Advocate For The Dead (Complete Novel)

Chapter 3: House Of Summer

The gravedigger didn't want me to take the ring. Not without giving him forty dollars first anyway. We left him standing there looking at the crisp bills in his hand and walked back to the cemetery road.

     "Can I see it?" Summer asked, pointing to the ring in my hand. I held it up so she could get a good look at it. She went to take it, but when she found she couldn't grasp its solid form, she just sighed. "I keep forgetting I'm not real anymore," she lamented.

     "Does it spark anything?" I asked. "Who's Jeff? Do you remember when he gave it to you? What the occasion was or anything?"

     "I know we were close once," she replied a little uncertainly, "but I can't picture what he looked like or even things we may have done."

     I smiled, trying to reassure her. If she'd been alive, I would have patted her hand or back in a gesture of innocent compassion. "Well, at least we know your name now, and can find out where you lived. Maybe your parents can tell me about you and Jeff."

     We passed by a headstone that had been knocked over. "Why do people do that?" she asked.

     "I guess some people just have nothing better to do." I glanced over at her.  "Even with that in mind, I can't understand why someone would have stolen your body."

     "I have a nice body," she giggled.

     I grinned at the joke.

     "Don't you think so?" she asked teasingly, her hand on her spectral hips.

     How do you answer a question like that without sounding like a necrophiliac? It was bad enough a girl that looked like a college junior was flirting with me, even worse that she was dead.

     "Not bad," I finally answered.

     "Not bad? Well..." She pretended to be in a huff and offended.

     I just shook my head. "I bet you were something else."

     "I bet I was, too," she winked. I'm not sure I liked this ghostly flirting of hers, but what can you do? If you ignore a ghost, they just keep at you. Trust me, I know this.

     As we were leaving the cemetery, this time by the road, we saw the spray painted headstone the gravedigger had mentioned. In neon green was the graffiti message: "You're going to die up there." Nice to know I'm not the only one who has seen 'The Exorcist.'

     Outside the cemetery gates, I noticed the sun was getting close to setting. I guess we could have waited to go to her house, but I don't like letting spirits linger too long. The longer they are in limbo, the more they want to stay in that state. This is why there are a lot of old ghosts out there. They just got used to it, and since there wasn't anyone around to help them out, they just stayed right there reliving the same events over and over. If people like me had lived during the American Revolution, we probably wouldn't have half the ghosts we do now.

     It wasn't that far to her house, but after being on my feet all day I was getting kind of tired of walking. So I hailed us a cab, and requested she stay quiet on the drive. This was always the hard part about taking public transportation with a ghost. If you started acting strange, most of the time the driver would kick you right out of the cab. So I had to sit there with my hands in my lap, trying my best to ignore her presence and pretending to be the only passenger. I had the driver stop at a phone booth and looked up Dennings in the book. New Sutcliffe had fifty-four of them listed. I started calling them one by one. I finally found the parents of Summer Lynn Dennings twelve quarters later. I told the woman who answered that I wanted to speak with them about their daughter Summer, and just as I suspected, she clammed up. Then I heard a beep. Turned out it was their answering machine. I hung up.