Witch of Christmas Past Read Free

was quickly discovering that it didn’t do much good for me to make plans for any further out than five minutes.
    As soon as I stripped down and pulled the shower curtain open, my heart nearly burst out of my chest.
    I would have screamed, but I couldn’t utter a sound.
    Her gray pallor, stringy blond hair and blue lips, gave her the appearance of a corpse, which isn’t too shocking considering she was actually dead.
    But I wasn’t looking at Muriel’s corpse. It was her ghost that was hiding in my shower.
    “What are you doing in my shower?” I asked, once I managed to find my voice. “And why are you appearing to me like this?”
    “Like what?” Muriel asked.
    “Like a dead person.”
    She shrugged. “I am dead.”
    “Yeah, but why are you popping up in my shower looking like a corpse?” I scowled.
    I’d grown accustomed to seeing the deceased, and it usually wasn’t a problem as long as I was prepared for it.
    “The lighthouse is getting boring.”
    Muriel was referring to the Shipwreck Point Lighthouse, which is where she usually did her haunting, due to the fact that’s where she’d been murdered. That was the theory anyway. Muriel wasn’t a lot of help in that department, on account of she couldn’t remember much about her own murder, though she was convinced it was the mythical Captain Marsh who’d murdered her.
    Sighing, I asked, “Why is it getting boring at the lighthouse?”
    “Aaron isn’t fun to scare anymore. He is totally ignoring me,” Muriel complained.
    “Well, maybe he has found a way to stop you from bugging him while he is trying to work,” I suggested.
    Aaron Osborne was my mother’s brother, who happened to be stuck in the 80s Heavy Metal era, which is why he preferred to make his living running a classic rock station from the top of the Shipwreck Point Lighthouse.
    Uncle Aaron and Muriel didn’t get along well. She had a habit of messing with him all night, and he reacted by cussing her and throwing fits, which she thoroughly enjoyed.
    “No, he isn’t just ignoring me.” She shook her head. “He is also ignoring the phone when it rings.”
    Well, that was weird. Uncle Aaron was normally pretty good about not ignoring the business side of his radio station.
    “I couldn’t even get a sigh out of him when I turned off the broadcast system,” she added.
    Now I knew something was wrong. My phone would have been ringing endlessly if the broadcast system went down and Aaron suspected Muriel was behind it.
    Maybe Uncle Aaron was going into a depression?
    It was getting close to Christmas and Granny still wasn’t home. I would definitely have to pay my uncle a visit and see how he was doing.
     

 
3.
     
    After dropping by the Quick Stop for a cup of go juice, also known as coffee, I took the Island Loop Road to Granny’s place, which was where Uncle Aaron lived.
    I had to go into work for a couple hours, but it wouldn’t take long to stop by and see Aaron.
    Against the backdrop of the turbulent Pacific and the rolling black clouds drifting in from the west, the old Victorian mansion seemed even more imposing than normal. It had changed so much since Granny went missing that it was sometimes difficult to believe it was the house I’d spent half my childhood.
    As I climbed the rickety old stairs to the covered porch, I was so caught up in my own thoughts that I almost didn’t notice the man sitting in Granny’s porch swing.
    I saw him, but it didn’t register until I reached out to grab the doorknob. Doing a double take, I turned sharply in his direction.
    Sure enough, there was a man sitting on Granny’s swing. He was sporting a long gray beard and looked to be dressed like someone from the eighteenth century.
    Whoever he was, he wasn’t alive.
    The man glared at me, drawing his bushy brows together. “I daresay … you took your time.”
    “Excuse me, but who are you … and what are you doing haunting my Granny’s porch swing?”
    “It be me that be amiss. It