The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance (Mammoth Books) Page 5

  Of course he was lying. She turned to the voice as though to an old friend. The voice knew she couldn’t survive the loss of Miles’s love.

  “Let me go, Miles,” she said evenly.

  “Never.”

  “You have to.” With a strength she didn’t know she possessed, she managed to tug free. She made no conscious effort to move, but suddenly she was several paces away, standing near the carved post at the far corner of the staircase. In the bright, eerie light, she read the denial, the disbelief, the confusion in his beautiful eyes.

  “Farewell, my beloved,” she whispered and turned toward the stairs.

  Josiah lurched forward to wrench Calista to safety but his grip slid uselessly away. His dead man’s hands gained no purchase on living flesh. Her eyes were dazed as she stared ahead, listening to voices he couldn’t hear. A fusillade of sparking red lights darted angrily around her.

  Some disturbance in the air had drawn him to the landing, as though the encroaching evil demanded that he witness its triumph. He glanced up in despairing frustration and met Isabella’s anguished gaze. She stood just behind Miles and the furious sorrow in her expression scored Josiah’s heart.

  Miles hadn’t moved since Calista had dragged herself free. “Calista, look at me.”

  When something in his commanding tone compelled the girl’s attention, the lights burst into a storm of flying vermillion. Jerkily, as though some force resisted her action, she turned to face him. In her loose white nightgown, she looked like she already hovered on the edge of the spirit world.

  “This is best. You know it is.” She didn’t sound nearly as tranquil as she had before, and Josiah read something in her blank eyes that looked like terror.

  Miles was pale and a muscle jerked in his cheek, but he didn’t shift toward her. It was as if he recognized any reckless move would prompt disaster. “Do you love me, my darling?”

  Her face was ashen with sorrow and regret. Her throat moved as she swallowed. “I’m doing this because I love you.”

  The participants in this drama were lit as brightly as if they stood on stage at the Theatre Royal. Calista looked torn and distraught. Miles’s jaw set with a stubbornness that indicated he intended to fight whatever forces captured his beloved – and prevail. But his eyes were dark with torment and his hands opened and closed at his sides as though he struggled against grabbing Calista and defying the powers that possessed her.

  “No, you’re not,” Miles said with absolute certainty.

  The girl cast a longing glance down the stairs but, thank God, moved no closer to the edge. “All right, I’m doing this because you don’t love me.”

  “You know that’s not true. You’re doing this because you don’t trust me.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Then you’re doing this because you don’t trust yourself.”

  “Why wouldn’t I trust myself?” she asked with a hint of irritation.

  “Because you never have. You don’t think you’re worthy of my love.”

  She licked lips reddened with kisses, or Josiah was no judge of women. “I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. I’ll spend the rest of my life proving how wonderful you are, if only you’ll give me the chance.” Miles paused and Josiah could see he frantically scrambled for words to convince Calista to stay with him, to resist the dark forces hunting her. He stared straight at her and his voice rang out. “Prove you are worthy. Come to me, my darling. Break away from whatever holds you and come to me.”

  She faltered toward him before she stopped, trembling. “I . . . I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “I’m not free.”

  “You’ll be free if you trust me.”

  He sounded so sure. Josiah wondered how he could be so sure. For one piercing moment, he envied Miles. Much as he’d adored Isabella, he’d never been so sure of her, even when she pledged her life to him.

  After a fraught instant of silence, Miles chanced a step in Calista’s direction.

  But he was too eager. She jerked back. For one horrifying moment, she teetered on the lip of the stair. She cried out and grabbed the banister, but it was a near thing.

  Josiah released the breath he hadn’t realized he held. Dear God, tonight mustn’t end in tragedy as his own wedding seventy years ago had ended in tragedy. Yet he could do nothing to prevent calamity. Frustration was a rusty taste in his mouth.

  “Trust yourself. Trust me. Trust our love.” Miles’s voice cracked with emotion. “For God’s sake, Calista, don’t throw away what we have because you’re frightened.”

  “Trust myself . . .”

  The girl hovered on the top step. Josiah poised in sick dread for her to lean a few inches backward and topple to her death. The red lights performed a stately minuet around her, as though they knew they’d won.

  “Yes, trust yourself.” Miles’s voice lowered to vibrating intensity and his gaze burned into Calista’s as if sheer force of will could convince her to return to him. “I love you. If you destroy yourself, you destroy me too.”

  For a moment, it was as if she hadn’t heard. Josiah braced himself for her to fall. Hope and wretchedness warred in her eyes before, at last, she ventured one shaky step toward her lover.

  Again she wavered in trembling indecision. The red lights blazed in a frenzy around her. Whatever held her was strong, it was malevolent, and it wanted her dead.

  For an endless moment, red fire meshed the girl, threatened to devour her. Calista moved no closer to Miles and with her surrender to its promptings, the light grew brighter until it hurt to stare into it.

  “For God’s sake, Calista, run!” Josiah shouted at her but she didn’t hear. The glaze in her eyes hinted she couldn’t even see Miles anymore.

  “Calista, don’t leave me,” Miles whispered, reaching for her without touching her. The red lights’ power seemed stronger than mortal flesh.

  Still Calista didn’t move. The girl’s eyes were stark with longing and doubt and fear. Her gaze didn’t waver from her lover’s.

  Then Josiah saw her suck in a deep breath. Purpose, courage, life flooded her features. She straightened and raised her chin with fresh defiance.

  Her voice emerged with steady confidence. “I trust you, Miles. I trust you and I love you and I want to be your wife.”

  The red lights ruptured into a blinding cascade of flame, but this time she proved herself immune to their promptings. She smiled at Miles with the radiance Josiah had noticed the first time he saw her. She wasn’t beautiful, but when she smiled, she seemed beautiful.

  With a stumble, she burst free of the cloud of red. Her lover groaned and dragged her into his arms, muttering an incoherent litany of love and relief. Calista sagged against him in exhaustion and started to cry.

  Around her, the red lights circled in confusion then, one by one, winked out to nothing. The air suddenly seemed cleaner, cooler, untinged by the low buzz of malevolence.

  Josiah glanced up to see Isabella approaching him, a smile transfiguring her face too. At last she looked like the woman he’d kissed so passionately behind the Japanese vase.

  She reached for his hand. It was the first time she’d touched him.

  “Isabella . . .” he stammered. Turbulent hope crammed his throat, making a wreck of eloquence.

  She was trembling. So was he. Her touch contained magic. It always had. Now she made him feel alive, as if he was once again that joyful bridegroom of so long ago. His fingers closed hard around hers in a silent claiming that he defied her to deny.

  How fiercely he’d loved her, loved her still. And staring into her beautiful black eyes, he could almost imagine she remembered just how she’d loved him in return.

  He could never have killed her. Never. Whatever she’d done. Whatever she believed. He’d rip his beating heart from his chest before he’d hurt her.

  She raised a finger to her lips and turned to watch as Miles and Calista drew apart. Calista stared across at Josiah and Isabella, an
d one of her beautiful smiles lit her expression, almost as if . . .

  “Do you see them?” she whispered to Miles.

  The young man kept his arm around his bride’s shoulders. “I do.”

  Astonished, Josiah realized he and Isabella had become visible to the couple. He raised his hand in a heartfelt gesture of blessing and Miles bowed in acknowledgement. Isabella curtsied with flirtatious grace, her wide skirts swaying into a graceful bell.

  “It must be Josiah Aston and Isabella Verney,” Calista said breathlessly. “You know, he doesn’t look . . . wicked.”

  “No, he looks like a man besotted. Believe me, I know the signs.” Miles pressed his lips to Calista’s hair in a caress that expressed adoration and gratitude in equal measure.

  “Calista and Miles, I want to wish—” Josiah began, but Isabella squeezed his hand and shook her head.

  “They can’t hear us.”

  “But they can see us.”

  “No longer,” she said softly.

  Calista turned to Miles. “They’re gone,” she said regretfully.

  “Yes.” Miles drew her closer into his body. “Do you believe in ghosts now?”

  The girl responded with a choked laugh. “I don’t know. I suppose I must.” She tilted her chin so she met her lover’s eyes. “Whatever I believe, we’re going to burn that bed.”

  Miles smiled down at her as if he beheld a priceless treasure. “We are indeed, my love. Now kiss me before I go mad.”

  “With pleasure,” she sighed and stretched up to press her lips to his with a sensual confidence that gladdened Josiah’s heart.

  Josiah blinked to clear his vision as a strange wall of grey descended. He blinked again, but still the fog enveloped the lovers, made them seem strangely distant for all that they embraced only a few feet away. The grey encroached on everything around him except Isabella who still burned as brightly as a candle in his vision.

  Isabella’s regard was open and trusting as he’d longed to see it. “Do you remember everything, Josiah?”

  And just like that, he did.

  Memory crashed through him with the force of a towering wave. Reeling under the onslaught of recollection, his clasp tightened on Isabella’s hand. “When you told me you weren’t a virgin, I acted like an ass and lost my temper. We were in the Chinese bedroom.”

  “Standing near the bed.” She released his hand and turned to face him, her regard searching as if she remained unsure of him, even now.

  He’d acted like an ass but he hadn’t killed her. Astonished relief thundered in his head. “You remember too?”

  “Yes. At last.” Her voice broke and her eyes glittered with tears. “Oh, my love, how could I have doubted you? Can you ever forgive me?”

  Josiah smiled down into her lovely face and reached out to cup her cheek. “I’m the one who should ask forgiveness.”

  With breathless speed, long ago events slammed into order. He’d carried his bride into the Chinese room and started to kiss and undress her. He’d never been so happy in his life – he’d never imagined such happiness was possible – until she’d abruptly pulled away and whispered a shaken confession that she wasn’t a virgin.

  Like an arrogant blockhead, Josiah hadn’t told her that her previous lover didn’t matter a tinker’s damn, that she’d married him and he’d love her forever. Instead, he’d succumbed to masculine pride and lost his temper. Isabella’s guilt had soon transformed into characteristic defiance.

  Then with an eerie abruptness that made sense to him now he’d witnessed the malign forces stalking Calista, Isabella had fallen silent. She’d cast him one last look as though her heart had shattered into a thousand pieces, then whirled away and fled the room as if devils pursued her.

  Devils indeed.

  Panicked by her incomprehensible actions, he’d abandoned his pique and his pompous insistence on a full confession. He’d raced after her into the corridor, but not fast enough to save her from throwing herself down the stairs. Barely had her terrified scream echoed through the great hall before she lay broken on the tiles below.

  After that, the world went mad. Nobody ever questioned that he’d killed his wife and he’d been too numb with grief to mount a convincing defense. And part of him, a large part, had believed that the trial in London, the disgrace, the hanging, were just punishment for failing to protect his beloved.

  His beloved . . .

  “And now, my sweet Isabella, we have eternity,” he said gently, extending his arm with a formal gesture, as if they were guests at a court ball and he invited her to dance.

  “I can’t wait,” she whispered, accepting his arm and turning toward the stairs with an elegant flick of her skirts.

  His heart finally at ease, Josiah escorted Isabella down the curved staircase and into the light.

  Old Salt

  Carolyn Crane

  Cassie Nolan addressed the tourists in a solemn tone. “Ready?”

  They nodded and murmured their yeses. It was a small group tonight – six adults and two kids, standing out on the porch of the Old Salt Tavern in the growing dusk.

  She raised her eyebrows as the town clock rang eight chimes, scrutinizing their faces, as though she wasn’t convinced they could handle Old Salt’s nightly haunting . . . as though it might be too frightening, too horrifying, too shocking.

  Not.

  Old Salt William McHenry was the most pathetic haunter ever. Clearly he was a real ghost, that’s what frustrated Cassie. Could he not come up with something cooler and scarier than dragging an invisible chain around on a dock? Maybe throw stuff around? Smash something?

  The tourists would stand there in awe of Old Salt’s ghostly clanking, and she would stand there in awe of his ghostly ineptitude, thinking, A chain? Really? That’s what you came up with?

  Of course, she kept her opinions to herself. These people were paying to witness Old Salt, but more than that, they were paying for the experience of wonder and mystery. As tour guide, Cassie set the tone for that. This was a family business, after all.

  Cassie sipped her caramel latte, acting mysteriously hesitant a few beats longer, then she turned and headed down the steps and out across the expanse of sand and sea oats toward the haunted pier. The tourists followed. It was a pleasantly warm and still September evening, and she told the story of how the Gertie Gail sank in a hurricane just offshore at precisely eight o’clock back in 1879.

  It was young William McHenry’s first voyage as captain. He had made sure his crew escaped, but he went down with the ship and died. He was a man in love, however, desperate to get to shore to his beloved and enigmatic Nell.

  In fact, poor, dying William McHenry’s passion was so strong that his ghost rose from his body and swam to shore, hook hand and all, and climbed onto the pier, dragging his chain along, calling her name: Nelllll! But she wasn’t there. So he turned around and dragged his chain back to the far end of the pier. From there, he floated away or disappeared – nobody knew what happened to him after the clanking ceased.

  “But there is one thing we do know,” she said. They’d reached the shore’s edge; they would stay there, just shy of the pier. “He’s back here every night, at about a quarter past eight, dragging his chain. It’s as if he relives the sinking of his ship and his own death every night at eight. And every night he comes back to this pier, searching for his beloved Nell, calling out her name on the wind.”

  Cassie had never heard Old Salt McHenry call Nell’s name on the wind, but it was part of the legend, and a lot of people thought they heard it.

  Whatever.

  She put a finger to her lips; it was important to enforce absolute silence during Old Salt’s visits.

  Captain William McHenry stood against the raging cyclone, clinging to the ship’s mast as the last of his men escaped in lifeboats. Though he couldn’t see the shore, he’d heard the town clock chime eight o’clock. Land lay near.

  McHenry shut his eyes and said a prayer for his crew as spray lashed
his face; everything seemed strangely dreamlike. Tremors in the deck, wood cracked all around him, and a dark form blotted out the sky – a rogue wave. The ship slid sideways; the hull heaved, ropes and pulleys took flight like startled birds. William began to slide. He grabbed hold of a wooden rail just as the anchor chain came loose and flew toward him. He tried to pull himself from its path but it caught him, wrapped twice around his ankle, and yanked him down through the icy depths.

  Next thing he knew, he was on the rocky sea floor. Frantically he kicked, trying to free his ankle from the chain. He pulled at the chain, attempting to loosen it, but his hook kept catching in the links. He cursed his useless hand.

  He thought of Nell. So close. She said she’d watch for his ship’s return and be waiting on the pier. He’d spent ten months at sea, reliving his time with her, remembering the way she’d made him feel, longing to see her again.

  Despair jolted through him. With his good hand, he grabbed the anchor from the ocean floor and heaved it up, amazed when it lifted – he’d never been able to hoist the anchor before. Perhaps he could still get to her! He swam upward, anchor in tow, stunned at his own strength . . . yet somehow not.

  When he reached the surface, he kicked and thrashed through the icy water, toward the Clancyville pier, amazed how the waves had calmed. Many a fire blazed in the distance. He reached the pier and hauled himself and the anchor onto it.

  A handful of people had gathered at the shore, but none came out to meet him. Why?

  “Nelllllllllll!”

  He waited, tired, disoriented. Why would they not come out to greet him? They acted as if they didn’t see him, didn’t hear him.

  “Nellllllll!” He’d been at sea since the age of twelve and hadn’t known many womenfolk. He was twenty-six now, and Nell was the first woman he’d ever felt easy with. She looked beyond his hook and his rough sailor manners and made him feel happy, in a way he’d never known.

  “Nelllllllll!” Still the people ignored him.

  It struck him that he’d been here before, sitting with his anchor, chilled by the water, yet not wet.