The Ghost of Ben Hargrove

  With a grunt, I stood up and moved to the pile by the front door. If I was a couple of towels and some sheets away from getting a Sausage McMuffin, you could bet I was going to knock that job out so I could get on with my day. After locating the knife my dad had given me when I was twelve—“Every boy needs a knife, Stephen”—I sliced open the linens box and pulled out the pile of sheets and pillowcases inside. I lugged them down the hall and crammed them into the closet. Shoving the door closed, I said a small prayer for whoever opened that door after me. Not that I was the religious type.

  Then, I found the box containing our towels and shuffled them to the closet Dad had mentioned. I actually managed to finish before I starved to death, which was pretty amazing, if you asked me.

  I walked into the kitchen and looked at my dad expectantly, without saying a word. He nodded. “Okay. Go take your shower and we’ll eat. There’s a diner on the other end of town.”

  There was only one bathroom in the house, which I could already see was going to be a problem. My grandmother had claimed every inch of the medicine cabinet as her own, and the small cabinet by the pedestal sink was already full of things like bubble bath and body lotion. The tub was a huge claw-footed monstrosity, and when I turned the water on, the curtain that hung around it from an oval ring up above sucked inward, like it was trying to suffocate anyone who climbed inside. There was no way I could have hated this bathroom more.

  That is, until I noticed my grandmother had stuck pink plastic daisies all over the bottom of the tub and hung an annoying plaque on the wall behind the toilet that read If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie and wipe the seatie.

  The words die already came to mind, but I wasn’t certain who my brain was directing them at.

  I hurried through a shower, fighting the curtain’s murderous advances the entire time, and threw on some clean clothes—just jeans and a T-shirt, nothing fancy. If the good citizens of Spencer wanted me to dress up for Sunday breakfast, I had a few ideas for where the good citizens of Spencer could stick it.

  I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Spencer, though. After Dad had told me that we were moving to the capital of midwestern nowhere, I’d Googled the town, hoping to find something salvageable for my summer. But the only things that had turned up had been a Wikipedia page stating that the “village” was about a square mile in total, and the town’s website, which featured a quaint photograph of the town’s reservoir and an announcement of when the next First Baptist euchre tournament would be.

  So I would have been lying if I said that I wasn’t at least a little curious about the place my father had chosen as our new home. I threw on a pair of Chucks and grabbed my wallet from my bedroom before heading out to the kitchen, ready for anything.

  Anything would have been nice. Hell, even something would have been acceptable. But as we navigated the streets in my dad’s beat-up ’73 Volkswagen Beetle—stylin’ in baby blue and rust so bad that the car looked more Swiss than German—I had a first-row seat to the nothing show of the century. Spencer’s streets looked as if they hadn’t been redone in several decades. Where there weren’t potholes, there were layers of patch so thick that they made small hills in the road. Spencer’s sidewalks had been shifted and lifted by the roots of the unkempt trees that grew along two main thoroughfares. At the center of town, encaged by a rusted, wrought-iron fence, stood an old brick mansion that had seen better days. The building reminded me of a woman who had been a real beauty in her younger years, but now denied the fact that those days were long gone. I wondered if she was a reflection of the rest of her town. I hoped not. I hoped that Spencer had something more to offer.

  As we passed a run-down gas station, I rolled my eyes at the faded Confederate flag hanging in the window. Who displayed something like that so prominently and thought it was okay?

  The three old men standing outside eyed our vehicle distrustfully. I sank down in my seat, pretending not to notice. We were the new people here. We weren’t part of their group. We had to prove ourselves worthy of their small-town ways. I didn’t even want to think about what the school year would be like if we were still here this fall. If the adults stared us down this bad, what would the high schoolers be like?

  The other side of the gas station was home to graffiti—nothing special, just a large, roughly painted pair of stark black wings. Probably Spencer’s idea of what passed for small-town rebellion, when in fact the teenage punks were all just farmers’ kids or a close variation thereof. These kids had no idea what punk was, what a big city was. Kids in Denver would eat them alive.

  As Dad pulled into the surprisingly full parking lot of the Lakehouse Grill, he grimaced. “I swear this town never changes. It looks the same as it did the day I left.”

  I caught sight of two bumper stickers on the truck next to us. One read Pro Life: Have a heart. Don’t stop one. The other read Keep honking. I’m reloading.

  Awesome. Just . . . awesome.

  I opened the passenger door of the Beetle, hoping like hell the rust would hold it together and the door wouldn’t fall off completely. I climbed out, closing the door behind me with a slam. It was the only way to be sure the stupid thing would close at all. My actions apparently caught the attention of a group of four kids around my age as they exited the restaurant, because all four were staring at me and my dad’s crappy car. One of the three guys in the group—tall, tan, and probably into things like Ultimate Frisbee and racquetball—whistled at the rust monstrosity as he slipped his arm around the slender, just as tan, likely-into-gymnastics-and-discussing-everything-to-do-with-her-hair girl in the group. An embarrassed heat worked its way up my neck as we walked by them and headed inside. I hated the Beetle. I hated the way those kids had noticed it, had noticed me. My dad seemed oblivious to the stares.

  The Lakehouse Grill was small-town chic . . . in that it had panel-covered walls from the seventies, ripped-vinyl booth seats, and enough fake plants to choke a horse. A weird horse that ate fake plants. Probably a horse from small-town Michigan.

  As far as I had seen, it seemed like it was pretty much our only option for eating out unless we wanted to drive thirty minutes to the next town over, so I was hoping they had some fair-to-decent food. When we stepped inside, we were greeted by a woman who was basically every hostess in every small-town café everywhere. She was relatively short and relatively thin, and I could tell by her gravelly voice that she smoked way too many cigarettes when she wasn’t busy directing people where to sit. Around her neck she wore a pair of reading glasses on a chain. A younger, much prettier blond lady was arguing quietly with her. The hostess was losing her cool. “I know, Marjorie, but Spencer’s going through a bad time right now. You just have to be more careful is all. It’ll all be over soon. Now get your buns back in the kitchen.”

  She looked at my dad expectantly. “Two?”

  “Yes, please.” We followed her into the main dining area, to a booth near the back. As we moved, I could feel eyes on me, wondering just who we were and what we thought we were doing here. Maybe some of these people recognized Dad or something. But from the look on Dad’s face as we moved past the tables, it was clear that he didn’t recognize any of them.

  The hostess handed us menus and told us that Donna would be taking care of us, then she called me “honey,” and, even resistant to her chain-smoking charms as I was, it felt nice. Maybe she could speak to the gas station guys on our behalf and tell them that my dad and I weren’t so bad. Or at least get the patrons to stop staring.

  Dad peered over his menu at me and cleared his throat. “It would be nice if you called your mom when we get back, and let her know we made it okay.”

  It was a nudge. I’d become very familiar with his nudges in the past six months. He’d nudge me to call her, to make a connection, to try to forgive her for the things she couldn’t control. But I wasn’t ready yet. So as usual, I countered his nudge with a lie. “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. We’ve got all that unpacking to do.”
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  Dad frowned.

  A perky brunette approached our table with a little too much bounce in her step, considering it wasn’t yet ten in the morning. “Good morning, you two. Can I get you started with some drinks?”

  “Coffee, please. Cream and sugar?” My dad remained completely oblivious to the stares we were getting. Either he had no idea, or he was trying to make the best of it. Likely, option B. He’d always been a peacekeeper. That’s why it took him so long to get the balls to lock Mom away. Or maybe, in the end, locking her away had been his way of keeping the peace. I wouldn’t know. No one had explained any of it to me. It was like when he’d told me we were moving. Simple, direct, with no room for argument. “Stephen, I’m committing your mother to a mental hospital.”

  My life with Dad was a series of simple statements.

  “And you?” Donna smiled at me, her pen poised over the small pad of paper in her hand. She struck me as one of those really annoying people who love what it is they do for a living.

  “I’ll have a Mountain D—”

  “Everyone! You’re gonna burn. You’re all gonna burn!”

  I whipped my head around to the wild-eyed woman standing just inside the restaurant’s front door. She was wearing a plain gray dress that reached her ankles, with sleeves that stretched all the way to her wrists, despite the fact that it was eighty-eight degrees outside. Around her neck she wore a small silver cross. In her hand she clutched a worn leather book. She didn’t seem to be speaking to anyone in particular, and in return, most of the patrons simply hunched up their shoulders and tried to avoid eye contact with her.

  The chain-smoking hostess approached her calmly, like this was a regular occurrence in her day. “Now, Martha, what have we talked about? You can’t keep coming in here and disrupting people.”

  Martha didn’t look like she gave a crap. She also looked like she pretty much lived on Planet Martha most of the time, with brief visits to the town of Whackadoo. When she spoke again, her tone remained every bit as embittered, but it was quieter, at least. “You’ll all burn. You should be home on the Sabbath. Family and hearth. All of you.”

  By the pinched expression that was settling on the hostess’s face, I could tell her patience was wearing thin. “Martha, we’re trying to run a business here. If Dave sees you in here again causing trouble, you know what he’ll do. He said he’d call Officer Bradley last time, and—”

  “YOU’RE GONNA BURN!”

  I was starting to like Martha.

  The door opened, jostling the bell that hung above it, and a girl around my age rushed inside. Her shoulder-length hair was stark black, with streaks of cranberry and thin, plum-colored braids twisting all through it. She was dressed in small-town punk, with bold black-and-white-striped knee-high socks and beat-up military boots. Several safety pins were hooked along the hem of her short black skirt, and the tattered T-shirt she wore depicted a band I’d never heard of. Attached to the front of her shirt, clinging to her curves, was a button that read Buttons Are for Dorks. She definitely didn’t look like a farmer’s daughter.

  She twisted one of her braids between two fingers in a way that was almost childlike. But there was nothing childish about the way she licked her lips or how she grazed the fingernails of her left hand along the smooth skin of her thigh as she looked around the place. I took my time noticing.

  When she saw Martha, she groaned. “Mom, come on. Come home. You can’t keep doing this.”

  Martha gestured to the patrons dramatically with a sweep of her right arm. The hostess rolled her eyes. Something told me she’d heard this punch line so many times, she was just waiting for the joke to be over. “I have to warn them. I have to tell them.”

  The hostess spoke up again, her already-pinched face pinching even more in irritation. “Cara, I’ve had about enough of this. You’ve got to get her home and keep her there. Every Sunday, for crying out loud.”

  “I know, Mary. I’m sorry.” The girl—Cara, I instantly memorized—turned back to her mom then, and my sympathy for her grew. It had to be hard to be the parent to your parent. It had to be hard to be the girl with the crazy mom. Especially when everyone in town seemed to know that was your lot in life. At least Dad had spared me that embarrassment.

  Cara sighed, and then something sparked in her eyes. “Come on, Mom. What are you always saying we should do on the Sabbath? Stay home with our family, right?”

  Her mom nodded eagerly. At last, someone was starting to listen to her. “Home and hearth. Family and home.”

  Cara tugged her sleeve and nodded at the door. “Well, come on, then. We’re family. It’s the Sabbath. Let’s go home.”

  At first, Martha didn’t move an inch. But then, with a distrusting gleam in her eyes and a furrowed brow, she edged toward the door, letting her daughter lead the way. As they exited, Cara glanced over her left shoulder, like she’d heard a sound or was checking to see if anyone else had anything to say about her crazy mother. When she did, our eyes met. I nodded a hello, and hoped she noticed, but I couldn’t be certain. In seconds, she was gone. Off to take her mother home, on the Sabbath, like any good girl would.

  Chapter 2

  After a full day of residing in Spencer, and a full three hours of lying awake in bed, I was beginning to worry that I might never sleep again. I was sure I wasn’t the only restless person in our new house. I could hear my dad pacing down the hall, the sound only briefly accented by the ruffling of a newspaper. He was looking through the classifieds, if I had to put money on it.

  Maybe my restlessness had something to do with the fact that my bedroom was stuffed so full of boxes that it felt more like some kid’s cardboard fort than a place to sleep. Or maybe it was because every time I closed my eyes, I saw Cara’s nails scraping lightly against her thigh—shortly accompanied by Martha’s words: “YOU’RE GONNA BURN!”

  Whatever the reason, I was getting pretty sick of this bout of insomnia, and as far as I could tell, it had only just begun. Lucky me.

  I wasn’t sure why I kept thinking about Cara, anyway. She probably had a boyfriend. Girls like her always did. She was smokin’ hot and a little bit badass. Her boyfriend was probably a biker or a thug or the leader of some gang. I wasn’t anything so cool. My friends in Denver had all been nerds of one kind or another, but I couldn’t really be defined by them. I wasn’t a gamer, because I didn’t own every system on the planet and beat every game the day it was released. I wasn’t a book nerd, because I didn’t enjoy the classics and had never met an author in person before. I wasn’t a history geek, because the parts of history I enjoyed were the kinds of stories that qualified as useless trivia. I wasn’t really anything at all.

  And if I wasn’t anything, how was I supposed to attract the attention of a girl who was probably looking for everything in a guy?

  It didn’t matter. That’s what I told myself as I tossed and turned and tried not to think about the mysterious girl that occupied my thoughts. It didn’t matter what she wanted or didn’t want. I didn’t even know her. For all I knew, she could be a real psycho. After all, didn’t psycho run in the family?

  I closed my eyes, drinking in the faint singsong of the crickets outside, blocking out any thoughts of Cara and her crazy mother, until finally, I slipped into the empty quiet of sleep.

  Moments later, or maybe it was hours—with my alarm clock still lost in Fort Cardboard, I had no way of telling how long I’d dozed—I sat up, awakened by a noise. I listened closely, but there was nothing, just that eerie silence that comes with night in a small town. And then it hit me. It wasn’t a sound that had woken me, but the lack of one. The crickets outside my window had gone abruptly quiet.

  Stretching, I sat up and peered outside. Stars speckled the sky above, and my heart sank at the sight of them. In Denver, we couldn’t see the stars in town because of the city lights. In Denver . . . well, a lot of things had been different.

  I was about to lie back down when I noticed a strange silhouette standing on
the sidewalk directly in front of the house. Whoever it was, they weren’t moving at all, just standing there. I watched, curious, waiting for them to turn and walk away, but they didn’t. And right as I became convinced that maybe it wasn’t a person at all, but a tree or a mailbox that I’d forgotten about, the figure raised its arm and pointed directly at my window. It was definitely a guy.

  My heart picked up its pace and I went straight into attack mode. What the hell was that guy thinking? I threw on my jeans, T-shirt, and shoes, and moved through the house, quickly but quietly. All I wanted to do was scare the guy a little. Just a little warning to keep him from stalking around my place in the dark.

  Not my place, I reminded myself. My grandmother’s place. My temporary prison.

  As I stepped outside, the screen door slapping closed behind me, I readied some choice words. My feet practically flew across the lawn to where the man had been standing, those words and more on my tongue, but there was no one there. The sidewalk was empty. A chill crawled up my spine, sending goose bumps all over my skin even in the oppressive heat of the midwestern summer. Behind me, all around the house, the crickets began to sing again.

  A small, rectangular shadow near the sidewalk drew my attention, and I moved toward it to investigate. Plucking it from its spot in the grass, I realized I was holding a small leather book. Curiosity got the better of me and I tucked it in my back jeans pocket. For now, though, I had more pressing concerns.

  The guy had been right here. Where the hell had he gone?

  I looked up and down the street, and sure enough, the intruder was standing about four blocks up, watching me. Not running away, not looking to engage. Just standing there. Watching. Under the glow of the streetlight, I could see that his hair was white. From this distance, his eyes looked like two coals embedded in pale skin. He raised two fingers to his forehead in a salute before slowly turning and continuing on. My stomach muscles tightened as tension rose inside me. What was with the salute? Did he think we were buds after he’d stalked my window and seen me come after him? I didn’t think so. And I was going to make damn sure he knew otherwise. I knew if I went back to bed, I wouldn’t sleep—not unless I’d confronted this guy directly first. So I moved up the street, ready to teach him a lesson, but suddenly, he ducked in between two houses and disappeared.