Chapter Four

“Dougal, what the hell?” Mel quickly lowered her voice since to anyone else it might look like she was yelling at her empty car. “I tell you! Just because most of the spirits in there were nice doesn’t mean you have to bring one out to the car, Dougal. And how did you carry whatever she’s attached to? If it’s still in the house, then she’s not going to be able to get very far with us.”

Dougal shook his head, then left the other ghost in the back seat as he floated through the back of the passenger seat to sit up front with her.

His face was grimmer than usual. “Mel, I swear I have no idea what’s going on. I saw many ghosts in the house and put each in the place it belonged. I removed myself to the car when you told me to. When I arrived at the vehicle, she was standing next to it as if she had no idea where she was or how she’d gotten there. Is this normal?”

“No, it’s not, Dougal. I’m sorry for being angry. What happened when you approached?”

“I invited her in because I didn’t feel right leaving her.”

Weird, but okay. “And what about her anchor?”

“I have no idea. I tried to talk to her after that first invitation. Yet no matter what I said and what volume I used, she never answered. She either doesn’t understand me, or she’s simply not speaking. I believe it’s the first. She hasn’t moved, either.”

They both turned to look at the woman, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, but she just stared back, her eyes wide with fright. If Mel had been asked right there on the spot, she would have guessed that the woman had just died but didn’t yet realize it.

Dougal and Mel looked back at each other. Dougal was the first to speak. “If I must, I can ask her to go away. I see no object for her to attach to, but many of the rules of this world are unfamiliar to me.”

Mel stared at the new ghost, who again didn’t even seem to blink. “No, let me think about it. We need to leave before Mrs. F wonders what I’m doing in the car at the curb talking to myself. Let’s see how far this gal can go. We can always come back for her if she gets whisked out. Try to talk to her and see if you can get anything.”

Mel put the car in gear and waved to Mrs. F, who had twitched the curtain at the front bay window.

Half way through town, the woman was still sitting in the back of the car. Dougal had gone back to join her and was talking quietly, but she just stared forward like she couldn’t hear a word he said.

She didn’t fade or flash out once they hit the outskirts of town and was still as formed as a ghost could be when Mel turned into the winding driveway that would eventually take them into Hargrove’s Junkyard.

Mel had to make a decision now before they went farther. “Okay, ma’am.” She pulled the car to a full stop at the junkyard’s entrance. Turning in her seat, she looked for any signs of movement but found the ghost still staring straight ahead, unseeing, unhearing. “I’m sorry to jump in, and I hope I’m not going to totally frighten you, but this is a special junkyard. We have a bunch of people just like you. I want to warn you because you might be able to see them all, and I don’t want you to be overwhelmed or afraid. We’ll take you right into the house, where we can hopefully help you.”

With no idea what she could actually do, Mel knew for certain she would at least try to help. If any of her ideas didn’t work, she’d shoot off some messages to her circle of internet friends. Maybe, as a hive mind, they could figure this out.

Pulling up as close to the house as possible, Mel opened the door and had Dougal coax the woman out of the car. She looked almost catatonic, her eyes staring off into a distance Mel couldn’t see. She didn’t flinch at all when Mumford tried to jump through her, and she actually floated through the wall next to the door instead of coming in the door itself.

Okay, there was something really funky going on here. Mel would bet her best set of dangly earrings that she was not going to like what that something was.

****

After a frustrating two hours, Mel had to take a breather or lose her cool. She hadn’t gotten anything out of the woman and had run out of tricks. The message she’d popped off to her friends had yielded no results, either. Dammit. Where could she go from here?

As if in answer to her silent question, Mel’s mother popped back into the room with a familiar if not-usually-seen ghost. Mel had seen him only a handful of times because he usually kept to himself in the displaced kitchen sinks at the back of the junkyard.

“Mikey might be able to help,” her mother said.

“Are you sure?” He wasn’t always the easiest of ghosts.

“I am.”

“Well, I guess it can’t hurt.” Mel would try to reserve judgment, because at this point she’d tried everything she could think of. They’d brought in Chester, Bernie, Horace, and any other person she could think of. She’d tried other women, men, even a child, but nothing seemed to break the ghost’s concentrated stare at some point off in the distance.

Maybe because Mikey was a recluse he would be able to break through to her like no one and nothing else. It certainly couldn’t be worse than it was, at this point. Mel had no idea what to do with her, no name to put in the book, no idea what her receptacle was, and had never dealt with this before. She’d texted a few more friends for additional ideas, but no one had gotten back to her yet.

“Have you tried to touch her?” Mikey asked from a mouth full of broken and dirty teeth. His hair was long and scraggly and his beard permanently out of control. His fingernails left a lot to be desired, as did his clothes. Mel had always thought that maybe he’d never been properly buried but had instead been dropped into a dirt grave somewhere, a place where no one could find him.

“I haven’t, Mikey. I wasn’t sure what to do. Thank you for coming in for this.”

“Course. Course. I gonna see what I can do, but Mikey might not be able to do much, you understand?”

Mel nodded. “Of course, I understand and appreciate the effort, no matter the outcome.” Mel’s mom gave her a thumbs up. If Mikey was ever around, you were gentle. He might have looked rough and unkempt, but he was one of the sweetest souls Mel had ever met. He could be difficult at times, but even then he was kind of quiet.

“Ma’am,” he said, approaching the woman ghost. She hung about five inches off the floor and everything about her drooped—her hair, her arms, her mouth, her shoulders. Even her nose seemed to droop.

After a moment, though, she turned her head toward his voice. Slowly, but still turning for the first time in almost three hours. With her mom sitting next to her on the couch, Mel watched the exchange. The woman’s eyes didn’t change, but the position of her head did. It was at least a small win.

“Yeah, so I’m wondering if you know that you are no longer in your body,” Mikey said. He laid a hand on hers. In life he had probably been a sunburned brown, and the woman looked to be very fair, but once they died they could fade into gray unless they chose to color themselves.

Mikey chose to stay gray, but Mel didn’t think the woman had made a choice. It seemed as if she was almost sleeping with her eyes open, but the dead didn’t sleep.

“So, uh, yeah. If you want to know more about what’s going on, we could talk some. I’m Mikey, just Mikey. I might have had a last name, but I don’t remember it. Never seemed important.” He doffed the trucker hat on his head, ran a hand through his unkempt hair, and then put the cap back on. “Anyway, you gotta have some questions, right?”

“What’s going on?” Mel asked her mother in a low whisper.

“I think Mikey thinks she doesn’t know she’s dead. I was of the same mind, and that’s why I got him. He didn’t know he was dead for quite some time when your grandfather brought him here. It was painful to watch him come to the realization that he didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there.”

“Mikey.” The woman apparition said it like she was trying the word out in her mouth, like there were marbles in there, and she was trying to speak around them.

“Yup, that’s me. Did someone hurt you?”

She opened her mouth. Mel thought she was going to answer the question. Instead, she screamed at the top of lungs that no longer held air.