Chapter 3 #2
I park at the far edge of the Walmart parking lot, eyes scanning for any sign of Radio Shack grandpa or his accomplice, who, in my memory, looks like Marty McFly if he were stretched out on that taffy puller machine from Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and made super tall.
Early morning shoppers load groceries, and employees corral carts.
One police car is parked near the front doors.
I told the cop at the vet where I was attacked—maybe one of them is here to review security footage.
Or maybe it’s just a coincidence, and the officer is here to shop.
I grew up thinking cops were heroes, but after the murders, I learned most cops won’t care about what happens to you nearly as much as you do.
I pull on Dad’s jacket and step outside. My eyes immediately land on a dented red panel van parked in the exact spot I was in yesterday.
It could be a coincidence. But a creepy van being their vehicle of choice wouldn’t surprise me, so I cross the lot until I can make out a figure in the passenger seat.
It’s him.
Tall Guy is sitting there on his phone, black baseball cap pulled low over his eyes.
I step up to the door and knock on the window. Our eyes meet through the glass, and my lungs forget their job because, holy hell—
He’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.
That’s saying something, coming from me. I work in construction. I see a lot of men. Some of them are even good-looking, in that rugged, ‘I can bench press a refrigerator and haven’t shaved this week’ kind of way. But this guy? There’s no other word for it.
This man is beautiful.
Soft black hair falls across his forehead, the tips brushing close to his eyes.
His eyes are green—not the muddy hazel others generously call green, but this light, cloudy color, like a milky pool, or sea glass I’d find on the beach when Mom took Rosie and me to Coney Island.
His face is lean and clean-shaven. His pale skin might make someone else look sickly, but instead, it makes his dark hair and stern eyebrows more striking because he’s stupidly hot.
Criminally hot. So hot I temporarily forget about the throbbing pain wrapped around my throat like a collar, or why I even walked over here in the first place.
He makes no move to open the door. I knock again and point at the handle. I’m starting to wonder if maybe he’s going to ignore me until I leave, when he unlocks the door and gets out.
He leans against the door, his hands in the pockets of his beat-up leather jacket. I’m very aware that I’m wearing yesterday’s work clothes and didn’t brush my teeth this morning.
“Have you been here since last night?” I manage, my voice coming out as a hoarse croak.
At least ten seconds pass before he says: “We’re monitoring the area.”
“For more ghosts?”
He glances over his shoulder like he’s looking for someone. Probably Old Man. He tilts his head as if he’s trying to figure out how much he should tell me, which is ridiculous because I was there. I saw the whole thing.
But he’s right not to be happy to see me. I might not have been in my right mind after being almost murdered, but I made one of the worst first impressions I could have made on him, so I need to try again.
“I’m sorry for punching you,” I say, swallowing against the burning in my throat. “You guys saved my life—thank you, by the way—so I should’ve realized you weren’t also trying to kill me. I was wondering if I could ask you a couple questions about what I saw?”
He stares at me with an unreadable expression on his face. “What happens if I say no?”
I blink. “What?”
“Will you punch me again if I don’t answer your questions?” He shrugs, holding his shoulders there for a second before dropping them. “I just want to understand if I’m being questioned under duress.”
He’s messing with me. The realization hits like a shot of espresso straight to my exhausted brain, and suddenly I’m grinning because funny is my favorite thing and I wasn’t expecting it from Mr. Tall-Dark-and-May-Or-May-Not-Know-How-To-Travel-Through-Time.
I should play this cool. Except I’ve never been cool about anything in my entire life. When I like something, it shows on my face like a billboard, and right now my face must be advertising that I think this guy is hilarious.
“I won’t punch you, regardless of your answers, for any reason at all,” I say.
“You promise?”
“I do.”
“Good.” He adjusts his position against the van, one boot crossing over the other. “What do you want to know?”
Wind cuts through me, and I zip my jacket up to my chin. “Your grandpa asked how long I’ve been able to see dead people.”
“He’s not my grandfather.”
“Uncle, then.”
“Not that either.”
Semantics. “What did I see?”
He sighs and pulls off his cap, running a hand through his dark hair before settling the hat back on his head. The tattoo covering his knuckles looks like bones. “An entity.”
“Entity is your fancy word for a ghost, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Why do you call them entities? I feel like that’s kind of pretentious when you could just call them ghosts.”
“I didn’t create the terminology.” He rolls his shoulders back, and his leather jacket creaks as it stretches across his broad shoulders. “Besides, calling them entities largely prevents the Ghostbusters comparison. Entitybuster doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
“So, you admit you’re a Ghostbuster,” I say.
He scrunches his nose, as if the comparison pains him. “Don’t let Donny hear you call us that.”
“All you need are matching jumpsuits and you guys would look exactly like them,” I say.
“We have matching jumpsuits,” he says. “We just wear them under our clothes so we don’t stand out so much in the field.”
He says it so deadpan that I can’t tell if he’s serious, but then I catch the playful gleam in his eyes.
Oh, this guy is funny.
“You’re messing with me.”
“I guess you’ll never know.” But his eyes are still dancing, and I notice for the first time that there’s a ring of cloudy gray around his irises. It makes the green even more striking. I’ve never seen anything like it.
I clear my throat, which makes the rope burn flare up again. Good. I need the pain to focus. “Why could I see this entity?”
“Because you’ve died before.”
A couple of seconds go by before the words sink in, and my fingers find the deep scar under my jacket sleeve. It’s from the second time I tried to join my family. I almost succeeded. I was clinically dead for five minutes before they got my heart beating again in the ambulance.
I knew I shouldn’t have done it. My family wouldn’t want me to join them that way, but I couldn’t take being alone anymore.
My only living relatives were Mom’s estranged sister, who had too many mouths to feed as it was, and Dad’s cousin in Alaska, whom I’d never met. Dad always said he was a bit cuckoo crazy, so it wasn’t surprising when the court deemed him unfit.
My social worker struggled to find foster homes that could handle my grief. I was left with couples who only cared about the money.
I was good for nothing. I was consumed by grief. What purpose did I have to stay behind other than to suffer?
But after that second time, whenever I thought about trying to end it again, I would imagine Dad’s disappointed face, telling me through his eyes that I couldn’t give up. So that was my last attempt.
“Oh,” is all I can say.
Tall Guy nods, and I can tell he’s choosing his words carefully. “When people die, they go somewhere, and when your consciousness touches that place and gets yanked back… something changes in your brain. You can see the dead because part of you is still standing in that doorway.”
I’ve spent years feeling like I’m not fully here, like some essential part of me got left behind somewhere along the way. Maybe it did.
But that still doesn’t make sense. “If that’s all it took, why has it taken me five years to see a ghost?”
“Your brain was protecting you,” he says, and there’s something almost apologetic in his tone.
“It happens to a lot of us. I started seeing them immediately, but I know a guy who didn’t start seeing them until ten years after he was revived.
The human mind is good at rationalizing things away.
Your brain found ways to explain what you were sensing without forcing you to confront it. ”
So he died, too. Tons of questions rush to my tongue all at once, but I can’t ask any of them. That’s the kind of thing you can’t ask a stranger, no matter how curious you are.
“Donny has done brain scans on people like us,” he says. “There are structures in our brains that don’t show up in normal brains. The trauma of dying and coming back rewires a person. You’ll always be able to see them.”
The parking lot blurs at the edges. If I had a rewards card for traumatic experiences, I’d have enough points for a free sandwich by now. “Am I going to see more of them?”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Will I really?”
He scrunches his face, which is answer enough.
I pull Dad’s jacket tighter around me, imagining he’s here, hugging me. “Do these things just show up randomly? Could one try to kill me again tomorrow?”
“It’s possible,” he says, and my stomach drops. “But there are things you can do to defend yourself. Salt is your easiest weapon. Iron also repels them. There are more technicalities, but that should get you out of a pinch.”
I’ll add them both to my shopping list right next to dog food and cheap shampoo. The second I’m done here, I’m walking into that Walmart and buying the biggest bag of salt they have.
“Who was the man who attacked me?” The question comes out rough, and I have to clear my throat again.
“Marcus Walsh.”
I make a circular hand gesture to urge him to keep talking, because that name means nothing to me.
“He was an accountant and a father of two,” he says. “Normal guy.”
“Until he snapped and strangled a girl in a parking lot?”