Ghouls Night Out

GHOULS NIGHT OUT

Terri Garey

Contents

Chapter 1

“I look like a giant pineapple,” I muttered. “Put a bowl of fruit on my head and I could give Carmen Miranda a run for her money.”

How many ruffles did one dress need? Ruffles from waist to ankle—in shiny yellow taffeta, no less.

“I’m Chiquita Banana and I’m here to say, bananas need to ripen in a certain way…”

If I craned my neck just right, I could see in the mirror how the giant bow on my butt made my ass look at least four sizes bigger. The waist was too big, and the flat bodice and off-the-shoulder sleeves squashed my boobs down to nothing.

Not like they were big to begin with, but they were usually
something
.

And this particular shade of yellow was so not my color—it didn’t go with the pink streaks in my hair.

“How are you doing? Need help with the zipper?”

I whipped the curtain to my dressing room back with a rattle.

“Oh,” the saleslady smiled, clearly blowing smoke up my newly huge ass. “You look lovely.”

“Are you sure this is the dress Debbie picked out?” I asked hopefully. “She said she was going to keep it simple.” The stiff tulle of my underskirt rustled as I stepped forward—walking in this thing would be a nightmare, and I was going to have to do it in front of witnesses, with a smile pasted on my face.

The woman actually looked disappointed. “Don’t you like it? All the other bridesmaids loved it.”

That’s because they’re all morons
, I thought to myself.
Redneck morons.

Though to be fair, only half of the Hathaway clan were morons, the rest were idiots. Debbie and her three sisters would welcome the chance to dress up like a Brazilian bombshell in pineapple season, particularly if there were hats or ribbons involved.

Cousins on my mom’s side, the Hathaway sisters made me glad I was adopted. But I knew my mom would’ve wanted me to do the right thing, and when Debbie called me out of the blue and begged me to be in her wedding, it had been Emily Styx’s voice I’d heard in my head. “Family is everything, Nicki,” she’d have said. Besides, as cousins go, Debbie had always been my favorite—I couldn’t erase the mental image of the little tow-headed girl who used to follow me around at family reunions.

Which is why I’d driven an hour into the middle of nowhere to be fitted with one of the ugliest bridesmaid dresses I’d ever seen.

Taking my silence for consent, I suppose, the grimly cheerful saleslady ushered me up onto a pedestal in front of a wall of mirrors. I stared at myself in dismayed silence as she fluffed a few ruffles and tugged at the sleeves.

“And here’s a lovely hat to complete the ensemble,” she said, fake smile firmly in place.

I watched in horror as she held out a floppy yellow concoction, dripping with ribbon.

“You’re not serious,” I said, unable to muster even a pretense of politeness.

“Oh, but I am, dear,” she answered, nodding. “It’s your cousin’s day, after all, isn’t it?”

Her day. Her beautiful, precious, I’m-getting-married-and-you’re-not day.

“No bride in the world is going to let a bridesmaid outshine them on their wedding day, dear,” the woman said, not unkindly. “Now put your hat on and stand up straight. Time to break out the measuring tape if we’re to have this dress ready by Saturday.”

Ten minutes later I was still standing there, waiting impatiently while the hem was pinned; it was going to have to come up at least an inch and the ruffles made the pinning difficult. The shop door opened, and a woman came in. She was in her early twenties, dark hair in a messy ponytail, and stopped short when she saw me standing in front of the mirrors.

“That’s my dress,” she said, clearly surprised to see me in it.

The seamstress, whose name I’d learned was Bebe, looked up. “I have to get that door fixed,” she said absently. “It keeps blowing open.”

“Who are you?” the dark-haired girl asked me, “and why are you wearing my dress?”

Bebe ignored her, rising to her feet with a relieved sigh. “That’s it,” she said to me. “Be careful of the pins when you take it off.”

“Hell-ooo,” said the girl, obviously exasperated. “Cat
got your tongue? I know you can see me. You’re looking right at me.”

My heart sank to the level of my newly pinned hem.

Not another one.

I glanced at Bebe again, hoping against hope that the seamstress saw the dark-haired girl, too.

Bebe gave me a quizzical look. “You okay, hon? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Ghosts, spirits, phantoms, spooks—call them what you like, just don’t call them too loudly.

They might hear you.

Trust me. I know what I’m saying.

My life had changed in an instant a few months ago; one minute I’d been lying on the couch with what I thought was heartburn, the next minute I’d woken up in the hospital after being declared legally dead. In between I’d been to the Other Side—Heaven, Nirvana, or whatever it was. I thought of it simply as the “Light.” The incredibly beautiful, amazingly wonderful Light, where I’d known everything, seen everything, and understood everything.

Until I’d regained consciousness.

And unfortunately, I’d brought a little extra something back from the Light with me: lifetime instructions to “do unto others as I would have them do unto me,” and the ability to occasionally see and hear spirits.

And boy, did they wanna be heard.

“Yoo-hoo,” said the dark-haired girl sarcastically, waving her arms in the air. “What the hell is going on? I’ve been in here three times today and every time she’s acted like I’m invisible. If this is Debbie’s idea of a joke, it’s really getting old.”

I shook my head, numbly, but didn’t answer her. Instead, I spoke to Bebe. “Um, was someone else supposed to wear this dress?”

Bebe’s eyebrows rose. “Well, yes…I thought you knew. In fact,” she gestured vaguely toward the main counter, “when she was here for her fitting the other day, she left her cellphone in the dressing room. I don’t suppose you know how to get hold of her? The only number she left me was the cell.”

“Aha!” said the dark-haired girl. “So that’s where my cellphone is. And I told you it was my dress!”

Bebe was beginning to look vaguely uncomfortable. “Your cousin Debbie called me that same afternoon and said Michelle had pulled out of the wedding. She said you’d be coming by, and asked me to refit the dress for you.”

Great. Being a replacement bridesmaid made looking like a pineapple in public even more appealing.

Particularly when the girl I was replacing was dead.

And apparently, she didn’t even know it.

The dark-haired girl must’ve read something in my eyes, because hers went wide.

“What the hell is she talking about? I never pulled out of the wedding. I just talked to Debbie a couple of days ago, right before I—” She stopped, brow furrowing. “Right before I—” Her image wavered, began to fade. “Oh, shit,” was the last I heard, before she disappeared completely.

“You look a little pale, dear,” Bebe said, touching my arm. “Why don’t you sit down?”

“I just need to get out of this dress,” I said faintly, and let her steer me toward the dressing room. As soon as the curtain closed behind me, I buried my face
in my hands, knowing Debbie’s upcoming wedding was going to be a wedding from hell, in more ways than one.

“How did I let myself get sucked into this?” I wailed into the phone. “I’m a replacement bridesmaid, and the dress is hideous! It makes me look like a giant fruit salad. With a hat.” I deliberately didn’t tell Evan that the bridesmaid I was replacing was dead. My best friend and business partner, Evan
lived
for fashion, and I knew it was easier for him to talk about that than my dubious “gift” of being able to see and talk to the dead.

“What did you expect, Nicki?” Evan wasn’t the least bit surprised about the ugly dress. “You’re lucky Debbie didn’t stick you with a tube top and Daisy Duke shorts.”

I sighed. “Yeah. At least there were no sequined flip-flops.”

“Don’t be in the wedding if you don’t want to do it—come down with something contagious or something.”

“I have to do it,” I said glumly, finding myself, once again, in the position of having to explain why I was doing something I didn’t want to do, for someone I didn’t want to do it for.
Do unto others, Nicki, as you would have them do unto you.
“Debbie needs four bridesmaids to balance out the groomsmen, and she’s only got three sisters.” Darlene, Diane, and Donna. Or as I privately thought of them: Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest.

It wasn’t their fault, really—the gene pool was obviously tainted. Debbie was okay in a clueless sort of way, but her sisters were another matter. Prickly as sandspurs, and just as irritating.

“Those cousins of yours are walking advertisements for birth control,” Evan said, echoing my thoughts exactly. “Didn’t your aunt know that she was supposed to swallow the pill instead of trying to hold it between her knees?”

“Well, since Uncle John never seemed to learn the alphabet past the letter ‘D,’ I imagine birth control was a foreign concept. They probably think oral sex means talking about it instead of doing it.”

Evan laughed, and I felt a little better. A girl deserved to be snarky when she was going through an ugly bridesmaid dress crisis.

I stared out the window of my car at the parking lot of Bebe’s Bridal. There was only one other car, a dusty old Camry that obviously belonged to the saleslady.

“I can’t wait to get home. Joe promised to be waiting with a bubble bath and a glass of wine.”

Evan made a purring noise. “Ooo, I need to get your hunky boyfriend and my hunky boyfriend together to talk about how to treat a lady.”

“Forget it, you fairy,” I said good-naturedly. “If you got your greedy little hands on Joe I’d never get him back.”

I heard the distant tinkle of the shop bell through the phone, and knew that a customer had just come into Handbags and Gladrags. Our store was the coolest vintage shop in Little Five Points, Georgia, and Evan was manning it while I was out in the boondocks fulfilling family obligations.

“Push the Led Zeppelin t-shirts,” I said, “we’re over-inventoried.”

“Climbing the Stairway to Heaven as we speak,” Evan answered gaily. “Drive carefully.”

He hung up, and I snapped the phone closed and dropped it on the passenger seat. Gripping the steering
wheel in both hands, I let my head fall forward until it rested there, too. I closed my eyes and tried to think positively—I was doing it for Mom. Aunt Nadine was her only sister, which is how I’d ended up with such a dorky middle name.

Nicholette Nadine Styx, sucker extraordinaire.

“Don’t be such a drama queen,”
my mom would’ve said, if she’d lived past my twenty-second birthday.
“It’s only one day. You can handle one day, can’t you?”

“Yes, Mom,” I replied dutifully, though there was no one there to hear it. Then I buckled my seat belt (another lesson from Mom), and started the car. As I was backing out of my space, I happened to glance at the saleslady’s Camry again, and this time I noticed that someone had used their finger to write a message in the red clay dust that coated the passenger side door.

“Help Me,” it said.

“Wash Me” would be more appropriate.

Making a mental note to run my little red Honda through the car wash when I got back to Little Five Points, I pulled out of the parking lot, already dreading my return visit to pick up the newly altered Carmen Miranda dress.

“Don’t let her do it,” came a woman’s voice from the back seat.

“Shit!” I jumped, swerved and nearly drove myself into a roadside ditch.

“Don’t let her,” the voice repeated.

I slammed on the brakes, heart pounding. Afraid to turn around, I checked the rear view mirror.

Nothing.

Gathering my nerve, I swiveled my head to look, glad there was currently no traffic in Hogansville.

The back seat was empty, but there was a dark spot on the upholstery—it looked wet.

“What the hell?”

Thoroughly spooked, I sat there, engine idling. You’d think I’d be used to this sort of thing by now—the girl in the bridal shop wasn’t the first spirit I’d ever seen, and somehow I knew she wouldn’t be the last.

“Hello?”
Speak now or forever hold your peace, Spirit.
“Don’t let who do what?”

No answer.

“Great,” I muttered. “Just great.” Hoping the spot was just water and nothing more ominous, I headed home.

If I checked the rear view mirror a little more frequently than I needed to, nobody knew it but me.

“You’re really tense tonight, babe.” Joe’s fingers were working magic on my shoulders. The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” was playing on the CD player, and the lights were low.

“You would be, too, if you had to wear an ugly yellow dress like the one Debbie picked out.”

He leaned down and nuzzled my ear. I could smell the clean scent of recently showered male, felt the brush of dark hair on my cheek. “It wouldn’t make me tense. It would make me a cross-dresser.”

“A tense cross-dresser,” I said stubbornly. “In an ugly dress.”

Joe laughed, using his thumbs to dig in deeper. “It’s just one day, Nicki. You can handle one day, can’t you?”

I shot him a look over my shoulder. “Have you been talking to my mom?”

The rubbing stopped. The magic fingers were removed. “You told me your mom passed away. You’re not saying…”

I sat bolt upright. “No! I was kidding! Just kidding!” That would be way too weird, and my mom would
never
do that to me.

Joe sighed with relief. He knew all about my little problem with dead people, and more about my other problems than was probably good for him. But since he hadn’t run away screaming into the night—yet—I dared hope he might be able to cope with them. “You haven’t seen any ghosts for a while, Nicki. Maybe that part of your life is over.”

It was my turn to sigh. “No such luck,” I said. “I saw one today.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?” Joe came around the couch and sat down next to me, a look of worry on his handsome face.