Silent Whisper

by ANDREA SMITH

  My foot was furiously pumping brakes that had been rendered useless. A slow leak of brake fluid no doubt.

  God! Please help me!

  The car continued to gain speed as the downhill momentum increased. Somewhere I heard the sound of a woman screaming, at the same time that I heard the sound of crumpling metal and steel as my blue Nissan careened through the guardrail on the left side of the road, and bounced over and over again down the slope of the tree-covered hillside, finally coming to rest on its top.

  Then there was blackness.

  And quiet.

  chapter 41

  December 14, 2014

  “I saw her eyes flutter. Twice. I think she’s waking up, Jean.”

  Ryan?

  “See, she is! Hey, baby. Welcome back.”

  I felt a warm flush envelop my body as if every single nerve ending, every bit of muscle, every pore on my skin had been electrified and was generating heat. But the heat was now subsiding little by little. It was seeping out of my pores, and the heaviness that it had brought with it was lifting, slowly, methodically and leaving me. I was in control once again of my body.

  I opened my eyes, immediately searching for a familiar face, and I found it. He was sitting on my bed, inches from me, holding my hand in his.

  “Ryan?” I croaked, my voice sounding foreign to me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hey baby,” he greeted, his lips brushing mine softly. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up. It’s been three days.”

  “Three days? Is that all?” I felt this sudden spark of—for lack of a better word—pheromone overload as I gazed into Ryan’s green eyes. “It just seems like forever since we’ve fucked,” I said in my sexy voice. “I’m so glad you’re here.” I pulled his hand to bring him in closer.

  “Uh, honey,” he said with a nervous laugh, pulling back a bit. “You gave us quite a scare.”

  Us?

  Ryan moved aside so that I could see who else had been with him in what now appeared to be a hospital room by the looks, sounds and smells, not my motel room at all.

  Oops.

  It was my mother. Her look of concern was visible by the crease marks in her forehead. She took my hand into hers, gently rubbing my fingers with hers.

  “Thank God, Parrish,” she said, releasing a heavy sigh.

  “Lana.”

  “What?”

  “You—you’re Lana…from my dream.”

  I watched her expression morph from relief to fear in a nanosecond, and then it settled on concerned.

  “Darling, do you remember your car accident? You went off the road, through an iron fence and ended up in a cemetery. It was three days ago. You suffered a head trauma. Do you remember any of it?”

  I continued to watch her. She was my mom. I knew that. But she was also Lana. But who the hell was Lana?

  “Don’t you recognize me?” she pressed.

  I nodded. “Yes, but what happened to Karlie?”

  “Oh my God—Ryan, go get one of the nurses or a doctor. She’s not making any sense.”

  Ryan quickly left the room, but I knew that I was making sense. At least I thought that I was.

  “I had a weird, weird dream, Mom.”

  She visibly relaxed when I addressed her as my mother. “I mean it felt almost like a Wizard of Oz type of thing, only much darker,” I said, and then shivered. The warmth I had been feeling for days was gone now.

  “Well don’t you worry, sweetheart. You were in a coma so I’m sure things like that happen when you’re comatose. Just put it all out of your mind, okay?”

  I nodded, giving her a weak smile.

  Ryan returned to the room with a nurse in tow. She checked my pulse, my blood pressure, my temperature, my pupil dilation, my ears, my reflexes, and my lymph nodes. I was about to ask whether she had a pap smear planned when she finally stopped and looked at me with a smile.

  “She’s just a little fuzzy from being out of it for a few days. She’ll be back to normal in no time. Welcome back, Ms. Locke. Are you in any pain at the moment?”

  “Just horny—I mean hungry,” I replied, quickly, feeling a flush spread across my cheeks. Ryan cleared his throat, shifting a bit uncomfortably. This was definitely out of character for me.

  How hard had I whacked my head?

  “I’ll see that a tray is brought up. Your doctor will be here in a little while. He’ll be pleased with your progress,” she said, giving me a wink.

  I was released the following day to Ryan’s care and ordered to take it easy with no work assignments for the next two weeks. My mom had fussed over me, trying to convince me to come and stay with her in Richmond to recuperate.

  “Mom, I’m feeling a lot better than I did yesterday. Things were just foggy, that’s all. I’ll be fine. I just hope I can get another shoot.”

  “Oh you,” she said, t’sking me, “You’ll get another shoot and if you don’t, who cares? You need to go on more shoots with Ryan and do what it is you really have a passion for, like you’re always telling me.”

  “I know, Mom,” I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “You’re right. And don’t worry, I promise I’ll let Ryan fuss over me just like you do, okay?”

  She gave me a hug, kissing my cheek. “I’ll hold you to that,” she warned. “I love you, Parrish.”

  “Love you too, Mom. Hey, how are you and Jerry doing? Is it getting serious?” I teased.

  “We’re just friends, Parrish. I keep telling you that.”

  “Uh huh,” I said, winking. “Friends with benefits. Why else does he take you on those fishing trips with him?”

  I actually think I saw my mother blush. “Gotta go catch my plane, darling,” she said. “Take care of her Ryan.”

  On the way back to the hotel, Ryan continued to eye me warily as if he thought I was some fragile thing to be handled gently. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay, babe?” he asked, glancing over at me.

  “Uh huh,” I replied, using my sexy voice again. “Almost perfect…well, except for one thing.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’ll feel one hundred percent once you’ve buried yourself balls deep into my pussy.”

  Jeezo Pete. Where did that come from?

  “Okay, who are you and what’ve you done with Parrish?” he joked, but he continued to eye me with suspicion, as if it weren’t entirely a joke.

  I was definitely acting out of character—not that I was a prude or anything like that, but clearly I had some uber hormonal activity going on.

  “Maybe the head trauma cut loose some pent-up hormones,” I replied, giving him a wink.

  Once we arrived at my hotel room, the same one I’d been staying at during the photo shoot for Mountain-Step Ski Wear, I was all over Ryan, despite his protests.

  “You’re supposed to being taking it easy,” he said, as I unzipped his jeans, and pulled his erection out.

  “Then make it easy on me and quit fighting it, Ryan,” I said, running my tongue down the length of it, as I cupped his balls. Once my tongue moved back up to the head, circling the tip and gently nipping his sensitive ridge with my teeth, he was on board with everything. I devoured him with my mouth and tongue, putting pressure on his perineum with my fingers as he moaned in pleasure. I was doing things to his cock that were new to me…and to him. As I felt the pulsing of his impending climax, I pulled him in deeper, my hands gripping his tight ass, to bring him in closer. He groaned with the release of his warm cum, running down my throat, as I swallowed each powerful stream, moaning with my own pleasure.

  “Fuck,” he growled, his hand fisting my hair, “On the bed, now.”

  And for the next hour, we fucked with total abandonment like we never had before. I mean as far as our sex life had gone, I’d no complaints, but now it seemed as if we’d been missing out on some primal level that was new to the both of us. And it totally rocked our sexual world.

  Afterwards we curled up against one another. A thin film of perspiration coated our nake
d bodies; the room smelled like our sex and I loved it. I asked Ryan to fill me in on the past few days.

  Apparently, my agent had contacted both of my emergency contacts—Mom and Ryan, and both of them had hauled ass to Chester, West Virginia.

  My mind was still cluttered with pieces of the puzzle that had been my life for the past several days.

  Dream?

  Reality?

  I couldn’t tell. It’d had been way too vivid and in full panoramic color to be a dream. Besides that, my normal dreams had never made sense. This one had in a twisted sort of way. And then how could I explain the physical transition away as being part of the dream? I had felt the changes in my body temperature; the fullness that spread through every part of me, the realization that it wasn’t my thoughts fluttering through my mind anymore…it had been her thoughts.

  “You okay?” Ryan asked, pulling me back to the here and now.

  I nodded.

  “Listen, I made plane reservations for us tomorrow,” Ryan said, his fingers stroking my hair gently. “Ready to go home?”

  “I need to talk to you for a minute, Ryan,” I said, running my fingers over his muscular chest. “I need to tell you something, but I need for you to not say anything until I’m finished. I know that you’re going to think this was all some comatose dream, but I’m not sure that explains what happened totally. I think it was much more than that.”

  “I’m listening, baby,” he said softly.

  And then I told him everything that had happened since the car accident with all the detail that I could remember, there were some blank spaces in my journey that I couldn’t recollect, but I was certain I’d remembered the most important parts. When I was finished, I couldn’t look at him. I simply hoped like hell that he wasn’t going to laugh, or have me committed.

  His fingers cupped my chin, tilting my face up so that our eyes locked. He studied me for a moment. There was nothing but concern on his face.

  He thinks I’m nuts.

  But as I continued to gaze at him, the concern was replaced by understanding and sincerity. And then I knew that he was simply trying to digest it all. “I believe you,” he said. “It makes sense when I think back to what the paramedics said when they found you in that cemetery.”

  “Who found me?” I asked, suddenly needing to know.

  He shrugged. “No idea. A woman phoned 9-1-1 and reported it and then left the scene. The dispatcher said whomever it was that called was whispering. There was no caller I.D. on the call, either. They thought maybe the person was afraid to give a name…or have their voice on tape. The weird thing is…that when the dispatcher went to play it back for his supervisor, there was nothing recorded on the tape.”

  “Ryan, you need to take me there. I need to go to that grave again.”

  “Parrish,” he said, trying to soothe me, “What do you expect to find?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I just know that it’s something I need to do, and that I need to do it alone.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute. I’m not about to drop you off at the cemetery and leave you there. Not happening, babe.”

  “You don’t have to drop me off. You can wait in the car, in the parking lot. I need to go to the grave myself. I need to talk to my mother and she won’t appear if you’re with me.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Just a feeling,” I admitted. “Will you humor me?”

  “Don’t I always? Get a warmer coat and let’s go.”

  chapter 42

  The sun was shining on this crisp, cold December afternoon as I trudged through the snow of the cemetery where I’d quite literally collided just a few yards away from Karlie Masterson’s grave only days before.

  Funny, but it seemed like almost a lifetime ago…or should I say part-of a lifetime? A lifetime that had been cut short on purpose. That is, if I was truly convinced that it hadn’t been some dream generated by my comatose state. I was fairly certain it had been real.

  I’d never given much thought about the existence of spirits—or ghosts. I guess I was the type of person who believed that supernatural things were always a possibility; I didn’t see things as being either black or white.

  Ryan was the same way. I recalled a photo shoot he’d done the previous year for a piece on the haunted catacombs of Paris. He’d shown me several photos he’d taken where you could clearly see shadowy apparitions amongst the live people that were touring. He’d been so excited over the validity of the photos since he had not only taken them, but developed them as well. I think that had convinced Ryan of their existence, and me as well, though the woman in the black sweater dress that I’d observed that snowy night looked totally different than what I’d seen in Ryan’s photos.

  I reached the grave, and felt the chill of the wind kick up just a bit as I stood there, not knowing what the hell I was supposed to do or say to conjure her up. I mean what the hell were the rules with spirits, ghosts, and poltergeists, whatever the politically correct term was these days? Did they only come out at night when it was pitch dark? Could they be hanging around without showing themselves? Could they hear human voices?

  I guess I was about to find out.

  Luckily no one else was around or I probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to start the conversation just then. I needed to cut to the chase, get to the point with her. She owed me some answers.

  “Okay, Karlie. I’m here; you’ve got my attention so you need to let me know that you can hear me.”

  I waited, feeling the wind whip around me. I pulled the collar up around my neck tighter. “So, I’m not going to stand here all afternoon and freeze my ass off, you know? You wanted me to do something for you, but before I consider that, you need to clear some shit up for me.”

  My voice had gotten louder for some reason, and I quickly turned and looked around to make sure I was still alone. I was.

  “Parrish, you have a potty-mouth.”

  Huh?

  I whirled back around and there she was. Sitting on top of her own headstone, wearing the same black sweater dress, same hose and heels; her legs and arms both crossed. Her voice came out plain, no whispering, and I immediately recognized it.

  “You are real,” I breathed.

  “Well, as real as any ghost can be,” she replied smiling.

  “I don’t understand—your voice, I recognize it now, but I didn’t before—when you whispered to me that night, I mean.”

  “That’s understandable,” she said, “Since next to the sense of smell, the sense of sound is strongest in your memory. Even before you were born and then as a tiny baby, you heard my voice—a lot.”

  “It’s so clear right now.”

  “That’s because I soaked up some of your energy while I was in the driver’s seat the last few days, my darling daughter. I hope you didn’t mind. It sure makes it easier for me to get around and communicate for now. It will diminish over the next couple of weeks. But Parrish,” she continued, “I want you to know that circumstances outside of my control brought you to me; I want you to understand that. I had nothing to do with your accident. I’d never do anything to put you at risk. Mommy loves you.”

  I shook my head, not able to contain my smile. “I can’t look at you and call you ‘mom’. I’m sorry—and it’s not because I don’t believe you—I mean I got the story firsthand, so I know it wasn’t a dream, but damn, you’re younger than me.”

  And then she laughed and it freakin’ sparkled. “My ghostly form is still twenty-two, but I assure you my spiritual essence is forty-nine. Yep—I hit the big five-oh next May unless I finish crossing over. Then you get to decide what age you want to be, I mean how cool is that?”

  “Okay—rewind, please? I don’t understand any of this, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to give me a quick ‘Poltergeist 101’ training session.”

  “First off, I’m not a poltergeist. You need to know that right from Jump Street.”

  Jump Street?

  I was tota
lly clueless about all of this, but I could tell she felt insulted. “Is that a bad thing?” I asked her.

  “Yes, most definitely. You see, poltergeists are manifestations of negative energy—they’re aggressive and besides that, they can’t be seen. I, on the other hand, I’m a living soul that hasn’t totally crossed over into the next world permanently because…well, obviously I have some unfinished business that’s important to me.”

  “Okay, I think I understand. So, can you tell me where exactly you’ve been for the last twenty-seven almost twenty-eight years then?”

  “In Limbo.”

  Holy Mother of Christ.

  Having been raised Catholic, I was familiar with Limbo. But this didn’t sound like the Limbo we’d been told about in grade school.

  “I thought Limbo was where babies went that hadn’t been baptized?”

  I actually saw my ghost-mom roll her eyes, and shake her head, the blond permed curls bouncing. “Yeah, well they told you wrong, my sweet daughter. I mean Limbo is the bomb, don’t get me wrong. It’s almost perfect, but of course you know it can’t be totally perfect or it would be heaven, right?”

  I nodded.

  “So before I go any further with the things I need you to do for me, I just have to tell you how much I love you, my beautiful baby girl.”

  And that got me choked up as I watched my mother tear up.

  “You are exquisite. You turned out perfect and though I missed all of those years between then and now with you, I can see that Lana did right by you. But I realize now that she never told you about me—otherwise, you would’ve recognized my name on the headstone of my grave that night you came barreling into the cemetery.”

  “That’s why you kept pointing to it?” I asked, wiping an errant tear that rolled down my cheek.

  “Yes my darling,” she continued, “You see, if Lana had ever brought you to the cemetery, I would’ve known it and have been able to appear to you just like I did the evening of your accident. I guess I hadn’t counted on the fact that she never told you about me at all.”