My eyes darted between her and Jack. “It’s...I...I was just overwhelmed. Nobody said anything. I’m okay. It’s the not knowing, I guess it’s getting to me,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t meant entirely about Jeffrey’s and Harvey’s deaths, and from the look on Jack’s face, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
“There’s no reason for you to go in there.”
Fran motioned for me to follow her. “Come on, you got to do this, for your own good. You’re strong. You can handle it.”
We stared at each other, and she crooked her finger for me to follow. “You coming?”
“Jack, it’s okay. I’m fine. I want to do this.”
He shrugged. “You sure?”
I nodded.
He pivoted on his right leg and smiled back at me. “Then let’s go.”
I walked alongside him while Fran floated in front of us. She talked the entire way, easing my concerns and very likely lowering my blood pressure. “Here’s what you got to do. Don’t look them in the eye. They come up to you, you just look down, up, to the side, whatever. Just don’t look them in the eye. They ain’t gonna hurt you, but they can be pains in the butt. The dead don’t like not having a place in this world, but we’re not gonna worry sending them off to the other side today. We’re just gonna get them outta your way, you hear?” She flipped around and smiled.
I nodded my head once, hoping Jack didn’t see. The fact that he didn’t have even a slight clue a ghost was floating in front of us shook me. Could he not feel the chilled air, the heightened energy? It was everywhere, and the energy coming off Fran in particular, was so strong it hummed.
He’d never believe in ghosts, I just knew it.
I hesitated before stepping onto the sidewalk leading to the hospital’s main entrance. The old man in the blue gown was still there and still smoking his cigarette. I noticed his feet touched the ground and Fran’s didn’t. He smiled at me, and I smiled back. I’d never understand how it worked, but I didn’t worry about that at that moment. I just wanted to do what I’d come to do and leave.
He and Fran exchanged greetings. “Hey,” she said, pointing at his cigarette. “That’ll kill ya, you know.”
They both laughed, but I didn’t see the humor in it.
She glanced back at me. “Gotta learn to take a joke. The cancer from smoking those things killed me. Angela’s always giving me a hard time for joking about it, but if you don’t have a sense of humor when you’re dead, you got nothing.”
I opened my eyes wide to acknowledge her. I hesitated before walking through the entrance, but Fran’s spunky attitude and have no fear resolve helped me gather the nerve.
So did Jack’s hand on my shoulder and his reassuring, “Seeing a dead body isn’t easy. If you get down there and can’t do it, it’s fine.”
He had no idea.
Ghosts crowded us, and I flinched, but Fran immediately took over, waving her arms and telling them all to leave the newbie alone. She charged through the spirits like nobody’s business. “She don’t know how to help you yet. You got unfinished business, go see my Ang, she’s a pro, but leave Chantilly here alone. You’re scaring her, and that won’t do you a bit of good, you hear?”
Surprisingly, the spirits listened. Most of them just nodded and sulked away liked they’d just been scolded by their kindergarten teacher. Just one little girl clutching a teddy bear stayed. She walked by my side and smiled up at me. “You’re going to see my daddy, aren’t you?”
My eyes shifted to Fran.
“I got this,” she said. She leaned down, her face even with the little girl’s. “Who’s your daddy, sweetie?”
“Jeffrey. The man she’s coming to see.”
I pressed my hand to my chest and stopped dead in my tracks.
“You okay?” Jack asked.
“Yes, I’m okay,” I lied. But I needed to see Jeffrey.
Gen didn’t have a child, so how could Jeffrey? I didn’t want to think he’d cheated on her, but it was possible. With what I’d learned about him recently, anything was possible.
“Sweetie,” Fran said. She took the little girl’s hand in hers. “Have you seen your daddy yet?”
She nodded as they walked in front of me. “Uh huh, but he’s not here now. He went to help my mommy.”
“Where’s your mommy?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, but Daddy said he needed to keep her safe from the bad people.
Bad people?
Fran glanced back at me again and asked, “You know her mommy?”
I nodded once, and then spoke as if I was talking to Jack. “I’m just worried for Gen. She’s still in shock over Jeffrey’s death.”
Fran’s eyes softened, and she reminded me of my own mother. “Honey, is your mommy Gen?”
She nodded. “She’s very pretty. She never got to see me, but Daddy said she loved me a lot.”
I sucked in a breath and held it. I wished I could run and grab her in my arms, tell her how much she was loved, and how much her mommy wished she could be with her. And I wanted desperately to tell Gen how beautiful she was. How she had her eyes, her lips, and Jeffery’s sun kissed hair. But I just smiled at both of them because there wasn’t anything else I could do.
“I promise you honey, you’ll get to see your mommy someday.”
“That’s what my daddy said. He said she would cry happy tears.”
Heaven help me, or I was going to cry right then and there.
Fran asked the little girl if she had anyone she could go to, and she said she had a great grandmother, she liked to call her Nanny, and spent her time with her. Fran suggested she go to her Nanny, and that her daddy would be back with her again real soon.
Nanny was Gen’s grandmother. She’d died the year before Gen got pregnant. I was happy to know the baby, who Gen named Emma, had someone to love her.
Emma disappeared, but not before waving at me and telling me to tell her mommy hi.
I wanted to melt into a puddle of tears, my heart hurt and beat with joy at the same time. I would have to tell Gen, I just had to figure out how.
We arrived at the morgue, and Fran sensed my hesitation. “It’ll be fine. They ain’t any deader in there than out here.”
In some weird way, that made sense. I asked Jack if I could go in alone, and he allowed me, but not after I reassured him twice I could handle it.
He wasn’t aware of my ghostly chaperone.
The room was as I’d expected, cold and sterile and equipped with all things steel and metal. The lights reflected off the shiny, clean equipment and the large wall of cubbies for the bodies. The brightness made me squint. After a few seconds, my eyes adjusted, and my body acclimated to the cooler temperature.
The young man working there nodded as he opened the compart where Jeffrey’s body rested. I swallowed hard as Fran floated behind him, blowing in his ear. He batted at the back of his head several times. I held back a laugh, but it wasn’t easy, and I appreciated her effort to lighten up the sadness overwhelming me.
There were four other spirits in the morgue at that moment. Fran spoke to them all, strongly suggesting they go back to their little boxes–her choice of words–and leave me be, and they did as they were told.
She had a way of making me feel comfortable in an environment not at all designed for comfort, and I hoped I’d find a moment to thank her.
I had to force myself to look at my friend lying there on that cold slab, his skin ashen, his body lifeless. It tore my heart to pieces. Jeffrey and I spent a lot of time together during my marriage to Scott. When Scott up and left me for another woman, I sat in that big house in Birmingham, his note in my hand, wondering what life had planned for me and how it wasn’t at all what I’d expected. Jeffrey and Gen were the first people I told, and they rushed over minutes after we hung up our phones.
Jeffrey and Scott were friends, but as is the case with most divorces, he and Gen had to pick a side, and they picked mine. I told Jeffrey it was okay,
he could be friends with Scott and still be a part of my life, but he chose not to.
“I can’t associate with someone that tears apart his family like this,” he’d said.
As he lay there, cold and lifeless on that metal slab, I sighed at the irony in his words. Whatever Jeffrey had done had also torn his family apart and left his wife in danger. I hoped he found a way to make peace with that.
The morgue employee said he’d give me a moment, explaining I should knock on the door to his windowless office when I was ready to leave. When he closed the door behind him, I exhaled.
I touched Jeffrey’s arm with the tip of my finger and jerked it back immediately.
Fran laughed. “He ain’t gonna bite you for crying out loud, but nudging him won’t do you any good. That body don’t have an ounce of life left in it.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“What’d you come here for?”
I glanced at Jeffrey’s remains and back at Fran again. “I don’t know exactly. To see if he’d tell me what happened, I guess?”
She shrugged. “Then ask him. Give it a shot. He might show up.”
I looked at my friend, admired the smooth skin on his face. Jeffrey always had a five o’clock shadow, and he had the last time I saw him, too. It surprised me to see his face clean shaven. I hadn’t known that was something that happened after death, but I assumed there was a lot I didn’t know on the subject.
I let out a long, slow breath and whispered, “Jeffrey, what’s going on? What happened to you? How can I help Gen,” and then I waited. I waited for Jeffrey to sit up and tell me everything was going to be okay, that I’d had a bad dream, that it was all just a crazy misunderstanding. I waited, and I waited.
And then Jeffrey’s eyes popped open and he spoke, clear as day. “It’s not what she thinks.” His eyes slammed shut.
I jumped back and hit a rolling metal cart in the process. Scalpels, scissors and needles flew off it and crashed to the floor. I screamed.
Fran shushed me, and the morgue employee burst out of his office. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes. I’m fine. I’m sorry,” I said breathlessly. “I just thought...I thought I...he...his...”
“You thought you saw him move?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He shrugged. “It’s possible, but it’s rare. He’s been deceased long enough that any trapped air has likely left his body. Most of the time what we think we see is our imagination. Used to happen to me a lot when I first started, but you get used to it.”
I stared up at the lights on the ceiling and blew out another breath full of tension and anxiety. “I’m not sure I could ever get used to this.”
“You’d be surprised. People are afraid of the dead, but they shouldn’t be. Our bodies are just the pod for our souls, and once the soul leaves, it doesn’t come back. You’re just staring at the equivalent to a caterpillar that became a butterfly. Nothing left but the pod.”
He had no clue what he was talking about.
“You need more time?” he asked.
“No, I’m finished, thank you.” I’d seen enough, and I wanted to get as far away from that place as possible.
Chapter Seven
Jack waited outside and I hurried him out without offering him a whole lot of small talk.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I just want out of here. Just get me out of here.”
Unbeknownst to him, Fran led the way, and after I convinced Jack I was fine, she hopped in my car with me. After Jack pulled away, I all but hyperventilated in the driver’s seat.
“Relax. That was good. You made it through, and you aren’t headed to the looney bin.” She laughed. “Trust me, a lot of people can’t hack it when the dead wake up and chat.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I lied. I started my car and centered myself before driving off. “Does this get easier?”
She shrugged. “Does for me, but the living, the few that can see the dead, most of those never get used to it.”
“Great. Just what I wanted to hear.”
She chuckled. “You got the gift like my Angela, and you got it for a reason. Some people, they got it, but the Universe doesn’t need them, ‘cause it’s got people like you and my kid. I got it on good authority you’re going to be just fine.”
I whipped my head to stare at her. “Good author—you mean God?”
She held her hands palms up, shrugged, and then shimmered away like a Fourth of July sparkler.
“HOW DID HE LOOK?” GEN sat in the main room of the historical society, the museum section, with printed photos of several different colored flowers spread out in front of her. “Does he still look like my Jeffrey?”
I nodded once. “He does.” Save for the clean-shaven face and the ashen complexion, neither of which I had any intention of telling my best friend. “Gen, do you believe in life after this...this one?”
She smiled, and there was a glimmer of hope in her sad eyes. “I have to. It gives me comfort to know I’ll see Emma, and now, Jeffrey, too.”
“Do you think ghosts are real?”
She laughed, a genuine laugh, too. “I’ve never seen one, but according to this party I’m planning for you, they’re all over Castleberry. Maybe I’ll get to run into one when we do the tour ourselves.”
“What about psychics? They say they can talk to the dead. Do you believe them?”
“Are you kidding? They’re scammers. They do that cold reading thing. I’ve read about it. It’s all an act.”
“But what if you knew someone that could do it. Would you believe them?”
She took a moment to answer. “I guess it’s possible, but I’ve never met anyone that claimed to be able to. The only people I’ve seen saying they can talk to ghosts are the ones on TV or online, and I really don’t think any of them can.”
“But what if—"
Olivia unintentionally interrupted us with two cups of fresh Keurig coffee. We had a new pot in the kitchen we used for employees, and we loved the consistent, flavorful taste. “Excuse me,” she said, placing a cup in front of each of us. “Speaking of the haunted tour, I’ve gathered the rest of the spots I think would be perfect. Would you like to see them?”
“Yes. I love love that,” I said.
“You mean see them up close and personal, or see them on paper?”
“Paper for now, but we can go to them if you’d like. We don’t have any tours scheduled for the day.”
I patted the empty spot on the vintage velour couch next to me. “Have a seat.”
She sat and removed the papers from a manilla file she’d carried in under the coffee tray. “These are all the locations, so there are only three more to add to the video, but that shouldn’t be a problem.” She flipped through the papers until she found the one, she wanted. “This is my favorite.”
I knew the location well. An old Baptist church just outside of the town limits that had been popular back in the sixties until the pastor died tragically.
The church, a progressive one for its time, saw its congregation as a collective unit of individuals sharing a relationship with God that transcended the discord of the time, and it was all due to the pastor, Jeremiah Alabaster.
Pastor Alabaster was known as a kind, loving man with a big heart big and a forgiving soul. I often wondered if he forgave the person that set the church on fire in the late nineteen sixties, and as I sat there listening to Olivia tell the story, I thought maybe I’d be able to find out.
The church hadn’t been destroyed in the fire, but Pastor Alabaster, in an effort to stop the flames from spreading through the sanctuary, died from smoke inhalation.
The town mourned for months, and the church, though repaired, was never quite the same.
Rumor had it Pastor Alabaster still looked over his congregation, as small as it was, and sometimes appeared next to members in the pews. He’d smile and then disappear. He visited mostly on Sundays and on dates of religious importance, like C
hristmas, or Easter, but many people claimed to see him over the years.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
She showed us the other two, and we all agreed the last one, closest to the historical society, would be the perfect one to end the tour since it was a short walk back to the office.
When we finished discussing the locations, Olivia scooted away to her office to add them to the video and tour guide.
After she left, Gen turned and faced me. “So, you going to tell me why you really went to the morgue? Did you think Jeffrey’s ghost would talk to you?”
“Not really,” I lied. “I guess I just needed to see him.”
She dipped her chin and raised her eyebrows as she gave me her, I don’t believe a word you’re saying, look.
“It’s true. Jeffrey meant a lot to me. He took my side in the divorce and—”
“How could he not? I would have divorced him if he didn’t.”
We both laughed.
And then Gen cried. “I miss him. Even though he’s a thief and a liar, I miss him.”
I hugged her. “I know you do.”
THE DOOR TO THE HISTORICAL society opened as I walked into the kitchen later that afternoon.
“Chantilly?” A woman’s voice hollered.
As I stepped out of the kitchen and walked down the hall, I saw her.
Jackie Barrington, who I’d met once or twice before, stood calling for me in the hallway. “Chantilly? I know you’re here. I need to talk to you.”
“Jackie?”
She grunted when she saw me. “Harvey’s dead.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Olivia walked up and said, “I’ve got some things to attend to upstairs if you need me.”
I hoped those things were actually Gen, and that she’d keep her from coming downstairs, but I wasn’t sure. “Thank you,” I said.
Jackie placed her hands on her hips. “The police think he killed Jeffrey Avondale, but I know for a fact he didn’t.”
“Okay.” I raised an eyebrow at her, not sure what talking to me did for her. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
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