Seeing the Light (A Marie Jenner Mystery Book 1)

  Seeing the Light

  Published by Tyche Books Ltd.

  www.TycheBooks.com

  Copyright © 2014 Eileen Bell

  First Tyche Books Ltd Edition 2014

  Print ISBN: 978-1-928025-08-5

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-928025-13-9

  Cover Art by Guillem Mari

  Cover Layout by Lucia Starkey

  Interior Layout by Ryah Deines

  Editorial by M. L. D. Curelas

  Author photograph by Shelby Deep Photography

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage & retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright holder, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third party websites or their content.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead would be really cool, but is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my husband, Harold–who believed in me even when I didn't.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Farley: My Death and What Came After

  Stage One Getting to Why

  Marie: The Interview

  Marie: So Now What?

  Farley: Death’s Good When You Have Someone to Talk to

  Marie: First Day of Work Exceeding Expectations. Almost.

  Farley: Marie Learns Something

  Marie: Researching Farley’s Death

  Marie: Why Would a Ghost Feel Sick?

  Farley: What Nightmares Are Like When You’re Dead

  Marie: Post “Moving on my First Ghost” Blues

  Marie: Saving James

  Marie: The Hero, Back at the Office

  Farley: To Hell, Again

  Marie: Again with the Blinking

  Farley: The Nightmare Continues

  Marie: James and his Uncle

  Farley: The Nightmare Won’t Stop . . .

  Marie: Helping James

  Marie: Farley Went to Hell and Back. Again

  Farley: Let’s Keep from Going to Hell, Shall We?

  Marie: The Margarita Lunch

  Stage Two Gaining Awareness

  Farley: Let the Fading Begin

  Marie: Score One for the Good Guys

  Farley: My Plan

  Marie: Farley’s Plan

  Farley: My Lunch Date With Marie

  Marie: My Lunch Date with Farley

  Farley: Back to Hell, with a Twist

  Marie: Setting Up the Non-Date

  Marie: Going on the Non-Date

  Farley: Las Vegas North

  Marie: Couch Surfing, at the Office

  Marie: Off to Work

  Farley: Back Hanging Around with the Living

  Marie: Farley’s Back

  Farley: Dying for a Bad Cause

  Marie: Taking It Under Advisement

  Farley: Caught in an Explosion When You’re Dead

  Marie: Almost Caught in an Explosion When You’re Alive

  Marie: Explosion Aftermath

  Farley: Lucky Marie Meets the Rat

  Marie: Meeting the Rat

  Marie: The Cop Comes Back, and I Am Sprung

  Farley: So Marie Has an Ex. Who Knew?

  Marie: Casa del James

  Marie: Time to Go

  Marie: Bringing James Up to Speed, Sort Of

  Marie: Good Cop, Bad Cop, All Rolled into One

  Farley: The Drive to the Office

  Marie: The Drive to the Office

  Marie: The Drive to the Office, Part Two

  Farley: Paying a Visit to the Good Sergeant

  Marie: Looks Like Business Is Picking Up

  Farley: Unwanted and Unloved

  Marie: Things Go from Decent to—What a Surprise—Worse

  Marie: Following the Money

  Farley: Following the Mountain . . .

  Marie: Breakfast, and What Happened After That

  Marie: Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun

  Farley: Meeting One of My Own

  Marie: Back from the Hospital, Once More

  Stage Three Seeing What He Needs To See

  Farley: This Wasn’t Like Before

  Marie: Making the Phone Call

  Farley: Dreaming of Grandpa Harry

  Marie: Farley’s Confession

  Marie: Life after Farley

  Acknowledgements

  Biography

  Farley:

  My Death and What Came After

  That “walking into the white light” thing is crap. The only light I saw was the electricity arcing around me as I jerked to the floor like I was doing the funky chicken.

  Then everything went black.

  Not white. Black.

  I woke up and thought I’d been tossed clear until I saw my body by the electrical panel, still doing its death dance as the last of the current rattled through it.

  Tendrils of smoke curled up from the hair, and that’s when I went crazy. Crying and trying to crawl back to myself, I did all that as I watched my body disconnect and ooze to the floor like a half-cooked chicken. A half-cooked funky chicken.

  I’m hilarious.

  When I pulled myself together, I went over to see if I could figure out what had happened. My free hand was in my pocket, though, so the current hadn’t used that route, and for a while I couldn’t see anything out of place. Other than the fact I was dead, of course, I really thought I hadn’t done anything wrong. Then I saw my sock.

  Okay, so I’m supposed to wear work boots, but it was as hot as the hubs of hell down in that basement in the summer, so I was wearing sandals and socks. And there was water. Why hadn’t I noticed the water? It looked like I’d been standing in a river, for Christ’s sake.

  My sock had wicked the water up to my foot. Obviously, when I touched the hot wire, the electricity searched for the quickest way to ground. That had been through me, to my wet foot, and out. The result had been fireworks and me getting tossed out of my body like a sack of potatoes off the back of a truck.

  Son of a bitch. If I could have, I would have moved the body, so nobody else could see the mistake I’d made. I couldn’t. I could only stand and glare at the water that soaked into my clothes and put out my hair with a hiss and a small sigh. Or maybe the sigh came from me. Who the hell knew for sure.

  The cops came and I made an ass of myself trying to get their attention, but by then it was beginning to sink in. I wasn’t getting back into the old skin sack again. And beneath the crying and wailing and gnashing of teeth, I was relieved. This life was finally done, and I could get on with whatever came next.

  Here’s the kicker, though. When the paramedics wheeled my body out, I couldn’t follow. I hit that open doorway like it was a thick pane of glass and bounced back about a foot. All I could do was watch as they loaded my body into the ambulance and drove away.

  There were no sirens. They don’t use sirens for the dead.

  Stage One

  Getting to Why

  Marie:

  The Interview

  Here’s the way it was supposed to work. I was supposed to put on my second best dress and the one pair of pantyhose that didn’t have a hole and go to the Palais Office Building, a five story red brick holdover from the 1920s hidden away on a nice side street in downtown Edmonton, for a job interview. I
was supposed to wow my potential new boss, Mr. Don Latterson, and I was supposed to get that secretary slash receptionist job. And then my life was supposed to get better.

  It didn’t go that way. Of course.

  There was only one other interviewee waiting in the small reception area in the office of Don Latterson’s import export business, called, not too imaginatively, Latterson’s Import Export.

  “Wish me luck,” she said, when Mr. Latterson silently hooked his finger at her, calling her into his office.

  “Good luck,” I said. I didn’t mean it. I wanted the job for myself, after all.

  When she ran out, sobbing, three minutes into her interview, I felt guilty, like I’d somehow jinxed her. I also felt relief. Maybe I had a real shot at the job.

  It wasn’t a lock, of course, because sometimes my big mouth gets me into trouble, but things were looking up.

  Don Latterson stepped out of his office. He was in his forties and starting to run to fat. His hair, what little that was left if you don’t count the absolutely atrocious comb-over, was brown streaked with gray, and his blue eyes looked parboiled, like he’d drunk his lunch instead of eating it.

  “Marie Jenner?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  He hooked his finger at me, and I followed him into the office, shutting the door behind me. Then I waited for him to offer me a seat so that the interview could begin.

  He did not do that. He sat down himself and stared at me until I felt acutely uncomfortable, and then pointed at an electric typewriter sitting on a small table by his desk.

  “Do you know what that is?” he asked.

  I wondered if there was some trick to the question. “An electric typewriter?” I finally asked.

  “It is not just an electric typewriter.” He ran his fingers over the plastic cover lovingly. “It is the Selectric II, the best electric typewriter ever made. Do you know how to use it?”

  I was sure I’d seen a computer on the desk out in the reception area. Did he actually expect me to type stuff on one of these?

  Whatever. He’s the potential boss.

  “Yes, I do,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  It was at that moment that I felt cold air wash over me. I turned around, thinking I hadn’t latched the door properly. That’s when I saw the ghost.

  He stood half in and half out the closed door, staring at me. Stupid me, I stared back.

  I knew better than to make eye contact. Dead’s dead and better left alone, but he caught me off guard.

  “Can you see me?” the ghost asked, looking just about as shocked as I felt.

  “Oh no,” I whispered. He wasn’t just dead. He was aware that he was dead. Good grief, why had I made eye contact?

  “Holy shit, you can see me!” the ghost cried.

  I shook my head, a completely useless thing to do, because it just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could, in fact, see him. Then Mr. Latterson spoke up. He didn’t sound happy.

  “What did you say?” he barked. “Turn around and answer me this instant.”

  Oh lord. I needed to regroup, and I couldn’t do it in front of my potential boss.

  “Can you excuse me for just one moment?” I asked. Without waiting for his answer, I left his office, shutting the door in his very surprised face.

  I heard the ghost follow me, and in the reception area he actually started dancing. I closed my eyes for a second, in a vain attempt to compose myself. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to make his appearance, and here he was, dancing around like an idiot or something. I had to get hold of the situation, and I had about two seconds to do it.

  “You have to go away,” I said.

  He stared at me, caught in mid-caper. “What?”

  “You have to go away!” I yelled, and then turned toward Mr. Latterson’s closed door, wondering whether he’d heard me. He probably had. He was probably in the process of tearing up my resume.

  My throat thickened with quick tears. This would have been a good job. A really good job.

  “You won’t get the job if you cry,” the ghost said.

  “Like I want it now,” I muttered.

  I walked to the door leading to the hallway, intending to leave, when I thought about my crappy job at the Yellowhead Cab Company. I had to get away from my boss, Gerald the Tyrant and paycheques that never quite paid all the bills. Not all in the same month, anyhow.

  I thought about my mom. She was sick, and she was counting on me.

  I needed this job. Even with a ghost.

  “How long?” I asked.

  The dead guy looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  “How long have you been dead?”

  If it was just a couple of days, there was a good chance he’d move on all by himself. I wouldn’t have to do a thing.

  “Oh.” He took a deep breath, even though he didn’t need to do that anymore, and I could see he’d been holding in his stomach. I tried not to roll my eyes. Men.

  “Six—no, seven days. I think.”

  My heart sank. Seven days. That was almost too long. He might be stuck.

  “How is it you can see me?” he asked. “Nobody else can.”

  “I’ve been able to see all of you since I was little.” I shook my head. There was no time for small talk. “Listen—”

  “Farley,” he said, and smiled at me, looking pathetically happy. “My name is Farley Hewitt. And you are?”

  “Marie,” I said quickly, knowing this was wrong too. I felt like I was in a car crash I couldn’t stop. “Farley, I can’t finish the interview with you in the room. You’re distracting, know what I mean?”

  He nodded eagerly. It was getting pathetic. Almost as pathetic as me acting like I still had a chance at this job.

  “So, leave. Please. If I get the job, I’ll be here tomorrow.” I wasn’t getting the job. I already knew that, and felt the sigh come up from the bottom of my soul. “We can talk then.”

  “All right. Sounds good. Great.”

  As he headed for the door that led to the hallway, I realized I had no idea what I was going to say to the living man standing on the other side of the door. I must have made a noise—probably a sob, I was feeling that desperate—and the ghost turned back to me.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t think of one thing to say to Mr. Latterson that would explain why I ran out of his office in the middle of my interview.” My throat tightened again, dangerously. “I’m never going to get this job.”

  Farley pointed at the desk behind us. “Tell him you thought you heard the phone ringing out here. He just got this system and tried to set it up himself. It won’t ring in his office. He screwed it up.”

  I recognized the phone system sitting on the desk. It was the little brother version of the one I used at the Yellowhead Cab Company, the job I was desperate to leave. I knew what Mr. Latterson had done wrong—what everybody did wrong when they tried to set these things up on their own. I touched a few buttons and my heart quit beating so trip hammer hard. It might work.

  I nodded at the ghost, to thank him for the help. Then I threw my shoulders back, slapped the smile on my face, and opened the door to Mr. Latterson’s office.

  Fixing that phone saved my interview. Mr. Latterson was so impressed when I made it ring that he hired me on the spot.

  “Welcome on board,” he said. “You start tomorrow morning. Eight sharp.”

  Then he pointed at the door and said, “Get out.”

  So, I left.

  I had the job of my dreams. I also had a ghost. And the ghost got me the job. What was I going to do?

  I didn’t want another ghost in my life. They are trouble. Just ask my mom.

  She sees ghosts, too. In fact, she does more than see them. She helps them move through the three phases of acceptance to the next plane of existence. She seems to think that I could do the same, if I just tried.

  I wasn’t interested in any of that. I’d seen what it did to my mom. I’d seen what i
t had done to her life—and to mine. I didn’t want to have a life like hers.

  I wanted to be normal.

  I stood outside the Latterson Import Export office, trying to decide whether or not to walk back in and turn down the job, when Farley oozed through the door, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  “Did you get it?” he asked.

  “You were spying on me, weren’t you?”

  “Well, yeah,” he said, sheepishly. “Just wanted to stick around, make sure you didn’t need any more help. The phone trick—it worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I sighed. “It did.”

  “So, now you owe me. Get me out so I can prove my death wasn’t an accident,” he said. “I have to prove the idiot cops wrong.”

  It took all my control to keep from running out of the building, screaming. Farley’s death was an accident. An accident!

  Even Mom hated working with the dead who die accidentally. They seem to hang on to this plane harder than any other spirit. They don’t want to believe that something stupid they did led to their own demise.

  “Well?” Farley asked. “You gonna help me or what?”

  I stood staring at him, my mouth gaping as I tried desperately to think of something, anything that would get me out of this situation. I couldn’t help a ghost who’d died accidentally. Heck, I couldn’t help a ghost at all. My mom could. Not me.

  Walk out, a little voice in my head cried. Before you get in too deep. Walk out and never come back.

  I took a deep breath, ready to tell Farley I couldn’t help him, when the cutest guy I’d ever seen in my life walked right through Farley and up to me.

  Farley screamed as he exploded in fragments of mist and ecto goo. My nerves were so shot from the interview that I screamed too.

  “Are you all right?” the cute guy asked, his face concerned. “I thought you saw me.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Farley yelled. He pulled himself together and took several hugely ineffectual punches at the cute guy’s head. “How dare you walk through me like I’m not even here!”

  “I’m fine,” I said, trying desperately to ignore Farley, who looked like he was ready to blow a gasket. “You just surprised me.”