Clay left the phone on the counter and slugged back upstairs, singing the opening verse of “Voices in the Dark,” projecting out across the echoey caverns of the house. “Indifference is the river of the world. What do you say when no ooone’s liiiistening?…”
He reached his bedroom and the tune died in his throat.
Someone had moved Boyle’s guitar. Clay had left it at the foot of his bed and now it was standing on his desk again, headstock leaning against the cracked window. His father wouldn’t have touched it. Had Essie? Too much of a coincidence. No, something was wrong, purposely wrong. Clay hesitated in the doorway, his vitals spiking with the suspicion of a prey animal.
“Rocco?” Clay asked the sunlit room.“What’s with the Amityville treatment?”
The moment drew on. Clay watched the motionless Rickenbacker, as if its fate were entwined with his own. “You’re making me nervous, man.”
He waited.
“Deidre?”
Nothing.
Clay cocked his head forward. “Are you here right now? I, I can’t hear you.”
The door swung at him, fast.
Clay threw a hand up and two fingers slowed the speeding wood, bending painfully, before the door struck his forehead, hard as a punch. Clay stumbled across the hall until the far wall caught him. Blood spilled immediately into his eyes.
You didn’t hear me ’cause I haven’t been talking! Deidre shrieked back. Think you’re so clever? You stay away from us! You hear me, Rooster? STAY! AWAY! Or I promise you—I’ll kill you!
7
STONE THE CROW
Whether it was a conscious decision or dumb luck, when Clay fled from Deidre’s ghost, he didn’t bother with the front door—and his waiting Jeep, whose gas pedal he’d have surely pounded down, never to return—but booked it instead for the back. All was a panicked blur, walls racing by, stairs receding underfoot like dominos, the French doors flying back, the overbearing sun blinding him; and when Clay next wiped the blood from his eyes, the Generator was right there in front of him.
“Rocco!” he called into its shady interior.
Silence endured long enough to jar his mind. What if Rocco had a talk with his girlfriend? What if she’d convinced him that Clay was more foe than friend?
In the last year of their lives, there had been numerous accounts of Deidre influencing Boyle’s life. And even if they were generally positive influences—swearing off drugs, moving out of hard-partying Hollywood, insisting on a vegan-and-yoga lifestyle—there were plenty who accused her of Yoko Ono-ing the band. Even Hank Ooljee, who was typically smart enough to avoid the media, was quoted as saying that “Deidre’s affect on Roc is absolute.” So what if that was still the case? What kind of reception would be waiting for him here?
…wonderin’ when you’d show, Boyle spoke up behind him. As before, the voice came from a long way off, but the words were clearer than they’d ever been. I figured you either homered with your girl or crashed and burned and didn’t want to fess up.
Then Boyle witnessed the blood on Clay’s face and his tone changed. What happened?
“Ask your girl,” Clay told him. “She’s been visiting.”
Deidre? Boyle replied.
“I recognized her voice from that Throne documentary—when she’s in the studio with you guys. Her voice is”—high and sharp—“distinct.”
Deidre’s in the house?
Clay pulled off his Rocket Throne shirt and pressed it to the gash in his forehead. “You didn’t know?”
I knew from Dave and his family that she didn’t survive our last night together. But I haven’t been in the house. I didn’t know she… Now it was Boyle’s turn to sound shaken. No, I never considered…. His words fell away.
“She’s there,” Clay said. “And I seem to remind her of someone named Rooster. That ring a bell?”
Clay heard Boyle moving off, deeper into the room. Two words came back in reply: It does.
“Who is he?”
My old dealer. Deidre blames him for what happened to us.
“For renewing your habit?”
And he is to blame. At least some.
“Is that why Ganek got his family out? Was she haunting them too?”
Boyle’s words grew louder as his footfalls moved closer; he was pacing now, on his way back. No. Deidre knew Dave. She was friends with his wife, liked his kids. In this state, we tend to be passive, content to subsist in shadow—as long as things are calm and to our liking. But Dave’s family is gone now, and there are strangers in our home. And your perception’s gotten stronger since we started chatting, Clay. That means Deidre’s more aware of you, like you’re more aware of us. Then she sees you strumming my guitar—like Rooster used to when he came here uninvited. Boyle sighed, before deciding, And if she’s mistaken you for Rooster, she’s not going to like you any time soon.
“Then could you do me a favor and talk to her?”
Boyle pivoted and paced away. When I said I haven’t been in the house, I didn’t mean voluntarily. I mean I can’t. I reside here. It’s where I died. It’s my anchor to this existence.
Clay groaned, feeling lightheaded with blood lose. Before long he was going to have to Uber to an ER. “Then I hope you like my company because sooner or later there will be three ghosts haunting this place.”
Hard for me to imagine, Boyle said, more to himself. Deidre never had a violent bone in her body.
“Well, I can fucking imagine it.”Clay lifted the two stiff fingers that had gotten in the way of the oncoming door, wagged them at the empty room. “Help me out. Don’t you have any insight?”
I haven’t been to any white-glowing castle with harps playing, if that’s what you’re getting at. You’d be surprised how many questions I still have. If anything, it feels like I know less. Boyle paused, pacing back. In the short time they’d been communicating, Clay had come to understand that ruminating pauses happened when Boyle’s brain—or however it worked when you were a non-corporeal spirit—sparked brightest. Something brilliant typically followed. At least when they wrote songs together.
You’re
