“Yeah, so…” Mooncricket rocked on his heels, tipped to the side then righted himself once more. He cleared his throat and stood up straight and tall, looking right into Tobias’s eyes with an expression of such solemnity that Tobias almost laughed.
“Are you all right?” Tobias asked.
Mooncricket nodded. “Yeah, I just… uh… wanted to stop by, you know?”
“Okay…” Tobias folded his hands in front of himself, curious to see where this was going.
“Right.” Mooncricket nodded. “I condolence you, dude.”
“You what?” Tobias asked.
“Like, your brother died and that shit’s sad, so like… I condolence you,” Mooncricket said.
“You mean you offer your condolences?” Dawn Marie asked as she poked her head around Tobias’s arm to look at Mooncricket.
“What?” He blinked then nodded vigorously. “Shit. Yeah. Aw, hell. I mean what she said. I’m sorry, man, I’m kinda… You know.”
“Loaded?” Dawn Marie asked.
“That,” Mooncricket said. “Me and Jeremy were drinking—well, mostly I was drinking—and I was like, ‘Oh, fuck, Jeremy, I forgot to condolence Tobias about his brother, Harry.’ So, Jeremy was like, ‘I will take you to do that.’ And then he did mostly ‘cause I think he wanted to be alone with his knitting and stuff. I mean, his quilting.”
“Hylas,” Tobias said. “His name was Hylas.”
“Oh,” Mooncricket hung his head and ran his hand over the back of it. “I’m really sorry about that.”
“It’s no bother,” Tobias said as he stepped back from the door. “Would you like to come in?”
“Cool,” Mooncricket said.
Since he proceeded to walk on inside, Tobias rightly assumed that he meant yes.
Dawn Marie took Mooncricket’s arm to help him to a chair when he bumped into the wall just inside the door. She got him to a chair, which he half fell into then proceeded to spin himself around and around.
Tobias really hoped he did not vomit.
“It’s you again,” Gary said as he manifested right next to Mooncricket. The spinning of the chair pushed Mooncricket’s legs through Gary’s shins and he scowled. “Stop that. This is serious.”
Tobias had no idea what was serious and he didn’t dare ask at the moment because he had paperwork to do. If he asked, he was likely to get drawn into a very long, very crazy conversation with Gary on the serious nature of seriousness or some such.
“Excuse me,” Tobias said. “I need to finalize the paperwork for Ms. Busby.”
“Sure,” Dawn Marie said as she put away the cosmetics. “I’ll keep Mooncricket company.”
“Awesome,” Mooncricket said.
“Pay attention,” Gary said, snapping his fingers in Mooncricket’s face. Gary was in a hell of a mood, Tobias had known that from the moment he and Dawn Marie walked in the door. He silently wished Mooncricket the best in dealing with Gary and walked away to his office.
A little while later, Tobias was pulled from his work by Gary yelling.
“Crap,” he said under his breath. Lenore hopped over to his keyboard and pecked at the keys, unmoved by the commotion coming from the embalming room.
“You are a moron!” Gary screamed. “M-o-r-o-n. Moron. That’s you.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” Mooncricket protested. “I haven’t done anything.”
“That’s because you are a potato,” Gary snarled back.
Tobias pinched the bridge of his nose as he pushed his chair back from his desk. After his second meeting with Mooncricket, he thought that perhaps the young man was not the sharpest tack in the box, but he was perfectly pleasant; sweet even. There was no sense in Gary taking his crappy mood out on him.
“Fucking quit it, Gary!” Dawn Marie hollered.
“Oh, God,” Tobias said as he picked up the pace.
“Potato!” Gary screamed. “Stupid boy-potato!”
“Gary! Stop it!”
“You stay out of this, missy,” Gary said to her.
“I’ll ‘missy’ my foot right up your ghostly goddamn ass if you don’t shut up and stop being an asshole,” Dawn Marie said.
“Yeah,” Mooncricket said. “That’s, like, really mean, man.”
“Oh, go to hell,” Gary said. “All of you can go to hell.”
When Tobias entered the room, Gary was standing between Dawn Marie and Mooncricket with both arms out, index finger of each hand pointing at one of them.
“Gary,” Tobias said. “What is this all about?”
“The potato said I don’t have any proof that Bigfoot was sent here by Jesus and the aliens,” Gary said. “He called me crazy.”
Tobias thought “Jesus and the Aliens” sounded a lot like the name of a new wave band, but wisely kept that to himself.
“No, I didn’t.” Mooncricket was wide-eyed and standing up, a little alarmed by then. “I said that was crazy.”
“It’s the same thing, dumbass!” Gary whirled on him, lips pulled back in an angry sneer. “I’ll show you crazy if you want crazy.”
Tobias stepped forward and cleared his throat loudly to get Gary’s attention before he could start hurling things around. Gary was more than powerful enough to engage in some highly destructive poltergeist activity when he was agitated. That kind of thing could not be allowed because of the sheer damage Gary could cause.
“You will do no such thing,” Tobias said as Gary turned to look at him. From the corner of his eye, he was aware of Mooncricket slipping out of the room and into the hallway—away from the conflict. “Not today and not any other time.”
“But they said—” Gary spluttered something unintelligible then continued with, “That stupid boy and that bitch… she threatened me. I heard her threaten me.”
“Shut the fuck up, Gary,” Dawn Marie said. “I did not.”
“Liar! Liar! You did so!” Gary said, turning back on Dawn Marie.
“No, look at me,” Tobias said. He grabbed Gary by the shoulders and turned him around. “You’re going to cease abusing people right now. You are not going to throw a tantrum like you so desperately want to.” He leaned down to look right into Gary’s insanity-bright eyes and gave him a gentle smile. “I want you to go somewhere quiet where you can be alone and get yourself together, all right?”
“I am together,” Gary said, but the rage in his voice had abated somewhat. That was good, but it was no guarantee either.
“I know you think you are, but you aren’t,” Tobias said. “Now, I want you to go sit in one of the parlors or in my office and compose yourself. When you feel like you can rejoin the group then you can come back, but not until then. I’m trusting you to be the judge.”
“Sometimes you talk like the doctors used to,” Gary said unhappily.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to,” Tobias said. “I just want you to be safe and happy, that’s all. I want that for everyone here.”
“I know,” Gary said. He shifted on his feet. “I’m sorry, but—”
“No buts,” Tobias said. “Go sit somewhere quietly and sort this out.”
“And if I don’t?” Gary’s eyes blazed as he tipped his chin up defiantly.
Tobias closed his eyes and took a deep breath; it wasn’t the first time Gary had really dug his heels in, determined to be difficult and test his boundaries.
“Then I’ll smash the radio with a hammer right in front of you,” Tobias said. He hated saying such mean things to Gary, someone he cared about, but he couldn’t just let him run amok either. “Into a thousand itty-bitty pieces.”
“You wouldn’t,” Gary said.
“Wouldn’t I?” Tobias tilted his head to the side and regarded him calmly.
“Fine! Fine! You’re against me, too! I knew it! I knew!” Gary shouted. “I should have listened to Jesus when he told me to never trust a man with wings!”
Tobias sighed then did the last thing he could think of: he shook Gary as hard as he could. Unlike Stevie Bu
ttons, Gary had more substance to his form; he was lighter than any living person would have been, but there wasn’t the same illusory feel to his body as Stevie’s had either.
“Go away,” Tobias said when he stopped shaking Gary. Gary stared at him, stunned as he blinked rapidly, trying to focus on Tobias’s face. “Do you hear me? No more talking, no more arguing. Do it, Gary. Go sit in the front parlor and get yourself under control, right now.”
Gary looked frightened then and his eyes were shiny with tears. It was the last thing he saw before Gary popped out of view and left the embalming room.
“Christ,” Tobias muttered. He felt awful, there was no way around it, but he’d had to do it. When Gary got really bad, he could not be reasoned with and there was no determining when he would act out and when he’d be fine. He was a powder keg of crazy and all it took was a little nudge to set him off. Or sometimes nothing at all.
“Oh, my fucking God.” Dawn Marie’s soft voice drew Tobias’s attention back to her.
“What?” he asked. Then he frowned. “I know, I shouldn’t have been so harsh with him. I should go apologize.”
“Fuck that, no,” Dawn Marie said. “I’m not even talking about that.”
“Then what?” Tobias asked. “Did he hurt you?”
“No, Toby,” she said. “You touched him.”
Tobias looked down at his hands and thought, Well, shit. No one knew about that, they never had and easy as that, he’d gone and let the ghost-touching cat out of the bag. The mental image of a cat wandering around touching ghosts flashed through his mind and Tobias had to bite back the inappropriate urge to giggle like a crazy person himself.
“So I did,” Tobias said, resigned to the fact Dawn Marie had seen it. He wouldn’t try to convince her she’d imagined it.
“I mean, you touched him, like he was solid,” she said. “I could see the dents your fingers made in his shirt. You didn’t just… I dunno… hover your hands there, you fucking touched him.”
“I know,” Tobias said.
She gave him a flat look for that. “You mean to tell me you’ve always known you could do that?”
“Yes,” Tobias said.
“What the hell, Toby? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was weird,” he said.
“Yeah, because that would’ve been the thing to do me in,” she said. “I’d just throw my hands up and say, ‘Oh, can’t be friends with that weird-ass Tobias Dunwalton anymore. He not only sees dead people and converses with them, he touches the fuckers, too. Count me out.’ Because no, Toby. It’s actually kind of amazing. Weird, yeah, okay, it is, but so what? That was badass.”
“Ah… Thank you?” Tobias said.
She grinned at him. “You’re welcome. And thank you for saving me from getting caught in a Gary-sized shit storm.”
“I should not have been so harsh with him though,” he said.
“You can’t always be nice to him and you know he doesn’t always listen to logic, reason or common sense,” Dawn Marie said. “It’s just the way he’s wired.” She looked around the room. “Hey, where’s Mooncricket?”
“Hiding in the hall,” Tobias said.
“Poor fucking guy,” Dawn Marie said. “I’ll go get him. You about ready to go?”
“Yes,” Tobias said. He still had some paperwork to do, but it could wait.
Dawn Marie gathered up Mooncricket and invited him back to Gallagher House to continue drinking. He cheerfully accepted the invitation and they headed out to the parking lot together while Tobias closed up the funeral home; turned off the lights, set the alarm—and left the radio on for Gary.
Tobias followed Dawn Marie and Mooncricket back home, mindful of how fast—too fast—she drove. He mulled it over; having a peek at her to see what her cause of death would be and if he could stop it. He was as afraid to see Dawn Marie’s death as he had been Hylas’s and even after what had happened, Tobias still found himself reluctant to pry into things that way. It always felt nosy and intrusive, but he couldn’t always block it out either, though snatches and glimpses coming unbidden were rare at least.
Mooncricket said, “Whoa,” when he stepped foot inside Gallagher House and that made Tobias smile.
He was proud of his sprawling old house even if it did feel at times more like a mausoleum than a home because there were so many empty rooms and the accompanying echoes such vast, unoccupied space brought. He had not considered that when he bought the place; he’d been in love with it from the first moment he laid eyes on it as a child. It was the grounds even more than the house with its slate roof and bluestone outer walls. As he’d gotten older and more involved with gardening, he had spent many a lonely daydream imagining all the things he could do with the overgrown, weedy grounds of Gallagher House while other boys his age had been fantasizing about having sex with their favorite celebrity.
“Do you like it?” Tobias asked.
“Dude, this place is… Damn,” Mooncricket said. “Jeremy’s house is nice as fuck, but this place… man. It’s like a real-deal mansion.” He squinted at Tobias. “I didn’t think undertakers made such serious bank.”
“They don’t,” Tobias said. He made good money doing what he did, no doubt, but with his salary even as good as it was he’d never have been able to afford Gallagher House with it alone. Thank goodness for his father’s twenty-first birthday gift to him and the incredibly low market value on the house, which was deemed creepy before it had fallen into shabby disrepair.
“Can I show him the passageways?” Dawn Marie asked.
“Sure,” Tobias said. He loved the secret passages; aside from his gardens, those were his favorite part of Gallagher House. He liked sharing his home and letting people look around and feel welcome.
“Sweet,” Dawn Marie said.
“Passageways?” Mooncricket asked.
“Just wait ‘til you see this shit,” she said. “You’re gonna love it. But first: Drinks?”
“Uh, yeah,” Mooncricket said. “Totally.”
Tobias watched them wander off toward the parlor where the bar was then went to the fridge. He was in the mood for a sandwich, but when he looked in the crisper, he found he had no deli meat to make one with. He also noticed they were out of milk, which meant there was likely to be no cereal either. When he closed the refrigerator door, he saw the list he’d left stuck there with a Wizard of Oz magnet.
Rolling his eyes at his own forgetfulness, Tobias snatched the list off the fridge then went to tell Dawn Marie he needed to go to the grocery store.
“All right,” she said. “Have a safe trip and oh, wait, hey.”
“Hmm?” Tobias asked.
“Get me some doughnuts,” she said. “The little ones with cinnamon sugar on them. You know the kind.”
“Okay,” Tobias said. “I’ll be back directly.”
“All right,” Dawn Marie said, already turning back to the bar and Mooncricket who was examining a bottle of tequila.
“We should, like, drink this,” he said.
“We should,” Dawn Marie agreed.
“All of it,” Mooncricket said.
“Obviously,” Dawn Marie replied.
“Joy,” Tobias said as he walked out into the garage and shut the door on their voices. Lenore cawed at him from inside and he went back to crack the door open wide enough for her to flutter out. “You don’t really want to go to the grocery with me,” Tobias said. “Why don’t you go visit your friends while I’m gone.”
She sat on the trunk of his car, regarding him thoughtfully for a moment before she flew to the garage door.
“You can ride out with me, then away with you for a bit,” he said. “Fair enough?”
She flew into the car when he opened the door and Tobias got in behind her.
He stopped long enough once he was in the driveway to roll the window down for Lenore to fly out into the night then he drove away toward Sparrow Falls and the wonders of late-night grocery shopping.
>
That time of night the grocery store parking lot was nearly empty; Sparrow Falls was a little city with small town ideals. It was the kind of place where they rolled the sidewalks up by ten o’clock every night and very few places were open later than that. Bateman Grocery (proudly serving Southeast Louisiana since 1952) was one of the only places actually open 24 hours a day. It was a lifesaver to people who worked night shifts elsewhere or worked late hours in Sparrow Falls itself. It was also where all the local drunks, junkies and run of the mill lunatics went to loiter after the gas stations closed.
Tobias was walking down one of the frozen food aisles when a man pushing a cart at warp speed came around the corner and nearly rammed him. The single can of tomato paste in the cart rattled and rolled around in it as the man tried to come to a stop and instead swerved toward an end cap display of scented jar candles.
“Careful,” Tobias said, taking the man’s elbow before he thought not to in order to keep him from crashing into the candle display.
The man recoiled from him, turning his face to the side and away from Tobias. He bared his teeth at him, revealing blackened stumps that were painful and smelly just to look at. His hair was greasy and stuck up in clumped, dirty brown tufts like tussocks. He was rail thin, arms like toothpicks where they poked from the sleeves of his ragged t-shirt with a smiley face on it. The red-red of its lolling tongue looked obscene against the stained, once-bright yellow of the shirt. There as a pick-mark the size of a half dollar on the man’s left cheek that looked wet and swollen; likely infected. His arms and the rest of his face were littered with the scars of pick-marks past. Too late, Tobias realized the man smelled a lot like old chicken grease and garbage juice left to ferment in the sun.
There was no mistaking the man for anything other than what he was: a meth-head. Undoubtedly one of Aaron Talley’s many satisfied customers and one that was quite far gone to his addiction at that. You couldn’t throw a rock in Sparrow Falls without hitting a meth head. Meth addiction was an epidemic there, a byproduct of people not having anything better to do than get drunk or high and fuck; hence all the slow-witted illegitimate children that had contributed to the population boom in recent years. Dawn Marie called meth heads “fast zombies” for their herky-jerky, gotta go, gotta go NOW, movements when they were really high. Tobias thought this particular fellow might well be one of those, what with his mad dash racing with the wind; just a junkie and his grocery cart against the ranks of canned goods.
Falls the Shadow (Sparrow Falls Book 2) Page 24
