Forever Odd Read Online Free Page B

mobile number.
    If he was personally engaged in the search of the house, he most likely wouldn’t stop to answer his cell phone.
    “I assume that’s you,” Wyatt Porter said.
    “Sir, yes, right here.”
    “You sound funny.”
    “Don’t feel funny. Feel Tasered.”
    “Say what?”
    “Say Tasered. Bad guy buzzed me.”
    “Where are you?”
    “Hiding in the pantry.”
    “Not good.”
    “It’s better than explaining myself.”
    The chief is protective of me. He’s as concerned as I am that I avoid the misery of public exposure.
    “This is a terrible scene here,” he said.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Terrible. Dr. Jessup was a good man. You just wait there.”
    “Sir, Simon might be moving Danny out of town right now.”
    “I’ve got both highways blocked.”
    There were only two ways out of Pico Mundo—three, if you counted death.
    “Sir, what if someone opens the pantry door?”
    “Try to look like canned goods.”
    He hung up, and I switched off my phone.
    I sat there in the dark awhile, trying not to think, but that never works. Danny came into my mind. He might not be dead yet, but wherever he was, he was not anywhere good.
    As had been true of his mother, he lived with an affliction that gravely endangered him. Danny had brittle bones; his mother had been pretty.
    Simon Makepeace most likely wouldn’t have been obsessed with Carol if she had been ugly or even plain. He wouldn’t have killed a man over her, for sure. Counting Dr. Jessup, two men.
    I had been alone in the pantry up to this point. Although the door didn’t open, I suddenly had company.
    A hand clasped my shoulder, but that didn’t startle me. I knew my visitor had to be Dr. Jessup, dead and restless.

CHAPTER 5
    D R. JESSUP HAD BEEN NO DANGER TO ME when he was alive, nor was he a threat now.
    Occasionally, a poltergeist—which is a ghost who can energize his anger—is able to do damage, but they’re usually just frustrated, not genuinely malicious. They feel they have unfinished business in this world, and they are people for whom death has not diminished the stubbornness that characterized them in life.
    The spirits of thoroughly evil people do not hang around for extended periods of time, wreaking havoc and murdering the living. That’s pure Hollywood.
    The spirits of evil people usually leave quickly, as though they have an appointment, upon death, with someone whom they dare not keep waiting.
    Dr. Jessup had probably passed through the pantry door as easily as rain through smoke. Even walls were no barrier to him anymore.
    When he took his hand off my shoulder, I assumed that he would settle on the floor, cross-legged Indian style, as I was sitting, and evidently he did. He faced me in the dark, which I knew when he reached out and gripped my hands.
    If he couldn’t have his life back, he wanted reassurance. He did not have to speak to convey to me what he needed.
    “I’ll do my best for Danny,” I said too softly to be heard beyond the pantry.
    I did not intend my words to be taken as a guarantee. I haven’t earned that level of confidence from anyone.
    “The hard truth is,” I continued, “my best might not be good enough. It hasn’t always been enough before.”
    His grip on my hands tightened.
    My regard for him was such that I wanted to encourage him to let go of this world and accept the grace that death offered him.
    “Sir, everyone knows you were a good husband to Carol. But they might not realize just how very good a father you were to Danny.”
    The longer a liberated spirit lingers, the more likely he will get stuck here.
    “You were so kind to take on a seven-year-old with such medical problems. And you always made him feel that you were proud of him, proud of how he suffered without complaint, his courage.”
    By virtue of the way that he had lived, Dr. Jessup had no reason to fear moving on. Remaining here, on the other hand—a mute observer incapable of affecting events—guaranteed his misery.
    “He loves