Waking Up Dead

When I died, I expected to go to heaven.

Okay. Maybe hell. It’s not like I was perfect or anything. But I was sort of hoping for heaven.

Instead, I went to Alabama.

Yeah. I know. It’s weird.

I died in Dallas, my hometown. I was killed, actually.

Murdered. I’ll spare you the gruesome details. I don’t like to remember them myself. Some jerk with a knife—and probably a Bad-Mommy complex. Believe me, if I knew where he was, I’d go haunt his ass.

At any rate, by the time death came, I was ready for it—ready to stop hurting, ready to let go. I didn’t even fight it.

And then I woke up dead in Alabama. Talk about pissed off.

You know, even reincarnation would have been fine with me—I could have started over, clean slate and all that.

Human, cow, bug. Whatever. But no. I ended up haunting someplace I’d never even been.

That’s not the way it’s supposed to work, right? Ghosts are supposed to be the tortured spirits of those who cannot let go of their earthly existence. If they could be convinced to follow the light, they’d leave behind said earthly existence and quit scaring the bejesus out of the poor folks who run across them. That’s what all those “ghost hunter” shows on television tell us.

Let me tell you something. The living don’t know jack about the dead.

Not this dead chick, anyway.

It took me a while to figure out what had happened, of course. I came to, drifting along a downtown sidewalk in some strange little town. A full moon shone high above me, glinting off the windows of the closed stores. The only noise came from a little pub-like bar down a side street. I didn’t know where I was or how I’d gotten there. What better cure for that than a stiff shot of something?

Next thing I knew, I was inside the bar. Like I was having those blackouts that people with multiple personalities claim to get. Fugues. I actually wondered for a minute if maybe that’s what was going on.

Then I tried to order a drink. “Vodka martini, extra dirty. Lots of olives,” I said when the bartender glanced my way.

The bartender ignored me. I tried again. The bartender walked away.

That’s when I became Callie Taylor, Ghost Cliché.

I leaned over the dark oak bar and yelled after the bartender. “Hey! Down here! I want to order something.” I got kind of a funny feeling in my stomach—like a muscle cramp or something. When I looked down, I realized I was standing in the middle of the bar, drink glasses and all. That concerned me, so I stepped right through it and to the other side.

I won’t bore you with the rest of my moment of epiphany. Suffice to say, I figured out I could do lots of ghostly things—walk through walls, blow out candles just by passing over them, let people feel a chill when they moved through me. (I don’t recommend it; it’s kind of chilly on this side, too. Brrr.) But I can’t do much of the old live-person stuff. I can’t eat. I can’t drink. I can sort of smell food and drink, and that’s nice, but not nearly as nice as eating and drinking was. If I concentrate really hard, I can sometimes make things move just a little bit. Electronic stuff is easiest—I can make anything electric go haywire. But I couldn’t talk to anyone.

I tried to. I used every ounce of concentration I had to make myself heard. I tried over and over again. I went all over town trying to get someone’s attention.

Sometimes, some poor schmuck caught a glimpse of me. One guy just about peed himself when I showed up in a mirror behind him, and that made me feel bad. So I pretty much quit trying to do that after a while.

And of course I tried to leave. If I had to be a ghost, I at least wanted to see how my family was doing back in Dallas. Find some way to let Mom and Dad and my brother Craig know that I was okay, really.

To be entirely honest, I also kind of wanted to see my own funeral. See who was there. I especially wanted to know if Preston Davis had shown up at my funeral. Preston was a database administrator for a local hospital and had been my on-again-off-again boyfriend for a while. We’d met at my friend Amy’s Halloween party and hit it off but were both too busy to start up anything serious. At least that’s what I told myself. Amy called him my “fuck buddy,” and in my more honest moments, I had to admit to myself that there was little more to the relationship than that, no matter what I might have wished.

I wanted to know if he cried at my funeral and how—or if—he introduced himself to my family.

Yeah. Okay. So it’s petty of me. So what? I’d had a rough week. Cut me some slack.

Anyway, I suspected that Preston sat with Amy and her husband Brian at the funeral. Amy, my best friend since college, would have been sobbing. Brian, the tall, kind, quiet man she’d married, would have been comforting her and occasionally wiping his own eyes with a tissue.

On the other hand, I imagined that Preston sat through the funeral stoically and then quietly left when the service was over.

Preston wasn’t into big shows of emotion.

I’d spent the entire eight months of our relationship ignoring the fact that his lack of emotional affect bothered me.

Now I found myself growing angry at his stoicism at my funeral.

Imaginary funeral, I reminded myself. Imaginary stoicism. Imaginary Preston, for that matter. I didn’t have any idea what had really happened. Not that it mattered, at this point.

But there were other things I wanted to know, too. I wanted to know how long it had taken someone to go into my condo. I hoped not too long—I hoped someone had gotten to my cat Phoebe in time, that someone had fed her, given her water. That someone had adopted her and was feeding her right now.

I hoped Amy had taken Phoebe in. In fact, I was just going to assume that Amy had; it was easier on me.

But apparently, I couldn’t get to Dallas to check these things out. I couldn’t even go outside of the city limits. I’d hit the edge of town, take one more step, and pop! I’d be right back in the middle of downtown. Don’t get me wrong.

Abramsville, Alabama is a lovely little town. Cute little downtown square with an ornate, nineteenth-century courthouse and shops selling knickknacks and jewelry and plaques with clever sayings on them. There’s a college, a couple of bars, some beautiful old houses.

But it’s not my town.

And it gets lonely, being the only ghost in town.

I know, I know. My best bet would have been to find other ghosts to hang out with. I tried it all. I hung out in hospitals, cemeteries, nursing homes, everywhere I could think of that other ghosts might congregate. I was even in the hospital emergency room a couple of times when other people died. All I saw was just a shimmer in the air above them, a wispy movement like light on fog. And then it was gone.

But as far as full-on, hanging-out-in-town ghosts?

Nothing.

This went on for weeks. And in that time, you want to know what I learned about being dead?

It’s boring.

Bo-Ring.

Until, that is, the night I saw some creep chop up Molly McClatchey.

I had fallen into something of a routine by then. One of the things that all those ghost hunter shows get right is that some people seem to be more “sensitive” than others. Some people got all freaked out when I was around, even if they didn’t know why. That’s why I was able to make that one guy see me in the mirror.

So I started hanging out at the houses of people who were most emphatically not sensitive to my presence.

Just for the sense of companionship, mind you. I wasn’t being all voyeuristic or anything. That would be creepy. I just missed being around normal people. Or any people at all, for that matter. I missed my life. I’d had a lot of friends. Every Sunday night Amy had hosted poker night. We took turns cooking—me, Amy, Brian, Lia, Elizabeth, Jim.

Sometimes Preston even showed up, though he was more likely to order pizza for everyone if it was his turn to provide dinner.

The McClatcheys were the sort of couple who would have fit in perfectly with my friends in Dallas. I liked being around them. She taught art at the local college. He owned a musical instrument repair shop. She was tiny, dark-skinned with long, black, curly hair and brown eyes. He was tall and thin with sandy brown hair. They were both in their late twenties. No kids, yet, but they were talking about it.

Yes. I heard them talking about wanting to have kids soon. So what? It wasn’t gross or anything. On Thursdays, they watched the crime show that had been my favorite when I was alive. So around seven, after dinner, I drifted over and watched their television.

I can’t help it if they had conversations while I was there.

And it’s not like they were the only people whose homes I invaded. Haunted. Whatever. Mondays at the Stevenses’ place. Tuesdays at the Andersens’ home.

Wednesdays with the Smiths. And so on.

Like I said, I was bored.

Anyway.

This Thursday was different. Rick McClatchey had gone to some musician repairman conference. Molly had been at home by herself for several days, and I could tell she was ready for Rick to get home. She stood at the kitchen counter humming to herself as she chopped vegetables for a salad.

Steaks sizzled on the small indoor grill. Potatoes wrapped in foil baked in the oven. Even I could smell the wonderful dinner she was preparing for Rick’s return—another reason I liked to spend time at the McClatchey’s: Molly’s cooking always smelled great.

When the front door opened, I think Molly and I both expected it to be Rick.

“Hi, honey,” she sang out from the kitchen.

No one answered, but Molly didn’t seem worried.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” she said, loudly enough to be heard in the living room. “If you’ll set the table, I’ll get everything else together.”

She didn’t even turn around when the man walked into the kitchen. It’s what Rick would have done, after all. And she was bent over the oven, pulling out the pan that held the baked potatoes.

I saw him, though. He wasn’t Rick McClatchey. He wasn’t anyone I’d ever seen before. He had dark hair—almost black—and pale blue eyes. Tiny pits covered his cheeks, like he’d had adolescent acne. He was shorter than Rick and more muscular. He wore regular clothes—Levi jeans and a black t-shirt—but he also wore black leather gloves and those little blue booties that doctors and nurses sometimes put on over their shoes.

And he had some sort of wire in his hands, the ends twisted into his grip.

I knew what was going to happen when I saw the wire.

I started screaming. “Molly, no! Watch out!” I waved my arms over my head and screamed at the top of my lungs. I closed my eyes and concentrated on forcing my hands make real contact with Molly, pushing as hard as I could with my hands and my mind, hoping to make her drop the pan and turn around.

It didn’t do much good, though.

The pan of potatoes did slip out of Molly’s hands and she danced backward to avoid getting hit with the bouncing foil packages. But none of that stopped what was about to happen.

As Molly straightened up, the man slipped the wire over her head and twisted it around her neck. She struggled, but he pulled the garrote tighter and tighter.

I was screaming at the top of my ghostly voice, for all the good it did me. I moved up behind the man and beat at his back with closed fists—fists that slipped in and out of his back without ever making real contact. He shuddered a little—clearly, he was one of the very slightly sensitive ones—but he didn’t loosen his hands.

I reached up and tried to grab the wire, tried to pull against the pressure he was exerting on the wire and it did loosen for an instant. But only for an instant. The living have more control over solid objects than the dead do. I never resented that fact more than at that moment.

But I kept trying. I kept trying as Molly’s face turned purple, then blue, then black, kept trying even as she drooped in the man’s grip.

Then he loosened the wire and it was too late. I watched that wispy, light-on-fog life force slip out of Molly and move on to wherever it is that other people go when they die. I was glad she didn’t show up next to me as a full-blown ghost. At that moment, I wouldn’t have wished my impotent half-existence on anyone.

I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d been alive; I might have been able to save her.

If I could have cried real tears, I would have. As it was,

I was sobbing hoarsely and calling the man every dirty name I could think of.

I was still cursing as I followed him around the kitchen. First, he opened the pantry and pulled out a box of Hefty garbage bags. Then he grabbed a knife out of the block on the counter. And finally, he picked up Molly’s body and carried it to the bathroom.

What he did to her body was horrible.

I didn’t want to stay. And I didn’t want to watch.

But more than that, I didn’t want this son of a bitch to get away with what he was doing.

He was meticulous; I have to grant him that. The garbage bags were for himself—he wore them to catch the blood splatter as he cut her up in the tub. He wore a dust mask, I guess to keep his DNA off of her. He traded his leather gloves for surgical gloves, making sure that everything he took off went into a pouch he wore on his belt.

I’d assumed that he would take Molly’s body with him, but he didn’t. He left her splayed out in pieces in the bathtub like some broken, disarticulated doll.

I’m no cop. Never was. When I was alive, I was a technical writer. I designed documents for one of the big phone companies—the sorts of instruction manuals that come with a CD and titles like Easy Installation Instructions for Your New DSL.

But I watched plenty of cop shows. Especially after I died. Not much else to do.

So when he started cleaning up, I waited for my chance. And eventually, he started to put the knife down into the tub next to Molly—apparently, he was planning to leave it behind. I wrapped my hands around his and twisted as hard as I could with both my hands and my mind, squinching closed my non-corporeal eyes and willing the knife to turn.

It did.

It slipped out of his hand and sliced cleanly through the glove he wore on his right hand and into the skin.

“Dammit.” It was the first thing I’d heard him say. His voice was deep, almost gravelly. He grabbed a hand towel from the bar above the sink and held it to the wound.

So I tugged at the towel, pulling it toward the floor. It came loose from the wound for an instant before the man wrapped it more firmly around his hand.

But it was enough. A single, tiny drop of blood—his blood—had slipped out and landed on the side of the vanity.

He gathered up all the plastic bags, shoving them into yet another one. At the door, he traded his shoe-covering booties for another pair. Then he switched the surgical gloves out for the leather ones and went into the McClatchey’s bedroom. He knew exactly what he was looking for, too—he went straight to Rick’s dresser, opened a small wooden chest on top of it, and pulled out a tiny key. He gently closed the chest and dropped the key into his pocket.

He stopped at the door of the bathroom and stood back to survey the room. I stood in front of the vanity, willing his eyes to skip over that single drop of blood.

He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the vanity, stared at that blood drop. And then he shook his head and left.

It had worked. Hallelujah. Against all odds, I had kept him from seeing the evidence he’d left behind.

Now I just had to wait for Rick to get home.

Too bad I couldn’t call 911 for him. I would have saved him this horror if I could have.

Poor Rick just about lost his mind when he came home and found Molly. It was horrible. I want to forget it almost as much as I want to forget my own death. Maybe even more.

The police took Rick away for questioning, of course.

He had touched the body when he found it, so he had Molly’s blood all over him.

It really was a mess. Even the poor policeman, who was first on the scene had to go outside for fresh air after just one look, I’m pretty sure I heard him retching in the bushes.

I considered following Rick to the police station, but I decided to wait for the Birmingham Crime Scene Unit to get to the house. Abramsville is a small town with a small police force. They’re not really set up to deal with the blood evidence from gruesome murders.

Honestly, I was impressed. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the small-town cops had arrested Rick immediately and called it a day.

But they didn’t. They called Birmingham, and in the end, that was Rick’s—and my—big lucky break.

I found out that night that crime scene stuff takes a lot longer than it looks like on TV. The police spent hours putting up crime scene tape, taking photos, examining the body, and removing the body. But eventually, a guy came in and started taking swabs of all the blood in the bathroom. He looked over everything pretty carefully, taking swabs from the tub, the floor, even around the toilet. And he looked at the vanity. But he missed the tiny blood drop the murderer had left behind. I stood beside it, jumping up and down on the balls of my feet, shouting “Here, over here!” But he wasn’t one of the sensitive ones. He didn’t sense a thing wrong.

So finally, I did the only thing I could think of.

I turned on the electric toothbrush.

Doesn’t sound like much, does it?

Well, it was. I was already exhausted from all the energy I’d expended getting the murderer to leave the drop of blood behind in the first place and then keeping him from seeing it before he left.

But like I said, electronics are easiest of all, so I touched it and imagined twisting the wires as I sent energy coursing through them. Instantly, the toothbrush and its charger started jittering across the vanity. I gave them a little nudge with my finger, and they headed toward the side of the vanity with the blood drop.

The CSU technician stopped in the doorway and turned around, frowning. He reached over and switched off the toothbrush. He gave the room a sweeping glance and turned to leave, still frowning.

I turned the toothbrush on again.

The technician froze in the doorway. He turned around slowly, staring at the toothbrush with narrowed eyes.

It continued buzzing its way across the counter.

The technician reached over and unplugged it. But this time he didn’t leave. He stood staring at the toothbrush.

So I gathered up my last shred of energy and shoved the toothbrush as hard as I could. It skittered the last two inches to the edge of the counter and balanced there, just on the verge of falling off.

The technician stared at it intently.

And then he saw the blood.

I knew the moment he saw it, too. The suspicion disappeared from his face. He leaned in closer to the counter, zeroing in on the blood drop.

Almost absently, he used his gloved forefinger to push the toothbrush back to its place on the counter. Then he set his kit down on the floor, pulled out a swab, and swiped it through the blood.

Finally confident that Rick wouldn’t go to prison for his wife’s murder, I retreated, exhausted, to the living room.

* * *

Ghosts don’t really sleep. This one doesn’t, anyway.

Never having met another ghost, I can’t speak for anyone but myself. I do, however, just sort of drift. It’s a little like daydreaming—I’m aware of what’s going on around me, but I don’t really pay attention to it. If I wanted to, I could spend days and days like that. In fact, sometimes I did.

This time I didn’t seem to have a choice. I had probably expended too much of my spook energy—or whatever it is—keeping Rick out of trouble.

Or so I thought.

I think I drifted for about three days. In that time, I have a vague recollection of police officers moving through the house periodically. Crime scene techs vacuumed up everything that might be on the floors and took all the trash bins with them.

When I finally regained full consciousness, the house was empty. I realized that Rick had never come home.

That worried me.

So I put my hand on the television and concentrated until it came on, then worked at flipping through the channels until I found the Birmingham news station.

I didn’t have to wait long. A gruesome murder like this one was big news, not only in Abramsville, but in all the nearby towns and cities. It might even hit the national news soon. A still photo of Rick flashed across the screen, then a picture of Molly, taken at her wedding. The photo receded to a corner of the screen, replaced by a moving image of Rick, in handcuffs, being shoved into a police car.

“. . . Rick McClatchey, indicted today for the strangling murder of his wife, Molly McClatchey,” the blonde newscaster was saying, “due to the presence of his DNA on the piano wire used to kill her.”

I turned the television off. I didn’t want to hear any more.

All my hard work, for nothing.

Had the crime lab even tested the blood drop from the real killer?

Apparently, the evidence I had arranged wasn’t going to be enough.

I know it wasn’t my problem. Not really.

It’s not like I’m some sort of guardian angel or anything. Ugh. Just the thought of all that responsibility gives me the creeps.

But Rick hadn’t done it. Some other scumbag had. And that scumbag was walking around having a grand life while Rick was going to jail.

That just wasn’t right.

I went back and forth, considering.

I wasn’t sure what, if anything, I should do.

But the McClatcheys were the closest thing I had to friends in Abramsville.

Not that I could help. I could barely turn on a television.

Not alone, anyway.

In the end, I made up my mind.

I needed help.