13 Queer Ghost Stories

The Future is Deadly-3

“Hi,” Tucker said when the grease monkey looked up at him. He’d expected someone younger. This guy had grey in his beard, though strangely none in his hair. Probably had a bunch of tattoos under those coveralls, but that was pure conjecture. “Sorry to disturb you. I can see that you’re working.”

“Let me guess,” Mr. Hot Rod said. “You’re going to ask me if I’ve accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Saviour. As it turns out, I have, so you can just keep on marching, string bean.”

Tucker glanced down at the suit he had on and let out an insecure laugh. “Oh, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s just... I saw you driving your car around the neighbourhood and I wondered if I could ask you a few questions about it.”

“Fully insured,” Mr. Hot Rod said. “Whatever you’re selling, I already got it.”

“I’m not selling insurance. I’m not selling anything. I really just wanted to talk to you about the car.”

Tucker saw a twinkle in the bearded guy’s eyes, like he was keen to discuss automotives with any interested party.

But Tucker had to burst his bubble, saying, “I noticed how fast you were driving...”

Mr. Hot Rod set both feet on the concrete floor, looped his elbows around his knees, and rocked threateningly back and forth on the wheeled board he was sitting on. “How’s that any business of yours?”

Oh God, this guy was going to bash Tucker’s face in for sure.

The only way to get out of this situation alive was to be totally honest, even if he sounded like a lunatic.

“I had a vision,” Tucker said, spitting out the words.

Mr. Hot Rod stopped rocking. He raised a brow. “What, are you some kind of psychic or something?”

“No,” Tucker replied. “It’s just—”

“Because I’ve always been intrigued by that sort of thing: psychics, extra-terrestrials, demonic possessions...”

Tucker chuckled uncomfortably, but at least he could use this man’s interest to his advantage. “That’s great. Anyway. Yes, I suppose you might say I had a psychic vision.”

The bearded man shivered, then sat a little straighter. “Ooh, I just got a tingle right down my spine. So this psychic vision of yours, it was about me and Hilda?”

“Hilda?” Tucker asked.

Mr. Hot Rod lovingly tapped his car’s bumper. “Hilda.”

“Oh. No, it wasn’t about Hilda. It was about another car, a pink Cadillac.”

The guy in the coveralls burst out laughing. “Then your vision wasn’t about me, matey. I wouldn’t be caught dead driving a pink Cadillac.”

“But you might possibly work on one for somebody else, right? Do you do that sort of thing? Work on other people’s cars?”

“Sometimes,” Mr. Hot Rod reasoned. His brow lowered, eyes flitted. “You’re saying stay away from pink Cadillacs?”

“I would, if I were you. And if you come across anyone else driving one, any or your friends or anything, you should tell them, too. Tell them to be careful, take it slow. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“Well, yeah, me neither.”

Tucker wasn’t sure what else to say, so he nodded and backed away. “Thanks for your time.”

“Wait,” Mr. Hot Rod called out. “Your vision—what happened?”

The words were hard to say, but Tucker forced them out. “Someone was killed.”

“By a pink Cadillac?”

Tucker nodded and took off down the alley, toward the busy street to the east.

After he’d gone, he could hear Mr. Hot Rod calling out, “Wait! Do you do readings?”

Chapter Five

Tucker popped out of the alleyway and onto a bustling sidewalk, feeling like he’d just crossed over from one world into the next. He had to admit, he felt pretty proud of himself. That hot rod guy was definitely on board about avoiding pink Cadillacs.

Betty would certainly be safe now.

He sauntered past a bus stop just as the city bus pulled up. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps the bus was stopping to let him on. He’d have to tell the driver he wasn’t waiting for the bus, only walking by. But, as it turned out, the bus wasn’t stopping for him at all. It was stopping to let passengers off: a man with a newspaper, a mother with a young daughter, and then another woman—someone he knew.

“Betty!” he called to her. “There you are! I’ve been dying to have a word with you.”

The woman with the young daughter turned long enough to shoot Tucker the evil eye, then hustled her little girl quickly down the sidewalk.

“What’s her problem?” Tucker asked Betty.

“Oh, who knows?” she said, pressing the grooves of her white gloves tight between her fingers. “People these days!”

Betty had on the kind vintage dress Frederique would have paid a pretty penny for. Her hair, her shoes, her whole look was a blast from the past—a blast from a time before Tucker had even been born.

“Are you heading home?” Tucker asked her. “I’ll walk with you, if you don’t mind. I’ve been knocking on your door all day.”

“Oh?” The poor woman looked a little nervous to hear that.

He’d rather she think him crazy than feel threatened, so he told her the absolute truth: told her about the sunglasses, told her about the vision, told her about his conversation with the hot rod guy.

“He said he wouldn’t be caught dead in a pink Cadillac, but that just means the driver could be somebody else,” Tucker told her. “I want you to be extremely careful crossing the street, hear me? Look both ways, all that stuff they teach you in kindergarten. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Sounds to me as if you already have,” Betty said nervously.

She quickly changed the subject, chatting about the gardens they passed by, gossiping about the neighbours, anything to get Tucker off-track. Clearly, she didn’t want to think about the vision he’d had of her death. But, then, who would? Death was a tricky topic. Predicting someone’s death wasn’t exactly good times.

When they arrived in front of Betty’s house, Tucker stopped abruptly and said, “You will be cautious, won’t you?”

Betty’s lashes fluttered. She seemed embarrassed by his concern. “Don’t you worry about me, young man.”

Now it was Tucker’s turn to feel embarrassed. He hated being called “young man.” But he cared about Betty enough to let it go.

With a wave, he made his way back to Aunt Margaret’s darkened house, expecting to find the place quiet, maybe the sound of Boo-Boo’s singing voice wafting from somewhere upstairs. Boo-Boo often sang to himself when he thought he was alone.

What Tucker found instead was a French costumier leaning back on a kitchen chair, eating udon teriyaki with both feet on the table. He swept them onto the floor when Tucker walked in the room, and said, “Hey, look at this! It’s Boo-Boo’s psychic sidekick!”

Tucker could feel his eyes popping out of his head. “You told Frederique about the glasses?”

“Are you kidding me? I sold him the glasses,” Boo-Boo replied.

Turning his face to the heavens, Tucker muttered, “Save me!”

“Boo-Boo did not just sell me sunglasses,” Frederique went on with a mouth full of thick wormy noodles. “He selled me the story, and the story is just as good as the glasses! Now sit with us and eat this food.”

Tucker had to admit, it did smell good. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Boo-Boo selling Frederique the glasses, thought. He felt, in some way, that they ought to be his. He’s the one who had a vision, looking through them.

“Did you take a look at the collection Boo-Boo put together?” Tucker asked. “Lots of rhinestones, a bunch of Bakelite.”

“After I eat, then I shop,” Frederique said.

This guy was not Tucker’s favourite person, but he would pay good money for costume jewellery. Ultimately, their responsibility was to Aunt Margaret’s heirs. They were going to earn a fortune for the family, not to mention find great homes for her belongings.

Boo-Boo had laid out his score of vintage jewels on the desk under the window in the front room. Among the items was the early pair of sunglasses he must have extracted from the mailbox.

Slowly, Tucker lifted them off the desk and opened them up. Without properly placing them around his ears, he looked through the tinted glass, out the window, and across the street.

She was still there. Betty. Bleeding from her head. Dead as a doornail at the side of the street.

He’d convinced himself that, by speaking to Mr. Hot Rod, he’d managed to change the future, but the sunglasses said it all.

Betty was doomed to her fate.

Chapter Six

“Bye-bye, Boo-Boo!”

“Grand merci, Frederique!”

From the study, Tucker imitated the ex under his breath: “Bye-bye, Boo-Boo, and a Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo to you too!”

Some businessman he was. He couldn’t even be bothered to walk out with the man who’d paid them handsomely for costume jewellery.

Tucker watched him drive away. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

Why was he so threatened by a stupid smarmy French guy? Frederique was only a man, and Boo-Boo had chosen Tucker long ago. He needed to get his emotions under control.

Anyway, Frederique might not have Boo-Boo, but he did have those sunglasses. May they bring him nothing but bad luck for as long as he lived.

Clapping his hands together, Boo-Boo asked, “Well, what now?”

“We should probably get started on this study.”

“True,” Boo-Boo agreed, snapping on the table lamp to brighten up the dark room. “I’ve been putting it off because of the books.”

“I know they’re not your favourite things to deal with.”

“You make me sound like a know-nothing moron. I like reading books, I just don’t like sorting through other people’s libraries. All these old volumes, I bet some of them are nearly a hundred years old, and even so they’re worth next to nothing. Might as well use them to wipe our—”

“I get the point,” Tucker cut him off.

“Geeze, what climbed up your butt?”

“Nothing,” Tucker snapped.

Inching a little closer, Boo-Boo said, “Maybe that’s the problem...”

Tucker ignored his boyfriend’s salacious tone and started pulling books down from the shelves, stacking them on the desk by the window. “I’ll just see if there are any stand-outs in the collection. For the ones that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, I’ll call up Ariadne, see if she needs more old books for that art installation she’s working on.”

“Good idea,” Boo-Boo cooed, wrapping his arms around Tucker from behind. “My boyfriend is the smartest boyfriend.”

Tucker rolled his eyes until Boo-Boo’s warmth crept through his clothes and heated his heart from the outside in. All this jealousy wasn’t doing anyone any good. He gave in and allowed Boo-Boo to cling to him like a child while he kept on grabbing books off the shelf, setting them on the desk.

“Wait, what’s that?” Boo-Boo asked, grabbing one of the books Tucker had just placed on the desk.

“What’s what?”

“Looks like old newsprint,” Boo-Boo said as he opened the blue linen cover.

He was right. Someone had tucked an old news story from a very old newspaper into the front of this book. It looked like it had been there for decades. Tucker didn’t even want to touch it for fear the paper would crumble in his hands.

“The print is so small,” Boo-Boo said. “What’s it say?”

“If you’d only wear your glasses, you’d be able to read it for yourself,” Tucker replied, his voice teasing and soft. “It’s an article about... no, it can’t be. That makes no sense.”

“What makes no sense?”

Boo-Boo squinted, reading over Tucker’s shoulder.

It was an article about a car crash. “Mrs. Betty Turtle of 345 Willowcreek Road was struck and killed just outside of her home... on May 17... 1956.”