Marie and Eva arrived at Olivia’s house Tuesday evening and found her sitting at her kitchen table, eating a bowl of cold cereal while looking at her cellphone. The phone sat on the table next to her bowl. Olivia wore a long green flannel robe over her pajamas and her hair pulled back in a red ribbon.
Marie and Eva hadn’t changed their clothing—at least the illusion of clothing—since leaving Marlow House minutes earlier. Had Olivia been a medium, she would have found an elderly woman, wearing a yellow gingham fabric dress and straw hat, standing in her kitchen with a much younger, stylishly dressed woman who looked as if she had come from the early 1900s, wearing a blue-gray dress, with its hemline falling to the floor.
Like Eva and Marie’s last visit, Olivia did not flinch when the two ghosts suddenly appeared. She simply kept eating her cereal while surfing on her cellphone.
“I will never understand why they’re always looking at their phones,” Eva said. “And to be honest, I’m not really sure why they call that thing a phone. It certainly looks nothing like the telephones from my day.”
Marie shrugged. “Nor from mine. At least, not when I was a younger woman.”
Eva frowned down at the bowl of cereal. “Is that what she’s having for dinner?”
“It could be a late-night snack. I used to eat cereal at night when I ran out of ice cream. I rather miss ice cream.” Marie let out a wistful sigh.
Eva glanced around the room. “It looks like her furniture may have arrived. I don’t remember a kitchen table the last time we were here.”
Marie walked to the wall in the kitchen where someone had stacked a row of open cardboard boxes. She peeked inside. Most were over half full, filled with items wrapped in brown paper. She glanced up at the overhead cabinets and back to Olivia, whose back was to her. Looking again at the cabinets, she willed their doors to open and quickly close. Unfortunately, too quickly, they made a loud slamming noise. Olivia jerked around and stared at the cabinets. Slowly, she stood and walked to them for a closer look.
“Careful, she’s going to think the house is haunted.” Eva smirked.
Olivia reached up and grabbed hold of one cabinet door. She opened it and pushed it close. It made a sound similar to what she had heard a moment earlier. Frowning, she repeated the action several times. Finally, she shook her head and returned to the table while glancing back at the cabinets several times.
Eva chuckled.
“I’m just surprised she hasn’t put more of her kitchen things away. That’s what I’d unpack first,” Marie said. “She’s put hardly anything away. Those cabinets are practically empty.”
“Why? You said you didn’t like to cook when you were alive,” Eva asked.
Marie shrugged. “Well, I did like to eat.” Marie walked through the wall leading to the living room and disappeared. A moment later, she reappeared. “Her living room is put together nicely. But I suppose the movers did that.”
The cellphone Olivia had been looking at rang. She picked it up and said, “Hello?… I’m okay… It wasn’t just finding the men in my living room… Yes. I should be grateful I have neighbors looking out for me. But what kind of people are these, really? I told you what I saw… I was not imagining things… No. I don’t care what you say, I was not dreaming… Okay, I’ll do that… I can’t make that promise… And remember, what the other neighbor said. Explain that!”
There was a long silence from Olivia’s side of the call as she listened to whatever the person on the other end said. Finally, she let out a sigh and said, “Okay. I’ll try, but no promises… Love you, too. Bye.”
Olivia tossed her cellphone back on the table and finished her cereal. She picked up the bowl and drank what milk remained. Standing, she took her now empty bowl and spoon to the sink, rinsed them both, and put them in her dishwasher. After she finished, she picked up her cellphone from the table.
Marie and Eva followed Olivia out of the kitchen, through the hallway, and up the stairs, while she turned the lights off as she left each room. She continued up the staircase and to the master bedroom. She stayed in the bedroom long enough to toss her cellphone on the bed before turning and leaving the room and going into the bathroom. Marie and Eva stayed in the bedroom instead of following Olivia into the bathroom.
“Oh my, this room looks so much different from when Pearl lived here.” Marie glanced around the bedroom. A mission-style queen bed with drawers under the mattress was against the wall facing the window, with a matching dresser under said window. The bed had one side table, on the right, with a lamp. Along the wall next to the door stood a five-foot-wide bookcase filled with books.
“This looks more like a library than a bedroom,” Eva noted.
Marie stepped closer to the bookshelf. “Goodness, apparently this is the first time she has ever moved.”
“Why do you say that?” Eva asked.
“Who puts books away before the kitchen?”
Eva shrugged. “Olivia Davis, obviously. I guess she likes to read.”
Marie frowned as she glanced over the titles in Olivia’s bookshelf. She read them aloud, more for herself than for Eva. “Adventures Beyond the Body, Ultimate Journey, The Out-of-Body Experience, Astral Dynamics, Mastering Astral Projection… Goodness, what an odd collection of books.” Marie surveyed the rest of the books in the case. “I don’t see a single novel or dictionary.”
Eva shrugged. “Some people enjoy nonfiction.”
“Not sure I would call these nonfiction, more science fiction.”
Eva stepped closer to the bookshelves and looked through the titles. “They sound quite interesting.”
From the adjacent room came the sound of a toilet flushing. A moment later, Eva and Marie heard a door open and shut, followed by Olivia entering the bedroom. Had either of them wondered if Olivia could really see them, that notion would have been dispelled when Olivia walked through Eva en route to her bed.
“Oh, I hate when they do that!” Eva said with a shiver.
The two spirits turned and watched while Olivia removed her robe, folded it, and placed it neatly along the end of the mattress. She wore flannel pajama bottoms and a matching long-sleeved shirt. Without pulling back the bedspread, Olivia climbed onto the mattress and assumed the yoga lotus position.
“What is she doing?” Eva asked.
Marie shrugged. “It looks like she’s doing yoga, but she shouldn’t be doing it on a bed mattress. Too much give.”
The two spirits each took a seat in imaginary chairs in the far corner, facing the bed. Olivia continued to sit in the lotus position, her eyes now closed.
After about ten minutes of watching Olivia, Marie said, “If we’re going to sit here and wait for our mystery ghost to show up, why don’t we do something to pass the time? After all, she might not even show up tonight.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I wouldn’t mind playing a game of gin rummy,” Marie suggested. “Have you ever played?”
“Yes. But I’m afraid you need cards to do that. And even if we found a deck of cards in this house, I can’t levitate them like you can, and even if I could, I imagine if she opened her eyes and witnessed playing cards floating around the room, she wouldn’t accept it as calmly as she did the slamming kitchen cabinets.”
“Ahh, but she won’t see these!” Marie waved her hands, and a deck of cards appeared.
Eva sat up straighter, her gaze fixed on the cards in Marie’s hands. “How did you do that?”
Marie shrugged. “I wondered, if you can conjure up snowflakes and glitter, why couldn’t I imagine playing cards?”
“Yes, but I have no energy left to do all that you do,” Eva reminded her.
“Perhaps you aren’t doing it right. After all, Walt conjured up cigars, and he still moved objects. Shall we try?”
Eva smiled. “Might as well!”
The next moment, a tabletop appeared between the two spirits—not an invisible one like the chairs they sat on, but one they could see. It floated in midair between them. Eva watched as Marie laid out the playing cards on the table.
Marie looked up at Eva. “Try to pick one up.”
Eva reached for a card and attempted to pick it up, but her hand moved through it.
“Oh dear, I was afraid that might happen,” Marie grumbled.
“If you can do it, I’m sure I can figure it out,” Eva insisted. “That was only my first try.”
“You’ve never levitated anything before.”
“Yes, but we are talking about illusions. Remember, I’ve mastered glitter and snowflakes.”
Both spirits focused their attention on the cards while Eva reached for one. Before she picked it up, a voice from the bed shouted, “How did you get in here?”
The two spirits immediately turned their attention toward the bed. When they did, they found two Olivias, one sitting on the bed, still in the lotus position, her eyes closed, and another standing by the bed, staring at the two spirits.
“It looks like our mystery spirit has arrived,” Marie said, waving her hand over the table. Both the tabletop and cards vanished.
The eyes of the mystery spirit widened, staring dumbly at where the cards and tabletop had been moments before. She looked back at Eva and Marie. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”
“I believe the real question is, who are you? And what are you to Olivia Davis?” Marie asked.
“What kind of question is that? I am Olivia Davis! And you are in my house!”
“If you are who you say you are, who is that?” Marie pointed to the woman on the bed, still with her eyes closed, in the lotus position.
The mystery spirit turned to where Marie pointed and frowned. The next moment, she vanished. After she did, the woman on her bed opened her eyes. She looked around the room in a panic, as if expecting to see something, yet it wasn’t there.
“What happened?” Marie asked.
Eva shook her head. “I have no idea.”
Olivia scrambled off the bed. When she did, she rushed out of the room and into the dark hallway. After turning on the upstairs hall lights, she looked over the railing to the downstairs, the lights there still off. She turned and returned to the bedroom, closing and locking the door behind her.
Oblivious to the two spirits watching her, Olivia reached for her cellphone, which she had tossed onto the mattress when first coming into the bedroom that evening. Eva and Marie watched as Olivia sat on the edge of the mattress, cellphone in hand. She looked down at the phone and pressed the screen, making a call. She then put the cellphone by her right ear.
The next moment Olivia said into the phone, “Hi. The craziest thing happened. If you think what I told you before was nuts, this is even crazier… I was doing it again, opened my eyes, and there were two women in my bedroom… no, they aren’t here now… I didn’t see them leave. But they were here.”
“Is she talking about us?” Marie asked as she and Eva frowned at Olivia.
“I am serious. It was an old lady. She was wearing a straw hat and a yellow gingham dress… she was playing cards with the Gibson Girl. Yes, you heard me right. The Gibson Girl. At least it looked just like her! No, I was not dreaming. They were here!”