I watched as the bridge materialized and two spirits began to cross over it to the other side. Death is part of life and watching spirits cross over the rainbow bridge is miraculous, but I knew I was going to be dealing with the fallout from families momentarily. It would have been so much easier to just not be in any kind of field where I had to deal with grief stricken family and friends. Sometimes it just didn't pay to have the ability to see and communicate with ghosts.
I could hear the mother sobbing, and when I looked over her husband was trying to comfort her, but it didn't appear to be having much effect. Something was fake about her behavior, it smelled like an act. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it just wasn't real.
Suddenly the coldness that envelopes my body when a spirit is near chilled the air around me. I turned my head just a bit and found myself staring into a pair of violet eyes framed by short black hair. Hair that wasn't dyed. There was a blood tear tattoo just beneath the corner of one of those eyes. A silver eyebrow ring adorned her left eyebrow and its twin was in her bottom lip.
"I wasn't supposed to die." She said, her lips not moving.
I couldn't talk to her here, because no one else could see the young goth woman but me. I discreetly motioned to follow me outside to the garden area. There was no one there at this time of morning. Once I was there, I turned to see if she had followed. Her image was standing next to me.
"What do you mean?"
The spirit looked uncomfortable for a moment. "I wanted to know what happens when we die, so I told my mom and she said, she could help me. That she could help me die for a little while and then she could bring me back. She's a nurse you know."
I turned and stared at the couple through the glass in the waiting room. They weren't paying any attention to me, the mother was too busy putting on her act and attracting a lot of attention. At least the act made sense now.
"So what did she tell you to do that would allow you to die for a little while and then she'd miraculously revive you after a short time?"
"Have you ever seen that movie The Frightners?"
I had actually and I was quickly seeing where this was going. "She had you get into a walk-in freezer and she locked you in?"
"Yeah." Goth girl was looking a little sheepish now. "My dad owns a restaurant." She shrugged.
"So, what went wrong?" I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Some sixth sense was telling me this wasn't about some goth kid wanting to know what it was like to die anymore, and had become murder.
"She didn't revive me." Anger bled out of her tone. "It seems she had taken out a million dollar life insurance policy on me. I mean I know my mother isn't like other mother's she's not all touchy feely, you know? But I didn't think she wanted me dead."
I looked at the spirit again. Black lipstick, black nail polish, piercings, purple t-shirt, celtic crosses with amethysts in the centers, black slacks and biker boots. She'd wanted to know what it was like to die, but she hadn't counted on her avaricious and greedy mother. Now she knew what death meant, but she was also stuck and I had a feeling she wasn't going to cross over until her mother's guilt was clearly established.
Honestly, the dead are easy to deal with, it's the living that make my job so much harder. I nodded at Charity, such an old fashioned name for a girl that was anything but. "I'll see what I can do. No promises, but your mother does need to pay for what she's done."
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