Page 24 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

Although it would have taken about a minute and a half to get herself off, Hazel got out of bed quickly. The thought of seeing those red eyes when she climaxed was alarming. It wasn’tjustalarming, which worried her even more, and she propelled herself into a cold shower in the hopes of killing off both the memory and the lust.

Sex dreams were always weird, she told herself, and they almost never meant much. The red-eyed figure and what they represented were on her mind. Her subconscious was trying to make the entity less threatening by putting it in an erotic context. Furthermore, she should probably try less pepperoni on her frozen pizza for a while.

And she really,reallyneeded to get out of the house.

* * *

Hazel had circled around Dawsonville proper on her moving day, respecting the need for twenty-mile-an-hour speed limits and stoplights every four blocks but not particularly wanting to deal with either. From the highway, she’d gotten a glimpse of low, square buildings made of red brick and gray concrete. An internet search had told her a little more. There wasn’t very much.

Downtown Dawsonville amounted to a pair of crisscrossing streets. One side held four churches, a restaurant, and a funeral home. The other had a Rite Aid, a McDonald’s, and a Starbucks, with an elementary-middle school a few blocks down. Local offices, a few more stores, and a small apartment complex filled in the rest, and a two-story concrete building near the intersection held city hall, the courthouse, the post office, and the local library.

Hazel entered it in the early afternoon, two bags of cleaningsupplies and a few other essentials in the back of her car, and thought that most government buildings smelled similar. It might be the combination of wood polish and stamp glue, or civics itself might have an odor. She wasn’t sure.

Shewasa skosh punchy, both from nerves after the night’s events and from the surprising oddness of being around people again. There’d only been two other shoppers in Rite Aid, plus the cashier and a guy stocking potato chips, and Hazel had still felt their presence. The feeling reminded her of the first few weeks after lockdown, but then everybody had been readjusting. This time it was only her.

Another difference from the first days out of lockdown: Public places were safer now, at least for a time. The presence of many living people, all strengthening the physical and influencing the ethereal in often contradictory ways, reinforced the barrier between worlds. It was why ghosts rarely appeared to large groups, and it gave Hazel a temporary reprieve. Eventually her condition would overcome any resistance, with horrible results, but she had a couple hours of freedom.

The library was basically one room, though a row of computer desks divided it in half. Long shelves on one end held nonfiction, adult novels marched along the shelves on the other end, and kids’ books occupied a corner. A couple spinning racks up front offered mystery and romance paperbacks.

As Hazel had sort of expected for a Wednesday afternoon before school let out, the library was pretty empty. When she stepped in, nervous for no real reason other than unfamiliarity, the noise of the closing door made the librarian look up from their paperwork.

They were probably in their mid-twenties or so, since they looked about fifteen to Hazel, and tall. A lock of purple in their blond hair probably had gotten them into a few arguments, unless Dawsonville was more liberal than some of the flags Hazel had seen suggested. Their name tag saidJess, they/them.

“I’d like to get a card,” said Hazel, once she and Jess had completedthe initial pleasantries. “I’d like to look up a few books, too, but first things first.”

The ethereal didn’t have a Wiki entry or a textbook, she’d told Stephanie, and that was true. Nobody that Hazel knew of had developed any comprehensive guide to the other side or the creatures there. Peoplehadwritten down information, though. It came in dribs and drabs, and it often took effort to sort out the real data from the bullshit, but Hazel had learned from a few texts and knew the names of others.

Learning, and learning about subjects that had been low on her priority list before, had become much more important over the last few days.

Jess picked up the form Hazel passed them, started to enter the information into the computer behind their desk, and then glanced back in Hazel’s direction. “Forty-five Statton—that’s the third house after the Sunoco station?”

“Fourth, I think,” said Hazel. The librarian’s description called to mind a string of neat suburban homes with no more lawn than would hold a Playskool tree house out back, easily contained and countable. Statton Road’s few other houses were in better shape than hers, and so was the land they were on, but there was alotof land between each of them, and the distances were irregular. Even a careful observer could have miscounted on the drive. “Kind of green, gray roof.”

“Yeah. You’ve taken on a job there.” Jess shook their head. Despite the purple hair and the mismatched earrings, the impressed-yet-doubtful expression on their face would’ve looked normal on their grandfather. Hazel almost expected them to saywhoo-eenext.

“You know the place, huh?”

“Every teenager around here knows it. Or did. I don’t think people went inside much, but it was a good place to, you know, drive out to.”

“I hope I haven’t disrupted anybody’s love life too badly,”

Jess laughed quietly. “I think they’ll adapt. And I’m sorry if I’vejust dumped a bunch of TMI on you. Seeing the address just brought back a lot of memories.”

“Oh, no. It’s good to hear more about the place, actually. I’m guessing nobody’s lived there for a while?”

“Not in ages. I think—” Jess tapped at their upper lip. “I kind of remember people selling produce and firewood out there when I was real little. But I might be remembering wrong. Hey, Kathy?”

They didn’t raise their voice very much, but an older woman turned from where she’d been restacking the fiction section. “Mm-hmm?”

“Do you remember anything about 45 Statton?”

Kathy left her trolley and came over, taking Hazel’s measure with bright brown eyes on the way. “Statton…well, nothingdramatic, if that’s what you’re wondering. The Whitlakes used to live there. I think they sold it and moved up to be with their daughter’s family in New York, but that would’ve been, oh, in the nineties. It’s just not exactly prime real estate.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to buy it if it were,” said Hazel.

“Oh, did you?” Kathy took another look at Hazel. Her glasses had bright blue frames, Hazel noticed, that almost matched the bluebird on her T-shirt. “You’ve signed up for some work.”

“I’m getting that impression. Nothing dramatic in the past, though, you said?”