The Hungry Ghost

by Dalena Storm

  He reached down and picked up the kitten. She struggled a little like she didn't want to be inspected, but Jimmy soothed her with his voice. “It’s okay, don’t be frightened. We’re just going to have a little chat. Come this way,” he instructed Madeline, standing up and setting off toward the back of the store. “If we want to do this properly, we’ll need privacy. We don’t need a bunch of other cats interfering in our business.”

  Madeline took one last, big gulp of her wine, set her glass down, and followed Jimmy through a door in the back where she found herself in a brightly lit hallway that glistened with fluorescent light. There were two doors, one directly in front of them and one down the hall to the right. Jimmy opened the first and Madeline followed him through, closing the door behind them.

  The room was small and empty. With the door closed wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling carpeting muffled any sound. It was cozy, but in a strange way. Madeline probably should have been a little more uncomfortable than she was, but the wine coupled with a general feeling of fatigue made her willing to accept just about anything. Jimmy was a little odd, sure, but he felt safe.

  “Okay,” said Jimmy. “Come on, have a seat.”

  Jimmy had already seated himself on the floor with his back against the far wall and was trying to settle Mickey down onto his lap. She was resisting.

  The kitten mewed in irritation. Jimmy tried to pet her into place but she struggled out of his grasp and stalked across the room.

  “Am I in the way?” asked Madeline, looking from Jimmy to the kitten. Mickey also looked back and forth between Madeline and Jimmy before turning in a circle and then curling up near the back corner, looking at neither of them.

  “Nah,” said Jimmy. “You’re just fine. If there were another cat in the room, it’d be different, but humans are on a totally different wavelength. I’ll tune you out no problem. So, come on. Have a seat. I don’t have to actually be physically touching her so long as she’s in the same space.”

  Madeline lowered herself to the floor and tried to fold her legs under her carefully so her short skirt didn’t ride up too high. She’d hoped to impress Sam with this dress, just in case she had been back to normal and Madeline had been imagining her strangeness, but now that seemed absurd. Madeline glanced at Jimmy and then at Mickey. Jimmy straightened his back and closed his eyes, and Madeline knew without being told that she should be perfectly quiet. That part was easy. She was busy trying to memorize everything about this so that she could write it down later and use it in her story. Who’d have thought she’d have met a cat whisperer this evening?

  Jimmy pulled in a few deep breaths, and then his breathing went quiet as he lapsed into a meditative state. Madeline felt him go still, then stiller, stiller… She was aware of Mickey’s body rising and falling in the corner with each inhalation and exhalation. The kitten snorted once in a larger exhale and deflated like a little furry orange balloon. She was falling asleep. Madeline wasn’t sure how many minutes they sat there, and with the wine in her system, she was growing more and more relaxed, until she began to feel sleepy herself. When Jimmy finally spoke Madeline started and bit her tongue—she’d practically forgotten where she was.

  “Okay, I’m getting something. It seems she’s upset. Seeing you upset her.” Above his closed eyes, Jimmy’s brow furrowed. “I’m trying to catch why, but it’s buried. I don’t think she knows. It was like when she saw you pass through the window, she wanted to call to you, but now she wants you to go away. You remind her of her past.”

  Jimmy opened one eye and peered at Madeline suspiciously before closing it again. “I’ve had her ever since she was born, and it’s not like she’s met that many people in her life, but oh well. Maybe she’s got you confused with a customer. Hang on, let me see what else I can get. Let’s see… Okay… You definitely remind her of someone. I’m getting an image, yeah, that does look like you. Only, in what I’m seeing, you’ve got long hair.”

  “I cut it last month,” Madeline volunteered, vaguely impressed.

  “Well, then that makes sense, I guess. Say, have you come in here before? Maybe while I was gone? I could have had someone else in the shop. This teenage kid that sits in part-time.”

  “No, never. This is my first time.”

  Jimmy made a hmph-ing sound. “Well, somehow or another, she definitely knows you—and someone else, too. I’m seeing a face, some older looking white guy. He’s got a bit of a beard. Tattoos.”

  Madeline shrugged, trying to ignore the fact that the description sounded like Peter. She was probably reading into it—there were lots of older white guys with beards. “Yeah, I don’t know. That could be a lot of people. I mean, there is this one guy, Peter. He’s the ex of this woman I know.” At the mention of Peter’s name, Mickey twitched in her sleep, or at least Madeline thought that she did. “But I don’t see how—”

  “That could be,” Jimmy interrupted. “There’s something else that’s got her upset. The smell of turkey. Seems like it’s giving her a flashback of a Thanksgiving gone wrong, but…” Jimmy scratched his head. “That can’t be right. This is her first Thanksgiving. Maybe my mojo is off today. Honestly, I don’t know what’s wrong. Maybe you are throwing it off, somehow. It’s not a full moon out there tonight or something, is it?”

  “No.”

  It was Jimmy’s turn to shrug, and he opened his eyes. “Well, then it must be a glitch, but seeing you sure as heck seems to have triggered something in her.”

  Madeline had a thought that gave her a chill. She tried to shake it off.

  “Something happen?” asked Jimmy.

  “No, it’s nothing.”

  “You sure? It looked like you got the chills just there.”

  “No. It’s just, well, okay. So this woman I know, Sam—” Mickey’s ears twitched in her sleep—“Got into a car accident a few months back...”

  “Hang on,” interrupted Jimmy again. He held up a finger and squeezed his eyes shut again. “I’m getting something.”

  Madeline paused, biting her tongue and feeling like she already knew what was coming.

  “Okay, this is weird, but I’m seeing a scene of a hospital, and a flash of a woman lying in a bed. She’s very still. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she might be…well. But Mickey, it feels like she’s longing for this person, but at the same time, wants to get away—to be free.”

  “Fuck,” breathed Madeline. This was heavy, and this time she didn’t think it was the wine.

  “Does that mean something to you?”

  “Maybe. How old did you say she was again?”

  “Three months.”

  Madeline crawled across the room until she was in front of the kitten. She observed the delicate face, the jaw, and the softly closed eyes.

  “Sam?” Madeline whispered so quietly even she could barely hear it. She placed two fingers on the kitten’s head, and it twitched and relaxed beneath her touch. Madeline stroked the kitten’s head gently, remembering the feeling of Sam’s cheek beneath her hand. A purr rose from the kitten and she lifted her head, leaning into Madeline’s touch. When Mickey opened her eyes it was with the eyes of the woman Madeline loved. Sam’s had been mottled hazel and the kitten’s were yellow, but nevertheless, the being looking out of them was the same.

  “Oh, Sam,” breathed Madeline. “What in the world happened to you?” She scooped up the kitten and held her close. The kitten curled in Madeline’s arms—contented, clueless—and nuzzled her nose into the crook of Madeline’s elbow before promptly returning to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It had taken a damn lot of trouble for Peter to arrange those crumbs into place, and when Bianca saw them, what did she do? She stood there, staring, gawking, processing, while precious seconds ticked by. Peter couldn’t contain it anymore.

  “Hurry up!” he shouted. “She’s in trouble! They’re in the basement.”

  Peter had been tracking the Sam-thing’s progress ever since he left Rosa’s side, a result of
a neat trick he’d discovered. Apparently, now that he was dead he possessed the very ghost-like ability to go from one place to another at something like the speed of light. Walls posed no barrier, so he could go just about anywhere, moving through solid objects like, well, a ghost.

  “The basement,” Bianca muttered, as if the thought had slipped into her mind of its own accord, and she gave a start as if coming back to herself. Had she heard him after all? Peter waved his hands in front of the woman’s face, but it was a predictable blank. Maybe it was just a lucky guess.

  Bianca shivered and rubbed her hands up and down over her arms as she headed toward the door to the basement stairs.

  Auntie Sam had said they were going to the basement so no one would notice the missing pie, but Rosa couldn’t eat all the pie herself, no matter how she tried. It wasn’t even cherry. It was coconut. She didn’t understand why Auntie Sam was covered in red.

  “Eat and be happy,” Auntie Sam kept repeating. “Happy little girl, sweet little girl.”

  “But I’m full!” Rosa wailed, flinging her fork across the room. A flash of anger like Rosa had never seen before crossed Auntie Sam’s face as she moved in a stiff and awkward way to she retrieve the fork.

  “No,” Auntie Sam said, shoving the fork back into Rosa’s hand. Forcing her to clasp it, she wrapped her hand around Rosa’s until it curled into a hard, angry fist. “No, you want pie. You eat pie.”

  Rosa started to cry because Auntie Sam hurt her hand, but her tears only made Auntie Sam angrier. She hissed at her to be quiet, pressing a finger over Rosa’s lips. Then the finger became two fingers and then these became a hand, covering her nose and mouth and muffling her cries. Rosa struggled against it, kicking and flailing, but Auntie Sam grabbed her harder and her fingernails cut into the side of Rosa’s cheeks. Something bad was happening, Rosa realized. Auntie Sam was hurting her. She couldn’t breathe. She tried to bite a finger, but Auntie Sam pushed her down roughly. Rosa’s head hit the floor. There was an explosion of pain and a brief glimpse of stars, but then Rosa started kicking as hard as she could. She tried to fight Auntie Sam off, but her strength was draining from her.

  It felt like she was falling asleep.

  Above them, the basement door burst open. Rosa heard feet on the stairs, followed by a familiar voice. “Samantha Belinda Bedford, what the fuck is going on down there?” Grandma Bianca yelled from the top of the stairs.

  A hazy thought passed through Rosa’s mind that her grandma had used a forbidden word and would owe Rosa a dollar later, and then the thought was lost as everything started to darken, the pressure of Auntie Sam’s body crushing her against the floor, until all at once the pressure turned into a painful lightness as Auntie Sam rolled off of her. Rosa sucked in air so hard it hurt her ribs and stars of light danced in front of her eyes. Too frightened to weep, she stumbled to her feet, her vision blurring as she tottered over to the stairs where Grandma Bianca rushed down to meet her and wrap her in soft arms. She could feel Auntie Sam’s eyes following her the whole way, but she didn’t move from where she sat on the floor.

  “We were just—” Auntie Sam started to say.

  “You were just?” Grandma Bianca interrupted her angrily.

  “We were just eating pie,” Auntie Sam finished. Rosa stole a glance at Auntie Sam and saw that she was smiling her horrible Grinchy smile again. “Weren’t we, Rosa?”

  “No!” Rosa howled, and using her voice again made her okay enough to start weeping. She wrapped her arms around her grandmother’s waist. From upstairs she heard the sound of her mother calling.

  “Is that you, Rosa? Honey, where are you?”

  “We’re down here!” Grandma Bianca yelled back. “In the basement.”

  Grandma Bianca’s arms around Rosa were shaking, and as Rosa continued to peer out at Auntie Sam she decided that the other woman in the basement with them must not be her Auntie Sam at all.

  There was more movement upstairs and Rosa heard her dad yelling. He was using the voice he only used when he thought Rosa couldn't hear him, like when he was in the garage swearing at the car or in his bedroom on the phone. “Mom? You've got to come to see this!”

  Grandma Bianca didn’t move. “Not right now,” she yelled back. Her eyes were fixed on the thing that was not Auntie Sam.

  Carly arrived, and the little girl transferred her hug to her mother. “Honey, are you okay? What happened?” Carly asked gently, while Rosa blubbered against her shoulder. Then, in her adult voice, “Sam? What the hell is going on?”

  “We were eating pie.”

  “What’s this about pie? I can’t understand you. Rosa, honey, can you explain?”

  Rosa’s dad came down the stairs, carrying Diane and followed closely by Grandpa. Now everyone was in the basement. Everyone except Unc—except Peter.

  “Mom,” Tom said, settling Diane on the floor beside her sister. His voice sounded scared, and she’d never heard her father use that tone before. He drew close to Grandma Bianca and spoke in a whisper in her ear. Rosa couldn’t hear what he was saying, but as he talked Grandma Bianca’s eyes widened and she clutched his arm like she might fall.

  “Carly, girls, it’s time to come upstairs,” he said, his eyes looking at everyone except Auntie Sam. “We’ve got to go—now. Move.”

  “What is it?” Jimmy asked softly, careful not to interrupt what seemed like an important moment between the girl and the cat.

  Madeline shook her head, cradling Mickey in her arms. Jimmy waited, giving her a minute before he tried again. “Did I hear you say ‘Sam’ to her just now? What was that?”

  Madeline shook her head again and tucked her chin to her chest. Jimmy could see she was shaking, and then he saw her grow still. She took a deep breath in, let it out, and then she turned to look at him with tears quivering in her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said. A tear spilled over and she rebalanced Mickey to flick it away. “I think I got carried away with an idea. Maybe it’s true, but I don’t know how it could be.”

  “I believe anything’s possible,” said Jimmy, and he meant it.

  “Tonight I was supposed to go see this woman I know, Sam. She had an accident and fell into a coma three months ago. It took a while, but she woke back up, or at least we thought she did. But after she was awake, she was…different. The Sam I was falling in love with was gone. I think I knew that, but I haven’t been able to fully admit it to myself, not until now, because I didn’t know where the real Sam had gone, why it wasn’t her that had woken back up. But now, I do. She’s right here.” Madeline lifted up the kitten.

  “So what you’re trying to tell me is that Mickey—”

  “Is Sam,” Madeline confidently finished for him.

  Jimmy considered this. “Well, I’ll be. I’ve never had anything like this happen before, but it makes sense with all those images I was getting of you and that man and that hospital room. If I were a different man, I might be inclined not to believe you, but given that we’re both who we are, well, I’m going to have to take you at your word.”

  “Oh, but it’s not my word.”

  “Now don’t go being wishy-washy!” Jimmy couldn’t stand it when people couldn’t just say what they thought without having to take back their words so many times that they no longer meant anything and might as well have never spoken in the first place.

  Madeline said nothing, but her mouth tightened. She returned her gaze to Sam.

  “I guess we’d better get used to calling her by her real name,” Jimmy said.

  “Just like that?” Madeline looked at him in surprise. “Aren’t you even sad at all about Mickey? She’s not who you thought she was.”

  "Sad? Now, why would I be sad? I got her name wrong, that's all. If she already had a perfectly good name, then who am I to go around changing it? And if she’s still got all those memories, then she must still be Sam.”

  “But she’s a cat!” Madeline cried. As if annoyed, the kitten leapt out of her arms.


  “Well, yes,” agreed Jimmy. Madeline started to cry in earnest, tears spilling down her cheeks in a rush. “Now, now,” he said. “Don’t cry, please.”

  Madeline’s tears morphed to anger. “Like, what the fuck!” she shouted, and then instantly lowered her voice as her expression returned to sorrow. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t want to upset the cats. Oh, I’m sorry! Oh, god, I suck!” Madeline’s voice cracked with desperation and Jimmy thought the poor girl was going to lose it.

  “Come on, now. If you need it, there’s a bathroom out the door and to the left.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Madeline said, seeming to understand what Jimmy meant. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, heaving and sniffling as tears continued to spill from her eyes. “I guess I should get out of your way. This isn’t how I wanted to spend my Thanksgiving.” Her tone was accusatory and Jimmy hoped it wasn’t directed at him.

  She got up and left the room. Immediately the air felt clearer. Jimmy hadn’t realized the presence the girl had brought with her.

  With a small mew, the kitten that was Sam came to Jimmy, purring against his body with relief.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Bianca was trying to remain calm because someone in this situation had to and that job was usually assigned to her. Sam had attacked Rosa, and yes, “attacked” was the only word for it. She had also killed Peter. Tom had seen that. Well, not seen it, but no one else had gone outside with Peter, and when Tom went out looking he’d found Peter’s body lying there, dead and maimed on the street outside under the burnt out streetlamp. Soon, they were going to call the police. Sam would have to be restrained, or kept under watch, and then she would be arrested for murder.

  Her daughter would be arrested on Thanksgiving, on the night of her welcome home party, because she had killed her ex-husband and attacked her niece. Bianca was going to remain calm. She was not going to freak out. She would stay in control. Sam would plead mentally unstable, obviously. It was the drugs from the hospital. It had to be. She wasn’t herself—she hadn’t been since she woke up.