Tricks & Treats: A Romance Anthology (26 page)

He laughed a bit, nervously, and it made him seem so like the boy I remembered, innocent and sweet. Now I reflected on it, though, he had always seemed burdened by something. It rarely showed, but there was always a haunting aura behind his smile.

“They’ve always been with me, Breezy. Always. They talked to me, and I learned not to question it. I kept it to myself, but it’s always been a part of me, of what I do.” He sat up and met my eyes, searching for judgment, and found none. It seemed I believed in spirits, after all.

“You could have told me. I would have understood.”

He was not finished, though. “I wasn’t ready, Bree. I was much too scared to tell anyone about the things I saw. And when the guides told me that…”

“Guides?” I was curious now.

“Guides are spirits who tend to stay for a while. They eventually move on; that’s what I’m called to do, actually. Help spirits move on. Some stay to help me do that, though.”

“Are there any here
now
?” I pulled the sheets up over myself in alarm, and Gord stared at me for a moment before replying.

“No one is with us, Breanna. We’re alone. My last guide moved on a year ago, anyway. I can do much of the work on my own if need be, but it’s easier with a partner.” Gordon took my hands and held them tight. “Bree, do you remember coming home for your Dad’s funeral?”

“Of course I do! What sort of a quest…” Then I realized, in fact, I could not.

I remembered the funeral. I remembered the interment, the gathering after, but not coming home. My brain felt fuzzy. The aftermath of sex? Was I simply tired? I felt suddenly confused and overwhelmed, and Gordon sensed it and held my hands even tighter in his own.

“Breanna. Oh, my dear, sweet Breezy. Do you understand what’s happening?”

I looked back on the night.
Wander through your old haunts for long enough and you will find other souls wandering just as lost as you are
, I had thought. “Gordon? You came back to Bonavista to move people on, didn’t you?” I felt a tear escape my eye. “My Dad, for one?”

“For one, yes. Abner Johnson, too, and old Mrs. Little. They passed in the last week or so.”

I remembered seeing both of them on my solitary walk of the loop.
How did
I
see them? No, it cannot be. It can’t!

“I didn’t think we could be together tonight, because…oh, Breanna, I love you, and I’m sorry, but you need to accept something: you aren’t really supposed to be here.”

Leaping from the bed, I screamed at him. “No, you’re being ridiculous! We just spent the night having
sex
! Are you honestly trying to tell me I’m a fucking
ghost
?”

“Breezy, please…”

“No!
No
! What the hell is wrong with you?” I was horrified. He was crazy. I had spent the entire night making love to a man who was clearly detached from reality, possibly psychotic.

Yet, I could not remember where I had been yesterday. I tried to go back further, to university, but I had no memories of attending, no memories of graduation, no memories of jobs or a career or lovers. Where had my life gone? What had happened to me?

As if reading my thoughts, Gord told me he was surprised that we could be together tonight. He accepted it, chose to believe it was miracle, but he knew that it should be impossible.

“I wanted to be your boyfriend from the moment I first knew you, Bree. I know that sounds corny, but I recognized you were special. It was just that as I got older, my guides kept telling me to back off. They said that it was my destiny to be with someone who could see what I did. It broke my heart that you weren’t that person, but I accepted it, because what I do can be a burden. I couldn’t wish that life on you.”

“I am…I am
dead
, aren’t I?” He did not need to tell me. The clues fell into place: the lack of memory after high school, his hesitation to touch me before I kissed him, my solitude on a night when I should be with friends and family.

“Do you remember kayaking with your cousins, the summer after twelfth grade?” He asked gently as I sat back down. “It was a quick thing, your father said. You didn’t feel anything.”

I had capsized, and struck my head. I remembered it now. I cannot remember drowning.

No air to breathe…

I began to cry freely. I could not stop the rain and I did not want to.

Being dead was the most difficult thing I have ever been forced to accept. No wonder so many cultures have ghost stories, I thought. How long must the dead struggle to accept the news? How many people fight the knowledge of their passing, dooming themselves to an artificial life, wandering alone?

I kept on crying and Gordon kept holding me, letting me feel everything I needed. He waited and let the grief and the truth wash over me, much as the coastal waters had on the warm afternoon I had drowned at eighteen.

Sometimes, people say that when a person drowns and their lungs are full of water, that their last feeling is one of peace, even euphoria. At first there is shock and panic, then pain and convulsion, but ultimately that passes away and the consciousness calms and becomes resigned to fleeing a failing body. That peace was denied me when I died. It seemed Gordon was here to help me find it now.

When my sense of peace finally came, a few hours before sunrise, he was as surprised as I was to find me, fully corporeal, in his arms. “Aren’t you ready, Breanna? You can move on now. You earned your rest, and there’s nothing to keep you here on this plane.”

“Yes, there is,” I replied simply, and without bothering to wipe away the last few saltwater traces on my cheeks, I kissed Gordon passionately again. He began to cry, too, but he did not stop me from making love to him again.

To feel Gordon moving inside of me, on me, the incongruity of his hard muscles and soft skin against my body, this was enough of Heaven. I wanted nothing more than I wanted this.

Sated, we held on to each other, staying joined as long as we could, both finally groaning with the agony of separation. I could not bear the thought of being apart from Gordon now that we had found our way to each other, and he sensed it.

“Bree, I can’t ask you to stay.”

“Why not?”

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I don’t know how tonight was possible…”

“Hallowe’en?” I offered.

“Maybe, I don’t know. I haven’t… Well, I never exactly encountered this scenario before.”

We both chuckled slightly, and I prayed I could see his smile forever, whatever became of me.

“Hallowe’en could be the reason, I guess,” he admitted. “The day of spirits. Perhaps tonight
is
the one night we could be together.”

“I don’t want to move on, Gordon.”

He shook his head. “It can’t be your destiny to stay, no matter how much both of us wish you could.” He hugged me tight, and I could feel his heartbeat against my chest. I wondered idly, and sadly, if he could feel my heart beat for him as well.

“Why not? Gordon, your guides told you that you were meant to be with someone who could see what you did. Have you considered that your destiny might have been misinterpreted?”

Gordon looked at me askance. “What do you mean?”

“Perhaps I actually was your destiny, just not then. I couldn’t see the paranormal when I was alive, but I can now.”

Gordon jumped a little. “I don’t understand. Why do you think that?”

“I saw Mr. Johnson; he was standing by his gate, as though he were waiting for someone. And then there was Mrs. Little. She was looking down into her garden tonight. Poor thing–I imagine she was looking for little children to take care of. She was so kind, wasn’t she?”

“That’s where I found Mrs. Little! I saw her in the window, and then she met me in the garden. She was reluctant to go, because she loved watching the neighborhood kids, but I convinced her that the children on the other side needed her. That was her future, her true calling.” Gordon ruffled his hand through his hair, a look of surprise and caution on his face. “And Mr. Johnson was waiting for
me
! Breezy? Did you see anything else?”

“A schooner. On the horizon. I didn’t believe it was real, so I just dismissed it as my imagination, but I get it now. It must have been a lost cargo ship, probably from century or more ago.”

“Breanna! You
can
see what I see. Spirits can rarely see each other, except when… Oh, gentle Christ, Breanna,” he shouted, rising from the bed to stand at the window, “you’re a
spirit guide
!” he gestured outside. “What else can you see?”

I rose from his bed and peered down into the lifting darkness. The sweeping roads of Bonavista should not have been busy at this hour, but I saw a man in open oilskins walking with a pushcart full of dried cod, and two boys cheerfully rolling barrel hoops down the road with switches cut from trees. A woman in a velour housecoat with a mushroom haircut smoked on the ruined porch of a derelict house. The step beneath her feet was missing, and she simply hovered above the gap. Finally, to my utter heartbreak, I spied a little girl in a bonnet and pinafore, sobbing miserably as she sat upon a rock.

I began to tell Gordon what I saw when the little girl lifted her head and met my eyes. Not knowing what else to do, I smiled as kindly as I could.

“She’s looking at you, Breanna. She knows that you can help her.”

“What do I do?” I asked him softly, but before he could even answer, I began. Somehow, my soul knew what must be done.

I beckoned to the girl, and it seemed she was already in the room with us even as I saw her fade from her perch on the rock. She tried to slip her little hand into mine but, of course, she could not touch me. Gordon knelt beside me, and though I heard nothing at first, I knew she was confiding in him. Soon, though, there was a new clarity and I knew what they were saying. She was searching for her father, and I told her he was waiting for her, and had done so patiently, just as my father was doing now. The child’s tears dissolved into a wide grin and she vanished, whispering thanks and blessings.

This was my destiny, and Gordon and I both knew it now.

“I’m staying with you, Gordon, if you’ll have me.” The sun was rising, and I noticed that my senses, those of touch and smell, were failing. “If we can only really be together on Hallowe’en, I’ll take that as a gift and be grateful, but I want to be with you, no matter how or why.” I reached to touch Gordon’s face but I found I could not do it now. My hand disappeared beneath his cheek. He trembled, feeling me touch his soul instead.

“Please,” he moaned, “please stay. I love you, Breanna. I always have.”

My heart hurt so badly for him. Gordon was a good man and he deserved a normal life, with a woman he could share a life with, and I told him so. “If you find your soul mate, I will under-”

“No!
You
are my soul mate, Breanna Abbott. You always have been. When it’s my turn, you and I will move on together, as it should be, but I don’t ever want to see you go.”

It would be another year before we could touch each other, before we could share the physical sort of intimacy we had shared only on this Hallows’ Eve, but I laid upon his bed in the sparkling sunlight of the cold November morning in Bonavista, and he laid down beside me. We could share other things now, after all, and an eternity stretched ahead for us to do so.

Gordon laid his arm out straight upon the bed, and although I knew he could not feel it, he could see it when I entwined my fingers with his own. This time, I could speak to him and tell him how I felt. This time, I would never let him go.

The End

About the Author

Born and raised in Newfoundland, Canada, Kelli Blackwood began reading at age three and writing at six. Her first 'book' consisted of crudely drawn pictures of the Easter Bunny and one of her favorite cartoon characters talking about candy. It was hilarious and terrible.

Ms. Blackwood has since written dozens of poems, short stories, essays, short plays and scripts, and novels in the genres of horror, romance, and adventure. (She hopes these efforts are an improvement over the candy book.) She is hard at work on an adult romance novel entitled 'Sleeping In' and a novella called ‘Seeing Red.’ Ms. Blackwood has other projects in mind, including a graphic novel for teenage girls and other fiction for children and adults.

Educated at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Ms. Blackwood holds a Bachelor of Arts in both English and History and a Bachelor of Intermediate and Secondary Education. She resides in Newfoundland with both her real family and her fictional one—the characters of her written work.

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