Chapter 15: Introductions are Made

It was five in the morning, and Dan was awake. He had already eaten, gotten dressed, and listened to the news. The newscaster had been thrilled that it was Friday and that there looked to be little snow in the forecast for the weekend.

Dan hadn’t been impressed with anything. His mind was weighed down with thoughts of Elbridge Copp’s murder, and the betrayal of Diane Wright.

As he put on his winter coat, Eli watched him from the doorway, the ghost’s remaining eye focused on him. The dead child appeared concerned, and Dan understood why. It was dark outside still. The sun hadn’t even tinged the horizon, and there was a new ghost wandering the streets of Anger.

And Dan was going for a walk.

“Should you really do this, Dan?” It was the third time Eli had asked the question, and Dan offered a small nod.

“I need the fresh air,” he replied. “I need to be able to think. The delivery is coming today, and we’ll have to get going pretty quickly on our defenses. You know that they’ll try to get us out of the house sooner rather than later.”

“I know. Do you want me to walk with you?”

Dan smiled sadly at the dead boy. “If you want to follow me, I would like that. I just, I just really don’t want to talk right now, if that’s okay?”

Eli smiled and nodded.

Silence fell over them, and Dan pulled on his hat, wrapped a scarf around his face, and then tugged on a pair of mittens as he left the house. Several fresh inches of snow had fallen during the night, and it muffled the sound of his boots. When he reached the sidewalk, he turned left toward the center of town and lowered his head against the chill in the air. When he glanced up a moment later, Dan was surprised to see the stars in the sky. There had been so many storms and such foul weather that he had forgotten to even look for them.

The sight of the sky reminded him of his children, and his stomach twisted painfully with worry. I need to call Letty so we can go over the materials for court. Am I going to keep it together if I have to talk to the judge? What if I royally screw up when I’m there? Will they take the kids away from me until they’re old enough to make their own decisions about the situation?

His shoulders slumped as he walked forward. He became accustomed to the cold as his body warmed from the exertion, and soon he was less than a quarter-mile from downtown. He stopped to consider what next to do and heard Eli whisper behind him.

“She’s here.”

Dan’s thoughts leaped to Diane, and he turned around, fear and longing warring within him.

He didn’t see her. Instead, Dan found himself staring at a dead woman. She was a nurse, and in the dim light cast by the streetlamps, her age was indeterminable. Her stethoscope hung around her neck, and she smiled at him.

Why is she letting me see her? Dan tightened his hands into fists, his fear easing as he felt the iron hidden in the mittens.

As if reading his mind, the ghost commented, “I was going to stay hidden, but your little friend pointed me out. Kind of useless to sneak up on you if someone's ratting on me. Anyway, how do you have your own ghost? You don’t look like anything special.”

“He’s my friend.”

“Go figure.” She smiled again, and the sight was disturbing. There was no joy or mirth in her eyes. No emotion he could see at all. “I don’t do ‘friends’. They’re just a lot of baggage, and you never know when they’re going to be trouble. Now, acquaintances, they can be useful. I had a lot of them when I was alive. Kind of a quirky town you've got. Lots of ghosts. Do you like ghosts?"

“Depends.”

Dan didn’t like the fact that she stood between himself and his home. He didn’t know if she understood that, and he didn’t want her to figure it out.

“On what?”

“The ghost,” he answered.

“Do you ever let a ghost touch you?” She tried to sound appealing, but it failed. Her voice was more akin to nails on a chalkboard than anything seductive.

“No.”

The dead woman quirked an eyebrow at him. “Want me to?”

“I think I’d like to finish my walk and not worry about you.”

She snorted and shook her head. “Not going to happen. Not a lot of entertainment for a ghost around here. Come on. I want to talk some more.”

“I don’t.”

He glanced to the left and saw Eli a few feet from him. The dead boy nodded, and Dan started to walk toward the dead woman.

“Yeah, come to me,” she laughed. “Let’s do this.”

She held out her arms, as though she would embrace him, and when he was close enough, she tried to grab hold of him, her fingers curved into hooks.