by K. J. Emrick
“That can be corrected.” Darcy would melt the thing into scrap before she let this woman into their lives again. “And why are you so young? You were old when you died and it’s not like the years had been kind to you.”
The image of Willamena’s ghost screaming and clawing at the air as Darcy had pushed her out of Colby had not been a pretty one. Her haggard face had been withered and distorted, her fingers long and hooked like a bat’s claws, her spine bent and twisted. The ghost had been an old woman’s, older than death, distorted by time and rage. It had been a nightmare that Darcy had been glad to walk away from.
It had been too much to hope for that it would end there. Even at the time, she knew that somehow, they weren’t quite done with Willamena yet. Or rather, Willamena wasn’t done with them. Now here she was, in the dim glow of Darcy’s dream.
“I am neither old, nor young,” the woman’s ghost explained with a casual toss of one hand. “I once was young, and I much preferred it to being old. So, as it were, here I am young again.”
Ghosts were a representation of that person’s energy, for lack of a better word, after they had passed on from life to death. Ghosts could change their appearance to a certain extent, like changing their outfit when the mood struck them, but for Willamena to be able to change her age? That meant she was a very strong spirit indeed. Darcy was grudgingly impressed.
But she wasn’t about to show it.
“Well, good for you. Now. Get out of my house.”
One of Willamena’s slender hands motioned toward the jewelry box. The sleeve of her dress pooled around her wrist. “The box is here. So, I am here.”
“Like I said, that was my mistake. In the morning I’ll find the deepest, darkest hole there is and drop it down there. Or, I’ll find a cement mixer somewhere and make sure this gets poured into a building foundation where no one will ever find it again. Or, I’ll send it on a plane to Kalamazoo. I’m not even sure where Kalamazoo is, but I know it’s way far away from here!”
Lifting a finger, the ghost shook it back and forth in exaggerated slow motion. “I would not be so hasty, were I you.”
“You’re not me. That’s the point. Now, I’m going to wake up, and you can just go—”
But then another voice interjected. “Darcy, dear. She’s right. Don’t be so hasty.”
Great Aunt Millie was barely more than a silhouette in the door to the bedroom, highlighted by the wavering glow of the silver jewelry box. She was a short woman, with a warm smile in her wrinkly face, wearing a black dress and her favorite floppy-brimmed hat. This was how she usually appeared to Darcy in her dreams. Just as she had been right before she died. No vain attempts to make herself young again for this grand lady.
Even after her death, Millie was still here to watch over her family. Except now she was standing there very calmly telling Darcy not to worry about the woman who had tried to use Colby’s body like a puppet.
“Millie, you can’t be serious. Do you remember what she did?”
“Ugh,” Willamena grumped. “Must we go over the old news, hmm?”
“Shush,” Millie told her. “I was here for all of that. I helped them understand what you were doing, remember? I’d hardly call it ‘old news.’”
“Right,” Darcy said. “And you helped me stop her, or so I thought. So why is she here now? More importantly, what’s stopping me from taking a sledgehammer to this piece of junk?”
“It is not junk!” Willamena protested.
“Because,” Millie said, giving the other ghost-woman a stern look, “you aren’t done learning the box’s secrets. There’s more it has to tell you. Remember, Willamena is your ancestor, too. Mine as well, for that matter. We are both descended from her. Without her, in fact, our family wouldn’t have our wonderful gift. As bad as she might have been to you, and to our precious Colby as well, she has a lot of knowledge that might be useful to us.”
“Naturally,” Willamena said with a saccharine-sweet grin. “If you ask nicely, that is.”
Darcy did not like where this was going. “So you’re saying,” she said to Millie, “that because she’s our great-great-great-not-so-great grandmother, we’re stuck with her?”
Millie sighed, and her smile turned into a frown. “For now. Yes.”
Darcy tossed her head back and stared up at the ceiling. “I can’t believe this. Can’t you just tell me what’s so important about the box now so we can get rid of it? And, rid of her?”
It was Willamena who snickered. “What would be the fun of that?”
“Yes, dear,” Millie agreed. “What would be the fun?”
“I don’t believe this.” Darcy crossed her arms over her chest. “The entire universe is against me. That’s what it is. I did something to make God mad, and now the universe is out for revenge.”
Millie came around the bed and pulled Darcy into a warm hug. “Don’t be silly, dear. If the universe hated you, then it wouldn’t keep bringing us together.”
“Or us,” Willamena added, and her smile was infuriating.
With her next breath, Darcy woke up for real. She pushed herself up on one elbow and rolled over to see the clock right where it was supposed to be. The red numbers told her it was just after three-thirty. Still enough time to catch a couple more hours of rest
She put her head back down on her pillow, thinking about what she had just seen. Millie standing to one side, Willamena sitting lazily on the other. It reminded her of those old cartoons, when some helpless character like Bugs Bunny would have two very different influences riding on his shoulders.
An angel… and a devil.
Chapter 3
The Sweet Read Bookstore had been in Darcy’s family for three generations now. It was Millie’s before she passed, and along with their house her great aunt had left Darcy this shop as well. The name had been changed when she took over, and the interior redecorated, and now there was a modern selection of audio books and digital downloads for sale right along with the physical paper novels and how-to books and other selections, but in Darcy’s mind it would always be Great Aunt Millie’s no matter how many changes she made.
She had a partner now, too. It had been one of the best decisions she’d ever made. The place just ran smoother with the two of them working here.
Isabelle McIntosh—Izzy to her friends—was wearing pleated khaki shorts today along with her short-sleeved blouse. The curls of her honey-blonde hair hung limply in the early morning humidity of what promised to be another warm day. Izzy wasn’t much for the heat. She much preferred the cold winters here in New England. Some years she hardly even wore a jacket.
“I swear to you,” she told Darcy. “I’m going to move to Canada. Someplace where it’s cold. Like Quebec, or something.”
“Um,” Darcy said, “I don’t think Quebec is typically any cooler than we are right here.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Plus, I’d need to learn how to speak French, and that just seems like too much work.”
They were restocking books from Saturday that people had browsed through and then left on the courtesy push cart. There was a lot of that nowadays. People looking, but not buying. The economy was great according to the news but down here on Earth where the little people lived, things were nowhere near as rosy. It was the end of the summer, and the tourism season was winding down, and there was always a sales slump when that happened. Things would pick up again. Especially toward Christmas.
“Crazy thing about that hand, huh?”
Izzy asked the question casually, but Darcy saw the way she was watching her out of the corner of one eye. The discovery of the hand had been the lead story for the news last night, and on the drive here this morning it was all the local radio station would talk about. Darcy had turned it off before Zane could hear too much. After Colby had gone off on her bicycle to her friend’s house for the day again, she had taken her car for the short ride into town with Zane in the back, and Cha Cha sitting right next to him. Both of them, boy an
d dog alike, were too young to leave by themselves at home. So, they got to spend the day with their mom here at the Sweet Read Bookstore.
Darcy had been expecting Izzy’s question about the hand. She didn’t have any reason to hide anything about it from her friend. Not to mention, she didn’t know much more than what had already been on the news. “It was pretty gross, I can tell you that. All curled up and withered and just sitting there in the water. And then Jon had to go and talk about how it didn’t crawl there on its own and all I could picture was the fingers inching along like a zombie spider at the bottom of the river. I mean, ew, right?”
“Uh-huh.” Izzy made a face. “Tell you what, though. I’d pay to see that movie. The Zombie Hand Strikes Again. Heh. Never a dull moment in our little town, is there?”
“Well, actually,” Darcy said as she slid the last book back into the cooking section where it belonged. “It turns out this one isn’t in our jurisdiction at all. It was on the far end of Applegate Road, so the state police get to take care of it. I’m just a witness.”
“Mom?” Zane asked from where he was leaning around the end of the bookstacks. “What’s a ‘itness?”
Darcy didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, but she knew he must have heard a lot more than she wanted him to. Cha Cha was standing next to him, and even their dog was looking at her oddly. “Hi, honey. I thought you guys were back in Mommy’s office.”
He shrugged. “Got bored. So, what’s an ‘itness?”
“Well, the word is ‘witness,’ first of all. With a ‘whi’ sound at the beginning. Can you say that? W-w-witness?”
Zane pursed his lips, giving a few experimental puffs while his face screwed up in concentration. “Whi. Whi. Whitness.”
“Much better. A witness is someone who sees something important. Your mom saw something kind of bad yesterday. I witnessed it, so I’m a witness.”
“Oh. Okay.” He nodded with a serious expression that made him look so much like his father that Darcy didn’t know whether to laugh or give him a big, big hug.
“Bright kid,” Izzy said. “I remember when my daughter was that age. Lilly was always asking questions about everything. I could barely keep up.”
Darcy knew what she meant. Zane was a sponge some days, soaking up every bit of information he could about everything. He was growing up far too quickly. She wished that she could just wrap him in bubble wrap and save him like this for all time, like the precious treasure he was. “Do you have any other questions, buddy?”
He thought about it for a moment, and then looked down at Cha Cha for his opinion. The dog licked his lips. Zane nodded his head. “Um. Yeah. Can we eats ice cream for lunch?”
Izzy clapped her hands. “Ooh, that’s a great idea. Ice cream and ketchup!”
“Blech,” the little boy declared. “No! Just ice cream.”
Darcy laughed at the two of them going back and forth like that. Her kids referred to Izzy as ‘Aunt Izzy,’ and they loved her like family. She was grateful for that, and also for the resilience of little kids. Her son had just heard them talking about severed hands and shrugged it off with thoughts of ice cream.
“We can have ice cream with lunch,” she said, with a look that included both Zane and Izzy. “Not for lunch. How about we get some sandwiches from The La Di Da Deli and when we’ve eaten them all up, then we can have some ice cream after.”
“Spoilsport,” Izzy muttered, but with a smile that said she was mostly joking.
Cha Cha said something that sounded like “mrowfl mrff,” and Zane reached over to put a hand on the dog’s furry head. “Right. Mom, Cha Cha needs go outside and, um, pee.”
“Already? We only got here an hour ago.”
Zane shrugged. “He says he’s gotta go bad.”
That made Izzy laugh out loud. “Aw. That’s awesome, the way he thinks he knows what Cha Cha’s saying.”
The puppy and Zane both turned to look up at her with twin expressions, as if she’d just told them that water was wet. “We understands us,” Zane told her.
Darcy didn’t even try to correct him this time. She was frantically hoping that Izzy wouldn’t push the issue because she hadn’t told her friend anything about Zane being able to talk to animals. She’d never told Izzy anything about Colby’s gifts, either. All of her friends in town knew that Darcy was special, and that she could do things that were maybe unexplainable and even a little spooky, but hardly anyone knew about what her kids could do. She wanted them to have as normal a childhood as possible. If that meant keeping their secrets even from Izzy, then that’s the way it would have to be.
“Um, Izzy, would you mind taking Cha Cha outside? I’ve got those invoices from last month to untangle. I still don’t know how MacGruder’s payment ended up on Simon & Schuster’s invoice.”
“Sure thing,” Izzy said cheerfully. “Tell you what. I’ll take Zane with me too. That way you’ll have some peace and quiet so you can argue with the numbers.”
“Thanks, Izzy. Ready to go for a walk, Zane?”
“Yay!” he exclaimed. “Walk, walk, walk!”
When they were gone, Darcy did breathe a sigh of relief, but not for the tranquility that descended inside the Sweet Read Bookstore. It was because she had avoided the subject of Zane and how he could understand Cha Cha a little too well.
Behind the desk was the door to the small office where Darcy kept all of her paper invoices and receipts. Most of them got scanned into the computer but she’d learned the hard way to keep the hard copies for three months before disposing of them. Something wasn’t adding up about that MacGruder account. She took the folders off the desk from back there and brought them out to the front register. She still had to watch the store while she worked on these. No telling how long Izzy would be outside before Cha Cha decided to do his business.
Maybe, Darcy thought, Zane would say something else while they were outside that would end up cluing Izzy in that he wasn’t just telling stories. She was a smart woman. If she figured things out on her own then Darcy would confirm it, but until then it was just a little mother-son secret.
The numbers were beginning to swim in front of her eyes when she finally found her mistake. “Eureka,” she whispered to herself, ready to strike out the error with a stroke of her pen. “That’s better…”
The shopkeeper’s bell over the front door jingled, and she looked up, her pen still poised above the forms. A young man stood there in the doorway, both of his hands tucked into the front pocket of his gray hoodie. There was a college name written across the front in red letters, some place Darcy had never heard of. The Ricker Classical Institute. Huh. Under the name, in blue, were the Latin words Vincit qui se vincet. Her Latin was rusty to say the least… something about obtaining victory, she thought. Or something like that.
He stopped just inside the door, scanning the several stacks of books, and the round tables in the reading area next to the coffee maker, and the sales rack of printed t-shirts. He smiled as if he liked what he saw, and the smile made his blocky cheeks wrinkle with lines. He wasn’t old. He was just deeply tanned and weathered from a lot of time in the sun. His tight, wavy blonde hair was like a halo against his tanned face. Kind of like a dark angel in blue jeans.
“Can I help you?” she said to Mister Blue Jeans. “We’ve got a nice selection of best sellers if you’re looking for a book to read.”
“Hmm. That sounds nice,” he said. “Might take you up on that.”
His voice was high-pitched for a man. Sort of like Ryan Reynolds, if Ryan was a blonde. He reminded her of someone—not Ryan—but she couldn’t think of who. Darcy was sure she’d never seen him before. “Are you visiting Misty Hollow? On a holiday or something?”
“Mmm, something like that.” He shrugged and smiled even bigger. “Actually, I’m looking to move into town. There’re a lot of houses for sale here. I was surprised when the realtor started showing them all to me. This looks like such a nice place to live. How come so many empty ho
uses?”
Ghosts, murder, arson… take your pick, Darcy almost told him. Instead, what she said was, “There’s not much for employment in Misty Hollow. Most people prefer to live in Oakwood or one of the bigger towns where the jobs are. We make our money primarily on tourism.”
She smiled, hopeful he’d take the hint and buy a few books while he was here.
“Ah. Just the kind of place I’m looking for, then.” He walked slowly down the front rack of books, where Darcy kept the romance paperbacks and thriller novels and other quick pick-ups that most tourists wanted. He trailed his left hand along the titles, the other still in the hoodie’s pocket. He stopped and took one out seemingly at random, flipped it over to read the blurb on the back cover, and frowned approvingly. “Haven’t read this one yet. I’m a pretty big reader, usually, but I haven’t had much time recently. Life has been pretty busy for me.”
He brought the novel up to the counter. Darcy recognized it as a paperback copy of a sci-fi series, Colony 41. But this was book two. Odd that he wanted the second book rather than the first, but Darcy never questioned a customer’s choice. She might give them suggestions, but she found that when she questioned why someone wanted a book, they often as not put it back. Sometimes without picking out anything else to buy.
“So what do you do for work?” she asked him as she scanned his book selection into the sales register.
“I’m a freelance writer, actually. I can work from anywhere so the lack of big business here in Misty Hollow really doesn’t bother me. The quiet is actually good for me.”
“Oh, a writer? That’s really cool. I’ve met a few writers in the past. Actually, I have a couple of books here in the store that my great aunt wrote.”
“Really? What sort of writing did your great aunt do?”
“Probably not anything you’d be interested in,” Darcy admitted. “She wrote about the paranormal. Ghosts, and ESP, and that sort of thing.”
