With her birthday just past, Madeline still felt on the inside like a gawky, misinformed teenager. Yet, according to her birth certificate, she was now the ripe old age of 31.
Thirty-one and never married.
Thirty-one and never even engaged.
She had no one to blame but herself.
And in looking into the mirror, she could see that though she didn’t look as though she was in her thirties, she was certainly well past the gawky teenager stage of her life.
Now she was a gawky over-thirty-year-old woman.
She wasn’t the best-looking girl on the planet, but she wasn’t the worst either. Her hips, thighs and stomach were a bit too round for her height. And who was to blame for that?
No one but herself.
Sitting at her desk for hours and hours made her round. Eating chocolate every few minutes helped. Her sugar addiction was going to kill her one day, she was told on a regular basis by the media and by her friends.
Her eyes were steel gray, and she had soft, light brown, wavy hair. She turned sideways, staring at her pendulous breasts and pear-shaped hips. She had to get back to the gym. Jessica, her trainer, was going to kill her for not sticking to it this time.
It just was so hard to get exercise. The endless days sitting at the computer writing articles and books and then the skulking around haunted houses with recording devices didn’t give her much time for anything else. Not for exercise. Not for dating.
She sucked in her stomach until it almost was flat. She ran her hand along it, imagining it toned and tanned like a model’s. Imagination was all it would ever be. She’d never been that toned in her life, and at 31, she couldn’t dream she’d ever have the focus and self-discipline it took to be truly buff.
She huffed out the stale air and ran her hands through her hair, pulling it on top of her head. Maybe if she wore more ponytails, she’d look younger. Leaning closer to the mirror, she peered at the crow’s feet lining her eyes. Character. Yes, she had character because she’d been through so much.
No more and no less than anyone else, when she really thought about it. But unlike many others, she hid her wounds deep. Her heart ached constantly until sometimes she thought she couldn’t take it anymore.
Why did she ache so much?
She wasn’t sure if she believed in love. Real love. A true, faithful love where there was no hurt and no cheating.
She had never truly loved, she didn’t think. Not in a romantic-love kind of way.
Sure she had loved her parents, her relatives, puppies and kittens. That kind of love was easy for her. She loved the starving children in Third World countries, the displaced flood victims in New Orleans, the shooting victims in Paris and the orphans from September 11. Her universal unconditional love had no boundaries and no limits.
She loved peace, not war.
But these things were easy to love. These were ideas, abstracts. They were emotions of hope and victory.
But to love another human being, to fully trust another human being with her heart, with her mind, with her body? She didn’t know if she was capable of that. She didn’t know if any honest and true human was capable of that.
For in her mind, love was an illusion. Love was a word made to be broken.
Falling in love was just one short step from falling into despair. Giving oneself completely to another for a lifetime was against human nature. Logically, no one could truly be committed and satisfied with one other person forever. Could they?
She knew many people in long-term marriages who seemed happy, compatible and complementary. But she often wondered how much of it was a front for people like her watching them, and how much bitterness and despair seeped behind closed doors.
How often was the news full of shocking tragedies perpetrated by people who were so “happy,” so “peaceful,” so “gentle,” and of course the all-time favorite, “kept to themselves”?
Happy faces to the public, nightmare existence behind the scenes. That was the stuff history was made of.
Murderers like Kelly Proctor.
The more she delved into real-life mysteries, real-life haunting, the more cynical she grew about human nature, secrets and the dreaded idea of love.
She hadn’t always been quite so bitter. She had started off life wanting to be open-minded, with an open heart as well. In kindergarten, she clung to the idea of happily ever after. But it was only a few short years afterward that she learned about reality. What men were really like. What she was really like. The cruel darkness of the human condition.
Like Jimmy McMurry back in ninth grade.
She thought he was the greatest. He was tall and handsome and had a quirky sense of irony that amused her. They were science lab partners and had been put together in a couple of other classes for group projects. She had known Jimmy since fifth grade. They had gone through two different schools together, and she figured their bond was strong.
After school one day, Jimmy walked her to the bus stop and asked her if she wanted to go to the park after dinner. Madeline had agreed. It would be fun to be out and about with a guy. They had hung out and had a good time, talking about school, life, movies and swinging on the swings.
They made a habit of meeting several times a week after homework and chores were done. At first, the meetings were harmless. They sat at the park on the swings gossiping about their fellow classmates, lamenting over their marks and worrying about their futures. They had a lot in common, or so Madeline had thought at the time. They liked the same foods, they saw the same movies—sometimes even together—and both thought the principal of the high school was an arrogant asshole.
It wasn’t long, maybe a few weeks after they started hanging out in the park, when Jimmy made his move on Madeline. The minute he slung his arm around her in his nervous, twitchy fashion, she knew right then and there what he was up to. Had all those weeks of hanging out really just been a front for him trying to cop a feel? Or had he suddenly looked at her and realized he found her sexy?
She had rather liked the feel of his arm around her and didn’t protest when he clumsily tried to kiss her.
From that moment on, whenever they met at the park, they went into the woods and found a place to make out.
As the weeks went by, they went a little further with their petting. One day, he tried to slip his hands down her jeans. She pushed him away.
“No…I don’t think we should do that,” she said.
“Why not? I just want to feel you.”
“I just don’t feel like we should,” she said.
His face fell, and he turned grumpily away from her. “I thought you liked me.”
“I do like you. I just don’t think…I mean, we’re not going steady or anything, are we?”
“No.”
“I mean, you don’t even talk to me at school except in the classes we have together.”
Jimmy nodded.
It was true.
In the hallways, when they passed each other and Madeline said, “Hi,” Jimmy pointedly looked the other way. As if he were embarrassed to be seen talking to her. She wasn’t cool. She wasn’t popular.
And she was beginning to wonder if she was his dirty little secret.
They decided to go their separate ways that night, and she thought that was the end of it. However, the next day, it was apparent that some sort of rumor was going around about her. The other kids whispered and pointed at her when she walked down the hall.
Finally, she managed to get the truth from her friend Maria. They were standing at their lockers, juggling books and tugging out papers.
“What is going on?” she asked as a group of girls catcalled her in passing. There was whispering and an eruption of giggles. Madeline scowled and stared at Maria
“Maria, tell me what you know. It’s only fair,” she demanded.
Maria stared at her with large, brown eyes wide with speculation and wonder with a bit of fear around the edges. “Well…everyone knows,” she said so
ftly. She braced herself for Madeline’s response. To her surprise, Madeline only narrowed her eyes in confusion.
“What?” Madeline asked.
“What you did,” Maria stammered, fumbling with her locker door as she tried to shut it. One of her books slid from her arms and slammed down to the ground, papers spilling out in a fan around it.
“What was it that I did?” Madeline asked. She kneeled down to help Maria gather up the papers. Students walked along the hallway, oblivious to the girls whispering on the floor.
“You know. You put out.” Maria sighed. “And I have to say, I didn’t think you were the type.” She rose and snatched her papers from Madeline’s hands.
Madeline stood up shakily, using the locker for support. “Put out? Me?” She asked incredulously.
“Yes, you.”
Madeline’s mind raced. Even as a 31-year-old adult, she still felt the pang of dismay and disappointment that had spread through her belly like a parasite. The sensation took hold and clung to her, and she had never been able to shake it.
Jimmy had lied. He had betrayed her.
Her friend had actually betrayed her.
When Madeline was finally able to put her thoughts together enough to speak again, she was trembling.
“I didn’t do anything. In fact, I pushed him away when he tried to shove his hand down my pants. I can’t believe he used me like that.”
“Oh, come on, Madeline. Everyone knows you go to the park with him on a regular basis to make out,” Maria said as she straightened the books and papers in her arms.
Madeline grew pale, and she slammed the locker door. She snapped the lock tight and double-checked it. The lock held.
“We necked, sure,” Madeline said. “I’m not going to deny it, but who knew? We never saw anyone, or at least very rarely.”
Maria stared at her. “You really don’t know?”
“What’s there to know?”
“We all knew all along. He always told Bobby McFarland in great detail about the stuff you got into. And you know what a big mouth Bobby has…”
Madeline took a deep breath. The gnawing in her stomach grew, and there was a tightening that made her want to vomit.
“So he never liked me.” She sighed. “He was using me.”
“You really thought he liked you?”
“Yes.”
“But he always acted like he didn’t know you at school. At least, except when you were paired up in classes for projects. How could you think he liked you?”
Even at that tender age, Madeline had learned that sometimes people didn’t understand what she thought. She knew she could never explain to Maria how she felt that she and Jimmy had a special friendship. They were buddies who liked to catch snakes and walk along the railroad tracks, and they were make-out buddies learning how to explore a body of the opposite sex. Wasn’t that special?
She realized the horrible truth that day. It wasn’t. Nothing was special to anyone. She had been blinded by TV shows and movies that romanticized the kind of friendship they had. The reality was cold and grim. She walked away from Maria and down the hallway and went to English class.
The teasing followed her until graduation. Dating was a nightmare of pushing away drunken guys who thought she was a sure thing. Eventually word got out that she was frigid or a lesbian, and she preferred it that way.
By the time she hit university, she had grown a shell of indifference toward men. Now and again, she’d indulge herself when she had one too many beers, but she was always grateful they never stayed.
In her late twenties, she had met a man who had changed her life. He was quirky and fun and they shared a wonder about the afterlife together. Their time together was far too short, and within a few months, he was dead.
A car crash with a drunk driver. One minute he was talking to her on his cell phone. The next minute, he was dead.
The pain of losing him tore at her like a knife, opening the old wounds and creating new scars. Instead of sharing her pain with her loved ones, she pushed it down and gained 20 pounds. Madeline closed up again and returned to her revolving bedroom of indifference.
Men were interchangeable. Half of their names, she couldn’t recall. The wall was thick and no one could penetrate it. Several had tried but had given up in frustration.
However, the wall was beginning to crumble. A small portion of her watched as her friends Maggie and Natasha had each fallen in love. Those two ladies were as cynical as she was, and they had both managed to find rather decent men within the past couple of months.
She knew that as the planets aligned, this month could be her month to find romance. And she thought she knew where to begin her search.
She turned from the mirror and thought about the night before her. She was going to record a séance at a pretty renowned place, the Sleepyhead Inn, and had to fling into gear.
Still warm from the shower, she scurried around the bedroom, pulling together warm clothes before the February chill took hold.
A lot of local people held séances in the winter in Hermana. Many of the homes were bed and breakfasts and had a thriving tourist industry in the summer. When the snowy New England winters hit, tourists didn’t venture out to the seaside town, and the locals could unravel their own secrets in peace.
As Madeline passed by her computer in the living room, she flipped the mouse and clicked on her horoscope for the day.
Keep to your New Year’s resolution.
Madeline laughed. Hadn’t she just been thinking about that damn gym? No matter, it had been only two weeks since she’d last gone. There had been so much going on. People not only enjoyed having séances, but they wanted the added bonus of recording any paranormal activity. That’s where she came in.
She checked her digital tape recorder, her still camera, her video camera and her infrared camera. As always, she threw in two extra packages of batteries for each piece of equipment. These séances had a way of sucking the life out of the cameras, and she always ran out of battery power no matter how many she brought.
Every camera lens was dusted and checked and packed away. She double-checked for her chargers. She found a small box and threw in pens, paper, string, tape and other assorted things that could come in handy at the spur of the moment.
The day passed quickly as she made notes about what she hoped to accomplish and drew up lists about images she wanted to capture. She printed off several pages of charts and graphs so they were ready for her to record anything she might experience.
After eating a piece of leftover pizza and half a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz, Madeline washed up and then pulled on her investigative journalist gear. She wore a warm black turtleneck, black jeans, a large crystal around her neck and crystal drop earrings. Her hands were adorned with a ring on every finger, each holding a different gemstone. Cut and polished amethyst, ruby, garnet, aquamarine and amber sparkled from her hands.
Before she left, she checked her paranormal research group message board. There was some discussion about the house she was investigating that night, The Sleepyhead Inn. It had been written up as one of America’s top 50 paranormal houses one year. There was speculation that not only was the house built upon land that had once been a graveyard, but that there were several unexplained deaths there.
The Sleepyhead Inn had been a bed and breakfast for only four years. Before that, it had been passed down in the family and was a private home. Guests often complained about strange noises and frightening visions.
Ghostman888 said he’d been at the house before but was unable to record anything he heard. Vincent78 said he had seen pictures of orbs and ectoplasm on the Internet that others had uploaded but had no idea if they were real.
Madeline read with interest different theories about who was haunting the place and why. Even ideas about the graveyard spirits weren’t left untouched, as perhaps parts of bodies had been left behind during the mass exhumation.
Jake75 offered the
ories of the murderers being ordinary people driven mad by the ghastly sights and sounds they had witnessed. Madeline stared at Jake’s icon.
Jake’s profile picture was of a wavy patch of ectoplasm he had shot during a stay at a haunted asylum in Texas. Madeline had been to his website many times to read his ghost-hunting journal and to stare at his pictures.
There were several albums of orbs and creepy buildings, but the album she enjoyed the most contained pictures of Jake at conventions, book signings and parties. His deep blue eyes stared intensely into the camera under locks of thick, curly, black hair. He almost always was deeply tanned, as he lived in California and spent a lot of time at haunted lighthouses by night and beaches by day. He often talked about surfing and hoped to one day go on a deep-sea dive to an abandoned wreck.
She wondered what he was like in real life.
Sometimes she would lie awake at night and think about Jake’s pictures. She imagined his arms wrapped around her, his lips pressed against hers as he thrust into her. The idea of it inevitably ended with her rubbing her hand against her pussy. She could almost feel the ripples of his muscles along his back as he pumped into her. Always when she came, she remembered he was just a picture on her computer. She would never meet him in real life. He lived somewhere along the coast in California, and she was here in Hermana, on the opposite side of the continent.
But maybe she could change that.
As she gathered her equipment together, she thought about inviting him and some of the others from the online group to help her capture activity at the Kelly Proctor house when she went there in a couple of days. She had mentioned it a few times, and there was always interest in the place on her mailing list. Maybe she should formally extend an invitation and see if anyone would bite.
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