A/N: Thanks so much for all your wonderful thoughts!
I hope everyone had a great holiday if you celebrate it. If not, I hope you've had a great few days! :)
Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine.
Chapter 6 – Krampus
I came to on a floor, moaning and blinking away a massive headache. For a few seconds, I imagined myself back in college and regretting one of many cocktails-and-study-sessions with friends, which almost invariably ended with way more in the form of cocktailing than studying.
"Ugh, Angela! You promised nothing bad would happen if I mixed rum, vodka, and whiskey!"
Then, I remembered a few years had gone by since my college girl party days, and Angela was no longer a shitty, armchair mixologist. She now worked tech at Amazon, and was married with one point five kids.
Then…I remembered the house.
"What. the hell?" I groaned, elongating the last word, which best described my current state of mind. However, that word and the rest were muffled against cold slabs of wood.
In the ensuing silence, it took my pounding brain yet another second before I remembered the whys along with the wheres. At that point, my sharp and audible hitch of breath would've been deep enough to suck the entire room and its contents into my lungs, had such a thing been possible. Which it wasn't, just like ghosts weren't possible.
Right?
I sat up at once, rattling my foggy brain all the more as I attempted to survey my surroundings, with my hair stuck to my cheeks and mouth like a dark curtain, and obstructing my view.
"Who…who…who's there?" I called out, my owl impersonation hoarse and quivery, simultaneously swiping strands of hair out of my face. My anxious eyeballs jiggled around in their sockets like those plastic craft googly eyes we all glued on our art projects as kids. Up, down, sideways, perpendicular, my eyes visually scanned every nook and cranny, aided by the morning light streaming in through the new windows. Unfortunately, daylight also had a habit of throwing shadows against walls – not helpful to an imagination already on the blink.
"Just shadows," I breathed. "They're just shadows."
But then…through the windows and in my periphery, a pair of long, thin arms reached out for me, its hands curled into claws. I gasped wildly – until my frenzied gaze honed in and realized they were just tree branches, doing nothing more than undulating in the morning breeze.
"Just trees," I assured myself.
Because everything had an explanation. For example, it turned out that the house's bones must've been shitty after all. This caused the electricity, and thereby the HVAC, to go haywire overnight. Then, I'd walked around in my sleep, claimed a blanket from my bedroom, and returned to the settee in the parlor. And then…I'd dreamed everything else.
See? Logical explanations.
"Who's there?" I repeated much more bravely and less birdlike.
Seconds stretched into minutes, during which, of course, there was no reply. Nothing and no one popped out of the woodwork. My racing heart slowed to a normal rhythm, while reason and sense returned in equal measure. My head still pounded like a fucker though.
"Holy crap, that was a crazy dream," I snorted to myself. Cradling my head in one hand and rubbing my sore ass with the other, I got to my feet. "I need some freaking coffee."
As I shuffled my way into the kitchen, the events of the past few minutes took on an increasingly humorous bend, and I laughed at myself hard now.
"Bella, you crazy bitch," I chuckled, shaking my head. "Well, at least I have yet another anecdote for my notes." As well as a possible episode to be added to the urban Christmas carol regarding Mr. Ed Masen.
By the time I set my coffee to brew, my mental fortitude had progressed beautifully. I'd gone from almost…almost being convinced I'd bought a genuinely haunted house to metaphorical self-pats on the back at how wonderfully I'd handled my first night in my new home. I'd survived the kinks that were to be expected from such an old property with nothing more than a headache – and a bruised ass where I'd landed when I tumbled off the settee.
"Good job, Bella," I congratulated with a smile, leaning against the counter with my prize, my morning coffee, in hand. The wintry, mountain view through the windows lent the moment even more perfection – yet another prize! The smile grew to a grin, and to round out the moment, I called out, "Personal Assistant, play me some Christmas tunes!"
Then, humming along, I brought my coffee to my mouth.
And froze.
At first, the sound blended with the Christmas music streaming through my personal home assistant. Sharper and clearer, I'd initially assumed it was just a crisp, piano version of 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.' The notes were invigoratingly played, infused with such feeling and gusto that they took over, drowning out every other instrument on the radio. In mounting horror, I realized that the musical notes wafted in from somewhere a lot closer than invisible airwaves.
Blindly setting down my coffee, and with throbbing temples and a hammering heart, I padded back toward the parlor room, following the antique piano's music.
And there…he sat.
It could've been a typical, seasonal morning image. Just a good-looking man at his piano, fingering away right along with the holiday tune streaming through the radio – even though he was dressed in his early-twentieth-century, three-piece gentlemen's suit. Still, he wore it so well – every piece smooth, immaculately pressed, and custom-tailored to his lean form – that the look was timeless. Along with his handsome profile, there was nothing ghostly, apparitional, or insubstantial-looking about him.
Except, he was the man from the picture frame in my bedroom, a man who'd been dead for a century.
"See, I know this one," he said, with nothing unearthly about his voice; no strange, quivery timbre nor high-pitched edge. On the contrary, it was a solid yet calm voice, and he spoke evenly; conversationally. "This one, I don't need to practice, unlike the one you played last evening over and over. That one had a strange tune that jumped from place to place." He shook his head, his brow furrowing as he apparently pondered a peculiarity in the form of Mimi's greatest hit. "It lacked any clear transitions. Why were there no clear transitions?" He sighed. "Anyway, it required a few tries, but I do believe I managed to get the hang of it. Although I apologize if I kept you up with my attempts."
"You're not real," I breathed in reply to his monologue.
He continued as if I hadn't spoken. "Then again, had you been in your own home rather than in mine, I wouldn't have had to concern myself with whether my playing kept you awake. Would I?"
For a long moment, he, Ed Masen, continued playing his piano keys, his profile unflappably focused, even when a few strands of dark copper hair fell over his forehead. He ignored them as easily as he ignored me.
I began to think – or maybe 'hope' is a better word here? – that he'd just disappear; that his spectral form would either vanish into the ether or that my mind, perhaps realizing it'd gone a tad bit too far, would retract its invention. Right then, I couldn't care less about the hows or whys as long as he was gone, and quickly, preferably before I erupted into shrieks of embarrassing, teenaged-horror-movie level screams.
Instead, he – whatever he was – sighed yet again, the sound elongated this time as if in frustration, yet still perfectly normal, completely human. His fingers kept their casual yet expert rhythm over the keys. Then, slowly, he angled his head toward me, and our eyes met.
My breath caught in my throat.
His eyes were the same eyes I'd been seeing in my dreams since Aunt Gigi's somewhat unfortunate passing: a deep emerald that now took me in impassively, inexpressively, unemotionally as if my appearance had unimpressed him just as strongly as his appearance sent me reeling.
"But he's not real," I whispered, still talking to myself, and more in a weak attempt to convince myself than because I believed it. "Any second, he'll disappear."
Either way, the attempt caused Mr. Masen to turn his unexcited gaze away from me and back to his piano.
"Now who's being stale and boring, Miss Swan? You asked for new lines, I've given you multiple new lines. Yet you don't appear to appreciate any of them."
My mouth fell open, and apparently, he had great working peripheral vision, because he smirked at the piano keys. When I finally managed to string together two words in a tone higher than a whisper, the half-strangled sort of voice in which they erupted was nothing to brag about.
"Holy crap."
Mr. Masen swept his green gaze back to me and quirked an eyebrow.
"Honestly, Miss Swan, I expected more from you than that repetitive oath you seem to favor – an oath which, by the way, is extremely coarse and vulgar for a lady."
"Okay, now you'd better just be in my imagination."
"I think we've already established that your imagination isn't that impressive," he said, returning to playing the piano like a modern-day Elton John. "But you're correct; I suppose your language is neither here nor there at the moment, especially considering all else I've heard you say."
"If you're not my overactive imagination, then you're a concussion caused by my fall off that settee." I pointed accusingly at the settee at fault as if we were in a courtroom, and I'd just announced the culprit to the jury.
Here, he stopped playing and slowly angled his entire frame toward me. We merely took one another in for a few heartbeats, each one sizing up the other, determining how to proceed.
"Next, you'll blame my appearance on what you ate last night," he scoffed, "or compare me to a piece of undigested meat, or in your cheese-and-bread grilling case, a piece of moldy cheese. Please don't compare me to moldy cheese, Miss Swan," he pleaded with obvious sarcasm, waving away the horrid thought before returning to his piano. "That's when I'll lose my patience."
"Wait, you've read Dickens?" I asked.
"Miss Swan, just because I may have provided my fellow men and women with a…somewhat irregular service for a few years doesn't make me an unread simpleton."
"I never suggested-"
"Not that it's here nor there," he said, sounding offended now, "but I graduated high school with stellar grades and then attended two years at the University of Washington before my parents' passing, at which point I joined the war effort, and-"
"Your parents passed away?"
"From the Spanish influenza."
"The flu? During the war?"
"The Great War, Miss Swan. Please keep up."
"You mean…World War One?"
"World War…One…? No. I mean the Great War. The World War. The war to end all wars."
Abruptly, he slammed his fingers against the keys, which resulted in a rattling, discordant sound that made me give a slight jump. He then shut the instrument, obviously annoyed, his breathing accelerated.
"Miss Swan, I think you've misunderstood my intention here. I'm not trying to give an interview on my life and times."
"Then what are you doing?"
Nostrils flaring now, he stood. I angled my head upward to hold his irritated gaze while trying to conceal my admiration because he was a striking figure, even when blatantly annoyed. As tall as his picture had hinted, and even more good-looking, he also had an air about him, a commanding sort of presence. He was a leader, not a follower, and obviously accustomed to the role. And despite how he glared at me, an unsubtle attempt to intimidate me with his height and his presence…I wasn't scared at all.
And he seemed to sense it. His hands moved behind his back, and he straightened all the more, squaring his broad shoulders and his angular jaw.
"I'm trying to explain to you that this is my house, and you're a trespasser. I'm asking you to leave, Miss Swan."
"Wow," I grinned. "That was rude ay eff."
"Ay…eff…?" he echoed, his brow furrowed in bewilderment before he quickly shook his head. "I'm not even going to ask. Miss Swan, I've chased grown men twice your size out of this house, men who've stumbled and raced out of here as if their backsides were on fire – and more than once," he grinned smugly, "they were." The grin then evaporated. "And you're a woman."
"And?" I snapped.
"And…you're a woman," he repeated as if his meaning should've been overt the first time.
"Wow. Now that was just plain old insulting," I smirked. "And misogynistic."
"Misogyn…" He gripped his hair in one hand, glowering darkly at me. "All right, let's cut to the heart of it. I'm trying not to be too frightening, Miss Swan, but you're not cooperating."
Now I plain-old chuckled. "Yeah, you might find that's the case with my sex nowadays. Plus, there's the fact that you're not real, and at any moment, I'll wake up, and you won't be here, Mr. Masen." I pointed sharply at him. "So, no, I don't plan to cooperate."
He glowered at me, those green eyes blazing. "All right, I've tried to be a gentleman about this because, as I said, you're just a woman-"
"What a sexist son-of-a-"
"-and after what happened to that last woman who ran out of here in heels and tripped and broke her nails-"
"-chauvinist-"
"-I don't want to be responsible for more shrieks and flutters."
"Shrieks and flutters!" I set my hands on my hips, and when he followed my actions and his lips appeared to twitch, it set me off all the more. "Who the hell are you saying is gonna shriek and flutter around here? Me? Because I'm a woman?!"
"Last chance," he warned.
"Mr. Masen, if you are a ghost, why don't you just leave my house and go to hel- AHHH!" I shrieked.
He moved like lightning, one second still a couple of feet away, and in the next moment, he'd somehow lifted me over his shoulder.
"What the fuck?!" I howled as he straightened and marched toward the door. "How are you doing this? How are you carrying me when you're just-?"
"-just a figment of your imagination?" he said mockingly as he raced up the stairs, my brain jostling from the speed of his movements.
"My imagination isn't this good!" I cried.
"We're agreed on that much."
In the next moment, we were in front of my bedroom door, though it all looked upside down to me due to my unfortunate position. A second later, he'd set me down. My heart beat so rapidly it felt ready to pop out of my chest, equal parts shock and fury at how I'd been handled. Still, I reached out to touch him, and when my pointed finger went straight through his midsection as if he weren't there, as if he were nothing more than a…a…
I gasped wildly. "You're…you're a…a…"
"A ghost?" Mr. Masen smirked.
"How?" I asked bewilderedly.
"Mind over matter, Miss Swan. Mind over matter. And now…" he pushed open my bedroom door, and for a fraction of a second, I felt my first, true fissure of fear since I arrived at this house.
What the hell was a ghost planning to do to me in my bedroom?
Apparently, nothing more than carefully yet firmly push me into the room, and, remaining just outside, shut the door behind me.
"What the-!" I turned the doorknob, but it didn't budge. "Hey!" I jiggled the knob harder. "Hey, let me out!"
"Miss Swan, I will let you out when you're ready to agree to leave my house."
"What?"
And with that, the next sound I heard was my favorite Christmas song streaming through my personal assistant downstairs.
"LET ME OUT!"
A/N: Thoughts?
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