by Misty Simon
She turned to her dad. “I’m going. Watch over him and do not let anything happen to him.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“You’re not. Don’t even think about it. The square is right out the window. You can keep an eye out from here, but I have to go, and I don’t want Becker alone. Don’t let me down.”
She didn’t wait for him to answer as she ran back through the doorway and down the back stairs. They’d probably been servant stairs at one point. They served just fine now by giving her an escape route that involved not seeing another person until she hit the bottom floor. She tore out of the building, rounded the corner to the front, and dodged cars as she made her way to the gazebo.
“You getting yourself killed is not going to help my heir.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Let’s just get this done.”
The good ghost—she hadn’t even asked his name before letting him put himself in possible danger—took the throat of Pomf with one hand and put his other hand on the closest statue. It happened to be the bike shop guy.
Color returned to his hair first, then his face, his shoulders, his arms, and on down. Mel couldn’t see beneath the muumuu, and she most certainly didn’t want to, but she rushed to his side when he appeared to be toppling over. She plunked him on the nearby bench and ran back to get the next one.
The ice cream shop owner was next. He, too, almost fainted, and Mel dragged him to the bench to sit next to Mr. Foster. Mrs. Buzzard was next. If Mel had been a betting girl, she’d have money on the older woman coming back in Technicolor, screaming her head off.
With each replacement of a person’s energy, Pomf was becoming less and less substantial. She’d brought the pieces of the washboard with her as Great-Grandpa had ordered and thought she might know what the end game would be.
Mrs. Buzzard didn’t exactly scream her head off, but she didn’t faint. Surprising Mel, she was very acquiescent as she was led to the bench to sit with the two men. Finally, they released the librarian. Mel put her on the steps of the gazebo, since they’d run out of room on the bench.
“Now what?” she asked, taking in the two translucent ghosts standing before her. Pomf was struggling weakly, probably drained from more than just losing the life force of the people around her.
“This is when I need you.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to give you pieces of him, and we have to put each piece into the separated pieces of the frame and the final piece of him in the washboard itself. Then you need to bury each piece in a different part of the junkyard and never let them touch each other again.”
Mel felt a presence behind her.
“Who the hell are you, and why do you look so much like me?” Becker had arrived, followed closely by her father.
“No questions now, Becker,” Mel said. “We’ll talk later. Right now I need to get this done.”
Great-Grandpa touched Mel’s fingers, his hand hovering over hers as she held out each piece of the frame. A shriek sounded in her head but not out loud, as Becker didn’t even flinch at the noise and neither did her father.
Finally, it was done, and she folded each piece into a sheet of the newspaper she’d found on the bench. She’d bury these as far from each other as her acreage could possibly allow.
“Done.” She dropped the pieces into a shopping bag.
“Get those in the ground as soon as you can,” Great-Grandpa said. “And take care of my boy here. He’s a special one.”
Becker stood up straight from his crouch next to Mrs. Buzzard, who was sobbing. “We need to get these people home.”
“Leave it to my father. We have things to do.”
“Okay.”
Darren Hargrove sputtered, but he could handle this. He was used to processing things, dropping them off, and leaving. He was certainly up to the task.
When they reached her car, she stopped short. “Um, where did the ghost go?”
Becker gave her a strange look. “I thought he was in the bag.”
“No, I mean the one that looked like you?”
“What one that looked like me?”
“Well, the one who called himself your…” She trailed off because just then Great-Grandpa peeked out of Becker’s pocket with his finger to his lips. He mouthed the words another time before sinking back into the pocket where she knew Becker kept his family heirloom pocket watch. How had he made Becker forget what had happened?
Another time, indeed. That time might be sooner than the ghost anticipated. She needed to load him in the book if he was going to be hanging around, and she didn’t like the thought of keeping a secret from Becker. Especially one so personal.
“So, Becker, where’d you get that watch?”
He launched into the tale of how it had passed down through the generations on the twenty-first birthdays of oldest sons, and how it was supposed to be a good luck charm.
They’d go back to the junkyard, plant this bad guy in the back forty, and then she’d bring out the watch if she had to, in order to get Great-Grandpa to ’fess up. Becker needed to know what he carried around with him all the time, and she wasn’t going to be the one who told him. She’d just be the one there to help him decide if he wanted to cart around a ghost all the time, when the moment came.
And that was good enough to hit the play button on her tape deck and have Def Leppard pound out about some sugar as they drove the seven miles out of town to the place she lived and worked and maybe would love in the near future…
For now, she was happy to have saved some lives and kicked some ass. Go her!
A word about the author…
Misty Simon loves a good story and decided one day that she would try her hand at it. Eventually she got it right. There’s nothing better in the world than making someone laugh, and she hopes everyone at least snickers in the right places when reading her books.
She lives with her husband, daughter, and three insane dogs in Central Pennsylvania, where she is hard at work on her next novel or three. She loves to hear from readers, so drop her a line at:
[email protected] www.mistysimon.co
Thank you for purchasing
this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.