Defying the Ghosts by Joan Marie Verba

Author:Joan Marie Verba
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: coming of age, ghosts, young adult, teen, ghost, haunted house, ghost story, ghost suspense
Publisher: FTL Publications

Chapter 9: The Quarrelsome Three

Charlene knew that someone had to be hiding out in the living/dining area. She walked to the door and opened it. “I’m coming in,” she called.

Cautiously, she took one step inside the room. A plate sailed past her, hit the wall, and dropped to the floor. Charlene bent to pick it up. It was intact. She turned to face the ghost of a middle-aged woman. “I see you’re not throwing the good china, Doris, just the unbreakable everyday plates.”

“How do you know my name?”

Charlene walked over to her, plate still in hand. “Oh, you’re famous, or shall I say, infamous?”

“Lies! Lies! Lies!” she punctuated each word by throwing another plate at Charlene. Her aim was poor. Charlene easily avoided them.

“You mean you didn’t kill your ex-husband and his new wife?”

“Of course I did! Anyone would have!”

Charlene almost referenced the musical Chicago before realizing it was produced after her time. “The number of women whose husbands left them for a younger woman is beyond reckoning. The vast majority of them don’t kill their husbands or the new spouse.”

“I was wronged!”

“Yes, you were, but….”

Doris dropped the plates on a table and surged toward her before she could finish her sentence. Charlene braced herself for an attack, holding the plate in front of her to ward her off. Doris, however, stopped, and threw herself on Charlene. There was little impression of weight, only a sensation of something, reminding her of thin fabric, brushing against her.

Doris wailed, “You don’t know how long I’ve waited to hear that!” She said more, but Charlene could not make out the words.

Charlene held out an arm in the direction of a couch. “Why don’t we sit down and talk.”

Doris sat in the middle of the couch. Charlene cautiously sat at the end, facing her.

Doris seemed more composed now. She wiped her ghostly face with a ghostly hand. “No one would say that.”

“Say what?”

Doris lifted her chin. “That I was wronged! Everyone kept saying to stop whining. Whining! My friends. My relatives. Even my grown daughter and son. My husband accused me of horrid things. The press picked up on it and wrote stories about what an awful person I was. All lies!” She put a hand to her face again. “All I ever did was love my husband, love my kids, love my family. I worked my fingers to the bone for them, and never got any thanks for it. I never expected thanks. I did what I did out of love. But I didn’t expect to be told that I was an awful person. A bitch, though they couldn’t use that word in the newspapers, they said as much.”

“Yes, I read the articles.”

“They were all lies. All lies.”

“Later articles were more nuanced. Beginning with the coverage of your funerals, your children said that they couldn’t understand what you did, because you had been a wonderful mother. Your friends said they wondered how you could do such a thing, because of your charity work and how you would bring over a casserole if someone was sick or bereaved.

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