Chapter 6 #2
My feet faltered, and slowly, I craned my neck so I could look at the man sitting down at the kitchen table as if it were an everyday occurrence, and he belonged there as much as the next person.
My gaze hit his large, grey eyes, the exact light grey color of mine, and a strangled word wrenched from my throat.
“Daddy?”
“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered, his stare roaming my face in wonder. “Never seen anything prettier, except maybe your girls.”
My jaw dropped open, and I felt my insides begin to shake.
How was this possible? They told me my dad was dead, but here he was, sitting before me, looking exactly the same way as he did in the last photograph I had of him, which incidentally, was taken twenty-five years before.
He hadn’t aged at all; there wasn’t a line on his face or a grey hair on his head.
It was as if he’d been frozen in time.
My heart soared because he was here.
My daddy was here.
Oh my God.
Without a thought, I rushed for him, but as I reached out for his hand, my fingers passed through his as if he were made of air.
My body locked, and my eyes widened as I whispered, “Daddy?”
His face fell, and he murmured, “Don’t be scared. I’m not here to hurt or frighten you. I’d never do that, Layla, not ever. You get that, right? I saw an opportunity and I took it, but I didn’t do it to scare you. I’ll always protect you.”
Tears hit the back of my throat, and an onslaught of emotions swept over me.
Just for a moment, I thought he was alive, and that his death had been a terrible, awful, heinous mistake, and that maybe he’d taken a blow to the head and lost his memory for all these years.
But he wasn’t really here.
Jesus, I didn’t know what he was, but he wasn’t alive.
My knees buckled and hit the tiled floor with a thud. I blinked, and the world began to swim. “How?” I breathed. “Why...? Are you a...?” My voice trailed off because the notion was too ridiculous. It was too impossible.
“A ghost?” he finished for me.
A sharp, brittle laugh left my throat because it was too absurd to even say the word.
Everybody knew there were no such things as ghosts, but my dad was here; I was seeing him with my own eyes.
I couldn’t explain it, and I couldn’t even attempt to get my head around it.
My hands still hovered inches from his, feeling neither heat nor cold, just a weird static electrical current that zapped through my fingertips.
“It’s one of many things you could call me, but I’m still the man who loved you, Layla.
The same one who used to tuck you in at night and tell you stories about princesses and knights in shining armor.
I’m the man who played tea parties with you and kissed you better when you fell and cut your knee.
I saw you laugh for the first time and take your first steps.
I was there in the good times and the bad, and I always will be. ”
His presence, his words, and the memories they evoked brought back everything I’d lost. Suddenly, it was too much. The raw emotions that I’d tried to keep locked down sprang free. I bent my head, covered my eyes, and burst into tears.
“I missed you,” I sobbed through my fingers. “Why did I have to lose you? The day you left, everything went to shit, Daddy. Mom... well, she… she stopped caring about anything, including me.”
“I know,” he said, his voice husky. “I saw it all. I tried to help. You had your gran, and I thought you had John and the boys, but your mom wouldn’t let him close.
I tried to intervene, but I couldn’t; I had to let things play out the way they were meant to, but I tried my best to make things better.
I sent light whenever I could”—he smiled—“and some sunshine.”
My tears turned to laughter, and I giggled because I knew it. The minute I found out I was pregnant, I knew my dad had sent Sunny to me.
“Thank you,” I whispered, my eyes still full of tears.
“I had to maneuver a lot, Layla,” he admitted. “You and Bowie were always meant to be. Even when you were kids, you used to follow each other around.”
A laugh burst out of me. “John said that.”
“Everything happened the way it was meant to, baby girl,” he told me, his forehead furrowing as if something caused him pain. “Even the tough stuff. Everything that happened brought you here.”
I nodded because he was right. I could see it now.
“I’ve seen your babies,” he whispered. “They’re so beautiful.”
My smile widened. “I know. Aren’t they amazing?”
He grinned. “They are, but I didn’t mean those babies.” He pointed toward my stomach, his eyes never leaving mine. “I meant those babies.”
My eyes bugged out. “Babies? As in plural?”
His grin widened.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. “I can’t believe Bowie.”
“You deserve it,” he said gently. “You deserve all the love you can wring out of life. God knows you went through enough to get here.” His voice lowered to a murmur so faint that I had to strain to hear the words. “I’m so proud of you, Layla. I love you so much...”
I blinked.
And he was gone.
The world around me blinked out too, as if somebody had literally turned out the light, because the strip light on the kitchen ceiling flashed twice, and then everything went dark.
I sat still in the shadows for a second with just the sounds of my own ragged breaths filling the silence, trying to decide whether I’d lost my mind or if maybe I’d just experienced my very own personal miracle.
That was when a cold, icy chill crept down my back.
The pressure in the ether thickened until it was so dense that my lungs had to strain just to pull in air. My arms prickled with goose bumps, and a sheen of freezing cold sweat glistened across my skin.
Movement from the doorway caught my eye, and my heart began to race as another figure appeared, but it wasn’t my dad; I could tell by its sheer size and the stench of tobacco that hung so strongly in the air that I almost gagged.
Jesus, I must have been going insane.
“Who are you?” I demanded, my clear, steady voice conveying a level of confidence that I wasn’t actually feeling. “What do you want?”
“Prettyyyyy,” the shadow replied in a voice that I could only describe as Gollum-like.
My skin crawled.
The thing shifted closer, spilling from the blackness of the shadowed doorway into the inky-blue moonlight bathing the kitchen.
The light of the moon and the coldness deep inside my flesh reminded me of a time years past, when I woke up in a strange room with the sounds of a party raging close by, after being drugged and violated.
The shape distorted, and I watched, holding my breath, as a long, ghostly arm reached toward me, forming into the point of a finger. It touched my arm, leaving a trail of ice in its wake.
I shrank back and squeezed my eyes closed, thinking about all the times Bowie and I had watched old horror movies on our big, comfortable couch, wrapped together in a blanket. I recalled how I’d always felt so safe because nothing in real life could ever harm me, especially ghosts.
“Go away,” I spat, lip curling. “Don’t touch me.”
The sound of deep, cracking laughter filled the room, and the tobacco smell became so strong that my stomach turned over.
Slowly, I rose from the tiled floor, my pulse hammering in my throat. I wanted it to be a trick of my imagination, a waking nightmare, but the feel of the monster’s slithering cold touch and the sickening stench of tobacco told me it was very real and ultimately dangerous.
The thing touched my hand, and a scream caught in my throat as I watched its main body draw closer. Its face came into view, distorted, but recognizable. The cold, beady eyes, the mask of scars, and the scruffy jawline that housed a mouth full of sharpened teeth, like a demon.
Bear.
I knew the legend—everyone in the club did—but seeing him there as a shadow, right in front of me, made panic rise through my throat and my breath saw painfully in my lungs.
The shadow came closer, his evil, demonic face drawing closer to mine. The stench of tobacco seemed to come off him in waves, almost turning the air green with its poison. He drew nearer until we were almost touching.
My teeth began to chatter—my fear a physical entity.
Then suddenly, through my tightly closed eyes, I sensed the sudden flood of light filling the room, and a deep voice called out, “What the fuck, Layla?”
I cracked one eye open, warmth flooding my body as my terrified stare settled on Atlas and Breaker standing in the same doorway where just minutes ago a dead man had lurked.
My body folded over at the waist, my relief so palpable that I couldn’t even stand.
My palms hit the table, and my eyes lifted to study the two men.
“You okay?” Atlas demanded, his eyes scanning the kitchen.
My face twisted and my eyes narrowed, then my voice, still pitchy with residual fear, bit out, “I will be when somebody tells me what the hell’s going on.”