The Night Vanishing by Dick Wybrow

Author:Dick Wybrow [Wybrow, Dick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dee Dub Publishing
Published: 2020-01-15T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Maybe we ought to hit a haunted house or something,” Rose said, picking at the remains of her fish taco. She pushed crumbs around the paper plate. “There’s only so many hours we can wander these streets and come up with bupkis until we start losing viewers.”

Hollow nodded, standing in the middle of the street. He looked back at the café, where his team was eating a late lunch. Mostly dressed in black, they looked like mercenaries before some attack on a guerrilla outfit in the Colombian jungle, but instead of guns, they had camera equipment strapped all over them.

He turned to Sapphire, who was sipping a diet soda. Hollow tried to remember the last time he’d seen their psychic eat.

“You not hungry?”

The blind man shrugged. “I’m worried.”

Digit was lazily tapping away on her wrist computer. “The Scotsman? You still can’t feel him?”

“No. Nothing. Not haze, no nothing.”

Doc stood and put his foot on his chair to stretch, his tartan flowing as he moved. “This is the spookiest town in America—”

“Most haunted,” the waitress said, putting a milkshake down in front of Digit. “I hear we spent good money on research to come up with that designation, so it’s best everyone uses it.” The woman straightened up, put a hand on each hip, and sighed. “But, from tell around town, we could lose said designation.”

Hollow gave her a small smile. “Why is that?”

She shrugged. “Recently, they just ain’t so many ghosts no more. Bustlin’ before. Now, many of them just, who knows… went somewhere.”

The group fell silent for a moment and let her words sink in. The server held up the notebook-sized bill folder. “Whose is this?”

Without looking, everyone pointed at Hollow. He nodded and held out a hand, taking the dinner’s bill from her.

Picking up where he’d left off, Doc said, “In this most haunted town in America—”

“Half as haunted,” Digit corrected.

“—your Scotsman probably found some spooky friends and went to have spooky adventures.”

Rose stood up, tossing her spork down onto what was left of her food. She looked up and down the street. It was beginning to fill with tourists gearing up to celebrate the nightly Mardi Gras.

Strumming her fingers on her hips, she walked up to Hollow, who was watching a group taking selfies in front of a hot-sauce store.

He looked over at her as she approached, smiled, then looked at his hands.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

“We can’t just keep wandering around here. The one real lead we had, or supposedly had, was a vague notion that some Scottish ghost would lead us to this super ghost.” She looked back at their group and chuckled. “Fuck, saying that out loud sounds nuts.”

“Sure, but it’s what we’re all about, right? I mean, all the programming bullshit aside, this is why we started doing this. Isn’t it?”

Rose shook her head slowly. “Come on, you know better than that, Hollow. There are no unicorns. There are no witches. No Santa Claus.”

Hollow went wide-eyed and muttered, “Wha?”

She smiled and put a hand on his shoulder.

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