by Kim Hornsby
Chapter 5
Seated by a roaring fire, I heard Carlos’s sneakered footsteps enter the room behind me and softly pad over to my chair. I smelled his cologne, Eau Savage, and tried my damnedest to not yet ask my mother if Caspian was her baby daddy. I’d never known who my father was and although I’d asked for two and a half decades, I’d recently given up the fight to know whose genes I’d inherited. Did I look like Caspian? No, I looked like Rachel when she was my age with very little room for a second set of genes.
However…
The way Caspian had asked Rachel if I was “the child” reminded me of a movie I saw where the unsuspecting father is reunited with his long-lost daughter.
I did not want to be Caspian’s spawn.
Not after secretly lusting after his muscles in the quiet of my Spook Central bedroom. The night I realized I was attracted to a ghost was one of the many secrets I now keep under my blue-tipped hair. I’d decided that even though I’d loved Harry and still did, there was no denying that Caspian was testosterone personified. And I was a big fan of testosterone.
“The chandelier is AWOL,” Carlos said. “Although, how a ghost moves a three-hundred-pound lighting fixture is beyond me.”
“I’ll ask him,” I said, bragging out loud that I had a direct line to a ghost.
Carlos had built a fire in the fireplace and was waiting to hear the tale of how my awful mother knew the apparition that brought me sight. Hodor lay against my feet, enjoying the warmth of the fire. I was enjoying the warmth of Hodor, the best dog in the world aside from when he burst through Caspian and made him disappear. The good news was that as soon as I entered the den, I could see again so that meant the guy I’d lusted for only last week who might possibly turn out to be my biological daddy was near. As I sat waiting for the bad news, waiting for Eve to bring tea, and waiting for Rachel to get back from the privy, as she called it for the first time in her life, I thought about how I’d adjust if Caspian was my bio father.
I’d recently come to the conclusion that the reason Rachel wouldn’t tell me who my father was was because she did not know. At her own admission, years ago, she’d told me that she’d been “dating heavily” around the time she got pregnant.
Balancing a tea tray, Eve set it down on the table beside me. I hadn’t seen Caspian yet and hoped he was well-hidden from my mother, for the time being. She’d just returned to the room. I couldn’t look around or go hunting under the desk or behind the drapes for him. I still wanted my mother to think I was stone-cold blind, something that gave me a slight edge at a time when I really needed a leg up on Rachel.
I took a mug of tea and warmed my hands, waiting for everyone to get settled in the room lined with shelves filled with hardcover books. The fire crackled in the hearth and I wondered if Carlos had used cedar when he built the fire. It burned fast and hot. I’d have used fir.
“I’m going to assume, Mother, that when you brought me here at the age of six to clear the house, you met Caspian.”
My mother cleared her throat as if to give a speech and I inwardly groaned. If this was going to be a long story of how she and Caspian had a doomed-from-the-start love affair, I needed to be ready. I did not want to share the Spanish sea captain with my mother but mostly I didn’t want to hear that he’d had feelings for her. Or that they been able to consummate their relationship before Rachel met Belinda that day somewhere, somehow and I was half-ghost.
Was that even possible?
“Back when we arrived at this place twenty some odd years ago, you were young. I was twenty-four and just coming into my prime.”
Eve slurped her tea from the chair in front of me. Carlos fake coughed. I imagined what they were thinking.
“In those days, I pretended to be the medium because I was sure no one would believe you had such an ability.”
“I remember,” I said, wondering why Rachel suddenly had a slight English accent.
“It turned out that not only could Belinda see the ghost of this dashing sailor, but you could, and I could too. This was and is the only time I’ve ever seen a ghost.”
My mother said this with such amazement, like she expected applause. Eve, Carlos and I just waited silently for the gag-worthy details.
“And Caspian was a memorable sight. Still is, it looks like. Of course, he hasn’t aged, still has those eyes, that strong jawline, the wide shoulders and full mouth, that husky voice that is all man.”
“Mother, you aren’t writing a romance novel. Get to the point.” Now my employees knew what Caspian looked like straight from a hot to trot female’s point of view. I think I’d said he was a large Spanish man.
“Belinda, the owner of the house, was quite in love with him. Smitten, I’d say. She was a beautiful sixty-year-old woman. She’d known him some time. A painter. Very interesting lady, but very possessive of her ghost. And who wouldn’t be? He’s a lovely specimen of a man.”
I gulped, knowing Caspian was in the room, listening. Maybe his eyes were all glossed over thinking about my mother in those days. I didn’t know because I couldn’t see him. Moonraker jumped on my lap and I tried to ignore the cat. Did my mother see him too? She didn’t react. Because Carlos didn’t scream and go running from the room, I knew he didn’t see his biggest fear bedding down on my jeaned thighs. Eve hadn’t reacted either, so I assumed the marmalade cat was mine. Until…
“You have a cat?” Rachel asked. She loved cats.
Carlos stood, spilling his tea. “Where?”
“Relax hombre,” I said. “It’s just a ghost cat on my lap.”
“Caspian’s cat?” Eve obviously did not have a feline in her line of vision.
“Yes, Moonraker is his name, mother. He’s a lovely Tabby.” I looked to where Carlos had backed up as far as he could go without jumping out the window.
Hodor lifted his head and sniffed like he’d caught wind of an animal; one he loved to chase. He stood and was just about to stick his nose in my lap when Moonraker hissed and jumped off my lap.
My mother picked up the kitty on the way by. “I remember you too,” she said holding him protectively.
“Eve, grab Hodor’s leash please.” I couldn’t reach down and do it without telling my mother I wasn’t blind. “He smells the cat but I’m pretty sure can’t see it.”
It was then I realized that my mother, the woman who never saw, felt or heard ghosts, had a ghostly cat in her arms. My mother not only saw Caspian but she also saw Moonraker.
Strike two.
Eve had Hodor sit back down but he wasn’t about to close his eyes. Not as long as he smelled a cat close by. And, I still had to pretend I couldn’t see a thing in the room or risk Rachel knowing my secret.
“Is the cat gone?” I asked.
“I have him,” my mother said tenderly. “Your dog can’t see this poor little pussy, thank goodness.”
Although having a dog and cat in the house provided some tension, my mother held the reins to the real tension that day as I waited to hear the story of how she came to know Caspian.
“Let’s continue your story, Rachel.” My words sounded more desperate than I wanted.
“Where’s the cat?” Carlos asked from across the room, not realizing that I was desperately waiting to hear if I was half ghost.
“Rachel has him. Sit down, Carlos.” I tried to not look directly at him as he sat on top of the desk across the room.
“Mother? Please continue.”
She stroked Moonraker and I bristled to see Caspian’s cat in her arms. “When we arrived here so many years ago,” Rachel said, “Belinda told me that she had a ghost in the house, one of several. This one desperately wanted to leave this world. She didn’t see him often anymore, but when she did, his sadness left her determined to try to help him.”
My mother took a sip of her tea. She was such an actress, knowing exactly when to pause for effect. She could have lived back when stage actresses performed by lamplight at the stage edge and wore overly-exaggerated rouge.
She set the tea cup down daintily and Moonraker jumped from her lap. I wouldn’t tell Carlos that the cat was headed for him. Did Rachel know that Caspian was near? Her performance suggested she sensed an impressive audience.
I glanced to the darkened corner where Moonraker had wandered and saw that Caspian stood in the shadows, behind Rachel’s chair. He was listening. Our eyes locked briefly. His expression gave nothing away of what was to come from my mother’s mouth.
“We were to stay the night, with a summoning at midnight. I wanted Belinda to give us privacy for the summoning, but she insisted she be present.”
“What room?” I asked.
“A bedroom upstairs. Belinda had painted a mural on the wall and this was where she always saw the ghost. Apparently, it had been the room where the ghost slept when he was alive.” My mother tilted her head and her eyes became slits. “Our hostess didn’t understand why I didn’t put my child to bed, or at least let her lie down on the bed in that room while I tried to reach the ghost. Then, she saw why. Caspian appeared before us, near the mural. You greeted him like he was a favorite uncle you hadn’t seen in a long time.” She smiled. “He shook your hand, lowering himself to one knee to talk to you. Belinda and I watched from the other side of the bedroom. I couldn’t believe that I saw him too.” Rachel stared into the fire, her gaze dreamy.
If this was her first look at Caspian, then I was not his child. I shot a quick look to the corner, but Caspian had stepped back into the shadows and his expression was unreadable in the darkness. I had a very slight childhood memory of shaking the hand of someone I thought was a pirate, him crouched in front of me. It must have been Caspian.
“He was so tender with you, asking your name, asking if you were afraid of him, wondering if you played a musical instrument, telling you he liked your black curls. I fell for him right then and there. If he hadn’t been a ghost…”
I mentally put up a shield against my mother’s words. The type of shield where you can still hear what she’s saying but you just don’t let it affect you.
“He didn’t look like a ghost. He simply resembled someone who’d been invited for dinner and was talking to my child.” Rachel sounded like a real person who had genuine emotion for someone. I’d rarely heard my mother speak this way with no agenda attached to her sentences. Her British accent was gone.
My breath hitched in my throat. Tears came to the back of my eyes. I couldn’t speak.
“He told you that although he was very happy to meet you, you were not able to help him. You were too young for the job. When he stood and looked at me, I sensed he was angry that I’d let my child expose herself to ghosts. He told me so in a few choice words. I defended myself and told him that your gift was not something I could stifle.”
Rachel looked up and for a moment our eyes locked. For the first time in my life I wondered if she felt like only an emissary to my gift. And if she resented that.
“We had words. It was much like a lovers’ quarrel, and I took you from the room. You and I spent the night in a bedroom across the hall. Caspian came to me while you slept and told me that what he needed to be able to pass on was not something a child could do. Or should do. I asked if I could help him, since I also could see him. Should we try, just in case?”
Rachel stopped, lost in memories.
I waited.
Carlos waited.
Eve waited.
The fire shot an ember to the rug and Eve popped up to fling it back to the fire with a tool. She then put the screen in front of the hearth. Hodor watched her. I watched all this, the sick feeling in my stomach intensifying.
“What did you do to try to help him, Rachel?” I didn’t want to know, but I had to hear it.
My mother sat forward and stared at me. I kept my eyes lowered. “That is something I’m not at liberty to divulge.” Her voice wasn’t flirty or tantalizing like we’d have to coax the information out of her. I knew when my mother meant business. She was shutting this conversation down. Still, I tried.
“How did you try to help Caspian?”
My mother took a sip of tea and stared into the fire. Probably a minute passed before she answered. I waited because I wanted her to tell me if she’d been asked to find Caspian’s bones, like me, or if she and Caspian had fallen in love.
Pulled in by the story, Carlos moved towards us, listening.
“I couldn’t help him,” she whispered. “What he needed, I couldn’t do.” The fire glinted in her eyes and I was sure tears were about to drop.
I felt sick. My mother and Caspian had a secret. It was too much. “And Belinda? She couldn’t help him either?” I needed to know.
“No, she couldn’t, and he wouldn’t let you be involved. You were too young. I suppose that’s why you’re back here now. Belinda knew it was only ever you.”
I didn’t care if Rachel saw that I had eyesight. I looked to Caspian who was now sitting at the desk behind Rachel, his eyes turned down at the corners, his mouth grim. “Did he ask you to find his bones?”
Rachel got up to put another log on the fire. She hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t blind or if she had, she didn’t say anything. “I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.”
Chapter 6
My mother was spooked enough that she chose to sleep in my room that night, something that left my mouth dry and my level of happiness just barely off the floor. It had been a long time since Rachel and I shared a bed and I was determined to kick her to the floor if she complained about Hodor’s presence between us.
In the bathroom, I washed my face, brushed my teeth and slipped into Harry’s big T-shirt that advertised an annual music concert in Canada he never missed each summer. At least I thought that was the T-shirt I slipped on. I’d lost my sight when we left the library to show my mother the house and Caspian hadn’t followed. He’d looked spent. Emotional. As I left the room on Eve’s arm, I looked back to see if he was coming and he sat at the desk with his head in his hands, like any hope he had was lost.
When we reached the Bloody Bedroom, Rachel confirmed my suspicions that our séance had taken place in this room twenty-one years earlier. This was where we both first met Caspian.
“And this is your room,” I teased.
“Very funny,” Rachel said. “I’m staying in your room.”
There was no way in hell she would sleep in the mural bedroom having already heard about the bloody wall. I thought it strange that my mother hadn’t recognized the mural from our Moody Paranormal Investigations Bloody Bedroom show, but she’d often told me she only skims our shows, doesn’t pay that much attention. Nice, Rachel. Thanks for tuning in.
Before we headed to the kitchen to make dinner that night, we found the chandelier in the piano room, laid carefully on the carpet, nothing broken, and I wondered how a ghost relocates such a thing. I still intended to ask Caspian next time I had him alone, which might be hard because my mother was not leaving my side.
I’d made the mistake of telling her about Jacqueline, the mean ghost and wife of Caspian and Rachel was sure that was the ghost she’d heard about from Belinda. Although her memories from two decades ago were sketchy, Rachel was sure Belinda said the female ghost had tried to kill her on more than one occasion and she believed Jacqueline was responsible for at least one death in this house before Belinda took over Cove House. Had Jacqueline killed Caspian? That was another something I intended to ask him next time we could talk privately.
Having my mother at the house for two weeks, maybe three, was grossly inconvenient and if I hadn’t been blind, I’d have put a calendar on the wall to X out the days I had to spend in her company. It was going to be a long two weeks. I’d been deliriously excited to eliminate the idea that I was Caspian’s child, but now had a new worry.
My brand-new horrific thought was that my mother, who I had a weird love/hatred for, had been intimate with Caspian in an effort to allow him to pass on. Usually ghosts need help when they’ve gotten stuck between worlds. Sometimes that means
helping find their body, like in Caspian’s case, and sometimes that means they need to pass on information that keeps them bound to this world. Had Caspian needed to do the latter, he’d have had decades of opportunity with Belinda so that wasn’t it. The obvious obstacle was not having a proper burial of his body, but my mother indicated that wasn’t it in her case. She’d been asked to do something else. I was sure of it. So why had Caspian asked me to find his bones? And why had my mother indicated I was the only one who could do this? If that was true, it explained why Belinda willed me the house.
Another thought crept into my mind.
Had my Spanish sea captain told my vulnerable mother that he needed to sleep with an Alive or something devious like that just to bed her? I hated to think that he could have done that, even though in his day the #MeToo movement was so far from taking flight and women were thought of as chattel by men in many cultures. Whatever Caspian had asked her to do, it hadn’t done the trick. I was the person who needed to help him, apparently, and Belinda McMahon knew that when she willed me the house.
Tucked into my bed for the night, I tried to not look over to my bed partner. My mother was reading one of the latest horror books, written by a bestselling author, her eyes wide. I knew this because I’d seen her. She’d come into focus a few moments earlier as I encouraged Hodor to jump up on the bed and lie down at the foot, between Rachel and I. If I could see her, where was Caspian? If he was smart he was hiding from my mother, maybe even under the bed. I didn’t see his large boots under the draperies at the window, so I was sure he wasn’t back there.
“If you’re so scared about a ghost in this house who kills Alives, why are you reading a scary novel?”
Rachel looked older with reading glasses on, not her glamorous forty-five-year-old self. “How do you know I’m reading a horror novel?” she asked.
Oops. I stared into space. Keeping my vision a secret was going to be harder than I thought, especially because my mother was still clinging to me for safety. “I know you, and I can hear your breathing hitch like you just got to a good part,” I faked.
