Ghosting - Kirby Gann

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and almost dozing in the small cottage that smells faintly of mold and Bone’s wet fur and a heady syrup sweetness he tries to ignore—he should be used to it by now—and the hour is deep enough for the TV to be into reruns of detective shows from his childhood that Hardesty can practically recite. Bone lay curled on the wool rug beneath the set, Hardesty had his socked feet on the coffee table that lacks one leg and requires careful placement of his feet to avoid spillage of magazines and candy wrappers and half-empty mason jars, two fingers of vodka tilted on his belly rising in rhythm with his low breathing, when the transformer cracked the sky like a cannon shot. The explosion is already an echo when Hardesty realizes the vodka gone, his table has upended everything onto the floor, and he is standing in the middle of the room with an empty jar.

      Through the kitchen he pulls back the threadbare curtain and wipes humidity off a pane of glass with the heel of his hand. Fog hangs heavy outside. He has to crane his neck upward to find the transformer in bright burn—quivering flame licks the steel casing and disappears into the mist, coloring a tiny fogbow; a strand of violet dances up the wooden post harnessed to the building. The flames create a strange, unfamiliar noise he can barely hear, like a radio receiver between direct signals, all crackle and burst. His nostrils tingle with a smell remembered from Army maneuvers and the cottage has fallen entirely dark.

      Bone presses into his legs, her frightened whimper winging up to join the howls of Fleece’s dogs in the big seminary itself. Hardesty pats at his chest pockets, not looking for anything but out of habit, and as he turns to seek one overhead cabinet for his power light—a quality instrument with a one-million candlelight beam—he trips over the dog tucked into his legs. He curses and shoves her out of the way with his ankle. In the darkness he doesn’t see her skitter back to his legs again, and Hardesty hears her squeal as his heavy foot lands on what might be her foreleg and he feels her mass against his knee and then he’s falling, one shoulder cracking into the corner of a chair back, his forehead shucking the edge of the refrigerator door.

      He’s unsure if he passed out or not. It feels like a discovery when he realizes his back against the refrigerator, Bone licking his cheek. Get, he says, moving his hand between her mouth and his face, but his speaking only makes the dog lick with more enthusiasm and he has to shove her away.

      He doesn’t rise from the floor immediately. One hand cups his knee; the other feels accumulated dirt on the peeling linoleum. Through the kitchen window the glow has turned the bluish white of moonbeams. Perhaps the fire burned itself out.

      “Aw, let the old thing burn, Bone, what do you say?”

      She takes it as invitation and dives at his face again with her tongue, forcing him to his feet, the nails of her paws a scramble-scratching on the withered tiles. Hardesty leaves her inside and slams the door behind him, power light in hand.

      He doesn’t like to exit his home without his boots and gun but he’s halfway to the building before he realizes he has left with neither. Midnight lies quiet, a gentle hushing amid the crowns of trees a hundred yards away in the old cemetery. The crooked moon shines over what has turned into a cold clear night, a few clouds aglow in ghostly hues passing slow beneath the stars. Smoke blankets the rooftop with moody shifts of the wind, an odor of burned rubber and singed plastic heavy within it.

      He shines the power light up to the transformer, over the scorched steel and melted cable insulation, and with a lethargic sigh drags the beam down the length of the wall to his cold feet, where he takes his finger off the button and the night surrounds him again. He’ll be eating off the charcoal grill for a few days; the power company does not place a high priority on this transformer.

      Hardesty digs his fingernails into the flesh just beneath his jawbone and starts to backstep carefully over the gravel again but then stops short: something is off about the sounds around him. He stills himself with head askew, tongue fingering small gaps in his molars, wary, senses keen, listening. The low chug of a powerful engine idles nearby, behind the seminary; a radio scratches out old country music, the high trebly kind of curdled yawps and wails that rise into the quiet and toil with the wind in the trees.

      Are kids so brazen these days that they would start to tailgate back here? He keeps close to the wall and crosses the width of the east wing, socks soaked, toes numb; the unseen engine coughs out but the radio continues, and then it’s the rough hinge of a car door pushed open. Hardesty flattens himself against the brick where a gap between the building’s wing and center chapel forms a deep courtyard, a space for the cement island that used to be a basketball court.

      The car door clicks shut softly. A groan from what must be the trunk opens then, another hinge in need of oil. Must be an old car. Hardesty presses into the brick and listens to a woman’s forlorn voice sing from the radio:

      Where you’ve gone I’ll follow

      Who you were I’ll be

      I’ll become your shadow

      if you no longer think of me

      no, you no longer think of me

      and a man (for it could be only a man, to Hardesty’s mind) whistles a counterpoint that doesn’t agree with her melody. Beneath the whistling comes a slosh from liquid poured, a heavy gushing that splashes loud over the flex and gulp from some pliable container. Hardesty looks back toward home, weighing the cost and opportunity to retrieve his gun, his boots. But he does not go. Instead he chances a glimpse past the corner to see.

      A man there, looking nothing more than a humanoid shadow. He works the length of the vehicle, emptying two large jugs over the cowl and hood. It doesn’t take long, and once he finishes he steps back and looks over the car, continuing to whistle as he tosses the jugs into high grass Hardesty never gets around to mowing. The man begins to fiddle in his pockets as the singer’s voice fades to silence, a brief quiet enduring until the opening guitar strum of another song begins.

      Hardesty is about to shine his power light on the scene when the man strikes a match. It’s a sudden firefly in the air and then a soft whup like a great gas oven firing overcomes the music. Blue flame washes over the chassis. Behind that ethereal blue, a color found in flame only that has fascinated him since childhood, high capes of yellow and gold race to catch up, and in another instant the entire car is rapidly burning, a single coal visible through the flames. The gentle lament of a song can still be heard beneath the crackle of fire. The man shades his face from the heat as he begins to walk a distant perimeter, admiring the success of his handiwork. In that light Hardesty can make out a dark sport coat and tie, a shuffling thin body moving like a boxer. The flames start to eat at the interior. One tire detonates from the heat—sparks spiral into the dark—and Hardesty can’t see the man on the far side of the flames. It gives him the courage to step from his hiding place, and as he does he catches sight of the man again, tail-turned and flatfoot running toward the distant Possler Woods, the gated cemetery.

      Only then does the caretaker find his voice: “Hey! Hey you there!” he calls, directing his light over the great lawn behind the looming building. But even a million candlelights cannot sight the figure fleeing the scene. Like that, he has vanished.

      Hardesty jumps at the touch of something live against his leg and he drops the power light—Bone has managed to open the unlocked back door. She cowers from him, expecting a kick. But Hardesty reaches to pet her gently as he looks back toward the cemetery and the Possler Woods and the moonlight that etches the outlines of forms. All he can discern now is the refuse abandoned back there, old refrigerators with the doors still connected, rusted bedsprings and engine blocks, piles of bottles and cans.

      “What kind of guard dog are you?” he asks, toeing her ribs, her fur as soaked as his sock. “I mean really. What you good for?”

      Bone glances at him with apparent wariness. She sits back on her haunches, and peers into the same direction as Hardesty as he strains to descry any movement within the moonlight shadows there.

      Another soft detonation as another tire blows out; Hardesty scratches at the flesh under his jaw again and watches the flames curl through the windows and thrive on the seats and dash. Transmission fluid boils on the cracked cement court.

      “Neither one

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