He’s invited too.
Okay, sounds good, I responded.
Cool. Goodnight.
Night.
I clicked off the phone and placed it back on my side table as I tried to drift off again, but didn’t manage to close my eyes until the pastel shades of early morning filtered in through the window.
Chapter Six
A Few Days Later
“In this house, you’d think the spiders would eat the butterflies,” I mumbled to myself, straining onto the very points of my toes to reach the last visible cobweb in the room. I gripped the ladder with one hand and dusted with the other.
Most of the moving boxes were unpacked, and I’d managed to clean the store and most of the house.
“What?” Finn asked, head bobbing up from the floor.
He’d been pretending to polish the baseboards for half an hour now. From my vantage point on the ladder, I could see he was actually fifty-six percent through a Kindle book. I didn’t call him on it. At least the book was on his school reading list. We’d agreed he’d start school again in a few more days, after we were settled. I’d been sending him to bed by eight-thirty every night so he could get into a routine again.
“Nothing. Why don’t you get to bed, okay? I’ve got this.”
Finn sat up, reaching his hands over his head and stretching. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes casually, trying too hard not to appear tired. There was worry in his eyes. We’d tried to get him to go to bed in his room all week, but each night he ended up coming into mine.
“You have your stars nightlight and your sound machine,” I said. “And you’ve got Piggy. Plus, you know I cleansed and protected the house with three different potions, Finn. This house is safe.”
“I know… I just can’t help it that I still have nightmares.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. “Just try to make it through the night, okay? I’ll be up to tuck you in in just a few minutes.”
“Okay,” he answered, but then paused as he eyed the ladder. “Are you sure you should be up on that thing?” He swept his gaze up the twelve foot podium ladder, face twisting up in worry. It barely put me level with the front entryway. This house seemed to have been built for a giant. Everything on the bottom floor was set comically high on the wall. Our home in Los Angeles had forced five-foot-ten Jeremy to stoop to avoid the ceiling fan. That’s how ridiculously low the ceilings were.
“I’m fine,” I answered.
“Seriously mom, if you fall off and break your neck, what am I gonna do?”
“Call 9-1-1?”
“I’m being serious, Mom.”
“And I’m forty-three, not eighty-three, Finn. I’ll be fine.”
“Mom…”
“I’ll turn in when I’m done in the living room and if I fall, you can say I told you so the whole way to the hospital, okay?”
“That’s not funny,” Finn grumbled, but got to his feet. I strained my ears for the tell-tale moan of the stairs as he started up them. It was fortunate the lights had all been working, or we’d have been living in the hotel for months until I could get an electrician inside this dusty old house. I was not navigating those stairs in the dark.
I yawned—one of those full-mouth, cave style yawns. I was exhausted. My hands wandered self-consciously over my body, smearing a little of the Pine Sol multi-surface cleaner over my oversized cotton t-shirt. Stained with speckles of paint and ground in dirt, I wasn’t worried about keeping it pretty. My belly bulged a little over the equally stained yoga pants, reminding me I should start showing some interest in running again.
I was aging like my mom. The lines on my face were subtle, the grays few and easy enough to conceal. My eyes though... I noticed recently that I looked perpetually tired. And the year-round chapped lips were bothering me. Hmm, there was another idea for a potion. Magic lip balms would constantly be in demand if I could master a solution.
“You ought to try cold cream, doll,” a high, nasal voice sounded from just inches behind me. “Always worked wonders on my lips.”
I nearly screamed and even more nearly launched myself from the ladder. It wobbled, thrown off balance by my sudden movement, threatening to spill me painfully, possibly lethally, to the floor. I hastily clung to the thing, trying to steady it. A pale hand shot into view, giving the ladder a light shove in the opposite direction, helping to stabilize it. It wobbled once again, then settled with a rattle.
For a few, incredibly long seconds, I was certain this was how I was going to die.
“Oh, stop your worrying, dollface. Everything’s jake,” the nasal voice huffed in the elevated pronunciation of the Mid-Atlantic accent that characterized movies until the 1950s.
I rounded on the pale, translucent shape hovering behind me. If she weren’t already dead, I’d have killed her myself.
Darla leaned against the door frame I’d been polishing, as casual as you please. It was difficult to tell in this light, but I knew she’d be wearing a deep pink, drop-waist silk dress, beaded with rhinestones. Her inky black bob was accentuated by a jeweled headband, and you could have choked a horse with the amount of pearls around her neck, wrists, and fingers.
She smirked at me, unrepentant as I tried to burn a hole between her eyes with my glower alone. “What are you doing here, Darla?” I hissed, mindful to keep my voice down. If Finn heard the ‘D-word’, he’d go ballistic.
No ghosts. I’d promised.
Darla pressed a slender, bejeweled finger to her lips and winked. She’d died with falsies on, forever the image of an aspiring Hollywood starlet. She’d have looked poised and elegant if it weren’t for the neat little bullet hole just under her feathered headband, courtesy of her jealous ex-lover, Frankie. He’d cut her life and career short just before she hit the big time. Or, at least, that’s what she said.
Not only had he cut Darla’s life short, but then he’d turned the gun on himself. And he’d been the poltergeist that made Finn’s life a living hell for the last year. Until I’d exorcised the SOB.
As to Darla, I was fairly sure it was being murdered that hadn’t allowed her to leave this earthly plane. Murder victims were prone to become specters and couldn’t easily be banished. In Darla’s case, I think it was her anger that kept her here. She was beyond pissed off about missing her big break, and so decided to stick around to complain about it... for the last ninety-five years.
But, the question was… how in the hell had she ended up here, in Haven Hollow?
“How in the hell did you end up here?”
She feigned extreme interest in her nails. “Oh, I stowed away.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to breathe in the sharp, pine scent of the cleaner to center myself. Breathe in, I will not shout at Darla. Breathe out, I will not shout at Darla...
“What do you mean you stowed away? How?”
She puffed up her tiny and perky bosoms, or ‘bubs’ as she called them, and appeared very indignant. “Well, I ain’t no Dumb Dora…”
“I didn’t say you were. I just want to know how you ended up here, when you died in Los Angeles!”
Darla chewed one painted thumbnail thoughtfully. “Will ya let me stay if I tell you?”