Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
He came back two days later.
Despite my wild start, I quickly settled into a work routine. Roll call over the radio started at nine in the morning, and with thirteen towers in commission this season, scattered throughout the park, it took a few minutes for everyone to check in and share their morning precipitation reports.
Thankfully, all were accounted for.
Janine was the most senior lookout and naturally fell into a leadership role. Technically, we all reported to Leonard, but several of us had already asked her to switch to a separate channel to talk through various aspects of the job.
Most of my time consisted of completing full, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sweeps of my viewshed at least once an hour.
We checked for signs of smoke, or in the case of inclement weather, lightning strikes.
However, we also collected weather data at each lookout, which could be just as important for predicting fire and red flag warnings.
When a hazard response team was deployed, we guided them to the correct location and kept an eye on other potential dangers.
I recognized a couple of the lookout’s voices as Forest Service employees who’d lived in Ponderosa for a long time, but most were strangers to me. Everyone seemed nice, though, and radio chatter was polite and succinct.
Technically, our shift ended at six in the evening, but considering we lived in the towers, off-the-clock smoke reports weren’t uncommon.
Eventually, I’d like to use the hour I had free over lunch to hike the nearby trail, but truthfully, with all the stairs between me and the bathroom—and the refrigerator—I was already far more active during the day than usual.
I’d never been congratulated more by my FitBit.
So, by my third evening at the tower, I was completely exhausted and tucked into bed by nightfall, far too tired to worry about things like ghosts or bears or annoyingly persistent raccoons.
Or whatever else might be lurking outside my door.
Listening to the now-familiar creaks and groans of the tower shifting in the wind and the rhythmic sound of my breathing, I pulled the duvet up and quickly slipped into that soft, barely lucid place just before sleep.
Thunk.
With a sharp inhale, I bolted upright, yanked awake.
Had something fallen off the counter? Had the raccoon found a way inside? It wasn’t shitting on my deck, nor was it sleeping there. I’d deduced it merely wanted food and would go away once it realized I wasn’t going to feed it.
Not again, I inwardly groaned. Every time I investigated an unknown noise, it turned out to be something harmless.
That’d sounded close, though, like it came from inside the lookout. I waited a few minutes, breathing steadily, but just as I was about to lie back down, I heard something else—much, much closer.
Riiiip.
I scrambled for the bear spray I now kept on the windowsill above my head while I slept and shuffled back into the corner. My eyes darted around the room, looking for movement in the shadows cast by the still-glowing wood-burning stove.
But there was nothing.
No striped tails or mischief-filled little masked faces. One of the positives of living in a small space was there was nowhere for an intruder to hide.
Unless they were a ghost, of course.
Air shifted in the space next to my bed, and a scrap of paper fluttered in front of me, landing in my lap as if dropped out of thin air. It looked like a corner had been torn from the sketch pad lying open on my desk.
Was that the sound I’d heard?
My heart pounded as I reached for it, fingers trembling. I squinted in the low light before flicking on the lantern next to my bed, blinking down in disbelief that there were words—real, tangible words in handwriting that wasn’t my own—scrawled on the note.
Definitely not the raccoon, then.
Hi. I don’t want to startle you again. Can I sit by the fire? I won’t bother you.
My voice caught when I tried to respond. I gulped down water from the bottle I also kept on the windowsill next to me, and cleared my throat. What the fuck do I say to a ghost?
“Are you in here?” I asked, throwing my ‘normal person’ card out the window. My heartbeat pounded in my ears.
“Yes, but I’ll leave if it bothers you.” The soft reply came from across the room, still empty.
I swore. “Who are you? Why are you here?” I asked, unable to stop the tremble in my voice.
The wood floor creaked under invisible feet, slowly treading closer before they stopped halfway to where I sat in bed.
Suddenly, he appeared.
I sucked in a breath. He was more whole than before. I could see all of him, enough to note that while some parts of his body were see-through, others appeared solid. He wasn’t as tall or imposing as I’d remembered. In fact, if I stood up, I was certain I’d be taller. Broader.
He was just as handsome as I remembered, though. Not in a well-groomed, perfectly symmetrical kind of way, but more like, I could look at him for a very long time, maybe even sketch him, and never quite capture him fully.
“Can I sit here?” he asked, gesturing to the wooden desk chair.
I nodded dumbly.
He scooted it across the floor so it was in front of the fire and sat with a heavy sigh. “Thank you.”
There was so much in those words I wasn’t sure I’d ever parse it all, but they had me releasing the deep breath I held. I pushed the comforter off my lap—thankfully, I’d worn sleep shorts to bed—and turned to lean back against the windowsill, facing him.
He wore a vintage, brown leather flight jacket with a Sherpa collar over a white shirt and faded blue jeans. His hiking boots looked worn, the laces undone and frayed.
“What’s your name?” I asked again. It was less of an accusation this time.
He didn’t look up. The orange glow behind the stove glass made his eyes look like honeyed whiskey. “Charlie.”
Charlie, I mouthed. Yes, he looked like a Charlie.
My scalp prickled. “Is that short for Charles? Charles Randolph?” I asked, holding my breath again.
For a reason I couldn’t give if my life depended on it, I didn’t want Charlie to be Charles Randolph. Maybe it was purely self-preservation—I had invited him to sit, after all.
He looked up. “Yeah,” he said, eyes curious and warmer than I’d expect from someone who’d probably murdered a bunch of people. “How’d you know?”
“Um…” How the fuck was I supposed to explain that? He’d been terrorizing visitors for nearly forty years, though. He’d shouted at me when I first arrived. Certainly, he was aware that he was a local urban legend.
“Well, I mean, you were the last lookout up here before me, right? You’re sort of known for that?”
“Was I? How long has it been since I… Since?”
“That was 1986. It’s 2025. Thirty-nine years.”
Emotion flashed across his face. Shock, pain, and something else. He sucked in a breath and faced the fire again. “Oh.”
It was quiet for a long time, the air heavy and aching. I wondered if I shouldn’t be there to witness this private moment of grief for lost time, if I should step out onto the deck to give him space.
He hadn’t asked me to leave, though. He hadn’t disappeared.
Maybe he just needed someone to sit with him. I had, when the neurologist strode into my hospital room and changed my life. Dad sat with me without saying a word after she’d left, and it’d helped more than I’d ever be able to tell him.
So I sat with Charlie, and no matter what came next, or what else I found out about him, at least I’d given him this moment of humanity.
“I don’t remember most of it,” he whispered after a while.
“The passing time. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.
It was just…cold. Very cold.” He scooted the chair closer to the fire and held out his hands as if to warm them.
“I tried to talk to a few others who came, but they couldn’t see me or hear me.
And then more came all at once, and they were too loud, so I threw things around until they left.
I’m sorry for yelling at you. I didn’t think you’d know I was there.
I wasn’t trying to frighten you. I just didn’t want you to close my window.
I didn’t want it to be dark in here again. ”
I tried to imagine that—desperately wanting to communicate with someone, anyone, only to go unheard and unseen. What would it feel like to be trapped in the dark for decades?
“I’m sorry,” I said, with feeling. No one deserved that.
“Do you talk to dead people a lot? Are you like a, what do they call those, a psychic? Or a medium?” he asked.
I snorted. “Definitely not. I was firmly in the camp that ghosts were for the beaded curtain people. Having a bit of an identity crisis over it, actually. You scared me to death when I first saw you.”
He raised an eyebrow, and I realized how badly I’d just put my foot in my mouth.
“Shit. Not to death, obviously. I mean, I considered that I had died and made you up, but then the pilots spoke to me like normal, so I figured I wasn’t actually splattered all over the ground outside.”
His eyebrows were practically in his hairline by now, and a small smile appeared on his face.
“Fuck. I didn’t mean to make that sound insensitive. I don’t know how you, ya know, went out, but I’m sure it was with more dignity than that. And if it wasn’t, that’s fine, too. It’s all fine. Or, not fine, but—”
“I didn’t jump off the deck,” he said with a laugh.
He was laughing.
I sighed. “Oh, thank fuck. You’d be the fourth person I said something off-putting to in a week, and I don’t have another recovery in me.”
He chuckled before his face turned serious again. “Do you know… Did my parents get to bury me? That was important to Mom. She’d drag us all out to clean up the family graves every year and put out new flowers.”
He wiped at his face. Did ghosts cry? Or was it a reflex to brush away tears that would never fall again?