Midnight Mysteries: Nine Cozy Tales by Nine Bestselling Authors

by Ritter Ames

  I clearly saw what had drawn Coker from the Great Beyond for revenge. Thom Cliburn wanted to rebuild a way of life that was anathema to those who had endured it.

  “How did Coker come to live at Dahlia House?” I needed a few facts.

  “Franklin Delaney bought Coker, his mother, and his siblings. Coker was only sixteen when his father was executed, but it was clear he intended to murder Ezekiel at the first chance. It was an act of compassion from Franklin Delaney, a man who detested the Cliburns and all they stood for.”

  It was still hard for me to accept my family had once owned slaves. Even well-treated slaves. I knew the economics of running large plantations, but the reality was bitter.

  “Where is Thom?” I asked.

  “He will be here soon. I agreed to meet him at midnight. He looks exactly as Ezekiel did. Coker will recognize him.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Leila had invited Thom to the plantation. At the very time when Coker’s ability to manifest would be the strongest. Leila had cast a web, drawing into it the ghost I loved and her husband, the man she loved. Leila meant to rid herself of the man who challenged her right to Cliburn Plantation. In some ways, she was a Cliburn through and through. “You’ve put yourself and Coker at risk.” Not to mention me and Jitty.

  “It must be ended.”

  “At what cost?”

  “The past must be answered.”

  “And how do you intend to explain Thom’s dead body, if Coker is able to kill him?”

  Her smile was sad and knowing. “There is always a path.”

  Before I could ask another question, the limbs of the walnut tree began to quake and clack, as if a windstorm had blown up in one small portion of the world. I drew out my cell phone to call Coleman. I didn’t care that I would interrupt Cece’s party. Someone had to come and stop this. I would do my best, but Leila was powerful and determined.

  I had no cell service. My phone showed 11:38. Midnight was almost upon us.

  In the light cast by Leila’s cabin, I saw the dark shadow I’d seen earlier. Backlit by the house, he was a strong man with broad shoulders, a trim waist and long legs. His hair was close cropped. He wore cotton pants and a loose white cotton shirt.

  The women in white, the mourners, came down the path, chanting and singing. Their voices were like a chill wind tracing along my spine. Spirit mourners come to mark another calamity.

  Far down the driveway I saw headlights coming toward the plantation. Thom Cliburn was on his way.

  “Leila, don’t do this.”

  “When Coker kills Thom, the curse will be released.”

  “And any challenge to your right to own Cliburn Plantation will be destroyed.” Leila might speak like a fresh island breeze, but she’d inherited the Cliburn ability to take whatever she wanted without worry about the consequence to others. She was as greedy and awful as her ancestors.

  The BMW pulled up to Leila’s cottage, and a tall, blond man stepped out of the car. “Who are you?” he asked me in a rude tone. “Leila, are you afraid to meet me alone? Had to bring a girlfriend?”

  “I’m not afraid. Sarah Booth is a Delaney.”

  He glared at me. “My god, you smell awful. Get off this land. Your family has caused enough trouble here.”

  Behind Thom, Jitty arrived. She wore a long skirt and gingham top. Her head was tied with a do-rag. She was thin, painfully thin. “Leave my man alone.”

  If he heard her, he didn’t react. I wondered if Thom would die tonight, a man too blind to see where the true threat came from.

  Coker, for it had to be him, came forward from the other end of the street. He carried a machete. The blade glinted in the thin moonlight, a silver edge of death.

  “You know you have no real claim to Cliburn Plantation,” Thom said to Leila. “You were never a Cliburn. You took the name because no one stopped you. Until now.”

  “I have lived here, among the ghosts, learning the secrets of the curse. Promising the land the peace and justice it deserves.”

  “Curse!” He laughed, a harsh sound. “Superstitious fool.”

  “You should have stayed gone,” Leila said. “You have no place here, Thom. This is my land, my heritage.”

  “But not your people. You are no Cliburn.” He came forward, and Jitty advanced behind him. “I’ll tell you what. You can live out your life in the slave cabin, Leila. I’ll let you stay here, if you give up any claim to the place. That’s the best you can hope for. You can live and die on this land that never belonged to you.”

  “I will not be the one to die here, Thom. Best you accept this now. Stay here and death will claim you. Your spirit will be trapped here, just like all the others.”

  Out of the shadows men and women stepped forward. Some wore the hoop skirts and Confederate uniforms of the Civil War era. Others wore suits, suspenders. A multitude of styles depicting a host of past times. The Cliburns, trapped by a curse, populated the decaying plantation.

  I forced a mental thought to Jitty. She could read my mind when she chose—and this time she had to listen. “Leila is using Coker to her own ends. We must not let this happen.”

  Jitty shifted beside me, her focus on the man she loved who waited in a glimmer of moonlight. “Help him.”

  “How?” I had no idea how to thwart a ghost intent upon revenge.

  “Franklin Delaney saved him once. You have to do it again.”

  Pressure, some? I wanted to say. I had no eloquence with spirits. Jitty ran roughshod over me all the time.

  “Don’t you see?” Jitty’s thought came through clearly. “It’s the time loop. You’re all here again. A Delaney, a Cliburn, and Coker.”

  “Were you here when Coker’s father was murdered?”

  “I was at Dahlia House when Franklin Delaney brought Coker and his family there. I thought Coker’s mind would snap. He’d gone into himself, far away, and no one could reach him. He wouldn’t eat or drink or talk. The boy had stopped livin’. The shock of seeing his daddy killed that way, and nothin’ he could do. The boy lost touch with everyone and ever’thing. Except Franklin finally got to him.”

  “How?”

  “They went fishin’, and whatever was said, Coker came back wantin’ to live. That’s why Coker went with Franklin to the war. He loved me, but there was a bond between those two men going back to that terrible day when Coker lost the biggest part of his world.”

  Somewhere in this story was a way to stop what was about to happen. If I could just figure out what Franklin Delaney had said to a young boy to give him a will to live.

  “There’s someone here for you, Thom,” Leila said, calling me back to the present crisis. “Someone who’s waited a long time for justice. He’s come for Ezekiel. He’s come for you. Sins of the father, don’t you know?”

  For the first time, Thom must have sensed danger. He turned in the road, but I knew he didn’t see the women in white, the mourners. And he didn’t see Jitty so close to him or Coker, who was only about twenty-five feet away, the machete gripped in his right hand. He saw only Leila and me, and he didn’t view us as a threat.

  As Coker advanced, he took on more and more substance. It was the eeriest thing I’d ever seen.

  “Stop him,” Jitty begged.

  But I didn’t know how. I didn’t know the magic my forefather had brought to a tragic situation that gave a young boy enough peace to want to live. If he wouldn’t listen to Jitty, he surely wouldn’t listen to me.

  “What are you staring at?” Thom asked me in a rude tone.

  “Your death,” I said softly. “Run.”

  Something in my voice made him back up. Thom looked around, awareness dawning. Whether he sensed danger or Coker or the weight of history, I couldn’t say, but he wasn’t my concern. I thought only of reaching Jitty’s man.

  “Coker, don’t do this. Please. Jitty is here. She’s begging you to stop.”

  “Who the hell are you talking to?” Thom asked, this time with more fear than a
rrogance. “What do you see?”

  “A man with a machete,” I answered. “He means to take your head.” I couldn’t believe I stood on a rutted path leading to slave cabins at 11:56 on Halloween night. A place destined to be the scene of another bloodbath.

  “Coker, please.” Beside me, Jitty pleaded. “You do this, you’ll be banned from the Great Beyond. You’ll suffer the same fate as the Cliburns.”

  Coker’s anger was quiet and bone deep. “I’ve come to fulfill the curse put upon the Cliburn family. Thom Cliburn will join his relatives, destined to walk these lands forever. Unable to rest. A witness to the misery of the past.”

  “Listen to me, Coker. You’re risking everything you care about to impact a man who will get what he deserves no matter what you do. He doesn’t need you to fulfill the curse. He’s earned his destiny. Let the natural flow of time take care of him.”

  Something cool brushed past me and I realized Jitty had stepped through me in one last plea for Coker. To my sorrow, I realized he chose to no longer see her. He’d lost his connection with Jitty and those who had gone before. He’d lost more than he even knew.

  Jitty went to Coker and touched his cheek. He felt it, but he ignored it. His gaze sought Thom and nothing else. “Goodbye,” Jitty whispered, and she slowly faded.

  “No!” I tried to call her back, but it did no good. Coker had lost his wife, and I had lost my friend and protector. All over a dastardly deed from nearly two hundred years before.

  “You’re going to prison,” I said to Thom.

  “For what?” he asked. His arrogance had won out over his common sense.

  “I’ll find something. Whatever it takes.”

  “Get off my land.” He turned to Leila. “You too. I’ve changed my mind. You can’t live here. I want you and all your possessions gone by six tomorrow evening.”

  “He won’t live long enough to evict me,” Leila said under her breath, before she pivoted on her heel and went into her cabin, slamming the door. Coker, Thom, and I were the only people left.

  I addressed Coker. “Franklin Delaney told you long ago the only thing you could do to right the tragic wrong of your father’s murder was to live a good life.” I tapped into something deep and true inside me. I knew what Franklin had told the teenage boy grieving so for a senseless murder. “I tell you now, if you don’t leave, you are sacrificing everything. For nothing.”

  “For justice,” he said, lifting the machete.

  “You are a fool, Coker. A complete fool.”

  “Stop talking to the dark and get out of here,” Thom said. “Now. And don’t come back.”

  “Gladly,” I said. In many regards, the two men deserved each other. I started back to my car when a shadowy form stepped into the path. The middle-aged man carried a cutlass with a wicked curve, and he wore a tri-cornered hat with a symbol of a skull and bones. He was no field worker. He was a pirate.

  He walked past me as if I didn’t exist. The tableau before me was Coker on one end of the street, the pirate on another, and Thom between the two spirits.

  “What are you staring at?” Thom demanded. “You look like a horse that’s been hit in the head with a bat.”

  That was it, the final straw, to speak so callously of harming an animal. “I hope you receive the karma you so justly deserve, and very soon.”

  “Since Jim Red is dead, I’m the last of the line, and I have no intention of dying. Leila has no claim. She’s not blood, though she’s pretended all these years. She’s an imposter and I’m going to rebuild the Cliburn name and land. Leave before I call the law to evict you.”

  I’d failed in my mission. Coker had doomed himself.

  I turned to leave when the pirate moved so quickly he was a blur. He hit Thom full force, and merged with Thom’s body. Before Coker or I could react, Thom sprinted down the path toward the plantation house. Hobbled though I was by sore muscles and a cricket outfit, I ran after him.

  He passed the house and climbed the river levee with me hot on his heels.

  “Thom! Stop!”

  He paid me no mind. At the top of the levee, he looked back as if to survey all that was his. And then he hurled himself down the other side of the levee, along the rotting docks which had once been Cliburn landing, and leaped into the Mississippi River.

  “Thom!” I called one last time, before I saw him disappear in a glimmer of gilded moonlight on the water. He was gone.

  “Holy Christmas.” I panted as I struggled to get my cell phone from the inner pocket of the tails. On the levee I had four bars of reception and called Coleman. I managed to hold back my hysteria as I told him what had happened. We needed water search and rescue and the Washington County sheriff. Thom Cliburn had been murdered, though I was positive it would go down as a suicide. No one would ever believe he’d been possessed by a ghost.

  I HAD MUCH fence mending to do when I got back to Zinnia. All of my friends were either furious, miffed, annoyed, or disgruntled that I’d disappeared from Cece’s party without so much as a fare-thee-well. It didn’t help I couldn’t explain what had happened or how I’d managed to be at Cliburn Plantation when the heir apparent decided to play dolphin in the Mississippi River.

  While I regretted the fact I’d upset so many people—and my hound and cat—I had bigger fish to fry. Dahlia House echoed with emptiness. Jitty had not returned. I wondered if she chose not to or if her participation in the events of Halloween night had gotten her into serious trouble in the Great Beyond. She’d broken the rules in an effort to save Coker. While she’d failed, at least he hadn’t killed Thom, as he intended. The pirate ghost took care of that.

  My internet research revealed the identity of the pirate. None other than Bodo Red. I recognized the portrait, which had once hung in Cliburn Plantation, and had been documented by a historian who photographed the plantation before it burned.

  Bodo Red was a Cliburn, a nephew to Ezekiel Cliburn, though his relationship came from the wrong side of the sheets. In an act of defiance, he’d escaped slavery and then begun to prey on the river plantations and shipments. He bitterly opposed slavery and actually used his pirate ship to transport slaves up the Mississippi to freedom in the north. Just a few facts no one had bothered to tell me. The more I learned, the clearer the puzzle became.

  A call to Leila confirmed my suppositions and Thom’s claim: Leila was not a true Cliburn. The issue was moot. Leila would either take over Cliburn Plantation and make a go of it, or the property would be divided and sold. It was probably a good thing or she, too, might be a victim of the curse.

  Leila also let me know the search and rescue had recovered Thom’s body. There wasn’t a mark upon him. The only witness to his death had been me. There was some question of my role in his death, but no one really believed a hundred and thirty pound Jiminy Cricket could push a two-hundred-pound athlete into the river and drown him.

  I couldn’t say I was sorry Thom was dead. I hadn’t cared for him or his superior attitude. My regret was his death had cost me more than I was willing to pay. Jitty was gone.

  I paced the first floor of Dahlia House, brewing coffee I forgot to drink, cooking ground turkey, barley, kale, and carrots for Sweetie Pie and the impending visit with Chablis. I oven grilled a salmon steak for Pluto. The animals were in a deep funk. They undoubtedly missed Jitty even more than I did. And there was little I could do to comfort them because my heart was breaking.

  Not even Coleman’s calls or Scott Hampton’s offers of booze and blues or Harold’s dinner invitations—and forgiveness for my rude departure from a party—perked my spirits. I couldn’t tell a soul what was eating at me. Because I hoped against hope Jitty would return if I kept my lip zipped.

  I curled up in bed with Sweetie Pie and Pluto and mourned my haint. At last we all slept, and All Hallows’ Eve slipped away. I awoke to sunshine and a brand new month. All Saints Day was half over, but Jitty, both saint and sinner, hadn’t returned.

  I fed the horses and took Sweetie Pie and
Pluto for a walk across the fields. I aimed for the grove of oak trees where, on rare occasions, I’d found my mother’s spirit. I needed help to understand what I’d seen the night before. It was one thing to see Jitty, and something else to see a bevy of spirits from the other side. Was it Halloween that had allowed me to witness the showdown at Cliburn Plantation and the ultimate death of Thom Cliburn? Voodoo? A change in my perception of the spirit world?

  I had many things to ask my mother. She never stayed long, but I needed her presence and her wisdom. It was the only solace that would help me through this terrible loss. What would I do without Jitty nagging at me?

  I choked back a sob as I entered the oak grove. The trees, with their graceful branches and the wonderful memories of time with my mother calmed me. I sat down in the leaves and leaned against a rough tree trunk, Sweetie Pie on one side and Pluto on the other, and asked for my mother.

  “Sarah Booth. I’m here.”

  It wasn’t my mother’s voice, but a woman with a deep Mississippi accent. I opened my eyes to see a thin woman in a long dress standing in a patch of shadow. She stepped forward, and I inhaled slowly. I knew her. It was my great-great-great grandmother, Alice Delaney.

  “Jitty is gone,” I said. There was no need for explanation. Alice bridged the Great Beyond to come to me. She knew what happened and why I was in such pain.

  “She’s very sorry. She didn’t want this to happen.”

  Not the words I wanted to hear. “I’m sorry too. I need her.”

  Alice came forward, and I recognized the way my father walked in her straightforward stride. I saw him in her hazel eyes, and the light chestnut hair that caught the sunlight in burnished strands of gold. I missed him with a longing so intense my heart cramped.

  “The passage of time brings loss, Sarah Booth. Relief and loss. It’s one of the hardest lessons I ever learned, but even the most intense suffering dims with time. The war cost me so much. And Jitty too. There were times we thought death would be preferable. I lost my husband, a child, a way of life that hadn’t prepared me for the future. The survival instinct is hard to kill.” She chuckled. “Damnable fact though that is.”