I like my chances.
Wish me luck, Justine.
Your friend,
Anna Holloway
Chapter Fifteen
They made their way through the meadow. Out here in the night air Rick felt exposed. It was foolish, but he was glad he wasn’t alone.
Will asked, “You going to talk, or are we just gonna listen to the crickets?”
“And the cicadas,” Rick said. “I’ve always loved that revving sound.”
“Not me. Puts me on edge.”
“Reminds me of where I lived when I was little. By the forest.” He smiled, remembering. He inclined his face, took in the multitudinous stars. “She got remarried when I was eleven. I was excited at first, thinking I finally had someone to play catch with, someone to wrestle. You know, the stuff kids do with dads.”
“My dad was never the wrestling type.”
“My stepdad wasn’t either. He shoved me and hit me, but we never wrestled.”
Will looked at him. “Sorry.”
“You didn’t know.” He studied the sky. “Most of it was verbal. He was just so damned…controlling. He had to know exactly what my mom was doing at all times. I guess he worried she’d cheat on him, but I don’t know why. She never gave him reason to think.…” He stopped, shook his head. “The stuff I need to tell you about, it happened when I was twelve.”
The forest loomed ahead.
“The summer before my seventh-grade year, I was really skinny and not very tall.” He laughed without humor. “I tell you that so if you wonder why I didn’t do more to help, you’ll think, ‘Well, he was only twelve.’ But deep down I hate myself.”
The trail before them was wide enough they could walk two abreast.
Rick nodded. “My stepdad, he was all about money, so when the break-ins began, he got scared. The prospect of losing his possessions frightened him the way most of us are frightened of losing a loved one. So he gave me an extra chore. Double-checking the locks to make sure no one would rob us.”
“You had a lot of chores?”
“About three dozen. The burglaries finally spilled over into our town. There were eight or nine by that time, and one of them had turned violent. The homeowners hadn’t been killed, but a man in a ski mask had threatened them at gunpoint and pistol-whipped the husband. The guy sustained a skull fracture. Brain damage. Everybody was tense, most of all Phil.”
The trail narrowed, and Rick took the lead for a few paces until it widened again. “He was relentless in his belittling. He’d criticize the way Mom looked, the clothes she wore. She was never supposed to be without makeup.”
“Why not?”
“How the hell should I know? Maybe he was worried about the president showing up and judging him for having a wife who wasn’t wearing eyeliner.”
Rick paused. The bile was boiling in the back of his throat, but he forced himself to continue. “When she mentioned divorce, his money alarm went off. He went ballistic, telling her she wouldn’t get a penny. He knew lawyers, friends who’d make sure she was ruined by the time they got through with her. He even threatened to take me away.” Rick hawked, spat into the underbrush. “As if he wanted me.”
“What a cocksucker.”
Rick stayed focused, knowing he’d lose his nerve if he stopped now. He told Will about the burglary, about Phil erupting on his mom.
“What’d the guy take?”
“Quite a few things, including this Civil War musket my stepdad was crazy about. Thing was supposedly worth twenty grand.”
“What happened?”
Rick scuffed the dirt with the toe of a sneaker. “Mom crushed his skull with a hammer.”
“Holy shit.”
Rick told him the rest of the story. They mounted a steep rise, clawed the pebbled ground to keep from tumbling backward. When they’d crested a hill, Will bent over, hands on knees, panting. “Let’s rest, okay?”
“You a smoker?”
Will shook his head, grimaced. “Nope. You’re telling me this why?”
“I told you. There’s a ghost.”
“You’re haunted by a ghost named Phil?”
“Not Phil. The thief.”
Frowning, Will straightened.
“The thief was caught the next day,” Rick said, “and charged for Phil’s murder.”
“Your mom didn’t come forward?”
Rick shook his head. “Neither did I.”
Will hesitated, though Rick knew what he’d ask next.
“What was the sentence?”
“Death.”
After a long silence, Will said, “Jesus.”
Rick swallowed. “The haunting began a month after the execution.”
“You keep calling him ‘the thief’. What was his—”
“Personalizing him brings it back.”
“Sounds like it never went away.”
Rick hung his head dispiritedly. “It didn’t.” At length, he said, “His name was Raymond Eddy.”
“He haunts you?”
“Raymond usually shows up as a shadowy figure. Or a nightmare.”
Will was staring at him. “What do you mean, a shadowy—”
“I’ll tell you something else,” Rick said. “The worst thing.”
Rick’s skin was icy with sweat. He started to pace, as though he could physically evade the memory. “They didn’t make me testify in the same room with Raymond. Why would they, right? I was a kid, and I’d never even seen him. Our story was that we’d found Phil’s body right after the attack. My mom, she claimed she’d been awakened by the slamming door when Raymond left.”
He could sense Will running it around in his mind, the logical questions arising. Rick braced himself, but when Will spoke, it was still painful to hear the words.
“There were no witnesses? Nobody saw Raymond at your house?”
Rick shook his head, the dread cinching tighter.
“How could they—”
“The justice system sucks,” Rick said, more harshly than he’d intended. But he couldn’t help it, the words came tumbling out. “Raymond was poor, which was why he started stealing in the first place. He was smart, the way a jungle animal’s smart, but he didn’t have a pot to piss in—”
“—so he couldn’t afford a good lawyer.”
“His lawyer didn’t give a shit, and it showed. Everyone knew Raymond was the one who’d been doing the break-ins, and when they traced him to a storage unit, they found the stuff he’d taken from us. The guy whose skull Raymond had broken – from the previous break-in? – he was pretty well-off, and they made sure the prosecution had everything it needed to crucify him.”
“You feel guilty about it.”
Rick glowered at him. “What the fuck do you think?”
Will held his gaze. “Raymond knew what was happening?”
Rick reached out, leaned against a tree, the scabrous bark rough on his skin. “He knew it before anybody else. He barely even protested.”
“He just let them do it?”
Rick shook his head, sucked in a shuddering breath. “He knew exactly where it was heading, and it was like…like he was preparing for what came after.”
He knew Will would ask the question, but that didn’t make it any easier when Will said, “After the execution?”
Rick swayed a little. “They interviewed him on the local news station. After the sentence had been given. Mom…she tried to shield me from the whole thing, but it’s not like I was a little kid. I was in junior high by that time. I saw the interview at a friend’s.”
“What did Raymond say?”
Rick looked up, tried to spot stars in the night sky, but there were only shadows.
“It was partly what he said, and partly how he said it. He kept changing the subject, speaking in this cryptic way. T
he reporter asked him if he was scared of dying, and instead of answering directly, he talked about an ancestor of his who fought in the Civil War, for the Confederacy. Said this great-great- uncle believed in reincarnation and wasn’t afraid of death. Raymond claimed the soldier had come back in the late 1860s, just a few years after his death, to redress the wrongs of the war.” Rick sighed. “Raymond said he was going to do the same thing. Get back at the people who put him in jail.”
There was a silence.
“The reference to the Civil War,” Will said. “Was that.…”
“An allusion to the musket he stole from our house?” Rick finished. “I didn’t make the connection at the time. At least, my conscious mind didn’t. But later…ever since Raymond’s death I’ve been replaying the interview, and it’s like the whole thing was directed at me and Mom.”
“You sure it wasn’t the guilt?”
“I’ve told myself that, but the haunting…it’s real. He follows me wherever I go. And even though it’s just the outline of a man…pitch black…I see Raymond’s face there.” He paused. “The end of the interview, they asked Raymond if he had anything to say to the audience.”
“Did he?” Will asked, not sounding like he wanted to know.
“He looked straight at the camera – straight at me – and said, ‘I’ll come for you.’”
Will was quiet a long moment. Then he said, “Holy shit.”
“He made good on his promise,” Rick said. He saw the look on Will’s face. “What?”
Will was gazing down the hill. “What’s that look like to you?”
Rick screwed up his eyes. “There used to be a house there.”
Will was silent a long moment. Then he muttered, “Fuck.”
“Wrong answer?”
“Let’s head back.”
They descended the hill, Will falling and cursing a couple times.
Rick said, “Because of the haunting, I’ve always been reluctant to settle down. One time I thought I’d broken the spell. I took her to Cancun, one of those all-inclusive vacations?”
“Love all-inclusives,” Will said. “I usually gain fifteen pounds.”
Rick smiled. “I’d proposed to Sarah that night. We made love. Later, when I came out of the bathroom, she was huddled in a corner, her mouth open in a silent scream. There was a darkness enveloping her. It was…Sarah had to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Her family…they blamed me. Wouldn’t let me see her.” He shook his head. “They returned the ring by UPS.”
Will didn’t make a joke of it. Rick was grateful.
When the mansion came into view, Will asked, “This is why you think Wells chose you. The haunting?”
Rick gazed up at the vast structure. “Mom and I had two years to break our silence. You know…trials like that take a while. The appeals.…” He shook his head. “But we didn’t. I was too afraid. Mom…she didn’t want to go to jail. Raymond was a violent criminal, but.…”
“But he didn’t deserve to die.”
Rick stared at his shoes. “No, he didn’t.”
“You think Wells chose you because of your sins.”
Unable to meet Will’s gaze, Rick nodded.
Will said, “I agree with you.”
Rick did look at him then, was surprised to see tears in Will’s eyes.
“You think I’ll tell you my secret,” Will said.
Rick studied Will’s face. No use lying. “Do you have one?”
“I let someone die too. You ever hear of Peter Bates?”
And as they stood at the edge of the forest, Will told him the story.
Part Four
Revenants
Chapter One
The rain moved in at midmorning and now, nearing noon, was still falling steadily. Unable to sleep even after he and Will had spent most of the night tromping around the wilderness, Rick had been working since dawn and had gotten nearly seven thousand words down. Yet as he chipped away at a crucial scene, one thing kept intruding.
Lucy.
She was more than just smart. She cared about people. And he respected that.
He needed to see her.
Because his tendency was to shut people out. Maybe he was that way naturally, but after what happened with Raymond Eddy and the dread that had darkened his life for more than two decades, he’d resolved to never again get close to someone.
He pushed the laptop away. Sat and listened to the rain pelting the windowpanes.
Dammit.
He left his room and knocked on Lucy’s door.
“Yes?” she said from within.
“Howdy,” he said. Knew it was lame but didn’t care.
“Rick?”
“Can I come in?”
The pause was so long he thought she’d lowered herself out the window with a rope of bedsheets.
“It’s open,” she said finally. Her tone was noncommittal. Or unenthusiastic, if you were being cynical.
He was tired of being cynical.
He entered, found her on her bed, fully dressed, feet crossed, reading a vermilion cloth-bound book.
She said, “Did you know Fred Astaire had huge hands? I guess it’s bad for a dancer to have hands that big, so he was always trying to hide them.”
“I can’t dance.”
“He failed his first screen test. They thought he was unattractive, untalented. He almost flamed out before he began.”
“Interesting. I need to talk to you about something non-Fred-Astaire-related. Two things, actually.”
She placed the book on her bed and laced her fingers in her lap. She was wearing a red-and-black flannel shirt and blue jeans with the cuffs rolled halfway up her calves. No shoes. Cute toes, the nails painted red like her shirt.
“I’m listening,” she said.
“I’ve been avoiding you.”
“Too competitive?”
He shook his head. “Nothing to do with it.”
“I’ve never gotten that vibe from you,” she said. “Still, not much point in getting close, is there?”
“That’s another problem,” he said. “You’ve got issues too.”
He saw the way her eyes narrowed, waved her off. “It’s not a criticism. It’s just to say…I want you to write a great book.”
The annoyance left her face, in its place a world-weary look that hurt him to see.
“I don’t know if I can anymore.”
“I do.” He moved deeper into the room. “Writing a great book is hard. It doesn’t happen by accident.”
She opened her mouth, but he went on. “I haven’t read The Girl Who Died cover-to-cover, but I’ve read enough to know you’re a hell of a writer.”
Her eyes grew larger.
“You’re better than I am,” he said, and when she started protesting, he said, “I know we write in different areas, but I’ve read pretty widely, and your stuff is the best I’ve seen in a while.”
“Sherilyn—”
“—is very good. So is Will, what little he’s let me read.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t compare to yours.”
The look in her eyes, she wanted to believe him but couldn’t bring herself to.
She gestured toward the desk. “What if my work-in-progress sucks?”
“Let me read it.”
He thought she’d demur, but she paused, thinking about it. “What about your story?”
“If I write any more today, my skull’s going to implode.”
She moved to the desk and opened the laptop.
He allowed himself to study her profile. Her brow furrowed when she was concentrating, a tendency he found endearing. There was an almost imperceptible dimple in her chin, a feature he hadn’t noticed until now because the angle had to be just right to see it. Add to that the brain, the personality…it almost wasn�
��t fair.
Papers began to feed out of the desktop printer.
“Can’t believe I’m letting you see this,” she said. “My rough drafts are train wrecks. Full of typos, extra words. The one time I let my agent see something raw, he acted like it was an affront to literature.”
“This agent of yours…isn’t he supposed to be helpful? I mean, he works for you, right?”
She propped her fists on the desk. “I should have fired him a long time ago. I get to the brink, but this panicked voice screams, ‘Are you crazy? He’s one of the most respected agents in New York!’”
“A guy like that,” Rick said, “is he the type who could make things hard on you? If you let him go, I mean?”
Lucy didn’t respond, nor did she need to.
“It’s a good thing you’re done with him.”
She looked at him.
He pointed. “Now give me those pages. I want to be the first to read The Fred Astaire Murders.”
A small smile. “You really like the title?”
“Fork it over.”
Laughing softly, she did.
“Hey,” she called when he was halfway through the door. “You said you needed to talk to me about two things. What was the other?”
“Oh,” he said, “that.”
He leaned in and kissed her. She was stiff for a second or two, then she moved into him, her body pressing his. She threaded her arms around his neck, her fingertips sending warm chills down his back. They stood that way a minute, breathing together, but it still ended too soon.
Chapter Two
Finally, Bryan thought as Lucy exited the library. She’d been there when he’d arrived a little after one, and she’d hung around for more than an hour, leafing through books on anatomy and true crime.
He glanced right and left to make sure no one else was there, then searched for a book on botany. He scanned the titles, amazed at how much shit there was on the shelves. Horror, fantasy, even young adult. Shit genres all. His faith in Wells was diminishing by the second.
Bryan rounded the corner, located the shelf he needed. He selected two books – the Royal Horticultural Society’s Good Plant Guide and The North American Field Guide to Trees – and moved to the table where he’d been pretending, for Lucy’s benefit, to read a book called The Art of War for Writers. It was a piece of crap, like every other writing manual he’d ever skimmed.
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