by Fall, Carly
“Relax, Margaret,” the voice whispered. “Relax and rest.”
A gentle tune wafted through the air. Whoever was in her dream was humming a slow, soothing melody.
At the deepest recesses of her mind, she recognized the voice and the song, but couldn’t place whom the voice belonged to, or the title of the song. All she knew was that it comforted her.
The pitter-patter of the rain slowly brought Maggie to consciousness. The pain had dissipated, and as all her senses came online, she suddenly remembered what had happened the day before. She bolted upright and her eyes flew open.
The chair next to the bed was empty. She threw back the covers and ran into the living room and kitchen area, the wood floor chilly on her bare feet.
Nothing.
No one.
She sat down on the couch and put her head in her hands.
What the hell was wrong with her? Why did she feel such utter disappointment and loss for someone who was obviously a hallucination?
She went over the happenings of the day before. All the craziness started on that mine tour, and it only got worse as the day progressed. Obviously, some type of chemical fumes or lack of oxygen in the mine must have overcome her, made her faint, and then affected her brain the rest of the day.
No, she couldn’t explain why no one else was affected, but that had to be it. In the morning light, the truth was too overwhelming, too crazy to contemplate. She simply wasn’t seeing dead people. She wasn’t feeling emotions of love and lust and comfort for someone who didn’t exist.
Yes, it had to be some malfunction in the mining air duct system, or something she ate or . . . something.
Her headache had been very real, but so had the voice who asked if she was having a “weather headache.” In her lucidness, she recognized the voice as belonging to Joseph. He had murmured soothing words through the worst of her pain, humming songs to her, and bringing her relief in knowing that someone actually cared about the pounding in her head.
It had been a long time since someone cared for her well being, and her eyes stung with the concern she remembered from the night before. She swiped at them angrily.
It was time to get out of this town and back to her old life, no matter how depressing it all seemed right now. She needed to live in the present, needed to focus on her future, not this fabricated past she had somehow carefully constructed.
She marched into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As the water heated up, Maggie stared at herself in the full-length mirror. She looked so normal. Her brown eyes stared back at her, and she touched her high cheekbones. She tried to push a year of Jerry’s cruel words aside and study herself without the critical eye. Yes, she was curvy and probably had a little more padding than she should, but overall, if she forgot Jerry’s comments, she was somewhat happy with herself.
The past year had been hard on her, but also therapeutic. Living alone had brought her the silence she needed to get to know herself and learn to like herself again. She had moved in to her condo a broken woman who felt completely unworthy. As she stared at her reflection now, she realized how far she had come. She would describe herself as pretty, and she was somewhat confident in her own skin.
Yes, she had grown a lot in the past year, and she had put herself back together without help from anyone. She still had a way to go, but she was in a much better place than she had been a year ago.
But now it seemed her mind was fracturing with her illusions of ghosts.
Closing her eyes, she wished she were in the comfort of her condominium. If she had just stayed home, she wouldn’t be questioning her sanity and wondering whether Joseph was really a ghost or some fabrication of her needy mind.
She opened her eyes; the mirror was so foggy she couldn’t see her reflection any longer. She wiped the steam away and gasped as she met Joseph’s stare in the mirror.
Terror, love, regret, and surprise mingled in her throat, letting off a sound reminding her of something between a scream and a coyote howl, except it couldn’t quite escape her throat at its full sound.
“Relax, Margaret,” Joseph said, smiling. “It’s just me.”
“Oh shit,” she whispered. Something inside her snapped, and she’d had enough of trying to decide what was reality and what wasn’t. “Leave!” she shouted. “Just leave me alone!”
A wave of hurt and surprise passed over Joseph’s face, but then he showed no emotion. “Of course,” he whispered.
Maggie turned around to face him, but he was gone.
Sinking to the floor, she cried. An extreme feeling of loss overcame her, and she wasn’t sure if it was for the apparition she had kicked out of the bathroom, or for the normalcy she had left behind in Phoenix.
A few minutes later, she got to her feet. The bathroom resembled a sauna, and she stripped off her clothes. She glanced into the mirror and there written in the steam was “Graveyard.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Please help me.”
Chapter 10
Maggie wanted to go home. That had been her intention when she packed most of her things in her suitcase, but then decided against it. Instead, she put her keys into the ignition and headed for the cemetery. From her research, she knew there was only one cemetery in the area, and she remembered its location from the map.
As she pulled up, her heart pounded. She had an idea of what she was going to find in the graveyard, but it still didn’t make being here any easier.
She stepped from the car, the dirt crunching under her shoes. Despite the temperature hovering in the seventies, she wrapped the sweater tightly around herself.
She stopped in the middle of the cemetery and looked around. The still air was frightening and comforting all at once. Birds chirped in the distance, but there was no movement within the walls of the graveyard itself. Headstones and grave markers littered the lawn for acres.
She turned in an unhurried circle and was drawn to the northwest corner. Slowly, she walked toward the far wall, the crunch of dirt under her shoes like small cannons going off with each step in the utter silence.
A chill ran down her spine and she stopped. She couldn’t see him, but she felt his presence. She knew he was there.
“Joseph?” she said.
A light breeze blew through the trees.
“Joseph!” she called louder. “I know you’re here!”
Nothing.
The pull to the far wall of the graveyard was stronger now, almost as if someone was there beckoning her. She reluctantly hurried over. Sweat broke out on her brow as she zeroed-in on one particular grave marker.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered. But she kept going, as if there was a magnetic force drawing her in, and she couldn’t halt her steps even if she wanted to.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the stone.
Finally, a few feet away from it, she stopped. She wanted to see it, but at the same time, she didn’t. She wanted to run far away from Bisbee and never look back.
But she couldn’t.
She had to see the headstone.
Taking a deep breath, she took the few remaining steps and slowly took it all in.
Maggie sank to her knees, the damp earth wetting her jeans. The old, gray cracked headstone read:
Margaret Ransom
1885–1910
Beloved soul mate to Joseph Ransom
To one day be together again
Tears flowed down her cheeks, an ache and longing in her chest threatening to cut off her ability to breathe.
As she leaned forward and rested her head on the soft, damp grass, images spun before her, blurring her vision further: a brief flash of her in a wedding dress, her kissing Joseph deeply, walking hand-in-hand with Joseph through town.
She swallowed heavily. It was just another indication that she had either lost her mind, or what Joseph had said was true.
Although she had been raised Catholic, she had never been particularly religious in her adult life. However, she did believe in
God, heaven, and she had thought that once a person died, their soul either resided in heaven or hell, depending on the life they led. This experience had shattered that belief.
It seemed ridiculous, but she knew deep within her that she was looking at her own tombstone. Everything about the past twenty-four hours was as real as her own flesh. Joseph was real, what he said was real. She couldn’t question or deny it any longer. She wasn’t losing her sanity; she was caught up in some strange paranormal world.
According to the headstone, she had died at the ripe age of twenty-five, seven years younger than what she was now. She reached out and traced her name, questions swirling through her head. How long had they been married? Did they have any children besides the boy who died? What were their names? Had she been happy with her life?
She glanced over at the headstone next to hers. It read:
Joseph Ransom
1885–1915
Beloved soul mate to Margaret Ransom
To one day be together again
“My God,” she whispered. “Is this all true?”
She sat in the silence, rocking back and forth, trying to come up with a logical explanation for all of it.
Why had she been drawn to this particular area of the cemetery? As Maggie looked over the acres of headstones, she realized it would take someone hours upon hours to look for a certain marker, but she had headed straight for her own. Why had Joseph guided her here? To prove that he did exist? That what he said was true?
She felt him before she saw him. “I know you’re here,” she said quietly, rubbing her face with shaky hands. “I can feel you.”
Slowly, she looked over her shoulder to see Joseph standing behind her. “I’m not going crazy,” she said. It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact.
“No, Margaret. I understand how you might think so, but no.”
She turned back to the grave markers. “How did you die, Joseph?”
“I was killed in a mining accident. I held on for a few days, but it was a long and painful death.”
Maggie winced as she stared at the headstones, and a thought occurred to her. “Joseph, why are you . . . stuck? Why haven’t you moved on? Why, in your case, did the natural progression of life and death stop?”
Joseph crouched down next to her, facing her. “I don’t know, Margaret. I’m not even sure what the natural progression is. Is there life after death? Is there reincarnation? In your case, there obviously is. For anyone else? I don’t have the answers. However, I can tell you what happened the day you died and what I did.”
Maggie stared at her tombstone. She wanted answers to all of her questions. She wanted to know what Joseph had done the day she died that had brought them to this moment. However, she needed to start at the beginning. She needed to know her and Joseph as they were from the start of their relationship, and that was going back to when they married.
“Tell me about our wedding, Joseph,” she said, meeting his blue gaze. Confusion and lust tore through her, only cementing what she’d know since the first time she’d laid eyes on him: she belonged to him. They belonged together.
“It was a lovely affair,” he said. “You were so beautiful that day. Well, let me rephrase that. You were beautiful every day, but on that particular day, you seemed to have a glow or an aura around you. You were gorgeous. All of our friends were present. It was very intimate.”
A flash of a red A-frame building came to her mind, and she recognized it from when she had first driven into town.
She shot to her feet. “We were married in that red church,” she whispered.
“Yes, we were,” Joseph said, also standing.
“I want to go there,” Maggie said, heading for the cemetery exit.
“Margaret, I want you to go there as well, but I’m worried about your well-being,” Joseph said, falling into step with her.
“You mean if I’m crazy or not?” Maggie asked, only half-joking.
“I know you aren’t crazy, Margaret. You are the only one questioning your sanity. What I’m worried about is your nutrition. When was the last time you ate?”
Maggie stopped in her tracks and had to think about it. It was yesterday at some time . . .
“I guess it was yesterday afternoon. Before I got here.”
“May I suggest you get something to eat then? I don’t want to see you fall ill, and I’ve heard the Bisbee Breakfast Club is excellent.”
Maggie was about to argue because she wanted to continue her journey to see where she had married Joseph. Perhaps she would even be able to go back to the past and witness the ceremony, or at the very least, he could tell her all the details.
However, now that he mentioned it, she was hungry. “That’s probably a good idea,” she said. “The Bisbee Breakfast Club it is.”
Chapter 11
Maggie drove the short distance to the restaurant alone, Joseph claiming that he would rather face an angry Apache Indian from his time period than ride in one of “those contraptions.”
When she parked across the street from the storefront, Joseph was waiting for her at the front door. Her heart fluttered as she got out of the car and crossed the almost-deserted street. As she looked down the road, she saw that the restaurant was thriving, while most of the storefronts were boarded up. Joseph must have been right—the food must be good.
She smiled as she approached him.
“I’d open the door for you, Margaret, but unfortunately, that isn’t possible.”
She chuckled and opened the door herself. “No worries, Joseph, I’m used to it.”
She glanced back at him, and he put his finger to his lips and threw a sideways glance at the couple coming in behind her.
Right. She needed to keep her trap shut or she might earn the label of “the crazy lady in Bisbee.” However, with some of the local flavor she had seen, she wouldn’t be surprise if someone already held that title.
“Two please,” she said to the hostess, the smell of frying bacon and cinnamon rolls making her stomach scream. Joseph cleared his throat, and Maggie said, “One. I mean just one.”
The hostess smiled at her. “Would you care to sit at the counter?”
Maggie noticed a vacant table in the very back of the restaurant. “I’d actually like to sit over there,” she said, pointing to the table.
As the hostess walked her back, Maggie quickly studied the black-and-white pictures on the wall and recognized them as old photos documenting Bisbee’s history, as well as old photos of movie stars from the fifties. Maggie sat down with her back to the rest of the restaurant, while Joseph sat across from her. Maggie picked up her menu, and her stomach rumbled again. As she looked over the menu, she decided she could probably eat one of each, but she was leaning toward the simple scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, and toast.
“Let me guess,” Joseph said, “something along the lines of scrambled eggs, a meat product, and some bread.”
A jolt of surprise went through her as she peered at him over the menu. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“And some coffee. Black,” Joseph said as the waitress approached. She was in her twenties with sharp features, and her dark hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail. Her dark eyes lit up when she smiled.
“Coffee?” she chirped.
Maggie nodded, never taking her eyes off Joseph. He smiled smugly.
“Cream?” the waitress asked.
“No, thank you,” Maggie said.
After she took Maggie’s order and left, Maggie sipped her coffee while Joseph stared at her. It was slightly uncomfortable, but then he asked, “Tell me about your life now, Margaret. Are you happy? Do you have children?”
Bile churned in her stomach, and she wasn’t sure if it was from drinking coffee on an empty stomach or Joseph’s questions.
Was she happy? The answer was, she was getting there. She was happier than she had been a year ago, at the height of her problems with Jerry. She’d been through a long str
etch of self-loathing in the last two years of her marriage but was now coming out the other side. She was getting better at accepting herself the way she was and learning to be happy in her life again.
Growing up in a one-parent household had been hard, but she remembered being happy then. Maybe it was because she didn’t fully recognize the problems her mother faced as sole provider, or maybe it was because her mom was one of those people who always had a smile on her face, even if her world was crumbling around her. Happiness was in some respects like a contagious disease: it affected those around you. Maybe Jerry had just been very unhappy with himself and took it out on her.
It was something to think about in the future.
“Margaret?”
Maggie smiled at him. “I don’t have any children and I just divorced my husband.”
Joseph sat back in his chair, looking stunned. “Divorced? How did that happen?”
She remembered reading somewhere that the divorce rate in the early 1900s was four out of every one-thousand marriages. Yes, it was more difficult to divorce back then because there were only certain reasons for which one could file for a divorce, such as adultery or abuse, but the numbers were still staggering low.
“Things are different today, Joseph,” she said. “Divorces are easier to come by than they were in your time. My husband was not a good man, so I left him.”
Joseph studied her for a long moment, and Maggie squirmed a little under his gaze.
“You and I didn’t believe in divorce,” Joseph said. “But it was never a consideration for us. If your husband was less of a man than he should have been, I’m proud of you for making the decision to leave him.”
Maggie smiled. Her sanity was still up for debate, but regardless, Joseph sure knew how to say all the right things. “Thank you,” she said.
“I do have to admit, the thought of you marrying someone else doesn’t sit well with me, but you are in a different life now. Our life together happened a long time ago.”
