Ghost Trackers (14 page)

So far, this weekend wasn’t turning out as he’d expected, but in his case, that wasn’t altogether a bad thing. When he’d first received the notice about the reunion in the mail, he’d tossed it into the trash. Who’d want
him
to show up? He hadn’t been the nicest guy in high school, and he doubted anyone would miss him. He hadn’t gone to the five-year reunion or the ten-year for that reason, and he wasn’t about to change his mind for the fifteen. He’d been babysitting his ten-year-old niece, and she’d fished the reunion notice out of the trash and colored on the back of it. When his sister stopped by his apartment to pick up his niece, she saw the reunion notice and told Jerry he should go.

He told her she was crazy, that no one would want to see him after all these years. She said that was probably true but that he shouldn’t go for them; he should go for himself. If nothing else, it would be good therapy.

They’d grown up together in the same abusive household, had endured their father’s rages, both verbal and physical, and neither of them had been popular in high school. He had become a bully, passing along the abuse he received at home to kids weaker than him, and his sister had become a party girl, drinking, drugging, and having sex with just about anyone who wanted her. After high school, they continued down their self-destructive paths. He got into bar fights on a regular basis,
and his sister went from one abusive relationship to another. Once her daughter was born, his sister decided to turn her life around. She stopped dating assholes, starting getting some therapy, and began urging her brother to get help, too. He’d resisted for a while, but he was getting tired of being an asshole himself. Plus, having a little niece who loved her uncle and looked up to him made Jerry want to be a better person.

He started seeing his sister’s therapist, learned some anger-management techniques, and began to get his proverbial shit together. He stopped fighting, got a better job, moved out of the roach hotel of an apartment where he’d been living and into a decent condo, and got himself a bona fide life. He hadn’t found Mrs. Right yet, but he dated regularly enough and remained hopeful. And he owed it all to his sis.

So, when she told him that it would be a good idea to attend the reunion, he reconsidered. It could be a chance to make peace with the past, say a final farewell to the screwed-up teenager he’d been, and maybe even make some amends in the process. Closure with a side order of redemption. Knowing that there was a better-than-average chance that he’d end up receiving a lot of hate vibes from his fellow classmates, he had decided to attend.

And all in all, it hadn’t been that bad so far. Yeah, seeing Patty had turned into a disappointment, and he’d received more than a few scowls from
people, but so far, no one had said anything negative to him. He’d been reluctant, but he’d forced himself to initiate conversations with people, and he’d been surprised by how open they’d been to talking with him. Maybe they didn’t see him as the big bad bogeyman he imagined they did, or maybe folks were more willing to forgive than he’d expected. Or maybe so much time had passed that they’d forgotten how much of a jackass he’d been. Whichever the case, people had been treating him as if he was just one more person attending the reunion, and he was grateful.

He was living proof that people
could
change for the better, and for that reason, he was proud to be there. Maybe it was a little arrogant on his part, but he hoped he might serve as an inspiration to his former classmates and that by doing so, he could make up, at least in some small way, for the things he’d done back in high school.

Jerry finished, zipped up, and washed his hands. He looked at his face in the streaked mirror hanging over the sink, and after a moment’s inspection decided that he didn’t look too bad. He carried a few pounds more than he had in high school, but he wasn’t fat, and he wasn’t in danger of going bald anytime soon. But what impressed him most when he looked at his reflection these days was the gentleness in his eyes. It was something that had grown slowly over the last few years, and it was his hardest-won and therefore most prized possession.

He figured he’d stalled long enough, and it was time to get back to Patty. He decided he’d endure her chatter a few more minutes for the sake of politeness, and then he’d say good-bye and head on out. His parents still lived in town, but his dad was the same abusive bastard he’d always been, and Jerry didn’t visit them any more often than he had to. Instead, he figured he’d go back to the hotel and chill until the banquet. Maybe he’d check out the bar, see if there was anyone else around to strike up a conversation with.

“You really know how to live the high life, huh? Big-time partier, that’s you.”

The voice came from behind Jerry, and he turned around to see a teenage boy standing and looking at him with an expression of utter contempt. The boy wore a Skinny Puppy T-shirt, faded jeans, and an old pair of running shoes with holes in them. Jerry understood at once that he was seeing his younger self right then, the recognition occurring on a deep instinctive level. Part of it was the cruel mocking smile on the younger Jerry’s face, part of it was the cold, calculating look in his eyes, but what clinched it was those shoes. Jerry—thirty-three-year-old Jerry—
knew
those shoes. Every hole, every scuff mark, from the feel of the dingy threadbare laces as he’d tied them to the soft flapping sound the loose rubber soles made when he’d walked. Those were
his
shoes, no one else’s.

He didn’t question how this could be happening. He accepted the presence of his younger self, as if it was nothing more than a dream. It sure felt real, though. Smelled that way, too. Even through the restroom’s miasma of sour piss and urinal cakes, he could smell that his younger self was in dire need of a shower. He hadn’t been big on hygiene back in those days.

Teenage Jerry stood with his head thrust forward, muscles tense, and hands balled into fists, as if he was ready to rush forward and attack any second. He exuded anger and sullen menace, and he reminded Jerry of a tiger he’d once seen in the zoo, pacing back and forth behind a thick glass partition, its mouth open to display sharp white teeth and a moist pink tongue, eyes gleaming with a mixture of hunger and resentment.
You’re lucky this glass is here
, those eyes had seemed to say.
Damned lucky
.

Is that what he’d looked like back then? Is that how the kids he’d tormented had seen him? The thought shamed him, twisted his stomach in a knot of nausea, but most of all, it made him feel angry.

Teenage Jerry’s mouth twisted into a cruel smile. “You used to be tough. More important, you used to be
feared
. But look at you now. You were a big dog, but now you’re about as scary as a toy poodle.”

Jerry’s jaw muscles bunched as he gritted his
teeth, and his hands curled into fists so tight that the skin over his knuckles turned white.

Teenage Jerry started walking toward him, cruel smile fixed so firmly in place that it might have been painted on. “I bet your balls are shriveled up like prunes, and your dick’s retracted into your body like a little turtle head afraid to peek out of its shell. You’re pathetic. A joke. Only you’re the worst kind of joke, the kind no one laughs at. They look at you, shake their heads, and think, man, what a total fucking pussy!”

Teenage Jerry continued walking toward him as he spoke, and now he stood a few inches away from him. As he said those last three words, he punctuated them by poking Jerry in the chest with his forefinger, each time harder than the last.

White-hot rage raced through him like electricity, and he felt his muscles tingle. Involuntarily, his body wanted to reach out, grab this little motherfucker by the back of his scrawny neck, and slam his face into the porcelain edge of the sink. The bastard wouldn’t be smiling anymore once Jerry had knocked his fucking teeth down his throat.

The fingers of his right hand uncurled and flexed a couple of times, as if in anticipation of sinking them into the flesh of his younger self’s neck. He imagined the jolt of impact that would race up along his arm as he smashed the kid’s face against the sink, imagined teeth ringing on porcelain,
blood splattering everywhere. It would be so easy to make it happen. All he had to do was reach out . . .

It was a near thing, but in the end, he relaxed his hands and allowed them to hang at his sides. That wasn’t who he was anymore, and no one, not even himself, was going to make him turn back into the sorry son of a bitch he’d once been.

Teenage Jerry, still grinning that insufferable grin, gave his older self slow, mocking applause. “Way to show self-restraint, Jer. I’m impressed. Of course, all I did was say a few nasty things and poke you in the chest a couple times. I wonder if you’ll be able to hold back under more . . . direct provocation.”

Without waiting for a response from his older self, teenage Jerry drew back his right hand, made a fist, and slammed it into Jerry’s gut. Dull pain flooded his abdomen, his breath gusted out of his lungs in a whoosh, and he doubled over, gasping for air. He’d had the breath knocked out of him before and knew that it would take him a couple of seconds before he’d be able to inflate his lungs again. But teenage Jerry wasn’t about to give his older self time to recover.

He was still bent over, and his younger self stepped back, took hold of both sides of his older self’s head, and, with a single savage motion, brought his knee up against Jerry’s jaw. White light exploded behind his eyes, and when his vision
cleared, he found himself looking at those oh-so-familiar running shoes. It was strange, though. They were close to his face, and he was looking at them from a funny sideways angle. It took him a few more seconds to realize that this was because he’d fallen to the restroom floor and was lying on his side. His teeth hurt like hell—he wondered if the impact had knocked any of them out—and his mouth was filled with the thick, coppery taste of blood. His tongue throbbed, and he figured he’d bit it. He tried to spit the blood out, but he was barely conscious, and the best he could manage was to make the blood dribble out of the corner of his swollen mouth.

Teenage Jerry crouched down, hands on his knees, head cocked to the side so he could look his older self in the face.

“Jesus, you
have
let yourself go, haven’t you? I barely touched you, and you folded like the proverbial fucking house of cards. Pathetic.” He straightened then and gazed down on his older self with sorrowful contempt. “Might as well wrap this up. I’ve got bigger and better fish to fry.”

He gestured, and both the toilet in the stall and the urinal began flushing. But instead of flushing once and then stopping, they continued flushing, over and over. Jerry couldn’t see the urinal from where he was lying, but he could see into the stall, and he watched as water began to run over the edge of the bowl and splash onto the floor. He
heard water splattering behind him, felt it slide across the tile floor and begin soaking into his clothes. It was cold, damned cold, Arctic Ocean cold, and he began shivering as the water touched his skin and the cold began penetrating his flesh. The toilets continued flushing, and water continued pouring onto the floor and sloshing up against him in tiny waves.

He tried to rise, but he still was having trouble catching his breath. His head was pounding, and he felt dizzy. He wondered if the blow he’d taken to the jaw had given him a concussion, or maybe he’d gotten one when he hit his head as he’d fallen to the floor. Either way, he couldn’t make his body listen to him when he told it to get up. All he could do was lie there while the freezing water kept pouring out of the toilets and onto the floor, making him colder and wetter with each passing moment.

Teenage Jerry kept looking down at his older self and grinning. Jerry was surprised to see that the water level had risen an inch over the soles of his younger self’s shoes.

“You gave more than your fair share of swirlies in your time, old man,” teenage Jerry said. “High time you got one, don’t you think? But you deserve more than a run-of-the-mill swirly. You’re going to get the greatest swirly ever!”

Teenage Jerry laughed, and water bubbled forth from his throat and dribbled over his chin to soak
the front of his Skinny Puppy T-shirt. He continued laughing, water bubbling out of his mouth like a fountain, the toilets flushing and disgorging frigid water, the water level rising. Jerry still couldn’t move, and all he could do was lie there while the water began to cover his face. Finally, he was able to draw in a breath and did so, but all he managed to do was suck in water, and when he tried to scream, it came out in a gurgling burst of bubbles.

The water’s cold seeped into his brain, rendering his thoughts sluggish and dim, and if he had any final profound insight before the darkness rushed in to claim him, he wasn’t aware of it.

“Now are you
willing to believe that something funky is going on?” Trevor said.

Drew ignored him, mostly because he wasn’t sure how to answer.

The three friends stood on the sidewalk outside Flying Pizza. The paramedic vehicle was long gone, taking Jerry’s body with it, but a police cruiser still sat parked outside the restaurant. They’d spent the last half-hour being questioned by one of Ash Creek’s finest before they’d been given permission to leave. The cop was still inside, interviewing some of the other customers.

“I thought that guy was going to haul us down to the station and book us,” Amber said.

For a time, Drew had thought the same thing. But evidently, the officer decided that they’d had nothing to do with Jerry’s death and let them go. But not before giving them the traditional “Don’t leave town” warning. He wondered if it was something cops were trained to say or something they picked up from bad movies and TV shows.

“You can’t blame him for being suspicious,” he
said. “Two people in town for the reunion have now died, and in both cases, the three of us found the body and reported it. You don’t have to be a master detective to suspect there’s something more than coincidence at work there.”