Prowlers - 1 (14 page)

yet Tanzer saw no hesitation in his eyes.

With a sudden lurch, Carver reached out and grabbed a lamp off a small table. He whipped off the shade, baring the gleaming light, then broke the bulb off in the socket. Ghirardi thrust himself up, tossing the lid of the piano up, breaking it off its hinges to shatter a vase and other knickknacks on a shelf behind it.

He turned toward Carver.

Carver jammed the broken lamp into Ghirardi's chest, slamming him back into the piano. There was a crackle and the smell of burning fur as electricity from the broken bulb in the socket passed into Ghirardi's body. The big animal jerked several times, chuffing noises of pain coming from his snout. Then he collapsed in a heap on the floor.

His eyes fluttered, and he stared up at Carver with hatred, but Ghirardi was too weak to move as Carver knelt over him and took the soft furry flesh of his throat between his teeth.

From fifty-seventh in the hierarchy of the pack, vicious Eric Carver had just risen to twentyfourth.

Tanzer smiled.

He walked over to Carver, who jumped with surprise, perhaps expecting another attack, but then leaned his head to one side to bare his own throat to Tanzer.

Owen studied him. Then reached out to take jasmine's hand.

"I'm going hunting, Carver," he said. "Change your clothes and come along."

CHAPTER 6

The 1ights flickered as the subway train rattled around a turn in the tunnel, brakes screeching with that harsh buzzsaw-through-metal squeal that Jack always thought sounded as if the train was scraping the walls as it passed. A pale girl decked out in all black with her hair dyed darker than her clothes sat beside him with something pounding into her ears from a Walkman turned up so loud that Jack heard every jangling note. With her black hair teased up into spikes and body jewelry punched through her eyebrows, ears, nostrils, top lip, and, one might imagine, just about anywhere else she could poke something sharp through, she drew plenty of attention and stares from other passengers on the Green Line train.

Jack was glad.

If they were looking at the girl, that meant they weren't looking at him. Never in his life had he felt so

out of place, so much like an impostor. No one seemed to notice him, which made the experience all the more surreal. The men and women in business suits with their cell phones, the kids in street clothes, the grandmothers with shopping bags—they were all moving through a world he no longer lived in. He watched them like a voyeur, envying them in a way, but also feeling strangely superior, as though their ignorance made them somehow less than he was.

Ironic, considering that he would have paid a great deal to be ignorant again. He'd heard it said that ignorance was bliss, but he had never understood that statement until now.

Huddled against the wall and the dirty window beside him, Jack looked out into the darkness of the tunnel beyond. He could still see the reflections of the commuters who were jammed in all around him. Still felt out of place. For in the window he also saw Artie's reflection. His best friend's ghost stood leaning against the door between the cars. A woman in an elegant suit, attractive and without much makeup, stood to his left. To his right, an unshaven blue-collar type in a hooded zip-up sweatshirt that barely covered his prodigious gut.

There wasn't enough room between them for Artie's ghost, but he stood there just the same. Where their bodies crossed, at hips and elbows and, in the case of the unshaven man, the entire right side of his upper torso, Artie was simply not there. Their bodies blocked his out as though portions of him had been rubbed out

with an eraser, leaving only a kind of mist around both of the people with whom he shared space.

As Jack watched the three of them, two living commuters and a dead one, the elegant businesswoman shuddered and hugged herself as though she felt cold, though it was more than warm enough on the train. Artie shot her a withering, irritated glance and waved her away with a flick of his wrist, the way he would an annoying insect.

The woman shivered again and glanced over at the obese man with a frown, as though he had bothered her in some way.

Jack turned away from the window and glared at Artie.

The ghost gave him a phantom, innocent smile and shrugged his shoulders. "What the hell do you want me to do?" he asked. "She's bugging me. Just because I'm dead, I'm not supposed to react?"

Artie stepped away from the back wall of the train car, pushed his hands through his shaggy

hair, and passed right through a pair of rough-looking punks in baggy pants and high-tops to stand in front of Jack with his hands on his hips.

Jack stared at him, then glanced around nervously at the people around him and wouldn't look at Artie again.

"Bro, come on!" Artie cried. "Give me a break here, all right? I mean, okay, this takes a little getting used to, right? But you think it's easy for me? Okay, I now have the ability to see any woman naked, and that's not a bad

thing. But—hello!—I can't do a damn thing about it because I'm dead."

In spite of himself, Jack chuckled softly and quickly put a hand up to hide his smirk. The Goth chick with the Walkman glanced at him, but only for a second. Then she scowled and went back to glaring at the people in suits.

"Oh, so me being dead is funny to you?" Artie said. "Oh, that's nice, Jack. Really nice. You're a bud."

Jack fixed him with a frustrated glare. Artie had been pretty quiet on the train so far, mainly because Jack had told him to. The last thing he wanted was a bunch of people to see him talking to himself on the T.

"What?" Artie snapped. Then he grinned. "Oh, right, the silent treatment. Listen, I've got access to the secrets of the universe over here, man. All these spirits wandering around, they know things, right? Kennedy? Three shooters. I told you, Jack. I can find out all kinds of things now, but it's too late for me to do anything about it."

Though he had been clowning only a moment before, Artie's voice now took on an air of profound despair. Jack's heart ached for him.

"Too late," Artie repeated.

"Not necessarily," Jack said quietly.

The Goth chick gave him a hard look. Jack rolled his eyes as he looked out the window. How she could hear anything with the noise crashing into her eardrums from the little headphones was a mystery to him.

"Problem?" the girl demanded angrily.

"You have no idea," Jack told her.

With a grunt, she shifted in her seat and turned away.

"I think she likes you, bro!" Artie crowed. Then he dropped to his knees on the floor, halfdissolved into one of the high-topped punks, and leaned right through the Goth girl to kiss Jack on the cheek.

The pale, tough girl shuddered suddenly. Jack felt something cold brush against his flesh, and he understood how she felt. He did not respond, however. After a moment he glanced over at Artie again. The ghost was grinning, his body even more transparent somehow. A white-haired lady with big shopping bags on her lap frowned at him as though she had caught him staring at her. Which was probably exactly what she thought.

Jack looked away.

He heard Artie snickering and could not stop a smirk from returning to his lips. A moment later the train slowed for a stop. The Goth girl gave Jack a sneer as she got up and pushed past people to be one of the first off the train. Commuters swarmed out of the car as others pushed on board without waiting. Jack could not help but turn and watch in fascination as the people going both ways passed through Artie. Each time someone moved through him, a puff of mist rose around his spectral form, like the chalk dust that flew off when they had clapped erasers together as kids at St. Matthew's Elementary.

Artie clowned as the commuters boarded, as the

flesh-and-blood world, the real world, made contact with the intangible essence which was all that remained of him. He wasn't a person anymore. He was a thought. An idea. A memory with a voice.

As he remembered all they had shared, and watched Artie playing the fool—mugging next to newly boarding commuters, pretending to trip or tickle them, kissing a gorgeous woman who stood out from the crowd—Jack felt the tragedy of his friend's death even more keenly. In a way, it hurt more to see him this way than to imagine him as nothing but a corpse in a coffin next to his grandfather's. It hurt to know for certain that his mind still existed, could understand all that had happened to him, and all that he had lost.

Artie glanced at him with those eyes, windows into the darkness of the afterlife, and Jack looked away, hoping to hide his pain. For his bitter thoughts about Artie's existence as a phantom of himself had given way to thoughts of another who had died. Thoughts of Jack's own mother.

Where is she now? "Hey."

The whisper came from right beside him. Jack started and looked at the businessman who had sat down beside him, only to see Artie's transparent face emerge from the side of the man's head. The ghost was no longer smiling.

"It's okay," Artie whispered. "Really. I'll be all right. I'm still here, right? Or maybe not here, exactly, but I'm still. Understand? I'm still. That's better than not being

anything at all, which had always been my fear, y'know? Plus I can still see people, can still talk to you. Maybe you won't miss me as much this way, right?"

Jack sighed. The businessman shifted uncomfortably, obviously aware of Jack seemingly staring at the side of his head. To avoid a confrontation with the guy, Jack turned away and looked back out the window. He could see in the reflection that Artie had stood up again.

'And maybe it makes you miss me more," Artie said softly. "I thought it was just me, feeling that way. I'm sorry, Jack. Maybe . . . maybe I shouldn't have come to you at all. I could have just gone on, y'know? But I didn't want to go without making sure someone knew what had really happened, before I told someone that they were out there. I should've just... gone."

The train squealed as it pulled into Kenmore Station. Jack got up and stepped around the businessman to join the crowd pushing to get off. He glanced around to see where Artie was, then looked out onto the platform and saw that the ghost had already gotten off the train.

Through the wall, of course, he realized. Why would he bother with the door?

Together they went with the flow of people up to the traffic-dogged intersection of Kenmore Square. Buses were lined up at the big station in the middle of the street, and Boston University students crowded the sidewalks. Artie was quiet as Jack crossed the street and headed up toward Fenway Park. On a game night, there would have been no room at all on the sidewalk, but the Red Sox were still down at camp in Fort Myers,

Florida. Few people were headed toward the ballpark tonight.

'Artie," Jack said, keeping his voice low. I’m glad you came back"

The ghost stopped walking suddenly, but drifted another few inches. That was when Jack realized that Artie did not have to walk at all, but merely went through the motions for the sake of illusion. Though whether the illusion was for his sake or Artie's, Jack did not know.

"You don't have to say that," Artie told him. "It wasn't fair of me, I know. I died. You didn't. I shouldn't have interfered with you just living your life."

"You're my best friend."

"I was," Artie corrected.

"You still are," Jack said, lowering his voice to a whisper as a pair of middle-aged women passed by hand in hand. "Look, we could talk about all the things we've lost, but at least we can still talk. Still communicate. I don't really understand how, but—"

"Unfinished business," Artie interrupted.

"Huh?"

Artie shrugged, bounding around with the nervous energy he had always had when he was alive.

"I don't know all the rules, Jack There is somewhere to go for me, I know that much. Kate went on to wherever she was meant to be. But I chose to stay behind because of the Prowlers. I can't go without making sure someone stops them, someone does something. Think about it, bro: it's like the biggest conspiracy in the history of the

world, and it cost me my life. How could I have walked away from that?"

Jack smiled affectionately. "You couldn't have."

Without a word, they fell into step side by side again.

"Exactly. So I stayed here in the Ghostlands, and I talked to some of the other . . . spirits . .. and I learned how to focus myself—my energy, I guess—so that you could see me."

"Ghostlands," Jack said. "You mentioned that once before. What is it exactly?"

"Just here," Artie told him. 'All around you. It's the world within the world, or outside it, maybe, the one you can't see, where the dead linger with humanity if they can't bear to leave or if they have something they need to do. You'd be surprised how many of us there are."

Jack's throat felt dry. He glanced at Artie out of the corner of his eye, and through his friend's body he could see a neon Budweiser sign glowing in the window of a sports bar.

"Is ... is my mother there?" he asked. Jack shoved his hands in his pockets.

Artie glanced at him as they walked. "I don't know, Jack. I'm sorry. My guess is that if you never saw her, she probably went on. And, hey, you and Courtney have done great things with the pub, and you've turned out okay, so maybe she didn't have any reason to stay."

Jack nodded slowly, didn't meet Artie's gaze. "I thought I saw her once. I never told anyone. It was in the restaurant, about two years after she died. Place

was hopping, I was busing tables, and I looked up and saw this woman standing just inside the front door and, God, it looked just like her."

"Maybe it was her," Artie suggested. "Maybe she checked on you guys and saw that you were going to be okay and went on."

For a minute or so they walked along in silence. At the corner of Yawkey Way, in the shadow of Fenway Park, Jack stopped again and looked at Artie. Looked into the infinite space behind the eyes of a ghost.

"I want her to be happy," Jack said, his voice choked with emotion. "To be in heaven, or whatever. But I never got to say good-bye to her. I'll never know if she's proud of me. When I find someone I want to marry she won't be there."