Fatal, But Festive, page 6
“We just would like to get your grandmother off our ass so we can enjoy the holidays,” Kiley said.
“So you saw it, you say?” That was Kev. He was clearly the more open-minded of the two, and super curious about all of this.
“I did. It was–”
Something crashed to the floor from upstairs. Sara shot to her feet and ran before anyone else had even reacted. They all followed her back through the house and up the stairs, down the hall and into that room at the end, where Rosalie lay in her hospital bed, eyes open, head moving around. A photograph lay face up on the floor, Rosalie holding her twin newborns.
Jack didn’t see Johnny or Maya anywhere, but there hadn’t been time for them to get downstairs and outside to the van where Chris waited. Sara had been like a rocket.
“I know somebody’s up here,” she said. She looked around the room all but baring her teeth. “Come out now, or I’ll call the police.”
The closet door creaked open. Johnny and Maya came out, hands up in front of them in “I surrender” poses.
“What the hell are you doing in my mother’s room?”
Johnny took a step forward and opened his mouth, but Jack held up a hand. “They’re with us. They thought they might be able to help.”
“By breaking into my dying mother’s bedroom? That’s it. I am done with you people. I want you out of here now. And don’t come back, you hear me? I’m getting a restraining order before the night is out!”
Kev put a hand on her shoulder. “What do you have there?” He asked.
Jack noticed that Maya was holding a book. An old photograph album much like the one the twins had brought to the shop.
Maya looked down at it, too. Her finger was inside, holding a spot. She said, “I was looking through her photos while Johnny tried to speak to her soul. I found this.” She opened the album and touched a large, old print of three shirtless young men wearing black and red striped face paint.
Jack sucked in a breath and moved closer. “That’s him, that’s the ghost!” He pointed at the guy on the right and took in every detail of the photo. It had been taken at a high school football game. There were bleachers and banners. He took the album and turned it toward the twins “Do you know who this is?”
“Of course we know who it is. It’s our father.” Sara rolled her eyes.
“He disappeared before we were born,” Kev said.
“He walked out on his pregnant, teenage girlfriend and never looked back, to state it a little more clearly.” Sara went to the bedside and smoothed her mother’s hair. “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re here, Mom. Everything’s okay.”
Her demeanor had changed like a light switch, leaving Jack a little stunned. And both were genuine. Nothing put on with her.
Kev watched the two of them. “They were going to elope. He promised to come for her on the Christmas Eve before we were born. But he never came.”
“Mom couldn’t accept it,” Sara continued. “That’s when the delusions started. She convinced herself something had happened to him, that it was all part of some big mystery, that people were covering up the truth. And then she started seeing his ghost, and it just…”
Jack pulled a notepad from his pocket in which he’d sketched the ghost he’d seen by Rosalie’s bed the other day. He flipped to the page, and then showed it to Sara. “This is the guy I saw by your mother’s bed the other day. He’s still there.” He tilted his head toward the form at Rosalie’s bedside. He just lingered there, gazing at her, eyes radiating sadness.
“Are you trying to say he really is dead?” Kev asked, incredulous.
Jack nodded solemnly. “Yeah. He’s probably been dead the whole time. We can find out for sure, no charge, if you would tell us his name.”
Kev wanted to answer, Jack could see that he did. But he looked at his sister instead.
“Yes. All right. Gabriel York,” Sara said. “I have his birthday written down somewhere.” She’d apparently decided not to have them arrested.
“Neither of you have ever tried to find him?” Kiley asked.
“Why would we? He didn’t want us,” Kev said. “That’s what Grandma Nisha always said, anyway. Now…now I wonder.” He looked at Johnny. “She said you were trying to…talk to her soul?”
“Feel her, really.”
“And what did you…feel?”
“Honestly, Kev–” Sara bit off the rest when Kev held up a stop-sign hand, Jack thought more out of surprise than obedience.
“It wasn’t hard,” Johnny said. “Her entire focus is singularly on her love. She can’t leave this life without him.”
As Johnny spoke the words, the ghost turned and looked at him. For a moment, Jack was captivated by the stark pain in its eyes. And then those eyes shifted, and met his, and locked on. Jack turned his gaze away, but it was too late. He’d established contact for sure this time.
The ghostly mouth opened so wide it became the entire face and it roared its fury to the room. Jack was physically blasted backward, arms flying wide, heels dragging the floor until he smashed into the wall behind him and a picture fell and hit him in the head.
Kiley was by his side instantly, kneeling, touching, asking if he was okay.
Just as fast, Johnny and Maya had closed ranks in front of him, facing the bed, crouching in defensive postures that said they would fight whatever had just attacked him.
Between them and the bed, Sara and Kev were wide-eyed and terrified.
“I don’t think it likes us here,” Kiley said, kind of spotting Jack while he got to his feet. Holding his arm in hers, she pointed at where Jack was looking and said, “The feeling is mutual, ghost. I'll stay out of your place, and you’ll stay out of mine. Got it? My house is off limits. OFF. LIMITS. And so is my man!”
Then she inclined her head toward the bedroom door, silently telling Johnny and Maya to get out. They did, exchanging wide-eyed looks on the way. Kiley followed, pulling Jack along by his arm, but never turning her back on that bed, and never lowering her finger. As they backed out the door, she said it again. “Off limits!” And then she turned and ran for the stairs.
She didn’t let go of Jack’s arm, so he had no choice but to go with her.
Jack drove them all back to his shop where everyone had left their respective cars. Kiley appreciated that. She knew he was trying his best to keep all of this ghost busting stuff away from her place. She, however, was no longer convinced it was within his control. Even so, he kept checking the rearview mirror every few seconds all the way. In fact, it had started to make her nervous how often he checked it. She’d turned to look behind them, but had seen nothing unusual, just the gang in the back and normal traffic outside.
He pulled into the parking lot behind his shop, and they all got out, forming a little circle in the pool of a streetlight. The wind was crisp and heavy, the sky dark.
“Is everybody okay?” Maya asked, looking around and pausing on each face.
“Well, I missed the whole thing, so yeah. I’m good,” Chris said. He’d been sulking as the others had filled him in on the excitement.
“Next spook confrontation, we promise to put you front and center,” Jack promised.
Chris rolled his eyes. Johnny studied Jack’s face. “You’re the one who was attacked. Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” Jack rubbed his left shoulder as if to make sure. “Yeah, all good.”
“Kiley?”
“Fine. Pissed. But fine.” She looked around the parking lot. “He just better not try anything like that again.”
“Johnny?” Maya asked.
He met her eyes and nodded once. “I’ll be okay after some sage. Rosalie’s energy is…dark and kind of sticky. But it makes sense it would be. She’s holding onto life against every physical law, against the will of her own soul. It would be best for her to let go, to move on.” He shook his head sadly, then raised his eyes to Maya’s again. “You?”
“It was sad looking at the albums. There are photos of them together, teenagers, so young and full of promise. So in love. But almost never smiling. I snapped some of them with my phone in case there are clues I might not have noticed right away.” She pulled out the phone and everyone leaned in close as she scrolled through photos of a young couple in hats and mittens, building a snowman and having a snowball fight, each event documented by a series of shots. Kiley wondered who the photog had been. They were great photos.
“Look, there are holiday decorations on the street lamps,” she said. “I bet this was that same winter, before their final Christmas. He doesn’t look to me like a guy getting ready to dump his girlfriend and run for the hills. How about you?”
“We need to find out what happened to him,” Maya said.
“I’ll get on the net tonight. See what there is on him,” Chris said.
“And I’ll call Lieutenant Mendosa at the PD,” Kiley said. She was her contact there for news stories. “Maybe she can help me out from her end.”
“Tomorrow, though,” Jack said. “We have plans for tonight.”
“We do?” Kiley asked.
“Yes. We do. If Chris wouldn’t mind swapping vehicles for the night? Chris?”
“Sure, boss.” Chris pulled his pickup keys from his pocket and tossed them to Jack, who caught them easily.
“We’ll meet at lunch hour tomorrow to compare notes, all right?” Jack said.
“At Kiley’s?” Chris asked.
“I was thinking the diner–”
“My place,” Kiley interrupted Jack. He sent her a questioning look but she smiled it away. “Noon. Bring food. I like when people bring me food.”
“I’ll bring enough for everybody,” Maya piped up, and then she gave a witchy wink and headed for her car before anyone could object.
Johnny watched her go, and Kiley watched Johnny watch her go, and tilted her head little bit. But then Jack was heading for the pickup with a sort of eagerness that didn’t fit with the night they’d just had.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jack pulled the pickup to a stop at a Christmas Tree farm. Rows and rows of pine and spruce bristled in every direction, and beyond them a lake as still and shining as peace itself. They pulled into the little half-circle driveway. A wood-structure stood behind it, wearing handmade wreaths as siding. It was a cut-your-own type tree farm, but there was a selection of pre-cut trees leaning up against one side of the building.
“You’re taking me to get a Christmas tree?” Kiley asked.
Jack glanced at her before replying, tried to read her face. Her tone had been off. It wasn’t like, “Awwww, you’re taking me to get a Christmas tree,” but more like, “What the actual hell are you taking me to get a Christmas tree for, you sappy fuck?” Her face told him nothing. She was amazing at poker. So he went, “Psssh, no. Not when you say it like that. I need a tree for the shop, you said you wanted one for the house, so… ” He gave a careless, palms-up shrug. “You want to leave, just say so.”
She bit her inner lip, like when you’re either trying not to grin, or trying not to cry. Why was she so hard to read? Wasn’t he supposedly gifted?
“I don’t wanna leave.”
He opened the door and got out, hoping his knees would hold him, being so weak with relief. She got out, too. Oversized bulbs looped from one ten-foot pole to the next, all around the lot. He headed for the trees, and she hurried up to join him, picking a random row that looked good. They passed a fencepost with several saws hanging from nails. He looked them over, like he knew which saw was best for cutting a Christmas tree. He’d never cut his own tree in his life. But he knew how to pick them. So he picked a saw like a boss and hoped for the best.
“What do you look for in a Christmas tree, generally speaking?” Kiley was turning left and right, as if trying to take them all in.
“What, you never had one before?”
“I was raised on artificial. Best money could buy.” She’d inherited her family’s fortune when their plane had gone down, then promptly lost it all to a con man. All she had left was the house she’d bought on a whim. And that had turned out to be haunted. Jack reminded himself that was probably a big reason why the place meant so much to her. It represented the last of what her parents had left her.
“Depends on what you like, I guess,” he said. “My grandma McCain always liked long, soft needles. My mom wanted short needles but it had to be full. No bare spots. She liked blue spruce best. That’s what these are, here. Smell.” He ran his palm over a branch, and she leaned in to sniff.
“Smells like the Christmas potpourri Mom had all over the house this time of year.” She sniffed again. “No, it smells better.”
“Way better.”
“Has cleansing properties, too,” Kiley said. “Pine and spruce vibrate quite high. Whatever the fuck that means. Maya says negative ghosts can’t hang out around positive vibes, so I’m all for that.” She walked slowly ahead, moving around one tree, and then another. “How tall can I go, do you think? I’m terrible at judging height. My living room ceiling is twelve feet, I think."
He looked around, found a tree he thought was close, and pointed.
“That’s smaller than I thought.”
“Well, you have to leave a little room to put a star or angel or whatever on top. But we can always prune it a little. So there’s some leeway in the–”
“Found it.”
Her voice came from farther away than she’d been a second ago, and he followed it to a tree that was perfect in every way. “You have a good eye. Would it be sexist of me to offer to cut it for you?”
“It’s either you or the tree-keeper, pal, cause I’m not cutting it.
He dropped down to crawl underneath the boughs and started sawing. The base seemed like it might be too big for an ordinary tree stand. It took a while to saw through it. He was still sawing when Gabriel York’s face popped out of the limbs in front of him, eyes bulging and boring into his. He yelped and jerked backward. The tree fell over, and he dropped the saw.
“You okay?” Kiley asked. Again, her voice came from further away than he thought it should. She was standing beside the prettiest little Scotch pine you could ever see.
“Yeah, I… um… Squirrel.” He looked around. No sign of Gabriel York.
“Squirrel?” She laughed and he went soft inside, then cussed himself out for being so much more into her than she was into him. Whatever. It was what it was.
“I think this one for the shop. Don’t you?” she said, nodding at the pine. “Your grandmother would love it.”
She would love it. She did love it. He felt it right to his toes, and because of all the ghosts in his life, he knew that was her, he was feeling. He supposed having this ability wasn’t entirely bad. It was kind of comforting, in a way, to be utterly without any doubt that life goes on without the body.
He looked down, spotted the saw, and bent to pick it up. Then he took hold of a lower bough and began dragging Kiley’s gigantic tree over to where she stood. He handed her the saw, and kept on going.
“Oh, come on, you don’t expect me to–”
“It’s your turn. Besides, that’s a little guy.”
“You suck, McCain.” She knelt down, moved the saw back and forth way more times than should have been necessary, and then shouted “Timber!” As the thing slow-mo tilted to the right and stopped anticlimactically as soon as a lower limb touched down.
He laughed out loud. He couldn’t even help it.
Kiley blew a curl off her forehead, picked up the three-foot tree, and carried it out before her like Liberty’s torch.
Jack bought the trees, and two wreaths they’d been unable to resist, and put them all into the bed of Chris’s pickup. As he drove them back to Kiley’s, he worried. If Gabriel York had followed him to the tree lot, what was to stop him from following him back to Kiley’s? She didn’t want that. He didn’t want to blow what they had by dragging ghosts to her door.
Then again, it was highly unlikely the ghost was following his physical trail. It had got a whiff of his energy. It could probably find him anywhere.
He knew that for sure when he pulled into Kiley’s driveway and the ghost of a teenage boy standing at her door.
Jack got the tree out of the back and carried it to the front door, looking around for Gabriel, but he’d vanished. The hair on the back of Jack’s neck was bristling, though. And that meant he was still nearby.
“No old lady in a coat, sans old lady,” Kiley said. She ran past him, unlocked the door and went inside. Rubbing her arms, she said, “I’m gonna have to break down and turn on the furnace. It’s getting downright chilly at night,” and flipped on the light switch. Nothing happened.
“Well, that’s weird.” She turned it off and on again.
Something was wrong, Jack felt it in his bones. “Kiley, why don’t you come out here, and let me–”
“Dude, I just sawed down a tree. You don’t have to be the big strong guy when the lights go out.” He still held the blue spruce by a low limb, pulling it along behind him up the porch steps. Kiley took out her phone, activated the flashlight, aimed it ahead of her and directly into the twisted, grimacing, dead face of Gabriel York. It shrieked at her, she screamed in terror, threw her phone at the ghost, pivoted and ran. Then Jack shrieked because she kneed him in the balls on her way over and through him. In 0.6 seconds, she was back in the truck
Jack got up. The tree lay cockeyed on the stairs behind him. Brushing needles off his coat sleeves, he went back up the steps and looked inside, but he didn’t see anything. He reached around and flipped the lights. They came on, so he went the rest of the way in.
Turning back toward the open door and Kiley, he called, “I think he’s gone.”
The pickup door opened. “Make sure!” The pickup door slammed.
He turned on the outside lights for her, then went through the living room, dining room, kitchen, turning on every light and lamp along the way. It was a really nice place. So many unique touches. The original woodwork was all engraved with curls and swirls. In the dining room, there were hardwood valances on the tall windows, so intricately carved they were works of art, really. The cabinets were not mass produced. Tongue and groove boards painted white, bearing china knobs with pink roses, all crackled with age.
