Hitchers

by Will McIntosh

  I pressed my forehead to the window. This was a stupid thing to be worried about. The way things were going it wasn’t going to matter. It was pretty clear both Lorena and Summer were not going to survive this. There was serious doubt I would survive this. On top of all that, I had no idea how Summer felt about me. I’d left my wife to be electrocuted in a rowboat, and goaded my twin sister into jumping to her death. I wasn’t exactly a prize.

  “I’m sorry,” Lorena said, her voice low.

  I looked at her. “What?”

  “I’m sorry. Don’t worry about it.”

  I nodded. She took my hand and squeezed; I squeezed back and went back to watching out the window.

  There were National Guard troops at most of the intersections, people in olive fatigues who looked like they wanted to go home. The military always wanted a clearly defined mission; this assignment must make them crazy.

  “What do you hear from your friend at FEMA?” I asked Mick.

  Mick shook his head in disgust. “They’re mostly taking a wait and see attitude. I pointed him toward your posting about what happened to your mate Dave, and he said they’d come across a similar case, but didn’t see how to capitalize on it on a larger scale. So they’re waiting.”

  So much for the cavalry riding in to rescue us at the last minute. It occurred to me that that would make a good Toy Shop strip. The National Guard gallop into the toy shop on horseback to help Tina get free of Little Joe’s ghost, and stand around doing nothing, asking if anyone has any hay.

  It was a strange sight, the three of us and a bodyguard Mick had hired, hanging out in a hospital room. Mick was right about the fame thing—he could have asked them to vacate an entire wing of the hospital for a couple of hours and they would have obliged.

  “How long do you think she’ll be?” Lorena asked.

  The muscular man with the black-rimmed glasses glanced at Lorena, then back out the window. Grandpa wasn’t going to get another chance to take a swing at Mick, or anyone else.

  “It’s got to be a nightmare in there. I’m not convinced she’ll even be able to locate him,” I said.

  “Am I part of the nightmare?” Lorena asked.

  I turned, surprised. “What?”

  “Whenever you talk about The Returned there’s this tone of dread and disgust in your voice. The prospect of a lot of dead people in one place constitutes a nightmare. I’m one of them, you know.” As if I could forget that, with her voice the way it was, her quavering hands.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Somehow I never connected you to the rest of them. It’s like, I don’t know, like you were there by mistake.”

  Lorena rested her chin on her fist, stared at her feet. “No one gets there by mistake.”

  The squirming in my muscles started up. Grandpa’s turn again. “He’s coming,” I managed to say to the bodyguard, then I gritted my teeth until I no longer had teeth.

  Grandpa eyed the bodyguard and grunted. “If I was in me own body, in me prime, I might have a go at you.” He stayed in his chair.

  I wasted no time turning toward Deadland. If Summer had managed to make the trip she might be grateful to hear a friendly voice. I braced myself, not sure what to expect.

  As soon as the room came into view, I felt myself slipping, like I was sitting on a greased slide. I had to sort of puff out to keep from falling out of my body; it wasn’t quite like stretching out my arms and legs, not exactly inhaling deeply to expand my chest. It was something in-between that I did instinctively without knowing quite what I was doing.

  Once I felt secured it took a moment to understand what I was seeing. The room seemed larger—more the size of a high school gym than a hospital room. It needed to be, to fit all the bodies. Where the bed should have been was a heap of muttering souls, a giant pudding of entwined bodies. Others were scattered across the floor, some lying, others sitting, a few standing. Yet more were stuck to the walls and ceiling.

  Then I saw Summer. I should not have been able to see her, because she should still be in her body, looking at Deadland but not in it. Instead, she was in it. There was someone on top of her, and she was screaming at him to get off.

  “Summer,” I called.

  “Finn?” She turned and looked for me. Her voice was flat, toneless, the distress washed out of it by this world.

  The man lying across her was huge. He had his face pressed to her thigh; he was shushing, the way you’d comfort a small child. “Hold still now, Andrew’s here to help you along.” Then he pressed his mouth to her thigh, worked his jaw, scraping her leg with his teeth.

  “Get off of her,” I shouted. Soul eater. The words leapt to mind instantly. This was what Krishnapuma had written about, a soul that doesn’t want to blow away, so it replenishes itself.

  He raised his head, looked in my direction. He moved easily, fluidly, immune to the high-G torpor of the world of the dead. “Who said that?”

  “You can’t see me because I’m not dead. But I can see you. Leave her alone.” I had to speak up to be heard over the constant low rumble of the dead, going through their mindless recital of the things they’d said in life. It was like trying to have a conversation at a crowded party.

  The soul eater looked at Summer, then back in my direction. It looked like there were crumbs, or sawdust, on his chin. “Liar. If you’re here, you’re dead. So why can’t I see you?”

  “I’m not dead. Summer’s not dead either.” There seemed to be a lot more flecks blowing off of the soul eater than the rest of the dead.

  The man looked at Summer and laughed, his laugh flat, almost mechanical. “Yeah. She’s just full of life. Ready to frolic in some sunflowers.”

  “He’s telling you the truth, I’m not dead,” Summer said. She struggled to push up onto her elbows but was barely able to get her shoulders off the floor. “Get off of me!”

  “What happened?” I asked Summer.

  “I just slipped out. I guess I leaned a little, and the next thing I knew I was on the floor.”

  The soul eater had gone back to work. Now he lifted his head. “You’re not fooling me for a minute.”

  If I could get Lorena to move backward a few feet, Summer might be able to pull herself back up and into her body. That was assuming the soul eater couldn’t hold her back, and that I could regain control of my body soon enough to get to Lorena before this thing consumed Summer.

  I racked my brain for some other way to help her. I could pop out of my own body, but I wasn’t close enough to reach her and pull her. Plus I wouldn’t be able to get back into my body.

  The soul eater could push her, if he was willing. The problem was he didn’t seem particularly inclined to help us.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” I asked.

  A bit of light entered his flat, grey eyes. “Andy Kozlowski. You recognize it?”

  “Sure I do.” I did, but I couldn’t place it. He’d been some sort of celebrity, years ago.

  He seemed pleased. “When were you born?”

  “Nineteen eighty.”

  “Way too young to have seen my show. So people still remember me?”

  That was enough to jog my memory. He’d been the host of a kid’s show back in the dark ages—the sixties or maybe even the fifties. Once in a while you saw a clip on one of those specials about the golden age of television. His name conjured up vague images of marionettes and a cardboard set. “Sure they do. Absolutely.”

  He made a satisfied humph. “Sometimes when I find a fresh one who’s still talking, I ask. Most say they never heard of me, but I suspect they’re lying to get back at me.” He looked at Summer. “How about you, when were you born?”

  “Nineteen eighty-two.”

  “You ever heard of me?”

  “Sure.” She mustered a little “Are you kidding me?” laugh. “Of course.” I was betting she’d never heard of the guy. Only a pop culture fiend like me would remember a name as obscure as his.

  “Look, help me out, will you?” Summer said. “I’m
not dead. Really. My body is waiting for me, alive and well, just a few feet away. You can save my life, and at the same time it’ll prove I’m not dead.”

  “Hey, if you’re lying here, you’re dead, and if you’re dead you’re fair game.” He sounded offended. “Look, why don’t the three of us have a nice conversation? Otherwise I’m gonna go ahead and eat your face first so you stop aggravating me.”

  If our theory was right, and the hitchers were the ones who didn’t want to be dead, why was this guy still here? He was hanging on tighter than Grandpa, Lorena, Gilly—anyone. This was the type of guy who sawed his own arm off with a butter knife if he got trapped under a fallen tree in the wilderness. Hell, he was eating people to stay together.

  One ghost to a customer. Maybe that was it. He wasn’t strictly one person any longer, even if he seemed to be one person and thought he was one person. He clearly had a strong need to be affirmed. Maybe we could use that to our advantage.

  “Hey, maybe we can make a deal,” I said.

  Andy chuckled. “What, you going to give me a thousand dollars? A new car?”

  “How about information? We can catch you up on what’s happening in the world,” Summer said, taking the words right out of my mouth. I marveled at her guts—she was keeping it together remarkably well.

  He huffed impatiently. “It’s twenty twelve. Barack Obama is president. He’s Black. Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died three years ago.” He held up a finger. “And I died in nineteen seventy-six, so I never even heard Michael Jackson sing.” He seemed to draw satisfaction from our stunned silence. “I keep up. I could eat the heads first, but I enjoy the company. They make better company if you save the head for last.”

  “Why are you bothering her when there’s an entire room of people you could take?” I asked.

  He made a face. “They’re no good. You have to get the fighters or it’s just a waste of time.”

  The fighters? “Who are the fighters?”

  He frowned like he was speaking to a complete idiot. “The fighters . The ones who really, really don’t want to be dead. Like your friend here.” He ran his bottom lip and teeth up Summer’s thigh.

  “Don’t do that,” I cried, almost in perfect unison with Summer.

  “What?” Andy said, lifting his head. “You’re just gonna blow away anyway. I’m just speeding up the process.”

  I didn’t know if that was true, or if being eaten kept you stuck there as well. There were so many things I didn’t understand about this place. At this point it didn’t matter—I didn’t want Summer to be eaten or blow away.

  A part of me stepped back then, wondering at how panicked I was. If Summer couldn’t get back, then Lorena would get a second chance at life. It would be unconscionable to purposely strand Summer here, to not do everything I could to help her, but if there was no way to save her, wasn’t that a good thing?

  It didn’t feel like a good thing. In fact it felt like a remarkably, unequivocally bad thing. I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to a world that didn’t include Summer.

  I tried to set my emotions aside and think. Wasn’t there anything I could offer him that he might want?

  I could offer him me, but that wasn’t a particularly appealing solution. What else? It was hard to think while he scraped away at Summer. There was a pronounced divot in her leg now. I shuddered at the thought of seeing her devoured until she was nothing but a head, then nothing at all.

  The only difference between me and the (Hundreds? Thousands?) of souls he’d eaten was that I could return to the world of the living. He had all the information he needed, but I could send information both ways.

  “Is there anyone you’d like to send a message to on the other side?” I tried. “A son or daughter, maybe?”

  Andrew froze. For a long moment we listened to the mutters and cries of the dead. “If you were alive you could do that, couldn’t you?”

  “I am, and I can.”

  Andrew rose halfway, swung his head from side to side, straining to see me. “How do I know you’re really alive?”

  Try as I might, I couldn’t think of anything convincing I could say or do. “Hell, Andrew, what do you want me to do? I am. A couple of days ago I watched the Bears beat the Colts. I had a turkey sandwich for lunch.”

  “Mayo or mustard?” Andrew asked.

  “What?”

  “Did you have mayo or mustard on the turkey?”

  “Mayo.”

  “Good choice. I miss eating.”

  “I can prove we’re alive,” Summer interrupted.

  “How?” Andrew asked.

  “If you do what we ask, I’m going to disappear back to the other side. If we’re lying, I won’t. You really have nothing to lose.”

  Andrew studied her, his hands still gripping her leg in a manner usually reserved for lovers, or for people clutching drumsticks on Thanksgiving.

  He looked in my direction. “First you deliver a message to my daughter, and come back and tell me what she said. Then I’ll do it. That’s the deal.”

  “No, no, that won’t work,” I said, panicking. “You have to free her first.” There was no telling where this daughter was, if she was still alive thirty-something years later.

  “Why is that?”

  I stammered, trying to come up with a reason. “You’ll just have to trust me. Look, I can do this, and I promise you, it’s the only chance you’re ever going to get. But it has to be our way.”

  He stood, came toward me, again shifting from side to side trying to catch a glimpse of me. “My daughter’s name is Penelope Harbaugh. There shouldn’t be many of those in the phone book. Last I knew she was living in Terre Haute. Here’s what I want you to tell her: Even though I’ve been dead for thirty-five years, I still don’t forgive you, and I never will. You got that? Repeat it back to me.”

  I did. I don’t know what I was expecting from a soul eater. Somehow I thought anyone in this place would be eager to make something right, to send a little light back into the world.

  “Swear. Swear on her life,” he pointed at Summer, “that you’ll deliver the message, then come back and tell me what my daughter said.”

  “I swear it.” They were only words. I would have sworn anything to get Summer out of there and away from him.

  He nodded, satisfied. “Now, what do I do?”

  “Push me,” Summer said. “Finn—is she still sitting in the chair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Push me toward that chair.” She motioned with her eyes.

  The soul eater grabbed Summer by her ankles and dragged her.

  “You’ll feel a pull,” I said. “Go with it. Reach for it.”

  She was gone before I finished the sentence. I wondered if she even got to speak to her brother. Not likely.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” the soul eater said, staring at the spot where Summer had been. “You still there, Mister Finn?”

  “I’m here. Do you believe us now?”

  “Don’t forget your promise.”

  “I won’t.” I would never forget it. That didn’t mean I would fulfill it. “Before I go, can I ask you something? How long do you plan to stay here?”

  “As long as I can,” he said. “Forever, if possible. Who wants to blow away?”

  There was no way to signal Mick that we were done, that we wanted to go home now, so Mick, Lorena, and Grandpa sat in the hospital room watching the news.

  I had a hunch that Summer would be the one to signal we could leave, that I would remain imprisoned behind Grandpa’s eyes for a good while longer. The pattern of progression made it likely I’d be lost for somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours.

  That sensation of being loose, that I might slip out of my body into Deadland, had not vanished when I turned to face front. It was vaguer, less pressing, but it terrified me that it was there at all.

  CHAPTER 34

  When I finally regained control of my body two days later I was shaving in a room at the H
ilton, and I had a raging hangover. I put the razor down and toweled off my face. Grandpa hadn’t finished, so parts of my face would be whiskery, other parts smooth, but finishing was a waste of my precious time. I grabbed my phone and keys, and ran. Running made my head pound even worse.

  When I had watched that Bears game, when I had chatted with Grandma about the weather, I hadn’t understood just how little time I had, just how precious every minute was, how I should make every one count. Now that I was aware, I wondered how I should spend my precious moments.

  I was no closer to shaking Grandpa than I’d been the first time he took possession of me. There was nothing in Deadland to help me. During my latest internment I’d considered one crazy plot after another: drag another soul in with me to oust Grandpa (only one ghost to a customer, after all), or lure a soul eater who would somehow eat Grandpa instead of me. Fantasy. Pure fantasy. There was only one way to exorcize the dead, and that was to take away their drive to return. With Grandpa that wasn’t possible.

  Maybe I could save Mick, or Summer, though. I could think of no better use of the precious moments I had left than to help my friends.

  Friends. Was Summer just my friend? If so, why was the worst part of this the thought of never seeing her again?

  I had loved Lorena, had lost her and mourned her and finally let her go and moved on. The memory of love is not the same as love. Summer had been right all those weeks ago: we weren’t meant to speak to our loved ones again once they leave this world.

  I dialed Summer’s number as I cast about in the parking lot under the Hilton, trying to remember where Grandpa had parked.

  “Where are you?” It was Lorena.

  “Just leaving the Hilton.” I tried to mask the disappointment in my voice. “What’s going on there?”

  “Gilly is working. I’ve been trying to find you, waiting by the phone, worrying.”

  “How long has Mick been gone?”

  “I haven’t been keeping track, but almost as long as you.”

  “How is Gilly doing on the album?” I finally spotted the Maserati, tucked behind a minivan. I dragged the key along the side of it, really grinding it, before getting in.