Dead People (8 page)

“Like isn’t the word I’d use.” She let the T-shirt drape over her thighs, and she smoothed her hand over the black lettering. “He didn’t look at me like I was a freak.”

“Ah ha.” Joe reared up, floating over her like a man in a zero-gravity spacesuit. “I told you he was giving you the once-over. And you’re not a freak. Don’t let those bastards make you feel ashamed.”

“I won’t. I’ll stay as far away from them as I can.” She put all her determination into a nod. “New Jersey sounds better by the second.” She had good memories of New Jersey. She’d met Joe in Jersey three years ago, in front of a mansion she was de-ghosting. When her gig was over and she drove back to Chicago, he came along for the ride. They’d been together since, though once in a while he disappeared to look up old friends, the few who still barely alive.

“No regrets?”

“None,” she said. “Now, will you get out of my way so I can pack?”

He didn’t move. “You’re almost convincing me. It’s been over fifty years since I’ve been a cop, but I can still smell bullshit when I hear it.”

“Idiot.” She threw up her hands. “Okay, I felt a connection to the little girl. She reminded me of me when I was younger.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Will you let me finish packing? Don’t make me walk through you.”

He backed up, and she got to her feet. “New Jersey, here we come.”

Chapter Eleven

When the school bus dropped Erin off, Luke got out of the SUV parked on the end of the curving driveway. Leaning against the driver’s door, he waited for her, his arms crossed over his chest. Through his dark designer glasses, he saw the kids with their faces pasted against the bus windows gaping at him.

He ignored them. Too young to remember the Dirty Secrets—some of them not even born when he walked out on Vanessa and the band—they must have heard their parents gossiping about him.

Erin trudged toward him, her lower lip a pout. The bus pulled away and she stopped five feet from him. The rays of the late afternoon sun slanted at her, her fleece jacket the same brown as the dead leaves under his feet, and a backpack that looked as if it outweighed her.

 
Straightening, he uncrossed his arms. “We’re leaving.”

She didn’t move, her body still, watching him the way a rat watched a cat, as if to see which way he was going to move so she could feint in the opposite direction. “Are you taking me to Mom?”

“We’re going to a hotel in Wisconsin Dells. They have a water park.” He tried to put enthusiasm in his voice, but it was like putting a blues solo in Mozart, the notes clashing. He was making a fucking mess of this. “You can skip school for a couple days. I’ll see about hiring a tutor.”

“Why?” Her unhappiness quivered in her voice and showed in her haunted eyes.

“The ghost turned violent today. She won’t leave, so we have to go.”

“No! I don’t want to go. I won’t go.” She planted her feet apart. “The ghost won’t hurt me. You’re lying.”

“Erin, I saw it with my own eyes. She was alone in the family room with Cassie. She threw things, breaking everything in it.”

Her hands flew up to her face, framing her mouth. “Is Cassie okay?”

“She was cut by a piece of flying glass. I can’t take the chance that it will happen again.” He gestured for her to go around the SUV and get into the front seat.
 

Erin slowly let her hands down, shaking her head. “I won’t go.”

“You’ll go because I told you to go.”

She backed up, peering behind her, and he knew she was thinking of running into the thicket of trees that grew on either side of the curving driveway.

He would stop her, but he’d have to grab her arms or her shoulders, then force her into the car. So far he hadn’t laid a rough hand on her. The thought of it twisted his stomach. He had to stop her before it got that far.

She took another look behind her.

Now.
If he waited another second it would be too late.
“I’m thinking of
you
, not me.”

“Then stay.” She looked him in the face, the squared shape of her mouth feral. “If you take me away from here, I’ll run away from you.”

He could see her mother’s wildness in her mouth and too bright eyes, and it frightened the hell out of him, scarier than any ghost.

“Why? We’ve only lived here two months.” Two months of misery for her. The entire time she’d been with him, he’d seen her smile just once. For Cassie. No friend had ever called her. She’d never called any friend.

“I like it here.” Her mouth was mulish. “Stay here.”

“We can’t.”

“Then take me home.”

“I can’t do that. I know you love your mother, but she isn’t able to take care of you.”

“Yes, she is!” Erin bent double, her voice harsh with raw hurt.

Luke felt her pain, a torment that wouldn’t go away. “The judge said that, not me.” He made his voice matter-of-fact, reasonable, when he wanted to rage at Vanessa and speak in forked tongues, fire shooting from his mouth.

“If you don’t let me stay here, I’ll run away every chance I get.”

She meant it. He’d seen that obstinate expression in the mirror too often. He felt it now.

“I can’t take the chance you’ll get hurt.”

Her skin tightened over the bones of her thin face. Tears welled up and flowed over and down her cheeks, big and fat, slowly at first, then one after another, faster and faster.

She didn’t make a sound. In that second, he knew she’d cried silently many times, holding back her sobs so Vanessa wouldn’t hear her. And she’d done it with him too, alone in her bedroom, weeping in silent misery.

He wanted to slug someone. Slug himself.

“Get in, I’ll drive you back to the house.”

She shook her head. She didn’t trust him.

“Walk, then. I’ll follow you.”

She headed along the lane, while he pulled out of the driveway onto the shoulder of the road to turn the SUV around.

It took him a few seconds to catch up to her. He pressed the button that rolled down the window. Ignoring the chill wind that bit at his face, he called out to her. “Don’t go inside without me.”

She continued marching ahead, her face forward, not looking to the left or the right. He paced her, his left foot hovering above the brake pedal. He stuck his head back in, not turning on the radio, feeling odd in the midst of silence, then realizing it wasn’t silence at all. Birds tweeted, the wind whispered in the trees, the dry leaves rustled, the SUV’s engine purred. The wisp of a tune started in his head.

They reached the front of the house. He parked and hopped out, shoving the keys in his pocket, the tune silenced. “Wait, I’ll get your stuff.” He unloaded the suitcases and her computer.

Erin ran over and grabbed her computer, giving him a dirty look, probably the same one he gave his mother when she looked through his collection of comics one day and wondered how much she could get for them.

He picked up her two suitcases. “Erin.”

Already at the front door, she turned and looked at him fearfully. His gut felt like a giant claw stuck into him and squeezed.

“If Isabel turns violent again, we’re out of there. Do you understand?”

Her fear morphed into a glare. She nodded, her eyes hating him again.

In the house, he went upstairs with her and deposited the suitcases on her bedroom floor. He glanced around.

“Isabel, are you here?” he shouted. “I want you to know that if you do one thing to upset Erin, I’m packing up and taking her away. But that’s not all. I’ll pay to tear the house down. If there’s anything left, I’ll burn it. There won’t be any place for you to stay. Do you understand?”

There was no answer, no ghost, just Erin looking at him with shocked eyes and a dropped jaw.

He stooped down. “If she bothers you, I want you to tell me right away. Do you understand?”

She nodded and he saw a glimmer of respect amidst the sullenness.

Was she telling the truth? He straightened. “I expect you to keep your word. I meant every single one I said. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a phone call.”

He headed toward his bedroom to call the pretty ghost whisperer and tell her he wanted her again.

In his mind, he heard a refrain.

Round woman, round woman, I want a woman who’s round.

I want a woman who isn’t afraid of a few extra pounds.

***

The thunder of the male voice slammed off the walls in the empty bedroom. A silent shriek started in Isabel’s head as she dived through the door into the closet. The shivers started again, which was odd because she didn’t have a body.

But maybe she did. A sort of a body. The shriek continued in her head, going on and on and on, echoing though it wasn’t even coming out of her mouth. Her shivers worsened, turning to shudders.

He was going to burn her house. Burn it! Where would she go?

The flickers started. In the closet one instant, for less time than it took to wink, then in nothingness, and back again.

But not all of her came back.
 

In and out, and in and out, and in and out…

And out…

Chapter Twelve

“Why the hell did you say yes to him? What’s he got over you?” Joe scowled, his attention off the football game on TV that he’d been looking forward to.

She shrugged, exhilarated when just a few minutes ago she’d been unable to concentrate on the very well written romance open on her lap, pissed off because the nearest airport didn’t have any non-stop flights to New Jersey until the next day.

“I’m getting a double fee,” she said.

“Bull crap. You’re not staying because of that.”

“I’m staying because a ten-year-old girl refuses to leave the house. Her life might be in danger.”

“What about the life of the thirty-five-year-old girl in this motel room?”

“Thirty-
four
. And the only danger to this thirty-four-year-old is her getting so upset with a certain dead man that her brain explodes.”

“A lovely visual.”

“I’m going to sleep.” She slid under the covers, pulling them over her shoulders, turning on her side, her back to Joe. Tomorrow she had a ghost to whisper home. Because today the stakes had just gone up.

If she didn’t get rid of the ghost, Erin might be hurt.

The lights blinked off except for the glow from the TV screen through her eyelids. The sound lowered and she felt something on her lip area, a cool breath.

She kept her eyes closed, her throat tightened, her exhilaration puffed into nothingness. She ached for more than that wisp of air. But it was all that Joe could give her.

Sometimes she needed more. Sometimes she felt so lonesome. Sometimes she wondered why God made her this way.

***

My body! Where’s my body?

Isabel came back to her ghostly half-life, cowering in a corner of the basement. She wasn’t in her body, not even the outline of one that she carried around with her. She was a wisp, her soul naked and shivering and cold, ice cold. If she had teeth, this bodiless thing that she’d become would chatter.

Taking a deep breath, she tasted the dankness.

The horrible memories flooded back. She’d gotten so scared, out of control. The awful, awful flickering had started again, only this time much worse, uncontrollable.

And then...

...nothing.
 

Afraid a movement might set her off again, she sat for a long time, the basement turning dark with night, a different kind of nothingness. Then the first rays of morning filtered in through the small, spider web-covered windows.

With the rays of light, she felt a spark return to her being, not life but a shadow life. She stood from her huddle, swaying at first but then firm. In her body again, the invisible one.

But where had she gone? What happened?

She shivered, then stopped herself, frightened that she might flicker again.

She could think of only one way to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

They had to leave first.

Chapter Thirteen

Dead flowers lined the walkway of Darleen Windmeyer’s tidy cottage, dwarfed on both sides by two-story houses with surrounding porches and jutting roofs. Cassie wondered how Tricia had felt growing up in their shadows. The front door opened, and a woman of immense girth regarded her like she was Gretel from the fairy tale.

In her linebacker-sized hand, she gripped a chef’s knife

Cassie stumbled back.

The door opened wider. “You must be Cassie,” Darleen Windmeyer said in the young voice Cassie remembered from the phone call, a smile puffing her chipmunk cheeks. “I’m Darleen. Come in, come in.”

“Uh...you look busy. I hate to interrupt.” Cassie eyed the knife.