Ghoul Friend

by Meredith Spies

  “Don’t worry about it,” he soothed. “I’m Jack, his nurse for the moment. I just need to change this out and get his next bag of fluids going. His vitals are looking good, no fever, still waiting on some preliminary scans and blood work to rule out viral infection or any other cooties. Did the doctor give you the rundown about the tests he’s going to need after you get out of here?”

  “Mentioned having a PET scan…”

  “Ah.” He frowned to himself, swapping out the IV bag for a fresh one and making a few more notes before turning back to regard me with a serious, concerned look. “So, here’s the thing. And keep in mind I’m not the doctor in charge here so any official word is gonna come from her. Your friend sounds like he’s got a hell of a lot going on, and that can either be very treatable, or it can be a sign of something very scary. Like long-term, ongoing scary. His age, and his reported health status, chances are it’s in the treatable camp. But to be sure, they want him to get some scans our little hospital just doesn’t have access to doing, like the PET scan. Because sometimes tumors can make behavior change, cause hallucinations…” he trailed off sympathetically, giving me one of those concerned looks I used to see often when Grandmere was sick, and staff thought I should be more afraid of her impending demise.

  I nodded and sighed. “I thought as much.” I remembered how to play normal human well enough to make sure staff didn’t think I was a cold arsehole or just plain weird for not being worried. I knew Ezra’s issues weren’t a brain tumor, but I couldn’t tell the nurse I’d been mostly worried that the ghost had caused some sort of damage, like a stroke or something.

  “Are you two very close?” Jack asked, resting his hip on the edge of Ezra’s bed. “I mean, I know you told the EMTs you’re brothers but…” he chuckled. “I know a lie when I see one.”

  “He’s my best friend. He’s the closest thing to a brother I have.”

  Jack nodded. “I get that. But you’re not together.”

  “Ah. Um.” Was he hitting on me or genuinely concerned? I mean, if he was hitting on me, I was flattered but yikes, unprofessional. But also flattering. Still unprofessional. My face felt warm as I answered. “I’m pretty sure I’m involved with someone, yeah. He’s back at the ranch waiting for me.”

  “The ranch? No offense, but you don’t look like one of our local farm and ranch guys,” he laughed, patting my arm. “And I should’ve guessed you were taken—the rainbow isn’t very bright out here in rural Texas. There’s a few of us, but seeing a new face in the area is rare as hen’s teeth.”

  Yep. Definitely blushing. “Well, I’m pretty much just here till he’s released. We’re heading out tomorrow, if all is well. Work thing,” I added, shrugging. Ugh, why was I so awkward?

  He laughed softly. “Can’t have all the luck, can I?” he said, winking. “You said you were at the ranch. Which ranch is that?”

  “The Carstairs place. It’s, ah, kind of hard to find. My friend’s sister is trying to make it out here to pick us up, but it’s like the place is Brigadoon or something.”

  Jack quirked a brow. “It’s right there on Cinder Road. Cinder turns into Main when you get to the town itself. In fact, all you have to do is come out of the hospital parking lot, turn left, go down to the four-way traffic light, turn right, and you’re on Main. Stay on it for about six miles and you’re there. My mom used to be friends with Deborah Carstairs,” he added. “Before the whole thing.”

  I straightened so fast, I nearly knocked over Ezra’s IV pole. “Sorry, but this is kind of serendipity.”

  “Ugh, hot and knows the big vocabulary words. Curse my luck,” he laughed. “Why is it serendipity?”

  I extemporized, “Her father was mentioning this morning how much they miss her.”

  “And?”

  “What and?”

  “And,” Jack murmured, glancing to make sure no one was lurking in the doorway as he lowered his voice and leaned in, “and you don’t get all excited about someone knowing Deborah Carstairs then give a limp noodle reason like that. If it was just because he missed her, you’d say, ‘oh, I was speaking with her father just this morning and she sure is missed.’ No.” He shook his head, gathered up his tablet and leaned in again. “No, you want to know the dirty details, don’t you?”

  “Er…”

  “Don’t give me that look. I’m not going to be all gross with you. No, I get off shift in ten. I need to wrap up and clock out, but I’ll stop by on my way out and fill you in. Now.” He stepped back, his timing impeccable, as a patient aide stopped outside my door with a food cart. “Make sure he eats his dinner—those antibiotics can make you feel like crap on an empty stomach.”

  Dinner was typical hospital fare, nothing to get excited about and perfectly edible if a bit beige. Ezra was still zonked out, so I ate his to put it out of his misery. By the time I was done and figured out how to get the tray balanced on the tiny nightstand beside the bed, Jack had made it back in civilian clothes, a messenger bag with a small, rainbow pin on the strap slung around his chest. He smiled when he noticed me noticing and gave it a tap with one finger. “My secret Bat Signal,” he said. “Like I said, not a lot of us, but we’re out here. So, you wanted to know about the whole sordid Carstairs affair. But first I have to know why you’re staying with them if you don’t know the family that well.”

  “Long story short, car broke down and they were the closest place to ask for help. We crashed the party for Mrs. Carstairs by accident and they let us stay in the bunkhouse till our ride could get there.”

  Jack hummed under his breath. “I hear they’re trying to turn the place into a guest ranch.”

  “Mr. Carstairs mentioned that.”

  “It’s so weird. That ranch was one of the first in the area. Seeing it turned into a glorified hotel is going to be a trip. Especially because that whole family hates pretty much everyone. Except Yancy,” he laughed. “Yancy’s a sweetheart. Maybe Enoch is too, but he never comes to town unless he’s with his grandfather.”

  I thought of Enoch that morning with Yancy and Gerald trailing after him. I wondered if they were trying to keep him on his grandfather’s leash too, or if they were genuinely concerned. “Enoch seems like he’s got a lot going on.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Jack sighed. “Even before Deborah vanished, the whole family was just weird, apparently. At least according to my mom and Lord, she’d know.” He laughed, cheeks coloring slightly. “Not a lot to do in a town this size other than gossip. Mom was a little older than Deborah and said it was a huge scandal, the way everything went down. Deborah took up with Leonard Newton, this guy who worked at the supermarket in Reefter. It was the Fast N’ Fresh, and literally the supermarket. If you think Budding is tiny, you’d be appalled at Reefter. Anyway, the guy who owned it was a total asshole. Owned the store, I mean, not the town. I mean, obviously. Anyway, Deb and Leonard had been college sweethearts at the community college. Mom said it was a huge scandal when Deb turned up pregnant,” he chuckled wryly, rolling his eyes. “It was 1997, not 1897, for land’s sake, but,” he sighed, “small town Texas, you know?” I didn’t but I was getting the picture. “Leonard was a good guy, wanted to do right by Deb, so they eloped, and he really threw himself into being a good father for Yancy and being a good husband for Deb.” Jack darted a glance my way as if gauging my reaction. Whatever he saw must’ve been alright by him because he straightened his shoulders, took a fortifying breath and continued. “By the time I was old enough to play with Yancy, Leonard had taken a turn for the mean. Being in a shitty situation wears on you, you know? Even if you’re a real good person at heart. And Leonard had grand ideas that just weren’t panning out. He couldn’t keep a job, Deb couldn’t finish school because of the cost, and he felt guilty about that… Mom said it was like he blamed himself for their lives being so hard, even though Deb never seemed to blame him. They moved in with her dad and grandma at the ranch and I remember going over to play a few times. Mom had been a year or two ahead of Deb in
high school and felt like she should reach out to her or something. Let her know there were people she could talk to, I guess. Anyway, Leonard was pretty sick by the time I was old enough to really remember him.” He made a drinking motion with one hand. “Self-medicating his depression is what Mom and I both think. When he died, the old man blamed the neighbor, said he’d been harassing the family over some land dispute. When the county did the easements back in the nineties, they mis-measured and gave about half an acre or so to the Carstairs ranch. Hicks—that was the neighbor—lost his freaking mind over it and wouldn’t let up. All the Carstairs needed to do was file some paper with the county, but it became this huge thing.” He smiled a bit sheepishly. “Small town drama, right? Not a lot else going on out here unless you want to drive the three hours to Austin, and even then, it’s iffy. But the rumor was Hicks had some sort of blackmail on Carstairs and was threatening to run with it if Carstairs didn’t do what he asked.”

  “Why would the neighbor harass Leonard Newton? It wasn’t his land.”

  “Ah.” Jack settled back into the guest chair, his smile smug. “But Deborah was his girlfriend.”

  I blew out a sigh. “I thought that might be where we were headed. Why was she with Leonard then, if she was dating the Hicks guy?”

  “Like I said, small town drama. The bloom was off the rose with Leonard, from what I remember my mom saying. Whirlwind romance, young love, surprise baby—that was Yancy—and you gotta do the right thing, you know? That’s the mindset some of these folks have. You get pregnant, gotta marry the father, even if he’s kind of a jerk. They moved in to the Carstairs bunkhouse and it was miserable. I remember visiting with my mom a few times when I was in middle school. Yancy was around my age, and he was so shy. Always acted like a whipped dog, just waiting for someone to go after him. He hid from me, so I just kind of played out in the dirt, went to go look at the cows…” He shrugged. “I think he’s better now that Leonard’s gone, and he’s grown, but I wonder sometimes…”

  “Deborah was having an affair with Hicks?” I prompted.

  He sighed. “That’s the going theory. At least if you ask my mom and the church ladies she hangs around. There was some question about Enoch, but no one ever tried to push it. By the time people started to wonder, Leonard was dead from cirrhosis complications when they couldn’t get a donor match in time, then Deborah disappeared, and Dewayne Hicks died right after.” He screwed up his mouth in a thoughtful moue. “It was always so weird. He just up and did it like that, left the house and farm and everything. It’s just rotting away out there.” An overhead page startled us both. “Well,” he said, standing. “It’s been a weird afternoon, huh? Look, I know I’m spilling all sorts of beans about the Carstairs, but you should know they’re… a lot. They’re not a social bunch, but that’s about as strange as they get. They’re very protective of Enoch since he’s the baby, and they’re a little woo,” he made the universal gesture by his temple, “because of the whole ghost thing, but…”

  “Ghost thing? Mr. Carstairs mentioned a sort of family ghost…”

  “Mason Albright,” Jack laughed.

  There was that name again. “The Wandering Ghoul? How much truth is there to the stories about him?”

  “That he shows up whenever there’s a death of someone from the founders?”

  I nodded.

  “I ain’t ever seen him myself.” Jack shrugged, looked almost embarrassed by that admission. “The town is named after his mama, you know that?”

  “Is it?”

  “Mmhmm. Caroline Budding. Married Franklin Albright. The town started out as a sort of halfway point from nowhere to nowhere. Franklin Albright owned a large cattle ranch out here and set up a general store, and when the railroad was put through nearby, a small hotel that’s near where the police station is today. When Mason was grown, they had enough money to gift him with a parcel of land just outside of where the city limits are today. It included what became the Hicks and Carstairs properties. It was a lot more than that though. There was not much town to speak of back then, and even with the store and hotel, it wasn’t exactly a bustling place. Not close enough to any of the cities to matter, not on any of the major cattle drive routes.” He shrugged again. “Kind of like today. We’re just kind of… here.”

  “You’re not from,” I hesitated, not sure if the question was going to prickle his pride or not. I decided to just bite the bullet and go for it, layering on a bit of charm to soften any potential insult. “You’re not from one of the founders, then? Your family—”

  He laughed. “Lord no. My family ended up here when my great-grandparents ran out of money on their way to California and decided this was as good a place as any to settle down. Might’ve had something to do with my great-grandmother hating the idea of California since that’s where the in-laws lived,” he added with a small smirk.

  “At the risk of sounding like an absolute bell-end, do you know who I am?”

  Jack hesitated, then nodded, ducking his head. “Yeah, I have to admit I’ve seen your YouTube videos and your web series. I thought it might be you when you came in earlier, so I did a quick Google, and your fan boards are all buzzing with rumors you’re in Texas.”

  “I have fan boards? Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. And please, do not tell Ezra when he wakes up!” Though I did harbor a tiny spark of amusement at the idea of telling Julian later, just to see the look on his face. “Well, then you know I know at least a little about ghosts. In my experience, ghosts don’t hang around this long for no reason. The Carstairs say Albright was trampled by his own cows. Why would a guy who died in an accident like that hang around for a hundred years?”

  Jack scoffed. “That’s what they told you, huh? Rumor is that it wasn’t an accident at all. Cattle just don’t stampede out of the blue. That stampede was a murder. Committed by none other than Jamie Carstairs and Vincent Hicks, Albright’s foreman and best ranch hand.”

  Jack tapped the foot of my bed again, oblivious to my startled silence. “Well. I probably won’t be seeing you again, so good luck out there and be safe, okay?” I nodded and he heaved a small sigh. “Seriously just my luck.” He winked and left, shutting the door behind him.

  Chapter 11

  Julian

  Fuck.

  My search around the property had turned up not hide nor hair of Enoch, and it was well into the evening. No one had come back from the hospital yet, and I hadn’t gotten a text or call from Oscar.

  I wanted to scream, curse something, kick something. Instead, I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe.

  It didn’t help much but at least I wasn’t having a tantrum like a toddler.

  Pacing the dirt between the bunkhouse and the main house wasn’t going to help anything, either, but I couldn’t stop myself from making several laps. Anxious, nervous energy bubbled inside me, fizzing away and demanding to be burned off. As I paced, I thought of Oscar, of how we’d left things earlier. Both of us hurt, angry, and frustrated, both of us stubborn jackasses in our own ways. But… but. Maybe, I thought, maybe I was making it worse. Instead of just butting heads a little, agreeing to disagree, simply not believing the same thing he did, I had made it into a fight.

  There was a difference between being a skeptic and being an asshole. I had crossed firmly into asshole territory. My anger at my life before the show and hell, my anger at my current life and all the changes being thrust upon me—well, I lashed out.

  I hadn’t asked Oscar to ‘rein it in’ or hide himself, but he had. When we returned to Louisiana, then Houston, he’d still been Oscar Fellowes, but there was something off I hadn’t been able to place—hadn’t wanted to place.

  When the cameras weren’t on, it was easy to forget, or pretend to forget. He presented himself as a medium and allegedly spoke with the dead. He rarely made comments about a spirit saying this, or a ghost doing that, when it was us alone. I’d worried, in the run up to this road trip and episode, seeing him in action again
would rile up thoughts I’d rather leave alone.

  I’d been right.

  I’d been focusing more and more on his belief in ghosts, on what he did for a living and had done his entire life. It was beyond the just being my job to ‘prove him wrong’ on the show… it actively went against what I believed in.

  And I was pretty sure I was being an asshole about it. Not because I wanted to be ‘right’ or prove him wrong, but because I felt powerless. And I needed to make it right with Oscar, if I could. I needed to… to undo things. Or redo them. And I needed to admit to myself that there was every possibility Oscar might not want to go forward with us, just keep things professional, because I hadn’t been there for him. When he’d opened up about feeling his abilities were blocked, feeling like he couldn’t do his job as a medium, I had brushed it off, minimized it.

  Fuck.

  My head throbbed and I wanted to cry, glad there was no one around to see me having my meltdown over realizing I was a massive jerk. The evening heat was unpleasant and made me feel angry on top of my self-pity and guilt, so I turned towards the bunkhouse and decided to regroup.

  The bunkhouse was dark. I relished the cool quiet, curling up on the sofa and closing my eyes for a moment. I almost missed the sound of steps on the floorboards. “Enoch?” I called, my heart lurching. “Enoch, people are looking for you! I’m not mad you’re in here. Come out, okay?” The steps were in the bathroom, heavy on creaky boards. A sharp knock sounded at the door as I headed for the bathroom, hoping that was Enoch in there, trying to hide, and not, I don’t know, Gerald on a tear or a suddenly very clever bobcat with a deep-seated hatred of humans. The knock fell again, and I stopped. “Just a sec!”