Another One Bites the Dust

by Chris Marie Green

  “Me, too.”

  We were having a moment, smiling at each other, when Tim jumped off the sofa and made a beeline for the kitchen counter, where he’d left his phone. I guessed he thought he’d missed a nonexistent call from Nichelle. When he checked his screen and didn’t like what he saw, he chucked the phone toward the wall.

  Crump! After the phone fell, there was a gouge in the wall, and he cursed. Did he ever.

  “This is all your fault, you bitch,” he said to the small hole. I think he was seeing Nichelle’s face there.

  “Well, then,” I said to Louis. “Sure looks like the seeds of nonviolence I planted in his head last night didn’t quite flower.”

  “I can still picture him ripping an invisible person apart and leaving blood on the walls in his dream, just like you described to us. I don’t want to see what might happen when Nichelle gets home today.”

  Tim went into the kitchen, standing in front of a window by a block of knives, looking out of the glass.

  I darted off the table.

  “What are you going to do?” Louis asked.

  “I know what I should do.” Because everything I’d tried with Farah in the Elizabeth Dalton case had produced the results I’d been hoping for. A confession. Why couldn’t something similar work here, with Tim’s bad side coming out for everyone to see? With him facing the consequences for it?

  I’d eventually just make sure matters didn’t go off the rails this time.

  “Maybe,” I said, “if I could just plant a few more seeds in Tim about calming down, that would work for now?”

  “For how long?” Louis sighed. “But, yes, we could try it.”

  He paused while the word we hung between us.

  “We could try something else, too . . .” he said.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  He nodded, the constant student shining through—the one who always wanted to try new things and gather more information. “If we doubled up, we might suck less energy from both of us. Let’s give it a whirl.”

  Brilliant. “Since Tim’s not asleep, we can’t plant seeds deep down. But we can sure use a hallucination to get him to back off Nichelle, right?”

  “At least for today.”

  “Awesome,” I whispered. It was like I had been driving a compact car this whole time, but now I was about to hop into a double-your-fun Firebird.

  As Louis and I put our heads together, Tim wandered to the front window close by us, staring out of it like he could summon Nichelle. I could see his faint reflection in the glass thanks to the angle of the sunlight: There was a scowl. A threatening storm about to emerge if he didn’t mellow.

  After Louis and I huddled up and made plans, he stationed himself on one side of Tim. I took the other.

  I went first, saving the hallucination and starting off slow instead, my gaze directed at our haunt-ee as I summoned the vague scent of a summer night, with fresh-cut grass filling the room. Sweet, nice smells of serenity.

  Tim sniffed, then frowned. I hoped he had good memories of fresh-cut grass, because that’s what I’d been aiming for. Didn’t everyone, though?

  Louis took it from there, gearing up to make his voice materialize. We’d decided he’d take this job since he was a male.

  “You’re starting to go over the edge, Tim,” he said conversationally. “Do you realize that?”

  Tim turned around, looking where Louis would’ve been standing if he hadn’t been invisible.

  “Tim,” Louis said. “I’m inside you, telling you to take a good look at yourself. What’re you going to do with Nichelle when she gets here? Are you thinking of doing something you’ll regret?”

  Tim put his hands over his ears, but when he realized what he was doing, he started to laugh.

  “That’s fucking stupid,” he said, going back to the window.

  I talked to Louis. “Would a normal person be laughing about this?”

  Louis went to Tim, touching his skin, his eyes going blazing blue, the same color shining out of his mouth as he empathized.

  He didn’t do it for long. “Tim thinks it’s just a random thought he had.”

  I didn’t want to drive Tim crazy. We had to be careful and not overdo it. Hopefully he’d keep pegging the voice on his conscience.

  Louis tried again, softly saying, “You know you’d never get away with what your anger is telling you to do.”

  Tim shook his head, each shake harder than the last one, like he was trying to dislodge the thoughts from his brain. Then he laughed again.

  “I’m used to being scary,” I said. “Not comical.”

  “He’s attempting to laugh the voice away.” Louis nodded at me, letting me know I could proceed with my next action.

  I concentrated my energy until it was a flaring seethe, then slowly floated up to Tim’s bare back, letting my essence shape to his form. Just before I saw the chills on his arms, I leaned into him, hard.

  Hallucination hard.

  I burst into him, bone deep—no, brain deep—and I melded to him, blending with the scene that was already in his head, then getting ready to show him an image that would rock him . . .

  We’re standing in front of the window, looking out of it. We can barely see our outline in the glass: our short blond hair, our face . . .

  The voice in our head is gone. Only the smell of grass is still here. It soothes us after what we just heard. It reminds us of days when we used to get out of the house, away from Mom, to cut grass for a few bucks a shot. The sound of the mower, the lazy rhythm of the blades whipping around, the feeling of getting something accomplished.

  Summer grass.

  As we remember, we can see ourselves smile in the window reflection. We can see . . .

  There’s something behind us.

  Another . . . face?

  Heart slamming, adrenaline rushing—cold, so cold as we whirl around.

  Nothing there.

  A beat of relief. We laugh. First, there’d been the voice. Now, a face. But the voice had been a part of us, a man’s voice, just like ours. The face had been . . .

  Unable to remember correctly, we try to call it back up to memory. Delicate features, nice lips . . .

  A woman?

  Just as we’re deciding what it was, it reappears in the window, clarifying every second as it comes closer to our shoulder. Ice chips scrape down our back, and we reach behind us with a hand, trying to feel it.

  All air.

  Pulse stamping now, we turn around, scanning the room. What was it?

  Where is it?

  Our breath comes fast, chilling our lungs as we walk away from the window, fast, quiet. We still can’t see where it is.

  In the background, the TV has gone to static, dead air.

  But there’s something whispering over the hissing sound.

  “Tim . . .”

  We look in the direction the voice came from, but there’s only a glass-fronted cabinet with dishes, and—

  On the glass is the face.

  A girl? A woman? We still don’t know, but as we try to get away from the cabinet, it shadows our progress.

  “Tim,” it breathes, stalking us as it floats over the glass, bodiless and pale and blurry. Just a mouth moving, a hole. “Don’t make a mistake. Leave Nichelle before it’s too late.”

  We’re away from the cabinet, heading for the hall, diving into the bedroom, shutting the door behind us, leaning against it.

  Panting, we don’t see the figure in the wall mirror until it’s too late.

  Misty body, a white shadow tracking us as we try to get out of the way again.

  “She makes you so angry,” it says reasonably. “Why do you stay? Leave before it’s too late!”

  We pick up a shoe from the floor, throw it at the mirror. It cracks into pieces, but the mist stays.

  Now, though, it’s pressing up against the glass, like it’s trying to get through to us, making scratching noises.

  “You’ll pay if you don
’t leave!”

  A bolt of true fear struck me inside Tim’s body, and it zapped me right out of him. I drift-stumbled backward, weakened. As I went to an outlet, Louis came up to me.

  “Look at this,” he said, pointing at Tim, who was on the floor and leaning against the bed, sweating and shaking hard.

  Success! I hoped.

  “Do you think we did any good?” I asked.

  “We’ll see about that.” Louis leaned over to touch Tim’s skin, empathizing, but just briefly so we didn’t tool with him too badly.

  Once again, I got a good view of blank airport-blue eyes and a gaping blue mouth before Louis came out of his trance.

  “I think we’re getting somewhere,” he said.

  Relaxing, I let the electricity do its work, juicing me up.

  Getting me ready for when Nichelle came home and we could really see if we’d done our job.

  • • •

  She returned a couple of hours later, long after Tim had gotten up from the floor, walked to the bathroom to splash water on his face, then sat in front of the TV again. This time, he watched baseball. ’Twas the season, after all.

  When she came through the door, Tim was laid-back. “How was lunch?” he asked.

  Nichelle was wary as she set her purse and a couple of small shopping bags on the table. “Great. Thanks?”

  He didn’t say anything else, just kept watching the zombie box.

  She seemed so happy about his submissiveness that she got two glasses out of the cupboard and poured soda for them both, bringing his to him on the sofa. She sat in a nearby chair, grabbing a magazine from a floor rack and paging through it.

  “The picture of domestic bliss,” I said to Louis as we watched from the dining table.

  “I’m sticking around to make sure it stays that way.” He braced his forearms on his knees, a sentinel. “You go ahead and do what you need to do.”

  I thought about Wendy’s place, where Scott was on guard. Flaherty’s Pub, where Randy was on the lookout for Gavin visiting Suze. Amanda Lee’s, where Cassie was keeping her company. Boo World, which Twyla was scouring for Milo Guttenburg, person of interest.

  Suddenly, I felt like a fifth wheel. Everyone seemed to be good with where they were.

  I guessed I could use a break.

  I almost patted Louis on the back in thanks. Old habits died hard. “Don’t mind if I kick back then. There’s this place in Elfin Forest that I’ve sort of commandeered . . .”

  “There is?” He was all smiles now. “When’s the housewarming party?”

  I laughed. “It’s an abandoned cottage. You’re welcome anytime.”

  “I’ll look you up when everything levels out here.”

  He winked at me, and I winked back. With Nichelle and Tim acting like Mike and Carol Brady in the family room, I was feeling lighthearted.

  I left Louis and traveled up to my new pad. I was half expecting the occupants to have returned, breaking my nonexistent heart, half expecting fake Dean to be sprawled on the covered sofa, grinning as I came through the chimney.

  But the place was dark and silent except for the night sounds outside: wind nuzzling the tree leaves, frogs croaking from the creek.

  I wasn’t sure what to do at first. What was this thing called “relaxing”? It was quite the foreign concept now.

  I got the hang of it, though, floating to the back porch, listening, allowing myself to veg out.

  But, as I said, ghosts don’t sleep. We get restless instead and, within a half hour, I was done for. So I retreated to the main bedroom, with its wide-screen TV. Why not? That’s how I was slowly becoming a woman of this new world, tele-educating myself in all the new phrases and trends. It was just a bummer that there was so much going on during this era that sometimes I doubted I’d ever catch up.

  As I lay on the bed, manipulating the channels on the TV, the room started to feel empty. So did the space beside me. I imagined my old Dean stretched out next to me, his blue-jeaned legs long, his arms folded under his head as he turned to aim that pussy-catcher grin at me.

  “Miss me, Jenny?”

  I sprang up in bed, my essence sparking. Fake Dean?

  But when the image faded and I realized that I didn’t have a corporeal body like I always did when fake Dean was around, I lay back down.

  Nothing was there in the space next to me. Not even the unreal thing. Damn lonely imagination.

  I sighed, hearing the echo of my dissatisfaction through the room. I tried to watch that TV, but I couldn’t. I was too wound up, and I shut it off and got out of bed because I couldn’t stand the inactivity for a second longer.

  So I headed for the forest, partly drawn by my death spot.

  Partly giving in to the nature that I was just now realizing I couldn’t fight.

  13

  I hadn’t been in the woods at night since me and my human friends had come here to get nice and scared.

  Were ghosts allowed to feel that way, too?

  Even though I’d never personally encountered huge paranormal activity here besides what I brought to the table, I’d heard that the freaks generally came out at night in Elfin Forest, so, as usual, I kept my eye out for any other weirdos like me.

  And I could feel all kinds of gazes watching me right back. Everything in the forest felt somehow . . . well, not alive. Maybe “nocturnally animated” was a better description. Actually, this place was a lot like an enchanted forest at night, where trees were waiting to snatch at me, their branches knotted and long, like the fingers of a sorceress.

  Speaking of witches . . . Was that a horse’s snort I heard in the near distance? They said the forest witch rode a black, misty stallion . . .

  I rushed through the trees toward my death spot, trying not to feel humiliated that I was a ghost who didn’t want to run into another ghost.

  Near the twisted, U-shaped oak branch that skimmed the ground and formed a sort of chair, my death spot reached out to me, gnawing through me with its sheer power.

  I gravitated toward it. Home sweet home, right?

  As I floated down, covering the ground with my essence until I probably looked like a flashing puddle, the death energy droned at high volume, moaning through me. Now I could relax, and I tried not to think about everything that had been draining me these past two days: fake Dean, the dark spirit from the Edgett place, Tim Knudson . . .

  It was the last one that I truly couldn’t let go of, because, seriously, how long could me and Louis continue to assuage Tim with hallucinations or suggestions in his dreams to refrain from violence?

  And, as Twyla said, why should we? It might give Nichelle a false sense of security, making her stay because she thought she was safe.

  The question harshed my buzz. But I was becoming more realistic by the second, and the more realistic I got, the more Twyla’s suggestion about just doing away with Tim came back to me. Destroy him, she’d pretty much said. Take him out and maybe the world will be a better place.

  As my death spot sucked at me and pulsed into me at the same time, the hard-core solution seemed to make great sense. But I was just lucid enough to dizzily wonder if my thoughts were tainted by the spot’s energy.

  I didn’t like the notion one bit, so I forced myself not to think of Tim. Instead, I doubled my efforts to loosen up, to think of my death spot like it was some kind of rejuvenating spa and I was here to get a turbo massage.

  A spa. You know who probably went to a lot of spa days? Brittany Kirkman Stokley. She might have even gotten a mani-pedi before her luncheon.

  A tiny zap lit through my head at the thought of her. That was weird, so I tried even harder to relax. Like I needed more stress in my life.

  But my mind kept going back to Brittany for some reason.

  Zap-zap-zap.

  It was like a bunch of thoughts were trying to connect in me, like fingers reaching out to touch one another in a dark mass of space.

  God, my death spot was really doing some tricks on me tonight
.

  Then—zap-zap-zap!

  My essence froze as a thought definitely connected—an image that sent a long, screeching shudder through me.

  I saw hands. My hands and arms, and they were in front of my face as I tried to ward off that shriveled, leering granny mask and the ax that was lifted in the air.

  “Stop! Please! Why’re you doing this?”

  Then, Brittany’s voice from our interview today. “I’m not sure why she took those bracelets off. . . .”

  Bracelets. I’d just seen those in the image.

  I quickly rolled away from where I’d died, but the zaps kept coming, each one shredding me with icy heat. They were strong and weak, cold and hot, hitting me so fast that all I saw was the yin and the yang symbol chasing itself until black became white and white became black, one big bewildering blur swimming through my head—

  The swirling stopped, and I found myself hovering over that twisted oak tree limb, the forest silent around me until an owl let out an experimental hoot. Had I become like that yin and yang, spinning around in a ghostly smudge until I’d just now solidified?

  Damn, did I ever feel strong, though. Even better, I’d gotten another piece to my puzzle.

  Those bracelets had been on my arm when the killer had attacked. I hadn’t taken them off and left them in the car because my other friend Lisa had been making fun of my jewelry’s Madonna-ness.

  My murderer had to have removed those bracelets from me after I was dead, and he’d gone out of his way to plant them in the car. But why had he left the bracelets behind at all?

  Good God, had the sadist been leaving behind a calling card?

  The willies racked me, but there was this to consider, too: Did the bracelets have my blood on them since I’d been wearing them while I was killed? Or would they have any traces of him?

  I knew from watching that CSI program a few times that my killer could’ve very well left a part of himself behind on those bracelets, whether it was a fingerprint or other trace evidence or whatever they called it.

  Did I have a fighting chance at solving my own mystery now?

  I’d have to tell Amanda Lee about what I’d just discovered, because she was picking those bracelets up tomorrow from Brittany. Ruben would know what to do from there. . . .