Merlin opened the door and Bert
shivered violently in the blast of cold air.
“I feel sharper already. I don’t think I need to – ”
She grabbed his sleeve and hauled him
outside. “There,” she said, shutting
the door behind them. “First step of
any journey is always the worst. It’s
behind you now.”
“But it’s freezing out here!” he
complained.
“Bert, when investigating the
paranormal, the time eventually comes when you have to pause with the questions
an get off your ass to go do
something.”
“They’re haunting the diner. The warm
diner. The diner they cannot leave.”
“That’s true. But they didn’t die in the diner, did they?”
He blinked. “We’re not gonna check
out the pass like you told them we were going to?”
“We are because we are gonna walk thru the pass an’ go on to the drop.”
“At the risk of sounding pedantic – ”
“You?
Surely not.”
He glared at her. “It was twenty years ago on a warm summer
night. What are you gonna look for when
the road is buried under several feet of snow?”
“Well, Bert, I don’t know an’ I won’t
till I get there. Come on.
Exercise’ll warm you up.”
Still he resisted.
Merlin halted, swung round and looked
back at him, her head to one side. He
seemed truly miserable and out of his depth in the snow, a borrowed sweater and
a stolen jacket.
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t know what I’d be able to do,
Peri.”
“You think you’d be better off if I
left you in the diner.”
“Well .. yeah,” he agreed.
“No one goes into the field without
backup – not even me.”
“Yeah, but – “
“Okay,” she surrendered. “I’ll go check it out on my own. You go wait in there an’, when Nick wakes
up, you’ll be there to explain to him why we didn’t wake him two hours and
thirty odd minutes ago when we should have.
I’m sure he’ll listen to you .. if
he can hear you over Derek shouting, of course. I know I’d rather be a
couple of miles away when Nick comes round.”
“Me too,” Bert nodded briskly. “How far away is the drop, do you think?”
“Far enough to avoid the fallout.”
“Great! Let’s go.”
He set off walking uneasily but as
quickly as he dared over the snow, determined to put distance between himself
and the diner. Merlin grinned wickedly
to herself. She wasn’t building a
horrible image of Nick in Bert’s mind and she wasn’t really playing on Bert’s
fears. She was just .. exaggerating
some things. Derek wasn’t going to
shout because Derek very rarely shouted and it had to be a crisis for him to be
anxious enough to shout. But he would
be irritated and he would give a small lecture on the importance of obeying
orders and being reliable, and then he would admit that, yes, in truth, she had
done the right thing in letting him sleep on so no harm done. Nick wasn’t going to hit anyone but he would
glare at missing out on the fun. And he
would probably be annoyed at the disappearance of his favorite jacket. But Bert – voluble, naïve and resolute Bert
– didn’t know any of that. Four days
just wasn’t long enough for him to know the varying facets and depths of each personality
in the San Francisco Legacy house.
Besides, he worked in Hollywood in an industry where everyone was
shallow and an ass kisser.
She hurried after him. This wasn’t a stroll in the park. Walking over snow was hard work, even for
those used to it. Bert was out of his
depth physically as well as mentally.
“Your first proper field
investigation,” she remarked, falling into ungainly step beside him.
“I guess. Though .. you may have thought I was kidding around before but
what are we like to find except ..
snow?”
“I know you weren’t kidding, you were
asking a valid question an’ I gave you a straight answer. I don’t
know till I get there. But, unless I
look, I may miss out on a vital clue, maybe the answer to the whole thing.”
“You think,” he commented flatly. “After twenty years.”
“Look, I’m a firm believer in
faith. Sometimes, you just have to ..
take a leap in the dark an’ trust it’ll work out.”
“Mmm, yeah, I know that.”
“You do.”
“Oh, sure,” Bert nodded. “Right from the first day I met you. Seems like years ago … ”
At times, it has felt like years, Merlin considered.
“But I knew you thought like that,”
Bert continued confidently.
“You did.”
“Uh huh.” He shrugged. “How else could you have married Nick?”
*****
“You got one thing right, Flipper,”
Skippy commented. “Tonight has
certainly been very different.”
Flipper was silent, his tanned face
thoughtful.
“What is it, Flip?” Lassie coaxed.
He looked up, his eyes – for want of a
better word – haunted. “You think they
can do it? You really think they can?”
“Yeah, I think they can,” she
answered. “Whether I believe they can .. I’m not sure. But I have hope. This is the closest we’ve ever come to finding out our answers,
to finding the key to unlock this prison we’re in.”
He nodded. “I know what you mean but I daren’t hope. If it doesn’t work out, an’ I find that I
still have to stay here, I think I’ll go crazy.”
“Oh, Flip, it isn’t that bad,” Lassie
whispered, holding his hand.
“It is. I thought, y’know, I could handle it. I thought I had handled
it. But .. talking about it tonight has
just brought it all back to me. All my
dreams, my hopes. Wasted. All the years I put
in learning my craft, how to act, gaining experience, honing techniques. For nothing. I only ever wanted to go to Hollywood. And I never will. Leaving
this diner an’ going on .. maybe setting up a theater on the other side ..
yeah, that’d be something. Something
good. I could do that. But I’ll still never get to Hollywood. And if I can’t go on, if I have to stay here
… If I could, I’d kill myself but I
can’t even do that.”
Lassie looked to Skippy because she
didn’t have the words to say. Skippy
shrugged helplessly. He’d never had a
dream like that. He’d always been
content to stay in the diner.
“Well .. if we do get over there an’
you want help in your theater .. count me in,” he offered.
“Me too,” Lassie added.
Flipper glanced up at them and laughed
softly. “I couldn’t do it without you
guys.”
“You think .. we’ll actually meet Shakespeare?” Skippy wondered. “Whoa, just think of that. Amazing, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” Flipper nodded.
“Hey, we can’t put on plays an’ stuff,
not just the three of us,” Skippy pointed out.
“We’ll need more people. That’s
gonna mean .. starting up a drama school.
Evening job an’ a day job too.”
“With matinees at weekends,” Lassie
grinned.
“When are we ever gonna get time for a
social life?” Skippy complained.
“We’re not even there yet an’ you’re
bitching about it?” Flipper remarked.
Skippy shrugged. “You know me, Flip.”
“The drugs thing. You were scared of being judged because of
that?” Flipper asked quietly.
Skippy nodded. “I thought I’d go to Mexico. I mean, no way am I ever gonna get to
Canada.”
“To escape the law?” Lassie frowned.
He frowned at her too. “What?”
“No matter,” she said.
“Anyway, it seems I can stay in
America an’ I won’t even have to go live in Texas. That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” they agreed heartily, despite
having no idea what he was talking about.
“Your .. reluctance to be judged,”
Flipper went on. “That isn’t why we’re stuck here.
Is it?”
Skippy shook his head. “Peri says not. Usually, you don’t get a choice.
You die, you go over, you get judged.
We’ve had a glitch an’ it’s still working cos we’re still here.”
“A glitch,” Lassie echoed.
“The reason we didn’t go the usual
route.”
“What were they again?”
“Aw, man,” Skippy sighed. “We’ve talked it to death. We haven’t found out. Not even the ghost hunters could find out.”
“They’re not ghost hunters,” Lassie
commented. “One’s a TV producer an’ the
other’s a bounty hunter. The ghost hunters are down there,” she said,
pointing.
“Okay .. but I wanna do as much as I
can an’, if that means talking it out again, we do it. Violent death – yeah, we died violently but
we weren’t aware of it. Is that enough
of a reason to keep us here? It’d be
like .. having the roof cave in on you while you’re in a coma. I think Peri would say it’s bad timing
rather than a reason to come back as a ghost.
If we’d been shot or stabbed, that’d be different, right? We’d be angry.”
“I’d be royally pissed if that had
happened to me,” Skippy remarked.
“So .. it isn’t violent death. Unexpected death – anyone got any comments
on that one?” Flipper invited.
“What does it mean, exactly?” Lassie
asked. “How is it different from the
first one?”
“I guess violent death is .. usually
manmade,” Skippy suggested. “Shooting,
stabbing, y’know .. violent. Although,
if your car engine stalls on a railroad track an’ you get hit by a locomotive
.. that’s violent too but really more of an accident.”
“In which case, you probably wouldn’t
come back as a ghost,” Flipper pointed out.
“Unless you got really angry that you
were so dumb you never got out in time,” Skippy commented.
“And a locomotive is manmade,” Lassie
remarked.
“So is an automobile,” Skippy nodded.
“Unexpected death .. is .. natural
causes?” Flipper ventured. “A cardiac
arrest maybe. If that happened when you
were .. twenty six an’ in good shape,” he continued. “If it happened at .. eighty three an’ you were already sick, it
wouldn’t be unexpected. Yeah?”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Skippy
nodded. “And it doesn’t apply to us.”
“I have to agree,” Flipper sighed. He thought for a moment. “Passing on information.”
“I know I don’t have millions stashed
in a secret account,” Lassie sighed.
“Nor do I have any secret recipes I have to hand on.”
Skippy shook his head. “I’m all clear on that one.”
“Me too,” Flipper said. “That just leaves unfinished business .. an’
I know I dealt with everything before
I quit town.”
“I settled a few debts I had,” Lassie
nodded. “I was all set for a free an’
easy summer.”
“Likewise. There is no reason or
combination of reasons,” Skippy concluded.
“At least, not that we can find.” Flipper drew in a deep breath. “I think it’s time we woke the
professionals.”
*****
Bert had stopped shivering and, to his
immense surprise, had actually started to sweat. The chill had brought a rosy flush to his cheeks which he would
have liked to see if only he’d had a mirror and it hadn’t been quite so black.
They were just about at the pass. Merlin slowed to assess it because Derek and
Nick would want to know if the conditions were good to go or whether they
should sit tight for a while longer.
Even with the four wheel drive, Merlin wouldn’t have risked it yet. The snow was about six feet deep and thickly
packed. They could walk on the top if
they took it easy but Bert had plunged thru a couple of times up to his
crotch. Two fully laden automobiles ..
she couldn’t see it happening.
While she did that, Bert looked back
down the road. He couldn’t see the
Mountain Pass Café because it was set back from the road, and the trees – ghostly
white sentinels standing proud and heavy with snow – were too thick. But he imagined he could see a glimmer of
neon light. It was home .. of a kind.
“Don’t stand still,” Merlin advised,
her breath a cloud. “The sweat will
start to cool. You’ll get hypothermia.”
Bert thought about stamping his feet
and remembered the cold shock to his crotch so flapped his arms instead.
“Are we gonna make it out of here?” he
asked.
“Yeah, but not just yet. Even if we could get this far, the road
bends ahead and if we go into a slide .. well, we know what’ll happen, don’t
we? The kids’ll end up with
company. If we wait a few more hours,
we’ll be able to get home. You could be
on your way back south few hours after that.”
She pointed. “Let’s go check out
the drop.”
Carefully, they set off again, moving
close enough together that they could steady each other if either slipped yet
not actually touching.
“What were you thinking back there?”
she asked.
“Back where?”
“In the diner. Before.
You couldn’t speak about it in front of the others.”
So much had happened since then that
Bert had to think. Then he felt a burst
of heat color his face and he was glad it was dark.
“Really. It was nothing.”
“You looked at Skippy, then you looked
at me. What were you thinking?”
“Jeez, you’re like a dog with a
bone. You never give up, do you?”
“Nope. One of the character traits needed for the job I do.”
He sighed. “Okay. I saw how Skippy
looked .. suddenly relaxed. You’d come
in together. I thought, y’know, maybe …
” He shrugged.
“Maybe what?”
Bert rolled his eyes. “That you’d maybe forgotten you were a
married woman.”
Merlin frowned then her eyes sprang
open. “You thought we’d made out in the
restroom? Bert!”
“I’m sorry! It was just a .. stupid, dumb idea.”
“Yeah, it was. I’d never cheat on Nick. Never.”
“I believe you!”
“Skippy had some questions to ask –
nothing to do with the overall situation.
Personal questions. I answered
them. He was relieved. An’ that’s all. Poor kid was worried sick .. an’ now he’s had that taken away.”
“I’m sorry,” Bert repeated. “I didn’t know that. It wasn’t unreasonable to think what I
did. Two people coming in together from
the restroom an’ one looking really happy … ”
Merlin laughed.
“What’s so damned funny?” Bert
demanded in a sour voice.
“I was just thinking how far you’ve
come. Yesterday evening .. you didn’t
believe in ghosts. Now, you’re happily
entertaining the idea of ghosts making out with people. Spirits – The Inheritance is getting more
interesting by the second.”
He halted. “Oh, yeah … Wow. I never considered sex. Sex is very popular .. provided it’s done tastefully.”
“No open mouth kissing an’ one foot on
the floor.”
“We’ve come a long way from those
days,” Bert remarked. “You can get away
with a lot if it’s on cable.”
Merlin glanced back at him. “Glad you came?”
“You bet,” Bert grinned. “Every wish I’ve ever made has come true
tonight.”
“Let’s see if we can top it by solving
this mystery an’ setting these kids free.”
“I’d like that,” he said quietly.
They trudged on, carefully pacing
themselves and remembering they had the long, arduous walk back. The snow wasn’t so bad the other side of the
pass – only four feet deep and decreasing rapidly. Merlin estimated that, within three miles, it would be only a
light dusting.
“You hear that?” she asked.
Bert listened. “An engine?”
“Snowplows. Heading this way.”
“You don’t know it’s snowplows,” he
accused.
“Wanna put money on it?” she invited.
They covered the ground a little more
quickly now and at last approached the bend in the road.
“Wow .. look at this!” Bert exclaimed,
cautiously going across to the barrier.
“Scrape marks, bits of paint.
You think it’s from their car?”
Merlin shone the flashlight onto the
low fence. “Looks pretty old. Could be.”
They followed the marks on the barrier
as it curved around the bend, and pulled up when they saw there was a large
section missing. Bert eased up to the
gap and peered over.
“That is a long drop,” he remarked.
“Get back here,” Merlin
instructed. “Bert, you hear me? Get away from the– ”
*****
Derek felt a cold breeze drift over
his face. He muttered, wrinkled his
nose and frowned. He brushed at his
face. Finally, he opened his eyes.
“Just shaking me would have been
enough,” he remarked, then realized he didn’t recognize the face he was
addressing. Derek sat up.
“Good morning. I’m Fl .. Philip Jones-Harwood.”
“Good morning. I’m Derek Rayne. Did you say morning?” Derek queried and looked at his watch. He gazed at it for several seconds then
raised his eyes. He did not look
happy. “Where’s Peri?” he demanded in an
iron hard voice.
“She’s gone with Bert to check out the
pass,” Flipper replied. “She said to
tell you.”
“I see. Were you marooned here by the storm as well?”
“Marooned .. yeah. By the storm, no. I’m one of the ghosts haunting this diner. These are my friends – Cassidy Renman and
Skip Delaware. And Peri said we should
answer your questions because you’re the ones who can help free us from this
prison.”
Derek nodded. “Wake the others,” he said.
*****
Merlin lunged quickly and grabbed the
sleeve of Nick’s pea jacket. Bert’s
eyes were pleading as she tugged and heaved him back to safety. He hadn’t fallen, but he had slipped on the
ice, and slipping just there had not been good.
When he was on solid ground with the
barrier between him and unexpected death plus unfinished business, he let out
the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“Man, that was close!”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Nick would’ve been really pissed if you’d
lost his sweater an’ favorite jacket.”
He looked at her. “You’re stronger than you look.”
Merlin shrugged. “Appearances are often deceiving.”
“I guess they are,” Bert agreed
quietly. “And, of everyone here, I
should know that. I watch shows being
put together with the sole purpose of .. entertaining deception.” He sighed quickly. “Don’t try this at home.
Men really cannot leap tall buildings at a single bound or fly faster
than a speeding bullet .. an’ they certainly can’t shoot lightning from their
fingers. Magic really is just clever
illusion. There are no people with
special powers. What are you doing?”
“How far down do you think that drop
is?” Merlin asked, squinting over the barrier.
“Well, let’s see … If we’re two thirds of the way up a
mountain, I’d say the drop is about two thirds. Maybe .. just over a half mile, straight down near enough.”
“How long would it take to climb?”
He stared at her. “You’re not serious. C’mon!
It’s pitch black. It’s cold. It’s more
than cold,” Bert corrected, “it’s freezing.
It’s probably icy. We have no equipment. Peri .. you are just kidding me, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. You’re right. In the
dark, it’s too risky. It’s just .. the
kids didn’t die up here. They died
somewhere down there. I’d like to take
a look.”
“You’d need to be superhuman to do
that,” he pointed out.
“An’ I’m just a minor character,” she
shrugged.
I’ll be back as soon as I can, Aquila
commented.
“You okay?” Bert asked as Merlin’s
shoulders sagged.
“I guess I’m getting a little tired.”
“And you’re hurt,” Bert added, and
then halted. “You pulled me back with
your injured arm.”
“Look, I won’t tell Rachel if you
don’t. If you think Derek can shout,
you haven’t heard her when she has a righteous cause. We’d better get back to face the music.”
Peri .. shine your flashlight down
here, Aquila said.
“Let’s just take one last look while
we’ll here,” Merlin suggested. “We
might not get another chance till spring.”
“I don’t know what you think you’re
going to see but .. take your time,” he invited. “I’m in no wild rush to get back, not if it means shouting and a
broken nose.”
*****
“It’s five forty six,” Nick pointed
out. “An’ my jacket’s gone.”
“Bert must have taken it,” Rachel
remarked.
“Mmm, hot coffee,” Alex sighed
happily. Cold mornings never seemed so
bad if there was hot coffee.
“Bert did that,” Lassie said
shyly. “He left it ready for when you
woke.”
“Did I miss something?” Nick
demanded. “We said – three hours. Why
didn’t they wake us at the right time?”
“That I don’t know,” Flipper
replied. “We were in the
storeroom. We didn’t hear.”
“If I know Peri half as well as I
think I do,” Derek commented, “she let us sleep on because we have a long drive
ahead of us in difficult conditions. We
need to be fresh. On balance, it was
the correct decision to take.”
“Yeah, but she could have woken us
with a sit-rep, told us all was well, that she had it covered, an’ that we could
sleep on.”
“Maybe she went to check the
conditions outside when she did because she knew you’d .. react,” Rachel
suggested mildly. “No harm done,
Nick. Let it go.”
He faced her. “I’m not reacting. She’s out there, in the snow, with Bert – who isn’t exactly
experienced backup – and he’s stolen my jacket.”
“Borrowed. Not stolen. You’ll get it
back,” Rachel insisted. “And Peri can
cope.”
“You don’t like him much, do you?”
Skippy said.
“Neither would you if he’d just walked
into your life an’ taken over,” Nick muttered.
“But .. that’s more or less what he has done,” Skippy retorted. “An’ we’re kinda grateful, y’know?”
“We should make a start,” Derek
suggested, thinking that Bert had a unique gift for causing arguments without
saying a word or even being present.
“Bert is a really great guy,” Flipper
commented. “He’s tried so hard to help
us tonight. No one has ever done this
much for us before. And .. he’s
promised to tell me about his job, where he works. I’m an actor. To me ..
Bert is a very powerful man as well as symbol of everything I aspire to be.”
Nick gazed at him in disbelief then
twitched his shoulders in defeat. Some
battles shouldn’t be fought. Some
battles shouldn’t even be thought about.
Derek put extra chairs around one of
the tables and they settled – the Luna Foundation ranged on one side, the
ghosts of the Mountain Pass Café on the other.
There was a moment of silence, of calm.
“Which one of you threw the cake?”
Nick began, his eyes raking across their faces.
“Nick, this isn’t an inquisition,”
Derek said sternly. “It happened, it
was .. unfortunate, but it’s in the past.
Going over it again will not build bridges of understanding and
cooperation.”
“Yes, boss,” Nick grunted.
“You had better bring us up to speed,”
Derek continued. “What have you told
Peri and Bert?”
“What haven’t we told them?” Skippy replied. “We’ve spoken of .. family an’ friends. Who we are, what we did, how we met up, the journey, what
happened that night, what happened the morning after that night. We’ve
talked it round an’ round. We’ve
debated the reasons why ghosts haunt an’, as far as we can tell, none of ’em
apply to us.”
“It may be obscure,” Alex said. “Something maybe you wouldn’t associate with
one of the four reasons. They are general headings, not the be all and
end all.”
“Start at the beginning,” Derek
requested. “How did you meet?”
Skippy groaned as Flipper launched
into the story one more time …
*****
Bert shivered. The night was starting to get to him. Dawn was still a long way off and the very
air seemed black. There again, he’d
never seen so much of the sky before.
The stars were clear, crisp, glittering in the chill. Half hypnotized, he gazed up at them.
His companion had been silent for several
minutes now, staring down the mountain.
The flashlight lit snow covered rock and snow covered trees but it
couldn’t make a dent in the deep night farther down.
What is she doing ..? Peri isn’t the Bionic Woman .. oh, no, he
thought, she had an ear. It was Steve
Austin who had the eye. Either way, she
isn’t bionic and there is no way she can see that far, not even with night
vision. It is too far down and too long
ago.
“P – ” he began.
She straightened. “Oh.”
“Oh?
What does that mean? Oh.”
“We have to get back. Quick as we can.”
“Oh,” Bert said, entirely lacking in
enthusiasm.
Merlin was crossing the road, head
down, walking with stiff legs. Snow
legs. Slipping, Bert hurried after her.
“What’s the big rush?” he asked. “Are you cold?”
She shook her head. “I need to ask some more questions.”
“Why?”
“I found some evidence, Bert.”
He began to laugh. “C’mon .. it’s impossible.”
“Sure,” Merlin agreed. “A lot of things in this world are patently
impossible .. like ghosts an’ finding twenty year old evidence buried in snow
.. except it wasn’t very snowy that far down.
Just .. very overgrown.”
“How could you see it?”
“Same way I can see ghosts, Bert,” she
replied. “And, before you start telling
me, I know, that’s impossible too. If I
believed everything you say is impossible, I’d get an inferiority complex. Now, can we hustle?”
He was struggling to keep up,
physically and mentally. “But how is it possible?”
“Training an’ instinct.” She shrugged. “How do you know if an idea has potential to be a really great TV
show .. or a person has what it takes to be a big star? Or even a reasonably good actor? When you first came to the house, you said,
with total confidence, that the others couldn’t act. They were too wooden.
How’d you get to make that judgment?”
“Training an’ instinct,” he said.
“There you go then. Each to his or her own specialty, Bert.”
“Peri, can you slow down just a
little?” he pleaded. “You had a good
few hours’ sleep yesterday evening.
I’ve been on the go for .. twenty two hours straight.” Suddenly, tiredness hit him like a battering
ram right between the eyes and he stumbled.
“I’m sorry,” Merlin apologized,
immediately slowing. “I forgot .. you
still have a task to do.”
“I do?” Another task sounded like a death sentence.
“Telling the kids about
Hollywood. It means a lot to them,
Bert, especially Philip. He feels very
depressed that he’ll never get there.
The journey he has to complete isn’t the one he started.”
“Oh .. yeah. Right. An’ after that, I
think I’ll pass out for a half day .. if that’s okay with everyone.”
Merlin thought about it. “I don’t think anyone will protest, no.”
*****
Alex was frowning, so was Derek. On the surface, it did appear that these
ghosts were ghosts for no reason. It
was almost unbearable to look at them, to see the strained hope in their eyes,
hope which, as the minutes ticked away and no answer was forthcoming, was
slowly starting to fade.
“We’re missing something,” Rachel
remarked, getting up to pace. “We have
to be. Nothing is ever straightforward
and obvious, not when it comes to ghosts.
If it was .. they wouldn’t be
ghosts.”
“Peri said she felt it was something
simple. A chain of small .. things
which combine to make the reason,” Lassie offered. “She also said she felt she was close. I think that was another reason she went out – to help get a
little distance an’ clear her head.”
“What did Bert say?” Nick inquired.
“That it was a sitcom,” Skippy
replied.
“Figures,” Nick muttered.
“He did say he didn’t know why he felt it was a sitcom,” Flipper
defended loyally. “He just did.”
Derek looked up. “It’s an interesting thing to say. A situation comedy ... ”
“There’s nothing funny about this,
Derek,” Alex pointed out.
“I realize that. But Bert’s frame of reference is rooted in
television. Everything which happens
around him is .. seen thru a camera lens.
And, if he said this was like a sitcom, something triggered that
idea.” He paused for a moment. “What makes a sitcom funny?”
“Scriptwriters who put in jokes,” Nick
replied, the eternal sports fan.
“That’s too literal, Nick. It’s .. the situations, yes? And the comedy happens because .. we see all
sides whereas the people on the screen only see part.”
“But we’re not seeing all sides,” Rachel pointed out.
“Then are we in a sitcom? This
sitcom?” Alex wondered.
“We can’t be,” Nick responded. “We might not know the whole picture but
we’re aware that we don’t. We know
information is missing.”
Derek was silent for another long moment. Flipper leaned forward, mentally urging him
on.
“The situations in a situation comedy
are caused by .. people having secrets – ”
“I told them my secret,” Skippy cut
in. “Peri said that wasn’t why we’re
stuck here.”
Derek held up a hand. “The people with secrets don’t tell
everyone, only some. Information is
passed along and is .. not correct. The
secret gets twisted, it rebounds, and confusion ensues.”
“That has to be the driest
interpretation of a sitcom in the history of human language,” Flipper remarked.
“I rarely have time to indulge,” Derek
commented with a slight smile.
“Sitcoms, not that I get to see many
of ’em,” Nick went on, “are basically miscommunication.”
“Exactly!” Derek agreed. “Miscommunication.” He looked at the ghosts. “Who did you tell you were heading south?”
“Harley knew I was going to
Hollywood,” Flipper replied. “There was
no need to tell anyone else.”
“I told Bonnie I was going with Skip,”
Lassie added, then put a hand to her mouth.
“I was gonna call my folks when I got to Santa Barbara. They wouldn’t be expecting me till the
weekend. I had time.”
“Skip?” Flipper asked.
Skippy was hunched in his chair, arms
folded.
“Skippy?” Lassie prompted.
“I told you! I wasn’t getting on so good with my folks. I wanted to cut loose.”
“You didn’t tell them,” Flipper
whispered.
“I was gonna call when I got to my
cousin’s. I never got there!”
“But Harley would’ve said, right? You knew her,” Lassie said.
“Yeah, I knew her .. distantly. I don’t suppose my brother knew that I knew
her. Put it this way, I knew her name
was Harley an’ we were in the same coffee bar when she heard me saying I wanted
to get away for a while. Couple of days
later, she tells me to call Flip.”
“But I never told her you were coming
with me,” Flipper breathed.
“So .. no one knows where you went,”
Derek said into the silence. “You all
disappeared .. and never came back.
Cassidy’s parents would have asked Bonnie who told them she’d gone away
with Skip. Skip’s parents didn’t know
he’d gone at all .. and no one knew they’d gone with Philip, not even Harley,
so her knowing doesn’t help because they don’t know who she is so they couldn’t
ask her .. and she wouldn’t know anyway.”
“They’d contact the police. You’d be listed as missing persons,” Nick
said.
Lassie’s eyes filled with tears. “They never knew … Oh, God.”
“And that has to qualify as unfinished
business,” Alex gently pointed out.
“Sure,” Flipper nodded. “I can see why Lassie an’ Skippy are here
because of that. But where do I fit
in? I covered the bases before I
left. It sounds a little cold but I am
not responsible for informing other people’s parents. I told Harley an’ no one else needed to know.” His shoulders suddenly dropped. “It’s because I was driving, isn’t it? I killed us.”
“It is the victims of homicide or
accidental killing who tend to haunt, although, if a close tie exists between
victim and murderer, it can cause both to remain. You have said that you were not close, before that night. You have developed this since being
here. Being foolish is not a reason to
return as a ghost, Philip,” Derek replied.
“It’s my fault,” Skippy
commented. “We’re here because I didn’t
do something. It’s me. Gee, guys, I’m sorry.”
“No.
I’m just as much to blame,” Lassie sighed. “Peri said it would be a chain of simple things. I should’ve told my parents. I thought I had time. I didn’t.”
Derek was frowning, trying to fit
Flipper into the picture.
Alex leaned forward. “Philip, who was expecting you to arrive in
Hollywood?”
“What?” he asked, startled.
“If Cassidy an’ Skip never told anyone
they were leaving, no one knew where they’d gone,” Rachel explained. “Who did you tell that you were coming?”
“No one,” Flipper replied.
“So .. apart from Harley,” Nick said,
“as far as the world’s concerned, you three dropped off the planet. No one knows the route you’d taken an’, even
if they did, you changed it, the destinations, when you were going to turn up. Two would be listed as missing persons ..
but you .. you’re not even a statistic.”
“Bert was right,” Alex marveled. “Miscommunication. It’s a sitcom.”
“I hate it when that happens,” Nick
sighed.
“And we have the reason – unfinished
business,” Rachel concluded.
“But it can’t be!” Lassie
exclaimed. “Yeah, I can see that you’re
right, but only so far. Surely – ”
The door opened and Merlin and Bert
came in, breathless and flushed.
“I think we’ve gotten the answer,”
Merlin said.
“So do we,” Derek responded. “They didn’t tell anyone they were leaving.”
“Go on, Cassidy,” Rachel gently urged.
“Surely, after the accident, our
parents would have been notified.
Someone would have been told!”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Merlin said. “You stopped here. Strangers to this area.
No one knew you an’ you weren’t here long enough to strike up a
conversation. You left. So did the staff in the diner. You headed over the pass. They went the other way. As far as they knew, you’d gone on to San
Francisco. It wasn’t raining or
snowing. It was a warm summer
night. No one saw the accident. No one reported it.”
She shrugged slightly. “The car’s still down there .. an’ so are
the bodies.”
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