She hadn’t slept much during the night. She tried to tell herself it was just because of being in a strange bed, with the noises of the hospital all around her. It might have been easier to sleep with Riley with her as well, but he had to get back to run the Inn. The guests for the week had started to arrive, and they couldn’t put up a sign that said “come back later” just because she was in the hospital.
It could have been any of those things, or the stress of being here while they had an Inn to run, even. It could have been, but it wasn’t. Now, in the early morning hours, with her eyelids drooping from exhaustion, she could admit to herself that the trouble had been the dreams.
Every time she had dozed off after Riley left her, she had seen the eyes of Martin’s ghost staring at her. She thought she was back in that well several times, waking up and flailing her arms and trying to get her head above water that wasn’t there.
This time they were just dreams. Katie knew she wasn’t in any danger of running through the halls of the hospital, believing she was being chased by a car. Still, the dreams scared her. That poor, dead boy was reaching out to her. Had he died down there, in that well?
Did his mother kill him?
She bit her lip, and stared at the ceiling in the dark. People did all sorts of things that were truly evil. Katie knew that first hand. If Vera Keats had killed her own son, and buried him in their well, would it really be all that much of a stretch considering--
“Knock, knock,” someone said from the door to her room.
Katie looked up to find Vera standing there.
She held the door open, and waved to Katie. “I heard you were still in the hospital. I wanted to come see you and say I was sorry.”
“Oh. Well, thanks Vera. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Sure I did,” she said, a frown on her face. “So, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. You’re here very late, aren’t you? Or, early, I guess.” Katie looked at the digital clock up on the wall. It was after three in the morning.
“Yes, it’s late. I’m sorry.”
“You said that already, Vera.”
“I’m sorry you decided to take a jog through my back yard.”
“Uh, yeah.” That didn’t sound much like an apology. Katie raised the head of the bed up so she could face Vera. “I know I shouldn’t have been back there. I know this will be hard to explain but I didn’t mean to be there.”
“I’m sorry you trespassed on my property,” Vera continued, as if Katie hadn’t even spoken. She took a step inside the room. “I’m sorry you have no respect for my property.”
“Vera?” Katie said, starting to get worried. “Um. Aren’t visiting hours over? Should you be here right now?”
And in the back of her mind, Katie was wondering again if Vera had killed her own son...
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, with another step, “that you want to meddle in my affairs.”
Katie saw a light in her eyes that was not natural. It certainly didn’t come from the dim lighting in her hospital room.
With her bandaged hands, she fumbled for the nurse call button. She had it, right there beside her, but it slipped through the fabric of her bandages. When she tried again, the same thing happened.
And again.
And again.
“What happened to my boy,” Vera Keats said to her, “is none of your concern. None of your damned business.”
She took another step toward Katie’s bed.
“Stay out of my life!’
Closer.
“Do you hear me?”
Closer.
“Stay out...!”
Vera’s face stretched toward Katie, the mouth becoming a huge gash and the eyes larger than life and then her whole body was following along in a flowing rush and Katie screamed and dropped the call button to the floor.
She held her bandaged hands up over her face to protect herself.
“Sweetie? You okay?”
The lights snapped on in the room. Katie dropped her hands. Vera Keats wasn’t here. A nurse was in the doorway instead, smiling patiently at her and waiting for an answer to her question.
You okay?
“Um. Yes,” Katie mumbled. She’d fallen asleep again. Just like that she’d been plunged into a nightmare. Vera Keats, screaming at her to stay out of her affairs. Vera Keats, her body pulling itself through the space between the door and the bed, stretching and reaching and distorting itself--
Katie got a grip on herself. It was just a dream this time. No ghosts. No premonitions of what was to come.
Just a dream.
Wasn’t it?
“Well,” the nurse said to her, “if you’re sure...”
“Uh, no wait.” Katie sat up straighter, carefully wiggling in the bed and not using her hands. “Can you tell me again when these bandages can come off?”
“I really think the doctor should tell you...” The nurse hesitated. She was a plump woman with a frizz of brown curls, and a way of smiling no matter what she was saying. “Well. I suppose it doesn’t hurt for me to say it, since the doc’s already told you everything.”
She came over, fussing with Katie’s sheets, and fluffing her pillows. Then she bent down, and picked up the call button from the floor where it had dropped.
“Your nails,” she told Katie, “need to regrow on five of your fingers. There split and cracked, sweetie. Not pretty. No, sir. There’s no damage to the bone, thank the good Lord for that. It’s your skin and your nails that need time to heal, sure enough. Got some stitches on a few nasty cuts along the pad of your pointer and middle fingers. Probably have you come back in a week to unwrap the bandages and see where you’re at.”
“A week?” Katie had not heard that part yet. She wasn’t happy to be hearing it now, either. “How am I supposed to run my business with my hands all wrapped up like this for a week?”
The nurse gave her one of those looks that medical professionals used to tell their patients they should stop complaining. “The real question you should be asking yourself, is how you plan on running your business if you mess your hands up permanently so they don’t work right. Those stitches are holding your skin closed so it can heal. You’ll have some impressive scars on your fingers. You go trying to use your hands before they’re healed properly, and who knows? Might have to take off the tips of one or two.”
“What?” Katie looked down at her hands again. Were they that bad? Really?
“Nothing you have to worry about,” the nurse promised, “as long as you give yourself time to heal.”
She knew the nurse was right, just like the doctor had been right, but now she really was worried. There were more guests checking in today. She’d sent Riley off to help Vera Keats fix the well, where there might be a dead body hiding, and where a young boy’s ghost was trapped. She couldn’t just sit on the sidelines with all of that going on.
What was she supposed to do?
“There, that’s better,” the nurse said, mistaking Katie’s pained silence for agreement. “Now, you get yourself some sleep.”
She went back to the door, flicking the light switch off on her way out.
Darkness surrounded Katie as the nurse shut the door. She lay there with her eyes open, refusing to sleep.
She knew that in her dreams there were ghosts waiting. And worse.
Chapter 6
It was near lunchtime when she opened her eyes. She sat up quickly, her head spinning, and when she could focus on the clock she couldn’t believe she actually had fallen asleep, and slept for that long, without a single dream.
Well. Thank God for small favors.
Her hands throbbed. She could feel the pulse in each of her fingertips. The anesthetic was wearing off, apparently. Wow, she really hoped that when they let her go home they gave her a prescription for some heavy strength Tylenol to go with it. With the pain starting, she really had to agree with her doctor. Keeping the bandages on sounded like a great idea.
But
then who was going to help Riley run the Inn and take care of everything else?
The door to her room opened, just a little, and a face peeked in. Katie thought it would be the nurse again, or a doctor, but instead she saw maybe the last person she had ever expected to see.
Mel Wragg had been Katie’s best friend for longer than either of them could remember. They hadn’t seen each other for a few months now, not since before Katie had come out on her trip to New Hampshire, and for the two of them that was a long time.
“Hey!” she almost squealed, wanting to clap her hands together in her excitement. She would have too if not for the bandages around her fingers. “I can’t believe you’re here! Why are you here? Oh, man, I’m babbling like an idiot. Come here!”
They hugged and laughed, and Mel told Katie she looked like day old crap and Katie told her she felt like day old crap but that was what happened to someone who fell down a well in someone’s backyard.
“A well?” Mel sat in the chair next to the bed and pulled a face. "You mean like someone dug in the ground to get water? Dear God, Katie, have you gone full Amish or something? Who uses things like wells anymore?”
Katie rolled her eyes. “This isn’t the city, Mel. Some people out here don’t have wifi or Uber, either.”
“Savages,” Mel said, putting a hand up over her mouth in mock surprise. “How have you survived?”
“We’ve managed. Oh, but it’s going to be so much better now that you’re here.”
“Mm-hmm. Looks like you banged up your hands pretty good. Got a little bit of a bruise up by your temple too, I see. All those stories you told me about the ghosts here in Twilight Ridge I would have thought you’d be more careful, Katie Pearson.”
There had been any number of late night phone calls between them, and Katie had felt better for having someone in her life who understood about the kind of crazy things she seemed to fall into. Mel had been with her for a couple of the haunted houses that she had bought, sight unseen. She knew ghosts were real, even if she couldn’t see them like Katie and Riley could. She knew how terrifying they could be, too. They’d been through a lot together.
So now, when she told her about the dream, of the car chasing her and the boy in the well, her best friend nodded and looked serious and didn't make a single joke.
“That,” she said at the end of it all, “is a hell of a story.”
“Yeah. I have a feeling it’s just beginning, too.”
Mel made a face, and Katie laughed. She was a very cute woman, shorter than Katie but with all the right curves in all the right places. The oversized sweater she was wearing hid most of them right now, but that face and the short pixie cut of her chestnut brown hair would’ve been enough to attract any man within sight of her anyway. Especially with the way Mel knew how to turn on the charm when she wanted to.
Katie wasn’t into women or she might be attracted to her, as well. They’d been close as friends for years but lovers would never be their thing. Thankfully, Mel had other charms that Katie was interested in.
“Tell me you brought it?” she said.
Mel leaned back in her chair, arm resting lazily over one knee. “Of course I did. I’ve got six bottles of good wine waiting out in my rental car. I paid a fortune to get them through customs at the airport, too, so we are not going to waste them. I’m thinking you must have a flat screen TV in that new Inn of yours. You and me, on a couch, wine and a movie, how’s that sound?”
Katie was laughing again. She couldn’t help it. Oh, it felt good to have her friend with her. “Yes, Mel. That sounds great but that wasn’t what I meant. Tell me you brought the Ouija board with you.”
“Oh, that.” She didn’t seem happy about it. “You broke mine, remember? That had been an heirloom, and you cracked it in two.”
“I’m sorry,” Katie said, although they’d had this same conversation many times by now and Katie had apologized just about as much as she could. “It was for a good cause.”
“Hmph. It was to save your life.”
“That’s not a good cause?”
Laughing again, Mel reached over and threw her arms around Katie’s shoulders. “Yes, I guess so. Don’t you worry, I found a new Ouija board. This one was supposed to have been blessed by a Shaman on the third full moon of a month. Very powerful.”
“What? What’s that got to do with anything?”
Mel sat back in her chair. “Come on, Katie. Don’t you know anything? The third full moon in a month is like, really rare. That makes it special. At least, that’s what the guy who sold it to me said.”
“Well, either way, I’ll be glad to have you here for a few days. The last time me and Riley had a ghost in the Inn...it didn’t end well. We’re lucky to be alive.”
Not everyone got out alive, she reminded herself. So, yeah. She counted herself lucky over that one.
Over on the bedside table sat the little metal cross she had started carrying with her everywhere she went. That had started after that last time, with the ghosts, and the almost dying. She made sure Riley left it out for her before he left.
Now that Mel was here, everything would be fine. “How long are you going to be here?” she asked Mel. “More than tonight, right? A few days?”
“Hmmm, chickie,” Mel said. “I’m not going to be here for a few days.”
Katie felt her heart sink. “But you flew all this way. You’re not going to just turn around and fly back, are you?”
“’Course not.” Mel winked at her. “I’m staying for a week, at least. I’m here until your hands heal.”
Katie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “No way. No way! Are you serious? Why? How?”
“That wonderful man of yours called me. Riley told me you got hurt and that he could really use an extra hand running the Inn. He left out the part about you falling down a well though. Nothing would’ve kept me away from you if I’d known that part.”
“Ha! You got here in a day as it is. I can only imagine what that ticket must’ve cost.”
Mel flipped a hand through the air. “None of that matters. Oh. Riley did say that you’ve got one room free and he offered it to me in exchange for my services. Now, I can’t cook to save my life, you know that, but I can clean and make nice with all those single male ghost hunters that are staying at your place.”
“Hey now. Don’t go fraternizing with the guests.” She thought about that, and who she was talking to, and then she added, “Unless you do it behind closed doors.”
“Oh,” Mel said, a wicked look on her face as she crossed her legs, “I plan on doing it behind closed doors. A lot.”
Katie couldn’t do anything but shake her head over the boldness of her friend. That was Mel, to a tee. Riley hadn’t said anything about inviting her here but she was so glad that he had. She was definitely going to have to thank him for this.
“So, that takes care of your Inn,” Mel said. “What are we going to do about the ghost in the well? You know, not to talk out of turn, but Riley’s not even really sure there is a ghost down there.”
“I know. I’m telling you, Mel, I saw him down there. He spoke to me. He’s real.”
“You saw him in a dream, though.” Mel laid her hand over Katie’s. “Sometimes your dreams are just dreams, chickie. I know how the ghosts like to find you, but isn’t it possible that this was just a dream this time?”
Katie started to say no, to say that she was sure that what she saw was real and that Vera’s dead son was still haunting her...but then she remembered the dream she’d had here in the hospital. The one where Vera came to attack her.
That hadn’t happened. Not really. And, if it was her mind trying to tell her something, she had no idea what that could be. So, was it possible? Could it be just like Riley had said, and the boy down there in the deep was just a dream?
No. It couldn’t be that, because it had happened to her. She’d felt it. She’d experienced it. The fall into the well had been real. They had to pull her out. She’d t
orn her hands up trying to get out. All of it was real. The ghost was there.
Then what about the car chasing her? Had that been real?
What did it mean?
She lay her head back on the pillows, and sighed. Now she wasn’t sure. Maybe she’d just had so many ghosts crawling in and out of her life that she was seeing them where they didn’t exist now. Maybe fear was just going to be a part of her life from now on.
The rush of what had happened to her had faded, a day later. Looking at everything objectively meant admitting that maybe, just maybe, Riley was right. There might not be any ghost at all this time.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Don’t worry,” Mel said to her. “We’ll figure this out. You and me.”
“Right. Just like always.”
Chapter 7
Mel stayed with her until she was discharged, just after noon. The hospital offered to feed her a lunch but she declined. All she wanted to do was leave, and go back home.
She regretted it almost immediately. Her stomach rumbled in the parking lot on the way to Mel’s rental car. Then Mel’s rumbled, too.
They decided to stop at a restaurant on the way to get something to eat, and so Katie could take her medication. Thankfully, yes, the doctor had prescribed tramadol for her pain, and given her four tablets to start with until she could get the script filled. There was another thing they didn’t have in Twilight Ridge. No pharmacies. Well. She was going to have to find one of those too, she supposed.
That raised the question of how long she actually planned on staying in New Hampshire. Just this week? Until the end of the month? The end of the year? She was starting to get comfortable here. She could feel it. This was becoming a much longer stay than she had ever planned.
They still hadn’t even started to hire anyone to work at the Inn, let alone to take over for them when she and Riley left. She sighed as she realized that was one more thing to worry over. They had to make a decision, and sooner was better than later.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 63
