NRoberts - G2 Black Rose

 “So I got David up, and Austin and Mason woke up, too. I wanted Austin to stay back with Mason, but there was no chance of that, so we all set out to follow her.”

 Mitch could imagine it very well. A pack of young boys, moonlight and lightning bugs and heavy summer heat. And a ghostly figure trailing through the gardens.

 “She walked right over Mama’s evening primrose, straight through the hollyhocks. Through them. I was too wound up to be scared. She kept making this noise, a kind of humming, or keening, I guess you could say. I think there were words mixed in there somewhere, but I couldn’t make them out. She was going toward the carriage house. Seemed to me she was heading toward the carriage house anyway. And she turned, and she looked back. And her face . . .”

 “What?”

 “Like last spring again,” he said, and let out a little breath. “She looked insane. Horror-movie insane. Wild and crazy. She was smiling, but it was horrible. And for a minute, when she looked at me and I looked back, it was so cold, I saw my own breath. Then she turned, kept walking, and I started after her.”

 “Started after her? An insane ghost? You had to be scared.”

 “Not so much, not that I realized anyway. I was caught up, I guess. Really fascinated. I had toknow . But Mason started screaming. Then I was scared spitless. I thought somehow she’d gotten him, which was stupid since she was up ahead and he was behind me. Farther behind me, all of them, than I’d realized. So I went running back, and there was Mason on the ground with his foot bleeding. And Austin’s running back to the tent for a T-shirt or something to wrap it ’cause we’re not wearing anything but our jockeys. David and I were trying to carry him back when Mama came running out like the wrath of God.”

 He laughed then, eyes twinkling at Mitch. “You should’ve seen her. She’s wearing these little cotton shorts and some skinny little T-shirt. Her hair was longer back then, and it’s flying as she came hauling ass. And I see—the others didn’t, but I see she’s got my granddaddy’s pistol. I tell you what, if it had been some ghost after us, or anything else, she’d have run it off. But when she saw what was what, more or less, she shoved the pistol in the waistband of those little shorts, around the back. She picked Mason up, told us all to get some clothes on. And we all piled into the car to take Mason into the ER for stitches.”

 “You never said you’d seen the gun.” Roz stepped into the library.

 “I didn’t think you wanted the others to know.”

 She walked right to him, bent down, and kissed the top of his head. “Didn’t want you to know, either. You always saw too much.” She turned her cheek, left it on top of Harper’s head as she looked at Mitch. “Am I interrupting?”

 “No. You could sit down if you have a minute. I’ve gotten this story from two sources now, and wouldn’t mind having your version.”

 “I can’t add much. The boys wanted to sleep out. God knows why as it was hot as hell and buggy with it. But boys do like to pitch a tent. As I wanted to be able to keep an eye on things, and hear them, I closed off my room, and did without the air-conditioning so I could have my doors open to the outside.”

 “We were right in the yard,” Harper objected. “How much trouble could we get in?”

 “Plenty, and as events proved just that, it was wise of me to sweat through the night. Once they settled down, I drifted off to sleep myself. It was Mason screaming that woke me. I grabbed my daddy’s pistol, which in those days I kept on the top shelf of my bedroom closet. Got the bullets out of my jewelry box and loaded it on the run. When I got there, Harper and David were carting Mason, and his little foot was bleeding. I had to tell them to hush, as they were all talking at once. Took the baby in, cleaned up his foot, and saw it was going to need stitches. I got the story on the way to the hospital.”

 Mitch nodded, then looked up from his notes. “When did you go to the carriage house?”

 She smiled. “First light. It took me that long to get back, settle them all down.”

 “You take the gun?”

 “I did, in case what they’d seen was more corporeal than they’d thought.”

 “I was old enough to go with you,” Harper objected. “You shouldn’t have gone out there alone.”

 She cocked her head at him. “I believe I was in charge. In any case, there was nothing to see, and I can’t tell you if I felt anything, genuinely, or if I was still so worked up I thought I did.”

 “What did you think?”

 “That it was cold, and it shouldn’t have been. And I felt . . . it sounds melodramatic, but I felt death all around me. I went through the place top to bottom, and there was nothing there.”

 “When was the place converted?”