Chapter Eight
I guess last night pissed a lot of people off because the bitch is back and she’s not welcome. I make that extremely apparent when she steps over the threshold of Phantom’s bedroom making googly eyes at him again.
“Take that!” I screech, hurling an empty soda can at her. “And that too!” I add, throwing an empty beer bottle towards the door.
Autumn’s eyes widen. “She’s feisty today.”
“She doesn’t like it when women come in my bedroom.”
“Our bedroom!”
A sock gets my wrath next, but it’s launch efforts don’t have the same effect as a good bottle or can.
“Damn sock! Sail farther!”
Autumn giggles as the sock limply drops at her feet, its terrifying presence nullified by her smile. “Seems that way.”
I guess she’s never smelled Phantom’s feet, because she would’ve feared the putrid smelling garment with more terror and unease.
I suddenly feel the magnifying glass again, like I’m a lowly ant on a sidewalk being roasted alive.
“Get out of my head, bitch!” I slam whatever door she just opened between us, making sure she feels the heat.
Autumn frowns. “She makes it very difficult to connect with her. She doesn’t want me here.”
Phantom sighs. “I’m sorry. Calling you here was probably a big mistake, but after what happened last night, I really had no choice.” He sits on the bed, rubbing at his temples in frustration. “She drives me crazy! I just want her to cross over, or leave me alone.”
“That’s not what you want and you know it! You wouldn’t have asked me to stay if you did.”
Autumn’s brows scrunch together. “Oh! Um, this is gonna sound kinda weird, but by chance did you ask her to stay?”
Phantom’s head shoots up. “How would you know that?”
She shrugs, smiling shyly. “She let me in long enough to hear her say that.”
“I did? Damn this flaky door and its rusty hinges!”
“Ghosts have a hard time keeping me out when they’re being vulnerable. Emotions lower their guard against me.”
“Good to know. Show no emotion… Check!”
“Mind if I sit down?” she questions, motioning to the bed next to him.
“Sure, by all means. But don’t be surprised if she suddenly rips you out of the room kicking and screaming by your hair.”
There’s those wide as fuck eyes again. Why does it make her prettier when she does it? I hate it. I hate her.
Moving over to the window, I stare outside, my eyes focusing on the girl who’s hovering just outside the property line. I’ve never seen her before, but it’s obvious she’s a ghost with the way her head is cocked at an awkward angle.
I can’t really see her from here, but it looks like she’s searching for someone. Too bad I can’t move farther than this room, otherwise, I’d march out there and find out who the fuck she is and why she’s hanging around my haunt.
“So, Phantom, tell me about Eve.”
Whipping around, my focus goes back on my man and the woman who’s sitting too damn close to him. I don’t like the way they’re looking at each other, or how they’re devouring each other with their eyes.
“Knock that shit off before I pluck out your eyeballs!”
If she heard me, she doesn’t indicate it at all, she just stares at Phantom’s handsome face, seeing the same turmoil and worry that I do.
“What do you want to know?”
“Well, getting to know her through you, can help me channel her better.”
“You ain’t channeling shit, bitch! This ghostly phone call has been disconnected and is no longer in service.”
Phantom’s eyes move to the ceiling before looking back at her, and he frowns. “She was the biggest bitch.”
“Hey now! I take offense to that!”
Autumn grins. “Okay, wasn’t there anything good about her that you liked?”
His shoulders slightly lift. “She was phenomenal in bed.”
Autumn shakes her head. “You gotta give me more than that, Phantom.”
He glances her way. “You can call me Blake if you want. I know calling me by my club road name can be hard for people outside of it.”
“Oh, hell no! You don’t get to call him Blake. That’s my man. I’m the only one who gets to call him by his real name!”
I must’ve let her in for a few seconds, because the ghost listener straightens. “Well, to be safe, I’m gonna keep calling you Phantom for now. Eve doesn’t like other women calling you Blake. She’s very territorial over your name.”
“Seems about right,” Phantom growls, letting out a deep breath that he was holding in. “Even when she was alive, she would never allow women to get close to me. Every time we’d break up, and I even attempted to move on to someone new, she was right there causing havoc.”
“Sounds toxic.”
He rolls his eyes. “You have no fucking idea.”
“Did you love her?”
This is where my interest gets immediately piqued. Because there’s only one answer to this question. The right answer.
“At one time, yes. But over the years, she made it impossibly hard to keep loving her.”
“What the fuck? How can you even say that?”
Autumn smiles, patting his hand out of pity. “Relationships can be very hard, especially if only one of you is working on keeping it together.”
“It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying, it was just too much, you know?
The day she died…” This time he gets choked up, the emotion stalling in his throat, his eyes burning with tears.
“The day she died she wasn’t even supposed to come with me.
She forced me to let her come. I actually tried to leave without her, and she threw a fit. So, I caved, like I always do.”
“Blake, stop acting like you didn’t want me there. You know how much we enjoy riding your motorcycle together.”
Autumn’s eyes slowly open. “She says you two enjoyed riding your motorcycle together.”
Hey, maybe there’s something to this ghost talking after all?
“We definitely had some good rides,” he agrees. “But that one… that one will haunt me for the rest of my life. Much like her.”
“What happened that day?”
Phantom leans back on his elbows, staring up at the ceiling again. He always does that when he’s avoiding a talk, that’s about to get serious. It’s a way to keep people from getting too close to him, I guess.
“We were near the back of the pack. Normally, I ride up front because I’m the Road Captain, but because she came with me, I switched up with someone else and took a position in the back.
We hadn’t even been driving five minutes before she started laying into me.
She wanted me to name her my Ol’ Lady, but with everything going on between us, I just couldn’t do it.
Claiming someone is like asking someone to marry you in the biker world. And the thought of marrying Eve…”
“The thought of marrying Eve what?” I growl, ready to pick another fight with him.
He sighs. “Was torturous for me.”
“TORTUROUS! What the fuck are you saying?”
Autumn, caught in the middle, swivels her head to look at him. “She couldn’t have been that bad.”
Another fucking eye roll? If this man rolls his eyes while talking about me one more damn time…
“She was fine when we were younger. I would’ve done anything to make her happy because she was my first love and meant everything to me.
But as we got older, she wanted more from me—things I wasn’t ready to give her.
That’s when she started to change. One minute she’d be happy and smiling, the next she’d be throwing things and trying to rip my head off.
I don’t hit women. I refuse. But that woman got me there so many damn times.
When the bad things start to outweigh the good, you have to take a look at the relationship and see if it’s even worth saving. ”
He changes the subject. “What about you? Any toxic exes still latched on to you?”
She laughs. “Actually no. I’ve only ever dated one boy my whole life.
Once he realized I could talk to dead people, he got freaked out, called me a witch, and bounced.
It was kind of ridiculous. One day, he just woke up and said I wasn’t the one for him, kicking me out of his apartment.
After that, I floundered for a while, trying to figure out what the right path for me was. ”
“How’d you figure out you could talk to ghosts?” he questions, looking way too interested.
She blushes, her freckles deepening, making her stupidly more beautiful. “It’s kind of a scary story.”
“I like scary stories, Autumn. I ride in a biker club that bases its road names off horror villains, though, I’ve probably seen less horror flicks than most of the guys here.”
She laughs. “Well, okay. So, the story is… my college did a tour of the Carson City prison, the one people think is haunted. I didn’t believe in that sort of stuff until I walked through those doors.
It was like I could feel the sadness aching in my chest. The more I toured, the heavier that ache became, until I suddenly blacked out, hitting my head on a concrete wall.
When I finally came to, my teacher and classmates were standing around me, but they weren’t who I was focused on.
I was focused on the inmate with a shank sticking out of his eye, staring at me like he was waiting for me to die.
The vile and filthy things that man said to me will never go away.
He made me feel dirty and gross. He said he wanted to kill me and then fuck my dead corpse.
” She shudders. “Not all ghosts are that mean and violent, but the ones who merge with the dark ones are.”
“Dark ones?” Finally! Something she says sounds fucking interesting. “Go on, freckle Lady, keep talking.”
“Dark ones?” Phantom questions.
“Um, I guess you can call them shadow people. Maybe even demons. They feed off negativity, especially spirit negativity. That’s why some ghosts are stronger and more violent than others.
The dark ones take them over, then they consume whatever good is left in their soul, before dragging them to the shadows with them.
I’ve only encountered the dark ones twice. Once at the prison… and now here.”
“Here?” Phantom questions, sitting up a little straighter.