Fatal, But Festive, page 13
“Can we sit somewhere?” Kiley asked. “We haven’t slept in thirty hours.
The twins nodded and led the way downstairs and into a sitting room with Queen Anne furniture, tufted cushions patterned in pink roses.
They all sat. Jack said, “Your mom has lingered in this state for so long because she can see Gabe. She knew he was dead and trapped here, unable to cross over until the truth of what happened to him was discovered. She refused to die without him.”
“But it was our grandmother who first approached you,” Kev said. “So she hasn’t crossed, either?”
“I think she regretted covering up the truth. I think in death she could see more clearly what a bad decision that was. She had to make it right.”
“Fine. She made it right. She led you to the…to Gabe.” Sara couldn’t sit. She would perch on a chair for a few seconds, they get up and pace again. “So why isn’t this over? Why is all hell breaking loose now? What are we supposed to do now?”
“Now,” Jack said, “Rosalie thinks it’s Christmas Eve. She can’t see Gabe’s ghost, so she’s once again waiting for him to arrive. I say we make it Christmas Eve. He was supposed to come for her. If she can live that night again, with the ending she wanted, I think they’ll both be at peace.”
“And what about our grandfather?” Sara asked. “He’s still out there somewhere.”
“Our concern is with the dead and dying,” Jack said. “Let’s let the police worry about the living. They’re looking for him. They’ll find him.”
Sara had stopped pacing. She was fixated on a framed photo of her mother and Gabe, ice skating, their faces pensive, but clearly in love. It had been in the album before. She must have taken put it there recently. She picked it up to move it, as it probably hadn’t been in the room that long ago Christmas Eve.
“They’d better find him before I do,” she said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I think this is ridiculous, and I don’t believe in any of it.” Sara held up a photograph from an album, looked past it at the wall, and said, “That painting wasn’t there.”
For someone who didn’t believe, Kiley thought she was being awfully particular about returning this room to its state on that sad Christmas-past.
The others had come to join them as soon as Jack had updated them on the plan. They were invested. They had to see it through to the end and had hurried over to help.
Kev and Chris took the painting down from the wall over the fireplace.
“There was a big wreath there,” Sara said. “I think I’ve seen it in the attic. In fact, All Grandma Nisha’s Christmas junk is up there.”
“Those two words should never be uttered in the same sentence,” Maya said. She was still shaken, sore, and tired.
“You sure love Christmas, for a witch,” Johnny said.
The twins headed upstairs, presumably for the “Christmas junk.”
“Winter Solstice,” Maya corrected.
“Now you’ve done it,” Kiley whispered, but Maya didn’t even pause for a breath.“Many Christmas traditions are way pre-Christian, including the tree. I have no qualms about sharing these traditions. But they were ours, first.”
Johnny listened attentively, and when she finished, he nodded exactly three times. Then he said, “Don’t you think they were someone else’s before they were yours?”
Maya looked at him, then at the tree standing in the corner. “Well, shit, how the hell am I supposed to be righteously indignant now? Thanks a lot, Johnny.”
“You’re welcome."
“A little less flirting and a little more help, huh, John?” Jack was standing on one end of the sofa. Johnny hurried over and picked up the other side, but he couldn’t hide the blush in his face.
“I can’t believe it’s the same sofa,” Kiley said, as she sent Jack a scolding look for embarrassing the two of them. Maya was blushing, too. “And the coffee tables, too. Even the fireplace screen—oh, speaking of, there was probably a fire.”
The twins returned, carrying boxes. “This is not the way I’d intended to spend the evening,” Sara said, lowering the oversized box to the floor.
“Wasn’t what we had in mind, either, Sara,” Kiley said. “But it’s not about us. It’s about them. They’ve suffered long enough, don’t you think?”
She lowered her head quickly, maybe ashamed. Maybe she really did believe, and was just afraid. Maybe Kiley ought to be nicer.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” Maya whispered.
There was a murmur of agreement. They all stood gazing at Grandma Nisha’s living room. The artificial tree was an old and unconvincing one, but somehow that added to its charm. Its lights were all blue, as they had been in photos from the year of Gabe’s disappearance.
They’d fluffed up the flattened plastic boughs of the old wreath as best they could, and hung it above the mantle. A tall, bone china nativity set stood below it with a bowl of plastic pine cones. Nobody liked them, but they’d been in the photos. A fire crackled warm in the fireplace.
“I think we’re ready,” Kiley said, nodding in approval.
“No,” Kev said. “We need music. Grandma always played the same music on Christmas Eve.”
“No,” Sara said. “No, Kev, this might all be bullshit but it’s solemn bullshit.”
“It has to be the same,” he said. He tapped his phone, waited, then tapped it again.
From a speaker somewhere, came the opening strains of The Twelve Days of Christmas, vocals by John Denver and…
Kiley’s brows arched high. “Wait, is that…?”
“Kermit the frog,” Kev said. “This is what she played, every Christmas Eve.
Sara walked away shaking her head. “This is never going to work. Even if it was going to work, it would never work with that!”
“I dunno, I think it’s kind of nice,” Johnny said. Maya was humming along.
“I’ve never heard this,” Chris said. “Kermit the Frog, you say?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “I think it’s time. Let’s do this, okay?”
Kiley and Johnny headed upstairs to Rosalie’s room, leaving the others to gather round the dining room table for a good old fashioned seance.
Jack sat down at one end of the table. Maya sat at the other. Chris was at Jack’s right, and the twins were on the left side of the table. Pine scented candles were burning, and the Muppets had been turned down low. Kev had put one song from the album on repeat, a very slow and solemn one.
Though our minds be filled with questions,
in our hearts we’ll understand,
when the river meets the almighty sea
Jack nodded, and Maya said, “Hand to hand, we cast the circle.” She offered her hand to Kev and he took it, turned to his sister and repeated the words.
Sara rolled her eyes, but took his hand, and reached for Jack’s. “Hand to hand we cast the circle.”
Jack took Chris’s hand, repeating the words, and Chris reached for Maya and completed the ring.
“This ring is made of love, and within it only love can abide. By the elements and elementals and by the powers of force and form, so mote it be.” Maya nodded at the others.
“So mote it be,” Jack repeated with Chris in perfect cadence. The twins came in late and awkward.
“Mote?” What the fuck is mote?” Sara asked.
“Check yourself.” Maya’s eyes held a warning Jack had only seen rarely. She nodded to him. “You’re up.”
Jack closed his eyes. “Gabe. Gabriel York. I know you’re here. You’re never far from Rosalie. Come to us, Gabe. We found your body. We told the police who killed you. And we’ll see you get a proper burial…”
“Beside Rosalie,” Sara blurted out.
Everyone opened their eyes to look at her. She shrugged. “Grandma has three plots. They were for her and Grandpa and Mom. But Gran--Edward doesn’t belong there. Gabe can have his spot.” She looked up toward the ceiling. “You can have it, Gabe.”
“All these years we thought you were our father,” Kev said, gazing toward the staircase. “You were willing to be. Thanks for that.”
Jack followed his gaze and saw Gabe there. His face and hair were clean. No paint. No mud. His clothes were clean. Grandma Nisha’s coat was nowhere in sight.
“It’s Christmas Eve, Gabe,” Jack said. “It’s time for you to keep that date with Rosalie. Long past time, don’t you think?”
Gabe looked up the staircase, and then he vanished.
In Rosalie’s room, Kiley hung back and watched while Johnny leaned over the bed, clasping the comatose woman’s hand. He closed his eyes. “I’m a friend,” he said. “I bring news from Gabe.”
Her eyes popped open. Kiley gasped, then clapped a hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t mess things up. Rosalie’s eyes were open, and lucid, and gazing up at Johnny.
“It’s Christmas Eve, Rosalie. Gabe’s coming for you. Just like you both planned so long ago.”
From the corner of her eye, Kiley saw someone in the doorway, and no one else was supposed to be upstairs, but as she turned to look more fully, a shadowy form streaked across the room and slammed into Johnny.
Johnny grunted and went rigid, his back arching, his arms flinging wide. And then he seemed to relax again.
“Gabe?” Rosalie whispered the name in a voice as rough as sandpaper.
“Rosalie, my girl,” Johnny said in his Gabe accent. Kiley’s blood all rushed to her feet and she felt dizzy. Before she could figure out what to do, though, Johnny-not-Johnny was scooping Rosalie right up out of the bed.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Kiley rushed forward, untangling tubing, lifting the IV bag from its rack and running to keep up.
Johnny-not-Johnny carried Rosalie down the stairs. On the way, the woman pulled the IV tube from her own arm. It bled, but she didn’t care. She just gazed up into Johnny’s eyes with the most blissful look Kiley had ever seen.
As they reached the great room, they were backlit by the fireplace and the lights from the Christmas tree, and Kiley could see a kind of aura around Johnny, a glowing, translucent Gabriel York overlay.
She dropped the useless IV bag as she passed a table. The others came in from the dining room, Jack heading straight to her, closing an arm around her, and pulling her into his embrace.
Maya said, “Johnny? If you can hear me, Johnny, just relax. Ride it out.”
“You came,” Rosalie whispered.
He nodded and set her on her feet. Her legs didn’t hold her weight, though, and he wound up lifting her again, and then he danced her around the room.
“You’re all right,” she whispered. “You’re all right.”
“I’ll never leave you again,” he said.
And from the corner, a sniffle.
Grandma Nisha, Rosalie’s mother, stood watching them dance. She was all wrapped in her coat, which was just like new, but the hood was down and she was smiling. Everyone was smiling. Jack didn’t know if they could see Nisha, but they could see the couple dancing, and that was enough. And then Johnny sort of sank to the floor with Rosalie in still his arms, and yet the couple were still dancing. Johnny lay on the floor beside Rosalie’s body. But Rosalie and Gabe danced on.
“Ohmygod,” Sara said.
Maya had tears streaming shamelessly as she fell to her knees beside Johnny, out cold on the floor, and Kiley was having a hard time holding her own back. Kev raced over, and gathered his mother up, carrying her gently to the sofa, and laying her down. Her body was lifeless, worn out, and used up.
But Rosalie was young and beautiful, dancing with her lover to John Denver and the Muppets having the Christmas Eve they’d been denied for twenty-five years.
“Is it just me, or are we incredibly lucky to be present for this?” Kiley asked, leaning closer into Jack’s embrace.
The front door crashed open. Snowy wind blasted inside, along with a large, ugly, gun-wielding maniac.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Like a true male, Jack put himself between Kiley and the gun. In fact, his entire focus was on staying between her and Edward.
“Good, you’re all here,” the crazy man said.
“Grandpa?” Kev asked, and then with a look toward the sofa, his face twisted with hate. “Or should I say father?”
Johnny was still on the floor, moving his arm underneath him. Maya, had bolted to her feet when the door had burst open, but Kiley thought the sofa blocked Johnny from Edward’s line of sight.
Grandma Nisha was still there, too, standing before the fire with her back to the room, wrapped in her coat and looking almost solid. The sofa’s back was toward the door, so Edward couldn’t see his daughter’s body lying on it.
“I don’t give a shit what you think of me.” The tremble in his voice said otherwise.
“I think you raped our mother, you filthy pig,” Sara said. “And you killed Gabe.” She glanced toward where the couple had been dancing as Kiley had done, but they’d vanished.
“I was protecting my family!”
“You know what, asshole, either shoot us or get the fuck out!”
“Fine!” he said, leveling the weapon on his own daughter.
“Rosalie is dead,” Kiley blurted. Anything to distract him. “She died a few minutes ago.”
Edward looked at her in disbelief. “She’s right there, on the sofa. See for yourself.”
Frowning, he kept the gun pointed, but moved slowly forward. The door was still wide open behind him. Icy wind was still swirling inside. He moved in until he could see her lying dead.
“Rosalie?” he asked. And his voice wobbled a little. “Rosalie?”
He moved closer, reached for her, and Kev stepped into his path. “Do not lay a hand on my mother, you lecherous murderer.”
“How dare you?” He lunged at Kev, but that was when the old woman in the coat turned to face him, pulled up her fur-trimmed hood, opened her mouth, and released a high-pitched, banshee-like keen. She surged toward Edward, no feet on the floor, just flew at him, and he stumbled backward, clutching his gun. She clawed at his face with her hands, and he backstepped through the door, tripped across the porch, and fell down the steps, and still she advanced. Everyone ran out onto the porch, even Johnny, as Nisha chased her husband.
Sirens screamed, but she didn’t let up, driving him out into the street. As the police cars skidded to a halt and cops got out, Grandma Nisha wrapped her arms around Edward, closed her hands over his on the gun, and turned to point it directly at the police cars.
The officers started shooting and didn’t stop until she let his bullet-ridden body drop to the pavement.
Then, she turned and lowered her hood and gazed back at those gathered on the porch of her home. Her mouth formed the words, I’m sorry. Then she pulled up her hood and vanished.
EPILOGUE
It was the real Christmas Eve.
The food was out, the wine was chilling, and the gang was on their way. But there were still a few minutes before everyone would arrive, and Kiley intended to use them.
“I want to give you an early gift,” she said.
Jack set the big platter of crackers and plant-based cheese for Maya on the table and ran to the tree like an eager kid. He hunkered down to examine the packages underneath and said, “Which one?”
Sighing, she walked over to him, holding up a red velvet ribbon with a big old-fashioned key hanging from it.
He looked at it, tilted his head.
“It’s the original house key,” she said. “Before I modernized the locks. I’ll give you the new one, too. It’s just…symbolic.”
He rose from his crouched position. “You’re giving me a key to the house.”
“And inviting you to live here,” she said. “With me.” As if it wasn’t clear.
He lifted his brows way up high. “You want to shack up?”
“I want to live here. But I don’t want to live here alone. All that space I thought I wanted, I don’t want that at all. And when you’re not here, I miss you like I’d miss a limb. So move in with me.”
“And what about my cabin?”
She shrugged. “You could rent it or sell it or put a yoga studio in there.”
“A yoga studio, you say?” he asked, rubbing his chin.
“What you do with the cabin isn’t the question, though. The question is, do you want to live here? With me?”
“Well, duh.”
She lifted her eyebrows.
“What I mean to say is…” He snapped his arm around her waist, spun her into a deep dip, and bent to almost kiss her lips. “I can’t think of anything I want more.” And then he kissed her like the end of a golden age of Hollywood movie.
“Whoo-hoo, get a room!” Chris yelled from the doorway. They’d left it slightly open to welcome their guests. He trundled through, arms loaded. Johnny and Maya came behind him, laughing and talking, and maybe, Kiley thought, no longer trying so hard to hide the something that was going on between them. They stood close, walked close, touched often, smiled a lot.
Johnny closed the door behind them as Kiley and Jack straightened upright once more. “I’m moving in,” Jack announced.
“About freaking time!” Johnny extended a hand. “Congrats, man.”
Maya came in for a hug and whispered, “So, is he selling the cabin?”
“Why? Are you looking?”
Maya shrugged, and the moment passed. “There’s more,” Kiley said. “Get your coats off, get in here.” She went to the table and poured wine for them while they tucked packages under the tree and unloaded food onto the table.
She handed a wine to Maya. Chris took one, and Johnny opted for a beer. When everyone had a drink, she said, “I think my house should be our headquarters.” She held up her glass.
Nobody else did. Jack said, “That’s the opposite of what you wanted.”
“It’s the opposite of what I thought I wanted,” she corrected. “But after all this…look I don’t like saying goodbye to you guys. I mean, I’m not saying I want you all to move in, but there are enough rooms here for you all to have a bed here any time you want or need it. The library has a separate entrance and its own bathroom. The perfect space for um… Well…” She walked over to the wall where a big object leaned, and pulled off the sheet that covered it. It was a large wooden sign that read, “Spook Central.”
