Winter Oranges (5 page)

He took a deep breath and did his best to keep his voice calm and level. “I’m telling you, I’m not on any drugs. There’s a man in my guesthouse.” He didn’t bother to point to the window again. “He’s probably a reporter. If you could just take him off my property, I’d appreciate it.”

“You think there’s a reporter camping out in your garage?”

“You think it hasn’t happened before?”

“No offense, but you aren’t exactly the most sought-after actor in Hollywood.”

“No kidding.”

She arched her eyebrows expectantly, as if waiting for an explanation. He suspected she was enjoying herself.

“You obviously read the tabloids,” he said, remembering her comment about the bad weed.

“Only the headlines, while I wait in the checkout line.”

“Then you know they don’t bother confining themselves to the A-list.”

She cocked her head, thinking. A grin spread slowly across her face. “They do spend an awful lot of time on John Travolta and Kirstie Alley.”

“Yes, they do.”

“And Lindsay Lohan,” she went on, apparently warming to the subject. “Miley Cyrus.”

“Right. And Jadon Walker Buttermore.”

She rocked back on her heels again, thinking. “Yeah, they do like you too, don’t they?” She glanced toward the garage, although she still gave no sign of seeing the man in the window.

“Just go up there and see for yourself,” Jason said. “Please.”

She shook her head, but her smile remained. “I’ll go check it out. I suppose it’s the least I can do, seeing as how it’s my job and all.”

He realized that meant she’d need the keys, and went to get them for her, relieved that now, at least, she’d see he wasn’t crazy.

She took the keys and turned toward the garage. “You stay here.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. He sat on the veranda steps and imagined her climbing the stairs and unlocking the door at the top. The boy in the window turned away, apparently retreating back into the room. A moment later, the sheriff’s face appeared in that gap between the curtains. Her expression was unreadable. She disappeared too, and Jason waited impatiently for her to come out with the man in tow. He hoped she’d apologize for doubting him, then felt guilty for being petty. But the seconds stretched into minutes. The minutes became a quarter of an hour. Finally, Sheriff Ross emerged.

Alone.

Jason stood, his stomach tight with dread as she crossed the grass from the garage.

“I searched everywhere. Checked the whole guest room, and the closet. Even under the bed.” He thought he heard a note of apology in her voice. “Searched the garage too, in case he’d snuck down the staircase. I assume you didn’t see him come out?”

“No, I—” Jason glanced up at the window. At the face that had reappeared there. Not waving happily this time, but frowning.

“Mr. Walker?”

Jason swallowed, reeling. He sank slowly back to the wooden step, which suddenly seemed ice-cold under his backside. The lawn fell into shadow as the sun passed behind a cloud. A breeze rattled through the trees, tossing dried leaves across the grass and sending goose bumps up his arms.

Either Sheriff Ross was lying—and Jason didn’t think that was the case—or she really couldn’t see his intruder. That meant . . .

That meant . . .

He wasn’t ready to think about what that meant quite yet. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to continue acting like an ass in front of her, either. “I don’t know what to say.” His voice didn’t sound right, not even to him. He cleared his throat. Clenched his hands between his knees. “I must have been seeing things.”

But what? A ghost? He didn’t believe in ghosts.

“Maybe he snuck out while you were waiting for me to arrive?”

She was offering him an easy out, and he took it. “Maybe.” Except the young man was still there, watching from the guesthouse as this ridiculous drama played out. Jason cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

“It’s not a problem. You can call anytime. But . . .” She hesitated. “Stay off the drugs, okay? It’ll help.”

“Yeah,” he agreed weakly. “I’ll do that.”

And he watched her swagger back to her car. She gave one tiny wave from the driver’s seat before driving away, leaving Jason on his veranda, his world spinning around him.

Just him, his brand-new house, and a ghost Regina Ross couldn’t see.

Jason ignored the garage and its ghost for two days.

Two days, while he rattled around his new house exploring and unpacking and rearranging as he went. He set up his TV, stereo, and Xbox in the living room and ordered furniture online for the veranda and the balcony. His script arrived. He opened the envelope, slid out the packet of paper, but didn’t read past the title page. He even ventured into town, to the grocery store Sydney had suggested, where luckily nobody recognized him. And through it all, no matter how hard he tried to keep from obsessing, he couldn’t keep his eyes from drifting toward the garage.

Sometimes the boy was there.

Sometimes he wasn’t.

And all the while, Jason’s mind ran in circles, assessing the possibilities.

A ghost. A hallucination. A real person.

Not a ghost, because Jason didn’t believe in ghosts. Besides, the man in the window didn’t seem threatening. He didn’t fill Jason with a sense of dread, as Jason supposed a real ghost would.

If real ghosts existed.

Which they didn’t.

No. Definitely not a ghost.

And not a hallucination. Jason had never had one, and he couldn’t imagine why he’d start now. Yes, he’d experimented with drugs now and then through the years, but he hadn’t done anything recently. The incident the sheriff had referred to had stemmed from some weed laced with some kind of hallucinogen. That much was true. But as usual, the tabloids had twisted the entire story. One of the extras in
Summer Camp Nightmare 3
—a buxom young lady whose job was simply to run screaming and braless toward the camera—had smoked a joint with a gaffer who’d only hoped to get laid. Jason and Dylan had been on set that day, but had been released early due to problems with the lighting. On the way back to their dressing room, they’d found the woman on the floor, clawing her face and screaming to “get them off.” The gaffer was in a panic, sure he’d lose his job. Dylan, who always seemed to know what to do, no matter how bad things looked, had sent the gaffer away with a promise of silence. Then he and Jason had taken the girl to the hospital. Dylan drove, and Jason sat in the back seat with the actress, trying to keep her calm.

It’d seemed like the logical thing to do at the time, but somewhere along the way, a photographer had found out about it. Somehow, they’d gotten word of why the girl had been admitted. But a no-name actress taking drugs wasn’t exactly headline-worthy, so they’d gone with a photo of Jason, snapped just as he was climbing out of the car. Even he had to admit he looked crazy in the picture, with claw marks across his cheeks, and his eyes wide with panic.

The magazine followed up a week later with a picture of him outside a tennis club. The headline had read, “JayWalk Checks Into Posh Rehab Facility.” The stupid thing was, he didn’t even play tennis. He’d gone there to have lunch with Dylan, only to find him with a starlet draped across his lap.

It still made his blood boil to think about.

So no, he didn’t believe the boy was a drug-induced hallucination, his Hollywood “lifestyle” be damned.

Which left one possibility—some strange man was living above his garage. Jason never saw him coming or going from the building, but he saw him in the window often enough to know it was true. The man still waved occasionally, but his excitement had waned. In fact, he appeared downright dejected and desperate as he raised his hand in greeting.

There was never a camera, though. He clearly wasn’t a reporter.

Jason wasn't sure how the man had managed to elude Sheriff Ross when she’d searched the building, but no matter how he looked at it, a deluded fan with uncanny hiding ability seemed the most logical explanation. He seemed harmless, at least, and too shy to approach Jason directly, thank goodness.

Nonetheless, he had to go.

Jason wasn’t about to call the sheriff’s department again though, so that left him one option: deal with it himself.

On his fifth day in the new house, he went to confront his intruder, feeling the boy’s gaze on his head as he crossed the grass to the garage. He stopped just inside the door to let his eyes adjust to the low light. The guest room was built into an enclosed loft, taking up only half of the upper portion of the building. His knees wobbled and his pulse raced as he climbed the stairs. The landing was only a few feet wide. The door itself was closed, and Jason stopped, suddenly unsure. The boy knew he was coming, but he hadn’t opened the door. Jason was hesitant to be the one who opened it. What if the boy was waiting for Jason on the other side with a camera?

Or an ax?

Jason shook his head, chuckling at himself. This wasn’t one of the two-bit horror movies he’d acted in over the years.

Still . . .

After a moment of debate, he came up with an alternative plan.

He knocked.

Boom
,
boom
,
boom
.

The sound seemed unbearably loud as it echoed through the empty garage. Jason waited, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet.

“Hello?” Jason pounded on the door a second time. “I know you’re in there. I don’t know who you are, or why you’re in my guesthouse, but this is private property. If you leave peacefully, I won’t press charges.”

No answer. Not a single sound. Not a gasp of surprise, nor the shuffle of feet hurrying across the floor.

Jason frowned, debating. Finally, he tried the knob and found it unlocked.

He threw the door open, stepping inside. The boy stood there in the center of the room, his eyes wide—not quite with surprise, though. He appeared downright elated.

“Listen, you!” Jason said, “I don’t know what—”

And suddenly, Jason realized what he was seeing—the boy. And the room. Specifically, the boy and the part of the room directly behind him, both at the same time, in a way that was utterly impossible.

“Holy shit!” Jason backed up quickly, ramming into the doorframe, practically falling onto the landing. He took another step back, discovered too late there was nothing beneath his foot, and fell down the first few stairs, twisting his ankle and banging his knee before managing to catch himself on the banister. Still he stared, horrified and unbelieving at the boy, who now stood in the doorway of the guest room. He looked much as he had in the window—young and thin and pale, his skin almost translucent.

No. Not
almost
translucent.
Literally
translucent. Everything from his baggy, high-waisted trousers and worn boots to his rough-woven white shirt and old-fashioned waistcoat, was not quite solid. Jason could see right through him to the cheap watercolor hanging over the bed. He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it before—whether due to the reflection of the sun on the window, or whether his mind had simply refused to see it—but staring at the boy now, it was quite clear he wasn’t real.

“You really are a ghost,” Jason gasped out, still clutching the banister with both hands.

The boy shook his head, pointing behind him into the room, his lips moving as if he were talking, but no sound came out.

“Is this a prank?”

The boy frowned, shaking his head. He started speaking again, as mutely as before.

Jason’s mind reeled, grasping at possibilities. “Are you a hologram? Are there cameras somewhere?” He wanted to look around for some, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the figure above him. “Who put you up to this?”

The boy kept shaking his head, gesticulating with his hands, moving his lips.

As horrified as he’d been, Jason’s alarm faded, made less urgent as the pain in his knee and ankle started to sink in. Was an interactive hologram somehow more plausible than a ghost? He didn’t think so. Whatever this was, he didn’t feel threatened. The apparition—or whatever the boy was—hadn’t moved from the doorway. He was still talking, gesticulating wildly, and Jason sighed and said, “I can’t hear you.”