Paint It Black Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

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  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Paint It Black

  Vengeful Spirits, Book One

  Val St. Crowe

  PAINT IT BLACK

  © copyright 2018 by Val St. Crowe

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

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  CHAPTER ONE

  “Jesus, Deacon,” said Mads, who was lounging on the bed in my 1965 Airstream Ambassador camper. Airstreams are the classic aluminum trailers with rounded edges. They look like huge silver bullets with wheels. “Are you wearing that to a funeral?”

  I looked down at my ensemble, a pair of black jeans and a flannel shirt, buttoned up and tucked in. “What?”

  The inside of the Airstream had been restored by yours truly, which meant that I had gone for comfort and utility rather than style. The bed that I had was not the original bed from 1965, thank God. I’d installed a memory foam thing that I bought on Amazon. Well, technically my mother may have bought it. My mother really got a kick out of spending money on me, so I let her.

  I wanted to stick to my guns and refuse to take anything from her, just on principle. I didn’t need her. She didn’t deserve to be in my life at all, not even to take stuff from. But I had long ago stopped trying to take the high road. It might be a nice idea to say that I would never accept anything from her at all, but it wasn’t practical. The mattress was nice.

  Not that Mads appreciated it. Mads’s name was actually Madeleine. She was smoking hot if you were into tall brunettes with lithe figures. She had big brown eyes and a smiling mouth. I couldn’t deny she was nice to look at.

  “Do you own a suit?” she said, sitting up on the bed and folding her arms over her chest.

  “No,” I said.

  She wrinkled up her nose. “Okay, um, how about pants that aren’t jeans?”

  “These are black jeans,” I said. “It’s like they’re not jeans. They’re dressy jeans.”

  “They are not.” She was shaking her head.

  “Look, what do you know about this anyway?”

  “I have eyes. I’ve been to funerals. You look scruffy.”

  I wriggled in my clothes, feeling uncomfortable. Not because the clothes weren’t comfortable. They were incredibly comfortable. I hated wearing uncomfortable clothes. That was part of the reason I had chosen these. Okay, yeah, the flannel was probably going to be hot. It was August, after all, the beginning of the semester at college here in Thornford. The temperature was pretty sweltering.

  But the flannel shirt had a collar. I figured that meant it was funeral appropriate. I sighed, and then I went over to the row of shelves that passed for my closet. I hadn’t spent a lot of time worrying over closet space when I was restoring the Airstream. Clothes were not exactly a priority for me.

  I pulled aside the old shower curtain I had used to cordon off the shelving and gazed at my clothes. Most of them were clean. I’d hit up a laundromat a few days back.

  “I have corduroys,” I said to Mads.

  “It’s August,” she said. “No corduroys.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at her. “Why not?”

  “You have nothing other than corduroys and jeans?”

  I sighed. Okay, maybe there was something somewhere, some outfit I’d worn for my father’s funeral. Which had been a bit of a head trip, considering I never met the guy. I got invited to his funeral and then told that I’d inherited some money and a rundown house in the woods. So rundown it wasn’t even worth fixing up. I’d had it torn down and sold the land. The Airstream had been on the property, though. I’d kept it.

  It wasn’t really a suit, though. It was a pair of slacks and a gray button-up shirt. There was a tie too. Somewhere.

  I pawed through piles of shirts and socks and jeans until I found the outfit crumpled up in the back, the tie too. I shook it out. Huh. Not wrinkled. Probably made entirely of man-made fabric.

  “I guess I should wear this?” I raised an eyebrow at Mads.

  “Yes,” she said. “Definitely that. Jesus.” She blinked her big, brown eyes at me, grinning.

  I waited.

  She just grinned.

  “You going to sit there and watch me change?”

  She laughed. “You think I haven’t seen you without your clothes before?”

  My lips parted. Seriously? That was… “So, what, like you spy on me or something?”

  She laughed again and made a point of turning around.

  I considered Mads watching me in the shower or something and felt disturbed. It didn’t make sense on a lot of levels, and I found I didn’t want to delve too deeply into it. So, I just changed. Once I had my arms into the shirt, she turned around.

  I buttoned the shirt. “Hey, thanks for waiting for me to give the all clear there.”

  “Oh, come on, Deacon, you’re being very silly about this.” She flopped back on my bed. “You going to tell me about this chick who died?”

  “Uh… what do you want to know?”

  “How do you know her?”

  “I went to high school with her,” I said. “She went to college here, where Wade goes.” Wade was my best friend. “I hang out with her sometimes.” I flinched. “Hung out, I mean. In the past.” And never would again unless Olivia appeared to me somewhere with unfinished business she wanted my help with. I really hoped that didn’t happen. I usually ignored the ghosts, but if it was Olivia…

  It wouldn’t be hanging out anyway, regardless, because ghosts weren’t like people. They were insubstantial. They didn’t seem as fully formed as a real person. Usually, they were mindlessly obsessed with one particular thing and that was all they cared about.

  “What did she look like?”

  “How is that important?”

  “What did you do when you hung out with her?”

  “I don’t know. Drink beer, watch movies, play video games maybe. Just hung out.”

  “Uh huh,” she said. “But you were really upset when she died.”

  I shrugged. “I guess.”

  “So, were you close to her?”

  “Kind of,” I said. “At one point in time, maybe I was closer. Back when I lived around here. Now that I’ve been traveling, I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “Right,” she said. “When you lived here. When I wasn’t around.”

  I sighed. Why was I talking to Mads again?

  She rolled over onto her stomach. “Did you and this girl have a thing?”

  “What? No.” I glared at her. “Why do you care?”

  “Who says I care?” said Mads.

  The door to the Airstream banged o
pen.

  I turned to see that my best friend Wade was climbing inside. He was wearing a suit. Whole nine yards—jacket, tie, everything. Even had shiny black shoes. I looked down at my barefoot feet ruefully. I guessed my boots were going to have to do.

  “Dude,” said Wade, “who are you talking to?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I think, deep down, what all ghosts want is to be “real.” To be alive. To be human. To touch things and think and breathe and feel again. That’s why they get so obsessed with those pieces of unfinished business. It’s their tie back to real life, not whatever half-life they exist in. To them, I think, the most terrifying thing is ceasing to exist, fading away, being gone.

  Not me, though.

  Maybe it’s because I can see ghosts. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because of how much time I spend alone. But I want things to end. The worst thing I can think of is being trapped for all eternity doing the same thing over and over with no company except the chatter of my own head.

  I don’t hate myself or anything. As far as people go, I’m all right with me. But I do tend to get a bit bored of myself. I know all my own jokes, you know? So, yeah, I don’t want to be a ghost. I want it cut off. If that means that’s it, and there’s nothing after, no heaven, no reincarnation, nothing, then I consider that a viable alternative to chattering at myself for the rest of forever and losing my damned mind.

  Which, hell, maybe I already had.

  I knew it wasn’t smart to talk to Mads.

  It seemed to make her tie to me stronger. That was kind of true with all the ghosts, really. If I acknowledged them, they glommed onto me and wouldn’t let go. Well, hell, they did that anyway, but if I ignored them, it was a little bit better.

  I was tying my tie. “I’m not talking to anyone.”

  “I heard you.” Wade sat down on the bed.

  Mads turned to him and stuck out her tongue. “Hello? Find your own place to sit, huh?”

  Wade didn’t hear her. Didn’t see her. “You were having a conversation with someone in here.”

  “Nope,” I said, pulling the tie snug at my neck. Well, snuggish, anyway. I didn’t much like the feeling of choking. I snagged my boots and started for the door. “Let’s go. When’s the funeral start?”

  Wade patted the bed. “This is really comfy. What is this mattress?”

  “It’s memory foam.”

  “We’re not in a rush,” he said. “Put your shoes on and everything.” And that was when I noticed the thing that was attached to him. It was hard to see, since it wasn’t strictly corporeal, and it seemed to be composed out of black wisps. It was clinging to his neck. It turned a head-shaped thing on me. It had a mouth, but no eyes. It hissed.

  I took a step back, swallowing.

  “Whoa,” said Mads.

  “What?” said Wade. “You okay?”

  I licked my lips. I had made it a point not to mention any of the weird ghost crap to Wade. I needed Wade. He was really the only person in the world that I truly trusted, and if he thought I was crazy, he might turn on me. He might tell me to check myself into some sanitarium, and he might never speak to me again. I didn’t think Wade would do that, but you can never be sure how people are going to react to being told you see things that they can’t see. Usually, though, they don’t react well. I bobbed my head. “Fine, I guess. Just… you know… I mean, Olivia’s gone.”

  “Yeah.” He hung his head.

  We were both quiet.

  Hell, what was that thing on him?

  Sometimes I wondered if I really was crazy. Like, maybe I didn’t see ghosts at all. Maybe I was just nuts. Maybe if I took some anti-psychotics it would all go away. But it wasn’t as if I had health insurance or anything to test out my theory. And thanks to my father’s leaving me that inheritance, I didn’t qualify for state assistance. Maybe someday I’d get a real job with benefits and then I’d go to a shrink and ask for some pills. Maybe they’d go away if I did that.

  “I guess… I know we haven’t really talked about it.” He raised his gaze to mine, and he looked haggard suddenly.

  I had an odd thought, that this was what he would look like when he was an old man. I didn’t have thoughts like that very often. I tried to cling to my youthful feelings of immortality as much as possible. When I wasn’t contemplating the afterlife, that is. I looked away. “What is there to say?” I asked my palms.

  “I never thought she would do something like that.”

  “Wait, I thought it was an accident.” I sat down next to him on the bed, on the side where Mads wasn’t. She was listening to the whole conversation quietly, which was polite of her. Sometimes, she chattered on in the background and it was really confusing to keep track of who to talk to and who not to. I was going to put on my boots, but I didn’t. I just waited.

  “No one knows,” he said. “There was no note. But she was up there at that window alone. Can you really fall out of a window on accident?”

  “You said it was broken,” I said. “So, yeah, I think it can be an accident.”

  We were quiet.

  “You had it bad for a suicidal chick?” piped up Mads. “Did she write you dark love poems?”

  I shot her a venomous look.

  But she was already chagrined. “Shit, I shouldn’t have said that,” she muttered. “Look, I’m not jealous or anything.”

  Jealous? What?

  “Why would I be?” said Mads. “That would be… insane.”

  Yeah. I rubbed my forehead.

  “Put on your shoes,” said Wade quietly.

  I did.

  * * *

  The funeral was pretty typical as far as funerals go. It was held in the Grayson Funeral Home in downtown Thornford, and it was crowded full of Olivia’s friends and family. Several people talked and told stories about Olivia. Her younger sister. Her best friend. A guy with a straggly goatee strummed the guitar mournfully while a girl in a little black dress sang a song. People cried.

  Lots of people cried.

  Eventually, the preacher got up and gave the typical sermon about how Olivia was a good girl who would be going to heaven, but that if we didn’t get right with God right quick, this could be us next, and we’d all be going the other way.

  I’d never been to a funeral where the preacher said that the deceased was going to hell, though.

  You know?

  Anyway, maybe I was being glib about the funeral, but that was probably just a defense mechanism so that it wasn’t obvious that I was pretty broken up about it. I didn’t know Olivia as well as I would have liked, but I had always thought that I was going to get the chance to remedy that. Olivia was a really nice girl. Everyone says that at people’s funerals, but in Olivia’s case it was true.

  When I first came to Thornford, I didn’t know anyone in town except Wade. I didn’t have the Airstream back then. I barely had my license. I was living in the back of my truck, which had a cover over the back, so wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I lied to get into the school, not because I really had any real desire to go to high school, but because they feed you at school (even if you’re delinquent with your lunch bill) and because Wade was there, and I wanted to be wherever he was.

  Anyway, Wade was always good to me, but I wasn’t exactly popular back then.

  I was this cruddy guy who was living in a truck in the woods, and I didn’t smell great, and I wasn’t in a good mood, because I was homeless and getting kept up all hours by ghosts and… well, look, cry me a river, right? Poor, pitiful kid who sees ghosts. Aw. What a world.

  Whatever. I’m not asking for sympathy or anything, because I managed just fine on my own.

  There wasn’t much that I valued about my crazy mother, but she did teach me to stand on my own two feet, and I did that as best I could.

  Olivia was nice to me. Truly nice to me. She seemed to sense that something was not great about my situation, and she used to buy me hamburgers from the local fast food joint and give them to me. Not like charity, though. She was
classy about it. She’d roll up to wherever I was hanging out and she’d have a bag of McDonald’s, and she’d be eating the fries and then decide she wasn’t hungry. “There’s a sandwich in there if anyone wants it. It’d be a shame if it went to waste.”

  She also clued me in to the thing that made my life less of a living hell back then, because cleanliness may not be next to godliness, but it sure is nice when you’re a cruddy, unpopular, homeless teenager. “You have to take two semesters of gym at some point, anyway,” she said. “You should just switch your schedule. I know there’s room in first period, because I heard Mr. Nichols talking about it when I was doing my office work study yesterday. They make you take a shower, but they got sued after that business with Jeremy Wentz, and now all the stalls have doors, so it’s not so bad.”

  Showers.

  Yes.

  She was cool like that. She didn’t say that she knew how I could get a shower every day, but she told me how to make it happen. Not that Wade’s mom minded me being there or taking showers, but I didn’t ask back then. I didn’t want to wear out my welcome.

  So, yeah, okay, I always liked Olivia. Who am I kidding? When I was seventeen years old, I worshiped her. I wanted to ask her to the prom, but I kept dragging my feet and freaking out. By then, I was working a job after school, and I had a little bit of money. I was still living in my truck, but I was feeding myself and I could have rented a tux and bought corsages and done the whole thing.

  But I was freaked.

  And then Wade asked her.

  Fucking Wade.

  And she said yes.

  But then Wade realized how much that I adored Olivia, like I was a puppy dog, and he backed out of the whole thing, and we didn’t go to prom at all, me and Wade. We drove to the next county and used fake IDs to get into some bar and got wasted drunk and…

  Wade and I made a pact that we would never let anything get in the middle of our friendship, especially not a girl, especially not a girl that hung out with the both of us all the time in a friendly way, a girl that we both…

  I don’t know. I still maintain that I liked her more than Wade, but he was never going to cave on that point. He liked her too.