Free Heart-shaped box by Joe Hill

should go on.
    “Bammy came in and cried out and said, ‘Girl, what’s the matter?’ But when I told her what I saw, that was when she got really upset and started crying. She sat down on the floor with me and said she believed me. She said I had seen her twin sister, Ruth.
    “I knew about Ruth, who died when Bammy was little, but it wasn’t until then that Bammy told me what really happened to her. I always thought she got run over by a car or something, but it wasn’t like that. One day, when they were both about seven or eight—this was 1950-something—their mother called them in for lunch. Bammy went, but Ruthie stayed out, because she didn’t feel like eating and because she was just naturally disobedient. While Bammy and her folks were inside, someone snatched her out of the backyard. She wasn’t ever seen again. Except now and then, people at Bammy’s house spot her blowing on dandelions and singing to herself, and then someone who isn’t there takes her away. My mother saw Ruth’s ghost, and Bammy’s husband seen her once, and some of Bammy’s friends, and Bammy, too.
    “Everyone who saw Ruth was just like me. They wanted to tell her not to go, to stay away from whoever was on the other side of the fence. But everyone who sees her is too scared by the sight of her to speak. And Bammy said she thought it wouldn’t ever be over until someone found their voice and spoke up. That it was like Ruth’s ghost was in a kind of dream, stuck repeating her last minutes, and she’ll be that way until someone calls out to her and wakes her up.”
    Georgia swallowed, fell silent. She bowed her head, so her dark hair hid her eyes.
    “I can’t believe the dead want to hurt us,” she said finally. “Don’t they need our help? Don’t they always need our help? If you see him again, you should try to talk to him. You should find out what he wants.”
    Jude didn’t believe that it was a matter of if, only when. And he already knew what the dead man wanted.
    “He didn’t come for talk,” Jude said.

12
    J ude wasn’t sure what to do next, so he made tea. The simple, automatic gestures of filling the kettle, spooning loose tea into the strainer, and finding a mug had a way of clearing his head and slowing time, opening a useful silence. He stood at the range listening to the kettle tick.
    He did not feel panicked, a realization that brought him some satisfaction. He was not ready to run, had doubts there was anything to gain from running anyway. Where could he go that would be better than here? Jessica Price had said the dead man belonged to him now and would follow him wherever he went. Jude flashed to an image of himself sliding into a first-class seat on a flight to California, then turning his head to see the dead man sitting next to him, with those black scribbles floating in front of his eyes. He shuddered, shook off the thought. The house was as good a place as any to make a stand—at least until he figured out some spot that made more sense. Besides, he hated to board the dogs. In the old days, when he went on tour, they always came on the bus with him.
    And no matter what he’d said to Georgia, he had even less interest in calling the police or his lawyer. He had an idea that dragging the law into it might be the worst thing he could do. They could bring a case againstJessica McDermott Price, and there just might be some pleasure in that, but getting even with her wouldn’t make the dead man go away. He knew that. He’d seen lots of horror movies.
    Besides, calling in the police to rescue him rubbed against his natural grain, no small matter. His own identity was his first and single most forceful creation, the machine that had manufactured all his other successes, which had produced everything in his life that was worth having and that he cared about. He would protect that to the end.
    Jude could believe in a ghost but not a boogeyman, a pure incarnation of evil. There had to be more to the dead