lines running across her forehead and forcing her eyes to narrow.
“Sure I did. Who forgets their family’s number?” she snapped. “They’re not in, though.” Her voice softened, and she turned to look over at the town. “Weird. My mom’s always in. Disabled. Doesn’t get out much apart from to drive to the store.”
The light was fading into gloom, and Lee followed her nervous gaze over to the ghost town. “Do you check in on her often?” The shadows were getting darker, and this time he was sure he could see flashes of eyes as small creatures scurried here and there just out of sight.
“Nah,” she said. “Carrie, my sister, she does all that.” Like him, her eyes were fixed on the suddenly sharp angles of the abandoned buildings and streets opposite. “I was never good with old people.”
“Try again later,” he said.
“Sure,” she nodded. “Sure.”
Half an hour later, and the sun was merely a line of fire against the horizon. Evening was falling and the wind was picking up. They stood in silence for most of the time, Lee looking out into the road and the woman staring at the town. He didn’t want to look in that direction. He’d glanced round maybe ten minutes earlier and this time he was sure –
“I don’t want to be here when it gets dark,” the woman said. It was the first time either of them had spoken for a while.
Lee said nothing. Over the wind and its unpleasantness, he could hear another sound, coming from the road. A familiar rattling noise that he hadn’t heard in such a long time. Years. How many? Forty?
“I don’t like the look of this place,” she continued. “I think it gets cold at night.”
Even as a silhouette against the raging death of the sun, Lee recognized the old pick-up truck. His dad’s car. The one they rode to town in when his mom didn’t come with them. The one she laughingly called “the boys’ toy”.
“Did ya hear me? I don’t like this place. Not at all. Damn stupid phone.”
Lee smiled, ignoring the woman, lost in the lift of his own heart as the truck pulled alongside him.
“You best get in, son.” His dad smiled from behind the wheel. “It’s nearly dark.”
Lee did as he was told. He sucked in the forgotten and yet familiar smell of the worn leather and old cheroot smoke.
“Thanks for coming to get me, Dad.” he said.
His dad’s crinkled face smiled back. “No problem, son. It’s been a long time.”
Lee could feel his grin almost cracking his face. His dad was wearing the old dungarees he used to wear when messing around with cars out in the barn when Lee had been maybe fifteen or sixteen. They’d built Lee’s first car together with his dad wearing those old dungarees. His dad looked the same as he had then too, no more than fifty. Healthy and happy.
Lee looked down at his wrist and the empty space there. His heart ached again.
“Where’s my watch, Dad?” he asked, softly. “I always wear my watch.” He felt fifteen again, maybe even younger. He felt of an age when your father had all the answers.
“Hey!” The woman slammed into the passenger side door, her sausage fingers with their painted tips hooked over the half-open window. Lee jumped. Her eyes glinted like the windows of the dead town.
“Hey,” she said again, looking past Lee to his old man. “Can I get a ride with you? I need to get out of here. Night’s coming.” She smiled, revealing the patches of lipstick that clung grimly to her teeth, and Lee wondered if it was an attempt at flirtation. If it was then she needed to practise. She was panting slightly and her stale breath was bad; as if something was rotting in her mouth.
Lee’s father nodded over at the phone booth, the light in it flickering on as the darkness began to take hold. “Make a call.”
“I tried that,” she hissed. “No one was home. Gimme a ride! You got the room. I’ll go in the back.”
Lee watched his father’s face. His brown eyes were unreadable but his expression had softened into something that was almost pity. Almost, but not quite.
“Everyone’s home,” he said. “They just ain’t answering.” Without warning, he put his foot down on the pedal and the old truck pulled away. The woman’s mouth fell open and she cursed as she lost her grip on the window. The truck turned in a wide loop, coming off the vague edges of the sandy road here and there, but Lee’s father didn’t stop. Once they were facing the setting sun, he cranked it up to sixty.
“Come back, you bastards!” the woman screeched after them. “You can’t leave me here!” After a moment, when she’d realized that they could, her voice rose an octave. “Go to hell! Go to hell, you pair of fuckers!”
Lee flinched and twisted round in his seat.
“Don’t look back, son,” his father said. “It’s night back there. You don’t want to see that. It’s not where you belong.” Lee looked anyway. He couldn’t help it.
The woman had lost one of her shoes and was hobbling back to the phone box as if she could find some kind of sanctuary in it. Lee thought it looked like a beacon now. One that would draw everything that lived in the dead town’s shadows. What would happen to her? He thought of fingernails clawing at glass, and shivered. He sat back in his seat, facing forward. A few moments later, a short howl rang out that had nothing to do with the wind. The truck picked up speed and the sound faded.
“My watch, Dad?” he asked again. He thought he knew the answer. He’d known it all along. He never took his watch off.
“Your Ella has it, is my guess,” his dad smiled. “A keepsake.”
Lee nodded. He guessed that was right. Ella had given him the watch on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and he hadn’t taken it off in the twenty years that had passed since except to change a battery and that one time it needed to be repaired.
“Will I see her again, Dad?” he asked.
“She’s a good woman, your Ella.” Lee’s dad smiled at him. “She was a honey when you were kids and she’s been a fine wife and mother and grandmother since, ain’t that the truth?”
Lee nodded. “That’s the truth.”
“Then you’ll hear that phone ringing, son. You’ll hear it ringing.”
The two dead men smiled at each other, content, and drove into the brightening sunlight.
Dead Flowers by a Roadside
Kelley Armstrong
The house is damnably silent.
I sit in the middle of the living room, furniture shoved out of the way, one chair tipped over where it fell, pushed too hard in my haste. Shards from a broken vase litter the floor. One is inches from my hand.
Amy would panic if she saw it. I close my eyes and imagine it. Her gasp from the doorway. The patter of her stockinged feet. The soft click of the piece against the hardwood as she snatches it up. Her voice as she tells me not to move, she’ll clean it up, I need to be more careful – really, I need to be more careful. What if I’d cut myself? What if Rose had run in?
In my mind, her voice is not quite right. The cadence, the tone, are fading already. Amy’s voice. Rose’s voice. How much longer before they slide from memory altogether? Before I’m reduced to endlessly playing old videos that don’t sound like them, not really, and telling myself they do, just so I can still hear their voices in my head.
I open my eyes and look at the ancient book lying open in front of me. Spidery writing, water-smeared ink, barely legible. The air smells faintly of acacia. That’s critical, the book says. The dead will not speak without the scent of acacia to pull them through the ether.
Not true.
I know it is not true because I have seen the dead. Heard the dead. All my life they’ve been there, flitting past, whispering in my ear. Never once have they needed acacia.
Yet for three months, I’ve been trying to contact them. My wife. My child. I beg, I plead, I rage and shout for
