Danville Horror: A Pat Wyatt Novel (The Pat Wyatt Series Book 3) (17 page)

Cindy took us home, and when we got there, she insisted that she be the one to take everything in. Luckily, Andrew was up, and after the initial reaction of, “Puppy,” he helped Cindy get everything out of the car. It took them about five minutes to get everything, and as they walked back in to set it all up, I asked Andrew if Tina was still sleeping.

“Yeah,” he answered, “why?”

“Have puppy, will travel,” I said, winking.

He smiled as I walked up stairs, Fang in my arms. I could tell he was getting a little tired, but I was sure Tina would have wanted to see him anyway.

Walking across the landing to my sister’s old room, I used my good hand to open the door while my bad arm started to twinge with pain from the weight of Fang. It was definitely time for more meds, but I told myself that would have to wait. Tina needed to be woken gently, and a puppy was the way to do it.

I tiptoed inside, seeing that she was lying on her back spread eagle. Thankfully, she was fully dressed in her pink sweater from Victoria’s Secret, and the sweats that matched so I didn’t have to cover my eyes. Tina never liked when people saw her naked. When I asked her why, she replied it was because she had green, scaly skin. But I just thought she was self-conscious about her figure. There was no need for her to be, but I respected her shyness.

As I sat gently on the bed, she stirred a little, but didn’t fully wake. “Tina,” I called her softly. “Tina.”

“Mmmmm,” she grumbled, turning onto her side toward me.

“Tina,” I called a little louder, placing Fang on the bed beside her.

“What?” she whined.

“Time to wake up.”

“Five more minutes,” she breathed.

“Okay, but there’s someone here who wants to met you.”

As if on cue, Fang licked her nose, and her eyes shot open. “Puppy,” she said slowly, scooping him up into her arms, snuggling with him. “Where’d you get ‘em?”

“Found him on the doorstep this morning. His leg is pretty beat up, but other than that, and being underweight, he’s looking good.”

She nuzzled her face in his fur. “He’s so soft and warm. What’s his name?”

“Fang,” I replied, and he yipped.

“I like it,” she yawned.

“Me too.”

She closed her eyes again. “Do I have to get up?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Sorry about that. But God knows what Cindy has in store for today, and it’s best if we’re both there to help her.”

Her eyes opened as she pulled the covers off with one hand while still holding Fang with the other. “I’m up,” she yawned again, swinging her legs over to sit next to me. “It’s freezing.”

“It’s January,” I pointed out.

“Can I carry Fang down?”

I nodded. “Please. My arm is killing me.”

Tina slid on her slippers, and we made our way downstairs. Fang’s eyes were beginning to close, so I suggested to Tina that she put him on the couch. She did, and I placed the throw blanket over him to keep him warm. Then we made our way out to the kitchen where Tina took one look at the doughnut box and grimaced. “Hell no. Patty, you know how much I hate doughnuts.”

“Okay. Then go take Andrew to the diner. You know where it is.”

She kissed my cheek. “Good idea. I’m gonna go get my shoes so we can go.” Tina was not shy about going out in her pajamas, especially when they matched. “You good goin’ like that?” she asked Andrew, pointing at him.

He looked down at his sweatshirt and striped lounge pants and nodded. “Yup, just let me get my boots.”

When they went back upstairs, Cindy laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I asked her with a smile.

She shook her head. “Who doesn’t like doughnuts?”

“Tina. She hates them,” I explained.

She raised her brows at me. “Did she always hate them?”

I shook my head. “No, but when she was little, she would go over to her grandmother’s on the weekend. They always had doughnuts for breakfast. One day when she was twelve, she noticed that her grandmother was getting a little senile, and when she went to have her doughnut, there were ants crawling all over it. It’s kind of put her off them ever since.”

Cindy shivered. “It would have put me off them too.”

“Bye,” Tina said from the door, grabbing her and Andrew’s coats.

I waved. “See you later.”

“Why don’t you go in the other room and relax with the puppy,” Cindy suggested. “I’ll get your meds, and some doughnuts, and bring them out to you.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Positive.”

I resisted the urge to tell her that only fools were positive and did what she had recommended. When I walked into the living room, I saw that Cindy’s purse had fallen onto the floor and the contents had spilled all over.

“Cindy,” I called.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Your purse fell. Do you want me to get it?” I asked, afraid to touch her belongings without her permission.

“Please.”

I bent over, trying to be careful with my cast as I put everything back in her purse. As I picked up her wallet, something clattered on the floor and when I bent down to see what had fallen out, my hand froze. My mind couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing, so I picked it up to see if it was real, and it was. My mother’s wedding ring gleamed in the light from the hall, and I could feel my blood boil. This was something my mother had promised to me before she died. It had been in her family for generations. I mean, it wasn’t anything lavish, just a thin gold ring with diamond chips in the center, but the sentimental value was priceless.

As I stood up just staring at it, I heard a clatter and looked up to see that Cindy had dropped the tray with the doughnuts on it. “What is this?” I yelled at her, and her eyes widened. “Answer me!”

“That is my personal property.” She became defensive, and she had no right to be.

“This was
my mother’s
! It doesn’t belong to you! You had no right to take it! Who the
fuck
do you think you are?”

“Patricia Anne Wyatt, don’t you dare use that kind of language with me,” my mother’s voice came out of Cindy’s body.

I froze, feeling all of the color, what little there was, drain from my face. My heart thudded in my ears, and I could feel my head begin to spin. “Moms?” was all I could say.

Cindy nodded. “Yes, darling. It’s me.”

My vision became blurry, my knees buckled and then everything faded to black.

chapter

SEVENTEEN

Someone called to me in the darkness, and it sounded like my mother. But when I opened my eyes, I looked up into Cindy’s face. I bolted to my feet from the floor, and the living room spun in front of me. I steadied myself by holding onto the back of the couch as Cindy reached for my arm. I jerked away from her, finally looking into her eyes.

“Patricia,” my mother’s voice came from Cindy mouth. It was unnerving.

“Stay where you are,” I warned as she moved closer. “You are
not
my mother.”

“Calm down, Patricia,” she hushed me the way my mother used to. “You don’t need to have another fainting spell, sweetheart.”

“I’m hungry,” I hissed. “I get—”

“Dizzy when you’re hungry,” she finished, nodding. “I almost forgot. I’m sorry, darling.”

“Don’t call me that,” I screamed, covering my eyes with my good hand. “You are not my mother, you can’t be. My mother is dead, I saw her—”

“In limbo,” she interrupted me, and my hand fell away from my eyes. “I was there, darling. That was me.”

“If it was you, what did you tell me?”

“I told you that the baby wasn’t meant to be and to stop shutting down, which I see you did. I’m so proud of you, Patricia. Although, I could kill that ex-husband of yours for doing that to your poor hand. It took all my strength not to throttle—”

I flung my arms around her and started to cry. “Moms, it really is you.”

“There, there, Patricia,” she soothed, patting me on the back. “It’s all right, darling.”

Pulling back from her, I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “But how, Moms? I just saw you a couple of days ago and you were clearly not…” I paused, sniffing. “You know, alive.”

She grimaced. “Funny story.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Moms, what did you do?”

“Nothing,” she answered defensively.

“Moms,” I said slowly, “you didn’t.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“How did you get into Cindy’s body?” I asked, folding my arms. “Are you possessing her or did you kill her?”

Her mouth dropped open. “Patricia, how dare you think that I would…” her voice trailed away when I cocked an eyebrow. “I didn’t kill her,” she clarified. “She just had an accident before you arrived. That’s all. And I just happened to be in the neighborhood, so I took over her body.”

My head was pounding. “Okay, start from the beginning and use small words, Moms.” I sat down on Pops chair as Moms, in Cindy’s body, stood in front of me. She must have picked the doughnuts up off the floor before she woke me because they were now on the coffee table, and my stomach growled just looking at them. But I had to focus on her story and how the hell she’d come to be in Cindy’s body.

“Well, it all started when I was watching over your father, as usual. I would pop in from time to time, just as I had with you and your sister. Finally, one night he decided to go out, which I wholeheartedly agreed with. After all, he was getting quite lonely, and I felt it would do him some good to get laid.”

I shuttered. “Ew. Let’s skip over that part, please.”

“Of course,” she obliged. “Anyhow, he met Cindy, and I knew that she would be a good,” she paused, “distraction for him. I thought it was just going to be a onetime thing until she kept coming round, and he eventually convinced himself that he was in love with her.

“All she was interested in was his money. He would buy her things, and she would try to manipulate him into buying bigger and better for her. I didn’t like her one bit, and there was nothing I could do about it except watch Richard go into debt. He was so blind to her that he never even noticed when she was cheating on him, and she did that quite a lot.

“One day, he got on his knees and asked for her hand. I could see the disappointment on her face when she saw that the ring wasn’t up to her standards, but she just grinned and accepted it. But then something happened. After he visited you and Samuel, the shine started to come off her. He was finally seeing her for what she really was. Apparently, she had flirted with Mr. Satané almost all night long, and your father did not like it. She made up her mind to get herself pregnant to keep him, and actually stopped taking her birth control pills.”

“Bitch,” I hissed and then remembered. “Sorry, Moms.”

“No, you are absolutely right. She was
that
and worse. She had it in her head when she found out she had gotten pregnant that she would have a little accident and lose the baby.” My mouth dropped open. “I know,” Moms replied to my silent outrage. “The cold-hearted guttersnipe actually thought all she had to do was fall down the stairs. And after I was with you, she decided that it was time to execute her plan before the wedding because she didn’t want to be fat in her wedding dress.”

“Ugh,” I grunted. “What a despicable human being.”

She nodded slightly. “You can say that again.”

“So what happened?”

“She fell down the stairs and died,” my mother replied. “But I couldn’t allow that poor baby to die with her. So I politely explained that she was no longer welcome, and I took her place in her body.”

I pursed my lips at her. “What did you really say, Moms?”

She sighed. “I told her that if she didn’t leave I would haunt her for the rest of her life, and she would not have a minute’s peace.”

I waved her on. “And?”

“And that I would make sure that she ended up penniless and alone.”

“Moms, you were a ghost, you couldn’t interfere like that. Right?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile, “but she did not know that, dear.”

“So you took over her body.” Even though it was a statement, my mother nodded. “And the whole changing your hair thing?”

“My idea,” she huffed. “Did you see that God awful red hair she had? It was hideous, and I couldn’t very well live with that for the rest of her life, could I?”

I shook my head. “No, you couldn’t.”

“I’m so sorry about the ring, darling. I know I promised it to you, but I just needed something familiar at hand. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It’s okay, Moms,” I breathed, leaning back against the chair. “It just took me off guard. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“Don’t be, darling,” she said, placing her hand on my knee like she always used to. “I should have told you from the beginning.”

“You had your reasons.”

She smiled. “That I did.”

“Still,” I sighed, “you could have at least mentioned it.”

She laughed. “That I could have.”

“I’m a bit confused.”

She cocked a brow at me. “About?”

“Well,” I breathed, reaching over to get a doughnut, “if Cindy is technically dead then doesn’t that make you, I don’t know, like a zombie?”

She grimaced. “No, because she was only almost dead.”

It was my turn to cock a brow. “Almost dead?”

“Not entirely over to the other side, but just enough for me to plant myself in her body.”

I blinked at her. “That’s just weird.”

“Not any stranger than you seeing me in limbo.”

“True,” I conceded. I took a bite out of the doughnut to calm the knot in my stomach. This was just too much to take in for one week. My mother was in Cindy’s body, having my father and Cindy’s baby, and now she was being remarried to Pops while in said dead girlfriend’s body. “Unbelievable.”

“Patricia, are you all right with this?”

I nodded. “Oh, yeah, Moms. I’m okay. It’s just a lot to take in,” I paused, thinking for a moment. “Does Mortimer know?”

“Why would he know anything about it? I sure didn’t tell him.”

I wondered if he could hear us while he was in the garage and asleep. “Did you two ever… you know?”

She looked confused for a second and then realized what I was saying. “Well—”

My mouth dropped open. “Moms!”

“It was only once right before I left for America, and we decided that it was better to remain friends.”

“You mean
you
decided,” I scoffed.

Her brow furrowed. “What?”

I shook my head, remembering that Mortimer had tried to kiss me. “It’s written all over his face every time he talks about you.” Technically it wasn’t a lie, but I didn’t want to explain what happened earlier. “His face just lights up. He was clearly in love with you.”

She laughed. “Mortimer? I doubt that very—” she stopped as I pursed my lips. “He was, wasn’t he?”

I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

She took a deep breath, frowning. “Well, I am sorry for that, and I’m sorry for him.”

“He would probably say that it was life, and that it was all a part of being human.”

“I never liked when he did that,” Moms admitted. “I used to call it his corn-fed wisdom. I think the worst part was that he was always right.”

“Yeah, that can be annoying.”

We were silent for a minute, and I could see that Moms wanted to say something, but she was keeping it to herself. I let it go until the silence was too much to bear. “Just say it,” I blurted, and she looked at me. “You’re dying to say something, just say it.”

“How is it you wound up amongst the dead, Patricia?”

I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”

“After all Mortimer did—”

My eyes widened. “You knew about the protection?” I asked interrupting her, and she nodded. “Why didn’t you mention this to me when you were alive the first time?”

“I didn’t want you and your sister to worry about all this supernatural stuff. But if I would have known you two would have gotten yourselves into this much trouble…” she paused, shaking her head. “Then again, these are my daughters we’re talking about.”

“When you’re right, you’re right.”

Her face because smug, and it was strange seeing one of my mother’s expressions on Cindy’s face. “And I usually am right.” She was silent for a moment, all trace of smugness gone. “Is your sister all right, Patricia?” she finally asked, her motherly voice dripping with concern.

All I could do was shrug. “I don’t know, Moms. I really don’t know.”

She sighed. “We are going to have to keep an eye on that situation, aren’t we?”

I nodded. “Yes we are.”

“I knew I could count on you, Patricia.”

I smiled a little. “Anytime, Moms,” I told her and then wondered, “Is there anything else I need to know about?”

“There is something,” she said, but before she could tell me, Fang decided it was a good time to wake up and start whimpering. “He’s probably hungry. I’ll go make him some food.” She started to walk out of the living room, but she wasn’t getting away that easily.

“Moms,” I called after her, and she turned around.

“Yes, darling?”

“What is the something you were going to tell me?”

She smiled, her ‘I know something you don’t’ smile. “All in good time, Patricia. Besides, you’ll figure it out sooner or later.”

“Gee,” I yelled as she scurried into the kitchen, “thanks!”

After that, I just sat there and ate my doughnut. I hated when she did that. She would tell me only half of something and then have me figure out the rest by myself. Moms called it “the art of deduction” in honor of her favorite literary character, Sherlock Holmes. It was a character builder, but it still didn’t make it any less annoying.

Fang whimpered again and I got up, walking over to sooth him. As I kneeled in front of him, he looked up at me with his big blue eyes. “Are you okay, sweetie?” I asked, petting him between the ears, and he blinked at me. “Yeah, me too.” The little boy touched my cast with his gauzed leg, and I nodded. “Yup, I’m injured in the foot just like you. Only a monster did mine, who did yours?” he sneezed in answer. “I see. You don’t want to talk about it. Well, when you’re ready, I’m here.” Then I realized, “And I’m talking to an animal that has no idea what I’m saying,” I cooed at him.

I stood and patted my hip for him to follow me, and he gently jumped off the couch. He limped behind me as I made my way to the kitchen. “Food ready?”

Moms was standing at the median smiling down at Fang. “Yes,” she replied, taking a bowl full of water and one full of food, placing them down on the floor for the puppy. He limped over to them and drank immediately, but put his nose up to the food.

“Go on,” I told him. “It’s good for you.” But he just looked up at me and cried. “Maybe we should try some of the wet food?”

Moms shrugged. “Worth a try.” She opened a can and placed it alongside the water, but still he wouldn’t budge.

The front door opened, and I turned to see Tina and Andrew walk in. They were intently talking about something, and I had a feeling I knew what it was.

“Patty,” Tina said sounding aggravated, “can you believe this? He won’t tell me what’s so important, but he dragged me outta the diner. I barely had time to finish my eggs and hash browns, but apparently, Andy’s got somethin’ to tell you.”

“Pat,” he whispered, pulling me aside, “Cindy is—”

“My mother,” I finished for him.

His mouth dropped open. “How’d you know that?”

“She told me.”

“Whoa,” Tina said, holding her hands up. “Cindy is your mother? I don’t understand.”

“Patricia,” Moms said, still in her light English accent, “maybe I should just give him some chicken. I have leftovers in the refrigerator.”

“Mrs. Wyatt?” Tina asked her.

Moms smiled at her. “Hello, Christina. It’s a long story, but I have a feeling Patricia will tell you, as it should be. You should always have someone to talk to, I say.”

“Does Mr. Wyatt know?”

“No,” Moms, Andrew, and I answered.

“No, Tina,” I repeated. “I don’t think we should tell him either.”

“Good thinking,” she agreed, shaking her head.

“Would you look at that?” Moms said, pointing down at Fang. He was eating and vigorously.

“He’s got good taste,” I laughed. “I guess we’ll just feed him like that until he gets use to the other food.”

“Ghosts in other people’s bodies, clairvoyants, vampires, werewolves,” Tina mumbled. “I’m starting to wonder if the Easter Bunny may be real.”

“Who’s a clairvoyant?” my mother asked as she bent over to pet Fang. Andrew raised his hand in answer. “Really?” she said, and he nodded. “How fascinating. We must talk more on this later. But now we have to get the house ready for the rehearsal dinner.”