Page 88 of Mourner for Hire
I exhale. Right. That’s it. I can enjoy the night and remember why my hormones are desperate.
The door creaksas I enter the cottage, and I immediately strip out of my sweaty, dirty clothes.
A quick rap on the window makes me jump and grab a throw blanket off the couch.
“Hello?”
The tapping returns, only this time on the other side of the house.
“Who’s there?” I call out.
Another tap on the window. I walk slowly to the single-panewindow, clutching the throw blanket to my body, heart pounding. Annabelle doesn’t do this. She makes herself known—loud and proud of her ghostly tendencies. She’s all about the jump scare, not the intense, suspenseful moments that build heartbeat after heartbeat until I peer out the window.
Nothing is outside except for beach grass blowing in the wind and a broken red wagon.
My mind holds onto the wagon as I stare at it. I remember it. Or at least I think I do. It’s a bead of a memory, like a drop in a bucket of water creating residual rings in my mind as I remember.
“These two are getting too big for this wagon!” my mother says, walking backwards in the sand.
My chubby fingers grip the shiny red metal, and I laugh. I can smell the ocean. I can taste the salt water taffy sticking to my teeth. Banana-flavored. I can hear the seagulls in the distance. A transportation of a memory—alive in my mind.
“What do you think? Should we kick them out?”
“Never!” I shout—a squeal, really. But there’s another voice behind me. Small and slight. I turn to see who it is…
But I can’t. Because in the memory, I don’t turn to look behind me.
“Annabelle?” I call out timidly.
Another knock, only this time, it’s coming from the front door.
I rush to the door in hopes of finding Annabelle so I can ask her a million questions.
She’s not there. It’s just her son, standing on the front step and staring at me with a mixture of contempt and concern etched into his forehead.
I clear my throat, clutch the blanket around me tighter, and brush my hair out of my face, ignoring my pounding heart. “What?”
He holds out my notebook. “You left this at checkout last week. Larry asked me to bring it to you.”
I was so frazzled by the cashier’s comments about the purple vibrator that I must have left it there. I snatch it out of his hands.
“Did you read it?” I ask, keeping my voice steady.
“Yep,” he answers, the P popping at the end as he turns down the sand-covered walkway. “Well, some of it. I couldn’t make it past the first page of your house of horrors.”
I grin as he walks away, fanning the pages of my most random thoughts.
Slamming the front door quickly, I opened the rose-covered journal to the first page and read what random thought of mine he had first read.
Ferrets might die if they don’t have sex for a year.
I throw my head back and laugh, remembering the day I learned that fact and had to write it down before I forgot. I grabbed my brand-new journal off the counter and jotted it down, christening the paper with ferret sex facts.
I never said I didn’t have issues.
The next note simply says,
Menthol tear stick.
