Page 52 of Hot Ghost Summer

Taller than me, but only just. Familiar. Hollis.

My breath catches. In this dark hallway, his image switches between yellow, green, and violet, and his crackling white-blue eyes never leave my face. My hands fall away and dangle loosely at my sides. I’d forgotten how handsome he is—was.

When he brings his hands to rest sternly on his hips, I can just make out the ExorSquad logo on his coveralls. The vein in his forehead throbs and the lens in his glasses is cracked, but he has the same slicked-back hair, high cheekbones that lend him a regal look, and a jaw sharp enough to cut glass that I’d noticed when he was still… human.

“Hi,” I whisper, breathless.

Hollis doesn’t answer, but I don’t care. I’m just happy to see him.

“You look great, despite the whole, you know, being dead thing,” I babble. But I also mean it. I don’t know what it is about this man, but from the second I first laid eyes on him he made me want to bite a pillow.

His form glitches, turning first more blue, then more purple. Worried that this might be it, that this is all I get, I reach forward as if I can brace a steadying arm on him. I can’t. My fingertips pass right through, and the sensation reminds me of how it feels to touch liquid nitrogen. Cold and smooth.

Hollis’s lips part as if in shock, and those unnatural electric eyes brighten into a glow.

“Can you…” I swallow, and he tracks the motion. “Can you feel me?”

Still, he doesn’t answer, and—a little reluctantly—I withdraw my hand.

“I… um… Why are you still ’ere? Why won’t you move on?” I push all the words out in one long breath, because now that I’m faced with him again, I’m struggling to remember why I’m so motivated for him to leave. Would it be so bad if he stayed?

Hollis tilts his head. Then the acrid stench of burning plastic fills my nose.

From his phone on the table behind us, the text-to-speech service robotically reads out, “Shut. It. Down.”

The command is triggering. We haven’t seen each other in days, and that’s all he has to say? That’s the tone he takes? “No. This is working—don’t you see? For the first time since… something is working!”

“We are not alone, Theo,” warns his robot voice.

“I know that,” I scoff. “But we could have been. Why won’t you talk t’ me? Why won’t you tell me what you need?” It’s a fight to keep the petulant whine out of my voice. “I just want t’ help.”

“Then turn the electricity back on.”

I stare at him until the smell of burning plastic starts to taste like bad eggs. Hollis glitches again, this time switching from violet to crimson.

He steps closer, bringing his hand up as if to grip my chest or neck. I don’t wait to find out which one.

“Fucking fine,” I seethe, walking right through him to open the hallway cupboard and throw the fuse switch. “There, you happy now?”

A series of beeps fills my small flat as every appliance turns back on, and I whirl on my heels to face Hollis. His manifestation is fainter than before and overcome by a fine web of electrical arcs that seem to punch in and out of his body. It reminds me of how he died, and something about that makes me unreasonably angry.

“Leaving again, are you? Even though you haven’t told me shit about your unfinished business.” I stalk closer, but he isn’t even looking at me. His gaze is fixed firmly on the empty living room.

“Hey, I’m talking t’ you.” I prod my finger into his chest and get a minor shock for my efforts. “Is it t’ do with how you died?” Nothing. “T’ do with your work?”

A bright flash forces my eyes shut, and when I open them, Hollis is gone. Do I take that as his answer?

The muffled yet aggressive crackle of electricity pours through from the living room. My hands form fists where they hang by my sides. I did what he asked; why’s he still so angry?

A buzzing hum—probably all my damaged electronics—fights with the stench of burning, and I storm off to my bedroom where I slam the door. A second bang that sounds almost like the crack of thunder follows closely after, and at first I think it’s an echo of the door closing… but it isn’t. Hollis just smashed something out there.

Father Byrne said a séance would help, but it’s been as much of a bust as whatever piece of furniture my resident poltergeist just destroyed.

Stressed and in need of a moment of calm, I stretch up to unscrew the lightbulb, unplug every outlet I can find, then starfish onto my bed.

This is now a Hollis-free zone.

Despite outwardly declaring that, I can’t disconnect him from my mind as easily. If my hunch is right, and he vanished on me because I got too close to the truth of his unfinished business, then Hollis is still here not because he wants vengeance on his murderer, but because of reasons connected to his job.