On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 35

And we’re down to it with just a few chapters left. If this had been rewritten, the Vancouver/return to Irisville section would have been a much larger part of this novel. As it stands, your torture and mine is almost done. Again, some mild foreshadowing here to events in the Rankin Flats series. I like to think Garrett and Brianna made their trip to Japan someday.

Chapter 35

“I know who has the child,” he said.

“What do you mean, has her?”

They threw everything into their suitcases as he explained. Three minutes later, management was knocking on their door. Garrett flung it open, wild-eyed, his shirt only half-buttoned. Two men stood there, one of them a suit, the other one much taller, broader, and meant to look intimidating.

“There’ve been-”

“We’re out of here in ten minutes, I swear,” Garrett said.

“I need to make sure your wife is okay, sir,” the suit said coldly,

Brianna leaned past Garrett. “I’m okay. He’s okay. We’re okay. It was a bad argument but we’re good now. Sorry and we’ll be out of your hair soon.”

“We can’t refund you for-”

“Yeah, fine,” Garrett said. Behind him, Brianna zipped up one bit of luggage and rolled it to him. “See? Gone in five.”

He let the door swing shut behind him. Brianna swept everything off the table and into a plastic bag. “How awake are you?” he asked.

“Awake.”

“Good. You’re driving the first couple of hours. I’ll sleep, we switch off like that until we hit Irisville.”

“Are you okay? Physically?”

“Exhausted. Feel like I could drop, but I don’t feel as sick as you did. I think whatever it was doing to me, I stopped it early.” He stopped for just a moment to cross the room and kiss her, hard. “I’ll make this up to you. Somehow we’ll make this right.”

“You forgave me. I’ll forgive you.” But behind her tone was a bit of sadness. It mirrored his own horrible adrift emotions after she’d made her confessions to him.

They did one last sweep through the room. Outside the door, management was still waiting. They flew by them to the elevators. Both men looked as though they wanted to say something as they rode down with the couple, but Garrett and Brianna were too busy kissing to notice much.

On the ground floor, they ran.

* * *

The city skyline had been remarkable in the day, but in the night behind them, the scattered lights and illuminated steel towers were nothing short of picaresque.

“Goodbye,” Brianna whispered, and kissed her fingers before pressing them to the mirror. “We’ll be back someday, maybe.”

“Believe it,” Garrett said beside her.

But neither of them did.

* * *

She was still there. Still connected to Garrett sporadically.

“I hate and love my father,” Garrett said through gritted teeth. “I wish you two would make peace.”

“That’s not so bad,” Brianna said. Compared to the verbal lashes he’d been making off and on for the first hour, it was tame as hell.

“She’s digging for anything she can get. It’s like a tug of war, but the rope is my head. Rose breastfeeding gets me way off. Oh fuck me, that’s embarrassing.”

“Not like I didn’t know it, though.”

He drew in a series of short, rapid breaths and made a grunting sound like he was taking a shit. “Gone again.”

“Out of the car gone? Is she…?”

“No. We’re locked together. She’s not going to murder anyone else until she’s done with me. If I’d known all this, she could’ve killed me back in Irisville and I’d have been happy.”

“Don’t ever say that. Not even as a joke. We don’t carry the burden of the victims of the killers we take down, remember?” That had been something Sloan had said to them in one of their little group therapy sessions. It would have been a lot easier to believe if she didn’t so visibly carry the baggage of her time being controlled by Desmond.

“Yeah. Listen, Bri, about what I said…”

“When you’ve lived through that end of things, it’s easier to pick out the bullshit from the little kernels of truth.” She sighed.

“I do like to take care of you. I’m sorry if it’s overbearing sometimes. And I think you’re beautiful and sexy and however you want to look, you should look.”

Brianna gave him a half-smile. “That one was harsh, but kinda fair. When I came back from Vegas, I looked half-starved.”

“Don’t say that. Please. I wouldn’t love you any less if you were five hundred pounds, Brianna. That’s not hyperbole. However you’re happy with yourself, that’s all that matters to me.”

“It’s been… on my mind.”

“Really, I mean it.”

“No, I mean… Garrett, I keep thinking about trying to get pregnant, and I think I’m going to cut back on the number of classes and YouTube videos I’ve been leading. Just, like, bring down the intensity levels. Family’s really important to me, and it’s kinda been bothering me that it hasn’t happened yet.”

“We’ve only been trying, what, three weeks? Four?”

She smiled faintly. “We’ve never really been great about using condoms.”

“That’s, uh, that’s true.” He was quiet a moment. “You know, it could be a problem on my end too. As many times as I’ve been kicked in the nuts, it can’t hurt for me to get tested when I get home.”

“We could go together. If that helps.”

“Yeah. Brianna, if it is me…”

“Can we not do this now?”

“Sure,” he said awkwardly. “Yeah. Sure.”

The miles – or kilometers, but neither of them had learned to think that way, leading to a very early speeding ticket north of Lethbridge – peeled away, and Garrett tucked back into his seat with a throw and a travel pillow, but all he could manage was rhythmic breathing. Brianna, thinking he was asleep, cried in the early morning hours, and his soul cramped in misery that he couldn’t set it all right again.

Rose’s voice. “Tell her, you idiot.” He smiled in the darkness.

“Where would you go?” he asked. “We missed some places along the way. I hate that we had to leave Vancouver so early.”

“Thought you were asleep.”

“No. I heard you cry. I…”

“Can we just agree to both be sorry and move on?”

“Sure.” Tell her, you idiot. “No. No, we can’t.”

She slowed down rapidly, found an offramp, and pulled off the side of the road. When the car stopped, she leapt out, fists balled, and screamed her frustration into the night.

Garrett got out too, and they met in front of the SUV. She pressed her fists against his chest, and for a moment, he thought she was going to punch him. “You’re so… you’re so…”

His hands fell on her shoulders, and in the low beams, they came together. His tongue darted between her lips, and hers his, a give and take, a dance, a greeting. She dug her fingernails into his back, he balled up little corners of her shirt. Someone roared by, honking, and neither noticed, neither cared in the mad swirl of their hurt.

It was him that pulled away first. “I’m always going to be clingy,” he said. “I’ll always need you.”

“I don’t want it any other way.” She looked down at the ground. “I’ll need your help. Now and again. I know that. It hurts. But I’m my own woman, Garrett. I don’t want you to look down on me.”

I don’t, he almost said, but everything they’d said to hurt each other did have a little core of truth to it. “Okay,” he said simply instead.

It wasn’t an end to their pain, and there would be more to come. But it was the start of their healing and whatever came next.

* * *

Brianna came awake with a start. The sun was well above the horizon now, and the bright light blinded her at first. She held up her hand against it, grimacing, and yawned. “How far?” she murmured.

“Hundred kilometers. Or miles. Not really too sure which.”

She nodded, stretched, and winced when something in her back gave way with a nasty pop and a crackle. “Just one away from Rice Krispies.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” Her arm brushed up against a plastic bag. Jerky. “Jeez, I was really out of it, huh? Didn’t know we stopped.”

“There are donuts in the back. Just the boxed kind. I ran in and out. Water and energy drinks too.”

“Nice.” Neither of them were much of a fan of energy drinks in general, but now with the need ahead of them, she cracked one open and sipped. “Japan.”

“Sorry?”

“You asked sometime last night. Where I’d go. I think Canada’s kind of been spoiled for me, at least for a while. I think maybe I’d like to go to Japan sometime if you’re game.”

“Hey, yeah?” He scratched his chin. “Sounds interesting. What’s the imaginary itinerary? What do we see? What do we do?”

“Hm.” She wiggled in her chair and stretched some more, smiling. “Himeji Castle, for sure.”

“What’s that? You know what, assume I’m not going to know what anything there is.”

“Oh, it’s this cool old castle. It’s gorgeous. You like architecture and stuff, right? I think you’d love it. Oh, and Osaka. We’d have fun in Osaka, I think. It’s this big shopping hub, and Japan’s got crazy shops. Like bananas crazy. If I don’t come home with a giant robot doll that transforms into a panda or a little girl or something, I will be sorely disappointed.”

“Now I know what to get you for your birthday.”

She laughed at that, the first honest, unguarded one he’d heard from her in what felt like forever. “Seriously, you could throw a rock at some of that stuff, pick whatever it hit, and I’d be squee-ing for a week. Kind of a lapsed Japanophile. August would be a kick to take with us on that one.”

“Hey, maybe we could do that. Family vacation to Japan or something next year, maybe. Bring your mom along.”

“And Stephanie,” Brianna said, and squeezed his arm. “Gar, I…”

“I know.” He cleared his throat. “So where else?”

She launched into descriptions of some of the themed cafes and bars she’d heard of, and soon had him laughing hard enough to forget what lay in front of them. Not for long, but for a moment, at least, things were okay again.

* * *

“We have no weapons,” Brianna said. “No idea what this guy is capable of.”

“And there was definitely some mystic bullshit going on in the girl’s vision. I saw a syringe. The liquid looked alive. Whatever this guy’s doing to her, I don’t know if it’s… agggh, shit!” he screamed, nearly swerving into the other lane.

Brianna grabbed the wheel for him, steadying the Durango. “What?”

“She’s getting stronger. Grabbing at me again. I knocked over Mom’s curio cabinet when I was eight. I told her it was the dog. The first girl I fucked in high school, I told her I loved her and I didn’t. I stole from a guy when I was twenty, not because he’d done something wrong, but just because he’s an asshole. Never told Murphy.” Then the child’s presence was gone, and he gasped for air. “I need you to drive.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

They swapped on the roadside. Garrett felt for the young teenager’s mind again, but it was getting harder to pull more from her. Bits and pieces of her childhood, mostly, fractured and broken. Her mind was broken, he understood that. For some reason, she was locked now into feeding on anger and guilt instead of all the emotions in the human spectrum like when she was alive. He gleaned too an uncle, someone who seemed to have her gift. There were more of them out there. How many, he didn’t know, but he wondered.

Weapons. Brianna had been right. They needed weapons. He crawled over the center console and into the backseat to search for anything they could use. Bags of souvenirs, tee shirts, and trinkets weren’t of much sue, so they went into the front seat. Camping gear. That was more like it. He dug out the tent bag. The stakes weren’t super sharp, but they were something – and the mallet he’d brought to pound them in was even better. A lighter. By itself, not much use, but with the unopened jug of lighter fluid? Yeah, that’d work too. The pair of kitchen knives weren’t too shabby either. And far in the back was a tire iron. Not much, but it would have to do.

“Fingerprints,” Brianna said from the front. “What do we do about fingerprints?”

“Did we mail those gloves we found in Edmonton?”

“The winter ones? Will those work?”

“They’ll have to, I guess. Try to remember what you touch.”

He dug those out too, along with a pair of scarves that would have to suffice for their disguises. Brianna’s scars were sometimes a problem when it came to masks, but the scarves were long enough she could wrap up just about everything but her eyes.

“I can see the city,” Brianna said. “Garrett… she’s a kid.”

“I know,” he said grimly. “If it comes to that… I’ll do it.” “No. We do it together.”

On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 33-34

Warning – spoilers for a potential future Seven Heroes novel, though the details are going to be changed quite a bit.

To my credit, I actually really liked the closing of this novel, and that really started with these chapters. The child ghost’s big reveal is one of my favorite WTF moments from the series, and it’s too good not to recycle into something I’ll eventually publish. All right, enjoy. Not too much left in the book now.

Chapter 32

Two notepads lay on the table beside cups of hotel room coffee and a bag of potato chips. Garrett taped papers with each of the victims’ names on the wall and scribbled notes as Brianna read the details from Annalise’s emailed case files. Autopsy-wise, all the cases were similar, and a wave of numbness hit Garrett when he realized how close Brianna had come to death yet again.

“A sane person would’ve run a long damn time ago,” he said, standing back to examine the pages.

“Pbbbbft. Garrett, if you thought I was sane even before we met, boy, do I have news for you.” She got up to look at the sheets with him. There was one commonality between all but one of the victims – a rap sheet. They were all different crimes though, and in most cases, nothing more than misdemeanors – or summary offences, as they were called by the Canadians. A few had an indictable offence or two – roughly the equivalent of a felony, so they learned.

“Okay, so all these people had criminal pasts. She’s a… what, like a vigilante then?” Brianna asked.

“Yeah, but why you, then? Have you ever been arrested for anything?”

“I had a few parking tickets, but I don’t think she’s killing for those.” She paused, then scrambled for a notepad.

“Did you think of something?”

“No, but I had to write that down. I want to try to write a book someday, and that’s too damn good not to remember. The Parking Meter Slasher.”

Garrett tried to smile but his nerves were too on edge. He turned to the ghost child at the edge of the bathroom. “Why? What’s the connection between them and Brianna? Why leave her alive and them dead?”

The child just looked back. If it understood, it gave no reaction or change in expression.

They worked it over for another hour, but came up with nothing. Finally, Garrett sank into the chair at the table and grabbed up the chips. He munched on one, sighed, and said, “Are you up for a walk or a drive or something? I need fresh air.”

Brianna was silent, looking at the board intently, then back at the chips. “It’s… no, that’s impossible.”

“Everything about this thing is impossible. What are you thinking?”

“Okay. The club, we’re both feeling feverish, both feeling like our anger’s been ramped up a dozen times, right?”

“Right.”

“And it was with you the whole time? It was following you more closely than normal?”

“Yeah, the damn kid was right up on me. Why?”

“And she was right up on me when I went psycho on the road from Jasper?”

He chewed the side of his mouth, brow furrowed. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, it was.”

“My God,” she whispered. “It’s feeding on our emotions.”

“Wait, what?”

“These people all shouted things they were guilty of, right? Blown up or not, it was shit they were carrying around inside. This thing’s drawing those feelings out. Anger. Lust. Guilt. Except it’s not doing it constantly. Look at the times, the dates. It’s practically on a schedule.”

“So when it gets hungry…”

“It’s sucking the emotion out of people, yeah.” She caught his look and shrugged. “Well, it’s a theory, anyways.”

“No, not making fun. Sorry. It’s just… weird. Why take on a ghost’s form then?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. Or why she let me live. Or why she’s so attached to you.”

Garrett tapped a pen on the notepad. “Okay. Assume this is all true. If she let you live, maybe it’s because you’re not as guilty.”

“But Garrett, the things we’ve done-”

“Apart from us taking on Desmond and him possibly unleashing the tornados to spite us – and I still don’t think that’s true-” he did, but it wouldn’t help to tell her that “do you regret any of the criminal stuff we’ve done? A single bit of it?”

“I…” She frowned. “I guess I would’ve liked to have not killed anybody, but I sure as hell don’t regret it.”

“So the things you said to me, those were what you felt most guilty about?”

“Yeah. I mean, look, I look at guys very occasionally at a gym, but the place is a testosterone fest, and no matter how crazy bad our fights get, I really don’t think I’d ever cheat on you, no matter what I say or worry about. It’s just me carrying around the guilt of looking now and again.” She reached across and patted his hand. “And I know here in my head I’m your best friend as much as Murphy, but by the time I came along, you two were like peas in a pod, and I envy that all the time. And… I never hate you, Garrett.”

He smiled. “I know.” The words still haunted him at night, but then, so did a thousand other regrets and hurts. “So… I’m guessing it has some restraint. Or tries to, anyways. And when it fed on you, it didn’t find enough to hold it over.” He held up the bag of chips. “A snack, but not much substance.”

“All right, yeah, I like that theory. Doesn’t make me feel any less shitty about hurting you, but-”

“Stop. Okay? Stop. They were problems that might have come out eventually. We just sorta ripped the bandage off all at once.”

She drummed her fingers on the back of his palm. “Okay.”

“And as for why it attached itself to me, let’s assume it has something to do with my sight. Not necessarily that I see ghosts, but who knows? Maybe it just felt there was something different about me.”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Sure. That makes sense.”

“But why a ghost? And how do we stop it?”

That, they had no theories, no answers. For another half an hour, they shot back and forth theories, but nothing had the intense rightness of Brianna’s thoughts about it feeding. They finally cleaned up, and headed for bed.

“I’m sorry,” Brianna said as they cuddled together. “As sexy as I was feeling earlier, I’m not really in the mood tonight.”

“It’s okay, baby.”

“But I am gonna have a hard time sleeping tonight. Maybe… um, maybe tell me a little more of the story?”

“There’s only a little bit left. You sure?”

She nodded, and traced a finger up and down his chest. “Tell me how you and Murphy saved Francesca.”

He snorted. “Oh, you have no idea.”

Chapter 33

—-

* * *

Garrett got up to get a drink, filling and refilling his cup.

“Were Beaudette’s guys the ones who sent that sniper?”

“Uhhh. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. See, Trevor’s chief of security had put together all this dirt on Francesca and…”

“…and they couldn’t let anything be traced back to Mr. Beaudette himself, so they hired outside shooters,” Brianna supplied for him, grinning.

Garrett knocked back the water and waved the empty cup at her. “That’s right!” He ducked back into the bathroom, filled it back up again, and rejoined her on the bed.

* * *

—–

* * *

“…was just the son of a bitch to give it to them,” Brianna finished, falling back onto her pillow and giggling.

“Now you’re getting it.” Garrett wiped the sweat from his forehead, his smile fading just a little bit.

* * *

—–

* * *

“Hell tore open its gates that day?”

“Hey, is this my story or yours?” His question was much more sharp than joking.

“All right, all right. Keep…” She glanced over at him and sat up. “Garrett. You’re flushed.”

“So I tipped over the couch and dove behind it. It was the best cover-”

“No. Stop.”

“Brianna, it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, it’s-”

“I’m fine!”

“It’s making you sick!” she shouted.

“It’s what I deserve,” Garrett snapped. “It’s what I’ve always deserved. What I begged for down in that cavern in Hamber. I almost blew myself up because I thought I deserved it, did I tell you that?”

“The Blight-”

“Fuck the Blight. I knew what I was and I knew what I wanted. The Blight just pushed me towards it. I would fucking thank the Blight, if it hadn’t stopped me.”

“Stop it, Garrett, you’re scaring me.”

He did stop, panting as he stood up and found his pants. As he yanked his shorts down and pulled them on, hopping on one leg, he said, “You want to know the truth? About Francesca? She was a senile old pickpocket working a fundraising thing trying to earn enough money so she didn’t have to suffer through her dementia in a nursing home in a shitty part of Texas. I caught her on it, the guards thought I was in on the whole thing, and we were both kicked out. I drove her home, she stole my wallet, and replaced it with a gold cross. I have no idea who she took it from, but it was a bad time in my life when I didn’t believe much in God. I was depressed, I’d just killed a man, and here was a cross like a sign from heaven. That’s what fucking happened, Brianna. The whole boring story, right there.”

Through a haze of tears, she cried, “Stop, it’s not you, this thing, it’s pushing you to-”

“Did you know I don’t like when you go all hard body on me? It makes you look like a man, kind of. When you came back from living in Vegas, you were like a malnourished bodybuilder.”

“Stop it, stop it-”

“Those tornados? In another two minutes, I would’ve pulled the trigger. And then I probably would have eaten the gun myself. I would’ve killed you, Brianna, to save a bunch of methed out rednecks and lowlifes. That’s how little you’re worth to me.”

Brianna’s cries were more like screams of pain now.

“You think I’m clingy? You should see the real me. How jealous I am, how much I just want to lock you up forever. And I think I’m better than you too. It’s why I want to fix everything for you all the time. Brianna fucking Reeve, my little wounded bird. I love having you need me. I want to see you fucking beg for it. Me. My money. My protection. Everything I think you need. You’re like the whore from that movie and I’m the guy who wants to make you his pet fucking project. My little ghetto rat. You’re nothing compared to me. Nothing.”

Garrett leaned over the bed, eyes wild, hot breath steaming through his nose like a bull. Whatever words he was going to say next died on his lips when he saw her flinch away from him. His clouded mind cleared–

I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you sometimes

–and he took a step back and turned. The child was right there, hands out, waves of heat rolling from her.

“You want my guilt?” he whispered to it. “You want my pain? My anger? Eat my fucking sin. Choke on it.”

The child inched away, hands lowering uncertainly, but Garrett’s own hand shot out and through it – there was something there, something indefinable, but definitely there – like static in the shape of a person, he thought.

And then he was lost.

Chapter 34

Mountains.

A spiky range. Scent of Christmas. Egg yolk flowerheads (dandelions, Garrett interjected, but this was not his dream and the vision paid him no mind). Long grass and thick weeds.

Logs. Crisscrossed. A small black screen (television, he tried to say and his voice sank into the nothing of ignorance). Fingers on a controller, making funny cartoons on the screen do something. White paper on the table. A book, opened.

People talking. Warmth mixed with sadness. Loss. White-hair-big-nose-dad. Big-emotions-cuddly-something-wrong mom. Hungry now, big big empty hole. Mom-Dad-scared-excited. Something is changing in her. Something awakening.

* * *

Watching again.

Serious-worried-excited-teaching-mom. A string of syllables that didn’t quite form right. Something broken. Words broken. Badly broken. Mom-help-belly.

Gnawing belly. A park. Shouting laughing children. A bench. Teaching-mom pointing. Showing her how to eat. To live.

Deep breath, closed eyes. Shaking her head. Try-it-again-mom. Time. Trickles of happiness. Slurping up happy. Warmth. A filling belly. Children don’t notice. Children still playing-shouting-laughing. Cheering-happy-loving-mom. Later, dad-hugs. Cold sweetness on her tongue. Fun music. Dad-dancing, mom-dancing.

Love.

* * *

Anger. Books thrown down. Laughing boys. Hurt. Tears. Embarrassment. Anger. Fury.

Closed eyes. Finds the laughing. Makes it more. More laughing. More. More. More. More. More. More. Eat the laughing.

Boys vomit. Boys keep laughing. Boys wheeze. Laughing stops. Boys slip into darkness.

Frantic-scared-angry-mom. Clothes in a suitcase. Harried-scared-frantic-dad pushing her into the back of a car.

Pavement. The yellow line.

* * *

This one is a little clearer.

Her mom’s fingers dancing on her knees in the car. Mountains in the background. Lots of questions, still no words make sense.

Her dad shaking his head, repeating something over and over. He is panicked. But he is trying not to be. Have to run have to run have to run.

The child, sorry. So sorry. Tears. But there is anger too. She wants them to hear. She yells at them.

They turn to face her. Her dad reaches a hand out to touch her face. Metal rushing towards them. Deafening horn.

The smash of metal and glass and nothingness.

* * *

This one is the clearest yet.

Her head lolls back. She can blink, she can move her tongue, but there is nothing below the neck. Nothing.

She is bouncing up and down towards the sunlight. Someone is carrying her. No. She is on something. A board. She is loaded into an ambulance and someone goes very fast.

She is staring up at lights. Then a face. Hands. She tries to make words, but she can’t. The man is thinking about someone he hates. Cannot get her out of his mind. How does she know this? Impulse. There is no trying. She simply knows. The child reaches without thought, drinks his hatred. He feels the heat, stumbles backwards.

Time.

The face again. He’s on a phone. He is satisfaction, smugness, wonder. He looks around, and she is lifted onto something and strapped in

Time.

She is staring up at nothing, but they are moving again. Fast. He is taking her somewhere. The music is loud. She cannot dance.

Time.

There is a ramshackle building. Dead animals posing. A sun-beaten man, tired and cross. He walks out, takes a look at her, shouts some words. The smug driving man responds. Then the new man takes another look at her. A long look. A necklace hangs off his neck, like a tooth. His face is wrong. It is a blur. There is a face and a not-face.

This man is Not Right. This man is a Wrong Man. She thinks about taking his emotions, but there are worms in his soul and when she tries to feed it makes her sick. His eyes widen and he smiles.

She is inside now, the two men taking her down a flight of stairs. She is lifted onto a table. The hospital man asks for something, the Not Right Man turns and digs in a desk drawer. When he spins back around, there is a gun in his hand and a too loud boom. The hospital man falls backwards. There are two more booms and then the Not Right Man is the only one left.

Time.

He is sliding her arm up, but she does not feel it. Wire in front of her, and rods. And a needle, full of a blue liquid that does not stop sloshing around. She makes a sound. He stops, smiles, and cinches another wire to her hand. No. Not to her hand. In her hand. More wires. Then he is standing her up.

Time.

She tries to fight him, tries to eat all of him the way Mom and Dad say she shouldn’t, but there is something there, something stopping her. She can’t touch him, can’t figure out why.

She is injected with the liquid. There is a fire in her mind, then darkness. She can still feel her heart beat. Slowly. Slowly.

Darkness.

Freedom.

Heart beating. Slowly. Slowly. Distant now as she walks towards town. She is hungry and she can feel emotions from the people she walks through. Happiness, lust, joy. These are there, but it is not what she wants. Not what is feeding her.

She finds the sorrow. Finds the rage. And she is sated.

For a while.

* * *

Garrett sat up, gasping for air. “Brianna!” he screamed.

Someone was pounding on the wall and yelling for them to shut up. She was there, kneeling on the carpet next to him, rolling a cold washcloth over his face. “I thought I lost you,” she said.

Garrett reached up, trying to pull her to him for a kiss, but she flinched away and he rose unsteadily to his feet. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” He shook his head and sighed. “Meant some of it. But not…” Brianna flung her arms around him. There were no tears, but she was shaking. “I hurt you, I’m sorry I hurt you…”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” They stared into one another’s eyes. She tried to smile, but there was pain, too much pain, and he pulled away jerkily. “I guess the honeymoon’s over.”

On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 31

Chapter 31

The note Monica left at the condo said to try to meet them at the harbor each morning or evening, but when Garrett saw a group of passing ghosts on the way to the museums in Vanier Park, he groaned, “I’ve been an idiot.”

“What?” Brianna asked. “Why?”

“There are ghosts all around us. All I need to do is grab one of them and ask.”

As it turned out, the four ghosts lost him in the bustle before he could find a parking spot, but an hour’s worth of driving around the park and they spotted another ghost leaning against a fountain outside the H. R. MacMillan Space Centre. The child ghost was back, following them silently, its face masked by its long hair.

The ghost was a short, wiry-haired man in his late twenties, maybe, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved yellow tee shirt. His sideburns came down nearly to his chin. Garrett sidled up to him and said quietly, “I can see you, ghost.”

Lost in his own world, the ghost didn’t hear him. When Garrett repeated himself again, the guy jerked upright and glanced right at Garrett. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Holy shit. It’s a long story. I need-”

“Hoo-ly shit!” the guy exclaimed again.

“Listen, I need you to do me a favor-”

“You’re real? You’re really alive and talking to me?”

“Yeah.”

The man did a shuffling dance, barely lifting his knees as he kicked his feet out. “Oh man, oh man, oh man, wait till Juno hears about this one. Hey, can you call my wife? She lives in Quebec now. Her guy-”

“Do you see this kid behind me?” Garrett snapped.

The guy blinked. “Well, yeah. Sure. That’s weird, though. Can’t say as I’ve seen too many kid ghosts around.”

“Thanks,” Garrett said. He thought about walking off, then sighed. “What’s your wife’s number?”

“You’ll call her? You’ll really call her?”

“Yeah, I’ll call her. Find me a payphone.”

The man whooped, and led them back across the park to a shopping district a few blocks away. Off to one side of the street were a dinged-up pair of payphones. Garrett charged the call to a credit card, told the guy’s wife her new husband was cheating on her and that her first husband missed his nugget berry. That got an emotionally charged silence from the other end, and then the woman asked tearfully who this was. Garrett hung up on her gently, feeling like absolute dog shit. That sort of call never ended well for the living, but they had the information they needed.

The child was real.

* * *

Brianna’s surprise was scheduled for that night. She asked Garrett to get a haircut and a shave, and to dress up nicely. She took off by herself for a little while, promising to meet him at a café near their hotel when she was ready. Half her luggage had gone with her. It didn’t go unnoticed by him that it was the lingerie and fancier clothing half, either.

He did as she asked, splurging on a hot shave in an old-fashioned barber’s shop recommended by the concierge. The barber, an old man missing one of his front teeth and a finger, tended to him carefully but swiftly, the strokes of his razor as sure as Garrett was with his baton. That done, he trimmed Garrett’s hair down shorter than he usually liked it, but it looked good. Stylish, sleek, like a businessman’s. The old man said little and Garrett said little back. When they were done, Garrett turned his head this way and that. It was the best haircut he’d ever received.

“Where’d you serve?” he asked as he paid.

The old man smiled thinly. “Here and there. How’d you know?”

“Only met a few people who handle a knife like that, and none of them started out cutting hair.”

That brought out a short bark of laughter. The man turned to the cash register to make change. “How about you?” he asked, but the space Garrett had occupied was already empty, the only remainder of him the jingling of the bells above the door. The old man glanced at the bill, shook his head, and jammed it into the register.

Garrett’s next stop was back at the hotel for a change. Had he known the barber was so skilled, he could have worn a tuxedo without fear of getting a single hair on him. “Wear something nice,” he murmured as he flicked through the hangers on the rack in the bathroom holding his dress shirts and slacks. He opted for a pinstriped white dress shirt, one he usually reserved for dancing. For slacks, he picked out a tighter-fitting pair of gray dress pants and a black belt. He’d only brought one pair of dress shoes and those were a little scuffed, but they would have to do. After one last glance in the mirror, he sprayed on a little citrusy, leathery Shay and Blue behind his ears. It was from a cologne sampler Brianna had bought for him around his birthday, and it was one of her favorite scents on him. He had a feeling whatever she had planned, this was as much her night too.

Then he was out the door, and heading downstairs. Mind elsewhere, he didn’t notice the seventy-something woman in the elevator giving him the friendly once-over while her husband tried not to glare at her.

The first to arrive at the café, he ordered an iced coffee, unsure if they were doing dinner or not. The ghostly child stood beside the counter, glaring at him. Whatever you are, he thought to himself, I’m going to figure you out. And I’ll stop you.

Her head tilted up and her nose worked the air, sniffing at it like a dog. She glared at him, then slipped through the walls, off to go fuck with someone else’s life.

A woman that may or may not have been his wife came through the door ten minutes later. He stood up fast, the ghost child forgotten about for the moment.

That night, Brianna was made even more beautiful by the short, soft blue dress clinging to her frame. The shoulders were bare, the neckline chastely high but tight across her small breasts. Her long legs were well exposed, gleaming from lotion or some kind of oil, and he gulped to see her in black high heels that helped arch her back. She never wore them. Ever. With every step, the fabric around her creamy thighs threatened to ride up, exposing her to him and everyone else in that place.

Her long dark hair hadn’t been touched up much – he’d professed to her he loved her with long hair, and she’d kept a style similar to that of their wedding pictures, with a little volume and waviness to it, but keeping it simple and effortless. She’d put on more makeup than usual too, emphasizing her eyes and cute little nose while softening her stronger chin and cheekbones. She’d done something with her eyebrows, darkened them, made them pop somehow, and he loved it. Loved all of it.

“Brianna,” he said, barely, audible. “My God, you look stunning.”

She blushed. “Thanks. You look… mmm. I want to drag you off right now, but we have other plans. Ready for your surprise?”

“This… this isn’t it?”

“Oh no,” she laughed. “If I’m getting dressed up like this, there’s a secret mission involved.”

They walked out to the Durango together, arm in arm. She had to stop him from kissing her. “There’s going to be plenty of that later, but for now, I can’t smudge up my makeup. You’ll understand soon enough.”

He walked her back until she was nearly pressed against the SUV’s door, “I want you, now.”

“And I want you. But be patient. I promise, it’s worth it. I hope.”

She drove while he gaped. As nice as the view of Vancouver was, it couldn’t compete with how sexy his wife looked. It was an elegant mix of sexy and classy, and he had to shift around several times in his seat to try to alleviate a growing problem. Each time she laughed softly, and at one point, reached over to brush his cheek with her freshly clipped nails.

Within a half hour or so, they reached a row of shops somewhere south of their hotel. A few cars were at the dry cleaners, but only one of the other businesses had a car in front of it – Patsy’s Pics. Garrett raised an eyebrow. “Did we get super dressed up to have my pants spot cleaned?”

“Might need that when we’re done,” she replied, and hopped out, forgetting she was wearing heels. “Damn it, shit, fuck, I’m terrible in these things. Should’ve gone barefoot until we got here.”

He came around the SUV as she was massaging her foot and wincing. “You okay?”

“Yeah, heel didn’t break on the shoe.”

“Fuck the shoe, are you okay?”

She grabbed his arm and fitted the shoe back on. “Never better.” The wince as she took each step gingerly said otherwise, but she had that stubborn look that said “I will cut you if you point out the obvious” and he just walked with her to the photo shop.

Inside, a long divider blocked anything from view, apart from a desk near the door. A stout woman came around the corner, a binder under one arm. “Wow, Mrs. Moranis, you weren’t kidding, he really does clean up nicely.”

“Um,” Garrett said. “Hi?”

“I still haven’t told him yet,” Brianna said. “Think we should lock the door before he can make a run for it?”

The woman snorted. “Darling, once he sees what I can do, he’ll beg to stay here forever. Trust me, they all do.”

“What is this?” he asked.

Brianna introduced the titular Patsy, who laid the binder on the desk. It was easier to show him, they explained, than try to tell him. “These are all models, you understand?” Patsy asked. “No one will ever see my real clients’ work except the clients themselves. That’s a Patsy guarantee.”

She opened the binder. Inside were tasteful, provocative pictures of women in various states of dress, though never nude. Some were in summer dresses, or jeans and tops that left bare their stomachs, shoulders, or cleavage – usually some combination of the two or three. Others were in lingerie, or posing as though they were just pretending to get out of it. Some smiled, others looked more contemplative, all of them were sexy.

“Garrett,” Brianna said, “I’ve wanted to do this for you since Thanksgiving. I trust you with your pictures, and those are fun, but I thought something more professional would be kind of a memorable souvenir. Something just for the two of us.”

It took some cajoling, but not much. He had concerns about a stranger photographing them intimately, but Patsy explained they wouldn’t be nude, unless Brianna wanted to expose some of the areole around her nipples. That was as far as she’d take it with her, and at most, Garrett would be stripped down to his boxer briefs. Warily, he agreed.

They spent two hours behind the screen wall in a trio of brightly lit sets. With their fit frames, Patsy explained that she thought color photography would show better than black and white, and since they were largely clueless about these things, they agreed. First came five minutes of breathing exercises to loosen them up and help them relax. After that came the pictures.

Brianna had little trouble posing the way Patsy ordered her to, and had even more fun when Garrett tentatively made some requests, leading to one great shot of Brianna sitting up on her knees, back straight and to the camera as she glanced over her shoulder, her hair brushed aside just enough to flash the camera those beautiful eyes while showing off her terrific backside. There were a few wardrobe changes, in which Brianna slipped quickly into some of his favorite outfits of hers.

Just as he helped with her shots, Brianna made a few requests of his and their couple pictures. One of him sitting near the edge of the bed, one leg dangling off with the other knee was drawn up nearly to his chest, particularly set her off, and Patsy snapped several angles of it. They eventually had to settle for him doing more serious poses, as his smile was too nervous and fake to really take a decent picture.

The couples’ boudoir photography was much more chaste than he’d imagined. It was mostly a lot of shots similar to their wedding photographs, just without so much clothing between them. There were a few shots of them kissing, sure, but by and large, they were mostly of the two of them at play, recreating their favorite moments of their relationship. One of their mutual favorites was a shot of him laying on the bed, knees drawn up, while she was holding herself up over him, dressed in simple white underwear, her forehead nearly touching his as they both grinned. In those shots, he found it easy to smile, and Patsy snuck more than one shot of him without Brianna in the frame to make up for the earlier problems.

And then, just like that, it was done. Patsy waited for them both to dress, then explained that Brianna had already a small part of her commission in advance with the rest to come when they knew they were satisfied with the pictures. After that, they’d be delivered digitally without a watermark, and since they had a photo printer had home, there was no need to worry about anyone else seeing the pictures.

Garrett asked for one last shot, the three of them together in nothing more than a friendly pose, and then graced Patsy with a kiss on the cheek. “That was, without a doubt, one of the strangest, nicest evenings of our honeymoon,” he said. “Thank you.”

* * *

When they got back to the hotel, Garrett wanted nothing more than to chase his wife up to the hotel room, help her out of that stunning dress, and make love to her good and properly. Such was his life though that when they opened the doors, he had to rethink that, even as she raced on ahead, dangling her high heels off her finger tips and glancing behind her with a smoldering “come hither” smile.

She stopped when she saw his attention was elsewhere and came back. “The kid again?”

He nodded. “While we were out there, giving each other sexy eyes, that thing…”

“We can’t beat ourselves up. We just can’t.” He wouldn’t meet Brianna’s look, and she used two fingers to turn his chin towards her. “What else can we do? Think.”

Staring at the child gazing coolly back at him, he shook his head slightly. “I have no clue.”

But he was starting to. The child always came back to him. It didn’t follow Brianna – it wanted him for some reason. His sight of the dead? Maybe. Think. If she was evil, really evil, her ribbons would have been black, right? Then again, if she was a child, she should have been sent straight to heaven, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. So why was she here with him? What did she gain from him? From any of her victims, really?

He blinked and walked with Bri slowly towards the elevators. Okay, if they couldn’t pin down what child was or what it wanted, what about the victims? Why them? What did they have in common? Confessions?

Confessions.

Brianna punched the button for their floor. “You have something, don’t you?”

Garrett frowned. “Yeah, maybe. About tonight…”

“It’s okay,” she said, and turned to kiss his cheek. “How do I help?”

On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Hope. The name of the town seemed almost cruel, considering what Garrett and Brianna were researching. A pot of coffee between them at a diner near their hotel, they checked and rechecked Garrett’s research.

It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.

Their waitress came by with their check. Garrett dug out a fifty, laid it on the table, and told her to keep the coffee fresh and hot until they left. When she told them her shift ended in fifteen minutes, he added another fifty and she immediately went to refill the pot.

“What do we know?” Brianna asked as Garrett stood up and paced back and forth, thinking it over. “If it’s a disease, it’s not spreading.”

“At least, not like a normal disease.”

“Do we know if I have anything in common with these people?”

Garrett stopped and turned Brianna’s laptop towards him. On the screen were pictures of all the victims in better times. Men, women. No kids. Nothing about them seemed overly similar, save for the circumstances of their deaths.

He sat back down again and called Annalise Fox. Despite the late evening hour, she answered as immediately and professionally as she always did. He soon had her filled in, and she was looking up information on her side. When he asked for medical case histories and autopsy reports on all the victims, she hesitated.

“I can pull some strings,” Annalise said finally. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll look into it.”

His second call was to Monica. He asked her to put a note in the War Room for the ghosts to meet him sooner rather than later. She sounded harried and exhausted herself.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Dog attacks around the city,” she said. “One cop’s dead, a few teens, some adults. Weird shit, but it’s handled now.”

“Oh hell, I’m sorry. If I’d known…”

“If you’d known and you’d left your sick wife,” Monica snapped, “I’d beat your ass from here to Billings and back. Not an idle threat.”

Brianna caught that and brightened measurably.

Another pot of coffee later and they still had nothing. They returned to their hotel room, disgruntled and scared, but now that they had the scent of a case, and it had brought them back. Their lovemaking was frenetic and fun, drawing a hammering from their neighbors, which sent them into mad fits of quiet laughter, muffled by the sheets and pillows. After their post-coital whispers of love, Brianna slipped down into the brink.

Garrett was too wired on caffeine to sleep, so he slipped out of bed to grab a glass of water and sit near the window. He watched his wife sleep for a while, smiling, then looked out at the parking lot below. Neither of them paid much attention to the town coming in – it had been pretty enough, but the victims and the disease had their minds preoccupied.

The child stood out there on one of the cars, staring up at him balefully. He grimaced. That fucking hallucination could stop anytime it wanted to, he thought to himself. Ever since that damn Irisville, she’d been a pain in his…

“Shit,” he whispered. “Shit shit shit.”

He backed away from the window, mind racing. Hallucination? Or something else?

* * *

Brianna knew something was on his mind, but couldn’t pry it out of him. The child was always there, and he didn’t want to say anything to Bri until they were alone. Plus, when the ghosts came, he could maybe pin his theory down. In the meantime, he played at normalcy.

If he was right, though, what the hell did it mean? A ghost couldn’t manipulate the real world. Sure, Murphy had been able to rouse a response out of Brown Dog, but that animal had been extraordinary. Then again, if this child, this thing, wasn’t a hallucination but a real ghost, then she was an impossibility. Children her age didn’t stick around the afterlife. They just didn’t. He’d assumed his own broken mind had been responsible for her existence, but what if it wasn’t? What if she was as real as Murphy, Virgil, or Tibaldo?

And if she was, how was she doing this?

The thoughts swirled around inside him, nothing quite connecting. But in his heart, he thought he was right, or was at least on the right track. Could she be stopped? Just as the dead couldn’t interfere with the living, Garrett could do nothing so far as he knew to stop the dead. But something had drawn her out of Irisville. Something had connected them. What? Why was he special? His sight of the dead? Maybe. But she hadn’t used it to communicate with him. Hadn’t tried to talk to him in any way.

Brianna said something, then repeated herself. He jerked out of his near-slumber and asked her to repeat herself. Mildly exasperated, she instead pointed.

Lost in thought, he hadn’t realized how much time and distance they’d covered. There, far in the distance, steel spiraled up in the sky, gleaming in the late morning sun. It was beautiful, but all at once, a sense of dreaded finality struck him. This was nearly the end of their journey. With it would come the crashing realization that life in the Flats awaited them again, that soon his endless grind trying to take down the city’s worst would start up again. His heart ached to stay here forever with Brianna, but there was a part of him too that recognized he wanted back in the fight, that he was tired of putting it off.

Vancouver. For Brianna’s sake, he turned, grasped her hand, and smiled.

* * *

Still trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy, they picked their hotel based on a text message from Rose, who had stayed in Vancouver on a weekend business trip a few years prior. The Pinnacle Hotel sat right next to the harbor, and after Garrett checked on the availability, they rented a room overlooking the water. Brianna thought it was too much, but he insisted, walking backwards as he dragged her towards the front doors, making her laugh until she finally gave in and admitted it was a gorgeous hotel.

When they checked in, they went back out to the SUV to bring in their luggage and other necessities. The porter was a fast-speaking Vancouver native, young and enthusiastic, and he was genuinely thrilled – or at least very good at pretending to be – to hear about the places they’d been on their trip, and recommended several city hotspots. Garrett only had really one in mind, though, but he nodded along with the young man anyways, smiling and pretending like everything was just peachy.

Their hotel room was spectacular. The king-sized bed looked cozy and comfortable, and a chaise lounger next to the window was perfect for Brianna’s evening reading. But beyond that was the real prize – the spectacular view of the waters beyond. A little choppy from the wind that day, the harbor practically begged them to walk to it, and so they didn’t deny themselves after they’d arranged their things and tipped the porter.

Hand-in-hand as always, they meandered across the busy city street, and for a good hour, they walked down the sidewalk, taking in the view, the business district, and the jaw-dropping skyline all around them. Edmonton and Vancouver had a fight on their hands for which was the more beautiful city – Garrett said Vancouver, Brianna had liked Edmonton. Both, they agreed, were worth the visit.

There had been a second reason Garrett wanted that particular hotel – the library nearby. The child had disappeared, and though he maybe knew what that meant, a little electric thrill ran through him. Finally, privacy, and not for their favorite casual act. He leaned in and whispered into her ear, “Wanna go to the library with me and neck in the stacks?”

She gave him a curious look. In all their time together, he’d been to exactly one library, and that had been to fight a cartel drug lord. That said, she loved libraries and wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity to see one. “Sure?”

He grabbed her hand and ran, checking the glass reflections of the buildings around them to make sure the child wasn’t following. If she was, he didn’t see her.

Outside, the library was a vaguely pyramid-like building with a flattened top. Its windows were tinted a dark steel color, roughly the shade of the crisscrossing beams. The entrance was four enormous sets of glass doors, and he led Brianna through, glancing around wildly for the ghosts.

A desk central to the room overlooked periodicals, racks of non-fiction, and a reading area where a couple of dozen people lounged around in armchairs under pleasantly bright lights. Further back was the fiction. To Brianna, he said quickly, “I think I know what’s been doing this. The kid’s not a hallucination. I think she’s real.”

Her lips puckered as she thought about this. “I thought you said kids can’t be ghosts. And ghosts can’t-”

“I know. That’s why we’re here. She’s gone, which… if I’m right, that means something bad.”

“Another victim.”

He nodded. “But we don’t know how to track her or who she’ll kill, so we have to use the time smartly. We need to find every book on folklore they have. Anything involving ghost children. We should probably focus it around Canadian stories. I’m going to take the nonfiction. Hit the fiction stacks.”

Her eyes were wide, but her strong jaw was set, and she nodded just once before shooting straight for the front desk. Smart to go to the source like that, he thought. He veered off into the nonfiction, pulling out his phone and searching for books matching his criteria on Google and Amazon. In twenty minutes, he had six books laid out in front of him at a table in a reading room. In another ten, Brianna joined him with four more and a stack of newspapers. He raised an eyebrow. “Every newspaper article I could find on the deaths,” she explained.

They set to work rifling through the books as quickly and thoroughly as possible. There were hundreds of pages dedicated to Canada’s water monsters, sasquatches, and werewolves, but frustratingly little about the undead or ghosts in general. Sightings, sure, there were lots of tongue-in-cheek entries about those – a husband and wife haunting a hotel in Banff, the Boot Hill graveyard and British Columbia Penitentiary, Seal Island… nothing pertaining to ghosts from Irisville or that area.

“Maybe we’re going at this the wrong way,” Brianna thought out loud.

“If you have ideas, I’m open to them.”

“What’s the weirdest part about all this? It’s not the deaths themselves.”

“It’s the confessions,” Garrett said, frowning.

“And if you’re right, remember our reaction at that nightclub? How, um, angry and frisky we got?”

“I like when you say frisky.”

“Hush. Concentrate.”

“Yeah, of course I remember.” He smacked his head. “She was there. At least for the nightclub part of it. She wasn’t watching us afterwards, I can guarantee that. We haven’t, uh, done it when she’s around. Too fuckin’ creepy, her being a kid and all.”

Brianna nodded. “So she’s amplifying our emotions somehow. Our guilt, our anger.”

“Doesn’t explain the lust.”

“Residual effects. We were ridin’ high off her supply.” She started stacking the books. “There’s a word for that, kinda, sorta. Empathy.”

Garrett frowned. “Isn’t that just, you know, being decent and receptive to other people?”

“Yes, but no. I mean, that’s one definition. Psychically, it’s about feeling others emotions as your own. Trust me, if you’ve ever played a pen and paper RPG, this stuff’s one-oh-one material.”

He scratched the back of his head. “I haven’t. Wait, did I marry a Dungeons and Dragons nerd?”

“Got me through a lot of boring nights in high school and college. And Rifts, actually. You’d like it. Ooh, so would Murphy. It’s… you know what, never mind.” She looked up books on empaths in Canada. “Okay, yeah. Here we go.” She highlighted a few and sent him the names. They raced back out into the stacks, but this time could only find two of the books. One of them was a nonfiction scientific analysis of psychics and was of no use to them. The other was a fictional novel about a Canadian hitchhiker trying to make it from coast to coast and having all sorts of wacky, transcendental experiences along the way. Garrett dismissed it, as did Brianna, but she took note of the writer’s name. Worse came to worse, it looked like an entertaining read for their last week in Canada.

Defeated, they returned the books to the stacks, and headed out. Brianna wrapped her arm around Garrett’s waist. “We’ll figure this out,” she promised him.

“We don’t even know if I’m on the right track,” he muttered.

“Hey. Chin up. It’s the best idea we’ve got. And doesn’t it feel right?”

He let his own arm sneak around her too. “Lots of bad arrests happen because cops can’t let go of a hunch they think is right even when it’s wrong.”

“We’ll know soon enough, I guess. Either she kills someone, or the ghosts come and tell us she’s real.”

“Or not, in which case, square one.”

“Either way? We try to be here while we’re here. It’s gonna drive both of us crazy, but let’s try to see some things while we’re here. There’s not much more we can do.”

He drew in a breath and blew it out through his nose. “Yeah. Anywhere you want to go?”

“Aquarium, maybe? Dolphins and pretty fish would be pretty calming right now.”

“That sounds like a hell of a plan.”

* * *

The next morning, they saw the headline. Another person dead, this time a college student. His last moments had been seen by dozens of people, all of whom reported him shouting about fucking his roommate’s girlfriend when she was drunk and thought he was the other guy. There was more, too, and some of it was posted on YouTube. Though it was taken down before Brianna and Garrett could see it, their emails had a new message that day from a certain friend in the FBI.

They watched the footage together, all of it, right up until the boy’s end. His screams of pain turned into a dry wheezy gasp for air, as his hair went completely white from the roots on up.

“That could have been me,” Brianna whispered. “Why wasn’t that me?” It was the best question either of them had asked so far, and the one neither of them had answers to.

On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 29

Thankfully, here we move out of the dreadful middle third of the novel and into the last. I’ve mentioned it before, but I suck at the midsection of novels. Anyways, the curtain’s finally being peeled back.

Chapter 29

A box of turtles, truffles, cookies, and banana bread between them as Brianna drove out of Prince George, Garrett relayed everything Dr. Dennings had told him. Brianna didn’t interrupt once, stopping only now and then to split a bite between them, feeding her with chocolate-stained fingers.

When he’d finished, Brianna asked, “All of them? All the cases were like that? They start shouting all their sins and crap, and then they dropped dead?”

“She told me they think you’re okay. But if you’re feeling warm even in the slightest-”

“Damn skippy we’ll get to a hospital. But Garrett, you were sick too, remember?”

He did. His own fever was still bugging him now and then, and worse, that damn ghost kid was back. Like he needed the hallucinations on top of all this shit. “Maybe I just had a mild case of it or something.”

“Let’s hope so, but if you’re feeling sick too, you tell me.”

They didn’t bother with music. Garrett was too obsessed with digging up news articles about cases like Brianna’s. Dr. Dennings hadn’t provided him with more information on how long this had been happening, but the Canadian news gave him plenty.

The first cases had been reported nearly a month and a half ago in…

“Huh,” Garrett said. “Irisville.”

“Before the bed and breakfast guy’s cousin?”

“Yeah, looks like there were a few cases there.”

Brianna bit into a truffle. “Ooh, I think this one has… chili powder? It tastes like the hot chocolate Rose makes.” She foisted the chocolate at him and he bit it out of her fingers.

Around the treat, he asked, “Is now really the time to be talking chocolates and desserts?”

“You kidding me? Now’s the only time. If I’m going out, it’s gonna be riding a sugar high.” Her smile faltered when she saw his worried gaze. “Sorry. Gallows humor. I do feel fine, though.”

He returned to his research. “Really does taste like her cocoa, though.”

“I miss them. And Stephanie. And the gym.”

“Really, baby, we can skip the rest-”

“Nope,” Brianna said cheerfully. “Wait till you see what I have planned in Vancouver. Set it up back in Edmonton. Trust me, you’re gonna love it.”

He put down his phone. “What you said about Stephanie-”

“Can that stay between us? Like… forever? I swear, I didn’t mean it. She drives me crazy sometimes, but not nearly so bad as that.”

He nodded. “I need her in my life, though. I hope you know that.”

“I do. And she knows it too. And whatever the hell I said, she is not giving you the sexy eyes. That was a fucked up, horrible thing to say.”

“It’s okay. Really. This virus sounds nasty.”

“Is that what they’re calling it? A virus?”

He searched a few more news stories and shook his head. “Doesn’t look like they’re giving it a name. Get this – in all the cases, the people’s hair went white.”

Brianna jerked down her visor and glanced in the mirror. “Thank God that’s not happening to me. The Nadine Cross look just isn’t me.”

“Who?”

She shook her head. “Never mind.”

Garrett kept reading. “Huh. All the cases were local to Irisville until – drumroll please – one cropped up in Calgary around the same time we were there.” He checked the current date on his phone, then did the math in his head, counting down the days they’d stayed in each place. “Right when we were there, actually.”

Then he talked very little. The cases kept popping up in towns they’d visited. Vegreville. Edmonton. Jasper. By that one, his hands were shaking too much to continue and he dropped his phone into the center console. Plucking a tissue out of a box in the back, he stared out the window, tearing the paper into little bits, unmindful for once of the mess he was making.

Brianna couldn’t stand his nervous silence anymore. “Garrett, what is it?”

He turned to her, dropping the remains of the tissue. “We’re the common denominator. Whatever this thing is, it’s not a virus. And it’s latched onto us.”

On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 28

Garrett whines so damn much in this novel. Ugh.

Chapter 28

They left the hospital together the next day around noon. The doctor wasn’t thrilled, but Brianna was feeling better, if not necessarily happier. Garrett walked just behind her out of the hospital. She slowed to try to catch his hand in hers, but his fingers didn’t play with hers the way they usually did. He looked away and muttered something about not wanting to seem too needy. Her heart broke again but she didn’t let go.

Their first stop was a large city park along the Fraser, the same river they’d been boating down a couple of days prior. Together they walked mostly silently, swatting at hordes of mosquitos and watching children shout and play along the well-kept walking path. A couple of families were barbequing, and a lone dog ran wide circles around a grove of white-barked aspens.

The trail was long, and Garrett worried Brianna was still not up for it, so after a half mile, he turned around. She caught his arm and he stopped, not daring to look at her. “Do you want to go home?” She asked the question sternly, not like her meek behavior at all from the last day.

Still, he didn’t look back. “Do you?”

“Please don’t turn this around on me. I hurt you. If what you want is home, let’s go.”

“No. I don’t.”

“Good. Me neither. Come on.”

She started down the trail back towards the Durango, and Garrett strode after her. “Where are we going?”

“To the Ancient Forest, husband of mine.”

“Brianna, I don’t-”

She turned and walked backwards. Her smile was forced, but her eyes really did glitter either with tears or good humor. “Want to go? Of course you do. Maybe not now, but we’re here. We might not ever have the opportunity again. C’mon. Thousand-year old trees. Inland rainforest type… stuff. Gorgeous walking paths. C’mon c’mon c’mon.”

“Fine.”

“Oh, is that enthusiasm I hear, Mr. Moranis? Is that a note of holy shit, we get to see more cool crap? Why, I believe it is.”

“Brianna-”

She stopped, quavering. “Garrett, I’m sorry. If you want, we can be mopey and I’ll spend every minute trying to apologize to you. But I swear, what I said wasn’t what I meant. Believe me or don’t believe me. I know how badly I hurt you. But-”

He caught her wrists, lifted them, and kissed her palms. “Brianna, would you go with me to the Ancient Forest?”

“Ohhh, I suppose.”

* * *

The cedars dwarfed them, but it wasn’t just the size that humbled them, but the idea that these organisms had lived fifteen times over what they would see in their lifetime. They were an ancient testament to a world gone by, one that man now shaped and dominated. The old guard, locked in a rainforest in the midst of western Canada.

It was very hard for Garrett to be upset after that.

* * *

They hauled the last of what remained in the backseat into their hotel room, Garrett grinning slyly to himself. Brianna was mystified, but played along as to why they needed so much room in the SUV.

“You’ll like it, I promise,” he told her. “Well, I think you will, anyways.”

He blindfolded her before they drove around Prince George. It was to be their last night there – the city was nice enough, but they were anxious for Vancouver, one of their last major stops before they swung back towards Waterton for a last bit of camping before heading back down through the border the same way they came in.

His heart still felt like it had been carved open, but this was still the woman he loved, and he would try to make sure she had as good of a time as she could despite the pain between them. He’d even taken the time to make them a playlist, carefully getting her advice so he didn’t accidentally wipe out the one she’d made for him to listen to before their wedding. It was all bad themes from eighties and nineties movies, and she was left guessing as he drove about half an hour from their hotel.

“Okay, is it… an actor signing or something? Like a David Hasselhoff meet and greet?”

“Nope.”

A block later. “Is it a movie marathon?”

“Closer. Much closer.”

“Oooh. I like this. You, me, a dark theater. Why, hello, Mr. Hole in the Bottom of the Popcorn.”

He laughed. “That’s gonna spoil popcorn for me forever.”

“Say that now, but wait till I get to the bottom of the bag.”

“All right, we’re almost there. No peeking.”

“Fine.” She folded her arms over her breasts, pouting as Garrett made a corner.

The window on the driver’s side came down, blasting them both with the night’s still-roasting air. “Evening,” a stranger said.

“Evening,” Garrett replied. “Two for Valerian.”

“Twenty-five bucks gets you both movies.”

The sound of paper wrinkling and being handed over. “Keep the tip.”

“Hey, thanks, buddy!”

To Brianna, Garrett said, “Okay. Now look.”

She lifted her bandanna, and laughed. “A drive-in!”

It was the first one either one of them had been to in their lifetime. The Park Drive-In was already filling up, and Garrett was glad they’d come early. Nestled in the woods around Prince George, it was a beautiful little spot that reminded him of a sandlot baseball pitch, of all things. He liked it, and judging from Brianna’s wiggling and bouncing in her seat, she approved too.

There was only one downside, and he groaned when he saw the signage. “Oh man, if I’d known there was go-karts and mini-golf, we would’ve never left this place.”

Brianna laughed, unbuckled her seatbelt, and leaned over to kiss him. She gave a certain part of him a little squeeze. “You do realize we’re probably getting kicked out of here later, right?”

“But you told me you really want to see this.”

“Trust me. Not as much as I want to do… this.”

“Hm. They have a concessions stand.”

Glancing around, she unzipped him. “Yeah?”

He groaned. “With poutine. And poutine baked potatoes, whatever that means.”

Slowly, regretfully, her hand withdrew and she leaned back in her seat. “We could always eat first and fool around later, right?”

“Now that’s the woman I love.”

* * *

They bid the city farewell early the next morning. The plan was to make the eight or nine hour drive to Vancouver in two legs, but they weren’t yet sure where they wanted to stop along the way.

On their way out of town, Brianna asked if they couldn’t stop at a little cafe called Ohh Chocolat. As she nibbled on the end of a piece of chocolate-coated bacon while carving up her loaded omelet, Garrett got a call. “The hospital?” he asked Brianna and she shrugged. Smiling apologetically to the other customers, he got up and took the call as he made his way outside.

“Mr. Moranis?” the voice on the other end asked. He recognized the voice – the ER doctor that had treated Brianna.

“Yes?” He tried to come up with her name and failed. Murphy would have remembered.

“It’s Dr. Dennings. I’m sorry, but are you busy at the moment?”

“Just sitting down to have breakfast with my wife. Is everything okay?”

“I wanted to speak to you specifically about Mrs. Moranis’s case. I hope you don’t mind.”

Panic rose in his chest. “Is everything okay? Did her labs…? What’s the matter?”

“It’s all right, Mr. Moranis, your wife is all right. But she said something when she came in, about having no control over blurting some awful things about you.”

Damn it, no one was going to let that wound scab over, were they? “Yeah. What about it? Look, if you think I was abusive, I promise-”

“No, no. We, um, had an odd case last night. And I don’t know if you’ve been catching up with the news on your trip, but there’s been an illness. A few individual cases like your wife’s. We didn’t recognize it right away because the symptoms were mild in comparison.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, and leaned against a light pole. “Dehydration? Heat stroke?” Of course there were going to be cases like that across the summer. What the hell was this about?

There was a long pause. “Mr. Moranis, I need you to listen – your wife, as far as we can tell, is fine. You need to understand that before what I say next.”

Garrett glanced back at the diner, his heartrate a freight train trying to go off the rails. “What is it?”

“These cases all have similar symptoms. Extreme signs of heat exhaustion. Catastrophic heart failure. In every case except your wife’s, it’s led to the patient’s death.”

“What are you saying?” he croaked. The world suddenly seemed to be going off-kilter.

“Remember, your wife is fine. We think.”

“You think.”

“I’m sorry I can’t give you more comfort than that. Mr. Moranis, we can’t explain this. Medically, it’s as strange as anything I’ve ever seen or heard of. In the cases where someone was nearby and could overhear, each person was last heard saying… well, horrible things. Grotesque things.”

Garrett’s runaway heartrate slowed to an unsteady beat. “Guilt. Anger.”

“You did hear it. Confessions, almost.”

“Y-yeah. Yeah, I’d say that about sums it up.”

I hate you sometimes. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

“Mr. Moranis, besides letting you know what to look for, there’s something else you should hear. In all the cases, everything the affected said seemed to be…” Dr. Dennings blew out a breath. “This is… personal. I’m breaking some confidentiality policies here, and…”

“Tell me.”

“The patient last night. Before he died, he told his wife some things. She says she knew some of the worst of it – that he’d been having an affair, but it wasn’t what he said so much as how he said it. She said he was never a vicious man, but he seemed to be trying to… to deliberately hurt her at the end.”

Brianna, trying to tell him her words had been twisted. Garrett hadn’t believed her, not really. He let out a choked gasp of air, and said, “The things were true, but… poisoned, almost?”

“Yes… yes, that’s about what she said. And I did some digging this morning. In every case like this one, where someone overheard a confession of sorts, it was all poisoned, like you say. Mr. Moranis, I saw the way you and your wife were avoiding each other. Anyone could tell you’d just had a fight. I guess that’s the real reason I’m calling you. Whatever she said, whatever pain she brought to you… I don’t know that I have the right to tell you how to run your relationship, but I guess I thought this might be something you needed to hear.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I think I need to go. Thank you, Doctor.”

“Goo-”

But he was hanging up already, and taking unsteady steps towards the diner. Behind him, coming out of the wall of a nearby shop was the ghostly child. He didn’t notice her even as she walked along beside him, idly glancing now and then at him and the sun.

In the café, Brianna was peering through the display at a row of fine chocolates and desserts. She stood upright when she saw him come in. “Had them get a box for your food. Is everything-?” Ignoring everyone around them, he walked to her, placed a hand at the small of her back, and bent her nearly backwards giving her a long, sweet kiss, her long hair nearly brushing the floor. When he helped her back upright, she was giggling, but he couldn’t smile. “I’m sorry I doubted you,” he said

On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 27

Again… not edited. Sigh.

Chapter 27

The child-like ghost watched him shuffle around the waiting room, head cocking side to side like a dog trying to understand its master’s voice. The push on the scarred-face-kind-smile woman had been a move born of animal frustration. The child hadn’t meant to do it, much as it never meant to be drawn back time and time again to this weird couple. It had been simply too hungry to ignore the gnawing in its soul for much longer, and had pushed the woman towards an emotional brink to try to draw out the craggy-face-broken-nose man’s anger. It hadn’t worked, and the child receded back into itself. Soon, it would stalk Prince George for another snack, but it sensed the cracks in this man and it wanted its entrée right now.

* * *

The doctor, a delicately-boned attractive woman somewhere in her thirties, came out of the ER, spotted him, and the two met halfway. As Garrett drew a breath, the nurse held up her hands. “Your wife’s stabilizing. We’ve got her on intravenous fluids, and her temperature’s slowly dropping back down to normal.”

“What happened?”

“It looks like heat exhaustion. You said you’ve both been experiencing symptoms for a week?”

Garrett nodded. “Yeah, a week or two.”

“And you’ve been on a long trip?” When he nodded again, she continued. “Given the high temperatures this summer, and all the traveling you’ve been doing, it’s not entirely unheard of that you might be experiencing these symptoms.”

“But we both know to hydrate.”

“You’re hiking, walking outdoors, taking in the sights?”

“Yeah, but…”

“I see traces of sunburns on both of you. It’s not a condemnation, I’m not trying to imply anything. But if you miss even a few hours like this without sunblock, your body’s going to run the risk of overheating. Keep stacking that up over a few weeks, and…” She shrugged. “We’d like to keep her here for observation. At least a day, probably two.”

“However long it takes for her to get healthy. Can I go back?”

The doctor nodded. “We’re moving her to a private room. Follow me.”

She led him back into the ER, weaving through a thin stream of nurses and patients. Brianna, dressed in a pale blue hospital gown, was being helped to a gurney and didn’t see him at first. Her head was down, her long dark hair clinging to her face and neck in sweat-crusted waves. IVs ran from her arm to a plastic bag full of clear liquid. His heart simultaneously leapt knowing she was okay and cracked. He’d finally broken her, and in a way, she’d broken him.

Gingerly, Brianna helped herself up on the gurney, taking the hand of one of the orderlies beside her, and finally brushed the hair out of her eyes as she glanced up. Her hand went to her mouth. “Garrett.”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, stiffer than he’d intended. To the orderly, he asked, “Can I help?”

Brianna reached for him. He took her hand for a moment, but didn’t squeeze back. Her fingers fell away, tapping softly on the side of the gurney. The orderly passed on his offer cheerfully, and as a nurse followed pushing the IV rack, Garrett fell into an uneasy step beside them, looking away from his crying wife.

They were led out of a set of heavy doors to a long corridor. More than a few friendly staff gave them a cheery hello or a smile and a nod of the head, but Garrett said little in return. How do we come back from this? he thought.

The stream of truths – and he didn’t dare let himself believe Brianna had been saying anything other than that – had been so sudden. Had all that been bubbling below her surface? Why hadn’t she told him any of it? And… Doug? His hands tightened into fists. There was no way he could compete with Brianna’s best physical trainer there at the gym. The guy was ridiculously handsome, and didn’t exactly make much of an attempt to hide what he was packing in the locker room either.

And her comments about Stephanie. Where the holy fuck had those come from? His mild headache was threatening to turn into a wall-banger. That shit had been sick, and he didn’t want to believe it had been Brianna talking, but there was still some stiffness between her and Steph that had never been really resolved.

And hatred. She’d said the words “I hate you.” There had been context to it, but… “I hate you.”

His anger left him, and a great, exhausting grief threatened to overwhelm his mind.

“I hate you sometimes. I hate you sometimes. I hate you sometimes.” Her voice rang out in his ears over and over and over again as the orderly and the nurse pushed Brianna into her room. They helped her to bed, pulled a sheet up around her, and she reached out for him again, whispering his name, but all he heard was those words.

“I hate you.”

* * *

Listlessly, he trained his eyes on the television. It was tuned to some crazy science fiction movie Brianna and Murphy both liked, about a man on a train trying to fight his way up to the front. Garrett had never understood it, but then, he’d never really understood half of the things either of them liked. He tried to pay attention now. Anything to take his mind off the morning.

“Do you want some of my Jello?” Brianna asked, her cracked voice mellow.

“I’m good. Thanks.”

“Okay.”

Something about bugs and the people on the train making candy bars out of them, or something. Fuck, he thought, this is nonsense.

“Could you get me some more water?”

He stood up, fast, and grabbed the little pitcher with the straw hanging out. “Yeah.”

She caught his wrist. “Garrett, I-”

“Be right back.” He pulled away from her. He thought about just filling it in the bathroom, but decided to get her some ice down the hallway instead. After asking a housekeeper where he could get more ice, he was led down the hallway and to an ice machine near a cafeteria. He filled the jug both with ice and water, thanked the housekeeper, and instead of heading right back, took a chair to lay his forehead on his hands for a while.

When he looked up, eyes red, a man was reading a newspaper at an adjoining table. The headline, in bold letters, said “ANOTHER DEAD OF MYSTERIOUS ILLNESS.”

A spiteful twig of jealousy of the dead threatened to bloom into a full tree. He stood up, knocking his chair over and excusing himself quietly, and returned to Brianna’s hospital room.

The television was off. She sat with the remote clutched between her hands, not quite meeting his quick look. When he settled the water back on the table and reached for it, she pulled it away from him. “I didn’t mean most of it,” she whispered.

“Which means you meant some of it,” he said.

She nodded just a hair. “Yes.”

“Fuck, Bri, the things you said about Stephanie-”

“That wasn’t me. Not all of it.” She shook her head. “I do sometimes feel like I want to yell at Stephanie. And I do think she’s got issues with you. But what I said, it’s like I couldn’t help trying to twist a knife. And I don’t… I don’t… I don’t know why,” she gasped, burying her head in her clawed hands.

“Yeah, well, it was a pretty shitty thing to say,” he muttered.

“I knuh-knuh-know.”

He was quiet for a long time. “Do you really hate me sometimes?”

“No. Never hate. I get pissed sometimes when you try too much-”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“You get so obsessed with getting the relationship right, with making everything perfect, that you kinda build up these expectations and it’s really intimidating.”

“Okay.” He still didn’t get it. When it came to their relationship, he tried. So fucking what?

“Garrett, I don’t know why I said the things I did. Some of it… some of it’s true, yes. But I swear to you, it’s like something was twisting my thoughts, making me try to hurt you. I can’t explain it.”

“It was the fever,” he finally offered lamely.

“Yeah, maybe.” She turned on her side, careful not to disrupt her IVs. “I’m sorry. I’ve never been more sorry.”

“I know.”

She reached out for him, and reluctantly, he took her hand in his. “I don’t want you moping around here all day,” she said quietly.

“I want to be with you.”

“Garrett, please. Find a nice hotel room. Go do something you want to do. Find us something fun when you jailbreak me out of here tomorrow.”

“You’re staying as long as you need to.”

“The fever’s already broken. I’m feeling stronger.”

“Still.”

“Don’t change the subject. We’ve gotta learn to be comfortable with ourselves, not just with each other.”

“That’s not what I want right now, damn it,” he said, the annoyance not fooling either of them.

“Liar.” The word was gentle, teasing, but there was truth to it. “Stay with me until I fall asleep. And then go find something to do. Promise me, okay?”

“Promise,” he said sullenly, like a child being denied another hour with a favorite video game.

* * *

Prince George could’ve been the most beautiful city in the world and Garrett would’ve never noticed that afternoon.

He floated through the small city aimlessly, barely registering the thick greenery at the edges or the low mountain ranges nearby. His choice for a hotel had been made simply by checking online and finding the first available one. The name of it barely registered in his mind – he walked in, laid a credit card on the counter, got his keycards, and that was that. There was no thought of even unpacking or bringing in their luggage. He just didn’t care.

Brianna texted him and reminded him he’d wanted to see the Ancient Forest east of the city, a grove of cedars said to be a thousand years old, at least. He thought about hitting the road, and even pointed the Durango in that direction, but less than a mile out of town, he turned around and headed back for the hospital. Being a tourist at that moment sounded as appealing as an enema. Maybe he’d wanted to be alone in that room when he was talking to Brianna, but not now. Despite the barbs still ripping at his soul, he wanted to be near her.

He figured she would be pissed if she saw him, so he found a waiting room near her, nodded curtly at a young man flipping through a magazine, and crashed out in a stiff armchair. Five minutes later, he was drifting, not quite asleep, not quite awake.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

His hip buzzed. Startled, he nearly jumped out of the chair, thinking it was someone trying to notify him about a change in Brianna’s health. But no, it was Rose. He thought about punching the ignore button, but decided against it. If they’d heard about Brianna – and by now, they probably had – they deserved to know she was okay.

He thumbed the green button, and said quietly, “Yeah.”

“You idiot, where are you?” Rose’s voice was shrill, and somewhere behind her, he could hear Ed try to say something placating.

“The hospital. I take it you heard about Brianna?”

Rose sighed heavily. “She called. And by the way, she thinks you’re out seeing the sights, or getting drunk.”

“No. She wanted me to. Hell, I wanted to, but… I just couldn’t. Figured she’d be upset if I came back to the room so I’m sacked out in the waiting room.” The guy across from him stood up and tossed his magazine on the chair beside him. Garrett watched him walk out the door before speaking again. “She’s all right, Rose.”

“Like fucking hell she is.” The swearing out of her mouth was surprising, but not nearly so much as if it had come from Ed, who disliked swearing himself but didn’t give a damn if anyone else did it. Still, Rose very only very infrequently dropped fuck bombs. “You know she thinks you hate her right now? I mean, really hate her? She thinks you’re ready for a divorce and it’s tearing her up.”

“Rose… I…” He sighed. “Of course I don’t want a divorce. There’s nothing she could say that’s going to make me stop loving her.”

Something banged on Rose’s end, once, twice, three times, and then his friend was shouting in the phone. “Then tell her that! She needs you, damn it!”

“What she said to me-”

“If you think she meant any of that, really meant it, then you haven’t been paying attention. That woman loves you utterly and completely. Whatever she said wasn’t her. You hear me? It wasn’t her.” Rose stopped, and a harsh sob broke from her throat. “It wasn’t, damn it.”

Then she was gone, replaced by Ed. “What do you need, man? What can we do?”

Garrett cleared his throat. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t know how hospital bills work up here, if we pay now or get billed later, or any of that.”

“I’ll talk to their accounting people.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“But what about Brianna?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated dully

“Are you two…?”

“We’ll be okay.” Garrett hung up before Ed could say anything else. He tapped the phone against his forehead. Without another word, he stood up, and returned to Brianna’s room, but didn’t dare enter. Instead, he just leaned against the wall outside her door, staring upwards, praying without knowing exactly what he was praying for.

* * *

Brianna stared up at the ceiling, the arm not hooked up to IVs curled underneath her head. Her eyes were dry, finally, but her throat kept working. She too was praying, trying to convince God to take back the last few hours, to make everything okay again. It was not a prayer she expected to be answered and she was not surprised when it wasn’t.

A nurse knocked and let herself in. “Time to change out your bags,” she said cheerfully. “Need a bathroom break?”

“Please,” Brianna said, and let herself be helped to the small bathroom. When she’d finished, the nurse guided her and the IV cart back to bed.

“You know, your husband could probably help you with that,” the nurse said as she swapped out the bags. “Doesn’t take much to push the cart around and he looks pretty capable.”

“I think he’s off seeing some of the forests east of here,” Brianna said, trying to inject her voice with a note of cheerfulness. “Didn’t want him hanging around here on my account, not when we’re on our hon…” She cleared her throat, and tried to widen her smile. “Honeymoon.”

The nurse snickered and shook her head. “Honey, he’s been outside your room for the last two hours. Not even sitting. Just standing there.”

Brianna jerked her head towards the door. “He… what?”

The nurse’s smile disappeared. “How bad did you two fight, hon? Do we need to maybe call someone? There are people who can help, you know?”

“I don’t…” It dawned on her that the nurse thought Garrett had been cruel to her. “Oh God, I gave you the wrong idea. I hurt him. It wasn’t the other way around.”

“You sure? Around here, we got the cops on speed dial.”

“Absolutely, yes.” Brianna dazedly sat up. “He’s really outside?”

“Sure is.”

“Could you send him in? And… um… does the door lock?”

It didn’t, but the nurse promised her that she could get a little privacy for half an hour or so. It would have to do. In a minute, Garrett shuffled in, looking at his feet.

“I thought you were sightseeing,” Brianna whispered.

“Didn’t want you to think I was being clingy again,” he muttered.

“Baby,” she chided him gently.

“I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“Stay.” He turned away, and a note of panic entered her voice. “Garrett, please, stay.”

He stopped with his hand on the doorknob, and glanced over his shoulder. “I won’t try to fix things, if you don’t want me to. If you’re not happy…”

“Oh God, Garrett, I love you,” she gasped, and yanked the IVs out of her arm. He turned, slow and unsure, but she was already sitting up, and despite his protests, she was taking off her gown. She knew she looked a mess, clammy and godawfully unsexy, but he crossed the room to her anyways, took her face in his hands, and kissed her so hard their noses banged off one another.

“Never leave me if you don’t want to,” she gasped as he pushed her back up on the bed. “Don’t tell me that, because I never will,” he said, hands finding the button of his shorts, his lips moving across her flesh.

On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 26

Chapter 26

“I’m sorry,” Garrett said dully.

“You’re driving me crazy apologizing,” she said, only kidding a little. She tried her best not to be irritable, but after the sixth or seventh apology, it was hard to be a saint about things. Her hand rose to her forehead again. Yup. Another fever. Wonderful.

“I’m sorry for that too.” This time, there was a faint hint of a smile on his lips, but his eyes were still flashing their “vacancy” sign at her. He sniffed, and for a moment, she thought he would cry again. That was almost preferable to the apologies. Instead, he grimaced. “Never going to get the smell of gasoline out of the seat.”

Her sigh was a small thing, one she hoped he didn’t notice. Or maybe she wanted him to – just a little bit. “We’re almost to Prince George. My mom will know how. We’ll give her a call and figure it out.”

“Yeah.”

A car pulled around them. From its rear seat, a huge mutt of a dog, its brown jowls hanging low and loose, barked noiselessly at them as it passed, then turned in its seat to keep an eye on them in case they tried any funny business with its masters.

Brianna’s dark mood broke a little “I miss Brown Dog.”

Garrett smiled. “Just thinking the same thing.” Not for the first time, a memory of their furry pet bounding across white sands tickled the back of his mind. A curious memory, because Brown Dog had never been to the beach with them. Elom adlo, a voice whispered, and vanished into the ether.

“Is Murphy still checking the pounds for another dog like him? One that can see ghosts?”

“Yeah, sometimes. He’s not as obsessed about it as he was back in the early part of the year.” That was an understatement. After Garrett’s disappearance into Hamber and Brown Dog’s death, Murphy had been adamant about finding another dog that could hear him, in case they needed to work out a line of rough communication with Brianna again. “There are some he thinks can hear him, but they don’t respond the same way Brown Dog did. He’s got a theory that it was because…” He trailed off, thinking about their poor animal’s last week or two. They hadn’t wanted to put him down, and he’d been suffering.

Brianna reached over and squeezed his knee. “It’s okay. You can say it. Today’s kind of the pits already.”

“Yeah, it is.” Garrett rubbed his nose. “He thinks it’s because Brown Dog was so close to death.”

“What do you think?”

“Honestly? I think that dog was magic. The way you saw his name in the Howell Building, then him showing up to help warn you about Galbraith-”

Brianna nodded, following the logic. “-and then being at the shelter where we were putting the shifter-”

“And then everything with you and Hamber… yeah. Magic.”

“I agree.”

“Yeah?”

“Grab me a bottle of water?” As he complied, digging around in the cooler, she stretched her fingers and continued. “I think we’ve definitely seen weirder things than a… magic dog. That really needs a better word.”

“I got nothing.” He twisted the lid off for her and handed the bottle over.

“Thanks.” She took a long drink, nearly finishing off half the bottle. The fever could go away any fucking time it wanted to, please and thank you. “Yeah, me neither. But I wonder… now you’re going to laugh at me.”

“Won’t. Promise.”

“Please, really, don’t.” Her voice had an edge to it. Two of their bigger fights had started because he’d laughed at things she had to say when she was being serious. “We know something, probably from hell, is connected to the Blight. Virgil thinks he saw him in the Veil in Hamber, remember?”

Garrett did. In one of the visions Virgil had while trapped in the bubble surrounding Hamber, he’d seen a giant red figure out in a courtyard, ostensibly asleep, but his eyes had been the same burning orange they saw whenever something had been corrupted by the Blight.

“Well,” Brianna continued, “we also know at least one time when the other team was helping you out. And I think… maybe there were two times.”

Garrett frowned. “Other team?”

Brianna pointed up at the ceiling. “Heaven. When you were lost to the Blight down in that cavern, you would’ve…” She shivered, unable to say the words. “If they hadn’t helped clear your mind, I think… I don’t know.”

“Agreed.” She shot him a glance, and he raised his hands. “No joke. I definitely agree. Murphy thinks so too. We’ve never, not once, seen anything like that before. I don’t think we can expect angels to fall out of heaven and help us smite the bad guys, but I think someone was up there watching us and maybe got the okay to push things just a little bit. But what’s the second time you think they interfered in things? I don’t remember us coming across anything quite like that.”

Brianna blushed, sure he’d make fun of this. “You.”

“I… what?”

“You’ve never figured out why you just suddenly started to see Murphy, right?”

“Right.”

“Well… what if it was someone up there throwing a switch when they saw the two of you in the same place at the same time?”

“How would they know that we would be a good fit?” Garrett asked, genuinely befuddled. That same voice – elom adlo, it whispered again – said something else in the dark recesses of his mind. In this place, time is circular. A sharp flare of pain numbed out the thought and then it was gone, the wisp of the memory erased.

She shrugged. “We’re talking about heaven. Who knows what the heck they know or don’t?”

“So you think me and Murphy, you and me, all of this last year and a half, it’s just been fate or something?”

“No, I don’t really believe in destiny. I think… hm. I think maybe heaven, or God, or whatever’s pulling these strings is just kind of… setting up the meetings and letting us come to them if we want to. Does that make sense? Like…” She saw a road sign for Prince George, now just a short ten kilometers away. “Like road signs! We pick whether we want to stop or not, but someone’s out there putting them up and making sure we see them.”

He pondered that for a while. “I like that.”

“And that’s my deep and crazy thought for the day.” Her headache was still there, but faded now. Not in a healthy way either, but fuzzy and washed out. Her stomach was flip-flopping too. “Regardless of if Murphy finds another dog like Brown Dog, I was kinda thinking, um, maybe once we got into the routine of things again, with you whacking on bad guys and me sexying it up at the gym, maybe we could get another dog. I’m always gonna be there for you when you come home, you know, but having a little fuzzy buddy around when you’re out with Murphy, it’d really be kind of nice.”

“Of course.”

“I mean, if you don’t want to, say it now, but we did better than I thought with Brown Dog and maybe if we got a puppy or a young dog it would be easier to deal with the messes if we could train it-”

 “Brianna. I already agreed. You don’t have to sell me on it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She went to take another drink and glanced away from the road, surprised the bottle was already empty. When had that happened?

“Baby,” Garrett warned, then louder, “Brianna!”

She glanced back up, just in time to realize she was drifting into the other lane right in front of an oncoming truck. With a swift jerk of the wheel, they skimmed by with less than a foot between their mirror and the oncoming vehicle, the other driver hammering on his horn. In the backseat, the child ghost leaned forward, her hands making sawing motions like she was carving up meat.

“You’ve gotta pay attention!” Garrett roared.

“Well, yelling’s not gonna help!”

“You almost got us killed! I think a little yelling’s in order!”

“I’m sorry,” she shouted, but her mouth tasted like dried tea leaves. Her hands on the wheel were shaking, and not from fright. She said quietly, “Garrett, I don’t feel so great.”

“Having a heart attack? Cause I sure am.”

“No, I mean it. I think something’s wrong.”

That stopped him. His eyes locked on her and noticed for the first time how intense her flush had become. Sweat had gathered and dried around her neckline, and she looked about ready to throw up. “Hit your emergency blinkers.”

“Yeah,” she said, almost childlike. She fumbled at the button and slowed for the next turnoff. They came to a jerking stop and she almost forgot to put the SUV in park. Garrett leaned over and felt her forehead. Burning up, and hard. His own head was aching, but he’d been drinking more water than she had and he didn’t feel nearly as feverish. He dug in the back and gave her another bottle of water. It didn’t go down well – or at all. She opened the door, undid her seatbelt, and spat back up a thin drizzle of brownish fluid.

Garrett came around the side of the SUV as she tumbled towards the ground, landing in her own vomit. A couple of tears were rolling down her face. “I think throwing up,” she complained, the words nonsensical, and he was helping her to her feet, trying not to panic. What was he supposed to do? He didn’t know, but he flashed back on a memory of a two-a-day practice schedule playing football that left him dehydrated and in the hospital when he was fourteen. The best thing in the world then had been the ice chips the pretty nurse had rubbed over his forehead and lips.

He helped Brianna to the passenger seat and dug out an ice cube from the cooler. When he pressed it to her forehead, she started to giggle and pushed him away weakly. “Tickles,” she said.

“I know,” he said, the panic rising in his voice. “Just please, for me, let me do this, okay?”

“Mm. Because you said it so nicely,” she whispered, and tried to kiss him. Instead, he managed to snake his hand up in time to rub the ice across her lips.

A Sentra pulled off the road behind them, and its passenger, a fishing-cap sporting older man, leaned out to holler, “You all right there, buddy?”

Garrett turned and tried not to shout, “Where’s the nearest hospital?”

The man said something to the driver, a frizzy-haired woman about the same age as him, and she nodded immediately. The man leaned back out. “Follow us.”

Garrett pushed Brianna’s hands and feet away from the door and didn’t bother buckling her in. He ran around the Durango and jumped into the driver’s seat, and when the Sentra shot ahead, he tailed it so closely that if a deer had jumped out, surely he would have rammed them.

“I’m afraid of us,” Brianna said conversationally, making vague little seesaw motions with her left hand. “Did you know that? Sometimes I think we killed all those people during the tornadoes because one of us couldn’t pull the trigger.”

Garrett gritted his teeth. “Baby, try drinking a little more water for me.”

“Back in Edmonton, I wanted to take your money. I wanted you to take care of me. I’m so fucking ashamed about it.”

“Don’t feel guilty, it’s your money too, just… don’t worry about it, okay?”

She ran her tongue out around her lips. “I want to hurt you sometimes. Well, everybody, sometimes. All the suffering, all the shit we’ve been through, and it just makes me want to punch something good in my life. Like when I bit you in Edmonton. I knew what I was doing. I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to taste your blood. And when you get all withdrawn after something bad happens, like I’m not suffering too, and you get all fucking needy, oh God, I hate that.”

“Stop, Brianna.” Where was Prince George? Where the fuck was this town?

“I look at guys in the gym sometime. Perks of the job, I guess. I’ve had a couple of real fuckin’ sexy dreams about Doug Cornell.”

“Stop,” he whispered.

“It’s why I was so freaked out way back in Lethbridge. It’s not you I’m worried about cheating on me. It’s me cheating on you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Maybe not now, but five, ten years down the line?” She leaned her chin down against her collarbone. “What am I saying? I’m so hot, Garrett.”

“I know, we’re almost to the hospital, it’s gonna be okay.”

“Stephanie-”

“Please, Brianna, just-”

“-sometimes, I’m so jealous of her, I want to claw her eyes out. She loves you, you know that? Sometimes I wonder if it’s more than a sisterly thing.”

“Please, God, stop!” he shouted, wishing he could plug his ears.

“I mean, she doesn’t talk to you for fifteen years? Girl’s got issues and hang-ups like you wouldn’t belieeeeeve.”

They broke out of the forest land and into a small, largely flat city. Finally, the outskirts of Prince George. As they pulled to a stop at a red light, Brianna gripped his arm. “Would you fuck her, Garrett?”

“This isn’t you, baby, it’s the fever talking-”

“Oh, it’s me,” she said, small, wincing, backing away. “I hate you sometimes when you white knight everything. You try so fucking hard all the time and it’s exhausting. I just want you to be you so I don’t have to try to match up to your standards about being so fucking perfect. I want you to be selfish and a fucking prick so I don’t have to feel so shitty about myself sometimes. And you…” By the end of that one, she was mumbling.

He grabbed her hand, keeping his eyes focused on the road, unable to look over. His heart was a whirlwind. What was going on? Why was this happening?

Brianna croaked, “I hate that I’ll never be your best friend.”

That one hurt, maybe more than all the others. “What?”

“You and Murphy. I’ll never have what you two have. It’s always been you two, and it’ll always be you two.”

“Of course you’re my best friend, You and Murphy both are.”

They flashed by a sign – University Hospital was all he caught – and then they were turning again, the Sentra shooting towards the emergency entrance. Garrett jerked up onto the sidewalk, not caring about the looks he was getting, and shot out of the Durango to grab Brianna out of the passenger’s seat. She swatted at him when he opened the door, but in her eyes, he saw a fierce terror, and she was shaking her head. “I don’t know what I’m saying,” she whispered, and then she was falling towards him. With a scream for help he didn’t realize he was making, he caught her, lifted her in his arms, and carried her until a someone, a group of someones, was taking her from him.

On Hallowed Lanes, Chapters

Utterly pointless drivel. Almost certainly these would have been cut. At this point I’d checked out of this novel.

Chapter 24

As much as they liked the Canadian Rockies, the relentless heat and the conditions it caused drove them out of Jasper National Park regrettably early, but they promised each other they’d come back, possibly to Banff in the spring during a long weekend. After an early brunch with the Halls, they packed up their things and headed west through the park, stopping a few times to snap pictures of the mountains and a herd of goats crossing the road. The goats were a salve to Brianna, who was still hoping to see a bear, moose or caribou.

They expected plains once they broke free of the park, much as they’d seen throughout the first two-thirds of their journey, but the gently yawning mountains pillowed out to either side of them all the way from Jasper to Prince George. Several rivers and streams danced with Highway 16, first the icy-looking Miette within the national park, then the Fraser, which swooped and swirled through the magnificent canyons joyously, its waters dotted with fisherman and boaters enjoying the blazingly hot summer day.

Life exploded around them on the achingly beautiful drive. Woodpeckers knocked against the soft green and brown-coated trees. Huge fish broached the surface of the river, searching out the swarms of mosquitos and other insects spotting the river’s surface. They played no music, they spoke little for the first couple of hours. Despite her best unwilling efforts, not even the spectral child could break them of the good mood.

After a stop to get pictures and walk a short trail to the waters of the Fraser, Brianna took Garrett’s hand and leaned her head against his shoulder. He could not hear her hum over the cascading waters, but he could feel the vibration from her throat. He wished he could make love to her right there, slowly, tenderly, but in the end, a long, searing kiss had to do.

Back in the Durango, Brianna said softly, “Tell me more.”

After he buckled his seat belt, Garrett took her hand in his, kissed each finger, and started talking again.

Chapter 25

Though they weren’t hungry, the name Gigglin’ Grizzly Pub was too good to ignore, so they stopped in McBride three hours and change after setting off from Jasper. Though they intended on just stopping for a moment, the sleepy, cheerful little valley town won them over completely the moment they eased off the highway.

Brianna hit him as they pulled into the parking lot, then again. “Moose. Moose moose moose!” she shouted, then got control of herself and whispered very responsibly so as to not startle the very distant creature – who could not have possibly heard her in the Durango.

Rubbing his shoulder, Garrett shut off the car. “Got your wild animal fix finally.”

Brianna jerked around in her seat and was yanked back promptly by her seat belt. “Ow,” she muttered, and unhooked herself to grab her camera. “Oh man, oh my God, oh man.” She found it, fumbled the case open, and flicked the on switch before leaning over to kiss Garrett briefly. “I love you so much.”

“I l-” But she was already slipping outside, gently shutting the SUV’s door behind her. “-ove you too,” he finished, and stayed put. If he startled the moose in any way, Brianna would be asking the cook inside the restaurant to serve him up for lunch.

Not daring to move much closer, Brianna kneeled gently in the dry dirt, bringing the camera up slowly. Aside from a couple of other people in the parking lot pointing at the magnificent creature, it felt like just her and the moose, taking each other in and acknowledging that the space between them was sacred and not to be crossed.

Others might have thought moose were ugly creatures with their awkwardly sized heads and giant lips, but she found them stunning, especially when they sliced down through lakes and rivers, gently rippling the surfaces despite their bulk. This one was tall, nearly as tall as Brianna – and she was a tall woman, standing only inches shorter than Garrett’s six two. A female, she guessed, trying to think back to when moose grew antlers. She thought they dropped them in the winter, along the same time as deer, but she wasn’t sure. It grazed on a shrub in an unoccupied along a side road, audible tearing away bits of leafy greens from the bush and chewing unhurriedly as it watched her.

“Hello, moose,” she whispered, and snapped off several shots.

The ghost of the child stood beside her, annoyed that the scar-sweet-scent woman wasn’t responding to her. These two, her and the jagged-face-warm-eyes should have been frothing at each other by now. The girl was tired of the slow trickle of food from them, but now that she wanted her feast, they weren’t responding like they should. She would try harder, she decided. So hungry. So hungry now.

* * *

They came out of the Gigglin’ Grizzly a couple of hours later, Brianna holding Garrett’s arm as her camera swung by her side. She stumbled over nothing at all, and murmured drunkenly, “Stupid cliff!”

“Yeah,” Garrett agreed, clutching his wife’s frame tighter against him. “Stupid cliff.” She was gone to a variety of beer and mixed drinks, bought for them by the slow trickle of locals who’d heard about the moose and come in for a beer and lunch. Once word got around that they were on their honeymoon, once again, the couple had found themselves on the receiving end of a lot of alcohol. Garrett held off, but the bartender told him about a nearby motel. The town was small enough they could grab a room and walk back to the bar to continue the celebration. Seemed like a great idea, especially to a wobbly Brianna.

Garrett dragged Brianna out of there with the promise that they’d be back soon. The motel pickings in McBride were slim, but the places all had spectacular views of the Rockies and the North Caribou Mountains. It was simply the most beautiful little village they’d been through yet, laid out gently in the midst of a flat, lusciously green valley, surrounded by farmland and edged by the same river they’d stopped at earlier that day.

With no wildlife to startle, Brianna launched into a drunken song in the SUV as Garrett looked up the motels in the area. It took him a minute, but he finally recognized it as the theme to Strange Brew, and started cracking up. It had taken all her resolve not to endlessly quote that and Canadian Bacon, and she’d lasted an admirably long time. He hummed along as they pulled out, headed for the Beaver Creek Lodge, a series of small cabins they could rent.

The cabins were nicely spacious, split into a main room with a little kitchenette and a bedroom. Brianna helped Garrett roll in their luggage and flopped on the bed as he brought in their cooler. As he took everything out so he could dump the water forming at the bottom, she said, “We could stay here forever, you know?”

It was an idle comment, but it stopped him cold. He was glad his back was turned to her, so she didn’t see him duck his head against his chest. Hadn’t he wanted this for them? That was what the whole last six months had been about, save for their brief and bloody fight against the Band of Princes. He’d tried to back away from the vigilante life, to live something approaching normal with her.

God, how his heart ached for this. If he thought she was at all serious, he’d be on the line with Ed in a minute, figuring out what they’d need to do to gain Canadian citizenship and buy a house there in that canyon. Slowly, softly so she wouldn’t hear, he expelled the fiery breath caught in his throat and turned, smiling. “It really is beautiful, isn’t it?”

Their time in McBride floated away from them like dandelion fluff caught on the breeze. A pick-up baseball game played by teenagers hooting and shouting at one another while they watched from the grass, passing bottled water and chaste kisses between the two of them as they talked about little of consequence. A trip to the local museum, where they learned about local railroads and farming. A slow walk down two hiking paths, and a stop at the river to take in the views and each other. Some of their new friends from the bar invited them to an impromptu barbeque behind one of the other motels, which grew into a community gathering of sorts. A local strummed a guitar, another traveling couple introduced them to several microbrews including one of Brianna’s new favorites, Vienna amber, and a few people with some steaks and burgers turned into a full-on couple of dozen of people bringing down Hibachis and charcoal barbeques. Brianna’s camera was taken from her sometime in the festivities by a kindly woman who told her to experience it all while she took the pictures for her. Try as she might, Brianna could never remember that woman’s name, one of the great travesties of their journey through Canada.

Their next day turned into more hiking, more exploring. They had every intention of heading to Prince George that afternoon, but two of their newly minted friends invited them out on their boat. Garrett accepted, then winced, thinking about Brianna’s scar story. Sensing his hesitation, she jumped right in, thanking them and agreeing wholeheartedly. Garrett got her away for a moment, and whispered in her ear, “If you feel uncomfortable-”

“If we were kayaking, this would be a different story,” she said, and kissed his cheek. “But thank you for thinking about me.”

The chilly river spray and the heat of the day made for an uneven experience, but beer was plentiful for the passengers and they wound up having a good time. By the time they got back to the dock, it was fast approaching evening, and they decided to stay one more night, taking their friends to dinner and finally crashing out back in their little cabin, sunburned, exhausted, and happy.

* * *

Wary that their McBride friends would somehow manage to keep them there another day, Brianna and Garrett woke up early and slowly packed their things again. They took a last couple of selfies with the mountains behind them, finally loaded up into the Durango, and headed for the gas station. While Garrett filled the tank, he took in the mountains one last time, and without warning, he slumped against the SUV, banging it hard accidentally before he slid down next to the tire, his chest hitching. He couldn’t get the air out, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. It wasn’t real it wasn’t real it wasn’t real it wasn’t real.

“It is,” Brianna said gently, standing above him. She knelt, and pressed a hand to his breast.

“I can’t,” he groaned. “You, this place, it’s not real, oh God, it’s not real…”

She sank down to the ground beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. On the other side of the pump, a man was staring, slack-jawed. Brianna shook her head at him, and the man jerked as if he’d been goosed. With a clatter, he slid the nozzle home, opened up the door behind him, and slid into his truck, never taking his eyes off Garrett.

People were coming out of the store, people they’d met. They were pointing now, and whispering, and Brianna didn’t care. She held her sobbing husband, and wished she could somehow put all the broken pieces back into place.

On Hallowed Lanes, Chapter 24

Of particular note with this one are the Halls, a pair of RVers. They’re modeled after my grandparents Jean and Leonard Hall, who spent a great part of their lives RVing back and forth from Palmdale to Sam’s Town in Las Vegas. Leonard used to say of his RV that the mechanics dropped all the pieces of the vehicle in the desert and let the wind blow it together.

Good people, and missed dearly. Nana would have a fit about me including them in a book this full of swearing and violence. Hah. And while I’m thinking about it, if you ever read A Shot at Us, the couple that pull up in the Jimmy at the church are modeled after my parents. Fun fun.

Chapter 23

Had they known there was a fire ban in effect, Garrett might have pushed for them to spend their planned time in Jasper National Park in a hotel instead of camping. Instead, they were too busy bickering over postcards and packages to their friends and families to notice the huge, glaring signs as they paid their fees to enter the park  Garrett was firmly on the side of mailing some of the packages in the town of the same name as the park, but Brianna was set on the notion that the expenses would be staggering and they should just hold off until they were back in the States.

“Brianna,” Garrett said in what he hoped was approaching a reasonable, tolerating tone, “If we cram so much as a napkin in the back end of this SUV, we won’t be able to see through the rearview mirror. And we still have Vancouver and St. George to go through yet.”

“So we’ll rearrange. And what do you mean, to get through? You make it sound like you’re going to war, not vacationing with your wife.”

Still trying not to make little strangling motions with his hands, Garrett said sweetly, “I did rearrange. This morning. You were there. You helped. You sat on the curb and directed me.”

“Oh, now I’m not helping enough?”

The park employee helpfully waved at them. “Hey. You can go on through now.”

Brianna whipped her head so hard to gaze at the man, Garrett wouldn’t have been surprised if she started spitting split pea soup. “Thanks.”

“And enjoy your…” But Brianna was already pulling forward, and the park employee sighed. “…stay in Jasper.” She adjusted her uniform, reaffixed her smile, and waited for the next car, full of happier Australians.

Back in the Durango, Brianna squeezed the steering wheel as she leaned forward and grimaced. “Stupid road butt ache’ll never go away.”

“We’ve got the travel pillows-”

“Yeah, so my knees can bang up against the steering wheel every time we bounce over a pebble. Right.”

Garrett gestured at the mountain spines rising all around the gently curving road. “Oh look, hey, wow, nature, beauty.”

“Same damn mountain range is in Montana,” Brianna snapped.

That stopped him. He thought they’d been mock fighting. But there was a serious edge to her voice. “Okay. Hey. You want to just keep going through the park, that’s fine. I’m sorry I suggested it.”

“I…” Brianna blinked and ran a hand across her forehead. Her fever was back, and with a vengeance. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Any of that.”

“Are you okay?”

“I… yeah.” She glanced around at the mountains. “They really are beautiful. I didn’t… I want to be here.”

“If you don’t, just say it. We can keep going or go home. But remember what you said to me about not wanting to go anywhere if I’m going to be miserable? That works for you too.”

“I know.” Her tone was harsh again, but she softened it immediately. “I know. I think once I can get out and stretch, and we can do some hiking, I’ll be good. I don’t mean to be bitchy.”

“Hey, it’s not like we haven’t been spending a couple of weeks within feet of each other. Bound to happen.” I guess, he mentally added. Seemed like they were snapping at each other or walking on eggshells more than they were actually talking.

But the Rocky Mountains really did bring back a soothing calm to their world, and in a hurry. The well maintained four-lane highway switched into a single lane road, the groves of aspens gave way to bare-bottomed, top-heavy firs, and with their windows down, the sharp wafting pine scent reminded Garrett of his own cabin. A pang of homesickness washed over him, unexpected and sharp in its longing. As much as he loved the Flats and the state in general, such a feeling had only ever belonged to his family in Florida or when he had to take time apart from Brianna. Homesickness was not something he’d ever applied to a place before. It was new. Beautiful, in a way.

Brianna finally, reluctantly agreed that they should get their friends’ packages out of the way, and they made the titular little town of Jasper their first stop. The postcards were surprisingly reasonable, the packages markedly less so, but at least the Durango was largely livable again. The packaging and mailing took up a solid hour, during which the ghostly child wandered away. Neither Garrett or Brianna seemed to notice their dampened moods lifting, but their snapping and verbal bites eased into a more comfortable quiet as they finished their business.

Cheery Jasper seemed like a bit of a tourist trap, but in a national park, that was to be expected. Still sore from their long drive, Brianna wanted to take a walk, so they wandered the town’s main street. Traffic was fairly light – it was noon-ish on a weekday – but a handful of people meandered here and there, largely hitting up the varied gift shops and a women’s clothing store. Neither of them felt like much shopping after their days at the West Edmonton Mall, so they kept their purchases to the town’s small Super A grocery store. There, they stocked up on some of their favorite camping staples – chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers for S’mores, cheap hot dogs, a pound of hamburger, condiments, and a loaf of bread. They debated on eggs for the mornings, and decided to risk it. After Garrett ran out to check their drink supply, they added a gallon of water, a few six packs of beer they hadn’t yet tried on the trip, and a couple of bags of ice.

Back at the SUV, Garrett unloaded the cooler while Brianna hoisted the bags, glancing around at the scenery, humming a little. When he turned to start loading their drinks, the sight of her there in the sun holding the grocery bags brought back a memory in a rush. Gently, he took the bags from her, set them on the ground, and embraced her, his hands finding each other around her back and not letting go for a full half a minute.

“What’s that for?” she asked as he pulled away.

He scratched his chin. “I hate to bring it up.”

“It’s okay. Tell me.”

“After Danny died… I was being kind of a selfish ass. I should have been focused on you, and all I could think about was that we were pulling apart.”

She smiled sadly. “I remember. Hard days.”

“Yeah. Then there was this morning, I woke up, and you were heading for the door, trying to be sneaky and not wake me up. And I thought that was it. That was the moment I’d lost you.”

She frowned, trying to remember, and shook her head. “I don’t-” Then it dawned on her. “Oh right, I wanted to have dinner with Rose and Ed. Do something normal again.”

“Right! And you left a note for me on the table. I was so wrecked I couldn’t even read it.”

A laugh bubbled out of Brianna, pretty and soft. “And all it said was ‘gone for groceries. Dinner with E and R?’”

Garrett’s own smile gleamed as he lost himself to the memory. “Murphy thought you’d gone too. He was just standing there, watching over me curled up on the couch. And when you walked back in, I… I don’t even know what I thought. I was so wildly confused. Everything in me said you would run. I thought for sure it was over and up until then, I might have thought you’d be better off.”

“Garrett-”

“No, let me finish. I know in my head I’m not good for you. But that day, when you came back, it was the first time I didn’t care. I knew I had to have you in my life. Even if it means someday something horrible happens, I had to stop thinking I needed to push you away. I know I’ve tried a couple of times since then, but… I’m glad you always came back.”

For that, she gave him a kiss and a hug of her own. Into his ear, she whispered quietly, “Will you do something for me tonight?”

“Anything.”

“Would you read your vows again for me? Please?”

His vows. He’d written them the day after their first date, though at the time he hadn’t known they’d someday become the words he’d speak to her on their wedding day. They were words of love and gratitude, ill-written in his childish handwriting and badly spelled, but still the greatest and hardest words he’d ever put down. There was more to them – instructions for her if something happened to him and a few contacts and phone numbers – but the words were the important part.

“Of course.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t get to keep his promise to her that night. He would make good on his word the next night, but their first night at the Pocahontas campsite north of Jasper belonged entirely to the strange Rogier Mesman.

* * *

After setting up their tent at their campsite, they headed first for Whistlers Mountain, which not only afforded them views of the surrounding valleys and mountains, but had a chairlift over to another peak which sounded amazing in theory. But only an hour into their climb up the beautiful trails cutting through groves of trees, Garrett caught sight of a pair of squirrels racing diagonal rings around a fir and was laughing too hard to see the sharply jutting rock right in front of him.

The ankle wasn’t broken, Brianna told him but he wasn’t going any further up the mountain, either. There wasn’t much they could do for the ankle up there on the mountain aside from letting him rest for a bit, but a pair of youthful parents leading a small horde of children and teenagers crossed paths with them not long after they started down the mountain gingerly. The father and his oldest boy hustled back down to their van for a first aid kit. Brianna bandaged Garrett up, and by that point, a ranger had been notified and was on his way with a pair of crutches.

Red-faced and feeling more than a little stupid, Garrett tried to pay the couple, but they insisted that it was their duty as Good Samaritans. That got them a ferocious hug from Brianna, and a mumbled, almost bashful round of thanks from Garrett to all the kids and their minders. They looked after the family as they charged up the hill, all smiles and shrieking and laughter and laughter. Brianna turned to start down the trail, but it was a long minute before Garrett tore his eyes away from the family. Had Brianna really doubted he wanted a family with her? Good God, he was ready for eighteen kids right then and there.

The ranger walked with them back down to the Durango. An irritated, grumpy man, he pointed out several of the mountain ranges around them as they walked, grunting the syllables like he was a sergeant belting out the morning’s commands to his troops. When asked where they could get firewood for a campfire, he stopped completely, practically up on the balls of his feet like he might take a swing. He told them, his words clipped, that if they’d read the signs, they would know there was a fire ban in effect. At the parking lot, he took back the crutches, gave Garrett a once-over, and muttered, “Next time, don’t be an idiot.”

It was, by and large, some of the soundest life advice they’d received in Canada so far.

* * *

Back at the campsite, Brianna made Garrett rest and elevate his foot while she worked up a makeshift ice pack to treat his ankle. He grumbled that he was fine and that he could go hiking if she wanted, but she turned that right back around on him and asked what he’d want to do if she was the one who had been hurt. That shut him up for a while before they started in on what they should do with the burger and dogs they’d bought now that they couldn’t cook them.

The solution for that came from the Halls, two retirees from southern California traveling North American national parks much the same as Brianna and Garrett were traveling Alberta. They were parked in a nearby RV hookup site, and struck up a conversation with the younger couple while they were strolling around the campsites. Garrett offered them the still-chilled foods in danger of spoiling, but the couple instead offered to cook dinner at their campsite. It worked out well for both parties, since Garrett and Brianna had the food and the RV had a stove.

With full stomachs, Garrett and Brianna headed back for their campsite. A man strolled along the road, his long coppery hair tied up in a bun atop his head with a rubber band. His lips cracked apart in a smile as he ambled towards them, bony knees bobbing up and down rhythmically, as though he were keeping time to a tune inside his head. “Wotcher, folks!”

Brianna gave him a polite, friendly smile and a wave. “Hi there!” Garrett echoed her, but his hands were full with the cooler, even more packed now with snacks and plastic baggies full of leftovers. The Halls had been as doting as long-lost grandparents.

“Name’s Rogier.” The stranger pronounced it raj-she. “I smelled the food down in my camp. I thought I would take a stroll, see if I could find the source of this magnificent scent.”

Rogier’s accent was all over the place. Garrett couldn’t pin down if he was French, French-Canadian – an accent they’d heard from a few travelers in Edmonton – or someone doing a bad impression of a New Orleans accent. Rogier never quite settled on any one of those, brutalizing his consonants and trying to sing his vowels.

“Well,” Garrett said uncertainly, but Brianna jumped right in.

“Would you be interested in a bite? We’ve got plenty of extras.”

“I would love some, if you do have extra.”

Brianna gestured at the cooler. “Sure! We’ve got plenty. Got a last name, Rogier?”

“Mesman. And your name, kind lady?”

“Brianna. Moranis. And this is Garrett.”

Garrett grunted something vaguely approaching friendly and headed towards their campsite. Rogier trotted along behind them like a puppy, glancing all around with wide eyes and an easy smile. “Ah, Americans!” he exclaimed when he saw the license plate on their SUV. “Just out for a Sunday drive to our national park?”

Brianna laughed politely. “Something like that. We’re on our honeymoon. Traveling through Alberta and a bit of British Columbia.”

“Get out,” Rogier exclaimed. “Your honeymoon? Congratulations!”

Garrett settled the cooler on the wooden table, and Brianna opened it to offer him a burger, a small bag of chips, and a beer. Rogier made what should have been a short meal into a grandiose affair, asking them question after question about their trip and where they’d been. Not long after he started talking, the ghostly young teenager flickered through the woods, walking towards Garrett with a sullen expression on her face, like she’d been told she was grounded. One beer for Rogier quickly became three after an hour, and when he finally finished off the chips, he gave the cooler a mournful glance.

“You’ve been such good hosts, and I’ve nothing to offer you,” he said. “Can I at least take a picture with you both? I’d love to have this moment to remember you by.” When Brianna cheerfully agreed and Garrett reluctantly nodded, Rogier patted his pockets and swore. “I must have left my camera back with my truck. Perhaps you could take one and send it to me.”

Brianna hopped up and dug out her cell phone from the Durango. The three of them stood together, doing a variety of goofy smiles and poses. Brianna insisted on giving him their leftovers, and finally Rogier bid them a good night. When he was out of earshot, Brianna said quietly, “You sure weren’t friendly.”

“He wasn’t exactly shy about wanting something from us, Brianna. I don’t think our neighbor was such a nice guy.”

“What, you’re pissed about me giving away our food? Garrett, I’ve seen you leave a twenty-dollar tip for a Coke.”

“No, not the food. Did you see the way he got you to dig out your cell phone? He was looking to see what kind of model you had.”

“Oh come on, that’s a stretch,” Brianna protested as she ringed one of their solar lamps around the driver’s rearview mirror. It would be dark soon, and they’d want the light.

“Really? When you got up to grab some napkins from the car, did you see him cataloging the stuff we had inside? Brianna, he was practically drooling.”

She laughed and crossed over to him, cupping his cheek with one hand. “Baby, relax. You see the rotten shit people do so much, you’re imagining it now. Some people are just… people. He needed food and company, we gave it to him. That’s all. You’ll see.”

* * *

The small pup tent retained some of the day’s warmth even after the night threatened to drop down into freezing temperatures. Brianna snored softly – well, for her, anyways – tucked away in their roomy two-person sleeping bag, a travel pillow tucked under her neck. She dreamed of her father and Ransom Galbraith, an old nightmare by now, still wicked but lacking its sharp ugliness. When she came to the part of the dream where Ransom came around the corner of the door, his gun in hand and moving faster than her own – unlike real life, when she’d managed to draw down on him first and put down the psycho fuckstain – she whimpered and came awake, aware for the first time that she was alone.

Just gone to the bathroom, she thought blearily. He’ll be back in a second. Then she heard the voices.

* * *

Given the soft solar lamplight, there weren’t many places Garrett could have sat in waiting comfortably, so he took up a position near a tree further in the darkness, hoping like hell a bear didn’t make him its dinner.

Just as he thought, someone kicked dirt on the road an hour later. For a moment, he thought it might be the Halls – it was coming from their direction, and the thought of the elderly couple being the ones to show up and steal from them would have made an amusing twist. But no, Rogier was just being clever, circling the whole camp and coming around from the other side.

Almost lazily, Garrett rose to his feet, keeping loose. Rogier tested the Durango’s back hatch. No luck. The back door on the passenger’s side. Still nothing. The front passenger door? That was unlocked. Garrett left it that way.

Though not as trained in wilderness tactics as he was in urban stealth, Garrett had enough practice moving through the woods silently from various cases with Murphy that he effortlessly crept up on Rogier until he was just feet away, still ringed in darkness. “You’re a disappointment, you know that?”

The would-be thief jumped hard enough to bang his head on the oh-shit handle. “Motherfuck-”

“Keep your voice down,” Garrett whispered. “Accent’s gone, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Rogier muttered. Now he sounded just like a thousand other Canadians they’d heard in Alberta – that was to say, he had little accent at all.

“You know what I’d do to you right now if it wasn’t for my wife? I’d break every bone in your good hand. We already gave to you, and you’d take more.”

“If it’s a lecture or the bone-breaking, I’ll take the pain.”

Garrett grinned in the darkness. “There was a time I would have obliged you, asshole. But that woman in there, my wife, she still believes in goodness, in decency. I love that about her and I never want it to change. I’m not about to break her heart and neither are you.”

“So… what?”

“In that side compartment, there’s a notepad and a pen. Get it.”

Rogier scuffled around and came up with both. “Okay?”

“Write her a thank you. A nice one, but keep it short. It’s cold and I want to go back to sleep.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You’re going to thank my wife for the food and her generosity. Leave it under the windshield wiper. Then you’re going to vanish, whoever the fuck you really are. If I see you again tomorrow, I’ll get you alone and make good on all my threats.”

Rogier scribbled out a note. Garrett approached out of the night, took it from him with two fingers, gave it a cursory look, and passed it back for him to put it in place. Garrett gestured at the road, and the man took off, practically running. A flick of the Durango’s lock later, and Garrett was headed back for the tent.

At the flap, he stopped to take off his shoes, and stepped in gingerly so as to not drag the muck of the forest floor with him. Brianna was as he’d left her, snoring, her arm outstretched across his side of the sleeping bag. He lifted it gently and slid in with her. She murmured a sleepy question, and he quietly told her nature had called. Slowly he dipped back into sleep, never seeing her smile in the dark.

* * *

In the morning, across the table as they ate Fig Newtons and boxes of tiny cereal dry, Brianna couldn’t stop smiling at him. Garrett tried to frown, found it was an abject failure, and finally asked with an amused lift of his lips what she was smiling about.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just thinking about how good people can be in this world.” And she was. Not Rogier, not like Garrett thought she meant, but him. Always him.