Clean Slate (Jim Knighthorse Book 4) Read online

  We had been, but the details of our separation were lost to me. We had financial problems I seemed to recall, which had led to many arguments. What we had argued about was anyone’s guess. But the arguments had been heated and impassioned and in the end I had moved out—but not very far. To stay close to my daughter, I had rented an apartment in the same building.

  “Yes, we had been separated,” I said. “And thank you for reminding me of that.”

  “Just keeping it real,” said Pauline indifferently. “Besides, there is no hell.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I talk to the dead, remember? And not just ghosts,” she added. “But those who have passed on.”

  “Passed on to heaven?” I asked.

  “Passed on to something,” she said. “Neither heaven nor hell. A spirit world—and it’s waiting for you.”

  I didn’t believe that. I believed in heaven and hell, and I was certain, as of this moment, that I was going to hell. “Well, it can keep on waiting. I’m not ready to pass on.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I need to work some things out,” I said.

  “And then what?” she asked.

  “And then I will accept my fate.”

  She nodded. “But for now you hope to change your fate.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at me with bloodshot eyes. Sitting on the couch, she had tucked her bare feet under her. Now her painted red toes peeked out like frightened little mice.

  “Nice imagery,” she said, wiggling her toes. “So you still can’t remember why you are going to hell?”

  “No,” I said.

  “But it was something bad.”

  “Very bad,” I said.

  “Bad enough to burn forever?” she asked.

  “Somebody died, I think.”

  “So you’ve said, but you still don’t remember who or why.”

  I shook my head. “No, but it happened a long, long time ago.”

  “And with your death,” she added, “it was the first of your memories to disappear.”

  She was right. My memories were disappearing at an alarming rate. The earlier memories of my life were mostly long gone. “Yeah, something like that,” I said.

  “And now you’re afraid to pass on because you think you are going to hell, even though you can’t remember why you are going to hell.”

  “It’s a hell of a conundrum,” I said.

  She nodded, then got up, padded into the adjoining kitchen, and poured herself another drink. When she came back and sat, some of her drink splashed over the rim of her glass.

  “Don’t say a word,” she cautioned me.

  I laughed and drifted over to the big bay window and looked out over Los Angeles, which glittered and pulsed five stories below. At this hour, Los Feliz Boulevard was a parking lot dotted with red brake lights as far as the eye could see. I had heard once that it was one of the busiest streets in the world. Standing here now, I believed it.

  After a while, Pauline came over and stood next to me. Actually, some of her was standing inside me. She shivered with the sensation, apologized, and stepped back. Ghostly etiquette.

  I thought of my sweet music teacher. According to the paper, she had been murdered just days away from her sixtieth wedding anniversary. Sixtieth.

  Anger welled up within me. As it did so, a rare warmth spread through me. Mostly my days were filled with bone-chilling cold, minus the bones. But whenever strong emotion was involved, such as anger, I became flush with energy. And when that happened—

  “Hey,” said Pauline. “Someone’s making a rare appearance.”

  And so I was. So much so that I could actually see myself reflecting in the big, sliding glass door. Next to me was Pauline, looking beautiful, but drunk. Bloody wounds covered my body; in particular, my forehead, neck and chest.

  I didn’t get to see myself often, and, despite my anger, I took advantage of this rare opportunity. Pale and ethereal, I was just a vague suggestion of what I had once been—and I was growing vaguer as the years pressed on. There was stubble on my jaw, and my dark hair was indeed askew. Eternal bed head.

  Great.

  “But you’re still a cutie,” said Pauline, giggling, now almost entirely drunk.

  And with those words and that infectious giggle, my anger abated and I started fading away again.

  “Tell me about your murdered friend,” said Pauline.

  “She wasn’t necessarily a friend.”

  She explored my mind a bit more. “My apologies. Your piano teacher from grade school.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would someone kill her?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  She paused, then nodded knowingly. “I see you intend to find out.”

  “Yes.”

  “And perhaps save your soul in the process?”

  “That’s the plan,” I said. “For now.”

  “You do realize you have limits to where you can go and what you can do, right?”

  I shrugged. “Minor technicalities.”

  Chapter Four

  The girl could see me, and, amazingly, she wasn’t afraid.

  Since she and her mother were new tenants in the apartment building I haunted, I swung by to say hello like any good neighbor. And by swinging by, I meant I walked straight through their front door and into their living room.

  To my surprise, the little girl immediately looked up from where she was sitting at a desk in the far corner of the room. Her eyes impossibly huge and innocent. She was young, perhaps seven or eight, about the age of my own daughter.

  Hey, maybe they’ll be friends.

  I was in a low energy state, which meant I was just a murky drift of ectoplasm that was vaguely humanoid and barely visible even to myself. It would take a keenly aware medium to see me now.

  But she sees you now, I thought.

  Indeed. And a thrill coursed through me.

  She stood slowly from her swivel chair. I could hear her mother was in the other room, unpacking and singing contentedly to herself, unaware that her daughter had just made contact with the Great Beyond.

  The girl approached me carefully, as if walking a tight rope. As if, remarkably, she was afraid of scaring me off. Tough girl. She stopped ten feet away. There was a smudge of chocolate in the corner of her mouth. I could see her brain working behind those impossibly huge eyes.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she said. “I see ghosts all the time.”

  I smiled, and impressed into her mind the image of a friend.

  “You’re a good ghost,” she said, nodding. “Some ghosts are not good; some are bad.”

  I next tried impressing the images of my daughter and wife and my apartment down the hall, but none of this got a response from her. She was attuned, but not highly attuned. Like a deaf musician.

  “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” she said. “Mommy thinks I make up the ghosts, anyway. Maybe I do. Maybe ghosts are just figmentals of my imagination, like she says.”

  Despite her bravado, there was still a touch of fear in her eyes. I smiled reassuringly, but I wasn’t sure if she could see the fine details of my smile. She studied me a moment longer, shrugged, then plodded back to her chair. Once seated, she swiveled around and faced me, her bare feet dangling just inches from the faux hardwood floor.

  I drifted closer and raised my finger, pointing at her computer.

  She followed my finger. “The computer?”

  I nodded exaggeratedly so that she could not mistake the gesture.

  “What about the computer?” she asked.

  I focused on the image of a writing program.

  She studied me. “Do you want me to open Word?”

  I nodded vigorously.

  She turned back to her computer and clicked open Word for Windows. When a blank screen appeared on the monitor, I leaned across her body and drew energy from both her and the computer, and struck a key on the keyboard. Granted, my finger d
isappeared down through the key, but luckily the sensitive keyboard recognized my touch. Ghosts and machines sort of go hand in hand.

  A letter appeared on the monitor before her, a ‘Y’. I continued typing until I had formed a complete sentence.

  Yes, I’m a ghost, was my reply.

  The little girl, who had scooted back in her chair to allow me room, squealed with delight, clapping. “You can type!”

  Yes, I responded, the words appearing on the white screen.

  “Do I need to type back?” she asked me.

  No, I wrote. I can hear you just fine. What’s your name?

  She scooted back in her chair, giving me enough room to type. “Kaira,” she said. “So how long have you been dead?”

  Two years. I think.

  “You think?” she asked.

  It’s getting harder and harder to remember dates.

  She screwed up her little face. “I can see that, I think.”

  You are a smart girl, Kaira.

  “So are you really a good ghost?”

  Yes.

  “Then why didn’t you go to heaven?”

  I thought about that, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. She was just a little girl, no need to burden her with too much information.

  It’s not time, I wrote.

  “You’re not going to heaven, are you?” she said. She was more sensitive than I thought.

  I hesitated, then typed my reply.

  No, I don’t think so.

  “You’re going to hell,” she said.

  I think so, yes. But I’m working on that.

  She pushed her chair back and stood suddenly. She looked at me warily. “Were you a bad man?”

  Yes, I wrote. I’m sure I was. But I don’t remember what I did.

  “But you said you are a good ghost.”

  I’m a good ghost, but I was a bad man.

  She continued watching me cautiously. I didn’t blame her. “What did you mean when you said you were ‘working on that’?”

  I typed: Means, I’m trying to be a better person.

  “But it’s too late,” she said. “You’re already dead.”

  A minor technicality.

  “What’s a ‘technicality’?”

  Means I’m working on it, I typed, then added a winkie face, complete with semi-colon and parentheses.

  “Kaira, honey,” called her mother from the next room. “Who are you talking to out there?”

  “No one, Mommy,” said the little girl.

  “Come and help me, sweetie.”

  “Okay, Mommy.” She quickly closed the Word document and turned to me. “I got to go,” she whispered. “You seem like a good ghost. I hope you don’t go to hell.”

  “That makes two of us,” I said, but she showed no indication of hearing me. I smiled at her again and exited the same way I had come, through the closed front door.

  Welcome to the neighborhood.

  The Body Departed

  is available at:

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK

  Paperback * Audio Book

  About the Author:

  J.R. Rain is an ex-private investigator who now writes full-time in the Pacific Northwest. He lives in a small house on a small island with his small dog, Sadie, who has more energy than Robin Williams.

  Please visit him at www.jrrain.com.

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