Ghost of a Chance Book 1 in Above the Grave Trilogy (25 page)

You haven’t been in hell, Brendan. You haven’t been
in purgatory waiting for God’s judgment day. You have been
waiting for Drew’s judgment. She had to decide if she really
loved you or not. I think that we both know what she decided.
I think that she has judged you as the man of her dreams, as the
man that she chooses to spend the rest of her living life with.”

Brendan closed his eyes and held on as tight to Drew
as he could without hurting her. He took in a deep breath and
took a step towards the door.

Chapter 9
Justice
“Mary Ann?” Drew called as she was pulled through
the tunnel, now encasde in darkness, by a very cold hand.

“Let me through bitch!” A dark voice said to her. She
could smell the rot of his breath as he spun her around. “Let
me through to speak with my dear brother! I must get through
to Lezetta!”

Drew thought that she understood everything now.
Danny would rather roam the house for all eternity than the
cemetery, understandable she thought as she landed hard on the
cold cemetery floor.
With Lezetta taking over her body he
could live there with her.
What would happen to Brendan?
Could one ghost get rid of another?

“Ye lousy wench! What have ye done? Ye have
closed the gate to the other side! Ye’ll be stuck here forever
just as we are now!” He was o
n her now. Angry as the devil!

From the corner of her eye she saw a flash. The moon
light
had returned from behind the clouds and there was
something flying straight for them. He was knocked off of her
only to turn on Mary Ann who had thrown herself at him.

“Ye think you have a new play toy do ya, Danny? Not
here!
Not her! She shall not feel your hatred and your evil as
Brendan and I have had to!
She has not to do with whatever
craziness has rotted yer brain!”

Drew slowly sat up and scooted away from the two
sparring siblings. She had no idea what was about to happen
but she would be damned if she was going to spend her eternity
listening to these two bicker and have that nasty man breathing
all over her.

“Ah, sister, dear. Don’t ya know that th
is be my
playground? I am the king of this sadistic world ye be livin’ in
and don’t you forget it!”

She watched him grab her and throw her across the
cemetery. Her eyes were as wide as silver dollars. She had
definitely never been more afraid in her life yet, she was
astounded at what the spirits could do. What was the point?
They couldn’t kill each other!

The first breath of fresh air that waved through his
nostrils in over a hundred and fifty years made him almost drop
Drew. The air was so thick he could feel it sticking to his skin.
The loud roar of thunder made him jump. Brendan opened his
eyes to see the clouds rolling over head, hiding the moon and
the stars once more.

He looked down to an unconscious Drew who was
sleeping unaware in his tight gripped arms.

“Let us go and get you back my love.” He said and
kissed her temple where blood had started to trickle down from
Liza’s hard blow with the Ouija board.

Liza reached up and squeezed Brendan’s arm. She
nodded at him, in reassurance as well as trying to get him to
hurry along. Brendan’s legs shook. He didn’t know if it was
his nerves from being able to walk on the ground outside of the
house for the first time or, not knowing what to do next
exactly. He was the man, he was expected to be the hero, but
he had no idea where to begin.

“To the cemetery then.” He said to himself as much as
to Liza.

He needed to run. Holding Drew even tighter he took
off in a sprint leaving Liza panting behind him. As he reached
the gates of the cemetery he froze, the hair rose up on the back
of his neck. Whatever was going on in there wasn’t good. He
wanted badly to leave Drew’s body outside of the gates. He
didn’t want to take her back in there, putting her in more
danger; unfortunately he knew that it had to be done.

The candles still burned on Lezetta’s grave,
illuminating his way.
He knew that he needed to take her
there, but had no idea what he was supposed to do after that.

“Every…spell… has… a… counter.” Liza said
breathing hard, kneeling over with her hands on her knees. She
had run as fast as she could, trying to keep up with Brendan’s
fast long legs. “It can be undone. I don’t know the spell
though for trading places.” She said after finally catching her
breath.

Brendan looked briefly back at Liza and gave her a
sympathetic smile. Liza was growing on him. He could see
why Drew had felt so comfortable with her when she had
practically closed everyone else off in her life.
Breaking a
coven promise was a very serious crime when it came to
witchery.
He knew that she would probably be shunned,
possibly even losing her powers for her transgression.

“What good is it to be a witch if you know no spells
woman?” Brendan laughed nervously.

Brendan laid Drew down in the middle of the ring of
candles that burned brightly.
He reached down to wipe the
blood off of her face then kissed her gently again on the head.
As he stood up he felt the wind rush out of him. Someone or
something had pushed him down to the ground forcefully.

“Brendan!” Liza sc
reamed.
She went to help him up
instead took a blow to the stomach as she reached out her
hands.
She hunched forward trying to wait out the unbearable
pain that seemed to take over her entire body. There was no
waiting; she was knocked out cold when someone hit her over
the head as she was bent over.

“Ha! Think ye can save the weak by bringing a woman
to fight yer battles do ya Brendan, my brother?”

“Danny?” Brendan said as he stood up, trying to
balance himself. Standing atop of Lezetta’s tomb, feet placed
on either side of Drew’s body, stood an evil version of
Brendan. He looked exactly like him; the only difference was
the wickedness in his eyes.

“I wasn’t aware there were any battles to fight,
Danny.” Brendan said still trying to catch his breath.

“How ‘tis it that ye have made yer way from that
prison o’ yours, Brendan?” Danny said as he hopped down
from Lezetta’s tomb. The dust from the ground, or maybe
Danny’s boots puffed up in a cloud around his feet. “Don’t tell
me the spell has been broken. There is no one left to love ye
now!”

“How do you know about the spell, Danny?” Brendan
said growing angrier every second. Drew’s body lay helpless
on a cold tomb and nothing but the devil himself was standing
in between him and her.

“Oh Brendan, so n
aive ye have always been. Course
you was always the one on the right track weren’t ye? Always
the good boy that be believing that no one can do ye no harm.
The curse was my idea in the first place!” Danny’s laugh cut
through Brendan’s soul like a jagged knife.

“Why, Danny? What did I ever do to you, my
brother?” Brendan’s heart hurt. He had always loved his
brother even though he knew since they were very young and
Danny drowned the small kittens that had made their way into
their back yard, that something was very wrong with him.
“What did I ever do to make you hate me so?”

“Because as much as we look the same, ye were
always the golden child! The favorite, the one to do no wrong!
While I was being whipped from shoulder to shank for childish
crimes that we both committed, you was being placed upon on
a pedestal for all the blasted world to worship!” Danny’s eyes
turned red and Brendan half expected horns to grow from his
head and smoke to start rolling out of his ears.

“Do not stand there and tell
me about your terrible
childhood when you brought it all on yourself!
Ever since the
moment you drowned those cats you had nothing but the devil
in you. I’ve no idea what led you to that moment but
everything that you got after that you deserved it very well and
you know it. Why don’t you tell me the real reason for your
curses now, Danny!” Brendan was shaking with anger. He
didn’t know how but he knew that the more time he wasted
arguing with someone that he couldn’t control, the closer he
was coming to losing Drew to the other side forever.

“You always had everything didn’t you, Brendan?
From the moment I was sent away it was all yours for the
taking!
When I saw that ye even had the most beautiful
woman in the world at the palm of your hands I couldn’t bear
to let you have it all any longer!
I tricked that little wench of
yours into thinking that I was you. After I bedded her and
shook her boots right off of her pretty little feet I told her the
truth then. She was madly in love with me by then, lad! I had
her in the palm of me hands!
The only problem was that she
wanted my charm and my body, and your money.”

Liza was slowly coming to. She could feel someone
shaking her but couldn’t quite focus on a face.

 

“Liza!” The voice faded in and out as it desperately
tried to reach her.

 

“Drew?” Liza mumbled. “Drew! Focus! I can barely
see you or hear you!”

It was seriously pissing her off!
Drew knew that
everyone could see Danny as plain as day but she could barely
stay in focus for more than a second. How was he doing it?

“Concentrate, Drew!” She heard Mary Ann say.
“You’ve got to feel all the love and hate in one. Everything
that has ever touched ye heart, you’ve got to let it shine! Your
friend she needs ya now!”

Drew closed her eyes.
She thought of her mother’s
face the night that she opened the door and saw the man that
she thought loved her trying to rape her daughter. She saw the
hate in her mother’s eyes ever since that night. She saw the
amazement in Liza’s eyes after she knocked that stupid Kelly
Barbie bitch flat on her ass and how she looked up to her for a
long time after that.

Then, she saw her friend’s eyes grow sadder as the
years went by. She never realized it until now, but the sadness
was for her. The fact that Drew wasn’t happy herself; it was a
reflection of her own eyes.

She saw the love in Brendan’s eyes and the confusion
in her own. She had known that she loved him all along but
she hadn’t been ready to take that step. She was ready to give
her body and soul to a man now after her whole life had been
built around hating men. It was an ocean of emotions that she
was drowning in. Everything was flooding in at once.
“Drew!” Liza screamed. “I see you! It’s working!”

Drew opened her eyes then and looked down at her
hands. Though she wasn’t human, she was still visible.

“Drew, help me. We have to get you back into your
body!” Liza was sitting up now. Her head was killing her but
she was going to have to suck it up.

“So, you took my life to be with Lezetta. You ha
d the
woman then, why did you never take over my home, my
money?” Brendan asked Danny as Danny got closer and closer
to Brendan and further away from the knocked out Drew.

“Well, that is because Lezetta, the stupid bitch, wasn’t
as smart as she thought she was. After we had Mary Ann taken
care of, she faked her own death. We hid out until it was time
to take care of you. She knocked ye in the head a good one
then she cursed ye and she cursed yer blasted house.
She
couldn’t step foot in it after that, she said it burned her down to
her soul. She realized then what a mistake it was that she had
made.

She had to come up with a new plan. She wanted me
to kill myself and let my spirit take over your body.
She
figured that with the curse you weren’t completely dead, only
sleeping. She would have the sisters bring your body here to
the grave after I was buried in your tomb and then we would
switch.

I was desperate you see to live your life. So, I decided
to go along with it. I hung myself from that tree.” He pointed
back to the tree that grew tall now above the grave that was
marked Brendan O’Keefe.

“The world was black and cold, nothing new for me
really.” He said with the wickedest grin Brendan had ever seen.

“Lezetta didn’t come back for you though did she?”
Brendan said as
he slowly walked backwards away from
Danny who was getting closer by the second. “You trusted her
to come back for you and she never did.”

“Oh, she came back alright. It wasn’t until after she
was dead herself though. She found out that she was pregnant
you see. She fell in love with the child the moment she found
out and decided to leave it all behind.
She left us both behind
then. She told the sisters to leave your rotting corpse up there
in that house and to leave mine here in this blasted cemetery.
Several years later when she passed on, the sisters had her
buried here. They could come and light their candles and pray
their blasphemous prayers and she would be in the grave that
she had cursed herself with years before.”

“Now she has found a way to come back.” Brendan
said, more to himself.

“Aye, and so have I!” With that Danny leapt towards
Brendan. Brendan ducked just in time though and out of the
corner of his eye saw Liza and two glowing figures dash
towards the grave where Drew’s body lay.

“Drew,” Liza said, “Try to connect with you
somehow!”

“That won’t work!” Mary Ann exclaimed. “You have
to switch them back! Ye can’t just shove one in there with the
other!”

“She is right.” Drew said. “Think, Liza. She ha
d to
have used some kind of magic or something. People can’t just
switch bodies.”

Just then, Drew reached for the necklace that Brendan
had given her. It had become a habit lately to rub it when she
was thinking hard or when she got sad.
It had become a
comfort for her. She turned to look at her body that lay on the
tomb.