A ghost is a dead person with a job. In life, Charlie Harmer was a disc jockey with a lot of suspicious friends. In death, he makes creepy songs play on the radio and whispers in the ears of the living when they get too close to places they shouldn’t be. It’s a good gig, or at least it was until the new boss showed up. The new boss used to be a serial killer. The new boss is bad news.
Charlie and the boys have been talking. The new guy has got to go. To make that happen, Charlie’s going to need help from someone with a pulse.
A year ago, Ashanda was in a juvenile detention facility. Now she spends her days as a high school student and her nights working with her aunt as a medium. Ninety percent of the time, she's a con artist, telling the living what they want to hear, but when you talk about ghosts too often sooner or later they’re going to show up at your doorstep.
Charlie needs a favor. Ashanda doesn’t like dead people, but Charlie’s putting a lot of money on the table. In the short term, the job involves a road trip. In the long term, it’ll involve dead gangsters, the hidden history of the music business, a zombie siege of a roadside diner, and a brief descent into hell.
Brendan Detzner is the author of White Rabbit Society, Beasts, Scarce Resources, Millersville, and a lot of other stuff. Stories featuring Charlie Harmer have appeared in the Book of Dead Things anthology and the Pseudopod podcast. This is his first time appearing in a full-length novel.
Very few sales so far! Sequel coming in a few months that will hopefully spur things along.
CHAPTER 1
Mark and Harry had the radio turned up just loud enough to hear. Not the music, just the noise and some of the words.
“This is Charlie Harmer on WBLI classic radio, joining you on a wonderful Monday night…”
Harry sat in the passenger seat watching the barrier fence bounding the edge of the Interstate roll by.
It was dark; the streetlights loomed overhead like vultures, continuing at regular intervals ahead and behind them as far as they could see, leaving only a thin black space between each one. The fuel gauge had been hovering near empty for a few miles now, but there was no use pointing it out to Mark. He always let things ride to the last minute. It was just how he was.
A cop appeared in the rearview mirror. Mark took a quick glance at the back seat. Old books with leather covers, road maps, tapes, photo negatives. Most of the bad stuff was in the trunk: pills, a candy tin full of weed, a fancy silver knife Mark saw in a head shop in San Francisco and insisted had something to it. There was also a gun in the back of the glove compartment. Supposedly it was for emergencies, but they really kept it just for the thrill of having it.
Nothing was out in the open.
The cop went past them and disappeared over the horizon.
“We really ought to find a hotel,” Harry said.
Mark didn’t answer.
