More laughter. “You know exactly who and what this is so don’t give me that. This is your worst nightmare coming true.”
“My worst nightmare already happened. You don’t scare me.”
“I’ve barely even tried scaring you, Dennis. Just because your wife died and you convinced yourself you let her go and got through that doesn’t mean a damned thing to me because you don’t know the meaning of pain and suffering. But—and hear me out, Dennis—you will.”
“You’re just a sad little nerdy boy who lost his comics somewhere.”
“You don’t know me. You don’t get me. You can’t even begin to understand me. You’ve read some of my work and obviously think it’s good enough to steal, but DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHERE THAT COMES FROM? DO YOU?”
The voice howled on the line, and Dennis didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
“You don’t know fear, and you don’t know pain. But that’s all gonna change.”
“I’m done. I’m done with your calls and your e-mails and your threats.”
“You stole something from me, so I’m stealing something right back. And it’s far more valuable than some story from a twenty-year-old who thought he knew it all.”
“And what would that be?”
“Hope.”
Just as Dennis attempted to answer Cillian’s threat, a truck slammed into his passenger side door and catapulted his SUV sideways.
The world went black.
Part Three
The Lunatic Is in My Head
October 24, 2009
There was something in the barn. Something alive, making noise among the dead.
Robert Holzknecht never slept soundly, and on this night he kept hearing things. The squeaking door of the barn opening, the sound of equipment dropping to the ground, a clanging.
Robert, or Bob as he was known by the few who happened to use his name at all, found a meat cleaver to take to the barn. It was late, the night still and cool, the farm deathly silent except for the haphazard sounds from the barn across from the house.
There wasn’t a light that he could see.
He strode over the worn dirt path to find the barn door open.
He didn’t slow down. He walked in and quickly found a light.
Cold, dim light bled onto the stained floor.
Bob looked around, opening the stalls, checking out the loft. There was nothing.
After fifteen minutes of checking, he turned off the light.
Bob.
The voice sounded like it came from behind him. But he turned and saw nothing. He flipped on the light again and found nothing.
Bob.
The voice came from the loft. But no one was up there.
It’s time, Bob.
He recognized the voice. He knew it well.
It’s finally time, Bob.
“Where are you?” he asked, looking around the deserted barn. He’d long grown used to the stench in here, to the sacrilege.
I’m here.
The cleaver rested in his hand. Bob knew he wouldn’t need it. Not now.
“What do you want?”
I want many things.
“What do you want from me?” Bob asked, staring at the high ceiling.
I want you to do what you do.
Bob just waited, listening.
He wasn’t frightened.
He wasn’t surprised.
I want you to finish what we started.
Bob knew the voice too well. The young guy never shut up, and even after shutting him up once and for all, the guy had occasionally come back.
With whispers in the night. Taunts in the darkness. Messages on mirrors. Voices in the silence.
The young guy named Cillian Reed still spoke to him. But never like this, never this deliberate, never this focused.
“What do you want me to do?”
He waited. Bob was patient. He could wait all night if he had to.
Finally Cillian’s voice sounded all around him.
I want you to spy on our author friend. This is a very big week for him.
Bob didn’t respond.
He remembered the man Cillian was talking about.
I want you to do something I cannot do. Something I’m forbidden to do. Do you understand?
“Kill him?”
Yes. But only him. Not the girl.
Bob nodded.
And then he will understand. He will see. He will see the only hope he has left in the world completely alone, her two parents gone. And he will know the meaning of hopelessness. He will know the meaning of suffering. He will know that hell does exist, and he will join me there.
The light went off and Bob found himself in darkness, the smell of death all around him, the silence soaking in.
He headed back to his house, back to his bed.
Bob knew Cillian would be back soon.
It wasn’t the first voice that had come to him.
He was smart enough to do what the voices told him.
Hiding
1.
The phone woke him. Dennis jumped, dizzy, as if he were on the deck of a ship in a violent storm. The ringing rattled inside his head.
He felt worse this morning than when the truck collided with his vehicle and sent an air bag slamming into his face. He’d blacked out, only to awake and find both vehicles damaged. After a mouthful from a driver claiming Dennis had run a stop sign, Dennis boarded an ambulance and was treated for minor cuts and a concussion.
Hank had taken him home last night and was the first to call this morning.
“You okay, man?”
“No,” Dennis admitted. “I feel awful.”
“I saw your Volvo. You should feel awful.”
“Thanks for taking me home last night.”
“You were saying a lot of crazy stuff, you know.”
“Really? I don’t remember.”
“Yeah. About ghosts and devils and spirits and such. I’m telling you—you need to get out more.”
“I was out when this happened.”
“I mean out with other people. With the living. Too much time spent with ghosts.”
The throbbing in Dennis’s head continued. It hurt to talk to Hank.
“I’m going to take some of those pills I got last night.”
“How ’bout I come by and bring you some lunch?”
“You don’t need to.”
“Who’s going to take care of you then, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You got a car to ride around in?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Though I doubt I’ll be driving anytime soon.”
He hung up the phone and thought about the car in the garage. It was Lucy’s car, one that hadn’t been driven since she passed. Dennis had tried to get Audrey to take it, but she said she didn’t need one at college. He knew she felt like he did—that it was somehow wrong to take Lucy’s car out, to use it flippantly, to act like it was just a car.
The image of Lucy driving the convertible was still cemented in his mind. He’d surprised her with the yellow Porsche Boxster the summer before she passed away. It was ridiculously expensive and flashy, but he said it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered in those days except trying to make every single day count.
The only regret was that she left too quickly.
Driving the car felt wrong, but so did getting rid of it. Even when his bills were draining his accounts, the thought of selling the bright, sporty car seemed wrong.
Dennis wondered where the keys were. But he knew. Even in his groggy state, he knew exactly where they were.
2.
—Den?
—Yeah.
—Come here.
—What is it?
—Just come over here for a second. Turn off the TV.
—Is Audrey okay?
—She’s fine.
—Okay, what then?
—I didn’t say mute it; I said turn it off.
—Okay. There.
—Do you know that I love you?
—Uh-oh. You met some young Italian guy, and you’re running off with him.
—If that was the case, I’d already be gone.
—What’s up?
—Den…
—Hey—what is it? Why are you crying?
—I just—I can’t—I don’t know how to tell you.
—Lucy, what?
—I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry. Because I was thinking—I thought it was no big deal.
—Didn’t tell me what? Hey—what is it?
—I got some bad news today.
3.
In the silence of the sunroom, he sat in the chair.
Dennis hadn’t been in this room since Lucy passed away.
Almost one whole year.
It was easy to close the door and forget about the colors and the light and the warmth of this room. He sat in the armchair and looked at the sunlight streaking through the trees onto the yard. She used to come in here to get away, to read, to do her puzzles, to arrange their photo albums, to take naps. Dennis had his office, she had the sunroom.
Dennis found the keys exactly where he expected. On the desk. On her desk.
Touching them was like touching her skin again. He found himself thinking of that afternoon when she told him she had seen the doctor, that she had cancer. He couldn’t believe it. Nor that she hadn’t told him she’d been going for tests. He was angry and hurt, but did anything and everything he could to get her help.
On the written page he could make miracles happen. He could awaken the dead, perform the supernatural, be a god to his characters. But Lucy wasn’t a character, and he was no god. All he’d been able to do was watch from the sidelines as she grew more and more ill.
And so many good things in his life, in his family’s life, died when she died.
He held the keys and cursed. It wasn’t surprising, the anger still inside him, the rawness. He had avoided this room and these keys and the photos and the videos because they just hurt too much. He hated sitting here, hurting, pining away, grieving.
It’s been a year and what’s changed?
Breathing hurt. Was that because of the car accident last night or because of being in this room?
He had refused to believe that she watched him from above or beyond. But there was a part of him now that wondered, questioned.
Don’t.
Words she had spoken to him still resonated. But he fought remembering them, hearing them.
Don’t come back. Don’t come back and hurt me.
He had listened to her and had said he understood and had said he would consider what she said, but after she was gone those words were like these keys. Put in a drawer and forgotten.
Why now, after all this time?
But Dennis knew why. Audrey was gone.
It was just him and this large coffin of a house.
Just him and his stupid characters in his stupid books.
He had done everything he could possibly do to get Audrey through the death of her mother. But that meant he’d done very little for himself.
Is this how I’m coping, how I’m paying for not taking care of myself? By losing my mind and making up ghosts?
But another voice told him there was nothing imaginary about what was going on. The only thing imaginary was his denial, his shelving reality.
Just because you hide a car and throw away the keys doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
His eyes caught the waters of the Fox River.
Just because you don’t always see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
He spotted the picture of Lucy. So sweet, so strong, so secure.
A thought filled him, one that had filled him whenever she spoke of taking her last breath.
If your God exists, then I want to see him. I want to ask him some questions, starting with why?
But even now he knew that no God existed. A real God couldn’t be that cruel, that unusual, that mean.
He wouldn’t take someone like Lucy and leave someone like Cillian.
Lucy had died believing, and Dennis was glad she had. But he didn’t believe and never would believe because that was life, real life, not life on the pages of a book where characters needed to see and feel some kind of hope.
Hope is waking up and seeing the sun and knowing you’re still alive. It’s breathing. That’s all we have.
But Lucy’s picture argued with him and said he was full of it and always had been.
You can no longer hide behind your pages, Den.
4.
“I’ve got a bike. You can ride it if you like.”
The sound jolted him, coming from the kitchen, blaring through speakers, the unmistakable sound of Syd Barrett before he’d lost his mind, singing about a bike and other crazy things.
Dennis darted into the kitchen and looked around. He found the base for Audrey’s iPod, but there was no iPod in it. Instead it was playing on its own.
He tried to find the volume to turn it down. As he approached it only got louder.
The music grew zanier until its end when it culminated in bells and whistles and eerie turntables, then the echoey duck-like calls.
The music stopped.
“I just—I don’t know how to tell you…”
He froze, turning around.
“Lucy?”
It had been her voice.
“I just—I just—I just—I just—I just—”
It was like a recording, skipping, replaying over and over.
He spun around in the kitchen, but when he stopped the kitchen kept spinning, turning, moving.
“I’ve got a bike. You can ride it if you like.”
Syd was now standing over him as he lay on the tiled floor, staring at the ceiling.
He remembered seeing this picture on the back of an album, the sun and the sky in the background behind the young singer with the wild hair.
And then he smiled and laughed.
“There is no dark side of the moon, Dennis. Matter of fact, it’s all dark.”
5.
He looked up at another face he recognized.
“Dennis? What are you doing? You okay, man?”
He waited to hear the bell of a bike rattling by, but it didn’t come.
Dennis sat up on the kitchen floor, no loud music playing, no deceased former English rocker hovering over him. Hank stood there in jeans and a Bears sweatshirt, having placed some bags on the counter.
“I got some sandwiches. How long you been like that?”
“I’m not sure,” Dennis said, standing on wobbly feet.
“Whoa, buddy. Come on. Let’s get a seat for you.”
Dennis eyed the Bose base for the iPod, but there was nothing.
On the counter lay the car keys to the Porsche Boxster.
I’ve already crashed one car. I don’t want to go for two.
Hank stared at Dennis for a long time, then finally said, “I think maybe we need to go out. Get some fresh air.”
“Sounds good to me,” Dennis said. “You mind driving?” Hank just laughed.
6.
A couple hamburgers had led to a couple beers, which had blossomed to more. They sat in the pub listening to songs from the ’80s and watching ESPN. Throughout the conversation Dennis kept wondering whether to tell his friend what was really happening.
He wasn’t even sure where to start.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
Hank’s eyes stayed on the television in the corner, his shoulders hunched. Finally he looked at Dennis and shrugged, nodding. “Sure.”
“You say that very calmly.”
“Yeah, so? I haven’t been haunted by one, so I can’t say I feel as strongly about them as I feel about, say, Julie, you know.”
“What if I told you I was being stalked by a ghost?”
Hank took a sip of his beer but didn’t seemed fazed. “I’d probably believe you.”
“I expected a little more skepticism.”
“No, here�
�s the thing. It makes sense. You write all those stories about ghosts and demons and evil. You’re opening yourself up for them to come after you if they really exist. And who knows? I believe they do. In some form at least. But why would they come after me? You know?”
“Why would they come after me?”
“Have you asked this ghost?” Hank asked as if this were just a game.
“You’re mocking me.”
“No, I’m not. I’m playing along. I know you well enough that you don’t believe in any of that.”
“But do you believe? Seriously?”
“Sure,” Hank said casually. “Why not?” He paused. “You’re a skeptic. Put yourself in one of your books. You’d be the main character of course—the guy who doesn’t believe but writes the stories anyway. What’s the fancy word to describe that?”
“Irony?” Dennis asked.
“Yeah, that’s ironic. Now me, I’m the sort of guy in your stories that always gets killed. The loyal dumb friend.”
“Who says you’re dumb?”
“Come on,” Hank said, staring at Dennis. “I didn’t say I’m a complete moron, but I’m not going to be the president of anything anytime soon. I’m happy just hanging around here, drinking my beer. And I’ve seen enough movies and read enough books to know guys like me get killed in those stories.”
“But what if—Hank—what if all that—those stories and movies—what if it really was real?”
Hank stared at him for a minute. “Is this something new you’re working on for a book? A scene you’re trying to play out with me?”
Dennis didn’t know how to convince his friend to take this seriously.
He still needed to convince himself.
7.
On the way home they passed the church as they drove toward Dennis’s house. It was late afternoon—both of them were tired, and Hank had to work the next morning. No late night for him. As the church sign approached, Dennis read its message.
Ghostwriter Page 18
