Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel)

by J. R. Rain

  “Idiot,” I said. “Besides, I’m different than those other ghosts.”

  “Yeah? How so?”

  “I’m a ghost on a mission.”

  “Could that sound more corny?” she said.

  “Maybe after a few more drinks,” I said.

  “So how’s the mission coming along?” she asked. We had been over this before, perhaps dozens of times.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not like I’m getting a lot of feedback from anyone—or anything.”

  “And when will you be done with your mission?” she asked.

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “And what, exactly, is your mission?” As she spoke, she peered into the empty glass with one eye.

  “To save my soul.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. And you’re sure it’s not too late to save your soul? I mean, you are dead after all.”

  “It’s never too late,” I said.

  “And you know that how?” she asked.

  “Because I’m not in hell yet.”

  “You’re haunting an old apartment building in Los Angeles,” she said. “Sounds a bit like hell to me.”

  “But I can see my wife and daughter whenever I want,” I countered. “Can’t be that bad.”

  “Your wife has re-married,” said Pauline. “And weren’t you two separated at the time of your death?”

  We had been, but the details of our separation were lost to me. We had financial problems I seemed to recall, which had led to many arguments. What we had argued about was anyone’s guess. But the arguments had been heated and impassioned and in the end I had moved out—but not very far. To stay close to my daughter, I had rented an apartment in the same building.

  “Yes, we had been separated,” I said. “And thank you for reminding me of that.”

  “Just keeping it real,” said Pauline indifferently. “Besides, there is no hell.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I talk to the dead, remember? And not just ghosts,” she added. “But those who have passed on.”

  “Passed on to heaven?” I asked.

  “Passed on to something,” she said. “Neither heaven nor hell. A spirit world—and it’s waiting for you.”

  I didn’t believe that. I believed in heaven and hell, and I was certain, as of this moment, that I was going to hell. “Well, it can keep on waiting. I’m not ready to pass on.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I need to work some things out,” I said.

  “And then what?” she asked.

  “And then I will accept my fate.”

  She nodded. “But for now you hope to change your fate.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at me with bloodshot eyes. Sitting on the couch, she had tucked her bare feet under her. Now her painted red toes peaked out like frightened little mice.

  “Nice imagery,” she said, wiggling her toes. “So you still can’t remember why you are going to hell?”

  “No,” I said.

  “But it was something bad.”

  “Very bad,” I said.

  “Bad enough to burn forever?” she asked.

  “Somebody died, I think.”

  “So you’ve said, but you still don’t remember who or why.”

  I shook my head. “No, but it happened a long, long time ago.”

  “And with your death,” she added, “it was the first of your memories to disappear.”

  She was right. My memories were disappearing at an alarming rate. The earlier memories of my life were mostly long gone. “Yeah, something like that,” I said.

  “And now you’re afraid to pass on because you think you are going to hell, even though you can’t remember why you are going to hell.”

  “It’s a hell of a conundrum,” I said.

  She nodded, then got up, padded into the adjoining kitchen, and poured herself another drink. When she came back and sat, some of her drink splashed over the rim of her glass.

  “Don’t say a word,” she cautioned me.

  I laughed and drifted over to the big bay window and looked out over Los Angeles, which glittered and pulsed five stories below. At this hour, Los Feliz Boulevard was a parking lot dotted with red brake lights as far as the eye could see. I had heard once that it was one of the busiest streets in the world. Standing here now, I believed it.

  After a while, Pauline came over and stood next to me. Actually, some of her was standing inside me. She shivered with the sensation, apologized, and stepped back. Ghostly etiquette.

  I thought of my sweet music teacher. According to the paper, she had been just days away from her sixtieth wedding anniversary. Sixtieth.

  Anger welled up within me. As it did so, a rare warmth spread through me. Mostly my days were filled with bone-chilling cold, minus the bones. But whenever strong emotion was involved, such as anger, I became flush with energy. And when that happened—

  “Hey,”said Pauline.“Someone’s making a rare appearance.”

  And so I was. So much so that I could actually see myself reflecting in the big, sliding glass door. Next to me was Pauline, looking beautiful, but drunk. Bloody wounds covered my body; in particular, my forehead, neck and chest.

  I didn’t get to see myself often, and, despite my anger, I took advantage of this rare opportunity. Pale and ethereal, I was just a vague suggestion of what I had once been—and I was growing vaguer as the years pressed on. There was stubble on my jaw, and my dark hair was indeed askew. Eternal bed head.

  Great.

  “But you’re still a cutie,” said Pauline, giggling, now almost entirely drunk.

  And with those words and that infectious giggle, my anger abated and I started fading away again.

  “Tell me about your murdered friend,” said Pauline.

  “She wasn’t necessarily a friend.”

  She explored my mind a bit more. “My apologies. Your piano teacher from grade school.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would someone kill her?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  She paused, then nodded knowingly. “I see you intend to find out.”

  “Yes.”

  “And perhaps save your soul in the process?”

  “That’s the plan,” I said. “For now.”

  “You do realize you have limits to where you can go and what you can do, right?”

  I shrugged. “Minor technicalities.”

  Now available on Smashwords.com:

  Moon Dance

  Vampire for Hire #1

  by

  J.R. Rain

  (read on for a sample)

  1.

  I was folding laundry in the dark and watching Judge Judy rip this guy a new asshole when the doorbell rang.

  I flipped down a pair of Oakley wrap-around sunglasses and, still holding a pair of little Anthony’s cotton briefs in one hand, opened the front door.

  The light, still painfully bright, poured in from outside. I squinted behind my shades and could just made out the image of a UPS deliveryman.

  And, oh, what an image it was.

  As my eyes adjusted to the light, a hunky guy with tan legs and beefy arms materialized through the screen door before me. He grinned at me easily, showing off a perfect row of white teeth. Spiky yellow hair protruded from under his brown cap. The guy should have been a model, or at least my new best friend.

  “Mrs. Moon?” he asked. His eyes seemed particularly searching and hungry, and I wondered if I had stepped onto the set of a porno movie. Interestingly, a sort of warning bell sounded in my head. Warning bells are tricky to discern, and I automatically assumed this one was telling me to stay away from Mr. Beefy, or risk damaging my already rocky marriage.

  “You got her,” I said easily, ignoring the warning bells.

  “I’ve got a package here for you.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I’ll need for you to sign the delivery log.” He held up an electronic gizmo-thingy that must have
been the aforementioned delivery log.

  “I’m sure you do,” I said, and opened the screen door and stuck a hand out. He looked at my very pale hand, paused, and then placed the electronic thing-a-majig in it. As I signed it, using a plastic-tipped pen, my signature appeared in the display box as an arthritic mess. The deliveryman watched me intently through the screen door. I don’t like to be watched intently. In fact, I prefer to be ignored and forgotten.

  “Do you always wear sunglasses indoors?” he asked casually, but I sensed his hidden question: And what sort of freak are you?

  “Only during the day. I find them redundant at night.” I opened the screen door again and exchanged the log doohickey for a small square package. “Thank you,” I said. “Have a good day.”

  He nodded and left, and I watched his cute little buns for a moment longer, and then shut the solid oak door completely. Sweet darkness returned to my home. I pulled up the sunglasses and sat down in a particularly worn dining room chair. Someday I was going to get these things re-upholstered.

  The package was heavily taped, but a few deft strokes of my painted red nail took care of all that. I opened the lid and peered inside. Shining inside was an ancient golden medallion. An intricate Celtic cross was engraved across the face of it, and embedded within the cross, formed by precisely cut rubies, were three red roses.

  In the living room, Judge Judy was calmly explaining to the defendant what an idiot he was. Although I agreed, I turned the TV off, deciding that this medallion needed my full concentration.

  After all, it was the same medallion worn by my attacker six years earlier.

  2.

  There was no return address and no note. Other than the medallion, the box was empty. I left the gleaming artifact in the box and shut the lid. Seeing it again brought back some horrible memories. Memories I have been doing my best to forget.

  I put the box in a cabinet beneath the china hutch, and then went back to Judge Judy and putting away the laundry. At 3:30 p.m., I lathered my skin with heaping amounts of sun block, donned a wide gardening hat and carefully stepped outside.

  The pain, as always, was intense and searing. Hell, I could have been cooking over an open fire pit. Truly, I had no business being out in the sun, but I had my kids to pick up, dammit.

  So I hurried from the front steps and crossed the driveway and into the open garage. My dream was to have a home with an attached garage. But, for now, I had to make the daily sprint.

  Once in the garage and out of the direct glare of the spring sun, I could breathe again. I could also smell my burning flesh.

  Blech!

  Luckily, the Ford Windstar minivan was heavily tinted, and so when I backed up and put the thing into drive, I was doing okay again. Granted, not great, but okay.

  I picked up my son and daughter from school, got some cheeseburgers from Burger King and headed home. Yes, I know, bad mom, but after doing chores all day, I definitely was not going to cook.

  Once at home, the kids went straight to their room and I went straight to the bathroom where I removed my hat and sunglasses, and used a washcloth to remove the extra sunscreen. Hell, I ought to buy stock in Coppertone. Soon the kids were hard at work saving our world from Haloes and had lapsed into a rare and unsettling silence. Perhaps it was the quiet before the storm.

  My only appointment for the day was right on time, and since I work from home, I showed him to my office in the back. His name was Kingsley Fulcrum and he sat across from me in a client chair, filling it to capacity. He was tall and broad shouldered and wore his tailored suit well. His thick black hair, speckled with gray, was jauntily disheveled and worn long over his collar. Kingsley was a striking man and would have been the poster boy for dashing rogues if not for the two scars on his face. Then again, maybe poster boys for rogue did have scars on their faces. Anyway, one was on his left cheek and the other was on his forehead, just above his left eye. Both were round and puffy. And both were recent.

  He caught me staring at the scars. I looked away, embarrassed. “How can I help you, Mr. Fulcrum?”

  “How long have you been a private investigator, Mrs. Moon?” he asked.

  “Six years,” I said.

  “What did you do before that?”

  “I was a federal agent.”

  He didn’t say anything, and I could feel his eyes on me. God, I hate when I can feel eyes on me. The silence hung for longer than I was comfortable with and I answered his unspoken question. “I had an accident and was forced to work at home.”

  “May I ask what kind of accident?”

  “No.”

  He raised his eyebrows and nodded. He might have turned a pale shade of red. “Do you have a list of references?”

  “Of course.”

  I turned to my computer, brought up the reference file and printed him out the list. He took it and scanned the names briefly. “Mayor Hartley?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He hired you?”

  “He did. I believe that’s the direct line to his personal assistant.”

  “Can I ask what sort of help you gave the mayor?”

  “No.”

  “I understand. Of course you can’t divulge that kind of information.”

  “How exactly can I help you, Mr. Fulcrum?” I asked again.

  “I need you to find someone.”

  “Who?”

  “The man who shot me,” he said. “Five times.”

  3.

  The furious sounds of my kids erupting into an argument suddenly came through my closed office door. In particular, Anthony’s high-pitched shriek. Sigh. The storm broke.

  I gave Kingsley an embarrassed smile. “Could you please hold on?”

  “Duty calls,” he said, smiling. Nice smile.

  I marched through my single story home and into the small bedroom my children shared. Anthony was on top of Tammy. Tammy was holding the remote control away from her body with one hand and fending off her little brother with the other. I came in just in time to witness him sinking his teeth into her hand. She yelped and bopped him over the ear with the remote control. He had just gathered himself to make a full-scale leap onto her back, when I stepped into the room and grabbed each by their collar and separated them. I felt as if I had separated two ravenous wolverines. Anthony’s fingers clawed for his sister’s throat. I wondered if they realized they were both hovering a few inches off the floor. When they had both calmed down, I set them down on their feet. Their collars were ruined.

  “Anthony, we do not bite in this household. Tammy, give me the remote control.”

  “But mom,” said Anthony, in that shriekingly high-pitched voice that he used to irritate me. “I was watching ‘Pokemon’ and she turned the channel.”

  “We each get one half hour after school,” Tammy said smugly. “And you were well into my half hour.”

  “But you were on the phone talking to Richaaard.”

  “Tammy, give your brother the remote control. He gets to finish his TV show. You lost your dibs by talking to Richaaard.” They both laughed. “I have a client in my office. If I hear any more loud voices, you will both be auctioned off on eBay. I could use the extra money.”

  I left them and headed back to the office. Kingsley was perusing my bookshelves. He looked at me before I had a chance to say anything and raised his eyebrows.

  “You have an interest in the occult,” he said, fingering a hardback book. “In particular, vampirism.”

  “Yeah, well, we all need a hobby,” I said.

  “An interesting hobby, that,” he said.

  I sat behind my desk. It was time to change the subject. “So you want me to find the man who shot you five times. Anything else?”

  He moved away from my book shelves and sat across from me again. He raised a fairly bushy eyebrow. On him, the bushy eyebrow somehow worked.

  “Anything else?” he asked, grinning. “No, I think that will be quite enough.”

  And then it hit me. I
thought I recognized the name and face. “You were on the news a few months back,” I said suddenly.

  He nodded once. “Aye, that was me. Shot five times in the head for all the world to see. Not my proudest moment.”

  Did he just say aye? I had a strange sense that I had suddenly gone back in time. How far back, I didn’t know, but further enough back where men said aye.

  “You were ambushed and shot. I can’t imagine it would have been anyone’s proudest moment. But you survived, and that’s all that matters, right?”

  “For now,” he said. “Next on the list would be to find the man who shot me.” He sat forward. “Everything you need is at your disposal. Nothing of mine is off limits. Speak to anyone you need to, although I ask you to be discreet.”

  “Discretion is sometimes not possible.”

  “Then I trust you to use your best judgment.”

  Good answer. He took out a business card and wrote something on the back. “That’s my cell number. Please call me if you need anything.” He wrote something under his number. “And that’s the name and number of the acting homicide detective working my case. His name is Sherbet, and although I found him to be forthcoming and professional, I didn’t like his conclusions.”

  “Which were?”

  “He tends to think my attack was nothing but a random shooting.”

  “And you disagree?”

  “Wholeheartedly.”

  We discussed my retainer and he wrote me a check. The check was bigger than we discussed.

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” said Kingsley as he stood and tucked his expensive fountain pen inside his expensive jacket, “but are you ill?”

  I’ve heard the question a thousand times.

  “No, why?” I asked brightly.

  “You seem pale.”

  “Oh, that’s my Irish complexion, lad,” I said, and winked.

  He stared at me a moment longer, and then returned my wink and left.

  4.