Page 7 of The Ghost of Christmas Present

Louisa answered the phone at the library’s front desk, coffee mug full and eyes blinking away the blur caused by all-night reading. “Pine Ridge Community Library.”

Belatedly, she realized that it was five in the morning and she should have let the answering machine take the call. Also, it was Christmas Eve, and the library was closed.

“Hello, this is Officer Ardy Walsh. Is that Louisa?”

“Oh, hi Officer Walsh!” Louisa recalled the officer who did a safety story time every year. Plus, in a small town with only a few police, you began to recognize members of the local law enforcement.

“Are you okay? I got a few calls that lights were on in the library overnight and a car was parked outside.”

“That would never happen in the city,” Louisa muttered. “I’m so sorry to trouble you, Officer. I’m fine, I just fell asleep here and then figured I’d attend to a few housekeeping matters since I had off today and nowhere to go for the holiday.”

“What? Oh, well, hey, my wife and I are getting together with the Wymarks and our extended families tomorrow at—”

“Oh, no. No, that’s okay, thank you. I’ll probably do a video call with my brother and his family tomorrow, and my parents will be coming home from visiting my grandparents after New Year’s. I’m fine.”

“Well... If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. I’ll be leaving in a few hours—but I might be back later. You know us bookworms. Being alone in a library for Christmas is a pretty big present!”

After a few more pleasantries and reassurances, Louisa hung up the phone and returned to her legal pad full of notes.

She’d felt like a real historian through the night, chasing the town’s history through several highs and lows, and big population booms in the 1950s and 1980s. Pine Ridge’s library had been used as a school at one point in the late 1890s before the town began to expand.

But it was the fact that Mortimer Ashfield lived—and likely died—in the original building before its renovation and expansion that fascinated her the most.

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Getting old.

Biological clock is pounding in my ears. Making me horny. Wanting to dream of some great lover, some secret admirer.

Which a ghost isn’t.

Not a ghost! A dream.

She sat, pen tapping, lower lip working between her teeth. She’d never had a dream like that. She woke up warm and wet, words burning in her brain as if she’d just attended a lecture and memorized every word.

I wouldn’t dream like that—with those words. With that accent.

Her dream companion had a faint accent that she couldn’t place as a foreign nationality or regional dialect. It was more like a time period, a preciseness in enunciation coupled with such poised, poetic speech.

Like a man who lived in the Victorian era?

“Mortimer Ashfield cannot be your secret admirer, idiot.”

Whap!

Louisa shrieked and whirled, pen held out in front of her like a weapon.

What are you going to do? Write him to death?

Whap!

Was that the sound of books hitting the floor in the children’s fiction section?

Pulse pounding and hand on her cell phone, Louisa crept through the library, trying not to think about the horror movies she’d watched as a teenager.

Two books lay on the floor, one next to the other.

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