Ghoul Friend Page 5

  It didn’t happen often, even when the web series was at its peak, but when I did get recognized, it was a heady mixture of pride, ego, and awkwardness that always led me to say something ridiculous. “Yes, I suppose so!”

  Julian slowly turned his head to look at me. “You suppose you’re Oscar Fellowes, or suppose he’ll be jiggered?”

  “Er… both?”

  Ezra snorted. “Hello, we hate to impose but we’re having car trouble and had to pull off the road onto your drive. Is it alright if we wait on your property for AAA to send a tow truck? They said it’d be a few hours—”

  “Nope.” The man shook his head, his lips pressed into a thin line. “Nope, that ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Oh. Well…” Ezra turned a helpless look on me and then to Julian. “I guess we’ll push it back onto the road?”

  “Oh, no! I didn’t mean that! I meant it’s not gonna be a few hours. You’ll be lucky if they show up before tomorrow. The only tow driver in the county’s currently on my back porch, three sheets to the wind, and they’re not gonna get one of the fellas from next town over out here, not this time of night.” He made a dismissive gesture at the protest Julian had started to voice and shooed us towards the tent like we were lost baby ducks. “We’re having a bit of a get-together to celebrate MeMaw’s birthday—it ain’t till Sunday but there’s church for most folks, and besides, we can’t have any beer or liquor out here on a Sunday, so we figured we’d have a to-do tonight after the Summer Fest was wrapped up in town.”

  I found myself inexorably chivied towards the pop-up pavilion with its small swarm of red-faced, sweaty people setting up what looked to be a truly excessive amount of food and drinks. “Is there a hotel in town, then?” Julian asked, slipping to stand next to me as our apparent host stopped just inside the pavilion. “We really don’t want to impose,” he added, plastering on a smile I knew very well to be false. It not only didn’t reach his eyes, it barely reached his lips and the bit it did touch didn’t so much curve upwards as grimace and bear teeth.

  Our host blinked, drawing back just a little. “The only hotel in town is the old Budding Motor Court but it closed in 1984 after the killin’. Next town over has a chain motel and a bed-and-breakfast but good luck getting a room tonight—it’s the Klobasnek and Kolache Fest weekend and that place is wall to wall tourists.” He scratched at the back of his neck, looking a little shy when he added, “We got plenty of room here, fellas. Not just in the house but the whole bunkhouse out back. We keep it ready for guests ever since MeMaw’s sister Jackie got widowed and drops in unannounced.” He shrugged again. “Besides, even if AAA got one of the guys from next town over out here, you still need a place to stay.”

  I groaned softly. “He’s right,” I murmured to Julian. “We really do. Even if CeCe got your message and is already on her way, she’s not getting here for hours and that’d still leave us with nowhere to sleep for the night.”

  Julian nodded, jaw tight. Turning to our host, he straightened his spin and said, “We don’t want to impose on your family gathering, but we’d be very grateful for a place to stay for the night. If you could just point us towards this bunkhouse, we’ll stay out of your way and be on our way once we have a ride in the morning.”

  The man laughed. “Hell, you won’t be in the way. We’re about to have most of Budding over here. Besides, all three of y’all look hungry. C’mon and grab yourselves a plate before the vultures descend. And you,” he jabbed a finger in my direction, “you give the old man a wide berth, okay? And maybe Enoch—he’s the scrawny one, you’ll know him when you see him—too.”

  “Any particular reason?” I asked. Yancy’s scowl lingered a few seconds longer before he sank into a sigh and another tight-lipped expression. He glanced past us towards the hustle and bustle inside the pavilion and sad, his voice much lower than before, “Both of them are very… keen… about ghosts. Enoch, he’s my brother and only sixteen so, you know how kids can be.” He made a see-saw motion with one hand. “Sometimes he’s playing it cool, being a little adult, the next he’s going gaga over his celebrity crush. Er, that would be you,” he added in a loud whisper. “He’s really into your show and the whole… thing you’ve got going on.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Kids, right?”

  Julian’s brows were arching upwards, and Ezra had one of his shit-eating grins plastered firmly on his face. “I have an idea, yes,” I ground out, my face heating.

  “But Pops… he’s… well. He’s not your target demographic,” he chuckled. “But he’d talk your ear off all night and once he gets going…” he trailed off. “Well. Let’s get y’all something to eat and find a nice place to hunker down a bit while the crowds get here.”

  Like his words were some sort of summoning charm, a van rumbled up the drive and stopped just past the pavilion. A lithe blonde popped out of the passenger seat and shouted, “Hey, Yancy! You know y’all have some broken-down car just inside the gate? You need to call Sheriff Patrick and get that thing towed. Drug dealers—”

  “It’s fine,” Yancy called back, his smile in place but words a bit strained. “Let me help you with that, Myrna.” He turned back to us one more time. “Grab whatever you’d like. Beers are in the cooler, sodas in the one next to that, the big carafes are sweet tea and, for the heathens, unsweetened. Make yourselves comfortable—I can show y’all back to the bunkhouse once we get everything underway, alright?” He didn’t wait for an answer, jogging over to help the blonde—Myrna, apparently—wrestle a small flock of children in some sort of scout uniforms from the van while she balanced a large, disposable cake pan in her arms and shouted at someone named TJ to, ‘Put that back, oh my Lord, you don’t know where that’s been!’

  Ezra had his camera out again and was panning around the tent. “Don’t worry, I’ll blur out faces,” he assured us. “Oooooh, are those ribs? Yes!” He was off like a shot, narrating as he headed for the platters of barbecue.

  “Is this Texas hospitality, or is this cannibal farmers?” I whispered as Julian and I followed Ezra at a more sedate pace, well aware of the looks we were attracting. While Ezra blended in in his t-shirt and jeans, I had gone for a pair of cigarette trousers and a ruffled lawn shirt, both in black, and a black waistcoat embroidered with roses and hummingbirds.

  Yes, it was a bit warm for the evening but, in all fairness, I’d fully expected to be spending the night in a nice, mid-range hotel in the Austin suburbs. Somewhere with air conditioning and take away pizza.

  Not standing in line behind Ezra with Julian beside me, both of us flexing fingers and making aborted moves to hold hands while we queued for plates of barbecue and some sort of starchy looking cubes covered in what seemed to be mayonnaise. “What is that?” I muttered, nodding at the starchy stuff. “Potatoes and…”

  “Potato salad. I know for a fact you have that in England so don’t try to play the stranger in a strange land thing with me, Fellowes,” he murmured back, a tiny smile relaxing the corners of his mouth finally.

  “Yes, we have potato salad. I’ve had it when Ezra and I go ‘round the pub near his parents’ place. But that,” I pointed subtly at the bowl, “is white and gluey-looking and has… oh my God, are those raisins?”

  Julian wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know whether to hope it’s raisins or bugs, to be honest. Potato salad should never have mustard or raisins involved.”

  I clicked my tongue, taking a step forward as Ezra scooted down the line of serving trays, talking to the camera held in one hand as he scooped food onto his paper plate with the other. “This relationship is over before we ever get it off the ground. Mayonnaise in potato salad…” I shook my head. “You pervert.” A soft, feminine laugh brushed past my ears and I paused.

  “Mustard in potato salad is the perversion,” Julian pontificated. “Especially yellow mustard. That shade of yellow is not found in nature and the entire thing tastes like vinegar and bad decisions.” He reached past me to pick up half a deviled egg, gave it a sniff, and p
ut it back on the tray. “This is hardly the best temperature for easily spoiled foods. I wonder if I can get them to bring out a tray and some ice…”

  The soft laugh came again, and I knew we weren’t alone. Sometimes, it was difficult to pick up on subtle spirits, especially if there were a lot of living bodies around. Especially lately. This one, whomever she was, was not a strong presence but almost a wisp of memory. Enough substance left to react, but not quite enough to have a decent conversation with. At least that was the impression I was getting. She brushed against me then, a purposeful contact, and a wave of prickly awareness shivered through me and settled in my belly. It filled me with a buzzing sort of excitement, and I tried to reach out, to snag that connection and open to it, but she remained ephemeral, a bare wisp of smoke in the air. I must have made some sound or something because Julian paused mid-word and fixed me with an oddly stuffed expression. “Are you, ah, having a moment?”

  I made a face. “You make it sound like this is a hygiene commercial, Julian. If you’re asking am I communicating, not really. There’s someone here but they’re not reaching out and I don’t feel they need me to. They’re just… amused.” I hesitated, then added in a lower voice, “And I can’t make it work, not like usual. It’s like my signal’s jammed.” Julian didn’t say anything else, just looked at me for a long, quiet moment before nodding and returning his attention to the buffet line. A knot in my belly I thought I’d gotten rid of tightened and grew cold. The food on my plate, not exactly appetizing to me in the first place, suddenly looked nauseating. I shuffled behind Julian and Ezra as they made their way down the line, people starting to fall into queue behind us as more and more guests arrived. Ezra spotted a relatively empty corner with some hay bales arranged as a sort of seating area, so we made our way over, gingerly settling on the prickly bales with our plates and drinks as the noise levels around us ratcheted upwards. Julian offered me a tight, small smile, but sat next to me so our legs touched knee to hip. Ezra gave me a look, the one that said alright? I nodded before turning my attention onto my food.

  Yancy found us after another hour or so, the pavilion now packed to the gills and people spilling out across the lawn. The sun had finally set fully and strings of colorful plastic lanterns in shapes ranging from something barrel-like to teddy bears and stars and even a few repurposed winter holiday lights—snowflakes and elves—were strung between the pavilion and the house, some between tree branches. Someone had turned on some music, a mix of country and classic rock, and a few people had made a dance floor out of the space between the serving table and the drinks table. Most of the food had been demolished already, but more was apparently on the way. An older man, one of those people with a face that could be anywhere between forty and seventy, held court at the far end of the pavilion, down near the cooker. We’d finished our plates and had sat in awkward silence while the party grew around us. “Y’all get enough to eat?” Yancy boomed as he drew closer. Ezra nodded, tucking that damn camera away again, and Julian offered a polite smile.

  “It was delicious, Mr. Carstairs. Thank you so much for your hospitality. I hate to impose further but—”

  “Bunkhouse,” Yancy chuckled. “I got ya. Y’all got any luggage?”

  “In the car,” I said. “Ezra and I can go back and grab our overnight bags,” I began, but Julian shook his head.

  “I’ve got the keys. Let me head down. I’ll be just a few minutes.”

  Yancy murmured assent. “I’ll keep you fellas entertained till he gets back then?” he offered as Julian gave my arm a squeeze and ducked out of the pavilion.

  “Oh, you don’t need to bother with keeping us entertained,” I protested. “We don’t want to keep you from your actual guests.”

  “You’re not—you’re guests too now,” he reminded us. A frisson of awareness trickled down the back of my neck—someone was watching. Someone dead, rather. It wasn’t a feeling I got often, the intense awareness that someone on the Other Side was observing me.

  Watching. Waiting. Not just a curious shade or someone who had a request or message. It felt… intelligent, for lack of a better word. Calculating.

  Predatory.

  I glanced at Ezra who had, while not the same measure of ability as I had, some touch of it. He was empathic when it came to spirits and would often pick up on the stronger traces of emotions that came with certain ghosts. He was staring at me with a furrowed brow and parted lips, as if he’d been caught out mid-thought and everything had gone offline for a moment. “Do you,” he began. I nodded once, sharply.

  I grabbed at it with both hands, trying to seize the sensation again, but like before, it was too thin, too much smoke to hold on to. The muffled feeling slid back into place and that knot in my gut tightened.

  Yancy looked between the two of us, his jovial politeness fading fast. In hushed, apprehensive tones, he asked, “Are you, um. Are you doing your thing right now?” He leaned in closer. “Is he talking to you? I was wonderin’ if he’d show up tonight, on account of the party and all…”

  “Who?” I asked, pitching my voice low and quiet. “Who might show up?”

  “Mason Albright,” another voice chimed in. The older man—the one who had been holding court, and I assumed was the one Yancy referred to as Pops—was making his way across the uneven ground towards us, the click-clomp of his walker with each step suddenly loud in the inexplicably quiet pavilion. “He’s talking about Mason Albright. The man’s been dead damn near a hundred years, but he does love a good party.” His smile was slow and wide, damn near malicious though. “Especially one of ours. He’s always lookin’ to crash ‘em. Can’t get over the fact this place used to be his before my great-granddady.” He sucked on his teeth, then added in a low, gravelly tone, “Story was, my great-granddad killed Albright in some sort of an argument over the cows.”

  Yancy’s face was a concerning shade of red. “Pops, that was just a rumor.” He turned a pleading, apologetic gaze to us. “People like drama, you know? Nobody got murdered. They inherited it fair and square.”

  Mr. Carstairs chuckled softly. “I think you boys should stick around. I have some questions for y’all.”

  Chapter 5

  Julian

  Once I was away from the strings of lights and the glow of the ranch house’s front porch, it was disconcertingly dark. There was just enough ambient light to see the pale track of the drive, so I kept myself towards the middle—away from the drainage ditches dug to either side of the expanse—and started my trudge towards the car. A few trucks and an older minivan were parked along the side of the drive, but most people had been directed by a young, skinny boy who I assumed to be Enoch, based on Yancy’s description, to park in an empty pasture just past the house. This far out from the house, though, there was no one else. No other cars, no teenager directing traffic, just the smell of wood smoke and roasting meat on the slight breeze and the distant sound of the party going on and occasional animal rustling in the dry grass of the fields beside me.

  And the unnerving feeling of not alone.

  The human brain lives to fuck with itself—it loves to find patterns in random occurrences. It’s why people see Jesus in a slice of bread or hear voices in ocean waves. Brains crave order and will try to make things fit into neat boxes. See a random variation in the color of your jam on toast? Your brain says that’s a map of Canada complete with provincial capitals marked in seeds. Hear whispers in the night even though you live alone and don’t have the television running? That’s the old brain meat deciding the sound of traffic on the nearby highway is the same as the whisper of a dozen voices in the next room, trying to keep quiet so you don’t come check on them.

  Currently, my brain was trying to convince me I was not only being followed, I was being paced by someone just outside of my vision. Someone who slowed when I did and sped up when I did. You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with Oscar, I reminded myself. You know this is your brain playing tricks on you. Why act nervous? I fo
rced myself to walk at a sedate pace back to the car and kept things calm and steady as I unlocked the car and retrieved documents from the glove box then our overnight bags from the trunk. I grabbed Ezra’s half-drunk bottle of soda from the front seat and shut the car back up, making sure to lock the doors and set the alarm, for all the good it’d do us. All the way back to the ranch house, I felt the same watched-stalked-prey feeling seeping under my collar and down my spine. It was only when I reached the pools of light stretching from the pop-up and the ebb and flow of voices washed over me again that I relaxed, my chest aching with the first signs of a panic attack.

  Shit.

  It had been a very long time since I’d had one, and the last time had been for a damn sight better reason than I got scared of the dark like a toddler. Dredging up the rusty exercises my long-ago therapist had given me to deal with the attacks, I started running through the simplest one as I made my way over to where I’d left Oscar and Ezra. They’d picked up a few strays in my absence, apparently.

  “Mason’s harmless,” Yancy was assuring Oscar. “He’s never even left a cabinet door open or, I dunno, made walls bleed. He just hangs out. He likes parties.” Yancy shrugged helplessly, turning his baleful gaze onto his father. “Dad, seriously, he’s not here to work. Don’t embarrass Enoch,” he added in a tight, low tone. “You know how he gets.”

  “Julian,” Oscar said, sounding more than a little relieved. “This is David Carstairs. Mr. Carstairs, this is Julian Weems. He’s our professional skeptic on Bump in the Night and my… my…” he paused. “He’s my dear friend.”

  A little dart of something like pain hit me square in the chest, but I swallowed it back to examine later. Hell, we weren’t even officially boyfriends or partners or whatever phrase we might end up choosing—I shouldn’t even be thinking about being upset he called me a friend in front of others.