A Most Excellent Midlife Crisis - Robyn Peterman Page 0,5

and I wasn’t planning a visit anytime soon. I was sure I’d only scratched the surface. The bizarre fact that my hand was clasped in the warm embrace of the Grim Reaper further convoluted my thinking.

I was learning quickly that the good were not so good and the bad were not all evil. The world was full of murky shades of gray. Gray was not my color.

The ruckus in the upstairs hallway pulled me out of my introspective thoughts.

“What’s going on up there?” Gideon growled as he picked up his pace.

What the hell was going on up there? Had Clarence decided not to help and all hell had broken loose? The man said his word was good…

Racing to the top of the stairs, I stopped dead in my tracks—pun intended. I gasped and wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or scream.

Quickly ducking and pulling Gideon down with me, we narrowly missed getting nailed by a detached flying ghost head. Of course, yanking Gideon to safety was unnecessary as the head would have gone right through him. But me? I could have gotten a lovely black eye or broken nose. Being the Death Counselor meant the ghosts were corporeal to me… and only me.

“What in the ever-lovin’ hell?” I shouted over the howling wind, shielding my eyes from the strong gusts and the thirty or so ghosts going nuts.

“Insane,” Candy Vargo yelled with a grin and a thumbs up.

Karma was correct. I grinned back at Candy and shook my head.

It was par for the course. My life had been spinning out of control for a while now. Why anything shocked me anymore was almost comical in a very unfunny way. I was a widowed forty-year-old who had a large posse of deceased roommates. I glued body parts back on with superglue and I could mind dive into the dead and figure out what problem they needed solved to move on. On top of that bit of bizarre news, my departed husband had shown back up to apologize for being gay and I was becoming the Hulk with superpowers.

However, what I was seeing right now took the cake.

The upstairs hallway was reminiscent of a big-budget horror film with seriously bad B actors. If I had to name the film, I’d have to go with Drunk Circus of the Dead. My dogs, Donna the Destroyer and Karen the Chair Eater, sat in front of the closed bedroom door and growled menacingly at the Immortals, who had pressed themselves against the wall in alarm. The dogs were enough to give anyone pause, especially since Donna was a Hell Hound.

But the ghosts had lost their damn minds.

My squatters were completely out of control, and I’d never been so proud in my life. The transparent brigade—led by Birdie, Gram and her new dead beau, Jimmy Joe Johnson—were gunning for Clarence.

I was fully aware they couldn’t harm him, but they could cause a good amount of trouble—not to mention nightmares. Most of my expired guests were not in great shape. The longer they’d been dead, the greater the decomposition of their bodies. The flying appendages were a nice and macabre touch. Several heads rolled down the hallway and tumbled down the stairs, hitting every step with a thud. Arms and legs littered the floor. Putting my ghosts back together would be a shitshow, but the expression of horror on Clarence’s face made the fact that I’d have to order more superglue worth it.

“Holy crap,” I muttered, swallowing back an extremely inappropriate laugh as the headless Birdie shoved her detached cranium into the face of an appalled Clarence.

I figured Birdie had retrieved her head from the refrigerator during the reception after Gram’s funeral. The crazy ghost loved to hide her body parts all over the house to freak me out. When I’d found her head in the fridge, I left it there. Her idea of a joke was gag-inducing. Of course, I planned to glue it back on after she’d learned her lesson, but I was thrilled she’d pilfered it. Clarence looked positively green.

“Call them off,” my father hissed.

“They can’t hurt you,” I yelled with a wide smile. I ducked as a few unattached legs flew past my head.

I wasn’t going to stop them because John Travolta had demanded I do so. I was going to stop them because I wasn’t sure I had enough superglue to glue them all back together. The longer the flying dead freak show went on, the more body parts fell off