Every Death You Take Read online

  “I invited her in because I didn’t feel right leaving her.”

  Weird, but okay. “And what about her anchor?”

  “I have no idea. I tried to talk to her after that first invitation. Yet no matter what I said and what volume I used, she never answered. She either doesn’t understand me, or she’s simply not speaking. I believe it’s the first. She hasn’t moved, either.”

  They both turned to look at the woman, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, but she just stared back, her eyes wide with fright. If Mel had been asked right there on the spot, she would have guessed that the woman had just died but didn’t yet realize it.

  Dougal and Mel looked back at each other. Dougal was the first to speak. “If I must, I can ask her to go away. I see no object for her to attach to, but many of the rules of this world are unfamiliar to me.”

  Mel stared at the new ghost, who again didn’t even seem to blink. “No, let me think about it. We need to leave before Mrs. F wonders what I’m doing in the car at the curb talking to myself. Let’s see how far this gal can go. We can always come back for her if she gets whisked out. Try to talk to her and see if you can get anything.”

  Mel put the car in gear and waved to Mrs. F, who had twitched the curtain at the front bay window.

  Half way through town, the woman was still sitting in the back of the car. Dougal had gone back to join her and was talking quietly, but she just stared forward like she couldn’t hear a word he said.

  She didn’t fade or flash out once they hit the outskirts of town and was still as formed as a ghost could be when Mel turned into the winding driveway that would eventually take them into Hargrove’s Junkyard.

  Mel had to make a decision now before they went farther. “Okay, ma’am.” She pulled the car to a full stop at the junkyard’s entrance. Turning in her seat, she looked for any signs of movement but found the ghost still staring straight ahead, unseeing, unhearing. “I’m sorry to jump in, and I hope I’m not going to totally frighten you, but this is a special junkyard. We have a bunch of people just like you. I want to warn you because you might be able to see them all, and I don’t want you to be overwhelmed or afraid. We’ll take you right into the house, where we can hopefully help you.”

  With no idea what she could actually do, Mel knew for certain she would at least try to help. If any of her ideas didn’t work, she’d shoot off some messages to her circle of internet friends. Maybe, as a hive mind, they could figure this out.

  Pulling up as close to the house as possible, Mel opened the door and had Dougal coax the woman out of the car. She looked almost catatonic, her eyes staring off into a distance Mel couldn’t see. She didn’t flinch at all when Mumford tried to jump through her, and she actually floated through the wall next to the door instead of coming in the door itself.

  Okay, there was something really funky going on here. Mel would bet her best set of dangly earrings that she was not going to like what that something was.

  ****

  After a frustrating two hours, Mel had to take a breather or lose her cool. She hadn’t gotten anything out of the woman and had run out of tricks. The message she’d popped off to her friends had yielded no results, either. Dammit. Where could she go from here?

  As if in answer to her silent question, Mel’s mother popped back into the room with a familiar if not-usually-seen ghost. Mel had seen him only a handful of times because he usually kept to himself in the displaced kitchen sinks at the back of the junkyard.

  “Mikey might be able to help,” her mother said.

  “Are you sure?” He wasn’t always the easiest of ghosts.

  “I am.”

  “Well, I guess it can’t hurt.” Mel would try to reserve judgment, because at this point she’d tried everything she could think of. They’d brought in Chester, Bernie, Horace, and any other person she could think of. She’d tried other women, men, even a child, but nothing seemed to break the ghost’s concentrated stare at some point off in the distance.

  Maybe because Mikey was a recluse he would be able to break through to her like no one and nothing else. It certainly couldn’t be worse than it was, at this point. Mel had no idea what to do with her, no name to put in the book, no idea what her receptacle was, and had never dealt with this before. She’d texted a few more friends for additional ideas, but no one had gotten back to her yet.

  “Have you tried to touch her?” Mikey asked from a mouth full of broken and dirty teeth. His hair was long and scraggly and his beard permanently out of control. His fingernails left a lot to be desired, as did his clothes. Mel had always thought that maybe he’d never been properly buried but had instead been dropped into a dirt grave somewhere, a place where no one could find him.

  “I haven’t, Mikey. I wasn’t sure what to do. Thank you for coming in for this.”

  “Course. Course. I gonna see what I can do, but Mikey might not be able to do much, you understand?”

  Mel nodded. “Of course, I understand and appreciate the effort, no matter the outcome.” Mel’s mom gave her a thumbs up. If Mikey was ever around, you were gentle. He might have looked rough and unkempt, but he was one of the sweetest souls Mel had ever met. He could be difficult at times, but even then he was kind of quiet.

  “Ma’am,” he said, approaching the woman ghost. She hung about five inches off the floor and everything about her drooped—her hair, her arms, her mouth, her shoulders. Even her nose seemed to droop.

  After a moment, though, she turned her head toward his voice. Slowly, but still turning for the first time in almost three hours. With her mom sitting next to her on the couch, Mel watched the exchange. The woman’s eyes didn’t change, but the position of her head did. It was at least a small win.

  “Yeah, so I’m wondering if you know that you are no longer in your body,” Mikey said. He laid a hand on hers. In life he had probably been a sunburned brown, and the woman looked to be very fair, but once they died they could fade into gray unless they chose to color themselves.

  Mikey chose to stay gray, but Mel didn’t think the woman had made a choice. It seemed as if she was almost sleeping with her eyes open, but the dead didn’t sleep.

  “So, uh, yeah. If you want to know more about what’s going on, we could talk some. I’m Mikey, just Mikey. I might have had a last name, but I don’t remember it. Never seemed important.” He doffed the trucker hat on his head, ran a hand through his unkempt hair, and then put the cap back on. “Anyway, you gotta have some questions, right?”

  “What’s going on?” Mel asked her mother in a low whisper.

  “I think Mikey thinks she doesn’t know she’s dead. I was of the same mind, and that’s why I got him. He didn’t know he was dead for quite some time when your grandfather brought him here. It was painful to watch him come to the realization that he didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there.”

  “Mikey.” The woman apparition said it like she was trying the word out in her mouth, like there were marbles in there, and she was trying to speak around them.

  “Yup, that’s me. Did someone hurt you?”

  She opened her mouth. Mel thought she was going to answer the question. Instead, she screamed at the top of lungs that no longer held air.

  Chapter Five

  “What the hell was that?” Mel asked her mother in the kitchen. They’d backed in there after the screaming had stopped, which only happened when Mikey had laid his hand on the woman’s arm gently, telling her several times that it was going to be okay.

  “That was an awakening, my love.” Peggy Hargrove floated from the counter to the dishwasher and back to the counter. Like pacing on one of those hover boards. “Most people have them, unless they are aware they’ve died. Although it doesn’t often take that long for it to come on. I wonder what happened for her to still be catatonic.”

  Mel was wondering the same thing, along with what they were going to do with her. She should ask her name, for the register, but was afraid to interrupt the peaceful quiet that
had come over the house. Every once in a while it was punctuated by Mikey’s low voice. That was it, though. No other voices in the whole place. It was as if everyone was holding their breath. Dougal and Mumford had retreated upstairs to give the two some privacy as the woman went through whatever this awakening meant.

  “Is there anything else involved in these things? And why have I never heard of an awakening?”

  Mom stopped long enough to brush a hand over Mel’s shoulder. “Because you didn’t need to know. And most of the spirits who come to you are already attached to something. They’ve been awake for quite some time by then.”

  Still, Mel would have liked to know what to expect, and this felt like something important in the world she inhabited. “What else don’t I need to know? Just out of curiosity.”

  Her mom laughed. “Sweetie, there are things even I don’t know. There’s a whole other universe that we only dip our toes into, and you have more access than most other people in the world. Be satisfied with that, and love what you do. I’m here if you need anything and will be as long as you need me.”

  A flutter of panic went through Mel. Would her mom leave and go to eternity if she thought Mel didn’t need her anymore? The thought alone had fear crawling up her neck.

  “Before you go getting yourself into a tizzy, I’m not going anywhere. I just meant that I’m here for the long haul.”

  Mel’s heart resumed its normal pace. “Oh, phew! I about had a heart attack, and then your services wouldn’t be needed except to help me in my awakening from the dead.”

  Laughter greeted her statement. “Not going to happen any time soon. You have too much to do and too many new things to experience for the world to lose you now.”

  Her mom reached out a hand, and Mel touched just a finger to her shade. The connection was there, she felt it in her soul, and that was good.

  “So what do we do with this spirit?” Mel asked. “Do I have to attach her to something? Will she attach herself? I wish I had any idea at all about what I was doing.”

  Mel’s mom had been right; she did usually get them months, sometimes years, after they’d been dead. At that point, they simply needed a resting place for their spirits to roam around without fear of being caught or whipped into a frenzy. The junkyard provided that sanctuary—for her, too.

  “So does this mean I have a dead body in town?” The thought had just occurred to Mel. Not a good one to entertain.

  Shrugging her shoulders, Mom folded her arms against her floral shirt. “I didn’t want to alarm you, but that is a distinct possibility. You might want to check the obits to see if anyone matching her description has passed away.”

  Mel looked in the woman’s direction, realizing that maybe she wasn’t quite a woman yet. Her face had an older look to it, but the body looked younger, and the stance was more “young woman” than Mel had originally thought.

  After scouring the internet and the local funeral home main pages, she had found nothing. Could she be so fresh that she didn’t have an obit yet? Could she be dead and not yet found?

  Becker walked in just as Mel had that thought, and she ran to him.

  “Keep your coat on. We need to run out and look for something.” She didn’t tell him what just yet, since she wasn’t even sure herself, and she didn’t know if she wanted to be the one to find anyone dead.

  “What do we need to look for?” He held onto her hands for a moment and forced her to slow down. “Just take a breath. You look like you’re about to go off the deep end. Breathe.”

  She took a couple of quick ones.

  “No, slower, calm down. Unless there’s a house fire, we have a moment. And if there is a house fire, then you should be calling the fire station and not running out to find it yourself.”

  Despite the fact that she wanted to book it right out into the late afternoon and start searching, what he said made sense. She needed to breathe and calm down and not be reactive. It was just that lately things had been going awry around here, with ghosts trying to drain the life force from others, and a dog and his ghost showing up who were being followed by a crazy woman. Now she was primed so that anything out of the norm felt like a panic.

  “Okay.” She took another breath. “So we have a new ghost.” She ran down the afternoon for him and watched his face turn from skepticism to disbelief.

  “Awakening? And no one told you about this?”

  “Apparently, no one felt I needed to know about it because it doesn’t normally come into play.”

  “Now, that’s not fair, Melanie.” Mom poked out of her horn. “It just never occurred to me to share it with you because it didn’t have to do with what your job is, housing the ghosts.”

  Mel turned to the Victrola with her hands on her hips. “I get that, Mom, but I feel like my job description has grown over the last few months. I don’t remember you and Dad ever having to deal with rogue ghosts and people coming after you wanting to take over your life.”

  “This is true, and it is a different world out there. But it wasn’t deliberate. We knew what all we were putting in your lap and didn’t want to give you more than you could handle. I’m sorry.” And she looked it, her eyes pleading for understanding.

  Mel could do nothing but give it to her. “It’s okay, Mom. It really is. But I think it’s something I need to learn more about.” She turned back to Becker. “And the reason I was running out the door is that I’m afraid there’s a new body somewhere in town, and this girl, or woman, is floating free because she’s recently deceased.”

  “I’m dead?” The ghost in question zoomed up to Mel with a look of horror on her face. “How can I be dead? I was just playing hopscotch with the kids I babysit, and then I went home for dinner.”

  Chapter Six

  The sun was setting when Becker and Mel made their way back toward Mrs. F’s house. Mel had no idea what she thought she might find, but she did have the new ghost in the back seat, just in case anything looked familiar to her. Dougal had come along, too, and the dog. She and Becker were going to have to get a bigger car eventually, just to haul everyone around.

  It was amazing, she thought as they travelled the road, to think of how her life was a year ago compared to now. She’d hardly ever left the junkyard. Had very little to do with anyone unless it involved ghost business, even if they were unaware it involved ghost business. And she went grocery shopping. That had been the extent of her life outside the house, then. She did have an extensive network of friends online, but it was a lot different from interacting with people in real time and having those people or ghosts ride in cars with you. These days, even the ghosts were hanging out more in the house and around the porch, coming in to say hi and ask how her day was. And it was all because of Becker.

  Not that they hadn’t interacted with her before, but then it was business and glancing contact. Now it was like they were her family. And she loved it. They’d fought through some bad guys together, and together they’d figure this one out for the girl who looked lonely and lost.

  “Does anything look familiar?” Mel asked from the passenger seat of her small car.

  The ghost hadn’t yet been able to remember her name, but that could come. It was part of the awakening, from what Mel had finally been told. Sometimes they remembered everything, and sometimes they only remembered bits and pieces. They’d see what bits and pieces might come back to this one.

  Driving the long way around town still didn’t take much time, and nothing was sparking for her. The ghost looked avidly at everything, but nothing new came out. They pulled up in front of Mrs. F’s house to idle for a few moments, since that was where the ghost had first appeared. Mel hoped something would jar a memory.

  Mrs. F flicked the curtain to see who was out there, as Mel had expected her to.

  Nothing had come of any of the obits online. No missing person reports or runaways over the last month that had sounded like the girl in the back seat. It did break Mel’s heart to see how many children were curre
ntly missing, though. She wondered if she might be able to tap the ghosts to see about following the invisible trails of sadness and anxiety of the children, just to see if they could reunite some of them. If they could find them…

  That would have to wait until after they found this one, and either put her to rest or let her go. It would be her choice, as always. However, until they found out who she was, Mel wouldn’t be able to do much. Names meant something in the other world. It bound you and gave you definition to have a name, no matter what you called yourself. But the girl hadn’t been able to come up with more than a few fragments of who she used to be.

  They’d finally sat there long enough to have Mrs. F come out in her housecoat. She waved from the small porch.

  “Can I help you with something?” she called out. “I’m not dressed to come into the yard, but if I can help you find something, I’ll try.”

  The ghost girl in the back squeaked, then squeaked again. Maybe they needed to keep Mrs. F talking. Was there something here that could bring it all back for the ghost? Still, there was a part of Mel that felt bad for forcing it on her.

  “We were just looking around. Showing Becker some of the places I like to visit, that kind of thing. I especially like your house because of how wonderfully it’s done inside and out.”

  “Thank you, honey. That’s so nice to hear. And thank you for coming over this afternoon. I felt so much freer after you left. And your adorable dog! He made me smile, and he wasn’t naughty at all.”

  The squeaking escalated, and apparently Mel was the only one alive who could hear it. Until she looked at Becker and realized he was also flinching. She tried to halt her own discomfort. Reaching into the back seat, she petted Mumford to cover the fact she was also talking to ghosts. “Dougal, can you help her? I don’t know what to do, and I don’t want to hurt her. Is she in distress?”

  The girl’s face was a mask of concentration even with the small squeaks from her mouth.

  “I don’t think she’s in pain, but something seems to be going on,” Dougal answered.