Ghostwriter

by Travis Thrasher

  Outside on the street, the misty drizzle felt refreshing. Dennis walked down the block and saw a figure next to the truck.

  He’s so drunk he can’t even get into his own car.

  Dennis called out, but as he jogged toward his friend, he could see the terror on Hank’s face.

  “No no no no no no!” Hank shouted over and over again.

  The big guy was in tears. As Dennis reached the opposite side of the truck, he could see Hank sobbing, blabbering, trying desperately to get inside.

  “Don’t hurt me! Please, don’t hurt me! Don’t take me away! Don’t!”

  “Hank—man! What? What’s wrong?”

  Dennis lurched around the vehicle, and Hank suddenly fell to the street, his hands covering his head and his face, his voice like a small child’s, his wailing continuing.

  “Don’t hurt me! Don’t touch me! Not again! Not anymore!”

  Dennis went to offer a hand to Hank, but the shrieking only grew louder. He backed up.

  “Please just leave me be! Please go away! Go away! Take your evil somewhere else!”

  Dennis had no idea what he was seeing, what he was experiencing. Hank looked terrified, like a ten-year-old boy screaming at a talking skeleton.

  Dennis could feel himself shaking, the light rain falling on his forehead and his cheeks.

  “Just go!” Hank shouted as if his very life depended on it. “Please go. Go and leave me be!”

  So Dennis left him.

  And as he walked back to his vehicle, he couldn’t stop shaking.

  2007

  When will they learn? When will they ever get it in their heads that it’s not about the work, it’s not about the pages or the word count—it’s about feeling the words, about living them. And you can’t know until you’ve lived them and tasted them.

  Rain dripped off the window ledges, the fading sun hidden behind afternoon clouds, the soggy night descending.

  Cillian knew that’s when the demons would come, when the visions would resume, when he would be able to write.

  For some time now he would start to get a headache about midday. He worked odd hours serving tables, which didn’t help the headaches. Sometimes the sun would make his mind hurt, as though he were a vampire. He dreaded the days because they lasted so long.

  But night would come, just like the approaching evening right now, and that’s when things would change.

  Nobody would believe him, but he didn’t have to make anybody believe. People were fools, and fools were only interested in themselves. They didn’t take the time to notice. But he noticed. He watched. He smelled and listened and touched. He waited. He enjoyed.

  And the darkness would cover him like a blanket, smothering him, burning him.

  Sometimes he would find himself hunched over at the small desk typing away, his fingers cut and bleeding.

  Sometimes he would wake up naked with a notebook in hand and scribbles and drawings and a pen that thankfully wasn’t stuck in his side like one time years ago.

  Sometimes he would try to combat the darkness with alcohol, but that didn’t help. Bob had given him some drugs to try, but they didn’t help.

  Life was full of spirits, full of voices, full of brokenness, and he opened the window at night and swallowed it in and let it cover and corrode until he woke up somewhere not remembering the last six or eight hours of his life.

  The rain fell. Sometimes he would go outside and sit in the street and wait for oncoming cars to approach and nearly hit him and swerve and honk their horns. That was amusing.

  They don’t understand, and they can’t see what the words are really for, what they really mean, what the story really is.

  Somebody turned down the light, like a dimmer slowly turning off.

  He thought of the hypocrite author who had lost it, the poser who still pawned off used goods and useless stories.

  You don’t even believe in God, and that’s sad because I know better. I know I believe in God, so what does that make you?

  He turned to the chair in his small bedroom and saw the eyes looking back at him, the animal perched, the sickly wet fur and the fangs, this creature that watched, that smelled, that wouldn’t go away.

  Bob can’t see him, but that’s okay because Bob’s got his own set, his own ways, his own thinking.

  Sometimes he would read what he had written the night before—thousands of words, dozens of pages—and he would be scared. They weren’t his words. They belonged to someone else.

  But he liked this because something was working.

  This is true inspiration. This is how you really do it, Dennis Shore, and one day, one day, if I’m lucky, I’m going to show you how.

  He found a sweatshirt and crumpled it and put it against his mouth and nose and inhaled.

  It still smelled like her.

  And soon he would be with her again.

  Tasting Blood

  1.

  “Can I come in?”

  Dennis looked at the half-opened door to his office, the light from the morning sun streaking across his carpet. “Of course.”

  Lucy was already dressed for the day, having worked out at a health club not far from the house before having breakfast and then getting ready. She wore jeans and button-down shirt. His wife looked ten years younger than her age.

  “It’s always so cold in your office.”

  “That’s because there are lots of windows. But the higher the sun gets, the more my office and my fingers warm up.”

  “Productive morning?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Which one is this again?”

  “I’m calling it Empty Spaces. It’s about a serial killer.”

  Lucy raised her eyebrows and gave a humored look. She didn’t ask the question she always used to ask him when his career in writing macabre tales began: When are you going to write a love story? He eventually got testy with the question one day and told her he’d do it when someone gave him a million dollars to write it, something that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, not while his name was Dennis Shore, not while his books scared the snot out of readers looking to be scared.

  She sat on the blanket draped across the leather armchair that was supposed to be for reading and mostly served as a bed for their cat, Buffy. For a moment she stared around the office.

  “What’s up?” Dennis asked her.

  “Nothing. Just came in here to be with you.”

  He looked at her, the light brown hair still long, her eyes so deep and earnest, her mind going a hundred miles an hour. She was always thinking and acting and living and doing.

  “Bored?”

  “No,” she said with a smile.

  Something was up and both of them knew it.

  “Okay, wait a minute. Did I miss something? Someone’s birthday or anniversary?”

  She laughed. It was like a drug, that laugh. So confident, so joyous, so right.

  “I want to tell you something,” Lucy said.

  Dennis leaned back in his chair and watched her, waiting.

  “Let me guess—something about the cancer.”

  “Uh, no,” she said. “I doubt I’d look this happy if it was.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s about Audrey.”

  “Something good?”

  She nodded, still smiling, the morning sun’s glow accenting her strong jawline and those ocean-deep eyes. Dennis couldn’t help smiling back. He waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  And suddenly, he found her gone.

  The chair was still there, as was the blanket, but Lucy wasn’t sitting in it.

  He found himself in his office, his iMac still asleep, the light from the windows leaking in. Dennis moved and his back snapped in pain. It took him a moment to realize how he’d gotten here, to realize the time, to realize he’d been sleeping in his chair for hours.

  The room was quiet. Too quiet.

  He hadn’t wanted t
o wake up. He wanted to stay sleeping, to live out that morning and that day and that life. He wanted to see her again and to hear her voice and see her smile and feel her life.

  Dennis glared at the chair and could almost smell her.

  It was real and it happened and that’s why you dreamed. You can relive moments from the past.

  But the dreams always, always turned into nightmares.

  He still remembered what Lucy had told him.

  He still remembered his promise to her.

  But you never told Audrey, did you? You couldn’t, and you rationalized that it was because she was buried and gone. But you promised, Dennis, and you never fulfilled it.

  It was a slap across his face by a cold, rigid hand.

  The glow and warmth of the morning in his dreams was long gone.

  Just like Lucy.

  2.

  “Hank.”

  “Hey, man.”

  “You sound awful.”

  “I feel worse than I sound.”

  Dennis had tried twice that morning to get a hold of Hank. If he hadn’t answered on this third attempt, Dennis was going to head over to his house. He wasn’t sure if Hank had made it into his truck last night, much less make it back home. Part of him wouldn’t have been surprised if they had found his body in the Fox River somewhere.

  “What day is it?” Hank asked.

  “Thursday.”

  “Good thing I don’t work Thursdays.”

  “What happened to you last night?”

  “Huh?”

  It sounded like Hank was struggling to get out of his bed, or wherever it was he had fallen asleep.

  “Last night at the bar. What happened? You sorta flipped out on me.”

  “Really? I don’t remember. Last thing I recall is sitting at the table with you, downing beers.”

  “Did you have much before I got there?”

  “No, not that I can remember,” Hank said.

  “I’ve seen you gone, but never like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “You just—you batted me on the side of my head with a beer pitcher, then threw a bar stool at Jimmy. I’ve got a nice bruise across my cheek to prove it.”

  “Oh man. I’d better go by there today.”

  “And that wasn’t the worst. You just—I don’t know, Hank. You were pretty messed up.”

  “What’d I do?”

  Dennis didn’t want to tell him that he’d turned into a blubbering mess. Hank couldn’t fully appreciate it even if Dennis described it to him in full detail. The sight of his friend weeping uncontrollably and crawling away from him in terror—it was probably one of the most unsettling scenes Dennis could remember seeing.

  “That bad, huh?” Hank asked after Dennis’s silence.

  “Hank, you just—you really sorta buckled under the pressure.”

  Hank just laughed. He was back to good ole Hank. “Yeah, well, you were the one who wanted to go out.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “What do you mean? With what?”

  “With you.”

  Again Hank laughed. It was a laid-back, gruff but tender laugh, the kind even the grumpiest of individuals would have to smile back at. And Dennis, as always, obliged.

  “I’m up to my neck in debt, and my ex keeps in touch enough to continue breakin’ my heart, and you and I both know I drink way too much. But other than that, yeah, everything’s okay.”

  “I’d lay low for a while, you know. Just—take it easy.”

  “You take it easy.”

  “How about we both take it easy?” Dennis replied.

  “Okay then. We still watching college ball this Saturday?”

  “Of course.”

  Dennis got off the phone and could still hear echoes of Hank’s desperate cries. He couldn’t understand why Hank had just snapped, why he was suddenly paranoid and deranged, and why he had been scared of Dennis.

  Then he recalled the text from Cillian.

  “You remember Marooned, don’t you?”

  Suddenly it washed over him.

  The story and the characters and the images and the scenes.

  And it made sense.

  And for the first time, he realized what he was dealing with.

  3.

  He huddled in the walk-in closet next to his bedroom.

  He couldn’t stop shaking.

  Even though it was bright and sunny outside, he remained in the shadows of the partially closed closet, the racks of clothes hovering above him.

  “No,” he said out loud, quiet but still audible. “No.”

  Thoughts buzzed in his head like a swarm of bees, and no matter how he might run and how he might swat his arms to get rid of them, they were still there and not going anywhere.

  It wasn’t just that he was losing his mind.

  He could deal with that.

  But this… this made no sense, none whatsoever.

  How could he know?

  But another voice inside him told him the truth, the truth he didn’t want to face.

  He didn’t dare articulate it.

  Dennis didn’t even want to think about it.

  How could Cillian know?

  First it was the girl on the bridge, a pivotal scene from Breathe.

  Next came the nightmarish romp through Home Depot, a pivotal scene from Scarecrow.

  Then the terrifying voices filling his house just like they had in his novel Echoes.

  And now this.

  The scene where the buddy in the story confronts the protagonist. Written in Marooned and somehow bizarrely played out last night between Hank and Dennis.

  But these occurrences didn’t scare him as much as the text message.

  And the fact that Cillian somehow knew.

  But there’s no way he could know unless I’m making him up, unless I’m making the text up.

  But Dennis saw the message again this morning. It was still there in his phone.

  And it made everything in his world tremble.

  “No,” Dennis said, still rejecting it, still not believing, still not able to go there.

  But he was already there.

  He was in the middle of it.

  And quickly sinking.

  4.

  This time Dennis e-mailed Cillian.

  The e-mail was short and sweet.

  I want to meet with you, face-to-face. Today.

  He wanted answers. For his own sake and sanity.

  He could accept what they were. But he needed to know.

  He waited for a response but none came.

  5.

  Every time he called her now, Dennis expected to hear the worst. He’d never been an overly worried father, but now worry coated everything he said and did.

  The line rang, and he knew she wasn’t going to pick up. He’d been calling her too often, driving her crazy with worry, making sure she was okay, making her friends think her dad was a quack. Thankfully that didn’t stop Audrey from answering her cell phone.

  “Helloooooo?” she asked in a high-pitched voice.

  “How’s Southern California?” he asked, trying to feign nonchalance.

  “A lot better than Geneva, Illinois.”

  “Maybe I need to find out.”

  “Dad—”

  “I know, I’m calling again. But really, I had a crazy thought.”

  “You make a living having crazy thoughts.” “This one involves you.”

  “This can’t be good.”

  “I was thinking about coming to visit you.” “Weren’t you just here?”

  “What if I came back out?”

  “Dad.”

  “What?”

  There was silence.

  “Audrey?”

  “Are you being serious?”

  “Of course I am.”

  There was a sigh, then another pause.

  Dennis knew what that meant.

  “We talked about this,” she finally said.

  “Yeah, I know.”
/>
  “And what’d you say?”

  “I promised.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  Dennis knew where she was going, what she was referring to, but this was different. When he promised to give her space and promised he would be okay being on his own for the first time, he hadn’t known that some twisted, sick freak would be harassing him and making threats against her. How could he tell her that? She simply thought he was caving in, that he was missing her and missing having family around.

  And the truth was, he was missing her and Lucy.

  Or maybe the truth is I’ve flown over the cuckoo’s nest and gotten my wings clipped.

  “I’m coming home at the end of the month.”

  “I could come out there.”

  “It’s been one year. We agreed, didn’t we?”

  “Maybe I could just—”

  “Dad.”

  “Yeah?” He thought for a moment, then said, “Okay, fine, fine. I’ll stop. But listen—just be careful.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m fine. You be careful. Watch the Disney channel. Listen to some country music. Go to a tanning salon.”

  He smiled. Leave it to Audrey to give him a good laugh.

  He loved her and reminded her again that he did.

  But love couldn’t prevent something horrible from happening.

  Dennis knew this bitter truth and knew it well.

  6.

  “How precious.”

  The voice lodged itself deep inside him, rattling, shaking, tearing. Was it just his imagination or was Cillian’s voice changing the more time passed, distorting itself into a voice with many layers and textures?

  “What’s precious?”

  “Being a father.”

  A rage continued boiling inside him. “Are you—are you listening to my conversations?”

  The laugh unsettled him. “However could I do that, Dennis?”

  The phone call had come only minutes after he spoke with Audrey. How could Cillian know he was talking with her unless he was spying or listening in?

  “You never answered my e-mail,” Dennis said.

  “I’m answering now.”

  “And?”

  “Where would you like to meet?”

  Dennis stared through the blinds of the kitchen at the back of his yard. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see the guy talking from back there, waving at him as he spoke into a cell.