Nearly Departed, Max Schlienger [the gingerbread man read aloud txt] 📗

“Christ, September!” Bobo exclaimed, regaining his balance. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!” He smirked and let out a short laugh. “Seriously, where’s the fire?”

“Would you stop it with the bad puns?” Dennis put one hand on the wall to steady himself and looked up with manic triumph. “I figured it out, Bobo! I know why Evy’s haunting that chair!” He paused, considering. “Well, maybe not the chair specifically, but that doesn’t matter! Where’s Elspeth?”

“Keep your hair on, September,” Bobo said. “She’s back in the sitting room asking for some more water. Give me a second, here.”

Dennis followed impatiently as Bobo walked through the kitchen and filled the glass from the tap. He was no longer concerned about whether Evy would disappear again, but he did feel an urgent need to explain what he had discovered. With what seemed like unnecessary slowness, the pair walked back to the den. A large envelope, yellowed with age, had joined the other items on the table. Dennis hoped that his phone was beneath the paper, and that it hadn’t been somehow misplaced.

“I found those pictures for you, Dennis,” Elspeth said, gesturing with a shaky hand that held another lit cigarette. “I hope there’s something that will help.”

“We don’t need them anymore, actually.” Dennis’ own hands were shaking from excitement as he sat down. “Elspeth, listen, when your father died, did he leave behind a key?”

“A key?” Elspeth asked.

“A key?” parroted Bobo.

“Yes, a key!” Dennis exclaimed. “Like, a key to a safe or something. Anywhere that he might have stored valuables.”

“I can’t think of anything,” replied Elspeth. Another series of coughs wracked her body, and she reached for the glass that Bobo was holding. “Dear me, I’m sorry,” she said, her voice strained. Half of the water was gone before she spoke again. “No, my father never had anything like that. Not that I was aware of, anyway.” Dennis’ heart sank.

“Are you sure? Your sister said that she was looking after a key.”

Understanding dawned on Elspeth’s pale face. “Oh, you mean the safety deposit box key, then?”

“That’s it!” Dennis rushed forward and sat down on the edge of a chair. “Where is it? Do you still have it?”

“Of course, dear. It’s –” she coughed again, louder even than before. “It’s in that drawer where I keep all the keys. You remember, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Dennis replied. “In the kitchen, right? Where you keep the one to Evy’s room?”

“That’s right.” Elspeth made an attempt at clearing her throat, but the action just prompted more coughs.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” asked Bobo with concern.

Elspeth waved him off, but continued to sputter and wheeze. “I’m fine,” she croaked. “Just... just give me a minute.”

Dennis would have preferred to wait for Elspeth to calm down before explaining, but she motioned for him to continue. “Evy thinks that she’s guarding that key,” he said. “If we show it to her, if we tell her that it’s all over, then that’s it. She’ll be gone.”

“Just like that?” Bobo asked.

“I’m sure of it.”

“That’s certainly... certainly something, Dennis,” Elspeth rasped. She looked down at where her spasms had spilled her water onto her lap. “Barnaby, if you wouldn’t mind, could you...”

She never finished the sentence. Another fit of coughs escaped her lips, and the glass slipped from her fingers.

“Elspeth?” Dennis jumped forward. “Elspeth, are you okay?” The woman didn’t reply, and she doubled over towards the floor.

“Here, help her lay down!” shouted Bobo, rushing around to her side. This time, she made no attempt to fend off the attention, incapacitated as she was. The paroxysms continued, intermittently interrupted by long, painful-sounding gasps. Dennis felt his heart race at the sight of the woman’s pale skin and bulging eyes. “Breathe, okay?” Bobo said urgently. “Just breathe!” He shot a look back at Dennis. “September, get that fag up before it sets the house on fire!”

Bobo’s words took a moment to register, and a further, tense second longer to make sense. He scrambled around on the floor, locating Elspeth’s cigarette where it had fallen. A splash from the overturned glass had extinguished the embers, but he thrust it deep into the ashtray nonetheless. “Is she alright?” he asked frantically, kneeling close to the couch. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know!”

Elspeth retched and gasped, and Bobo barely managed to duck away as the woman’s hand clawed at her chest. Dennis watched the motion with raw panic in his veins. “Is she having a heart attack?”

“I’m not a bloody doctor, September!” He forced a hand through Elspeth’s flailing arms, and with no apparent thoughts towards modesty, pressed it firmly against her chest. “I can’t tell what’s going on. There’s a phone in the kitchen, call an ambulance!”

“Right, ambulance,” Dennis said. He rushed from the room, past the restaurant façade, and into the kitchen. An old rotary phone sat on a counter at the far side of the room, and Dennis lunged for it, dialing as quickly as he could. He hoped that they wouldn’t end up replacing one ghost with another.

Dennis disliked hospitals. Every time he visited one, he always seemed to leave with less flesh than he had entered with. Now, waiting for news about Elspeth, he felt a different sort of anxiety. The ride over, following closely behind the flashing lights of the ambulance, had been one of the more nerve-wracking episodes in Dennis’ recent memory, and that was saying something. It was ironic how all the events of the last few days, his dealing with the trials of the dead, could be so easily overshadowed by a near-stranger slipping away from life. Nobody had said anything to him, not since he and Bobo had been forcefully confined to the waiting room by an overweight nurse.

“Bloody bad luck.”

Dennis looked across at Bobo, who had been silent until then. He was sitting with his arms draped over his legs, a deflated look about him. Even his trademark grin was absent, a fact which Dennis found almost as disconcerting as the