Dying For You (7 page)

“You figured it out.” Ken-Jack looked absurdly relieved. And adorable, with the dish towel slung over one shoulder. He smelled like Dawn detergent. “I thought you might. I’ve been trying and trying to think of how to tell you—”

“My ass!”

“Ooooh,” Nikki said.

“You’ve only had a million chances to bring it up and you blew it every time. How about after we made love last night, buster? Huh? How about then?”

“Jesus, I can’t leave this place for one night without all hell breaking loose,” Nikki commented.

Jack put his hands on her shoulders, dark eyes serious. “Cathy, you’re right.”

“I
know
I’m right. I’m not an idiot. Nikki?”

“That’s right,” she said. “She’s not an idiot.”

“I meant go away.”

“I should have told you,” Jack was saying. “But to be honest, I couldn’t think how. I was afraid I’d scare you. There just isn’t a nice way to say ‘when Ken died I took over his body’ without sounding like a bad man. And I would never want you to think I was a bad man. I love you, Cathy. I’d do anything for you.”

“Oh. Well…” She chewed on her lower lip. “You’re kind of taking the wind out of my sails, here…”

“Let me get this straight,” Nikki began. “Your house was haunted by this guy, who, when you killed Ken off in a fit of rage—”

“I did
not
—”

“—took over Shirtless Ken’s body. Well, who’s knocking down all the pictures?”

“Ken,” Cathy and Jack said in unison.

“Man, no wonder he’s pissed. Not only did you steal his body and put the moves on his girl, he’s now relegated to the spirit world and stuck in this termite trap? Bogus!”

“You’re taking this awfully well,” Cathy said suspiciously.

“I’m the one who keeps getting almost eye-gouged with flying glass,” Nikki reminded her. “And Ken
was
an asshole. This whole passive-aggressive crap would be just like him. It makes sense, sort of.”

“I want you to know,” Jack said, his hands still warm on her shoulders, which was unbelievably distracting, “that I didn’t take over Ken’s body. I was sort of…sort of pulled into it. You’ll never know and I don’t have the words…I was so happy when I woke up in the hospital. I couldn’t believe I’d been given a second chance after all these years. A second chance—”

“Ugh, don’t say it,” Nikki warned.

“—with you.”

“Okay, I’m officially barfed out now.”

“Shut
up,
Nikki. Really, Jack?”

“Why else do you think I wanted to come back here? Not just because I grew up here. I wanted to be close to you. When my sister moved away, I thought it would be my time to just…leave. But then I saw you…you looked so…so lost and so determined. And you were so pretty…”

“And don’t forget about her cute split ends.”

“Nikki!”

Jack laughed. “I even liked your friend.”

“Did you like me, or did you
like
me like me?”

“Nikki.”

“And I-I couldn’t leave. When I heard you talking on the phone with your family, I thought, this woman is alive, and she’s as lonely as I am. And I just…couldn’t leave you.”

“Thanks,” Nikki commented. “Thanks a lot. What am I, chopped liver?”

“Nikki, get it through your head: this is not about you.” She looked back up at Jack. “I went to see your sister today, Jack. She told me everything. About what happened to you in the basement. About why you never left her.”

“I’d like to go see her, too. If I could just get you to drive me—”

“
That’s
why you’re a shittier driver than me,” Nikki said. “You’re about a hundred years out of practice!”

“Not quite a hundred,” Jack said dryly. “It’s—”

“Basement!”

Jack flinched. “Don’t do that.”

“Okay. Basement!”

“I’d kill her, except I get the feeling she’d never leave,” Cathy said, glaring at her friend.

“What are we going to do about Ken?” Nikki asked. “We can’t just let him hang around knocking pictures off the walls.”

“What is this ‘we’ stuff?” Cathy asked. “And frankly, I have no idea.”

“It’s very difficult to manifest,” Jack said quietly. “If I affected something in the physical world, it would often take days to build my strength back up. And I had things to hang on for. My sister, for example. Ken…Ken has nothing but his anger.”

“Well, he was a pretty angry guy…”

Jack shook his head. “It’s not enough. It’s really not.” He
squeezed Cathy’s fingers. “Love is. Love can last for years. Anger…anger wears off.”

“Barf again. So he’ll just…just fade away?”

“Something like that.”

Relieved, Cathy said, “As long as he can’t hurt anyone on the way out.”

“You could take a vacation,” Nikki suggested. “You’ve already got the time off from work. Go to an island or Disney World or something. Maybe…get to know each other. I bet when you come back, Ken will be long gone.”

Jack smiled. “What a wonderful idea.”

“I agree,” Cathy said. “Plus, if we’re not here, we won’t have pop-in guests every third hour.”

“What, I’m not going with you guys?”

“Forget it, Nik.”

“Nikki, you’re very nice,” Jack began tactfully, “but—”

“No you’re not,” Cathy said. Impulsively she squeezed Jack so hard his eyes bulged. “Besides, this is me-and-Jack time. No pals allowed.”

“So that’s it? You’re gonna take off with a guy who’s been haunting your house for a zillion years? A guy you barely know? That’s not like you, Cath.”

“I know,” she said, and smiled at Jack.

For Daniel and Lisa,
who introduced us to the real paradise
that is Little Cayman.

Also, thanks to the Cannon Falls Bombers,
and all those pep rallies back in high school,
which have made the Cannon fight song stick
into my brain like a fishhook.

The events of this story take place about a year and a half after the events in “The Fixer-Upper” (
Men at Work
, Berkley Sensation anthology, December 2004). Also, snorkeling is usually a harmless activity.

Cannon, Cannon, loyal are we.

Red and black we’ll shoot you to victory.

So fight fight fight our motto will be.

Rah-rah-rah and sis-boom-bah!

Fight fight fight fight!

Go for the red and black!

—
CANNON FALLS HIGH SCHOOL FIGHT SONG

You’d bitch if they hung you with a new rope.

—
ALEXANDER DAVIDSON III

“I see dead people.”

“In your dreams…while you’re awake? Dead people like in graves? In coffins?”

“Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.”

—
FROM
THE SIXTH SENSE

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA
FEBRUARY 21, 1975

Jack watched with interest as his sister’s nosy-body neighbor dragged a GP (General Psychic) into his house.

It was actually his sister’s house; it had passed to her on their parents’ deaths. But they both knew whose house it really was. Jack had lived there for many years. His sister was getting on, but he felt just the same.

“You can’t mean to
live
like this,” Nosy-body was saying. “Who lives like this?”

“Well.” His sister looked around helplessly, but Jack decided not to come to her assistance, this once. She really did need to learn how to stand up for herself. It was his fault she couldn’t, and now it was too late. Forty years too late. But if
an old dog like him could learn, maybe she could, too. “Well, we get along fine, Jack and me.”

“No, no. You must get him out. You can’t have a—a dead thing running amok in your own house. It’s—outrageous! Your chakra and your aura are completely screwed up.” Nosy-body rattled the purple beads around her neck as if to make a point. She was wearing a black T-shirt that had a pair of giant red lips on the front. She was an infant at twenty-seven.

“Well, it would have been Jack’s house if he hadn’t broken his neck in the basement,” his sister said reasonably, and Jack almost groaned. “Really, I think of it as his house.”

The medium, who hadn’t said a word to that point, was looking around at the carefully kept Victorian with an almost bored look on his face. He was holding hands with a small, curly-haired blond boy, a boy with the bluest eyes and dirtiest green coat Jack had ever seen. The child looked like an angel down on his luck.

“You’ll never get the damned thing out,” the angel said.

“Think so, Tommy?” The medium, who had the same curly hair (less vivid than the boy’s), dirty clothes, and blue eyes, seemed unsurprised at the child’s tone and language.

“Dad, you can’t do it. Nobody could do it.” The child paused, his eyes narrowing with thought. “Maybe Mr. Graham in London. Nobody here.”

“Sorry, then, ladies,” the medium said.

“But you haven’t even taken your coats—”

“If Tommy—”

“Tom,” the child corrected, bored.

“If my son says it’s a no-go, it’s a no-go. He’s much stronger
than me, you see.” The medium offered a small smile, which didn’t match his eyes.

“Besides, he’s not hurting anybody,” the child added, apparently in response to the stunned look on the faces of the two ladies. “He helps you, doesn’t he, Miss Carroll?”

“Well, yes, I don’t know how I’d get along without my Jacky.…”

“Yeah, well, that’s the problem,” the child said. “S’long as you both feel so strongly about helping each other out, he’ll never leave. And nobody will ever get him out.”

“Er…oh.”

“Good-bye,” the child said, almost politely.

“Good-bye, dear. Thank you—thank you both—for coming.”

“Bye, Jack.”

Jack knocked once in response, making Nosy-body jump. The child didn’t even turn, and the father was halfway out the door already.

That poor boy! He was, what? Four? Five? And how much of the human condition had he already seen? Murder, sex, greed, thievery, vanity—it made Jack shiver to think about it.

“Not one of my finer moments,” his sister said when they had left.

He knocked.

“I know, I know, I should have told Sharon I wasn’t interested. Because I wasn’t, you know. She just has a way of—taking over, I guess. All that chakra talk makes a lady tired.” She paused, waiting, and then added, “And I’d never get rid of you, darling.”

Sulking, Jack didn’t respond.

“But I must admit I was curious.”

Jack restrained himself from snorting.

“And I also have to admit I wanted to meet a famous medium.” While she chattered, she set the pot on for tea and rummaged through the cupboards. She was a tea snob, and would no sooner use a Lipton bag than go outside without a girdle.

“Thomas Fillman is supposed to be the most powerful psychic in the Midwest. But I see it’s Thomas Jr. who’s the real talent. That poor baby! Better at five than his father ever was, and now he’s being dragged all over town to dig through old houses, looking for ghosts.…I could cry right now.”

Well, don’t,
Jack thought.
It’s none of our business.

Still, he couldn’t help wondering, as the years passed, how the child was doing, and if he was happy.

LITTLE CAYMAN, 2006

Nikki floated through the azure waters beyond Little Cayman like a—well, like an angel, thank you very much! Her long blond hair was fanning out behind her as she twirled and whirled through the water, dancing like a water sprite, wriggling through schools of fish like…like…

Like someone who’s got to get a grip, she thought, and snorted, and then had to swim to the surface.

She spit out the mouthpiece, along with a mouthful of seawater. “Angel!” she crowed, and only the gulls heard her. They spun overhead, laughing at her. Natch! Angel. Shit.

She dipped her head back in the water, skimming the long strands away from her face (ah, they were like strands of kelpy,
smelly seaweed, that was romantic, right?), then adjusted her mask and bit into the big rubber nipple.

Then she dove back down to examine the glory that was Little Cayman Island. She should have gone back and re-slathered sunscreen, but dammit, she was having too much fun.

And soon enough, she’d be out here constantly; Pirate’s Point Resort wasn’t that big—maybe ten guests, total, and most of them on the boat all day. Cathy and Jack, who didn’t dive, would be necking all over the place. Nikki felt like enough of a third wheel at home; she had no intention of feeling like that on her vacation.

It wasn’t their fault, and they weren’t doing anything wrong. Cathy was newly in love, ditto Jack, and after eighty zillion years, Jack was starved for sex, touching, hugging, kissing, even handshakes. A trip to the store to get milk could quickly end up an X-rated straight-to-video incident.

She was nuts to have accepted their invitation—it was their anniversary, for God’s sake.

That said, she’d also have been nuts to turn down a free trip to the Cayman Islands…although why Cathy had a jones on about coming to a place famous for scuba diving, when neither of them dived, was a mystery. It was like deciding to go to Antarctica when you didn’t like penguins, or the cold.

She swam down, wiggling her flippers to get as close as possible to the sea floor. Schools and schools of fish swam by, ignoring her—to them she was just another skinny tourist in a Target bikini. But Christ! It was like being on the Discovery Channel. Fish and coral—live coral, no less—and birds above
and turtles below. Unreal. Here she’d been going to Disney World every year, with no idea what she was missing.

She saw something out of the corner of her eye and turned to get a better look, then jerked back, startled. Stingray. Nice-sized, too—a six-foot wingspan. It wouldn’t hurt her; rays were huge but gentle, and this one was startled, and as it flinched away from her, the barbed tail whacked her, quite by accident, across the side of her face.

But that was okay, because they were harmless, you just had to watch out for the—for the thing—the thing on the end of their—

Luckily, her face didn’t hurt. And the blood in the water—it probably wasn’t hers. And even if it did attract sharks, there was nothing in these waters that could hurt her. Not even rays—they only stung you if you stepped on them by accident. That’s what her instructor told her, and he knew his shit. Besides, it hadn’t even hurt.