GHOST OF A CHANCE_CHAPTER 24_SEPULCHRE OF THE PAST

{"Half forgotten things

in the depths of time ...

they lie with significance, waiting for the simplest sign of life ...

Disconnected things, you exist within a kind of truth,

and the consequence of a consumated trial of fire."

- Sarah Blasko.}

{You would think that a ghost couldn't feel dread. But I do. I know what's coming next.

Samuel Clemens here. I was feeling pretty frisky. I should have know better.

We were in Meilori's, the supernatural New Orleans jazz club where the dead, the undead, and the living could kill one another.

The ghost of Marlene Dietrich had dispatched the vampire Nazi, Strasser, though his head was still squawking.

Now, I see so much I should have seen -- seen and warned Roland. Let his words from his journal take it from here. The hot tears are blurring my eyes.}:


As the ghost of Lauren Bacall straightened from jamming her napkin into Strasser's mouth, her slit skirt fell open, revealing a lot of shapely leg.

Marlene stiffened as parts of her anatomy came to attention.

My Lakota vision swirled about her, the years blurring away like phantoms of displaced time. To my eyes, she was young, early teens.

Eyes haunted even so. And I stiffened, seeing that the art of the saber wasn't the only thing her step-father had taught her.

Lauren smiled and spoke in that smoky way of hers, "Thank you, Marlene. Any way I can thank you?"

The ghost of Humphrey Bogart looked uncomfortable. Me, too. Mark Twain literally bristled.

"Valkyrie, you make me want to spank you."

Marlene spoke to him but looked at me. "I am what I have always been."

"Not always," I said, seeing the specter of her step-father hovering over her teen's face .

Marlene's eyes closed like fists. "There are times when I hate that Lakota gift of yours."

I shook my head. "Who said I considered it a gift?"

Lauren looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes and laughed throatily, "That's right. They call you DreamSinger."

She studied me for a silent moment. "What can you tell me of my past?"

Bogart looked even more uncomfortable, though he tried to hide it.

Lauren spoke to Marlene : "I was flattered by your attention. Generally women are better than men -- they have more character.

I prefer men for some things, obviously, but women have a greater sense of honor and are more willing to take a chance with their lives.”

My Lakota blood whispered a bitter song to me, and I answered the question softly,

"That in the past, as in the present, Mr. Bogart has always been loved by Lauren of the long legs and sexy smile."

Bogart smiled wide and relieved. "That's Bogey to you, kid."

Mark Twain squeezed my shoulder. Marlene stabbed me with haunted eyes.

"And what do you see in me?"

I paused. How to speak my heart, here in this place where shadows had ears?

"What does love look like, Marlene? It is beyond the microscope and past the length of hope. I cannot put it into clumsy words."

I reached for her hand. She pulled it away. She stepped back into the shadows.

Bogey's face became rock. He reached down and pulled his trench coat from the chair back next to him.

"Here, kid, put this on. It'll match your fedora."

He helped me on with it and bent his head next to mine, whispering so softly I almost missed his words.

"Dames can forgive you everything, son, except forgiving them."

A shadow fell across the lot of us. And Marlene and Mark Twain turned to face the figure approaching us. Together, they literally spit one word :

"You!"
***