Chapter 10 It’s Time
TEN
IT’S TIME
JOHNNY
My sweetheart is going to die—again—and there’s nothing I can do to stop from history repeating itself.
Refusing my girl when she wants something from me…
that’s not how I’m wired. I tried to tell Cassidy that she couldn’t come with me, that she had to stay, that I would come back if I could while knowing that my death curse means that she won’t see me again until next Halloween after I crash and return to my ghost form right after…
I tried to explain that this was something I had to do myself, but stubborn as ever, Cassidy insisted that she ride shotgun.
Our date wasn’t over yet. That’s what she said. Halloween wasn’t done, and she was looking forward to spending the rest of the night with me.
How could I refuse?
I should have. It would be a real shame if anything happened to her, but seeing as how I’m destined to crash whatever ride I’m in when the ghostly headlights on, it’s not looking good for ol’ Johnny Gray.
I caved for Cassie.
I love Cassidy just as much—and I fucking folded again.
I even opened the door for her. “Get in.” The same words that have haunted me since I said them to Cassie.
And how did Cassidy respond? With an impish grin and fire in her pretty brown eyes as she settled in the Mustang’s bucket seat, she told me, “Night’s not over yet, Johnny.”
She was right, too. The night doesn’t end until the race does.
For the first time in seventy years, I’ll have a passenger riding shotgun.
I wonder if this one will survive.
“Where are we now, Johnny?”
Cassidy’s excited yet curious voice breaks up the noise rattling around my skull.
The crunch as my ribs cracked. The thump-thump-thump of my heart as it pumped my life’s blood all over the Shoebox.
Cassie’s scream. Cassie’s last sigh. The creak of the tree we smashed into, and the crumpled steel that ripped through my ears.
Her pleading words right before I lost her.
Stay with me…
And my own vow echoing back to me: Always… ays… ays…
“Johnny?”
A hint of concerns colors her voice. I shake my head, rapping my palms against the steering wheel anxiously.
Don’t think about Cassie. It’s Cassidy we’re riding with now. It’s Cassidy we have to protect.
To save.
To keep.
“What was that, sweetheart?”
“Where are we?”
Oh. That’s what she said.
I point through the dash. “See how the path we took brought us down to this lot, but if you look closely, it’s like a carved out bowl?”
Cassidy leans forward, making a small noise of surprise when she sees the stone walls in the distance. “Yeah. That’s so weird.”
“It’s an old gravel pit. A quarry. Back in the day, they used to excavate it for construction.
You can make concrete out of this shit. Other building blocks, too.
It was a big deal in Shadowvale, and when houses were springing up, the quarry was in demand.
Not anymore, though. It’s been plucked clean for a long time now. ”
“Okay. So why are we here?”
Good question.
I know the answer of course. Every Halloween, no matter what, my death curse insists that I hop in a car, drive all the way to the gravel pit where Amy Harris once used her blue scarf as a starting flag, and wait for—
I shift in my seat as the hum of a too-familiar car reaches me through the glass window and over the purr of the Mustang’s engine.
Right on fucking time.
I rap my knuckles on the window, drawing her attention to the phantom Oldsmobile idling next to us.
Cassidy jumps. “Holy shit. Where did he come from?”
“That’s the other drive we’ll be racing tonight. If I win, I get his car. If he wins, he gets mine.”
At least, that was the original deal. Scotty Hilton moved on after he hanged himself, but he’s not the one I’m locked in a never-ending cycle of racing every Halloween.
It’s the Olds itself that plays its part in my purgatory. And it doesn’t need to win when everyone involved knows that, by the end of the race, another stolen car will be wrecked off of Scotty’s Curve for the SPD to putz over.
Cassidy is going to hurt her neck if she keeps swiveling like that. “But I don’t get it. I was watching… where the hell did he come from? I didn’t see… it’s like he just appeared out of thin air!”
Shit. That’s what happens when I let my melancholy get the best of me.
Too busy thinking of the past, hoping that it won’t repeat itself with Cassidy riding shotgun, I loosened my hold on my girl.
My ghostly magic is almost spent. I’ve used so much to keep her from questioning little things that would give my paranormal secret away, and all it took was a lapse in my own focus for her to ask questions about the race.
She’ll have even more before we’re done if I can’t fix this.
“Cassidy, please. The race is quick. We both leave the quarry at the same time, head north, take the curve, then drive down by the old Reed House. First to reach that point wins. I can come right back after that.”
It’s a simplification of the truth. Technically, the real race requires that we hit the end of that street, turn around, retrace the path.
The first car that returns to the quarry is the real winner.
Since every single race ends with me crashing on the curve, it doesn’t make sense to go into details.
I’m just hoping that the magic recognizes that Cassidy… she’s not Cassie.
Let her survive the wreck. I’ve never been a religious man, but if I can ask God this one thing, let her survive the crash.
Unless I can—
She opens her mouth. “If you try to tell me that I should wait for you here, shove it. Either I’m coming or I’m calling for a ride home. Your choice, Johnny.”
Cassie couldn’t stand to be left behind, either.
Helpless and unsure what to do, I just shrug. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Get out of the car. I can’t make you, but get out of the car.
Fuck. I can use all my power to hide the fact that I’m a ghost while easing her into accepting her attraction to me, but when it comes to ‘suggesting’ her to do anything, I’m SOL. One glance at the stubborn set of her jaw tells me that she means what she says, and she says what she means.
She’s coming on this race, and her next words confirm it.
“I won’t. So… when does this show get on the road?”
Right as Cassidy asks that, the Oldsmobile 88 next to me revs its engine. I do the same, leaning forward, gripping my steering wheel. “When?” I repeat. “How about… now!”
Tires squeal. Gravel kicks back, so loud, I hear the echoes of more than seventy years in their scattering.
I take the lead. That’s what happened then.
That’s what happens now. I climb out of the quarry first, edging the Olds.
Once we’re on the main road, the Mustang’s tires roar over the asphalt, slick and hungry beneath us no matter the weather in the mortal world.
Each window is cracked open. Whipping wind lashes through the gaps, Cassidy’s curls flying wild beside me as she laughs at the speed.
It’s a full-throated, husky laugh, but it’s alive.
I have to keep her that way.
As always, the Oldsmobile is on my ass, its headlights like hellhounds, snarling to drag me to Hell at last. No.
This is where I belong, with a brown-eyed beautiful in the passenger seat.
I coax a little more speed from the Mustang.
Scotty’s Curve—Johnny’s Curve—is coming fast, but I stay ahead. This time, I stayed even further ahead.
My knuckles are white on the wheel, sweat beading on my still-Living brow, the ghost of my past chasing me down the road I’ve died so many times on. But the Mustang growls and races like the horse she is, and I take the curve as though it might yet be different.
Cassidy whoops from the passenger seat. “Go, Johnny! You got this!”
I grin even as death chases us both.
God, I love her. Cassidy. I fucking love Cassidy.
The turn comes, and I try to slam on the breaks. Maybe if I try to change the outcome, maybe if I let the Olds win I can shield her, but the death curse is too powerful and my foot seems glued to the gas.
I can’t turn, either. All I can do is drive, but then the most amazing thing happens.
The headlights don’t come. The road stays clear.
No lights up ahead. No screech.
No crash.
Together, Cassidy and I clear the curve. I beat it. Even if the Oldsmobile catches up and overtakes us on the next street, I don’t care. I didn’t kill my girl.
Not this time.
Cassidy throws her hands in the air, laughter ringing out. “You’re doing it! You’re fucking doing it! Let’s go! Happy fucking Halloween!”
My heart thunders louder than the engine as I beat my hands on the steering wheel in time to the thuds.
The Olds is in my rearview. A moment later, so is the Reed House. We did it.
We survived.
And Cassidy was absolutely right.
Halloween isn’t over yet.
If you’ve never been dead, it might not make sense what I do next, but, to me, it was the only thing I could do. The race was over. I won. I finally won. Only my prize… it wasn’t a silly car. I can steal a hundred cars if I want to.
There’s only one Cassidy Montrose.
I waited seventy years hoping that Cassie Miller came back to me. What I got was infinitely better. A woman with a face I was destined to love who is wild and reckless and brave, who falls easily under my spell, and who might even want to stay there without my power compelling her to.
She’s not my past. She’s better.
She’s my future.
She’s mine—and it’s time I take her.