Page 3 of The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy

Edgar

Edgar was captivated. Jamie moved like molasses, slow and sinuous and sweet. Edgar scripted things he could say to them after—compliments, flirtation.

“You okay there, bro?” Helen asked and elbowed him in the ribs.

“Huh?”

“You’re practically drooling,” they said.

Edgar couldn’t look away. He didn’t want to miss one second. He did, however, clamp his mouth shut against any drool, even though he was pretty sure Helen was joking.

Onstage, Jamie raised their arms, and bright red blood burst from their mouth and trailed down their pale skin. Edgar gasped. A table close to the lip of the stage burst into riotous applause at the blood, and Edgar glanced at them for just a second, envious of how close they were to Jamie.

That was when he saw it.

A creature that had once been human and was now a rotten, twisted echo of one.

The ghost’s skin was mottled gray and yellow, and the hair a brittle shock of matted straw.

Where its eyes had once been, blank pools of jelly quivered.

Its mouth gaped around black teeth and a tongue swollen to twice its natural size.

Edgar didn’t know how it could see him through those gelatinous eyeballs, but he felt it like a fist in his throat.

Then the slow freeze slipped down his spine, and Edgar scrambled out of his seat.

“Hell, yeah,” Carys cheered beside him. Then she slid out of her seat to stand too, clapping wildly. The rest of the audience followed suit, and Edgar realized that Jamie had finished performing.

“Wanna go meet them?” Helen was asking. “I’ll introduce…”

But Edgar’s head was swimming, and his hearing was going in and out to the precipitous beat of his heart.

Jamie was right there, gorgeous and so alive, bowing to the uproarious audience and scanning the crowd—surely not? But possibly?—attempting to look for him. And between them, impassible, the ghost.

Edgar glanced away for a second to see everyone at the table staring at him, as if they knew.

“Edgar?” Helen prompted. “Do you want to?”

The ghost had moved a table closer, as if it were magnetized to Edgar.

“I gotta go,” Edgar slurred, patting his pockets for his phone and wallet. “Sorry, thanks, sorry,” he mumbled in the direction of the group, never taking his eyes off the ghost.

Then, before it had a chance to get any closer to him, Edgar fled the Never Lounge, ran into the dark streets of the French Quarter, and didn’t stop until he hit Canal Street.