by DM Sinclair
Ryan settled into his seat. “So your client…”
“Rufus.”
“You said you weren’t going to say his name.”
“I’m not.”
“How much does Rufus remember?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“What’s the first thing you remember seeing after you got ghosted?”
Ryan vividly recalled that disconcerting sight of his own body from above. The closed eyes, the hair standing on end. “Myself,” he replied finally, chilled at the memory. The shirt, oh God, the shirt. He folded his arms across his chest self-consciously.
“Exactly. That’s the first thing everyone remembers. That’s how you know you’re dead, right? First you’re going into the light, and then you’re floating above your body looking down at yourself. Except not my client. Rufus doesn’t remember dying, and he never saw a body. He just woke up in that dump all ghosty, with no idea what happened to him. As far as he knows, he never died.”
Ryan silently admitted a possible connection. Being a ghost without dying was, after all, a situation he was intimately familiar with. But if Rufus had been extracted at the Clinic, he would have had days to prepare. He’d certainly remember it.
The rain slacked off as they sped into the city, and the hiss of the tires on the wet road turned into a dull, throbbing hum. As much of an infected scar as the Mass Pike continued to be, Ryan was grateful to be on it, and see the glow of Boston emerging out of the mists ahead. He recalled feeling in the landfill like he would never get back here. But here he was.
Lowell merged left to pull off the Turnpike into Cambridge and fished through his pockets for change without slowing down at all. Or, for those few seconds, steering. “We’ll go to my office,” he said.
“No,” Ryan said, pointing ahead, “take me to the Clinic. I’ll show you where it is. Head towards Davis Square.”
Lowell slowed for the toll booth, veering into the cash-only lane. Ryan almost lost his connection to the car and sped through the EZPass lane on his own, but forced his particles back into the passenger seat with a hard molecular shove.
“Okay,” Lowell said. “But on the way, you’re gonna tell me everything.”
“I already told you everything that matters.”
“Then you’re going to tell me everything that doesn’t.”
“Why? Are you going to solve my case too?” Ryan asked.
“You know, I was kind of hoping you’d solve mine.”
They parked at a meter across from the Clinic. The rain had slunk away for the evening but the sky remained threateningly heavy, so the sidewalks were mostly deserted. Only a few brave pedestrians dodged puddles as they hurried home, while an assortment of ghosts who had no reason to care about puddles meandered right through them.
In ten minutes of stakeout, the Clinic entrance had not opened once. Yet Ryan ducked in his seat like he could be spotted at any moment.
“Is it closed?” Lowell asked.
The old wristwatch duct-taped to the dashboard suggested that it was about 7:30. And while the irregular movements of the second hand gave him plenty of reason for doubt, Ryan suspected it was roughly correct. “I don’t know. Maybe they do night appointments. I’m going in.” He pushed himself halfway through the car door.
“Whoa, and do what?” Lowell said. “Exactly what you did before? How’d that work out for you?”
“Then I’ll do something different. But you have to come with me.”
“Why?”
Ryan gestured towards the snow globe resting on top of the dash. Seeing it again made him love it more than ever, and then hate himself for how much he loved it.
“Even if it’s open, which I don’t think it is, they’re not going to let me just walk around in there,” Lowell said with a shrug. “Private property. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then we should go to the police.”
“Have you been to a police station since the Blackout? ‘Get in line’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”
Ryan had already forgotten what the objection was to his original plan, so he returned to it. “I’m going in.” He had both his legs through the door before Lowell’s voice stopped him.
“Stop,” Lowell said with a commanding edge. “That’s stupid. You have to be smart about this.”
Ryan hovered as Lowell studied the front of the Clinic and looked up and down the street, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Twice he rubbed his chin and at least once he let out a deep, thoughtful sigh. It went on for more than a minute at least.
“And?” Ryan demanded.
“And what?”
“You were going to suggest a plan!”
“No I wasn’t. I said you have to be smart. I didn’t say anything about me.”
Exasperated, Ryan flopped back into the passenger seat. He felt a warm sense of relief being so near the snow globe again. He loved it unconditionally, and yet wanted it to know how much he hated it.
Ryan had a sudden thought. “There was a woman in there. A doctor, or whatever those people in there are. Margie.”
“Dr. Margie?”
“She seemed like she would help me. She tried to help me. If we can find her…”
Lowell folded his arms. “You keep saying ‘we’ like this has anything to do with me. But it doesn’t. This is all you. I’m not doing anything.” He reclined his seat a few degrees, apparently to emphasize that his plan was to stay right where he was.
Five seconds later Lowell scrambled frantically to find the door handle, threw open the car door, fell out onto the road, picked himself up, stumbled against the hood of the car, and barrelled away down the street at a dead sprint, shouting “Hey! Hey!”
This took Ryan very much by surprise.
He was so stunned that he neglected to do anything about it at all for several seconds.
Lowell was yelling something unintelligible and waving like he was hailing a taxi. Fifty yards away now.
Ryan got his wits together and forced himself through the passenger door, scrambling to catch up to Lowell even though he knew he couldn’t. Ten yards down the road the yearning hit him and he stopped dead and spun around, straining to see through the windshield of Lowell’s car. He desperately wanted a glimpse, anything to tell him the snow globe was okay and didn’t need him. But he couldn’t see it, not even the jagged top edge. So he had to run back and plunge his head in through the window. There it was, safe and sound on the dash and doing everything it could to make him happy. It infuriated him.
By the time Ryan was satisfied that the snow globe had no urgent need of his presence, Lowell was walking back up the street towards him, talking on a cellphone. He paused every few feet to double over and pant, gag, and hock something viscous from deep within himself onto the asphalt.
“What was that about?” Ryan called as Lowell drew closer.
Lowell dropped the phone into his pocket and barely managed to wheeze an answer. “I’m not… gonna… say.”
Ryan had had enough. He threw himself back into the car. An insistent pessimism surged through his molecules, infecting them one by one. He didn’t have the energy to fight it so he went with it. He wanted to be somewhere familiar, somewhere he could think. It occurred to him that he hadn’t been home even once since leaving his body.
Lowell stumbled all the way to the car and leaned on his elbows on the hood, trying to force something out of his lungs.
“Do me one more favor,” Ryan said. “Take me home. I’ll show you where.”
Lowell puffed. “What… are you going… to do?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Ryan said. Because he didn’t.
TWENTY
Lowell scrambled frantically to find the door handle, threw open the car door, fell out onto the road, picked himself up, stumbled against the hood of the car, and barreled away down the street at a dead sprint, shouting “Hey! Hey!”
He wasn’t at all sure how his passenger—was his name Ryan?—would feel about
his sudden departure, but he didn’t have time to consider it.
Because someone had just come out the door of the Post-Mortal Services Clinic. Someone who had no business being there. Hence his willingness to risk heart attacks and various other bodily breakdowns by sprinting up the street to catch up to him.
The figure was moving unhurriedly but with a kind of determination to his stride that suggested annoyance. The guy was moving like somebody had just wronged him and he was off to do something about it, dammit. But he was evidently unaware of Lowell pursuing him. He never glanced back, even when Lowell crashed into a Herald box and knocked it in front of a bus pulling over to stop.
Lowell picked himself up, but not the newspaper box, and resumed his pursuit as the figure ahead cut across the street into traffic. Lowell had closed enough distance between them that he tried calling out again. “Hey!” When that didn’t get a response, he tried using the figure’s name.
“Hey! Rufus!”
There was absolutely no way that Rufus Flowers hadn’t heard him. Every single other person within earshot, both living and dead, turned towards him in response, some of them much further away from Lowell than Rufus was. But Rufus didn’t so much as pause. He continued his stride across the street, ignoring even the car that had to screech to a sudden stop to avoid hitting him.
He’s going to get himself killed, Lowell thought.
And the thought incensed him again. Because the last time he had seen Rufus, the “getting killed” had already been taken care of. And Lowell’s paycheck from the case pretty much relied on that fact being true. Which it now seemed it wasn’t.
Rufus being alive and walking angrily around in front of cars meant that he and his wife had lied to Lowell. There was no dead body for Lowell to find at all. He could spend weeks futilely looking for it, for no financial gain whatsoever. The couple were definitely liars, which made them that much more likely to stiff him on the check.
Lowell leapt off the sidewalk into traffic, waving at cars approaching from both sides to stop. They honked violently instead of slowing down. Lowell was forced to stop in the middle of the road and let them go past.
He craned his neck to keep track of Rufus. He caught sight of the man’s enormous back as he stepped over a guardrail into a public parking lot.
As soon as the cars were clear, Lowell sprinted the rest of the way across the street and tripped on the curb, nearly diving headlong into a bus shelter. He went clear through a cluster of ghosts milling there and his wildly pinwheeling arms stirred them briefly up into a swirling mist.
He breathlessly mumbled an apology and cut left down the sidewalk towards the parking lot, weaving in and out of the various ghosts and occasional living people who got in his way.
By now he was already seriously out of breath and sweating, dismayed at how heavy and unwieldy he felt. He used to be able to run better than this, didn’t he? He was being outrun by a three-hundred pound supposedly dead man.
Lowell grabbed a lamppost to stop himself. He clung to it, panting and clutching the stitch in his side.
Something wasn’t right here. Something beyond all the other things that weren’t right here. And he had just finally realized what it was.
He shifted sideways until he could see Rufus over the tops of the parked cars, moving across the parking lot.
Lowell remembered Rufus coming into his office. The man—or rather the ghost—was enormous. You could ski down this man. And yet he had glided with the grace of a speed skater on a smooth pond. Subliminally at the time, Lowell had attributed his movement to the fact that he was a ghost. But consciously, Lowell knew that ghosts always move exactly as they had done in life. Rufus must have been a smooth walker when he was alive.
Yet this figure that Lowell had been chasing moved nothing like that. He lumbered. He moved quickly for a big man, but his movements were massive, lurching. Encumbered, even.
For the first time, Lowell doubted himself. Was this Rufus at all? He had been so certain upon first seeing the giant figure emerge from the Clinic, but now he was losing his confidence.
Rufus—if indeed it was Rufus at all—stopped next to a silver Corvette, and fished through his pockets.
Lowell took a deep breath and forced himself to run again, despite the very convincing protests being mounted by every single part of his body.
He stumbled over the guardrail encircling the lot and squeezed between the parked cars, managing as he stumbled across the lot to set off no fewer than three car alarms.
By the time he reached Rufus, he could barely breathe and he thought he might be about to throw up and possibly to die, not necessarily in that order.
Rufus still had his back to him, and had only just found his keys and was twisting sideways to force himself into a sports car clearly much too small for him.
Lowell clutched onto the SUV next to Rufus’s car and tried to get a breath, to get a word out before the big man could get into his car and be gone.
Rufus seemed to sense his presence. There was a slight cocking of the head. But he continued to struggle into his car.
Finally Lowell managed a breathless, rasping word. The same word he had already tried.
“Rufus!”
The big man froze. He turned to Lowell.
It was definitely Rufus. There could be no doubt. The same jowls, the exact same spot of thinning hair just above his forehead, the tiny mole on his cheek that his ghost had decided to render as a brilliantly shimmering spot. It was all there, except opaque and in full color.
He stared at Lowell, and Lowell stared back between shallow, desperate, exhausted breaths.
Rufus said nothing. And there was nothing in his eyes. No recognition whatsoever. Just a baffled, vacant annoyance. Like Lowell had just stumbled up out of the gutter and asked for change.
Lowell had a million doubts at that moment but there was one thing he knew for certain.
This man, although he was definitely Rufus, had never met him before.
“Sorry,” Lowell managed to choke out, “I thought… you were… somebody…”
Before he could say “else”, Rufus had already forced himself into the car like cramming two buckets’ worth of Play-doh into a single little Play-doh bucket. It seemed impossible for him to close the door but he did.
As the Corvette backed out, Lowell barely had the energy to get out of the way.
Halfway back to his own car, where the ghost Ryan waited inside for him with a dazed expression, Lowell thought how detective-like it would have been for him to have gotten the Corvette’s license number before it pulled out. But he had not done that.
You, he reminded himself needlessly, are not a detective.
When he finally felt like he had his own voice back and wouldn’t sound like walking tuberculosis, he pulled his cellphone from his pocket and touched a speed dial. Someone answered on the first ring.
“Mr. Mahaffey?” Lucinda Flowers sounded hopeful.
Lowell had been prepared to immediately launch into an accusation, but now that he was in the moment he decided on a different tack. Better to be sure when there’s a pay check on the line. “Mrs. Flowers,” he gasped, “is your husband there?”
“I’ll put you on speaker,” she said.
He’s there? Lowell’s breath caught in his chest, which was the last thing he needed when he had so little breath to go around.
Rufus’s voice came on, close to the phone. “Mr. Mahaffey?” He had the same hopeful tone as his wife.
Lowell’s mind raced, trying to piece together a scenario where any of this made sense. He couldn’t come up with one. Not even one where these people were lying to him. He just couldn’t buy that.
He got a bit of his breath back to speak. “Rufus, have you ever been to the Post-Mortal Services Clinic?”
“Never heard of it. Why? Did you find my body?”
“Yeah, I did,” Lowell said. “But I think I’m going to have to find it again.”
TWENTY-ONE
<
br /> Lowell’s car wobbled up to Ryan’s house. The storm had cleared but the sun was long gone, and the nightly wandering spirits had taken to the gleaming streets. Ryan had always liked how the dense flow of ghosts looked on a rainy night, their shimmering forms suffusing the damp asphalt with an ethereal glow. There was a serenity about it despite the sheer number of ghosts it took to produce it.
A little cluster of ghosts that spanned at least three centuries conversed in front of the house, and had to scatter onto the sidewalk as Lowell pulled up. One of them waved his fist and hurled Dutch insults, but Lowell ignored him.
Ryan was just grateful to be home. Despite his hurry to find his body, and despite the fact that he could not get tired, and despite it being the least comfortable place he had ever lived, it was still home. And seeing it again was a relief.
But something wasn’t right. He froze, staring.
Lowell got out the driver’s door. He pulled the snow globe out and set it on the roof of the car. “Where do you want…?” he started to ask.
But Ryan cut him off. “Wait,” he said urgently. He pointed up at the third floor windows. His apartment. “There’s a light on.”
There was a glow in the kitchen window, the one Sye used to sit in front of. The kitchen light made a dim orange circle on the water-stained ceiling. From their vantage point below, the ceiling was all they could see. But there was no doubt. The light was on.
“So you left the light on,” Lowell said, shrugging.
“No, I specifically didn’t.” He had been very diligent about everything when he left the morning of the procedure. He had shut off the lights, the heat, all the appliances that he counted on never needing again. The only thing he had left on was the fridge, because of the Algonquian ghost, who seemed to like the cold. He had definitely not left any lights on. And Benny the Poltergeist wouldn’t have turned them on; he liked the lights off because it was scarier. And he hadn’t ever managed to operate the switch anyway, though not for lack of trying.
There was somebody up there. Somebody living.