“Educate—” He thumbed at his chest.
“A common societal response, whether you disagree or not, is to exhibit a modicum of magnanimous behavior. This might include anything from a hum of acknowledgment to verbalizing a thought, like, ‘Wow! That’s interesting!’ even if you’re positive it’s total bullshit.”
“Really?” He crossed his arms. “And where did you get your degree in psychology?”
She’d turned for the car but spun back around, speaking in loud, staccato beats. “N. Y. U.”
He blinked at her and shut up.
“You said you were an actress.”
“One-note assumptions again. How thickheaded. Must be what you got your degree in.”
Pete opened his mouth and closed it, stopped by his one-credit-shy exit from Brown. He’d never seen his father so livid.
“My degree”—she took a step toward Pete, who took one back—“didn’t come with a disclaimer saying the two things were mutually exclusive. One can earn a degree in anything, then decide to pursue something else. Hardly a phenomenon. Just a stereotype.”
“Yeah, but . . . well, I don’t know that much about actresses, but I didn’t think—”
“What? That we’re educable?”
While he’d never thought about it, Pete felt committed to the ludicrous argument and splayed his hands wide in front of him.
“You’re kidding, right? No one is that ignorant.”
“Excuse me?” And now he was ready to fight, certain he could handle an intellectual argument—even one credit short.
She beat him out of the gate.
“Education was the agreement I made with my parents. Flighty as my mother can be, my father not such a great businessman, they insisted I earn a degree if I was going to pursue acting. It seemed reasonable to me and my 3.86 GPA. Average is 3.7.” She smiled at his awed expression. “Oh, did I suddenly jump a notch on the brainiac meter? I might be something more than the niece of your mother’s dead grifter lover.” And for all her capricious humor, she appeared quite serious.
“Sorry. I didn’t think—”
“No. You didn’t.”
And Pete felt himself lower a peg, maybe two. “Look, I’m sorry if my knee-jerk reaction to déjà vu came off as snobbish. It was a really long . . . strange night. But I think we’ve already covered my off-putting disposition.” His stare shuffled between her and the barn.
She threw the hairbrush in through the open car window. “Why do you keep doing that?”
“What?”
“Looking toward the barn. While we’ve been duking it out here, you keep looking in that direction, like the barn is a third party in this argument. What’s in there that’s got you so spooked?”
He hesitated. A voice cut into their conversation, one to which Ailish wasn’t privy. “Do it . . . take her . . . show her . . . it has to start somewhere . . .”
Great. Just what he needed—a rogue specter flickering. Pete shuffled his hand through his hair. But in an instant, he also understood that the spirit present was connected to Ailish—not him or the bungalow. This knowledge put him abnormally at ease. “I . . .” He pointed to the barn. As she’d noted, Pete didn’t share well. Not with people he knew, never mind with an almost stranger, one who clearly didn’t care for him.
“Well, whose fault is that?”
“Okay, that’s just . . .” He looked around the thickly wooded yard. Specters rarely made it past surface thoughts, never mind offering an opinion. “Son of a . . . who are . . . ?” He concentrated, forcing the hovering ghost out of his mental line of vision. He turned his attention to a waiting Ailish. “I came back here last night because this place was gnawing at me. It wouldn’t let go.”
“What does this bungalow have to do with you? I thought your mother inherited it, and you were just here to do the math, see if there was anything she might want to keep.”
“It’s what got me here. But if I can step beyond déjà vu without insulting you . . . ?”
“Since you ask so nicely.”
“The spirit world influences everyone—whether you have a gift like mine or not. And—”
“Do you really believe that?”
Again, what was with her probing, off-track questions? For the sake of getting on with it, Pete answered. “Yes. I do.” He paused, seeing if she’d counter. “May I continue?”
“Please.”
“In my experience, most people are unaware of otherworldly occurrences. Mostly because they’re not open to it, because it’s too outside the box for them. People are fearful of things not readily explained. What it might mean.”
“Sometimes they are.” She crossed her arms. “Déjà vu, maybe even dreams.”
“Maybe even that. My point is, I believe a confluence of events, both earthly and otherwise, landed me here. You said you didn’t sleep in the bungalow because it creeped you out.”
She nodded.
“Multiply that by about a thousand for me. Of course, that’s not the most intriguing or interesting part. That occurred this morning—or last night.”
“What happened this morning . . . or last night?”
He gestured toward the barn. “Come with me.” Hesitantly, she followed, and the two walked that way. Pete slid the wooden plank to the right. As he did, the past flashed before him, a foul-smelling room and near squalor. He had to stop, closing his eyes.
“Are you all right?”
He blinked. “No. It has to do with my permanent crab-ass disposition. Think of it as a lifelong hangover.” Pete pulled on the barn door. “Grace and I found this yesterday. After I looked around the house, I came out here last night.” He pointed. “That lantern was lit. I’m guessing you didn’t light it.”
“I never came out here.” She didn’t look at him, her attention tight on the truck. “I curled up in the back seat once I realized I was stuck for the night.” Ailish closed in on the vehicle, running her hand over its battered paint: “Oscar Bodette’s Traveling Extravaganza. Well . . .” She brushed her dusty hands together. “There’s something you don’t see every day. What is it about the truck that bothers you so much?”
“This morning, I woke up in it.”
“Like me in Lucy’s car?”
“Not exactly. I woke up in it parked near a deserted piece of bay. A sweet little beach, some town called Bayport.”
“Bay . . . ?” Her face grew perplexed.
“Bayport. It’s about an hour from here. Beyond getting in the truck, pulling out of the garage, I have no recollection of driving there.”
“Like a blackout?” She looked between him and the truck.
“Would be my best interpretation. But it gets better. I knew the place, the beach.”
“This, um . . . Bayport.”
“Yes. Bayport.” Pete opened his mouth, on the precipice of a blow-by-blow explanation. It was too much; he went with a simpler version. “The beach scene, it’s among my mother’s collection of . . . ghost gifts.”
“Ghost gifts?” She smiled at him the way people did in instances like this, like he’d drifted into a fairy tale.
“Yes. Ghost gifts are objects my mother’s collected since she was a girl—or more to the point, the objects . . . gifts find her. Trinkets, baubles . . . stuff. They connect to the spirit population she encounters. They’re delivered to her by specters. Whatever the gift, it somehow ties to the ghosts and the living person she’s likely to encounter.”
“That’s pretty fascinating.”
“You mean unbelievable.”
“No, fascinating. The story’s not completely new to me.”
“Your mum.”
“Yes. Mum.”
“My mother’s ghost gifts, she’s never been able to place some of them—their meaning or what they connect to. Among the rogue ghost gifts is an old postcard, a beach scene. It’s dated from the early part of the last century.”
“That’s the beach where you woke up this morning?”
“Yes.” H
e sighed, the exhaustion of attempting to get his point across.
“Huh. An oddity within an oddity.” Ailish put her hand on the truck, and Pete waited for her NYU clinical diagnosis. “Did it ever occur to you that the card wasn’t meant for your mother, but for you?”
“Actually, my mother and I talked about that right before I made this trip. With very old postcards, you didn’t write on the back like you would nowadays. There’s a tiny space on the bottom, on the front, for a message. My mother insisted that aside from the New York postmark, the card has always been blank. Two days ago, there was a short note on it—nothing mind-boggling, more the fact that it’d suddenly appeared there.”
“That would be fairly amazing. Your mother’s gift and yours, is it the same?”
“To a point. Generally, I don’t encounter ghost gifts like she does. Of course, my grandfather was subjected to even stranger messages than . . .” Pete backtracked. Hearing his family history was a lot, even if you had insider information. “Our gifts. Mine, my mother’s, her father, even my great-grandmother, they all translate differently. In fact, mine has facets we’ve yet to figure out. Peculiarities . . . tics.”
“More peculiar than speaking to the dead in general?”
He didn’t answer right away. Esme and his past life were too personal. The risk of disbelief was high, and guarding his secrets was paramount. “Let’s just say, in my family, we’ve all had to travel a path to deciphering our gifts. Communicating with the dead is the baseline ability. The count-on-it rule seems to be that no matter the gift, it doesn’t come without complications.” They traded quizzical looks. “I’m a work in progress.”
She brushed one hand over her other, as if mulling over dusty details. “It . . . it’s all very curious. I don’t know what to say.” Ailish turned, walking at a sober pace toward the house. Pete nodded at her exit. At least she hadn’t laughed in his face. Keeping to a simple story was the right decision. He wasn’t just protecting himself; he was protecting Esme. He couldn’t stand the idea of a near stranger speculating, drawing random conclusions. Even well-educated, open-minded people had their limits. Pete closed the barn door and followed.
Near the bungalow, Ailish stopped. She gripped her hand around the rotten wood post that supported a sagging overhang. With her other hand, she pulled her phone from her back pocket. Great. He’d managed to freak her out enough to call for assistance, maybe the police. “Help! I’m stranded with a nut who thinks he talks to the dead and suffers debilitating blackouts . . .” She stood with her back to him, fiddling with her phone.
She pivoted, holding out the device. “Is this the beach where you woke up this morning? Is this the scene on the postcard, your mother’s ghost gift?”
“What?” The photo in his face was identical to the place he’d woken up that morning—a glassy sea and a row of neat huts off to the right, the weathered sign noting the site of the destroyed dock.
He gripped his fingers around one end of the phone, both of them staring at the image. “How . . . where did you get this?”
“Seems it’s a little more than déjà vu. You might find it interesting to know, I spent two weeks on this beach last summer.”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Ailish had gone inside the bungalow and it took Pete a few moments to follow. He shook off her beach photo. There was serious margin for error between the ethereal and coincidence. Surely that’s all this was. The Bayport beach, it wasn’t that far. It was plausible happenstance. She lived in the city. If you couldn’t afford the Hamptons, the South Shore hamlet was a decent compromise.
For now, he let it go. Something more disturbing had been on Pete’s mind since waking up that morning and finding the bungalow photos. He needed to follow through on a hunch. With his phone charged, Pete pursued a reluctant Google search. The photos of a beaten Esme had him recalling a class from Brown—Visual Art and Literature, a Litmus Test of Changing Sensibilities in Twentieth-Century American Culture.
Pete held his breath, clicking from one web page to another, eventually confirming a fear that caused his stomach to plummet. In the early part of the twentieth century, there was a strong market for perverted media of this kind. Newspapers had little hesitation publishing photographs of beaten women. In fact, they paid good money for them. And if newspapers didn’t want them, underground nickelodeons were an equally strong venue. He found photos similar to the ones of Esme—other women abused and exploited. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or more anxious that none offered a photo credit.
Pete forced forward motion and went inside the bungalow. The room all but slugged him in the face, and the heinous photos ebbed. If the bungalow and its contents spoke to him yesterday, they were screaming at him now. A mixture of scents trounced Pete, sights rushing by like a high-speed carousel, sounds ringing in his ears—church bells.
“Are you all right?” Ailish stood near the saddle.
Her words were foggy, like she was the intangible thing. Balance wavered, Pete’s grasp on this world turned slippery, and another grew more prevalent. He stood closest to the carousel pony and shakily shuffled forward. Touching the horse was out of the question, so he gripped a bookcase edge. He squeezed his eyes shut; sweat prickled from every pore. When Pete opened his eyes, the girl was in front of him. He took a step back, bumping into the carousel horse. He nearly panicked, feeling trapped between two places. He chose the girl. Concentrating on a single object was a go-to remedy, a trick his mother had taught him.
After a moment, things started to settle—a ship dodging weather. The surge quieted and the room steadied. Ailish’s presence also clarified, and the assault on Pete’s senses ceased. “Like I told you, this place creeps me out.”
“No. I said this place creeps me out. You said it was a thousand times worse than that. Can I ask, is it like a spiritual presence or something more?”
There she was again, prodding at his most private thoughts. He wasn’t about to share deeper confessions. What would that even sound like? “Funny thing, it’s not just plain old ghosts, Ailish. Everyday specters, they’re a no-brainer. It’s more about the woman I murdered in a past life. The fact that I found her photographs in this damn house. Maybe discovering that in addition to killing her, I beat the shit out of her. Then there’s my handwriting, basically a signed confession. Aside from that, I’m cool.”
But the way she stared at him, Pete was compelled to offer an explanation for his acute moodiness. He relaxed his mind, and help arrived. The specter from earlier nudged at his subconscious, an otherworldly tap at his brain. He granted a sliver of an opening and the ghost grabbed at it. “Your uncle.”
“What about him?”
“He’s here.”
“My uncle Zeke?” Her fair eyes drew full-moon wide.
“Unless you have another uncle who’s passed.”
She shook her head. “No. Although . . . actually, it was another—”
“Uncle that killed Zeke.” Pete cocked his head, listening harder. The communique was marginally more interesting.
“Did your mother tell you that?”
“No. Zeke just did.” Pete massaged two fingers into his brow. “Jesus, I know it was murder, but what did he do, shoot him in the head?” Pete’s head throbbed more than usual. A bizarre fusion of smells filled his nose: popcorn and gunpowder. He tasted blood. Then he tasted cigarettes, coffee.
“Actually . . . yes.” Now Ailish and the ghost had his attention. “Not really the kind of family history one likes to dwell on. It’s ugly. My father’s half-brother, Jude, was responsible. I don’t know much more about the details. We don’t discuss it. My uncle Jude is in prison. My mother does talk about Zeke, how much she misses him.”
He guessed Ailish was unaware that her incarcerated uncle was also responsible for kidnapping a twelve-year-old Pete. He stayed away from it and concentrated on the ethereal. “Your grandparents.” He stared at the beaten wood floor beneath his Nikes. Then he looked at Ailish.
“Zeke wants you to tell your mother they’re all together.”
“My grandparents.” She drew closer to Pete, who nodded in reply. “What else does he say?”
Her acknowledgment was all Pete needed, and communication with Zeke became a fluid thing. “He says to tell Nora none of the awfulness from this life moved with him to that one. Everything is peaceful and she shouldn’t wonder or worry. He misses her too.”
Ailish’s cheekbones rose, a coy smile on her lips. “Oh. Okay.”
“What?”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to be skeptical, but that’s just kind of . . . well, what you might expect a ghost to say. Kind of like saying if Mum sees a butterfly, he’s thinking of her.”
“Oh, I see. A doubter in our midst.” Pete raked a hand over his stubble-covered jaw.
“Look, I don’t mean to insult you. I’m sure you believe in what you think you’re communicating.”
He held up a hand. “I honestly don’t think about it at all. It just exists.” He smiled tightly. “You know what? I don’t usually do dog and pony shows, but in your case, I’m going to make an exception.”
“Really, you don’t have to—”
Pete concentrated with superior effort, wanting this exchange to be flawless. “Uh . . . Zeke says something about rings. He’s glad Nora gave you one, and not to forget what she told you about it.”
“A ring.”
He pointed to her left hand. “That ring.”
On the fingers of her right hand were several rings. On the left there was one ring, a plain gold band around her thumb. “My mother gave it to me a few years ago. It was—”
“Your grandfather’s. She wanted you to have something of his. Zeke gave her the rings years ago.”
“How did you know . . . ?”
He tipped his head at her. “The inside of the band, it’s engraved with a triple knot. The Holy Trinity.”
“My mother’s father, she told me he used to say . . .”
Pete and Ailish spoke simultaneously. “‘May the hand of family always be near you.’”
Then he shrugged. “Guess Zeke is keeping up tradition.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just hard to get your head around unless you—”
Echo Moon (A Ghost Gifts Novel Book 3) Page 18
