Someone sure wants me to look at them now.
She thought again about ghosts. Her mother said they were everywhere, and sometimes they made their presence known.
So who was the ghost? Her grandmother? And why was she trying to contact Amy? Did she have some kind of warning?
This is nuts.
Looking at the chest, a smile cracked along her face.
Might as well see what the big secret is.
Amy reached into the chest, dug around the garments, and uncovered a small shoebox.
Ah, what have we here?
She extracted the shoebox from the chest, her curiosity piqued by its considerable weight. She opened the lid eager to discover what her grandmother had been hiding.
But to her dismay she found nothing but a bunch of yellowed photographs.
She furrowed her brow, perplexed.
That’s it? That’s what Grandma never wanted me to see? Old family pictures.
Now that she thought about it neither her grandmother nor her dad had ever talked to her about their side of the family, even when she asked about it. For all Amy knew it had always been just the two of them, mother and son.
She knew nothing about her paternal grandfather except that he died long before she was born. She didn’t even know what he looked like. There were no pictures of him around the house.
Frowning, Amy pushed herself up, shoebox in hand, and sat down on the bed. She began leafing through the photographs.
She skimmed over images of her father as a child. He was a big guy even then, but she’s seen similar pictures before.
The ones of her grandmother she found more interesting. She had never seen photos of Grandma Snow without her shock of white hair or network of wrinkles. She had been a handsome woman once, almost pretty, but not quite.
She then came across pictures of a heavy-set man with ape-like hands, big toothy smile, and small beady eyes that held a wild glimmer like that of a religious fanatic. Those she really studied.
Is that him? Is that Dad’s dad? Is that the man no one ever talks about? Amy didn’t even know his name.
As she continued to leaf through the photographs, cold phantom fingers plucked at her nerves. Startled, she glanced around the room. She was alone, yet she felt eyes watching her. It gave her the chills.
Letting a shudder pass, she returned her attention to the stack of photos in her hand.
The next picture was of her father in his teens. He sat at a picnic table at what looked to be some camp in the woods. A skinny blond girl sat across from him. Neither looked happy.
Amy tilted her head to the side, studying the picture. The girl almost looked liked her mother. Some facial features were similar, yet there was enough difference to say for certain it that wasn’t her. Besides, her parents didn’t meet each other until their twenties. So who was she?
Amy dropped the photo back in the shoebox and glanced at the next one.
She felt her heart skip a beat.
No… No, impossible!
Her lips parted in astonishment as she met the icy blue eyes of a husky pimple-faced skinhead who had his arm linked with the mystery girl. She wore a white wedding dress and a miserable expression.
But it was the skinhead whose face Amy looked at closely. It appeared an awful lot like—
“It can’t be!”
A white bolt of terror shot through her nervous system as the bedsprings suddenly shuffled and the mattress sunk with an invisible weight. A chilly breeze rustled Amy’s hair.
“He’s coming for you.”
Flinging the pictures into the air, Amy screamed. Leaping to her feet. She dashed from the room and sprinted down the hallway to the kitchen.
Breathing fast, she swung the back door open and barreled down the steps. Heart racing, she ran down the driveway.
A cloud of dust rose around her feet. She didn’t stop until she hit the dirt road. Hunched over with her hands on her knees, she struggled to catch her breath.
Petrified, she glanced at the Halloween decorations in the yard, and at the sheeted ghosts swinging in the passing breeze. She felt a sickness churn in her stomach.
Am I crazy?
Vomit rose up her throat. She swallowed it down.
Or did that actually happen?
Chapter 19
Inside Eddie’s Bar & Grill it was happy hour. Pool balls clacked as southern rock blasted from the jukebox by the entrance.
Hank sat at a barstool with a shrinking cigarette in one hand and a small, perspiring glass of Southern Comfort in the other. He was brooding over the mess he had made of his life when he felt a hand drop on his shoulder and squeeze blood-red nails into the threadbare fabric of his shirt.
His stomach churned in revulsion as Ruth Jackson dropped a clunky, green purse on the glossy surface of the bar a sat her chunky, denim ass down on the stool by his side.
“Hiya, big guy,” Ruth said. “Ain’t seen you ‘round here in a while.” She shifted her weight around. “Eddie! Vodka tonic!”
Eddie, the droopy-faced barman, slapped his issue of Hustler down on the counter and glowered at Ruth.
Hank raised his drink to his lips. “You touch me again with those plastic claws of yours, Ruth, and I’ll stick Eddie’s .45 up your twat and pull the trigger. Understand?”
“Now that ain’t nice.” Ruth lit a cigarette. “Having a bad day, are we?”
“We are.” Hank sipped his drink. “Now fuck off.”
Ruth— a ratty-haired junkie with a goblin’s devilish face— accepted her drink from Eddie. “That ain’t no way to talk to a lady.”
“Deaf slut,” Eddie grumbled, retrieving his magazine. “Man said leave him be. Now stop pokin’ the bear. Get!”
With a puff of smoke, Ruth grabbed her purse and slid off the stool. “All right, all right. I know when I ain’t wanted.”
“And how many times I gots to tell you, stop turnin’ tricks in my bar. This ain’t no whorehouse, woman!”
Clicking away on six-inch heels, Ruth gave Eddie the middle finger.
“Dumb bitch.” Eddie leaned against the counter with his pink, bulbous nose stuck back in his magazine.
With melting ice cubes clinking in his glass, Hank sipped his whiskey and returned to his troublesome thoughts To his daughter, and what he had done to her life.
Placing his drink down on a damp napkin, he took another drag from his cigarette and savored the nicotine filling his lungs. Exhaling a ghostly plume of smoke, he peered into the somnolent eyes of the burly man staring back at him from the yellow-spotted mirror bolted to the wall across the counter.
If eyes were indeed windows to the soul, then those belonging to the man in the mirror were as haunted as a battlefield long after the last shot was fired.
So many dead. Wish they’d leave me the hell alone.
But they wouldn’t. If they hadn’t let up in the last four years, they sure as shit weren’t going to start now.
And then there was Amy. What the hell was he going to do about his daughter? Keep her chained to her bed? He was truly tempted.
Should’ve been honest with them all from the beginning. None of this shit would be happening now.
The barstool next to him was dragged back. Hank recognized the tall, gray-haired man instantly.
“Eddie,” Joe MacCallum called, “Club soda, please. And give us a little privacy, if you’d be so kind.”
Meeting MacCallum’s eyes in the mirror, Hank nodded his head as smoke clouded his reflection. “Been on the green?”
“Yeah, I managed to get out there this mornin’,” MacCallum said. He accepted his drink from Eddie, who scurried back into the kitchen, making himself scarce. “How’s Amy?”
Hank lowered his eyes into his drink. “I hit her.”
MacCallum was silent for a moment. Hank gave him a glance. The older man stared at him, his green eyes ablaze with a cop’s self-righteous judgment and disapproval.
Hank had seen it a dozen times. His Uncle Keith used to give him similar looks whenever he got in trouble as a youth, which was often.
“She lied to me about some party she went to last night,” Hank said before a lecture commenced. “I lost my temper.”
“Where you drunk?”
Hank sipped his drink. “Was on my way to it.”
MacCallum sighed. “Making all the wrong moves, pal. You know what I’m talking about.”
Feeling bile boil in his stomach, Hank slammed his glass down on the counter and jabbed a finger at MacCallum. “Don’t fuckin’ start. She’s my daughter. You mind your own fuckin’ business!”
McCallum kept his calm. “When she was born, you and Ellen asked me to be her godfather. I’m just trying to play the part. You can’t protect her forever. All I’m saying.”
“Watch me.”
The two men sat in silence. Eddie reappeared to take drink orders from a few new patrons.
MacCallum leaned in toward Hank. “I checked on that thing you asked me about yesterday. Got nothing. Think you’re wrong about this one. You’re just being your old paranoid self.”
“I don’t think I am. You’ve seen them girls. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“Afraid you’ll have to.”
“They all look like her, too much so to be a coincidence. I mean damn. If it ain’t him, it’s a copycat, and you know what that means.”
“Hank, right now we don’t have evidence to suggest there’s foul play, or that these disappearances are connected. Besides, kids go missing all the time. Most of the time they turn back up.”
“That’s bull and you know it.”
Joe took his first sip of club soda. “Big stubborn bastard. Tell you what, though, you made one a hell of a detective. Still don’t know why you had to quit. Nobody believed you had a thing to do with Ellen’s death.”
Eddie freshened Hank’s glass. “Some did.” He thought about Patrick Keene, he thought about his ex-father-in-law. “Some still do.”
“Who, Barrett? You still bothered about him?”
“He called yesterday afternoon. I wasn’t home. Amy was.”
Pool balls clacked. Someone shouted an explicative and slammed their pool stick on the floor in frustration.
MacCallum glanced over his shoulder, caught the offender’s eye with a warning glance, and turned back to Hank. “You worry yourself ragged. So what? Couldn’t he’ve been calling to wish her a happy birthday?”
Hank swallowed down a long drink of whiskey, put the glass down and took one last drag before snuffing out the cigarette butt in the ashtray. “After the shit he tried to pull. I don’t even want him calling to tell her he’s dying.”
“That’s harsh.”
“So is tryin’ to take my only daughter away from me after my wife died. Like I hadn’t lost enough.” Hank felt his temper flare. Rage rattled his bones.
“Just calm down. No way that was ever gonna happen anyhow.”
Hank took a deep breath and collected himself. “I loved Ellen. You know that.”
MacCallum nodded somberly. “Yeah. I do.”
Hank gazed back into the mirror, and into the haunted eyes of his haggard reflection, into the bloodied battlefield of the restless dead.
For a moment, he saw Ellen’s reflection standing back in the smoky gloom watching him. But when he blinked, she was gone.
Hank ignored the shiver scuttling down his back. He really needed to lay off the sauce, but knew that probably wasn’t going to happen.
“Gotta get to the shop.” He polished off the rest of his drink. “Thanks for looking in on that other thing. Let me know if anything comes up.”
“Sure thing,” MacCallum muttered. “You paranoid sumbitch.”
“It ain’t paranoia,” he patted MacCallum on the back. “It’s instinct.”
Chapter 20
Amy ventured back up the driveway one step at a time.
Looking at the house, she eyed the plastic skeleton hanging in the living room window. It was positioned with a hand waving hello, its death-head grin frozen in mocking laughter.
She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the breeze that brushed against her face. She rounded the corner to the back door and re-entered the kitchen.
Shutting the door, she listened for unusual sounds. She heard none.
It was just your imagination. There are no ghosts.
The floorboards creaked beneath her feet as she crept to the door at the end of the hall. A cold wave of apprehension washed down her shoulders as she entered the room.
She looked around. The only disturbances she found were the cracked mirror and the photographs scattered on the carpet. As her fear thawed out, she bent down to pick them up.
When she came across the wedding photo, she tucked it in a pocket of her jeans, dumped the others in the upturned shoebox, and returned it to the chest at the foot of the bed.
Picking up the Louisville Slugger, she glanced at the cracked mirror. How was she going to explain that to her father? He never liked her snooping around in here. Especially after Grandma Snow died a year ago…