The Witch and the Gentleman (The Witches Series Book 1)

by J. R. Rain

  We were standing in the foyer. The spiral staircase was before us. The paintings were everywhere, as were the statues. Nothing had been touched. Peter was still holding his stomach. I motioned to it. “Are you feeling any better?”

  “I wish I could say yes, but, sadly, no. I really should go see a doctor.”

  “How long has the pain been going on now?”

  He looked at me, blinked, shrugged. “Why, I don’t know. Quite a long time, I suppose. I really should go see a doctor.”

  “Yes, you just said that.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes.”

  He blinked at me, and sighed. “Let me tell you, my memory isn’t holding up well these days.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “So, why don’t you go to the doctor, Peter?”

  “I just...” he shrugged again, gave me a long look. “I just don’t care enough, I suppose.”

  “You don’t care enough about your own health?”

  “Nothing much matters to me anymore. Not since...”

  His voice trailed off and I nodded. He didn’t need to finish his sentence. I knew what followed “not since...”

  I said, “Tell me, Mr. Laurie, why are you moving?”

  He looked at me for another long moment. “The house...it’s so big...and I’m all alone now...surrounded by painful memories. I need to start somewhere fresh. I need to move on, I guess.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t have agreed more. “Do you still go to work, Mr. Laurie?”

  “I thought I’d told you I’d taken a leave of absence. Didn’t I tell you that? Boy, I really can’t remember much these days.” He rubbed his face, moving his hand over the same three-day growth he’d been sporting for the past two weeks. His hand moving over his whiskers, I noticed, didn’t make any sound. “Are you here with news about my daughter?” he asked.

  “I found your daughter’s killer today.”

  He snapped his eyes up, inhaled sharply. He seemed about to take my hand, or grab me about the shoulders, or perform some other form of physical contact, but refrained. He was, of course, the perfect gentleman. Or something. “Please, Allison, tell me who it is. Tell me everything.”

  And so I did. I told him all about my dream, about the connection to her school, about my theory that Penny never went straight home. I told him about my meeting with her teacher. I paused there and Peter Laurie seemed to be holding his breath. Tears came to his eyes and then spilled down his cheeks.

  “Her teacher?” he asked finally.

  I nodded and relayed the conversation I’d had with Mr. Fletcher...and then the attack in parking lot. As I spoke, I felt nauseated, knowing that a man was dead by my hand...a man who’d died only hours ago.

  Sweet Jesus, help me.

  Peter sensed my own pain and confusion and did something that surprised the hell out of me...and maybe even him, too. He reached out and hugged me...only it wasn’t any kind of hug I’d felt before.

  It was then that I knew.

  That I knew.

  * * *

  We were sitting on his couch, holding hands.

  We had been sitting like this for some time. Ten minutes, perhaps. Maybe longer. We were both dealing with a lot of shit.

  “My daughter...she came to you in a dream?”

  “Yes. I believe so.”

  “Did she...did she look okay?”

  “She did.”

  He inhaled deeply, although I didn’t hear any actual air passing over through his open mouth. His hand, I noted, was soft and pulsated with energy. If my eyes had been closed and I had been asked to describe what I was touching, I would have said a pile of cotton, with a soft electrical current passing through it.

  He said, “I haven’t seen my daughter since the morning I left for work two years ago.” He motioned toward the kitchen before us. “I kissed her forehead there, but she didn’t kiss me back. She had stuck out her lower lip. She always did that when she was mad. I had, of course, taken her mother’s side of their silly argument and my baby girl was mad at me. I had ruffled her hair and laughed and told her I loved her. At least...at least, I said that.” He shook his head sadly. “You know, for someone losing his memory, I sure remember every detail of that day. It’s all I have, in a way. It’s my last memory of her alive.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through this, Peter.”

  “I’m more sorry for her. And angry. So angry. I want to kill the bastard all over again. I want to kill him a million times, each death more painful than the last.”

  His words hit me hard and as his discordant energy crackled through me. I tried to forget the man lying on the concrete, gasping and drowning in his own blood.

  Peter looked at me. “And it was definitely her teacher?”

  “It was.”

  “Do we know this for a fact?”

  “We will soon.”

  He nodded. “I met him once, at a parent-teacher conference. He seemed...intense. I almost pulled my daughter from his class. I guess I should have...”

  He released my hand and wept into his own. I nearly hugged him, nearly put my arm around him, but I refrained, afraid of what I might feel.

  Finally, Peter sat back and nodded and breathed deeply, and this time, I heard a ragged sound pass over his lips. The house, I noted, was absolutely silent. Not even the hum of a refrigerator. It had been unplugged, of course. After all, no one needed it. No one living, at least.

  “Peter, how did your wife kill herself?”

  “She took a bottle of painkillers.”

  I nodded. “Did you watch her die, Peter?”

  “I did, yes.”

  “And you did nothing to stop it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Her...her pain was so great...she couldn’t deal with it anymore, or with Penny not being here. She wasn’t holding up well.”

  “And how were you holding up?” I asked.

  “Not much better.”

  We sat together, our knees almost touching. I noted that I had sunk in much deeper on my side of the couch than he had, although he was a bigger man. He said, after a moment, “My wife wanted to be with Penny again, that it was the only way she could be happy.”

  Peter didn’t bother brushing away the silvery tears that now ran down his cheeks.

  “But I stayed behind. I had to find the killer. I couldn’t let that piece of shit walk the Earth a free man.”

  I studied Peter Laurie as he spoke, noting the same black suit, the same haircut, the same slightly askew tie. I noted the same scuff on his right shoe. Mostly, I noted the way the air crackled when he was near. I had thought it was because I was feeling his dead wife’s energy, or even his daughter’s energy. I had, of course, been dead wrong.

  I said, “You stayed behind while your wife moved on.”

  He nodded. More tears spilled free.

  “Except you’re not telling me everything, are you, Peter?”

  He buried his face in his hands and shook his head.

  “The two of you, in fact, killed yourselves together?” I said. “Didn’t you?”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Peter wavered in and out of existence.

  It was the first time I’d seen him do that. One moment he was there, and the next he wasn’t, just a ghostly hint. And, unlike, Millicent, Peter Laurie was very much a ghost.

  Finally, face still buried, he nodded. “Yes. We took the pills together, died together, although she went first.”

  “You watched your wife die?”

  “She died in my arms.”

  “And then you died, too.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “What happened next?” I asked.

  “Time passed, although I don’t know how long. A day perhaps. I continued sitting near the bed while our bodies lay unmoving, dead. I was alone. Wherever my wife had gone, I didn’t know. But I was alone, as I have been since that day.” He looked at me. “Until you.”

  “Do ot
hers see you?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve scared off one or two potential home buyers.” He chuckled lightly.

  “You didn’t want the house to be sold,” I said.

  “Not then...but now...now, I don’t know what to do.”

  Detective Smithy had, of course, finally filled me in about the family’s tragedy. He had known all along that Peter had committed suicide with his wife, but had played along with hopes that the case might finally be cracked. Mostly, he thought I was crazy, but wanted to see where all of this might lead. After all, the case had been cold for two years, and in came a crazy woman who claimed to have been hired by the deceased father.

  Smithy had admitted to me in the parking lot at Clover Field Elementary that he’d been too dumbfounded to say much of anything. Most important, he admitted to dreaming about Peter Laurie the night before our first meeting. Although he had dismissed the dream at the time, when I had come into the office asking if Peter had contacted him, the detective, who was, amazingly, open to the idea of a spirit world, had taken that as a sign. Good for him.

  Which led me back to Millicent. She would have known that her son was dead, but she had withheld that information, too. As I sat there and looked at her son’s confused face—her dead son’s face—I heard her words all over again: “Help my son.”

  Why she had kept me in the dark, I didn’t know. How, exactly, she wanted me to help her dead son, I didn’t know that either. But I had some ideas...and it had to do with more than just helping her son find the killer.

  Millicent had often told me that those in spirit can only help so much, that many of us must find our own paths, too. Although dead, Peter was still very much mired in the physical world.

  Help my son...

  Yes, I knew what she needed from me, although I did not think I was the right person for the job. Who was I, after all, other than a part-time Psychic Hotline operator?

  Later, after my cry-a-thon, I called Peter’s real estate agent, and got the lowdown about the house, too. Peter Laurie’s siblings had spent the better part of nine months fighting over the home, until they’d finally come to some agreement. The house, meanwhile, had sat empty for nearly a year. Yes, there had been some interest, but buyers, in general, were not very excited to get involved in a home where a double suicide had occurred.

  “Besides,” the agent had admitted, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “the house is...creepy. I always feel like someone’s watching me. I think the place is haunted.”

  I asked why she thought that, and she said, “One time, I saw a man in a suit standing at the top of the stairs. But when I looked again, he was gone. To this day, I will not go in that house alone. I make my husband go with me, but he’s just as afraid as I am. Two scaredy cats!”

  The man—the spirit, the entity, the ghost—sitting next to me was not someone or something to fear. He was a father hurting, a father lost, a father looking for answers.

  “Why did you call me?” I asked Peter suddenly, as we continued sitting together in the darkening room. That I was sitting next to a ghost in an abandoned old house should have sent me running. I wasn’t running. Not now or ever.

  “I...didn’t know who I was calling, truth be known. I found an ad in the Yellow Pages, circled in red ink. I called the number, and got you.”

  “You can use the phone?”

  “I have become quite adept at physical manifestations, as you can see. I can hold this shape for quite a long time.”

  “How did you find the ad?” I asked.

  He thought about that, blinking rapidly...and I briefly wondered if this was just a memory of blinking. After all, why did a ghost need to blink, or breathe, or wear clothes, for that matter? He said, “The Yellow Pages had been opened on the counter.”

  “Who opened it?”

  “Why, I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  “No,” I said, thinking of Millicent. “It doesn’t. Not now. Why didn’t you tell me, Peter?”

  “That I was dead?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed lightly. “Would you have helped a ghost? Or even taken me seriously? And, quite frankly, half the time, I don’t remember that I’m dead. I’m losing my memory rapidly, you see. Forgetting who I am, why I’m here. Half the time, I call out to my wife and baby girl, thinking they’re here with me. A dozen times over, I’ve broken down all over again when I remember they are both dead.”

  Jesus, I thought.

  “Do you ever see them, too?”

  “My wife and baby girl? No, never. I feel them sometimes. I think I see them sometimes. My mother, too. But when I look again, they’re gone.”

  I thought of the irony: ghosts haunting ghosts. Or, as Millicent would sternly point out, spirits.

  Speaking of which, I noted that Millicent was oddly absent. I suspected I knew why...she could only interfere with her son to a point. Perhaps it was the same with his wife and child. They could only influence so much.

  It was up to the living to help the lost return home.

  It was, in fact, up to me.

  Chapter Thirty

  “So, what will you do now?” I asked.

  We’d been sitting quietly again, as the house grew colder. This had been the longest I’d been with Peter, and I couldn’t help but notice he was wavering in and out of existence. One moment, he was as real as any man, and the next he was just a ghostly, wispy specter. I tried not to let it freak me out, but it did a little.

  “Now?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Now that the killer has been found, you can...move on, right?”

  Truth was, I didn’t know a whole lot about what I was talking about. I wasn’t a medium, although, over these past few weeks, I’d certainly seen my share of spirits and ghosts. But I knew that spirits moved on to...somewhere. They had to. According to Millicent, she and I had been reborn together throughout time and space. And Samantha Moon, too. A kind of soul-mate trifecta. I liked that.

  He shook his head, briefly disappeared, reappeared, then said, “Oh, I’m not going anywhere, Allison. I’m perfectly happy staying right here, thank you very much.”

  “But why here?”

  “This is where I last saw my daughter, and where I last saw my wife. This house is full of their stuff and full of their memories. I’ll let you in on a little secret, Allison,” he said and raised his index finger to his lips. The gesture was oddly wooden. He continued, “I have no intention of moving on. I’m staying right here, and I’ll be damned if anyone is going to move in here and take over my daughter’s stuff.”

  Help my son...

  Millicent’s words again, and I wondered if she thought them to me now, or if they were still bubbling up from my memory.

  Probably a little of both.

  I wasn’t sure how to proceed. I wasn’t sure how to convince a ghost that it was in his best interest to leave behind all that he knew and loved and to venture off into what I saw as the Great Unknown.

  I didn’t know, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

  So, I did what I do best. I opened my mind and reached out for an answer, hoping like hell one would come to me.

  * * *

  As we sat together, as Peter sat forward on the couch, his back straight, rigid and unmoving, I had a brief vision of a golden tunnel with glorious light pouring out. And just as quickly, the vision disappeared.

  I asked Peter about the tunnel, and he said, “Ah, yes, the tunnel. I’ve seen it often, although it comes less and less these days. When it does come, I ignore it.”

  “What do you mean when it comes? What does it look like?”

  He pointed toward the vaulted ceiling high above even the second floor, which rose up into a sort of rounded, windowed dome. Yes, a nice house. “I see it up there. It’s full of light. Sometimes, I can see people inside, but mostly I feel the light. It feels warm.”

  “You are warm?”

  He shook his head and his body rippled slightly as energy wavered.
“No. I’m cold. Always cold.”

  “Don’t you want to be warm, Peter?”

  He nodded, thought about it, then shook his head vigorously. “I failed my daughter, Allison. I allowed this happened to her, you see? And then I lost my wife, too. I’m not losing their things, too. It’s the last I have of them.”

  “They are more than things, Peter.”

  “I know. But it’s all I have—”

  “What if they are waiting for you in the tunnel?”

  “And what if they aren’t, Allison? What if I move on and there’s...nothing?”

  I had no argument to that, but then words appeared in my thoughts, perhaps supplied to me by Millicent herself. I said, “Moving on takes great faith, Peter.”

  “Perhaps, but I’m not willing to find that out. I will stay right here, with their stuff, with their memory. I can’t leave their stuff behind, Allison. I just can’t let it be thrown out, or forgotten.”

  This was, of course, the key, and I had missed it before. “What if I promise to keep all of it for you? I will hang your daughter’s paintings, too. In my home, in the homes of my friends. She will never be forgotten.”

  He looked at me sideways, wavered in and out of existence, and I saw the tears in his eyes. “You would do that for my baby girl?”

  “Of course,” I said. “She’s very talented.”

  “Yes, I would like that—no, no I can’t. I just can’t leave them behind. I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I know your intentions are good...”

  He gasped, and the energy around him crackled. And around me, too. The hair on my neck and arms stood on end. Crackling living light swarmed through the room—and briefly illuminated dead light bulbs.

  Holy smokes, I thought.

  “It’s okay, Peter. I’m not making you do anything. You can stay here as long as you want.”

  The crackling energy, after a moment, abated. Peter seemed to relax a little, too. An agitated ghost was not a pretty thing to see. I tried to hide the fact that I’d nearly peed myself.

  Help my son...help my son...help my son...