Britt's eyes fluttered open, and she drew a sharp, startled breath.
She stared up at the canopy of the four-poster bed, dotted with golden stars her mother had sewn on years ago, some of those, like her, now hanging by a thread. She was tangled in tangy wet sheets, alternately shivering and sweating. It was still dark and she wondered how long she'd been asleep.
She gingerly sat up and looked around the dimly lit room, her head throbbing as though she'd been out painting the town instead of lying balled in a fetal position for god knows how many hours.
The memory of her inexplicable dive to that cavern, her discovery of Aunt Maggie's skeletal remains deep inside of it, and her own narrow escape, all of this as a passenger in a body hijacked by a spirit, came flooding back. At least now she seemed to have regained possession of her drained middle-aged self.
What time is it? she wondered and she reached for her cell on the night table beside the bed. It lit up and she released a long moan. It was the following night, she'd slept away the entire day. She'd blown off her appointments with the real estate agent and photographer, and worse, the lawyer to sell this bloody haunted mansion.
She was less surprised to find more voicemails and texts, all with the same NYC area code, and she braced herself to finally face the music with the agent she'd been avoiding for over a week now, her promised manuscript nowhere near completion. She sighed: no more bobbing and weaving, dodging and ducking. Her advance would have to be repaid -- at least her mom left her a bit of scratch along with Beelzebub's beach bordello to cover that setback.
Brit drew a deep breath and played the first message from Barb back in New York. The familiar deafening, unctuous voice shattered the evening silence.
"Britt, darling, it's un-fucking-believable! You've done it again! I just read it for the third time! I have no idea what performance enhancing substances you're using down there, but don't stop now! And save some for me! I. LOVE. IT! I want more! Call me!"
What the fuck is she talking about? she thought. She quickly scrolled through the call log and her mouth opened in shock to see a number of calls had been made that day -- to her literary agent, the real estate office and to the lawyer in Marathon. There were also a number of brief calls to a number in the 215 area code -- Philadelphia. And all things considered, Britt would have rather been there, or anywhere else, for that matter.
Her blood boiled when she spotted the text from the realtor thanking her for considering his company's services and that if she changed her mind about taking the property off the market, to please call him first.
Wide awake now though still hung over, Britt got to her feet and padded to the living room where she found her laptop on the coffee table. She flipped it open and quickly scanned her emails, finding one sent to Barb earlier in the day with a text attachment. Her eyes widened as she quickly reviewed an extensive reimagined treatment for her novel and it took a moment to learn the plot had taken a significant turn to the macabre.
She began sobbing frightened breaths as she read page after page outlining the adventures of her detective heroine travelling to a cottage by a lake to solve a cold case, encountering the spirit of the victim who takes possession of her and together they unearth evidence to finally bring a murderer to justice decades after the evil deed. But as they work together it becomes a seduction and the details of their unearthly coupling became a faithful recapitulation of Britt's own sapphic encounters with the woman in the mirror.
She scrolled to the end and encountered a blank screen. It was a work in progress. She sank back into the couch.
"Maggie," she breathed. "What did you do?"
Suddenly letters started appearing on the screen.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MY WRITING?
Britt leaned forward, head in her hands. Where to begin? "Writing? This isn't writing -- it's reporting!" she howled.
WHAT'S THE OLD MARK TWAIN SAYING? WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW
Britt's fear was finally supplanted by anger and irritation. Drag me to the depths of the ocean and nearly drown me, fine, but do not fuck with my work.
"For starters, can we knock it off with the ALL CAPS?" she snapped. "Unless you're the spirit of Donald Trump sitting on a toilet in hell."
She watched with bemusement as the CAPS LOCK light went off.
Sorry. I'm still getting the hang of computers.
"This isn't a Rand Corporation supercomputer, it's a laptop," Britt said. "And you've apparently been busy. Or was it me?"
We did it together. You showed me how. I did the rest.
Britt frowned and continued to scroll through her adulterated prose, in particular the more adult parts. "So Dixie McClure has gone from a love 'em and leave 'em maneater to pussyhound lesbo gumshoe," she muttered. "I ought to sue you for copyright infringement but you'd probably just possess the judge."
She read more of the familiar intimate details, and in spite of herself, Britt could feel her juices rise and her pussy throb. She could only surmise Barb was sitting in a puddle after she got a gander at the text she'd been sent. No wonder she was almost whistling Dixie in her voicemail.
The screen went blank. Then Maggie returned. I can tell you think it's hot too.
"Where is this going?" Britt demanded, jumping to her feet. "And I don't mean my novel, YOUR novel, whatever this is supposed to be! What do you want from me?"
The screen chattered again. I told you in the cavern. I want you to avenge me.
Britt reached down and slapped the lid closed on the laptop. "How? It's been, what, 40 years since you were murdered? Where do I find this guy? In a senior's home? Do I put a pillow over his face? Poison his prune juice?"
She stood there, hyperventilating, in the darkness. All was silence. She wondered for a moment if Maggie was giving her a timeout. She tried to compose herself and realized she still might be clinging to sanity if she was concerned about losing it.
Britt looked out the window to the driveway and saw the Mustang convertible parked there. The keys waiting for her on the windowsill by the door. Could she make a break for it? Would Maggie stop her?
Please don't go. Don't leave me.
A mournful, quiet voice in the darkness derailed Britt's increasingly desperate train of thought. She had darkly imagined a locked door, four flat tires, hell, even a downed tree across the driveway, to prevent her from getting away. But now she considered that she might still have agency of sorts to walk away on her own, flee from the wi-fi range of this perhaps limited spirit.
But from within her mouldered feelings of betrayal and anger -- Maggie's, not yet hers. "Avenge" her? She was hardly Captain Marvel, just a dumpy middle-aged woman possibly in the fast lane to downtown Dementia.
"How do I even do this?" she whispered. "Where do I start?"
You leave it to me, said the voice. You leave everything to me.