20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

spoken. She absent-mindedly brushed the back of one hand under her nose, and left a dark smear of blood over her upper lip ... and Alec froze with his hands in his pockets, staring at her. It was the first he knew there was something wrong about the girl sitting next to him, something slightly off about the scene playing out between them. He instinctively drew himself up and slightly away from her without even knowing he was doing it.
    She laughed at something in the movie, her voice soft, breathless. Then she leaned towards him and whispered, never been in a matinee before. I thought only night shows, I thought—for God's sake, it's a kid's movie. What's she trying to do to me?"
    Alec opened his mouth, didn't even know what he was going to say, something about the dead girl, but what came out instead was: "It's not really a kid's film."
    The big man shot him a look of mild annoyance. "Sure it is. It's Walt Disney."
    Alec stared at him for a long moment, then said, "You must be Harry Parcells."
    "Yeah. How'd you know?"
    "Lucky guesser," Alec said. "Thanks for the Coke."
 
    Alec followed Harry Parcells behind the concessions counter, through a door and out onto a landing at the bottom of some stairs. Harry opened a door to the right and let them into a small, cluttered office. The floor was crowded with steel film cans. Fading film posters covered the walls, overlapping in places: Boys Town, David Copperfield, Gone With the Wind .
    "Sorry she scared you," Harry said, collapsing into the office chair behind his desk. "You sure you're all right? You look kind of peaked."
    "Who is she?"
    "Something blew out in her brain," he said, and pointed a finger at his left temple, as if pretending to hold a gun to his head. "Six years ago. During The Wizard of Oz . The very first show. It was the most terrible thing. She used to come in all the time. She was my steadiest customer. We used to talk, kid around with each other—" His voice wandered off, confused and distraught. He squeezed his plump hands together on the desktop in front of him, said finally, "Now she's trying to bankrupt me."
    "You've seen her." It wasn't a question.
    Harry nodded. "A few months after she passed away. She told me I don't belong here. I don't know why she wants to scare me off when we used to get along so great. Did she tell you to go away?"
    "Why is she here?" Alec said. His voice was still hoarse, and it was a strange kind of question to ask. For a while, Harry just peered at him through his thick glasses with what seemed to be total incomprehension.
    Then he shook his head and said, "She's unhappy. She died before the end of The Wizard and she's still miserable about it. I understand. That was a good movie. I'd feel robbed too."
    "Hello?" someone shouted from the lobby. "Anyone there?"
    "Just a minute," Harry called out. He gave Alec a pained look. "My concession-stand girl told me she was quitting yesterday. No notice or anything."
    "Was it the ghost?"
    "Heck no. One of her paste-on nails fell into someone's food so I told her not to wear them anymore. No one wants to get a fingernail in a mouthful of popcorn. She told me a lot of boys she knows come in here and if she can't wear her nails she wasn't going to work for me no more so now I got to do everything myself." He said this as he was coming around the desk. He had something in one hand, a newspaper clipping. "This will tell you about her." And then he gave Alec a look—it wasn't a glare exactly, but there was at least a measure of dull warning in it—and he added: "Don't run off on me. We still have to talk."
    He went out, Alec staring after him, wondering what that last funny look was about. He glanced down at the clipping. It was an obituary—her obituary. The paper was creased, the edges worn, the ink faded; it looked as if it had been handled often. Her name was Imogene Gilchrist, she had died at nineteen, she worked at Water Street Stationery. She was survived by her parents, Colm and Mary.