Chapter 14 Livings
FOURTEEN
LIVINGS
This is how it could’ve happened…
JOHNNY
Ryan.
Ryan.
Hell’s bells, you gotta be kidding me.
I knew she had a secret. I’ve heard her say this name before, cursing him like he was the devil himself. While I watched her, she was watching out for him, but I didn’t worry about the Living man. She ran to Shadowvale to escape him. She’s on my territory now.
She’s sitting next to the memorial markers for me and Cassie, glaring up at a man with an easy grin, his hands in pocket, and a rich boy hair cut that reminds me of Scotty fucking Hilton.
Where the fuck did he come from? I don’t see a car nearby. He might’ve approached on foot, but seeing as how I was obsessively watching Cassidy grieve for me… call for me… I didn’t see him until it was too late.
I hate him instantly now that I do.
Just one look at this square and I wish it was still Halloween. I wish I was still one of the Living.
I’d duck my head, bury my shoulder in his gut, and keep on pushing until I’ve tossed him over the rail, offering him to the placid waves of Shadowvale Lake.
But I can’t do that.
I can’t do anything to let Cassidy know I’m on her side, either. Not any more than I already have, whispering a sweet song to her on the breeze as she sat at my deathsite, mourning the man she met yesterday.
The man who died more than seventy years ago.
Her man.
I knew Em would have to tell her. I couldn’t bring myself to do it after the race.
That was on me. I’d gone into the old quarry, expecting that I would end the race with my new sweetheart bleeding out in my arms. She would die because I always did, and even if she isn’t my Cassie reborn, I was almost sure that she’d share the same face and the same fate.
But, this year, something different happened. Miraculous, even. I raced the ghost of Scotty Hilton’s Oldsmobile 88, but as I took the curve, the fog curling in over the road, the headlights never appeared.
I took the curve the way I would’ve back in 1953, coasting to a firm lead that made me a winner in more ways than one.
I didn’t die again. Cassidy didn’t die at all.
I didn’t leave behind another wreck to puzzle the idiots who worked for the Shadowvale Police.
She squealed and I beat my hands against the steering wheel, puffing on my cigarette as we coasted past the gloomy Reed House, then turned around so I could finally claim her right beside Scotty’s Curve.
Minutes were counting down. I knew that all the way down to my borrowed bones. Halloween always ended with my ribs cracking and my heart breaking—but not this year. This year, I brought my girl home, kissing her sweetly before walking her to her front door.
I stayed leaning against the stolen Mustang as she raced up the stairs.
My cigarette was still nestled between my fingers; if she noticed that I never completely smoked it to the filter or relit another, the magic of Halloween and the spell my ghostly magic wove over her made it so that she didn’t remark on it.
She was mine to love. Mine to make love to.
Mine to kiss.
To fuck.
To claim.
But only until midnight.
Still, I needed one more look before I drove out into the night.
By the next morning—by tomorrow—she would come out of the daze that settled over her the moment our eyes first met.
I suspected Emily would let her in on my secret before long, and I had to make it so that me being a ghost… it wouldn’t matter to her in the end.
I used every bit of energy I had to work on Cassidy, to make her accept me the way that I obsess over her, and my sweetheart responded just the way I thought she would.
I needed her to still love me when Halloween was over. I needed her to pine for a ghost so that she would be waiting for next Halloween, responding to my presence in all the days in between.
I needed her to want Johnny Gray so desperately that the memory of a dead man would best any real-live Livings who tried to make a pass at her.
Like this fucker.
Ryan.
Surprise, Cass. Miss me, baby?
She ain’t his baby. She’s my sweetheart, and I won’t let him lay his filthy hands on her.
I know how a man thinks. This generation or mine, I’ve seen that possessive gleam in many a fella’s eyes. He thinks Cassidy belongs to him.
He’s aiming to take her away when he goes.
Over my dead body, and since my memorial stone is there but my bones ain’t, he hasn’t got a prayer.
I hover behind him, gathering some of my energy.
Halloween was barely twenty-four hours before.
It’s All Saints Day, and the veil is as thin as it can be.
It will only grow harder and harder to pierce it until it’s next October, but for now, if I try my hardest, I can use the power of suggestion to get him to walk away from my girl.
I spent so much of it as a Living last night, fighting the death curse before it finally released me.
I won’t be able to ‘suggest’ that this prick take a nose-dive into the lake the same way that I finally got Scotty to reach for the rope, but I’ll do anything to erase that stunned look on Cassidy’s face.
Surprise, Cass. Miss me, baby?
“No,” I tell him, layering my voice with my power. “She didn’t, buddy. So why don’t you make like a tree and leave?”
His ears twitch, like he heard my creaky voice on the November wind, before dismissing it with a shrug of shoulders and a wave of his hand. “You don’t know how long I’ve been looking for you.”
She’s still crouched in the dirt. I’m not using any of my magic on my girl just now, but as though some spell’s been broken, she climbs up to her feet.
“Ryan? What are you… how did you find me?”
“Same way I always do,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “You suck at hiding.”
Asshole.
Cassidy crosses her arms over her chest.= “I mean it.”
He snorts. “Does it matter? I’m here. It took a while, but you can’t say I’m not determined. See? I love you.”
She covers her face with her hands. “I can’t do this right now.”
“Do what?”
Cassidy huffs. “Okay. Look. I figured, if you tracked me down again, I’d be better prepared. Hell, I’d either go fight or flight depending on the situation. But after the last two days I had, Ryan… please. Go.”
You heard her, chump. Hit the road.
He frowns. “Cass?”
She can’t even look at him. Good for me. Bad for Joe Schmoe over here.
“I love you,” he echoes.
Tough shit.
“I’ve spent months looking for you. I’ve got a house waiting down the street from your parents’ where we’re gonna live. Damn it, you stupid bitch, look at me!”
Her head whips up as he suddenly raises his voice.
“I’m sick and tired of you playing these games. I know you get off on me chasing you, but enough’s enough. You’re coming home with me. You will be my wife. You get it? Now, let’s go. We’re leaving this spooky ass town tonight.”
No, you’re not.
Thankfully, Cassidy agrees.
“This is my home now, Ryan. I’m not going anywhere.”
He takes a step closer to her. “Fine. I found your place. Talked to your super. He seems surprised I’m your boyfriend since he saw you coming home with a different man last night.
” His eyes, dark and brown and absolutely insane, go wide.
“You want to tell me about that, baby? You fucking around on me? On us?”
Cassidy flinches at the reminder of our Halloween date, but rather than deny she was with me, she gets up, surging forward. “There is no ‘us’. There hasn’t been in years. You have to understand that.”
Ryan shakes his head. “We’re over when I say we’re over.”
“Goodbye, Ryan.”
You heard the lady. Get out of here.
He goes still, shoulders tensing. “Don’t you speak to me like that, Cass.”
She tips her chin up. “My name is Cassidy.”
Later, I’ll wonder why her reminding him who she was turned out to be the breaking point for this outsider. Any fool with eyes can see that she’s Cassidy Montrose and no one else, but the second she tells him so, he reacts.
He reacts by pulling a switchblade out of his pocket, flicking it open in one practiced move before launching himself at Cassidy.
Time stops.
It just stops.
Now, nearly everything I’ve learned about being a ghost came from experience, but also because there are enough of us haunting Shadowvale that we can share tricks of the trade.
Some people think that a ghost is tethered to the spot where they died.
Nope. While it’s true that I spend more time hanging around Scotty’s Curve than anywhere else in the town, that’s because I’ve spent long decades reliving the race.
Wondering if there was a way I could’ve avoided Old Man Reed.
I should’ve known that he was the driver that would’ve happily barreled into the Shoebox.
The Reeds in Shadowvale have always been touched in the heard, and if he knew that two hotrodders were taking the curve leading up to his house, he would’ve laughed to see Scotty Hilton and me smashing into the guardrail, our cars landing at the bottom of Shadowvale Lake.
Lord knows I’ve hovered over the serene blue water, talking to more than a few of his lingering victims that all found their watery graves down below, one way or another.
The Reeds are insane, and they’re killers, and every single generation is drenched in blood. It continues even to today with a pair of identical twins who keep their own victims buried in the graveyard at the Reed House.
I don’t mind chatting with the floaters, but even Johnny Gray knows better than to visit the spirits on that land.