All Died Out Read online

  “I have no idea, and I have no idea.” Becker sat in the laundry room with Mumford on his lap. The poor dog was shaking now. While he’d seemed okay earlier, he now looked like a hot mess rolled in anxiety pie. It simultaneously made her angry and scared.

  Mrs. Hatchett came in with a dog biscuit, and he calmed down enough to eat it with his normal doggy smile on his face.

  “We need ideas, because I’m not going to be held hostage in my house by a book, and I can’t get rid of the thing because we need it for so many reasons.”

  “What about asking Great-Grandpa to help again? He seems able to do things that no one else can.” Chester jumped into the conversation from his post at the hallway.

  Mel had locked down the book to the desk with a bungee cord and hoped that would keep anything more from happening. Chester had not been sure that would be enough, so he had set himself up to keep watch.

  “I’m game,” Patrick Becker said, standing at his great-grandson’s shoulder. Mel often wondered what he heard and what he did with all his time in the pocket watch Becker kept on his person at all times. He was different from any other ghost she’d ever met, and it was both awesome and nerve-inducing.

  “What can you do, though, and have you ever come up against anything like this before?” Mel asked.

  “Young lady, I haven’t come up against over half the things I’ve had to deal with since we came to live with you, but that hasn’t stopped us from not only figuring each one out but also dealing with it before anything truly bad or irreversible happened. We just need to get in there and dive down into what could be going on. No fear and no foul.”

  “No foul…” Mel trailed off as an idea hit her. “What about that oven mitt that came in last month? The one with the chicken on it? Dad said it was owned by some kind of priestess and was used to handle objects that are cursed. Could we use that? Maybe it is a curse. Maybe something Dad brought with him is cursed and not just attached to a ghost.”

  It made a kind of sense, though her father had always been good at making sure he didn’t bring bad things to the junkyard. There was a first time for everything, though, and with that many new objects it could have been easy to not see all the individual pieces.

  “Chester, can you get my dad? And Becker, can you get the mitt? Let’s leave Mumford here, now that he’s not shaking. Mrs. Hatchett, will you watch him?”

  “Of course. He’ll be fine. I can go get more treats if he needs them.” At that word, Mumford whined and then smiled, and then whined and smiled, the cheeky little puppy.

  “Okay, we’re set, then. Let’s go see what we can find.”

  Ten minutes later, everyone was convened in the living room with the book. Mel kept the bungee cord on for another moment, just to make sure everyone was situated. It wouldn’t do to have anything go awry with all these people and spirits in the same space.

  “Dad, thoughts?” She was not used to asking her dad about anything, but maybe the time had come to mend what she wasn’t even sure was broken, though she knew something needed attention.

  He looked startled at first, then crossed his arms over his chest and paced in front of the book. “Seems to me we have a couple of issues. One, if you open the book, it does nasty things. Two, if you touch the book, it can zap you if you’re a ghost but not if you’re a human. Though you didn’t touch it for too long, so we might not want to trust that. Three, entries are missing from the book. And four, the dog doesn’t like the thing, even though there’s never been a problem before.”

  Mel didn’t want to hustle him along now that he was here and participating, but she wanted to get things done and get moving.

  Her dad cut into her thoughts before she could come up with a good way to tell him to hurry up without offending him.

  “I say we try the oven mitt and see what happens. I’ll be the one to do it, though, so don’t get any stupid ideas, Mel.”

  She’d already reached for the mitt, so she couldn’t say he was wrong. But it was her junkyard, and it was her responsibility. He shouldn’t be the one taking the risk.

  “You have far more to lose than me,” he said, and her damn eyes stung. Because he didn’t mind losing more time with her? Or because he wanted to be with her mom? She had no doubt that her father would attach to something and hang around, but she didn’t want ghosts for both of her parents.

  “Get that look off your face. Nothing’s going to happen to me. You can count on that. I’m too stodgy and hardheaded to let some stupid book kill me in my own house.”

  He grabbed up the mitt and tentatively touched the book. Nothing happened, so he flipped the book open to the page where Mel had started listing all the ghosts yesterday. All the names had reappeared, so that was good, but they were in different colors and that meant they were out somewhere off the property.

  “Every single one is out? How is that possible?” she asked, just as her father turned a page back and then another and another, only to find that every single ghost except Mrs. Hatchett, Penny, and Chester were outside the junkyard.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Darren said, right before he toppled over onto the floor like a chess piece under the hand of an angry child.

  “Oh, my God!” Penny screamed.

  Chester crouched down next to Darren and then did that weird wavering thing from yesterday before he disappeared altogether. When Mel looked at the book, his name was in red.

  What more could go… No, she wasn’t even going to think that, because there was a whole lot more that could go wrong, and none of it she wanted to experience.

  A ghostly laugh behind her had her whipping around to come face to face with someone she’d never seen before.

  His hair was slicked back, and his moustache reminded her of Yosemite Sam from the Looney Toons from long ago.

  “Only four left, Mel Hargrove. You might want to return what you stole of mine, or you’re running out of people and things that are dear to you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she yelled. “I’ve stolen nothing from you, and I want my stuff back, and my people back, right this instant!”

  “Big words from such an insignificant woman. You have twenty-four hours before it’s all gone. Find it and give it back, or you’re the last thing I’m going to take.”

  And he puffed out of the room like he’d never been there. She and Becker stared at each other with their mouths hanging wide open. Mel bolted for the front door first. If all of those ghosts were out in the world, it meant that all of their receptacles should be gone, too.

  And, holy cow, she had never seen the junkyard so incredibly clean. Nothing sat out on the acres of grounds that normally held cars and tubs and tires and birdbaths. Before she could stop herself, she ran back into the house and found that many of her pieces of furniture were gone and the only thing left in her kitchen other than appliances were the ghost cookie jar and Mrs. Hatchett’s cookie jar. Whipping open drawers showed her that spatulas were gone, orange peelers, potato peelers—everything with someone attached to it was gone.

  “Holy crap” was not a strong-enough phrase, but she didn’t know what else to say, and she could do nothing but fall into Becker’s arms when he wrapped them around her.

  “What am I going to do? Everything is gone, and I don’t know where it went. How am I going to get everything back when I don’t even know where to start?”

  The phone in the kitchen rang. It was an old one that hung on the wall and was robin’s-egg blue. She stared at it for a moment, not sure if she could handle it if it was the jerk ghost again, trying to get her to give back whatever he thought was his. The phone kept ringing, and then her cell phone started up. After another moment, Becker’s phone also started ringing and text messages pinged like dropping icicles in a snowstorm.

  Yanking the phone from its cradle, she snarled. “What?”

  “Uh, Mel, sorry to disturb you,” Arlan Copeland said, his voice shaking, “but I
, uh, think you might want to come pick up some junk that I found in my yard. The missus doesn’t think it’s funny that you brought back that yard thing that looks like her big fanny bent over gardening.”

  “I do not have a big fanny, you nincompoop!” Mel heard his wife yell in the background.

  “Of course not, dear. Sorry, dear.” He cleared his throat. “She, um, wasn’t pleased when I brought it home as a joke the first time, and now she’s very angry that it’s here a second time. Any chance you might want to pick it back up? I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t really want it, if that’s okay with you.”

  How had it gotten back there? She remembered the piece. It was a big, flat sheet of plywood painted to look like just a woman’s big behind covered in bloomers and a red polka-dot dress. And it was big, really big. Kathy Copeland had made Arlan sleep on the couch for three days until Mel had been able to pick it up. And it was a good thing she had, because there had been a ghost attached to it. One who was pleasant enough and Mel hardly ever saw. She glanced at the book, and that ghost’s name was in red.

  “I’ll be right over, Arlan. Please apologize to your wife. I didn’t mean to make her mad. We had a mix-up in some shipments, and I guess the delivery guy got things wrong. I’ll be right over. Sorry again.”

  She hung up and pulled the ringing cell phone to her chest. Okay, this wasn’t so bad. If all the pieces from the junkyard had been returned to their previous owners, then it should be easy enough to gather them all back up. She and Becker could each go out in one of the junkyard’s trucks and just start gathering things up.

  But then she groaned. Was she going to have to go to Missouri to pick up the antique mirror that had hung in the front hall where she constantly fluffed her permed bangs? The one her father had bought two years ago from an antique store? Or every state in the continental United States where he’d traveled for the last sixteen years? And what about the things that her grandfather had received throughout his years here? Some had come from houses that didn’t even exist anymore. At least the book could tell her where they had come from, so she’d have that to work with.

  But this was going to take months, and she had less than twenty-four hours to get it all back and return whatever this madman ghost thought she had stolen.

  Nothing to it. Right?

  So very wrong.

  Chapter Eight

  “Becker, can you get the guys from the game room upstairs and see if we can offload all the things in the moving trucks to the secured garage and then use the trucks to go collect things?” She gave him a rundown of what had happened. He whistled several times and groaned several times, but in the end, he went to talk to the guys.

  She’d have to make a map of everyone in town and list what had come from their houses. In the meantime, she changed her voicemail to say she was aware of incorrect deliveries and would be sending someone along to pick up the things.

  That didn’t answer the big question of what the bastard ghost thought she had stolen of his, but at least it would get them moving in the right direction. Her head hurt and her stomach hurt, and her arms and back were going to hurt when this was all done. But manual labor should get her in a thinking mood, and maybe, as they went about their business, something would come to her. Something that she didn’t even have an inkling of yet.

  “The guys are ready to go.” Becker came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her middle. “This is all going to be okay. Do you know where you want to send them? Do we have a list?”

  Drawing a map and telling them what was there was going to take too much time. She needed a better plan…and then one came to her. “Actually, you and I are going to go in the truck with the guys and once one is full we’ll wait for the next to come. While we’re working in town, the other guys can be offloading and getting things put back where they belong. I have no idea how long this is going to take, but it could be days or even months.”

  His big, calming hands rested lightly on her shoulders, and then he gave her a squeeze. “We’ll do it. No matter what, we’ll get this done. Don’t worry. In the meantime, your dad is breathing well and situated in the living room. Your mom said he’s just sleeping.”

  “How can she know that?”

  “She said it’s because their souls are tied together, so she would be the one person to know.”

  Their souls were tied together? She’d never heard of that and didn’t know what it meant, but if her mother said it was going to be okay, then it was going to be okay. That was all there was to it.

  “Okay, let’s get this done.”

  They left Mumford in the house but took the book with them. Mel didn’t know if the book had ever been off the property. Maybe it was time to figure out what happened when it was displaced.

  Hopping into the first truck, she waited for Becker to join her, then turned to Derek, the driver. “We’re going to start at one end of town and go down each street. I’m sure most people have given me something over the years, and I should be able to ask the book about each street, so I’m thinking we’ll be good to go. I’ll worry about the other things from other states later.” In the meantime, she’d also be trying to figure out what she might have that another ghost wanted, and how to get it back to him.

  All within the next twenty-four hours. Heaven help her.

  They rumbled down the long driveway with Derek driving the now-empty truck. Mel mentally mapped out a best way to get this done, so she was lost in her own thoughts when both Derek and Becker drew in deep breaths.

  “What?” she said, snapping her head up. “What? Oh, shit.”

  All the way across the two-lane country road was over half the junkyard. Pipes and tires, birdbaths and jewelry boxes, couches and hairbrushes stretched for at least a block each way and completely covered the surface of the entire road. There was no way around them. They weren’t going anywhere until things were moved.

  Mel used her cell phone to call back to the junkyard. “Guys, bring the trucks up. We have some hauling to do right here.”

  Jumping out of the truck, she approached the piles of objects and chose a jewelry box. It would be light, and if she couldn’t get it back through the spell cast around the perimeter of the junkyard, it would be better to know now than when they tried to use the trucks to move things.

  Surprisingly, the thing went right with her over the invisible line without a single hesitation. It almost seemed too easy, but then, honestly, she was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, not one this size and with this much work involved.

  “Okay, Derek, can you pull out into the grass and turn the truck around so we can get everything into the back? Then we’ll have you pull around the other guys so they can start loading up while you unload down there. Just put everything in. Don’t worry about making it fit or making it pretty. We have a deadline and we’re going to meet it.”

  She heard a faint ghostly chuckle on the wind, but instead of scaring her, it galvanized her. Her father was right—they were smart. And Becker’s great-grandfather was right—they’d done everything they had to do so far. Nothing had beat them, and this jerk wasn’t going to beat them this time, either. She’d get it all done, and then she’d go after the things in town. And when that was done she’d have to see what the evil man might want in order to get him to leave. Not that she’d give it to him, but at least then she’d have a bargaining tool to cage him with.

  It was a sound plan. Why didn’t she feel like they were going to beat the clock, though?

  ****

  “I’m exhausted,” Mel said to no one and nothing in particular. Which was good because no one was listening since they were all working to get things into the third truck in an effort to at least clean up the road to town. Three guys were going to stay behind and work on the other side of the road while Derek, Mel, and Becker went into town. With all the stuff here, though, it shouldn’t take as long. It really looked like only the things she’d gotten from town were missing. And as each item p
assed over the threshold at the mailbox, the name in the book went from red to black, thank goodness. There were still a ton of items to go, but the way to town was nearly cleared, at least enough for them to get by.

  “We’re ready.” Becker walked up the road toward Mel, his jeans dirty, his face sweaty, and a huge grin at his mouth. “We’re working faster, and this is easier than I thought it would be. We should get ready to move out to town.”

  “Do you want to shower first?”

  “Not really. I’m probably going to get dirty again, no matter what, so I might as well stay dirty now and just add another layer instead of starting all over again.”

  Mel laughed. “Fine by me. Should we go check on everyone before we head out?”

  “I’m thinking yes. I wanted to make sure your dad is still okay before we leave.”

  Mel’s stomach rolled. Please let him be okay. She had less than twenty hours now to get this all sorted out, and while she could laugh about dirt, underneath it all she was an emotional mess about all of this.

  Her world was threatened, and she was alternately terrified and ready to kick some ass and take some names. Right now was the ass-kicking part, so she hopped into the truck and waited for Becker to come back while she made a game plan with Derek.

  Soon enough, Becker was back and nodded to her. She was going to trust him that the nod meant everything was okay, and they were good to go, because she just couldn’t think about the alternative. Either way, this had to get done.

  Opening the book on her lap, she looked for the street on the farthest side of town, then stabbed it with her finger. “Show me everyone in that vicinity,” she demanded in a harsh voice. She didn’t have time for the book to play coy or decide not to cooperate. The time for being nice and accommodating was way over.

  Derek pulled around the remaining items in the road and rumbled toward town. The book flipped pages and Mel took the glasses out of the neck of her mesh shirt. She could do this. She would do this. And then life would go back to normal. Or at least as normal as it ever was.