3New Haven, USA, 1951
The hanging was a happy day.
The sun had finally broken through the sickly gray-green of the summer storm clouds, and a few ancient birds braved the skies. Children, carrying candy, chased each other through the legs of their parents, and the spindly wood of the hanging platform.
Maria Monday waited. It was her last day on Earth.
She licked a bit of blood from her lips. It tasted, to her, like sugar and water, slightly diluted.
A white feather from a bird above floated down, and landed on her outstretched palm.
"Oh," she laughed. "It's raining."
She blinked eyes that were black as the executioner's pinstriped suit. They were sightless, inky orbs, endlessly spinning in their useless sockets.
Once, she'd tried to remove them herself.
Oh, the town had loved that.
They'd come from miles to see crazy Maria Monday, on the floor with holes in her demon eyes and a scarlet knife clutched in her hand. Remembering it, Maria bared her teeth and hissed, shaking in her chains. They would never understand her.
"Hey, freak!" A voice, thick with alcohol, pierced the air. Something heavy spiraled out from the raucous crowd, and Maria felt it hit her in the temple, fiery pain erupting out through her skull. "You ready to die?"
She told herself she wouldn't cry.
Her mouth tasted like blood and the white bread they'd given her last night. A final feast of calories and plain protein for a hated woman. Maria laughed dryly, and shuffled her bare feet. Ugly, hated, and completely harmless. A blind loner.
Her heart was slippery with anxiety.
A little girl in the audience was crying about her lost balloon, somewhere above.
Maria hoped it would be quick.
An old man grumbled something about the proper way of tying a noose.
"It's not the knot, Kelly," he explained in a crumbling voice. "It's not the bloody knot, it's the way you loop the neck and tighten. Airtight, that is. Vicious."
Maria hated all the noise. A hundred heartbeats. The scattering of feet. Muffled voices from miles away. The squeak of the rope as it slid, finally, around her neck, slick with sweat. She wanted it done. All of it.
"Oh, god," she whispered, hurried. "Oh, my god." Her breath came quick and anxious.
The thumping of the executioner's Italian shoes was the loudest sound she had ever heard.
"Yeah, see, that idiot's got no sense in knot tying–"
"It's gone, Mommy, I want it! I want that–"
"Hey, freak! Die, you monster! Good–"
"Murder! Such a sweet child she was –"
Maria opened her mouth.
Her last gulp of air was stuck in her throat, and she clawed desperately to let it out, the noise around her escalating into a mind-numbing parade of furious catcalls and moans.
Snap.
A flash of light, and for a moment, Maria Monday could see, as if the rope had hit a fuse, a switch, a nerve.
She saw nothing but her own hands, covered in someone else's blood.
"Oh, god,"
Silence.
The crowd erupted into cheers.
Maria Monday was dead. They would leave her body there for days, to let the birds have their share.
But for now, music burst from a radio, a woman in red began to dance with a stranger, and a little girl bought a new balloon, tugging giddily on her mother's fading smock.
The hanging, after all, was a happy day.
Haven Highway, USA, 2012
Jane Tucker pursed her lips, and leaned in closer to the wheel of her Civic, eyes narrowed.
"Yeah, we're lost," she sighed, defeated, pushing backwards into her seat. "This highway is like a freaking maze."
Beside her, Tully King raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, right, it's the highway's fault," he yawned, and stretched his arms out in front of him. A bit of brown hair flopped into his face, and he smirked. "Because you're is so coordinated these days."
Jane tapped the bridge of her nose with a nail. She noticed, somewhat rejectedly, that she was in dire need of a manicure.
"Well, thanks for the big help." She kicked Tully with a high-heeled foot, and leaned back into the steering wheel, eyes on the road. Pushing up her glasses, she squinted at the nearest rust-covered exit sign. "Does that say Exit 47, or is it just me?"
Tully smiled again.
"Just you."
"Shit!" Jane smacked a hand against the seat. "I need to find this stupid town before three forty-five!" She really hated highways. Some dusty off-ramp could lead them to New Haven, or the millionth McDonalds. And if she ate one more extra-large serving of fries, she was sure she'd shrivel up completely from upping her salt intake.
"Take a deep breath, Ms. Tucker. Deeeep breath," Tully wiggled his fingers in front of her face. He had yanked his gray hoodie up so that it covered his face in midday shadows. "You are getting very sleepy..."
"Shut the hell up, you little brat," Jane slapped his hands away, growling. "I'm trying to concentrate. You bother me again, I'm cutting your paycheck. Again. Fifty percent this time."
Tully gave her a worried glance. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but bit his lip and let out a little anxious sigh instead.
Jane blinked, and focused back onto the endless stretch of gray highway, dusty and red with the hot summer sun.
Two hours later, she pulled the Civic into a trodden dirt parking lot, frustration poking little holes in her heavy heart. The job was already turning out troublesome, and they hadn't even reached the hotspot or the clientele yet.
But there, nestled between a fading brick outhouse and large patch of snaking weeds, was a thin sign post, with a wooden slab attached to it.
"New Haven, population 400." Jane said, almost to herself. She smoothed out her jeans in thought. "Huh."
She shuffled over to the passenger door, dust already catching in her throat. Tully was still sitting in his seat, eyes straight ahead.
"Hey, stupid," she rapped on the glass, with a little cough. "I need you out here."
He unfolded from the car, looking worried. His eyes weren't focusing, and his forehead was slick with perspiration.
"Jane," he said, quietly. "I don't know why, but this place is seriously effed-up."
And then he threw up.
Jane was used to Tully. She'd hired him out of a high school she'd worked with once. The place had had a bad infestation of vengeful suicides, and she'd been brought in descreetly to clear them up. Tully was strange. He'd followed her back to her motel one night, determined to get her to tell the truth. She wasn't a substitute English teacher, was she? What was she doing in the gym after hours?
It was then that she had noticed he could feel things. Dead things. She could too, on a small scale. A squirmy feeling when the sleeping awoke and when the unborn became reborn. It was as if something small and parasitic burrowed briefly, furiously, in her stomach. But Tully was different. He knew things. Who they had been. What they had done. The dead actually communicated with him, whether he wanted it or not.
Jane thought it was great.
Tully did not.
"Man, that tasted like Big Mac," he mumbled around spit. "And feet. Oh, god, why did it taste like feet?"
"I dunno. Maybe you licked a shoe?" Jane leaned against the car, once more checking her nails. "Think, when was the last time you washed your Converse?"
"Oh, ha ha, Ms. Tucker," he tried a sarcastic chuckle, but only managed a slight groaning sound. He always called her by her temporary teacher title. It was either a joke, or some sort of norma reality he kept clinging too. Jane couldn't tell. "It might interest you to know what's making me chuck my cookies, you know." He stumbled into an upright position, and joined her by the car, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
"Spill, psycho."
"Some sort of pissed-off spirit. But she's not like anything I've seen before." He paused to cough. "Like, she...I don't know how to explain it..."
Jane glanced sideways at him, dropping her hands to her hips. Her glasses slid down her nose.
"Try."
Tully gulped.
Sighed, and leaned back to stare up at the blank blue sky and pillow-white clouds.
"Like she wants something, but she's forgot what it is and she's really, really super angry about it. She's tearing everything up, but she's lost all control of her mind."
"Oh. Like, spiritual rage-quit?" Jane asked. Tully chuckled.
"Um, yeah. But super-charged. And she knows we're here."
Jane jumped.
"WHAT? Couldn't you have said something before? How do you even know?"
Tully didn't reply for a long time.
Finally, he cleared his throat.
"She told me."