The Man in Black: A Gothic Romance (Crookshollow Ghosts)

by Steffanie Holmes

  “Eli … nor,” he croaked.

  “Shhhh,” said Clara. “Don’t try to speak. You need a few moments to fully wake up.”

  Eric lifted one arm, then the other, his face alight with joy as he moved his stiff limbs for the first time in over three weeks. Finally, he gripped the edges of the coffin and pulled himself up. “Oh,” he breathed, clutching his stomach. He leaned forward, breaking into a retching coughing fit. A stream of pale fluid spewed from his mouth across his pants. Embalming fluid. His body was expelling what it no longer needed.

  “Eric!” I threw my arms around him. He held me tightly, his whole body trembling against mine. He convulsed wildly again, spewing another stream of embalming fluid into the coffin.

  “Elinor,” he croaked, his hand exploring my body, touching my face, grabbing my shoulders, stroking my back.

  “You’re alive,” I cried, burying my head in his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him.

  “Thanks to you,” he said, running his fingers through my hair. “The spell wasn’t working, but them … I heard your voice through the void, and it pulled me to my body. You called me home.”

  “Oh, Eric.” I sobbed, clawing at his shoulders, my chest feeling as though it might burst with happiness.

  “Lets get you back to the house.” Clara said kindly. She took off her black shawl and placed it over Eric’s shoulders. “Do you think you can stand?”

  Eric reached across and gripped my arm with such fierceness that I winced. Bianca stood on the other side of him, and together we helped him lift his stiff legs out of the coffin and on to the floor. We had to hold him under the shoulders while he practiced putting weight on his legs.

  “Thank you,” he said to me. “I think we can go to the house now.”

  “Of course,” I squeezed his hand as we helped him shuffle toward the door. “I’ve kept it just the way you like it, slightly charred on the inside.”

  “You’ve done more than that. You found me,” he whispered. “You were my light in the darkness.”

  “I don’t think so,” I grinned back. “I think you were mine.”

  Eric

  The next two weeks passed by in a blur.

  One thing about coming back to life that no one ever talks about: it’s like waking up with the hangover from hell. My body was filled with all the embalming fluids used to keep my corpse beautiful in death. Clara had to create several powerful expulsion charms to cleanse me of all the toxic stuff and replace my actual fluids. While the crystals and herbal sachets she placed around my body seemed harmless enough, what was going on inside of me was anything but. I’d never been to detox before, but if it hurt even half as much as having to regurgitate formaldehyde and then regenerate your own organs, then I pitied anyone who had.

  I couldn’t very well go to a hospital in my state I’d be the subject of medical inquiry for the rest of my life. Bianca had graciously put us up in her tiny apartment while the repairs were being made to Marshell House. I’d instructed Elinor to release the funds from my mother’s bank accounts to make it happen, and she informed me there was an army of workmen there around the clock to ensure the place would be habitable again by the time I moved in. Thankfully, although Bianca’s place lacked space and light and sufficient hot water, it did have one serious advantage … the press didn’t know I was there.

  Elinor stayed by my side the entire time. When I was throwing up fluids, she held my hair. While my punctured organs were regrowing, she read me stories from the newspaper. Through the wall of my pain I registered that Allan and Colin were now on trial for murder, assault, drug trafficking, and a litany of other crimes, along with the other members of Ghost Symphony and three members of our tech crew. The press were following it carefully, publishing every morsel of juicy news. Helen Manning gave an extremely emotional testimony. The outcome wasn’t looking good for my band.

  A police search had turned up Isolde in Allan’s hotel room, amongst a lot of other damning evidence. Bianca’s friend Ted delivered her to me, and she was now leaning up in the corner of the room, begging me to reunite with her again as soon as I was well.

  Elinor told me about Duncan being in love with my mother, and what he’d used the money for. I decided not to press charges against him. After all, at his heart he was a good person, and he really had taken wonderful care of my mother. It wasn’t as if she missed the money. Elinor grinned when I announced my decision to leave Duncan alone. “But I reserve the right to change my mind later,” I warned her, wincing painfully as something inside my stomach twisted painfully. “I’m in so much agony I can’t be trusted at my word.”

  “That’s fine, Eric.” Elinor grinned, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Whatever you want.”

  Finally, I was well enough to start to walk around again, but Elinor and Bianca wouldn’t let me leave the apartment. “We have to keep your presence a secret, until the right time.” said Elinor. Her friend Cindy popped in from London every few days to go over details—Elinor had put her in charge of my “comeback” campaign. We were going to frame my death as a publicity stunt to launch the new stage of my career, and my gothic fans would eat it right up. Eric Marshell was going to be reborn as a solo artist, and he was going to be hotter than ever.

  Despite all this good cheer, as my body grew stronger, I grew more anxious to return to Marshell House, or failing that, just to be anywhere that wasn’t inside Bianca’s tiny apartment. I was also worried about Elinor missing so much work. So I snapped at my carers and grunted whenever they asked me how I felt. By the end of my incarceration I was leaving lewd drawings on the bathroom mirror and making sculptures out of my food (which was a lot more fun than eating it. Elinor was a woman of many talents, but cooking wasn’t one of them).

  Finally, Clara checked my pulse and her crystals and declared that I was ready to return. Repairs on Marshell House weren’t quite complete, but Elinor assured me that it was now safe to move back in. My legs still felt a little stiff, so together, Elinor, Bianca and Cindy helped me struggle downstairs, while Clara called instructions from below. Finally Elinor settled me in the car with Isolde and we drove up the street and down the long driveway of Marshell House.

  As we neared the house, I looked up at that imposing facade, the two turrets jutting out like sabre teeth, and the twin round windows like eyes glaring over the landscape. But she didn’t inspire the same terror she once did. I used to dread entering her tall, floral hallways, for inside that house lurked only pain, and disappointment. But now, with Elinor beside me … I reached across and squeezed her hand.

  “It looks great, doesn’t it?” she smiled. “Those gardeners Duncan hired did an amazing job.”

  “It certainly does,” I agreed.

  Elinor helped me hobble up the steps and crash into the hallway. This was more exercise than I’d had in two weeks, and my body was already exhausted. She set down the keys and turned to me, looping her arm under my shoulder once more. “Where would you like to go?” she asked.

  “Bedroom,” I huffed, my body already protesting against all this exercise. “I want to … ravish your body …”

  “Tempting as that is,” Elinor grinned back. “I think we need to wait for you to gain some more strength. There’s something I need to show you first.”

  Elinor helped me into the study, and sat me down in the chair by the window. She handed me a thick, black ledger book. “What’s this?” I asked. “I can barely remember how to spell my name at the moment. I really don’t want to look at numbers now.”

  “This one is different. Look at it,” Elinor said, flipping through the pages and shoving it into my hands.

  I glanced at the old news clippings of my father’s disappearance. “I’ve already seen those,” I said. I had many of the same clippings in a box under my bed upstairs. “My mother must have been cutting them out and keeping them.”

  “What about these?” Elinor grabbed the book out of my hands, flipped to a page toward the back, and turned the book
back around so I could see.

  It was a picture of me, taken five years ago during Ghost Symphony’s first European tour. I was sitting beside a fjord in Norway, my violin resting across my chest. I was looking forlornly at the camera while grey clouds gathered in the background. I remembered the shoot for it well—about two minutes after the picture was taken, the heavens opened up and drenched everything.

  Elinor flipped the page. There were more clippings about the band, GHOST SYMPHONY NUMBER 1 AGAIN. LATEST GHOST SYMPHONY ALBUM NOMINATED FOR GRAMMY, ERIC MARSHELL VOTED SEXIEST MAN OF THE YEAR. All the press about me, all the cheesy photo shoots and gripping exposés and news articles and revealing interviews … she had kept it all.

  I couldn’t believe it. My mother had never said anything to me about my music. NEVER. As far as I’d known, she still hated me for choosing the same career as my father. And yet, all the time, she’d been doing this.

  For the first time since my mother died, a well of pain welled up inside me. I stared down at those pages with a tremendous sense of loss. Here she was, the mother I thought I had lost forever. She had been right here this whole time, and she was just too proud to tell me how she really felt. And now it was too late, for her and for me.

  Tears pressed against the corners of my eyes. I blinked them away.

  “Thank you,” I said to Elinor, closing the book. I closed my eyes, suddenly feeling very tired.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t show it to you sooner,” she said. “I found it the first day I was here. I didn’t understand the significance of it before now.”

  “That’s OK.”

  “And that’s not all.” Elinor handed me a letter. “This is a will written by your mother. It’s what we in the lawyering business call a holographic will. She had it witnessed by two of her nurses. It’s completely legally blinding, Eric, and Duncan is not going to contest it.”

  As I read the words from my mother—the apology I’d long wished to hear while she was alive—tears streamed down my cheeks, thick and fast. I placed the letter down and wiped them away. “I’m sorry. This is supposed to be a happy day, and here I am—”

  Elinor patted my knee. “Eric, you’ve quite literally been through hell, and come back to tell the tale. This is a happy day, because you are alive again, and you’re back here at last, and you have all your mother’s funds behind you. You can do anything you want now.”

  “We’ll set up the scholarship fund. I want all the money to go to other kids like me, other young Eric and Erica Marshells. All I want to do is play music,” I said. “And make love to you.”

  She laughed, and squeezed my hand. “That’s perfectly fine by me.”

  I pulled myself upward, pressing my lips against hers. She yielded to me, her lips warm and delicious, her scent fresh and sweet. Every second of the kiss lingered on my senses, a perfect moment forever etched on my memory.

  “So …” I raised one eyebrow playfully. “How do you feel about being ravished by a man in black?”

  “I think that would be very lovely, indeed.“ Elinor grinned, smothering my lips in hers.

  In between making love and sleeping, Elinor told me all about her previous boyfriend and her outburst at his funeral. “So much of what I was feeling wasn’t about you. It had to do with Joel and how I still blamed myself for being sucked in by his bullshit. He made me feel foolish, and I hate that feeling. And with you … I felt so out of control, as though I were slipping back into the same trap again. I am so sorry, Eric.”

  “Of course that’s OK.” I embraced her. “I just wish you’d told me, because I could have been more patient. I mean, not terribly patient, because I did want to rip your clothes off you pretty much from the moment I first saw you, but …” she pressed her lips to mine, and I ran my fingers down her naked back as I kissed her deeper, enjoying the way her tongue entwined with mine.

  “Did I mention I was sorry? I just got so sick of always been pushed around and walked over. I didn’t want to take that from you. I didn’t want you to see me as weak.”

  “You’re not weak. You’re not that person anymore, babe.”

  “No,” she grinned, moving in for another kiss. “I’m not.”

  Later that day we put our clothes on again, and Elinor twirled around the living room in a new version of her red gothic dress, sent over from Clara as a present. Bianca came over with a box of cupcakes from Bewitching Bites. She set out tea for us on the back porch, while I enlivened the mood with a couple of jigs on my beloved violin. While I played, I looked out over the back garden, and the patches of charred earth where the fire had been worst. I thought how lucky we had been to escape that with our lives. The fire could have so easily got out of control.

  “To Eric,” Elinor held up her teacup. Laughing, Bianca reached over and clinked cups.

  “Why are we toasting me?” I demanded, pointing my bow at them with disdain. “If it wasn’t for you ladies I wouldn’t be here to toast with tea at all, which is a completely ridiculous waste of tea if you ask me, since you’ve spilt it everywhere.”

  Bianca made a face at me, but Elinor said seriously. “You’re alive, Eric. You’re real. I can touch you. That alone is worth toasting, without any of your other accomplishments.”

  “But it was an incredible thing you guys did for me. I just lay there and let you do all the work. You should be toasting yourselves.” I smiled. “I do kind of miss that electric shock feeling whenever we touch, though.”

  “I don’t!” Elinor hugged me again. “Now I know that when I touch you, we both feel the same.”

  “Ah well, then.” I held up my cup. “I can drink to that!”

  We toasted together and sat back in silence, enjoying our tea as a crisp breeze blew the fallen leaves across the porch.

  “So what happens now?” Bianca asked, looking from Elinor’s face to mine. “Are you going back to London?”

  I stared at Elinor as I dragged the bow over the strings slowly. We’d avoided talking about the future while I was recovering, but it was playing on my mind. How would I live without her when she returned to London? Should I go with her? But how could I leave Marshell House?

  “Of course she is,” I said, at the same time, Elinor said. “I don’t think so.”

  I whirled around to face her. “What are you talking about? Of course you’re going back. You have your career to think about. I’m in London a lot anyway, in the studio and doing press and such. We’ll find a way to make it work.”

  Elinor toyed with the tulle on her skirt. Finally, she said. “Oh, I know we will. But there’s just one thing I have to do.”

  “And that is?” I raised an eyebrow.

  Elinor whipped out her phone.

  “You’re not going to play some of that god-awful house music again, are you?” I groaned. “I have literally just come back from the dead. I can’t deal with a seizure right now.”

  She shot me a dirty look, then held her phone to her ear. “Hello, Clyde. It’s Elinor Baxter. I’m sorry to be disturbing you on the golf course … yes, it’s going very well. I’ve not only completed Alice Marshell’s estate, but I’ve also solved a murder mystery and uncovered a drug ring. I think I’ve done the firm proud … Oh yes, well, see about my return ... It turns out I’m not going to be back in the office on Monday. I’m tendering my resignation, effective immediately.”

  She what? I dropped my bow in surprise.

  Elinor watched me as she listened to the man yelling on the other end, a big grin spreading across her face. “Oh, no. I don’t have a competing offer. Well, at least, not one you can match. I’ve decided to take up an apprentiship as a tattoo artist. I’m going to be starting as soon as I’ve moved up to Crookshollow.”

  Bianca laughed. I gasped. Is Elinor sick? Has sitting next to me for the last two weeks made her crazy? Did the fumes from the embalming liquid addle her brain?

  Elinor’s boss sounded equally miffed. I could hear him yelling and spluttering from across the table. “I’m sorry that
you’re upset, but I’m sure Lila will take your mind off it. Toodles!” Elinor hung up the phone, cutting off her boss mid-rant. She tossed the phone down on the table and leaned back in her chair, grinning madly. Her eyes sparkled from behind her black glasses.

  “Elinor, Baxter. I am speechless,” Bianca said. “And to think I’ve been interviewing pimply-faced schoolboys for the apprentiship all week.”

  “So you’ll take me?”

  “Of course,” Bianca grinned, extending her hand across the table and shaking Elinor’s firmly. “Welcome to Resurrection Ink.”

  “Well,” Elinor prodded me. “What do you think?”

  “About you moving to Crookshollow?” I leaned over to her and picked her off the chair, sweeping her into my arms and planting a hot kiss on her yielding lips. “I think we’d better hurry up and get the house repairs completed.”

  Elinor wrapped her arms around my neck, raising one eyebrow. “So you’re asking me to move in?”

  “I am. I mean,” I gestured towards the house. “She’s a little run-down in places, there are a few holes due to age and arson. It’s been recently haunted, but we fixed that. I think it’s got real potential, don’t you?”

  Elinor giggled, pointing to the large burned hole at the back of the dining room. “Absolutely. It’s got great indoor–outdoor flow.”

  “Excellent amenities,” added Bianca, pointing to the mausoleum.

  “A menagerie of delightful pets,” I added, indicating the stone gargoyle sitting on the edge of the fountain.

  I spun Elinor around, admiring the way the corset accentuated her luscious curves, and her bare shoulders revealed the line of her neck as she threw her head back to laugh with abandon. My whole body felt light and free. Elinor was coming to live with me. We were going to fill Marshell House with books and music and games and children. And there would never be a day in my life that went by when I wasn’t grateful for the second chance I’d been given.

  I set Elinor down again, and she reached across the table to snag one of the cupcakes Bianca had brought. “Remember what I said,” Bianca told her. “You can’t be a tattoo artist until you have your own ink.”