A Little Spooky (Small Town Lovers #7)

Bram 3

I’d hugged Luna many times in my life, even kissed her a couple of times, not a girlfriend-boyfriend type of kiss. More like a friendly peck.

But hell, this hug stirred up feelings that were better left unmixed. Then she pressed up against me a little too close, and she brushed my cock with her hips.

Immediate erection.

I didn’t know whether she felt it or not, but if she did, I was in deep shit. We were friends. These things weren’t supposed to happen.

“I can’t see a thing,” she said, stepping away.

“We can use our phones.” We pulled them from our pockets and tapped on the flashlight, making everything even spookier.

“Follow me,” I said, holding my hand out for hers. “I think I know the way downstairs.”

“You guys okay?” Vince yelled from somewhere in the darkness.

“Yes! We’re fine!” she yelled back to him.

“We’re in the kitchen,” Vince told us. “Take the back stairway.”

“Okay,” I yelled back.

“Do you know where that is?” she asked, now holding onto my arm, like she didn’t want to take the chance I would leave her. Outside, the rain pelted the house, and thunder continued to shake everything around us.

“I think so. I was here while Freddie worked on the house. Took some before and after pictures. Haven’t had a chance to look at all of them yet. Thought we’d do that tonight. I uploaded them to my laptop. Thought it might give us something to do.” We slowly made our way down the dark hallway.

“Vince needs to install emergency lights.”

“It’s on his list. He still has a lot to do. Not all the rooms are furnished yet. I think the playroom and only one other bedroom has furniture.”

“Is that other room big enough for all of us, if we decide to stay?”

“It only has one queen bed. I don’t think we’d all fit. But it has a sofa bed that pulls out.”

“That will work, if you promise to be the one who sleeps with me.”

“Um, It might be better if I sleep on the floor.”

Another deep thunder, and she jumped right into my arms, like it was completely natural, and once again, my dick reacted to her touch.

This time, I knew she felt it, and I found that we were suddenly lost in a gaze that was so hot, it only made matters worse. And before either one of us could step out of the embrace, we were kissing. And not a peck kind of kiss… this was a full-on, lip-crushing, tongue-twisting, hungry kind of kiss that best friends never should engage in. Especially when she pressed her hips in even tighter against my now-swollen cock. I didn’t know where this was going. All I knew was it felt so damn right.

So much for my sex pact with the guys. No way was I about to pass up sex with Luna because of our pact. Sex with Luna negated any sort of agreement I made with the guys, blood or otherwise.

I rotated us so she was up against the wall, and in that moment, the moment I slipped my hand down over her perfect breasts, I heard a woman laugh… straight-up laugh.

And it wasn’t coming from Luna.

We immediately pulled out of the kiss, and it broke the spell we seemed to have fallen under. I slid my fingers away from her thick hair. “Did you hear that?”

“If you mean the woman laughing, yes, and if you move or let go of me right now, I’ll scream. I’m scared, really scared.”

“I’ve got you, cupcake, and I’m not about to move, but what the fuck was that?”

The sound of rain hitting the roof grew even louder.

“Carrie Ann?”

At the mention of her name, her bedroom door flew open, and once again, it smacked the wall with a loud bang. When we turned towards her room at the end of the hall, a bright white light poured out of it.

I grabbed Luna’s hand, and we raced to the back stairway and took those stairs so fast. I didn’t think our feet touched.

When we arrived at the bottom, the lights suddenly flickered and came back on again.

We were breathing so hard and so fast, it took a few moments to regain even a shred of composure.

“Are you okay?” I whispered as we stood at the bottom of the stairs.

“I think so. You?”

“Yeah.”

“What was all that?”

“The kiss or Carrie Ann?”

“Both.”

“I don’t know, but it was way too good… the kiss, not Carrie Ann.”

She reached up and brushed her lips against mine one more time, and heat raced through my body like fire following a path of gasoline. I didn’t know what the hell was happening between us, but we were racing past friendship and into unknown territory, and I wasn’t about to stop it.

When we parted, she said, “I feel the same way.”

Then we turned and walked into the brightly lit kitchen, still holding hands. Freddie had worked his magic in the kitchen and brought it up to date, with white cabinets, gray and black granite countertops, stainless appliances, and a large island covered in butcherblock with four stools on one side. Our bags of groceries still sat on one end of the island, while Vince and Freddie sat on two of the barstools on the opposite end.

Luna and I stood across from them.

“You two look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Vince said as we entered the room. “Carrie Ann?”

“Not exactly, but the rocking horse moved all on its own,” Luna said, her voice a bit shaky. “And the door to the playroom swung open again, and this time, it was lit up like there was a spotlight inside. Scared the shit out of us!”

I was all for leaving… like right now. My body was still shaking from everything that had just happened. Crazy shit!

“I don’t know if we should spend the night here,” I told them once again. “It’s way too intense.”

“I know one thing for certain; if we do, none of us will be sleeping alone,” Luna said as she grabbed a bottle of beer from the sixpack on the counter, twisted off the cap, and downed at least a quarter of the bottle.

I grabbed a bottle and did the same. Vince and Freddie already had their own. Fortunately, we’d brought at least three sixpacks, knowing that a night like this might require some liquid courage.

“I think we should try to talk to her. Ask her what she wants. See if she’ll tell us,” Vince said as if getting her to talk without her pulling some scary stunts would be an easy task. “If I can’t get her to back off on the scary shit, nobody will stay here, and I’ll lose all the money I put into this place. It’ll break me.”

“She’s a ghost, not one of your ex-girlfriends,” I told him between discreet burbs. “Where does it say you can reason with a ghost?”

“What the hell do my ex-girlfriends have to do with anything?” Vince asked, looking miffed.

“Wow, touchy much?”

Vince let out a breath. “Sorry, but I didn’t think anything about spending the night in this place. I thought what we saw when we were kids had to be in our imaginations. I’ve been in and out of this place for the past six months, and if Carrie Ann were here, she didn’t make herself known to me. Okay, so I never went near her playroom. Yes, there were a few weird things that happened but nothing like this. No white lights, no laughing voices in the hallway, no gusts of wind, and no moving rocking horses. This shit is over the top, and it’s got to all go away, or I just dropped the last of my savings into a fucking dark hole.”

The windows lit up, and thunder rolled over us like some sort of ghostly bulldozer.

Then the lights went out once again.

“Okay. Enough of this shit. Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Freddie said.

“I’m staying,” Vince countered. “You guys can go, but it’s time I confront Carrie Ann.”

“You can’t stay here alone,” I told him. “You don’t know what she might pull next.”

Luna walked over to Vince and swung her arms around his shoulders from behind. “I’m not leaving you, Vince. We’ll fight this thing together.”

I held up my beer. “Fine. I’m not leaving you two alone. I’m staying as well.”

We all stared at Freddie. He hesitated for a bit more. “You’re all nuts, you know that? Certifiably nuts. What if she goes off the deep end and tries to physically hurt you? Then what?”

“Then we’ll fight her off,” Vince said. “There’s three of us and one of her, and from what I’ve seen, she’s a puny little thing.”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared of some little girly ghost?” I teased.

“No, I’m not scared of her. I’m scared of all her friends. How do we know she hasn’t gotten half of hell behind her antics?”

“We don’t, but so far, it’s only been her, sooo…” Luna told him, looking both frightened and confident at the same time.

“So, what?” Freddie asked.

“So, let’s come up with a plan, find a room to use as our base camp, and bust this ghost back to where she belongs. Are you in?” Luna asked, gaining confidence with each word.

She put up her fist. It was how we always started a project that seemed especially tough. Vince grabbed her wrist, then I grabbed her wrist as well, right under Vince. We continued to stare at Freddie.

“Fuck you guys,” he said, came over, and grabbed hold.

Then we recited our little prayer. “All for one. One for all. And everybody else can go to hell! We’ve got the strength, the knowledge, and each other. Now, let’s do this.”

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, we decided to make the library our headquarters. It had three sofas and a recliner. It was centrally located on the main floor, and had four walls and a door we could close. Not that a closed door would keep Carrie Ann out, but at least it seemed like we could control the room.

The biggest feature was the real fireplace, with wood already stacked inside the hearth and enough wood to get us through the entire night. The glow of the fire would illuminate the room and keep us warm.

I found brand-new quilts and blankets in a room filled with boxes of stuff that hadn’t been used yet. Pillows were boxed as well, so I brought several of those down. Luna placed everything on the floor in front of the fire and made one big bed, which caused me to think up all kinds of wicked scenarios.

Next, I braved the weather and unloaded my SUV of all my equipment, including my newest video camera that I would use for the various Halloween events around town. Then I sent it all up around Carrie Ann’s playroom and turned on the motion detectors.

“If she shows up at all, or if she moves things around, we’ll catch it all on camera,” I told Vince, who helped me get everything set up.

“We still need to do more. We need to try to contact her.”

“And we will. I want to set this all up first, so when we’re calling on her to show, and if she does, I’ll get it all on camera.”

Freddie had set up the folding card table I always kept in the back of my car. He took a sheet and draped it over the table, gathered at least five or six battery-powered candles and stuck them in the center, then brought up some folding chairs from the storage room down on the first floor.

The lights were still out, but Vince had ordered some battery-powered camping lights and found them in the maze of boxes. I also had a couple of headlamps that Freddie and I now used.

Despite everything going on with our resident ghost, I knew I had to tell Freddie and Vince what happened between Luna and me. When we were in our mid-teens, we all hoped Luna would look at one of us as more than just a friend. So, we vowed that we would tell each other if anything ever happened.

“I kissed her,” I spat out, as I focused the video camera to encompass the entire table and all four chairs.

“You met someone?” he asked as he walked around the room to make sure every square inch of it had some sort of camera pointing at it.

“No. I kissed Luna.” He stopped, turned, and glared at me as his headlamp blinded me. “Turn that damn thing off.”

He did.

“You kissed Luna? Our Luna?” His expression became less than friendly. Almost as if he was ready to punch me.

“Is there another Luna I don’t know about?”

“No. What the hell, dude? You kissed her. How the hell did this happen? And when did this happen?”

“About a half-hour ago, on our way to the back stairs. I don’t know how… it just did. I guess I broke our pact. Sorry about that, but it’s Luna. All pacts are off when it comes to her.”

“That’s a given. And was this like a mutual kiss or…”

“Or what? Did I force myself on her? No. You know me better than that. It just happened. And she kissed me back, like really kissed me back.”

“Who kissed you back?” Vince asked as he stood in the open doorway.

“Shit, do you have some kind of radar or something?” I wanted to know.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I just put the frozen pizzas in the oven, and I knew I had to come up here and check on you two. So, who did you kiss? Did you meet someone?”

“Yeah, he met our Luna in the dark hallway and took a shot,” Freddie said, still angry.

“What the fuck? You know she’s off limits. And what about our pact? What the hell happened?” Vince asked, his forehead furrowed.

“It wasn’t like that. The pact doesn’t exist when it comes to Luna. I mean, even though that’s why we made the pact, but fuck. I wasn’t about to keep a pact when her lips were next to mine. I didn’t kiss her, exactly. It was a mutual thing. Like it was supposed to happen.”

“What was supposed to happen?” Luna asked as she came up behind Vince, carrying a real candle in one of those old-fashioned metal holders.

“Our kiss,” I blurted out, not wanting to try to hide anything.

“You told them?” she asked, looking positively beautiful, with her hair pulled up except for one thick strand caressing the side of her face. She wore black yoga pants and a short, orange, bulky sweater, with matching fuzzy socks. Her cheeks were rosy and her full, kissable lips were soft pink that made me hard just thinking about her mouth on mine. And if I thought of her mouth on my cock, well, I forced myself not to go there.

“I had to. I can’t keep something like that a secret.”

“Now is not the time to talk about sex.” The word came out of her mouth, and it hit us like she’d just stripped down naked.

“Whoa! Who said anything about sex?” Gone was Freddie’s anger. He now looked a bit embarrassed by the conversation. “We were talking about a kiss, or did it go further than a kiss, and Bram just left that part out?”

“All I know is that I was ready to do it right up against the wall in the hallway, until we heard Carrie Ann laugh… like she was watching us. It was like a girlish giggle. Like she was embarrassed or shy about the whole thing.”

“You would’ve had sex with me,” I wanted her to be clear. This was a new twist in our friendship, and I didn’t want to misread what she’d just said.

“In a heartbeat, babe. But that laugh scared the sex right out of me.”

“Maybe that’s the key? Maybe that’s the missing link to get Carrie Ann to talk to us. Maybe it attracts her. Do it again.”

“Do what again?” I asked, not believing that Vince wanted me to kiss Luna.

“This,” Luna said, placing her candle down on the table, then walking over to me, and crushing her lips on mine. “And maybe this.” She kissed me harder this time. “Or maybe this.” She wrapped her leg around mine and pressed her hips up so tight, I knew she felt my erection.

And there it was… Carrie Ann’s giggle.

Only this time, a small moan accompanied it, and everything stopped.

Even our kiss, which was life changing.