Chapter 14 Livings #2
Some ghosts don’t know they can roam. They stay where they died, but I lived by the road, died by the road.
Nothing could hold me down, not when I was still kicking, and especially not once I was a goner.
Nearly every inch of Shadowvale is mine, though my preferred haunts have always been the Shadowvale Diner—where I used to drink malts and rev the Shoebox’s engine for the crowd gathered in the lot—or Mac’s Garage.
My old boss had my wreck towed to his place, and though there was nothing doing when it came to saving my ride, he kept the back bumper, putting the talisman up on his wall as a nod to his best employee.
It’s still there today. Rusted and hanging crooked near the back, Mac’s grandson knows better than to risk Johnny Gray’s wrath by taking it down. He’s never met me, only heard the stories, but I haunt my old garage the same way I haunt the diner that belongs to the last of the Grays now.
They were places I imprinted on when I was alive, and I consider them my turf in death. No other ghosts linger near them for that long, except for me, and that’s how I like it.
Until Cassidy. From the moment I felt the same tug toward my sweetheart that I did to the mortal realm after my insides were splattered over the dash of the Shoebox, she’s been my anchor. I can go anywhere, but I only want to be where Cassidy is.
She could die. It hits me like a punch dead to the chest. I drift a few feet away, the realization having my head spinning. She could die.
I didn’t have enough time with her yet. I’ve only known her since March. Not even a year, and we only shared one real day together. I need more time. I don’t know if she would choose to stay or if she’ll move on just like Cassie did.
I can’t take that chance.
He’s already lunging. If I don’t do something about it, he’ll kill her, and I’ll be alone.
No.
I’ve never possessed anyone before. Some ghosts say it’s like an addiction. You get a taste of Living when it ain’t Halloween and you want more and more. But in order to keep someone else’s life, you have to kill them.
No. It’s worse than that. The dead can move on. They can go to Heaven or Hell, but if you possess a mortal body, their soul stays in purgatory. It’s the cruelest sort of violation because the ghost controls the human body, and the mortal soul is overpowered and quashed into nothingness.
They’re less than nothing, and when the ghost leaves the body, they’re shattered and broken.
But if I enter this bastard, I won’t be able to resist the temptation of taking over his life and being a Living with my sweetheart. We would have this life on earth, and when it was over, I’d follow her to eternity.
Put like that, how could I make any other choice?
It happens in seconds. One moment, the knife is in Ryan’s hand, the body in his control. The next? His body convulses, becoming mine. The first thing I do is drop the knife. Right after that, I release the death grip on Cassidy’s arm.
I swear to God, if he left a mark on her, I’ll unpossess him, then gut him with his own damn knife.
“No, please, don’t. I—”
“Cassidy.”
She jerks her head away from me, waiting for a strike that will never come. Not while I’m a Living.
I try again. “Sweetheart.”
It’s his body, but my voice. I’m puppeting him, and as I reach out, cupping her jaw with his hand… my hand… I put a little more force into it. “Look at me.”
Cassidy gulps. I can feel the motion of her throat against my fingertips before she sucks in a short breath and turns.
She looks at me. Really looks at me.
Her lips part. “Blue.”
I raise my eyebrows.
She lifts her hand, tracing the height of my cheek, as close to my eye as she can get without poking me with her nail. “I know these eyes.”
Thank fucking God. “It’s me, sweetheart. It’s me.”
Her bottom lip trembles, and my heart squeezes. “Johnny?”
I nod.
“But… what? How? Em said…”
Yeah, sweetheart. I know exactly what Em said. “That I’m a dead man?”
“Uh… yeah.”
I shrug, but not enough to lose this connection between us. “She’s right. I said I was waiting a long time for a girl like you, Cassidy. Maybe I just didn’t mention how long it was.”
Cassidy jerks her head. She glances behind her, toward the mossy stone at her back. My death marker. “You were born in 1928,” she whispers.
I nod.
“So that means you’re—”
“I’m twenty-five,” I say. “I’ve just been twenty-five for a long time.”
I’ve been twenty-five since 1953.
“He… he tried to kill me.” She gasps, eyes searching for me again. “Holy shit, Johnny! He… you… He tried to kill me. Now you look like him, but you sound like you and your eyes… those are your eyes!”
“Because I’m me,” I promise. “I saved you. Because I love you, sweetheart.”
Her eyes are full of shock, but something else, too. “You came back for me.”
I chuck her chin. “And I always will.”
“But you… won’t you have to leave me again?”
Not if I can help it.
She sounds so much like Cassie in this moment, but she isn’t. She’s my Cassidy, and just as I promised my first love that I’d never leave her, I gaze down on her familiar face and make the same silent vow to Cassidy. I won’t leave, but I need to know that she can stay with me like this.
She has to love Johnny Gray. I’m not this bastard who tried to hurt her, I’m her Johnny, but is that what she sees when she looks up at me? I don’t see Cassie when I look at her. She has to see me.
“Do you want him?”
“What?”
I gesture at the chest of the man that I’m possessing. “This fella. Your Ryan. Tell me, Cassidy. Do you want him?”
Do you love him?
She flinches, a look of disgust twisting her gorgeous features. “No.” It’s a whisper that grows into a more assured answer. “Fuck, no. He wanted to kill me!”
He did. I can sense that murderous urge in every inch of this body. I’m in complete control. His hands won’t betray me and try to throttle Cassidy like Ryan wants to because this body… it’s mine now.
It can be mine forever.
Ryan will be a bad memory, and Cassidy and I… we can have the second chance I’ve waited all these years for.
“What if I told you that I can stay with you forever? Me and you, sweetheart. You’d just have to get used to looking at this face.”
“You… you mean it?”
“I do.”
Her eyes search Ryan’s face. My face now. “And he won’t be able to come back? You’re Ryan now?”
I chuckle darkly. “Nah. I’m still Johnny Gray. There ain’t a Ryan anymore.”
For a moment, Cassidy stands in front of me, watching me closely, trembling softly—until she throws her arms around my neck, burying her face in my chest.
“You saved me. Oh, Johnny, you saved me!”
I did.
This time, I finally saved my girl, and as I hold Cassidy close, squeezing her to me while burying the consciousness of the former Ryan so deeply, he won’t even get to experience the love and affection and undiluted need I have for this woman… I hold Cassidy close and know that this is it.
Johnny and Cassidy.
Together forever.
Always.