Ghost College (10 page)

“
Helping makes me feel good.” And it kept the darkness from consuming me, which of course would have caused me to consume others. I looked at it as a little preventive health care for the universe.

“
What kind of problems do you help with?”

“
Any problems.”

“
How do you fix them?”

“
Any way I can. Whatever it takes.”

“
But you’re my age...I don’t understand.”

“
You don’t need to understand,” I said.

“
But these are adults.”

“
I fix adults, too,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

She had completely forgotten her food. She wondered if some punk teenager could help her with her problems, and I was beginning to suspect her problems were very, very big.

“Look,” I said. “None of us wind up in night school without a seriously screwed-up life. All the normal kids are getting trained for day jobs in regular society. We’re the sort they don’t want peeing in the pool. So whatever it is, it’s okay.”

She chewed without tasting, staring blankly out the window at her past.

I reached out and gently touched her forearm with my finger. I knew what the reaction was going to be, and so I was ready for her to shiver.

“
I can help you, Parker. But you need to tell me what’s wrong,” I said, and something interesting happened as my fingers rested on her arm, as I spoke sincerely and honestly with her. The darkness in my heart, the dark whisperings that sometimes filled my mind, subsided. Subsided significantly. I almost, almost, felt human again.

“
There is a man who likes killing girls.”

For most people, something like that would be a shock. But I’m not most people. I’m not even people.

“That’s terrible.” I didn’t ask if she was making up a story. She wasn’t.

“
You believe me?”

“
Who is this man?”

She turned and looked at me, and I saw the tears in her impossibly round eyes.

“My dad,” she said.

Chapter Three

I hoped this wasn’t a pervert case. I
hate
pervert cases.

“
And you know this how?” I asked.

“
That part I need to fill you in on later.” Her once-sweet, shy exterior had now turned a tad darker. Which was okay with me. Darker was right up my alley.

“
So what can you tell me?” I now grabbed a pencil from my pocket and began writing on a piece of paper.

“
What are you writing?” she asked abruptly.

“
Don’t worry,” I said. “My notes will be cryptic.”

She didn’t get the wry humor. “Alright, my dad is one of the most intelligent men in the world. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. He’s a world-renowned physicist. He does a lot of research for Berkeley and Ivy League schools. Over the past eight years he’s been delving into a different, ah, kind of scientific method.”

“Different how?”

“
It’s not even really scientific. It’s more...metaphysical. To put it simply, my dad runs a cult. He has this big compound called ‘Cloudland’ on a property near Mount Shasta.”

“
A Moonie-type thing? Branch Davidians? Suicidal comet-hoppers?”

I wondered if she would catch the references, but she didn’t miss a beat. I guess when your dad runs a cult, you’re up on all things cultish. She said, “One man’s cult is another man’s paradise. But this is way bigger than just one power-tripping dabbler in the dark arts. He’s converting some of the greatest minds in the world into believing his theories.”

“And how does killing girls play into it?”

“
Just like with every cult, people eventually wise up and want to leave.”

“
And he kills them before they leave?”

“
Well, he also wants the blood sacrifice, I guess. Killing two birds with one stone.”

“
Why only girls?”

“
Because he believes women are the conduit to the mystical power he wants to channel. The ‘feminine divine,’ I’ve heard him call it.”

“
So mostly women are in his cult.”

“
Right. Men are just not that attracted to a religion where they are second fiddle. Plus, he kind of likes to be the center of attention. He’s a total alpha male.”

“
So what do you want me to do?” This was becoming a lot larger than anything I had previously taken on. There were a lot of layers to this.

“
I want you to stop him.”

This was a pretty tall order for someone who, as far as she knew, was just another loser in night school. “Stop him how?”

“Any way you can.”

I would have thought she was a little out of her gourd if I didn’t suspect she was telling me the truth. I get a feeling from people, and more often than not it’s the right feeling. From her, I was experiencing honesty and fear and confusion. Still, even a crazy person could project honesty and fear. And pretty much everyone on the planet had a heavy case of confusion.

As I said, night school isn’t exactly a haven for the best and brightest. I’d have to learn a little more about Parker Cole, and even though I trusted her, I’d need to know things about her she wasn’t even aware of.

And I also needed to know what she knew about me. This was a little extreme for our first conversation. One minute I’m sitting across the aisle in history class, the next I’m hearing the kind of dark confession that don’t usually come up until at least the third date.

I said, “Do you want me to expose him for the fraud he is?”

“
If that will stop him, sure. Especially if it will put him in jail.”

“
Wouldn’t that ruin your life?” I asked. “Sounds like he makes good money, and all that will be gone. And you’ll wind up on Fox News as ‘The Daughter of the Monster.’”

“
I can handle all that,” she said. “That’s a lot easier to live with than knowing it’s still going on.”

“
Is your dad on to you?” I asked, knowing I sounded a bit like Dick Tracy, but sometimes there just wasn’t any better way of saying something. Besides, Dick Tracy was cat’s-pajamas cool back when I was alive.

Her eyebrows knitted themselves together. “On to me?”

“You know, does he know if you know what he’s doing?”

“
You talk funny. How old are you?”

“
Too old to rock and roll, too young to die.”

She wanted to say something else but didn’t. Parker was pretty and was probably used to getting her way. Pretty girls mostly didn’t get a reaction from me. Mostly.

“Fine,” she said petulantly, and I idly wondered if she even knew who Dick Tracy was, or Jethro Tull. Probably not. She said, “No. I don’t think he suspects anything.”

One of the guys I’d been watching at the edge of the scraggly shrubs came sauntering over. He wobbled a little, probably high on something. I could smell the cheap wine and stale tobacco and the urine, and his heart was beating faster than a little stroll would trigger.

“Trouble,” I said.

“
It’s just some homeless guy.”

“
Here’s a lesson they don’t teach you in night school, Parker. The most dangerous people are those with nothing to lose. You take a guy who is willing to strap dynamite around his waist and blow himself up in a crowd. What can you possibly threaten him with? He’s already decided his most precious asset, his life, is worthless.”

“
You sure do talk funny.”

The guy wore a ragged Seahawks T-shirt and baggy jeans. He’d lived hard, so under the lights I couldn’t tell if he was teen or middle-aged. My window was down because of the mild weather, and I wasn’t going to roll it up, because that would have shown fear.

“Yo, yo, my friends,” he said when he was three feet from the car. “What you people looking for tonight?”

“
We already found it,” I said. “Burger and fries.”

He laughed, showing dark gaps in his teeth. Meth addict, I figured. “You funny, man. But I bet you want something more.”

“We’re good,” I said. “We were just leaving.”

He leaned awkwardly into the car, his face a foot from mine, sharing the scents of all the poisons inside him. “I got what you want, and you got what I want.”

Parker instinctively clutched my arm. I wondered if she could tell my pulse was as steady as ever—six beats a minute.

“
Later,” I said to the man, but as I reached for the ignition, he thrust one clawing hand toward my throat.

I knocked it away, and it cracked on the steering wheel. Maybe breaking a bone, maybe not. Not my problem.

With my other hand, I grabbed a fistful of his greasy hair and banged his forehead off the edge of the roof. When his mouth opened in pain, I plucked the remainder of Parker’s burger and shoved it in his mouth.

As he fell backward, grunting and choking, I said, “Don’t forget to tip the waitress.”

I started up the Mustang and headed back toward the school.

“
That was...” Parker said, having trouble forming a sentence. “That was....”

“
That’s one way I solve problems,” I said. “Are you down with that?”

I wanted her to know that some messes couldn’t be cleaned up with a whisk broom and dustpan. Sometimes you needed a hammer. Sometimes you had to bring out the big guns.

“Are you...going to do that to my dad?”

“
Whatever it takes,” I said. “If that’s what you want.”

She sighed. “Whatever it takes.”

As I drove, I reached with my left hand to the edge of the roof, feeling the wet splotches there. “Do you live with him?”

“
When he’s up from Berkeley, yes. But he spends most of his time at Cloudland. He comes home and visits his family once in a while.”

“
Who else is in the family?”

“
My younger sister Lilith and my mom.”

“
Do they...know?”

“
Mom’s like the robo-wife, on the library board and bridge club and whatever club it is where you drink a quart of vodka a day. Lilith is just a sweet, innocent kid. But I’m worried that Dad has designs on her.”

“
Designs?”

“
Looking at her funny. Thinking. Like maybe she’s about old enough to get in on the action.”

I pulled my fingers inside the window and pretended I was wiping my mouth. The blood was bitter and tainted, but intoxicating nonetheless. “Have you ever visited Cloudland?”

“A couple of times. I really don’t like it because all the girls go out of their way to kiss my ass so that they get on his good side. Plus they’re all spaced out on peace and love and that type of crap. Plus whatever he’s putting in the punch bowl. It’s just wrong.”

“
Would he be opposed to you bringing your boyfriend down to meet him?”

“
At Cloudland?”

“
Yeah.”

“
It would probably throw him off, but I’m pretty sure he’d be okay with it. Especially if we just popped in.”

“
All right.” I said. “Are you up for it?”

“
You’re serious?”

“
As a corpse.” I pulled into the school parking lot, feeling a slight rush from more than just the blood. When I feed, I take on some of the victim. It’s one of the unfortunate side effects of my lifestyle, and in this case, the victim had definitely been on speed.

“
But I didn’t do this to date you,” she said, running her eyes over me as if maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

“
I’m not saying we’ll be dating for real. But we will need to pull it off around your family a couple of times before we go out and meet Dad. Your dad will be less suspicious of me if he thinks I’m just a goofy eighteen-year-old trying to get into his daughter’s pants.”

“
You’re not a goofy eighteen-year-old? And you don’t want in my pants?”

“
Oh, I’m goofy. Let’s just leave it at that.”

She was looking at me curiously as I took out a piece of paper from my glove compartment and wrote my number down for her. I was used to people looking at me curiously, but it always made me nervous—like I was an insect they wanted to swat with a newspaper, or maybe a snake to trap behind glass. I gave her my cell number and she looked at it, and then promptly snorted with laughter.

“Why does it say ‘Wal-Mart’ above it?”

“
Because it’s better—and safer—than writing ‘Spider for Hire.’”

She snorted again. “But Wal-Mart? That’s so lame.”