Unfinished Business Read online

  Mike knew it was wrong. Not being with a man—nothing had ever felt so right in his entire life—but that he was cheating on his wife. He knew it was reprehensible.

  But when he was with Joel, everything was right.

  But now? Now it was too late.

  Too late to tell Joel that he loved him more than life itself (and wasn’t that thought ironic?). Too late to make amends. Too late to tell Lori. To see if there was any way she could forgive him for cheating—and hadn’t that turned out to be ironic as well? She was doing the same thing. Having an affair!

  My fault. She cheated because I wasn’t the man she needed. I didn’t fulfill her. My fault!

  But before he could have another thought, before he could reflect any more on what was happening to him, the world turned inside out.

  That’s just what it was like, what it felt like. Falling and exploding outward, and then noise…. Noise…. Noise! Pain. Pain beyond imagining. And Cold. Metal? Lights! Blazing lights. Silhouettes…. God! Was this it? Was he going to… the next place?

  And…

  13

  …HE WAS somewhere else.

  14

  HE WAS lying in the dirt. The pain was gone, thank God, and he sat up and saw he was in the middle of a salvage yard. He was surrounded by a great valley, a canyon of the remains of cars and trucks and SUVs. He lay half in and half out of a row of these remains, looking down a large aisle, and saw row upon row of vehicular carcasses. They were perched upon empty wheels, two in front and one behind, and when he went to pull himself to his feet, there was a quick and wacky bolt of fear that he might topple one. But these cars, these remains of cars—stripped as they were of doors and hoods and rearview mirrors and fenders and bumpers and headlights—were still, nonetheless, massive. Thousands of pounds, tons of metal. They wouldn’t fall over that easily.

  Certainly not for the weight of a ghost.

  What in the hell am I doing here? he wondered. And why too. Why was he here? He wondered that.

  He stood and then, with an unexpected chill, he saw why.

  The car he had used to help himself to his feet….

  It was his car.

  “Oh God,” he said with a sob and lurched back away from the thing. There was still dried blood on it.

  Oh no! No!

  He shut his eyes and swiveled around so that… thing… was behind him. He couldn’t look at it.

  How long? How long had it been? He had somehow lost time…. How much? How long did it take an insurance company to declare a car totaled and then to get it to a place like this?

  A graveyard, he thought, and that chill rushed over him again.

  A week? A month?

  God…. Had he been away for a month?

  His eyes flew open and he thought of Joel, alone and grieving, and Lori, feeling guilt for having an affair when that was what he had done! And there wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do!

  Too late! Too fucking late!

  He dropped to his knees and then fell back, and the only reason he didn’t go all the way into the dirt again was that he’d come down on a big tire.

  So he sat.

  He was surrounded by dead metal and dead dreams. There were other things too. Car hoods lying out like platters for a giant, a rearview mirror revealing a cloudy sky through shattered glass, a steering wheel, a kid’s pink-and-blue sneaker, a container of suntan lotion, pop bottles, a squashed Red Bull can, a single Lincoln Log, a pair of panties….

  Mike sat in a graveyard of dead and empty cars.

  Except, they weren’t all empty, were they?

  There were feet sticking out of an old Ford not ten yards away. Someone picking something out? Finding that part they needed to fix their own car?

  But when the man wiggled out from the car, his right arm was missing. It was bloody. He had pale skin, and one of his eyes was filled red with blood. He was still bleeding.

  Mike let out a startled cry and almost fell backward off the tire. He scrambled to his feet and backed up against the car (his car… the car).

  The man looked at him, his eyebrows coming together. “You can see me.”

  Then a woman stepped out from one of the rows. Her head was cocked at an impossible angle, almost level to her shoulder. There wasn’t much blood, but it was quite clear to Mike, in his new way of knowing things, that she was dead.

  Ghosts. They’re ghosts.

  She opened her mouth and something came out, but it was hard to tell what. She was trying to talk. The words were garbled, but then—and only because the man without an arm had just said it—Mike came to understand what she had said.

  You can see me.

  Gooseflesh ran up Mike’s arms and the hair stood up on the back of his neck.

  Then there was another. And another. And another.

  They came out of the aisles and rows, and he saw they were all dead. An African American man whose body was twisted into a horrid S, a little girl in a blood-drenched Snow White costume, an old woman with a gaping hole in the middle of her chest, a boy wearing nothing but dirty underwear and one pink-and-blue shoe.

  “You can see me,” they said.

  Not us. They didn’t say, “You can see us.” In fact… it seemed as if none of them could see each other at all.

  “Can’t you see each other?” he cried. “So many of you? Can’t you see each other?”

  They came in close and tight, jostling one another, but seemingly totally unaware they were elbowing one another aside, nudging, bumping heads, crowding in.

  “How can you not see each other?” he shouted.

  A few of them looked around curiously, then back at him—trying to understand, maybe.

  “You’re all dead!”

  Now there was a host of expressions: confusion, surprise, anger, shock, and incomprehension.

  “What’d you say?” said the black man with a jaw that wasn’t moving the way it should. “What’re you sayin’?”

  “You’re dead,” Mike said, trying to back up more but totally unable to, back up against the car. The car.

  “Dead? I ain’t dead!”

  “Look at yourself,” Mike all but howled. “Look at yourself! No one can get their body like that.”

  The man looked down at himself, and a shocked expression spread over his face. “Oh… oh Christ! Oh dear God!”

  “You need to move on!” Mike cried. “You’re supposed to move on! All of you.”

  The black man looked scared now—in fact, several of them did.

  “What?” said the black man. “I need to what? Help me!”

  Mike shuddered and wanted to scream. He wanted to cover his eyes—he wanted to gouge them out—but he could barely move. “You’ve got to go, you’ve got to move on….”

  “Move on where?” the man cried.

  “Haven’t you lost someone?” Mike asked in a frantic desperation. “Someone you love? A wife? A boyfriend? A mom? A dad?”

  “Mamma?” he asked, and a tear began to run down his cheek.

  I’m making people cry again. That’s all I do. Make people cry.

  Mike pushed the thought away. “Did she die?”

  “Y-Yeah,” he said.

  “How?”

  “She died when I was a boy. She died having my brother.”

  From somewhere came a strange thought. An intuition really, and without thinking further, he went with it.

  “Can you remember her?”

  The man paused. Fell back a half step. “Y-Yuh.” So horrible watching that broken jaw try to make the words….

  “See her,” Mike said. “See her! Remember her.”

  “See her?”

  Mike nodded vigorously. “See her. Think of her. You’re dead. Now you can finally be with her….”

  All this while the others crowded close, unable to see one another but unable to get closer either. But they were feeling something. Mike could see that!

  “See her,” Mike said again.

  The black man paused, his
focus going distant, and….

  A light played over his features.

  “Mamma?” he said, and then exclaimed. “Mamma!”

  And then he grew bright… brighter still… and then winked out.

  He was gone.

  The others pushed in to take his place.

  One at a time, he told them… helped them….

  Told them to remember their wives and husbands and mommies and daddies and sisters and cousins. And one by one, they went away.

  15

  MIKE HAD no idea how long it took. They kept coming even after the crowd was gone. It went into the night and through the next day, although not as urgent. Not as heavy.

  One by one, he helped them pass on.

  He told the little girl to remember her mommy and her daddy, and then she smiled and it was glorious and she was… gone….

  He helped a nun recall her sister, her real sister and not one of the nuns at the convent. She cried when she realized she was dead—had died in a van belonging to her convent, along with several sisters. Then she slowly finished with her tears, and not long after that, she was smiling and calling out to someone named Carol, and she was… well, gone.

  Mike helped the boy with one pink-and-blue shoe remember his parents, because he didn’t want to think about his uncle who had done things to him and had been doing them when they were hit by a semi.

  Bit by bit, ghost by ghost, he helped them go away—to wherever they were supposed to go. And while sometimes Mike saw the people they saw, or maybe the white, white light… he had no idea where they were going.

  And when he had an hour’s freedom, he tried to think of someone he loved. Someone he could go to. Someone who might be waiting for him.

  But in the end, exhausted and worn in a way he’d never dreamed possible, he saw there was only one person he’d ever loved in his entire life.

  Joel.

  And Joel was alive.

  A few more of the dead came to him. Some were more work than others, especially these at the end. Maybe that’s why they were last. It had taken them longer to know he was there.

  Finally, finally, he was done.

  Then, all alone and tired beyond any imaginings, he thought of Joel again and….

  And then….

  —Swish—

  16

  HE WAS with Joel.

  Joel was sitting in a chair and reading out loud. It was a romance book, of all things. Why was he reading a romance book?

  “My God,” Joel read. “And her eyes widened, and the warm color ebbed from her cheeks….”

  And then Mike saw something that was the biggest shock of all. Nothing that had happened had prepared him for this.

  Joel was reading… to him.

  Mike froze, unable to even think.

  Joel was reading to him. A him who was lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by equipment and tubes and wires and a beep—beep—beep….

  Mike tripped this time, over his feet, and fell to the floor and looked up (his body was no longer visible) and saw Joel reading.

  “That looks ghastly!”

  He… he wasn’t…? “I’m not dead?” he asked aloud.

  “He can’t hear you, you know” came a voice, and both Joel and Mike turned to see a nurse standing in the doorway.

  “They’ve proven,” Joel said, “that people in comas can hear. I don’t want him to be alone.”

  Coma? I’m in a coma? I’m… I’m alive?

  The nurse, a big woman with pale skin, shook her head. “Honey,” she said. “He’s not in a coma.”

  Wait. What? Not in a coma? Then….

  “What the hell is he, then?” Joel was all but shouting.

  She sighed. Took a step into the room. “He’s gone, sweetie. It’s only the machines keeping him alive….”

  Machines?

  Joel was shaking his head. “No…,” he whispered.

  The nurse came into the room and pulled a chair beside Joel. She laid a hand on his—it quite suddenly reminded Mike of him touching the old lady on the steps of the apartment building…. Rose—and said in a soft, kind voice, “He’s brain-dead. Whatever made your… friend… what he is… was… that part of him is gone. It’s only the machines keeping him alive.”

  Oh God, thought Mike. This was worse than anything he could have imagined.

  “Please…,” Joel said, and once more his eyes filled with tears. “No….”

  This was almost too much to bear.

  “And as soon as this man’s wife can think straight, she’s going to—for your friend’s sake, at least—she going to let them turn the machines off….”

  “No!” Joel shouted. “No!”

  And Mike wanted to scream. He wanted to scream just so he couldn’t hear the woman!

  Machines keeping me alive?

  Then with a horrid sense of clarity, it all came to him. It made sense, didn’t it? The machines. Maybe it was the machines themselves keeping him here… why he couldn’t move on like all those other ghosts….

  And the pain he’d felt…. They’d been trying to revive him….

  The cop—Brookhart—had been wrong. She said she hadn’t detected a pulse. But she’d also said she was no doctor….

  But it had been too late by then, hadn’t it? By the time the ambulance—the EMTs, all of that—got to him, it was too late. Machines were all that was keeping him alive. That part of him that was… well, him… it wasn’t in his body anymore.

  It’s me here… standing outside of myself.

  God, Mike thought—watching as Joel lowered his face into his upturned palms and sobbed—I wish I could talk to you one more time. Tell you how sorry I am. Tell you how much I love you. I wish! Oh God, I wish!

  Then Mike had another thought.

  Brookhart. The cop. She could hear him! He would go to her. Get her to tell Joel! Yes. Yes! He had to. Had to go to her…. But how?

  Mike closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Think of her. Picture her. See her in your mind. Brookhart…. Daphne Brookhart. Please. I need you.

  He could hear Joel crying, tearing his heart out. Mike’s throat seized up. God… please….

  Daphne Brookhart! Please! Please….!

  And just when he thought it wasn’t going to work….

  —Swish—

  17

  MIKE WAS standing in… a locker room? He looked around and blanched. Brookhart was in her bra and panties. Shit! He looked away, embarrassed—until he realized she couldn’t see him.

  But that didn’t make any difference, did it? Doesn’t everyone want their privacy in a situation like this?

  No. Fuck that. Sometimes there were more important things to worry about. He turned back around (relieved to see she had her uniform blouse almost completely buttoned) and walked up to her like he’d been doing this for years.

  “Brookhart,” he shouted.

  She reeled back, arms pin-wheeling, and crashed against the lockers. “What the fuck?” She looked around her, wide-eyed and now alert. “Who’s there?”

  Mike steeled himself for the insane. “Detective Brookhart,” he said in a much softer, but still firm, voice. “Can you hear me?”

  Her eyebrows lifted so high, they seemed to want to disappear under her curled bangs. “My God,” she said with a gasp.

  “You can,” he replied in relief. “You can hear me.”

  Those brows came together, eyes flashing. “Who is this? Townsend? Is this a trick?”

  Mike shook his head, then chuckled under his breath. She couldn’t see him. “No. It’s not Townsend.”

  She squinted, looked left, right….

  “I’m here in front of you.”

  Her hand shot out, slashing back and forth. It was most disconcerting when that hand passed right through him.

  “I think you better sit down,” Mike said.

  She did. Heavily. “What’s going on?” she asked in a whisper.

  He sat next to her, and when he spoke—“This is going to be hard to be
lieve”—her head swiveled quickly in his direction. She really could hear him. He wasn’t even yelling anymore. “I’m….” Funny. It was still hard to say. Of course, he hadn’t been able to actually speak to anyone before, had he? To a living person? Besides a shout or two? “I’m dead, Detective Brookhart.”

  “Dead,” she said. It was a statement and not a question.

  “Yes,” he confirmed.

  “I see.” She swallowed. Nodded. Her expression unreadable.

  “You don’t believe me. I don’t blame you….”

  “I didn’t say that. But here at police headquarters is not the place to be caught talking to myself. Get out of here. Let me get fricking dressed.”

  He stood, surprised at her willingness to at least play along. “I can’t leave. I can’t open doors. But I can turn my back.”

  “You do that,” she said grimly.

  So he did. He turned around, walked as close to the door as he could,, and it was a relief—it was only a matter of time before he saw someone with a lot less clothes than Brookhart. And it wasn’t that she was a woman. Or it was. He wasn’t upset by female nudity. It was just that this wasn’t his place. It was rude. It was wrong, spying like this….

  Although it would have been a convenient ability all those times he’d wanted to see a man naked, wouldn’t it? He laughed at that.

  Mike waited by the locker room, and when she was dressed, she whispered from the corner of her mouth. “You here?”

  “Yes,” he answered. And then so she wouldn’t have to say anything else, said, “I’ll follow you outside?”

  Brookhart gave a nod, and he did just that: followed her. They passed through the station, past desks and the lobby (where two cops were dragging a shouting prisoner inside) and out into the parking lot. She kept going, setting a determined pace, and he found himself amused that he was having trouble keeping up. She got to a car, paused, opened her door, and then asked, “Can you get in?”

  And just like that, he was inside, on the passenger side. It startled him, and just as she was asking again, he called out, “Yes. I’m inside already.” Not sure how, though. Seemed he was getting better at the “swish” thing.