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

on the spine.”
    I made a note—using a pencil.
    “Have you read it?” I asked.
    “Charlie never lets anyone read it—not even me. He keeps it wrapped up in an old flour sack, he says to keep the Kansas sand out of it, but I think it’s really to hide it. I asked him about it once, and he said it was just a story . . . a kind of fable, I think that is the word he used.”
    “Did you ask him why he won’t let you read it?”
    “Because of the ghost,” Molly said. “He says it has caused so much trouble already, that he can’t stand the thought of what understanding the book might do to me.”
    “Curious,” I said. “Has this been going on for all six years of your marriage?”
    “No, only since April. It was then that Charlie started acting jumpy and began constantly worrying where the book was. The ghost came the first time on the last Monday in April.”
    “Tell me about that.”
    “It was a quiet night, because you know it was too early in the season for the cattle drives to have reached Dodge yet. Charlie and I were both asleep when we heard the strangest sound coming from the parlor. A kind of mournful creaking, the protest of wood under strain, accompanied by the sighing of wind. We were afraid somebody was trying to break in, so Charlie jumped up and grabbed the shotgun he keeps in the corner, and he crept to the parlor. He kept telling me to stay put, but I was right behind him, looking over his shoulder.”
    “What did you see?”
    “An unspeakable horror.”
    “If you could put this horror into words, what would they be?”
    The woman thought for a moment.
    “At first all I could see was some kind of bluish glow illuminating the parlor like a cold flame,” she said. “It hovered and bobbed in the middle of the room about chest height, as if it were suspended from an unseen cord, accompanied by the sound of the wind and that awful creaking. I took it for a foxfire light, because when I was a child in Missouri I heard tales of lights such as this drifting through cemeteries. But this was the first time I had ever seen anything I was unable to identify as belonging to this world and not the next.”
    She paused.
    “I wish it had been the last.”
    “Please, go on.”
    “The glow turned into a flame, and elongated, and took the shape of a pillar of fire with a brilliant star at the top. I told Charlie to fetch the Bible, but it was on a table on the opposite side of the room, and he was afraid to pass too close to the light,” she said. “I was afraid as well. So we stood there, frozen, staring at this unearthly blue flame that gave no heat.”
    She looked down at her clasped hands.
    “Then the pillar of flame began to take shape, resolving into a human form,” she said. “It was a hanged man, eyes open and hard as marbles, his black tongue protruding from swollen lips. The veins in his neck were thick and looked like worms above the rope. His hands were free and hung limp at his sides, and the fingertips and thumbs were dark and engorged. The toes of his boots pointed earthward in slowly inscribing circles as he twisted from the ghostly rope.”
    “How awful,” I offered.
    “But I haven’t told you the worst part,” she said. “On the floor, beneath the hanged man, was the book. It was open and the pages were riffling in a breeze felt by no living person. Then, as the body turned on the rope to face us for perhaps the third time, the body stopped and the dead man’s right hand came up and slowly pointed a dreadful forefinger.”
    “You must have been frightened.”
    “I was mortified,” Molly said. “Charlie began to tremble.”
    She let out a burst of nervous laughter.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. Charlie would be so embarrassed.”
    “Who could blame him?” I asked.
    “He cried out like a little girl.”
    “Some do,” I said.
    “Have you?”
    “Never,” I said. “What happened next?”
    “The apparition dissolved, leaving the parlor