“Mrs. Bendsfield?”
Her voice echoed across the barn.
“Huh? Who there?” Mrs. Bendsfield called back, her voice shrill.
Dani couldn’t locate her. “It’s me, Mrs. Bendsfield’s. Dani O’Hara.”
“What? What you say? I thought a moment you said Dani O’Hara, but that can’t be right. That girl’s been dead a long time.” The voice was still distant, and both voices kept echoing.
“No. No, it’s me, Mrs. Bendsfield. I came back home.”
“No, no. It’s me. I’m just fooling in the head again. Little Daniella O’Hara was taken by that cancer. I know because her mother came crying to me. Thirty-four back then.”
Dani caught her breath. She hadn’t heard words spoken about Sandra, ever. It had been an understood rule—no one talked about her grandmother.
Mrs. Bendsfield mused to herself. “Oh no. I know you’s in my head. Little Daniella O’Hara died long while back, left three rabbits behind, and her mother just sobbed and sobbed. No one knows what to do. No one knows what to do. Little Daniella O’Hara was the minx and angel, I tell you. Half-minx and half-angel, that one. No one knows what to do.”
Dani took a hesitant step forward. Crossing toward the pottery studio, she continued to hear Mrs. Bendsfied mutter, and realized she was in a back room where a heavy plastic curtain was hung from the ceiling.
“I knows I’m just hearing my own voices. Memories, that’s what they are. Little Daniella O’Hara, always came around these parts. She just took a liking to Oscar, that she did. No one knows what to do. Her mother always cried to me. Thought I was supposed to know what to do, but I didn’t. Clueless. Just like the rest of them! Oh no. That girl’s just back to haunt me. Always knew it was coming. Always knew it was coming.”
Dani paused at the doorway and saw Mrs. Bendsfield’s petite figure. She wore a loose long-sleeved shirt, as big as the old woman was, and she was bent over a pot. Mrs. Bendsfield was circling with a paintbrush in hand, pausing sporadically to lean forward and make a dab. She was adding detail to the pot.
Dani saw herself staring into an oncoming ocean wave. And she suddenly felt, literally felt, the waves coming for her.
Choking in a breath, she steeled herself. The waves crashed back, and she heard the first scream—”Daniella O’Hara?”
Mrs. Bendsfield stood frozen, hand raised, clenching a small paintbrush.
“Uh…” Dani blinked, pushing the memory away. “Mrs. Bendsfield, I came in because I saw—”
“No.” Mrs. Bendsfield interrupted, waving the paintbrush at her, stabbing the air. “Do you know what you’ve been doing to me? Years of guilt, girl. Years of guilt, and here you are, living, breathing, and part of my delusions. I want you out! Out!”
“No. No. Mrs. Bendsfield, it’s me. Dani O’Hara. I’m Daniella’s daughter. I came in because I saw one of your cows got loose. She’s in the ditch.”
Mrs. Bendsfield sniffed and crossed her arms. The paintbrush smeared paint across her face and arm, but she didn’t notice as she stared intensely at her. She circled Dani’s form, studying her from every angle. Then she murmured, “You’re the best damn delusion I’ve ever had. I must’ve had an extra dose of mushrooms in that last batch.”
The lady wasn’t senile. She was high.
“Mrs. Bendsfield, I am not a delusion and I am not my mother’s ghost here to haunt you. I am here because one of your cows got loose.” Her head inclined forward an inch. “A cow.”
“Oh.” She waved the paintbrush in a dismissing manner. “That’s GoldenEye. She wanted to go for a walk, so I let her loose. Don’t worry. She’ll come back.”
“Mrs. Bendsfield.”
“No, no.” Mrs. Bendsfield turned back to her pottery and hunched down on her haunches. She returned to painting. “GoldenEye always comes back. Always has, always will. You can either take off or you can sit and entertain me a bit.”
Dani sighed.
“Don’t get snippy with me. You’re my delusion.”
Dani glanced back to the door, but sat on an empty chair in the corner. She’d never known that Mrs. Bendsfield knew her grandmother. She wanted to know why her mother’s ghost would be haunting the potter.
“Why would I be haunting you?”
Mrs. Bendsfield sniffed, wrinkling her nose at Dani. “You know why. Don’t play that game with me. Not with me, girly ghost.”
“I’m here and I’m haunting you, but I don’t know why. I’d at least like to know why. I’m an amnesic ghost.”
Mrs. Bendsfield fixed her with another hair-raising stare. Then she shrugged. “Because you loved my Oscar and I wouldn’t have any of that.”
Oscar Bendsfield was Mrs. Bendsfield’s son. He went missing thirty years ago, and the story was that he fought with his mother over his absent father. He wanted to find him. She didn’t. But he swore he would and that night, he walked to the woods and never came back. The story was told over campfires and during sleepovers. The moral had been to avoid empty threats. Some argued he hadn’t made an empty threat. He was still searching for his vagabond father, but some thought he’d gotten snatched and murdered. Still, others always said Mrs. Bendsfield killed him in a rage because he dared defy her word.
Dani always rolled her eyes every time she heard the story. It was a stupid rumor created by mothers to scare their children from using emotional blackmail, but she found herself asking, “Did he love me?”