Maud, Here by Louise Robinson

Author:Louise Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: women, crime, mystery, comedy, ghost
Publisher: Louise Robinson

Chapter 14

Return to the Scene of the Crime

It had been a difficult evening at work and I was tired. But I knew Maud would be waiting to talk. "I'm home!" I called out melodiously.

"You don't have to shriek." And there she was, hanging from the kitchen light fixture by one hand. "I'm not deaf, just dead."

"One of these days you'll give me a heart attack," I grumbled as I plopped down in my chair at the kitchen table.

"No I won't. You're a tough old broad." Maud dropped from the light and sat across from me. "I'm the one had the heart attack."

"Is that how you died, Maud? A heart attack?"

She frowned and looked up at the ceiling. "I think so."

"You don't know?"

"Well, I figured that was it. I had diabetes for a long time, but I didn't know about a bad heart. I woke up one morning and there I was, dead."

"How old were you?"

She looked down at her hands folded on the table. "I was only 76."

"That is pretty young." It sure was. I was passing 65 at a rapid rate.

"I took good care of myself, but I guess everything caught up with me finally and there I went."

"What's it like? Being dead, I mean."

"I knew you'd ask me that sometime." She grinned. "I can't tell you anything, it's the rules."

"There are no rules, Maud! When we first met you told me you couldn't talk to me until I talked to you first, that was the rule." She was still grinning. "You made that up. There's no such thing as 'ghost rules' and you know it."

She drifted up from the table, circled the room and came back to the chair. "Well, I can't tell you anyway. I might get in trouble."

"Trouble from whom? God? The devil? You're making stuff up again." I got up to fix the cup of tea I was definitely going to need. "Please tell me. I promise I won't tell anyone."

"Okay," she said. "But you can't tell, ever."

"I promise. Now give."

"It's just nothing."

"What do you mean nothing?" I turned from the stove to glare at her.

"Nothing. That's all. When I'm not haunting or hanging around with you, I'm just not here. Like falling asleep, but not really."

"What do you mean, 'not really'?"

"Not really asleep, that's all. I don't know what it is." She shrugged. "But it might be different for other dead people. I only know how it is for me."

"But where are you when you're not here?"

"I don't know. I'm just not here. Before you talked to me, sometimes I'd be around for a while, then I'd be gone for hours or days. Sometimes years, I guess."

"What wakes you up?" I sipped my tea, wishing I had something stronger to put in it.

"I don't know. I'm just awake again. Maybe something interesting going on. I don't know."

"I wish we knew more about this stuff," I said.

"If I knew anything for sure, I'd be on Oprah. You know, like Montel had that Sylvia Brown on every week.

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