True, I hadn’t killed her. She’d taken that particular choice herself, in consultation with whatever cosmic guide she’d consulted. My failure had been in refusing to let her be fully alive.
No, she hadn’t been Diana Kelly Rognstad Steele, a creature of love and light, one of God’s special children. She hadn’t been a woman, a sacred entity that I nurtured and honored and celebrated. She hadn’t been a temple of all that was valuable and worthy.
None of that.
She’d been nothing but a dump for my pain and darkness and selfishness.
I couldn’t see her, but I felt her, and she took that journey with me, into the deepest hollows of my soul. Her eyes widened in surprise and maybe a little sympathy.
“Richard,” she whispered, and it was the voice she’d used in her most tender and generous moments, when times had been good, when we were virgins to each other, exploring and brave and not walled off from one another.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and that was enough. For the first time in my life, I’d said it without an inaudible “But...” trailing after it, backloaded with a litany of justifications and excuses for pathetic and cowardly behavior.
Tears ran down our shared cheeks, and they were as warm as the Pacific Ocean in August, as cool as lovers’ sheets when the sweat is evaporating, as hot as Diana’s cavorting flames of Hell, as icy as the finger of The Grim Reaper when he taps on your shoulder and beckons you home.
“Did you love me?” she said, and I embraced her as well as I could while wearing the same arms as hers.
“Yes, and I still do,” I said, and it was true and not at all contradictory. I looked at Lee, who seemed frozen in the real world, hunched over the note, achingly gorgeous and radiating all the light I’d come to appreciate. This love didn’t mean I was cheating or that I was in any way diminished or duplicitous.
I hadn’t realized in my stinginess that there is not a limited supply of love, and that it flows through us from someplace beyond us, someplace better than us. And we are only conduits, and our job is to simply keep the pipeline open and let it gush instead of tightening the valves through our fears.
“I love you and I always will,” I said. “Forever.”
That confession must have leaked through the borders of the dead and living, because Lee’s head lifted. She looked over at the portion of the wall where I was immersed in my dead wife.
“Finish it,” the goon commanded.
Lee gave a wry twist of her lip, turning up one corner in a smile that somehow seemed a secret signal. Approval, maybe? Understanding?
Diana’s warmth flooded me, all the verdant, fecund moistness in which she’d enveloped me countless times, and I felt her rising into the ether.
“Mission accomplished,” she said. “I’m free now.”
And the resentment was gone, just like that, swept up on a breeze as I wished her Godspeed and happiness.
The last echo was her whisper. “I love you, too.”
Diana’s work was done, but mine wasn’t. I brushed the invisible tears away and took inventory of my powers. Even without flesh, I had carried a heavy weight around inside, and somehow dragging it into the light had killed the poisoned darkness inside. Still, my spiritual batteries had been drained by my stubborn clinging to old ways, past damage, and unrequited guilt.
I didn’t think I could pull off another materialization. I had to do something, though. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Lee die unfairly, even if dying brought her to my side of the spirit world.
The goon with the gun had an Errol Flynn mustache and was smart enough to wear gloves. I had no doubt that Lee’s fingerprints were on the gun’s handgrip, and the rifle that had killed me was planted in the closet. I hovered over Lee, sniffing her hair, reading the words she had written:
The guilt is too much to bear. I’m sorry for what I did to you, Richard. You were the only one I ever loved. And that’s why I couldn’t let you love somebody else. Wherever you are, I’m sure you understand.
I can’t pay for my sins, but at least I can keep myself from hurting anyone else.
Lee
Anyone that knew Lee could see that her handwriting was wrong. She held the pen in a different position than usual, between two fingers instead of one and her thumb. What a smart woman. A gun at her back, and still rational enough to throw some kinks into a near-perfect crime by leaving a puzzle for the handwriting experts.
“Nothing personal,” said the goon. He even smelled like a lawyer, pungent with cologne and garlic and wine.
“I hope you fry in Hell,” she said.
“The only place I’ll be frying is on the beaches of Singapore,” he said, bragging with the confidence of a sleazy crook who thought he was getting away with murder. Make that two murders. And he’d been smart enough to stick a frame on Bailey as well, if worse came to worst. That and millions of simoleons would buy him plenty of time to skip the country.
Lee put the pen down. “The police are probably watching my apartment. They’ve already questioned me once.”
“And the pressure has driven you to suicide,” the goon said. “Guilt is a real bitch, isn’t it?”
She sat back and looked out the window. The sun broke through, and the shadow of a palm tree fell across her face. Her eyes were hard, set in that determined look that I knew so well. She would not give her killer the satisfaction of making her squirm.
“You know what I can’t forgive you for?” she asked, as if the gunman were a wayward child. “For taking away the only things I wanted to live for. You took my Richard, and now you’re taking me from the father I’ve always wanted to have.”
“Cry me a river.”
I concentrated, trying to muster some flesh. If the lawyer and Bailey DeBussey and Bailey’s jar-headed lover enjoyed a life of luxury, they won. If Lee died, I failed. If I couldn’t will myself into action, I lost. And eternal love wasn’t something you got many second chances at.
Now that I’d cleaned out the crypt inside my sorry soul, I had no desire to let dust gather in the corners.
I flitted to the goon’s ear and penetrated the canal until I was at his eardrum. Come ON, I thought, Make it happen.
What did my caseworker say? Faith. It’s all about FAITH.
I was screaming inside, but I only managed a slight whisper. “Hey, you.”
The lawyer cocked his head and scratched his ear.
Faith.
I looked at Lee’s face and tried again, raising my voice to gnat level. “It’s God, you idiot.”
“Huh?” The goon glanced around, his mouth parted in confusion.
“You’ve been a very bad boy,” I whispered. Psychic razors slashed at my essence, my batteries pulsed with the last flicker of a charge, but I kept going. “God doesn’t like bad boys.”
Maybe it wasn’t my place to play God. Maybe they’d hold that against me later. But the administration at The Bright Place set the rules, not me. They’re the ones who gave me power and a mission. And another chance.
They had taught me to hope. And, to hell with it, I was just a conduit, after all. “God’s not happy with you.”
The goon shook his head. His gun hand dropped to his side. He’d forgotten Lee in his surprise.
“God’s going to have to kick your ass now,” I whispered. Lee swung a leg out, making contact and sending the gun clattering across the floor. She exploded from her chair, delivering a flurry of chops and kicks to the poor guy’s neck and stomach. The air rushed out of him as I backed away to enjoy the show.
Lee was good. Took her thirty seconds to wipe him out, and she didn’t even make him bleed. He would have some nasty bruises, though. She’s merciful, but not to a fault.
She tied his hands and called the police. I tried to summon myself into flesh, desperate with desire, but I was gone, done, used up. She was already out the door.
If she had heard my God imitation, she hadn’t recognized my voice.
***
13.
> Later, I drifted through Uhlgren’s office. He was telling the District Attorney about the case. Turns out that Ron Wesmeyer’s lawyer had actually worked his way through law school as a hit man. When he saw a chance to make a two-million-dollar cut, he fell back on old habits, though his ultimate plan was to filch the whole 10 mil himself.
The lawyer fingered Bailey and her boyfriend. Bailey was the mastermind of the whole setup. I guess smarts run in the family, same as looks. Too bad Bailey wasted hers, unlike her sister.
That was my only regret. Lee had finally found her family, except one of the bunch had turned rotten. Well, you can’t ask for everything, especially in Los Angeles, and doubly especially around Christmas time. You can, but in my experience, you’re just wasting your prayers. I guess even hope isn’t unlimited.
I spent most of my remaining time hanging around Lee’s place. It was a joy just watching her daily rituals, her karate routines, her laundry, her visits with her father. They were getting along great. She was going to be just fine.
I only had one more piece of unfinished business on this Earth.
***
14.
I had a beautiful funeral. I didn’t know I had so many friends. It was good to see Wesmeyer by Lee’s side. The priest’s eulogy was so inspiring that you’d think I was up for sainthood.
Lee put a gorgeous bouquet on my chest, white roses, bluets, and yellow lilies, all grown in her garden. The morticians had done a swell job. I looked as if I were sleeping and visions of sugarplums were dancing in my head. As the mourners filed out and got into their cars to drive to the cemetery, Lee went back to my coffin for a last look.
Faith.
It’s about faith, a belief in right and wrong and justice and hope and love. Love, as in caring about something bigger than your own sorry hide, but also believing in yourself enough so that you had something to give. No, not just believing in yourself, but believing in your piece in the great puzzle, something that fits but not always to the shape you like. Somebody or something, maybe some grinning guru in a corner office of The Bright Place, had a better plan. I drew strength from those things. I could do it. I could live again, if only for a moment.
In the last pew sat Miss Titanic. She grinned, then frowned and pointed to an invisible wristwatch, then held up five fingers. Five minutes left to be dead and alive.
I spent the last of my energy incorporating myself. Lee’s moist eyes widened, but she didn’t scream. She’s not the kind of lady that gets thrown all out of kilter over a little thing like the ghost of her dead lover. Or maybe her father had told her about my visit.
“Hiya, honey,” I said, trying to be suave, which is kind of hard for a corpse.
“Richard?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“But you’re...you’re...”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“Oh, sweetie,” she said, and more tears rolled down her pretty cheeks. I didn’t think you could squeeze that much water out of a person. It made me feel good, in a strange way.
“Listen, babe, I don’t have much time.” I wiped her tears away, glancing behind me to make sure the priest didn’t have his convictions rocked by my appearance. Only one ghost was sanctioned by the church, and that was the Holy Ghost, not Richard Steele. Fine by me. I had other temples to walk through.
The priest was occupied bottling holy water or something, so I went on with what I needed to say. “Here’s the deal. I didn’t say this as much as I should have. But I love you. Forever.”
More tears. This time they were mine.
Ghost tears are cold, serious stuff.
Lee gripped my hands. I stammered, shivering, my earthly molecules about to disintegrate for the final time.
“I don’t mind if you find another guy,” I said.
When she shook her head, I squeezed her hands. “You might not feel like it for a long time, but you might someday. I’m just asking one thing.”
“Anything,” she said, the heartache plain in her voice.
“Save the last dance for me, will you?”
She nodded, laughing and crying at the same time.
With a last effort of will, I kissed her hard enough for her to be sure she wasn’t hallucinating. My lips went numb, then my fingers, then all my borrowed flesh.
“By the way,” I whispered. “Thank you for the flowers. You throw a lovely funeral.”
Then I was mist, scattered on the winds of time and the universe, gone to whatever this nice bright place is.
I like to think it’s heaven.
I’m an optimist, you know.
THE END
Table of Contents
###
A man channels his dead wife during a paranormal conference, disturbing demons at a haunted hotel where even angels can’t be trusted.
SPEED DATING WITH THE DEAD
By Scott Nicholson
Copyright 2010 Scott Nicholson
Published by Haunted Computer Books
Table of Contents
For my #1 fan and #1 stalker…you know who you are.
Speed Dating with the Dead
Chapter 1
“And here’s our most haunted room, Mr. Wilson.”
The brass name plate over the hostess’s breast read “Violet,” an old-fashioned name that didn’t match her JC Penney pants suit. Early twenties and attractive, the make-up failed to hide the hard years around her eyes. But Wayne Wilson had logged his own hard years, and he hid them in the coffin of his heart.
“Call me ‘Digger,’” he said.
“‘Digger’?” Violet said.
“I have this little undertaker thing going on,” he admitted, feeling a bit sheepish under her blue-eyed stare. “The top hat and Victorian coattails. Part of the gig.”
Wow. Beth, if you really are here, you’ll see what a cartoon I’ve become.
But the dead stayed dead, and the best thing about them was they weren’t in a position to second guess. But the worst thing about them was they weren’t around when you needed them.
“So, have you ever had any experiences here?” Wayne asked, eyeing the décor and fighting the rush of memories.
“I’ve never had a honeymoon, and I would choose somewhere a little more exotic than the North Carolina mountains. Like maybe Dollywood or Paris.”
“I meant ‘supernatural experiences.’”
“Just those brain-dead zombies who hit on me at the bar.”
Wayne was only half listening. The master bedroom of Room 318 had changed little since his stay 17 years earlier. The roses on the wallpaper had yellowed, and each wall held an autumnal mountain landscape. Imitation Queen Anne furniture, chipped and scarred by cigarette burns, a plush purple carpet in which rodents could reproduce, and the king-size, four-poster bed were the same as his honeymoon night.
Even the throw pillows appeared unchanged, skinned in greasy satin and leaning against the headboard the same way his and Beth’s heads had leaned on a cold autumn night. Before they opened the door.
“The manager’s pleased you chose the White Horse for your conference,” Violet said.
I didn’t choose. I was chosen.
“You have quite a reputation,” Wayne said. “Nobody keeps their ghosts secret for long.”
“Ghosts are good for business. Especially in the off-season.”
“It should be good for both of us.”
“We booked about 50 for the weekend.”
“Too bad you can’t charge your invisible guests. You’ve got at least three here in 318.”
“Ah, you’ve been browsing the Ghost Register,” she said, referring to the journal at the front desk where guests and staff had faithfully recorded their encounters.
One of the victims had been a stock broker who had suffered a heart attack during his honeymoon, and though the urban legend maintained he’d died on top of his new wife, the Rescue Squad report said he’d been discovered on the floor with half a corn dog in his mouth and an empty bot
tle of champagne sitting in a tin bucket of water.
The second was a jumper, a documented death in which a distraught tool fabricator had launched into a frothing rant about a two-timing, backstabbing bitch before launching himself off the balcony in a fall that would likely have resulted in nothing more than a few fractures if he’d have missed the lamp post. You could call it coincidence, you could call it bad luck, but it made for a better campfire tale if you called it “the Wicked Hand of Evil.”
The third victim was the most interesting to Wayne, because it didn’t have the glib familiarity of the other deaths, which were not much different than those suffered at any of America’s century-old hotels. As the manager, a powder-dry walking mummy named Janey Mays, had put it, any building with a few generations behind it would end up with a slate of strange happenings.
Janey hadn’t recognized him from his long-ago visit. But why should she? He was young and happy then, a clean-shaven newlywed and 100-percent demon free.
“What do you know about Margaret Percival?” Wayne asked Violet.
“Just the stuff in the register.” Violet opened the television cabinet as if to make sure the maids hadn’t stolen the TV.
“West Virginia woman, checked into this room in February, 1948.”
“I don’t think the color scheme has changed since then.” She whacked the dark floral pattern on the velour curtain, and a lazy haze of dust spun in the sunlit window.
Margaret was a war widow, in town for a reunion of the Camp Creek Sisterhood, a collective of well-to-do white teenagers who spent the summers of the Great Depression in their one-piece, baggy swimsuits, canoeing, singing “Tomorrow” around the fire, and talking about boys, when they weren’t sneaking off in the dead of night to meet them at movie theaters and fumble in the dark.
Perhaps the reunion was an opportunity to recapture the lost innocence of youth, or perhaps Margaret was seeking a veneer of respectability after a notorious past. But she never made it to the reunion luncheon, because between the hours of 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. early one Sunday, she vanished from the face of the Earth. Police reports hinted that she might have been in the “family way,” and a single mother and alleged prostitute might sneak across the border to get rid of the problem.
Scott Nicholson Library Vol 3 Page 45