by Bree Verity
“Except it’s me, Marc. I don’t tell spook stories.”
“You’re right,” he said with a nod. “And I promise I’ll listen properly after rehearsal, okay? Without prejudice.” He took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. She begrudgingly accepted the kiss he offered.
“Without prejudice?”
“Sure.”
“Right.” Her voice conveyed her skepticism.
“What?”
“You’re prejudiced before you even start.”
He heaved a sigh. “Pen, you’re gorgeous but fuck you’re hard work sometimes.” He gave her a cheeky wink and went to his place by the curtain.
“Five minutes!”
“Penny! Is there really a ghost?” Amber led the girls from the cast as they crowded around Penny, excitement shining in their eyes. “Chris said you thought he was the ghost, and that you were really scared.”
Chris strolled up, a shit-eating grin on his face, and Penny scowled at him. “I was not scared. He just startled me, that’s all.”
“And Jane said you found something.”
Penny sighed. She wasn’t going to hear the end of this. “Yes, I found something but I’m not going into it now, because there are two minutes ‘til the curtain goes up, and you guys need to get into position.” She frowned at the girls, who scuttled away, nattering between themselves and deepened her frown even more for Chris, who still stood cockily beside her. “Did you have to tell them?” she asked.
“Happy to,” was his offhanded reply.
“Well, next time, don’t.”
By the time the break between acts came around, Penny could have screamed. The number of people who came up to her and asked her about the ghost was out of control. And it seemed that their preoccupation was messing around with their memories as well - all the lines were all over the place, and Jane was starting to get irritated. She came backstage, where everyone was seated, just chatting or getting a cuppa. One or two were outside the stage door having a smoke.
“What’s going on tonight?” Jane asked mildly, although Penny could see she was a little on edge.
Becca replied, a little sheepishly, “We just can’t stop thinking about the ghost.”
Jane’s eyes whipped to Penny and then back again. “Ghost or not, we have a show going up in two weeks. Focus people!”
“But is there a ghost?”
Jane sighed. “Pen found a letter under the floorboards in the furniture room, apparently from Edwin Turner. I think it’s a fake.”
“What did it say?” By now, just about everyone was crowded around, eager to hear.
“Well,” Jane replied, obviously considering how much she would tell the cast. “It said he was a kleptomaniac and that he killed himself because he couldn’t stop stealing things.”
“Did he kill himself in the house? Is that why it’s haunted?”
Penny jumped in. “We don’t even know if he did kill himself, or if the letter is real, or if Edwin Turner did have a problem at all. It could all be an elaborate hoax.”
“Then why do you believe it?” The question came from Marc, who stared hard at Penny, his brows drawn together.
She paused for a long moment then, face flushing, she replied, “There are too many coincidences.”
The room exploded with questions, and Penny instantly regretted her words. How could she explain the brush of cool air on her neck? The pity and understanding she felt for poor Edwin? And how could she explain all the things in Edwin’s confession that matched up to what was going on around here?
“People!” Jane shouted. “People!” The room quietened down. “We have a rehearsal to finish. Ghost talk can come later.”
“Except the handkerchief is missing again.” Cerise’s voice came from over by the props table, trembling and soft. Like some kind of curtain, the people backstage peeled back to make a corridor between Penny and Cerise. Penny could see that Cerise was freaked out. She hastened to her side.
“That’s got to be someone playing a joke, Cerise,” she encouraged, placing her hand on the other girl’s arm. “I mean, what kind of a ghost would do something like that?” A kleptomaniac poltergeist, that’s who. Cerise nodded and swallowed. Penny gave her a smile.
Once again, they searched for the hanky, finding it under a pile of costumes in the ladies dressing room. Cerise took it, although she regarded it with loathing and touched it only as much as she had to. Penny decided then and there to replace it with another one from the wardrobe. How do you like that, Mr. Turner?
By the end of the rehearsal, Penny’s neck was aching, and she thought if she heard one more word about ghosts she would scream. It seemed by coming out in belief of Edwin, she had opened herself up to every single other person in the cast and crew telling her about their own ghostly encounters. She massaged the muscles in her neck, and then tensed when someone else pushed her hands away and took over, only relaxing when she smelled Marc’s fragrance. She leaned back into him. “What a night,” she groaned. “That feels so good. Just keep doing that. For about three hours.”
Marc chuckled behind her. “My fingers may never survive.”
“I’ll make it worth their while.” She tried to make the words sound sultry, but even to her own ears all she managed was tiredness.
“I don’t think you’d make it through three hours.” He kissed her neck.
“Just because I’m asleep doesn’t mean I can’t continue to enjoy a massage,” she argued.
He barked out a laugh, then continued to plant little kisses on her neck. “Tell you what. I’ll massage your neck until you fall asleep, and then tomorrow morning, I’ll tell you that I kept going until the three hours was up. Deal?”
She turned in his arms and put her own arms around him. “Deal.” She tiptoed up and kissed him.
“You guys ready to go home?” Jane appeared from the stage area, all her bags in her arms. “I’m going to forgo the pub tonight. All this ghost talk has got me edgy.”
Penny nodded. “Sorry about that.”
“Not your fault,” Jane responded. “We both should have kept our mouths shut until rehearsal was done.” She smiled at Penny. “It's pretty cool to have a real ghost.”
Penny wasn’t so sure. Edwin seemed to like trouble.
Chapter Thirteen
Dr. Johnson wore a floaty, feminine top today, but Penny still couldn’t get the image of a sergeant-major out of her head.
“So, what’s been happening this week?” asked the doctor, looking at Penny over the top of her glasses and smiling. Penny smiled back.
“Well, we found a ghost at my theater.” Seemed to be as good a place as any to start. It couldn’t make the doctor think she was any crazier than she already did.
“Interesting,” replied Dr. Johnson, one eyebrow raised. “What do you mean, you found a ghost?”
As Penny told the story, she wondered whether the doctor’s conversations were really code for something else, that she listened to Penny’s words for verbal cues of other things. She supposed that would probably be so - after all, psychologists are the ones who analyze the mind, and there would be no analysis without gathering of data.
“You seem to be a little bit absent today,” the doctor remarked, and Penny flushed.
“Just thinking about other things,” she offered, and then internally groaned. That was probably exactly the kind of thing Dr. Johnson wanted to hear.
“What’s on your mind?”
Penny gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Right now? I was thinking about how you must have to listen over and above just having a conversation, so you can get an insight into what a person is actually saying.”
“You mean me, as in therapists?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Johnson smiled and took off her glasses. “Penny, most of what you say in here comes directly out of you. I might ask a question to lead your thoughts in a specific direction, but my purpose in being here is only to facilitate you working your own way through your ow
n thoughts. And if those thoughts become frightening, or overwhelming, or dangerous, I’m here to walk you back to a place where you can have control.”
Penny took a moment to consider the doctor’s words. She didn’t like the thought of someone else digging around in her memories. But the way the doctor put it, it was more like Penny herself was doing the digging, and that Dr. Johnson was just there to lend a hand with the shovel from time to time, or to dig her out if there was a tunnel collapse or something.
She chuckled at her own analogy then flushed when she realized Dr. Johnson looking at her askance.
“It's okay, I was just laughing at my own thoughts.”
The doctor raised one eyebrow but smiled back at Penny. “I know we haven’t really had time enough together to build much trust, but I hope you can believe it when I say I’m here to help. Not judge. Not tell you what to do. Just to listen, ask questions, answer your questions, and apply what I know to try to help you.”
The sergeant-majorishness seemed to melt away, and Penny found herself looking into a pair of sympathetic blue eyes.
She looked away. It was uncomfortable, this talking about yourself. Especially when she was the type of person who had always shrunk back, happy for everyone else to be in the spotlight.
But no. That wasn’t exactly true. It was only since the pregnancy that she had been that way. Before that, she was just as outgoing and talkative as Lydia and Desiree.
Penny desperately wanted to be that person again. Free of blame and guilt and having the courage and audacity to say exactly what she was thinking. But the very thought of it also terrified her. She had been so passive for so long.
Could she go back? Was it possible that Dr. Johnson would be the way back for her?
In that moment, Penny decided that she would try.
“I appreciate that, Dr. Johnson,” she said. “And I have to say, although the thought of dredging up all my memories and feelings makes me feel sick to my stomach, but I hope you can help me.”
The doctor’s smile widened, crinkling her eyes. “Good.”
Penny exhaled a long breath that she didn’t realize she had been holding.
“Alright,” she said. “Where do we start?”
“Have you had any panic attacks this week?”
“I don’t think I’ve had any since I was here last, but the underlying reasons for them are still there.”
Penny heard her voice tighten and tried to blink back the tears that threatened to fall. She didn’t need to start bawling this quickly into the conversation.
“Oh?” said Dr. Johnson. “Have you thought about what the reasons are?”
Penny nodded, her lips pressed together. “There’s a few things. The stress of keeping such a secret from my best friends. How much I’ve changed since the pregnancy and abortion.”
Okay, it was time. The tears started to drip down her cheeks, not one at a time, but more like a flood that had been building up in her tear ducts for the past thirteen years, just waiting for this moment to come spilling out. “And the third thing is...”
She gulped and pursed her lips. She didn’t want to say this out loud. Saying it to someone else would be confessing a secret she never, ever wanted to let out, ever since she realised it for herself.
“The third thing?” Dr. Johnson prompted.
“I wish I’d never had the abortion.”
To the doctor’s credit, her face stayed impassive, although Penny noticed her lips tighten, just a little.
“How long have you felt like that?”
Penny smiled sadly through her tears. “Since soon after the abortion, but I think it was even while the appointments were being made.” She took a deep breath, and then whooshed it out, accepting with thanks the tissue Dr. Johnson offered her. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“It’s a sizeable secret to keep for such a long time,” admitted Dr. Johnson. “Did you want to talk a little about it?”
“Yes.” Penny surprised herself, but now that she had let the cat out of the bag, she actually really wanted to talk. “When I first told my parents that I was pregnant and wanted an abortion, they were so good to me. They basically screened me off from all the negativity that might be there. They took over organizing doctors’ appointments and clinic appointments and things, they drove me wherever I needed to go, and I was never alone going through any of that stuff.”
The doctor nodded. “The support of your family during that time must have been a great relief.”
“It was,” agreed Penny, “only by that time I was wondering if it was the right thing to do, but I felt like I didn’t have a choice anymore, that I was being swept along and that things were too far along for me to change my mind.”
The scalding tears continued to flow as she took her mind back to that time, thirteen years ago. Shocked by her boyfriend’s abandonment, scared of telling her parents and her friends that she was having a baby, but just as scared of having a termination, it had seemed the obvious choice for someone as young and clueless as her to make. She wasn’t ready for parenthood. Blind Freddie could see that.
“So, I just did what I was told, went to the appointments I needed to go to, and the abortion happened around me. It was only when they started the suction that my mind started screaming at me.” Penny rubbed her face with her hands, not caring if she ended up with mascara from one side to the other. “I thought about the child, and the fact that I was taking its life away before it even had a chance to do anything. I thought I could be terminating the next Picasso or Mozart. I could be killing the person who was supposed to come up with the cure for cancer, or diabetes or something. But even if they were only going to be a regular person, who was I to decide if that person lived or died?”
Sobbing outright by now, Penny covered her face with her hands, her words muffled. “But by then it was too late. It was all over.”
Dr. Johnson left Penny to sob for a few moments but came to sit beside her and pat her shoulder, murmuring noises of comfort that weren’t really words, just soft sounds.
When Penny’s cries started to settle, she pulled her hands away from her face and looked at the other woman. “I pushed my feelings down deep. There was no way I was discussing it with anyone. I didn’t want my parents to feel any of my guilt, and I resented them for pushing me along, even though I knew I was what I’d asked for and I just didn’t want my friends to know anything about it. So, I insulated myself a bit, you know, boxed myself in a bit, became way more passive than I wanted to be. But by doing that, I could forget about my baby. But now? The thoughts are coming just on their own. And I think I need some kind of closure to make it all go away. But how do you get over the fact that you killed another human being - and not only that, one that you helped bring to life in the first place?”
Dr. Johnson nodded in sympathy. “It’s going to be tough, Penny. What we’re looking at here is bringing your memories to the fore, acknowledging them, and forgiving them. And the only person who will be able to do that will be you.” She smiled. “But I can certainly help.”
“Can you? How?”
“Oh, I have a few tricks up my sleeves,” Dr. Johnson said airily. “Ways of working through your own feelings and letting yourself acknowledge and let go. But,” she leaned forward and took off her glasses, “I do think there are a couple of other things you will need to do as well.”
“What’s that?”
“I think eventually you’ll need to come clean with your parents and friends.”
Penny blew out a big sigh. “I’m not sure I can do that. I mean, I could probably talk to my parents, but my friends don’t know anything about this at all.”
“Well, let's start with working out how you might approach your parents, then, can we?”
“Okay.” Penny grimaced. “It’s not going to be easy, is it?”
Dr. Johnson smiled. “Probably not, but with a few strategies, I think we might be able to make it easier for you. Did you want to do that?
Work through how you might approach them?”
Penny nodded, hoping for the first time in a long time that maybe she could get a handle on these feelings. With a smile, she launched into discussion with Dr. Johnson.
Chapter Fourteen
“A real ghost?” squeaked Lydia with glee.
“Yep.” Penny looked at her two friends over the top of her skinny latte - Lydia, goggle-eyed and excited, and Desiree, scoffing and disbelieving.
“Stealing stuff, blowing cold air on me, turning off the lights… you name it, he’s done it.”
It was Wednesday, and the girls were back at their favorite cafe.
Desiree sat back on the couch. “I don’t believe it. A klepto-poltergeist? Seriously? It’s someone pranking you.”
Penny’s brows drew together in a tiny frown. “But there’s just too many unexplainable things, Des. Like the letter. I swear the dust on the floor wasn’t disturbed. And it would’ve been, if someone had gone in there and planted it.”
Desiree shook her head. “Everything must have a practical explanation, Pen.”
“Well, you’re welcome to try. I’ve been wracking my brains for the past couple of days, but in my mind, everything points to an honest-to-god ghost.”
“I think it’s exciting,” chimed in Lydia, her eyes sparkling. “I’d love to have a ghost. That would be cool.”
Desiree snorted. “Yeah. Because a ghost who likes to pinch things and switch off the lights at inopportune moments is so cool.” She rolled her eyes at Lydia, who promptly stuck her tongue out back at Desiree.
“Believe me, there’s nothing cool about it,” Penny said. “He’s a nuisance more than anything. Keeps stealing props.”
“Why would he steal props?”
“He seems to have this fixation on a handkerchief. According to the letter, the last thing he stole before he killed himself was a handkerchief that his wife had promised an old lady she would look after. And he never gave it back.”
Lydia’s eyes rounded even more. “It’s the same handkerchief,” she breathed.