A Haunting of Ghosts

It was a dark and stormy Tuesday night. All right, not stormy. If it had been, Van thought, he and Gene probably wouldn’t be standing in the entryway of a shop, looking at their dead bodies sprawled on the pavement. They’d be at home, where it was warm and dry. “We’re really dead. It isn’t a nightmare,” Gene said, sounding both horrified and interested. Interested because, as a writer, it gave him new insight into what being murdered involved—like the shock and pain as bullets tore through him, for starters. Or so Van figured as he replied, “Nope, it’s real.” He put his arm around Gene’s shoulders, or tried to, as they watched the police and an ambulance arrive at the scene. Instead, his arm went through Gene as if he had no substance. It took Van less than a second to realize that his partner didn’t have substance, any more than he did, if the fact he could see the pavement through his feet was any indication. Van was Vance Acker. Gene was Eugene Norton, his writing partner and also his life partner. Together, under the pen name V.G. Ackton, they’d written a series of fairly popular mysteries. They’d also done two of what a reviewer who wasn’t too fond of them called speculative non-fiction—Who Killed…?, and more recently Who Killed…? Book 2, each book covering three separate murders. They don’t tackle high-profile cases, like JonBenet Ramsey or Marilyn Sheppard. Everyone and their brother had written about them. They chose smaller cases, laying out all the known facts before adding their own two-cents-worth on who might have had the best motive, and the best chance, to have committed the murder. People seem to like them, so they’d started on a third one. Guess we’re not going to finish it. Van sighed, recalling why they were standing in the entryway looking at their bullet-ridden bodies to begin with. * * * * “Dinner out and a movie, or stay in tonight?” Gene asked as Van saved the research file they’d been working on and they shut down their laptops. Van stretched, considering their options. “Dinner here, and then a movie.” “Sounds good.” Because Gene was the designated cook, since Van couldn’t even boil water without burning it, or so his partner claimed, he headed to the kitchen while Van checked to see what movies were showing close to them. He found one they both agreed on, and after a dinner of veal piccata and angel hair pasta with grated Parmesan, accompanied by red wine, they took off. Two hours later they were walking from the theater to their favorite coffee shop on the block behind the theater, while discussing what they, as writers, would have done differently with the movie’s script. They were partway down the one-way side street when they heard the screech of car brakes. They turned to see what was going on—Van figured probably two cars in a near miss at the intersection—just as a dark-colored sedan careened around the corner. It sped up beside them, skidding to a stop. The driver’s side window was open and the muzzle of a gun appeared, spewing bullets as if they were free, cutting the two men down where they stood. That was the reason Van and Gene were watching from a few feet away as the cops and the crime scene technicians examined their dead bodies. They were both very shaken, to put it mildly. After all, it isn’t often, in fact I could safely say ever—Van grimaced—that we get to see the results of a murder up close and extremely personal. “Who shot us?” Gene asked, his voice trembling as badly as the rest of him, now. “You think I know?” Van spat out in reply. “Don’t yell at me,” Gene said. “Sorry, but damn.” Van reached for his hand and this time he made contact. He squeezed gently, afraid if he did it any harder their hands would melt through each other or something. “This ghost thing sucks,” he muttered. Gene looked at him wide-eyed as the realization finally sank in. “We are. But why? I mean, why are we still here?” Van shrugged. “Best guess, we don’t know who killed us?” At that point he became aware that a man in crime scene gear was staring in their direction as if he could see them, which had to be impossible. Van said as much to Gene as the man started toward them. Still holding Gene’s hand, Van intended to move them deeper into the darkness of the entryway. It worked and then some. They were inside the shop and they hadn’t even opened the door. “f**k. Damn.” Van looked at Gene and suddenly they burst out laughing. Tension relief, Van was certain, but still it was weirdly funny that they could come and go through doors, or walls he suspected, as if they didn’t exist. “Do we want to stick around?” he asked once they’d sobered. “Not me,” Gene said. “Of course we’ll have to walk home. I don’t think driving is an option anymore.” “No kidding. Let’s go out the back way, in case that guy did see us.” “He couldn’t have,” Gene protested, but it didn’t look as if he believed what he’d said. They left the shop by walking through the back door, ending up in an alley. From there, they made their way home. * * * * “We had a couple of interested spectators,” Sage said as soon as he could get Mike alone for a moment. The detective had caught the case, and as often happened Sage was on the scene in the guise of a CSI technician in case the ghost of the victim was there and watching. “Ghosts, I presume,” Mike replied. He knew Sage could see them. He’d known since soon after they’d met, while he was trying to solve the murder of a young man who was now a friend of theirs. A friend thanks to the fact Sage was a medium who could communicate with the dead. “Yep. I was going to try to talk to them but—” Sage gestured toward the recessed shop entryway a few yards away, “—they vanished before I could get to them.” “Shy ghosts?” Mike chuckled. “More like they probably wanted to get away from that.” Sage pointed to the ME’s people, who were putting the corpses into body bags. “It’s bad enough knowing you’re dead. Watching your mortal remains being readied to go to the morgue would sort of put an end to any doubts they had that they’d been murdered. Since they were here, I don’t think they’ll show up at the morgue.” “Meaning the last thing you want to do is go there, so you hope they won’t.” Sage nodded, smiling briefly. “Do you know who they were?” “So far, just names and addresses, or address, since it’s the same on both their licenses. Vance Acker and Gene Norton.” Mike paused when someone called his name, then went to talk to the man. “Do you want to go to their place to see if that’s where they went?” Sage asked when Mike returned. “I can’t get away for a while, but if you want to.” Mike tapped his lip thoughtfully. “Let me see if Brody’s available to go with you. It could ease things some, if he’s there to act as an intermediary.” “Good idea.” Mike took out his phone and sent a text since, as Sage knew well, he couldn’t talk to Brody—or rather, he couldn’t hear whatever he said in reply. After hanging up, he said, “He’ll be here in a few.” Taking out his pad, he checked his notes before writing the address Sage needed on a clean page, tearing it out to hand to him. ‘A few’ turned out to be less than a minute, and Brody wasn’t alone. Jon, his lover in every way except physically, was with him. “What do we have?” Brody asked Sage. “Two men, killed in what looks like a drive-by shooting,” Sage replied. “The ghostie boy has arrived, I presume,” Mike commented, as he couldn’t see or hear Brody. “Him and Jon,” Sage said. “Why am I not surprised? At least they didn’t bring the rest of the horde, I hope.” “Not this time,” Brody said. “Tonio and Kurt decided to get away from the barn for a while and catch a movie.” The barn was where all four ghosts were living; having decided finding a place in the city wasn’t going to happen once Kurt had joined the group. Sage relayed Brody’s reply to Mike before saying, “The sooner we get out of here, the sooner I can find out if Acker and Norton know who shot them. I doubt they do, or they wouldn’t have been hanging around watching what was happening. If you want, I can at least set it up for them to talk to you, Mike, presuming they’re willing.” “I want,” Mike replied. “Make it at their place or our house.” “No duh,” Brody said. “The other cops might look at you strange if you tried to bring them into the station to interview them.” When Sage told Mike what Brody had said, Mike shot him the finger, muttering, “Go, before I decide to arrest you for insulting an officer’s intelligence.” “Now would I do that?” Brody laughed, telling Sage he didn’t need to relay his reply. They went to the lot where Sage had parked his car. The first thing he did was get out of the coveralls, booties, and mask he’d been wearing while posing as one of the crime scene investigators. Then they took off and five minutes later they were pulling into a spot in front of a small house in a middle-class neighborhood. “They’re not going to be able to open the door after you ring the bell,” Jon pointed as they walked up the path to the front porch. “It took me forever to be able to manipulate even a pencil, to say nothing of turning a doorknob.” “True, so I’ll go in the easy way,” Brody replied. “If they’re there, hopefully I’ll be able to convince them it’s safe to talk to Sage, and then let him in.” * * * * “What are we going to do?” Gene asked as he paced the living room. “I mean, what can we do? Nothing, damn it!” He had been going on in that vein since he and Van had arrived at home. They’d gotten inside the same way they’d left the shop fifteen minutes earlier—by walking through the door. The first thing Gene had done was go to the TV. He wanted to see if their murders had made the news. That wasn’t happening because neither he nor Van could turn it on. Van had tried his laptop with the same result…nothing. He’d reached for a pencil and his hand went right through it, eliciting a string of swear words in response. “I can’t cook, we can’t write, hell, we can’t even brush our teeth, I bet,” Gene muttered angrily. “You don’t need to,” someone said from the entryway. Van and Gene spun around in unison. A man in worn jeans and a muscle shirt stood there. “Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?” Van snarled, his hands tightening into fists. “My name’s Brody Ellis, and like you, I’m a ghost.” He took a few steps into the room. “We need to talk.” “Uh-huh. About?” Van asked, relaxing minimally. “How do we know you are a ghost?” Brody smiled before he went into the entryway again—and returned to the living room by walking through the wall. “That do it for you?” Van shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. What do we need to talk about?” “How you died, and why, but first things first. There’s a man, a live one, out on your porch. Do you mind if I let him in?” “How? We can’t move things,” Gene said. “You can’t,” Brody replied. “I’ve been around for, hell, six, seven years or so. There’s nothing I can’t move if I put my mind to it.” “So there’s hope,” Gene whispered to Van, getting a nod in return. “Okay, let him in, I guess.” Brody opened the front door and two men came in. Or a man and a ghost, Gene realized, since he could vaguely see the door behind the younger man. “I’m Sage,” the living man said. “I saw you at the crime scene.” He smiled compassionately. “I don’t blame you for getting the hell out of there. I would if it was my body on the pavement. Before you ask, I’m a medium. I can talk to ghosts like Brody and Jon, and the two of you. Which one of you is which by the way?” “I’m Van,” Van replied. “He’s Gene.” He c****d his head, frowning. “Why are they still here? I thought ghosts moved on after a while.” “Good to meet you,” Sage said. “Although you’d probably prefer it if it had happened while you were alive,” he added with a wry smile. “To answer your question, in order to move on you have to know why you died, if you were murdered, who did it, and then prove it. In other cases, like a ghost who has committed suicide, they have to accept that they did. Some go into denial after the fact. Then there are those who decide they want to remain because there’s someone in this world who’s important to them. It can be a living person, one of our friends did that for a while, or it can be another ghost who can’t move on.” “That’s why Brody’s here,” Jon said. “I don’t know who killed me, and we love each other, so he chose to stick around until things are resolved one way or the other.” He smiled at Brody, slipping his arm around his waist. “If I can’t ever leave, I have someone who is willing to make the sacrifice to keep me company.” “Some sacrifice,” Brody said, giving Jon a kiss. “We do love each other and are partners in all the ways that count.” He looked at Gene and Van. “The same way the two of you are, I suspect.” “We are,” Gene replied. “In life as well as in what we do for a living.” “You said you’re here because you want to talk to us about what happened,” Van said. Sage nodded. “We do, but there’s someone else who should be here, too. His name is Mike Harris and he’s the lead detective on your murder case, and my life partner.” He winked. “If you don’t mind waiting until he’s available to come out here, it would save a lot of repetition.” “We have all the time in the world,” Gene replied, grimacing. “So make yourselves comfortable. If you could turn on the TV I’d appreciate it. I’d like to watch the news.” “Prurient interest?” Brody asked as he turned it on. “Wrong word,” Jon said with a laugh, “unless the news has started showing porn as part of their line-up.” “Okay, smartass, what’s the word I’m looking for?” “Wanting to know what happened as far as the cops are concerned?” “That’s a lot more than one word.” “Inquisitiveness, interest, curiosity,” Gene said. “Although none of those are strong enough. I have to know what they’ve found out. I mean, no one wants us dead, damn it. Why would they?” “You think it was a case of mistaken identity?” Brody asked. “It has to be, doesn’t it?” Gene swore under his breath when he realized they were too late. The news program was showing the weather and he knew the sports report would be up next. “How soon before we can talk to the detective?” “Let me check,” Sage replied, taking out his phone. After a brief conversation, he told them, “Mike can be here in twenty or so. Do you mind if I make coffee while we wait?” “Hell, no,” Van said. “I could use some…” He sighed. “Not possible, is it?” “I’m afraid not,” Jon told him. “You get used to it after a while. Not eating or drinking, I mean.” “Or sleeping, or reading, or using the computer, or…” Van said sourly. “Give it time,” Brody replied. “You can already sleep. The rest? Once you learn to manipulate things, you’ll be able to surf the net to your heart’s content.” “And play games,” Jon added, winking at Brody. “What about…?” Gene glanced at Van then took his hand, holding it carefully. When Van squeezed it in return and then put an arm around him, Gene asked, “How come we can already touch and hold each other, but not real things like a pencil?” “Because you’re both ghosts. Here…” Brody held out his hand. When Gene tentatively took it, Brody said, “See. If you and Sage tried to shake hands, however, his would go right through yours because he’s human. Eventually you’ll be able to pick up a book and read it, or whatever.” “What about…” Gene worried his lip, his gaze locked on Van. “We have a pretty damned good s*x life.” Brody chuckled. “If you’re asking will you still be able to f**k, no, it won’t happen. A c**k needs blood to get hard, something all of us are lacking. Well, other than Sage.” He grinned at him. “Thank God for that,” Sage muttered.