He found her room again. She was lying there, half-covered by her sheet. Oh good, you sleep nude. That’ll save us some time. Fucking hell, he thought to himself. Seeing her nude made his dick so hard it hurt. He’d take care of that soon enough. Moving slowly, he carefully laid the tape over one wrist then gently placed the strip over her eyes.
She immediately came awake. “Wha…”
He set upon her, clamping his hand tight over her mouth and nose so hard she couldn’t breathe. Pressing all his weight into her chest, he bound her wrists together against her struggles. “Okay, little cunt, we’re going to play a game. The rules go like this, if you scream and fight I’m gonna hurt you.” He emphasized the last words by cruelly grabbing and twisting her breast. She screamed in pain through his fingers. Gripping harder, he hissed again, “No, you’re going to lay quiet-like, and I’m gonna play.”
Lanie clawed at the hand covering her face. She couldn’t breathe and her head was starting to swim.
Lanie’s attacker let go of her abruptly. “What the fuck? No! Get the fuck away from me! Get away!!! Ahhhh…”
She heard the screaming man’s footsteps running down the hall to the stairs. The sound of feet on the stairs turned into a crashing noise below and suddenly all was quiet. She tore at the tape over her eyes, feeling the smaller hairs of her eyebrows ripping free along with it. She ripped the tape from her wrists with her teeth, tearing the skin as well but she ignored it. With a shaking hand, she reached for her cell phone and dialed 911.
“Emergency Services, how may I help you?”
Lanie could barely talk, she stammered, “P–please help…I’ve b–been attacked in m–my house...”
Minutes later a squad car screeched into the driveway, followed shortly by two more patrol cars. They found the intruder at the bottom of the stairs. Apparently something had interrupted him, for rather than completing his planned attack he’d fled and in so doing tripped on the loose stair runner and fell down two full flights of stairs to break his neck.
Lanie refused to go to the hospital, but one of the female officers stayed a while longer to finish the report and to make sure she was okay. Her breast was terribly bruised, as were her ribs where his arm had pressed all his weight into her. The skin on her wrist wept blood where the tape had peeled the layer of skin away.
The kindly officer patted Lanie’s arm. “You’re going to be okay. This creep won’t be bothering anyone ever again.” She felt the lock and pulled the tape away. “Try to get some sleep, Doctor.”
Lanie saw the tape and blanched realizing he’d put the tape there earlier. He’d planned this from the start. “I will. Thank you, Officer.”
Alone again, Lanie went to make a cup of chamomile tea. She dropped the first cup into the sink where it shattered. The second cup sloshed hot water all over her so she poured half out and, holding the shaking cup with both hands, gave up trying to drink it. She pushed it aside and shakily sat down. Drawing her knees up, she hugged herself and sobbed.
Her sobs were tearing Jason inside. Never did he feel more useless. He’d watched the wretched scene as it was happening and threw himself at Max repeatedly, but his formless body passed right through him. He tried to grab the man and pull him off of her, but without substance his ghostly hands wouldn’t grip. At last he’d done the only thing he could think of, he materialized and scared him away. His meeting his end on the unfinished stairs was a bonus. At least the bastard wouldn’t bother her again. He shuddered inside. Had she been alone, there’s no telling what that animal might have done.
Moving to stand behind her, he silently spoke to her mind, You’re all right now. It’s over. He’ll never hurt you again. With everything he had he wrapped his arms around her tightly and poured his comfort into her. A moment later, her crying ceased. Again he whispered to her mind, Come, come into the study.
Met with an overwhelming urge to go to the study, Lanie left the kitchen light on and headed to the other room. Taking the plaid comforter from the overstuffed chair, she wrapped herself in it and curled up on the sofa. There was no way she could sleep in her bed tonight. Her tears spent, the adrenalin crash hit her hard, and she soon fell asleep.
Waiting until she drifted off, Jason kissed her forehead and whispered, “Sleep, my love, no dreams tonight, just sleep.” It hit him then. He’d called her his love because she was.
Chapter 9
“Oh, my god!” Lexie exclaimed, feeling her friend’s fear and pain. Her eyes filled with tears. “Those bruises…Lanie, he hurt you.”
Nodding, Lanie buttoned up her shirt. “He did. I didn’t want to show you, but you insisted.” Before she could finish the task her friend crushed her in a fierce hug.
She patted Lexie’s back. “Please don’t cry, Lex. Listen, it was three days ago, bruises always look worse a few days after you get them. I’m okay now.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“What a monster…” Lexie sniffed, wiping her eyes and nose on her cuff.
“He was.” Lanie didn’t add that at least three of her mother’s boyfriends could have been the gutter man’s siblings. Some people were just bullies, some were dangerous bullies. Fortunately there was one less in the world. Lexie sniffed again. Lanie handed her a tissue.
“Thanks.” Lexie blew her nose in a gurgling honk. “I’m glad he’s dead. I’d push him down the stairs myself if he were standing here right now so he could break his neck all over again.” She went and dropped the sodden tissue into the toilet then reached for another. “Please, Lanie, you live all by yourself here. Get an alarm service or something, a dog maybe, a big one, a pit bull or a Rottweiler…”
Lanie laughed. “You’ll be happy to know all my locks have been changed.” She pulled a key from her jeans pocket and gave it to her friend. “And this one’s for you. I did get an alarm system by the way. They put it in yesterday, but there’s some sort of weird electrical issue and the alarm keeps going off when it shouldn’t.”
“Great. So until it’s working like it should, how about that dog…”
Lanie laughed. “Not right now. I’d love a dog but until all this is done, I couldn’t give it the attention it needs.”
“So what have you found out about the creep, anything yet?”
“The police are thinking he’s responsible for a string of attacks in the last year. Apparently all occurred in the span of time the guy worked for WeatherAll. It’s a small family business. Needless to say, Bill Bradley, the owner, was beside himself when he heard what his employee had used his company for.”
“No kidding…”
“He came in person to apologize with flowers and a certificate for new gutters.”
“Sounds like a nice man.”
“Yeah, I felt bad for him. In a week’s time several jobs were canceled, but it wasn’t his fault.”
“Well he does own some of it, doesn’t he? Who hired the nut?”
“I suppose. He reminded me of my pop a little.” Her eyes started to glisten. She wished her foster parents were alive. She’d always felt safe with them around. She didn’t feel safe anymore and she didn’t like it. There were too many bad memories associated with feeling that way, too many uncertain times in her early years.
Lexie looked at her friend’s brimming eyes. “Lanie, I know you’re like Wonder Woman and all, but how are you feeling…I mean inside. How are you?”
“I’ll live.” She rubbed her eyes before helping herself to a tissue. “It all happened so fast, it’s like my brain doesn’t even recognize it as having really happened. Still, every time I look in the mirror I see that it did.” Her hand protectively covered her breast.
“And they will fade.” Lexie ran a reassuring hand up and down Lanie’s arm.
Lanie nodded, feeling too choked up to speak. Waiting for the strangling sensation to pass, she explained, “It all reminds me of living with my birth mother. It’s the fearfulness, Lex. The bruises will fade, but I’m afraid the fearfulness wil
l remain. There were times when this guy or that guy would go after her like the gutter man did to me. All I could do was hide under the bed or in the closet, or if the bed was just a mattress on the floor and I had nowhere to hide I’d bury myself in the piles of clothes and blankets and hold my breath afraid my breathing would be heard.”
“And that will fade too, sweetie. I know.” Lexie had been put in foster care because of similar abuse and was eventually adopted by a terrific family. Sensing a need to redirect, Lexie said, “So hey, because we know all that’s gonna take time, let’s talk about nicer things. Tell me what’s left on the house. It’s beautiful. I can’t believe how different the whole place looks after only a month.”
The change in Lanie was instantaneous. “I love you, you know.”
Lexie smiled. “I know.”
“So what do you want to know?”
“Well, I was thinking the other day how this whole project was a long time coming. Remember how you always knew odd things about this spooky old place because you dreamed them? I told Pete you used to dream the old house was yours, but I think he equated dreaming with wishing.”
“My earliest dream occurred when I was ten or so, after I saw the house for the first time. It was like I was reminded that I knew this place. The dreams started after that.”
“The question is why?”
“I have no idea, but I haven’t had a dream since that gutter man broke in.” She frowned. Those dreams were important to her, and they’d stopped. Suddenly, she said, “Oh!”
Startled, Lexie jumped. “What?”
“Something really weird is going on around here. I meant to tell you the morning after that blind date, but things were so crazy here. The cellar was a nightmare to clean out and the stairs…I never did finish the runner…” She paused. If she hadn’t gotten distracted and finished tacking the runner, gutter man might have come back. A shiver passed through her. Sometimes things just happened the way they were supposed to.
“Well, no doubt that was a good thing. So anyway, what did you want to tell me?”
“I had a very unusual dream the night of the blind date, Lex.” Lanie’s face grew warm. She’d actually had two dreams. She only planned to mention the second. She told her friend a little of the details. “So I found this the morning after.” Lanie opened the top drawer of the nightstand and pulled out an antique linen handkerchief.
Lexie unfolded it and read, “JSB.” Handing it back, her eyes met Lanie’s. “So, what’s this about?”
“It was in my bed.”
“And?”
“I dreamt a man gave it to me, and there it was the next morning in my bed.”
“What?”
“Seriously, I dreamt it. His name was Jason Bowen…”
“Wait a minute.” Lexie cut in. “Jason Bowen as in Bowen House, as in this house?”
“There’s more, Lex.” She held the handkerchief monogram-side up. “I think he saved me the other night.”
“Saved you? From the gutter man? How?”
“Well the guy was screaming ‘get away from me!’ No one else was here, Lexie. It was just me in the house, and I was duct-taped all over so he wasn’t screaming at me.”
“So what are you saying, you think your house is haunted by Jason Bowen?”
Lanie nodded.
“You’re kidding me.”
Lanie shook her head.
“And you believe this ghost is leaving handkerchiefs in your bed?”
“I think so. I dreamt of him that night. I dreamt I was living in his time, in the 1880s.”
Processing this information, Lexie went momentarily silent. Then seeking ground that actually made sense, she suggested, “Maybe you were in shock after the attack and thought you heard—”
Lanie put her hand up. “No, like I said, the attack was only a minute or two. I was shook up of course, but I know what shock looks like and I wasn’t there.”
There had to be a reasonable explanation for what Lanie thought had happened. She went down a different path, “Wasn’t there some speculation the guy died by mysterious means?”
“That’s what I’ve been getting from the locals. There’s not a store I’ve been in that doesn’t have at least one person stop to tell me my house is haunted. That’s one of the reasons I asked you to come to dinner Friday night.”
“You want access to the historical society’s files?
Lanie nodded.
“I’ll help you do anything, you know that.”
“I was hoping you would. Nobody knows the town history like you do.”
“Yeah, I’m a pro.” Lexie grinned. Tipping her head toward the handkerchief in Lanie’s hand, she said, “Now let’s go back to that. Ghost stories are fine. We have them at the museum all the time as part of our fund drives. But how can a ghost hand over a handkerchief?” It was a pretty wild deduction.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you sure it didn’t fall out of something? I mean, this is the Bowen house after all. A Bowen handkerchief is more likely to be here than anywhere else.”
“I dreamt it, Lex.”
Lexie tipped her head to the side. “Okay, so we know you’ve always had strange dreams about this place, and God knows you were obsessed enough to actually buy it.” Then referencing the essence of the well-known time period, she added, “Maybe you’re just caught up in the whole Victorian zeitgeist, you know?”
Lanie shrugged, deciding it best to stick with tangibles for the time being. “Perhaps. I could really use your help in finding out about the history of this house and all the people associated with it. Will you help me, Lex?”
Lexie hugged her. “You know I will. I’ll see what I can find in the files today and bring anything good to dinner.” If focusing on the factual history of the place helped Lanie get past her attack and residual fears, then that’s the help she’d give. Lexie picked up her purse, she had to leave. “Hey, what are we having by the way?”
“Italian.” Lanie smiled brightly.
“Ah yes, the pasta bribe.”
“It’s the best kind.”
“Yes, it is. Works every time. Come on, walk me to my car.”
Arm in arm the pair walked out of the bedroom.
Jason sat on the bed for the length of their conversation. It eased his heart to hear Lanie say she was putting the attack behind her. She’d had telephoned the various workers the following morning and told them to take the next four days off because she needed to be alone for a while. And for two entire days she’d slept on the sofa, rising only to drink water and use the commode. Though he tried to insert happy thoughts into her waking mind for the past two days, he’d stayed out of her dreams hoping this trauma would pass and leave no lasting scars.
Not knowing her silent mind was beginning to take a toll on him, in fact he found himself fretting—a completely uncharacteristic condition for him. He saw light at the end of the dark tunnel when she finally called her friend. Lexie was here just a half an hour later, and within minutes Lanie had opened up to her. He was glad for it, for there was no other way for him to hear for himself that she was truly all right inside.
Jason had felt her friend’s shock and rage having seen the savage bruises for himself when she bathed. Lanie’s lovely breast was blotched with bruises cause by a grip so firm each of the man’s fingers had left their mark. Her ribs were bruised as well, and the skin on her wrist had scabbed where the flesh had abraded. The area below her left eye was still red, but fortunately her beautiful face wasn’t marred beyond that. But she was right. Bruises always looked worse two or three days in. Bad to begin with, hers now looked horrible. No wonder her friend had broken into tears. It hurt his heart to see them, too.
Several turns in their conversation surprised him. For one, Lanie knew he was here. So enraged when he’d showed himself to Max, he hadn’t even heard the man’s shouts nor did he give a thought that she might have seen and perhaps been afraid herself. The thought of her running blindly in the
dark and careening down the staircase twisted his insides. Then another recollection came to mind. She’d showed only curiosity the night he knocked a spoon to the floor and opened and closed a squeaky cupboard door. There was a possibility that she might tolerate his presence after all, perhaps as well as Margaret had.
Hearing the front door open and close, he rose from the bed and went to the window. The laughing pair cleared the porch and headed down the walkway. When Lexie drove away, Lanie stood at the gate, her eyes drawn to where he stood, but he knew he was invisible. What’s your exquisite mind thinking, Lanie? A dawning realization came over him. She knew he was here and she wasn’t making plans to vacate the premises. The thought he might eventually sit and talk with her filled him with anticipation. He’d recently discovered she was a doctor. Though he was certain medicine had advanced a great deal since his time, they had that in common.
He also found himself intrigued at what Lexie might find in the local history annals and looked forward to their dinner tomorrow. He hungered to know more about the circumstances of his murder, especially now that Lanie’s dreams had taken him to the turn of events prior to his death. Jason considered those extraordinary dreams a moment. With their inexplicably rich detail and timing to the days preceding his death they had to be significant.
How could she possibly know so much about his house in his own time? Lexie’s words echoed in his mind. You’ve been dreaming about this place for how long? Jason shook his head, completely baffled. She’d been dreaming of his house since she was a girl. It was unbelievable. Lexie had said, ‘The question is why?’ and now he couldn’t help but wonder that, too. Why indeed?
The new alarm system, whatever the hell it was, seemed to put her at ease. He was glad for that small fact, because last night she was back in his bed and he’d slept beside her, holding her close, as close as a ghost without form or substance might. He so wished to dream with her again and for reasons other than the mystery of his murder. For one, having walked this world as a ghost for so long, reliving his time with her made him exceedingly happy. And two, his baser desires got the better of him the night he lay between her silken thighs and loved her with mouth and hands. That was the action of a cad, and while he didn’t regret the act, he certainly regretted the one-sidedness of it.
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