The Stroke of Midnight: A Supernatural New Year's Anthology
Page 12
"Did you put a girl in that room to punish her?" I asked, trying to pry Blair's hands away. I knew it wasn't Blair attacking me, but the spirit possessing her.
"She deserved it!" Blair screamed wildly as Lou and Shaun pulled her away from me. As soon as her hands let go of my face, Blair collapsed, unconscious. I stepped forward to check on her, and an icy hand grabbed my ankle, just as it had grabbed Daisy.
I swatted at the invisible hand, and then I did something completely unexpected. I lost my temper.
"Stop it, Lottie!" I shouted. "You are dead, and your girls are dead, and you do not belong here anymore. Go away! Cross over and move on to whatever comes next for you. We will not tolerate you being here any longer! You can't hurt anyone anymore!"
I stopped, my chest heaving. I felt a little better—after all, I'd gotten my chance to give Lottie a good talking-to. Blair's eyes opened slowly during the silence that followed. "She's gone," she said. "How did you do that?"
I shrugged. "I guess someone just had to stand up to her."
There was a loud knock from the outcropping. Shaun nodded his head toward the spot. "This ghost agrees."
Daisy addressed the open air. "Are you ready to move on, too? Lottie Jones is gone, and no one can make you stay here."
Another knock in the affirmative was all we got, and we could only hope that the girl's spirit really had crossed over. The atmosphere in the attic felt lighter, and I moved toward the hidden door without hesitation. "What's in there, anyway?"
We all crowded around the open doorway, except for Blair, who seemed too exhausted to get up from the floor. Shaun had taken Carter's flashlight from him, and when he shone it inside the tiny room, I covered my mouth. I shut my eyes briefly and fought a wave of nausea.
Charles swore softly and said, "This has been over our heads every day?"
There was a skeleton on the floor of the room, curled up in a fetal position, the tatters of a long white nightgown still clinging to the bones. Long strings of black hair fell over the skull, and an inch of gray dust covered the floor around the skeleton.
"Skin and tissue," Lou said. Although the rest of us had horrified expressions on our faces, Lou looked fascinated. "It's all dissolved into dust over the years."
I brought my hand away from my mouth. "Lottie Jones locked her in here as punishment for something, and she must have been trapped here when the fire broke out. I didn't think the fire came this far up, though."
"She could have died from smoke inhalation," Daisy suggested. "More likely, though, she died after the fire. If no one came back to the house right after, she probably starved to death."
"Shut the door, Shaun," I said. He complied eagerly, closing it gingerly so he wouldn't stir up the dust.
"This has been quite an exciting evening," Charles said. "I'll call someone to come take care of the body. Maybe we can give her a proper burial somewhere."
We returned downstairs and filled in Carter and the others. Carter insisted on going back to the attic to see the skeleton for himself, and he was unusually quiet when he rejoined us.
"What about Eliza's ghost?" I suddenly asked. We had forgotten all about her.
Blair spoke for the first time since we had come back downstairs. "She'll find her way to the other side. It was Lottie keeping those girls here."
"So we're done," I said.
As I spoke, the bell from the cathedral two blocks away rang. It rang again, and Daisy smiled, her naturally happy disposition unfettered by the night's activities. "Ten!" she said in time with the third chime.
"Nine!" we joined in. "Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one! Happy New Year!"
I hugged Lou while the couples in the group kissed. Blair just sat in a chair, looking at us as if we had lost our minds. Daisy was the first one to address her. "Happy New Year, Blair. Thank you for a great evening."
Blair nodded, one eyebrow arched doubtingly as if she disagreed with Daisy's definition of great.
We said goodbye to Blair, Charles and Anita and headed for the front door. I was bringing up the rear, and as I walked past Blair, her arm shot out and she gripped my hand. "This coming year," she said, "I see evil for you."
I gave a short laugh and pointed toward the door. "Yeah, and its name is Carter."
"No." Blair's voice was low, almost plaintive. "Evil that will bring you grief, despair, danger."
I bit my lip, struggling to match Blair's somber expression. "Thank you for the warning," I said.
I was laughing by the time my feet hit the sidewalk outside. "Psychics," I muttered. "What does she know?"
GSW, or How I Met My Mother
Connie Suttle
If I hadn't shot myself in the foot (in the physical sense) with my dumb-ass husband's gun the day before New Year's Eve, I wouldn't have been sitting on an examination table in the hospital emergency room, talking to the suicide who'd died five minutes before I arrived.
He was seventeen and too talkative for a suicide, I decided, when he tried to show me the exit wound in his head. Spirits don't have exit wounds, or any other wounds showing after they die, but I didn't want to point out the obvious to him. He saw me as a kindred spirit, albeit a live one, since I'd also shot myself.
"Mine was an accident," I told him for the third time. I glanced behind him, through the door of my cubicle. A nurse walked past, shaking her head as her soft-soled shoes squeaked on tiles smelling of disinfectant. The nurse thought I was talking to myself, since she couldn't see or hear spirits. Just what I needed; somebody thinking I had a bigger dose of crazy than I already did. My left foot throbbed where I'd shot it; I'd wrapped it in a kitchen towel and could only find duct tape to secure it to my foot before driving myself to the hospital. I'd called my best friend and next-door neighbor Shane Taylor, but he'd been in a meeting. He served on the committee that planned a charity ball every year for AIDS patients.
"Why did you have a gun, then, if you didn't intend to—you know?" Suicide attempted to get my attention again.
"People handle guns all the time without intending to off themselves," I said absently, glancing at the Williams and Sonoma kitchen towel that wrapped my foot. Red seeped around edges of hastily wrapped duct tape, and I figured I'd have to buy another towel.
"In my case," I continued, "My idiot husband was cleaning his .22 pistol last night, until a client called and he never put it back in the safe where it usually stays. I picked it up to put it away this morning when something startled me. I dropped the gun and shot my foot."
"The docs aren't gonna believe that story," Suicide offered a lopsided grin. He hadn't been awful looking when he was alive, even if he did have ears that belonged on a larger head. I might have asked him what his story was if I had more time and wasn't bleeding into a kitchen towel, all while medical personnel listened in to see if I didn't need a psych consult in addition to emergency wound care.
"Look," I said to Suicide Boy, "If you can't find your way over, I can take you later. Right now, I have my own fish to fry."
I've lived in Atlanta all my life, and I'm proud of my roots. If I have a bit of a drawl, along with plenty of southern euphemisms, I come by them honestly.
Suicide was searching for an appropriate comment when Shane rushed in, an emergency room intern right behind him. "Conner, darlin', what the hell happened?" Shane demanded.
"Steven forgot to put his gun away last night. He was cleaning it and left it on the coffee table in the den when he got up to answer the phone, so I picked it up to put it away this morning. The damn cat that's roaming the neighborhood managed to get in the house and scared the hell out of me. I dropped the gun and shot myself in the foot."
I'd said this in a rush, so Suicide wouldn't jump in on the conversation and distract me. Shane gave my towel and duct-tape-covered foot a critical and disapproving stare. So did the intern. In fact, Intern had an eyebrow lifted so high, I figured he might need therapy to talk it down again. He stuck his head out the door and yelled for a nurse and
a suture tray.
"Shane," I mumbled, "we have a visitor." I jerked my head toward Suicide Boy.
"Well, what do you expect? This is a hospital," Shane placed hands on his hips while stating the obvious. Shane can't see spirits, but he and my son Steve Jr. are the only people who truly believe I can see them. Oh, and perhaps the dozens of people I've been compelled to deliver messages to over the years. Sometimes they believe me. Sometimes.
A nurse walked in with a mound of wrapped medical supplies shoved into a pink plastic tub. She hauled a tray table over, plopped the tub on it and proceeded to lay things out. Intern grabbed the scissors and then examined my foot, first this way and then that, trying, I'm sure, to figure out the best way to cut into my towel and duct tape. "A cat, huh?" Intern asked as he made the first cut.
"A more devious and felonious feline you might never expect to meet," I nodded, wincing as he jerked on my towel while snipping. "I'm thinking about pressing charges. I still don't know how he managed to break into my house."
"Conner, I told you to call animal control, but of course you ignored me," Shane wore his finest, longest-suffering, I'm your best friend but only because I'm a saint expression.
"They'd kill it," I muttered. "He's not the best lookin' cat I've ever seen. People don't adopt animals like that."
"Conner Louella Francis, have you been feeding that stray behind my back?" Shane's elbows went up a notch, and indignation wasn't far behind them.
"He likes leftover tuna," I mumbled, attempting to defend myself.
"Conner, you're a vegetarian and Steven hates tuna." Shane wanted to swear, I could tell, but his southern upbringing came into play and he didn't. Not in front of strangers, anyway. "You've been buying tuna to feed that cat, he gets in the house and now you have a hole in your foot."
"Mrs. Francis, you know we had to call the police since this is a gunshot wound," Intern said as he removed the towel from my foot. He dumped my sixteen-dollar kitchen towel into a wastebasket, (I wasn't worried about the loss of the duct tape—that was Steven's) and examined the hole in my foot with glove-covered efficiency. It still seeped blood and Suicide leaned in to examine it. Shane moved closer at the same time and he and Suicide occupied the same space for a brief moment. That always makes me nauseated, so the nurse had to shove the pink tub into my lap as my breakfast came up with eye-popping momentum.
The intern backed away quickly; I'm sure he didn't want to pull bits of scrambled egg from his hair after tending my injury, but I managed to hit the tub. Mostly. The police walked in right as I was coughing up cranberry juice. I'm sure that presented a pleasant image to the two officers, who now stood inside the door of my cubicle. One had the decency to turn his head. I hate for somebody to watch me throw up—it's embarrassing. I don't ever ask anybody to hold my hair when I puke.
Suicide stepped away as the officers walked in, and the room got crowded as another nurse arrived. I recognized her as the one who'd heard me talking to Suicide a few moments before. She had another doctor with her. He wore glasses over weak hazel eyes and that, coupled with thinning brown hair and a white coat, marked him as the resident shrink. And then, to complicate things further, another spirit followed right behind Shrink and the nurse.
Suicide knew somehow that the new spirit was somebody he could speak to and sidled up to him immediately. "So, how did you croak?" he asked the new arrival.
The nurse took the tub away after she determined I was finished puking, the intern cautiously approached my foot again and one of the officers stepped forward with a form in his hand. Shane backed against the cubicle wall and Suicide traded causes of death with the new spirit. Shrink took in my appearance with an objective and clinical stare.
"So, Mrs. uh, Francis," the form-bearing officer asked after checking the name on the paper he held, "You say you shot yourself in the foot?"
"Yes," I replied, almost jerking my foot away from the intern's hands—he'd hit a tender spot. "I thought about putting the foot in my mouth instead, but I'm not as flexible as I once was."
"How did this happen?" the second officer asked, ignoring my attempt at humor.
"Husband, gun, phone call, cat," I itemized the list of causes on my fingers.
"Your husband shot you?" The officer studied me with procedural curiosity.
"Oh for heaven's sake, no," I said. "Not that I wouldn't mind sending Steven's mail to a prison address, but he was at work when this happened. It should all be there on that paper you're waving around," I pointed at the form the first officer held.
"You shot yourself because you have anger issues with your husband?" Shrink now spoke up. He had a slight paunch to go with the thinning hair and weak eyesight, and if he hadn't started digging at me, I might have harbored some sympathy for him.
"I have anger issues, all right, but they don't include physical pain or bullet holes on my person," I snapped. Shane made a slashing motion with his hand, silently begging me to shut up. Shrink saw this and a light appeared in his eyes. Shrink was either having a religious experience or thinking that I was plotting my husband's death with Shane as an accomplice. Possibly both. How was I to know?
"Look," I said, "I accidentally shot myself. My husband left his gun out, I picked it up to put it away this morning, the cat ran through and startled me, I dropped the gun, it went off and the bullet went through my foot. I was not plotting the demise of my husband, the cat or my foot. It was an accident."
Suicide and his new BFF came over, walking through one of the officers to do it. I almost went into dry heaves again, but managed to keep my gag reflex under control this time.
"You think they're gonna put you in the psych ward?" Suicide asked. "I've been there a couple of times. I can give you pointers."
"I'll bet you can," I said aloud without thinking. Who knew that a hole in my foot would allow all my good sense to leak out?
"She can see us?" BFF was now very interested in me. "Can you tell my wife she's a cheating whore and I knew she was fooling around with Steve?"
"Steve who?" I opened my mouth again; I couldn't help it. I swear, if he said Steven Francis, I planned to start screaming right there in the emergency room. No, I didn't think my Steven had screwed every woman in Atlanta. From a logical standpoint, he hadn't had time to get to all of them yet.
"Steve Emerlin," BFF said. I breathed a relived sigh, then jumped when I realized that Shrinkman was now standing at my side, half in and half out of Suicide. He'd had to move the cops aside to get there. I wondered when he'd whip out that cell phone or whatever it was he had clipped to his belt and call for the straitjacket. Queasiness tried to win out, again, and I couldn't help it, I reached out and nudged Shrinkman to the left, separating him from Suicide. I could hear his little hardwired brain adding obsessive-compulsive to his list of other diagnoses.
"Are you gonna tell my wife or not?" BFF demanded, coming to stand next to Suicide. The intern was cleaning the bullet hole with a squirt bottle filled with fluid, and I almost kicked him in the face, I was so surprised. It wasn't the most pleasant experience I'd ever had, either.
"Where is she?" I gasped, attempting to keep my unruly foot under control.
"Down the hall," BFF said.
"Her name?"
"Conner," Shane whispered from his spot against the wall. His voice held a warning, but he knew when a spirit asked to have a message delivered, it did become an obsession. I didn't eat or sleep well until I'd made the delivery—or the best attempt I could.
"Sandra Broom," BFF replied, ignoring Shane.
"Shane, go down the hall and get Sandra Broom," I sighed, then almost pulled my foot out of intern's grasp; he was attempting to give me local anesthetic and, I admit, I don't much like needles.
"I'll deliver the message, but I'll be nicer about it," I gasped to BFF as the needle went into my foot.
"I'll take what I can get," BFF nodded his acceptance. Shrinkman was having a field day, I could tell. He was smiling and ticking off "delusional" on his
mental list.
The two officers had now backed against the wall and were watching all this with interest. I guess their normal, everyday lives didn't include this brand of lunacy. Shane came in a few minutes later with a woman I assumed was Sandra Broom, and there was a man with her.
"Steve, I presume?" I nodded toward the man, and BFF nodded in return. I cleared my throat. "Sandra," I began, "Your husband, uh, what's your name, honey?" I asked BFF.
"Andy," he told me.
"Uh, Andy here tells me that he was completely, unequivocally and in all other ways knowledgeable about you and Steve." Her eyes grew round.
"How?" she whispered, a shaking hand at her throat.
"Um," Andy said. I think if he could have, he'd have turned red. He shuffled non-existent feet instead.
"Fess up," I told him. I wasn't about to let him off the hook, especially since this was going to land me in a locked ward where I'd be forced to answer questions about my mother. Shrinkman was becoming positively gleeful.
"Her panties," Andy muttered. He looked to be in his twenties, but all spirits look young and healthy to me. Sandra, on the other hand, looked to be in her forties. I figured Andy had to be around the same age.
"What about her panties?" I demanded. All right, I was lightheaded. Under normal circumstances, I don't think I would ever say the word panties in mixed company. Unless I knew the mixed company in the biblical sense, that is.
"I, uh, like the scent," Andy admitted. I thought he was going to phase out, right then and there.
"Oh, no you don't," I almost yelled at him. "I'll tell her, but by damn you're gonna stay here and face the consequences. You asked for this, remember?" I turned back to Sandra. "He liked the scent of your underwear, and he, uh," I couldn't go farther than that—it was too embarrassing. Sandra got the message, though. She turned a bright enough red to do for her and Andy both. She buried her head in her hands.
"Happy now?" I asked Andy. He hung his head.
"I loved her," he said unhappily. "That was the worst day of my life."