Page 20 of One Last Night

“Very well. I’ll look into him. If you can do so safely and discreetly, you might consider investigating the servants. As you know, it’s not unheard of for household staff to be behind these sorts of crimes.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea. I will.”

“Be careful, though. Please. I don’t want to have to shoot another cook.”

I grimace a little. At one of my positions, I discovered the dead body of my employer on his boat. I eventually learned thathis killer was the household cook, who murdered him out of revenge for his cancellation and absorption of her pension. In the ensuing struggle, she nearly killed me, but Sean rescued me in the nick of time.

My grimace turns into a smile. “That was our first kiss.”

“I prefer to keep the memory of the shooting and the kiss separate,” he says. “But either way, I’d like you to be more careful this time.”

“I will. Thank you, Sean.”

“Of course. I love you, Mary.”

I will never get tired of hearing him say that. “I love you too.”

CHAPTER TEN

He hangs up, and I breathe a sigh of relief. With both of us investigating this circumstance, we’re sure to discover the truth soon.

I turn around, ready to return to the house, but instead, I freeze.

I am still in the forest, but it’s not the forest I entered an hour ago. The trees here are not lush and green but bare and skeletal. Their branches loom over the path; pale, twisted and sharp like crooked, needle-sharp teeth.

Ahead of me is a woman as tall and pale as the trees. She stands with her back to me, and blonde hair so light it's nearly white hangs down to the small of her back.

I know where I am. This is the forest through which Annie and I would occasionally walk home from university, twisted and made macabre by my own violent imagination.

I know who it is that stands in front of me, too. Even facing away from me, I can see the too-pale skin and hollow but not-quite empty black holes of my sister's eyes. I've had this nightmare many times before, but this is the first time I've seen it outside while I'm wide awake.

Panic chills me, accentuated by confusion. I’m not dreaming. I’m not dissociating either. I know exactly where I am, and I know that what I’m seeing isn’t real. So why am I seeing it? Why is this plaguing me now?

A shiver runs through me, and I release a soft whimper. I’m not dreaming or dissociating. I’m hallucinating. I studied psychology in university, but I don’t need to have background in understanding the human mind to know that seeing things that aren’t there when one is fully awake and aware is a very bad sign.

I’ve been committed before, once for eleven weeks after the police closed the investigation into my sister’s disappearance. I have fought grimly for my sanity ever since.

And I’ve been doing well. I haven’t had nightmares in months. Other than my brief relapse in New Orleans, it’s been a while since I’ve had a dissociative state as well. Why am I suddenly skipping those two symptoms and going straight to hallucinations?

My fear turns to anger. It’s not fair! I’m getting better! I’m confronting my past and accepting the pain I’ve suffered. I’m in the middle of another mystery, but this isn’t a murder mystery. There’s no great fear prompting this episode. Why am I suffering again?

I open my mouth to vocalize these thoughts, but all that comes out is a soft squeak when I see that Annie’s ghost is no longer thirty yards away but is standing right in front of me. She doesn’t have her back turned to me either.

And she’s not a ghost. She’s my sister as I remember her, as she was thirty-one years ago. She’s smiling her usual impertinent, playful smile. Her blue eyes are dancing with mirth, and her blonde hair shimmers like the sun.

The forest around me is just as black and forbidding as before. The contrast is, if anything, more unnerving than when I expected to see a specter.

“You’re not really getting better, though, are you, Mary?”

I jump, surprised to hear her speak. That happens sometimes when I have a flashback of a repressed memory, but not often in my nightmares. Then again, this isn’t a nightmare.

“Iwas,” I reply morosely. “I was moving on from losing you. I was focusing on building a life with Sean. I was going to be an ordinary governess focused on helping the people I work for. Then I found that damned flyer and remembered that you liked jazz, and—”

“And that was enough to send you into a tailspin. You went to New Orleans, had a few dissociative episodes, almost lost two twelve-year-olds on Mardi Gras and hallucinated a demon-me possessing one of them.”

“I didn’t… That… That’s not a fair representation of what happened.”

Annie shrugs. “Okay. Then you really saw my vengeful ghost try to possess a little boy to get back at you. That sounds like something you would do.”

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