Love Enough for This
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary: Carter's heard that everyone has had at least one ghostly experience in their life. This is his. Doctor/Elli.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: The characters appearing within this piece are the property of the people who came up with them. The story itself is fairly closely based on a short story by L. M. Montgomery, called "The House Party at Smoky Island" or something like that, in her "Among the Shadows" collection. Part of a writing exercise.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They say that everyone has had at least one ghostly experience in their life, one supernatural encounter to enliven their conversation – so to speak – at parties ever after.
I suppose that my line of work does not exactly permit me to believe in ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggedey beasties, but one does miss a lot of fun in life, doing only what one is supposed to.
At any rate, I certainly have no other explanation for the incident – and in the main room of Mineral Town's warm, comfortable Inn, too! If there's a place in the world that feels less connected to the realm of the dead and the unexplained, I've certainly never found it.
None of us who were there understands what happened that night. None of us even try. There are several very educated souls in this small town, but we still retain a very strong connection to the superstitions that were reality, pure and simple, to our ancestors.
It seems strange that in a town that has kept up with the rest of the world so effortlessly in some ways, we should collectively decide to hold fast to little rituals of the past, like the Blue Feather in place of an engagement ring, and the wedding so many days after the proposal, or the idea that a festival put off by a day will bring bad luck for the rest of the year…
But this is not a story about the curiosities of Mineral Town custom.
This is a story about a strange occurrence that took place in the main room of Doug's Place.
The weather had been drizzling and dank and dreary for most of the week, and the forecast suggested that it would finish up with something far more impressive.
Another custom of this town, developed in recent years, is for nearly the entire town to gather at the Inn during a storm. Ann's idea, I believe, because storms have always terrified the poor girl. She drags everyone she can to the Inn to pass the time, and distracts herself by the crowd, noise, and making sure everyone has something warm to drink.
I suppose you can tell why no one ever refuses her invitations, particularly when coupled with the biggest, brightest blue eyes I think I've ever seen in a girl.
I tried, though. Quite valiantly.
"Ann, don't you think that before his own hearth, submerged in his favourite book, is the best place for any man during a storm?"
"That's so dreary," she huffed. "It would be a lot more fun to have a party. You know, in defiance! You can storm and rain and blow and send thunder and lightning and burn down trees and kill forest animals, but we're still having fun!"
She finished off with a dramatic pose, and I laughed.
"Who else do you imagine is going to be there? I'm very fond of everyone in town, of course, but some people are best taken in fair weather."
"Mary and Gray are coming," she replied. "And Basil and Anna."
I nodded approvingly. Basil was one of the best people in town to enjoy a drink with, and Mary was a sweet, quiet, thoughtful girl, while Gray was incapable of being unhappy in her company. Anna, although a little standoffish on occasion, was a brilliant woman and her conversation always had a certain spice to it.
"Umm…I think Jeff and Sasha are going to be there, and Jack and Popuri. Rick and Karen are staying home," she added regretfully, "because they don't want Lillia to go out in the rain, and they don't want to leave her alone."
"Ah."
"Barley doesn't want to take May out in the rain, either, so they probably won't come. And Won never comes to anything, so he won't be there, and Zack probably won't, because he only goes to parties for a chance to see Lillia."
And that graceless girl giggled!
"Well, Ann, it's good to know that you can find a little bit of fun in someone else's pain," I said as sternly as a person can say anything to Ann.
She blushed.
"Well, I didn't really mean it like that. I-it's just kind of cute, and—"
"Never mind, Ann, I know you weren't trying to be malicious. So, who else is going to be at this party of yours?"
"W-well, Elli and the doctor, of course," she replied hesitantly, her expression begging me for approval.
"Do you really think that's wise, Ann?"
"No!" she retorted grumpily. "But it was Cliff's idea. He says he's going somewhere else if I don't invite them. You know he likes them both a lot ever since he had to spend that week when he passed out wandering around in the snow like an idiot."
"A fine way to talk about your husband," I scolded laughingly.
"I can't help it!" she wailed. "I was really worried about him, and he didn't even care because he was too busy moping about how he didn't have any friends, and now he's going to make me ruin my party! But I guess he's right; Elli's one of my best friends, and I guess it would look kind of bad to not invite her. I don't know what the heck's wrong with her right now. Dad says everyone else knows that the doctor didn't poison Clarice. To tell you the truth—"
"Ah, now it all comes out," I interject mildly.
"—that's part of the reason I really want you there. You know Elli's more likely to listen to you than anyone else in town. And someone's got to do something, and soon, because they're going to drive each other insane!"
This, I knew all too well, and everyone in Mineral Town along with me. We were all helplessly furious, and more helplessly despairing. Such a tragedy to arise from a simple unwillingness to talk!
The story was common knowledge as far as Flowerbud Village, and very likely further.
The current practicing doctor, Timothy Trent, was the grandson of Mineral Town's previous doctor, Neil, and although he had been raised in the city, he had spent enough time in the summers visiting his grandfather, who was loved throughout the town despite – or perhaps because of – a gruff, brisk, and outspoken nature that would "tolerate no nonsense", as he had always prided himself.
Even as a young man, on his way through extensive schooling, he came to visit the town often, and once or twice brought with him a wife.
It is supposed ill luck, and generally rather nasty and unfair besides, to speak ill of the dead, so of Clarice Waters I will say only that she was very beautiful, and very wealthy, although the latter not until an aunt who had always favoured her beauty and insolence passed away and left her everything.
This, fortunately, served to remove, in most eyes, the only motive Tim could have had for what he was suspected of, and he had been very much in love with her at first.
By the last time he came to see me, shortly before Clarice's death, he seemed a man desperate to break free of a miserable prison, and I suspect that his affection for her had all but evaporated once the stars had faded from his young eyes and he began to realize that beauty is never enough to make a worthy woman.
As for us, the faithful denizens of Mineral Town who sympathized with his fate, we had never had much for her, so when the word came from the ocean city that they had relocated to for Clarice's health, that she had died unexpectedly of an overdose of a particularly strong sleeping aid, there was not an excessive amount of mourning.
The circumstances were mysterious, of course, but the woman had not been much loved, and although I hesitate to say so, I suspect that not many would have said a word against Tim if he had poisoned her.
As for the younger generation, none of them knew much of Clarice, of Tim's marriage to her. The visits had been made close to ten years ago, and Elli, the eldest of the girls, was nine years old. Their only impression of Clarice Waters-Trent was of a very beautiful woman who didn't smile much.
And as the story was hardly the sort of thing that any self-respecting parent relates to a child, or even to an adolescent, the children remained unaware of Clarice's possible fate. So when the younger Dr. Trent came to Mineral Town about three years ago to attempt to fill the shoes of the elder, his pretty brown-eyed little nurse saw him as a grieving widower and took it upon herself to console him however she could.
She managed well enough, and perhaps too well for the doctor's taste; within a year, his image of the cheerful, affectionate little brunette had shifted from that of a little sister to that of a lover.
The next year, they were married. Working with a spouse is generally considered to invite trouble, but it apparently suited them very well, because his practice thrived as it never had before. As for the personal end of things, they were deeply, devotedly, fearfully in love, and some anxious whispers wondered if it wasn't tempting the gods to be so happy.
But we were all thrilled to see him with the kind of life he deserved, and thought nothing of the doomsayers.
And then, gradually but relentlessly, a shadow began to steal over their happiness. They ceased holding hands and behaving as young lovers in public, or, I suspect, in private. Elli went about her job mechanically – she, who had always loved her work – and that sparkling, bubbling laugh that seemed to bring summertime with it, was never heard anymore. Tim's constant distraction began to cost him patients, who muttered unhappily that they would rather commute to Forget-Me-Not Valley than risk a careless mistake.
Some believe that the source of the trouble was an anonymous letter, despicably cruel under the guise of warning away an innocent girl, but whether or not Elli ever voiced her suspicions to Tim was unknown.
I personally believe that she did not. If she had, if she had spoken to one of us, it could have saved all of us the heartbreak of seeing love choked out by weeds of suspicion.
If Ellen had still been alive, she surely would have made short work of her granddaughter's silly behaviour. She loved Tim devotedly, believed him the finest young man in the world, and was ecstatically happy for both of them. But Ellen had passed away shortly after the wedding, barely two months.
At first, we thought it was only grief for her grandmother that was making Elli act so strangely, but she had been starting to overcome it, had set aside her mourning attire, and found something to live for again.
No, it was something else entirely, this bitterness poisoning what should only have been love between them, and we all had an excellent idea of what it was.
By the time of Ann's makeshift party at the Inn, things had reached such a state that we were all ready to hear that a divorce was in the offing, or something far worse about the poor girl, whose huge soft brown eyes looking so piteously lost left us all wrung with sympathy, even if her misery was partly of her own making by her simple refusal to talk to him. Tim was starting to look just pale and haunted, and neither Mary nor myself, or even Gotz, had seen him in his usual favourite places for weeks.
It surprised me to see them turn up at all.
But they did, rounding the corner to the Inn quickly, Tim trying to hold an umbrella over himself and the girl hurrying three steps ahead. He caught up, pulled the door open, and tried to guide her through, as he had often, with one hand at her back, but she pulled away and ran inside to give Ann a soggy hug.
The doctor turned swiftly very white, and I squeezed his shoulder in sympathy, my own heart dropping like a stone. If things were to the point that she avoided his touch, surely disaster wasn't far off.
The party was a dismal failure.
To Ann's credit, and Doug's and Cliff's it did start off pleasantly enough, with small reunions between friends whose busy schedules had kept them from making the long journey down the street until it had been months since they had last spoken, and steaming mugs of tea and coffee and rich hot chocolate, and conversation and laughter aplenty.
When word came that a severe storm warning was in effect and we would all be stranded there until it passed, it was far less pleasant. We ran out of parlour games quickly, and despite our attempts to keep our spirits up, and Ann's attempts to keep our spirits up, by early on in the third day we began to long for the solace of our respective homes.
Solace, in particular, from Manna, who kept up a steady stream of chatter, apparently believing it her duty to keep the conversation going. Duke pleaded with her to give it a rest, but she paid him no heed. Finally, Saibara snubbed her, which accomplished little, save to make the old man's rudeness the topic of the hour.
Gray, who beamed non-stop during every moment he spent in Mary's presence, found even his infatuation-induced cheeriness tested. Anna snapped at him to stop sulking, Mary snapped at her to leave him alone, Basil snapped at the three of them to stop fighting, and Manna snapped at him that he was starting to sound like Saibara.
Jeff, worried about his daughter, son-in-law, and friend in that tumbledown wreck they call a Poultry Farm, moped by the window, and Sasha teased him until moping became pouting.
Jack began trying to play the peacekeeper, and met with the peacekeeper's usual thanks, which set off sweet, soft-hearted little Popuri, who hated to see her adored husband so maligned for trying to help.
Doug kept his head remarkably despite the crowd effectively invading his home. Perhaps this was because he had the solace of his own room to flee to and had slept in a soft bed instead of on the floor of the Inn as many of the younger fry had done in order to give the elderly somewhere comfortable to sleep.
At any rate, he was certainly the only one who didn't leap a foot in the air when the phone rang very suddenly into a room full of tensely silent folks who had just begun to relax.
"Doug's Place," he greeted with perhaps a little less than his general brisk friendliness. He listened for a moment, then requested a moment from the unknown caller, before cupping one hand over the mouthpiece. "Doctor! Telephone."
One eyebrow lifting curiously, the doctor picked his way through the crowd and took the phone.
And as these things always happen, it was just as his expression had changed from detached curiosity to mild concern, as he had leaned further into the corner to better hear the caller, that Duke and Manna had resumed their bickering.
"Probably some lonely old lady in town whose only entertainment is dragging the poor man out of his hard-earned bed in the middle of the night," she said airily, conveniently forgetting that it was neither the middle of the night, nor was the doctor passing his time in his hard-earned anything, as those around her began to look at one another questioningly.
"For God's sake, Manna, it's not your business, so keep out of it," Duke snapped.
"I was only saying," she huffed indignantly.
Duke gave an irritated snort.
"Well, maybe if you'd quit saying for once, people wouldn't run when they saw you coming."
"Yes," the doctor was meanwhile shouting half-desperately into the phone. "Yes...I understand...pardon? Could you repeat—CAN I HAVE A MOMENT, PLEASE!"
This last question, bellowed at the bickering couple, did not sit well with Duke, who drew his bushy brows together.
"If you want quiet, go back to your damned Clinic!" he roared, despite Manna's nervous tugging at his sleeve.
The rest of us spent a few anxious moments, gazes darting back between Duke and Tim, before Tim finally turned away, requested the number to phone back from a different line, and quickly cut off the call.
"You didn't have to do that, Doctor," Doug protested, his expression troubled.
"No, it's alright," the doctor assured him in a tight voice. "I might be needed in town. They'll let me know when I call back."
And with that, he was gone, stopping briefly to kiss Elli goodbye. She flinched back slightly, and for a fleeting moment, my closest friend for years resembled nothing so much as a torture victim who has reached the limits of human endurance.
Moments later, Elli muttered something about a headache in a voice thick with tears, and Ann dragged her hastily off to her and Cliff's own room to lie down.
It was Jack, of course, who tried to break the tension again by suggesting in his eager, boyish way that we should all pass the time telling ghost stories.
It was the perfect night for it, Popuri insisted, quickly picking up the idea and finding favour with it.
"I have heard that everyone has had at least one ghostly experience in his life," Saibara chuckled.
Huh, I thought. Maybe that's where I heard it.
"Please tell me none of you really believe in that stuff," Mary moaned despairingly. "The last thing we need is to all get ourselves worked up—"
Anna shot her a disbelieving look.
"—more worked up, over some silly stories used to scare children into behaving.
"Well, if it works," Sasha shrugged, while Jeff, whom I knew for a fact had been more disturbed by the stories than their unruly and willful daughter, sulked a little more.
"Okay almost everyone's had at least one ghostly experience," Doug chuckled, patting Mary gently on the head.
"So, who's gonna tell the first story?" Jack demanded, looking expectantly to each of us in turn.
To all our surprise and her daughter's disapproval, Anna led off with a chilling little tale about a cursed bridal veil. The gist, I believe, was a pretty young seamstress who had been desperately in love with an aspiring politician, and jilted for a beautiful, wealthy actress. The actress, knowing of their crumbled romance, had gone to the seamstress to have her wedding gown and veil made, and the devastated girl had set every stitch in the exquisitely crafted, costly veil feeling as though the needle drove straight through her heart. There had been a curse, naturally, placed by a jilted and taunted lover, and the bride had died a gruesome death. Veils, apparently, were difficult to come by, and this one had been so irresistibly beautiful that the dead actress's sister had worn it for her own wedding. When she stopped before the mirror for one last glance before going down to meet her groom, she saw her dead sister's face scowling back at her. The family heard her screams and came running, but found her dead, strangled by an invisible hand, the finger marks still fresh around her neck.
Not to be outdone on grisly tales of curses signed in blood, Manna jumped in next with a story of a wealthy man who had hired a contractor to build a very large, very fine house. The house, which ended up costing far more than he had anticipated, ruined him utterly, and he placed a curse on it at the signing of the deed. Manna then went onto describe the death of each and every member of the seven generations that had occupied the house, until the most terrifying thing imaginable to any of us was that she should recall a few more family members she had forgotten to tell us about.
Of all people to rescue us, Cliff piped up, and related a story of a schoolhouse haunted by the ghost of a child had been left after classes for a detention. When the schoolmaster had returned from an errand that had taken longer than he had anticipated, he had found the child dead – of what, Cliff was uncertain – and had himself been found weeks later floating facedown in a pond. Fifty years of schoolmasters had met equally grisly fates, spurred to insanity by the boy's malicious and angry little specter, until the school had been torn down.
"And all because of Dennis the Menace," Jack sighed theatrically, and a few of us laughed nervously.
At this juncture, Elli emerged from Ann's room and slipped quietly onto the barstool next to mine. It seemed that something fell over us with her arrival. Mary ceased to look bored and disapproving, and looked nervous instead; Manna clung to Duke's arm, and he wrapped an arm around her with equal firmness; Ann's cat, which had come to say hello and curl up in my lap sometime between the haunted veil and the cursed mansion, hissed, fur bristling, and shot across the room and up the stairs.
As for myself, I felt a strange prickling in the roots of my hair, thinning though it may be, and felt that something uncanny was among us, so I turned hastily to the slim, dark-haired girl at the end of the bar, on the other side of Elli.
"What about you, Sara? I'm sure you have a ghost story for us."
She smiled, and folded very pretty hands over her knee. An artist's hands, as I could nearly see Jeff thinking admiringly. The only thing on my mind just then was why on earth I couldn't remember Sara's last name, and the strange compulsion that had urged me to make that simple remark to her. I am not terribly fond of the sensation that I have no control over my actions, unless it will go to a purpose. And even then, I would rather muddle my own way than be led there.
"Do you remember how Aunt Cecile used to believe so firmly in ghosts?"
"Of course," Manna replied eagerly. "I remember her well. She--"
Sara looked up at her, and her words died on her lips.
"I used to laugh, and she would get so angry. I think I know a little better now."
"Wasn't it your Aunt Cecile that left her fortune to Clarice Waters?"
It was as though being cut off in the middle of a speech had caused a small burst of words, regardless of tact, in Manna elsewhere, and although it was really an abominable thing to say, Sara only smiled.
"Yes, it was."
Bolder now, Manna leaned forward eagerly.
"Do you think Clarice took those sleep tablets on purpose."
None of us were close enough to Manna to strangle her, for Duke had been inching gradually away from his wife as soon as she started on the subject of past murders, as though expecting a lightning bolt to strike her at any moment.
Elli showed no sign of finding anything outrageous in Manna's question, and only stared fixedly at Sara, who in turn gazed steadily at Manna.
"She did not." Although it was only common sense that Sara could not possibly know any more about the matter than anyone else, I felt immediately that she did know, that she spoke with authority, and that her word was the final one on the subject. "Clarice had no intention of dying. Even when she found out that the problem they'd moved to the coast for had been getting steadily worse, and her lungs were all but gone, I don't think she ever believed that she could die. The only way to save her was an operation that would either improve the problem, or serve only to speed up the process. She had always been mistrustful of doctors, and Tim was no exception, especially when she had come to hate him so, and refused the operation. She planned to have him sued for malpractice because he hadn't detected the problem sooner – when she had been beyond saving since before she knew him – and she knew a lawyer and several court officials who would back her up. Whether she lived or died, she would leave him with a legal battle and fees enough to ruin him, even if he wasn't charged.
"Clarice took great delight in telling me all about it, all the more because she knew that I'd loved him almost from the moment I'd first seen him. I couldn't stand to see it happen to him, when he'd spent such a struggle pulling himself through schooling, and finally got his practice off the ground despite Clarice's goings-on. The sleep aid she was using was strong; she was having a lot of nightmares. One would usually be enough, two only in extreme cases, three too many, and four might be fatal. I gave her six. I told her they were her infomercial miracle-cure liver tablets." She laughed slightly. I shivered at that laugh. "I loved him enough to do it. And to tarnish two reputations to give him back the love of a girl who can make him happier than I could have hoped to."
There was a shout from far in the distance. I've never found out who or what gave it, and just then it didn't matter.
Manna was sobbing in her husband's arms, and his own face was very grey. Ann and Cliff, Gray and Mary, and Popuri and Jack huddled together, no more than shivering, terrified children. Sasha was clinging as desperately to Jeff as he was to her, both deathly pale. Doug looked very old, and very sick. The only one to keep his composure was Saibara, who had watched the entire proceeding with an unearthly serenity that only served to unnerve the rest of us.
For myself, I felt as sick as Doug looked, and as terrified as the children.
Because there was no one at the bar next to Elli, and none of us had ever heard of the girl I had called Sara.
The door banged open, yanked out of the newcomer's hand by a strong gust of wind, and a little blue and brown streak shot across the room from the bar.
"Oh, God, Tim, I'm so sorry, I should have trusted you more, I know you can never forgive me for being so horrible to you--" Her voice broke on a sob, and she hid her face against the doctor's drenched overcoat.
Something that I hadn't seen in his face for months flooded into it now, and warmed some of the chill of what I had just witnessed. Soaked as he was, he rested his cheek gently against the top of her head and laughed gently into her hair.
"Elli! I didn't mean to worry you. It took so much longer than I'd expected – the connection went out thanks to this weather, but I didn't want to leave before I found out for sure, so I had to wait until they'd gotten something cobbled together. The call earlier was word that Sara Peters – she was Clarice's second cousin, and her nurse while we were in Rose Shore – was killed in a terrible motorcar accident early yesterday morning. She was a loyal, hardworking little thing; I was very fond of her. I'm sorry you've had such an anxious evening, sweetheart."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
End Notes: And that, as they say, was silly. XD I don't know; was this worth writing in any way? When I read the story, I just kept seeing it acted out with these characters. If I'd been fair about it, I would have made Elli the ghost-girl. But I'm a psychotic shipper, and we're not known for being fair. Or, like, logical. XD
But I don't know if the premise worked with them, because I don't know if Elli would be such a headcase. Somehow, I think she's got far-and-away too much common sense, but ya never know. :)