Howard’s Surprise
“Whatever twisted game you are playing, young lady, you’ve gone too far,” Howard was furious. “For your mother’s sake, I promised myself I’d give you the benefit of the doubt. I swore I wouldn’t lose my temper. Well, guess what? I’m losing it!”
“Howard, I’m sorry,” I said. “But your first wife is hovering beside you!”
The angry electrical charges I had seen earlier in Howard’s aura returned.
“Stop it, Bertie!” Bending down, he grabbed his cell and saw that the screen was cracked. Howard’s lightning bolt aura flashed a deeper red, like he wanted to smash me. He started for the door. But Sandra Morton’s ghost wasn’t done with me.
“Ask if him he’s still a terrible singer, Bertie.” Ghost Sandra saw me hesitate. Her ghoulish features intensified. “DO IT!”
“Your wife wants to know if you’re still a terrible singer,” I said, looking away from the creepy ghost.
Howard slowed momentarily, as if caught off guard. But he was so mad, he wouldn’t let himself stop. “Don’t talk to me! Haven’t you done enough, Bernice?”
Now it gets really strange.
Sandra’s ghost floated inside me.
Inside me!
My body went cold. I smelled lavender. I felt love. A mother’s love. A wife’s love. And then I started singing. Or, more precisely, we started singing. “Ooh-ooh child, things are gonna get easier. Ooh-ooh child, things’ll get brighter.”
Howard stopped. Turned around in shock. “Who told you to sing that song?”
The Bertie-Sandra Morton Ghost duet didn’t answer, we just sang louder. “Some day, yeah, we’ll put it together and we’ll get it all done.” It wasn’t simply strange having a ghost take over my body; it was magnificently strange.
What Sandra was up to, I had no idea. But nothing about it felt dark or sinister. More than anything it felt bittersweet. Hopeful and helpless and a little bit desperate, all at the same time. For our big finish, we did a quick dance spin. “Some day, yeah, we’ll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun!”
Tears filled the astonished optometrist’s eyes, and all the raging red electrical charges surrounding him dissolved away. “How … how can this be?”
WHOOSH!
Sandra’s ghost floated out of me. As she left, my strength left me, too. My legs caved. I fell, but Howard caught me before I hit the floor. My body felt like I’d run a marathon at a full sprint. Peering up to Sandra, I saw she was beautiful and lovely and luminous once again.
“Forgive me, Bernice,” she said. “It’s a side effect following a ghostly occupation. I’m not quite right, either.”
“Oh, goodie.” I sighed. “Please stop calling me Bernice.”
“Are you talking to Sandra?” Howard asked. “What’s she saying, Bertie? Does she have a message for me?”
“Need a minute, Howard. I just got body-snatched!”
He helped me stand up.
Sandra hovered, looking down at me. Not to get all new-agey, but it was like she was looking into my soul. Sandra was a ghost mother on a mission.
A speeding swirl of words formed in my brain.
Sandra’s words.
They shot out from my mouth. “Sandra does have a message for you …”
More words flew out.
“She says you have to stop, Howard. She says you’re hurting Mac.”
Howard didn’t like that.
“Me? Hurting Mac? Sandra would never say that!”
“You believe Mac is going to die, Howard,” I said, with the ghost’s help. “You believe it, and Mac knows you believe it. So why should he keep fighting?”
Howard’s aura dulled into the lifeless color of doom. Sandra must’ve spoken the truth.