Chasing a ghost around a house is some real C-list horror movie shit I did not foresee in my future three years ago. Hell, three days ago. But here I am, running through the house, following the sound of Ruby’s crying from room to room, upstairs and downstairs and back again.
At least she can’t leave the house.
“Ruby, wait,” I call after her when I finally corner her in my bedroom. I’m out of breath, and my stomach is cramping in hunger. I haven’t eaten all day because I forgot. This is why I don’t like drama; wreaks havoc on every part of your life, even your body. “Please, Ruby, just…listen to me.”
Her hands are covering her face, and when she drops them, her tears look as if they’re filled with stars. It shouldn’t make her look beautiful, but it does. And I shouldn’t be thinking about this ghost as beautiful, but I am.
“What?” she spits at me.
“Let me explain.”
“Who are you to explain my best friend’s betrayal of me?”
“I don’t think it was a betrayal,” I yell as she starts to shimmer. I’m terrified she’ll disappear, and I just don’t have the energy to run around the house a minute more. “I don’t think it was a betrayal,” I tell her carefully. “I think she wanted to keep the house safe for you.”
“Bullshit.”
I rear back. “Ma’am, did women curse like that in your day and age?”
“Women like me certainly did.”
I smile at her.
“Don’t smile at me,” she says.
I wipe the smile from my face and continue to edge closer. “Ruby, you said Esther was your best friend.”
“Was.”
“Can I show you something?” I ask.
She looks me up and down, but she doesn’t leave, so I take that as a yes.
I pull Sophie’s letter from my back pocket and unfold it. “This is a letter from my great-aunt,” I tell her.
“Another scheming Delisle.”
“Esther’s daughter,” I correct her.
Her eyes dart to the letter, and I can see hunger in her gaze.
I flip to the last page and point at the last two paragraphs. “Sophie said that the last thing Esther talked about was you.”
Her eyes shimmer with tears again, and I take the letter away to read those lines about her aloud.
Just before she died, she told me to make sure that I took care of Ruby’s house, and I haven’t done such a great job of that. I tried, but I realized after a while that the only way to take care of Ruby’s house was to take care of Ruby.
That’s where you come in, Noel. Take care of her, please.
Ruby looks at me, then the letter, and back at me again. “Take care of me, how?” she asks.
“You tell me,” I say. “Tell me how to help you move on?”
“Move on?”
“You know…go to heaven?”
She swipes at her shimmering tears with force. “I don’t believe in heaven. Now what?” she asks and crosses her arms in front of her chest petulantly.
“Y-you don’t?”
“Nope.”
“Fuck,” I hiss, and her eyebrows shoot up.
“Well, now,” she says, smiling at me.
“Wait. What?”
“Does ‘fuck’ mean something different these days?” she asks.
“What did ‘fuck’ mean in 1933?” I ask, incredulous and confused at this sharp turn in the conversation.
Ruby’s stopped crying and disappearing. Now, she’s smiling and moving toward me, and I’m frozen in place.
“You didn’t answer my question earlier,” she says.
“There have been like a hundred questions in the past five minutes. Please be more specific.”
She’s standing in front of me now, and I’m looking down at her, close enough to see that she has brown flecks in her dark green eyes. “Do you remember last night in the shower?”
I huff out a breath just thinking about last night. The water that was finally warm enough to enjoy as the bathroom filled with steam. That cool shot of electricity shooting through my body. The feel of my hand around my dick, and the tingling feeling that there was someone in that shower with me.
I jump back. “Was that you?” I scream in shock.
“Sure was.”
“What about the dreams?” I ask.
Her eyes light up, and her mouth falls open. “What dreams?”
“Nothing,” I stutter.
She tsks at me. “How can you help me if you keep secrets?”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life ain’t fair. All you learned today should have taught you that lesson. What dreams?” she asks again.
I swallow, and my stomach growls. I’m hungry, but it’s not food I want. “I…I think I’ve been dreaming about you.”
“Dreaming about me?”
“Yeah, but I… I didn’t know it was you?”
She cocks her head to the right and frowns at me. “Explain.”
“This morning, I woke up…” My eyes dart to the pile of sheets in the corner and back again, too ashamed to admit this of all things.
“Oooh. I see,” she says with a laugh. She lifts her hands and touches my chest, and we both shiver.
“That was you,” I gasp.
“Mmmhmm,” she hums, moving her hands over my chest.
It feels like electricity all over my skin, and I swear I can feel every strand of hair on my chest. My nipples are hard. I gasp and moan and close my eyes; the feelings are so much.
“You like that?” she asks.
“Yes. What does…” I have to back away from her to collect my thoughts enough to speak. “What does it feel like for you?”
“Like lightning,” she says. “Every time you touch me or even just walk through me, I feel like I’m getting struck by lightning.”
I nod. “Yeah,” I gasp. “Electricity. That’s what it feels like to me. Nothing but pure energy.”
“So…” she says with raised eyebrows. “That’s how you’re gonna help me.”
I cringe. “Yeah, I still don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.”
She rolls her eyes at me and cocks her head toward the bedroom. “This ain’t the first time I’ve had to take the lead. Follow me.”
RUBY
“Add some more bubbles.”
“It’s gonna overflow,” he says.
“Not if you watch it,” I tell him. “Now strip.”
He turns to me with his hands on his hips and a frown on his face. I can see it now; I don’t know how I missed it before. “You look just like Esther,” I tell him, reaching out to touch his cheek. “Just like her.”
He swallows and shivers. “You sure you want to say that…considering?”
“Considering what?” I’m still stroking his cheek. I can’t feel it, not really. Not his skin or the stubble I can see on his cheek. I used to love the feeling of stubble all over my skin, especially between my legs. But after all these decades of feeling nothing, the electricity feels like my version of heaven.
“Considering what we’re about to do,” he says.
My hand stills, and I smile up at him. “Your grandmother—”
“Great-grandmother,” he corrects.
“Your grandmother was my very first kiss, and a few other things, as well.”
“Nope, don’t tell me anything else,” he says, shaking his head and backing away.
And I laugh so loudly the lights in the bathroom flicker.
“Is that you?” he asks, looking around.
I shrug. “Or it’s just all this old wiring.”
He don’t look so sure, and neither am I, but who cares about the lights? “I can’t believe Esther had such a prude. That must be the Baptist in you, ‘cause the Esther I knew—”
“I don’t wanna hear—”
“The Esther I knew was timid sometimes, but when she got going…” My vision shimmers, and then I feel his hands on my face, wiping my tears away. “When Esther really got going, she was the most wondrous person I ever saw. Beautiful, too.”
“You think I’m beautiful?” he whispers.
I smile. “Real pretty. That’s the first thing I thought, when I saw you, that you was the prettiest Delisle I’ve ever seen. Makes sense that I was just seeing Esther.”
His thumbs move over my cheeks again. “It’s okay to cry.”
“Thank you. Now strip.”
He rolls his eyes. “You don’t have to be so bossy.”
I look up at him with a smile. “And you don’t have to pretend you don’t like it,” I say and move my hand down the front of his pants.
He sucks in a harsh breath. When he exhales, it’s on a moan. “What do you get out of this?” he asks. “How does this help you?”
I move back so he can undress while I talk, and I eye him until he gets the hint.
He rolls his eyes and begins to pull his shirt up his body. I enjoy the view of his flat stomach covered by dark, curly hair. His hands stop just before he shows me his chest.
“You wanna see more,” he says, “keep talking.”
“I’ve seen it all,” I tell him. “Every time you shower.”
“So, that’s why I’ve been feeling like someone’s been watching me.”
“Shoulda thought about that before you trespassed.”
“Talk,” he says.
I shiver and shimmer in and out of existence. “See how I didn’t pretend that I didn’t like it?” I purr.
He shakes his head and laughs and then pulls his shirt over his head.
“When I was little and realized that John Randall was my daddy, I asked my mama why we lived in that small house with poppa and not here. And she said, this is the Randall House; might look pretty, but it was nothing but evil inside. I was too foolish then to understand what she was trying to tell me, so all I said was that one day, I wanted to live in that house.”
“And you did,” he says as he pushes his pants down his legs.
I focus on his eyes for this next part. “I meant to live here with my mama and granddaddy.”
“Moses Lincoln?”
I nod. “But by the time I figured out how to make it happen, they were dead and gone. Buried out back, actually.”
“What?” He freezes.
I roll my eyes. “Boy, this was a plantation, where you think they buried us?”
“But they were free?”
“In a sense. But free or not, my granddaddy wanted to be buried next to his wife, and my mama wanted to be buried next to her parents.”
“And you?”
I turn to the small window over the tub. All I can see is the sky and tops of trees. “I wanted to be buried with them too, and in a sense, I was.”
“You’re back there?” he whispers.
“No,” I say, turning back to him. “I’m here. My spirit is, at least. But my bones are somewhere back there, I guess. Close enough to my people to be at rest.”
“Then why are you haunting the house?” he asks. “Oh, shit.”
I laugh as he rushes to turn the taps to the tub off.
“Told you it would overflow,” he says.
“Almost. And if you’d been watching it, it wouldn’t have.”
He grumbles something under his breath and lets some of the water drain. I like teasing him, I realize. When he turns back to me, his hands are back at his waist, and he’s scowling at me. “Keep going,” he says.
“You first.”
“No, ma’am. If you want to…you know.”
“Ravish you?” I lean forward and whisper and then laugh when he looks away to hide his excitement with his hands.
“Anyway, if you want to get me naked, tell me what you get out of this. Don’t you want justice, or…?”
“Negroes don’t get justice, not in my day, at least.”
“Not in this one, either,” he mumbles.
“I’m here ‘cause I worked hard to get this house, and it’s mine, dead or not.”
“So then what does…ravishing me,” he says uncomfortably, “get you?”
“That wasn’t so hard to say, was it?”
He rolls his eyes.
“I get to feel,” I tell him simply. He squints at me. “I’ve been here all by myself for so long, but then here you come, looking all delicious with that smooth ebony skin and pretty smile, and I could feel you, from that very first day.”
He tries to hide his smile. “Every time I walk through you?”
I nod. “Sometimes you don’t even have to walk through me. Sometimes when you’re near, it’s like…”
“Static electricity,” he says. “It’s like a current making all the hair on your body stand up, and then as soon as you touch, it’s like…”
“A shock,” I finish for him. “I never felt that before, and it seems like you’re the only person I can feel that with. I been through a lot. I just want to feel something that don’t hurt. Just for a little while.”
He nods and seems to be thinking it over. I can’t read his mind, but I know when he makes a decision because he bends over and pushes his underwear down his legs. “Okay,” he says.
I take a look at the hard length of him pointing right at me and smile. “Okay.”
I grab at the hem of my dress and pull it over my head. “In the tub, please, Delisle,” I say.
“Noel,” he says. “You can call me Noel.”
“Okay, Noel. Get in the tub.”
NOEL
I don’t have any expectations about having sex with a ghost. How could I? Who the fuck spends their time thinking about what that might be like? Okay, some people do, but not me. So, when I crawl into that tub, I feel like I’m either going to have a wild story to tell my grandkids one day when I’m senile, or I’m going to write a novel about this shit.
Maybe both.
“How’s the water?” she asks, stepping into the tub over me. “Too hot?”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Good,” she says. “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
I huff out a breath of nervous laughter. “Shit, me either.”
She smiles down at me, and all my nerves go away. “Tell me if you want me to stop,” she says and then lowers her body into the water with me.
There are moments where Ruby looks completely solid; when my brain tricks me into believing that I’m talking to a real, live human being. Not right now. It’s like the steam and the water and whatever the fuck she’s made out of blend together, and she’s not in front of me, so much as she’s everywhere around me. She’s in the steam hovering over my skin, caressing me, the water lapping around my chest, and sifting through my chest hair before circling my nipples in the faintest touch.
“Fuck,” I hiss.
She smiles, and then she’s in the water moving around my waist, and then, somehow, pressing against my dick. It’s almost like a warm, wet pussy. Almost.
“More,” I tell her.
“Which part, honey?”
“My dick. Fuck,” I grind out.
I swear I can almost feel hips settling on top of me and her pussy gripping me and then a slow, gentle rock up and down and up and down my shaft. I groan so loud I shock myself. “How the fuck are you doing that?”
I feel the static of her hands on my shoulders and her face hovering over mine. “I don’t have any idea, but I like it.”
I tip my head up to look as deep in her translucent green eyes as I can. “Is it still like lightning to you?”
She nods, and the phantom pressure of her hips against me moves faster.
I reach up to grab at her hips, forgetting she’s not, in fact, solid, and my hands go through her.
It’s her turn to cry out, and then I watch her flicker in and out like a television with a faulty bulb.
“Weird,” I breathe.
“Do it again.”
This time, I focus on touching her with purpose. I move my hands up her sides, just almost touching a body that should be there, and those small currents of static shock my fingertips. Ruby groans and smiles, and the water stroking me in the tub somehow gets hotter and moves faster over me.
“I think I’m close,” I grind out. “Are you?”
Her eyes go wide, and she smiles at me. “Yes,” she moans. “What do you think will happen?”
When she comes, she means. I shake my head. “I don’t know.” And then I smile at her. “Let’s find out.”
She nods excitedly at me, and suddenly, I know that we’re on the same page. I lock eyes with her, and we start to move as if our bodies were always meant to be together. Suddenly, the water in the tub is moving faster as I start pumping my hips up into… nothing…but also everything. I lose control of my reserve, and my fingers move across and through her. She tickles me with steam everywhere the water can’t touch.
The water sloshes over the rim of the tub.
The room fills with my groans and hers too, although vaguely somewhere I realize that if anyone else were here, they wouldn’t hear them. That should freak me out, but it doesn’t. There’s something about knowing that her moans and groans are only for me in this moment that pushes and pushes me over the edge.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, Ruby,” I scream and wrap my arms around and through her.
She screams my name, and the lights flicker out on the hiss of burned-out bulbs.
And all of a sudden, I’m sitting in a lukewarm bathtub, panting, my body buzzing.
Alone.