Grave Danger Read online

  Henry knew exactly how she felt. In fact, they all did. None of them had ever thought to find they were dead, at least not so soon. Being dead was not as easy as many of the living believed. It brought with it a whole new set of complications. A ghostly existence was full of the same pit falls of the human condition. The lack of a pulse or a fleshy body didn’t make those issues less or non-existent.

  “You’re behaving exactly how anyone in your situation would.” He grinned at her statement about being a terrible ghost. “I think you are going to be a wonderful ghost, Clarissa.” He sobered a little. “Sometimes, it does suck to be us, but then again it could be worse.” There were some who had a worse existence than the Eidolon. “Don’t people always say that life sucks too? I think that if people can make the statement that ‘life is what you make of it’ then we can say ‘death is what you make of it’. Would you agree with that?”

  “Yes,” she answered. Clarissa knew that she could never go back to the world of the living. Henry was more than correct with his assessment. By the very nature of the world it was up to her to find a semblance of happiness in this deathly existence. “You’re right,” she continued. “I’ve never been dead before, but I can certainly make a good try of it.”

  “Now that’s the right attitude,” he encouraged. “And of course, you are not alone in this world. The rest of us will always be here if you need someone to talk to.”

  “Thank you, Henry,” she said, truly appreciative of the Eidolon community and their spokesperson. She smiled up at him. It was the first time she felt like smiling in days. Clarissa had been so grief stricken by her death, it was nice to be with someone who understood what she was dealing with. It made her wonder about Henry’s death, but she figured he would tell her in time and under the right circumstances.

  He grinned down at her, glad to see the sadness gone from her eyes. “I don’t know about you,” he said as he steered them to the right, into an open courtyard with hanging plants and a pretty little fountain that housed some smaller shops and a tavern, “But I could definitely eat something right about now. What about you?”

  Chapter 2-

  Clarissa had a sudden hunger pang at his words. She wanted to eat too. In fact, she hadn’t eaten anything since finding herself dead several days ago. All the drama that went with the grief over her unexpected demise had overshadowed the thought for food. But now she was thinking about it and it didn’t make any sense. Being dead, she no longer needed food to survive. However, the craving for food was still much a part of her ghostly psyche.

  “How can we eat if we don’t have bodies,” she asked as they walked into the local tavern. The wooden sign outside the restaurant was engraved with the words, Happy Haunts, in bold red and green lettering, slightly dull and worn from sun damage and time.

  “We can eat just like any other human only it’s spectrally made. It’s just as good as the living’s food. The only difference is that it’s made with magick.”

  “Then if we can simply conjure food, why do we need to go to a tavern to eat?” The saying that food could not pop up out of thin air was entirely inaccurate in the ghostly world.

  “I could make us something, but I doubt you would want to eat anything I could produce.” He nodded to a pair of ghosts in the far corner and pulled Clarissa toward the table. “I’m not very good in the art of cooking. It takes a bit of skill and knowledge to make food, even in this existence. Everything I try to make comes out bland or over done and more than not burned. So I gave up and left it to the pros like Clare.”

  Inside the dimly lit interior of the tavern, light caste dancing shadows along the aged wooden walls and floor. Local pictures and cut out’s from newspapers hung from frames on the walls. The place was a family owned restaurant and not because everyone who worked here was blood related. It was more that they all had a strong connection to one another. It was tangible in the air.

  There were several groups of people sitting at square hard wood tables, with tops rubbed smooth by numerous hands, talking and eating, large plates of high cholesterol, artery clogging foods and tall glasses of cold beer cluttering up their tables. It looked like any other local eatery in town. The only difference was that it was owned by a dead couple.

  Anita and Roger Mendez opened up their establishment sometime around the nineteen forties. It was a casual joint that catered to locals and tourists who could come in and lounge for awhile and have a drink of something cold after a hot day of sightseeing under the squelching Florida sun.

  They served both the living and the dead. With the help of some living staff members they had the means to do so. Everything was on the up and up in regard to legal issues. The dead could not own property nor could they serve to the living. For that reason the Mendez’s were required to hire living workers to accommodate the living patrons, and a middle man of the living persuasion had to be used to keep up with the finances of the building and all monies made. Most of the money made was used to keep up the tavern and pay the living employee’s. A small portion went into the community pool of money that supplied the needs of the ghostly citizens.

  It would be a surprise to the living to know that the St. Augustine Eidolon community owned their own homes in the area. The local citizens wanted to live as normal an afterlife as humanly possible. The physical trappings of humanity like a home, helped to create that normality.

  It was full tonight at the Happy Haunts and not all the seats were occupied by the living. The dead enjoyed good food and conversation just as much as any other human.

  Henry and Clarissa made their way to a table with two ghosts already occupying seats at it. No one mistakenly sat in their laps or tried to make off with the chair under them. The living simply pretended they were not there.

  Henry offered Clarissa a chair at the table and she sat down in the offered seat. As she did so her mouth almost watered at the smell of good cooking coming from the back kitchen. She tucked herself closer to the table as Henry took the seat next to her.

  Henry began the introductions with the woman across from him. “Clarissa, this is Eleanor.” Henry introduced the petite blonde woman who Clarissa thought had the most amazingly curly hair. The woman smiled at Clarissa, holding out her hand. Clarissa took it.

  “Hello there,” she drawled in a soft southern accent. “As Henry here said, I’m Eleanor.” She gave a fleeting glance to Henry. Her cerulean blue eyes held an emotion Clarissa could not name. As if catching her slip, the undefined emotion quickly vanished from Eleanor’s eyes before turning her attention back to focus on the newly deceased woman across from her.

  “Eleanor Masters was my name in my living days, but I just go by Eleanor now. There’s no sense in all that formality.” She let go of Clarissa’s hand. “I hope you’ll be joining us for dinner. We just put in our orders.”

  Eleanor tilted her head to the side and studied Clarissa. “You’ve only just arrived to St. Augustine?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Clarissa answered, “Only a short time ago. Henry met me at the old city gates.”

  “I thought I felt something in the air today.”

  Henry interrupted. “Eleanor can always tell when a new one of us is made or comes to the area. She can sense them, even from miles away.” Henry absently reached out and touched Eleanor’s finger tips over the smooth table top for a brief second before pulling away. “It’s an amazing gift, Eleanor has. There isn’t much that get’s past her. She’s too intuitive for anyone to escape her notice.”

  “Yeah, it’s a real pain in the ass when you’re trying to pull off a really big stunt and she pulls the rug out from under you. I was this close to getting us in the papers and she goes and rats me out to the spectral feds.” The man continued to grumble under his breath to himself. He appeared to Clarissa to be younger than both Eleanor and Henry, but perhaps a year or two older than herself.

  His black hair was spiked up in a messy doo that looked very much like something rock stars had worn in the early e
ighties. His outfit made that theory much more plausible. Where Henry and Eleanor were stylishly attired in modern fashion casual wear, he wore scruffy dated jeans and a vintage t-shirt. The man was hopelessly stuck in the eighties.

  “This is Richard Pomar, our resident poltergeist.” Henry indicated the spiked haired ghost. “He’s a punk who thinks it’s funny to scare the tourists with his ghostly antics.”

  Richard sneered at Henry. “What else is there to do around this snooze town? That’s what being a ghost is supposed to be about, scaring the shit out of the living. It’s what they want. What do you think they all flock here for?” He mused up his already chaotic looking hair, casting a wicked grin at Clarissa.

  “I just give the people what they want. It is one of the most haunted cities in the south next to New Orleans. If anything, I’m just keeping up business.”

  “Richard is a self appointed Public Relations for spooks,” Eleanor interjected with a little giggle.

  “Exactly,” he said, making haunting noises in the back of his throat. Eleanor laughed harder at his antics.

  Henry frowned. Haunting the living was fine, but even that got old after a few decades. Richard had died mere twenty-some years ago. He was still ‘living’ up his newly acquired ghost hood. But in time he would fall into the trap that all aged ghosts felt.

  At some point, they all began questioning the purpose of their existence. What was the point of this existence on this earth past the point of living? Many of the living believed them unnatural and godless creatures and that perhaps this was a means of punishment. Henry wasn’t sure that was true, but it could be. Was there something waiting for them in the near future, or was this all there would ever be? Just as in life, death seemed tedious and monotonous at times. Every day was a constant struggle to remain hopeful that their existence was not just a fluke of nature.

  “Where’s our order,” Richard yelled to the crowded room, bringing Henry back to himself. A few ghosts on the opposite side of the room took notice, raising their eyebrows and looking at each other with knowing expressions. Richard was in his usual pleasant mood. His outburst didn’t faze them as they returned to their own conversations. “I swear we’ve been waiting an eternity,” Richard continued. “Shake a leg back there,” he ranted. Turning to talk to his own table, he turned to speak to Clarissa. “Some of them move like death warmed over. Just because their dead don’t mean they have to move at a corpse pace,” he complained.

  Clarissa wasn’t sure how to respond. The living took no notice of Richards rant except for a few of them who rubbed the chill bumps from their arms. When a ghost becomes overly emotional, the living could detect them, but not always.

  “Don’t be so impatient, sugar,” Eleanor chided kindly in her soft Georgia accent. “It’s busy tonight. Our order will be out shortly.” She looked at Henry. “Perhaps you could go see how things are going in back. And order something for yourself and Clarissa. I haven’t seen so much dead in one place since the civil war ended,” she said in joke.

  Henry nodded in agreement, scowling at Richard as he got up to see what was going on in the kitchen. It was indeed packed tight in the place. Just as he was about to go through the connecting door that led to the kitchen, a spectral waiter came out from the other side, nearly colliding with him.

  Nearly running into each other, Henry managed to move aside, out of the way of the waiter and his large tray.

  “Hey, Henry,” the waiter called. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” He held an oversize tray of tall beers and plates of food. There were a couple of thick milk shakes too. The dead didn’t have to concern themselves with counting calories. It wasn’t like they could have a heart attack or some other health issue that plagued the living.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Henry responded casually. “Busy tonight, isn’t it?” he asked as more people filed in through the front door.

  The waiter set his tray down on a nearby stand. “You’re telling me. It’s like half the town is here.” He moved his hand over the tray and the plates hovered up from it, the beers following suit along with the shakes. They floated through the atmosphere on their journey to the ghostly patrons at one of the tables. He turned to look back at Henry. “We’re just about out of our supplies for the living. I had to go send a couple of staff on an emergency grocery run.”

  “Well, I guess it’s better than having no business at all,” Henry pointed out. They were lucky people were still willing to come out and eat, especially after dark. They had gone to great lengths to keep the stories of the others out of the local papers for fear that it would cause them to lose the draw of tourists. The city lived off its tourism, just like many of Florida’s cities. But if tourists knew what prowled the streets at night, most would likely never come back.

  The man nodded in understanding. “You’re right. I don’t mean to complain. I know we’re lucky to still be in business what with,” he trailed off. It didn’t bear talking about. He quickly changed direction. “It’s just that the living staff tires out a lot faster and they can’t work as long. We thought about cutting our hours so they could go home before full dark, but we can’t afford to lose that kind of money.” He scratched his head at the problems they were dealing with. He was in charge of keeping tabs on both the living and dead staff members. Right now, his job was becoming more difficult.

  Focusing his attention on Henry, “Anyway,” he said, picking up his tray and folding it under his arm. “So what can I get you?” he asked, materializing a pad and pen in his hand. He waited expectantly for Henry’s order.

  “I’m with the table over there,” pointing to where Eleanor, Richard and now Clarissa were sitting.

  The waiter gazed over at the table in the far corner. The blonde woman and the black haired man he knew from other encounters with them in the city. But the second woman he had never laid eyes on before tonight.

  She was rather young looking with long straight brown hair and bright brilliant blue eyes. With his exceptional vision, even from this distance, he could see the blue of her irises darkened around the edges to a darker cobalt blue. Her skin, which had likely been pale in life, was even more pronounced in death. It made her hair seem that much darker and her eyes look like sparkling jewels next to her porcelain skin.

  “I got the two there,” he indicated the older woman and man, “Their orders should be coming up soon. I can put yours and the other woman’s with them. It won’t take that much longer. So what’ll you have?”

  Henry looked to where the others were sitting, watching Clarissa as she gazed about the busy tavern, taking notice of everything. It was all so new to her. Like a child she was staring intently at a table full of ghosts who were drinking and chatting loudly. Clarissa was likely surprised with how normal they appeared. But the dead were normal humans. For ghosts, death didn’t diminish their humanity. They just lived a different lifestyle from the living world.

  Henry turned his focus back to the spectral waiter. “We’ll have the same as them. I don’t think Clarissa is a picky eater.”

  He jotted down their orders on his pad. Using his pen he pointed to Clarissa, “She’s new here isn’t she? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her at Happy Haunts before.”

  “Yes,” Henry spoke quietly, not wanting to be overheard. Death was a sensitive matter. “She’s new, if you know what I mean. She passed away a few days ago in Orlando. She just got in today, but I imagine she has been wandering around out of sorts. It was her birthday and I thought we could do something special for her to make her feel welcome.” Henry finally managed to remember the waiter’s name. Sometimes he was bad with names.

  “It’s Josh, isn’t it?”

  Josh nodded, still looking at the woman.

  “Do you think Clare could whip something up for her? I know it’s busy and you’re all over worked.”

  Josh continued to stare at the young woman with whom they were conversing over, but lost inside his own head.

  He himself had died some s
ixty years back and even though he’d been dead for awhile now, the memories of his first few days as a ghost still haunted his existence. Much of his memories of life were vague recollections. As if that part of his life had been nothing but a dream. Death had overshadowed that reality and for some time it was difficult to even recall being alive.

  Now after so much time had passed he was able to separate and examine both sides of himself, his past as a living man and his present as a ghost. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for what she would have to deal with in this existence. But it couldn’t be changed. However, if there was any way to make it easier on her, he would try to see if he could help.

  “Yeah,” he responded, with a mental shake bringing him back on point. “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe she’d like it if I brought some of the other staff to come out to greet her too.”

  Henry agreed that would be something that would please Clarissa. With that settled, Josh went back into the kitchen while Henry made his way back to his table and a still irate Richard.

  “Well,” Richard asked impatiently as Henry took his seat.

  “It should be another few minutes,” Henry answered, leaning back in his chair.

  “Jesus,” Richard swore loudly, “How hard is it to manifest a couple of beers and some hamburgers? It’s not like she’s creating a culinary masterpiece.” He slumped in his chair very much like an impatient child. “I’d fucking starve to death if I wasn’t already dead to begin with.”

  “You know you’re not making a good first impression in front of Clarissa,” Henry barked back with a tilt of his head in Clarissa’s direction, as he pointed out the obvious to the moody ghost. “You’re giving in to the stereotype that ghosts are whiney.

  Richard made a derisive snort at that comment, folding his arms across his chest.