He Loves Me Not

by Matt Coolomon

That evening, Annabel was all cuddly and wanting to sit on his lap to watch television. He really didn’t get the kid at all—the way she could be so sweet one minute then do something silly the next. He opened his mouth to complain about it to her mother but paused in mid-thought. He wasn’t about to pick an argument and risk disrupting whatever was happening with Sheri. He was looking over at her bare legs, thinking about having her again when she glanced and blushed.

  12

  Wendy felt weak. Joining with the life form had drained her energy. She appeared again at the end of the bed. It was dark and silent in the house. She moved forward, slithering up the wife’s body. She sensed this would be the last time. Somehow she knew that after this experience, she would be rid of the pain and despair. She would be free from waiting and ready to move onto something new and wonderful.

  She turned onto her back and gently relaxed into the wife’s sleeping body. Her eyes opened. She squeezed her fists, feeling the flesh and bone. She took a breath. To feel air rushing into her lungs was a tremendous relief. The heart beating in her chest, the warmth of her skin—it was sheer exhilaration.

  Wendy was pretty, fit and slender. She approached the mirror, opening the pyjama top she was wearing and letting it fall from her shoulders. She admired her body, dropping the pyjama pants to puddle at her feet. She felt her firm belly and cupped her small breasts. She smoothed back her long, dark hair, then her eyes rested on the form of her sleeping husband in the mirror.

  A wicked smile crossed her face. She approached the bed, slipping under the covers and pressing against him. He was sleeping only in his underwear, and she stroked the firm muscles of his chest, tracing each curving line. The smooth skin of his back squashed her nipples, which hardened teasingly. Ah, that feels good. She was so sensitive there. This body was ready to be loved, eager for it, just as she was. She slid her hand down and cupped Randal’s penis through his boxer briefs. Even in sleep he was half firm, and he snorted, starting to stir.

  Wendy was not content with this tepid response. He needed to wake up and tend to her. She was on fire, and her time was not unlimited. She backed up and slid her hand inside his underwear, grasping his firming erection. At the same time, she bit him sharply on the neck.

  “Wha—” he began sleepily, but her busy hand was stroking up and down his shaft, and he got the idea quickly. He took a moment to strip himself then rolled over, taking her in his arms. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I’m not complaining.”

  She touched his lips with her finger, reminding him not to talk, then placed her hand on the back of his neck, pulling him into a kiss and so that he was on top of her, pressing her into the bed. It felt so good like this, in this slender body. He admired her this way, thought she was beautiful, desired her for life, not just the night. The silly wife didn’t know how good she had it.

  Wendy had it all now—this night, this body, this man. She opened her thighs, and he obligingly thrust, sliding into her wet, ready passage. He crushed her little frame in a tight embrace as he pressed into her, pulled back, and surged home again. Wendy’s borrowed body wanted to climax, was getting close to it, but she tried to hold back.

  Randal took her breasts in his hands, teasing the nipples and making Wendy moan. Then he let go and grabbed her hips, slamming into her and watching the soft little mounds jiggle. Abruptly, it was too much, and Wendy orgasmed around his sex, soft sobs of pleasure torn from her throat.

  “Aw, yeah,” her man growled, seeming delighted by her response. As she squirmed and clenched, she watched his brief grin give way to a look of concentration then one of pleasure so intense it almost looked like pain. He growled again, inarticulate as his own climax wracked him.

  He collapsed on her. In this insubstantial body, his weight was becoming painful, but Wendy didn’t fight him. This was her last chance to hold him close, and she savoured every second, wrapping her arms around his middle so she could stroke his back, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair.

  He seemed to wake up after a few moments and began to withdraw. Wendy made a sound of protest and tried to cling to him, but he was stronger and pulled away from her, rolling onto his side. He cuddled Wendy’s naked body into the curve of his, dozing off quickly. She settled in his arms, closing her eyes, drinking in every moment of contact, every tingle in her well-satisfied, mortal body.

  13

  As sleep came to the wife, Wendy’s spirit lifted from her. She floated upward. The thought of visiting the girls came to her, but she had not the strength to travel to their room. She passed through the ceiling. Her time in this world was over. A sense of loss was rising. It was filling her, as had the pain, but it was different this time. The feeling was passing through her. It was collecting fragments of memories and impressions and cleansing her of them. Her life was being extracted and cast away. It was being spread asunder, sprinkled over the collective consciousness, to meld with it, to advance it and grow it a tiny bit more. Everything her life had been was being registered as a part of the fabric of eternity.

  She clutched at the leaves of the trees but couldn’t hold on there. She was drifting higher than ever before. She was empty now, and she was being flushed through again. The sense of loss had abated, and she was being filled with bliss. Above, she could sense the conduit of souls. It was a light, but the light was not visual. It was a wonderful, glorious, all-consuming feeling of utter wellbeing. It was the bliss that had filled her, and it was drawing her home.

  She blended with it. She became a part of it, and her energy, stripped bare of all save instinct and life-times of wisdom, was swept away to another place where a new life was awaiting a soul.

  14

  “What are you doing, sweetheart?” Annabel’s mother asked.

  Annabel had rested her head on her mother’s belly. “I’m just listening, Mummy.”

  “Listening to what?”

  “Nothing.” Annabel cuddled up to watch television.

  She was soon sent to bed. She waited until the house was dark and silent then lit her mother’s candle that she had taken from the bathroom. She shook her sister to wake her. It was after midnight, and Anastasia was in a deep sleep.

  “Get up, Tasha, it’s time.”

  Anastasia rubbed her eyes, yawning. “Is it time now? How do you know?”

  “I just know. Come on, unless you don’t want to play.”

  “I want to play,” Anastasia whispered. “I want to play too.”

  Annabel took her hand and led her to the candle in the middle of the floor. She sat her little sister down then went to her bedside cabinet and opened the top drawer. She took out the daisy she had picked that day and the razor from her mother’s hair cutting things, and returned to sit opposite her sister with the candle between them.

  “Mummy’s going to give us a brother,” she said.

  Anastasia’s eyes widened. “What’s his name?”

  “We don’t know yet. But it doesn’t matter because he’s just like us.”

  “He’s like us? He’s the same?”

  Annabel nodded. “Yes.”

  “Like me and you and Wendy?” her little sister asked excitedly.

  “Shhh…” Annabel said. “We have to be quiet so we don’t wake Daddy.”

  She opened the razor and placed it next to the candle.

  “Is that to do it with?” Anastasia whispered, peering from the razor to her big sister.

  Annabel nodded. “Yes. Because we don’t need Daddy anymore. Not unless—”

  “But why don’t we need him?”

  “Because Wendy’s gone now.”

  “But where did Wendy go?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It only matters what the flower says.”

  Annabel held up the daisy. Her little sister’s eyes shone in the candle light.

  “Are you ready to play, Tasha? Are you ready to see if the flower tells me I have to cut Daddy’s neck? I know just how to cut it.”

  Anastasia nodded, her lips mum
med.

  Annabel plucked a petal. “Daddy loves me.” She plucked the next petal. “Daddy loves me not.” She plucked the next. “Daddy loves me.” And the next. “He loves me not... He loves me… He loves me not… He loves me…” She plucked each petal and paused, looking to her sister before plucking the last. She smiled lightly, the blood draining from her face, her heart slowing as a cold calmness settled within her.

  She plucked the remaining daisy petal. “Daddy loves me not……”

  Haunted Hook-up

  Prologue

  This was not life, merely flashes of some strange disjointed consciousness. This was not really happening. A moment ago Henderson had been enraged. He’d been on the auditorium balcony at work. The evil little bitch who had accused him of assaulting her had been there. He’d had his hands around her throat, edging her backwards towards the balcony rail. When he was satisfied she had stopped breathing he would thrust her over; letting her filthy little body thump lifeless onto the red carpeted aisle below.

  Had that really been only a moment ago? It had been August 1982 when he killed the lying little tramp. Or had he in fact gone through with it? He remembered the moment like it had happened over and over. The face of the girl was distorted in his mind. Was that even Viki Cranston? He was sure it had been; that long dark hair and those dark eyes.

  Henderson acknowledged the scene before him. He was in the Tucky's Tiremart showroom where his son Jack worked. The calendar on the wall displayed the year 2009. There were keyboards and screens on the counter that fascinated him. He understood they were computers. He had seen one once at a science fair.

  Visiting the tire shop was another reoccurring nightmare for Henderson. He would watch his son closing out the till at the end of his shift. His son was a man now. The last time Henderson had tucked him into bed, Jack had been a small boy. That too seemed like a moment ago. But it was all confused and tangled up with other moments in time: Jack as a school dropout working late under a car, covered in grease and grime. Coming home to his trailer and opening a can of beans for his evening meal. Heating the white powder in a spoon and drawing it into a syringe.

  Henderson had failed his family. That little bitch accusing him of rape had ended his career at the university. His wife had left town in shame.

  Jack had been a young man when Marcy had left, though. That must have been years after Henderson lost his job. But what of those years? Where was I all of that time?

  The vagueness of existence overpowered Henderson's thoughts. He was no longer in the tire shop. He was on the balcony of the auditorium. There was a play being rehearsed. A boy standing at the back of the stage watching from behind a curtain glanced, then his head lifted and his eyes widened in horror.

  Henderson floated back into the shadows. In this strange translucent form he now resided in, he didn't like to be seen.

  ***Chapter 1***

  Julie “Jules” Masterson examined the strange black box in her hand, muttered softly and twisted a dial sticking out one side of it. The needle on the display swung from red to green and back again. She looked up, scanning the auditorium. Nothing was visible to the naked eye. Nothing unusual anyway. The two-story room was filled to the back wall with embedded chairs, all pale pine-colored veneer and green vinyl seats. The walls were lined with white baffles, looking like Swiss cheese. The stage, of course, dominated the front; a vast expanse of blond boards with a medieval castle as a backdrop and three sets of velvet curtains, all open. Ropes and boom microphones hung from the ceiling, interspersed among a series of catwalks. Jules shuddered. She would not be interested in going up there. Ugh.

  Her gaze returned to the needle. Ice cold green. Her readings were, in short, unreadable. They didn’t add up to anything. She turned to a digital display screen. The readings there were also muddled, jumbled, hard to follow. And the machine was nowhere near powerful enough. It was still reading the basement. She muttered again, louder.

  The needle jumped back into the red zone and stayed there. Jules held her breath. Was this stupid machine finally going to do what it was supposed to do?

  “Hello.”

  She shrieked and jumped a foot into the air then landed awkwardly and stumbled. The auditorium seat in front of her was suddenly jammed against her leg and she lost her balance. The combination EMF detector and ground penetrating radar device she’d been tinkering with for the last month went flying, and she started to fall with it, right over the back of the curved wooden seat where she was sure to crush her ribs against the rigid arms.

  Except... she was no longer falling. A hand clutched her upper arm, pressing her back upright. A second hand on her hip steadied her. She looked into pretty brown eyes framed with the ugliest black plastic glasses she’d ever seen. If ever a set of eyewear had been designed to make a person not want to look twice, this was it.

  Her eyes skated over the hideous glasses to take in the narrow face beneath. He had decent bone structure. His nose was a trifle large but not horrendously so. And he had quite an attractive mouth. He also looked vaguely familiar.

  Jules took a deep breath and stepped back. “You scared the crap out of me,” she said, not harshly, more with a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Sorry,” the guy replied. “But at least I caught you.”

  “Yes. Thanks. You also screwed up my readings.” Where was the EMF/GPR?

  “Readings?” He sounded curious. “What readings were you taking in the auditorium at midnight?”

  “Electromagnetic fields,” she replied succinctly. “This is the only time I can scan them without getting a hundred people mixed up in them.”

  The young man turned and walked a few steps away, returning with Jules’ strange device. He handed it to her.

  “Aw, man,” she whined. “It’s broken.” No surprise there. The thing had fallen quite a distance, and it was fragile as all get-out.

  “Sorry,” he said again. She glanced at him. Under the heavy black frames of his glasses his cheeks were faintly pink. Why would he be embarrassed? And who was he? She narrowed her eyes and contemplated.

  “I know you,” Jules burst out suddenly. “Theo, right? Theo Kent?”

  “Theodore,” he replied. “Do we know each other?”

  “Yes. Your roommate is... um... dating my roommate.”

  “Oh, right.” Now his face was bright scarlet. This time Jules didn’t blame him, though. Her roommate Keller Jones and his roommate Bill Blankenship were indiscreet to say the least. They thought nothing about getting it on with a person in the next bed. They didn’t even keep it down. In the bad roommate hall of fame, it wasn’t the worst there could be, but it was quite awkward at times.

  “Um, Julie, right?” he asked.

  “Jules, please, Theo.”

  “Okay.” He was mumbling shyly. “What do you want EMFs for?”

  “Well, it’s a long story, but basically I’m working on a project for my mechanical engineering class. We’re supposed to design a machine that will be of some practical benefit to the university.”

  “EMF? But how... um... what?”

  “How does it benefit the university? Well, it’s that stupid haunting. People are afraid to come in here. It disrupts classes and leads to unstable people doing stupid things. My goal is to debunk the myth so people will go on about life as normal and stop acting like there’s something malevolent in here.” She said this very fast, all in a rush, the way she normally did when explaining her theories. When she stopped, a little breathless, Theo was just looking at her.

  “How do you plan on debunking the story?” he asked at last, his stammering tone having smoothed out considerably.

  His expression was open, curious, so she kept going. “My theory, the theory of many people, actually, is that so-called hauntings are the result of electromagnetic fields, which can trigger auditory or visual hallucinations in certain sensitive people.” Jules was talking slower now; conversing rather than pontificating.

  Theo tilted his head slight
ly. “How do you account for the fact that everyone reports seeing the same thing: the man in the brown suit?”

  “Suggestibility,” she replied smugly. “After the first person reported seeing him, everyone’s hallucinations were interpreted by their brain as that, because that’s what they were expecting to see.”

  “Humph,” Theo snorted. “You have all the answers, don’t you, Jules.”

  “Well no,” she replied, striving for humility for a moment. “I have a theory. Now I just have to prove it... or rather fail to disprove it.”

  “I can see how your EMF detector might help, but how do you know that any errant fields aren’t actually caused by a spirit? I mean, where else would they come from?”

  “My theory, and this is less well developed than the rest, is that there must be significant ground water below the auditorium. Water is electrically charged, and we know most of the state sits on top of an aquifer, so if this is a shallow spot, if the water is unusually close to the surface, I’m hoping to detect it.”

  “You know that still won’t prove anything, right?” he asked, and the look on his face told her he was expected to be assaulted.

  “I guess it might not entirely, but it’s a start.”

  “So is that the rest of what’s on there? I mean, I’ve never seen an EMF detector that complicated.”

  Jules couldn’t help smiling. This was a sharp one. “Yes, you’re right. I’ve merged an EMF detector with a handheld ground penetrating radar. Ideally it will show a correlation between shallow ground water and EMF fields. But it wasn’t working right, even before you dropped it.”

  “Excuse me?” Theo said, smiling back a little, “You dropped it.”

  “I dropped it because you startled me,” she replied.

  “Startled, nothing. You were scared out of your mind. Were you expecting the man in the brown suit, maybe?”

  Was he teasing her? This shy, bumbling nerdy boy? It seemed there was more to Theo than Jules had expected.