by H. T. Night
His name was Jerrold and he was close to sixty and close to retirement. He lived alone and seemed mostly happy. He was addicted to internet poker, but, as far as I could tell, that was his only vice.
Thank God.
He turned the paper casually, snapping it taught, then reached for his steaming mug of coffee, heavy with sugar and cream, and took a long sip. I could smell the coffee. Or at least a hint of it, just like I could smell a hint of his aftershave and hair gel. My senses were weak at best.
As he set the mug down, some of the coffee sloshed over the rim and onto the back of his hand. He yelped and shook his hand. I could see that it had immediately reddened.
Pain.
I hadn’t known pain in quite a long time. My last memory of it was when I had been working at a friend’s house, cutting carpet, and nearly severed my arm off.
I looked down at my translucent arm now. Although nearly imperceptible, the scar was still there—or at least the ghostly hint of it.
Still cursing under his breath, Jerrold turned back to his paper. So did I. He scanned the major headlines, and I scanned them along with him. After all, he was my hands in this situation.
He read through some local Los Angeles news, mostly political stuff that would have bored me to tears had I tears to be bored with. I glanced over at his coffee while he read, trying to remember what it tasted like. I think I remembered.
I think.
Hot, roasted, bitter and sweet. I knew the words, but I was having a hard time recalling the actual flavor. That scared me.
Jerrold turned the page. As he did so, something immediately caught my eye; luckily, it caught his eye, too.
A piano teacher had been murdered at St. Luke’s, a converted monastery that was now being used as a Catholic church and school. Lucy Randolph was eighty-six years old and just three days shy from celebrating her sixtieth anniversary with her husband.
I had known Mrs. Randolph. In fact, she had been my own music teacher back when I was a student at St. Luke’s. She had been kind to a fault, a source of inspiration and joy to her students, and especially to me.
And now, according to the report, someone had strangled her, leaving her for dead on the very piano she had taught from. Perhaps the very same piano I had been taught from.
Damn.
Jerrold clucked his tongue and shook his head and moved on to the next page, but I had seen enough. I stepped away,
“You’re still young, Jerrold,” I said to him. “Lose fifteen pounds and find someone special—and ditch the gambling.”
As I spoke, the small hairs on the back of his neck stood up and and his aura shifted towards me. He shivered unconsciously and turned the page.
I left his apartment.
3.
We were in Pauline’s apartment.
She was drinking an apple martini and I wasn’t, which was a damn shame. At the moment, I was sitting in an old wingback chair and she was on the couch, one bare foot up on a hand-painted coffee table which could have doubled for a modern piece of abstract art.
“If you ever need any extra money,” I said, “you could always sell your coffee table on eBay.”
“It’s not for sale,” she said. “Ever.”
“What if you were homeless and living on the streets and needed money?”
“Then I would be homeless and living on the streets with the world’s most bitchen hand-painted coffee table.”
Her name was Pauline and she was a world-famous medium. She could hear me, see me and sometimes even touch me. Hell, she could even read my thoughts, which was a bit disconcerting for me. She was a full-figured woman, with perhaps the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She often wore her long brown hair haphazardly, a look that would surely have your average California girl running back to the bathroom mirror. Pauline was not your average California girl. She wasn’t your average girl by any definition, spending as much of her time in the world of the dead as in the world of the living. Luckily, she just so happened to live in the very building I was presently haunting.
“Yeah, lucky me,” said Pauline, picking up on my thoughts.
She did her readings out of a small office near downtown Los Angeles, usually working with just one or two clients a day. Some of her sessions lasted longer than others and tonight she was home later than usual, hitting the booze hard, as she often did. I wouldn’t call her a drunk, but she was damn close to being one.
“I’m not a drunk,” Pauline said absently, reading my thoughts again. “I can stop any time I want. The booze just helps me...release.”
“Release?” I asked.
“Yeah, to forget. To unwind. To uneverything.”
“You should probably not drink so much,” I said.
She regarded me over her martini glass. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her face gleamed with a fine film of sweat. She wasn’t as attractive when she was drunk.
“Thanks,” she said sarcastically. “And do you even remember what it’s like being drunk?”
I thought about that. “A little. And that was below the belt.”
“Do you even have a belt?”
I looked down at my slightly glowing ethereal body. Hell, even my clothing glowed, which was the same clothing I had been wearing on the night I was murdered two years ago: a white tee shirt and long red basketball shorts, my usual sleeping garb. I was barefoot and I suspected my hair was a mess, since I had been shot to death in my sleep. Dotting my body were the various bloody holes where the bullets had long ago entered my living flesh.
“No belt,” I said. “Then again, no shoes, either.”
She laughed, which caused some of her martini to slosh over the rim. She cursed and licked her fingers like a true alcoholic.
“Oh, shut up,” she said.
“Waste not, want not,” I said.
She glared at me some more as she took a long pull on her drink. When she set it down, she missed the center of the cork coaster by about three inches. Now part of the glass sat askew on the edge of the coaster, and the whole thing looked like it might tip over. She didn’t notice or care.
Pauline worked with spirits all day. Early on, she had tried her best to ignore my presence. But I knew she could see me, and so I pursued her relentlessly until she finally acknowledged my existence.
“And now I can’t get rid of you,” she said.
“You love me,” I said. “Admit it.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I do. Call me an idiot, but I do.”
“Idiot,” I said. “Besides, I’m different than those other ghosts.”
“Yeah? How so?”
“I’m a ghost on a mission.”
“Could that sound more corny?” she said.
“Maybe after a few more drinks,” I said.
“So how’s the mission coming along?” she asked. We had been over this before, perhaps dozens of times.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not like I’m getting a lot of feedback from anyone—or anything.”
“And when will you be done with your mission?” she asked.
“I don’t know that either.”
“And what, exactly, is your mission?” As she spoke, she peered into the empty glass with one eye.
“To save my soul.”
“Oh, yeah, that. And you’re sure it’s not too late to save your soul? I mean, you are dead after all.”
“It’s never too late,” I said.
“And you know that how?” she asked.
“Because I’m not in hell yet.”
“You’re haunting an old apartment building in Los Angeles,” she said. “Sounds a bit like hell to me.”
“But I can see my wife and daughter whenever I want,” I countered. “Can’t be that bad.”
“Your wife has re-married,” said Pauline. “And weren’t you two separated at the time of your death?”
We had been, but the details of our separation were lost to me. We had financial problems I seemed to recall, which had led to many argument
s. What we had argued about was anyone’s guess. But the arguments had been heated and impassioned and in the end I had moved out—but not very far. To stay close to my daughter, I had rented an apartment in the same building.
“Yes, we had been separated,” I said. “And thank you for reminding me of that.”
“Just keeping it real,” said Pauline indifferently. “Besides, there is no hell.”
“How do you know?”
“I talk to the dead, remember? And not just ghosts,” she added. “But those who have passed on.”
“Passed on to heaven?” I asked.
“Passed on to something,” she said. “Neither heaven nor hell. A spirit world—and it’s waiting for you.”
I didn’t believe that. I believed in heaven and hell, and I was certain, as of this moment, that I was going to hell. “Well, it can keep on waiting. I’m not ready to pass on.”
“Obviously.”
“I need to work some things out,” I said.
“And then what?” she asked.
“And then I will accept my fate.”
She nodded. “But for now you hope to change your fate.”
“Yes.”
She looked at me with bloodshot eyes. Sitting on the couch, she had tucked her bare feet under her. Now her painted red toes peaked out like frightened little mice.
“Nice imagery,” she said, wiggling her toes. “So you still can’t remember why you are going to hell?”
“No,” I said.
“But it was something bad.”
“Very bad,” I said.
“Bad enough to burn forever?” she asked.
“Somebody died, I think.”
“So you’ve said, but you still don’t remember who or why.”
I shook my head. “No, but it happened a long, long time ago.”
“And with your death,” she added, “it was the first of your memories to disappear.”
She was right. My memories were disappearing at an alarming rate. The earlier memories of my life were mostly long gone. “Yeah, something like that,” I said.
“And now you’re afraid to pass on because you think you are going to hell, even though you can’t remember why you are going to hell.”
“It’s a hell of a conundrum,” I said.
She nodded, then got up, padded into the adjoining kitchen, and poured herself another drink. When she came back and sat, some of her drink splashed over the rim of her glass.
“Don’t say a word,” she cautioned me.
I laughed and drifted over to the big bay window and looked out over Los Angeles, which glittered and pulsed five stories below. At this hour, Los Feliz Boulevard was a parking lot dotted with red brake lights as far as the eye could see. I had heard once that it was one of the busiest streets in the world. Standing here now, I believed it.
After a while, Pauline came over and stood next to me. Actually, some of her was standing inside me. She shivered with the sensation, apologized, and stepped back. Ghostly etiquette.
I thought of my sweet music teacher. According to the paper, she had been just days away from her sixtieth wedding anniversary. Sixtieth.
Anger welled up within me. As it did so, a rare warmth spread through me. Mostly my days were filled with bone-chilling cold, minus the bones. But whenever strong emotion was involved, such as anger, I became flush with energy. And when that happened—
“Hey,” said Pauline. “Someone’s making a rare appearance.”
And so I was. So much so that I could actually see myself reflecting in the big, sliding glass door. Next to me was Pauline, looking beautiful, but drunk. Bloody wounds covered my body; in particular, my forehead, neck and chest.
I didn’t get to see myself often, and, despite my anger, I took advantage of this rare opportunity. Pale and ethereal, I was just a vague suggestion of what I had once been—and I was growing vaguer as the years pressed on. There was stubble on my jaw, and my dark hair was indeed askew. Eternal bed head.
Great.
“But you’re still a cutie,” said Pauline, giggling, now almost entirely drunk.
And with those words and that infectious giggle, my anger abated and I started fading away again.
“Tell me about your murdered friend,” said Pauline.
“She wasn’t necessarily a friend.”
She explored my mind a bit more. “My apologies. Your piano teacher from grade school.”
“Yes.”
“Why would someone kill her?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
She paused, then nodded knowingly. “I see you intend to find out.”
“Yes.”
“And perhaps save your soul in the process?”
“That’s the plan,” I said. “For now.”
“You do realize you have limits to where you can go and what you can do, right?”
I shrugged. “Minor technicalities.”
Also available at your favorite ebookseller:
Dark Horse
Jim Knighthorse #1
by
J.R. Rain
(read on for a sample)
1.
Charles Brown, the defense attorney, was a small man with a round head. He was wearing a brown and orange zigzagged power tie. I secretly wondered if he went by Charlie as a kid and had a dog named Snoopy and a crush on the little red-headed girl.
We were sitting in my office on a warm spring day. Charlie was here to give me a job if I wanted it, and I wanted it. I hadn’t worked in two weeks and was beginning to like it, which made me nervous.
“I think the kid’s innocent,” he was saying.
“Of course you do, Charlie. You’re a defense attorney. You would find cause to think Jack the Ripper was simply a misunderstood artist before his time.”
He looked at me with what was supposed to be a stern face.
“The name’s Charles,” he said.
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
“Glad that’s cleared up.”
“I heard you could be difficult,” he said. “Is this you being difficult? If so, then I’m disappointed.”
I smiled. “Maybe you have me confused with my father.”
Charlie sat back in my client chair and smiled. His domed head was perfectly buffed and polished, cleanly reflecting the halogen lighting above. His skin appeared wet and viscous, as if his sweat glands were ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
“Your father has quite a reputation in L.A. I gave his office a call before coming here. Of course, he’s quite busy and could not take on an extra case.”
“So you settled on the next best thing.”
“If you want to call it that,” he said. “I’ve heard that you’ve performed adequately with similar cases, and so I’ve decided to give you a shot, although my expectations are not very high, and I have another P.I. waiting in the wings.”
“How reassuring,” I said.
“Yeah, well, he’s established. You’re not.”
“But can he pick up a blind side blitz?”
Charlie smiled and splayed his stubby fingers flat on my desk and looked around my office, which was adorned with newspaper clippings and photographs of yours truly. Most of the photographs depict me in a Bruin uniform, sporting the number 45. In most I’m carrying the football, and in others I’m blowing open the hole for the tailback. Or at least I like to think I’m blowing open the hole. The newspapers are yellowing now, taped or tacked to the wood paneling. Maybe someday I’ll take them down. But not yet.
“You beat SC a few years back. I can never forgive you for that. Two touchdowns in the fourth quarter alone.”
“Three,” I said. “But who’s counting?”
He rubbed his chin. “Destroyed your leg, if I recall, in the last game of the season. Broken in seven different places.”
“Nine, but who’s counting?”
“Must have been hard to deal with. You were on your way to the pros. Would have made a he
ll of a fullback.”
That had been hard to deal with, and I didn’t feel like talking about it now to Charlie Brown. “Why do you believe in your client’s innocence?” I asked.
He looked at me. “I see. You don’t want to talk about it. Sorry I brought it up.” He crossed his legs. He didn’t seem sorry at all. He looked smugly down at his shoes, which had polish on the polish. “Because I believe Derrick’s story. I believe he loved his girlfriend and would never kill her.”
“People have been killed for love before. Nothing new.”
On my computer screen before me I had brought up an article from the Orange County Register. The article showed a black teen being led away into a police car. He was looking down, his head partially covered by his jacket. He was being led away from a local high school. A very upscale high school, if I recalled. The story was dated three weeks ago, and I recalled reading it back then.
I tapped the computer monitor. “The police say there’s some indication that his girlfriend was seeing someone else, and that jealousy might have been a factor.”
“Yes,” said the attorney. “And we think this someone else framed our client.”
“I take it you want me to find this man.”
“Or person.”
“Ah, equality,” I said.
“We want you to find evidence of our client’s innocence, whether or not you find the true murderer.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“We feel race might be a factor here. He was the only black student in school, and in the neighborhood.”
“I believe the preferred term is African-American.”
“I’m aware of public sentiment in this regards. I don’t need you to lecture me.”
“Just trying to live up to my difficult name.”
“Yeah, well, cool it,” he said. “Now, no one’s talking at the school. My client says he was working out late in the school gym, yet no one saw him, not even the janitors.”
“Then maybe he wasn’t there.”
“He was there,” said Charlie simply, as if his word was enough. “So do you want the job?”
“Sure.”