Orpheus - Haunting the Dead.pdf - Dice

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER
one—even Tragic Alex, even Kleck, even Dennison—
laughed hard and long.
Bilka nearly choked on her soda as she spat, “Tragic
Alex is a secret raconteur! But ghosts?”
Shutty was laughing so hard she could barely speak,
but she managed, nonetheless, to issue a husky, “Boo!”
before collapsing into such deep-seated paroxysms of
the lungs and throat that her diaphragm hurt.
“And what issue of what comic book was all that
in?” Jobe said.
Unsurprisingly, Kleck was the first to regain control.
“Man, you blew that strong-and-silent-type thing
in a major way.”
“None of you ever heard of Orpheus?” Tragic Alex
repeated, aghast in his oddly mousy way.
“Sure,” Shutty said, her own laughter slowing. “I’ve
heard of the Psychic Hotline too, but I don’t give them
my credit card number. I mean, it’s just like that stupid
show where the guy pretends to talk to the dead, isn’t
it? It’s a cheap carnival trick—you say all sorts of stuff
really fast until you get a right answer by accident, then
you go with it.”
“It’s called cold reading,” Kleck explained with a bit
of a nod. “And this is a little different. Well, maybe it’s
a little different.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Jobe said, waving
his hand about as if he had a remote that could pause
the conversation. “Kleck, you believe this shit? You
brought us here to see a ghost on TV?”
“It’s all true,” Tragic Alex assured them. “Just like
Roswell. All over the net for you to see. I can send you
the links.”
But the fickle group was ignoring him now, more
focused on mastermind Kleck, who shrugged and said,
“Do I admit to visiting some of the same sites as our
laconic friend here? Perhaps. But let’s just say, as a
skeptical thinker with a profound, and I think universal,
desire to reach out and actually touch the
unknowable, I wanted to see if I could get some proof
( 31 )
HAUNTING THE DEAD
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