~*~
The Main Street Apartments weren't exactly on Main Street. Main was two blocks north and taken up by shops with brick fronts and brightly painted windows. Technically the buildings were on Maple Drive and Freemont Street, but Maple-Freemont Apartments wasn’t classy enough. The sign out front said what it wanted to, and it didn't matter much one way or another. It was where Sharon D. Morris put up her feet after dealing with a day of family drama and work. It didn't help that a five o'clock storm had rolled its way in and settled against the mountain.
Being a small town deputy was not exactly what Sharon had planned for her life. Oh sure, it was nice enough most days. Her shiny metal badge and the uniform gave her some semblance of purpose and kept her bank account going.
No, she admitted silently, that wasn't true. It was more than that. She looked at the piece of metal, glittering up at her in the near dark of her entryway. It was a promise, to protect and serve. It was a promise to do the right thing and keep people safe.
But Pete was dead, Lillian was missing, and the storm looked like it wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.
A demanding mewl caught Sharon's attention as she hung up her jacket.
“Hey, Persephone.”
A large gray cat twined its way between Sharon's legs and yowled up at her again. The golden eyes were accusing as the water from Sharon's soaked pant leg transferred itself to the feline.
“Don't blame me, pretty girl." Sharon bent down and grazed her fingers over the smoky fur.
Unamused Persephone flopped back and began to clean her damp side. The sight of it tickled a laugh from Sharon, a minor miracle for the day.
"Hungry, baby?” She asked leaning down and picking up the plump feline. Persephone's response was a loud purr while butting her forehead against Sharon's chin. “Yeah, yeah...that's what they all say.”
Sharon set her on the ground and watched gray paws scamper towards the kitchen in the hope of food.
She walked by her television and slapped the on button. While it blazed to life she headed to the kitchen, opened a can of wet cat food, and plopped it into a dish. It smelled of old chicken and cold gravy, but Persephone was eyeing it like a five course meal. She flicked her tail against the back of Sharon's legs in thanks when she set the dish on the floor. Apparently food trumped a wet tail.
“Enjoy.”
Sharon turned and opened her fridge, greeted by several nearly empty shelves. “Got food for the cat...forgot about yourself. Smart. Least you got some wine,” she grumbled grabbing a cold bottle. A take-out box caught her attention. A sniff of the contents told her they were a few days old and chancy at best. But she had a bottle of the pink stuff in the medicine cabinet, and the only restaurant open right now was a BBQ place over on Cedar. A crack of thunder had her deciding that possible stomach pain was better than going back out into all that wet.
She hoped Lillian was all right.
She pulled off the metal bar along the top of the take out container and popped it in the microwave. Before the bell went off Sharon felt a tickling at the base of her neck. Persephone stopped eating and began to growl. Out of the corner of her eye Sharon saw the cat back up towards the cabinet and hunch down, ears pinned back in defiance.
“Damnit. Not tonight.”
But the tickling increased. It became a buzzing at the tip of her spine, like a bee caught under her skin. It crawled down her back and back up again. Sharon kept her eyes on the light in her microwave busily illuminating her spinning food.
Persephone was hissing. With more calmness than she felt, Sharon popped the cork out of her wine and poured out a glass. The food dinged its finish, and the noodles steamed merrily when Sharon opened the door.
“I'm not in the mood, spirit. It's been a long day.” But it wasn't going to listen. The damn thing was dead. It had nothing better to do than be there, waiting for her to give it some attention. Besides she was hungry, and it was too damn late.
“Fine,” she said, turning around.
There Pete stood with his insides hanging on his outside. When alive, the tall lanky man had reeked of his Irish nature from his red hair to his freckled cheeks to his capacity for fine whiskey. Sharon's mom looked similar. In death it was all the same. Movies depicted ghosts as spectral entities and misty forms. They got it wrong. They got it so damn wrong.
“Oh god.”
She had known, of course, that he was dead. She had even heard how it happened. That did not compare to seeing it.
Pete stood there, looking far too much like himself if his ‘self’ went around with his chest hanging open like a cabinet door. He looked a little pale, sure, with the green turned up so he looked like a bad TV screen. For a moment all Sharon could see was the pile of intestines clinging to sundered bone, a scoop of organs eviscerated by uncaring claws. Green and brown blood splashed across his clothes like a bad painting.
“I should have known you'd find your way to me." Her voice broke as she said it. She swallowed around a lump in her throat that she hadn't felt form.
Pete didn't say anything. He stood there, looking like a pea soup version of himself.
She cursed, and slapped her glass against the counter. The wine splashed over the rim and puddled around the base. It looked too much like blood. Tears, hot and angry, threatened to spill down her cheeks. Sharon blinked them back. “Alright, alright. What is it? Ghosts only stop by when they need to tell me something. Just...god...just tell me. I don't think that I can handle this.”
Pete stepped forward his movements too smooth to be real. His ethereal body unimpeded by the friction of carpet. Persephone swatted at him and gave a hateful howl. Pete stopped and watched the gray feline with dead pan wariness.
“Okay.” She blew out a breath. She pushed down the frustration and the sadness. She could wallow later. Right now, Pete needed her.
“I told you when you were alive, Pete. Cats are the best guard animals against the undead. And...well,” she motioned up and down at the ghost of Pete Lawson. “That's what you are.”
Pete stepped back and turned around, heading towards the television. After a few steps he walked through the couch. Apparently Pete didn’t see a reason to talk. Or maybe he couldn't. Every ghost was different. Some forgot they were dead and spoke like the living. Some did nothing but scream. Pete, it seemed, had forgotten how to talk.
She wanted to hear him speak. It would be too easy though, wouldn't it? No ghost could just wander up and tell her what happened and then cross over to whatever afterworld would accept them.
He continued his silent walk through the ugly striped couch that took up most of Sharon's living room. As the phantom stepped through the fabric it rippled like stone disrupting water. Pete slid into place on the same spot on the couch that he always took. His eyes stared straight forward watching images flicker across the screen.
“TV? Really? You are putting off going into that white light of beyond so you can crash on my couch and watch HBO?”
Pete continued to stare at the screen.
“Alright, fine. Far be it for me to stand in the way of your last wishes.”
Sharon grabbed a fork from a drawer and headed to the living room to demolish her reheated dinner. She plopped down on the other end of her couch.
“So what do we watch?” she asked, digging in between the couch cushions for her remote. Just as her fingers brushed plastic the channels began to flick the bright green number in the corner, increasing as the images changed.
For a moment, just a moment, she thought that the button was caught against the sofa. That maybe she was crushing the remote into flipping channels. When she tugged the remote free, she knew that wasn't the case.
She turned her eyes on Pete. He was watching the screen with the unblinking intensity of the dead.
“Alright, Pete. What are you trying to say?”
The channel came to a sudden stop on the local late night news. Up in the corner, blocked partially by the green numbers, wa
s a picture of Pete's house. The lawn and front door were blocked by police tape. The words 'Werewolf Attack!' took up the lower portion of the screen as a well-dressed man spoke into a mic explaining that a family was found eviscerated inside the home earlier today.
“Pete, I don't think you need to see this.” Sharon flipped the channel.
The screen went back to the report.
“Fine. Have it your way.” She dug into his noodles. “Ghosts are weird. Said so all my life.”
That wasn't entirely true. Sharon hadn't started saying that until she realized what it was she was seeing.
The report had changed to a prerecorded press conference with a gray haired woman in a suit. The nameplate at the bottom of the screen now read 'Constance Gray, Federal Bureau of Investigation'. She was talking at a podium with the Lincoln Memorial standing behind her.
“...The making of the supernatural division is well underway. For the moment, names are being kept classified.”
“There are rumors that a case is already being investigated!” a reporter shouted.
“I am not at liberty to confirm or deny.”
Sharon snorted, twirling her noodles around her fork. “Yeah, okay.”
“I can assure you that only the best are being considered.”
The screen froze there. Sharon could hear the news casters talking in the background, but the image was held there with the FBI woman making her big promise.
Sharon turned to Pete who was still watching the screen.
“You don't trust my people to investigate this, huh?”
Pete turned his eyes on Sharon. The look was as empty as his ghostly eyes, but Sharon didn't need a translation.
“Yeah, man...me neither.”
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