The Omen Days Read online

  The Omen Days

  A Christmas Ghost Story

  J.T. Ellison

  Contents

  THE OMEN DAYS

  About the Story

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Also by J.T. Ellison

  Sneak Peeks

  LIE TO ME

  Praise for J.T. Ellison’s LIE TO ME

  Prologue

  Ethan

  We Find a Body

  Something’s Missing

  FIELD OF GRAVES

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  THE ABANDONED HEART by Laura Benedict

  About Laura

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  THE OMEN DAYS

  Christmas

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Mercy Lounge. Heaving masses of bodies writhing back and forth in time with the heavy bass beat, yelling and screaming, happy faces locked on the stage, eyes lit up and mouths stretched into manic grins. It smells like teen spirit, and brimstone, and cold iron from the overhead girders, which are sprinkled with fake frost, all overlaid with the thick, sweet scent of liquor. Guilty Pleasures are playing a Christmas show. I am drinking. Heavily.

  I hate Christmas.

  It’s not only the weather. Christmas in the South is hit or miss. Some years, it’s eighty degrees and we’re playing football in the backyard. Others it’s cold enough for snow, light dustings of white crystals shadowing everything. Most years, though, it’s freezing cold, and bleak, and empty. Slate skies with nothing falling but the temperature and my mood. What’s the point of Christmas without snow?

  But that’s Nashville for you. Utterly unpredictable. Especially during the holidays, when the kids are off from school and the parents are high on rage and champagne and tinsel and greed, loaded with murderous intent.

  Thinking about it, maybe hate isn’t a strong enough word. I loathe Christmas. I despise it. I would rather dig a hole the first weekend of December and emerge again with that poor groundhog in February, when the insanity and water-cooler talk of the holidays are truly over.

  Maybe it’s because I don’t have a family nearby, and I’m not religious, and as low man on the totem pole, I usually get stuck on call. There’s nothing like being an undercover cop on Christmas. You see everything humanity has to give at the holidays. It’s like the full moon: it brings out the worst in people, and it brings out the best in others. I rarely see the best, though. Nature of the beast.

  Maybe it’s because people are harried, tired of the year and the demands of their lives, or because they’re ready to turn over a new leaf, to start fresh, start again. It does feel like we’re all simply going through the motions.

  And not maybe, truth: spending the holidays alone sucks.

  What I do sort of like are the days after Christmas. That time when all goes quiet: silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. A certain peace steals over the city, as if everyone’s breath is held in anticipation of the new year.

  The calendar didn’t used to have an exact number of days, and it ran according to the sun. The long nights and shorter days of winter meant there were always a few days at the end of the sun year that didn’t fit in with the calendar. This is a mystical time. If you look at your Greek, Norse, or Roman mythology, this is when legends are born, when gods and goddesses spring forth, crossing the veil of the two worlds, blurring the lines between mortal and immortal. This is where the twelve days of Christmas really comes from—not silly gifts of French hens and lords leaping and partridges. It’s those lost days at the end of the year.

  The Omen Days.

  I think it would be better if we called them by their true title. It’s more fitting, really. You can figure out a lot about your life in those twelve days after Christmas, when the old year dies and all its highs and lows become a memory.

  But whatever you call it, or I call it, I can’t find the joy in the season. Not anymore. It hasn’t been a real Christmas since I lost her.

  So I count the days until the season draws to a close and do everything I can to distract myself. Like tonight’s bacchanalia on Cannery Row.

  Grimey shouts something and the band switches gears, going full bore into “Cruel Summer,” and the girls from behind the bar jump on the stage and dance. I’m dancing now too, throwing my left arm in the air, trying not to spill the drink in my right hand. I have enough whiskey in my system to let me relax a bit. The band plays on and on, mining the best hits from a bygone era. With each new tune, I scream the words at the top of my lungs, feel the enmity leave. The crowd melts together into the most raucous sing-along yet. “And I’m gonna keep on loving you . . . ”

  I gulp more of my old buddy Jack with its tiny splash of Coke for fizz, let the blessed numbness calm my tortured soul.

  The band shifts to Journey, and I’m believing, all right. I’m taken back to our first prom. The whiskey threatens to come up, so I have some more. I’m rocked now, completely drunk, limbs loose, vision off. On stage, if I’m not mistaken, someone has joined the band and is wearing a codpiece. Ballsy.

  My shift today was long and sad and full of unhappy people doing stupid things, and tonight I am trying to disappear into the fabric of the city and let it consume me. I order another drink. I will feel exactly like hell tomorrow, but tonight . . . tonight, I can try to forget.

  I’m here with my two best friends, Stephen and Jim. We used to be roommates until my undercover gig made it awkward for me and too dangerous for them. I needed room to be by myself, roaming town as the lone wolf, busting drug dealers and pimps, but I miss the days at the townhouse, the three of us howling at the moon together.

  Friends are a good thing to have when you’re alone.

  Jim is a patient advocate lawyer, and Stephen is a writer. They’re both good at their jobs: Stephen won an award for his debut novel this spring and is writing a new book, and Jim got a partner offer last week. The three of us couldn’t be more different. We met at Vanderbilt freshman year, in Dr. Tichi’s English Comp, and have been thick as thieves ever since. They got me through the breakup, for which I’m usually grateful. Usually.

  These two men are good to their cores. I wouldn’t be the man I am without them. Though at this moment, their actions are questionable. They are dancing, unsteady and silly, jumping up and down, heads bobbing. Jim is carelessly spilling beer down his arm, soaking his blue Brooks Brothers button-down, but he’s too drunk to care. Stephen is drinking whiskey, like me, but at a slower pace. He has to meet up with family tomorrow and doesn’t want to spend the day puking and green. He is sliding around from side to side, creating enough space in the crowd to do the moonwalk, the “Thriller” dance, the works. He looks like an idiot. I love him. I love both of them.

  We are moving as one, the crowd and the guys, and the music is pumping and I’m almost, almost, at a place I could call happy when I turn my head to shout at Stephen’s antics. . . and that’s when I see her. The world screeches to a halt. The music fades. The room stops heaving.

  Autumn is here.

  Autumn Cleary was my first everything: friend, kiss, car ride, football game, dinner date, blow job, sex. We met in kindergarten and spent the next eighteen years either fighting or kissing, and sometimes both at once. We had plans, man. White picket fences and two point five kids and a dog. The whole American dream.

  But soon after we graduated from college, Autumn broke my heart.

  It was a clean break. She looked at me one night two weeks before Christmas, when we were getting ready for bed, and said, “I’m leaving in the morning. I thought you should know, in case you wanted to talk about it.”

  “What do you mean you’re leaving? On a trip? To where?”


  Brilliant of me, I know. No one ever said I was smart.

  She sat down on the side of the bed, her blond hair falling in waves around her shoulders. She’d gotten it cut two days earlier, taking her waist-length hair to a long bob, a lob, she called it, and it was so different. She was so different.

  She must have seen some sort of recognition of that in my eyes, because she smiled sadly and touched her hair self-consciously. “I know it’s strange. I needed a change, and this wasn’t enough. I need to do something else. I love you. I’ll always love you. But I want to be by myself for a while.”

  A desperate wave of fear and hurt and panic started to rise in my chest. I wanted to roar, to scream, to beg and plead. My worst fears were being realized, my very worst nightmares coming alive. Losing Autumn would kill me dead, as sure as a bullet. My heart rattled against my ribs, and I took a deep breath, somehow managed to hold the tidal wave at bay.

  “Did I do something? Say something? What in the name of fuck is wrong, Autumn?”

  She smelled of cinnamon. She’d been decorating the apartment—why would you decorate if you were planning to leave, Autumn?—and I had the insane urge to push her down and roll on her body like a dog, get her scent all over me before it was too late: cinnamon and cloves and lavender and that soap she used on our clothes, the organic stuff that was safe for the environment and smelled like rain. It was a heady perfume, and I didn’t want to forget it.

  Perched on the edge of our big bed, she said the words that tore us asunder. “Baby, if I knew the answer, I wouldn’t have to leave. Something’s wrong. I don’t know if it’s you or me, but I’m going to give us some space and find out. I don’t want to end up like our parents. I refuse to do that. You remember how . . .”

  Remember? How could I not? Autumn’s mom had pretty severe clinical depression one year, got sadder and sadder, and she started to drink, and her dad ignored them both, spent all his time in the basement or the golf course, until her mom finally decided enough was enough and hung herself in the bathroom. Autumn was eight. She never got over it. Not that anyone expected her to.

  Autumn was still talking. “ . . . and I don’t want that to happen to us. I’d rather remember us as perfect than spend a minute unhappy.”

  “You’re unhappy?” I’d whispered, confused, so confused.

  “Yeah, I think I am.” She’d reached out a hand and grabbed mine, her long white fingers so elegant and soft against my blunt ones. “You’re not happy either. You just don’t want to admit it. Trust me. This is for the best.”

  Then she drew me down and kissed me, and we made love, hard and wet and furious and desperate, and in the morning, when I woke up, she was gone. My soul was broken in two, and nothing, nothing, could ever fix it.

  All I’ve dreamed about for the past seven years is finding her again. Holding her in my arms, warm and fragrant. Having the life I’d always envisioned, the one where we’re together with our kids and our dog, our happy, perfect dream. It was always us against the world.

  And here she is. She’s standing by the door, a drink in her hand. As far as I know, she hasn’t been back to Nashville since she left. She wasn’t close to her dad after her mom’s death, had bounced around her girlfriends’ houses and mine until she moved in with me permanently sophomore year of college, our first apartment.

  I assume she still has friends here. No one speaks Autumn’s name to me. Ever. It is an understanding I have with my whole world. We were the “Most Likely” couple. Prom king and queen, most likely to get married, most likely to get pregnant in college, everything. When we broke up, it was like a bubble of hope and comfort burst for everyone who knew us. Everyone hates her for what she did to me, how she left me—all of a sudden, with no real warning, and no real explanations. No one understands what happened, least of all me.

  From what little I know, Autumn has gotten on with her life. I haven’t, not really. Don’t think I’ve lived a monk for seven years. There have been other women. None have touched my soul the way Autumn did. No one ever will.

  Face it: I’m a heartbroken asshole who can’t get over his first love.

  A first love who is now moving toward me. Almost like she’s making sure I see her. She’s getting closer.

  Is she going to come over here and talk to me?

  Panic rises in me. I have the insane urge to run away. I don’t know what I’ll do if she tries to talk to me. I’m torn between hugging her and hitting her, which is a very bad way to feel when I’ve consumed half a bottle of Jack.

  I’m not a volatile guy, but this woman ruined me.

  Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  She’s watching me. She looks sad. Thin. The blond hair is even shorter now than when I saw her last. It grazes her chin, the front longer than the back, the ends flipping toward me like a ski jump.

  Stephen and Jim notice me staring away from the stage. Stephen says, “Dude, what is your damage?”

  “Autumn,” I manage to spit out.

  Jim overhears this news, sobers immediately, puts a hand on my arm as if to hold me back. He cranes his neck to see over the crowd. “Where? I don’t see her.”

  “By the door. Her hair’s short.”

  “I still don’t see her. I’m going over.”

  “Shit, no. Don’t. Stay here. If anyone should go over, it’s me.”

  Autumn is still staring at me. I take one step toward her, ignoring the cries of my friends. Another. Then a big guy wearing a flannel shirt and Dr. Martens steps to her side. She smiles up at him, gratefully, I think, casts one last glance at me, almost as if she wants to be sure I’m watching, and leaves with the lumberjack.

  Autumn leaves. She walks out without saying anything to me, and I am struck dumb and nearly blind by the pain.

  The guys shuffle me over to the bar, dump me on a stool covered in questionable stains, and shove another drink in my hand. Seconds later, it is gone and another replaces it.

  One of them asks, “You okay, dude?”

  “Did you see her?” I choke out. “Who was that douche she left with?” I am slurring. I am making no sense.

  Stephen’s eyes are grave. “I didn’t see her, man.”

  “Me neither,” Jim adds. “She must have chickened out when she saw you. I didn’t know she was back in town. I thought I would have heard.”

  If anyone would have, it was Jim. He’d always had his finger on the pulse of our crowd, and his girlfriend Joy had been Autumn’s best friend back in the day. They’d kept in touch for a few years, probably more, but I’d asked not to be informed when they heard from her. It hurt too damn much.

  Stephen is looking at me with concern. “You’re pretty fucked up. Maybe we should bail.”

  “You stay. I want to be alone.” I manage to stand up, though my legs are wobbly. I hear Jim murmur, “Is he carrying?” and Stephen say, “Is he ever not?” and Jim comes to my side and says quietly, the word a demand, “Gun.”

  A pretty girl with wads of blond dreadlocks whips her heads around. A wave of patchouli stings my nose. She’s gone white, instantly terrified, is staring at Jim, ready to spring away to save herself.

  “Fun!” Jim yells, waving her off, then walks me to the door. I see Stephen eyeing Patchouli; he’s always gone for the hippy types. Good. I like it when he’s occupied. He’ll go home with the girl instead of sleeping on my couch. I wasn’t kidding when I said I want to be alone right now.

  Down the stairs, out the doors. Half the crowd is out on the sidewalk and balcony smoking. I slur my way into bumming one. Jim helps me light it, then walks me into the parking lot.

  He makes sure we’re alone. I use a vintage Beetle covered in stickers to hold myself up.

  He points to my ankle holster, hidden beneath my jeans and boot. “Do you need to leave that with me?”

  “Naw, no reason to. There’s more where that came from.”

  “Not funny, dude. I don’t want you doing anything stupid.”

  “You’re a good friend, man.
” I slap at his chest, missing, hitting his bicep instead. “Yeah, I’m good. Gonna walk. Walk it off.”

  Jim looks worried. He’s thinking he should make sure I get home in one piece.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’m a grown man. I’ve grown up, man.” This strikes me as funny, and I start to giggle. Jim purses his lips like a teacher about to scold me, and it sets me off in gales of laughter. He rolls his eyes. He’s not sober, not by a long shot, or else he’d never send me off alone, but I am in luck. He’s drunk enough to let me go.

  “Okay, tough guy. Call me in the morning. Don’t be a dummy. Walk straight home. Don’t drink anything more.”

  “Yes, Mom. I will not pass Go. I will not collect two hundred dollars. I will not eat pancakes with a fox. I will not linger with the lox.”

  “You’re a fucking idiot.” Jim starts to say something else, then squeezes my shoulder and heads back inside. It feels good to be alone.

  A chick in angel wings and thigh-high boots walks past me, smoking.

  “Hey. Can I buy your pack off you?”

  She gives me a look, then tosses it to me. “Looks like you need them more than me. Merry Christmas, beeyotch.”

  I nod gratefully. Merry fucking Christmas, indeed.

  I walk. The city is quiet, and there’s glory in this.

  I head toward Broadway, past Cummins Station, giving it a dirty look as I go. They’re ruining the historical building, and it hurts to see my town growing and changing the way it has in the past few years. We’re being overrun. I think the crane-to-person ratio is at an all-time high. They have T-shirts with cranes in the Nashville skyline now. We have totally jumped the shark with all the new construction. Soon enough it will be a ghost town again, the new buildings only partially full, because the millennials are getting knocked up and moving to the suburbs for better schools. Wax and wane. The story of any city.