Eternal (9 page)

I wasn’t disappointed.

The ominous sound of hinges creaking caught my immediate attention. Holding my breath, I gaped as the attic door swung open as if of its own accord.

I tensed.

Adrenaline coursed through my veins. He expected me. He welcomed me into his sanctuary.

My backpack dropped to the floor with a thud. I furtively glanced once over my shoulder to make certain Ella hadn’t sneaked up behind me before, heart thundering, I eased through the open doorway. I wiped my damp palm on my jeans and then gripped the rough-hewn banister. Dismay and doubt nagged at me when I couldn’t find a light switch. But nothing was going to prevent me from going up there. Nothing. Determined, I started up the stairs. A soft glow illuminated the space above.

My breath stopped in my chest when Jeremiah’s silhouette formed out of seemingly nothing at the top of the stairs. A little sliver of terror rattled my confidence but I tamped it down and wet my dry lips with my tongue. Tossing caution aside, I hurried up the stairs as quickly as my feet would carry me.

Toward a ghost.

When I reached the top, I stopped, awestruck.

Dust motes glittered in the amethyst shards of light radiating through the giant fan-shaped window. Old trunks and random pieces of furniture rested haphazardly on the attic floor. Tarps and sheets covered other odds and ends, looming like phantoms in the shadows and, in the center of it all, a real ghost waited for me.

Still wearing the woolen trousers and oversized muslin shirt he’d worn when I first saw him, Jeremiah stood, hands plunged into his pockets, his eyes carefully watching my expression. A keen eagerness warmed the blood in my veins as the bold intensity of his stare compelled me to avert my gaze.

“From the ground, it doesn’t look this big,” I admitted, taking in the magical beauty of the window, the vaporous light and Jeremiah all at once.

When he smiled, my heart skidded sideways. And when he moved, the energy of his being swirled around him like a ghostly halo. The ethereal glow emanating from him made his features hazy, at times, indistinct. Other times, he seemed faded.

All the time, I found it extremely difficult to tear my gaze from his exquisite face. And yet, when I looked directly at him—into his eyes—I sensed he saw too much. As if I was the one who’d become transparent.

Reluctantly, I looked away from him to scan the attic. It was large, much roomier than I would have guessed. And the fanlight…dominating the front wall of the attic, it stretched from the pitched ceiling to the floor. The thick glass rippled like a rushing creek, cast intermittently in hues of gleaming green and silver. A wooden trellis radiated from a center point at the bottom like a burst of sun rays. It was even more awe inspiring from this vantage point than from outside the house. Here in the attic, no fragrance of lemon oil lingered, but instead, the scent of old wood and…darkness permeated the stale air.

My gaze locked once more with Jeremiah’s and, without words, he extended his hand.

I froze, too terrified to touch him and, instead of insisting, he lowered his hand. Relieved, I exhaled the breath I’d been holding. His smile faded nearly imperceptibly. “Come. I want to show you something.” He drifted toward the fanlight.

My knees shook as I neared him. The windowpanes were so thick and so old, the objects beyond them appeared distorted. What I was able to make out, I could only describe as…dreamlike. My focus adjusted and I peeked out over the front lawn. It was no wonder he spent so much time up here. Brightly colored fall leaves, caught up in the breeze outside, fluttered past the leaded glass like a swarm of butterflies.

“This was always my favorite place,” he said in his velvety drawl.

I was reluctant to look away from the mesmerizing sight of the leaves beyond the window but despite everything my gaze found his and…I smiled.

He stared for a long while and just when I felt obliged to avert my eyes, he asked, “Do you like it here?”

“Yes. Very much.”

“Why won’t you touch me?” he asked, abruptly changing the subject.

I sucked in a breath. I hadn’t expected him to be so direct. “I’m afraid.”

His gaze warmed as it moved over my face, tracing my scar. “You probably should be,” he whispered.

Realizing I was shaking, I hugged my arms. I wanted to ask him why he thought I should be afraid of him but I didn’t. My own reasons were incentive enough not to allow myself to get too close.

He took a step closer and everything in my being screamed at me to fly back down the stairs, to guard myself, to prevent this from happening.

But I didn’t do that either.

I wanted it. I wanted him in my life—even if he was ghost.

Barely breathing, I looked into his eyes. They were gray. In this light, I could tell. Silvery gray.

“Do you want to leave?” he asked.

“No.” My voice was small and uncertain.

Those devastating dimples reappeared at the corners of his mouth, dissolving the awkward tension between us. “Good. I have something else I want you to see.”

With more grace than would have been possible for a mortal man, he moved toward another set of stairs I hadn’t noticed before. This one seemed even narrower than the attic stairs and led up into the shadowy ceiling.

My nerves bunched into knots. “What’s up there?”

He had the audacity to wink. “Come with me.”

His image faded as he began to ascend the stairs. Afraid he might vanish from my view, I hurried after him.

Light suddenly flooded the stairwell, blinding me. Shielding my eyes, I blinked furiously as I realized a door at the top of the stairs had been thrown open. When I reached the top, I drew in a sharp breath and, astonished, I stepped out onto the roof of the house.

“Oh, Jeremiah!” I exclaimed, unable to find words to describe it. I stood on a small, flat area of the rooftop enclosed by a railing. The rest of the rust-colored tin roofing sloped steeply downward.

From here, the view stretched for miles and miles, past the orchard and the family plot behind the house and beyond that, further than the railroad track. To the right, the roof of the neighboring plantation house rose above the golden tree line, salient against the blue-gray threat of a stormy sky. On my left, lay the outline of Columbia’s low skyline in the distance.

Cows and horses grazed in the swell of a hill on the other side of the highway while a stout breeze billowing from the West whipped through my hair. The fresh scent of impending rain filled my nostrils.

“What do you think?” Jeremiah asked.

My gaze found his again. In the waning light, he appeared nearly transparent but his entire being shimmered as if he was made of pastel glitter.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, but none of it compared with the beauty of Jeremiah’s spirit.

Hiking up the front of his trouser legs, he sat and then he leaned back on his elbows. “I spent a great deal of time up here when I was alive.”

When he glanced up at me and smiled, my stomach plummeted.

I sat beside him, as close as I could without touching him, and stretched my legs out next to his. Mine were short in comparison. My high top sneakers looked odd next to his clunky brown shoes and my jeans seemed incongruously modern in contrast to the coarse wool of his pants. The dissimilarities in our appearance—me being brightly colored and him being faded and somewhat see through—struck me with the eerie reality that I sat mere inches from a ghost.

Looking at him, I felt suddenly foolish for not allowing him to touch me because, right now, I wanted to feel his hand holding mine more than anything in this world. My face flushed with shame when I recalled how silly I’d been and yet I wondered how it would feel to make physical contact with a spirit. Would I actually feel bone and flesh with a pulse vibrating underneath or would my hand pass through him like water?

A request to touch him now would seem too much like damage control or as if I perceived him as some sort of oddity. That was not the impression I wanted to make at all.

His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. I wondered if he could smell the autumn leaves or the scent of peanut butter cookies that lingered in my hair or the promise of rain on the horizon.

His gaze swiveled to mine and I realized I was staring. I racked my brain for something to say. Anything. “What was it like when you died?” I blurted.

Instantly, I regretted it.

The dove gray of his eyes turned to cold steel. “It was easy,” he said simply.

I blew out the breath I had been holding. “That’s exactly what I thought when I…when I died…” My voice trailed off with my last words. I’d never discussed what happened to me with anyone.

“Did they tell you that you had to return?” he asked.

I nodded, amazed he knew that. “Yes. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay there.”

His lips pursed. “They told me I had to return as well,” he said. “But I knew if I did, my family would have to care for me for the rest of my life. I would have been an invalid with the injury I’d sustained.”

My heart ached. He’d chosen to remain, for all practical purposes, in limbo rather than be a burden on his family. I inhaled, knowing how easily I would have gone on.

He sat, leaning forward to fold his arms on top of his drawn up knees. Resting his chin on the back of his wrists, he cut his gaze at me. “I doomed myself to this existence to save them.”

“Do you…regret not returning?”

His eyes sparkled. “Not now.”

As he watched me, I nervously twisted a lock of my hair around my finger. I didn’t dare speculate as to what he meant by his statement.

“The years I’ve been a…ghost…have been lonely,” he confessed.

Compassion welled. Tears formed in my eyes. If I had refused to come back, I wondered if I would now be like him. Lost. Wandering forever…

Waiting for someone to find me.

Even though I tried to wrap my mind around all this, my entire body brimmed with the awareness of just how close he sat. Inches away. I could have easily touched him. I forced myself to resist the restless craving to brush away the errant lock of black hair that had stolen across his forehead.

The desire was so overwhelming, I sat on my hands to keep from overstepping my boundaries. A sudden shiver rattled me.

“You’re cold.” He shifted as if he was about to stand.

I was anything but cold. The heady combination of the coming storm and Jeremiah’s nearness made the air unseasonably warm. “No!” I protested, not wanting this moment to ever end. “I’m okay.”

“Okay?” He repeated the word as if he was pronouncing a foreign language.

The vast gap that separated his time from mine struck me and I realized
okay
had not been a part of nineteenth century vernacular. “It means all right.”

“Okay,” he said again, seemingly pleased with his new word. He repeated it as if he liked the feel of the word in his mouth, before he settled back down on the roof. “Are you certain you’re not too cold?”

“Positive.” I smiled. “Actually, it’s kind of warm. Can’t you feel it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t feel hot or cold.”

Darkly, I wondered if he could feel the warmth of my skin.

He suddenly turned his gray gaze on me and I resisted the impulse to lean away from its intensity. “What did you feel when you were out of your body?” His eyes searched mine.

I didn’t even have to think about my answer. “Peace.”

His stare made my stomach somersault. “You weren’t there long, were you?”

“I was told I was probably…dead…for four minutes before they revived me.”

His mouth stretched into an indulgent smile. “I was there for what seemed like days. Arguing. Refusing.”

“What did they do?”

“They threw up their hands and vanished, leaving me…here.”

“What’s going to happen to you?” But already I wondered what would transpire when I grew old and he remained the same—when I died and went on to that place and he did not. Although I’d only known him for a short while, sudden panic surged at the thought that he might be taken from me forever.

“I stopped wondering what was going to happen to me a long time ago,” he murmured. “There wasn’t much for me after watching my parents grow old and die.”

I toyed with a golden leaf that had fallen onto the roof. “What about the woman who lived here before me?”

He drew in a deep breath. “She moved here when she was a little girl and I suppose I wasn’t the quietest of ghosts.”

I laughed. “No, you’re not quiet.”

His lips stretched into a smile. “Upon realizing her house was haunted, she idealized who I’d been.”

“What do you mean?”

“She had romantic notions about what my life had been like, about me.” As he spoke, he scanned the panorama of verdant fields and brightly colored leaves.

I drew one of my legs underneath me. “What was your life like?”

He shrugged. “I suppose I lived much like any other planter’s son. Dewey, my oldest brother, stood to inherit the farm. He helped Father with the books and with managing the place. My other brother, Jasper, had gone to Nashville to attend Western Military Institute. He fancied the soldier’s life and becoming a politician one day. I was studying to be a lawyer.”

“Law? Really? But you seem so young.”

His eyes slid into mine. “I was twenty when I…died.” He said it as if he thought he’d died an old man.

I chuckled. “Now, you can’t even drink until you’re twenty-one.”

“Drink what?”

“Liquor.”

It was Jeremiah’s turn to laugh. “A swig of corn whiskey is what got me through many a cold night on the march to Franklin.” His grin widened.

“I don’t even like to camp. I can’t imagine what it was like sleeping outdoors,” I said, easing into a natural conversation with him.

“I didn’t feel as if I had a choice,” he said dismally.

Not wanting to press him for details about something that was obviously hard for him, I turned the conversation back to the woman who’d lived here before me. “Miss Polk couldn’t talk to you?”

Jeremiah shook his head but then that easy grin curved his lips once more. “Well, she could—and did. At length. But she couldn’t hear me.”