I'd Rather Not Be Dead (4 page)

Dark falls, but I keep walking
anyway. It's not as though tripping over something I didn't see
would hurt me. I'll pass through it or I'll fall but either way
I'll be fine. But my feet get sore. My legs ache. I don't know why
I get tired walking. I'm not hungry. I'm not thirsty. If my body
doesn't need food and water, why does it need sleep?

I don't understand why I have
to, but I lay down anyway. Despite the ground being hard and my
jacket not making an ideal pillow, I'm quickly unconscious.

I dream of fog. Not the normal
wispy fog the Smokies were named for, but something dark and
disturbing. It drains my energy, tries to drown me.

A man appears, banishing it. I'm
certain he's someone I know, but there's something blocking my
ability to recognize him. It's like hearing just enough of a song
to know you've heard it before but not enough to name it. He's tall
and dark haired. His nose is Cherokee, but he's not Native
American. Not full-blooded anyway.

The man lances me with brown
eyes that reflect the mountains. Looking at them is like looking at
the hills through an amber lens. He wants something from me.

I shiver myself awake, surprised
to find I've been sweating even though the air's still bland and
lukewarm.

Someone kneels beside me,
holding my hand and stroking my hair. He speaks softly, in an
accent tinted by both Ireland and here. “It's alright. It was just
The Shadow Lord. And The Spirit.”

I snatch my hand away from the
stranger. “Who?”

The boy at my side smiles. Soft
brown hair falls along his cheeks, but doesn't flutter with the
wind moving the light fog around us. The normal Smoky Mountain fog,
not the terror from my dream. “The Lord of Shadow is the king of
our realm.”

“And The Spirit?”

He takes a deep breath while
straightening his back. “The Spirit's harder to explain. It's...
It's the blended result of all of the energy that's here but not
strong enough to retain its individual identity.”

“Huh?” seems like an apt
response.

After a second, he tries again.
“It's all the ghosts who forgot who they are. All rolled into one
big mass.”

My shivering comes back.

“Yeah, scary. But you're strong.
It wouldn't eat you 'cause you're so tough.”

I laugh. “The Purple People
Eater?”

“You know it?” He grins back at
me.

“Yeah, I know it.” I prop myself
up on my elbows. “So, I'm clear on the Shadow Lord and The Spirit.
But who are you?”

“You can call me Fray.” The 'r'
rolls and the 'ay' lingers in the air.

He stands and holds a hand down
to me, but I get up on my own as I eye my new acquaintance. Fray
looks a year or two older than me and the word 'gorgeous' could be
accurately applied. Wavy chestnut hair falls around lean but
muscled shoulders. His eyes, a vivid green, sparkle. He's wearing a
jacket made with nearly as much metal as leather over a weathered
Sex Pistols t-shirt and very tight, very flattering, black jeans.
He gives me a wide smile. It's charismatic, almost too much so.
Reminds me of Cooper Finnegan. “I thought maybe you could use some
help. I know I could have when I first died.”

“Which was when?” He doesn't
look even slightly dead.

His head tilts in a playful way.
“This state was a colony.”

Long time ago, if he can be
believed. I want to ask him history trivia, to see if he actually
knows the era he's claiming to be from. But I never paid much
attention to history, so I wouldn't know if any of it was right or
not. “Were the Sex Pistols popular before the Revolution?”

“Punk might not have been around
yet, but the spirit was alive long before anyone first bellowed
lyrics about the queen's fascist regime.” His grin is downright
devilish.

“Maybe the words didn't occur to
you back then because you had a king and no one knew what a fascist
was.” Which is about as far as my knowledge of Colonial culture
reaches.

“Likely.”

We look at each other, the
stranger bouncing energetically on the balls of his feet and me
wondering if his body's going to fade and leave just that taunting
grin floating in the air. Clearly, if I'm Alice and this is
Wonderland, I've stumbled across the Cheshire Cat. I always thought
of myself as a cat person, but now I'm not so sure.

“Why would you want to help
me?”

Laughter makes his eyes dance
all the more. “Suspicious one, aren't you?”

“I'd be stupid not to be.”

“True.” He gives me a crooked
smile. He's too attractive for his own good. People that pretty
just aren't trustworthy.

“Anyway, I'm leaving town.” My
actions match my words as I shove my jacket over my arms and start
walking again.

“Ah,” says Fray. “Good luck with
that.”

He vanishes like guy in the
hardware store and I curse myself. I should have asked him if I
could get to Philadelphia that way. Too late now.

There's a lot of traffic on the
Parkway today. It is, after all, peak tourist season. People come
from all over to gawk at our changing leaves. Apparently other
places don't have them.

My steps keep to the edge of the
road. The trees are solid, so I can't just walk through them. I
don't understand why trees are solid and people aren't, but that's
the way it is. If I had to guess, I'd say it has something to do
with trees standing still for centuries. Maybe saplings aren't real
here, but I don't see any to test my theory on.

A few cars hit me. The feeling
isn't great, although it's more emotionally painful than physically
so.

My steps get progressively
slower. Each one takes more energy. The world sways and little dots
of darkness dance on the edge of my vision. When Fray materializes
beside me, I spend a second thinking he's a hallucination. “If I
were you, I'd stop.”

“Why?” I don't stop, even though
I'm now dragging my feet along in weariness.

“Because if you continue with
this, you'll fade out of existence.”

The explanation's calm,
matter-of-a-fact. It makes me stop. And stare. “I'll die if I keep
walking?”

Fray nods. “We can only get so
far from the place of our death. You're already further away than
most people can go.”

I stare at him some more. “Why
didn't you say that when I told you I was leaving?”

“Didn't think you'd believe
me.”

And I wouldn't have. But I do
now. I've been feeling myself fade for the last half mile, I just
didn't know what it meant. Fabulous. I crash onto the ground and
bury my face in my hands. “I'm stuck in Mayberry forever.”

“It's not that bad a town.”

I let out an ugly snort. “Bet
you're just saying that because you founded it.”

He laughs, a long and somehow
accented laugh. “No. But I robbed the man who did.”

“Robbed?” Looking up, I see him
looking down at me, his eyes dancing with mischief. “You were a
thief?”

“That's one of things they
called me when they hanged me.”

“Hanged?” That's kind of cool.
“You were hanged?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What was it like?”

The corner of his mouth quirks
up. “I wouldn't recommend it.”

“But it's quick, isn't it?”

A darkness passes across his
face. “Only if your neck breaks.”

Something tells me his neck
didn't break.

“I'm sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.” He
shakes his head. “The thing that sucked was I did a lot of bad
shit, but not the crime they killed me for.”

“Was it a woman?” I ask, too
eagerly.

Laughter meets that. “I wish.
No. My brother.”

“Your brother?”

“Yep.” Fray sits beside me. “So,
my brother was worse than your sister. She's a brat, but she'd
never frame you for a capital offense.”

I swallow. “Yeah. You win.”

“And, no,” he says. “That wasn't
about a woman either.”

“Bummer.”

He nods. “Bummer.”

Hold on a second... “How do you
know my sister?”

“Never met her. Either of
them.”

My scowl doesn't have any effect
on his smile for several heartbeats, then he looks away with a
shake of his head. “I've been haunting this town for a while, Drew.
There aren't many people I don't know about.”

“You've been watching us?”

He tilts his head at me. “What
else am I supposed to do?”

A Cadillac passes through us,
followed by a whole line of people being slowed down by its lack of
speed.

“I hate it when they do that,”
Fray says.

“Me too.” I'm not sure if he
meant people driving through us or to people holding up traffic,
but either way I agree.

He stands. “Ready to go back to
town, luv?”

No. And I'm not sure I want to
go with him, even if I were. Exactly what has he been watching me
and my sisters do? I get up anyway, but the world sways and my
knees feel like marshmallows.

“I'm too tired.” I start to sit
again, but Fray reaches out and draws me against his chest. He's
warm and solid and I fight not to collapse against him.

“Let's not walk then.” His
breath caresses my ear and he holds me tight.

Thunder claps. A crowd
cheers.

“Great!” Fray grins. “A football
game.”

Chapter Four

There's exactly one place in
Pine Ridge to buy alcohol. There's only the one because we're in
the middle of a dry county, one of the last remaining in North
Carolina, and the hunting club only gets away with stocking a bar
because it's a private club. A private club anyone can join and
which doesn't charge dues, but a private club nonetheless.

Needless to say, the club's one
of the most popular places in town, especially on college football
game days. A huge chunk of the local population has crowded into
the place to watch the University of North Carolina today, but when
Fray walks toward the bar, the masses part for him. It's like they
can feel he's there even though they can't see him.

He plops down on a stool and
looks up at the nearest screen. “The Tar Heels look decent this
year.”

“How did you do that?”

He looks at me like he doesn't
know what I'm talking about, so I elaborate. “We were on the
Parkway. Now we're miles away. How?”

“I'll tell you after you've had
a bit of a rest. Go lie down in the back booth. No one ever sits
there. It's haunted.” His smile turns to a wicked grin as he turns
back to the game.

I want to argue, but I'm too
wiped to even try. I'm tired enough to do what he says despite my
instinctive rebellion against orders and the nagging doubts about
trusting a guy who claims he's a Colonial but who's going around
spreading the word of the British punk movement.

It should be hard to fall asleep
in a crowded bar, next to the hall to the bathrooms and in the
middle of a sports event, but I sink under before I even get my
head all the way down and I don't wake up again until after the
place has emptied.

The clock on the wall reads
eleven thirty and the lack of customers indicates the tavern's
closed, which would make it Sunday morning. Even if this is a
private club, they aren't going to be open in the morning on the
Sabbath. They take way too much flack from the conservatives as it
is.

Fray isn't anywhere to be seen
and he doesn't come when I call for him, so I go to the door and
try to open it. My hand falls through the doorknob, but that's
alright because when I try walking through the wood I glide
through, just like walking though a spiderweb. The door doesn't
really resist, but it clings to me as I move through it and it
hangs on for several steps later. Which is seriously weird, but at
least I'm not trapped.

Or I'm not trapped by the door
anyway. It's raining out and the drops tickle like anything,
driving me back inside. Boring though it may be in here, I couldn't
get far in the rain. Not without going crazy.

Crazier than I already am? I do,
after all, think I'm a time-traveling ghost. That's not exactly
sane.

I pace the room for a few
minutes before realizing it's not going to make the rain go away
any faster. There's a TV remote on the bar and since I can't think
of anything else to do, I start poking my finger against its power
button. After about half an hour of being bored out of my mind, my
finger doesn't sink into the button, but presses it.

The television springs to
life.

I gape stupidly while that fact
sinks in. I look around, making sure there isn't anyone else who
could have turned it on. There isn't.

Holy crap. I turned the TV
on!

I cheer. I whoop. I dance. I
spin around on the barstool screaming out my glee. I turned the TV
on!

I stop spinning. I spun the
barstool. Grinning, I turn the seat slowly to face the bar.

There's a man on the screen
wearing a flashy suit and a sleazy smile. “And Jesus? What would
Jesus say?”

“That if you took half the money
you spent on that outfit, you could feed all the homeless in New
York for a week?” I hazard.

“Jesus would say we must help
these people!”

The crowd choruses in with an,
“Amen.”

“We must help them to resist the
devil. Because it's the devil who's behind their actions.”

Using my newfound ability to
touch stuff, I press the channel button. The weather in Charlotte
will be rainy. Highs in the low fifties. Click. Big Carolina
Panthers football game later today and our Fox affiliate is very
excited about it. I click the button a few more times, as much to
do it as to change the channels.

An inner door swings open.
“Barney!” a woman with large breasts and even bigger hair yells.
“It's on again! And it just changed channel!”

A weary middle aged man follows
the woman in. “It's a short in the remote,” he says, coming up to
the bar and grabbing the remote from in front of me so he can shut
the TV off.