Me? I personally wouldn’t have minded seeing it paved over and turned into a parking lot.
Still, it had pretty much already faded from the public’s mind. Things like who was ahead on American Idol, next year’s presidential election, and other useless crap were far more important.
What a bunch of sheep! Most of them didn’t have a clue that the dead had any influence over the living. The conspiracy whack jobs who railed about fluoride and black helicopters always talked about shadow governments and the like. Oddly enough, they were not too far off; except they’d never be able to track down the agents of this shadow government because almost all of them were dead.
Few among the living had glimpsed “that man behind the curtain,” so to speak. I happened to be one of the few, but I wasn’t ready to enlighten the masses anytime soon. Still, the powers out there knew that Taney was gone and he’d been removed by a Ferryman.
I’d like to say that my first week out of the hospital was restful, but between keeping up with my college classes (I’d paid for them after all) and helping Colonel Strong Vincent grab control over Taney’s former territory, I was on the move. I was by his side as he negotiated with the contingent of dead soldiers that stalked Antietam’s graveyards.
A General there seemed to bristle that a mere Colonel was “assuming command.” The fact that Vincent had been promoted to Brigadier General posthumously didn’t seem to assuage Major General Joseph Mansfield’s ego, which makes sense – two stars beating one star and all that.
Like Vincent, this ghost wasn’t buried where he haunted. Mansfield was an older man who had fought extensively in the Mexican-American War, but died in his first real combat of the Civil War from a lucky shot while arguing with his troops. With his winning personality, I’d give even odds that it was friendly fire.
I’m sure he wasn’t at all bitter about that.
The ghosts that showed up that week were mostly Civil War types, but I saw a few wearing uniforms from other wars as well, including the sailor from the USS Cole who was interred in the cemetery back in 2000.
Despite the numbers of ghosts, Antietam gathered less energy than Gettysburg. I asked Vincent why, and the best theory he had was based off of the small population of living folk near the battlefield as opposed to the larger Gettysburg.
Oddly, it led to the conclusion that the dead need the living.
“And how are you doing today?” Jenny Goodman sat down next to me. My two bodyguards rolled their eyes and wandered to the other side of the cafeteria. Sadly, I couldn’t run away … lucky bastards.
“Just trying to get ready for a test. How about you?”
“Mr. Binstock has a pretty important case coming up, so I’ve been running a lot of paperwork around town, but it’s pretty cool. So, are you still wearing the heart monitor?”
Only Jenny could find Oil and Gas law “cool.” I tapped the area over my heart and replied, “Nope, turned it in last week, not that it was going to tell the doctors anything.”
Jenny shrugged, “You just need to avoid fighting really powerful ghosts.”
“I’ll keep that under consideration. What else is new? How are you and Chaz?”
“You really need to stop doing that! I almost called him that on our date last weekend and he spent five minutes asking me what was so funny.
“Sorry, he just looks like a ‘Chaz’ to me.” My test preparations weren’t getting anywhere, so I decided to tweak her a bit. I deserved some entertainment.
“Well he’s not a Chaz!”
“What does he do in his spare time?”
“He’s in his first year of law school. He doesn’t have any spare time.”
Chuckling, I pushed further, because I had visited Chaz’s Myspace page. “What kind of hobbies does he have?”
“Well, Carleton’s really big on fencing. I went to see him play in a match. He’s really good! Maybe he could give you some pointers.”
“Nah, I don’t have the sword anymore. Fencing, you say? That’s certainly not a Chaz sport. What else does he do?”
Jenny was starting to get testy. “He plays sax in a jazz band.”
I left the obvious Chaz plays jazz pun alone. “Where’d he take you on your last date?” This I didn’t know, but I was certain the answer would be telling.
“We saw a play at the Kennedy Center.”
There was a moment of silence while I simply arched an eyebrow at her. She broke a moment later, “Okay! Okay! So he really is a Chaz! I admit it. What’s wrong with being a Chaz anyway?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“Asshole.” It would have stung more if she hadn’t been smiling.
“Is that better or worse than pompous jerk? I need to know if it’s an upgrade or not.”
Jenny reached over and swatted my head, playfully. “Either way it’s more appropriate. So, what did you think about my idea?”
I’ll never understand this girl. We’d already been over this. “A minute ago you said that I should avoid fighting powerful ghosts. Now, you’re telling me that I should open my own ghost removal business.”
“I thought the DeadEye Mike website was cool.”
I wondered if it was more or less “cool” than Oil and Gas law. “Yeah, it was, but a flashy website doesn’t necessarily translate into cash in the bank account. I have enough problems with the afterlife without advertising for more. Why are you so keen on this?”
“I was looking at my accounting courses for my business management track and one of them goes in depth on startup companies. I figured since I’m doing the work anyway, if you wanted to, I’d help run it for you.”
“And how much vocational credit would you get for this?”
She smiled at me, clearly busted. “Probably quite a bit. Did you know the requirements for becoming a private detective in Maryland aren’t that difficult, or if you didn’t want to list yourself that way, you could just list your business as ‘Entertainment’ like the astrologers and tarot card readers do?”
I didn’t know which idea was more laughable. “Me? A private detective? Oh that’d give your uncle a fit. You’ve given this a lot of thought, haven’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but don’t let me push you into something that you don’t want to do.
I had no intention of letting her do that. “I’m still waiting to see how my lawsuit against the hotel pans out.”
“Mike, you’re still pursuing that? Even though you know it wasn’t their fault?” She scolded me.
“Hey, I was injured – on their property. Does a concussion and sprained ankle ring a bell? It’d be more suspicious if I didn’t sue.”
“What’s your ambulance chaser say?” She was needling me for using a questionable legal firm.
“Ask for ten, hope for five, but expect three at the most.”
“I’m disappointed in you.”
“Jenny, I need the money for this summer.”
“You and Candy have big plans?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m going to Arizona to find my father.”
“Why?”
It was at that point that I realized that I hadn’t bothered telling Jenny bits of crucial information. “Jenny, I’ve lived most of my life thinking that my dad walked out on Mom when I was a little kid. One of the things I learned last month was that one of Taney’s Skinwalkers possessed my dad and then auctioned his body off up in Philadelphia.”
Her eyes were as big as saucers. “They did! Oh my god Mike, that’s awful!”
“Tell me about it. I almost left right after I got out of the hospital, but both Mom and Strong Vincent talked me out of it.”
“Why?”
“A whole slew of reasons. I don’t have enough money tops the list. Mom is still warming up to the idea that he didn’t run off, but at the same time she thinks I need to finish the school year.”
Jenny nodded her head in agreement with my mother’s assessment as I continued, “She admitted that they were havin
g trouble even before he suddenly left. Plus, even if I find him, there might not be anything left.”
“What do you mean?”
“Skinwalkers can manipulate the person inside the body or gradually kick them out all together. Colonel Vincent pretty much told me that I shouldn’t get my hopes up after almost fifteen years.”
“Did he really say that?”
“No, but it was there between the lines. Besides, he’s still taking control of this territory. I can understand why he needs me to stay around a bit longer.”
Jenny covers my hand with one of hers. “If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know.”
“Thanks. You know, it’s kind of sad, when I’m watching the TV these days and I see a story about someone doing something stupid, I start wondering if they’re being possessed by a Skinwalker who enjoys playing havoc in their lives.”
Naturally, Jenny linked my thoughts to the tabloid trash headline that somehow still dominated the news. “You think Anna Nicole Smith was possessed before she died?”
“I really don’t care if she was or wasn’t. I was just making a point.”
She immediately calmed down, “Oh, I guess you’re right.”
I decided to change the subject. “Aren’t you going to be in Europe for most of the summer anyway?”
Jenny grimaced, “I keep forgetting. It’s still on, for now, but I did book the ticket as refundable in case things cool off between the two of us.”
My guess was that “Chaz” would have to do something really stupid to lose Jenny. She was sweet on him. It only served to remind me of my struggles in the romance department.
“Congratulations, Mr. Ross. The vision in your right eye seems to have normalized at 20/40.”
A few days later, I was sitting in front of my regular ophthalmologist, Doctor Schocke, as he examined my eye closely. “Thanks Doc. Do you recommend that I go ahead and take my driver’s test now, or should I wait a bit longer?”
“No, you should be fine. I’d still like to see you every six months to monitor your progress, but your recovery is about as complete as I could’ve hoped for, given the nature of your injuries. Just think, in a few days you can be stuck in traffic with the rest of us.”
I thanked the good doctor and promised to stay in touch. Freedom! It was a powerful feeling. Like many people in the area, I’d probably still have to ride the Metro and so forth, but the feeling of being dependent on someone else for rides was getting old.
With the ability to drive, I could go and visit Candy. Rather than flying, I could drive to Arizona and be more mobile – The Ferryman Traveling Roadshow, coming soon to a town near you! Although, with the price of gas these days, maybe it was cheaper to just fly there and then rent a car.
Either way, I was in a good mood on the bus ride home. No more bus riding for me! Walking back from the bus stop, I was even joking with my ghostly bodyguards and was treated in turn to stories about marching all over Pennsylvania from the duo of Corporal Martin Berry and Private Amos Sweet. They were of the firm conviction that people “nowadays” don’t do enough walking.
Okay, so they weren’t exactly Abbott and Costello, but they were a decent enough company, if a bit on the quirky side. Sweet was conversational in both French and Spanish. He was trying to teach me and the other four ghosts at Casa De Ross something of both languages. The funny part was that he wanted me to leave the television on one of the Spanish stations when I went to bed. Explaining that one to Mom was amusing, to say the least. Fortunately, Sweet was usually outvoted by the other ghosts assigned to watching my house. They were history junkies who seemed to be crazy for the History and Discovery channels.
Berry was obsessed with cartography and enjoyed it when I printed out maps for him to look at in the evenings. Like I said, they were a bit quirky, but interesting enough, nonetheless.
“Those Spanish soap operas are much better than the ones in English, trust me.”
I shrugged, “Dunno, maybe if I could understand them, they’d make more sense. Usually there’re a couple of women yacking away, then blam, they start bitch-slapping each other.”
Amos laughed, “That’s the best part!”
Berry groaned, “Now you know what I have had to put up with on a daily basis for the last century.”
There was a light rain, so the three of us went inside. Mom and her bodyguards weren’t home yet. I went into the kitchen and pulled a bag of chips out of the pantry and fired up the computer to knock out my homework.
Opening my email, I saw the some spam and the usual garbage. It was a reminder that I needed a better mailbox filtering program. Among the ones I wanted to read was an email from Candy sent last night, hopefully scheduling our next unsuccessful date. We had the “try, try again” part of a relationship down cold by this point. Frankly, I was surprised she was still sticking with it.
Dear Mike,
First let me thank you for the gift--you sweet adorable guy! I’ll snap a quick pic of it with my digital camera and attach it, so you can see me wearing it.
My work schedule is still pretty heavy, but I’ve got a three day coming up and will be expecting you down here to rock my world!
Gotta run, hugs and kisses,
Candace.
There was one small problem with this message – I hadn’t sent her a gift! I opened the attachment. There was a picture of Candy’s wrist with a jade bracelet on it.
Time froze; there was only one person I’d ever seen wearing a jade bracelet like that, and she wasn’t a real person. Grabbing the phone I dialed Candy’s cell phone and prayed I wasn’t too late. The time stamp on the email was from last night – over sixteen hours ago. I’d been in a rush and hadn’t checked my email that morning.
“Mike! How are you? I was just about to call you!”
“Candy! I didn’t send you that bracelet. If you have it on, take it off! It’s probably the focus of a Skinwalker!”
“But it’s so pretty. I don’t want to take it off.”
“Candy, don’t argue with me. Get rid of it.”
She laughed. It wasn’t her usual style of laughter either. I also noticed that her drawl was much less pronounced. “Oh, Mike, you really should check your email more often.”
“Let her go, Cassandra.”
“I told you that you’d pay. As for letting ‘her’ go, you’ll have to be more specific.”
“What exactly do you mean, Skinwalker?”
“You say ‘Skinwalker’ like it’s a bad thing. Me and the girls are just taking a little road trip. Of course you know Officer McKenna; I’d let you speak to her cousin, your friend Jenny, but she’s resting comfortably in the back of the patrol car. The poor dear thought Candy was dropping by to get her help planning a special date for you. I guess, in a way she is. Care to guess where I’m headed?”
I already knew the answer. “Baltimore.”
“Here I thought you were slow on the uptake. I’m about twenty minutes from there. You’d better get a move on. It’s just after seven and the weather’s awful, if you’re not here by … let’s say, ten, I’ll have to decide which one of these meat puppets is expendable. The short one runs her mouth too damn much anyway.”
My reply was a hiss, “When I catch up with you, I’ll destroy that bracelet and see how much you’re laughing then.”
“That’s funny, Mike, maybe you aren’t all that after all. You think it’s my focus. No, this lovely bracelet is a slave collar. Your little deputy here isn’t a very good candidate for walking, not like Sonya, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Destroying the jade won’t hurt me in the least. Uh-oh, looks like there’s an accident up ahead, I’d better let you go. See you this evening; I assume you know how to get to Westminster. William and I are expecting you. I’d normally say leave your pathetic bodyguards there, but they won’t amount to much, compared to William. Bring them along and we’ll give him a true coming out party. It’ll be glorious!”
She hung up on me and I sent Sweet
to alert Vincent at his temporary headquarters while I started filling my backpack with everything I could think of. I’d assumed Poe would come after me directly or my mom and Vincent could only spare so much manpower.
People always dream of being the hero, running off to save the girl, the day, or whatever. They’re idiots. I won’t lie. I considered not going, writing off Jenny and Candy as casualties of war. The good news was that I’d probably live longer. The bad news was that I’d have to live with myself.
Like I said before, I’m not big on reflecting on the deep issues of life – or death. I fumed for a minute before yelling, “To hell with it! William Henry Poe wants his Ferryman, then that’s what he’s going to get!”
It was tempting to just jump in my car and drive to Baltimore, but in the heavy downpour and with my oh-so-good luck, I’d have gotten into a fender bender with no license.
So, once more, I climbed onboard a Ride-On bus half filled with the soaked and smelly for a rendezvous with my destiny.
Man, I hated riding the bus.
Vincent and his contingent met up with me at the Shady Grove station and the fifteen or so of us clambered onto the Metro to ride to Union Station for the MARC train that would take us to Baltimore. It was amusing to listen to some of the passengers complaining about the cold drafts on such a wet day. I huddled in my seat trying not to speak while Vincent addressed the troops.
“According to Mr. Ross, we will arrive at Penn Station, roughly a mile and a half north of our target, which is Westminster Hall and Burial Ground. We will have roughly twenty minutes to travel from the train station to the battlefield.”
One of the other ghosts spoke up, “What kind of opposition are we expecting, sir?”
“We face an unspecified number of spirits just like ourselves. Our job is to simply get Mr. Ross to the target area and divert enough of the enemies to make his job easier. Unless you cannot avoid it, do not enter the burial yard. The so called ‘Beast of Baltimore’ also known as William Henry Leonard Poe is confined inside and at least one Skinwalker will be with him.”
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