October Ghosts (A Southern Romance Monthly)

by Hockenberry, CJ

  Chloe put her hand to her mouth. "Oh dear God."

  "I think I was unconscious for a while. But when I woke up I could hear people calling my name. It was dark, the door to the basement was closed and I couldn't feel my leg—I could feel the pain of it though. My chest hurt and I thought I'd broken my ribs. But when I tried to breathe in enough air to yell, I couldn't. I couldn't breathe at all. Every time I tried it felt like something was inside my chest, squeezing all the air out of my lungs. I couldn't yell, I couldn't cry and I was sweating. I was half nuts when they found me, oxygen deprived."

  "You didn't know you had asthma."

  "No. And since then we noticed the episodes were triggered by high stress. I've been on Advair for nearly three years."

  She leaned closer to him. "Did you have an attack today? Is that why you look so tired and sick?"

  He finally turned to look at her. The circles seemed more pronounced to her and he looked so tired. "Yeah. But I have to tell you why. And once you know, you might not want to agree to do this."

  Chloe made a rude noise. "If I can survive that sergeant you've got working with you, then I can survive anything."

  He shifted and she thought he was going to get out of the car. Instead he released his seat belt and turned to face her full on. "I need to know about the kiss first."

  "The kiss." It wasn't a question as much as admittance. "You mean the one you gave me at my shop?"

  He blushed! "No… at the Barrett House. In the kitchen."

  "When…I was looking at you I could feel your experiences in that hole. And my heart went out to you. You…became human for me."

  "I wasn't before?"

  "You were but…now that I know the terror you survived I'm a bit more able to trust you."

  He laughed. It was a hollow sound. "Oh…that was nothing, Chloe. Nothing compared to what I have to tell you." Matt looked to his right. "Is this your house?"

  "Yes."

  "I like it. They call this a Cape Cod."

  "Would you like to see the inside?"

  His grin was infectious and the two of them got out of her car.

  Chloe had inherited her house from her mother. Her sister got the Winnebago, Chloe got the house. Though to outsiders the inheritances might not seem equal, but their mother had known that while Chloe would stay in Roswell, Karen would roam. She loved to go places.

  The yard was as immaculate as her own mother had kept it—this was something Chloe prided herself on. She took Saturday mornings off from the shop and mowed, weeded, planted, fertilized and watered. The house was a soft blue with white trim, and the rocking chairs her grandfather had made still decorated the porch next to wooden TV stands Chloe had painted white to match the chairs.

  She disabled the security system with her phone and led Matt inside.

  The house smelled of incense, her special blend of dragon's blood rede and a secret floral essence. The scent was devised to put any welcome visitors at ease and any unwelcome intruders on edge. The furniture was her mother's—from the soft white couch and love seat to the matching ottoman. A piano sat against one wall, its top used as a display area for her many female statues from the Wallendorf to the Venus de Milo.

  A flatscreen was the only new thing added to the living area, along with a cabinet underneath to hide her Playstation and Wii.

  The kitchen had all new appliances. Something she'd splurged on after closing. The ones her mom had used worked just fine, but Chloe wanted the best, which included a double-doored stainless steeled refrigerator.

  Chloe hung her purse on the back of one of the dinning room chairs and went into the kitchen. "There's water, beer and tea in the fridge. Help yourself. Do you need any painkillers? I have ibuprofen and aspirin."

  Matt, his mouth open as he looked at everything, pulled on the fridge door and retrieved a bottle of water. "You live here on your own?"

  "My sister has a room here, but she's never home. In fact I think she's in Denver, Colorado this month. She'll be back around Thanksgiving and then again at Christmas."

  "Her job keep her on the road?"

  "Well she's a writer. Writes a lot of travel blogs. She also does a lot of letter boxing."

  "Letter boxing?"

  "Sort of like geo-caching. Only to me it's much more fun, and you don't end up with a bunch of junkie trinkets."

  He gave her a half smile as he cracked open the bottled water. "She make a living at that?"

  "Mmhmm. If there was one thing our mom always taught us it was to follow your bliss. That if you did what you loved, the money would follow. Of course, it took both of us a number of years to understand that. And now we do."

  "Your bliss is to run a store and do card readings?"

  Chloe filled up her electric kettle and turned it on. She wanted tea. And there was enough of a nip in the air to want peppermint tea. "Yes. Though the card reading came later." She pulled the aspirin out and handed him two. "Sometimes I just know. Like you've got a headache brought on by a nasty asthma attack earlier. Am I right?"

  He took the aspirin and downed them with water. "Yeah. You are. And…you really saw it, didn't you? Me in that hole?"

  "I didn't so much as see it as felt it."

  "And what about the fountain in the Barrett House?"

  Chloe leaned her back against the sink and crossed her arms over her chest as the kettle heated. "It happened when I touched the sink. Like…I was reading the person standing there when it happened. I don't remember reading anything about a child drowning in the fountain, but the deaths we do know about were sketchy."

  "No details." He drank half the water and chewed on his lower lip. She loved it when he did that. It made him so endearing. It also made him look a lot younger. "So…about the kiss…"

  "You're really worried about that, aren't you?"

  "You didn't pull away, even when Margo interrupted us."

  She felt heat rise from her shoulders, up her neck to the top of her head and looked away. "No. I didn't. I didn't want to."

  He paused. "Neither did I."

  Chloe gave him a nervous laugh. "So…what did you want to tell me?"

  "This," he set the bottle of water on the counter and moved closer to her. He put his hand on her cheek and smoothed her hair away. "I don't trust…easy, Chloe."

  Her breath caught in her throat at his touch. Being so close to him again brought back the memories of his kiss. His sensual, perfect kiss. "Truth is, Matt. I'm not that trusting either. And everything I've read about you tells me I shouldn't trust you. But my gut…tells me something different."

  "What've you read about me that tells me not to trust you?"

  "Well…I've read you're gay."

  He laughed. "Oh you mean read online."

  "And I've read you're a womanizer."

  "Not true."

  "I've read you're selfish, hard to work with, you don't believe in ghosts, not really, and that you always make fun of anyone in the occult field and…" Chloe took a deep breath herself. "And that it was more than just a house that tried to kill you."

  That caught him off guard. He stepped back and stared at her. "Where did you read that?"

  To his surprise, she reached out and put her palm flat against his chest. "Here. I'm a psychic, not a medium, Matt. I can feel experiences. Sometimes I can see what's happened or what's going to happen. And last night, when I shook your hand, I sensed danger."

  "From me?" He reached up and put his hand on hers. Her skin was warm and soft.

  "It disappeared after the witch showed up in my office. I'm still not sure if the danger I'm reading is from you, or if you're bringing it with you. Feelings, portents and signs aren't always clear. Drives me nuts sometimes, but it's usually my job to figure them out."

  "Do you still pick up danger?"

  "Yes but its different now." Chloe watched his face, studied his expressions. Something was bothering him, something bad enough to trigger an asthma attack that had him weakened. That much she could tell just
by touching him. "What did you need to tell me?"

  Matt pulled her hand from his chest and held it. "I need to tell you about my ex."

  "The one that's not supposed to come within a hundred feet of you?"

  "Yeah. Chloe…she's here in Roswell."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Matt felt he needed to be very careful about what he said in the next few minutes. He didn't want Chloe to kick him out and not do the gig tomorrow night, but he also didn't want her doing something she didn't want to do. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her in any way. He just wanted her to be happy, and he wanted her to be with him.

  Chloe peered up into his face. "You're starting to look pale."

  "Yeah…well news of her being nearby is what set off the attack earlier today."

  "Seriously?" Chloe smiled. "You're that afraid of her?"

  "Remember when I told you just now about there were a lot of accidents in that last haunted house that revolved around me? Well, after the plunge into the well that landed me in the hospital for a few weeks, Margo told me the police had gone through the house and found a lot of tampering. And those stairs had been sawed through."

  "Oh hell…that could have killed you. Or anyone that stepped on them."

  He made sure his breathing remained calm and he didn't panic. It was when he panicked about what had happened that he triggered an attack. But just to be sure, he pulled his inhaler out and had it in his hand. "Most of the things in a haunted house work on pressure plates and motion sensors. And I always had a map with me that told me where those traps were, and each display was named something. Like…laughing ghost, flying zombie, popping ripper, you know. So I would know which of my tricks was where in the house. But those tricks started doing things they weren't supposed to do."

  "Like what?"

  "The first thing that happened after I started sleeping there was the ghost audio kept switching on during the night. It would wake me up and I'd go turn it off. The third time it came on the popping zombie came at me as I turned the corner. Knocked me into the wall because I was standing too close. Tricks wired to frighten visitors are on different circuits than the normal power usage in the house. Having the separate makes it less likely to blow a fuse or shut down the basic lights. Before I went to bed, I always made sure that switch was off."

  "Were you hurt?"

  "I cut my head when I hit the door frame. And you know head wounds bleed like nothing else. Luckily I wasn't the only one in the house. Dennis was there with his wife and we managed to shut it down again before I had to get stitches. But the next night a different trick went off. Just the audio." He shifted and leaned against the refrigerator. "Dennis went to check it out and turned it off. Three times. On the fourth time I decided to check the breaker, but it was off. On my way back up the stairs the hall ghost shut on. I walked right into it—or I should say I stepped into the hole."

  "What?"

  "The ghost was rigged to come out of the floor. It was little more than gauze and window shear material painted with florescent paint and lights come on. The pressure plates were on the other side of the trap door so that when it came up they would stop and then be steered by the guide to the left. I was behind it and it went off in the dark and fell through. Broke my arm and cracked my head again. That time I ended up in the hospital for a few days. Dennis and his wife did a bit of investigation and found several of the tricks had been rewired, the pressure plates and sensors moved. They found one of Sarah's old baseball caps in the trap I fell into. And her fingerprints were also found on the mechanics. They found the saw used to cut the basement stair supports."

  "Her fingerprints?"

  "Yep."

  "Did she usually work on the tricks?"

  "Nope. That was Margo's job. Sarah worked for the legal team. You know, making sure a ticket holder doesn't sue if something goes wrong? Then sometimes she'd work the ticket booth or set the websites up for pre-sales."

  "But she didn't go to jail for rigging those things up? You could have died."

  "I didn't want to press charges—I just wanted her off the project. And she was fired. The company owner did press charges but the evidence was circumstantial and she had alibis. I took out a restraining order on Margo's suggestion."

  "Have you seen her since?"

  "No. We got a cease and desist letter from her law office in New Orleans after the first Halloween episode. We didn't have all our ducks in a row so when the psychic we use saw the result, she pointed out she'd never signed a waver. We had to yank the episode. That's why we now pay and have you sign wavers."

  "And that's it? That's the only contact?"

  "Yeah. And she contacted Phil not me. She's not allowed to be near me or speak to me."

  "Then why are you so nervous even talking about it? Why did the thought of her being here trigger an attack if she can't get near you?"

  And there it was. He hadn't really wanted to talk to her about this, but if he wanted to keep things honest he was going to have to. Usually this kind of thing didn't matter. He could easily dismiss it and move on to the next show. But Chloe…

  Chloe made him feel different. She made him want to know her better.

  "Well…after that first Halloween fiasco I actually started dating one of the interns. Margo took her under her wing and started teaching her and the moment we started going out, the intern started getting harassing phone calls."

  Chloe's expression hardened. "From Sarah?"

  "We didn't know that at first. Beth was very spiritual. A Christian, whom I got no beef with and I really liked her devotion. Someone was putting nasty letters on her car when she spent the night with me. The letters called her all kinds of bad names."

  "Oh I can imagine."

  "Yeah. And the longer we saw each other, the worse the letters got. Margo put in a few surveillance cameras for me so I could catch who ever it was, but they never showed up. The letters were actually left in her parents' mailbox."

  Her mouth dropped open.

  "So when her parents found them, they confronted us and then called the cops. They learned about Sarah and questioned her. She denied it, same as she denied ever rigging the tricks at the haunted house. No evidence, and Sarah was in New Orleans when these things happened."

  Chloe closed the gap between them and put her hands on this face. "Matt, this is ridiculous. You can't really think this poor woman is somewhere in Roswell, waiting to hurt you? It just sounds so…obsessive."

  "I don't think it's a coincidence that effigy showed up in your office at just the right time, do you? Yeah I'm a little weirded out. I think I have the right to be. And given what's happened, even Margo said she'd already talked to Sheriff Harhmon about some added security at the Barrett House. At least until after we're done." He took her hands in his and pulled them to his chest. "And it's not just about me. I'm worried about her coming after you."

  "Why me?"

  He swallowed and straightened his shoulders. "Because I like you. And it's very obvious to anyone else that I do. I didn't plan it, and you're not what I expected."

  Matt wasn't sure what kind of reaction he was going to get from his confession. He hadn't planned on confessing at all because he was still a bit confused about his emotions. What he did know what that he enjoyed being with Chloe. She calmed him, made him feel invincible and not vulnerable. And she had a head on her shoulders, which impressed him. He respected her in ways he rarely respect anyone.

  But what he worried most about were his trust issues. Those he'd have to deal with on his own.

  The smile that pulled her sensual lips touched her eyes, and he knew at that moment she felt the same way about him. "Matthew Hunt. I shouldn't like you. Everything about you says trouble. Even the constant warning of danger. But I'm not thinking you're the cause of the danger like I did yesterday. I'm beginning to suspect you're its victim. And if you think my being there with you in the house would protect you, I'm willing to give this a go."

  "Really? Even thoug
h Sarah's proven to be a little nuts?"

  "I don't think the people around you want you hurt, and they sure don't want anything to happen to me because I haven't signed any papers not holding them responsible. So for now, I think you're safe. And besides…" she moved in closer to him went up on her tiptoes again. "No one knows where I live."

  And with that, she pressed those soft, supple lips to his.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It didn't matter about the crazy around him.

  She wanted him. She was drawn to him. The entire time he'd told her his story she felt the resonance of truth the way he saw it, the way he knew it. He was being honest with her, and the feeling of danger she still felt when she touched him shifted and changed and found its place. He was in danger. He needed protection, but she could also feel the desire to protect her radiating from him.

  He'd risked her saying no again to be truthful. To lay things out as they were.

  And for that, she respected him. Did she trust him?

  She wanted to.

  It'd been so long since she'd felt a man's touch against her body. And the kiss…

  Oh sweet Lady and Lord that kiss! Her body still tingled when she thought of it, and it tingled even more knowing he was here, in her house, alone, and she sensed if she wanted more, he wouldn't say no.

  But then again, Kevin had always told her no man alive, gay, straight or bi was going to say no to sex. Just wasn't in the DNA.

  Which was why when she kissed him and he kissed back, she was surprised when Matt put his hands on her shoulders and stepped back. He looked serious and it was a look that made him even sexier. "Chloe…we don't have to do this."