Now look at her, dressed from head to toe in khaki. Jeremy always pitched a fit if her clothes weren’t the same color—he liked brown or a nice olive green. God forbid she should wear a purple skirt with a goldenrod blouse like the one she’d worn to my junior high graduation. Jeremy would howl for days.
With a sigh, Honey twisted around to look at Amy and Anna where they were dozing in the car seats. “I miss Sunny already.”
When she brushed away tears, a lump filled my throat. Well, a lump would have filled my throat if not for my being dead.
She settled back in her seat. “And what on earth are we going to do with these babies? It’s been fifteen years since I had to deal with bottles and diapers and all that crap.”
“No pun intended,” he quipped.
Honey rolled her eyes.
He glanced over into the back. “We made it through puberty with Jeremy, so we can sure make it through bottles with a couple of rugrats. He’s better about helping out now, too. Maybe we can teach him to change diapers.”
Over my dead body. Pun intended. So much for hoping that Bert and Honey had come to their senses. But now they were pulling into the long driveway that led to our old family farmhouse just outside Mossy Creek. Somewhere back there, the Demon Child still lurked, waiting to pounce on my babies.
By the time we pulled up in back by the barn/TV station, I was practically sitting in little Amy’s lap, trying to figure out what to do. I peered out at the rambling house where I was raised, the familiar rub of memory stirring up old feelings. Bert and Honey had inherited it from Mom when she died, and I had been more than happy to let them have it.
What if I hadn’t? How would my life have been different if I’d stayed right here? Where nothing changed. Where the same old red brick chimneys and same old white clap-board siding graced the family-worn place.
If I’d stayed, I would never have known Cam and never had my girls. And I wouldn’t be floating around in the ether, watching for some sign of the boy who would surely be the death of my babies.
“You want me to go over to Hank’s and get Jeremy?” Bert asked. “Casey said she’d keep him as long as we needed.”
Casey had to be nuts. How could she defend herself in a wheelchair with a boy like that running around? I don’t care if she had been an Olympic contender in softball—Jeremy was dangerous.
“I’ll call her and tell her to have Hank bring him over. We should get these girls inside.” Honey opened the door and shivered, pulling her flimsy coat tighter around her as she got out. “Geez, it’s cold out here. I go away for a week, and suddenly the Deep South becomes the Midwest?”
“Knock, knock,” Bert retorted.
I rolled my eyes. Bert and his stupid “knock, knock” jokes. Why Honey put up with them, I’ll never know.
She just shook her head. “Who’s there?” she asked as she opened the back door of the car.
“Oldman.”
“Oldman who?”
“Oldman Winter came down to Georgia.”
She groaned. “Very funny.” She bent into the car. “Now come on, Old Man Lyman, and take a baby, will you?”
They each took one, which was a lot easier than taking one in each arm like I always had to do when Cam wasn’t around. You get used to it after a while, but it’s hard juggling two babies, especially at feeding time.
Feeding time! I floated over to glance at Bert’s watch. Uh oh, almost time for their bottles. The girls knew it, too, because as soon as their bare little faces hit the frosty air, they woke up on a wail.
Amazing what a motivator those tiny lungs can be—Bert and Honey got up those stairs faster than you could say, “bottle.” At the top, Honey shifted Amy to one arm so she could open the door with the other. “The way these girls cry sometimes breaks my heart.”
Mine, too. In more ways than one. The crying was why I was still around.
You see, when you die, you feel this strong compulsion to go after that great light shining at the end of the tunnel. Especially when you’ve got a guy like Cam at the other end waiting for you to show up.
But the babies’ cries dragged at me worse than the undertow at San Francisco’s Baker Beach. I couldn’t leave my girls. I just couldn’t abandon them.
So here I was, tethered to them like a balloon. The minute I wandered off, they’d cry, and it would be like jerking the balloon close. I’d bob up next to them and want to wrap my arms around them so badly I could practically smell the talcum on their skin.
Practically. I couldn’t actually smell. It seems that ghosts can’t smell—I’d discovered that early on. Hearing and seeing seemed to be about it—kind of like watching television, only you’re in the picture.
Which can be pretty maddening. I could get right up close, but I could only watch as somebody else picked them up and cuddled them and fed them. Then after they fell asleep, the big light would beckon me and before I knew it, I’d be wandering off toward the tunnel. Until they cried again, and the tether jerked me back.
Today, the tether was shorter than a shoelace as we came into the farmhouse. I got sloppily sentimental when I saw our old kitchen table, complete with a half-gnawed leg from the one time we’d had a pet, a Jack Russell terrier with a hankering for cheap pine.
But it didn’t distract me for long. While they caterwauled away in stereo, Bert settled into a chair and let Honey put Amy in his arms, so she could get the girls’ bottles made. And I was right there, with one ghostly hand on Amy and the other on Anna.
Meanwhile, Honey made her call to Casey, then scurried about the kitchen, putting stuff together. “Thank goodness Sunny’s nanny had a brain. You should see the instructions she sent along for everything from feeding times to bathing. You just add babies and stir. Although I don’t imagine it’ll be that easy. Did you get the formula?”
“It’s in the first grocery bag on the counter.” Bert raised his voice to be heard over the babies. “Didn’t have a chance to unload anything but the perishables. Jeremy and I had just got back from the grocery when you called from the airport.”
“Who’s handling the station?”
“Win. Said he could handle it for today as long as Clifford the Clown stayed out of his way.” Bert jiggled the sobbing babies. “It’s coming, sweet peas, it’s coming. Auntie Honey is getting it for you right now.”
“Shoot,” Honey said, “the special bottle nipples for Amy are in the diaper bag, and I left it in the car. Be right back.” She hurried out the kitchen door.
That’s when the Demon Child chose to make his grand entrance. He strolled in through the front door big as you please and headed through the house to the kitchen. If I could have wrapped my ghostly body around my babies when he walked through the kitchen door, I would have. Because Jeremy was even bigger than I expected—five foot ten and two-hundred pounds at least. And he frowned as he lumbered up to tower over Bert.
“Hey there, sport,” Bert said. “Meet your new cousins, Amy and Anna.”
“Amy and Anna,” Jeremy echoed.
The boy was what they call “echolalic.” He couldn’t say “I’m hungry,” but he could repeat whatever you say, or at least the last part of it.
Right now, however, he was more interested in scowling at the wailing twins. Oh, right, the Demon Child didn’t like loud noises. Of any kind. Turning on the vacuum cleaner could send him screaming into the room to jerk the plug out of the socket. Well, he’d better not even think about pulling any plugs on my babies.
He walked closer to Anna and Amy, and I screamed, Stay away from them! For all the good it did. I might as well have been blowing kisses.
Luckily, just then Honey returned with the diaper bag. She saw Jeremy and broke into a grin. “Hi, sweetie.”
His gaze swung to his mama. “Hi, sweetie.”
“Jeremy, go out to
the car and get the suitcase. I opened the trunk for you, okay?”
“Okay?” he echoed and stared at her.
Are you nuts? I thought. That boy can no more understand about getting a suitcase than—
“Outside, Jeremy,” she said. “Car. Suitcase. Bring to Mama.”
“Bring to Mama,” he repeated, then lumbered out the door.
I was sorely torn. Should I leave the twins? Or follow Jeremy? Curiosity got the better of me. I floated on out to the car. Shoot, Jeremy was actually lifting the suitcase out of the car. I could hardly believe it.
But then he didn’t do anything with it, just stood there like a porter at a hotel, protecting the luggage.
Honey poked her head out the door. “Bring the suitcase in, sweetie. Bring it to Mama.”
“Mama,” Jeremy echoed. He lifted the suitcase and carried it right up the stairs and inside.
I could hardly believe it. The last time I saw the boy, if you handed him a grocery bag full of potato chips to carry, he dropped it on the ground and looked at you like you’d asked him to eat rats.
Maybe Honey hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said Jeremy had improved. But as far as I was concerned, lugging one suitcase did not erase Jeremy’s Demon Child status. Not yet. I’d seen him compliant before. It lasted about ten minutes. Maybe this was his ten minutes for today.
“Take it upstairs,” Honey ordered the boy as he entered the kitchen where she and Bert now sat holding one baby apiece. Casting the babies a wary glance, he trudged right to the stairs. At least he wasn’t frowning at them anymore, probably because they weren’t crying. They were happily sucking down formula in the arms of their aunt and uncle.
As he disappeared up the stairs, Honey turned to Bert. “Did you fix up the room for the twins?”
“Did it last night. I moved the rocking chair from Jeremy’s room into the babies’, and I brought his old baby bed down from the attic. Until we can get an extra crib, they’ll have to sleep in the same one.”
Honey stared down at Anna, who bore her usual Ah-the-joys-of-the-bottle expression. Honey’s eyes grew suspiciously moist. “I never thought we’d get to use that old baby bed again.”
“Me either.”
The wealth of emotion in those two words brought me up short. Honey had once told me that she and Bert had decided not to have more children after Jeremy was diagnosed, because Jeremy was all they could handle. Bert had even gotten himself fixed.
It had never occurred to me that the choice had been hard. Or that maybe they had even come to regret it. They sure did seem happy to have my darling girls in their home.
“Do you think they’ll be okay sleeping upstairs in the guest room?” Bert asked.
No way! I shouted. Jeremy’s room was upstairs, and Honey’s and Bert’s was downstairs. So who was going to protect my darlings from the Demon Child?
“They’ll be all right for one night,” Honey said.
“Sorry I didn’t have enough time to get that extra room down here cleared out,” Bert said. “With the weather turning so cold, the furnace started acting up again. I had to work on it half the morning.”
The scowl crossing Honey’s genial features looked surprisingly like her son’s. “I told you to hire Arturo to fix it.”
“I’ve got it figured out this time. It wasn’t that hard, really.”
“Now, Bert—“
“Knock, knock.”
Honey frowned, but still said, “Who’s there?”
“Don.”
“Don who?”
“Don’cha know I love you?”
A laugh sputtered out of Honey. “That has to be the worst one you ever told.”
He grinned. “It made you laugh.”
“I’m so tired right now, I’d laugh at a monkey picking its nose.”
“What a visual.”
“It’s all your fault—you’re the one who taught me that gross-out humor is better than none at all.”
“And knock-knock jokes.”
She snorted. “Did you get that baby monitor from Jayne?”
“Sure did.”
“Then the babies will be all right upstairs tonight. We’ll clean out the downstairs room tomorrow.”
Amy was fighting the bottle and Bert stared at her in typical male confusion. “The girl hasn’t drunk very much for sounding so hungry.”
“She needs to be burped.” Honey arched one blond eyebrow. “Think you remember how to do that?”
Bert lifted the baby to his shoulder with a sigh. “This will take some getting used to, won’t it?”
“Oh, yeah,” Honey said as she hefted her own baby up to burp her.
Bert looked thoughtful as he patted the baby’s back. “Do you think we made a mistake, offering to take them? Do you think we can handle them?”
I tensed, not sure what answer I was hoping for. If Honey and Bert didn’t keep the babies, I wouldn’t have to worry about Jeremy. On the other hand, my husband had been an orphan, and whenever he talked about what that had been like, I knew I didn’t want that for my children.
Besides, how many people would be willing to adopt twins? An adoption agency might have to separate the babies—would I really want that over having them grow up with Honey and Bert?
“It’s like you said,” Honey replied after a moment, “if we could handle Jeremy, the twins will be a piece of cake.”
Yes, but could they handle both Jeremy and the twins? That’s what worried me.
I was just starting to relax and drift off, half-consciously, toward the white light, when I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. Jeremy was back. Oh, no. That jerked my tether tight.
The boy entered the kitchen and stood waiting until he got his mother’s attention. When she looked at him, he flicked his hand toward the refrigerator.
Honey glanced at the clock. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. It’s way past your dinner time, isn’t it?”
“Dinner time,” Jeremy said solemnly, and flicked his hand again, with more urgency.
“Sit down. I think Anna’s done eating anyway.” Honey looked over at Bert, but Amy, the slower eater, was still sucking on her bottle. So Honey took Anna and headed over to where Jeremy had dropped into one of the ancient kitchen chairs once belonging to our mother.
“Would you like to hold the baby?” she asked Jeremy.
No! I screamed, so loudly I nearly splattered my ethereal self on the ceiling.
Jeremy merely repeated, “hold the baby,” which was just as likely to mean, “Go fix my dinner, woman,” as “I’d love to hold my cousin, thank you.”
But Honey, who should have known better, still bent and pressed Anna up against Jeremy’s chest, then placed his arms in position around the baby. “Hold tight now, sweetie,” she ordered him, and he squeezed the baby hard enough to startle her into a cry.
“Not that hard,” Honey said hastily. “Gently. Gently.”
Meanwhile, I was doing the dance of the dead—hopping from one ghostly foot to the other while trying not to go insane over the prospect of my sweet darling being squeezed lifeless by the Demon Child.
He relaxed his grip, but leveled a severe frown on the crying Anna. For some reason, she found that humorous. Anna always did have fun with faces. She not only stopped crying, but started patting his cheek.
“Good job,” Honey told Jeremy as she went off to make dinner.
Jeremy looked skeptical, however. As Anna’s little fingers batted at his mouth, he inched his head back farther and farther until he was bending his neck at an unnatural angle to avoid the baby’s touch.
I laughed in spite of everything. Maybe Jeremy was just as wary of Anna as I was of him. The twins were a lot like him, after all. They couldn’t talk, they expressed their emotions at an obnoxious volume, a
nd they flailed about and put their hands where they didn’t belong without rhyme or reason.
But they couldn’t hurt him. And he could sure hurt them. In fact, Anna now had her tiny grip on his lip and was yanking it like she yanked the arm of her Ernie doll. When Jeremy opened his mouth and I saw those teeth of his, I threw myself at him, screaming. Then flew right through him, which did no good whatsoever.
Before I could even come back around to try again, however, Honey had returned to whisk the baby from Jeremy, apparently not even noticing that her deadly son had been about to make a meal out of my poor child’s fingers.
“Okay, your pizza pockets are in the oven,” she told him cheerily. Jeremy’s diet consisted of two things—pizza pockets and burgers. And probably baby fingers. “I’ll be back to get them out in a minute. Your dad and I are taking the babies upstairs to bed.”
I went with them. Not that I had much choice. I could wander a little away from the babies, but not very far, not if I didn’t want to get sucked into the light. I’d figured that out pretty quickly. And going to the light just wasn’t an option right now, not until I’d figured out a way to alert Honey to the dangers of Jeremy.
Yes, that’s what I needed to do—send her a message. My Baptist sister would never attend a séance, but maybe I could spell out a message in refrigerator magnets or something.
What I needed was advice from other ghosts about how to haunt the living. Too bad I hadn’t run into any other ghosts. I wish I had. We could have formed a support group—Dead People Anonymous. I wouldn’t even have minded being the first to stand up in the front and say, “My name is Sunny Ross, and I’m a dead person.”
But I was on my own.
Chapter 13
Just when you think it’s safe to go home at the end of the day.
A Day in Mossy Creek Page 19
