Presenting the final part of the Spectral Advocate bonus, The Commitment. It’s been fun sharing this piece of history with you. There are some definite cringe moments with the writing side of things, but overall, the story still makes me happy.

Thanks for reading and enjoy this final chapter.

The Commitment Part 3

“I don’t want this, Caryn. I came to here to talk. To reason.” His words sounded hollow. He held tight to the sheet of paper on the table. Caryn Roberts’ blank stare shifted from him to the cream-colored printer paper. Small beads of sweat pooled along his brow despite the freezing temperatures surrounding their little chat.

“To hurt me!” Strands of thick wallpaper shredded from around the room spun wildly in her rage. Cal followed the movements, waiting for Caryn’s distorted and twisted visage to take root in the room once more.

“Have I done that?” Cal asked loudly. “If I have, I’m sorry. But all I’ve done is tell the truth.”

“Drew used me up and now he’s moved on,” the wind screamed, getting closer and closer like a constricting vise around him. It blew his moppy brown locks over his eyes and he fought to keep his eyes on the room.

“You’re wrong.”

“You don’t know him,” Cal held tight to the table, feeling the shredding wind cut around him tighter. Faster. Any closer and his back was at risk of being sliced in long strands like the wallpaper that surrounded him.

“I think I do, Caryn,” Cal’s voice boomed. “And I think he loves you very much. Even eight years later. Why else would he call me?”

The wind went into a holding pattern, the confused and torn form of Caryn Roberts resting across the table. “To… to do whatever that thing will do.”

“This?” Cal asked, pressing harder on the single sheet of paper between them. “Last resort. I came to help you. You can see that, can’t you?” He held up a finger, begging for the moment to last just one second longer, before diving back into his briefcase to retrieve another document. This one filled with print, packed tight in a dozen sheets of the same cream colored paper that he continued to hold firm against the table.

“What is that?”

Cal laid it out before the waiting Caryn Roberts, the storm quieting around him yet remained spinning through the room. “The house. Right here. Drew signed it away to the women you were less than cordial to, but it wasn’t all his to sell, was it?”

“Why would I…?”

“It’s not about the house, Caryn,” Cal admitted, laying the pen beside the document. “What it can be though is a sign. A blessing for Drew.”

“Never,” she snapped, shaking her head profusely.

“You love him, don’t you?”

Her eyes returned, wide and beaming with the life they once held. The dress remained mangled, the twisted visage slowly fading with the wind around him as the dead woman stared intently at the paper before her. The choice before her. “He’s my husband. Of course, I…”

“He’s moved on,” Cal continued, his words calm and measured. “He loves you still. Cherishes your memory. But he’s still living. Not here. Not where he shared all those time with you. I’m sure he tried. I’m sure it hurt him to leave it behind. I’m sure it hurts him even more knowing you’re still here. In this place. He wouldn’t want that for you. But he needs to live. You would have wanted that same chance, wouldn’t you?”

Frost receded, the wind all but gone from the room. Cal felt warmth return to his arm and his back, the stabbing pain of her sweet caress a fading memory. “But…”

“Caryn,” Cal pressed, pointing to the pen. “It’s time.”

“I won’t,” she replied, her words a mere whisper.

“You have to. You have to do this, Caryn. And you know it.”

Where once her cigarette wafted smoke around her, came the mist of tears from her swollen eyes. The pen lifted by her unseen hand and scrawled quickly along the paper. It was illegible, the emotion of the moment, keeping her from fully concentrating. But it was enough.

“He always made me happy,” Caryn said. “Even the cigarette thing.”

The pen dropped, rolling the length of the table to the dust covered floor of the dining room. Cal bent to retrieve it, the cold breath from his lips no longer present.

“Caryn?” Cal called out when he stood. The room was empty, his work completed in the vacant home in Maryland. He nodded slightly, satisfied. He retrieved the signed documents turning the home over to its new owners, hoping they would be able to push through the terror of their brief time in the place. The home deserved a second chance at life.

With the papers tucked neatly in the briefcase, Cal lifted the single sheet of paper on the table. Blank on both sides. His so-called last resort. He hated the feeling that he had pressed his luck, but he had faith in Caryn Roberts. Faith in her making the right choice. And in his own decision to give her that chance. Cal held the door open to the cold winter afternoon looking back once more at the emptiness within. This time with a smile.

“Thank you, Caryn.”

Welcome back to the Spectral Advocate bonus, The Commitment. The original intent was to explain Cal’s appearance in Bethesda when he runs into Ben Riley. The initial draft never went into detail, though subsequent drafts connected Abigail Winslow to the Cooper Massacre as the real reason for his visit.

Enjoy Part 2 of this Spectral Advocate bonus.

The Commitment Part 2

“Liar,” Caryn Roberts hissed at the stranger across the table.

Cal straightened in his chair, clearing his throat loudly. Part of him wished he had some water or that some was available but it would have been one more thing to mention to apparition floating on the chair in front of him. He shrugged lightly. “That would be my reaction too. But I’m not.”

Caryn stood, screaming, “I’m not dead. Are you insane?”

“The thought had occurred,” Cal replied, regretting it immediately. She scoffed at the comment, frantically pacing the room in an effort to prove her existence to him. He wished it had been a question of sanity. It bedeviled him, the memory of the accident over the curve near his parent’s estate. The voices in the hospital and the psych treatments that followed at his father’s request. The constant questions it brought up for him. Through it all the evidence remained. As clearly as it did right now with Caryn Roberts.

It was a gift, he reminded himself. One he never wanted. Not the idiot rich kid, unsure how to appreciate the newfound wealth of his family or what it meant to the definition of the term. So much time spent angry and resentful, instead of working to put their lives back together. The way it had been before. By the time of his accident it was too late. Too much had changed since those days. He had changed. On days like this, however, he wondered if there was a way to go back, a way to switch off that part of his brain that saw things so differently than everyone else, the one that knew there was a deeper meaning to the world than others did, and the one that saw the deeper pain within it all.

Especially when it came to days like this with Caryn Roberts.

“Honestly, I hate this part,” Cal continued while the ghostly specter of Drew Roberts’ former bride paced the vacant dining room of the home they once shared. “Let me ask you a question, though. When was the last time you put out your cigarette?”

Caryn stopped at the query, momentarily pausing the drag on her habit forming phallic symbol and staring at it intently. Then the anger returned to the man across the table. “What the hell are you…?”

“We’ve been talking for awhile now,” Cal straightened in the chair. He checked the gold watch around his left wrist more for emphasis than a need to know the hour of the day. “Mind you, I’m no smoker but the way you’ve been puffing, that thing should have been a nub in the ashtray five minutes ago. Don’t you think?”

“So what if I take my…”

Cal shook his head, glancing around the room. “Where is the ashtray by the way? The one filled with that reminder pack from all the worry about your husband? Maybe packed up with the rest of the place? Caryn…”

She was in front of him in an instant, her wide eyes screaming louder than her disembodied voice. Anything to fight what was being told to her. “Don’t you dare call me…”

“Bad news, remember?” Cal said plainly. He hated to do it, to antagonize at the moment of clarity with his host, but he needed to move forward. He needed to make her see what was happening. “You died.”

The screaming visage of Caryn Roberts took a step back at Cal’s assertion. She took a puff from the cigarette, stopping halfway through, the smoke wafting over her. She stared at the cloud gathered, the trail running from the lit end of the cigarette. Cal stayed quiet, letting her questioning gaze tell the story for him. Slowly, Caryn moved back to the chair and sat back down. Her legs crossed once more, her head low to the ground. The beauty was faded, the reflection of younger days gone with the illusion of her current state.

“You came here to tell me that?” she asked bitterly.

“No,” Cal replied. His voice was soft. Sympathetic. “I was hoping you knew that. Makes everything else go a little smoother. But it does explain a few other things, so there is that.”

“What are you…?” The question rose angrily from her cracked lips, no longer lush and full. She held it back, eyes on the young man at the table. “Why are you here?”

“For Drew,” Cal said, hands folded in front of him. “He’s getting married. Well, remarried.”

“That… How?” Cal felt the chill fill the room. Caryn shook her head fiercely, unable to process more after everything she had been told. “That son of a bitch.”

Cal’s hands moved closer to the briefcase. “Not really fair there.”

“It’s been days,” Caryn yelled. Her words ripped through the room, a torrent of wind and rage flowing around her guest. “Who was it? That blond that was here? Her or that friend she was with, the one with the tattoo over her cleavage?”

Cal held up a finger, refusing to look at the woman across the table. He opened the briefcase, reaching within for a small file. It smacked hard on the table. Two photos slipped out of the shabbily kept folder, which he moved to the center of the plastic tabletop for his host to get a better view. A woman with blond hair was captured in one and one with black in the other. Cal pointed to the images. “You mean Jessica Stafford and Patricia Jacobs?”

Caryn refused to look. “I didn’t catch their names.”

“No. You were busy doing other things. Recognize these?” Cal pushed the images closer. Each one taken from the official police report he had been able to procure from Drew Roberts. Each woman had been marred with long scratch marks long their skin. Deep and thick from a brutal assault, though neither could identify their attacker. Both now simply carried her branding, unique to each of them. Jessica’s arm read the word “WHORE” lengthwise. Patricia received the worse of the two, engraved with the word “TRAMP” over her angel wing tattoo on her chest. “Do you even remember doing this?”

Caryn scoffed. “Like I would…”

“You did,” Cal persisted, feeling the temperature of the home continue to drop. It wasn’t from the fading daylight outside or the freezing temperatures of the December winter in Maryland. He kept his focus on the images and the woman now staring directly at them. “And no, they don’t even know Drew. They just bought his house.”

“His…?” Caryn tried to find the right words. The shock of the statement. “Now you listen…”

Cal stopped her. “You think it’s been days, Caryn?”

“It has been days!”

The young attorney hesitated. He knew where they were headed. He had seen it dozens of times before, though each one brought its own challenges. As well as more than a few risks. Mostly to him. He was really hoping for a simple discussion. Cal licked his lip lightly.

“It’s been eight years.”

In an instant the windows froze over. The chill ripped into Cal, up his arms, down his spine to his toes. The tears in the wallpaper lining the room tore and shred in large claw marks. The dusty floor crystallized from the changes, spinning outward further and further from the woman across the table. All that remained in the frozen lake that was once a dining room was the table and the two seated at it.

“No.”

Cal took a breath, filling his lungs with the deep cold. “Listen, Caryn.” He tried to reach out, though he knew the futility in it. The woman in the tight dress now looked frayed and frazzled. The makeup that adorned her skin now tore away in drips and drabs, discoloring her already pale skin. The woman in her early twenties was gone, replaced by the diseased and crippled form she left the earth with. Her head remained fixed on the ground, staring at her non-existent reflection though to her Cal believed the image was clear. Still, Cal tried to reason with her. “I know this is difficult…”

“Are you dead too?”

Cal ran his hand along the back of his neck. “No, but…”

“Your spouse ditching you for some skank while you’re cooling underground?” Caryn moved closer, not in rhythmic steps as she had when she entered the room, but the shifting of someone unable to remain in check. Her emotions seeped into the temperature of the room, into her appearance to the young attorney from upstate New York. Even her voice changed with each passing word, growing deeper and omnipresent rather than from a fixed point.

Cal straightened in the chair, refusing to take the bait. His hand slid closer to the briefcase. “That’s not exactly what…”

“I gave him everything,” she screamed, shattering the wooden railing running the length of the stairs. The two photos spread on the table were caught in a whirlwind before being shredded from view by unseen hands. Scraps scattered along the frozen floor.

“Caryn,” Cal called out in a quiet voice. His hand remained near the briefcase.

The shifting became incessant. From the right to the left of him, her hands scraping and picking at his flesh, but never assaulting him. She was testing her boundaries, testing him in the moment and he let her.

“Love. Devotion. Heart. Soul. Body,” she railed, her voice booming from the vaulted ceiling overhead. “That is commitment! Where is his? Answer me!”

“You have to stop,” Cal said with closed eyes. “Please.”

“Or what?”

Cal slowly stood, his hand reaching into the briefcase. “Please.”

He opened his eyes to see her across the table once more. No longer beautiful. No longer radiant even with the plume of smoke rising from her never-ending cigarette. She was twisted with each word, with each feeling that cut through her. The revelation of her death. Of Drew’s promise to another without her. A life without her. A spirit no longer haunted but vengeful in its presence, shaping the world around her rage.

The sunken chasms that were once her eyes screamed at him, “What will you do, lawyer?”

Cal refused to back down, feeling her immaterial claws digging into his sides. “Two people are hurt, Caryn. It could have been worse but it doesn’t change things.”

His hand returned from the briefcase carrying a single sheet of paper. He kept it low to the table, letting it settle on the cool surface before placing his hand firmly upon it to keep it in place. His eyes, however, never left the vicious ghost before him. He refused to give her the moment, the thrill of another victim. Hers, though, wide and black as night stared intently at the paper. Curiosity crept in at what was held on the opposite side of the single sheet held between them.

“And what do you think that will do?”

Cal’s eyes thinned. “End this, I’m afraid. One way or another.”