Ghostwriter (26 page)

He could make out a shadow behind the tree. A man wearing no shirt, his chest and neck streaked with what Dennis imagined
to be dirt.

Or blood.

The figure looked at him, leering at him with white teeth. “Care to join me, Dennis?”

Dennis was torn between continuing forward and bolting out of there.

Cillian shook his head, his face distinguishable now that Dennis’s eyes had adjusted to the moonlight. “Such a pity.”

“What’s a pity?”

“You. You’re pitiful, Dennis. You let me down. You are constantly—constantly—letting me down.”

“Then maybe you should go bother someone else.”

“Maybe if you didn’t disappoint me I would.”

“What can I do for you then?”

“See—look. Look at this. You don’t get it, do you?”

“Did you decide to bury my cat?”

Cillian laughed. “That’s a good one. You never cared for that thing anyway, did you?”

“You didn’t have to tear its head off.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Would you like it back?”

“No,” Dennis said flatly.

“This is much too big of a hole for Buffy.”

“Deciding to bury yourself?”

“You’re so full of wit tonight. Is it because you visited the little park in the forest and saw some of God’s creatures?”

“What are you doing?” Dennis asked.

He looks and sounds and even smells real. How can this be a ghost? It can’t be.

But Dennis had seen the pictures. They were real. And this guy was dead.

Cillian looked up, sweat beading on his forehead. “Yes, even the sweat is real.”

“Can you read my mind?”

“Sometimes. But not in the way you might think.”

“How might I think?”

“You don’t understand, and you refuse to understand, Dennis. You’re too stubborn, too confident. Even after all this time.
After everything that’s happened.”

Dennis walked over to the hole.

“What is this?”

“I’d say it’s big enough for a man your size, wouldn’t you?”

“Are you gonna kill me?”

“You know I can’t do that, Dennis. And you call yourself a horror writer.”

“I like to think that I write more than just horror,” Dennis said.

“You write garbage that’s not worth filling this hole!”

Dennis stared. He wanted to grab the shovel and hurt Cillian with it, to knock him out and throw him in this hole and bury
him.

Can you bury the dead? Will they stay down there?

“You know what’s going to fill this hole? Right in your backyard? Your buddy. Perhaps he will give you inspiration.”

Dennis thought of Hank.

What have you done?

“What buddy?”

“Oh, no, not the stupid one. No, he’ll get something else. The friend you call Ward.”

“What have you done?”

Cillian started laughing.

As Dennis went after him, he vanished.

The shovel dropped, and Dennis picked it up. It was real. The dirt was real, as was the hole.

He ran the dirt through his fingers.

Dennis sprinted back toward his house, not caring about the time or Cillian’s disappearing act or anything else.

Ward has a wife and a family and he can’t be involved in this. It would be my fault. I can’t allow that to happen.

His hands shook as he dialed the number.

“Hello?” The voice whispered. It was Ward’s wife, Kendra.

“Kendra, I need to speak to Ward.”

“Wha—Dennis?”

“Yeah, it’s Dennis. Something—I just—is he there?” There was a pause.

She’s looking for him but he won’t be there because he’s downstairs lying in a pool of blood.

“Dennis, what’s wrong?” Kendra asked.

“I can’t tell you now—I just need to speak to Ward.”

“Okay.”

There was movement in the background, muffled voices, the shuffling of the phone.

“Hello.”

It was Ward. Groggy and subdued but still Ward.

“Are you okay?”

There was a pause. “Hey, Dennis.”

“Are you okay?” he repeated, demanding an answer.

“Yeah. Are you?”

“I just—something happened tonight.”

“What?”

“I can’t—I was worried about you.”

“Dennis, man—it’s almost three in the morning.”

“I know. And I’m sorry.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just, uh, just be careful, okay?”

There was another pause.

“Ward, look, I’ll explain everything. Just—give me a call sometime tomorrow. Apologize to Kendra for me.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And Ward. Don’t…”

“Don’t what?”

What are you going to tell him? Don’t lose your mind? Don’t anger any dead people? Don’t go close to any holes in the ground?

“Look, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Dennis lay the phone on the counter. Suddenly he heard the dial tone, as if the speaker on the phone was on. And through the
speaker he heard laughter.

Taunting, menacing, hilarious laughter.

“Just keep diggin’, Dennis! Keep diggin’! I’ll finish up for you tomorrow. Just you wait. I’ll finish up for all of you. Just
you wait!”

He awoke in the third-floor bedroom, the unused guest room across from the storage room. The morning sun striped over the
bed, revealing his muddy clothes and clumped shoes. He felt hungover though there was no reason he should.

Had he dreamed the whole thing about Cillian digging the hole? He decided to go downstairs and see if there was anything in
the backyard.

Who says you didn’t do it yourself in a nightmarish fit of energy?

His lower back ached. His mouth felt dry, pasty. As he went to the stairs, wondering how he had ended up here, something in
Lucy’s old room caught his eye.

For a moment he just stood there, staring.

On the wood floor rested the photo album.

Not a photo album but the photo album.

I know I haven’t looked at that since she passed, and I know I wasn’t looking at it last night.

It was perhaps the ugliest album ever made, with a bright yellow and blue cloth covering that said words in bold like
LOVE
and
LAUGHTER
and, in case you wondered what the album was for:
PHOTOS.
He had picked it out for Lucy on their first anniversary, giving it to her filled with funny photos. He had given her something
else too, though he couldn’t remember what—a necklace or a gift certificate. But he remembered this gift. As the years passed,
the album filled with more funny and memorable moments from their life together.

It still had a couple blank pages, pages she had added not long before she passed.

Dennis had thought of taking it out after she died, maybe about every five or ten minutes of every day of every week after
she died. But he knew it would be too much. The best way—maybe the only way—to deal with someone dying was to go out and live
as hard as you could. Sitting upstairs on the third floor looking through memories wouldn’t do anybody any good.

Did Cillian do this to hurt me? Is this one of the many ways he’s wanting to peel open the scab?

The room chilled him. He looked down at his arms covered in goose bumps.

Get out of this room.

He picked up the photo album.

As he walked down the narrow stairs to the second floor and his office, it felt like he was carrying a box of dynamite. As
he entered his office, he heard something fall to the carpet.

It was a photo.

He picked it up and looked at it.

There she was, smiling, laughing, saying something. It was a snapshot taken in the last month of her life. She still looked
like she had twenty or thirty years left. Who could have known?

He quickly slipped it back into the album.

I don’t remember ever seeing that picture before.

Dennis put the album in his closet. He couldn’t look through it. Not now. Maybe in another year. Or another decade.

The photo lingered in his mind. He couldn’t place it. Had he even been there when it was taken?

It’s easy to forget when you want to. To stuff it away in some dark place that can only be found through the mossy swamps
of pain.

Dennis looked out his window and saw the hole in the backyard, the shovel next to it.

It was real, just like the stains on his clothes and the grime on his hands.

Dennis spent the day in denial.

He avoided the growing pile of bills. He avoided the messages left by Ward on his answering machine. He avoided the e-mails
and calls from Maureen asking how the manuscript was coming along. He avoided reading any more of Cillian’s horrific story.
He avoided the thought of slapping a cover letter on it and sending it to Maureen.

He avoided the reality of Cillian and what that really, truly meant.

Dennis was a pro at avoidance.

And despite everything he had seen and gone through, he still couldn’t force himself to get help.

When the doorbell rang at 5:45 that afternoon, Dennis found something to greet the guest with.

The .38 in his office.

He swung open the door, raising the gun and expecting to see the familiar sneering face.

Instead it was Hank with a case of beer and a bewildered expression.

“Okay, I give up,” Hank said, holding out the beer. “Take it. It’s all yours.”

Dennis stepped outside to see if anyone else was around.

“Don’t worry. The neighbors didn’t see you.”

“It’s not Sunday,” Dennis said as if to remind Hank.

“
Really
? Is that the only day I can come over?”

In the kitchen, as Hank loaded the Coors Light Draft into the fridge, he glanced at Dennis. “Here I am thinking you might
need someone to swing by and visit. Looks like I’m right. You okay?”

Dennis shook his head.

“So what’s the deal?”

“Remember what I told you the other day?”

Hank stared suspiciously at Dennis, still skeptical.

“The thing about the ghost?”

“Yeah,” Hank said.

“That’s why I’m holding this thing.”

“So you’re for real? It’s really happening to you?”

Dennis sighed. “Something is happening. I don’t know what. I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or what.”

“If that’s the case, you think carrying around a gun is a good idea?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that thing loaded?”

“Yeah.”

Hank handed him a beer. “If it’s a real ghost, it can’t hurt you. Not really.”

“How do you know?”

“I looked it up online the other night. They say most ghosts are stuck in holding patterns, as if they’re confused and don’t
have anywhere to go. They need something to change before they can pass on to the next place.”

“Which would be what?”

“I don’t know,” Hank said. “Heaven. Hell. The great Dairy Queen of the beyond.”

“You believe in an afterlife?”

“I want to. I want to believe there’s more than just this. There has to be.”

“No there doesn’t.”

“Tell me something, Den. Why is it that Lucy
and
Audrey both believe in God and heaven and all that, and it’s so hard for you?”

“Wanna know why I write scary stories? Because they’re real. People like horror because it mirrors real life. Turn on the
news and what do you find—one horror story after another. Those tales of happily ever after—now those are fiction. There is
no such thing as happily ever after.”

“Den—tell me. Are you okay? Like, seriously?”

“I’m scared, man.”

“Scared of what?”

“What’s worse? Going crazy or seeing the dead?”

“I got some medication my doctor gave me when I was going through the depression and stuff. It messes with your head, but
you could try it.”

“I don’t think that’s a solution.”

Dennis didn’t feel like sitting. He got up and stared out the back window at the yard. The shovel still rested on the grass.
He told Hank that he was going outside for a moment. He set the gun on the kitchen counter, feeling a bit foolish now for
carrying the weapon around.

It felt cooler outside than he expected it to be. The warm weather had gone. He shivered as he walked toward the hole.

It was big enough for a man. For him.

Dennis examined the shovel. On the handle was a familiar tag. A black H cut into the grain. He had no idea what the H stood
for.

Dennis brought the shovel to the front of the garage, resting it on the side of the house.

He wondered what sort of tool would show up next.

A riding lawn mower with a big fat H scrawled on the side.

Dennis looked through the trees at the leaf-covered yard belonging to the neighbors. They never seemed to rake their leaves,
even after getting fined.

Maybe the H stands for Hank. Or Hysteria. Or Hell.

After finding little to eat at Dennis’s house, they decided to head to downtown Geneva, parking on Main Street and walking
a block to the hole-in-the-wall lit by a sign that said Pa cho. It was missing the n and the ’s. Part of the allure.

They opened the rickety door to find themselves in a long restaurant with a bar that seemed half as long. There was an orange
ambience about Pancho’s with television screens tuned to sports, the kitchen on the left, a line of two tables each to the
right. There wasn’t anything fancy about the place. Eight tables were occupied tonight. A Hispanic woman nodded at them, meaning
they could find their own table.

They selected a table in the corner with four chairs. Hank faced the TV so he could watch highlights of the game. The woman
placed a basket of chips and a bowl of salsa on the table.

The place didn’t have menus. Again, that was the beauty of it. A burrito was a burrito, a taco a taco. No nonsense and great
food, that’s what Pancho’s offered.

A guy with long wavy hair and a shirt that said 4:20 on the back approached the table.

“Okay?”

“I’ll take a margarita. Want one, Hank?” Dennis asked.

This place didn’t fuss with a lot of fancy margaritas. They had one kind, and it wasn’t frozen. If you wanted frozen, you
could go down the street to 7-Eleven for a Slurpee because Pancho’s served margaritas on the rocks. But they were great, with
some kind of “special” ingredient added into it that Dennis hadn’t identified. Some fruit or spice that made it just a bit
different.