Oh, yes, the damn disclaimer: seriosuly, do we really have to do it? Because, Jeez, if I'd own them, I'd not be here writing it, I'd be the writeer of a TV Shows and, well, we'd have the LIsbon romance for real...meanwhile, I just "write, draw, create, dream, hope and believe in Bruno, waiting for him to be blessed bu the light of reason..." (No, this discalimer isn't mine, it belongs to one fo the girls who wite Mentalist fiction on the italian site efpfiction, but don't tell me many of you don't share this vision...).

Also:thanks to everyone who reviewed - and allanon as well, Anceh perchè è mia "compaesana!"

ACT TWO OR THE GHOST OF ALEXANDER JANE

He hates thinking about Christmas. Thinking about it, he tends to think about happy times that are no more and that will be no more, each case is something he'd rather prefer not thinking about. Why thinking about what he has lost because of his greed, like decorating a tree with Angela and Charlotte, singing while his wife played the piano? Why thinking about what he'll never have, like decorating a tree with Teresa and two beautiful children, a boy like his daddy and a girl like her mammy, singing along with the radio? Actually, if he has to be honest, he does think about it, because he IS indeed guilty and guiltier he shall feel, along with remorse, and pain, and everything in between. (He has always known he is an emotional masochist).

What he stopped to think about a long time ago is Alexander Jane, his father, who passed away the year before Charlotte and Angela did, and why should he think about the way his father psychologically abused him for years, since the tender age of six, not long after his mother had left, removing his own son from the world out of greed, not allowing Patrick to be like any other child of his own age- no school for the psych boy wonder, just the carnie circuit, where there are marks and the carnie people. After all, he hasn't thought about the man in eight years, and he isn't going to think about him now. Alexander Jane doesn't deserve it, isn't worth the effort. Too bad his mind doesn't agree with him.

The upper part of the back door to his rented and empty if not for the bed and a nightstand table with a couple of drawers, less than the essential in the kitchen and the bathroom furniture place in Sacramento (self-loathing is a good thing for him, but a seven hours drive every morning would be crazy, as crazy as taking a plane every day from Los Angeles to his work place) is made of glass, and for a second, as he lifts his eyes as the key turns into the lock, he thinks that… he could swear he sees his father's reflection in the surface, but he knows it's crazy- it's just sleep deprivation, because his father is dead, and he can't see him, slightly enlightened, with ghost-like features. Jane can feel the air stirring on his neck, like by breath or hot air; Alex's eyes are wide open, but still and motionless. He is livid, and looks horrible, but not because of something he is seeing, it's like he IS the horror.

Yet, even if he knows and is sure it's just the lack of sleep, it doesn't stop him from double-checking, and he when he sees that the only visible reflection is his own, he is still startled and he has a terrible sensation running through his veins along his blood, something he has never felt before, not even like an infant. Maybe it's because of this that, even if he is well aware that ghosts don't exist, he pauses with a moment of irresolution before closing the door at his back on the light has been already turned on, double-checking his surroundings and shouting a "Bo!" that resonates into the whole empty house as he slams the door with a bang. Even this way, as he moves up to his bedroom, curled into the darkness (because that's the only thing he deserve) and enlightened only by the small light by the entrance, he checks to see that everything's all right- nobody's in the drawers, or hidden under the bed, or is wearing his pajama, neither the top or the bottom, the only part he is used to wear in the hot Californian weather.

He closes the door, quite an unusual fact since he lives alone and, once thrown his clothes on the pavement careless, once wore his pajama, he stops to look outside the window, focused on the road enlightened by street lamps and on the nightly sky, enlightened as well, but by lightening. A storm is coming (even if one is already taking place, metaphorically speaking, in his heart and in his mind), and, apparently, Sacramento will not see the snow yet again, even it has been more than seven years since last time it happened (and it should snow, according to researches, once every seven years).

And it's when he sees again, reflected on the glass of the window, his father, his face, staring at him with enraged eyes from his back.

"Bullshit" he shouts, walking across the room just to throw him on the bed, massaging, at closed eyes, his own temples. He is just tired, it's just sleep deprivation, he keeps repeating. That's why he saw his father. That's why now, once opened his eyes, he sees a bell, hanging in the room for who knows what purpose, and it's with astonishment and read that he sees it swinging softly, barely making its sound at first, just to increase in volume as time passes, becoming unbearable, few minutes lasting like hours.

Then, it as it began, it stops, only to be replaced by something else, different. Jane can hear it, coming from the top of the stairs, getting closer, getting louder, getting toward the door, something like a chain dragged on the pavement, like in the horror stories.

"It's still bullshit! I'm not going to believe that there's a ghost here!" he screams, enraged with him because he is even just contemplating that his father's ghost is here, visiting him. And even if he would like to not believe it, he becomes pale as the ghost pass through the door, stopping, grinning, in front of him, and right now there's nothing Patrick Jane would like to scream more than "I knew it, daddy's ghost has come to visit me!"

He falls from the bed, staring at the man who was his father, looking exactly like last time he saw him, almost 10 years prior; the only differences, are the fact that he is transparent and the heavy chain, clasped about his middle, long, of strong steel. He is still unsure, Patrick Jane, still incredulous, and is fighting against his senses, even if he can see through the phantom, even if he is seeing his dad standing in front of him, even if he can feel the chilling influence of the ghosts on him.

"What do you want with me, now? Who are you" Jane says caustic and cold as often.

"There are many things I want from you, son, and you should know it, after having spent your whole life with me!" While saying so, grinning, the spirit, even in transparent and seemingly made of not solid matter, goes to sit on a chair, in front of his "son". There's something he can't deny, Jane doesn't know what's going on, but there's no doubt that the voice he is hearing belongs to his father, his late father. But, still, it's just a nightmare, or a hallucination, or who knows what, but it's not real, it can't be real. "You don't believe in me, I don't understand, what evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses? Why do you even doubt them? That's not what I taught you, Patrick. Everything you do and did is based on your senses."

"My senses may be clouded. I may have a hallucination induced by sleep deprivation, or maybe it's something I ate at lunch. Now that I think of it, the roast beef looked a bit too old, and had a weird taste!" he tries to be smart to distract himself, keeping down his terror, because, if the ghost really was just an hallucination, why bothering answering his questions? No, it can't be just that, now, seeing and feeling the infernal atmosphere provided by the spirit, with everything of its being agitated by hot vapors even if he was motionless and still. But, for his own sanity, for his own sake, he has to not believe it, "I tell you this, bullshit!"

Alex raises a frightful cry, shaking his chain with such a dismal and appalling noise that Jane has to holds on the bed to avoid falling down, appearing really like a creature from a horror movie, a bit like the character in Munch's "The Scream", his chin dropping down upon his torso.

"Dad…please dad, mercy, why… why do you have to do that to me?"

"Tell me, son, do you believe in me, now?" he grins, looking again normal.

"I do" he pauses, hesitating, getting closer and closer to the man who once had been a father to him, curious of his nature, almost touching the ghosts "but, I don't understand. What are you doing here? Why did you come to me?"

"It is required of every man- the Ghost says poetically, inhaling a big breath, looking in the distance, like reflecting - that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world, and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness." Again the specter raises a cry, and shakes hiss chain with shadowy hands, before to go on "I wear the chain I forged in life, I made it link by link, of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it, like you'll eventually do as well, one day. When I died, your chain was as long as mine, but despite what you think of yourself, you worked on it"

Jane glances about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he can't see anything at all. Only one word (a begging, an imploration) leaves his mouth. "Dad…"

"I can't give you the comfort you are looking for, son. It comes from other regions, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay and I cannot linger anywhere… the whole time, these past seven years, no rest, no peace, an incessant torture of remorse, traveling on the wings of the wind…" again he scrolls the chain, looking at it like it is the cause of his troubles and sufferance, and goes on with his speech, no longer grinning, but with a scared expression and sufferance painted on his once handsome features "Listen to me, Patrick, because my time is nearly gone, and I want you to know something. I've been at your side, during the last few years, invisible, for quite a long time, but now I've been allowed to come to you in a shape you could see, because I have to warn you… I've pushed everyone away, I've been selfish, I've never cared about everyone, and you, my son, even if you once saw the light, you are falling into the darkness of your ego yet again. But Patrick, there's still hope. You can still save yourself!"

"That's what you come here to do, dad, to warn me, to save me? But I'm broken, I'm beyond salvation!"

"Three spirits will haunt you, and without their visits, you cannot hope to avoid the path I forced myself to take. This very night, at one o'clock, the first of my fellow companions will come to you" Alex pauses, looking with love and affection, or maybe regret, at his own son, in a way he has never looked at Patrick in while he was still alive. "If you'll be able to change your path, we'll never see each other, ever again. For your own sake, I truly hope so." Alex leaves his spot, and walks in direction of the window, getting it wide open just by whishing it as he approached it. Patrick is tempted to teach him for a last goodbye, one he had never had the chance to give when his father was alive, but the ghost stops him, convincing him with a mere gesture of the hand to walk no more.

When Patrick approaches the window, he can sees his father's ghostly form floating out upon the bleak, dark night, filled with phantoms wandering in restless haste, moaning as they go, every one of them with a chain just like his own father, everyone faded into the mist.

He moves back to the bed, immediately collapsing on it, falling immediately asleep on top of the cover, tired and emotionally shaken by what just happened.