Grave Danger Read Free Page B

workers to
accommodate the living patrons, and a middle man of the living
persuasion had to be used to keep up with the finances of the
building and all monies made. Most of the money made was used to
keep up the tavern and pay the living employee’s. A small portion
went into the community pool of money that supplied the needs of
the ghostly citizens.
    It would be a surprise to the living to know that
the St. Augustine Eidolon community owned their own homes in the
area. The local citizens wanted to live as normal an afterlife as
humanly possible. The physical trappings of humanity like a home,
helped to create that normality.
    It was full tonight at the Happy Haunts and not all the seats were occupied
by the living. The dead enjoyed good food and conversation just as
much as any other human.
    Henry and Clarissa made their way to a table with
two ghosts already occupying seats at it. No one mistakenly sat in
their laps or tried to make off with the chair under them. The
living simply pretended they were not there.
    Henry offered Clarissa a chair at the table and she
sat down in the offered seat. As she did so her mouth almost
watered at the smell of good cooking coming from the back kitchen.
She tucked herself closer to the table as Henry took the seat next
to her.
    Henry began the introductions with the woman across
from him. “Clarissa, this is Eleanor.” Henry introduced the petite
blonde woman who Clarissa thought had the most amazingly curly
hair. The woman smiled at Clarissa, holding out her hand. Clarissa
took it.
    “ Hello there,” she drawled in a soft southern
accent. “As Henry here said, I’m Eleanor.” She gave a fleeting
glance to Henry. Her cerulean blue eyes held an emotion Clarissa
could not name. As if catching her slip, the undefined emotion
quickly vanished from Eleanor’s eyes before turning her attention
back to focus on the newly deceased woman across from
her.
    “ Eleanor Masters was my name in my living
days, but I just go by Eleanor now. There’s no sense in all that
formality.” She let go of Clarissa’s hand. “I hope you’ll be
joining us for dinner. We just put in our orders.”
    Eleanor tilted her head to the side and studied
Clarissa. “You’ve only just arrived to St. Augustine?” she
asked.
    “ Yes,” Clarissa answered, “Only a short time
ago. Henry met me at the old city gates.”
    “ I thought I felt something in the air
today.”
    Henry interrupted. “Eleanor can always tell when a
new one of us is made or comes to the area. She can sense them,
even from miles away.” Henry absently reached out and touched
Eleanor’s finger tips over the smooth table top for a brief second
before pulling away. “It’s an amazing gift, Eleanor has. There
isn’t much that get’s past her. She’s too intuitive for anyone to
escape her notice.”
    “ Yeah, it’s a real pain in the ass when you’re
trying to pull off a really big stunt and she pulls the rug out
from under you. I was this close to getting us in the papers and
she goes and rats me out to the spectral feds.” The man continued
to grumble under his breath to himself. He appeared to Clarissa to
be younger than both Eleanor and Henry, but perhaps a year or two
older than herself.
    His black hair was spiked up in a messy doo that
looked very much like something rock stars had worn in the early
eighties. His outfit made that theory much more plausible. Where
Henry and Eleanor were stylishly attired in modern fashion casual
wear, he wore scruffy dated jeans and a vintage t-shirt. The man
was hopelessly stuck in the eighties.
    “ This is Richard Pomar, our resident
poltergeist.” Henry indicated the spiked haired ghost. “He’s a punk
who thinks it’s funny to scare the tourists with his ghostly
antics.”
    Richard sneered at Henry. “What else is there to do
around this snooze town? That’s what being a ghost is supposed to
be about, scaring the shit out of the living. It’s what they want.
What do you think