[2010] The Ghost of Blackwood Lane Read online

  No, she wasn’t going anywhere soon. She was just a dog tied to her husband by an invisible leash. She shook her head as she washed up her dishes and headed to bed, wondering how drunk he would be when he got home.

  ------

  Gary tried to sleep, but nothing happened. He lay in bed for a long time, staring at the plans and trying to work out the layout for the water pipes and ductwork in his head. Sometimes when he visualized the interiors of his work projects, his mind could let go of the dream and move on. It was the reason he had ten or twelve large architectural renderings hanging on the walls of his room. If the window was fully open, the corners and edges of them sometimes moved in the light breeze.

  He wondered about the car he’d seen earlier, the one that he had assumed to be driven by a drunk. Maybe the guy had cracked up his car and needed help. Maybe someone would get him off the road before he killed himself, or someone else.

  Any responsible bartender wouldn’t have let the guy leave if he was that plastered, would they? Maybe he’d come from a party. Drinking was so easy—just relax, sit back, and let it take over.

  He tried not to think about the dream or the memories of bourbon and gin that taunted him. He turned over, flipping on the radio next to his bed. Quiet music drifted over him—maybe it would help him sleep.

  He grabbed his tarot pack and flipped idly through the cards, looking at the pictures more than anything else. He didn’t have the energy to lay out a spread and do a reading. The Moon card came up and Gary glanced out the window, where the true moon hung low near the horizon, a thin crescent, pointed on each end as if sharpened by God himself. It glowed a dingy shade of smog gray, hanging motionless just above the horizon.

  ------

  She awoke several hours later as he came home, and she carefully stayed out of his way until he went upstairs to collapse on the bed. She slipped quietly out through the front door—the air outside was cool, and the early May breeze smelled of rain. Judy sat in one of the chairs on the front porch and flipped on the small, cheap clock radio that sat rusting on the metal table between the two old metal chairs, dialing it from Vincent’s all-sports channel to an ‘80s station.

  Sometimes it seemed like her only real connections to the outside world were this radio and the TV inside, but she didn’t enjoy new music—it seemed too loud and vibrant, too full of life. Or maybe it just reminded her that she couldn’t be out there, experiencing it all for herself. She preferred older music, songs from her high school days, back when she was with Chris, back when she had hopes for a future she cared about.

  She felt the light wind play across her face and enjoyed the cool sensation. The stars sparkled brightly over her head, sharp diamonds in the darkness. She had always been interested in the night sky, and one of the few books she owned was an atlas of the stars. She knew all of the constellations, both by their normal and Latin names, and she regularly followed the looping arcs of the planets as they traced their way across the darkness. Venus, Jupiter, Saturn; she had spent hours staring at each through a battered pair of binoculars, wondering what it would be like to be there, far away from Centerville and O’Fallon. And Vincent.

  Judy stood and walked out into the short grass of the yard, her arms crossed across her chest, looking up at the sky. Tonight, Venus sat low on the southern horizon, hanging in the sky just above the patchwork of dim lights that was O’Fallon, Illinois. Population 7,000, fifteen miles east of St. Louis, Missouri. Beyond O’Fallon, she could just make out the runway lights of Scott Air Force Base, just southeast of town, and sometimes she imagined stowing away on one of the big planes that sometimes flew over her house. Flying away, east to New York or, even better, west to California, flying out there to look for Chris.

  Chris was in Sacramento, but that was all she knew—somewhere in that huge city, he was living and working. For some reason, he had forgotten all about her, about them.

  Music flowed quietly from the radio behind her, Elton John and Billy Joel. The old songs from before.

  The moon hung in the sky above her, a sharp crescent that in a few days would grow full and bright. She knew the phases of the moon like the back of her hand. He was like an old friend.

  As she stood there in the scraggly grass of her lawn, looking up at the thin sliver of the moon hanging in the sky over her, part of her mind wondered idly how many more full moons she would look up at. How many more full moons before something happened?

  ------

  In a quiet radio station south of St. Louis, Burt Lancer watched, bored, as the large console played each song in turn, selecting each from the large CD jukebox sitting in one corner of the broadcast studio. The unit had been programmed earlier by the PD, the program director, who chose what songs would be played at which times. Burt got a kick out of this place—the station was so antiquated that the manager was only now pondering going full digital. They still used CDs, and on occasion, albums. Most of the rest of the country had been digital for years, and the PD picked the songs from a massive hard drive before broadcasting them. Another station he’d worked at in Knoxville had the advertising spots on digital, too, so all he’d had to do was an occasional weather and time check.

  But here at WGDE, Burt babysat the commercials and the CD jukebox, making sure that everything bumped up against each other right and that there was never any dead air. He had to change the commercial cartridges that played every thirty-three minutes, pulling out the small black tape cartridges, or carts, with one set of prerecorded commercials and replacing them with the next. It was a boring, thankless job, but Burt got a lot of reading done on his textbooks and it was easy money, pulling out one tape and popping in the next. A monkey could do it, and sometimes that’s exactly what he felt like.

  WGDE was a best-of-the-‘70s-and-‘80s station, so the rotation was full of old songs, tunes by Elton John and Billy Joel and an occasional Paula Abdul. It wasn’t a popular station in the St. Louis market, but it did satisfy a particular demographic, the one jam-packed with 34–to–52-year-olds who owned Volvos and were well-settled in their careers and enjoyed listening to the old stuff they had grown up on. Jimmy, the PD, snuck in an occasional newer song by the likes of Mariah Carey or Hootie and the Blowfish, but it was the old hits that never went away. “Sussudio,” by Phil Collins, was something of a station classic, remaining in the PD’s rotation continuously since the song had been released.

  Burt kept the sound down most of the time, not caring for the music. He’d heard all the songs a dozen times before, and he preferred to listen to newer music, songs more in tune with his age and background. He used some of the equipment in the studio to listen to the CDs he brought in, CDs that were out of place here: Metallica, Live, Gin Blossoms, Collective Soul, Better than Ezra, whatever. He was careful to never get the music crossed—there was probably no quicker way for him to get canned than for the PD to wake up in the middle of the night and hear WGDE, “the best sounds of the ‘70s and ‘80s,” pumping out “Welcome to Paradise” by Green Day. Burt didn’t love working here, but at least it was a paycheck.

  He set his book down and turned to the computer monitor on top of the CD jukebox. The green screen displayed a list of the next two hours of music, taking the station up to seven o’clock, when the station would kick over to a nationally syndicated morning show. Sometimes he felt as if really worked in some kind of big spaceship that cruised through the night on autopilot, totally devoid of life. The tunes were played, broken up by an occasional commercial, filling time playing quiet music for those out there driving the dark streets or those who couldn’t sleep.

  John Cougar Mellencamp was just finishing up “Jack and Diane,” and that was soon to be followed by Billy Joel with “Uptown Girl.” Burt glanced down the log, the list of upcoming music and breaks, not seeing anything that sounded good. Hootie and the Glowfish, as he liked to call them, were coming up in a few songs, one of the few tracks on the list from the ‘90s.

  Nothing on the list matched his mood,
but then the chances of that song coming up were pretty slim. He didn’t even know if they had the song he was looking for in their library.

  He had been listening to Dookie, the latest Green Day CD, but he had been thinking about Becky, his girlfriend. She wasn’t in town this week—she’d gone to visit her cousin in Thomasville, Georgia, and Burt missed her.

  And a song had been rattling around in his head all night, not the sort of song he usually wanted to hear, but it was driving him crazy. He pulled up to the jukebox and began typing on the keyboard.

  First he did a search to see if the song was in the hundred-CD jukebox, but it wasn’t. The chances had been pretty slim, but it hadn’t hurt to try.

  Burt stood and walked out of the broadcast studio, glancing at the big red neon clock over the desk. It read 3:18, so he had fourteen minutes before the next station break and commercial set. The cart was already in, so he had nothing to worry about, but after the set he would have to take it out and put in the tape marked “4:05” for the next set of commercials.

  He walked down the dark hallway and turned into the PD’s office, flipping on the light. There were stacks of unopened CDs on top of the cabinets, and long lists taped to the walls all around the office. There were opened copies of Variety and Billboard on the desk, along with magazines that catered to the easy-listening radio stations around the country, filled with lists of articles related to the industry. Sometimes he flipped through them just for kicks, reading serious articles with titles like “How much ‘70s is too much?” and “New Artists—How long to wait before including them in your rotation?” The articles were great, seemingly all written by old men concerned with the encroachment of all of this “new music,” a loose term that seemed to include anything produced or recorded after 1980.

  Burt glanced at the bookshelves, some weighed down with CDs, and he found what he was looking for: the 1997 Schwann’s Guide. The thick book, an industry standard, listed every song ever recorded, including what year the song was recorded, the artist, the backup singers, and the record producer. It also broke out each song by category, a valuable tool for PDs when trying to decide if a song was appropriate for their station’s format. Of course, the good PDs didn’t need a book to tell them what songs went in which category—they had heard all the songs a hundred times before.

  He opened the book to the “G”s and flipped through the titles until he reached “Georgia (On My Mind).” Ever since she’d left for Georgia the song had been running through his head, and he figured it was so late at night, no one would notice the slight change in format.

  The song had been recorded in 1953 by Ray Charles, and as he read the Schwann’s entry he realized that he probably could’ve figured that out on his own—the man had a unique voice. The Schwann’s Guide also listed the title of the album: All Around the World.

  He put the book back on the shelf and picked up a spiral-bound printout of all of the albums and CDs the station owned. The list was constantly changing and therefore reprinted on a regular basis, each title and song inventoried and tracked by interns at the station. He flipped though and found the album title listed, meaning the station did have a copy available.

  Burt put the spiral-bound book back on Jimmy’s desk and walked around the corner to the library. This small room, really no bigger than a large closet, had walls covered with shelves, and the shelves in turn were covered with rows and rows of old albums and CDs. Knowing the title and artist helped Burt find the CD in a matter of moments, and he pulled it down from the shelf and headed back into the studio.

  The cut was listed as the fifth on the CD, clocking in at 3 minutes and 42 seconds. Burt sat back down at the computer console for the jukebox and scrolled through the listing of songs. Paula Abdul’s “Forever Your Girl” was about halfway through, and it would be followed by “Take It Easy” by the Eagles. Three songs down the list he saw “Centerfold” by the J. Geils Band. A good song, but what really caught his attention was the length: 3 minutes and 51 seconds. Almost perfect.

  A few more seconds of tapping on the keyboard, and the J. Geils CD moved around inside the jukebox and was ejected from the unit through a slot on the top. He slid the Ray Charles CD into the slot and tapped a couple more keys, and the unit accepted the CD, inserting the song into the rotation. He would have to remember to make up the extra nine seconds of dead air space by pausing the tape cartridge between commercials on the next break.

  Burt sat back and relaxed for a few minutes, waiting for the song to begin.

  ------

  In the basement of the largest radio station in Los Angeles, adult contemporary station WMES clicked on through its rotation, playing each song in order. The DJ was away from her desk, recording bumpers and ad spots for the next week’s “All ‘70s Show,” a popular addition to the station’s nightly lineup. She sat in the production studio, earphones covering her ears, reading from the copy that had been prepared for her earlier in the day by the station’s advertising staff.

  The digital hard drives clicked in as the music was played digitally and broadcast—the station was literally on autopilot, programmed with music and commercials and needing almost no attention. On the computer screen in the main broadcast studio, the log of songs ticked slowly through, playing each cut in turn and interspersing the songs with commercials or digital traffic updates.

  One song title drifted toward the top of the stack, and when it reached the top, the song began as the track on the other CD player faded out, mixing the two songs together seamlessly as only expert DJs and very expensive audio equipment can do. The song began, its low melody drifting out over the airwaves.

  ------

  Judy stood, looking up at the moon and quietly listening to the music from the old radio when their song came on. One minute she was just standing there, relaxing, looking up at the crescent moon, wishing to be anywhere else in the world, and then suddenly there it was: their song.

  “Georgia,” the song that they had loved to listen to together, the song that she used to sing for him as he played it on the piano in his parents’ living room. The song that they had always played when they sat together in his car, parked out on Pine Drive, a hill north of Centerville and O’Fallon that looked out over the sparse lights of the small towns. Pine Drive, where she and Chris O’Toole had spent so many warm summer nights in each other’s arms.

  She hadn’t thought about Pine Drive in a long time, and now, as the familiar words of the song washed over her, she found that she remembered them perfectly. She remembered Pine Drive too, a little road not five miles from the porch where she now stood, a porch where she would never have expected to end up.

  The moon hung bright in the sky over her head as she crossed her arms and started to cry. Judy hugged her arms a little tighter around her and quietly sang the words of their song to herself, glancing up at a bleary crescent moon.

  ------

  Beside his bed on the nightstand, the clock radio purred with quiet music, and as the next song came on, he reached over and turned it up. The song was “Georgia,” by Ray Charles. He loved it. But every time he heard it, it made him sad, for reasons he didn’t know. The song was mournful, yet the melody and lyrics were beautiful.

  Gary Foreman lay in bed, looking out at the smog-tinged moon, and quietly sang the words of the song to himself. It made him think of loss, of smoky rooms and lost memories and missed opportunities.

  The song ended, and as Gary drifted off to sleep, as he slowly crossed the hazy line between wakefulness and sleep, a random thought crossed his mind.

  It had been their song.

  Chapter 4

  “The way I feel right now, I couldn’t care less if another woman talks to me ever,” Mike said, playing with his food and talking more to himself than to Gary.

  Gary was trying to listen to his friend’s latest tale of romantic woe, but he was rubbing his forehead and wondering when his days would begin to look brighter. Sleep had been difficult last night, as it had
been for months now. His mind just didn’t work right if he didn’t get enough rest. He wanted to pay attention to his friend, but he had an almost-permanent headache, a tight band of pain across his scalp.

  Gary wanted a drink badly, even though it was early in the day. Any kind of drink, anything to get his mind off of what he had dreamed about the night before.

  Mike Sampson put down his chicken sandwich and offered Gary some fries.

  “Now, I know what you’re going to say. Probably something like ‘It’s only Tuesday, Mike, and too far from the weekend to start getting so depressed already.’ Something like that, right?”

  Gary looked up at his friend. Mike had just broken up with his girlfriend, and he and Mike should’ve been comparing wounds and consoling each other over the failed relationships. Rosa had left Gary about a week ago, and Denise had broken up with Mike three nights ago. But Gary couldn’t equate the two—Rosa had gotten sick of the endless nights of tossing and turning and waking to screams. And Mike never had trouble finding women—he was the prototypical southern California male, skinny and tanned and fit.

  Mike continued. “It’s just that I know there are other women out there, plenty of them, just waiting for some hunk of a man to come along and sweep them off their feet. And then, when those hunks dump them, you and I will be there to comfort them. Right?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry, Mike. I’m sorry to hear about you and Denise.”