13 Queer Ghost Stories

The Future is Deadly-2

Tucker couldn’t see her face from this angle, but he didn’t need to see it. Dark liquid pooled like oil beneath her head. Her body was so contorted he knew she couldn’t possibly have survived the crash, and yet a part of him must have held out hope because he sped from the bedroom.

Why was this hallway so dark?

He struggled out of the sunglasses before chancing the staircase.

“Boo-Boo!” he cried as he ran downstairs. “Boo, come help! Call an ambulance! Call the police! Get up here, come help me with—”

Tucker tore open the front door and saw... nothing.

No body in the road.

No pool of fresh blood.

No Betty.

He stepped outside in Aunt Margaret’s finery, and walked across the lawn while Boo-Boo rushed through the door. “Whazzamatter, Tuck? What... what... what are you wearing?”

Tucker turned away from the road, and then quickly turned back in case the vision was somehow playing hide-and-seek with his vision.

Still nothing.

Boo-Boo’s amusement turned to concern. “What happened to you? Looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Opening his hand slightly, Tucker glanced at the sunglasses lying on his palm. “Worse than that,” he told Boo-Boo. “I think I just got a glimpse into the future.”

Chapter Three

They both agreed it was time for a break. Tucker was shaking too hard to handle delicate materials, anyway. So Boo-Boo brewed a pot of tea in Aunt Margaret’s kitchen. Tucker hugged his cup tight while he told his partner what he’d seen: the crash, the smash, the roll, the result.

“I saw all that with the sunglasses on. And then when I took them off... nothing. It must be the glasses. They must be psychic or something.”

Boo-Boo gave him a dubious look.

“Yes, it seems crazy. I know it seems crazy! But this neighbour lady, Betty, she told me that Margaret used to have people around for séances and stuff. Maybe... I don’t know. It sounds far-fetched, I realize that, but I know what I saw.”

Boo-Boo nodded slowly over his cup of tea, then turned his attention to his tablet. “You want to start thinking about dinner? I’ve pulled up the local delivery service.”

Tucker shook his head. He’d taken off the turban, the earrings, the jewels, and he felt strangely frail without those accoutrements. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I do believe you,” Boo-Boo countered. “Tuck, you’re the most sensible guy I’ve ever met. You wouldn’t make stuff up. Who knows? Maybe you did see the future, but I doubt it has anything to do with a pair of old sunglasses.”

“So you think I’m just naturally psychic?”

With a small shrug, Boo-Boo said, “I believe everyone is naturally psychic. Some people are just more attuned to their abilities than others.”

Tucker wasn’t sure what to say. He felt like he was gearing up for a fight, but it’s not like Boo-Boo had said anything hurtful or offensive. Even so, he struggled to keep his emotions in check. He could feel himself swinging on a pendulum from anger on the one side to deep sadness on the other. It was so strange. Almost like the feelings weren’t his own.

Tucker and Boo-Boo worked through the night, as usual, catching forty unanticipated winks on Aunt Margaret’s big satin bed around six in the morning. When they woke up it was nearly 10:30.

“We should get out of here for a couple minutes,” Boo-Boo suggested. “Remember we passed that breakfast place on the way in? Let’s head down there, grab some eggs, a plate of fruit.”

Usually Tucker would have suggested getting back to work, but not today. “Getting out sounds good. Coffee sounds even better.”

Boo-Boo smirked, then found his shoes which he must have kicked off in the night. Black rhinestone high-tops. Tucker always thought they were a little much, but Boo-Boo went in for the bling.

“Sunny,” Tucker said as they stepped out the front door.

Boo-Boo handed him a pair of sunglasses and Tucker put them on without realizing this was the pair, the sooth-seeing pair, the sunglasses belonging to the late Margaret Dumas.

The first indication was the poking sensation behind his ears.

The second indication was the vision of Betty lying dead in the street.

Shrieking, Tucker tore out of the glasses and handed them back to Boo-Boo. “Why would you give these to me?”

“I thought you wanted to keep them!”

“No! I never want to see these things again!”

Boo-Boo had already locked the front door. He placed the glasses in the mailbox. “That’s not what you said last night. Last night you couldn’t stop talking about these things.”

Was that true? Yes, he supposed it was. Tucker vaguely recalled telling Boo-Boo he felt it was his duty to inform the neighbour lady about his vision. Boo-Boo had encouraged him to at very least wait until morning.

Well, it was morning now.

“Wait a sec, okay? I just have to run next door.”

Without waiting for a response, Tucker made his way to the neighbouring house. A quaint little bungalow. Nothing like the towering two-storey gothic mansion beside it.

Tucker knocked at the door, rehearsing what he’d say when Betty answered: “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but hear me out...”

Thing is, Betty didn’t answer the door. Nobody did. He waited and waited, knocked again, and finally Boo-Boo called from the SUV, “She’s not home. Let’s just go to breakfast. You can try again later.”

True enough. It was a work day, after all. Not that Betty looked much like the kind of woman who held a job. Looked more like a housewife from the 50s, if anything. But who knows? Jobs came in many shapes and sizes these days. Just look at Tucker’s. He’d worked through the night in a dead woman’s house.

Chapter Four

Tucker tried again when they came back from breakfast, but nobody came to the door.

Enough of this silliness.

He needed to get his head in the game, get back to work. He’d been staring at a Red Rose tea figurine for a matter of minutes, until Boo-Boo noticed and brought it to his attention.

“That thing’s worth fifty cents and you know it. Put it in the cheapo bin and move on.”

Tucker focused on what he was holding in his hand. A lemur? And not a very attractive one, at that.

“Sorry,” he said, placing the figurine in the box.

Boo-Boo sighed heavily. “This isn’t like you, Tuck. You’re always so focused. I’m usually the scatterbrain. We can’t trade roles now. We’re in too deep.”

With a smirk, Tucker said, “Sorry. I’m just having trouble concentrating, that’s all.”

“Yeah, no joke.”

He picked up a handful of tiny tea figurines and placed them all in the box. What next?

“I just can’t stop thinking about it,” he told Boo-Boo.

Boo-Boo didn’t have to ask him what he was talking about. The answer was obvious.

“If you’d seen what I saw... wait, maybe you should try on the glasses too! Where are they, still in the mailbox? Try them on and see what you see.”

Boo-Boo’s eyes bugged. “No thanks! I can’t even handle blood and gore in the movies. I don’t want to see it through a pair of sunglasses.”

Tucker replayed the vision in his mind while Boo-Boo went back to work in one of the spare bedrooms: the car, the crash, the crumpled body twisted in the road. It was all so horrific.

Just then, Tucker heard a rumbling sound off in the distance. It was coming this way.

He recognized the noise. He’d heard it yesterday while he was out from talking to Betty.

Rushing to the window in Margaret’s bedroom, Tucker just managed to catch sight of a cherry red hot rod racing down the street.

Betty had mentioned there was a man two streets up who restored old cars. If Betty was going to be hit and killed by a vintage vehicle, one guess who the driver would be.

If Tucker couldn’t warn Betty about the danger she faced, he needed to take it to the source. He needed to find Mr. Hot Rod himself.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” Tucker told Boo-Boo as he rushed down the stairs.

“Are you taking the car?” Boo-Boo called back.

“No, I’m on foot!”

Sticking his head out the spare bedroom’s door, Boo-Boo said, “Don’t be too long, though. We’ve got Frederique coming over in an hour to look at rhinestones.”

The mention of Frederique’s name was somewhat sobering, but even the thought of his boyfriend alone in a gothic mansion with an ex-lover wasn’t enough to keep Tucker from his task.

“I won’t be long,” Tucker assured Boo-Boo as he fled the house.

And he honestly believed that, when he said it.

Two streets up. That’s what Betty had told him. Easy enough. He walked along Margaret’s road until he arrived at a bustling cross-street, a busy enough route for there to be a bus stop on the corner. From there, he walked north two streets and the investigation began.

Could have been like finding a needle in a haystack, but as it turned out, Tucker figured the task of finding Mr. Hot Rod might not be so challenging. A cursory glance at the old houses on this street told him that they were missing something most people took for granted in newer houses: a garage. All he had to do was find the house with the garage, and he’d be set!

He walked the whole street from end to end. Not a garage in sight.

Maybe this was the wrong street?

And yet, he noted, there weren’t many cars parked on the road. Did the people who lived here simply not own cars?

As he reached the end of the line, a very young woman and a very old man turned the corner. The man was white, hunched over a walker. The woman was Asian and wearing a nurse’s uniform.

Tucker stopped them to ask, “Sorry if this sounds strange, but do you happen to know where people park their cars around here? I notice none of these houses have garages.”

The man gauged him suspiciously. The woman simply opened her eyes wide.

Should he ask again?

The old man gave a cough and pointed north, then stumbled and grasped his walker. “They got carports out back,” he said, wheezing the words. “Hidden alleyways between the streets.”

“That’s enough talking,” the young nurse said. “You need your strength for your walk.”

“Hidden alleyways,” Tucker repeated as the woman wheeled the man forward. “Thank you. Thank for the... information.”

For an old man with a walker, the guy could really move.

At the residential cross-street, Tucker headed north. He’d only walked a couple steps before he realized what the old man meant by “hidden alleyways.” There was a driveway between the backyard of one house and the backyard of another. Except it wasn’t a driveway, not really.

Tucker crept into the alleyway, feeling the sharpness of gravel through the thin membrane of his leather soles.

Overhead, ancient trees blocked out the sun. It was dark, yes, but not quite dark enough to erase the carports the old man had mentioned. Their doors were all painted in bright colours, probably so residents could differentiate between them. Otherwise, how would you know which one was yours?

This alleyway didn’t seem the safest place to be. It’s not that he worried about being mugged or beaten, not in this neighbourhood, but he was very aware that there wasn’t enough space for both humans and vehicles along the alley. The path was quite narrow.

He followed the sound of tinkering to the only open garage door. Inside was the red hot rod he’d seen on the street. Under that was a pair of legs in blue coveralls.

“Hello?” Tucker said warily.

The man in the coveralls slid out from under the car like he was on wheels. Oh, in fact he was on wheels. Or, at least, he had his back on some kind of wheeled board.