Save My Soul (3 page)

“Where are you planning to sell these?” Anna hoped she wouldn’t be enlisted in distribution as well as manufacturing. She grabbed a hammer and set to work on the other slab.

“Sally said she’d be glad to have our stuff in her shop. She’s got all that herbal bath crap and soaps but no candles. She’s gonna clear off a wall for us.” Tam started a pot of water boiling. She placed another pot inside the first and dropped some of her wax chunks in. “Okay, let’s watch TV while this melts.”

Anna followed her and collapsed on the couch, frowning when she noticed the television was on the cooking channel. That wasn’t what she’d been watching. “Scarlett, did you step on the remote again?”

“Mrarrr?”

“Well did you do it, Rhett?” The newest edition, a gray-haired tabby, looked offended as he put his tail high in the air and sauntered off.

“Fine. Whatever.”

“Two cats now? When we spoke on the phone you said you had one,” Tam said.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.” She wasn’t going to be the crazy cat lady. She wasn’t. Two cats in a house this large was not excessive. Anna swatted Scarlett off the couch and switched to a movie. As soon as she set the remote down, the television flicked back to the cooking channel.

“Maybe the TV is trying to tell you to learn to cook,” Tam said, trying to keep a straight face. She stretched her arms in front of her like a zombie and wandered around the living room making woooo noises.

“That’s not funny. The house isn’t haunted. There’s a reasonable explanation.”

Tam stopped, her hands planted on her hips. “The house is haunted. I can feel it.”

Anna had to work to hold onto her patience. They were about to get into dicey territory. “I thought you got over that phase.”

“My beliefs are not a phase,” Tam huffed. “I could read your cards if you wanted.”

Anna ignored that. Tam knew how she felt about Tarot cards. She flipped the channel back only to have it change again.

“Dammit!” Undeterred, Anna took the batteries out of the remote and flung it against the wall, then changed the channel manually. She returned to the couch, feeling smug.

The television clicked off.

“It’s not haunted,” Anna said.

“It’s not? So there’s a reasonable explanation?”

Anna hauled herself up off the couch, latching onto the only diversionary tactic at her disposal. “I think it’s time to check the wax.” She went to the kitchen without waiting for Tam to reply and peeked over the vat.

A chair scraped across the floor.

“It’s melty, now what?” Anna turned, expecting to find Tam in the chair, but the kitchen was empty. A chill skittered down her arm, causing goosebumps to prickle out over her flesh. She let out a slow breath.

“Okay. Fine! I have a ghost. Aren’t you cute? I know who you are, Beatrice. And I’m sorry about your death and all, but really, get the fuck out of my house!”

The back door flew open and slammed against the wall, shattering the glass.

“Thank you.” Anna crossed her arms in front of her to hide the faint tremor in her hand.

“Who broke the glass? The ghost or you?”

She turned to find Tam standing in the doorway with a velvet bag, surveying the damage. “Where did you go?”

“Sorry, had to get something.”

Anna sighed, tired of denying the obvious. “The ghost. Are you happy?”

“Yes. Now let me read your cards.” Tam opened the velvet bag and removed an elegant deck of tarot cards wrapped in red silk.

“I said no.” The last thing Anna needed right now was to see her fortune spread out on the kitchen table of her haunted house.

Tam ignored her and shuffled the cards, laying them out in a Celtic cross spread.

Anna glanced at the table, immediately wishing she hadn’t. “Put them away, now! I don’t want to know.”

“But . . . ”

“I said put them away. I saw the death card in there. I don’t need to know about that shit. I don’t believe in it, and I don’t want to see it.”

“The death card doesn’t always mean death,” Tam said defensively. “In fact, normally it doesn’t. It just means a big change.”

“Yes, and death is a big change. There is somebody dead in my house. Let’s not tempt fate.”

“But most of the spread isn’t that bad, really.”

“Tam, what part of I don’t want to know do you not get? If you want to figure out my future, do it on your own time, in your own house, and never ever tell me about it.”

“Sorry.” Tam wrapped the cards back up in the silk. “I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“Why won’t she just show herself, or tell what she wants? See, this is why I’ve never believed in ghosts. It’s ridiculous. Moving things around, changing the channel on the TV. Why not communicate with me directly?”

Tam shrugged. “Maybe she can’t.”

“Or maybe she just likes messing with me.”

***

Anna stood in the downstairs bathroom, wrapped in a towel, exhausted from spending all day decorating candles. Her hand swiped out to clean the steam from the mirror. She stopped herself in time. A single word was smeared in the moist fog.

Leave.

Anna felt a tightness curl in her chest. She gripped the pedestal sink, taking a few deep breaths, knowing the ghost was watching and waiting for her reaction. If she were sane, she’d flee the house, do not pass go. But she’d left sane about three exits back when she’d bought the house to begin with. She wasn’t giving it up to a ghost.

Anna wrote her own response on the mirror with her finger, just underneath the first message.

No.

It had taken all her concentration to keep her hand steady, but she’d accomplished the feat. She opened the mirrored cabinet and took out a comb to untangle her hair. When she closed it again, another word had been inscribed.

OK.

Anna didn’t like the sound of that. Somehow it didn’t seem like Beatrice was agreeing to be her roommate. The fear wrapped more tightly around her. She took another, slow breath. After about a minute of being a spaz, she became both angry at herself and exasperated with the ghost.

“Oh good lord! Do you go to a special drama school after you die? I mean, really. Could you possibly whine more? Oh whaaa, I’m a ghost. My life is so hard. This house is plenty big enough for both of us. It’s not like I had plans to put down tacky avocado linoleum. What exactly is your problem?”

A hot breath puffed out over her neck. Her knees buckled, and she gripped the edge of the sink to keep from landing on the floor. She’d spent all her courage on sarcasm and now couldn’t bring herself to look in the mirror again, afraid if she did she’d see the fuzzy outline of Beatrice reflected back to her.

“Scarlett, Rhett, come on,” she said as she left the bathroom. Two furry little heads poked out of the towel rack.

Anna turned on every light on the way up the stairs. Now wasn’t the time to prove she wasn’t afraid of the dark. The score was: Beatrice: 1, Anna: 0. She was freaked, and she had no trouble admitting it.

The cats followed her to the bedroom weaving in and out of her legs the entire way, clearly as bent on her destruction as Beatrice. As soon as she was settled under the covers, Scarlett shoved her head up underneath Anna’s chin while Rhett curled around the back of the pillow, his paws resting on her head. Normally, Anna would toss them off the bed, but tonight she didn’t want to sleep alone.

She spent an hour staring at the back of her eyelids, occasionally opening her eyes to see the green LED numbers mocking her as the time dragged on. Once when Anna looked, the clock had miraculously sped up ten minutes. She must have drifted off.

Now she was awake again. Soft, female cries drifted up the staircase. Then the moaning started. What the hell did Beatrice have to moan about? And could she come up with a bigger cliché? Would chain rattling be next? She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the muffled groans and fell into a fitful sleep.

. . . A masculine chuckle pierced the silence. Darkness crowded around her. Had the power gone out? The mystery of the lighting situation left her as strong hands skimmed down her body and a honeyed voice whispered in her ear. “Just let it happen, Anna. You know you want it.”

Her breath hitched in her throat. She should be screaming right now. She wanted to, but everything felt too wispy, like a dream. It couldn’t be real. If it wasn’t real, it was okay. Wasn’t it?

The hands on her skin felt right, soothing. It had been so long since she’d felt this with anyone. She pressed herself against him, soaking in the comforting feeling of strong, steady hands on her.

Her own voice, sounding nothing at all like it belonged to her, whimpered out, “Yes.” His wicked hands set to work, kneading her breasts with expert finesse, wrenching a strangled little whimper from her. Then his hand slid downward to grind between her thighs.

She stared out into the blackness, hoping for a form to take shape. Nothing greeted her vision but a bottomless void. Her hips responded, bucking, against his hand as a tongue flicked up the side of her neck. Then he started to nibble, his hot, wet mouth sending her into a tailspin of erotic need . . .

Anna bolted up in bed. It was just a dream.

Why did she have to wake up right before something interesting happened? Easy to think that now that I’m awake.

She leaned against the pillows, allowing her hand to trail down the path his had traveled only moments before. The need for release was suddenly overwhelming. Her mind pushed replay: his hands on her, his voice in her ear. She arched off the bed as she made herself come for the first time in as long as she could remember.

Anna lay perfectly still, panting, listening to the silence of the house. When her heart rate finally calmed, she could feel it. She didn’t know why she hadn’t felt it before.

Someone was watching. Maybe she should have puzzled that one out before she’d engaged in masturbation theater.

Her voice cracked a little when she said, “Ghostly voyeurism is not cool. I have the spice channel. Go watch that.” Anna watched in horror as the door opened, and she sensed the presence slip from the room. Whatever was haunting the house could have simply gone through the wall. But where was the fun in that?

The Peach Festival took up a single block of downtown Golatha Falls with brightly-striped and colorful tents circling the three-story brick courthouse. A stage was set up in front for the day’s entertainment, and there were barrels full of peaches from Mayor Walsh’s orchard beside every booth. The peaches were free. It was an election year.

Anna stood next to the stage smoothing down her pale yellow sun dress for the tenth time, as her eyes drifted back to the clock in the courthouse tower. Marshal was late. Charles and Cecelia Townsend had already been by to invite her to Thursday night dinner, followed by Tam who’d steadfastly refused to wait with her, saying three was a crowd.

As if it was a real date. It wasn’t a real date.

When Anna woke that morning, there had been a dearth of scary. No writing on mirrors, no breaking glass or scraping chairs or moans and groans. No Chinese takeout being creatively rearranged. Things had been so quiet that part of her wanted to dismiss it all as products of an overactive imagination. But then she’d felt the cool breeze blowing through the broken window in the kitchen.

Maybe Beatrice was taking a nap.

All that haunting and voyeurism must have taken a lot out of her. Maybe ghosts needed to sleep during the day to recharge their batteries. Anna had turned the coffee pot on, allowing the rich smell and drip, drip, gurgle to comfort her. While it was dripping, she’d gone to wipe the bathroom mirror, only to find it already clean. Beatrice was definitely an odd little duck. The whole Mommy vibe didn’t seem to go with watching people masturbate.

When Anna left for the festival, Stan the window man had been crouched in the doorway, measuring for the glass and promising it would be finished by the time she got home. Better than new, no extra charge. She’d averted her eyes from his backside. The famous plumber crack had unfortunately spread from plumbers to all handymen everywhere. Window men not excluded.

She was jolted from her thoughts as the Baker sisters approached.

“Anna, darling, you look wonderful. Marshal called. He’s on his way,” Mimi said, winking at her.

“Twirl for us, dear,” Bitsy said.

“Huh?”

“You know, twirl.” She revolved one wrinkled, yet well-manicured finger. “We want to see the dress.”

Anna felt ridiculous, but she obliged them and spun around once. A breeze flew by and picked up the dress, causing her to have to smooth it down for the eleventh time, a la Marilyn Monroe.

“We’ll get you married off yet,” Bitsy whispered.

She hoped the old woman was referencing the dress itself and not the near-pornographic display the weather had just caused. Anna had become their pet project. Didn’t they have Bingo night in Golatha Falls?

“Speak of the devil . . . ” Bitsy said.

Anna looked around quickly, thinking perhaps the dark lord himself had shown up to congratulate the old ladies on a job well done. It was only Marshal.