Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 (6 page)

“You’re evil!”

“Well, come and get me, then!” she said, and took off down the sand toward the water.

Jack gave chase, and though he fully intended to get her back for the shock of that cold water, he was happy to see that she had shaken loose whatever thoughts had been bothering her.

Molly ran into the water, hurdling waves as it grew deeper, and then dove right in, unmindful of the cold temperature of the ocean. Jack followed, his momentum nearly causing him to trip, but he took a few last long steps and then plunged into the water after her. Molly was maybe six feet away, and he lunged at her. She shrieked almost giddily and tried to dodge him, but was not fast enough. Jack grabbed her by the shoulder, put his other hand on top of her head, and dunked her into the Atlantic even as they were both battered by a high wave.

He barely kept his footing, but he lost hold of her. As he glanced around to search for her again, something tugged on his legs and he went under, sputtering and choking on salt water. Jack scrambled to get his feet beneath him again, and when he stood up, he saw Molly close by. Her grin was even wider as she pushed her wet hair away from her face. The bathing suit clung damply to her in a way that made him want to look again and yet made him feel as though he ought to look away, all at the same time.

Molly tensed as though she had seen that reaction on his face. Her smile faltered and the energy seemed to go out of her.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Molly ran both hands through her water-darkened hair, straightening it out. “Is this a date?”

Jack blinked, his mouth slightly parted. He started to speak, then stopped, unsure how to reply. Her eyes searched his for an answer. After a few seconds of fumbling, he slid down into the water and allowed himself to float as he regarded her.

“Do . . . I mean, do you want it to be?” he asked at last.

“I’m not sure,” she said, slipping down into the water just as he had, swimming just a bit to keep afloat. “We never talked about what happened in Vermont, when we . . . I mean, I think I do, want it to be. But wanting that makes me feel like I’m betraying something.”

“Betraying Artie,” Jack said.

She nodded.

“I can’t help you with that,” he went on. Though there were so many things he wished he could say, that he ought to say, for Molly’s sake. “Maybe if we had time, that would change things. But I don’t want to confuse you, or myself, and you’re going away in a couple of weeks.” For a second he thought she was going to argue. Wanted her to argue. But then Molly just started to swim, no longer meeting his gaze.

“Where do you want to have dinner?” she asked.

But Jack did not answer. His attention was riveted on a spot just past her, where a thirtyish man with a toddler on his shoulders waded into the waves. And where the ghost of Artie Carroll, in jeans and a torn sweatshirt, hung above the ocean and beckoned to Jack.

“Artie,” Jack whispered.

Molly flinched at the name, then turned to see exactly what Jack was staring at.

C H A P T E R 2

Artie.

For a moment Molly simply drifted there in the water, letting it tug at her and rock her with its inexorable power. She tasted salt on her lips, felt the cold of the ocean seep into her bones, turning her numb. But she knew that it was not truly the water that had done that. A wave rolled past, lifting her up and then gently lowering her again, and she stared first at Jack and then at the distant spot along the beach where he stared at a place just above the waves.

A sea gull flew past.

Children chased one another in the sand just along the shore where the waves rippled like little bits of magic. A gray-haired man—an older father or young grandfather—directed a trio of girls in the construction of a sand castle of extraordinary proportions.

The gull must have cawed. The surf must have whispered on the sand. The children must have shrieked with pleasure. Molly could hear none of it. She found herself suddenly deaf. Deaf save for the single word that Jack had spoken.

Artie.

Molly had suspected, but she had not known. Even now, Jack would doubtless try to explain it away. But it wouldn’t work anymore. Now she knew.

Slowly, she rose up from the water and stared at that spot where she thought the ghost must be.

Jack touched her arm and she flinched.

“Molly. I . . . I need to . . .”

She turned away from him and waded through the low waves toward the shore. As though she had broken through some barrier, the moment she set foot on the dry sand the world seemed to rush back in all around her. The flap of the wind against an umbrella. Splashing and laughter and voices.

But even out of the water, beneath the sun, she still felt cold.

The ghost shimmered above the water like heat rising off pavement. As Jack swam parallel to the shore, there were moments when the sun shone down at a strange angle that made the specter seem to disappear completely for just a moment before reappearing. Artie’s too-long hair had been blond in life, but with the halo effect of the sun shining through it—through him—it looked almost white.

Though he knew how foolish the thought was, Jack could not help but imagine that everyone on the beach was staring at him. Self-conscious, he swam a little farther out from shore, past a pair of twelve- or thirteen-year-old boys who were bodysurfing.

Waves rolled by underneath the hovering spirit, their tips just cresting white, and the higher ones almost seemed to blend with the strange vapor that comprised the ghost from the knees on down. Jack glanced back to the shore and saw Molly sitting on her towel, knees drawn up in front of her, hugging herself and staring at him. A sickly sort of flutter began in his stomach, and he forced himself to turn away, to look back at the ghost.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Jack asked.

Artie was not looking at him, however. The ghost’s black eyes, like holes torn in some endless night, were instead turned toward the beach.

“Why did Molly take off like that?” Artie asked, and his voice had a tinny echo, as though he were speaking through some cheap microphone.

“I said your name.”

Those black eyes turned upon him now, and though Jack knew that this dead soul was his friend, for the first time since the night the ghost had first appeared, Jack was a little bit afraid of Artie.

“Whaddaya mean, you said my name?”

Jack glanced around to make sure there were no swimmers nearby, and he shot an angry look up at the hovering phantom.

“Don’t blame me, Artie. You were the last thing I expected to see today. You show up like this, in the middle of the day, when I’m on the beach with a couple thousand of my closest friends, and you expect me not to be a little surprised? It just came out, man. Besides, I think she probably caught on a long time ago.” The ethereal substance that comprised the ghost wavered. Artie seemed about to chastise Jack again, but then he just lowered his head, a sad expression on his face.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Artie said, and he began to sink down into the water, parts of him disappearing as they touched the waves. “She wasn’t ever supposed to know, Jack. I don’t want her looking over her shoulder for me the rest of her life. That’s not fair.”

“There’s a lot that isn’t fair,” Jack replied, keeping his voice low. “You’re dead, for starters. And you know what else isn’t fair? Having you around, talking to you, knowing that Molly might have been able to get some closure if you’d just
talk
to her, through me. I’ve gotta wonder, Artie, if you’re avoiding adding to her pain, or your own. ’Cause Molly? She can live, start again. But you’re done. That’s not fair, is it?”

“But if she’s in pain now, don’t blame
me,
all right? I don’t think I can take that.”

Dark shadows spilled from Artie’s empty eyes, and Jack wondered if that was what the tears of ghosts looked like. For a long moment Artie said nothing more, and Jack just floated there, feet extended toward the bottom, rising and falling with the waves.

“You’re sure she heard you?”

“Take another look at her,” Jack said. “What do you think?”

Though he had meant the comment to be sarcastic, Artie did glance over to the shore again. He slipped lower in the water and Jack was unnerved at the way the portions of him below the surface just seemed to dissipate. Only Artie’s head and shoulders were above the waves now.

“What are you going to do?” Artie asked.

“I don’t know.” Jack studied the ghost and wondered if the despair he saw in its features was genuine or something he had projected there.

“Look, Artie, I should get back to her. I assume you didn’t show up to get some sun. What’s so urgent?”

Artie flinched, his ghostly form shuddering again. A wave washed up and over him, momentarily erasing everything below his nose. Jack turned away, unsettled by the sight, but when he turned back the ghost’s countenance had begun to coalesce again.

“I’m sorry,” Artie said.

“For what?”

“Everything, I guess. Just try not to forget who the dead guy is, okay?”

Jack smiled thinly. “That’s low. Playing my grief for sympathy.”

Artie reached up and, pushing a hand through his long blond hair, he shifted back and forth somehow, as though he were standing. It was eerie to see him behaving in ways that were so familiar. In those moments it became hard to remember that he was dead.

“Seeing Molly like that threw me off,” Artie explained. “But I really did need to talk to you. Need your help. I guess it could have waited until later, but the more time that goes by for me here in the Ghostlands, the less I think about what’s proper there, with the living. All I could think was that we needed to talk and then I was here and I saw you and . . . Do you want me to come see you later?” Again, Jack was chilled by the familiar. In life, Artie had had an excitable way of talking, of running his words together in a rush of enthusiasm or anger. That had changed some, since his death. But here was the old Artie again.

“I should go see what’s up with her,” Jack agreed. “But you’re here. At least tell me what’s got you so worked up. More Prowlers in Boston?”

One last time, Artie cast a regretful glance up at the shore. “It isn’t Prowlers,” the ghost said, and again his voice had that odd static, that hollow echo. “You have to understand, Jack, that I thought it was over, now. I’m dead. There isn’t supposed to be anything left for me to be afraid of, yeah? But turns out there is. Big freakin’ joke on me. Apparently there’s something here, in the Ghostlands, and it’s been here for a while only nobody bothered to tell me that. They must have left it out of all the guidebooks.

“The dead just call it the Ravenous, Jack, but from what I’ve been able to figure out so far, it eats souls. It cruises the Ghostlands like some kind of animal, a lion or something, and it eats the spirits of the dead.” Jack stared at Artie in horror, for once barely noticing the way the light shone right through him. On the shore nearby, a fortyish couple began to wade into the water side by side, so when he spoke again, Jack dropped his voice even further.

“So . . . so what happens then?” he asked. “If a ghost is eaten, what happens to it then? I mean, a soul is immortal, right?”

Reluctantly, he looked into Artie’s eyes. In the depths of the darkness there he could see a distant nightscape, something that might have been stars, rolling shapes that might have been black waves on some eternal ocean.

“No one knows for sure. But the whispers say that’s it, Jack. That’s the real end. Nothing’s supposed to be able to touch us over here. Even the most desperate and lost spirits only have themselves to fear until they get where they’re going. But the Ravenous gets you? You’ll never get there.” Jack shook his head in frustration. “I don’t get it. What am I supposed to do?”

Hushed laughter came from nearby and he turned to see the couple who had just entered the water doing their best not to look at him. They were too close. Jack felt foolish for a second, but then he just couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Talk to people on your side. A priest, maybe a medium. Turns out some of them are actually for real. Somebody’s got to know something about this thing, where it came from, how to hurt it. But we’ve got to stop it, Jack.” With a kick of his feet, Jack swam a short way from the couple, and Artie followed.

“Absolutely,” he told the ghost. “Before it gets you.”

Artie only stared at him. “If we don’t destroy this thing, it’s going to be waiting for all of us eventually.” The ghost began to rise up from the water again. Through his gossamer form, Jack could see a sailboat out on the ocean. “I’m sorry I startled you. I know it’s my fault. If she really does know, and you think it would help her to talk to me . . .” Then Artie wasn’t there anymore. He disappeared like the spray from the breaking waves. Jack turned and rode the next one in, bodysurfing until he found himself on his knees in six inches of water.

It wasn’t anger. At least, not entirely. But the chaos of clashing emotions inside Molly could not be calmed, could not be made sense of. So though anger wasn’t really what it was all about, that was how it came out, as a bitter, cold rage at the only person close enough for her to hurt.

Jack stayed down in the water for several minutes, swimming a little, talking to the air.

Not the air. She knew that. But that was how it looked.

When he dove into the water and then swam for shore, Molly stood and picked up her towel. She had the urge to hit someone. Or cry. But crying would just have pissed her off even more.

By the time Jack jogged over to her, she was taking apart the two pieces of the rented umbrella. He stood behind her and said her name, soft and with great tenderness. The same voice that had caused so much confusion for her of late.

“Molly,” he said again.

She bent and picked up his towel with one hand, the pieces of the umbrella under her arm. She shook the towel once and thrust it at him without meeting his gaze. Jack took it, threw it over his shoulder.

“Don’t you think we should talk?”