Shades

by Mel Odom

  Liz attached the latest order to the spinner bolted on the pass-through window. Michael, dressed in an apron over jeans and a T-shirt, wielded a spatula and tongs with grim efficiency. He flipped a half-dozen burgers, then lifted a basket of fries from the deep fryer and swatted the annoying beeping timer in one move.

  "How about that order?" Liz asked, flicking one of the tickets with her forefinger.

  Michael shook the basket of fries. "You know, I'd be a lot faster if we didn't have to involve this whole cooking thing."

  "Good plan," Liz said. Then, off a second look, "No."

  Michael shrugged and dealt cheese out onto burgers like playing cards. "Hey."

  "What?"

  A look of concern lighted Michael's face. "Is your mom gonna cave?"

  Choking back a harsh reply, Liz grabbed the order sitting in the pass-through window and went back out into the dining area. She passed the food out, then noticed the truck driver raising his arm again. Retreating back to the wait station, she retrieved a pitcher of tea and managed the refill.

  Taking out her order book, she seated three regulars at a back table one step behind the young busboy her dad had hired for the summer. The tabletop still glistened from Ethan's towel. After getting the drink order, which she thankfully knew by heart, she got the beverages delivered.

  Grabbing a bus tub from the end of the counter, Liz quickly went to one of the tables. As Liz scooped up three glasses in each hand and placed them within the tub, Maria joined her.

  "Look, I can tell you're upset." Maria rounded up the silverware and shoved the utensils into one of the drink containers. "Maybe later will be better."

  "You told Michael"

  "Oh. That."

  Liz finished the table and picked up the bus tub.

  "My bad," Maria said, following Liz through the tables again. "It's just that it's easier to talk about somebody else's problems than ours."

  "Glad to know I could help."

  "Cmon, Liz. You want to talk about this," Maria said. "I know you do. It's eating you up."

  The truth was, Liz's concern over her mother had gotten worse. Usually her mom came down to make sure the hectic lunches went well. Today there had been no sign of Nancy Parker. Liz couldn't help wondering if her mom was still upstairs talking to herself. The image hurt and confused her, and it made her angry.

  "Maybe saying anything to you was a mistake," Liz said, turning from her friend. After all, Maria was still one of the friends of the happy little aliens living secretly in Roswell. Maybe she complained about relationship issues with Michael, whose very human faults seemed more to blame than any extraterrestrial ones, but she remained in the thick of them. Not like Liz.

  "Talking to me is never a mistake," Maria said. "Look, maybe there's a reasonable answer for why your mom was having a conversation by herself this morning."

  "What?"

  Maria sighed. "I don't know. Yet."

  Liz went over to the serving window to check on her orders.

  Maria followed, catching up with her at the window. "We'll figure this out. I promise."

  Overhearing them, Michael turned from the flat grill. "Figure what out? What's up with Liz's mom?"

  Maria frowned and shook her head. "I really shouldn't have told you."

  Michael looked at Liz, then back at Maria. "You barely mentioned it," he said in a monotone.

  Neither Maria nor Liz spoke.

  "Doesn't that help?" Michael asked.

  "No," Liz and Maria told him at the same time.

  "I've got a right to know about your mom," Michael said defensively.

  "How do you figure?" Liz demanded.

  "I work here too." Michael shook his spatula at the frying burger patties. "I depend on this job. Without this job I have no house. Without a house I'm sleeping in a cardboard box." He shook his head defiantly. "And I'm not sleeping in a cardboard box. You don't have to worry about that if your mom is headed for the loony hotel and the Crashdown closes down."

  Liz couldn't believe Michael could be so insensitive. Even after everything they'd been through together, after everything she'd already seen him do.

  "Look," Michael said, "it's not like I'm going to run out on you. If you need help… you know, a place to crash for a couple days, somebody to help subdue your mom till the nuthouse people can get there… I'll be there for you."

  "Gee," Liz said sarcastically, "that's awfully sweet of you."

  Michael shook his head in disgust. "There's about a million guys out there who wouldn't offer to help you subdue your mom without hurting her."

  The sad part was, Liz realized, Michael was right. She and Maria took their orders out to their respective tables.

  Several minutes passed as she gathered new orders and refilled drinks. One of the things that bothered her most, Liz admitted, was that Max was out there somewhere and didn't even have a clue that she was having trouble with her mom.

  Only a short while later, after a flurry of drink refills

  and condiment requests, Maria and Liz stood at the pass-through window again. Liz wished the lunch business would hurry and die down so she could go check on her mom.

  "I've got an idea," Maria said.

  Liz didn't want to ask. "What?"

  "How much do you know about the Crashdown Cafe?"

  "A lot," Liz answered.

  "Was this always a restaurant?"

  "Maybe," Liz answered. "I think so. What difference does it make?"

  "Maybe someone died here," Maria said. "Maybe the restaurant is haunted."

  "Haunted?" Liz couldn't believe Maria was serious. "You think my mom was upstairs talking to a ghost?"

  Maria took a step back and frowned. "It's better than you thinking she's gone totally whack."

  "I don't think that," Liz objected, feeling guilty because those thoughts had been in her mind. "Thinking my mom is talking to a ghost isn't exactly a hundred and eighty degree turn on thinking she's wigging out."

  Maria shrugged. "Depends on whether you believe in ghosts."

  "I don't believe in ghosts," Liz said. "Anyway, my mom wasn't talking to the ghost of a previous occupant. She was talking to my grandmother."

  "Maybe ghosts attract ghosts," Maria said. "Maybe there's a poltergeist loose in the Crashdown that has drawn your grandmother's ghost here."

  "We've been here for years," Liz said. "Why would she suddenly start turning up now?"

  Maria frowned, her brow furrowing. "I don't have all the answers. Some of this still needs to be worked out."

  "Ghosts don't exist," Liz said.

  "Actually," Michael said, bringing plates over to the pass-through window, "they do. I saw one."

  "What?" Maria exploded. "You saw a ghost and you never told me?"

  Michael looked at her. "Didn't know we were supposed to share otherworldly experiences. Anyway, you weren't really big on discussing anything I did last week. You were kind of mad at me for being gone."

  "The geological survey," Liz said, remembering. She'd had to help cover Michael's shifts last week.

  "Yeah," Michael replied.

  "You were there with Tiller Osborn," Maria said.

  Michael nodded.

  "I heard somebody saying something about him seeing his father's ghost."

  "He did," Michael said.

  "And that was the ghost you saw?" Liz asked.

  "Yeah." Michael turned back to the grill and started laying out the next orders. Meat sizzled on the grill. "Those orders are ready."

  "Wait," Maria said. "You can't just say you saw a ghost and then walk away. Tell us the rest of it."

  "That is the rest of it," Michael insisted. "The ghost was there, then it was gone."

  "And it was Tiller's dad?" Liz asked.

  Michael nodded. "Looked like him to me. Tiller thought so. The experience messed him up pretty bad. We brought him back into Roswell the next day and left him here."

  "Has he seen the ghost since?" Liz asked. Somehow the whole story sounde
d just too bizarre to believe, but after everything she'd been living through the last year and a half, maybe the ghost tale didn't sound as far-fetched as it should have.

  "I don't know," Michael answered. "We don't hang."

  "And you don't think you should check on him?" Maria asked.

  "No. I'm a guy he worked with for a day. Somebody he sees in the hall occasionally. I figure he wants his privacy about now."

  "Does he know you saw his father's ghost?"

  Michael laid hamburger buns down on the grill to toast. "No."

  "Why not?"

  "He didn't ask." Michael used the toasted buns and assembled hamburgers with passionless expertise.

  "You didn't tell him?"

  "No."

  "Why?"

  Michael piled fries on the plates and pushed them through the pass-through window. "Nobody else saw the ghost. If 1 told Tiller that I'd seen the ghost, maybe he would have thought about it and decided I was lying. In which case he might want to punch me out. If he believed me, that I had seen the ghost and no one else had, then he might have started figuring something was different about me." He eyed Maria. "I'd kinda rather he didn't go there, you know."

  Liz's mind spun and tumbled with the thoughts. Having to choose between two evils… Mom talking to herself

  or Mom talking to a ghost… Liz really didn't know which she'd have preferred. "What did the ghost want?" she asked.

  "I don't know," Michael admitted. "The ghost didn't talk or anything. It just rushed at Tiller and drew down a lightning bolt that scattered Tiller, Bulmer, and me."

  "You were nearly hit by a lightning bolt?" Maria asked. Michael realized there was a near-death-by-lightning footnotes she hadn't been aware of as well.

  "It was nothing," Michael said. "The bolt knocked the three of us off our feet. That's all." He nudged the plates forward. "Better get these out before we get mobbed."

  Maria sighed in disgust as she gathered her orders. "We're not done here."

  Michael nodded. "Kinda got that."

  Liz lagged a half-step behind, waiting till Maria left. "Have you ever seen ghosts before?" Liz asked in a low voice.

  "No."

  "Maybe this is a new power manifesting," Liz suggested. During the time that she'd known Max, Michael, and Isabel, their powers had become stronger.

  Michael shrugged and started cleaning the grill. "Maybe. Or maybe it was just something that happened because we'd been telling ghost stories and the storm settled in. Maybe I didn't see anything after all."

  Balancing five plates on the round server tray, Liz turned toward the dining room again. When she finished delivering the order to the waiting table, Liz retreated to the wait station for the tea pitcher and coffeepot.

  Maria joined her just a moment later. "Can you believe

  Michael? Can you believe that he'd see a ghost and not tell me about it?"

  "I don't think he's sure he saw a ghost," Liz said.

  "What about the lightning bolt?"

  "Coincidence."

  "Around those three? No way."

  "The ghost was Tiller's father," Liz pointed out. "Not anyone Michael knew."

  "Look, after the shift finishes today," Maria said, then glanced out at the dining area. "Okay, if this shift ever ends, we'll check around with the realtor and some of the other businesspeople along the street who were here before you and your parents were. Maybe something happened here."

  "What?" Liz asked.

  "A murder." Maria looked at her. "You think I'm being overdramatic?"

  "Yes."

  "Then we can keep the operative theory that your mom is wigging out?"

  Liz grimaced. "Okay. We'll ask around, but I think there has to be a more reasonable explanation for… "

  Car horns blared outside the restaurant on the street.

  Glancing up, Liz watched as a thin scarecrow of a man darted across the street out in front of the Crashdown Cafe. She recognized the man as one of the town regulars.

  Leroy Wilkins seldom stopped in at the Crashdown Cafe to eat, but he dropped in often for a cup of coffee and to exchange gossip. Thin and wiry, on the edge of looking emaciated, Wilkins was supposed to have been some kind of prospector back in the sixties and seventies. His hair and long gray beard stuck out in several directions. He wore faded and patched jeans, a flannel shirt in the same dire degree of wear, and a battered cowboy hat that might have once been black but now carried an indelible patina of desert sand.

  More honking shrilled in the wake of Wilkins's frantic run crossing the street. An SUV couldn't stop soon enough. Tires shredded the pavement. The SUV rocked forward, catching Wilkins before he was able to get clear. Wilkins sprawled across the front of the SUV for a moment, looking like the fresh kill proudly shown off by a mechanical predator.

  Shoving from the SUV, Wilkins got up again and ran toward the Crashdown Cafe. He reached the door wheezing, his face mottled red from exertion.

  Instinctively Liz looked behind the man. Anyone running like that was being chased by someone… or something.

  5

  Worry gnawed at the edges of Liz's mind as she watched Leroy Wilkins claw at the Crashdown Cafe's front door like a feral animal. His arthritic hands kept slipping on the handle. Wilkins managed to get the door open and slide inside. He turned to face the door and the plate-glass windows at the front of the cafe.

  "No!" Wilkins bleated hoarsely, raising one hand as if to ward off a blow.

  Liz stared out into the street. Besides the stalled traffic, she could see nothing else.

  "Keep him back!" Wilkins cried out. He lifted both hands in front of his face and kept stepping back into the cafe. "Keep him back! Somebody help me!"

  Several of the nearby patrons stood and abandoned their meals, not wanting to be anywhere near the old prospector.

  "Do you see anybody?" Maria asked Liz.

  Liz shook her head.

  Wilkins turned and fled again. Before Liz could move, the old man was on her, grabbing her by the shoulders and staring into her eyes.

  "Make him stop!" Wilkins begged. Saliva flecked his lips and shone in his beard. His breath was foul and harsh enough to peel paint.

  "Who?" Liz asked. The old man's fingers dug into her shoulders painfully. She struggled to get away, but he only tightened his grip.

  "Swanson!" Wilkins exploded. "Swansons out to get me!"

  Liz didn't know who Swanson was, and she didn't see anyone over the old man's shoulder, either. She felt Wilkins trembling, though. "I don't see Swanson," she said.

  Taking a step to the side, Wilkins kept Liz between himself and the front door. He peered out at the street. Then his grip tightened on her again, almost hard enough now to make her cry out.

  "You're lying the old man shouted. "He's out there! I can see him! He's been followin' me for days!"

  From the corner of her eye, Liz watched Michael slip from the kitchen through the door beside the pass-through window. Michael took his apron off, balled the garment up, and tossed it to the floor behind him as he started for Wilkins.

  "Swanson!" Wilkins brayed in his hoarse voice. "You're not gonna get me! All that business that we done between us, all of that's over with! You're dead!"

  Dead? Liz's mind flipped and spun. Wilkins is talking to a ghost?

  Michael reached for Wilkins. The old man still wasn't aware of Michael standing there. Before Michael's hand fell on Wilkins's shoulder, a cloud of swirling debris… fast-food containers and cups, newspapers, and bits and pieces of unidentified matter… rose up from the street.

  Liz didn't think the swirling wind was too strange. Dust devils were a common occurrence out in the desert. But she'd never seen one that grew the way the dust devil in front of the Crashdown Cafe grew. In the space of a few heartbeats the dust devil increased in size large enough to cover the cafe's front door and most of the glass window that looked out onto the street.

  Liz glanced at Michael, wondering why he wasn't doing something about Wilkins.
Instead, Michael had frozen in place, watching the front of the cafe.

  What does he see? Liz asked herself. There was no doubt that Michael saw something. She stared hard through the glass, turning most of her attention from Wilkins, ignoring the pain in her shoulders.

  All she saw were papers swirling in midair. Some of them slapped against the glass of the door and the window, creating eerie tapping noises, the kind she'd heard on sound tracks of cheesy horror movies. A silvery glimmer sparked out on the street, something that raced in between the traffic. But the glimmer was gone before Liz could be certain she'd even seen it.

  In the next instant the dust devil slammed against the front of the cafe. Glass shattered as the windows gave way before the assault.

  "NOOOO!" Wilkins shouted, yanking Liz backward. He stumbled and almost fell, only maintaining his balance because Liz kept hers.

  Michael launched himself into action, stepping forward and grabbing one of Wilkins's arms. He tore the panicked old man's hand from Liz's shoulder, then spun her out of her captor's grip.

  "Noooo!" Wilkins howled, raising both arms in front of him. The wind caught up to him, ripping his cowboy hat from his head. "Don't, Swanson! Don't do… " His frightened plea ended in a sudden detonation of thunder.

  A white-hot spark filled the cafe for just a moment. Liz felt the heat of the lightning strike… if that was what it was… but only on her face and one arm because Michael turned her so that he could shield her with his body. Thunder rolled and echoed inside the cafe.

  The explosion of light left dark shadows floating in Liz's vision. She barely made out the regular customers and tourists hiding at the rear of the cafe and under the tables.

  "Are you all right?" Michael asked.

  "Yeah," Liz said. "I think so." Her ears hurt, and a headache had formed behind her eyes. She extricated herself from Michaels protective grip.

  Leroy Wilkins lay sprawled on the ground. A dark crimson blush stained his features, spreading out along on his hands and arms as well.