Re: [capital pawnshop: hannah & david]
He only touched her skin with the glove on, but it gave and sprang with a plush and flexible liveliness. So he came to the inevitable conclusion that he was imagining her.
She couldn't be real, with her striking resemblance to the dead, her new name, her complete disinterest in the man squirming on the floor. Live Amy would have screamed by now, as most live people would. "Death changes our preferences. Even our names." She was Hannah, now, but he knew she wasn't a ghost. That meant she was a tangible figment. The cognitive dissonance was too striking for her to be anything more.
When she spoke, he read it as a part of his own narrative. She knew what she came here for, because he thought her up. "He didn't sell it," said David, pressing his boot in a little more tightly. Henry coughed, weakly. "I have it now. He bought and sold things that no one should touch. He needed the money. He was saving up for something special, but he won't tell me what it was."
Her smile was too sweet, too, to be real. Her hair was too soft, and her tone was too light. She was a phantom, but he didn't mind the company. "Be my guest," he said, with a touch of mirth. He reached down and grasped Henry's ankle. "It's an open house."
He and Henry went toward the stairs - David walking, Henry being dragged, trying softly to scream with no air in his lungs, staring blankly in the direction of the absent girl, clawing with what strength he had left at the floorboards, the doorjam, and the edge of the stairs. Then they went down, thump, thump, thump and Henry struggled to keep his head from striking every step. As they went, he struggled less and less.
"The descent of man. This is how you took him downstairs, isn't it?" The ghost jerked Henry's leg forward, and his head struck the bottom step, hard. He went limp, and then the only sounds downstairs were the soft slide of weight and fabric across linoleum. The back door creaked open, and they went outside.
The lot behind the pawnshop was lit only by the moon and the glow of light pollution. Surrounded on all four sides by high and rusty chain link, grass struggled to grow. The neighbors high fences blocked any good view of what happened out here. Perhaps that explained the patch of earth that was a little greener than the rest.
The revenant dropped Henry's ankle when he was resting on the patch of sweetgrass. He moved back inside the pawn shop, rooting around near the back wall where the tools were stacked. "The gallows does well, but how does it well? It does well to those that do ill."
Henry was just coming back to consciousness when the blade of a shovel buried itself in the earth two inches from his nose. He looked up into the dark, at the figure standing over him.