Romancing The Dead by Tate Hallaway

Author:Tate Hallaway [Hallaway, Tate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Horror & Ghost Stories
Published: 2010-05-22T02:37:52.937000+00:00

When it was revealed that I didn’t have a Live Journal account, Traci said she’d be more than happy to set one up for me. I gave her my work e-mail—it was the only one I had— and she said she’d be in touch. She hugged me a little too tightly for just a little too long, and we parted ways.

Outside, the afternoon had turned into a storybook gorgeous summer day. The temperature had leveled out somewhere in the mideighties, no clouds in the sky, and the rhythmic sound of automatic lawn sprinklers filled the suburbs. I needed to get back to the city. Micah knew something about Sebastian’s disappearance, I was certain of it. Not only had I seen his smile in the scrying bowl, but he’d been standing at the junction where Sebastian’s astral cord frayed. Bright yellow school buses made their rounds, and the clusters of mothers waiting at street corners gave me suspicious looks as I walked down the wide-paved sidewalks. I took advantage of their stares to ask for directions to the nearest bus stop. I was informed that the best spot to pick up public transport into town was the strip mall about a mile and a half thataway. Good luck, good-bye, and don’t come back was the subtext. Even so, I thanked them cheerily and went on my way. The big square houses that I passed, which all looked much the same, made me want to sing Pete Seeger ’s “Little Boxes.” Even the gardens had a cookie-cutter feel, tending toward hydrangea, sedum, and hosta. Occasionally, some brave soul would break out and have a tall stand of sunflowers or a riot of deep purple wave petunias spilling from hanging baskets, but they were rare. All the trees were approximately the same size and shape, being all the same variety and having been planted at the same time. In my spangles and black jeans I felt conspicuously different. My shoulder blades itched like I could feel eyes watching my progression through this Stepford community.

There was a reason I lived in the city.

When I reached the busy intersection near the mall, something akin to relief washed over me. Shoulders I didn ’t remember hunching, relaxed. It was as if a tiny bit of “city” chaos had encroached into the sterile orderliness of the suburbs, and I felt much more anonymous among the billboards and neon. Even the smell of fast food and exhaust comforted me with its familiarity. The bus stop proved difficult to find. Foolishly, I assumed it would be somewhere convenient for shoppers, like right at the main mall entrance. I walked up and down the mile-long mall twice until I finally broke down and asked someone. Of course, they didn’t know, having driven there like everyone else. Just about ready to give up and do a no doubt equally fruitless search for a pay phone to call a cab, I spotted an information desk inside. The bored security guard directed me to the back alley.

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