I'm re-naming my story to 'Just Three Words'. That way, It's going to make more sense when the story is written. Oh, and a good book about the eighteen hundreds is the True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. It's sort of grade eight and nine level, for those younger or older, but it's good. Has alot of old proper English.
Before I forget, special thanks to Frolicking Bananas for Jesse's sisters names.
"What? Can't someone drop in to see an old friend?" Paul asked innocently but with a small smirk on his face. I knew he wasn't all that innocent.
"Friend," I snorted, "what friend are you to me? You're the reason we're both dead." I looked at him. Paul Slater, he was easy on the eyes but I hated him with a burning passion that made me want to turn him alive and kill him all over again. If that was possible, of chorse.
Then he looked at Jesse and said, "Speaking of friends, who's the guy?"
"Oh, yes, Jesse this is Paul Slater." I told Jesse boredly. "And Paul, this is Jesse de Silva. Now that you both know eachother, I think you should leave, Paul."
"Aw, Suze." He whined, but in a seductive way, walking toward me where I was sitting on the window seat. "You're not trying to get rid of me, are you? I'm the only one you've got besides the priest." He ran a smooth hand down my cheek and I slapped it away.
To my surprise Jesse spoke up and said, "Well, now she has me and I think you should listen to the lady and leave." Gentleman, he is. He said 'lady' like it meant something. I maybe a girl but I was no nineteenth century lady. Though I tried my best in front of my family, I was no gentlewoman.
"Lady," Paul laughed, "she is nothing of a lady. But she slaps like one." He mumbeled rubbing his arm where I had hit it to. And Paul doesn't bruise easily. Well, he can't bruise, anyway. He's dead. Dead as a doorknob.
"Paul!" I roared. So much anger was building up inside of me that a few books lifted off of Jesse's desk and fell to the floor. "Leave!"
"Fine," he huffed, "someone had a cup of Carnation Instant Bitch this morning, now didn't she?" I just sneered at him and he finally dematerialized.
"Susannah?" Jesse said and then pointed to a picture frame that was floating in midair.
"Oh," I laughed cooling my nerves, "sorry." The picture safely landed on the desk without breaking. "I have got to get under control of this anger thing. Over one-hundred-years and I still can't get it right!"
"So, I'm guessing he didn't move on?" Jesse wanted to know walking over to the picture and hanging it back on the navy blue walls of his room.
"No, isn't that obvious? He's not going to, either, until he gets what he wants. Me." I told him. "And at this rate he's going, he'll never move on."
"Some strange things people will do for love." Jesse said shaking his head.
"And some of the unhumane people will do to get back at them." This time I never made eye contact with Jesse. I just stared at the small crack that use to be a bullet hole. Then I got an idea. "Uh...I'll be right back."
Jesse turned around quick. "Where are you going?"
"Attic," I told him, "I'll be right back." Then I thought, "Want to come?"
He nodded. "Where are the stairs to the attic?"
I pointed to his closet and to a little hatch in the top. The closet was still empty but I told him he would have to pull himself up scince the ladder going up there was destroyed by Tay so no one would find my body when he stashed it up there until night when he could dispose of me. He had gotten rid of Paul right away even though neither of our bodies have been found.
"I don't even think my madre has been up here yet." He told me as I stood over the latch. I just dematerialized and materialized back up here. "Now, what are you looking for?" Then he noticed the floor and his expression changed from interested to disgusted.
"What," he wanted to know, "is that?"
"Blood. Dried blood, of chorse. It dosen't stay liquid forever. It sunk in and stained the floorboards. If you stand by the window you can see the print from my body." He made himself look away.
"That is a very morbid memory." He exclaimed walking over to where I was. I was staring down at a cracked floorboard right over Jesse's room.
"I think I might be able to get it out." I said kneeling down on the creaky dusty attic floor. I picked at it and the bullet started to move. It finally was free and I picked it out and put it in the palm of Jesse's spread hand.
"Rusty." He said.
"Bloody." I corrected him. "And a little rusty too, I guess."
The bullet was cold in my hand. Over one-hundred-years of cold. Why would someone kill a person as nice as Susannah. As beautiful as her. I just met her but I knew we would be friends.
"Why didn't you tell the priest-Father Dominc I think his name is-about this?" I asked her.
"Because, being a priest and all, he's all about doing good biddings and helping ghost's move on and I know if I told him about it then he would try to find my body, or what's left of it, and I don't know exactly why I'm still here so it might make me move on, and I don't want to." She told me ducking under the attic's low ceiling.
"I see." I looked at her. She wasn't dressed like a lady. White long sleeved blouse, black pants, boots, not a dress like she should've been wearing. Dressed like a man to get away from the two people she dispised. To live, but she wasn't luckey enough to get out.
She walked over to an old trunk that was sitting in the corner. There was a large lock on it that had great fancy craftsman ship.
"Do you know where the key is?" I asked, walking over and standing beside her.
"Of chorse!" She told me and started to dematerialize. "Up there."
I was sitting on a beam that was holding up the roof. The key was still there on a nail that was sticking out of the beam and I put it in my pocket.
I swing around the beam so I was only hanging on it with my arms and legs. Then I leg my legs go and only my arms were holding on. It was only about a six inch drop. It was nothing. Not like I was going to make any noise or anything.
"Why didn't you just dematerialize down?" He wanted to know as I took the rusted key out of my pocket.
"Because it's more fun this way." I laughed putting the key into the lock. It unlocked and I put it down beside the trunk and flung the trunk's top open. Dust came off it and filled the air causing Jesse to cough.
"Here it is." I said unfolding a white blanket that was now a yellowish colour. It was stained with age. "The gun used to kill me, and the knife used to kill Paul."
"I thought you said he was shot." Jesse pointed out.
"Oh, he was stabbed first, then when he didn't die Tay shot him, but only in the side and then stabbed him to make sure he was dead. The bullet is probably stil embedded in Paul's clothes that he was wearing when he got shot. It never went through as easy."
"Is Tay still around? I mean, his ghostly being?" He asked me as I placed the gun and knife back into the chest and locked it.
"No." I said to him materializing up onto the beam again, placing the key back in it's rightful spot, and comming back down again. "But I did see him die. He died when he was twenty. His friend, Greenly Porter, accidentally shot the little bugger when he was trying to get back into his house. The door was locked and Greenly thought it was a robber so he shot him dead on the spot. Who knew you could get so much glory out of murder? Best night of my life, I tell you."
Jesse looked at me strangely then I said, "If you were murdered, you would feel the same."
"Hector, dinner!" I heard his mother call up from downstairs.
"Hector?" I asked confused. "I thought you only had sisters and that your father died."
"I do only have sisters and-hey, wait? How did you know my father died?" He wanted to know walking towards the hatch.
"I over heard your mother talking." I told him. "And who the heck is Hector, anyway?"
He straightened up and said in a matter-of-factly way, "I am. My middle name is Jesse but everyone calls me it anyway." Then he dissappeared down the hatch. I heard his feet hit the floor and I dematerialized.
I went downstairs to meet my madre and my sisters for dinner. That would be five sisters, to be exact. But Marta and Esperanza have graduated and moved out long before we moved to Carmel, California. So now it was only Mercedes, Josefina, and Catalina.
After setting the table we all sat down to eat. As mom was talking I noticed a shimmer of something in the corner of your eye. It was Susannah. She was looking at the pictures on the wall and there was a very old one of my family. All eight of us. I was only young then, about six. She looked at the picture and said, "Aw." I shot her a warning look.
"Jesse," Madre said as she took my attention off of Susannah, "what are you glaring at?"
"Oh, um...nothing." I lied as I picked at my dinner. Susannah mouthed 'Sorry' but with a little smirk on her face.
"You start school in three days." Mother said to us. "But Jesse, I haven't signed you up yet. We're going to have to go down to the Mission tomorow and get your papers straightened out."
"You can meet Father Dominic there." Susannah said out loud. It's not like anyone else but me can hear her. "I'll go tell him later. He dosen't know you're a mediator." I nodded just slightly enough so only Susannah could notice and no one else.
"Jesse," Mercedes said, "you're acting quite strange lately."
"Paranoid." Catalina chimed in sipping some water from her glass. "Reading too much."
"Talking to himself alot too." Josefina laughed. Being the youngest she dosen't take things very seriously. I made a face. "Maybe it's the ghosts."
"Ghosts." Catalina, much more mature than Josefina and only a year younger than me, spat. "There's no such thing as ghosts." Susannah, who was leaning on a wall behind her made a noise of disgust as if she was offended.
"If you excuse me," I said standing up, "I'm finished." I put my plate and glass in the sink after rinsing them and then headed for the stairs.
"Going to talk to yourself some more, Jesse?" Josefina laughed.
"Josefina." Mother said in a warning voice, placing her napkin down on the dinning room table. I ignored the other comments she muttered under her breath and began to climb the stairs expecting Susannah to be there. I was right. She was in her same place: on the window sill.
I was staring out at the sun that was now on the edge of the horizon daring to dip lower until the night sky prevailed it's dark blue's and sliky black. The stars like glitter as it mingles with the Milky Way. It was pure beauty, if I ever seen such. The night. The darkness. The yellow moon as it overs over the Pacific Ocean making the aqua blue water glow radiantly as it reflects.
"Beautiful sight, isn't it?" I sighed, turning my head toward Jesse. He stood not talking. I drew my attention away from the window long enough to let out another heavy sigh and say, "This isn't about what happened downstairs, is it? That's nothing. My step-brothers, well two of them, thought I was crazy." I stood up. "Don't get your panties in a bunch over nothing."
"My what?" He asked sounding shocked. I was sort of shocked that those words came out of my mouth and that I said it to him.
"Uh..never mind. It dosen't matter." I said to him pacing around, changing the conversation. "I'll talk to Father Dominic tomorow before you arrive there. I'm sure he'll be happy enough to have a mediator as a student. But the guy likes to do charity work. 'God's bidding' he calls it. I call it a pain in the butt since he's been trying to use it on me but whatever he does," I huffed, "it'll never work."
"You don't want to leave?" Not now that you're here. I never said that, of chorse. I'll say somethings in front of him but I'll never say that.
"Nah." My lack of proper English never seems to amaze me. "I'd rather stick around. Stop Paul from whatever mischeif he's getting himself into this time." Then I remembered. "Oh yeah, if he says anything to you about pretty much anything it's probably a lie."
"I'll remember." He said in a low voice. "Anything else, Susannah?"
Susannah Simon! I heard Father Dominic calling me. He wasn't in his best of moods. You could tell by the tone of his voice.
"Nope, nothing else. Look, I got to go. Father Dominic is calling me." I told him starting to dematerialize.
"Good-bye, querda." He said to me and when I arrived at the Mission he had me stunned. Querida?
Sorry it took awhile to update but I've been trying to put as much effort into my stories as I can. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading chapter two!
Mrs.JW
