Carly. I need your help.
Roly and Poly let out screeches and darted for the stairs, abandoning their dreams of more bacon bits in favor of self-preservation.
My head hurt, one side of my body felt strangely numb, and when I opened my mouth to ask Delia what was wrong, all that came out was “Whaaarrrng?”
Then I recalled that Jenny Jane Booth, who’d been in her late-fifties at the time, had died last Christmas from a massive stroke. She’d been a sweet yet no-nonsense woman, a stay-at-home mama who’d raised three kids into responsible adults with a whole lot of love and little else. She’d always been kind to me, and I’d been sad to hear of her sudden death last December.
Trying to persuade her to back up, I made a shooing motion, but that only seemed to draw her nearer once she realized I could see her, too. In a flash, she was in my face, her blue-gray eyes pleading as she moaned and groaned. “Errrmmmbbb!”
“What in the name of sweet baby Jesus was that?” my mama screeched in a high-pitched voice as she jumped to her feet.
Daddy put a hand on my arm and said, “Carly?”
“Mmmm finnn,” I said, trying to tell him I was fine. Dang. The words just wouldn’t come out right.
Jenny Jane continued to moan.
Pale-faced, my mama backed slowly into the living room.
I looked to Delia for help, then realized it was why she’d come to me. With Jenny Jane near, Delia couldn’t speak properly in order to tell Jenny Jane to back the hell up.
Fighting against the head pain, I dragged my right leg behind me as I walked over to the kitchen junk drawer. My right arm was all but useless as I foraged for a pen and paper. When I found them, I slapped them on the countertop and painstakingly began to write with my nondominant left hand.
The letters looked like chicken scratch but the message was clear.
Go stand by the front door.
I held the note up to Jenny Jane. Frowning, she stared at it and did nothing.
As quickly as I could, I added a RIGHT NOW to the note in all capital letters. I shook the paper at her and pointed toward the front door.
Jenny Jane held up her hands as though not understanding.
Never had I been more frustrated at feeling the effects of a ghost’s demise. Especially when said ghost had full use of her limbs and I did not.
Once again, I pointed toward the door. Nothing. Not so much as a flitter out of Jenny Jane.
“Arggghh,” I moaned, upset.
Daddy turned off the bacon pan and calmly took the note from my hand. He cleared his throat and said, “Go stand by the front door. Right now!”
My mama, who had been lurking by that particular door, screamed. In a flash, she ran up the stairs, her heels sounding like gunshots on the wooden steps.
Jenny Jane looked at my daddy, puzzled. She pointed a who-me finger at herself, and I nodded vigorously.
With an okay-I’ll-do-it-but-this-is-strange look on her face, she floated over to the front door.
“Thank you,” I said to my daddy after a long moment, then gave him a hug. Never had I been more grateful that the empath abilities in our family affected only women. I was pretty sure that right now my daddy was happy about that, too.
Delia came over and joined in the hug, throwing her arms around the both of us. “I’ve never been more exhausted in my whole life.”
When a ghost didn’t give an empath any distance buffering, our energy drained quickly, sapping the very life out of us. It was why it had taken me a month to recover when I’d had my bad experience with a ghost years ago. I’d been nothing but a limp noodle by the time the ghost had been sent back to the beyond. I knew what Delia was feeling and was surprised she was still functioning so well.
“Who is the ghost?” Daddy asked, patting our backs as though we were little girls in need of soothing.
I supposed we were.
“Jenny Jane Booth,” I said.
At the sound of her name, she started toward us, and I held up a hand. “Stay there, Jenny Jane!” Then I quickly explained to her why we needed her to keep her distance.
Delia collapsed onto the kitchen chair my mama had vacated. “I tried the note thing, too. Even a computer screen. Both are tactics I’ve used on other ghosts and they worked just fine. I don’t understand why Jenny Jane is oblivious. If Carly and I can read just fine while dealing with the symptoms of her stroke, she should be able to read, too, as she can’t even feel the effects anymore.”
Daddy placed crispy strips of bacon onto a paper-towel-lined plate to drain. “You both didn’t know Jenny Jane very well, did you?”
Not well, no. Jenny Jane and her family had lived in a cabin out in the country, too far off to pop in for a visit. Her kids, three in all, were now grown and scattered across the South, and her husband had remarried this past summer and relocated to Florida. There were no more Booths remaining in Hitching Post.
Except Jenny Jane.