Forever Odd

above me. With rubbery legs and arms still spastic, I don’t know how I reached it, but I did.
        I’ve a long list of things I don’t know how I’ve done, but I’ve done them. In the end, it’s always about perseverance.
        Once in the pantry, I pulled the door shut behind me. This close dark space reeked of pungent chemical scents the likes of which I had never before smelled.
        The taste of scorched aluminum made me half nauseous. I’d never previously tasted scorched aluminum; so I don’t know how I recognized it, but I felt sure that’s what it was.
        Inside my skull, a Frankenstein laboratory of arcing electrical currents snapped and sizzled. Overloaded resistors hummed.
        Most likely my senses of smell and taste weren’t reliable. The Taser had temporarily scrambled them.
        Detecting a wetness on my chin, I assumed blood. After further consideration, I realized I was drooling.
        During a thorough search of the house, the pantry would not be overlooked. I’d only gained a minute or two in which to warn Chief Porter.
        Never before had the function of a simple pants pocket proved too complicated for me to understand. You put things in, you take things out.
        Now for the longest time, I couldn’t get my hand into my jeans pocket; someone seemed to have sewn it shut. Once I finally got my hand in, I couldn’t get it back out. At last I extracted my hand from the clutching pocket, but discovered that I’d failed to bring my cell phone with it.
        Just when the bizarre chemical odors began to resolve into the familiar scents of potatoes and onions, I regained possession of the phone and flipped it open. Still drooling but with pride, I pressed and held 3, speed-dialing the chief’s mobile number.
        If he was personally engaged in the search of the house, he most likely wouldn’t stop to answer his cell phone.
        “I assume that’s you,” Wyatt Porter said.
        “Sir, yes, right here.”
        “You sound funny.”
        “Don’t feel funny. Feel Tasered.”
        “Say what?”
        “Say Tasered. Bad guy buzzed me.”
        “Where are you?”
        “Hiding in the pantry.”
        “Not good.”
        “It’s better than explaining myself.”
        The chief is protective of me. He’s as concerned as I am that I avoid the misery of public exposure.
        “This is a terrible scene here,” he said.
        “Yes, sir.”
        “Terrible. Dr. Jessup was a good man. You just wait there.”
        “Sir, Simon might be moving Danny out of town right now.”
        “I’ve got both highways blocked.”
        There were only two ways out of Pico Mundo-three, if you counted death.
        “Sir, what if someone opens the pantry door?”
        “Try to look like canned goods.”
        He hung up, and I switched off my phone.
        I sat there in the dark awhile, trying not to think, but that never works. Danny came into my mind. He might not be dead yet, but ‘wherever he was, he was not anywhere good.
        As had been true of his mother, he lived with an affliction that gravely endangered him. Danny had brittle bones; his mother had been pretty.
        Simon Makepeace most likely wouldn’t have been obsessed with Carol if she had been ugly or even plain. He wouldn’t have killed a man over her, for sure. Counting Dr. Jessup, two men.
        I had been alone in the pantry up to this point. Although the door didn’t open, I suddenly had company.
        A hand clasped my shoulder, but that didn’t startle me. I knew my visitor had to be Dr. Jessup, dead and restless.

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    FIVE
        
        DR. JESSUP HAD BEEN NO DANGER TO ME WHEN HE WAS alive, nor was he a threat now.
        Occasionally, a poltergeist-which is a ghost who can energize his anger-is able to do damage, but they’re usually just frustrated, not genuinely malicious. They feel they have unfinished business in this world, and they are people for whom death has not diminished the stubbornness that characterized them in life.
        The spirits of thoroughly evil people do not hang around for extended periods of time, wreaking havoc and murdering the living. That’s pure Hollywood.
        The spirits of evil people usually leave quickly, as though they have an appointment, upon death, with someone whom they dare not keep waiting.
        Dr. Jessup had probably passed through the pantry door as easily as rain through