Riding Shotgun by Charles de Lint

Author:Charles de Lint
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: newford mythic fiction folklore ghost stories urban fantasy paranormal romance alcholism
Publisher: Charles de Lint

* * *

It’s four years before we get back to this part of the world. I only know that because I remember when I died, and as we’re walking by a newsstand, I happen to see the date on a newspaper, right above a heading that reads “THIRD VICTIM FOUND.” The headline depresses me. Seems there’s been some guy running around cutting up young women like they were meat at a butcher’s. It’s senseless, and horrible, and I feel for the girls.

Ginny’s looking in a store window and doesn’t notice the headline, so I don’t point it out to her. I don’t want to remind her of her own terror time, setting out to find a new life and finding only an end in pain and horror.

We don’t spend long in the city, but I want to look in on the old man before we head into some new wild place, so we head up into the country. I can’t believe how the city’s spread out in just four years.

The old man’s changed, too. He seems to have aged ten years instead of four. He’s still working the farm—on his own now. I check Billy’s room, but he’s moved out.

It takes me a while to track him down.

Turns out he made the dream come true. He’s in pre-med at Butler U, on a scholarship, but he’s working a job on the side that lets him keep a crummy little bachelor apartment in Lower Foxville, close to the campus. He’s taking a shower when we drift into his apartment. I look around at all his books and things, waiting for him to come out when I realize that Ginny’s not with me. I find her in the bathroom, checking Billy out.

“Jeez,” I say. “Give him a little privacy.”

She pulls her head out of the shower curtain and laughs. “We’re ghosts, Marsh. What difference does it make what we see? Besides, he’s got a nice butt.”

I don’t want to be having this conversation.

“Get away from there,” I say.

But before she can respond, the shower stops and Billy opens the curtain. The first thing I think is, my little brother’s all grown up. The second is, where’d he get the black eye?

But a funny thing happens when I see that bruise. It reminds me of…

It’s like I suddenly wake up from a dream and my thoughts go flying to my other life—the one I had before the old Impala brought me back and put me into this one.

“Alessandra,” I say softly.

Ginny turns to me. “What?”

I repeat the name. How could I have forgotten her? The same way I forgot all that other life, I guess.

“Oh, right,” Ginny says. “Your old girlfriend.”

She was way more than a girlfriend, but I’m not thinking about that right now. I’m thinking about how she was five years younger than me. How right now she’d be fifteen or sixteen, still living at home with her father—the drunk who used her as punching bag.

“I’ve got to see her,” I say.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.