The Spirit is Willing (An Ophelia Wylde Paranormal Mystery) Read Free Page A

smile, “but the agency is quite closed. Do return during business hours.”
    “But you are Miss Wylde? The woman who talks to ghosts?”
    “Yes, and I will be tomorrow as well,” I said. “Come back then. But not too early, as I haven’t been sleeping well.”
    I should have slammed the door, but the woman radiated sadness like a stove gives heat. Her weepy eyes looked at her own clasped hands, then to my hand upon the door, and finally to the stain on my sleeve. Her expression turned from sorrow to guilt.
    “I’ve caused that stain,” she said, talking more to herself than to me. “You’d better put something on it before it sets. I apologize and will cause you no more trouble today.”
    She turned to go.
    “What would I use?” I asked.
    She stopped.
    “Pardon?”
    “For the stain,” I said, opening the door wide enough so that it touched, but did not ring, the announcing bell above it. “These domestic matters escape me. What would I use to keep it from setting?”
    “Vinegar,” she said. “Then warm water and soap.”
    I sighed.
    “I have no vinegar,” I said.
    The afternoon seemed suddenly quite empty. Why would a lack of vinegar plunge me into a fit of melancholia? It wasn’t the shirt, but what the stain on the white shirt represented, and that it was now permanent; that I lacked any of the essentials to create a home; that I was spending another Sunday afternoon alone, save for a talking bird; and that, in my hour of need, I was denied even the consolation of sour wine, a biblical resonance that is at once absurd and indicates the depth of my sudden self-pity.
    “Come in, please,” I said, opening the door and ringing the bell.
    “No, I’ve already imposed.”
    “Do me the favor,” I said. “I am in the mood for company.”
    While I sat behind the oak desk, the woman slumped in the cane chair opposite. She patted her hair with her hand and began her story, which she had obviously spent some time rehearsing.
    “My name is Mary Howart,” she said. “My friends call me Molly, and you may call me that as well, if you are a candidate for that position. My husband is Charles Howart, an employee of Morris Collar’s railway freight business. We were married six years ago in Newton, and came to Dodge last year. We have a trim little house on Chestnut Street with two pear trees started in the front yard and a vegetable garden out back. Although the Lord has not seen fit to bless us with children, Charlie is a good and temperate man and attends services at least once a month with me at Union Church on Gospel Hill.”
    “Your life sounds pleasant enough,” I said. “Why do you need my help?”
    She hid her face with her hand, fingertips trembling on her forehead.
    “Because,” she said, in a voice so low that I had to lean forward to catch the words. “We are haunted by a book.”
    I considered this statement for a moment.
    “Do you mean a book appears to you?”
    “No, the book is real enough,” Molly said. “It’s just an ordinary book, but the way Charlie treats it, you’d think it was made out of gold. He frets over it, moving it from one hiding place to another in the house, even getting up in the middle of the night to check on it.”
    “What kind of book is it?”
    “I told you, just an ordinary kind of book.”
    “Not a grimoire?”
    She looked at me blankly.
    “A book of witchcraft, of spells or curses?”
    “No, nothing like that.”
    “The title, then?”
    “There was once a title on the cover, in gilt, but most of the letters have been worn or rubbed away. What’s left is an S , an X , and a W .”
    “It is a red book?”
    “Yes, it is red leather.”
    “And the letters,” I said. “You’re quite sure?”
    She repeated them: S , X , W .
    “Do you know this book?” she asked.
    “No,” I said. “Can’t say that I do, but I may have seen it once. Wish I could tell you where.”
    “The author’s name is Gresham.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yes, W. L. Gresham. It’s