I didn’t want to hear it, and I held up a hand to stop Randy.
“Sorry,” he said.
After a second, I shook my head. “You shouldn’t apologize. I mean, death is our life, right?”
I just couldn’t stand any more sadness right now, and thinking of that old man and lady downstairs going out like that was… ugh. As hard as I was trying not to imagine it, I was, picturing them with heinous gunshot wounds and—
Wait.
“Randy, why don’t we ghosts show any effects of our deaths? You don’t have a bloody head from where you hit the rocks. And I’m not in pieces from an ax.”
Funny how I could say it so casually. Distancing myself from that Jensen was obviously working.
“I don’t know the big answers,” he said. “No one does. Not about our existence, not about the ultimate death. If a ghost goes with a wrangler ’n’ he finds an afterlife, he never comes back to tell us what he saw there. We’re jus’ as dumb as we were when we lived.”
That was heartening.
“As for McGlinn,” he said, “he sees how his gramps ’n’ gran’re so happy here with each other. So, deep down, it gives him a lil’ peace. The rest of us are the same when we’re here. Happy.”
“That’s why ghosts are drawn to this house? Because they like to be with others who’re happy?”
“You bet. Ghosts say that this property’s built over an eighteen hundreds anonymous graveyard, so the house’s got some energy that attracts spirits, espeshly the ones buried here from Western times. Ya saw Old Seth down there in his cowboy gear. He’s a graveyard regular. The rest of ’em? Jus’ travelers.”
“Lots of activity,” I said. “Because of the buried spirits who’re already here.”
“Yup, it’s active, all right, ’cept when McGlinn goes to sleep. Then he lays down the law, and Gramps ’n’ Gran enforce it. They guard his slumber.”
Done chatting, Randy meandered down the hall with me on his tail.
But I wasn’t done. “How did they produce that music? Were they doing it in the same way I can make smaller sounds, like knocks on walls?”
“Somethin’ like that. Only bigger.”
No doy. “They’re good at the music thing.”
“You’ll be, too, with practice.”
He urged me to a bedroom, where the door was shut tight. After we slipped underneath, I saw that a twin-sized bed with a wagon-wheel-decorated quilt was the only piece of furniture, the walls a stark white.
“McGlinn’s room?” I asked, taking a wild guess. I didn’t know why Randy would want to show me that, though.
“Nope. Jus’ wait, ’n’ you’ll see. We always introduce new ghosts to our good friend here.”
Randy stood by the bed and waved me over to wait next to him. Respectfully, he folded his hands behind his back, every inch a gray-toned military man. I copied him, lingering politely.
Within moments, the image of a young boy—five years old?—blinked to black-and-white animation on the mattress. Sweat matted his hair to his head, and his breath rasped in and out of him. His hands were propped in the air, like there were invisible people on either side who were holding on to him, grasping onto the kid for dear life.
“I… love you… Mommy… ,” he whispered, just before his image fluttered, then blinked out altogether, leaving the bed empty again.
Ouch. My chest area hurt, just from seeing what I knew was a time loop.
“McGlinn’s uncle Kevin,” Randy said softly in a moment of soberness. “He was jus’ a kid when he died here with his parents sittin’ by the bed. They took him out of the hospital to be with the family ‘cause they knew he was goin’. Cancer.” He slid me a glance. “Does this also show you why McGlinn won’t leave?”
I nodded slowly, not trusting myself to speak.
Randy spent one more second by the bed before he led me out of the room. Then, outside the door, he hesitated.
“Every so often, we’ll try to get Kevin outta the loop. Can’t ever manage it, though.”
Some upbeat Southern rock music had started downstairs, where the party was going on, oblivious of the tragedy up here. But they knew, didn’t they? They had probably been celebrating downstairs from Kevin for years, accepting that this was how it was in Boo World and there was no changing things.
We all had ways of coping, whether it was McGlinn and his dope or ghosts and their music. Death was always a heartbeat away somewhere, so why should I be concerned about it?
Randy was already in a better mood, like he’d had a lot of practice leaving dark times behind. “I’ve been lookin’ forward to showin’ ya this.”
I hoped it would be happier.
We were standing in front of an open door leading to a master bedroom with a bed covered by a dull brown spread, decorated with only a worn-down dresser. Inside, I heard someone moving around in the attached bathroom.
Randy plunged inside like the drunken imp he was.
I met him in that bathroom, where he was already hover-sitting on top of the toilet tank by the shower. But forget Randy. My attention was fixed on the chick standing in front of the mirror, fussing with her hair.
And what hair it was, one side of it all black and straight, streaming over her shoulder, the other side teased and colored with what I thought might be rainbow hues, even though I couldn’t tell with her grayish tone. Part of her scalp was shaved down to stubble, too.
She was wearing a dark corset, petticoats, fishnet stockings, and ankle boots, plus the pièce de résistance.
Madonna bracelets.
Randy was holding back a laugh as the girl caught sight of me in the mirror, then whipped around, her face megapale, her eyes ringed with lots of liner. She looked like half Cyndi Lauper and half Robert Smith from the Cure.
“Goddamn it, Randy,” she said, turning around again and throwing a punch at him. She only swiped through his arm with a bzzt of energy. Randy still flinched, though.
She huffed. “I’m not, like, fit to meet anyone.”
“Ya never are.” Randy presented me. “This here’s Jensen, from the ’eighties.”
When the superfreak just looked me over with a sneer on her lips, I began to question Randy’s friend-matching skills.
“Jensen,” he said, “meet Twyla from the ’eighties.”
Instead of saying hi, she chuffed, “Grody.”
Yeah, yeah, my clothes. I wasn’t thrilled about the eternal statement they made, either.
“Hi to you, too,” I said.
She rolled her eyes, turning back to the mirror, stabbing a hand at her hair. “Like, really, Randy? You sincerely think I look decent or something?”
Like, whatever. I wanted to be with the fun ghosts downstairs again.
Randy was enjoying her sass. “Twyla’s jus’ in a bad mood. She died on a Friday night before goin’ to the clubs. Got a charge out of a malfuck… malfunken…”
“Malfunctioning?” both Twyla and I said.
We ignored our stereo correction as Randy said, “Yeah. That. Her hair dryer cord thing dropped in a full sink and gave her a sizzle while she was experimentin’ with her look, comparin’ one side to the other. She got so…”
“Extra-crispy,” she said, rolling her eyes again.
“Yeah, she got so extra-crispy from the dryer that she ended up only dyeing one side of her hair black ’fore she became a Kentucky Fried Corpse.”
Again, Randy looked proud of his ability to drop modern pop names.
Twyla cared only about the hair. “Like he said, I was comparing how I looked with Lauper in the mirror and then with the Goth. I died right before I decided to stay with the colors and right after I filled the sink with water to wash my hair. So sue me.”
Randy busted out with “Jensen got murdered.”
Twyla’s hands stilled. “Bag your face! Seriously?”