Daniel refused to cower before them in fear. “You do realize I’m already dead. Aye?” He shrugged. “We’re all dead. You must also be aware I don’t really feel anything when you slit my nonexistent throat. Guess what? I no longer fear you.” He smirked with indifference. “So I must ask again, what’s the point? What’s in it for you?”
He could sense their confusion. “Here’s a thought,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve better things to do than play make-believe with me. How about we just skip the reenactment of my murder this year?”
Was it possible no one in all these years had thought to opt out of their yearly death scene? Did his lack of fear cause them to be even less of a presence? If all else failed, perhaps indifference would end their haunting of him all together.
Why hadn’t he thought of these things sooner? Because he hadn’t met his ghost whisperer yet, that was why. She’d told him he was unlike any ghost she’d met before. He had changed, but only because she’d awakened a spark within him—the desire to fight for the life that these three had taken from him.
Now that a plan to thwart them was in the works, might as well try to glean as much information as possible. “Perhaps it’s time to introduce ourselves. I’m Daniel Cavanaugh. What might you three be called? he asked.
The leader of the gang began to growl, and the growl grew into a roar. Small rocks began to shake, and dust rose from the ground around their phantom feet.
“I’m not impressed,” Daniel remarked, trying in vain to get a clearer image of them in his mind, something he could share with Meredith. “I’d do the same, move even larger stones, but you’re not worth the energy doing so would cost me.”
With that, all three of his tormentors took themselves elsewhere, and Daniel was left alone to continue his woolgathering in peace. “My plan will work. I know it will, and for an all too brief moment in time, I might even hold Meredith in my arms.” A man—even a man who is a ghost—could hope.
7
Meredith sat at a small table in the corner of a Missoula Starbucks. Her laptop open before her, she sipped her coffee and searched for records of Daniel’s family. Other than births, the death of his father and baby sister, and his parents’ marriage, she hadn’t had any luck. She’d been at it for a few hours, and she’d even looked for information about Daniel’s mother under her maiden name.
It had ended up taking her a little over two weeks before she could find the time to get away from Garretsville to even do this research, and the frustration at not finding anything really bit. A vital piece of information had to be missing. To have full names, locations, and birth dates, and to not come up with sibling marriages, obituaries, or anything else, was highly unusual.
“Unless of course the records were destroyed by fire or by some other disaster,” she muttered to herself. Sadly, that was all too common when it came to paper records from the past. Especially in countries that had been through WWI and WWII. She’d seen firsthand the ruins of bombed buildings from WWII while visiting Ireland. Sadly, many of those had been churches where parish records of marriages, births and deaths were often kept.
Daniel’s family had relocated to Dublin after their farm had been seized. Perhaps a different search might yield something new. She switched to Dublin’s public records and started over, but her mind wasn’t really on the task. What if she did end up traveling through time? How did one prepare for that kind of trip?
Opening a new tab, she looked for ready-made clothing appropriate for the mid-nineteenth century. That brought her to the online Historical Emporium where she clicked on women’s clothing and began to scroll.
Smiling, she chose a lovely navy-blue Edwardian walking suit, a skirt, two blouses, a jacket, lingerie, a pair of leather ankle boots, a bonnet, and gloves. She added all of the garments to a cart and stared goggle-eyed at the total. Her summer as a volunteer could set her bank account back way more than she imagined. The clothing added up to more than a grand.
Did she really need an entire wardrobe for one week in the past? No, but being a history buff and all, that didn’t prevent her from wanting every single item she’d chosen. “Especially the walking suit,”