by Jim Butcher
Edie was still thinking about that day in the garage when she smelled something horrible coming from outside. It was suffocating—heavy and chemical, like burning plastic. She rolled up her window, even though the air inside the Jeep immediately became stifling.
“Don’t you want to let some air in?” the blue-eyed boy ventured.
“I’m more concerned about letting something out.”
He waited for Edie to explain, but she didn’t. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot,” she said.
“If you believe there’s a ghost on this road, why are you driving out here all alone at night?”
Edie took a deep breath and said the words she had rehearsed in her mind since the moment he climbed into the car. “The ghost that haunts Red Run killed my brother, and I’m going to destroy it.”
Edie watched as the fear swept over him.
The realization.
“What are you talking about? How do you kill a ghost?”
He didn’t know.
Edie took her time answering. She had waited a long time for this. “Ghosts are made of energy like everything else. Scatter the energy, you destroy the ghost.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
Edie knocked on the black plastic paneling on her door. It was the same paneling that covered every inch of the Jeep’s interior. “Ghosts absorb the electrical impulse around them—from power lines, machines, cars—even people. I have these two friends who are pretty smart. They made this stuff. Some compounds conduct electricity,” She ran her palm over the black paneling. “Others block it.”
“So you’re going to trap a ghost in the car with you and—what? Wait till it shorts out like a light bulb?”
“It’s not that simple,” Edie said, without taking her eyes off the road. “Energy can’t be destroyed. You have to disperse it, sort of like blowing up a bomb. My friends know how to do it. I just have to keep the ghost contained until I get to their place. They’ll do the rest.”
Tommy glanced at the black paneling. “You’re crazy, you know that?” His arm wasn’t draped casually over the seat anymore, and his hands were balled up in his lap.
“Maybe,” she answered. “Maybe not.”
He reached for the handle to roll down his window, but it wouldn’t turn. “Your window’s—” He paused, working it out in his mind. “It isn’t broken, is it?”
Edie took her foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop. “You didn’t really think I’d pick up a hitchhiker on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere?” She turned toward the blue-eyed boy, a boy she knew was a ghost. “Did you, Tommy?”
His eyes widened at the sound of his name.
Edie’s heart felt like it was trying to punch its way out of her chest. There was no way to predict how Tommy’s ghost was going to react. Wes had warned her that ghosts could psychically attack the living by moving objects or causing hallucinations, even madness. His mom had walked off the second-story balcony of their house when Wes was in fourth grade. It was only a few weeks after she had started hearing strange noises and seeing shadows in the house. Wes’s father wanted to move, but his mom said she wasn’t going to be driven out of her house by swamp-water superstition. She didn’t believe in ghosts. Not until one killed her.
Now Edie was sitting only inches away from a ghost that had already murdered six people.
But he didn’t look murderous. There was something else lingering in his blue eyes. Panic. “You can’t stop here.”
“What?”
“There’s something I need to tell you, Edie. But you have to keep driving. It’s not safe.” He was turning around in his seat, scanning the woods through the windows.
Edie bit the inside of her cheek again. “What are you talking about?”
Before he had time to respond, the light outside flickered as a shadow cut through the path of the car’s headlights.
Edie jumped, jerking her eyes back toward the road.
There was a man a few yards away, waving his arms wildly. “Get outta the car now!”
“It’s too late,” Tommy whispered. “He’s already here.”
“Who?”
“The man who killed me.”
Edie didn’t have a chance to ask him to explain. The man in the road was still yelling as he moved closer to the car. “Hurry up! Before that blue-eyed devil skins you alive alike the rest a them!”
Tommy’s ghost grabbed her arm, but she couldn’t feel his touch. “Don’t listen to him, Edie. He wants to hurt you, the same way he hurt me. And your brother.”
“What did you say?” The words tore at Edie’s throat like razor blades.
“I didn’t kill any of those kids that died out here. He did.” Tommy pointed at the man in the road. “I watch the road. I try to make sure no one stops near his cabin. I tried to warn all of them, but they wouldn’t listen.”
Edie remembered her brother’s last words.
I should have listened…
She had assumed he was referring to the stories—the constant warnings to stay off Red Run after dark. What if she was wrong? What if he had been talking about a different warning altogether?
“No.” Edie shook her head. “Those guys beat you to death—”
Tommy cut her off before she could finish. “They didn’t. That’s the story he told the police. And no one believed a bunch of drunk kids when they denied it.”
The voice outside was getting louder and more frantic. “Whatever that spirit’s telling you is a lie! He’s trying to keep you in there with him so he can kill you! Come on out, sweetheart.”
It was easier to see the man now that he was just a few feet away. He was about her dad’s age, but worse for the wear. His green John Deere cap was pulled low over his eyes, and he was wearing an old hunting jacket over his broad shoulders despite the heat.
He was shifting from side to side nervously, his eyes flitting back and forth between the woods and the car.
“He’s lying. I swear,” Tommy—it was becoming harder to remember that he was a ghost, not a regular boy—pleaded. “Why do you think I got in the car? I wanted to make sure you didn’t stop. He doesn’t like it when people get this close to his place. Especially teenagers.”
“You expect me to believe some old guy is killing people because they’re coming too close to his house?” Her voice was rising, a dangerous combination of fear and anger burning through her veins.
“He’s crazy, Edie. He cooks meth back there at night, and he’s convinced people can smell it. He’s always been paranoid, but after being cooped up in a tiny cabin with those fumes for years, it’s gotten worse.”
Edie remember the nauseating stench of melted plastic. She never would have recognized it. Still. The man was pacing in front of the car, wringing his hands nervously. There was something off about him. But then again, he was facing off against a ghost.
Tommy was still talking. “That’s what he was doing the night I got lost in the woods, only back then it was something else. He’s been cooking up drugs in his cabin for years, supplying dealers in the city. I was looking for this girl who wandered off, and I got all turned around. I didn’t realize how far I’d walked. There was a cabin…” He paused, looking out at the man in the green cap. “Let’s just say, I knocked on the wrong door.”
The man stopped in the path of one of the headlights, a beam of light creating shadows across his face. “You can’t trust the dead. No matter what they say, sweetheart.”
Edie reached for the door handle.
Tommy—the boy-ghost—grabbed her other hand. For a second, Edie thought she felt the weight of his hand on hers. It was impossible, but it gave her goose bumps all the same. “He beat me to death, Edie. Then he dragged my body all the way back to the party and left me in the middle of Red Run.”
Edie didn’t know who to believe. One of them was lying. And if she made the wrong choice, she was going to die tonight.
Tommy’s blue eyes were searching hers. “I would never hur
t you, Edie. I swear.”
She thought about everything Wes and Trip had taught her, which boiled down to one thing: You can’t trust a ghost. She thought about her brother lying in the road. I should have listened. He could’ve been talking about the man in the green cap—the one begging her to get out of the car right now.
What was she thinking? She couldn’t trust a ghost.
Edie threw the door open before she could change her mind. The smell of burnt plastic flooded into the Jeep.
“Edie, no!” Tommy’s eyes were terrified, darting back and forth between Edie and the man in the road. In that moment, she knew he was telling the truth.
She reached for the door to pull it shut again as the man in the green cap rushed toward the driver’s side of the car. When he passed through the headlights, Edie saw him grab the buck knife from his waistband.
Edie tried to close the door, but it felt like she was wading through syrup. She wasn’t fast enough. But the man in the green cap was, his arm coming around the edge of the door. His knife was in his hand, reddish-brown lines streaking the dull blade.
“Oh, no you don’t, you little bitch!” The man grabbed the metal frame before she could close the door, the blade of the knife waving dangerously close to her face.
Tommy appeared just outside the open car door, only inches from the man wielding the knife. Before the man had a chance to react, Tommy rushed forward and stepped right through him.
Edie saw the man’s eyes go wide for a second, and he shivered.
“Back up!” Tommy shouted.
Edie didn’t think about anything but Tommy’s voice as she turned the key, grinding the ignition. She threw the car into reverse, slamming her foot on the gas.
The man swore, his hand uncurling from the handle of the knife. He tried to hold onto the doorframe, his filthy nails clawing at the metal.
Then his fingers slide away, and Edie saw him hit the ground.
She heard the scream as the Jeep bucked and the front tire rolled over his body. Edie didn’t stop until she could see him lying facedown in the dust. She could see the crushed bones, forced into awkward angles. He wasn’t moving.
Edie didn’t notice Tommy standing next to the car. He pulled the door open, bent metal scraping through the silence, and knelt down next to her. “Are you okay?”
“I think I killed him.” Her voice was shaking uncontrollably.
“Edie, look at me.” Tommy’s was calm. She leaned her head against the seat, turning her fact toward his. “You didn’t have a choice. He was going to kill you.”
She knew Tommy was right. But it didn’t change the fact that she had just killed a man, even if that man was a monster.
Tommy’s blue eyes were searching her brown ones, their faces only inches apart. “What made you trust me?”
“Your eyes,” Edie answered. “The eyes don’t lie.”
“Even if you’re a ghost?
Edie smiled weakly. “Especially if you’re a ghost.”
She looked out at the road. For the first time in forever, it was just a road—dirt and rocks and trees. She tried to imagine what it would be like to spend every night out here, so close to the place where you died.
“You’re the first person who ever believed me,” Tommy said. “The first person I saved.”
“Then why did you stay here for so long?”
Tommy looked away. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Edie remembered Wes telling her that most ghosts couldn’t leave a place where they had died traumatically. They were chained to that spot, trying to find a way to right the wrong.
When he turned back to face her, Edie noticed the sadness lingering in his eyes. And something else…
Tommy was fading, flickering like static on an old TV set. He stared down at his hands, turning them slowly as if seeing them for the first time.
“I think you can move on now,” Edie said gently. “You know, to wherever you’re supposed to be. Red Run doesn’t need protecting anymore.”
“I don’t know where I’m supposed to be. But wherever it is, I’m not ready to go.” Tommy was still fading. “There are so many things I never had a chance to do.”
Edie ran her hand along the black paneling inside the jeep, and looked at him. “Get in.”
Tommy hesitated for a second, smiling. “Just don’t take me to meet the friends who made that stuff.”
Edie smiled back at him. “You can trust me.”
As she drove away, Red Run disappearing into the darkness, Edie felt the weight of this place disappear along with it. “So where do you want to go?”
Tommy was still watching her.
The girl who wasn’t afraid to hunt a ghost.
“Maybe I’ll hang out with you for a while.” Tommy put his hand on top of hers, and she didn’t need to feel the weight of it to know it was there. “There are always things that need protecting.”
PALE RIDER
~
by Nancy Holder
Shards, ashes, and a freaking carton of batteries. Inside the dusty box, there were dozens of double-A six packs.
Dana whooped, victorious. Lowering herself to a squat on the balls of her feet, she pushed back her dreads and caressed the treasure with her flashlight beam. Then she set her flashlight upended so that the light bounced off the ceiling, picked up one of the packs, and wiped off the dust. She turned it over, examining it for an expiration date. The printing was too faded. She grabbed the flashlight, and was just about to unscrew the head so she could test a sample when she heard the creak of a floorboard. She wasn’t alone.
“Shit,” she whispered. As quietly as she could, she clicked off her flashlight and stuck it in the pocket of her hoodie. Then she grabbed the heavy carton and stood, listening. Her heart pounded.
Nothing. Maybe she had imagined it. Or the poor old house was settling some more.
She quietly shuffled out of the room. This was the third time in two weeks that she’d found batteries in places they’d already searched. She had just known to go inside the ramshackle house and step through the filth and the trash to what appeared to be a home office. Even though she and Jordan had been there before, and carted off anything useable. But this time, she could see the floorboards in her mind, and she’d pried them up.
In the disintegrating world, change was not usually your friend, but life had made an exception.
There was another creak, and then a growl, and something charged at her. She screamed and tore out of the room with her carton. It followed her into the hall, kicking up years of dust and trash while she banged into the walls from side to side with the huge box. She kept yelling, barreling around a fallen door, into pitch-black darkness.
My gun is in my other pocket, she thought.
She whirled around and tried to throw the carton at her attacker—where she thought it might be—but the box was too heavy and it just tumbled through the darkness to the floor. Stumbling backwards, seeing nothing, she got the gun out of her other pocket and fired. The thing howled. Dog. Coyote. She fired a couple more shots and ran out of the house. The wooden porch gave way and she crashed downward through the rotted waist to her waist.
Bathed in amber moonlight, a mangy dog leaped out of the shadows. Dana was trapped. She let out a bellow as it launched itself at her.
It howled; then its limp body smacked against her right arm and it crumbled in a heap beside her. It didn’t move. Panting with fear, she planted her palms on either side of her body, fingertips brushing its dirty, matted fur. She pushed up and out of the hole, propelling herself to freedom as she flopped onto her front, then threaded her legs free.
The dog was twitching and panting. Oh, God, rabies. Had it bitten her? With a shaking hand, she felt around for her gun, unsure when and where she’d lost it.
No luck.
She tested her footing. Nothing sprained or broken. She stepped back into the house, listening hard, feeling along the floor with the soles of her sneakers for the gun. She still
couldn’t find it. She could come back for it later, but there was no way she was going to leave the batteries. They were just too precious.
Ear cocked, she groped around for the carton, found it, and picked it up again. She was trembling. She didn’t feel any pain. No bites, then. Hopefully.
A creak.
She turned back around to leave. Her knees gave way and she almost slid to the floor.
Silhouetted by moonlight, a man stood in the doorway. Spiky hair, long coat, boots. Her heartbeat went into overdrive.
His dog, she thought, cold and terrified. He set it on me.
They faced each other without speaking. She kept it together. You didn’t live as long as she had—she was seventeen—by losing your cool. But she was very scared.
“I have a gun,” she said.
He raised his hand. “This one?” he said in some kind of accent.
Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, she thought. This was what she got. Jordan had told her not to scavenge alone. But she had just known they had to get the batteries tonight. Jordan was down with a bug, and no else had felt like going.
She licked her lips and raised her chin. “I have another gun.”
“You can have this one back,” he said. The accent was German. He sounded like a movie villain. He looked like one in his long coat. She felt naked in her sweatshirt, sneakers and board shorts.
“Stay away from me. I’ll call my guard dog on you,” she said, but her voice cracked and she realized she was losing her grip on the carton. Icy sweat was streaming down her body.
“I mean you no harm, Delaney.”
She jerked, even more afraid. That was her given name, and no one at the house knew it.
He raised his hands above his head, and she saw the outline of her gun. She didn’t know what to do. Rush him? Run back into the darkness? Where there might be another dog?
Then suddenly, there was no carton in her arms. It was in his. And they were on the sidewalk outside the house.
“What the heck?” she said.
“Es geht.”
He was very tall, not as old as she had thought—maybe five years older than her—and in the moonlight, she saw that his hair was blond. His eyes were light and he had a superhero face—flared cheekbones, square chin. Pierced eyebrow. Maybe that was a tat on his thumb. He was muscular, his long black wool coat stretching across big broad shoulders. These days, most people were a little too thin. Like her. She was all crazy black hair, brown eyes, and bones. “I got your name from your aunt. Well, from her things. I haven’t actually met her.”