In a short time, he was back in the television room, coffee in hand, and a tin of black licorice candies opened beside him. He doubted Sandy would be home before he finished the coffee, but it never hurt to be prepared. With his ill-health, he wasn’t supposed to drink.
He popped a licorice bite into his mouth, chewed, and tried to find something to watch. Nick was certain he would spend most of the time scanning through the various channels before giving up and deciding to work in the yard.
The television flickered and went black.
A heartbeat later, the electric Schlitz Beer sign over the television went out. Then the lights on their end tables and the Blu-ray player followed as an uncomfortable chill entered the room.
Faint light drifted down through the basement windows, and in it, Nick was able to see his own breath. A memory of childhood, when he had been staying with his grandparents in Maine, reached out from the past and shook him.
Ghosts are real, his grandfather had told him, lighting a cigarette. Don’t ever think they’re not. We saw plenty in France and Germany. People who didn’t know they were dead. Some of them, they wander right past you. Others, well, they died fighting, and they were hellbent to keep on fighting.
Nick’s home had never been haunted before, and his mind raced as he tried to remember if anything new had been purchased and brought into the house. Anything that might have had a ghost attached to it. His grandfather had taught him a good deal about ghosts and what might bring one into a house, if there wasn’t one there already.
His eyes widened as he remembered the sunglasses from Linda’s house.
The sunglasses he had brought home and that were still in his jacket pocket.
Linda was shooting at a ghost, but she didn’t know it, Nick realized. He cleared his voice, forced himself to be calm, and said aloud, “Who’s here?”
“What’s your name?” a woman asked.
Her voice was soft, almost sultry. It reminded him of the old actresses, the ones who seemed to dominate any room they entered. There was power and control in her tone. It gave Nick the feeling that whoever he was speaking to was dangerous.
“My name’s Nick,” he replied. “What’s yours?”
“Miriam.”
“Why are you here, Miriam?” Nick suspected the answer, but he wanted to be certain.
She laughed, and the sound caused an involuntary ripple of excitement to race through him.
Oh, he thought. She’s definitely dangerous.
“You brought me here, Nick,” she answered. “I was about to ask you why that was.”
“What do you mean?” She hadn’t revealed herself, and he didn’t know if she could see him or not.
“The sunglasses,” she told him, her voice coming from behind him for a moment. “You picked them up from Zeke’s desk and brought them here. Why is that?”
He cleared his throat, fear and nervousness creeping over him. He struggled for an answer, unsure why he had done it. I don’t know why, he thought. What am I going to say?
When he didn’t answer, she tried again, enunciating her words carefully and speaking in an exaggeratedly slow manner. “Why are my sunglasses upstairs in your jacket pocket? Why did you bring me here, Nick? There must be some sort of reason.”
Damn, I wish there was, he thought. “I don’t know why I would. I was only there to see what happened.”
“Was Zeke your brother?” Miriam asked, her voice now in front of him.
“No,” Nick replied. “Linda was my cousin.”
“Oh,” Miriam sighed. “Well, I’m sorry to tell you then that she shot him to death.”
“But why?” Nick asked.
“I think she was jealous,” Miriam answered, and Nick heard real emotion in her voice.
Anger.
“She must have heard me talking to Zeke,” the dead woman continued. “He was going to take me to Europe. To wherever I wanted. Finally. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to travel, Nick? How many years I’ve been messing around with a bunch of stupid fellas who can’t figure out which way is up, and which way is down?”
“No.”
“A long time,” she snapped and formed in front of him.
She was good-looking, in a trashy, pin-up sort of way, and despite the injury to her stomach and the blood that accompanied it, he could see how someone might find her attractive.
Especially Zeke, Nick thought angrily.
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. In a soft voice, she asked, “Do you like what you see?”
“No,” he answered, and he tried to remember what his grandfather had said about ghosts. How to get rid of them.
Nick couldn’t remember.
“No?” There was genuine surprise in her voice. “What do you mean by that?”
“You’re not my type, Miriam,” he told her. “Not to mention you’re dead.”
She sneered. “What difference does it make? Are you telling me you don’t like the way I look?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Nick nodded. “Come on, that’s the way it goes.”
“Everyone thinks I’m good-looking.”
“No,” Nick argued. “Not everyone.”
He saw her hands clench into fists, and he got to his feet.
“What are you going to do?” she hissed. “I’m dead, remember?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Nick responded, trying to keep the fear out of voice and failing a bit. “But I’m going upstairs for a snack.”
He turned stiffly around, his back to her, and reined in his fear as he started for the stairs.
“The hell you are!” she howled, and a pair of hands grabbed him by the back of his shirt and threw him down.
Nick tried to catch his balance but couldn’t. He landed hard, twisted around onto his belly, and sprang up, his blood pumping. His eyes darted about the room, but he couldn’t see her anymore.
Pain exploded across his eyes as an unseen fist smashed into his nose, sending him back a step. She kicked him in the groin, causing him to vomit his coffee and the scrambled eggs he had eaten for breakfast.
He dropped to his knees, gagging, and tried to think of a way out.
Another blow to the side of his head knocked him to the floor.
“Am I pretty now?!” she screamed.
“Uglier,” Nick gasped as he tried to crawl to the stairs. He screamed in agony as she stomped on his knees. The cold that penetrated his joints sent waves of pain crashing into him. He rolled onto his back and howled. Reaching down to see if his knees were all right, he vomited again as an unseen foot smashed into his stomach.
“You should have said I was pretty!” she yelled. “You should have done as I said!”
Again and again, she struck him, his limbs in agony as she worked them over.
“All I wanted to do was travel,” Miriam hissed. “That’s it. Nobody ever gave it to me. Not a one of you fellas did it. You all want something, but you don’t want to work for it. But you, you’re the worst. Because all you had to do, all I wanted you to do was tell me I was pretty.”
Nick spat out a wad of vomitous phlegm and whispered hoarsely, “Liar.”
She flickered in and out of his vision for a moment, and when she returned, she brought one foot up over his head.