Deadline. Metsy Hingle

Hell, he didn’t even have a regular phone anymore—not since the greedy phone company had disconnected the thing when he hadn’t paid the bill. He needed a pay phone. Trouble was, there weren’t nearly as many places to find one these days. Then he remembered the one in that old vacant shopping strip a few miles from his place. Hopping in his truck, Lester headed toward home.

      Twenty minutes later he dropped a quarter into the coin slot and punched in the number he had committed to memory—a number he had been warned never to call unless it was an emergency. Seeing a dead woman come back to life was an emergency in his books.

      As the phone started to ring, he drained the last of the beer in the can, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He dropped the empty can to the ground and crushed the aluminum beneath his work boot. But the beer did little to ease the fear that had knotted like a fist in his stomach since he’d seen the woman in the Quick Stop.

      A cool blast of wind whipped through the concrete strip of deserted shops with broken windows and sagging roofs, but Lester barely felt it. He jumped as the sign in front of a burned-out dance studio squeaked from a rusty chain. Growing more on edge by the minute, he gazed over to his truck just to be sure he was still alone. “Come on, come on. Answer the phone,” he demanded as he listened to the phone continue to ring.

      Finally, it was picked up. “Hello?”

      “Jesus! I thought you’d never answer.”

      “Who is this?”

      Lester gritted his teeth. “It’s Lester. Lester De Roach,” he spat out, irritated that he’d had to identify himself to the man. Considering what he’d done for him, he’d think the SOB wouldn’t forget his voice so easily. But then, he was always the one who’d come up with the short end of the deal—even all those years ago.

      “Didn’t I tell you never to call me,” the man said, his voice cool, angry.

      “You said I wasn’t to call unless it was an emergency. Well, it’s a fucking emergency, okay?”

      “Hang on a minute,” he ordered, and while Lester waited he heard a door shut. Then he came back on the line. “All right. What’s the emergency?”

      “Melanie Burns. She’s alive.”

      The man swore. “Listen to me, you drunken fool. Melanie Burns is dead and has been for twenty-five years.”

      “And I’m telling you I seen her with my own eyes. She’s come back—just like old lady Burns said she would. She’s come back to make us pay for what we did.”

      He swore again. “You stupid piece of shit!” he said furiously. “You did not see Melanie Burns. She’s dead. Understand?”

      “But—”

      “No buts. Go home and sleep it off and don’t call me again.”

      “I’m telling you, I’m not drunk,” he insisted, despite the beers sloshing through his system. “Melanie Burns is here. In Grady. I saw her not thirty minutes ago with my own two eyes at Bobby Ed’s Quick Stop. She was paying for gas. If you don’t believe me, fine. But you better remember, I’m not the only one who lied about what happened that night.”

      After a pause, in a somewhat calmer voice, he said, “All right. Start from the beginning and tell me exactly what happened.”

      Lester told him. “…then after she paid for the gas and got directions, she turned around. That’s when I saw her face. It was her, I’m telling you. It was Melanie Burns.”

      “How much have you had to drink tonight, De Roach?”

      “I told you I’m not drunk.”

      “How much?” he demanded.

      “A few beers,” he lied. “But I’m nowhere near being drunk. I know what I saw. I saw Melanie Burns.”

      “Do you hear yourself, De Roach? Do you have any idea how crazy you sound? You’re telling me you saw a woman who’s been dead for twenty-five years.”

      “Don’t you think I know how the fuck it sounds?” Lester fired back, feeling scared and confused, but needing the man to believe him. “But I’m telling you, it was her.”

      “What you saw was a woman who reminded you of Melanie.”

      “It was her I tell you,” Lester insisted. “I looked right into her eyes. They were Melanie’s eyes. There’s no way I’d ever forget those eyes.” Hell, he’d seen them in his nightmares for more years than he wanted to remember.

      He paused again. “All right. Tell me what this woman you saw looked like.”

      “I told you. She looked like Melanie.”

      He released a breath. “Describe her to me, you moron.”

      “She was tall, a little on the skinny side. Her hair was darker than it used to be and shorter, but everything else was the same. One thing I’m sure about, she had those same spooky gray eyes.” He bit back a shudder. “You remember those eyes of hers.”

      “Yeah, I remember them.” After a moment, he said, “She must be Burns’s kid.”

      “Melanie’s kid?” Lester repeated.

      “Yeah. Don’t you remember, you moron? Melanie and Jody Burns had a kid, a little girl. She was sleeping in the next room. And when she woke up, she found Jody Burns standing over his wife’s body. It was her testimony that helped put her old man away.”

      “Melanie’s daughter,” Lester repeated more to himself than the other man. Relieved that the woman hadn’t been Melanie after all, he slumped against the cold wall. “Christ almighty, I thought for sure it was Melanie. That she was one of those reincarnations and she’d come back to make us pay just like old woman Burns said she would.”

      The other man swore again. “How many times do I have to tell you there’s no such thing as ghosts. Only drunks with shit-for-brains believe in all that voodoo crap.”

      Lester didn’t argue. But he knew what he knew. He’d heard the stories about Jody Burns’s mother, how she’d lived for a time in New Orleans in the French Quarter. Sin City, his own momma used to call the place because the people there were wicked. They even messed with black magic and stuff.

      “De Roach, did you hear me?” he snapped.

      “What?” Lester asked, pulling his attention back.

      “I asked if you said anything to her.”

      “No. I never said nothing to her,” he said. No reason to admit that he’d told her to stay away from him, he decided. After all, it wasn’t like they’d had a real conversation or anything. “I just got my stuff and got out of there as fast as I could. Then I called you.”

      “Okay. Good. That’s good. It’s best if she didn’t notice you. She didn’t, did she?”

      “No,” he answered quickly. “Like I said, she was paying for gas and getting directions from the kid behind the register.”

      “Directions to where?” he demanded.

      “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying no attention.”

      “Try to remember, De Roach,” he insisted.

      Lester thought for a moment, tried to recall what the kid had been saying to her. “She wanted to know how to get to one of those guesthouses.”

      “Which guesthouse?”

      “I don’t know. One with a name like a flower or a tree or something like that.”

      “The Magnolia Guesthouse?”

      “Yeah. That’s it. That’s the place. The Magnolia Guesthouse,” Lester told him.

      “All right. And you’re sure she didn’t say anything else or ask questions about anyone?”