The Ghost Who Dream Hopped

by Anna J. McIntyre

  Fifteen Minutes Earlier

  She had forgotten to lock the door leading to the driveway along the side of the house. From his coat pocket he pulled out a ski mask and then fitted it over his head, concealing his face, his eyes peering through the holes in the knit mask. Slipping into the garage, he wondered if she had remembered to lock the door leading from the garage into the house. He had been watching the place for some time now, and the interior lights had been turned off about thirty minutes ago. He suspected she was in bed and hopefully sleeping.

  Flashlight in hand, he looked around the garage. He noticed the blinds to the only window were drawn. He smiled. Moving his flashlight over the center of the concrete floor, he found a pile of cardboard boxes.

  The cardboard boxes had been emptied—so had the garage cabinets, their contents scattered across the floor. He stood by the door leading into the house when he heard the doorknob rattle. Panicked, he quickly turned off the flashlight and stepped into the darkness. The door opened and light from inside streamed into the garage. Holding his breath, he stood silently and watched as she stepped out of the house into the garage. Just as she was about to turn on the overhead light, her back to him, he impulsively raised the flashlight over his head, stepped forward, and brought it down across the back of her head. She fell to the floor.

  “Oh crap,” he muttered. Leaning down beside her, he picked up one of her wrists and felt for a pulse. She was still alive.

  Leaving the flashlight on the concrete floor, he tucked his arms under her armpits and dragged her backwards into the house, her bare feet dragging behind her.

  Carla had opened up Pier Café early Thursday morning. It was a good three hours before she was able to take a break and grab something to eat. She stood in the back of the kitchen, nibbling a piece of toast, when Earl the cook came walking up, his once white apron covered with grease as he wiped his hands off on it, adding more.

  “I need to talk to you,” Earl said.

  She looked up from the toast and groaned. “What now?”

  “I got another one of those calls yesterday,” he told her.

  “Come on, you have to be kidding?”

  “Person claimed she got a pink hair in her food. Said you were her waitress,” Earl told her.

  “And just when did this supposedly happen?”

  “Said she was in here on Monday.”

  “Monday?” Carla smiled. “Earl, tell me, what color is my hair?”

  “It’s lime green. But you had it pink last week,” he reminded her.

  “True. But I dyed it green on Sunday!”

  Brian Henderson sat in a booth in Pier Café, looking at the menu, when Joe arrived.

  “I’m surprised you’re not spending your day off with Kelly,” Brian said when Joe sat down with him.

  “We’re going to spend the afternoon together.” Joe picked up a menu. “But Kelly had some blog she had to finish this morning. She says she can’t write when I’m there.”

  Brian chuckled. “So whenever Kelly wants to write, you have to leave?”

  Joe shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  Before Brian had a chance to comment, Carla showed up at their table, order pad in hand. “People suck!”

  Startled, Joe and Brian looked up to Carla.

  “Hey, Carla, you might want to work on your people skills.” Brian was only half teasing.

  “Why? People suck,” she grumbled. “What do you want to eat?”

  Joe set his menu on the table. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

  She lowered the order pad and looked down into Joe’s dark brown eyes. “Some creeps keep calling in and telling Earl they’ve gotten hair in their food. My hair!”

  Brian grimaced. “Might not be a great idea to announce to customers that you’ve been getting complaints of hair in the food.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re bogus complaints,” Carla snapped.

  “Curious, how do they know it’s your hair, DNA?” Brian teased.

  “Ha-ha. Whenever they call, they say I was their waitress and the hair they claim to have found is always some color like pink—or purple. Seriously, if someone finds hair in their food, they say something then. They don’t call back a few days later and tell the cook!”

  “I’ve heard when someone dyes their hair a lot, it can start falling out—” Joe began.

  “It is not my hair!” Carla insisted. “The jerk called yesterday and said she came in here on Monday, and the hair was pink.”

  “Your hair is green,” Joe noted.

  Carla nodded. “Exactly. And it was green on Monday too.” Without asking, Carla sat down in the booth next to Joe, forcing him to move down the bench seat to give her room.

  “Whoever this is, they call about once a month,” Carla told them.

  “Obviously it’s a prank. Unless the person is some sort of masochist, keeps coming in, in spite of regularly getting hair in their food,” Brian said.

  “Whoever it is, they either change their voice when they call or it’s teenagers screwing around and taking turns calling. First time someone called it sounded like a girl. Then the next time, sounded like a guy. At least, that’s what Earl said,” Carla explained. “One good thing, Earl believes me now. The creep screwed up and got my hair color wrong this time.”

  “Now that you got that off your mind, you think we could get some coffee? Maybe take our order?” Brian asked.

  Ten minutes later Brian and Joe sat at their booth without Carla, drinking their coffee.

  “Who do you think is making those calls?” Joe asked.

  “Some teenagers messing with Carla is my guess. Or maybe some fashion critic who doesn’t like pink and green hair.”

  Brian’s cellphone rang. He picked it up off the table and glanced at it. It was the police department calling.

  “Hello, Brian Henderson here,” Brian answered.

  “A Roxane Klein has called for you a couple of times. I didn’t want to give her your number.”

  “Roxane Klein? What did she want?”

  “I don’t know, but she seemed pretty upset. I have her number; do you want it?”

  “Yeah, give it to me.”

  Joe sat quietly at the table and watched as Brian removed a pen from his shirt pocket and then jotted down a phone number on a paper napkin.

  When Brian got off the cellphone, he looked up at Joe and said, “Beverly’s daughter has been trying to get ahold of me at the station. I wonder what’s going on?” Not waiting for Joe’s reply, he dialed Roxane’s number.

  “Hello?” came a female voice.

  “I’m calling for Roxane Klein. This is Brian Henderson.”

  “Oh, thank God you called! Have you talked to my mother today?”

  “Your mother? Umm…I saw her yesterday afternoon. Is there a problem?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t know who else to call, but Mom told me yesterday you and she had been dating, so I thought maybe you could help. I figure, you are a cop. Or I thought maybe you were together.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on,” Brian urged.

  “I always call Mom in the morning. It’s sort of a thing I do now that she lives alone. But she isn’t answering her cellphone or her landline. I called one of the neighbors, and she said Mom’s car is in the driveway. I talked her into going over to Mom’s house and she knocked on the door, but no one answered. Yesterday Mom said she was going to get some boxes down from the rafters in the garage, and I just keep thinking of her on a ladder and then falling and being all alone.”

  “I’ll go over and check on her.”

  “You will?”

  “Yes.”

  “I tried to get the neighbor to go into the house and see if Mom was okay, but she said the front door was locked and she didn’t want to break in. So if you have to break in, you have my permission! Just please check on my mother!”

  Brian got off the phone and stood up. He quickly explained where he was going.

  “You want me
to go with you?” Joe offered.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  Joe stood up. “Let me go tell Carla we’re leaving.”

  When they arrived at Beverly’s house ten minutes later, the front door was locked, and her car was in the driveway, just as the neighbor had told Roxane. Instead of breaking into the front door, they went around the side of the house to check the door to the garage. They found it unlocked.

  “Holy crap,” Joe muttered when they stepped into the garage.

  The trash bags Beverly had filled the evening before were now empty and their contents strewn across the floor of the garage. When Brian had removed the boxes the day before, all the doors to the cabinets lining two walls of the garage had been closed. Now they were all open and empty, their contents thrown on the concrete floor.

  “What the hell?” Brian muttered as he removed the gun from his holster. He stepped over the items littering the floor, making his way to the door leading into the house, Joe trailing behind him.

  Inside the house it was eerily quiet, but then Brian heard something. It sounded like knocking.

  A minute later they found the source of the knocking. It seemed to be coming from the hall closet. Someone was inside, and whoever it was could not get out. A wooden chair strategically propped under the doorknob made it impossible for whoever was inside to open the door.

  Quickly re-holstering the gun, Brian shoved the chair out of the way and threw open the closet door. There, sitting in the dark cubicle, wearing only a rumpled satin robe, her hair matted in blood, was Beverly Klein. Blinking from the sudden flood of light, Beverly looked up with a tearstained face.

  “I thought I was going to die in here!” she began to sob.

  Eleven

  After breakfast on Thursday morning, Danielle and Walt stood in the parlor looking at the boxes Beverly had brought the day before and debating what they should do with them.

  “I know you’re probably anxious to go through them now, but we have guests arriving tomorrow, and when Joanne gets here, she’s going to want to vacuum this room,” Danielle told him. “Maybe we should put the boxes in the hall closet for now?”

  “Why don’t I just move them to my room? That way I can take my time going through them without getting in the way of the guests,” Walt suggested.

  “Okay. That’ll work too.” Danielle reached down to pick up one of the boxes when Walt stopped her.

  “You don’t need to be lifting these heavy boxes,” he told her. “I’ll move them.”

  Danielle stood up straight again and glanced down at Walt’s broken leg and then over to his crutches. She looked up into his face and arched her brows. “I don’t think you’re going to be lifting anything heavier than a crutch for a while.”

  “Ahh, but you forget.” Walt smiled. He looked down at the box she was about to pick up. After a moment, it floated up into the air.

  Danielle let out a little surprised gasp and jumped back one step, her eyes still on the box. It floated back to the floor. “Oh my gosh, you’re getting better at that. That’s a lot heavier than a brochure or book.”

  “Not getting better exactly—simply getting back to what I used to be able to do.”

  Danielle looked up into Walt’s blue eyes. “But you were a ghost then. This shouldn’t be possible.”

  “You explained it yourself. What was it you called it? Oh—telekinesis.”

  “Well, that’s one theory.” She looked back down at the box. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You did manage to send that crate sailing down the hallway. And you certainly weren’t a ghost then.”

  “True. But what I would like to do is to be able to control it more—like I used to. When I was a spirit. I need this practice.”

  “Okay.” Danielle let out a sigh. “Let me go open the doors so you can give this a shot. Not sure you’re ready to move the boxes and the doors.” She opened the parlor door all the way and then sprinted to the downstairs bedroom, opening its door.

  A moment later, she stood in the hallway, near the open doorway leading to Walt’s room. One by one Walt moved the boxes from the parlor to the hallway, just outside the parlor door—and never once touched one of the boxes with his hands. After he accomplished this, he hopped over to Danielle, crutches in hand.

  With their backs to the hallway leading to the kitchen and library, Walt and Danielle stood side by side as they watched the boxes float—one at a time—from where they sat outside the parlor door to inside the open doorway of the downstairs bedroom.

  When there was just one box remaining, Danielle looked at Walt and said, “You know, if you would have let me help carry them, we could have gotten this done faster.”

  “Or I could have tried moving them all at once,” he retorted.

  “You just want to show off,” Danielle teased.

  Walt laughed and then focused his attention on the final box. It lifted up several feet into the air and then floated across the hallway toward them. Just when the box was about two feet away from Walt and Danielle, a startled voice from behind them yelped, “What in the world?” The box dropped unceremoniously to the floor.

  Both Danielle and Walt turned around quickly and found the housekeeper, Joanne Johnson, staring dumbly at the box, which now sat motionless on the floor.

  “Joanne…” Danielle muttered, at a loss for words. She hadn’t realized the housekeeper had arrived, obviously entering through the back door into the kitchen.

  Joanne pointed to the box, her hand shaking. “It was floating!”

  The three stood silently for what seemed like an eternity but was actually less than a minute, when Walt let out a laugh and said, “Well, thank you, Joanne!”

  Both Danielle and Joanne looked to Walt in confusion.

  “It did look like it was floating, didn’t it!” Walt beamed.

  “It wasn’t?” Joanne stammered.

  Walt laughed again. “Prestidigitation.”

  “Huh?” Joanne hesitantly took a few steps toward them.

  Danielle frowned at Walt yet remained silent. He flashed her a quick grin before looking back at Joanne. “I’ve been so bored, cooped up and hopping around with this annoying cast. I’ve been spending a lot of time on the library computer, surfing. I’ve been reading about magic tricks—sleight of hand—prestidigitation. I don’t think I’m ready to make an elephant disappear like Houdini did, but making it look as if a box was floating in the air—a piece of cake!”

  “Houdini made an elephant disappear?” Danielle asked in a whisper.

  Walt smiled at her and said with a nod, “Yes, in New York, in 1918.”

  Joanne physically relaxed and smiled. Stepping up to Walt and Danielle, she said, “How did you do it?”

  Walt shook his head. “Oh, I can’t tell that. It would spoil all the fun!”

  A few minutes later Danielle picked up the last box and moved it into the downstairs bedroom while Joanne returned to the kitchen. After placing the box in the bedroom, she joined Walt in the parlor and closed the door.

  “That was close! I can’t believe she bought your story!” Danielle told Walt.

  Walt hopped to one of the chairs and sat down, setting his crutches on the floor by his feet. “People believe what is convenient,” he told her.

  “Convenient?”

  “Or what alleviates their discomfort. We often tell ourselves lies to make ourselves feel better.”

  “Are you saying Joanne didn’t really believe you?” Danielle asked.

  “She’s letting herself believe me. It’s easier than the alternative—less scary.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Like when Lily first told Ian about you, it was easier for him to think she was making up some lie as opposed to what the truth was.”

  “In Ian’s case, I don’t think that made him feel any better, considering he almost lost Lily because of it,” Walt reminded her.

  Danielle walked to the sofa and sat down across from Walt. She propped her stockinged feet on the coffe
e table. “Funny when you think about it. Just last night Chris suggested you become a magician.”

  “Chris was being a wise guy.”

  “Maybe.” Danielle shrugged. “But at the moment Joanne is out there thinking you’re something of a magician trainee.”

  “I don’t really see myself as another Houdini—or even a magician who doesn’t lock himself in small boxes.”

  Danielle chuckled. “I don’t blame you. And I think you’re onto something. I can see you as a writer, especially considering your unique perspective on the world. I can’t really think of any writers today who could write on the 1920s with the same authority as you.”

  “I realize that just because I’m a voracious reader, it doesn’t mean I’ll be a good writer.”

  “If writing doesn’t work out, there is always your fallback career. Pet whisperer.” Danielle giggled.

  One of the throw pillows lifted off the sofa and then flew toward Danielle, smacking her in the side of the head.

  “Hey!” Danielle shouted, grabbing the pillow. She quickly threw it at Walt, but it missed her target and fell to the floor.

  Walt laughed. The pillow then floated up from the floor and drifted back to the sofa, returning to its original place.

  “Now I’m not sure I’m going to tell you my idea,” Danielle said with a pout. She pulled her feet onto the sofa and tucked them under the pillow that had been thrown at her a moment earlier.

  “Come on, I like hearing your ideas,” Walt coaxed.

  Danielle’s pout turned to a smile as she looked across at Walt. “You aren’t going to be in that cast forever.”

  “I certainly hope not.” Walt glanced down at his broken leg, the cast hidden under the loosely fitting slacks.