Grave Danger (2 page)

“
Are there a lot of us here?” Clarissa
whispered. He was the first of her kind she had met.

He took his hand from the stone pillar. “A few,” he
answered, “But not as many as in other places around the world. We
are a quiet community and don’t like to be as showy as some of the
dead in other haunted locals. I think you’ll find us to be normal
enough for our kind.”

Henry looked around at his city. The beauty of this
land trumped any of the more haunted ghostly communities in the
surrounding area. He had traveled to New Orleans on a short
vacation trip some years back. It was exciting, but the paranormal
inhabitants were entirely too chaotic for his tastes. In his
opinion, they didn’t co-exist as amicably as he was used to and he
was more than happy to come home to his own haunted town, leaving
the craziness of the ‘Big Easy’ to the more adventurous soul.

“
Have you gotten a chance to see much of the
city yet?” he asked as he started walking around her onto St.
George Street.

Clarissa shook her head, falling in step beside him.
Henry was her ghostly tour guide as they made their way through
town, pointing out stores and historic land marks. He was rather
knowledgeable about the area. They meandered down the popular
street, full of tourists and locals, shops and restaurants on
either side. It was a long stretch of road where no cars were
allowed to venture, taking pedestrians through several blocks until
they reached the open square of the Plaza de la Constitucion.

No one bumped into them, nor did any of the living
walk through them on accident. Though no one took notice of their
presence, subconsciously the livings were able to step around their
forms even without realizing they were doing so.

“
How long have you been like this?” Clarissa
asked as they paused at a cross road that intersected Hypolita with
St. George. Not that a car could do much damage to their
non-corporeal form.

Henry laughed at her expected question. “I assume
you mean, how long have I been dead?” he spoke frankly.

Clarissa made a shamed face at her indelicate
question. It wasn’t polite to ask such a personal question of
someone you had just met. And death was very personal. “I’m sorry,”
she interrupted before he could continue. “That was rude of me. I
was just curious to know because I want to know what to expect in
this existence and you seem to be so knowledgeable. But you don’t
have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“
No, I don’t mind,” he assured her, a quick
and friendly smile in her direction. They crossed the intersection
and continued forward. “I’ve been residing in St. Augustine for
several decades now since my death in 1924. Before that I resided
in Maryland, both during my life and for a brief time after my
death. But I’ve come to prefer this city above others. This is my
home and I can’t think of a better place I’d rather spend this
existence than right here in the Sun Shine State.”

Clarissa agreed with a silent nod as she watched the
tourists. It was a nice place and she could get used to calling
this city home. “I’ve been here a few times on vacation. There’s a
favorite restaurant of mine, my friends and I used to go to it
every time we came to visit. But I don’t remember what it was
called.” As Clarissa spoke those words, an image of herself and two
blurred shaped people sitting in a local restaurant flashed in her
brain.

It was a memory of her living self, but still fuzzy
from death. For the death of her, she couldn’t remember the names
of those two people, but she knew somehow that they were friends of
hers. Those same friends were likely now aware of her untimely
demise.

Henry became aware of her sudden sadness and
confusion. Clarissa was only recently dead and it would take time
to acclimate herself with her living past and her deathly future.
It was something they all had to go through. Death was nothing new
to this world and yet it still mystified much of the living.

“
It will take some time to adjust to this
existence,” Henry spoke, looking at a couple as they held hands in
the streets, walking quickly by them. “Who you were and who you are
now, it’s a struggle for supremacy. In your head your mind knows
that life no longer exists for you, but in your heart you still
feel the need to be connected. The significant memories of life are
imprinted on the soul and we can retain some of what we were in
this form. But it takes time to remember the rest and even then we
are not the same.”

“
That’s speaking mildly.” She answered with a
sarcastic bite. “I know I’m not the same. I’m dead.” She shook her
head as another image of her herself and a man popped into her
brain. They were arguing over some issue. She knew it was not
unusual for her and this man to fight as they fought viciously and
often. Suddenly the picture was gone from her brain, disappearing
back into the shadows.

Clarissa looked earnestly up at Henry’s sympathetic
face. “I don’t know who I am,” she spoke the terrible truth. “I’m
not sure I even exist anymore. I know it’s somehow wrong that I
should still be attached to this world. But at the same time I know
that I should.” Still looking up at her ghostly companion she
searched his face for answers. “Am I making any sense to you? I
know I must be the worst ghost ever to exist. I don’t think I
believe in the paranormal world or ghosts.” She turned away from
him, wiping at her cheek to make certain that she wasn’t crying.
That would make him feel uncomfortable, she was sure. Clarissa
continued.

“
I have to be honest and confess that being
dead really sucks right now. It was my birthday a few days ago.
That’s when I died, on my birthday.” She wiped at a stray glowing,
shimmering tear. “How convenient,” she said. “At least I’ll never
forget the day of my death. I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”
However that wasn’t entirely true. She knew she had died on her
birthday, but not how she had died or even why. That was something
her brain would not – could not think about yet.

Henry knew exactly how she felt. In fact, they all
did. None of them had ever thought to find they were dead, at least
not so soon. Being dead was not as easy as many of the living
believed. It brought with it a whole new set of complications. A
ghostly existence was full of the same pit falls of the human
condition. The lack of a pulse or a fleshy body didn’t make those
issues less or non-existent.

“
You’re behaving exactly how anyone in your
situation would.” He grinned at her statement about being a
terrible ghost. “I think you are going to be a wonderful ghost,
Clarissa.” He sobered a little. “Sometimes, it does suck to be us,
but then again it could be worse.” There were some who had a worse
existence than the Eidolon. “Don’t people always say that life
sucks too? I think that if people can make the statement that ‘life
is what you make of it’ then we can say ‘death is what you make of
it’. Would you agree with that?”

“
Yes,” she answered. Clarissa knew that she
could never go back to the world of the living. Henry was more than
correct with his assessment. By the very nature of the world it was
up to her to find a semblance of happiness in this deathly
existence. “You’re right,” she continued. “I’ve never been dead
before, but I can certainly make a good try of it.”

“
Now that’s the right attitude,” he
encouraged. “And of course, you are not alone in this world. The
rest of us will always be here if you need someone to talk
to.”

“
Thank you, Henry,” she said, truly
appreciative of the Eidolon community and their spokesperson. She
smiled up at him. It was the first time she felt like smiling in
days. Clarissa had been so grief stricken by her death, it was nice
to be with someone who understood what she was dealing with. It
made her wonder about Henry’s death, but she figured he would tell
her in time and under the right circumstances.

He grinned down at her, glad to see the sadness gone
from her eyes. “I don’t know about you,” he said as he steered them
to the right, into an open courtyard with hanging plants and a
pretty little fountain that housed some smaller shops and a tavern,
“But I could definitely eat something right about now. What about
you?”

Chapter 2-

Clarissa had a sudden hunger pang at his words. She
wanted to eat too. In fact, she hadn’t eaten anything since finding
herself dead several days ago. All the drama that went with the
grief over her unexpected demise had overshadowed the thought for
food. But now she was thinking about it and it didn’t make any
sense. Being dead, she no longer needed food to survive. However,
the craving for food was still much a part of her ghostly
psyche.

“
How can we eat if we don’t have bodies,” she
asked as they walked into the local tavern. The wooden sign outside
the restaurant was engraved with the words,
Happy Haunts,
in bold red and green lettering,
slightly dull and worn from sun damage and time.

“
We can eat just like any other human only
it’s spectrally made. It’s just as good as the living’s food. The
only difference is that it’s made with magick.”

“
Then if we can simply conjure food, why do we
need to go to a tavern to eat?” The saying that food could not pop
up out of thin air was entirely inaccurate in the ghostly
world.

“
I could make us something, but I doubt you
would want to eat anything I could produce.” He nodded to a pair of
ghosts in the far corner and pulled Clarissa toward the table. “I’m
not very good in the art of cooking. It takes a bit of skill and
knowledge to make food, even in this existence. Everything I try to
make comes out bland or over done and more than not burned. So I
gave up and left it to the pros like Clare.”

Inside the dimly lit interior of the tavern, light
caste dancing shadows along the aged wooden walls and floor. Local
pictures and cut out’s from newspapers hung from frames on the
walls. The place was a family owned restaurant and not because
everyone who worked here was blood related. It was more that they
all had a strong connection to one another. It was tangible in the
air.

There were several groups of people sitting at
square hard wood tables, with tops rubbed smooth by numerous hands,
talking and eating, large plates of high cholesterol, artery
clogging foods and tall glasses of cold beer cluttering up their
tables. It looked like any other local eatery in town. The only
difference was that it was owned by a dead couple.

Anita and Roger Mendez opened up their establishment
sometime around the nineteen forties. It was a casual joint that
catered to locals and tourists who could come in and lounge for
awhile and have a drink of something cold after a hot day of
sightseeing under the squelching Florida sun.

They served both the living and the dead. With the
help of some living staff members they had the means to do so.
Everything was on the up and up in regard to legal issues. The dead
could not own property nor could they serve to the living. For that
reason the Mendez’s were required to hire living workers to
accommodate the living patrons, and a middle man of the living
persuasion had to be used to keep up with the finances of the
building and all monies made. Most of the money made was used to
keep up the tavern and pay the living employee’s. A small portion
went into the community pool of money that supplied the needs of
the ghostly citizens.

It would be a surprise to the living to know that
the St. Augustine Eidolon community owned their own homes in the
area. The local citizens wanted to live as normal an afterlife as
humanly possible. The physical trappings of humanity like a home,
helped to create that normality.

It was full tonight at the
Happy Haunts
and not all the seats were occupied
by the living. The dead enjoyed good food and conversation just as
much as any other human.

Henry and Clarissa made their way to a table with
two ghosts already occupying seats at it. No one mistakenly sat in
their laps or tried to make off with the chair under them. The
living simply pretended they were not there.

Henry offered Clarissa a chair at the table and she
sat down in the offered seat. As she did so her mouth almost
watered at the smell of good cooking coming from the back kitchen.
She tucked herself closer to the table as Henry took the seat next
to her.

Henry began the introductions with the woman across
from him. “Clarissa, this is Eleanor.” Henry introduced the petite
blonde woman who Clarissa thought had the most amazingly curly
hair. The woman smiled at Clarissa, holding out her hand. Clarissa
took it.

“
Hello there,” she drawled in a soft southern
accent. “As Henry here said, I’m Eleanor.” She gave a fleeting
glance to Henry. Her cerulean blue eyes held an emotion Clarissa
could not name. As if catching her slip, the undefined emotion
quickly vanished from Eleanor’s eyes before turning her attention
back to focus on the newly deceased woman across from
her.

“
Eleanor Masters was my name in my living
days, but I just go by Eleanor now. There’s no sense in all that
formality.” She let go of Clarissa’s hand. “I hope you’ll be
joining us for dinner. We just put in our orders.”

Eleanor tilted her head to the side and studied
Clarissa. “You’ve only just arrived to St. Augustine?” she
asked.

“
Yes,” Clarissa answered, “Only a short time
ago. Henry met me at the old city gates.”

“
I thought I felt something in the air
today.”