by Amy Boyles
A crystal chandelier hung overhead, and wall sconces as well as floor lamps cast an amber light inside.
“You have a beautiful home.” I walked a few more paces and stopped by the staircase, sliding my hand over the glossy surface. “Truly remarkable.”
“Can I get you something to drink? Tea? Coffee?” Brownie offered.
Clearly she was Southern to the bone. She looked perfect, but a touch of fatigue bordering on frazzled filled her voice.
I raised my palm. “No, thank you.”
“I could use a cookie,” Alice said.
“For God’s sake, Alice,” Ruth snapped.
Brownie shook her head. “It’s fine. It’s better when my hands are working anyway. Gives me something to do. Staying busy helps me forget about”—she glanced at the ceiling—“our problems.”
She shot Alice a warm smile. “Let me see what I can round up. Wallace, will you bring them to the kitchen?”
“Yes, dear.” Wallace watched us with small, beady eyes.
A skeptic, I could tell. Well, what Wallace didn’t know was that I was a skeptic, too. We’d been called out to many houses that were supposed to be haunted. But when we had arrived, the invader happened to be a squirrel in the attic.
So yeah, I was a skeptic.
We followed Brownie into a beautifully updated kitchen. White quartz countertops accented ebony cabinets. A breakfast nook had been cut into bay windows, and a grand island finished off with a cooktop sat squarely in the center of the room.
I almost drooled on my jacket.
Brownie rummaged through the cabinets until she found cookies. She placed that and a glass of milk in front of Alice. Ruth covered her eyes and shook her head.
“Tell me when everything started.” I settled myself into the cushioned breakfast nook.
“Not long after we moved in,” Brownie explained.
“We started the renovation,” Wallace said tersely. “That’s when it began.”
“Right,” Brownie quickly agreed. “We started renovating. At first it was small things.”
“I would misplace my keys,” Wallace said. “Which was preposterous because I always set my keys in the same place every night when I come home. I would put them down”—Wallace demonstrated dropping his keys—“and the next morning they would be moved.”
“He would accuse me of moving them,” Brownie said. “We’ve been married ten years. I wasn’t that dumb.” She picked a chocolate cookie from the platter and nibbled on it. “But for weeks he thought I changed their spot.”
“What did I know?” Wallace said. “They were supposed to be in one place, and then they weren’t.”
“Okay.” I needed to steer the conversation back to the important stuff. “So the keys were the start.”
“Then other things,” Brownie said quietly.
“Like what?”
“I was cooking dinner and getting plates from the cupboard. I pulled a few plates out and shut the cupboard. When I turned around, all the cupboard doors were open.”
“All of them?” Ruth said.
Brownie nodded. “Every one. For a while Wallace thought I’d lost my mind.”
He rubbed his forehead. “It had occurred to me. But really no, it was when I started seeing the woman that things changed.”
My eyes widened. Now I was interested. “The woman?”
He nodded. “You can see her sometimes walking through walls. Or she’s sitting in a chair. She’s never bothered us until recently.”
“The knocking,” Brownie said. “That’s another thing.”
Rap, rap, rap.
I glanced up. The ceilings were at least fifteen feet.
“Sounds like someone’s hammering on the ceiling,” Ruth said.
“That’s what we thought.” Brownie pulled her robe closed at the top. “We thought someone was in another part of the house knocking.”
“But we quickly realized that wasn’t the case.” Wallace rapped his knuckles on the table. “The rapping would come from one room—a room we would all be in.”
“We have a daughter.” Tears filled Brownie’s eyes. Wallace squeezed her arm.
“Did something happen to her?” Ruth said.
“No,” Brownie said quickly. “At least not yet. But we’re afraid for her. That’s why we called.”
“The spirit,” Wallace added, “or whatever it is has become more…aggressive lately.”
“How so?” That didn’t sound good. Aggressive spirits? Never something that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
“She’s started throwing things.” Tears spilled from Brownie’s eyes. “We don’t know what we’ve done, but plates have flown from the cupboards, smashing against the walls.”
“Something ripped up my tires,” Wallace said. “It could’ve been a dog.” He wanted it to be true, I knew, but he said it limply as if he’d given up.
Ruth knocked her knuckles on the table. “What else has happened?”
Brownie thought for a moment. “Those are the main things. Oh, and sometimes it sounds like a boulder is falling on the house. It’s a loud boom.”
“We wanted to leave,” Wallace said. “I told her we should just get up and go. Leave the house. It’s only a shell. It isn’t our family.”
“That might not work,” Alice chirped from behind a cookie. All gazes swiveled to her. She shrugged. “What? It might not.”
I patted the table in front of Alice. “What she means is, depending on what we’re dealing with, leaving the house isn’t always the best thing to do.”
“Why not?” Brownie said.
“It could follow you.” I raised my hand to stop anyone from freaking out. “Depending on what sort of spirit we’re dealing with.”
Wallace pumped his hands. “What are we dealing with?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
“Blissful has to meet the spirit,” Alice said with authority.
Wallace gestured toward the door. “Well, what’re you waiting for? Go meet the spirit. Find out what it wants. See if the thing will leave us in peace.”
I rose. “Where’s your daughter?”
“She’s asleep in our room. We’ve all started sleeping downstairs. In the back.” Brownie pointed to a wall across from the kitchen.
“Okay. I’ll try not to disturb her. If I can, I’ll avoid that room. But when I walk a house, I generally go into every single space.”
“Why?” Wallace’s voice held exasperation only seen in those who were at their wit’s end.
“Because sometimes spirits hide.” I nodded to Ruth and Alice. Both women rose, and Alice brushed cookie crumbs from her dress. “They’ll come with me. If y’all could, please stay here. I’ll tell you if I need help with a door.”
I turned to go. “Oh, and one more thing.”
Wallace slid a hand down his forehead. “What’s that?”
“In your message you said the spirit had said something about me. Showed you my face?”
Wallace and Brownie exchanged a charged look. Brownie cleared her throat. “Yes. Let me tell you about that.”
FOUR
“The spirit asked for you,” Brownie explained. She fisted another cookie and munched on it while relaying the story.
“The apparition of the woman you see?” That didn’t make any sense. I’d never met a ghost who asked for someone.
Brownie shook her head. “No. Not the woman. I don’t know who it was. Your face materialized on a wall, and then a voice spoke. A deep voice. It came from all around me, and then it said in this really masculine tone, ‘Blissful Breneaux must come.’ Well, you can imagine I had no idea who Blissful Breneaux was until I started asking around.”
“Our pastor knew of your work,” Wallace said. “He’d heard from someone else that you’ve helped calm spirits in a home before.”
Our work as Ghost Wranglers was beginning to get out there, which I was thankful for. Not that we took any money from people. It wasn’t right to make emo
tionally broken people pay for help. At least that’s what I thought.
Not that we’d encountered a lot of ghosts, as I’d mentioned before. But the one or two we had needed some convincing to transition to the other side.
“So that’s why you called us,” I said.
Brownie nodded. “It’s shameful being in this situation, where a-a-a ghost is haunting your home. When there’s a child involved, it’s even worse. You can’t imagine.”
I squeezed her shoulder. “Let my associates and I walk the home.” I glanced at Ruth and Alice. “Come on, ladies. Let’s see what this house has in store for us.”
We started to walk out the door. I stopped and turned. “Anything scary happens while we’re gone, just start praying, okay?”
“Praying?” Brownie said, terror in her voice.
I nodded. “Just do it. It should help.”
Ruth, Alice and I stepped outside the kitchen.
“What do you think it is?” Ruth whispered.
“I don’t know. I’ve never encountered a spirit that asked for me.”
We started in the living room. I closed my eyes and listened, searching for a spirit.
Being a clairvoyant meant I could talk to ghosts, but I could also sense their energy. When I’d first stepped into the house, I hadn’t felt anything peculiar, which I knew was on purpose. The ghost was hiding.
“Come on, spirit. I know you’re in here.” I walked a circle in the living room and then headed into the family room.
I stopped. My eyes widened.
A faint apparition of a woman clad in a wispy dress stood by the window, looking out. She had long hair that billowed as if a wind was blowing into the house.
I gestured for Ruth and Alice to stop. I didn’t know if they could see her, and to be frank, at that moment I didn’t care.
I took a small step forward. “Why are you here?”
The apparition turned. Her ghostly skin looked milky, young. She’d died in the prime of her life. Her clothes weren’t from this decade, but I couldn’t place their origin.
Her eyes widened as if I scared her.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I only want to help. Why are you here?”
“I am always here.” Her voice broke between words as if the spirit had forgotten how to speak but was quickly remembering.
“But why?”
“I am chained here.”
Okay, maybe this chick could give me less cryptic answers. I would appreciate that.
“A family is here now. You need to leave them in peace. The light awaits you. You must go.”
She ticked her head to one side. “I cannot.”
“Listen to me, you are dead. You have passed over. Your friends and family are awaiting you in the afterlife. This home no longer belongs to you. It belongs to these people. Stop haunting them and go.”
I raised my hand. Stars started falling from the ceiling.
The spirit glanced up and inhaled. Her dress rustled around her. A slow smile curved on her face before she launched herself at me.
The ghost hit me with the force of a gale. I rocked back. A hundred images flashed in my head.
I saw the woman when she’d been alive. She stood at the window, waiting. I saw her lying dead at the foot of the stairs. Then I saw something else. Something that made me crumple to the floor.
I fisted my hands, trying to get ahold of myself.
“Blissful,” Alice said, worry filling her voice, “what is it?”
I closed my eyes tight until the tidal wave of nausea finally passed. Then I uncurled myself and rose.
“We need a shovel.”
“Can someone please explain to me why she’s digging up our basement?” Wallace asked, his tone just one pitch away from exasperated.
“Trust us, Blissful knows what she’s doing,” Ruth said.
Alice leaned over and whispered loudly enough for half the county to hear. “She does?”
Then she said “Ow,” because Ruth probably elbowed her in the ribs.
“I don’t understand what digging has to do with the ghost,” Brownie said.
“Or why she has to dig in our basement,” Wallace said. “You know we’re renovating this entire house.”
Already panting and sweaty, I was not in the mood to explain myself, but what the heck? Since the house actually did belong to these folks, they might like a touch of an explanation.
But I wasn’t going to stop shoveling to do it. “I’m doing this because your basement is actually a cellar, so there’s dirt down here.”
“Yes,” Wallace said, “we can see that.”
“I saw your ghost.”
Brownie gasped. “Already? You already saw her?”
“I did.”
“That was so fast.” Wallace nodded with pride. He wagged a finger at me. “You are good. Brownie said you’d be good, but I’ll admit I didn’t believe her.”
“Few people actually do believe it until they see it. But anyway, your spirit showed me this spot.”
“She showed it to you? Did she bring you here?” Brownie was clearly very mystified by the ins and outs of my work.
“Oh no,” Alice answered. “The spirit didn’t actually bring Blissful here. Blissful kind of shot back like she’d been punched in the head.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Did it hurt?” Brownie said. “I hope it didn’t hurt.”
“It didn’t hurt,” I replied. “I’m fine.”
“I think I might see a cut,” Alice said.
I shot her a look that said, Back off. “I’m fine.”
“But what’s all this digging for?” Wallace said. “I still don’t understand that. Can someone explain to me why you’re creating a pile of dirt?”
“I’m not creating a pile of dirt.” I heaved another mound of packed earth from the hole and tossed it to the side. “There’s a reason I’m doing this.”
“It better be good,” Wallace said. He turned to Brownie. “You said she’d help us solve the ghost problem, but all I see is a woman pretending to be a gravedigger.”
Exasperation filled my voice. “You were just pleased with me!”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I can be finicky.”
“Anyway.” I rolled my eyes. “Funny you should say gravedigger.” I jumped out of the hole and took a deep breath. “See for yourself.”
The four of them crowded around. Brownie took one look in the hole and screamed bloody murder.
“Is that what I think it is?” Wallace said.
“Looks like a head,” Alice said. “Or a foot.”
“It’s a head,” Ruth snapped. Her wide eyes swiveled toward me. “Is that the ghost?”
I nodded. “Ladies and gentleman, this is the body of the woman that’s been haunting you. All the renovating woke her up, got her stirred into a tizzy, as it were. I don’t know her name, but hopefully we can discover that. But I present to you, your ghost who was murdered in this very house years ago.”
Brownie gasped again. “Murdered?”
I smiled. “Don’t worry. Once we get her out of here and lay her to rest, your problems should be gone.”
“I certainly hope so.” Wallace peered into the hole once more. “I’m going upstairs to call the police.”
I nodded. “That’s the right thing to do.”
“I’m going with you.” Brownie clutched Wallace’s arm as if it were a lifeline.
“I need more cookies.” Alice disappeared with them.
Ruth turned to me and whistled. “Wow. We found a skeleton. You are something else, Blissful. Just wait till this hits the papers.” She splayed her hands. “‘Local clairvoyant finds missing person, puts decades-old mystery to rest.’”
I shook my head. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here. I’m only doing my job. But I’m glad I could help. I mean, these people don’t need to be terrorized by a spirit. No one does.”
“Yeah,” Ruth said. “But I wonder how that ghost knew about you.”
&n
bsp; “Maybe she got out and we didn’t know about it. Went into town, had coffee and overheard people talking about me.”
Ruth tapped her mouth. “Maybe that’s it.” She did not look convinced. I wasn’t totally convinced, either, but as I stared at the bare skullcap encased in dirt, I realized it had to be the only way.
I shivered.
“All I know is I’m glad it’s over.” Ruth hummed to herself as we waited with the body until the police arrived.
A cold wind blew past, and I shivered again. Okay, that could not be coincidence. There had to be a reason why I was shivering.
I whipped around, expecting to see the lady and receive her thanks. After all, we were one step into solving her murder, thanks to me.
But instead I met a squat man wearing a white short-sleeved button-down shirt and pants that were cuffed at the ankles.
“Finally. Someone has figured out where that dame is. Now I can get some rest around here.”
His accent was distinctly Northern—as in East Coast Northern.
“What are you talking about?”
Ruth eyed me. At this point in our relationship she was used to me speaking with spirits. The fact that I could communicate with entities she didn’t see didn’t seem to rattle her very much. Or at all, actually.
“I’m talking about the fact that she was always moaning and groaning. Crying and stuff. Good riddance.”
A bowl of something appeared in his lap. The ghost dipped a spoon in—yes, it had also appeared out of nowhere. He took a big bite and chewed.
“You know,” he said, “one thing I love about Southern cooking is grits. Don’t ask me why. Bland as hell but delicious if seasoned just right.”
“Who are you?” A tingling sensation washed up the back of my scalp. That wasn’t good. “Are you the ghost that’s been haunting this family?”
“Nah, that’s not me.” He pointed to the bones. “But it wasn’t her either, not totally.”
I squinted at him. “What are you talking about?”
He swallowed a large spoonful of grits. “What da ya mean, what am I talking about? You asked if I gave this family grief. I did not. And neither did that dame. At least not too much.”
“Then who is? And don’t they know that they’re a spirit and need to go to the light?” I pointed at him. “You need to go into the light, too. You know that, right?”