by Frank Hurt
“You mean bring you, Mum.” Ember felt bile rise in her throat. “I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion. You’re trying to sell me off to some old man.”
“You’re being dramatic again,” Benedette chided, her voice singing.
“I’m not being dramatic. He’s literally a century older than me.”
“Even if that’s so, he doesn’t look a day over 70.” Benedette sounded wistful. “Time has been good to the gentleman.”
“Speaking of time,” Ember said, “oh look at that, I’m late for a meeting.”
“I thought you were in the field, looking at dilapidated farms…or what have you?”
“Goodbye, Mum.”
She continued fuming as she drove out of the abandoned farmstead and back to the gravel road. “Quick wit and cleverness,” she muttered.
She returned to the small farming town of McGregor, where she read through the handwritten directions once more. She would carefully follow them, watching her odometer to ensure her mileage matched what the crow changeling ghost had instructed.
If this doesn’t work, I’ll need to return to Rik’s landfill and ask the ghosts for better directions. That’ll cost me the rest of the day. How much of a head start do I have until Jackie finds the lab? Then what will I do to make sure the bodies stay hidden?
Ember considered, then, of how rudely she had dismissed Jackie. The scarlet-haired Investigator was far more competent than first impressions would suggest. The mage was motivated to work with Ember, to stick up for her when Roseanne and Neal made disparaging remarks. I repaid that loyalty by sending her on a wild goose chase. Why am I so quick to push away anyone who wants to help?
The gravel road was rugged with washboards, and Ember had to grip the steering wheel with both hands to keep control of the bucking Ranger.
Just the same with Nancy. She’s so eager to assist me. To serve as my “ghost sidekick.” I sent her away because—why—because she was annoying me? Because I could?
Ember chewed her lip, feeling the pang of remorse. She tucked a hand into the inside pocket of her jacket and found Nancy’s locket. The locket which she had given Ember, to use in summoning her whenever she desired. Her fingers traced the cold metal and then closed around it, as if in embrace. She said, a little sadly, “I’m sorry I was so rude to you, Nancy Shaw.”
Ember glanced at the dashboard odometer to verify she hadn’t driven farther than the instructions cited. She looked up just in time to see a person walking in the middle of the road.
She gasped, grabbing the steering wheel and spinning it counter-clockwise. The Ranger was traveling too fast over too rough of a surface. The pickup swerved, careening into the pedestrian at forty miles per hour.
20
What’s the Worst That Could Happen?
Miles north and west of the agrarian village of McGregor, North Dakota, can be found the remnants of the Josephson farmstead. The barn burned in 1973 when its cupola was struck by lightning. An aged south-facing chicken coop, overgrown by golden caragana shrubs and surrounded by a fenced yard, still housed eleven chickens. There were scant few other structures to mark the location as once a viable farmstead. There was, however, a petite farmhouse which remained reasonably well maintained.
Kept by Clara Josephson, the little white house was where she grew up, and where she now lived alone. The elderly woman was not really alone; she dwelled with nine cats who served as surrogates to the children she never had.
Miss Josephson lived by her routines. Feeding and cleaning up after her feline family was perhaps the most dominant, recurring routine. Feeding the hens and picking their eggs was another regular chore. Then there was the small vegetable garden and the flower beds she kept. On Sundays, she would start her 1984 Ford LTD Crown Victoria, back it carefully from its bay in her detached garage, and drive to services at Zion Lutheran. She would clutch the steering wheel with both hands and never move faster than 35 miles per hour the whole route.
Every weekday, Miss Josephson walked the length of her quarter-mile-long gravel driveway to the county road, where she would retrieve her mail from the roadside mailbox. Traffic on the main road had been sparse the entirety of her existence, right up until the oil boom arrived. Now, it seemed as though an automobile sped down the road at a pace of two or three per hour, even on weekends. She had might as well live in downtown Chicago, at that rate. Times were changing.
It was a Tuesday afternoon in October when Miss Josephson heard the roar of an engine and looked up from the winterizing she was performing on her flower beds. Straw still gripped in her gloved hands, she stood slowly and watched as a small, red pickup spun its wheels in a futile attempt to claw its way out of the main road’s ditch. It was probably some young, inattentive roughneck, his rock-and-roll music turned up too loud, driving faster than he should have been on the washboard road.
Miss Josephson shook her head disapprovingly. Times were changing.
Ember and the red Ranger slid sideways down the steep ditch. Dried grass and wet mud cascaded from spinning tires, painting the windshield and driver’s side with greasy thatch. The driver slammed against the door, restrained from more serious injury by the shoulder belt which dug into her clavicle.
What did I just do?
One moment, she was glancing at her dashboard’s odometer. The next, she was driving over a person. Ember trembled with the realization of what she had done. Maybe I missed them. Please, God, tell me I didn’t just run over someone.
Gravity assisted her in swinging the door open. She belatedly released herself from the seatbelt and stepped, still trembling with adrenaline, onto the slippery embankment. The air here smelled of wet earth and burned brake pads. Ember used the pickup itself as a handrail, climbing the slope until her feet found gravel.
She bit down on her bottom lip, looked up and down the flat road, and saw nothing. Nobody. Ember walked the length of her pickup’s tracks. She noted where it had swerved, bouncing along the rippled, loose gravel road bed. Where it had slid sideways into the ditch, barely missing a lone mailbox and the short post it was affixed to.
But no body. No blood. Not on the road itself, nor in either of the two ditches.
Her imagination once more offered its own cinematic horror show. Did they get flung aside? Or—is their body wedged under my pickup?
The mage returned to her vehicle, wary of what she might find. She leaned against the chrome bumper, squatting low as she peered beneath the frame. She was mumbling a prayer to any deity who would accept when she heard a whistling voice.
“What’re we looking for?”
Ember’s prayer instantly became a surprised curse. She slipped and fell onto the seat of her pants. Crouched next to her, the ghost of Nancy Shaw was examining the underside of the Ranger.
“Did you drive off the road?” Nancy asked.
“I…” Ember’s voice trailed until her pounding heart allowed her to think. “Bloody hell! That was you I just ran over?”
Nancy gazed at Ember with hollow, glowing eye sockets. “You ran me over? Why would you do that?”
The Malvern woman shook her blonde ponytail. “The locket. I summoned you, by accident. I thought I’d just ran into a jogger! Oh my God, Nancy. You should feel my heartbeat right now.”
Interpreting it as an offer, Nancy reached a transparent, azure hand out and plunged it into Ember’s chest. “I’m afraid I can’t feel anything. I’m sure you’re pretty excited right now to see me, is that it?”
Ember waved Nancy off, her own hand passing through the bony hologram of an arm. She scrambled to her feet. “Right. Terribly excited. If this is the most excitement I experience this week, I’ll be all smiles.”
A white sticker above the rear wheels of the Ranger boasted “4x4 Off-Road”. Ember tested that marketing claim and found it wanting. Between the steep slope and the wet grasses, the rear wheels of the pickup spun helplessly.
“Try going backwards,” Nancy said.
“I d
on’t want to go into the ditch,” Ember growled. “I want to get back onto the road.”
“I know, but maybe it will help to rock it back and forth.”
Ember had next to zero experience driving on non-asphalt roads, never mind driving off roads altogether. She flung the shift lever on the steering column into Reverse. The pickup immediately slid deeper down the embankment.
“Shite-shite-shite-shite!” Ember slammed her foot on the brake. She shifted into Drive and found no joy there. “Brilliant. Now I’m even farther from the road. You’ve been so helpful, ghost sidekick.”
The ghost floated through the pickup and around the outside. “What do you want me to do? Push?”
Ember tapped the accelerator again. Again, the wheels spun.
“Wait,” Nancy said. “Only the back wheels are moving.”
“Right. And your point is…”
“Don’t you have it in four-wheel-drive?” The ghost asked.
Ember rolled her eyes. “It says four-by-four on the side, doesn’t it? This bloody thing is simply stuck. I’ll need to call in for a tow.”
“There should be a switch,” Nancy said as she floated back into the cabin. She ignored the mage’s outburst. Her empty eye sockets studied the dash. She extended a bony, transparent finger at the control panel. “There. You need to turn that.”
The mage looked where the ghost pointed. She pinched the black selector switch between her thumb and the knuckle of her index finger, turning it clockwise with a single satisfying click. The arrow aligned with white text which read “4x4.” An icon within the semi-circle of the speedometer illuminated green, confirming the change in transmission.
“Now, don’t just step on the gas,” Nancy instructed. “You’ll want to just ease into it, so the grips of your tires can do their job.”
Ember did as she was told. The pickup responded, the engine growling as it clawed its way up the embankment. With all four wheels back on gravel, she got out and walked around her previously clean ride. Its sides were splattered with chunks of wet mud and dried grass. When it dried, it would form a hard, armored shell, just like the fleet vehicles she observed at the gas station in Tioga.
“I love this little pickup,” Ember said. Then, to Nancy, she said, “thank you.”
The terrycloth-robed ghost had been shadowing her. She said, “I find it’s better to stay on the road whenever possible, city girl. Where are we, anyway?”
“Close to the Middle of Nowhere,” Ember said. “I’m looking for an abandoned farmstead. It’s got a hidden methamphetamine lab.”
“Meth? Ember, I’m astonished! I would have taken you to be more of a cokehead.”
“Normally, right. I thought I would try new things. You know: different drugs, different ways of driving off roads. Adventure.”
“Adventure,” Nancy repeated. “How can your ghost sidekick help?”
Ember nearly turned her down. Instead, she said, “I’ve got these directions, but they’re provided by an uncooperative witness. He and his chaps are changeling birds. They traveled to and from this site primarily by air. It’s proving difficult to follow along by road.”
“I see,” Nancy said. “What do you need me to do?”
“I was hoping maybe you could…follow the directions in the air? Like they would?”
“You mean fly?” Nancy asked. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I don’t have wings.”
“Right,” Ember pronounced the word slowly. “But you do fly. I’ve seen you hovering around the Archives.”
“I’m scared of heights,” Nancy said matter-of-factly.
“You’re scared of heights? But…you can’t fall. You can’t be harmed. You’re already—”
“Too soon, Investigator,” Nancy said. “Too soon. I can’t believe you would keep rubbing that in my face. Just because I’m departed doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings, too. You’re a cold one. Cold as ice.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry,” Ember stammered. I didn’t mean to imply—”
Nancy’s expression erupted into a smile. Her whistle-tinted voice chimed. “I’m joking, Ember! Of course, I’ll help you. What kind of a ghost sidekick would I be if I got butt-hurt for being a ghost?”
“Uh, you’d be—”
“We’re Team Ember!” Nancy swung her palm across Ember’s back and through her chest. “Oh. That was supposed to be a shoulder-slap. I wasn’t trying to grab your boobies. We’ll have to work on that. Fist bump, maybe? Oh, how about you just hold up a finger.”
Ember’s eyebrows were raised. She wasn’t sure where this was going, but she played along by extending her index finger and pointing it at the sky.
The ghost slid a bony arm from the sleeve of her terrycloth bathrobe. She held her little finger and thumb against her palm, leaving the other three fingers pointing horizontally. Gingerly, she reached out and touched Ember’s digit with all three fingers.
“It’s an ‘E’ for ‘Ember,’” the ghost explained. “Go Team Ember!”
“Go Team Ember,” Ember repeated, though with decidedly less enthusiasm.
Ember recited the directions scrawled in her notepad. Nancy had difficulty orienting herself to North—cardinal points were not particularly relevant in the spirit world—but once she aligned herself with the compass, she floated up and away.
Not long after, the ghost returned, all manner of pride in her announcement. “I’ve found your abandoned farmstead!”
“You did? Already?” Ember asked.
“Send a ghost to find a ghost town—erm, ghost farm.” Nancy swirled around the pickup in a floating pirouette. “C’mon, it’s down a section line. I’ll show you.”
Ember kept the pickup in four wheel drive, following the turn-by-turn instructions of her ghostly navigator. “Can you stop floating around outside while I drive, at least? It’s disorienting.”
Nancy floated through the pickup, hovering within the cab. “There’s nowhere to sit.”
“Seriously?” Ember glanced at the transparent figure, then at her satchel on the passenger seat. She pulled the leather strap and tossed the case into the small space behind the seat of the supercab pickup. “Better?”
The ghost settled into the bucket seat, taking painstaking effort to adjust herself so she would appear as though she was on the seat, and not in it. Nancy reached for the seatbelt, her hand passing through the buckle. She shrugged, sheepishly. “Old habits die hard.”
The muddy trail wound over a short hill and down into a shallow depression in the otherwise flat landscape. Tracks leading into the colorless, abandoned farmstead were grown over by a summer of unmolested grasses and weeds. Long-dead trees encircled collapsed structures and a mound of assorted trash. Prickly Canada thistle thrived throughout the site.
She parked her Ranger next to the rusted husk of a windowless International pickup. Her vehicle was even muddier than before, courtesy of the long section line trail they had just driven. Ember walked among the thick, untamed sod, avoiding thistle where she could.
Each of the buildings was in various stages of decomposition. Roofs were collapsed and windows were long since shattered. Swallows found refuge among the decaying structures, chirping loudly to alert one another of the arrival of an invader to their territory. A few of the birds darted in and out of paneless windows, their distinct bent wings forming W’s as they flew an intercepting circuit around their airspace.
The trash heap reminded Ember vaguely of the landfill tucked away in the pasture of Rik’s farm. Old appliances, knotted bundles of rusty barbed wire, rotted tires, and quantities of weathered boards peppered with bent nails all weaved together with more modern trash to bake beneath the sun. It would have been an ideal site to contract tetanus, if one ever had such a quest.
She walked among the dead trees, their bark stripped to reveal white trunks resembling bleached bones. Thistle clawed at her legs, biting through the material of her pants. She kept her arms raised to protect her exposed hands from the thorns.
“You look like you’re crossing a river in Viet Nam,” Nancy said. “Marcus used to like watching those military films.”
The ghost glided through the thistle, her terrycloth robe and slippers unfettered by the physical world’s obstructions. More than once, her head passed through a low-hanging tree branch. The curlers she permanently wore remained in place.
“I don’t think this is the place,” Ember admitted. She walked past the trash heap and returned to where she started. She leaned against the rusted, bare-metal hood of the junked pickup. The text inset on the grill said “International” next to the round driver’s side headlight. A logo badge on the side fender was a red lowercase “I” overtop a black capital “H”.
“Your witness must’ve given you bad directions,” Nancy said, shaking her head. “There’s no other abandoned farmstead anywhere nearby.”
“The lab is supposed to be in a trailer house,” Ember said. “Clearly, there’s no trailer house.”
“Can you just call him and see if he can clarify?”
“This witness isn’t reachable via mobile,” Ember said. “It’s a ghost.”
“Ah,” Nancy said. “That makes sense. But you can call him up anyway, right?”
“I’ll have to go to his gravesite to summon him.”
“You can summon me from anywhere,” Nancy said.
“Right. But that’s with the locket you gave me.” Ember patted her leather jacket and the locket safely tucked within an inside pocket.
Nancy said, “you summoned Barnaby Harrison in the Archives.”
“Right again. But there, too, I had a photo of him.”
“If you have a photo of someone who’s deceased, you can call on their ghost?”
“Apparently not entirely,” Ember said. “That same photo with Barnaby in it, well, when I stopped for lunch I tried summoning the ghost of Billy Colton using that photo. I got nowhere with that.”
