The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance (Mammoth Books)

by Trisha Telep

  If there was a message for him in the barn, he thought he’d find it up in her loft.

  So he climbed up, noticing the ladder had gotten less sturdy. He walked carefully through the darkness, feeling his way along the wall. He wanted TJ to be sitting there waiting for him. He wanted to stop chasing after her – he was tired of being three steps behind.

  She wanted to tell him whatever it was that had her so scared, and he wanted to figure out a way to fix it for her, but he couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t just stay put and wait for him to catch up.

  He reached the bales she’d used to form her hideaway’s wall. He felt along them for the break between the stacks and, when he found it, he worked his way through the little maze to her private space.

  And all of a sudden he felt sick. Scared. Chilled clear through, even though the barn, warmed by the cows and horses below, had been cosy and comforting an instant before.

  He crouched with his back against the bale wall and tried to see through the darkness. Something was wrong, though he didn’t know what. His skin crawled, his gut knotted and he tasted ashes on his tongue. He fished around in his pocket, past the pocketknife to the little flashlight he kept for emergencies.

  He played the flashlight over the place where TJ had kept her books and sleeping bag. In the tiny circle of light, he saw two pairs of handcuffs, open, one fixed to each angle of TJ’s corner by ten-penny nails bent and hammered back into the wood to form makeshift rings. The handcuffs were stained black in places.

  The books – always stacked in the corner – had been ripped apart, their pages scattered, their covers cut and slashed by a knife.

  He couldn’t find the sleeping bag. It was gone.

  That fact made him shake.

  He ran the flashlight carefully over every inch of the corner, noting blackened, dried blood and tangles of long dark hair.

  Who had used the sleeping bag? And for what? To carry her out after . . .

  After . . .

  Had her father done this? Could her father have done this?

  Mike considered the possibility.

  Someone knew her well enough to know about her secret place, and burned with enough rage or envy or sick desire to do terrible things to her. Someone wanted to desecrate the place of her childhood happiness.

  Or worse.

  Her father had sent her away, though. He’d proven himself content never to see her again. Mike couldn’t imagine him dragging her back, or doing what Mike thought had been done to her here.

  The old man was five different kinds of bastard – but not that kind. Not a sick, twisted pervert, not a sadist, not a torturer.

  Not a killer. He’d sent his own child away because she didn’t live up to his standards. But he had standards. He wouldn’t betray those standards.

  Mike looked for a note.

  There was no note.

  But this blood-crusted mess was TJ’s secret.

  Something hissed, and he jumped and turned to find a barn cat staring at him, back arched, fur on end, ears flat back.

  “Shoo,” he whispered, realizing he was probably trespassing on its den.

  But from the corner of his eye, he caught slight movement, and flicked the flashlight toward it.

  A strip of photographs fluttered to the ground.

  They hadn’t been in the corner before. He’d already searched it. They couldn’t have fallen from the sharply angled roof. Nothing had been up there. The only way they could be where they had not been an instant before was if TJ was in the barn.

  “TJ?” He kept his voice low. “TJ? Are you here?”

  Are you hiding in the shadows, watching me – still not dressed for the weather? Still pale and quiet and withdrawn, when previously you were the sunshine in any room?

  Are you what I think you are?

  Nothing answered him but silence. He picked up the ribbon of pictures and turned it over.

  Written on the back: “Do you remember your promises?”

  He did. And he remembered where that strip of photos came from.

  The lights were on in the house when he headed up the hill to his car. He thought about stopping by the house to tell her parents what he’d found in the barn.

  But no. He’d follow this thing through to the end, wherever that end might be. He’d find out the truth.

  And then he’d make sure everyone knew it.

  After a string of gorgeous spring days, April showers had arrived. Outside the mall, the rain came down in sheets.

  TJ was too elated to care. She’d found Dance Naked, Silver Obsession’s first album, in the rack at one of the mall’s music stores, and was holding it up to show him.

  “See? The cover is perfect.” She flipped it around, and laughed gleefully. The packager she and the rest of the band had hired had added a little pull-away tab over her breasts, with CENSORED in big red letters across the black strip. “I’ll bet half the guys who buy the album buy it just to pull the tab off when they get home.”

  Mike snorted. “Not a chance. Ninety-five per cent of the guys who buy the album buy it to pull that tab. And none of those tabs are still in place when your male buyers get home.”

  “C’mon . . .”

  “I’m serious,” Mike said. “I know my people. We do not wait to see hot breasts. We pay for our merchandise, we get it out of the store, we find the first corner where we can take a look in private, and we open the package.”

  “Your people, huh?” TJ laughed and hugged him. “I’m grateful for your people. According to the demographic tests we’ve been getting back, women hear the songs and then buy the album. But men, ages nineteen to twenty-eight, buy the album and then listen to the songs. And according to our packager, men in that age group don’t generally buy music by women, and they don’t generally buy first albums. So I’m reaching beyond my expected market.” She hugged herself and bounced up and down just a little as the excitement of her first real success caught up with her.

  He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her close. “You’re wonderful. And now everyone will know it.” They walked out of the music store, past the giant aquarium and down toward the food court. “With a different cover, all those men would have written you off as a pretty face and figured you were just another pop singer. You bypassed that whole ‘pretty face’ issue with your record cover concept. Your male listeners don’t even know you have a face.”

  She laughed again. “I love your sense of humor.”

  “And I love the fact you think I have one.”

  They got burgers and fries and shakes from one of the shops at the food court and sat down to enjoy their meal together.

  All of a sudden TJ turned serious. “Our manager got us a string of good bookings on the strength of record sales.”

  Mike tried to bring the lightness back to the conversation. “And you’re worried because your contract calls for you to do one of the numbers with no shirt on?”

  The corner of TJ’s mouth quirked in a smile. “Nothing quite that awful.” But the smile faded and she leaned forward to look into his eyes. “But things are going to change for us. This first tour is ten weeks, Mike. Small venues, but not bars, so we’ll have a chance to actually get some notice. Only . . . the band and I will be living between the bus and crummy motels, and the tour never comes near here, so I’m going to be gone the whole ten weeks.” She paused and looked up at him, a little hope in her eyes. “I mean, unless you could come along . . . ?”

  And there it was. “I wish I could. But you were right about the cover generating good publicity for me. I’m getting commissions for more than dog portraits and paintings of newborns taken from photographs. And I also need to hit my deadline for the little show I’ve been offered at the Westhill Gallery.” He sighed. “It isn’t a ten-week tour. But it’s a start.”

  “I know. And I understand. We both have our hands on our dreams, and now is not the time for either of us to let go.”

  He nodded. This was the part of the
two of them he didn’t want to face, or to think about. “We won’t have to do this for ever,” he told her.

  “I know. But while I’m gone, I want you to promise me . . .” She stopped and stared down at her hands on the table edge in front of her. Around them, the din of the mall roared on, but the two of them seemed to slip into a hole in the universe where everything hushed.

  “What do you want to ask me?”

  She looked up from staring at her hands, and he saw her swallow. “I want three promises from you before I go.”

  He waited.

  She frowned. “You’re not going to say ‘all right’?”

  “You’re asking this seriously. I’ll answer it seriously. If I agreed before I heard what you have to say, it would be because I was blowing you off, TJ. I won’t do that. Tell me what you want, and I’ll decide.”

  She considered that for a long moment. “Thank you.”

  He waited.

  “One: promise you won’t forget me.”

  He smiled and nodded. “I promise. I can’t forget you. You’re my gravity and my oxygen.”

  “Promise you’ll wait for me.”

  “What? You think there’s another one of you running around out there somewhere? TJ, I knew from our first date that you were the only woman I was ever going to love. I promise. I’ll wait for you.”

  She nodded. Took a deep breath. “Promise you’ll always find me.”

  He frowned and studied her, not certain what she meant by that. “I don’t understand,” he told her at last.

  “I’ve had nightmares. That I get . . . lost. I can’t explain it, but they scare me.”

  She shared his bed. He was with her every minute he could grab from every single day. When had she had nightmares? “You didn’t tell me?”

  “They’re stupid, Mike. They’re childish, ridiculous. I wake up shaking and you’re right there next to me, where you belong, and I take a deep breath and let go of my fear because I know everything is all right. But when I’m out on the road, when I’m in bed by myself, I may wake up from the damn nightmares and think they’re real. So I just want you to promise me, if I get lost, you’ll find me.”

  He took her hand in his, and ran his thumb over the calluses on her fingertips. “Always, TJ. If I have to march into Hell to get you, I will always find you.”

  “OK,” she said, and her radiant smile returned. “I’m sorry for the stupidity. I haven’t had nightmares since I was a kid, but now I’m having them all the time.”

  They finished their meal and wandered through the mall.

  In an electronics store, they bumped into Brandon, and TJ told him about her upcoming tour. Brandon, who privately worried to Mike that TJ was going to get famous and move on, breaking Mike’s heart in the process, congratulated her with enthusiasm.

  Brandon seemed genuinely happy for her. Mike took it as a good sign. He knew TJ was going to be with him for ever, and he wanted Brandon to accept her, just so he’d stop worrying about Mike getting hurt.

  The three of them parted company on their way out of the mall, when TJ decided she wanted pictures of Mike and her to take with her on the road.

  A photo booth sat next to the mall entryway, situated between a drinks machine and four coin-op kiddie horses.

  “I want your face in my pocket,” TJ said, and Mike asked, “Is that even legal in this state?”

  “Depends on which pocket.” She laughed and hugged him, and the two of them squeezed into the booth like a couple of teenagers on a first date.

  She cuddled up against him and fed the machine enough dollars to get a strip of photographs for each of them.

  Then they made faces into the mirror while the camera counted down, then clicked, counted down, then clicked.

  He would have bought another round, but the voice on the intercom said the mall was closed.

  So they climbed out of the booth, and he pulled the photographs out of the tray.

  There was only one strip.

  And Mike heard someone running away.

  “Stupid machine,” TJ said.

  Mike stared back the way they had come, listening to the receding footsteps. “Idiot kids. They think it’s funny to take something someone else paid for.”

  Mike studied the pictures and said, “You’re gorgeous as ever,” and handed the strip of pictures to her. “Keep them in your shirt pocket so I’ll know you have me close to your heart.”

  He couldn’t count the number of times in the years that followed that he wished he’d gone after the little shit who’d stolen the second strip.

  He wished right then he had those photos.

  The mall seemed run-down and tired now, the snow falling beneath the orange glow of the sodium vapor lamps looking dingy rather than enchanting.

  Mike didn’t think TJ was going to be there. He’d stopped hoping for a happy ending back at the barn. Now he just wanted an ending of any sort. The truth. A way to understand why his world came to an end five years earlier. He had the “what” of the secret, he thought. Now he needed the “who”.

  He shoved through the mall doors and found the photo booth still there. An OUT OF ORDER sign hung beside each curtained entry.

  Naturally the damn thing would be out of order.

  He stared at TJ’s scrawl on the back of the photos.

  He remembered his promises. He’d never forgotten her. He’d never stopped waiting for her.

  And he’d tried every lead he could to find her. He’d killed his future as a fine artist looking for her and had never found her, not even a clue as to what had really happened to her. She’d been lost, and she’d stayed lost. He’d failed her.

  The remembered pain of his desperate search washed over him again. Everything he tried was futile. Every resource he explored gave him nothing. He’d lost her, but was never able to let go of her.

  After three years, wrung out and broken, he’d taken time off from his search.

  His painting career was a shambles, and he no longer had any desire to bring it back to life. He’d picked up a camera instead, and started taking pictures rather than painting them, because photographs didn’t pull his attention away from what mattered the way painting did.

  He hated himself for staying behind to paint when TJ wanted him to go with her. He blamed himself for her disappearance.

  If he’d been taking photos, he could have traveled with the band. Could have been with her when the truth behind her nightmares had stepped between the two of them and ripped them apart.

  He could have stopped disaster from happening, and she would never have gotten lost, and he would never have been without her.

  He turned the strip of pictures over again, and looked at the two of them, mugging for the camera. The content of the pictures was standard stuff. One was of the two of them grinning, then one was TJ with her fingers behind his head in a V. Then the two of them kissing like they just heard the world was ending. Another one like that, because they’d got sidetracked. And the last one showed him with his face buried in her neck and her winking at the camera.

  They were . . . cute. What made them magnificent was her. She lit them up like a goddess among mud men.

  “Where did you go?” he asked her winking image. “And why am I chasing you?”

  He slid into the booth, and sat down. She’d wanted him to come here, and it didn’t matter that the photo booth didn’t work. He wasn’t going to get his picture taken. He was here to get the next part of her message. At first he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It was the same booth. The seat was a bit more worn. Kids had scratched more graffiti onto the painted metal walls.

  He sighed, closed his eyes, and remembered TJ with him, the way her warm, soft body pressed up against his, the weight of her head on his shoulder.

  He leaned back, feeling tears creeping to the corners of his eyes. He squeezed them away, swallowed hard a few times and, when he had himself under control, opened his eyes and found himself staring at the ceiling of the boo
th.

  He was looking up at a photograph of his own face, staring straight at him, wearing a bereft expression.

  The picture had been taken through a bus window, and he realized now when TJ had taken it – he’d been in the parking lot the band had left to go on tour. He’d never seen that picture before.

  He took it down and studied it, trying to figure out why the image made him queasy. He looked like a wreck already. He didn’t yet know she was about to vanish from his life. Knowing what that picture actually represented, though – that had to be the cause of his queasiness.

  Except . . . there was something else. A tiny detail out of place that his subconscious mind had spotted but his conscious mind hadn’t yet caught. He kept looking, mentally dividing the photograph into a grid, and going over each square in turn.

  And there it was.

  Brandon was in the parking lot, too.

  Brandon, who didn’t like TJ well enough to see her off, and who seemed to be keeping himself out of sight anyway.

  He stood deep in the background, leaning on the back of a white sedan that looked like a rental car.

  And Brandon wasn’t looking at TJ. He was staring at Mike, and though his face in the picture was small, the image was clear. The expression on Brandon’s face was one of fury. Despair. Pain.

  Longing.

  Longing?

  Mike stopped and little pieces of his friendship rearranged themselves into a new pattern, and took on a different shape.

  Brandon’s words as he was getting ready to flee his third wedding rang through Mike’s memory: “Hell, let’s both just swear off women right now. I have all the damn tickets with me. We can go to Aruba, drink ourselves stupid, and do things we’ll both regret that don’t involve getting married.”

  Mike got out of the booth feeling like an old man, his knees weak and his heart racing. He leaned against the frame of the photo booth and looked down into the tray.