I’m not a proud man.
Okay, that’s a lie. I’m extremely proud when the moment calls for it. However, hearing the shouting coming from the house after I’d stepped out to call CeCe, I was not ashamed to admit I hurried away from the porch and made a beeline for the gravel drive, putting myself at a distance that would make overhearing a family fight impossible.
A tiny part of me felt a pang of guilt—I should go back in, I thought, and interrupt, see if things were okay. Maybe even just give Oscar and Ezra an excuse to book it out of there and not be forced to sit in mortified polite silence as what sounded like Enoch and his grandfather screamed at each other. But I turned my back on the house and kept my phone pressed to my ear, my deep aversion to other’s awkward moments making me downright queasy at the idea of purposefully stepping into that argument. Besides, I reasoned with myself, CeCe was already behind schedule. I checked the time as I dialed her number. She was half an hour late.
CeCe running late didn’t surprise me. CeCe being unable to find an entire damn town, however, did. “How can you not be able to find this place?” I groaned. “It’s tiny, but not invisible. Did you take the South Road exit from the freeway?”
“Yes,” she hissed. “Harrison, slow down, I see a sign! No, it’s not the same one I saw earlier. Slow—Oh. Okay, yeah, that is the same one. Sorry. Where the hell did all the Factotum stations go, anyway? I haven’t seen one in business since we were like… six.”
“Cec, focus please,” I snapped. The tow truck had showed up just as I’d stepped out onto the porch, and now the car was long gone, the driver giving me a receipt with a mechanic shop address in a town called Reefter, which was apparently “up the road a ways.” We were officially stuck until CeCe got there, and I told her as much.
“I’m sorry,” she groaned. “But seriously, ask Harrison! We’ve been circling this area for an hour now and there’s not a single turn off into the damn town! Even the GPS gave up and just keeps saying it’s recalculating.”
I walked a bit farther down the drive, wary of the tenuous connection my phone had. It was flickering between two and three bars and the sound quality was shit—I had a feeling I’d be losing the call soon and the thought made me unsettled. It felt too much like we were being cut off, even though I knew better. The farmhouse had a landline, Carstairs had mentioned having a satellite phone they used when repairing fences out on the back end of the property since it was so remote and could be hazardous depending on what time of year it was. We had options. Hell, if we had to, we could all pack on to one of the ATVs I saw parked by the house like we were in a remake of Grapes of Wrath and meet CeCe and Harrison halfway.
Halfway to where, I wasn’t sure. But it’d be halfway away from here, and at the moment that seemed more important than a definite destination. “Okay, how about this: pull over at the next business y’all see and regroup? Re-enter the address and start from there.”
“The only business we’ve seen out here is a roadside stand selling pecans and jam, manned by a kid and an old lady.”
“Did it occur to you to ask them for directions to Budding?”
“Would you?” I didn’t have to see her face to know the expression on it. CeCe and I had never been good with people, especially strangers, and the idea of approaching not one but two to ask directions was nerve-wracking even in theory.
“Fair.” CeCe and I both shared an aversion to asking strangers for help, even in dire situations. But, unlike CeCe, I’d come to grips with the fact sometimes life was a slap in the face with a dead fish and you had to do things that made you wish you could rip your nails out instead. “Well, needs must, favorite sister. Tell Harrison to do it if you’re too nervous. Wait. He’s not on the clock right now, is he? This isn’t going to be something he’s charging hourly for?”
“No,” came Harrison’s low voice down the line. “I’m doing this because I had nothing better to do on a Thursday and the idea of driving around the Texas hill country while CeCe shotguns slushies in increasingly neon colors sounded fun.” His dry tone could have either been honest or the most brittle sarcasm ever. It was near impossible to tell.
“Thanks for telling me I was on speaker,” I sighed. “Look, my phone’s having a crap time with the service out here, so I don’t know if you’ll be able to get in touch with me later. If I don’t answer, try this number.” I read off the car shop’s number to her. “Ask for Wally Carson and tell him you’re the sister of the guy whose car he brought in, and you need help getting here to pick me up, okay?”
“That sounds like a lot,” she muttered.
“Seriously?”
“Ugh, fine.” Her sigh rattled on the weakening connection. “If I don’t see you in the next four or five hours, try to call me again.”
“That means you’ll need to actually answer a number you don’t recognize since I might need to use a landline.”
“Fine…” She made a kissy noise at me and hung up, already telling Harrison to turn left again.
I tucked my phone back into my breast pocket and turned to look back up at the house. Enoch was striding across the field, away from the house itself and towards an overgrown patch of pasture that slowed downwards, towards a dark scar on the landscape I took to be the creek Carstairs had mentioned. He was alone but apparently talking to himself, waving his arms and throwing his head back as he strode through the high grass. Enoch looked back over his shoulder but kept going, maintaining a steady pace. Yancy came out of the house and joined the parade, albeit at a much slower pace, head hanging and shoulders hunched. A man resigned. I wondered if Enoch had himself an old fort or clubhouse he retreated to, a holdover from childhood he couldn’t let go. A rustle in the grass beside me jerked my attention away from them as I hurried to get back to the center of the drive, away from the possibility of attack snakes. When I looked back to see how far they’d gotten, Yancy had stopped and was facing the house, facing me. Enoch was long gone.
“Y’all want to go into town?” Yancy called. The forced jollity was plain in his voice even over a distance. “I have some errands to run and figured y’all might like to talk to some locals about the Ghoul for your show thing.” He started towards me with one last look over his shoulder in the direction Enoch had likely gone in.
“Um, I think that would be great, sure. Is, ah, is everything okay?”
Yancy was close enough now that we didn’t need to shout. “Fine, fine. Kids, you know? Well. I don’t guess he’s much of a kid, is he? Teenagers.” He shrugged. “I, uh, don’t suppose you had much experience with them, teaching college and all?”
“I had a few freshman seminars,” I admitted. “But mostly upperclassmen in my lectures while I taught.” My face felt hot, and it had nothing to do with the sun. I wondered if Yancy had heard about my ignominious booting from academia last year. It hadn’t exactly been part of the show’s promo package but, after the incident in New York, people were definitely starting to google names. The second suggested search that popped up under Ezra Baxter was Ezra Baxter single? And Oscar was Oscar Fellowes real medium hot, sexy gay. Mine was Julian Weems skeptic boring. So, you know… word of mouth was really great.
Yancy grunted. “Well. You ever have one of your own, they’re a pain in the ass. I love him, but…” he trailed off. “Well. Let’s get our shit together and head into town before it gets too late. I still have chores to get going on with and MeMaw’s gonna want the groceries back in time for lunch.”
The drive into Budding was shorter than I expected but seemed terribly long given how tensely quiet it was at first. Ezra had one hand pressed to his forehead as if it ached, and Oscar, after an initial attempt at conversation with Yancy which was rebuffed with a one-word reply, stared out the passenger side window. The curving blacktop road cut through summer-dry fields and the occasional oddly green patch with massive, self-propelled, watering tractors. “Corporate farms,” Yancy muttered. “They’re growing soybeans.”
Which, given his inflection, was the worst thing you could do in cattle country. “Seems like a waste of water,” Ezra said. “Can’t they grow something more suited to the local environment?”
Yancy snorted. “What’s that song, tale as old as time? That’s farming, least out here. Land’s not cheap—never has been—but it’s cheaper here than in the Midwest, for example. These companies love to come in and buy up struggling family farms and pop ‘em into their corporate models. Some of us,” he gestured vaguely as we came to a stop for a train crossing, “we’re part of a co-op group and we’re not in danger of being bought out. Our farm’s still barely considered one but we do keep the pecan groves going and Pops sells off one or two calves a year and has a few bulls that produce show-quality calves so he sells their semen and—”
“I’m sorry, what?” Oscar looked aghast. “He sells bull semen?”
“Well, yeah. How do you think you get baby cows? Setting the mama and daddy up on a date and hoping for the best?” This seemed to tickle Yancy so much, he chuckled the last mile into town and was still grinning when he dropped us at the square in the center of Budding. “I’ve gotta go by the grocery, the water office… Hell, a lot of places. Meet back here at half-past twelve?”
Here was a bandstand. An honest to God, rural Americana, where’s-Robert-Preston-and-the-singing-quartet, bandstand. A swag of red, white, and blue bunting still hung over the entry from the Fourth of July over a month before.
“Holy shit,” Oscar muttered as Yancy headed the opposite direction, leaving us to stare like we’d never seen a bandstand before.
And to be fair they weren’t exactly thick on the ground where I’d lived. And by the looks of things, where Oscar and Ezra had lived, either.
“This place looks like something out of a movie,” Oscar half-whispered as though people in the surrounding shops might hear and converge on the square in order to do something song and dancey, telling us about how great Budding is and maybe throw in a verse about their resident ghost.
Ezra took point on the recording, positioning himself in front of the bandstand so the Budding, Texas sign hanging from the roof was clearly visible. “Hello, poppets!” he started, ignoring my snort. “We’re in Budding, Texas, home of the Wandering Ghoul!” He wiggled his brows and made spooky jazz fingers with his free hand. “According to our sources—”
“CeCe,” Oscar muttered, and Ezra ignored us harder.
“This ghost has been haunting the area since the late nineteenth century and has been spotted all over town and even as far as some of the farms outside the town-proper. We’ll be talking to some locals to get their perspective and maybe even some personal accounts of this Wandering Ghoul, and maybe get to see him ourselves.” He shut off the camera and glanced at where Oscar and I were standing, staring at him. “What?”
“That was way more telly host than I was expecting,” Oscar admitted faintly. “I thought this was just like a travel blog or something…”
Ezra shrugged. “We’re doing it for promo, right? May as well make it interesting. Just footage of us traipsing about town and asking people if they believe in ghosts isn’t going to get numbers.”
“He’s been spending way too much time with CeCe,” I sighed.
Ezra turned a full circle, camera out and recording. “Julian, you’re from Texas,” he began.
“I’m from Houston. This,” I waved a hand at the Americana on display, “isn’t the same.”
“It’s adorable,” Oscar cooed. “Seriously, it reminds me of that movie with Sandra Bullock where her husband leaves her, and she moves in with Gena Rowlands.”
Ezra lowered his camera. “Hey, Oz. You, ah… you know?”
Oscar’s face fell. “No. Nothing.” He darted a glance my way and looked, for the first time since I’d met him, nervous. Not uneasy. Not mildly disturbed. Outright nervous.
“What’s going on?”
Oscar sighed, rubbing his arms distractedly. “It’s just that problem I mentioned the other day. It hasn’t cleared up.”
“Prob—Oh. Oh.” He didn’t look at me and, in a heart-sinking moment, I realized he doubted my response would be a caring one. “Oscar, it’s okay if you need a break,” I offered. “There’s nothing wrong with resting or just stepping back for a little bit, especially when you’re dealing with stressful situations. Sometimes, the human brain can do stupid shit like forgetting basic information or—”
“Or forgetting how to talk to ghosts?” he asked with more than a hint of archness in his tone. “Just what am I so stressed about that my brain flips the off switch on that?”
“Bettina?” I suggested, though it came out more as a question than a statement and he rolled his eyes. “That was a fucked up situation and there’s no shame—”
“You’re right,” he interrupted, waving me off in that imperious way he sometimes had. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long few days with the road trip, the car issues—Hell, probably even the heat.” He offered me a ghost of his usual smile and laid his palm, surprisingly cool in the morning heat, against my jaw. “Don’t worry, Julian. I’m fine. Just stressed. I’ll be okay.”
“Hey.” I reached up and caught his fingers before he could pull away. “What did I say? Did I… Did I insult you? What’s going on? You’re giving me that fake show-smile you do when you’re annoyed and want to wrap up a séance.”
Six months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine saying that sentence with a straight face. Now… I had an odd little internal shudder when I realized I meant it without irony or sarcasm. Séances had become part of my life and I wasn’t feeling as annoyed by it as I would’ve been less than a year ago.
Oscar closed his eyes and, for a moment, pressed his fingers a bit more firmly to my face and just seemed to wilt a little. “No,” he sighed. “No, you didn’t insult me. I’m not feeling myself lately and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“We can go back to the ranch. I’ll tell CeCe she can forget about her vlog thing for this leg of the trip. Or we’ll just film the fucking cows or something.”
“That’ll cost extra, if they’re fucking,” Ezra muttered.
“Ew.” Oscar’s laugh was a little shaky, but genuine. He dragged his hand out from beneath mine, resting it on my chest for just a moment before stepping away. “Come on, then,” he said with a gusty sigh and almost believable cheer. “Let’s ask some unsuspecting townsfolk about a ghoul. I don’t need to use my abilities for this. We’re just chatting, right?”
Lee’s wasn’t what I was expecting, and from the mild surprise on Ezra and Oscar’s faces, they weren’t expecting it either. Instead of the greasy spoon with worn vinyl floors and chipped Formica tables I’d thought we’d be walking into in a tiny rural town, the place looked like a hipster cafe in a big city. Soft white walls, artfully arranged black and white photos, a sleek wood-cased jukebox that looked more like an old-fashioned stereo cabinet than something that would blast Old Time Rock & Roll until my ears bled (for the record, the number of times that takes is one). The street-facing windows were done up with sweetly gathered eyelet curtains, pulled back to let in the natural light and keep the dark wood of the floor, tables, and service counter from making the space overwhelmingly dark.
“Holy shit,” Ezra muttered. “I feel bad thinking we were gonna get a gum-chomping waitress named Flo who’d call us hon and have her hair all big and fluffy.”
“We still might,” Oscar soothed, patting his arm. “Courage.”
“Sorry, y’all, but I think we seat ourselves here and order at the counter.” I pointed to the small, cursive-printed sign by the door instructing patrons to ‘grab a seat and ponder your order before headin’ up to the counter to talk to Cookie.’
Ezra looped his arm through Oscar’s and made a beeline for a table right by the window, leaving me to trail along after. I was only seconds behind them but by the time I got to my seat, they’d already decided on a plan of action. “We’ll grab something to drink and some, I don’t know, toast or something because I’m so full from breakfast I might actually explode if I tried to eat anything more than that,” Ezra informed me. “After we’re paying customers, Oscar’s going to ask the lady behind the counter if she knows of any ghoul stories.”
“I get to ask because I’m charming,” Oscar informed me primly with a tiny wink and a nudge of his toes against my ankle. A warm flush stole up my throat and I know he noticed, judging by that dimple-popping grin he flashed me before sliding out of his seat to approach the counter.
“I’m willing to bet he doesn’t follow the plan,” Ezra sighed.
“Not taking that bet. I only brought my card with me, all my cash is back in my luggage.”
Oscar returned a few minutes later with a rather smitten-looking young lady he introduced as Sandy, the owner’s daughter and the hostess as well as cook-in-training. “You’re both British?” she gasped when Ezra said hello. “Oh my God.”
When she turned wide eyes to me, I offered an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I’m from Houston.”
Her own smile faded, and she gave me a considering look. “Well. Least you’re not from San Antonio,” she sighed before turning her eager expression back to Oscar and Ezra. “Y’all really want to hear about the Ghoul? Though I don’t guess he’s really a ghoul since those are like… corpse eaters, you know?”
“She’s right. Ghouls are traditionally depicted as creatures that live in burial grounds and feed off the dead. The name comes from Arabic and—” I stopped myself. “Well. The word’s also been used to just refer to something like a ghost or other scary creature.” Sandra nodded, resting her hip on our table and settling in for a chat. “See, Carol?” she called towards the kitchen, “I told you! Now,” she turned back to us, “If you’re wanting ghoul stories, I got one for you. It happened to my mom and sister, though. I was, like, four and had to stay home with Dad while they went to Austin for one of Becca’s baton twirling things. Mom and Bec both saw the ghoul out off Main Street and Darling Road, near the Hannover Ranch’s old truck patch.”
“I’m sorry, their what?” Ezra asked, frowning behind the camera.
“Truck patch. You know, small garden? Grow enough veggies to sell out of the back of your truck? Truck patch? Y’all don’t have those in England, I guess.”
“No,” Oscar said faintly, leaning closer. “But go on.”
Sandy shrugged. “Mom and Bec had just turned off onto Darling, heading towards the highway so they could cut around Smithville and still make good time to Austin. It was super early, like just past dawn. Mom said she still needed the headlights, but it was getting bright out so when she saw him, she thought maybe it was a trick of the light or a scarecrow or something.”
Ezra fiddled with a setting on the camera. I was pretty sure he was zooming in on Sandy’s distant expression and Oscar’s intent stare. It took a moment, but I realized Oscar wasn’t looking at Sandy. He was staring at some spot in the middle-distance, like he was trying to focus on a fuzzy picture. As Sandy went on about how her mother and sister saw the ghoul and he was staring at them, like totally right at my mom’s face and she was super scared, I watched Oscar.
Oscar’s furrowing brow, his deepening frown.
Sandy shrugged again, sliding her gaze back to Oscar and Ezra. “Anyway, that was the same day Carl West—he’d married one of the Dint girls—died and my mom swore the Ghoul had been there to pick him up, like he did just about everyone who’d been married into one of the founders’ families.”
“Founders?” I asked. “Of the town, I’m assuming?”
She shrugged again, distracted by the wall of a man who’d lumbered out of the kitchen looking for her. “Yeah,” she said, already walking away, checking her apron pockets for who knows what. “The old farmstead’s off that way,” she gestured vaguely towards the east, where the Carstairs farm lay, “The Carstairs place, the Hicks’ old wreck, the Dints—they have acreage across the creek from the Carstairs—and the O’Hallorans, who had a spread on the other side of the Hicks place. They were all the families who ended up starting the town, and one or two of ‘em always die when the Ghoul shows up.”
Oscar and Ezra fell to their interviewing with enthusiasm, people finding excuses to stop by the table after Sandy had hurried back to the kitchen. Within half an hour, people were stopping by from elsewhere, coming in to see the medium and his sidekick according to one couple I overheard. Not everyone there was a believer—in fact, I’d feel safe in saying most weren’t, or were at least apathetic towards the idea. Several were laughing as they told the stories, repeating popular ones, some fantastical even by Oscar’s standards from the slight smile that fought his scowl from earlier in the morning. But there were a small handful that were devout. One or two had heard of Oscar and Ezra, had seen their show and were waiting for the episodes of the new one to air on UnReality. One young man enthused how he even got ‘one of those streaming sticks’ just so he could watch the show when it was on. I took the opportunity to stretch my legs a bit, get out from under the small crowd gathered around the table. Oscar shot me a glance, but I nodded, a silent you okay and I’m fine, really. He swept a look over me, head to toe, and frowned slightly, but went back to listening to one of the Buddingites talking about the time the Ghoul was spotted near the motor court, just the night before the murder of Casey Dint, who was apparently the ghost Yancy had mentioned to us the night before, and the last granddaughter of one of the founders.
“It was just so sad,” the man murmured. “Casey, she had a hard life after her family lost their ranch. She tried to make it in Dallas, tried to go to school but just didn’t have the funds for it. Back in those days, women didn’t have as many options for jobs as you’d think. Not here anyway.”
One of the other customers joined in, a man who looked even older than the first. “Casey Dint? Hell, Hube. She didn’t go to Dallas for school! I was in high school when she went off, tried to take up with a rough neck and he knocked her around, so she came home. No one here would hire her because she’d had that baby,” he paused and added as an aside, “that was the rumor anyway, that she’d gone up to Dallas to give birth, but no one was ever able to run down what happened to the kid after that. Frankly, I think that was just a load of horse shit and there was no kid. I mean, if there had been—”
“Anyway,” Hube chimed back in, cutting off his friend, “Casey, she was the last of the Dints, and they used to own about a thousand acres south of town. Ran cattle, just a few hundred head, not a big operation but it kept them steady for a while. She was the last of ‘em left though and took to, er, some unsavory goings-on, trying to keep her head above water.”
His friend nodded. “Sad time. I remember her though. She was so pretty. Always trying to get out of here again. When she got killed…” he trailed off, seeing something that happened over fifty years ago play out all over again. “Well. Lots of people were sure the Ghoul was behind it. He always showed up before one of the founding families was gonna have a death in it, you know? Sure enough, the night Casey got killed, lots of folks saw him near the motor court.” He paused, then added, “I saw him. I was riding my bike to the little theater that used to be off Peach Street. He was just… just standing there. Almost thought he was real like me for a second.” Around us, everyone had gone quiet as he sighed and continued in a soft tone, “I didn’t realize what I was seein’ till I got up on him and he just looked at me and smiled. Lord, I got so cold. So damn cold…”
Hube shifted uncomfortably, fidgeting with the well-worn ball cap on the table before him before slapping it back on his head and saying in a false-hearty tone, “Well. Poor Casey Dint, she got herself pushed out the window, didn’t she? Didn’t even scream, they said. Dead by the time she hit the ground.”
His friend glanced up, looking startled to be surrounded by people in the cafe and not on his bike, decades ago, seeing a ghost seeing him back. “Weirdest part was the fall shouldn’t have killed her. Hurt her, yeah, but not killed her. But once she was gone, that was the end of the Dint family.” He paused again, then shrugged. “Less she really did have a baby up in Dallas. Then I suppose it wasn’t. Though Casey, she don’t rest easy. Lots of folks have seen her at the motor court. It’s why they closed. People couldn’t stand the crying.” There was an awkward quiet as the two men muttered their farewells and headed for the door, leaving an uneasy feeling in their wake as they hurried out into the warmth of the day, away from the ghosts they’d summoned from memory.
“So, the Ghoul is associated with the deaths of specific families,” Oscar said loudly enough for me to hear from my spot, examining an array of photos on the wall by the jukebox. “That sounds like it’d be an interesting thing to study, if one were into that sort of thing.”
I didn’t bother trying to hide my smile. “Aren’t we both into that sort of thing, just from different angles?”
Oscar’s expression lightened a bit more. “True.” His attention was diverted back to one of the townspeople just dying (ha) to tell him about their personal Ghoul sighting and I was left to stare at the collection of tasteful, modern black-and-white photos made to look old-fashioned. The landscapes I’d fetched up in front of apparently comprised a series of photos of the seasonal progressions of a huge tree, arranged to show the cycle of bloom and die off from spring to winter and back again.
“Wanna see something kind of cool?” Sandy asked, sidling up to me. She had an empty tray under one arm and an earbud in one ear, tinny Slipknot playing between us. “This is the only known picture of the Ghoul and it’s why a lot of folks think it’s Mason Albright. Looks just like the only actual picture they have of him at the Budding Community Museum and Ranch Club.” She tapped one neatly short nail against the picture of the tree in full leaf. “You kinda gotta squint but he’s there.”
I leaned in and, sure enough, a dour-faced man who could have been considered handsome if he didn’t look so angry was staring at the photographer from a distance, partially obscured by the shadows of the leaves. The image was black-and-white, so he was also in grayscale. Nothing about him screamed undead cowboy to me but then again, I wasn’t expecting it to. He looked like every other middle-aged man in rural Texas to me, from my Uncle Roger to the guy who talked to me when I was trying to call CeCe on the side of the road.
Sandy was still talking about it. “When she took the picture, there was no one there. It was, like, seven in the morning because she always tried to go at the same time and the Hicks’ place hasn’t run cattle in forever, so it’s not like someone was out there working.” She shrugged. “It’s pretty spooky. She even sent it off to one of those paranormal investigation groups to see what they thought but no one ever got back to her.” She cut her eyes over to Oscar and Ezra. “Do you think—”
“Their specialty isn’t really in photography,” I murmured, peering a bit closer. The man wasn’t fuzzy around the edges or translucent or any of the other things people might expect a ghost photo to look like. No, it looked just like a grumpy man caught standing under what looked to be a mesquite tree, glaring at someone taking his picture. “Does Albright still have any descendants in the area?”
“Huh? No. I think he had some kids but after he died the farm got chopped up so there was no reason for them to stay, and I don’t think there’s any Albrights even left in the county.” She made a face, wrinkling her nose in thought. “Maybe one of the cousins, but if they’re the ones I’m thinking of, they’re not Albrights, they’re Donaldsons and, like, cousins twice removed or something so I guess the answer is no?”
She didn’t sound super sure but honestly, her explanation kind of exhausted me, so I just nodded. If this guy looked enough like Albright for the photo to gain some fame as the only photo of the alleged ghoul himself, I’d be willing to bet Sandy’s mom caught some descendant of Albrights checking out old family history. Lord knows my own mother was fond of that sort of thing when CeCe and I were kids, taking us on drives to see where Aunt So and So lived back in the day or the place where Great-great-grandad’s store once stood. I’d like to say those road trips are what started my love of history and anthropology, but really they were just the seeds of my hatred of road trips. “I know a few people back in Houston who do forensic analysis and—”
“Forensic analysis?” She scowled. “It’s not a crime photo! Why would we need them to do an analysis of it?”
The words fell out before I could stop them, and I really tried to stop them. “Well, they can tell if the image of the man was added after the original photo was taken and—”
And I swear to God I was going to say ‘and provide verification if you’d like,’ but Sandy’s offended gasp was the equivalent of a record scratch. The small crowd around Oscar and Ezra swung their heads our way and Sandy hissed, “Are you accusing my mother of faking this photo?” she demanded, jabbing her finger at the picture. “Asshole!”
Oscar was on his feet and smiling his charming don’t be mad at me, I have floppy hair and a sexy accent smile. “Our resident skeptic,” he said with a slight roll of his eyes, “is an absolute bear before he has a second cuppa.”
“I meant no offense,” I said stiffly. “I was—”
“He was just doing his job,” Oscar said with another eye roll, one that said isn’t he just adorable, thinking he’s a big boy and doing work. I bristled but bit my tongue. Yeah, I wasn’t exactly out here curing cancer, but pretending like I was making shit up? Definitely fucking having a talk later. Oscar and Ezra passed out business cards with the production company email on it, promising they’d get any messages with their name in the subject line should folks have more stories to share, and they hustled me out of the diner like I was a misbehaving child.
We made it as far as the bandstand, where we’d started from, before I shook them off. “What the Hell?” I demanded. “I know you think it’s a pain in the ass that I’m having to try to do what I do, but you don’t have to pretend like I’m just an inconvenience or making it up! I didn’t say one damn thing to that woman that wasn’t true!”
“Sometimes,” Oscar bit out, “we need to keep our loud voice quiet and our quiet voice loud.”
“Guys,” Ezra said. “Guys…”
“I didn’t say her mother was a liar,” I snapped. “I said there are all sorts of reasons for the picture, not just a ghost!”
“Oz,” Ezra said a bit more sharply. “Something’s wrong.” He swayed hard, then fell, tumbling into Oscar’s startled grasp.
“Shit! He’s having another seizure,” Oscar hissed. “Julian—”
I was already helping him get Ezra to the ground. “Are you sure he doesn’t have epilepsy or a seizure disorder?”
“Are you calling me a liar now?” Oscar snapped. “Shit. Sorry, sorry, not the time. Shit! Ezra, come on, talk to me!”
Ezra’s head rolled to one side, and he shuddered, drawing in a deep breath. As he exhaled, his eyes opened and he stared up at me and Oscar, a smile spreading across his face. He showed too many teeth, too much gum. It was a grimace, a rictus grin, not a real smile. “I’m so glad y’all are here,” he drawled in a voice unlike his usual one. “I’ve been running out of time, but y’all got here right in the nick,” he laughed. “Just in time…”
“Ezra, no!” Oscar grabbed for Ezra’s face as he turned away again, and Ezra arched as if shocked. A bright flash of orange light blinded me for just a second, someone’s headlights or something cutting across the square, and when I blinked my eyes clear, Ezra’s head was in Oscar’s lap and Oscar was pale, trembling. “Ezra,” he whispered. “Ezra, are you… are you?”
Ezra groaned softly. “I feel like absolute shit,” he muttered in his own voice. “Fuck.”
Oscar looked up at me, eyes wide and a little wet. “We need to get him to a hospital.”
“No,” Ezra protested, sounding stronger than a moment before. “No! I’m fine. I came over funny for a moment. I’m okay. I swear.”
Oscar and I exchanged a long, speaking look. “He’s an adult. We can’t force him to go. But I think he should seriously consider it.”
Ezra shook his head. “I’m fine. I’m fine. It was just… I just need a nap or something.” He was talking fast, shaking. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he looked like he was tweaking out or something similar. Yancy’s truck rolled to a stop beside the bandstand, and he rolled down his window.
“Y’all ready?”
Ezra nodded, struggling to his feet. “More than.”
Oscar and I followed more slowly, both of us wearing near identical expressions of confused concern.