by Nic Saint
But then, as she stepped into the darkened hallway, she heard it again, louder and clearer. Startled, she turned to the source of the mysterious noise. It seemed to be coming from the operating room, where Uncle Charlie worked on the bodies, preparing them for viewings.
The flashlight quivered in her hand, and she took a firmer grip. If someone had actually decided to raid the place, why had he—or she—decided that the operating room was a prime target? There was most certainly nothing of value there, only dead people stuffed in drawers. And then only a few of them, as the death rate had been low in Happy Bays of late, a fact which irked her uncle immensely.
She inched closer, curiosity vying with a strong desire to lock herself up in the kitchen and wake up her uncle. And as she stepped into the doorframe, her hand stole out, reaching for the light switch.
But before she could bathe the room in light, she saw… it. Whatever it was. It was glowing, and hovering not ten feet in front of her. An apparition of some sort, a shimmering of light that illuminated the darkness, as if made from some translucent material.
She gasped, automatically bringing her hand to her mouth, and held her breath for a moment as the vision kept on shimmering, as if unaware of being observed. For a moment, she didn’t dare move. Whatever she’d expected, it most certainly wasn’t this.
She cleared her throat, and the apparition changed shape, and then she noticed it wasn’t a mere dance of light but an actual person.
Or rather the ghost of a person.
The figure now turned to face her, and she recognized the features of Dora Rainbow, victim of a tragic accident and latest resident of Uncle Charlie’s Funeral Delight.
“Um, hi there,” she said when she’d sufficiently recovered from the shock of meeting a ghost where no ghost should have been. “Are you lost or something?”
It seemed like a strange thing to ask, but what does one ask a ghost?
Dora heaved a sob, and asked in the same soft voice she’d possessed in life, “Can you see me?”
“Sure I can,” replied Alice airily, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. “You’re Dora, right? I recognized you from the, erm…” She pointed to a big spot of crimson on the woman’s chest, where a truck had flattened her.
Dora absentmindedly touched the spot. “Oh, right, of course. I keep forgetting about that. I’ve been trying to remove it but it won’t come out. And it’s not as if I can have a quick change of clothes either.”
“You can’t?” asked Alice, intrigued. She’d never actually met a ghost before, and it was an aspect of the matter that intrigued her.
“Of course not,” spoke the woman, sounding a little upset. “I mean, this is all I’ve got.” She pointed to herself. “No change of outfit, hairdo, or even makeup. This is all there is.”
“Too bad,” muttered Alice, who couldn’t imagine what it must be like not to be able to select a fresh pair of undies. “So this is the way you’ll stay… forever?”
Dora nodded. “Oh, yes, for sure. But I’m getting used to it, you know. For instance, I broke my foot in that accident, but I manage to get around.”
Alice’s eyes dropped to the errant limb, and when she saw Dora’s foot hanging by a thread, she gasped involuntarily.
“It actually looks a lot worse than it feels,” Dora assured her. “One of the perks of being dead, I guess. I don’t feel a thing.”
“No pain?”
“Not a twinge.” Dora smiled, and Alice was reminded what a beauty she’d been in life.
She looked a little pale now, but when living her cheeks had been rosy, her skin of a porcelain hue, and her body extremely shapely. In fact, Dora Rainbow could have gone on to be just about anything she wanted to be, but she’d chosen dentistry as her profession of choice. She’d opened a practice on Hutton Street, and would still be removing plaque, filling cavities and generally making sure Happy Baysians went through life with a toothpaste smile if some idiot hadn’t scooped her up and snuffed her out.
“I think it’s odd,” said Alice now.
“What’s odd? That I’m dead?” She snorted. “Join the club.”
“No, that I can see you. I’ve never seen a ghost before. No offense.”
“None taken.” She frowned. “Me neither, actually. At least not until I was dead myself. Now I see them all over the place.”
Alice looked around with some trepidation. “You see them… here?”
“Oh, sure. It’s quiet now, but you should have seen this place last night. Donna had a breakdown and was crying her heart out. Donna Sayer? Her little girl misses her, you see, and Donna has been desperately trying to reach out, but of course she can’t. And then there’s Rock, who was brought in the day before yesterday, and still hasn’t really come to terms with the fact that he played his last tournament.”
Rock Harcombe was a golf pro who’d been participating in a charity tournament when he suddenly keeled over and croaked. He would have to finish that particular round in heaven.
Alice stared at the drawers, where the bodies of Donna and Rock rested. “So why aren’t they out tonight?” she asked, though she didn’t know if she really wanted to know. One ghost was quite enough for now. She couldn’t imagine facing three.
“They’re not here,” said Dora simply. “Rock is out trying to locate his golf ball. According to the referee it landed in the rough, while Rock maintains it was on the green. He and the referee were duking it out when he collapsed, and he wants to prove he was right after all.”
Alice raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t familiar with the secrets of the dead, but this surprised her. “And what about Donna? She also out and about?”
Dora nodded. “Yep. Still trying to get in touch with Tammy, trying to tell her mommy loves her very much and will watch over her for the rest of her life.”
“Aww,” said Alice. “That’s so sweet.”
Dora bit her lip. “You know? Maybe you could talk to her.”
“To Tammy? Yeah, right,” Alice scoffed. “She’ll think I’m nuts. And her father will probably have me committed.” Her own father would be happy to do the honors. As Happy Bays’s chief of police, Alice’s dad wasn’t a man who took kindly to kooks, even if they were related.
“You wouldn’t have to tell anyone,” Dora reasoned. “You could just talk to Donna’s little girl. Convey the message? That way Donna will be able to find peace, and Tammy won’t feel so sad.”
“Or she will feel a lot sadder knowing that some stranger can talk to her mother and she can’t,” Alice argued. She had the distinct impression this conversation was taking a turn for the cray-cray. She held up a hand when Dora opened her mouth to speak. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m pretty sure I’m simply asleep on the kitchen table right now and dreaming up a storm.”
“You’re not dreaming, Alice,” said Dora seriously. “You’re really here and this is really happening. I can’t explain why, but for some reason you can see me.”
Alice sighed. Too bad this was just a dream, she thought. How cool would it be if she could actually see ghosts? It would rock her world. Miss Ordinary would finally have a talent others envied. So far her life had been so average it even bored her. Her only claim to fame was being Reece Hudson’s girlfriend, Hollywood hunk and celebrity par excellence. But that was merely fame by association, of course.
She surreptitiously pinched herself. Any moment now. Any moment she would wake up and have a big laugh.
Dora interrupted her musings. “How did you know where to find me?”
She cocked her head, and blinked at the luminescent apparition. “What do you mean?”
“You were the one who discovered my body, right? You and Felicity Bell?”
She shrugged. “Well, I guess I had a hunch. One of those ideas that suddenly pop into your head?”
The driver of the truck that’d killed Dora had gone above and beyond the call of a hit-and-run. After the hit, instead of running, he loaded up the body and dec
ided to ditch it in Lake Joy. He’d even weighed Dora down with rocks, and if not for Alice’s hunch, the missing dentist might never have been found.
Dora smiled, seeing Alice’s confusion. “You knew where to find me because I reached out and told you where I was.”
Alice shook her head uncertainly. “I don’t think so. I mean, I would remember, right?”
“Not if it happened while you were asleep. I’ve been trying to get through to someone—anyone—ever since I ran into that douchebag—or since he ran into me. You were the first person to respond.”
“It was a hunch. A simple hunch,” Alice repeated slowly.
Dora leaned forward. “I whispered in your ear, Alice. I told you where to look. And luckily for me you heard me and told your dad.”
“You… told me?” Alice swallowed. Was this really happening?
As if she could read her mind, Dora grinned, and Alice saw that her teeth, at least, were still an advertisement for premium dental care. “Yes, Alice. This is really happening. You can see dead people.”
Chapter Two
The door to the basement was slightly ajar, and Felicity frowned, suspending the munching motion of her jaw. She’d been suffering from midnight cravings for a while now, and usually simply gave in when she felt the urge to raid the fridge. And she was just on her way back to bed when she noticed someone had left the door to the basement open.
The house that she and Alice shared had once belonged to Alice’s grandfather and had been supplied by the Whitehouse family free of charge in exchange for keeping it in tiptop shape. The arrangement extended to the basement, but since both Felicity and Alice hated crawling around in a cramped bug-infested space, they never set foot down there unless strictly necessary.
Which is why Felicity knew something was amiss. Alice would never open the door to the basement and neither would she. As far as their live-in boyfriends were concerned: Rick was in New York for a conference on ‘Journalism and ethics in the twenty-first century’ and Reece was doing a movie in LA.
She pushed her red curls from her brow and scurried closer, frowning at the offending door. She was a big and busty woman, and usually quite intrepid, but she drew the line at spiders. Even though she knew her fear was irrational, the mere thought of meeting an arachnoid in a dark basement gave her the willies.
She swallowed the remaining piece of sandwich and rubbed her hands to rid them of the crumbs, then placed a hand on the handle and slowly tugged. The door opened further with a revolting squeak, and she tentatively snuck her hand inside to flick on the single lightbulb suspended from the ceiling. It cast a harsh glow on the top steps. As far as she could ascertain all was quiet down below.
She debated whether to descend. The thought that someone was down there was simply ludicrous. Who in their right mind would break into a house in the middle of the night and then whoop it up in the basement? Besides, didn’t all the movies point out that you should never go snooping around in a basement by yourself?
She decided this was one of those cases where an overactive imagination did more harm than good. The cost of being an amateur reporter. So she flicked off the light and closed the door. That was it. She would talk to Alice when she got home in the morning. For whatever reason, she had probably left the door open to begin with.
Quietly relieved, she tripped back upstairs, to a nice and comfortably warm bed. Now that Rick was out of town she had the whole bed to herself, which was both a joy and a source of regret. She and the star reporter had only been together for a few short weeks, and the love light was still burning brightly. She missed him when he was gone, and the bed felt lonely without him by her side.
Especially now, with Alice doing the obligatory shift at the funeral home, she was feeling a little vulnerable. And she’d just hopped between the covers and turned off the light when she heard a soft sniffle.
Figuring it was Gaston, their big, red tomcat, she felt around with her foot. Gaston liked to hop onto the bed at night and curl up at her feet. To her surprise she didn’t feel the familiar weight of the big cat.
And then she heard it again. That same sniffle. What the heck?
Carefully, she raised her head and stared into the dark. She blinked when she spotted a soft glow in the corner of the room, right next to the closet. And she blinked again when she saw that the glow was in fact a small girl, hunched on the floor, crying softly, her face buried in her hands, wispy flaxen bangs covering them.
Felicity stared at the apparition, too fascinated to scream out her surprise. For this was very obviously not a living little girl but the astral form of one. For one thing, she could see the wall right through her, which is not something the living allow for, and then there was that eerie glow, as if the apparition had taken a bath in fluorescent paint.
“Who-who are you?” Felicity asked, her voice brittle.
The girl looked up, face pale and tear-filled eyes wide. She looked about six or seven. “You can see me?”
Felicity nodded, then thought the girl probably couldn’t see her, as she hadn’t turned on the light, and added, “Yes, I can.”
The girl wiped her tears away with the sleeve of her dress, and asked, “You’re Felicity Bell, aren’t you? The baker?”
“That’s me,” said Felicity, trying to figure out if she’d seen this girl before. She didn’t think so. Happy Bays was a small town, but even then it was impossible to know everyone.
“I thought so. I bought a creme donut from you once. You said you’d put extra creme in mine, since I liked it so much.”
“I did, huh?” asked Felicity with a frown. Still nothing. “Um—I hope you don’t mind my asking, but…”
“Yes, I’m dead,” said the girl in a low voice, then whispered, “But I’m not supposed to tell.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” Felicity whispered back.
The girl giggled. “You’re the only one who can see me.”
“Yeah, why is that?” asked Felicity. “Why can I see you?”
The girl shrugged and held up her hands in a cute gesture. “I don’t know. I tried to talk to Mom and Dad, my big brother, Grandma, Grandpa, Melissa—she’s my best friend… Nothing. For days and days.”
“That long, huh?”
“At least,” said the girl seriously, “but it’s difficult to know for sure. Time moves differently when you’re dead.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Felicity, “but I’m glad you told me.”
The girl paused. “Is it true that you live with another woman?”
“That’s right. Alice and I share this house. She’s my best friend.”
“They told me she was.” She’d risen, and was scuffing her toe on the carpet. “Are you a lesbian?”
Felicity laughed. “No, I’m not. I’m afraid ‘they’ have no idea what they’re talking about. And who are ‘they’, if I may ask?”
The girl looked up at the ceiling as she recalled the names. “Well, there’s Dora, of course. And then Donna, and a funny man who plays golf. Rock. But Dora is the one who told me to come talk to you.”
Felicity frowned. “Dora Rainbow?”
The girl’s face lit up. “Yes. She’s very nice, and pretty as a rainbow, too. She told me all kinds of stuff about being dead.”
“I’ll bet she did,” muttered Felicity. It was odd, she felt, that this girl and Dora would know one another. Alice had helped find Dora’s body after she went missing. With an uncanny intuition she’d known where to look. If this ghost girl was right and Dora’s ghost was roaming around, she might have nudged Alice to have her body dredged up from the bottom of the lake and be given a proper burial.
“What’s your name, honey?” she asked.
“Jennifer Dozen. But most people call me Jennie.”
Felicity’s lips parted, but no sound came out. Jennifer Dozen had gone missing three weeks ago, and her parents were still in a frenzy, posting signs all over town and going on TV with desperate pleas to return their daughter hom
e safely. Though no ransom demands had been made, it was generally assumed the girl had been kidnapped.
Only now did she finally recognize the missing girl in her ghostly guest. Of course. She’d even written a story about her for the Gazette. She swallowed a sob. So Jennie was dead. This was terrible news.
“I-I’m so sorry,” she said, for lack of anything better to say.
“That’s all right,” said the little girl. “I’m used to being dead by now. Dora talked to me about it and said that when this is all over, we’re going to a very nice place, and that one day I’ll even see my family again. Is it true?”
“Yes,” Felicity said hoarsely. Her eyes were stinging with tears.
“She said I have to figure out what happened to me. Just like she does.”
“She’s… connected to all of this?”
“Dora doesn’t know how, exactly, but our fate has become…” She scrunched up her face in an attempt to remember the difficult word. “…inter… mixed?”
“Intermingled?”
Jennifer nodded, and suddenly her head flipped forward and off her slender shoulders. Felicity gasped, but Jennie deftly caught it before it rolled away, and placed it back on her shoulders. “This always happens,” she explained cheerily.
Felicity wiped away a tear. Now she was the one sniffling. “And Dora told you to talk to me?”
“She said you would help me. Will you, Felicity? Help me?”
Before she could think things through, Felicity found herself agreeing. “Of course I will, honey. Of course I’ll help you.”
Chapter Three
Rick’s car was racing through the night. He wanted to arrive home before the storm hit. The conference on ‘Journalism and ethics in the twenty-first century’ had proved even more boring than the topic promised, and instead of spending his last night at the hotel he’d decided to bail out and head on home. With some luck he could still catch a few hours of sleep in his own bed, and surprise Felicity with an early arrival.
He’d missed her. Not since he was a boy had he been so aware of the warmth and comfort a real home offered. It was a great concern, since his work as a reporter often required him to be gone for weeks. He’d been in Paris last month, and had missed Fee terribly. Next week he was scheduled to travel to China for a story on the triads and for the first time in his illustrious career he wasn’t keen on going.