by Shawn Lane
“Still, I’m here.”
“Unless I’m hallucinating.”
Aaron smiled. “Unless you are. What do you do, Curtis? I see you at your computer a lot.”
“I write horror novels. Like Stephen King.” Curtis laughed. “Well, not like him. Not as successful I mean.”
“That’s good. Maybe that’s why you see me. You’re more open-minded to the supernatural.”
“Don’t know. I always thought what I was writing was completely fake.” He pushed the button to make his coffee.
“I don’t know, Curtis. There’s some reason you see me and I’m here like this with you. It’s never happened before.” Aaron allowed himself to have a shred of hope. He shouldn’t. Shouldn’t allow it. It was so hard to hope these days. “Maybe you’re the answer to my finally having peace.”
Curtis blew out a breath. “That’s a lot of pressure, Aaron. What if I can’t help you?”
“So far,” Aaron said, “you’re my best hope.”
“Look, I’m sure you were a very nice guy when you were al—here, but how do I know you’re even the ghost of Aaron Carmichael and not a psycho here to murder me?”
For a moment, Aaron didn’t know what to say. How could he convince Curtis he really had been Aaron Carmichael? A man with a life, a boyfriend, hopes, and dreams?
“Touch me.”
“What?” Curtis frowned.
Aaron held out his hand. “Grab my hand, Curtis. Touch me.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Touch me,” he insisted.
Curtis had paled, but he took a couple steps toward Aaron. He stopped. “I believe you.”
He squelched his disappointment. He couldn’t blame Curtis. He wouldn’t have wanted to touch a ghost five years earlier either. Five years without some kind of contact had been so hard. Aaron forced himself to nod and then to smile. Or at least he thought he smiled. How could he know about anything anymore?
Curtis visibly swallowed. “How? How did it happen, Aaron? Do you know? Do you remember who did this to you?”
His laugh was bitter, at least to him. “I don’t remember what happened that day, Curtis. I can’t tell you who k-killed me.” He closed his eyes, wondering if admitting out loud he’d been killed, that he was dead, would make him disappear before this man’s eyes.
“Okay, okay, Aaron. You don’t have to. Not now. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
He opened eyes. “Upset me?”
Curtis nodded, concern evident on his face. “You’re crying.”
The aching sadness nearly overwhelmed him. Nearly brought him to his knees. “The sorrow does not go away, Curtis. It crushes me.”
“I’ll help you any way I can. Can you tell me about your life before your death?”
Could he? Wouldn’t it kill him all over again? But who was he kidding? Nothing could kill someone who was already dead. Nothing would change what happened. He was dead. Not saying the word or thinking the word didn’t make it go away.
“Okay, but maybe we should go into the living room where you can get comfortable,” Aaron suggested.
“Good idea.”
Curtis led the way back into the living room and Aaron followed behind.
“Um, can you sit?” Curtis asked.
Aaron was reminded of a similar line in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and the answer was the same.
“Yes, I think so.” Aaron carefully lowered himself into a chair. Oddly it felt no different than sitting when he’d been alive. It would be too easy to convince himself he wasn’t dead though, even after all these years of just existing, so he pushed such thoughts out of his mind.
Curtis sat on the couch across from him; as far away as he could, Aaron imagined. As though being dead was contagious. He almost laughed. Funny how he could still be amused.
“How far should I go back?”
Curtis thought about it. “Well, maybe tell me about your life about that time and then a few days leading up to that day. What you remember. Should I take notes?”
Aaron nodded. “Maybe. I don’t know how this works as I’ve never been this…this whole before. I don’t know it if it will last and you’ll be able to talk to me again. You have to treat this like this is the only time I can talk to you, because maybe it is.”
“Makes sense. Be right back.” Curtis rose and left the living room.
Aaron waited, wondering how long he really did have. Since he wasn’t sure why he could now be seen by Curtis, anything could happen. He only hoped it meant he was at least getting close to the truth and could find peace at last. This not being real but not going to whatever awaited him in the afterlife was becoming more difficult and depressing by the…Well, however he measured time now. Once he’d charged three hundred bucks an hour as a highly paid San Francisco criminal defense attorney. Now hours went into days, months, years. Having nowhere to go. No one who even knew he still waited. Until now.
Curtis returned with a lined legal pad and a pen, sitting once more on the sofa across from Aaron. He looked expectantly at Aaron as though he expected the meaning of life to fall from Aaron’s lips. Perhaps the meaning of Aaron’s life, but that eluded him.
“I don’t know exactly how to begin or what to say,” Aaron admitted.
“Tell me about your upbringing,” Curtis suggested.
“I was born into a wealthy family who’d lived their entire lives in San Francisco. My parents owned a Victorian mansion in a wealthy suburb, the kind of house you see in postcards of the San Francisco area. It was kind of cool and kind of a burden at the same time because it had to be maintained a certain way. Anyway, besides me I had two brothers and a sister. I was the third one, after a brother and sister, but before my younger brother.”
Curtis was writing and he looked up at Aaron’s pause. “You got along with them? Your family?”
Aaron nodded. “We weren’t Leave It to Beaver or anything close to that, but we didn’t have daily screaming matches or suffer abuse either. They were just there, you know. Your family. But we didn’t hug or have chummy baseball outings or stuff like many families might have. My parents were always Mother and Father. I don’t know that they ever told us to use those titles, but that’s what we did. My oldest brother went to military school, but I was saved from that. I think, even when I was a kid, my parents knew I was gay.”
“You’re gay?”
He nearly said he wasn’t gay, he was nothing now, but they both knew it without having to beat it into the ground. “Yes.”
“Me, too.”
Aaron smiled. “I know. I’ve seen you bring men here.”
Curtis’s faced reddened. “I didn’t know I had a ghostly voyeur.”
“How could you? Nice ass by the way.”
The other man choked. “Aaron—”
“Sorry.” He sighed. “My parents prided themselves as being conservative and liberal at the same time. They went out of their way to tell me my being gay was all right while treating me different from my brothers and sister. Whispering behind my back to friends, apologizing for subjecting them to me, things like that.”
“Wow, that sucks.”
He shrugged. “It could have been much worse. They never threw me out or cut me off from the money. In that I was lucky.”
“And your siblings? Did they accept you?”
“More the same tired tolerance. ‘Oh, Aaron’s family so even though we don’t like him being gay, he’s still our brother.’ I’d be excluded from family gatherings. All by accident, of course,” Aaron said. “Everyone was happy when I decided to go into law. Not quite so happy when they discovered I’d chosen criminal law. They didn’t like me defending those loathsome creatures. Their words, not mine.”
Curtis put the pen down for a moment. “My family is much more accepting of my being gay. They weren’t thrilled at first, but they’ve come around.”
“Usually good families do. But then I did the one thing I suppose mine couldn’t really forgive.”
“Which was?”
“I found a boyfriend.”
“Ah, of course.” Curtis smirked. “It’s acceptable as long as you don’t actually sleep with a man.”
“Exactly. I actually got invited to a family function and I showed up with my new boyfriend at the time, Robert Henley. Robbie.” For a moment he couldn’t get any other words out. Just mentioning Robbie…
Oh, God.
How unfair was life to find the man of your dreams only to die and never see him again? Five years without Robbie. Aaron wondered how his lover was doing. If he’d found someone new. Was he happy? Aaron hoped so.
“He was your boyfriend when you died, wasn’t he?” Curtis asked softly.
“Yeah. He was all I ever wanted.”
“Was he with you when it happened? Do you remember?”
Aaron tried to think. Tried to remember. Robbie. Had he been there? If he had been, had he been hurt, too? “I don’t remember.”
“How did you die? Do you know that?”
Aaron stood and turned his back to Curtis. He knew what Curtis would see. His back covered in blood. He’d been shot in the back between the shoulder blades.
Chapter 3
A lump formed in Curtis’s throat as he stared at the mass of partially dried blood covering Aaron’s back. Tears sprung to his eyes. It was all so much to take in. To see. Was he truly mad and imagining Aaron here?
Aaron turned back around and Curtis let relief wash over him. It didn’t make the truth of what had happened to Aaron go away, but not facing it made it easier.
“You were killed by a coward,” Curtis said. He’d been taking notes, but really, he doubted he’d ever forget what Aaron said.
“I don’t remember who did it. Or what led up to this.” Aaron sat in the chair once more.
Curtis knew Aaron was not likely to appreciate his next question, but well, he had to ask. The odds in most cases of non-stranger murders stared him in the face. It was usually someone very close to the victim.
“Are you…could it have been Robbie who did this to you?”
It was odd looking at a ghost. He couldn’t really say Aaron’s face wore expressions, exactly. Not normal human ones, anyway. He recognized when Aaron was trying to smile, it resembled a smile but was more watery, not quite solid. When Aaron had been sad earlier, Curtis could even tell he was crying, though the tears were like little pearls of water. But just now, Aaron stared at him as though he were looking through Curtis, his expression devoid of any emotion whatsoever. Shivers went down Curtis’s back.
“It wasn’t Robbie,” Aaron said finally. “If you knew Robbie you would know. He was the sweetest, most loving person I’d ever known. And anyway he would have had no reason to murder me. Nothing to gain.”
“Okay, it’s just that the significant other is always the one cops suspect first.”
Aaron nodded. “I know. I supposed Robbie was subjected to questioning after I was killed. But they would have realized soon enough he didn’t do it. My murder remains unsolved, Curtis. Or I wouldn’t be here, I think.”
“Yeah, and everything I saw on the Internet indicates that, too. But if it was someone you knew and not like an intruder or a burglar, then likely whoever did kill you was questioned at some point.”
Another ghost smile. “It wasn’t Robbie.”
“Tell me something about him. Tell me about the two of you.” Curtis wondered how many people would so readily accept a ghost sitting in their living room talking about their life, who might have killed him. He couldn’t think of anyone. Yet here he was like it wasn’t so fucking crazy.
“I’d love to see him again,” Aaron said wistfully. “Robbie and I met at the coffee place I went to. He was just in beauty school then. I was going to be appearing at a trial on a significant case, so Robbie volunteered to do my hair for it. Robbie became a great stylist at a popular salon. Probably still there, I imagine, unless he’s opened his own place. He was very good and everyone loved him. Clients lined up to get an appointment.”
“How long ago did you meet?”
“Um. It’s been five years, so…eight years ago. We were together for three years.”
Curtis noted that on his legal pad. He’d begun to write down the people Aaron had mentioned. Sort of a suspect list, no matter what Aaron might say. He might be right and Robbie was innocent, but Curtis left him under suspects anyway. Also on there were Aaron’s parents and siblings, as well as clients Aaron defended and the families of victims of crimes.
“Did Robbie live here with you?”
“Only on weekends. I was pretty busy during the week working on cases, long hours. It made sense to both of us for Robbie to keep his own apartment during the week because it was a lot closer to the salon. We still saw each other a few times a week, but most of our time together was Friday to Sunday. I only worked half days on Fridays unless I had a trial, so I’d pick Robbie up and he’d stay here until Monday morning when I’d drop him off again.”
“Do you know what day of the week you were killed?” Curtis wondered.
Aaron shook his head. “Don’t remember. Don’t even know the date.”
“I can look it up.” Curtis wrote himself a reminder. “Are your parents still living?”
“They were five years ago.”
“And their names?” His pen hovered over the suspect list, waiting.
“Walter and Mary Carmichael. What are you doing?”
“Creating a list of everyone you knew back then,” Curtis said carefully. “And your siblings?”
Aaron hesitated, but then with a nod said, “Colton’s the oldest, then my sister is, Marianne, and my younger brother is Zane.”
Curtis wrote them all down. He yawned. He could barely believe he was this sleepy while talking to a ghost. He should be wired.
Aaron smiled. “Why don’t you go to bed? We’ve talked enough for now.”
“Are you sure? What if—”
“When you wake up I’m no more?”
He nodded.
“We have to take that chance, Curtis. You can’t stay awake forever afraid I’ll disappear. It’s going to happen in its own time. Hopefully not until we learn what I need to know in order to have peace. Go lay down. I’ll stay out here so you can sleep undisturbed.”
* * * *
Curtis woke from restless sleep. By the time he’d gotten into bed it had been nearly three. He blinked rapidly. Sunlight streamed through the partially open curtains in his room. A check of the clock on his nightstand indicated it was nearly nine in the morning.
Groaning, he ran his fingers through his hair and then over his face. He needed a shower and some breakfast. Could he leave his ghostly visitor alone a little longer?
“Where would he go?” Curtis mumbled aloud and went into his shower and turned it on.
He spent his time in the shower wondering what the hell he was going to do with Aaron. About Aaron. He was not a detective, psychic or otherwise. How was he supposed to find out what happened to Aaron if the police couldn’t?
After drying off, he dressed in jeans and a brown short-sleeved T-shirt, then opened his bedroom door and walked out into the living room.
“Aaron?”
His heart pounding, Curtis waited for a response from his resident ghost. God, was Aaron gone already? So soon? But he didn’t know what to do. Not really.
“Aaron?”
“Here, Curtis.” Aaron came from the direction of the kitchen. “I’m still here.”
Odd to feel relief a ghost still lived in your home. “What were you doing?”
Aaron smiled. “Just checking out what you had in your kitchen. I used to love to cook. How did you sleep?”
“Fair. I thought I’d fire up the desktop computer and see what day you died.”
“Okay.”
Curtis went into his office, which had been an extra bedroom he hadn’t needed, and to his computer desk. The computer was only asleep, not completely off, so it didn’t take long to get
it going.
Aaron stood behind him, peering down at the screen, which made Curtis curious.
“Can you do stuff like reading like normal? Do you see everything like you did when you were alive?”
“I see you, I see this place and all the furniture, and I see the computer. But no, I can’t really read what any of that says,” Aaron said. “I doubt I could pick up a pen and write with it or even type on the keyboard.”
Curtis nodded and pulled up the articles he’d seen on the Forest Glenn murder. “You know you aren’t the first one.”
“Huh?”
“To be murdered at these apartments. They’ve been here for decades. The first murder was in the 1940s. A guy bludgeoned his wife to death.”
“Hmm. I don’t think that was disclosed when I rented this place.”
“Neither was yours to me and it was the same damn apartment.” He glanced at Aaron. “Can you feel the presence of other spirits?”
Aaron shook his head. “But I don’t know if I would one way or another. I’m no expert on the supernatural.”
“February eighth,” Curtis said looking at an article online. “It was a Tuesday.”
“I probably would have been home alone then. Robbie didn’t usually come over on Tuesday nights.”
Curtis considered this. “My guess is that whoever killed you knew this.”
“That means it was definitely someone who knew me well.”
“Or studied you well. It doesn’t rule out someone you represented who didn’t get the sentence they wanted.”
“Yeah, but likely they’d be in prison,” Aaron said.
“Unless they’d been paroled. There’s also the possibility of a vengeful family member of a victim. I’ve made a list of possibilities.”
Aaron nodded. “Okay. Who is on this list?”
Curtis decided if he was going to actually help Aaron he’d have to be honest. “All of your family members, Robbie, and those I just mentioned. I suppose I should add co-workers and opposing attorneys. Friends. Maybe jealous former classmates. Lovers.”