I didn’t want to answer that question. Instead, I eyed her narrowly. “What object are you attached to?” That had to be it. There was no other way she could have traveled with us. And that meant there was no getting rid of her unless I got rid of the object in question.
Dammit.
Not that I minded Darla so much. Unlike the ghost of Frankie, who had a mean streak a mile wide, Darla was harmless. As ghosts went, she was the least objectionable one I’d come across. True, she was more likely to give unsolicited and outdated fashion advice than my mother, but she was ultimately innocuous. So what if she droned endlessly about the talkies she’d just missed starring in?
I started down the ladder, my skin screaming against the cold of her proximity.
“Butt me, dollface, an’ we’ll talk about it.”
“You know I don’t smoke, Darla, and even if I did, you wouldn’t be able to.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” she grumbled.
“What object did you attach yourself to?” I repeated.
“I ain’t gonna tell you if you’re just gonna go all Mrs. Grundy on me.”
Mrs. Grundy was a 1920s term for an uptight individual. Mrs. Grundy aside, I suddenly realized I could use Darla for something—for getting an answer to a question I’d been wondering.
“We can talk about whatever object you’ve attached yourself to later,” I started.
“We can?”
I nodded. “First, I need you to tell me if there are any other spirits in this house? Maybe one of a man murdered here?” I remembered the nightmares I’d been having lately and how I’d thought maybe this person had died in the house, hence the visions.
Darla cocked her head to the side and appeared to be thinking. Then she shook it. “Can’t say as I feel anyone else.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, seein’ as how I’m a ghost, I would know if there were more of my kind here.”
That was true. And it was the reason I’d asked her in the first place. “So you don’t feel any other spiritual energy? What about residual haunting energy?”
There are two types of hauntings—residual and intelligent. Residual hauntings occur when something traumatic happens in a space, such as a murder. Negative energy is literally blasted into the atmosphere, causing the space to imprint or record whatever happened. Then the energy just replays the events over and over again. But, there is no interaction between the living and the dead in a residual haunting. The entities involved are unaware of their surroundings. It’s literally just an imprint of a different time.
An intelligent haunting is different. An intelligent haunting is a spirit who can interact with his or her surroundings. In this case, the person is still the same as he or she was in life, but now they’re just missing their bodies. This is the type of haunt usually referred to as a ‘ghost’. Darla was a good example of an intelligent haunting.
“Nope, nothing like that either,” she said. “Looks like it’s just you and me, toots.”
“Hmm,” I said, shaking my head, because it didn’t make sense and I wasn’t sure what to make of the visions now.
Maybe they weren’t visions at all, I told myself. Maybe they were literally just nightmares that seemed overly real?
That was certainly the easiest explanation to go with. But, there was still something that didn’t sit well with me. “When we first moved in, I felt a few cold spots,” I started, looking at Darla again.
“Oh, that was me.”
I glared at her. “You were already here? Before the furniture arrived?”
“Right.”
I shook my head, still curious as to what she’d attached herself to, but I knew that conversation was going to take a lot of effort and, at the moment, there was one topic that outweighed all the others. And that topic needed to be discussed post haste.
“You and I need to come to an understanding right now,” I started, eyeing Darla narrowly.
“And what’s that?”
“If Finn finds out you’re here, he’s going to flip out. If you’re going to stay here, under no circumstances are you to ever reveal yourself to Finn, understood?”
“Does that mean you’re gonna let me stay?”
Did that mean I was going to let her stay? I sighed. “Until you give me reason not to.”
“Whoopee!” Darla giggled and then promptly disappeared into the wall.
I muttered a nasty word beneath my breath and then groped for change in a pocket that wasn’t there. I’d need to add fifty cents to the swear jar by morning. I had a feeling it’d be overflowing by month’s end.
I was more than sure Darla wouldn’t keep her promise and at some point, Finn was going to see her, whether she intended it or not.
Family blowup in t-minus a few weeks everybody…
Chapter Seven
I eased the Jeep into place behind a silver Toyota, narrowly avoiding hitting the rear bumper.
“Jeez, Mom…” Finn said as he looked over at me with concern. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine,” I answered and inhaled deeply.
But, I wasn’t fine—I was exhausted.
I’d had another nightmare. This one also featuring that awful creature and the man. And, just like the other two instances, I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. And I still didn’t have any answers—Darla had insisted there were no other spirits in the house, and there wasn’t any residual energy either. And that meant I had nothing to go on. I didn’t know who this man was—I didn’t even know his name!
And that doesn’t matter, I reminded myself. Because I’m not about to derail my life to figure out what happened to the guy. I have enough going on with moving to a new town, getting Finn settled and opening a store. I don’t have time to add the mystery of whatever happened to this guy to the pile.
Even though I was fairly sure that was exactly the reason I kept having the nightmare visions—because whoever this man was, he was reaching out to me.
Well, I’m not going to answer!
The nightmares were wearing me out, leaving me more tired than when I’d first gone to bed. On any other day, I’d have gone home, taken an Ambien and slipped underneath the downy comforter to take a long nap. But today wasn’t an ordinary day. Today was Finn’s first day of school.
The dropoff line was relatively small, probably owing to the fact that we were so early. Finn hadn’t wanted to be late on his first day, and I didn’t blame him. Even thirty minutes before school started, I noticed the neat gravel parking lot to the side of the school was already full. And other students were arriving either on foot or riding bikes.
Not that I was surprised—Haven Hollow was the smallest town I’d ever seen, so no wonder the Norman Rockwell vibe carried over to the mode of transportation of the students. Back in Los Angeles, most parents wouldn’t allow their kids to walk or bike to school. There were just too many weirdos, too much traffic, too many things that could go wrong…
But here…
Here you could go for miles without even encountering another vehicle on the road. It was almost unsettling, in a way. Cities like Los Angeles were constantly moving, everyone busily going here or there, and doing this or that. It was almost like the city had a pulse.