Sweet Cherry Pie

by J. D. Monroe

  This is what it means to hunt. The difference between a hunter and an average person is not any degree of badassery, nor intelligence, or really even bravery. It is simply the willingness to ignore what every cell in your body screams, and walk into the dark instead of away from it. It’s a sort of noble stupidity, really. And she gets plenty scared; she just knows, from years of blood-curdling experience, that the odds are decent that she can handle whatever is out there. Decent being fifty percent, seventy-five on a good day. She’s confident, not delusional.

  “Backstage?” Charity says. She shines her flashlight toward the glow from backstage.

  They slowly walk toward the dark area, illuminated only by the hazy red and white of a fire exit sign. A crackling sound breaks the silence, and they both freeze until they hear a muffled “copy that” from the other side of the backstage doors.

  White flashlight beams slide across the floor and walls as they look around. A glass-windowed office, barely bigger than the cab of the RV, takes up one corner. A silver costume rack looms in front of the window; a bloody handprint streaks across a white toga hanging on the end. A long table stands next to the costumes, overflowing with props. There are more yellow placards here.

  Charity shines her flashlight on the table. Masking tape sections off the surface. Each rectangle is labeled—ORCHARD, SOOTHSAYER, CAESAR’S DEATH—and holds props that apparently belong to that scene. An index card with tight, neat handwriting is taped in the upper right corner of each box. The Caesar’s Death card reads: nine knives, crown.

  “I got something,” Georgia says.

  “EMF?”

  “Cast list,” Georgia replies. Charity turns to see a sheaf of papers in her hand. “Complete with emails, phone numbers, and attendance for the week. Looks like they had to sign in every night.”

  “Even better. Nice find,” Charity says. She turns back to the table and aims the temperature gun. She squeezes the trigger.

  0.3.

  Her mouth goes dry. That can’t be right. She points it at the costumes.

  76.9.

  Back at the table.

  0.2.

  The lights go out as something moves in the shadows.

  12. RED AT NIGHT

  SILENCE FALLS.

  Seconds later, Georgia breaks it, breathing harsh and fast like an overheated dog in the height of summer. Charity shushes her and waits, willing her hummingbird-fast heart to slow down. It’s nearly pitch black, and the dark seems to swallow their flashlights. Charity tucks her flashlight under her arm and swings the crossbow around, aiming it at the tiny circle of light as she turns slowly.

  “Georgia,” Charity says calmly. “I’m going to grab your arm. Don’t shoot me.”

  “Uh-huh,” Georgia says breathlessly. Her thin arm tenses and trembles under Charity’s grasp. “We should get out of here.”

  “And leave it to run around free? Hell no. This is why we’re here,” Charity says. “No gunshots if you can help it.”

  “What? What the hell am I supposed to do? Club it to death with my shoe?”

  “Silver knife, dumbass,” Charity replies. “Now shut up and listen.”

  Georgia starts to protest, but Charity clamps down on her arm hard enough to bruise. She gets the message. She’s probably regretting the day she walked into Mike’s in search of one Charity Pierson. Well, there’s a life lesson. Be careful what you wish for, because you might get exactly what you ask for. Georgia holsters her gun, metal whispering against nylon. There’s a shift in body weight as she draws a knife instead.

  The silence is deafening. Blood roars in Charity’s ears as she waits in agonizing stillness. The backstage area is a long, narrow hallway behind a black curtain. Her eyes adjust to the darkness, and the pitch black resolves into the outlines of tall set pieces and the bulbous shadows of sandbags hanging high overhead.

  The sharp vertical edge of the set is blotted out by a deeper shadow that moves in a slow, fluid motion. She silently raises the crossbow and squeezes the trigger. Silence shatters as the creature roars, and the black fills her vision. Something cuffs her across the face and pain blooms in her jaw. Another blow catches her in the side, and she hits her knees, fumbling for her flashlight. The air around her reeks of wet earth and week-old corpse. She draws her knife and slashes out, but it only finds empty air.

  The temperature plunges. There’s a raucous clatter and a yelp from Georgia. There goes the prop table. The creature squalls again, a bladder-twisting sound of rage and pain that pierces her eardrums.

  “I can’t touch it,” Georgia pants.

  “Me neither,” Charity says. “Spirit. Angry one.” She finally gets her hand on her flashlight and shines it on Georgia. Her partner is hauling herself up from a pile of discarded props. “You okay?”

  Her voice is thick and strained, but Georgia manages to say, “Yeah.”

  There’s a low, guttural groan that echoes off the walls, and Charity’s stomach lurches. “Can’t fight blind.”

  “The soundbooth light is still on,” Georgia says. “Come on.”

  Charity jumps as Georgia’s clammy hand squeezes hers, but she’s warm and solid and smells like laundry, not death. Clutching hands like little girls, they sprint back to the stage. The harsh white light over the sound booth still glows, casting the faintest light over the house. There’s no sign of the spirit. It could be anywhere.

  “Tommy, we’re here to help you,” Charity says. “I know you’re angry, but we want to find out what happened so you can rest.” Even as she says the words, she slips her hand into her bag for a bundle of sage and a lighter. The pale green leaves are papery and soft in her trembling hands. She flicks open her silver lighter and strikes it, bringing the tiny flame to the end of the sage. Tommy’s rest is a distant second to her own safety at the moment.

  As she starts to light the purifying herb, a cold wind whips out of nowhere, sending an icy chill breaking across her skin. The flame of the lighter blows out, and her attempts to relight it fail.

  There’s a clatter from the audience, and then a sound like thunder. As an icy wind howls around them, the folding seats in the audience flip up and down, bouncing on their springs. The forgotten programs swirl in rustling clouds of white paper.

  A masculine figure appears in front of her in the dim light. His body is translucent, like a cutout from sheer gray cloth draped over an ice sculpture. A grayish toga stained dark hangs off one pallid shoulder. His exposed skin is blue-gray in the low light. Handsome features are chalky white around one glowing white eye. His left eye is gone, and a blue flame burns like a star in the empty socket. The spirit shouts, a wordless cry of rage.

  “Tommy, we’re trying to find out what happened to you,” she says. She holds out the sage defensively. Without lighting it, it’s about as useful as a bundle of lettuce.

  The blue flame flares bright, and he plants his icy hands on her chest and shoves her back. The contact is shocking, like an electric current to her chest. She stumbles back. As Tommy approaches her, Georgia flings a spray of holy water at him from behind.

  Tommy’s head whips around, and he lets out another terrible shriek. He rushes Georgia and shoves her backward. Her feet tangle as she goes over the edge of the stage. It takes a full second for her to hit the ground with a bone-crunching thud. There’s a clatter of something metal from the orchestra pit.

  “Georgia!”

  Ah, hell. Her stomach rolls as she peers over the edge. All she can see in the dim light is a glint of red hair. Come on, get up.

  Tommy spins, and the flame in his empty eye flares bright. He disappears, and then she hears him shout from behind her. The cold washes over her. A sharp pain in her back takes her breath away. She staggers, half expecting to find a knife protruding from her spine.

  She grits her teeth and digs into her bag for the holy water. She slings it around in a wide arc, splattering Tommy. He disappears, and she hears Georgia shout. She lurches to her feet and to the edge of the stage. Tommy fl
ickers into existence in front of Georgia, whose eyes are wide and wild as she backs into a corner of the orchestra pit, limbs tangled in a mass of black music stands.

  Charity hitches up her pants and prepares to jump. Then she goes blind as white light floods her vision. It doesn’t make sense, but it feels like lightning just struck the building. She squeezes her eyes shut, then creaks them open to see the stage lights burning bright. Then she hears the first “Who’s there?”

  She glances down into the pit and sees Georgia slowly running one hand over her chest and checking for injuries. “Stay down there,” Charity hisses. She draws her gun, drops it, and kicks it toward the crossbow. Both weapons tip over the edge and into the pit with a clatter.

  The security guard from outside is moving toward her cautiously, gun drawn and aimed at her. She doesn’t like that one bit. Middle-aged, going lumpy-soft around the middle, like a cheap motel pillow is stuffed under the faded yellow polo shirt. “Hands where I can see them!”

  “Can you not already see them?”

  “Hands!” the guy shouts. His voice wobbles a little, and she suppresses a smile at the thought of little old her scaring the big bad campus policeman. She could disarm him in a split second and leave him unconscious while she makes a run for it. But unless they can solve the rest of the case without coming on campus, that’s a damn stupid plan.

  “Here they are,” she says. As her hands creep up, she hopes there’s no obvious blood stains on her shirt. She can’t tell if Tommy actually left a mark or just took out some of his post-stabbing rage on her.

  “You’re under arrest for trespassing.”

  13. GOOD COP, BAD COP

  THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME Charity Pierson has been arrested. This is probably not even the twenty-first time. As arrests go, this one is mild, probably because Patience isn’t here to antagonize the cop. With Patience, things go from calm to chaotic in a matter of seconds, and “compliance techniques” come into play. Something about her sister rubs some people the wrong way, maybe the way fuck off is etched into every inch of her face. She doesn’t give half a shit what people think, and people can tell. Most don’t care for it.

  Instead, Charity goes along peacefully with Officer Smiley, and she manages to not laugh out loud at his name once she confirms on his engraved nametag that it is, in fact, his God-given name. She deserves a cookie for that, or at least a shot of whiskey and a handful of aspirin.

  Smiley drives her to the police station in the back of a white hybrid with “BUPD” painted on the side. He reports the incident on his radio—one white female, unarmed, trespassing. There’s no mention of Georgia, which means he never even saw her. Good. It’s always nice to know someone can bail her out.

  The campus police station looks like another classroom building, an unassuming brick building on the edge of campus with three patrol cars and half a dozen golf carts parked outside. The receptionist barely looks up from her typing when Smiley hustles her through the lobby.

  He plunks her down in an uncomfortable plastic chair in a holding room. It’s a shoebox with white cinderblock walls cast under harsh fluorescents. Sun-faded posters about drunk driving and the dangers of party drugs decorate the dingy walls. Yawn. For God’s sake, he left the door half open, and she’s not even handcuffed. It’s almost insulting.

  She twists awkwardly and pulls up the hem of her shirt. She presses her fingers to the small of her back. A pair of shallow cuts mark the soft skin there. They’re not the deep, fatal wounds Tommy had sustained. They barely sting, but it worries her that Tommy has enough juice to do that kind of damage already.

  They’re going to have to let her go, unless Smiley goes back and finds Georgia or the guns. Charity’s concealed carry permit—which is actually legit in North Carolina—still doesn’t permit her to carry where guns are prohibited, college campuses being high on that list. Still, she hasn’t seen a redhead limping through the door, so maybe God’s on their side after all.

  She slumps in the orange plastic chair and sighs. It’s always nice to be right, but Tommy Crane’s case is already unusual. She’s not surprised he came back as a spirit, but he was way stronger than he should have been only four days after his death. He had the full poltergeist act going already, and that didn’t usually happen for months, even years after death. In another few weeks, Tommy is going to be a bad motherfucker.

  And that one blue eye, burning like a pilot light, is new. Eight years on the road, and she’s never seen that. New is bad. New means a whole lot of potential for things to go deadly wrong while they figure out what the hell to do.

  Officer Smiley comes in the room with another officer, this one wearing a wrinkled blue sport coat. She keeps her expression as even as possible as he slides a folder in front of her. Unlike his paunchy subordinate, he’s lean and fit, with spiky salt-and-pepper hair that shines silver against his tanned face. “I’m Officer Ruben Hayes. You know why we brought you in, Miss Pierson?”

  “Trespassing,” she says calmly.

  “So what were you doing at the Fine Arts building?”

  “I suppose I was trespassing,” she replies, keeping her arms folded tightly over her aching chest. “That’s what a little bird told me.”

  “You think this is funny?” Hayes says, eyes raking over her. She can see it on his face. Attitude. Doesn’t give a shit about the law.

  He’s not wrong. She’d like to see Hayes and Smiley go toe-to-toe with pissed-off Tommy down in the theater without shitting their pants. Hunters should get automatic get-out-of-jail free cards. She wants an actual card for her wallet, one that says, “Do not arrest. Carrier is getting shit done.” Instead, she has to lie through her teeth to these blind idiots while she wonders if Tommy went back for round two with Georgia.

  “Am I laughing?” she says with more heat than she intended.

  Hayes’s eyes narrow, and she realizes she’s got more of Patience in her than she thought. This is exactly how they ended up spending a holiday weekend in that shithole county jail in the Florida panhandle, until they managed to con Randall into coming to bail them out. It all started with Patience being a smartass and telling the arresting officer the only fingerprint she needed was the middle one.

  Charity may have been an accomplice. Possibly.

  “Let’s see how funny you think it is when we transport your ass—you to the county jail,” Smiley says, face reddening when Hayes shoots him a glare.

  She sighs and lets her face soften. She knows better. Play nice and get out of here quick. “Look, I’m sorry. I was just curious about the crime scene.”

  “You were curious? It’s an open investigation. Closed to the public, not a damn circus,” Hayes snaps. “Or do you not know what that yellow tape means?”

  “Really? It’s closed?” she says. “Cause y’all left the door wide open.”

  Smiley frowns, and his superior’s eyes widen. “Sir, the place was locked tight. I swear, I checked all the doors not ten minutes before I caught her.”

  “If I’m lying, I’m crying, and I ain’t shed a tear,” Charity replies. “Go check. Side door’s propped open with a brick. Y’all might want to tighten up your security.”

  “Even if it was open, that doesn’t mean you’re welcome to walk in whenever you want,” Hayes says. “You were tampering with a crime scene.”

  “Didn’t tamper either,” Charity says. She sighs heavily. “You have my bag?”

  Officer Smiley ducks out of the room for a second, then returns with the worn leather bag. “What about it?”

  “Dump it out,” she says, keeping her arms folded across her chest. “I’ve seen COPS. I don’t want you to think I’m going for something and shoot me.”

  Smiley grabs the bottom and dumps it out unceremoniously. The two officers watch in disbelief as the contents of her bag fall out. Old-fashioned EMF detector, tape recorder for EVP, big baggie full of salt, a bottle of holy water, multi-tool, cell phone, and a dozen other odds and ends. All of it looks weird to t
hem, but all of it’s legal.

  “Look, I’m a blogger. I write about the paranormal. You know, like those ghost hunting shows,” Charity says. The well-rehearsed lie rolls off her tongue as easy as the Pledge of Allegiance. Patience even set her up a fake blog a few years ago in case someone ever called her on it. That last post, eight months ago, feels like a virtual tombstone. “I was trying to find something in the theater. They say violent deaths leave behind all kinds of interesting activity, and—”

  “That’s enough,” Hayes says sharply. “Blogging. Ghost hunting. At a murder scene.” He mutters something that sounds like, “Fucking kids.”

  “So can I go? I really don’t mean to sass, but if you’re going to keep me, you have to charge me. I saw that on TV.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Hayes snaps. “You ought to have more respect for the dead. Someone died, and you’re trying to pretend you’re on some damn reality show.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says through gritted teeth. Her temper is waking up, like a dragon stirring with fire in its belly and murder on its mind. “Won’t happen again.”

  “Damn right it won’t,” Hayes says. “You so much as fart on my campus and I’ll arrest you so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

  As soon as she clears the front doors, she checks her phone. There’s a text from Georgia:

  Georgia: Where are you?

  She calls. Georgia picks up on the first ring. “Where are you?”

  “Campus police station. Come get me.”

  She sits on the steps outside, crouching in the blue glow of an emergency call station. Summer has officially bowed out in favor of fall, and it would be a lovely evening if not for the knowledge that something or someone murdered Tommy Crane and is probably moving on to another victim.

  It only takes a few minutes for Georgia to arrive. Her face is frantic, eyes practically bugging out of her skull. “Well?”

  “You got here fast,” Charity says. “Did you see Tommy again?”