In the real world, April Destino was dead. And Doug Douglas was insane.
And Amy Peyton, for the first time in well over an hour, was in control.
Amy exited the trailer park and turned onto the old highway. The shadows were deep and the road was narrow-there wasn’t much development this far from town-but Amy felt secure behind the sturdy steering wheel of her Mercedes. She tried to concentrate on the things she would say to Doug, but shouldn’t seem to plan the confrontation. Excitement was burning a hole straight through her. Maybe things were going to get a little more dangerous, a little scarier. The idea didn’t frighten Amy. She had disassembled her fear rather than giving in to it. She had channeled her anger, just as the pop psych books advised. That empowered her. That, and the gun. She was ready for anything.
Amy passed through town-Mercedes tires hissing cool and quiet over the empty road, waxed hood reflecting streetlights and the dull dead neon glow that spilled from the windows of closed businesses. She almost laughed at the idea of Doug Douglas trying to pull her strings. She intended to scare him with the gun. She would do a good job of it. And then Doug, being Doug, would cave. She’d get the film and some answers. About the nature of a man’s fear, and about April Destino.
Amy ran a red light. Annoyed at herself, she shook her head. Farrah Fawcett curls tickled her eyebrows and she brushed them away. This was no time for stupid mistakes. She had made her stupid mistake of the night by giving her attorney’s card to the lot manager, and she wasn’t going to make another.
She tried to concentrate on the big steering wheel, on the road and on the rhythm of the shifting gears, but her thoughts returned to April Destino, playing with the edges of the idea that maybe there were more surprises in store. Maybe April had only been toying with her tonight. Maybe she had only wanted to prove that she wasn’t such a sad little loser. Or maybe April was playing her like a puppet, driving her forward, driving her into a dangerous- Christ! The man stood frozen in the middle of the road, twenty feet from the Mercedes’ front bumper, staring at the headlights with the uncomprehending expression of a trapped animal. Amy mashed the brake pedal and simultaneously twisted the wheel. She tried to gear down but her foot slipped off the clutch and the engine died with a jolt. The car slipped into a slow spin. Icy headlight beams revealed the frightened whites of the man’s eyes and then the car spun sideways and he was swallowed by the darkness.
The Mercedes shuddered to a stop, its diesel engine quiet except for a few idle pings. Amy glanced through the driver’s side window and saw the yellow divider line running under her door, bisecting the big German car.
Unbelievable. She had almost lost it. If traffic had been heavy, if this had happened at any time other than four o’clock in the morning, she might very well have been hit from both sides while the car spun.
Unbelievable. Amy peered into the night but saw no sign of the man. She didn’t think she had hit him. NO. She hadn’t hit him; she was sure. Jesus. She wasn’t sure of anything. Beneath the heavy wig, Amy’s scalp was itchy with sweat. “Just relax,” she whispered. “Get it together.” She keyed the engine and it started right up, and that was a relief. She backed to the side of the road. Tires crunched over gravel.
The emergency brake made a comfortable ratcheting sound as she secured it. She put the car in neutral and pulled a Kleenex from the walnut box between the bucket seats. She was still shaking. A single tear had spilled from her right eye. She forced her trembling hand to her face and daubed at the tear, removing it without smearing her eye shadow. Her left eye was still brimming; she opened it wide, pressed the tissue against the white flesh of her eye, and the tear beaded into the paper.
“Okay,” Amy whispered. “Better.” She tugged at the heavy sweater, trying to get some air beneath it. The damn thing was too hot. She ended up flipping on the air conditioner. Soon the cool breeze worked through the wool. The engine idled comfortably. All was quiet on the gravel shoulder. The Mercedes’ headlights bathed the road, illuminating the wild skid marks left by the car.
Two angry question marks tattooed in burnt rubber.
There was no sign of the man. Amy hoped she hadn’t hit him. She couldn’t imagine actually killing anyone.
She hit the brights and the spectrum of light widened. Pine trees appeared to her right, overhanging the gravel shoulder, rimming the old drive-in theater. To her left, on the other side of the road, was a steep slope of dull brown earth, thick clumps of grass hanging at the crest, and above the grass the cool gleam of a chain-link fence.
The cemetery.
April was up there somewhere, buried in that dull brown soil, calling to her like the dead woman who lost her golden arm in that well-remembered ghost story.
No…it was only the wind. Shaking, Amy released the emergency brake. The Mercedes rolled forward, but Amy’s eyes were locked on the sloping wall of dirt, searching every inch of it as if she might see the end of April’s coffin jutting from the earth.
A dead pine shivered to her right, but Amy didn’t see it. The branches closed behind the man. He approached the car. The man from the road. His palms were bloody and his face was scratched because he had dived into the trees. He made greeting with a wet, red wave, squinting into the bright headlights.
“Help,” was the single word that spilled from his lips.
Amy saw him at the last moment. Gasping, she hit the brakes and brought the car to an instant stop.
A few more inches and she would have hit him.
“Help,” the man said again. His bleeding fingers closed over the hood ornament, as if he couldn’t understand what the big car could do to him.
Amy’s fear evaporated. She knew this guy. She shifted into neutral, set the brake, got out of the car. “Marvis?” she said. “Is that you?”
Marvis smiled as he came forward. He was soaked from head to foot, as if he’d been running through the sprinklers. Then Amy heard the sound of sprinklers tick-tick-ticking from the cemetery across the road, and she knew that was exactly what Marvis Hanks had been doing. He stepped past the headlights and for the first time saw more than her silhouette. His face became like nothing Amy had ever seen. A sound came from him that could only be described as a wail and he wobbled in a surprisingly comical way before diving back into the pine trees.
There was a short moment of silence. Then the wail resumed, and dead branches popped and cracked as Marvis Hanks hurried along the fence of the old drive-in.
Amy found herself laughing.
She slipped behind the wheel of the Mercedes and drove on.
God, it was fun being a ghost.
God, it was fun being April Destino.
4:33 A.M.
For a guy who’d blown his life savings burying a dead whore, Doug Douglas was doing better than Amy had expected. His neighborhood was solidly middle class. New cars were parked in most of the driveways; well- maintained yards with clipped grass and pruned bushes fronted split-level houses that aspired to a Spanish look but actually resembled something that a Taco Bell architect might create.
Amy double-checked the address and parked her Mercedes in the driveway. The muffled slam of the car door was like a thunderclap on the quiet street. She stood by the car for a moment, staring at the dark windows of the house, listening to the even sound of her own breathing. She was going to be okay. She was going to give Doug Douglas a lesson about the power of will and the value of a good memory, and she was going to get Doug’s film, and she was going to be okay.
She checked the address a third time. She checked the pistol and tucked it under the waistband of April’s cheerleading skirt. She tore the key from the map.
She was going to put this behind her.
