Ghost Mortem (Bordertown Chronicle Book 1) Read online

  Ghost Mortem

  Copyright © 2017 Gavin Masters

  Publisher’s Disclaimer

  The following paranormal police procedural is a work of fiction. (Duh!) Any characters resembling real life people probably do so for good reason. This book deals with both mature and immature subject matter, and probably shouldn't be read be anyone. Some parts are funny. Some parts are sad. Some parts may trigger you. Consider this your only warning. I should also say something about not pirating this book. But to be honest, I don't think I'll be particularly bothered if you do. But if you do, please try to leave me a review or something. Even if you think this book is garbage. I'd appreciate the input. Oh, and while I still have your attention, bear in mind that everyone you meet is fighting a battle you can't see. So be kind to them. They're worth it. And so are you.

  Want an early release of my next Bordertown Chronicle book in exchange for your honest review? Join my mailing list and I'll keep you apprised of upcoming titles, including ARC opportunities.

  Table of Contents

  Dedications

  Part I: Masters of None

  Part II: Monster Town

  Part III: The Bordertown Chronicle

  Part IV: Ride-Along Regardless

  Part V: Valliant Complications

  Part VI: Too Many Skeletons in the Closet

  Part VII: The Killer Revealed

  Part VIII: Death—the Final Frontier

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  About this Book

  Dedications

  This book is dedicated to my parents, my sister, and my lovely partner-in-crime, Michelle. I furthermore wish to include my 98-year-old grandmother, my other dearly departed grandparents, and all the friends I've lost along my journey through life thus far. And also, to the friends who've stuck by me through the years. I realize that's a lot of people to dedicate a single book to, but as the ancient proverb goes, it takes a village to raise a child. Everyone who has touched my life has, in some way, helped shape this book.

  Chapter 1

  A wise man once told me trauma makes monsters of us all. That's unavoidable. The real mitzvah, he said, is holding on to your humanity when it happens.

  I was eighteen when my mother steered our S.U.V. into the high-beams of an oncoming truck. She died instantly. I didn't. Instead, I awoke in a hospital bed, next to the remnants of my family.

  That first night, while my sister underwent emergency surgery, I saw my first ghost. He was a young boy, maybe about 8 or 9 years old. He kept saying he wanted his mommy to know he was feeling better. I limped around the hospital with him—perhaps in a vain effort not to deal with my own grief—for two hours. People kept asking me 'what boy?' until finally I met a nurse who remembered a boy matching that description who'd died fifteen years earlier. When I turned to ask the boy about it, he'd disappeared. I never saw the boy again after that.

  I'm twenty-three now. I've seen many more ghosts since that night. I once found the ghost of an ancient high-school janitor lurking in the boys' bathroom stall, saying he couldn't find any relief. I know that sounds like the punch line to a joke, but it’s not. I once saw a man dressed like Elvis macking on a cashier at a grocery store. Maybe he really was Elvis. I'll never know. I once met the ghost of a girl on a beach asking me to help find her mommy. She said her brother kept holding her underwater and laughing, but she didn’t think it was so funny.

  Never once have I seen my mother's ghost. I suppose that qualifies as irony. I always wanted to ask her why she did it. What was so terrible about that day that made her try to kill us all like that? Was it deliberate? Was it an aneurism? I guess I'll never know.

  Sorry; I guess that's a pretty grim way to open this memoir. Let me start over.

  ****

  I could begin my story in any of a dozen places, but for argument's sake, let's start with the night a three-foot-long raccoon-dog with massive testicles stole my cigarettes.

  I'd been riding in a car for eight hours, driving to some small town in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, along with my sister and dad. Our car had been running on fumes the last couple of miles or so, when we chanced upon a gas station.

  My sister called dibs on the only restroom at the dismal little convenience outlet there—and really, who was I to argue with a one-armed girl?

  I guess I should mention my sister has only one arm. Remember that life-saving surgery I mentioned before? Her arm was torn off in the accident. They had to remove even more of the arm to have enough skin to close up the wound afterward. Although she lost the arm, my sister also kept it, pickled in a jar in her bedroom. She said she thought maybe one day we'd have the technology to put it back on. Denial is a powerful thing.

  Suffice it to say, I let her have the washroom. I instead took off down the rocky road shoulder to find a decent, private spot to relieve myself. I suppose I could have waited my turn at the rest stop. But why wait when there was a perfectly good expanse of grassy roadside nearby with my name on it?

  Well, it was about to have my name on it. Written in my pee.

  I passed a small picnic table, whereupon there sat a petite, dark-haired girl with Betty Page bangs, punkish clothes, a backpack and a skateboard. She was puffing on a cigarette, giving me a suspicious look—presumably because she was a small, pretty little thing, on her own, and I was a strange, much larger, potentially rapey male. And because life is basically a nightmare.

  I suppressed the urge to find a disarming way to approach and hit on her, as I had a more pressing urge at the moment. Maybe drinking that whole can of no-name cola in the back seat to pass the time was a mistake. Or maybe it was the forth or fifth can that really did it.

  I found a secluded patch of bushes. I took one last look around to make sure I wasn't being watched. Then unzipped my pants, and answered nature's call.

  “Aahhh,” I sighed, as I passed my excess water onto the soft grass.

  That's when I saw it, standing right beside me.

  I couldn't tell whether it was a raccoon or a dog, but it had the biggest balls I'd ever seen. This thing's testicles had to be at least three feet in diameter. It looked like he'd stolen a couple of watermelons from the local grocery store and packed them into a large purse under his fur, like some kind of double-decker kangaroo. This thing, whatever it was, was scrotally awesome.

  I just stood there, stranded mid-whiz, while the cold night air slowly shriveled my own privates, as if in deference to the creature's scrotesque jewels.

  I stared at the creature in awe, as the warm stream relentlessly pissed down onto the soft grass. I wondered if it was some rare breed of raccoon, hitherto unseen in these parts. Or any parts of the near-derelict forested highways of southern Saskatchewan. Or if it had some rare case of raccoon-elephantiasis. Or something.

  For his part, he simply stared back at me with two massive, bulbous eyes. They glowed back at me, like luminescent orbs in the darkness. I would swear this creature was just as shocked to see me as I was to see it. That's when I noticed the pudgy little guy was holding my last pack of Marlboro Lights!

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  I started toward the little monstrosity.

  Or should I say 'monscrosity'?

  “Kuso!” the creature ejaculated, in a voice not unlike Alvin's or one of the chipmunks'.

  The creature propped itself up on his massive, delicate unmentionables, which now didn't seem so much delicate as…more like a bouncy-toy. He was bouncing up and down on them like on one of those Pogo Balls from the 1980s my dad keeps in our garage. Well…he kept in our garage. I suppose I was still trying to process the fact that we were moving away from Regina
for good.

  I didn't even know if they had Marlboro Lights where we were going, and I wasn't about to lose my last pack. Not for any reason.

  In my haste, I'd forgotten to close up my pants, so as I started toward the creature, my pants slid down to my ankles. I tripped over them, and fell front-first into the pebbly road shoulder. Falling forwards like this, when your delicates are hanging out, hurts. If you're male, you know this. If you're female, well, I imagine you probably still understand.

  I took a second to moan and clutch my aching privates. I looked up. The little monscrosity was bouncing up and down on his pogo-balls, and he was getting away with my cigs!

  So…I did what any rational twenty-something jonesing for his smokes would do. I pulled up my god-damn pants and gave chase like a madman. I didn't bother to stop and question whether what I was seeing was real or not. I learned to stop questioning these things a long time ago. At eighteen, to be exact. After the crash.

  I chased the furry little creature with all my fury.

  He turned to face me, still bouncing, and not losing any momentum. I suppose he wanted to see if I was still chasing him. I was, so he turned again, altered his method of movement, and sped up. His two balls began working independently, like functional pseudopods. His balls began to step one after the other like two massive, marshmallowy feet, making dull pitter-patter noises against the leaf-covered autumn ground.

  Now he was outpacing me, and getting away again!

  I was obviously going to have to pick up speed or I'd lose the damn thing in the woods! But I was a bit short of breath at that point. My lungs aren't what they used to be, you know? Not since I started smoking.

  Yeah, yeah. I know; the irony isn't lost on me that I was chasing the very thing that's been slowly eroding my lungs for the past five years. But I was jonesing for a smoke pretty badly, and in no mood for a lecture on poetic irony.

  “Get back here with my cigarettes you mother-f—”

  The creature stopped and looked back at me again. He was some distance from me now, with his fat, bulbous balls bunched in front of him, looking like a hairy, large-breasted opera-singer.

  I took a big breath and darted toward him with a final burst of energy.

  The creature brought out his thumb and began blowing into it, like he was inflating a balloon. Then his nutsack started inflating like some kind of god-damned puffer fish. His scrotum inflated to twice its original size, and the creature began floating upward like a helium-filled party balloon.

  The monscrosity drifted up into the sky, like some kind of small, furry, demonic, glowing-eyed, cigarette-stealing fertility god.

  When I got close enough—or so I thought—I jumped for him.

  This seemed to startle him momentarily. He tucked his feet in to ensure I wouldn't ensnare him.

  I maniacally grasped at the air. But he was just too high off the ground for me by that point.

  Realizing this, he took to tucking his tiny index fingers into each of his fat cheeks, and blew the raspberry at me. He floated upwards, towards the nearby tree-line.

  I was too winded to give chase now, so I just stood there panting and wheezing as I watched the last of my cigarettes disappear over the evergreens.

  As I stood there panting, I realized I was being watched.

  Chapter 2

  I took a few moments to catch my breath, and made my way back toward the gas station. The petite young woman with the Bettie Page-style bangs was still sitting at that picnic table, puffing away on her cigarette, her face illuminated by the blue light of her smart phone. She wasn't eyeing me suspiciously like before. Now she was staring, and trying to suppress a smile.

  So naturally, I sauntered up to her.

  “Hey, um…” I started. “You um…you didn’t happen to see that, did you?”

  “You mean did I happen to see a guy trip over his own pants, and then run into the woods, swearing at a giant raccoon for stealing his smokes? No, I must have missed that.”

  She smiled and took a drag from her cigarette.

  I was instantly smitten.

  I smiled back at her, in the least creepy way I thought possible, given that we were alone in a mostly isolated wooded area. Just me and this mysterious, hot girl. And apparently the odd cigarette-stealing clepto-monster with big balls.

  I had a passing, morbid thought that maybe this girl might not be real either. Could she be another ghost? There was really no telling sometimes.

  Well…there is one way of telling.

  “Hey,” I said. “You wouldn't happen to have an extra smoke I could bum off you…I could literally die for a cigarette right now.”

  “Really?” she said. “Literally? You could literally die for a cigarette right now? Like if I don't give you one, you'll drop dead from nicotine deprivation?”

  “Well…no. Not literally-literally. But I could figuratively die for one. I'm being hyperbolic. I am literally exaggerating right now.”

  She smiled and puffed out another cloud of smoke, seeming to consider me for a moment.

  “Okay,” she said.

  The pretty brunette reached into her backpack, which I noted was jam-packed full of clothes. She was obviously a hitch-hiker. Or maybe a backpacker. But I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go backpacking alone through the woods of Southern Saskatchewan in late October. Especially not a pretty little thing like her. Especially not with the recent string of disappearances of young women in these parts.

  She produced a cigarette and handed it to me.

  I looked at her small, soft, white hand as she held it out, and then back up to her flawless face and delicate neck. She looked so small. So vulnerable. So trusting.

  God damn, I thought to myself. She shouldn't be out here alone. Anything could happen to her.

  My dread persisted. What if what I was seeing was the ghost of a girl who'd tried to backpack her way through ass-rape nowhere Saskatchewan? Maybe she’d been running away from an abusive boyfriend. Or maybe she’d just been lashing out at her overbearing parents, only to vanish on the road, never to be heard from again. Her remains could be out there in the woods somewhere. Or possibly right here, buried under this picnic table. Maybe, she’s buried a little ways off the main road, under a tree or something.

  “Are you going to take it or what?” she asked.

  “Sorry. Yeah. Thanks.”

  I reached out to take the cigarette, bracing myself for another surreal encounter.

  Sure enough, the cigarette was real. Thus the girl had to be real. And alive. Right?

  “You're real,” I said, perhaps without thinking, and smiling with relief.

  “Uh…yeah. Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be real? Do I look like a mirage or something?”

  “I don't know,” I said.

  I sat down across the table from her. I took out my Zippo—a shiny silver beauty I take with me wherever I go. I feel pretty much naked without it. Plus, over the past five years I've owned it—ever since I won it from a biker who didn't believe I could tell him five things only his dead brother would know. Guess who won that bet—I've taught myself some neat tricks with it. I tell myself it's for moments like this, so I can impress a pretty girl. But who can really say why we do the things we do? A lot of it is biological pressures to procreate, accumulated over deep time, which tend to be beyond the comprehension of us mere mortals anyway.

  With a flourish, I lit the cigarette, protecting it from the wind with a cupped hand.

  “You're not, like, crazy or anything, are you?” she asked.

  I took a long drag, and then exhaled, blowing a satisfying blast of smoke upwards. I turned to evaluate the striking brunette in front of me. I gave her a sardonic smile.

  “I don't know,” I said. “How meta is your average crazy person? Like, if I were crazy, would I have the sense to know I was crazy?”

  “I don't know,” she said, taking another drag of her own, and then blowing smoke out the side of her mouth. “But are you?”
/>   “Not in the way you mean.”

  I took another look at my beguiling interlocutor. She looked to be about my age. Maybe a little younger. Maybe closer to my sister's age. She had a nose ring and a lip ring, and straight brown hair, which looked almost black in the night, with Bettie Page bangs. Did I mention I liked her hair? She wore a black misfits T-shirt and cut-off jean-shorts with green nylons underneath which appeared to be torn at the knees. To top it all off, resting against her backpack was a skateboard with a really creepy Grim-Reaper-looking-figure—basically a skeleton with a hoodie, perhaps an urbanized personification of Death—riding a skateboard out of a Hellmouth in the background. A flood of bats follow in his wake. From all this, I deduced this girl was some kind of rebel. You know, in a stereotypical, conformist kind of way.

  She placed her cigarette back in her mouth. I noted she had a recent application of lipstick—a shade perhaps just a bit too red for her complexion. Then again, maybe not; it drew attention to her mouth after all. That's kind of the point of lipstick, isn't it? To get the boys to focus on those soft, luscious lips. To entice us to imagine what those lips might taste like on ours. Or maybe how they might feel on…something else, as we watch them put phallic things in and out of them.

  God damn it, Gavin! Stop staring at her lips and say something un-creepy.

  “Nice wheels,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Your skateboard. I love the Grim Reaper artwork.”

  “Oh… Thanks.”

  “Did you draw that, or was it like that when you bought it?”

  “My dad painted it,” she said, taking a long drag, and then exhaling, “for my birthday a couple years back.”

  “Wow. Your dad's really talented,” I said.

  Both at painting, and at making hot daughters.

  “Yeah. He was,” she said.

  'Was,' she said, I noted. Past tense.

  An awkward silence followed.

  “You, um…you from around here?” I asked.