by Ava Mallory
Think, Mercy, think. What do you want to do here?
I took a glance down the hallway. Still no movement from anywhere. I assumed that Chip's guests must have left and it was just the staff and the guests that remained. I had no business snooping around, especially at this hour of the night. No one else should suffer because I decided to forgo sleep.
It didn't take me more than a moment to make a decision that would probably save me a world of trouble and a potential lawsuit. Time for bed, Mercy.
As I moved to step away, the floorboards underneath my feet squeaked. Like a domino effect, the door to Flynn's office popped open and I jumped behind a large plant off to my right.
Why didn't I just go to bed earlier, I thought.
When I didn't hear any movement from inside the room, I braved a peek around the plant to see what the man was doing. He stood in front of the window, his back to me, and didn't move at all as I moved closer to the door.
Was he meditating? Praying?
The man turned slightly as the floorboards rebelled under my feet. It happened too fast for me to be able to move. There I stood, staring at him, feeling my heart leap into my throat and the shadowed man stood with his head cocked, listening to the unfamiliar sounds outside the door of the office.
“Who is that,” his hushed voice asked.
I froze in place. What other recourse did I have?
“Hello,” he raised his voice a little louder.
I closed my eyes. I have no explanation as to why. Maybe, perhaps, if I couldn't see him, he wouldn't see me.
To my disbelief, he didn't acknowledge me at all, at least, not verbally.
I peeked through my lashes, my hands shaking on my sides. All I could see was his outline. Again, he stood with his face obscured by the dark. I could make out his profile a bit, but would never have been able to testify in court as to who he was or what he looked like.
“I did it. I can't believe I actually pulled it off,” he whispered, bringing his hands to the top of his head. “Way to go, Flynn. You are amazing.”
I held my breath. Was I staring at a dead man? Flynn was still alive?
I wanted to reach out and find a light switch to expose whoever this was, but luckily common sense or a sudden overwhelming sense of doom and disaster convinced me not to press my luck. I remained still until the figure turned his back on me, then I crept back to the hallway in search of my room.
Please, don't let him kill me. Please, don't let him kill me. That was my refrain until I was safely tucked away in my room, shaking like any horrified human being would be if they saw a ghost. At least, I think it was a ghost.
Outside the bedroom door, the floors creaked loudly, as if whoever was out there, stood right outside my door. I held my breath, wishing the intruder away.
I quickly scanned my dark room, assessing what I could use as a weapon to use against the man.
Don't scream, Mercy, I thought as I heard my doorknob turn. Luckily, I'd locked the door behind me, but if I'd seen who I thought I'd seen, he would undoubtedly have a key to my room.
I crept over to the door, pressing my ear to it. Suddenly, there was a soft tapping on the other side.
“Are you awake,” a small voice whispered.
My heart lodged in my throat and cut off my airway momentarily.
That's not a man's voice.
Chapter Four
“Diana, you scared the living daylights out of me,” I opened the door and pulled her in quickly and locked the door.
“What is going on, Mom? You're shaking.” Diana grabbed both of my hands.
How was I going to explain this and not sound any crazier than I had earlier?
I took a deep breath and said, “Promise me that you'll hear me out first.”
She gulped. “What happened, Mom? Are you hurt? Sick? Please, you're scaring me.”
I shook my head. “No, I'm not hurt. That's not it.” I sighed. “I feel like a loon for even saying this, but...” I sighed again because the more I thought about it, the more unreal it felt. Maybe I'd just been hallucinating. Sleep deprivation was detrimental in so many ways. It all could have been a figment of my overactive imagination that, at most times, only rivaled my sometimes overactive bladder, but I digress...
“Mom, tell me what's going on,” Diana begged.
“Okay, here's the thing, I think I figured it out all by myself. Tell me, what did you come here for, honey? Are you holding up okay?” I tried to change the subject. That felt like a much better idea than admitting that I either saw a man that should have been dead or I'd been following a ghost. I didn't believe in ghosts, at least I didn't think I did. I didn't want to find out any time soon whether or not I could be a believer.
Diana sat down on the edge of my bed. “Oh no, you're not doing this to me. I want to know. You always made me tell you everything. The least you could do was extend me that same courtesy. What happened?”
This was it. Do or die time. Excuse the horrible pun, but it felt necessary in this unnecessary situation.
“I couldn't quiet my mind, so I went downstairs to take a walk.” I started.
“No, you didn't,” Diana said dryly. “You went to do the very thing Aunt Ruby and I specifically asked you not to do: snoop around. Mom, why would you do that? This is supposed to be your vacation. A fun girl's weekend, not another one of your wacky whodunit things.”
I had to protest because, as I recalled, these women – although, my absolute favorite women in the world – were the ones who scheduled this mystery weekend. By doing so, they gave me permission to solve a murder, just not the one they thought they were giving me permission to solve. I call that, snooping by default. I wouldn't have had to do any of it, if they hadn't made elaborate plans to get me here.
“Honey, in my defense, you two were the ones who invited me here. In fact, the two of you even went so far as to fill my gas tank with gas – and not the cheap kind either – and drive me to this Felon place.” I reminded her, thinking she'd acknowledge it and agree that this was partly her fault.
“The Felon House, Mother.” Diana refreshed my memory and sealed the deal with the one word I never liked: Mother. Something about that word gave me chills and reminded me of Joan Crawford. Mommie Dearest much?
“Don't call me that. You know how I feel about that word. No more wire hangers and all. The thought just gives me chills.” I shook my head to clear the memory of the word and the movie that made someone as flighty and unpredictable as I was, appear to be lovable, if not downright angelic.
“Sorry, but you're avoiding the issue, Mom. Will you just please relax and focus? What happened? Why were you shaking like that? Is it Flynn's death? Does that have you shaken up because I don't blame you if it does. I know, I'm still in complete shock. I've never seen someone die like that.” Diana was just as shaken up as I imagined she would be.
While I always did my best to shield her from life's hardships, like any good parent would, I also made sure that she understood that life wasn't all cupcakes and butterflies either. I didn't want her to grow up and be a naive woman. I wanted her to be able to stick up for herself and stand on her own two feet. Now, at nearly twenty-three-years-old, she was making me proud by doing just that.
“I don't know how to say this.” I took a deep breath and just let the words spill from my mouth. “I think I saw a ghost.”
Diana's mouth gaped open.
I said it again, “I'm not sure it was a ghost, but I'm hoping that it was because, if it wasn't, then our dead Bed & Breakfast owner is alive and in the house.”
“What are you talking about? Where did you see him? When? We have to find him and find out what that whole show was about downstairs.” Her eyes lit up as she spoke. “Wait. What if we didn't actually see a murder? What if what we saw was the whole mystery thing that they had planned for us?”
I hadn't considered that. What a buffoon I'd been. Of course, that's what that was!
I started laughing nervously,
feeling like a fool for thinking otherwise.
“You see, I was making something out of nothing. I don't know what I'd do without you, sweetheart.”
Diana patted my leg gently. “It scares to even think about it. Don't get me started, Mom.”
I'd never been so relieved in my life. I was beginning to think that I'd finally lost my marbles.
Not to upset the spirit world, if there was one, but I spent my whole life trying to convince myself that those noises that went bump in the night were nothing more than a figment of my imagination, those shadows that only appeared when I was alone or immediately after being to forced to watch one of the slasher films that my quirky next door neighbor got a kick out of watching.
“What's the look for?” Diana asked, studying my face.
“Oh, nothing. I'm just so relieved.” I admitted.
“What? That you're not completely nuts?” Diana teased.
She was absolutely right.
“Well, I guess, you can sleep easier now.” Diana said, standing up to leave the room.
“No, not at all,” I admitted. “I still want confirmation that it was Flynn. I don't want to go to sleep believing one thing and wake up to something entirely different.”
Diana's shoulders slumped. She knew me well enough to know that my idea of finding out the truth meant doing so without hesitation and going straight to the source.
She followed me out of the room and down the hallway. This time, I knocked on Flynn's office door. The fact that it didn't open when I approached it was an interesting point. Just a few minutes earlier, the door had popped open as soon as I stepped on the threshold. Why wasn't it opening now?
“Wait a minute. Is this some kind of trick?” I asked and maneuvered from one spot to the next spot over to see if there was some sort of trick strip that would make the door pop open again.
“What are you doing,” Diana whispered.
“Testing the door.” I answered as I continued to step from side to side and hit various spots on the door jam and the door.
We were so engrossed in what we were doing, neither of us heard someone walk up behind us.
I took a step backward to try floorboards further away from the door to see if I'd somehow inadvertently taken a step further back in my urge to find out who it was that was walking around in Flynn's office.
“What are you two up to? Do you realize what time it is?” Ruby's hushed voice startled both Diana and I. Soon, we were all screaming.
Lights illuminated from downstairs. We froze in place, sure that we'd been found out. With no options and our limbs heavy with fear, we remained where we were and didn't dare utter a word.
There was movement below us, but that movement never made its way toward us. Whoever it was must have assumed that there was no actual emergency or they were already tuckered out from the fake emergency that was created to get our hearts racing.
After a few tense minutes, I whispered, “Should we go in?”
“Go in where?” Ruby hadn't yet been told what we were doing in the hallway in the middle of the night.
“Mom, thought she saw a ghost, but it was really Flynn.” Diana said it as if it explained everything.
Ruby gasped. “A ghost? Are you kidding me? You saw a real, live ghost?”
I hushed her. “You're going to wake everyone in the house up. Be quiet.”
“Don't tell me to be quiet.” Ruby raised her voice louder. “You're the one who said you saw a ghost. What did you expect me to do? Where did you see it? I want to see it.” She grabbed the doorknob and opened the door.
Only in my life, would there be people who weren't the least bit terrified by the prospect of ghouls or goblins. First, there was my elderly neighbor, who adored scary movies. Then, there was Ruby who lived for strange phenomenon and the spirit world.
I don't really know if she ever actually encountered a ghost, but she sure behaved like she had. Halloween with Ruby around always promised to be creepy and ominous. I almost dreaded when the Fall season hinted at its arrival because that meant that I'd be roped into helping her set up her annual haunted exhibit in her gigantic backyard that was the real reason why she'd purchased the home she'd lived in for the past twenty years.
Ruby turned around when we didn't follow her into the room. “Well, are you coming in or not?” She reached for a lamp sitting atop the walnut desk. “Where did you see him?”
Diana and I blinked frantically, trying to make our eyes adjust to the light.
With the light on, the room didn't look so foreboding. It was actually an impeccably designed office with smart furnishings and mementos and books lining walls of shelving.
“Ruby, it wasn't a ghost. It was Flynn. At least, I think it was.” I explained.
“I don't understand.” Ruby looked at me with confusion on her face. “Is he alive?”
Diana quietly shut the door behind us to keep the light from shining out into the hallway and disturbing the other guests.
“Diana thinks, and I agree, that the death downstairs was part of the big mystery event they had planned for the weekend.” I informed her.
Ruby considered it for a moment. “You don't really believe that, do you? Mercy, you and I both know that what we witnessed downstairs was a death. We heard the labored breathing, saw the discoloration, felt for a pulse, and watched as he expired. We are the best kind of witnesses. We can speak to exactly what happened as he died. He's not alive and nothing you say can make me believe otherwise.”
I wished she hadn't said that. I didn't want to admit to any of what she said because that would make my vision all the more real and ghosts were not my thing in any scenario. I'd been perfectly fine living my life as if ghosts, goblins, and ghouls were phenomenons others experienced. I preferred the company of the living. I liked facts and plans of action and treatment plans. Knowing what my next move would almost always be gave me comfort.
While no one could say that the nursing profession was predictable in any sort of way, there were plenty of go-to methods and approaches to every procedure, ailment, recovery plan. That's what we did – followed protocol, only reported what we actually saw or did, and moved on. The dead roaming the Earth didn't fit into any of those categories. Therefore, I surely wasn't interested in having to face the unknown.
“I don't know what I believe, but I know that I don't believe in ghosts. I'm telling you, I saw Flynn or someone who looked like him standing right here in this office.” I explained.
“Are you sure that's who it was?” Ruby studied the photos on the wall and took one down to show me. “This is him, right?”
I didn't have to look at it longer than two seconds to be able to tell that the profile I saw almost matched the man's profile in the picture.
“Yes, that's him.” I answered, relieved that I hadn't lost my mind.
“Well, I don't think that's possible. Let's go downstairs and see if he's in the house somewhere. I doubt it, but just to prove to you that things not of this world do exist, I want you to see for yourself that you couldn't have possibly seen him.” Ruby tried to urge me to go downstairs with her.
“No, that's not a good idea.” I looked at Diana to see if she'd agree with me. Disturbing people in the middle of the night wouldn't have been a good move.
I didn't have to try to persuade her much longer. Ruby's face lit up. “You know what, scratch that idea. I have a better one. Now, bear with me.”
Uh oh. Here we go. When Ruby's face lit up like that, that usually meant that she had some sort of an epiphany, but not in the angelic, hear the angels singing kind of way. It was more akin to 'let's do this crazy thing and worry about the consequences later'. But that theory only applied when and if she was nowhere near her husband Hank. He was a good egg. Always had been.
We all met in college and have been thick as thieves for over twenty years. Hank was mellow, level headed, cerebral. Ruby was a brilliant nurse, a kind, generous friend, and a purveyor of fun, but she was also unafraid, bra
sh at times, and more full of energy than anyone I'd ever met.
I'd like to think that I shared some of their traits, but truth be told, I was more inclined to react when it came to things in my personal life and less inclined to want to venture out of my comfort zone. Recent history set aside, I used to be rather conservative and quiet – at least, three days a week.
“Enlighten me. What insanity are you planning for us?” I asked.
She grabbed a stack of files out of one of the desk drawers and said, “Here, go through these and tell me when you find something.”
I looked at the stack she handed me. “What is this?”
