Until It Sleeps

by Val Crowe

  “Hell, yeah, it’s possible,” I said. “You went to all those funerals with me last fall. You remember what happened at the Sunny Day Campgrounds.” A ghost had knifed five people to death. I hadn’t been able to stop him.

  “Yeah, but that was because of Dominique, right?”

  “Technically,” I said. Dominique was Negus’s daughter. She had the ability to turn ghosts corporeal. But she didn’t have that ability anymore. Her connection to the supernatural had been severed. “But Oscar was killed by ghosts.”

  “Yeah, and they forced him to kill himself, right?” said Wade. “Same deal as Cheyenne.”

  “That’s true, I guess,” I said. “It’s possible. But you don’t think that’s what happened?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Wade. “It’s only that Virginia asked me not to bring up Kadan’s stepfather around Kadan. Apparently, Kadan’s scared of him. Virginia says he has nightmares about the guy.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Right?” said Wade. “I said to Virginia that we should tell the police about that, see if they can interview Kadan. Because if this guy—his name’s Tex Sanford—actually did kill Cheyenne, then her daughter’s murderer is running around free, and how can she stand for that to happen? Doesn’t she want justice?”

  I nodded. “So, what’d she say?”

  “She said she didn’t want to upset Kadan any worse than he was. And I’m like, ‘The kid is having nightmares.’ He’s already plenty upset, don’t you think? We should do something to alleviate that.”

  “Well, he might be having nightmares for a completely different reason. It doesn’t mean that his stepfather killed his mom.”

  “But if he did,” said Wade, “then I want the guy locked up. For Cheyenne, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, definitely.”

  “So, will you go to the house?”

  “What? Why am I going to the house?”

  “If there are ghosts, then you’ll know. And then we’ll know that his stepfather was telling the truth, and then I can drop it. And if it’s not haunted, then I go after the bastard.”

  “Legally, you mean, right?” I said. “You’re not going to get a gun or something stupid.”

  “Legally,” he said. “Like sic the police on him.”

  I sighed. “Okay, okay. I guess I can do that.”

  “Thank you,” said Wade. “Thank you so much.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Unlike the Donaldson’s house, Sanford House resembled a haunted house. It was probably two hundred years old—definitely built in the 1800s. It was two stories high with a porch on the front and narrow windows. It was in good repair. It had obviously been given new siding and fresh coat of paint and new doors and windows. But it still had its ancient bones.

  Wade and I stood on the porch, waiting.

  I’d just knocked on the door.

  We listened to see if we heard any noises from within, the sounds of someone coming to the door. But it was quiet.

  We waited some more.

  Wade jammed his hands in his pockets and studied his shoes. He’d skipped his morning classes to drive out here with me. The house was about forty-five minutes away from Thornford, not far at all. It must make Wade crazy to know that Cheyenne had been so close, with Kadan there besides, and never bothered to come and find him. She’d even gotten remarried to this Tex guy who—murderer or not—sounded kind of like a jerk. What had Cheyenne been thinking when she did this? Why had she kept Wade and Kadan apart?

  I’d tried to convince Wade to stay back and go to class. I knew it was important to him that he got his credits and graduated in the spring. It was doubly important now. He would want to get a good job to help take care of his son, and his degree would be a help with that. But Wade was insistent he come. I think he wanted to see the place for himself.

  “Maybe no one’s home,” Wade said.

  I raised my hand to the door to knock again.

  And the door opened.

  There was a redhead there, her freckled face flushed. She was pregnant, and she had one hand on her rounded stomach. “Can I help you? Sorry, I was all the way in the basement, and I had to run up here to get the door. I thought my husband was going to get it, but then I didn’t hear him coming down the steps.”

  I could see the steps behind her. They were directly behind the door, ascending steeply to the upper level. They were the kind of narrow wooden steps you find in old houses.

  “Hi,” I said. “My name’s Deacon Garrison, and this is my friend Wade Moore. We’re—”

  “No.” She shook her head. And then let out a laugh that was half apologetic and half annoyed. “You’re here because you think the place is haunted.”

  “Uh, well, sort of,” I said.

  “It’s not haunted,” said another voice. A man was coming down the steps, probably the redhead’s husband. “It was a hoax. That Tex guy was so caught up in his grief he couldn’t accept his wife had committed suicide.”

  “Or maybe he did hear things,” said the redhead. “But there are no such things as ghosts, and whatever he heard must have had a perfectly normal explanation.”

  “Anyway,” said the husband, alighting from the steps and stepping in behind his wife, “there’s nothing to see here now.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, listen. My friend Wade here, his son lived in the house.”

  “Um, what?” said the redhead, furrowing her brow.

  “Yeah, the boy’s name is Kadan. His mother is the one who died here,” I said. “And it’s pretty important that Kadan know what actually happened to his mother.”

  “Oh, wow,” said the redhead. “Well, I feel awful for the little guy, but…” She looked up at her husband and then back at Wade and me. “Well, I don’t know that there’s anything we can do.”

  “I just want to walk through the house,” I said.

  “Why?” said the husband.

  “I know you folks don’t believe in ghosts, and that makes sense to me. Truthfully, most spirits aren’t strong enough to make their presence known to most people. But I have a, uh, sensitivity and I can see ghosts. So, if the place is haunted, I’ll know.”

  The redhead and her husband exchanged an alarmed glance.

  Then the husband burst out laughing. “Listen, we’re not in the market for a ghostbuster, so—”

  “I’m not asking for money,” I said. “And I don’t need to convince you that I’m telling the truth or that I’m not crazy. You think what you want about me. All I want is to walk through the house. Probably take me fifteen to twenty minutes tops.”

  “Are you going to try to take pictures and sell them to tabloids?” demanded the redhead. “We thought all this nonsense with the place died down. We get the occasional crazy, and it’s worse at Halloween, but it’s quiet here. We don’t want any renewed attention to the place.”

  “I won’t bring anything with me,” I said. “No phone. No camera. Nothing. I won’t take any pictures.”

  “Don’t you need some kind of equipment to track the ghosts?” said the husband. “Those EMF meters?”

  “No,” I said. “Don’t need it. Like I said, I’m sensitive.”

  “Look,” said the redhead, “there’s no haunting here.”

  “Please?” I said. “Let me walk through? For Kadan?”

  The redhead sighed. She rubbed her belly.

  “Oh, come on, Wren,” said the husband. “You’re not thinking of caving, are you?”

  She chewed on her bottom lip. “What does a walk-through hurt, Philip?”

  “It’s a bad day,” said Philip, giving us a too-bad-not-my-fault smile. “We’re putting together a crib today.”

  “Tomorrow would be better,” agreed Wren. She turned to me. “Could you come back tomorrow afternoon instead?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can definitely do that. Thank you. Thank you for agreeing.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoo
n, I met Wade out at the Woodland Terrace apartment complex. I had never been all the way out this place, although I knew about it, because it was one of the last resorts for college students who were going to Malbrooke. No one wanted to live out there, because it was outside Thornford proper, about a fifteen-minute drive away. Not only that, it was expensive, and they didn’t like renting to college students, so they made prospective renters jump through a lot of hoops. Move in was first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and a security deposit. There was a minimum income requirement to sign a lease, and if a renter didn’t qualify, they’d need a co-signer who did (typically, the college student’s parents). The upshot of all it was that the place didn’t have a lot of college students living there, and I was guessing that was why Wade wanted to move there.

  His apartment now was a one-bedroom, a converted attic in a building in downtown Thornford. I liked the place all right, but it did have sloping ceilings and there wasn’t much room for a kid there.

  Anyway, I was willing to tag along and give Wade my opinion, but I’d never rented an apartment before. I’d gone from living in the back of my truck to living in the Airstream. I had no frame of reference for all this.

  On the drive over, Mads argued with me about music, because I was blaring Def Leppard, and she wasn’t a fan. She didn’t like much classic rock, and she only tended to concede if the singer was female for whatever reason. I didn’t see how that made much difference, but Mads was Mads. Anyway, I told her that if she didn’t like the music, she could dematerialize or do whatever it was that she did, and she told me I was an asshole, and that I was avoiding having a conversation with her about what was going on with Wade.

  I didn’t want to have that conversation, which I knew was going to consist of her telling me that we should “break up” since she was a ghost and could never bear my children.

  Like I cared about that shit.

  Like I was even thinking about that shit.

  And we couldn’t break up anyway, because we weren’t even together. Not really.

  Anyway, she eventually did dematerialize, and I cranked the music until I pulled into the parking lot.

  Wade was already there, milling around in the parking lot, and he had Kadan with him. Whoa. I hadn’t know that Wade was going to bring the kid along, but it made sense for Kadan to see what the apartment looked like. It was going to be his home too, after all.

  Seeing the kid, I knew that the paternity test had been pointless. The guy was like a miniature Wade. He looked just like Wade had when he was a kid. He was only a few years younger than Wade and I had been when we met.

  The two of them were both standing with their hands in their pockets and scuffing their toes against the asphalt as they talked to each other, neither meeting the other’s eye.

  It was, uh, kind of adorable, actually. Not that I tend to find things adorable all that often. Yeah, I was completely not affected by it.

  I slammed the door to the truck and the both of them looked up at me.

  I waved. “Hey!”

  Wade grinned at me. “Hey, Deacon.” He turned to Kadan. “Hey, buddy, this is Deacon. I was telling you about him?”

  “Right, your friend,” said Kadan, eyeing me.

  I smiled at him, and I felt like an idiot, because it was a kid smile. You know, how you smile differently at children than you do at adults? But when I was a kid, I always hated that. I wanted people to talk to me like a regular person. I swore never to give the kid smile. And now, here I was, doing it. I scolded myself and wiped it off my face.

  Instead, I marched over to Kadan and offered him my hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Deacon,” I said in a normal voice.

  Kadan shook my hand and looked up at me. “I’m Kadan,” he said solemnly.

  “Yeah, so I hear,” I said.

  “Are you the one with the silver camper thing?” said Kadan.

  I grinned. “Uh, I am. I didn’t bring it, though. But if you guys want to swing by the campground later, I’ll show you around.”

  Kadan looked up at his dad.

  “We’ll see if we have time, buddy,” said Wade. “We got to get you back to your grandmother’s before too late.”

  “I thought I was going to get to stay with you some night,” said Kadan.

  “Well, yeah,” said Wade. “That’s the plan. But it’ll be easier to convince your grandma of that if you’ve got your own bedroom at my place. So, you want to go look around?”

  “Okay, sure,” said Kadan.

  Wade turned to me. “The landlord’s waiting up in the first unit we’re going to look at.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  We all started walking toward the apartment complex.

  “Thanks for coming,” said Wade. “I don’t know how to do this. I picked my last apartment because it was a good location. You know, within blocks of all my favorite bars.”

  I laughed softly. “I’ve never even rented an apartment, you know?”

  “True,” said Wade. “I guess we’re both clueless.”

  “We’ll have to rely on Kadan,” I said. “He seems smarter than both of us put together.”

  Kadan looked over his shoulder at me. “You don’t know that. You’ve barely said five sentences to me.”

  “Yeah, well, your dad tells me you’re smart.”

  “He’s biased,” said Kadan. “I’m just average.”

  I laughed.

  “You’re way above average,” said Wade, falling into stride with Kadan and putting an arm around him. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  Kadan smiled up at his dad.

  I couldn’t help but smile too.

  We looked at two different apartments. They both had two bedrooms, but one had a balcony, its own washer and dryer, and another bathroom. The other was on the ground floor and a little cheaper. The bedrooms were a little bigger in that one.

  Still, it was no contest.

  Kadan liked the one where he had his own bathroom. He also liked the balcony.

  Wade and I huddled in the kitchen of the upper floor apartment, and Wade looked worried. “You’re supposed to think about these things, right? I’m supposed to tell her that I’ll go home and think it over?”

  I ran my fingers over the counter top in the kitchen, which was some kind of laminate, but looked like marble. “Well, do you have other options?”

  “No, I like it here,” said Wade. “This is near the highway, so I can hop on and get to Kadan’s grandma’s in twenty-five minutes. And there’s that park just down the way. It’s got a bike path. I figure Kadan and I can go biking there and stuff.”

  “And the money?” I said.

  “You kidding? My dad found out he’s a grandpa. He’s doing back flips. He wants to send me a fucking credit card and he’ll pay off the balance every month.”

  “You got to introduce Kadan to your dad?”

  “I don’t gotta, but I will.” Wade turned to the kitchen sink, and began experimentally turning on the tap. “I mean, my dad made a lot of mistakes, but he’s done his best to make it right, and I don’t know, maybe I’ve punished him enough.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously? You’re forgiving your old man?”

  “Well, you forgave your mom.”

  “Because it wasn’t her,” I said. “She was possessed by a demon.”

  “Well, my dad was an alcoholic.”

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  Wade turned off the water. “You don’t think I should forgive him?”

  “I didn’t say that.” I crossed to the refrigerator and opened it up. It was empty inside. Clean. Cold. I shut the door. “I guess I’m surprised is all.”

  “I don’t know.” Wade shrugged. “I guess I feel bad for the guy. Like, I think about how I failed Kadan, not being there for him—”

  “You didn’t know he existed.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t try very hard to find Cheyenne or anything,” said Wade. “I really liked her, but I let her go. All the time
, she was down the road, less than an hour away, and I didn’t even go looking for her. Maybe if I’d tried, things could have been different. Maybe she and I… I don’t know. Maybe we would have ended up together, and she never would have married that Tex jerk, and she’d still be alive.”

  I cocked my head to one side. “Hey, Wade, you’re being really hard on yourself. You’re nothing like your dad.”

  Wade studied his knuckles. “Yeah, I know. He doesn’t deserve forgiveness. But if people deserved it, you wouldn’t have to forgive them.”

  I considered that. I guessed he was right.

  “I’m not keeping Kadan from his grandfather,” said Wade. “Cheyenne’s dad died before Kadan was born. He’s never had a grandfather. And my dad is a good guy now, you know?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, okay. I get it.”

  “Once I’ve graduated, I won’t need his money, anyway,” said Wade.

  I clapped Wade on the shoulder. “You’re doing great, man. You’re handling all this really well.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  So, Wade took the apartment. He filled out a lot of paperwork, and Kadan and I went for a walk down to the nearby park. We skipped some rocks over a little stream that went by the bike path and we talked about stuff like superhero movies and the kinds of pizza toppings we liked. He was a pretty easy-going kid. I liked him. I was probably also biased, but I thought he was pretty cool.

  Then Wade had to take Kadan back to his grandma’s house. After that, Wade said he was going to go home and crash, because he had classes in the morning.

  I went back to the Airstream, and Mads was sitting at the table looking mopey, and I knew she was going to want to have the heavy conversation about how screwed up it was for us to be doing whatever we were doing, so I just left.

  I went to the bar.

  Because, you know, where else is there to go at 9:00 on a weeknight in a college town?

  At the bar, I ran into Charlotte, who was sort of Wade’s ex, but not really, because they hadn’t been in an actual relationship or anything. They’d just been fuck buddies. Anyway, it was awkward, because I’d slept with Charlotte. Only to save her life, though. Long story.