“Com’on, Chief, wake up already.”
The familiar voice filtered slowly through Kip Anderson’s sleep fogged brain, making his full lips turn down in a frown of confusion. A second later, there was a hard thump on the mattress near his face. Awake now, his brows furrowed, he hesitantly peeled first one eyelid open and then the other, his pale brown gaze falling on one of the well worn sneakers he used solely now for mowing his lawn during the summer months. It was grass stained and muddy on the sole, and the stench from it was enough to make him want to pull the covers up over his head. But he didn’t do that, because its presence on his bed in the middle of the night was too unusual a thing to ignore, even in favor of going back to sleep. Even after being up damn near all night long helping one of his mares bring a new foal into the world.
“Oh, good, you’re finally awake.” The return of the voice brought Kip’s head up with a snap. He’d been sure he was dreaming it earlier. Now, he wasn’t so sure that he wasn’t still sleeping, and the dream continuing. Because there was no way that he was awake and actually seeing the man that stood before him. It just wasn’t possible.
Standing just inside Kip’s walk-in closet, still dressed in the same clothes he had last seen him in over four months ago was his life-long best friend, Quentin Craig. As Kip watched, Quent dropped the mate to Kip’s lawn mowing sneaker, and grinned crookedly. To Kip’s eyes, it even looked like the grin wobbled a little, and he could have sworn that Quent’s eyes misted over. He had to clear his throat before he spoke again to Kip. “We need to talk, buddy.”
Never mind that it was the wee hours of the morning, or that Kip had been up for over twenty-four hours straight before finally finding his bed that night. Never mind that Quentin was a sleep whore who rarely saw the light of day before at least ten in the morning, nor the fact that he had a gorgeous wife of five years waiting for him at home. Those reasons were certainly enough, each of them on their own, to make this middle of the night visit seem a little weird. But the one reason that had Kip Anderson questioning his sanity at that moment had them all beat by a mile: Quentin Craig was dead. He’d been killed in an automobile accident over seven months ago. Kip had been in the car with him, and he’d gone with him in the ambulance to the hospital. He’d been sitting next to him when he’d died. And he’d been the one to break the news to Quent’s wife.
And now, here was his best friend, apparently back from the dead, looking exactly as he had on the day of his funeral, with the noticeable exception of the absence of the suit coat his wife Lily had chosen for him. Instead, Quentin stood before Kip in only the western cut dress slacks, pearl snap white dress shirt with its cuffs unsnapped and rolled up his forearms, and his best pair of dress boots, spit-shined so bright they even gleamed in the dim lighting of Kip’s early morning bedroom.
Quent took a couple steps out of Kip’s closet, approaching the bed slowly. He seemed to do so deliberately, and Kip had the idea he was trying not to spook him. “I’m sorry about throwing the shoe at ya,” he apologized sheepishly, removing the odorous sneaker from the rumpled flannel bedding when he got close enough. “But, unfortunately, I’m limited in what things I can control. I would’ve just given you a good shake, but my damn hand probably would’ve gone right through your shoulder, Kip. I haven’t figured out some of the finer points in my new... situation. Being a ghost has its restrictions...”
“G-ghost...?” Kip whispered, staring at Quent. His best friend sat down on the edge of the bed and nodded at him. Kip’s eyes ran up and down the apparition before him, noting now the smoky quality of his image, and the way he didn’t indent the mattress beneath him at all as he sat there – truthfully, it was more like he was hovering there instead of actually sitting.
“I can control inanimate objects,” Quent continued calmly, as if his lifelong best friend wasn’t having a nervous breakdown right beside him, “but if I so much as touch something alive – especially a human being – well, my damn arm goes right through, and it creates the strangest feeling...” He sighed and cocked his head to look at Kip closely. “You okay, Chief? You don’t look so good.”
Kip’s eyes bulged at him. “No, I’m... I’m not okay!” he sputtered. “You... you’re... you’re supposed to be dead, Q! What the hell’s happening to me?!”