A Ghost of a Chance

A Ghost of a Chance

by

Evelyn Klebert

2005

A Cornerstone Book

A Cornerstone Book

Published by Cornerstone Book Publishers

Copyright © 2005 by Evelyn Klebert

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any

manner without permission in writing from the copyright holder, except by a

reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Cornerstone Book Publishers

New Orleans, LA

First Cornerstone Edition - 2006

www.cornerstonepublishers.com

ISBN: 1-887560-50-5

ISBN 13: 978-1-887560-50-4

MADE IN THE USA

OTHER BOOKS BY EVELYN KLEBERT

NOVELS

A Ghost of a Chance

An Uneasy Traveler

Sanctuary of Echoes

Treading on Borrowed Time

Ghost Soldier

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

Breaking Through the Pale

Dragonflies: Journeys into the Paranormal

The Left Palm and Other Halloween Tales of the Supernatural

POETRY COLLECTIONS

Considerations

Explanations

Dedication:

For my husband,

my reason

Table of Contents

A Ghost of a Chance

The Author

Excerpt from Sanctuary of Echoes

A Ghost of a Chance

PROLOGUE

Is there a connective thread in everything that happens in someone’s life?

He checked his watch for about the seventh time since he’d flown out of the door of his fourteenth floor Manhattan apartment. In ten minutes he was due across town for a meeting. He paced in front of the elevator door. Usually it was slow, but today it was interminable when he desperately needed everything to fly — just to fly.

Those things that you never can anticipate, was it all chance or the product of some grand cosmic design?

“
Where are you Jack? Mr. Braseman has called three times already. You were supposed to prep him before the meeting?”

“
I’m just flagging down a cab. Everything’s going haywire.

My alarm didn’t wake me and my cell phone was turned off.” He rubbed his eyes. He’d overslept, but he felt like he hadn’t slept at all. “Tell him I got caught in a traffic jam.”

“
Jack, he sounded really upset.”

“
Look Bev, there’s nothing I can do. Stall him. I’ll be there.”

He hung up — just didn’t want to hear anymore. He was out of breath. Down the street, there was already heavy traffic, but he couldn’t spot any cabs. The city was usually glutted with them. But not as far as his eyes could see, not when he needed one.

He stopped. He had to — for a minute, to breathe again. He looked up. The skyscrapers over his head stretched into the clouds.

The questions, the big ones, admittedly he hadn’t taken much time to ponder.

After all such issues fell into the philosophical arena — again, a place that he hadn’t cared to spend much time. There weren’t any clear cut answers on this stuff written down in a book. Well maybe some book, but not his brand of reading material — the stock market, law journals, and Agatha Christie novels (they were his Achilles heel). He’d always felt that Agatha did have her hand on the pulse of human nature.

“
Brennan where are you? Your receptionist gave me this number. I’ve invested too much in your firm to have you screw this deal up for me.” Click

“
Jack, hi it’s Tessa Knowles. Remember we met last weekend? Um, Bob Walters introduced us at the Peterson reception. Anyway, Bob tells me that you don’t slow down for anybody so I decided to call you. My number is 23. . .”

He clicked the phone off. That was all the messages. He loosened his tie. It was hot, unusually hot even for an August day. It was getting to him — the heat, really beginning to get to him.

He peered down the street anxiously. Damn it, again no cabs in sight. People were everywhere even this early, but it wasn’t early.

He checked his watch again. It was late. People standing with him near the street, looking, hungry for a cab, hungry to get somewhere.

He was young, he thought, only thirty-five. One would think that statistically he had a better chance of being knifed by a mugger. But the time of death has little or maybe better said nothing to do with statistics or probability. It was simply the time.

Finally, a cab coming down the street, but three other people were already starting in that direction. He moved to enter the race but just couldn’t. Must stop, just a second, just to breathe.

“
The water’s always the place I go to recharge son. It makes everything slow down and make sense.” He was with his father again out on the fishing boat, just for a second, one precious second.

But the noise, the loud noises of the city rushed up and dragged him back.

Shouldn’t momentous days be filled with momentous things, instead of little things?

Across the street, he saw steam rising off the hot cement sidewalk. Someone was murmuring near him about an Italian restaurant they wanted to try for lunch. And on top of it all, the gasoline fumes from the street traffic burned his nose and throat. He couldn’t draw the air in; and all he needed was a moment to breathe.

Too quickly came the crushing pain in his chest, his knees buckling, refusing to support him further and the merciful, dizzying blackness.

It did seem that he was unjustly young. He was only thirty-five, but on that hot August morning, for some odd reason, Jack Brennan wasn’t terribly surprised.

CHAPTER ONE

Hallie Barkly was a writer of horror stories, or rather horror novels, and had achieved some moderate success in her profession. Of course, only some knew that they were her books at all. The first one she had ever published her own mother refused to believe was hers. “Why on earth darling would a beautiful young woman like you write such convoluted and horrible things? You’ve always been such a lovely, kind considerate child. Why you even came out of that unfortunate divorce from Edward so, well, benevolent? Where on earth did well all this twisted rage come from?”

And Hallie had smiled and said little, not willing to argue this point or any other with her mother. Where did this rage come from, where indeed? Edward, however, did figure prominently in the works of Sebastian Winters, Hallie’s dark and proactive pseudonym.

Her ex-husband made his debut appearance as the manipulative and self-absorbed lawyer who gets butchered in
Vengeance’s Angel
and then later the anal accountant who gets his just due in
Requiem for the Midnight Hour
. She had to admit that it did feel good to oft the son of a bitch at least in her mind. Because in the real world, she hadn’t said boo to his unfair machinations in their divorce settlement. But then again all that repressed frustration that he had cultivated did give birth to a well-sustained career as Sebastian Winters. And in some fashion had also led her here, to seclusion.

RRrrrrng. She picked up the cell phone that she’d carelessly tossed on her well-cluttered computer desk. Without hesitation, she answered. There were only a handful of people who actually knew where she was. “Hello?”

“
Hallie, it’s Monica. I’ve been trying to reach you for several days.”

“
Oh I’m sorry. I haven’t been checking my voice mail.”

“
Or email?”

“
Yeah, well I got on a roll with the novel so. . .” She strummed her jagged, unmanicured nails on the desk, dubiously reflecting on how untrue that particular statement was. “I was a little worried about you.” Dramatic pause, “You know, being so isolated, moving out by yourself in the country.”

“
It’s just for the summer Monica, so I can do this book.”

“
Another vampire book?” She smiled vaguely, distressed by the awkward collection of words on the screen.

“
Yes, but this one will be different,” the statement perhaps more to herself than Monica.

“
Will you promise to drive into the city this weekend to have lunch with me? I haven’t been able to get away. Things are popping here.”

“
A marketing emergency?”

“
Well we all can’t be successful authors of pulp fiction.”

Her voice had gotten a little testy; evidently Hallie had unknowingly ticked her off again. “I see you still hold my work in high regard.”

“
No, no, in my book success is success, no matter what you do to get it. Anyway, you know I’m just jealous.”

She sighed. She wasn’t in the proper frame of mind for Monica’s backhanded compliments. Her mind was too caught up in struggling with her problematic narrative.

“
Well, don’t be. You have a life. All I have is what’s in my head.”

“
And from what I gather that’s a rather grisly place to be.”

“
Yes, well I can’t deny that. Look, I’ll call you at the end of the week.”

“
Will you?”

“
Promise.”

“
I don’t like the way you sound. Give Sebastian a rest for awhile, like an everlasting one.”

“
Oh very good. Bye, hang up now.”

She was odd and for lack of a better word, quirky. A description he wasn’t normally apt to use. That was his first impression of her. In addition, she was really kind of a slob. Her office was a disaster. That was something that drove him crazy, or at least it used to. He needed order around him to think, to plan strategies. But now everything felt disconnected. Priorities had somehow radically shifted all over the place.

Of course it took him awhile to realize that she really couldn’t see him, in fact wasn’t aware of him at all. They occupied the same house, sometimes almost the same place, but Hallie Barkly was completely oblivious to his presence.

He had unearthed this particular truth in the midst of a few embarrassing encounters. Coming to the old house had been like waking up from an extended sleep; he was groggy and disoriented. He was even wearing the same dark navy suit that he’d remembered putting on that morning. And then she’d come in the room and walked right by him.

Understandably startled, he’d stammered out, “Excuse me, can you please tell me where I am?” silence. “Miss, don’t you hear me? I have no idea how I got here.” And then as she crossed through the room again, “What’s your problem? Are you deaf?” He followed her around for a while and then eventually gave up, dubiously accepting that either he was not what he used to be, or she was an imbecile.