I reached for my phone to hit pause, only remembering my slimy salmonella hands at the last moment.
With a sigh, I gave in. “Hey, Siri, what is a parson’s nose?”
The video paused while Siri considered.“A person’s nose is the organ that extends outward in the middle of the facebetween the eyes and the mouth. It is the first organ of the upper respiratory system…”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
After cleaning my hands off with disinfectant wipes, I Googled what the fuck a parson’s nose was, thoroughly studied the outright dismemberment involved in spatchcocking,and followed suit with my own raw chicken.
The whole process gave me the heebie-jeebies—especiallyafter I’d returned to the tower to find the last of the crime scene investigators packing up their things, leaving me to kick rocks and dirt over the bloodied message that remained so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.
I shuddered. What a terrible thing for any creature to die for. Hopefully, it’d at least been quick.
LEAVE
I shook my head, brushing off the weight of what it meant that I’d given the middle finger to the message and returned against literally everyone’s wishes except my own.
But I’d promised Charlie a birthday dinner of roasted chicken with crispy skin and peach cobbler, so there I was,spatchcocking.
With the unpleasantness out of the way, I thoroughly seasoned the whole bird and popped it into the small oven before moving on to boil potatoes. The cobbler was already baked, set aside on the small kitchen counter to cool, and the ice cream waited in the utility shed freezer, along with all of my other groceries.
“How many weeks are you going to be out here before your next supply run?” the pilot had asked, looking somewhat perplexed at the sheer amount of food I loaded into the helicopter.
“I eat a lot.”
She’d especially eyed the packs and packs of hot dogs, which I hadnotpurchased for a mangy, beady-eyed raccoon. Charlie liked them, that was all.
She’d merely shrugged and prepared to fly out after we unloaded everything. Just in time, too, because it’d begun to hail a few minutes after she dropped me off. A slow-moving storm was forecasted to pass through over the next few days, with freezing rain, ice-cold wind, and even snow at this elevation.
Charlie could sit in front of the stove again this evening.
If he showed himself, that was. Which he’d better, because today was his birthday.
With a few minutes left until the chicken was ready, I dug his presents out of my bag. I had no idea what a good gift for a ghost was. He couldn’t take anything with him when he left, so I wanted to give him something he could use in the lookout. But when I stopped thinking of ideas to give a ghost, and thought ofCharlie, instead, I knew exactly what to get.
It only took a handful of thumb tacks and a bit of creative jerry-rigging to mount the small solar charge panel, and then the cabin was lit in a magical, soft glow from the fairy lights I strung above the windows all around. These wouldn’t require power to operate and would stay lit well into the night.
I set the other small box on the desk for him to open later. “Are you here?” I asked into the quiet. The potatoes were mashed, and the broccoli was sautéed. All that remained was to carve the chicken.
No answer.
“Charlie, please come back. I’ve lit a fire and made dinner.”
I paced back over to the note, unmoved from where I’d left it.
I’M COMING BACK
Had he even read it? Had he stood me up?
A half-laugh, half-groan burst out of me. “I will not be ghosted by aghost. Come out! I spatchcocked a chicken for you.”
“You didwhatto a chicken?”
I spun around. Charlie stood next to the fire, one hand fingering the blanket draped over the back of his chair. He was mostly all there, in the same flight jacket and pants he always wore, but the color in his face before I left was gone, leaving him gray and see-through.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly.
“You came back,” he replied, shy and quiet. A statement, yes, but also something more.
