Hung Out to Die by Sharon Short

keeled over dead of a heart attack. This did not make Mrs. Oglevee a very happy ghost—or whatever she was—when she showed up in my dreams.
    Tonight, she was in an exact copy of my Mamaw Toadfern’s Thanksgiving outfit—the black pants and the turkey-Pilgrim-motif sweatshirt and the high-heeled mules. She had a drum strapped around her neck and was hitting it, but not with drum drumsticks. With turkey-leg drumsticks.
    I moaned.
    This did not cause Mrs. Oglevee to stop, or even pause, in her drumming with the turkey-leg drumsticks. In fact, she drummed so hard, grease flew everywhere.
    I groaned.
    This only caused her to start tapping her right foot in rhythm with her drumming.
    I finally found my voice. “Could you please just go away, Mrs. Oglevee? I’ve had a rough night.”
    To my amazement, Mrs. Oglevee stopped drumming and tapping. Usually, she never listened to my requests. But her drum disappeared, a rocking chair appeared behind her, and she plopped down into it, still holding the turkey drumsticks. She bit into the one she held in her left hand.
    â€œSorry,” she said around a mouthful of turkey. “Long day. First chance I’ve had to enjoy Thanksgiving.”
    I stared at her as she took another bite, this time from the drumstick in her right hand.
    â€œWhat?” she said, around another mouthful, glaring back at me. See? I annoyed her, even in my dreams. “Thanksgiving is always a time of great stress and drama for lots of people. Family get-togethers, you know. I don’t understand why people who usually don’t get together—or get along—congregate once a year and then are surprised when things don’t go well. So, this is really my busiest season.”
    She stopped suddenly, looking like she wished she hadn’t made that last comment, and lit back into the drumstick with gusto.
    I gaped at her. “What? You mean to tell me you show up in other people’s dreams, too?”
    She didn’t say anything, finished off her drumsticks and tossed the bones over her shoulder, where they disappeared into the fog. I decided this was a good opportunity to ask her as directly as I dared about whether or not she was really a ghost.
    â€œOr . . . or . . . for some people do you actually show up when they’re awake?”
    Mrs. Oglevee licked off her fingers. Then she said, “I really can’t say. Confidentiality issues. Part of my agreement.”
    I rolled my eyes. No one had ever felt comfortable confiding in Mrs. Oglevee when she was alive. I couldn’t imagine what the Almighty would have been thinking, assigning her to some afterlife counseling role. Assuming she was with the Almighty. I’d never been quite sure where Mrs. Oglevee was residing in the afterlife.
    But then, Mrs. Oglevee adjusted her glasses, started rocking, and gave me a piercing look. “Start talking,” she said. “I’m on a schedule.”
    And so . . . I started telling her about the reunion with my parents and Toadfern kin. The surreal visit at the Burkettes. The conversation with Rachel Burkette about our childhoods, and our meetings at the shed, years ago.
    I told her about Uncle Fenwick, stabbed, but also made to look as though he’d tried to commit suicide, with the clothesline and the ladder nearby. I told her my theory, that someone had threatened or forced Uncle Fenwick into hanging himself, and then Uncle Fenwick had fought back at the last minute, and the killer stabbed him, left him to die from a combination of bleeding to death and hanging, then panicked and ran off.
    I told her how Rachel had started screaming hysterically, how I’d fumbled with my cell phone and finally managed to call 911, how the snow had really picked up. How finally officers from both the Paradise Police Department and the Mason County Sheriff’s Department showed up.
    I told Mrs. Oglevee about answering the questions of John