Epilogue Callum
My tech setup illuminates the kitchen with an eerie green glow. I check that the night vision camera pointing towards the pantry is recording.
‘The spirit is supposed to hang around in there,’ I whisper to Holly. ‘Both the current owners and the previous owners of the house have reported poltergeist activity in the pantry. Food thrown around, boxes spilled, that kind of thing.’
‘I’m picturing Slimer from Ghostbusters ,’ she whispers back. ‘With hotdogs hanging out of his mouth. But he’s not in there now.’
I squint at my monitors. ‘Yeah, I can’t see anything either.’ I catch her eye. ‘Don’t look at me like that, this gear works. You’ve seen it work.’
‘I’m not looking at you like anything.’ She rubs my back. ‘Stop being so sensitive.’ She bends down and plants a squeaky kiss on my cheek. ‘Now, want me to flush the spirit out for you? Drive it this way so you get the money shot?’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ I say. ‘I’ll have your back.’
In the months since the events of East Mill, Holly and I have become a team.
In every sense of the word. We’ve tried to make up for the two years we missed.
We went on that hike we’d talked about and decided it probably wasn’t for us.
Too much nature for a couple of people who spend hours in the dark with the dead.
We’ve done lots of talking, gone on lots of dates and of course, had lots of sex.
Lots. Holly even did the math on how much sex we’d missed out on during the two years we were apart.
We’re trying to catch up. We’re also trying to forget about my great uncle, lying in a bed in Lakeview Hospital.
That part hasn’t been as easy. I’ve visited him more than once.
Compelled to see him for some reason, standing beside his bed, looking down at him, his face unsettlingly like mine.
I’ve scoured the internet and old books trying to find anything on the Westerns, what they are and what I could have become.
But I keep coming up with a big nothing, and it’s killing me.
All I know is I hate the man in that hospital bed, and whenever I’m near him, that hate bubbles in my blood.
At least I think it’s the hate. God, I hope it’s the hate.
‘Callum, behind you!’ Holly suddenly yells.
I spin around, my eyes darting between my Structured Light Sensor camera and the darkness all around me.
‘I can’t see it!’ I call. But then I do – a crazy, fluorescent green stick figure on my screen rushing towards me.
Energy slams into my chest and I soar backwards, landing with a thud and skidding across the glossy wood floors until I slide into a wall.
‘Coming through,’ Holly calls as she vaults over me.
I hold my camera up, trying to catch the action, but the stick figure image of the spirit changes course and darts out of frame.
Then there’s a shimmer of light, and a crackle and pop and Holly yells, ‘Got it!’
She walks back towards me with her arms out and says, ‘This house is clean!’ Then she flicks on a hall light and we both wince. ‘I tried to get it to go to the pantry, so your camera would record it. But Slimer wouldn’t play. You alright down there, Jefferies?’ She offers me her hand.
‘More of a heads up would have been nice, Daniels.’
‘Not my fault you move so slow. Did it hurt you?’
‘Just my ego.’ I rub my ass.
She laughs and loops her arms around my neck. ‘Your place or mine, ghostbuster?’
In the small studio I’ve set up in my apartment, I quickly type out the notes on the spirit Holly saw. She turned out to be a senior, resplendent in ’80s-style gym gear. I guess all the aerobics made her hungry, even in the afterlife. And strong enough to kick my ass. The humiliation is complete.
When my phone vibrates on the desk and the words ‘Lakeview Hospital’ glow on the screen, I know what I’m going to hear before I even answer. Because I feel it.
‘Got it,’ I say when the doctor finishes his report, ‘my lawyer will be in touch soon.’ I send a quick email, to get things in motion.
I sit with the news for a moment, staring into space, then explode from my chair and race down the hall calling, ‘Holly?’
‘What is it?’ She barrels up the hall to meet me.
I skid to a halt, breathing like I’ve just sprinted a marathon not twenty feet.
‘He’s dead. Edward’s dead.’
She grips my arm. ‘How do you know?’
‘The hospital just called me.’
‘But how? How could he be dead?’
‘The doctor said his body finally gave out. I guess it’s hard to suck on psychic souls when you’re in a coma.’
‘He’s definitely dead?’
‘Definitely dead. There’s some paperwork, but I’ve already contacted the funeral home and told them to start enacting the plans I put in place.’ Which is cremation with no service, no death notice, no acknowledgement that the man ever existed, nothing. His ashes can go to landfill for all I care.
‘Ding-dong, Western’s dead!’ Holly sings out.
I laugh, even though for some reason I’m not feeling her level of joy.
I wanted him dead. If he’d had plugs I would have unplugged him months ago.
But he didn’t. He just lay there stubbornly living.
But not anymore. So why aren’t I happier, and why do I have this weird feeling like a nest of wasps has just moved in under my skin, buzzing and stinging?
I roll my shoulders, trying to shake off my uneasy vibe.
‘Hey.’ Holly grabs my hand, obviously noticing.
‘It’s over now. You’re free of him.’ I nod but I mustn’t have convinced her, because she firmly adds, ‘It is, and you are. It’s been months, and no other Western has come knocking on your door.
And now Edward’s finally gone. It’s done; I can sense it. I know he was family and—’
‘Holly, that man wasn’t family. You’re family.
Jason’s family. Hopefully your sister and dad will one day be family.
’ The surprise that flashes across her face.
‘I just mean…’ I quickly add. ‘That hopefully one day Maggie and your dad will actually like me.’ I’m not their favourite.
They haven’t yet forgiven me for hurting Holly two years ago.
She puts her hand to her heart. ‘Don’t scare me like that, I thought you were about to drop to one knee.’
‘What would you do if I did?’ Not that I’m thinking about it. Not so soon, that would be crazy. But it’s not like I’m not thinking about it either, because I know I’m going to be with her for as long as I’m kicking, if she’ll have me, which I think she might.
‘I’d tell you to get up,’ she says. ‘We’re a team, you never have to kneel in front of me.’
‘Really? Because… I thought you liked it when I knelt in front of you, Daniels?’
Her cheeks flush. Then she wiggles closer, pressing herself against me.
‘Well, that depends, Jefferies,’ she says, all breathy, ‘on what you’re doing while you’re down there.’ All my blood rushes south.
She squeezes my fingers tight. ‘I’ve been thinking lately, you still haven’t come good on that promise you made to me in East Mill. Not once have we been listed as missing persons because we’ve stayed too long in bed.’
I chuckle. ‘My bad. Did you want to start now?’
‘I think we should,’ she says.
‘Do we need Uber Eats?’
‘Yes we need Uber Eats, it’s part of the plan. Besides, I’m hungry.’
‘Of course you are.’ I can’t hold in my grin.
‘Don’t judge me!’
‘No judgement.’
‘Lucky, because I’d just hate to have to bring up how you got your ass handed to you tonight by Ms Aerobics 1982.’
‘Thanks for not bringing that up.’
Holly laughs, lifts onto her toes and kisses me in that way of hers that makes me feel like she can’t get enough, and I kiss her back the same way, because I know I can’t.
I get that she’s trying to distract me, and I love her for it.
I love her like crazy.
I’ll love her for the rest of my life… and afterlife.
I don’t need to be psychic to know that.