End of the Road (Ghost Stories Trilogy #1) (19 page)

Chapter
Forty-One

BOB

It was early spring. The
cacti and wildflowers were in full bloom and it had been almost a year since Juanita
left us, when we had a visitor. A minivan pulled onto the shoulder and a
gorgeous blonde stepped out of the driver’s side and hurried around, out of the
way of passing traffic. She had the longest legs I’d ever seen, the hem of her
skirt pulled far above her knees when she walked.

Out of the corner of my
eye I saw Tobin and in an instant he was standing next to the woman. A light
breeze lifted the hair out of her face and that’s when I recognized her.

She walked up onto the
sand, which was covered in sporadic patches of grass.

“Tobin, are you still
here?” she asked.

Tobin picked up a stick
and wrote
yes
in the ground by her feet.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been
up to see you, but it was too hard.”

I understand. How’s
Egan?

“He’s good and getting so
big. He’s in first grade. Can you believe it?”

Tobin hunched over like
he had been kicked in the balls. After a few seconds he composed himself and
continued writing.

How are you?

“I’m good. We’re all good
Tob, which is why I came up here. I need to tell you…” She pursed her lips and started
fidgeting with her hands, twisting a large diamond ring. “I’ve met someone and
we’re getting married.”

Tobin hunched over again
and Georgia moved closer to him. “Are you okay?” she asked and he nodded.

“Tobin, I forgot what a
babe your wife is,” I said.

“Bob, stop being such an
ass. You are so inappropriate!” Peggy glared at me, flickering with rage.

“Hey, I’m just sayin’.”

Peggy shook her head a
mumbled something under her breath, then proceeded to ignore me.

I looked down to see what
Georgia had written for Tobin.
Who is he?

“You don’t know him. He’s
a Physician’s Assistant and works at Egan’s pediatrician’s office.”

Tobin was fainter than
usual even disappearing briefly before flickering back into existence and he didn’t
respond for a few minutes. Georgia was poised and ready with the stick, but
soon grew tired, growing more transparent each passing second. I walked over
and took the stick out of her hand. She peered up at me in surprise.

***

TOBIN

“Do you want me to write
something?” Bob asked.

“No, yeah…shit, I don’t
know, man. I sure wasn’t expecting this.”

“That’s why I never
settled down….gets too complicated.”

“She has every right to
move on. I’m fucking dead.” I turned and started to walk away.

“So that’s a no?”

Bob’s question made me
pause. I didn’t have any right to be angry. Candy had found someone and I
couldn’t begrudge her happiness. So I went back.

“Yeah. Ask her if Egan
likes this guy.” I said, watching as Bob etched the letters in the dirt.

Candy’s response was what
I wanted for Egan. That he was happy and her fiancé, Adam, got along great with
my son, but it still stung to hear it.   

‘This is the last time
I’m coming up here. I need to get on with my life. I hope you understand.”

Bob waited for me to tell
him what to write, the stick pointed and ready.

Yes. Give Egan a hug
from me and tell him his Daddy loves him. I want you both to be happy. Goodbye
Candy.

Bob’s eyes met mine and I
nodded that I was finished. I couldn’t stop her and I knew Egan would be taken
care of. That was my biggest concern. Suddenly, a buoyancy I hadn’t experienced
before pushed any remaining worries to the side.

“Tobin, how are you doing
that?” Bob yelled. I turned towards him and that’s when I realized I was
floating at least six feet above the ground and moving further away from the
others.

Chapter Forty-Two

LAWRENCE

“Tobin, get back down
here,” I called.

“I can’t!” His voice was
barely audible because he was traveling higher up into the sky. This was a new development
and none of us knew what to do.

“I think I’m leaving!”
The boy’s face wore a serene expression. “Bye!” He smiled a radiant smile
brighter than the sun, waved and then disappeared.

We stood there in a
stunned trance surveying the sky for his return. We forgot that Candy hadn’t
left and still waited for more words to appear in the sand.

“Tobin, you still here?”
she asked, breaking the silence.

Bob had dropped the stick
and stared at the clouds, completely unaware of Candy’s questions, even though
he stood closest to her. I sighed and picked up the stick.

He’s gone. I think you
set him free.

Candy gasped and her hand
flew up to cover her mouth as tears spilled down her cheeks.

Go live and be happy.
Do this for Tobin.
Do this for your child.

She nodded and wiped her
eyes, leaving matching charcoal smears which disappeared into the hair at her
temples. Without another word she turned and walked back to her car.

Tobin didn’t come back,
his form wasn’t bleached invisible by the sun as Bob suspected.

“He didn’t become visible
like Juanita did with her family? Why do you think that is?” Frank asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think he really
crossed over or just went somewhere else?” Georgia asked, while searching the
horizon for her friend.

“I don’t know.”

“So he might come back?”
She said and I could see the hope burning in her eyes.

“Again, I don’t know.
Obviously if I had the answers I wouldn’t be here!” I snapped and wished myself
far away from the group. In less time than it took to blink, my wish was
granted and I found myself on the other side of the highway.

Tobin’s crossing over
made me even more miserable. A family member or a loved one was the common
factor in both situations and most likely the catalyst needed to leave
purgatory behind. I didn’t have anyone to release me from my eternal prison. I’d
be forced to linger on the side of the road where my family died.

I didn’t stay away for
long. Not only did I feel bad for yelling at Georgia, who was just upset over
losing her friend, but I didn’t want to be alone. The thought had occurred to
me that everyone could cross over leaving me behind. I needed to savor the
company while it lasted.

Frank greeted me as I
approached the others.

“Georgia didn’t deserve
that.”

“No, she didn’t and I’ll
apologize…to you all.”

“Some of the fault is
ours. We seek you out for answers you don’t have.”

We moved towards the
others. Georgia and Peggy were watching the sunrise and Bob was watching Peggy.
Frank and I stood with them. We all had our backs to the road and waited for
the sun to creep up out of the horizon, for its golden rays to race across the
earth towards us. This was our first day without Tobin. Just the five of us
remained and none of us knew when our numbers were going to decrease again.

Chapter Forty-Three

GEORGIA

What bothered me the most
about Tobin leaving was that I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Lawrence apologized for
yelling at me. I assured him it was nothing compared to how my father would
rant and carry on. I accepted his apology and moved on, focusing instead on
strengthening our abilities. Since we were successful in saving Tobin’s family,
we wanted to be better prepared for the next accident. The way people drove, it
surprised me a disaster didn’t happen every day. There was more traffic too and
although none of us knew what day it was, we always knew when it was the
weekend because the traffic doubled.

Cars overheated, tires
went flat, but amazingly months went by without an accident. Our little area
was located right by a nasty hairpin turn and tires screamed as cars whipped
around too fast and we knew it was just a matter of time.

None of us could have
predicted the next disaster would be a natural one.

***

LAWRENCE

We were impervious to the
weather, but even we could tell the summer was an extraordinarily hot and dry
one. Trucks hauling tanks of water passed by us every day. Most likely heading
towards farms where the irrigation had dried up. Plants withered and died on
their stems, the vibrant colors of a lush spring had long faded away into a
brown landscape. I was reminded of the Depression and the reports on the severe
drought.

Clouds formed on the
horizon and we waited in anticipation for the rain as if our throats needed to
be quenched. Just as quickly as the thunderheads gathered, they dissipated as if
the heat chased them away.

Days went by like this
until finally there was some activity to the west. In the distance the clouds
grew darker and were illuminated with strands of lightning. Somewhere it was
raining. I remembered how I used to enjoy the smell of rain in the summer. In
Boston, street surfaces steamed from a sudden dousing.

My anticipation was never
gratified for the storm didn’t reach us. It petered out somewhere over the
expanse of desert. The next day dawned with clear skies and you could see for
miles. On the mountain range to the west, a large plume of smoke smudged the
landscape. As the day wore on, the plume grew larger and darker.

‘That’s not good,” Bob
said. He stood next me and we were both engrossed watching the distant wildfire.

“Why?”

“When the smoke is dark that
means it has a lot of fuel and is burning heavily - could make for some
interesting viewing though.”

Bob was right. Over the
next few days the wildfire grew and marched closer towards us. Emergency
vehicles became a familiar sight on the highway. Helicopter and airplanes
roared overhead as an aerial attack on the flames commenced.

When ash started to fall
out of the sky like gray snow, I knew it was just a matter of time before the
fire reached us. I found a part of me wanted the destruction, a sheer desire
for something to alter our environment. I wasn’t the only one excited by the
impending disaster. Bob stood in the highway hooting and hollering every time a
fire truck passed through him. Frank and Georgia stood next to me and joined in
the vigil as we watched the progression.

Peggy remained unusually
quiet and withdrawn. She only stood with us occasionally, spending more time
down where her car had crashed. After two days passed without her talking to
any of us, I sent Frank to check on her because he was the only who wasn’t
restricted and could reach her.

***

FRANK

I appeared next to Peggy
and she barely acknowledged my presence. She glanced at me briefly and went
back to stacking rocks. Dozens of miniature columns had been randomly erected
in the clearing.

“You’ve been busy,” I
commented.

“What do you want,
Frank?”

“Nothing, Lawrence is
worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, growing
brighter and more dimensional, fueled by her agitation.

“No, you’re not.”

“Frank, you remember how
I died, don’t you?”

As if she had knocked me
upside my head, I remembered her crispy remains trapped inside her car. “Oh,
Peggy. We didn’t even think.”

“It shouldn’t bother me.
I’ve been dead for so long, but…”

“No, I get it. So, do you
want me to leave you alone?”

She nodded and turned her
attention back to the stone column. The moment she did, I joined the others,
glad to be relieved of my duty. Talking things out had never been one of my
strong suits. I filled them in on what Peggy said and there was a collective,
“Oh!”

When Peggy eventually
joined us the next day, we didn’t mention her accident. From the sideways smile
she gave me, I think she appreciated our discretion.

So we all watched the
firestorm draw closer. At night, the sky glowed red, the ridge of the mountains
a jagged, fluorescent scarlet line. The flames stepped down from the range and
we watched as brush, Piñon pines and mesquite trees were consumed by a line of
fire that marched in a slow, yet steady progression. The air choked with ash
and the highway shut down. We suddenly had visitors as our land became the
staging area for emergency crews.

Come daybreak the smoke
had snuffed out the sun and helicopters flew directly overhead. They hauled
huge upside down balloons full of water. Firemen were putting in a full scale
effort to control the wildfire. Bob said it reminded him of Vietnam,
specifically napalm.

“Is Napalm a city in
Vietnam?”

Bob snorted, “No a weapon
which burns anything it touches. The sky would glow orange like this for nights
on end.”

Warfare certainly had
changed over the years. I watched the war being waged in front of us; Man
versus Nature. Even with technical advantages of fighting the fire from above,
it refused to back down.

The winds kicked up and
flames raced towards the far side of the highway. The brush and weeds, which
had grown over the rusted shell of my car, ignited.

I overheard the
firefighters say that the highway was a dividing line. If the fire jumped the
asphalt, things were sure to spiral out of control. All efforts were focused on
the road. A few men came through and started burning our area. They moved
through us like we didn’t exist.

“Did you feel that?”
asked one guy to another.

“What?”

“The air was cold back
there, like twenty degrees cooler than the rest.”

“Huh, I didn’t notice.
Weird. It’d be nice though, it’s fucking hot.”

“And it’s going to get
hotter if we don’t hurry.”

Both men went back to
work. If it was hot, I couldn’t tell. None of us in our group were able to feel
temperature.

All of this excitement in
our territory provided a much needed distraction. Since Tobin and Juanita had
crossed over, we had all been a little on edge.

 One of the firefighters
yelled to the others on our side of the highway. He pointed up at the sky. I followed
where he was pointing and saw a series of glowing embers arc from the other
side. They landed in the sand and extinguished. More embers made the leap and
some of these found more tolerable landing areas. Bushes, the moisture from
spring rains long exhausted, lit up like candle wicks. 

More yelling ensued and
the firefighters ran across the road and down the embankment to assist with the
getting the inferno under control. Their efforts were futile. A wind gust
picked up creating a fiery dust devil which quickly overwhelmed two men.

“We got this!” I yelled
to Lawrence as me and Peggy, the only two capable of going that far, rushed to
their aid.

When we reached the
firefighters, they were unconscious. We worked together to pull them to safety.
No one seemed to notice the men being carried out by unseen forces…or so I
thought.

Part
II

The
Living