by Terri Reid
Tales Around the Jack O’Lantern II
A MARY O’REILLY SERIES SHORT STORY
by
Terri Reid
Tales Around the Jack O’Lantern Two – A Mary O’Reilly Series Short Story
by
Terri Reid
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Terri Reid
Tales Around the Jack O’Lantern Two – A Mary O’Reilly Series Short Story
Copyright © 2015 by Terri Reid
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
The author would like to thank all those who have contributed to the creation of this novelette: Richard Reid, Sarah and Jon Powers, The Ellefson Family, Denise Carpenter, Jenny Bates, Virginia Onines and Mindy Roberts for suggesting I write a second one!
Happy Halloween!!!
Chapter One
(Twelve years ago)
Rain was coming down in a steady drizzle as it had all night, dampening the costumes of many Trick-or-Treaters but not their spirits as they stoically made their way up to the front porch of the O’Reilly home. Mary opened the door to look at a pair of soggy ghosts and a dampened princess with eye makeup running down her adorable six-year old cheeks. “Trick or treat,” they called in unison, holding their treats bags out in front of them.
“Oh, my, you have wonderful costumes,” Mary replied with a smile as she placed a handful of candy in each bag. “Did you do well tonight?”
“We got lots,” the smiling princess replied. Her front tooth was missing, which turned the last word into a slight lisp that Mary found endearing.
“Lots?” Mary repeated.
The three nodded. “Uh-huh,” one of the ghost replied in a slightly more masculine voice. “Lots of kids stayed home ‘cause of the rain and people wanted to get rid of their candy.”
“Well, it was very wise of you to venture out in the rain,” Mary said, wondering why their normally overprotective mother had let them out in such nasty weather. A moment later she had her answer.
Once again, the three nodded. “Yeah, and Mom had to work late, so she won’t even know,” the tallest of the ghostly pair answered. “Um, what time is it?”
Mary glanced down at her watch. “Almost 8:30.”
The three looked at each other, their eyes widening. “We gotta go,” the oldest said, picking up his sheet and heading towards the sidewalk. “Bye. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Mary said, biting back a smile as she watched the three run down the sidewalk, their costumes flapping against their legs, their bags held against their chests as they hurried toward their house down the block. “Good luck.”
“Are you being a bad influence?” Sean, her older brother, asked as he leaned over her shoulder and watched the three along with her. He reached into the bowl she was holding and pulled out a candy bar.
“No,” she said with a grin. “But I could see us doing the exact same thing.”
They watched in delight as the kids entered the house just moments before their mother’s car pulled into the driveway.
“Do you think they’ll get away with it?” she asked her brother.
“Well, if it was me, I’d hightail it upstairs to my bedroom, quickly stash my candy and costume under the bed and then pull on a robe,” he said.
“I heard that Sean O’Reilly,” his mother called from the living room.
“But I would have never gotten away with it,” he said, sending a quick wink towards his sister. “Because Ma would have found us out.”
“Because she has eyes in the back of her head,” Art O’Reilly, one of the twins, replied.
“Nope, she’s psychic,” Tom O’Reilly, the other twin, said.
“No, it’s because she can read minds,” Sean said, as he and Mary joined the rest of the family in the living room.
“Well, if you want to know the truth,” Margaret O’Reilly, their mother, said. “It was because you were the worst liars I’ve ever met.”
The adult children were stunned into silence and Timothy O’Reilly, their father, roared with laughter. “And now you’ve done it, my darling,” he said to his wife. “You’ve given away our greatest secret.”
“Well, it’s best they know their weaknesses before they go get married and try and lie to a spouse,” she said with a chuckle. “Because that would be the end of that.”
“But you believe our ghost stories,” Mary inserted defiantly.
Her mother smiled at her and nodded. “And that’s because they’ve got truth in them,” she said. “Don’t they?”
Mary looked around the room at her older siblings and her parents. “All of them?” she asked.
“All of them that will be told around the Jack O’Lantern tonight,” her father said, his voice soft. He walked past her, locked the front door and turned off the lights. The front porch was now dark and the only light in the house was from the flickering glow of the Jack O’Lantern’s candle placed in the middle of the coffee table. “And now, who’s the first to start?”
Chapter Two
“When your father and I were just a young couple and Sean was a wee boy we lived in a small apartment on the north side of the city,” Margaret O’Reilly began. “It was a usual Chicago apartment, a long hallway that separated the front living room and a small bedroom from the kitchen, bathroom and another bedroom in the back of the house. We’d set up the front bedroom as a nursery because it got the morning sun and was the warmest room in the house.”
And so her story began.
Margaret O’Reilly wiped her hands on her apron and turned off the water in the sink. She had hoped to be able to get the dishes done before Sean woke up, but she could hear his voice calling from the front of the apartment and knew the dishes would have to wait.
Hurrying up the hallway she could hear her son’s laughter. He was such a happy boy and, at two years old, more than old enough to be moved out of the crib he was sleeping in and into a bed. But with a tight household budget, the new bed was still a few more months away.
She paused outside the door, with her hand on the doorknob and smiled as she listened to him babble away. It was almost as if he was having a conversation with someone, she thought with a shake of her head. He was quite a talker, her son.
Opening the door, she saw Sean standing in his crib on the side opposite the door. He turned to her and smil
ed, lifting his arms toward her as he walked over his mattress.
“Momma,” he cried, as he hurried. “Momma.”
She hurried over and picked him up, kissing him softly on the cheek. “Well, good morning, my big man,” she said. “And how did you sleep?”
She turned, walking back towards the door and Sean looked over her shoulder and laughed aloud. Pausing, she turned around to see what caught his fancy, but there was nothing unusual in the room. “What do you see, Sean?” she asked.
He clapped his chubby, little hands together and then looked back towards the closet in the corner of the room. He laughed again, chuckling his deep belly laugh that was generally reserved for when his father was making faces at him. Margaret stared into the corner, lit by the sunlight streaming into the room, and felt a shiver course down her spine.
Taking a deep breath, she shook her head. There was nothing there; she was just spooking herself.
“Okay, well, let’s get you some breakfast,” she said, holding him closer and turning him away from the corner. “How does oatmeal and brown sugar sound to you?”
“Sugar,” Sean repeated with a delighted smile.
She carried him out of the room and closed the door firmly behind her. “I’m just being silly,” she said aloud. “There’s nothing in there but a child’s room.”
For the next few days, Margaret felt uneasy about Sean’s room. She found herself avoiding the room during the day, keeping Sean with her on the other side of the house, letting him nap on her own bed and play in the living room. When she finally had to put him to bed, she kept the door to his bedroom open, so she could listen for him.
One night, when Timothy had to work late, Margaret was in the kitchen folding laundry when she heard the sound of a child laughing. Glancing up at the clock, she saw it was nearly ten o’clock and wondered what kind of mother allowed her young child to be up at that hour. Worried, she opened the back door of the apartment and stepped out on the porch to see if she could locate the child. But stepping outside she made a realization that had her blood growing cold; there was no noise outside. The laughter she’d heard had come from inside her apartment.
Bolting back into the house she ran up the hallway. Sean’s door was closed. She knew she’d kept it open to listen for him. She grabbed the handle and pushed the door open wide, her heart pounding in her chest. Suddenly, she felt foolish. Sean was sound asleep, his fine, blonde hair tossed across his forehead and his little lips drawn upward in a smile. Looking around the room, she could see that everything was in place. His shelves were filled with blocks, cars, trucks and stuffed animals. His favorite books were stacked on his dresser. His teddy bear was in his bed next to him and his favorite toy, a push and spin carousel, was on the floor next to the closet door.
She leaned over the crib, pulled his blanket up and softly kissed his head. “Good night, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Pleasant dreams.”
Turning, making sure the door was wide open, she returned to the kitchen to finish folding the laundry.
Several hours later, Timothy came home. He entered the front door and then stopped at the front hallway, making sure his gun was stored away high on the shelf and his uniform jacket hung just below it. He paused when he heard some noise coming from his son’s room and started to turn in that direction when Margaret called from the kitchen.
“I’ve got your dinner warming in the oven,” she called softly.
He walked down the hall into the kitchen and gave her a quick kiss. “I’ll eat in a moment,” he said. “I want to go in and see Sean first, while he’s awake.”
“He’s sound asleep,” Margaret said. “I checked on him about thirty minutes ago.”
“That’s funny,” Timothy replied. “I’m sure I heard his carousel playing when I walked in the house.”
Pushing past her large husband, Margaret ran down the hall to her son’s room. Timothy followed closely behind. She stopped at the doorway and swallowed a scream as she stared at the floor in the middle of Sean’s room.
“What’s wrong?” Timothy asked, coming up behind her.
She couldn’t speak, she just pointed.
Sean lay sound asleep, just as he’d been when she’d checked on him. But the little toy, his favorite, was now in the middle of the room and the carousal was still spinning as if someone had just pushed the little plunger down. Then they both heard the sound of a child’s soft laughter echoing throughout the room.
Chapter Three
“How long did it take you to move?” Art asked his mother. “And why didn’t you leave Sean with the ghost?”
Sean playfully punched his brother in his arm. “Thanks a lot,” he quipped.
“It took us about two weeks to move,” Margaret said. “But we moved in with a friend during the time it took us to get out of the lease and move to a new place.”
Timothy chuckled. “And once your mother sat down with the landlord and let him know exactly how she felt about his haunted apartment, he was only too happy to let us out of the lease,” he said.
“So, I’ve been associating with ghosts since I was little,” Sean said, nodding his head slowly. “Okay, that clears somethings up.”
“What does that mean?” Mary asked.
“It means I get to tell the next story,” he replied. “It was a dark and stormy night.” He stopped and laughed. “Actually, it was a beautiful late summer day and I had just arrived on the campus of Notre Dame University.”
The main quad at Notre Dame was teaming with new students and Sean was on his way to his new home for the semester, Sorin Hall. He had his arms filled with boxes and had a backpack strung over his shoulders when the building came into view. Stopping in his tracks, his jaw dropped, he just stared.
“Come on,” his friend Pete O’Byran said, slapping him on his back to move him forward. “We’ve got a carload of stuff to carry in.”
“Dude, we’re going to live in a castle,” Sean said, looking at the turrets at each corner. “It’s a freaking castle.”
“Nope,” Pete said. “It’s a really old building and it probably has drafts and really old bathrooms.”
“How can you say that?” Sean asked. “This place is magical. This place has atmosphere. This place…”
This place has ghosts.
Sean didn’t know if he’d heard the words or just felt them. He looked around, but there was no one close except for Pete.
“Did you hear that?” he asked, knowing the answer before he even opened his mouth.
“Hear what?” Pete asked impatiently. “Come on, O’Reilly, stop daydreaming and get moving.”
That night after boxes had been emptied, clothes hung up and dinner eaten at the dining hall, Sean found himself wanting to get away from the crowds. Leaving Sorin Hall, he walked towards the main quad. Noises from the dorms and activities on the other side of campus faded away as he walked toward the center of campus and the iconic Washington Hall. Finding himself a bench among the large oak trees spread out among the green, he sat down, placed his elbows on his knees, cradled his head in his hands and sighed. He wondered what his family was having for dinner, which football game Art and Tom were arguing over and what his father had done that day at work.
“It’s okay to miss them.”
Startled, Sean jumped and turned around to find an elderly priest standing behind him. “I’m so sorry, Father,” Sean said. “You startled me.”
Chuckling softly, the priest nodded. “Yes, I do have that habit of sneaking up behind the students,” he admitted. “Of course, it tends to keep them worried when they’re up to no good.”
Sean laughed softly. “That’s probably a good thing,” he admitted. Then he looked around the deserted quad. “Am I allowed here, I mean at night? This is my first day, so I’m not real sure about the rules."
The priest smiled warmly. “Yes, you are allowed here,” he said. “Especially when you need a time to be quiet and reflect on your life. That’s why I walk the quad.”
>
Impressed with the priest’s insight, he nodded. “I didn’t think I’d miss them this much,” he admitted. “I mean, I’m in college now, I’m not a kid.”
The priest’s smile widened. “No, you are certainly not a kid,” he agreed. “But missing your family has little to do with age or maturity, it has to do with love.” He nodded with admiration. “It is a good thing to take the time to think about them and miss them.”
Sean felt comfortable chatting with the elderly man. For some reason, he felt as if he could tell him anything. “Duh,” he said aloud. “Confession.”
The priest shook his head, confused. “I beg your pardon?”
Blushing, Sean rolled his eyes. “I apologize, Father,” he said. “I was thinking that for some reason I could tell you anything and you’d understand and then I thought…”
“Ahhh,” the priest said with a grin. “Confession.” And he laughed. “Yes. Yes, I do see. But, I believe, Sean O’Reilly, that we have something more in common.”
“We do? What?” Sean asked, and then he shook his head. “Wait. How do you know my name?”
“I will answer your first question and perhaps that will answer your second,” the priest replied, the smile on his face turning thoughtful. “Both you and I, Sean O’Reilly, believe in ghosts.”
Then the priest nodded his head and disappeared into the night.
Chapter Four
“Did you ever find out who he was?” Timothy asked.
Sean nodded. “Yeah, as soon as I got back into the dorm,” he explained. “I’d been using the door closest to my bedroom and hadn’t gone in through the main doors until that night. There was a statue of him in the lobby of Sorin Hall. I had the pleasure of meeting the one and only Father Sorin that night.”
“Well, I’ve a story for you,” Timothy said. “But I never found out who the ghost was.”
The woman’s body had been found beneath the metal staircase that led to the Damen Avenue elevated train stop. Just like the others, she’d been strangled and her hair had been cut off, as if the killer was collecting his own version of scalps. And, unfortunately, he had acquired quite a collection in the six weeks he’d been terrorizing the city.
