Easton: Forbidden: Paranormal Romance

by Kathi S. Barton

  “You don’t know shit. She was driving me crazy about wanting me to take her someplace. I told her that the game was on.” Easton asked him how he’d managed to watch a game on the television when there was no power in the house. “I’ll tell you, but you’re going to show me my son. I got me some ways of dealing with that short of shit. I got me all kinds of electrical cords that I strung all the way from the neighbor’s house. It’s not like he was going to be missing any. Most of the time I had me the deep freeze plugged in. Except when there was a game on that I wanted to watch. Mary was doing nothing but nagging me.”

  “So you killed her.” Wendell said nothing about that, but did demand to see the baby. “In due time. What did you do about heat? Or even running water to keep your family warm?”

  “Mary had her work to keep her warm. If she didn’t then she wasn’t doing it right. I forgot about Margaret. But she was nothing more than a pain in the ass anyway.” Easton had only shook his head. “You said you’d bring me my son. Hand him over, faggot, before I call one of them police officers down here.”

  “Call them all you want. You’ll see him or not when I decide. So, you forgot about Margaret starving and freezing in the cage, did you? Did you know that the police found your stash of steaks in the freezer? Also all the canned food that you had under lock and key in your room? Where did Mary sleep when you weren’t beating her up and raping her?” Wendell glared at him. “The longer you take to answer me, the shorter time you’re going to have to see Alex.”

  “It wouldn’t have been no tying her to the bed if she’d just cooperated with me. She was my wife, damn it, and she was to give me a son. One that I could rear up like I am.” Easton told him that was a scary thought. “Why? You think you can do a better job? You’d just make him queer like you if you were to have him. Now, I answered your fucking questions. Give me my boy.”

  “The entire town turned out for their calling hours. Even the mayor came to tell me how sorry he was that she’d been murdered. It was a surprise to most of them that Mary even had a child, much less was pregnant with the second one, when you slit her throat. How could you do that to her? She was a good person.” Wendell yelled for the police. “You think that is going to make me want to do anything for you?”

  “She fucking was taking my car. There wasn’t nothing going on that she had to leave at that minute. Hell, the way it was anyway, she was in that ditch for an hour before she birthed Wendell Junior. That first one took over three hours to get here, and I had to sit there waiting like I had nothing else to do but see to her needs. What about my needs? I tell you, she was very selfish, your sister. What did she think she was going to do? Wreck my car?” Wendell put his hands out of the cell as if he was reaching for Alex. “So what, I put an end to both of them so that now I have the house all to myself. You have no idea what it’s like having nagging women around all the time that make demands on you. I had my own shit to do, and I’m happier that I killed them both.”

  Easton looked at the people with him as he paused in his telling of the story. “He admitted to killing them both. Did he have any idea what he did, do you think?” Easton told Paddy that he thought it was just the two of them there. “Christ, I wish I would have been there to record everything that he said. It would have been a slam dunk trial.”

  Picking up the tale where he left off, Easton told them how he’d asked Wendell why he’d wrapped his sister in a sheet. Knowing full well, he told them, that she’d been in a rug.

  “Sheet? I didn’t want to soil my sheets with her nastiness. Christ almighty, she was gushing blood all over me by then. No, I grabbed up the rug off the front porch and wrapped her in it.” Then Wendell laughed. “She had her a little set up there. Pretty flowers and shit like that. A little pillow that she’d rest on. I broke all that up too, just to teach her a lesson. I guess it was lost on her since I’d already killed her. You should learn something from this, Easton. You give a woman a minute and she’ll take a mile from you.”

  “I stood up then and took Alex just close enough to the bars that he could see him, but not touch. When he reached out to snatch him from me, I just took a step back. The words that spewed from his mouth were outrageous. I mean, I swear, he was making them up as he went along.” Everyone laughed, and he looked at his nephew. “I saw her then. Mary was there with Wendell. She didn’t move or say anything. Not that I thought that she could, but I knew that she was there, and had been listening to Wendell seeming to brag about killing her off and being proud of it.”

  “Did you get to tell him that he’d never see him again? I hope you did. Wendell is a bad man.” Easton told Christy that he was the worst kind. “Was he mad at you when you left him? I would have punched him right in the nose, Easton.”

  “Thank you, Christy, but I’ve already decided that I wasn’t going to stoop to his level in violence. No, what I did was put Alex on the chair and wrap him back up and turned to leave. But I stopped and turned to look at Wendell.” Easton would remember the look on Wendell’s face for the rest of his life. “I told him that Mary was there with him. That her ghost was waiting on him to die so that she could take care of him when he arrived on her side. Also that his forgotten child, Peaches, was ready to execute her own revenge on him as well.”

  No one said a word for several minutes. Then when it seemed to be coming up on ten minutes, he thought for sure that they were all pissed off at him. Paddy stood up. Easton braced himself for whatever the man did for him.

  Instead of hitting him or something along those lines. Paddy started clapping. Then Henry joined him. Wayne hugged him, then kissed him on the mouth before he and Christy got up to start clapping as well. They were cheering him on, whistling like he was some big rock star that had dedicated a song in their honor. Standing up, Easton bowed before them and laughed. These people were the best.

  Long after they cleaned up the mess, he and Wayne were studying houses on the Internet. Wayne had told him the entire conversation that he’d had with Cara, and that took a little wind out of his sails when he found out that Cara wouldn’t be a part of their new home. Really, all that either of them wanted was for her to be happy, and to him, it sounded like she would be.

  Poring over houses was fun. He and Wayne teased each other a great deal, and stole kisses as they ticked off the things that they wanted in a home. Easton wanted this to be his last house, one that while they’d never get older in, but that they could have their children coming home for the holidays in. They both wanted a home, not a house.

  “I’ve been thinking about a couple of things.” Easton told him not to blow a fuse. “Very funny. I was wondering how you felt about both of us having an office downtown, if we can find a place to use. That way we don’t have to bring our work home with us unless we want to.”

  “Sometimes I do my best work in the middle of the night.” Wayne wiggled his brows at him. “Yes, that sort as well. I would have to have some sort of office here too. But I do like the idea of having a place separate that we can leave if we want to.”

  “Good. I’d also like to have a place in it so we can take the kids with us if we want You know, a safe place that they can hang out with us while people come in droves to see how adorable they are.” Easton laughed. “Seriously. If we can do it, I’d only like to have someone come and help us with the kids a few days a week. We can take turns keeping an eye on them while the other one of us works. I don’t want them raised by someone else.”

  “I love that idea.” Easton asked him if there were any buildings in the area that they could convert into what they would need.

  “There are two of them now. One of them needs to be completely revamped for what we need. However, I was thinking a house. Someplace that we can redecorate and have a sort of showplace.”

  They worked until just after midnight. There were several houses that they had picked out, as well as three houses that they might turn into their pl
ace of business. As they were dragging their asses up the stairs, Easton being nearly asleep on his way up, he had a moment of worry.

  “The guy is supposed to meet with us tomorrow. I almost forgot about that. What is it you suppose he wants?” Wayne said it was much too late to worry about it now. “Yes, I guess so. You know what? Fuck it. If he has bad news, then we’ll deal with it. I’m not going to...I’m going to try not to worry about things that I cannot control. That’s my new outlook on life.”

  “Good for you. Now shut off the light and come to bed before I have to come and get you.”

  As good as that sounded, Easton knew that Wayne was just as tired as he was. Climbing in the bed after checking on the kids, he closed his eyes. Easton thought that he was asleep before his heart beat again.

  Chapter 7

  Wendell was still about as pissed off as he could be about things that were going on with his kid. Then there was the added fact that someone was out to get him. Rubbing his head, he wondered how the police had managed to make it so that his room was like an ice rink. He’d never fallen so much even when he was drunk as a monkey.

  When his breakfast was brought to him, he asked the cop what he’d done to his floor. The man simply stared at him as if he’d not spoken a word. That was another thing that was pissing him off—the way people treated him. Like he was some sort of monster or something. He’d not done a damned thing wrong.

  “What happened to your head?” Wendell counted to five, about as far as he could get without having to resort to pulling out his fingers to continue “You look like you’ve had a fight with a prize fighter and came out on the bottom. I’ll call the doc and see if you need stitches or not. Don’t be doing stuff like that, Wendell, before you get yourself in trouble.”

  “You did this to me, you moron. I was just walking around in my room here when my feet would just sweep out from under me.” He didn’t mention what that faggot had told him, that his wife and daughter were around. Instead, he blamed it right on the shoulders of where it belonged. “I want you to bring me some rugs in here. This floor is colder than a witch’s tit in a brass band.”

  “It’s brassiere, not band. Not that it matters one way or the other—you’re not getting any special treatment. You’re just lucky that we bring you food without spitting in it after what you said yesterday.” Wendell didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about when he said that. “You do know that this place is all wired up when we have people back here? And that man you saw, Mr. Hunter, he made sure that we recorded every word of it. Even paid for the place to be updated with the newest kind of stuff.”

  “When the hell did he do that? I didn’t see anybody.” The cop told him it was when he was talking to his lawyer. “You can’t just spring shit like that on a man. Besides, I don’t think I said anything that could make you mad at me for nothing.”

  “Sure you didn’t.”

  Wendell sat back on his cot. He had thought to ask for a chair too, so that he’d not be on his bed all the time. He got to thinking about the conversation that he’d had with the faggot.

  Not even a minute later he was thinking that Easton had done that on purpose. He’d gotten him to say things so that he’d not be able to have his son with him when he left here. It was all true, yes, but he’d not meant to say anything like that to the man. Wendell knew that he’d done it to get him into trouble.

  “Hey?” Wendell yelled for someone to come back there and talk to him. “Hey? I tell you, I need to see somebody. That man, the faggot that has my kid, he’s doing me wrong. I want to press charges against him.”

  “Sit down and shut up.” He heard the voice, but didn’t have any idea where it was coming from. He was the only one back here today since the other guy was speaking to his lawyer. “Don’t you have anything to say to me, Wendell? Nothing to say to your dead wife?”

  Turning slowly, just knowing that this was another trick that the police were playing on him, Wendell looked around the room before sitting on the floor. His mind seemed to go into some kind of fit when he saw what was behind him. There was nothing there, he thought, telling himself over and over that he was seeing things.

  “Hello, Daddy. I hope you’re not going to forget me now, are you?” Wendell didn’t look again—he couldn’t. This was something that they’d put in his food. Something in his water. Opening one eye to make sure that he was just seeing things, he saw that his daughter was standing right there in front of him. “Boo.”

  Wendell screamed like she’d stabbed him, because that was just what it felt like when she put her hand on his face. The coldness was more painful than he’d ever felt before. Wendell tried to back himself through the iron bars.

  “You might as well get used to us, Wendell. We’re not leaving you until you’re dead like we are. Have you anything to say to us? Like how you wish you’d not done it?”

  Wendell was afraid to speak. If he did, that would make it more real. Right now it was real enough.

  “You cut my throat. See?” Mary opened up the wound on her neck so that he could see her bones in her spine. Her tongue was hanging all funny, and he nearly threw up his meal when she pulled a bug out of her neck and tried to hand it to him. “You’d not believe the things we can do now that we’ve been given permission to haunt you. To be honest, we was supposed to be doing this yesterday, but we spent the day with Easton and his new lover. Isn’t it nice that he’s found someone to love him? I wish I’d had that sort of love from you.”

  “You didn’t love me either.” She told him that much was true, for the most part. “I don’t want you here no more. I want you to go back to where you were and leave me alone, before I have to call a priest or someone to make you leave.”

  “I asked about that. That doesn’t work for public places. Even if you were to be going home, which you’re not, Margaret and I could haunt you there as well. Since we were killed there, we can hang out with whoever wants to be with us. But you won’t be going back home.” He asked her why not. It was his house. “It’s not. It never was after our first year of marriage. I have a few things that I’d like to talk to you about. I mean, it’s not like you’re going anywhere any time soon. Did you know that before you started knocking me around, I had plans to share my winnings with you? I had won a great deal by the time I bought the big ticket.”

  “What do you mean, you bought a big ticket? I never said you could gamble. You should know better than that. I ought to take a whip to you again.” She pointed out that she was dead. “Still, you will tell me where the money is right now, or so help me, Mary, I’ll give you more than I ever did in the way of making you behave.”

  “That’s another thing. You never had to make me behave. I was a good wife to you. I actually did love you, at one time.” He told her that was the way it should have been. “But you beat that out of me, didn’t you, Wendell? Right after you found out that I was going to have a baby girl, you started treating me like your whore. Tying me to the bed to try and...what did you call it? Fuck it out of me? Well, it didn’t work, did it? But you did end up killing my baby girl anyway, didn’t you?”

  “She was a pain in the ass.” Wendall saw her there, his daughter. “Don’t even try and tell me that you weren’t, either. Every time I wanted to do something on my own, you’d be right up my ass trying to get something from me. You should have known better.”

  “I wanted you to love me.” Wendell snorted at her. “You never did, did you? You never once wanted to love me back.”

  “As I said, a pain in the ass.” She darted at him, and he felt the coldness of her body going through his. “Christ, don’t you ever do that again. That fucking hurt. Go away. Christ, even dead you’re a pain in my backside.”

  They were both laughing at him. They surely weren’t laughing with him. Mary was spouting off shit that he had no idea what she was talking about, and Margaret was acting like she always did
. Being in his way. He opened his mouth to tell them both to leave him alone when Margaret spoke again.

  “Mom would hide me away when I was little so that you’d not be reminded of me. I knew even then that you hated me because I wasn’t a boy. But I tried to make you see that I could be as useful as a brother would have been. The day that you locked me down there, I was cleaning your shoes for you. I’d already cleaned up the fishing poles that I’d stolen for us to do something together. But you didn’t see that, did you? All you saw was that I was stupid enough to want to spend time with my dad.” He told her that he didn’t like fishing. Especially with a dumbass girl. “Yes, you told me that. As you made me crawl into the cage, bent out of shape because it was much too small for even me. Then you just left me there. I could hear you. Smell the food that you didn’t let Momma share with me. To keep her from helping me out, you locked her away too, didn’t you?”

  When Margaret disappeared, he looked at Mary, asking her to tell him about the money, but she laughed again. It didn’t sound like the Mary he knew. Course, he realized that he’d not heard her laugh all that much when she’d been around him.

  “Because you sucked that out of me. Happiness and love. But back to the ticket. I had about five thousand dollars the day that I purchased that ticket. It was enough to buy the house we were living in. I suppose, in a way, that I should be happy that you didn’t keep it up. It certainly made it easy for me to be able to afford it.” He asked her what she was talking about. “You might have owned the house at one time, Wendell. But I made it so we could continue to live there by paying the taxes each year. When you got behind, the house was to be sold. So I paid them and it became my home. It was going to be my way to get away from you. By letting you have it in exchange for me being free. But then Margaret wasn’t allowed to go anywhere with me anymore.”