A Guilty Ghost Surprised (An Indigo Eady Paranormal Cozy Mystery series) (10 page)

I adored him, of course. I loved being able to ‘see’ my dad. But disappointment always mingled with the pleasure, because he wasn’t my dad. I had to love him, though. He took me in.

“What are you two up to? It’s a bit late to be out, isn’t it? Staying out of trouble?” he asked.

“Yep,” I answered, my face warming all over.
Yep - I’m going to hell on the bullet train.
We were all sorts of busted for investigating Bart’s murder and putting ourselves in danger. Not to mention the lying and the resulting month of groundedness. If he knew about another investigation, not to mention being followed again, we’d be wading through deep dung.

“Good.” He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Good night, then.” He went up the back staircase to his room and bed.

Simon stood beside me, his face as unreadable as a poker player. All manner of emotions swirled from the tension built in those few short moments. A strain existed between him and his father that I didn’t completely understand. Simon blamed himself for the accident, and he thought his father blamed him, too. But I didn’t think so. No, it had to be more complicated than that.

Muted television sounds drifted up from downstairs, but I tried to ignore them. I had dozed off when a commotion erupted from Simon’s room. A muffled yell, then footsteps pounded down the hall. My door flung open and banged into the wall.

I sprang up in bed, my heart pounding in my ears.

Simon ran in.  Bryan shot around him into my bed and Franny floated right through him in her haste to get inside my room. 

“What the bloody hell is going on?”
Simon yelled in a stage whisper, shivering from head to toe.

“Bryan, what is it child?”  Franny soothed Bryan while Simon continued to babble.

“I was sleeping and then something yanked the covers off and then the flippin’ bed turned ice cold and I felt something, I don’t know what, climb into bed with me…”

 “It’s okay,” I interrupted. “It’s only Bryan.” Bryan had dived into my bed and curled against my side like a giant cold foot. I shivered and pulled the blanket up to my chin.

“What happened?” I asked Franny, while Simon stood uncomprehending and Bryan clung to my arm.

“We were only watching the telly, dear, and Bryan screamed and flew up here, as if terrified for his
life
…”

I sighed. “Watching what?”

“Franken
something
.”

“Frankenstein?” I couldn’t help the exasperation in my voice. “Franny, you can’t let a three-year-old watch scary movies, especially not in the middle of the night.”

“They were watching Frankenstein?” asked Simon, incredulous.

“He was a perfectly lovely creature, dear. Not scary at all, really.”

“Maybe not to you, but you’re used to scary, er,
different
creatures,” I said.

“They were watching
Frankenstein?”
Simon repeated.

Franny looked at Bryan. “I am sorry, child, I didn’t know.” She paced-floated, grief-stricken. “It’s been ever so long since I’ve been around children. Not since I was a child myself, a hundred and twenty-five years ago.”

“It’s not real, Bryan,” I told him. “Just make-believe.”

“Scared,” he mumbled, around the thumb in his mouth, hiding his face in my arm.

“I’m sorry,” Franny repeated. “Come to Aunt Franny.” She drifted to the chair and held out her arms.

Bryan hopped across the bed and flew into her arms. He sat in her lap, sucking his thumb, while she rocked him and sang a lullaby:

Sleep my child and peace attend thee,

All through the night

Guardian angels God will send thee,

All through the night

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping

Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,

I my loving vigil keeping

All through the night.

An old and haunting melody, it soothed Bryan. His eyelids drooped.

Simon still stood in the middle of my room, staring at me.

“It’s okay now,” I said. “Franny’s rocking him and all is well.”

Simon sighed. “All right. If you say so. I’m going back to bed.”

“No!” Bryan cried.

“No, not yet,” I told Simon. “Bryan wants you to stay for a bit.”

“Oh. Right.” He headed to the armchair to sit down.

“No! Not there. Franny and Bryan are there. Over there.” I pointed to the bay window where a couple of pillows and blankets lay. Not long enough for Simon, but if he pulled up his knees, it would do.

“I hope they’re not going to make a habit of this,” said Simon. “A guy needs his beauty sleep. You hear that Bryan?”

Bryan smiled around his thumb.

Simon propped his pillows into the bay window seat, spread two blankets over his legs, and lay down with a sigh. As his eyes drifted closed, he hummed the lullaby.

Now that Bryan quieted down, I could find out what Franny learned about Mrs. Cuttle.

“Rumor has it that Sadie Cuttle’s place is highly active.” Franny, dressed immaculately as usual, wore a peach colored dressing gown that highlighted her amazing black hair. Even when worn down, as now, it shone like a midnight sky full of stars, and hung in waves to her waist. She tucked Bryan next to Simon on the bay window bench. Simon cinched the blankets up to his nose and closed his eyes.  

Franny floated back and forth in front of me. Clearly, something else occupied her mind.

“What do you mean by highly active?” I yawned. In my bed beneath the covers, I propped the pillows behind my head. Since Bryan had been back, I’d been sleeping in my bed, rather than the kitchen armchair to make sure he had access to me. Which meant other spirits had access to me as well. Whether or not I got any sleep was a crap-shoot.  

 “I mean it’s incredibly haunted, to put it in living terms. The house is old and has seen a lot of death. It attracts spirits looking for a place to be.”

“That makes sense. Maybe that’s why ghost-dog made his way there.”

“It could be.” She sounded worried.

“What else?”

She stopped pacing and turned to me. “That energy-sucking Soul Collector is there.”

I sighed. That could be why so much colorful activity took place there. The Soul Collector probably tried to recruit souls—or steal them, more likely.

“Indigo.” She knelt down beside me and laid chilly hands on my arm. “Stay away from there. That evil
thing
wants you. Nobody trusts it.”

“Nobody, as in…”

“The entire spirit community of Sabrina Shores.”

Crap.
That’s what worried me. A whole community of spirits resided in that town. Even worse, they sounded
organized.
I’d never heard of such a thing.

I shook my head. “By community, do you mean, like, town meetings and gatherings? Sporting events? Church? School?”

“Yes. Only different. Some spirits continue their lives, uh,
after
life. They do the same things they always did. But it’s different. Strange. You get used to it.”

“Strange? Strange how?” My heart beat faster. This was new, scary.

“There are
things, beings.”
She stopped, clearly struggling.

I gave her time, waiting wide-eyed.

She continued. “Monsters, some of them.”

I gasped. “Monsters?”

“Oh, not like the one on the telly that scared Bryan, that Frankincense monster. No, these were human once, only mutated by what they became in life. Most of them, anyway.”

“Frankenstein,” I corrected absently, more focused on the
most
part of the statement. “What do you mean by
most of them?”

She shrugged. “Some of them I don’t think could ever have been human, dear.”

“Like the Soul Collector?”

She nodded. “We coexist peacefully for the most part, but sometimes we have our differences. We try to integrate the community, but the huge range of differences…sometimes it’s not easy. Sometimes…” She left off.

“What? Sometimes what?” I held my breath.

“Sometimes spirits simply disappear. Like a second death. Nobody knows where they go.”

“A second death,” I repeated. “Maybe they just leave, go somewhere else?”

She shook her head. “We have reason to believe it’s not voluntary.”

“Is the Soul Collector behind it?”

“They think that is part of it.”

“Only part?” I didn’t know what to think. I started out inquiring about Sadie Cuttle and ghost-dog in order to help them cross over. Instead, I uncovered an after-life conspiracy. And the possible leader was my mortal enemy. And not only that… “I think he’s after Bryan…” I whispered.

Franny shot up. “No,” she hissed back in a whisper. “I’ll not let him take that sweet child.” She popped out, leaving only a puff of ice-cold air.

Chapter Ten

Quixley Street Mansion

After school on Tuesday I called Mrs. Cuttle’s niece, Roxanna Cuttle-Jones. Until we got the forensic results on the paint chips or Riley called with the information on D.S. Michael Potter’s employee file, we were free until Friday’s meeting.

“Mrs. Cuttle-Jones, please,” I said in my most cultured and mature voice. The English make fun of the twangy American accent, but I did the best I could.

“Speaking,” said a voice, much more hoity-toity than mine.

“I’m calling about the house listed for sale on Quixley Street?”

“Oh yes. A lovely Victorian mansion. It used to belong to my aunt, Sadie Cuttle. Sadly, she passed a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I knew her vaguely.” Yes, I lied. I’d have a nice long talk with God about it later. Even so, she couldn’t see me squirm. “She owned a dog, didn’t she?”

“No, she didn’t like dogs, especially big ones. She was afraid of them.”

“Oh, that’s right,” I answered. “I remember now. Can I ask what she passed from?”

“Old age. Her mind started to go at the end. She imagined all sorts of things. All of a sudden the place became haunted and she saw the ghost of a dog, a bulldog of all things, and then a black shadow lurking in corners. She scheduled an appointment to see a doctor, but she had an accident and died before I could take her, God rest her soul.”

“I’m sorry to hear she had a troubled end.” And I was. Mrs. Cuttle remained here and still troubled. Her mind hadn’t gone at all - she really saw those things. “I’d like to see the inside. Would you be able to show me around tomorrow?” I could get Franny to do my makeup and hair to help me look older, so I’d be more believable as a buyer. She did it for me once and was quite good at it.

“I am sorry,” Mrs. Cuttle-Jones said, “but I have a previous engagement. But if you’d still like to see it, a spare key is kept under the back mat.”

She warned me that the mansion might be a bit rundown, but nothing that couldn’t be repaired by loving hands.

I thanked her and said I’d be in touch. The arrangement would work out rather nicely. I received her permission to go inside and look around. She didn’t know I wasn’t really in the market for a house, so the small dishonesty could be forgiven…okay, maybe not so small. I’d just have to extend my conversation with God. But a good deed would be done if I could help cross over Mrs. Cuttle and the dog.

I hung up as Simon came in the back door. He looked as tired as I felt after our sleepless night. I honestly don’t know how Uncle Richard slept through it. Since his workday typically lasted fourteen hours, though, I guess he completely passed out when his head hit the pillow at night.

“Hey,” he said, throwing his book bag in the corner.

“Hey back.”

He flopped into an armchair next to the fireplace. Cold ashes reflected his gray mood. He hadn’t even grabbed food yet, truly a first.

I rebuilt the fire and warmed a pot of potato soup. We needed cozy. Warm bellies and a warm fire. And a nap.

“Thanks,” said Simon as I handed him a bowl of soup and a roll. “I didn’t have the energy after last night’s fiasco.” Purple shadows surrounded his bloodshot eyes. I knew I looked just as bad, but operating on very little sleep came, if not easily, then out of habit, to me. Spirits tended to be more active at night.

We ate our soup and Simon added more wood to the fire. The house settled into quiet.

“I spoke to Mrs. Cuttle’s niece this afternoon,” I said.

“Yeah? What’d she say?”

“She thought the old lady lost her mind. Old age, she’d said.” I relayed the conversation to him. “So, do you want to go with me? Later, I mean.”

“Sure.” He grinned tiredly. “Because we don’t have nearly enough spirit activity in our lives.”

I grinned back. “Welcome to my world.”

Until we figured out how to send Bryan back to the other side, afternoon naps in my kitchen armchair would be the order of the day. Closing my eyes, I let silence and warmth lull me into a semi-comatose state…until the door gave an almighty shake, as if a 9.0 magnitude earthquake shook the foundation of the entire neighborhood followed by a sonic boom—

I sprang out of my armchair and crashed into Simon. His arms went around me, eyes wide with shock. Cups rattled against their saucers. Pots and pans swung from hooks. Ashes rained down the chimney and burst into the kitchen, sending gray clouds erupting into the room.