Freelance and Fishmaids is a supernatural mystery novel, serialized in twelve episodes. This is Episode Six of Season Two. Start Here.
{New to this story? Catch up with Season One here!}
Previously, Flora handed Caroline and Reyville another assignment, this time investigating an impossible disappearance…
In this episode, Caroline and Reyville press a little harder on Flora’s intentions, and investigate a haunting in an unexpected place…
If you’re enjoying this story, let me know with a like, comment, or restack!
To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe for FREE…
For more tales set on Ferris Island, check out the Ferris Island Index.
Despite the bright, climbing summer sunshine, the Seavend General Store was quiet and empty—tense in a way that was unusual—as Caroline and Reyville waited at their favorite corner booth. Caroline fidgeted with her napkin, folding one corner, ripping another, and glanced at the door.
She and Reyville had agreed: this—this conversation, this exchange—was for the best. And it was going to hinge on Reyville trusting her hunch.
But what he couldn’t know was that it wasn’t a hunch. It was a vision. When she had snapped Scully’s shutter by the pool, a whole world had passed before her eyes, too fast to catch onto, the gift from the Sisters burning white-hot and inscrutable in her mind’s eye. She had been left with impressions, feelings. An uneasiness.
More than anything, she just wanted Flora to put her fears to rest.
The front door of the General Store opened and Flora entered, scanning the room for them, then striding over quickly, heels clicking on the old wood floor. She looked a little more harried than usual, a little less put-together.
“Hi,” she said, somewhat breathless, as she slid into the seat beside Caroline. “Sorry I’m late. I was a little surprised to get your call. Is everything, uh…is everything okay?”
Caroline nodded. Reyville sipped his coffee, letting her take the lead.
“Everything is fine,” she said. “We went to Appleview.”
“Oh?” Flora paused in setting her purse down, undisguised intrigue filling her features. “Did you find anything?”
“You could say that.” Caroline pulled Scully out of her bag, glanced at Reyville. He didn’t seem to have changed his mind that this was the right thing to do, not a hint of reluctance in his face. So she turned on the camera, tapped through to reveal the photo of the hole in the floor of the pool. She handed the camera to Flora, whose eyes visibly widened, her mouth forming a little “o”.
“What…is that?” she asked, quietly.
“That is something you can’t see with the naked eye,” Caroline said, “at the bottom of the saltwater pool at the resort.”
Flora studied it closer. “A hole? A cave?”
Caroline shrugged. “Hard to say. Can’t exactly dive down to investigate when it's invisible.”
Flora handed the camera back, but her gaze still lingered on it. “You think that this has something to do with the disappearance of our fishmaid?”
“We would be crazy to discount it. In a place where invisible portals are possible, anything goes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re still thinking about that.” And they were. Appleview would probably need another look. Caroline turned Scully off, tucked the camera gently back into her bag. She had been feeling a little sensitive around Scully, still, like old friends reunited after a long decade apart. Whatever strange magic lingered around Scully seemed all-too-ready to interact with the gift from the Sisters in ways she had not been prepared for.
She glanced at Reyville again. No change in his expression. Only trust. Only a readiness to back her up. So she said, to Flora, “We have a question for you. And we hope…it doesn’t offend. But in return for your honesty, we have a project you might be interested in.”
Flora nodded. “Go on,” she said.
Caroline cleared her throat. “What are you actually studying, Flora?”
Flora tilted her head slightly, as if she hadn’t understood the question properly. “I don’t…know what you mean. Project Sea Lion is a fishmaid behavioral study.”
“Yes, we know. But what are you studying? Off your own bat?”
There was an awkward pause, as Flora seemed to weigh something out in her mind. Finally, she said, “I promise you that Sea Lion is the only project I am officially working on for RUMOR. But…yes, I do have a more personal interest in other aspects, in other research. That isn’t relevant, though, to our partnership. It doesn’t get in the way of what I’m asking of you. It’s fully…extracurricular.”
Reyville spoke for the first time. “And that personal interest would be…?”
“Personal.”
Flora said it so firmly that Caroline was a little taken aback. She hadn’t heard Flora speak that way, before. There was an icy silence.
“Listen,” Caroline said, “we’re not accusing you of anything. But…if we’re going to take on these errands of yours, I think it’s only fair to lay it all out on the table. If there’s something you’re looking for, something apart from the study that you’re using us to find…I think we deserve to know.”
Flora sighed, but something in her face remained guarded. “As I’ve told you, my family was very intrigued by this island,” she said. “Connected, you could say. And working at RUMOR gives me a front-row seat to learning more about what makes this place unique. The…the key to its strangeness. But as I’ve said, that’s a fully personal interest. It isn’t clouding my judgment with Sea Lion, and it isn’t…it isn’t relevant to you. To what we’re doing.”
She laughed, then, an unexpected sound. “I’m just not easily satisfied, that’s all. If there’s a question, I want an answer, and I want the full answer. I assumed we had that in common.”
She sounded a little stung, and Caroline nodded. She understood that, more than she could express. She could tell that Reyville was not quite as convinced, but maybe he would understand, someday.
“We do,” Caroline said. She looked at Reyville again for the second part, for the offer. She wanted him to confirm it. He hesitated, clearly wanting more information from Flora, but then took up the baton.
“We have something we need RUMOR’s help with, that might interest you,” he said. “You did say that you would offer full support if we asked, yeah?”
Flora nodded, grateful to be back on firm conversational footing. “Yes. Oh, yes. What is it?”
“There’s a large predator in Mothwood, stealing livestock,” Reyville continued. “We don’t know what it is, and we’ve done our best to find it, but we’ve hit a bit of a dead-end. We may need back-up. Better surveillance of the area, and possibly even support in capturing it. Is that something you and your people can handle?”
Flora smiled. “Yes, I think we can do that. Let me make some calls. Could I…uh…could I help out? On the ground, I mean? In the field?”
Caroline chuckled, nodded. “Sure. You help us organize the operation, and you can be right there in the mix with us.”
It was a calculated risk, and they knew it. But there was a part of Caroline that wanted to see how Flora operated in a real-world scenario, under pressure. You can learn a lot about a person in the right circumstances.
“Amazing.” Flora was back to that unguarded delight. “I should go. But…yes, I’ll make those calls and let you know what we come up with. Thank you. And…I hope…that you know how grateful I am to you both. For your help. I just know that there’s so much more we can accomplish together, for the good of this place. I really feel it.”
She stood, shouldered her purse. “Talk later?”
“Yes, talk later,” Caroline said.
Flora turned and left the store, a lightness in her step, and Caroline turned to Reyville. But it was the Captain who spoke, first.
“I won’t mince words. She’s odd.”
Caroline shrugged. “Pot to kettle?”
“You know what I mean. There’s odd, and then there’s odd. She’s odd.”
“Odd, yeah, but I still think she’s harmless.” Even as the words left her mouth, Caroline thought of the sudden steely look on Flora’s face when they confronted her, the first time Caroline had ever heard that deep, rumbling tone in the researcher’s voice on the word personal. But everyone has their demons, don’t they? Everyone has their reasons for playing a part.
There was a pause. Reyville lifted his coffee cup, but before drinking he said, “One strange thing. I couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t seem all that surprised by Scully.”
“What?”
“When you showed her the photo. Most people are pretty amazed by Scully’s abilities when you show them off. Flora didn’t seem shocked by that at all. As if…” He shrugged instead of finishing the sentence.
“No, go on. What are you implying?”
Reyville met her gaze frankly, unflinching. “As if she had seen Scully in action before. But when would that have happened?”
Caroline’s heart thundered. She hated the way he did that, the way he saw things she didn’t and dropped them in her lap; a cat with a dead gift-mouse in its jaws. She hated it because he was so often right, and—in this case—she so desperately wanted him to be wrong.
But before she could say anything, could fire back a reply, Noah Banfield—the teenage waiter whose family owned the Seavend General Store—slouched over to refill their coffee cups, looking even more forlorn than usual.
“Thanks, Noah,” Caroline said, hiding the tension by putting on a smile.
“No problem,” he replied, glumly. Then, instead of moving on to another table, he stood at their elbows, not making eye contact.
“Everything…okay?” Caroline ventured.
He sighed. “Can I ask you guys something?”
This was new. Caroline nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
“You guys do, like, ghost stuff. Right?”
Caroline nodded again, unsure where this was going. “Uh…yes. We…do ghost stuff, in a manner of speaking. Why?”
“It’s my girlfriend. Amanda. Um…I mean, she’s not a ghost, but like…her job is haunted.”
Reyville smiled quietly behind his refilled coffee cup and Caroline kicked him under the table, trying to handle several thoughts at once. First, it was news to her that Noah—bored Noah, taciturn Noah—had a girlfriend, especially since he was supposed to be heading off-island to college in the fall. Second, she was highly skeptical that these teenagers knew anything about actual hauntings; this felt like a social media dare, to her. And third, she wasn’t sure she liked how far afield their reputation had taken them, to be known by the island youth. It was an odd feeling.
“Okay. Well, uh…where does she work?”
“It’s some plant store in Port Salish. It’s new.”
“Oh,” Reyville said. “Paradiso, right? It’s on the corner across from the post office?”
“Yeah, I guess. She’s really freaked out. She told me that she wants to quit, but she can’t, because she’s trying to save up some money this summer before we go to college.” He looked between them, hopeful. “Could you guys, like, hunt the ghost or do your exorcism thing, or whatever?”
Caroline sighed. For all his faults, Noah was a good kid, and she didn’t have the heart to tell him that exorcisms weren’t quite their thing.
But it was Reyville who said, kindly, “We’ll check it out, Noah. Don’t you worry. We’ll head over there in the next hour.”
“Thanks,” the kid said, shoulders relaxing. “I’ll text Amanda and let her know you’re coming.”
He gave them a brief smile—uncharacteristically sincere—before wandering off to refill the coffee at the next table.
“Are you serious?” Caroline asked, when he was out of earshot.
Reyville grinned. “Why not? Unless you have something better to do while we wait for Flora to organize the cavalry.”
Caroline thought that the mention of Flora would bring the tension crashing back down between them, but Reyville seemed content to drop it, for now. If nothing else, that was something she did love about him. His willingness to move forward. To take her at face value.
“Okay, then, Captain,” she said. “You pack the holy water, and I’ll fire up the ouija board. Let’s go ghost-huntin’.”
*******
Paradiso Nursery and Garden Supply was a relatively new addition to the historic downtown of Port Salish. From the outside it seemed to fit in quite nicely with the old brick buildings and lightly-renovated vintage maritime aesthetic that the tourism board had worked so hard to preserve. But when Caroline and Reyville walked in, they were instantly hit with an incense-haze and a mix of New Age music playing lightly on the store’s speakers in a drone of sitar, flute, and hand-drums. There was a display of crystals for sale next to the till, dreamcatchers hanging in the window, and tapestries lining the walls. The shop was not very big but the space was bright with skylights in the ceiling and purple grow-lights illuminating the houseplants and potted specimens, crammed together on sturdy shelving all along the walls. There was a sign at the back with an arrow leading down a hallway, reading MORE PLANTS OUTSIDE.
Behind the counter was a young woman looking a bit out-of-place against the strong hippie aesthetic, dressed in a normal T-shirt and jeans, thick black hair in tight braids, clear skin already a beautiful brown, but deepened by time in the summer sun. She was scrolling on her phone, brow furrowed, but she set it aside as they walked in.
“Welcome to Paradiso,” she said, adopting a practiced customer service tone. “Can I help you find anything today?”
Caroline returned the smile. “We’re actually looking for Amanda.”
The girl’s smile faltered, replaced by widened dark eyes. “Oh. I’m Amanda. Wait, are you guys the ghost hunters? Noah told me about you guys.”
“That’s us.” Reyville picked up a clear crystal from the display, peered through it. “You have a ghost problem, eh?”
Amanda looked around, as if afraid of being overheard. “Yeah, it’s…I’m probably not supposed to be talking about it. It makes Rosemary sad. Paradiso is her dream, and this whole ghost thing has kind of bummed her out.”
“Who’s Rosemary?”
“Rosemary Dante. She owns the store. She’s back there in the office. I can get her, if you want—”
“Why don’t you tell us your story, first,” Caroline said, ignoring the twee small- business cleverness of someone named Dante owning a store called Paradiso. “Why do you think the store is haunted?”
Amanda bit her lip, crossed her arms and held her elbows, almost a self-soothing gesture. She was pretty. Caroline was quietly impressed that Noah Banfield had managed to woo someone like her.
“The store is really new,” Amanda said. “I think it only opened, like, three weeks ago? And I’m saving up for a car before college, so…anyway, when I got the job, Rosemary asked me to help move some boxes around and stuff, in and out of the storage space in the attic. And that was fine at first, but like…pretty soon I started to hear weird things. Noises when I was alone in the store. Or I would find things tipped over, plants spilled on the ground. Really messy. And then, uhm…”
Amanda paused, winced, and said, “It got weird when…I would be helping out a customer, right? And they would ask a question about plants I didn’t know the answer to, because I’m still learning. And…I would hear…like, a voice. In my ear. Giving me the answer to their question.”
The girl looked at Caroline, as if daring her not to believe it. “I thought I was just going crazy at first, so I tried to ignore it, because the customer didn’t seem to notice. But when the customer left I would look it up online and…it was the right answer. The voice was right. Every time.”
“Huh.” Caroline glanced at Reyville, and he met her eyes. He was intrigued, she could tell. “Sounds like you’ve got a very helpful ghost.”
“I guess.” Amanda sighed. “But it’s creepy, feeling like I’m being watched and stuff. I don’t know if I can stay here, but I really need the money. Rosemary is cool and all. But…getting haunted isn’t what I signed up for. And I‘m always freaked out that it could worse. Or, like…dangerous.”
Suddenly a door opened in the back hallway—where the office had been indicated to be—and a woman emerged, arms full of seed packets to be restocked. Even at a distance she was fragrant with sandalwood and patchouli, wearing round tortoise-shell glasses, dripping with beads and bangles and feathers, her peasant top and paisley skirt an instant vintage throwback, reddish hair braided down her shoulders. She was a little older than Caroline by the look of things, and humming quietly along to the store’s music, which had switched to Enya’s greatest hits at some point in the last few minutes.
“Welcome in, folks,” Rosemary Dante said in a throaty voice, bustling her way behind the counter and giving Amanda’s shoulder a supportive tap before smiling to Caroline and Reyville. “I trust you’re having a pleasant day. So beautiful, isn’t it, that bright sunshine? There’s just something about that solstice energy, the liminal peak as we tip into the darker half of the year. I pulled the Star this morning, and oh, how it feels like a day for hope and possibility and healing. We could all use a bit of that, couldn’t we? It’s just so inspiring.”
“Yeah, for sure,” Caroline said, even though she didn’t have a clue what most of that was supposed to mean.
Undaunted, Rosemary beamed. “Can we help you find anything?”
“In fact…we were just speaking to Amanda here about your ghost problem.”
Rosemary froze, setting her armload of seed packets down on the counter, and her mystical demeanor faded ever so slightly. “Oh,” she said. “Is that why you’re here?”
“We just want to help,” Reyville said.
“They’re really good, Rosemary,” Amanda added, with a confidence that Caroline wasn’t sure was warranted. “Noah told me they’re really good at this.”
Caroline was surprised, yet charmed. Noah never seemed to pay any attention to anything except his phone. It was strangely touching that he had brought Caroline and Reyville up at all to anyone, let alone his girlfriend.
Rosemary leaned on the counter, looking tired. “It’s been very disconcerting, I don’t mind telling you. When I first realized we were being haunted, I was actually a little bit excited. It’s not every day you get to make contact, you know? So I tried reaching out with a pendulum, and then with my cards, but for some reason she doesn’t seem to care about any of that. Won’t tell me her name or anything about herself. But she’s awfully chatty about plants, though.”
“She?”
Rosemary nodded. “Oh, yes, it’s a woman. The ghost. We can’t see her, but we hear her. And she doesn’t like being ignored. When we do, she makes a frightful mess. Last time it took me hours to sweep up all the soil she spilled. Seeds dumped, ruined. Pots smashed. I’m at my wit’s end.”
A shiver of genuine sorrow entered Rosemary’s face, then, and traveled to her voice. “I don’t want to have to move Paradiso again,” she said. “Coming all the way up here from Portland was already such a journey, and I got this space for a steal, considering its location.”
Reyville’s eyes narrowed. He asked, “What occupied this space before you moved in? Do you know?”
“It was a secondhand bookstore,” she replied. “Hence all the pre-built shelving. There are still a few boxes of old books in the attic. I called the previous owner about them, but he said to just throw them out, which I thought was strange. Haven’t had the heart to, though. Some of them look very, very old. Antiques.”
Caroline and Reyville exchanged a look. Old owner sells the space for a steal, leaves merchandise behind, and tells the new owner to throw it out?
There’s odd, and then there’s odd.
“Well then,” Reyville said. “I think we should take a peek in the attic.”
*******
Climbing up the creaking ladder into the attic of the Paradiso meant climbing out of the fragrant smell of incense into an older smell, the soft press of mildew against the nose, rafters shrouded with cobwebs and barely enough space to stand up. Rosemary and Amanda had kept the storage space tidy: neat stacks of galvanized buckets and plastic pots, boxes carefully labeled with their product names, unused shelving, extra bulbs for the grow-lights. While Reyville and Caroline stood hunched, peering around the dark space, Rosemary perched at the top of the ladder—only her top half hovering in the hatch doorway—and pointed out the corner where she had stacked the old boxes from the previous owner of the shop space.
“It’s just books,” she said. “But like I said, they’re quite old.”
Reyville made to walk over, but Caroline stopped him, pulling Scully out of her bag.
“If we’re gonna do this, we should do it properly,” she said.
“You sure?” Reyville’s eyes darted between the camera and Caroline, still haunted by what happened last time she clicked the shutter, even if he didn’t understand it.
But she shrugged. “I can’t be scared to use this thing,” she said. “Just, you know…stay close enough to catch me.”
She grinned, but he did not return her good humor. She steadied herself, braced for the feeling of pain in the welts on her arm, and raised the camera.
Snap!
The flash filled the space, and the visions poured in like water from a faucet, rushing past her like a river, and her arm seared with pain. She hissed a breath but held firm on her feet, lowering the camera as the visions passed her by. She tried to catch one and hold it, but she simply couldn’t. They fluttered by too quickly. The pain was drowned out by frustration.
As her sight cleared, Reyville was waiting beside her. She took a deep breath, turned to smile at him, her arm still throbbing. “We’re good,” she said. “All good.”
His subtle look of relief made her heart squeeze.
She lifted Scully and tapped the button to see the photo she had taken, tilting the camera so that Reyville could look, too.
Sure enough, there was a ghostly form there: a flit of softness, a mist, hovering near the boxes, unclear but present.
Caroline nodded and smiled. “Gotcha,” she whispered. Then, to the air, “We see you. We’re not here to hurt you. If there’s something you want to show us, please do. I’m going to take another photo, okay? Just…do whatever you have to. To make your message known.”
She raised Scully a second time, bracing herself once more.
Snap!
This time, when the visions came, she focused in on the images flying past her, the pain less pronounced this time, the way the unpleasant shock of the heat from a hot tub starts to feel normal after your skin adjusts. As the visions passed her by, it suddenly dawned on her: these were photos. A lightning-fast slideshow of photos, in her mind.
Yes. These were all of Scully’s photos. Everything that magical little lens had ever captured. Perhaps even from before Caroline owned her. She could see them, but could not focus on any of them, could not control the speed.
The visions cleared, and Caroline brought herself back to the present, swaying, breathing into the pain.
Then, when she was ready, she showed the latest photo to Reyville, who waited, watching her.
The ghostly form had sharpened, found a bit more definition. A woman in a long, dark dress, wearing something on her head. A hat? It wasn’t clear enough to see. But she stood beside the boxes, looking straight at the camera with steady eyes, and one hand was pointed at the lowest box in the stack.
“Bingo,” Reyville said. “Scully is a marvel.”
It didn’t take long to pull the stack of boxes apart, to open the lowest one. There were about two dozen books in the box, but somehow Caroline knew. She knew, as soon as her hands touched the right one.
Did she imagine a draft, sweeping through?
Did she imagine a woman’s voice beside her ear, saying yes? Yes? Choose this! Choose me! Find me!
Regardless, Caroline picked up the book. It was very old, a small and slim leather volume, the cover soft and supple in her hand. It was unmarked, no title on the front cover.
Caroline carried the book to the ladder and they all descended, bringing it to the front counter where the light was better. The music in the store had changed again, and the sound of Lindsey Buckingham warbling through the store felt off, somehow, in a way that Caroline couldn’t put a finger on.
But they all crowded around to look and Amanda’s eyes were wide as Caroline set the little book down on the counter and gently opened its creaking cover.
The first page greeted them with a spidery script, the ink faded from time:
A Materia Medica recorded by Goodwife Maud Page Boston, 1801
Rosemary made a little sound of surprise. “Oh. Oh, my. That’s…well, historically, a materia medica is a book kept by an herbalist. For therapeutic purposes. But I imagine that in 1801 it wasn’t exactly smiled upon for her to make this for herself. I wonder if it was a secret…her secret…”
Caroline carefully turned the pages, greeted by extensive handwritten lists and recipes, notes and funny little illustrations. The book had clearly been well-loved and well-used, slipped in and out of pockets and baskets and bags. Surreptitious.
And somehow, over the long centuries, it traveled across the country, hand to hand, shop to shop. How many hauntings had this little book caused on its journey through time?
Caroline felt that she could see her: a woman in a long dark dress, white bonnet on her head, hair tucked away, cross around her neck, and a secret in her hand. Knowledge at her fingertips. Maud Page, the one everyone in town knew to talk to, to go to for help when the doctors couldn’t give an answer.
But quietly. A secret. Her secret.
“It would seem that your ghost knows a thing or two about plants,” Reyville said. “That’s probably why she’s been so busy telling you what’s what, Amanda.”
The teenager’s eyes were wide as she looked at the book. “So, she really was trying to help. Answer questions and stuff.”
“Yep, sure seems that way.” Caroline smiled. “She was quite the expert.”
Rosemary said, in a hushed tone. “I never thought it would be something like this. I truly never thought.”
Caroline looked up. “If you still want to remove her from the shop, we could take the book somewhere else. She clearly followed it all the way from Boston, so I imagine she would follow it anywhere.”
But Rosemary and Amanda looked at each other, both women saying much without saying anything at all, before Rosemary shook her head. “No, no. A nursery is the best place for an herbalist to be, I think, ghost or not.”
Amanda nodded. “Yeah, at least I know she has a name, now, and isn’t just a voice in my head. A ghost is less creepy when you know she’s called Maud and she's just, like, really into plants.”
Rosemary took up the little book with reverence, peering around the shop. “If you can hear me, Goodwife Page,” she said, “I’m sorry we were so frightened of you. If you’d like to stay, you’re more than welcome. And I promise your book isn’t going back into the attic. We’ll keep it safe and sound. I swear.”
Then she turned to Caroline, held out her hand to shake. “Thank you,” she said. “For all of your help.”
“It was no trouble,” Caroline replied, and she meant it.
It was another win. Another happy conclusion to a ghost story.
She hadn't realized how badly she needed one of those.
*******
Caroline and Reyville leaned beside each other against the railing of the Port Salish Harbor walkway, letting the sun clear away the smell of the attic’s mildew and the cobweb-cling of ghostly presence. The sun was high and the whole world was summer-green and gold, the water and sky mirror-image sparkling blue, seagulls wheeling overhead and the little harbor-side bustling with tourists. Even the Fishmaid’s Wake had its doors and windows wide open, festive, jukebox tunes filtering out into the breeze and sunlight glinting off the row of Harleys parked out front. Port Salish in the warm season was always a sight to behold.
It was Reyville who broke the silence first. “I’m sorry about earlier. With Flora, and Scully. I don’t want to fight.”
“I don’t either,” Caroline replied.
“But,” he said, “you have to know that she's not telling us everything. Right? You have to know that she's got some kind of agenda. Everyone does, but her most of all.”
“It really isn't our business.” Caroline thought about Flora's home in Orchard Beach, how spartan it was…except for the joyful tumble of her museum of oddities, a paradox. So tidy on the outside, so messy on the inside. Flora Burnside was a woman who cared about the same things Caroline did, in so many ways. She simply couldn't bring herself to truly dislike her.
We all have our things that we’re into. Maud Page, Rosemary Dante, Flora Burnside. Even Reyville. We all have our reasons. We all have our hidden attics, our jumbles.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Reyville said, clearly holding back something else he wanted to say. But Caroline couldn’t reply, because without warning, Reyville shifted his hand to lay on hers, skin on skin…and the world fell. Slipped. Tumbled backward and away.
It was a mess of color and sound. It was a past.
Reyville—but not Reyville—sitting on a chair in a dark apartment, but it was not in Ferris Island, and the clouds outside were heavy and gray and the rain struck the window, and he had a whiskey bottle in his hand, and Reyville doesn’t drink, but this man does, and every sip is a curse…and it was not now, but it was decades ago, because the carpet was shag and the paint on the wall and the color of the appliances was all wrong.
There was a new record spinning, Fleetwood Mac, lyrics like a lament but the song was too upbeat for the scene: “One thing I think you should know, I ain't gonna miss you when you go…been down so long, I've been tossed around enough…"
He was so sad, so very sad, so horribly sad, because there was something he was supposed to do, and he hadn’t done it, and there was something he was haunted by, but he didn’t understand it, and oh…oh, no…please, no…
As quickly as it arrived the vision passed. Her arm throbbed. Reyville’s hand was still on hers, and Caroline stared at it, unfocused, feeling sick…and yet euphoric.
She looked up at Reyville—this Reyville, her Reyville—and his eyes were soft and full of questions that she couldn’t answer.
But she had seen a past. One of his pasts. She knew there were more.
And a feeling rose in her then, so disturbing, that she had to physically swallow it down before it consumed her. It was a craving to be touched by him again, and again. The sudden wielding of a powerful weapon, a quiet scalpel.
It was a terrible desire—a low burn, turned sky-reaching inferno—to know everything.
Thank you for reading! 📸
Click HERE for the NEXT ISSUE. ⏭
Click HERE to head back to the Navigation Page.
I really love the idea of a helpful ghost haunting a book specifically and following that book around, just wanting to help people out. That just warms my heart.
The Dante/Paradiso reference had me excited. And I appreciate that you have no issue making light of/pointing out your own naming conventions in the storys themselves.