I knew that, of course, but something about this nightmare was different. Like I was at the mercy of a powerful and malevolent intelligence, and my own will was being violated. I couldn’t have managed to resist looking inside the coffin, no matter how hard I struggled. I might have been able to dismiss the feeling if it weren’t such a familiar one.
There were many times lately when I felt compelled to do things that were out of character. Just a few nights ago, I stepped out onto the balcony at sunset and fought an overpowering urge to throw myself over the balustrade. I wasn’t suffering from depression and had no desire to end my life, but the compulsion was overwhelming, all the same. Thankfully, Drake brought me back to my senses when he asked me what I was doing. Afterwards, I was terrified as well as completely confused.
“Why does everything seem to be going wrong, lately?” I wondered if Ryan was still awake, but it didn’t matter now; I just needed to voice my thoughts. “It doesn’t feel like we’ve had a moment’s happiness since Drake was exorcised from my body.”
Or maybe I was just unhappy. Having recently spent a significant amount of time in the dream world of 1920s Chicago with Drake, I returned somewhat shaken by the abundance of chemistry between us. If we spent any more time together, I could have easily fallen in love with him. Maybe I already did? But that was impossible, right? I was currently committed to Ryan. More than committed; we were happy together.
Weren’t we?
I began spiraling into ever-deepening circles of worry. It was almost a relief when my phone buzzed on the nightstand—once, twice, three times.
Normally, when someone called at this hour, I ignored it and put the phone on silent. But Maggie had already boarded her flight, so maybe she was trying to call me? I reluctantly reached for the phone but didn’t recognize the number.
Speaking in a low voice so as not to wake Ryan, I said, “Hello?”
The voice on the other end was unfamiliar, shrill, and slightly hysterical. “Hello? Is this Peyton Clark?”
“Yes.” I was gaining a reputation as someone who could speak to the dead, even if it wasn’t one I especially wanted. “How can I help you?”
“I’m sorry for calling you so late—I hope I didn’t wake you, but it couldn’t wait. I’ve gotten myself into trouble and I need your help!”
Chapter Four
The tone of the woman’s voice was anguished, to the point of sounding panic-stricken. “I wouldn’t have bothered you,” she continued, “but I didn’t know who else to call. And after what happened tonight, I couldn’t wait a second longer. I had to get in touch with you.”
“It’s okay.” Not knowing the nature of her dilemma, I wondered how best to advise her. “Are you in any present danger?” I asked. “Did you call the police?”
“No, the police wouldn’t know what to do with this,” she replied. “And I’m not in immediate danger anyway.”
“Okay, can you tell me what happened?”
There was a pause and when she spoke again, her voice fell almost to a whisper. “I’d rather not talk about it over the phone, if that’s all right with you. I just… I’m kind of superstitious about these things. Would you be willing to meet me in person?”
What did being “superstitious” have to do with talking over the phone? I didn’t know but there it was. “Sure, how urgent is the situation?”
“Urgent enough that I don’t want to wait another day before seeing you. I’m free in the morning, if you are.”
That presented some logistical difficulties since I was meeting the lawyer at eight a.m. “Um, I have a meeting in the morning but we could meet around seven a.m. if you’re willing to get up that early? Or failing that, we could meet at ten.”
“I don’t get a lot of sleep,” she said. “Let’s do seven a.m.”
“Sounds great. By the way, what’s your name?”
The woman paused, then laughed in embarrassment. “I completely forgot to introduce myself. I guess in the back of my mind I assumed you already knew.”
“I’m not a psychic.” I found it unnerving how often people confused psychics with sensitives.
“Right. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“My name’s Catherine St. Michael. I’m a journalist for the Times Picayune.”
“Nice to meet you, Catherine.”
“Likewise.” She paused. “Well, thanks for taking my call and agreeing to meet me tomorrow.”
“You’re welcome. See you then.”
I hung up and put my phone back on the nightstand.
Ryan stirred beside me. “Who was that?”
“Somebody who’s having a rough night.”
“A rough night?”
“Yep, so rough that we’re meeting her downstairs in about four hours, so you’d better get some rest, if you can.”
Ryan swore loudly and rolled over.
###
I barely shut my eyes before the faint hints of daylight began to appear from behind the shutters. My phone alarm went off and then Ryan’s alarm went off. For a few minutes, they seemed to be having an urgent conversation with each other. When Ryan failed to wake up, I rolled over and kneaded him lovingly but firmly on the upper arm.
“Babe?”
“Mmmm?”
“We need to get up. There’s a woman coming to see us in a few minutes.”
“What?”
He was so tired the night before that I doubted he remembered our conversation. Hastily, I relayed again what Catherine told me over the phone: how she felt threatened but couldn’t go to the police.
“Are you sure she isn’t nuts? She sounds a little nuts,” Ryan said, now fully awake.
“She’s a journalist so she can’t be that nuts, right?”
“I think that qualifies her as most definitely nuts.”
“Ha ha, Ryan, funny,” I said as I playfully nudged him in the arm with my elbow. “Anyway, I’ll know within ten minutes whether she has a legitimate grievance, or she’s just some weird lady obsessed with the occult.”
“All right, well let’s eat breakfast before she gets here,” said Ryan, clambering into his blue jeans.
“No time for that.” I started searching the guest bathroom for my toothbrush before I remembered I left it in the other bathroom.
“This morning just keeps getting better,” he grumbled.
Within a few minutes, we were both showered and fully dressed. We drifted downstairs into the kitchen when I remembered I left Lizzie, the doll from Aunt Jessie’s, in Ryan’s truck.
“I’ll be right back. I forgot the doll in your truck.”
“Oh, right. That weird-ass doll,” he answered, shaking his head as he reached his muscular arms over his head and stretched, giving me a great view of his torso. Damn, but the man was sexy. “I really don’t want to see that thing at night.”
“I’m not planning to put her in my bedroom,” I scoffed although the image of Ryan waking up with the doll looking at him brought a smile to my face.
Ryan didn’t respond but started making a pot of coffee.
“Can you use those raspberry chocolate torte beans?” I called out with a cheeky smile as I opened the front door. “They’re my favorite.”
“Of course, Pey. Anything for you.”
I didn’t respond as I hurried out to his truck and pulled the bag with Lizzie in it out of the back seat. When I walked back in, I took her out of the bag and the moment I touched her, I felt the same slight humming I felt earlier in Aunt Jessie’s store. The radiant warmth again overtook me. The doll definitely possessed a lot of power and as far as I could tell, it seemed to be positive. Closing the front door behind me, I decided to seat her on the couch in the living room.
After putting Lizzie down on the couch, I walked back into the kitchen, coming up behind Ryan and giving him a quick peck on the cheek. Just then, the front doorbell rang.
“There’s our client now.”
“Potential client,” he corrected me. “Unle
ss she’s psychotic.”
“Right, our potential psychotic client,” I said as I made my way down the hallway, past the living room and to the foyer. When I opened the front door, I found a woman in her mid-twenties standing on the doorstep, her hair a mess of curls. A pair of coffee-colored sunglasses were perched on top of her head that gave her a California beachy look. She wore a tight-fitting purple shirt with three-quarter sleeves and denim jeans that accentuated her robust figure. A key chain bearing the emblem “I <3 Dolly” hung from between the fingers of her right hand. She looked pretty much as I expected: eccentric and aimless, the sort of person who posed no danger to anyone.
“Hi, are you—?”
“Peyton Clark,” I said, offering her my hand as footsteps sounded behind me. A few seconds later, Ryan appeared at my side. “And this is my boyfriend, Ryan.”
“Nice to meet you, I’m Catherine,” she said, but I noticed she didn’t bother shaking my hand or Ryan’s. Instead, she hung back with a shy, aloof air, as if waiting for us to invite her inside but worrying we wouldn’t.
“Come in,” I said as I opened the door wider. Catherine gave me a soft smile but once her eyes met Ryan’s, she dropped her gaze to the ground. For a journalist, she seemed rather lacking in the confidence department.
“Would you like some tea? Coffee?” I asked.
Catherine shook her head. She seemed too agitated to be bothered with mundane concerns like food and drink. “I’ll feel better once I’ve told you everything. This town is crawling with amateur paranormal investigators but you were the only one who struck me as having any credibility.”
“Why did you think I was credible?” I asked, growing curious.
She shrugged. “Reviews.”
I figured she was referring to Yelp, where I had a five-star average rating.
I led the way down the hall and into the living room where I motioned for Catherine to take a seat on the couch beside Lizzie. I plopped down next to Ryan on the velvet loveseat and she sat in the winged chair opposite. I couldn’t help but notice that her attention was fixed on Lizzie.
“That’s a pretty doll,” she said.
“Thanks, I just got her yesterday,” I answered.
Catherine continued to study the doll. “Weird, but it’s almost like she’s looking at me.”
“She’s not,” I said, unwilling to inform Catherine of Lizzie’s history or to agree that she probably was looking at Catherine. Most people didn’t do well with that sort of information. “She’s just a doll.”
Catherine nodded and brought her attention back to me.
“So, Catherine,” I started as I faced her with a smile. “What’s up?”
She smiled back at me and laughed a little, as if my question were entirely too casually phrased for whatever she was going through. “What’s up?” she repeated, taking a big breath as she expelled it and shook her head. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Why don’t you try the beginning?” Ryan asked.
Catherine nodded and took another deep breath before she commenced telling her story. It began nine months earlier when she met a handsome young man at a local bar that catered to singles who had recently graduated from college.
“It was eerie how well we connected,” she explained. “He was my type exactly. We both had the same off-beat sense of humor and appreciation for old school British sci-fi like Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Quatermass and the Pit, Sapphire and Steel…”
I glanced blankly at her because aside from Doctor Who, none of the titles meant anything to me. “Wow, you really were like matching puzzle pieces,” I offered.
“Right?” said Catherine, leaning forward with renewed urgency. “He shared my taste in super obscure TV. Stuff that no one else ever heard of! And it wasn’t just that, but other little things we liked. And he wasn’t much of a drinker and neither am I. Anyway, after we’d been flirting for about an hour, he asked if I wanted to go back to my place.”
Ryan cleared his throat and looked away and I felt myself blushing. Catherine took a deep breath.
“Anyway,” she continued, clearly skipping the sex part, which was mildly appreciated. “We dated for about three weeks. At some point, I remember calling my sister and telling her I met the man of my dreams. My future husband.” She sighed again. This time it was more deeply. Then she started staring at the corner of the room as her eyes took on a wistful glow. “Looking back at it now, there were a couple of things that should have given me pause, but I was so smitten, I ignored any red flags.”
“Like what?”
“Like the way Clarence never wanted to make out with me, even though we spent plenty of time alone in my apartment. He completely shunned all the physical aspects of our relationship.” She swallowed hard and her cheeks colored as if she were embarrassed. “I’m fine if a guy doesn’t want to have sex immediately, but he refused to even kiss me or hold my hand!”
“Sounds gay,” Ryan said, nodding.
Catherine faced him and frowned. “He wasn’t gay.”
Ryan nodded with an apologetic smile. Meanwhile, she turned her attention back to me. “And while we could talk for hours about TV from the ‘70s and early ‘80s, he hadn’t seen any shows that came out in the past twenty years. He never even heard of Buffy!”
“Ah,” I said as I realized where this story was going. I had a feeling Clarence was more ectoplasm than flesh and blood. Poor Catherine.
“I chalked that up to him being old-fashioned,” Catherine continued. “And I told my sister, it was one of those quirks that made him so lovable.”
“When did you start to figure things out?” I asked.
“I figured it out as soon as you said his name was Clarence,” Ryan said with a shrug.
I looked at him and shook my head even as my lips started to turn up with the smile I was doing my best to hold back. He smirked down at me as Catherine continued.
“Eventually, we got into an argument because I was tired of him always coming to my place but never inviting me over to his. My family said he was hiding something. Of course, I made excuses for him. But after about a month of dating, I started to get suspicious.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said.
“One night we were watching Hitchhiker’s Guide and sitting on opposite ends of the couch with a good three feet of space between us. Finally, I’d had it! I told him I didn’t like the fact that he never touched me and I said I wanted to go to his place for once.”
“And what did he say to that?” I asked, genuinely interested by this point. Clearly, Catherine was a sensitive, herself, if she had this long of an interaction with a ghost.
It seemed Ryan was rapidly losing interest at this point because he started busily answering texts on his phone. I had to figure they had something to do with the hotel remodeling project he was managing. Catherine didn’t seem to notice.
“We fought about it, at first,” she said. “He threatened to go home. Finally, I gave him an ultimatum and said if he weren’t willing to have me over at his place, we were done.”
“And?”
She frowned. “He agreed to let me but he warned me I wouldn’t like it. I didn’t understand at that point what he meant of course.”
“What happened next?” I asked, anxious to keep her on track.
“So, we got into my car and left. After driving for about twenty minutes, I realized we were leaving the residential part of town. There were no apartments nearby, and the streetlights were getting further and further apart. Pretty soon, we were way out in the country.”
“I’m sure that surprised you,” I said.
She nodded. “When he told me we were almost there, I looked around but there were no buildings anywhere. We were on a dirt road with nothing but sagging trees on either side of us and flocks of grackles perched on telephone wires.” She took a break and inhaled deeply before continuing. “I didn’t know where we were going, but I didn’t like driving so far out of town. And Clarence was being su
per vague and mysterious about where our final destination was. Finally, we drove past Old Fort Cemetery and he told me to pull over and park. I was confused, of course, but I did what he said, and as he opened the passenger-side door, I asked him why we were stopping.”
“And he said?”
“That we’d arrived!” she answered, flummoxed. “So, of course, I asked him if it was some kind of joke.”
I swallowed hard. “But it wasn’t.”
“No,” she said as she nodded. “It wasn’t a joke. He got out of the car and walked through the gates of the cemetery.”
“Did you follow him?” asked Ryan, who was now paying more attention.
She laughed ruefully. “I took a couple of steps away from the car and watched him walking between the headstones, and…” She took another deep breath. “I know this is going to sound crazy because it still makes no sense to me when I replay it through my head but…”
“Nothing sounds crazy to me anymore,” I said honestly.
She nodded. “I swear to you that when Clarence reached the fourth row of headstones, he straight-up disappeared! I mean, one second he was there, and the next, he wasn’t.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what to do! I just stood there because my feet couldn’t move. And my heart was pounding, and my brain was like… trying to make sense of what just happened, you know?”
“Yep, I know,” I answered with a quick nod. “And then what?”
“Well, I waited there for maybe five minutes as I tried to register what was going on. But there was no sign of Clarence. So I decided to follow him, thinking that maybe he was just hiding behind a tombstone and my eyes played a trick on me or something. So I walked up to the fourth row of headstones and when I got there, he was nowhere to be seen.” She paused as she looked down at her white hands, which she folded primly in her lap. Then she glanced back up and I could see the tears shining in her eyes. “Take your time,” I said with a smile.
She nodded and sighed deeply before looking back up at me. “When I looked down at the headstones, sure enough, there was one that read Clarence Harper. He was born in 1957 and he died in 1982.”
If You've Got It, Haunt It: A ghost romance (The Peyton Clark Series Book 4) Page 4