Page 19 of After Life
“Damn, it’s Monday.” Julian sighed. “Well, let’s be nosy, shall we?”
He made a beeline for the row of dour-looking portraits lining the foyer wall. I hadn’t been kidding when I said the place was haunted—I could feel it as soon as we were near.
“Oh, cool! There’s a whole display about stained glass at Honey Walk! They mention the break in 1797. Huh.” He paused. “I hope Sandra had it reinforced. That was only a Cat 1.”
The buzzing pull of a ghost had curled around my awareness and tugged, wanting my attention. Now, in the foyer, the buzzing was nearly tangible, making the hairs on my arms stand on end as Julian peered at the nameplates on some of the pictures, muttering (to himself? To me? Who knew?) about whatever he was finding there.
“I’m here,” I murmured. “I’m listening.”
She was difficult to see with the sun shining through the high windows, but I could just make out the petite form of a woman in a blue gown, the style they called an at-home dress some centuries back. She was washed out, barely visible in the daylight glare, but she was strong. At least for the moment. “I’ve waited for ages.” She sighed. “Are you telling the truth? You can hear me?”
“And see you,” I promised. “My name is Oscar Fellowes. What’s your name, madam?”
She laughed softly. “Madam. And your accent. You sound a bit like my father, when I was a girl.” She moved closer to me, one hand reaching for me and the other clutched at her waist. “You’re a very handsome fellow.”
“Ah, thank you. I didn’t get your name?”
She paused, the cool brush of her fingertips along my face shocking in the otherwise warm home. “My apologies. It’s just been so very long since anyone’s truly heard me. I’m Mrs. Charles Noonan. Eliza. I suppose there’s no use standing on formality now, is there?”
She sounded dejected, small. Lost. “There is, if you wish.”
“It... It might be nice,” she murmured. “It’s been so long.”
“Well, Mrs. Noonan, you have a lovely home.” I was aware of Julian moving through the foyer, focused on something in one of the glass-topped cases. He either didn’t hear me murmuring with Mrs. Noonan or was doing a very good job of ignoring us for the moment. “How long have you been here, if I might be so bold?”
She shook her head, her pale eyes closing. “I’m not certain. After a while, I started drifting in and out. I would lose track of time and people... They change so much. One moment, they are familiar faces, familiar clothing and food and sounds and names, the next they’re so strange. Wrong. Why am I still here, Mr. Fellowes? I thought there was an eternal reward waiting for me. That’s what Reverend Malthaus preached. Is it”—she moved even closer, the chill of her shot through me, making my bones ache, but I stood still, letting her drift— “is it because I wasn’t supposed to die? Did they cause me to linger?”
“Most people I’ve met in your situation feel they passed too soon,” I began, but she cut me off with a sharp shake of her head and a spectral foot-stomp.
“No, Mr. Fellowes, I wasn’t supposed to die, period. What they did... they took me from my body, Mr. Fellowes. I saw them. I saw them! They forced me out, all because Charles—” She broke off in a sob that pulsed with energy, all of her rage and sorrow and fear coalescing into a physical force that rattled the plain metal chandelier overhead and made the windows shake. Julian jerked around to face me, his eyes wide. I held up my hand to stay him and he hesitated, then nodded once. “What they’re doing is so wrong, Mr. Fellowes. I thought perhaps it was over. It’s been so many years since I’ve seen them do it but now...” She trailed off, fading fast. “Now they’re trying again.”
“Mrs. Noonan,” I said sharply. “Madam, wait!”
It was futile, I knew, but still...
“Oscar?” Julian murmured. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I think I need some air though.”
He cast one last, longing look at the foyer—we hadn’t even seen the rest of the museum. Guilt washed over me, and I started to back away. “I’ll just step onto the porch,” I murmured. “You can—”
“No,” he insisted. “We can come back tomorrow. Ah, I know! Want to have a picnic on the beach? Fresh air, food, and I’ll make sure it’s barnacle and mussel-free?”
I huffed a small laugh. “Let’s do that. I’ll tell you about Mrs. Noonan as we go.”
WE OPTED TO AVOID DELIA’S Café—I knew it was because it now had bad memories attached to it for the both of us, but Julian proclaimed picnics meant nibbling and we needed to just grab some prepared veggie trays and maybe cold cuts and cheese rather than heavy sandwiches and burgers, steering us to the grocery store instead. A few cars were parked in the tightly angled spots along the pavement but inside the store, it was a (ha) ghost town. Soft music played overhead, something country-western sounding and too quiet to make out the words, and someone out of sight was using a floor buffer from the sound of things.
“Christ, this is some liminal shit here,” Julian muttered as the doors slid closed behind us. “Come on, before something comes out of the cold storage to drag us into a Stephen King novel.”
“It’s quaint,” I hissed. “You’re just spoiled by those huge HEB stores back in Texas.”
“Maybe,” he muttered, heading for the small produce section. “It’s been ages since I’ve been in a store like this. It reminds me of the grocery stores near where my mother’s parents lived, in West Texas, when I was little.”
The produce section was all wooden baskets on graduated risers and the aisles beyond were about chest-high to Julian, nothing like the towering, sprawling shops we’d gone to in other cities when we needed to grab a few things. He made a soft noise of discovery and tugged me toward a small glass-front refrigerator where several ready-made plastic boxes of cut vegetables and fruit waited. “Any preference?”
“Dealer’s choice.”
We moved through the store, Julian selecting a few things to go in the hand basket he’d picked up, including some bottles of water and one slightly dusty bottle of wine. “Looks a bit picked over,” I murmured.
