A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories (23 page)

“Because
she’s
here, but I can never see her!” he said.

“She—you mean Grace?” Logan asked.

He nodded, looking miserable. “It was one thing to be murdered, and then … the bastard who killed me practiced some kind of strange rite.”

“Who killed you? The law has no record,” Kelsey said.

“Can you imagine?” the ghost asked them. “A bitter war—I was a Northerner, the Ainsworth family was hardcore Southern. But as the war came nearer to a close, we all just wanted it over and we realized that what we were fighting for wasn’t worth killing
love
for—or one another. Oh, I’m not a fool—prejudice and hatred lasted long after the surrender and long after my death, but Grace and her family and I and mine … we loved one another. Grace and I were married. I survived Cold Harbor and Gettysburg and battles you couldn’t imagine to come to—this. But, at least, I had Grace.”

“But who killed you?” Kelsey demanded.

“Burt Olmsby, the banker. He wanted the house; he had a buyer for it—old man Fogarty. Oh, and he wanted Grace, too. She foiled him on that, but she took her own life. So he saw to it that some ritual kept her to one half of the house—and me to the other. I can see her sometimes, down the hall. But when we come close … we’re both just gone.”

Kelsey, wrapped tightly in her towel, just looked at him. “Ritual?” she murmured. “I can get on line and see what I can find. But, honestly, perhaps he just made you believe that you couldn’t cross the line. That’s possible.”

“No, he told me he’d see to it that—dead or alive—I’d never hold my wife again,” Brent McNamara said. “He told me that when he’d stabbed me in the gut and was holding the nozzle of his gun dead against my forehead.”

“I’ll get on it,” Kelsey promised him. She headed into the bedroom. The ghost started to follow.

Logan stepped in front of him and cleared his throat. “Really? You’re in love—so you attack women in whirlpool baths?”

“Only those who are here with men who are supposed to love them,” McNamara said.

“What?” Logan asked.

“She’s beautiful; you’re a lucky man. You should never forget it,” McNamara said.

“But—I don’t,” Logan told him.

“But too many people do,” McNamara said softly. “Like that jerk who’s running around the halls. Bet you didn’t even know that the young woman he’s with is his wife—he treats her like an indentured servant. It’s not right. I can’t see the woman I love. We never got to have our first Christmas as man and wife—I’d give so much for that!”

As he spoke, a scream tore through the hall.

“The ghost hunters!” Logan said, hurrying into the bedroom. Kelsey was dressed in a long skirt and soft sweater. She was already at the door, opening it.

“It’s old man Fogarty,” McNamara said. “He learned how to move things and—”

They were already out in the hall.

Kelsey dead stopped, a puzzled expression on her face. The ghost hunters appeared to be just fine. Martin Crypton was shouting out commands at his crew of assistants and camera personnel.

“Get the lights right!” Martin told the thin, shaggy-haired man holding a lantern. “We need it eerie … I can see on the screen that we all look lousy. Get a better gel!” He turned to his pretty young assistant. “And what the hell kind of scream was that? I’m going to show you how to do it right and then get it straight!”

He walked down the hall and dramatically jumped back. “What was that? What the hell was that? Something touched me.”

The girl sighed. “Okay, okay,” she murmured.

“Your scream sucked!” Crypton told her.

Kelsey shook her head and turned and went back into the room. Logan and the ghost of Brent McNamara followed her.

“Who is old man Fogarty?” Kelsey asked, spinning around to look at Brent. “The last mortuary owner?”

“Yes, he’s here. He’s fine—nice old guy, really. But, he likes to bug the guests now and then. I think he wants them to know that they’re lucky to be alive.”

“Does he hurt people?” Kelsey asked.

“None of us hurts people,” Brent McNamara said indignantly.

“None of us?” Logan asked.

“There are a number of us here,” McNamara said. “We don’t mind. That poor rock-star boy—he just couldn’t resist his booze along with pills. But he’s not a bad guy; just got to famous too fast and couldn’t handle it when things went to hell. There are some kids … Joey, who died of pneumonia when he was about five in the 1920s. Sissy—polio in 1890.”

As he spoke, there was another scream from the hallway. Kelsey waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Crypton again,” she said.

“It is Crypton,” Logan said. “But … he sounds different.”

He opened the door to the hallway again. He started—the ghost-hunters were almost in front of the door.

And the scream was different.

It was real.

Crypton lay on the floor. He was screaming and struggling and the cameraman and his assistant and the sound men were all running around—tilting at the air, trying to save him.

“Where? What? What the hell is it?” The cameraman demanded.

“There’s nothing,” the assistant said. “Stop it, Martin, you jerk—we can’t see anything.”

“How can I run the camera when you’re being this dramatic?”

“Help me, help me!” Crypton babbled. “Help me, help me, help me, get me out of here!”

Logan slowly saw the figure attacking Martin Crypton appear. It was an elderly gentleman; he wasn’t really doing anything to Crypton. He was seated on the “ghost-hunter’s” chest, grinning.

Logan would have tried to act—but he didn’t need to do so.

Brent McNamara strode by him to stand by Crypton and the elderly gentleman. “No hurting people, Mr. Fogarty!”

“He’s a jerk!” the elderly apparition on top of Crypton said belligerently. “He was saying that I haunted the place because I embalmed the living—he was saying that you were a two-timing carpetbagger!”

“You still can’t hurt him!” Kelsey said softly. “People say awful things—but you can’t hurt them. Dead or alive,” she added.

“You can see something here?” the cameraman asked Kelsey.

She whispered in reply. “Crypton is a bit of an ass; I’m just humoring him to get you all out of here!”

Crypton continued to blubber and beg for help.

“Up now, Mr. Fogarty, up. Enough is enough,” Brent McNamara said.

“Yes, please, Trinity—who owns the place now—is a really nice woman,” Kelsey told him.

“Please,” Logan added.

Mr. Fogarty got off of Crypton. Crypton lay there stunned for several minutes. Then he leapt to his feet. And he was headed down the hall to the stairs and Logan knew that he was gone.

“Might as well pack up,” Logan told the pretty girl who was, according to Brent McNamara “the love of his life” as well as his assistant. “And you might want to move on; my friend, the ghost here, says that you shouldn’t settle for less than being really loved.”

“I didn’t exactly say that,” Brent McNamara murmured. “You said it really well—and I guess it’s what I meant.”

The “ghost hunters” were quick to leave.

“How do we fix this for Trinity—and for Christmas?” Kelsey asked quietly.

“A medium? We convince everyone that … the ghosts are gone?” Logan suggested.

“If I could just see Grace!” McNamara said.

The next day, Ainsworth House remained closed.

And Kelsey had spent the day on the computer.

She discovered that Brent and Grace had been buried in separate tombs in an old mausoleum. With Trinity’s help, she arranged for Brent to be exhumed. By the next day—three days before Christmas!—they arranged for an Episcopalian priest to perform a re-burial ceremony and a blessing on both of the departed.

Logan, Kelsey, and Trinity attended the service. It was lovely.

“Will this work, do you think?” Trinity asked anxiously.

“Can’t hurt!” Kelsey assured her.

But later, when they returned Trinity to Ainsworth House, Logan expressed his doubts to his wife.

“I’m concerned,” Logan told Kelsey. “Part of it may have to do with Burt Olmsby. The banker—Brent knows that he was killed by Burt. He was looking the man in the face when he stabbed him and shot him. And he knew that Olmsby wanted Grace. Think there’s anything we can do about that?”

“It’s far too late to have him arrested for murder,” Kelsey said.

“No, but, maybe we can find where he’s buried.”

“But—he doesn’t haunt the place. Brent would have told us.”

“Still, I believe that we need to do something. Find out where he was buried.”

“And dig up his grave? We’ll wind up arrested!”

“I know. And we’re Federal agents,” Logan said.

But, back at the house, they discovered that Brent still could not leave the wing he had been doomed to haunt.

Kelsey lay with Logan in bed and said softly, “You know, we have a tendency—as people, human souls—to believe in curses and superstitions. Maybe Brent
believes
he’s doomed to this side of the house. Maybe if we have something read over his body.…”

“You found where he’s buried?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “He’s about a few miles north of here—toward Jacksonville. It’s an old, old cemetery. There are no gates or fences.”

Logan sighed. But he knew Kelsey. “I already have the shovels,” he told her. “If we’re caught, well you know.…”

She turned to him, her smile radiant. “We’re going to dig him up?” she asked.

“Yeah, what the hell … surely, if we’re fired, we can find work at a carnival,” he said.

They reached the cemetery near midnight—just the right hour. Luckily, they were off on a dirt road that led far from I-95 into stretches of shrub land.

There were no walls, no gates, just a sign that half-heartedly warned that there was no admittance after dusk.

Of course they ignored the sign.

Burt Olmsby had been granted a praying angel—which made his grave easy enough to find. Kelsey knew exactly where because she had looked it all up and was excellent at historical research. Since he hadn’t managed to make himself at all famous at anything, the angle and his name were all that remained of any kind of memorial to the man.

They dug.

His coffin had been poor pine; it was barely six feet down in soft, moist earth.

It wasn’t easy to create much of a fire with all the dampness, but Logan had come armed with a lot accelerant. Soon, they had the coffin, the remnants, and the bones blazing.

Then, of course, they heard the sirens. And they ran like hell.

But, when they returned to Ainsworth House—filthy, worn, and ragged, they found Brent McNamara near the second floor stairs—unable to cross over. They saw Grace Ainsworth McNamara—on her side—just staring at her beloved Brent.

“Maybe the mind and the soul are one,” Logan told Kelsey.

“What now?” she asked. “I’m not even sure what you call the crime we committed—and we still haven’t solved the problem for Brent and Grace.”

“I believe I have it,” Logan told her. “It’s all in the heart, the soul, and the mind, and the mind must live on with the heart and the soul.”

“Okay, so?” Kelsey asked.

“We are definitely calling in Will Chan!”

Will Chan was one of their agents—in fact, he was one with the very first group who had become part of the Krewe of Hunters.

He’d been a magician and an entertainer in his previous life. He knew all about sleight of hand and tricking the mind and the eye. He was also a great and understanding guy and though he’d been planning his own Christmas break, he was a friend as well as a co-worker.

And so he arrived quickly, flying from Virginia down to Jacksonville and while Logan drove him from the airport down to St. Augustine, he told him all about the situation.

“Belief can be everything,” Will agreed.

By the time they reached Ainsworth House, their plan was ready for action.

That night, Will arrived and with the ghosts in the room—including rock star Buggety-Boo and a number of young ones who had died of childhood diseases in the house over the years and a few others who had also gone by natural means—he performed a ceremony at the table. Only Brent McNamara wasn’t there; he had to watch from the upstairs hallway.

Will was great at what he did; he called for the powers of Heaven, goodness, and light to honor those who had died in God’s good grace to clear the house of all and any evil.

He had managed to get some kind of a trick that caused a large puff of black smoke over the table to be cleared with a charge of white—and then vanish entirely.

Then Grace Ainsworth, beautiful in a Victorian day dress, rich dark hair swept up in a chignon, walked to the foot of the stairs.

“Brent!” she implored.

Brent walked down the stairs to stand before her. He embraced her warmly. It almost appeared that there were tears in his eyes; real tears.

Ainsworth House had a spectacular re-opening on Christmas Eve. All the publicity had garnered a new crop of tourists who longed to experience a place with a reputation like that of Ainsworth House.

Trinity invited Thomas Villiers—the hurt Santa—to dinner on Christmas Eve.

Villiers hadn’t shattered his kneecap or broken a leg; he’d only strained it badly. And while he’d said that he’d never come back in the house, Logan had convinced him that Father Connolly—the Episcopal priest who had performed the rites at the gravesite—would be there, too, and that the house would be blessed and all would be well.

Kelsey told Logan with a certain amount of wry amusement that it was important that Thomas come back and that he like the house again—Trinity was in love with the man who had played Santa for her.

And dinner was lovely. The chef and sous chefs and household staff were back—along with the elves. They had turkeys and hams and mashed potatoes and stuffing and cranberry sauce—all the traditional fare that could be wanted.

The house was beautiful and lovely.

A storm was rolling in, but that was all right. All were in the Christmas spirit—even Father Connolly who arrived a little late after having given the six o’clock Christmas Eve service.

But it was soon after that the storm moved in with a vengeance and right in the middle of the meal, the lights went out.