“Roxanne, please!” he exclaimed. “Must you screech right in my ear?”
“Well . . . yes! Yes I must! What the heck are you?” I asked, poking my finger into him several more times to various depths, ignoring the icy sensation this produced. “This can’t be right!”
Elmer smiled his calm, amused smile again at me. “I’m a ghost, Roxanne. Or a spirit, if you prefer. I chose to remain here after I died. I had something important to do that kept me here.”
Now I know I’ve lost my mind. A ghost. Riiight. This old man sitting here in Sam’s kitchen expects me to believe he’s—dead—and he’s haunting her house? Nurse? Can I have more of those drugs? Wait. Did Leo, er Dr. Lane, mention anything about brain damage?
“And exactly what . . . important thing did you have to do that kept you here . . . Elmer?”
“Come in and sit down. It’s kind of a long story.”
“That’s okay. I’m good over here. Wait. First tell me why Sam has never mentioned a little thing like the fact that she has a ghost living with her?”
He shrugged his shoulder. “She doesn’t know.”
I cocked my head a little at that, processing it. “And—why is that?”
“She can’t see me.”
“And yet I can. Tell me Elmer, why is that?”
“Must be that nasty bump to the head you took,” he said with another shrug, “either when Steven punched you or when your head hit the cement and bounced a couple of times. I saw the whole thing, you know. Not that I can be a witness for you in court. Nobody else would be able to see or hear me.”
“Wait. You saw it? All of it?”
“Indeed.”
“So then maybe you can tell me something that I haven’t been able to figure out, and apparently Sam missed.”
“Try me.”
“Right after Steven hit me and I fell down, my vision was all blurry. But I remember him looking at me—or something behind me—like he was completely terrified. I thought I heard something really loud, and I’m sure I saw something really big fly over me and knock Steven down. What was that?”
“Jake!”
“Jake?”
“Yes. Jake is my Newfoundland dog. I’m old and not very fast—even ghosts have limits—so when I saw Steven become violent with you, I sent Jake over to intervene. It appeared to me that Steven could hear Jake barking and growling as he came, but couldn’t see him. I would imagine that would terrify Steven. Jake is—I mean was—a big fella! He used to go one-hundred-fifty pounds at least.”
“Used to. Was. Is Jake a ghost too then? A ghost dog?”
“That, he is. Jake? Come here boy. Let Miss Roxanne see you.”
Right next to me a huge black dog with long black fur poking out all over appeared. The thing was the size of a pony! Or maybe a bear. He nudged me gently with his snout. Not. His snout passed right through me. I felt a definite and instant chill, but nothing physically touched me. I’m kind of ashamed to admit that I may have wet myself a tiny bit.
Oh, the joys of being forty . . .
I pulled out a stool on the opposite side of the snack bar and sat down on it with a thump. “Please explain to me why he can’t touch me, yet he was able to knock Steven flat on his a—, erm, butt?”
“Oh, sure. Spirits can make physical contact with the living, if they really want to, but it takes a lot of their energy. It’s much easier to just make the living hear us, but Jake knew he had to stop Steven from hurting you even more, so he just did what he had to. He needed to rest for several days afterward in order to regain his strength. He’s no young fella himself, you know.”
I turned and looked at Jake. I started to reach out to pet his massive head, remembered I couldn’t, and pulled my hand back. “Thank you Jake, for doing that for me,” I told him. I started to relax, just a little. Then it hit me— “Shit. I'm seeing dead things.”
***
We spent most of the day talking, until I realized what time it was. Sam would be home from work soon and here I was, still in my pajamas. I excused myself and went upstairs to shower and get dressed. My life kept getting weirder and weirder by the day. Freaking unbelievable!
When I came back downstairs, Elmer and Jake were nowhere to be seen. And I did look for them. And call them. Nothing.
Do I dare mention this to Sam, or will she have me put away somewhere for being batshit crazy? Yeah . . . No! Better that I keep my mouth shut. For now. Ghosts. Who would have ever thought? Am I nuts?
I got a text from Sam that she was five minutes out, with dinner. We were experimenting with different foods put through the blender. And being my crazy, ride-or-die friend, she was eating the same things I was, minus anything extra to soup it down, since she could actually chew. We had both crossed salad off the list of foods we could stomach eating this way. Though most of the chunky soups weren’t too bad, watered down with broth. Tonight it would be Whoppers from Burger King. And fries. Shaking my head, I settled into a comfy love seat in her living room, opened a magazine she had there, and made like I’d been lounging there all day.
***
The next few days followed nearly the same pattern. Elmer, sometimes with Jake, sometimes not, would sit and talk to me while I made my breakfast smoothie. He would occasionally answer the myriad of questions I threw at him.
Where do you go when you aren’t here? What do you do all day? Are those the clothes you died in? You don’t peek at Sam in the shower, do you? You don’t peek at me in the shower, do you?
Those last two questions had him spluttering and blushing. He insisted quite vehemently he would never do that.
I spent the rest of those days on Sam’s treadmill, watching television, reading, and looking up new smoothie recipes. Sam had brought my purse, laptop, phone, and a few essentials from my house. She had even changed the security code, in case Michelle tried to get in. I wasn’t ready to go back there yet, but I knew I would have to suck it up and go sooner rather than later. According to Sam, the accounts were now unfrozen. Steven had managed to hire some hotshot lawyer and would be out on bail any day now.
Speaking of which, I had received a few interesting texts from Michelle. Some were from when I was still in the hospital, all were pretty much the same. Demands that I drop the charges against her dad and that I respond to her texts. Then a boatload of profanity and even a couple threats. There were several phone calls from her number where she hung up without leaving any messages. I ignored all of it, per Sam’s advice. She told me not to erase the texts or the records of the phone calls. She would use them to prove harassment, if needed.
When the day finally came, Sam took me to Dr. Rhea’s office to have my jaw unwired. I was almost disappointed in the process. With just a few snips of the wires, she undid the latex bands, looked over her handiwork, gave me a pamphlet with instructions, warnings, etc., and pronounced me good to go—call her if I had any issues. Her office would bill my insurance and send me a statement for what I would owe.
Chapter 6
“Roxanne—there are lots of other things out there besides ghosts like me. Dangerous things. Things you don’t want noticing you.”
“Like what?” I wanted to know more about my new world. Elmer had agreed to tell me what he could, so here we were, in Sam’s kitchen. I fixed myself a breakfast smoothie. I was down almost twenty pounds now, no way was I going to put it back on without a fight—rinsed out the blender, and sat down at the snack bar. He was sitting at the magazine-worthy farm table, Jake leaning against his leg.
“I don’t know all of them. Heck, I probably don’t even know most of them. I try to stay close to home for a reason. There’s things out there that—,” he paused, face scrunched in thought, “well, from what I was told when I was little and my Grandmam figured out that I was like her, with the Sight and all—there’s things that can use someone with the Sight. Use them for bad stuff.”
I had a million more questions but I let him talk. I had my notebook out and figured I would write dow
n anything relevant.
“See, the Sight was strong in my family. That’s how it works. Bloodlines either have it or they don’t. Some of them are strong with it while others can barely See,” Elmer chewed on his lip for a moment. “The ones that are strong, they grow up with it and have to learn to hide it. Those that aren’t very strong with it, they might only have it when they’re little. Then they outgrow it and eventually forget about it. The things that those ones See are generally explained away as being part of an overactive imagination or whatnot.
“I think that was you,” he went on, pointing at me. “I think you must have had at least a little of the Sight when you were a kid. And that knock to your head just flipped it back on, like a light switch. But I think it’s stronger in you now than it’s supposed to be. I can . . . see it in you. And if I can, then Others will, too.”
Jake groaned and flopped over onto Elmer’s feet. He bent down and rubbed the monstrous mutt’s ears. That dog really did look like a bear. And he drooled more than I had with my jaw hardware. I looked down, expecting to see puddles on the floor under him, but it was completely dry. Weird.
“Did your wife know you could, um, See?” I asked, curious. I ignored that last thing he said, processing it.
“Oh, yes. She had a touch of it, too, I always thought,” he said wistfully. “I sure miss that woman. Especially her voice. She could sing like a bluebird. She hated her name, so the family always called her Birdie.”
“Did you two ever talk about being able to See things?”
“Sometimes. What I could See, she could only sense, I think. And once in a while there were things that she sensed, that I couldn’t See,” he shook his head. “My Grandmam, she said it all came down to the blood.”
“What about your kids, Elmer? Couldn’t they See you after you passed?”
Shaking his head sadly, “No. It can skip a generation, sometimes two. I’m glad, though. They aren’t in danger, at least. But I worry about their kids and their future grandkids. There won’t be anyone to teach them any of this.”
I thought about that for a moment as Elmer seemed to lose himself to his own thoughts. If the Seeing was passed down through families . . . Where had mine come from?
My parents had been older when they had me. They were both gone now, as were both sets of my grandparents. I had an aunt on my mother’s side that lived down in NOLA, last I had heard, but she and my mother had never gotten along so I didn’t really know her. She had sent several generous gifts for my wedding but hadn’t attended. That was pretty much the last time I’d heard from her. I didn’t know if she had any children or not, even. My mother had rarely mentioned her. I wrote a quick reminder in my notebook to touch base with her at some point. Maybe she would know something about all of this . . .
“So what else do you want to know Roxanne?” Elmer asked, apparently having snapped back to the present.
“Hmm. What other ‘things’ are there out there besides ghosts? That you know of, anyway.”
“Well, there’s the witches,” he started, then chuckled at the expression on my face. My eyebrows had to be lost in my hairline. “You asked, girl. Now listen up. Witches. And not those kind they call Wiccans that sit around knitting and singing Kumbaya out in the woods, pretending to pray to the moon or whatever. I’m talking about real witches. The kind that can curse you, capture you, and suck your power down like a hot cup of tea. Or they will use you to find ghosts like me. Like most other things, there’s good ones and bad ones. Mostly there’s bad ones, though.”
“Wait, wait—what do you mean suck my power down? And why would they want a ghost?”
“I don’t know how they do it and I most certainly don’t know why. I’m just telling you what Grandmam told me. If they catch you, they will use your power one way or another,” he shook his head. “She thought maybe they could absorb or steal your Sight for a time and use it so they could see Others, too. But for some reason, they can’t use it for very long. I saw a witch catch a ghost once. It wasn’t pretty. She stuck him in some kind of a bottle thing, like he was a Genie. That ghost had been around for close to twenty years, always watching over his kids. I never saw him again.”
Shivering, I wrote down everything he’d told me.
“Umm, okay. What else?”
“Let’s see now . . . there’s the Shifters, the Necros, the Vampires, the Fae . . .”
“Vampires? Like Dracula Vampires?” I’m pretty sure my voice had squeaked up several octaves. Even Jake cocked his head at me. “And what is a Necro?”
He chuckled. “Yes, there are Vampires. There aren’t a lot and I have never seen any around here, but they do exist. I’ve only ever seen one, in fact. Birdie and I went down south for a vacation one year, back in the eighties. She sensed him before I Saw him. I don’t know how to even describe how I knew what he was . . . I just knew. I think that goes back to why the witches hunt us.
Anyway, that vampire, he knew us, too. He didn’t seem to be interested in me much, but he sure honed in on my Birdie. Scared her pretty bad, he did.”
“What, um, what did he do?” I asked, swallowing hard. This was worse than a ghost story.
“He didn’t really do anything that I could see. But Birdie, she said he kept calling her, in her head, like. That he knew her name. Now, she said she didn’t know what he was, not like I did, just that he felt . . . wrong to her. We didn’t stay in town like we had originally planned. In fact, we drove two states over before she settled down enough to do more than keep looking out the back window.”
This was unreal. Witches. Vampires. Fae. If it weren’t for the fact that I was here, sucking down a smoothie, talking to a freaking ghost and his ghost dog - that had pretty much saved my life—I would have thought this was a weird dream. Or maybe a nightmare, as I considered the state the rest of my life was in.
“Having a hard time taking all this in?” Elmer asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. It’s a bit . . . much. I mean, you and Jake? I think I’ve had enough time to process you guys. And, I thought the rest would be less—” I found I was at a loss. “Just, less, I suppose.”
“I think it’s harder for the ones like you. The ones that didn’t grow up Seeing the Others in the world. I was luckier than most in that I had my Grandmam and a couple others in my family to tell me what was what. And like I already mentioned, I had to learn early on how to hide what I could See from anyone who couldn’t—especially back then. You can probably imagine what happened to people who could See things that regular people couldn’t, right?”
I nodded, swallowing hard. “Were they hauled off to the loony bins?”
“Sanitariums. They did awful things to them in those places, Roxie. Electric shock therapy. Hydrotherapy. Heavy sedation and Psychotropic drugs. Isolation. And what’s worse is that they became easy pickings for the Others.”
“H-How do you mean?” I was pretty sure that I would never sleep again, at this point.
“Witches and some of the Others can hide in plain sight. They might look like you or Sam, or even your neighbors, but most of them are predators, don’t you doubt it for a minute. They learned early on that sanitariums, hospitals, homeless shelters, places like those all make great hunting grounds. They could waltz right in, take what they wanted, and no one would be the wiser. A coven could even put one of their own in there as a doctor. It would practically be a smorgasbord for them.” Now he was getting worked up, agitation marring his normally calm demeanor.
“A coven? Like, a group of witches? Elmer, now you are freaking me out!” My thoughts jumped to Steven. He did this to me! I didn’t ask for this, to have to worry about being hunted by groups of witches!
“I’m sorry, Roxie. I know this is probably not how you pictured your life, even in your wildest dreams.”
“Dreams? Try nightmares! What am I going to do? How am I supposed to even go outside? If they look just like everyone else, how will I know before they get me?” I was panicking, I knew that. I just
couldn’t help it.
“Roxanne, witches look like regular folk to regular folk. You will recognize one when you See her. And there are ways to hide yourself from some of the Others. Not all of them, though. We may have to cover that another day, if that’s alright with you. I’m getting kind of tired.”
Tired? How could a ghost be tired? I looked over at him, pushing my own anxiety over everything I had just learned out of my mind for the moment. He did look a little less glowy than normal.
“Are you okay, Elmer? Is there, um, something I can do?” Smooth Roxie. Why don’t you just offer to get him a glass of water? I’m sure that would be super helpful.
“No, I just need to rest a bit. Recharge, I guess you could say. I’m not used to spending so much time on this side. We’ll continue tomorrow.” And just like that, he was gone.
All I could think to myself was that my life couldn’t possibly get more weird. Note to self—do not challenge Fate. It will bite you in the butt.
Chapter 7
The next day . . .
I’d barely slept the previous night. Everything Elmer had revealed during our talk seemed to alternately terrify me and excite me. I wanted to know more—no, from what he’d told me, I needed to know more. My survival depended on it. I didn’t doubt anything he’d said. He, or Jake rather, had saved my life. I trusted them both.
Dragging myself into the en suite bathroom, I took a quick shower and pulled my thick auburn hair back into an informal ponytail. I paused in front of the mirror, studying my reflection. Though I had dark circles from lack of sleep, all of my bruising had faded. Losing almost twenty pounds, coupled with no makeup and my pony, had changed my appearance more drastically than I would have thought. Despite my new gray streak and the other, less obvious gray slowly creeping in at my temples, I looked . . . years younger. Or maybe just less worn. What were they saying these days? Forty is the new thirty? I’d take it.
SEEING DEAD THINGS: A Paranormal Women’s Fiction Novel (Roxie’s Midlife Adventures Book 1) Page 4
