by Dale Mayer
She nodded. “I know. I know that. I mean, in theory, I really do understand that,” she whispered. “I just don’t know what to say because it’s what happened.”
“And what did he say?”
“It’s like I was having an argument with myself,” she said. “And it just made no sense. Then he said I was actually arguing with him, not me, and he laughed at me, like I was some kind of an idiot for not having figured that out.”
“And how would you possibly figure it out?” he said. “When you, in theory, don’t really have any exposure to this kind of stuff.” He looked at her closely. “Or do you?”
“This kind of stuff?” she repeated with a slight sarcastic overtone. “I don’t even know what this is.”
“You’re the one who keeps calling it a ghost.”
“As far as I know,” she said, “it is. Yet I’ve never spoken to a ghost in my life before.”
“I want you to talk to somebody,” he said abruptly.
She looked at him and asked, “A shrink?”
“A specialist,” he temporized.
“A shrink,” she said, her shoulders sagging.
“Don’t you want to figure out if there are voices in your head or if something else is going on?”
“They won’t be open to the idea of ghosts. They’ll start talking multiple personalities and all kinds of crap like that.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “We have a very interesting psychologist on staff.”
“I’ll do it,” she said, sighing loudly. “If for nothing else than to see if I’m going crazy. I don’t want to be on any medication though,” she fretted.
“Medication isn’t always bad,” he said.
“It always makes me feel funny.”
“But you don’t know what this medication is,” he said with a wry twist.
She groaned. “No. I know that.” She shrugged. “But I’ll try to listen to anything he says.”
“That’s fine.” Then he straightened up and said, “Let me make a call and see what we can set up.”
She nodded, as he walked a few feet away. She walked over to the small kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. Thank heavens for the big case of coffee under the counter that would keep her supplied for a long time. At the same time, she wasn’t sure that she should even be drinking this much, as if she were running purely on nerves.
She stared around the living room, now very dry-eyed, as she huddled into the single oversize recliner. Gazing out the window, she hugged her coffee cup to her. This was such a uniquely comfortable spot, full of luxury, and made her feel like she was in a surreal environment, but it just went along with everything else.
She thought briefly about the other women she shared the apartment with, wondering why nobody had contacted her, but, then again, she hadn’t reached out to them either. It said a lot about who they were really. More roommates, not so much friends.
Gabby was still hurting from Wendy’s lack of sharing and her inability to tell Gabby about Meghan again. Friends were for telling things like that. Had Gabby really been so hard on Meghan? Maybe Gabby had; maybe that had been her fault entirely. That just sent her down another ugly path.
When Damon stepped in front of her, she looked up at him and said, “And?”
“We can get you in this afternoon.”
She winced. “Meaning that I’m really a head case, and they want to know if I had anything to do with my friend’s death?”
He stared at her in surprise. “How did you segue to all that from one appointment being scheduled?”
“It’s the only reason you could get me in so fast,” she said. “You have a murder to solve, and I’m a likely suspect.”
“I don’t know about a likely suspect,” he said, “but I will concede that, because you are a part of the case, the appointment is a little bit faster than normal.”
She nodded. “How long do I have?”
“About an hour,” he said, “and I’ll drive you myself.”
“Wow,” she said, “they must have really made an opening then.”
“Yep, they did,” he said cheerfully.
She nodded glumly. “I guess thanks are in order then.”
“Don’t sound so unimpressed about it,” he said.
“Hard to be impressed,” she replied. “When you think about it, it’s just all bad news.”
“Well, it would be easy to say that except, in theory, you don’t understand how this works.”
“I understand a lot,” she said, “but I don’t understand what’s going on in my head at all.”
“Which is why we’ll let you talk to somebody.”
She nodded slowly. “If you say so.”
He stayed with her, and they had half an hour of basic general conversations about the town, the people, and snowboarding, until he looked at his watch and said, “Finish up the last of your coffee and let’s go.”
She winced, and, tossing back the last of the caffeine, she got up, grabbed her jacket, put on her boots, and stood here, waiting for him to tell her what was next. He led her down to his vehicle, and the snow bit at her skin, as she stepped outside. She looked up at the dark stormy clouds and said, “This is about how I feel right now.”
“Yeah,” he said, “let’s not forget that you are at least feeling something and that your girlfriend no longer has that opportunity.”
With that bitter reminder, she hopped into his vehicle and didn’t say another word.
*
Damon probably shouldn’t have said that to Gabby, but it was something that most people needed to be reminded of. They were lucky that they were even alive. Lucky they were here and doing what they were doing, versus all the people who could no longer do that. He was pretty damn sure that Tessa wanted to have a life as she chose to lead it, not ending up in the morgue as she was now.
It was all just a little too weird. Her death has caused quite a stir among Damon’s team too. He, for one, was still trying to figure out what could possibly have done that kind of damage to the body, and the other guys were muttering about the dark side of the history of Aspen. Damon hadn’t had a chance to read up on that, but apparently a somewhat similar death had happened. He hoped that it wasn’t truly similar, but that, over time, general gossip had expanded it.
He pulled up in front of Dr. Mica’s office and parked. He looked at Gabby to see her fingers intertwined in a white-knuckle grip. “It’ll be okay, you know?”
She nodded mutely and didn’t say anything.
He’d been aware of a rising tension, the closer and closer they got to their destination, but he hadn’t realized how unnerved she was. “Are you worried about meeting her,” he said, “or about what’s happening to you?”
“Both, and the explosive combination of when they come together,” she said starkly.
That made him pause, and he realized just how important the outcome of this visit was. He nodded slowly. “I hadn’t considered that.” He hesitated and said, “Do you want me to come in with you?”
She looked at him in surprise, yet he could see the relief in her eyes, but almost immediately she masked it and then shook her head.
“No, that probably wouldn’t be right. But thank you for offering.” And, as if she had a gust of courage, she quickly opened the car door, hopped out, and slammed the door shut, racing up to the front steps, where she stood under the eaves, out from under the weather. He got out slower, locked the vehicle, and joined her.
As he opened the front door and headed toward the office, she asked, “How do you know this doctor?”
“She’s a consultant for the police force,” he said. “I’ve had a few times where I’ve needed to see her myself.” He caught her staring at him in surprise, then gave her a smile. “Think about it. Think about the work I do and how hard it is sometimes. When you save some abused woman from violence, only to turn around and save her again a week later because she went back? How do you think that makes me feel?”
S
he winced at that. “Thanks. That just brought it a little bit too close to home. I don’t think Wendy sees herself as an abused woman.”
“Honestly, they never do,” he said sadly. “Until it’s too late.”
“And is it often too late?” she asked, worry in her voice.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “A lot of times it’s too late. And I’m not saying that’s what’ll happen to your friend, but it is a problem,” he said. She nodded, and slowly he reached out a hand, grabbed hers, and said, “Hey, it’ll be okay.”
She snorted. “No,” she said, “I’m not sure anything will be okay anymore.”
“Well, that is something you’ll have to decide for yourself. Because life happens, and you can just react, or you can choose to take your reaction and make something out of that.” He said, “It doesn’t all have to be negative.”
She took a deep breath, nodded slowly. “I know that,” she said. “I guess I’m just not to the point of feeling like I’m in control of anything right now.”
“Well, let’s go talk to Dr. Mica and see.” He pushed open the door to the office to find Dr. Mica standing in the reception area with a stack of papers in her hands.
She looked up, smiled, and said, “There you are.”
“Thank you for seeing us so quickly,” he said. With that, he introduced them and said, “Some interesting things have been happening.”
Dr. Mica looked at him and then looked at Gabby. “Come on into my office,” she said. “We can talk there.”
As they walked into the office, Damon didn’t know what he should do.
When Gabby got to the doorway of Dr. Mica’s office, she turned to look at him, frowned, and said, “You might as well come in.”
“If you want me there,” he said.
“Well, if I don’t, I guess I’ll ask you to step out,” she said in a tight voice.
He nodded, giving her emotional support, as he walked in. Dr. Mica’s eyebrows were raised, but, as she looked at him, he gave an almost imperceptible shrug, as if to say it was all good. Then he sat down in one of the chairs.
“So tell me what’s going on,” Dr. Mica said.
“It started with me being pushed down the mountain and almost dying the day before yesterday,” she said, “and it ended, so far, with my roommate being murdered last night, and me being hounded by a ghost.”
It all came out in such a fast rush that Damon could see Dr. Mica trying to blink and process at the same time.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “That’s a lot of information, so let’s unpack that a bit. Who pushed you down the mountain?”
“I don’t know,” Gabby said. “I was standing there on my board, completely in control, and, the next thing I know, I was going at a speed that was way more than anything I could have produced on my own, taking me out of bounds over a hump, where I landed on this tiny outreach of rock. The detective here, on his side job with ski patrol, came and helped rescue me.”
“Well, good job there, Damon,” she said with a bright smile. Damon tilted his head, acknowledging but not entering the conversation. She turned back to Gabby. “Then what happened?”
“I was pretty traumatized. He insisted I go to the hospital, but I was completely fine, and I felt good, which made no sense, considering the terrible fall I took, but I was fine,” she said with a shake of her head. “The next morning, I woke up superenergized, superhungry, having a wonderful day. Everything was great. I woke up today feeling off, and it was just—I don’t know—it was the antithesis of what should have been.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” Dr. Mica said. “You came close to death, and, instead of dying, you had a realization that life was something very special and worth living.”
“Potentially,” she said. “In the meantime, last night I was home with one of my roommates. Five of us share a place, due to the high rents here,” she said. “We woke up to a strange sound, and my girlfriend came into my room. We were too scared to go out to the living room, and then we heard these absolutely horrible noises, terrifying noises,” she said, stopping, taking several deep breaths.
“And that’s when we called the detective here, who came running, and told us to stay locked up in my room, which we did. We thought we heard somebody coming down the hallway toward us, but then the sirens started,” she said, starting to shake, caught up in the memory. Damon reached out a hand and grabbed her fingers, and she clutched his fingers supertight. “And then all of a sudden Damon showed up.”
“You didn’t tell me that the killer walked down the hallway toward you,” he said.
“Didn’t we?” She looked at him in surprise and then shook her head. “I’m surprised I was even coherent enough to talk.”
“Okay, so that was a horribly traumatic session last night,” the doctor said. “Now what else has happened?”
“I ended up leaving the apartment because, well, it was a horrible murder scene, and I’m all alone because my best friend apparently had another relationship to go to that she hadn’t told me about.”
“And was that some sort of a betrayal for you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I know it sounds foolish, but, yes. We came here together for the winter to enjoy snowboarding, and I thought she was part of it all and onboard. We had all these plans on how we would make it work financially, but the other thing I didn’t know was that she had lost her job early on and didn’t tell me. So she has been spending her savings this whole time and now has no money left. Her parents blame me for the loss of all her savings, and I didn’t even know that was going on,” she said in bewilderment, as the words spilled out of her.
“Anyway, Damon found me a place to spend the night,” she said. “Then this morning, I started to rehash everything that was going on, after Damon told me which of my roommates was murdered, and it seemed like I was having this ongoing argument in my head. And of course—” She stopped.
“Of course, what?”
“Well, in some ways, it makes sense that you argue in your head. I mean, lots of people do it.” She looked from Damon to the doc. “Right?”
“Yes, of course,” the doctor said. “We argue with ourselves at times. It’s completely normal.”
Gabby took a deep breath of relief. “Right, so that’s what I thought, but then he said that I wasn’t arguing with myself. That I was arguing with him and that, if I thought I could hide, I was wrong,” she whispered.
“And who do you mean by he?”
“When I first got pushed off the mountain,” she said, “it felt like an unseen force pushed me between my shoulder blades.”
Damon looked at her in surprise because that was also a detail she hadn’t mentioned.
“And when I finally came to rest, and I was still alive, he said something to me.” She went on to explain how he’d said it and what he had said, then continued, “And so it was that same voice that I heard again.”
“And that was earlier today?”
“Yes,” she said, and she held out her hands, which were trembling. “I get that I’ve been through a couple really horrible experiences, and I’m sure that shock is playing into all this to some degree. I just don’t know what else it is.”
“It’s all very interesting,” Dr. Mica said. She studied Gabby, but in an odd way, like Dr. Mica was focused on something almost slightly to the side of Gabby.
Damon looked at the doc. “What is it you’re thinking?”
She looked at him and smiled. “Well, it’s hard to say,” she said. “An awful lot of trauma is happening here, like she just said, and that can mess with our minds. The thing is, she believes that this is what’s going on and that another entity is involved, yet is determined that she shouldn’t be believing it.”
“Well, of course I shouldn’t be,” Gabby said. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“Isn’t there?” Dr. Mica said with a smile. They both stared at her.
“Are you saying you believe there are?” Gabby asked.
“I come from a different vantage point than you guys do,” she said, “and we do believe that there is life after death and that our ancestors have a life once they have passed from this realm. So I won’t tell you right now that you’re being possessed or that there’s a ghost or anything else like that. But I won’t knock it either.”
“Wow,” Gabby said, staring in shock. “I thought for sure you would tell me that I was crazy and would want to give me some pills to make life come back to something resembling normality.”
“If I thought life was that easily handled,” she said, “I would. But I don’t know that that’s the answer right now.”
“I don’t think it is,” Gabby said quietly.
“Why is that?”
“Because this entity, this person that I keep fussing about,” she said, “I think he’s here right now.”
Damon leaned forward and looked at her. “What are you talking about?”
She started to shake. “I feel like he’s right here,” she said, and she put her hand out to the space on the right side of where she sat. “It’s cold right here. Like really cold.”
He immediately ran his hand through the space too, and, indeed, it was cold. He reared back slightly, then looked at Dr. Mica to see an odd look on her face. He stopped and stared at her. “What is it you’re not telling us, Doc?”
She looked at him with a frown. “I’m not exactly sure,” she said. She looked at Gabby. “Can you talk to him?”
“I don’t want to,” Gabby whispered.
“Well, maybe you should try, if you believe he’s here,” she said gently. “Maybe he’ll tell you what he wants.”
“He told me that he wants me to die,” she said in a rush. “He told me that before.”
“And why should you die?”
“I don’t know,” she cried out.
“Easy, shh. Take it easy,” Dr. Mica said. “Let’s see what we can figure out here.”
“There’s nothing to figure out,” she said, bolting to her feet. She looked at Damon. “I told you this wouldn’t work.”
“Don’t panic,” he said, standing and reaching for her, but he had to step through the space that had been cold before. Instantly a chill wafted through him. He was struck by almost a darkness inside it, and, for the first time, he wondered if maybe she was telling the truth, if something completely abnormal was going on here, something supernatural? He turned to look at Dr. Mica to find her still staring at the same spot, and he knew that something was going on in her world that she didn’t want to share.
