by Etta Faire
"I intercepted a lot of messages, so you wouldn't have to."
I patted my heart. "You are my secretary."
He ignored me. "Pretty much every murdered ghost within a hundred-mile radius wants you to solve their cases now using your channeling abilities. I'm not exactly sure why. I told them you failed to solve mine."
A couple meandered nearby with flowers and a tiny flag. So, I lowered my voice. "How on earth do they even know I solved these murders? You guys have some sort of phone?"
"Paranormal messages, and even spirits, can travel on the living. It's how I got here. I travelled on you."
Great. Now, in addition to being a medium, I was also some sort of ghost taxi and message service. It wasn't going to be long before I spit out ectoplasm; I knew it.
Jackson continued. “I told them they had to make it worth our while to do a channeling. We aren't running a nonprofit over here."
“Our while? You mean my while. I can't imagine what a ghost would have that would make solving their murder worth my while, though.”
"What about knowledge? Memories that might explain the curse. And your part in it."
I stepped back, almost tripping over the soft dirt that still covered his grave, catching the smell of the flowers I'd placed there. He knew about that picture. ”Tell me what you know now, Jackson," I said, hands on my hips. "Why do I look like that doll and who's Eliza?"
He pointed to the graves of his family. "My parents were relatively old when they had me. You may not have known that. They weren't going to have children at all because my father was convinced his children would be lost to the curse. My mother was 40 when she finally decided it was now or never and she chose now. She gave my father an ultimatum."
I nodded. It was a similar story to how I got adopted. Around 40, my mother had a "now or never" moment, and she chose adoption.
He went on. "When I met you, I was drawn instantly to you. You looked just like the doll in the closet, just like the woman who put the curse on my family so long ago. I knew there was a connection, and I felt it."
I looked up at the sky, concentrating on the clouds. "So you married me because I looked like the curse-woman?"
"No," he said, hovering by my face now. "I loved you more than you'll ever know. But your notebook full of baby names, and your mother's nagging... I knew you wanted children. I knew your 'now or never' time was coming. I couldn't give a child up to the curse. So, I chose to let you go."
"So you're trying to tell me," I said slowly, my face growing warm into anger. "That you went to strip clubs and ran around with Destiny because you were choosing to let me go?You’re delusional. I left because you were a disgusting jerk."
I looked down at my heels, partially covered in the dirt from his grave. The very grave I should be dancing on. I could not believe he was trying to hand me the "I had to date that stripper for your own good" crap.
"I know you'll never truly forgive me for all the awful things that happened, but I think if we work together, we can help a lot of people rest in peace: ones trapped in a curse, ones trapped by their own unsolved murders, maybe even end the curse at Gate House."
He stared into my eyes, in that same ridiculous way he used to try to be cute back when we were married. I searched his face for the dimple in his cheek he used to shave around, but I didn't see it in his ghostly shadow, so I turned away and looked at my watch. It was getting late and I still had a sink full of dishes to clean and an ageless dog to feed before too long.
I wasn't sure what was happening here, not with him, the house, the curse, or the ghosts that wanted my help.
But I knew it was all going to happen over my dead husband's body.
The End
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After the Suffragette’s Suicide
Copyright © 2018 by Etta Faire
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Chapter 1
Dead Clients Are So Demanding
Working with dead people has taught me that death is a part of life. Living with dead people has made me seriously wish there was a way to kill dead people.
That’s what went through my head as I snooped around the library that afternoon, something I was absolutely certain went against the strict 75-page agreement I had to sign when I inherited this Victorian two months ago. But so far, my only regret was my shoe choice.
Those damn designer, light brown, ankle booties. I had to have them when I saw them sitting on the clearance rack, lonely and forgotten. Of course, they weren’t in my section. Nothing good was ever in my section. Why did the whole world have to have a size 8?
“They’re way too small,” Shelby said, when she saw me twisting my foot at a strange angle to get them on. “You look like you’re in pain.”
“They just need to be broken in, is all,” I said, because they were only ten dollars.
And now, I was breaking them in while trying not to break my neck. The library’s rolling ladder swayed a little as I tried to stand on it while simultaneously running a hand along the dusty top shelf. My toes were numb and my foot slid forward every time I shifted my weight, because apparently, traction isn’t included in ten-dollar shoes. But I was determined to snoop. And I figured the top shelf had to be where all the dirtiest secrets were.
I tugged another antique book from its spot, and looked it over. Little Women.
“Really?” I said to no one. “You hid Little Women, from who… women?”
I shook its pages with my free hand to see if anything good was hidden there, my feet slipping out from under me as I did. I grabbed the ladder just in time.
“Oh for goodness sakes, you’re going to kill yourself snooping around like that,” my ex-husband said, suddenly appearing in the desk chair below me. His coloring seemed strong in the afternoon light streaming in through the stained-glass windows. I could make out the dimple just above his beard. He looked up. “You could’ve at least worn a skirt. Made things interesting for a lonely ghost.”
“Just as disgusting as ever,” I said, realizing I hadn’t even jumped when his ghost appeared. I was getting used to him popping in, which was a good thing; I could easily have fallen in these shoes, again. “And just so you know, dirty old men aren’t considered adorable relics anymore. They’re considered sexual harassers.”
“But… adorable sexual harassers.”
“If adorable includes getting fired, having their careers ruined, or, if they’re a ghost, watching as their ex-wife sparks up the sage.” I put the book back on the shelf and carefully climbed down, one step at a time, staring at my slippery, cute feet the whole way.
I jumped from the last step and my landing shook the entire unstable turret, reminding me that this house was designed by a crazy man back before permits and safety were a priority.
“What are you looking for, anyway?” Jackson asked.
“Secrets.”
“You’ll have to be a lo
t more specific than that around here.”
I sat down on the bright red sofa at the far end of the library and tugged off my boots, watching as my feet expanded to their natural form, like clowns from a tiny car. I opened the scrapbook in front of me on the coffee table. It was the one I’d found two months ago in this very room after the house helped me escape death.
And that scrapbook had set me on a quest to find out everything I could about the Victorian I’d inherited from my dead ex-husband, and the curse I’d apparently inherited along with it.
It probably wasn’t a coincidence that I looked exactly like Eliza, the woman who had allegedly cursed the house in the early 1900s. From our curly light hair to the shape of the mole on our neck, we were the same. We even looked the same naked. I only knew that last part because the scrapbook in front of me had a photo on the last page of Eliza dancing nude on Henry Bowman’s desk way back when.
But so far, that was about all I’d found out about the curse, other than the fact that I probably had a ghost for a housekeeper and a dog that seemed to be aging like Benjamin Buttons.
I closed the book before my perverted ex could ask to have a look at that last page or something, and ran my finger along the gold-embossed title: There Was a Crooked Man. Henry Bowman had been a crooked man, all right, making his millions off of shady brothels.
“I was actually hoping to find more books like this one,” I said.
Jackson glanced at the cover, his arms crossed to reveal the pretentious, ridiculous elbow patches on his jacket. “So, you want my help in your snooping?”
“I’m not snooping. I’m exploring my own house. Now, did you show up to annoy me? Because I don’t have time.” I looked at my cell phone to emphasize this, realizing I really didn’t have time. Shoot. I had to be at the Purple Pony in an hour.
Jackson was just as snotty as usual. “Not that I need a reason to haunt my own house, but I actually have a bit of an announcement to make.”
“You’re ready to move on to a better place. I’ve heard that happens with dead people. See you later,” I said.
“I could never do that to you, darling,” he replied. “You’d be so lonely without me. Actually, I made a decision about our first client.”
“Finally.”
He’d been interviewing entities for the last two months, trying to decide who was worthy to be the first. I was getting a little tired of hearing about it.
He went on. “It’s an honor to work with her, really. One of the oldest ghosts in Potter Grove has requested our services. Bessie Hind. She remembers my great grandfather, dear thing. Lots of stories to tell us about him, I’m sure.”
I sat on the edge of my seat. Just the mention of Henry Bowman had me interested. “What on earth does she want with a channeling, though?”
Our services had come to mean a channeling, which is an odd kind of experience where an apparition enters your body and connects with your living energy. They can take you to any day in his or her memory, and you experience it exactly the way they did — the sights, sounds, tastes, feelings. Three months ago, when I did my first channeling with Jackson, I was able to use the clues I observed to help solve the murder of some local women. I also got to eat an incredible steak.
“This ghost has been dead for a while,” I said. “She can’t have any connections to the living anymore. What does she want with a channeling?”
Jackson flew behind me, a wash of cold shot up my spine as he rushed toward the short stack of books partially hidden by the sofa I was sitting on.
So that’s where all the good books were.
After pulling off a large leather black one with gilded writing on its spine, just like the one on the table, he returned to the sofa.
“You’ve been holding out on me,” I said, pointing to the scrapbook.
He licked his finger to scan over the pages, even though there could not have been any spit to help the process.
“Do you know where any other scrapbooks are,” I asked.
“No, sorry. Just the one.” The pages blew through his fingertips. “I do know my great grandfather kept many scrapbooks, though. This is the one dedicated to his social gatherings, I think. Who knows? The old man was eccentric.”
Jackson’s almost-transparent finger stopped on an old society newspaper clipping. At the top was a black and white photo of a beautiful, young, light-haired woman with pale skin and doe eyes, staring off in the distance. She wasn’t smiling, but no one ever did in early photographs. The date said the article came from 1906. The caption: Socialite Bessilyn Margaret Hind commits suicide.
“You would think she’d remember committing suicide,” Jackson said. “I’m sure that has to be memorable.”
I ignored my ex-husband’s attempt at a joke and read out loud:
During her thirty-fifth birthday celebration at the home of her parents, Miss Hind suggested to her many guests that she would be taking a long trip and that this would be farewell for a while. Following cake and champagne, the socialite retired to her room alone where she was later found shot in the chest.
Due to the fact that she was found alone, and her room door and window had been locked, police determined the death to be a suicide. Friends and family say she was despondent over a recent break-up with Sir Walter Timbre of Landover and had confided that she was worried her chances at matrimony had passed her by.
Miss Hind was a champion for women’s rights in Landover County, most notably the controversial suffrage movement, and is survived by both her parents, Greta and James Hind and her sister, Mrs. Pleasant Brillows.
“Poppycock!” a loud voice in front of us said.
I looked up, not the least bit surprised to see the same woman from the photo in the newspaper. She was a little older than she’d looked in the article, but then, the dead rarely got to choose what picture was put in their obituary. She was dressed in a silky champagne-colored dress, probably her party dress that evening, and her hair was in a loose up-do. Beautifully Edwardian looking. She was more colorful than Jackson. I could almost see the pink in her cheeks and the blonde highlights shimmering in the overhead light.
“Bessilyn, I presume,” I said.
“I want retractions,” she demanded before I had a chance to even ask what she was hoping to get from our channeling. “That obituary is rubbish and I want a full retraction, pronto.”
“I’m not sure they do full retractions on obituaries, but even if they did, probably not on ones more than, say, a hundred years old.”
She studied my face while she floated this way and that, inspecting it. I couldn’t get over how much more lifelike she was than Jackson, and he was pretty colorful today. She touched my cheek and I actually felt her cold hand vibrating over it. “You look familiar,” she finally said when she’d finished studying every crack in my makeup. “When I first saw you at the Purple Pony, I noticed it. And now that I’m getting an up close and personal look, I’m sure.”
I nodded, slowly. “Well, I have become quite popular among the ghosts in town, or so I’ve been told.” I shot my ex-husband a look.
“Sorry, Carly doll. I should’ve mentioned she was here,” he said. “She came from the bed and breakfast.”
Bessie sat down on the desk chair. I’d never seen a straighter back or a more proper leg cross. “The Landover Bed and Breakfast used to be the Hind Estate, my family’s home. The new owner is horrible. Paula Henkel. Dreadful, dreadful person who drives like she’s asleep and snores like she’s attempting to wake the dead.”
“I heard the bed and breakfast is haunted. Now, I guess, I know whose work it is.”
She patted her puffy hairline. “Thank you. I’ll admit I had to increase my theatrics in order to get Miss Henkel to request a seance with your boss.” She looked up at the ceiling. “The antics perfectly respectable ghosts must go through to impress the skeptics. Really.”
“So you’d like retractions,” Jackson interrupted, rolling his eyes. “What is it you can offer?”
“I can tell you think retractions are foolish,” she said. She moved closer to my husband, making him back away. Jackson once told me ghosts couldn’t get too close to each other. It was like two magnets trying to get together on the same polar end. They repelled and weakened one another.
It was obvious who the stronger ghost was here. She continued. “But I was a women’s rights leader. And believe it or not, I was quite aware I was making history at the time I was making it. I cannot have people thinking I committed suicide over a man. It simply did not happen. Therefore, I want you to figure out who my murderer was, and, yes, I want full retractions on every piece of literature that talks about my suicide.” She rubbed her gloved hands together. “Shall we get started?”
Jackson held his hand up. “Hold on a second, Bessie. We talked about this. Carly needs to agree to the channeling. They’re very hard on the living. Tell us what we’ll get in return.”
“Of course,” she said. She hovered closer to me, studying my face again, turning her head this way and that. I could feel her heavy energy, and I gulped thinking about a channeling with such a strong ghost, especially one I didn’t know. My boss at the hippie shop warned me not to do them at all, that they were harder on my body than I realized.
She finally spoke. “I was going to offer you a glimpse of Henry Bowman from 1906. He was at my party that night. But I think I can do better.” Bessilyn was so close to my face I was surprised I didn’t smell her perfume. “Because now I remember where I know you from,” she said. “You’re Henry Bowman’s nanny. Or, you look just like her. Eliza, I believe. She was at my party, too, following the Bowmans around as usual, only there weren’t any children with the Bowmans that evening. Hardly a need for a nanny, wouldn’t you say?”
“Done,” I said. “We’ll do the channeling tomorrow.”