Chapter 15
Cathy lay awake for a long time. It was late. Past 2:00 A.M. Waking had been a little like dreaming, or swimming: inch by inch through consciousness until she was completely awake, with no idea how she had gotten there, or why.
Then she heard it. Low, guttural moaning. So low and quiet it took her a minute to realize she was hearing anything.
Ken. It was coming from Ken’s room.
She got out of bed at once, her feet freezing on the wooden floor, and hurried out her bedroom door and down the hall. A picture swung ominously as she passed it, but didn’t fall.
Ken’s door was open and she stepped inside without hesitation.
“Ken? What’s wrong?”
No answer. He had torn the sheets free of the bed and they were balled up around his middle, and his fists were working restlessly through the cotton. Moonlight fell across the bed and she could see the sweat sheening his body.
She stepped to his bed and shook his shoulder, which was as rigid as stone.
“Don’t go in the basement,” he said very clearly, and his eyes popped open. Cathy nearly screamed, and in shock her hand clamped down on his shoulder, probably hurting him. His eyes. It had been like looking into the eyes of a dead man.
“K-Ken? Are you all right? I heard…heard…”
“Cathy, thank God,” he muttered, and pulling on her hand, pulled her to him until she was beside him in the bed.
“Are you all right?” she whispered as he stroked her face.
“I am now,” he replied. “Stay with me.”
“You’re sort of staying with me,” she teased to cover her nervousness. She heard an odd sound, then placed it: pictures swinging against the wall in the hallway, but not falling. Jack must not be up for a full-blown temper tantrum tonight. “But sure. I’ll stay.”
He leaned in and kissed her so softly, it was almost tentative. She was a little surprised—she hadn’t expected Ken to be tentative between the sheets, ever—but pleased. She had never been one for a big choking tongue being rammed down her throat. Little butterfly kisses were more her style.
She sat up and pulled her nightgown over her head. “Don’t start,” she told him before he could. “I’m well aware I look like an extra in Little House on the Prairie in this thing.”
“I like it,” he said seriously. Then he laughed. “It beats what I wore to bed today.”
“Yes,” she murmured, tracing her fingers across his shoulders, circling his nipples. “We’ve simply got to go over to your place tomorrow and get you more clothes.”
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes. Tomorrow.”
“Butterfly kisses,” she said dreamily, half an hour later.
“Pardon?” She was cuddled against him, spoon-style, and he was kissing the back of her neck and shoulder.
And that wasn’t all he had kissed. Even now, she could still feel his mouth on her—well, his mouth was on her—and shivered. He had been all hands and mouth and tongue, all hungry skill and silent desire. When he had finally entered her, he had done so because she had been begging him to. When he was inside her, she had locked her ankles behind his back and never, never wanted him to go.
They had rocked together for an eternity, one that was over much too soon. Not that she wasn’t ready to be done—she had stopped counting climaxes after six—but beyond the physical pleasure, the connection they had shared was so intense, she didn’t want it to end.
It had never been like that. She had never dreamed it could be like that.
Now they were sweating lightly in the cool dark, and she could feel beard burn where he had kissed and licked and sucked her nipples. She welcomed the mild discomfort. It proved what had happened was real.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said. “I’ve always thought so.” He reached out and tugged at one of her curls, watching as it bounced back. “But not very many people know how clever and funny you are. It’s like a wonderful secret.”
“I don’t know that it’s a wonderful secret,” she began.
“But you’re so quick to denigrate yourself. Why is that?”
“I-I don’t know. Nikki’s the pretty one, the funny one. I’m just…me, Cathy.”
“Nikki has her charms,” he agreed, “but she’s not you.”
“Definitely not,” she agreed. “Never mind. How come you weren’t so nice before I killed you? We could have gotten together a lot sooner.”
He didn’t say anything, and she cursed herself. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “That was in poor taste.”
“No, that’s fine,” he replied, obviously meaning the opposite. “I-I have no excuse for how I acted earlier. I was…I didn’t…things were different then.”
“Well, all right.” She could see how tense he had become; the forearm she was lying against had become hard as iron. “The important thing is, you’re here now.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m here now.”
She leaned forward and kissed him, savoring his mouth, his sweet, firm mouth. He caressed her curls for a moment, then kissed the tip of her ear and cuddled her more firmly into his side.
As they both drifted back to sleep, Cathy had a passing thought that shocked her and left her rigid and wakeful for the next hour.
She had been, in her defense, a little distracted at the time. But while they had been rocking together, while his delicious cock had filled her up, had stroked sweetly, while her hands groped and held and groped some more, while his face had nuzzled into the crook of her neck, she had started calling his name.
And he had covered her mouth. Gently, but firmly. Covered her mouth so she couldn’t say anything.
In an instant, she had it. And was furious it had taken her so long to catch on.
My God, she thought. I’m sharing a bed with a dead man.
When she knew he was deeply asleep, she slipped out of his bed.
Chapter 16
“I just want to see Miss Carroll for a couple of minutes,” Cathy explained. “I called earlier? Cathy Wyth?”
“Oh, yes…Wyth. Well, of course Miss Carroll is always happy to have visitors. It’s down the hall on your left, Room 326.”
Cathy thanked the nurse and hurried down the nursing home hallway. She had been afraid that tracking down the original owner of her house would be tricky, especially since Victoria Carroll did all her business through her lawyer. But it only took a few phone calls.
Miss Carroll was a surprise. For one thing, though she was sitting in a wheelchair by the window, she was perfectly erect, and her hands, slim and pretty, were busy with a pile of knitting.
For another, she was beautiful. Not “gee, I can see she was pretty when she was younger” beautiful. Beautiful-right-now beautiful. Her long hair was unbound and flowed over her shoulders and back, and was pure white. Her face, while heavily bracketed with laugh lines, was porcelain pure, with a wide forehead and a narrow, foxy chin. Her eyes were the green-brown of a pond in the deep woods.
“Hello,” she said, looking up from her knitting. “How are you liking the house?”
“Oh, you…you know who I am?” Cathy was cursing herself for making assumptions. Just because the older woman chose to do all her business through a lawyer didn’t mean she was lacking, either mentally or physically. “I mean, I—”
“The desk announced you. And your name was on all the paperwork I received this week. Would you like a pop? Some coffee?”
“No, I-I just wanted to…I was just interested in your family.”
“My family.” Miss Carroll commenced knitting, her bright purple needles flashing in the morning light. “My family is all dead, Miss Wyth. All except for me.”
“Yes, I…yes.” Cathy sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly feeling foolish. Where was she supposed to go with this? Hi, thanks for selling me your house, I think it’s haunted? And what was Victoria Carroll supposed to do about that, exactly?
“I’m ready to go,” she continued. “I’ve been ready for
a long time. I never had any children, never even got married. I miss my brother, and I miss my parents. I’m ready to go home.”
“Your brother?”
“Mmm. Jefferson. Oh, that was a terrible day.”
“A terrible day?” Then, “Jefferson?”
“We were horsing around, you know, like kids do—although we didn’t think we were kids then, certainly not—and my brother was home from Harvard. He was so happy to be home! He said nobody on the coast could cook like our mother, and we started chasing each other. It was so silly and childish. Then he tripped on the basement stairs.” Miss Carroll dropped a stitch, then stopped knitting altogether. “There wasn’t a mark on him, isn’t that strange? Nobody could get over it. How handsome he was at his funeral, like he was sleeping. But his neck was broken and that was that. One minute we were laughing and tearing around, and the next we were planning a funeral.”
Don’t go in the basement.
“So Jefferson…your brother…”
“Oh, he’s the ghost living in your house.” Victoria Carroll was looking right at Cathy; no hiding behind knitting this time. “I was so upset. I blamed myself for his death for years and years. Couldn’t leave the house, never got married. Never had a life outside of my family’s, and once my parents passed on, there was…nothing. And I guess my brother stayed around. Looked after me. He always hoped I would move on. And I did, just a couple of weeks ago. But I think…I think the habit of staying in the house, it was too strong.” She paused. “We always called him Jack, you know.”
It was a good thing, Cathy decided, that she was sitting down. Because she felt as if she were falling. “No,” she said faintly. “That’s not how it works. You’re supposed to have no idea what I’m talking about, and I’m supposed to help you sort of work around to it, and then it’ll be this dramatic revelation, not a…not a matter-of-fact story where you just blurt out, oh, by the way, the ghost is my brother Jack. Didn’t you know?”
“Sorry, darling, but I don’t have that kind of time.”
“I guess I’m the one who’s sorry. I sort of assumed you…you wouldn’t know what was going on. But you do know.”
“I honestly thought he would either leave when I sold the house,” Miss Carroll said, “or come with me. I wasn’t tricking you. I have to admit, I kind of miss him. How is he?”
“He’s taken over the body of my obnoxious next-door neighbor. And now my neighbor is the ghost.” Cathy sighed. “I should have kept renting.”
“Oh.” She brightened. “So he’s alive again?”
“Well…yeah.”
Miss Carroll clapped. “Wonderful!”
“No. My neighbor…he’s stuck in some sort of limbo, he’s—”
“You’re not talking about Ken, are you?” Miss Carroll’s mouth thinned with distaste. “I wouldn’t worry about him, dear. Anything that happened to him, he had it coming.”
“Yes, but he’s in my house,” Cathy said, exasperated. “Living with a ghost might be business as usual for you, Miss Carroll, but it’s a pain in my ass!”
“Well, yes, if the ghost is Ken. Jacky was a wonderful ghost. So helpful.”
Cathy flopped back onto the bed. “My head hurts.”
“You’re just Jack’s type, too,” Miss Carroll commented, picking up her knitting. “All that dark curly hair, those big eyes…”
“Don’t start on my curly hair and big eyes, please. What should I do?”
“Marry my brother,” she said promptly.
“About. The. Ghost.”
“Oh, I’m old so I know about exorcisms? Call a priest, dear. Or don’t. Ken struck me as the type who withers without attention. He’ll probably go away on his own.”
“You know, there’s the small matter of your brother taking over a body that didn’t belong to him.”
“Bullshit,” Miss Carroll said. “Jacky was cheated out of his own lifetime. Dead at twenty-one; you call that reasonable? What was Ken doing with the body, anyway? Riddling it with STDs? Filling it with alcohol and getting DUI’s? Using it to date-rape unsuspecting women? Why shouldn’t my brother have a chance?”
Because it was wrong. Because the body didn’t belong to him. Because it was creepy. Because she didn’t mean to kill Ken. Because nothing was that simple. “I…I don’t know.”
“Exactly.” Miss Carroll held up her knitting, then reached into the bag at her feet and withdrew a new ball of yarn. The yarn exactly matched her knitting needles. “Give my love to Jacky when you see him.”
Chapter 17
Cathy slammed into her house and stomped into the kitchen. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, buster!”
“Yeah!” Nikki added, wiping up the last of the egg yolk on her plate with her toast. “What are we doing?”
“Nikki, go away. This is between me and Jack. And don’t park in my spot anymore; I almost rear-ended you this morning.”
“Uh-huh. His name is Ken, dear.”
“Hush up. Go to the bakery. Go to the bathroom. Something.”
“You figured it out.” Ken-Jack looked absurdly relieved. And adorable, with the dish towel slung over one shoulder. He smelled like Dawn detergent. “I thought you might. I’ve been trying and trying to think of how to tell you—”
“My ass!”
“Ooooh,” Nikki said.
“You’ve only had a million chances to bring it up and you blew it every time. How about after we made love last night, buster? Huh? How about then?”
“Jesus, I can’t leave this place for one night without all hell breaking loose,” Nikki commented.
Jack put his hands on her shoulders, dark eyes serious. “Cathy, you’re right.”
“I know I’m right. I’m not an idiot. Nikki?”
“That’s right,” she said. “She’s not an idiot.”
“I meant go away.”
“I should have told you,” Jack was saying. “But to be honest, I couldn’t think how. I was afraid I’d scare you. There just isn’t a nice way to say ‘when Ken died I took over his body’ without sounding like a bad man. And I would never want you to think I was a bad man. I love you, Cathy. I’d do anything for you.”
“Oh. Well…” She chewed on her lower lip. “You’re kind of taking the wind out of my sails, here…”
“Let me get this straight,” Nikki began. “Your house was haunted by this guy, who, when you killed Ken off in a fit of rage—”
“I did not—”
“—took over Shirtless Ken’s body. Well, who’s knocking down all the pictures?”
“Ken,” Cathy and Jack said in unison.
“Man, no wonder he’s pissed. Not only did you steal his body and put the moves on his girl, he’s now relegated to the spirit world and stuck in this termite trap? Bogus!”
“You’re taking this awfully well,” Cathy said suspiciously.
“I’m the one who keeps getting almost eye-gouged with flying glass,” Nikki reminded her. “And Ken was an asshole. This whole passive-aggressive crap would be just like him. It makes sense, sort of.”
“I want you to know,” Jack said, his hands still warm on her shoulders, which was unbelievably distracting, “that I didn’t take over Ken’s body. I was sort of…sort of pulled into it. You’ll never know and I don’t have the words…I was so happy when I woke up in the hospital. I couldn’t believe I’d been given a second chance after all these years. A second chance—”
“Ugh, don’t say it,” Nikki warned.
“—with you.”
“Okay, I’m officially barfed out now.”
“Shut up, Nikki. Really, Jack?”
“Why else do you think I wanted to come back here? Not just because I grew up here. I wanted to be close to you. When my sister moved away, I thought it would be my time to just…leave. But then I saw you…you looked so…so lost and so determined. And you were so pretty…”
“And don’t forget about her cute split ends.”
“Nikki!”
Jack l
aughed. “I even liked your friend.”
“Did you like me, or did you like me like me?”
“Nikki.”
“And I-I couldn’t leave. When I heard you talking on the phone with your family, I thought, this woman is alive, and she’s as lonely as I am. And I just…couldn’t leave you.”
“Thanks,” Nikki commented. “Thanks a lot. What am I, chopped liver?”
“Nikki, get it through your head: this is not about you.” She looked back up at Jack. “I went to see your sister today, Jack. She told me everything. About what happened to you in the basement. About why you never left her.”
“I’d like to go see her, too. If I could just get you to drive me—”
“That’s why you’re a shittier driver than me,” Nikki said. “You’re about a hundred years out of practice!”
“Not quite a hundred,” Jack said dryly. “It’s—”
“Basement!”
Jack flinched. “Don’t do that.”
“Okay. Basement!”
“I’d kill her, except I get the feeling she’d never leave,” Cathy said, glaring at her friend.
“What are we going to do about Ken?” Nikki asked. “We can’t just let him hang around knocking pictures off the walls.”
“What is this ‘we’ stuff?” Cathy asked. “And frankly, I have no idea.”
“It’s very difficult to manifest,” Jack said quietly. “If I affected something in the physical world, it would often take days to build my strength back up. And I had things to hang on for. My sister, for example. Ken…Ken has nothing but his anger.”
“Well, he was a pretty angry guy…”
Jack shook his head. “It’s not enough. It’s really not.” He squeezed Cathy’s fingers. “Love is. Love can last for years. Anger…anger wears off.”
“Barf again. So he’ll just…just fade away?”
“Something like that.”
Relieved, Cathy said, “As long as he can’t hurt anyone on the way out.”
“You could take a vacation,” Nikki suggested. “You’ve already got the time off from work. Go to an island or Disney World or something. Maybe…get to know each other. I bet when you come back, Ken will be long gone.”