Only the Good Die Young

6

I was as aimless now as I’d been in life, heading to nowhere in particular, but it didn’t feel as freeing as I’d thought it would.

What did I really know about Amanda Lee? Not much. And seeing my picture posted on the bulletin board alongside the others made me feel like an object. Part of a collection.

It was the first time I’d realized that, even if I could still think like a human and act like one, I wasn’t even close. Amanda Lee had clearly never thought of me that way, either, since it was obvious that she had something she’d never shared with me up her sleeve. I was definitely a dead person to her.

Was she tracking down other killers, using other ghosts—the ones on the bulletin boards?

None of it made sense, and I just wished I could ask someone if this was a normal existence for a ghost. Besides, now that my trust in Amanda Lee had been rattled, I wanted to see if there was a reason she had been keeping me to herself in that casita.

As the night enclosed the sky, I sat on some power lines, absorbing energy since I was farther than I’d ever been from my death spot. After I left Amanda Lee’s, I’d zoomed away so fast that I hadn’t been thinking about where I was going. The travel tunnel had blocked out any view of where I was, too, so I had ended up busting out of the artery way down in south San Diego County, on Coronado Island.

It was a mellow community, with high-end houses and beachfront real estate, populated by affluents and military families. Training for Navy SEALs went down nearby on the beach, near the island’s most famous landmark, the Hotel del Coronado, with its red, upside-down cone roofs and white wooden walls.

The hotel was just across the street from where I was sitting in the streetlamp-dim dark. The place was timeless, with its resort feel, flags flying from the rooftops, and the black ocean spreading out behind it.

Back when I was alive, I didn’t spend a lot of time in the south county. My parents had died just off the coast down here, so I liked my apartment in the north, by San Marcos, far enough away for me to distance myself from the nightmare. I’d never even visited the Hotel del, but I’d always heard that there were ghosts here.

Now I wanted to go in to find someone like me so I could get better answers than I’d been getting.

I was just starting to float down from the power lines when all my plans were shot to shit.

Something sped past me so fast that it zapped me, sending me flying down the street until I recovered in midair. As I tried to figure out what it was, I only hoped it wasn’t fake Dean. Like I needed another old-boyfriend encounter to top off my night.

I waited to find out what’d hit me, so when I heard the air buzzing nearby, I followed the sound past the sleepy, closed boutiques and shops to the white-planked facade of a bar that rested under a dormant neon palm tree sign.

Near the door I saw the atmosphere yawning open to show what looked to be the arterial inside of a travel tunnel. An electric blur popped out of it, just as I always did when I got to my destination.

Another ghost?

The entity coalesced for one instant into a gray figure right before it slipped under the door and disappeared into the bar.

Oh my God.

Too cool to see someone else using a travel tunnel. I wanted to know what this ghost’s story was, like if he or she had his or her own Amanda Lee. Or a fake Dean.

But what if this was a territorial ghost and got pissed at me for invading his or her turf? What if it was one of those mean ghosts Amanda Lee had theorized about?

I’d never know if I just hovered here.

It was no doubt way past closing time, and no one else was around, so I gathered up my courage and slid under the door, coming up on the other side into a dark place that smelled like beer plus grease from burgers and fries, and with a bar running the length of most of the room. Total dive.

“Who’s there?” asked a high-pitched male voice.

I went still, then darted to a corner. Whoever this ghost was, he sounded drunk. Maybe it’d be a good idea to visit the Hotel del instead, after all.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he slurred.

I heard his essence humming near the back of the bar, where he’d obviously gone first. He was in the front room now.

Oh, screw it.

I showed myself, smiling, hoping he wouldn’t ghost-jump me.

Even in the dimness, I could see every bit of him because of his gray electric glow. He was swaying like an inebriated sailor. In fact, he was a sailor, dressed in one of those white uniforms with a flap for a collar and a Popeye hat dipping off his head. He was also a kid, probably just old enough to have joined the navy the minute he was eligible.

When he saw me, he perked up, his dark eyes widening in a face that… Okay, let’s be honest. He looked like someone’s nerdy younger brother.

“Hey, doll!” he said.

Doll? I was going to guess he wasn’t a modern ghost. But at least he seemed cool.

“Hi. Sorry for barging in like this, but—”

“You’re not bargin’ in.” His voice broke like Peter Brady’s every so often, and he had a thick Southern accent.

He floated to a stool and patted the bar next to him. It didn’t make a sound. “Come join Petty Officer Randy Randall fer a drink.”

His name was beyond fun.

“Ghosts can’t drink.” I knew this because I’d already tried it. Same with eating, and frankly, it’s pretty crappy to be able to smell pizza on the wind and not be able to scarf it down.

Sailor Randy Randall gave me that wide-eyed stare again and then fell into a fit of laughter, silently pounding the bar. When he finished, he slurred, “I can see you’re a new kid, ain’t ya? Welcome to Boo World.”

I sensed that I was going to get an education tonight that Amanda Lee might not approve of. Maybe she’d kept me away from other ghosts so that I would be her little specter slave while not knowing there were other ways to exist.

I moved to a seat close to Randy, but not right next to him. He laughed at that, too.

“New ’n’ careful,” he said with exaggeration in his tone. “I like ya new ghosts. You’re a real gas.”

Now that I was nearer to him, his essence tickled me. I could also get a better gander at his features: wavy light hair under his cap, a tilted-up nose, crooked teeth. He winked at me, knowing I was checking him out.

Then he zinged upward and flew toward the liquor shelf, knocking down a bottle. It hit the ledge below, breaking open and spilling whiskey.

“Oh,” I said.

“Don’t worry. The ownersh know the bar has ‘activity’ every once in a while.”

Ownersh?

“And you’re the activity,” I said.

“Smart new ghost, too.” Still slurring most of those s’s.

He bent down—he wasn’t a big guy to begin with—and caught falling whiskey drops in his mouth. The liquid ran right through him, leaving a sparky trail, and splattered to the floor.

“Why bother doing that?” I asked.

“Why bother drinkin’ it when you’re alive? Because it’s there.” He gave me a goofy grin. “Plus, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a perpet… perpetial…”

“Perpetual?”

“Thass it. Perpetial state of drunkenness.”

“Because that’s how you…” I was about to say, “Because that’s how you died?” But that might be rude.

He didn’t seem to care. “Yup. I died completely soused.”

Whoa. So that’s why I was a spaz who just wanted to go-go-go—because I’d been slightly hopped up on Mello Yello when I’d died. I guess if I’d been toking with my friends in the forest that night—and I would’ve if I hadn’t been on driving duty—I would’ve come out on the other side as a wasted ghost.

Randy said, “Here I am, still a drunken bum. My girlfriend told me that once, in a letter. Jus’ before I was supposed to ship out to the South Pacific.”

World War II. Was he that old?

After another “drink,” he stood back up. “Haven’t met other ghosts, have ya?”

I thought about fake Dean, but decided he wasn’t so much my and Randy’s kind. “No.”

“I can tell. Ya look at me funny. Also, ya don’t know ghost etiquette.”

“Sorry.”

“Forget it, doll. All of us start somewheres.”

And here’s where my education would begin. Hopefully. “What am I supposed to do when I meet a fellow ghost?”

“Oh, it’s not so much what you’re supposed to do. It’s what you’re ’spected to do. Tell your story. Here, I’ll go first.” He was making a lot of hand gestures. “It happened seaside. I always loved the ocean. And one night, near downtown, I was standin’ on a bank of rocks with my girlfriend’s last letter in my hand. I was mooning over her when… Oops. Lost my footing on them rocks.”

“You… drowned?” That’s what’d happened to my parents in the boating accident.

“Nah.” He knocked on his head. “Slammed the ol’ noggin. Bled right out. The worst part is that I let go of Magnolia’s letter when I fell, and I’ve been trying to find it ever since. Then again, we all have our tether.”

Amanda Lee had mentioned that last word to me—it was what she thought kept us tied to the earth, unable to move on.

Randy was watching me like he was expecting me to reveal my tether. But I had a question for him first, ghost etiquette or not.

“What if you never find that letter?” Because he wouldn’t. By now, the paper would’ve disintegrated, right?

He didn’t seem very concerned. “That bothered me at first, I must admit. But ya know what? I haven’t lost hope that I’m gonna find it. I will one day.”

Okay. I dropped the subject. No use in upsetting him with the truth.

“So, it’s my turn?” I asked.

“Ya never hear a ghost’s story without telling him your own. It’s terrible form. Terrible.”

“All right. But it’s not pretty.”

“Toots, if you’re roaming this plane after your death, chances are ya got a sad tale. I’ve been around, and I’ve heard it all. Try me.”

I laid it on him—Elfin Forest, partying with my friends, nineteen eighties, going missing in the woods. He’d been around Boo World for so long that he even knew things, like how “dope” in my era didn’t mean what it did in his, as in “You got the dope on the shindig tonight?” I told him that I didn’t remember my death, and he actually understood perfectly.

“Thass why you’re still here,” he said. “Because you’ll search and search until ya find out how ya died. It could take aeons.”

I didn’t mention how Amanda Lee told me she was going to help me solve my murder. I wasn’t sure how that’d work out anymore. Besides, I didn’t feel like talking about her much.

Randy kind of jumped and then arched over the bar, landing in the seat next to me, my essence going staticky and sensing his cool temperature as I shifted.

“So why’d ya follow me in here tonight?” he asked with a tilted grin. “Bored?”

“I… Not really. I wanted to meet someone who was like me.”

“Right. Besides, you’re too new to be bored yet. But I’m gonna tell ya—watch out for boredom, toots… .”

“Jensen. You can call me Jensen or Jen.”

“I like that. Jen. I know ’nother ghost from the nineteen ’eighties.” He waggled an unsteady finger. “You’re not like her. She’s got hair thass all these colors, and she wears petticoats as skirts, too. They didn’t even do that in the dance halls.”

Sounded like a total Valley Girl to me.

Randy touched his wrist. “She’s got black bandy things on her arms, too. They’re ’cause of Madonna.”

He seemed very proud to name-drop someone from the ’eighties.

“Very good, Randy.” But I wasn’t happy that I had been wearing those same bracelets before I died. I’d lost them at the forest party, so they weren’t a permanent part of my ghost wardrobe. I’d had a total love-hate thing with Madonna: liking that she sassed all the boys while not liking her mainstreamness. I was more an Oingo Boingo SoCal girl.

“Anyway, I was talking about boredom, wasn’t I?” Randy scratched his head under his hat, scrunching his eyebrows together. “Thass right. Ya need to know that boredom is bad for us, Jen. Very bad. Ya said you were caught in a time loop?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that can happen again. Don’t think it won’t. When one of us doesn’t recharge, we lose power, and we go into that time-loop imprint. The pros call it a ‘noninteractive’ spirit.”

“Pros? Like…”

“Psychics. Mediums. Hunters. What have ya.”

Again with Amanda Lee. I couldn’t seem to get away from the thought of her.

“What do they call ghosts like us?” I asked.

“Interactives. Intelligent spirits. We still have our personalities and we can think, unlike the nons. But there’re a boatload more, like anonymous spirits, who’re confused and afraid and won’t come out to play like we do, poor fatheads.”

I wished I could take notes from Randy Randall. This was the best.

“What else?” I asked.

“It’ll take more than a night for ya to know everything. Besides, I gotta go off the island and look for my letter soon.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

He smiled with those crooked teeth, and his voice went all crackly again when he said, “Thass a girl.”

In life, I’d managed to have a lot of friends, especially in high school, where people elected me to stuff like the student council and even made me Homecoming Queen, not that you’d know it by looking at me now.

Damn, I wished ghosts could do wardrobe changes.

Just as I was thinking that it might be pretty easy to make ghost friends, too, Randy shifted gears.

“Ya know how ghosts appear in different places? It’s not just because they have a purpose in being there—sometimes they need a change of loo-cation, and they get happy by changing up their routines. We get a real charge outta reactions from people when we scare ’em, too. Thass because it’s fun.”

I gave him a curious glance.

“Don’t worry. I just boo the jerks, no one nice.” He looked me up and down. “I’d say ya got some kind of charge tonight yourself.”

“I was out on some power lines before.”

“Nah… not from that. An inner charge. Like ya feel more alive for some reason. Ya got some color to your gray.”

Hadn’t Amanda Lee noticed my slight color, too, after I’d come back from the star place?

Now was my chance to ask about fake Dean, but Randy was looking yearningly behind the bar at the whiskey, which had slowed to infrequent drips. This sailor was an exercise in futility, I feared, but I liked him.

“You said there’s a boatload of ghost types,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Like… ?” I urged.

Randy glanced away from the booze, his gaze focusing on me again. “Like malevolent spirits. Never pal around with one of those, Jen.” He hiccuped.

Was he talking about the type of ghosts Amanda Lee had mentioned? “What do you mean… malevolent?”

“Negative ghosts, ones that’re attracted to despair and bad feelings. Sometimes ya can’t even tell ’em apart from any other ghosts. But only sometimes.” He hiccuped again. “And don’t confuse them with demons.”

Shit. Demons actually existed?

Could Gavin summon one of those to go after me? Not cool at all.

Randy leaned closer. He wasn’t producing a smell right now; otherwise I’m sure I would’ve been knocked over by alcohol fumes.

“Ghosts aren’t demons, in case you’re wondering,” he said. “They’re spiritual entities that’ve always existed.”

“Can they hurt us?”

“Demons? Gosh, yeah. Avoid ’em.”

Instead of avoiding, I just might be putting myself into the path of bad by engaging in Gavin’s haunting. But what were the odds of him reaching out to a demon for help against us? Amanda Lee was only being ultracareful when she’d mentioned the slight possibility of spiritual enemies.

Paranoia, the destroyer…

I wasn’t scared. I just wanted to be prepared. “Can ghosts hurt other ghosts?”

“Sure, jus’ like humans can hurt other humans, but it’s not something we usually do. Why? You thinkin’ of takin’ me on?”

He held up his fists and shadow-boxed at me, then laughed. His sudden movements made him lose his balance and spill off his stool, but he regained his floating, pushing his hat higher on his head.

I couldn’t help laughing, too. He was something.

“About them demons, though?” he said, coming back to the stool. “They don’t go after ghosts so much. Jus’ humans, and anyone who asks to tangle with one deserves what they get. They possess people when they can.”

I narrowed my gaze. “Can ghosts possess, too?”

“Only with the willing. I’ve never done it. If you’re not experienced”—he mangled that word, too—“it’s supposed to suck so much energy out of ya afterward that you’ll probably turn into an imprint.”

He started hovering out of his seat, toward the booze, like he couldn’t fight it anymore. But I stopped his progress with my next question.

“Have you ever met an angel of death?”

His energy fritzed as he hung in midair, then turned to me, wary.

“We all meet ’em at some point,” he said, “but they’re not angels. We call ’em wranglers, and their job’s to—”

“Bring us to the light?”

He nodded, and I almost thought he’d gone sober.

“I didn’t meet my wrangler for the first time till…” He shrugged. “Gosh, not till they started buildin’ the Coronado Bay Bridge. The nineteen sixties?”

I didn’t know much about the history of that. “So he’s visited you more than once?”

“Sure. They check in every once in a while, jus’ to see if you’re ready. But I wouldn’t call wranglers ‘he.’ They’re sort of like… its. Ya can’t tell what they are because they got veils and they’re all covered up.” He got closer to me. His skin had gotten a little grayer. “Did one already visit ya?”

My stomach area had gone truly hollow. “I’m thinking this wasn’t so much of a wrangler.”

I described fake Dean, the lotus pool, the star place.

By the time I was done, Randy’s mouth was hanging open. Then he said, “That wasn’t a wrangler, Jen. I don’t know what the hay that was.”

Maybe I did need a drink—or the closest I could get to one.

I floated off my stool, joining Randy as he went behind the bar again. I bent to catch a drip of whiskey in my mouth, feeling a sizzle in me.

It was… hell, different.

That word described a lot of things as a ghost. And I assumed it was an important word, because different was an enemy of boredom, which Randy said could be a negative.

“Don’t worry.” He seemed as if he wanted to pat me on the back or something. I think he even tried and I couldn’t feel it except for a blip of coldness and a buzz. “I’ll ask around, see if anyone’s met something like your… Dean. Thass his name, right? Your old boyfriend?”

I nodded, wishing the whiskey would drip some more.

“I wonder, though,” he said. “There’re… legends, even here in Boo World.”

“Legends.”

“Rumors about entities that like to suck energy off new, traumatized ghosts who carry lots of fear with ’em. But ya don’t seem all that fearful. He must’ve found that out and rejected ya.”

Ouch. I took that personally, because somewhere in my sick soul, I sort of liked that “Dean” had wanted me again. I knew it wasn’t really Dean, but still. Vanity works in strange ways.

Also, being a needy girlfriend sucks.

Then I recalled fake Dean’s last words to me. “Another day, Jenny.”

“I don’t think he’s done with me,” I said.

Randy got a protective scowl on his face. And why not? We’d kind of bonded so far. Sweet.

I told him everything fake Dean had said before sending me through the cracked floor.

“Yup,” Randy said when I was done. “I’m definitely talkin’ to the others about this.”

There was a lull in our conversation as Randy looked at the liquor pooled on the ledge. A tiny wave of it rolled to the edge and tumbled off. He smiled at how he’d manipulated the booze into a new fall of drops and bent down to catch some.

“You do that so easily,” I said.

“What? Drink?”

“Well, that. But… manipulating. I’m not very good at it yet.”

“Ya will be. It takes practice. So do things like causin’ hallucinazions”—he continued his championship streak of word-screwing—“in humans and bein’ able to empathize with ’em.”

I was still back at the hallucination part. “We can make them see things?”

“Oh, sugar, ya don’t even know. Remember when I said I scare jerks?”

“Yeah.”

“I usually do it when I’m downtown, and some guy is handlin’ his girl in the wrong way. All it takes is a long touch and your imagination and, voilà, instant nightmare flashin’ in front of the jerk’s gaze. It never fails to make ’em behave from that minute on.”

Wow. I decided not to tell him about haunting Gavin because I wasn’t sure how Randy would judge that. But this news was bad to the bone.

Immediately, my thoughts started whirring with the possibilities.

“How about empathizing?” I asked. “How do you do that right?”

“A softer, less intense touch. Those are the ones I use on the dames.” He waggled his eyebrows.

Then it was as if a ticking clock had sounded an alarm in Randy, because he whipped his gaze toward the door and float-hopped over the bar.

“Sunrise,” he said. “There’s light enough for me to look for my gal’s letter.”

He must’ve forgotten that I’d told him I’d help, because he was under and out the door before I could remind him.

Drunk ghost ADD.

But honestly, I was excited about the information he’d given me, and I couldn’t wait to put this hallucination and empathy stuff in action.

I smiled, knowing exactly where I’d be going today—a possible murderer’s mind.

And maybe even beyond that.