Ghostwriter

by Travis Thrasher

  Dennis got up to turn off the lights, but froze when he heard something.

  This is crazy, Den. You’re just spooked.

  He turned off the final light and headed upstairs to his bedroom. The wind shook against the house. The steps creaked in their familiar way. The small hallway light illuminated his way as he went. And all Dennis could think about was a bloody hand grabbing his ankle and yanking him back into the darkness.

  He stared at the steps. Just steps. Just feet walking up them.

  How could someone imagine such horror and spell out such inhumanity?

  He shook his head as if the action might erase his thoughts. But even in his bedroom, even standing in the bathroom washing his face and brushing his teeth, even looking at his dark closet as he took off his jeans and shirt, even climbing into bed wondering what might be hiding at the bottom of his comforter by his feet waiting to take a bite out of them, Dennis could not get rid of the images.

  They were vivid and real.

  The printed word had power.

  Stop this. It’s crazy, man.

  But the thoughts wouldn’t go away.

  And he pictured the scene he had read once again.

  And he wondered what would happen next.

  And he felt sick imagining something like that happening in real life.

  Knowing that it could.

  Afraid that Cillian Reed might be writing from personal experience.

  2006

  The trees fly past and the windshield bounces and the sky tumbles and the seat belt tears into his shoulder and his chest as the world swirls and a branch crashes through the glass next to him.

  “Get him.”

  Cillian still feels spinning, still feels turning.

  “Do you hear me? Go open the door and get him.”

  He shakes his head. “Why can’t you?”

  But then he sees the big guy’s slashed face, the glass on his forehead and cheek, a nice chunk of his jaw ripped open, the blood oozing out.

  “Okay,” Cillian says, not needing to ask.

  And he releases his seat belt and falls onto the ceiling of the overturned truck. He cuts his hands on the glass as he crawls out the window.

  The last thing he remembers is driving down the remote street in the woods, Bob tossing a lukewarm Budweiser back at him, listening to the two men talk in the front of the car. Bob met the drunk twenty-something guy at the run-down bar in Elgin and told him about a party. A party that doesn’t exist. At a place that isn’t there.

  This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. But it will be the first time that it’s all left up to Cillian.

  Until now he’s only watched and taken notes.

  This time his hands will be used for something else.

  Cillian stands next to the car that has flipped and slammed against a tree.

  He remembers the drunk guy asking questions and not liking the answers Bob gave. The guy abruptly jerked the wheel and forced them off the road.

  Up ahead the man staggers down the road.

  Cillian starts to run after him.

  What are you going to do when you get to him?

  But he just keeps running, his hands and arms bloodied. He feels dizzy, maybe from a concussion.

  “Get him.”

  He can hear Bob’s words.

  “Get him.”

  The stranger turns around, then stops. His eyes say everything. He stumbles and bolts over the ditch and heads into the woods.

  They’re still barren since it’s mid-March. The man trips over a log and gets back up, locking eyes with Cillian.

  This time I’m the monster. This time he’s running from me.

  And for a few minutes they run through the labyrinth of trees and limbs and bushes until the man looks back and nicks his right foot on a root and falls face-first into the leafy, muddy ground.

  Don’t stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop. You know what waits back there at the car if you do.

  Cillian finds himself acting quickly. Bob has taught him well. His knees force the man down. His hands find the man’s neck and squeeze. And as the man jerks away, clawing, fl ailing, he remains on top of him.

  He puts the palm of his hand on the man’s forehead, driving him in the soft ground, his other hand deep into the guy’s taut neck.

  Then his palm goes over the man’s mouth, and he shoves the air out of the man until his tossing and turning and flapping body finally stops convulsing.

  But he doesn’t let go. And as Cillian keeps one hand clenched over the man’s neck and the other jammed over the man’s mouth, he can feel his own tears dripping down his cheeks and his hands and body shaking.

  But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a smile on his face.

  Because it’s the most glorious moment of his life.

  Echoes

  1.

  Dennis walked along the river on a small path that led to a forest preserve. It was late in the day, and it was nice to be able to walk uninterrupted while most people were stuck in their cars in traffic trying to get home. There were many things he enjoyed about being a full-time writer, and this was one of them.

  A strange knocking sound got louder as the path fed into a parking lot. There was one car in the lot, a beast of a blue Chevy. It sounded like someone was inside, banging to get out.

  Dennis looked around as he discerned a muffled cry.

  Someone was screaming from the car, but screaming with their mouth closed.

  He dashed to the car and peered into the front seat. As he did, he heard the pounding from the back. Somebody banged against the trunk, their yells stifled.

  Dennis examined the trunk but couldn’t find a way to open it.

  “I hear you—I’m going to get you out,” he called, tapping on the trunk.

  Whoever was inside wailed away as if they didn’t believe him.

  “Okay, hold on,” he yelled.

  He tried to open all doors, but they were all locked. The screaming and bashing continued. Dennis sprinted over to the woods nearby and found a rock. He used it against the driver’s window, bashing the glass and finally opening the door.

  The keys were still in the ignition.

  But the driver is nowhere to be found. Right?

  He grabbed the keys and opened the trunk, assuring whoever was inside that everything was going to be fine.

  But when he opened the trunk and saw what was shrieking and kicking and fighting inside, he knew things weren’t going to be fine.

  The young woman—what was left of her—would never be fine, no matter how long she lived.

  Bleeding eyes bore into him, the tape around her mouth almost chewed off. Similar tape was wrapped around her wrists and ankles.

  She screamed and jerked and as he tried to pull off the tape. She fought and convulsed violently.

  She was terrified of him.

  Whoever had done this to her—and he could imagine what had happened—wanted her to be found.

  But she was already dead.

  As Dennis reached to pull her out of the trunk, he woke up. Not with a jerk, but rather opening his eyes and seeing the darkness around him.

  He wasn’t in a forest preserve.

  It was his bedroom.

  He reached over but didn’t find anybody.

  He breathed in deeply and looked toward the ceiling. His hand brushed the sweat off his face.

  He didn’t need to wonder why he had dreamed that.

  It was from the second chapter in Cillian’s novel Brain Damage.

  2.

  Grief was sometimes like listening to an approaching war in the distance. The tanks and the armies and the destruction had not yet arrived at Dennis’s doorstep, but he had heard the rumblings for eleven months now. And every now and then they sounded closer.

  As he drove toward downtown Geneva, the October day bright and still, Dennis reflected on these rumblings. Perhaps he had been able to squelch the winds of war simply by running away from them. The eleven months had b
een so busy, with Audrey’s final year of high school and then sending her off to college. He hadn’t had enough time to really, truly write. And he certainly had not been able to grieve effectively, however that was supposed to be done.

  Dennis knew he’d been so focused on helping Audrey grieve that he hadn’t allowed himself any time to do so.

  Perhaps writer’s block is part of my grieving process.

  Sometimes he wondered if it would hit him like a tsunami you could see approaching on the horizon. He remembered the stories of the tsunami that hit Thailand back in 2004, and how people initially thought it was just a nice, fun wave coming at them. But once it hit they realized it was deadly and they were in dire trouble.

  Dennis felt Lucy’s absence every day, yet it didn’t prevent him from moving on without her. He stuffed the emotion aside, confined it in a box, and left that box to drift with the rushing tide while he went the other way.

  But the wound was still there. And sometimes like this morning when he awoke from a terrifying nightmare only to find another one—a lonely house and himself aimlessly attempting to work on a story day after day after unproductive day—he found himself missing her. Just her sweet spirit and her smile, there to cheer him up, there to make him feel alive.

  In some ways he felt as dead as Lucy.

  3.

  That afternoon, walking through the crowds at Geneva Commons, deliberately surrounding himself with life and activity, a terrifying thought struck him.

  How will I know if I’m going insane?

  He used to have Lucy and Audrey as sounding boards and voices of reason. Now it was just him.

  And he was cracking up, losing it. Having nightmarish visions from the books he had written. Terrifying dreams from the book he was reading.

  What if I’ve already lost it and don’t know it?

  The fear didn’t leave, no matter how many strangers surrounded him, no matter how busy life was around him.

  4.

  He opened his eyes. For a second he could see nothing but black. But then, little by little, he was able to discern shadows and shapes, outlines and overtones in the suburban night.

  Dennis sat up, and instead of finding himself in bed, he was on the freshly cut lawn staring up at the midnight sky. The grass beneath him was wet and cold. He could hear cars in the distance, the steady rush of the river, a train passing on the nearby tracks.

  I’m not dreaming. Not this time.

  He patted his face to make sure. The last thing he could remember was reading that unholy tale Cillian had left by his door. The one he kept reading even though he swore he wouldn’t continue. He must have drifted off in the armchair.

  And then what? How’d I get out here?

  He stood, his back aching, his mind foggy. The dampness on his backside was real. The chill in the air was real. And the light in the third-floor room of his house was real.

  I didn’t turn that on.

  Long hair draped over pale skin and bruised arms came to mind. So did Cillian’s glaring face.

  I’m losing it.

  He closed his eyes hard and opened them again as if that might help, but saw once more that the light was on. It was the second room on the third floor used for storage. He and Lucy had always intended to turn it into a memory room or a room for Lucy’s crafts. Now it just contained echoes of the past.

  Echoes.

  Dennis hadn’t been in that room since Lucy passed away. The door was always shut, the blinds closed. But those blinds were now open.

  And a figure stood at the window, looking down.

  Dennis almost choked on his breath as he backed away before forgetting everything and sprinting back toward the house.

  Whoever was in there was going to get hurt. Whoever was in his house messing with his mind was going to be messed with.

  Dennis was tired of this. Tired of being afraid.

  He hated feeling helpless.

  He bolted onto the deck and tried the back door but found it locked.

  He turned and ran around the side of the house to the front door, but it was locked as well.

  I didn’t lock myself out of my own house.

  There was a spare key under the deck. He used it on the back door, his hands shaking, then searching out the light switch since it was pitch-black inside.

  Just as he turned on the light, a black creature sprang at him from the kitchen island.

  It was a creature of the night, a creature from hell, with bright red dead eyes.…

  But as the fur brushed him and he noticed the missing claws, he realized it was just Buffy. The cat Audrey had gotten after Lucy passed away, the cat he couldn’t say no to, the cat that came and went as it pleased.

  He was lucky he didn’t snap the cat’s furry neck.

  “All right, Buffy. You need to learn not to jump on people.” He put the cat down and thought about getting the gun.

  You keep thinking about it, don’t you? When are you just going to go get the thing?

  But he refused. If Cillian was upstairs trying to scare him, he’d deal with it his own way. A gun would complicate things. And could make things messy.

  As he started to go upstairs, a noise stopped him.

  It was laughter.

  And it made his already chilled body break out in bumps.

  It was the laughter of an old woman. Hoarse, ragged, haunting—the laughter smothered him.

  I didn’t just hear that.

  But it came again, a scratching cackle that sounded ancient.

  Someone’s just trying to spook me out. That’s all. That’s all it is.

  He went up the steps slowly, barely breathing, his body quivering from the cold, his eyes wide.

  The laughter came again.

  The step underneath him creaked.

  So did the house.

  This house doesn’t creak like that.

  On the second floor he began ascending the twisting narrow stairs to the third level. His bad knees, thanks to years of baseball and softball, prevented him from making the climb very often. But now someone was playing with him. Someone was trying to scare the guy who made a living scaring others.

  Someone was playing with his fears even though Dennis had few of them.

  I’m not scared.

  So he tried to tell himself. But the creaks and the laughter and the wind outside continued. And the light upstairs glowed, the sliver of illumination visible beneath the closed door.

  As he reached the top of the stairs, everything suddenly went dark. He held onto the railing, afraid he would go tumbling if someone suddenly jumped out at him.

  Or if someone decided to push me.

  He waited, straining to hear anything. But there was sudden silence. No wind outside, no groaning in the floor or the walls, no children laughing.

  He stepped up to the door.

  He opened it slowly, carefully.

  I know where you are.

  His finger found the switch and flipped it on.

  And nothing.

  There was nothing.

  Nobody was in this room. There wasn’t anywhere to hide either. No closet up here. No bed to hide under. Just boxes and a couple of bookshelves and an overhead light.

  Even the blinds were closed.

  Dennis scanned the room, listening, waiting, watching, but nothing happened. He opened the blinds and looked outside, but could barely make out anything in the darkness.

  The darkness he had just awoken in.

  I’m losing my mind.

  As he started to head back downstairs, déjà vu struck him.

  He remembered his haunted house story.

  And the scene that happened almost just like this one. With the man awaking outside, going into the house to the empty room on the third floor only to find nothing.

  That was the start of the haunting, the start of the story, the start of everything.

  But I made that story up. I wrote that almost a decade ago.

  Climbing down the stairs, Den
nis knew he needed to see someone, talk to somebody. To make sure he wasn’t going insane, like the character he had written about so many years ago.

  2006

  Cillian had never felt so cheated. So infuriated.

  You might as well have come to my house and stolen twenty-five bucks from me and slapped me in the face and peed on my carpet while you’re at it.

  He didn’t bother to toss the book across the room. No. He was going to do something else with it. But he needed to decide what first.

  His man had lost it. Officially lost it.

  Book seven—actually, book nine but the first two didn’t count—jumped the shark. It was a sellout. It was autopilot land. It was clichéd. It was beyond horrific—it was boring.

  It was about as scary as a Girl Scout. Scratch that—even those could be scary. This was dull city.

  Maybe he would cut the book into pieces and mail it back to Dennis Shore. No, that would be far too obvious.

  He needed to do something different.

  He needed to make an impression on a man who had obviously stopped trying to make impressions.

  Cillian had a few ideas. And they made his mind and his mood feel much better.

  The Gift

  1.

  He was parking his SUV on Third Street when he saw her.

  The curly brown hair, the slender frame, the bouncy walk.

  It was only from behind, but Dennis knew it was Lucy walking down the sidewalk.

  She was right there, across the street. In person. There to touch.

  He wanted to run after her, but instead he stayed in the car, backing up the Volvo and driving down the street, racing to see her face, already knowing the truth but hopeful anyway.

  When he finally passed the woman, he instantly saw that she very much wasn’t Lucy. She was younger, and her features were completely different.

  Dennis shook his head as he looped back around onto Third Street. Once out of the car, the sun shining on his face, he felt ridiculous.

  He had deliberately gotten out of the house. Every moment he spent there he feared someone ringing the doorbell to tell him the truth was out. He had stolen something, and the world finally knew. He was everything those pages strewn across his lawn had said: a liar, a fraud, a hack.