Haunted

  Just as she finished speaking, the Chevy began to veer insanely. She grabbed hold of her seat with a death grip as the Volvo veered accordingly. There was a split second in which she saw Hunter trying to seize the Chevy’s steering wheel.

  Then it all went out of control. The Chevy jackknifed with a roaring vengeance against the nose of the Volvo. Then it flipped, and rolled over and over in front of them. Josh pumped the brakes, but simple physics sent them flying into the body of the Chevy.

  For a moment, Darcy felt the weightlessness of flight herself. An air bag suddenly exploded in her face. She felt a thud unlike anything she had ever known before, and the world suddenly turned to an absurd cartoon vision as stars in a field of black velvet swam before her eyes. Then, one by one, the stars twinkled out, and there was nothing but an ebony darkness.

  Ashes to ashes.

  Dust to dust.

  Darcy attended Josh’s funeral with blackened eyes and heavy bruises. They told her that it was only thanks to the integrity of Josh’s Volvo that she was still alive.

  Mike wouldn’t be buried for another two days. Somehow, again miraculously, Hunter had survived as well. Darcy thought that she must still be in shock, unable to really absorb what had happened because, as she stood by Josh’s grave site, supported on either side by her parents, she was able to look at Hunter. She could even think that, to his credit, he’d had the balls to come here, and that he was weeping like an infant.

  The accident had been a wake-up call for the entire school, she thought, for those who had shunned Josh for years had come. He might well have been amused, she thought. But again, every face showed shock and sorrow. Those who had thought themselves young and immortal had discovered that life was fragile and death could come at any time. Who, in their realm of experience, had ever imagined that taunting a nerd could come to such a tragic end?

  Josh’s father, grave, tall, ancient, and bowed, tenderly kissed the coffin, and laid a flower upon it. His grief seemed beyond tears, and still, when the last words of the priest had faded into the bizarre and beautiful blue beauty of the day, he came toward her. He managed a gentle smile, as if her pain could be as deep as his own, and reached for her hand. She took it, let him lead her to the coffin, where he offered her a flower to cast upon it.

  It was a strange moment, for those who had attended seemed to want to come to him, to offer their condolences. Yet, he and Darcy stood in their own little world, and people hesitated, then let them be. Even Darcy’s parents, loving, kind people, allowed them that moment.

  They stood in silence for the longest time. Oddly, Darcy became aware of a bird chirping. At last, she found her voice. It was broken and trembling, but she managed the words she wanted. “I’m so sorry. So, so, sorry. I—I’m responsible. That can’t help you any, I know,” she babbled. “But he was my friend, truly, my best friend, always there, and oh, God, I didn’t know…I….”

  “Please,” Josh’s father said softly. “Darcy, you did nothing wrong. It’s never wrong to be a real friend. He loved you. Not romantically, of course. You didn’t love him that way, either. But he knew you really, truly cared about him. You were a special person to him. Incredibly so.”

  She looked up at the old man who seemed bowed with sorrow, and yet so accepting. She offered him a teary, rueful smile. “Please, you’re trying to comfort me. You’ve lost your only child.”

  He looked back at her a long time. “I always knew that I would,” he said quietly. “And still, what a fine, bright boy! The love we shared will remain in this old heart as long as it ticks. I was privileged to have him as long as I did. Remember this, those we love do live forever in our hearts. You’ll remember his voice. The things he said that made you laugh. I can’t explain this, but…Josh wasn’t really for this world.”

  “He has gone to a far better place,” she whispered, wincing at the way the words, sincerely meant, could sound so trite.

  “He was different, Darcy. You must have known that.”

  “Smart, sweet, wonderful,” she whispered.

  Josh’s father was still smiling. He reached into his wallet suddenly, producing a card. “I doubt if I’ll be around the old homestead here much anymore. Please, take this. If you ever need help, if you ever need to just talk, call me. Come see me. You have great folks of your own, Darcy. I know they’ll help you through. But if you’re ever confused, lost…call me. Remember that I am—was—his dad. I’ll always be there for you. You were always there for my boy.” He hesitated. “And you may find that you need me. Remember this, please, I’ll always be there.”

  He touched her head gently, then walked away, leaving her at the coffin. She stood there for several seconds, feeling the breeze touch her face, noting again the unbelievable blue of the sky. Down by the road, her parents were waiting. They would give her all the time she needed.

  She saw that Hunter, leaning on his crutches, was waiting as well.

  She didn’t think that she could bear to talk to him.

  She knelt down in the earth at the head of the coffin, suddenly overwhelmed with bitterness. “Oh, Josh, I will never speak to him again,” she whispered softly, then shook her head. “God help me!”

  She closed her eyes. It seemed that Josh’s voice entered her head. “Darcy, hey, don’t be so hard on Hunter. You know, he realized that Mike was being a homicidal jerk. He tried.”

  The voice was so real that her eyes flew open.

  The day hadn’t changed. The sky was still blue, the breeze still soft. The coffin still lay in the mechanism that would shortly bring it deep into the ground.

  Tears welled in her eyes again. She closed them tightly, and prayed. Then she rose, kissed the coffin, and murmured. “Josh, I will never forget you. And like your dad said, you will always be in my heart. Always. If I live to be a hundred.”

  At last, she turned away. She started for the road where her parents, and Hunter, waited.

  For a moment, the hate remained. She couldn’t even look at Hunter. Then she remembered Josh’s words, so real in her mind. Don’t be so hard on Hunter.

  He was still crying. She managed to walk to him and place a hand on his arm. “You tried,” she said very softly.

  “Oh, Darcy!” he whispered sickly.

  “You tried,” she repeated. “One day…one day, we can talk again.”

  Amazingly, she felt better. And she knew that Hunter had tried. She knew, too, that his leg would heal. His heart never would. He would live with the night in which Josh and Mike had died all of his life. And he would fight the guilt in his soul just as long.

  Her mother was waiting with outstretched arms. Her father, too. She ran to them, and let them do all the right things they thought that they could do.

  That night, her mother gave her a sleeping pill, since she hadn’t really slept since the accident.

  And it was the pill, she was convinced the following day, that caused her strange dreams.

  She was back at the cemetery. It wasn’t a blue day anymore. It wasn’t exactly gray, either. It seemed that there was a cast of silver, like a mist, over the day. Time had passed, and she walked through the old gnarled trees, ancient graves, and newer ones, that composed the cemetery. Josh had been buried beneath a beautiful old oak. She walked toward it, clad in black, bearing a bouquet of flowers.

  And yet…

  As she neared it, she saw a thin man standing by the old oak. Frowning, she came closer. And it was Josh.

  He looked very handsome, dressed in the dark suit, tailored shirt, and crimson tie in which he had been buried. His dark hair was trimmed and brushed, as it had been for the prom. He was leaning against the tree, arms casually crossed, smiling as she came.

  For a moment, she was afraid. Only a moment.

  “Josh?”

  “Darcy, poor Darcy,” he said softly. His rueful smile reminded her of his father’s when he had spoken to her over his son’s coffin. “Darcy, you’ve got to know. It’s okay. Honestly, it’s okay.”

&nbs
p; “It’s not okay, you’re dead.” She frowned, amazed to realize that she was a little angry with him. “You knew it, Josh! You knew you were going to die. The day that Mike threatened you…you said that maybe you’d be dead, but he’d be dead as well. And he is!”

  “I know. I’m sorry. He was a true jerk, but I didn’t really hate him.”

  “Josh—”

  “I’ve got to go, Darcy. I just wanted you to know that I’m okay. I’m really okay. And you’ve got to go on.”

  “I will, Josh, but…I never knew how much I’d miss you,” she whispered.

  He touched her hair. Except that…he wasn’t real, and of course, it was just a whisper of the breeze.

  “I’ll always be with you, Darcy. When you need me, just think of me. Here.” He laid his palm against his heart.

  “Oh, Josh!”

  He was fading. Into the silver color of the day. Of course. It was a dream. A drug-induced dream.

  He smiled. “You’re special, Darcy. You’ll need to be strong,” he said softly.

  And then he was gone.

  It began the next day.

  Her father had determined that he wasn’t going into work; neither was her mother. They were going to spend the day with her, take a drive to the nearby mountains, and just spend time in that quite and beautiful part of their state.

  He couldn’t find his Palm Pilot.

  “You left it on the counter of your bath,” she told him.

  “How on earth would you know that? Were you in our room, sweetheart?” her dad asked.

  “No,” Darcy said, startled herself. “I just…well, I guess it’s a place you might have left it.”

  He went upstairs to his bathroom and returned with his Palm Pilot, looking at her oddly. “Thanks. I guess you know your old man pretty well, huh, kid?”

  Of course, that was it.

  But then…

  Little pieces of precognition began to come to her, now and then. A few that summer, a few during her first years of college, more after that.

  They were disturbing at first. Then she came to accept them. She thought that they were maybe something that Josh had very strangely managed to leave her.

  It wasn’t until later that she decided it was time to call Josh’s father.

  When the ghosts came.

  1

  Jeannie Mason Thomas lay in the white expanse of the four-poster bed in the Lee room at Melody House in pure bliss.

  Roger was snoring softly at her side. Men, she thought affectionately. Bless ’em. Whatever came, they could sleep.

  She could not. She had to keep playing over the day, minute by minute. Her wedding day.

  There had been the usual hassles in the morning. Her mom had gotten all teary every few minutes, and insisted on giving speeches about sex and marriage that were totally unnecessary. Alice, her matron of honor, had clipped off two of her newly purchased acrylic nails trying to fix Jeannie’s train. Sandy, another bridesmaid, had gotten too looped on the champagne they had shared while dressing for the service. The limo had been late. Her original soprano had come down with a sore throat leaving Jeannie desperately seeking a new singer at the last minute. But she’d managed to find an Irish tenor through the priest, Father O’Hara, and once she had reached the Revolution-era church just outside town, everything had gone perfectly.

  Everyone claimed that it had been one of the most beautiful weddings they had ever seen. Roger had been tall, dark, and glorious in his tux. Her father had been stately, her mother beautiful. Her brother and sister, both part of the wedding ceremony, had been well behaved, joking, laughing, and wonderful. Her first dance with her new husband had been magical, but it was during her dance with her father that she had realized she was one of the luckiest human beings in the world with a tender, tight family, and an incredible groom.

  The reception would be the talk of a number of counties for months to come. The Irish tenor had joined with the band. The music had gone from classical to rock and pop to theatrical. The food had been delicious, the cake stupendous.

  Then, after fully enjoying their own reception, they had taken off at last for Melody House. And it hadn’t been as if making love had been anything new for them, but making love as man and wife was new and therefore, somehow, more sensual, more erotic, and so deeply satisfying. They’d been hot and heavy, they’d laughed, they’d joked over getting out of clothing, slipping in the shower in their haste, rolling off the bed, and all sorts of little foibles. They’d had a great deal more champagne, finishing the bottle that had been left in the elegant little silver bucket on the antique table set before the fireplace. They’d dined on the delicious little snacks left for them, caviar, quiches, chocolate-dipped strawberries and more. Then they’d made love again, all lazy and slow, and it had been incredibly luxurious as well. Melody House had offered everything they had wanted. In the morning, they could go downstairs and be served breakfast in the sunny little nook off the kitchen. They could spend a day indulging in the heated pool—a recent addition to the colonial manor. They could ride the trails that meandered through miles of forest when the sun was just setting. They could have both privacy and service. Jeannie had every right to be entirely blissful, and also, patient with the fact that her new husband could sleep, while she could not.

  She rose, feeling as agile and luxuriously sinuous as a cat, naked in the coolness of the night. She stretched, thinking that the strenuous exercise program she had put herself through before the wedding had been well worth it—she didn’t think that she could be more than five percent body fat at the moment, and Roger had been delighted. She was glad, too, because she liked to think that she had talked Matt Stone into allowing them to use the seldom-rented room for their wedding night because she had just been cute and charming. Stone was known to be something of a hard-ass.

  Walking over to the open French doors that led to the balcony, Jeannie almost pouted, then grinned instead. Roger had told her that Matt Stone had given in just because he knew the only way to keep Melody House as a private property had been to allow the house itself to earn some of the upkeep money such an estate so desperately needed. Roger had probably been right. But then again, maybe it had been a combination of Stone’s needs and her charm and persuasion. Whatever! It had all worked, and it had come together so beautifully. She was a lover of history, and to spend her wedding night in such an elegant and historic place was like the most delicious icing in the world on the most wonderful cake—her perfect wedding day. She parted the draperies, glad to feel the breeze against her bare shin, and feeling sensual all over again as it touched her. She was married now. She was Mrs. Thomas. She could slink right on back over to the bed, wake up her slight snoring husband, and live out her every fantasy.

  Yet…

  Suddenly, the delicious feeling wasn’t quite so delicious anymore. She felt a sudden, quick, bone-numbing chill. She spun around, and saw nothing in the dim night-light pouring out from the bathroom, or even from the faint glow of moonlight and property lights that seeped in from the open French doors to the balcony, just hemmed in by the drifting draperies where she stood.

  She felt…

  Fear. Deep and irrational.

  She swallowed, stepping over to close the French doors and lock them tightly. She glanced at Roger. He kept snoring. She tried to calm herself. If she was feeling a sudden and totally irrational fear, all she had to do was run back to the bed, jump in beside him, and he would cuddle and hold her and everything would be all right.

  That was exactly what she was going to do.

  But she didn’t. She didn’t move. Because she saw…

  The silvery movement in the night.

  She blinked, but it didn’t go away. And it wasn’t the darkness, or the reflection of the lights, or a combination of the two. It was something, vague in shape, silvery-white, hovering, moving. It came from the side of the bed, where she should have been sleeping, and it was coming toward her.

  She panicked totally. Her
vocal cords were frozen. She stared, breathing out desperate little choking sounds, since she could find no voice. It came closer and closer. She felt ice trickles into blood and limbs and then…

  It was almost touching her. She felt her hair move…pulled? Cold seemed to slap her right across the face. And she could have sworn that she heard a whisper, mocking, scornful. “Silly little girl! He’ll only kill you!”

  Then again…her hair…lifting. On its own, in the grip of the vague, silvery-white substance. A substance that whispered or played havoc with the breeze. There was no breeze. She had closed the doors.

  At last, she found voice, movement, and energy. She let out an hysterical, chilling scream, and ran.

  She didn’t run for the bed and Roger—she headed straight for the door out of the Lee room. Jeannie wrenched at the knob so hard she nearly ripped it from the wood. The door itself flew open, and banged wickedly against the wall. This had no bearing on her. She barely heard it. She kept screaming, tore along the landing, and down the elegant, curving masterpiece of a stairway to the ground level below.

  Matt Stone had chosen to stay in the caretaker’s cottage, fifty yards to the left of the main house. It had been his home for years before his grandfather had died, leaving Melody House—and the responsibility for its upkeep—to him. He had only moved into the main house recently because it had become easier on the upkeep side, and, he had to admit, he had come to like it. The grand master suite he had chosen afforded a lot of comfort. Big bedroom, dressing room, office or entertainment space, and it kept him right on top of whatever was going on with the property.

  He liked the caretaker’s cottage, too. Since it had been falling apart so badly due to years of neglect he had rebuilt and refurbished it with every modern convenience. In contrast to the painstaking care they had used in keeping the main house historical, the caretaker’s house was far more state-of-the-art.

  When he had given in to allowing the Lee room to be used as a honeymoon suite, he had opted to spend the night in his old haunts.