“The necklace that Brendan gave me.” She pointed at her body. “It isn’t there I must have dropped it somewhere. Or, maybe that stupid bitch took it off of me when she got inside the house. Damn it!”
“Drew, I don’t remember you having it on when I took you to the house. Besides, you are dead at the moment what do you need it for? You know what they say… “You can’t take it with you.””
“I’m not dead!” Drew yelled. “Besides, my body has that stupid ring of Lezetta’s on! She must have traded it and hid it somewhere.” She was looking frantically around the ground for her necklace. Mary Ann and Liza stared at each other now, the idea seeming to click for both of them at the same time.
“Drew!” They screamed in unison.
“What? I have to find that necklace! Brendan gave it to me!” Drew wanted to cry but of course the tears wouldn’t come. “Please help me find it!”
“Drew, honey, I think Lezetta might be wearing it.” Liza said excitedly.
Brendan, for the first time in one hundred and fifty years actually wished that he was a ghost. There was no way that he could take on Danny. Danny tired of Brendan’s ducking and running after only a couple of shots and found a way to make himself invisible then visible again just before he pounded on him.
It didn’t take long for Brendan to be knocked down as he had no way of defending himself. Danny turned around and headed for the women who were now struggling to open the tomb where Lezetta’s decomposing neck lay wrapped in a beautiful Celtic necklace that Brendan had gifted to Drew.
“Does someone want to tell me how my necklace would have gotten inside of this grave?” Drew demanded of Mary Ann and Liza.
“I think that Lezetta traded jewelry with you in order to trade spirits with you. How the hell do we get this thing open?” Liza cried out.
“Watch out Drew!” Mary Ann screamed. Danny was headed straight for her.
“Oh, ye are a pretty little thing.” He snarled. “I can’t wait to get my hands on you when my Lezetta and I both become of flesh again. Ye are a little too innocent for my liking though I am afraid. I will be takin care of that part though soon enough.”
Drew swore she saw drool slithering out of his mouth. She shuddered as she imagined it to be a very cold and slimy thing. She didn’t know how it was possible that they could be twins. Other than their looks they were nothing alike. Brendan was charming and soft hearted underneath his attempt to be stubborn at times while Danny was just pure evil. The darkness bled from his pours.
Once Brendan was able to find himself again, he took off across the cemetery towards Danny and the girls. He knew there was no way to stop him though he had to at least try to slow him down.
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, brother?” Brendan yelled as he ran towards him.
Danny stopped just as he had Drew by the throat. Drew didn’t know how it was possible but she could smell his rotten breath as it lingered much too closely to her face. Danny turned around to watch his brother in amusement.
“And what is it that ye think ye can do, lad?” Danny chimed. He tossed Drew aside and made his way back to Brendan in three long very dedicated strides. “You are doing nothing but being a pain in me arse!”
The next thing Brendan knew he was being flown across the grave yard toward the girls, hitting his head hard on Lezetta’s tombstone. They all heard a crack… then a sizzle… and Brendan was gone.
“Oh, God!” Liza cried. “Where did he go?”
“Ha, who says ye can’t die twice, aye?” Danny was wearing his evil grin from ear to ear. “And in practically the same way no less! Come on back Brendan and let me crack yer egg one more time as we all know, third time is a charm!”
“Where the hell did he go?” Liza screamed again.
Mary Ann and Drew who were both in the spirit world searched desperately for him to reappear, but there was no sign.
The force of Brendan’s head on the tombston e had pushed the solid concrete lid away from the tombstone just enough for Liza to get her fingers between and begin to pull. Drew saw her friend hiding behind the grave struggling and crossed her heart and decided it was time to get the ball rolling or she was going to be stuck in that cemetery for all of eternity. She gave Mary Ann a nod towards Liza and then headed towards Danny to pretend to be working on the biggest tip of her life. God, how she hated flirting.
“Wow, you really are so much more of a man than Brendan could ever be.” She said, walking towards Danny and batting her eyes. He gave her an uncertain look, but it was in his nature to take to the compliment of being better than his brother.
As Drew reached him she slowly reached up to his face and held his cheek in her palm. She looked him straight in the eyes with as much sexy as she could muster under her crawling skin.
“Now that I have met you, I don’t know what I ever saw in him. He is weak and you are clearly everything that I have ever wanted in a man, and once we are both of flesh, I can’t imagine what you could do with that beautiful mouth of yours… all over my virgin body.”
Danny was hypnotized. All she had to do was say virgin and he was sold. He took one of her ghostly breasts in his hand. What he wouldn’t give to feel her right now, to taste every inch of her. By the Gods how long had it been since he felt a woman’s warm flesh against his own?
Brendan woke up again in the blasted upstairs room that he had come to hate. Only this time it was different. The room looked so much smaller, he thought he could actually see the other wall that he had faced so many times, but couldn’t quite focus in on. Instead, he realized that he was staring at the ceiling. He was lying on the floor in the exact same place that he had taken his last breath so many years before.
He couldn’t move. Not because he was stunned, he literally felt paralyzed from the nose down. What was wrong with him? The back of his head was pounding and he swore that he felt a pool of warm blood starting to form around his head on the floor. He tried hard to sit up, but still nothing. Soon what he was afraid of happened… the room began to fade to black and he passed out.
“What are we to do, Miss Liza?” Mary Ann as ked once Liza finally held the necklace in her hand. “She has distracted him long enough for us to retrieve the necklace, but ye can’t carry Drew’s body out of here on your own… we must wake her up! Och, Lezetta will never let us switch the jewelry knowingly and she will never leave the cemetery with you alive!”
“I have an idea!” Liza said.
Though Drew knew she wouldn’t feel it in her spirit state, the thought of his mouth on hers made her want to barf. Still, she let him lean into her anyway. If anything, she may be able to convince him into letting her have her body back; she could then make a run for it. He leaned in and she made the best of it by closing her eyes and pretending that he was Brendan. Though they looked just a like she knew the difference, she could see it in his black eyes.
She was wrong, she could feel it. It burned like all of the fires of hell and he was sucking the little power that she had right out of her. She had a sudden memory of her real father. Though she hadn’t thought about him much over the years a moment came to mind then.
She was very young and he had lit the fireplace so that they could roast marshmallows. She remembered the bright blue flames that danced along with the red, orange, and yellow. It fascinated her and she had asked her father if that part of the fire was cold because on the faucets the cold water was blue and the hot water was red. He had laughed his hearty laugh, patted her on the head, and told her that in the case of fire, it was the hottest part of the fire.
She didn’t understand until that moment how any fire could be hotter than another. Fire was just plain hot no matter what color it was. The kiss that Brendan had given her had lit her up for sure. It was like nothing she had ever felt before then again she didn’t have much to compare it to as far as kisses went. She had definitely felt a burn throughout her body with his kiss and it was a good burn. It had been a burn that she would n
ever get enough of.
Danny’s kiss burned her too alri ght. It was what she imagined her dad would have called blue fire. She imagined it was what the poor women had felt when they were being burnt at the stake for witch craft. If she could have screamed, it would have definitely woken up the dead.
Drew knew that this was the end of whatever mission she had been on in life and in her brief after life of what seemed like purgatory and hell all in one. Though she had no idea what was to become of her soul next she knew that it wouldn’t be here. It wouldn’t be as she was now. She felt herself fading away. She opened her eyes and saw her step father; the look of psychotic lust tattooing her soul. He had to hurt her one more time didn’t he?
Then the vision of her step father morphed into a new vision, one of her mother. It was such a sad face. One of disgust, pity, and self-defying guilt; what her mother must have felt all the while she was growing up. Her mother had no idea what to do. She saw it in her eyes. She had no idea how to handle her daughter, and she blamed herself for the pain that she knew now mirrored in her own eyes, the pain of loving someone so much that the best thing that you knew to do for them was to just walk away and let them grow on their own, in their own way.
Just when she thou ght she couldn’t take any more and was praying for God to take her now, the vision of her mother turned into a man and a woman, they were as one. She and Brendan, their faces collided. They merged together and the sight was so beautiful that she felt the tears fall freely down her face. So, that was love; two lost souls colliding. And then, love was lost for the two became one again, and she was all alone.
Was this heaven? She hoped not. It hurt so much. It hurt more than the blue fire of Danny’s kiss taking her life, it hurt more than finding that even in her after life she would never forget the lustful looks from the devil himself, more than understanding that her mother really did love her and she would never be able to tell her that she loved her in return. The pain of knowing that she would never be with Brendan, that she would never see him again, took whatever else that she may have been holding on to for she didn’t want to live anymore if it couldn’t be with him.
The girls couldn’t believe wh at they had just seen. Drew had only kissed Danny they knew in order to keep him occupied while they were hopefully making things right. What Drew had done instead was saved them all on her own. The virgin’s innocent kiss hadn’t just incinerated Danny’s evil spirit; it sent it straight to hell. How was that for fairy tales coming true? If only happily ever after didn’t look to be such a long way away.
Liza had to cover her earthly ears as the pain that she heard from the other side was too much to bear. She saw both Drew’s and Danny’s lives flash before her eyes in horror just before the ground opened up and hundreds of flaming skeletal hands reached up and grabbed him and pulled him into the darkest, scariest world she had ever seen.
Mary Ann stood in shock of it all; both her eyes and mouth wide open. She had been one of the evil doings of her brother, and watching her own death from what she assumed were his eyes, portrayed on what seemed like a gruesome projection screen, was more than she was willing to bear. If sitting down would help she would. If crying was something that she was capable of she would have cried a thousand rivers. Instead she closed her mouth and her eyes and whispered, “Let us get on with it then.”
“We have lost Drew, Mary Ann.” Liza whispered back in a voice that sounded so foreign that she even had to look around to make sure there was no one else with them.
“Aye, but we can’t be given her body to Lezetta, Love.” They both nodded in unison.
Liza took the necklace that she held in her hand and carefully placed it over Drew’s sleeping head. Mary Ann tried to remove the ring but she couldn’t find the energy to move a dust particle, much less a solid ring that was wrapped tightly around a human finger.
“What do you think wil l happen to her when she lays soulless, Mary Ann?” Liza felt the tears falling now. She had never been sure about whether or not heaven and hell existed, she had yet to see heaven but she was quite sure that what she had witnessed just a moment before was hell and she prayed to her new found God that her dear friend was not there; anywhere but there.
“I don’t know... I just don’t know.” Mary Ann put her head down. What would happen to her now? Would she remain in the cemetery, just her and Lezetta for all of eternity? In her living years she had believed in God, for so many torturous years though, He had never come for her. She was sure that she had just witnessed hell as well and she still didn’t understand why she was still there on Earth, trapped in the middle.
Liza understood what she had said and had no idea how to correct it. So, she just kept her mouth shut and removed the ring from Drew’s finger and threw it into the tomb along with Lezetta’s rotting corpse where it belonged.
The vibration and bang that followed was so powerful that it knocked Liza on her ass and Drew’s body onto the ground.
“Mary Ann?” Liza said, standing up and wiping the dust off of her slightly bruising rear end. If it was possible, Mary Ann looked even paler than she had before.
“Aye?” Mary Ann said shakily, staring at Drew’s lifeless body in horror.
“I will carry her up to the house.” Liza said after realizing what Mary Ann was worrying over. “I’m not sure if there is anything that I can do but I am going to try. I don’t want to be in this cemetery any more though and I don’t want her here either.”
“I wish that I was able to come with you.” Mary Ann said. “Alas, I’ve been trying to get out of this damnable place for what seems like an eternity. It seems that I am bound to it and am unable to do so.”
“I don’t plan on letting anyone go anywhere!” Lezetta screamed as she rose from her above ground grave behind them. “At least not until the two of you have placed that girl’s body back into the circle.”
“Sorry to rain o n your wicked little parade, Lezetta. You are welcome to reenter Drew’s body all that you like, but I’m afraid it won’t do you any good. She is dead.” Liza said through her teeth.
Brendan’s head throbbed. He looked around and saw, though his vision was blurry, that he was back in the cursed office of his home, the damnable room that never seemed to be very welcoming. He tried to sit up, but when he did the pain raced across the back of his head with such force that he almost past out again. He laid his head back down on the hard cold wooden floor. He had to just relax for a moment and let the birds that had flocked around his head settle their way down.
He laid there breathing in and out. Slowly he tried to remember what had happened. Someone had hit him in the back of the head. He sat up more cautiously this time. He placed his hand on the back of his head when the throbbing wouldn’t subside and felt the warm ooze of fresh blood.
“Bastard!” Whoever had hit him on the head had whopped him a good one. He grabbed the edge of the desk and pulled himself up. That’s when he saw the blood on his hand, and the blood on the floor, and a body that looked all too familiar fading in the moonlight that had slipped through the window.
“What in bloody hell?” W as all that he could say as he watched himself fade away in front of his very own eyes. With shaking hands he reached for the door that led to the upstairs hallway. This was his home, yet everything seemed so strange. Was he dead? He felt for a moment like he was in a foreign land. When he reached the balcony and peered over he saw the burnt curtain lying on the floor, the television from the future against the wall, and he screamed, “Drew!”
Lezetta with her gorgeous flowing hair and glowing eyes was on Liza like a cat. “I need the ring! You have to place her back in the circle now and give me that damned necklace!” She said as Liza had removed the necklace from around Drew’s neck for safe keeping.
“Over my dead body!” Liza screamed as she dodged a very angry translucent Lezetta.
“Oh my dear one, that can be very easily arranged!”
Liza knew better though. Lezetta was a
strong energy, but she didn’t possess the power that Danny had had. She knew that she could easily run away and leave Lezetta there screaming for all eternity but she wasn’t about to leave Drew there with her. Even though Drew’s body may be going to a cemetery soon she would be damned if it was going to be that one.
“Mary Ann! I need your help!” Liza called out to the poor girl sitting helplessly on the edge of her own tomb. “Mary Ann, this isn’t the time to be giving up! I could really use your help right now!”
As Liza tried to make her way back around to Drew she pleaded and begged with Mary Ann. How could the girl just sit there with her elbows on her knees like that? Liza was running out of breath and swore she was making a path in the grass from running in circles.
She finally made her way back to Drew’s body and grabbed underneath her arms. “I’m so sorry Drew that I have to torture your body like this but we got to get the hell out of Dodge, Sister!”
Lezetta was coming for her again but this time she didn’t care. She was going to hold her ground the best that she could. Lezetta was building power the madder she got and she had a feeling that the dark shadow Lezetta had now manifested into was going to hurt like a bitch as it was headed straight for her.
“Mary Ann!” Liza screamed as she closed her eyes to take the punch. Instead of a punch though, she felt a cool breeze just touch her hair, the Celtic necklace that she had been holding was swiped from her hand and she heard what sounded like an Irish chanting. She opened her eyes to see a flash of light slam into the darkness that had been coming towards her like a bat outof hell… literally she thought.
Just then a strong arm wrapped around her waist and swung her around. She saw Brendan grab a hold of Drew with his other arm and wondered how the hell he could move so fast with the extra two hundred and fifty pounds that he was dragging.
She looked back in time to see the darkness that had been darker than the night as well as the beam of light that had possibly saved her life, vanish into thin air.
Ghost of a Chance Book 1 in Above the Grave Trilogy Page 19
