***
"'E seems t'be talkin' t' 'imself," Ruth said, pointing toward Paul's black pick-up truck. "But we know only too well, 'e's-"
"Probably jabbering with Bartholomew," Martin huffed and flew to the curb on the other side of the street. "How exasperating is this? Bartie-boy is safe as long as he stays inside the human and he knows it."
"I wonder why 'e chose 'im?" Ruth stopped in the street on Martin's side of the yellow line and tapped her fingers through her chin. "Paul, I mean, the boy must 'ave special powers, 'e does." Two cars, an oil truck and a semi breezed right through her. After the twirling smoke formed back into the stout English woman, she bolted to the gutter, raised a brow at Martin, and then shouted at Sara's image, which was wrapped around the stoplight a few feet away. "Yer sister's got something 'e wants, but can't get 'imself, dearie. We'll be needin' t'do a bit o'figurin', we will.
"'E's been tryin' fer years t'break back in t'the real world, 'e 'as." Ruth tsked, flitted onto the curb beside Martin and aggressively motioned Sara over.
Sara's image stretched in and out of shape as she made ready to take flight, and when the light turned red, she zipped toward them and hovered close, hand inside her heaving chest. "Ohmigod! That is such a scary feeling, in an adrenaline-rushy kind of way."
Ruth eyed Sara up and down. "Yer family wouldn't be unnatural—somethin' out o'the ordinary—would they, dear? See, some 'umans can channel us spirits, but can't give us immortality, they can't. But, well, with the right body, Bartholomew can walk among the livin' again, 'e can. You'd tell ole Ruth if y'was a bit different, wouldn't y', love?"
"I'm not different, I'm popular—Toni's different." Sara ran her hands into her forehead, trying to finger-comb her hair. Sara swallowed a sob and threw her hands in the air. "Well, hell, I guess I better own it. Lord knows I've tried to help Toni—she's such a dweeb. I woke up one morning last week with a brainy idea; help my geeky twin find a boyfriend. So I surfed the Net. Toni, she had . . . she didn't... those guys just answered my ad."
"Yer ad, dear?" Ruth asked.
Martin sighed while Sara cried like a rejected third grader. "You go to computer sites designated to help you find romance, place an advertisement, and wait for someone to contact you to set up a meeting."
"Blessyerunbeatin'eart, dear, y'sound like y've done this yerself," Ruth said. "Shame things have come t'this, it is. In my day-"
"Nix the rant, Ruth," Martin said. "Work with me here. Who cares how B did it? He's clearly using Paul. So the boy has to be a medium, a sorcerer, or both. B wants Toni for some reason. Why? That's the question."
"Well, yes, Martin, and y'don't 'ave t'shout. What say we follow Toni for a bit, and maybe it'll come t'me," Ruth mumbled. "But y'can't disagree, these newfangled contraptions are the devil's 'ands and ears, they are. No proprieties these days, that's all I'm sayin', I am. Didn't mean t'get personal, dear."
"Oh, Puh-leeeze." Martin dismissed Ruth and then turned, squealed, and whipped a path of ghostly head-smoke, followed by a trail of his pointing finger. The same guy that was in the restaurant earlier, was now climbing into a Jeep across from the parking lot.
"Blessyerlibidinousness, Martin. Get yer mind out o'the gutter, we've work t'do," Ruth said. "Shall we fly over t'the 'ospital? Mecosta Medical Center, I believe? Isn't that what the young man in the white coat said?"
"I am not going to watch my mother and sister, and some hunky doctor, crying over my salad-incrusted face, bloody neck, and puke-gelled hair. This is just too embarrassing!" Sara started bawling.
"Oh, now, now, dear. Yer dead; it's not like y'll be 'ave'n t'sip tea over yer dead remains and carryin' on a conversation with any of 'em," Ruth said, taking off toward the sky.
Martin looked at Sara with empathy. "You'll have to cut Ruth some slack. She's been dead almost four-hundred years and weird shit just pours out of her mouth. Sorry for your loss, by the way."
Sara's arms sank into her chest when she gripped her elbows. "I just want to wash my hair with my strawberry shampoo, get out of these bloody clothes, text my friends. I want-"
"Honey, you're preachin' to a corpse," Martin said, giving the man in the jeep one final look before pulling Sara up into the sky with him.
"By the way, you should put some clothes on," Sara said. "You look like an idiot in your underwear."
"I died in my thong—I haunt in my thong."
Sara looked horrified. "You mean we have to wear the same clothes—like What? ForEver? Do I have a hole in my neck, too?" She passed her hand through her throat several times, somersaulting in the air with the effort.
"Oh, give it up. It adds to your trashy ambiance, in a 'Night of the Living Dead' kind-of-way." Martin steadied her by tapping her foot down in the direction of earth as they got closer to Ruth. "You'll get the hang of it. Just don't make any sudden movements."
"I don't do trashy," Sara pouted. "I wish I would've worn my new skinny jeans and my shit-kicking, black leather knee-high-boots—and gone heavier on the makeup. I bet I look pasty, don't I? Dammit! I would've been the rage of the spirit world."
Martin sighed. "Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse. You come along; bottle-blond, bitchy, and totally the wrong sex. I'm so screwed."
"I am so not a bottle-blond! Hey, we can exchange a few fem-pointers," Sara said, whipping in circles. "Weeeeeeeeee, I can fly!"
"Oh, give me a break."
Chapter Four
The emergency room was packed with coughing, sniveling, puking, wheezing, complaining men, women, and children, impatiently waiting to see a doctor.
Fluorescent lighting buzzed overhead, bringing clarity to the inconsolable atmosphere. Industrial, slate-colored carpet, soiled from years of traffic, smelled faintly of sweat, disinfectant, and mold. The pale gray walls added to the ambiance of disparity in the room. Close examination could almost reveal a waver in the stale air when Ruth, Martin, and Sara floated through the wall and hovered over the crowd.
"Blessmytransparentbody, it's like the wailin' rooms durin' the black deaths in 'ere, it is." Ruth patted Sara's hand. "Not to worry yerself, dear, I'm sure yer carcass is in a safe place bein' attended to right properly, it is."
"What?!" Sara squeaked. "Where's the morgue in this place? I wanna be sure. Hey, I wonder if I could, like, do a possession thing and make it go all zombified?"
"Godblessyerinanity, that's not what we're 'ere fer." Ruth patted Sara's hand again. "Yer dead, Sara, plain and simple. Put yer cadaver out o'yer head. It's just a useless piece o'meat, dear."
"You have a subtle passive-aggressive way with words, Ruth." Martin ran fingers right through his hooded blue eyes, and forehead, to get to his blond hair.
"Well, it's life, Martin. Y'live—y'die—they bury y'in the ground, they do. 'Cept, I have it on good authority that now-a-days they burn yer cadaver and stuff the ashes in a jar fer the fireplace mantle, they do. Imagine that."
"Yes, imagine." Martin rolled his eyes.
"Ugh! That kid just upchucked! Ohmigod, this place is full of germs. Can we just go down and find my body? I don't like being around sick people." Sara bolted for the reception desk, wrinkling her nose when she couldn't pump the hand sanitizer bottle.
"I don't think I've ever seen a ghost with a bottle of sanitizer," Martin quipped. "We don't eat, we don't sleep, and your popular little ass is just another puff of smoke on this side." Martin flew through Sara a couple of times, her attempts to pummel him totally useless. "And we don't get sick."
Sara made a hummingbird stop and hovered in front of Martin. "Do ghosts get their period?"
The rest of Martin's laugh strangled him. "What part of dead don't you understand?"
"Oh, hell yes, no more cotton plugs!" Sara was a bouncing, squealing ball of ectoplasm.
"Cotton plugs, dear?"
Sara clapped herself into a smoky blob. "Tampons, Ruth! No more tampons, no more cramps. No more bloody underpants." Her song echoed.
Martin rolled his eyes.
"Oh, well yes, dea
r. I see. How convenient. In my day, we'd rip rags and I washed 'em daily, I did. That was one of my dreaded tasks in the castle. A bloody mess; it was."
"Okay, now that's entirely too much information." Martin grimaced. "Let's just all back away from the feminine hygiene issues, shall we?"
"You are such a guy," Sara said. "I bet you even make PMS jokes. Am I right?" she asked Ruth.
Martin's form flickered. "So, Sara, you say you're a natural blond?"
"Yes! Will you get off my hair!" Sara snapped, "Now let's go find my body before they bag it and send it to some funeral home. I wanna be sure they kept all my pieces and parts. I have lots of friends that-"
"Back in my day they used pine boxes, they did. And what the rats didn't get, Godfergivethevermin, the earthly creatures made fast work o'when y'were put t'ground, they did. And then the grave robbers, shametheirgodfersakensouls, they-"
"Ohhh, I hate rats." Sara shuddered. "Sharp teeth. Beady little eyes. Oh yuck! Well, that's it! I'm going to find myself. You coming or what?"
"No need holdin' watch in the morgue, dear. I'm sure they started 'ackin' away at yer earthly remains, autopsy and all, and . . . well never mind, yer sister's over there, she is, and that's what we came fer." Ruth gestured toward Toni who was sitting on an aluminum and Naugahyde chair, in the back of the room, beside a television mounted over a table with complimentary coffee and condiments. "Come along, Sara. Some things are better left t'the imagination."
Sara was eyeing the double doors by the office.
"Is that yer mother hugging yer sister?" Ruth asked, pulling Sara's attention away from the doors. "The one with the orange and black hair, dear?" Ruth put a ghostly hand to her mouth, one eyebrow raised in question.
"Oh, God no," Martin clucked, his long fingers splayed across his bare chest. "Women with black hair should just say no to highlights, honey."
"I know, right?" Sara said. "It's not like I haven't tried to tell her."
"Do y'ave mirrors in yer home, dear? I would think a reflected image would say it all, I would, but then-"
"OHMIGOD, is that my BF!?!" Sara screeched.
"BF?" Ruth asked.
"Best friend, Ruth," Martin flippantly answered, still looking at Sara's mother with disgust.
Sara's lips wisped a snarl. "And that's my brand new, as of last week, X boyfriend with her! The bitch! The slut! She's got at least two months re-growth—you know she does her own color, I'd never be caught dead—I mean, look at her—showing that much nippage!"
"Now, now, blessyervanitydrivenlittle'eart, no need t'get all sketchy, dear," Ruth interrupted.
"Where?" Martin asked, reluctantly pulling his eyes off the mother's hair.
"Right there! The MF'n cheater!" Sara screamed as she floated at warp speed toward a tall blond boy with a badly put together towel sling wrapped around one arm and a bosomy young girl tucked under the other.
Martin eyed the boy with a wicked grin. "Atta girl, go get him. Nasty pants—horney toad—little MF'n, catch and release." He grabbed the waistband of his undies, tightened his butt cheeks, and snapped the thong back against his hip.
"MF? Sounds lewd, Martin," Ruth said.
"Oh, this is going to be good." With a smile that flashed a little fang, and long skinny legs working his jiggling butt, Martin strutted off after Sara.
"Martin, don't encourage a fracas," Ruth said, floating after them. "We should stay focused, we should."
Sara was whipping in and out of the young man's body, screeching, "I knew it—I just knew it, David. Bet you have that bling-ho's peppermint lipstick all over your dip-stick!" Sara's outstretched hand was waggling a finger inside Jessica's face. "You did this because I wouldn't do you unless you did me! And everybody knows she would!"
"Yes, well yes, now that's quite graphic, isn't it, Godrestyercrasslittlemouth. Clearly a wee bit too much information for one's mind t'conjure up a mental image, it is. And I'm thinkin' y'should let it go, dear, since y'really can't-"
Sara grabbed for Jessica's throat with both hands, but only managed to find her own fingers. She shook her clutched hands in and out of the girl's throat.
"Oh, that's damn skippy! Sooo dramatic! Let her have it, sweetie," Martin said, full lips in an open smile.
"That's enough, dear," Ruth tried.
Sara floated backward with clenched fists and glaring eyes. She darted up to the ceiling, looked down, dive-bombed Jessica's head, entered her body, and didn't come out.
Jessica sucked in a whopping big breath. Her eyes went big. She snarled, and started slapping her own face with both hands. Her feet swept out from under her and she fell butt first on the floor. She then wrapped her hands around her own throat, shook hard, until her face started to turn purple.
"She's inside!" Martin shrieked. "How amazing is that?"
Jessica let go of her own neck, took another huge breath, pulled her own hair toward the ceiling, and stood up. She pumped a fist in the air, let out a war-cry, and ran at David. Grabbing the collar of his t-shirt, she yanked it down, sank her teeth into his chest, shook her head while he screamed bloody murder, knocked over chairs, and fell over a table.
Jessica snarled. "Weeell, scrrrew yoou—you pencil-dick, ass-wipe, shit-head!"
The room became very silent.
"What the hell are you talking about, Jessica?" David backed quickly away, eyes frantically searching.
Martin gasped, "Oh my!"
"Bless'erfilthylittlemouth," Ruth whispered, even though she didn't need to, "Sara's possessed that the poor girl, she has. It hardly seems possible, 'er bein' new and a mere ghost an all, but none the less, evident, and we really should assist with 'er withdrawal, we should."
Martin exchanged a testy look with Ruth before he faced Jessica and tried, "Sara, get your bleached blond head out of hers right now, you're making a scene."
"Well, yes, there is that, but y'should embellish a bit, dear. We came 'ere t'find out what Toni is, and, well, now I'm thinkin', if Sara can get inside a 'uman body-"
Jessica hissed at Martin and Ruth who stood behind David, but of course the boy didn't know that and, holding his bloody chest, he jumped back, blew through the two ghosts and plastered himself against the wall, looking like a psychopath's garish trophy.
After Ruth waddled through David, she tsked at Toni and her mother, who were both staring at Jessica with big round eyes. "Yer mother is watchin' ya, dear," Ruth tried.
"Well he's a pig!" Jessica turned to look at Toni. "And you can tell all of his friends I said so, Toni!"
Three attendants and a security guard burst through the double doors by the information desk and scanned the room.
Everyone pointed at Jessica, including David.
Jessica leapt at David and grabbed his hair with both hands. One foot against the wall, she pulled his nose to hers. "You lying, cheating, son-of-a-"
The security guards leapt at Jessica.
"What the hell's gotten into you?" David yelled, wrestling her hands from his hair as the guards pulled Jessica off.
"Now would be as good a time as any t'exorcise yerself, dear," Ruth suggested. "I believe y'put an end t' 'is intimate relations with the young, MF'n-BF in question, y'did."
Jessica, arms restrained, leered at David and opened her mouth in a silent scream and Sara erupted from the orifice in a puff of smoke that only the ghosts could see. Sara immediately started wind-milling her translucent fists into Jessica's horrified face.
Jessica teetered, blinked madly and looked around the room in a stupor.
"What's she on?" one of the security guards asked David.
"Nothing! I swear. She drove me here."
"Well I'm impressed and terribly amused," Martin commented, watching Sara, who was now hovering over Jessica, peddle kicking her face. "Just look at the little hellion."
"I don't know what the problem is," Jessica stammered, wiping at her cheeks.
"I'll tell you what the freakin' problem is!" Sara screamed into the security guard's ear,
arms rigid, hands fisted. "She stole my boyfriend, the MF'n little slut!" Sara hammered Jessica's back.
"I believe you've covered that right well, dear. Blessyervindictivelittlesoul," Ruth said.
"Why don't the two of you come along with us to one of the offices where we can sort this out?" the security guard said, pulling Jessica by the arm.
Sara turned on Ruth. "Dammit, is there some way to slap the hell out of her from out here?"
With shrewd eyes, Ruth answered, "I'm afraid not, dear. Some ghosts can move inanimate objects, they can, but it takes a lot of concentration, a bit of ghostly maturity, and-"
Sara narrowed her eyes and focused on a pile of magazines on a nearby table. The magazines lifted into the air, hovered, and then turned into a maelstrom of flapping pages that ended up beating Jessica about the face.
"Or not," Martin said, as patrons, including Toni and Sara's mother, made a mad dash for the exit.
"Holy shit!" the security guard said, pulling Jessica toward the double doors near the reception desk. The other two attendants ran after them with David in tow.
"She just might come in handy," Martin said.
"If we can control 'er, and keep 'er away from 'er cadaver, dear," Ruth said.
"Yeah, well, there is that," Martin said, eyeing the pile of magazines fluttering to the floor as the security guard pulled Jessica through the double doors.
Sara floated toward them across the empty room, looking like a ghost on a bad-hair day.
"Your coif is slightly askew. Shall we give you a moment before we go out to the parking lot, Missy?" Martin asked, hands together at his chest. "I think our next move will be to see if you can enter the body of the woman with the bad highlights."
"What do you mean? Are you talking about my mother? Why would I do that?" Sara asked, fingers slicing through muddled smoke clouds around her head.
"That's what we came 'ere fer, dear. Infermation," Ruth said, "and who would've thought y'might-"
"I am not getting into my mother's body!" Sara hollered. "And neither of you are, either!"
"No need t'fear, dear. Neither I nor poor Martin can possess a 'uman," Ruth said.
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