Ghost Writer (The Ghost Files Book 7)

by Chanel Smith

  Every excuse in the world had suddenly become a handy one to use in order to avoid sitting down at the desk and writing. Though Doug and I had tried to push her initially, we’d both backed off, realizing that it was something that she would eventually have to come to grips with on her own.

  Diana had come home from her shift utterly exhausted, not only from a particularly busy night, but having felt an even stronger sense of guilt concerning the unfinished story. With a great deal of contempt, she had glanced at the typewriter before heading down the hall to her room and sliding into her bed. Exhaustion took her into a deep sleep quickly, but it seemed like she’d only be asleep for seconds before she heard the unmistakable sound of typewriter keys clicking away down the hall.

  Before she was out of her room and down the hall, the typing had stopped. Wondering what could possibly be going on, she cocked an eyebrow as she moved toward the living room and flipped on the light.

  She’d expected to see Jaxon sitting in the chair like he had for several weeks, but instead, there was no one there. She wondered if her anxiety had simply driven her to dream that the typewriter had awakened her, but she moved toward the desk anyway, noticing that there seemed to be a single line typed on the page. She took hold of the rollers on either side of the carriage and advanced the page upward so that she could read the line better.

  Why don’t you give it a whirl?

  Tears began to fill her eyes immediately. Those were the exact words that Granddaddy had always used when he’d turned anything over to her. The first time he showed her how to throw a ball. The first time he had taught her how to hit a ball off of the tee with a bat. The first time he had taught her to drive. Everything he had ever taught her to do, he had shown her and then used those very same words, even when he had taught her to type. She could hear his voice whisper them to her as she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

  “Why don’t you give it a whirl?” his gentle voice repeated over and over again.

  Still sobbing, she pulled the sheet of paper from the machine and inserted a new one, making sure that everything was lined up properly and ready to go. She checked her margin settings as she had been taught and made sure that her tabs were correct. It had been ages since she had sat down in front of the old machine to type, but as she put her hands into position over the home keys and she began to type the first few words, she realized that the thrill was quickly returning to her.

  As her tears began to dry on her cheeks, she started tapping away on the keys as the story that had been pent up inside of her for so many years began to flood out of her and become revealed in the words upon the page. Pictures that had been in her head for 15 years began to enter her mind, she closed her eyes, captured their essence and then translated those visions into words.

  There was a warmth that began to move over her as she worked and she felt her spirit becoming lighter and a sense of freedom that she hadn’t felt in a very long time. At the same time, she began to smell the soft aroma of Cherry Cavendish surrounding her and a whisper in her ear.

  “That’s it, Sprout. You’ve got it, Sprout. That’s the stuff. You’re getting the hang of it now,” her Granddaddy’s voice continued to fill her with encouragement.

  It was daylight and she could hear her alarm buzzing on her nightstand in her bedroom before she even thought to look up from her work. The sound of the alarm instantly reminded her that she had to get Jaxon up and ready for school. Reluctantly, she left the chair and the typewriter behind and went down the hall, first to shut off the alarm, and second to get Jaxon out of bed.

  The urge was strong to return to the desk as she passed back through the living room on her way to the kitchen, but she fought it back and started in making Jaxon’s breakfast and packing his lunch.

  “Have you been typing on Granddaddy’s typewriter or was it the ghost?” he asked as he came into the kitchen.

  The question almost sent her into a fit of laughter. During the entire ordeal, he had never known that her grandfather’s spirit had been using him to type. The irony struck her as extremely funny. Biting her lower lip, she smiled and answered the question. “It was me, Sprout.”

  “Sprout? Who’s Sprout?”

  “That’s what Granddaddy used to call me.”

  “Really? You never told me that before.”

  “I didn’t remember it until just this morning.”

  Jaxon was silent as he started to dig into his peanut butter and jelly waffles. She could tell by the expression on his face that he was thinking very hard. Rather than try to pry out what he was thinking, she sat down at the table with her coffee and watched him.

  “Mama, can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you going to start calling me Sprout all of the time, now?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Not really. I mean, that might have been a good name for you, but you call me Jax and I like that better.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That’s fine, Jax.”

  He went back to eating his waffles, but there was still something weighing heavy on him. He sat his fork down, swallowed the waffles in his mouth, took a long swig of milk and then looked up at her. “Can I ask you another question?”

  “Go ahead,” Diana replied.

  “Do we have anything else to eat for breakfast besides peanut butter and jelly waffles?”

  Diana was shocked by the sudden question and the revelation that came with it.

  “I thought you liked peanut butter and jelly waffles.”

  “I did, but I’m starting to get tired of eating them every morning.”

  “What would you rather have instead?” she asked, holding back the laugh that was threatening to burst out at any moment.

  “Pretty much anything,” he replied.

  She could hold her laugh back no longer as she got up from the table and started to the refrigerator. “How about a couple of slices of bacon and an egg?”

  “Yeah!” he answered.

  She smiled as she cooked the replacement breakfast. It was amazing how adult sounding her seven-year-old could be sometimes. When the eggs and bacon were ready, she brought it to the table and set it in front of him.

  “So, do you want me to get rid of the peanut butter and jelly waffles for good and start fixing you bacon and eggs?”

  “No, mom,” he replied. “I don’t want to get tired of bacon and eggs either. How about you start mixing it up a little?”

  “You got it,” she winked.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  With all of the wonderful changes that had come to Diana’s life recently, she ought to have been excited to be sitting in the reception area of a major publisher’s office, instead, she was extremely nervous. What if they turned her down? What if she had ruined the second part of the book and they hated it?

  Albert Herman had told her that, in his opinion, the second part of the book was her best work, but she was pretty sure that he was just building up her confidence. It had been nearly half an hour since her agent had gone into the publisher’s office. She had spent that entire time worrying over the outcome. She’d been worried about how the story turned out from the moment that she had typed the last word and presented it to Albert a few weeks before.

  Once her grandfather’s spirit had finally broken through to her, she had sat down and written, almost non-stop for a week. She’d still gone to work and had even took a few hours out of her day to sleep, but when she wasn’t doing either of those, she was sitting at the typewriter, hammering out the ending to her novel. Doug and I had picked up the slack with Jaxon and had even forced food and drink down her; something besides coffee, which she went through by the gallon every day. We’d even come up with a joke that writers were machines that turned coffee into novels.

  As she’d written the story, she had been able to feel the presence of her grandfather and smelled the aroma of his Cherry Cavendish, but hadn’t experienced any more of the early morning wake up call
s from him or any other odd occurrences that had become a normal part of her life for such a long time. At one point, the scent of the Cherry Cavendish had become so strong that she had asked Doug and I if we smelled it, but neither of us had.

  Once Diana had submitted the last part of her manuscript to Albert, she had done a great deal of sleeping and had become pretty depressed. At one point, she stayed in bed for an entire day and I was beginning to think that she was getting sick. I was later able to get her to confess to the fact that she was afraid that she had completely screwed up the story. It took Doug and I a lot of hard work to try to convince her that she had written a beautiful ending to a beautiful story. It was Jaxon that was the one who finally broke through to her.

  “Mama, why are you so sad?” he asked one morning.

  “It’s a mommy thing,” she replied.

  He considered what she’d said for several seconds before continuing. “Mama, if you want to make me peanut butter and jelly waffles for breakfast every morning, it’s okay. I don’t want you to be sad.”

  From that one simple statement, she suddenly realized how much her Gloomy Gus routine was affecting Jaxon. Since he had requested that she change his breakfast, she had become a stranger to him. She’d all but ignored him while she wrote the last of the novel and she had been worse afterward when she began to worry over how badly she’d ruined it. He’d made the simplest connection, but had the most profound impact on her.

  “Oh, Jax, you can have anything you want for breakfast, mommy’s just…” In reality, she didn’t have a good answer to give him. From that moment forward, she decided that regardless of how things turned out with the novel, she had to keep her focus on Jaxon. She’d shut him out and that was something she swore that she’d never do. Chris had shut out his son and she wasn’t going to be like him.

  When Albert Herman called to let her know that he had a meeting in New York set up with the publisher, she was instantly scared to death. It meant that she would have to take off from work, which, though she had the vacation time coming, made her extremely uneasy. She knew of people who were replaced while they were on vacation. If she was replaced, then their financial troubles would multiply even more. She had to take another risk that began to eat away at her as well; the cost of flying her and Jaxon to New York. If she did that, then all of what she had been reserving to make it through that last two months would be gone and she would be at risk of losing her apartment.

  After I suggested that she could probably stay with her mother and just take a single day trip or maybe an overnight trip into New York, it relieved some of the pressure, but when Doug made the announcement that he was taking a few weeks of leave time and wanted to go back east with her, it had sealed the deal. Doug, Jaxon and her mom had traveled into New York with her and gone off on one of her mother’s “famous” tours after dropping her off at the publisher’s building for her meeting. Knowing that they were not far away, ready to lend her support, helped calm her nerves a little bit, but she still wasn’t ready to hear the words of rejection that she knew were coming.

  Every since she had been a little girl and watching her Granddaddy typing his stories, she had dreamt of being just like him. From that motivation, she had started the novel that was now being so heavily scrutinized behind closed doors. At the age of 15, with all of the crazy ideas and out of control hormones that came with adolescence, she had been particularly sensitive to anything and everything her Granddaddy did and said. When the story had come back with all of that red ink on it, she was pretty sure that she would never be able to write anything worthwhile and so, she’d given up on that dream.

  Her teen years had become filled with all of the crazy things that teen years are full of and her dream of writing the next great American novel drifted off into a distant memory as she started to see that there was more to life out there. With her Granddaddy beginning to decline, they had never spoke of the story again as he slowly became more and more ill before he eventually passed on.

  She remembered the empty feeling that had come upon her so suddenly when she heard the news of his passing while away at college. It was an empty feeling that eventually led her to a commitment to Chris, a move to Southern California and the birth of Jaxon. Though Chris had been a major mistake, the others had turned out to be positive decisions, so she couldn’t say whether filling that void the way she did was either good or bad, but she had plenty of regret for losing sight of her dream.

  “Miss Curry?” The receptionist’s voice sliced into her thoughts like the blade of a knife.

  “Um, yes?” She stood, trying to make herself look as though she hadn’t just been thousands of miles away and deep in thought.

  “They’re ready for you.”

  “Okay. Thank you.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, started toward the door and hesitated a moment.

  “They’re right through those doors in the office at the end of the hall,” the receptionist instructed.

  “Thank you.”

  Diana stood in front of the glass doors with publisher’s name intricately etched into them, closed her eyes and pushed down the nerves that had enjoyed such a strong grip on her. This was either the biggest moment of her life or the biggest letdown she’d ever experienced. Beyond those glass doors and behind that solid wooden door was validation for a dream that had started a very long time ago. Can I handle another rejection? Will I be completely crushed and forever shattered or will this be the beginning of something big? Either way, it was extremely difficult for her to face. And then she heard a gentle voice inside her head.

  “Why don’t you give it a whirl?”

  In the same moment that she heard the voice, she smelled the sweet aroma of Cherry Cavendish. She inhaled deeply, fixed a smile on her face and pushed the glass doors open. Here we go Granddaddy.

  It was through the very same glass doors with the publisher’s name intricately etched into them that she pushed open an hour later on her way out; carrying a sizeable advance check in her hands and a royalties contract that would take care of all of their financial problems for quite a while.

  Epilogue

  “Peanut butter and Jelly Waffles?” Monty said after I had finished telling him Diana’s story.

  “I told you that entire story and all you got out of it was peanut butter and jelly waffles?” There were times when Monty Drew made absolutely no sense to me. “Don’t you understand that Diana and I got the start into our careers at the same time; from the same paranormal event?”

  “Yeah, I got that, but don’t you think that peanut butter and jelly on waffles is a little bit odd?”

  “Don’t knock them until you’ve tried them,” I snapped.

  “You’ve tried them?”

  “Yes, I’ve tried them and they’re not as bad as you think. They’re certainly better than chocolate pancakes and better for you too.” My tone was pretty rough and left little doubt to how irritated I was with him at the moment. I fell silent. I’d just exposed a story that had had a deep emotional impact upon me and launched me into my career and Monty had completely destroyed it with his disinterest. We walked along in silence for quite some time before he took the risk of speaking to me again.

  “Did you ever figure out how that package with the postmark date from 1989 had been delivered? Or how the red marked manuscript had traveled from one storage place to another?”

  “No,” I answered shortly. It had continued to bother me, but until I had told the story and Monty had asked me about it, I had pushed it out of my mind for a very long time.

  “Do you think spirits can travel back in time and interact in our world from points in the past?”

  It was an intriguing question, but I was still steaming from his lack of sensitivity to a story that had meant so much to me. “I don’t know,” I sighed.

  “You know, Ellen, at first I didn’t get this ghost detective thing. Well, you know, I didn’t even believe in ghosts or any other sort of paranormal activity. I thought
that everything had some sort of logical explanation to it that could be proved by some sort of science. To an extent, I still believe that, however, now I simply believe that we haven’t come up with the proper, scientific way to measure that type of activity. Maybe we never will.”

  He paused for several minutes while he thought of what he wanted to say. I still wasn’t thawing out much. He had very quickly and very easily pissed me off; something that doesn’t occur often, but the fact that he had body slammed some of my deepest feelings, just…

  “But I understand why this whole field has had such an impact on you. You know, most people see that ghosts, spirits and paranormal activity is a bad thing. It scares them, mostly because they don’t understand it and it scares them because it is beyond their control. You can’t fight a ghost. You can’t overpower something that can move beyond what your senses can pick up. So, the moment something paranormal occurs, people have to deal with it in one of two ways, either deny that it happened or figure out a way to get rid of it.”

  He was at least on track with ghost hunting and admitting to things that I was pretty sure that he would never admit to. Though he had stepped on my feelings, he seemed to be moving toward redeeming himself. I still didn’t reply, but my ears were beginning to perk up.

  “In Diana’s case, she was frightened at first, but when you helped her to begin working with the spirit instead of being afraid of it and working against it, things began to take on a new shape. It not only helped Jaxon out, but it transformed her life. What’s interesting is that I think that her Granddaddy’s spirit never came back once she started writing on her own. You know, not like he had been before. He didn’t need to; he’d delivered his message, righted his wrong and moved on to the light.”

  I turned and looked at him. I didn’t have a response on my lips, but a smile was beginning to form. He’d been listening after all.