 
Author: Brian Stillman

Cover Artist: Jenny Dayton

Copyright 2017

Distributed by Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

About The Author
1.

The plan for the afternoon and evening was a birthday pizza party at Wet and Wild. The water park was populated with lame characters. A clown. A penguin. A tiger. All outfitted in swim trunks. Little kid stuff.

I was months older than Denny. I wore the age of 12 like an old suit. Dad even made fun of the fact the tiniest mustache trace grew on my upper lip - he'd check the coffee grounds every morning, accuse me of stealing some for the fake mustache he alone could see.

"Which one should I wear?"

Denny held up two black t-shirts. Mid-August. Going to be nearly 90 degrees that afternoon, but Denny was self-conscious about his weight. Both his folks were plus-sized. Both his older sisters had been chunky little kids, but high school-aged had transformed, and now both were athletic and slender. Denny was convinced he'd bypass slimming down once he hit puberty.

"Batman," I said.

"Batman," echoed Trista.

"You didn't even look," said Denny. Trista was sitting Indian-style on his bedroom floor, playing with the Caldwell's cat, Tumor, a kitten named after the inclination to clutch onto feet and stay put no matter how violent the attempt to shake him off.

"Eventually you'll have to take the shirt off," I said. "You'll get too soggy."

"Tina's going to be there," said Denny. "Janine Wilson."

"You should bottle that whine. Sell it."

Trista laughed.

"Come on, Monty," said Denny. "You know I've been trying to lose weight."

"You shouldn't have invited them."

"I didn't. My mom did."

"Sorry, D."

Trista made a noise as Tumor launched off her shoulder and landed on Denny's bed.

"You ok?"

She looked at me and rolled her eyes.

"No. Can't you see all the blood? I'm dyyyyying." She wiggled out of her position and stood.

Denny called Trista my own 'Tumor.' She was some neighborhood kid that had randomly shown up and started watching us play a few years ago. She'd hung around ever since, an unofficial younger sibling. She lived closer to my house than Denny's, so I took the brunt of her affections. Both Trista's mom and my own placed an unspoken expectation upon me that Trista wouldn't come to harm hanging out with two older boys. She was a skinny burden with an overabundance of curly hair.

Trista walked over to a window and parted the blinds with her fingers. A spray of sunlight invaded the dim room. Distracted from inspecting the present I'd brought Denny, Tumor leaped on the spray of sunlight splashing on the bed then off it then back on. Denny laughed.

"Are your sisters coming to the party?" I asked.

"In your dreams," said Denny. Holding my eye, he mouthed 'wet dreams,' ever cautious with the put downs with Trista around.

"Just asking."

"I know," he said. "They're seniors this year. No time for little kid stuff. Although they did get me a gift certificate to Wedgeworld Comics."

"Nice."

Trista sat down at Denny's desk and waggled the computer mouse.

"Can I play Arkham Asylum?" she asked.

"Sure. Just don't do it under my account."

"Afraid I'll break your high score?"

"No." Denny walked over to her and reached for the keyboard. "I just like my stuff my way. Here. Let me show you how to set it up-"

Trista hunched over the keyboard and mouse, blocking Denny.

"I know, I know. Geez. This isn't my first rodeo."

A crackling noise started up from the bed and quickly ratcheted up in speed and force.

"Dude! Tumor! Stop, man!"

The cat transformed into a blur on the bed, tearing the wrapping paper into ribbons then ducked away from Denny's outstretched hand and leaped onto the floor and ran a full circle before shooting out the partially closed bedroom door and into the hallway.

"Shit," Denny picked up the ravaged present. "Spastastic the Cat strikes again."

"You might as well finish what he started," I said.

"I guess. Man, he gutted it."

Denny tore the paper away.

We had a saying that anything falling short of cool was 'Totally Bauer', named after a substitute teacher that was all balding nerd up front but sporting a ponytail in back. Mr. Bauer got a little too excited about math and science for us to take him seriously.

My present was a soft cloth Batman doll. Little kid-ish, kind of, but it was the version based on Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Pulled from the ravaged wrapping paper, Denny was looking at it like far as Batman-themed presents go it was Totally Bauer.

"This is amazing," he finally said.

"Is it?"

"It's DKR, Monty. He's even baring his teeth. And he even looks old like Clint Eastwood, man. Cool."

"You're welcome."

"It's a sign. I'm totally wearing the Batman t-shirt to Wet and Wild."

"Denny. What's wrong with this?"

Trista had pushed back from the desk. She pointed at the computer screen.

A chat app had popped-up dead center in the monitor. The message was a photo. Someone had snapped a shot of a drawing and sent it to Denny.

I recognized the little girl in the drawing. Prudence the Dumb Little Ghost Girl. Some bad luck ridden dead girl Denny and I had come up with one day when we were bored. Like some of the dumb gags we'd devised it had a surprisingly long shelf life. Now and then Denny would bring it up like if a sudden bad smell blossomed, he'd blame his epic chili fart on Prudence the Dumb Little Ghost Girl.

On the screen, Prudence, modeling her trademark messy hair and dirty clothes, held a cake with candles. Exhibiting all the bad luck she always attracted, one of the candle flames had strayed and set her hair on fire. Even the trademark Band-Aid dangling off her scabby knee was aflame. Written above Prudence were the words: "Happy Birthday, Jerkwad. See you at WNW!"

"Is that Prudence?" I asked.

"No. Yeah. Here. Trista. Let me see that..."

Denny pushed himself in front of Trista, practically crawling up in her lap to get at the keyboard. She squeaked. Denny's bulk blocked my view of the screen.

"There. Sorry. It's gone now. You can go back to playing."

He went back over to the bed and picked up the Batman doll.

"Denny?" I asked.

"What?"

"Why is Craig Donnelly drawing Prudence?"

"Um. I don't know."

"I thought I drew Prudence," I said.

"It was a good drawing," said Trista.

"Hey. Pipe down. Play Batman."

"Sorrrrr-ry."

"And what did that mean - 'See you at WNW!' Hey. Denny."

Denny had tossed Batman onto the pillows. He gathered torn up wrapping paper and balled it into his fists.

"Craig Donnelly is a douche," I said. "The douchiest. You've said it yourself. A million times."

"I know."

"He's the worst. He brown noses. He cheats during tests. He thinks he's black, thinks he can rap, does all those dumb stupid gang sign things."

"Girls really like him though," said Denny. "When I invited Lisa and Heather they asked if he was coming. When I said 'yes' they got all excited."

"Screw Lisa and Heather. Jeez, Denny. They don't even like you. They just want to go to Wet and Wild for any reason."

In the silence between us, the Batmobile's roar and the Joker's cackle filled the bedroom.

"He's drawing Prudence?"

Denny's shoulders sagged.

"I told him about her. I made a reference to her at school one day. He asked me about it, and I told him about her. I showed him one of the comics we made. He said he could draw it only better. You know him, Monty. He draws really, really good."

"I liked it," said Trista.

"Shut up!" I mussed the top of her head. She squawked and slapped at my hand.

"Is he really going to be there?" I asked Denny. "Did you invite him to Wet and Wild? To your party?"

"I don't know. Yeah. I guess."

"I'm your best friend. I'm your best friend since forever, and you invite Craig 'The Plague' Donnelly to your party without telling me?"

Mrs. Caldwell called up from downstairs. Denny's grandma was on the phone and wanted to talk to her favorite grandchild.

Denny left. Trista kept playing Arkham Asylum. I told her I wanted to leave. Only about twenty times before reluctantly, petulantly, she saved her game and got out of the chair.

Right next to the bedroom door Denny kept a shelf displaying toys and books he'd outgrown, but couldn't let go of just yet. On the bottom shelf next to a stuffed soft cloth R2-D2 was a red and yellow plastic Walk-And-Talk. Mobile fun for everyone. Really. That was the advertisement line.

It was outfit with a plastic strap, a handle, and a microphone attachment. It came with cassettes you could record your voice on in several pre-programmed settings. Robot. Monster. Alien. We used to play with it all the time, recording over and over and over again a billion stupid things.

Headed out of Denny's room, I kicked the Walk-And-Talk, hard, into the shelf backing board.

Trista said my name. Told me congratulations, I'd broken it. I didn't care. I kept walking down the hall, steam rolling out of my ears.

*

Downstairs, Tumor latched onto my ankle. He didn't use claws when he went all-Velcro on you. I finally peeled him off, and he went scampering away towards their kitchen.

Outside, Trista said, "At least you didn't kick Tumor."

"I wouldn't kick Tumor."

"Tell that to the toy you killed." She sighed. "What do we do now?"

"I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm going home."

I heard Denny's voice. He'd come outside and stood in the Caldwell front doorway, talking to his grandma. I thought he'd seen the damaged Walk-And-Talk and felt my scalp and ears turn red.

He pointed at me. Then cupped his hand and motioned I ought to come on over and take care of something. Then he pointed at his crotch. It was something he'd seen on the Internet, one of those 'Things You Never Notice in Movies' collections put up on YouTube. In this case, some little kid actor standing right behind Doc Brown at the end of Back To The Future III, making all these crotch-oriented funky hand motions no one noticed before the film was released.

Denny probably wouldn't remain Grandma Caldwell's favorite if she knew he was performing that nonsense while talking to her long distance.

Usually, not even usually, every time, when one of us did that, the other person did it back.

I left Denny hanging. I just stared at him. He could tell his new boyfriend Craig Donnelly all about the creepy Back To The Future III kid.

Stupidity performed, shoulders slumping, Denny retreated and shut the door.

"What does that even mean?" asked Trista. "Hey. I'm talking to you." She punched my shoulder.

"What?"

She turned and made a face and did the 'come-here' motion with her hands.

"You look stupid," I said.

"Then I guess we're twins. What does it mean?"

"Nothing."

"But I want to know."

"If you want to know, read my mind."

"'Read my mind.'" She said it back in a voice like she was Frankenstein's monster.

I put my hand on her head, my hand squeezing through all the curls to her skull.

"Can't read what isn't there," I said.

"Grow up. I hate it when you do that! Stop. Monty!"

When my hand kept squeezing her skull, she played dirty. Grabbed through my shirt around the collarbone and pinched me. Hard. I let go. Massaged my wound. She giggled. Gave me a look that said what did I expect? Anymore, anytime I pulled the 'read my mind' card, I paid a price in physical pain.

"I bet that-" She did the 'come here' gesture, "it's something gross, isn't it?"

"Of course it is. It's boy stuff."

"Boys are gross."

"Yep."

"You're gross."

"Then why do you hang around with us?"

"Science."

"You need a lab coat."

"Maybe I'll get one."

"Doesn't matter," I said. "You're too dumb to be a scientist."

"Like 'Prudence the Dumb Little Ghost Girl'?"

I didn't say anything. Trista walked beside me.

"What does that mean, what you said, 'he thinks he's black'?"

"Craig Donnelly?"

"Yeah."

"Way he talks. Way he dresses."

"Denny's black."

I shrugged.

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know. He's just..."

"Well, I think he's dumb," said Trista. "Craig's the dumbest."

"He is. You're right."

"Denny's dumb, too. The dumbest." She punched my arm. "You're dumb, too."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," she said.

"At least I know where boogers come from."

"Where they come from? You're where they come from. You, Montgomery Strahl, you are boogers."

I jammed a finger up my nose and then went after her with an index finger wet with fresh gold. She shrieked. Laughing like a madman, I chased her down the street.

2.

Far as haunted houses went, the one in our neighborhood was kind of sad. Totally Bauer.

We called it the Clatterhouse. It wasn't that creative. The former tenants were actually named Clatterhouse. The last person to live inside the house was Myrna Clatterhouse. They said she'd poisoned everyone - her kids, her husband, her sisters - and gotten away with it because the local doctors and police were too dumb to figure out her methods. She died, too, and the rumor held it was suicide. She'd run the board and run out of relatives to kill.

The house itself was dilapidated, grayed out like you could picture something older than time itself lurking behind all the curtains, but the local historical society had an ongoing preservation push. They were taking it upon themselves to pretty up parts of town that might otherwise continue to go ugly.

A small army of glove wearing little old ladies attacked the weeds in the Clatterhouse yard. A wheelbarrow was full of weeds, some green and some browned by time. One skinny woman was tugging on the power cord of a gas-powered weed whacker nearly as thick in its trunk as she was. Several of the elderly workers waved at Trista, and she waved back.

"Pretty soon you won't even have a haunted house on your street," said Trista.

"I guess not."

"Should we help them? The ladies?"

"We have to go to Denny's party," I said.

"Even with Craig Donnelly there?"

I didn't answer.

"That's hours from now, Monty."

"Look at them," I said. "They'd make us do all the work. Besides, I bet it's just a trap to lure young girls into their midst. And then when no one is looking, they'll jump on you and drink your blood."

"That's vampires," said Trista. "Vampires can't be out in the sun."

"They're special vampires. Reverse vampires."

"If they're reverse vampires, they wouldn't need blood. They'd have too much blood in their bodies and would have to get rid of it or else they'd die. They'd pop like balloons."

"Boy, you're smart, aren't you?"

"Smarter than you," said Trista.

"But not as pretty."

She laughed. If she laughed hard enough, she snorted and the laugh crumbled into a bunch of dorky honk noises. Mom said it was endearing. I thought it made Trista sound like a donkey.

"Besides," she said, "I'm not scared of vampires. They're not real."

"If they were, they'd stay away from you and that donkey laugh you've perfected."

She turned and stuck her tongue at me and blew a raspberry.

"Real mature," I said.

"Real manure is what you mean. It's what you're made out of."

We turned off the Clatterhouse street and continued ambling south. When we walked past it, I barely looked at my house. No one was there. Dad was at work, Mom at work, too, at the school, inspecting the gymnasium re-flooring. Real exciting the way being the high school principal meant she didn't even get summers off.

Walking past a convenience store, we were joined by Ellen Gaines, one of Trista's friends. She was a nice kid, normal as any of us except for a port-wine stain, just a splash of one, poking out from her scalp. Her hair was long and blonde and didn't obey her. She'd pat it down over the mark and soon as she'd let it go, her hair would betray her, reveal what lay below.

"Do you know Sue Hart, Monty?" asked Ellen Gaines. Self-conscious of her skin, she always talked quietly and looked at the ground when she was talking.

"No."

"She's in my class, I mean our class, mine and Trista's. She said Peter Uphall tried to make her take off her clothes."

"Peter Uphall?"

"Uh-huh. She said he got her out in the woods right past that tire place and gave her a choice. She had to take off her shirt, or she had to watch him pee."

"Gross," said Trista.

"She said he made her hold his you-know-what while he peed," said Ellen.

"She's in your class?" I asked.

"Yeah," said Trista. "She's got freckles. Does Peter Uphall like freckles or something?"

"I don't know," I said.

"I've got freckles," said Trista.

Ellen made a noise like Trista might be doomed. Trista just gave her a look.

"He's in your class, Monty," said Trista.

"So?"

"You don't know that much about him."

"I haven't seen his dossier," I said.

"His what?"

"His file."

Trista sighed.

"What?" I asked.

"Sue makes stuff up," said Trista.

"You think she's making it up about Peter Uphall?"

Trista shrugged.

"I don't know. She tried to tell everyone I had worms."

Ellen made a noise.

"See. Ellen remembers. And then she was telling us her cousin was on America's Got Talent! Also a fib. I don't know. I don't know anything about Peter Uphall. He's never done anything to me. But if he is creepy, I hope he doesn't have a thing for freckles. I don't want to see anyone pee let alone hold it while they pee."

Denny called Peter Uphall 'PU' - like 'Pee-Uuu! You stink!'"

He was this quiet kid with light blue eyes like two chunks of ice decorated by tiny black dots for pupils. Denny said he got a 'rogues gallery' vibe off of PU. Like there was something off about him, something that would easily trigger and allow him to menace the town like one of Batman's villains.

Now and then I saw PU walking around town alone, often walking out of bushes or onto paths that ran between neighborhoods or paralleled the gravel pit or the garbage dump. I walked around by myself now and then, but I didn't frequent the out of the way places. But now with Trista's anecdote firmly attached to all things PU it made me wonder what he was up to.

"Just don't go anywhere alone with him," I said.

"I won't." Trista pointed at Ellen. "She won't either."

"I won't," said Ellen. "I swear."

Trista stepped off the curb and crossed the street and started down an alley. She turned and walked backward and looked at me.

"What?"

"Am I supposed to go anywhere alone with you?"

"I don't know," I said.

"Do you have to pee?" "You're in luck. I'm fresh out. I wouldn't want you to hold it anyway. You picked boogers with those hands."

"Ha!"

"You'll be ok though. If I do something creepy just make like a donkey like you usually do and the whole town will come running."

She laughed. She even made the donkey dork noise. I made it right back at her.

"Jerk! You know you love it!" She clubbed my arm and turned and ran. She yelled for Ellen to join her, to get away from that obnoxious human freak Montgomery Strahl. Giggling, Ellen put on the afterburners and left me behind, running after Trista. I watched them run, hands in the air, running some goofy figure-eight pattern until it was time to fake-hide and stare at me from behind the front of a parked car. Trista moved out into the center of the street and grabbed Ellen and showed her how to do the Back To The Future III Kid crotch motion. They both did it, and I did it back, and they screamed and ran. Real manure.

3.

Ari held the bucket of worms out, waited for Trista to make a choking sound, and then smiled. He was the older Fletcher brother. When he went to classes, he was a year ahead of me. His attendance record was the definition of sparseness. Truancy his chosen art form.

"She doesn't want to eat worms," called Soup. "No one wants to eat worms, Ari, for gosh sake. Get that can over here already. We're losing light."

Soup was the little brother. Sebastian his given name, but Ari and practically everybody else never called him anything but Soup.

The Fletcher clan lived a couple of streets down from Trista's house. She was older than Soup. Waiting for the hours to crumble away for the trip to Wet and Wild our ambling had delivered us to the Fletcher's.

Ellen had peeled away from us and gone home. Right after Ellen was out of earshot, Trista had asked me if I liked Ellen. 'Like' liked her. I didn't know what to make of the question. I told her all the girls I was interested in were in my class or older. Trista got quiet. And then just announced we should see what Ari and Soup might be up to especially since Trista knew for a fact that Soup 'like' liked her.

She was getting weird.

It used to be throwing around a football or playing video games was enough for her. Denny had said something at one point about how Trista was getting pretty. And how Trista's mom had nice ones. I'd punched his shoulder, and told him to knock it off.

The Fletcher house choice details were peeling paint, absent roof tiles, and several rusted out cars perched upon the front lawn like silent sentinels. To add even more color, moles and gophers had chosen to assault the yard. There was a complex obstacle course composed of holes and little dirt mounds anywhere you looked.

"You want to go fishin'?" Ari slow walked over to his brother. Even moving slowly his feet found molehills and gopher holes, and he stumbled every other step.

"They don't want to go fishing," said Soup.

"We got something else to do later," I said.

"See? Get that can over here, Ari. I don't like holding worms very long. They poop crazy lots."

Soup hovered above a metal rod thrust into the ground. A worm-getter. A cord ran out of the cork handle and cut off at a power strip laying on the grass, a bright orange extension cord snaking towards the mournful house and up the grayed wooden steps and through the open door, connecting the power strip to the indoor outlet.

"Here." Soup nabbed worms blossoming out of the ground and dropped them into the coffee can. He cried out at sight of fresh worm poop and wiped it off on his shorts.

Ari wore a Hawaiian shirt and black dress pants gone shiny at the knees. Soup reversed the fashion, outfit in a black T-shirt and Hawaiian shirt patterned shorts displaying a wide swathe of stains of varying colors.

"How many are coming up?"

Trista knelt down beside Soup. Hugging her shins, she rested her chin on the top of her knees.

"All of 'em." Soup poked the worm-getter cork handle. "This thing shoots plenty of volts into the ground. Sends the worms straight on up. I swear, when we're putting them on the hook for fishing, you can smell the electricity coming right on off of 'em. You cast, and they go in, the water even sizzles a little."

"Don't," I said.

Trista gave me a look.

"What?" she asked.

"You were reaching for it."

"For the handle," said Trista.

"Even so. I think your mom would want you a good ten feet back from that thing."

"She isn't here."

"If you get electrocuted, she'll kill me."

"I can be Trista the Dumb Little Ghost Girl. Craig Donnelly can draw me."

She looked at me.

"Geez, Monty," she said. "Lighten up."

Soup laughed. He pointed at a fresh one, just popped up through the soil, and asked Trista if she wanted to nab the wiggling worm.

Ari looked at me and spat towards a molehill.

"Little kids," he said. "Pains in the ass, you ask me."

"We need more soil," said Soup. "Ari. Hey. Get more soil for the can."

Ari shrugged and walked across the yard towards a flowerbed, a spade still stuck in the dirt. A muck coated cloud of dirt spread the width of his butt made it look like he'd suffered a soft chocolate explosion, Denny's term for pooping your pants. Carrying a full load or not, Ari knelt and started churning earth.

"Do you want to move it?" Soup stood and pointed at the worm-getter.

"Me?" asked Trista.

"Yeah. We need a couple more. This spot's plum wormed out. Just grab it and pull it out of the earth. Stick it in over thereabouts."

"No, she won't," I said.

"What do you mean 'no'?"

"I'll do it."

"But I want to do it," said Trista.

I didn't point out the look on her face when Soup was posing the possibility. She looked scared, plain and simple, but I wouldn't embarrass her, not in front of others.

"I got dirt," announced Ari. "I got dirt to spare."

"Good. Get it over here," said Soup. "Trista? Strahl? Anybody want to do the honors? Somebody move it. I'll do it myself unless someone around here wants to show they've got the balls."

Trista's eyes narrowed to slits. She looked like she might overcome the fear, but I moved too fast for her.

"Careful," warned Soup. "Cork. Only touch the cork. I don't want to deal with you getting all frizzle-fried. My mom and dad will have my hide otherwise."

Kneeling, I could feel the ground vibrate. The edge of my hand felt a flutter of energy roiling off the metallic spine jammed into the ground.

The cork handle was long enough to wrap one hand and part of the other around. I took hold with my right hand and put a part of the left on top. It came out slowly, but not with too much of a struggle. Black crumbs of earth stuck to the rod like chocolate colored dryer lint.

"Where do you want it?"

Soup turned around and around, fist on his hip like a long-time construction foreman. He pointed.

"Right there. Under the tree, if you please. Don't worry about the extension cord. We've got miles of it to spare."

Just to show Trista it was nothing to worry about I pretend aimed the worm-getter at her and made a noise like it was shooting out a laser. She didn't look like she thought it was funny.

I heard Ari swear behind me, stumbling on those molehills and gopher holes. I was too twitchy to pay much attention to the obstacle course. The tree, my destination, that was my focus. My step wobbled on a deep as you please molehill. A chill shot from my scalp down my spine, but I didn't cry out. A small victory.

Arrived at the tree, I knelt down and drove the worm-getter into the ground, one of the few lush green spots, amply rained upon, shaded. I'd chosen wisely. The earth gave easily and the metal rod sunk in.

"Great," said Soup.

Ever the perfectionist, I pushed the rod in a little deeper.

The sun peeked out from the clouds. It threw Ari's shadow over me and to my left. Soon as I saw it, the shadow took flight. I heard Ari shout, and then he landed on me and bounced off. Dirt and worms landed on me. The coffee can collided with the base of the tree and produced a faint ringing clink. More worms and more soil exited the can.

And there was noise.

I heard nothing above it. It was all encompassing. A roar the likes of which I'd never heard before and would never hear again.

I was screaming.

Screaming while my lungs and the back of my throat turned black as the bitters abundant in the bottom of a burn barrel.

I kept waiting for the moment to pass.

For the vibration infusing me from every point inward out and outward in to cease. Hold a mirror up to my face, and I wouldn't have been surprised to see blue electricity running a route around my teeth and gums or to see smoke pouring out my nostrils or to see my eyeballs bloat and bloat passed poached egg stage to the point they seemed ready to burst.

I kept waiting.

I could be patient.

Really.

I lost track of Ari. I couldn't hear Trista or Soup, and I couldn't feel anything other than my body, all of the molecules, moving. Blurring.

It went on.

And kept going on and on and on and on.

And then it ended.

And took me with it.

4.

The hand stroking my face wasn't a hand. The forearm ended abruptly in a stub the color of a ketchup coated pencil eraser.

Her lips were cracked. Something oil derived dried around the lips, and the same gunk coated her teeth and her chin. She smiled. All around her gunk mouth black goop puckered and popped.

"He awakes." A woman in glasses stood behind Gunk Mouth and pointed at me. A red dot burrowed into her forehead.

"You see," she pointed at the people standing around, and then she pointed at the sky, "you speak of Him, and even those beyond saving can be saved."

Arms in the air, she turned around.

She had that red dot in her forehead.

She didn't have a back of the head.

The back of her head looked like the inside of a lidless soup can. Skull removed, moist dripping tendrils slipped out the hole, patiently waiting to be tucked back in. It looked like a gouge in the crust of a goopy cherry pie.

Gunk Mouth stuck her face in mine. The wetness and heat migrated onto my face. Her tongue was bloated and black.

She grabbed my shoulders and shook me.

"Do you believe the King is near?" A whisper.

I could feel her shaking me.

But I couldn't smell her.

Soup Can turned in circles. The crowd turned as they watched. Adults, mostly, but a lot of kids. They all looked like they'd been through a wringer of some sort like a mass transit system had broken down on the hottest day on record, and they'd been forced to walk through a city.

Soup Can raised her arms to the sky and most in the crowd, muttering, followed suit then fell to their knees. Gunk Mouth let go of me, and she fell to the ground, on her knees, arms raised to the sky.

The sky.

It wasn't right.

I'd seen the sky go that shade of brown and orange and low and bruised only once before, a road trip, cars lining up to move at a crawl on the interstate courtesy of a forest fire that had gotten out of control, leapt a fire line and shot out of the woods and into surrounding fields. Mom said it looked like the sky that accompanied the end of days.

There were patches of light in the sky. Green tinted. Little black dots circled the green light like birds in a synchronized pattern.

I looked around. No sign of a Fletcher. No Trista. This wasn't even in town or anywhere near town. This wasn't any place familiar to me.

Maybe I'd hit my head, and wandered, but where?

All these people, but no cars anywhere in sight.

Gunk Mouth cried out. One of the few standing in the crowd was moving. Gunk Mouth lurched to her feet and scampered through the crowd towards the man, but he jerked out of reach. Not back. Not forward. Not to the side.

Into the air.

Gunk Mouth rolled in the dirt and raised her hands to the sky, shouting.

The floating man kept floating.

And floating.

A rope coiled around his ankle unraveled and fell towards the ground like a booster rocket peeling off a space shuttle headed into upper atmospheres.

The rope landed near the man's launch point, almost right in Gunk Mouth's outstretched hand.

The man gathered speed and kept growing smaller, and just like that, he joined the black dots in the sky, circling the green light.

I looked around.

I turned all the way around.

This definitely wasn't the Fletcher's neighborhood or Trista's. This wasn't a hospital, not the inside of the emergency room, not even the parking lot. It was like a football stadium, the biggest one ever with a field was so massive the seats were so far away they were all but invisible.

A crowd gathered at a door that was and wasn't a door. A black gouge torn into the tan colored surroundings, too tall and too wide and too round and too sharp to have been produced by conventional machines.

The blackness was the real state. The longer I looked, the more it seemed the blackness had been painted over in the rust brown color. All the rust was a snow job, concealer, trying to obscure reality.

Gunk Mouth kept shouting, but no one looked at her, no one shared her concern. They had their hands in the air, but they focused on Soup Can, on her words.

"Do you believe the King is near?" She said it again and again and again. Each time the crowd shouted back in the affirmative more and more passionately.

"Let him hear our song so he can follow the trail back. Let him hear our song so he can follow the trail back."

Soup Can pointed, and a group of children stood and started singing.

There was something wrong.

Not with the singing.

It was beautiful. It sounded like a church choir. The best church choir I'd ever heard.

But the singers themselves, the children. They shouldn't have been singing.

One singer didn't have eyes. Dark sockets stared out at the rust-colored landscape.

Another was bald, and her skull was swollen and bruised, and she wore a blue hospital gown.

There was a boy with bloody holes in his face and chest. The holes wept fresh red.

And worst of all a singer whose gender escaped me. They looked flattened like a giant rolling pin had been applied, mooshing shoulders and hips and legs, adding bits of metal and glass like nuts and raisins into a dough, puncturing skin enough to allow blood and intestines to ooze on out. The misshaped head looked like a shrunken apple had been carved into an approximation of a human face.

Gunk Mouth pointed at me and screamed. The rope slid off the floating man was clutched in one of her hands.

The crowd remained wrapped up in the children's singing. They didn't hear Gunk Mouth. They didn't know why she was so peeved off with me.

She crawled towards me. On all fours, moving like an angry crab. She bumped through the revelers, rolling right on over the top of some of them.

I backed up, but not fast enough. She caught up and grabbed on. She hugged my legs and buried her fingers in my pants and then grabbed my legs and squeezed onto them tight. She wrapped the rope around my ankle. I told her to stop. She didn't stop. Done, she rubbed her face across my thighs. Moaning. Muttering.

"I don't know you," I said. I reached out and shoved her head away from me.

It was the wrong thing to do. Her mourning and moaning vanished. She bared her teeth and stood and held the end of the rope up, right in my face. A thick black ooze coated the rope, so thick it didn't drip. The black ooze caked her fingernails. She put the rope in her mouth, I realized. Either she sucked the black ooze off the rope, or she supplied the rope the ooze. Her left eye was filled with viscous fluid the color of a flushed toilet bowl swirling and about to empty.

Gunk Mouth raised her arms like she intended to put the rope around my neck, and tie it off and strangle me.

Something shoved me to the side. I stumbled.

"She wants to go steady I think. Way too soon in the relationship."

Gunk Mouth hissed. At me, at the owner of the voice.

"Back off, Bad Breath."

Gunk Mouth lunged. Her opponent held ground and simply allowed Gunk Mouth to bounce right on off her. It was a comic book moment, Superman standing arms and legs akimbo, smiling as bullets bounced off of him.

Gunk Mouth hit the ground and dust rose. Screeching, she rolled around and patted the dirt urgently, looking for something.

"You want this?" Her opponent held up the rope.

Gunk Mouth ceased her frantic search, saw the rope, and hissed like a cat seeing the devil. The rope got thrown. Gunk Mouth watched it arc through the sky. She ran after it.

"Whatever. Idiot."

The woman in the pointy green hat looked at me. She wore a long sleeved thigh length green top belted around the waist. Her striped leggings terminated in green cloth booties that curled up over the toes and ended in points like chocolate chip curlicues. The hat cone was topped off by a single puff piece of white cotton.

Looking at her longer, she looked more a high schooler than an adult. Black hair ducked out from under the green hat down to her shoulders. Her eyes were a little bloodshot. She looked at me looking at her. She cocked an eyebrow.

"What's up, kid? You've never seen a girl elf before?"

5.

"Where am I?"

"The question of questions. I'm sad to say there's no consensus opinion on that one."

"That guy..." I looked up, at the black dots swimming around the green light.

"Those are Floaters," said the elf-dressed woman. "That's where you were."

"What?"

"You just came down. Sometimes two will come down at the same time. They make a love connection or something up there, I guess. But her lot," she nodded at Gunk Mouth, "they'll jump on you right out of the gate. Try and get you to go join the club."

"I was up there?"

I couldn't believe it. I looked at my arms. The green lights up in the sky glowed. You might even say they glowed hot. If I'd been up there, wouldn't I be glowing?

"The green lights? Is that radiation?" I asked.

"Good question."

"How long was I up there?"

"Couldn't tell you that either, kid. Some of them up there, I think they've been up there a long time. Don't ask me for specifics. Some people's long is short. Some people's short is long. But you don't want to be one of them. Circling, circling the drain. If you're a Floater, you're gone for good, more or less. You're like a little piece of poo that just can't quite go down the sewer pipe. Wait. Hey. What are you doing to yourself?"

"Pinching. If I pinch hard enough maybe I'll wake up."

"Here. Let me help."

She pinched my arm. I said "Ow" even though it didn't really hurt. She put her arm out to me.

"Return the favor. Come on. Do it."

I did. She sighed.

"Shit. I guess we aren't dreaming. Sorry."

Behind her, the singing had ceased. Soup Can had closed down shop. A herd of Believers moved away from us. Admitting defeat, Gunk Mouth kept glaring over her shoulder at us as she kept up with the rest of her group.

"Idiots," said the elf.

"Who are they?"

"Believers. Groupies. You know what a groupie is?"

"Kind of."

"Those are the King's groupies, hoping he comes back sooner than later."

"What king? This is America, isn't it? Or some weird part. Someplace out in the desert or something?"

She gave me a look. I didn't like it. It was the same look Mom had given me when Leonard Goodis had died. Some fellow kindergartner that had fallen off his bike without wearing a helmet and the head wound had been a lot nastier than anyone suspected, even the doctor his mom took him to see. I'd asked Mom if I'd see Leonard in heaven and she made this face that although it aged her and distorted her prettiness, it cut off impending tears at the pass.

The elf-dressed woman went through the same facial convulsion.

"Oh honey, you don't know where you are. Why you're here."

"No." I took a step back. "I don't think I want to know."

"What's the last thing you remember? Before you were here, what's the last thing you remember?"

I kept backing up.

"The longer you don't let it in the harder it's going to be. Here. Let me start the conversation for you." She sighed. "And don't freak out."

She pointed at the side of her head. She turned her head so I was looking at her in profile. The pointy green hat featured a dark smear right above her right ear. She reached up and took her elf hat off, the hat dragging and messing her hair.

It was a weird haircut. All poofy at the front, the bangs in a puffball, the rest of her black hair long. Several of those long strands stuck to the inside of the hat. She kept her head turned so I could look at the right side of her skull. Right above the ear, the dark hair was mussed up into a tacky looking swirl like a gush of BBQ sauce had solidified in that area.

"Shampoo isn't going to take care of that. Johnson & Johnson doesn't make the Band-Aid that takes that kind of ouch away."

She pushed her finger into the wound. Took her finger away. Looked at it and then extended her finger towards me.

"It's blood. It's my blood. And probably some brains from when my head hit the curb harder than hell. I'm Dawn, kid. You can call me Dawn the Elf. And I'm dead. Just like you. Just like everyone else here. I'm sorry, but it's true."

I wanted to turn and run. I wanted my mom. Screw that. I wanted my mommy.

There was a noise from the direction of the giant dark doorway, the one big enough to allow the U.S.S. Enterprise through.

People were moving out of the way. Making room for some sort of disturbance.

Dawn put her pointy elf hat back on.

"Stampede," she said.

The first shape came into view. They weren't running. No feet hitting the ground. They were running away, but they were flying. Floating. It was amazing to see.

Behind them, at first far away, then closing the gap, were several shapes, all black, and flapping and shimmering at the same time like bats viewed through a smudged lens.

The running away form kept closing in on us like he or she would drive the chase right past us or through us, but before that could happen, one of the black shapes accelerated ahead of its kin, spinning in a kind of kamikaze loop, and swooped down, tackling the runner, and they rolled across the ground in a whirl of shapes, finally running out of fuel not more than a dozen feet away from me.

The other black fliers landed and watched. They were all slightly hunchbacked, and their arms were held close to their chests, small kind of useless looking limbs like Tyrannosaurus Rex arms. They wore a thick rubbery looking black like they'd flown one at a time through a car wash with big industrial brushes that coated you in black roofing tar.

"Help me!" The runner was a man. He was flat on his stomach. The black-clad creature that had taken him down perched on his back. It shifted position, and the man screamed like the feet were sharp talons.

The creature looked from its prisoner to me. Its face was different than that of the others. Both feminine and longish, horse faced, a term Dad had used once to describe one of the teachers at mom's school. It took him awhile to grow back the skin from Mom's stern rebuke.

"Don't move." Dawn had slid over right behind me. "When they're like this they want to punish everything in sight. They don't even care if there's a real reason to do so or not."

"What are they?"

"Hangmen. Our cops. Keepers of the peace."

One of the creatures hopped over, away from its fellows, and halted, standing just beside the prone man's left side. It tipped its head back and cried out. It was a high pitch sound like something that would wake you up from sleep and be so disturbing it would obliterate the ability to fall back asleep, for days, weeks, forever.

"The accused is accused of the crime of wearing a Skin. How does the accused plead?"

The man said nothing. The creature on his back shifted position. The man shrieked.

"The accused is accused of the crime of wearing a Skin. How does the accused plead?"

"I don't care. I wanted to see my wife."

The Hangman on his back lurched forward and pecked at the back of the man's skull.

The man screamed.

"I wanted to see my wife!"

The Hangman crier tipped its head back and made the terrible squawk again. Then it yelled, "Guilty!" So did the rest except for the Hangman on the man's back. The cries of 'Guilty' kept on going. It sounded like when birds filled a tree and started talking to one another and then just as quickly took flight, abandoning the tree, but still making the noise.

The Hangman on the man's back drew a noose out from under her wing or her cape or whatever it was. All the Hangmen had four hands. There were hands on the too skinny arms, and then hands poking off each wing. Her hands worked together, fastening the noose around the man's neck. Her wings pulsated, and she swooped up into the air and lifted the man up off the ground. His feet only cleared the ground by an inch or so. His hands sought the rope encircling his throat. While he dug at it, the noose turned a bright fiery red, and the man started to cook, turning the same color of red and black at the same time, like something caught on fire and burning two directions at the same time.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry. I just wanted to touch her one more time!"

He screamed the whole time, even when his head was gone, when there shouldn't have been anything there to scream from.

The Hangman carrying out judgment, the Executioner, flapped wings and looked down at the ashen remnants of the man. The noose was still mostly red as she coiled it up and returned it to its roost beneath her wing.

The Hangmen lifted off and flew away. Except for her. The main one. The Executioner. She looked at me. Even though her face and eyes were coated in that shifting mask of black tar, I could tell she was looking at me.

Finally, she turned and rolled mid-air and flapped away, following the rest. The mass of souls down at the doors ran upon sight of the Hangmen.

"I hate that sound," said Dawn. "You ok? Kid? Hey. Kid."

She asked where I was going.

I didn't answer.

I didn't know.

I was running.

I mean I was trying to.

My feet were moving me forward, the direction opposite the door, opposite the masses of people, where the Hangmen had vanished, but for all that motion the feet weren't quite touching the ground.

I was floating. I was running. I was doing both. My feet were hitting something, propelling me forward. I didn't question the reality. The twisted reality.

I ran towards the horizon.

Towards the rust.

Into it.

I'm not dead.

I'm not dead.

I kept saying it and saying it and believed it less and less the deeper I fled into the widest of wide-open spaces I'd ever seen.

6.

Minutes ago I'd been killing time. Just killing time, waiting for the afternoon trip to Wet and Wild. There'd be pizza. I'd get to ride Goliath the Man-Killer - maybe three or four times. Get to see Denny perform his stellar impression of a walrus, and definitely - if not most importantly - get to see what Janine Wilson looked like in a bathing suit. All of that was worth enduring Craig 'The Plague' Donnelly.

When I stopped running, I put aside the freak out long enough to ignore the fact I floated above the ground a good six inches. Whatever. There was an explanation. That's what Dad said no matter the news. There's an explanation. Facts. You can count on facts.

I had a phone. I wasn't supposed to use it for too much. Mom tracked my minutes.

Emergency use. That's what I had my lame phone for. Without question this qualified.

I searched myself. Given it was summer and I only had one layer on, the search didn't take long. I could go full cavity, but I was pretty sure if anything was shoved up someplace nasty I'd be able to tell based on sensation alone.

The only thing I found was on my back, a moosh of dirt complete with a worm-center. I made an 'ick' face and dropped the worm. It wiggled and curled and wiggled some more as the rust-colored soil glommed onto the worm's body.

Worried dirt and worms might be in other places I performed a full body pat down. There was a lot of dirt. A lot of worms. And my hair was out of control. It stuck up in spots. Bedhead in the middle of the day. I licked my hand. It didn't feel right. My tongue, my hand, the wet off my tongue. Rubbing my hair had little effect. The hair remained sticking up, out of place.

I hadn't run all that far. I could see Dawn. I could see the big black door and the milling crowd of people.

The far horizons looked just as far away as when I'd started to run. I'd accomplished nothing.

I looked at the ground. I concentrated. I told myself to land. I wanted to feel the ground on the bottom of my feet.

I imagined Mom yelling at me, wondering why I had to use the phone to Google 'how to stop floating'.

*

I called out Trista's name. Called for my mom and my dad. Denny. I was so desperate I hollered for the Fletcher brothers just to cover all the bases.

Nothing happened. No one showed up.

I won't lie.

I cried.

The last time I'd cried was when I was real little and thought Mom had lost me at the store. She hadn't. She was over in the canned goods aisle, trying to get away from some lady she knew going on and on about all her overachieving kids. Some store clerk found me blubbering in my little snowsuit, idiot mittens dragging on the floor behind each of my broken spirited steps.

So it was kind of funny. It was like the saying the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Here I was, blubbering, a 12-year-old acting half that age.

"It's ok."

Dawn looked at me.

She hadn't been right beside me. She was far away and then she wasn't.

"What's ok?" I sniffled and wiped my nose.

"It takes awhile to get used to the fact."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "This place is...I don't know what it is other than a load of bullshit. But I'm not staying here. I'm not."

She nodded. The puff cotton ball on her pointy hat bobbed.

"I can't be...That. That thing. That way. Dead? No," I said. "It was just this stupid homemade worm-getter. I guess maybe I got hit and grabbed it and got hold of the current, where the current was going through, but...They could've pushed me away. Or shut it off. Unplugged it. Something. They would've done something, right? Right?"

Dawn pointed at her head wound.

"Black ice. I was hustling back to the job, the dream job, Santa's helper at the mall, the job of all jobs, and I ran through a crosswalk, stepped right on it. You don't see it until it's too late. I felt it, and then I felt myself falling, hitting the curb. I swore. Heard myself swear. Then-"

She motioned. Showing off everything within range of our sight like a seasoned, longtime game show hostess, drawing eyes to all the fabulous prizes that could be ours if the price was right.

7.

Dawn called the field or flat or whatever-it-was the Game Room. Other ghosts had different names for it, and I could ask around, but she told me I'd get real sick real quick trying to keep track of all the variations. Limbo. The Big Black. The Waiting Room. Lost Vegas. And so on.

According to Dawn, the way ghost-abilities were distributed in the Game Room was either democratic or schizophrenic. Some could float. Some could go all immaterial. Some couldn't.

The big black expanse where most of the people clumped up was the Gap.

Dawn didn't call the people 'people'. She called them at various times 'screwed,' 'wretched,' 'the unwashed hordes.' Always something different.

The Gap was a door. It led here, to the Game Room, and it led other places - home. The Flip Side.

"You can go back if you want," said Dawn. "It's interesting for about five minutes, and then it just gets all kinds of boring. Well, there are stages. Exciting. Depressing. Boring."

"I can go back?"

"Yeah. But like I said, it isn't much. No one is going to see you. You can't talk to anybody. It isn't like visiting. It's like attending a party behind a one-way glass. You can see them, but they can't see you."

"But ghosts can do stuff, right? Move things. Make doors creak on hinges. They can, right?"

She sighed.

"What?"

"It's like I said. Some of us can do things when we get back and some can't."

"What can you do?"

"I'm not sure. Last time I went, I could still go through things. And fast as we move over here, we can go about as fast over there."

"Do you fly? Like the..."

"Hangmen?"

"Yeah."

"I wouldn't call it that. We just run, but it's like you don't get tired. Which makes sense, not having lungs or anything anymore, right? You'll find out. You should go back, probably, at least once. Just to scratch that itch."

The closer we got to the Gap I slowed down.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm still floating."

"What? That thing with your feet?"

"Yeah."

"You'll stop. Maybe."

"I can't go up though."

"What do you mean?"

"If I try to go up-" I showed her. I bounced, but my feet didn't budge vertically.

Dawn puffed out her cheeks. Stared at my little dance. Shook her head.

"That's one of those physics things. I don't go near physics unless I've had a cool one. Or two cool ones. Sorry, kid."

I scanned the crowd. It was thick. It didn't look possible to get through them to the door. I saw something on the ground and stopped walking. Dawn asked what was wrong and I pointed. A gooey rope lay on the ground.

"I just don't want Gunk Mouth to come and grab me."

"You don't want to try and give yourself a tail?"

"No. Not really."

"Don't worry. Even with a tail, you wouldn't have gotten that interesting, not over here. Hold on."

She bent down and picked up the rope. She made a face and tossed it and didn't seem to care about the complaints that came from the ghosts nearly smacked by the flying rope.

Dawn looked at her hands, at Gunk Mouth's grease, and made a face.

"Sorry," I said. "It's gross, isn't it?"

Dawn wiped her hands on the part of the green shirt hanging down below her belt.

"Way too intimate of contact with that witch."

"Is she a witch?"

"I don't know. Whatever she is she's awful. I could call her a witch, or I could call her a name that rhymes with that, but starts with a 'b.'"

"I've used that word. That's what we call Mrs. Manring behind her back. A real bitch-on-wheels."

"Do you even know what that means?"

I shrugged.

"I don't say it that much. I don't think she's really that bad. Denny says it more than I do."

"He sounds like a real prize."

"It's his birthday today."

"It is?"

I nodded. And then it hit me again. Where I was. What Dawn had told me and how it was starting to seem that this, the most elaborate dream I'd ever experienced, didn't seem to be running short of fuel anytime soon.

Dawn kept walking. I let her get a little ahead of me, and I pinched my arm again. And then the other arm. And then various other parts of my anatomy. Nothing happened.

*

The closer you got to the Gap, the more noise it made. It was like being inside a house located near the freeway. A constant unrelenting roar sourced from somewhere nearby. Grandma Strahl's house was like that, and usually, by the time I was getting used to the sound, it'd be time for us to leave.

Near the Gap, there were too many people to look at, to process all the faces. Some looked like people I'd see in town or when we made the drive to see Grandma Strahl in Sacramento or my uncle in Portland. And then there were people in headscarves or with dark skin and speaking in languages I'd only ever heard on TV or in movies or on the Internet. A lot of people talking. A lot of it in languages I didn't understand. Even if everyone had been speaking words I did know I wouldn't have been able to understand much of it. Too many tongues formed a persistent babble.

People moved out of the way as we approached the Gap. It was weird because it wasn't even like I saw them back up or take a step to the side. It was more like the ground itself determined a path needed to be formed for Dawn and I and that path was made whether or not the people wanted to move.

Looking into the Gap was like looking down a tunnel dug high and wide enough to admit Godzilla. It wasn't lit up. It was black starting at the entryway and black all the way down far as you could see.

People walked into the entryway and vanished. And others appeared, walking out of the entryway into the Game Room. Some of them stumbled. Some kept up their stride. One woman walked through the entryway, looked around at the Game Room, looked right at me for a moment and then wrapped her arms around herself, and looked up at the sky, and lifted up and off, headed for the green lights and the Floaters circling in their endless formation.

"That happens," said Dawn. "It's like I told you. Going back isn't like a visit. It's like watching everybody you know ignore you. I've seen us, ghosts, spirits, lost souls, whatever poison you want to call it, get back and get right on up in the faces of people they knew. Scream at them. Strangle them. It doesn't do a lick of good. You'd think we'd get it. We weren't that special alive. Why would be granted exalted status once we were dead?" She whistled and poked my arm. "You ok, kid?"

"There aren't any animals."

"No."

"Do you know why?"

"I don't. Notice how you can't smell anything? I don't know why on that front either. I asked, and no one had an answer," said Dawn. "But my guess is animals aren't people. They go somewhere else once they're done mortaling about the mortal coil. It's for the best. I mean it'd be a real out of control Noah's ark if they sent all the critters two-legged and four-legged one place. Who knows? Maybe they tried it, and there were complaints, and that's why you can't smell anything here. Whoever is in charge set up a place for the animals to go, but then forgot to turn the smells back on. I don't know. But if you find out you tell me. I collect and trade useless trivia."

"When you go through where do you end up at?"

"Scene of the crime."

"What do you mean?"

"Where you died."

"Really?"

Dawn nodded.

"It's not like you return to the actual moment. It's just the same spot. I went through and ended up in the crosswalk of doom. Only it wasn't Christmas time. It was summer. Hot. People in shorts and halter-tops and I'm standing there dressed like this. It's probably good no one can see us. That little fashion discrepancy would make us stand out even before the living noticed we're kind of gross and icky. Speaking of which..."

I followed her line of sight. A man in a mangled cowboy hat limped around the mass of souls. All of him was mangled. His head resembled a squashed grape, plump in some parts, gooshy in others. A grease streak down his right cheek was the remnants of an eyeball, and some of the exposed paste once packed full behind the socket. His left arm was missing, just the sleeve shreds dangled from his shoulder and his right arm looked like it'd been twisted in its socket again and again until it dangled by only the barest threads of skin. He passed right by me, so close one of the hundreds of strands of hay decorating his long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans brushed my shoulder.

"Kid. Hey. You've got a fan," said Dawn. She poked my shoulder.

I was being stared at Prudence the Dumb Little Ghost Girl.

It was an older girl, definitely high school age. The girl's hair was clumpy and slick and dry at the same time. Blood dried around each nostril. Dark bruises ran around her throat, dark and floating upon skin that was grayish, blue, like she'd been deep dipped in ice for far too long and no combination of blankets or fire or hot chocolate was going to reverse the ravages of cold. She wore a dark dress with shoulder straps, and the dress hem went almost all the way down to her knees.

She'd been cut. Not stabbed, but something sharp had been used to gouge at her collarbone and then the flesh on display between her throat and the dress collar. It looked like raw infected Roman numerals.

She stepped towards me. Pointed. She was going to tell me about the King's imminent return, Soup Can and Gunk Mouth and their choir would appear from out of nowhere. I was primed to turn and run.

I noticed that what I thought was a bruise on her head was something different, not a result of violence. Something dark and reddish, but permanent since birth.

"Monty," said the girl. "Monty. I thought it was you. Oh, thank God."

She wrapped me up in a hug and kept tightening her grip. She did and didn't look the way I remembered, but the port-wine stain poking out from her scalp was exactly how I remembered.

It was Ellen Gaines.

8.

I'd seen Ellen Gaines earlier that day. Hours ago, back in her neighborhood, riding her bicycle, a Thundercloud Pink AeroBlaze, Trista wearing roller skates, holding onto Ellen's bicycle backseat, the two of them approximating water skiing, giggling like maniacs.

"You look the same," said Ellen. "Kind of. I mean, I don't know, do I look like I did the last time you saw me?"

"No."

"'No'?"

"You look older."

"I guess that makes sense," said Ellen.

I didn't want to ask her what I had to ask her. I watched the crowd. All the dead. Finally, I scraped up the courage.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"I'm 15."

No. She was 10 or 11. Trista had just turned 11. Denny was 11 at least until 8:16 P.M. tonight, his official time of birth, when he'd earn another notch on the belt towards being a teenager.

"I can't," I said. I swallowed. "You can't be. You can't be 15."

"Monty."

"What?"

"You've got worms on you. And dirt."

I patted myself. Scraped at my shirt and knocked soil and one worm off onto the back of my hand.

"I know. And my hair sticks up, too, right?"

Ellen nodded.

"You've been dead," she said. "A long time now."

I shook my hand free of worm and dirt.

"No. See that's the weird thing for me," I said. "I was just at the Fletcher's. I was just there."

She crossed her arms over her chest. Her arms were dirt-tinged.

"It's been - " she searched for the right approximation, "days. For me. It feels like days."

"Same for me. But minutes. Maybe an hour." She was pissing me off. I was older than she was. She was supposed to listen, behave.

"It's different for everyone," said Dawn.

"Why am I here?" asked Ellen.

"I don't know," said Dawn.

"Why are you here?"

Dawn smiled. "No one else will have me."

"But you're dead," said Ellen.

"Yeah," said Dawn.

"You're sure?"

"Positively worm food," said Dawn.

"What happened to you?" I asked Ellen. "You look...Not good. At all."

Denny would see people on the street, usually outside bars, or the homeless drifting through a grocery store and tell me they looked 'rode hard and put away wet.' I tried to imagine him saying that about Ellen. She looked so bad I bet he wouldn't be able to say anything.

I could hear her start to cry, even against the constant roar coming from the Gap. Ellen crouched over, making spasms, arms across her belly like it hurt. I looked around. Some of the people looked at Ellen, but no one lingered. They were dead, too. They had their own issues to sort through. The crying girl was on her own.

"Sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to..."

Dawn shook her head at me like she couldn't believe this jerk she'd stumbled on.

"He killed me." Ellen reversed her hunch. She stood straight. She wiped her nose. She'd been crying, but there was no trace evidence, no wet from tears. "Peter Uphall, Monty. Peter Uphall killed me. He murdered me."

"Why?"

"Because I was stupid. And I trusted him."

PU. PU killed her. I tried to imagine telling Denny PU was capable of killing someone.

PU was just a little guy, barely bigger than Trista. But that was years ago. Ellen was a kid hours ago. Now she was 15 and dead. Some sort of unexpected, unbelievable physical transformation might've happened for Peter Uphall.

"This is the worst part," said Ellen. She laughed. A quick dry sound. "Like it isn't all bad, but...My hair. He pissed on it. He pissed on me, on my face and mouth, but he focused most of it on my hair. That's why it looks like it does. I can tell how gross it looks."

She gathered a clumped together length off her shoulder and held it up to her face.

"Look at it. My mom always said I had the nicest hair. Said it kind of made up for the port-wine stain." Her hand slumped. The hair dead dropped like a horsetail back onto her shoulder. Ellen's body convulsed, and she made more noise. If she produced a more violent sound than she already was making I wondered if the cuts across her skin might not break and release an ooze of blood.

*

Before they went to dinner, Peter took her on a nature walk. His special place, he said.

The town outskirts border the woods. All kinds of trails fork off to parts unknown. About once a year some kid or elderly adult wanders a path they shouldn't and a search party forms and rescues them.

It was still light when they set out. It wouldn't take long, he promised. Ellen's footwear, though not of an athletic bent, would serve her well.

There was a main path that branched and branched and branched again. Down a slight decline and through some tall grass and into a circle of trees with a tall hill enclosing the circle. Maybe it was still light, in most of town, but it felt later there out at Peter's special place. Much later.

The first thing Ellen noticed in Peter's hideaway was the hole in the ground. It was about as deep as a hole prepared for a coffin. A shovel was jammed into the mound of dirt stacked up next to the hole.

And there was a hill formed from rocks, almost none of them smaller than a softball, stacked up next to the dirt.

The next thing she knew Peter was showing her a collection of things that were kind of a joke. And then she realized it wasn't a joke at all. Peter wasn't kidding. Peter was proud of these things. He'd made them. They were real. He was sharing them, it was part of a test, and Ellen was failing that test, and failing that test meant Peter was going to have to do things to her to keep her from letting anyone else know what Peter did in his secret spot.

"He'd killed dogs. Not big, but those little dogs like old people have. And he'd cut the heads off and switched them around. And some, he'd killed them and put the heads of dolls on them. And some heads he'd put those on bushes. Decorations he called them. Gave the place a certain ambiance. He made me touch them. Pet them. He told me I could kiss them if I wanted."

And when she wanted to leave, when she made it clear to Peter in no uncertain terms that she thought he was sick and what he'd done was wrong, he pulled a gun out. It was in the plain brown paper bag he'd had in his hand since meeting her on the nature path. A pistol. She thought it might be a present. He popped out the cylinder and showed her the bullets lodged within, ready to rock and roll and rob Ellen of her life.

"He said he'd let me go, but first he wanted to run some tests. Science was his biggest interest. I loved science, right? It does so much for us. He told me to lie down in the hole. So I did. And he threw dirt on me. With the shovel. Part of the test was not making any noise. But I couldn't help it. So that's when he cut me. He got down on top of me and cut me. He ran his finger in my blood and in the cuts, and he licked it off.

"And just to be sure I knew I had to keep in line, how important his work was to him, he pissed on me. On my head. And then he told me something even worse would get put on me if I didn't do it right. So I did it right. I kept quiet. And after he put dirt on me, he put rocks on me. Some he dropped. The big ones, he rolled them into the hole. One hit me in the face. He apologized. He said that he hadn't meant to do that. And so I had a layer of dirt on me and rocks on me. And he asked if I could breathe. And I could. So he said more science was necessary. And he threw more dirt on me. And put more rocks on top of that, on top of me.

"He couldn't quite get it right. Because the dirt, the more dirt put on, the more rocks he put on, the more it all kind of sloped towards my head. I kept getting dirt in my mouth. He apologized for that. I think he really was sorry about that. It was like he told me, the first time he killed a dog he cut its head off, but it was messy, and he didn't like the noises the dog made. So after that, he'd kill them and then do his things, his special things. Less noise. More precise work.

"He had part of a cat litter box. One of the ones that's got a roof? He'd cut it, so it was just the front of it and then put part of a lead apron on, screwed into the plastic, to keep stuff from coming through any of the excess space in the hole. And he put that down, so I was shielded - kind of - from the dirt and rocks he kept loading on. He braced it so it wouldn't tip over and hit me in the face.

"I couldn't see him while he worked. All I could hear was the shovel going into the dirt and the dirt coming down and after he put the shield up some dirt and rocks hitting the shield.

"I couldn't breathe. I couldn't tell him I couldn't breathe. I don't think he could see me, not with the litter box thing being where he'd put it. He didn't know I couldn't breathe. Or maybe he did. Maybe he kept checking on me, and I just couldn't see it. I was too busy dying to see him watching me, watching another of his special things."

9.

She woke up here, outside the Gap, looking out into the vast expanse of the Game Room.

She didn't know what else to do so she followed people through the Gap. It went back. She'd been back. No one saw her. No one could sense she was near. They were looking for her, but no one knew Peter's special place. No one suspected him.

Ellen went through the Gap. She came back. She thought if she kept doing that at a certain point she might go crazy.

Someone in the Game Room had told her that's what happened to some of the ghosts. They went crazy then they went up into the sky and floated forever, circling the light.

Going crazy wouldn't be good. But there was something else. Something bad if not quite as bad as her getting murdered.

"Peter told me I was special because I got to be first," said Ellen. "At some point when he was stacking on the dirt and the rocks he told me I was the warm up. The one he really wanted was next. Sue was supposed to be the one, but she moved this year. And Peter realized that was a good thing. It made him understand how special I was, but more than that, how special Trista was. He could see lights around her, all the time. I had lights around me, but not like Trista. He wants to see what she can do with all those lights. If she can share them. If they get stronger and weaker. If they'll still show through when he's got her where he wants. She's the one he wants, Monty."

10.

Right after Ellen told me about Peter's plans for Trista she vanished. Some magician just out of range of sight waved a wand. Poof.

I yelled her name. I looked all around for her.

I'd seen parents freak out in grocery stores or places packed with people, realizing their kid all of a sudden wasn't right at their side.

Dawn had hold of me, telling me to settle down, but I wasn't hearing it, letting it settle in.

"She's moved on," said Dawn.

"What do you mean? Where did she go?"

"She's not here anymore. She's gone."

"Where? Where did she go?"

"One of the other places," said Dawn. "It isn't like the movies. If there are lights and ooey-gooey music playing at the moment, others don't get to see it. It's a one-viewer only deal."

"She needs to help me," I said. "She needs to help Trista. She has to."

"She did. She told you. Kid. Listen to me. Some people, they just aren't cut out for going all the way. They pass the buck. That's a lot of work for some. That's enough for them. She passed it on. It's yours now. It's on you. It's why she was here. She did what she needed, and now she's gone."

I kept screaming Ellen's name.

Hangmen flew right overhead, scattering the crowd, but I stayed in place, hollering for Ellen, screaming for her as one of the Hangman circled, head cocked to the side like a cat, like it couldn't figure out if I was something to hang, fight, or just something currently exhibiting a certain one-of-a-kind entertainment value.

11.

Eventually, I settled down.

I remembered overhearing my mom talk with a fellow mom about letting the kids run their batteries down. The other lady was talking about her tantrum throwing 4-year-old, but the tact seemed applicable to any kid. I almost felt like asking Dawn if she had a kid, but I didn't want to knock her off course, make her think about things that would hurt.

"Can I save her," I asked Dawn. "If I go back?"

"Maybe."

"There has to be something I can do. What about that one guy?"

"Which guy?"

"The one we saw earlier. The one screaming about going back just to see his wife. To touch her?"

"You saw what happened to him, right?"

"How did he do it? How did he go back? Is it like you said? You just go back through this hole? The Gap?"

"That's how you get back. But just doing that isn't going to get the Hangmen after you. You could go back as many times as you want and no one will care. The man we saw, the Hangmen went after him because he wore a Skin."

"What's that?"

Dawn puffed out her cheeks like she couldn't believe she'd said just a touch too much. Now I was intrigued. A mistake on her part.

"It's something you shouldn't do."

"But he did it. How do I do it?"

"You don't want to. Trust me. You don't know me from a hole in the ground, I know that, but trust me. Stay away from the Skin Palace."

I got sick of her delay. I grabbed the arm of a man in a blue suit and asked him about the Skin Palace. He made a face and shook me off, shoved me away, and pushing into the crowd, looked back at Dawn like she needed to go back to parent school and learn how to control her kid.

"Kid," said Dawn, "the Skin Palace...It's somewhere you're not supposed to go. Ever."

"But people do. What if I need to touch Trista to help her? What if I need to touch Peter to stop him from hurting her?"

"Then you'll die."

"Already happened."

"No. You'll die like that man did. You'll burn up. You saw that right? Did that look like anything you want to be part of?"

"I don't care."

"What if you went to the Skin Palace, and the Hangmen get you before you even get to go back? That happens, too. The Hangmen do raids. The Skin Palace moves all the time, but they figure out where the Skin Palace has moved to and they storm the place. Kill everyone there, burn them up, and nobody gets to go back. How does that help your friend? You'll die here. She'll die there. Think about it. Do you want that to happen?"

I didn't answer. I sulked.

Shadows swam across the rust-colored ground, right over my feet. When I looked up into the smoke-colored sky, expecting to spot Hangmen, all I saw were Floaters performing their endless synchronized routine around the green lights.

12.

Dawn had never gone back anywhere other than where she'd died. She didn't know if she could go back with me to Ashton. We could get separated along the way. Or maybe there was some alternate track where the dead trying something new and funky were nose-smacked and got sent down the shaft into oblivion.

"Like the Black Hole," I said.

"What's that?"

"A movie. A space movie. These kind of astronauts get sucked into a black hole at the end."

"We could hold hands," she said. "Is that ok?"

"I don't know. I don't care."

"I just don't want to embarrass you."

"My mom holds my hand. I'll be fine."

We started walking towards the Gap. It looked like a wall. Like we'd bounce off of it. That wasn't happening for others. They approached, and they walked into the black and were gone.

Sometimes it looked like the exits and entrances were walking through one another, merging and just as quickly splitting apart. It was disorienting to look at. There were too many people going in at once and then there were all those coming out of it at the same time, coming back into the Game Room.

Mom had a poster on her office wall, a drawing by M.C. Escher of all these castle pathways linked together, but oriented in nonsensical ways, up, down, sideways, like your brain had to bend and fold to make sense of all the altering geometries. That's what it was like, walking up to the big black opening. My brain didn't know how to process it all, not exactly.

"What does walking through feel like?" I asked Dawn. "Does it hurt?"

"No."

"Is it cold?"

"No. Let me think. What is it like...It's like...You've been in an elevator before?"

"Yeah."

"Sometimes right when you get to your floor, or someone's floor and the door is about to open, the elevator goes up, just a little more than it needs to like it's got to get up just a little extra to actually hit the real stopping point. It's like that. But it's quick. Going through the Gap is quick. But it's like that moment, that extra little lift that the elevator gives at the end. Your brain goes one direction, and the rest of you goes the other. You walk through the Gap, you feel that weirdness."

"I hope I don't barf."

"You won't," said Dawn.

"Promise?"

"One of the benefits of being dead. No barfing."

As if on cue, a wild-haired man walked out of the blackness into the Game Room, his clothes coated from chin to knees in some sort of thick soupy goo.

Dawn looked at me.

"Don't look at me. There is fine print to those benefits."

*

I was still thinking of everything that had happened being part of the day I'd woken into. Denny's birthday. Once we were back, Dawn would see some mistake had been committed, and I wasn't dead. And if I wasn't dead then Dawn wasn't real. And my interaction with Ellen Gaines had been some sort of weird error-riddled hallucination with no basis in reality. I'd taken Prudence and Ellen and mooshed them up into some weird as shit hallucination. Before I knew it, I'd be at Wet and Wild in a line like this line, only real. Walking towards a ride. Then I'd be getting soaked. Giving Craig the Plague the finger. Eating sugar ice. Laughing with Denny.

"They stopped moving. Look."

A man standing in front of me looked up at the sky. He had a loop around the earpieces of his glasses and a wild sprouting of nose hair. He looked right at me and grimaced like he knew how enraptured I was by the nose follicles.

He pointed upwards, his finger nearly taking out my eye.

"It's a sign," he said.

The Floaters had stopped the circling. They were still up in the sky rimmed around the green lights, but the constant motion was a thing of the past.

"Maybe they take coffee breaks," said Dawn. "Or. It could be the Husk."

"Don't say that," said Nose Hair Man. "What's wrong with you?"

"When the Husk shows up, sometimes things like that happen right before. Signs. Irregularities," said Dawn. "I've seen the green lights go yellow. Or the Gap closes. I've seen that, too."

Without saying another word, Nose Hair Man pushed past me and then started pushing past others. We heard him telling people to look out for the Husk. The Husk was coming. The farther he got from us, the more panicked he became. People looked up in the sky. Some followed Nose Hair Man's lead and started moving away from the Gap.

Up in the sky, like a lever got pulled, the Floaters started moving again.

"Guess they're done with that coffee break," I said.

Dawn nodded.

"What's the Husk?"

Still watching the Floaters, she said, "Words can't possibly describe the Husk."

"It's that awesome? It's like a Mega-Sized Coke Slurpee?"

A woman wearing a tie-dye t-shirt touched my arm and smiled. Her eyes were hooded. She wore a nose ring and an ankle length skirt.

"All you need to know is that the Husk is a sandwich. One day it's tuna on rye. And the next it's like you took a big dry bite from the book of knowledge." She laughed. She ran her hand through my hair. "He's demented. The Husk? He's like God dropped some fairly freaky acid and forgot he's God. He drops in on us now and then for try-outs. Looking for his replacement. Maybe, baby, maybe the Husk is looking -" she kissed her fingertip and bomped my nose (even making a 'bomp' noise), "for you."

She spun on heel and ran away from us. She was barefoot. She kicked through the powder like this was a day at the beach. When she turned and waved at me, I waved back.

"Hoo-boy," said Dawn. "Yeah. I guess the Husk is like that. Something like that. There's something else you should know." She whistled. "Monty. Hey. Over here. The braless hippie chick is gone."

"What?"

"When we get over there, it's not going to look the same. You're dead now. You can see, still, but the eyes you have now are not the eyes you had then."

"What will it look like?"

"Darker. For me, that's how it's looked. And over time it's gotten weirder. It's like a photonegative. Have you ever seen one of those? You go to the photo shop, and they give you your pictures, and inside the pack, they give you the negatives? It's like that now. What was light is dark. What was dark is light. It's like going over there, going back, it had a shelf life and I ignorantly abused what I didn't know could die out."

"Ok. I mean, I'm sorry."

She smiled.

"I wish I could still drink. Having half a buzz for all these years...You're lucky you never grew up and had life collapse on you, kid. The choices you make or don't make or make by not making a choice at all." She blew out her cheeks and then motioned forward. "It's still open. Let's boogie."

We made it to the Gap. Dawn tightened her grip on my hand, and we walked through.

The experience delivered on her promise. My brain went one way, my body the other. It was weird, it was quick, but it didn't make me puke.

13.

It was the right spot and the wrong spot at the same time.

The twisted up tree, where I'd driven in the worm-getter, where Ari had fallen on top of me, that was where I expected it to be. Tree branches above held only a few gold and orange-colored leaves. Fallen leaves coated the ground.

Across the lawn was the clothesline, absent of laundry, same as the last time I'd been on the property.

The rusted out, broken down cars were gone. Left in their absence discolored patches on the lawn where oil and grease had leaked in, where the sun hadn't been able to feed grass for years.

The Fletcher house was gone, too. No gray-walls, no taped-over windows, no shingles-shed roof, no signs of the weathered structure. The base of the house was bared to the elements, rebar and pipework poked up through the cement patiently awaiting shelter.

Overhead, the sky was cloud-filled. It wasn't July. The sky never looked like that in July.

"Is this the right place?" asked Dawn.

She looked a little different here, away from the Game Room. Over time, the rust-colored dust coating the Game Room migrated onto the occupants. Her clothes looked soiled, desperate for a wash. The bloody patch soaked into the pointy hat above her right ear looked more prominent, wet looking like a recently splashed dollop of paint. Her eyes were sunken, purpled. Veins stuck out on the back of her hands. Her skin didn't look all that different a shade of gray than the house no longer here. Rode hard, put away wet, I thought.

"It's not the way it was when I was here."

"Remember Ellen," said Dawn. "You said she was 11 when you were here last. But she was older just now when we saw her."

I nodded. "I know. It's four years later."

"Maybe more."

"How much later could it be since Peter killed her?"

Dawn shook her head.

"I don't know," she said. "It's like when I went back. It was the right place, right city, right crosswalk, but the time was wrong. I even tried to get the right time. I went back through the Gap, and the next time I went through, coming back here, not here-here, my here, I concentrated. It didn't matter. I've talked to others. People like us. Ghosts like us. It's the same. No one knows what the trick is. How you get exactly where you want. When you want. You get close. Close enough to make you ache all over."

"But we came through," I said. "You said you didn't know if you'd be able to come with me, but you did. You're here."

"Maybe we got lucky," said Dawn. "It's why I call that place the Game Room. The house holds all the cards. Sometimes they let you win. But not usually."

The day didn't feel like a weekend.

It didn't feel like summer. I couldn't hear kids anywhere.

A brown UPS van drove down the street. It felt like confirmation that it was a school day. I didn't tell Dawn where I was going. I just started moving.

"Where are we going?" Dawn walked alongside me. I was taking steps, still floating steps, but at least no more than just barely above the ground. It could've been worse. I could've been bobbling around like a balloon.

"School," I said.

"You think it's a school day."

"I saw a UPS truck."

"Smart."

"How are your eyes?" I asked.

"Good. "

"It's like you said - light is dark, dark is light?"

"Pretty much," she said. "You?"

"It looks...I don't know. The same. It could just be dark because of the sky. But it's different. Definitely different."

Sort of a lie. I wanted to be able to confirm her prediction of how things would be darker, but I couldn't. Thinks looked brighter than I remembered like every surface had been polished.

At first, I tried to avoid trees and cars and the sides of houses. Dawn didn't. She went right through them. There wasn't any noise to accompany her melting into and through and out of solid objects. She didn't make faces like it hurt or that there was any concentration involved. I realized it would save time for me to do the same.

I turned off a sidewalk and cut across a lawn. An old thick trunked tree on a side lawn didn't stand in the way. In fact, I altered course and headed right for it. Here it was, my virgin ghost passing through something experience.

There was a problem though.

I bounced off of it.

I hit the ground and bounced. A couple of times. I pushed myself up into a sitting position.

"Are you ok?" Dawn smiled. She tried to cover her mouth, but I knew she thought it was funny.

"Yeah. I am." I looked at the tree. "Why didn't I go through?"

"I don't know."

"You go through."

"You want to watch?"

"I guess."

She walked right through the tree. She looked back at me and looked a little ashamed of her ability to do what I apparently couldn't.

"Do you want pointers? Suggestions?"

I stood up.

"Are there any?" I asked.

"Not that I know of. Maybe...Think thin. No. Think immaterial."

"Like I'm not here?" I said. "Like I'm nothing going through nothing."

"Sure."

"All right. All right."

I furrowed my brow and walked right at the tree.

I walked into it, against the bark, but that's as far as I could go. Punching and kicking it didn't do anything either. It didn't even hurt. It was like getting into a fight with water pouring out of a hose.

It wasn't the tree. It was me.

I tried the house. I tried the bushes in the lawn. The doghouse in back. The dog chained up next to the doghouse. No matter how much I concentrated or got angry or tried to think myself immaterial, I couldn't go through anything.

Montgomery Strahl, Defective Boy Ghost. I was perfect material for a play date with Prudence the Dumb Little Ghost Girl.

I realized it was a distraction. Trista. That's all that was important. If I was dead, then I had all of eternity to figure out how to be a proper ghost.

I got back on track. I ran. Dawn ran beside me. She stopped passing through solid objects, at least when she could avoid them. Careful not to compound my feelings of low ghost-worth.

At least I was smart enough not to go to the middle school. If four years had really passed, Trista would be at the high school. Approaching the long tan single level structure, the parking lot packed full of cars, I realized Denny would be there.

My mom, too.

14.

On the way to school, we saw ghosts. Flying by. Hovering. Staring. Circling the living with murder in their eyes. One naked man floating right behind a postal carrier caught me staring, and he hissed like a snake.

"So let me get this right," I said. "All the time, every day, there are ghosts?"

"Yeah."

"There are so many of them."

"Think back to the Game Room," said Dawn. "All the ghosts you saw there. Not so many here in comparison, right? But think about some place like Los Angeles or New York or London. Think about all the ghosts those places have."

"I guess so. It's just this is where I live. Lived. I never would've guessed there are so many."

A man walked out of a convenience store holding a giant soda in one hand, his cell phone in the other. Something on the phone made him laugh. He coughed. Burped. Didn't notice the chunk of food shot fresh from his mouth into his beard.

"Gross."

"And we saw it," said Dawn.

"And he has no idea we saw it. Does that mean ghosts watched me...I don't know...Go to the bathroom? Eat my food? Sleep?"

"Probably not. Unless they knew you or had some other reason to be hanging around. When I was alive, I liked ping-pong. We had a ping-pong table at my junior high. That's about my only good memory of school. But now, dead, I don't watch anybody do it. I don't think about it."

"What do you do when you come back?"

Dawn paused. She shrugged.

"Stuff. Nothing important. Nothing worth talking about."

"And the others just leave you alone?"

"They don't notice you. It's like a concert or going to a movie. You're there with a ton of other people, but after awhile, you just don't notice them. Your brain overwrites that nagging noticing everything node. Trust me. You'll be fine."

The high school was in sight. I pointed at it. A short man in a bright white suit stood on the corner. He looked at me. A ghost. A well-dressed ghost, I thought.

"Montgomery Strahl," he said.

Dawn kept running ahead of me. I stopped and looked at the short ghost.

"Caught your interest. Good." He clapped his hands and walked out into the road. Lights changed, and cars drove down the street, right through the short man. He smiled. "I hate it when they do that." He laughed and kept walking towards me.

Dawn poked my shoulder.

"Kid, come on. This guy's no good. Trust me."

"He knew my name."

"So what? He's nothing but trouble. Trista, remember?"

"I know. Just...Give me a second."

The short ghost stopped just a foot or so away from me. His hair was parted down the center of his head and ducked out over his ears like bird wings. His eyeballs were super-shiny like a bright light was being shone directly into them. All his whites matched, teeth, suit, socks, shoes, and not only his fingernails, but the cuticles were the intense white of Wite-Out.

One thing though.

His hands looked rotted. At least when you first looked at them. Then it was like a digital effect. All the pink, swollen, blistering, black pus and ooze got wiped away. But if I looked away and looked back, just for a moment I still saw the infected, decayed skin. If he noticed that I saw momentary grossness, he didn't seem to care.

"What's she saying about me? Only good stuff, right?" He laughed.

"He's from the Skin Palace, Monty. He's a scout. Don't believe a word he says."

"You knew my name," I said.

"You bet I did, Montgomery. It's my business to know these things. Word travels fast. Some folks when they die, they can relax. Others, like you, with unfinished business, well, entities have been erected to help you along your way on the path to true rest."

Dawn grabbed my wrist and pulled me.

"What a bunch of baloney," she said. "We're busy. Give the kid a business card and blow off, short stuff."

The scout smiled and waved his hand like his pal Dawn said that every time they met.

"What's her name?" the scout asked.

"What's that?" I asked.

"I know that look on your face. Had it myself. Someone still living is in trouble. I like that about you, Montgomery. A serious work ethic doesn't give two wet toots about mortality. There you were, dead, on the other side of the coin, but here you are, back, ready to help out this friend in need. What's her name?"

"Betty Fartsalot," said Dawn. "Seriously, you little scam artist, do you want me to kick your ass?"

A minor convulsion rocked the scout's face. When his lips parted, the teeth weren't white. They were black. He shook his head and cleared his throat and pointed at me. He smiled. His teeth had all gone back to being the whitest of whites.

"Your friend here in the pointy green hat might help you, Montgomery. Might. And you might be able to help your living friend. Might. But what I do, Montgomery, all the Skin Palace wants, is to help you. We ensure your success on this side of things to secure your true rest back on our side of things."

Dawn put her face so close to mine I could almost feel her tongue in my ear.

"He wants your soul," she said. "That's all the Skin Palace does. They take your soul. They give you a Skin. You do your business, and if you make it back to the Skin Palace, they give you your soul back. If you don't, if the Hangmen get you, the Skin Palace keeps your soul. It's the scam of scams. They win, kid, they win all the time. Even when they lose, guess what, they're winning."

"I know what she said," said the scout. "It's a lot of malarkey. You've never even been to the Skin Palace, lady. A lifelong drunk like you could wander into an outhouse and think you were visiting the Taj Mahal."

Dawn stepped over to the scout and hunched down until she was looking right into his face.

"I can go back, asshole. Like that. I can go back to the Game Room and get a Hangmen over here in no time flat."

"Aren't you a delight."

"I try. You know what I heard? I heard the Hangmen actually work for the Skin Palace. You guys merged with them."

The scout put his hands up and shrugged.

"I don't know anything about any of that. It sounds to me like the people you hang out with might be crazy, lady."

"Scoot along. Hoodwink someone else. Some asshole fresh off the boat. Let's go, Monty."

Dawn kept pulling on my arm until I was moving along at her pace.

The scout waved at me.

"You know where to find me, Montgomery. Anytime you need the Skin Palace, you just think of us, and we'll be there. I speak for the Skin Palace when I say we truly look forward to helping you secure your true rest."

I asked Dawn how the scout knew my name. All she could tell me was sometimes word traveled fast over on the Game Room side of reality.

*

On the edge of the high school grounds, a memorial had been set up in honor of Ellen Gaines.

A poster was up, complete with a grainy photograph. All it said was that she was missing. Nothing about her being dead. The poster had been rained on. The colors had bled. Grouped around on the ground in front of the sign were dried up flowers, and some plastic and metal oddities, like offerings made to a god. The memorial was near enough to the public bus stop I imagined bus passengers bored by the wait had wandered over and emptied their pockets on a whim.

Nobody in town knew the truth. We knew. Ellen wasn't just missing. Ellen was gone from this side of things. She was out in the woods, in a hole, covered in layers of dirt and rock.

I stared at the poster. Tried to imagine Trista's face in pixelated black and white dots. Properly pissed off, plus poked in the shoulder by Dawn, I stalked towards the high school.

15.

You would think dying and then finding out you have been dead for years would be more than enough for one day.

But there was more.

*

First, Dawn showed me a trick to get me inside places. I was still bumping off rather than sliding through.

She went inside the school, slid her hand out through the crack between door and doorway, caught hold of my sleeve and pulled me through.

It made me think of a container of Wet Wipes. How a fresh Wet Wipe sticks up just a little bit from the top and grabbed and pulled on - presto! - you get a ready to use sheet.

That was me. Boy ghost. Wet Wipe.

*

Second, my mom was pregnant.
I first saw her walking down a hall towards the office.

I started to go all gooey. I'd never ever again be able to hug her or be yelled at by her or taste her raisin oatmeal cookies. She was texting. Her phone in her hand distracted me, and then I noticed the bump. Prominent like she'd swallowed a basketball.

All Mom and Dad had wanted was one kid. Me. They joked as long as I didn't show any serious defects they wouldn't send me back to the factory.

Being dead shifted me into the defect column.

"She's pregnant."

"I see that," said Dawn.

"But I'm the kid. I'm the only kid they have. They only wanted one."

Dawn patted my shoulder. I watched Mom continue down the hall.

"She's pretty," said Dawn. "I like the white streak in her hair."

"Yeah," I said. "She didn't have that before."

Her heels clacked on the linoleum floor. Mom opened the office door and went inside. After the door had closed slowly shut on its hinge, the hall went quiet.

*

Third, we started going classroom to classroom. The process didn't take too long. Most the doors had a rectangular window inset in the wood. You could press your face up against the glass and look in and see a good healthy sampling of the seated students.

Before I'd peered into too many doors, a bell rang and doors all up and down the hall opened. Students poured out into the corridor.

I recognized one person right away.

Janine Wilson.

Four years later she didn't look too different, a little taller, a little more filled out in some fairly exciting ways, but my reaction was tempered by thinking about Ellen Gaines seeing me back at the Game Room. Janine was older, and I was never getting older. If she could see me, I'd look like a little brother. Next, I'd look like some kid she babysat. Before either of us knew it, I'd be old enough to be her child. Her grandchild.

Someone called her name. Some tall, athletic looking idiot. Janine was at her locker. The idiot pressed up behind her, close enough to whisper in her ear. She laughed, turned and fake-threatened to slap his face. He laughed and play-ducked out of her range.

The laugh did it.

"Bullshit," I said.

"What?" asked Dawn.

I walked towards Janine and her muscle-bound suitor.

"Double bullshit."

"Again, what? What is it?"

The couple looked around and made sure no teachers were watching. The boy ducked in and smooched Janine. He smooched her cheek and then full-on right on her lips.

"Denny." I couldn't believe I was saying it. "Denny Caldwell is dating Janine Wilson."

I said the f-word.

Then I yelled it, louder than loud. Besides Dawn, no one noticed.

"Did you feel that?" Dawn asked.

"What?" I couldn't stop staring at Denny. Janine was looking at him like he was awesome. He still smelled his own farts. He'd done it last week. A hundred times, easy. But that was last week. In less than a day he'd grown half a foot taller and if his neck was any true indicator, turned all his extraneous Jell-O into concrete.

"Montgomery." Dawn shook me and pointed at a kid threading the crush of students.

"That kid is evil."

"What do you mean?"

"He walked past me. Into me. I felt it. Don't ask me. It's just one of those things some of us can do. Or get saddled with."

I tried to walk after the kid. I bounced off teenagers like an inflatable doll. I moved a lot, I just didn't move from my spot.

"Great. Look at me. I'm like a pinball machine. This sucks. Jesus H."

"Hold on. I got it," said Dawn. She grabbed me and started forward. Her intangibility transferred over to me, at least as long as she had hold. It was like something out of the comic books.

The boy we stalked stopped and looked around. Like he thought someone had called his name. He stepped towards us. He walked through Dawn. Two girls gave him a look. He smiled at them. They both seemed to shiver and kept moving down the hall. Those shivers. He smiled even more.

I'd know those blue eyes anywhere. Chunks of polar ice.

So would Ellen Gaines.

"That's him," I said. "PU." I watched him walk away, down the hall.

I got bumped and bounced by the walking living. Dawn had let go of me. I looked towards her.

Dawn had sagged down onto one knee.

She wheezed.

I knelt beside her.

I kept saying her name, getting more and more frantic when she didn't respond.

16.

He'd walked through Dawn twice. So many other kids had walked through her, too, and she'd walked through them.

Peter Uphall was a special case.

"I'm okay," said Dawn.

"You don't sound it."

She looked up and around through the crowd of laughing, chattering students towards Peter, sorting his locker.

"Don't ask me how that happens. It just does," she said.

"What happened?" She nodded her head like she wanted help up. I got her up on her feet.

"Like I was telling you," said Dawn, "things changed back in the Game Room. So some of us are like you. We can't do all the things a ghost should be able to do. And some of us have a worse time, coming back over. It wasn't like that before, but it is now. We can't go through everyone like it's nothing. Some of the living suck down our batteries like no one's business."

"Why him?"

"Something's wrong with him," she said. "Something that shouldn't be in a human."

"We should kill him," I said. I was getting bounced around by students walking past. I didn't care. I wanted to pretend PU would blow up under nothing more than my rage-filled stare.

"Doesn't that make sense?" I asked. "Stopping him before he hurts Trista? Dawn?

She still looked awful. Once we'd had food poisoning, some bad potato salad, and Mom and Dad and I took turns shooting it out of both ends. Dawn looked that green. Maybe even greener.

Peter Uphall went through his locker, whistling under his breath. A happy, no-worries little songbird.

Two kids walked through Dawn, one right after another. She wobbled, backed against a locker and slid down the locker door, straight down, onto her butt. I yelled her name. Ran to her.

"Maybe I'll just sit for a second," she said. "This stinks. It's gotten worse the longer I've been around. It's not just your pal here. Maybe it's all of them."

"Why?"

"Toxicity. Evils unaccounted for. I mean, Montgomery, look up and down this hallway."

I did. The crowd was starting to thin out, kids re-upped with textbooks, moving on to their next class.

"When you're this age, you're self-involved. Can't be helped. Your universe obscures everyone else's. But adults are worse. They're supposed to be aware of all the ills in the world. They're not though, or usually, they happily put on the blinders. They don't care who made their clothes or the industrial goop going into their car tires or eating the ozone or the animals getting slaughtered so they can eat something real fast and get back to their job. That's poison enough. I'd even say that's evil. Him? The ones like this guy? They know. They don't put on the blinders. They toss them aside."

Peter Uphall slammed his locker shut. He walked down the hall. I thought about punching him, but I'd probably bounce off of him like a cartoon character.

Once he was gone, once there were just a couple of students in the hall, Dawn re-inflated a little.

"You still don't look like you feel very good."

"I know," she said. "Any greener and Floaters are going to start circling me."

"If being here makes you sick why did you come along?"

"Curiosity. Boredom. You seem like a nice kid."

"I don't know about that," I said. "I just asked if we should kill PU."

She smiled, mouthed 'PU.'

I looked around the hallway.

Janine had been easy to spot. I saw a few other kids from my class. After four years, everyone had changed, but the girls were still easier to identify than the boys.

Denny walked towards a classroom, walking right alongside a couple of other jocks, laughing, smiling. It wasn't right. He hated jocks. We made fun of them.

"No Trista? Montgomery?"

"No."

"Maybe she goes to another school. Maybe she's sick."

"Or he killed her already," I said.

"Don't say that."

"But it's possible."

"It is."

"I don't know," I said. "Denny...Even if he's changed as much as it looks like he has, I can't imagine he'd be happy like this, not if something had happened to Trista."

I hoped that was true. But given how beautiful Janine Wilson was now, how big her boobs were, I could imagine being in Denny's shoes, smiling, up close, smelling Janine, kissing her, feeling her right up against me, concentrated on the matter at hand even if behind me was any sort of bloody tableau, a mushroom cloud, or an army of swarming, screeching, talon deployed Hangmen.

17.

Before we left the high school, I wanted to see my mom one more time.

Next to the office door, Dawn held out her hand so I could take it and we could melt through the wall.

"Wait a second. Did you see that? Is that her? Monty. Look."

Dawn pointed at a poster tape up beside the office door.

The poster congratulated the Knowledge Bowl Team. The team was off on October 11th to compete in the regional tournament, held in the Tri-Cities.

Six names were listed on the poster. Four girls, two boys. The team co-captain was my very own Trista Quinn.

"Maybe today is October llth," said Dawn.

"Maybe. What?"

"First time I've seen you smile, kid."

"Does it take away from the fact my hair is sticking straight up, and I'm wearing dirt and worms?"

Dawn waggled her hand like kinda-sorta-not-really.

Inside the office, I leaned over the secretary and scoped out the date listed on the bottom of her computer screen.

Wednesday. October 11th.

Relief flooded me even more.

All kinds of time seemed now fully on my side.

My mom was busy in her office taking a teleconference call with other principals in the district.

She was listening, participating in the conversation, but she was also playing a mindless computer game on her cell phone. Also, whenever some dorky-assed sounding guy named Randy piped up into the conversation, Mom made a face and mouthed along to whatever he was saying like he was definitely Dick-of-the-Month if not Year. I laughed. Usually, she was so straight laced you wouldn't believe it was possible she could do something like that. Maybe it was the baby. Considering that little brother or sister that would never ever see me or play with me started seeding my good feeling with melancholy.

We left before I started crying like a baby. With time to kill before Trista was back, I told Dawn I wanted to see my house. I could only guess how much of the house I'd recognize.

Headed for home, I knew I had to come up with a plan. I had to let Trista know she was in danger. If I couldn't do that, I had to erase the danger.

If Peter Uphall had to be turned into a ghost, if I had to kill him to save Trista, I would.

Killing PU.

That seemed insane.

All of it seemed insane.

Dawn and I were running down Cotton. A street I'd been on every day for years. It looked the same. It seemed the same. I couldn't smell anything, but I couldn't really remember any prominent smells from days gone by.

Up ahead was something I never would've noticed. Not if I was still alive.

A man stood on a lawn. He was human. Alive.

Whirling around him, like an angry hornet in a cartoon, was a brown-clad shape.

I stopped. Dawn stopped.

She asked me if I was all right.

I nodded.

It was just odd to know how we'd been right all along. How it was true. Ghosts were real.

It was the Clatterhouse.

And it had a ghost.

An outside-in-the-daytime ghost, winging around the man, over and over again, swearing, more-or-less screaming the swear words.

A lot of the verbal eruption involved doing bad things to the oblivious man's genitals. Violent things. Impossible surgeries. Painful flesh swaps. Unnecessary orifice blockages.

Witnessing the crudity, Dawn's jaw dropped.

"She's amazing," said Dawn. "I mean it's reminding me a little too much of my mom on any Saturday night ever, but at the same time...This is like performance art. Man. She just kind of takes your breath away, doesn't she?"

18.

One more change had occurred in Ashton, further cementing the fact that time had moved on while I'd been circling green lights.

The Clatterhouse place had been painted a bright eggshell blue. The old board fence had been torn down and replaced by ornate white railings. A car was parked in the driveway, and the front door of the house was open.

Parked in front of the Clatterhouse property was a black van. Both rear panel doors were open. The advertisement painted on the side of the van read: 'Cobb Vaughn. Paranormal Services. Investigations & Exterminations.'

Exterminations.

Ghostbusting.

From the perspective of the dead, that seemed a more than valid reason for Myrna Clatterhouse being pissed off.

*

The man unaware of being in the eye of a screaming ghost tornado was short, balding, and sporting a mustache that drooped along his jowls and joined up with his sideburns. All his hair was the color of barbecue potato chips. His suit was brown and reminded me a little of the patterns on couches I'd seen in the homes of older people. Like they'd been new about 20 years before I'd been born.

Spread out on the grass at his feet were elements for some kind of aquarium or cage. It looked like a lot of pieces for something, most the skinny pieces covered in cloth. What looked like a vacuum hose was in a loose coil, restrained by a rope. The hose was the exact color of snot. The man held a map or instructions of some sort. He kept looking at it and the pieces on the ground. Portions of the map had fallen off previously. It was all taped together. The tape was brown in a lot of places.

"Are you ok?" When the spinning ghost didn't slow down and answer, I asked again, politely. "Mrs. Clatterhouse? I know you're dead. I'm dead, too. Uh. I used to live around here. Do you need help or anything or are you all right?"

She spun so fast it resembled the Tasmanian Devil in old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Nothing but whirring and whirling speed coils. And then she stopped. She stood directly above the balding man. She looked at me. And then she straightened and slid down the air towards me like she had her own private, invisible escalator. A tall, gruff-looking middle-aged woman. I was on her lawn. Myrna Clatterhouse didn't look pleased.

"Come to see the show?" she asked.

I didn't know what to say. Myrna squinted. Squinted twice as hard at Dawn.

"Were you going to sting him?" asked Dawn.

"Excuse me?"

"I like your fashion," said Dawn. "Polyester. You dress like most of my teachers did."

"This isn't a show, children." Myrna moved her hand like she was an usher at a museum. "Move along. Go bother some other innocent person."

"Ma'am," I said, "I live here. Lived here. I was just-"

"I know who you are. I know who all the little boys are. You want to break my windows don't you?"

"No. I don't. I-"

"I want you off my property. Immediately. This weirdly dressed teenager, too. I don't think you're wearing a bra young lady. Have you no shame?"

"One," said Dawn, "I have been wearing the same bra for some twenty-plus years now. Two, if this is your property, it doesn't look like it's going to be your property much longer, lady."

Myrna's eyes boiled red. Like tomato red. She popped up off the sidewalk and screamed. I put my hands over my ears. I could still hear it. It sounded like something going very wrong in a lot of ways with a ceiling fan. It went on so long I looked at Dawn. She must have gotten used to that kind of thing. She didn't have her hands over her ears. In fact, she had a kind of smile on her face like she thought it was all kind of funny in a way.

The scream ceased. Finally. All was quiet again.

Myrna floated back onto the soles of her feet. She looked spent. Pale. Out of juice. Her hair had been swept up into a tight bun. Given the force of all her screaming, some of the hair had come loose and danced in a languid sleep-inducing way around her head.

Two people exited the house. A short and kind of plump woman and a little girl. Myrna heard them. Energy poured back into her in a snap. She turned and hissed like a cat pissed off at sight of another cat.

The little girl had white hair. I don't mean blonde hair so shiny the sun made it look white. I mean white. Like old people have. Her dress was black. It went all the way down to her feet. Her feet were bare.

"Your daughter is a very interesting little girl," the plump woman told Cobb Vaughn. She kept walking towards him as he took account of the pieces lying all over the lawn.

The little girl had stopped. She looked around the yard and rubbed at the sores along one side of her mouth.

"That's not a child," said Myrna. "That thing belongs to him."

The woman of the house stopped alongside the bald man and looked down at him. He kept sorting.

The woman crinkled her nose and pushed her glasses up and tilted forward, inspecting the pieces fanned out across the grass.

"Is this it, Mr. Vaughn? It doesn't look like much."

"Please, Mrs. Clark. Cobb."

"Cobb. Of course."

"It's not assembled." Cobb's lower jaw both jutted out and then didn't really move as he spoke. It was more like it stayed in place and his skull bobbled around. He looked a little like a fish. I expected bubbles to tumble out from between his lips as he talked.

"Once it's assembled, you'll see," said Cobb.

"I'm sure I will."

"Goddamned lawyers," said Myrna. "Goddamned relatives. Whatever they've done, whatever contracts they signed, this is always going to be my house. They want to try and get rid of me, they've got another thing coming."

"What about your family?" I asked. "Your husband? Your sister? Your kids?"

I didn't think she'd answer me.

"They're dead."

"I know. But I mean, if they moved on why can't you? Don't you want to see them?"

Myrna looked at me.

"How old are you?"

"12. 16. I don't...I'm not quite sure."

The faintest beginnings of a smile started and stopped. She did something with her jaw that made it look like she'd eaten the smile.

"When you're old enough, young man," said Myrna, "after you've met enough people, you'll realize, some people, even if they have families, even if they've had children, even if they've loved someone, they're really and truly always separate from the rest."

"That can't be good." Dawn pointed.

The little white haired girl was looking at us. She took a step towards us. Stopped. Poked at the sores on her mouth, inspected what pink sore crumbs had worn off onto her fingernails, and then looked back at us, and then up in the sky like something had caught her attention.

"There are ghosts, Cobb," the little girl said. Her voice sounded older than she looked. It also sounded like she was half-asleep. Drugged.

"How's that?"

"Out here," said the girl. She pointed. Not at us, but in the general vicinity. "Right here. Right out on the lawn."

Mrs. Clark looked at the girl, followed where she pointed, and then walked around Cobb and the parts on the ground so she could stand right behind the girl, check her line of sight, and squinting, try to mimic it.

With a grunt, Cobb pushed himself up. He patted himself down, searching, searching, searching, and finally removed an instrument from his pants pocket. He touched a knob. The device buzzed and crackled like a Geiger counter.

"What is it?" asked Mrs. Clark. "Is she out here? She's outside? During the day?"

"Who is that little kid?" Dawn asked Myrna.

"She came with the man."

"Has she seen you before?"

"No. I came out here only a little while ago. Something forced me out. Some weird feeling. Now I think I know what the feeling was. It was her, this little white headed fink."

Myrna floated towards the white haired girl.

"I don't know if I'd do that," said Dawn.

"My house," said Myrna. "It's my house, my lawn. And I've had quite enough of any and all intrusions."

Myrna stopped right in front of the little girl and Mrs. Clark.

"Cobb?" asked the little girl.

Cobb had crouched down and was noodling with another instrument removed from a canvas bag. It looked like a souped-up eggbeater.

"What is it, Perplexia?"

"One of them is standing right in front of me."

Mrs. Clark gasped. She took a step back. Then another.

Cobb turned on his eggbeater. There was a beep. He pulled an antenna out far as it could go and then he moved the handheld device back and forth in a leisurely stroke like he was painting the air.

"We're not alone," announced Cobb.

He shoved the antenna in and switched the handheld device off.

"How many are there?" asked Mrs. Clark. "My husband. I have to tell him. He didn't believe me. He didn't believe there was one ghost. Three ghosts. Well. Now he'll know I was right, won't he?"

"We signed an agreement, Mrs. Clark, yes we did, but the only thing that's set in stone is my commitment to customer service," said Cobb. "If there are more than one of these ungodly roamers haunting your property don't worry. Could be one, two, twenty, or three like my dear Perplexia here confirmed. My machines don't care. I'll get rid of them. I'll grab them, beat them, and put them back in Hell, or wherever you pay me to put them. I guarantee."

Mrs. Clark seemed pleased by his reassurances.

"How about some sweet tea?"

"Oh. Sounds delightful."

Mrs. Clark smiled, squinted in our general area, pulled her cell phone out and took a picture - of what I don't know - and gave that a good squinting, too, before walking back towards the house.

Cobb watched her go.

"Do you have to scare the customer, Perplexia?"

"There are three ghosts," said Perplexia. "I thought you'd like to know."

"Fine. It's fine. Three is nothing to worry about, I'm sure. I'm honestly more worried that we're missing a piece here." He jostled the spread out parts with his foot. "We may need to order a replacement. Or two. We may be stuck in Ashton for a few days, my little one."

Perplexia returned to rubbing the sore patch at her mouth. It broke. A tiny weal of pinkish blood oozed down towards her chin. She captured the blood with a finger and then licked at the blood. Her tongue pulsated like a hamster in a cage guzzling at the water bottle. Her eyes seemed to angle up, so she was looking more or less right in Myrna's face.

Perplexia pointed at Myrna.

Then she took that index finger and tipped her head back and made the universally accepted throat-cutting sign.

"Oh, that's not good either," said Dawn.

19.

My bedroom had been converted into a nursery for the unborn sibling.

Big pink fluffy bunnies were painted across walls once exhibiting Darth Vader and Superman and Wolverine posters. Everything Montgomery was gone, washed away in the march of time. I pictured it like the Dark Lord of the Sith himself had just gestured, and all my belongings shot out of the room, out of the house, snapping, cracking, splintering, tearing in the process.

In boxes under the window were parts for a cradle yet to be assembled. Dangling from the center of the ceiling was some elaborate hanging, a merry-go-round, also bunny themed, waiting for the cradle and the cradle inhabitant to roll on into existence so it could start issuing hours of enchantment.

We were killing time until after school when Trista would be back from the Knowledge Bowl meet. The Tri-Cities were all of a 45-minute trip from town. In the interim, I was finding new ways to depress myself.

I peppered Dawn with questions about Myrna Clatterhouse's opponents. Dawn had been alive long enough through the 1980s to have seen Ghostbusters. It was possible tech used in the movie had a real world equivalent. For sure though, Bill Murray didn't ever seem half as threatening as Perplexia.

Every question I had about Perplexia - the white hair, the sores, the ability to see ghosts - Dawn had no response for other than the world was full of weirdoes. If I hadn't reconciled myself to that fact when I was alive, I probably wouldn't be able to do so dead.

The fridge was the same as I'd seen hours earlier. What seemed hours earlier. When I was alive. When I couldn't see ghosts all over town. Being back in the house only intensified my feeling that the whole death thing had only just happened. Before wandering out with Trista into what turned out to be my last screwing around session as a living, breathing boy, I'd looked at the fridge and the magnets.

Four years on, most of the very same magnets remained on the fridge. For the longest time the Word Poetry assisted term 'Languid-Sausage-Pole' had resided on the freezer door; a joint father and son project that met with Mom's immediate disapproval. The term had been officially retired, and the words ushered back into hibernation with the rest of the brood.

The kitchen sink was new. The desktop PC was gone. Instead, a laptop and some sort of Apple pad lay charging on the desk lodged between the kitchen and living room.

The living room TV was longer, bigger, flatter. The DVDs were still on a bookcase shelf, but a determined layer of dust coated the shelf. It had been awhile since anyone had watched a Transformers movie.

"There's not a lot of pictures," said Dawn.

"No. There's a lot. An infinite lot. Dad took pictures all the time, but they're on the computer. On his phone. On mom's phone. Hundreds. Millions."

"A phone?"

"Like Mrs. Clark? At Myrna's? Or my mom. Remember? In her office? She was playing that game? A phone is just a computer. A tiny one. People text on them. You know what that is?"

"I've heard the term." She waved her hand like she couldn't care less. "It just seems weird. Having pictures on a little computer...Where I came from - notice the air quotes - pictures are framed and put on display, and every old lady in the world licks her chops waiting for some victim to come around so she can dust off the old family photo album."

Dawn walked through the couch and the coffee table and stopped and looked at the TV. She shook her head like she couldn't fathom how slender an operation it was.

"No VCR?" she asked.

"DVDs. And a lot of stuff is just up on the Internet. Movies and music and stuff."

"Internet. This stuff? Your stuff? All after my time. I've been dead forever compared to you, kid."

"You don't even know what the Internet is?"

She waggled her hand. The kinda-sorta motion.

"Computers," I said. "Just computers linked up to one another. Servers. Denny called it cyberspace. I don't know where he got that term from. It sounds stupid."

Dawn snapped her fingers.

"I do. Neuromancer."

I shook my head.

"A guy I was seeing read it. It's a book. It's a novel. He told me about. Cyberpunk he told me, was a big thing. Going to be a big thing. Screw your Star Wars and Star Trek and all that crap. Hey. His take. Not mine. I dig the Spock. Live long and prosper, kid."

She waved off the no doubt pale and confused look of a kid looking like a foreigner in his own land once terms like 'cyberpunk' were released into the conversation.

I walked into the kitchen to check the time. Dawn followed me.

"You want to go?" asked Dawn.

"I don't know. Sure. Waiting at Trista's house probably won't be nearly as depressing as doing it here. Besides, the sooner I try to talk to her the better." "Have you thought any more about how you're going to talk to her?"

"I don't know. How would you do it? I mean, other than going to the Skin Palace."

She gave me a look.

"Sorry. I know. I'm not supposed to even mention it."

"Don't even think about it."

She circled the kitchen. She walked through the table and chairs and the sink and went out the wall then came back in from outside and walked past me and through the wall behind me and then looped back and stopped beside me.

"You guys never went out or anything? Boyfriend girlfriend-like?"

"Gross. No."

"I know. Girls. Cooties. Ick. But it's easier that way. If you had, after you die and come back, closeness like that, it might make it easier to reconnect. In theory. Or not. Shit. I don't know, kid."

"I bounce off stuff," I said. "Does that mean I can move stuff?"

"I don't know. Try it." She looked around. "Go ahead. It's not like you're going to get in trouble. Think of it like it's not a kitchen. It's a spook laboratory, and you've got the run of the place."

I warmed up. I bounced off the kitchen table and doorways to the hall and back porch. I tried to open the fridge door. I gave up and focused on the mass of Word Poetry magnets. It wasn't a successful excursion. One and all, the herd members refused to budge from their dust brushed clump.

Every time I put my finger on one of the magnets and tried to move it, it was like my finger was an ice cube scooting like all get out across a countertop.

I concentrated. And pushed. And failed. I doubled-down on concentrating. And pushed. And failed. And then I just pushed without concentrating. And failed. And pushed with my eyes shut. And failed. And ran up to the fridge from across the room. And pushed. And failed. And I tried to move magnets with my mind. And failed.

Exhausted, I tried lower hurdles, but the fridge sticky notepad didn't so much as ripple, and I couldn't even turn the DVD 'Play' switch to 'ON.' The pen left right on top of the desk didn't roll towards the laptop and didn't roll towards the Apple pad. It just stayed where it'd been left.

Totally Dead and Totally Bauer: The Montgomery Strahl Story.

Yep. Sounded about right.

*

"I suck," I said.

We walked towards Trista's.

"I can't touch the ground. I can't move things. I can't go through things. I can't do anything to help Trista."

"We've got time."

"Yeah, how much? What if tonight's the night that PU comes after her?"

"I don't know."

"Shit. Shitty shitty shit burger farts."

"If you could somehow leverage all that swearing into a weapon, then maybe you'd have something."

"Damnit."

I stopped walking. Dawn looked at me. At the house I stared at.

"Is this it?"

"Yeah."

"Cute. We going inside?"

"Yeah. But let me..."

"What?"

"Let me try on my own. Maybe you helping me, back at the school and at my house, I don't know, got my ghost blood flowing finally."

"Cool."

"But don't watch me."

"Right. Ok. I'll close my eyes. Call me if you need me."

"I won't."

"That's the spirit."

It was bullshit.

I needed her.

I gave up before it got too pathetic.

We went inside, holding hands, passed right through the front door, and instantly I was hit by nostalgia.

I heard Mrs. Quinn's voice.

I followed it into the kitchen and soon as I saw the curly haired teenager drinking a Pepsi and telling her mom about the school's second-place finish at Knowledge Bowl my dead boy's heart turned liquid.

20.

"She's gorgeous," Dawn told me.

Who couldn't arrive at that conclusion? Denny had been right, all those times he'd told me my little shadow was going to be pretty. He'd guessed wrong. Pretty? She was drop dead beautiful.

It didn't even matter that there was a little something off with her left eye. It wasn't anything like one eye was huge and the other teeny-tiny. There were scars around her left eye. Fracture wounds that had healed, but were still pink, bright pink, compared to the rest of her skin.

Trista still had the same nervous tics. Biting her lower lip. Tugging the hair over her right ear. Something had altered though in the last few years. If anything was going to convince me that time had passed it was her transformation from all knees and elbows (as Mom used to say) to becoming even better looking than Janine Wilson.

Like always, Gizmo followed her around, staring up in awe. It used to be just because of the ability to open doors and dog food cans. Now maybe it was because Trista represented the fruits of all those years of human evolution. Gizmo walked right through Dawn. When he tromped at me, he actually knocked me aside, but didn't notice, focused on Trista.

There were three Quinn siblings. Marsha had been a senior four years ago. She was gone to college. Teeny little Tabby was now 8. She kept wandering into Trista's bedroom, asking for help with homework and then asking Trista's opinion on drawings she'd made or costumes she'd put on dolls. Gizmo assisted her. Dawn smiled each time Tabby arrived and laughed especially at the way Tabby would rock back and forth on her feet nervously like she had to pee a little.

Trista's cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and smiled.

"I've got to talk to someone, Tab."

"Your ears only?"

"My ears only."

Tabby made a face and turned around in mock stomping feet.

Gizmo hopped off the bed and followed Tabby out before she pulled the bedroom door shut.

"Thank you," called out Trista. She hit a button on the phone and rolled off her bed. Immediately, she grabbed her hair and started tugging it around her ear.

I didn't like the way she said 'Hi.' It sounded too much like the way Mom said it when Dad called her on the phone. Ooey and gooey.

"We did fine...I did ok...Well, it came down to a sports question. Sports! I know. None of us know anything about sports...Muhammad Ali. I know. That is an easy one..(she laughed)...Well, you're the one that decided not to go out for the team...(she made a 'der' noise)...Fine. I'm a loser. You're a loser. We're all of us losers...(laughing...too much laughing...an outright descent into donkey-honk noises)...When? I don't know. If you're going to be mean to me, then I don't want to do that. Ha!...(she flopped on the bed and put her legs straight up towards the ceiling, and the skirt sloped down around her hips; Never ever had I seen the underside of a girl's legs; Her underwear was yellow; Dawn cleared her throat and said 'Don't be a creep'; Although I didn't want to stop looking and felt super-creepy for not wanting to stop looking, I moved over to Dawn's side of the bedroom and stared at a spot on the wall; By that point Trista sounded much more serious)...They should do another search. I'm going to do one this weekend. If I can't get anyone else, I'll do it myself...Yes, by myself if I have to!"

Trista dropped her legs and bounced a little and sat up on the bed.

"She's missing, Pete. Missing. Until they find a body, it's not over. And they won't. They'll find her. Alive. I'm not going to stop believing that Ellen's alive. I'm not. She's my friend. I won't give up on her."

Pete.

I tried to think.

There weren't any other Pete's in our class. It was possible it was a guy a grade ahead of her. Or some newly arrived Pete.

"You can come if you want. No. Jesus. Why would you need a gun?...(she laughed)...I don't think squirrels get that big around here, Mr. Uphall. Even if they did, they wouldn't grab you and try to store you with their nuts. Don't overestimate your worth."

She laughed the donkey-dork laugh.

"Yes...We can still go out on Friday...If you want to call it a date call it a date...You're so forward all of a sudden. So formal...I told you before, The Chili House is fine...I'll dress to dazzle."

"What do I do?" I asked Dawn. "It's him. She's talking to Peter Uphall."

"It's him? Him-him? PU?"

I walked back and forth around the bedroom. No direction. No idea of what to do. I tried to touch her. To knock the phone out of her hand. I went after her desk and the items on her desk. Her bookshelves. Her dresser.

I screamed. I shouted. At one point, Denny told me someone had started a rumor that Mr. Bauer was impotent. I was still a little confused that even though it meant you couldn't get an erection you could still pee. For a brief moment in time, Totally Bauer was supplanted by the term Totally Impotent.

That was me.

Totally Bauer, Totally Impotent: Montgomery Strahl, Boy Ghost.

I could scream. I could shout. But I seemed completely incapable of warning Trista that Peter Uphall wanted her in the very worst way.

21.

Almost all of the daylight was gone. Street lamps glowed up and down the street and windows displayed lit up house interiors. Briefly, I wondered what it all looked like for Dawn, her eyes seeing everything like a photonegative.

Trying to get out of Trista's bedroom I'd bashed against her door again and again until Dawn touched me and dragged me through the door out into the hall and then she'd maneuvered me towards the end of the hall and we walked through a table and the wall itself and we'd dropped from the top floor to the ground below. We didn't even really bounce. It was like we softly clicked into place, two spirits that were meant for the ground right in that precise spot.

We walked down the street. Cars drove past. Dogs and their owners here and there making that one last bathroom break before full on night. No one noticed the two dead people - one dressed like one of Santa's helpers, the other an agitated little kid covered in dirt and worms. That's what I was. A useless little kid. All I'd ever be, forever, until the end of time.

"How do we get back?" I asked.

"Where?"

"To the Gap. Through the Gap back to the Game Room."

"Why?"

"Because I want to go back."

"Tell me why."

"I can't do anything for her. I can't."

"Monty, you're upset. Just settle down."

I stopped walking. Dawn stopped, too.

"He's going to kill her! How does she not know that?"

"I don't know," said Dawn. "Some people are really good at hiding things. It's like a game for them. They get a charge off of it."

"I don't care! I want to go back. I want to go to the Skin Palace. We have to do something. Anything!"

She wasn't even looking at me. Something in the street was proving more interesting to her.

"Watch your language."

"Oh, bullshit! I'll swear if I want to. You're not my mom! Or my dad! Or anyone! That guy was right. The scout. You don't look good. You know that? Did anyone tell you that before? You do look like a drunk. You do. Is that why you died? Is that why you slipped, why you couldn't keep yourself from smacking your head on the ground, on the curb?"

For a second it looked like she was going to grab me and maybe strangle me. Then she looked back out towards the street, and the anger in her face dissipated.

"Weird."

"What? What's weird?" I followed where she was looking, right out into the middle of the street. A front porch light and the lamppost light above illuminated a patch of asphalt. The glow made me think of the bright lights on the exterior of a lunar module parked on the surface of the moon.

Dawn walked from the sidewalk to the street. She knelt down and inspected some dark mark on the street.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Stay there."

"No."

"Monty. Stop being a little jerk and listen to me. Get mad again."

"What?"

"Like you were doing just now. Get mad. Get really, really mad. Swear at me. At the world. At PU. At your mom. At whoever."

"Really?"

"Really," she said. After a moment, she said, "Damnit, I just iced you, didn't I?"

"'Iced' me?"

"It doesn't matter," said Dawn. "You know what? It doesn't matter. In the long chain of the living and dead, it's all ok. Your little friend, the one with those nice long legs and the yellow panties, she's probably better off getting killed. PU's doing her a favor. I mean, if she's that dumb, if she can't tell that her boyfriend is the same guy that killed Ellen, it's probably better for everyone that she gets struck out from existence now, while she's young, I mean, before she ever gets pregnant and unleashes a brood of useless shitheads on everyone else. I won't help you. Monty. Really, go fuck yourself. Why would I help you if you're dumb enough to help Trista? Trista's a piece of shit. I hope he kills her. PU? I hope he kills her and cums in his pants when he does. I'll be happy when he does."

I screamed and ran straight at her.

I was almost on top of her, ready to rumble right there in the middle of the street and inflict what damage I could when a car slammed on its brakes.

Coming from my left, the headlights spilled out over Dawn, but that wasn't why the driver had stopped.

The dark spot on the asphalt had moved.

It had moved.

It was moving.

It rasped and clicked like a wind nudged candy wrapper.

The driver got out of the car.

"What the hell?" he said in a hushed church-appropriate whisper.

Under the ministrations of some ectoplasmic spatula, a too-many-times-to-count tire-flattened squirrel had been peeled off the asphalt and rotated on limp fur, on mashed into powdery fragment bones.

It tilted towards me. It seemed like it bowed the moderately squashed skull like the prayerful in pews.

Bugs had long ago slurped up its unseeing eyes. Hollow sockets looked up at me.

The car driver made a sound like he was going be sick. Then he was. Everything in his stomach came out in a spasm. It sounded like chili sliding out of a can.

"You did this," said Dawn. "How...I don't know. I've never seen any ghost do this. You can move dead bodies, Monty. I don't know what it means, but it's awesome."

22.

The squirrel followed us down the sidewalk, clicking and scraping. It tried to undulate, I think, is the word, but it was a little too dried out and crispy to quite manage a bounce-filled pursuit. The flattened squirrel looked like someone's idea of going beyond the pale to prank a pancake for some unsuspecting, half-awake breakfast diner.

I wasn't angry, and we were still being pursued. That was one thing.

I also wasn't floating while walking anymore. That was another.

Dawn theorized maybe it was ghost-puberty I was enduring. Floating while walking now had a checkmark next to it. Done. Before too long, maybe, hopefully, I'd be able to walk through doors and walls without assistance.

The suddenly discovered resurrection power might fade, too, or become even more powerful.

Once he'd barfed all over the street, the driver had gotten back into his car and backed all the way to the intersection before shifting direction and peeling out, never to be seen again.

Dawn turned on heel and still moving, looked back at the squirrel.

"You going to name him?"

"Um."

"You should name him."

"What if he just keels over?" I looked back. Yep. Still lurching after us. I kept waiting for a pedestrian to come across us and the squirrel and repeat the driver's barfing.

"Franken-Squirrel," I said.

"Weak. Too obvious."

"Fluffy."

She laughed.

"Wallace."

"'Wallace'?"

"I don't know," I said. "I've never named a zombie squirrel before."

"How about Squish?"

"Squash."

"Gutless."

"Splat."

Dawn clapped her hands together and laughed.

"Perfect. Oh, that's good, that one. Splat it is. Hey there, Splat. How's it going?"

Click. Scrape. Click. Scrape.

"Not a big talker that old Splat," said Dawn.

"What's going to happen to him? Her. It."

"When?"

"When we go back. To the Game Room."

"I don't know. Maybe it'll be like cutting the cord. You do it, and he's done. He'll go back to being flat and a victim of poor driving skills."

I pointed.

"That's Denny's house."

"Right."

"I still don't think anything is going to happen. I mean anything much different than what happened at Trista's."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"Dawn."

"What?"

"I'm sorry. For what I said back there. About you being. You know. Drunk. And stuff. I was just mad."

"It's all right. I think I said a lot worse. But it worked. I mean, look-"

She pointed. Splat was almost right at my feet.

"-now we're proud parents of a bouncing baby squirrel."

Splat kept coming. I didn't know how to stop him. He might just keep going and going until he got ran over again or a dog grabbed him and rolled over him again and again before deciding to try and eat him -- or vice versa.

"Stop," I said. I held out my hand. "Right there. Whoa, guy."

He did.

"Shit," said Dawn. "Like I said. That's cool. Make him move. Tell him to move."

"Come here, Splat. A little bit."

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

"Ok. Right there. Stop."

He did.

"The sad thing," said Dawn, "Sad things, is one, how long do you think Splat was left there on the road? People's indifference to that kind of thing sickens me. It makes me wonder how long I was down and out and gone on the asphalt before anyone bothered with 9-1-1.

"But also, I know people - ok, knew people - they're probably all smears under the footsteps of time by this point, but they were regularly high enough they'd think this was all fake somehow. They'd pick Splat up and look here and look there and try and spot the wires coming out of him. A maggot would ooze on out and roll across their knuckle, and they'd think that was fake, too. Probably a good thing I did die when I did. I was about thirty beers away from that state of mind. Permanent oblivion."

"A Floater."

"Right. But if you do it here, I mean, you don't even get to float on this side of things, do you? I drank with people that thought they could fly, but man, no wonder I was depressed when I was alive."

*

Splat would be ok waiting for us.

The Caldwell's didn't look like they had a dog, and I could imagine Tumor, now fully grown, at most sniffing Splat and hissing and running away.

On the side of the house I found a spot between bushes right under the outdoor hose spigot where Splat should remain safe...unless the Caldwell's were suddenly doing yard work on cool, dark October nights.

"Did you tell him to stay?" asked Dawn.

"I guess. Not in so many words."

"He's obedient."

"Yeah."

"What are you going to do with all that power, kid?"

"Is it power?"

"To control the bodies of the dead?" Dawn shrugged. "Did you notice his guts?"

"I'm guessing that's why the driver barfed."

"I mean I think he's losing them the more he moves even though he's all mostly dried up. But you're right. The living are total wussies when it comes to guts squirted out of something. It's natural. Naturally gross, but natural."

23.

Buffed up, Hulked-out, and dating Janine Wilson, other parts of Denny's life seemed the same.

The bedroom remained a den of geekery, but I felt out of step with time. The video game titles, his paper-thin computer, comic books, movie posters, almost all utterly foreign to me. Four years later might've as well been a thousand years later. I'd missed so much. I'd continue to miss so much.

Denny's shirt was off. He was wearing nothing but an iPod and his underwear and standing at the foot of his bed, pumping barbells over and over and over again. Sweat ran down his face and chest.

"I'm torn," said Dawn. "In a way, this is doing it for me, but at the same time, it's kind of gross. I'm hedging into being a Chester, female version."

"'Chester'?"

"Chester the Molester. Ever hear of Hustler magazine? No? Don't worry about it."

"He's buff," I said. "He could totally take out Peter Uphall. Easy."

"We just have to convince him."

I looked around.

Soon as we'd ghosted into his room, I'd noticed the shelf right at the side of the door.

All the older artifacts remained on display, including dead center top shelf, pride of place, the stuffed Batman, the very same The Dark Knight Returns version I'd gotten him for his birthday. I guess in memory of my death he kept it there.

"I've got an idea. Dawn. Dawn."

Finally, she looked away from Denny, now doing some side lifts that rippled his abs on every lift and lowering of the weights.

"Me and Denny, we used to have this thing. You know the Back to the Future movies?"

"There's more than one?"

"Right. You don't, you weren't around for... Yes. They made three of them. So at the end of the third one, Doc Brown is talking, like he's in the foreground, right? And the filmmakers didn't notice that this kid actor in the background makes this weird gesture. Like this. See? Weird, right?"

Dawn gave me a look.

"A kid did that?"

"I know. Anyways, it was like a running gag for me and Denny. We'd make that gesture all the time. Here. At my house. On the street. At school. Anywhere, trying to make one another lose it."

"Ok."

I pointed at the soft cloth The Dark Knight Returns Batman doll.

"If I could make him move. And make him make that gesture, maybe it's a way to let Denny know I'm here."

"Ok. But how?"

"That's kind of the problem," I said. "I don't know. Any ideas?"

She made a face, screwed up her lips, thinking.

"We could get someone to help us," I said. "We could go back to the Game Room and convince another ghost to help us. Or, here, maybe Myrna? What about Myrna?"

"She's got her own problems," said Dawn. "That's something you're going to run into. I'm spoiling you. I'm outside the realm of regularity. Most ghosts don't stray from their own shit, kid. 99 out of 100 of them are narcissists. It's not like life, well, ok, a little, but when you're alive, helping others is the thing to do because you don't know when you'll need a helping hand yourself. But dead, there's no incentive. Not really."

"You're irregular is what you're saying."

"I am. I'm a freak. Probably all the boozing I did. I'm pickled otherwise I wouldn't be here. And people say alcohol is bad for you."

Behind us, barbells clinked. Denny made a 'hoo' noise and set the weights down. He left the ear buds in, grabbed a t-shirt and clean boxers from his dresser drawer, and left his room, leaving the door open.

"Shower I bet," I said.

"Shower." Dawn said it dreamily like she was in the bathroom, watching Denny under the spray. She shook it off. With only a little coaxing.

Dawn investigated the artifacts shelf. She kept crouching down, looking at all of Denny's goods saying 'nope.' Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Then 'hm.'

"What?" I crouched down so I could see whatever it was on the bottom shelf that had so interested her.

"I knew a dead guy once," said Dawn, "a comedian. Now I mean, he really was a comedian. A stand-up. He'd toured and all that. So he died kind of young, which isn't a surprise, those entertainment people live life to the fullest. Drugs, booze, drugs, sex, drugs, and drugs. So after he's dead, he'd go from the Game Room back to the last place he'd performed and he'd haunt the microphone. Like in-between other people's sets, he'd talk into the mic. And people heard it. Heard him. No one knew what was going on. The club people thought it was one of the comedians pulling a prank. The audience thought it was just some sort of gimmick, but the dead comic just kept doing his thing. Only, he didn't do it for very long. He realized the problem was that people paid attention to the gimmick, not the material. It was what finally made him shuffle on down the road."

She pointed.

The Walk-And-Talk, its microphone plugged in and clipped to the side, remained on Denny's shelf.

*

I tried it out. Dawn tried it out.

Neither one of us could talk through the Walk-And-Talk's microphone and make any sound come out the speakers. Then Dawn pointed out the 'Play' button wasn't pushed.

Although I wasn't floating anymore, I still couldn't move stuff. Not even a plastic button on an ancient toy - not even a slightly askew plastic button. Apparently my Craig 'The Plague' Donnelly inspired kick from years ago had inflicted battle damage.

Dawn couldn't depress the button either.

"We could go back," she said. "Try and rope someone hanging around the Game Room into helping you."

"I have an idea," I said.

"Don't say the Skin Palace."

"Nope. Closer than that. Downstairs actually. Outside. Kind of flat. And dry. Showing off all of his guts. But eager and ready to help."

24.

Tumor had apparently grown into an indoor/outdoor cat.

Courtesy the cat access door in the Caldwell's kitchen, that's how Splat made it inside. He didn't punch his way through the plastic flap, more he kind of eeked through, at a near maddening just-a-little-at-a-time pace.

Tumor wasn't in sight. I guess maybe he was out carousing before punching the clock. A good thing. All the hissing and growling Splat's presence would've incurred only would've drawn Denny's folks out from the living room, towards Splat, so, so, so slowly making progress, first into the house, then up the stairs, and then into Denny's room. Splat's range of movement was limited. It was like watching someone in a full body cast try to perform jumping jacks.

It wasn't until Splat lurched into Denny's room and was under the full spill of the ceiling lights that I saw just how beat up and mangled the poor little guy was. You could make out tire tread on portions of him. The spill of guts was more barbecue-colored than blood red. Portions of his tail were fluffy, but overall, it was dry and sticky like his butt end had been liberally dipped in syrup.

Denny spent a lot of time in the bathroom.

A.

Lot.

Like he was a girl almost. Given how into his body he was now, it helped us out. Even when I told Splat to hurry, he could only move as fast as his bent and broken body allowed.

*

Dawn and I were crouched down, looking at the bottom shelf of the display, inches from Splat reaching out his cold dead paw onto the Walk-And-Talk 'Play' button.

"Come on, Splat. Press down, little guy. You gotta push with everything you got."

"I don't think that's very much, Monty," said Dawn. "All told, I think Splat has the mass of a couple of pieces of paper. Not even soaking wet pieces of paper. Maybe he's got to use both paws."

"They're kind of far apart."

"I know. But this isn't really working."

"Fine. Ok. Splat. Take your left paw over there and put it together with your right."

I could hear something internal tear. Splat was a soldier. He took whatever I threw at him without complaint. That noise though. It made me think of movies when the seat of some fat guy's pants tore.

Two tiny dead squirrel paws pressed down on the 'Play' button. They pressed, but the button refused to move.

"I heard something," said Dawn. "I think Denny's out of the bathroom."

I leaned in right next to Splat. I whispered. Like anyone other than Dawn was going to hear me.

"Come on, Splat. Come on, buddy. Press. Press down. You can do it. Just keep pressing. Make that thing click. You can do it. I know you can. Come on."

Whistling, Denny walked in. He wore a clean t-shirt and blue boxers.

I freaked out. I thought he was going to see us, me with my hair sticking out and my body partially decorated in earth and worms, and Dawn and her outfit, and best of all, one dead and desiccate squirrel, messing around with an absolutely obsolete toy.

Denny walked over to his bed and burped and then walked over to his desk and moved the mouse, waking the computer. He pushed the desk chair back and sat down.

Given the angle of things, he'd notice Splat from the corner of his right eye. And if not, eventually, when he went to bed for the night, he'd see Splat. There was no way to miss seeing road kill when it occupied a portion of your nice bright and clean bedroom carpet.

It was quiet, but each time Splat tried to get the 'Play' button to go down, claws clicked off of plastic. To my ears, it was like a gunshot. I kept looking over my shoulder at Denny. He had a textbook out. Homework. That wasn't good. He'd be looking for a distraction. Splat was all distraction.

Without a word to Dawn, I shut my eyes and doubled down on willing Splat to shove down on the Walk-And-Talk. I thought about being dead. Mom being pregnant. Trista. PU. Gunk Mouth. The Hangmen. The Skin Palace. Ellen Gaines, her cold and carved and murdered flesh. All of it. Crap I shouldn't have to deal with, but did have to deal with because being dead was now my life. PU. Those bright blue eyes. Trista looking into them. Believing his lies. Closing her eyes when he leaned in for a kiss. Looking into those cold blue balls of evil when he held her hand or danced with her. Walking out into the woods, to Peter's special place. A hole in the ground. A mound of rocks. The collection of dead dogs. Dog heads on doll bodies. Trista covered in dirt, by rocks, losing breath, losing consciousness, showing up in the Game Room, confused, dead because of me, because I couldn't help her, I couldn't help her, I couldn't help her, I couldn't help her, I couldn't

"Oh!" Dawn smiled at me and pointed.

Splat had done it.

The 'Play' button was pushed in. The plastic button angled a little to the side, damaged by my kick, but it was functional.

Victory.

I scrunched down, even further, and looked in at the cassette housing and the cassette still inside the toy.

The two little black thumb wheels didn't spin.

'Play' didn't do anything. Not if the batteries were dead. Not if someone kicking the Walk-And-Talk some four years back had delivered a killing blow to the little kid's toy.

"It didn't do anything," I said. "It doesn't work. Shit."

Dawn leaned in and whispered in my ear.

"He moved. Just now. Denny? Your friend. When you talked just now, he heard it."

I looked towards the desk. Denny was back at homework. Scratching his head, moving a leg in a nervous twitch.

Staring at him, I said, "Shit."

Denny looked up. Right at me.

He stood up.

He squinted and tilted his head to the side.

Splat.

He'd seen Splat.

"The hell is that?" Denny knocked the desk chair back with his legs and walked away from the desk towards his bedroom door and the display shelf. Yep. Splat was the center of his attention.

"Denny. It's ok. Just stop right where you are?"

He did. He looked around. He looked at his bedroom windows, but the curtains were all drawn down. It wasn't like someone was spying in from across the street.

"What is this?"

"I need you to listen to me. This is about Trista. Trista's in trouble."

"What the fuck is that?"

"That's a dead squirrel, Denny. Don't pay any attention to that. It's ok."

"How did that get in here?"

"It's a long story. Trista, Denny. That's what we need to be talking about right now. Do you know me? Do you recognize my voice?"

Denny sniffed the air.

"Jesus. I can smell it from here."

"Denny."

"That's gross. That's so, so gross. I'm throwing that out. Right now."

Denny stepped towards Splat. Looking at Splat, I said, "Spin move, Splat."

Splat turned around. His little forepaws remained touching like he held the world's smallest cup.

"Move your paws apart."

He did.

"Jump a little."

Splat jumped.

"Oh shit!" Denny stepped back.

"Denny."

Denny kept backing up towards his desk. His leg smacked into the desk, and he cried out. His hand smacked the desktop and nearly knocked the keyboard to the ground.

"Denny. You need to listen to me. You're freaking out. I'm sorry you're freaking out, but really and truly, Trista is in trouble. You need to help her out."

Denny looked at his computer. At Splat. Denny grabbed the mouse and started to move it around.

"What are you doing?"

He didn't answer. He paused long enough to grab a pair of scissors out of a pen and pencil cup on his desk. He kept moving the mouse, clicking, with the other hand.

Dawn got up and walked across the room and looked at Denny's computer.

"He's turning it off."

Denny twitched. Looked at the ceiling like he'd heard Dawn just now.

"He heard you," I said.

She nodded. She pinched up her hand and drew it across her lips like she was zipping them up.

"Ok. Ok." Holding the scissors out like he was primed to use them, Denny backed away from the desk. In fact, he backed right through Dawn. She was fine. She'd recovered from the high school hall earlier. She gave me a thumbs up.

"Denny," I said, "I want to show you something."

"Fuck!"

"What?"

"I shouldn't be able to hear you. I thought I'd shut you down just now by killing the computer. Here. Ha! I bet I know how you're doing this..." He picked his phone up off the desk and tapped at it. "Boom. Shut it off. Take that."

"Denny, do you know who I am?"

He groaned. He had the scissors in one hand, his phone in the other.

"No. I don't know who you are. I don't care. Someone from the team probably, fucking with me and recording it."

"No. Denny. Look at the squirrel."

"I'm not looking at the fucking squirrel. The fucking squirrel has guts coming out of it. And it doesn't have any eyes." He pointed in the Walk-And-Talk's direction. "How did my parents not see you get in here? Wherever you are?"

"I snuck in. Your parents are fine. Tumor is probably fine, too, wherever she is. No one is here to hurt you or anyone you love."

"They better be all right, man. I've got no problem kicking ass."

He sounded like he meant it. I still took the threat with a heaping grain of salt. My Denny was kind of flabby and started to make sounds like he was wetting his pants if you even as much verbally threatened a Wet Willie.

I stood up. What I had in mind, I bet I couldn't tell Splat to do it. I had to do it to show Splat what I had in mind.

"Ok. Splat. Look at me. Watch me. See this? And this? Again. Move one. Move two. Do it. I'll do it with you."

I kind of wish I could've stood outside myself just so I could watch it. We did it a couple of times. Got the kinks out. And then it was perfect. Synchronized Creepy Back To The Future III Kid moves coming at you courtesy of an electrocuted to death 12-year-old boy and a tire- flattened tree squirrel.

Denny just gawked.

"What the fuck was that?"

"You don't get that, what that was from?"

"No."

"Back To The Future III. The kid. Doc Brown's kid. The creepy little 'come here, I want to show you my wiener' move."

Denny's shoulders slumped.

"Monty?"

"Yeah. It's me."

"Bullshit."

"Bulltrue."

"No."

"Denny, seriously, I need your help. Trista does. PU is evil. She doesn't know. He killed Ellen Gaines. I know he did. She told me. Ellen did. He took her out to the woods. Remember? We always knew he had a thing about going out in the woods alone? Denny? Hey. What are you doing?"

Denny had pulled a window shade up. He opened the lock on a window and pushed the window up into the frame.

"This is so fucking gross. I can't believe I'm doing this."

Denny shrugged out of his t-shirt. He wadded it up into a glove and walked right at Splat.

"Denny. No. Splat didn't do anything. Don't do that."

I should've shut up. Knelt down to grab Splat with his workaround glove, Denny realized my voice was coming out of the Walk-And-Talk.

"Fuck me," he said. He picked up Splat and walked him over to the window and threw him out into the dark, just like that. Making a face, he pitched the now soiled t-shirt to the floor.

"Denny. It's me. It's Monty, really and truly it is. No one's screwing with you. This is real. I swear. The Walk-And-Talk is busted, that button is, I know it is because I kicked it the last time I was in this room. It was your birthday. And downstairs, remember? You came outside while you were talking on the phone to your grandma and you did the thing, the creepy kid weiner thing, and I didn't do it back. Trista was there, too, Denny. No! Denny. Trista, Denny! Trista's in trouble."

I heard my voice, tinny, kind of muffled, coming from the realm of the dead for Denny's ears get further and further away and then too far away. Denny had thrown the Walk-And-Talk out the window, not even thrown, but heaved, hoping, I guess, that it'd get caught up in the same swarm of air that had hopefully carried Splat away forever.

Denny looked out the window like he wanted to make sure he'd thrown things far enough away they wouldn't be coming back anytime soon. Then he slammed the window down. Tugged the curtain down. Looked around the room and waited to hear my voice again. He couldn't. He wouldn't. Victorious, he laughed.

He walked past us, out into the hall, and called out for his parents as he thumped down the stairs.

"You tried," said Dawn. "Poor Splat."

I nodded. We were done. Dawn walked over to the windows and motioned for me to follow.

We touched, and she ghosted us out through the wall. We drifted to the ground.

Noises like leaves rasping drew us to Splat. Tossed Frisbee style he'd nearly crossed the sidewalk and gone into the street.

Streetlamp light described the Walk-And-Talk's battle damage. The cassette and the plastic cover for the cassette housing lay nearby, ejected. The 'Play' button had popped off, too. The microphone at least remained snapped in place against the toy.

Even after being so rudely ejected from Denny's bedroom, the weird amplification effect remained. Now it trailed my actual speaking so the Walk-And-Talk, at least to my ears, did seem kind of ghostly, processed words dragging behind the real time version.

There wasn't much to say in the wake of crushing defeat. We walked down the street, Splat trudging on behind us.

25.

"What if it's a racket? What if the reason I can't touch stuff, and you can't even touch stuff, it's something the Skin Palace people do? They do something that inhibits that ability. And then - if you get in a situation like this - going to them is like the only option."

"Conspiracy theory," said Dawn. "I like it."

"Sure. Why not? I watched X-Files. I've heard people talk about JFK and Oswald and that the moon landing was faked. One of my teachers was telling us not to even drink the water at the school because the fluoride would make us crazy or have retarded babies or something."

We were walking, thinking, trying to come up with the Emergency Plan, now that Denny had kicked us clean out of his kingdom.

An all-night Waffle Heaven glowed white and blue on the corner, a bowling alley and then some gas stations further down the street. We'd come out of a residential neighborhood. Taking Splat down a more occupied street didn't seem too wise.

We were about to turn back for the quiet and calm of houses when I saw a man, glowing, just on the far edge of the Waffle Heaven parking lot.

"Do you see that?" I asked. "Sorry. I mean, the guy is glowing. I don't know if you can tell with your eyes being how they are."

"I see it. It's just a throbbing black field," said Dawn. "When it's dark like this, even with lights above, you can always see a Skin."

"Like a Skin Palace 'Skin'?"

"That's it."

"Why is he glowing like that?"

"Because he's two great tastes in one," said Dawn. She sighed. "Don't get any ideas, all right? I know we're pressed for time, and you want to help the girl with the curly, curly hair, but a Skin is...You, and me, and any other ghost, we can control people. If we want. But they have to be the right kind of people. People that aren't all there because of drugs or injury or birth defects. Their condition makes it easy for us to take the wheel."

"So that's a real person?"

"It is."

"But with a ghost inside?"

"Right," said Dawn.

"What's he doing?"

"Something dumb," said Dawn. "Something almost definitely dumb."

A woman and kids came out of the Waffle Heaven and walked towards a car. The Skin waited until the woman was nearly at the car and then he started walking towards them. He was short, overweight, and balding, but the hair present was shoulder length. He limped. Severely.

"That can't be good," said Dawn. She walked ahead of me, right towards the meeting about to happen.

I turned and pointed at Splat. He was parallel to a hedge, almost at the point where it ceased and turned into Waffle Heaven parking lot.

"Stay there, Splat." I ran after Dawn.

She continued jogging. She put her hands up in the air.

"You've got no business messing with them," said Dawn. "You're dead, dummy. You're dead as shit. Deal with it."

The limping man paused. Looked at her. Then just kept moving. He called out, "Kathy!"

The mom - Kathy - stopped. The kids were in the car. Standing on the driver side of the car, right behind the back bumper, Kathy looked at the limper, the Skin.

"Can I help you?" asked Kathy.

"Are you safe? Are you ok? Are the kids ok?" asked the limper.

She tried to think of the right way to respond. It threw the living to interact with the dead. We were always off-kilter, not quite right. It put the living on edge. Kathy was like Denny, faced with a spookified Walk-And-Talk.

"Look, I've got to go."

"I'm sorry. Kathy!"

She didn't look back at him. She marched towards the driver side of the car. She beeped the car door, making sure it was open. She got in the car and slammed the door. We could hear the locks tumbling into place.

The limper stupidly scurried over to the car and started pounding on it.

Dawn tried to grab him. Because Dawn was trying to grab him and get him to stop, I tried, too.

The limper moaned and sobbed and cried. Mostly he didn't make a lick of sense. The car backed past him, Kathy put it in drive, and she got the car out of the Waffle Heaven lot before running over the limper. She made a sharp right turn out onto the street and then hit the gas.

The limper screamed. It sounded awful like he was being crucified or something. People poked their heads out from the Waffle Heaven to look.

None of the living would see what happened next.

The air right behind the limper turned a noxious orange.

I knew that color now.

The color of pretty much everything in the Game Room.

It was a doorway that wasn't quite shaped like a door. An opening. It kept spreading out and contracting like a too thick and then too runny egg yolk.

A Hangman shot out of the door and jammed a claw into the limper's chest. The limper, the man, the human, didn't feel it. Had no idea the Hangman yanked a ghost right out of him. The limper stumbled, put his hand to his head, and that was the extent of his injuries. He stumbled around, confused. The common condition of people used as Skins.

Another of the Hangmen dove out the still open doorway. It flew through the limper and grabbed me by the throat and then bounded back, carrying me through the limping man.

Dawn shouted. Ran after me. Ran through the limper. Claws squeezed my throat. The increasing pressure interrupted my breath.

I was Montgomery Strahl, The Dumb Little Ghost Boy. I shouldn't breathe to begin with.

Everything going dim, I watched Dawn continue her pursuit and felt a lurch as I was carried out of the living world through the door and into the Game Room.

Dawn was almost at the door. Almost there. And then the doorway shuddered and sputtered and shut.

26.

The dead liked a show just as much as the living.

The Hangmen dropped us off not right at the Gap, but near it. Panic inflicted some of the ghosts, guilty or knowing the Hangmen weren't overly particular about those receiving judgment. Come the ripple effect, ghosts ran. But apparently, some also knew what was about to happen, and were used to it, had even developed a taste for the show.

"I just wanted to see her. I just wanted to know she was all right. I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything wrong!"

The ghost, Kathy's dead husband, stood in judgment, surrounded by on-lookers and Hangmen. His hair was dark, gray at the temples. He was in a t-shirt and shorts and high top sneakers. He looked wet. He'd been sweaty in life at the point he'd died.

The Executioner yanked the noose out from beneath her wing and floated towards the ghost. The Hangmen started to cry out their judgment of guilty, guilty, guilty.

"I saw her." He looked at me. "I saw my kids. They looked good. They looked fine. They looked alive."

The noose dropped and looped around his neck and tightened. His eyes bulged. The Executioner pulled up, and the man's feet cleared the powdery ground. He made a sound like he'd been punched in the throat. His hands grabbed the noose as it turned pink then orange then a dark glowing red. His fingers glowed and then ignited like a magic trick - ten fingers all at once. He burned from both ends, towards his head and his feet, just like the previous execution. His thrashing didn't last long, but his scream didn't fade right away, even after his physical presence terminated. His remnants drifted onto the ground. I realized a fair portion, maybe a huge portion, of the dust on the Game Room ground was ghost ash.

"How do you plead?" It was a vaguely feminine voice.

The creature looked at me. She was short. One of her wings was wounded, torn into, exposing thin bones the same tar-colored black as the wing itself.

"I didn't do anything," I said. "I didn't do what he did. I didn't go into anyone, control them or anything."

The Executioner's wings moved. Ashes drifted as she rose into the air. She circled from above.

"How do you plead?" The injured Hangmen asked me.

"Not guilty. I didn't do anything." Seeing I had an audience, I freaked out, I yelled at all of them. "Not guilty! I swear! I didn't do anything!"

The Executioner's shadow passed over me. I looked up at her. Far above us, green lights in the sky had grown dim, had all but vanished. The Floaters in the sky lay dormant, completely still.

"I didn't do anything. My friend is in trouble. Even if she is, even if I'd do anything to help her, anything at all, I didn't buy a Skin or rent a Skin or whatever the fuck it is you do. Ask the scout! There was a scout! The guy with the Wite-Out teeth! He offered it to me, and I said no! I didn't do it!"

The Hangmen playing jury, hovering right above the ground, all cried out at the same time. That noise like a hundred birds in a tree or a hundred birds flocking, all talking at the same time.

The wounded creature tipped her head back. Chunks of leathery matter fell from her spread wings. She cried out, "The accused is accused of the crime of wearing a Skin. How does the accused plead?"

"Not guilty!"

"The accused is accused of the crime of wearing a Skin. How does the accused plead?"

I screamed it again.

"The accused is accused of the crime of wearing a Skin. How does the accused plead?"

The air immediately above the crowd of rubbernecking ghosts began to bulge. It looked like water was filling the air. Water pregnant with a bunch of tiny little bubbles.

Noticing this oddness, ghosts hollered. The shouts soon gathered more volume than the high- pitched cries of the Hangmen. Ghosts started to beat a retreat any way they could.

The wounded Hangman was distracted. She looked at the sky bubble. At the sprinting away crowd. She looked back at me. She again cried, "The accused is accused of the crime of wearing a Skin. How does the accused plead?"

And then ghosts, all those Floaters that had gone still once the green lights had dimmed, they started falling from the sky, pelting, like rain, like what Denny called an anvil chorus, after this one super stupid Daffy Duck cartoon he couldn't stop watching.

*

The air bubble expanded and rippled. The anvil chorus Floaters bounced off of it. They didn't go through. They repelled like someone bouncing on a trampoline.

The Hangmen watched. They didn't panic. Even when a Floater fell right on top of one of them, the rest just stayed in place.

The air bubble filled with murky light. I couldn't tell if it was some sort of dirty water or smoke or if it just reflected the Game Room light.

It doubled in size in the space of a second. It displaced air. I felt the ripple on top of my head, and then I felt something else. I looked up. The Executioner's noose dangled from her claw. The whoosh of air slammed into her and drove her back. The noose swirled all around her. She flapped her wings, trying to gain control, retain her mid-air perch.

Floaters kept falling, slamming into the ground.

Ghosts kept stampeding.

Faintly, I thought I heard someone calling my name.

Then there was a popping noise.

The bubble broke.

The bubble was there. And then presto change-o it was gone.

The wounded Hangman lurched at me, claws extended. I don't know if she wanted to hurt me or if she was looking for something or someone to grab and cling to. She knew what was about to happen.

A bomb went off.

The powdery ground rose in a thick roiling sheet.

The Hangmen jury was tossed apart like a giant broom swept into them.

The wounded Hangman rolled head over feet, past me, and kept on going. A black-clad tumbleweed. The force of the explosion picked me up. I joined the tumbleweeds. My mouth filled with dust, with executed ghosts. I gagged. I choked. Grit filled my eyes. My arms performed the useless grappling motion of a puppy or a kitten picked up, paws in a panic, removed from the sure surface of the ground.

I blacked out. Ghosts black out. I'd already blacked out once, for four years, apparently. A few minutes more meant little in comparison.

When I opened my eyes, I was floating. I looked down.

Ghosts were running.

Ghosts were clumped around the Gap.

I didn't hate heights. I didn't seek them out of my own free will, but they didn't freak me out. Not usually.

Besides, I had a distraction.

Something was up in the air with me.

I remembered what the pretty Hippie Ghost had told me about the Husk before she bomped my nose.

"He's demented. He's like God dropped some fairly freaky acid and forgot he's God. He drops in on us every now and then for try-outs. Looking for his replacement."

The Husk kept fading in and out of the Game Room. I couldn't tell you what color it was or if it was composed of bone or wood or steel or stitched together from light and dust. The Husk's head seemed mammoth in size. I was a single drop of water. It was a lake. What I could make out of the Husk's head reminded me of an animal skull, something folks lost in the desert come across in their water-deprived stumbling, a prediction of their fate, a steer skull bleached by exposure to a never-ending sun.

I thought of Trista. I had to get out of the Game Room. Peter Uphall and I had a play date I didn't want to miss.

I did the dumbest thing I could think of.

I looked into the Husk's eyes, or, at least where I thought one of the creature's 10-foot tall and wide eyes might be, and I made the motion, the 'come here' motion, followed right after by the even creepier, but ever oh so clear in intention weiner tap.

The Husk vanished. Reappeared. The giant head shimmered, turned solid, and slammed into me.

Everything in existence went white then black, and it felt, right before I lost all ability to think, that someone hooked onto my bellybutton, and punctured it and reversed me, insides out, outsides in, and then repeated the process, only something like a thousand times more in the space of a single second in time.

27.

Gunk Mouth, down on her hands and knees, snuffled the ground. She made noises like some predator feasting on fresh kill. She looked up. Looked around. Licked Game Room dust off her lips. Her teeth and tongue were sticky with ghost ash. Other Believers were in the same position, the same messy state.

The Gap was far off on the horizon. Green lights glowed in the sky. Floaters circled the emerald light.

The tumult resulting from the Husk had calmed down.

No sign of Hangmen.

But no sign of Dawn either.

One of the Believers snuffling dirt kept moving forward a little at a time until his head brushed a rod stuck in the ground. There was an audible zap-sound, an electric crackle. It stung, but it didn't hurt him. He kept snuffling right around the worm-getter, the spasms jerking his body each time he got zapped.

"It doesn't hurt."

I looked.

It confused my brain.

First I was looking down at the ground like I was hovering. Then I was down on the ground, standing, looking to my right.

The voice belonged to Ellen Gaines. Only it wasn't Ellen Gaines.

No birthmark. No glasses. Not a teenager. Younger. Still, her hair was a mess, and her clothes were a mess. A finger was up a nostril. That was new if this was Ellen, but it wasn't. One bandage hung off a leg, just below a knobby knee, holding on for dear life by a trace amount of adhesive.

Prudence the Dumb Little Ghost Girl, Denny's idea, my drawing, transformed into flesh, gone ectoplasmic.

"Don't worry," she said. "They don't even know we're here."

"How did that get here?" I pointed. "The worm-getter."

She pulled her finger out of her nose. Looked at it, rolled up the booger with her thumb and wiped the gold off onto her dress.

"Drift."

"What's that?"

"Things from this place go other places. Things from other places come here. Drift. It's never permanent."

The same Believer brushed the worm-getter. He sputtered and cried out.

Prudence knelt and moved her hand through the powder on the ground.

"Drift is just one of the long list of imponderables about this place. Imponderables."

"Where did the Husk go?"

"Nowhere."

"It's here?" I looked around. Frightened.

"The Husk is always here. It's just only sometimes that it shows itself."

Prudence scooped something out of the dirt. Stood up. Blew on it. Held it out towards me.

The bright red plastic cover for the Walk-And-Talk 'Play' button.

"Drift." She handed the plastic to me like that one word explained it all. Smiling, she brushed my shirt, and a wiggling worm crawled across her knuckle onto her wrist. She smiled at me like it was the cutest pet ever. I tried to evaluate my worminess. I couldn't feel or see any on me at all. I bet Prudence could keep reaching over and pulling them off of me like rabbits coming out of a seemingly bottomless magician's top hat.

"What did the Husk do to me?"

"What do you think it did?"

"Rammed me. Slammed into me."

"Maybe it swallowed you," said Prudence. "The Husk is huuuuuge. Maybe you're in the Husk's stomach right now. We are. All of this. Everything you can see and hear. Before you know it, he'll poop us out."

I must've made a face. Gone pale. Which, for a dead kid, is quite the accomplishment.

Prudence laughed. She touched my arm like I was a real rube.

"Oh, come on, Montgomery. I'm just having my fun. Come on. You'd believe everything I say? I'm just a dumb little booger digging ghost girl, remember?"

The Believers had joined hands in a prayer circle. One of them looked like he'd been a car accident victim. He was missing an arm. For want of a limb, the Believer next to the one-armed ghost clutched the bit of bone jutting out from the exposed shoulder joint.

"The King will hear our cry. The King will hear our cry. Make us flesh, never die. Make us flesh, never die."

A dozen sticky dark mouths uttering the same words over and over and over again, Gunk Mouth louder than the rest.

"That's ash smeared all over their faces. They eat ashes. They eat ghosts," I said.

"It works like a stimulant. A hallucinogen. It gets them nearer their King."

"Is there a King?"

"They think so. The one that will come and make them flesh."

Prudence studied her pet worm. She held it right up to her eyes and watched it wiggle the length of a finger. When it got to the end of her right index finger, she touched the tip of her left index finger, making a bridge. The worm took advantage of the engineering feat and continued to wiggle.

"If this King makes them flesh does that mean they'd be alive?"

"Alive but dead. Dead but alive."

"Zombies. They want to be zombies."

The worm worked its way under her left shirtsleeve. Prudence laughed. Her shoulder rose towards her ear, trying to mitigate the tickle sensation.

"Um. Yes. And no. They don't want to go back. Some ghosts get used to this place. They don't want to go through the Gap. They don't want to move on or find it impossible to move on. They linger. They turn the temporary permanent. Which is a no-no. If that happened here, everything everywhere would go out of balance. It'd wobble. We don't want wobble. Wobble is bad."

The Believers had stopped speaking words. Now they all made noises. Nonsense. Denny had once shown me a video online. One of those religions invested in snakes and love languages. All the Believers needed were some snakes to hold above their heads, and they'd look just as all-out goofy as the people in the video.

"If you were like that," I asked, "alive but dead, dead but alive, could you go back to where you were when you were alive and do things? Touch things? Touch people?"

Prudence stopped being ticklish. She stopped looking like Prudence as I knew her and more like some adult and humorless Prudence neither Denny or Craig or I could ever have imagined.

"There are ways to save your friend that don't imperil the rest of things. The balance of things is all," said Prudence. "One soul is no more important than the next. Yet...You'd do anything for your friend even if it put all these souls you see here, right here, and there, over at the great black wall, even if it put them at risk you'd do anything if you thought you could, wouldn't you?

"It's you, and it's people, it's always the humans that think they're above the normal course of things. You don't think. Animals don't do this. Animals never kneel and call out to some King. Animals just move on. Trees move on. Bacteria moves on. They get it. They understand the process. The never-ending churn. Why can't you? What is it about you selfish, fragile infuriating creatures that makes you think you deserve special treatment? Why do you ignore the way of things? That even suns and dust and the spaces in-between all were created to one day disappear?"

As Prudence had spoken, she'd invaded my personal bubble. I stepped back, trying to keep space between us. If I backed up too far, I'd got right through the middle of the prayer circle.

Prudence's face had warped. It'd cracked and broke, and the fragmented chunks melted, revealing something just below, a moving, squiggling brown mass. All of her skin cracked now and seemed to move over the teeming mass like the tops of rocks seeming to surf flowing lava. Skin dripped off Prudence onto the dusty ground. So did worms, fatter and oozier than I'd ever seen.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"There's a balance." Prudence reached out like she wanted to grab my shoulders. "It's kept even by the barest of threads. The slimmest of margins."

Prudence's hair slid off the back of her head and dropped to the ground in a wet clump. Worms dropped and broke on the ground like icicles claiming defeat in spring, shuddering off roof drains.

I gagged.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know. I didn't. Really."

The fingernails and skin on the fingers reaching for me had peeled back into flaps. It looked like she'd been playing with shed, sticky snakeskins.

"You idiots. You fools. You," she said. "The King."

Prudence's face all but slid towards her chin. The skin caught on the squirming, shuddering brown mass, and vanished like an elaborate strand of spaghetti getting sucked into a diner's mouth.

My leg hit something. Metal. The worm-getter. An electric charge pulsed through me. I screamed. Dirt and worms exploded off of me and spun through Prudence-Not-Prudence like ball bearings propelled out of some horrible terrorist-set bomb. She popped into a dozen pieces like a dried out termite ridden tree finally bursting apart.

It shouldn't have been possible, not here where there were no smells, but I smelled warm damp soil and burning meat. Succumbing to blackness, I heard them cook, bubbling, liquefying, running in thick, slow moving streams through the rust.

28.

The inside of the building was like a bank or a museum, post-Apocalypse. This was where people once came to for culture or a loan. Now it was all but empty. Full of echoes. I saw cobwebs. A water-stained wall. The glass ceiling featured broken panes and the swinging remnants of a once elaborate chandelier. It swung without making a creaking noise. There were shadows and voices, indistinct but prevalent.

The giant room full of little office spaces without walls. Desks and client chairs, far as the eye could see. An infinity of deals going down.

I sat in a chair in front of a desk. Across from me was a tall white chair. I heard someone laughing.

I looked around. No dust. No Believers. No Prudence. There were worms, but just on me, the guys that had made the trip over when I'd died.

"Don't get up, Monty, not until you hear my pitch."

He wasn't there, and then he was. Wite-Out. The Skin Palace scout. Only not the same one I'd seen in Ashton.

This Wite-Out seemed older. All the white highlights were bright though, skin, teeth, fingernails, shinier even than the tall white chair.

At every desk sat a Wite-Out. I remembered what Dawn had said. So many ghosts, none of them seeing what you saw. That meant that some of the Wite-Outs wore turbans. Another held a spear. Another wore a crown. Swapping props like this was a school play.

"How did I get here?"

Wite-Out laughed. He laughed so hard he started coughing. Slapped the top of his desk and reached for a glass of water. Strangely, there'd been no glass of water present until he'd reached for it. His hands looked rotted, and then they cleaned up. Just like the Wite-Out back in Ashton. He took a small sip and set the glass down.

"We all got here the same way, Monty."

He motioned to the wall to my right. There hadn't been a wall. Now there was.

On the wall hung a painting of a tall robed figure, a black jaw jutting out the hood, and black skeletal hands poking out the cuffs of the grimy sleeves. A plaque at the bottom of the painting read: 'Our Founder.' The scythe-wielding figure astride a unicorn, a blood red unicorn with eyes the same bright white as Wite-Out's teeth. Directly above the painting was a glowing ticker like something displayed at the stock market. The number grew by the second. The number was indescribably long. Billions of billions of billions of billions of billions of souls.

"Best day of my life the day I got off the mortal coil and got this job. Absolutely. I'd never lie." Wite-Out smiled. Every time he smiled it was like his teeth had grown in number.

"The Husk," I said. "I remember the Husk. And worms."

"Sweet, sweet memories," said Wite-Out. "We can keep moseying, but you need help, right, kid?"

"Is this real?"

"This is the Skin Palace. Real as it gets over here, on the Flip Side. Or is this the real side, and where the living live is the Flip Side? It changes. It depends on what idjit you're talking to. How confused they are. How pliable you are. One moment, 2 + 2 = 4, the next moment 2 + 2 = -4. The trick is never trust anyone, only trust yourself, but not completely. Always leave enough wiggle room to blame the other guy. Trust me. You'll get it eventually. You'll stop caring. Be the best day of your death, guaranteed."

I got up. My legs were wobbling.

"I need to go. My friend. Trista."

"She's not going to make it."

"What?"

"Bad news, I know, but I ran the numbers. I had them here. Where'd they go?"

Like the glass of water, all of a sudden Wite-Out's desk was covered in stacks of paper. He shifted them around. He grunted.

"BRENDA!" He cleared his throat. "BRENDA!"

Again, the not there-there effect.

Brenda appeared at his side. She looked like all of the blonde Hollywood actresses that Denny drooled over, all their best parts rolled up into one lady, but it was like it was too much. The top and the mini-skirt were too tight and too revealing. She was so pretty, so perfect, it looked fake. A computer somewhere had produced the dream woman, still, the technology was incapable of making her seem all the way real.

Wite-Out threw his hands up in the air.

"Numbers shmumbers! Monty, what's important is getting you into a living, breathing human body so you can help Trista. The clock's ticking. Now, not here, but over there. The longer we talk, the closer Trista gets to becoming just one more notch on the Grim Reaper's belt. My assistant here, the lovely and wondrous Brenda, has a contract. It's our standard contract. The important thing is, you sign it, and mere moments later you can be behind the wheel of the Skin of your choosing, vanquishing villains, right and left."

Brenda helped me step back and sit down in the chair. She handed me a sheet of paper. A pen lay on the desk edge. Brenda got behind my chair and pushed it up to the desk.

"Thank you, Brenda," said Wite-Out. "Just sign on the bottom, Monty. After that, it's easy. You give us your soul, as collateral, go and do your business, then when you're done, we return your soul. How simple is that?"

"Simple Simon," said Brenda. She smiled at me, lips and teeth like the swirling blood-and-bone colors of a candy cane.

"Sign it. Be the hero, Monty. Sign it, save Trista. Keep her from joining us. Let her live out her life."

I tried to pick up the pen. My ghost-puberty stayed in effect. The pen kept slipping from my fingers.

I didn't hear the chair creak in the loss of his weight or see him move from one side of the desk to the other, but Wite-Out was at my side. He held my hand and placed the pen in my fingers.

"There we go. There we go. I tell you, making some of you idiots weak as kittens was a dunce of a decision. Upsy Daisy, Monty Wonty. Signy-winey."

"Wait," I said.

"What?" Wite-Out suddenly sounding not so nice.

"I just saw a guy. At the Waffle Heaven. A Skin. The Hangmen got him. You can't guarantee this. You can't tell me I can save Trista, not for sure."

Wite-Out's face was still. All except for biting into his bottom lip, and then making a whistling sound as the now-black teeth poked into the lip. Then it was like someone pulled on a chain dangling out the back of his head. All smiles. Electricity humming. Even turning those black teeth back to white.

"You do your homework, Monty. That's something. That's something we don't often see. I can do you a deal, but I want you to understand, this is not normal practice. This is abnormal. But I like you. You stay frosty. Color me impressed. So, what we can do, something I call the loan-within-and-without-loan. Interested?"

I shrugged.

"Let me show you something." He dug a hand in his pocket. What he pulled out was black and wiggling. It looked a little like this scrub brush my mom had in the shower. Entirely black, a black that reminded me of the Hangmen's masks.

"This is from the drift. The drift works both ways. And, things drift here from places outside space and time. I'll let you hold this, but brace yourself. It's one of those ingredients the Makers didn't really notice creeping out of the pot back when they were making, you know, everything that's ever lived and everything that's going to die."

He heard the shout before I did.

He released his hold on me, and the pen spurted from my fingers, across his desk, and off his chair and onto the floor.

Wite-Out tucked the black scrub brush object back into his pocket.

Among the endless rows of desks and chairs a single solitary figure ran. I recognized the voice. And then I saw her. That pointy hat.

Dawn.

Somehow, in that crowd, those dozens if not hundreds if not thousands of possible choices for her to sort through, and even though the chair I sat in was huge and dwarfed me, she recognized me.

"Don't sign a damned thing!" she shouted. She waved, and I waved. She started running right towards us.

Wite-Out's shoulders sagged.

"Well, crap," he said. He looked at me. "The Skin Palace is only making you this offer one time, Monty. One. Time. You brush it off, you run with Drinky McGee here, it's all on you when your little friend ends up cold as ice."

I shook my head. I stood up. I looked at Brenda. She'd gone radio silent. Just like a statue.

When I turned to look at Wite-Out, he was gone. All the desks and chairs and the high ceilings and the deep endless shadows of the Skin Palace were gone, too.

The ground and the horizon and the sky, all siblings, unified, all the same color of rust.

I was back in the Game Room.

*

Something red lay in the dust. I got down on my hands and knees and blew on it, a sick feeling in my stomach like I knew I'd reveal the cover to that busted off Walk-And-Talk button. But it was just some random Lego building block. A victim of the drift.

I looked around again, just to make sure that this wasn't one of those dumb horror movie hallucinations-inside-a-hallucination.

Dawn ran up to me and stopped. She smiled.

"There you are."

"Where did it go? The Skin Palace."

"Palace rules," said Dawn. "It comes and goes as it pleases."

"How long have I been here?" I asked.

"Not too long. I almost got to you back there. I was afraid the Hangmen were going to seriously do you in. I was yelling, running. I was almost on top of it when the Husk showed up. That happened, I got blasted back. The Husk shows up, and it's like dropping a rock in a mud puddle. Everything goes all over."

"Is the Husk gone?" I asked.

"Gone. Yep. Truthfully, we were overdue for one of its fun-filled appearances. The usual gimmick. Appear. Cause mass chaos and then flit off to wherever unexplained phenomena cool their heels."

"I saw a lady," I said. "Before I ended up at the Skin Palace."
"What's that?" asked Dawn.

"I had a dream or a nightmare. Something. And Prudence was in it. This cartoon that Denny and I used to do. But it wasn't Prudence. It was this thing. Made out of worms."

Dawn thought it over. Putting on her thinking face, she turned and started walking towards the Gap. I followed. Before even a few steps we were jogging and then running.

"The Husk can inflict all kinds of weird stuff on you," said Dawn. "I think half of all the Floaters up in the sky are victims of the Husk."

"I remember. They all fell out of the sky when the Husk showed up."

"And he left. And they went right back up to the light, the little junkies. Jonesing for the green light."

"Prudence, whoever it was, she got really pissed off at me," I said. "She said something about the Believers wanting to change this place. Make the Game Room something more than just a stopping spot in-between worlds."

"Weird. That's a new one. You could probably try to ask one of them all about that, and they'd probably handcuff you until you promised to join their movement. Help get the King back."

"Why did the Hangmen grab me?" I asked.

"Why not? You're one more notch on their belt. A better question - not to discount you almost getting erased permanent like - is what were they doing on the Flip Side, to begin with? They can't do that. The way they nab ghosts using Skins is they wait for the ghost to come back over here. Then it's marshmallow-roasting time. I don't know. They're the police. There's no police to keep the police in line. Not here."

We kept running. The Gap and the crowds assembled around it loomed just ahead.

Time would have passed. Over there. For Trista.

How much I didn't want to know. Dawn wouldn't know. She could guess at best.

Trista was still alive. She had to be. Coming up on the crowds I scanned faces. I willed my ears to listen for someone shouting my name. At the same time, I was desperate not to hear her voice, what it would mean if I could hear it over here.

Up above us all the green lights suddenly put on a burst of brilliance. It was like driving on a freeway right after a downpour, and the sun breaks through the clouds and ignites all the pools of water floating on asphalt. No one can see anything. Really dangerous especially when everyone is boogying around at 65 MPH. My dad invested in sunglasses just for that once in a while occurrence.

I put on a burst. Dawn yelled something about Carl Lewis, whoever he was. The crowds followed the rules of Game Room physics and slid away before I ran right into them. I ran faster and even faster than that. Dawn caught up and latched onto my wrist. Trista on my mind, I ran faster than anyone in any dimension ever, into the black, into the Gap, back to the land of the living.

29.

Back in Ashton, I could relax. Trista was still alive.

It was morning. Trista was in her bedroom before school. She was texting and looking at herself in a mirror, making all these minor adjustments courtesy of her makeup that seemed to have no real discernible effect other than covering the pink web of scars around her eye. She was multi-tasking. Doing all that and looking at a social media page set up for Ellen Gaines, still missing, no one having found her body yet.

"How do we tell her?"

Dawn shook her head.

I'd tested my porousness. I still bounced off things. And I remained a Mr. Butterfingers. I still couldn't move anything. It all slid out of my grasp.

"If we had the Walk-And-Talk."

"Neither one of us could tote it around," said Dawn.

"Splat."

"Splat? Maybe. If he's put on weight. Oh geez. Poor little guy. I hope he's ok."

"I told him to stay," I said. "Right before everything went wrong at the Waffle Heaven. He might still be there."

"We could go look. I could go look. Should we split up?"

I checked Trista's computer clock.

"She probably won't leave for school for another half hour or so. I'll stay if you want to go."

"And if she goes to school?" asked Dawn.

"I guess I'd follow her," I said. "Keep an eye out."

"I could meet you there."

"School? With Splat?"

"I don't know. We'll work something out."

We made sure Dawn knew how to get to the high school, and then she took off.

Trista typed something on her computer keyboard.

It hit me. Maybe what we could do is get Splat, poor flattened dehydrated squirrel corpse that he was to write something for us. Hitting typewriter keys was nothing at all compared to mimicking the creepy Back To The Future III Kid. Still, the chances were high that Splat wouldn't be a 50 WPM man. More of a hunt and peck type was my guess.

*

All ready for school, Trista ran downstairs, told her mom her ride was here, and not to worry - she'd grab breakfast from the mini-mart next to the school. It took me by surprise. I lagged behind her, distracted by Tabby doing cute little sister stuff.

I had to gallop to make sure I made it through the door before Trista shut it and turned me into a prisoner. I turned, angled, facing the doorway and tried sliding out.

I almost cleared it.

The door shut on my left hand.

It didn't hurt. But I was stuck. No matter how hard I pulled, even if I gripped the left wrist with my right hand and tugged. Even if I swore. Even if I invented new swear words.

The car at curbside in from of the Quinn house was a regular old sedan. The motor left running as Gentleman of the Year candidate Peter Uphall walked around the rear bumper in time to open Trista's door for her.

She kissed his cheek. Real quick and dry, but still, she giggled.

She settled inside and started buckling in, and he shut the driver side door for her.

She wouldn't giggle if she saw the look on his face when he wasn't interacting directly with her. PU's eyes were bright and shone, but it was like glass reflecting out of a pale and bloodless cut of meat. Something at an art installation. Something striving to be human, but falling far short of that aim.

Peter opened the driver side front door and got inside. Slammed it. He put the car in gear and drove from the curb back out onto the street. Away they went.

30.

I'd seen zombies on TV and in movies and comic books, some left in pitiable straits - trapped under crashed cars, bisected, so badly burned they were crispy and without the muscles to move. I couldn't imagine a ghost anywhere getting his or her hand stuck in a door. I was setting the bar for pathetic.

When Mrs. Quinn and Tabby left, they used the back door. Of course they did. I watched them back down the driveway and turn onto the street. A few minutes later a school bus drove by, and after that it got quiet.

Clouds were practically non-existent. The sky looked freshly painted in blue. One of those pretty fall days Ashton specialized in.

I declared war on the door. I punched it. Kicked it. Grabbed my wrist and pulled on it harder than I'd pulled on anything ever. I couldn't even slide it down, not even up. Where it was stuck is where it was going to be stuck, maybe forever.

I hollered.

I hollered for Dawn.

When that didn't take, I hollered for any ghost capable of hearing me. Helping me.

Dawn had said ghosts weren't big on helping each other out. Maybe I'd luck out.

Maybe shmaybe.

Time marched on. I wondered what was keeping Dawn. I imagined she was at the school, waiting, Splat, retrieved from the old hiding spot now hiding outside the school.

I imagined Dawn spotting PU in the school hallway. But Trista proving noticeably absent. Trista already dead or put away somewhere for later. For all those experiments PU had in mind.

I declared a second war on the door. Punching, kicking, spitting, biting, screaming at it.

Nothing - surprise - changed.

I tried to gnaw my arm off at the wrist.

Here's how that went.

Denny once dared me to bite a balloon.

Try it.

The balloon just keeps slipping on out of your mouth.

Denny - when he was done laughing - told me it was better than watching a dog try to eat peanut butter.

The other thing?

I tasted nothing.

I tasted like nothing.

Taste was apparently like smell. One of those senses you kicked to the curb when you were dead.

When going all primal on my wrist didn't take, I started to think about Splat. I'd made him move. I'd moved the dead. Maybe there was something dead in the neighborhood. Something I could revive. Something that could slide or limp or spill ooky amounts of blood and guts everywhere in a last ditch effort to help my sorry ghost boy ass out.

I tried to think something dead into my good graces. I tried to make contact. I squinched my face up real seriously like you'd see a preacher calling on God to reach on down and cure the ailing members of his flock.

"Oh, that doesn't look good. You trying to pinch one out, kid?"

I recognized the voice right away.

Wite-Out.

The Wite-Out we'd seen near the high school, the same severe part to his hair, those teeth and fingernails and clothes glowing like a radioactive version of his namesake.

"You know," said Wite-Out, "the percentage of ghosts in your situation is pretty small. Isolated, even. Most of your peers would leave a youngster such as yourself in dire straits. Not out of out-and-out meanness, but pure and simple self-immersion. Selfishness doesn't stop at death, you know."

He smiled at me.

"Could you help me?" I asked.

Revealed in full, his smile was like a row of carnivorous piano keys.

"I could. I will, but I think before we head down that path I'd be remiss if I didn't let you in on a little business proposition."

"I know, but you know what? You should check in with your home office. I just turned down their offer to put me in a Skin."

He made a face like I'd said too much.

"Hangmen. Right. Sorry."

"Don't worry about the Hangmen. Play them right, and they're pussycats. Easy going, really and truly."

He walked up to the door and looked at it. Looked at me. He made noises like he inspected this sort of crisis twenty times a day every day.

"Well, Monty, let me give ya the lay of the land," said Wite-Out. "Most folks, we make them visit the shop. It's just the way we do things."

"Like I said, I was just at 'the shop.'"

"Are you done jabbering?"

"Sure."

"Not to be brusque, ok? But Monty, I can tell you're the kind of customer that wants to expedite the process. Am I right? So you're in luck kid. I got a job less than five minutes from here. I get him over here, you check him out, I get you to agree to terms, and bingo-bango-bongo, we're off to the races."

"Can't you just free me? Touch me. Just touch me and pull me out."

"Son, if I could do that I would."

"Why can't you?"

"A little thing we call 'the balance of doing business.' I do you a freebie, things tip. What if they never tip back? Who knows what dire consequences might result? But if I do you a solid, and you promise to do me one, contractually, right here, right now, then we're well within the realm of possibility."

"What do you want?"

"No, kid. That's not how you look at it." He started to put his hand on my shoulder. Then caught it, knowing if he did touch me, I'd be able to dematerialize enough to pull free.

"Have we shown you our current crop of prospects?"

"'Prospects'?"

"A picture is worth a thousand words."

He pulled a brochure from a breast pocket. The brochure far too long to fit into the space it came from, but the laws of physics weren't high on his list of concerns.

While getting the brochure out, his sleeve slid back from his wrist. The flesh along his wrist was blackened and oily. A gob of flesh and matter had rotted down to the bone. At least I thought it was bone I was seeing. Whatever was at the center of the limb was blue like the blue of pool table chalk. Just like before, the momentary reveal was almost instantly replaced by a mirage of perfect plastic-like skin.

The brochure pictures were of people you'd see around Ashton, the way too depressed, the unmistakably drunk or high or mentally ill. Each picture a still until Wite-Out pointed at it and then the picture started to move like it was live video feed of the person that very moment.

"Who do we got here? A bunch of plum Skins you can hop into and out of once you sign on with us. Who do we got? Her? She looks like a crazy cat lady. Him? Hasn't been sober in years. This old coot's wife died, and he's been painting walls with his own defecate ever since. These two look like they've become part of the couch they're shooting up on. And this one. Mmm. Look. At. This. Oooooo-wee!"

Whoever he was he easily had PU beat on creepiness. He wore a trench coast stained to the color of a rotten banana peel. Dull eyes, wide nose, thin too pink lips, and black greasy hair pasted onto a head that looked like it'd been clamped inside a vise tightened by the Hulk.

There were more. I even saw the limping man from the Waffle Heaven. Wite-Out could tell I didn't have the patience to look at all of the plum prospects. He tucked the brochure back in his breast pocket.

"The way we look at it," he said, "all of us at the old S.P.-" he waggled his eyebrows, because, between the two of us, S.P. was a clever way of getting around any Hangmen's ears listening for the catch phrase 'Skin Palace', "is it's not what we want. It's what you, our beloved customers, want. Doing for you what you want. Satisfying you. Whatever it takes."

Standing that close, Wite-Out was spooky, in large part because he looked so plastic, standing in Ashton instead of the Skin Palace. Like some squat little carnival statue that had somehow been blessed with mobility. Dawn had battle damage. According to everyone else, I did, too. Wite-Out looked like he'd scooted through life without incurring any hazards. But I knew he had. Those blue bones. If PU set off alarms, Wite-Out did so at maybe triple the rate.

"How about this, Monty? I can tell you're close to making the right decision, but let me give you a little-added push. What if I promised to tell you why you spent such a long time circling those green lights? That's right. We know you were up there, part of the turd circus going forever and ever around the glowing, glowing greens. Sometimes there's a reason for it. Sometimes there ain't. Sign with us. Help your friend. Save your friend. And as a bonus part of the package, I'll let you in on a little secret. Something that'll curl your toes. Permanently."

Wite-Out smiled. Nodded his head like I'd already agreed. The whole time, flattening the crease in a contract that looked made out of bright, clean baby pink skin.

A car drove past on the street.

It stopped.

The driver had slammed on the brakes. The car was placed in reverse, and backed up, and stopped.

Dawn got out of the car. She didn't open the door, she ghosted through, and she was not happy.

I won't repeat what she yelled at Wite-Out, but it was the big one, the twelve-letter swear word.

The Skin Palace scout rolled his eyes. Glared at me like I'd set it all up from the get-go and then he vanished from sight.

"Tell me you didn't agree to anything." Dawn grabbed my right hand and just like that, I slid my left hand out from the Quinn's front doorway.

"I didn't sign anything," I said. "I swear."

A car door slammed. I looked past Dawn towards the street.

"Get. Out." All I could manage to say.

I was dumbstruck.

Denny walked around the front of the car. In itself amazing. In his hands, even more amazing, the battered, now partially duct taped Walk-And-Talk.

"Where are you?" asked Denny. "Dawn? Dawn?"

"I'm right here," she said. "And I'm not alone."

He focused on her voice and walked towards us.

"How?" I asked Dawn.

She shrugged.

"Kid," she said in an eerie approximation of Wite-Out's slimy businessman voice, "even us dead, worthless drunks, we've got our ways."

31.

The morning after we'd failed to draft Denny for Team Save Trista, he'd gone outside onto the Caldwell's lawn and picked up the Walk-And-Talk, collected the popped out cassette and the now totally busted off button. There was no sign of Splat, but the Walk-And-Talk stayed on his mind. He'd told his folks he thought it was just some stupid gag.

But parts of it were too weird, information too specific for anyone to know other than him, Trista, or me.

And Splat doing the Creepy Kid bit, that was something he was never going to forget.

*

Our class - ok, his class - I was dead - was big enough you couldn't know everybody. Not personally. Denny's clique didn't run anywhere on the waters near Peter's clique.

Denny watched Peter. Watched him interact with people. Watched the way Peter's face went back to being still, robotic, lifeless, soon as interactions halted. It was even creepier the way it happened right after PU would stop talking to Trista.

Denny couldn't understand the depth of Trista's interest in PU. But then, his mom had been a jock all through high school and college, and his dad was a nerd, and they'd ended up together. Opposites attract. For some reason though, thinking of attraction, Trista with Peter seemed like a planet teeming with life getting sucked into a black hole.

Denny didn't ask Trista about Peter. He did ask her if anything odd of late had happened. Anything related to the now four years departed Montgomery Strahl. Nothing came to mind, but she did tell Denny she missed Monty. She still had bad dreams some nights about the way he'd died.

*

On a whim, Denny followed Peter. Blew off football practice to do it. He wasn't even a starter. He'd make up some valid-sounding reason for slipping on his dark knight detective's cowl and gathering information.

On that day, after school, Peter drove out to the Lucky 7 bowling alley, parked in a slot, walked past the mini-mart in the space next to the bowling alley, walked down the alley and down past the lumberyard and the big parking lot where the school district parked all the buses. The alley dumped off into a wall of bushes, the edge of the woods.

Peter vanished through the wall of green. Denny followed. He walked into the woods and looked around. PU had vanished. All Denny heard were trees tilting.

The next day at school, he watched Peter Uphall. Same as always, PU didn't look at him once.

At the end of the school day, when Denny went out to the parking lot to drive home, something hung off of the mirror on the driver side door of the car.

It was a doll body. A Barbie. The head had been removed in place of a pinecone. A thread of string connected at the top of the pinecone looped around the driver side window. The pinecone had those plastic bobbling eyes you see on stuffed animals, the goofy dog with a tongue sticking out from the mouth variety.

*

The next day in school, Peter made eye contact with Denny. Just for a moment. Those bright blue orbs looking right at Denny. A brief self-delighted smile informed PU's face before vanishing back into the normal sea of emotionless marble.

*

Armed with a compass, thermos, and a flashlight, Denny ditched school the next day and went out into the woods. He tried to think of where could someone erect a kind of kill site. He tried to summon his inner Batman, his inner dark knight detective. For all his efforts he walked into some poison ivy and sprained his ankle.

*

The next morning, leaving for school, Denny came to a full halt at the curb outside the Caldwell house.

Another doll. This one not dangling off of the side view mirror, but sitting on top of the car roof, facing the street.

This time the body beneath the pinecone head was the victim of some mild graffiti. Dark marker ink applied nipples and pubic hair onto the Barbie-body.

*

At school, Denny didn't pick PU up by the collar and slam him into the lockers. He wanted to do that, but he defused that impulse.

PU was looking through his locker in-between classes. Denny stopped right behind him, so close he could count all the hairs on the back of PU's neck.

"Ellen Gaines. That name mean anything to you, Uphall?"

PU didn't wheel around on his heel.

He didn't twitch one little bit.

He took out his third-period Chemistry textbook, shut his locker door, and looked Denny right in the eye.

"Hear you started a doll collection. Kind of gay, don't you think?"

Denny pushed Peter into the lockers. Electricity shot through the students. Of course it did. Fight, fight, fight, who doesn't want to see a fight?

One of Denny's teammates wrapped an arm around him and pulled him back.

Peter was making his little self-satisfied smile, but he caught it before too many peers saw, and he defused it, made his face look more the innocent victim, picked on for no discernible reason by some over-stimulated jock asshole.

Concerned for Peter, Trista rushed past Denny, giving him the kind of glare you'd expect to issue from a girlfriend or near-girlfriend. Denny was the bad guy.

Janine gave him hell. She was Janine Wilson. Dating an athlete was a no-brainer for her, but there were athletes a-plenty at Ashton High. If Denny got any more high maintenance, he might very well find himself walking the hallways solo.

*

At home, Denny would wait until his folks had gone to bed and then he'd set the Walk-And-Talk up on his desk.

He'd played toy surgeon, fixing what he could. He'd switched out batteries. A slab of duct tape held the broken cassette cover and cassette in place. It didn't matter. For all intents and purposes, he'd killed it. Still, he left it in place of honor beside the computer.

And sometimes, he'd talk at it like maybe, just maybe, someone could hear him, and maybe, if he listened close enough, he could hear them talking back.

*

He'd started taking the Walk-And-Talk around with him. Hidden in his backpack. He wasn't crazy enough to carry it around conspicuously.

He'd go to all the relevant spots he could drum up from memory. Places he and I had frequented.

The comic shop was gone. The movie theater had closed. The gaming shop at the mall was out of business.

Denny didn't want to hang out at my parent's house and get caught and have to explain to Principal Strahl why he was being a stalker.

Online, he saw an article stating that the places amongst the living that most attracted ghosts were the scene of the crime, or, the scene of the demise.

At the same time, he was investigating PU, Denny would go to where the Fletcher house once stood and hang out. Not for hours. A couple of minutes a day, phone in hand, pretending, for any on-looker, that he was just some regular teenage doofus that had settled on this spot, for some reason, as the best place to text the universe.

*

A late practice and a study date with Janine hadn't kept him from stopping over at the old Fletcher place last night.

And even though he'd been there hours earlier, Denny put in the time this morning. He kept his backpack unzipped, gaping, so if anyone said anything through the Walk-And-Talk, he'd have a better chance of catching it.

He sat at the base of one of the trees. He fell asleep. He didn't mean to, but it happened.

Waking with a start, he looked at the time and realized how screwed he was. School. Game. Damn.

Denny was walking across the lot towards his car when Dawn walked past. At first, she froze, and then realized she had to do something because Splat was lurching behind her - sticking to bushes, trying to be as inconspicuous of a reanimated squirrel corpse as possible, but still, kind of noticeable.

She told Splat to stop.

Denny heard it.

He stopped. Looked around.

Shrugged off the backpack and took the Walk-And-Talk out, tossing the backpack to the ground so he could hold the battered toy in both hands.

"I heard you," he said. "I heard you. Miss? I recognize you voice from the other night. I'm sorry I freaked out. But I think...I mean I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe this is the prank of the century being played on me, but there's definitely something funky going on with PU. He's a creepy shit, same as ever. Monty? The girl that was with Monty? Man. Come on. Please? I said I'm sorry. Give me something. Give me anything. Anyone. I want to help. If Trista needs help, I will help. I'm your man. Honest."

32.

Denny had questions. We tried to answer them as best we could.

I knew I was saying 'and' too much. Mom would always tell me to slow down when I was excited. She warned me I'd hyperventilate, choke on the stream of and's coming out of my mouth.

A trip through the school parking lot confirmed Peter Uphall was present. He probably hadn't time enough to make it out to his secure location, drop off a handcuffed or knocked out Trista, and then make it back to school.

Our options were to finalize a plan to convince Trista of the danger and/or to go out and try and discover the burial site, where Peter had killed Ellen. Then Denny could call the cops, and they could take it from there.

"I'm in," said Denny.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah." He found a parking spot and killed the car engine. "I'll just go in and tell them I'm sick. Coach won't be happy, but right now, I'm riding the bench until next year anyway. He's got defensive backs coming out of his butt."

"You've got a game tonight?"

"Yeah. Those are the rules. You miss school, you miss the game."

"Shit. Don't do that, Denny."

"Are you kidding me? This versus that? Hey. Wait. Monty. Where are you sitting again?"

"Backseat. Behind Dawn."

Denny looked back where I sat, ghostly, invisible to his eye. He pointed at the Walk-And-Talk in his lap. At Splat, sitting in the backseat behind the driver seat.

"In all seriousness," he said, "I think I've got other priorities."

"Cool."

The Walk-And-Talk was still broadcasting my words and Dawn's on a slight delay. Weird to our ears if not Denny's.

Denny released his seat belt and opened the driver side door. Paused.

"I feel bad, man. About not believing you right away, but, your mom. Your dad. Do they...I mean have you been able to let them know?"

"Not yet," I said. "Maybe when there's more time. I don't know. I just want to get this done first. Help Trista. Stop Peter."

"Yeah. All right. I'll be back. Got to convince the vampire at the front desk that I've got it coming out both ends so much that I passed out like hours ago. I already texted my mom. She told me to go to the doctor."

"Sorry."

"My bad. What happens when you don't get enough sleep, I guess. But it's worth it. I mean, knowing that I wasn't losing my mind and all."

He started to get out of his seat.

"Lick your palms," I said. "Let her touch them."

Denny laughed.

"Right. From Ferris Bueller. Oh. Shit. Don't need this." He put the Walk-And-Talk on the driver seat, shut the door, and gravel crunched under him as he walked to the school.

"Splat might be enough," I said.

"For Trista?" said Dawn.

"Sure. How could you not look at his adorable little face and not believe in spooks pulling strings?"

"She might just scream and run away," said Dawn. "Or scream, grab Splat and tear him apart, and then run away."

"Yeah," I said. "There's that possibility. Thanks again for running Wite-Out off."

"No problem. That guy is like a weed. I'm starting to get addicted to the adrenaline rush."

I didn't tell Dawn how close I'd come to signing the contract. Getting into a body, getting Trista free of PU's plot would be worth the loss of my soul.

We saw Denny jogging for the parking lot.

"The school sees him doing that," said Dawn, "I don't think they're going to believe he's sick."

"Probably not. Hey, how about this though? We could sick Splat on Peter."

"You think that would terrify him?"

"I don't know," I said. "Well. He does have a thing for dead animals."

"If that's true," said Dawn, "he sees Splat he might just cum in his pants instead."

"Ew."

"Just saying kid. In my brief life, my dating history, there's a lot of guys with quirks out there, and most of them have a real short trigger."

Denny opened his door, moved the Walk-And-Talk and dropped into the seat.

"We're good," he said. "You guys?"

"Golden," said Dawn.

"Monty?"

"Ok. Just trying to erase the image of Peter Uphall having sex with Splat from my mind."

Denny looked at the Walk-And-Talk like it had gone even more defective. Then back in the back seat, brows scrunched.

"Grosser than gross. I know," said Dawn. "And just think -- we're the good guys."

Denny laughed. Shook his head and started the engine.

33.

We decided to go out into the woods. Not past the bowling alley like Denny had days ago, but hopefully, to find one of the entry points I'd seen Peter make use of years ago. It was going to be one of those 'I'll know the entry point when I see it' expeditions. Likely a total soul-killing time suck.

On the way, I asked Denny how Trista could have fallen for PU.

"She's different," I said. "All the bits of her that I knew, they're gone. The tomboy and all I mean."

"She got walloped, man," said Denny.

"What do you mean?"

"It was just a couple years back. She played little league. She played third base. She took a line drive right in the face one day. Some girl from Eaton smacked it. Trista nearly lost the eye. They had to do surgery and do some plastic reconstruction stuff."

"Her eye. All those scars. Shit."

"Yeah," said Denny. "It kind of put the brakes on her running around doing stuff. But the other stuff. Going for Peter, I don't know. I guess you could blame Soup."

"The food?"

"No. Soup Fletcher."

"Why?"

"Couple years ago he went on a growth spurt," said Denny. "I mean Ari was big, tall at least, but Soup? One day, teeny tiny, next thing you know he was like Bane. The guy, you know, broke Batman's back? Of course, you do. Soup decides to start taking out his stress on people. Whether they wronged him before or not, Soup's got a bone, and he wants to pick it with you.

"So Soup fixates on Peter. Maybe it had something to do with Peter and Trista making goo-goo eyes at each other and Soup liked her or Soup just wants to keep flexing these new muscles. So, you know, he just pops Peter one day. PU dissed him somehow, allegedly, and Soup lays him flat. One of those deals where everyone's cheering Soup on at first, but then Soup keeps going at PU, and it just gets ugly and gross real fast."

"At school?"

"Outside. At lunch. Somewhere. I forget. But anyways, after that, Trista and PU started going out or at least circling one another. Instead of Trista going around with her friends, it'd be her friends plus PU. But I gotta say, Monty, up until now, it's not like a dating thing. You don't see PDAs in the school halls or anything."

"Soup. Man." I had trouble seeing it. "Just a little guy."

"Not anymore. Well. Who knows how big he is anymore? He vanished."

"'Vanished'?"

"Uh-huh. Disappeared. Gone, baby, gone. Maybe a year ago. No one knows what happened to him."

The car got silent other than Splat adjusting his position.

"Do you think PU got him?"

Denny mulled it over.

"I don't know," he said. "Did you ever see his ghost?"

"They don't all go where I've been. Most pass that place up and go somewhere else."

"I don't know," said Denny. "If PU's doing the evil routine now, who knows? Maybe he needed a warm up. Figure out if he was up for killing people he liked, why not start with killing people he loathed?"

*

It didn't take long to realize we had little to go on and too big an area to search.

I should have asked Ellen Gaines for specifics. Alternatively, she could have provided specifics. But we were both dead. Thinking things through in terms of practicality kind of a low priority.

Denny told us he could keep going. We could search all the woods around town for all he cared. Whatever it took.

Noon turned into 1 PM into 2 PM.

I started to get twitchy.

PU might kill Trista soon as school was out.

Maybe he was so sick, so psycho he'd do it in the parking lot. Nobody noticing him killing Trista, in full view of a bunch of dim bulbs too busy texting and making Friday night plans to notice the crime in their midst.

We gave up. Waved the white flag. Trudged back to Denny's car and drove back towards town.

We were trying to decide the best thing to do before heading to the school and waiting for the end of classes. We drove through Trista's neighborhood, headed towards my neighborhood.

That's when screams came through the Walk-And-Talk.

Denny slammed on the brakes. The driver behind him hit their brakes. And honked at him. Not happy.

Poor Splat had flopped flat onto his stomach. At least he hadn't slid all the way off the backseat.

The screaming kept coming out of the Walk-And-Talk.

"Are you guys ok?" Denny was freaked out.

"I'm fine," said Dawn.

"I'm fine, too." I leaned forward to get closer to the Walk-And-Talk. "I'm fine. What is that noise?"

"You guys hear it?"

We nodded. Like he could hear that.

The driver behind Denny beeped at him, drove around him in a fury, and kept on with their day.

I looked out the car window. I didn't even need to get out of Denny's car to know the source of the noise.

"It's the Clatterhouse."

"The what?" asked Dawn.

"Myrna," I said. "Remember? All the polyester? Jesus. What are those sounds, Dawn?"

She didn't answer.

She didn't know.

She'd never heard a ghost screaming like that before.

34.

Denny and Splat stayed at the car. Dawn and I headed for the house. It was a twisted kind of fate that now that the neighborhood haunted house had been refurbished, and looked as inviting as any house ever, Myrna Clatterhouse's house was scary. At least to ghosts.

Dawn and I walked around the house. Looked in windows and didn't see anything.

The screams ebbed and flowed.

Sometimes swear words cemented the screams and moans together.

"Maybe she's just upset," I said. "You know, about those people moving in."

"Maybe."

"Should we check?"

"Do we have time?"

"Kind of," I said. "A little more school day for Trista to get through before, you know, whatever happens after that."

"About this, these screams? I don't know that we should care," said Dawn. "Don't give me that look. I've told you. Ghosts manage their own deal and don't pay attention to anyone else. We're the freaks here, Monty. We're the ones that stopped. We're the one in a million. Ok, two in a million. The only reason I'm here is because you're here. If you want to check it out, we can, but it's up to you."

I looked back at Denny's car.

"Let me tell Denny."

"All right."

The way she said it, I knew she thought it was all a very bad idea.

Let me tell you.

Over the course of time, you learn to trust those with such finely honed instincts.

35.

Something green kept swimming in circles inside the ghost box. The green light swore and screamed and every now and then battered against the engine housing. The accordion-like hose would spasm. Scrape against the hardwood floor.

The ghost box was in a downstairs bedroom. The aquarium-looking-thing Cobb Vaughn had been sorting through on the lawn the other day now assembled, functioning. It didn't look that big. About the size of the bed I used to have.

The new homeowners were absent. Vaughn and Perplexia the only people present. Someone was talking to Vaughn on his cell phone.

The ghost box had windows on at least two sides. So you could look inside and see anything trapped. A motor about as big as a lawn mower engine hummed from the front end of the ghost box. Grease or oil dripped off of it into a coffee can. That big accordion-like hose stuck out from the engine like some stand-in for an elephant trunk. A lid closed the otherwise open end of the hose. The engine offered two hose options. Suck. Blow.

The room's window shades were all drawn down. The room darkened but then illuminated by a deep red light. Vaughn wore goggles like he was some soldier that needed night vision. Like this was a military operation of some sort.

"She's trapped," Vaughn said on the phone. "Oh, I can keep her in there indefinitely. You can come see her if you want. Or I can dispose of her. Whatever you want."

Vaughn's shirt was off. He wore suspenders, pants, and boots. Maybe he got too warm with the weird red lights on. His skin was shiny. There was a lot of skin. He was fat, but it looked solid like he might still lift weights. Whatever he'd been doing today, he sweated buckets.

"You're wet," said Perplexia. She stopped in front of Cobb. She rubbed his chest and belly with her palms. Cobb cried out. He backed away, complaining about her cold little hands. Perplexia giggled, sniffed her newly sweat-coated palms. Her tongue darted out, daring a taste of salt.

I looked at Dawn. She nodded like, yep, people can be freaky sometimes.

Perplexia still wore her black dress. She hadn't shown that she'd noticed Dawn or I. Maybe it was the red light. Wiping her hands off on her dress, she circled the ghost box. Perplexia seemed intrigued with the ghost box and its newest exhibit.

"Myrna," I said. I yelled it, to try and be heard over Myrna's yelling. "It's me. Montgomery. We were here the other day."

She stopped yelling. She kept circling the ghost box at the same speed.

"Do you want us to help you? I mean, how can we help you? How did he get you in there?"

"His hose," said Myrna. "His stupid hose. He sucked me in here."

I looked at Dawn. She shrugged.

"You can't get out?"

"No," said Myrna. "This horrible box. The walls. They come from someplace. It sounded Egyptian or something. He told me. He told me in his proud little man voice. It's skin. Human skin. Used in ancient rites. The skin was anointed when the Devil was called up to participate in a sacrifice."

Cobb had finished talking on his phone. He had a holster on his hip and placed the phone in the holster.

"What is she talking about?" I asked Dawn. "'The Devil?' 'Human skin?' Is that really what she said?"

I looked at Dawn. She shook her head. This was all new territory for her, too.

"What about the floor?" Dawn asked Myrna.

"What about it?"

"You can't go through it?"

"No. This trap, this stupid hellhole trap, he's got some sort of net for the floor. The net is the same. Made of skin, according to this hideous man. If I touch it too long, it burns."

"Why would that trap her?" I asked Dawn.

"I don't know."

I followed her look.

Cobb was looking at her. At me.

"Can he see us?" I whispered.

"I don't know."

Cobb tilted his head down, put a hand to the goggles strap and adjusted something. He looked to the ceiling and made a sound like some minor issue had been dealt with.

"You've got a little more life," said Cobb. He walked towards the ghost box, around the side opposite where Dawn and I stood. He put his hand on the ghost box and looked down through one of the windows. "The lady of the house wants to see what was messing with her house before we flush you down the drain."

Myrna hissed at him. She threw herself at the front of the ghost box. The hose shuddered, scraped against the floor.

Cobb laughed.

"There's a girl. Mad to the end. You were probably mad when you were alive, too, weren't you? That's what I was told. That's right. Everyone around you dying. That's the kind that sticks around, even when they've shed the flesh. You great big dummy."

"I want her," said Perplexia.

"Oh, sweetheart," said Cobb. "What would you do with her?"

"I'd go after her skin, her old, tattery ghost skin. I'd tear her. I'd cut her. I'd wear her as the key to another universe."

Cobb reached out and touched Perplexia on the top of her head. She reared up, into his hand, like a cat popping up on hind legs up and into a pet. She grabbed his arm and latched a hand into the top of his pants and pulled him until he leaned over. She whispered into his ear. He laughed. She laughed. Then Perplexia smooched his cheek and returned to gazing in at the trapped Myrna Clatterhouse.

Cobb walked around the entire ghost box. Touching it. Tapping on the windows. When he walked past Dawn, she took a step back to give Cobb as much room as possible. When he walked past me, I saw the tattoo on his shoulder blades. It looked like a big black blob of a fish swimming away from a Tic-Tac-Toe box, a Tic-Tac-Toe box that had been left out under the sun and melted into a semblance of its former shape.

"Before Mrs. Clark gets back here, I want to make sure everything is in its right place. I don't want anything to go wrong."

He slammed his palm on top of the ghost box. Myrna took the bait and thrashed against her jail. Cobb laughed.

"Careful now," he said. He crouched down and took the hose in his hands. "Don't you bust my equipment. You don't know how difficult it can be to get all these parts put together in the right way. I've had to go to the ends of the earth and back to get some of these parts. Some of these parts came from places not even of the earth."

He had the hose on his thighs. He grunted. Swore. He stood up and patted at the hose cover like he was trying to smack it back into place.

I heard something.

Dawn, calling my name. Telling me something.

Cobb kept at the hose cover, but not to snap it back in place.

He flipped the cover back. Kicked at the engine housing and a roaring noise filled the room.

He lunged at me.

I heard Perplexia producing a noise like a lady in a horror movie about a second shy from disembowelment.

It happened so fast I had no idea what had happened until I was picking myself up off the floor inside the ghost box.

And quickly.

Whatever the floor was composed of, it burned.

"Welcome," said Myrna Clatterhouse, floating, her helmet of hair come almost completely undone, "to my little corner of Hell."

36.

"I don't like touching," said Myrna.

"Lady. Please. I don't like burning," I said.

She made a noise like I was placing the ultimate in backbreaking impositions upon her, but still, she took my hand, and once she did, I could float inside the ghost box and stop picking up one foot at a time, like a pee-pee dance, but a necessary one. It was do the dance or have both feet burn on the netting. It was irritating to suddenly long for some reverse ghost-puberty, have that non-stop floating-walk kick back in.

Inside, the ghost box was bigger than it looked from the outside. The round windows looked higher, the walls were taller, and the width of the whole space far greater than seemed possible from the outside.

Denny was a Doctor Who fan. Anytime new episodes were airing, he'd irritate me, walk into a room at his house or school and tell me in his full-of-astonishment voice how it was bigger on the inside. The ghost box actually was bigger on the inside.

Cobb had shut the engine down. Dawn hadn't joined us inside the trap. I took it to mean she'd cleared out of the room, and maybe the house, too. Good. I didn't want her trapped, too.

"He's going to kill me," said Myrna. "Evaporate me. Gas me. Whatever it is you can do to get rid of a ghost. I can't say I want to keep on, now that those two horrors have taken over my house, but I don't want to die at his hand. Or hers. I think she's worse than he is."

I looked up. Perplexia stared in at us. She looked like a cat, anticipating dinner, face pressed right up against a goldfish bowl.

"She's the reason I got grabbed. She called out to me. Got me into this room and then the little monster crouched down and pissed on the floor. My floor! I was so dumbstruck by it I didn't even notice the fat man coming up behind me with the hose."

"She peed on the floor? Why would she pee on the floor?"

Myrna gave me the stink eye. The swimming octopus-like strands of hair danced as she shook her head.

"You're so young. Innocent. It's revolting."

37.

Pretty quickly, Denny had gotten sick of waiting in the car. Through the Walk-And-Talk's peculiar paranormal broadcasting capacity, he could hear two familiar voices and one unfamiliar. Some of it muffled, some of it distinct, almost all of it made him nervous.

He was halfway between the car and the house when Dawn's voice spoke to him through the Walk-And-Talk. This wasn't muffled. Dawn was right next to him.

"Monty's trapped."

"What do you mean 'Monty's trapped?'"

Dawn told him all she knew.

"I don't know how long he has," she said. "I think the guy that trapped him might kill him."

"Ok, so, what can we do?"

"Don't go in there," said Dawn. "Stay away from the house. I'll be back."

"What do you mean you'll be back?" Denny kept raising his voice, enough that the dog walker on the street adjusted her path, wanting to give the angry teen with a bright red and yellow Walk-And-Talk hanging around his thick neck as wide a berth as possible.

"I'll be back," Dawn told him, her voice growing fainter every syllable. "Just don't be surprised if when I show up, I don't look anything like you'd expect."

And she was gone. Despite all of Denny's yelling and his fiddling with the Walk-And-Talk speaker controls, she didn't speak to him again.

38.

Cobb was on the phone again. Not, I guessed, with the new homeowner. Unless Mrs. Clark spoke some foreign tongue I'd never heard before.

My mom spoke Spanish and just a touch of German, the latter, given her old world heritage and when the semi-regular occasion to speak to a faraway cousin arose. She always said you should respect anyone that can speak more than one language. But I don't think she ever considered the possibility that person might have you in a cage.

Cobb walked back and forth in front of the ghost box. He seemed on intimate terms with the other conversant. Lots of little fits of laughter, descending into outright giggling. Eventually, the conversation spun to a conclusion, Cobb sounding like he wished he could do something, but it was out of his control.

Done talking, Cobb put his phone back in the hip holster.

"Oh, Sergei." Cobb sighed. "If I had the missing pages, my friend, then I could turn these two ghosts into a tap, give you and your sweet Pasha the libations you desire."

"They wouldn't appreciate the taste." Perplexia stared in at Myrna and I. "They wouldn't know what to do with a whole another soul inside them. They're amateurs."

Cobb slapped the top of the ghost box.

"You hear that, you two? Either of you. Both of you. There's a market for ghost. International mostly. Some of the rich idiots out there actually think ingesting essence of ghost prolongs their lives. It's probably bullshit. The rich love to hear about experiences only they can afford. Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes' creator? He had a side business in faeries. And Sinatra, he had a ghost abductor, this fat old Polish slug, that would reach out through time and space and nab famous women, Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette, jam them into the bodies of any random Vegas showgirl and he'd bang their brains out. You wonder why a guy that goddamned ugly radiated so much power, that's why. Sex with ghosts. Not even sex. Rape. Sick. What a bunch of crap. But if crap pays five to six figures, who am I to argue?"

Myrna stared through the window out at our captor.

She spit. Not that she formed any saliva. But the gesture was in itself enough for her. Perplexia laughed. She mimicked Myrna and managed to form some spit. She wiped the foam off the side of her mouth.

"Why can't we float out of here?" I was investigating our side of the engine housing. "Just go through that hole and then swim right on out the hose?"

"I tried," Myrna said. "It burned me."

"Oh. Shit. But what if we did it together? Maybe the two of us slamming into it at the same time is something the engine can't take. Maybe it'd bust apart, and we could just float right on out."

"We can try." She said it like she was a put upon babysitter and I was four-years-old and wanted to ride her around like a pony for the twentieth time that night.

Myrna was right.

It did burn.

I'd fallen off my bike once and landed on my ribs. They didn't break or crack, but it burned for days afterward. That's what our attempt inflicted, the pain spreading over almost all of my body.

I landed in a lump on the floor. The floor, the netting, just like before, burned. Burning upon burning. I leaped and grabbed Myrna, and she swore at me. Slapped at me, but I refused to let go.

We heard fingers tapping on the ghost box. On one of the windows. We looked. Perplexia looked in at us.

"Little ghosts," said Perplexia. "Little ghosts with nowhere to go. I can tell you this. I can tell you, little boy ghost, friendly little boy ghost, I might take my time with you. Some ghosties make the worms wiggle. Some can make the worms dance. Can you do that? Can you make them dance? I'm going to find out. Before I eat you, I'm going to find out. Both of you. Old and chewy, young and sweet, before I eat you, I'm going to find out."

She stuck her tongue out and licked the window like it provided a preview of the ghost flesh feast to come.

Myrna started to cry. I loosened my grip until I was barely touching her.

"I don't mean to breakdown in front of you," she said. "But this is so much to put up with. And I had my chances, more than enough to get out of here. Move on. I don't know why I've hung around. Really. I don't miss this town. I'd miss the house. I don't miss much of anything else other than maybe a pack of Virginia Slims and some Bacardi on ice."

"Did you ever go to the Game Room?" I asked.

"What's that?"

"After you die, you know, the big wide open space. Kind of rust-colored."

"Oh that. That was depressing. It looked like a scene out of The Grapes of Wrath. I got out of there as quick as I could. I almost think I'd rather be trapped in here than be there. So many people. Too many people."

"It just doesn't make sense," I said. "How we're trapped in here. Ghosts aren't supposed to have weaknesses. We're not vampires or anything."

The front door bell sounded.

And sounded again.

And again, followed by someone pounding viciously upon the front door, and not apparently displaying any interest in alternating the rhythm.

Cobb pushed the goggles up onto his forehead. He swore. He checked the ghost box over, waggled a finger at us like we better be good or else, and then left the room. I could hear the floorboards squeak with his steps down the hallway. I imagined the noise the same as like a noose, slung from a hangmen's crossbeam, stretched out by the dead weight.

39.

Cobb opened the front door. Denny needed a moment to take in the image: a short, overweight man wearing no shirt, his suspenders holding up a brown pair of pants, soaked in a sweat plastering the walrus mustache and the few fair strands of scalp hair to pink, exerted skin. Denny finally managed a smile.

"Good afternoon. Are you the master of the house?"

"No."

"Oh, is he or she available?"

"No."

"Well, that's ok. I'm with the Ashton High football team." Denny pointed at his letterman's jacket. "Like you couldn't tell, right? Ha. Right now, before the holiday season kicks in, we're collecting pledges to help out our local charities. And if you are interested in that sort of thing...then...you could...pledge...Um...Huh."

A little girl had ducked her head around the sweat-slicked man. Her hair was bone white. Her skin, Denny guessed, the same tallow-colored tint as any preserved animal fetus sprung from formaldehyde. Sores at the left side of her mouth looked wet, recently picked.

She pointed at Denny.

"He's got ghosty-ghosty-ghost all over him," she said. "It's making my Pringle tingle."

Without a word, Cobb pulled a gun out from a holster snugged behind his right hip and pointed it at Denny.

Denny put up his hands.

"If it's a bad time. I mean. I can go if you want me to go?"

"No. Never. Pledges? Charities? It all sounds so interesting." Cobb motioned with the gun. "Come inside. Please."

40.

Dawn was freaked out. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been freaked out. That decades-long beer buzz fizzled as the fear blew cold and hot through her veins.

Running, trying to find a Skin Palace scout, sheer lunacy.

Headed the general direction of the high school, Dawn stopped. Full dead stop. She knew it would be faster to simply pop through back to the Game Room.

She wondered how long the little white haired, white-suited, white-toothed, white-everythinged little bastards would make the process run, drawing it out, going over every syllable in a contract, all the fine print's fine print, getting off on Dawn's mounting anger, knowing all too well Monty was in trouble.

Making her pay for her rudeness. Getting off on her need.

Dawn worked the magic. A slight smear formed in the air. A glob like glass melting. It peeled open, and the Game Room rust color appeared, lengthening and widening like watching the sun slide out from behind a cloud.

"Lookie-look who comes to us in a time of need."

Dawn spun around.

Wite-Out.

Just like she'd thought. The little creeps could tell when you needed help.

The pupils in each of this one's eyes were melted almost all the way gone. The rush, it must have felt like a drug high, about to score on a ghost ready to shed the soul for a taste of flesh.

"You know what I need. Don't be a dick about it," said Dawn.

It went fast. But it went down weird.

A contract.

Shoved in front of her.

A pen.

Moving in her hand.

A Skin. A human. A wasteoid.

Not there.

Then there.

Something yanked out of her.

Someone yanked out of her.

Her yanked out of her. A duplicate. Dawn meet Dawn.

And it didn't look ghostly.

It looked solid. Real. Delicate. Fragile.

Her soul.

She hadn't seen herself in so long she had to excuse a momentary confusion.

Who is this black haired girl and why is she stealing my stellar Santa's helper fashion choices?

Wite-Out gripped it around the throat and bobbled it like it was so much factory plastics assembled by rote. Nothing special. Pitch it in a pile. There's more where that came from. A million more. A billion more. They all looked the same after awhile.

"Oh," said Wite-Out. "And this is yours."

Wite-Out's nostril flared. Then it really flared. A black trickle of blood dripped from his nostril. No. Not a trickle. It undulated. It oozed. Crawled. Over his top lip and onto his waiting point-tipped pink tongue.

Giggling, Wite-Out pinched the long ooze coated worm off his tongue. A sheer snot-like coating stretched between worm and tongue and broke and began to drip. The Skin Palace businessman's tongue slid out, long as his forearm, and slurped up every last drop of the muck with relish.

"Hold out your hand, Drinky."

She did. Reluctantly.

Wite-Out wiggled the worm. Dawn could hear it squeak. Wite-Out dropped the worm. It landed and burrowed into Dawn's palm. Penetrated her ghost flesh and wiggled in. No surprise, it stung like a mother.

"There's your soul-check. Bring it by when you're donesies. Have fun. Bye now."

And he was gone. Just like that. Dawn's soul clutched in Wite-Out's fist like a limp bag of laundry.

She looked at the Skin. His head was oddly shaped. Kind of like the number 8. Kind of like his head had been put in a vise.

"Hope you can run, buddy."

She slid inside the Skin. She didn't pop out. She didn't get hit with that feeling like she'd just come down with the flu to end all flu's.

Dawn was at the wheel.

She pivoted.

Knew where she needed to go.

They started running.

She started running. Wherever this poor dude's brains were, they weren't anywhere obvious. Frankly, he didn't look like he'd been using his brains anytime recent.

She hadn't run very far from the Clatterhouse place. The Skin lumbered in comparison to the way she could bolt across the living world.

Focus.

She should focus.

She would focus.

Soul-check.

She could feel it.

A hot little throb in the palm of her hand.

She wondered what it felt like when Wite-Out extracted the soul-check and returned her soul.

She wondered if she'd get to experience that.

41.

Cobb marched Denny into the bedroom at gunpoint.

"Oh man," I said. "Denny. Are you ok?"

"Who is that?" Myrna asked me a moment later. "Is this someone you know?"

Soon as I'd spoken, I'd slapped my hands over my mouth. I tried to make Myrna understand. But I was too late.

My voice had broadcast through the Walk-And-Talk. Denny wore it under his letterman's jacket. The house was so quiet, even muffled under the jacket you could still hear it.

Cobb told Denny to undo the buttons. Revealed, the toy drank up Cobb's interest. He rubbed his chin. Perplexia walked up to Denny and poked at the Walk-And-Talk.

Trying to muddy the waters, Denny said, "It's my buddy. In the car. Mister, I mean, you've got the gun and all, but he'll call the cops. Guaranteed. They'll be all over this place in minutes. I'm just saying."

"I want to hear the voice again."

"Ok. But like I said, it's just my buddy."

"I don't give a shit who you say I'm supposed to think it is. I want to hear the voice come through this thing again."

Just to be sure Denny understood Cobb's feelings on the issue, Cobb extended his arm, pointing the gun right in Denny's face.

"Fine. Uh. Monty. Did you hear that? Go on and tell this guy, I don't know, whatever."

"Sure thing," I said. "Are you ok? Do you want me to call the cops or what?"

"Hold on. Hold on for one hot minute," said Perplexia.

Cobb kept the gun trained on Denny. Perplexia knelt and clicked a switch on the ghost box engine. The motor shut down. Perplexia stood.

"Again. I want to hear more from Monty."

"Monty?" said Denny. "He wants to hear more from you."

We were sunk.

I already knew it. So did Denny.

Cobb held his head at a slight angle towards the Walk-And-Talk like he wanted to be sure to process each and every syllable from my mouth without error.

"Yeah," I said. "I copy that. What does he want me to say, Denny?"

Cobb swore. Perplexia giggled and clapped her hands. She turned the engine back on. Touched the ghost box. Patted it like she was calming a freaked out animal.

"Hello, ghost in a box," she said. "Hello. I want to talk to you. I want you to talk to me. I want to be your friend. Your friend to the end."

Cobb started to laugh.

For a moment at least, he even forgot he should be pointing the gun at Denny, but Denny didn't take advantage of the distraction.

"Who are you?" Cobb asked.

"You're talking to me?" I asked.

"Of course I am." Laughing, he smacked the ghost box with his palm, motioned at Denny like 'Why is dear Montgomery always so slow?'

"What do you mean? What do you want to know?"

"What is your name?" asked Cobb. "What is your relationship to this house? Why would you be so dumb as to get sucked up inside there?"

"I'm trying to help."

"Who?"

"Someone."

"The lady of the house? Miz Clatterhouse? She's done. She's got a date. She's going to get sopped up in a prayer blanket and shipped to Dubai. Some oil mogul's daughter collects the odd and interesting. I hear the kid is wishy-washy. Dad will pay mad money for the privilege of a ghost even though his pride and joy will probably use the blanket as little more than a bath towel six months from now."

Myrna didn't react. Her loose hair kept swimming around her face.

"I've got to say, what fascinates me is how this little piece of plastic can broadcast your voice."

Nonchalant as you please, Cobb walked over, pressed the gun into Denny's forehead, and grabbed the Walk-And-Talk in his other hand. The strap was still around the back of Denny's neck. Cobb inspected it.

"Do you need to turn the light on to look at it?" said Denny. Squeaked, really.

Cobb all but ignored him. He let go of the Walk-And-Talk and let it flop back against Denny.

Cobb pulled the gun away from Denny's forehead and stepped back. Pondered.

Then he made Denny take the Walk-And-Talk strap up and off from around his neck. Watched Denny pull the duct tape off of the cracked and loose cassette housing. Take the cassette out, put it back in. Smooth the duct tape back down. Then pop open the empty battery compartment. Click it back in place. Cobb pondered some more, and then Cobb motioned, and Denny handed the Walk-And-Talk over. Cobb held it up, grunted, stuck it between his arm and ribs and slid the goggles down over his eyes and took a look. Blew on it like the goggles still on over his eyes revealed destructive dirt invisible to our eyes.

"Let me." Perplexia held out her hands, and Cobb handed it to her.

She shook it. Sniffed it.

"Nothing?" asked Cobb.

"I can't tell," said Perplexia. "Let me try my favorite thing. I want to see if it makes my Pringle tingle."

After a moment, Cobb shrugged.

Perplexia giggled. She set the Walk-And-Talk down on the floor. She hiked her dress up around her hips and then squatted down on the Walk-And-Talk.

"She's not going to poop on it is she?" I asked.

Perplexia heard it. Or felt the vibrations through the Walk-And-Talk. She laughed. I shut up.

Crouched down, she started to mouth words I couldn't hear. Even outside the ghost box without the motor running, I might not have made any sense of them.

Perplexia stuck her arms up. Her hands made tiny fists and then relaxed and repeated the process. She kept mumbling. She'd pause and then speak, sometimes asking questions, sometimes providing information. Face squinched up, she bit her lower lip, all of her trembled, and she produced a noise like a wet Pepsi-powered belch, and then her whole body relaxed. She stood. Stepped up off the Walk-And-Talk. She crouched down and picked it up and handed it to Cobb.

"Nothing," she said. "None of the low-level spirits could tell me anything. It's out of the ordinary range of expected communications between worlds. It shouldn't be."

Cobb looked at the Walk-And-Talk.

"Shouldn't be. I believe that. Such a piece of utter shit shouldn't be able to do what technology and the knowledge of thousands of paranormal experts and witches and scientists and kooks and the dead's decimated left behind have been incapable of achieving. Fortunes have been spent. Blood has been spilled. Minds capable of comprehending incomprehensible algebras have sputtered out and turned into quivering jellies trying to bridge the communication gap between the living and the dead. This shouldn't be. This is the lodestar of all the bizarre. This is a gross injustice. This insults my intelligence. I should take this unholy article of manufactured plastic and shatter it into a million pieces."

He looked at it and shook his head.

"A Walk-And-Talk. Shit."

He pitched it through the air at Denny. For someone on the football team, Denny didn't catch so well. He only almost dropped it to the floor. After a moment, remembering the treatment it had just endured, he looked at Perplexia. Rolling a strand of bone white hair between her fingers, she smiled all her teeth at him.

"Cobb? Mr. Vaughn? I want to ask you something," I said.

"Please," said Cobb. "Anything."

"Why can't we get out of here? What's so special about this thing?"

"It's a ghost box."

"I thought...Getting trapped like this, I mean, I'm a ghost. Getting trapped seems like a vampire thing or a werewolf thing."

Cobb laughed.

"There's no such thing as werewolves. A thousand years ago in some rinky-dink piece of shit eastern European country, they used a word for supernatural shenanigans that got misappropriated and translated poorly. They meant ghost, anything evil, but the broader term was molested. Pared down to one meaning. And silver, certain kinds of silver, certain specially treated kinds of silver will prove pesky to ghosts. It isn't cheap. But it's effective. Now, human skin dipped in evil, the right kind of evil, as you're discovering, is even more effective. And it weighs less. Bonus."

"Why does it burn?"

"It burns?" The way he said it, he didn't know ghosts could burn. It wasn't false sympathy for us. Any concern on his part stemmed from a hole in his knowledge of the dead.

"If it burns, why aren't you screaming?"

"I'm floating."

"Right. Is she floating, too?"

Myrna looked at me. Shrugged. I could tell him whatever.

"She is," I said.

"She doesn't want to talk to me, does she?"

"I guess not."

"I don't blame her. If I were on my way to inhabiting some rich bitch's bath towel I'd be tetchy, too. What's your name, kid?"

"Monty. Montgomery. No one calls me that."

"Four syllables is pushing it," said Cobb. "How long you been dead?"

"A few years."

"You like it?"

"No."

"How did it happen?"

"I got electrocuted."

Cobb pointed at Denny.

"You with him when it happened? That why you remain so chummy?"

"No."

"You gay? Is that it? Your true love was lost before either of you sprouted curlies?"

Perplexia laughed.

"'Curlies,'" she repeated.

"No," said Denny.

"Hey now, Captain of the Team. Lose the attitude. This is science. I'm a scientist. This is a discipline lacking discipline. Countless morons go online and think they can tap the undead courtesy patchouli, and finger-twiddling over some crystals. They think they've mastered the bridge between worlds just because the house settles and they're like 'Grandpa's been dead for 30 years, but that's him walking on the floorboards!' Man. Look. I'll ask the dumbest question you've ever heard, I mean, we've got a couple of hours here before Clatterhouse gets the treatment, so I'm gonna ask everything, and I do mean everything that's burning a hole in my brain, but believe me, anything I ask, even if I want to know what it sounded like when all the worms were nibbling your cold dead flesh down to the bone, it isn't personal. There's a reason behind it. Science. Cold hard fact. Reaching out for those facts, I'll be asshole number one, every time, but ask me if I care."

It was his room.

His house.

We were under his thumb.

He'd made that clear.

Just to add unnecessary punctuation, once more he pointed the gun at Denny.

"We might even make this a lab, everyone, " said Cobb. "Depending on how it all goes, I might punch a hole through Mr. Football's head here, and we'll see just how quick we can suck a spirit up through the hose and into the box. It'll be for the good of all mankind. Plus, Perplexia finds the fresh ones are the most fun to experiment on. They scream more. Science. You gotta love it."

And that's when a rock shattered the bedroom window.

42.

The rock landed with a thump and bounced off of the ghost box.

I let go of Myrna's hand and bounced off the floor. I grabbed the wall. I braced my hands like little sucker-armed tentacles and looked out the round window towards the broken window glass. Mr. Butterfingers. I started to slide immediately.

The way shadows and light were working, seen through the tinted ghost box glass and filtered through the room bathed in red light I guessed it was an approximation of how things looked to Dawn.

"Run, Denny!" I yelled louder than I think I'd ever yelled anything. "Get out of here! Run!"

Cobb yelled.

A moment later, another bedroom window shattered. The second rock hit the floor and rolled to a halt at the base of the wall.

Sliding down the inside of the ghost box, I grabbed the wall. It came off in my hand, soft and malleable like clay. It pulled with my hands like if I kept pulling the wall would come with me.

Skin.

Human skin.

That's what Cobb said.

Grossed out, I put my right foot against the side of the ghost box and pushed away from it. I dropped and bounced off the floor and ended up on the other side of the ghost box. I played tentacle-fingers again and looked out the round window towards the bedroom door. I slid. I bit down on my nausea and grabbed the wall. Touching skin, having it go all cookie dough in my hand was gross, but I had to do it. I had to look. Check on Denny.

Denny wasn't there.

I saw Cobb Vaughn. Pointing the gun towards the two busted out windows like he was waiting for someone to come into sight.

"Go check it," said Perplexia. "I'll keep an eye on the ghosties."

Backing up, Cobb looked at the ghost box. And then looked out the windows. He turned around and walked and stopped at the doorway and swept the gun up and down the hall before he left the room.

I let go of the oozing flapping skin handles. Used my foot again and pushed off the inside of the ghost box, bounced, and grabbed the hem of Myrna's polyester jacket.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"I don't know."

"Your hands."

"I think I'll be ok," I said even as I let go of her and flapped my hands, trying to shake off the painful throb. I grabbed hold of her again before I touched the floor. Between the burn and who knows whose skin I'd been gripping, I really, really wanted to dunk my hands in cold water, and then maybe wash them with soap for the next week or so.

The bedroom door was wide open. Even with the hose motor puttering away we could hear noises from the rest of the house.

It sounded like somewhere in the house another window got the treatment. Then there was a popping noise, Cobb shooting someone or at someone. Cobb yelled. Kept yelling.

Then it got quiet.

For a moment.

Myrna squeezed my arm.

"What was that?"

"What?"

She tilted her head. Her mussed helmet of hair continued to move like grass slow dancing at the bottom of the ocean.

Another moment later I could hear it, too. It didn't make sense at first. It was a man's voice. Deep throated like plenty of air had to be directed onto coals before they'd warm enough to provide fire let alone heat.

Framed by the broken glass, a face loomed up from outside and stared into the bedroom from the window.

It was one of the faces, one of the prospects, from Wite-Out's brochure.

Probably the kind of face most people imagined when they thought of something staring in at them, late at night, when they were alone, weaponless, and on second thought, they weren't quite sure whether or not all the doors and windows really were locked.

Vise Head.

"Hold on, Monty," he said. "Give me a minute. This body is shit-tastic."

Vise Head's voice.

Dawn's words.

I was relieved.

And just as quick I realized the downside to her sudden saving-the-day appearance.

She'd gone to the Skin Palace.

Wite-Out.

Hangmen.

Shit.

43.

Denny ran to his car. He could get in and drive away. He could get in and call the cops. There were options.

From the back of the Clatterhouse, something shattered. Someone yelled.

He had an aunt that had been diagnosed schizophrenic. Drove around town knocking over garbage cans and then fled the police and eventually wrapped the car around a telephone pole, all because she thought she was an actress filming a movie. His dad's older sister. Maybe her madness was in the bloodline. He tried imagining explaining anything that had happened today to Janine Wilson. He could imagine her telling her friends and most of them feeling sorry for Janine, but mostly, feeling incalculable amounts of relief that they'd chosen much wiser from the Ashton High boyfriend dating pool.

Already he was going to be in trouble deep, faking the sick, missing a game. Even if Ashton was carrying a 1-3 record and Ione was almost certainly going to change that to 1-4 tonight, Coach told the players, even the benchwarmers, they'd better actually end up in the hospital if they were going to skip a game.

Cobb had pointed a gun at him. Denny had never had a gun pointed at him before.

He needed a plan. A weapon. There was a socket wrench set in the car trunk.

Something clicked and scraped inside the car, from the backseat.

Denny looked.

Splat.

Twitching, tremoring, good old Splat.

It looked like he was trying to eat a seatbelt.

44.

Vise Head lumbered around the back of the house towards the front lawn. There was something wrong with one of his knees. Dawn couldn't feel the pain, but in the driver seat, it was a little like trying to drive a big truck depending on poorly inflated tires.

Directing the grunting, wheezing, stinky 300 pound-plus load around Myrna's house, Dawn had to keep an eye out on two fronts.

Cobb Vaughn and the weird little white-haired girl.

And the Hangmen.

She didn't know when they'd show up. If they'd show up.

A few years into her drinking career, she'd stopped planning ahead. Before those days and nights of near constant liquid refreshment, she'd been stellar at planning. Cheap weekend getaways. Relocating office supplies on the down low. You name it she was aces.

It freaked her out to think of Skins. That ghosts used them to get around, that there were brains in heads that could be turned off easy as walking into a room and flipping a switch. Even creepier, she wondered, if she'd kept living and kept pouring paint thinner into her head, how long it would've been before she was susceptible to the plot, all but primed for inclusion in Wite-Out's human version of the used car lot.

Thoughts for another life in another dimension. Alternate Dawn.

The people moving into Myrna's house had already decorated outside. Some sort of stone lion sat in a flowerbed along the base of the house. Dawn directed the big beefy body to tilt and pick up the lion.

Vise Head was big enough he should be able to take Cobb out with nothing but his hands. But a little insurance never hurt.

She spotted Denny. Denny slamming his car door and running back towards the house.

Seeing things 'normal', through peepers that hadn't lost the right amounts of light and color was slightly eerie. No wonder ghosts - the fortunate few that didn't earn the ire of the Hangmen - hung out perpetually in Skins. Going back, slipping out of Vise Head, her regular photo- negative like sight would be regressive, a return to the near blind.

She'd hoped Monty's friend was smart enough to stay out of the line of fire. Cobb was dangerous.

There were shouts from the front of the house.

"Go, go, go, go," said Vise Head. It was Dawn, talking to Vise Head, to herself, but anyone that saw it would think some big insane guy was talking to himself.

Cobb stood outside the house. He pointed a gun at Denny.

"Hey, idiot!" yelled Dawn. She raised her arms. The lion in her fist like a sword.

Cobb turned his head and saw her. He snarled. Now he pointed the gun at Dawn, at Vise Head. Even though the big slab of meat had about as many brains as a loaf of bread, she didn't want to get him killed.

"Hey, asshole!"

Denny yelled at Cobb. Even before Cobb pivoted back, Denny threw something at him. Gray. A grayish piece of paper.

Splat latched onto Cobb's face.

Cobb slapped at the squirrel. With one hand, and then quickly, employed both hands. He started to shout. He dropped the gun, got a hold of the gray shape and ripped it off his face and flung it.

A row of tiny blood red marks dotted Cobb's cheek. He put a palm against his face. Took the palm away. Looked at the blood. Blood oozed off his chin and dripped off his jaw.

Down on the ground, red mustache hairs stuck to his teeth, mission totally accomplished, Splat twitched.

Cobb bared his teeth at Denny and then looked at the ground, saw his gun and bent down, hand reached out.

Without a word, Dawn swung the yard lion into the side of Cobb's head. The lion burst apart. Cobb grunted and stumbled, but kept up on his feet. Dawn slapped Cobb on the side of the head. Then directed Vise Head to take one big meaty paw, cup the back of Cobb's skull, and then she started punching the bald ghost hunter in the face. She couldn't quite feel Cobb's solid skull going from hard to softer and then softer yet. But she could hear it.

Denny grabbed the pumping and pistoning arm and yelled at her to stop. It was enough. She didn't want to kill the guy.

She let Cobb go. It was like someone had cut his power switch. He flopped to the ground, all wires cut.

"You got him," said Denny.

"We did. Splat ok?"

"I don't know."

They looked.

Splat looked awful. Flat, dead, twisted, and now with fresh blood spattered here and thereabouts.

"Guessing that's not his blood," said Denny.

Dawn shook her head. Vise Head's head.

She started walking up the steps to the Clatterhouse front porch.

Something made her pause. Just a feeling. Impending doom.

She could recall the moment, heading back to the mall after downing some sweet whiskey, not so much when she stepped on the patch of black ice, but the moment after. Freeze-frame moment. Knowing that something bad had happened and that something far worse was going to bookend the moment. Dawn's head, meet curb. Two pieces of bread, and her doomed little life in-between. The perfect shit sandwich.

Even though they were Vise Head's eyes, she could still make out something from the Game Room side.

In the sky. These black blots. Looked a fair dozen. Winged. Noose-bearing. Headed this way.

45.

Heavy steps approached. It didn't sound like Cobb, but it could be Cobb, heavier, full of confidence after getting rid of Denny and Vise Head. I imagined Denny, dead, slung over Cobb's shoulders, Vise Head's greasy hair inside Cobb's fist as he brought the two fresh kills into the bedroom. He'd show us. Triumphant. And he'd show us his instincts were right on the money. He'd vacuum Denny and Vise Head and Dawn, those ghosts new and old, inside the ghost box.

Vise Head lumbered into the bedroom.

Perplexia hissed. She backed into a corner, climbed up on one of the Clark's unpacked moving boxes and perched, her fingers clutched out in front of her like claws, or needle-sharp points might punch out if necessary.

He/she/Vise Head/Dawn knelt down at the front of the structure. Dawn produced a long sigh.

"You ok in there?" she asked.

"Yes. Are you?"

"Pretty much. Denny, too. Splat's a hero."

"Splat?"

"Yep. He's got a taste for human flesh now."

Dawn switched the motor off. She kept struggling with the hose. Something plastic sounding hit the floor.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting you out. I think...This thing sucks and blows. Literally. I'm going to spray you guys out, but you might want to get right up close to the front ok?"

"It kind of burns."

"I don't care. There's no time. The Hangmen are coming."

"Hangmen?"

"Yep. Ready?"

Myrna looked at me. She wasn't all there. It was a lot to go through in one day for a ghost so used to haunting the same old house with little or no alteration to the schedule.

I grabbed her hand, and we floated right on up to our side of the motor.

"We're ready!"

Dawn started the motor up.

For a moment, I didn't think anything had happened. Or would happen. And then it was a little like the first time Dawn pulled me through a doorway crack only that experience multiplied by ten on the disorientation and nausea scale.

If ghosts could puke, I would've soaked the inside of the hose in barf, not to mention getting it all over myself and Myrna Clatterhouse.

The hose popped me out. I hit the wall and stuck, and kind of wiggled. Myrna went through the wall.

Dawn steered Vise Head back down to the ghost box engine. A switch thrown, the hose noise altered, returned to sounding like it wanted to suck the skin off your bones.

Dawn looked across the room at Perplexia. She was still poised to leap at us. She looked feral.

Myrna slid out from the wall and looked at the ghost box. She busied herself, using her hands to piece her helmet of hair back in place.

"That thing is hideous. I want to burn it." She said it with a slight sniff like I was her houseboy and needed to make that burn pile happen sooner rather than later.

Even over the motor, we heard the noise. High pitch. Screaming like birds filling up the sky.

Myrna made a face like her eardrums were suddenly little instruments of pain.

"What is that?"

"Guests," said Dawn.

The first Hangmen flew into the bedroom from the hallway.

Dawn didn't even have to move that much. The winged demon's route landed him dead center down the hose. A moment after he got sucked into the ghost box the structure produced a thump sound like one of those automated machines that serve up tennis balls.

Two more Hangmen entered. The one coming from the hall met the initial creature's fate. The one that slid in, half in the hall, half coming out through the wall, saw what had happened to his co-worker. He just came to a kind of dead halt mid-air, confused, processing the sight, and Dawn sucked him down the hose.

Two more flew in, coming through the bedroom walls, and circled us. I waved my hands in the air. Distracted, reaching out for me, one got sucked down the hose, tail end first. The other Hangmen suffered from the same rubbernecking syndrome as Dawn's third victim. It just didn't process. They were Hangmen. Hangmen were badass. They didn't get sucked down hoses.

I started counting those tennis ball machine thumps. It was like a video game, Hangmen Down The Hose. I could picture a point total displayed underneath Dawn. One hundred points for each bad guy sucked inside the hose and shot down inside the ghost box.

Perplexia had forgotten to show us she was ready to fight. It was like she really could see ghosts. Her head moved like she was watching the fight. The weird old woman features in her face retreated, relaxed. She looked like a little girl watching something otherworldly unfold before her very eyes.

The Hangmen started to realize something bad was happening. This wasn't your typical rope 'em and burn 'em exercise.

One flew right over my head and then tried to grab me from behind, but it wasn't like he was trying to grab me and punish me. The noises he made were more urgent, at a higher pitch. Terrified, he wanted to use me as a barrier between Dawn and the hose. I grabbed at him and slapped at him as he tried to dig claws into me. I grabbed at his beak and a wing. He latched onto me. Spinning around, I somehow threw him off, and once he was far enough away from me, Dawn sucked him down the hose.

Myrna got caught up in the adrenaline rush. All the hair she'd just put back in place had come loose again. She hopped around and waved her arms in the air, shouting at the Hangmen.

I lost count. I had no idea what Dawn's score was at. 1100? 1200? 2500?

Somewhere in the cosmos, someone turned the Hangmen producing spigot off. As quick as the bedroom had turned into a kind of shooting gallery, it stopped.

"Is that it?" I asked.

Dawn shook her head. Shrugged.

"That was fun," said Myrna. "I don't normally go for that sort of thing. Exercise. But it wasn't bad at all."

Right then, a Hangmen shot through one of the walls with a busted window into the bedroom.

The Hangman different from the others.

Longer, sleeker, nastier looking.

The Executioner.

She didn't scream or screech. She darted up and down and around, even circled Perplexia, and the little girl reached up for the creature like if only someone would make the Hangman obey, she could step up into a saddle and go for a pony ride.

Just as it seemed the Executioner had exited the bedroom, she reappeared, right behind Myrna. The Executioner grabbed Myrna's hair and yanked back on it, drawing Myrna's head back, exposing her throat.

The Executioner's claws clicked like she was making sure she had our attention right before she tore out Myrna's throat.

Myrna yelled. But it wasn't a scream of pain. It was a shout like here, finally, a line had been drawn in the sand. Insult after insult had been endured today, but Myrna Clatterhouse was done.

Reaching for the claw in her hair, Myrna grabbed the Executioner's wrist, pivoted and twisted that polyester-clad body around in one smooth motion. She grabbed the Executioner's wing and cementing her hold in both places, spun around and around, shouting, "I have had enough! I have had enough! I want you out of my house!"

Dawn timed it out, watched the whirling Myrna, and almost like someone taking a shot on a pool table, shoved the hose end into the Executioner's back. The hose started to suck the Executioner down. She let go of Myrna and started trying to grab hold of the hose. Claws clicked on plastic. It sounded like a cat scrabbling for purchase on something unexpectedly coated in ice. I grabbed at Myrna and tried pulling on her, to get her away, just to make sure no surprises knocked her back inside the ghost box.

Myrna shoved me away. She lurched towards Dawn. The Executioner's head and one struggling wing remained sticking out of the hose. Both Dawn and I cried out.

"Get out!" Myrna drew her arm back and slammed a fist into the Executioner's beak. "Get! Out! Of! My! House!"

A punch delivered with each shout.

The Executioner cried out, and then her head and the trembling wing vanished from sight. A moment later, the ghost box processed one last thump.

Game over.

46.

"How long will they stay in there?" I asked.

Dawn shook her head. Dropped the hose onto the floor. The room was mostly empty. Only a couple of the Clark's moving boxes were stacked against the walls. With the sudden cessation of violence, the hose floor-thunk noise seemed incredibly loud.

"Forever. Hopefully. You're asking the wrong person, kid." Dawn touched her head. Vise Head's head. I know. Trying to decide what to call her was confusing to me, too.

"You ok?"

She nodded. Looked around.

"I want to lay down for the next year or so. The Skins thing is a racket. One, I'm discombobulated being in here. In this guy's head. Two-"

She cut a fart. Long and bubbling.

"Wow."

"I know. I can taste all the grease this guy's been cramming down the last forever and a month of his life."

We heard a noise from the front of the house. I tensed up, but then saw it was just Denny running down the hall towards us.

He was wearing what all the fashionable young men had on this fall. A beat to hell Walk-And-Talk and a Splat. The deformed eyeless squirrel head looked at us from over Denny's shoulder. I knew it was mostly body rot and the death throes induced curling of the lip that made it look like Splat was smiling, but I couldn't be sure. Spotted in blood, the little guy looked pretty happy.

Denny saw Vise Head/Dawn looking at Splat. He shrugged.

"It's weird, I know, but it's just easier to have him cling to me. I like him, but I don't really want to touch him with my hands," said Denny.

"I dated guys like that," said Dawn.

Denny laughed. He gave Vise Head/Dawn a look pregnant with unease.

"Ri-iight. How are things? Is Monty, is he-"

"I'm here."

Denny's shoulders sank. He patted the Walk-And-Talk.

"Awesome sauce. Good. Cool."

The ghost box thumped.

"What was that?"

"Bad guys," said Dawn.

"Is that what you were talking about outside?" asked Denny.

"Yeah."

"I don't like that thing," said Denny. "It just oozes evil for some reason. I mean seriously, the outside of it...That looks like skin. Is that human skin? All of it? That can't be good."

The ghost box thumped again. It moved like all the Hangmen inside had directed a combined force in one spot.

"Cobb made it sound like ghosts can't get out of there," I said.

"But there might be a load limit," said Dawn. "Like an elevator. It can only hold ten people. 2500 pounds. Anything in excess of that-"

Myrna pointed across the room.

"Wait. Look. It's her. The little devil."

Perplexia had knelt down on the moving box, the same pose as when she'd squatted on top of the Walk-And-Talk. Her lips moved fast. Whispers of weird words slipped through her teeth. Her arms up, her fingers twiddled like she was making invisible finger puppets dance wildly. Her eyes opened. The pupils were gone. The whites fairly glowed. A noise slid out of her, some door somewhere that opened into a cold dark place that might have existed before our universe. A place of old sleeping evil that loathed the cosmos itself. The door opened and slammed, opened and slammed. I could feel the noise, sense those old things behind the door moving, rumbling up from sleep. If my hair wasn't already standing up all over, now, it would've attained that state.

The ghost box not only thumped, but it lifted up from off the floor.

None of us said 'Maybe we should go now.'

Denny led the retreat. Then Myrna. Then Dawn. Dawn hissed at me to pick up my pace.

By the time I was at the other end of the hall, the ghost box was bouncing up and down, dancing in time with the sound erupting from Perplexia. The hose lashed the air like it was being cracked like a whip. Screws and bolts were coming off of the ghost box. Getting shot like bullets. A sheet of the skin siding flapped wildly.

I turned the corner and ran for the front of the house.

Behind me, glass, like one of the round windows in the ghost box, shattered, and birds, angry, angry birds, cried out.

47.

The last time I ever saw Myrna Clatterhouse she told us to get going already.

Right outside the front steps, Cobb was down for the count, flat on his back. Across the street a resident was on a cell phone, pointing at Cobb while they talked. The arrival of a cop of some sort imminent.

Denny had the car engine turned over, ready to go. Dawn and I sat in the backseat. Splat was somewhere up front with Denny.

"They won't mess with me," said Myrna. "Not after what I did to that one." She made a fist and smiled.

"You don't know that," I said. "And the girl. Perplexia."

"Denny," said Dawn, "we need to be going."

"I'll be fine," said Myrna. "Besides, I have some alterations to the house to make before her new owners get back. Something to leave them with before I go."

Poor Denny. All those voices coming through the Walk-And-Talk. He looked back at the general direction of conflicting voices in a kind of indecisive near panic.

"Denny," I said. "Go-go-go-go-go-go-go-go!"

Conscientious, he signaled, pulled out into the street and then pressed down on the gas.

Dawn and I looked out the rear window. Myrna waved. Cars parked along the curb quickly obscured her.

"If they do bust out, can we outrun them?" I asked.

"No."

"What if they don't get out?"

Dawn looked at me. Vise Head shook his head like I was the dumbest kid he'd ever known.

"What's the plan you guys?" asked Denny. "Tell me where to go, and I'll go there."

"I could give myself up," said Dawn. "Distract them. Slow them down. If you got far enough away, they might forget all about you."

"Maybe. I wish you hadn't done it. Dawn. You shouldn't have."

"I had to," she said. "You know it. Just do me a favor. If you ever see our little pal Wite-Out again, tell him that 'no Hangmen' guarantee is a load of crap."

"No problem."

I recognized the part of town Denny was driving through. Downtown was fairly close. And then some on-ramps to the freeway.

And the cemetery.

Something passed over in my mind. Splat. The dead rising from the ground.

"Here they come," said Dawn.

You could see it through the car rear window. A black cloud. Kind of a ratty stringy looking cloud, but a cloud nonetheless. It looked drawn to us like fine particles racing towards a magnet.

"Can you get out of him?" I asked Dawn.

"Yeah. I guess. Now?"

"Now," I said. "Denny, we're going to go."

"What do you mean you're going to go?"

"You'll be fine," I said. "Splat will be fine."

"Monty!" said Denny. "But where do we meet? What about Trista? The woods? The, the-"

"The Chili House. That's where Trista and PU are having the date. We'll figure it out. Keep the Walk-And-Talk close."

Denny swore.

"Ready or not, here I come," said Dawn.

It looked like something right out of the movies. Dawn leaned her upper torso out of Vise Head, pulled her right leg out, grabbed me, braced the right leg against the inside of the rear driver side door, and pushed off. We popped out of Denny's car, hit the asphalt, and rolled. We got up. I pointed at the sidewalk.

"This way."

We ran. We made sure to keep touching.

I ran right through a fire hydrant. A bicyclist. A dog sniffing grass. A bus stop kiosk. Tree after tree after tree. A woman sitting inside her car looking at her cell phone. At an angle, the reading room on the ground floor of the Ashton Public Library. A car dealership occupied by no one but a single salesman whistling through his teeth. Cars queued up at a red traffic light, a dozen cars, we sprinted through them all, front to back bumper, one after the next. A little old woman using a cane. The checkout aisles of a grocery store, a cashier's laugh booming, deep and loud. I could've run forever, faster and faster, but it didn't seem to matter.

The Hangmen screams got louder way too fast.

I could hear wings flapping, claws clicking, in anticipation of tearing into us.

Dawn shouted, asked me where we were headed.

And then she saw row after row of headstones.

I didn't tell her why. I didn't tell her what was on my mind.

But what I was thinking, I mean, underneath all the fear and dread and absolute terror, was what Wite-Out had said about the Hangmen and their fear of bones.

Beyond that potential fib, I remembered resuscitating Splat.

Put them together, bones and what I could make them do, and one word and one word only pulsed at the center of my mind:

Ammunition.

48.

Dawn decided we needed cover while I tried to tap my otherworldly power. We zigzagged through the cemetery, and as quick as we could, dove into a hiding spot.

A crypt.

We were copping someone else's move.

The crypt had been broken into already.

A sleeping bag lay on the cement floor, perpendicular to stone coffins and a wall holding a dozen marble head plates decorated in gilded gold, more members of the Bunch family.

Outside, Hangmen squawked.

It was only a matter of time before one ducked in here in passing and spotted Dawn and me, the Bunch family, and the mummified remains laying on top of the sleeping bag. The corpse wore a ski cap and a red and black-checkered shirt and grimy jeans.

A metal can near the sleeping bag corpse was full of ashes. A tin plate was tipped over near the ash can like it'd been laying flat on top of the can at some point. Several empty cans of beans and vegetables littered the makeshift camp.

The dates bookending the Bunch's lives showed the last death had occurred a full five years before I'd been born. It made sense then that no one had found the break in job, the remains, the mess. Their family line may have run completely out of gas.

Outside, a Hangman squawked. It was like it was right next to the Bunch crypt.

I motioned to Dawn. She ducked her head down.

"Wite-Out lied." My mouth was so close to Dawn's ear I could've licked her brain. "He said they were scared of cemeteries."

She stood back. Shrugged. Gave me a look like 'He's Wite-Out. Of course, he lied.' She whirled her finger in the air, telling me to get back to it already. I didn't want to tell her now I didn't know if it even made any difference, trying to raise bones from resting places. Even if I could assemble an army, it might be for nothing. Risen at my call, bone people would shudder and thump. Meanwhile, judgments would issue, and nooses would turn both Dawn and me into ashes.

The skin on the dead man on the sleeping bag was the color of Cobb's ghost box. His eye sockets were hollows, his skin retreated enough both gums and teeth were visible. The remnants of his nose looked like it belonged on an alien. I tried to make the nostrils open and close, and then the mouth open and close.

I'd made a lot of noise resuscitating Splat.

I couldn't make noise now.

It would draw the Hangmen to us.

I had to get angry, direct the anger, but be quiet about it.

And what if I could only resuscitate bodies of dead animals?

Crap.

Maybe there were dead spiders inside the crypt. Dead flies in spider webs. That would be effective. Like throwing dirt clods at a tornado.

It was the time when it was incredibly important that I don't ice myself, and there I was, icing myself. Totally Bauer, Totally Iced, Totally Ashes: The Montgomery Strahl Story.

Outside, all of a sudden, there were two Hangmen, squawking at each other.

Dawn waggled her hand, got my attention. She pointed at the dead sleeping bag man. She lay down next to him and more or less crawled inside of him. I could see her body moving, more and more frantically, parts of her breaking the surface, popping out the checkered shirt, the dirty jeans, trying to get the dead man to move, too.

She pushed up out of him. She slapped the floor, pissed that her impulse hadn't worked. She got to her feet and looked at me. Another squawk sounded outside. Dawn shuddered.

When Dawn had been trying to move the dead man, I'd noticed something tucked just out from underneath the wadded up clothes that had been employed as a pillow.

I knelt down to look.

It was an old photograph. The background almost nothing but blue sky with a thin strip of a body of water at the bottom of the picture. Some nice looking lady looking right at the photographer, a pair of sunglasses tipped up into her curly hair, a kind of impossible to analyze Mona Lisa smile on her face.

I wondered if the woman in the picture even knew what had happened to this man. If she remembered him. It was possible the two didn't even know each other, just a random photo of a stranger the man held onto because he liked the picture, liked the subject's sphinx-like quality.

Dead now, maybe he resided in the Game Room. And he made trips back to the land of the living, all the time, constantly, hanging just outside the curly haired woman's perception, watching her age, raise a family, have things go sideways, correct, go sideways again.

It was more than I might get.

Now it sounded like all the Hangmen were outside, jawing, speaking in their foreign tongue, planning their attack, or just delighting in hazing Dawn and me.

I remembered Wite-Out describing Hangmen.

They're bush leaguers, picking on poor souls that want a little extra time with their loved ones.

I also remembered my situation at that moment. My hand being stuck between the front door and the doorway. Useless. Another one of fate's punching bags.

I might not ever see Trista again, not if the Hangmen's script were followed. I wouldn't see her when she showed up in the Game Room. Her skin pale, displaying all the tortures Peter Uphall inflicted upon her before her body finally surrendered. There existed a fair chance that in that state she would spend eternity, maybe even expel what parts of her sense remained, and then lift up towards the rust-colored sky and join the crowd circling the green lights.

Denny always made fun of this one part of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Kirk is trapped inside a planet, and the bad guy, Khan, teases Kirk via communicator, letting Kirk know how that fate delights Khan ever so much. The way Kirk screams Khan's name, Denny just found it silly that someone could get that mad, or, he just thought in that scene, Shatner was being his Shatnery-Best / Shatnery-Worst. Just a toe over the stupid line.

I don't know what Denny would've thought of the way I screamed inside the crypt.

I channeled every possible fate for Trista that made me angry into a moment, and I let the universe know what I thought about those possibilities. Not just a toe. I put both feet over stupid.

The lids of both stone coffins jumped and bounced and spun onto the floor with loud porcelain like thumps. Sleeping Bag Man's bones moved from skull to toe, lurching, making a sound like some ancient machine bereft oil and grease moving parts for the first time in a century. From deep inside the wall came what sounded like the intake of breath, like we were all of us buried inside the chest of something long-slept and old and cold and waiting millennia for sign from an ancient being long forgotten and grossly mistaken for myth. Somehow I pulled a lever, and the coffins launched out through the marble monuments marking the resting space for the dozen dead enclosed in the wall. The coffins broke as they landed. Lids popped open. The Bunch family rose from their sleepers' berths grinning, glad to be with family again.

All of them then, even Sleeping Bag Man, a guest, but unquestionably an accepted guest, faced the crypt walls, and as if in answer to the questions posed by the Hangmen's cawing, opened and closed their jaws, again and again and again, a kind of mortal Morse code that in time, in its ever increasing speed and volume silenced the cries of the visitors outside.

We're here, said that jaw-clicking.

We're waiting.

We're hungry.

49.

Dawn and I stood at the center of the skeletons snapping their jaws open and shut. Outside, the Hangmen produced a smoker's voice bird-cry in response.

"What are they doing?" I asked.

"Calling each other out is my guess," she said. "'We're bad.' 'No, we're bad.' 'No, we're bad.' And on and on and on. You're not making our new friends here do it?"

"No."

"But you sure as shit woke them up."

I nodded.

I wondered if I should reach out even further. If it was possible I could tap anger so pure it would blow dirt off every grave, empty every tomb, surround the Hangmen with an army of the dead.

Fairly quick, the jaw clicking became the only noise we could hear. The Hangmen had gone silent again.

One by one, the revived army of bones stopped clicking their jaws. One old woman - the hair all but vanished, the skeleton draped in a black dress - the last to cease.

One of the coffins ejected from the crypt wall teetered on a shattered chunk of wood. The wood gave way, and the coffin slid and fell onto the crypt floor.

I tugged Dawn's arm. She leaned towards me.

"Did they leave, you think?"

She blew out her cheeks, shook her head.

"The Hangmen are assholes. Assholes are dumb but persistent."

As if on cue, Hangmen shot through the crypt walls. Came down through the roof. Came up through the floor.

The Bunch family skeletons moved fast, but still, they weren't nearly as agile as the Hangmen. It was a little like watching Rebel Snowspeeders wing around and through the legs of Imperial Walkers on the ice planet Hoth. The numbers were more or less even, but one side was even more brutal than the other. It became obvious that for one side of the entanglement, it was a kind of suicide mission.

A Hangman landed on top of the black dressed matriarch's head and went at the skull with beak and wings and those tiny little extraneous forearms. It was like watching a bathtub rubber ducky attack water. Unlike her brethren, the matriarch didn't move with lightning speed, but she moved fast enough her skeletal hand grabbed the creature around the throat. She pulled it off her head, the whispers of white hair trailing the Hangman's spasms like jet contrail. Once her hand was on the Hangman, it stayed on the Hangman. She squeezed the creature's throat. The wings shuddered. The claws at the end of the wings feebly went after the dead woman's hand. The matriarch's other hand approached the Hangman's face and then seemed not so much as to take hold, but to sink in, gouging the black tarry mask, squeezing so hard the mask oozed on out between her fingers. The creature tried to twist away from her probing. It couldn't. The sound it made I couldn't describe other than to tell you to imagine the noises made by animals in slaughterhouses distilled to their purest essence of fear. A sound that would turn God's blood cold.

The same situation played out all around us. For once, Wite-Out had told a truth. The Hangmen had every reason to fear bones. Separated from the souls that once powered them, that weighed moral choice and slowed violent action, the skeletons were nothing but machines with a single-minded mission to complete. And somehow, the Hangmen were not immaterial to the bones. Skeletons could touch them. Hurt them.

The Executioner circled us up above. She screamed like she was trying to rally her troops or form a retreat. Either way, it was too late. Giving up on that tact, in a fury, she dive-bombed Dawn. Dawn ducked at the last possible instant. The Executioner ended up snagging the pointy green hat off of Dawn's head. Spinning in the air, she opened her beak, and the hat rolled up and over her face. She couldn't shake it off. It was on her face like the blindfold they put on a poor soul before the firing squad takes aim.

One of the Bunch skeletons snagged one of the Executioner's wings. The creature screamed. She shook, and Dawn's hat popped off the eyes and slid down her beak and then fell from her face. The skeleton grabbed the Executioner's other wing with the other hand. The Executioner screamed more, flapped even more violently, but she didn't get anywhere. The skeleton pulled her closer and closer, reeling her in, enfolding her in a hug that suffocated the scream to a muffled but still ice-inducing sound.

Sleeping Bag Man had carried his victim to the floor. He crouched over his prize. The Hangman was limp. The Hangman's head was tipped to the side, the chest barely moving as Sleeping Bag Man grabbed at the body and pulled fistfuls away in long gooey strands like he was playing with a thick tar prior to its dispersal on a roof or a road.

Several of the Bunch skeletons made like vampires, or carnivores, carried their kills to private spots, and there, focused on their experiments, their autopsies performed while the bodies were still fresh.

Dawn said, "Let's go. Let's go."

She was just as numbed as I was by what we'd seen. What I'd unleashed. She even forgot her hat. She'd already exited the crypt when I remembered it. No one looked at me as I crossed the floor and knelt. I tried to pick up the hat.

Of course. I could unleash an army of darkness, but I still couldn't touch anything, move it, lift it, brush it, you name it, I came up short.

A Bunch had pulled one of the Hangmen apart. Covered in thin tarry strands the bones still weren't done exploring. The Hangmen, belly down, faced me. Each time the skeleton pulled on the strand, the Hangman's head went up and forward, and the beak lifted and dropped and clicked when it struck the floor.

"The hat. Forgot about that. Right. Great. Come on, Monty."

She'd come back. Dawn pulled on my arm until I was up on my feet. The Bunch skeleton wearing streamers of Hangmen goop turned his eyeless head to watch us as Dawn tugged me through the crypt wall back out into the cemetery. Dead for so long now, he grinned, so happy, so grateful, to be up, and at work, messy and involved, but ever so rewarding.

50.

Denny had troubles. Three. Or four. Or if he thought long enough he might uncover an easy dozen, or maybe even an infinite list of problems.

One, Coach Tudor was definitely pissed.

Two, Janine was pissed at him, too. She knew he wasn't home convalescing. She'd called Denny's mom. Denny's mom didn't know where Denny was. Denny's mom adored Janine and had even gone so far as to call her the third daughter she'd wished she had - the implication being, Denny had arrived out her womb the wrong gender entirely. Maybe the two could work it out, cut Denny out altogether, and just continue to enjoy one another's company.

So there were those fun times ahead of Denny. More immediately, given the experiences with those creeptastic pinecone dolls, Peter Uphall knew what Denny's car looked like. Denny had to find parking downtown that wouldn't make it obvious that he was anywhere in the vicinity of The Chili House.

And beyond that, there was the matter of the 300-pound insane man in the car backseat.

After Dawn's departure, Vise Head's marbles had returned one at a time. Not surprisingly, based on Vise Head's appearance alone, the marbles were almost all uniformly cracked.

Given the pursuit of the Hangmen, Denny couldn't fault Dawn and me for leaving him holding that particular bag, but at the same time, he wasn't incredibly happy about it.

Once he was downtown, Denny had parked on a side street, gotten out of the car, walked around to the passenger side and opened the rear door, stepping back with the door to allow as much exit room as Vise Head could ever want.

"Where is this?" Vise Head looked around, his head moving a little like a cat trying to pin down something in the visual field.

"Ashton."

"No. It's not."

"Pal. Look." Denny turned and pointed at this letterman's jacket. "See? What does it say? Ashton High. What street are we on? Wright Street. Just like the little sign at the end of the block states."

"I want to talk to the President."

"What do you want me to do about that?"

"I need to tell him about the convenience store clerk. The one playing music. It's bad music."

"Man, I don't-"

"It tells people to lick turds."

As if he'd fallen victim and licked turds himself, Vise Head's tongue pulsated in and out of view like he was trying to get rid of some nasty taste coating the roof of his mouth.

"That's really nasty," said Denny.

"You look like a liar."

"Great. You don't like the looks of me, get out. Walk away. The President is out there somewhere, I bet. Have a good night."

Vise Head massaged the air like he was performing an autopsy on a Nerf football.

"I don't walk away from fights."

Denny sighed. Waited a beat.

"This isn't a fight," he said. "This is me asking you to get out of the car. I got to go do something."

"What is that?" asked Vise Head.

"What?"

"Thing around your neck."

"It's a Walk-And-Talk," said Denny.

"Looks like electronics. Electronics is what they did to my head. Put the electronics in there. Now they know. They know I can't get it out. Once it's in, they know it all, that bunch of turd lickers."

Denny thought about pretending to scan Vise Head with the Walk-And-Talk. He jumped to the conclusion that the Walk-And-Talk, mashed into many fine red and yellow bits, might not be salvageable, not even with his newfound acumen in duct tape bandaging.

Denny was strong and young and could outlast Vise Head in a tussle. Vise Head was big enough that all it would take is one solidly landed punch, and Denny would be hurting. Maybe more than hurting. He wondered if Janine would feel sympathy if he ended up hospitalized.

"Do you need cash?" asked Denny. "I got money. Twenty bucks? Twenty-five? How much, man?"

"All the liars I know talk to the circles. When they get tired of being turd lickers. They go around. Bet you I can tell you where the electronics go when the power goes out. It transforms bowel movements. Some come out like soup. Some are chocolate. Whatever the government wants."

Denny gave up on civility. There was a clock ticking, and Trista was in danger. Leaving the back door open, he opened the front passenger side door. Grimacing \- he didn't like the way the dead and driven over countless times fur felt - he collected Splat from out of the front seat and returned to standing right outside the rear seat door.

With the car doors open, the interior roof light was on. Denny held Splat out towards Vise Head like he was offering a stranger the opportunity to hold a little baby.

Splat's claws moved like something slow to sink in the ocean. He still had Cobb's blood streaked across his muzzle. His head moved in a start and stop motion, a herk-and-jerk, that looked like a filmstrip sequence missing certain key frames.

Like most people encountering Splat, Vise Head had to take a moment to process what he was looking at. The sheer improbability of it.

Denny let that moment come and go.

Then, looking around Splat right at Vise Head, Denny cleared his throat and said, "The President of the United States wants to talk to you about those bowel movements, turd licker."

51.

The Chili House featured outdoor seating even into fall as long as the weather complied. Across the street from the restaurant were shops and an apartment building and one structure covered in tarps with warning signs all around it. It was a nursing home that had closed, been bought, sold, bought, and left to stand empty. Fumigated by the newest owners to deal with a giant rat population, the building now stood in stasis. Word held the California investor had reconsidered the purchase and might unload the property at a dirt-cheap price.

The tarps flapped behind us as Denny and I looked across the street and watched Trista and Peter make goo-goo eyes across their table.

"Is she holding his hand?" asked Denny.

"Looks like it."

"I should go over there and pop him in the nose."

"We need a better plan than that."

A couple decked out for nightlife walked past us on the sidewalk. The woman looked at the Walk-And-Talk quizzically.

"At least we know people can hear you through this thing," said Denny. "Cobb could. That lady could just now."

"Trista would," I said.

"That's what I'm saying, man." Denny looked down the street and grunted.

Coming at us from the corner at a lumbering pace the one and only Vise Head.

"Dawn's back at the steering wheel. Don't worry."

"You can tell?"

"There's kind of a glow."

"Whatever. My car is going to smell like that guy from now on."

"Pretty bad?" "Remember the locker room after P.E., I mean, when the Henderson kids were still going to school here? Those little sweat machines. It's like that only like put in a pot and put on the stove and left to boil."

"Sorry."

"It's ok. It'll work out for the best. It gives Janine a nice easy out."

Dawn had slid back into Vise Head soon as we'd found Denny and company downtown. It was easy to take control. She said it was like she opened a door to a room and Vise Head marched right on in without complaint, and she shut the door behind him. Ease of use, one of the reasons ghosts liked Skins so much. I hadn't asked her how Wite-Out had claimed her soul. How she got her soul back once she no longer needed Vise Head's services. I might've, but after all I'd unleashed at the cemetery, neither of us felt like talking much.

Our giant trench coat wearing companion stopped beside us.

"I haven't done that in a long time," said Dawn. "Can't say as though I miss it."

"What?" asked Denny.

"You don't want to know," she said. "I do feel sorry for the plants that I had to tear up out of the ground. This guy is killing himself with his diet."

"He definitely didn't want to talk to Splat about his diet," said Denny.

"What?" asked Dawn.

"Nothing. Never mind."

*

While couples enjoyed the October evening on the patio across the street, two ghosts and a living teenage boy formulated a devious plot.

It was the most direct solution we could think up, but Dawn couldn't simply attack and disable PU. Poor Vise Head would be accountable for something he hadn't done, plus, it just seemed like that would create sympathy for Peter in Trista's eyes. Go an even darker route, we could kill him, but there was still this sliver of possibility that we were wrong. What if Ellen Gaines, even dead, was crazy, wrong about the identity of her murderer, and Denny's interactions with PU and PU's veiled threats were misinterpreted? I imagined spending an eternity in the Game Room, trailed by the ghost of Peter Uphall, the specter never ever tiring of letting everyone know what I'd done to him. Doubly bad was thinking what it would do to Trista, what horrible skew would her life take?

We formulated a plan. There were only a thousand holes in it.

We waited until their food arrived. The waiter wished them a good meal and retreated. Trista and PU dug in.

And we sprung into action.

52.

A fancy black iron fence separated The Chili House from the sidewalk and pedestrian traffic. Any adult could easily swing their leg over the top of the fence and either enter or exit the patio seating. You weren't supposed to do it that way. The restaurant staff would prefer guests to access the patio from the front entrance and then snake their way through the restaurant and access the patio via the tall retractable sidewalk facing doors.

Diners didn't at first notice Vise Head stepping over the black iron fence. Dawn chose a spot behind Trista and in front of an older couple. They might notice him, but they weren't as likely to raise a questioning fuss as some of the younger diners.

Dawn walked up to Trista and Peter's table. Looked at them. Looked at their food. Dawn drew her arm back and smacked Vise Head's palm dead center into Peter's plate. Then she slid the plate into Peter's lap. He pushed back from the table and knocked his chair over as he stood up. He looked at the gravy dripping off of his crotch. And looked up, at Vise Head, right at the moment Dawn tossed a glass worth of bubbling effervescent 7up in his face.

She pointed at Peter and yelled, "You have to stop with the electronics! You're killing me in my sleep!"

Mission accomplished, Dawn stepped over the black iron fence back onto the sidewalk, and then, voices rising behind her, she broke into a sprint, grimacing, wondering how poor Vise Head made it through his days, dealing with a knee full of broken glass.

53.

North of The Chili House, Denny had scampered across the street and then worked his way south back towards the restaurant. Hovering behind bushes beside the restaurant patio, he'd watched Dawn go to work on PU, and then vault over the fence to the sidewalk and beat her retreat.

Diners were all hub-bubbing. A waiter appeared and immediately sprung into action, asking Peter and Trista if they were all right. More wait staff arrived at the patio. A restaurant manager stepped out. Cell phones bred like rabbits. Everyone had a phone out now, a little late to record any of Vise Head's interaction with the attractive teen couple.

At the manager's urging, Peter stepped away from the table. Denny edged around the bushes and watched Peter leave the patio and go inside, probably to the bathroom.

As planned. Ok. Hoped for.

Waiting staff hung around Trista, and at least one waiter skirted the black iron fence and went in pursuit of Vise Head. They told him to be careful. He said he would. The waiter was armed with his cell phone. He'd likely provide constant updates until the suddenly most wanted criminal in the city if not the state if not the entire country were nabbed and put on ice.

Denny really wanted to go up to Trista when she was all by herself. But he couldn't wait all night. Sooner rather than later, Peter would sop up all that crotch gravy, and he'd be back out on the patio, ready to continue with the date.

"Trista. Hey. Are you ok?"

"Denny! Oh my god."

"I saw it. That guy was crazy."

The waiter minding Trista gave Denny the stink eye. Denny waved at him.

"Man, it's ok. I know her. We go to school together."

Trista brushed the waiter's arm and smiled and told him it was ok. The waiter retreated, but with a nod like all Trista had to do was call and he'd drop Denny like yesterday's news.

"Actually, can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Sure," said Trista.

"Do you need to sit down or anything?"

"I'm fine."

"You sure?" asked Denny.

"I think so."

Trista gave the Walk-And-Talk dangling around Denny's neck a look, but in the aftermath of Vise Head throwing pork chops and mashed potatoes into Peter's lap, the toy's decrepit state still ranked kind of low on the list of unexpected sights.

Denny's palms were saturated with sweat. His armpits felt like swamps. For some reason having crazy-assed Cobb Vaughn point a gun at his head seemed more agreeable to his nerves than moving forward with his portion of the plan.

"You should sit down," said Denny.

"No. Really. I'm ok."

"You should sit. I have to tell you something. Trust me. It'll be better if you're sitting."

She shrugged, smiled at him, and took a seat.

Denny looked around. No Peter. That one waiter was still giving Denny the stink eye. Whatever. Chill, dude.

"This is going to be really weird," said Denny. He knelt alongside Trista. Took the Walk-And-Talk in both hands.

"Is that a Walk-And-Talk?" asked Trista.

Denny laughed.

"Yeah. It's mangled, but it still works."

"Huh." She touched it like she could remember years ago, playing with one herself, or maybe a sliver of memory, a pissed off Monty kicking the toy only hours before getting electrocuted to death.

"There's a tape in here," said Denny. "But it doesn't work."

"Ok."

"And I'm not screwing with you, ok? I shouldn't be here. I'm supposed to be at the game, maybe even rushing Ione's quarterback right about now. This is real. This is really happening. If it wasn't real, I wouldn't be here."

"Denny. What is it?"

Denny took in a long breath and let it out. Closed his eyes and shook his head.

"Go ahead, man, go ahead and tell her."

The only sounds either Trista or he heard were The Chili House patrons returning to their meals and conversations in the wake of Vise Head's terrorist attack.

Denny looked at the Walk-And-Talk.

At Trista. She smiled, but her brow was kind of crinkled up. If things continued along the weird path much longer, she was going to start lowering her expectations of Denny Caldwell, maybe down to the red zone depths where he resided in Janine's estimation anymore.

"Come on." Denny shook the Walk-And-Talk. "Anytime, man. Just go. Speak."

He looked at just the other side of the black iron fence. And then past that out across the street and back towards the fumigated building where the plot had been sprung.

He was looking for the owner of the voice that was supposed to come on out of the Walk-And-Talk and convince Trista she was in danger.

I was trying.

I really was.

But it was hard to talk with a noose around my throat.

54.

The Executioner's wings hadn't made a sound. Not a single solitary flap. Stealth mode, right on up to my doorstep.

Injured, angry, she had slungshot around the street or through the buildings on the streets around Wright, right towards her dirt and worm-pocked target.

I had no idea the Executioner was going to attack until the noose went over my head and then cinched tight, around my neck.

She took me clean up off my feet.

There was gurgling.

Some of it me, but most of it her.

I couldn't see her, but based on the wet wheezing noises, she'd suffered injury back at the cemetery before somehow struggling away from the Bunch skeletons. If any of the Hangmen were going to escape, of course it would be her, the biggest and scariest of them all.

Before it tightened all the way, I got one hand between the noose and my throat. The noose burned. My fingers burned, but they weren't sizzling off into gooey glops of ghost boy. Given my experience inside the ghost box, maybe I'd built up immunity to the Hangmen tactic. Or more realistically, the damages she'd suffered and had barely survived had cropped serious oomph off of her killing stroke.

The Executioner coughed. She coughed and whatever she coughed up came out first in a chunk and then a hot torrent. It landed in my hair and dripped down my forehead and into my eyes. It was liquid and thick and chunky. I wanted to focus on getting the vomit off of me, but during the Executioner's convulsions, the noose had gone slack. I stopped trying to grab her face and fought to get both hands working the noose free.

We were in the middle of the street. A car drove by so close to us my elbow grazed a revolving wheel bolt. We were close enough to The Chili House I could see Denny standing up, Trista behind him, both of them curious about the delay in Denny's big reveal. I couldn't shout. I was being dragged away into final darkness, the goal still within reach.

The Executioner coughed up one more big, black splash of goop. I heard it splatter the asphalt with the percussion of intestines hitting an autopsy scale. Then she grabbed hold of the noose, reinvigorated.

I didn't focus on her ratcheting breath as she pulled harder and harder on the noose. Instead, I heard the tarp snapping against the fumigated building.

The building full of rats.

Rats.

Dead rats.

That's what Denny had said.

I didn't think 'Well, aren't rats kind of sort of the same four-legged family as squirrels? If I could resuscitate Splat, then a rat should be almost no trouble whatsoever.'

Truthfully, I don't know what I thought.

Hangman vomit ran down my face. Dripped off my chin, ran in a stream down to my throat and across my fingers.

A force moving as one.

I visualized it.

First one then two then a torrential downpour of dead rats, the bloated and the flat, gas expelled, twitching and quivering and then igniting back into motion, a herd logic magnifying intelligence and strength, locating the weakest point in the building, a busted window, a thinness in the plywood nailed on over the windows, an open sink door, a pipe waiting for a sink to be attached, I didn't care, I wasn't picky, and neither should my weapon.

That's what it was.

A weapon.

Mine.

It sounded like rainwater convulsing, a flood of it, directed out a drain and onto a tarp.

The Executioner's noose cut into both my hands. Ghost skin was cleaved, and now the noose was almost burning into ghost bone.

There was a skittering sound like something long and thick and fur covered and decorated in beads snaking its way across a floor.

The noose started to burrow into the bones of my right hand.

There was a squeal like a dentist's drill.

I screamed.

And then so did the Executioner.

The force tugging my head back lessened then vanished. It was like I was sprung from a trap. I spurted forward, onto my stomach. I pulled the noose up off of my head. As the heated loop passed the vomit coating my face, I could hear a slight bubbling. I rolled around, gasping for a gulp of what passed as my oxygen, trying to toss away the noose, trying to make the agony go away, all at the same time. The noose had melted into my right hand. I flopped the hand around crazily, trying to get the noose to snap off.

The Executioner screamed again. A driver slammed on their car brakes. They couldn't see her, all they could see was this shuddering mass of rats, swaying back and forth, teeth and claws digging into what looked like nothing but the air.

As the Executioner sagged down beneath the weight of her attackers, she looked like one of those terrible inflatable whip balloons car dealerships had started employing shortly before I'd died. With the right wind, the grinning polyurethane devils would snap low and high and low and high, on an endless undulant repeat some marketing genius had determined would lure in rather than keep consumers away.

Crippled, crushed flat to the street, one skinny arm and claw extended out towards me, the wing flattened on top of her arm. Covering the rest of the wing and all the rest of her body a seething mass of dead rats, gobbling away, following their dark master's bidding.

Both the claws moved at the same time. Weakly. Like the pulse working the wing and the arm ran in a synchronized fashion. They moved, and moved, and moved once more, and then something old and cold washed out from under the pulsing mat of zombified rats. The Executioner's withered evil essence washed over me. The last quantity of heat fled out the noose and then the noose itself crumbled, turned black ash, and vanished.

The driver of the car left his engine running, the headlights illuminating a black mass of rats wide enough to occupy an entire lane of traffic.

He was on his cell phone.

"You wouldn't believe it even if you were here, man," he said.

Another car, coming down Wright Street from the other direction stopped, too. A regular rubbernecker's convention smack-dab downtown Ashton.

They didn't see me get up. Limp across the street, cradling my hands to my body. I had to lie down on the sidewalk. Some red thought glowed in my head, something small and furry and so recently resting asking me for directions. A collective voice. I think I said go back into your darkness. Back where you were before I disturbed you. They seemed thankful, to have been of service, to now receive my mercy.

There was a lot of screaming. People freaking out over something their living brains couldn't quite process adequately.

I thought I heard a skittering, a scampering, a lot of human voices producing epithets, and then I did something I didn't know ghosts could do.

I fainted.

55.

Gunk Mouth, down on her hands and knees, snuffled the ground. She made noises like some predator feasting on a fresh kill. She looked up. Looked around. Licked Game Room dust off her lips. Her teeth and tongue were sticky with ghost ash. More Believers were in the same position, all of them circling a spot in the dust, mimicking her love for licking the ground.

Drift had delivered the crumpled ghost box into the gap. It lay on the ground behind the Believers. It resembled a crushed eggshell. The windows shattered, the structure walls crimped and torn easily as construction paper. Game Room dust clumped up high on the ruins so it looked like a desolate ship anchored on shore to a sea that had evaporated a million years ago.

The mutterings grew fervent. The Believers were praying. They were calling something into their midst. From nothing, the one, the all. They were gymnasts, their faith propelling them into wild spasms, gyrations that would snap the hips and backs of even the healthiest athlete alive.

The ground at the center of the prayer circle began to curl and swirl and twist. It was giving way. Wind swirled up from out the hole. The shattered ghost box went into spasms, twitching, expanding and contracting violently, producing a noise like a screen door trying to send an SOS during a tornado. Chunks of the ground fell away and threatened the Believers, but they didn't budge, refused to acknowledge peril as one and then another, and then all were sucked in and fell and tumbled and disappeared into the turbulence.

I burst up from out of the swirl, big as the Husk, two Husks.

The whirlpool was my mouth.

My eyes were rolled back in my head, my eyes so large as to be mistaken for glaciers.

It was slow motion propulsion like old NASA footage of Apollo rockets abandoning Cape Canaveral for the limitlessness of space. I could see Believers clutching to me. Holding fast like the touch was sensuous, pleasure incomparable.

Swirling out from this King Kong-sized Montgomery Strahl, those worms dumped onto me by Ari Fletcher, they too had been super-sized. Part of me, now like limbs, like arms and legs they were thicker than should have been possible. Altered in other ways. The worms were black, the creases in between rings red as crimson construction paper decorating a homecoming float. Teeth covered the black worms. A million mouths of serrated edges, their location on the worms as random as leaf pattern in the fall.

Every mouth screaming a warning, a preview of coming attractions for every dimension, every timeline, every possibility that had been that was that would be, a decree that all existence and all of death and all gods and all of the one true God would perish in this new age of wrath, the time of no time, the reign of the King of Worms.

56.

I woke up screaming.

"Dude! Dude! Monty!"

Denny yelling. Worried. I was in a car. Denny's car. A rustling sound beside me. I looked. Splat appeared to be dry humping a backseat seat belt.

Through the car windows, I could see trees. Lots of trees. The clear night sky provided moonlight so bright it acted like a spotlight. Denny was driving down a gravel road with the headlights off. We were nowhere near town.

"Are you ok?" asked Denny.

"I'm ok. Nightmare."

"Shit. Ghosts can have nightmares?"

"I guess so. Where are we?"

"The woods," said Denny. "Just so you know, man, we gotta talk quietly. I'm listening for Dawn."

"Dawn? Where is she?"

"Dude, not that loud."

"Sorry. Wait a second."

I had to overcome a natural reluctance to not crawl wherever I wanted in a moving car. You could get hurt, but I was long past getting hurt in a car. Hands sore from struggles in the ghost box and the noose, I jumped and landed in a heap in the front passenger seat. Closer, at least I could talk to Denny through the Walk-And-Talk at a more normal volume.

"I'm up front now, right beside you," I told Denny. "Where's Dawn?"

"With PU. And Trista. They're ahead of us."

"How did I get here?"

"Dawn hopped out of that guy-"

"Vise Head."

"Right. And all kinds of shit--Whoa. Wait a sec." He listened, but nothing from Dawn came out of the Walk-And-Talk. "Ok. Just random noise. So, all kinds of shit was going on on the street next to The Chili House. A bunch of rats came out of that building and cars were stopped on the street, and people were screaming and when the rats went back inside the building people were really screaming. Hold on."

He had to slow down and make sure to make a turn on the road. The moon was bright, but it wasn't like driving with headlights.

After the turn, we could see a pair of taillights up ahead.

"Is that them?" I asked.

"Yep."

"Dawn's with them?"

"Yeah. So, like I was saying, she came back, you know, let Vise Head go off into the wilderness or whatever, saw you knocked out or something, we saw PU and Trista leaving The Chili House, so I guess Dawn grabbed you, boogied, tossed you into my car, and then boogied back, told me to move my ass and get the car and follow, but keep my distance and she'd talk to me, tell me where PU was driving."

The taillights went out of view.

Denny swore and sped up. Gravel tocked off the bottom of the car.

"We're turning off the main road." Dawn's voice. It almost sounded like she was whispering, but she wasn't. It was her distance from us, from the Walk-and-Talk. She was probably yelling.

"You go down a slight dip and make a right turn almost immediately into a big patch of dark. Ok. Now we're stopping. He turned off the engine. He's telling her this is it. This is their destination. They're getting out of the car. Don't park here. Denny. Stop on the main road and then walk into that big patch of darkness."

Denny muttered to himself. A steady, quiet stream of 'ok-ok-ok.'

"What do you have nightmares about?" asked Denny.

"I don't know. They're just nightmares. A jumble of stuff."

Denny was driving grandma-slow. We started going down the dip.

"This is probably good," said Denny. At the bottom of the dip, he stopped the car and turned off the engine.

"This all on me, isn't it?" asked Denny.

"I don't know."

"I mean if Dawn let Vise Head go and you guys can't touch anyone or anything, it's up to me to stop him. Get Trista out of here."

"You could take Splat."

"I don't know. If PU is half the asshole you say he is I don't know how he'd take Splat."

"Denny," I said, "I can do things. If Ellen was right, if this is some kind of burial place where Peter's been doing things, then I can take care of it."

"Ok. I believe you. I guess. You're the dead guy."

I was about to tell him about the skeletons and the Hangmen and how the rats on Wright Street were all my doing when Dawn's voice came back on the Walk-And-Talk.

"If you can hear me, you need to move. Right now. Hustle. Or I don't think this Trista girl is going to be alive much longer."

We hustled.

57.

It was a short walk from the car to the killing ground, the path powered by the brightness of Peter's cell phone screen. Dawn could hear Trista getting a little less taken with the romance of the exercise each time she spoke, each time her date provided a one-word response, Trista's laugh powered by less and less enthusiasm.

Arrived, Peter lit lanterns, one after the next. Some he left at their point of origin, others he moved, setting them on stumps, or hooked over tree branches. Trista told him she was getting cold. She hadn't dressed for going out to the woods. He told her he was hurrying, providing light for what he had in mind. He told her not to worry. He'd take care of her.

Dolls hung on trees. Baby dolls, the kind little girls dressed and placed in diapers. Plastic bodies glowed in the orange-tinted lantern light. They had weird heads. Trista asked. Peter told her he'd explain. There was a mound of dirt stacked up like a pyramid. There wasn't a stack of rocks. That was different from what Ellen Gaines had told Dawn and Monty.

Never patient, one of many character faults her alcoholic mother had nagged about, Dawn got tired waiting for Denny and Monty to put in their appearance.

Dawn passed through Trista. She was trying to get in and stay. It didn't do any good. Vise Head had been a different animal altogether. The Skin Palace featured a certain product line for a reason. She couldn't stay inside the girl, couldn't direct her, make her run, make her attack Peter.

"What's the hole for?" Trista had her arms wrapped one around the other. She wore a half-jacket, specially chosen for a date, all for show, for fashion, no practical application on a chilly October night. She tapped her foot at the hole edge. Knocked some dirt down in the hole.

Peter didn't answer. He stared at her. Dawn had seen men look at women like that before. Before wising up, before giving up and deciding to live at the bottom of a bottle, she'd wasted countless hours seeking the favorable glance of the more possessive and violent gender.

"The hole," said Peter. "It's a surprise."

Trista laughed. A short, uncomfortable laugh.

"It's nice out here. Kind of romantic, but..."

"You know Ellen asked that very same question," said Peter. "About a hole."

"I don't understand."

Peter smiled. A display of teeth not out of the same realm of conscious monstrosity exhibited by Wite-Out.

Although she was pretty sure she'd hate herself in the immediate aftermath, and not only because she had a pretty good idea it wouldn't work, Dawn ran at Peter and jumped into him.

She had to applaud her scientific intuition. Peter provided the exact same jolt she'd gotten in the Ashton High School hallway. Exiting the non-compliant Skin, Dawn windmilled her arms, trying to stay on her feet.

One second, right before entering Peter Uphall, she'd felt fine, and then going into him, out of him, something attacked her. Calling it the flu was the closest comparison she could think of. Decades on since ever suffering the flu, she could still remember getting it, needing bed rest, fluids, open windows to supply fresh air even if it was winter outside.

All the cool, clean air she ever needed was available right here.

"Even with all this light out here, the stars, the lanterns, I want to see brighter light." Peter walked up to Trista. Put his hands on her shoulders.

"I," she took a deep breath. She looked into his eyes. She gave him the benefit of the doubt. Tapped down on the creepy factor of this whole backend of the date night. She couldn't hear Dawn scream.

"What was that you were saying about Ellen?"

"I'll tell you. But first, can I kiss you?"

"Uh-huh."

It started slow and dry and shy and then more deep and probing. Tongues. Teenagers loved using their tongues. Something got going inside Trista. Biological urges supplanted common sense, obliterated that sense she should flee. She pressed her young flesh up against Peter, surged against him, rose up on her heel.

All this romance going on in the woods, and Dawn was screaming for Monty and Denny to hustle for Christ's sake.

The kiss finally ended. Trista giggled. Peter gave her the look lab animals get right before the tests begin.

"That was amazing," said Peter. "The light inside you."

"Jeez, Peter. What is it with you and talking about light?"

A branch snapped. The two teens looked towards the rim of the lantern light. Nothing moved. And then a moment later, Denny stepped out of the dark into lantern supplied orange-hued glow.

"Yeah, PU, you little creep. What is it with you and the light?"

58.

"Trista, we need to be going," said Denny. He started walking towards her.

Peter ran. He ran across the clearing, just a few feet, and knelt down at a bush. Trista called after him. He didn't respond. Too busy.

"What is going on?" asked Trista. "Denny? Why are you here? How are you here? Denny...I mean, did you follow us out here?"

"Let's go." Denny saw the mound of dirt. The hole. Something rolled over in his guts. I could hear the burble. "God, she's buried out here isn't she?"

"Probably," I said.

My voice came out through the Walk-And-Talk.

"Who is that?" Trista had heard me. "Why..." She pointed at the Walk-And-Talk.

"Guys," said Dawn.

I looked towards Dawn. She pointed at Peter.

He hadn't fled. He was still here. Standing now, no longer screwing around with the insides of some bushes.

Ellen had told me about it, but I'd forgotten the gun.

It wasn't some smooth and elegant super-villain move. PU didn't have it on him, in some shoulder holster. He just kept it under a tiny kind of teepee, an assortment of branches tipped up on end.

Maybe Peter practiced the move, defending himself against unexpected guests like bench riding defensive backs outfitted with duct taped and obsolete little kid toys.

Peter grinned. Pointed the weapon at the guests he could see.

"I should have known," said Peter. "I mean, for a second I thought you'd catch a clue, Caldwell. What did you think those dollies were all about? You think I was flirting? You couldn't get it through your thick head that you might not want to continue fucking with me?"

"Peter. Is that a gun?"

He looked at her. Made a face at Trista like she was dumber than dumb. He swung his arm, pointed randomly into the woods and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out. It went right through Dawn. Somewhere off in the near distance a tree took the hit.

"Are you ok?" I asked Dawn. She'd jumped a little. Those residual reactions, even if she was some 30 years dead.

"Who is that?" Trista pointed at the Walk-And-Talk.

Peter took another step towards Denny. Stopped. Leveled the gun right at Denny's face.

"Answer the lady, Caldwell. Who is that? Someone else out here, watching us?"

"Ellen Gaines sent me here, Peter," I said. "She told me about you. About you murdering her."

Peter laughed.

"She told you? How did she do that? That's quite the magic trick."

"You told her Sue was supposed to be first."

"Sue?" Trista shook her head. Tried to back away from all of us. "I don't understand. What does Sue-"

"Shut up!" Peter pointed the gun at her.

"Don't be a pussy, PU," I said. "PU. You remember that name. It's what they called you in kindergarten. Because your feet stink."

"How are you doing this?" Peter glared at Denny. Old PU sounded like he was quickly heading towards the lip of the sanity waterfall.

"This is where the dead are," I said. "You've put so many dead out here. They want to talk to you. I want to talk to you."

"Tell me something else."

"Ellen said when you cut her, you dipped your fingers in the cuts. You licked her blood off your fingers."

Peter laughed. A real fit. If he didn't have the gun, Denny could've taken him down. Even Splat.

"That's amazing," he said. "It's really. You have no idea. I have no idea. How. How you're."

Trista made a noise.

"Peter. I don't like this."

It snapped him out of his tee-heeing fit.

"I don't like it either," said Peter. "Caldwell. Seriously. Whoever is on your phone on speakerphone, they need to come out and join us, right now, or they get to watch me blow your head off. Seriously."

Trista was closing in on hyperventilating. She kept looking back and forth, Peter versus Denny, and then at the mound of dirt. The hole practically right behind her.

Something turned over in her head. For the first time, she looked, really, really looked, at some of the decorations dangling off the trees around the flat.

Saw the plastic baby bodies. The dog heads. The retracted, drying up skin. The bared teeth. The hollowed out eye sockets.

"Peter," she pointed at the decorations. "What are those?"

"Fun," said Peter. "Endless amounts of fun. Now, Caldwell? I want you down on your knees. Right now. Right now, right now."

"You need to let them go," I said. I stepped in-between Peter and Denny. If the gun went off, the bullet would go right through me and into Denny. I didn't want that. It goes without saying that Denny didn't want that either.

"Who are you on the Walk-And-Talk? Mystery voice. Mr. Mystery Voice. Really? Tell me."

"Montgomery Strahl."

He laughed.

"That's a good one. Poor fried and dried Montgomery Strahl. Tell me another one."

"Ellen told me what you did," I said. "You put dirt on her. And rocks. Layer after layer. You watched her until she couldn't breathe. You pissed on her. Pissed all over her face and her head. Put some sort of scrap from a litter box over her throat to shield her, keep the dirt from covering her, getting up her nose and mouth. She said you called it science. Science experiments. She told me you wanted to do the same to Trista."

"How do you know?" Peter looked scared. A little. He couldn't see Dawn walking right up next to him. She didn't look at me. Too busy staring cold thoughts Peter's direction.

"She told me," I said. "The dead talk to each other, Peter. We don't keep secrets from one another. And some of us come back. If we want to. If we have reason to. If we want to come and harvest the soul of some jerk face loser that gets off on killing people and house pets."

To steady his twitching hand, Peter wrapped his left hand around the right. It still pointed at Denny.

"You need to leave. Right now."

"Make me." I was going to say, "Make me. Try and make a dead boy do anything", but I didn't get to go that far with my cold-blooded line of dialogue.

Peter pulled the trigger.

The gun fired.

Trista screamed.

I screamed.

The bullet struck Denny.

59.

"Ow. Man."

Denny sagged. He reached up to the point of the bullet impact, his right shoulder. He took a step backward.

Peter laughed. At Trista. At me, the scratchy, background noise filled voice coming out of the Walk-And-Talk.

"All that screaming. Goodness. What did I tell you?" said Peter. "Someone holding a gun tells you to do something, maybe you should do it."

Denny laughed. The laugh of someone not quite believing what was happening to them. Peter laughed, too. At least for a moment, it was like they were both in on the very same joke.

"Don't help him!" Peter pointed the gun at Trista. "Don't get your hands dirty. Don't get blood on them. On you."

Denny backed away. He didn't know where his feet were taking him. He stumbled on the mound of dirt and cried out, his legs went out from under him, and he sat down on the dirt mound. He landed violently. Cried out and closed his teeth over the shout.

"Look at King Shit," said Peter. "Perched right on his throne. Did you do it in your pants, King Shit? When you got shot? I bet you did. Lemonade and fudge. All the best for King Shit."

Trista looked out of it. Confused. Who wouldn't be? Peter walked up to her. Smoothed hair off her forehead. Took an extra moment to trace the scars around her left eye. Then he tapped her forehead with his left hand, fingertips tap-tap-tapping.

"Don't move. Don't take your light anywhere."

Peter stopped in front of Denny.

"Take that thing off."

"My jacket?"

"No, King Shit, not your jacket. The toy. The Walk-And-Talk. Take it off. Right now."

Denny groaned in pain. He held his right arm out from his torso. He made the left arm do the work of lifting the Walk-And-Talk strap up and over his head. The strap dangled, the toy dangled. He held it out and handed it over to Peter.

Peter looked at Denny and Trista. Shook his head like he was still having trouble believing his simple plan had gotten so stupidly off-track.

"You want to talk to me some more, Mr. Walk-And-Talk? Mr. Montgomery Strahl? Talk to me."

"Let them go," I said.

"Why?"

"Let them go."

"Why?" Peter laughed. Looked around like he still thought we were being spied on by someone sporting binoculars, tucked into the night outside the orange lantern light, maybe hiding out in a tree top.

"I don't want to hurt you, Peter."

"I don't think you can do anything. I think there is an absence here. There's no way you can hurt me. Or do anything to me. Or stop me. If you could, you already would've done it."

"Peter-"

He screamed. He spiked the Walk-And-Talk off the ground. The toy wasn't very bouncy. It hit and stayed rooted to the new landing spot. Peter yelled. Kicked the Walk-And-Talk, and then pointed the gun at it and shot it. The impacts made the toy jerk forward. One, two, three times.

I told Peter to stop.

It didn't matter.

The Walk-And-Talk was dead.

He couldn't hear me anymore.

60.

Peter directed Trista at gunpoint. He made her take one of the rocks and smash the Walk-And-Talk up enough he could verify a cell phone wasn't stored inside it. He made Trista sit down on the ground where he could see her while he made Denny stand and gave him the pat down. Nope. No phone on him. Search complete he made Denny sit on the ground beside Trista.

"How did you do it?" asked Peter.

"Do what?" asked Denny. His teeth chattered. I didn't know how much blood he'd lost. Or it could've just been the shock finally settling in.

"Make the voice come out of that thing."

"I don't know how it works."

"Of course you don't. Who was it? You can tell me that much."

"Monty."

"Montgomery Strahl. Uh-huh. Dead all these years now. Sure." Peter laughed. "You're going to keep saying that, aren't you?"

"He's not alone," said Denny. "A lady's with him. Dawn."

"Who's she?"

"I don't know. She's like Monty."

Peter laughed.

"Two ghosts. Ooh. Spooky Town just got even spookier." Peter pointed the gun at Denny. "Pretty soon the population is going to explode like crazy."

*

Dawn and I had talked while Denny endured Peter's pat down.

"He's going to kill both of them," she said.

"I know."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm already doing it."

She looked at me.

"I've been hearing it. Since we got out here. I think the skeletons and the rats from town...It's like they telegraphed ahead. Now the bodies know. Bodies everywhere they know what I can do. That I can get them out. Give them that jump start."

Dawn looked at me. She looked scared. Ghosts shouldn't look scared.

"Dawn," I said. "There are so many dead things here. Right here. Animals. People. And they want out. They want Peter. They want revenge."

61.

"What's that noise?"

Peter looked around, past Denny and Trista, towards the dark on the outskirts of the lantern light.

Denny grunted and slowly lowered himself to the ground.

Trista reached for him.

Peter pointed the gun at her then lost interest in her. She could comfort Caldwell. They both would soon be dead. He might make them do things to one another before he killed them. Make the meat jump through some hoops before he watched the light show. Caldwell's gunshot wound would only make the experiments more interesting.

He walked towards the dark. He could barely make out all the movement in the bushes.

It wasn't wind.

He used the screen on his phone like a flashlight. He wanted to see. Maybe it was something sick or injured. He'd seen wounded birds. He'd spent an hour once watching a bird with a broken wing. It didn't know what to do saddled in an unfortunate situation. The injured bird had made Peter uncomfortable, mostly because he didn't have a lighter or matches, not even a knife. Later on, he'd congratulated himself, exhibiting the patience to watch and only watch.

Peter looked back at Denny and Trista. They weren't going anywhere. He almost laughed out loud. Denny was like that bird.

Turning back to the bushes, Peter held the phone up, angling the screen. He dropped it. He couldn't help it. What he'd seen didn't make sense.

The teeth and jaws of the murdered dogs clicked, over and over again.

"Are you doing this?" Peter asked Denny.

"No."

"I'll shoot you again. If you're lying to me."

"I'm not."

Peter stretched his arm out. The gun muzzle almost touching the piston-like motion of the dead dog. He recognized it. This one was Thurber. Thurber had belonged to a little old lady on the Uphall's street. Thurber would get out of the house. Snuffle the sidewalk and the lawns, and his tail would whump as he saw people approaching. People loved Thurber. They'd just pick him up and take him back to his house. Thurber's tail had kept whumping even after it had become apparent Peter wasn't taking him back to his house, and his cozy pillow filled bed. Thurber had licked Peter's hand over and over again before Peter started in with the knife.

Peter waited. Timed it. Thurber opened his mouth, and Peter jammed the gun muzzle in-between the opening and closing mouth.

The teeth clicked. The hollowed out eye sockets, the dried out brainpan were all under orders from some strict central operator. Briefly, flaring and going out before he acted on the impulse, Peter wondered what it might feel like to stick his fingers in Thurber's mouth. What would his released blood look like, feel like, sound like?

62.

I could hear them.

The skulls talking bone talk, but also something else.

This was different than my previous exercises animating bones.

Splat had been smack dab right there on the street.

The Bunch family had been in coffins.

The fumigated rats were in hiding in walls inside the old building.

These were buried.

There was earth for them to navigate.

The worms wiggled and softened the ground ahead of the swim strokes of the dead.

It was like a parade. The big interesting floats are towards the rear. But there's got to be build up before you get to get to the big exciting stuff.

The lantern light wasn't bright and all illuminating. In the lantern glow, some movement seemed more like shadow before proving otherwise.

The ground started moving.

Churning.

Like some big invisible potato masher had been retrofit for dirt and was turning the soil over and over again.

"Oh my God."

Trista stood. She brushed her rear end and the backs of her legs.

"Oh my god," said Trista. "Denny. Denny, can you see this?"

Beside me, Dawn whistled.

"That," she said, "is a lot of worms."

63.

Voices weren't talking to me.

We weren't having a consult.

I wasn't learning of the evil done to them. The fear and sadness and confusion they'd felt being butchered by Peter Uphall.

The bones were like a wall socket.

Souls plugged into the bones and powered the bones. At death, the souls departed. Nothing powered the bones.

The bones waited, could wait an eternity and outside of the detrimental processes of time would readily accept the assistance of anything agreeing to turn them back on.

To help them move.

To help them get revenge.

I turned them on.

I gave them a jolt. I gave them more electricity than they'd ever experienced before.

I could hear the dogs, the teeth, clicking in the bushes.

The worms churning up the ground around us.

And I could hear a low hum, insect-like, that no one else could, not even Dawn.

It was the rage.

I don't know how many dogs and cats Peter had buried in this spot.

Ellen was buried out here.

So was at least one other person.

I could sense shadows. Feel them. All these small, four-legged carriers of rage, and then two larger ones, pinging on my radar.

All of them, they'd been dropped far short of their anticipated time upon the planet.

They weren't happy about that.

This was an unexpected pleasure.

Not only could I move them, but he was here. The ender of life.

A tiny would-be god.

They were coming now.

They would like to sit and chat with Peter Uphall.

At least for a moment.

And then they would show him what he didn't know and what they did about life and death.

*

One dead dog pushed up between Trista's feet. Worms burst onto the ground just moments beforehand rode the risen dog's muzzle like party streamers.

Trista screamed. She backed up and watched the worm churned ground prove soft enough for the appearance of skeleton after skeleton. She stepped up onto the dirt mound and stood behind Denny.

A dog skeleton with matted fur wobbled up at Denny's feet. The dog's ribs wore bits of fur like tiny dirt matted rugs.

Dawn asked me, "You're doing this, right?"

I couldn't answer.

I'd lifted up off the ground. Floating boy action again. Not because I was scared of worms or the earth had turned into an ocean for the dead to swim, but the energy surge had lifted me up.

Frozen in place, Peter watched the show.

The dead dogs moved like tomorrow's robot dogs today. Peter throbbed on their radar like a hot pulsing beacon. Strays. Neighborhood dogs. Dogs that had been in backyards minding their own business. A mother cat lumbered amongst the dogs. Kitten skeletons clutched their bone mother. One of the kittens was headless. The kitten skull had come along for the trip to see Peter. The kitten teeth clamped tight onto the mother's sashaying tail.

All those animals moved towards Peter. They'd come for him. Across the gap between life and death. His experiments had come home to roost. He was a Noah of an altogether other kind.

He hadn't moved. He remained standing beside the bushes decked out in chittering-chattering dog head dolls.

Almost at Peter's feet, two more dogs pushed up through the squirming worm covered ground.

They were tiny.

But they weren't dogs.

They were hands.

There was still skin on the bones.

Ellen hadn't been dead all that long.

The natural processes decaying and deteriorating flesh had been at work. All her beauty had been wrecked, assaulted, putrefied. Her face was the color of rotting fruit. A puffed up cheek quivered and deflated with a wet pop. A worm slid out of the oozing wound like a blood-fattened spaghetti noodle abandoning a sieve.

She pulled herself up out of the ground. This was easy. She'd already pushed up through those layers of rock stacked up on top of her. That had been the hard work. Pulling and pushing herself through the topsoil was like swimming for shore. The deep cuts in her collarbone had spread. Skin all but gone, the bones were on display.

She opened her mouth.

Bugs fell out Ellen's mouth like cashews spilling out of a can. The clicking clacking bug shells glittered like ice cubes. Peter screamed.

He pointed the gun at Ellen and fired until the cylinder was spent.

He threw the gun at her. It hit her in the head. Falling, for a moment, it seemed to stick to her hair, once blonde, so blonde it was like spun gold until Peter had pissed on it and on her and covered her in dirt.

"Oh, man," said Denny. At least he could still talk. Blood loss hadn't pulled out all of his spark plugs.

Trista followed Denny's look.

She made a sound. A scream partially sounded before losing all its steam.

The second big shadow I'd sensed. The second large shape swimming amongst the smaller.

Denny had said Soup Fletcher had gotten into it with Peter. And then Soup went missing.

A smear of curly hair stuck to the ooze of flesh left in a thin layer across Soup's head. He must've been planted out here earlier than Ellen. Before killing him, Peter must have made Soup strip everything off. Soup was naked.

His eyeballs were gone. Each step he took made skin fall off. He brushed against a bush, barely glanced off of it, and skin from his collarbone all the way down to his knee sloughed off like a zipper was drawn down smooth and effortlessly. The insides barely retained by the rotting skin did an anvil chorus onto the ground. Plop. Plop. Plop. It sounded like feet going through snow changed into slop come thaw.

"If I could barf," said Dawn, "I would be barfing right now."

64.

If I could have stopped them, I would have.

At least, I like to think so.

Peter ran.

He tried to run.

Dog bones crunched under Peter's weight, but the truth of it was he'd kidnapped, abducted, tortured, and killed too many innocent creatures. Those resuscitated bones slowed him down. They got in his way.

Ellen grabbed him.

Soup grabbed him.

They dragged him down and then the dogs and the cat and even all those kittens, they got in on it, too.

Trista put her hands over her ears. Denny's jaw dropped. He watched. He couldn't turn away. The lantern light showed a lot of it. And some of it you couldn't see. But you could hear it. There's no way you couldn't hear what was happening to Peter. And how he asked for help. For someone or anyone to please help him. He didn't know why this was happening to him.

It didn't take long, but soon enough, Peter wasn't using words. Words weren't possible for his situation. Words couldn't form after something bit your tongue in half.

Soon enough, all you could hear were bones. The skeletons on the ground enthralled by their wetwork. The dog heads in the trees.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Although most of what they did to him they did with their mouths they didn't eat him.

Nobody ate him. These weren't zombies. These were vehicles that had been put away far before the date of planned obsolescence. They were unhappy about that.

I'd provided an opportunity for them to act upon their frustrations.

When they were done, they backed away from Peter, what was left of him. Maybe it was shadows, maybe it was Peter's silhouette, the lantern light wasn't providing proof positive, but the something on the ground moved, a little if not a lot. Whatever it was it didn't move for very long.

I'd plugged them in. After they moved around long enough and started in on their end goal, I'd been able to pay more and more attention to what they intended to do. What they'd done. I wasn't receiving or generating all that energy like I had been only minutes prior. I'd floated on back down to the ground.

Now, the bones looked at me.

I could see pieces of PU dripping off of the skeletons. Not just blood, but gore.

Dawn was beside me.

"What do you do now? With them?"

"I don't know."

"Ask."

A moment later I said, "I did."

"You did?"

"It's like what you were telling me when Ellen disappeared from the Game Room. It was her moment. She saw it, no one else did. With them, the dogs, Ellen, I hear them. It's not words. It's a feeling."

"You asked them a feeling?"

"I don't know. I did it. I don't know what I did. I've never done any of this stuff before. I don't have a word for it."

Soup looked up at the sky. Ellen looked toward Trista and Denny. I had to tell myself they were nothing more than bones. Ellen, Soup, all the animals, their actual selves, their souls, those had already exited the Flip Side, the Skin Palace, whatever you wanted to call it, but they'd been gone for awhile now.

"They want to rest, don't they?" asked Dawn.

"They do," I said.

They didn't want to go back in the ground. Not here. Even if Peter was dead now, what he'd done to them out here marred this area.

Someone else would have to move them.

Adults would come out here, cops, reporters, and maybe, some of the animal owners, someone who could identify remains.

That was for tomorrow. That was somebody else's job.

I pulled the plug.

Ellen and Soup collapsed. So did the animals. The dog heads in the bushes stopped chattering.

At the same time, at least two of the lanterns went dead. It got quiet out on the burial spot, the slaying spot, Denny settling more onto the ground, the sleeves of the letterman jacket creaking sounded like the loudest sound in the world.

In the dimness, visible exhales of breath escaped Denny and Trista. They clamped closer together just in case the extinguished lanterns indicated some new threat. After a moment, they relaxed. Trista put her hand on Denny's left shoulder. Then she sunk down, behind him, put her chin down on her hands resting on his shoulder. He reached up and patted her hand.

Denny sighed.

"I think we can go now," he said. "Do you want to go?"

Staring over his shoulder, towards the ocean of bones surrounding their now dead maker, she nodded.

65.

Back at Denny's car, Trista held the front passenger door open for Denny. He got in, slowly. Once he was seated - more like he slumped almost on the brink of laying down flat on his side - she walked around the front bumper and got in the driver seat, took the keys from Denny, and started the engine.

"Don't look in the backseat," said Denny. "I forgot to tell you that."

She looked in the backseat. Moonlight poured into the backseat. She couldn't help but see good old Splat.

Looking away from Splat, out the windshield, Trista turned the car engine off.

"Was that really Monty? On the Walk-And-Talk?"

"Yes. He came back to save you. He saw Ellen he said."

"Where?"

"Where the ghosts go."

"Is he here right now?"

"I don't know. Honest. I haven't seen him. The only way I could talk to him was on the Walk-And-Talk. Hear him, I mean."

"That was it? The only way?"

"Yeah."

Trista opened the driver side door and got out of the car.

"I'll be back. Right back. I promise."

She slammed the door and ran off the main road and back down the slope.

"Dawn."

"I got you."

Dawn moved through her door, pulling me out right behind her. I ran after Trista. Sprinting down the slope, I saw her run past Peter's car. I ran faster.

*

Nothing had moved in the short time since we'd abandoned Peter's burial spot.

The clear night sky benefitted Trista immensely. Practically everything was in a spotlight, but all she was looking for was one Walk-And-Talk, heavily used, kicked, shot, probably now and forever out of reach of the healing touch of duct tape.

She picked it up by the strap. Pieces rattled inside. Once she popped it into the proper space and smoothed the duct tape down, the duct taped cassette cover held in place. A miracle. She smoothed down the duct tape, on the sides, around the back. She knelt and picked up stray plastic bits and stuffed them in her jacket pocket.

"Can you hear me?" I asked.

Again, louder, I shouted it.

Trista looked at the Walk-And-Talk.

Somewhere in the woods, very far off, a lone wolf howled.

For a moment, Trista stood there. Frozen. Exhaling. Alive.

The moment passed.

"Shit. Denny," said Trista. She turned and ran, stopped, and looked back at the bones. At Ellen. Then she turned and put on a burst of speed.

I ran behind her.

She was still faster than I could ever be.

Trista was cranking Denny's car key, getting the engine turned over by the time I was running to catch my ride.

Dawn leaned out through the rear passenger side door, her hands outstretched, smiling, like she liked the fact the boy with the ultimate skeleton key ever still needed her help.

66.

Denny was right. Ione wiped the floor with the Ashton Bears.

Social media being what it was, 911 calls going out and being tracked and reported, the Ashton football coach was told what had happened with one of his players. Some point Friday night Coach Tudor called Denny personally, and spoke to Denny's mom and dad, telling them how proud he was that someone as courageous and tenacious as Denny was on the team. He joked about maybe seeing around Denny's part in stopping Peter from killing Trista and not suspending Denny from next week's game against Richland.

That was the story. Peter the Killer. Trista realized while driving back to town that they were going to have to concoct something to tell parents and cops.

Denny was shot.

Too many people knew she'd been out on a date with Peter.

The questions would only mount if there weren't answers.

She went over it, talking it out to herself while she drove to the hospital, hoping that tapping Denny to play a kind of teenaged private eye didn't sound outside the realm of possibility.

Denny told her it sounded great. Anything he didn't know the answer to, any part of the hacked together plot he couldn't recall, he'd just tell an adult to ask Trista. The trauma of being shot would be his blame mistress.

To explain Peter's current state, his final state, they'd say he'd fallen and hit his head after showing off all of his prized possessions. There were wolves out in the woods. Once Peter was down, they pounced, tore into Peter, and Trista had to get Denny out of the woods and get the gunshot looked at.

Bullshit through and through, but the magnitude of PU's evil was going to be the star of the show, now and forever. Denny and Trista were nothing but bit players.

*

At the hospital, Denny got good drugs and went away from us quickly. They wanted to do a full check-up on Trista. Her freaked out Mom and Dad left her hospital room and so did Dawn and I. Tabby wasn't freaked out. She was very matter of fact about Trista not having very good taste in boys.

Dawn had been quiet.

I didn't know if she was just being respectful or was tired or with the Hangmen more or less put down was still waiting for some other shoe to drop, her experience being a Skin coming around to bite her.

"What do you want to do, kid?" she finally asked.

"I keep worrying about the crypt."

"The Hangmen?"

"No. The skeletons. I need to turn them off. Unplug them. The rats...That already happened. Everyone out at PU's...But the crypt."

"You can't do it from here?"

"No."

"You sure?"

I tried. It was like trying to remember whether or not you'd closed a bedroom window while you were at school. And then trying to double-check their status by way of some ghostly stand-in. I was seeing them or hearing them but in a vague way.

"Yeah," I said. "I can't quite pull it off from here."

"We can do that. You know the way back to the cemetery?"

She walked ahead of me, down a long and empty hospital corridor, and ghosted through a swinging door.

"From here? Yeah. It's pretty close I think. What?"

Dawn was giving me a look.

"What?"

"I didn't pull you through the door."

"So?"

She flicked her finger off my forehead and then pointed back the way we'd come.

The swinging door kept moving in my wake.

I'd pushed it out of my way.

A reflex. Something performed out of habit.

I could touch it.

I went back to it and pushed it.

It moved.

Dawn clapped her hands and hopped up and down.

An old man sitting in a chair in the waiting area kept looking at the door, probably wondering why the hospital maintenance staff didn't do something about the draft.

*

I had to make sure.

A water fountain was right inside the doors in the corridor we'd just come down.

I punched it.

Water spurted out.

I found a bulletin board. I pulled out pushpins. I picked up fallen sheets of paper and put them back up on the board and pushed the pushpins back on through the paper.

A hospital bathroom was like a playground. Water running in every faucet. Pink ooze spurted out the soap dispensers like slugs straining for the sink drain. Paper towels dispensed like a long white tongue down to the tile floor. Every toilet in the stalls flushing, every stall door moving in my wake.

"Are you done yet?" Dawn got bored with it.

And I really truly started cleaning up the disarray, but before I could finish a man walked into the bathroom and looked around, wide-eyed, taking in the mayhem.

I let the string of wadded up paper towels flop onto the floor and exited, shrugging at Dawn's look, pregnant with utter older more mature ghost judgment.

67.

I already had a checklist. A plan. Now that I could touch things, and move things, it altered.

*

I didn't follow through with one plan.

I imagined stopping back at my house, what had been my house, Dawn and I sneaking in, and I'd go to the kitchen and the refrigerator, and under the spill of moonlight I'd move the Word Poetry around.

Languid. Sausage. Pole.

Put that eternal phrase right in the spot where my dad and I put it.

And then I would creep around the house.

Check out in the dark what had been my room and was soon to be someone else's room.

I would watch my parents sleep. Creepy, I know. Unsettling for me, too. They both snored like crazy.

Ultimately, it was work I would undo. I knew I'd herd those three refrigerator magnets back into the dust-coated pack.

I didn't want to remind them of me. Or confuse them more likely, have Mom accuse Dad of sentimentality or stupidly upsetting her when there was no need for it.

She already thought of their dead kid every day. There were still more than enough reminders. All those boys she saw in the high school hallways, Denny included, enjoying an age I'd never reach.

*

More immediately was a concern still in Denny's car, parked at the hospital.

Splat.

He was still in the backseat. At least if the Caldwell's hadn't driven their son's car from the hospital back to the house and somewhere in the process looked in the backseat.

Theoretically, Splat was a complete bad ass. Anything Denny's parents could throw at him, he could handle. Unless Tumor got thrown into the mix. Tumor might prove impervious to the Back To The Future III Kid move.

The car was still in the parking lot. The doors were locked. Dawn ghosted into the car and pulled me in behind her. Splat looked like a gangsta like always. Always chill, his dead squirrel credo.

I opened the rear passenger door and let him out then made sure the door was locked and shut it. I looked around, but no one living was around. No one had seen the car door moving all by itself.

Dawn thought it a stupid idea, only inviting discovery, but I picked Splat up. Carried him around a corner into shadows. Nothing but the executive treatment for Splat.

I set him down in a little pine tree festooned plot that was part of the hospital grounds, decorated with park benches and designated cigarette trash cans, a smoker's oasis. The ground gave way to hillside and plenty of bushes and trees. Stomping grounds if Splat so chose them.

"Are we setting him free?" asked Dawn.

"I don't know."

Splat seemed occupied, staring down at pine needles like a scientist absorbed in a discovery.

"What then?" asked Dawn.

"I don't know," I said. "He attacked Cobb."

"Splat doesn't fuck around."

"But do you think Splat would be safe? Cobb's still around," I said. "And, you know. Her."

"The demon child?"

Perplexia.

"Don't even say her name," said Dawn. "That one would even give our friends at the Skin Palace the heebie-jeebies."

"What about that?"

"What?"

"The Skin Palace," I said. "They've got your soul, right? You need to get it back. Before you can't. I mean, unless all the Hangmen are taken care of. Did we? Did we get all of them?"

"I don't have the full roster list, Monty," said Dawn. "But I guess we got all the ones with big brass ones big enough to come over here."

"And when we go back?"

"I don't know."

"Can't you call Wite-Out? Any Wite-Out? Wrap up business on the Flip Side?"

"I think it just kind of takes care of itself," said Dawn.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means we're good business because we take care of the customers."

I snapped to full attention. So did Dawn.

Right there in the ring of trees, one of the Skin Palace scouts had joined us.

Wite-Out smiled. There was something different about it this time.

Gizmo would make a sheepish grin if the Quinn family called him out on being a bad dog. Eating from an unattended people-plate. Chewing up a pair of Trista's old tennis shoes.

Sheepish.

That was Wite-Out's grin. Teeth and gums on full display. For once the creature even seemed disinterested in making eye contact.

"Miss," said Wite-Out, "please put out your hand."

"Why?" asked Dawn.

"Your soul-check, of course."

Dawn gave him a slit-eyed look pregnant with distrust.

"You want it back, don't you? Your soul?"

"Watch this guy, Monty" Dawn said. "If he pulls a fast one..."

I nodded. I gave Wite-Out my own slit-eyed look like Batman working it, making some common thug piss his pants in fear.

"No fast ones, I promise," said Wite-Out. "This is all part of our sterling business practice. Guaranteed."

Wite-Out put his hand under Dawn's. Something wet and wormlike wiggled out of her palm and dropped into Wite-Out's hand.

Dawn caught my look.

"It doesn't hurt," she said. "It's a little gross feeling."

"It's fine. Fiiiiiine. There we go," said Wite-Out. "Simple Simon."

"Don't you want to put it back up your nose?" asked Dawn.

For a moment, the usual angry-creepy look crept back into Wite-Out's face. And then it vanished.

"Ohhhhhh, you old so-and-so." Wite-Out laughed and shoved the worm into a jacket pocket. He pulled something out of the same pocket.

"And now," said Wite-Out, "I believe this is yours."

He just threw it at her like someone that had balled up a piece of printer paper and now chucked it into a waiting wastepaper basket. The soul was about that big. That white.

It phased into her like a ghost going through a wall. Dawn did a full-body twitch.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"I'm fine," said Dawn. "It was just a little cold. Just for a moment."

"No problems though?" asked Wite-Out. "We do provide a limited warranty on all soul returns. For a small fee."

"Shut up," said Dawn. "You know, I don't get it. Why are you coming to me?"

"You're a customer," said Wite-Out. "We cherish our customers. And you're done with the Skin. We've been watching. We always watch. And once we-"

"The Hangmen," I said.

Both Dawn and Wite-Out looked at me.

"They saw what happened to the Hangmen," I said. "What the bones did. What I did. Now they're scared. Wite-Out. Wite-Outs. They think maybe getting on our good side gives them leverage against the Hangmen. The ones still alive."

Wite-Out's sheepish grin was joined by a shrug of the shoulders communicating 'guilty as charged.'

"You said you knew why I floated," I said. "When I was stuck in Trista's door. When you were trying to sign me up. You said you knew why. So tell me, why did I go up and join the Floaters for all those years?"

The grin vanished. When Wite-Out wasn't showing all those teeth, they pushed out on the white skin of the skull and it all looked fair to bursting like a hamster had pouched one tasty treat too many.

"I don't know, but let me look into that. Just take a notey-wotey." Wite-Out cupped his left hand and scribbled into the palm with his right index finger. Scribbling, he said, "It could be the data stream. A big, old nasty gap in it currently. Sometimes it fluctuates for reasons outside our control. Solar flares. Drift between the Flip Side and the Game Room. The Husk showing up out of nowhere. You know. The ush-u-al."

"Bullshit," said Dawn. "Answer the kid."

The note writing into the palm stopped cold. Wite-Out's eyes ticked back and forth wildly like he was a cartoon character. Then the creature made a noise like a kid suddenly divining the answer the teacher and the entire classroom is waiting to hear.

"I gotta take this call!" Wite-Out put his hand up to the side of his head. Nothing in his hand. No ears to speak of. "You don't say! I'm on it!" He covered the hand holding the invisible phone. "Big deal going down, kiddos. Sorry to run. Don't fret, Monty. The second I know something concrete about those floats, you'll be in the know!"

Wite-Out vanished.

A branch crackled. A hospital worker walked towards the smoker oasis. She lit up before she even made it to her destination. Before she got within spotting distance of Splat, I picked him up and put him on the side of a tree, out of range of any human eyes.

"Well," said Dawn, "that was fun."

"You got it back," I said. "That's good."

"I don't trust those buttholes," said Dawn. "He said that? He promised he could tell you something about it? About when you were a Floater?"

I nodded.

"It could've just been a fib," said Dawn. "You know that, right? They'll say anything."

On the horizon line, the sky was just beginning to turn the barest bit blue as the globe spun and dipped towards the sun. There were still stars in the sky and the moon so distinct it looked like Photoshop, a real more real than real could get. I could touch things now. I could move the dead. If it was dead, the moon, maybe it wasn't out of my reach.

I thought of my vision, the mega-sized Montgomery Strahl, festooned with worms big as semi-trucks. That Montgomery Strahl could animate the moon. That Montgomery Strahl could bring it down out of the sky and hand it off to anyone, a pretty present, big as you please.

The Bunch family skeletons. I had to get to them. They were on the checklist same as Splat. But so was one other thing.

Maybe not more important than unplugging bones called into service and returning them to rest, but for me, more immediate, more important.

Dawn said she'd wait. Splat looked indifferent both to the ear scritch I gave him and my warning to stay out of sight of the lady smoking and looking at her phone.

They watched me head back towards the hospital, Splat's head moving in the normal spastic tic, the first light in the east igniting the red Cobb Vaughn mustache fibers dried to his muzzle. They looked like Fourth of July sparklers, painting patterns in the black-going-blue light.

I asked the Bunch family for forgiveness, patience. I couldn't tell if they could hear me. For all I knew they were still enjoying their feast.

68.

Denny was down for the count. They'd slipped him off to dreamland.

The Caldwell and the Quinn families were still talking to each other in one of the corridors. Trying to make sense of Friday night. Tabby was down for the count, covered in her mom's jacket, asleep in a waiting room chair.

Trista was alone in her hospital room. She'd changed back into her dress. She sat on the edge of the bed in the hospital room. She kept looking at the door out to the hall like she could kind of guess what damning information doctors and police officers and her parents had swapped around out there.

She slid off the bed and walked to the chair beside the bed. Her cell phone and the Walk-And-Talk were both under her jacket. She left the jacket and the phone on the chair.

She shook the battered toy. That loose piece that had been rattling earlier had multiplied. It sounded like a jigsaw puzzle box.

"Monty. Can you hear me? Crap. I don't even know if I need this to talk to you. Maybe you can hear me. If you can, I definitely can't hear you."

She glared at the Walk-And-Talk. Ran her hand through her hair and sighed.

She sat back down on the edge of the bed and slowly peeled the duct tape off most of the Walk-And-Talk. When she turned the toy onto its side plastic bits fell out and onto her lap. She laughed. Shook her head. Set the Walk-And-Talk down towards the foot of the bed and dumped the freshly fallen plastic pieces on top of what was now pretty much just a shell.

"This isn't real," she said. "This isn't real."

Looking at the ceiling, her eyes were wet. She made a face and dammed the tears before they could betray her completely. Right after she produced a deep sigh something happened.

She tensed up.

She stood up from the bed.

Gasped.

Looked around, putting a hand on top of her head where she'd felt something just a moment ago.

Slowly, she removed her hand off of her head.

She nibbled at the flesh around her thumbnail, her eyes swiveling back and forth, like when she was thinking super-hard about something.

The next time she felt something on top of her head, she tensed up and started to reach up, and then stopped.

The motion kept going.

It felt like a hand or a brain sucker, squeezing through all the curly hair on her scalp.

She whispered something.

I stopped moving my hand.

Waited.

Then Trista said it louder.

"Can't read what isn't there. Right? Right? Monty? You can't read what isn't there."

I squeezed.

She laughed.

And she reached up like maybe, just maybe, she might be able to feel a hand and then find the boy connected to it.

THE END

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Stillman is the author of _The Lipless Gods_ , _Lucid_ , and _Exit The Skin Palace_.

He recently completed a sequel to _Exit The Skin Palace_ titled _Surfer On The Drift_.

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BOOKS

The Lipless Gods

Lucid
