by Kim Hornsby
“Missed,” she said and softly closed the door between our two rooms.
My next dream seemed to be hours later. In some regards it was more like a dream because I woke to the illuminated room, in full vision. Hodor was not on the bed. I looked to see he was also not on his dog bed on the floor. I sat up and was just about to leave the bed to go to Carlos’s room when I noticed a shadow in the corner of the room near the window. I blinked to see someone sitting in the chair by the window. I believed it was Harry. “Hello,” I said.
The man stood and stepped from the shadows. It was not my husband. It was Caspian. Then I remembered. Harry had been gone for a long time and I’d healed from the horrible grief I’d lived with for months. Caspian hadn’t taken Harry’s place in my heart, but I now had very deep feelings for Caspian. Was he still a ghost? ”I missed you.”
He spoke. “I’m sure if I knew I’d been gone, I would have missed you too.” He took several steps towards me. “Have I been gone long?”
The lamp on the nightstand was set on low, but I could see his gorgeous face in the yellow glow. “Too long. Eight days.” I reached for him and as he sat on the bed beside me, I took his hand and kissed it. “They saw you in the mirror tonight.”
“In a mirror? How unique of me. I saw you sitting on the floor with a child’s toy.”
I scooted closer to Caspian, our thighs resting against each other. “I was working.”
He nodded knowingly. “Where are we? Surely this isn’t Cove House with the bed linens looking so.” He lifted up the blanket and dropped it.
I scooted closer and looked deep into those gorgeous eyes that made me want to sail away with him immediately. “We are in a hotel, an inn.”
Caspian’s hand came up to cup my face.
“You knew you were leaving and said, ‘remember me’. Why did you say that? Have you crossed over?” His hand was warm in mine and it felt rough, like the hand of a man used to handling ropes on a ship.
“No, but I thought I might.”
This dream was my doing, a secret story between me and myself. This was not Caspian but my memory of him. As much as I wished it was him, it wasn’t, and the thought left me feeling despondent. “Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to find your bones because then you’ll be gone.”
He smiled gently and kissed my lips.
“I have feelings for you,” I said, wondering if I was talking out loud in the bedroom and if Hodor was sitting up in bed staring at the sleeping version of me. “And I believe you have feelings for me.”
Caspian’s gaze raked down my face to my chest and below. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, he pinned me with a look of such sexual interest, I shivered. “Yes, I have feelings for you, Bryndle.”
I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted one of those dreams where you rip each other’s clothes off and make love, but he stayed still as if he’d disappear again if he moved. “I wish this dream was you.” I leaned in to take his shoulders in my hands and pull him halfway to me, intending to kiss him, to satisfy my want. To initiate what we both knew needed to finish.
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to him fiercely. Our kiss was rough, needy and I felt like a starving person at the most deliciously decadent dinner. Caspian smelled of the ocean, adventures and sailboats and as his hand slipped down my side and up under my shirt, I gasped against his warm mouth. “Yes,” I whispered. I shifted to sit on his lap but just as his hand found my ribs, a slamming sounded across the room and I woke to darkness.
“What just happened?” I said, not meaning my sexy altercation with Caspian, but referring to the slamming. The connecting door to Carlo’s room squeaked open.
“Did you slam the door because we were making too much noise?” Eve said. “Because we were whispering.”
Hodor jumped on the bed.
“No, I was sleeping. Did the door just slam on its own?” I immediately thought Jacqueline, then remembered we were in a hotel room in Portland and I didn’t think the evil ghost could follow us.
“Think it was a ghost?” Eve asked.
“Probably.” I couldn’t think of any reason that door would close so powerfully except a ghost. “Where was Hodor?”
“He was in here, sleeping. Sorry Bryn,” Eve said. “We had the door almost closed, but he kept scratching on it. Carlos took him out a while ago, then he wanted to settle in with us.”
That was very strange. Hodor was a one-woman dog. “Why didn’t he come back to my bed?”
Carlos chimed in. “When I opened the door to see what his problem was, he rushed in here, like he was afraid.”
“I was dreaming you woke me, Eve. Maybe I was talking out loud.”
“I did wake you and you were talking out loud. That wasn’t a dream. It was right after that, Hodor started scratching at the door.”
I felt a pillow land on the bed.
“You threw that at me,” Eve said.
I felt around for Hodor until my hand connected to his furry body. “I guess that wasn’t a dream where you said the people downstairs complained I was snoring.”
“Nope, but you were pretty groggy,” Eve said. “Are you OK, Bryn?”
“I guess so. I had a dream where Caspian was in the room. In that one I could see.”
“It was a big night with the inhabitation.”
“Yes, it was.” I sat on the bed beside Hodor who was now licking my hand in apology for deserting me. “What time is it? Time to get up?”
“Four thirty,” Carlos said.
“You’ve only been asleep about an hour.” Eve’s voice was soft, placating, like I was a child asking if I could get out of bed from my nap.
“It seemed like more. You guys doing OK? Getting some good stuff?” I stood.
“Amazeballs,” Eve said. “Wait until Caspian shows up and you can see what we got.”
Had Caspian shown up or was that a dream? “I’m going to get more sleep then. See you at seven.”
As I settled back in bed, I thought of something. “Eve?”
She came to the door. “Yes.”
“Did you ever tell me what color the bedspread is on this bed?”
“I don’t remember saying. It’s not just one color though.”
A chill of happiness spread throughout my body. “Is it black, tan and teal stripes?”
There was a pause while I crossed my fingers under the blanket, waiting for the answer.
“Yes. How did you know?”
Chapter 8
Our meeting with Gavin Smythe was what paranormal investigator dreams are made of when they aren’t dreaming about kissing gorgeously handsome ghosts. Or being visited in the middle of the night by one. I woke believing that Caspian had come to me last night and we’d gotten all hot and heavy on the bed, him above the covers and me under them, unfortunately. The smile on my face would not calm down, not even for our meeting and I was sure Gavin Smythe thought I was a touch crazy.
We told him that the ghost of the little girl, Amanda, made contact. Carlos showed him the footage of me holding the bear in the elevator. Eve had briefed me to say that earlier Carlos had discovered something almost as good as me being inhabited. He found an anomaly of a light-colored shape the size of a small person entering the elevator where I sat with the bear. Our temperature detectors showed a blob of green coldness on the screen right over the shape. Carlos played the footage for Gavin and from my seat beside him, I heard his breath catch in his throat.
“That’s amazing,” he said.
I knew that any skeptics might think that I was simply trying to act like a little girl from my spot on the floor of the elevator, but the footage of the coldness merging with me, was impressive, Eve had assured me. The moment the green blob covered my body, it disappeared, and I started speaking like Amanda.
Gavin was convinced of the ghost’s appearance and inhabitation and took to his walkie-talkie to summon someone named Dave to our table where we were tucked into the corner of the restaurant. “I
hoped you’d find something but never imagined…” his voice trailed off. Footsteps approached on the tile floor and the hotel manager greeted Dave. “Take a look.”
I listened while everyone watched the screen. Everyone but me. I hated being blind but at moments like this, I hated it more than usual. I was lucky to pick up on a sense of wonderment from the two men who were watching the tape and a sense of satisfaction from both Eve and Carlos. But I wanted eyesight too. I wanted to read Dave’s expression, not just feel that he was a big paranormal skeptic and was trying to figure out how we jimmied the tape to look like this.
“I sense you don’t believe it, Dave,” I said, mostly to mess with him. “I assure you, as I sat in the elevator last night, the ghost of a little girl inhabited me.” I took a sip of my tea.
“It isn’t that I don’t believe in ghosts,” Dave said, but never finished. He didn’t need to. We came across this all the time.
“It’s that you don’t believe we see them. It’s fine,” I said, setting my mug on the table. “Eve? Can you order me two scrambled eggs and wheat toast with jam, please?” I was ravenous, having been up all night and down a couple of meals. Eve and Carlos had ordered room service as soon as it was up and running at five and had eaten burgers and weren’t as hungry as me. I’d had a shot of whiskey just before the second try in the hall, hoping to be loose enough to find a ghost. I hadn’t eaten anything since the spaghetti lunch, not wanting food to diminish the expensive whiskey I traveled with. Now, I was as hungry as a bear after hibernation and ready to consume some calories.
“Do you think the ghost is gone for good now?” Gavin asked once the tape stopped.
“I do.” I knew everyone was looking to me. “Eve gave her good reason to pass on.”
Eve ordered my breakfast from the far side of the table and added an omelet, hash browns and bacon for herself.
“Fried egg sandwich,” Carlos said when asked what he’d like, “with a side of melon and berries and yogurt.”
I knew Gavin would pick up the bill and felt the need to explain why we were ordering everything on the menu at The Aristocrat. “Being up all night has made us hungry.”
“And Moody expends a huge number of calories when she’s inhabited,” Eve explained.
Dave excused himself and left just as Gavin took a call on his walkie-talkie about a disgruntled customer, mad about poor elevator service last night. “Excuse me,” Gavin said. “I’ll be right back to cut you a check and talk about having the hotel on the show.”
“Tell your disgruntled customer, they can see this episode next week on YouTube,” I added.
“Let’s talk about that when I return,” Gavin said.
As he walked away, I had the clear impression that Gavin was going to try to weasel out of our agreement to air the hotel footage. Or at least ask me to postpone it. But, I would not give in to any reason he might have to keep the hotel’s haunting from his patrons. I happened to think it would be great for business. We’d run across this before and Eve kept facts and figures on her phone from other clients to support that theory.
Besides, we hadn’t been able to follow up with the final episode of The Eatery show yet seeing the owner’s girlfriend was charged with a murder attempt and the courts had told us to sit on the tape that had us all discovering she’d put arsenic in his power drink.
We needed this haunted hotel show to air next week or I was going to have to substitute something amazing. Like the fact I had gone blind.
***
“Come straight here,” Rachel said on the phone as we hit the highway and headed north.
My mother wanted us to meet her at Floatville when we hit town. Did she think we were heading out dancing before touching down at my home? We had no intention of going anywhere else but the houseboat. We’d just left Portland and had a few hours before we’d enter the doorway at my floating home in Seattle, when my mother’s ringtone, Bad Moon Rising, had come up in my phone.
“I’ll see you in three hours,” Rachel said. “I know how fast Carlos drives.”
Three sentences in and already Rachel was nagging about my driver and friend. I decided to twist the knife. “We’ll be there in two. The Marshmallow is burning rubber like no one’s business and the wheels just might fall off.”
Carlos was actually a careful driver, especially since the day I asked him to promise to keep it under seventy for my sanity as a blind backseat driver who couldn’t take the wheel in a dire emergency.
“Ron is waiting for you to do a reading at Mrs. G’s house tonight because you promised Tuesday,” Rachel said.
“Can’t he wait until we get to town and get some sleep?”
“No, you told him Tuesday. What’s a good time so we don’t keep him wondering? He’s an important detective.”
“And I’m an important psychic,” I said.
“Don’t get too full of yourself, Smarty Pants,” she said. “We’re talking about the law here.”
My mother said this like she had any amount of respect for the law, something she’d always thumbed her nose at while stealing from clients’ wallets when they left the room.
“That’s rich,” I chuckled. “The law. OK, Rachel. First, we need sleep.” We were fantasizing about getting prone and unconscious at Floatville ASAP.
“I’ll tell him midnight.”
“Where are you? I hear my coffee grinder. Are you at my place still?” The grinder was a sound I knew very well. My mother had ground coffee at her house. You didn’t need to be a genius to figure this one out. Or a psychic.
“Floatville,” she said. “Remember, you said I could sleep here because the chemical fumes at my place make me nauseous? I’m waiting for you. I thought you’d be here by now and we could talk.”
“See you in a few hours then. Don’t piss off my neighbors.” Once my lovely mother told the nice people in the boat on the next dock to turn down their music. “My daughter is grieving and she’s gone blind!” she’d screamed loudly off the dock. I’d had to call them to explain my mother was nuts.
“You think you’re so funny,” Rachel said before she cut off the call.
Something was up with Rachel, but I did not want to get into it until we got to Seattle. I was exhausted and because of that my resistance and comebacks to Rachel was low. I needed sleep but Carlos really didn’t like it when anyone went to sleep while he had to stay awake and drive. “It’s disrespectful,” he’d once said turning the music to a million decibels in the van.
Already, I’d heard Eve’s soft sleeping noise that was not unlike a tiny snore. I needed to stay awake to keep my driver company. To amuse both of us on the drive I recounted the conversation to Carlos who agreed that Rachel was hiding something about her and Ron, the house, the case, or Floatville.
We just didn’t know what.
***
It was just after one when we pulled in to Mrs. G’s driveway. Rachel had directed us to park on the street but Carlos said Ron’s truck was in the driveway so we slid in behind him. It was raining. Soft rain, like a gentle caress on the face. Not! The rain was pile driving the pavement as we scurried into the house under the mega-umbrella Eve took everywhere like the most amazing assistant that she was.
Inside the house, I immediately felt something strange and almost announced my finding. Instead, I kept my mouth shut until I heard who was with us on this middle of the night adventure.
“Ron, Rachel and another man,” Eve whispered into my ear.
“Hello Ron. Who’s your friend?” I asked, taking off my wet coat.
“Moody, this is my partner, Gibson,” Ron said, his voice scratchy like he hadn’t spoken in a while.
The fact that Ron, who’d just spent a very long weekend at my house in Oregon called me Moody, led me to believe that we were putting on a pro show for the new guy. Maybe Ron finally watched my show on YouTube. I got a slight vibe from Gibson as he shook my outstretched hand. One, he was worried I’d realize something about him and two, he didn’t be
lieve in hocus-pocus and was here as a favor to Ron.
“Don’t worry, Gibson,” I said. “Your secret is safe with me.” I did love to toy with non-believers.
Rachel cleared her throat. “Tell them how this is going to work, Bryndle.” Her voice was careful, nervous, and I wondered why. Everyone was treading on such eggshells tonight, it made me want to pick my nose in front of them and swear like a soldier. Instead, I kept it light. “I’m going to bring the house down with evil spirits and you guys better get out your crucifixes,” I said.
“Bryndle!” My mother poked my back, something she’d been doing ever since I could remember.
Eve chuckled beside me. She appreciated a good joke.
“Eve and Carlos will accompany me to the bedroom where we’ll start rolling tape. Carlos always films, so that’s not an option.” I sensed Ron was about to tell Carlos that he couldn’t film. “I’ll start there, see what I get.” I turned to where I believed Carlos to be. “Ready, mi amigo?”
“Lista, Moody.” Carlos sounded like he was smiling too.
“Keep the cops out of the shots,” I added, taking Eve’s offered arm and walking through the kitchen to the bedroom. The thing about my new improved psychic ability since Caspian hit the on switch, was that things were coming through to tell me if the coast was clear to walk straight down the hall or if there was a laundry hamper in the way. It wasn’t vision, just a sense that it was all clear to keep walking. This was major stuff and I was elated to get those signals.
As Eve and I walked the hall, I’m sure she felt that I wasn’t clinging to her the way I had been.
“Can you see?” she whispered.
“No, but I’m sensing where to go.”
She squeezed my arm and I had a vision of Eve’s happy smile.
“Mucho cool,” I added turning at the bedroom door and stopping just inside. “Mrs. G’s bedroom. Where they found her dead in her bed.” I walked by myself to the bed and stopped. “Carlos, are we filming?”
