Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“I wish you’d stayed in the hospital,” Liam said with a scowl.
“Why? You’re a doctor. You can be my doctor.” She smiled sweetly up at him.
Her charm assault didn’t work. He continued to frown at her. “You should have had an MRI and a CT scan. An EKG. An echocardiogram—”
“Liam, come on. We know what caused my collapse.” Even if she couldn’t tell the doctors in Cooperstown the truth without ending up in the psych ward. “It was the brain ghost. Not some stroke or heart attack or whatever.”
“Natalie, the brain ghost might have been the cause of your collapse, but without the necessary tests we don’t know the effects the attack had on your body. It could have resulted in a seizure or a stroke or damage to your heart.”
“Am I acting like I had a stroke or a seizure? No. Now that I’m out of that hospital I feel fine.
I can think. I can breathe. I can even walk, not that you’ll let me.
” She raised a brow pointedly at Liam, who’d only agreed to let her go to the public meeting of the village board that night if she agreed to attend in a wheelchair.
“Just because you can walk, doesn’t mean you should walk,” he said and reached down to release the brakes on the wheels.
She let out a sigh. “Fine. Just push me inside. I don’t want to miss the time set aside for public comments on the agenda.”
“…I find her nearly dead on the train tracks twenty-four hours ago and she’s concerned about agendas…” Liam grumbling under his breath was a familiar comfort to her as he wheeled her toward the glass door.
Someone seated in the front row saw them coming and jumped up to open the door.
Inside, she glanced around.
Stone was there presiding over the meeting as mayor, of course. Along with the four elected trustees and the village clerk.
There were well over a dozen Mudville residents seated facing the board. Among them Harper, Agnes, Mary Brimley, Dee Flanders and, surprisingly, Margaret Trout, whose eyes widened when she saw Natalie in the wheelchair.
What Natalie didn’t see were any of the ghosts.
Harper had texted and assured her she’d passed the word on to Gabe and Millie about Natalie’s plan to attend the meeting tonight.
Harper said she’d asked Gabe to rally the rest of the ghosts and get them to the meeting too—they needed all hands on deck for this situation—but Natalie didn’t see even one ghost here now.
Were they all out on patrol?
They shouldn’t be. As far as she knew, they rotated on a preassigned shift schedule. Spirits were surprisingly organized, considering they couldn’t write anything down. That made it even more odd that not one had shown up here.
Natalie glanced up at Liam.
He’d pushed her chair to the end of the front row and parked it next to Harper. He squatted down next to her now and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t see any ghosts,” she whispered the words low.
No use riling up the non-believers, or those who believed but didn’t like the reality of sharing their village with spirits of the dead.
She continued, “Why aren’t any of them here? Is something going on we don’t know about?”
Liam shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Her mind spun with possibilities. Were the ghosts all currently locked in an epic battle against the evil entity while she sat here waiting for her turn to speak?
Natalie turned to Harper, about to ask if she knew where Gabe was, when she heard Stone say in his official mayoral voice, “Any public comments?”
She’d have to ask about Gabe later, because that was her cue. Natalie raised her hand.
Stone tipped his head in her direction. “Natalie, go ahead.”
She moved to rise from the wheelchair, which sent Doctor Liam into overprotective boyfriend mode. “No. Sit. I’ll move you around.”
He pushed her forward then angled the wheelchair so she could address both the members of the board seated in the front and the attendees opposite them.
“Mr. Mayor, esteemed trustees, ladies and gentlemen. You all know me. Know how I earn a living…”
“Is she doing Quint’s speech from Jaws?” one trustee mumbled to another.
Natalie ignored the comment and continued, “and you’ve no doubt heard that I can see spirits.”
There were the expected grumbles among those gathered.
“Whether you believe in my ability or you still doubt it,” she said, raising her voice louder to be heard over the murmurs.
“You can’t deny the evidence that there is something out of the ordinary happening here in Mudville.
I believe it all stems from the arrival of a new spirit and it’s a bad one.
It attacked me. Put me in the hospital.”
“Almost killed you, you mean,” Liam added low in that deep voice that on any other occasion made her think naughty thoughts about all the things she’d like to do with him.
She continued, “Yes. It did almost kill me. And it’s my belief it’s the same entity that attacked Margaret Trout and the same thing that caused the heart attack that killed Doug.”
“And it attacked Alice,” Agnes announced, loud and clear.
It attacked Alice? This was news to Natalie but she couldn’t ask for more over the loud cross chatter.
Stone pounded on the table. “Quiet down. Quiet. Let’s have some order, please.”
When the room quieted, Agnes continued. “Sorry, Natalie, for interrupting, but Alice came out of her coma while you were in the hospital. She called me right before I left for tonight’s meeting. Alice is sure it was the brain ghost that ran her off the road and caused her trike accident.”
Again the room erupted in disorder.
Snippets of the comments reached Natalie up front.
“Brain ghost?”
“Ridiculous! I’ve never heard of such nonsense.”
“Crazy as an old loon, that Alice. Just like that book seller.”
Natalie felt her blood pressure rise as her pulse pounded over the ignorant insults from the closed-minded public.
Good thing Liam didn’t know what was happening inside her body or he’d be wheeling her right out of there. She’d be hooked up to a heart monitor before she could say, worry wart.
The ruckus caused Stone to have to call for quiet again.
When he finally achieved his goal and the din lessoned, Margaret Trout stood, slowly, gingerly, as if she hadn’t quite recovered from her attack yet.
In fact, Margaret looked how Natalie felt. Beaten up, from the inside.
“It attacked me too. Twice. The same thing I saw jump in front of my car before I crashed into the phone pole by the post office is what assaulted me on the sidewalk in front of the library. Natalie Chase is not lying. There is something here in this village and it’s bad.
We have to do something before it hurts someone else.
” Margaret, Natalie’s sudden and unexpected ally, turned to speak directly to her. “I believe you. Tell us what to do.”
Her biggest doubter, possibly her largest critic, believed her.
It felt like a momentous occasion. Natalie’s eyes clouded with the mist caused by Margaret’s words. Margaret Trout believed her. The way she looked now, she would follow wherever Natalie led to fight this evil entity.
There was one problem.
Natalie had no clue what the hell to do to fight and defeat the brain ghost.