Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (top ebook reader .TXT) 📕

in the trash as soon as Patrick Miller walked up with a box of chocolates. I saw that. I saw everything. I saw you laughing at me when I would drop water bottles bringing them out for the team. I saw you point and makes sure everybody saw it when Allan Clark pantsed me at center court. I saw you tell Crystal Purdue to gather up the cheerleaders’ dirty underwear and put them in my locker, so they’d all spill out into the hall when I went to my locker after homeroom. I got suspended for three days for being a pervert!” The louder the ghost yelled, the more his image flickered, as if his corporeality was directly tied to emotion.

“I didn’t have anything to do with the underwear,” Jessica protested. “I mean, I gave Crystal a pair, but they were clean, thank you. And I’m sorry that we picked on you, but what does that have to do with killing my friends? What does any of that have to do with haunting this place for twenty years? You died in the explosion, just like the rest of the team, just like all the cheerleaders, just like the coaches…”

“Just like everybody but you. Everybody but the princess, who never had anything bad happen to her.”

“It wasn’t like that, and you know it, Reggie! I wasn’t on the stage because I flunked trig! I’m alive because I was too dumb to be a cheerleader, what kind of cliché is that?”

“And you’re a medium because of it. We all died, and you got to see the Other Side.”

“Yeah, that’s such a fucking blessing. I get to see all the ghosts and all their pain, wherever I go. I go to the bank, I see the old man who had a heart attack waiting to cash his Social Security check. I go to the grocery store, I see the bag boy that got shot in a holdup. And God forbid I drive through a dangerous intersection. For fuck’s sake, Reggie, I haven’t been able to drive in a city in ten years!”

“Is that why you never told your team? They had no idea that your string of debunkings were really exorcisms, did they?”

“No. Most of them never believed in what we were doing anyway, they were just in it for the money. Mike believed, and I think he knew something was up, but as long as the ratings were good, he didn’t care.”

“But you cared. You were all about laying the spirits to rest, weren’t you?” The ghost’s voice took on a mocking lilt.

Jess felt her face flush. “Yeah, I was. I helped a lot of people move on. What’s your deal? You hang around the high school waiting for the cheerleader you had a crush on to come back after two decades so you can show me what a big bad mojo you are now, Reggie? Well, I know a thing or two about ghosts, and I know you’ve only got a couple of hours before sunrise, and you’ve used up a lot of energy tonight. So how you gonna kill me, Reggie? How you gonna get your revenge on me?”

The image of Reggie shimmered, then flickered out before popping back into view. “You think that’s what this is about? This isn’t about revenge, Jessie. This is about atonement. I’m not trying to get even; I’m trying to make things right.”

“What the actual fuck are you talking about, Reggie? You died in a gas main explosion. What is there to set right?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ you did not just spout that shit to me. You know as well as I do that there was no fucking gas main explosion. Think back. Did you smell gas? Did you smell anything before the explosion? Was there a flame? A spark? Anything that could have lit a gas main? Jessie, there wasn’t even a gas line under the gym.”

“Then what happened to you? To the team?”

“I happened.” Reggie’s form flickered in and out several times before he went on. “I built a bomb out of some acetylene torches my dad had in the garage with some other shit and planted it under the stage. I set the timer and was going to blow everybody that had ever tortured me straight to Hell.”

Jess sat stock-still, her hands clapped over her face, reliving the worst day of her life. She saw it all, the team sitting on the stage, the cheerleaders and equipment managers lined up in front of them. Coaches and administration sitting on the other side of the stage, Principal Davis at the podium going on about something lame while Jessica glared daggers alternately at Mrs. Holmes, her trig teacher, and Miss Scoggins, the cheerleading advisor who kicked her off the team with only two games to go in the season. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Reggie Coventry, lead equipment manager, start to stand up, then topple over on stage, his feet tied to his chair. She saw Allan Clark and Carl Winstead start to howl with laughter, then the world went red and yellow as fire ripped through the gym. A huge ball of flame exploded through the stage, engulfing everyone sitting there in an instant, then a shockwave rolled through the gym, knocking people down and sending bodies flying. Jessica stood, then somebody hit her in the back and knocked her down the bleachers to fall in a tangle of writhing arms and legs and screams.

Jessica snapped back to the present, staring at Reggie’s flickering form. “You killed them. You killed everybody.”

“Yeah.” His simple admission struck her as somehow sad, as if he had found regret in the decades since.

“Why?”

“I could explain it until the sun came up and you’d never understand. I was supposed to live. I was going to get up and get off the stage right before the explosion, to get a drink of water, or pee, or something. So I’d be the sole survivor. I’d be