A Ghost of a Chance (3 page)

“
Uh, well I mean the long hours toiling at the castle.”

She’d typed it but looked very confused. She spoke out loud, “I must be losing it.”

Jack leaned closer and closed his eyes for a moment and then whispered in her ear. “The truth is that I filled my life with things that I told myself were important, surrounded myself with people who I thought felt the same way as me. But I was always lost, filled with a wanting of more, of something I could never find.”

She was very still as though she were hearing him somehow.

He knelt down and sat on the floor beside her chair. “Life is so strange. You go on day to day pushing yourself to achieve things, material things that we all prize, but then when you have them their pleasure is so brief. It just slips through your fingers and you’re left trying, always trying to fill in the holes . . . And it never really works.”

He stopped. He was rambling, pouring out truths about himself for no reason except that there wasn’t a reason not to now. He hadn’t really ever acknowledged how profoundly dissatisfied he was before.

But why now, did it really matter now? And then he remembered Hallie. She was still beside him, so very still, breathing quietly as though waiting for something.

He whispered to her again, “Is it possible? Can you feel me here Hallie?”

For a split second her hands drifted to the keyboard again, hovering over it, almost trembling he thought, but then she withdrew them.

Whatever had been between them was gone. He could feel it. The delicate thread of connection had snapped. He’d broken it, although he truly didn’t know how he’d achieved it in the first place.

“
How am I going to use this stuff?” she spoke out loud. “It’s good, but it doesn’t really fit.” Her hand brushed her forehead, that sensation again. And then she rubbed her temples.

Her head hurt. He knew it. Being in close proximity he was somehow keyed in to some physical sensations that she experienced. He hadn’t begun to fathom the perimeters of this odd new existence of his. In fact, he suspected, he hadn’t even scratched the surface.

Standing up behind her, he lightly touched each side of her head with his hands and began to softly massage. He felt her skin, felt the warmth radiating out from it. Even though she was oblivious to the contact, he could feel her relaxing.

Again he spoke to her, “Why can’t you feel me here Hallie? I’m as real as you, I’m sure of it.” But other than the unconscious response of her body to his touch, there was nothing.

And then he stopped. It was sudden, coming out of nowhere. A freezing chill quickly swept aggressively through the room. He dropped his hands from her and turned around slowly. Although it had not been moments before, the opposite corner of the room was visibly darkened. He felt a shiver pass through him. There was a definite iciness coming from that direction.

“
What is it? Who are you?” he spoke out instinctively. It seemed like endless minutes that he stood there waiting, and then just as abruptly as it had manifested, he felt it withdraw.

He turned back to Hallie and what he saw surprised him almost as much as the presence that had just vanished. For there she was staring into the exact corner of the room, where whatever it was had been seconds before. She knew somehow. She felt it too. For the first time since he had arrived in the old house, he felt a tangible danger – a worry, not for himself but for her.

CHAPTER TWO

He paced. She had gone to bed hours ago, and he paced up and down the den. He retraced what he knew, turned it over in his mind, examining it from every possible angle. And there was only one conclusion he could arrive at. Man, was he in over his head.

There could be no doubt because, in truth, this wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling for Jack. There had been moments like this in the past, in the midst of a very crucial business negotiation for a client when he had known it, felt it in his bones. And he’d drawn himself out of his own sense of doom and had persevered, had risen above the fray. Had, in effect, bullshitted his ass out of trouble.

He was good at that, saving his own backend. But here, now, in this setting, he didn’t know the game plan, couldn’t find the loopholes, backdoors. There was no one to listen to his fast talking.

There was just him and his own thoughts ricocheting around in his head – just him drowning in his own ignorance.

“
It’s not so easy, is it?”

He’d heard it – a voice, a woman’s voice, but it definitely wasn’t Hallie’s. He looked around. The room was empty. Maybe he was losing it. Maybe that was it. He was just having a massive delusion. It wasn’t the first time that possibility had occurred to him. In a way it was more comforting than alternatives.

“
No, I’m sorry dear. There’s no easy way to break this to you but you have crossed over, bought the farm, as my father was found of saying.”

He turned around. Where minutes ago there had been empty space was now seated an elderly white-haired woman in the rocking chair near the fireplace. She smiled widely at him. “What was that again?” he managed to get out.

“
Oh, I know it sounds a little overwhelming, but it’s not all that bad once you get over the shock of it all. I mean really. Where we are is a lot less trying then where my little Hallie is.”

He frowned. Was she really whitewashing the fact that she’d told him he was dead? “Your little Hallie?”

“
Yes, Hallie is my grand niece. I’m her Great Aunt Marie.”

She stood up, although in his estimation it didn’t make much difference. She couldn’t have been any taller than four feet seven, if that.

“
Well,” he cleared his throat, wondering exactly where this conversation should go now. It wasn’t as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him, but he’s dismissed it. Could he really feel this much alive, if he wasn’t? “Great Aunt Marie, so what you're saying is that I’ve died?”

“
Yes, not exactly what you expected is it? It was a bit of a shock for me as well when I crossed over. It’s sort of more like walking into a different room than all that eternal peace stuff.”

He tried to assimilate her words for a moment. Now, how did this happen to him?

“
The heart attack was terribly serious, remember that Jack?” It was as though she was listening to his thoughts.

“
The heart attack . . .” He remembered the pain in his chest. It seemed so quick. Was that how it felt to have a heart attack? The whole memory was foggy, like a dream.

“
Sometimes the transition can be hard Jack. Some don’t want to accept that they’ve made it at all.”

He sank down onto Hallie’s incredibly soft couch. All of this was hitting him very oddly. He should be more upset he supposed, but it felt a bit like an unspoken truth that well, now was spoken. “But I don’t understand. Shouldn’t there have been a tunnel, or people waiting for me or something. But there wasn’t any of that. I just woke up here, trapped in Hallie’s house. Is this my afterlife, this old farmhouse?”

Her smile dimmed a little, “Yes, well that’s just it. There’s a reason all of this doesn’t seem quite right.” She paused as though carefully choosing her words, “Jack, I have to tell you this isn’t, well, the usual protocol for these things. So all I can piece together is that you’re here for a special reason.”

He waited expectantly, but she seemed content not to elaborate. “So what you’re saying is that you don’t know. I thought once you’ve passed over everything would be clear.”

“
Goodness no. Although wouldn’t that be nice?” she chuckled in amusement. “Some things become clear, but others are as clear as mud. You must understand whether you are where we are, or even where you used to be; it’s all about learning, evolving, every bit. Though most don’t realize it at the time.”

He stood up and walked over to the fireplace. He didn’t know if he could have headaches anymore, but he felt as though he did. “This is a lot to take in.”

She was behind him, lightly patting his shoulder. Although a bit frustrating, she seemed like a kind person. He sort of wished that she’d been his Aunt. He could have used such a benign presence in his life. Turning back to her, “Are you, well trapped here too?”

“
Oh no, I’m just visiting. I check in on Hallie from time to time. She’s had a difficult life.”

His eyes focused toward the hallway leading to her bedroom. He’d forgotten for a moment about what had happened in the study.

She nodded, “That was remarkable Jack.”

“
What was?” he murmured, still wrestling with the enormity of it all.

“
The contact with Hallie. That was most unusual. It takes a great deal for us to reach those still existing on the physical plane.” She was nearly beaming at him, seeming to be genuinely excited about his success.

“
Funny, I thought I was existing on the physical plane.”

She grinned at him with her sparsely wrinkled, heart shaped face. Her eyes were the purest blue that he ever remembered seeing. “Well Jack I know that’s how it feels now. But you are and you’re not. There are all kinds of planes of existence.”

How did she seem to have a knack for making the worst news seem not nearly so bad with her cheerful disposition? She certainly would have been useful on his team – way back when.

“
But still feeling connected to the world may help you in what you have to do.”

He looked at her quizzically, “And that is what exactly?”

Another well-meaning smile,” I don’t know, but it must be important, don’t you think?”

He smiled back at her. He just couldn’t help feel her enthusiasm spread to him a bit. “I suppose. I suppose it must be.”

He sat next to her bed in a small, cherry wood rocking chair. It seemed rather old, possibly an antique. Evidently Hallie was fond of rocking chairs. He’d counted four in the house. He listened peacefully to her light breathing. Being near her did seem to have a calming effect on his well-challenged nerves.

And he had always been drawn to beauty. There was no denying that Hallie Barkly was beautiful.

It wasn’t an aggressive beauty or even an obvious one. But rather like a subtle painting whose dimensions of texture only become apparent upon close scrutiny. She was a person you needed to take time with. And just now, he seemed to have all the time in the world.

Her hair was one of his favorite things. It was just packed full of shades and highlights. At the moment it lay carelessly and unevenly strewn amongst her six, well beaten down pillows.

These he’d counted twice; indeed there were six. He wondered vaguely how she didn’t smother herself at night amongst them all.

His initial opinion of her hadn’t changed that much. She certainly was for lack of a better description quirky – soft, perhaps gentle – but amusingly quirky. He wondered what she would think if she knew he was sitting next to her bed watching her sleep.

Jack had accepted that he was a ghost, a member of the non-real sector of society. This was incontrovertible now, but he still didn’t feel it at all. He felt as he always had, like a man – a confused, lost man. In fact right now he was feeling like a bit of a voyeur, peering into a life in which he had not been formally invited.

He relaxed back in the chair and closed his eyes. Vaguely, he wondered what Hallie might be dreaming. And in that instant, he discovered how quickly what he thought could be translated into reality. In one blindingly rapid sweep, his curiosity drew him instantaneously to a place where he had not expected to be.

It was a room – a vast, enormous, cold room made almost completely of stone.

He stood motionless on the panoramic threshold, frozen in a bit of shock at this turn of events.

Where in the hell could. . . He turned about shakily, still stunned by the utter massiveness of this new environment. It was absolutely overwhelming. It felt as though he’d fallen into another time, centuries and centuries ago.

The room itself was void of ornamentation except for a few, sparse arrangements of what appeared to be medieval armor, and boldly colored, wall tapestries. The chill of the stone walls actually seemed to be physically seeping into him which only served to increase his mounting sense of panic.

All of this reminded him of something. It was like a sort of medieval throne room that he’d seen in an old Sinbad movie once.

“
Sir Jackoryn, welcome to my domain.”

The booming voice nearly jolted him into a back flip. He’d been so overcome by the surroundings that it hadn’t occurred to him that he wasn’t alone. He whirled around in the direction of the sound. Well naturally he hadn’t noticed. He had been addressed from across a football-field of a distance.