“Where did you get this?” Eric asked. He and his brother exchanged nervous glances.
“Marie gave it to me.”
The twins stared dumbly at Evan.
As Evan tried talking to the Bowman brothers, both Clay and Marie kept telling Evan what they wanted him to tell the boys.
“Marie is the ghost who wrote that note at the house you were at.”
The twins continued to stare at Evan, making no reply.
“Your dad is here, too. They both tell me you need to let me call my dad, and you tell him everything that happened today. It’s important.”
“We’re going to get in trouble,” Zack said.
“Your dad says it’s important.”
“A woman tried to kill us. She had this big old knife. She might still try,” Eric said.
“Holy crap,” Eddy muttered, his eyes wide as he listened.
Evan turned momentarily to look at Marie. “What?…Seriously?” Evan turned back to the twins. “Marie says she’s not a threat anymore. She fell down the stairs. She’s dead.”
Chief MacDonald sat in his police car at the park with the Bowman twins sitting in the back seat with Eddy, while Evan sat in the front passenger seat. MacDonald understood Clay and Marie were somewhere in the car with them.
The chief sat sideways in the seat so he could see both Evan and the boys in the back seat. The Bowman twins had just recounted all that had happened to them that day, emphasizing that the only reason they had gone to the house was their desire to set things right. When describing their time hiding under the desk, all Zack said was, “The woman started talking to the painting, and then Eric sneezed.”
Evan then told Marie’s version of the story, ending with the part where the woman fell down the stairs and died.
MacDonald jerked upright. “Are you saying there’s a dead woman in the house right now?”
Evan shrugged. “I guess, unless someone’s already found her.”
“Shouldn’t you have started with that part?” MacDonald snapped.
“Well, it’s not like you can do anything now,” Evan argued. “She’s already dead. And Marie said her spirit didn’t even stick around.”
“I’ve got to call Brian.” The chief reached for his phone.
“Tell him to wait,” Clay said.
“Wait a second, Dad,” Evan said.
MacDonald looked at his son. “What?”
“I need to tell your father what the woman said to the portrait before Eric sneezed.”
“Marie’s going to follow you both home. I don’t like the idea of you riding your bikes home, not after all you’ve been through. Your dad will be with you too, but he can’t help you like Marie can.”
Eric and Zack nodded at the chief.
“And while I don’t believe a child should ever keep something from a parent—”
“You don’t want us to tell our mom?” Eric finished for him.
“It would be best if you pretend nothing happened. Your father was with you all morning and is convinced no one saw you go into the house or leave. If someone had seen you, then I would be more concerned.”
“We won’t tell anyone,” Zack vowed.
“And Marie, thank you for having the foresight to pick up their cellphone. I don’t know what kind of mess we would be in if they found it with the body,” the chief said.
Marie chuckled. “Edward, I never thought I would hear you condone tampering with evidence.” She looked at Evan and said, “Don’t tell him I said that. Just tell him I said you’re welcome.”
“Why does the chief want us to go over there?” Joe asked Brian as they drove to Cordelia’s house.
“The chief isn’t convinced Adrian just fell. He wants us to take another look at the scene.”
“I’m assuming he already talked to Bonnie?”
“He tried to call her, but she’s not answering,” Brian lied. “Since he already told her we might need to go back over, I don’t see why there would be a problem.”
Before coming over, they had stopped at Adam’s office and picked up a key. But when they pulled up to Cordelia’s, they saw Bonnie’s car already parked in front of the house.
“Looks like Bonnie is here,” Joe said when he parked.
When they got to the front door, they found it slightly ajar. Instead of ringing the bell, Brian pushed it open. “Hello, Bonnie? It’s Brian Henderson, from the Frederickport Police Department.” When there was no response, Brian called out again. There was still no answer. They walked in. The first thing Joe noticed was the ring of keys sitting on the entry table. He pointed to the keys, and they walked into the living room, all the while calling out Bonnie’s name.
About forty minutes after Brian and Joe arrived at the house, Bonnie returned. When she first arrived, it felt like a repeat of yesterday, with police and other first responders swarming the property. She watched as the coroner looked over her body, as he had done with Adrian.
Two police officers stood a few feet from the corpse. One looked up at the staircase and then back to the other officer and said, “Those are some dangerous stairs.”
It didn’t take long for Bonnie to realize she should never have followed her body back to the morgue. While she should have known she might run into Adrian, she didn’t expect to run into her husband’s spirit. The man had been gone for over six months. Was this hell? she wondered. Doomed to spend eternity with the two men she had murdered?
They weren’t alone, there was a woman with them, and by the manner of the woman’s dress, she had been dead a long time. She actually looked a little like the actress whose portrait hung in the local museum.
“Bonnie?” both Adrian and Wesley gasped.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“You’re really dead?” Adrian said. “What happened?”
“What do you think happened? I died. And this must be hell, because you two idiots are here.”
“Actually, I brought them here because I knew you were coming,” Eva said. In the background, the staff at the morgue did their jobs while the spirits paid no attention to them.
“Who are you?” Bonnie asked.
“I’m Eva Thorndike, and I thought you might have something to say to your husband before you all move on.”
“What do I have to say to him?” Bonnie snapped. Eva didn’t answer as she and Bonnie locked gazes. They were both silent for a few minutes until Bonnie finally said, “What do you want me to say to him? That I murdered him?” Bonnie turned to Wesley. “Wesley, I murdered you.” Bonnie looked back to Eva. “Was that what I was supposed to say?”
Wesley stared with disbelief at his wife. “You murdered me? Why?”
“Because I was in love with your stupid brother.” She flashed Adrian a glare and then looked back at her husband. “Idiot that I was.”
“That’s not possible. You were in Frederickport. I was in California.”
“I put something in your medicine, you fool. In one of the capsules. I knew you had only taken four capsules, just enough for your trip. I didn’t know what day you would take it, so you could have died on the last day. But once you did, if the police investigated your death, they wouldn’t find anything wrong with your medicine. But look at you, taking the death capsule on the first day.” Bonnie laughed.
“I can’t believe that,” Wesley gasped.
“Wesley,” Eva said, “why don’t you tell her what you had planned for her while you were gone?”
Wesley flashed Eva an uneasy look.
“What do you mean planned for me?” Bonnie asked.
Wesley refused to talk.
Finally, Adrian blurted, “I was going to kill you for him. We had it all planned out.”
Had Wesley, Adrian, and Bonnie known how to harness energy, the inside of the morgue would have been destroyed within the next fifteen minutes. Mayhem ensued, which included verbal abuse from all parties, punches that had nowhere to land, and lots of screaming.
Eva stood back and watched the three as they unsuccessfully tried grabbing, punching, and kicking each other. And it wasn’t just the two brothers against Bonnie. The brothers went after each other with the same gusto they attacked Bonnie, and Bonnie showed equal loathing for each brother.
Growing bored with the chaos, Eva looked up and said, “Can’t you take them now? I think they’re ready.”
The next moment the illusion of the three spirits gradually rose upwards, none noticing their increasing distance from the floor, while they continued to fight amongst each other, shouting curses and taking ineffective swings with fists until they disappeared, and the only sounds Eva heard were those made by the employees at the morgue.
When the twins returned home, they were both unusually quiet and had little to say about working at the pet adoption event. Debbie attributed it to the boys being overly tired. But when dinner rolled around, and they both claimed they weren’t hungry, she felt their foreheads and found them both burning up. She immediately brought out the thermometer and soon discovered they both had a 104 temperature. Panicked, she loaded both boys in her car and took them to urgent care. At urgent care, they sent the boys to the hospital. And two hours later, they checked Eric and Zack into a hospital room, each hooked up to IVs. Both boys were delirious.
Clay stood with Eva in the hospital room, while his wife sat in a nearby chair, occasionally dozing. The boys had finally fallen asleep. “I don’t understand. They were fine this afternoon.”
Eva smiled at Clay. “Things happen for a reason. But they’re going to be alright. Trust me.”
“When I was alive, I never understood how much I had. I kept wanting more, while ignoring these incredible things I had in my life. My wife, my sons. I made so many mistakes, have so many regrets.”
“I believe your sons are going to be okay. They’re on the right track now, and your wife is much better now, too. She understands she needs to be the best person she can be because she’s all they have.”
“Only because I was such a bad husband and father.”
“In the morning you’ll see their improvement, and perhaps you’ll be ready to move on.”
Morning came, and just as Eva had predicted, the Bowman twins no longer had a temperature, and both wanted to go home. While waiting for the hospital to complete the discharge papers, they had a visitor, Chief MacDonald. He had heard about them being admitted to the hospital. Debbie left him alone to talk to her sons while she went to the nurses’ station to ask a question about a follow-up visit.
“I understand you were pretty sick,” the chief told the boys.
“I had so many weird dreams last night,” Eric told him.
“Me too,” Zack said.
“Really? What kind of dreams?”
“Crazy stuff, like our dad’s ghost was hanging around. And then it saved us from this wacky lady who locked us up in a room with bars on the window,” Zack said.
Eric laughed and said, “Dad was in my dream, too. But it was really goofy. We found these soup cans with money in them, and Dad told us we had to take them back.”
“Mom says it’s probably the medication they gave us last night,” Eric said.
“Umm, tell me, boys, before your mom comes back, just between you and me, what was your day like yesterday?”
Eric shrugged. “We did our community service at the pet adoption. Which was really cool. We got to play with all the dogs. Thanks for letting us do that.”
“Yeah, that was fun,” Zack said.
“Before you arrived at the park, where were you boys?”
Again, Eric shrugged. “We were at home and rode our bikes to the park. Are you thinking we stopped somewhere and caught something that made us sick? Because we didn’t really go anywhere, just home and the park.”