Nightingale

By D. K. Golden

About the Book
Seventeen-year-old Jim Nightingale is an average, lonely boy until the fateful day when an accident hurls him outside his body and he discovers he can roam the world free of the tyranny of physical matter. However, his newfound power exposes him to dark secrets concerning his family’s ancestry, and his reckless actions awaken an ancient evil buried beneath his family’s old church. Soon, Jim finds himself fighting for his very soul and his family’s lives as powerful, elemental forces converge on their town to do battle, with the fate of the universe hanging in the balance.
Combining horror with supernatural suspense
against the backdrop of dark religious themes, NIGHTINGALE will make you shudder…
About the Author
D. K. Golden has lived nearly his whole life in southeastern Pennsylvania. He attended Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and has sold his artwork internationally. He is also a children’s book illustrator. He works full time in healthcare, and in his spare time, Mr. Golden enjoys hiking, bowling, painting, writing, and visiting the beach.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Dec 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887297088

Book preview

PART I

The Watcher

I will stand at my watch,

and station myself on the ramparts.

I will look to see what He will say to me,

and what answer I am to give...

Habukkuk 2:1

Then Jesus returned to his disciples and found them sleeping.

Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour? he asked Peter.

"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

John 26:40-41

Chapter One

The Accident

1

---

Becky Dillard screamed, Daddy, look out!

Her father stamped his foot on the brake pedal of his BMW, but it was too late. Something had darted out in front of his car as Rick Dillard drove his daughter to school, and it took less than a second for him to recognize it as a human being. The figure that had appeared out of nowhere barely had enough time to turn its head to address the speeding vehicle before the impact. Becky watched helplessly, unable to tear her gaze from the awful scene happening before her. Her eyes locked with the jaywalker’s own and a sudden, forlorn spark of recognition

(my God, that’s what’s-his-name)

flashed in her eyes as his mouth shot open in a perfect O-shaped expression of surprised horror. Her father sat frozen in his seat, his knuckles bone-white from gripping the steering wheel in cold panic, his foot pressing the brake pedal so hard that it felt it would punch through the floor. The tires shrieked in protest of sudden deceleration as the face of the boy who’d suddenly run out into the middle of the street filled the frame of the windshield.

Dillard felt the front end of the car strike something, heard the sickening thump! of a body colliding with metal and fiberglass. The horrified face of whoever it was disappeared from his view. The BMW skidded to a stop and sat idling on the asphalt.

Daddy! Becky screamed again, You just killed somebody and I know who it is!

Shut up! Dillard snapped as he wrenched his door open and heaved himself out of the car. His accent was Midwest-flat with a reedy tone, clipped like a dog’s bark. He was tall and heavyset, dressed in a black polo shirt, expensive khaki slacks and burgundy leather tasseled loafers that gleamed like he’d recently taken them out of the box. An icy, leaden mass formed in his gut as he slowly stepped toward the front of his BMW and peered over the fender. His throat instantly dried when he saw what lay on the ground in front of the car.

The body of a teenaged boy lay sprawled on the street, unmoving. The boy was dressed in frayed, dark blue jeans, a white tee-shirt displaying the logo of a rock band Dillard was unfamiliar with and mismatched socks, one black, one white. One of the kid’s sneakers lay like a dead bird nearby, flung from his foot by the impact. The boy’s unkempt brown hair was flecked with grime from his head hitting the ground. Blood seeped down the left side of his ivory-toned face from a gash near his hairline. His limbs were splayed outward in every direction like a weather vane. His bright green eyes stared skyward through narrow slits, glazed, lifeless. One of his hands twitched, then lay still.

Dillard stood and stared for innumerable seconds before the reality of the situation took hold. He gulped down a wad of bile and frantically looked around. It was quarter past seven in the morning, he was standing in the middle of the road with a dead body in front of him, and he was the cause of said body being dead in the middle of the road. He whipped his bearded head around, looking up and down the streets, his icy, blue-gray eyes surveying the quiet neighborhood.

His heart pounded. Somebody had to have seen or heard it. He saw no one else out on the sidewalks, no dog walkers, no children. No other moving vehicles were in sight on the road. His granite-like face, craggy with the fault lines of middle age, relaxed slightly but his heart continued to race and his breath entered, exited his lungs in ragged bursts.

Dillard looked down at the teen’s body again, then at the front end of the BMW and winced, cursing under his breath. He leaned forward to inspect his car. No blood, but he saw that the grill had been bent slightly inward. He closed his eyes. Jesus wept. Beautiful mid-September day, rare civil time between him and his daughter, brand-new Bimmer, not even a week off the dealer’s lot and some dumbass punk kid jumps out of nowhere to play nine ball with it. Just beautiful. Should just tie him to the front and drive him around like a hood ornament, he thought angrily.

Dillard cursed. It actually had been a good morning between him and Becky, a seemingly rare occurrence after she’d reached the magic age of sixteen. They’d begun the day at the breakfast table after she came downstairs from showering and applying what little makeup she wore. Becky was very pretty without it, having inherited much of her mother’s natural beauty. The only things she seemed to have picked up from her father were his eyes: stony, inquisitive, and piercing. And his bulldozer-like resolve.

He opened his cold eyes, spat on the ground and rose to his full six-foot-two height. Something had to be done, fast. Thank God the airbags didn’t go off, he thought as he glanced at the car again. Brand-new. New car smell. And this happens. Jesus wept. He waved his hand in his daughter’s direction, indicating she shouldn’t get out of the car.

Becky flung herself out of the BMW anyway, ignoring his gesture, and raced to the front of the car. She was a slender girl with flowing almond-blond hair neatly combed to wavy curls below her shoulders and quick, wiry strength in her small frame. Her clammy flesh was slightly tanned with her simple attire of dark blue jeans, black flats and blue casual tee that looked almost painted on her body as she moved. She wasn’t particularly athletic but her movements were swift and efficient as she knelt down to brush the disheveled hair out of the boy’s lifeless face. Her eyes widened in horrified recognition.

Becky, don’t touch him! Dillard hissed, frantically looking around. It was only a matter of time before someone came out to confront them about the accident and the police were probably already called. He did not want to be held up in a police inquiry, nor did he want his insurance premiums to skyrocket upon his car’s underwriter being notified.

With the possible exception of his family, time was more precious to him than anything else.

Daddy, I know him! Becky shrieked. She felt his cheeks, which were still warm. Becky held a hand over his parted lips. No breath exited his body. She felt for a pulse and there was none. Becky placed her hands on the center of his rib cage and began thirty chest compressions, pushing firmly. When she finished she quickly repositioned his head and opened his mouth. Becky lowered her face to his and pressed her lips against his mouth, blowing two quick breaths into his windpipe. His chest rose twice with each breath and she quickly began compressions again.

What are you doing? Dillard nearly screamed, his heartbeat sounding like a drum in his ears. He looked around, feeling the tingly embarrassment rise to his craggy cheeks

(she’s putting her mouth on the cold lips of a corpse...oh, Jesus help me)

as he fully realized how much of a shit show this would all become if anyone was watching.

She glanced up into his cold eyes as she pressed on the kid’s chest and said, CPR, Daddy! He might have a chance! This is one of my classmates. We’ve got to get him to a hospital or he’ll die! She enclosed her mouth around his again and blew air into his lungs. His chest rose twice and she began chest compressions once more. Becky Dillard was trained in basic lifesaving measures when she applied for a job at a local community pool as a lifeguard. Her father disapproved for reasons that she thought were ridiculous and, with her mother’s support, persisted. Her father had seethed at her decision, viewing the job as beneath his daughter’s talents, but he harbored a grudging respect for her stubbornness.

Nevertheless, she was delaying their getaway and his anxiety escalated to cold panic. He’s dead! Dillard hissed.

No, I’m not!

2

---

Earlier that morning, before waking, Jim Nightingale dreamed of flying.

The dream was neither complicated nor fantastic. There were no thick Maxfield Parrish purple clouds to plunge through, no winged dragons to soar alongside, no stars to zoom past at warp speed. He wasn’t in the cockpit of any flying machine. He dreamed simply of floating through the world unfettered by gravity or matter, slipping through walls and rooftops like a ghost, unseen and unheard, a silent watcher riding on the wind.

Jim laughed. He soared for what seemed like an age had passed and suddenly had a preternatural notion that he was being watched. He instinctively looked above toward the strangely glowing clouds. He glimpsed what he thought was the outline of a person embossed in the crystalline vapor, with a face that seemed to stare directly down at him, its expression somehow curious, even covetous.

Jim, incredulous, blinked and looked again, but the ethereal image, whatever it was, had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He shook his head. Weird, he thought, and gazed down again. As he drifted uncontrollably through the early morning light above the rooftops of the town, briefly ruminating over life choices that he’d need to make soon, he gradually became aware of a whispering voice calling him from somewhere.

He paused his thoughts and listened intently. It was the first time in all his dreams that he distinctly heard a voice speaking, gentle, seductive, barely audible, like a sigh on the wind:

Nightingale…find me…

Who are you? Jim called out, his voice sounding equally wispy. He tried pulling himself toward what he thought was the direction the soft voice whispered from, and the forlorn shape of the old Methodist church emerged from a leaden mist, dreary and somehow foreboding. Odd. Jim’s family had been involved with it for generations, but it had fallen into disrepair. He regarded the crumbling hulk of the church with morbid interest. He was not exactly a Christian believer, but he occasionally found himself seeking answers to large questions that formed in the back of his mind, questions that pertained to the meaning of his existence. Skepticism nagged him. He always wondered if there really was a God watching over the world, and, if He was there, why He seemed to always be absent when bad things happened to good people.

(Like my Dad)

As he drew closer, his curiosity overpowering his unease, another voice called to him from the ground, startling Jim. He banked, following the hollering voice to the south end of the town and looked down to see a man standing in the cracked, weed-choked parking lot of the closed-down Sunbeam service station, waving at him. The station had been out of business for more than a year and, like the church, it had fallen into disrepair. Graffiti traced its funky patterns up and down the exterior and two of its windows were broken.

Hey! the man called again. He was plainly dressed in faded khaki dungarees, scuffed brown work boots and a frayed, blue fleece-lined corduroy jacket. His complexion was swarthy with dark, benevolent eyes set deeply atop a black, hirsute beard which framed an open, friendly smile of slightly yellow teeth. He wore a faded orange baseball cap with nothing printed on the front. He continued waving, his smile somehow glowing in the midst of all that unkempt facial hair. The waving hand looked calloused and strong enough to crush a bar of soap.

Jim felt himself lowering to the ground, a few yards away from the smiling man. His feet hovered above the crumbling asphalt but did not touch it. He regarded the bearded man with guarded interest. The man’s stocky frame seemed to command the space he stood in. But the bearded smile and bemused eyes put Jim at ease. Dude looks like a construction worker, he thought.

Were you the one calling me a minute ago? Jim asked. His voice, oddly diaphanous a moment ago, now sounded normal, and he was startled again.

 The bearded man stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and looked perplexed. Me? I don’t know. What did I say? His rich, commanding tone was accented with a foreign inflection, but Jim couldn’t place it. European, perhaps, or Middle Eastern. Jim wasn’t sure.

You said my last name, I think, Jim said.

The man looked puzzled. I did? he asked, shifting his feet. Interesting, my friend. I don’t believe we’ve met, but it’s always good to run into a friendly stranger. I’ve been wondering if anybody even knew who I am, or even looking for me at all, to be honest with you. He nodded good-naturedly at Jim and added, I’m Josh, by the way. You’re Jim, right?

Jim’s eyebrows arched. How did you know my name? he asked.

Josh beamed at him. I get around, hear a lot of things, meet a lot of interesting people. I’ve worked a lot of jobs fixing things. Names get mentioned. He withdrew a hand from his pockets and gestured toward Jim. You have an interesting way of getting around, I have to say.

Jim tried to extend his feet to the ground, to no avail. He remained suspended a foot above it. I can’t seem to get back down, he said. Can you help me?

Josh smiled sadly, put his hand back in his jacket pocket and shook his head. That’s something you’re going to have to learn to do on your own, Jim. I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, I’m homeless. Do you know how hard it is to be a handyman around town with nowhere to call home? His smile brightened again. But then, I’m used to it. I’ve been kicked to the curb almost everywhere. People are hard to relate to, Jim. Right?

Jim shrugged. Josh’s smile was infectious and he felt his own mouth pull itself into one. Yeah, you’re right, he agreed. He glanced around, took in the foreboding shape of the crumbling church steeple on the horizon and shuddered, as if something cold

(find me)

had touched the back of his neck. He looked away from it and said, I never felt like I belonged anywhere, ever. A familiar hollow, yet portentous, weight formed in his sternum and seemed to grow hands that squeezed tightly.

You’ve been to lots of places, I reckon?

Jim nodded. Yeah. Too many, I think, for a kid, anyway. We always packed up and moved for as long as I can remember. My dad was in the army, then after he quit, he tried to get a job but it was tough. He was a teacher.

Ah, Josh said, beaming. A teacher. That’s a very important job. Usually very difficult to stay focused in but the reward can be gratifying. Especially if you can reach through to the one who is learning. He smirked. Sometimes even the teacher can also learn from the student. There are lots of directions water can flow in, if you catch my drift.

Jim regarded the man with bemusement after a moment, when the pun finally registered. Josh’s wry humor was strangely ameliorating. He snickered and said, Yeah, I hear you on that. We’re always learning new things all the time. I’m always open to new knowledge. He looked down at his feet hovering above the unkempt weeds erupting through the cracks in the pavement. Like keeping myself grounded, he cracked, attempting his own pun.

Josh chuckled warmly, slid his hands out of his pockets and spread them as he shrugged. Sounds like we have something in common, Jim. The smile faded and he nodded to the floating teenager with sad understanding. Well, I should start getting busy while it’s still early, he said.

Are you here to work on the gas station? Jim asked.

Sorry, no, but someone will come along to develop it, I’m sure, Josh replied, his dark eyes smiling wistfully. He backed up, turned and began walking away. You’re a good kid and I’d love to stay and talk, but I have work to do, he said over his shoulder. And you need to get going yourself. Wake up.

Huh?

WAKE UP!

Jim’s body lurched in his bed. He surfaced frantically from the foamy sea of sleep and partially opened his eyes. For a moment he briefly replayed some of the things he saw while dreaming and lazily turned on his side, gazing at the blurred, glowing red numbers of his digital clock next to the bed. Josh’s shouting voice echoed once in his head, followed by silence.

What the hell, he thought. That was a weird one. Jim yawned and forced himself to keep his eyes open. He wasn’t a morning person and stole as much sleep from the day’s opening moments as he could. His bedroom was dark from his shuttered blinds blocking out most of the dim morning light, and the glaring numbers seemed to hang suspended in dark space. He regarded them with a vapid curiosity. Something was strange.

His clock displayed 6:55. Jim thought that was strange. He had to be up at six in the morning to get himself cleaned and ready to board the school bus when it rumbled up to his stop at 6:45, at the corner of Wissahickon Road and Ashton Avenue, to take him to Northdale High School. It shouldn’t be 6:55. Very strange.

The clock’s digits advanced to 6:56. Very strange, indeed.

6:57...

6:58...

Oh God.

6:59...

Oh dear God in heaven.

Jim Nightingale lunged from his bed with a shout and looked frantically around his bedroom, fixing his wild gaze back on the clock. He’d forgotten to set it to wake him earlier. Oh, shit, he uttered as he threw his dresser drawers open, searching for clothes to wear. He couldn’t believe he was going to be late for the first day of his senior year of high school. He swore loudly as he surveyed the dearth of suitable clothing available to dress in and remembered that most of his clothes, which had been piled in a huge mound along with his two siblings’ soiled laundry over the weekend, was still being washed.

Jesus! he yelled as he frantically searched the room. He pulled on what he could find: frayed faded blue jeans, a wrinkly white tee displaying an orange interlocking B logo of the rock band Breaking Benjamin. He yanked mismatching white and dark socks on and shoved his feet into a pair of battered Skechers sneakers. He flung the bedroom door open and ran out into the hallway. There was no time to shower, brush his teeth or comb a wayward lock of his unruly brown hair. What his homeroom teacher would see, whoever it was, he or she would get.

He smoldered. He’d already missed the bus, he had no car (Jim flunked his driver’s test three times, mainly due to not studying the state driver’s manual), his father had already left for work and his mother was driving his two younger sisters to their respective schools. Mike Davis, the only one of his close friends who drove a car, was on the other end of town (probably still asleep too, Jim mused) and couldn’t come and get him. He was already alone in the house by six-thirty and apparently nobody had bothered to make sure he was awake. Wonderful.

A stray quote, in his father’s sardonic voice: When it rains crap, you get hit by bricks.

Jim leaped down the stairs and ran out the front door, locking it behind him as he slammed it shut. He’d forgotten his door key to get back in but dismissed the thought with a mental shrug. His main priority was running as fast as he could to school, which was over a mile away, and pondering the petty hazards of being a latchkey kid was a dim afterthought. He glanced around for a second, furtively seeking anybody’s car he recognized to hitch a ride in, but the street was devoid of traffic. He sighed, then took off running.

His family’s two-story cross-gabled house, which belonged to his grandfather, stood on a relatively quiet street of a cul-de-sac called Maple Lane in the eastern Pennsylvania suburb of Northdale. Maple Lane exited to Ashton Avenue, which bisected the eastern end of town and crossed over Wissahickon Road, which ran just over a mile north to Northdale High School. It was not a long commute, but it could be a physically taxing jaunt on foot for one not used to the curiously rolling landscape of the Delaware Valley. The sun was well above the horizon and peeking above the treetops, bathing Northdale in a misty orange glow.

As Jim ran, feeling his muscles slowly burn in protest, he thought, God, I’m not wearing deodorant...I’m going to stink like a garbage truck by third period. Immediately after he thought that, a nearly-forgotten voice, icy with contempt, echoed from the depths of memory, like a bee sting:

(Jimmy, you’re dumb...oh my God, you’re stupid...)

3

---

The rolling terrain on which stands the township of Northdale, or the Dale, as its residents nicknamed it, had been inhabited by the Unami-Lenape people since before the time of Christ until the arrival of the Europeans. Subsequent wars with other Iroquoian tribes and the introduction of smallpox destroyed most of the Native American tribes that called the Delaware Valley their home. The land was settled in 1698 by English and Welsh colonists, many of whom were Quakers. Northdale was incorporated in 1773. The area is not remarkably hilly but its topography ripples like small waves in the earth, particularly in the western end of town, which runs alongside Wissahickon Creek.

The creek churns heavily or lightly in the spring depending on the yearly thaw of winter ice from the low hills near the borough of North Wales and became lethargic by the summer solstice. The creek had powered several mills by the time independence from the Crown was declared in 1776, and in the following decades the township’s growth was fueled by foundries, textile manufacturing, a brickyard, and the expansion of the North Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran between Philadelphia and Bethlehem and is now owned by SEPTA as part of its regional Doylestown-to-Philadelphia line.

The town occupies an area thirty miles north of Philadelphia in Montgomery County, accessible by the SEPTA railway, PA Routes 202 and 309 and the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Northdale’s primary layout is characterized by a compact town center where Broad and Main Streets met to form a cross that was heavily congested during morning and evening rush hours. Town Hall and its connected Municipal Center stand on the southeast quadrant of Broad and Main. A large, granite Kugel Ball rotates on top of a gushing fountain in the courtyard between the buildings.

The Dale is not a large township but with a population of over 10,000 it is significant enough to exert some socioeconomic influence over the region in which it stood. The last census indicated that Northdale is as ethnically diverse as many northeastern U.S. cities with Caucasians of north-central European descent possessing a sizable majority. Politically it is divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats even though it lies in the Democratic Thirteenth Congressional District. The primary employer is Maxonis, a massive biotechnology company with global distributorship. Its main headquarters stands on, appropriately enough, Headquarters Road, near Fort Washington.

The Dale’s civic amenities and services are typical of a mid-sized American town, hosting a general hospital, a police station, a fire department, a public works department, a movie theater, the high school, an elementary school, a small satellite campus of Drexel University, three parks, ten churches, a synagogue, and the new Performing Arts Center, which opened to much fanfare in 2010. Many historical buildings, including a house on Mason Avenue where George Washington briefly used as his headquarters during the fall campaign of the Revolutionary War in 1777, stand throughout the town in varied condition. A wooden covered bridge, one of the oldest in Pennsylvania and registered as a state historical landmark, crosses over Wissahickon Creek. It is in a state of disrepair, had been for decades, rickety and dangerous, but it had never been closed off and some motorists dare to use it despite the risk of it collapsing. A newer steel bridge crosses the creek a half mile away.

When he was younger, as he and his family visited PA from out west one summer, Jim Nightingale would ride his Grandad’s old Schwinn bicycle to the old covered bridge and park beneath it, searching for salamanders and frogs on the banks of the rolling waters to take home and keep as temporary pets, until captivity for the tiny animals became intolerable and they either perished or were released back into the wild. Jim hadn’t yet felt the rumblings of displacement in his life, and those humid summer days were filled with adventure for boys of eight or nine when fantasy had not yet been pushed aside by reality.

Growing up, the bane of boyhood, was still seemingly a far-off goal to Jim.

He ran down Maple Lane to Ashton and cut right, sprinting west down the sidewalk, as if trying to outrun the reality of his situation. Reality was rapidly encroaching on his existence and he struggled against the concept. He was seventeen, with a birthday coming in December, an inch under six feet, slightly built and not particularly athletic, but he possessed an unusual agility that made him of some use on the field during soccer, touch football, softball and other activities in gym class, when he was in the mood to apply himself. He never expressed any interest in joining any of the school’s sports teams but when engaged in team activities he always gave his best effort to help his team win. He did not smoke and his body was unmarked by tattoos or piercings. His sharp English cheekbones, narrow nose, bright green eyes and pale skin, coupled with his quiet demeanor and penchant for darker clothing, singled him out for some derision, particularly by those who derided the nonconformist types like the goths and geeks, neither of which Jim was a member of. Jim stood alone in every crowd.

He was a bright kid, did well in all his classes (except math, which would always be a mystery to him), and rarely got in trouble. But Jim was no standout in the world. He had no driver’s license, no car, no girlfriend (there was that goth girl, Sandy, who seemed to have taken an interest in him, especially after that incident in the cafeteria, and he thought about asking her out once or twice), no job (he’d gotten his insubordinate ass fired from the local Great Foods supermarket after giving a piece of his mind to his store manager, a particularly hated man named Mr. Crockmall, concerning the menial duties he always assigned him) and no real ambition regarding his life beyond high school. His father, a patient man, tried to get Jim interested in college to no avail. Jim wanted to hear nothing of it, deferring the subject to a misty future that he had no real desire to participate in, which greatly irritated his dad.

You know what will happen to you if you don’t make an attempt to graduate from college? Scott Nightingale had asked him upon learning Mr. Crockmall (whom Jim told off, flinging his soiled apron at his feet for emphasis) had terminated Jim’s employment. Jim shrugged and asked what.

You’ll get a job, his father deadpanned with a grim smirk. Jim had looked away sullenly. He and Dad hadn’t always clashed. Their relationship was usually good, even through all the agonizing moves and other life events, but lately an ennui had crept into a slowly-spreading chasm between them, as it does in many father-son relationships when adolescence wanes and adulthood looms like clouds on a distant horizon, signaling an end of an era and the beginning of another one.

Whatever, Jim bit back, not yet done being a boy, feeling the encroaching grip of something that he didn’t yet comprehend and filled him with a quiet dread. His father, incensed, bit his lip and silently nodded. The conversation had ended, more or less, on that thudding note.

It was then that reality had attained its first significant foothold in Jim’s life. He recognized Dad’s attempts at making him acknowledge the fact that the time to put childish things away was upon him, and Jim, sensing the push, couldn’t resist the urge to push back. Childhood, while not completely dead, was gasping its last breaths and young adulthood was exerting its strengthening grip. Reality was getting fired from work. Reality was receiving odd glances from passersby and contemporaries who’d matured at a quicker pace and become acquainted with the abstract concept called responsibility.

Reality was spending the next fifteen minutes running to school when one forgot to set his alarm and had no money from the job one had gotten canned from to purchase a clunker car that would have gotten one to school in five minutes. If one hadn’t also flunked his driver’s test three times to his parents’ chagrin.

No driver’s license. No car. No job. Hardly any friends at school. The teeth of self-pity, of alienation, bit into his psyche. He decided, as he always did in moments of painful self-reflection, that he simply didn’t belong anywhere. Nothing ever seemed to welcome him. He would always be a stranger somewhere. He certainly felt like one in the Dale, an outsider always looking in.

(Maybe that’s why I always dream of flying...maybe I don’t belong on Earth.)

The sudden sound of a vehicle approaching from behind made him slow his pace and he whipped his head around to see a shiny, cherry red Ford Mustang pull up alongside him. Loud hip-hop music pounded from oversized stereo speakers. Icy, leaden dread pooled in his gut when he saw Neil Fitzpatrick behind the wheel with his buddy Cillian Killer McGough leering from the passenger seat.

Jim tightened himself. Ohh...no...

Hey, Flo! McGough called, grinning. His round, tanned face seemed to split beneath his nose as he smiled. McGough was the incoming varsity quarterback on the high school football team. His reddish-brown hair, neatly trimmed, combed back and gelled, combined with his dark blue polo shirt and expensive watch worn on his right wrist, gave him an almost regal appearance despite his casual attire and huge, athletic frame. Jim detected the faint scent of some obnoxious cologne and his nose twitched.

Where you headed, Flo? We can give ya a ride. McGough beckoned with his hand. Fitzpatrick smirked beside him. He was dressed in a red polo and wore a gold chain around his neck. He was of slighter build and his skin was paler. He sported longer black hair and a thinly-trimmed circle beard. He shifted the car to neutral and revved the engine several times.

Jim resisted the urge to dignify the nickname. When he was a junior at Northdale High, he was mockingly referred to as Florence Nightingale, after the English nursing pioneer, and the nickname had been rapidly shortened to Flo. Despite his efforts to ignore and play it down, it stuck.

I’m good, Jim said, ignoring the menacing sound of the engine. His gut roiled. Thanks for the offer, though. He turned away and resumed jogging.

What’s wrong, Flo? Fitzpatrick hollered. He continued gunning the engine as the car rolled forward. This car ain’t good enough for Limeys like you? Or you think you’re too good to hang out with us hipsters? We’re trying to be nice to you, man. Looking tired there, running. He reached down and put something to his lips. Jim saw it was a can of beer. Something turned in his belly.

Yeah, get in. We’ll give ya a ride, McGough chimed in, his stupid smile becoming wolfish. We’re like a good Uber service, right Fitz?

Jim gritted his teeth. Uneasiness gripped him. He knew that Fitzpatrick hadn’t forgiven him for the incident in the cafeteria last year, when he stood up for that bullied goth girl, Sandy. The Irish Mafia weren’t known as the types who didn’t hold grudges.

 This isn’t going to be good, he thought, and quickened his jogging.

4

---

McGough and Fitzpatrick were two incoming seniors at Northdale High and legendary around the school for various shenanigans. And putting the campus, more or less, under their thumb.

They were part of what was locally (and pejoratively) known as the Irish Mafia, a small group of Irish-American families whose ancestors descended from the tough coal miners who emigrated from Ireland in the 1850s, fleeing starvation from the Potato Famine and persecution from British landlords. Many settled in Philadelphia but a few families moved north of the city, wresting the anthracite from the unforgiving limestone hills of Pennsylvania’s Coal Region, embedding their lineage as deeply as the minerals beneath the earth, even after the mines buried more than a few of the Irishmen.

But the mine owners proved to be as oppressive as the English overlords in the old country and attempts by the Irish workers to unionize for better wages and working conditions were brutally repressed. The workers, many of whom were involved in the Molly Maguires society, refused to reenter the mines until their demands were met. The Pinkertons and police were called in to quell the rebellion. Twenty Mollies were hanged for terrorism. Many of the miners’ families were also targeted by vigilantes, and by 1878 most of them had fled.

Seeking a better life for their families, the more enterprising Irish patriarchs, several of whom were secretly Mollies with nefarious connections to certain criminal elements in New York and Boston, moved south to Philadelphia, deciding that a better living could be made by bootlegging and other less savory activities by the time the Nineteen Twenties thudded, with the Crash, into the Thirties. They prospered during the Great Depression and were amazingly good at smuggling booze and other goods across the country, as well as quietly causing mayhem to The Man, until the outbreak of World War II, after which many of the migrant families, having accumulated enough wealth to live comfortably, decided to turn to more legitimate pursuits as their sons fought against the Axis Powers.

The world was changing even as it burned in the flames of war, and they seized their chance at upward mobility. Never welcomed into Philadelphia’s Main Line society, which was dominated by old guard WASPs and new money Jewish families who’d integrated themselves into the upper crust of the city’s social strata, the Irish Mafia moved north into Montgomery County, settling mostly in the Dale. They were Catholic and, in the eyes of the region’s Protestant inhabitants, unwashed, but they integrated quickly and made their lives in the Delaware Valley.

They also earned a measure of envy and resentment from many of the less-affluent families of the region, a few of whom knew where the bodies were buried, even after the descendants of the Irish underworld of Northdale went, in the eyes of the law, legitimate. Years passed and the legends faded to myth. The high school students who comprised the new generation of the Dale’s Irish families had money, swag and expensive cars that they could seemingly park where they wished, even right out in the front lot alongside the principal’s Honda Pilot. They also got placed in the best schools due to the perks that come with the kind of privileged inheritance they enjoyed. Many of their forebears occupied lofty places in the town’s government and established financial ties that influenced much of the Dale’s history. Fitzpatrick’s father was on the township council and considering a run for mayor.

Must be nice to be rich, Jim groused. He reached Wissahickon Road and turned right to begin the mile-long trek down to the school. Fitzpatrick shifted back to first gear and ignored the stop sign, rolling right to keep pace with Jim.

I really think you should get in the car, Fitzpatrick said. McGough snickered beside him.

Jim ignored them and kept running. Fitzpatrick’s cheeks flushed. He reached between the seats, took a sip of beer from his open can of Yuengling and said, Limey punk. Thinks he’s a badass. He replaced the beer can and gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles turning ivory.

McGough chuckled nervously. You still pissed about what he did last year, man?

Fitzpatrick didn’t answer. He suddenly shifted into second and spun the steering wheel right, mounting the curb and pulling the Mustang onto the sidewalk. The car’s suspension groaned in protest.

McGough guffawed and said, What’re you doing, Fitz?

Teaching the little bastard a lesson, Fitzpatrick replied viciously, suddenly not feeling himself in the seat of the car, feeling something else take over. He smiled a shark’s grin and said, I’m gonna run his ass down. He sipped the beer again and giggled as the Mustang’s engine roared. He was beginning to feel buzzed as he steered the vehicle toward the running figure of Jim Nightingale.

McGough’s grin faded. You’re just trying to scare him, right? he asked nervously.

Jim heard the noise behind him, turned around and gazed in stupefaction

(What the hell?!)

at the sight of the Mustang mounting the sidewalk. The vehicle edged toward him with deadly intent. He glimpsed the grinning face of Neil Fitzpatrick behind the wheel and that was enough to convince Jim that he needed to make a quick decision. Run or die.

He ran, his long legs moving like pistons on the concrete as his feet pounded, his heart quickened and his vision seemed to narrow to a tunnel before him. The sound of the engine growling closer behind him made the Mustang sound like a hungry metal beast. He knew he couldn’t outrun it.

McGough yelled, You’re gonna hit him, Fitz! He was laughing hysterically, amused and scared at the same time. What began as a derisive joke had quickly turned into a ride of horror, the blaring hip-hop music on the radio a demented calliope tune on a hellish amusement park carousel spinning at insane speed. The malevolent sneer on Fitzpatrick’s face convinced McGough

(Oh my God oh God oh Christ Fitz is drunk and he’s gonna kill the kid oh God and I’m sitting here and I can’t do a damn thing I’m scared)

that he was about to become an accessory to murder. The joke was no longer funny.

Jim’s chest was burning and his legs were nearly numb when he thought quickly and jumped off the sidewalk and onto the front lawn of somebody’s house. He ran across the lawn toward the lot space between homes and, in fluid motion, vaulted over a low chain link fence. He stopped in the middle of the backyard and turned around, expecting Fitzpatrick to abandon the pursuit. His lungs were twin vacuum chambers and he needed to catch his breath. His heart pounded hard against his rib cage.

There was the sound of something heavy suddenly approaching and Jim turned in astonishment to see the red Mustang bursting through the chain link fence, the tinted windshield partially obscuring a terrified McGough and a demonic Fitzpatrick gunning straight for him. Astonishment instantly turned to terror. Jim was out of breath but nonetheless turned and ran across the yard, jumping over the rear side of the fence and through another house’s backyard. The Mustang plowed through the fence and continued rolling, chasing Jim across the other yard.

Jim saw somebody, a woman in a pink nightgown, stick her head out the back door of her home and she yelled, What’s going on?

Help! Jim screamed. He thought about running toward her door for safety but abandoned the thought when she saw what was chasing him through her yard and darted back in, slamming the door shut. He whimpered in frustration and continued running, racing down the empty driveway of the home and into the street, followed closely by the roaring Mustang, which was right at his heels.

McGough had enough. Without really thinking, he lunged over and wrenched the steering wheel to the left, veering the car away from Jim, whose backside was terrifyingly close to the front end of the Mustang. What the hell— Fitzpatrick hollered as his car rolled off the driveway, stumbled off the sidewalk and landed on the street. He applied the brakes and the car stalled, coming to a full stop.

What the hell did you do that for? he screamed at McGough.

McGough looked at Fitzpatrick incredulously, his eyes wild, his chest pounding. Jesus, you were gonna kill the guy! he yelled. He grabbed the nearly-empty can of Yuengling and threw it out the window before Fitzpatrick could protest. McGough gripped Fitzpatrick’s polo collar, nearly tearing the fabric, and screamed, You’re crazy, man! You’re drunk and you drove through somebody’s yard to try to kill that kid! He let go of a stunned Fitzpatrick and shouted, Let’s get outta here!

Fitzpatrick shook his head violently, his black hair slicked with sweat. Oh God, he said, feeling numb. He started the Mustang’s engine and wrenched it around, its tires screeching on the asphalt as he drove away, not knowing where.

Jim continued running. He could barely feel his own body as he raced through the lawn of the house across the street and frantically climbed over a tall wood fence to cut through the backyard. He shambled across the yard, astonishing a golden retriever that had been lounging on the back patio. The dog immediately jumped to its feet and chased Jim, barking reproachfully. Jim leaped up the rear side of the fence and managed to frantically climb over before the barking dog could catch him. The rear end of the property backed up to Derstine Avenue, flanked by a thin line of trees on a sloping hill. Jim, his adrenaline reaching its end and his lungs out of oxygen, ran between the trees and down to the street without looking.

Made it, he thought feverishly. Jesus, those stupid idiots really tried to—

A sudden, deafening screeching of tires made Jim whirl his body around to see the front end of a black BMW screaming toward him. He had no time or energy to react. Instead, he stood in the middle of the street, awestruck, and he caught a glimpse of the icy-eyed, bearded driver and astonished face of the girl sitting next to him

(hey, I know her...isn’t that Be-)

when the car struck him. He felt something crush his torso, completely evacuating all the air from his lungs as he went flying backward from the impact, one of his Skechers flying off. He landed on his back, gazing upward, seeing the sky strangely recede, his body feeling hollow, unable to breathe.

A numbing calm settled over him. He felt no pain. He couldn’t breathe but his chest felt unnaturally free. His vision seemed to fluctuate and blur as he somehow forced himself to sit up. He slowly stood, feeling unhurt and amazingly at ease as the middle-aged driver shambled out of the BMW and crept toward the front of the car, looking both irritated and nervous. The man seemed to stare at something behind Jim as he stood there waving his hand, signaling that he was okay. Jim tried to speak but his throat felt infinitely hollow, unable to form words.

He was about to say he was all right when the girl exited the car and ran around Jim, ignoring him. She looked very familiar. He wondered why she was paying no attention to him, why the world sounded like hollow echoes all around him, why everything around him seemed to be enveloped in a strange, blurring mist and why he couldn’t quite hear himself talk. She was yelling something that Jim couldn’t quite make out.

He looked around, confused. The voices of the man and girl were distorted, indistinct, but after a moment he finally picked up something the man was saying in a hushed tone:

 He’s dead!

No, I’m not! Jim frantically tried to tell them. His voice sounded oddly hollow, liquidlike, as if reverberating through a membrane. He tried clearing his throat and was startled that he somehow couldn’t feel himself breathing. He hollered, I’m right here, in front of you!

Then he finally turned around and looked down to see the girl hunched over the body of someone lying on the ground, attempting emergency resuscitation. He finally recognized her as Becky Dillard, a fellow school student. She was ambitious, smart, and one of the popular girls at school. Definitely out of my league, he thought haphazardly. Jim looked at the man standing nearby and guessed that he was her father. He frowned. Mr. Dillard didn’t seem like a nice man.

She attempted the resuscitation procedure several times before pulling herself away from the body and Jim got a look at who she was trying to revive. Horrified astonishment flooded his being as he recognized the sharp-cheeked face, its lifeless green eyes staring skyward. He moved closer to get a better look and bewilderment quickly twisted into terror.

The need to scream was nearly overwhelming.

(No...it isn’t...it can’t be…)

Jim Nightingale was looking down at his own dead face.

Chapter Two

Springsteen And Jagged, Bitter Teeth

1

---

We’ve got to get out of here! Rick Dillard hissed.

Panic threatened to make a huge bid for space in his psyche. He glanced madly at his Rolex watch and looked around, feeling the air around him strangely compress. His cold blue-gray eyes scanned for any movement among the homes surrounding him and his daughter, who was still busy administering CPR to the boy he’d hit with his car minutes earlier. Revulsion hissed in his gut as she kept working on him.

Dillard swore under his breath and frantically looked around, his eyes alert for window shades and blinds being partially opened by hands, doors cracked open with faces peering out, or anyone walking along the street. He was sure he heard the screeching tires of a car peeling away in the distance right after the accident but quickly dismissed it as being related. He was getting angrily impatient with his daughter, convinced by now that what she was working on reviving was nothing more than a cold corpse.

Becky tried another two quick breaths and chest compressions on the unmoving, unresponsive body of the boy. She threw a resentful look at her father and yelled, He’s got a chance, Daddy, and we’ve got to get him to a hospital! And you should know who this is!

Dillard wrung his hands in frustration. Alright then, who is he?

Jimmy Nightingale! she cried. She continued pressing into his rib cage. The boy’s face was turning a pale shade of blue. Cyanosis. They were losing him. Determination seeped from her forehead in cold beads of sweat. He’s Mr. Nightingale’s son! His dad is your partner at your office!

The air around Dillard compressed tightly and his throat went dry. He tried swallowing and couldn’t. He stared at Jim Nightingale’s glazed expression and recognition slammed into him like a sledgehammer striking concrete.

Oh My God, he thought. Scott’s kid. You’ve got to be kidding me...

Dillard swallowed and made his mind up in a nanosecond. He said, Okay, and opened the rear passenger doors. He knelt down beside the body. Get his legs, Becky, he grunted as he hoisted Jim’s torso from the ground. Becky pulled her lips from the blueish face and helped her father lift Jim Nightingale’s body off the ground. Dillard gently pushed Jim’s head and torso into the back seat and ran around the other side to pull him the rest of the way in. Becky positioned his legs to allow the door to be shut and when his body was all the way in, she and her father shut the doors. She raced around the car to step into the passenger seat as her father, grunting, followed suit and slid behind the wheel.

Jim Nightingale watched them put his body in the back seat of the BMW. A sickening feeling, like the sudden need to vomit, exploded deep within him. He was still standing in the middle of the street, a silent witness to a bizarre and horrifying event that stretched his mind to the limit of comprehending the unreality he was confronted with. The odd distortion that marred his senses continued to fade in and out but was gradually ceasing. He could see and hear more clearly but an odd echoing continued to irritate him. He wanted to rush forward and try to reenter his body but found himself rooted to his spot, seemingly paralyzed.

He suddenly felt cold, felt like he was immersed in icy waters, frozen to the core, but he did not shiver. Jim couldn’t even feel himself breathing, felt no heartbeat...nothing.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at all, he thought. I’m dead. Oh my God.

The thoughts tingled with frost through his consciousness. The possibility of becoming a ghost, a trace memory of somebody once alive, had never occurred to James Charles Nightingale. He never dreamed of what it would be like

(a lot of my dreams are just like this)

and the thought suddenly sparked: the dream he had of flying over town in the early morning light was very much like what he was now experiencing. It had to be a dream, he rationalized. He relaxed a little. The distorted sensory intake, the feeling of paralysis, the slowness of everything, all of it convinced him that he was in a dream state. He smiled and relaxed completely, certain that it would soon end and he’d awaken in his bed.

But...Jesus...this is all so real, he thought feverishly.

As he watched Becky Dillard and her father get back in the car, he noticed something odd, looked down and gazed at the ghostly, shimmering cord-like material that was attached to him, snaking from right around his navel. Puzzled, his gaze followed it from where it seemed to appear out of his belly to where it ended at the black BMW. Jim stared at the silvery tether, fascinated. When the car suddenly tore away with the sound of screeching tires, a hilarious image

(wait...I’m attached to that thing)

played in his mind of being dragged along and, before he could even properly form the thought, a sudden bolt of discomfort shot through him as he felt his gut being pulled away. Jim was yanked from the ground and he found himself being dragged in mid-air behind the speeding BMW, feeling himself being lifted higher and pulled upward, like a kite on a string. His senses, already disrupted, were jarred by his sudden whipping around in the air. He screamed, and the screams quickly turned into exhilarated giggling

(Holy shit, this is fun!)

as he whipped through the air. He found himself holding onto the tether for dear life like he would on the safety bar of a roller coaster at Dorney Park as the car shrieked around corners and sped through the neighborhood. Jim looked frantically around as he soared above the rooftops toward what looked like the middle of town.

The Dale, as in his dream, resembled a sprawling miniature train set as he glided above the rooftops, catching glimpses of familiar landmarks as they drifted by, seeing the sparkling Wissahickon in the low hills to the west. Everything seemed small and somehow magnified at the same time. He caught a glimpse of the old Sunbeam station on the southern edge of town and he was quickly reminded of his dream. He deliriously wondered if Josh was still hanging around there, a vagabond looking for work.

He shook away the thought. What he was experiencing was too vivid, too visceral, to be a dream. Jim saw the block-like shape of the hospital on the horizon and he thought: They’re taking me to Northdale General. Great. Mom and Dad will get a call. He glanced northwest and saw, about a half mile away, the building that housed the Veterans Affairs hospice where his grandfather, Charles, lay in a comatose, vegetative state. A grim smile spread beneath his nose. Maybe he’d take a moment to check on his grandfather, who, for all intents and purposes, wasn’t really there anyway...

Jim suddenly wondered if his grandfather was doing the very same thing, somewhere.

He looked away from the horizon and his thoughts focused on the silvery cord connecting him to the speeding BMW. It hadn’t readily occurred to him what it was and why it was attached to his midsection but a flash of primal logic quickly fit the pieces together

(Jesus, it’s connecting me to my body!)

and he pulled at the tether, attempting to pull his way to the car and somehow climb back into his body. Despite the circumstances he found it surprising easy to pull himself up the length of the silvery cord.

As he inched closer to the speeding BMW, the awful realization exerted an icy hold on his spine: I’m not dreaming...I really did get killed...and I’m parasailing behind a freaking BMW. Jeeze...Mom and Dad are gonna be pissed when they find out I’m dead.

2

---

Daddy slow down or you’re gonna hit somebody else! Becky hollered. She had her seatbelt fastened around her and her feet braced against the floor board but she didn’t feel safe. She’d been driven around by her father on numerous occasions and he was always a careful driver, always came to a complete stop at stop signs, never tried to beat the red light when it turned yellow, always halted the vehicle well behind the white parallel lines of a pedestrian crosswalk. Rick Dillard always took loving care of his motor vehicles, never failing to clean them regularly nor abusing them on the road.

Just like he always cares more about the properties he sells, she mused, a bitter thought that broke into Becky’s racing consciousness. She frowned. You’re heading to the hospital, right? she asked.

Dammit, yes! he shot back. Dillard clenched his jaw in irritation. Just...don’t talk until after we get there, he barked. He forced himself not to look at the clock on the dashboard, focusing on the oncoming road. In the back of his head, however, a thousand barely-organized thoughts were forming and racing through his subconsciousness. Chief among them was the front end of his new car and how he was going to deal with it. A close second was the inevitable discussion with the hospital staff, who would then make a quick phone call to the police. Discussion would lead to confrontation, then accusation once they saw the BMW. Criminal charges were sure to follow.

The roots of his plan unfurled in the base of his mind. It could work, he thought.

Becky pulled her Samsung Galaxy phone from her pocket and unlocked it. I’m going to call 911, she said.

Christ, no! Dillard yelled, half-swiping at her phone. He felt his control of the car waver and he struggled for a few seconds to straighten it. Becky whipped her phone away and glared at him, stupefied.

What is your problem, Daddy? she shrieked.

I’ll take care of it! he barked. His icy gaze reverted to the road. We’re just about there, he grated. It’ll all work out as long as my daughter doesn’t screw things up, he thought frantically. Dillard tightened his grip on the wheel and grudgingly regarded his headstrong daughter. Honor society inductee, academic decathlon champion, lacrosse player, swim team captain, 3.9 GPA, expected valedictorian, possible senior class president, highly popular student at her school, volunteer summer lifeguard, and art scholarship winner...all of them described Rebecca Dillard, only child of Richard and Laura Dillard, longtime residents of Northdale, Pennsylvania and successful real estate agents, co-managers of over two hundred rental properties in Montgomery County. Dillard himself was the listing agent for over three hundred homes.

He ruminated, his mind randomly pulling from memory like a rapidly spinning Rolodex. He’d grown up in Detroit and worked as a carpenter part-time prior to dropping out of high school and enlisting in the Navy. He and his wife had methodically built their business and reputation following his retirement from the Navy, first by literally walking around neighborhoods stuffing business fliers into mailboxes (I CAN SELL YOUR HOME! the postcards loudly proclaimed, despite the fact that Dillard and his wife were newly-licensed and neither of them had much sales experience when they started out), followed by driving around surrounding subdivisions when time allowed and especially after Dillard had haphazardly sold his first listed property. When he had built up enough funds (and borrowing heavily, including maxing out three credit cards), the Dillard Real Estate Team had been founded.

Business boomed in the late Nineties, during the bubble of a sudden massive influx of buyers in the Philadelphia-area real estate market and when mortgage lenders went wild with approving loans to families who had virtually no money and wanted their piece of the American Dream. The Dillard Team quickly leached onto that runaway train and rode it, raking in millions of dollars. Dillard, however, had a hunch that the good times would soon end when all those poorly-advised loans would come due and foreclosures would be rampant. It was only a matter of time.

When the bubble indeed detonated in 2008, Dillard’s office was inundated with an endless parade of foreclosure notices and homes were being abandoned at a ridiculous rate. Dillard, switching into survival mode with the determination of a squad of marines securing a beachhead, quickly repurposed his business into rental property management, offering their services particularly to active military personnel stationed at the Naval Air Station in Willow Grove who’d purchased homes and then suddenly found themselves ordered to transfer to other locations. Many of them had turned to Dillard’s team to rent their homes out to other people to live in while they were gone, seeing an opportunity to recoup on their investments.

It wasn’t an option that Dillard particularly wanted to embrace, but he knew he needed to do something. Times were tough, especially when those murderous defaults hit in 2008 and the market tanked. Dillard’s singleminded determination and steel-plated armor of sheer will to make sales, no matter the cost, and collecting rent from their tenants, no matter the circumstances, helped the Dillard Team remain one of the few consistently successful real estate ventures in the tri-state area.

Dillard grunted, sighed, and focused on the road. He was determined that nothing would tarnish his reputation.

(Especially the corpse of my partner’s son)

He would have to make his daughter cooperate. One way or the other.

He wrenched the car onto Central Road and sped toward the rectangular outline of the hospital that emerged above the treetops. Becky glanced at her father reproachfully and leaned around to check on Jimmy Nightingale’s body half-curled in the backseat. She gazed at his blue, lifeless face, focusing on his closed eyes and felt her heart lurch. He shouldn’t be dead, she thought