Only the Good Die Young

12

When Randy and I popped out of the tunnel in front of a two-story pine cabin house nestled into a flurry of oak trees in some bum-fuck part of nowhere, I thought he’d gotten his directions mixed up.

“Did you bring me to Grizzly Adams’s place or something?” I asked.

“Huh?” Randy scratched under his sailor cap as the travel tunnel folded up behind him.

I wondered if Randy and I should have a TV marathon someday. The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams had provided many nights of homey watching with my parents.

Randy started float-swaggering to the cabin before I could explain my love for the bear man.

“If you’re askin’ where we are,” he said, “we’re near Escondido.” Esh-con-di-do.

That was the town where I’d grown up. Holly Avenue. Hidden Valley Middle School. Orange Glen High School. We had to be on the outskirts, here in the boondocks, unless a bomb had dropped on Escondido and sent it back into the Grizzly Adams ages.

But I knew that wasn’t the case when I heard a series of rhythmic thuds coming out of the house.

Music. Disco?

Pale lights flashed in the downstairs windows as a different song played even louder over the first.

Buddy Holly rock ’n’ roll.

Randy was laughing as he moved forward, urging me to follow. “It’s war!”

“What?”

“Just come ’n’ see.”

We got to the daylight-dappled porch, where the front door was halfway open. So we threaded ourselves through the slim entrance and went to a large living room that had a circular black metal fireplace sunk into the middle of it, surrounded by shag-carpeted stairs.

Whatever had been making the lights flash on and off had stopped, but wisps of smoke were coming from the fireplace. I thought it was weird to have a fire going on a day that wasn’t so cold.

The blaring music switched from Buddy Holly to Mexican guitars as I took a good look at what was happening on those stairs.

Partying ghosts.

They were in old TV shades of black-and-white, just like me and Randy. Ghosts in long, Mexican fiesta dresses that looked like they belonged in Old Town as the women with braided hair swirled their skirts in time to the guitars. Ghosts who seemed to have arrived from Chinatown.

Nearest to us, there was a black man ghost dressed in a factory uniform; he raised his hands and seemed to wipe away the music that was playing and brought in a blare of ‘forties-sounding jazz. That encouraged an outraged hoot from a teenage ghost with greased hair, a plaid shirt over a tee, and jeans rolled up to his ankles. Near him were a housewife from the ’seventies, a guy wearing Old West garb, and even an old couple who balanced on top of a couch just off the edge of the fire pit, dancing cheek to cheek, no matter what music was on.

The housewife, with her dishwater blond ponytail, pale lipstick, paisley blouse, and flare-bottom polyester pants, wiped her hand through the air, bringing back the disco as the ’fifties teen booed.

Next to me, Randy struck a John Travolta pose, which he’d obviously learned from the housewife, who spotted him and waved frantically at him in greeting.

He went back to normal, shrugged like a dork, and yelled at me over the music, “So what do ya think?”

“I don’t know what to think!”

The ’fifties boy made a high whistling sound and the music stopped. That’s when I noticed that the room smelled like…

I do say, someone in here was smoking the ganja.

Everyone stared at me, smiling at the new girl. Even the old folks dancing on the couch paused to check me out.

“Hey, you all,” Randy said.

“Rand!” they all chorused.

Aw, they liked him.

Randy swept an arm out to me. “This here’s Jensen. Murdered by an ax in Elfin Forest.”

Several ghosts nodded in sympathy during this moment of etiquette, but the housewife spoke up in a chirpy voice.

“I know another ghost who died there. A hiker. You know him? Daniel Ashbury, longish hair, scruffy beard, looks like Jesus a little?”

“Sorry. I don’t.” I would’ve noticed Superstar in Elfin Forest. “I didn’t meet any ghosts there.”

“Oh,” the housewife said. “There’re more than a few. Mostly nice ones, except for the White Lady and the witch.”

My curiosity flared. On the night I’d died, my friends and I had planned to search for the White Lady. After they’d had a little liquid courage, of course. Being the designated driver, I’d been armed only with mischievous bravery.

Randy slurred, “Jensen didn’t hang around her death spot long. She’s a new ghost, got pulled out of a time loop by a spiritual medium.” Sch-pir-tual.

Everyone made interested sounds, and just when I thought they were all going to offer their own death stories, the ’fifties kid waved his hand, brought back Buddy Holly, and the dancing recommenced.

All right, then.

I glanced at Randy, who only winked.

“They’ll get around to talkin’ to ya!” he yelled. “A music war always wins out, even over a new ghost!”

So much for etiquette. But I could handle it.

As some flamenco guitar riffs filled the room, Randy waved me to a corner, where someone I hadn’t noticed yet had been sitting in a lounge chair the whole time. A human?

At least, that’s what I thought he was, with his ridiculously long black hair, which covered all of his face except for his mouth. He was a cross between Cousin It and Joey Ramone, sporting a black T-shirt with a skull and crossbones on it, ratty jeans, and bare, dirty feet.

It wasn’t hard to guess who was the pothead in the room, since he was holding some Mary Jane between his thumb and forefinger and practically emanating smoke from every pore.

I wished ghosts could get secondhand highs.

Randy motioned to him. “This here’s McGlinn. It’s his house.”

McGlinn didn’t move a muscle as he muttered, “Yo.”

“Good to meet you,” I answered, but when he didn’t acknowledge me further, I shot Randy a glance.

The verbose McGlinn took a hit off his weed, and Randy guided me away from him, an indication that we didn’t have to hang around the only human in here.

By now, the old couple from the couch had taken over the music war, airing one of those songs you’d probably hear in a Catskills resort back in the day. You know—all smooth clarinets, soft drums in the background, and lazy, muted trumpets. They were dancing cheek to cheek again, even though, as I got closer, I saw that they actually weren’t touching each other. Maybe they were just enjoying the ritual of dancing.

The other ghosts had mellowed out, some wandering to the power outlets, where they were clearly getting a buzz from sticking their fingers into the sockets and pulling them out. This was what had been making the lights flash on and off. Others were vegging and chatting. The black man was closing his eyes to the music, sitting on a fire pit step by himself.

Randy headed for the main stairway, talking over his shoulder. “There’s someone I want ya to meet, and she’s prob’ly up top.”

He zipped away from me, flying to the second floor. Used to his ADD, I followed.

But when I caught up, I stopped him. “Wait. Questions here.”

“You can get everyone’s stories later. They won’t mind.”

“Cool, but… there was a human down there. Isn’t that a little out of the ordinary?”

He thought about it for a sec. “Yeah. It’s odd to have a human in a house where ghosts are dancin’ around. But his grandparents gave this place to McGlinn, along with a bundle of money, so he has a ’tachment to it.”

“How does he even see us?”

“He can’t, under all that hair. And thass the point, I guess, ’cause it bothers McGlinn that he’s a seer. Thass what we call a human who knows we’re around. McGlinn, though… he’d rather get numb with those smokes than face the reality.”

McGlinn sounded a little like Amanda Lee when it came to living with his abilities. But, compared to him, she seemed really evolved. In a way.

“Then why does McGlinn let all these ghosts party here if they bother him so much?” I asked.

“Did ya see the old folks dancin’ on the couch? Those good-time people are his grandparents.”

Oh, man.

Randy said, “It’s awful, isn’t it? They died here. Double death. Gramps was cleanin’ his gun when it went off, and Gran didn’t wanna live without him, so—”

I didn’t want to hear it, and I held up a hand to stop Randy.

“Sorry,” he said.

After a second, I shook my head. “You shouldn’t apologize. I mean, death is our life, right?”

I just couldn’t stand any more sadness right now, and thinking of that old man and lady downstairs going out like that was… ugh. As hard as I was trying not to imagine it, I was, picturing them with heinous gunshot wounds and—

Wait.

“Randy, why don’t we ghosts show any effects of our deaths? You don’t have a bloody head from where you hit the rocks. And I’m not in pieces from an ax.”

Funny how I could say it so casually. Distancing myself from that Jensen was obviously working.

“I don’t know the big answers,” he said. “No one does. Not about our existence, not about the ultimate death. If a ghost goes with a wrangler ’n’ he finds an afterlife, he never comes back to tell us what he saw there. We’re jus’ as dumb as we were when we lived.”

That was heartening.

“As for McGlinn,” he said, “he sees how his gramps ’n’ gran’re so happy here with each other. So, deep down, it gives him a lil’ peace. The rest of us are the same when we’re here. Happy.”

“That’s why ghosts are drawn to this house? Because they like to be with others who’re happy?”

“You bet. Ghosts say that this property’s built over an eighteen hundreds anonymous graveyard, so the house’s got some energy that attracts spirits, espeshly the ones buried here from Western times. Ya saw Old Seth down there in his cowboy gear. He’s a graveyard regular. The rest of ’em? Jus’ travelers.”

“Lots of activity,” I said. “Because of the buried spirits who’re already here.”

“Yup, it’s active, all right, ’cept when McGlinn goes to sleep. Then he lays down the law, and Gramps ’n’ Gran enforce it. They guard his slumber.”

Done chatting, Randy meandered down the hall with me on his tail.

But I wasn’t done. “How did they produce that music? Were they doing it in the same way I can make smaller sounds, like knocks on walls?”

“Somethin’ like that. Only bigger.”

No doy. “They’re good at the music thing.”

“You’ll be, too, with practice.”

He urged me to a bedroom, where the door was shut tight. After we slipped underneath, I saw that a twin-sized bed with a wagon-wheel-decorated quilt was the only piece of furniture, the walls a stark white.

“McGlinn’s room?” I asked, taking a wild guess. I didn’t know why Randy would want to show me that, though.

“Nope. Jus’ wait, ’n’ you’ll see. We always introduce new ghosts to our good friend here.”

Randy stood by the bed and waved me over to wait next to him. Respectfully, he folded his hands behind his back, every inch a gray-toned military man. I copied him, lingering politely.

Within moments, the image of a young boy—five years old?—blinked to black-and-white animation on the mattress. Sweat matted his hair to his head, and his breath rasped in and out of him. His hands were propped in the air, like there were invisible people on either side who were holding on to him, grasping onto the kid for dear life.

“I… love you… Mommy… ,” he whispered, just before his image fluttered, then blinked out altogether, leaving the bed empty again.

Ouch. My chest area hurt, just from seeing what I knew was a time loop.

“McGlinn’s uncle Kevin,” Randy said softly in a moment of soberness. “He was jus’ a kid when he died here with his parents sittin’ by the bed. They took him out of the hospital to be with the family ‘cause they knew he was goin’. Cancer.” He slid me a glance. “Does this also show you why McGlinn won’t leave?”

I nodded slowly, not trusting myself to speak.

Randy spent one more second by the bed before he led me out of the room. Then, outside the door, he hesitated.

“Every so often, we’ll try to get Kevin outta the loop. Can’t ever manage it, though.”

Some upbeat Southern rock music had started downstairs, where the party was going on, oblivious of the tragedy up here. But they knew, didn’t they? They had probably been celebrating downstairs from Kevin for years, accepting that this was how it was in Boo World and there was no changing things.

We all had ways of coping, whether it was McGlinn and his dope or ghosts and their music. Death was always a heartbeat away somewhere, so why should I be concerned about it?

Randy was already in a better mood, like he’d had a lot of practice leaving dark times behind. “I’ve been lookin’ forward to showin’ ya this.”

I hoped it would be happier.

We were standing in front of an open door leading to a master bedroom with a bed covered by a dull brown spread, decorated with only a worn-down dresser. Inside, I heard someone moving around in the attached bathroom.

Randy plunged inside like the drunken imp he was.

I met him in that bathroom, where he was already hover-sitting on top of the toilet tank by the shower. But forget Randy. My attention was fixed on the chick standing in front of the mirror, fussing with her hair.

And what hair it was, one side of it all black and straight, streaming over her shoulder, the other side teased and colored with what I thought might be rainbow hues, even though I couldn’t tell with her grayish tone. Part of her scalp was shaved down to stubble, too.

She was wearing a dark corset, petticoats, fishnet stockings, and ankle boots, plus the pièce de résistance.

Madonna bracelets.

Randy was holding back a laugh as the girl caught sight of me in the mirror, then whipped around, her face megapale, her eyes ringed with lots of liner. She looked like half Cyndi Lauper and half Robert Smith from the Cure.

“Goddamn it, Randy,” she said, turning around again and throwing a punch at him. She only swiped through his arm with a bzzt of energy. Randy still flinched, though.

She huffed. “I’m not, like, fit to meet anyone.”

“Ya never are.” Randy presented me. “This here’s Jensen, from the ’eighties.”

When the superfreak just looked me over with a sneer on her lips, I began to question Randy’s friend-matching skills.

“Jensen,” he said, “meet Twyla from the ’eighties.”

Instead of saying hi, she chuffed, “Grody.”

Yeah, yeah, my clothes. I wasn’t thrilled about the eternal statement they made, either.

“Hi to you, too,” I said.

She rolled her eyes, turning back to the mirror, stabbing a hand at her hair. “Like, really, Randy? You sincerely think I look decent or something?”

Like, whatever. I wanted to be with the fun ghosts downstairs again.

Randy was enjoying her sass. “Twyla’s jus’ in a bad mood. She died on a Friday night before goin’ to the clubs. Got a charge out of a malfuck… malfunken…”

“Malfunctioning?” both Twyla and I said.

We ignored our stereo correction as Randy said, “Yeah. That. Her hair dryer cord thing dropped in a full sink and gave her a sizzle while she was experimentin’ with her look, comparin’ one side to the other. She got so…”

“Extra-crispy,” she said, rolling her eyes again.

“Yeah, she got so extra-crispy from the dryer that she ended up only dyeing one side of her hair black ’fore she became a Kentucky Fried Corpse.”

Again, Randy looked proud of his ability to drop modern pop names.

Twyla cared only about the hair. “Like he said, I was comparing how I looked with Lauper in the mirror and then with the Goth. I died right before I decided to stay with the colors and right after I filled the sink with water to wash my hair. So sue me.”

Randy busted out with “Jensen got murdered.”

Twyla’s hands stilled. “Bag your face! Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I said.

Suddenly, I was queen of cool while Randy told her every detail he could, obviously relishing my story.

“Oh my Ga-od.” Twyla looked half Goth, but she sang out the phrase like a true Val. “You’re, like, interesting.”

“Totally,” I said, not sure if I was mocking her or just falling into the bad habit of aping her speech. That sometimes happened to SoCal girls—even the resistant non–Pod People who hung out at the beach or sheltered ourselves with normal friends. Val talk had been a plague that you could catch without knowing it.

“Jen’s jus’ learnin’ the ghost ropes,” Randy slurred. “She jus’ joined her first human dream yesterday.”

“Ah, dreams.” Twyla went back to the hair, testing out ways to hide the shaved part of her head with her longer hanks. “I’ll go into one of their dreams just so I can feel what it’s like to be touched again, you know?”

Randy couldn’t help himself. “Jen likes humans even more ’an that. She’s on a mission for one of ’em.”

And he spilled everything about my former alliance with Amanda Lee and her crusade.

When he was done, Twyla gave me a perplexed look in the mirror. “Like, why would you go through the trouble?”

“I asked her that, too,” Randy said. “Why worry ’bout anything but your own state?”

Twyla shrugged. “Come to think of it, caring about humans’ problems is sooooo cute. It really is.”

I wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or genuine. Either way, I didn’t dig her attitude.

“It keeps me from being bored,” I said, not wasting my time on any more complex explanations. She wouldn’t get it.

Randy floated off the toilet tank. “Jen’s also managed to find a strange buddy in the otherworld.”

Awesome. It was now time for fake Dean stories.

“He or it seems like a wrangler,” Randy said, “but I ain’t sure. Ya ever meet up with a thing that took ya to a starry place?”

The Goth Val seemed highly intrigued. “No. What happened?”

I started to suspect that Randy got more of a kick out of telling my stories than I did.

“It snatched her off this plane, and it looked like her ex-boyfriend.”

“Awww,” Twyla said. “And… ew.”

I casually shrugged at both as Randy continued.

“The thing tried to get Jensen into a light—and I don’t think it was our light. Then, when she wouldn’t go in, it dumped her.”

“What a dick!” Twyla said. “Have you seen him after?”

“No.” And it tripped me out that it hadn’t been so long since my sick rendezvous with fake Dean. A day? Two? Ghost time sure blurred a lot.

“I’m guessin’,” Randy said, “you’ve never come across something like that, Twy.”

“No day, no way. But it is a pretty gnarly tale.” She hopped up to hover-sit on the counter very ghost-gracefully. “But if you do run into your boy toy again, Jensen, you should make the most of it. Ask him who murdered you, you know?”

Again, she might’ve been playing around with me. I’d had a so-called friend like that in middle school who took great pleasure in tormenting everyone with mind games. Twyla might be one of those.

But I had to admit, her comment was a grain of an idea. Was fake Dean a higher being or just a really talented kind of ghost? He’d created a star place, after all. Would he know more than any other regular ghost?

I shoved the thought aside as Twyla spoke.

“By the way, I was joking about shooting the breeze with this thing you ran into.”

Well, good for her.

“Seriously, you should be afraid of it.” She leaned forward on that counter. “You should be afraid of everything at first, when you’re a new little ghostie who thinks she’s a bitchin’ tuff but isn’t. You don’t want to be destroyed before your life here has, like, even started.”

“Destroyed?” I asked. “You mean going back into a time loop?”

Twyla exchanged a jaded glance with Randy.

“Noooo,” she said. “I mean that, besides the odd spiritual beings you’re bound to meet, there’re stories of ghosts getting into less exotic trouble, too. Like ghosts who’ve gotten stuck in the gut by, like, iron daggers and they just disappeared, never to be seen again. There’re humans who know how to do stuff like that to clean us out of their presence.”

Randy said, “Thass why we call ’em cleaners.”

Twyla was just warming up. “They can chase ghosts from houses they’re haunting or whatever. They ban us from places we get comfortable in by using gaggy smells and sensations from energy machines.”

“They can banish a spirit from a location,” Randy slurred, “but not from the earthly plane.” He took a good look at me, measuring my reaction.

Did I have a constipated look on my face or something? I checked the mirror and, yeah, I did.

Answers would help me calm down. “Where are we sent when we’re pierced with iron in our… gut?”

Twyla clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes. “Like we know? I’ve never gotten the stuff stuck in me.”

Randy was more diplomatic. “No one ever comes back to tell, ’member? But I heard that iron can separate our forms into mist. It’s poison.”

Dead ghosts tell no tales, evidently.

He added, “But about them time loops, as ya call ’em… there’re lots of things that can suck up our energy and send us into ’em. Too much communicatin’ with humans is one.”

Twyla nodded. “And that’s why we use Ouija boards, medium channeling, raps on the walls, and automatic writing instead.”

Helpful advice from the Laup-Goth. Maybe it was worth meeting her, after all.

I said, “That’s strange, because communicating with Amanda Lee didn’t take much out of me.”

Randy answered. “Thass ’cause she’s a medium.”

“Duh,” Twyla added. “You know, she’s a conduit who can see into parts of Boo World? For some, like, reason there was a connection between you two. So talking to her is like talking to one of us.”

Randy was already on to the next comment. “Materializin’. That’ll sap ya, too.”

I blinked. Randy was right, because hadn’t I felt a loss of more power than usual after I thought I’d materialized to Gavin? Maybe I did need to watch myself more. Maybe I’d just been a lucky ghost so far.

Both Twyla and Randy were laughing now, and I knew why. From what I saw in the mirror, I was definitely less confident, and they were just having some fun with the new ghost by piling it on me.

But as they cooled out, Randy had an expression on him that told me he actually wanted me to be safe. But Twyla? I still wasn’t sure if she’d just enjoyed poking at me or if she was a good egg.

She hopped off the counter, free-falling to the floor, her petticoats flaring for the briefest, kind of impressive instant.

“Let’s get downstairs before Old Seth starts up with the country music,” she said. Then to me, “He’s an ancient fart, but he picked up on Waylon Jennings somewhere along the way and it makes me want to, like, barf.”

She sashayed out of the bathroom, and with a good-natured shrug, Randy followed.

I did, too, thinking that a little fun with the others wouldn’t kill me.