The man had kind, sad eyes behind thick glasses and wild hair. But his hair was not wet. He was not, after all, really there. He was a ghost.
Jack shivered, but it was not the chill of the rain that brought it on. He had seen ghosts before, had spoken to them. They had saved his life more than once.
Artie, after all, still appeared to him. But these lost souls of the mournful dead were still tethered to this Earth by grief or confusion or some unfinished business.
He would never get used to seeing them or to the twinge of sadness he felt when he did.
The spirit appeared to be waving at him, but had not noticed when he began to pull over. Jack wondered if the man had died in an accident on the side of the road, and stood there for eternity trying to flag down some help, unaware that it would never come. He suspected that if he looked into it, he might find reports of other sightings of the ghost, a lost soul.
Ever since Artie had first appeared to him as a ghost, Jack had been able to see into the Ghostlands if he wanted to. Sometimes, though, it just happened, whether he wanted it to or not. Artie had explained to him that the phantoms who wandered the Ghostlands were spirits who were still tied to the earthly plane by grief or some sort of unfinished business. Many of them had died horribly, suddenly, such as the victims of Prowlers. Among those were ghosts who were not even aware that they were dead.
This man was probably one of them, killed so quickly in a car accident that his soul could not accept that he was dead.
Some of the ghosts Jack saw chose to be seen, to draw his attention to them. Others he simply noticed, sometimes out of the corner of his eye, like a spectral little boy he had seen a few weeks earlier, standing on a street corner as though waiting for a school bus that would never come. It had unnerved him, seeing that boy.
It seemed that whatever door Artie had opened in Jack's mind could never again be closed all the way.
Chilled, Jack did his best to push the thoughts away. He accelerated again, left the ghost behind. A short way up, he found the exit for the local, two-lane highway that would eventually lead him to Buckton. It took a moment for him to figure out which direction he ought to drive, but then they were moving again.
Three miles farther on, he saw another ghost. A woman, this time, standing in the center of the highway, arms raised above her head in what might have been prayer or a supplication to heaven. The rain passed through her, spattered the pavement around her. His headlights caught on the wraith-like mist of her phantom form, like the glitter off morning fog.
Unlike the first ghost, this one noticed him. As the Jeep bore down upon her, Jack moved into the oncoming lane to avoid her, though the vehicle would have passed right through. She dropped her arms and turned to stare right at him.
As he passed, their eyes met.
She mouthed the words "Go home, Jack."
"Holy shit," he muttered under his breath, heart rate speeding up, adrenaline pumping through him. His eyes were wide and he glanced in the rearview mirror, but she was already gone.
Molly stirred but did not wake. An old seventies love song came on the radio. Soothing, yes, but his heartbeat did not slow. He blew out a few breaths, trying to tell himself it was nothing, not to be so freaked out.
The road ahead was dark and slick with rain, the sun only a glimmer between black clouds. There were no other cars on the road. Now that he had gotten off Route 89, he was alone, with only Molly's sleeping form and the spirits of the dead for company. He wanted to scream.
Jack would never get used to it. They were dead, and it always felt to him as though they wanted something from him that he could not provide.
Life.
Go home, Jack.
Though the road was slipperier than ever beneath his tires, he risked a quick glance at Molly. She was cute as hell, her lips parted just a bit, a tiny bit of drool at the edge of her mouth that he would tease her for later. He mentally willed her to wake up, but resisted the urge to reach out and shake her. After all, what would he say? She knew about the ghosts, but just as she did not like to discuss her mother, he was reluctant to talk to her about the Ghostlands, because that might lead to questions about Artie.
A few miles farther on, he rounded a corner and the road began to climb up. All around there were hills and small mountains. A green sign at the side of the road announced that Barlow was three miles away, and Buckton eight. Jack never saw a trace of Barlow, and imagined it must be off the main road.
A short time later the Jeep rolled to a stop at an intersection where more than a dozen ghosts stood along the side of the road, like spectators at a parade. As one, they turned to stare at the Jeep, and at Jack behind the wheel. With the rain sluicing through them, they then lowered their heads and would no longer meet his eyes.
He froze. The engine idled as he sat there staring at the ghosts, hoping they would look up at him. If they did, and they told him to go as the
