An Open Spook (A Haunted Guesthouse Mystery) (2 page)

As I’ve said, I pride myself on seeing every ghost in my path, but there are a lot of them, and they vary in their intensity. By that, I mean the spirits I see have levels of energy. Some could easily pass for living people because they are very strong and vibrant. They have color and depth. The majority, like Maxine and Paul, have an average amount of energy. Their voices don’t echo like in the movies but sound less forceful than a living person’s, and the ghosts are less colorful in appearance, given that light seems to go through them. They can interact with physical objects to various degrees, but they can pass through them, too.

There are some, however, who have very little physical energy. This type of spirit can be seen, but it requires a good deal of concentration. I believe it indicates their energy is either very new—they died not long ago and haven’t established themselves on this level of existence yet—or waning, as the spirit might be ready to move on to the next plane, whatever that is. This kind of ghost is almost transparent to the eye; Alison can’t always sense these ghosts, and even Melissa sometimes has some difficulty with them. I usually don’t have that trouble, but when I saw the flying roast chicken, I had to assume I was in such a presence.

“Can I help you?” I asked in the direction of the chicken.

The chicken stopped moving. I turned toward it, away from the stove and in the direction of the door, and squinted just a little to block out some of the light from the overhead fixture, because direct light can sometimes cancel out the ghost’s form. Sure enough, I began to see the dim outline of a man, tall and straight. His face wasn’t very visible, so I couldn’t read his expression. He stood—or floated, to be more accurate—very still, seeming stunned that I had seen him. He did not speak.

“I can’t imagine you’re hungry,” I told the man. Spirits don’t need to eat, of course. “So may I ask what you need with our dinner?”

The man moved a little closer to me and for a second looked like he was going to drop the chicken, but managed to place it carefully back in the Pyrex baking dish.

As he gained substance, I could see he was in his late twenties or early thirties, dressed in army fatigues. His uniform held some indication of rank, but I don’t know much about such things. “It’s not for me,” he said, indicating the chicken. “It’s for . . . friends.”

“Friends?” I asked. The ghost’s mode of dress and age were not necessarily an indication of when the man had died; some spirits take on the look of another time (usually a happier one) in their lives. This doesn’t happen all the time, but then, I had discovered, there are no definites concerning the afterlife; everyone’s seems to be a different experience. “If your friends are hungry, maybe we can find something for them to eat without giving up our own dinner.”

“My friends are homeless,” the ghost said. “They live on the beach not far from here. There is a very bad storm brewing.”

“How many friends are you talking about?” I asked. Something about his tale didn’t add up. I figured I should keep him talking.

“Eight,” the soldier said, after thinking about it.

“That chicken isn’t going to feed eight hungry people,” I noted.

“It’s going to be a very bad storm,” he repeated, as if that explained the discrepancy.

“Then food is not their biggest problem,” I told him. “We should call the police and get them to a shelter before this becomes dangerous. They’ll get food there.”

I took a few steps toward the new arrival, and Paul rose up out of the basement and through the stove—usually Paul has better aim than that—and startled the new ghost (new to us, anyway) when his face appeared directly in front of the chicken. The soldier’s shoulders shuddered, but Paul stopped and looked at him, smiling.

“Did I miss something, Loretta?” he asked me. “Why not introduce me to your friend?”

“Mostly because I don’t know his name,” I said. I turned to the newcomer. “I’m Loretta Kerby, and this is my friend Paul Harrison. What should we call you, dear?”

The new ghost had turned back toward me after Paul spoke, still visibly shaken by his arrival. I suppose ghosts don’t always see other ghosts coming, either. “Sergeant Robert Elliot, United States Army,” he said. For a moment I thought he’d give us his serial number as well, but instead he added, “I owned this house once, a long time ago.”

It took me a moment to absorb that, but Paul was quicker to respond. “When was that?” he asked. It’s always tricky when a ghost talks about time. For them, “a long time ago” could be three months, or it could be the Revolutionary War. Paul had been a private investigator when he was alive, and he likes nothing better than to ask questions. It keeps his mind sharp, he says. He’d even gone so far as to convince Alison to get a private investigator’s license so she could go out and do some digging for him on what he calls his “cases.” Alison is very clever at it, but she’s never quite taken to the idea of being a detective and doesn’t like to put herself or especially Melissa in danger, so she often resists the jobs Paul accepts on her behalf.

“I bought it in nineteen sixty . . . eight?” Sergeant Elliot said with an absent tone, as if he were thinking about something else. “I didn’t live here very long. It was sold in the early seventies.” He was getting less visible, more transparent as his voice became ethereal. I had to get him to focus on the conversation or he might fade away. The memory seemed to be overpowering him.

“Why?” I asked. “If you had the house for such a short time, why did you sell it?”

“I was about to get married, so I bought the house for me and my fiancée, Barbara Litton,” the sergeant answered. “But then I was inducted into the army, and we decided to postpone the wedding until I came back.” He stopped, closed his eyes and opened them again. “I did not return alive.”

This was not explaining the walking roast chicken, but there’s no point in rushing some people, alive or dead, when they’re telling you a story. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “What happened?”

“A land mine in Thua Thien-Hue Province,” he said simply.

“Vietnam,” Paul said to me. “Late nineteen sixties.”

“Nineteen seventy, to be precise,” Sergeant Elliot responded. “I don’t remember the exact date; the incident is a little . . . confused in my memory.”

“Is that why you came back here?” I asked. “To jog your memory?”

Robert’s head snapped down to look at me, and he seemed more focused, but almost annoyed. “No, I came for the
food
for my
friends
.”

I still didn’t believe that claim, but I thought I’d play along to see what Paul could find out. “I’ll call the police right now about seeing to your friends,” I said and got my cell phone from my backpack. Alison teases me about “looking like a third grader,” but the backpack carries everything I need and keeps my hands free when I’m walking. It helps with my posture, too.

I stepped into the dark dining room, where the windows were all boarded up now as Alison had moved around the house to work on the game room. I turned on the lights and called the Harbor Haven police, and after a lengthy delay—the storm was causing a lot of panicky calls to the police headquarters—was informed by the dispatcher that they were aware of the enclave of homeless people living in town, and had taken them to shelters in the area for the duration of the “weather event.”

Paul and Robert had clearly been talking during my conversation, because when I returned to the kitchen, they were hovering next to each other by the center island. Paul turned to me with a look on his face I recognized—he had a case to solve.

“Loretta,” he said with great enthusiasm, “Robert has asked us to conduct a search on his behalf.”

“You want us to find your fiancée?” I asked Robert.

He shook his head. “No. She was informed of my status and married another man in 1978. But there was something that . . . belonged to her, something that was linked to me, and it seems to have vanished when Barbara sold the house.”

“What is it we’re looking for?” I asked.

Robert’s eyes were clearer and more substantial than I’d seen them before. He looked right at me and asked, “Do you know what a POW bracelet is?”

“What’s a POW bracelet?” Paul asked.

We were situated around the center island in the kitchen—Paul, Maxine, and myself. Alison was still battening down the hatches for the storm, and Melissa was finishing her homework. Paul was hovering over the stove, giving the (false) impression of a man who needed the warmth to keep himself aloft. Maxine was lying on her side in a horizontal position, floating by the refrigerator, which made it more uncomfortable to get out salad dressing than it might normally be. Maxine didn’t seem to notice.

Paul stroked his goatee, which made him look professorial. He’s such a nice boy; now that I’ve known him for a while, it’s even more upsetting to me that he died so young. His case with Maxine had been the first he’d undertaken himself—Paul told me he’d apprenticed at a detective agency and had just started on his own. If the attack hadn’t happened so soon, he undoubtedly would have anticipated and foiled it, but it was just bad luck. Since then, he and Alison have proven to be a very good investigative team, and I like to watch them work together. It makes Paul happy to be useful, and it makes Alison . . . well, she underestimates her talents.

Paul had conducted a fairly thorough interview of the spirit he was now calling “our client,” Sergeant Elliot. The lost item in question was a POW bracelet—I explained to Paul that various student groups during the Vietnam War used to make these simple metal bands with the names of missing soldiers on them and sell them for a few dollars to raise funds protesting the war or just to focus attention on military personnel who had been listed as missing or taken prisoner. Usually, people just got bracelets with random names, but this one was special.

“Barbara had specifically asked for one with my name, and the families of those lost overseas usually got at least one,” Sergeant Elliot had told us.

“So what happened to this one, the one Barbara had with your name?” I asked.

The soldier looked irritated. “I don’t know,” he answered. “But I know she still had it after I made it back here to the States. They found our remains, some of us, and shipped them home for a group burial, but they weren’t able to identify mine, so I was still listed as missing. All I know is she wore it until she sold this house, and then it was gone. I think it might still be here.”

I decided to keep working on getting dinner ready as I listened to the interview, but I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d been doing when the chicken had started walking. Oh yes: I’d been rendering pan drippings to make gravy. Now, where had I put that measuring cup?

“Here?” Paul said. “I’ve been here for a couple of years, and I don’t believe I’ve seen anything like that.”

“I believe it’s here,” Sergeant Elliot repeated. “I don’t know the place well; I didn’t live here long, only a few months before I shipped out. I’ve done a little searching, but I don’t know the idiosyncrasies of the house. You might have better luck.”

“Why do you need it?” I asked. After all these years, and after knowing his fiancée had married another man, what kind of significance could it still hold?

“It’s very important I get it,” he said. “If I hold it in my hand, I believe I can end this half existence.”

Paul looked intrigued; the idea of other levels of an afterlife was always a fascinating concept for him. “You think the bracelet is the key?” he asked.

“I don’t know for certain, but I feel it has a hold on me,” the sergeant answered. “I think that if I can gain possession of it, its restrictive power will vanish.”

“Really!” Paul stroked his goatee harder, a sure sign he was thinking deeply.

“What’s this all got to do with the chicken?” I asked. The question had been bothering me the whole conversation. And my inability to find the measuring cup was just as annoying.

I didn’t get an answer. Sergeant Elliot vanished.

• • •

“What’s a POW bracelet?” Melissa asked.

“It was a special thing,” I answered my granddaughter. “It was a metal bracelet people wore during and after the Vietnam War. Each one had the name of a solider who had been captured or was missing, and the date he had last been seen.”

Melissa thought about it as she chewed a bite of chicken and then asked (after swallowing, like a good girl does), “So it’s like those ribbons or rubber bracelets people wear now to raise awareness for a disease or something?”

I nodded. The wind was starting to howl around the house, but the rain hadn’t started yet.

Alison was looking up at the ceiling, where Maxine was stretching as if she were going to—or could—sleep. “So this ghost wants us to find the bracelet with his name on it? Why does he think it’s here?”

“He says he ‘dropped in’ on his ex-fiancée and overheard a conversation about it, years ago,” I reported, based on what Robert had told me. “She thought she’d packed it with her, and then when she got to her new apartment, she couldn’t find it. Apparently that was very troubling to her, and even after she was informed that he was listed as missing, and then as killed in action, she wasn’t able to let it go.”

Paul was clearly thinking ahead to the search. “Maxie and I can search inside walls and in places you can’t look. If we all begin looking after dinner, it shouldn’t take very long at all.”

“If the ghost looked himself and couldn’t find it, why does he think we can?” Melissa asked.

Alison answered for Paul. “We don’t have another plan, so we might as well go with this one. But I want to point out that nobody still breathing is going outside tonight, is that clear? From all reports, this is a really dangerous storm, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone.” She looked at Melissa. “Especially you.”

“You worry too much,” Maxine told her. “If anyone has to go outside, I’ll do it. Nothing’s going to happen to
me
out there.”

“I thought that was what I just said,” Alison muttered.

Paul knows when to nip their arguments in the bud. He also focuses on his “cases” very acutely; he’s very responsible. “While we’re looking for the bracelet, Maxie, I think you should run some computer searches.” Maxine does the research on the investigations, and even though she likes to grumble about it, she’s very talented at what she does. It makes me proud that it was originally my suggestion she take up that part of the job.

“I’m good,” she told Paul, “but there’s no computer database on Earth that’s going to tell us where a lost bracelet might be in this house.”

“Maybe not,” Paul agreed. “But it might provide an image of the bracelet, so we all know what we’re looking for.”

Sometimes I forget how young they all are. Paul and Maxine were both barely born in the 1970s, Alison is in her late thirties now and Melissa . . . well, she’s young enough to be my granddaughter. Of course none of them would know what a POW bracelet looks like.

There’s nothing I like better than being helpful, so I pulled back the sleeve on my blouse and reached for my left wrist. “They look like this,” I said. I’ve been wearing a POW bracelet, along with a few other pieces of jewelry, almost every day for a very long time. I pulled it off and placed it on the island between plates of chicken and rice. (It was a theatrical gesture, I know, that I hadn’t shown them my bracelet already, but I do sometimes relish the spotlight.)

The group of them stared at me, then at the simple metal—I think it’s nickel—bracelet, whose inscription read, “Col. William Mason, 5-22-68.” Alison blinked a few times and shook her head a little. “How did you know to bring that, Mom?”

I waved a hand at her. “Don’t be silly. I wear it sometimes, out of respect for Colonel Mason. But not all the time. It gets hot in the summer, so I take it off, and it doesn’t go with everything I put on. You don’t see them that much anymore; at one time, everybody I knew wore one. You’re supposed to wear it until the person whose name is on your bracelet, or his remains, come home.”

“Wow, Grandma,” Melissa said. “You’re way cool.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “You have no idea, sweetie,” I told her.

• • •

In 1970, I was a junior at Monmouth College, which is now Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. I had just declared a history major, but only because I had been required to declare something. Otherwise, I would have happily studied whatever happened to capture my interest until someone—probably my parents, who were paying most of my bills—told me to stop.

“But I don’t believe in the war,” I was telling my friend Marilyn Beechman as she wrapped a strip of metal around my left wrist. Marilyn was not the kind of person who allowed anything like waiting for permission to stand in her way. “I’m against it.”

“So am I,” she assured me. “Vietnam is a huge mistake. But that’s the point of this bracelet.” She finished bending it around my wrist and took her hands away to admire it. “See? You show your opposition by reminding people that soldiers like”—Marilyn stopped to read the inscription on the bracelet—“Colonel Mason are being held against their will, maybe dying, because we’re participating in an illegal war. You know Congress has never declared war on Vietnam at all?”

I looked at the metal strip, which resembled something they’d put on your arm when you were admitted to a hospital. “It’s ugly.”

“Exactly.”

“No, the bracelet. It looks bad on my arm.” I held it out again, so she could see what I meant.

Marilyn frowned and shook her head. “It was only three dollars. And I think it looks good on you. Besides, you only have to wear it until Colonel Mason comes home or the North Vietnamese tell us what happened to him. Then you can take it off.”

“I can’t ever take it off before then?” I asked. That seemed impractical.

“Well, when you’re in the shower and stuff, of course you can take it off,” she answered. “You don’t want it to rust on your arm or anything. I mean, you can’t take it off
forever
until we find out what happened to the guy. How long could that take?”

I hadn’t been terribly active in the antiwar movement, or at least, not as active as I thought I should have been, deep down. I participated in moratoriums, but didn’t go to sit-ins or anything like that. I didn’t like the idea of young men dying, especially when I didn’t really understand what the war was about. And if this strip of metal on my arm could show I believed in peace, like John and Yoko were saying, then I didn’t see the harm in it.

“As long as it’s only temporary,” I told Marilyn.

She waved a hand. “A few months, tops,” she said.

• • •

Over forty years after first putting it on, I considered the bracelet. I hadn’t really thought about it in years; it had just become something I put on some days and not others without paying much attention. “It’s pretty worn out,” I said, probably more to myself than anyone else.

“It’s old,” Maxine said, then seemed to catch herself; she put her hand to her mouth. “Sorry, Mrs. Kerby.”

“I’m not offended. I’m just showing it to you because that’s the kind of thing we’d be searching for.” I looked up at Paul. He seemed deep in thought.

Alison started clearing the table, and Melissa stood to help. They are a very well-oiled machine, those two. Alison seemed nervous; out of habit she kept glancing toward the windows, which were boarded up, as if she were able to see something outside. “I wonder if I should have put the car somewhere else,” she said. “Is yours okay, Mom?”

“I parked behind you,” I told her. “Was that okay, or do you think I should move it?”

My daughter gave me a look that spoke volumes. “Were you paying attention when I said nobody goes outside tonight?” she asked. “Listen to that wind.” It was indeed making eerie noises outside the house, like the kind in ghost movies on television (of course, wind has nothing to do with actual spirits).

“The cars will be fine,” I assured her.

Paul looked impatient; the weather didn’t affect him, and he gets fidgety when the subject strays off a problem he’s considering. “While you’re at the computer, Maxie, it wouldn’t hurt to do some searches on Robert Elliot. Maybe we can find out something that Robert hasn’t told us, or maybe we can find another of his POW bracelets on eBay or something in case Barbara’s proves hard to locate.”

Alison furrowed her brow. “Yeah? And whose money are you using for that?” she asked.

“Don’t be a cheapskate,” Maxine told her. “We’re talking about a war veteran’s peace of mind here.”

“Sure.
You
don’t have to put anyone through college.”

Maxine, looking offended, flew up through the ceiling and vanished.

“That bothers Maxie,” Paul told Alison.

“What does?”

“When you remind her she’ll never be a mom,” I reminded her gently.

“But I didn’t say
that
,” Alison protested.

“That’s what she heard,” Paul said.

Alison sat down on one of the bar stools next to the island. “It’s not what I
meant
,” she said.

Paul held up his hands in front of his chest. “Don’t worry, she’ll get over it,” he told Alison. “Let’s stay on task, shall we?”

I saw Alison’s eyebrow twitch just a little, and I knew what that meant. One reason she’d decided to go into business for herself is that she hates to be bossed around. She turned toward Paul. “Okay, let’s. Why don’t you go off into your corner and get a message out on the Ghosternet?”

Paul has the ability to communicate with other spirits. It’s sort of a telepathic thing, from what I understand, and it involves him being off on his own for a while so he can concentrate on the messages he sends and receives exclusively. Alison calls it the “Ghosternet.” I just love that.

He looked a trifle surprised. “Who would I be trying to contact?” he asked.

“Anybody who knew Robert Elliot. People in his army unit maybe. For that matter, Robert Elliot. I also want to know why he bolted so quickly if he wants us to help him. Don’t you?”

Just then, Maxine descended from the ceiling wearing a trench coat a few sizes too large for her. That usually means she’s carrying something. The ghosts, if they hide an object in their clothing, can bring it through solid objects like walls. If they carry it outside their clothes, whatever they’re carrying hits the wall and won’t move. It’s a funny little trick—I often wonder what a physicist would make of it. I’ve asked a few, but they were already ghosts and took it for granted.