Right after that was when she’d started seeing the dead. She’d always wondered if her mother had somehow bestowed that ability on her, though she couldn’t imagine how, or why.
Still… what if she’d been wrong? What if it hadn’t been her mom but something else that came to her that night? What if her mom had been stuck, like Jimmy, this entire time? And in her frustration, she finally found the power to manifest, with Marsha being the unsuspecting target of her emotional outburst?
It seemed far-fetched. But also possible—enough so to keep Chris from dismissing it out of hand, regardless of what her heart told her.
Of course, her heart also really wanted to see and talk to her mom again.
“This way,” she told Derek, turning right at the top of the stairs. Marsha’s room was the second door on the left.
Derek let out a dismayed-sounding grunt as her light illuminated the mess of a room. “How much of this was caused by the spirit and how much was Marsha packing her stuff in a hurry?”
She trained her flashlight on the bed, where strips of white chiffon lay strewn in tatters. “Well, we know this much was the spirit.” At the sight of the shredded veil, Chris shuddered. Whatever had done that was filled with a lot of hate and anger. No matter how much she wanted to see her mom again, the mere thought that her mother could be so full of violent rage made her queasy.
“Are you sensing anything?”
“Other than mild nausea and a little bit of fear? No.”
“Okay. So what do we do now?”
“Now, I try to make contact.” She looked at him, finding him by the faint outline made visible by her flashlight and the little red indicator light on his infrared camera. “You wait outside.”
The red light moved back and forth as he shook his head. “No way. I’m not leaving you in here alone with whatever did that.” She didn’t need to see him pointing at the veil’s remains to know what he meant.
“I’ll be okay. You’ll be right outside the door.”
“And what if something won’t let me open the door?”
Chris frowned. She hadn’t thought of that. Also because this felt eerily like one of her arguments with Ron, except she was on the other side of it. It was reckless to send him out of the room. But she needed to do this alone, at least until she knew. One way or the other.
“If I get locked in, run downstairs and shout for Ron or Joe. They should be able to come in and help.”
“Yeah, unless that same something snaps your neck or caves in your head in the space of time it takes me to round them up. I’m staying, Chris.”
“Derek—”
“No. This is not negotiable.”
“Derek.” Her voice was firm. “You’re right, it’s not. I need to do this alone. Don’t ask me why.”
“If you want me to walk out of this room and leave you on your own, I get to ask why.”
Chris remained silent. Derek didn’t budge. Finally, she blew out a sigh. “I think it could be my mom.”
“Your… why would you think that? I thought you said your mom moved on when you were a kid.”
“I thought she did. But Marsha had this idea. And I don’t know. I guess it’s possible. And if it is her, I feel like this would go better if it’s only me. Okay?”
He sighed. “No, not okay. What if it’s not her?”
“Then I’ll scream as loud as I can and both you and the ghosts we brought with us will rush to my rescue.” She shined her light around the room and shook her head. “It’s not like I sense anything here, anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s what you said the other night right before the van put on a show.”
Chris didn’t say anything to that. She simply waited out the long stretch of silence between them. Finally, she heard rustling and felt him move closer. His strong hand cradled the back of her head as he pressed his lips to her forehead. Then he pressed his own forehead against hers. “I’ll be right outside the door. Anything happens, you scream bloody murder.”
She couldn’t suppress the smile that tugged her lips if she wanted to. “You bet I will.”
His lips found hers in the darkness, and then he let her go. She waited until he closed the door behind him, then settled onto the bed and turned off the flashlight.
She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “Hello?” she called. “Is anyone here with me?” She waited, listening, paying attention for any changes in temperature or in the general vibe of the room. She felt in front of her for a piece of the veil and held it up. “Are you the one who did this?” She held onto it, twisting it between her fingers. “You must be very angry. You can tell me about it, if you’d like. I can hear you. I might be able to help you. My name is Chris.”
She licked her lips and amended, “Christine. I’m Christine Wilson.” Her heart pounding, she closed her eyes and summoned the courage to ask what was really on her mind. “Mom? Are you here? It’s me, Chrissy.”
She waited, straining all her senses to catch something, anything. But there was nothing. She felt deflated as she blew out the breath she’d been holding.
And then she jumped at the sound of something crashing.
She was still fumbling for her flashlight when Derek burst through the door. “Did you hear that?”
“It didn’t come from in here.” She found her light and turned it on, shining it around the room. Nothing had changed, and the noise had sounded too far away, anyway.
“No, I think it was downstairs. We should go check it out. You good?”
“Yeah,” she said, but realized as she said it that she was trembling. She got up from the bed and steadied herself. “Nothing’s happening in here. Let’s go.”
Ignoring the uncomfortable mix of disappointment and relief she felt, Chris followed Derek down the stairs, pausing at the bottom to listen. To the left, she heard voices speaking in hushed tones. “This way,” she told Derek, following the sound into a formal dining room. Her heart pounded as they went, but it slowed as they drew close enough to the source of the voices for them to become familiar. Passing through an archway to a large living area, she found her sister and Joe in the middle of an argument.
Chris cleared her throat. They both turned to regard her, Ron looking irritated, Joe looking defensive. “It’s the rest of our team,” Chris told Derek before asking the other two, “What happened?”
Ron’s gaze traveled to something on the floor. Chris shined her light at the spot and illuminated the shattered pieces of something all over the floor. Judging from the cut flowers strewn among the pieces and the puddle of water soaking into the rug, Chris decided to go with vase as an educated guess
“Something startled me and made me bump into it,” said Joe. “Do you think it was expensive?”
”In this house?” Chris shined her light around the room, spying oil paintings—probably originals—sculpture and other works of art. “I’m thinking probably. But don’t worry. We can blame it on the angry spirit.”
“I don’t feel right about that,” he said.
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’ll have to pay for it.”
“It’s probably insured, anyway,” said Ron.
Derek crouched down and picked through the pieces. “This looks like Fiestaware. My mom used to have half a dozen of these.” He looked up at Chris. “What did this?”
“Joe.”
“Oh.” He stood back up. “Well, these things go for around fifty bucks on eBay. So it’s not like he broke a Ming vase.”
“Well, thank the Lord for that,” said Chris. “What was it that spooked you so bad?”
“He heard crying,” said Ron, then pressed her lips together sheepishly at the look Joe gave her.
“Can I tell the story?”
She made an “after you” gesture with her hand.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I thought I heard crying somewhere behind me. I spun toward the sound and knocked right into the dadgum vase.”
“Crying? You’re sure?”
He shook his head. “Not exactly. It was over before the vase hit the floor.”
“Did you hear it, too?” she asked Ron, who shook her head.
“Sorry. I was distracted by the vintage tile on the fireplace surround.”
“Okay then, I guess we should all keep looking. I think Derek and I can cover the rest of the house. Why don’t you guys search the grounds? That’s where most of the alleged sightings of this white lady have taken place.”
“Sure. Conveniently, there’s nothing we can break out there.”
“Yeah, that too.”
Ron sighed and tugged Joe’s sleeve. “Come on, honey. The air’s a little thick in here, anyway.”
“So what’s going on?” Derek asked as the two ghosts dematerialized. “Who was crying?”
“That’s what we need to find out,” Chris said, thinking about her mom, imagining decades of loneliness and still not sure what she hoped to find.
Chapter Six
The grounds were as beautiful as the house they served. The moon, still a few days from peak fullness, bathed the beautifully landscaped lawn in pearlescent light. Lush gardens radiated out from the house, filled with about a million varieties of plants and flowers. The front lawn sloped down to a sparkling pond on one side of the house, with thick woods beyond. As lovely as it was at night, Ron imagined it must be breathtaking in the daylight.
“It really is a perfect place for a wedding,” she said.
“I s’pose.” Joe sounded unimpressed. “Mine was in a church. A little one, at that. My mama baked the weddin’ cake. Why can’t people be happy with a simple little church wedding anymore?”
“Because today’s brides want to feel like a princess, even if it’s only for a day.”
“My bride wore her best Sunday dress and a new bonnet from the Montgomery Ward catalogue. She carried flowers cut from her mother’s rose bushes. I don’t doubt she felt any less the princess on our wedding day than Marsha will on hers.” He looked off into the distance, a wistful look on his face. “I sure thought she looked like one, at any rate.”
Ron felt guilty at the sharp pang of jealousy that stabbed at her until she realized that it wasn’t Joe’s long-gone wife she was jealous of. Really, it was the fact that he’d been married at all. Not that she begrudged him for having loved someone before her. But she envied him for getting to experience marriage while he was alive.
She supposed that what they had now was pretty close to a marriage, but that was mostly by default. And as much as she loved sharing her current existence with Joe, the truth was that she would never know what it was like to actually share her life with someone.
And she’d never get to be a princess. Or even a bride.
“You okay?” Joe asked suddenly.
“Yeah,” she said, surprised at how sad she sounded even to her own ears. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She said this with more conviction.
“You don’t sound fine. I’m sorry. You don’t want to hear about my late wife.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s…” She shook her head and sighed. “I think it’s finally sinking in, how much I’m going to miss out on by dying young. I’ve never really let myself think about it. But all this wedding business is kind of driving it home. I’ll never get married, never have kids or a career, never go to Paris…”
“Who says you can’t go to Paris?”
She shook her head. “You know what I mean. Even if we could pop over there, it’s not like we could enjoy a croissant and cafe au lait on the Champs Elysees.” She stopped walking as the weight of sadness she’d been trying to fend off washed over her. Looking helplessly up at Joe, she said, “My life is over.”
The look on his face matched what she was feeling as he simply gazed down at her in silence. After a long moment, he nodded and gently said, “I know.” He reached out and stroked her hair, his gaze turning wistful. Suddenly, he pulled his hand away, his demeanor going all stoic and resolved. “If you can make peace with that, then you’ll be able to cross over to what comes next.”
“Oh, stop that.” She started down the slope toward the pond. Joe’s biggest fear was that she would one day decide she’d had enough of this limbo—or maybe enough of him—and grab the first opportunity to walk into the golden light that led to whatever was beyond this veil of existence, a barrier his suicide disqualified him from crossing.
Which was exactly why she stayed. She could never reassure him enough that she had no intention of crossing over unless they could do so together, hand in hand. She would simply have to stick around and show him. “I’m in no hurry to don a halo and start strumming a harp, or whatever it is they do on the other side.” She glanced back to see if he was following her. He was. “But I’m realizing that I’ve never really let myself process this. My death, I mean. I’ve never allowed myself to grieve my loss.”
“Not sure why you’d want to,” he said catching up to her. “I’ve dealt with plenty of grief in my time. It’s generally something I try to avoid.”
“See, now that’s not healthy.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and crept down to the edge of the pool. Across the way, on the opposite side of the pond, sat a large gazebo. “I guess the difference with me is that I already lost everything before I died. I didn’t have anything left to live for.” He looked over at her. “If only I could’ve met you back then. I would’ve had a reason to keep going.”
Ron smiled in spite of her sadness and took his hand. They stood there a long while, gazing at the moon reflected on the water. She tried to think of something to say to shake off the sadness and regain her cheerful optimism. She opened her mouth to tell Joe how much she loved him, but he spoke first.
“Did you see that?”
She looked around. “See what?”
He stared at the gazebo. “Over there. I thought I saw a flash of something white.”
“The white lady!” Ron let go of his hand and willed herself to the other side of the pond, dematerializing from where she stood and rematerializing in the middle of the gazebo platform. A second later, Joe appeared beside her. “Did you see where she went?”
He pointed toward the woods. “Looked like that direction, but it was so fast I can’t be too sure.”
“I’ll check the woods. You stay here in case she reappears.”
She popped herself to the edge of the woods before he could argue and stood peering into the darkness. The leaves on the trees were so thick, and the trees so close together, that the moonlight barely penetrated. Ron had an advantage in that her kind didn’t really need light to see—probably because she didn’t really have eyes, only the appearance of them, which was another one of those things she hadn’t really let herself think about too much, and now wasn’t really the best time to start.
But she didn’t need ghost eyes to see snatches of ghostly white, illuminated by something other than moonlight, weaving in and out between the trees. She saw enough of a flutter to get the impression of a dress.
“Hello!” she called. “Hey! Stop running! We want to help you!” The apparition didn’t slow down. She gave chase. However she might feel about being dead, at the moment she was grateful to not have to worry about tripping over roots or slamming her head into a low-hanging branch as she made her way effortlessly through the woods. Even without the obstacles that would slow the living, though, she still couldn’t catch up to the fleeing ghost—if indeed that’s what she was chasing.
“Wait!” she called out in frustration. As if in answer, a low, mournful wail seemed to fill the woods around her. Ron couldn’t pinpoint where the sound came from, but it filled her with an even deeper sadness than the one she already felt. After a moment of listening to this phantom sobbing, she began to feel heavy with the weight of despair. She stopped and tried to pull herself together. Suddenly, she couldn’t think of a reason to go on. She was so tired, and her life was over. So why was she still here?
“Ron!” Joe called, and the wailing stopped. T
he fog that had settled over her lifted, and her reason for staying appeared next to her. “Are you okay? What in blazes was that?”
“I don’t know. Did you hear that?”
“I did. Never heard nothin’ like it. I figured if that sound was having the same effect on you as it was on me, I’d better find you fast.”
“Thank God you did. But since she stopped crying the feeling’s going away.”
“Yeah, for me, too. You sure that was a she and not an it?”
“I have an idea of what we might be dealing with.” She reached out and grabbed his hand, more for the feeling of being anchored it gave her than for anything else. “Come on, let’s get out of here. We need to find Chris and let her know what we found.”
Chris found herself back in the bedroom where she’d started. She and Derek had gone through the entire house room by room. Twice, even. First, they searched together, and then to be thorough, they split up to do one more sweep. But they found nothing. Not even the sense of a presence. Whatever had menaced Marsha—assuming that she hadn’t dreamed the whole thing, maybe even destroyed the veil herself during some kind of sleepwalking episode—had apparently left when she did.
At least Chris could tell Marsha that her wedding venue didn’t appear to require an exorcism.
She turned the bedroom light on and sat on the bed, taking advantage of a moment of solitude to examine the disappointment she felt. Had she wanted the troubled spirit to be her mother? Not really. More than anything, she’d wanted to prove that it couldn’t be her mother, both to vindicate her and to reinforce Chris’s belief that her mom had moved on to her final rest. The last thing she wanted was for her mom to be so tortured that she’d pull a Bertha Rochester on Marsha’s veil.
Still, there was that tiny part of her that simply wanted to see her mom again. That part couldn’t be denied, nor could she deny sadness at her mom being well and truly gone. Chris realized she had questions only her mom could answer. Did she have something to do with giving Chris this ability? Had she been able to see the dead herself, or did this thing run in the family? Her mother’s sister, Aunt Judy, had never seemed surprised by it, but they’d never really talked about it, either. Maybe that should change.
Bound Spirits Page 5
