“Well my oh my,” she says. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You trying to make a motion picture?”
“No m’am,” I can’t help but say. “Much less than that.”
“And you what? You hunt ghosts?”
“It sounds ridiculous when you put it that way,” I admit.
She snorts and turns around, heading back to the machines. “It sounds ridiculous anyway you put it, child.”
“We’ve just been told the ghost of Parker Hayden is known to haunt this room.”
She stops in mid-stride. Her whole body is tensed up. It makes me tense up too. I must have hit a nerve.
“Have you seen him?” I whisper, making sure the camera is running but not pointing it in her direction just yet. I don’t want to scare her and just getting our dialog recorded would be more than enough for the show.
“Seen who?” she repeats slowly. She still doesn’t turn around.
“Parker Hayden. The ship millionaire. He lost all of his money during the strike and then killed himself–”
“Don’t you dare speak ill of him,” she threatens in a low voice so raspy and ragged that it almost sounds demonic. “He would never kill himself.”
I bite my lip, unsure of how to proceed. I have no idea what is going on but those hairs are standing up on the back of my neck again.
“Do you know who he was?” I ask carefully.
Finally, she turns around and looks at me with tear-filled eyes.
“He was…my friend.”
I don’t know what to make of that. “Pardon me?”
“He was…my lover. I haven’t seen him for days, not since they threw him out.”
Oh. Dear. God.
“He wouldn’t have killed himself though,” she continues, her voice warbling with emotion. A tear spills down her cheek, leaving a dark trail. “He has troubles but he wouldn’t have done that. Not Parker. Not my Parker.”
“Ummmm,” is all I can say to that. I slowly raise the infrared camera and aim it at her.
“You’re filming me now?”
Yes, I sure am, I think and look at the screen. My breath freezes in my throat. Through the infrared, I can see my own hand in front of me burning a deep red. The shape of the maid though is coming out a steely blue, like the blue I saw in the hotel room.
I look back at her. And I realize I’m talking to a ghost.
“I said, are you filming me? Answer me, child,” she says, her voice angry. She wipes away a tear with a rough swipe of her hand.
“No,” I say quickly and lower the camera. “Sorry, I…what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. It’s May,” she answers. “I’d say I’m pleased to meet you Miss Perry Palomino, but I’m afraid I’m a victim of some terrible joke.”
There’s one thing I’ve learned about the dead: they don’t like to learn they are dead. Things kind of go crazy when they do, like their entire existence is shattered and they go along with it. I mean, imagine you think you’re alive and someone tells you you’re dead. Then you start putting together all the pieces and BLAM! Your entire world is ripped apart. The very realization can make most ghosts simply disappear. The acceptance pushes them on into the afterlife, or whatever the next step is.
But for selfish reasons, I don’t want to lose May. I don’t want her to realize she’s dead. Because while I’ve got her here, in this room, I can use her. I can use her to get to Parker.
“When was the last time you saw Parker?” I ask her innocently enough. I still keep the camera aimed at the floor.
“Five days ago,” she says. “He said he’d come by the next day. I was here waiting. He never did. I reckoned…I don’t know. I feared the worst. The very worst.”
“Which was?”
“That he was dead, Miss Palomino. But not by his own hand. No, he that was murdered.”
“By who?”
“The sharks. Who else?”
My face must have contorted into a look of pure confusion because she continues, her voice and demeanor more impassioned by the second.
“The sharks are the fellas who he owed money to. You just don’t lose a boat without losing a few friends. These fellas meant business and I seen them threaten him more than a few times. Parker went and told the police but they do nothing. They don’t have no control. Parker would tell me he was scared. So scared. He’s a man who don’t get scared, you hear that. So if he’s scared, I reckon there’s a reason for it. They are after his life.”
The idea of Parker being murdered by men he owed money to is just as believable as suicide. I don’t know what to believe but I choose to give the ghost the benefit of the doubt.
“Did Parker leave any proof, any records, that these men were after him?”
She closes her eyes for a second and it’s then that I notice a strange transparency about her.
“There was his diary,” she tells me. Her eyes open slowly. “It’s his checkbook. But he would keep a log on the back of the checks he couldn’t write anymore. Most of it doesn’t make much sense to me…if I could talk to him, hear from him, he could tell you himself. I just need to talk to him. Can you find him for me? You said you knew the manager?”
“Yes…but I don’t think it will make much difference.”
“Why is that?”
“Do you know where he would have kept the checkbook?”
“On his person. Where else? What aren’t you telling me? What are you really doing here?”
I look down at the screen and aim it at her. She glows a translucent blue. It’s beautiful, for once, and not scary.
“What happened to Parker?” she goes on, her voice cracking over his name. I don’t say anything but I meet her eye and I know, in one look, that she knows the truth. Maybe not that she’s dead. But that he is.
Her face crumbles. She puts her hand to her head and stumbles backward.
Out of instinct, I go after her, my arms outstretched, hoping to reach her in time before she goes over.
I almost reach her when she smashes against the floor with a sickening thud. The world goes black. The lights go off and I find myself on my knees, my leggings ripping open on the cold hard floor.
“May?” I cry out and raise the camera, hoping to see her blue form through the darkness. I only read my own heat and no one else’s.
I slowly get to my feet and try to flick on the flashlight with my own hand.
Cold fingers reach over my elbow in a stealthy grasp. I can feel the ice through my jacket.
I am yanked harshly to the side until I crash into a wheeled laundry bin and another hand grabs me by the face and pulls me over the side and into it.