Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  "Love may not be rational, Ross, but it isn't paranormal."

  Says who? Ross thought. "That's not the point. It's that even when you can't see something right before your eyes, you can still feel it. And you're willing to trust your senses in one case, so why not the other?" Getting to his feet, he brushed off his jeans. "You know, I'd go into these houses . . . and all I'd have to do is be willing to listen, and these people would just talk. Not just psychos, Shel . . . professors with Ph.D.s, and Fortune 500 CEOs. It's like once you've seen a ghost, you're part of the club, and you can't wait to find someone else who doesn't think you're insane for admitting that what your parents told you wasn't true."

  It's what Ross had wanted to believe. He had met some psychics who claimed that they could barely turn around without crashing into a spirit. That ghosts were constantly trying to catch their attention. But now, he had his doubts. Now, he was starting to think that once you died, that was that.

  "Even Ph.D.s and CEOs can be liars. Or crazy," Shelby said.

  "How about four-year-olds?" Ross turned to his sister. "What about the kid who comes up to his mom in the middle of the night and says there's an old man in his bedroom who told him they have to leave the workshop so he can make a table? And then you go to the library and find out the house is built on a carpentry studio from two hundred years back?"

  "That . . . happened?"

  The four-year-old boy had eventually started hitting himself in the head to stop hearing the ghost's voice; he'd scratched at his eyes so that he wouldn't see it. "Well. I guess kids can go crazy, too. Point is, I'm through with it." But Ross wondered whether he was trying to convince his sister, or himself.

  Shelby patted his shoulder. "For what it's worth, Ross, if anyone was going to be able to find concrete evidence of a ghost, I have no doubt it would have been you."

  Hesitating, he looked at her, then dug into his pocket. He extracted his wallet and pulled a photo from the liner.

  "You're going to tell me that looks like a mouth, and eyes." She squinted. "And a hand."

  "I didn't tell you anything. You told me."

  "So what is it?"

  "Curtis Warburton would call it ectoplasm. When I took this picture, there was nothing on that lake . . . no fog, no breath, nothing. But this is what made it onto the negative. Film is sensitive enough to pick up light, heat, and magnetic energy . . . which are the same sources of energy spirits use to materialize." Ross slipped the photo back into his wallet. "Then again, it could have been some crap they spilled at the photo lab."

  He did not say that at the time he took the photograph, the air suddenly grew so cold that all the hair on his arms and legs stood up. He did not say that for the rest of that day, his hands shook and his eyes could not seem to focus.

  "There was no mist there when you took the picture?" Shelby clarified.

  "Nope."

  She frowned. "If I saw that in some newspaper, I'd think it was doctored. But--"

  "--but I'm your brother, so you have to trust me?"

  Ethan roared to a stop in front of them. "There's this rock quarry in town where a guy got murdered a really long time ago. Everyone says it's haunted. We could go and--"

  "No," said Ross and Shelby, simultaneously.

  "Jesus H.," Ethan muttered, loping away again.

  Ross looked over the horizon, the blue night starting to bleed. "Isn't it time to go in?"

  Shelby nodded and began to gather the remains of their picnic. "So what will you do now?"

  "Track UFOs." He looked at her. "Kidding."

  "You could baby-sit for me while I work. Although taking care of Ethan might be even scarier than your last gig."

  "Ghosts aren't scary," Ross said before he could remember to speak hypothetically. "They're just people. Well, they used to be."

  Shelby paused in the middle of folding the blanket. "But you've never seen one."

  "No."

  "Even though you wanted to."

  Ross forced a smile. "Hey, I've never seen a ten-thousand-dollar bill, but I've always wanted to see one of those too."

  Retirement made sense. It was simply a matter of convincing himself. The truth was, in nine months, he had not found what he was looking for. He had not witnessed an apparition because there was nothing there.

  But then again, he had a mind-boggling photograph burning a hole in his back pocket; a spirit that might have taken strength from heat or from light or even his camera batteries, so it could project itself and be seen. To Ross, that was perfectly logical. After all, Aimee had been the one who energized him. Without her, he was no better than a ghost himself, slipping through his own life, unseen.

  "I ain't bulldozing over him!" shouted the foreman on the job, his face shiny and florid as a plum. He glared down at Eli from the vantage point of the truck's cab, arms crossed over the shelf of his belly.

  "Mr. Champigny--"

  "Winks." The guy lying supine on the ground smiled gamely at Eli. "That's what everyone calls me."

  Eli's dog bounded out of nowhere and planted his front paws on Winks's chest. "Down, Watson," Eli ordered. "Mr. Champigny, I'm going to have to ask you to get up. The Redhook company has contractual permission to perform due diligence on this land."

  "He speakin' English?" Winks called out to a group of picketers nearby.

  "Can't you arrest them?" Rod van Vleet asked.

  "They haven't made any trouble yet. This is civil disobedience, is all." At least that's what Eli's orders were from Chief Follensbee, who didn't want to stir up what could quickly escalate into an angry racial disagreement. Eli knew that the Abenaki wouldn't press the issue, if they weren't pressed themselves. All the same, he wasn't much in the mood for this. He'd had to pick up Abbott Thule, the town drunk, from the Gas & Grocery and set him in a lockup to dry out. He needed to get Watson something to eat. He did not want to be screwing around now with a bunch of Indians with enough hubris between them to fill the bowl of Lake Champlain.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. Times like this, he wondered why he hadn't moved to Florida after his mother passed. He was thirty-six, and working way too hard. Hell, he could be out with his dad now, playing a round of golf. He could be sitting under a palm tree. At his side, Watson grinned up at him.

  "There are human remains on this land," Winks insisted.

  "That true?" Eli asked.

  Rod's face darkened. "There haven't been any found. Just a tin locket, some pottery shards, and a 1932 penny."

  "An arrowhead," Az Thompson called out, although Eli would have thought the old man was too far away to hear their conversation. "Don't forget the arrowhead."

  The developer rolled his eyes. "Yes, all right, they found an arrowhead. Which is proof of absolutely nothing, except that some kid played Cowboys and Indians here."

  Az Thompson came toward them. "We don't care about arrowheads, either. Just our ancestors. Didn't you see Poltergeist? You dig up their resting place, it stands to reason that whatever you build on here isn't going to be at peace."

  Eli wondered where the old man's attachment to the property came from. As far as he knew, Az had moved to Comtosook from somewhere out west. Granted, he'd lived in town nearly as long as Eli had, but it wasn't like Az had any special connection to this spot. Apparently his grievance with the development wasn't personal as much as it was principle.

  "That's a threat," Rod said to Eli. "You heard him."

  Az laughed. "What did I threaten you with?"

  "A curse. Some . . . hex."

  The old Indian cupped his hands around a pipe and lit the leaves in the bowl. "Gotta believe in that kind of stuff before it can do its work on you." He inhaled, his words slipping out on the smoke. "You believe in that kind of stuff, Mr. van Vleet?"

  "Look," Eli sighed. "I know how you all feel about this development company, Az. But if you have a grievance, your best bet is to go through the courts."

  "The last time the legal system said it knew what was best for the Abenaki, i