with his fist as the camera flashed again.
Summer pushed his scotch in front of him. “Welcome back.”
Mick downed the scotch. “We have to sort this out. I don’t want to go back in there.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, signaled for another drink.
“I’m with you,” Summer said. She turned. “Where are my manners?” she added, dripping sarcasm. She flicked her hand in Grandpa’s direction. “Mick, this is Finn’s grandfather, Thomas Darby.”
Mick pulled a pack of cigarettes from a vest pocket in his jacket, shook one out, and lit it with a badly trembling hand. “Fuck off.”
Grandpa lifted his glass. “Well pardon me if I don’t shed a tear. Lousy drug addict.”
That blessed vague tingling, like a low-level electric current, spread down my arms and legs. The glass dropped from Grandpa’s hand, splashed whiskey on my jeans before shattering to the tile floor.
I took a deep, ragged breath. “No, it’s me. I’m back, too.” I buried my face in my hands, stifled a sob of relief. “So now we know who Mick’s ghost is.”
“I knew who it was,” Mick said, lighting his cigarette with still-shaking hands. “I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. The sodding bastard was trying to block me from performing my own songs when he keeled over. I was glad to see him go. I threw a bloody party.”
“Did he die in the anthrax attack?” I asked.
“Him?” Mick rolled his eyes. “He ate himself to death. Diabetes or some such. You heard him mention he used to be in the band? That was in the early days, before we made it big. The wanker kept putting on weight until we had a four-hundred-pound bass player. Then he went strange on us. Stopped playing in the middle of songs, wandered the stage, went all bug-eyed and hid behind amps. A complete embarrassment, he was. Then ten years ago he slaps me with the lawsuit.”
“Um, Mick?” Summer shook her head tightly, as if attempting to signal Mick without Gilly seeing. “Sounds like he’s willing to let bygones be bygones. This might go easier if he’s on our side?”
Mick grumbled under his breath, tipped his head back and drained his glass.
Flashing red lights appeared outside the bar. A police cruiser had pulled up. Summer tugged my jacket. “Time to go.” With Mick on my heels, we stumbled out.
CHAPTER 22
Askinny, exhausted-looking kid handed me a white bag through the Wendy’s drive- through window.
“I still get the fever on a Saturday night,” Gilly sang from the passenger seat, his eyes closed, head lolling. He sounded terrible, trying to sing with that voice.
I unpacked my spicy chicken sandwich while I pulled out of the lot, burned the roof of my mouth on the first bite. I was eating too fast because I didn’t want to waste time eating. It had been almost sixteen hours; who knew how much longer I had before I’d be driven back inside?
“Sorry. Don’t mean to be rude,” Gilly said. “I’m working hard when I’m inside, but I can’t write anything down, and I forget stuff. It’s frustrating.” He plucked a few fries from their cardboard basket.
“Did you find the notes you mentioned?”
“Not yet. I need to make some calls. It’s hard when you only have half an hour, you know?” He licked his fingers like a dog cleaning his front paws. “I worked on this for eight years before I died. I was going to surprise Mick, give it to him as a peace offering, you know?” I nodded. I wondered if he was delusional, or if he was actually composing decent music. Mick said Gilly had lived with his mother for the last twenty-odd years of his life, in the same room he’d occupied as a child.
Gilly waggled his head, brayed sort of like a horse. “Man, wish I could clear my head. I’m not used to the pills and the booze.” He twisted the rear-view mirror so he could look into it. “Not that I’m criticizing, Mick. It’s your body; I’m just along for the ride, as long as it lasts.” He held two fingers up in a peace sign. “Back to the top, man. Me and you.”
My phone rang. It was Mom, but I wasn’t going to get to talk to her. The snakes were running free. Damn it. I was pulled back into cottony numbness.
Grandpa closed the phone, signaled, parked along the curb.
“Why are we stopping?” Gilly asked, peering out his window.
Grandpa got out without a word.
“Hey Finn?” Gilly had one foot on the pavement, his hand on the hood.
Grandpa crossed the street with its neon signs and honking cars. I had no doubt he was heading for a bar.
He turned into Cypress Street Pint and Plate on the corner of Fifth Street, stormed up to the bar and ordered a whiskey, his tone all business.
“Finn?” Gilly pulled up the stool next to Grandpa.
“I ain’t Finn,” Grandpa hissed, turning a shoulder to Gilly.
I tried to ignore their interchange; it was time to get to work, looking for Deadland. I couldn’t stomach Krishnapuma’s melodramatic and cumbersome “world of the dead,” so I had shortened it.
Summer had laid out a plan based on Krishnapuma’s book, and had practiced with me for two hours. I smiled inside, remembering how she would reach up and feign choking me when my natural skepticism came out. I didn’t expect to get anywhere. I wasn’t a mystic, and I wasn’t dead.
Despite my reservations, I took a few imaginary deep breaths, tried to bring my mind to a single-pointed focus on the back of my head. I felt ridiculous, like I was on the ultimate snipe hunt, sent by a mystic who’d been dead fifty years.
My third eye. Right. How do you turn around when you don’t control your body? I tried to visualize the third eye in the back of my head, while Grandpa chewed out Gilly, who didn’t understand why Grandpa had to be like that.
Again, I imagined the breath I couldn’t actually take, willed myself to drift, to grow lighter. Those were Summer’s directions. When Mick heard the directions he waved a dismissive hand and went for a cigarette, and later refused to even consider trying it. I couldn’t tell if he truly thought it was dumb, or if it was a front because he was scared. In any case it seemed unfair that it was left to me.
It felt sort of good to drift, actually. Rather than feeling pinned beneath Grandpa I felt like I was floating free, even rising a little, toward the top of my head…
I returned to myself with a jolt. For a moment everything had gone dark. My eyes had stayed open, because Grandpa was the one controlling my eyelids, but the
I relaxed, found that I could close my eyes again. I let myself drift. It was unsettling, as if I was in deep space, floating away from the mother ship. It felt as if I was rotating, moving slowly clockwise. Without knowing why, I felt certain I was now facing my right ear.
Breathe. Relax.
The darkness began to lift, like the first hint of dawn. Trying to stay calm, I continued rotating toward the back of my head.
A sliver of silver light broke through.
I jolted with surprise, and I was instantly pulled back behind Grandpa’s eyes.
There was something back there.
I didn’t want to see what it was. I desperately didn’t want to see what it was. Had I just glimpsed the place you go when you die? I’d never felt so utterly petrified. I had no choice, though. I had to look again. If we didn’t know where the ghosts had come from, how could we find out how to send them back?
Reluctantly I tried again, drifting, turning, until the darkness turned grey, then light broke through.
The bar drifted into view.
