Chapter Four Truce
Amber isn’t moving. She’s in the grass under a tree.
In a lightning storm. My mother was terrified when I moved out of the city and into the countryside.
She warned me not to stand under trees during a storm.
She also warned me not to drink the water from the spring because I would get dysentery, not to answer the phone with wet socks or I’d get an electric shock, and not to watch television at night or I’d go blind.
I think the one about the tree and the lightning storm has some merit.
“Damn it,” I groan. My plan worked! I got Amber out. She was terrified. Screaming. Hysterical.
And then... She turned around and fought me. Fought against something she couldn’t see, something that was way stronger than her.
To be honest, right now I’m running on fumes, but my conscience is still working. I can drive the girl out, sure. That’s just fair. This is my place. I deserve it.
But I can’t let her die.
What if she’s already dead? What if she broke her neck?
The thought sends me screaming into the night, doors and windows flung wide, and my body wrapping around hers and dragging her inside as she tries to struggle. Her body is mostly limp, but she still finds time to curse at me.
Don’t know why that makes me smile a little.
I plop Amber on her couch, soaking wet, bedraggled, and covered in grass and mud.
She rolls to the floor. “Don’t get the couch dirty,” she snaps, eyes still closed, speaking through bloody lips.
“Quite the fighter, kid,” I say, voice holding just a little bit of admiration.
“Hm?” Amber lifts her head. “You’re a man?”
“What? You can hear me?”
“Well, I can now,” she mutters, breathing shallowly, her eyes still shut. She looks spent and hurt, and her head just lolls on the wooden floor while a little puddle forms around her.
I feel like a real heel.
“Why are you being such a dick?” she asks. “I thought you were some little old grandma ghost who wanted to scare me off.”
“I’m no grandpa. I am a ghost, and I want you gone, kid.”
“You called me kid. Why are you calling me kid if you’re not an old grandpa?”
“I call all the cute young girls kid.”
“That’s gross.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, it wasn’t in 1954, okay?”
“In 1954? Is that when you died?”
“Yep.” Don’t know how it happened, but Amber and I are having a conversation. It’s the first conversation I’ve had in seventy years, and it feels... Wonderful.
I can’t explain it, but it makes me feel different. More alive. More like the me I used to be.
Well, don’t get used to it, Johnny. I give myself a shake.
“Look, you can have any house you want. You’re alive. Go buy another one. This is where I have to stay. I don’t want you here, no offense.”
“Just go buy another one? Ha!” Amber’s eyes flutter open. “Are you out of your mind? Do you know what the housing market is like?”
“No. Because I’m a ghost, smart alec.”
“Oh. True. Well, that isn’t happening. I couldn’t have afforded a house as nice as this anywhere else in New York, or even the whole Northeast!”
“Uh... How about the Southeast?” I suggest.
She glares, eyes open now. “My family is here, dipwad. Well, in the Boston area.”
“Dipwad?” I mutter and walk over.
For a second, her eyes glaze, then focus, and she gasps. “The frowning man!”
“The what?”
“You! You’re the frowning man in my dream!”
“Wasn’t a dream,” I sigh. “I knew you saw me for a second. And look, I’m not usually a big frowner.
I’m a jovial sort of guy. Real people person and all that.
But not these days. This is my place. I can’t leave it, and I can’t cross over, either, so you can forget that.
One of us has to go, and it’s gotta be you. ”
Amber slowly tries to sit up, wincing and gasping. I don’t know what I’m thinking, but I gently stretch out and help her sit up.
“Thanks. And also—no deal, buster. All my money is sunk into this place. I’m not moving. Not selling. How could I? That would just be someone else you’d scare off, right? Is that really what you want to do with your life?” She looks at me, frowns, and amends, “Unlife? Afterlife?”
“No, of course it isn’t. I wanna cross over, okay? I got a family, too, but they’re all dead and gone. I can’t leave—because I was killed here.”
Amber’s eyes widen. “Killed?”
“That’s right. I had it all, kid.”
“Amber. I’m Amber. Not ‘kid.’”
“Fine, Amber.” I sit down, too, cross-legged, looking intently at the wet, shaking woman across from me.
“I was a Sgt. Had an honorable discharge at the end of my time in Korea. Got one of the special loans for G.I. s. Got this place. Got a car—a real beauty, a Chevy Bel-Air. Got a job I liked, working over at Manny’s Garage.
Got a girl—Nancy. Cute little waitress. I was supposed to propose the night I died. Killed. Only twenty-four, you know.”
“No. I didn’t know. And look. I’m sorry, because that’s horrible, and miserable, and I’m so, so sorry—” Her voice rings with genuine sympathy, and she looks at me, waiting for me to supply my name, I think.
“It’s Johnny. Johnny Miller.”
“I’m so sorry, Johnny, but I’m alive. You’re not.
I had a career. I worked my ass off to get into an architectural program in Boston with a minor in structural engineering.
Only girl in most of my classes. I got internships, then the lowest jobs in firms that partnered with bigger firms, then actual jobs at the actual big firms—I was going in for a meeting with someone at the head of Urban Design at Dillinger and Doesberry, the biggest firm in Manhattan, when some idiot T-boned my car and nearly killed me.
Busted my back. My head. Blurry vision. Broken wrist. Unable to do the job I’d trained for all of my adult life. ”
“But you’re better now. Couldn’t you—”
“No. You know why? A year in recovery taught me something. I might have been in a car crash in Manhattan, but I was heading for an actual crash in real life. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, I was in meetings and calls until eight at night, and I was obsessed with getting into the next big team, nailing a spot for the next big project—and I don’t want to live like that anymore.
This is Pine Ridge. This is peace. I’m going to keep this house.
And my peace.” Her soft, pretty face goes hard.
“And if you mess with me, Johnny Miller, I will kick your undead ass. I will exorcise you so fast your ghostly blue jeans catch fire.”
I look down at my clothes. I never take much notice of what I’m wearing, but I think it’s usually the same thing.
White tee. Blue jeans. Work boots. Used to have cigarettes rolled up in my left sleeve, but I don’t now.
Wonder where they went, if they faded away as I stopped reaching for them, knowing I couldn’t smoke ‘em.
“You know I could kill you before you find your phone. So fast your pink jammies catch fire,” I snarl, turning the phrase on her.
Amber’s face goes slack in shock for a second—then gets cocky. “No. You wouldn’t. You dragged me inside when I was knocked out under the tree. And... and it was you! You saved me when I was choking, didn’t you?” she gasps.
I close my eyes. “I just wanted to make you leave, not kill you. But, hey, if you’re throwing around words like ‘exorcise,’ I’ll play rough, too.
I think you’re one cold dame if you can come in and throw an old man out of his home, a home he earned serving his country, a home he was murdered in the night that he was about to seal his future, start his family by proposing to the girl of his dreams,” I say, arching one eyebrow. Laying it on real thick.
Even as I say it, I feel a guilty squirm about one part.
Nancy. She was wonderful, but she wasn’t the girl of my dreams. I was young and dumb.
I dreamed of a future where I’d have a few kids, grill on Saturday, cut the lawn on Sunday, and have a wife in a pretty dress making sure the clothes were clean and the dog was fed.
Just... Just what they call the American Dream, I guess.
What do I dream of now?
I don’t know. People that I love. Seeing them again.
“Look... Can we work out some kind of a deal? You have the back bedrooms, and I’ll take the rest of the house? When my cousin comes over in October, I’m going to need you not to pull this freaky shit, though,” she informs me, trying—and failing—to stand.
I help her again. “You’re in real bad shape, ki—Amber. You’re not in a position to make demands.”
“And you’re a bad poker player,” she counters, letting out a muffled noise of pain when she finally is able to push off on her wrist and rise. “I think I broke a toe. And my wrist always hurts when it rains. This is a new level of pain, though, thank you very much.”
“Hey, I tried the diplomatic approach, though. A little flicker-flicker here. A little slam there.”
“Hmph.” She makes a doubtful noise. “Hey... You can touch stuff!”
“Damn, how hard did you hit your head, kid?” I ask. “Yeah, you’ve already figured that out, remember? I was the one who hauled you in here? The one who was slamming the doors and windows?”
“No, I mean... I didn’t know ghosts could do that! You feel like a water bed.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, since I never got to try one of those out,” I frown, puzzled, “but I’ll take your word for it.”
“Are you the guy who kept this place in such good shape? With the little toolbox under the sink?”
That makes me smile. “Yeah. That was me. Nice you noticed.”
“I did! This place was in really good shape, even though the banker, Mr. Silverman, told me no one had been here in years. I got the place at a good price since it was abandoned.”
Abandoned. Ugly, ugly word. My mouth twists. Chest hurts.
“My family used to visit in the summers. Sometimes. They were busy. This place is in the mountains, but it ain’t no vacation spot,” I snap.
“I didn’t mean—”
“You wanna make a deal, Amber?” I say with sudden conviction, a pain inside my heart now flowing out of my mouth in the form of bargains made in haste.
“Prove Harry Rogers murdered me. Find out if justice was served. I can’t cross over until I know.
You answer all my unsolved questions, and I’ll get out of here.
I know you’ll—” I have to stop and swallow, throat suddenly thick. “I know you’ll treat this place right.”
Amber blinks in surprise, and then sticks out her hand. “If I do that, you won’t pull any more Fright Night stuff on me? You’ll be a ‘tame’ ghost? You’ll help me figure out the case, give me clues and stuff only you would know? Not give me red herrings to prolong the time you stay here?”
“You think I want to stay here, all alone? My brothers and their families used to come and visit me—well, they took the house. They came to the house. But I saw them. I watched my brothers get old. Stop coming. Watched their kids grow up, and some of them kept coming... My youngest brother died a while ago, I guess, based on what I heard that centaur tell you.”
“Centaur?” Amber says faintly. “Mr. Salvin? The handyman is a what?”
“Centaur. And the guy with him, Hugo? I’d say he’s an Orc, but he looks different. Might be an ogre or a troll. I don’t really know.” I relish dropping these little tidbits on her, even though I shouldn’t.
But hell, she rattled my world. I’m only returning the favor.
“Wh... Who? How? These things... Like ghosts make sense. People die. They have souls. Sometimes souls must have forms, right?” Amber licks her lips, which are several shades paler than I remember.
“Hey, don’t you go fainting on me,” I warn.
“But Centaurs? That’s half man-half horse. And horses and people don’t... Like how...”
I shrug. That’s none of my business. “Hey, I remember a couple of myths in the Sunday Special Illustrated Classics. Centaurs or minotaurs were around thousands of years ago, right? Who’s to say they weren’t always real, weren’t always around, like people, but the people didn’t wanna believe in them?
People like to believe they’re real superior,” I sneer.
“Especially the ones who are still breathing.”
She has the manners to know that jab was meant for her. “I’ll start looking into your death in the morning.”
“It is morning. It’s after midnight,” I inform her.
“In the daylight. You’re not getting any deader, and I need sleep.
Lots of it. I’m trying to heal my body, and even though people don’t like to admit it—sleep heals.
If I don’t get much sleep, the headaches are unbearable.
I can’t look at screens, can’t leave dark rooms, and that’s going to be zero help to you. ”
“Oh.” I nod and feel worse than ever. “Sorry about waking you up.”
“I need a shower and clean clothes, and an ice pack for my foot... I think I have ice packs somewhere. I have a gel mask for my head...”
“You get changed, I’ll get the stuff and mop the floor,” I promise.
“You can do that?”
To prove it, I jerk my head to the side, and a mop flies out of the hall closet and into my hand. Amber squeaks in surprise.
“That’s freaky,” she whispers, eyes wide.
“I can do a lot. We’re all just matter. Energy. Sometimes I think we’re like water, ‘cause I hear we’re made with a lot of water, and water can be liquid, gas, and solid, depending on what you do with it.”
Amber nods, face thoughtful. “That’s true. And weird.”
“Weird or not, with enough time alone and enough practice, a ghost can move anything—except himself, outta the place he died.”
“Well. I’m here to help with that. First thing in the morning, we work.”