Laws of Nature -2 (11 page)

Artie perked up. "Really?"

"Truly."

"Thanks, Jack. I mean it." The ghost's eyes darted toward the bathroom door. "So you and Molly . . .?"

Jack stiffened. "Nothing, Artie. There's nothing going on."

Artie gazed at him with obvious disappointment. "Come on. What am I, twelve? I've seen you guys dancing around each other like bugs trying to keep away from the backyard zapper. Just kiss her, already."

Horrified, Jack clapped a hand over his eyes and lowered his head. "Man, stop with that. She's your girlfriend."

When he took his hand away from his face, Jack saw that Artie was hovering only two inches away, close enough so that his fingers dragged through the ethereally cold nothingness that made up Artie's body.

Jack jerked back hard and his head hit the wall with a thud. He winced, but Artie moved closer. The specter's eyes had narrowed with anger and an abiding, aching sadness that hurt Jack to the core.

"Don't do that to me, Jack," Artie said through clenched teeth, angrier than Jack had ever seen him.

"What? Don't do what?"

"Don't talk to me like I'm
alive."
Artie turned and floated back across the room, his legs passing right through the bed. Once he had pretended to walk, but that had been right after he'd died. Now he simply drifted.

"Artie, listen - "

"No," Artie snapped, turning on him. "You do what you want, Jack. Do what your heart tells you to do. But you're my best friend. I expect you to watch out for Molly as best you can. Do I wish I could hold her in my arms and tell her everything will be all right?"

His voice seemed to drop an octave, to become hollow and distant and cold. The dark eyes swirled, with the eternity of the Ghostlands visible through them, and for the first time Jack was afraid of the ghost. He knew Artie could not hurt him, but there was a darkness in him in that moment, the sinister weight of death itself, that made Jack shiver.

"Of course I do," Artie whispered. After a moment, he looked up again. "But I can't do that, Jack. If Molly ends up with anybody else, it'll break my heart. But with you . . . I can live with that. I can even be happy for you. It's obvious you care about her, and I've seen the way she looks at you."

Jack sighed. He fixed his friend with a sincere gaze and shook his head. "We can't, Artie. You're still here to me. And Molly . . . I think she can sense that you're not really gone."

"But I
am
gone, Jack. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Molly knows it, too. It's pretty freaky that I have to be the one to tell you what any fool could see is happening with you two. Give it time, all right? See what develops. Don't let her end up with some jerk."

Jack took a deep breath and blew it out. "You're right about one thing. It's all pretty freaky. How the hell am I supposed to kiss her if I know you might be watching?"

The ghost shimmered, then flickered like the picture on a television set just before the power goes out. A sad look had come over Artie's features again.

"When you're right, you're right," he said. He floated toward Jack. "You've got my word that unless you see me, I'm not around. If I pop in and you guys are together, I'll bug out for a while."

"I really don't think you have anything to worry about," Jack told him. "Nothing's gonna happen with us. I'm telling you. We've got too much between us."

Artie grinned at that. "We'll see."

Jack sighed. "Look, you didn't come here to talk to me about this. What's going on?"

"The locals - the dead ones, anyway - they're talking about the Prowlers. We already know from those ghosts you passed on your way into town that there's a pack in the area. But I did some more digging. It looks like they use the town as a home base and hunt around here. The strange thing is, they only started killing people
in town
recently. It's over some book apparently. I talked to the ghost of that mailman, Garraty? Tried to get him to manifest so you could talk to him, but he's still pretty angry about being murdered and all, keeping mostly to himself. I'll see if I can find out anything else."

Jack scratched at his chin. "Yeah. Thanks for that. What about the other local victim? Martin or Marlin or whatever."

The ghost drifted backward, toward the window. The closer Artie came to the sunlight, the more gossamer-like he became, until it was almost as though his whole body had been woven out of spiderweb.

"I've asked about him, but no one seems to know. Some think it's possible he's gone on already."

"Gone where?" Jack asked.

"To wherever he's destined to go. Those of us still here, we're the lost ones, Jack, or the ones who refuse to leave. The ones who have something keeping them from resting. People who die violently usually hang around for a while, clinging to the old world. Looks like Foster Marlin was the exception."

Jack thought about that. No Marlin. But at least the ghost of that mailman was still around. And if he and Molly didn't work fast, there would be more.

"All right. Thanks. Let me know if you come up with anything else."

He looked up at Artie but the ghost was staring past him, a wistful smile on his spectral features. Jack blinked and turned to find Molly standing in the open bathroom door, wrapped only in a towel. Her hair was damp and hanging across her bare shoulders in tangled skeins. She looked nothing short of extraordinary.

"Hey," Molly said quietly.

"Hey," Jack replied.

"You talking to one of them?"

Jack nodded.

"Let me just grab my clothes," she said. Quickly, Molly went to the dresser and made a small pile of the items she wanted to wear before hurrying back into the bathroom and shutting the door.

Alone again, Jack glanced up at Artie, who had a broad grin on his face.

"Told you," the ghost said.

"Told me what?" Jack replied quickly.

Artie rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. She could have brought the clothes in with her in the first place, Jack. Were you always this slow on the uptake, or is this a special case?"

Then the ghost dissipated into nothing, like the momentary sheen of a rainbow in the spray of a backyard sprinkler. Artie was gone.

"A special case," Jack whispered to the empty room. "Definitely a special case."

A few minutes later Molly emerged from the bathroom to rummage for her hair dryer. She wore a bright orange shirt that was cut above her belly button and white shorts. Jack offered her a smile that felt plastered on.

Dryer in hand, Molly stopped before going back into the bathroom. She studied him a moment.

"What is it? Did it tell you anything that'll help us?"

"Not really," Jack replied. "But it told me we were right about the Prowlers. They're here."

The trees that lined Route 31 blocked out some of the harsh sunlight, allowing the breeze that rustled through the leaves to cool the air just a bit. It was a day that made Jack appreciate shade, not to mention the ocean breeze he usually took for granted, living so close to Boston Harbor.

That morning they hit the lobby of the Buckton Inn to find coffee, juice, and muffins on a sideboard against a far wall. There was no sign of Tina, just a gray-haired, stern-looking woman whose eternally pursed lips made Jack think of a prissy, tyrannical librarian he'd run into more than once at the Boston Public Library. Without a word, they collected what little the inn offered by way of breakfast and fled the lobby to escape the woman's intense scrutiny.

Jack drove them south along the Post Road, the way they had come the night before. In the passenger seat, Molly spread a map out in her lap. They had pored over news reports of the mailman's death, and it looked as though Phil Garraty had been murdered on his route, just beyond the intersection of the Post Road - Route 31 on the map - and Route 219, which ran east-west just south of town.

They parked on the side of 219, fifty yards from the intersection with the Post Road. Jack spread the map on the hood of the Jeep and Molly stood still, apparently trying to get some sense of the place. From time to time, a car or an SUV whizzed by on 219, mostly headed east. East made sense to Jack. There wasn't much to the west except more towns like Buckton, more green hills and mountains.

Molly walked over and stood behind him, staring over his shoulder at the map. "I'm curious. What are we doing here exactly?"

"What do you mean?"

"What are we doing here?" she said again. "Exactly?"

"Just getting our bearings."

Molly stared at him. "The information the ghosts have given you is pretty clear. There are Prowlers here. A pack, though we don't know what size, exactly. But don't you think we should call Bill now? I really don't think we should try to take them on by ourselves."

His eyes widened. "Neither do I. Are you kidding? But Courtney and Bill have a lot on their plates already. We're keeping them posted, but I figure before we drag Bill all the way up here, we can at least try to figure out what's going on, see if we can't narrow down where the pack might have their lair. We might even be able to figure out who some of them are."

"And we're supposed to do this without drawing attention to ourselves?" Molly prodded.

Jack shrugged. "Basically. Look, the second we have any solid information or feel like we're in danger, we'll call him, all right?"

Molly seemed to roll that over in her head for a minute. Then she nodded. "Let's just be careful."

"Absolutely," Jack agreed. Then his attention turned back to the map. "Foster Marlin was killed in his home. Garraty was murdered out here, in the middle of the morning, while on his route. But the locals . . . the ghosts . . . they say those guys are the exceptions. Up until now, the pack hasn't hunted in Buckton. All the killings were in the mountains and other towns. If the information I got was right, they changed the rules because of some book that was stolen that they want back."

He had explained to her what Artie had told him, though without revealing it was Artie who had supplied the information.

"Doesn't seem like the smartest thing to do," Molly noted. "There have to have been ways for them to get the thing back without attracting attention."

"Maybe they panicked," Jack offered. He looked around at the trees and shivered, despite the heat. Though cars passed intermittently, they were pretty much alone out there. "Look, I don't know. I'm just trying to figure out what to do next."

Molly took a breath and reached out to stroke his arm once. "I know. You talked to Courtney this morning. Did she and Bill have any suggestions?"

"Other than 'don't get killed'?" Jack asked. He shrugged and walked along the Post Road a bit. "Not a whole lot, no. They both want to come to be with us, but there's the pub to be dealt with. I told them we'd be careful, to hold off until we really need them."

Molly rubbed the back of her neck, then leaned against the Jeep with her arms crossed, regarding him carefully. "So how are we supposed to figure out where the lair is?"

For a moment Jack felt at a total loss. The wind kicked up and blew the map off the hood of the Jeep and he ran to get it. Twice he bent to retrieve it, only to have it blow out of reach. The third time he stamped a foot down on it, then bent to carefully pick it up. The grimy print of his sneaker was smeared across the entire Buckton area.

Jack stared at the map.

"What?" Molly asked.

"We chart them. The corpses, I mean. We chart them out, and see if there's a pattern."

He went to the Jeep and rummaged in the glove compartment for a pen, then circled the spots where he thought the postman had been murdered, and where he thought Foster Marlin's house ought to be, based on the address he had gotten out of the phone book.

"Are you expecting help from Deputy Vance and the sheriff ?" Molly asked. "'Cause, no offense, but if you don't want to draw attention, asking about mysterious deaths and murders going back forty years or so is not the way to go unnoticed."

"They won't have any idea what we're doing until we have something solid to give them," Jack assured her.

"Then I don't get it," she said. "How do we find out the exact locations where all these people were murdered, where their bodies were discovered?"

Jack turned to her, aware that his smile had dissipated, his features now grim, but he felt unable to pretend with his emotions in front of her.

"We ask them," he said simply.

Eyes wide, Molly stared at him, then glanced around anxiously, as though aware for the first time that the lost souls of the dead were not there only when Jack saw them, but all the time. She took a step closer to him, one hand on the sun-warmed hood of the Jeep.

"You can do that? I mean, I thought you only saw them if they appeared to you."

"Not necessarily. Let's experiment."

Molly bit her lip and turned to lean against the Jeep, beside him. Jack closed his eyes and thought about Artie, and Father Pinsky, the priest the Prowlers had killed in Boston, and the other ghosts he had seen. He tried to force himself to feel that frisson of fear that always ran through him when his vision changed and he was able to see the Ghostlands.

"Hold my hand," Jack whispered, fingers reaching for Molly's. Something seemed to be tugging on him, and he wanted to hang on to her, as though she were his anchor.

"Hey," he whispered. "Anybody there?"

After a long moment he opened his eyes. Everything looked exactly as it had before. His mouth twisted with disappointment, and he glanced at Molly.

"Nothing."

"You can try again later. Let's have some lunch and maybe talk to some of the living instead," she said, trying to cheer him. "If we're casual enough, maybe it won't seem out of place."

Jack nodded. He pulled out his keys and jangled them in his hand for a second before he dropped them. They struck the pavement, and he bent to pick them up.

When he straightened up, he saw a battered old postal van rumbling along Route 31 to the intersection with 219. The van only paused a moment at the stop sign before starting across. A car came flying along 219 well above the speed limit, and passed right through the mail truck.