“I’m forty,” I said, sitting back down. I didn’t trust my legs not to give out. And I was a little sore from my early morning belly crawling. “Why is it showing up now?”
“Not sure,” Gram said, not making eye contact.
She was a horrible liar. I was too.
“I call bullshit,” I said flatly. “And why are you telling me this? How did you know I was seeing the dead?”
“The Grim Reaper stopped by,” she explained.
Closing my eyes, I tried not to laugh. Gram was losing it. The only person she’d seen today as far as I knew was Heather. Gram didn’t have many visitors. Heather was not the Grim Reaper. The Grim freaking Reaper didn’t exist.
“Right,” I said with an eye roll. “The Grim Reaper with a big ol’ scythe and a long black hooded cape came to the nursing home to tell you that your granddaughter was hanging out with decomposing squatters?” Of course, my description came from horror movies since the Grim Reaper didn’t exist. Score one for my horror movie habit.
“Squatters?” Gram asked, ignoring my sarcastic tone and most of everything I’d just said. “They’re at your house?”
Were they not supposed to be? Had I done something wrong? “They are,” I replied, watching my beloved Gram like a hawk. Her lips might say one thing, but her body language and eyes gave the truth away. I’d kicked her butt in poker my whole life. “Why?”
“How many?” she asked alarmed.
“At least fifty,” I said, starting to feel alarmed myself. “Maybe more. They’re kind of hard to count.”
“Don’t touch ’em,” she said sharply.
“Is that a joke?” I asked warily.
“Did it sound like one?”
“Umm… no. But it’s too late for that,” I told her as my stomach began to churn. “I’ve been gluing body parts back on for a couple of them.”
“What in the name of Dolly Parton’s plastic surgeon did you just say?” Gram asked with a shocked expression.
“Gluing body parts back on… with superglue,” I repeated weakly. “An old woman’s hand and Sam’s jaw. I was shocked that it worked—tendons and all.”
“Sam?” Gram shouted, throwing her hands in the air. “How in tarnation do you know their names?”
“He told me… kind of,” I said, feeling the need to cry or freak out. “He kept pointing at the ham and hissing. I eventually worked it out. Ssssssss plus ham equals Sam. My dog, Donna…”
“You have a dog?” she asked, now seriously confused.
“The girls got me a puppy for my birthday,” I told her. “She understands the dead.”
Gram narrowed her eyes and looked at me like I was as crazy as I’d felt for the last month. It was the same look she’d given me when I’d been in high school and she thought my skirts were too short. The phrase “your skirt is so short I can see your religion” was stuck in my brain for eternity. To this day I was hyper-aware of my skirt length.
“Why are you looking at me like that, old lady?” I asked, using my regular term of endearment for my Gram. However, it sounded kind of rude right now. Part of me wanted to apologize immediately. The other part didn’t care if I pissed her off. “Why is it hard to believe a dog can understand the dead when we’re discussing the fact that I’m basically running a morgue for uninvited ghosts?”
“Daisy,” Gram said, running her hands through her gray hair and sighing. “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that. I was still mad. If I didn’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all. Gram had taught me that one too.
“Your job is to help them find a way to move on, not to become friendly with ’em. That’s a very bad idea. They’re as lost as last year’s Easter eggs. Most are still here because something was left undone,” she said, holding out her frail hand to me. “Some people move on without help. Some don’t. That’s where a Death Counselor comes in.”
Gram was my everything even though I wanted to strangle her right now. Crossing the room and taking her hand in mine, I sat on the edge of her bed.
“I already helped Sam,” I admitted. I wasn’t sure if I should tell her how attached I’d gotten to him. She sounded adamant about not getting involved. However, I didn’t have it in me not to care. It was a strength and a fault of mine. “At least I didn’t get arrested.”
Gram’s brows wrinkled and her lips compressed and flattened to a straight line. “Arrested? What in tarnation did you do for this Sam fella?”
“His wife’s glasses were in the cookie jar,” I told her, feeling my tears well up again. “Her wedding ring was on the chain. Her mind is going and Sam used to search for her glasses each evening and leave them by the teapot. And then he died,” I said, letting my tears fall. It was still fresh in my mind. “He wanted to find her glasses one last time. So, I broke into his house and put the glasses by the teapot.”
Gram was speechless… and shocked.
“Daisy, that’s not usually how it works,” she croaked. “How on earth did you learn all of this?”
“Learn all of what?” I asked, feeling stressed and still upset with her and with myself at the same time.
“All of the information that this Sam fella wanted to tell you? Do you have a Ouija board?” Gram asked.
“Is that how you did it?” I asked, kind of proud of myself that I’d already thought of that.
“Yes,” Gram snapped, looking worried. “However, I never once got that much information. Ever. Most of the dead don’t have the sense God gave a goose.”
“I disagree,” I said without thinking. Although, she might be correct. I’d only really dealt with two. The handless woman didn’t count. I didn’t know anything about her. Sam… Sam was different.
“How’d you do it?” Gram asked again.
“I hugged Sam,” I whispered.
Gram looked like she was going to pass out. “What did I just tell you about touching ’em?” she shouted, pulling on her hair in agitation. “You’re acting like you’ve only got one oar in the water, Daisy.”
“Well, since you never told me what I was or who I am, how was I supposed to know not to touch them?” I yelled right back at her.
The feeling of déjà vu washed over me with sickening clarity. Gideon’s comment in the park rang in my mind. “You have no clue who or what you are. You’re just walking around completely ignorant. Unbelievable.”
Did he know? Impossible. However, I thought communicating with the dead was impossible. Not to mention, gluing appendages back on defied basically everything.
Taking a deep breath and calming myself, I realized yelling was only going to bring a nurse to the room to see what was going on. I didn’t need interruptions. I needed answers. “What happens if I touch the ghosts?” I asked. Since I’d already done it, I might as well hear the ugly results of what I’d done and what to expect.
“I don’t know,” Gram whispered, taking my chin in her hands and searching my face with worried eyes. “I have no clue. I just know my mamma said never to touch ’em. That’s what I taught your mamma and what I should have taught you.”
“Am I going to die?” I asked.
“Everyone’s gonna die, child,” she said, running her hands over my arms and checking my skin. “Dying ain’t nothing to get your knickers in a knot over. We have no control over it.”
What was she looking for? Marks maybe? Bites? Had I been right about the zombie thing?
“I meant soon. Am I going to die soon?”
“I hope not,” Gram said, not making me feel very reassured. “Just stop touching ’em.”
The logic wasn’t sound. If this was truly my gift now, I needed to handle it my way. The backup of dead people at my house was becoming a problem. Something told me a Ouija board wasn’t going to cut it.
“Gram, I’ve already touched them,” I pointed out, letting my anger at the woman I adored go. “I’m fine. I actually feel better than I have in years. I don’t have to wear
glasses anymore.”
“You can’t see three feet in front of you without glasses,” Gram said, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Well, I can now. When you hit midlife, stuff changes,” I told her, trying to convince myself as well. “Eyesight changes all the time.”
“For the worse, Daisy,” Gram muttered, still sounding troubled.
“Or for the better in my case,” I said.
“Possibly,” she replied. “You still need to get ’em out of your house.”
“Not sure how I’m going to do that. New ones show up daily. Where did you… umm… counsel the dead?”
“At the church,” Gram said. “That’s why I went to all those dang depressing funerals. If someone was sticking around, I’d get ’em at the church and be done with it.”
“Did you ever break and enter?” I asked, curious if the job consisted of illegal activity.
She shook her head and laughed. “Can’t say as I ever did, baby. Never ran around hell’s half acre for the dead. You don’t need to either. Mostly, I just passed on messages to loved ones.”
“How?”
“Sometimes a note, postmarked before the person died. Occasionally a gift sent… again, postmarked before the deceased left this realm. On the rare occasion, I delivered the message myself. Most folks aren’t real receptive to messages from the beyond, but there are some who welcome it. I’ve got all the stuff you need to forge a postmark in the bottom drawer of the dresser over there. You’re gonna take that with you today.”
“So, you never got arrested?”
“Nope. Never,” she said, shaking her head. “And I don’t want to hear about you livin’ on the edge like that. Real hard to use ‘a dead person asked me to do it’ as an excuse in court.”
Gram had an excellent point. However, I couldn’t imagine my time with Sam going any other way than it had. Deciding to keep that information to myself, I pressed Gram for more.
“Wait, did you say there are other lines of Death Counselors? Like other families?”
“I said that I was certain another line would take over,” she corrected me. “I’m guessin’ now I was wrong. Clearly, I can’t find my butt with both hands in my back pockets.”
“So, there are others like us?” I honestly couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with a straight face. But after the last month with the dead squatters, yesterday’s near-death experience inside Sam’s mind and the misdemeanor I’d committed this morning, I was taking it all pretty seriously.
“I don’t rightly know,” she admitted. “I suppose I hoped there were.”
“Okay,” I said, racking my brain for more questions. I had a million and couldn’t think of one. Well, I could think of one… “When did you stop being a Death Counselor?”
Gram stared at the ceiling of her room for a long moment, then sighed. “A month ago. Been doin’ it from the nursing home. We have a little chapel here. Not a bad place to run the operation since so many croak at this place,” she said with a shrug. “And then one day, I stopped seeing the ghosts. I figured someone else had taken the job. I was relieved.” She laughed but it wasn’t joyful. “I shouldn’t have been. If I’d known they would come to you, I would have done something to stop it from happening.”
I cocked my head to the side and looked at her. The timing of her stopping and the ghosts stalking me was about right. “What in the world could you have done?”
“No clue,” she admitted. “Probably nothing. But I sure as heck would have told you about it. I’m just so dang sorry, Daisy girl.”
We both sat in silence for a few minutes. I was sorry too—sorry for her and sorry for me. All of this was so bizarre, it was difficult to wrap my head around it. If I hadn’t been living with dead people for the last month, I wouldn’t believe a word she’d just said and I’d think Gram had lost her mind.
“Did my mamma counsel the same way you did?” I asked. I knew it was hard for Gram to talk about my mom. I’d recognized her pain even when I’d been five. I hated even bringing it up, but I needed as much information as I could get as quickly as possible.
Gram sat silently for a few minutes and stared off into the distance. I wasn’t even sure if she’d heard my question. The fact that she seemed to be drifting away terrified me.
“Your mamma was not a good Death Counselor,” she said quietly, still staring at something I couldn’t see. “She got too involved.”
“She touched the dead too?” I asked.
Gram shook her head and brought her focus back to me. “No. Not as far as I know.”
“Can you define too involved?”
“I don’t rightly know,” she admitted. “I just felt it in my gut.”
“Okay,” I said, standing up and pacing her small room. “I’m not insane. The ghosts are real. I’m supposed to help them move on into the golden light that Sam went into.”
Gram cleared her throat and eyed me curiously. “You saw him go?”
“I did. Is that a no-no too?” I asked, feeling a headache coming on.
Gram shrugged and shook her head. “I have no idea,” she said. “Never saw that once in my time as the Death Counselor. But Daisy…”
“Yes?”
“Not all people go into the light.”
I digested that information and sat back down. Sam had warned me not to go into the light or into the darkness. I wasn’t sure what I believed about the afterlife. As a small child after my mother’s death, I decided I believed in nothing. There was no sense whatsoever in my mom’s death. It wasn’t fair for a little girl to lose her mother. No loving God would have done that. I’d struggled with it for decades. Steve’s death brought it all roaring back.
The irony that I was helping people move on didn’t escape me at all. I had no real clue where they were going. I could only assume that the light was good and the darkness was not.
“So, I’m helping some people go to hell—if Hell even exists?” I questioned.
“You’re not helping people go to Heaven or Hell,” Gram explained. “The life they led has already determined that. You’re simply giving them peace before they move on.”
“Why?” I demanded, thinking all of this was ridiculously bizarre. “Why us?”
Gram shrugged but said nothing. She obviously didn’t know the answer. Not good. I didn’t think midlife crisis was supposed to hit until my fifties, but I’d have to say I definitely qualified right now.
“I’m going to go now, Gram,” I told her as I gently kissed her forehead. “I have to work and take Donna outside. This conversation isn’t over.”
Gram nodded and worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “Don’t try to save ’em, Daisy.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.
Gram began to cry. She looked so small and fragile in her big bed that my heart literally lurched in my chest. I was upsetting her. It couldn’t be helped, but I felt awful.
“Don’t cry,” I whispered as I wrapped my arms around her and rocked her like a child. “This was good—it was a good talk. I know I haven’t lost my mind now. I could think of better hobbies than the one I’m stuck with, but I can do this. You don’t need to worry about me, Gram.”
“Don’t get attached, Daisy,” she whispered. “Do not get attached.”
The warning was dire. She was saying far more. I knew it, and she knew I knew it. The choice was mine to make here. Did I want to know why? I had a feeling it would rock my world in a way that I wasn’t ready to handle. However, the dead squatters had already done that. I’d committed a misdemeanor this morning with a dead person as my accomplice. I couldn’t imagine what could knock me further off-kilter than that.
She wanted me to ask why. I was sure of it. However, Gram was giving me an out. I didn’t want an out right now. I couldn’t afford an out. My sanity was still somewhat on the line.
“Why? Why shouldn’t I get too attached?” I asked with my face buried in her hair.
“It’s how your mamma died,” she to
ld me in a strangled whisper. “She fell in love with a dead man who was sent to hell. There was no work accident, Daisy. Your mamma took her own life.”
My mind went numb and seemed to disconnect from reality. The information was too much to absorb. I didn’t feel rage. I didn’t feel sadness. I felt nothing.
Closing my eyes, I saw a beautiful winged beast appear and drift across my tangled thoughts. His wings were raven black and his face was obscured by grotesque versions of dead people.
My eyes snapped open and I gasped. Gram held me tight as wrenching sobs overcame me. My body felt so cold and empty. No amount of heat could warm me. Tired. I was so tired. Everything around me grew distorted. I couldn’t make sense of any of it—didn’t want to.
All of a sudden, the need to peel the skin from my body and scream came over me.
My mother—the woman I’d pined for my whole life—didn’t care enough to stay with me. A dead man was more important to her.
Was I going to have to rethink my position on God now? He didn’t steal my mother from me at all. She left by her own hand. I reeled with a mixture of hatred and sorrow. Gram’s arms around me were the only thing that connected me to reality.
I changed my mind. Forty had not started off as a good year. Thirty-nine had been devastating because of Steve’s death. Now I was going to have to rethink my mother’s death.
“I’m so sorry,” Gram whispered over and over as she cried with me.
It could have been a minute. It could have been several hours. I had no clue how long we held each other and cried. It occurred to me that I never would have known the true circumstances of my mother’s death had the dead not shown up. Right now, I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
Knowledge did not always set you free.
“I have to go, Gram,” I said as I stood up and tested my legs.
It was still daylight outside. I had to breathe fresh air. I needed time to process.
Gram nodded and wiped her eyes. “I love you, Daisy girl.”
“I love you, old lady,” I replied with a watery smile.
“She loved you too,” Gram said softly.
It's A Wonderful Midlife Crisis : A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel: Good To The Last Death Book One Page 11