Slippin' into Darkness

4:00 A.M.

Amy Peyton stared into the mirror and saw April Destino staring back at her. In the dim light of the bedroom, the illusion was almost perfect. April at eighteen, before her trip to Todd Gould’s basement. A frosted mane styled in a Farrah flip, just enough blush on her cheeks to accent the gentle curve of her cheekbones, and blue eye shadow that wasn’t at all gaudy because the school colors were blue and white.

Amy smiled. Anger flared in her eyes with a hard, flat intensity that was the antithesis of the secretive, liquid mystery of April’s eyes.

Like Doug had said. You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes.

Unless you were someone like April Destino, someone who could bury anger deep in the pit of her heart. If she sat in front of April’s mirror for a million years. Amy would never understand that kind of restraint.

She straightened April’s cheerleading sweater, smoothed her short blue skirt, and daubed her wrists with April’s perfume before rising from the little chair that sat in front of the dresser. Even in the dim light of a whore’s bedroom, the one thing Amy had overlooked was obvious. Two things, actually. Things that even red lamp shades and deep shadows couldn’t hide.

Amy grabbed a box of Kleenex from the dresser. Each tissue escaped the box with a tired whisper, and with each whisper Amy blushed a little deeper because she knew she needed several tissues and at the same time didn’t want to know the exact number.

Doug’s words rang in her memory: “You do a good job of it. You make it real, right down to the tits. If it isn’t real, the deal’s off. And believe me when I tell you that I want to see two full scoops…”

Amy raised the heavy sweater and stuffed April Louise Destino’s blue bra, molding breasts that were generous and voluptuous. The experience was both humiliating and ridiculous and she knew it.

She reached for another Kleenex.

The box hadn’t been full when she started- Amy realized that even as humiliation burnt a hole in her very core-but now it was empty.

Lipstick. She’d forgotten lipstick.

She searched the dresser but found none.

She opened April’s nightstand drawer. Dug through a pile of tubes until her fingers brushed something cold.

A pistol. Amy shivered. Her stomach rolled. Just seeing a pistol made everything seem so much more dangerous. And touching it… touching it was like touching something that was dead.

She could do without lipstick.

She closed the drawer.

Amy tidied up as best she could. She returned April’s cosmetics to a dresser drawer. She ruffled the shag rug in the dresser’s dead space, erasing the indentation marks left by the box that had held the cheerleading outfit. That done, she replaced the drawer that held April’s bras. Finally, she hid the empty box in a garment bag in the closet and returned to the living room.

Amy knew that such a simple clean-up wouldn’t keep a determined-or lucky-cop from learning of her visit. After all, there was the matter of her little run-in with the lot manager, a man who obviously enjoyed the sound of his own voice. She had given the manager her attorney’s card. A cop who had both luck and determination might make something of it, but that was extremely doubtful. A first-class attorney like Wendy Wong probably handed out ten or twenty cards a day.

Even if a cop tracked Amy down, what could he do? She certainly hadn’t murdered April Destino. April had done that to herself.

Amy didn’t think she had much to worry about. Not on that score, anyway. But before tonight she hadn’t been worried about April Destino, or Doug Douglas, or any of the ghosts from her past. Now, facing a row of cheap paperbacks filled with crazy, impossible ideas, she had to admit that there was something about being involved with April that frightened her, even if April was dead.

The idea that she had unfinished business with a dead woman circled Amy’s thoughts like a buzzard closing in on fresh carrion. Spooky stories had always frightened her. The man with the hook hand, the hitchhiking ghost, the woman with the golden arm-she still shivered just thinking of those stories. They stirred completely irrational fears, but these were fears that she could overcome.

Just as she would overcome her fear of April. Doug Douglas was another matter entirely. He wasn’t dead. He was very much alive. She had seen raw hatred burning in his eyes. Fearing Doug was not irrational. Doug was unstable. Hell, Doug was loony.

She wasn’t accomplishing anything by standing here. The old yearbook was on the third shelf from the bottom, nestled among April’s reincarnation books, just as Doug had promised. Amy pulled it free and turned to page 131. A map-this one with a key taped to it-slipped from between the pages and fell to the floor, but Amy hardly noticed it. Her gaze had locked on one of twenty or thirty portraits on the page.

Peyton, Amelia. Yearbook Editor. I want it all!

But Amy couldn’t see her portrait. A heavy black circle eclipsed it, and there was a message above the circle.

I’ll always be with you.

Love, April

“No you won’t.” Amy glared at all the silly books about reincarnation and ghosts and psychic phenomenon. “You’re dead in the ground, April. You been boxed and buried and I’m closing your account.”

Amy bent low and collected the map and the key. She was tired of thinking, tired of being scared. She returned to the bedroom. Dumped the nightstand drawer onto the dead whore’s bed. Most of the lipsticks didn’t have caps. Amy hated sloppy women. She batted the lipsticks aside, leaving bloody streaks on the bedspread.

Amy’s fingers brushed cool metal. The pistol small and silver. She didn’t know much about guns, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure the thing out, check that it was loaded.

She replaced the yearbook. Her anger receded, making room for fear, and she nearly replaced the gun. Maybe it was part of April’s plan. Maybe April wanted her to have the gun. Maybe- No. April really was playing with her mind, and that was going to stop right now. Amy was going to keep the gun. Playtime was over. Spooky stories, all forgotten. This was the real world.

In the real world, April Destino was dead. And Doug Douglas was insane.

And Amy Peyton, for the first time in well over an hour, was in control.

Amy exited the trailer park and turned onto the old highway. The shadows were deep and the road was narrow-there wasn’t much development this far from town-but Amy felt secure behind the sturdy steering wheel of her Mercedes. She tried to concentrate on the things she would say to Doug, but shouldn’t seem to plan the confrontation. Excitement was burning a hole straight through her. Maybe things were going to get a little more dangerous, a little scarier. The idea didn’t frighten Amy. She had disassembled her fear rather than giving in to it. She had channeled her anger, just as the pop psych books advised. That empowered her. That, and the gun. She was ready for anything.

Amy passed through town-Mercedes tires hissing cool and quiet over the empty road, waxed hood reflecting streetlights and the dull dead neon glow that spilled from the windows of closed businesses. She almost laughed at the idea of Doug Douglas trying to pull her strings. She intended to scare him with the gun. She would do a good job of it. And then Doug, being Doug, would cave. She’d get the film and some answers. About the nature of a man’s fear, and about April Destino.

Amy ran a red light. Annoyed at herself, she shook her head. Farrah Fawcett curls tickled her eyebrows and she brushed them away. This was no time for stupid mistakes. She had made her stupid mistake of the night by giving her attorney’s card to the lot manager, and she wasn’t going to make another.

She tried to concentrate on the big steering wheel, on the road and on the rhythm of the shifting gears, but her thoughts returned to April Destino, playing with the edges of the idea that maybe there were more surprises in store. Maybe April had only been toying with her tonight. Maybe she had only wanted to prove that she wasn’t such a sad little loser. Or maybe April was playing her like a puppet, driving her forward, driving her into a dangerous- Christ! The man stood frozen in the middle of the road, twenty feet from the Mercedes’ front bumper, staring at the headlights with the uncomprehending expression of a trapped animal. Amy mashed the brake pedal and simultaneously twisted the wheel. She tried to gear down but her foot slipped off the clutch and the engine died with a jolt. The car slipped into a slow spin. Icy headlight beams revealed the frightened whites of the man’s eyes and then the car spun sideways and he was swallowed by the darkness.

The Mercedes shuddered to a stop, its diesel engine quiet except for a few idle pings. Amy glanced through the driver’s side window and saw the yellow divider line running under her door, bisecting the big German car.

Unbelievable. She had almost lost it. If traffic had been heavy, if this had happened at any time other than four o’clock in the morning, she might very well have been hit from both sides while the car spun.

Unbelievable. Amy peered into the night but saw no sign of the man. She didn’t think she had hit him. NO. She hadn’t hit him; she was sure. Jesus. She wasn’t sure of anything. Beneath the heavy wig, Amy’s scalp was itchy with sweat. “Just relax,” she whispered. “Get it together.” She keyed the engine and it started right up, and that was a relief. She backed to the side of the road. Tires crunched over gravel.

The emergency brake made a comfortable ratcheting sound as she secured it. She put the car in neutral and pulled a Kleenex from the walnut box between the bucket seats. She was still shaking. A single tear had spilled from her right eye. She forced her trembling hand to her face and daubed at the tear, removing it without smearing her eye shadow. Her left eye was still brimming; she opened it wide, pressed the tissue against the white flesh of her eye, and the tear beaded into the paper.

“Okay,” Amy whispered. “Better.” She tugged at the heavy sweater, trying to get some air beneath it. The damn thing was too hot. She ended up flipping on the air conditioner. Soon the cool breeze worked through the wool. The engine idled comfortably. All was quiet on the gravel shoulder. The Mercedes’ headlights bathed the road, illuminating the wild skid marks left by the car.

Two angry question marks tattooed in burnt rubber.

There was no sign of the man. Amy hoped she hadn’t hit him. She couldn’t imagine actually killing anyone.

She hit the brights and the spectrum of light widened. Pine trees appeared to her right, overhanging the gravel shoulder, rimming the old drive-in theater. To her left, on the other side of the road, was a steep slope of dull brown earth, thick clumps of grass hanging at the crest, and above the grass the cool gleam of a chain-link fence.

The cemetery.

April was up there somewhere, buried in that dull brown soil, calling to her like the dead woman who lost her golden arm in that well-remembered ghost story.

No…it was only the wind. Shaking, Amy released the emergency brake. The Mercedes rolled forward, but Amy’s eyes were locked on the sloping wall of dirt, searching every inch of it as if she might see the end of April’s coffin jutting from the earth.

A dead pine shivered to her right, but Amy didn’t see it. The branches closed behind the man. He approached the car. The man from the road. His palms were bloody and his face was scratched because he had dived into the trees. He made greeting with a wet, red wave, squinting into the bright headlights.

“Help,” was the single word that spilled from his lips.

Amy saw him at the last moment. Gasping, she hit the brakes and brought the car to an instant stop.

A few more inches and she would have hit him.

“Help,” the man said again. His bleeding fingers closed over the hood ornament, as if he couldn’t understand what the big car could do to him.

Amy’s fear evaporated. She knew this guy. She shifted into neutral, set the brake, got out of the car. “Marvis?” she said. “Is that you?”

Marvis smiled as he came forward. He was soaked from head to foot, as if he’d been running through the sprinklers. Then Amy heard the sound of sprinklers tick-tick-ticking from the cemetery across the road, and she knew that was exactly what Marvis Hanks had been doing. He stepped past the headlights and for the first time saw more than her silhouette. His face became like nothing Amy had ever seen. A sound came from him that could only be described as a wail and he wobbled in a surprisingly comical way before diving back into the pine trees.

There was a short moment of silence. Then the wail resumed, and dead branches popped and cracked as Marvis Hanks hurried along the fence of the old drive-in.

Amy found herself laughing.

She slipped behind the wheel of the Mercedes and drove on.

God, it was fun being a ghost.

God, it was fun being April Destino.