Page 78 of Ghostly
By the time Gabriel had cooled down—physically more than mentally—Perry was deep into his work, and Ida was still nowhere to be seen. Not wanting to shoo Perry away, Gabriel instead pushed through an afternoon of occasional chit-chat and a walk around the house. It wasn’t until half an hour after Perry’s departure, well into the evening, when Ida finally came out of the deer-hog.
Gabriel had several openers prepared, all including a profound apology, but as he saw her wringing her hands and shifting her gaze to anything but him, his fancy words evaporated. She was ashamed, wasn’t she? And he made her feel that.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was the perfume. It never should’ve happened.”
Ida lifted her eyes and opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I understand,” she said, and floated upstairs.
“Don’t you…”
She disappeared through a wall.
Gabriel frowned. Perhaps talking about it would only make it worse. If this was what she wanted, he’d ignore the incident… and in time, all would return to normal.
Two weeks later
On the bright side, Ida and Perry were getting along great.
He came by frequently, and they found many new ways to interact. They used Gabriel’s old trick from the Christmas fair, only with an added text-to-speech app, and Perry went around town and showed Ida places, while she explained how the town used to look like. They invented a game of knocking, and for hours, Gabriel would sit and work while listening to the continuous knock-knock, knock, knock-knock, like he was in some twisted reality where the only communication was via Morse Code.
That communication was only meant for Perry. Ida had decided to snub Gabriel. Easy for her, perhaps; at least she had her distractions. Gabriel’s best distraction was the research on Mrs. Ashford-Abernathy’s case and (completely uncorrelated) the more documents he read, the more he realized the perfume had nothing to do with him going crazy. He simply wanted Ida.
One day he was sanding the peeling paint off the garden-facing walls, to prepare the facade for the fresh coat. When he returned inside, a scent hit his nostrils—sweet, but citrusy. And creamy. Creamy, like Ida’s skin. If he could touch her for real, it would’ve been soft and warm—
Hold on.
He strode into the living room and took in the scene: Perry, with a blindfold over his eyes, arms stretched out, headed for a disaster: the shelf with the porcelain vase on it. Ida, a few feet left of the said vase, hand over her mouth, trying to suppress her giggles.
“What’s going on here?” Gabriel’s voice came out harsher than he’d expected, but he didn’t care. The damn perfume was back. And Ida—
“Oh, we’re just playing a game.” Perry took off the blindfold. “Ida’s got this perfume that can stick to her. I’m trying to find her by smelling.”
“Then why do you need the blindfold? It’s not like you can see her, anyway.” Gabriel turned to Ida. “And you don’t need to control your giggling, he can’t hear you!”
“Dude, chill.” Perry spread his arms. “We’re just having fun.”
“You nearly destroyed the vase.”
“That vase means a lot to you, huh?”
“Whatever you’re doing, go do it somewhere else. I’ve work to do in here.”
Without a word, Ida disappeared.
Perry looked at his phone. “Sure, sure. Hey, I love music boxes! Used to have one when I was little…” He wandered to the hallway, eyes glued to the screen. “Aw, man. I think my phone smells like flowers now…”
Gabriel opened his laptop and checked his mail. Only a new briefing to run through. He downloaded the document and scoured it with intense determination, trying to dismiss the orange blossom scent still lingering in the room.
Stop with this weird jealousy.She has to bond with Perry.
But when he lay in bed at night, unable to sleep, he could only think about how it would feel if she lay next to him. When he finally fell asleep, she chased him into his dreams—waves of her hair spilling over her naked shoulders, tiny moans and cries escaping her lush mouth, legs wrapping around him. Some mornings, he had to dedicate another six minutes in the bathroom just to cool himself off.
She was driving him insane.
***
He was driving her insane.
Forget revenge over family; Gabriel was going to single-handedly turn her into a crazed, lights-flickering, house-wrecking spirit, just by existing. Well, to be fair, some of it was Ida’s fault: she couldn’t stop thinking about the perfume, couldn’t stop recalling all the things he’d made her feel, and she couldn’t get him off her mind.
