All of the Voices by Bailey Bradford (little red riding hood read aloud txt) 📗

in the restaurant, before you asked if we could talk, there was this… Well, it was almost like a current in the air. That’s not what I usually feel when there’s a spirit hanging around, but I’ve learnt I don’t know as much about spirits as I thought I did.”

“You think I’m being haunted?” Matt was officially past creeped out. The strange comforting smells, the sudden need to make sure the elderly in McKinton were being taken care of, the buzz in his head… “Fuck. I am, aren’t I?”

“I don’t know,” Severo said. “But if there is a spirit or two hanging around, I wouldn’t say you were being haunted. Protected in a weird way, or maybe guided? Those are definite possibilities. Have you experienced any strange visions, or heard unexplainable sounds? Caught the whiff of something familiar but not really there? Usually when a spirit wants to talk to me, I hear this buzzing in my head—”

“Fuck,” Matt muttered again because no other word seemed to be applicable. “Yes to several of those. Shit.”

“Huh.” Severo released Matt’s arm then propped his hands on his hips. “Looks like we both have some listening to do.”

* * * *

Carlin leaned back in the chair in front of Sheriff Stenley’s desk and wondered if it was possible for him to have been an even bigger asshole. The sheriff had insisted—not that Carlin had protested too much to the contrary—on playing Aunt Mary’s last call to report a prowler. Hearing his aunt’s voice, which was clearly happy and not tinged with even the least bit of fear, had torn Carlin up inside.

The sheriff had also showed him a log of Aunt Mary’s calls, and frankly, after seeing the number of times she’d made false claims of a prowler, Carlin had been surprised the woman hadn’t been arrested. He was more surprised Deputy Nixon had arrived so quickly as, all things considered, to quote Sheriff Stenley, Aunt Mary had clearly cried wolf dozens of times. Yet Deputy Nixon hadn’t hesitated, and had, according to the sheriff and the documented time of the call and the time of Nixon’s arrival, treated the call like the emergency it had ended up being.

Not that it’d made a difference. Aunt Mary had been dead before Nixon arrived, and there was nothing that would change that. According to her autopsy report, Mary had died within seconds, the bottom of her heart basically bursting. Even if someone had been with her, she wouldn’t have survived the massive heart attack.

So Aunt Mary had died alone, and even worse, lonely. The only person who’d bothered to spend time with her had been Deputy Nixon, and Carlin had basically intimated the man hadn’t done his job, had let Aunt Mary die.

“I’m an ass,” Carlin said dully as he rubbed his forehead.

“Just upset,” Stenley argued gently, “and probably feeling a little guilty on top of it?”

A little didn’t begin to cover it. “I have certain obligations that kept me from being able to come to McKinton to visit.”

Sheriff Stenley gave him an arch look. “Yet you’re here now.”

Carlin now knew how his defendant felt during trial. “They only recently changed.”

“But you visited here before?”

“You should have been a goddamned lawyer,” Carling muttered, which made the sheriff’s lips twitch. “I was here for less than twenty-four hours over ten years ago. I’d just figured out I was gay, and one of the town residents was assaulted and frankly it terrified me.”

“That’d have been Zeke Matthers, a friend of mine,” Sheriff Stenley informed him. “His sister was the one who got those men riled up so they would gang up on Zeke. She’s in prison now, since she tried to run him down several months back. Almost killed Zeke.”

“Well. Good.” That was more twisted than a random gay bashing in Carlin’s opinion. “Is your friend…? How is he?”

“Does all right with it most days. Reckon he’s entitled to occasionally get upset over the fact his own flesh and blood wanted him dead.” Stenley’s expression was hard enough to cut diamonds. His friend Zeke wasn’t the only one who still got upset about it. “Lots of people were out on Main Street when it happened, and seeing that crazy woman try to kill Zeke made a lot of townsfolk more tolerant. Guess the evidence of how evil hatred is made ’em rethink their own prejudices.”

“Aunt Mary never mentioned anything about Zeke’s sister being the one who had him beaten, or about her trying to kill him again, or—” Carlin saw the sheriff locked in a passionate kiss with his much smaller lover. The image was seared into Carlin’s brain because it had been one of the most erotic and loving things he’d ever witnessed. “I don’t know why she didn’t tell me any of that. We talked at least twice a week on the phone. I thought we were close.” Except maybe Aunt Mary had been closer to Deputy Nixon.

“Would it have made any difference?”

Carlin rethought the last decade, then the last year, since that was when things had changed here in McKinton according to Stenley. He shook his head. “No, I still couldn’t have come down here, but I would have wanted to more. I wouldn’t have been so afraid of being murdered for being who I am.”

Stenley pushed his chair back and rose. “Then it wouldn’t have made any difference, right? You still wouldn’t have come to McKinton unless you had to—”

“I couldn’t have,” Carlin snapped, guilt and anger getting the better of him. He didn’t have to listen to a lecture from this man! “I told you—”

Stenley interrupted him in return. “Guess there’s no gay bashing in New York, it being a world renowned bastion for homosexuals and all.”

“That doesn’t— It’s bigger and—”

“Doesn’t have a bunch of inbred hicks in it?”

Carlin didn’t know why Stenley was so determined to goad him, but he’d had enough. Rising slowly from his seat, Carlin forced himself to keep his expression bland and his movements