Ashes to Ashes (Experiment in Terror #8) (5 page)

She glanced up at him, brushing
her light brown hair out of her face. “It’s no problem. It’s nice
to have a change of scenery from time to time. You sure you’re
comfortable with me being here?”

“
Any friend of
Rebecca’s is a friend of mine,” he said, and then gestured over to
the kitchen counter. “Instructions are there. Call us if you have
any problems.”

I waved goodbye to Fat Rabbit
while he bounded past Ana Rita and over to Dex where he delivered a
bunch of last minute sloppy kisses. Once we were in the elevator, I
looked over at him. “She seemed nice.”

He shrugged. “As long as the
dog is alive when we come back, I don’t care.” I guess I was
staring at him for too long, studying the set of his firm jaw,
because he looked over at me with interest. “What?”

“
Nothing,” I
said. Like hell I was going to tell him I was feeling unworthy
because the dog sitter happened to be a hot chick. I needed to get
the fuck over myself before I royally screwed things up one day. A
guy can only tell you you’re beautiful so many times before it
seems like a lost cause, and I didn’t want to seem like one with
Dex.

He studied me for a moment and
I could tell he wanted to say something, but thankfully he let it
go, probably chalking it up to my nerves again. Once in the parking
garage, we loaded our bags in the Highlander, Dex having brought
the camera equipment down earlier, and headed off to pick up
Rebecca.

We drove down the interstate
until we got to the turnoff at Longview and started heading out to
the Pacific. The minute the Highlander was heading west, away from
the direction of Portland, I let out the longest breath of air.

Rebecca, who had been talking
nonstop about a chick she met at a party the night before, leaned
forward and tapped me on the shoulder. “Relax, Perry.”

I shot her a smile over my
shoulder. Even though we were heading to the coast to look for
ghost children, she still looked fabulous in a retro cherry-printed
white sundress, a lace cardigan, and cat-eye shades. “I’m
good.”

“
Anyone feel
like having a late lunch in Seaside?” Dex asked.

“
As long as
we’re at Uncle Al’s by seven, sure,” I said. I used to go to
Seaside all the time as a child so it would be nice to visit the
quaint town with its promenade, crashing waves, and old timey
shops. I hoped I could avoid the enormous candy stores where I used
to spend hours picking out saltwater taffy.

An hour later we rolled into
town, wrestling with early-season tourists for a parking spot. We
grabbed a quick bite to eat at a chowder place that Dex swore on
the bible was the best he ever had, and he wasn’t far off. We still
had a bit of time before we headed down the coast again, so I
suggested we go for a walk on the beach. It was sunny and warm,
with just a light breeze, and on the Oregon Coast you had to take
advantage of that when you could. I guess Rebecca thought we wanted
some privacy because she told us to go ahead; she wanted to do some
shopping in town. I didn’t know what she could possibly buy aside
from chocolate-covered bacon and clothing with tacky seagulls
printed all over them, but we left her to her own devices and
headed out to the sand.

“
Fuck me, this
feels good,” Dex said as we stood at the top of the steps before
heading down onto the beach. The ocean was blue and glittering from
the sun, the sand glowing golden white. Kids ran up and down with
their kites, making sandcastles and running back from the cold
surf.

Dex took in a deep breath.
“Feel that sea air. That’s got to be good for you.”

I gave him a funny look,
shielding my eyes with my hand. “We live by the ocean, Dex.”

“
Bah. Puget
Sound doesn’t count,” he said. “I mean the real ocean. This.
There’s nothing between us right now and Japan. Just water and
waves. Makes you feel free.”

“
You don’t
feel free otherwise?”

He gave me a lopsided grin and
took my hand in his. “Come on.”

He led me down through the
dunes, my boots slipping awkwardly as I walked, until we came to
the hard-packed sand near the pounding surf. We walked side by
side, not saying anything to each other, just watching the people
around us, the miles of flawless beach, the sand dollars that
crunched under our feet.

We stopped where the
pine-dotted bluffs of Ecola State Park jutted out into the water
and the beach curved inward, and sat down on a washed up log. Out
on the waves, surfers vied for the perfect set, looking like
vertical seals in their shiny black wetsuits.

The light wind tossed my hair
into my mouth, already tasting like salt, my vision blurred by the
strands. I felt Dex’s fingers on my face, tucking my hair behind my
ears.

“
Feels
familiar,” he said in a low voice. “Doesn’t it?”

I thought about it for a second
and realized it did. Even though the cameras were back in the car
and we were just sitting here looking at the coast, the smell of
sea spray, the sound of surf and the feel of sand under my feet
brought me back to when we first met each other, just an hour south
of where we were.

I looked him over, remembering
how he was when I first met him. He still had on the same newsboy
cap, though now his eyes were dark and shiny instead of dark and
manic. There was no cigarette dangling from his crooked smile and
his mustache was trimmed beyond rapist standards. It was still Dex
but now he was my Dex. It was kinda hard to wrap my head around it
now that we were back at the beginning.

“
It feels
good,” I told him. “Weird. But good.”

“
Just like
me,” he said before sucking in his lower lip and turning his gaze
to the shore.

“
You’re better
than good,” I said.

He nodded with a smile. “And
weirder than weird?”

“
I think we
both are, when you think about it. You’re the only person I know
that knows what I’m talking about when I say I saw the creepy lady
in black at the convenience store.”

He pulled the brim of his cap
down, shielding his eyes from the glaring sun, and stared at the
grains of sand that danced at his boots, whipped around by the
wind. “I’m starting to think the douche magoose who works there
thinks we’re both a bit nuts.”

“
His name is
Paul,” I said sternly, sticking up for the harmless hipster who
works at the store across the street from us. “And yeah, he
probably does. I just pretend I don’t see her. I do that with
everyone.”

He gave me a sideways glance.
“How often do you see them?”

It suddenly struck me as odd
that even though Dex and I suffered from the same affliction and
were intimate with each other on a daily basis, we never ever
talked about the things we saw. I chose to suffer in silence, even
though I knew he’d understand if I told him.

I brushed a wayward strand out
of my eyes, mulling it over. “At least once a day. I think. It’s
hard to tell, in Seattle anyway. Sometimes I think I’m looking at a
ghost but it turns out to be a meth head.”

He put his elbows on his knees
and his fingers together like a steeple. “Do you ever get
scared?”

I snorted. “Yeah. Of
course.”

I mean, they were ghosts. We
weren’t seeing puppies. We were seeing the dead, and both of us
knew very well that the dead had the power to kill us. Of course,
they had the power to kill anyone, but when they found someone who
was actually able to see them, able to communicate with them, it
made things a bit riskier. They wanted to be around us, they wanted
the attention they so rarely got. That’s why when we went ghost
hunting with Rebecca, she was never in any real danger. It’s not
that she wasn’t scared herself, there were a few times where she
was freaking out on behalf of what we said we were seeing, but we
both knew the ghosts wouldn’t usually bother with her. She didn’t
see them, so she didn’t really exist herself. Sometimes I felt like
Dex and I were the ghosts—that the dead could only see us—and every
other normal person was just a passing shadow to them.

“
Me too,” he
said, his eyes focusing now on the surfers. “I keep thinking I’ll
get used to it, but I never really do. Some days I can just kind
of, you know, gloss over them. The old man bleeding on the sidewalk
that people are walking past…I can almost pretend he’s real. As if
that fucking makes it better. But I can ignore it. Then sometimes I
have a strung out woman with a broken neck in my face, flies coming
out of her nose and…” He trailed off and I saw a shudder roll
through him.

I reached for him, putting my
hand gently on his leg. “I know what you mean.”

“
And then it
just slaps me in the face. Hey, I’m a fucking freak. Hey, this is
the reason I was put away in a mental institute. Hey, this is never
ever going to go away.”

“
Unless we go
on medication,” I said quietly.

He shook his head. “No way,
baby. I’ve seen the light. I can’t go back to hiding from it. This
is me. This is us. No other way around it, we just have to deal.”
He tilted his head down and eyed me. “You know that. It’s us
against the world.”

We both fell into silence that
was occasionally punctuated by the cry from a soaring gull. How
right he was.

Eventually he cleared his
throat and gestured to the houses that lined the beach to the right
of us. “Could you imagine yourself living here in five, ten
years?”

I eyed the houses, all of them
grand with large landscaped lots and views to die for. “Sure. I
guess. It’s nice here. But I think I’d have to be independently
wealthy.”

“
So say you
were. Say you could live anywhere. Where would you
live?”

I pursed my lips as I looked at
him curiously. “Why are you asking?”

“
Why not?
We’ve never really discussed our future with each other…have
we?”

I swallowed hard, those damn
butterflies making an appearance in my insides.

“
Of course,”
he went on, “I’m being a twat in assuming that I’m actually in your
future…”

I gazed at him steadily, my
eyes focusing on his ear, where just the tip had been left scarred
from his encounter with the voodoo priestess in New Orleans. “Dex.
I just got a tattoo for you. I let some humorless dude brand me
with a needle and ink in a place I look every single day.” I waved
my wrist at him. “Of course you’re in my future. You’re the only
thing I know about the future.”

His eyes blazed passionately
before he broke his stare. “Then if that’s true…where do you see
us?”

Now what was he getting at?
What did he want me to say? That in five years I wanted to be
married to him, to have his babies, to be putting up a white picket
fence? These were dreams that I rarely allowed myself to
entertain…none of that ever seemed possible for us, no matter how
in love we were.

“
I see
us…happy,” I answered feebly.

“
Doing the
show?”

“
I don’t
know. I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel like enough, if you know
what I mean.” His blank stare told me he didn’t. So much for mind
reading. “I mean, I think, I
feel
, like the show is a means to
an end for now…but it’s also the beginning of something, not the
end. I think one day we’ll be doing something that’s
more…respectable. Something that matters.”

“
And
me?”

“
And you’re
there with me. I don’t know what it is, but we’re doing it
together.”

“
I don’t think
you can count wild monkey sex as a career, Perry.”

“
I’m counting
it as a perk,” I said with a smile. “But I think we’re both
destined for something more. I’ve always felt that, right from the
very start. I think in five, ten years, Experiment in Terror will
be a memory. A scary, kind of fun and meaningful memory, but
something in the past.”

“
And we could
be living in Seattle…or Seaside…”

I took my hand off his knee and
started pushing my fingers into the cool sand. “Anywhere. San
Francisco. Boston. Anywhere. As long as I’m with you, I’m
happy.”

I could feel his eyes boring
into me, and by the time I looked back up, he had taken out his
phone and was glancing at it. “We oughta get back to Rebecca. She’s
probably getting sucked into a timeshare by now or getting cotton
candy stuck in her hair.”

Dex helped me up off the log
and took his sweet time brushing the sand and bark off my backside.
When we were back at the Lewis and Clark statue at the end of the
promenade, he put his arm around me and pulled me in close. “Are
you ready to say hi to Uncle Al and your dopey cousins?”

Are you ready
to start making amends with your family
,
is what he was really asking, even though my uncle Al was barely
part of the equation.

I let the strength and warmth
of Dex’s hold wash over me and nodded. As long as he was at my
side, I’d manage.

At least I’d try.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was just before seven when
Dex pulled the Highlander down a coastal lane past the beach town
of Manzanita. Uncle Al’s property took up a large chunk of land
that I was sure the state was eager to own. There were pastures and
an abandoned barn where an old dairy farm used to be, a couple of
miles of beachfront, as well as a small forest that dipped into the
shores of Nehalem Bay. And, of course, somewhere on the bluffs, the
charred remains of a lighthouse that may or may not have blown up
on our behalf.