Paranormal Properties

by Tracy Lane

  He gulped it down and turned to find a man leaning on the hood of the van; a toothpick in his mouth, and a black fedora on his head. His suit was so white it almost gave Jake a headache.

  “P— pardon?” he asked.

  “Your mouth,” the man said, his voice deep with a slight New York accent. “What’s in it?”

  Jake swallowed the last of his cinnamon chunks and sputtered, “Jawbreaker.”

  The man nodded, the brim of his wide hat tipping up and down until you could barely see his cold, gray eyes. “Can I trouble you for one, kid?”

  Jake warily reached into his pocket and felt around the dozen or so jawbreakers until his trembling fingers could snatch one out without dropping it. When Jake at last met the stranger’s eyes and held out the crinkly candy in its plastic wrapper, the man had an amused expression on his face.

  “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to give candy to strangers, kid?” he said with a chuckle, his long, elegant fingers snatching the sweet from Jake’s hand without actually touching his skin.

  Even so, Jake felt a chill pass through every cell of his body. He shivered and said, “Uh, I think I’m not supposed to accept candy from strangers.”

  “That so?” said the man, eyeing the bright red piece of candy in his large hands.

  As he did, Jake studied him a little closer. He was tall, several inches over Jake and even a few inches taller than his Dad, who was no runt. Of course, the hat gave him an edge, but even without it, he’d be a big guy.

  His suit was shiny and old-fashioned, like something you’d see in an old, black and white movie late at night when you couldn’t sleep, nothing else was on, and your parents were too cheap for cable.

  The jacket had padded shoulders and there was a crisp red handkerchief folded just so in the left corner pocket. On the man’s feet, white and black shoes shone in the sunlight. They looked a little like bowling shoes, if bowling shoes were polished leather and fancy, not to mention incredibly clean.

  How could they be so clean? Jake wondered. The driveway was gravel and the old mountain road to get to Grant House was 2.9 miles of red, dusty clay. His own shoes were covered with all types of gunk just from running back and forth to the van all afternoon.

  Jake looked around for a car, something old and sleek, with tails on the back and fat, white-walled tires, but found nothing. There was just the van in the drive, and not another set of tires in sight.

  “How’d you get here?” Jake asked the mysterious man, forgetting his manners.

  The stranger cocked an eyebrow and said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

  That was it; he said nothing more. As the man eyed him with a knowing smile, Jake waited for a punch line that never came.

  He heard his parents puttering around inside Grant House. His mother’s voice, clear as a bell, rehearsed her intro to this week’s episode. Just as clearly, his Dad grunted and groaned over the lighting, the angle, and how far away he should stand while holding his camcorder.

  Jake was pretty surprised that neither of them had bellowed his name in the last two minutes.

  “They find any ghosts in there?” the man in the antique white suit asked, a playful look in his eyes, like maybe he already knew the answer.

  “Not yet,” Jake snorted.

  “That’s ’cause they’re all out here, Jakey Boy,” said the man with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  “Wait, what?” Jake took an unconscious step back. “H– how do you know my name?”

  The man smiled. “I must have heard your parents saying it earlier.”

  Jake paused. Okay, okay, that much was true. Maybe. But how long had the dude been standing there, lurking around? Why hadn’t Jake seen him?

  Besides, that wasn’t the only spooky thing he had said.

  “What do you mean, ‘the ghosts are all out…here’?”

  Jake’s heart was hammering beneath his shirt. He didn’t believe in ghosts; never had, never would. And following his parents around creation, camping out in the most ridiculous locations, and NEVER, not ONCE, finding anything, hadn’t changed his opinion on the matter.

  Yet he held out on some ridiculous hope, because if his parents were to catch something on film, they could go from driving around the country in a beat-up van and appearing on local public access channels to doing an actual show with professional equipment, and maybe, just maybe, buying an actual house.

  The man in the suit pushed himself off the hood of the van, popped the wide lapel of his cheesy white suit and said, “You’re looking at one, kid.”

  Jake frowned.

  Yeah, right, he thought ruefully. Another clown who saw the writing on the side of our van and decided to mess with my head.

  He shook his head and looked down, reaching for another jawbreaker deep in his pants pocket, if only to buy himself some time in trying to figure out how to deal with this nutcase.

  When he looked back up again, he popped the bright red candy into his mouth and prepared to tell the guy to “scram,” but the stranger was already gone.

  Jake felt the wrapper slip through his grip, the cool October breeze catching it and blowing it away. Jake scanned the dried grass that passed for the Grant House’s front lawn, looking for footprints or a fussy red handkerchief the man might have dropped while sprinting away; he saw neither.

  All that remained of the mystery man was the jawbreaker Jake had given him, still wrapped and resting just so on the hood of his parent’s van.

  “Jake?” his father asked from the front porch of the house.

  Jake turned, too shocked to say anything.

  “You okay, buddy?” his Dad asked, cracking a crooked smile. He lifted up his black ball cap and, true to form, his hair was stiff and spiky underneath. He scratched it absently and put it back down. “Who were you talking to out here?”

  “Some old guy,” Jake said distractedly. “You didn’t see him?”

  Dennis Weir cocked his head to one side and studied his son. “Sure you’re all right, Jake?” his father asked with concern in his voice. “Maybe Mom and I have been working you too hard—”

  “He was right here!” Jake insisted, racing around the front of the van to see if maybe the man was hiding there. But why would he be? Why would any grown man play hide-and-seek with him?

  Jake’s Dad shook his head and smiled thoughtfully. “Better be careful, Jake,” he said, turning around to disappear back inside the Grant House. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Chapter 2

  Dusk High School looked nothing like its name; it was clean, and new, and bright, and it sat, sterile and glass-covered, in the middle of an open field on the edge of town.

  At the moment, Jake sat on one of the metal benches out in the front of the campus, waiting for Tank to get out of detention.

  It was nearly four o’clock, but she’d gotten double duty thanks to pounding some jerk into his desk during third period Chorus.

  The guy had it coming; no one mentioned “Tank” and “three chins” in the same sentence. Well, that wasn’t true. Jake had heard Tank’s father, Charles Barton, call her a few names on the rare occasions Jake stopped by her place. He’d stopped going over too often, on account of how frequently the two fought.

  No wonder Tank had a temper; she learned it from her father.

  Jake had offered to help Tank scrub the entire Chorus room floor – and it was one big floor – with a toothbrush the way the Choral Director wanted it done, but the director wouldn’t hear of it.

  “It was your friend’s decision to fight, young man,” he had said just before slamming the Chorus door shut on him. “It’s her responsibility.”

  Now Jake waited, patiently, outside of a deserted school, even though she still had another half-hour of detention to go.

  Since the bell had rung that afternoon, he’d been alternately staring at the red marker stain on his sneakers and glancing at the cell phone next to him, waiting for a text from Tank to say she
was ready to go.

  Ever since meeting in the graveyard a few weeks back, Jake had been walking up to Dusk High to meet Tank after school let out. It got lonely being homeschooled, and it was a good excuse to get out of the house after a long day of worksheets and online test taking. Besides, Tank knew a lot about ghosts, and about Dusk, and he liked to pick her brain on the walk home together.

  It was a long way back, but it was better than racing home on the bus and hearing his parents argue about their next “paranormal property” as they sat at the kitchen table, road atlas in hand and checkbook open, trying to figure out how to go cross-country on eighty dollars in gas money.

  Plus, if Jake didn’t walk with her, Tank would only walk alone; she spent enough time alone as it was. Her Dad worked relentlessly, and when he was home, well, let’s just say Tank would have appreciated company that wasn’t barking orders at her.

  Besides, what else did he have to do instead? Homework? Research for his parents? Checking the obituaries in the Dusk News? At least while walking with Tank, he was sure to get a few dozen snacks out of it.

  There were exactly four convenience stores on the way back to Mulligan Lane, where Tank lived in the big white house at the end of the street, and Jake and his family lived in the tiny duplex at the beginning.

  Tank always stopped at each store. Sometimes, she’d grab a soda for herself, and for Jake, a candy bar, or vice versa. Sometimes, she was in the mood for a Slushee or a slice of pound cake in a greasy plastic wrapper. Every day was like a carnival of junk food, and Tank always paid.

  Her father ran a chain of very popular used car lots in town. Barton’s Barn Busters could be seen on every other street corner, easily spotted because of the big red barn he had built in the middle of every lot.

  Tank had money, all right; all that money in the world couldn’t help her be happy. But Jake would try to make her happy, and if that meant eating his way through every convenience store in town, so be it!

  Jake heard whistling down the open-air hallway at his back. It was probably the janitor making his last rounds. He’d already emptied the trash can next to the bench where Jake was sitting and given him the evil eye, probably confusing him for a student loitering around the school.

  Some whistles are random; this wasn’t – it was a song, and a pleasant one, like something you would hear in a black and white gangster movie.

  It grew louder as the whistler approached, and so did the click-clack of shoes; dress shoes, from the sound of it. His Dad generally wore sneakers, but once a month he had to go to the bank and get another extension on his business loan for the show; the heels of his dress shoes always sounded like that against the tile floor of their foyer on those days.

  Click-clack went the heels; whistle-whistle went the whistler. Click-whistle-click-clack-

  whistle-click. Jake couldn’t help himself; he finally turned to see who was making all that noise when the brim of a satiny black fedora poked around the corner of the hallway.

  He gasped as the man from the Grant House inched into view in front of the wall of glass that was the main reception wing of Dusk High, his white suit brilliant in the afternoon light.

  “Afternoon, Jakey Boy,” said the man as he doffed his hat and bent at the waist in a cruel imitation of a bow.

  Jake stiffened, carefully watching the man. “W-who are you?” he stammered.

  “I’m sorry, I never had the time to introduce myself over the weekend,” said the man, ambling forward. “I’m Frank, Frank Barrone, and I need your help.”

  His shoes tapped on the floor, tapping until the man –until “Frank” – reached the next bench over. He was a towering frame, but so were most adults to a shrimpy fourteen-year-old like Jake.

  “What kind of help?” Jake managed without stammering.

  Frank cracked a wry grin. Come to think of it, his skin was as gray as his eyes. Did some people just look that way, or just strange, random creeps who walked around in shiny suits and asked for jawbreakers, but never ate them?

  “The most important kind, of course,” Frank said, sitting up straight and pinning Jake with those cold eyes. “I need you to find out who killed me.”

  Jake smirked.

  “What?” he asked dubiously. Why was this guy even talking to him? It was practically harassment on school grounds.

  Frank didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. “I was murdered nearly sixty years ago and I can’t move on. Until I find my killer, I can’t find peace.”

  Jake only watched Frank suspiciously. “So…if someone killed you sixty years ago, what are you doing…here?”

  “Isn’t it obvious, dummy?” Frank joked. “I’m a ghost.”

  He said it flat out, just like that: I’m a ghost.

  No big deal. I’m a specter, a ghoul. I’m the undead.

  Jake rolled his eyes. “Tank!” he called out, sure his friend would emerge from the commons area behind him any minute, snickering and handing a big wad of bills to the man in white for being such a terrific actor. “You can come out now. Joke’s over!”

  Frank sat back, chuckling. He crossed his legs and waited patiently. When it was clear that Tank was still in detention, scrubbing the Chorus room floor with a brand new toothbrush, Jake glanced back at Mr. Barrone.

  “You don’t look like a ghost to me,” Jake said, but before he was finished, the man that was before him – the sturdy, tall man suit – just drifted away.

  What was once permanent and full of muscle and bone literally exploded into mist. Jake stood immediately, looking around for wires, or a hidden camera, or something, but no. There was only mist, white and chilly.

  He tentatively reached down and touched the seat where Frank had been sitting; it was cold, too, and covered with a thin layer of frost.

  Jake turned, reeling, only to find Frank standing directly behind him.

  “Boo,” he said.

  “B— but, you were just…over there,” Jake stuttered like a fool.

  “And now I’m here, and if you keep making me do this, I can be over there, and over there, and over there.” Frank pointed left, right, up and down, a bemused expression on his face. “Face it, kid; your parents are right. I’m a ghost, and I need your help. I wouldn’t be bothering you if I didn’t.”

  “But my parents,” Jake scrambled, trying to find an explanation for why a grown man could turn into smoke and frost one minute, and then wind up behind him – alive and in person – the next. “They’re the ones who should be helping you.”

  Frank wagged a finger and grunted. “I’m not talking about helping me become a TV star. I need help solving my murder, period. You know your folks would only turn it into some big spectacle.”

  Jake nodded hesitantly. Sure, he knew that, but it seriously spooked him how Frank knew, too – how Frank seemed to know everything. Could all ghosts do that, know everything? Was this guy really, truly, a ghost?

  “B- but, how can I help?” he blurted. “I’m just a kid. I don’t even have my learner’s permit yet. It’s not like I can take you anywhere!”

  Frank cocked his head, that giant hat inching to the side. “Did you hear me, kid? I’m a ghost. You think I’m worried about a little thing like a traffic ticket? You let me take care of that. So, what do you say? You in?”

  Jake shook his head. “This is ridiculous. I don’t care what kind of special effects you’ve got going on, or why you’re doing this to me, but you’re not real. You can’t be. Ghosts aren’t—”

  Just then, Frank reached out and pushed him; hard. Hard enough to sit him back down. The hand that pressed against his hoodie was ice cold, but firm; firm like his father’s hand. In the same breath, with Jake’s wide eyes open and staring in disbelief, Frank walked toward him – no, floated – and then passed right through him.

  Jake felt a sudden chill race under his skin, and not just his skin, but through every part of him: every muscle, his teeth, his very heart and soul.

  It felt like he’d drunk an entire
gallon of ice water.

  His heart racing, Jake turned to find Frank standing next to him. He couldn’t help it; he reached out, grabbed the hem of Frank’s coat, and yanked. It held firm. It stretched, it gave, but it was very, very real.

  Just as real was Frank’s hand on his shoulder as he leaned into Jake. “Like I said, I’ve been a ghost a long, long time. I’ve learned some tricks, sure, I’ve had some kicks, but it’s time to go on home, if you know what I mean. Will you help me, Jakey?”

  Jake took a moment to consider the question. While it was crazy, surreal even, to be having this conversation, did he really want to do business with the guy?

  Er, ghost?

  Then, he thought there could possibly be a way to help Frank and his parents at the same time.

  “Y-y-yes,” Jake stammered, still plotting. “Yes, I will; on one condition.”

  Frank stood back and frowned, calculating and curious under the brim of his black hat. “What’s that?”

  “If I help you get back home, if I find your killer, you have to promise to do what you just did, live and in person, on my parents’ show.”

  “Kid, I already told you, I’ve got no desire to be some kind of TV star,” Frank began, but Jake held firm; crossing his arms over his chest – which was still cold – and staring him down.

  When he saw Jake’s face, the surprising determination in his eye, Frank nodded. “All right, fine. We start tomorrow—”

  “Jake?” came a familiar voice as Tank rounded the corner, a curious expression on her face.

  He merely stood awkwardly, feeling as though he’d been caught doing something wrong.

  “Yeah?” he managed to say, sounding nowhere near as casual as he wanted to.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “Nobody,” Jake lied, but at the same time felt Frank’s icy breath on the back of his neck.

  “Look it up, Jakey,” Frank said, dissolving into a fine mist that Jake could feel against his back. Even as his vapor drifted away on the chilly October breeze, Jake could still hear his voice: “On the Internet. Frank. Barrone. Look. Me. Up. Why? Don’t cha?”