Only The Good Die Young
Jensen Murphy, Ghost for Hire - 1
by
Chris Marie Green
To every writer’s group I’ve been a part of over the years. Your support and knowledge are the building blocks of what I love to do. Thank you!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, I want to thank Ginjer Buchanan for believing in me! That also goes for my agent, Pamela Harty, and my critique partners, Sheri Whitefeather and Judy Duarte, plus my family. You guys are all inspirations to me.
And speaking of inspiration, thank you to Deborah J. Ross and Linda Thomas-Sundstrom. As writers, we are often asked how we get book ideas, and the most accurate thing I can come up with is that every story has its genesis, starting with one domino, and then growing stronger as each one connects with the one before, causing others to fall into what becomes a real, live book.
The dominos for this series were set in motion at a lunch during the 2011 World Fantasy Con. A private, profound story from Deborah was the first domino, and it connected to the next one while Linda and I were on our way back to the workshops, exchanging thoughts about what we’d heard from our friend. The next one fell as we moved on to chatting about true crime books, in particular the excellent The Cases That Haunt Us by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker. I told Linda about the stories in it—profiles of the JonBenét Ramsey, O. J. Simpson, and Jack the Ripper cases, among others—and then Linda referred back to the title of the book. “People like [a certain killer] should be haunted,” she said. Bam! “What if there was a ghost who worked for an agency that tried to scare confessions out of people?” I blurted out. Linda and I laughed, and from that point on, Jensen Murphy started talking to me in her ’eighties, dead-girl, justice-seeking ghost voice.
Lest you think I forgot about my final thank-you (not quite!), much appreciation goes to my readers. You are always there, always supportive, and always awesome. It’s an honor to know you on Facebook and Twitter, and it makes my week when I meet you in person. Hope you enjoy this new series—it’s all yours.
A FREE SPIRIT
The second I snapped out of what Amanda Lee called my “residual haunting phase”—a time loop I was clearly stuck in until she yanked me out of it with the psychic mojo in her voice and the sight of the bracelets from my era—I knew just what I was.
Dead.
Deader than a doornail. Deader than a shrunken head. Deader than when video killed the radio star.
Very dead indeed. Actually, I had been living that truth over and over for a long time in that forest, so death didn’t seem like all that big an issue when I became an intelligent spirit. What actually freaked me out more than anything was the fact that I didn’t remember who my killer was. I guess I’d spent so much time in my noninteractive ghost state that I’d gone a little numb. Or maybe, as Amanda Lee suggested, I had some sort of “fright wall” erected in my brain, and that was the only thing keeping my fragile spirit psyche together.
Amanda Lee thought my memories would all come back to me, though, just as soon as I was ready to deal. And, being a total rich-lady do-gooder, she promised to help me figure out my deal. To her, I was a real live… I mean… not totally alive mystery.
In the Beginning…
On the anniversary of Jensen Murphy’s disappearance, the psychic knew, without a doubt, that this was finally the night she would find her.
Amanda Lee Minter walked alone through the night-shaded trees of Elfin Forest, a place where haunted energy filled the air with legends like the White Lady and the insane asylum that was supposed to have burned to the ground and left many a soul to wander. And there had to be at least a hundred other ghost stories besides these, all pressed around the windy trails that snaked from the Southern California coast and then inland like long, gnarled fingers beckoning people to enter the darkness.
To get lost and maybe never found, just like Jensen Murphy.
After the police had finished all their interviews and investigations, it became public knowledge that twenty-three-year-old Jensen and her friends had ventured into the forest on that fateful night to scare themselves silly with the help of some of those ghost stories and, at least for the other kids, booze. Jensen had refrained that night since she’d been the designated driver.
But the group at large was only doing what so many others had done over the years, driving up to the security-guarded gates of Questhaven—a supposed cult church that was really only a spiritual retreat—and trooping through the woods nearby so that they might get a peek of the hooded figures that were supposed to roam the area.
Amanda Lee was too darn old to be frightened by that nonsense, though. Fifty-two years of psychic intuition had shown her some real hauntings.
And so had life itself.
As leaves crunched under her fringed boots, she knew just where to go, and she looked around at the shadows, drawing her shawl tighter, feeling the night’s chill on her face. Then she made her way deeper into the woods until she stopped, cocked her head, listened to what no normal person would be able to pick up in the air.
A buzzing.
A… presence?
After months of preparing herself for this moment, she moved forward, taking shelter behind a tree, finding what she had been looking for all along.
Jensen Murphy.
Amanda Lee could barely breathe as she watched the young woman crouching near the trunk of an oak on all fours nearby.
Carefully, with her heart catching in her throat, Amanda Lee kneeled, her skirt spreading around her.
The girl was unnaturally gray under the shadow-filtered moonlight, her fingers scratching at the dirt, her eyes wide with animal fright as she fixed her attention on something in the distance. Amanda Lee thought of a picture she’d seen of Jensen Murphy from the night she’d disappeared: a rosy-cheeked face, long and straight strawberry summer hair, freckles sprinkled over her nose, a glimmer of mischief in her green eyes as she posed with a Mello Yello she’d been drinking that night at the party. She was dressed in a pair of Levi’s jeans and a light blue top rolled up at the sleeves and tied at the waist with a white tank underneath.
She was the all-American girl who’d been popular in high school, everybody’s best friend.
And someone’s prey.
“Jensen?” Amanda Lee whispered.
The girl didn’t react.
She’s in a state of numbness, Amanda Lee thought, and she tried to reach her again, louder now.
“Jensen?”
Nearby, an owl took off in a flutter of wings, shaking a few leaves off a branch.
But even then, Jensen Murphy didn’t move. Her terrified gaze was still fixed on the trees to the right of Amanda Lee.
The eerie silence scratched down her spine. She didn’t look around, though. Nothing would be there. At least nothing that could hurt her. Her sixth sense had already told her that.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Amanda Lee said, her voice stronger. “I’m going to help you.”
The girl began to shake her head, crawling behind the tree trunk, as if it could hide her from whatever was out there.
“Jensen—”
A strangled sound—half scream, half cry—came out of Jensen Murphy just before she sprang to her feet and started to run, her white sneakers flashing in the moonlight.
Amanda Lee pressed a hand over her mouth as she watched helplessly: Jensen making it only a few steps away before she crashed to the ground on her stomach. Jensen screaming as she turned onto her back, lifting her arms and pleading, sheltering her face, and then—