Dance With the Dead by H.P. Mallory

Chapter Six

The Lady of the House

The things of Victoria’s that remained in the house—bits and pieces that had been no use to thrift stores—somehow seemed wrong to throw out.

Somewhere, in among the detritus of existence, I thought there might be something that could tell us where she’d come from or something that might hint at the man whom she’d been seeing. Both seemed like the main questions to solve at the present. And I was fairly sure that ‘something’ was her diary. Which, as of yet, had not announced itself anywhere.

The tidy household budgets, preserved with her financial records, went back years, maybe even all the way back to when Victoria moved to Morley-on-Avon, but no further. For someone who seemed to keep records as a matter of course, all itemized and properly filed, the absence of anything from before her move seemed both significant and suspicious.

“Perhaps she was on the run from an abusive husband,” suggested Petra. “Such things happened quite often in my day.” She paused. “Or perhaps there was an illegitimate child involved.”

I looked at her. “I doubt that was the case.”

“Perhaps Victoria was addicted to gambling or to liquor.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It shows she was of a poor constitution and easily given to drink and play.”

It looked more like Victoria had been in witness protection; her whole life starting in Morley, as if she simply hadn’t existed before moving here. “Can you just... look for something that resembles a diary?” I asked, figuring I should try to put Petra to good use.

“Did she have an occupation?” asked Petra.

“She must have had an income of some kind.” Petra didn’t always grasp the concept of women going to work. “I guess I should have asked Joanne.”

Everyone I’d spoken to since arriving in Morley had inevitably mentioned Victoria, even if it was just in passing, most probably because I was living in her house. And yet not one had mentioned what she did for a living. And, as far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything left in the house that might indicate what she’d done for work. It seemed like she’d just gotten by somehow in fine style without actually doing anything.

“Didn’t that Joanne woman say something about book-keeping?” asked Petra.

“She said that was what Victoria used to do, but she didn’t make it sound like Victoria was a bookkeeper while she lived in Morley,” I nodded, looking at another sheet of diligently laid-out numbers. “Everything here is so carefully recorded.”

“Perhaps she was fiddling the accounts for a large corporation? If she were a gambler with a bit of a drinking problem, that would certainly make sense.”

“I think we’d need a little more evidence before we go accusing of her of any of that.” I looked up at Petra, who was currently wearing a blue dress she often wore during the evening. “I don’t suppose you could just ask her?”

“How many times must I tell you, Gwendolyn?” Petra sighed. “That’s not how it works.”

I did know that, but I still felt the need to ask every now and then because, while I was familiar with how it didn’t work, I was still very vague on how it did.

When she wasn’t here, hanging out with me, Petra was in Limbo, that waiting room of the dead occupied by those who didn’t exit quickly after death. It was from Limbo that ghosts manifested into our world. That much I grasped, but a description of what Limbo entailed was something Petra had never been able to convey; apparently it simply defied words. It wasn’t just a ghostly version of earth—that I got. The dead didn’t hang out as if they were in a members-only club until their time came to leave this plane in a more permanent way. That said, they did mix, and they did get to know one another in some sense.

“So, why can’t you ask them a specific question?” I’d asked Petra on many occasions.

She would always shrug. “We don’t talk.”

“Must be a very quiet place.”

And Petra would pull a face. “We communicate. We just don’t talk.”

“So, what—you use sign language?”

And that would earn me a frown.

Apparently, communication in Limbo was more geared to the spiritual than the corporeal—you needed to get out of the habit of using your mouth and tongue to form words, but apparently body language was also out. You also needed to jettison the idea that communication involved talking about the weather, where you came from, or what sort of music you were into—such things had no value in Limbo. Communication was on an instinctive and emotional level—spirits ‘understood’ each other, though not through an exchange of ideas but through ‘generated waves of self’ as Petra had referred to it. I wondered if it was akin to dogs sniffing each other’s butts in order to find out their life histories.

“I don’t understand,” I said, not for the first time.

“Me neither,” admitted Petra. “At least I don’t understand it here, on this plain. Maybe not there either. But when I’m there—in Limbo—when anyone is there, you just do it. You don’t think about it and you don’t have to understand it because thinking and understanding don’t mean much in Limbo. There is only existence. Together, apart, it’s all the same.”

“Sounds awful,” I judged.

Petra shook her head. “It’s really rather wonderful.”

“Then why do you keep coming back here?” This was another regular question and one I felt she was unwilling to answer rather than unable.

“I suppose I like your company.”

There was more to it than that, I was pretty sure. Petra Shearwater probably had as many secrets as Victoria Willis, but right now, it was Victoria’s that were occupying my thoughts.

I wrote down what we knew about Victoria thus far, which didn’t take long, and Petra and I stared at the paper for a while. But every time I tried to focus on the words, I heard some others in my head.

‘I’m married.’ And then I pictured the guilty look on Leo’s face. And I thought about how Petra had said he’d closed his eyes when we kissed.

I breathed out a long breath. “I’m going for a drink.”

Petra said nothing, but she knew me well enough to know that I was going to drown my embarrassment in alcohol. She gave me some space, and I appreciated it.

***

The Swan was quieter tonight, and I strolled to the bar and ordered a cider, because this was the West Country and… when in Rome.

I paid and then walked over to the same table I’d occupied last night.

“Alone again.”

It was Bastian Chambon, of course. Smiling and looking just as handsome as he had the night before.

“Long day,” I replied, before frowning at him. “So, do you live here or something?”

He chuckled. “No.” Then he shook his head. “But there’s not a lot to do in Morley, so here I am.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything. Just stared down into the amber liquid of my glass.

“Want to talk about it?” Bastian asked.

“Depends.” I raised my eyebrows. “Will our conversation be punctuated by thinly veiled attempts to get me into the sack?”

“Certainly not,” said Bastian, stoutly. “I never veil anything, thinly or otherwise.” I couldn’t help but smile at that, even if I did shake my head and sigh. “If my intentions last night were vague, then I apologize.”

“They weren’t vague.”

“Good, because I was one hundred percent trying to sleep with you. Sorry if that didn’t come across.”

I couldn’t help smiling; how did he manage to make comments like that charming? Or was I just so far away from the dating scene that I couldn’t recognize an asshole when I saw one? Probably the latter. I definitely hadn’t been able to recognize a married man when I’d seen one...

“But,” Bastian shrugged, “if you don’t want me to mention how attractive I find you, how much I do want to get you into bed, and the amount of fun I think we’d both have there, then we can talk about whatever’s bothering you.”

“Wow, what an offer!”

“I’m nothing if not a gentleman.”

I rolled my eyes at that, but couldn’t help my smirk. Or maybe I just wanted company and, after today, it was nice to get that company from someone who found me attractive and was definitely not married. Or...

“Are you married?”

Bastian looked at me like I’d just asked him if was a eunuch. “Married?” he repeated, frowning. “Um, have you listened to a word I’ve said?”

I shrugged. “You could be married and still trying to get me into bed.”

He shook his head. “I’m not married.” Then he lifted up his left hand. “See?”

I nodded. “Just wanted to make sure.”

“Does that mean—”

“No,” I interrupted. “It doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that I didn’t want to talk to you if you were married.”

“Well, fair lady, worry yourself not, for I’m unmarried,” he answered in a sing-song voice. If he was trying to impersonate someone, I wasn’t sure who that person was.

***

It was an unexpectedly pleasant evening.

Bastian was as good as his word and never made a move on me. He didn’t bring up anything sexual, didn’t lean in uncomfortably close, he didn’t even mention how well-endowed he was—something he’d mentioned in the conversation we’d had the night before. When it came time for more drinks, we each paid for two rounds, as if to make clear that this was a meeting of friends and nothing else.

When he wasn’t thinking with his little head, Bastian Chambon turned out to be surprisingly good company. Although I didn’t tell him exactly what had happened earlier in the day, he was a good listener, and I soon found myself pouring out my recent woes; the end of my relationship with Ian, my move here, my plan for new books (for which, at the moment, I had no ideas). He listened, he sympathized, he laughed, and he offered advice. Overall, he was nice.

We talked a little about him too, more so as the evening wore on and he began to open up a bit, letting the façade of the rogue drop away. I got the impression that Bastian liked being thought of as the town stud almost as much as he liked being it, and it was a part he took great pleasure in playing. It came with certain expectations and one of them was that he shouldn’t have any real interest in the women whom he pursued beyond the obvious. And yet it was clear that there was more to him, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

“So, there’s never been anyone special?” I lightly pressed, because in our short acquaintance, I’d learned that if you pushed Bastian too much, you just got the silly, cocksure answer from Morley-on-Avon’s resident lothario.

“They’re all special. In their own way.”

“Is that right?” I grinned.

“Actually, yes,” he nodded, as if he was admitting something. “I like women. And I mean that sincerely. I like sex too. Obviously. Enormously. But I like women, as well. And…” he paused, ordering his thoughts. “… I wouldn’t like sex if not for women, but I still like women, even without the sex.”

“Then why so many?”

He spread his hands. “Just more to like.”

“Really?”

Another, almost guilty look. “No.”

“Then?”

He shook his head. “I guess you could just say I’m cliche.”

“How are you cliche?”

He shrugged. “I just haven’t found that one yet?”

“Oh, that cliche.”

He chuckled. “Maybe I haven’t been looking all that hard or all that well, though. Maybe my reputation means that the right one isn’t looking for me, or wouldn’t want me if she found me.”

I cocked my head to the side as I thought about it. “That could definitely be. Women don’t take men like you seriously.”

He nodded and didn’t seem surprised by my comment. “Much as I enjoy my life—and I really do—that is a disadvantage. And it may be too late to fix it now.” He sounded almost wistful. He looked up at me. “But I’m not done looking.”

“Maybe think about what you really want in your life—whether it’s just one-night stands—”

“I very rarely have a one-night stand,” he corrected me. “I like repeat visits.”

I laughed at that. “Well, think about whether you want to keep the women you bed at arm’s length where your heart is concerned or whether you might like something... longer lasting.”

He nodded. “Eventually, I’ll find her. The one. One thing I’m good at is looking for her.” He shook his head and then made a strange pouting sort of expression that seemed in opposition with the rest of him. “My biggest fear is that I met her already and let her go with a pleasant memory and a pat on the bottom.”

As the bell behind the bar rang to signal last orders, we stood and made our way to the door, definitely tipsy but definitely not drunk.

“I’ll walk you back,” said Bastian. “And before you can say it, I know what you’re thinking, and normally you’d be correct. But I made a promise and I stand by it.”

“Okay.”

It wasn’t far to my little cottage, but I still felt better having an escort. Or maybe…

Now that Bastian wasn’t hitting on me, I suddenly felt a blow to my ego. Which made absolutely zero sense, and I was fairly sure that had I been thinking with an alcohol untainted mind, I would have been thinking more rationally. But c’est la vie.

“I’ll say goodnight,” said Bastian when we reached my front door. “I... well, thanks for tonight. I actually really enjoyed myself.”

“You sound surprised.”

His eyebrows arched for the evening sky. “I guess I am. Usually, I try to get through the talking as quickly as possible.”

I had to laugh at that. “Well, thanks for listening.”

“It was my pleasure,” said Bastian. “And since the evening is officially over and the restrictions you placed on me are no longer…”

Even though you’d think I’d already learned my lesson, I leaned into him and kissed him on the mouth.

Bastian didn’t lose a second but responded instantly, opening his mouth as his tongue invaded mine, his hands cupping my body and pressing me more tightly to him. If I’d had any doubt about his attraction for me, then those doubts were quickly dispelled.

I broke the kiss, but Bastian still held me, and I made no move to get away. He kissed my mouth, my cheek, and then down my neck, whispering as he did so, his voice low and soft and apparently hard-wired to my libido.

“I think I told you yesterday that I had no plans for tonight,” he whispered. “Guess what?”

“What?”

He pulled away and looked down at me, a smirk playing with the ends of his lips. “I still have no plans.”

He was still young and arrogant and had apparently worked his way through a decent number of the town’s women. But he was also pleasant and surprisingly sweet. Plus, it was flattering to be desired by such a handsome and younger man. Sex with Bastian was bound to be fun, and it wouldn’t mean anything—there wouldn’t be any strings attached. It could just be a fun night of consequenceless passion. Not to mention the fact that I hadn’t had sex, or exciting sex, in years. All told, it didn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.

***

I woke up and glanced at the illuminated numbers of the clock by my bed: 4.05.

Not when I wanted to be waking up and not when I usually did (you develop pretty lazy sleeping patterns when your commute is from the bed to your desk) but maybe I’d gotten unused to sleeping with someone else in the bed, and I was certainly unused to sleeping with someone else in the bed who wasn’t my ex-boyfriend, Ian.

Turning over, careful not to move too sharply, I looked at the man who was lightly snoring beside me. Bastian Chambon contrived to be irritatingly handsome even when he was asleep, which is something few people can pull off. Actually, he slept with a smile, and managed to look pretty pleased with himself, which shouldn’t have been possible. Then again, he did have a reason to look that way; he’d gone to sleep, safe in the knowledge of a job well done.

What was that British phrase again? ‘A damn good seeing to’. Yeah, that about covered it. I guess you could put it down to practice making perfect—by all accounts, Bastian had put in the man hours and so he knew his way around a bed, and around a woman. You could also say that a man who loves his job never works a day in his life and, though I was flattering myself, I took pride in the fact that Bastian had enjoyed last night as much as I had (which was a lot). All that might make it sound like the sex had been textbook box-filling (so to speak), going through the motions. Fun, but nothing more. And that really didn’t do it justice.

I’d never been with a ‘player’ before (or at least not since college) and Bastian earned his reputation both in his skill between the sheets and his physical attributes (which, it turned out, weren’t just idle bragging). He did everything with style; taking the trouble to point out that his condoms were imported from Europe by a company called ‘El Toro Grande’, successfully undoing my buttons with his teeth as if he did the same every day, and athletically changing positions as if to prove he knew them all and was quite the sportsman. But that considerate sweetness I’d noted in the bar was clearly more than a way to ‘pull the birds’.

It wasn’t just that Bastian was a generous lover, he was also a surprisingly intimate one. I didn’t feel like I was just another woman in a line of unending conquests. And I also didn’t feel like I’d gotten the same performance as Karen had the night before or whichever bored house wife he’d been with last week. I was sure he had his moves, his signature trademarks, but I never felt like just one more woman in a long and neverending line.

At the very least, Bastian offered a bespoke love-making service tailored to the woman he happened to be with. But I also felt that, in contrast to his reputation, he actually cared about me. And I was fairly sure he hadn’t been lying—he did care about the women he made love to. Maybe he didn’t love them, but I didn’t think he slept with anyone he didn’t genuinely like. I had, when I was young, as most people had, a certain amount of casual sex—some of it even anonymous because college had been a wild time. But this wasn’t that; this was Bastian and me, together, and even if it was just for one night (and I was sure it wouldn’t repeat because my itch had been scratched and that was all she wrote), then it still meant something.

That said, it was also just the stress release I’d needed. All that sweetness and intimacy to one side, it was good (in fact great) for someone who’d been a little lonely in that area for the last few years, to find herself in the hands of someone who could take care of business so thoroughly, so satisfyingly and so repeatedly. At the end, I just felt that beautiful, exhausted calm that washes over you after a really great romp between the sheets, and I wondered how long it had been since I’d felt like this.

“You’re welcome,” Bastian had said, because he was still Bastian Chambon and was invested in the reputation he’d built up—if people found out that he cared about the women he slept with then where would he be?

So that was nice. A nice way to end my first week in my new home, and maybe a nice way to draw a line under my old one. All good.

Except… that raised a point; all was good. Bastian wasn’t a restless sleeper, so he hadn’t woken me up. He’d done a very good job of tiring me out enough that I should have slept through. And yet here I was awake.

What had woken me?

A flicker from the doorway and I clamped my hand over my mouth to stop from crying out in shock. I’d never really been shocked to see ghosts because I’d started seeing them at such a young age that it had quickly become normal to me. But when apparitions appeared suddenly in the night, rousing me from sleep then hovering nearby, waves of anger passing across their fluctuating forms, then that was still enough to make me jump.

Beside me, Bastian stirred in response to my sudden movement, but he didn’t wake up.

I slipped quietly out of bed, tugging on the robe that hung on the front of the armoire, and pulled on a pair of bed socks because the floor was cold, but I hadn’t yet reached an age at which I was ready for slippers.

Onto the landing I padded out, looking around for the apparition of Victoria. And I spotted her at the head of the stairs. I could feel the urgent distress radiating from her. This time she didn’t fall down the staircase, but glided down halfway, rushed back to the top, and then down again. I had the distinct feeling that she wanted me to follow her.

Even for someone as accustomed to the dead as I was, being asked to follow them in the dead of night was a little disconcerting, but I summoned up my limited courage and went after her, down the stairs. As I went, I couldn’t help thinking that my fluffy bed socks afforded no grip whatsoever and yet I was nowhere near slipping down the stairs to meet my fate at the bottom. It underlined how unlikely it was that Victoria had slipped, yet everyone had written her death off as an accident.

It was dark downstairs, the only light coming from the luminescent presence of Victoria herself. She turned at the bottom of the stairs, still moving in fast, staccato bursts; impatiently urging me to follow her, which I did a little nervously. What did she want to show me? And why now when I had company?

I’d always been very grateful that Petra had, from my first time, made a point of making herself scarce when ‘conjugal congress’ was occurring. In my naivety, I’d thought that maybe ghosts had a rule not to play peeping Tom on the living. But based on Victoria, maybe that wasn’t a hard and fast rule.

The window in the kitchen was open as we went in, and I breathed in the scent of jasmine that was wafting in from the garden. It showed how much of a hurry Bastian and I must have been in last night because normally I was one of those people who goes around the house three times checking every door, window, and electrical switch before going to bed—or at least, I had been that sort of a person. In a way, it was nice that Bastian had also cleansed me of that artificial pressure.

A little moonlight also crept in through the window. The blind was still raised (another thing I hadn’t had time to lower) and I cinched my robe more tightly around me, not wanting to give an inadvertent eyeful to any nocturnal passers-by.

“What is it?” I whispered, not wanting to wake Bastian, and aware that if I did wake him, then I’d have some serious explaining to do about who I’d been talking to.

Naturally, Victoria didn’t answer; couldn’t answer. When the constantly shifting image of her face coalesced into something recognizable, I could make out her mouth moving, as if she was trying to tell me something, but no sound came out.

Petra had explained to me that new spirits still think too much like humans to make themselves understood as spirits, either in this realm or in Limbo. These things take time and calm, and the victims of violent death never had the calm to figure out how to communicate with the living. They were fractured and fraught expressions of confusion and anger, unable, for the present, to exist in any other terms.

The harder Victoria tried to communicate her point to me, the more indistinct she became, barely looking like a figure now, more like a blob of shifting energy, shivering with indignation and frustration.

I felt for her, but there wasn’t much I could do when I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me.

“Is there something in here? Something you need me to see?”

The apparition raced around the kitchen, but conveyed nothing helpful. She rushed over to where the fridge stood beside the big walk-in pantry. And she hovered there, apparently pointing like she had the other night, when I’d thought she was pointing at the oven. But maybe it wasn’t the oven at all, but the fridge. I walked over and stooped to look beneath the fridge.

Frowning, I got back up again to turn on the light—it had looked like there was something under there, something I’d missed in the perfunctory search I’d done earlier.

With the light on, I hurried back to the fridge and looked again. What was that?

I slid my hand under and with one extended finger, I could just get a hold of whatever it was. It felt like a wrapper, and I realized that I was probably going to a lot of trouble to establish that Victoria had shown up in the middle of the night because she had the munchies for a chocolate treat she could no longer obtain in Limbo and was trying to tell me what that treat was. She flitted up and down beside me, faster and faster, her frustration growing.

“I’m going as fast as I can.”

But the wrapper that slid out from under the fridge, and which I now held up, wasn’t a chocolate wrapper. It wasn’t the wrapper of anything you’d eat, except in certain specific circumstances.

It was an empty condom wrapper, left from when Victoria had been living here, and I recognized it instantly as the twin of the wrapper that was currently in the trash basket in my bedroom. El Toro Grande. A brand that had to be specially imported from Europe. And how many people had either the money, the need, or the inclination to do that?

My head suddenly snapped up to look at the ceiling because I’d heard movement from the bedroom.

The End

~~~~~

Gwen and Petra return in:

Dead and Gone

Gwen’s Ghosts #2

by J.R. Rain and H.P. Mallory

Coming Soon!

Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK

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