Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story (65 page)

“Well…some people complain that it’s haunted, but I assure you our ghosts prefer the hotel.”

“Bloody fabulous…Is there anything, anything at all you could do to swap us out?”

“Ummm. I don’t think so.”

“Sucks to be you,” laughed Simon, smirking as he tossed his key in the air. “See you at dinner.”

“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a bath,” Margot announced and tossed her key in the air as well. Simon snatched it from under her nose.

No one said a word. He held it tight in his fist for a moment and stared at her as if asking permission to use it. Then apparently changing his mind, he opened his palm and tossed it back to her with a smile before he walked silently down the hall. Margot watched him go, clearly taken aback.

Andrew did not toss his key but turned with his best expression to face Emily.

“How bad?” she asked.

“I assume there’s running water.”

Resigned to see what awaited them, they walked back out the doors and along the garden path that led them farther and farther away from the hotel to the edge of the headlands. Outside it was still warm as they hiked through the tall grass. He was so sweaty and dirty he ached for a shower, and he prayed to God this bloody outbuilding at least had a bath so that they wouldn’t have to trek back to the hotel and share one with pensioners from New Jersey.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t realize Emily had walked several yards ahead of him. She moved fluidly as though knowing exactly where she was going, despite the fact that the signs leading the way had become few and far between.

“Wait,” Andrew cried, rushing to catch up with her, but she had already turned the corner of a large overgrown garden and disappeared from view. Suddenly, he heard her cry out. He ran, and rounding the corner, he stopped short.

A deserted cottage rose before him. It was old, quiet, and composed with its weathered shingles, sloping gables, and overhanging eaves. There was nothing modern or jarring about it. Time had adorned it with vines of ivy and wild bramble. They overwhelmed its façade as they twined around its mullioned windows, continuing their reach upward. Three blackened chimneys rose from the thick slate roof, which was partly obscured by the ancient pines that encircled the property and edged the roaring ocean beyond.

“It looks like…” Emily’s voice trailed off.

A most profound and disturbing sense of nostalgia gnawed at Andrew’s heart. He knew what he would find when he opened that door. He knew the shape of the fireplace, how it would take up the whole wall, how the windows would open to the sea, how the wide planked floors would creak under his feet, how the sun would warm a far corner where his chair sat waiting…

Emily took a step toward the door when he stopped her.

“No. This isn’t the way it’s done…” His mind was tumbling through a whirlwind of déjà vu. Images flashed before his eyes, and he struggled to catch one while an old song unwove its refrain through his memory. But just as quickly as it came, the song was swept away by the roar of the waves. Without another thought, he unlocked the door and took Emily’s hand because that is what he had always done. No…no…it was what he wanted to do. Now. Here in the present.

She would smile at him now because that was what she had always done.
Stop.
Stop it. He could not know that. He had never been here before in his life. But then why was the cottage just as he had remembered? Silent and waiting, warm shades of umber and sienna filled the room, from the worn velvet and suede window seat cushions to the faded medieval tapestry print of the drapes. Emily walked about and trailed her hands over the back of the settle that stood in front of the fireplace, dust motes rising in the last rays of the sun. A pendulum clock framed by old black and white photographs sat on the mantle and chimed the hour.

She twirled around and plopped down into the Morris chair in the corner, hoisting her feet up on the matching ottoman and letting out a long, low chuckle. “Sucks to be us.”

He wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t. What was happening to him? He had to hold her. His hands shook with the need of it. “Come here.”

“No. Must check out the rest.”

Down a small hall they entered a large bathroom; it was different, newer. It had a wall of showers and a clawfoot tub that stood before a set of French doors which framed the sun setting on the sea beyond. The bedroom lay quietly off to the side—of course it did. There would be an antique four poster bed there, and a sea of pillows…

“Let’s never leave this place,” she told him.

He wanted to tell her that he never had.

Unable to bear the stifling sensation any longer, his arms enfolded her body. He held her against the granite walls, trying to kiss her—her, the woman he loved, the woman he could feel in his hands. Not a ghost, not a memory. Emily.

In his mind, he believed his desire was driven by the need to escape the hell that they had lived through, to forget death and violence and fear and everything except her, but he knew that wasn’t true. There was something more. Refusing to face whatever it was, he hoisted his T-shirt over his head and felt the glorious touch of her fingers, Emily’s fingers, encircle his waist. Yes. This was Emily. This was the woman he loved.

Unable to be denied, his hands moved across her body as he undressed her. He kissed her mouth, tasting her, breathing in the smell of salt and sun on her skin. Finally freed of their clothes, he reached for the taps, twisting them on and spinning her to the side as a wall of water poured down. It soon began to steam, creating billows of fog wafting around them. He moved her trembling body into the spray. Her nipples darkened as the water coursed over her, and she tilted her head back and let it wash away the smudges of dirt on her face.

“Christ, you are so unspeakably beautiful…”

The sound of breakers crashing on the rocks far beyond the window filled the room. He lowered his mouth to her lips again, hearing her sighs mix with those of the sea. He could not get enough of her; his hands ached with the need of her skin—to surrender to him, to be his. Emily. Only Emily.

He looked into her eyes and froze. There, reflected deep within those unfathomable spheres, he saw souls of souls, each calling out to him, beckoning him to them, seducing him with their whispers and sighs.

“I love you,” he breathed roughly, to her and to them. She leaned forward and rested her forehead on his shoulder. “But how can you do this to me? What are you? What lives inside you that makes me want you every breathing moment? Tell me.”

She would not answer, but instead stared into his eyes, a deliberate challenge it seemed to him. Their connection was so intense that he could now feel the souls inside her now, those trembling ghosts that lived within her flushed wet skin as they came closer and closer to the surface. She clenched her arms around his shoulders, her nails biting into the tense muscles of his back, and gripped him tightly. His mouth found hers, and he kissed her with all the love within him. He could barely survive his need for her; it ripped the fabric of his world apart.

“Who are you? Please tell me,” he muttered hoarsely, desperate for an answer.

She would not answer.

“Tell me, what are you that makes me so fucking wild?” he demanded and shoved harder into her, over and over, making her scream. “Tell me!”

Enraged, he demanded again and with all his might he drove into her as deeply as he could, sensual waves of lust crashing down his body, arousing the ghosts within him. Each life, past and present, demanding he take this woman as he had for ages.

She clung to him like her very life depended on it, the water beading on her trembling skin. He bowed his head to her neck once more, pressing fierce, feral kisses to her skin. His breathing became shallow as he bit down on the spot just below her ear.

“I love you…but fuck, sweet girl, what are you?” he muttered hoarsely, so on the edge, in trembling, fucking glorious agony. “Tell me!”

Seeking an answer she would not give him, he made love to her mercilessly. There was no longer reason or time. There was only her fevered skin and the pounding water and the ocean far way. He struggled to keep his lips on hers until at last she screamed and wailed, pounding the stone wall with her fist, her body one tight knot of lust as she came and thrashed in mind-numbing spasms, tightening over and over around him, making him cry out in ecstasy.

Yet he still wanted more.
They
wanted more. He slammed into her one last time, screaming against her soaked hair as he forced the rest of himself hot and throbbing, into her, pinning her body to the wall, his heart trying to bash out of his chest beneath her breasts.

Gasping for air, blinded by the water and tears and so bloody reluctant to move, he allowed himself to collapse against her. She was panting his name against his heaving chest, half elation, half sobs. His lips reached hers, and he tasted the salt of her tears and felt the curl of her mouth as he kissed her gently.

He feared she couldn’t stand without him, so he gathered her in his arms and shut off the tap, stopping only to grab a towel. She nuzzled into his neck as he carried her in his arms to the bedroom, her heart beating wildly. She searched for his lips as he laid her down and joined her under the thick blankets. Her body was still rippling like waves on the edge of a beach, pulling him to her as the ghosts softly ebbed away. Like the moon to the tide.

He gazed down at her and found her mouth and kissed her, their moist bodies sizzling together.

“Who are you? Please tell me,” he whispered, and brushed back the wet strands from her face, amazed at the loving pain rife in his heart.

Her fingers slipped softly around his neck and pulled him down to her. “Yours.” And she finally began to cry.

26

T
HE
S
ETTING
S
UN
H
AD
burnished the clouds in gold. Candles flickered on the nightstand, and somewhere far off a piano played, lost in jazz. Emily lay against Andrew’s chest as they gazed out of the open bedroom windows from their bed, luxuriating in the sea air.

“Andrew?” she asked.

“Hmmm.”

“Does this place—is there anything about this cottage that doesn’t seem quite right to you? That seems strange?”

She tilted her head up at him while she spoke. The sky had descended to the mood indigo of dusk, leaving her eyes nearly violet. They shone in the faint light, framed by the waves of her hair that fell to the bare skin of her shoulders.

Strange? Strange didn’t cover half of it. He wanted to tell her that for weeks now he couldn’t shake this sickening feeling that everything was repeating itself somehow. And that since they had stepped through those doors, it all seemed amplified in his mind. It was as if he was watching himself watch himself, like the past and present were folding in and over on themselves and trapping him in some kind of twisted three-way mirror from which he couldn’t escape. Christ, it made no sense and was certainly the release of all this bloody stress—but every time he held her, looked at her, it seemed like he was experiencing it tenfold. It was thrilling, staggering, but he felt as if he was no longer there, like he was a ghost. A ghost haunting all of his lives.

“Yes,” he replied, unwilling to say more. How could he explain what he was feeling and not sound mad? It was impossible.

Emily stilled. She was so much like a wisp of ghost herself except for the slow beat of her heart. “It’s not the first time I’ve felt this way, either. When I saw you the in the park, saw you standing there with your guitar, and saw your hands strum those first chords, ever since then, this feeling I have for you…No, it’s not a feeling, that’s too weak a word—this bond that connects me to you, has only gotten more intense, like it has a life of its own.” She looked up at him briefly, her face self-conscious from her confession. “You know when Dwayne told us about all those past lives that day in his shop, when he told us that I was your lover, your concubine…”

“My muse.”

“Yes. I wanted to discount it all as craziness, but now—I don’t know. I’m haunted, by who I was and who I was to you. And at night, in my dreams—I…”

“Go on, sweet girl?”

She shook her head.

“I know you’ve been having nightmares, I’ve heard them.”

“No. Oh God, what did I say?”

“What happened? What did you see?”

She hesitated and pulled at the strings on the quilt. “There were cliffs and rocks and we’re there, you and I together, but I can’t reach you, you’re not who I think you are, you’ve changed somehow, and then…”

“Go on.”

“I can’t remember. I can never remember the ending.”

Just then a chill wind blew in from the window, extinguishing the candles on the nightstands, and a soft chuckle emanated from the dusk of the evening.

“Liars,” a voice replied.

The window shutters slammed shut, casting the room in near darkness.

“Damn it, Nick! Cut this shit out!”

“Isssss not Nick, my pretty lad.”

The inhuman hiss of a woman’s voice sent a jolt of fear down his spine as the temperature around them dropped precipitously. An elaborate phantasm shrouded in an Elizabethan gown swept slowly across the room; she was ghastly beautiful, like dead roses set in a crystal vase.