Chapter 19

“It’s hoooooot!” Jade announced as she came into the house. She shut the door behind her with a loud bang, and then dropped one shoulder so her book bag could tumble down into her dad’s poor, mistreated chair. She began to reconsider her love of all things black, her wardrobe included, with this sudden burst of unseasonal humidity. For one desperate moment she was almost considering getting some of the shorts the little Barbie’s and Kens wore at school to combat the sweltering misery of the unruly fall. “It’s hoooooot! I thought it was supposed to be cooling off?” she repeated when her mother didn’t answer her right away.

Kelly was watching the TV, the news talking in serious tones about a storm system coming up from the gulf and not whether if it was going to hit them, but when. They weren’t sure how bad it was going to be just yet, but they were already talking the worst, and hoping for the best. “Hi, honey,” she said as she pulled her attention away from the screen. “You are dripping wet, is it that humid out there? And where’s your sister?”

“She’ll be in directly, she stopped to get the mail,” Jade said as she plopped next to her mother on the couch. “They seem to be talking serious on this one?”

“Jade, you know I don’t want her out there by herself!” Kelly exclaimed as she rose and walked to the door. She was uneasy with the fact that the only dental appointment that she could get for Jayce had been in the early afternoon, and by the time they were finally done (he had been good until he grew tired of having strangers loom over him and decided a meltdown was in order), she hadn’t been able to pick up the girls from school in time. By the time they finally got out of the over-sized office, they would have been on the bus for at least twenty minutes, and since the girls lived so far out in the country, they got to enjoy over an hour in that hot metal box. Kelly pulled open the heavy door and grimaced at the blast of heat, but much to her relief, Jenn was walking towards the house, looking very much like a wilted flower as the younger apparition followed behind her. “It was not this miserable when we got home, and that was twenty minutes ago, and they don’t know what’s going to happen with this storm. One station says it’s absolutely going to miss us, everyone else says to buckle up, pucker up and kiss your kiester goodbye.”

“See? She’s ok. She went two rounds with Tyson, she’s fine. You need help with dinner, or are we going to be blown away? If so, we’ll just cling to the first drive thru window we come to and shout our orders then.”

“That’s not funny, young lady,” Kelly said as she pushed open the screen door for her daughter, who quickly darted into the cool house. “And I think maybe we should go out for supper tonight. It is way too hot to cook. I hate that you had to ride home in this heat.”

“Maybe we could just bring it home? I don’t feel like leaving the house. I’m happy in the Jade cave.”

“You don’t want to ride with me to go get it?” Kelly asked as she went back to the television, waving briefly to Gregg as he floated up the staircase.

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe we can order a pizza online, and you can pick it up? If we didn’t live out here in BFE, we could have it delivered. You know, how civilized folk do.”

“Now don’t start on that, either,” Kelly said as she sat down next to Jade.

“Who else is starting on that?” she asked, unzipping her boots.

“You’re the only one starting on it,” Kelly pointed out as she lifted the remote to turn up the sound. “What do you want to eat? Maybe we can send Nick out after it. He likes to get out of the house.”

“I’m good for Pizza. I’m sure Jayce will agree with me.”

“I’m tired of pizza! We always have pizza!” Jenn called from her seat on the bottom of the stairs. “Hamburgers!”

Jade groaned. “She would have to say the opposite of me. How about sushi?”

“No! Burgers!” Jenn called stubbornly.

“How about we all behave like little ladies,” Billy’s voice floated down before his footsteps resounded along the staircase. He materialized before he reached Jenn, and then put his hand down, grasping her head and giving her a gentle shove. “We’re going to Gregg’s place to start packing his stuff to bring here so he’s got things to keep him occupied. Don’t get into trouble while we’re gone,” he ordered.

“I don’t want pizza!” Jenn pleaded her case to him as she smoothed down her hair.

“Well eat dirt,” Billy fired back as the front door shot open.

Jade laughed. “First reasonable thing he’s ever said!”

“Tell Nix he needs to finish putting that tarp up on Gregg’s roof, there’s a storm coming. I can feel it to my core. Gonna be rough, I want you guys to pick up the crap you’ve decorated my backyard with before the wind picks it up and puts it through a window.”

Jade shook her head. His yard. Talk about holding on to things. And why would they need to tarp that other place? It was about to fall down anyways. “You feel it? Or have you been listening to the news?”

“Well, I’ll let him know,” Kelly said, giving Billy a wary look, “but I’m planning to send him into town to get us something to eat.”

“He needs to get that tarp on now,” Billy said in a cold tone, and then addressed Jade. “Shut up.” He turned and floated through the front door.

“Man... he works Nix harder than dad does,” Jade whispered.

“I know,” Kelly whispered back. “But… better Nick than us, right?”

Jade nodded in agreement. “Besides, he’s more buddies with them. Wait until dad gets home, and then they’ll have a big game of tug of war over him.”

“You know, I think I’m actually looking forward to that,” Kelly said. “You know daddy’s hard headed and once he puts his heels in, and that ghost is going to get what’s coming to him.”

Jade laughed. “He needs to be knocked down a few pegs.”

“Well if you think you can do it, little girl, then you go right ahead and try it,” Billy’s voice suddenly hissed into Jade’s left ear. Moments later, he materialized next to her, where he leaned over the couch, gripping the back in his hands as he glowered at her.

Jade jumped as Kelly cried out in alarm, and then glowered back at Billy. “Maybe I might,” she said, her eyes filled with the stubbornness her dad’s side of the family was famous for.

Billy rose to his full height, his arms slowly crossing over his chest as he silently challenged her.

“Oh, it won’t happen now. I hold my cards tight to my chest,” she said, standing up herself.

“I think you better sit down before your pride takes a punch it can’t shake off,” he warned quietly.

“I thought you were looking for Nix to boss around?”

“I was. Until you opened your mouth and fell in,” he said quietly, still pinning her with his dark eyes.

Kelly watched the two square off, her curiosity too strong to feel fear or the need to intervene. Unless Billy threatened to harm her child, that was, then she was going to step into it.

“I was just speaking the truth,” Jade reasoned.

“You were just doing this,” Billy said as he opened and closed his hand, mimicking her. “Go play in some heavy traffic and leave the grownups to do some work!”

“Yeah, I got things to do,” she said, turning and heading up the stairs.

“While you’re up there, wipe that crap off your face!”

“Don’t you have things to do?” Kelly asked.

“Yeah, I got things to do. I lost Gregg.”

“I saw him go up the stairs after he came in after Jenn,” Kelly said as she rose from the couch. “Mercy, it’s hot in here.” She walked to the thermostat, and then turned it down a few degrees. “Billy…?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve been dead a long time, haven’t you?”

“Quite a while, yes.” He had floated back to the picture window, where he gazed out into the overcast day.

“Should we be worried about this storm? Is it… I mean, do you know if it’s going to be bad?”

There was a slight shrug to his shoulder as he gripped his left wrist behind his back. Kelly watched him stand and watch, and it still gave her a feeling of unease.

“Why do you do that?”

For a long while, there was no answer, and just when Kelly decided to repeat herself, he spoke up quietly. “I watch. I remember. I see what is on my side.”

“What is on your side?” Kelly asked quietly.

“Would you like to see?”

“No,” Kelly whispered softly, perhaps a little too quickly and it made her feel ashamed. “I mean, not right now. But thank you for the invitation.”

Billy nodded once and continued to gaze out of the window.

“How did you die?”

“I was shot. I was coming home one night, and the caretaker… he was a bit of a slow man, he mistook me for a thief and he shot me. He held me in his arms as I died, weeping like a lost child in the night. My… first memory of death is standing behind him and looking over his shoulder while he held me. It was raining, a bad storm. I didn’t know what was going on, what had happened. I thought at first that I was still alive and it wasn’t until lightning lit up the darkness and I saw my face.” He grew quiet for a long moment as the memories he pulled up were still painful. “I could have gone on, but I was told to stay here, that I was needed.” By the time he had finished speaking, Kelly was standing beside him, her face tilted up as she listened to his story.

“Were you afraid?”

“Yes,” he said softly. “But I did as I was instructed. In my day, funeral parlors were few and far between. Not to mention expensive. The family would wash your body and set you out in the parlor in a homemade coffin. We were… well to do for the time, so mine was purchased. It was almost too pretty to put into the ground.” He gave a soft smile as his dark eyes trailed back to the window. “I still remember how I hung back by the archway there,” he nodded to his right, “cowering as I watched the funeral, afraid someone would see me and ‘have a fright’, as they said in my day. They had my coffin in front of the fireplace, using the living room because our parlor, as you can see, is a little on the small side. My father took a few locks of my hair. I still have one, it was the first thing I learned to pull into this world. Then, after my grave was dug, I stood on the back porch while they buried me. I… didn’t have the courage to watch them put my body in the ground. I was going through so much emotional turmoil. I was in disbelief, fear, confusion. Then, I saw the world change as I remained the same. My family died off one and two at a time, and it was so good to see some of them again.”

“What happened to them? Where did they go?”

Billy cut his eyes to the ceiling, and then back to Kelly, who gave him a gentle smile. “You too one day, right?”

“Oh yes,” he said softly.

“You were how old when you passed?”

“I had just turned twenty years old.”

“Were you married?”

“Almost,” he said. His mouth turned down for a moment while his eyes moved side to side as he watched two carriages on his side pass each other in front of his house.

“Can you tell me about her?” Kelly asked gently. Billy looked so forlorn at the question, but she was too curious now to bail out.

“She was beautiful,” he said. “Inside and out. Kind and strong, intelligent. We were going to run away together and get married the week I died. The grief was too much for her, I… don’t know when she died, she didn’t die here; she left and never came back to me. I only learned about her passing eighty years after it had happened. She never came back to me…”

“That must have left you feeling so lonely…”

“Well, she abandoned me, that’s what it was,” Billy’s tone took on a hard edge and Kelly suddenly realized why he was so angry. The woman he had planned to marry never even thought to return to him so they could have some happiness together on their side.

“What was her name?”

Billy gave a wistful smile as his eyes went distant. “Her name… I only whisper it in my heart now. It’s not to be spoken aloud. Not anymore.”

“But you still love her, even today, don’t you?”

He nodded his head once, and then looked back towards the yard. It was starting to get dark outside. “The storm is close,” he answered softly. “And yes, it will reach us. I can hear it; it’s like a pulse of energy and just over the horizon. I can see the aura of it and it feels angry.”

“Angry?” Kelly asked softly.

“Angry,” Billy repeated in a whisper. “Like it knows something that I do not.” His shoulders drew up stiffly for a moment, and then began to ease down. “I sense something, and I can’t put my finger on it, but yes, the storm is coming and it is going to be much worse than they are predicting.”

“Are we going to be all right? Should we leave the house? Will there be flooding or wind damage?”

“I don’t know,” Billy murmured. He knew–could feel–that there was a very good chance that he may end up without a home by the end of the week.

“Moooom!” Jenn called from the top of the stairs. “We’re still having burgers, right?”

“Pizza!” Jade countered immediately.

“Did you really read to her while she was sick?” Kelly asked to change the subject. There was no sense in worrying about something they had no control over that wasn’t even on their doorstep yet.

“I had no choice, she made me. Forced me in a cruel and unusual manner,” Billy sniffed with indignance.

“Oh yeah? How’d she do that?”

“She threatened to call the boogieman on me.”

“Moooom! We can have burgers tonight! Jade says we can’t, but I told her you said we could!”

“Mom! She’s being a total pain and if she doesn’t stop it, I’m going to stuff her in her doll house and lock it closed!” Jade cried out.

“Mom! Mom! She just threatened me! Did you hear that! She threatened to stuff me in my dollhouse and lock it closed!”

“You’re such a little tattletale!”

“Moooom! She called me a tattletale! Tell her I’m not a tattletale, I’m just standing up to her because she’s being a punk!”

“Didn’t you ever want to have kids that didn’t eat paint chips, and did they ever fight over them?” Billy asked dryly.

Kelly sighed deeply as she rubbed her temples in a slow, circular motion. “Sometimes I wonder,” she sighed. “All right, girls!” she announced as she moved away from Billy and towards the stairs. “I want you both to get ready, we’re all going to town, yes, and that means you too, Jade! We’ll call in a pizza for Jade, and stop by a burger place on the way back for Jenn and somewhere in between, I’m getting something I want! Jade, call your uncle and ask him what he wants while I get Jayce ready!”

“Atta girl,” Billy said, and then faded out of sight.

*****

“Sabaste, can you feel this storm coming?” Lance asked. His whole face was lit up with excitement as he watched the young apparition approach him. So far, Sabaste wasn’t having much luck sneaking back into the large house.

“Yeah man, I can,” Sabaste said. “It’s got me on edge, are they supposed to do that?”

“From what I’ve heard, yes. You’re already drawing power from it. I think the time has come that we get our revenge. Me on Holmes, you on your former friend. Let’s go somewhere and practice, there’s some houses on the next road over.”

“Yeah, sure, we can do that,” Sabaste said. “Do a little haunting to warm us up. Then… Nix is mine. I got a question, though.”

“What’s that?”

“If I kill Nix… that means he’s on this side, right? So… I’ll have to deal with him constantly, because I know he’ll go where Jayce is.”

“We’ll worry about that when the time comes. The important thing to focus on is Nix and revenge. You want to hurt him, take from him what he took from you. You didn’t get the chance to have a family, did you? And you told me he liked men and there he goes and knocks up some stripper and he has a son. Don’t you realize how unfair that is to you? Some friend, huh?” Lance knew the importance of keeping Sabaste focused on his own mission, it was just easier to handle the little hothead that way.

“Yeah, but… he shared Jayce with me, you know? That was pretty cool. That kid, he’s just something else man. When this is said and done, I want to hang around to watch my little Hermano grow up and just watch out for him like a guardian angel, you know?”

“You’re not much of an angel,” Lance said with a playful smirk. “Are you, Phantom?”

“Nah, but for him, yeah, I could be. I’d go to the ends of the earth if that kid wanted me to.”

“You know… I have a wonderful, wonderful idea. Forget what I said about leaving Jade that fake note from that man, I have something better planned.”

“What kind of idea?”

“A good idea. Come, let’s sit by the water and discuss it.”

*****

“Okay,” Gregg sighed as he met Billy at the driveway. Together they lifted their hands and gave a short wave as Kelly and the kids backed out. The family lifted theirs in return and Gregg smiled. “I can’t get over how good that feels,” he said as they drove away. “To be acknowledged.”

“Wimp. And what were you about to say?”

“I was about to say that I’ve got several boxes packed up, mostly books because Jade and I agreed to do a book exchange. She can paw through mine and I can paw through hers.”

“I’ll never get these people out of my house now,” Billy sighed dramatically as he floated towards Gregg’s house. “What else do you have packed up?”

“Clothes, my telescope, the big one you “procured” from that one family a million years ago,” Gregg chuckled. “Let’s see… I think that’s it.”

“With most of the boxes being full of books, am I right?”

“You know me well.”

“You know what I was thinking?”

“You were thinking?” Gregg jogged away from his friend moments before a fist could connect with his bicep. He laughed as he trotted up onto his porch and lifted his hands. “Joking, joking, what were you thinking?”

“Tire swing.”

“I’m not surprised at the primitive response, but the idea is brilliant. Please elaborate more.”

“Well, I have that old tractor tire in the barn that’s sitting there, not doing anything particularly useful, so I figured maybe we could roll it up to the house after this storm gets done with us and hang it from that big branch in the front yard. If we still have the big branch left. Or a front yard… Maybe we can turn it horizontally so they can sit on it and put their feet in the hole and no one will argue about not getting a turn.”

“Because they’ll all have room. That’s a great idea,” Gregg said. “We could make it just high enough where Jade could put her toes on the ground and give them a push. I’ve got some old leather I could stitch into the side of the tire so they won’t get dirty or sore.”

“Yeah, and when they aren’t using it, we can,” Billy said.

“Absolutely,” Gregg agreed. “Okay, let’s get this over with; I can’t wait for Nix to get finished with this house. I’ll have a real house again, it’s so exciting!” he cheered.

“You’re such a big kid,” Billy scoffed as he followed Gregg into the house. At the road, Lance watched the two as they disappeared, and then turned to Sabaste.

“All right, you have your chance, get back in that house and wait. Keep your ears open and listen for me to scream, when you do, go back to your hiding place, but until then, I want you to snoop around, see what you can find.”

Sabaste tilted his head to the right, getting a ghostly pop out of his neck. “All right, I can do that, no problem,” he said, and then quickly turned to face Lance. “I really can feel a difference in the air. I bet by tomorrow night, I’ll be able to wipe the floor with Nix. I just feel that strong,” he said with a grin.

“Don’t get cocky,” Lance warned. “Or you’ll end up getting wiped off his shoe. Now go, hurry!”