The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance (Mammoth Books) Read online

  “No, I should respect that. You and Nell.”

  He settled back onto the couch. “We’ll have to put in some new wood in the morning and clean out the ashes. They can’t see the smoke what with the trees and terrain, but they’ll sure see this.”

  “Right.” She crossed her legs. “I’d always meant to finish Anna Karenina, and I noticed a copy of it here. Now that I can turn pages . . . yay.”

  “They got a good library here.” They sat in silence for a while, and then he glanced at her, like he had an idea. Or a question.

  “What?”

  He touched the brown scarf that hung around his neck. “You think you could tie my kerchief?”

  Of course. He hadn’t been able to tie it all those years because of his hook hand. “How does it go?”

  He pointed at an old-fashioned engraving on the wall. A president? “Some manner of knot like that.”

  Carefully, she lifted her fingers to his neck, felt the cloth form and, after three tries, she had it looking like the picture, a floppy bow.

  “So I fixated on you, and now I’ve run aground on you.”

  “Just a theory.”

  “And you’ve run aground on Nell.”

  “Well, she ain’t here, is she?”

  She pictured McHenry on the pier, his look of hurt when he snapped to and realized he wasn’t in the same time or place with his Nell. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “Maybe you’ll find her tomorrow.”

  “You don’t believe that now, do you?”

  “Not really,” Cassie said.

  “Sometimes I think . . .” He got a faraway look. “Sometimes I think it’s not her I ran aground on, but the idea that she might not be there. Maybe that’s my rocky shoal. Nothingness. I think that sometimes.”

  She felt so sad for him, calling out, so lost. “I bet she was pretty.”

  “Yup.”

  “What did she look like?”

  McHenry didn’t reply.

  “Did she have brown hair? Blue eyes? You know, did she wear pretty dresses?”

  “I can’t recall her face. Nor her looks . . .”

  “What do you miss most about her?”

  “I miss being with her. The way she made me feel.”

  “You must’ve really loved her.”

  “I didn’t know her long enough for that. I did want to see her something fierce, though.”

  “How long did you know her?”

  He traced a finger around the curve of his hook, stopping at the point. “A night. Before I shipped off.”

  Cassie sat up. “Seriously? All this for a woman you knew a night?”

  He gave her a warning glance. “I don’t want you casting aspersions on her now.” The town clock started its bong bong.

  Cassie bit her lip.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Sure, I been with a lot of whores, but she was different. Fallen on hard times is all. And she was kind – the best sort in all of Clancyville. When she looked at you, it made your heart glad.”

  A prostitute?

  William sat up straight as the clock ceased its bong bong. “Eight chimes!”

  Cassie widened her eyes. “Right! It’s eight.” The tourists would be there.

  “Why am I still here? Eight chimes always put my mind back to the ship’s deck, the cyclone.” He closed his eyes. “I have to get back.”

  “William.”

  “Hush.”

  “Even if she was waiting, William, how would you recognize her if you don’t even remember what she looks like?”

  “By the way she looked at me.”

  “William—” She touched his arm.

  “Stop it.”

  She let him alone, and finally William opened his eyes. “Tarnation.” He rose up and floated through the wall.

  He’d called his hope for finding his Nell the one shining thing in his life. A hope he clung to. Was she messing it up? Obviously she was. She should probably feel guilty, but instead she was . . . relieved. Excited.

  She was jealous of Nell.

  She floated through the wall and over the hill and joined the tourists crowded down at the foot of the pier. Kenny was leading the group. She was glad; she’d worried he’d leave after the funeral. He looked good, and she hadn’t seen him drink once. He was smoothing back his hair, a nervous habit. “Can’t quite set your watch by Old Salt, but the man usually turns up by half past. Nobody knows where he comes from. Some say he sails upon a ghost ship in the sky.”

  The sky? Kenny was making that up. Nervous because Old Salt William McHenry was late.

  Then she spotted a figure sitting way down on the end of the pier. McHenry. She ran out there. If he heard her coming, he made no sign.

  “William!”

  He stared out to sea, anchor nestled in his lap. “You were right. It’s stupid what I been doing.”

  “It’s never stupid to hope.”

  “It is if your hopes are cock-eyed. She’s long gone. Just a whore who I paid.”

  “It didn’t mean the whole thing was nothing. Doesn’t mean you didn’t feel connected.”

  “I felt connected all right.”

  “I didn’t mean that in a dirty way.” She’d meant in life. In a human way. “Hey, since they’re all here, you should still maybe drag that chain around for them.”

  He glowered at her. “I should?”

  She regretted the request intensely.

  “I should be that fool dragging the chain and wailing her name?” He lifted his anchor and started dragging it. The sound rang out. The people stilled, eyes widened. “Happy?” he yelled over his shoulder. “This what you want?”

  She stood helplessly, watching him drag the chain up the pier and come face to face with the crowd of people who could neither see nor hear him. “You like that, people?”

  Cassie trailed behind, unsure what to do.

  He picked up the anchor and let it go; it smashed onto the dock, creating a large crater. Everyone jumped. William stilled, let loose the chain. He hung his head low. “All this time, moaning for a feeling that wasn’t even real. A woman who likely forgot me the second I walked out.”

  “If it was real for you, then it was real enough,” Cassie said.

  “What kind of man am I?”

  Cassie placed a hand on his shoulder, felt his strength, his solidity. She squeezed. “You’re the best kind of man.” She meant it. She hoped he could tell. “You’re the best kind.”

  Silence. The people waited expectantly for the part where Old Salt dragged his chain back to the end of the pier.

  “It’s heroic that you never gave up. You wanted to feel connected to one other person. It’s what everybody wants.” Suddenly she realized something. Hello! She knelt down and worked at the chain around his ankle, trying to loosen it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting this stupid chain off your ankle so you don’t have to carry that anchor all over.” She pulled at a stubborn knot, twisted and yanked. “Now that I can touch stuff. I’m feeling this chain form under my fingers and . . .” Why hadn’t she thought of it before? She pulled one section under another, feeling his gaze on her. “No wonder you couldn’t get this thing off,” she said. “Hard enough with ten fingers.” She finally liberated a section, undid a loop and unwound the rest. His ankle was free.

  He stared, incredulous. “Thank you.”

  She smiled. “Least I could do. Let me finish this show now. I can’t stand to see them waiting like that.” She hoisted the anchor, surprised at her strength. Maybe ghost things weighed differently. She grabbed the chain with the other hand and dragged it down the pier toward the sea, mimicking the sound she’d heard for so many years.

  Halfway down William was there, blocking her way. “Don’t do it. You’ve been telling me all these years to stop.” He grabbed the chain. “Throw it over. The anchor, the chain. Let’s just throw it over.”

  “That’s not how the Old Salt legend goes. I
have to get it to the end.”

  “So now you want Old Salt to keep on? Your hated legend?”

  “They depend on it.”

  He was back in front of her, holding her arm. “I won’t let you.”

  She jerked it away. “This is my new thing. You didn’t like my toilet flush thing, and now you’ll stop me from this?” She kept dragging.

  He grabbed the anchor. “It’s my ship’s property. I’ll say what happens with it.”

  “Finders keepers.” She pulled at it. Soon they were in a tug of war, chain clanking. The people looked startled. Kenny improvised some explanation involving vortexes. Cassie laughed, pulling. “Goddamn it!” She got it away and rushed onward.

  Strong arms came around her shoulders from behind. “No you don’t.”

  She twisted. “Let me go!”

  “You’re not doing it.”

  She stilled, felt his whiskers on her cheek, his breath in her ear. It felt so good. He felt so good, and she had the strangest thought: she could stay right here. Just right here with him.

  “We’ll throw it over,” he whispered. “I’m done with this folly.”

  “You are so stubborn!” She pulled out of his hold and finally got to the end of the pier. He caught up again and tried to take the anchor from her, but Cassie pushed him in. “Hah!”

  He gasped and laughed. Then he surged up out of the water, grabbed the anchor and yanked her in with it.

  She screamed, letting go of it. The water was cold, but it felt good. Like life.

  She splashed William. With a serious look, he threw the anchor aside and came for her. She laughed and swam toward shore – she’d always been a strong, fast swimmer. As she neared shore, she could see her brother leading the tourists away, unaware of their splashing and screaming.

  A hand grabbed her ankle and she screamed. He pulled her to him. She flailed and laughed, and then she came to him and put her arms on his shoulder and wrapped her legs around him. He felt cool and solid and strong.

  “I thought you wanted to be done with Old Salt.”

  She pulled back and looked at him. She felt good in his arms, but more than good – OK, yes, she felt lust, stronger and wilder than anything she’d ever felt out in the world, but she also felt a sense of epiphany, as though she’d uncovered a secret. There were so many places in the world to be, so many things to do. And then there was this – this man who never gave up on a dream of connection. It was as if the planet had finally stopped spinning, to reveal worlds and mysteries eons deep, right here in Clancyville.

  “What I want is this.” With one light finger, she traced over his cheekbone and down his cheek. All her writing, all her wandering, was she looking for the same thing William was searching for? A sense of human connection, of belonging? And right here she’d found this Southern sailor with sky-grey eyes – she couldn’t think of anybody more beautiful. Anybody she’d rather be with. Any feeling greater than this.

  Old Salt McHenry. It was the damnedest thing.

  His gaze changed – she didn’t know really what he saw – something in the way she looked at him, maybe, but with an inhale he pulled her tight, kissed her all over her face. Then he just held her close, like a precious thing. She turned her ear to his chest. She could hear his heart. The water lapped around their shoulders. She felt its coolness, but no wetness came through.

  “We left that fire burning,” she said.

  “So we did.” He pulled away, looked into her eyes. “You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to fixate on you some, Miss Cassie.”

  She smiled. “Oh, I’d like that.”

  “Let’s us go home,” he said.

  They must have formed the thought at the same time – home – and there they were, in the parlor with the fire blazing. He pulled her to the sofa with him. Shadows danced in his eyes as he touched her cheek, her neck. His touch felt electric. Slowly he unbuttoned her blouse. One button, then another. “You have freckles here all down.”

  “I have freckles almost everywhere, McHenry.”

  “That’s good, Miss Cassie,” he said.

  She took off his kerchief and, eventually, the rest of his clothes, all funny loops and clasps. She enjoyed watching his sky-grey eyes as she touched him this first time, enjoyed his gentlemanly surprise at her forwardness, enjoyed the feel of his cock, heavy and warm in her hand.

  And when he pushed her down and made love to her, it was with the same passion that had kept him forever in this place, forever back in that cyclone, forever searching.

  Epilogue

  William dragged his chain along the wooden planks, very nearly to the beginning of the pier, where wide-eyed tourists waited. He gazed over them, and down along the crowded shore. Buses glinted in the setting sun, and then he locked eyes with Cassie, who stood just over on the beach, long hair wild in the wind. She placed her hands on her hips and tilted her head, jokingly, as if to say, “Get on with it.”

  “Caaaaaaaaaa-ssieeeeeee!” he shouted, though nobody would hear but one. “I love you!” She blushed. He couldn’t see her freckles from that distance, but they’d look all pretty and brown on her pink cheeks. He loved her – he did! Sometimes he wondered if it was her he’d been seeking all those years.

  He turned and dragged his chain back to the sea. “Caaaaaaaaaassieeeeeee!” And then he jumped in.

  By the time he swam to shore, she’d chosen her piece of driftwood – tourists had been bringing their own pieces, throwing them on the sand, hoping their wood would be used by the Sandwriter Ghost. She’d begun humbly last year, writing “Nelll!!” or “I’m awaiting!” in the sand, pretending to be him. She’d switched to other things later: “Home” or “Love” or “Never give up”. The people couldn’t see her, of course. All they would see was the piece of driftwood, floating through the air, making letters in the sand. TV crews had filmed it – Cassie had explained to William how it all worked. Her brother, Kenny, was running the tavern and the tours now. He and his parents had grown close, much to Cassie’s relief. She’d visit them often, and come back to William feeling hopeful.

  She was so smart and funny and beautiful. He was so proud of her. And they had so much fun fixating on each other, a word that had increasingly dirty connotations. Sometimes he thought maybe they might stay forever, anchored there by each other, and that would be fine with him.

  Today, like many days, she’d written “I love you!” She threw down the driftwood and smiled over at him. The tourists clapped and cheered.

  He went to her, careful not to make tracks, and wrapped his arms around her from behind.

  “You know what I wanted to write?” she said, grabbing on to his hook hand, and nuzzling the back of her head underneath his chin. “I wanted to write, ‘Happy’.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t want to make them feel bad. We have so much.”

  “That we do.” He kissed her cheek. And they floated off home to their lovely parlor behind the velvet ropes, the finest and happiest home in Clancyville.

  Haints and Hobwebs

  An Elemental Assassin story

  Jennifer Estep

  The first time I saw the haint was in the cemetery.

  Shocking, I know, a ghost hanging out in a graveyard, but the pale, wispy figure still caught my eye, if only for the fact it was the first one I’d ever seen.

  You’d think that I would have been visited by more haints in my time, given the fact that I was a semi-retired assassin – and I’d helped a lot of people move on from this life to the next with a slice or two of my silverstone knives.

  I’d come to Blue Ridge Cemetery to place some forget-me-nots on the grave of Fletcher Lane, my murdered mentor. The old man had taken me in off the streets when I was thirteen, trained me to be an assassin like him, dubbed me the Spider, and then set me loose on the greedy, corrupt citizens of the southern metropolis of Ashland.

  Good times.

  I’d been crouched over Fletcher’s grave for about ten mi
nutes, brushing the dry, withered remains of the autumn leaves off his granite gravestone and arranging the forget-me-nots in an empty soda bottle that I’d brought along for the purpose. The slick green glass was the same color that Fletcher’s eyes had been.

  It was January and bitter cold. The sun looked like it was submerged under dingy dishwater clouds rather than hanging in the sky, and its weak rays didn’t even come close to melting the thin patches of crusty snow that littered the ground like shreds of tissue paper.

  But I didn’t pay much attention to the cold – I was too busy talking to Fletcher. I’d been catching the old man up on everything that was happening in my life, from the reappearance of my baby sister Bria back in Ashland to my ongoing war against Mab Monroe, the Fire elemental who’d murdered my family when I was thirteen.

  Fletcher’s grave was my own private confessional, a place where all my whispered secrets and worrisome weaknesses would be whipped away by the biting winds that whizzed across this particular ridge of the Appalachian Mountains.

  Weaknesses that I had to hide as Gin Blanco, and most especially as my alter-ego – the Spider.

  I’d just finished telling Fletcher about my deepening feelings for my lover Owen Grayson when a flash of movement caught my eye. I immediately palmed one of my silverstone knives. I might be mostly retired from being the Spider these days, but I still had plenty of enemies who wanted me dead, namely Mab, now that I was openly gunning for her.

  My fingers curled around the knife’s hilt, and a small symbol stamped into the metal there pressed into a larger matching scar embedded in my palm. Both of them spider runes – a small circle surrounded by eight thin rays. The symbol for patience. The same rune, the same scar, that had been branded into my other palm. It was my assassin name, and so much a part of who and what I was.

  Knife in hand, I turned my head, ready to face whatever danger might be lurking in the cemetery – and put it down, if necessary, in the bloody, permanent fashion I was fond of and so very good at.

  And that’s when I first saw the haint.

  She hovered over a gravestone about twenty feet away from the slab Fletcher was buried under. I’d never given much thought to ghosts before. They were dead, after all. It was the living you had to watch out for – the people who could still fuck you over six ways from Sunday the second they got the chance.