When They Fade (2 page)

And for Tatum, her own car means small escapes.

Escape she does. Her secondhand Yaris starts on the first try. Looking at the illuminated clock on her dashboard, she figures she can get away with about an hour before Mom starts calling to check up on her. She puts the car in drive and goes.

Driving. Such simplicity. Bliss. A chance to forget all her problems by simply pointing the car in one direction and pressing the accelerator. Opening the window and letting the wind tickle her ears. Tatum is positive she was an explorer in a previous life. Someone who made a living plotting her way through forests and valleys to find the open sea. There is nothing greater in the world than the experience of simply moving forward.

Driving does this. Tatum almost wishes her parents would stop pressuring her to apply to college. She'd love to be a truck driver. The open road. A thousand miles of gravel. A car stereo to keep her company. Now that's heaven.

But not enough tonight. As much as she'd just love to disappear, that probably wouldn't go over well with her parents. They'd find her and drag her back. So for now she'll barely get to wet her whistle, as Dad likes to say.

Tatum pulls to a stop at the bottom of the hill. If she turns right, it'll take her toward Main Street. She's more likely to come across enemy territory. And if they follow her like they did last week, the only safe way is to head back home. Left takes her toward the old highway. A small, almost-forgotten interstate that no one ever travels. It's the long way around to the next town, shadowed by the new and improved Interstate 90. The state doesn't even bother repairing it these days. Eventually it'll turn to crumbling gravel, and the only people who will complain are those in the few remaining acreages where city folk love to retire.

The route may be forgotten, but for Tatum it'll take her to Frog Road.

Perfect.

Tatum heads left.

Frog Road isn't its actual name. It's just what Tatum's dad has called it ever since Tatum once caught him driving over an aforementioned amphibian when she was a little girl. She made him stop the car so she could get out and try and rescue its little frog body before another car came along. Luck must have been on that frog's side that day (or perhaps it was stuck to Dad's front tire) because she never did find the remains.

Frog Road goes along part of the twisting Snoqualmie River. And if Tatum hurries, she can turn up the music and drive for a good twenty minutes before reality makes her head back home.

It's a cool night for spring. Thankfully, there's no rain in sight, but as she drives along, Tatum notices the first few wisps of fog settling in. She's not overly surprised, nor does it worry her. She's driven in fog heavy enough to barely see past her dashboard. She knows the rules: Slow down and never turn on your brights. Watch for animals, especially small amphibian types.

Ten minutes in and she's almost ready to turn around. The whiteness has taken over everything. She can barely see the pavement anymore. And when the road gets that dangerous, Tatum stops having fun. She's even turned off the radio in order to concentrate.

When she sees the girl by the shoulder, she nearly swerves into the middle of the road.

A girl who calmly holds her thumb out.

Tatum's never picked up a hitchhiker. She's been heavily influenced by the stories her parents have told her. Couples who will rob her and steal her car, leaving her stuck in the middle of nowhere. Men who will butcher her. The names of famous serial killers float through her mind. The Green River Killer. Ted Bundy. Surely they must have preyed on girls foolish enough to stop their cars? Or picked up girls on their own. Or prostitutes? She can't remember.

Not that it matters. This girl certainly can't be a killer. She looks to be about Tatum's age, although Tatum doesn't recognize her. She definitely doesn't go to Tatum's high school.

And the way she's dressed, she must be freezing.

Tatum puts her foot on the brake and pulls over. The seconds move slowly as she watches the girl jog toward her. If she's going to flee, now's the time.

Instead she hits the unlock button.

The door opens. The girl bends over to check Tatum out. Her hair is long and perfectly straight. Dark chestnut, the kind of hair color Tatum wishes she had instead of her own mousy brown.

“Thanks,” the girl says. She smiles and gets in.

I'm sitting with Parker and Mary when I feel it coming.

We call it the Fade.

Stupid name, but I guess no one's bothered to try and come up with something better. It's the moment when one of us travels back into the real world.

The haunting.

We're all ghosts here.

And contrary to popular belief, it's not always by choice. It's not like we saw the white light and said, “No thanks, I'll stay here.” None of us thought with our dying breath that we'd like to spend eternity haunting some boarded-up house or darkened alley. The whole ghost thing is massively distorted. Yes, we all have unfinished business. Show me a single dying person who didn't. Even if you've convinced yourself that you're ready, there's always something you still desire. One more sunrise. One more piece of cake. One last goodbye. The list is limitless.

As the years go by, the unfinished business is forgotten. Loved ones die. Bodies are found and buried. Secrets are taken to the grave or discovered in diaries hidden in attic trunks.

But we stay here.

We don't want help, either. We're not appearing over and over again to try and point out who killed us or show someone where our body is so we can get a proper burial. We're not looking for the diamond ring torn from our finger or a missing kneecap that some criminal kept as a trophy. The stories people make up to simply justify our existence? Total garbage. Even if we could talk to the living and tell them our tales of woe, I doubt it would be of any help. Some of us have been haunting for centuries. The people who wronged us are long gone themselves.

We're not lonely. I've got Parker and Mary and a host of others to keep me company. Yeah, it's not the most exciting place to be, but I'm sure there are worse. Because if this place exists, other places do as well. And all I can hope for is that the man who harmed me went somewhere a lot warmer.

Okay, yes. That's one thing we have in common: We all died before our time. It was always violent, sudden, and painful. Although there are a few here who try and pretend otherwise, I have never met anyone in our valley who went peacefully in his or her sleep.

We share our stories.

Parker died in 1923. He was eighteen years old. He'd moved to London, England, from his home in Stoke-on-Trent to study medicine. One night, while walking home to his small one-bedroom flat, Parker was mistaken by a drunken man for his wife's lover and stabbed through the stomach with a sharpened fish knife. Parker lay in the darkened street while the drunk realized his mistake. Instead of going for help, the man dragged Parker into an alley, where he covered him up with newspaper and garbage. Parker spent the next few hours weakening, dying, unable to cry loudly enough to get any attention from the early-morning longshoremen as they headed to the docks to begin work.

Funny enough, Parker doesn't haunt the alley in which he died. He says he often appears in more than one place. Sometimes it's the hospital where he interned; other times it's the pub where he had his last drink. His haunting routine is mostly quiet. He doesn't have a voice with which to speak. Only an image of him coated in blood. So far, he says, he's scared more than one nurse out of her knickers.

Mary also died in London, but her story is much worse. In 1888 she was twenty-five and a prostitute. She'd been through a marriage that went nowhere, and she'd left the man. According to her, there weren't a lot of respectable jobs for a woman such as herself. One night a man followed her home and did all sorts of unspeakable things to her body with a knife. She stayed alive through a fair amount of it.

Mary only goes back into the world on rainy nights. She doesn't appear as a victim all torn and bloody, but just as herself. She materializes in the small room where she died, or sometimes on the stairs. Once, she found herself walking down the alley. She says it's quite boring, actually. Every now and then she'll come back bragging about how she freaked someone out, but mostly she says it's just the owners' cats that run and hide.

We come from all over. All places. All nationalities. A Canadian girl haunts a music studio, floating down the halls each night at midnight. Her lover, a famous musician at the time, strangled her over an argument about who got the last bit of cocaine. The other band members took her body and dumped it in the trash several blocks away. She heard the men talking about it the first few nights she returned. Listened while they patted each other on the back for removing her body from the scene of the crime. Watched when her lover showed up with a new girlfriend. She's quite angry most of the time, so we don't talk to her much. I can't blame her. I wouldn't want to Fade every night either.

A Chinese man, killed by his wife, haunts a rice field in Sichuan.

We have someone from Brazil who only Fades during Carnival.

A boy from Germany haunts the street where his house was bombed during the war. His cheeks are still hollow from lack of food.

An old lady from Boston drowned along with her dog. She's the only one here who managed to bring her beloved pet. She sits over by the corner of the lake and chats with her furry friend all day long. And if you try being polite, she'll talk your ear off for hours. Mostly about her poodle. Sometimes she'll talk about the two children she left behind, but not as often. After all, it was her son who killed her.

Every one of us has a story. We have a death. We have a haunt. We all Fade.

We do different things. Mary walks around and spooks cats. Parker gives nurses something to gossip about. And me? I hitchhike.

I have no idea why. It wasn't something I was doing before I died. Actually, I had caught a ride with Walter, but I knew him well. He was part of our community. Our family. He was someone I trusted.

The first time I Faded, I couldn't have been more spooked. Isn't that hilarious? A ghost who gets spooked? I suppose stranger things have happened. One minute I was sitting with Parker and Mary, staring off into the trees; the next, my body simply disappeared. I'd been ready for it, considering I'd been at the lake for some time, and pretty much everyone wanted to talk about it. Everyone wants to be the first to explain the Fade to the new kid. Some of the others even tried to predict what I'd do. If money had meaning, they would have bet on it.

The Fade isn't much of anything. Have you ever had that feeling when you get dizzy stepping out of the shower? That moment where everything tilts awkwardly on its side and your brain gets all light-headed. Sometimes the edges of your vision darken and you have to reach out to steady yourself. That's what the Fade feels like. A quick moment of dizziness followed by a complete change in scenery.

People here enjoy Fading. Well, most of them do. I quickly figured out why. As I found myself standing in knee-high grass, a gust of freezing wind nearly blew my skirt up over my head.

Wind.

Feelings.

I was standing in the middle of a ditch. Looking around, I tried to take in my surroundings. There was nothing familiar, or so I first thought. In the darkness I couldn't see much. I stepped forward and climbed the steep embankment to the road. Dirt dug into my hands as they pressed against the cool ground. I brushed them off, marveling at how my skin burned slightly from where the pebbles dug in. I waited for my eyes to adjust. Slowly the dark shadows became trees.

This could have been any road in America. The pavement beneath me stretched out into darkness, leaving me unable to fully take in my surroundings. But I didn't need to. I knew exactly where I was. Call it instinct, or perhaps something in my ghostly mind had clued in. It was the road Walter and I had driven down not that long ago. I knew that if I were to continue walking for a few miles, I'd come to the place where he'd dumped my body.

The field.

Was my body still there? Decomposing beneath the moonless sky?

As he killed me, the last thing I smelled was the wildflowers. The meadow was full of them. Millions. Seeds stuck in my hair. Flattened beneath my back, tickling my bare arms and legs, as my blood dripped down to nourish their roots. They'd be dead now. Wilted away as winter sucked the warmth from their stems.

Another gust blew through my blouse, causing me to shiver. It was cold, but not quite snow-cold. I shivered, wishing I had something warmer to wear. But at the same time, it felt so good to feel, even if what I felt was nothing but biting air. Looking up at the sky, I could see stars. More like late autumn. I'd died in the spring. In May. One month after my birthday.

Had two seasons passed? Or more? It didn't seem like that long. In fact, I could have sworn I'd only been at the lake for a few days. But it's hard to tell when nothing changes. An entire year could have passed and I wouldn't have known.

From a distance I could see headlights coming my way. I stepped over to the side of the road, determined to go back into the high grass and hide. But something wouldn't let me. An unseen force held me back, pressing gently against my body, showing me where to go. No. Hiding wasn't my purpose. Neither was jumping out onto the road and screaming like a banshee. Slowly, I watched as my hand went up. Then I stuck my thumb out for a ride.

The car slowed as it approached. The headlights flashed over my body momentarily, and I was too blind to see who was inside.

I had no fear. Impossible. Fear is the unknown. It's the uncertainty of what bad things could happen. It's pain. Despair. Horror. I'd already been through the worst mankind had to offer. I was no longer part of the world. I was pretty sure no one human could ever hurt me again. Unless of course this car held my killer and I would be forced to relive my death over and over again like the tiny Cambodian girl no one liked to talk to. She shook constantly and stammered with broken English, begging for God to help her. I avoided looking in her direction. Hers was a suffering even the dead found difficult to face.

I studied the car as my legs began walking toward it. No, it wasn't Walter's. He drove a VW bus. This car was a Ford, early-sixties style with a hardtop roof. Double headlights. The kind of car Julian wanted to buy if he ever got the money.

The driver leaned across the passenger side and opened the door a few inches. My fingers reached out and clasped the handle.

“Where ya goin', cutie? Next town?”

I nodded. I had no idea where I was going or if there even was a next town to worry about. But it must have been the right thing to do.

“I can do that. Hop in.”

My body agreed to that. I climbed inside and closed the door. Rubbed my hands over my bare shoulders. The interior was still cool, but without the wind it was a huge improvement. I looked at the dashboard, which rattled along with the engine. I reached out and ran my fingers across the surface, feeling the vibrations from the engine. I grinned at the Hawaiian hula girl who bounced along in rhythm. The cheesy dice hanging from the rearview mirror. I touched everything, not caring if I looked weird or not.

“Good thing I seen you,” the man said as his foot pressed down on the gas pedal. The car lurched forward, and I reached out and placed my fingers against the dash. I glanced over at my driver. An older man in his late forties or early fifties. Conservative. His hair didn't have a strand out of line. He didn't look like the sort of man who might pick up young hippie girls in the dead of night. But there was something in his eyes that suggested he was the type who saw things for how they really were. That maybe he understood that once in a while a girl needs to catch a ride with a decent stranger. Someone decent who doesn't have roaming hands or darker plans.

“It's cold out,” the man continued. “Not really a good place to try and thumb a ride. Most people would probably drive on past ya without seeing. I almost didn't stop myself. Don't normally pick up strangers. But being it's so nasty outside, I was worried you might not get another ride till morning. This ain't a busy road.”

It was time to find out if I could really talk. What kind of words might I be allowed to say?

“It's where I got left behind.” My voice came through clear and loud over the engine. A large smile came to my lips. Thankfully, the darkness concealed it. Sweet words! Most ghosts couldn't talk. I wondered what the powers-that-be would allow me to say. Would they control my vocal cords the way they forced my limbs? Would it always be this way? Was I destined to play puppet, or would they cut my strings when I didn't fight back?

“Last guy give you problems?”

“No,” I said a bit too quickly.

“That's good. I've got a daughter 'bout your age. She don't hitchhike—hell, I'd tan her hide if she did. But I pray she don't get taken in by some creep. Some girl died here not too long ago.”

I looked over at him in surprise. He must mean me. How many girls died along this road?

“Who was she?”

“Not sure. Papers didn't say much. She belonged to this traveling hippie commune. Fifteen? Sixteen? Not pretty what that guy did to her.”

They'd found my body. Part of me was happy to hear that. They'd probably returned the remains to my father. I wondered where they'd buried me. The other part was a little sad, wondering if it would have been better for Julian if he'd never found out what happened.

“Did they catch the guy?” I asked.

“Yep. Big manhunt. He was one of the people in that commune. Fatherly type. Saw his picture in the papers. Big beard. My mama always said you can't trust a man who wears a beard, but I always thought that's a bunch of hogwash. Guess maybe she was right somewhat. But this guy didn't look like the type to hurt a fly. He had nice eyes. I remember saying that to my wife: ‘He's got nice eyes, Ethel.' That's the problem with people, innit? Can't always tell the good from the bad.”

“Yes,” I said. I'd certainly been fooled by Walter. I could easily understand why others could be too.

“I get that you kids like to be daring and all sorts,” the man said, “but where on God's green earth is your jacket? You must be freezing to death. I was young once myself, and I remember all trying to pretend I wasn't cold. Grew up in the north. Used to go out with the coat undone and my lips bright blue.”