The Ghost and the Bride

by Anna J. McIntyre

  “He asked his boss to lie?”

  “Basically. And his boss agreed.”

  “I don’t know if I’m more surprised Kent asked his boss to lie, or the fact the boss agreed.”

  “Well, according to Marilyn, it’s not a big secret the boss fools around on his poor wife. I guess he believes cheating husbands need to cover for each other.”

  “Are you suggesting Kent was cheating on you?” Lily asked.

  “Before the accident, I would never have considered such a thing. I would have said absolutely not. I thought everything was perfect. But…” Pamela looked out the side window and bit her lower lip in an attempt to silence the tears.

  “What?”

  “Kent used to date a girl in Paso Robles.”

  “So? Paso Robles isn’t that close to Morro Bay,” Lily said.

  “It’s not that far either, and I know she has family in Morro Bay. And, about a month before the accident, he mentioned he had run into her.”

  “If he decided to start cheating with his old girlfriend, you really think he’s going to tell you he ran into her?”

  Pamela wiped away the tears before they could slip down her face. She looked over to Lily. “I don’t know what to think anymore. But if you love someone and lose your memory, I don’t believe that would necessarily kill the love. I don’t believe Kent feels anything for me anymore. It’s not because he lost his memory, it’s because he stopped loving me long ago. He just forgot to fake it.”

  To the casual observer, the exterior of the Glandon Foundation Headquarters looked not much different from when Stoddard and Darlene Gusarov had called the place home. Signage was limited to a modest brass nameplate installed on the front door. It simply said Glandon Foundation.

  Danielle had never cared for the architectural style of the Gusarov Estate, sleek with ample metal and glass, reminding her of an industrial property. However, it seemed to suit Chris’s purpose. He’d had the downstairs remodeled, making the interior look less residential. He had not yet made any changes to the rooms on the second floor. Even some of the original furnishings remained.

  When the wedding party staying at Marlow House arrived, they were greeted at the front door by Chris and his brindle pit bull, Hunny.

  No longer perceived by strangers as an adorable and harmless puppy, Hunny couldn’t quite understand why new humans she met no longer greeted her with open arms. At six months she hadn’t yet grown to her full size, yet to the outside world, it did not necessarily make her less intimidating.

  With her butt wiggling, she tried desperately to heed Chris’s command to stay seated by his side, but she so wanted to make friends with the new people who had just walked up to the front door with Lily and Danielle. When the strange woman looked down and saw her, she let out a little gasp, took a step back, and clutched the hand of the man next to her.

  “Oh, Mom, she’s just a puppy,” Lily said, kneeling down to Hunny. The pit bull promptly covered Lily’s face with wet kisses. “This is Hunny.”

  “You really shouldn’t put your face so close to hers,” Lily’s mother, Tammy, scolded.

  Chris took hold of Hunny’s collar and smiled at Lily’s mother. “Why don’t you all go in, and I’ll keep Hunny out here. She needs to go out anyway. Lily can give you a tour. Heather brought Bella to work with her, and Bella’s been picking on poor Hunny all morning. I think she’ll be glad to get away from her.”

  “Bella?” Tammy asked, carefully stepping around the pit bull, who tried desperately to get closer so she could have a sniff.

  “It’s Heather’s cat,” Lily explained. “She loves to torment the poor dog.”

  Danielle stayed outside with Chris and Hunny while the others went indoors. The two wandered to the side of the yard while Hunny romped freely on the front lawn. Danielle had closed the front gate after she had arrived so that the dog wouldn’t be able to escape.

  “I wanted to talk to you.” Danielle then told Chris about the mystery ghost.

  “And you have no idea who it might be?” Chris asked when she was done.

  “Not a clue.”

  Chris started to say something when he happened to glance toward the street. He paused midsentence and frowned.

  “What is it?” Danielle looked from Chris to the street.

  “It looks like someone is sitting in the backseat of Lily’s car.”

  Narrowing her eyes, Danielle focused on Lily’s car beyond the wrought-iron fence. “I think it’s him.”

  The man then turned in their direction and stared squarely at Danielle. Even from this distance she could tell he was looking at her. Letting out a gasp, she impulsively reached for Chris’s right hand, clutching it.

  “He’s getting out of the car,” Chris said in a low voice.

  Standing along the side of the front yard, Danielle and Chris silently watched as the mystery man moved effortlessly through the iron fence. The moment he stepped on the lawn, Hunny noticed him. She started barking furiously, and then the man looked at her, his expression blank. Letting out a yip, as if she had been struck, Hunny turned abruptly and ran straight for Chris, taking refuge behind him.

  Danielle and Chris watched as he made his way toward the front porch, now ignoring them both. Still wearing khakis and a brown T-shirt, his hair disheveled, he made his way up the walk. It wasn’t until he turned his back to them that they saw it.

  Danielle let out a gasp, her hand releasing hold of Chris’s as it flew to her mouth. Blood covered the brown T-shirt, and from the center of his back, a ragged piece of glass protruded.

  “Maybe we don’t know who he is. But it’s pretty clear what killed him,” Chris noted.

  “Has he been in the car all along?” Danielle asked as she watched the apparition disappear into the house.

  “If he was at Marlow House yesterday, maybe he hitched a ride over.”

  “But does that mean he’s attached to Lily…or Pamela?” Danielle wondered aloud.

  Before Chris had a chance to reply, a chilling scream replaced the quiet summer afternoon. It had come from the open window of what had once been the living room of the Gusarov Estate.

  “Oh crap!” Chris blurted.

  He turned to Danielle; she looked at him, her eyes wide. Together they shouted, “Heather!” and then took off running to the front door.

  Fortunately, Danielle and Chris reached Heather before anyone from Lily’s family made it downstairs. Instead of comforting Heather, Chris promptly jogged to the base of the stairs and hollered, “Everything’s okay. False alarm.”

  When Chris returned to the living room, slightly out of breath, he came face-to-face with Heather, who stood angrily, balled hands on hips, glaring menacingly in his direction. If she had ever reminded him of Wednesday from the Addams family, it was in this very moment. It wasn’t her goth look or the black braids and straight-cut bangs she wore. It was that her expression matched the same look Wednesday gave her brother Pugsley when preparing to do something especially dastardly. Chris suddenly knew how poor Hunny must feel when Bella tormented him.

  “And you two couldn’t have warned me?” Heather hissed.

  “I’m sorry,” Danielle said for the third time.

  “Who is he?” Heather demanded.

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Chris said.

  “Is everything okay?” Lily asked when she appeared the next moment.

  “Where’s your family?” Danielle asked Lily, keeping her voice low.

  “I left them upstairs.” Lily glanced around the room, looking from Danielle to Chris to Heather and back to Danielle. “Why did Heather scream?”

  “A ghost. But I suspect you might want to make up a story on your way upstairs. A mouse maybe?” Chris suggested.

  Turning from the living room entry, Lily walked away, muttering, “Freaking ghosts.”

  “Oh brother!” Heather ranted. “What has Lily to complain about? She didn’t see the stupid thing.”

  Turning abruptly to
face both Chris and Danielle, balled fists back on her hips, she asked, “Have you any idea how it felt to have that…that…whatever it is to come walking in here with a stinking window sticking out of its back, and all that blood? For a moment there, I thought it was a real man, and we were under attack.”

  “I don’t think it was a window,” Chris said with a shrug.

  Heather countered with a glare.

  “When did you figure out it was a ghost?” Danielle asked.

  “When he took a shortcut through the wall.” Stomping her foot angrily, she said, “Damn you two. The next time, freaking warn me!”

  Fourteen

  When Danielle went upstairs, she found the Millers and Pamela in the room where Lily had been held by the Gusarovs. Upon entering the bedroom, Lily had opened the curtains, and now sun streamed in. The hospital bed had since been removed, as had most of the furnishings. What also wasn’t in the room was the mystery ghost.

  “This certainly doesn’t look like a dingy basement,” Tammy muttered, sounding relieved.

  “Mom, even if Lily had been held in a basement, she wouldn’t have known any different. She was in a coma, for goodness’ sake,” Laura said impatiently.

  “And if she came out of the coma in the basement?” Tammy snapped.

  Laura rolled her eyes and wandered to the window and looked outside. “I guess you didn’t even see this room until Chris bought the place.”

  “Umm, yeah,” Lily lied. She had first seen the room during her out-of-body experience, when she had been looking for a comatose Isabella and found her own body instead.

  “I’ll meet you all downstairs,” Danielle announced abruptly. Lily’s family members flashed her smiles and then resumed their conversation regarding Lily’s brief stay in the mansion.

  Leaving the bedroom, Danielle quickly moved through the rest of the rooms on the second floor, yet there was no sign of the mystery ghost. Lily’s family was just beginning to tour the rest of the second floor when Danielle started down the staircase.

  “Any sign of him?” Danielle asked when she entered the front office area of the foundation headquarters. Heather sat at a desk, opening mail, while Bella lounged on the desktop, playfully batting the discarded envelopes.

  Chris looked up from a letter he was reading. Hunny sat under the chair, nervously peering around Chris’s legs, watching the cat and preparing to run in the opposite direction if she decided to jump off the desk.

  “Not since we saw him come in here,” Chris told her.

  “Yes, and terrorized me,” Heather snapped. With a sudden frown, she set the envelope she was just about to open down on the desk and then added in a thoughtful voice, “Although, now that I think about it, he seemed a bit terrorized himself.”

  “What do you mean?” Danielle asked.

  “After I screamed bloody murder, well, he was rather startled, like he was surprised I could see him. That’s when he just took off in a run.” She pointed to the back wall. “Ran straight through there.”

  “Maybe he kept on running, out the other side of the house,” Chris suggested.

  “Out to the beach?” Danielle asked.

  “It’s possible,” Chris said.

  “I just wish they would come with signs.” Heather sounded annoyed. She picked up the envelope she had abandoned a moment earlier and ripped it open with a letter opener. “You know, something along the line of nothing to see here, I’m just a ghost.”

  “I have to admit; he didn’t look like a ghost…Well, except for walking through the iron fence and the front door…umm…and that glass sticking out of his back,” Chris said with a shrug.

  “Fortunately, ghosts tend to be harmless. Unless of course, you run across a nasty one who’s harnessed his energy,” Danielle reminded them.

  Heather shivered at the thought. “Well, that’s not especially comforting. Life was less complicated before I developed my psychic abilities.”

  “Tell us about it,” Chris murmured.

  “Since it’s obvious he’s hanging around for some reason, I think it would be a good idea if none of us screams the next time we see him. We need to find out who he is,” Danielle said.

  “You’re talking about me,” Heather said with a pout. “But in all fairness, according to Chris, you saw him walk through the fence before you got a look at his back, so you knew he was a ghost. When he walked in here, I thought it was some sort of zombie apocalypse.”

  “If you see him again, try to find out who he is, why he’s here,” Danielle urged.

  “You want me to talk to him?” Heather groaned.

  “If you see him, yes,” Danielle said. “Unless you want him to hang around indefinitely, we need to figure out why he’s here so we can help him move on.”

  Heather glanced from Danielle to Chris. “Has it always been like this for you two?”

  “What do you mean, running into ghosts and figuring out some way to get them to move on?” Chris asked.

  Heather nodded.

  At the same time, Danielle and Chris said, “Yes!”

  Shaking her head, Heather picked up another piece of mail and muttered, “And I thought it would be so cool to see spirits.”

  “Why do you think Heather is able to see spirits now, practically as well as you and Chris do, if she couldn’t before?” Walt asked Danielle after she told him about her morning. The two sat alone in the library. Kent was in his bedroom, taking a nap, and Lily and the rest of her family hadn’t yet returned. After leaving the Glandon Foundation Headquarters, the group had met up with Ian and his family for lunch. Danielle had left Mr. and Mrs. Miller to ride home with Lily and Pamela, while she ran errands.

  “I believe she’s always had some ability—everyone does. When looking into the stories surrounding her grandfather, she started researching, opening her mind to the possibilities, which led to her honing her skills. Although, I don’t think she finds it as amusing as she imagined it would be.”

  “You didn’t see him again after he went into the building?” Walt asked.

  Danielle shook her head. “I went through the entire house. And then I checked out the beach before I left. I didn’t see him anywhere. I suppose it’s possible he got back into one of the vehicles and is riding around with them.”

  Walt grew still, his gaze now focused on something behind Danielle. “I don’t think he’s riding around with them.”

  Lounging on the sofa, Danielle frowned up at Walt, who stood in front of the small fireplace, a thin cigar between two of his fingers. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he’s right behind you,” Walt said without flinching.

  Danielle’s first inclination was to jump up and turn around, but she didn’t want to frighten the spirit again. She was about to say something when she heard the spirit speak.

  “How long have you been dead?” the ghost asked.

  Walt arched his brow. “How do you know I’m dead?”

  The ghost stared at Walt, his expression unreadable. “Flesh and blood people don’t normally conjure up cigars from thin air, nor do they walk through walls. I’ve seen you do both.”

  “I suppose it makes things easier that you understand. Who are you?” Walt asked.

  “Understand? No. I do not understand. I heard you and this woman talking, and I know she’s not dead. But that doesn’t make any sense.”

  Danielle turned slowly on the sofa and faced the spirit. She smiled at him. “Hello.”

  “So you really can see me too?” he asked Danielle.

  “Yes. And you’re correct, I’m alive.”

  “Those other two people saw me too, didn’t they?” he asked.

  “If you mean Heather and Chris, yes. They’re like me and can see spirits.”

  “Why now?” he asked.

  “Why now what?” Danielle asked with a frown.

  “No one’s ever seen me before. Aside from ghosts. I’ve run into them a number of times since starting on this dark road.”

  “Why d
on’t you tell us who you are?” Danielle suggested.

  “What does it matter? I doubt you could help me anyway.”

  “I’ve helped ghosts before,” Danielle told him.

  “Don’t call me a ghost!” he roared.

  Walt smirked at Danielle. “See, I’m not the only one who doesn’t appreciate being called a ghost.”

  “Okay, sorry. But I’ve helped spirits before. I can call you a spirit, can’t I?” she asked.

  He considered the question a moment and then shrugged. “I suppose. I guess that is accurate enough.”

  “Can you tell me your name?” Danielle asked.

  “Like I said, there is no point. You can’t do anything to help me.”

  “At least tell me who at Marlow House you’re connected to,” Danielle asked.

  He frowned. “What is Marlow House?”

  “The house you’re standing in,” Danielle explained. “Who staying in this house are you connected to?”

  “Connected to?” He laughed bitterly.

  “You are clearly upset,” she said in a calm voice.

  “You have no idea,” he hissed.

  “Why are you here?” Walt asked.

  The spirit stared at Walt a moment and then finally said, “Kent Harper.”

  Danielle glanced to the open doorway. She thought of Kent, who was sleeping in the nearby bedroom, unaware of the angry ghost just down the hall.

  “Does this have something to do with the accident he was in?” Danielle asked.

  “You could say that.” The spirit remained standing in the same spot.

  “I remember Lily telling me two men died in that accident.” Danielle studied the spirit, who was now glaring in her direction.

  “Yes,” he said, his expression blank. “Where is he?”

  “He’s sleeping in the downstairs bedroom. But if you’re angry with Kent, it wasn’t his fault,” Danielle told him. “I know his vehicle caused the accident, but it really was not his fault. According to Lily—she’s the cousin of Kent’s wife—there was some sort of malfunction—defect—with his vehicle. It caused it to accelerate, and he lost control. Even the car manufacturer agreed; that’s why they paid a settlement after the accident.”