into my purse this morning at the book shop. It was going to be a long day, but that was fine. I was home with my puppy and my dead friends. No more weird conversations with good-looking crazy people for me today. I’d had my fill this morning for the rest of the year.
With a smile and a solid resolve to try to figure out what Sam was trying to tell me, I snapped my laptop shut and followed my puppy and dead buddy out of the kitchen.
Sam was on the couch, and Donna was at his feet wagging her tail so hard her little bottom was shaking. I was so in love with her. I was starting to love my buddy Sam too. Probably not the smartest move, but he was adorable in a dead and decomposing kind of way. He had a terrific sense of humor and he seemed kind.
I’d never had a grandfather or a father that I’d known. Not that I was pretending that Sam was my grandpa… Wait. I was. I was crazy and starting to live in an alternate fantasy reality. Not good.
“Dausseeeeee,” Sam grunted and made a valiant attempt to pat the seat next to him on the couch. I was worried his arm was going to fall off since it was hanging by what looked like a paper thread, but I didn’t say anything. I’d bought a case of superglue earlier.
“Did you just say my name?” I asked with a grin as I crossed the room and sat down next to him.
Donna barked and wagged her tail. I’d gotten it right!
“Dausseeeeee, waauufff lassssh gaussaus,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Waauufff lassssh gaussaus.”
“Is there another way to understand?” I mumbled, still trying to decipher what Sam was saying.
Donna wrapped her paws around my ankle and held tight. I glanced down and giggled. She was the oddest little dog. “What are you doing?”
Donna looked up with her paws still around my ankle and barked.
“Really?” I asked, and then smacked myself in the forehead. Had I fallen so far into the rabbit hole that I thought my dog was telling me how to communicate with the dead—the dead that I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure weren’t figments of my imagination?
Deciding to ignore Donna’s advice because that meant there was no turning back from complete insanity if I listened to her, I kept going over Sam’s words in my mind.
Donna wasn’t having it. She kept barking and gripping my ankle with her little paws. Where in the heck had my friends found Donna? She wasn’t normal. I mean, I wasn’t normal, but she was a dog. She was supposed to be normal. Well, crap. Had I screwed her up because I brought her into a home with decomposing dead people and insanity?
I couldn’t even go there right now. Some things—not everything—happened for a reason. I was choosing to believe that I was supposed to be Donna’s human because I was as whacked as she was.
“You want me to grab Sam’s ankle so I can understand him?” I asked, very happy that I lived in the middle of nowhere. If someone heard me, I would die.
Donna barked and licked my shoe.
“I’m not licking Sam’s foot,” I informed all present. I could only do so much. Licking a dead person’s foot—ghost or not—was not going to be added to my repertoire of loony.
“Dausseeeeee,” Sam grunted with what sounded like a laugh. “Haaawug.”
I didn’t need to interpret through my dog on this one. Sam held his semi-transparent arms out and repeated himself.
“Haaawug,” he said, giving me a smile that might have made me think he was a flesh-eating zombie if I didn’t know him so well.
“You want me to hug you?” I asked.
Sam nodded and kept smiling.
In less time than it would take a heart to produce a single beat, the family room was full of so many ghosts, I gasped. Counting them was impossible since they faded in and out of each other, but their excitement was very clear.
The garbled noise coming from them sounded like a very off-key song that was supposed to be joyful but came out macabre instead. However, I’d spent a few weeks with the weirdos. I was beginning to understand far more than I’d ever wanted to.
“Quiet please,” I yelled to my squatters. “I need to think.”
Everyone piped down, but the eager anticipation was still in the air. Had I just figured out the key to help these sad souls? Was