The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

Thinking of Aimee this afternoon had made him want to try, one last time, no matter that he’d told Shelby he’d hung up his paranormal shingle. So from Lake Champlain he’d gone to Burlington, to a discount electronics store, where he bought a new infrared video camera. When Shelby put dinner on the table, he told her he had a date that night.

  “Really?” She’d smiled so brightly it hurt Ross just to look. “Who is it?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Ross,” Shelby answered, “this is exactly what you need.”

  He hated that he’d lied to his sister. He hated the way she had reached into the window of his car before he left to straighten the collar of his shirt, how she told him the door would be open whenever he got home.

  Now, while his sister wondered which eligible female he was meeting, Ross balanced his flashlight on an outcropping of rock, so that he could set up the tripod for the video camera. “I am not going to see anything,” Ross murmured as he peered through the viewfinder. He hesitated, then swore.

  He was retired.

  He didn’t believe in ghosts, not anymore.

  But what if this was the time that something materialized? What if he walked away now, without finding out for sure? If Ethan was right—if someone had been murdered at the quarry—there was an excellent chance that a restless spirit was hanging around. The ones who didn’t go on to heaven or whatever came next were the ones who had unfinished business left—people who had died violently, or committed suicide without communicating a message. Sometimes they stayed because they didn’t want to leave someone they loved.

  Ross knew that if luck was on his side when he ran the camera, he might get some zipping lights, maybe a globule or two. He might catch some EVPs—electronic voice phenomena. And if there was any evidence at all that something paranormal existed in this quarry, there was a chance Aimee was somewhere, too.

  Going by his senses, Ross pointed the video to a spot in the quarry that his eyes kept coming back to, although he had no idea if in fact that was where a murder had occurred. He loaded a fresh tape and checked the battery, then sat back to wait.

  Suddenly he was blinded by a beacon. “I can explain,” he began.

  Whatever Ross was going to say, however, died on his lips as he found himself face-to-face with an ancient man wearing a vintage security guard’s uniform; a man who held so much of the world in his eyes that Ross was certain he was looking at a ghost.

  “Who are you?” the man whispered to Az. He was gawking like he’d never seen anyone native before, and frankly, that pissed Az off.

  “You’re trespassing,” Az said.

  “This used to be your land?”

  Sweet Jesus, and they talked about Indians being hooked on peyote. Granted, Az was old, and he was rigged out in a security guard’s uniform he’d owned for twenty-five years now, but still . . . The guy looked normal enough—maybe even had a little Abenaki blood, what with that long, dark hair. It was enough to make Az feel pity for him, anyway. “Look, tell you what. You pack up whatever it is you’re doing and get out, and I won’t tell anyone I saw you.”

  The man nodded, and then lunged forward in an attempt to touch him. Startled, Az drew away and pulled his billy club.

  “Please! I just . . . I just want to ask you a few questions.”

  Christ. Az was going to miss the whole seventh inning, at this rate.

  “Do you live here?”

  “No, and I don’t have a teepee either, if that’s next on the list.” Az grabbed his arm. “Now shut that thing off and—”

  “You can touch me . . .?”

  “I can beat the crap out of you, too, if you keep this up,” Az said. “The Red Sox are tied with the Yankees, though, so it’s going to be fast.”

  The intruder—well, he faded—that was the only word for it. It was the same thing Az had seen over and over sitting at the deathbed of a friend; that light that made a person what he was, suddenly snuffing out. “The Red Sox,” the man murmured. “Then you’re not a ghost.”

  “I may be old, but I’m sure as hell not dead.”

  “I thought you were . . .” He shook his head, then extended his hand. “I’m Ross Wakeman.”

  “You’re crazy, is what you are.”

  “That too, I guess.” Ross ran a hand through his hair. “I’m a paranormal researcher. Well, I was one, anyway.”

  Az shrugged. “You ever find anything?”

  Ross paused. “Is there something here to find?”

  “Never seen nothing myself. Not here, anyway.”

  “But you have, other places?”

  Az avoided the question. “You can’t stay. Private property.”

  Ross busied himself cleaning up his equipment, taking his sweet time, from the looks of it. “I heard there was a murder here years ago.”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “You know anything about it?”

  Az looked into the pit of the quarry. “It happened before I was a security guard.”

  “Right.” Ross lifted the camera bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Sorry about . . . the mistaken identity thing.”

  “It’s nothing.” Az started to escort the younger man out. As Ross reached his car, Az curled his hand around the cast-iron gate. “Mr. Wakeman,” he called. “Those spirits you’re looking for? You aren’t far off.”

  He went back to the security booth, leaving Ross to wonder if that was a promise or a threat.

  Over the next few weeks, the residents of Comtosook came to believe in the unexpected. Mothers would awaken with their throats so full of tears they could not call out to their children. Businessmen catching their reflections in a pane of glass were suddenly unable to recognize their own faces. Young lovers, parked at the Point and twined together like the strands of a rope, whispered desperate vows of passion only to realize their words had come out as bubbles, and burst just as quickly.

  Shelby Wakeman found ladybugs swarming all the north-facing windows of her house. Rod van Vleet could drive no more than a quarter of a mile in his company car before the scent of berries burst from the air-conditioning vents, making the interior of the Taurus as cloying and thick as jam. Spencer Pike slipped his hand beneath his pillow and discovered three sky-blue robin’s eggs.

  Ethan, who knew better, found himself stealing glimpses of the sun.

  Droves of cats escaped from their homes and walked down to the river to bathe. The level of water in Lake Champlain rose and fell twice a day, as if there were a tide. Roses burst free of their trellises to grow in wild, tangled thickets. Nothing at the dinner table tasted quite right.

  And in spite of the temperate August climate, the disputed land on Otter Creek Pass froze solid, so that excavation became a physical impossibility as well as a philosophical one.

  “What do you make of it?” Winks Smiling Fox asked, grunting as he moved the drum a few feet to the left. Where they’d been sitting, the ground beneath their feet was icy. Yet over here, there were dandelions growing.

  There were documented cases of ground freezes occurring during a New England summer. In 1794, the Old Farmer’s Almanac predicted a frost in July as a result of a typographical error, which then unexpectedly came true when Mount Vesuvius erupted and the dust it sent into the atmosphere caused a miniature nuclear winter. Every few years, a blueberry frost would move through Vermont, dragging temperatures below freezing and drying the fruit on the bushes. And yet in all these instances, the damage was done town-wide, not just on one small patch of land.

  “You remember the stories about Azeban?” Winks said. “The ones from when we were kids? That’s what I keep thinking of.”

  “Azeban?” said Fat Charlie. “The trickster?”

  “Uh-huh.” Winks nodded. “Remember how he’d set a trap for someone else as some big joke and get caught up in it himself? Like when he went to stamp out the fire Fox was sleeping near, and wound up watching his own tail get burned.”

  “Wouldn’t mind a little fire here, actua