Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story

by Glover, Sarah M.

  In his mind, he believed his desire was driven by the need to escape the hell that they had lived through, to forget death and violence and fear and everything except her, but he knew that wasn’t true. There was something more. Refusing to face whatever it was, he hoisted his T-shirt over his head and felt the glorious touch of her fingers, Emily’s fingers, encircle his waist. Yes. This was Emily. This was the woman he loved.

  Unable to be denied, his hands moved across her body as he undressed her. He kissed her mouth, tasting her, breathing in the smell of salt and sun on her skin. Finally freed of their clothes, he reached for the taps, twisting them on and spinning her to the side as a wall of water poured down. It soon began to steam, creating billows of fog wafting around them. He moved her trembling body into the spray. Her nipples darkened as the water coursed over her, and she tilted her head back and let it wash away the smudges of dirt on her face.

  “Christ, you are so unspeakably beautiful…”

  The sound of breakers crashing on the rocks far beyond the window filled the room. He lowered his mouth to her lips again, hearing her sighs mix with those of the sea. He could not get enough of her; his hands ached with the need of her skin—to surrender to him, to be his. Emily. Only Emily.

  He looked into her eyes and froze. There, reflected deep within those unfathomable spheres, he saw souls of souls, each calling out to him, beckoning him to them, seducing him with their whispers and sighs.

  “I love you,” he breathed roughly, to her and to them. She leaned forward and rested her forehead on his shoulder. “But how can you do this to me? What are you? What lives inside you that makes me want you every breathing moment? Tell me.”

  She would not answer, but instead stared into his eyes, a deliberate challenge it seemed to him. Their connection was so intense that he could now feel the souls inside her now, those trembling ghosts that lived within her flushed wet skin as they came closer and closer to the surface. She clenched her arms around his shoulders, her nails biting into the tense muscles of his back, and gripped him tightly. His mouth found hers, and he kissed her with all the love within him. He could barely survive his need for her; it ripped the fabric of his world apart.

  “Who are you? Please tell me,” he muttered hoarsely, desperate for an answer.

  She would not answer.

  “Tell me, what are you that makes me so fucking wild?” he demanded and shoved harder into her, over and over, making her scream. “Tell me!”

  Enraged, he demanded again and with all his might he drove into her as deeply as he could, sensual waves of lust crashing down his body, arousing the ghosts within him. Each life, past and present, demanding he take this woman as he had for ages.

  She clung to him like her very life depended on it, the water beading on her trembling skin. He bowed his head to her neck once more, pressing fierce, feral kisses to her skin. His breathing became shallow as he bit down on the spot just below her ear.

  “I love you…but fuck, sweet girl, what are you?” he muttered hoarsely, so on the edge, in trembling, fucking glorious agony. “Tell me!”

  Seeking an answer she would not give him, he made love to her mercilessly. There was no longer reason or time. There was only her fevered skin and the pounding water and the ocean far way. He struggled to keep his lips on hers until at last she screamed and wailed, pounding the stone wall with her fist, her body one tight knot of lust as she came and thrashed in mind-numbing spasms, tightening over and over around him, making him cry out in ecstasy.

  Yet he still wanted more. They wanted more. He slammed into her one last time, screaming against her soaked hair as he forced the rest of himself hot and throbbing, into her, pinning her body to the wall, his heart trying to bash out of his chest beneath her breasts.

  Gasping for air, blinded by the water and tears and so bloody reluctant to move, he allowed himself to collapse against her. She was panting his name against his heaving chest, half elation, half sobs. His lips reached hers, and he tasted the salt of her tears and felt the curl of her mouth as he kissed her gently.

  He feared she couldn’t stand without him, so he gathered her in his arms and shut off the tap, stopping only to grab a towel. She nuzzled into his neck as he carried her in his arms to the bedroom, her heart beating wildly. She searched for his lips as he laid her down and joined her under the thick blankets. Her body was still rippling like waves on the edge of a beach, pulling him to her as the ghosts softly ebbed away. Like the moon to the tide.

  He gazed down at her and found her mouth and kissed her, their moist bodies sizzling together.

  “Who are you? Please tell me,” he whispered, and brushed back the wet strands from her face, amazed at the loving pain rife in his heart.

  Her fingers slipped softly around his neck and pulled him down to her. “Yours.” And she finally began to cry.

  26

  * * *

  THE SETTING SUN HAD burnished the clouds in gold. Candles flickered on the nightstand, and somewhere far off a piano played, lost in jazz. Emily lay against Andrew’s chest as they gazed out of the open bedroom windows from their bed, luxuriating in the sea air.

  “Andrew?” she asked.

  “Hmmm.”

  “Does this place—is there anything about this cottage that doesn’t seem quite right to you? That seems strange?”

  She tilted her head up at him while she spoke. The sky had descended to the mood indigo of dusk, leaving her eyes nearly violet. They shone in the faint light, framed by the waves of her hair that fell to the bare skin of her shoulders.

  Strange? Strange didn’t cover half of it. He wanted to tell her that for weeks now he couldn’t shake this sickening feeling that everything was repeating itself somehow. And that since they had stepped through those doors, it all seemed amplified in his mind. It was as if he was watching himself watch himself, like the past and present were folding in and over on themselves and trapping him in some kind of twisted three-way mirror from which he couldn’t escape. Christ, it made no sense and was certainly the release of all this bloody stress—but every time he held her, looked at her, it seemed like he was experiencing it tenfold. It was thrilling, staggering, but he felt as if he was no longer there, like he was a ghost. A ghost haunting all of his lives.

  “Yes,” he replied, unwilling to say more. How could he explain what he was feeling and not sound mad? It was impossible.

  Emily stilled. She was so much like a wisp of ghost herself except for the slow beat of her heart. “It’s not the first time I’ve felt this way, either. When I saw you the in the park, saw you standing there with your guitar, and saw your hands strum those first chords, ever since then, this feeling I have for you…No, it’s not a feeling, that’s too weak a word—this bond that connects me to you, has only gotten more intense, like it has a life of its own.” She looked up at him briefly, her face self-conscious from her confession. “You know when Dwayne told us about all those past lives that day in his shop, when he told us that I was your lover, your concubine…”

  “My muse.”

  “Yes. I wanted to discount it all as craziness, but now—I don’t know. I’m haunted, by who I was and who I was to you. And at night, in my dreams—I…”

  “Go on, sweet girl?”

  She shook her head.

  “I know you’ve been having nightmares, I’ve heard them.”

  “No. Oh God, what did I say?”

  “What happened? What did you see?”

  She hesitated and pulled at the strings on the quilt. “There were cliffs and rocks and we’re there, you and I together, but I can’t reach you, you’re not who I think you are, you’ve changed somehow, and then…”

  “Go on.”

  “I can’t remember. I can never remember the ending.”

  Just then a chill wind blew in from the window, extinguishing the candles on the nightstands, and a soft chuckle emanated from the dusk of the evening.

  “Liars,” a voice replied.

  The
window shutters slammed shut, casting the room in near darkness.

  “Damn it, Nick! Cut this shit out!”

  “Isssss not Nick, my pretty lad.”

  The inhuman hiss of a woman’s voice sent a jolt of fear down his spine as the temperature around them dropped precipitously. An elaborate phantasm shrouded in an Elizabethan gown swept slowly across the room; she was ghastly beautiful, like dead roses set in a crystal vase.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Are? You do insult me with such a word. I have not ‘been’ in a long, long while.”

  Emily sat up next to him, her eyes taking in the bone-chilling apparition. He wanted to haul her back to his side, but she kneeled forward, sitting even straighter.

  “Andrew, she’s The Lady in White,” she whispered to him, never taking her eyes from the ghost.

  “Ahhhh…behold a Thomas, and she is no longer alone. No, not alone at all. And the lovely lad is naked too. Tsk, tsk.” Her sing-song spectral laughter echoed like a wind chime made of glass shards. Her deep green eyes glimmered.

  He didn’t care for the insinuation behind her words, nor the angle of her sight for that matter, and he pulled the sheet tighter around his hips. She was a formidable old thing, even in death; the very air pulsed with her aura. Emily, however, didn’t seem to mind. Oblivious to any danger, she leaned perilously closer to the eerie ringlets of hair that snaked wildly about the specter’s face like a spray of asps.

  “Thank you for protecting me today. You were extremely brave.”

  “You saw her—today? Where?” he demanded under his breath.

  “The caves,” Emily whispered back. “That’s why I went down there in the first place.”

  “Didn’t you think this was a bit of information worth sharing?”

  “I was preoccupied with trying to stay alive at the time.”

  The spirit studied him some more, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end as well as filling him with the strong desire for a robe. Before she turned her attention to Emily, her black lips puckered suggestively at him, and if he didn’t know better, he would have sworn she winked. As she turned to stare at Emily, her eyes darkened and narrowed slightly; she rested her hand coquettishly against her transparent cheek.

  “I know you didn’t have to help,” Emily went on in a rushed tone. “I know there are rules about things like that, but I never got a chance to thank you. I’m Emily Thomas, by the way, but I guess you already know that. And this is Andrew Hayes.”

  The pallid rays emanating from her body rippled with her dissatisfaction as the jeweled dress thrashed the air. She inspected him anew, her head tilting in a perturbed sort of query, as if she was not pleased with what she had heard. Not pleased at all.

  “You have pledged yourself to her, pretty boy?”

  Andrew tried to grasp the meaning of her words, anchoring them in whatever time she had come from. Had he pledged himself to Emily? Proposed marriage? Is that what she meant?

  “Yes.”

  Suddenly, the air around them dropped another ten degrees. His attention shot back to The Lady in White, whose eyes had narrowed to slits and blackened entirely. “Why? Why did you have to do that to her?” she wailed, her hands clawing at her gown. “Why curse her? Why must it always be that way with you?”

  He stared at her in confusion. This was hardly the reaction he was expecting. Wouldn’t this have been acceptable behavior during her lifetime? Lying naked with a girl in an unmade bed centuries ago—he better damn well be pledged to her.

  “Because I love her.”

  “If you loved her, you would leave her now, never to see her again. She is far better off without you.” Her vapors bled black to match the darkness of her words.

  He opened his mouth to protest when Emily moved even closer to her. “Please, please, do you know where Nick Chamberlain’s ashes are?”

  “You come this close when I am angry. Your heart…I can hear it beating. You are still afraid, I can tell.”

  “I’m…sorry. I don’t mean to be. Do you prefer to be addressed as The Lady in White—or is there another name I can call you? I mean may I call you,” Emily stammered.

  “No one has spoken my name for centuries,” she sighed.

  “I’m sorry, it was rather rude of me to ask.”

  “No—it is simply painful to hear it said aloud. I am not sure I remember how to say it anymore. There are so few of us left. So many of our brethren have passed on. Those who knew our names and those whose voices called for us in the night have long slipped away.”

  Her melancholy enveloped them like mist.

  “But I’d like to know your name—that way you wouldn’t be forgotten.”

  The Lady in White swirled to the window, hesitating, vibrations shaking her image.

  “You would—you would do that for me? Something this fearful?”

  “Fearful? No, you’re beautiful. I’ve never seen someone like you. I could never forget you.”

  “Emily…” Andrew warned. Despite his love for Emily, the depth of compassion in her tone bothered him. Two ghosts in one house were bad enough, and he definitely was not bringing this one home.

  “What you told me in the caves, what did you mean? What did you mean when you said you told Mrs. Chamberlain the truth?”

  “She must tell you. I cannot. But—”

  “What truth? What did you tell Mrs. Chamberlain?” Andrew asked sharply, clearly annoyed that there was yet another vital detail that Emily had forgotten to tell him. The Lady in White glared at him.

  “Go on, please,” Emily pleaded.

  The specter fixed her blackened eyes on Emily. “Life is not without hope. You are proof of that. There may be hope for Nick and Nora, but you must be strong, stronger than all the rest. Are you strong, Emily Thomas?” She swept toward her, almost blanketing Emily in her silver glow.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Can you live without your heart?”

  “Wait!” Andrew cried. “What are you saying? No one is touching this woman. Her heart stays where it is!”

  “Please tell me…if we find Nick,” Emily asked quickly, “will there be peace for Nick and Nora? Will they be reunited?”

  “Peace is a mercurial word. You may only have so much peace in this life. But you have the keys for it. Use them. If you do so, then yes, there will be peace. In its way.”

  “Keys? What keys?” Emily was nearly nose to nose with the ghost now.

  Just then a knocking came from the door. The Lady in White swirled in alarm.

  “No, wait! Don’t go!” Emily cried.

  “Emily Thomas, seek what you want…where the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow…” And with that she pushed open the shutters and leveled them both with her withering gaze. “But I must warn you. Time is—”

  “Fuck no, you’re not! You are not going to warn us about time running out. I’m bloody sick of hearing it. No more! Just get the hell out of here.”

  “Andrew!” cried Emily.

  The Lady in White swept toward the ceiling and glared down at him. “Arrogant, smug, overconfident boy—you are all alike. Every time. Only you are so much more so. The worst ever.”

  “Thank you for your high opinion of men. Now go fucking haunt somewhere else, I’ve had enough.”

  “You—you are not scared of me in the least, are you?”

  “Not a bit. But I dig the dress.”

  “Insolent bastard. Breathtaking and stunning you are, with that comely face and eyes of blue, those fine, long, muscles. Yes, you are truly an exquisite specimen. You would make such a superb ghost. Care to try?”

  “Shan’t happen, not if I have anything to say about it.”

  She whooshed down from the ceiling until she was inches from the bed, her eyes drinking him in, ravenous, hungry, smoldering…

  Bloody hell…he recognized that look—he had seen it a thousand times before—from the stage. He had an undead fan. Christ. There was only one thing he could do.


  Cocking a roughish eyebrow at her, he held back his shoulders and leveled her with an equally hungry and ravenous smile.

  She froze in midair, stunned. Then the impossible occurred. She seemed to blush. Every one of her silver spectral wisps turned a deep crimson.

  “Good night…m’lady,” he whispered huskily.

  Her ebony lips curled into a trembling, radiant little O. The knocking came even louder. She sluiced through the window and was lost to the night.

  Emily stared at him in shock. The knocking was quickly escalating into pounding.

  “I’ll get it,” he said, grabbing a towel.

  “I’m coming with you!” Emily grabbed another, and they headed for the front door.

  “What? Are you expecting others? Was anyone else down there you haven’t told me about?”

  “I don’t think so. But I’ll bet you just got yourself another girlfriend,” she said, impressed.

  “I’d like to take this opportunity to say I’m getting bloody pissed at every damn ghost telling us the end is nigh. It’s truly starting to get on my nerves. And I have no desire for another girlfriend. I’m having problems enough trying to keep the one I have under control,” he said before yanking open the door.

  Simon stood outside, freshly showered and dressed in a pair of navy slacks and crisp white dress shirt, holding their suitcases in his hands.

  “You’re a bellboy now?” Andrew asked.

  “Compliments of the stoner express.” Simon dumped the two bags on the threshold, then tried to peer inside the cottage, clearly intrigued.

  “Sucks to be you,” Andrew retorted, resting his arm against the door jamb and blocking his view of Emily, who stood next to him struggling to keep on her towel.

  “My, my, look at this place.”

  “Trust me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Why is it that you always get all the luck?”

  “Because I am a truly exquisite specimen and evidently would make a superb ghost.”

  “Really?” Simon frowned at him and tried for another look but met with Andrew’s shoulder. “Fine. Meet us in the lobby in an hour. Zoey’s orders.”