Evangelina Green (21 page)

"I’m sorry Netta. Have you discussed Tashi
with your dream...guy?” Netta shook her head, still blushing,
feeling warmth as if she were being hugged. She gasped when she
realized “he” was hugging her.

"Uh Lina? I think he’s here right
now…he’s...hugging me...making me feel all warm and fuzzy. Can you
feel him? Can you get a vision of him?"

Lina had been watching out the window for
signs of Keaton to no avail. When she turned around she dropped her
tea glass and yelped! For just a flash she saw a dark man, dressed
in a suit, bending over his sister with his arms folded around her!
She was shaking as she sat down.

"Netta, is your man a ghost?” Netta
shrugged, too afraid to speak, after seeing Lina’s reaction.

"I don’t knoooow!" Netta whined. "C’mon,
Lina, he meets me in my dreams. I don’t know anything about this
mumbo-jumbo stuff you deal with!"

She sounded screechy, but she was scared and
frustrated, so figured screechy was just about right.

“
I think I’ve seen him
around the house, but I never dreamed he might be a
ghost!”

Lina was almost sure it was the dark haired
man she’d seen with the crew. That wasn’t completely true. He’d
been near the crew but they didn’t interact with him. Now as she
looked back, she realized they didn’t seem to notice him at
all.

Lina slept poorly that
night. She wasn’t afraid of a ghost for heaven’s sake, but she
couldn’t clear her mind and rest. Then there was also the sound of
the wolf calling out in the swamp. She knew Keaton’s special
vocalizations. His voice had a soothing quality. This one was
aching, longing, lost, and so sad it made her cry. She didn’t know
if she should help or even if she should mention it to Keaton,
when...not if...
when
he got back.

She’d had her second cup of coffee when
Netta wandered down to the kitchen the next morning.

"You seem in fine spirits.” Then she laughed
and almost spewed her coffee across the table, when she thought
about the pun.

"Spirits, ghosts. Get it?" Netta didn’t
think it was funny, indicated by the scowl she wore. She got her
pills and her juice and sat at the table, gulping down one at a
time.

"Damn horse-pills!” she groused.

"Didn’t you sleep well?" Lina asked her
grumpy sister, actual concern in her eyes.

"I slept fine, when I could sleep. What was
with that damn dog howling all night? I have a headache. I think
I’ll take a long hot bath, that usually helps.”

Netta pushed herself from the table, rinsed
her glass and dragged her feet as she walked to the stairs. Lina
was concerned but she decided Netta would tell her if she was in
more pain or had problems that necessitated a visit to the E.R. She
hoped so anyway!

Better to dive into the work at hand. Nobody
else was going to do it. She walked into the dining room and before
she could open the first box of documents...she felt that familiar
chill.

"You’re the one.” he sighed the words.

"I’m the one
what
?" She
questioned.

He was so shocked he actually stumbled and
when she turned to him and asked, “Aaaaand...?”

Then he did stumble over his feet and his
entire world became undone and unglued. He felt dizzy. Wait just a
darn minute. Centuries of empty nothingness, and now his first
tactile response was dizziness? He fell through the wall behind him
and actually felt his backside collide with the marble foyer floor.
He was grinning like a fool. He felt that! He was corporeal and yet
not. She sat down hard into the tiny desk chair.

"Well." She brushed her short hair out of
her eyes. "That was different."

Time had momentarily stopped, until he moved
around the doorjamb and just stared.

"You never did answer my question, although
now, I believe we now have more to discuss.”

She smiled as she stared back at him. He
only stood there with his mouth agape and shaking with disbelief.
She was smiling at him. She could hear him. She could see him. And
instead of panic or fright, she took it all in stride. Just another
day. As long as he’d been watching her, he had noticed her sense of
calm. She just took things as they came, never questioning the why
of it, because it just was. He really liked that about her.

"Well, I guess we should introduce
ourselves,” she started toward him with her hand outstretched.

"You can hear me. You can
see me. Amazing." His voice still weak, and now he was backing
away? Why? He couldn’t explain his sense of panic at her approach.
He was afraid
for
her, not
of
her.

She extended her hand toward him however, it
went completely through his and hers tingled up to her shoulder.
She'd almost forgotten he was a ghost having seen him around so
often. Okay, now what?

“
I’ll go first then. I’m
Lina, but I think I know who you are. After reading the old
records, I've come to the conclusion that you used to live here, in
this house." She waited for him to reply, but continued when he
just looked puzzled. His confusion stemmed from not talking for so
long, he'd actually forgotten how.

"You’re Mr. Jackson, my sister’s
uhhh...friend, aren’t you? My sister, Netta? You know the one you
share dreams with and a few other things.” He interrupted her
before she went too far.

"
Yes
! That is me." His voice was
scratchy, but stronger by the minute. "Please go no further, lest
we soil your sister’s reputation!"

He looked pained and
amazingly...embarrassed! Laughing out loud, Lina couldn’t believe
ghosts could blush!

"Mr. Jackson, apparently you are not aware
how close my sisters and I really are.” She almost giggled, but
spared him the embarrassment.

He had thousands of questions for her but
didn’t know how long he had to ask them.

"How is it you can see and hear me, while no
others can?"

He sat, or hovered, on the only other chair
in the room, waiting and looking anxious. She was the one. He knew
he had found his gateway. He felt her magic and her goodness. She
would help him find his family, restore the family name and
fortune.

"I’ve always been able to see and hear
ghosts, even as a child. I saw you more than once before this, but
sometimes ghosts appear to be just another person on the street.
It’s not until they haunt someone that they become less...shall we
say flesh and blood and their corporeal bodies fade somewhat and
they look, well...for lack of a better phrase...ghost-like."

He became thoughtful and wondered if by
haunt, she meant visiting with her sister, Netta. He smiled at the
thought of her.

"What are you thinking Mr. Jackson that
makes you smile?" He sat straighter and tried to change the
subject.

"If I haunt, as you say, a person and it’s
only when they sleep...are they aware...after sleeping...what took
place in that dream...and if I may ask another, does it do the
other ill?"

Now he genuinely looked
concerned and worried. Was he involved with Netta and Lina really
hadn’t known? She could usually feel when a ghost or spirit was
around...she hadn’t had that prickly feeling in quite a few years.
Did Keaton sense Mr. Jackson’s presence? Could that be the
electricity
he'd felt?
Either way this house was getting crowded!

"The way I understand it, not being a ghost
or a haunt-ee, the longer the ghost is in contact with his or her
object of desire, the ghost...well...kinda loses himself or
herself. Some ghosts have sought riches or possessions and the more
they search for this or the more they try to hoard, the less of a
ghost they become and they kinda fade, I think." She really wasn't
sure how to phrase it any better.

"I’m not sure what happens to them after
that. But my experience has been that they just don’t come back. At
least I never see them again. Some spirits can manipulate the
living, making them steal, hurt, and even try to kill others. Not
all ghosts are nice spirits, and I’ve heard people have died
because of these spirits, but I’ve always felt those individuals
were near death’s door to begin with. That is part of why people
are afraid of ghosts." She paused for him to speak.

"May I ask you a question, Mr. Jackson?”

He was mulling all the information away and
not really paying attention.

"I beg your pardon. Did
you ask something of me?" She grinned at him.
A flustered ghost?

"Yes, Mr. Jackson. You are he, aren't you?”
She tried to remember more of what she’d read in the newspaper
documents.

“
Tomas Jackson? Weren’t
you one of the owners of this home?”

He was lost in thought, remembering another
time, long ago, although he nodded in the affirmative.

"Can you tell me, Tomas? What was your life
like? Can you remember what happened to you?"

He looked directly into her gorgeous, green
eyes and began his story.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"
I was a young boy when my parents moved here. The mansion was
owned by my maternal grandparents Eugene and Theodora Treadwell. In
early 1867, after the war, my father Zacharia Jackson had nothing
to his name, and to add injury to insult, he had left his home in
Mississippi to fight with the Union. His family disowned him and
therefore he had no inheritance. My mother Beatrice Jackson, was
humiliated, but she also knew if my father could no longer provide
for her and the children, she had no choice but to return home. I
was the eldest boy, at 14, with two younger brothers, Jonathan and
Byron, and one younger sister, the baby, Elizabeth. Father didn’t
take the move well. He began to withdraw from us and he drank
often. Mother became saddened at the loss of her best friend and
husband. She doted on us for the first few years we lived here.
Then realizing we needed her less and less, when the Treadwell’s
hired two nannies and had maids and servants for every task, she
withdrew. My parents died within two years of our moving to the
mansion and within a week of each other. They just went. There was
no warning, no sickness, and no outward signs of anything but
sadness. Seems they didn’t want to live without the other.
Elizabeth said they died of broken hearts and I must
agree.

"We managed—the four of us children, to stay
close and avoid the grandparents. They’d become tyrants and blamed
us for our mother’s death. They claimed if we had shown her more
love, she would not have gone on. They couldn’t fathom loving
someone that much they’d die to be with them again. They were
incapable of love. I only discovered this on the day I died. I’d
always thought they just didn’t know how to love us kids. But they
hated us. They could have killed us all, buried us far away and be
done with it, if it hadn’t been for two house slaves. I realize
that’s not a term used now, but they were intelligent and caring
individuals who took us to church, and school, and they made trips
to shop in town with us in tow, all to make sure the entire
community knew of us and that we were wards of the Treadwells. They
couldn’t very well do away with us with everyone knowing about
us.

"I actually died a full grown man, I had
just turned 21. But after death, I was cursed to stay in this house
until...well I’m not sure, but I assumed that as the oldest and the
first to go, I was left to watch over the mansion. I don’t know
what I might do if the old girl was threatened but since that
hasn’t come up I haven’t had to find out. I don’t have an answer to
any of those questions. My portrait hangs at the bottom of the
stairway. I think there are times when it shows me as a lad, and at
others I seem to age day by day until I appear as an old man.
Currently, it shows me as I looked at twenty-one. The portrait
painter, well known for his black magic, was often a guest at the
mansion and therefore the one commissioned to paint one of each of
us. Then one by one my family, my siblings, at the age of
approximately twenty-one, either died or disappeared, almost as
soon as the paint dried on those portraits. We were cursed by our
own grandparents.

"I was cursed to watch my family die and
their deaths were not peaceful. I know not what has become of them
afterward. It all seems so long ago, and memories fade, even for
spirits. Why would I be the only one cursed to remain here? They
all died at age 21, after they supposedly left home to find their
fortunes or after marrying someone in another state. Of course, no
one here knew of these marriages or husband or wives, or what ever
became of them. No one ever saw my siblings again. No one
questioned why they didn’t come home for holidays, or summer
vacations and the like. With time, memory fails and after a while,
we were forgotten by everyone around us. Our killers and I were the
only witnesses to these vulgar acts of violence."

He stopped speaking, waiting for Lina to say
something. She was staring out the window, shoulders slumped,
crying softly for his lost family. She knew the pain of losing
those you love and she could hear it in his telling of the tale.
She turned to him, wiping her face, not knowing what she could say.
She hadn’t felt any other presences in the house, but she hadn’t
known he was there either. Who could say?

"I think I’d like to try reaching them if
they’re near. No promises, but I have done it in the past.”

His eyes lit with excitement.

"Do you think they might be here and I might
not know? They might be on a different plane or lost somehow?”

She didn’t know, and
wouldn’t know until later when she tried to hold a séance. She had
held séances in the case of a reluctant
“left behind”
as she called them.
The living sometimes needed some convincing before they believed.
Usually it was a spouse or a child who desperately needed to tell
their family or
“left behinds”
that they were happy, safe and they wanted their
loved ones to move on, to continue on and love someone else. It was
all okay. The ghosts she spoke with could put on a good show if
needed and convinced every single doubter she’d ever invited to her
sessions.