Riding the Thunder - Deborah MacGillivray [80]
“I told you, I assumed it had been boarded up while the Vietnam draft was still going on. I can’t figure it. But I swear to you she was seeing it, even singing songs from the era. Dell Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ . . . and she mentioned one called ‘Alley Oop.’ She said she could hear the music, asked me if I could.”
Liam frowned, said nothing, just pushed a glazed strawberry around with his fork.
“These blackouts—”
Liam’s head snapped up. “Plural?”
Jago nodded. Scooting his chair back, he propped his ankle upon his opposite thigh. “One at the pool. Then last night at the drive-in . . . she did the same thing. She was normal one minute, then the next staring at me with doll eyes. FYI—that’s why I stayed with her last night. She scared me. I didn’t want to leave her alone. I was quite honorable and refrained from ‘shagging’ her—as you so quaintly put it. Sorry, she had other notions this morning. Has she ever experienced blackouts before?”
Liam shook his head no. “Of course, I’ve been gone two months, back to England, so I can’t speak for that time away, but she’s never had any occurrences such as these before. Did she tell you what happened at the pool and the drive-in?”
“No. Lack of Pepsi was the excuse at the pool. Second time, she ran from me. This afternoon at the rink was the first she talked about them. I watched her, Liam. She heard the music. She almost had me believing I could.”
“We come from a ‘fey’ family and tend to accept that there are things in the world at which others might scoff,” Liam said. “Although, this is a puzzler. I have no idea what’s happening to her now. This is the first I’ve heard of any of this.”
Jago pushed on, sharing his fears. “The kicker—she mentioned something else. A Tommy and Laura.”
Liam paused, then decided he didn’t want the rest of his half-eaten pie and shoved it away. “Why do those names ring a bell?”
“That damned song on the jukebox.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the song. There’s something else, something that strikes a memory.”
Jago recalled the last names that Asha had told him at the pavilion. “Tommy Grant and Laura Valmont?”
“Yeah . . . now I recall. Some sort of accident on the road where you were today. A long time ago, they were in a terrible car crash. Died.”
“‘The cryin’ tires, the bustin’ glass, the painful scream I heard last.’” Feeling gut-punched, Jago recited the song lyrics, and was suddenly filled with a sorrow so intense that tears came to his eyes.
“That’s not ‘Tell Laura I Love Her.’That’s—”
“Yeah, ‘Last Kiss.’ It plays on the jukebox a lot, too.” Jago fixed Liam with a hard stare, fighting to keep at bay the overwhelming pressure to break down and cry. Not sure why. “So, you’re going to tell me what it is with that damn jukebox?”
“Oh, surely you’ve guessed—The Windmill is haunted.”
“Thank you, Rod Serling.” Jago wanted to make a joke of it. How serious can you be—a haunted Wurlitzer? Then why did he already half-believe Liam?
Getting up, he walked to the picture window overlooking the river, staring into the coming dawn. The night-light hit the large pane so it became a ghostly mirror, reflecting his own likeness, and then Liam’s behind him. Slowly lifting his hand, he placed his fingertips so they touched the reflected ones. He was a logical person, used his senses to tell him what was real and what was not. A haunted jukebox? He wanted to laugh how ridiculous the idea was. Only, sometimes you had to open your mind to things you cannot touch.
Like love.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Enchanted, neither day nor night, the pale light of dawn crept over the riverside, bathing the majestic Palisades in tones of sepia and gray. Asha drew deep solace from this time of day, when the world was still sleepy and nothing stirred; not even birds sang their wake up melody. A wood nymph