by Lori Drake
I gave her a minute, then got started. “How long have you lived in this apartment?”
“Six months and change.”
“Are you aware of any history of violence in the apartment? Either since or before you moved in.”
Mindi shook her head. I made a mental note to have Sam look into that, not wanting to spook her about the possibility of something bad happening in her bedroom in the past.
“Did anyone you know die recently?”
“No.”
I nodded. “How long have you been having problems? Sam said you’ve felt like you were being watched.”
“A few weeks. I called the police and they checked the place out, suggested I get the locks rekeyed, but nothing changed.”
“Sam also said things have been moving around the house? Have you seen them move?”
“No. It’s just—you probably think I’m just forgetful, but I have a routine. I brush my hair before bed, two hundred strokes, and then I put the brush down on the dresser. But I keep finding my brush in different places. Once it was in the toilet.” She shuddered. “I boiled it.”
“Word,” Trish said, finally seeming to sympathize with something the woman said.
“Is there a history of sleepwalking in your family?” I was grasping at straws a bit, but she hadn’t given me much to go on.
Mindi stiffened, her eyes flashing with sudden anger. “No.”
I held up a placating hand. “No offense intended, miss. I just have to cover the bases. Have you noticed any oddities with temperature in the room? Sudden chills, anything like that?” It was a trick question. Movies are works of fiction. There’s no actual correlation between the presence of ghosts and ambient temperature, but it sure makes for good cinema.
“No.” Mindi still looked annoyed, but at least she wasn’t obviously making anything up.
I nodded, satisfied. “Well, I don’t know what’s been going on, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a ghost involved.”
“Didn’t you say that just because there wasn’t a ghost here now that it didn’t mean there wasn’t one involved?” Sam asked.
“It’s within the realm of possibility, but ghosts aren’t usually shy. In fact, they’re actually kind of territorial. Especially ones that are tied to a place rather than a person—and I have no reason to believe that one is tied to Mindi if she doesn’t know anyone who died recently.” If there had been a spirit tethered to the apartment, I was pretty sure it would’ve shown itself to Trish. What’s more, it probably would’ve started pestering Mindi the moment she moved in rather than coexisting peacefully for a few months.
“Now what?” Mindi asked, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m right back where I started. If it’s not a ghost, it’s a man… maybe I just need to move.”
Sam patted her back. “We’ll get to the bottom of it, Ms. Masterson.”
“I’m going to stay at a hotel until the security cameras are installed. I can’t keep doing this, I just can’t.” The tears finally started to flow, and even though I stood by my analysis, I still felt like an ass.
“Do you want me to stay the night?” I asked. Foolishly.
“What?” Mindi and Trish said. One more incredulously than the other. You can guess which.
I winced and held up a hand. “On the couch, obviously. I can just hang out and see if a ghost shows up.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” Trish said.
“Oh! That’s a wonderful idea!” Mindi pulled away from Sam and wiped her eyes. “I’ll get you some bedding.”
“I’ve got a few things to do this afternoon, but I’ll come back later, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you so much, Dean. I mean, I know we just met, but I’ve got a good feeling about you. And if Sam trusts you, I trust you.” She didn’t, however, look to Sam for confirmation.
“Idiot,” Trish muttered, giving me a pointed look.
Yeah. She was right again.
5
I was able to keep my appointment with Chris after all, but we struck out on the car front. On the upside, the rain had stopped—so I was feeling less pressure to commit to something with a roof—and when I got back to the house, the spirits that’d been hanging out were nowhere to be found. After dinner, I rode my bike back into town and headed for Mindi’s apartment. She answered the door in a silky red robe and fur-trimmed house shoes, smiling coquettishly as she invited me in.
“Thanks so much for this, Dean,” she said, closing the door and engaging the locks.
I couldn’t help but feel like she was locking me in as much as she was locking anyone else out, but that was a bit silly. After all, the locks all opened from the inside. The only thing keeping me here was chivalry, however misplaced that might turn out to be.
“No problem at all, ma’am.” I smiled politely.
“Can I get you a bite to eat?”
“No, thank you. I just had dinner.”
She cocked a hip, resting one hand on it. “Drink, then? I have some sherry. It’s lovely. But you’re probably more of a scotch kind of guy, right?”
The truth was neither, actually. I tend to favor good old-fashioned barley and hops. Occasionally tequila.
“Water would be fine. I don’t want to impose. It’s best if you could forget I’m here and just go about your evening.”
“Do I have to? It’s so rare I have company.” She thrust her lower lip out briefly, then glided off to the kitchen.
“I doubt that.” The words were out before I thought them through. I winced, preparing for backlash that didn’t come. Other than the sounds of ice tinkling into a glass and water running, she didn’t make a peep. I took the time to look around the living room, eyes peeled for any signs of a spirit. The place seemed the same as it had earlier in the day. When Mindi returned with the water, I turned my attention back to her.
“Are you calling me a slut?” Mindi’s lips twitched with obvious amusement as she held out the glass.
I blinked, slow to take the offering. “No, no, of course not. I just meant that—I mean—You must have friends, right?”
She pressed the glass into my hand, fingers brushing mine. “Of course, but they don’t come in”—her eyes raked over me—“quite so nice a package.”
I coughed to clear my throat and took a step back, putting some distance between us. “Well, like I said. Just forget I’m here.”
Mindi pouted but nodded and headed for her bedroom. “It’s early, yet. I think I’ll just watch some TV in my room. Feel free to use the one out here if you like.”
I thanked her but took out my phone once I’d settled on the couch. It was a long, quiet night. Trish showed up right about when my eyelids started to sag.
“Get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll wake you if anything happens.”
I yawned. “Don’t let the crazy lady touch my no-no parts.”
She snickered and curled up on the other end of the couch. “No promises.”
By morning, no stalkers had put in an appearance, in spirit or flesh. Mindi thanked me for staying, claiming it was the best night’s sleep she’d had in days. I declined her offer of breakfast and got out of there as quickly as possible.
“Do you think she’s making it up?” Trish asked, as we descended the stairs.
“What, the whole stalker thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe. I mean, what she claims is a bit odd if a spirit isn’t involved. But I’ll leave that up to Sam to figure out. Our work here is done.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Hm?” We’d reached the bottom of the stairs. I lifted my eyes from my phone and blinked as I found half-a-dozen ghosts congregating outside the apartment building. None of them were familiar to me, but they turned as one to regard me nonetheless. Eerie.
I’m not sure how long I stood there staring before Trish nudged the back of my shoulder. “Friends of yours?”
“You know they’re not.” I frowned and tucked my phone away inside my jacket. “This is
weird. There were spirits hanging out around the house yesterday morning, too.”
“What did they want?”
“I dunno. I didn’t ask. I had shit to do.”
“That’s my boy.”
She sounded so proud. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Trish really wanted me to get out of the ghost-helping business, or at least find a way to do it and lead a semi-normal life. I didn’t think either were in the cards for me. Squaring my shoulders, I approached the nearest ghost. It was a man in a business suit with half of his head missing. Self-inflicted gunshot, by the looks of it. As I approached, the others kept their distance, either eyeing me or ignoring me.
I glanced around quickly to make sure no living were lurking nearby. You spend too much time talking to no one on the street, people start to think you’re crazy. I didn’t care much about what people thought about me, but I didn’t need anyone starting to think I was dangerous and calling the cops.
Yes, it’s happened before.
Assured that we were relatively alone, I looked the dead man in the eyes. “Hi, I’m Dean. What’s your name?”
“You can see me?” The anxiety in his voice as almost palpable. “I mean, I’m Jim. Can you help me?”
Behind me, Trish snorted and rattled her tongue piercing against her teeth.
I ignored her. “Depends on what you need. What’s up?”
“I need to get some information to my wife. Please, it’s important.” In a blink, he was in my face, gripping my shoulder tightly.
I recoiled, pulling away. Before I could respond, Trish had blinked in front of me like a spectral bouncer.
Even though the other ghost had a good foot-and-a-half on her, she got in his face. “Hands off the merchandise, buddy.”
Jim took a step back and ducked his head, shoulders slumped. “Sorry, I… sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You just startled me.”
Truth be told, I was shaken. That was the second time in as many days that a ghost had reached out and touched me, and the way they were starting to show up in my vicinity was unnerving as hell. I was accustomed to bumping into ghosts here and there, but this was unusual activity. Okay, that’s putting it mildly. It was borderline alarming activity.
“What about the rest of you? Any requests?” I looked at the other spirits lingering in the vicinity. A couple more had shown up while I’d been speaking with Jim, but they all either just looked at me in silence or ignored me entirely. The goosebumps on my arms refused to go down as I started walking down the street toward my bike, motioning for Jim to come with me. He fell in with me on one side and Trish on my other.
“I’m going to need an address for your wife,” I said. These sorts of messages were best delivered in person. Plus, it was the only way I had a shot at getting paid. The dead guy’s suit looked expensive, so I wasn’t surprised when the address he rattled off turned out to be on Mercer Island. That boded well.
After walking a block and a half, I glanced behind me. There was minimal sidewalk traffic, so the ghosts trailing along behind us were easily spotted. It looked like a few more had joined the crowd. My quick headcount got to eight before I tripped over a raised section of sidewalk and turned my focus forward again.
Fingers laced with mine, and I spared Trish a brief glance. The concern in her eyes mirrored my own. Something weird was going on.
“Hey, Sam. It’s me.” It’d taken me a couple of hours to deal with Jim’s problem, but my PayPal account was five hundred dollars richer, and he’d crossed over, so I had no complaints. What’s more, I’d managed to outdistance most of the spirits along the way, and by the time I got to Granite Falls, the only one with me was Trish.
“How’d it go?” Not one to beat around the bush, Sam. I liked that about him.
I held the phone between my shoulder and ear while I unlocked the front door. “Fine. I mean, maybe not from your point of view. As far as I can tell, whatever’s messing with her isn’t a ghost. There was no spirit activity in the apartment at all last night.”
“Okay, thanks for checking it out. Are you sure you don’t want anything for your time?”
If not for the quick job I’d done for Jim, I might’ve been tempted. “Nah, don’t worry about it. If you need me again, maybe we can talk about a retainer or something.”
“All right. Thanks again, Dean. Talk to you later.”
I hung up but paused before going inside and looked out across the lawn, eyes scanning for anything out of the ordinary. There was no trace of the spirits from the previous day, but I had the feeling I hadn’t seen the last of them.
“They’ll be back,” Trish said, practically reading my mind.
“What makes you think so?”
She smirked and I expected a sassy retort, but her expression turned serious and she bit her lower lip. “Something’s different about you.”
I blinked. “Different? How so?”
“I’m not sure. It’s hard to put into words.”
“Try?”
She looked away, collecting her thoughts. I let her, ignoring Sadie’s barking on the other side of the door and hoping one of my many housemates wouldn’t come open it before I was ready.
“You and me, we’re connected,” Trish said, eventually. I knew that, so I nodded for her to continue. “Ever since I died, you’ve been a beacon to me. A light in the darkness, so to speak. But it’s been getting stronger. I’ve felt it more and more, and I think… I think others may be starting to feel it, too.”
I swallowed and looked across the lawn again. The old-fashioned ghost with the hat and the corncob pipe was back, watching from afar. A shiver went down my spine. “You think I’m attracting them, like some kind of ghost magnet?”
She nodded, and I contemplated this until Sadie’s barking and scratching at the door became too much to ignore. I opened the door and the little dog darted out onto the porch, wagging her tail hard enough to shake her whole rear end from side to side as she danced around my feet with a big doggy grin. Her cuteness was like a natural defense against the repercussions of being annoying as hell.
“Go pee or something.” I pointed into the yard, and she danced around at my feet a few more seconds before looking in the direction I pointed. She went still, then took off to streak across the lawn in the direction of the ghost hanging out there. Curious, I watched to see what would happen when she reached the spirit, but he disappeared before she got there. She didn’t stop until she reached the spot where he’d been, lowering her nose to give the ground a thorough sniffing.
Trish wore a bemused expression as she watched the little dog. “She doesn’t react to me the same way as the others.”
“Maybe you’re not an actual ghost. Maybe you’re a figment of my imagination.” I didn’t believe it, not really. If anything, she was a manifestation of my guilty conscience. Still, I liked having her around. Maybe that made me a glutton for punishment.
Trish elbowed me. “Would a figment do that?”
“Technically, a ghost shouldn’t either. Never stopped you.” Memories of the night we’d spent together rose, unbidden. Christ, she’d felt so real. How she’d tricked me into believing she was a living, breathing woman, I may never know. I only knew that it was a line we hadn’t crossed since. A line I didn’t want to cross.
Except when I did.
She elbowed me again and gave me such a knowing look that I’m sure I blushed as I cleared my throat. “I don’t appreciate being manhandled by ghosts—present company excluded.”
“Is there someone you can talk to about it?”
“Maybe.”
Harper, the man who’d found me trying to drink myself to death after Leti died and I started seeing ghosts, was a complete technophobe. He didn’t even have a landline, much less a cell phone or computer. It made contacting him difficult, since he lived in Mexico. I’d have to go in person or—God forbid—write him a letter. There was also Catherine Boyd, a local witch I’d become acquainted with recently. She
was a real heavyweight and knew a lot about magic but less about the spirit world—probably a dead end. Pun not intended.
Resolved to give it a little time to see what happened and think about it some more, I whistled for Sadie and turned toward the door but paused as I reached for the handle. “When did you start to notice that something was different?”
She didn’t answer, but she was still there. I could sense her. Had I always been able to do that, or was that new, too? I wasn’t sure. I’d never really thought about it but once I did… it bugged me.
“Trish?” I glanced over my shoulder.
She had a far off look in her eyes but returned to me with a blink. “Not long ago. A few days, tops.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
Trish shrugged. “It didn’t seem relevant until now.”
I had the sense there was something she wasn’t telling me.
I was right.
6
Two days later, Sadie’s barking and clawing at my bedroom door dragged me out of a rather pleasant dream about riding my bike across the plains without a care in the world, just the open road stretched out before me as far as the eye could see and gas money in my pocket. Reality came barging in when I opened my eyes and saw the dozen or so spectral forms milling about my bedroom. Sadie’s barking continued, unabated, in the hall.
“You’re awake!” A young woman with long dreadlocks rushed to my bedside. “Please, I need your help.”
A man in a tracksuit shoved her out of the way. “I was here first!”
The two ghosts started arguing while I lay blinking up at them. Others crowded around the bed, clamoring for my attention until I couldn’t make out any one’s words over the others. The door shook in its frame so loudly that I thought the pup outside might rattle it right off the hinges.
I pressed my hands over my ears, not awake enough to remember it wouldn’t help. Distance plays a role in how well I can hear a spirit, but up close I can hear it just as clearly with earplugs in as I can without. The ghosts grew bolder by the second, clutching my legs, pulling at my blanket. I kicked and scrambled backward until my back was pressed against the headboard. My heart beat a rapid staccato in my chest.