He lifted an eyebrow. “Good guess. So what happened to him?”
Edie knew the story by heart. “It was graduation night. There was a party in Black Grove and everyone went, even Tommy Hansen. He was quiet and always kept to himself. My mom says he was good-looking, but none of the girls were interested in him because his family was dirt-poor. His dad ran off and his mother worked at the funeral home, dressing the bodies for viewings.”
Edie saw him cringe in the seat beside her, but she kept going. “Tommy worked at the gas station to help out and spent the rest of his time alone, playing a beat-up guitar. He wanted to be a songwriter, and was planning to leave for Nashville that weekend. If the party had been a few days later, he might have made it.”
And her brother would still be alive.
Edie remembered the night her brother died, his body stretched out in the middle of the road. She had stepped too close, and a pool of blood had gathered around the toes of her sneakers. She had stared down at the thick liquid, wondering why they called the road Red Run. The blood was as black as ink.
“Are you going to tell me how that kid Tommy died?” The boy was watching her from under those long eyelashes.
Edie’s heart started racing. “They had a keg in the woods, and everyone was wasted. Especially Katherine Day, the prettiest girl in school. People who remember say that Katherine drank her weight in cheap beer and wandered into the trees to puke. Tommy saw her stumbling around and followed her. This is the part where folks disagree; in one version of the story, Tommy sat with Katherine while she threw up all over her fancy white sundress. In the other version, Katherine forgot about how poor Tommy was—or noticed how good-looking he was—and kissed him. Either way, the end is the same.” Edie paused, measuring his reaction. At this point in the story, people were usually on pins and needles.
But the blue-eyed boy was staring back at her evenly from the passenger seat, as if he already knew the way it ended.
“Don’t you want to know what happened next?”
He smiled, but there was something wrong about it. His eyes were vacant and far away. Was he remembering? He sensed Edie watching him, and the faraway look was gone. “Yeah. How did he go from making out with the prettiest girl in school to getting killed?”
“I didn’t say he was killed.” Edie tried to hide the fear in her voice. She didn’t want him to know she was afraid.
“You said he died, right?”
She didn’t point out that dying and being killed weren’t the same thing. If Edie hadn’t known she was in over her head the minute he got in the car, she knew now. But it was too late. “Katherine was dating a guy on the wrestling team, or maybe it was the football team, I can’t remember. But he caught them together—kissing or talking or whatever they were doing— and dragged Tommy out of the woods with a bunch of his friends.”
The boy’s blue eyes were fixed on her now. “Then what happened?” His voice was so quiet she had trouble hearing him over the crickets calling out in the darkness.
“They beat him to death. Right here on Red Run. Some guy who lived out in the woods saw the whole thing.”
The boy nodded, staring out the window as the white bark of the pines blurred alongside the car. “So that’s why no one drives on this road at night?”
Edie laughed, but the sound was bitter and cold. About as far away from happy as it could be. “This is the Bayou. If you avoided every road where someone died, there wouldn’t be any roads left. Folks don’t drive on Red Run at night because Tommy Hansen’s ghost has killed six people about our age. They say he kills the boys because they remind him of the guys who beat him to death, and the girls because they remind him of Katherine.”
Edie pictured her brother lying in the glow of the police cruiser’s spotlight, bathed in red. She had knelt down in the sticky dirt, pressing her face against his chest. Will’s heart was beating, the rhythm uneven and faint.
“Edie?” She felt his chest rise as he whispered her name.
She cradled his face in her hands, but he was staring blankly beyond her. “I’m here, Will,” she choked. “What happened?”
Will strained to focus on Edie’s tear-stained face. “Don’t worry. I’m gonna be okay.” But his eyes told a different story.
“I should have listened . . .”
Will never finished. But she didn’t need to hear the rest.
Edie could feel the blue-eyed boy watching her. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. She had to hold it together a little while longer.
“You really believe a ghost is out here killing people?” He sounded disappointed. “You look smarter than that.”
Edie gripped the steering wheel tighter. He had no idea how smart. “I take it you don’t?”
He looked away. “Ghosts are apparitions. They can’t actually hurt anyone.”
“Sounds like you know a lot about ghosts.”
It was the same thing Edie said the second time she hung out with Wes and Trip in the filthy garage. Wes was adjusting some kind of gadget that looked like a giant calculator, with a meter and a needle where the display would normally have been. “We know enough.”
“Enough for what?” She imagined the two of them wandering around with their oversized calculators, searching for ghosts the way people troll the beach for loose change and jewelry with metal detectors.
“I told you, we hunt ghosts.” Wes tossed the device to Trip, who opened the back with a screwdriver and changed the batteries.
Edie settled into the cushions on the ratty plaid couch. “So you hang out in haunted houses and take pictures, like those guys on TV?”
Trip laughed. “Hardly. Those guys aren’t ghost hunters. They’re glorified photographers. We don’t stand around taking pictures.” Trip tossed the screwdriver onto the rotting workbench. “We send the ghosts back where they belong.”
Wes and Trip weren’t as stupid as Edie had assumed. In fact, if the two of them had ever bothered to enter the science fair, they would’ve won. They knew more about science, physics mainly—energy, electromagnetism, frequency, and matter— than any of the teachers at school. And they were practically engineers, capable of building almost anything with some wires and scrap metal. Wes explained that the human body was made up of electricity—electrical impulses that keep you alive. When a person died, those impulses changed form, resulting in ghosts.
Edie only understood about half of what he was saying. “How do you know? Maybe it just disappears.”
Trip shook his head. “Impossible. Energy can’t be destroyed. Physics 101. Those electrical impulses have to go somewhere.”
“So they change into ghosts, just like that?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘ just like that.’ I gave you the simplified version,” Trip said, attaching another wire to his tricked-out calculator.
“What is that thing?” she
