Haunted Tales (2 page)

“So, there I was as this thing came hurtling down the
staircase towards me,” Bradley said, waving his arms over his head for drama.
“And Mary was unconscious on the couch from a terrible head-on collision she
had with a fort.”

“A fort?”
Mike asked, leaning
against the kitchen wall with his arms folded over his chest, engrossed in the
story.

“A fort?’
Clarissa echoed
,
turning her focus from her father to her mother as they
all sat around the breakfast table.

Mary chuckled. “That’s another story,” she replied. “And I
wasn’t unconscious. I was just sleeping.”

“Sleeping, unconscious, what’s the difference?” Bradley
asked with a wink.

“Well, as a former first responder, I can tell you…” Mike
interrupted.

“So, this terrible creature…” Bradley continued, talking
over Mike.

“That you couldn’t see,” Mary inserted with a wink towards
Mike.

“Which made it even more terrible,” Bradley added.
“Came down the stairs.
Thump. Thump.
Thump.”

“Like the bunny in Bambi?” Clarissa asked innocently,
sending both Mary and Mike a conspiratorial smile.

“No, not like that at all,” Bradley replied, so caught up in
the story that he didn’t see the smile pass among his audience. “It was more
like this.”

He lifted his boot-clad foot and thumped it against the
kitchen linoleum. Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Very realistic,” Mike said. “I can totally picture it.”

“Oh,” Clarissa replied, hiding a grin. “I get it now.”

He looked up and studied their faces. “Do you want a ghost
story or not?”
 
he
growled, the twinkle in his eyes belying the tone of his voice.

“Of course I do, Daddy,” Clarissa replied. “‘Sides, you have
to practice telling it for Halloween night when everyone’s here.”

He nodded and continued. “So, I drew my gun…”

“You were going to shoot a ghost?” Clarissa asked.

“Well, I didn’t believe in ghosts at the time,” he replied.

“You were going to shoot an invisible Thumper?” Clarissa
asked while Mary stifled a chuckle.

“Wow, that’s like shooting an invisible Bambi’s mother,”
Mike added.

“I was merely being prepared for anything,” he replied. “So
then I stealthily made my way across the room.”

Remembering the remains of her treasured cookie jar that he
broke during that encounter, Mary gently cleared her throat, and he smiled up
at her.

“Perhaps not as stealthily as I would have liked,” he
admitted. “But I stood between the creature and Mary.”

“Yes he did,” Mary agreed. “He protected me from Earl.”

“Earl?” Clarissa and Mike asked.

“Yes, and Earl was a ghastly looking specter,” Mary added,
lowering her voice. “With a body riddled with bullet holes and blood oozing
from each wound.”

“
Ohhhhh
,” Clarissa said, her eyes
widening.

“And he walked with a slow limp,” Mary continued, “dragging
his bloodied body through the house and up the stairs to my bedroom where I lay
sleeping, alone and unprotected.”

Clarissa grabbed hold of her father’s hand. “Oh, no,” she
said.

Mike leaned forward in spite of himself.

“And when I looked up to see him standing next to my bed,
blood dripping on my white blanket…” Mary said.

“Did it stain?” Clarissa interrupted, lifting her hand from
Bradley’s and turning to Mary.

Bradley looked from daughter to mother and laughed. “Whose
daughter is she?”

Mary chuckled and shook her head. “No, surprisingly, it
didn’t,” she said. “But I was worried.”

“Wait,” Mike said. “A headless, dead guy was in your
bedroom, and you were worried about his blood staining your duvet?”

“It was a really nice duvet,” Mary replied.

“And then she looked up from her bed,” Bradley continued,
his voice mimicking Mary’s. “And what did she discover?
 
He was holding his head in his hands.”

“Cause he had a headache?” Clarissa asked.

Mike exploded in laughter and then clapped his hand over his
mouth. “Sorry,” he said to Bradley.

Bradley exhaled in frustration. “No, because someone chopped
his head off,” he said, and then he turned to Mary. “I am absolutely no good at
this.
 
Your entire family is going to
fall asleep during my story.”

Clarissa turned back to her father. “Oh, no, Daddy,” she
encouraged. “You were really great.
 
You
really made me feel scared.
Really.”

He bent over and placed a kiss on the top of her head.
“Well, thank you, sweetheart,” he replied with a smile. “That makes me feel a
lot better.”

“So, when are Grandma and Grandpa O’Reilly and my uncles
coming to tell ghost stories?” Clarissa asked.

“Halloween night,” Mary said. “So we’ll go trick or treating
early, and then we’ll all get together, light the jack-o-lantern and tell scary
stories.”
 
She paused for a moment,
looked over her daughter’s head to Bradley and winked. “I know. You could tell
them about the time you helped Clarissa clean out under her bed. That was
really scary.”

Clarissa giggled.

“Scary and disgusting,” Bradley added, and then he glanced
up at the clock. “Okay, kiddo, the bus will be here in five minutes.
 
Go brush your teeth and grab your backpack.”

“Okay,” she replied with a smile. “I can’t wait until
Halloween.”

“Me, too,” Bradley
said,
his voice
a little less enthusiastic. “I just can’t wait.”

“Don’t worry,” Mike teased as he started to fade away.
“You’ll get better. You can’t possible get any worse.”

“So she doesn’t suspect a thing?” Rosie asked Bradley,
placing a blueberry muffin on a plate before him.
 

“Course she
don’t
,” Stanley
answered before Bradley could speak. “He’s a law enforcement officer. He knows
how to keep a secret.”

Stanley picked up another muffin from the middle of their
kitchen table and slowly peeled the paper from its sides.
 
“However…” he started.

“However?”
Bradley
asked,
his mouth half full.

Stanley turned and met Bradley’s eyes. “However,
iffen
you keep eating my wife’s cooking after you eat your
wife’s cooking every morning, she’s gonna wonder which of the two of you this
baby shower is for.”

Bradley paused, the second bite of muffin halfway to his
mouth, and looked down at his waistline. “I work out,” he said defensively.

“Besides,” Rosie added, defending him. “It’s very normal for
men to gain weight while their wives are pregnant.”

Bradley put the muffin back on his plate. “I’m not gaining
weight,” he said. “Am I?”

“No, of course not,” Rosie said, patting his arm. “You look
just fine.”

“
Fer
a middle-aged man,” Stanley
added.

Bradley pushed back his chair, stood up, gave Rosie a hug
and nodded to Stanley. “I’d better be getting in to the office,” he said. “If
you need me to get anything for the shower or do anything, don’t hesitate to
ask.”

“Thank you, Bradley,” she replied. “But between Margaret and
Kate, I think we have it all covered.”

“Excellent,” he replied. “Thanks again.
 
She is going to be so surprised.”

He left the house and walked over to the cruiser, but before
getting in, he stared at his reflection in the mirror.
 
Am I
getting a little thick around the middle?
he
asked
himself as he turned first one way and then the other.

Stanley chuckled loudly from behind the curtain on the front
window as he watched Bradley.

“Stanley, that was mean,” Rosie said, holding back her own
chuckle. “You know as well as I do that Bradley hasn’t put on an ounce of
weight since he’s been married.”

“A man’s
gotta
do what he’s
gotta
do to protect his wife’s blueberry muffins,” Stanley
replied. “‘Sides, a little work out in the gym will help him release some of
that anxiety that’s eating him.”

“He only has anxiety because you keep teasing him,” she
replied.

“Toughen the boy up,” Stanley said with a grin. “Good for
him.”

Shaking her head, Rosie walked back into the kitchen. “You
know, Stanley,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. And I think
that perhaps we ought to start eating better.
 
You
know,
more salads and fruit. Fewer baked
goods.”

“What?” Stanley asked, dropping the curtain and hurrying
back to the kitchen. “What are you talking about woman?”

She turned from the sink and grinned at him.
“Gotcha!”

“You nearly scared the life out of me,” he said with a
smile, walking across the room and enfolding her in his arms. “I sure didn’t
marry you because you were a good cook, but I
ain’t
complaining about it.”

She laid her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Stanley,” she said.
“I’m the luckiest woman in the world.”

He smiled down at her. “Well, that makes perfect sense,” he
said softly. “Seeing as I’m the luckiest man.”

“Well, luckiest man,” she said, stepping back. “How are we
going to get Mary to her own baby shower without letting her know anything is
wrong?”

“You just leave that to me,” he said.

“You’ve got a plan?” she asked hopefully.

“Well, no,” he admitted with a wink. “But don’t you worry; I
got a whole week to figure this out.”

Clarissa hurried down the bus aisle and slipped into the
seat next to her best friend, Maggie Brennan.
 
She sat quietly until everyone else at their bus stop had taken their
seats and the bus driver had closed the door and started moving down the
street. Then she turned to her friend and quietly whispered, “I need you to
help me with a surprise.”

Maggie smiled and nodded. “I love surprises,” she said.
“What kind of surprise?”

“On Halloween we’re having a ghost story telling party,”
Clarissa said.

“I know,” Maggie replied, her eyes sparkling with delight.
“My family gets to come, too.”

“Oh, cool!” Clarissa replied. “Then you know.”

“Know what?”

“That everyone is supposed to tell a ghost story,” Clarissa
said.

Maggie shook her head. “No,” she said, her eyes widening in
interest. “I didn’t know that at all.”

Clarissa nodded eagerly. “Yes. Everyone is supposed to tell
one,” she explained.

“Do they have to be spooky?”

Shrugging, Clarissa thought about the question for a moment.
“I don’t know. But I don’t think so. Not all of Mary’s stories are spooky
ones.”

“Whew,” Maggie said, leaning back in the seat. “That’s a
relief. I have lots of ghost stories, but none of them are spooky.”

“But that’s the thing,” Clarissa said.

“What?” Maggie asked.

“You have lots of ghost stories. Mary has
lots
of ghost stories, and even my dad
has ghost stories,” she explained. “But I don’t have any ghost stories.
At all.”

“Oh,” Maggie replied. “And you want to have one, right?”

Clarissa nodded again. “Right,” she said. “I need a ghost
story.”

“Okay,” Maggie said with a smile. “I’ll tell you one of my
stories, and then you can pretend that it’s yours.”

Shaking her head, Clarissa faced her friend. “No, that won’t
work,” she explained. “It has to be my story, or it won’t be as good.”

“But you can’t see ghosts,” Maggie reasoned.

“Remember when you taught me how to jump double-dutch?”
Clarissa asked.

Maggie nodded.

“Well, you taught me how to do that,” Clarissa reasoned.
“So, you can teach me how to see ghosts.”

Maggie thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think it’s
that easy.”

“Well, double-dutch wasn’t easy at all, and you still taught
me.”

“But I don’t know how I learned,” Maggie said. “I just did
it one day.”

Clarissa folded her arms over her chest and sat back in her
seat, thinking about what Maggie had just said. The bus rumbled farther down
the route and pulled to the side of the road to pick up another group of
children.
 
Waiting until the bus was
moving again, Clarissa turned back to Maggie. “Well, maybe if you could try to
remember what happened the first time you saw a ghost,” she said slowly,
thinking it through as she voiced it, “maybe you could tell me, and then I
could do it.”

“I was pretty little,” Maggie said
,
her nose wrinkled in concern. “I don’t know if I can remember all the way back
then.”

“Please?” Clarissa implored.

“Okay,” Maggie said, biting her lower lip in concentration.
“The one thing I remember is that I first started seeing ghosts when I looked
sideways.”

“You looked sideways?” Clarissa asked. “What does that
mean?”

Sitting back her in her seat, Maggie kept her face frozen
forward while she moved her eyes to look at Clarissa sitting beside her. “Like
this,” she said.

“What?” Clarissa asked.

Maggie huffed with frustration. “Look at my eyes,” she said,
keeping her face forward.

Clarissa leaned forward and looked at Maggie’s face. “Oh,
only your eyes are looking sideways,” she said. “I get it.”

Maggie blinked and then turned her head.
 
“Yeah, I remember that I saw more ghosts when
I looked sideways at them,” she said. “And sometimes they would disappear when
I turned and looked at them.”

“Were they shy?”

Maggie shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “But that’s all I
remember.”

Clarissa sat back in her seat facing forward and slid her
eyes to the side. “I don’t see anything,” she whispered to Maggie.

“That’s ‘
cause
there aren’t any
ghosts on the bus,” Maggie said. “It only works when there are actually ghosts
around you.”

“Oh, yeah,” Clarissa giggled. “I forgot.”