The Ghost of Christmas Past

by Angie Fox

  Officer Hale sighed.

  “She deserved it,” I told him. “In fact, she deserves it again right now.”

  “That might be true, Verity. But some parts of this family have been broken for a long time.” He wasn’t looking at Virginia. He was staring at his nephews, side by side but totally alone for all they were connecting with each other. “It doesn’t help that my brother-in-law is a damn fool who thinks money is the most important thing in life, never mind how his boys have suffered without him.”

  “Phineas wants me to do something about this, but…” I gestured helplessly around the room. “What could I possibly do to make a difference, when people who are actually part of the family can’t?” It was clear that Montgomery and his wife were trying, but they were fighting against forces that were bigger than themselves. Time was slowly but surely taking away the Wydells who remembered how Christmas as a family used to be, and too few people in the later generations seemed to care about the old traditions.

  “I don’t know what you can do,” Officer Hale confessed. “Hell, I don’t know what I could have done back when I was alive, other than grab my sister by the scruff of her neck and haul her out back for a good talking-to. The Wydells welcomed us into their family, and she brought them nothing but trouble.”

  “No wonder Ellis needed you,” I said.

  His uncle had been his mentor and friend, the reason he’d joined the police force.

  “I tried to be a good influence on the kids, but now I think I should have stuck my nose in more. Look at my nephews. They need the support of their family more than ever, and I’m helpless to do anything about it. I hate it.” He shook his head. “I should have tried harder when I had the chance. I wish to God I had.”

  We stood in silence for a long moment before the scene began to fade away, the nearly empty room vanishing in a whirl of white.

  11

  Returning to the cider mill was less of a rude awakening this time, almost a relief. My stomach churned with the thought of what I’d just seen. “Phineas.” I turned to search for the ghost who was the architect of my journey. He stood a few feet behind me, his handsome face solemn, his mouth turned down at the corners.

  “Miss Long.” He inclined his head. “Welcome back.”

  I was done with niceties. “Why are you showing me this? There’s nothing I can do.” There was nothing Hale could do. It wasn’t nice or fair, but it was fact.

  “You needed to see,” Phineas said, as if that was all there was to it.

  That didn’t help at all.

  I didn’t create this. I didn’t make Virginia into the person she’d become. And it was abundantly clear that I couldn’t fix it. “I already tried putting my foot down on Virginia’s bad behavior once tonight, and all it got me was excluded.”

  Although from what I’d seen tonight, that was a good thing.

  Phineas exchanged a look with Hale, who scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Verity,” Hale said pragmatically, “the stand you took tonight was what drew you to this place.”

  Hardly. “I think my friend did that.”

  And speaking of such…

  I peeked over the edge of the hole in the floor and saw Frankie tossing ghostly apples at the sleeping bear—over her massive front paws, through her head—to the delight of all three babies, who danced all around her massive slumbering form like this was some kind of game. “Chase!” Frankie called to them. “Go!”

  Oh, sweet baby Jesus. “Frankie!” I whispered as loudly as I could. This was too much. Too far. Frankie might not get torn apart by a rampaging animal, but I could. “What happened to leading the babies out?”

  He stood in the hole, looking like a slightly overwhelmed babysitter. “They won’t leave. They won’t chase apples,” he said, tossing his hands up. “They’re completely out of control!”

  “They’re going to get me mauled!”

  “Don’t be dramatic,” the ghost said, wincing as a baby climbed its sleeping mother’s snout. “Okay, that was bad,” he admitted. He pointed to the bear. “That’s enough out of you, Sprinkles.”

  “Sprinkles?”

  “He’s got gray dots on his nose,” Frankie said fondly before catching himself. “Look, that pulley is falling soon, and these little guys need to skedaddle.”

  “My point exactly.” If he’d only listen to reason, at least attempt to be a responsible adult.

  He dropped his remaining apple. “At least I’m doing something. You’re too busy taking ghost taxis to remember the actual reason we’re here.”

  “I’m working on it,” I said, catching sight of Phineas by the door. “You said I could go after I went with Hale.”

  “I made no such promise,” Phineas said.

  “You haven’t truly grasped the lesson yet,” Hale added.

  “Now you’re in on it too?” I asked the former officer. For the love of Pete. “I know enough.” We were running out of time.

  Hale’s mouth formed a thin line, but I saw him blink.

  “I listened to you,” I said. “Now you help me. We need to get that pulley moved before it falls.”

  Hale gave a sharp nod. “You’re right. Let’s try. It’s a hell of a big piece of machinery.” He studied the problem for a moment. “Let’s do it this way: I’ll swing it toward you, and when it’s close enough, you can grab the hook and pull it over the rest of the way.”

  And hope it didn’t break off and fall on me.

  I really didn’t like the idea of intercepting a massive, heavy hook, but it was worth a try. “It’s a plan.”

  “My plan’s better,” Frankie said from the hole.

  We both ignored him.

  “All right, then.” Officer Hale floated just behind the pulley, his jaw clenched like a boxer entering the ring. He took a few deep, fast breaths—mentally psyching himself up, I figured, since it wasn’t as if he needed the air—and then began to push. His form began to blur, the clean edges of his spectral body melding and clustering together until he was just a ball of light centered right behind the pulley.

  It didn’t move.

  “Push harder,” I urged, bracing against the intensifying chill. My breath frosted the air in front of me.

  The ball of light quivered.

  “Yes!” I said as the layer of dust covering the hook exploded off it in a thick gray cloud.

  But the pulley itself didn’t shift even an inch.

  Oh no. “Maybe try a different angle,” I suggested.

  The image of Officer Hale reformed, this time barely visible. His head was completely transparent, the rest of him a mist. He gasped and glared at the pulley. “It’s too much,” he said, shaking his head. “I used up my juice. I can’t get it to you, Verity.”

  “I appreciate you trying,” I said. What he’d done to himself couldn’t have been comfortable. “Now you have to get me out of here.”

  “We have a bigger problem,” Officer Hale said tentatively. I wasn’t used to tentative from him. He was forthright, determined, never one to hesitate. He glanced at Phineas. “She’s here?”

  And as he said it, the air in the mill grew even colder.

  “I’d been hoping to avoid this,” Phineas said, stiffening. The boards of the old mill began to creak and shudder.

  “Who is it?” I asked, bracing for who knew what.

  “A strong spirit. One of the strongest I’ve ever met,” Hale said. “She’s tied to the land.”

  “And she’s lingering just outside the door,” Phineas added.

  Donna had warned me about a dark presence. It seemed I was about to meet her.

  Phineas exchanged a wary glance with Hale. “I was afraid this would happen if you or I didn’t succeed.”

  “Me too.” Hale dug his hands into his pockets. “But it’s worth a shot.”

  No, it wasn’t. “We don’t have to do this,” I said.

  “I could allow her inside just this once,” Phineas ventured. “In truth, the boundary that I’ve set is more of a formali
ty for her than a rule. She is”—he shuddered slightly— “quite powerful.”

  Powerful enough to scare Donna. Threatening enough to give any living person pause. And with Frankie’s power, I was vulnerable on every level.

  “Uh, Verity…” Frankie called. “Why’s it getting dark down here?”

  “Hang tight, Frank.”

  Powerful might mean that the ghost could help us move the pulley, but it could just as easily mean she’d have no interest in helping. Almost all the ghosts I’d met before who had the ability to affect the physical world had been, well… It would be generous to call them “emotionally unstable.”

  Hale’s image flickered. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think she wants to hurt you,” he said. “But she wouldn’t be here if she didn’t have something to show you. Something bleak.”

  I stared at him uncertainly. “Worse than what you already showed me?” I didn’t know how it could get much worse.

  “Dark but necessary,” Phineas insisted. That guy was really starting to get on my nerves.

  The wrecking ball of a hook jerked into a fresh rotation as another strand of rope directly above it snapped. Then another. I watched in horror as it dropped farther away from the pulley, a fraction of an inch closer to disaster.

  “Verity,” Frankie shouted, “you’ve got to hurry.”

  The rope wasn’t going to last much longer—maybe not even as long as it would take me to get to the main house and back, assuming I could convince Phineas to let me go this time.

  I can do this.

  One more journey with one more ghost—one that might or might not help me after.

  No. I’d convince her. I would. I braced myself. “I’ll go.”

  Phineas nodded and closed his eyes. A moment later a fresh chill came over me—not the same as the chill I was standing in, but a cold that came from a dark night, winter winds, and a dusting of snow on the ground. This was the chill of the grave, an icy blast from the beyond that felt like it reached inside me and froze my soul. I bent almost double as the harshness of it racked me then gradually receded like a malevolent tide.

  “Be cautious with her!” I heard Phineas shout. “The living are fragile!”

  “Too fragile,” the new ghost agreed. Her voice was low and crackly, like breaking ice. I caught my breath and straightened to greet her, but as soon as I saw her, my own voice evaporated.

  She was like no ghost I’d ever seen before. She floated before me, wreathed in a flowing gray cloak pulled close around her figure. I tried to make out her face. At least, where her face should be. The oval within the hood of the cloak was nothing but a swirling black hole that swallowed the light from the room. “Verity Long,” the spirit intoned, “you have a task to complete.” A bony finger beckoned me. “This way.”

  I didn’t want to go, not with her. But the rope was fraying before my eyes.

  “I’ll go,” I said quickly, “but I need you to do a quick favor for me first.” I made it a statement, as if it were a done deal. “You need to move that pulley away from the hole. There isn’t much time left.”

  “The journey shall take no physical time at all,” the ghost said. “But it will exact a toll.”

  I didn’t want any more tolls or journeys or ghosts tonight. “Do we have a deal?” I pressed.

  “After,” the ghost answered. “Once you learn.”

  The only thing I’d learned tonight was that Wydells—and their ghosts—were a pain in my rear. But we didn’t have time to argue, and it was probably as good a deal as I was going to get. “All right. Fine. Let’s do this.”

  “Good luck,” Hale’s voice sounded in my ear.

  When I’d traveled with Phineas, stepping into another time had been as simple as walking through a door. With Officer Hale, the cider mill had faded into Montgomery Wydell’s house in a flurry of mist.

  When the power of this ghost swirled around me, it felt like being plunged into a pool of icy water. The room faded, the light vanished, and my lungs squeezed tight in my chest. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I struggled against the pain and the void until bright white light made me slam my eyes closed.

  I choked out a breath, shielding my face against the glare. “What is this place?”

  “The future is never easy to look upon,” the ghost’s voice crackled.

  “The future?” That got my attention. I blinked and realized I was in a small room with piano music playing.

  Only I didn’t see a piano. Just beige walls, a neatly made beige medical bed, and Virginia Wydell sitting in a straight-back chair, wearing pearl earrings and a red silk housecoat, and looking about a century old.

  Her silver hair had been styled in the same familiar bob. And she directed an equally familiar icy glare at a nurse in holly berry scrubs.

  “How dare you bring that monstrosity into my room,” Virginia demanded, pointing at a foot-tall foil Christmas tree with red plastic balls on the end of each bough. “It’s not mine.”

  The kind-eyed nurse folded her hands in front of her. “Well, Mrs. Wydell, I thought it might brighten up your day. Mr. Flatley in 204 is out with his family until after the holiday, so he won’t miss it.”

  “It’s pathetic and so is he,” Virginia spat. But I noticed she had no decorations, no family notes or mementos. No old photographs in her room. Only expensive, sterile decorations—a crystal vase with dried-up flowers, painted nature scenes in frames.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” the nurse said, her tone hardening as she removed the tree and walked out the door.

  “No wonder nobody visits that one,” said another nurse passing by.

  “I feel sorry for her,” said the nurse with the tree. “Nobody talks to her. Nobody visits.”

  “Close the door!” Virginia demanded.

  “Sure, dear.” The institutional door snicked shut, and Virginia sat alone. She stared out the window at the parking lot, a bitter frown creasing her sunken lips.

  It was a sad and depressing scene, but it also felt warm and right as I saw what she’d become, a shrunken shell of toxic pride that had left her completely alone. Good.

  Justice had been served.

  The laughter bubbled up, and even though I wasn’t rude enough to let it out, it felt so wonderful inside my own head. She’d made her bed, and I was deeply glad she was wallowing in it. “It’s what she deserves,” I said to the ghost.

  And as I said it out loud, I paused.

  That wasn’t me. I’d never been the kind of person to take joy in someone else’s suffering.

  Virginia Wydell was the most poisonous person I’d ever met, and I didn’t know how many times I’d wished others would realize what I had. Life was too short to put up with her brand of venom.

  But if I let her make me into a person who took joy in another person’s misery—even Virginia Wydell’s—then she would win no matter what happened.

  The ghost bowed her head, looking away from what Virginia had become. “Have you seen enough?” she asked me.

  “I have,” I said, watching a defiant Virginia stare out the window as cars pulled in and out of the lot.

  Virginia’s venom had been neutralized at last.

  The mist of the ghost swirled around me, blotting out Virginia and the pain she’d caused—to herself this time.

  I braced against the ice and the pressure and held my breath as the world spun around me. When at last it felt safe to remove my hands from my eyes and open them, I stood gasping in a field under the light of the moon.

  “Are we back?” I asked. I’d expected the old cider mill.

  My gaze caught the stars, then traveled downward.

  The ghost hadn’t returned me to the mill or Montgomery’s warm if dysfunctional house. Instead we stood outside on a leaf-strewn path. Then in the dim light I made out rows of shadowy gravestones. “This is a cemetery.”

  The ghost didn’t say anything.

  “Why aren’t we back at the mill?” I didn’t understand.
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br />   Her voice crackled over me. “You still have to see.”

  I’d seen plenty. More than enough, in fact. “Is this the same Christmas Eve you showed me before?”

  “It is,” the ghost murmured.

  I recognized this place. And it wouldn’t have been my first choice for a holiday visit.

  Holy Oak Cemetery stood about a mile away from Ellis’s brewery, on the south side of town. There was a newer one closer to Sugarland’s town center, but sometimes people with long family histories in town were still interred out here. Maybe Virginia had died. No, I’d just seen her.

  The sound of footsteps made me turn in time to see a very familiar man carrying a single white stargazer lily. My blood froze in my veins. “Ellis.”

  The beam of his flashlight cut through the dark night, and he stared straight ahead with no emotion as he walked straight through me.

  “Ellis!” I hurried after him, not caring if the ghost followed or left me. Ellis looked terrible, hollowed out through his cheeks and temples like he’d lost ten pounds too fast. The circles under his eyes were dark enough for me to see despite the low light, and his walk was more like a trudge, every step an effort he almost couldn’t seem to bear.

  The worst of it was the expression he wore, like his heart had been ripped out.

  I caught up to him. “I’m here.” He was miserable and hurting, and I couldn’t keep myself from reaching a hand out toward him. I would do anything to take that awful look off his face.

  But my hand passed straight through him.

  “I should be here with him,” I said as he continued down the leafy path without me, away from the main cemetery and into the woods. The ghost drew up next to me. “Why am I not here with him?” I asked. “If this is Christmas Eve, then we should be together.” Especially if the alternative was him walking through a graveyard all by himself.

  The ghost made no move to speak. She just watched.

  I mean, if what I’d seen at the nursing home were true, Virginia Wydell was no longer able to make us miserable and mess with our lives.

  This should be a happy time.

  “Your heart hardened,” the ghost said simply.

  “I grew a spine,” I said. “And I was right.” I didn’t regret standing up to Virginia, not one bit.