Christmas Consort

White-Eyes Haunt

Finally getting her cigarette lit, Rose took her time. Elegant smoking, thought Kylie who waited patiently for whatever Rose might want to discuss.

Rose blew all her inhalation downwind before gesturing with her smoke toward the folks milling around not far away.

"Good people. Mostly. You come from good stock way back," said Rose. She took another draw. "I've seen the kind you mentioned. Seen a flash of white that was gone the next minute so I couldn't say for sure if it'd ever been there at all."

She let her cigarette dangle over the Harley's handle bars which served as the stone bench's arm rest. "You see something like that?"

Kylie nodded. "And more."

"Ahh." Rose said a lot with that.

Kylie waited. The cigarette ash lengthened without attention.

"I heard about your Christmas confusion. This wouldn't have something to do with that, would it?"

Slow nod.

"Sight is a funny thing," said Rose. "Seems so sure, so...--reliable. I say trust your gut."

"Dad always says that 'trust your gut Kylie.'"

"Just so."

"And," Kylie hesitated, "what if my gut tells me I've...what if I've done somebody wrong?"

"This hypothetical somebody got white eyes?"

Short nods and a swallow.

Rose reached over patted Kylie on the back. "If they were upset about it, I don't think you would be here having this conversation."

They watched as Grandpa John's casket was lowered through the open spot in a large collection of artificial grass. Only family remained, some of them inspecting the stones in the area where their last name was commonly inscribed.

"The White-Eyes, they're bad stock, bad blood even," said Rose. "It's best to stay away from them." The excess ash fell from the cigarette onto the stone fender.

"I feel like I owe him an apology or at least a--"

Rose cut her off. "You don't owe him anything. Nothing." She tucked her large chin into her larger neck and looked at Kylie from under her white brows that contrasted with pale yellow hair. "If you gotta do something, you do it for you. Not for anybody else. We each gotta exorcise our own demons. And if you can let this go, then do."

Rose crushed out the cigarette remains under the stone cross bar and grinned. "Now there's a bit of authenticity. Maybe I should get a black jack table for a head stone."

Kylie smiled. A middle-aged gardener spotted the two of them and brought a trash bag which he held open for Cousin Rose. She regarded him with a mischievous grin before thanking him and flicking the butt into the sack.

"Well if you aren't the spitting image of my second husband." She raised one eyebrow and leaned toward Kylie, "Talk about a man who was good in the sack," then back to the gardener, "Whew it's getting hot out here, you got a fan on you somewhere?" She was leaning around to check out his backside.

He said, "Sorry to say I do not."

Rose plucked at her shirt fanning herself with the fabric. "If you can't cool me down then you best stop heating me up. You go on and we'll just," she waved him off, "watch you go."

The gardener actually blushed as he walked off, but Kylie thought he was strutting a bit as he went. Her cousin never met a man outside the family that she wouldn't flirt with.

Rose stood. "I've always got Lenny on my mind after wintering down at Sanabel. He bought that place for me right before he passed."

Kylie smiled. Large woman or not, Cousin Rose had married almost as many times as Elizabeth Taylor, and every husband very well off. Rose owned property in Indianapolis, Missouri, and Tennessee in addition to the beach house off the west coast of Florida and the casinos put her up in nice rooms whenever she came to gamble which was pretty much every week she wasn't at the races. Nothing ever slowed Rose down very much.

That had been two years ago.

Now Cousin Rose was the reason Kylie was driving from Ohio to NowhereRichardson, Missouri. Kylie had seen Rose once since the funeral and had alluded to her sleep issues.

"You gotta do what you gotta do for yourself," said Rose. "But maybe I can help a little. You'll be hearing from me."

Rose was cremated and scattered off the big boat before the family grapevine got word of her death, and she left Kylie her house in Missouri "to sell, keep or do with anywhat she wants." Rose's will only stipulated that Kylie had to go to the small town and see the property before deciding what to do. Inheriting a house or anything else from Rose's estate shocked Kylie.

Their last conversation rattled in Kylie's mind: "maybe I can help" and "you'll be hearing from me." Was the will Rose's message? Was there something in the house that might help Kylie find the Man in Black?

The sooner Kylie arrived, the sooner she could take care of issues with the tenants and search the house. She figured it might take some time, so she had lined up a job as well.

It was time to dig into the past and exorcise Kylie's nightmares.

A car accident on the way was definitely not part of her plans.