City of Ghosts

by J. H. Moncrieff

  I’d thought I was shockproof by then, but apparently I wasn’t. “Why would she say that if she wanted your help? Clearly the chick had issues.” I admired the restraint Kate had shown with Meghan all the more now. Meghan’s insults must have brought up some bad memories.

  “I’m sure she’d given up on me by then, but if she hadn’t, what I said next must have convinced her.” She met my eyes with a pleading expression. “I only wanted her to go away.”

  “No one would blame you, Kate. She sounds horrible, and you were a kid. What did you say?”

  “I yelled, ‘Why don’t you fuck off and die, you ugly bitch? And never come here again.’” Her voice got very soft. “I’ve never forgotten that. I wish I could. I’d give anything to take it back.”

  We sat in silence a few minutes, holding hands across the table. I couldn’t remember taking her other one, but there we were, like lovers on a date. The pressure eased when I touched her, almost like there was a weird lifeline between us that kept Kate on this side of the divide. Isabelle wouldn’t hurt her anymore, as long as I didn’t let go.

  “I have to tell you something else. It’s pretty horrible.”

  “Go ahead. It’s okay, Kate.” Like my grandma used to say before she died, in for a penny, in for a pound. I wouldn’t have thought anything could make me feel grateful for Yuèhai, but this story was making the impossible possible. At least I was haunted by a benevolent ghost.

  “This sounds awful, but sometimes people are bullied for a reason. Everyone wants to feel sorry for the victims, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t. There are lots of kids who get picked on for stuff they can’t help, like they’re gay or other kids decide they’re gay. I’m not talking about them.” She turned her head to gaze out the window. The sky was the color of steel wool—the sun would be setting soon. “I guess what I’m trying to say is Isabelle wasn’t a nice person. Maybe it was the bullying and stuff that made her cruel, but I don’t think so. Having this…ability makes me able to sense stuff about people, and not only dead ones.

  “It was her ugliness that made her a target, but if she’d been beautiful, Isabelle would have made everyone else miserable. She would have been the bully. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.”

  “Did you ever try talking to your mom about her?”

  Kate shifted on her chair. She kept gazing at the remains of my placemat, and I could tell she was torn between the need to do something with her hands and the desire not to let go of mine. I didn’t make it easy on her—I didn’t want her to let me go. Not yet. “Yeah, but she never listened. I think she was horrified to have such a selfish little bitch for a daughter, to tell you the truth. All I got for my trouble was a lecture about our Christian duty, and how Jesus loved everyone, even the lepers and the whores.” She smiled faintly. “It was enough to turn me off religion for life.”

  “Hey, some of my relatives speak in tongues and think lobsters are the work of the devil. It could have been worse.”

  “She knew, though. That’s what bothers me, even now, after all these years. My mother knew something was wrong with Isabelle, but she had to pull that fucking holier-than-thou act. God, I hate her for that. If she’d put that crap aside for a second—for even one minute—it might have changed everything.”

  I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “What happened to Isabelle?”

  “She killed herself,” Kate whispered. “She took a pair of her mother’s pantyhose and hanged herself in her closet. The second she died it was like a hurricane ripped through our house. Cupboards opened and closed, doors slammed, plates went flying everywhere. After Isabelle finally left me alone, I flung myself on the couch, bawling, and I fell asleep. Something whacked me on the head and woke me up. Someone was throwing everything in the living room at my face, and whoever it was had pretty good aim.” She lifted her head to the light then, raising the brim of my cap so I could see a faint scar running along her forehead. I’d never noticed it before. “The world was filled with her screams. I thought my eardrums were going to burst, and all I could do was curl in a ball and beg her to stop. To stop and go away and leave me alone.

  “I know most people don’t believe in this stuff. My mom certainly didn’t at first. She thought I was acting out. She’d always blamed me for the shit the spirits did, but I think she was too afraid to admit what was going on.”

  “What changed her mind?”

  “Isabelle bit her.” Kate laughed. “Can you believe it? After everything my mom had done for her, every kindness she’d shown, that bitch bit her. Right on the cheek. After that, my mom took it seriously. She told me not to tell anyone at school what was happening, but at least she believed me. About Isabelle, if nothing else. Of course, she never accepted that it was Izzy who bit her and who destroyed her things. She thought it was a demon.”

  “What did she do?”

  “What any good Christian does.” Kate said the word ‘Christian’ as if it were a curse. “She called a minister and arranged for an exorcism.”

  “For real? I thought that was only in the movies.”

  “Oh no, it exists. A lot of people think religion is crap nowadays, but at least it gives you someone to turn to when something like this happens. I have no idea what atheists do when a poltergeist tears their life apart. But I’m guessing they find God real fast.”

  Kate’s hands were so cold they hurt my skin. I longed to pull away, but I couldn’t. I had to hear the rest. “It worked, then?”

  “Yeah, it worked. At least for my mom.” She sighed. “There was no more screaming, nothing obvious anymore. We could have friends over for dinner again. She could have a Christmas tree without worrying every ornament would be smashed to bits.”

  “But…”

  “But Izzy wasn’t finished with me. You see this?” She indicated the marks on her face, which had darkened to an ugly purple. No one would mistake them for tear tracks anymore. “This is nothing compared to what she used to do to me. Whenever I complained and tried to tell my mom she was still around, I got told I’d probably done it in my sleep.” Kate shrugged. “Whatever. I figured that deep down Mom knew I was telling the truth—she just couldn’t face it. After a while, I stopped talking to her. Our relationship was pretty much destroyed by then, if we’d ever really had one to begin with. You see, my mom…” She hesitated, studying my face. “Mom thinks what I do is evil. She thinks I’ve been touched by the devil.”

  That invisible suit of armor had returned. She was trying so hard to be tough, and it was enough to break your heart. Even a cynical bastard like me was having a tough time keeping it together. “I’m sorry, Kate. You shouldn’t have had to go through that. Sometimes people suck.”

  “I didn’t have the most enlightened mother, but so what? It’s not the end of the world. At least her methods worked, if only a little. The exorcism seemed to take away a lot of Izzy’s power. Now she has to build up her strength for a while if she wants to claw my face. It’s a vast improvement, believe me. And I got off easy. You should have seen what happened to the guys who assaulted her.”

  Goose bumps puckered my arms. “What happened?”

  “She beat the living hell out of them. No one was charged with rape or anything, but from the state of Isabelle’s face and her body, her parents knew someone had attacked their daughter before she died. They kept shrieking about justice, but without evidence, there wasn’t much the cops could do. Soon after Isabelle committed suicide, these three guys came to school looking like something out of a horror movie. They’d been beaten so badly they didn’t resemble human beings any longer. Maybe that was the point. Maybe she wanted everyone to see them for the monsters they were.”

  “I hate to condone violence, but in this case it served them right.” I’d always thought rapists were among the lowest life forms on the planet.

  “I thought so too, but like always, she took it too far.” Kate let go of my hands then and wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “Is it freezing in here, o
r is it just me?”

  “It’s pretty cold.” I flexed my fingers to get the feeling back. There were small indentations where her hands had gripped mine. “What do you mean, she went too far?”

  “Whenever the boys healed and were almost normal, she did it again. They spent the rest of high school with their faces blown up like bruised, bloated balloons. And from what I hear, the beatings didn’t stop when we graduated. Not that any of those idiots actually graduated.”

  I thought of Prometheus, who’d had an eagle tear out his liver over and over again because he’d pissed off Zeus. “Sounds harsh, but I can’t say I feel sorry for them. Is she still doing it?”

  Kate stared down at her soup. “I’m sure she would be, except…they’re not alive anymore.”

  The hairs on my arms stood at attention, and I shivered. It had been chilly before, but suddenly I was freezing. Don’t ask, my mind warned. Don’t ask. But of course I did. I’d gone too far to turn back.

  “They went crazy. They’d always been party boys, but now drinking was a means to escape, and probably a painkiller as well. One of them became an alcoholic. His blood level was something like .24 when he drove his truck into a tree. He died on the scene. Another ate his dad’s revolver.

  “The third kid’s parents must have seen the writing on the wall. I’ve never been able to figure out what these guys told their parents. It was like they’d been on the losing end of a fight with a rabid tiger every day—can you imagine? Anyway, this guy’s parents had him committed. They said he was suicidal and injuring himself, and I’m sure they thought he’d be safe in a mental hospital.”

  But he hadn’t been. I knew that without having to ask.

  “His face was healing when he was beat up again, even worse than before. A friend of his told me he’d had a concussion that time. No one could figure out how it happened, because he was on suicide watch, which meant isolation. No one had been anywhere near him, except his doctor and maybe a few of the nurses. As you can imagine, the parents had a fit. There was an inquiry into the hospital, but no charges were ever laid.

  “That night, he rammed a plastic knife into his jugular vein. He bled out in his room before anyone noticed he was injured.”

  “Is everything okay?” The waitress appeared at my side, startling us both.

  “Yes, thanks. Can we get the bill, please?”

  “You haven’t touched your soup. Would you like to take it with you?” She wore that expression of confused concern again. Maybe I looked as awful as I felt, or maybe she was worried we’d give the restaurant a bad review on TripAdvisor.

  “No thanks,” Kate and I said in unison.

  Discussing this stuff over dinner hadn’t been the best idea. We should have eaten first.

  ~ Chapter Twenty-Three ~

  “Jackson Stone? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  “What?”

  Kate hovered above me, reading over my shoulder as I wrote the first blog post. Her hair smelled like flowers.

  “That’s your DJ name, right? It must be, because no one actually has a name that awesome.”

  “Hey, I was born in the eighties, remember? My mom was obsessed with Thriller.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Kate said, flopping on her bed. She hugged a pillow to her chest, tucking her knees up to her chin like a little girl. “I keep forgetting how young you are.”

  I glanced up from my tablet. “Why, how old are you?” I’d assumed we were the same age.

  “Let’s just say I remember a lot more about the eighties than you do, and leave it at that.”

  “Okay, as long as you know it won’t matter to me. Age is only a number.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, right. People in their twenties are always saying that.”

  “Hey, my mom says it too, and she’s in her fifties.”

  Then again, my mom was pretty amazing. She’d started running marathons in her forties, and competed in at least three every year. When I was a teenager, I hated having guy friends over to the house because they acted like such idiots around her.

  “So, have you published that thing yet, or what?”

  Fine, let her change the subject. Some chicks were sensitive about their age—I knew that; I just didn’t get it. Kate was one of the hottest women I’d ever seen, certainly the most unusual and interesting. It didn’t matter to me if she was twenty or forty.

  “Yep. Now I’m doing the Facebook posts.” I’d decided to promote it to everyone on my list with a few group messages. People hated those things, but what else could I do? It wasn’t like I had time to send thousands of individual ones, even if I stayed up all night, and I was already exhausted. Not to mention Facebook would flag me as a spammer. Status updates were fine, but only a small portion of my list would see them.

  With Kate’s help, I’d hit the highlights of everything that had happened since I’d spent the night in the ghost city. I’d taken her advice and left out the part about Yuèhai being dead, but I’d skewered Harold and his buddies quite thoroughly. While I’d been working on the post, Kate had finished her own masterpiece—a letter to the powers that be at Valiant Tours, a letter that was sure to get Harold fired.

  “How about you? Did you send yours?” I wished I could see that motherfucker’s face when he lost his job. He’d probably thought he could arrange for me to conveniently disappear before I got word to his boss about what an evil little shit he was.

  She smiled. “Yes, I did, and I have to say, I have never gotten more enjoyment out of writing an email. I hope the tour is over before they fire him.”

  The tour. It was strange—we’d only left the group that morning, but it felt like they were a million miles away, part of another life. “If it isn’t, Martin can take over. That guy was born to be in charge.”

  “You’re right. He’d probably love that.” She stretched out on her stomach, squishing a pillow into shape underneath her head. “I sent a few of them a Facebook message to let them know we’re okay. I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye to anyone.”

  “You didn’t tell them where we are, did you?”

  “Of course not. Someone could be monitoring our accounts. Plus, it’s better for them if they don’t know. They won’t have to lie.”

  “The tour is over tomorrow, anyway.” The month had passed in a surreal time warp. It was difficult to believe the trip I’d anticipated for so long was over, but it also felt like years had gone by. My wanderlust had finally been cured. It would be a while before I felt like traveling again. And I’d definitely think twice about booking with Valiant Tours. “I’m sorry I ruined your trip, Kate. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be seeing Victoria Peak right about now.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. No one made me do anything. Besides, I’d had enough of the tourist stuff. This is a real adventure.”

  “You can have it. I think I’m done with adventures for a bit.” Hitting send on the last message, I stood up and stretched. My head and shoulders throbbed in tandem with my feet. “How’s your face feeling?”

  Kate touched her cheek with a tentative hand. “Better. It’s still a little sore, but it won’t be as bad in the morning. She’s done a lot worse.”

  As much as I didn’t want to believe that things like poltergeists existed, I’d seen the evidence now. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to deal with stuff like this all the time.”

  “Thankfully, I don’t. Most ghosts aren’t violent, and if they are, they usually don’t take it out on me, because I’m the one person who can help them. Isabelle hates me because I didn’t help her when she was alive, and honestly, nothing she can do to me is as bad as how I feel about myself for not opening that door.”

  “Everyone makes mistakes, Kate. You were a kid.”

  “Yeah…I should have known better, though.”

  “We’ve all done stuff we regret at that age, trust me.” I barely suppressed a huge yawn. “I think I’m going to get ready for bed. I’m dead on my feet. Do you want the bathroom first?”
>
  “No, you go ahead. I’m too keyed up to sleep.” Now that we were alone in the room, Kate had taken off my cap. Her red hair tumbled over her shoulders in tangles that still managed to be sexy. “Hey, Jackson, before you go, can I tell you something?”

  “Sure.” I’d thought it would be weird to stay in a room with Kate, that the obvious chemistry between us would make everything awkward, but I’d found the opposite to be true. We’d spent so much time together over the past few weeks that I was extremely comfortable around her. It felt like we’d known each other for years.

  “I want to thank you for restoring my faith in men.”

  Her statement was so unexpected I laughed. “How so?”

  She propped herself on her elbows, toying with a frayed edge on her pillowcase. “You’re the first guy in a long time to treat me like a human being. A lot of men would have taken advantage of this situation by hitting on me, but you’re not like that.”

  “Everyone should treat you like a human being. You are human, after all. At least, I think you are.” Shit. Now I felt bad for being attracted to her, but it wasn’t like I could help it.

  She tossed my ball cap at me, hitting me in the shoulder. “Ass. You know what I mean. I’m glad we can be friends without it getting weird between us. Because I really like spending time with you.”

  At the dreaded friends, it felt like someone had stabbed me in the gut with a dull knife. It wasn’t a word I’d heard much since I’d started DJing, got contact lenses, and stopped resembling Steve Urkel, but I’d heard it enough in my life. “Likewise.” I wished I’d said no when she’d asked if she could tell me something. I’d dated plenty of women, but I hadn’t felt a connection like this in years—if ever.

  “You’re a good guy, Jackson Stone.”

  “Ssh.” I held a finger to my lips. “Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to uphold.”

  “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Good. Was that it?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. I just wanted to thank you.”