by K. J. Emrick
Don’t let it happen again.
I don’t know how long I was standing there. The next thing I knew the door between the Lady’s Room and the rest of the building was opening and a mother ushered in her very young daughter ahead of her, urging her to do her business quick so they could get back to their day. The mother smiled at me. I smiled back.
“Did you see someone just leaving?” I asked her.
“Eh?” Her attention was on her daughter, not me. “Sorry. We were in a bit of a rush.”
“No worries. Thanks.”
When I looked back at my reflection a handprint outlined in a thin layer of fogginess was just disappearing.
Written by a ghostly hand. So, there were ghosts here at Port Arthur after all. At least the one. Was that who I just heard screaming? The ghost?
In the short little while that I’ve known I could talk to dead people there’s a few things I’ve learned.
One is that when a ghost takes the time to deliver a message to you, then you should probably listen.
The mom turned to me with an odd look and I realized I’d been staring at myself in the mirror for half a minute or more, just waiting for another message to appear and explain the first one. To cover for my hesitation, I turned the water on and soaped my hands up, washing them again. And again.
Don’t let it happen again. Don’t let what happen?
Chapter 2
The cab ride back to our rental cabin was a short one. James’s car was just outside the visitor’s center but I wasn’t going back inside to ask for the keys and anyway I figured I should leave it for him to get back to our room with. I suppose I could’ve walked it but that would have taken me the better part of a half hour, and I just wanted to get somewhere that I could sit down and think. Better yet, someplace where I could soak in a nice hot tub and think.
Let’s face it. Women do some of their best thinking while soaking in a tub with bubbles and a good craft ale.
I’d done a quick trip back to the gift shop before I left the visitor’s center. Other than the usual knick knacks with the prison’s picture on them, the place also sells a good selection of locally made cheeses from the Grandvewe Cheese Company and the Wicked Cheese Company and others, along with a dozen varieties of wines and, yes, ale. I purchased a round of semi-hard sheep’s-milk cheese and some ale for myself, knowing that a soak in a tub wasn’t going to be enough to relax me after the morning I’ve had. That’s the other reason why I didn’t walk to the cabin. I didn’t want to be the crazy tourist walking the streets of Port Arthur with a pack of beer and a round of cheese in my hand.
Now that I was here I kept thinking about the words in the mirror, and the ghostly scream, and what it all meant. I came up with exactly zero answers. There just wasn’t enough information.
The cabin was practically on the beach, which gave me an amazing view of the ocean. I could’ve gone swimming to unwind but I much prefer the bath. One leg hanging over the side, I sank lower into my pink bubbles and soaked my long hair before reaching over to the little table where my longneck was waiting to be drank empty. I got a good way toward making that happen, the heat of the water warming me from the outside and the warm amber fluid warming me insides, when I heard the cabin door open.
My watch was on the floor with my clothes but I didn’t bother looking at the time. It was the middle of the afternoon already. James had only been a few hours getting back. Not something that should bother me.
Only, it did.
“Dell?” he called to me. I heard him kicking his shoes off, heard his keys clank onto the cabinet next to the television. “You would not believe the stuff Alistair had to tell me. How awesome is this? I’ll have two stories out of all this, easy. Maybe three.”
I rolled my eyes. Thankfully I had my smile back in place before he pushed the bathroom door open.
For the longest time, me and James were dating like Puritans. We kissed, we held hands, we spent time together, but that was as far as it went. That was me, of course. Had to work past a host of issues to allow myself to love again. It took me forever to get past the sting of my ex-husband leaving me. Then I found out my husband was dead, and that complicated things even more. Somewhere in there I found the resolve to commit myself to a real relationship with James and we got... intimate. He’s a very dedicated lover. Attentive and gentle and, um, not gentle when I need him to be.
It’s the ale making my cheeks flush, I swear it.
Anyway. He’s seen me naked any number of times and there’s really no reason for his eyes to light up like this when he sees me all wet and slippery anymore, but they do, and they are. Makes a girl feel special, I can tell you that.
“Hey,” is his greeting, his eyes wandering below water level.
“Hey yourself.” Another pull off the ale gives me a reason not to say anything else.
“Oh, aces. You got some cheese.” He came over and sat on the commode, helping himself to a cracker and a piece of the cheese. After a single bite he reached for my beer but I held it closer to my chest and out of his reach. His hand fell away to his side. “Are ya mad at me?”
“No,” I lied, although I was actually more disappointed than I was upset. “This is my beer, is all. You get your own.”
He popped the rest of the cheese in his mouth and sat back as best he could. “You are mad at me. Dell, I swear, I wasn’t trying to ditch on our little holiday here. I just couldn’t let a source of information like Alistair get away. He’s bonzer.”
Not the word I’d choose to describe the man, to be sure. Setting my drink down, sitting up taller in the water, I made sure the bubbles covered all the right spots before I caught his gaze with mine. “You know there’s already been a million articles written about Port Arthur, right? We found a dozen or more when we were booking this place. Remember?”
“Sure, sure. But this is different. Alistair’s family comes from Port Arthur. He knows stories that the history books never told. Real good stuff.” He stopped, finally noticing the set of my jaw and the way my fingers were drumming on the side of the tub. “Er, which isn’t why we came here, is it? So, you and me for the rest of the day.”
“Oh really, Mister Callahan?” My longneck was empty so I dropped it to the bathroom floor so I could hear it clank and clatter as it spun to a stop. “Don’t do me any favors.”
“Dell, don’t be like that. Look, I know Alistair can be a little brusque—”
“Try rude, abrasive, and obnoxious. He’s up himself, if you ask me.”
He blinked at me. “You are upset.”
I bit off a snappy comment about his finely honed investigative journalism skills and eased back into the water. “I get that he’s a doctor, but that doesn’t excuse him from being a flaming jerk.”
“He’s not like that. Give him a chance.” He came over and knelt beside my table of cheese, dipping his hands in the water over the side of the tub. His fingertips touched my hip.
Can’t say I didn’t like the way that felt, but I wasn’t going to let him distract me from my belief that Alistair was a complete drongo.
“I’m serious, Dell.” He scooped some water in a hand and let it trickle over my belly. “I think we could all three of us be friends if you give him the chance. The whole point to this trip was to take your mind off… things. Death, and such.”
“Subtle, James.”
“Hey,” he said gently, dribbling more water from his hand over my flat midriff. “I’m trying here. You’ve been through something that I can only imagine. Strewth, I saw it with me own eyes and I can barely believe it. I want to be here for ya but I don’t want us to stay cooped up in our cabin for the entire five days, either.”
The teasing way he was making the water slide down my skin was making my brain all tingly. His words didn’t sink in at first. I was concentrating on him touching my skin, and tickling me with the water, while my eyes closed and a smile slid over my lips…
Then I sat up again, realizing what he meant.
“You told him we’d get together again, didn’t you?”
He tried to answer but words failed him. The best he could do was gesture helplessly with his hands at the edge of the water.
“Unbelievable.” I stormed out of the tub, sloshing water everywhere. On the floor. All over James. All over my cheese. That last part really sucked because I’d never had sheep’s cheese before and I really liked it. “Just made plans for us. Did you even think to ask me what I wanted to do?”
My nice dry bathrobe was on the hook near the door and I quickly wrapped it around myself and cinched the belt tight to keep James from getting any ideas. In comparison, my hair was damp and so dark it was almost black against the fluffy white of it. James’ eyes followed every move of my body, but he was busy drying his own clothes off with a towel from the shelf. “Dell! Ya got water all over… I look like I wet meself!”
Hands on my hips, feet braced, I could feel anger boiling in me just beneath the surface. “We’re on this vacation for us, remember? We came here for me!” At least, that’s what he promised. That’s what I was expecting. “This was supposed to be time away for me to get my head on straight and find myself and find you! Now you want me to go out to dinner or whatever with a man I can hardly stand?”
He stood up, toweling off his crotch still, reaching for me with his free hand. “Dell, listen to me…”
“No! You promised me, and now you just want to pick Alistair’s brain to see if there’s something there you can use. That’s it. This is for you!”
I wasn’t even listening to anything he said after that. Turning on my heel I stalked down the short hallway to the bedroom area, up at the front of the cabin. Two beds, one with its pink and purple sheets still made up and neat. The other was mussed from what me and James had done last night after we arrived. I remembered that moment in time, feeling so loved and protected and safe. I reached for those same emotions now, and fell short.
Hugging my arms, I forced myself to calm down. James wasn’t doing anything except trying to make a friend and get a story to write up while we’re here. I kept repeating that to myself. That shouldn’t be a felony offense, should it? Yes, the other side of my brain argued, because he’s supposed to be paying attention to me. Just me. He suggested this trip and I jumped at it thinking it would be just me and him and a spooky old prison with ghosts for me to see and talk to. Kind of like practice for my ghost senses. Like a baseball player going away to baseball camp.
The thing I wanted most, was time alone with James. Now it was looking like I wasn’t going to get what I wanted unless I got it on his terms.
“Dell,” he said, still in the bathroom door with a towel. “Can we talk about this?”
“No!” I shouted at him. I wasn’t even going to turn around. Just keep staring at the front of the cabin, with the curtains drawn over the window and the heavy wooden door…
Knock knock knock.
It took me a minute to realize that someone was actually at the door, knocking to get our attention. Well that just took the cake. Fantastic. It wasn’t bad enough that our tour of Port Arthur had been interrupted by the high and mighty Doctor Alistair Grotton, but now my alone time in the cabin was going to be interrupted, too.
“Hold on,” James said from the bathroom. “You’re in a robe. Let me just get this last bit and I’ll go answer it.”
I was mad enough at that point that anything he suggested, I was going to do the opposite. So, wrapped in a wet robe with water still dripping off me and making puddles on the carpet, I marched over to the door and slid the deadbolt open.
Then I stopped. I wasn’t so angry that I was going to just rush to open a door because someone knocked on it. Not after getting some sort of ominous warning from an invisible hand in the Lady’s Room mirror at the visitor’s center. Yeah… no. Putting an eye up to the peephole, I looked out on our front stoop.
The woman standing there was athletically thin, and young, and her dark brown hair was done up in curlers. I didn’t realize anyone still used curlers. Her oversized gray sweater hung low over the waist of her baggy black shorts, and low on both shoulders so it was obvious there was nothing on underneath. This’d be odd attire for a walkabout, but it was perfect sleepwear. As a girl who has slept in her sweats more than once, I should know.
Point being, the person knocking on my door didn’t seem to be the sort of insane killer murderer psycho type that the message in the mirror would have been warning me about. She seemed like the girl-next-door type. So. Pretend we’re not here, or open the door?
When she knocked again, I decided the quickest way to get rid of her would be to find out what our unwanted guest wanted.
She smiled a sleepy smile at me when I opened the door, folding her hands together behind her back. “Hi there. I’m Stevie. I’m in the cabin next to yours. Over there. Number 5. Yeah. See, the walls in this place are made of just about nothing at all. Sound carries through them. Especially when a gal and a bloke are having a blue at the top of their lungs.”
I put a hand up to my face, covering my eyes with a sigh. I should have realized. The way I was shouting at James it’s a wonder we didn’t have everyone within a half kilometer at our door asking us to keep it down. Putting on my best customer service face—learned from years of running my Inn—I said, “I’m so sorry. James and I didn’t realize.”
“No,” he said as he stepped up next to me. “We didn’t. I’m James. This is Dell. Glad to meet ya.”
The girl smiled back—at James. She must have been all of twenty-five, and seeing the way he looked at her now set me on edge again. Yes, she’s pretty. Yes, she’s young. So what else does she have that I don’t?
“Good to meet ya, too,” she said. “Look, I’ve got to work tonight. Means I need to sleep now. Hard to do that with you guys reenacting episodes of Home and Away over here.”
She was right, even if I wasn’t in a mood to admit it. “Fine,” I said in clipped tones. “Sorry to bother you. We’ll try to be quieter. Now, you probably need to get back to sleep…?”
When she turned back to me, she looked amused. That really didn’t help my mood at all. I may possibly have slammed the door shut. In her face. While she was still standing on the stoop.
“Dell!” James exclaimed.
“Shh,” I told him. “We’re trying to be quiet, remember?”
“You know what?” He went and pulled open one of the drawers in the bureau under the television. “You’re not exactly giving this a fair go, are ya?”
As I watched, he pulled out a fresh pair of khakis and another button-up. Without another word he stripped out of the clothes I’d soaked and started changing into the others.
I waited for him to say something else. Truth be told I was still keyed up and looking to vent. Not that I like arguing with James, because I don’t, but right now he seemed to be the reason for a lot of my bitterness. Or at least, he made a convenient target.
Arms crossed, I sat down hard on the bed we hadn’t used yet. “What are you doing?”
“I’m getting ready to go out, Dell.” He didn’t look at me when he said it. “I’m going back to meet up with Alistair so we can take a tour of the Island of the Dead, and then we were going to go to this restaurant that he knows in the area, and then we—that is, you and me—had a ghost tour planned for this evening, now didn’t we?”
“I remember,” I said, my voice very small and miserable. I just kept thinking about how this was supposed to be time for me and him to be together. “I suppose you invited Alistair along on the ghost tour.”
“As a matter of fact…”
“Well that’s just great, isn’t it?” Flopping down on the bed was going to get the sheets soaking wet, but I didn’t care. “So I either go on this tour with him and you both, or I don’t get to go?”
He stopped with his zipper half way up. Apparently, that very obvious fact hadn’t occurred to him until I said it. “If ya want me to beg off with him, I will. I didn’t know having h
im along was going to upset ya this much, Dell. Look. I’m going to have dinner with him, because I need to talk to him a bit more, but we can drop the rest of it. How’s that sound?”
It sounded… reasonable, actually. In fact, it sounded so very reasonable that I couldn’t let myself say okay to his very reasonable plan. Instead I bounced back off the bed and ran my fingers through my hair before it could dry in odd snarls. “I’m going to towel off and get dressed.”
He snagged my hand on the way by.
“What about after you dress?”
With another breath I lowered my defenses. Just a little. “After that we can go to dinner with your new friend.”
His kissed on my fingers felt really good. “There’s my girl.”
“Don’t make me regret being nice to you.”
“Come here,” he said, with a mischievous little tug on my arm.
I fell on the bed with him, and his clothes got wet all over again. Thankfully, we found the perfect way to take care of that.
“Where is this place?”
“The restaurant?” James asked, as if I could have been asking about any other place. He took another left turn onto another narrow country road. “It’s just up this street.”
There were a few houses along the streets as we drove, ones that seemed to have been rooted in place for generations. The sun was just flirting with the horizon and the mix of golden light and the approaching end of day was sort of magical. No better place on Earth than our country here at the bottom of the world. A warm night, a good man, and the promise of a good meal. I couldn’t want for more.
I was still annoyed with James. No matter how many times I told myself I was being silly I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I had a right to be annoyed with him. The whole business with him striking up a new friendship with Alistair and ignoring me. The way he practically fawned over our pretty neighbor. I was supposed to be the only one he was paying attention to during our vacation. Selfish? Maybe. But that didn’t mean—