October Ghosts (A Southern Romance Monthly) (8 page)

"I did." She had him get in the passenger side of her small car and started the engine. "Where to?"
 

"Anywhere you feel safe."
 

She smiled and pulled away from the Barrett House.
 

CHAPTER TEN

What am I doing?
 

This thought continued to rattle around in Chloe's head as she drove away from the Barrett House.
 

What happened?
 

In truth, the last thing she remembered clearly and coherently was walking into the kitchen. And then she was in Matt's arms and kissing him. The images she remembered were strange and incoherent. She thought of a fountain in the back yard where there wasn't one. There was a fish. She remembered seeing a fish. And then she saw Matt. She had the impression it wasn't that long ago. He was trapped in a dark place and he couldn't breathe and he was in terrible agony. The terror of not being able to take in a breath of air without pain lingered with her as her brain went on automatic pilot.
 

They sat in silence until she pulled up in front of her house.
 

She cut the car off and stared straight ahead. "You have asthma." Chloe turned in her seat and looked at him. "That's why you wear that bracelet. What I saw when I touched you…you were in a pit or a hole or something."
 

He licked his lips. He wasn't looking at her but down at the dashboard though she was sure he wasn't really seeing it. "It was in the last haunted house I worked on. There'd been a series of accidents. Well, accidents that all revolved around me. Margo left something in the basement and I offered to go get it." Matt took a deep, slow breath. "The stairs gave and I crashed down to the floor below. No one knew there was a hole there, under the stairs. An old abandoned well."
 

Chloe put her hand to her mouth. "Oh dear God."
 

"I think I was unconscious for a while. But when I woke up I could hear people calling my name. It was dark, the door to the basement was closed and I couldn't feel my leg—I could feel the pain of it though. My chest hurt and I thought I'd broken my ribs. But when I tried to breathe in enough air to yell, I couldn't. I couldn't breathe at all. Every time I tried it felt like something was inside my chest, squeezing all the air out of my lungs. I couldn't yell, I couldn't cry and I was sweating. I was half nuts when they found me, oxygen deprived."
 

"You didn't know you had asthma."
 

"No. And since then we noticed the episodes were triggered by high stress. I've been on Advair for nearly three years."
 

She leaned closer to him. "Did you have an attack today? Is that why you look so tired and sick?"
 

He finally turned to look at her. The circles seemed more pronounced to her and he looked so tired. "Yeah. But I have to tell you why. And once you know, you might not want to agree to do this."
 

Chloe made a rude noise. "If I can survive that sergeant you've got working with you, then I can survive anything."
 

He shifted and she thought he was going to get out of the car. Instead he released his seat belt and turned to face her full on. "I need to know about the kiss first."
 

"The kiss." It wasn't a question as much as admittance. "You mean the one you gave me at my shop?"

He blushed! "No… at the Barrett House. In the kitchen."
 

"When…I was looking at you I could feel your experiences in that hole. And my heart went out to you. You…became human for me."
 

"I wasn't before?"
 

"You were but…now that I know the terror you survived I'm a bit more able to trust you."
 

He laughed. It was a hollow sound. "Oh…that was nothing, Chloe. Nothing compared to what I have to tell you." Matt looked to his right. "Is this your house?"
 

"Yes."
 

"I like it. They call this a Cape Cod."
 

"Would you like to see the inside?"
 

His grin was infectious and the two of them got out of her car.
 

Chloe had inherited her house from her mother. Her sister got the Winnebago, Chloe got the house. Though to outsiders the inheritances might not seem equal, but their mother had known that while Chloe would stay in Roswell, Karen would roam. She loved to go places.

The yard was as immaculate as her own mother had kept it—this was something Chloe prided herself on. She took Saturday mornings off from the shop and mowed, weeded, planted, fertilized and watered. The house was a soft blue with white trim, and the rocking chairs her grandfather had made still decorated the porch next to wooden TV stands Chloe had painted white to match the chairs.
 

She disabled the security system with her phone and led Matt inside.
 

The house smelled of incense, her special blend of dragon's blood rede and a secret floral essence. The scent was devised to put any welcome visitors at ease and any unwelcome intruders on edge. The furniture was her mother's—from the soft white couch and love seat to the matching ottoman. A piano sat against one wall, its top used as a display area for her many female statues from the Wallendorf to the Venus de Milo.
 

A flatscreen was the only new thing added to the living area, along with a cabinet underneath to hide her Playstation and Wii.
 

The kitchen had all new appliances. Something she'd splurged on after closing. The ones her mom had used worked just fine, but Chloe wanted the best, which included a double-doored stainless steeled refrigerator.
 

Chloe hung her purse on the back of one of the dinning room chairs and went into the kitchen. "There's water, beer and tea in the fridge. Help yourself. Do you need any painkillers? I have ibuprofen and aspirin."
 

Matt, his mouth open as he looked at everything, pulled on the fridge door and retrieved a bottle of water. "You live here on your own?"
 

"My sister has a room here, but she's never home. In fact I think she's in Denver, Colorado this month. She'll be back around Thanksgiving and then again at Christmas."
 

"Her job keep her on the road?"
 

"Well she's a writer. Writes a lot of travel blogs. She also does a lot of letter boxing."

"Letter boxing?"

"Sort of like geo-caching. Only to me it's much more fun, and you don't end up with a bunch of junkie trinkets."
 

He gave her a half smile as he cracked open the bottled water. "She make a living at that?"

"Mmhmm. If there was one thing our mom always taught us it was to follow your bliss. That if you did what you loved, the money would follow. Of course, it took both of us a number of years to understand that. And now we do."
 

"Your bliss is to run a store and do card readings?"
 

Chloe filled up her electric kettle and turned it on. She wanted tea. And there was enough of a nip in the air to want peppermint tea. "Yes. Though the card reading came later." She pulled the aspirin out and handed him two. "Sometimes I just know. Like you've got a headache brought on by a nasty asthma attack earlier. Am I right?"

He took the aspirin and downed them with water. "Yeah. You are. And…you really saw it, didn't you? Me in that hole?"

"I didn't so much as see it as
felt
it."
 

"And what about the fountain in the Barrett House?"
 

Chloe leaned her back against the sink and crossed her arms over her chest as the kettle heated. "It happened when I touched the sink. Like…I was reading the person standing there when it happened. I don't remember reading anything about a child drowning in the fountain, but the deaths we do know about were sketchy."
 

"No details." He drank half the water and chewed on his lower lip. She loved it when he did that. It made him so endearing. It also made him look a lot younger. "So…about the kiss…"
 

"You're really worried about that, aren't you?"

"You didn't pull away, even when Margo interrupted us."
 

She felt heat rise from her shoulders, up her neck to the top of her head and looked away. "No. I didn't. I didn't want to."
 

He paused. "Neither did I."
 

Chloe gave him a nervous laugh. "So…what did you want to tell me?"

"This," he set the bottle of water on the counter and moved closer to her. He put his hand on her cheek and smoothed her hair away. "I don't trust…easy, Chloe."
 

Her breath caught in her throat at his touch. Being so close to him again brought back the memories of his kiss. His sensual, perfect kiss. "Truth is, Matt. I'm not that trusting either. And everything I've read about you tells me I shouldn't trust you. But my gut…tells me something different."
 

"What've you read about me that tells me not to trust you?"

"Well…I've read you're gay."
 

He laughed. "Oh you mean read online."
 

"And I've read you're a womanizer."
 

"Not true."
 

"I've read you're selfish, hard to work with, you don't believe in ghosts, not really, and that you always make fun of anyone in the occult field and…" Chloe took a deep breath herself. "And that it was more than just a house that tried to kill you."
 

That caught him off guard. He stepped back and stared at her. "Where did you read that?"

To his surprise, she reached out and put her palm flat against his chest. "Here. I'm a psychic, not a medium, Matt. I can feel experiences. Sometimes I can see what's happened or what's going to happen. And last night, when I shook your hand, I sensed danger."
 

"From me?" He reached up and put his hand on hers. Her skin was warm and soft.
 

"It disappeared after the witch showed up in my office. I'm still not sure if the danger I'm reading is from you, or if you're bringing it with you. Feelings, portents and signs aren't always clear. Drives me nuts sometimes, but it's usually my job to figure them out."
 

"Do you still pick up danger?"

"Yes but its different now." Chloe watched his face, studied his expressions. Something was bothering him, something bad enough to trigger an asthma attack that had him weakened. That much she could tell just by touching him. "What did you need to tell me?"
 

Matt pulled her hand from his chest and held it. "I need to tell you about my ex."

"The one that's not supposed to come within a hundred feet of you?"

"Yeah. Chloe…she's here in Roswell."
 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Matt felt he needed to be very careful about what he said in the next few minutes. He didn't want Chloe to kick him out and not do the gig tomorrow night, but he also didn't want her doing something she didn't want to do. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her in any way. He just wanted her to be happy, and he wanted her to be with him.
 

Chloe peered up into his face. "You're starting to look pale."
 

"Yeah…well news of her being nearby is what set off the attack earlier today."
 

"Seriously?" Chloe smiled. "You're that afraid of her?"

"Remember when I told you just now about there were a lot of accidents in that last haunted house that revolved around me? Well, after the plunge into the well that landed me in the hospital for a few weeks, Margo told me the police had gone through the house and found a lot of tampering. And those stairs had been sawed through."
 

"Oh hell…that could have killed you. Or anyone that stepped on them."
 

He made sure his breathing remained calm and he didn't panic. It was when he panicked about what had happened that he triggered an attack. But just to be sure, he pulled his inhaler out and had it in his hand. "Most of the things in a haunted house work on pressure plates and motion sensors. And I always had a map with me that told me where those traps were, and each display was named something. Like…laughing ghost, flying zombie, popping ripper, you know. So I would know which of my tricks was where in the house. But those tricks started doing things they weren't supposed to do."
 

"Like what?"
 

"The first thing that happened after I started sleeping there was the ghost audio kept switching on during the night. It would wake me up and I'd go turn it off. The third time it came on the popping zombie came at me as I turned the corner. Knocked me into the wall because I was standing too close. Tricks wired to frighten visitors are on different circuits than the normal power usage in the house. Having the separate makes it less likely to blow a fuse or shut down the basic lights. Before I went to bed, I always made sure that switch was off."
 

"Were you hurt?"
 

"I cut my head when I hit the door frame. And you know head wounds bleed like nothing else. Luckily I wasn't the only one in the house. Dennis was there with his wife and we managed to shut it down again before I had to get stitches. But the next night a different trick went off. Just the audio." He shifted and leaned against the refrigerator. "Dennis went to check it out and turned it off. Three times. On the fourth time I decided to check the breaker, but it was off. On my way back up the stairs the hall ghost shut on. I walked right into it—or I should say I stepped into the hole."
 

"What?"

"The ghost was rigged to come out of the floor. It was little more than gauze and window shear material painted with florescent paint and lights come on. The pressure plates were on the other side of the trap door so that when it came up they would stop and then be steered by the guide to the left. I was behind it and it went off in the dark and fell through. Broke my arm and cracked my head again. That time I ended up in the hospital for a few days. Dennis and his wife did a bit of investigation and found several of the tricks had been rewired, the pressure plates and sensors moved. They found one of Sarah's old baseball caps in the trap I fell into. And her fingerprints were also found on the mechanics. They found the saw used to cut the basement stair supports."