by Kim Hornsby
“Can you hear that?” I asked Eve. I knew my mother could and wanted everyone to hear the lovely music coming from the piano.
“Don’t tell me Jacqueline is back,” Eve’s fork stopped half way to her mouth.
“Caspian is playing,” I said, putting my plate on the table, to sit back and watch him play. The tune was sweet, almost romantic, and called up a profound loss in my heart. Caspian looked to me, as if he knew the effect the music had on me.
As if on cue, my mother spoke. “Bane looks so much like Harry, don’t you think, Bryndle?”
I did. Seeing Bane, Harry’s lookalike, had done something to the hope I’d been holding on to for the last nine months. Hope that I’d hear from Harry in the afterlife. I knew now I wouldn’t. “I have to let Harry go.” I said. “He’s not going to contact me.” I looked to Caspian who had stopped playing and was staring at me. “If he was able to, I know he would have by now.”
Eve leaned over and touched my arm.
My mother, for once, did not say something smart ass.
Caspian was the only one who spoke. “I’m very sorry, Bryndle. I fear your husband has moved on.”
I nodded, taking in full meaning of the realization. “And now, I have to,” I said.
Chapter 16
That night, I had a heart to heart talk with my mother about being able to see in Caspian’s presence. Caspian had long since disappeared and as we sat in the chairs in front of the fire in what was once our shared bedroom, I told her that Caspian gave me psychic sight. I was a little tipsy from all the wine we’d consumed, and Rachel did not look like the monster mother she usually did. “I can close my eyes and still see the room if he’s close. My eyes aren’t working again. I haven’t recovered my eyesight. It’s different.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Rachel said.
Since dinner and the charred roast, my mother was behaving strangely and more than once I wondered if someone inhabited her, someone nice and likeable. She’d lost her snark. When it became obvious she hadn’t been taken over by a ghost, I worried that my mother was coming down with a virus. “Yes,” I said to the nice lady across from me at my fireplace who resembled Rachel. “Having sight is fricking awesome. The trouble is that Caspian comes and goes, with no telling when he’ll show up again. He tells me he has no control over it either.”
“So, when Eve mentioned you had a relationship with Caspian, that’s what she meant?”
There was a strange hope in her voice that made my hackles stand at attention. “Don’t go hitting on him, Mother. If you do, I’ll have to put you on a bus back to Seattle. Just because Caspian and I are not romantically involved, doesn’t mean he’s up for grabbies.”
She chuckled from ten feet away. “I seriously doubt I can touch him, like you.”
The fire crackled and I raised the wine glass to my lips. We’d brought a third bottle to the room for a talk and I imagined it was almost gone. The sweetness had been less of a problem after the third glass.
“I have a perfectly good boyfriend,” my mother said, “who, by the way, is arriving soon for a three-day weekend,” she said.
I had to ask her. Seeing things were going well, I needed to know this one last thing from my mother tonight. “Did you ever try anything with Caspian, back then?” I knew Caspian wasn’t present because of the blackness in front of my face. “Could you ever…touch him?”
Wine sloshed into my mother’s glass while I waited. Rachel used pregnant pauses for effect. Especially before a big story telling session. My spidey senses told me that I was about to hear all about my mother’s love life. Or something equally fun for her, but not me.
“Back then, I was a vital, sexual being.”
I rested my wine glass against my thigh on the chair, knowing this was going to make me feel slightly nauseous.
“But no, Caspian and I never crossed that boundary.” She chuckled. “I wouldn’t have turned him down if he’d been alive, but he was always just a handsome ghost to me. Besides, he belonged to someone else, Bryndle. Your ghost was in love with Belinda McMahon.”
I heard a door close down the hall and waited for my mother to elaborate, as I knew she would. When she didn’t, I realized she was getting out of the chair and heading to bed. “That’s it?”
From across the room, she spoke. “That’s part of it. The rest I can’t tell you for your own good.”
“When has that ever stopped you?” I said, turning to where she stood on the far side of the bed. My sight was returning. “And don’t get ready for bed in here. I put all your stuff in another room.”
“I brought it back in. I’m not sleeping alone in a house with a woman who stabbed Caspian and inhabited Evelyn.” My mother had taken off her top and stood in a lacey black bra and jeans on the other side of the room.
I admired how fit she still looked for someone approaching fifty. “I can see, by the way, which means Caspian is…” I saw him leaning against the door, Moonraker at his feet.
When he noticed my mother in her bra on the other side of the room, he turned away and lowered his chin. “Oh, excuse me. I’m dreadfully sorry.”
My mother, now back to her old self, chuckled. “Oh Caspian, don’t tell me you’ve never seen a woman in her skivvies before.” She whipped off her bra and pulled her silky nightgown over her head.
“Mother!”
She laughed and walked into the bathroom with her toiletry case, closing the door.
“Thanks to your evil wife, Jacqueline, my mother isn’t moving down the hall tonight.” I took a sip of my wine and Caspian crossed to sit in the recently vacated chair across from me. It was wonderful to be able to see the fire. And Caspian. It was just plain wonderful to be able to see again.
“You have Bane. I have Jacqueline,” Caspian said, crossing his legs and unbuttoning his coat.
“I might have gotten rid of Bane, thanks to you. And Jacqueline,” I added.
We watched the fire until my mother returned. “I’m going to sleep with Eve if you two are going to stay up and talk.”
“Good idea,” I said kicking off my boots and curling my toes in Hodor’s fur. “Make sure she isn’t entertaining poor Jimmy who also looked too frightened to sleep alone in this house.”
“Oh, my Lord,” she announced. “I’m sure she’s alone. Jimmy looked mostly terrified of Eve. I’m going then.”
“Are you sure you have to go?” I said facetiously.
“Goodnight, you two,” my mother said and swept out the door.
“Alone at last,” I kidded, meaning that I was alone, not shadowed by my mother, finally. Caspian had a strange look on his face though. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “You look pretty in the firelight,” he said, still staring.
I looked away. “You just like my blue hair.”
He chuckled. “I heard your mother tell you that Belinda and I were in love.” Moonraker jumped on his lap. “I suppose she noticed passion left over from the early years.”
I felt his emotion from across the low table between us.
“Being in love and loving someone are two different things. One suggests an abandonment of all things reasonable to feast on the other person.”
I smiled.
“Over the years, our relationship evolved into something different. We were the best of friends. Two halves of a whole, she used to say. Our relationship was unique.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear more about how he loved Belinda, not after he told me I looked pretty. I’d dressed for Caspian tonight and in my slight drunkenness, I had to admit I hoped he’d find me less than mannish or hideous. He’d mentioned he liked pink earlier, when I was getting dressed, and I’d happily worn his choice. I even smoothed my hair, not spiking it to stand on end. I watched him talk, eight feet away from me, his eyes dark and deep.
“When Belinda left, I felt empty, like nothing again would ever please me, comfort me, measure up to my friendship with her. I know you can ap
preciate this, having lost Harry.”
“I can.”
He nodded. “If Harry was here, or I felt him or saw him, I’d tell him that you desperately need contact.”
“I know you would. Thank you, Caspian. But I’m coming to terms with never hearing from him again.”
He looked at me with those dark eyes and I felt my soul being sucked to the surface. “We have both lost someone we loved.”
I nodded.
“What we have, Bryndle, is not like anything I’ve ever known.”
I had to agree.
“We are strangely dependent on one another.”
“Me more than you,” I said, thinking I hadn’t done much to help Caspian.
“You have no idea what you are to me.” His words foreshadowed something, and I was about to ask him what he meant but I was immediately overcome with an emotion that was powerful and beyond explanation. Like being taken into an embrace, Caspian’s soul enveloped me. “What’s happening?” I asked.
He leaned forward. “Did you feel that?”
I nodded. “I’m clairvoyant.”
Caspian looked thoughtful. “If you were privy to my emotion, just now, it appears you have found your dormant talent.” He rubbed his unshaven face and took a deep breath. “I suppose there’s no hiding from a clairvoyant now.”
He slipped from the chair and knelt in front of me. “Bryndle, this is difficult to explain but I’ve known you for a long time. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.”
The way he said this left me tingling from the top of my head all the way down my body to my feet. The effect of those words was something beyond earthly emotion. It was so profound that tears came to my eyes.
I reached out and stroked his face with the tips of my fingers. He didn’t stop me. His face wasn’t cold, or wet, and I felt the silkiness of his beard as my fingers trailed to his jawline.
He took my hand gently and kissed my fingers. His lips were warm, and I wondered…
“I don’t want to frighten you…,” he said.
Like pulling a rope, I pulled a secret from Caspian. He had feelings for me and had for a long time. How was this? We’d just met. At least, we’d just met as adults.
It was then that my psychic abilities came fully rushing back into my body, my mind, and my heart, like Caspian had unbolted a door and the dam had broken. I felt everything around me and was fully cognizant of everything that had ever happened in this house.
Overcome with the amazement of being whole again. I looked into Caspian’s searching face. He understood what was happening. “How did you do this?” I asked. “You restored me.” Caspian had opened whatever kept my sixth sense imprisoned all these months.
“I did nothing,” he smiled. “It was you, you amazing creature.”
I leaned closer and barely touched my lips to his. A shock of pleasure coursed through me and I pulled back to search his eyes. They were dark and full of want.
He leaned his forehead against mine.
“Remember me,” he whispered.
And then Caspian was gone.
THE END
Thanks for reading.
If you enjoyed this story, a review would be greatly appreciated on the site where you bought the book. Reviews help other readers find good books and make the author deliriously happy. I’m no exception. ~ Kim
Acknowledgements
I would be remiss without mentioning my wonderful readers who support my career and my books and have stuck with me since I first published The Dream Jumper’s Promise. I have a group of faithfuls who read, review, offer suggestions for names and plot lines, and are my barometer on how I’m doing as an Indie Author. They are amazing!
I’d like to thank my agent, JD, who has this series in her catalogue to promote as a TV show. I’m always thrilled that you believe in my projects.
And, as always, I’d like to thank my family – a husband who cooks, a daughter who gives me no trouble at all, and a son who is working towards his own dream in life. I love you guys!
Moody and the Ghost
COMING ABOUT
Book 3
Moody & The Ghost – COMING ABOUT, Copyright 2019, Top Ten Press
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Novak Illustrations
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
SEATTLE * MAUI
“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
~ Louisa May Alcott
Chapter 1
It had been four long days and I still hadn’t seen, heard, or felt the presence of my ghost, Caspian. Except in my dreams. And I’d had some doozies after that kiss we shared. Dreams that made me impatient for his return to Spook Central, my house on the Oregon Coast.
Where was this ghostly man? He’d told me that when he was gone, it was like sleeping, like when he was alive. He had no idea how long he’d been away when he next appeared. For me, it was always too long because of the effect he had on me. His presence meant I could see, which was a big deal to a blind person.
I walked to the center of the bloody bedroom on the second floor, tonight, trying to summon the ghost of Jacqueline, Caspian’s wife who’d also lived over one hundred and fifty years ago. I was pretty sure the room was pitch dark. It was the middle of the night, so I had to assume there wasn’t sunshine coming in the tall windows. As I stood with my arms flung out from my sides, I imagined Jacqueline floating towards me, although I had no idea what she looked like. In my mind the apparition was transparent with big hair and lots of makeup, for some reason.
“Jacqueline? Can you come through?” I waited and listened. If she moved the curtains, I wouldn’t know. If she was floating around me, I couldn’t tell. Not visually. But, with my amazing clairvoyance, I was hoping for a feeling from what used to be my sixth sense but was now my fifth. Sight was gone now, thereby evening the playing field somewhat between me and everyone else.
“I need to ask you about Caspian.” I wasn’t sure what I needed to ask her besides ‘where the heck is that husband of yours?’ I knew she’d hated Caspian enough to attempt to kill him when they were still alive and barely married. I hoped that saying his name might rouse the ghost who usually came through in the bedroom where she stabbed him.
Then, I felt a presence.
I wasn’t alone.
The hair on my neck stood on end and I waited. It was often difficult for ghosts to break the audio barrier and be heard, a sense I now relied on. It was more common in ghost hunting for us Alives to see something but that wasn’t possible for me. I knew I should have brought the Ghost Box with me to pick up on audio but asking Carlos for that piece of monitoring equipment earlier, would have had him asking why I wanted it. I didn’t want either of my assistants to know I was coming here specifically to ask Jacqueline about Caspian. My middle of the night plan sounded like high school when you go to a friend of the boy you like to see if he likes you. I hadn’t even explained to Eve, my cousin and confidante, that Caspian and I had shared a kiss and he’d somehow fully restored my clairvoyant abilities that had lain dormant for months. Dormant sounded so much better than dead as a doornail, which described my clairvoyance for the last eight months. I’d tell Eve eventually about all that. I often kept secrets from Eve and Carlos, doling out bits of information when I felt the time was right.
The room grew frigid, as though a north wind had whistled through and left a covering of frost on everything. Would I have been able to see my breath? It was that cold.
“Jacqueline,
I owe you a favor,” I said, which was true. She’d inhabited Eve’s body recently and when I’d told her to leave, I promised to do something for her in return. “What do you want me to do?”
I knew one thing she wanted and that was to kill her husband once and for all, even though Caspian was officially dead in our world. I was pretty sure Jacqueline had not been the cause of her husband’s final death and probably lamented that she hadn’t had the pleasure of offing him, even though she’d tried. “Besides get rid of Caspian.” I added.
I felt a cold hand against my neck, one of my only exposed patches of skin. The sudden cold made me recoil then recover. “I feel you,” I tried to say calmly. Unless Jacqueline jumped inside my bones and became me, I probably wouldn’t know what she was thinking by just standing here in the middle of the room talking. I couldn’t feel emotions beyond her anger which was pervasive any time Jacqueline the fireball was present. The times she’d come through, I had no inkling to what she was thinking, only that she was a mean bitch.
“Have you seen Caspian?” I asked. I knew the ghosts in this house were able to communicate between themselves. Caspian had told me they rumbled around inside the house often trying to keep out of each other’s way, sometimes talking, and in Jacqueline and Caspian’s case, arguing.
The air in the room swirled around me and I was glad I hadn’t brought Hodor, who’d be barking at the wind. “I think I banished Caspian forever,” I said, above the noise of the wind. I knew Jacqueline would like it if I’d banished the man who betrayed her lover. “He seems to be gone.” I wasn’t sure about this and secretly hoped it was not true.
Something thumped on the floor across the room by the fireplace. “Touch me again if you’ve seen Caspian recently.”
