Grave Danger

by K. E. Rodgers

  Before Eleanor could continue down this path, Clarissa interrupted her. “Don’t even go there, Eleanor. They’re just good friends. I’ve seen them together and I can assure you there is nothing romantic going on between them. You always do that you know? You think everyone’s interested in someone just because they spend time together.”

  Eleanor brushed away her long curly blonde hair off her shoulder. “I just think I’d be a good matchmaker, that’s all. I can see when people like each other and know the difference between friendship and infatuation. Except for you,” she turned her head to give Clarissa an intense stare, “You don’t seem to get too close to anyone. Isn’t there anyone you’ve sort of had eyes for?”

  “No,” Clarissa lied through her teeth. “I haven’t been here long enough to figure that out yet.” Eleanor gave her another long look, before turning away. That look said she didn’t believe her friend one bit.

  “So if Jackson is your escort to the dinner,” Eleanor began, a hesitant note in her voice. Jackson had only been allowed as Clarissa’s escort because of some convincing on Maddy’s part to the council members. “Who’s Henry taking?”

  Clarissa had known for some time now how Eleanor truly felt about Henry. Though both of them hid it well, anyone with eyes to see the truth could see that those two had a terrible love for the other. But something was preventing each from pressing forward. Though Clarissa would like to help, she knew that it wasn’t her place to interfere in the ‘will they, won’t they’ conflict that Eleanor and Henry had put themselves in for decades. The drama of it all was outlasting the Ross and Rachael or Jim and Pam plot lines. It would have been cute if it wasn’t so sad at the same time.

  She thought for a moment, trying to remember who Henry had asked to the dinner. It wasn’t a woman she was well acquainted with. “I think her name is Millicent Carp. Does that name sound familiar?”

  “Millicent Carp,” Eleanor quoted back. “That fish-lipped old handbag, what is he thinking?” Actually Millicent, despite her unpleasant sounding name, was in fact a very attractive woman in her mid-thirties who had once been romantically linked to some of the hottest male actors of the nineteen thirties and forties. She had that pinup model elegance that was all the rage back then.

  Eleanor hated Millicent Carp because she was tall and curvy with long wavy brunette hair instead of short and slender with cork screw curls that always required detangling in the mornings. Even in death Eleanor had to fight the nature of her hair. She rested on a satin pillow at night, but in spite of all her efforts in this humidity her hair sometimes had a seventies afro look about it.

  “She seems to be a nice woman,” Clarissa defended Henry’s date. Out of all the committee members, Millicent was one of the few who did try to strike up a conversation with her.

  “Don’t defend that woman to me, Clarissa. I’ve known her a lot longer than you have and she’s a snob. She’s always telling stories of when she used to go to all the Hollywood parties and how everyone adored her. What absolute nonsense.”

  Clarissa couldn’t begrudge Eleanor for smearing the woman’s name. In the same position she’d probably feel the same way.

  Someone knocked on the door to her suite. “Come in,” Clarissa called out. The door was opened revealing Richard standing in the hallway. Looking at him in his faded denim jeans and Black Sabbath t-shirt from their 1978 World Tour she thought that he was the one who needed to be fashionably re-vamped by Eleanor and her expertise. However, knowing Richard he’d storm off at the slightest suggestion or comment about his clothes.

  “You almost finish in here. Josh and I are downstairs waiting.” He came into the sitting room, raising his dark eyebrows at all the boxes stacked about the room. Stepping around them he came to sit in the high backed chair next to the couch.

  “So,” he said on a sigh. “You’re done with all this right? We want to head out before it gets too late. The first fifty customers get their drinks complementary if they bring in a real human bone.”

  “What’s this?” Clarissa asked confused.

  Eleanor made an exasperated sigh as she reached across the couch and smacked Richard on the arm. “You were supposed to call her yesterday and tell her we were going out.” Turning to Clarissa she explained. “There’s a new night club and restaurant opening, tonight’s the big event and we thought you’d like to go with us. Richard was the one who found out about it and he was supposed to call and ask if you wanted to go.”

  “Why was I supposed to be event coordinator?” Richard argued. “Besides you two spend all the time together I figured you would have brought it up during all the girly talk. Anyway it doesn’t matter. Josh and I snuck into the Science Department at Flagler College and borrowed some bones from their collection.”

  “I hope you plan on bringing them back,” Clarissa said, not sure why they needed them. “Why do you need bones to get into this club?”

  “It’s a ghost club,” Richard informed her with a grin. “Only the dead and those in the S.S. are allowed in. The bones play to the theme for the night’s party, The Skull and Bones. Kind of an interesting choice since most of the guests won’t have any. The club’s name is Dark Spirits, kind of a weird name but who cares what they call it as long as we get free booze.”

  “Sounds like an interesting place.” Clarissa didn’t know there were clubs in the area dedicated specifically to the dead clientele.

  “So you’re going with us, right?” Eleanor asked with a bright smile. “Henry said he couldn’t come because the council was sending him off on some negotiation meeting. I’m not sure what it’s about; he was rather secretive when he told me.”

  Clarissa couldn’t at first recall either what it was about. The council members, especially Isabella Canova, were always having Henry going off on secret missions for them. But then she suspected what it might be concerning. They’d found the bokor, they just needed someone to convince him to come into town and do his dirty work. Clarissa knew it was only a matter of time before the pot was sweetened enough to convince him to come to St. Augustine.

  “No,” Clarissa answered her. “I already agreed to help Maddy arrange a scrap book for Jackson’s graduation in the spring. She wants to give it to him now partially full and then she wants him to fill in the rest before his school year ends.” At Eleanor’s disappointed look she added. “I promised her and I can go to the club another time. Is that okay?”

  She looked between both of them. It was only a partial lie. She was helping Maddy this evening make up her scrap book. But that wouldn’t take too long. It was later that she had made plans to meet Corrigan on his side of the bridge. But she couldn’t tell them that.

  Why? They’re your friends. She just couldn’t put them in that awkward position.

  Clarissa’s days were almost a routine now. During the day she would spend time with Eleanor or Richard. They worked for the St. Augustine Eidolon post. Richard wrote articles and Eleanor took pictures, other days they worked part time at the tourist shops and tour guides. Clarissa went with them when she could, but most of the time she was asked to sit-in on council meetings or be there when political figures from other areas around the state came for a visit. So far only a councilman from down south had come to pay a call. He’d left quickly the next day when he heard of the problems they were having.

  In the evenings she would have dinner with Maddy and Jackson; a real dinner with real living food. At first it had been awkward, but quickly enough they’d found their stride and for a few hours every night Clarissa wasn’t a dead woman. After dinner they’d watch television or play a board game. The games always ended up with Maddy owning all the property and Clarissa mortgaging all her homes. She knew right then that she didn’t have a head for business.

  Then Clarissa would walk Jackson out to his bike on the street. They’d talk for a bit. Life with his parents hadn’t improved much and the best way for everyone to get along was to pretend that nothing was wrong. Hence, Jackson didn’t talk too
much with his parents.

  “You going for a visit?” he’d ask. He knew the answer, but asked all the same.

  “Yes,” she answered. “You going to crash on Leah’s couch again?”

  “Affirmative,” he answered back, “Until she gets tired of seeing my snoring ass on her couch every morning.” Jackson was secretly staying at Leah’s. Only the three of them knew; his grandmother would have a fit. “It’s a bitch to drive back every morning to school. But I’d rather drive from West Palm Beach and back again every day to get to school than stay with them,” ‘them’, obviously being his parents.

  Jackson would drive over to Leah’s house on the south side of town and Clarissa would head back inside to help Maddy clean up. She and Maddy would talk for a few hours before Clarissa would make her usual departure up to her room. Once there she’d change into her ‘Corrigan seeing’ clothes, shorts and tennis shoes, a bathing suit if they decided to go swimming in the ocean. She brought extra clothes if she thought about changing later. Clarissa had tried to make her own clothes, but her stitching was off and the result looked more Holly Hobby than runway quality. Then she’d sneak out her window like an errant teenager.

  “Yeah,” Eleanor agreed on a sigh. “You can come with us another time I guess.”

  “Thanks for being so understanding,” Clarissa said, touching the back of Eleanor’s hand.

  “Well,” Richard hedged. “If you two are done playing girl stuff can we get a move on. I got the bones downstairs. You want a shin bone or a rib, Eleanor?”

  Eleanor touched her lip thinking hard about the question. “Rib, please.”

  Clarissa walked them both downstairs where they met Josh. He was dressed in casual clothes and had lost the apron back at his place of work, the Happy Haunts. “Hey, Clarissa,” he called out when he saw them.

  Josh had developed a tiny crush on Clarissa. He might have mentioned it to Richard when they hung out at the tavern after his shift. They were also both in a band together called the Deadbeats. They were still pretty green and hadn’t had many gigs to warm up on, but they were getting better. The council had hired them, at an almost outrageous low price to play at the Halloween party in a couple of days.

  Tonight would have been like a double date only Richard and Eleanor weren’t exactly interested in each other. Really it was a maneuver to get Clarissa away from town and her busy schedule so he could get to know her better and perhaps see if she wanted to get to know him.

  “Clarissa’s not coming,” Richard said to Josh as they came into the room. He discreetly patted his friend on the arm. He knew exactly what if felt like to be interested in someone who barely knew you existed. “Sorry,” he whispered his condolences.

  They left shortly thereafter. Clarissa watched as a car pulled up to the front of the house driven by a female S.S. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, but Clarissa couldn’t place her name; Audrey Something. She watched as they drove away, waving to them as they left.

  A sudden sting hit Clarissa like a sledgehammer. It almost crippled her, causing her to bend forward at the waist and hold her stomach. It was like someone was trying to fry her soul like an egg.

  “I’m watching you, little girl.” The soft angelic voice sounded harsh and cold around the edges. Without needing to see the body, she already knew who that voice belonged to. “A car will pick you up at 10:30 am, be ready for it.”

  The connection was broken leaving Clarissa to gasp for air. She knew that Isabella was a dangerous young woman, too bad it was packaged inside the body of a naïve looking teenager. Yet there was very little naïveté when it came to this ghost council member.

  A voice deep inside Clarissa whispered to her, calling out from that dark spot deep within, it told her that one of these days she’d get that stuck-up little bitch back. Clarissa pushed down the horrible thought, remembering that despite Isabella’s age as a ghost she still behaved as a prideful child. At death her human brain had not had the ability to grow as it should, leaving her with the experience of an adult, but the underdeveloped mind of an adolescent.

  Clarissa went back inside. Tomorrow would come soon enough, but at least she had tonight with Corrigan to look forward to.

  Chapter 19-

  Across the bridge inside the LeMoyne complex there was a stirring of activity as the family woke from that day’s slumber. Across from the main house surrounded by a pretty little garden and wrought iron fence, Margaret Ann dug around in the dirt in her vegetable garden pulling weeds and checking the plants for infection.

  Wearing a baggy pair of overalls and sporting a pair of neon pink gardening gloves she looked less like a monster and more like a woman enjoying herself in her garden. She swiped a piece of her blonde hair off her forehead, brushing it behind her ear. As she worked on her knees in the garden, she swayed to the music coming from a portable radio on the ground beside her.

  The twilight sky enveloped the land around her casting shadows over the houses as it steadily consumed the light of another day. Every evening she came out to her garden to tend to it. Xavier preferred to sleep until full dark, but she liked basking in the soft light of the day’s final cadence before the night took over. It relaxed her and made her feel almost human.

  Margaret Ann heard the heavy footfall a moment before she looked up to see her baby brother standing beside her wrought iron gate. The waning light played across his handsome face making his eyes sparkle. Lately those eyes had warmed, filling with a light that she hadn’t seen in them before. It pleased her beyond almost anything to see her brother happy. It was a good look on him.

  “So what can I attribute the pleasure of your company this evening?” She smiled up at him as he walked into her garden. When he got close enough, she pulled him down into the dirt next to her. “Have you come to learn the art of farming?”

  Margaret Ann patted his cheek affectionately with her neon pink gloves. “Somehow I have the feeling you’re not here to help weed my tomato plants.”

  Corrigan wiped a smudge off his sister’s cheek. “No, I don’t have a green thumb like you.”

  Margaret Ann gasped in mock outrage. “Are you suggesting my thumb has become septic?”

  Playing along he reached for her gloved hand pulling it off to inspect her thumb to be sure. “It looks a little necrotic; maybe you should see a doctor. You can’t let these things get out of hand or you might wind up dead.” He tried to make it sound serious, but the smile gave it away.

  She made a silly face at him, sticking her tongue out like she was dying of some horrible disease. “Since when have you become a comedian, my moody Irish brother?” She punched his arm with her perfectly undead looking hand. Margaret Ann’s skin was anything but necrotic and was deceiving to the unwary eye. No one alive could guess that she wasn’t the same.

  Corrigan’s smile faltered. It was true. When had he become a man who made jokes or felt affection for his brothers and sisters? But that’s what he felt now. He had always cared for them, felt a great deal of warmth when he spent time with them. But now it felt more real. Before he’d been trapped behind a glass wall of his own making, where he was able to keep the world and all those in it at a distance; it had been easier that way. He’d existed for so long alone in the world it was out of habit that he thought little of human interaction. Now, though, the glass had shattered and he felt he was slowly letting them get closer.

  He could only blame Clarissa for bringing him out from behind the glass barrier into the living world. She was quickly starting to mean more to him than any other object of value or frail happy memory of his life. Corrigan hadn’t voiced his heart to her yet, but already he knew that the bonds of love were quickly weaving their threads around his heart. He’d become a bleeding heart. Who would have thought?

  It had been a little over a week since Clarissa had changed his perception of women and ghosts. He knew she went out of her way to make up for the miserable existence he’d lived through before he’d come to stay with the LeMoynes.
She made him feel like he had value, that he deserved love.

  She’d listened quietly as he told her the tragic story of his death. How his only brother had fallen in love with a selfish woman who he foolishly believed was his whole world. But the woman had eyes only for Corrigan. They’d made port in the tiny unnamed island several times before and each time his brother had fought to win this woman’s heart, to no avail.

  Driven to desperation Aiden had gone to a vodou priestess to seek help. To his surprise she had been young and beautiful and not the old wizened creature he thought she’d be. When he explained to the woman how he loved a woman who refused him repeatedly despite all his wooing attempts, but instead seemed more than interested in his older brother, she told him of only one solution. Kill your brother.

  But there had been an ulterior motive on her part. The priestess had seen the brothers in port before on a previous journey to the island. She’d spied Corrigan on the docks. One look into his ice blue eyes, seen the breeze finger his midnight hair, and she had wanted him. So she made an exchange, the love of the young woman for the life of the brother.

  Aiden had drugged his brother’s ale while they’d spent an evening in one of the local taverns. After complaining of an unusual head pain, Corrigan had stumbled out onto the beach. The moon had been full, a blood moon; the only light to guide their way to the waiting surf.

  As Corrigan stood still facing the rolling ocean, trying to get his bearing and not puke his guts out, an alarming feeling came over him. He never got sick on spirits of any kind. It was then that his brother’s hand had crept around his throat like the snake of Lucifer. The blade made short work of Corrigan’s throat, his life’s blood leaking and falling onto the soft sand turning it black as death in the moonlight.

  Corrigan remembered nothing after that. When he awoke, he was chained inside an iron cage. That stinking iron box had been his entire world for the next fifty or so years. Elmira had both loved and hated him. He was her pet, her play thing. But she hated that even as she aged with each passing year, her beauty fading, he remained the same. He had done horrible things in her service, killed those that she was envious of and toward the end she barely remembered he was human. For a time he forgot as well.