Death Do Us Part

by JG Faherty

  Vengeance never dies.

  When Art Stanhope’s bitter, vindictive wife commits suicide, he believes all his troubles are over. Instead, they’re just beginning. For Catherine’s fury transcends even the grave, turning Art’s world into a living hell as he struggles to keep his son and new fiancée safe from her lust for vengeance.

  But there are secrets behind Catherine’s death that Art doesn’t know—secrets that could prove deadly for everyone involved as they learn too late that death is not always a permanent condition, and sometimes the ultimate sacrifice can be too great a price to pay.

  Death Do Us Part

  JG Faherty

  Dedication

  To Andrea, my wife, best friend, and soul mate.

  To my parents, who still remain my biggest fans.

  To my eagle-eyed beta readers—Rena Mason, Patrick Freivald, James Chambers, Peter Salomon, Erinn Kemper, Chris Marrs, and Chantal Noordeloos. You guys rock!

  To Don D’Auria and the great staff and artists at Samhain—thank you for all you do.

  And to the old masters of horror who inspired this story by delivering Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror into my hands as a child: William Gaines, Al Feldstein, Ray Bradbury, HP Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, Manly Wade Wellman, John Campbell, and so many others. I found those comics at yard sales, used book stores, and comic book stores. It didn’t matter to me that they were already 20 years old and no longer in publication. I loved every one I could get my hands on.

  Finally, as always, a thank you to everyone reading this book. All I can say is please keep reading, not only my books but everything you can get your hands on. And tell your friends and children to read. Don’t let television and social media turn their brains into useless mush.

  Disclaimer: No actual ghosts or zombies were hurt in the making of this story.

  Death Do Us Part

  Catherine Stanhope sent her Mercedes convertible speeding down River Road in a blind rage.

  This was nothing new for her; anger in all its phases—irritation, rage, fury, vehemence, and just plain pissed-offedness—made up the majority of her days.

  In this particular instance, a call from Art had lit her fuse, and had her driving at sixty miles per hour despite the sharp curves and lack of street lamps on River Road. Even set on high, her headlights struggled keep up with the car’s speed, their twin cones carving away less of the darkness each time Catherine applied more pressure to the gas pedal. Although she didn’t know it, only luck and German engineering had kept her from flipping over so far.

  A divorce. The bastard wants a divorce! How dare he?

  Her intention was to return home and give Art what he had coming to him. In her mind, she saw this as part of her duty as a wife, to school her husband in the ways of marriage and commitment. Much like a child who needed to be taught a lesson, sometimes that involved using a hand or frying pan to keep his attention. It wasn’t violence, it wasn’t abuse. Those were just words made up by therapists who believed in coddling rather than teaching. The same therapists who poisoned Art and Connor against her after she’d finally started to make headway. Ten years of love and hard work down the drain. Well, if they thought she was giving in without a fight, they could go to hell. All of them—the therapists with their high-and-mighty words, the doctors with their pills and Art with his fantasy of divorce.

  Focused single-mindedly on the lessons she intended to dole out, she didn’t notice the car behind her until flashing red lights lit the darkness like an alien craft swooping in for the kill.

  Police! Her first thought was to press down on the gas. She was only a couple of miles from home. If she could just get there, Art would talk to them, explain that it was a simple misunderstanding. Cops never arrested wives of other cops.

  Then a shard of common sense penetrated her rage. There was no way she could outrun a police car. Better to just accept the ticket and be on her way again. Let Art take care of it in the morning. It was the least he could do. After all, it was his fault she’d needed a few drinks to calm down in the first place.

  She pulled over to the right side, where an overgrown field bordered the road. On the left, a sharp embankment led down to the wide, black ribbon of the Hudson River. She waited for the officer to approach, but instead heard an amplified voice.

  “Step out of the vehicle, please.”

  A new fire started inside Catherine. What did this cop think, she was drunk? How dare he! She’d only had two Cosmos at the club. Half the goddamned town was probably—

  “Ms. Stanhope, step out of the car.”

  That caught her by surprise. They knew who she was. And the voice…it actually sounded familiar. Catherine opened the door and stood next to the convertible, unafraid of passing cars. River Road seldom saw any traffic during the day; at night it was virtually desolate.

  Half-blinded by the unmarked car’s headlights, Catherine squinted at the dark silhouette approaching her. She didn’t recognize it until the glow of her tail lights revealed his face.

  “You! But you’re not supposed to—”

  Pain blasted through Catherine’s head as something hard struck her left temple. The world went fuzzy and then black.

  When her vision returned, she was behind the wheel again. Blurred images of trees and rocks flashed by, and it took her a moment to realize the car was moving forward. In the same instant, the world tilted on its axis, sending her hard into the steering wheel. The car bounced and jumped but her seat belt held her tight. A ball of white exploded in front of her and slammed her back in the seat.

  And then all sense of movement disappeared, replaced by freezing cold.

  The river!

  Instinct took over. Catherine struggled to free herself from the seatbelt but her hands tangled in the half-deflated airbag. Foul-tasting water filled her mouth, choking her. The water rose quickly, past her nose and over her head.

  Even as her body fought against her approaching death, Catherine’s mind focused on one thought.

  I will get you for this. I will be back.

  * * * * *

  Staring down at his wife’s coffin, Art Stanhope wondered at all the different flavors of guilt.

  Could he have prevented Catherine’s suicide? Been a better husband? Avoided all the headaches and problems and sorrow by just leaving her when he first discovered he no longer loved her?

  And, above all else, should he have waited until after they divorced before having an affair with her sister?

  The worst part, he thought, while watching the last of the mourners drop their roses into the cold, wet hole that would serve as Catherine’s final resting place, is that he had no answers to any of his questions.

  Catherine had been one crazy bitch, especially at the end. Possessive, demanding, and more than a little delusional. But suicidal? There’d never been a hint. So how could you prevent what you never expected? As for being a better husband, sure, cheating on your wife wasn’t exactly the best way to improve a marriage, but it wasn’t like Catherine knew. He and Missy Sawyer had only started their affair a couple of weeks before…

  She went off the deep end? He grimaced at the poor choice of words, considering how she’d died.

  He knew he shouldn’t feel guilty. Before giving in to his feelings for Missy, he’d done everything he could to try and save their marriage. Had even suggested counseling, but Catherine refused to consider it.

  You could have left her.

  That was true. But would it have really solved anything? Stopped Catherine’s mood swings or her violent outbursts? Prevented her from accusing him of trying t
o poison her or drive her crazy? Or would it have simply hastened the inevitable outcome, sent her off that cliff months earlier? More than once, while she was still alive, he’d thought about divorce, and then decided against it. Mainly because each time, he got a picture in his head of Catherine boiling their cat alive and leaving it on the porch, or showing up one night with a gun and an ultimatum. Besides, admitting the marriage had failed would be music to his father’s ears. Jeremy Stanhope had never wanted Art to marry Catherine, and even getting a grandson hadn’t softened his stance on her.

  “She’s not right for you, son,” he’d said after learning Art had proposed. “You can do better.”

  They’d argued, and that had led to a rift between them that had only grown wider with each passing year, to the point where he now only saw his father on holidays, when all of his other babysitters backed out or at police functions.

  It wasn’t until he’d been sure Missy felt the same about him as he did about her that he’d decided to end things. On the night Catherine died, he’d told her he didn’t think things were working out, that he couldn’t take it anymore. She’d stormed out and he’d assumed they’d pick up the argument the next day. Only in his mind, it ended with him moving out, not going to the morgue to identify her body.

  Never once had he imagined she might commit suicide. Him, yes. But her? Not Catherine, who thought of herself as the center of everything, a dominant sun around which all the lesser people orbited.

  Yet they’d found her note in the car, waterlogged and smeared but still legible.

  “It’s time to go,” a soft, tearful voice said behind him. He nodded. Heard Missy retreat a few steps, leaving him to his final goodbyes. Everyone else had already left, including his father, who’d taken Connor for the weekend.

  His final goodbyes. And with them, the final guilt.

  I don’t feel bad that she’s dead. I should. I loved her, once. She gave me Connor, who was about as good a kid as you could have and hadn’t deserved all the shit we put him through with our fighting. Now all I can think is that she finally did something nice for me. For us.

  She freed us.

  Art dropped his rose into the hole.

  “Goodbye, Catherine. Thank you.”

  * * * * *

  Out of respect for Connor, Art waited six months before telling him that Aunt Missy was now dating Daddy. He took it better than Art expected. Possibly because he’d always been close to Missy anyhow, loved her like crazy, or possibly because she’d been there for both Stanhope men before and after Catherine’s death, a rock in their ocean of turmoil.

  “Is Aunt Missy going to be my new mommy?” Connor asked when Art finished explaining that “Daddy and Aunt Missy like each other in a different way than just friends. Like on TV, when you see people kissing and holding hands.” At eight, Connor understood the concept of dating, but Art had found that anytime he could use a television example, it sped up the explanation process.

  “No. Your mommy will always be your mommy, even if she’s up in heaven now. Missy will be…your substitute mommy. You know how sometimes you have a substitute teacher in school, when your regular teacher gets sick?”

  Connor had nodded. Art expected questions about how Art could love another lady besides Mommy, or why Aunt Missy was going to sleep in the same bed where Mommy used to sleep, but Connor had simply gone back to his comic book.

  Later, after Connor was in bed and they sat curled up on the couch together, Art wondered aloud to Missy if perhaps it was because so many kids at school had parents who had divorced and remarried.

  “That could be,” Missy said, sipping her wine. “Or maybe it’s that deep down, he knows we’re all better off this way. You and Catherine were always going at it, so this new, happy atmosphere has to be making him feel better at some level.”

  Art smiled and lifted his glass to her. “Good point. So I’m better off, and so is Connor. What about you?”

  Missy chuckled. “I’ve got you, of course. And Connor. I love that kid like he was my own. Plus, now that I’m moving in, I’ll be out of that crazy apartment.”

  She said it in a humorous way, but Art caught the tone of actual relief behind the statement.

  “Still fighting with the neighbors, huh?”

  “Not just them anymore.” She shook her head. “Now it’s the landlord too. He says I’m ‘harassing’ the other tenants with my complaints. I told him I wouldn’t have to if he’d just do his job and find out who the hell is really causing all the problems.”

  Art finished his own wine and pulled Missy closer. For months, she’d been suffering through a series of disturbances in her apartment. Screaming coming through the walls. Thumping footsteps. Things falling off shelves, which Missy blamed on one of the neighbors either doing construction of some kind or playing the bass on their stereo too high and sending vibrations through the walls. At first, they’d joked about her apartment being haunted. Then, as things got worse, Missy had expressed concern that it was Catherine making her life miserable. Art had quickly and forcefully told her to stop thinking like that. They’d already agreed not to feel guilty about dating.

  The problem was each time she called the superintendent the noises and vibrations stopped before he got there. Now he no longer even responded, which was why Missy had begun calling the building’s owner directly. He insisted no one else had heard anything and no one was doing construction, that the superintendent had checked all the apartments. In turn, she’d accused him of ignoring her complaints.

  “Well, the only times the walls shake here is when we bang the headboard too hard,” he said. It had been his idea for her to move in. After all, why should she have to live like that? She’d already been through so much, what with her sister dying and then devoting all her spare time to helping him and Connor. It was the least he could do.

  Besides, he wanted her around as much as possible. And seeing a nice, stable relationship would be good for Connor. So despite the fact that they’d always said they should wait a year before she moved in, let themselves grieve properly and get used to being alone, he’d gone ahead and asked.

  And she’d said yes.

  “Do you want more wine?”

  She finished her last sip and handed him the glass. “It’s Saturday night, I’m with the man I love and Connor’s asleep. Hell, yes! But I’ve got an idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  Missy winked at him. “Let’s take the rest of the bottle into the bedroom.”

  He smiled. “Best idea I’ve heard all day.” He reached for his glass, but just as his hand got there, it fell over and shattered on the coffee table.

  “Wow.” Missy stood up. “I’ll get some paper towels. Good thing it was empty, Mister Clumsy.”

  “I never touched it,” Art said.

  “Yeah, right. One glass of wine and we have to cut you off.”

  He laughed. “Or maybe the ghost in your apartment followed you here.”

  Missy pointed a finger at him. “Don’t even joke about that. I wouldn’t put it past my sister to—”

  “Dad? What was that noise?”

  Art turned and saw Connor in the hallway, his hair mussed and his eyes only half open. “Nothing, buddy. I just broke a glass by accident. Go on back to bed.”

  “I can’t. Something keeps poking me every time I fall asleep. Can you check my room for monsters?”

  With a sigh, Art glanced at Missy. “I’ll get him tucked in and meet you in a few minutes, okay?”

  She nodded. “Go head. I’ll clean up in here.”

  Grateful for her being so understanding—since Catherine’s death, Connor hadn’t been sleeping well, which wasn’t surprising but it was annoying at times—he put his arm around his son and herded him down the hall.

  “Now, what have I told you about there being no such thing as monsters…”

&n
bsp; * * * * *

  Two months after Missy moved in, the idea of a ghost was no longer a joking matter. Glasses toppled over and broke with regularity in empty rooms, pictures fell from walls and the television had acquired a nasty habit of turning itself on in the middle of the night.

  Although neither of them wanted to believe an angry spirit haunted the house, they could no longer dismiss the strange happenings with weak explanations of earth tremors, construction or faulty wiring. Gone were the days when one of them would mention ghosts and the other would counter with a rational alternative.

  What was once considered whimsy had grown into a terrible reality, their house morphing into something out of a horror novel.

  Connor’s complaints about nightmares also grew worse, but for Art the final straw came when Connor came into the kitchen for breakfast one Saturday morning with livid bruises on his arm.

  In the shape of a hand.

  “How did that happen?” he asked his son.

  “Mommy did it,” Connor said, his voice still muddled with sleep.

  “What?” Missy paused in the middle of pouring coffee.

  “She kept waking me up all night, telling me I was a nasty child,” the boy continued, unaware of the looks his father and aunt were giving each other. “Then she grabbed me and tried to pull me out of bed.”

  Art said nothing, but later, after Connor was ensconced on the couch watching cartoons, he pulled Missy aside.

  “I don’t care what Doctor Sloane says, this isn’t guilt or coincidence or a reaction to loss.”

  He expected Missy to argue, as she’d done in the past when he’d disagreed with the psychologist’s explanations for Connor’s problems, or suggested they take the boy to a different doctor. Instead, she bit her lip, her face as pale as if she’d been the one visited by her sister’s spirit.

  “It’s Catherine,” she said, finally putting a name to the specter infecting their home. “The bitch is haunting us.”

  Art nodded. “I’m calling Father Tony right now.”