Chapter 1 #4
“Ah yes, the manly sport of football. How gay!” Tiberius crowed, patting Miss Petunia’s gloved hand.
I did catch a peek at her wrist where the glove and the cuff of her gown failed to meet.
There was no meat on her wrist, just bare bone.
Crap. My sight flew from her hand to her eyes.
She lowered them demurely, then floated free of Tiberius.
He turned to watch her move off. “Oh dear, she is a skittish one.” He sighed and rested his hands on his belly.
“Between you and me, I find that her face being chewed off by a bear is a small price to pay in comparison to her silent approval of my poetry. Mother always told me to find a meek woman who spoke when spoken to, and I seem to have finally done so. Damn pity it was in the afterlife!”
“Right,” I mumbled as I began to slowly peel away. “Speaking of my guy, I guess I had better head back to the gate to find him.”
“Oh yes, I don’t wish to hold you up. I did have a new sonnet about the shape of my sweet love’s toes, but that can wait for another day!
I hope you arrive home safely. Rumor has it that the Tewberry twins have been hiding in their attic for the better part of ten days now. Have you heard or spoken to them?”
I stared at the ghost with the large belly and equally big nose. “No, I haven’t.”
“Hmm, well, that’s beyond odd. Normally, they’re quite rambunctious this time of year.
Upset over the lack of gifts on Christmas and all of that.
Perhaps they’re just biding their time until the humans that they live with go on holiday to Bridgeport to visit their family over the New Year.
Oh, I see Miss Rhonda Mills and her sister Betty Anne are heading our way. ”
With that announcement, Tiberius tipped his head at the young women nearing me and left to return to his lady love.
With a groan, I turned to greet the sisters in the matching yellow polka dot bikinis.
Both were missing one yellow sandal. They had matching Jackie Kennedy bouffant bobs, long legs, and were already talking to me.
Outwardly, they appeared fine aside from the vascular marbling.
How they had drowned was a mystery as neither sister would speak about it, but there had been mention of a strange man seen near the lake that day.
Did he kill them, or did they get into a squabble and drown each other?
Their misadventure at Lake Killikee in 1964 was just one of many spooky tales in this part of the country.
Given how pushy they could be, the fact that they had kept the cause of their deaths a secret for so long was truly impressive.
These were the spirits that liked to latch onto a seer like a leech.
I began moving away from them as I smiled my most polite smile.
They were speaking over each other now, high-pitched New Englander drawls, the tone of which was already giving me a headache.
The two of them weren’t exactly malevolent, but they were suspiciously close to it, and that made me edgy.
“Archie, we simply must speak to our boyfriends,” they droned nearly in unison as I began moving in reverse, taking care not to back into low stones as I stumbled cautiously to the roadway.
“They’re not alive anymore,” I told them for at least the tenth time.
I had done the work to try to find their steady guys last month.
With Monique’s help, we discovered both had passed away within the past ten years.
“I’m really sorry, but I think you both need to resign yourselves to that fact. Now I have to go.”
“No! Don’t say that. They were due to propose!” the sisters wailed and then lunged at me.
My heel caught on a headstone buried under some snow.
Arms windmilling, I nearly went to my ass.
One of the sisters, as they were similar enough to be twins, reached out to catch me.
Kind of her, really, but her touch set off a sickening whirlwind of memories that flooded my head like a tsunami of remembrances.
Flashes of childhood squabbles with her sister, dating, getting frisky with her boyfriend, a varsity jacket, a summer day at the lake…
a stranger…sex on the shore…booze…pot…the warm kiss of water flowing over your face as you sank deeper and deeper…
the face of a blue-skinned water ghost that pulls you down into the pondweed where your soul is swapped for the Shin Gui’s… bulging eyes leering at you and—
“Archie!” The vision snapped in two like a twig just as my ass met the ground. Phil gently looped an arm around my shoulders as I fought like mad to try to breathe. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.”
I spun to bury my face in his thick neck, smashing my glasses into my nose, while my lungs filled to bursting with bitter cold air.
Tears blurred my vision. Phil smelled of sweat and that sweet scent that was uniquely his.
I coughed against his neck, trembling, as the brackish taste of pond water filled my mouth.
I jerked back from my boyfriend to spit just a mouthful of earthy water into the snow.
Someone snuffled my cheek, then licked my face.
A memory of chasing a squirrel wheedled in to replace the horror of drowning.
I sat back on my heels. I looked about through smudged lenses and found no trace of the sisters in their bikinis.
The cemetery was deathly quiet aside from dog pants in my ear. Not even the crows were speaking.
“And here…I thought people were…only supposed to see…ghosts of Christmas past, present, and…future on Christmas morning,” I wheezed while Phil rubbed my back. Man, the life of a medium was loads of fun. Ho-ho-ho.