Paranormal Erotic Romance Box Set (38 page)

Tara and Jennie-Lynn held each other and cried. Patrick
grabbed Céline and pulled her away. I looked over at the rose garden and saw
Jonas Dashiell running toward us. The coyotes ran away from the fire and back
into the woods as Anthony continued to burn.

“Push him over!” Jonas said as he ran toward us. “Tell the
wolves to push him over, for Christ’s sakes. He’s suffering!”

I wiped my tears away and grabbed Number Ten’s collar and
brought his head down to Anthony’s legs.

“Go,” I said into the wolf’s ear. “Push him.”

The wolf crouched down on the ground and nudged Anthony’s
severed torso over the property line with his nose. The rest of Anthony
exploded and the cops jumped back.

“It’s a gas leak!” one of the cops said.

I fell to my knees as great flames shot up from the
remnants of Anthony’s body. Andy Larabee ran over to me and sat in my lap and
cried. Everyone else dropped to their knees at the property line.

When the last of Anthony’s body was burned, the flames
simply disappeared. There was no singed earth or smoke or dust. It just ended
and was gone.

Brandt sat up and looked around for Nellie. She crawled
toward him on her hands and knees. One of the cops walked over to them with his
gun drawn.

“I don’t know what the fuck just happened,” the cop said
and shook his head, “but we had a call about you people doing some kind of drug
dealing here.”

“What?” I said and slammed my fists into the ground.
“Fucking drugs?”

I looked up at James and he shook his head.

“We are not drug dealers,” Nellie said and patted the
ground that moments before was consumed in fire.

“What’s your name?” the cop said.

“We’re not drug dealers,” Nellie said and looked up at the
cop.

“Your name!” he said.

“N-Nellie. My...Brandt...has a prescription. Morphine.
It’s in my purse, over there,” she said and glanced up at the hotel as she
wiped the blood from her wrists on the snow. “How did--”

“Close your eyes, Sophia,” James said.

“His life for this?” I said and hung my head. “All of
this, I did.”

Céline crawled over to me and pulled me into her body.

“It’s not your fault, Sophia,” she said and kissed my
face. “You didn’t know.”

“Exactly,” May Gaspar said. “She didn’t know because she
didn’t plan it properly. All of this was a fucking mistake and now, Tony is
gone!”

“May!” Jonas said.

May ran off toward the hotel and Jonas squeezed my
shoulder.

“Close your eyes, Sophia,” James said.

I looked up at him and he nodded.

“Close them!” he said.

I looked up at the sky and hoped to see the fat star, but
saw nothing but black. I closed my eyes and wished for James to push me over
the line the same way the wolf did to Anthony.

“James, no!” Jonas said.

I opened my eyes and saw a single sheet of paper drifting
toward the ground on the other side of the property line. I looked up at James
and he stared at me and then at the paper.

“What did you do?” I said.

“Always go out with a bang, Sophia,” James said and
winked.

James turned and walked away from me toward the rose
garden.

“James, what did you do?” I said and slammed my fists into
the snow.

Jonas ran after James as the paper James threw over the
line landed on the ground in front of one of the cops. The cop bent over and
picked it up.

“What does it say, Mike?” one of the cops said.

The cop pulled a flashlight off his belt and shined it
onto the page. I looked through the back of the illuminated paper and saw the
note was written on the Battleroy’s stationary.

“What did you do?” I said. “James!”

“Are you Brandt Therrault?” Mike, the officer said as he
shined his light in Brandt’s face.

Brandt looked up at Mike and smiled.

“Yep.”

“And you,” Mike said and waved his flashlight at Nellie,
“you’re Nellie Daniels?”

“What is that?” Nellie said and looked up at the paper and
then Brandt.

Mike turned to the cop next to him and whispered in his
ear. The cop summoned the other two and they walked toward Brandt and Nellie.

“What the fuck is that?” Nellie said as one of the cops
grabbed her arm and pulled her off the ground. “Can’t you fucking hicks see
we’ve been through enough?”

“Oh, it’s just beginning lady,” the cop said and cuffed
Nellie’s wrists behind her back.

“‘I, Brandt Therrault,’ ” Mike the cop said as he read the
paper, “‘attest that it was Nellie Daniels and I who murdered Sophia
Pearson-Therrault on June 23, 1967 at the Battleroy Hotel and not Bobby Allen.’
”

“Sounds like a confession to me,” one of the cops said and
pulled Brandt up from the ground and cuffed him.

“Brandt!” Nellie screamed and tried to lunge at him.
“Officers, I did not write that.”

“It doesn’t say you did, sweetheart,” Mike the cop said.
“It does say that you killed her. Mr. Therrault, did you write this letter?”

“Write the letter? Look at him! He can’t even remember his
own name. No, we are being set up by that man!” Nellie said and pointed to Mr.
Conway.

“Sir, did you write this letter?” the cop said to Brandt.

Brandt looked up at the sky and smiled.

“Yes,” he said and sighed.

“Brandt!” Nellie shrieked.

“Read them their rights, Mike,” one of the officers said.

“No rights,” Brandt said. “I confess. We confess.”

“Let’s take them in and sort it out at the station,” Mike
said.

“Sophia,” Céline said, “they’re going away!”

“James intervened,” I said. “It’s against the Law.”

I stood from the ground and placed Andy in Céline’s lap.
Brandt and Nellie were thrown in the back of separate squad cars and one of the
officers bent down and tried to figure out what was wrong with Mr. Conway. I ran
toward the rose garden screaming for James, but when I went through the gates,
only Adelaide was inside.

“Where is he?” I said and leaned against the altar.

“Sit down, Sophia,” she said.

“No! Where is James?”

“He’s gone,” Adelaide said.

“What do you mean?” I said and climbed up on her base and
pressed my face against her chest. “Where did he go?”

“You know where he went,” Adelaide said. “He broke the
Law.”

I slid down her body and fell to my knees at her base.

“Please,” I said and rested my forehead against her icy
stone, “get him back. It’s my fault.”

“I cannot,” she said. “It has been decreed.”

“Tell me where he is so I can see him,” I said. “I just
want to touch his face, just one more second.”

“I’m sorry,” Adelaide said, “but it’s too late.”

“But he did it for me! It was the right thing to do!”

“It is against the Law.”

“Fuck the Law and fuck you!”

“I am so sorry, Sophia.”

“He said he would never leave,” I said.

I closed my eyes and wished to be turned to stone at
Adelaide’s feet.

“He had to leave. He had to give you what you wanted.”

“I only ever wanted him.”

“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all
my life.”

Oscar Wilde

If you are able to find a human who admits they were at
the Battleroy Hotel on February 14, 1968, more than likely, they’ll just tell
you that their trip was as uneventful as any other.

Those who saw what happened would never admit that they
witnessed two bodies being dragged through the snow by something that was
clearly not there. And certainly, none will admit to seeing the explosion and
the resulting flames of the spontaneous combustion that occurred by the woods.
Even among each other, they won’t speak of the claw marks that appeared on the
bodies that were dragged as if their flesh split apart like a watermelon hit
with a mallet.

And you certainly won’t hear a peep from Mr. Conway who
was institutionalized on February 15th and officially retired as manager of the
Battleroy. The sixth Mr. Conway soon took over.

What you will learn is that on March 20, 1968, Brandt
Therrault and his mistress Nellie Daniels were convicted of the murder of
Sophia Pearson-Therrault, after a police officer discovered a confession for
the murder written on a sheet of Battleroy Hotel stationary. But not even
Brandt and Nellie, nor the police officers present, will be able to tell you
what happened to them. The terror they experienced frightened their memories of
that night away forever.

Brandt Therrault and Nellie Daniels remain imprisoned for
my murder and are sicker today then the day they were brought in. Not long on
life, really. Not long on life at all.

Bobby Allen was freed from the Bridgewater Prison for the
Criminally Insane. However, in a blunder common for that institution, Bobby
Allen was not released until the warden at Bridgewater figured out he was still
holding a boy on the suspicion of a murder that two other people were already
convicted of.

They really fucked Bobby Allen up in Bridgewater. The
constant interrogations and electroshock turned a bright, wonderful boy who had
dreams of going to Harvard into a mannequin. His family tried to stuff him full
of happiness just as the guards at Bridgewater tried to stuff him full of gruel
when they shoved a filthy tube, lubed up with bicycle chain grease, up his nose
and into his stomach when he refused to eat.

Bobby Allen walked into the lobby of the Battleroy on
January 12, 1969, holding a .38. He went after Mr. Conway to exact his revenge
for a life ruined. And when he was told that Mr. Conway was long gone, Bobby
Allen ended his pain in the lobby with a bullet to his brain. Bobby tells me to
this day that he thought the dogs he heard as he walked into the hotel were
hallucinations.

May Gaspar refused to glance in my direction for nearly
sixteen years after Anthony died. Then, one day she came into the rose garden
and sat on top of the altar next to me. She told me about a magnificent dream
she had about Tony. He told her to forgive me because he never blamed me for
his death. May said that when Tony released her, she realized that what she
wanted in this life was love, so she set off to find it. May Gaspar and Judah
Roderick were brought together by their quirks and remain in love to this day.

Patrick and Céline’s relationship became quite tenuous for
many years. Shortly after the incident, Céline realized that she wanted to
accept love. But Patrick, used to Céline’s wild and adventurous spirit,
resisted the notion of such a commitment and he left Céline for Mary McDonald,
who surprised everyone by dumping Perry Alden.

I didn’t think anyone sobbed as much as me until I sat
with Céline for years as she cried over the loss of Patrick. She followed him
around the hotel and begged him to return to her, threatening to throw Mary
McDonald over the property line if he did not. And then one day she got, as she
said, a case of the fuck-its and was simply done with Patrick Lucien and his
cruel ways. And it was then, as it happens, that Patrick Lucien realized the
mistake that he made in leaving Céline and spent nearly twenty-eight years
winning her back.

As in real battle, there were not any winners as a result
of my best laid plan gone awry, only casualties. We all lost the joy that we
gained by being part of the plan.

At the time, we freaks who seemed as out of whack in life
as we were in death, belonged to one another. There is a purer joy when you are
part of a community like ours, but as any other, it can become fragile. While
we will always look exactly the same as we did on the day we died, our ideals
and values and desires will advance as if we have the ability to age.

As for those damn memories, well, they refuse to fade.

And me? Well, the first few years I tried in vain to kill
myself several times. I jumped off the roof, weighted myself down with rocks
and walked into the sea, I even stuck my head into the oven. And at the end of
each incident, one of the others came along, dusted me off and sent me on my
way. The wolves posted themselves at the property line so I couldn’t jump over.
Andy Larabee tried to guilt me into sticking around because he said I was the
closest thing he had to a mother. That worked.

I began a long period of waiting and wondering.

I fantasized for many years that James did in fact return
to his life, that Hades and Thanatos took mercy on him and sent him back to a
world that he missed more than he would ever admit. I read all the papers
hoping to see a picture of his handsome face at some gallery opening or gala.
But all I had left were the pictures I saw when I closed my eyes.

I refused to take another lover, because there was no one
else I wanted to occupy the space beside me. That space was always only ever
meant for James.

I entered a decade of arrested development, some called it
a deranged optimism, where I spoke to him every day. I closed my eyes and had
long conversations with James as if he was right in front of me. I even snapped
at the others when they interrupted my discussions with him. Even Adelaide was
extra nice to me because she thought I really flipped my wig.

What great hell the years without James truly were.

And then, thirty years later, as I sat on the cliff over
the lake during a particularly sorrowful meditation, he walked up to me as if
he never left and said--

“Hello, butterfly.”

I pretended not to notice the lash and claw marks that
covered his body and told the story of the terrible torture he endured. I asked
him not about the limp he now walks with, nor the hoarseness of his voice. He
is still as handsome as he was on June 23, 1967.

“I knew you would come back to me,” I said and threw my
arms around his neck.

“I had to come back. You still owe me that second secret.”

And back James remains.