“Janice,” I skidded to a halt as a tall, hooded figure appeared in the midst of the row I was running down. Great, leave it to me to run into death in the middle of a horror film scenario. Before I could turn back, the figure spun, lowering the hood to reveal my mother’s face. I drew back in awe, torn between rushing into her arms and running away. “Janice, everything you’ve done has been for this.”
“Mom?” Curious feet moved me forward, despite my trepidation.
“Everything you’ve done has been in preparation of this time.”
“What does that mean?”
She shook her head and looked down at the hands folded at her waist. “When the time is right, all will be revealed, but fear not. You are on the right path.”
“What path?” I was close enough that she was able reach out and grab onto my hands. It was instinct that made me draw away in fear of the arthritic hands reaching for me, but there was an unspoken pleading in her eyes that calmed me. Her hands were like gnarled tree limbs wrapping around mine as she leaned close.
“Follow the way, follow the path.”
“Mom, I don’t understand. Just talk to me, please. Just tell me what you want me to know!”
A strange sound cut through the fabric of our reality and both my mother and the field we stood in began to fade the way a radio station faded outside of signal range. One moment she was standing there, her mouth moving over unheard words again and again, “Follow the path…”
I pushed off of my pillow with a gasp and a sharp stab of pain to the temple. After a moment of struggling with consciousness, the strange sound was easily identified as the telephone ringing in the hallway, and though I really didn’t have the ambition to get out of bed and answer it, it was relentless.
I dragged myself out of bed and staggered down the hall, finally grabbing it off the hook and lifting it to my ear. “Hello?”
“You sound about as bad as I feel,” Becky noted.
“I really shouldn’t have had that Long Island Iced Tea.”
I thought she laughed, but couldn’t be sure. “I don’t know. It did give you a boost of confidence there when you asked Troy to dance. That really took me by surprise.”
I asked him to dance, didn’t I? As memories of the ride home came trickling back to me, I chalked that up as a minor success compared to my near psychotic breakdown.
“I think it took me by surprise,” I said. “And Troy too.”
“He seemed pretty pleased about it.”
“Did he?” It was too early to be having that conversation, or any other conversation for that matter, and the dryness in my mouth made it taste like something I didn’t even want to identify.
“Are you kidding me?” I heard the sound of children’s television in the background and a little boy’s voice. “Janice, he is seriously smitten with you.”
“You really think so?” I leaned back against the wall and looked down the hallway. The sewing room light was off, and the door wide opened. I wondered if my dad turned it off when he left, or if it mysteriously turned itself off.
“You are kidding, right?”
“Well he did ask me out to dinner tonight.”
“And you accepted because it was the right thing to do, didn’t you?”
“I almost didn’t.”
“What do you mean, you almost didn’t? Are you crazy?”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “I just may be crazy, actually. We had a really awkward conversation after we dropped you off, and I think I made a total ass of myself.”
“No, you were drunk,” she said. “You can use that as your line of defense if he brings it up at dinner.”
“You know, you’re something else,” I said. “I really don’t know if going out with him is such a good idea, especially since I’m leaving on Sunday.”
The phone went silent for a moment, and I wondered if maybe she’d hung up, then the station break on the television ended.
“Well, I know you said you didn’t want to stir anything up, but I’m going to be perfectly frank with you, Janice. You can get mad at me if you want, but I’m looking at it this way.” She paused for a moment as if to prepare me for her view. “I know the circumstances are really strange, but to me it seems like God or fate or whatever you want to call it is trying to tell you something.”
The image of my mother standing at the top of the stairs in that otherworldly pose flashed through my soggy memory.
“And I think whatever force is working in your favor would tell you that you can’t walk away from a chance at love because it doesn’t fit into your agenda.”
“Love, Becky?” I swallowed against a dry throat and wondered if there was any Tylenol in the bathroom. Stretching the cord into the bathroom, I began to root through the medicine cabinet. “He asked me out to dinner, and you’re already calling it love.”
“Hey, I’m hoping for a June wedding. I want to be a bridesmaid, please.”
“You’re impossible,” I snorted.
“Hopeful,” she corrected me. “Optimistic.”
I knew my only hope was to steer the conversation quickly away from my love life. “Listen to me, talking about myself.” I found a bottle of ibuprofen and decided it would have to do. I filled a paper cup with water and took four pills to battle my headache. “How is Brennan?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Turns out he wasn’t really even sick, so much as he just wanted his mom. The little goofball. I guess he figured out pulling the sick card was a way to get what he wanted. They learn so fast, it’s almost scary.”
“Well, I’m glad he’s okay. I was a little worried.”
“He’s fine. In fact, Marty has the day off, so I was calling to see if you wanted to go out to lunch, and then I could take you over to get your car.”
“Do I have time for a shower?”
“Is an hour enough time?”
“Should be.”
“Then it’s set. I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
My headache dulled to a tolerable ache by the time Becky and I settled into a booth at Katy’s Diner. Becky didn’t look like she was feeling too great herself, but her vibrant spirit overpowered the hangover, and she was all about preaching reasons I should just go out with Troy and have a good time.
“Seriously, you said yourself you were a little lonely in the city, and your schedule made it hard to date.”
“Exactly,” I held up my hands in defeat. “If my schedule in the city makes it hard for me to date guys there, imagine how it will affect any kind of relationship I might try to have with a guy three hundred miles away.”
“Weekends,” she said, as if that was the grand answer to all of my problems. “And you’d still have your space. It could be romantic starting up a long-distance relationship. Heck, Janice, it could change your whole life.”
“First off, I work a lot of weekends and late nights,” I pointed out. “Secondly, long-distance relationships are hardly romantic. They almost always end in heartache and disappointment. And another thing, I don’t know if I want to change my life any more than it’s already been changed.”
“How many long distance relationships have you personally had, or is that a statistic you heard on Dr. Phil or something?”
Shaking my head, I burst into laughter. “Dr. Phil? Does he even have a show anymore?”
“He was the first person who popped into my head,” she grinned.
Katy Greenberger, the owner of Katy’s Diner, slipped a plate in front of each of us and stepped back to inspect us both. She’d been in the same year with us at school, and was one of the quieter girls that often got picked on, like Becky.
“What are you two over here giggling about?”
I shot Becky a warning glare, which resulted in her replying with, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” And before she could press us any further, Becky distracted her with compliments about the steaming dish of New England clam chowder in front of her.
“So Janice,” Katy crossed her arms. “I’m surpris
ed to see you’re still in town. I honestly thought you’d be on your way back to the city. Does this mean you’re here to stay?”
“Oh, no,” I shook my head. “I stayed on an extra week to help my dad get a few things taken care of. I’ll be headed back to the city on Sunday.”
“Shame,” she shrugged, as she started away from the table. “I thought for sure you’d be back to take over The Standard after it collapsed. You always were a real good writer in school, and this town sure could use a proper paper again.”
“Now there’s an idea,” Becky brought the spoon to her lips and blew away the steam. “You’d have no reason to worry about starting a long distance relationship with Troy because you’d be right here.”
I tilted my head at her and gave her a look I hoped conveyed in the nicest way possible that I wasn’t going to let her say another word about it. “Seriously though, could we put Troy on the back burner for a minute? I want to ask you something.”
“Sure,” she straightened up in her chair and put on a serious face. “What’s up?”
I wasn’t really sure I wanted to go through with it, because talking about it out loud meant that I was acknowledging it as real. That had the potential to wind me up in a nuthouse if too many people thought I’d lost my mind. I pushed a meatball around my Italian Wedding Soup for nearly a minute before I lifted my eyes to hers.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Ghosts?” She held her empty spoon half-poised. “You mean like spirits of the dead, ghosts?”
I felt my head give in to a reluctant nod.
“Well,” she started, “do you remember all that talk when we were kids about the ghost of Missy Moffatt?”
“That girl who died in the drunk driving accident on prom night in 1977?”
She nodded, and then for a moment she looked down as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to go on. It took her several minutes to work up the courage to speak again.
“There was that whole story about her appearing on Stryker Road every prom night, covered in blood.”
“Yeah, but I thought that was just a S.A.D.D. story someone made up to deter us from partying on prom night.”
“Well, I didn’t go to prom. No one ever asked me, in fact, I worked that night. I’d gotten off just around midnight from the sub shop and was driving home. Stryker Road runs along the trailer park and the river, and I wasn’t even thinking when I took the long way home. Anyway, I was coming up on the turn where the accident supposedly happened and there was a young woman in a prom gown pacing back and forth. She seemed almost… I don’t know. It was like she glowed a little, or was outlined in light or something. Not even thinking, I pull over and roll down the window, asking if everything is okay, only it’s like she doesn’t hear me. I can hear her sobbing and muttering, and that’s when I realize she’s bleeding. So I call out again and ask if she’s all right, if she needs a ride or something, and as she looked up at me, she just disappeared into the thin air.”
Becky’s story sent shivers down the backs of my arms. “Wow.”
“You’re the only person I’ve ever told that story. Like, I never even told Marty, for fear he’d think I was a nut job.”
I swallowed and looked down at the food in front of me, suddenly not feeling hungry. “What did you do?”
“I freaked out! I drove home and tried to tell myself it was just my imagination. By the next day I’d convinced myself that it was a dream or something, but I’ll tell you this much: I never drove home that way again.”
“I would have done the same thing.”
“So,” she leaned closer, “why did you want to know? Is something wrong?”
I shook my head, “I don’t know. I think I’m going crazy. Weird things keep happening at the house, especially in Mom’s sewing room.” All I needed to do was close my eyes in order to see her standing at the top of the stairs, otherworldly, but so real. “And you’re going to think I’m crazy too, but last night while Troy was dropping me off, I noticed someone watching at the window. The light was on upstairs and everything. As soon as I looked, the curtain fell back into place. I thought it was my dad, but once I went inside and started up the stairs, there she was.”
“Chandra?”
I nodded and reached for my iced tea. “She was standing at the top of the stairs wearing this gown that seemed to flow in a wind I couldn’t feel. Her mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear anything she was saying at all. I freaked out and closed my eyes, and by the time I looked up again she was gone.”
“Okay, Janice, you’re giving me the chills,” she admitted.
I lifted my arm to show her the hair standing straight up. “I’ve had them for days. I think that’s one of the real reasons I decided to stay on an extra week.”
She took a bite of soup while processing what I’d just told her, and then asked, “You say it was like she was trying to tell you something?”
“That’s what it seemed it like, but there was no sound at all.”
“Has your dad seen anything?”
“I don’t know, if he has, he isn’t saying anything about it.” He hadn’t even seemed the least bit concerned when I told him the sewing machine was on again, despite his having unplugged it, but then my father was never one for communication. “I mean, he has to know something weird is going on. There’ve been some odd things that happened around the house since she died. Even before last night.”
“Like what?”
I told her about the crash in the sewing room while I’d been taking a bath the night of the funeral, and the strange writing on the mirror when I came back.
“Oh my god,” she shivered. “What did it say?”
“It just said Stay, but it was backwards, like it had been written from the other side of the mirror.”
“Stay?”
“That was it. I mean, she had so many people over all the time, a lot of them had kids. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but then there have been all the different happenings in her sewing room. The sewing machine has been unplugged and turned off twice in the last couple days. And last night, after I saw her in the hallway, I finally got upstairs and her sewing room light was on. Dad was sound asleep, so I turned it off and went to the bathroom. When I came back out, it was on again.”
“Holy crap!” She gasped. “This is so weird.”
“Yeah, it’s really starting to freak me out.”
“Well, yeah!” She nodded. “I would be freaked out too.”
“So what do I do? I mean, if it is her and she’s trying to tell me something, I can’t hear her.”
“Have you tried talking to her, out loud, I mean? Maybe asking her what she wants?”
“Kind of, but nothing happened. I guess I could try it again, but it’s really scary, Becky.”
She reached across the table and touched the top of my hand, “I know. Maybe we could both get online and do some research about that kind of stuff. Believe it or not, there are a lot of groups now that specialize in that kind of activity.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll see what I can dig up before Troy picks me up tonight, and I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“You better call me tomorrow anyway,” she said. “I want an exclusive report on that date.”
For the moment the eeriness was washed away by her joke, but even as I smiled I felt a strange weight and uncertainty pressing down on me. I’d seen my fair share of horror movies, read enough ghost stories in my lifetime to not want anything to do with the whole situation.
When Becky finally dropped me off at my car around one-thirty that afternoon, she must have sensed that I was still uneasy because she reached across and touched my shoulder before I got out. “Hang in there, and if anything else happens between now and whenever, don’t be afraid to call me, okay?” The concern she wore was far more than I might have expected, and I realized if I shared a wacko story like that with any of my colleagues in the city, they’d have called the men in white coats. “Even if it’s the middle of th
e night, I don’t care.”
“Thank you, Becky. For everything these last few days.”
“Hey, that’s what friends are for, right?” Her final smile definitely lightened my mood, and I couldn’t stop laughing when she called out, “Remember what I said about love. It doesn’t honor our agendas.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I rolled my eyes and closed the door to her minivan. Ducking into my car, I waved one last time before she started to pull away.
She was certainly persistent, I’d give her that. I wondered for a moment if she and Troy were somehow in cahoots with one another, plotting against my heart. It wouldn’t have surprised me in the least, but my greatest curiosity was why? He was not only single and ruggedly handsome, he had an obvious sense of family value that would have made most women swoon. So why was he so fascinated with me when he could have just about any woman he wanted. Not that I didn’t think I deserved a nice guy like Troy, but after the way I’d been acting with him, did I really?
I started up my car and let it warm up for a few minutes before I drove back to the house, half expecting to walk in on some kind of ghostly garden party or something. All was silent, and when I ducked upstairs to grab my laptop I was surprised to see that not even the light in the sewing room had been turned on since I’d left. Maybe lifting the burden by telling Becky fixed whatever problem had been there. It was impossible to tell, so I set up at the kitchen table and waited for my wireless to connect to the house signal.
At last, I typed Ghosts into the search engine bar, and it brought around fifty million hits. I reworded the search to how do you know if you have ghosts, and started to browse through the results. I was particularly fascinated by a couple of pages that explored sensitive reactions to paranormal activity; some cases actually included fainting. I sat back in the chair and tried to put the moments into perspective, but couldn’t tie anything paranormal or odd to the times I’d fainted.
I was still reading through some material when Dad walked in at 3:15.
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