Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel) (21 page)

“Hi, daddy.”

“Hi, baby,” I said.

“Mommy said you got hurt real bad.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Mommy said that a bad man hurt you and you
got killed.”

“Mommy’s right, but I don’t want you thinking
about that right now, okay?”

“Okay,” she said sleepily. “Am I dreaming,
daddy?”

“Yes, baby.”

We were quiet and she shifted subtly, lifting
her face toward me, her eyes still closed in sleep. There was a
sound from outside her window, a light tapping. I ignored it, but
it came again and again, and then with more consistency. I looked
over my shoulder and saw that it was raining. I looked back at my
daughter and thought of the rain, remembering how it felt on my
skin, on my face. Or, rather, I was trying to remember. Lately,
such memories of the flesh were getting harder and harder to
recall.

“It’s raining, daddy,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Do you live in the rain?”

“No.”

“Where do you live, daddy?”

“I live here, with you.”

“But you’re dead.”

I said nothing. I hated to be reminded of
this, even by my daughter.

“Why don’t you go to heaven, daddy?”

I thought about that. I think about that a
lot, actually. I said, “Daddy still has work to do.”

“What kind of work?”

“Good work.”

“I miss you,” she said. “I miss you so much.
I think about you every day. I’m always crying. People at school
say I’m a crybaby.”

“You’re not a crybaby,” I said. “You’re just
sad.” My heart broke all over again. “It’s time to go back to
sleep, angel.”

“Okay, daddy.”

“I love you, sweetie.”

“I love you, too, daddy.”

I drifted up from the small wooden chair and
moved across the room the way I do—silently and easily—and at the
far wall I looked back at her. Her aura had subsided, although some
of it still flared here and there. For her to relax—to truly
relax—I needed to leave her room entirely.

And so I did. Through the wall.

To hell with doors.

2.

I was standing behind him, reading the
newspaper from over his shoulder, as I did every morning.

His name was Jerrold and he was close to
sixty and close to retirement. He lived alone and seemed mostly
happy. He was addicted to internet poker, but, as far as I could
tell, that was his only vice.

Thank God.

He turned the paper casually, snapping it
taught, then reached for his steaming mug of coffee, heavy with
sugar and cream, and took a long sip. I could smell the coffee. Or
at least a hint of it, just like I could smell a hint of his
aftershave and hair gel. My senses were weak at best.

As he set the mug down, some of the coffee
sloshed over the rim and onto the back of his hand. He yelped and
shook his hand. I could see that it had immediately reddened.

Pain.

I hadn’t known pain in quite a long time. My
last memory of it was when I had been working at a friend’s house,
cutting carpet, and nearly severed my arm off.

I looked down at my translucent arm now.
Although nearly imperceptible, the scar was still there—or at least
the ghostly hint of it.

Still cursing under his breath, Jerrold
turned back to his paper. So did I. He scanned the major headlines,
and I scanned them along with him. After all, he was my hands in
this situation.

He read through some local Los Angeles news,
mostly political stuff that would have bored me to tears had I
tears to be bored with. I glanced over at his coffee while he read,
trying to remember what it tasted like. I think I remembered.

I think.

Hot, roasted, bitter and sweet. I knew the
words, but I was having a hard time recalling the actual flavor.
That scared me.

Jerrold turned the page. As he did so,
something immediately caught my eye; luckily, it caught his eye,
too.

A piano teacher had been murdered at St.
Luke’s, a converted monastery that was now being used as a Catholic
church and school. Lucy Randolph was eighty-six years old and just
three days shy from celebrating her sixtieth anniversary with her
husband.

I had known Mrs. Randolph. In fact, she had
been my own music teacher back when I was a student at St. Luke’s.
She had been kind to a fault, a source of inspiration and joy to
her students, and especially to me.

And now, according to the report, someone had
strangled her, leaving her for dead on the very piano she had
taught from. Perhaps the very same piano I had been taught
from.

Damn.

Jerrold clucked his tongue and shook his head
and moved on to the next page, but I had seen enough. I stepped
away,

“You’re still young, Jerrold,” I said to him.
“Lose fifteen pounds and find someone special—and ditch the
gambling.”

As I spoke, the small hairs on the back of
his neck stood up and and his aura shifted towards me. He shivered
unconsciously and turned the page.

I left his apartment.

3.

We were in Pauline’s apartment.

She was drinking an apple martini and I
wasn’t, which was a damn shame. At the moment, I was sitting in an
old wingback chair and she was on the couch, one bare foot up on a
hand-painted coffee table which could have doubled for a modern
piece of abstract art.

“If you ever need any extra money,” I said,
“you could always sell your coffee table on eBay.”

“It’s not for sale,” she said. “Ever.”

“What if you were homeless and living on the
streets and needed money?”

“Then I would be homeless and living on the
streets with the world’s most bitchen hand-painted coffee
table.”

Her name was Pauline and she was a
world-famous medium. She could hear me, see me and sometimes even
touch me. Hell, she could even read my thoughts, which was a bit
disconcerting for me. She was a full-figured woman, with perhaps
the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She often wore her long
brown hair haphazardly, a look that would surely have your average
California girl running back to the bathroom mirror. Pauline was
not your average California girl. She wasn’t your average girl by
any definition, spending as much of her time in the world of the
dead as in the world of the living. Luckily, she just so happened
to live in the very building I was presently haunting.

“Yeah, lucky me,” said Pauline, picking up on
my thoughts.

She did her readings out of a small office
near downtown Los Angeles, usually working with just one or two
clients a day. Some of her sessions lasted longer than others and
tonight she was home later than usual, hitting the booze hard, as
she often did. I wouldn’t call her a drunk, but she was damn close
to being one.

“I’m not a drunk,” Pauline said absently,
reading my thoughts again. “I can stop any time I want. The booze
just helps me...release.”

“Release?” I asked.

“Yeah, to forget. To unwind. To
uneverything.”

“You should probably not drink so much,” I
said.

She regarded me over her martini glass. Her
eyes were bloodshot. Her face gleamed with a fine film of sweat.
She wasn’t as attractive when she was drunk.

“Thanks,” she said sarcastically. “And do you
even remember what it’s like being drunk?”

I thought about that. “A little. And that was
below the belt.”

“Do you even have a belt?”

I looked down at my slightly glowing ethereal
body. Hell, even my clothing glowed, which was the same clothing I
had been wearing on the night I was murdered two years ago: a white
tee shirt and long red basketball shorts, my usual sleeping garb. I
was barefoot and I suspected my hair was a mess, since I had been
shot to death in my sleep. Dotting my body were the various bloody
holes where the bullets had long ago entered my living flesh.

“No belt,” I said. “Then again, no shoes,
either.”

She laughed, which caused some of her martini
to slosh over the rim. She cursed and licked her fingers like a
true alcoholic.

“Oh, shut up,” she said.

“Waste not, want not,” I said.

She glared at me some more as she took a long
pull on her drink. When she set it down, she missed the center of
the cork coaster by about three inches. Now part of the glass sat
askew on the edge of the coaster, and the whole thing looked like
it might tip over. She didn’t notice or care.

Pauline worked with spirits all day. Early
on, she had tried her best to ignore my presence. But I knew she
could see me, and so I pursued her relentlessly until she finally
acknowledged my existence.

“And now I can’t get rid of you,” she
said.

“You love me,” I said. “Admit it.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I do. Call me an idiot,
but I do.”

“Idiot,” I said. “Besides, I’m different than
those other ghosts.”

“Yeah? How so?”

“I’m a ghost on a mission.”

“Could that sound more corny?” she said.

“Maybe after a few more drinks,” I said.

“So how’s the mission coming along?” she
asked. We had been over this before, perhaps dozens of times.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not like I’m
getting a lot of feedback from anyone—or anything.”

“And when will you be done with your
mission?” she asked.

“I don’t know that either.”

“And what, exactly, is your mission?” As she
spoke, she peered into the empty glass with one eye.

“To save my soul.”

“Oh, yeah, that. And you’re sure it’s not too
late to save your soul? I mean, you are dead after all.”

“It’s never too late,” I said.

“And you know that how?” she asked.

“Because I’m not in hell yet.”

“You’re haunting an old apartment building in
Los Angeles,” she said. “Sounds a bit like hell to me.”

“But I can see my wife and daughter whenever
I want,” I countered. “Can’t be that bad.”

“Your wife has re-married,” said Pauline.
“And weren’t you two separated at the time of your death?”

We had been, but the details of our
separation were lost to me. We had financial problems I seemed to
recall, which had led to many arguments. What we had argued about
was anyone’s guess. But the arguments had been heated and
impassioned and in the end I had moved out—but not very far. To
stay close to my daughter, I had rented an apartment in the same
building.

“Yes, we had been separated,” I said. “And
thank you for reminding me of that.”

“Just keeping it real,” said Pauline
indifferently. “Besides, there is no hell.”

“How do you know?”

“I talk to the dead, remember? And not just
ghosts,” she added. “But those who have passed on.”

“Passed on to heaven?” I asked.

“Passed on to something,” she said. “Neither
heaven nor hell. A spirit world—and it’s waiting for you.”

I didn’t believe that. I believed in heaven
and hell, and I was certain, as of this moment, that I was going to
hell. “Well, it can keep on waiting. I’m not ready to pass on.”

“Obviously.”

“I need to work some things out,” I said.

“And then what?” she asked.

“And then I will accept my fate.”

She nodded. “But for now you hope to change
your fate.”

“Yes.”

She looked at me with bloodshot eyes. Sitting
on the couch, she had tucked her bare feet under her. Now her
painted red toes peaked out like frightened little mice.

“Nice imagery,” she said, wiggling her toes.
“So you still can’t remember why you are going to hell?”

“No,” I said.

“But it was something bad.”

“Very bad,” I said.

“Bad enough to burn forever?” she asked.

“Somebody died, I think.”

“So you’ve said, but you still don’t remember
who or why.”

I shook my head. “No, but it happened a long,
long time ago.”

“And with your death,” she added, “it was the
first of your memories to disappear.”

She was right. My memories were disappearing
at an alarming rate. The earlier memories of my life were mostly
long gone. “Yeah, something like that,” I said.

“And now you’re afraid to pass on because you
think you are going to hell, even though you can’t remember why you
are going to hell.”

“It’s a hell of a conundrum,” I said.

She nodded, then got up, padded into the
adjoining kitchen, and poured herself another drink. When she came
back and sat, some of her drink splashed over the rim of her
glass.

“Don’t say a word,” she cautioned me.

I laughed and drifted over to the big bay
window and looked out over Los Angeles, which glittered and pulsed
five stories below. At this hour, Los Feliz Boulevard was a parking
lot dotted with red brake lights as far as the eye could see. I had
heard once that it was one of the busiest streets in the world.
Standing here now, I believed it.

After a while, Pauline came over and stood
next to me. Actually, some of her was standing inside me. She
shivered with the sensation, apologized, and stepped back. Ghostly
etiquette.

I thought of my sweet music teacher.
According to the paper, she had been just days away from her
sixtieth wedding anniversary. Sixtieth.

Anger welled up within me. As it did so, a
rare warmth spread through me. Mostly my days were filled with
bone-chilling cold, minus the bones. But whenever strong emotion
was involved, such as anger, I became flush with energy. And when
that happened—

“Hey,”said Pauline.“Someone’s making a rare
appearance.”

And so I was. So much so that I could
actually see myself reflecting in the big, sliding glass door. Next
to me was Pauline, looking beautiful, but drunk. Bloody wounds
covered my body; in particular, my forehead, neck and chest.

I didn’t get to see myself often, and,
despite my anger, I took advantage of this rare opportunity. Pale
and ethereal, I was just a vague suggestion of what I had once
been—and I was growing vaguer as the years pressed on. There was
stubble on my jaw, and my dark hair was indeed askew. Eternal bed
head.