Chapter 15 #2
So, why hadn’t he told me?
What caught my attention the most, though, and twisted my stomach into knots, wasn’t the truck at all, or the road it was on.
It was the camo-colored ATV strapped onto the bed.
Before I could even process what I’d seen, loud barking followed by angry, raised voices startled me so much I nearly dropped the binoculars. I tossed them onto the bed and rushed outside as fast as I could.
The utility shed door was wide open, creaking in the wind. Charlie stood in front of it, hands in the air, the groceries he’d collected sprawled on the ground in front of him. Rocky the dog was a few feet away, squared up and barking ferociously. Next to Rocky, stood Tate.
Pointing a gun right at Charlie.
Fear so acute I couldn’t breathe gripped my chest like a vice. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I yelled, crashing down the stairs two at a time. “Put that away!”
“Stay back, Reece! I caught him sneaking into your utility shed,” Tate yelled. “Call the station. We can get a helicopter out here in thirty minutes if there’s a pilot available.”
I ignored him, my large strides carrying me down the last flight and over to them.
“Reece, don’t!” Charlie yelled.
I ignored him, too, and stepped in front of him, shoving him behind me to block Tate’s shot. “Put the gun down!”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Tate yelled.
“Put that down, and we’ll talk,” I repeated. “I know him. He’s supposed to be here.”
Eyes darting between me and where Charlie peeked around my shoulder, Tate dropped the gun. “Fuck. I thought—”
“You didn’t think, you hot-headed dick,” I interrupted, still shouting. “Is that how you greet everyone you don’t know? Barrel first?”
He swore again and flicked on the safety before holstering it to his hip. “Only the ones who might be murderers,” he threw back. “Rocky, heel.”
As obedient as ever, Rocky ceased his barking and sat at Tate’s heel, tongue lolling and looking quite pleased with himself.
“Hello, puppy,” Charlie cooed. I wanted to knock him upside the head for having no sense of time and place.
Although if I’d gone nearly forty years without seeing a cute animal, I’d probably be asking, “Can I pet that dog?” too.
Charlie’s canine affection didn’t ease Tate. “Who are you?” he asked, tone accusing.
“Um…” Charlie looked at me, eyebrows raised.
I shrugged. Why not? He can’t arrest a ghost.
“My name’s Charlie.”
“Hold on a second,” Tate said, stepping closer, brow furrowed. “Have we already met? You look familiar.”
Charlie cringed. “No?”
Tate squinted at him a second longer before turning as pale as a, well, a ghost. “Holy fucking shit. That’s not possible,” he breathed, eyes darting back and forth between us. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Tell me that’s not who I think it is. Tell me I’m seeing things.”
“Well, you’re probably seeing things just fine,” I grumbled. “It’s your decision-making that needs work.”
Charlie shot me an exasperated glare.
“What?” I said. “It does.”
“You’re not helping the situation.”
“Can this situation be helped?”
“Who are you really? What’s going on here?” Tate interjected. He looked ready to pass out.
“I told you, my name is Charlie. Charlie Randolph.”
Tate mouthed the name silently, dazed, before he swore for a third time. “That’s not possible.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sighed. “You can say it as many times as you want, but it doesn’t make it true. He really is Charlie Randolph.”
“Charles Randolph is dead. He died almost forty years ago.” It sounded like Tate was trying to convince himself more than us.
“Yes, that’s true,” Charlie said.
“This is some kind of fucked up practical joke, isn’t it?”
“It’s not a joke.”
“Do you really expect me to believe this guy,” he pointed at Charlie in disbelief, “who is very much alive, is Charles Randolph, the Charles Randolph, responsible for killing six people thirty-nine years ago before disappearing off the face of the planet?”
“He did not kill those people,” I growled.
Tate looked incredulous. “That’s the detail you take issue with?”
“It’s about time someone fucking does,” I spit back. “Maybe people wouldn’t be disappearing all over again if someone with more than two brain-cells to rub together had considered Charlie might not have been the killer.”
Tate’s eyes flashed to Charlie, then back to me.
“I don’t believe you. Whatever game you’re playing, I want no part of it.
I thought you were a better person than this, Reece.
Your dad calls me almost every day, asking if you’re safe out here.
Bobby won’t leave me alone about this case.
I hauled my ass all the way out here to talk to you, again, because you won’t pick up your goddamn phone, and you pull something like this?
It’s a slap in the face to everyone who cares about you. ”
“He’s not lying,” Charlie cut in, angry and defensive. “I am Charlie Randolph, and to my great dismay, I’m not alive. And I’ll fucking prove it, you asshole.”
And then he disappeared.
The clothes he’d been wearing, my clothes, fell to the ground in a lifeless heap.
I smirked at the stunned expression on Tate’s face, his mouth hanging wide open. “Believe me now?”
“But—he—that’s not possible. I’m hallucinating. He just—he was right there,” Tate rambled, spinning in circles to peer around, as if Charlie could’ve undressed and streaked away to hide in the trees in the blink of an eye. “Where’d he go?”
Right then, Tate’s ball cap lifted off his head seemingly of its own accord, twisted around, and plopped down again, facing backwards.
He spun around, hands going up to hold the hat in place. “What the—”
Charlie materialized right behind him, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “Boo.”
“AHH!” Tate screamed, skedaddling away from him. “What the fuck?”
Rocky had lain down a while ago. He cracked an eye open just long enough to watch Tate’s distressed retreat before closing it again, entirely unbothered.
That’s what happens when you don’t give them enough cheese, I thought.
As much as I wanted Charlie to keep going, if only to see his playful side return, Tate looked one more fright away from a heart attack, and I wasn’t prepared to explain a ghost and a dead cop.
Schooling my grin, I said, “Now that we’ve cleared that up, will you stop shouting and accusing me of being a shitty person?”
Eyes following Charlie as he returned to his place next to me, Tate put a hand to his chest, breathing hard. “I need to sit the fuck down.”
Back in the lookout, Charlie earned Rocky’s trust nearly immediately through several offerings of cheese and ear scratches. Then, the dog curled up by the fire and promptly fell asleep.
Tate sat in the desk chair, finally calm enough to have a coherent conversation after gulping down a cup of instant coffee. Charlie and I sat side-by-side on the bed facing him.
“So you’re, what? A spirit? An apparition?” Tate asked, looking like he, too, was confronting the beaded curtains.
“I honestly have no idea,” Charlie answered. “A ghost, maybe? I think I’ve been here, in the lookout, since I died. I don’t know how or why. No one could see or hear me before. Or if they did, it was a passing glance. Not the way Reece can, anyway.”
Tate’s brow furrowed. “Are you a medium?” he asked me.
I shook my head quickly. “Nope. Charlie is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.” In more ways than one. “I’m no ghost whisperer.”
“My grandmother is going to have a field day with this…” Tate mumbled lowly before turning back to Charlie. “If no one could see you before besides him, why can I see you now?”
Charlie blushed a bit, but shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure. I have theories.” He fussed with the blanket sprawled next to him. “I think it’s helped me to be seen. To feel alive again, even if I’m not. But I’ll probably never know for sure.”
I wanted to hold him, kiss the blush from his cheeks, and tell him I’d do anything and everything to make him feel seen, to feel alive.
Tate dragged a hand down his face. “I don’t even know where to begin asking questions. I still feel like maybe I tripped and fell into a ravine on my way out here, and this is all a hallucination.”
I grimaced, feeling a bit bad for teasing him. “This is really happening. You aren’t lying dead in the woods somewhere. But I sort of thought the same thing had happened to me the first time I saw Charlie, too, so I get it.”
“You’re handling this surprisingly well, actually. Reece screamed like a banshee and nearly chucked himself over the railing.”
I turned to glare at Charlie. “I was startled. And I didn’t chuck myself off, you yelled at me and nearly killed me.”
“What?” Tate asked, eyeing Charlie warily. To be fair, though, he’d looked at him like that the entire time.
“He’s being dramatic,” Charlie answered with an exasperated sigh. “I didn’t try to kill him; I assertively asked him not to close my window. I wasn’t aware he’d actually hear me. Or see me, for that matter. And then I saved his life by preventing him from going over the railing.”
I hid a smile at his put-out expression and opened my mouth to continue, but Tate interrupted. “Can you stop bickering like an old married couple for two seconds?” he begged.
Charlie blushed again.
Tate heaved a sigh before shifting into cop mode. I had to give him credit for rolling with the punches, even when faced with a reality so far out of the norm. “So. Say I believe you really are Charles Randolph, and you really are… dead. It doesn’t make you an innocent man.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Charlie responded angrily. “The same thing that happened to Reece happened to me.”
Tate’s eyes narrowed. “Really? Did you see who, then? Who killed you?”
“I don’t remember,” Charlie answered, a tremble in his voice.
“You don’t remember?” Tate parroted, his tone making it clear he didn’t believe him.
Charlie’s outline flickered, and I reached out and took his hand. He squeezed back before taking a deep breath. “No. I remember seeing a light outside and following it into the woods. I don’t remember anything after that.”
Tate’s gaze was skeptical. “Do you think you could if someone helped you?”
My turn for skepticism. “What do you mean, ‘help him’?”
He sighed. “I was a few years younger than you in school, so you probably don’t know, but my parents were pretty shitty people. They were in and out of jail for a lot of my childhood. Mostly drugs. My grandmother is the one who raised me. She’s… different. Quirky.”
“Okay…” I said, not understanding the connection.
“My whole life, she’s been into stuff like tarot cards and hypnosis, and reading people’s auras.
She runs a small business out of her house.
She says most of it is just observing people and guessing at what they want to hear.
But she’s also talked about other stuff, too.
Communicating with the other side. She wouldn’t even let me stay in the house when those clients came calling—she said she didn’t want my young, open, vulnerable soul to be taken advantage of if something went wrong.
I never knew what she meant, but…” he trailed off, glancing at Charlie again warily.
“If it’s true you can’t remember what happened to you, maybe she could help. ”
“If you were raised by a woman who says she can talk to ghosts, why are you so shaken up by me?” Charlie asked.
Tate shrugged, looking a bit chagrined. “I’ve always believed she believes she can communicate with the dead, and I’ve never had a reason to challenge her on it. But seeing it for myself is different.”
I didn’t like any of this.
First, would Charlie even want to remember? Was the identity of the killer buried somewhere in his subconscious? What would happen to him when he did remember? Would it hurt him?
Suddenly, I couldn’t get the question he asked me the other night out of my head.
Do you think it’s why I’m still here? Because I haven’t fully faced what happened?
I squeezed his hand tighter.
On the other hand, if there was anyone who could explain why Charlie was still around, wouldn’t it be her? Or maybe she could at least point us in the right direction for answers.
What if she can help bring him back?
I couldn’t look at that tiny flame of hope head-on, afraid it would snuff out the moment I wanted it too much.
Charlie peered over at me, his hand still firmly linked with mine. I felt like he could read every thought I’d ever had. Even that tiny, hushed flicker of an idea.
“I don’t want anyone else to get hurt,” Charlie began uncertainly, turning back to Tate.
“So if there’s something I could remember that would help, I want to try.
But I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me why you think I did it.
If I disappeared, how could they have been so certain it was me? ”
Tate paused, weighing Charlie’s words. Probably calculating the risk of divulging information to the one and only suspect in the murders of six people, with the benefit of his restored memories.
He turned to me. “No one else, remember? By some miracle, this hasn’t been leaked. If it happens now, I’ll know it was you.”
I nodded. “Not a word.”
He sighed heavily. “They searched the lookout top to bottom. Tore the place apart. They never found you, or any indication you planned to leave. But they did find the murder weapons—covered in the victim’s blood.”