Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

Without much of one now, I figured there was really only one place I belonged. One place that could offer me a sort of warped comfort while I figured out what to do next.

And that place sure as hell wasn’t back at Amanda Lee’s.

Elfin Forest by day sure was a lot different than it was at night.

I had landed away from my death spot, and I supposed the woods looked like a lot of others in SoCal during spring: a thrust of green bursting out, pygmy oaks coming alive with their long, thick branches winding over the ground and then up into the air. They were almost like fingers of smoke that writhed and nearly entangled with each other in a still dance.

Power from being close to my death spot hummed through me, and I started feeling less pessimistic than I had felt back at the Edgett mansion. Then again, I wasn’t all that optimistic, either, since I didn’t seem to be nailing all this haunting stuff as well as I should’ve been.

But maybe that was the former A student in me—the one who’d wanted to be an anthropologist before my parents’ deaths had sent me reeling.

Why an anthropologist? Well, because I’d seen Raiders of the Lost Ark like everyone else, and archaeology required too many science classes, so I’d adjusted my goals slightly.

Practical, if not a little romantic.

I wandered among the gnarled branches, pulled toward my death spot. And when I saw one branch that dipped into a U just like a Mother Nature–made chair, I vaguely remembered it from the worst night of my life.

Why? Had I run past it as I fled from my killer and the sight branded itself into my psyche? I didn’t know, but as I moved closer, a turbo-humming sensation blasted through me.

I reached out to run my hand just over the bark—I couldn’t actually touch it—and the answer to why this branch was giving me the electric willies seemed closer than ever, just as out of reach as that tree was.

I kept trailing my fingers over the bark, and as I came to the dip in the branch—

A jagged screech of imagery assaulted me: darkness, a pale face—

Then, as quickly as it’d jarred me, it was gone, yanked away from memory.

I didn’t move for a second, even though my essence was still in the middle of a tug-of-war between this spot and my death place.

What I’d seen… God, it hadn’t looked like a real face. But I couldn’t hold on to enough details about it to be sure. I only had a wispy feeling of adrenaline-to-the-heart terror, as if faces like that shouldn’t exist in real life.

Unnerved, I floated away, allowing that pulling sensation to take me right to my death spot. I hadn’t visited the forest since Amanda Lee had rescued me from it, so I hadn’t been able to investigate my own murder yet. But as I skimmed along the leaf-strewn ground, that disturbing big-time humming feeling increased, got louder, making me shake. Making me think I should’ve come back here way before now.

Then there I was—Death Central.

The noise and the trembling suddenly stopped. Was it because this was where everything had stopped for me? It was almost like I was hovering over a hole that wanted to suck me in, keeping me here in a silent, dark embrace. Already my senses were getting hazy with a mixture of dread and confusion… and comfort.

But when I bent to get closer to the ground on which I’d died, that sharp screaming sensation I’d felt before lanced me one last time, like a final, humming cut.

A flash of pale, withered face, so awful that—

A big black wall slammed down in my head, dividing me from that face, like I didn’t want to remember.

But I did want. I had to want!

I slumped the rest of the way to the ground, lying there for a while as time passed and the sun tumbled from morning to afternoon. All the while, death energy enveloped me. A pure energy—not the kind I got from batteries.

It was almost like granola versus Froot Loops. Both would keep you going, but one was better for you than the other.

Eventually, I heard footsteps shuffling through the leaves, but I didn’t move. A casual hiker or nature lover wouldn’t see me anyway. Then I heard a familiar voice.

“I had a feeling I might find you here.”

Amanda Lee.

I still didn’t stir. It was just so cozy here, but only cozy in the way your bed feels on days when you’re too depressed to get out of it.

She spoke again. “I kept thinking you would return to the casita, and when you didn’t, I began to worry. This was the first place I checked.”

I turned my head to glance at her. A tall woman in laced-up dark boots and a Southwest-patterned skirt and a red silk blouse, her auburn hair pinned back from her face to feature those gray streaks curving near her high cheekbones. Her gray eyes showed me she wasn’t lying about being worried.

“You were checking in on me?” I asked. “Couldn’t you just look at your bulletin board if you wanted to get a load of me?”

Amanda Lee folded her hands. “I didn’t mean for you to see my war room.”

“If you’re expecting me to say sorry for spying on you, sure, I’ll do it.” I sat up. “But I didn’t go there to spy.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” She found a seat of sorts on a thick, level oak branch that stuck out from the trunk, but she tested its weight before she gingerly rested on it. “I like my privacy, even if we’re partners.”

“I’m not sure that’s the word for us. Partners don’t use tricks to put each other at a distance. That’s what the salt around your windows and your chimney was for, wasn’t it? Shutting me out?”

She shook her head. “That was nothing personal. I’ve been barring spirits from my home for years.”

Still. “I’m just going to lay it out, Amanda Lee. I can’t work with you if you keep secrets in general, and the first one I want to know is what’s going on with those bulletin boards.”

Her shoulders lost a bit of their tension, like she was relieved that I hadn’t asked about the ring she’d been longingly gazing at while sitting on her bed in her nightgown. Maybe she thought I hadn’t seen that part. Or maybe she thought I had already gotten the idea that it was from her dead husband.

“The bulletin board with your picture,” she said, “is a collection of your data—articles published after your death and reports that a private investigator gave to me. I told you before that I had been looking into your life and death, trying to contact you because I wanted to help you.”

“You wanted to do more than that,” I said, referring to her other agenda.

“True. But I’m not lying when I tell you that I also want to solve your murder. I merely have… priorities.”

Fair enough. “And the other bulletin boards on the wall?”

She didn’t even hesitate. “I studied those victims before you. I used the same private investigator friend who’s been looking into the Edgetts. I’ve consulted on some of his cases in the past when he’s stuck. But I’m here to tell you that I’ve never been successful in making contact with those other people on the boards.”

“So why keep their information posted?”

She seemed baffled at the question. “Why? Because dismantling their boards would be the same as dismantling them. They had suspicious deaths, just like you, and…”

Oh my God. I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

“You’re thinking of using me to solve their murders, too?” I asked. “And maybe to haunt their killers when we’re done with Elizabeth and before my tether is broken?”

“The idea had crossed my mind.”

Hell. Amanda Lee had ambitions, didn’t she? Her husband’s death had given her some major purpose, scarred her, maybe even resurrected her into a different justice-seeking crusader. Like the Wonder Woman of dead people.