Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

When she saw us approach, she stood, locking in on me.

“You’re safe.” She sounded like she’d been hoping and praying for me all night, maybe even keeping vigil for me, sitting under the porch light and hearing the night breathe around her.

“Safe enough.” Why tell her about how un safe I’d been a short time before? “These are my friends. They wanted to meet you while I took a break.”

When she glanced around, I realized that she couldn’t see them like she could see me.

Next to me, Louis said, “Looks like you’re her special ghost, Miss Jensen. She’s a medium for the spirits who connect with her, but she’s not a true seer like McGlinn.”

It was like Amanda Lee was half-blind as she addressed the group. “It’s good to meet you. Who is everyone?”

I introduced Louis, Scott, and Twyla, describing them to her: the dignified World War II factory worker, the Bye Bye Birdie dude, and Schizoid Valley Girl.

All the while, Twyla hung out by my side, giving Amanda Lee the Sherlock eye.

“She’s so boho,” she whispered after I’d finished with the niceties. “Total wannabe Stevie Nicks, you know?”

I nudged Twyla, even though my elbow only buzzed against her essence.

Amanda Lee raised her brow. “Just because I can’t see you doesn’t mean I can’t hear bits and pieces. Unlike the others, you’re more static than anything.”

“Oops,” Twyla said, shutting up.

I got down to brass tacks with Amanda Lee. “Did you have any visits from the dark spirit?”

“No. It’s been a quiet night. Too quiet. I couldn’t stop thinking of what you were doing.”

“It all worked out.” I’d almost been annihilated, but no biggie. “Even when the cleaner came, I got out of the mansion, thanks to these guys. I lost some energy, but they were there to help me out.”

“Thank goodness.”

Scott had started poking around the porch, inspecting the aloe plants and sweet peas like they would tell him more about Amanda Lee’s personality. Twyla and Louis began nosing around, too. Obviously, studying a human’s life keenly interested them, especially when there’d been verbal contact.

“Do you know of an Eileen Perez?” I asked Amanda Lee. “She’s the one who came over to clean the mansion.”

“I don’t. But it sounds as if she did a good enough job so that you can’t get back into it.”

“Actually, I didn’t try to reenter. But I’ll do that after I visit my death spot for an energy boost.”

Amanda Lee’s eyes couldn’t have been wider.

“Yeah, I just told you that I’m going back.”

“I’ve already said you don’t have to—”

I held up my hands. “It’s not over till it’s over.”

There was a conviction in my voice that even caught the other ghosts’ attention. It sure as hell caught mine, because I’d never felt strongly about much before in life.

From the expression on Amanda Lee’s face, I realized something: even if we came at things from different angles, she had begun to respect me. I wasn’t her tool anymore.

Louis looked over at me from where he was checking out a colorful birdhouse, grinning. Nothing got past this guy.

Then he said, “Tell her about Gavin’s dream. She’ll be able to interpret it, right?”

Amanda Lee must’ve heard at least part of what he said, because she scooted forward on the swing, stopping its mournful creaking. Revitalized.

So I told her about the dream red sky and the swimming pool, about me in the white bathing suit, walking into the study to find Gavin reading a book. Then about the desert, the spider, the two girls in the air machines, and the final image of blindfolded Elizabeth.

Amanda Lee didn’t say anything for a while, just leaned back in her porch swing and let it sway back and forth as she touched the cross around her neck. The swing’s chains moaned again as Louis and Scott gathered near me, done with scrutinizing the porch.

But Twyla actually walked up the first step for a better look at Amanda Lee, who turned her face to her, feeling her coolness. Unflustered, she didn’t say anything about the ghost eyeballing her.

“I only wish I were a better detective,” Amanda Lee said softly, looking at me again. “Then I would understand what all these images mean when we put them together.”

“Then let’s take them one by one,” I said.

She was game. “All right. A swimming pool could signify the need for a mental recess—that Gavin is taking a moment to try and understand his feelings.”

“That’s a good thing,” I said. “The haunting is making him sort himself out. Maybe he’ll be easier to access from this point on.”

Or maybe not. But pessimism would get me nowhere.

Louis asked, “How about that pool man who appeared in the dream?”

Amanda Lee addressed the location of his voice. “That’s a new element. One I don’t have a ready answer for.”

He rested on a step, and Scott followed his example, engaged in the conversation, too. Twyla was meandering closer to Amanda Lee, and I had the feeling that she was actually checking out the chunky turquoise cross necklace on my part-time ally. What a fashion victim.

“Could the pool man be a keeper of Gavin’s emotions?” Louis asked. “Could it be that he somehow maintains order for Gavin’s feelings in his mind?”

When I gave Louis a check- you -out look, he seemed humble. Then he offered something like an apology for being so smart.

“I like learning,” he said casually. “I couldn’t get enough education in life, so I spend a lot of time in libraries looking over shoulders at books and, these days, computers. Lord knows I have the time to fill.”

When this was all over, I was dying to have a talk with Louis about why he was so mild when he could do just about any damned thing he wanted to as a ghost. He’d existed awhile, through Civil Rights and everything. But it could be that earth-shattering stuff like that didn’t get to beings like us.

“Maybe,” I said, going on, “in Gavin’s psyche , the pool man plays the part you mentioned, Louis. But why do I get the feeling there’s something more to him in general?”

Amanda Lee said, “It’s because of the way the pool man was lingering under Wendy’s window that morning you visited her.”

Twyla took a detour from her Amanda Lee surveillance and wrinkled her nose. “Grody. From what Jen told us before, it sounds like pool boy is a barf bag.”

“Anyway,” I said, moving on to Amanda Lee again. “How about the desert imagery? What do you make of that?”

“Isolation, loss, misfortune.”

Louis chimed in once more. “That’s where this Gavin fellow has been wandering all this time in his head. A figurative desert. But what about the spider that showed up?”

“Spiders,” Amanda Lee said, clearly hearing Louis now, “are powerful forces that can protect. Would it make sense that the spider is attempting to discourage the dreamer from continuing any more destructive behavior?”

“Like mur -ders,” Twyla singsonged, but I didn’t think Amanda Lee heard her. Or maybe she’d already learned to ignore shit like this very fast.

“However,” Louis said to Amanda Lee, “a spider creates webs…”

Scott volunteered his view. “And webs trap things. Or people.”

Did I have a crack team or what?

“A spider,” Amanda Lee said, “might symbolize trapped memories for the dreamer. If we take into account the fact that Liz appeared later in the dream, I’d venture to guess that he’s caged with the recollection of her, and it’s a constant punishment for what he did.”

I’d told the others about my doubts regarding Gavin’s guilt and Amanda Lee’s belief in it, so I looked first to Louis for a reaction. He didn’t have one. Neither did Scott. It seemed all of them were deep in thinking mode—even Twyla, who’d just sat on the porch with her petticoats spread around her, her chin in her hand.