Ghost Trackers (7 page)

“What are you talking about?” Amber said. “You’re a psychologist, and Trevor’s a published author. You’re both doing pretty well for yourselves, I’d say.” She paused and looked down at her empty wineglass, as if regretting not ordering a refill. “Not like me. I can’t hold down a job for more than a few months at a time. If it wasn’t for disability checks, I’d be homeless.”

The pain in Amber’s voice prompted Drew to reach across the table and take hold of her hand. “I’m not talking about careers,” he said. “I’m talking about how our personal lives have developed. Or, rather, failed to. None of us has been married or had children. For that matter, we haven’t been able to hold on to any of the relationships we have managed to form. Do either of you have any lovers, or even close friends?”

Neither Amber nor Trevor said anything.

“It’s the same for me,” Drew said. “I have my work, and while I get along well enough with my coworkers, it would be a stretch to call them friends.”

“And I don’t have coworkers,” Trevor said. “Unless you count my literary agent, and I’ve never even met her face-to-face. I travel so much that I’m hardly ever home. I mostly live in cheap hotel rooms and eat too much fast food.” He patted his well-padded stomach.

“In a very real sense, the three of us have been frozen in time since that night in the Lowry House,” Drew said. He gave Amber’s hand a last squeeze before releasing it. “Trevor and I are still looking for answers to what happened, though we’ve taken very different routes in our search. And you struggle with nightmares. Your subconscious mind is fighting nightly to force you to remember what happened, and your conscious mind fights just as hard to keep those memories suppressed. The conflict wears you down to the point where having a normal life is impossible for you. I think deep down, all three of us are tired of spinning our wheels.”

Trevor nodded. “I know I am.”

Drew continued. “We want to move on with our lives, and this reunion has provided a handy excuse for us to do something about it. You must recognize that on some level, Amber, or else why would you have come?”

Although she didn’t say anything right away, she looked thoughtful, and Drew took the fact that she didn’t get up and leave as a good sign.

“So what should we do?” she asked, her voice soft.

Before either Drew or Trevor could respond, a voice cut in. “How about saying hello to an old friend?”

They all turned to face the newcomer, who was standing next to their table, smiling at them. Drew
hadn’t noticed the man’s approach, and he found that puzzling. He was a trained observer, and it wasn’t like him to miss an important detail like a man walking up to interrupt their conversation. It was almost as if he had materialized out of thin air, a ridiculous thought, of course, but one that Drew couldn’t shake, especially given what the three of them had been talking about when the man arrived.

He was their age, medium height, with a trim physique like that of a runner or a tennis player. His facial features were more distinctive than handsome—he had the kind of face with a lot of character, as Drew’s mother might have said—but he wasn’t unattractive. He seemed genuine, a regular guy, the kind of man who engendered automatic trust with a ready smile and a warmth-filled gaze. Like a salesman practiced at hiding who and what he really was, Drew thought, surprised a bit at his own cynicism. The man wore a navy-blue suit, black shoes, and a white shirt without a tie. He looked well groomed but relaxed and at ease, as if he owned the place and had come over to see if they were having a good time. But there was something familiar about him, about his voice and lopsided smile, and there was something about his eyes . . . they seemed to sparkle with amusement, as if he were enjoying a private joke.

It was Amber who recognized him first.

“Greg,” she said, and that single word triggered Drew’s memory.

Drew, Amber, and Trevor might have been the Three Musketeers in high school, but there’d been a d’Artagnan as well, a fourth sometimes-member of their group: Greg Daniels. He hadn’t been in the science class where the three of them met, but he got wind of their interest in the paranormal, and that had attracted him to Drew and the others, as he was also interested in strange phenomena. And it hadn’t hurt that he’d had a crush on Amber, although it had gone unreciprocated.

Greg had hung around the three friends from time to time and even invited himself along on a few investigations. He’d been something of an outcast in high school—overweight, acne-plagued, socially awkward, and just plain annoying. Plus, he had a bit of a temper and a cruel streak. Drew and Amber had felt sympathy for him, which was why they’d allowed him to tag along sometimes. Trevor hadn’t liked him one bit, but he’d put up with him for the sake of his two friends.

There was one thing more, Drew remembered. Greg had been with them the night they’d gone into the Lowry House. He frowned. No, that wasn’t quite right. He hadn’t gone in with them, had he? The three of them had visited the Lowry House alone that night, he was certain of that. But Greg had been
inside
the Lowry House with them at one point, although the details weren’t clear.

Drew was stunned by this sudden inrush of memory. How could he have forgotten Greg? The
trauma that Drew, Trevor, and Amber had suffered the night the Lowry House burned down had robbed them of many memories, but they’d never forgotten one another. But he hadn’t thought about Greg Daniels once in the last fifteen years. It was as if the man had been erased from existence for the last decade and a half and now, miraculously, had been resurrected.

“What’s wrong?” Greg said. “The way you three are looking at me, it’s like you don’t recognize me.” He paused and then let out a small laugh. “I suppose I
do
look a lot different from the last time you saw me.”

His smile grew wider, and a dark cast came over his eyes. Looking into those eyes, Drew experienced a moment of vertigo, as if a pit had opened beneath him and he was falling . . . falling . . . His nasal passages were clogged with thick smoke, and he felt intense heat sear his skin. He coughed and fought to keep his eyes open in the superheated air. The sound of crackling flames filled his ears, but the noise was almost drowned out by someone close by screaming in agony. A wall of flames stretched before Drew, and as he watched, Greg staggered through the fire, mouth open wide, and Drew knew then where the screams were coming from.

Greg—the adult version of him—was wreathed in fire. His skin was blistered and blackened, and his hair was ablaze, making him appear to be wearing
a halo of flame. His eyes were wild with pain, and Drew wondered how he managed to remain conscious, let alone stay on his feet.

Greg’s gaze fixed on him, and he stopped screaming. A terrible calm came over him, even though the fire continued consuming his flesh.

“You did this to me,”
Greg said, his voice thick, as if his throat were filled with bubbling fat.
“The three of you. It’s your fault. All your fault . . .”

He laughed, flames leaping forth from his mouth as if the fire had eaten its way into his body and was now devouring him from the inside out. He extended his blackened hands toward Drew and stepped forward. Drew recoiled from the flaming apparition, making a small sound in the back of his throat like a tiny animal terrified at a predator’s approach. This wasn’t real, it
couldn’t
be real!

And then, just like that, Drew was sitting in the bar once more, looking at a whole, healthy, unburned adult Greg. He realized that Greg was talking, and while his words were nothing but meaningless noises at first, they eventually became clear.

“—started working out in college and lost a lot of weight. I don’t manage to get to the gym as often as I should. Busy-busy, you know? But I still try to take care of myself.”

Drew sat and stared at him for a moment, the smell of smoke lingering in his nostrils. He glanced
at Amber and Trevor and saw that they looked as shell-shocked as he felt.

Greg continued talking as if he didn’t notice anything wrong with them. “I’d love to stay and catch up with you three, but I volunteered to help the alumni committee, and there’s lots to do to get ready for tomorrow night. You’ll all be at the banquet and the dance afterward, right? I’ll make sure to carve out some time for you then. In the meantime, keep having fun.” He gave them a last smile and started to go, but he stopped and turned back to look at them once more. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see the three of you.” His smile widened, and a look came into his eyes that Drew couldn’t read. “I’ve waited a long time for this. A very long time.”

Then, with a last wave, Greg departed. Drew watched him as he headed toward the bar’s exit, nodding to other reunion attendees at other tables as he passed. When he was gone, Drew turned to Amber and Trevor. He intended to ask them if they’d experienced the same strange vision of Greg being burned in the Lowry House, but then he stopped himself. People didn’t share hallucinations. What he’d experienced was some kind of flashback, if a weird one that was a combination of memory and present sensory input. Unsettling, no doubt about it, but nothing supernatural.

Drew glanced at his watch, and even though it was only a little past ten, he said, “It’s getting late.
I think I’ll turn in. Maybe we can get together for breakfast tomorrow? Say around eight o’clock?”

Trevor and Amber agreed. They exchanged cell numbers and room numbers. They left the bar together, saying little as they headed for the lobby and the main elevators. As they walked, Drew did his best to ignore the smell of burning wood and cooking flesh that seemed to follow them the entire way.

Amber showered twice
before climbing beneath the covers of her bed, but despite her best efforts to rid herself of it, the smell of smoke lingered on her skin—which made sense, since it hadn’t been
real
smoke, had it? After drying off, she’d donned a pair of comfortable panties and a cozy oversize T-shirt, but they felt scratchy on her skin, almost as if she were suffering from a sunburn, which was a ridiculous thought. As rarely as she left her apartment, she got about as much sun exposure as one of those blind albino fish that dwelled in caves.

Not a
sun
burn, she realized. A
heat
burn, as if she’d stood too close to a fire for too long.

Despite that, she shivered and burrowed deeper beneath the covers.

At home, she normally lay in bed with all the lights off, but she’d turned them all on the moment she’d gotten back to her hotel room. Even so, it still seemed too dim in there—shadows pooled in the corners, the darkness seeming to watch her as it gathered . . .

Stop it!
she told herself.
It’s just your imagination
.

And was that her explanation for the vision of Greg burning that she’d experienced at the bar? Imagination? Her throat was still raw from inhaling too much smoke, her skin hot and tight from exposure to the flames’ heat. Her body was reacting as if what she’d experienced had been real.

A memory, then . . . a flashback. Though one nightmarishly distorted. In real life, no one could have continued moving and speaking with the kind of burns Greg had sustained. There’d been a fire at the Lowry House the night they’d worked up the nerve to investigate it, that much they knew. Although she had no clear memory of being inside the house when the fire broke out, it’s possible that she’d been there. That part could have been a memory. But Greg standing there, covered in flames, laughing, reaching for her with burned and blackened hands . . . no way had that ever happened. Besides, it hadn’t been the teenage Greg she’d seen but, rather, an adult version of him.

So, what she’d experienced could have been part memory, part . . . what? Waking dream? Psychotic delusion? She was used to seeing disturbing things in her nightmares, but until this point, such horrifying images had confined themselves to her sleep. They’d never spilled over into her conscious experience before.
Call it what it is
, she decided.
A hallucination
.

“You’re losing it, kiddo,” she whispered to herself. “Big time.”

She’d been afraid that coming here was a mistake, and now she had proof. At first, she’d feared that seeing Drew and Trevor again would dredge up emotions and memories that would be too much for her to handle. But after they’d been talking for a while and everything had been OK—no bad feelings, no bad memories—she’d begun to think that maybe it was a good thing that she’d allowed Greg to talk her into coming to the reunion. That maybe this weekend could be a step forward for her, for all three of them, just as Drew had said it could be. For the first time in a long time, she’d allowed herself to feel hope. Hope that she might be able to begin dealing with the trauma of what happened at the Lowry House and get on with her life.

But the vision-hallucination-whatever-the-hell-it-was of Greg proved that she’d been a fool to allow herself to hope. She was messed up, far beyond the ability of a simple reunion with her two closest friends from high school to fix.

It had been strange seeing Drew and Trevor again. Strange but good. She’d talked to both of them a few times over the years, especially Trevor, who periodically called to nag her to help him write about that night in the Lowry House, and he had visited her once a couple of years back. But this was the first time she’d been in Drew’s presence since high school.

They’d never dated; despite the gaps in her memory, she was sure of that. But there had
always been an attraction between them, even if they’d never gotten around to acknowledging it. She thought they might have gotten together eventually if that night at the Lowry House hadn’t happened. Being around Drew tonight, she’d felt that attraction again, a tightness in her chest, a thrilling fluttery feeling in her stomach, the sensations at once both familiar and brand-new. She wondered if he had experienced similar feelings from being around her, but she dismissed the thought.

Drew was an accomplished professional, and while he claimed also to suffer from the trauma of that night in the Lowry House, he’d handled it a hell of a lot better than she had. There was no way a basket case like her could appeal to a man like him. Still, she thought that maybe she’d sensed something in the way he looked at her, the way he smiled . . .