“I can’t believe you’re here.” Harper felt like an idiot as she stared at the ghost. “I never thought to look for you. If I’d known … I mean, have you been here since you died?”
Chloe nodded, her eyes roaming Harper’s features. “You look familiar to me,” she said finally. “I don’t recognize you, and yet I do. It’s a very weird feeling.”
“My name is Harper Harlow. I was behind you in school.”
“Behind me?” She looked Harper up and down. “You’re older than me.”
“You’ve been dead a long time.”
“I guess so. It felt like a long time, but I couldn’t be sure. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“That’s okay.” Harper flashed an understanding smile. “I’m so sorry that I didn’t know you were out here. I would’ve come if I’d known. I would’ve helped you cross over.”
“To where?”
“To the other side. I don’t know what’s over there, but I’ve seen glimpses a few times. It’s beautiful.”
“And you can help me cross over?”
“I can.”
“That would be nice.” Chloe brightened a bit, although she hardly looked happy. “It’s not time for that yet, though.”
“No?”
“No. I have something I have to show you.”
“You have something you have to show me?” Harper was understandably confused. “Where?”
“This way.” Chloe beckoned and started moving toward the trees.
“I have to wait,” Harper called out, jerking her head to the east in the hope she would catch sight of Jared or Mel. Unfortunately, it was dark and silent.
“You can’t wait. There is no time to wait. You have to come.”
“But … why?”
“Because it’s going to happen again if you don’t save her.”
“What’s going to happen again?”
“My mother will win.”
Harper was unbelievably confused but something inside propelled her forward. Since she wasn’t an idiot, though, she held up her hand and tugged off her mitten. “Hold on. I have to leave Jared a note.”
She didn’t have paper or a pen, but she had the condensation on the window that still lingered. She opened the door, breathed hard to increase the fog, and left Jared a simple message. “Ghost came. Went into woods. Be right back.”
Harper read the note, scanned the woods surrounding the house again, and then shut the door. She wasn’t going far. She was certain of that. She would be fine. Chloe clearly had answers, and Harper was more than ready to hear them.
THE WALK INTO THE woods took longer than Harper envisioned. To be fair, they didn’t go far. It only felt that way because Harper had to walk slowly to make sure she didn’t accidentally trip over a fallen branch and bang her head into an unforeseen barrier.
Chloe wasn’t much for talk and she remained far enough ahead of Harper that the blonde felt it unwise to call out and draw her back. Finally, when Harper thought she could take it no longer, Chloe circled behind a thick crop of trees and disappeared.
Harper increased her pace and pulled up short when she realized she was looking at a small building that was completely shrouded by trees.
“What the … ?”
“It’s the quiet place,” Chloe whispered, something about her tone causing Harper to snap her head in the young girl’s direction.
“The quiet place?”
Chloe nodded. “Mother likes it quiet.” The words were barely a whisper and they sent a shiver down Harper’s spine.
“Oh, Chloe, did your mother kill you?” Harper blurted out the question without giving it much thought.
Instead of balking, Chloe merely nodded. “I wasn’t quiet enough, good enough. I knew better than mouthing off, but I thought I caught her in a good mood. I wanted to go to prom, you see. She always told me that was for girls who didn’t want good things for their future, sluts. She chaperoned the homecoming dances, but she made sure I never got too close to anybody. The prom was a different story. I wasn’t to bother her, but Rodney Daughtry asked me, and I wanted to go.”
Harper felt sick to her stomach. “Your mother killed you, reported you missing, and then spent fifteen years playing the victim. I can’t believe it. How did she pull it off?”
“Look.”
“She fooled everyone,” Harper barreled forward, not noticing the way Chloe gestured at the building. “She had every single person in this town feeling sorry for her and she was the one who killed you. I can’t believe it.”
She swiveled and pinned Chloe with a dark look. “Tell me how she killed you. I can’t help unless you tell me where your body is. We’ll nail her. I promise. We’ll make sure she pays for what she did to you.”
“Look,” Chloe repeated, her fingers going close to the small outbuilding’s door. “Look.”
A wave of nausea washed over Harper. “Oh. You brought me out here because you wanted me to find you.”
Chloe nodded. “You have to look. Then it will be real.”
Harper wasn’t sure what to make of the statement, but she did as she was asked. She wrapped her mitten-covered hand around the handle and gave it a tug. It held tight, so she had to try again. Finally, she had to brace her feet and put her back into it. When the door flew open, Harper lost her balance and toppled backward.
The ground was cold when she hit, and her hip groaned in protest because the frozen surface offered zero cushion. “Ow.” Harper made a face as she rubbed her hip, glaring into the dark opening.
There were no streetlights in the area, but the moon managed to filter through the bare branches and give Harper a relatively good view of what was inside the shed.
There was nothing left of Chloe, at least nothing identifiable. Her skull remained, empty black eyeholes staring into the darkness. Clothes that looked eerily familiar because the ghost wore the same outfit that was on the floor, although they were old and had seen better days. There was also hair, although it was nowhere near as glossy and pretty as Harper remembered from her youth.
“Did you die in there?” Harper remained on the ground, her sore hip forgotten. “Did your mother kill you in there?”
“That was where I lived when she needed quiet,” Chloe explained. “She doesn’t like noise. Never liked it. I learned quickly as a child, although not quickly enough.” She held up her ghostly hand so Harper could see how the pinkie and ring fingers on her left hand weren’t perfectly straight. “You have to be careful and not make noise.”
“She hurt you.” It was a statement, not a question. “She hurt you when you were little. Didn’t your father say something?” Now that she asked the question, Harper realized that she couldn’t remember Shana ever being married. “Wait … what happened to your father?”
“He left when I was three. I don’t remember him.”
“I’m sorry.” Harper meant it. “No one should have to go through what you went through. Did you ever try telling someone? Maybe a teacher or a family friend.”
“Who would’ve believed me?”
“I would have.”
“Weren’t you a child, too?”
“Yes, but I meant that I would’ve believed whatever you told me so there had to be other adults around at the time who would’ve believed it, too.”
“Does it really matter?” Chloe was obviously defeated. “It’s too late for me.”
Harper pursed her lips. “It matters to me. What happened to you? You said you asked her to go to the prom. I’m guessing that didn’t go over well.”
“Only whores want to go to prom,” Chloe said. “I shouldn’t have asked. I knew better. My hopes were greater than my brains that day, though. She yelled … and screamed … and hit me with the pan on the counter. She was making dinner, and she hates being interrupted when she’s making dinner.
“I woke up in the quiet place after that,” she continued. “My head hurt, and there was blood in my hair … and in my ears … and in my mouth. It hurt everywh
ere. In fact, it hurt so much I almost wished I didn’t wake up.
“I waited for her to come and get me like she usually did,” she said. “She would give me a chance to apologize. The key was not to apologize for the first go around, because she never believed it anyway. You had to wait for the second or third time, depending on the infraction, to make her believe it.
“She never came this time, though,” she said, her face twisting. “The pain got really bad … and then it wasn’t so bad. That was the scariest part. I knew when it stopped hurting that something was wrong inside of my head. That when I closed my eyes again, they would never open.
“I tried to hang on, but it was impossible. Eventually, I could no longer keep my eyes open. I drifted away, into the best sleep of my life, and woke up in this place all over again.”
Harper wanted to hug the ghost, offer some sort of comfort. She couldn’t, though. There was nothing she could give Chloe but a promise that her mother wouldn’t walk free another day.
“I can help you, Chloe. I can … help you move on. You don’t have to stay here. You can celebrate Christmas this year on the other side. In fact, I don’t have a dreamcatcher with me right now, but I can go home and get one. I can be back here and help you cross over within the hour.”
Chloe forced a smile, but it was wan. “I can’t leave yet. I have one more thing to do.”
“If you want to make your mother pay, I can guarantee that she’ll be behind bars before the end of the night. Those two men I was with earlier, they’re police detectives. They’ll help me. All we have to do is show them this and I guarantee they’ll drag your mother out of bed and she’ll be finished.”
“I have a feeling my mother is going to face more than one sort of judge,” Chloe said. “I’m not worried about that. This isn’t about her. It’s about the other girl.”
“What other girl?”
“The little girl.”
Realization dawned on Harper and she remembered why she was really in the woods that night. “Zoe.” The name came out on a half-gasp. “Your mother has Zoe, doesn’t she? Oh, my … .” Harper jerked her head back in the direction they came from. “We have to go back.”
“You see, right?” Chloe was insistent. “You see what she is. That little girl doesn’t see. She doesn’t know the rules. You have to get her tonight.”
“Oh, I’m going to get her.” Harper squared her shoulders in determination as she regained her footing and began walking, ignoring the pain shooting through hip as she increased her pace. “We’re going to get her right now, Chloe. Come on. You won’t want to miss what’s about to happen. Your mother is finally going to get what’s coming to her.”
Nineteen
Jared and Mel were at the back of the house trying to look through a window when they noticed movement to their right.
Instinctively, Jared snapped his head in that direction and openly gaped when Harper appeared on the lawn “What the ... ?”
Mel followed his gaze, dumbfounded. “What is she doing?”
“I don’t know.” Jared forgot he was supposed to be quiet and unobtrusive as he stood and straightened his shoulders. “Why was she in the woods?”
“Forget that. Who is she talking to?”
That’s when Jared realized that Harper was indeed talking to herself, something he didn’t notice until Mel pointed it out. Her lips were moving and she seemed agitated as she favored her hip and occasionally looked to her right as she walked.
“She found a ghost,” Jared said after a beat. “It must be Jessica. Maybe she told her what happened and we can officially move.”
The look Mel shot Jared was pitying. “Listen, I know you love your girlfriend and think she can do no wrong, but we can’t secure a search warrant on the word of a ghost. You know that as well as I do.”
“Yeah, but ... .” Jared trailed off, narrowing his eyes when Harper stormed right past them and continued toward the front of the house. “Did she not see us?”
Mel seemed equally puzzled. “I don’t know. I ... thought she did. She didn’t look at us, though. I guess it’s possible she didn’t. We were twenty feet away from her.”
In tandem, they scurried toward the side of the house and peered around. Harper was still stomping toward the front door, her mouth moving a mile a minute as she talked to the ghost that apparently only she could see.
“I promise this will be over soon,” she said. “You’ll be on the other side in time for Christmas dinner.”
“Jessica must not like being a ghost,” Mel mused.
“Yeah, well, we need to figure out what Harper is doing,” Jared said as he hurried to catch up with his obviously determined girlfriend. “She’s going to draw attention and that won’t bode well for us.”
Mel grumbled something under his breath as he attempted to match Jared’s pace. His partner couldn’t decipher exactly what it was, but he didn’t ask because he had other things on his mind. By the time the two men made it to the front porch, Harper was already up the stairs and standing in front of the door.
“Open up, you old witch!” Harper barked, kicking the door with her foot as hard as she could. “I know what you did. I know what you are.”
Jared’s mouth dropped open. “Harper,” he hissed, his eyes flashing. “Get off that porch right now!”
Harper ignored him. “I can’t believe this town treated you like a hero when you’re pretty much the worst person ever,” she groused, kicking the door again. “I mean ... what is the matter with you? Who does what you did? I just want to ... .” She broke off and mimed a violent act that Jared couldn’t quite make out.
“Harper, you get off that porch right now,” Mel ordered, his voice cracking. “I mean it. If she comes out and ... .” Whatever he said died on his lips because the door opened at that exact moment.
Shana, who wore a cotton night dress that zipped from throat to feet, didn’t look happy to be interrupted. “Can I help you?”
“I certainly think you can,” Harper said calmly, affixing a sweet smile to her face as she glared at the woman. “I want Zoe Mathers right now.”
Curious despite himself, Jared watched the woman’s face from the shadows. He expected Shana to feign confusion, or deny having Zoe outright. Instead, she merely glared at Harper with enough hatred to fuel a rocket ship.
“I believe it’s a bit late for a visit, Harper,” Shana said drily. “Perhaps you should stop by tomorrow.”
“And perhaps you should bite me,” Harper shot back. She was so disgusted there was no way she could back down now. “Where is Zoe?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Harper tilted her head to the side, as if listening to someone. “Really?” she challenged finally. “I’m guessing that’s not true. I’m guessing she’s in the basement room nobody knows about, the one without windows. I think she’s down there ... and I think she’s crying for her mother.”
The flash of fear that flitted across Shana’s face caused Jared to take a step forward. He recognized savagery when he saw it, and there was no doubt in his mind that Shana was about to turn her fury on Harper. The question was: Did Harper realize it, too?
“I’m going to ask you to leave now.” Shana’s tone was icy. “If you don’t, I’ll have to call the police.”
“I think that’s a grand idea,” Harper said, her smile more of a grimace as it washed over her features. “You call the police and get them out here. We’re going to need them.”
Jared wasn’t surprised when Shana remained in the doorway instead of retreating into the house to make the call. The woman didn’t want the police at her house. She was bluffing, and now that Harper had called her bluff, there was only one thing to do. All Jared had to wait for was Shana to make a move, then he had just cause for entering the home.
“If you don’t shut your mouth, I’m going to shut it for you,” Shana hissed.
“I’m not afraid of you.” Harper was firm. “I know what you did. I kno
w about Chloe.”
Whatever Jared and Mel were expecting, it wasn’t that. They exchanged a quick look, something unsaid passing between them, and then edged forward so they could hear the next part of the conversation.
Shana wrinkled her nose. “Everyone knows what happened to Chloe. It was a tragedy.”
“Everyone knows what you told them,” Harper countered. “They don’t know that you were abusing Chloe, that you like absolute silence and reverence and are willing to mete out pain to get it. They don’t know you hit her with a frying pan because she wanted to go to prom and then locked her in the quiet place in the woods behind the house.”
Shana’s face drained until she was so white she looked like a ghost herself. “W-what?”
“You heard me!” Harper was furious. “She had a head injury and you left her out there to die. She’s still out there. You killed your own daughter and then played the victim. You make me want to throw up on your face.”
As far as insults go, it wasn’t her best offering, but Jared had to give her credit for holding it together despite everything that had obviously happened over the last twenty minutes. Shana, on the other hand, didn’t look happy.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She moved to shut the door in Harper’s face, but Whisper Cove’s favorite ghost hunter was having none of it.
“Stop!” Harper slammed her foot in the opening so Shana couldn’t lock her out. “You’re done here. This whole thing is done.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shana screeched, doubling her efforts. “You’re trying to stick your nose in my world and it doesn’t belong. You’re going to be sorry if you’re not careful. In fact ... .” Shana stopped fighting and eased her pressure on the door, which meant Harper went tumbling inside.
That was enough for Jared. He broke into a run and headed straight for the porch, his weapon drawn. Mel was close on his heels.
“Why couldn’t you just mind your own business?” Shana screeched as she tried to wrestle Harper to the ground. “Why did you have to stick your nose into something that doesn’t concern you? I mean ... what is wrong with you?”
Ghostly Holiday (A Harper Harlow Mystery Book 11) Page 18
