The Touch Of Ghosts: Writer's Cut (Alex Rourke) by John Rickards Read Free Book Online

car and fetched my bag from the trunk. The street around me was frozen and silent, though not entirely dark. Light shone through the windows of a couple of the houses further down the road, and there was perhaps a hint of movement behind the curtains. I turned away from them and crunched through the undisturbed snow up to the porch, hunting in my pocket for the keys.
    Inside, the house was cold. I flicked the lights on in the hall and dropped my bag at the foot of the stairs, then went back outside to retrieve the handful of mail that had built up over the past few days. Junk, most of it. A couple of personal letters for Gemma I didn't open but left propped up by the mirror, like she might come home to get them.
    The living room was much the same as last time I was here. The burgundy felt couch starting to wear thin in patches, the not-quite-matching armchair, the clutter on the coffee table. At the far end of the room near the fireplace was the antique rocking chair we’d come across when we went to a fair in Burlington. On the mantel was an LCD alarm clock intended for travelers. Next to it was a photo in a cheap wooden frame of the two of us together; apart from that and a few lighter patches on the pale yellow walls to show where the previous owner's pictures had once hung, the room was undecorated.  
    The cavernous kitchen beyond was a little homelier, though that didn’t stop my footsteps ringing hollowly from the tiled floor. The table in the center was spread with a blue and white cloth, half a dozen cookery books sat on top of the fridge and there were a variety of utensils stacked along the worktop. A couple of dishcloths hung from cupboard doors, splashes of color against the wood, and there was a bunch of wilted flowers - the ones I’d given her that final time - in a vase on top of the microwave. I skimmed the notes stuck to the wall by the phone, but nothing grabbed my attention. I glanced through the back windows at the deck outside, then checked the fridge and cupboards. Although I figured I should be OK for breakfast, there wasn’t much food in the house. I hoped the bar on Main served meals.
    I collected my bag and headed up the groaning stairs. Gemma's bedroom looked like she’d just left. The covers were crumpled, unmade, and the pillow still retained the dent left by her head. There was a shirt and a sweater that never made it to the laundry hamper lying on the floor, a scattered collection of jewelry and the small amount of makeup she used on the table by the mirror. There was a half-read paperback on the floor next to the bed. I couldn’t help but glance down the landing to the smaller spare room — the study — that I knew housed her computer and some junk she’d never gotten round to unpacking, and the bathroom at the far end, just to make sure she wasn’t still here. Dissonance between memory and reality; it all felt deeply wrong. I dropped my bag just inside the bedroom and made my way downstairs again, then out into the cold.  
    My breath steamed in the stiff breeze that blew down off the mountains, rubbing my face raw. It thrummed and whistled among the wires that suspended the stoplights over Main, making them shudder and dance. The Devil's eye-glow of the red light preventing traffic from crossing the larger highway glowered at me as I hurried over the junction towards the Owl's Head. A small, unlit sign beneath its name said: 'Bar — Grill — Rooms'.  
    I walked into a roiling cloud of stale warm air and the low murmur of conversation. Somewhere in the background a jukebox was playing Dire Straits' 'Brothers in Arms', because nothing said Saturday night in this part of the world like wanting to kill yourself. Either the bar hadn’t changed much since Revolutionary times or the owners had gotten a great deal on dark aged oak in bulk. Black wooded tables, ceiling, counter, doors and windows. The carpet was a red so deep it might just as well have been black too. Even the walls were