Free Emily's Ghost by Antoinette Stockenberg Page A

"I
know I seem unsympathetic to you, but I'm not," she said, careful
not to anger him. "It's just that you've made me realize that you
never lived to see the worst war the world has ever known, or the
invention of the atom bomb --"
    "What do I care about wars
and Adam bombs!" he cried, whirling around on her. "I never lived
to fall in love, or have a son, or teach him to work with his
hands. He might've become something -- a silversmith, maybe. He
might've made me damn proud." His eyes burned with a century of
indignation.
    For one incoherent second
she imagined herself being the wife of Fergus O'Malley in 1887. She
banished the thought as instantly as it formed. "But you can't turn
back the clock," she said, almost gently.
    "No. I can't. But I can
get in line for another try at life -- if I can get the bloody hell out of
this--"
    "Limbo? Is that the name
for it?"
    He shook his head and
sighed. "There is no bloody name for it. Limbo is someplace
else."
    "So, if you can clear your
name and get out of this ... nothingness, you can be reincarnated?
Do I have it right?"
    "So they say," he answered
dryly.
    "But if you're innocent,
Someone should know that! Why should you be punished this
way?"
    He repeated through
compressed lips, "I'm not being punished. I'm not being anything ."
    "But it's not
fair!"
    He laughed at her, a laugh
filled with contempt and pain. "Who in hell ever told ye life was
fair?"
    She didn't know what to
say to that, so she said nothing.
    After a pause Fergus
O'Malley said, "Well? Will ye get started?"
    "Now? It's nearly dawn!"
she wailed.
    "No better time. Get a
pencil and paper."
    She'd been sitting in the
hard-backed chair for what seemed like half the night. One of her
feet was asleep, her rear end was numb, and her eyes hung heavy as
andirons. She glanced at her spindle bed with its downy comforter
and beckoning pillows and said, "I can't, Mr. O'Malley. I just
can't. In the morning, o.k? Just ... an hour of sleep. One hour.
Then I'll do whatever you want."
    He flushed angrily at
being opposed and she thought, I don't
care. Let him kill me, let him blind me. But let me
sleep . She let her eyelids droop and stay
closed for one exquisite moment, like an exhausted driver on a dark
country road, and when she forced them open again, he was
gone.
    Without questioning why or
where, Emily threw back the comforter and collapsed, fully clothed,
onto her bed. She fell like a stone into a deep and dreamless sleep
and when she finally stirred and opened one eye, the sun was not in
the east window where it was supposed to be: it was two o'clock in
the afternoon. At first she remembered nothing. Then, slowly, bits
and pieces of the previous day came back to her, floating at the
edges of her consciousness like dried leaves on a pond. Kimberly,
and Mrs. Lividus, and the senator -- had they all happened only
yesterday?
    And then she remembered --
obviously she'd been trying not to remember -- Fergus O'Malley. Her
eyes opened wide and her heart took a flying leap out of her chest.
The ghost! She had dreamed of a terrible, endless, bizarrely
realistic encounter with a ghost. She sat bolt upright and looked
around the room, her breathing coming short and fast. No ghost. She
looked for signs of the mace she dreamed she'd sprayed all over. No
mace. Her bedroom was absolutely quiet. From somewhere outside she
heard children playing their Saturday games, and that was
all.
    It was several moments
before she dared to feel reassured. Never again would she deny the
power of the subconscious mind to produce a terrifying reality of
its own. She had wandered into the realm of the mentally disturbed
yesterday, and she hadn't got out again without one hell of a
scare. Some day, but not now, she'd analyze the symbolism of her
spin-off dream of Fergus O'Malley. What a na ї f she'd been to skip off blithely
to a s é ance
expecting only a little innocent foolery. What a jerk.
    She swung her legs
groggily over the side of the bed and realized