By Katie Sise Sweeney
The following fictional story is the final installment of a fantastical mystery set in Bedford, to be continued in novel form next year. So far in our story, we’ve met twenty-seven-year-old Claire, who has just tragically lost her fiancé, James. On the night of his funeral, desperately missing him as she walks to the end of Hook Road, Claire decides to follow the instructions of an old Bedford prophecy, circling the Bedford Oak nine times in the hopes of setting free James’ spirit. But instead of James, Claire calls forth Beatrice, a young ghost who lived in Katonah in the late 1800s. In exchange for her help in finding James, Beatrice enlists Claire’s help in retrieving an old locket that holds a picture of Beatrice, her dearest friend, Christine, and Christine’s brother, Arthur, who was the love of Beatrice’s life back in the 1890s. The photo was taken in front of an old Victorian in Katonah, when all three were trying to save their family home from the fate of being destroyed to make way for New York City’s new water system. Beatrice asks Claire for her help taking the locket to Katonah, where the soul of Christine is alive and well, living a new lifetime as a young woman named Chrissie who works at LMNOP bakery on Katonah Avenue. Throughout the night, as they venture through Bedford to find the locket, Beatrice and Claire talk about old souls living new lifetimes on Earth, and Beatrice confesses to Claire that she’s never been able to reconnect with Arthur’s soul, even though she’s been searching for him for over one hundred years. In the previous installment of our story, we flashed back to 1893 Katonah, where Beatrice and Arthur’s love story was unfolding. Now, we return to present-day Katonah, when Claire sees a young man named George, a friend of her fiancé James, who was the last person to see James alive. More surprisingly, Beatrice realizes that George is the soul of her beloved Arthur in his earthly form. And then Beatrice collapses from the shock of it all, leaving Claire holding her ghostly frame on the floor in the middle of LMNOP bakery.
Inside the bakery, an espresso machine hissed with a gasp and a puff. I still held Beatrice’s quivering, invisible ghost-body on the cold-tiled floor, and I stared up at George’s blinking eyes.
“Claire?” George asked, his voice tentative. I had no idea how to explain why I couldn’t stand up. George stared at me like he was deeply worried, his gaze lingering on the odd way my arms cradled a ghost he couldn’t see. Even my palms faced skyward, and I couldn’t imagine how strange I must have looked to him, but I also couldn’t imagine dropping Beatrice onto the floor. I glanced down to see her heart-shaped face and delicate features at rest. Her long, white-blonde hair splayed across my lap.
“Do you need help?” George asked, his dark brows furrowed.
In the far left of my peripheral vision, I could see that Chrissie was glaring at us, and when I turned to meet her glance, her face flushed, and she quickly looked away. I wondered if the locket I’d given her was still shoved inside the pocket of her jeans; I wondered if she’d look at it tonight like she promised me she would, and if she could ever possibly recognize the photo from her previous lifetime in 1893.
George lowered himself carefully down onto his knees beside me. I thought of him kneeling at James’ funeral, how he’d bowed his head, and how his lips had moved silently over the prayers. He was one of James’ newer friends; they’d met when George started dating one of James’ friends from college.
“George, hi,” I said, stalling. I felt Beatrice shift in my arms. Her bones edged through her nightdress, pressing against my hands. She was so warm that cradling her felt like holding a freshly made cup of tea. Her eyes fluttered, exposing a flash of gray. But then they closed shut again.
Please, wake up, Beatrice.
“Are you okay?” George asked, his voice low and deep. I tried to smile at him, but I couldn’t get the muscles in my face to work quite right.
“I’m fine, thank you. I think I was just a little dizzy,” I managed to eke out. A few patrons had gathered around us, most moving along once they saw that I was all right. Beatrice stirred again, finally seeming to come to. As she pushed herself onto her elbow, I slipped my hands from beneath her and folded them in my lap. “I feel a little better now,” I told George.
George nodded, and a moment passed where neither of us said anything. Beatrice had straightened, and now we sat side-by-side on the floor next to a chic marble-top café table, both of us staring at George.
“Goodness gracious,” Beatrice said, her eyes roving George’s face. He couldn’t hear her ghostly voice, so he never turned toward the sound of her. His dark gaze was locked on mine as Beatrice stretched a shaking, bony hand toward him and touched his cheek. He flinched nearly imperceptibly, as though in some small way his skin registered her touch.
“I never imagined I’d find him here…” Beatrice said, her voice quiet and reverent. “Arthur,” she whispered.
The longing that filled that one word hit me in the gut. I understood perfectly.
Chatter filled the café, the buzz of coffee orders and conversation swirling around us. I heard Chrissie’s delicate voice above the hum, asking a customer to repeat her order. I turned a moment later to find her staring at me again, her expression suspicious now, as though I’d done something wrong.
“Can I help you up?” George asked, reaching out a hand. Two teens clutched to-go coffee cups and pretended not to look at us. I took George’s hand. His skin was soft, but his grip was strong as he pulled me to my feet. Beatrice stood, too, her petite frame barely taking up space in the café. She gazed at George as if he were a breathtaking painting meant for her eyes alone.
“I’m so sorry about James,” George said softly. He’d already said this to me at James’ funeral more than once, but hearing him say it somewhere else, in this new life without James, brought tears to my eyes. It was hard to believe that the funeral was just yesterday. Hadn’t I lived a lifetime since then?
“Scott and I talked to the police again,” George offered, shoving his hands deep into the pocket of his jeans.
Scott was an old friend and James’ business partner, and he was there that night at the bar when James died, too.
“Oh?” I asked, edging away from him. I wanted to talk with George about James—but I also wanted to get Beatrice out of the café, to go somewhere quiet where we could digest what all of this could possibly mean. If Arthur’s soul was having a new lifetime inside one of James’ friends’ bodies, then everything had to be connected, and it had to be the reason that Beatrice was the specific ghost who was called back to Earth when I’d circled the Bedford Oak. And if my wildest hunch was correct, then maybe all of this could somehow lead to James.
“Certainly, it’s not a coincidence,” hissed Beatrice from beside me.
I whirled around to face her. Since when could she read my thoughts?
“I’ve always been able to read your thoughts, Claire,” she said plainly, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
I cleared my throat, turning back to George, not wanting him to think I’d completely lost it by staring into the shadows and listening to the voice of a long-dead young woman.
Trying to stay in the here and now, I asked him, “And what did the police say?”
“Just the same questioning on whether we saw James’ attacker outside the bar that night,” George said. “We didn’t, Claire.” He looked so shaken. But the cops were convinced it was a random attack, and so was I. Who would have wanted to hurt James?
“Of course,” I said, resenting the feeling that I should be comforting him rather than the other way around. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Beatrice reaching forward to rest a hand on George’s arm.
“Arthur, it’s truly you,” she whispered. It struck me as deeply sad that he couldn’t hear her.
“I should really go, George,” I said, wiping away the wetness on my cheeks. I didn’t want to lose it and start sobbing here.
“Please, let me know if I can do anything to help you,” George started, but I was already heading toward the glass door. I wasn’t sure if Beatrice was following; I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to pry herself from George.
Cold January air blasted my face as I pushed open the door. I staggered to a bench outside the café and sat, putting my head into my hands, and letting myself cry. I knew I’d never stop feeling this way, imagining James getting hurt and knowing how scared he must have been. I couldn’t stop wondering whether he’d known who or what danger was coming for him that night at the bar, or if it was all over before he could realize his fate. I prayed it was the latter.
Eventually Beatrice came to sit beside me, and I could feel her warmth. Her night dress fluttered in the bitter wind that swept down Katonah Avenue. “We found Arthur,” she said softly, and she was looking at me with such concern that I knew she wasn’t only talking about this one singular event and how it would affect her. I’d only known Beatrice for a short while, but I could tell she was invested in what had happened to me. I could sense she’d spent a lifetime caring for others, and not just herself. I could feel it like something I’d always known. “We’re going to find James,” Beatrice said, proving me right. “Don’t you see? We were meant to do this together. None of this has happened by chance.”
“And Chrissie?” I asked. “What about her?”
Beatrice shook her head with wonder. “Can you believe Arthur and his sister have returned to lifetimes where their souls inhabit the same circle? You wouldn’t believe how often it happens, groups of souls reunited, traveling together across lifetimes.”
“Then why have you been left out?” I ask, not wanting to hurt her feelings, but not understanding everything I needed to.
Beatrice seemed to lighten as she thought it over, her gray eyes twinkling. “Maybe I haven’t been left out. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“True,” I said. “So now what?” I stared at her, no longer caring about the Katonah bystanders who must have thought I was staring and talking into thin air. No one seemed to notice me, anyway. Parents shepherded children through the steely winter morning into shops or parked cars. Katonah residents looked down at their phones and raced to make it to the train. A woman who might have been a grandmother emerged triumphantly from a toy store called G. Willikers, and a young couple held hands and visited an eyeglass store. No one seemed to notice me seemingly talking to myself, which was certainly for the better.
Beatrice opened her mouth to answer, but then the door to the coffee shop swung open and out came Chrissie. Her blue eyes were icy, her gaze piercing. She held the gold locket inside her hand. “I don’t recognize these people,” she said to me as she opened the locket and displayed it before me.
“I know, I understand…” I started, exasperated. She’d already told me she had no idea who they were.
“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice urgent. And then she turned her head to look at Beatrice. At first, I thought I must be mistaken, that perhaps Chrissie couldn’t hold eye contact with me any longer and that her eyes had coincidentally fallen on a ghost. I was so sure I was the only one who could see Beatrice…
But then, in a fervent whisper, Chrissie locked on Beatrice’s gaze and said, “You.”
I heard a gasp and wasn’t sure if it belonged to Beatrice or me. Beatrice put a bony hand over her see-through heart.
Chrissie didn’t take her eyes off my ghost as she continued, “I don’t recognize these people inside this locket that you and your human friend here say I should. But I can see you. And I’ve seen you before, usually at night and sometimes in my dreams, and I always worried you were a figment of my imagination. But now that I see you in the broad daylight in my place of work, I know I’m not making you up. And now you’re going to tell me exactly who you are, and why you’ve been haunting me for years.”
My heart pounded. I turned to Beatrice, waiting for her to answer, for her to defend herself, but suddenly, she flickered, and her form dissipated like smoke.
Chrissie reached forward as though she could grab hold of Beatrice’s arm and keep her here with us, but it didn’t work. I watched them both, my breath shallow. Chrissie staggered a step back, staring at the space where Beatrice had just been sitting.
A whistle sounded across the street as the train screeched into the station. Chrissie and I stared at the bench, and then at each other.
Beatrice was gone.
… To be continued in a novel in the near future
As featured in the November/December 2023 issue of Bedford & New Canaan Magazine