A bit more Ravishing

Want another look at The Ravishing? Read on!

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Jeremy sat opposite from me and poured some evaporated milk into his coffee.

“How long you been seeing dead people?”

“Since I was a kid. My mother insisted I go up to the coffin when my Grandpa died and he spoke to me. I kept asking everyone if they heard him but it was just me. After that, I’d see them every once in awhile.”

“Must be disturbing.”

“No. Doesn’t happen often…that is, not until I moved here.”

“Then why don’t you move out?”

“The rent. I can’t afford much. And my roommate, he…well…”

“Your lover?” I met his gaze. “Come on, Jeremy, you apparently know about David and I. I guess we can be straight with each other.”

He nodded. “He was my lover, yes. Older, a big shot in the theatre. It’s more accepted in those circles.”

“So, what happened between you?”

“He got tired of me, I guess. Too many pretty boys flocking around. So, I wasn’t sure what to do. This place was the answer to my prayers.” I saw the troubled frown on his face. “Joe, I’ve seen spirits but I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I…”

Joe?

I looked around. Someone said my name.

“What is it?” Jeremy asked.

“Someone said my name.”

“He’s here.”

A shiver ran down my spine.

Joe.

I stood up. My chair went crashing to the floor. There standing in the doorway to the bedroom was David. He smiled at me. The tears lit my eyes. “David?”

Come to me, Joe.

I walked toward him as if in a dream. He reached out to me with both arms and I placed my hands on his face. I kissed his mouth with grateful tenderness. David. David. It’s you. Thank God, it’s you. You’re alive. You’ve come back to me.

Then he just dissolved in my arms. I felt his touch, his kiss and then he was gone. I stood in stunned silence, not feeling the hand that caressed my shoulder until Jeremy said my name. “Joe. Where did you go?”

I was sitting at the table, tears drying on my face. I looked up at him. “It was David. He was here. I kissed him.”

Jeremy nodded, smiled sadly at me. “I know. I saw him. That took a lot for him to do that. He was desperate to kiss you, to touch you. That love he had for you lingers even in death.”

I tried to speak. There were no words. Jeremy let me have my moment. He didn’t speak first. I did. “I couldn’t grieve,” I told him. “When David was murdered, I had to act like he was just another victim, not my lover. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I found him, you know.”

“I know.”

“I had to treat David’s death as a case. He was just another guy in the neighborhood, someone who might have seen something. That’s how we met. I interviewed him, never guessing he’d become a victim, never guessing I’d love him so much.”

Jeremy nodded.

“David told you?” My eyes widened.

“He’s told me everything. How you met, how he couldn’t take his eyes off you when you interviewed him, the way he felt the first time you made love to him. But there was pain, too.”

I felt as if Jeremy had suddenly stripped me naked. He could see inside my soul. “He wanted me to be with him, like a couple, and…I didn’t know how. It’s not that I didn’t want to. I would have had to give up my job, my life. How would we have lived?”

“He knew why you weren’t with him. His heart…” Jeremy trailed off.

“I broke it off with him but I couldn’t stay away. That night I came here, he wouldn’t open the door to me. I was crazed.”

“You stood in the rain for an hour. He said you looked like a drowned rat.” Jeremy laughed a little. “He never loved you more than when you took him into that room and told him you couldn’t live without him.”

The tears ran down my face. “Yeah, and two days later he was dead. He was murdered in the very bed where we’d made love.”

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