Between Seasons (7 page)

“You do know how crazy that sounds, right?”

Patrick bristled on Sara’s behalf over the condescension in Jules’ tone since Sara seemed so intent on ignoring it.

“Sure. It’s just that there’s a real history here with this house. Megan told me everyone in town thinks the house is haunted.”

Jules sat up straighter, glancing around and touching the cross at her throat. “Really? Why?”

“She doesn’t really know. It probably has something to do with the house being empty for forty years. You know how it is in small towns.”

“You should call a priest. What if something evil is living here?”

Sara snorted, and Patrick smiled. He’d never heard her laugh like that – he liked the way her face lightened. “Well, let’s not get crazy. Do you want some dinner?”

Jules huffed out a breath. “Having a priest bless the house isn’t strange – it’s just smart.”

“We might as well have a séance,” Sara joked.

“If you guys drag out candles and a Ouija board, I swear I won’t answer,” Patrick threatened, although deep down he wondered if he could communicate with them that way. Ginny had dragged him to the cemetery for Halloween one year to screw around with spirits, but all that had happened was a lot of making out in the car. One of the chicks in his church’s youth group told him using a Ouija board was a sure way to invite demons into his house , but he had never believed in that either .

“Fine. Let’s just eat.”

Patrick groaned as he followed Sara and Jules to the kitchen. He imagined Sara’s food tasted great since it sure smelled amazing. A few nights ago she’d made baked chicken that was enough to make his mouth juicy from the scent.

“Sandwich okay? I’ve got mozzarella and tomato.”

Jules nodded and poked her head into the refrigerator. “So, do you really think there’s a ghost?”

“Yes, I’m right here.” Patrick felt weird that they were talking about him, but he liked that maybe Sara really did have some kind of clue he was hanging around.

Sara shrugged. “Sometimes it does feel like someone is listening, which is kind of comforting in its own way.”

“Maybe it’s God who’s listening.”

Patrick stared at Jules. “I wish.”

“Um, yeah,” Sara said. “Maybe. I mostly feel like I’m not alone , though, because I keep finding things. It’s like having someone here with me.”

“You find things? Like what?” Patrick could almost feel Jules tense up.

“Well, like on one of the first days I was here, I found a bunch of concert tickets from the sixties in the closet in my office. And a few days ago I found a huge stash of records and an old record player in the basement. Oh, and I found a copy of The Turn of the Screw .”

“That’s weird. Isn’t that your favorite book?”

Sara nodded, and Patrick stared at her in surprise. He’d cringed when she found it, sure she’d toss it, but she had put in her bedroom on the nightstand. He considered moving it again –she still hadn’t spent much time in the attic, so his hiding place there was still undisturbed –but liked the way the book looked next to her lamp. He liked that she had something of his.

Sara and Jules ate quickly, not talking any more about Patrick’s stuff or ghosts. It was mostly things about Jules’ family. Her husband was working a lot of hours, she was doing stuff with her church group, and their mom and dad were thinking about selling their bakery again. They spoke about decorating and work.

“I think I’m going to start a novel,” Sara said after wiping her mouth with a napkin.

Jules smiled. “That’s wonderful! You could write all about the good work my church – ”

Sara interrupted. “I was thinking maybe I’d write something based on my divorce. It would make the perfect horror story. Stephen King has nothing on me .”

Sara went upstairs after helping Jules pull the couch apart and make it into a bed. Patrick looked away when Jules whipped off her shirt, giving him a glan ce of pale skin and a pink bra.

From the very first night the electricity had been turned on, when Sara had taken a shower, he’d tried to avoid rooms with naked women, which struck him as nothing less than hilarious. For most of his teen years he’d gone out of his way to see boobs wherever he could. It was different, though, with Sara –he felt like he needed to give her some privacy. He wanted and he wondered, of course, but he resisted out of a sense of chivalry. His mother would have been so proud.

Not that it really mattered since his efforts to keep his eyes to himself weren’t always so successful. Sara had no idea he was there in the house, of course, and she’d run through the house in her underwear more than once, giving Patrick his first true hard-on in decades, another thing he found bizarre. He’d definitely spent inordinate amounts of time whacking off in his room or the bathroom before he’d died, but it didn’t even occur to him once while he was dead to fantasize about sex. Hell , if he’d thought of it, he would have passed the time taking care of whatever ghostly needs he had instead of feeling sorry for himself or sleeping.

He wasn’t even sure what would happen if he did jerk off. He’d been thinking about it more and more over the past couple of weeks, laughing his ass off while contemplating the nature of ghostly jizz and what God would think of it, if there was a God who was paying attention. He wasn’t so sure anymore. Whatever the case, he wondered if it was still a mortal sin if he touched himself while dead. Or undead. Or whatever he was.

By the time he turned around, Jules was dressed in a blue t-shirt and under the covers. She retrieved her phone on the end table and settled back. Patrick stared as she push ed the buttons .

“Hey, honey,” she said quietly. “Yeah, I miss you too. No… no, she’s still in spiritual trouble. I’ve tried… yes, I have. I don’t know… well, I can’t just give up – she’s my sister.”

“Spiritual trouble?” Patrick repeated, forehead wrinkling in confusion.

“Yes, and now she thinks there’s a ghost in the house… yes, I told her the house needed to be blessed, but she laughed it off. I’m going to do it myself when I get off the phone with you, but I’m a poor excuse for… yes, of course.”

Patrick had no idea what blessing the house would accomplish, but he kind of hoped she’d try it. As much as he liked hanging out with Sara, if Jules could do something to, you know, bump him into the next life, he wouldn’t say no. He vaguely remembered it was supposed to clear out the bad spirits. Hell , maybe he was a bad spirit.

“Uh huh. Yeah, there’s a bit of Holy Water and oil in my bag… well, I wasn’t about to come here without it. Sara still hasn’t accepted that the divorce – well, no, of course not. Yes, I’ll be careful. Okay, I love you too. Good night, sweetheart.”

He found it a little strange this woman travelled with Holy Water, and he wasn’t overly fond of the way she’d been talking about Sara either.

“Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow, an undeserved curse does not come to rest,” Jules muttered, digging in her duffel bag. She drew out two small vials, and Patrick raised his eyebrow as she crawled out of bed and walked around the room.

She wiped something on the front door and along the sill of the windows and said, “I anoint this house with oil and place it under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Oh God, use this house for your glory and post angels at each door and window.”

“I think God’s a little busy,” Patrick said, trying not to laugh. “This house really isn’t on his radar.”

Jules opened the other vial and poured something into her hands, which she sprinkled onto the carpet, a few drops passing straight through Patrick. “I am countering any curse on this house or demon in it with the blood of Jesus Christ, and I take my authority from Him.”

He waited to feel different, for Jules to prove him wrong. If he were a demon, shouldn’t God have zapped him by now? Shouldn’t he feel compelled to leave the house? He didn’t even so much as have an itch on his arm, so he figured he was fine. Would this work to banish ghosts too? It didn’t seem like it.

“I speak peace here in the name of Jesus,” Jules intoned, scuttling toward the kitchen and keeping her voice low. “I invite you to come, Holy Spirit, and fill this place. Demon or ghost, leave.”

For half a second Patrick considered moving something to freak her out, but there was nothing downstairs that was his, and he didn’t feel like digging a book out of one of his hiding spaces. Plus, there was no telling what Sara’s reaction would be to something like that, and he wanted to keep her around.

“Not that it would matter – I’m convinced the house would burn down, and I’d still be stuck here. But hey, at least I’d be outside. Well, maybe. I don’t know. I’m not entirely convinced this house actually exists or that you exist.”

“Amen,” she finished, sprinkling more water or whatever it was on the floor. “There. That should protect my heathen sister.”

She was as bad as Sara with talking out loud.

“Yeah, that worked great.” Patrick shook his head and climbed the stairs.

As always, he checked on Sara; it was his nightly ritual now . Her door was closed, an unusual thing, but a light shined through the crack at the bottom. He took a running start to make the transition between dead air and the heavy quicksand feeling of the wood go faster, only feeling the uncomfortable sensation for a moment before stumbling into his parents’ –Sara’s –bedroom.

She smoothed the sheet over her legs and up around her waist, reaching for –

“Hey, that’s my book!” Patrick said, moving closer to the side of her bed. It felt odd to walk over the floor without the cushion of the plush carpeting his mother had loved so much.

Sara flipped the cover open and ran her fingers over the text. “Good choice.” After thumbing past a few more pages , she read, “I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days –found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake.”

Patrick smiled along with her and recited the next sentence. “In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house.”

He carefully settled himself onto the floor, leaning his back against the wall, and watched her read. He liked the way her face reacted to the words , forehead wrinkling and smoothing with each turn of the page. She looked less… haunted as she read, which even he could tell was kind of ironic.

A chapter later something fell out of the book into her lap.

“Shit!” Patrick heaved himself toward the bed, not quite stopping himself in time from touching the book. It tipped out of Sara’s hands, and she froze before reaching for the book and then the photo. “God dammit!”

He’d completely forgotten he’d stashed a photo of himself with his parents in between the pages . It had been taken in Sea Isle City on the beach during one of their day trips. Patrick had been eighteen , and he remembered the smell of the salt air that day, coupled with how bad the top of his dad’s bald head had burned. It peeled for a week afterward, and his mother had soothed aloe vera over the flaking skin while his dad sat on his mom’s beloved green print couch. He’d also met a girl on the beach that day, kissing her on the boardwalk at 34th Street. Mary, her name had been. Cute girl –she ’d had long, straight, red hair and freckles.

“Who’s this?” Sara asked, holding the photo by its edges and moving closer to the light on her nightstand. “Oh, h ell o, tall, dark, and handsome. “ Her fingertip touched the picture, just at the edge . “Are you the guy who used to live here?”

“Handsome, huh?” Patrick asked, grinning. He puffed out his chest and shifted his weight on his feet. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Your parents look sweet.”

“Well, I wouldn’t ever say that about Dad, but yeah, they were nice,” Patrick said, moving around the bed and leaning over the lamp to study the faded photograph. “My mom was pretty great. She would have hated what you’ve done to the house, though.”

“Hey, I bet my office was your room – you look tall. Those marks on the closet door are probably from you, right? Your mother looks just like the kind of mom who would force you to stand there and let her fuss over how tall you were getting .” She laughed, a quiet rumble , running her fingers over the photo again before setting it on the table next to her bed.

“I miss her,” Patrick blurted. “I miss them both.”

Sara reclined against her headboard again, picking up the book and rubbing her thumb along spine. A few moments later she swung her legs over the side of the bed, bare legs pale against the dark green sheets, and grabbed her typewriting machine before easing into the armchair in the corner. She pushed herself back and crossed her legs, flipping the top part up. She looked excited and too wide awake for the hour, and within minutes she typ ed frantically, muttering to herself about inspiration and memories.

Patrick crept up to the chair, laughing at himself about his instinct to still be stealthy when there was no chance anyone could hear him, hovering at her shoulder and reading her typed words out loud:

The ocean was relatively calm, hardly a wind to blow the old blanket on the sand my mother spread on the sand , joking with my dad about sand crabs and warning him to put his hat on. Dad was balding, the horseshoe ring-pattern of his hair thinning even as I watched.

“Tommy,” my mother chirped, turning to me and adjusting the straps of her burgundy bathing suit, “Did you r emember to pack the sandwiches?”

“Yeah, Ma. I grabbed two bologna for me and the tuna salad for you. Dad’s got two salamis. Oh, and I packed a couple of Tabs.” It had always been my responsibility to pack the cooler for the beach… at least since I turned fifteen .”

Patrick gaped at Sara as she continued typing. How was she doing it ? It was exactly what had happened that day. Aside from the name Tommy, it was as if she was reading his memories. He stood abruptly and skittered away from her, thoughts racing to figure out what the Hell was going on. Sara kept typing away, but he was afraid to see what else she wrote .