by K. J. Emrick
All of them had inhaled far too much smoke, but no one was really worried about that. The fresh night air was doing them good. What had worried the paramedics the most, was Darcy’s bruises.
Her left side was a mosaic of purple and yellow. Both of her arms were covered in red marks, some of them looking suspiciously like hand prints. She was sore all over, but she figured she would live. The nice EMTs had chalked it up to having half of a building fall down around her before the fire department could put the blaze out. They insisted that she ride with them in an ambulance to the hospital to be checked out, and Jon had given her that look that said she had better do it or she’d never hear the end of it.
So, she had agreed to go. They would be leaving any minute, but for right now she got to cozy into the warmth of her fiancé and know that everything would be all right.
Firefighters and police officers and curious onlookers poked around the remains of the Town Hall. The far corner of it still stood, but the rest was a charred mass of support beams and red bricks that had fallen in on themselves. The roof that had stood over the entryway doors had come crashing to the ground and now lay at a cockeyed angle over piles of debris.
“I can’t believe we got pulled out of that,” Helen said, shaking her head. “Good thing I got here when I did, I suppose. I would hate to think anything would have happened to you two. What were you doing here, anyway?”
Jon pulled Darcy to her tighter. “We saw the smoke,” was his answer. “We got inside just in time to be cut off by the flames. I’m really glad you were there, Helen.”
She shrugged off the compliment. With a shake of her head, she muttered, “I just wish I could remember…”
A loud chiming cut off all other sounds around them. Then another, the sound tinny and out of tune, like a hammer striking a bent pipe. Another, and another. People all around them stopped and turned toward the source of the sound. They stared, some of them pointing.
Darcy counted each of the tones until they were done, twelve in all. Everyone stared at the cracked face of the old Town Hall clock, propped up at an angle amid the debris. It had been stuck with its hands pointing at 11:59pm for as long as anyone could remember. Now they had suddenly started moving forward, chiming out the witching hour even though it had already passed them by.
“That’s creepy,” Jon whispered.
“I’ll second that.” Darcy knew Nathaniel Williams was gone. She’d felt him go. She couldn’t help but wonder, though, if his influence would ever be cleansed from the town entirely.
Two paramedics in stiff white shirts came up to her, rolling a stretcher between them. “Oh, guys,” she complained. “Is that really necessary?”
It was, and they helped her on and strapped her in. Just as they were going to wheel her away, Chief Daleson appeared out of the crowd, asking them to hold on a moment.
“Jon, Helen, I want you to hear this,” he said. “You too, Darcy. We just got a call from the state crime lab. I had asked them to put a rush on the fingerprints we found on that knife.”
“What knife?” Helen asked.
Daleson didn’t miss a beat. “The one that killed Bonnie Verhault. Guess whose prints were on the thing?”
“Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” Helen said, turning to look down at Darcy. “I didn’t kill her.”
“Nope, you sure didn’t,” the Chief agreed. It was obvious how happy it made him to be able to say it. “Turns out, she killed herself. Stabbed herself to death, based on the fingerprint evidence. We figure that land deal she was negotiating was turning sour on her. Probably a lot of other stresses in her life, too, if she could kill herself that way. Dumped herself on the lawn of the town’s mayor as some sort of crazy statement. Can you believe that?”
He looked from Helen, to Jon, to Darcy, the wind puffing out of his cheeks. “How come none of you seem surprised?”
“Darcy figured it out a little while ago, Chief,” Jon explained. “Come on. I’ll follow you down to the station. I’m sure there’s a lot to do.”
“You aren’t kidding,” the Chief grumped. “The lights came back on in town but now everyone is freaking out because of the fire, and that incident back at the station didn’t help. That, and the fact that it’s almost Halloween.”
The incident down at the station that he was talking about had turned out to be a rookie officer shooting off his weapon during a power grid failure. Accidental discharge. At least, that was what the official report would say.
Taking her hand, Jon leaned down to Darcy and kissed her cheek. “I’ll meet you at the hospital. They’ll probably have you discharged before I even get there.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked him. “The way I feel right now I’m going to have them admit me and keep me for a week.”
For a moment his expression slipped and she could see the effort it was costing him not to cry. Darcy had almost died this time. He had almost died. Helen, too, and how many others? No matter how the Chief and all the other people in town would try to rationalize what had happened, Jon and she would always know the truth. The Pilgrim Ghost had possessed Bonnie Verhault, tormented that poor woman until she had committed suicide and placed herself on Helen’s lawn. The same thing had almost happened to Helen. Not to mention how he had gotten into Darcy’s body and spirit as well.
“I’ll be all right,” she promised Jon. “Things will be better now. You’ll see.”
Darcy had no doubt that Nathaniel Williams had been at the core of a lot of Misty Hollow’s worst problems. How many good people had that one demonic spirit ruined? How different would things have been without him hanging around this town?
There was no way to know the answer to that one. The only thing they could do was pick up the pieces and move on. That, and be more careful in the future. If there had been one ghost hiding in the shadows of this town, there could be others.
“Sorry, folks, but we have to go,” one of the EMT’s said in a friendly but firm way.
Darcy didn’t want to let go of Jon’s hands, but she was already being rolled away.
As their fingers slipped apart he blurted out, “March twentieth. Okay?”
“What?” she said, straining to see him around the shoulders of the paramedic at the back of the stretcher. “What’s March twentieth?”
“The day we’re getting married.”
She was momentarily struck speechless. They had tried everything to come up with a day for their actual wedding and failed each time. To her, it had felt like he wasn’t really interested in a wedding at all. That was why she had offered to elope with him. Hearing him set a date made her heart leap in her chest.
“But…wait, wait. Why March twentieth?”
“Because it isn’t Valentine’s Day,” he said, moving through the crowds of people with the stretcher.
“But it’s so far away!” she complained.
With that lopsided smile of his that she loved so much, he made her a promise. “I’ll wait for you.”
The EMTs maneuvered the stretcher up into the ambulance, the metal supports collapsing under her as they locked in place. She had one last glimpse of Jon, then the doors to the ambulance closed, and she was on her way to the hospital. She was in pain, and exhausted, and even with all that she couldn’t help the smile that came over her.
They had a date. They were getting married.
Her life was perfect.
-The End-
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About the Author
Strongly influenced by authors like James Patterson, Dick Francis, and Nora Roberts, Kathrine Emrick is an up and coming talent in the writing world. She is a new Kindle author/publisher and brings a variety of experiences and observations to her writing.
Based in Australia, Kathrine has wanted to be an author for the majority of her life and can always be found jotting down daily notes in a journal. Like many authors, she loves to be surrounded by books and is a voracious reader.
In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family and volunteering at the local library.
Her goal is to become a bestselling author, regularly producing noteworthy content and engaging in a community of readers and writers.
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