After the Midnight Hour

by Linda Randall Wisdom

  “I didn’t think ghosts ate food,” he said, telling himself this was proof she wasn’t what she claimed to be.

  She nodded, but kept her head downcast. “I cannot actually taste the food since it is not necessary for my survival. But I enjoy the different textures.”

  “Because I would have wondered why you didn’t eat,” he muttered.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Yet Maya still has her sense of taste,” Jared said.

  She nodded. “It is another thing we do not understand.”

  Rachel hadn’t felt fear in over one hundred years, but she felt it now. What if there was a way that Jared could banish her from the house? Long ago she’d prayed for a way to leave here because she didn’t have a reason to stay. Since Jared had come here she hadn’t wanted to leave—unless she found the key that would release her from her half existence.

  Under lowered lashes she watched Jared eat. More than once he’d spoken of his lack of education and his common manners. Yet she noticed he wiped his boots on the mat outside the door before coming in, he washed up without any prompting and he never sat down at the table until she did. And not once had his eyes slid over her with the hungry leering look Caleb used to give her. Many times after Caleb stared at her with a dark fire in his eyes that led to his possessing her body, she’d felt the need to bathe in the hottest water possible to cleanse herself. Not once during her marriage had she felt clean in spirit. Before they were married, Caleb had told her he would worship her and give her the world. Instead, he threw her into a hell she felt she would still be in after death. And for decades, that was exactly what had happened to her.

  She licked her lips. “Are there still other ranches here?” she asked, now feeling a little confident that she could ask the questions that had plagued her for a long time. “I remember there was a family about fifteen miles from here.”

  Jared shook his head. “There hasn’t been a working ranch in this area for the last sixty years.”

  “Yet this one remained even if it wasn’t occupied.” She took a tiny bite of her meat.

  “The way I understood it, Caleb’s brother back East inherited the ranch, but he never bothered doing anything with it. Even after his death, it still sat empty for a number of years until a descendent moved in briefly.” He slanted her a look. “But I guess you know about the empty part better than I do.”

  “Yet you chose to come here.”

  “I inherited this place from my mother and decided to move in. From what I was told, a trust account had been set up years ago to cover the property taxes, so I don’t have to sell off any body parts to pay them.”

  Rachel scrunched up her face. “Sell body parts?”

  He chuckled. “Another term from the modern world you claim not to know about.” He shook his head and pushed his plate away, resting his elbows on the table with his fingers laced together. “I have lots of questions.”

  She looked apprehensive. “Would you like more coffee?” She jumped up from her chair and almost ran to the coffeemaker.

  “Rachel!”

  She froze as if he’d commanded her to halt. Jared sighed as he realized his harsh voice had frightened her.

  “Rachel…” He said her name in a softer voice this time. “Let’s go outside on the porch.”

  “I can’t,” she said in a strangled voice, refusing to look at him.

  “Can’t go outside? Why not?” he asked.

  Rachel looked toward the back door as if she wished she could escape but knew it wasn’t possible.

  “I do not entirely understand how or why, just that I cannot leave the house,” she whispered. “It is as if some sort of barrier exists at the doors and windows that will not allow me to leave.”

  Jared couldn’t miss the fear in her eyes. “What are you remembering, Rachel?” He continued to use the quiet voice that worked with more than one traumatized witness.

  Her brow furrowed in thought. “She’s chanting.”

  “Who?”

  She shook her head. “I never knew her name. She was Caleb’s…” She suddenly blushed. “They were very close.”

  “You mean Caleb’s mistress.” He said the word for her, easily guessing why she blushed, while wondering why any man would want another woman if he had someone as special as Rachel.

  She nodded. She still couldn’t meet his eyes. “She hated me so much and I did not understand why,” she whispered. “I never knew her and only saw her from a distance.”

  Jared felt uncomfortable with her distress. He didn’t want to believe she was a ghost. He preferred thinking she was a harmless woman who had a problem with reality.

  “Then if you can’t go outside, let’s go into the other room.” He thought it might be easier for her if she was more comfortable.

  Rachel moved toward the table instead. “The dishes need to be washed.”

  “They can wait.” Without touching her, he guided her back into the den.

  Rachel went in ahead of him and perched on the edge of a chair. She didn’t take her eyes off him as he followed her, then took a seat opposite her, turning his chair around and resting his arms across the back. He racked his brain for questions that wouldn’t bring back dark memories, but he couldn’t think of one that didn’t have to do with what was upsetting her.

  Damn! It was easier for him to question a cold-blooded murder suspect than to interrogate this fragile beauty. He noted the tension in her mouth and the wary look in her violet eyes. He refused to believe she was a ghost. It flew in the face of all his beliefs.

  “What do you do during the day? Where do you go?”

  She appeared relieved by his question. “I remain here.”

  Jared looked around. “Here where?”

  Rachel nodded. “In the house. I do not know how to explain it. It is as if I am inside a cloud.”

  “A cloud in the house,” he mused, having trouble believing her, but doubting she was lying to him. “How come I don’t see this cloud you’re in?”

  “Because it’s not the kind of cloud you can see. It is just…there. I am afraid it is not easy for me to explain.” She thought for a moment. “Do you know how it feels when a breeze touches your face?”

  Jared knew that feeling only too well. There had been many times inside the house he’d felt something brush against his face. Was Rachel trying to say that sensation was her? He nodded.

  “That is what I become. I cannot feel anything, but I do hear voices and understand what people are saying. And I am aware of everything around me. You might say I am an observer standing at a distance. I can travel to any of the rooms inside the house. I just cannot leave it.”

  “So you haven’t been outside this house since 1888?” he asked slowly. He winced when she nodded. “What do you do after I go to bed?”

  “I read, I watch programs on your television,” she admitted. “And I stand at the windows and look outside.”

  A part of this world, yet not a part.

  Jared still had trouble believing her, but the barriers were lowering bit by bit, and they were blowing his mind. She explained everything so logically. The idea of not having the freedom to just walk outside to enjoy a sunny day or moonlit night would have had him clawing at the walls. He couldn’t comprehend someone handling such stark isolation for so many years, even if, in a sense, that being had company. But why, then, could Maya leave the house? She’d even been nagging Jared to find her seeds and plants so she could start a kitchen garden.

  “Then why can Maya…?” he asked.

  Rachel shrugged. “I do not know. It is the way it has always been.”

  “What about when the weather changes? Do you feel the cold night air or the heat of the sun? Do you feel the wind on your face? Smell the rain?”

  Rachel shook her head. Her hands lay neatly folded in her lap, her ankles crossed in a ladylike pose.

  “I feel nothing during daylight hours,” she softly admitted. “I can enjoy looking at a fresh flower, but I ca
nnot smell its fragrance. I can look out the window and watch the rain falling outside, but I cannot feel the dampness. I feel neither warmth nor cold. And I cannot leave this house to discover what lies outside the boundaries that hold me.” Her shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug of resignation. “That is what my world has been for me for the past hundred odd years.”

  An existence with no meaning. A prison that didn’t require jailers because there was no chance of escape.

  Jared was still having trouble assimilating all the information she had given him. As it was, he had an idea Rachel had only related a fraction of the story. She hadn’t said one word about what her life had been like before her death.

  Her death. Another thing he couldn’t understand. The woman seated before him looked vital and alive.

  What if she was telling the truth? What had her life been like before she married Bingham and moved to California? What had happened the day she died? Why had that man killed her?

  Jared mentally shook his head. No matter how he looked at it, it seemed more like a movie he’d see on TV.

  “None of it makes any sense,” he muttered to himself. He kept shaking his head in disbelief as he pushed himself upward. “No sense at all.”

  Her dark violet eyes tracked his movements. “That is why I never said anything to you before. I knew you would have trouble believing me. I do not lie, Jared.”

  He didn’t acknowledge her words as he walked out of the house, with Harley on his heels.

  Rachel remained seated in her chair. She thought of the warning signs of Jared’s temper earlier that evening. Even in the face of his evident anger, she noticed he didn’t allow his ire to get out of hand. Not once had he come right out and accused her of lying. She understood he had trouble understanding her story. After all these decades even she had difficulty comprehending what had happened to her after that horror-filled moment when she’d looked into her husband’s crazed eyes and known she was about to die at his hands.

  A moment later she heard the throaty rumble of his motorcycle as it raced down the road.

  Rachel had told Jared she couldn’t feel anything any longer. She’d lied.

  At that moment, she felt a great sorrow tearing her apart inside at the idea that he might now have the power to banish her just because he didn’t believe in her.

  Emotions shot through Jared like poisoned darts, all with the intention of creating damage.

  It had been a long time since he’d felt this unsure about the world around him. He was used to a lifestyle that followed a rigid set of rules he’d laid out for himself.

  He worked the graveyard shift because he preferred it. His willingness to cover that shift made the other homicide detectives, those with actual lives, happy. He also preferred working alone. Something else they didn’t mind, since it was known that Jared Stryker didn’t always play well with others. But he was persistent when investigating a crime and he didn’t quit until he got the job done.

  Then he thought of the person who was turning his concept of reality upside down. Rachel. She was so beautiful she made his teeth ache and his body ache even more.

  From that very first moment, she hadn’t seen him as a thug with a badge. She didn’t see him as a man with a less than perfect family tree. Someone she should avoid. In fact, she always sought out his company. He ignored the whispered thought that naturally she sought him out. She hadn’t talked to anyone in more than a hundred years, so for all he knew she would have sought out the devil himself just to have a civilized conversation. For all intents and purposes, she was a literal prisoner in the house, with no hope of parole.

  When Jared felt this way there was only one destination he could go where he knew he wouldn’t feel out of place. A spot that had everything he needed: loud rowdy music, cigarette smoke guaranteed to burn the lungs, and an average of one fight a night.

  “You look like hell,” Lea said, setting a frosty beer bottle in front of him. She remained where she was, looking him over much too thoroughly.

  He grimaced. “I’ve been better.”

  “How’s the house coming along?”

  The innocuous question sent a stab through his body. He should have known she would ask. And if he didn’t put on a good front she’d suspect something was wrong. Lea was tenacious when it came to ferreting out information. She wouldn’t let him alone until she got the whole story. Right now, he wasn’t sure just what that story was.

  “I’m learning I’m a hell of a lot better cop than I am a carpenter.” He grinned when two leather-and-denim-clad men flashed him furtive looks and moved farther down the bar.

  “We’ve discussed this before,” Lea pointed out in her I-need-to-be-reasonable-with-my-favorite-idiot voice. “You don’t mention your occupation while you’re in here and I don’t throw your cute ass out the door for scaring off my customers.”

  “Come on, Lea, most of them already know what I am. And they know this isn’t even my jurisdiction,” he pointed out, recognizing a few faces he’d arrested in the past. “Have you seen anyone try to pick on me?”

  “Only because they’re not that stupid.” She rested her arms on the bar and leaned forward. “But they don’t need to be reminded, do they?” she said in a soft voice, barely audible courtesy of Bob Seger’s rough voice singing in the background. “Just because you’re in a pissy mood doesn’t mean you can take it out on my customers.”

  “You’re a hard woman, Lea Raines.” Jared flashed a grin that had seduced more than one woman into his bed.

  Except this woman was immune to his charm. She preferred being a friend to being a lover. She’d once stated that friends were more important. She also sensed something was very wrong with him. “What is going on here, darlin’?”

  He picked up his beer bottle and drank thirstily. “Not much. I’m just having a beer and enjoying an evening with an old friend.”

  Lea gave him a dirty look.

  “I needed some time away from the homestead and didn’t want to ride all the way into Sierra Vista,” he explained, looking around. Even though his gaze wandered over most of the men and women in the bar, his mind’s eye focused on two men in particular. “At least now it doesn’t take me as long to come out here, since I’m practically a neighbor.”

  Jared looked at the woman who had been his best friend ever since he could remember. The shy girl who rarely looked anyone in the eye had grown up into a lovely woman with a self-assurance that couldn’t be ignored.

  He and Lea had survived abusive parents, indifferent educators and a world that looked down on them. Jared had ended up in the army, where his anger was channeled in a more positive way and he discovered what it was like to live on the right side of the law. In turn, Lea was determined not to turn out like her alcoholic mother and petty-criminal father. A college degree in business would have allowed her to work anywhere, but she chose to return home and run the bar her grandfather had left her after his death.

  It was on the tip of Jared’s tongue to tell her everything about Rachel. He wanted to ask Lea what she thought about such a fantastic tale. Maybe she could make sense out of what he couldn’t.

  He figured she’d listen politely, then either inform him there’d be no more beer for him, even though this was his first, or she’d call those men in the white coats who would offer him a jacket with lots of straps and buckles, and then escort him to a nice quiet room with incredibly soft walls.

  Plus, right now, he felt like keeping Rachel’s existence to himself. His very own secret. How many men had a real ghost in their house?

  He froze. He couldn’t be admitting he believed Rachel’s incredible story, could he? Maybe he was losing his mind, after all.

  Lea, standing a short distance away dispensing beers to several customers, looked in Jared’s direction when she heard his chuckle. She arched an eyebrow. He shrugged.

  “If you can’t behave, you’re outta here,” she warned as she passed him to reach the other side of the bar.

  �
�Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He turned around and leaned against the bar as he idly scanned the room. He deliberately allowed his gaze to slide past the one man that interested him most, but he retained the image. He raised his beer to his lips to enhance the idea that he was more interested in his drink than the tavern’s clientele.

  His mind’s eye pictured the man. He thought of the worn leather chaps wrapped over equally worn jeans. Jared already knew the wicked looking steel tips on the man’s boots weren’t for decoration, nor was the obviously empty knife sheath on his belt. Lea’s rules were irrevocable. Leave your weapons outside, boys, or don’t bother coming in.

  Greasy, shoulder-length blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, with a scrubby beard partially covering acne-scarred cheeks. The man looked as if he hadn’t showered in the past week or so.

  Something tightened in Jared’s gut. He was used to the feeling. It always meant something bad.

  He thought back to the night he was beaten. His ribs still ached a little at the memory. It seemed likely the man was one of his attackers.

  Before the character realized he was under scrutiny, Jared turned back to face the bar with an unhurried motion. He offered Lea a hopeful smile. She rolled her eyes and replaced his now empty beer bottle with a fresh one.

  “Who’s the butt-ugly blond guy with the scar across the eyebrow?” he murmured. “He’s playing pool with Crank.”

  She didn’t look in the direction of the pool tables. “I don’t know his name. He comes in maybe two or three times a week. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a couple of friends. Drinks no more than two beers when he’s in here, sometimes plays a little pool, but nothing that could be considered high stakes. He hasn’t given me any trouble yet.” Her gaze sharpened. “Or has he?”

  “Those steel tips on his boots seem familiar.” Jared lifted the bottle to his lips and allowed the cold yeasty brew to slide down his throat. “Seems I’ve encountered them not long ago.”

  Lea’s expression didn’t betray her thoughts. “He was here that night, but I didn’t notice what time he left.”

  Jared didn’t bother asking her if she was sure. Lea’s memory was better than any security camera.