4 The Ghost of Christmas

by K. J. Emrick

  Communicate with the dead.

  “Why are you here?” Darcy asked. She shivered again. “And why did you bring all this cold?”

  “I am too angry to rest!” The ghost shimmered with his rage. “I need peace!”

  “Roger,” Darcy said as she searched for some way to calm the spirit down, “you have the option to leave. Go on to the next place.”

  “No!” he shouted, his face distorting before snapping back to the visage of what he must have looked like in life. “I was murdered! I want justice!”

  Before Darcy’s eyes, he seemed to shrink down, become smaller even as his voice became quieter. “I can’t rest until I know who killed me.”

  There it was. This was what most restless spirits wanted. Darcy sighed. Here we go again. “If you want,” she offered, “I can help you with that.”

  Roger smiled at her. The wind died down, the cold receded, and then the ghost simply faded away.

  Smudge wound his way around her ankles. “Big help you were,” she muttered. “You could have at least hissed at him or something.”

  The tom cat meowed loudly. Darcy laughed and picked him up, scratching his ears until he purred.

  Well, she thought to herself. What do I do now?

  Chapter Two

  Darcy straightened the last piece of tinsel on the Christmas tree that had been mussed by the ghost’s cold breeze. She had to smile as Smudge crawled under the couch for a moment only to re-emerge with an ornament in his mouth. He trotted over to her and dropped it at her feet.

  “Good boy. Are there anymore lying around anywhere? Our friend Roger certainly made a mess didn’t he? Who do you suppose he was?”

  Darcy carefully picked up the last pieces of the broken colored ball ornaments that were lying on the floor and threw them into the trash. The ghost had really done a number on her Christmas tree. Several of her favorite decorations hadn’t survived the violent wind that had accompanied him.

  She picked up some magazines from the floor and straightened them into a neat pile before dropping them down onto the coffee table. Smudge waddled over to her and dropped another ornament at her feet once again. She bent to pick it up and placed it back on the tree.

  Darcy propped her hands to her hips and did a slow rotation around the room. It looked like everything was back in order. While she had been tidying up she had been going over the mystery of Roger’s visit in her mind. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he was familiar to her. Somehow, she thought that she may have seen a picture of him at one time.

  If he came knocking on the door, she reasoned, maybe he had been a friend of her Aunt Millie. Maybe the picture was in her great-aunt’s journal.

  A cold gust ruffled her hair.

  The journal was at the bookstore. She grabbed her coat and shrugged into it, looking around the empty house as she did. She wished Jon were here. Just to have someone to talk to. Of course, he was already freaked out by her abilities and Roger the ghost hadn’t exactly been gentle about his request for help. Maybe it was better that Jon wasn’t here.

  Darcy stopped suddenly, one arm in and one arm out of her coat. She hadn’t meant that to sound the way it did. She couldn’t take the thought back, though. It was there now.

  She shoved her feet into her boots and headed out of the house.

  ***

  The town center looked practically deserted when Darcy cycled into it. Her bicycle was newly fitted with all terrain tires and thankfully the snow was only a dusting. She didn’t know what she would do once it got deeper.

  Outside the bookstore she leaned the bike up against the wall and quickly unlocked the door to rush inside. Twinkling white Christmas lights lit the corners of the room and the stacks of books, strung around the bare ceiling beams and pull away hooks on the walls. The tinsel taped to the end of each row of books glittered in the muted light and the cut out paper snowflakes swayed softly on their strings in the gentle breeze coming through the open door.

  She closed the door softly and went into her small office near the back of the store. There, on a shelf above her desk, she slid the journal out from between a copy of Pride and Prejudice and a first edition of Palmer’s Journal, then she sat down to read through the leather bound book her aunt had kept such careful notes in.

  In the light of her desk lamp she slowly flipped her way through the book, carefully studying the photos that were pasted into several of the pages. She had read through her aunt’s journal any number of times, and knew entire passages by heart. Was there a photo in here that could help her?

  A dozen or more pages in, Darcy saw it. A picture with a bunch of people, all of them labelled, looking like a committee for one of Misty Hollow’s many festivals. She traced her finger over the man who had visited her, standing near the back of the group in the faded photograph. His name was scrawled under the picture. Roger August. He looked exactly the same, wide face etched with fine lines around his eyes, thick dark hair turning gray. A scowl set into his mouth. There was no other information on the page to give her any idea who he was or how her great-aunt knew him.

  She had the next step, though. Now that Darcy had Roger’s full name she would go and ask Jon for help in looking him up. She decided to do that tomorrow. Jon was gone for the evening, after all, and he had said he wouldn’t be coming over.

  She tried not to let that thought bother her. They weren’t spending every night together. One night didn’t matter, in the bigger picture.

  The picture in front of her hadn’t been much help. There was a lot more about the story to learn. She slid the journal back onto the shelf and stood up to leave. She was almost to the front door when she heard the journal fall to the floor back in the office.

  “Oh for Pete’s sake,” she said as she went back to pick it up. “Millie. Stop it. I have to get home. I’ll be back tomorrow, I promise.”

  Her aunt still haunted the bookstore. For some spirits, like Roger, hanging around the mortal coil was a sign that something was unresolved from their lives. For Millie, it just meant she was somewhere she loved to be. This bookstore had been her life, so to speak, and the memories that Darcy had of being here with her would always be some of her most cherished. Millie loved to play little pranks now by throwing books or knocking things over in the store. Darcy just didn’t have time for it tonight.

  The journal had fallen back open to Roger’s photo. Darcy looked at it again, deciding she hadn’t missed anything, and putting it back on the shelf once more.

  As she turned to walk away, the book fell again. She growled between her teeth. Turning back, she saw the book was on a different page this time. A page showing a picture of one of Misty Hollow’s many previous Christmas celebrations. A group of children were on stage, singing carols. One girl stood in front of the rest of the group, doing a solo by the looks of it. The photo was dated, thirty five years ago.

  Was Millie trying to tell her something?

  ***

  The next morning Darcy cycled into town early to see Jon before he went to work. She had on her heavy winter coat. Last night’s encounter with Roger made everything seem colder somehow.

  There weren’t many people out and about this early in the day. Darcy had gotten up before dawn and headed out before seven. Jon’s shift would start in an hour or so, depending on how late he had been out last night in Meadowood. Maybe he’d decide to stay home.

  She went to the Bean There Bakery and Café to get some breakfast for the two of them first. She was delighted to see that Helen was working behind the counter again.

  There weren’t many people in the café this early in the day. Leo Hanway, who always came into the café for breakfast every day, was sitting in his usual place and was reading his morning paper. “Hello Mister Hanway, how are you?” Darcy said with a smile as she walked past him towards the counter.

  He nodded hello to her but didn’t speak as he turned a page of his paper and shook it out, holding it up in front of his face rather rudely. Darcy had alw
ays thought he was a bit of a strange man and not very likeable. He kept mostly to himself and could be a bit curt at times. He was just one of the dozens of unusual characters who lived in Misty Hollow. The place seemed to have more than its fair share.

  Darcy sighed as she turned towards the counter. “Hi Helen,” she said. Helen had come up to the counter when she was talking to Leo.

  “Hi Darcy what can I get for you?” Darcy ordered two coffees and two muffins. “Thanks,” she said as Helen set the order down in front of her.

  “Going to Jon’s for breakfast?” Helen asked with a smirk. Darcy just grinned as she left the shop without answering.

  At Jon's front door Darcy knocked a couple of times before he opened it yawning loudly. “Hey you,” he said, sleepily looking at her with his eyelids low. He was still in his pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt.

  She laughed and said, “What sort of greeting is that?”

  He rubbed a hand over his face and with a grin said, “Sorry. I’m really tired this morning.” He yawned again. His eyes lit up when he saw that she had coffee and muffins from the bakery. “Oh thank goodness, coffee.”

  She grinned back at him as he stepped aside to let her enter. Taking one of the styrofoam coffee cups from her he took a big sip. “Oh my God, that is so good.” He flopped down into one of the chairs and put the cup down onto the coffee table in front of him. He reached up like a little kid when she held up the blueberry muffin. She made him pay for it with a kiss first.

  “So how did the stakeout go last night?” She asked, sitting down next to him.

  He swallowed his mouthful before answering. “Fantastic. Got the little, um, thieves,” he said, covering up the term he obviously wanted to use instead. “We arrested them, finally, but they didn’t show up until three in the morning. That’s why I’m so tired.” He took another sip of his coffee. “But this coffee is making me feel much more human. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure,” she said as a warm glow spread through her. Any awkwardness from yesterday was gone. He was Jon again and they could sit together in comfortable silence. His eyes slid shut again for just a moment before they snapped open. She felt guilty for waking him up. “I can leave if you want to go back to bed.”

  “No, baby. Thanks, but no. It’s fine. I have to get ready for work anyway.” He shoved the rest of the muffin into his mouth and Darcy took another bite of her own. They chewed in silence for a few moments.

  “So, tell me more about your stakeout,” Darcy asked him, wanting to work up to asking him about Roger.

  He shrugged. “We arrested four men. Boys, really. The oldest was just twenty-one. It was pretty routine, but it was nice to do it the old fashioned way for a change.”

  Darcy frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”

  Jon gave her a long look through tired eyes and then said, “Lately I’ve been arresting people based on weird visions that my girlfriend has had.”

  Darcy sat back, trying not to be offended. He must not have meant it the way it sounded, she thought. She knew that Jon wasn’t completely comfortable with her psychic abilities but what he had just said…it sounded like he resented them. Now she didn’t want to tell him about her vision of Roger the ghost or ask his help.

  Darcy could feel the tears coming. There was no reason to cry. She knew that. She just couldn’t make it stop. Standing up she kissed him goodbye and quickly left without saying another word.

  ***

  The whole rest of the day Darcy was out of sorts. Even Sue Fisher, her always bubbly assistant, couldn’t bring her out of the unhappy mood she was in. Darcy had thought things were going so well with Jon, but this thing over her abilities was becoming a giant rift between them.

  She closed up at the end of the day with a sigh of relief. The bookstore was usually soothing to her but today it had been a grind. She headed over to the police station.

  In the back of the police department, after being buzzed in, she found her sister Grace. She was older than Darcy, and her dark hair was a little shorter, but the resemblance between the sisters couldn’t be denied. She looked up now from her computer screen, a little smile erasing some of the lines around her eyes when she saw Darcy.

  “Hey sis. What are you doing here? Jon’s gone home.” Grace waved at the chair on the other side of her desk and Darcy flopped into it. “What’s up?”

  Darcy explained everything about how she’d had a vision of a man named Roger August, who had been murdered. “I kind of need your help, Grace. Can you find out anything, do you think?”

  Grace studied her for a moment. “Why aren’t you working on it with Jon?”

  Darcy bit her lip and looked away. She didn’t want to try explaining to her sister the feeling she had that something might be wrong between her and Jon. She could be wrong, after all. He had been happy to see her this morning. If it weren’t for those constant comments about her abilities… “I’ve loaded him down with a lot lately,” she decided to say. “Could you do it for me this time? You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  Grace looked at her intently for a moment and then shook her head. "Uh-huh, no, that's not it. There's something else." Darcy sighed. Trust her sister's eagle eye. She took a deep breath and then explained what had happened between her and Jon that morning.

  Grace chewed on the inside of her lip. “Well, I do understand where Jon is coming from…”

  “Oh for Pete’s sake, not you too,” Darcy said with an edge to her voice.

  Grace held up a hand and said, “Your visions and whatnot can be a little hard to accept, Darcy. Even for me, someone who has known you all of your life. Doesn’t mean I don’t love you, sis. You know that Jon loves you too, right?”

  Darcy calmed down a little and nodded. “Oh, sure. I know. I just, um, don’t want to put too much on him.” The excuse sounded weaker every time she said it.

  Grace shrugged and turned back to her computer. In a few minutes she had looked up Roger August and found out that he had died some twenty years ago. “He was killed in his house on Christmas Eve,” Grace said as she read the report out loud to Darcy. “These are files that were copied over after we got our computer system, from the old paper files, so they aren’t exactly complete. It says he was shot in the back, no leads, no one ever arrested. That’s about it.”

  “That’s it? Nothing else?”

  Grace shook her head. “Guess you’ll have to rely on your abilities to get you anything else on this one.”

  Darcy pressed her lips together. Her abilities. Right.

  For the first time in her adult life, she came very close to wishing her abilities would leave her alone.

  “Twenty years ago?” Darcy repeated what Grace had said. “That means that the killer could still be alive.”

  Suddenly solving this mystery had become much more dangerous.

  Chapter Three

  Early the next morning, after a very sleepless night of tossing and turning, Darcy pulled out all of the old photo albums she had stuffed in the back of her closet. Some had belonged to her great-aunt and they’d passed to her with the house.

  Jon hadn’t come over last night either. She tried not to put too much thought into that.

  As she sat cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, she wondered if Roger August would be in any of the pictures. Worn pages flipped between her fingers, old photographs held in place with plastic corners at their edges. She started with the old albums of her aunt’s figuring that there was a greater chance of finding something useful in those. Thankfully her aunt had taken the time to leave notations under them with names of people, dates, places and so on.

  She didn’t find a single photo of Roger in any of them. What a waste of time. At least it had kept her mind off Jon for a while. She wasn’t sure what to do about him, or if she should do anything, or if she should just let it alone. If she said anything, would it make it worse? Was there anything even to make worse?

  Exasperated, she threw herself back on the r
ug with a little groan. Smudge came over to see what was wrong, nuzzling her cheek with his nose until she started rubbing his ears and neck. His purring was loud, and comforting.

  Darcy figured she could at least solve Roger’s problem. She could find out who killed him, and give his spirit some rest. Thinking on how to do that she decided she could talk to other townsfolk, particularly the people who had lived in the town for more than twenty years. There was a good chance that somebody would remember him, especially if he had been involved in town affairs like that photo in her aunt’s journal suggested.

  At least it was a place to start.

  ***

  After work that day, Darcy took a stroll through town, taking in the sight of all the pageant preparations that were going on. Several of the town’s residents were there, helping in one way or another or just watching, and she used it as an opportunity to casually ask about Roger August.

  She looked all around at the work that was being done. There were a lot of people working on the stage development, including her friends Helen, Sue and Linda. Her brother-in-law, Aaron was also working there and he lifted his hand to wave at her. She smiled and waved back at him. Clara from the La Di Da Deli was busy hammering nails into the framework and Leo Hanway was looking at some papers that looked like they may have been plans for the stage structure.

  One after another, Darcy talked to the older residents of the town. There were several people she asked who either said they had never known the man or who only remembered that he had died, and nothing more. She was beginning to wonder if Roger had made any impact on the town at all. How could he have lived here and no one remember him?

  Leo Hanway, for instance, looked bored with her questions. He didn’t seem to be helping with the work either and explained to Darcy that he was only there because the others needed to borrow his tools. He was more than happy to talk about how he had worked in construction before being forced to retire because of his cancer. He went on and on about being a foreman and how he’d even built some of the houses that were still standing here in Misty Hollow, but had no interest in discussing anyone named Roger August.