Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology (19 page)

Trip laughed. “Hardly. Those guys aren’t ghost hunters. They’re
glorified photographers. We don’t stand around taking pictures.” Trip tossed
the screwdriver onto the rotting workbench. “We send the ghosts back where they
belong.”

Wes and Trip weren’t as stupid as Edie had assumed. In fact, if the
two of them had ever bothered to enter the science fair, they would’ve won.
They knew more about science, physics mainly—energy, electromagnetism,
frequency, and matter—than any of the teachers at school. And they were
practically engineers, capable of building almost anything with some wires and
scrap metal. Wes explained that the human body was made up of
electricity—electrical impulses that keep you alive. When a person died,
those impulses changed form, resulting in ghosts.

Edie only understood about half of what he was saying. “How do you
know? Maybe it just disappears.”

Trip shook his head. “Impossible. Energy can’t be destroyed. Physics
101. Those electrical impulses have to go somewhere.”

“So they change into ghosts, just like that?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘just like that.’ I gave you the simplified version,”
Trip said, attaching another wire to his tricked-out calculator.

“What is that thing?” she asked.

“This,” Trip held it up proudly, “is an EMF meter. It picks up
electromagnetic fields and frequencies, movement we can’t detect. The kind
created by ghosts.”

“That’s how we find them,” Wes said, taking a swig from an old can of
Mountain Dew. “Then we kill them.”

~

Edie was still thinking about that day in the garage when she smelled
something horrible coming from outside. It was suffocating—heavy and
chemical, like burning plastic. She rolled up her window, even though the air
inside the Jeep immediately became stifling.

“Don’t you want to let some air in?” the blue-eyed boy ventured.

“I’m more concerned about letting something out.”

He waited for Edie to explain, but she didn’t. “Can I ask you a
question?”

“Shoot,” she said.

“If you believe there’s a ghost on this road, why are you driving out
here all alone at night?”

Edie took a deep breath and said the words she had rehearsed in her
mind since the moment he climbed into the car. “The ghost that haunts Red Run
killed my brother, and I’m going to destroy it.”

Edie watched as the fear swept over him.

The realization.

“What are you talking about? How do you kill a ghost?”

He didn’t know.

Edie took her time answering. She had waited a long time for this.
“Ghosts are made of energy like everything else. Scatter the energy, you
destroy the ghost.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

Edie knocked on the black plastic paneling on her door. It was the
same paneling that covered every inch of the Jeep’s interior. “Ghosts absorb
the electrical impulse around them—from power lines, machines,
cars—even people. I have these two friends who are pretty smart. They
made this stuff. Some compounds conduct electricity,” She ran her palm over the
black paneling. “Others block it.”

“So you’re going to trap a ghost in the car with you and—what?
Wait till it shorts out like a light bulb?”

“It’s not that simple,” Edie said, without taking her eyes off the
road. “Energy can’t be destroyed. You have to disperse it, sort of like blowing
up a bomb. My friends know how to do it. I just have to keep the ghost
contained until I get to their place. They’ll do the rest.”

Tommy glanced at the black paneling. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
His arm wasn’t draped casually over the seat anymore, and his hands were balled
up in his lap.

“Maybe,” she answered. “Maybe not.”

He reached for the handle to roll down his window, but it wouldn’t
turn. “Your window’s—” He paused, working it out in his mind. “It isn’t
broken, is it?”

Edie took her foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop. “You
didn’t really think I’d pick up a hitchhiker on a deserted road in the middle
of nowhere?” She turned toward the blue-eyed boy, a boy she knew was a ghost.
“Did you, Tommy?”

His eyes widened at the sound of his name.

Edie’s heart felt like it was trying to punch its way out of her
chest. There was no way to predict how Tommy’s ghost was going to react. Wes
had warned her that ghosts could psychically attack the living by moving
objects or causing hallucinations, even madness. His mom had walked off the
second-story balcony of their house when Wes was in fourth grade. It was only a
few weeks after she had started hearing strange noises and seeing shadows in
the house. Wes’s father wanted to move, but his mom said she wasn’t going to be
driven out of her house by swamp-water superstition. She didn’t believe in
ghosts. Not until one killed her.

Now Edie was sitting only inches away from a ghost that had already
murdered six people.

But he didn’t look murderous. There was something else lingering in
his blue eyes. Panic. “You can’t stop here.”

“What?”

“There’s something I need to tell you, Edie. But you have to keep
driving. It’s not safe.” He was turning around in his seat, scanning the woods
through the windows.

Edie bit the inside of her cheek again. “What are you talking about?”

Before he had time to respond, the light outside flickered as a shadow
cut through the path of the car’s headlights.

Edie jumped, jerking her eyes back toward the road.

There was a man a few yards away, waving his arms wildly. “Get outta
the car now!”

“It’s too late,” Tommy whispered. “He’s already here.”

“Who?”

“The man who killed me.”

Edie didn’t have a chance to ask him to explain. The man in the road
was still yelling as he moved closer to the car. “Hurry up! Before that
blue-eyed devil skins you alive alike the rest a them!”

Tommy’s ghost grabbed her arm, but she couldn’t feel his touch. “Don’t
listen to him, Edie. He wants to hurt you, the same way he hurt me. And your
brother.”

“What did you say?” The words tore at Edie’s throat like razor blades.

“I didn’t kill any of those kids that died out here. He did.” Tommy
pointed at the man in the road. “I watch the road. I try to make sure no one
stops near his cabin. I tried to warn all of them, but they wouldn’t listen.”

Edie remembered her brother’s last words.

I should have listened…

She had assumed he was referring to the stories—the constant warnings
to stay off Red Run after dark. What if she was wrong? What if he had been
talking about a different warning altogether?

“No.” Edie shook her head. “Those guys beat you to death—”

Tommy cut her off before she could finish. “They didn’t. That’s the story
he told the police. And no one believed a bunch of drunk kids when they denied
it.”

The voice outside was getting louder and more frantic. “Whatever that
spirit’s telling you is a lie! He’s trying to keep you in there with him so he
can kill you! Come on out, sweetheart.”

It was easier to see the man now that he was just a few feet away. He
was about her dad’s age, but worse for the wear. His green John Deere cap was
pulled low over his eyes, and he was wearing an old hunting jacket over his
broad shoulders despite the heat.

He was shifting from side to side nervously, his eyes flitting back
and forth between the woods and the car.

“He’s lying. I swear,” Tommy—it was becoming harder to remember
that he was a ghost, not a regular boy—pleaded. “Why do you think I got
in the car? I wanted to make sure you didn’t stop. He doesn’t like it when
people get this close to his place. Especially teenagers.”

“You expect me to believe some old guy is killing people because
they’re coming too close to his house?” Her voice was rising, a dangerous
combination of fear and anger burning through her veins.

“He’s crazy, Edie. He cooks meth back there at night, and he’s
convinced people can smell it. He’s always been paranoid, but after being
cooped up in a tiny cabin with those fumes for years, it’s gotten worse.”

Edie remember the nauseating stench of melted plastic. She never would
have recognized it. Still. The man was pacing in front of the car, wringing his
hands nervously. There was something off about him. But then again, he was
facing off against a ghost.

Tommy was still talking. “That’s what he was doing the night I got
lost in the woods, only back then it was something else. He’s been cooking up
drugs in his cabin for years, supplying dealers in the city. I was looking for
this girl who wandered off, and I got all turned around. I didn’t realize how
far I’d walked. There was a cabin…” He paused, looking out at the man in the
green cap. “Let’s just say, I knocked on the wrong door.”

The man stopped in the path of one of the headlights, a beam of light
creating shadows across his face. “You can’t trust the dead. No matter what
they say, sweetheart.”

Edie reached for the door handle.

Tommy—the boy-ghost—grabbed her other hand. For a second,
Edie thought she felt the weight of his hand on hers. It was impossible, but it
gave her goose bumps all the same. “He beat me to death, Edie. Then he dragged
my body all the way back to the party and left me in the middle of Red Run.”

Edie didn’t know who to believe. One of them was lying. And if she
made the wrong choice, she was going to die tonight.

Tommy’s blue eyes were searching hers. “I would never hurt you, Edie.
I swear.”

She thought about everything Wes and Trip had taught her, which boiled
down to one thing: You can’t trust a ghost. She thought about her brother lying
in the road.
I should have listened.
He could’ve been talking about the
man in the green cap—the one begging her to get out of the car right now.

What was she thinking? She couldn’t trust a ghost.

Edie threw the door open before she could change her mind. The smell
of burnt plastic flooded into the Jeep.

“Edie, no!” Tommy’s eyes were terrified, darting back and forth
between Edie and the man in the road. In that moment, she knew he was telling
the truth.

She reached for the door to pull it shut again as the man in the green
cap rushed toward the driver’s side of the car. When he passed through the
headlights, Edie saw him grab the buck knife from his waistband.

Edie tried to close the door, but it felt like she was wading through
syrup. She wasn’t fast enough. But the man in the green cap was, his arm coming
around the edge of the door. His knife was in his hand, reddish-brown lines
streaking the dull blade.

“Oh, no you don’t, you little bitch!” The man grabbed the metal frame
before she could close the door, the blade of the knife waving dangerously
close to her face.

Tommy appeared just outside the open car door, only inches from the
man wielding the knife. Before the man had a chance to react, Tommy rushed
forward and stepped right through him.

Edie saw the man’s eyes go wide for a second, and he shivered.

“Back up!” Tommy shouted.

Edie didn’t think about anything but Tommy’s voice as she turned the
key, grinding the ignition. She threw the car into reverse, slamming her foot
on the gas.

The man swore, his hand uncurling from the handle of the knife. He
tried to hold onto the doorframe, his filthy nails clawing at the metal.

Then his fingers slide away, and Edie saw him hit the ground.

She heard the scream as the Jeep bucked and the front tire rolled over
his body. Edie didn’t stop until she could see him lying facedown in the dust.
She could see the crushed bones, forced into awkward angles. He wasn’t moving.

Edie didn’t notice Tommy standing next to the car. He pulled the door
open, bent metal scraping through the silence, and knelt down next to her. “Are
you okay?”

“I think I killed him.” Her voice was shaking uncontrollably.

“Edie, look at me.” Tommy’s was calm. She leaned her head against the
seat, turning her fact toward his. “You didn’t have a choice. He was going to
kill you.”

She knew Tommy was right. But it didn’t change the fact that she had
just killed a man, even if that man was a monster.

Tommy’s blue eyes were searching her brown ones, their faces only inches
apart. “What made you trust me?”

“Your eyes,” Edie answered. “The eyes don’t lie.”

“Even if you’re a ghost?

Edie smiled weakly. “Especially if you’re a ghost.”

She looked out at the road. For the first time in forever, it was just
a road—dirt and rocks and trees. She tried to imagine what it would be
like to spend every night out here, so close to the place where you died.

“You’re the first person who ever believed me,” Tommy
 
said. “The first person I saved.”

“Then why did you stay here for so long?”

Tommy looked away. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Edie remembered Wes telling her that most ghosts couldn’t leave a
place where they had died traumatically. They were chained to that spot, trying
to find a way to right the wrong.

When he turned back to face her, Edie noticed the sadness lingering in
his eyes. And something else…

Tommy was fading, flickering like static on an old TV set. He stared
down at his hands, turning them slowly as if seeing them for the first time.

“I think you can move on now,” Edie said gently. “You know, to
wherever you’re supposed to be. Red Run doesn’t need protecting anymore.”

“I don’t know where I’m supposed to be. But wherever it is, I’m not
ready to go.” Tommy was still fading. “There are so many things I never had a
chance to do.”

Edie ran her hand along the black paneling inside the jeep, and looked
at him. “Get in.”

Tommy hesitated for a second, smiling. “Just don’t take me to meet the
friends who made that stuff.”

Edie smiled back at him. “You can trust me.”

As she drove away, Red Run disappearing into the darkness, Edie felt
the weight of this place disappear along with it. “So where do you want to go?”