Page 5 of Gift for My Ghost

“Just consider yourself lucky that I’m not prosecuting you for theft. You’re not getting anything else out of me.”

“Fine,” Alexis snapped. “Tim doesn’t need you anyway. He’s twice the businessman you are. We’ll be fine without you.”

“We?” Tim gave a harsh laugh. “There’s no we, you stupid bitch. I’m getting what he owes me and getting the hell out of this town. By myself.” Alexis looked so shocked he almost felt sorryfor her, but then Tim pulled out a gun and pointed it at him. “Now give me the fucking password.”

She didn’t even seem to notice the gun.

“You told me you loved me. That you wanted to be with me.”

“Why would I want to be with you? There are a lot younger and prettier fish in the sea, ones who know how to please a man instead of lying there like a rag doll.”

Alexis screeched and flew at him and everything went into slow motion. He saw Tim raise the gun and tried to shove her out of the way. Instead a wave of agony radiated through his chest. The last thing he heard before darkness surrounded him was a second shot.

For a long time, it had been as if he were asleep, a nightmarish sleep with occasional flashes of wakefulness, a faint sense that time was passing. However as the fiftieth anniversary of his death drew nearer, those moments came more frequently. As they did, so did the knowledge that he was trapped, here in the house he had once loved so much.

Alexis’s hatred had wrapped everything in a dark, sticky web from which there was no escape. She had been so angry and so intent on causing harm. When he realized what she was doing, he had tried to counteract her actions, even though he did not have the strength of her hatred.

But then Jessica had come along and freed him. She had called him, her light piercing the darkness that surrounded him. He remembered standing in the circle she had drawn, aware of himself in a way he hadn’t been for so long. Aware and warmed by her presence. He’d been cold for so long that even after shehad released him, he hadn’t wanted to leave the warmth of her companionship.

He’d felt a tug, something trying to pull him away, but he’d looked at her—small, pretty, almost delicate looking despite the strength of her will—and he’d known he couldn’t leave.

He hadn’t considered the possibility that she might not stay; that she might have moved on. But she had stayed. She’d even moved into his house. She could see him, and the loneliness which had surrounded him for so long vanished.

At first he had been content just with that, but as time wore on, he realized he wanted more. He wanted things he could never have. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to hold her hand when they were watching television, or stroke her hair when she was having a bad day. And more than anything, he wanted to kiss her, to feel those soft pretty lips beneath his.

He’d never really considered the afterlife while he was still alive. If he had, he would have assumed one was no longer troubled by the desires of the flesh. But it wasn’t true. He wanted her the way a man wants a woman. His body responded to her nearness. He knew it was an illusion, a memory of an erection rather than the real thing, but it felt real.

He gave a frustrated sigh and the doors to the balcony flew open again.Damn.His ability to manipulate physical objects intentionally had increased, but as a result, so had the unintentional consequences when his emotions triggered physical events

Although he didn’t need to be in physical proximity to close the doors, he automatically crossed the room towards them, then hesitated when something caught his attention. When he hadbeen standing here with Jessica earlier, he’d been too focused on her and the delightful discovery that he could now detect her sweet floral scent to pay much attention to anything else. This time he realized something else.

Usually when he approached the boundaries of the building, he encountered an invisible barrier, as if the air was too thick for him to move through it. He didn’t feel it now. Had that changed as well?

He cautiously moved out onto the balcony expecting at any moment to be slammed back into the house. Instead, he made it almost to the edge before the air thickened. There was a certain logic to it. The balcony was, after all, part of the building. But he didn’t think he’d ever gotten this far before.

Have I tried before?Or had he just assumed it wasn’t possible? Either way, he was grateful for the change and for the wider view out over the town to the mountains beyond.

He loved Fairhaven Falls. When he’d moved here, he’d felt as if he were coming home, even though he’d been born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. Perhaps it was because his grandparents had lived there. Whatever the reason, his love for the town had never changed, despite his unhappiness. In fact, he sometimes thought it was the only thing that had kept him going during the long, unhappy years of his marriage.

It still seemed so familiar. There were a few new buildings, but most of the houses surrounding him were the same ones that had been there when he first moved in. There were a few changes—an addition here, a new roof there, sleek new cars parked in the driveways, and a tree he remembered his neighbor planting, now grown tall and majestic—but overall it still felt the same.

As he smiled down in the quiet street below, a flash of color caught his attention. A small elderly woman was walking briskly down the street wearing a neon green tracksuit so bright it almost seemed to vibrate.

Not a woman, he realized as she drew closer and he saw pale green skin beneath the mop of short white curls. Something about her seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

Then she came to a dead halt directly in front. He’d concealed his appearance, but she was looking directly up at him and he was sure that she could see him. Dark eyes, curiously compelling, studied his face.

“It’s about time,” she said briskly.

He couldn’t help himself.

“About time for what?”

She didn’t seem the least bit surprised by his response, just wagged her finger at him.

“We’re already into October. You’d better get busy.”

“Busy doing what?” he asked, then blinked when he realized she was no longer there.

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