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  The Ghost in Mr. Pepper’s Bed

  Sigrid Vansandt

  Copyright Information

  The Ghost in Mr. Pepper’s Bed Copyright © 2016 Sigrid Vansandt, all rights reserved.

  Ebook Cover Design by www.ebooklaunch.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places and events are invented by the author or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, organizations, places and events, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This e-book may not be reproduced, scanned, stored or distributed in any form without prior written permission of the author. It is intended for the purchaser’s use only.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Information

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Sigrid’s Other Books

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  A SOFT MOONLIGHT FILTERED IN across the sleeping elderly man’s bald head and illuminated the room in a muted silvery radiance. The camper’s small window directly above his feet was slightly opened to allow the cool May night air into the tiny sleeping chamber. Outside, the insect population was in its second movement of the evening’s musical concerto and the man’s breathing seemed to wax and wane with the gentle rhythms of their songs.

  Mr. Pepper, as he was known to the residents of The Whispering Pines RV Park, was a tidy person and the camper he called home, was, in all ways, a reflection of his domestic philosophy. The tiny bedroom in which he slept was sparsely decorated but with a masculine penchant for quiet colors and utilitarian necessities. There was a flashlight within easy reach of his bed, a revolver tucked into the bookshelf next to the Farmer’s Almanac and a dusty bottle of brandy for cold nights hidden in the bottom drawer of the bedside cabinet.

  His bedroom boasted of one sentimental item, and it hung on the wall next to the open window right above Mr. Pepper’s feet. It was a photograph in a slim metal frame housing a picture of a young, attractive woman sporting a 1960s bouffant hairdo. Like a guardian angel, she beamed a cheerful smile from her home on the camper wall. Tonight, the sleeping Mr. Pepper peacefully dreamed of the pretty girl, Eloise, his wife of forty-five years who was now deceased.

  A cool wind whipped up outside the camper and twirled its way like a zephyr through the open bedroom window into the tiny room. It moaned softly and hung in a fog directly above the lightly snoring Pepper. With a joyful sigh, the mist settled itself as closely as possible against the warm, sleeping elderly man.

  Nothing and no one stirred the peace. Somewhere, though, in the recesses of Mr. Pepper’s subconscious, something sent up little question marks to his slumbering mind causing him to shift uneasily in his cozy nest of blankets and pillows. The chilly, misty bedmate lying beside him readjusted itself as well, and that’s when poor Pepper found himself uncomfortably awake.

  At first, he thought he’d been dreaming of his wife, but as he pulled himself into an upright position in his bed, he realized something was amiss. He focused his eyes on the photo of Eloise to bring himself into the conscious present and it was at that moment Eloise Pepper’s framed photo rattled ominously against the paneling. At first, subtle tremors took hold of the camper as if it was being buffeted by a strong wind. But soon the shaking picked up and increased its energy until it crescendoed with a series of violent vertical and horizontal jerks.

  Mr. Pepper was being tossed around inside the camper like a lottery ball at a Saturday night bingo parlor. Trying frantically to remember what one should do in an earthquake, he found his groggy mind lacking, but as he rolled once more from one side of his bed to the other, that same brain quickly reminded him there hadn’t been an earthquake in Missouri in over a hundred years.

  As the rocking escalated, Mr. Pepper grabbed desperately to the edges of his mattress for stability. His befuddled brain tried to make sense of the bucking-bronco movements of his camper. Like Aladdin riding his magic carpet, poor Mr. Pepper also felt the effects of air turbulence. Queasiness was taking hold, so he held on for dear life, becoming aware of a mist rising beside him on the bed and encircling him within a tornado-type cone.

  A woman’s sleepy sigh followed by a whimpering sound made Mr. Pepper’s blood almost come to a crashing halt in his veins. Rapidly blinking his eyelids, the pajama-wearing septuagenarian tried to make sense of what he was seeing. It was when Eloise’s photograph lifted off its hook and levitated in mid-air for a few uncomfortable seconds, that Mr. Pepper realized his situation was far outside any rational attempts at an explanation.

  It was a good thing he quit trying to understand because what was truly needed in his situation was excellent reflexes. His dearly departed wife’s photo took flight right at his head as he ducked. It slammed into the opposite wall barely missing Pepper’s balding pate. That’s when all hell broke loose inside the camper. Screeching and guttural sounds reminiscent of cats fighting exploded like a mini-bomb in the six-foot by four-foot room.

  With the camper rocking as if a wind was buffeting it from all directions, Mr. Pepper scrambled off the bed while things were knocked about and blankets were sucked up into the air and flung into corners. He stumbled out into the kitchen area and frantically tried to find the front door latch to escape the whirlwind of flying objects, yelling female voices, and the occasional tug on his person from unseen, cold hands.

  Once out into the darkness of the night, he turned to watch the cyclonic activity whipping around inside his aluminum home. With both hands, he pulled on the gray tufts of hair encircling the sides and back of his otherwise bald cranium and shook his head in disbelief at the sight. Was he being fought over by two unseen women? He quickly realized the storm wasn’t abating inside, so he gingerly made his way in bare feet over to Marnie's, the park’s owner. Marnie would know what to do.

  Behind him and inside his camper, a gun went off, making Mr. Pepper jump and hunch up as if he expected the bullet to be about to make an impact on his backside at any second. Feeling no sting, he gave up worrying about his tender toes and toddled down the perfectly manicured gravel drive. Not stopping once, he made it to Marnie Scott’s door yelling, “Let me in, Marnie! I think my wife is trying to kill me!”

  Chapter 2

  “YOU’D BETTER NOT EAT THAT, Willard. Your digestion isn’t what it used to be,” Sonya Caruthers explained to her five-pound, tan terrier who came popping through the doggy door from the backyard. In his mouth was an old plastic chew bone he’d probably buried months ago and had dug up sometime in the last hour. “Last week you ate the fringe off my grandmother’s old woolen blanket. Your stomach made the most terrible sounds for two days. Don’t let plastic be the reason for your next visit to the vet.”

  Willard’s button-sized coal-black eyes blinked as an acknowledgment to her comment while his mouth smiled around the dirt encrusted orange bone. If a passing neighbor or even a newly arrived bird to one of the taller bushes hugging Sonya’s house h
ad peeked in at that moment, they would have wondered if Mrs. Sonya Caruthers was perhaps a bit dingy or touched in the head.

  Who talks to animals? They might be thinking or maybe, what an odd assortment of clothing for a woman to be wearing!

  Dressed in a royal blue tunic, a long, floral scarf flung about her neck and tie-dyed colored tights, coupled with orange zippered high-heeled ankle boots, Sonya C. cut a unique fashion figure. Her kinky brown hair, knobby jewelry, and green eyes were on the large side, while her feet, lavender-lipsticked mouth, and Victorian cottage were definitely on the small.

  Since the age of seven, she’d been comfortable picking up the inner feelings of most people and domesticated animals, as well as with having the occasional conversation with a stranded being known to the rest of us as a ghost. By fourteen, Sonya was adept at keeping her talent quiet, and by twenty-five, she’d accepted her gifts and progressed to using them to help anyone or anything that needed her. At forty, she was an early widower and had decided to present her spiritual therapy services to the community by running a nice business from her home.

  People stopped by to seek out her help. Sometimes it might be a newbie ghost requesting Sonya’s help in accepting their new life or the exact opposite, one of the living wishing dead Uncle Harry would cross over and leave them in peace.

  Picking up Willard, her pint-sized terrier, with a gentleness and respect most people don’t bother showing to their human loved ones, Sonya brushed him free of his backyard dirt and deposited her furry friend of five years onto his favorite perch. She held out her hand for the bone because Willard, once committed to lavishing his attentions on a chew toy of any kind, would most likely gnaw on it until he’d consumed it entirely. Plastic isn’t the friend of dogs, and where he’d found this toy was anyone’s guess.

  Slightly lowering his eyelids, Willard resisted giving up the chew bone. He rolled over to show his adorable belly and waved one front paw as a salute to his honest intentions. Sonya laughed at his antics, scratched the presented tummy and shook her head. Willy was a con, but a charming one. She sighed and said, “Don’t whine to me when your stomach hurts later, and you’re sleeping in the guest room tonight. Understand?”

  Flipping himself over, he performed a deep stretch and a couple of quick circles. He worked himself down on top of his bone in a curled up ball and shut his eyes for his mid-day nap. Sonya waited for the snoring to begin. Once he was asleep, she retrieved a rawhide bone from the cupboard and made the switch with Willy making one sleepy snort for her troubles. When he awoke, he’d be perfectly happy with the substitute and his inside plumbing could continue to operate peacefully.

  Moving quietly, so as not to wake him, Sonya turned to the one domestic chore she enjoyed the most — watering her flowers in the front garden. The rather diminutive Victorian cottage of Sonya and Willard nestled comfortably between a nineteen-thirties Tudor and a magnificent Dutch Colonial. Sonya’s home was extremely well-maintained. It was painted a happy color of canary yellow with white trim and a wrap-around porch. Festooned with flowers at every window and along the brick front walk, it graced Pickwick Street with a nostalgic nod to those finer aesthetic sentiments appreciated by our more genteel ancestors at the end of the nineteenth century.

  She’d made her home in Willow Valley and had lived contentedly there for over five years. A widower, she came to the quaint southern Missouri town after her husband, Bud, passed away and set up shop doing what she’d always done, assisting souls on either side of the great divide. A few Willow Valley eyebrows were raised at the shingle she hung outside her house, Ghost Therapist but owing to the new tenant’s excellent gardening abilities and responsible maintenance of one of Willow Valley’s prettiest historic homes, most of its citizens chalked up her profession to eccentricity or talent. Either way, they concluded, she was an excellent addition to the neighborhood.

  As she picked up the watering can still sitting on her kitchen counter, a chilly breeze floated by her. Sonya’s extra-sensory perception told her she wasn’t alone. Willard, awakened by the presence, growled in a low tone and hopped down from his spot. His nails and paws made clicking sounds as he sped into the kitchen and barked and bounced in a dance directly under the kitchen table. Sonya shook her head.

  “I think we have a visitor, Willard. There’s only one person who prefers perching on furniture instead of sitting on chairs. You shouldn’t be so rude every time he visits,” she chastised him gently.

  Out of nowhere, a red ball dropped from the middle of the kitchen table and bounced across the kitchen floor out into the living room with Willard in hot pursuit.

  “Go chase that, you wee mongrel!” boomed a man’s voice thick with a Scottish brogue. “How are you, my love? Miss me?”

  Chapter 3

  “Fritz, back so soon?” Sonya asked as she finished filling the watering can at the sink. Fritz was short for Fitswilliam. He was also known, in more genteel circles, as Lord Fitswilliam Dunbar, a Scottish Laird, who died from a fever after a day of shooting grouse. Sonya called him Fritz instead of Fits because, as she put it, she wasn’t always going to the trouble to use his full name, and Fitz sounded rude. He had lived a full life two hundred years ago on his ancestral estate in the Highlands of Scotland. And these days, now that he was dead, he still maintained a busy existence helping Sonya, annoying his dead wife, Mary, and toying with the unsuspecting living, mainly the next-door neighbor, Mrs. Townsend.

  Fritz, for that matter, would have answered to Chuckles if Sonya’s taste ran in that direction because he was completely smitten with her in every way. His lack of a corporeal body in no way hindered his fervent love for Sonya. After his death in 1815, he’d taken to traveling the world and as most ghosts do, he lost his concept of time. It wasn’t until he’d been enjoying himself in a posh grand hotel in Montreal, Canada, as a resident specter for a few years that he was reminded one evening how many decades had actually passed since his death. It was the night that he laid eyes on Sonya that changed his afterlife forever.

  She’d come to attend a convention of paranormal studies, and he’d spied her from his favorite position for people-watching perched on the top of a Steinway piano in the main entrance hall. Sonya was a colorful dresser by any standard, but it was her sunny personality, beautiful eyes and way of smiling at people with true friendliness that entranced Fritz. Her warmth and genuine goodness intoxicated him. He floated and hovered around her the entire weekend until finally, one evening as she was letting herself into her room and he was peeking at her from the hallway’s massive crystal chandelier, Sonya said, “Would you like to come in and have a nice chat?”

  Fritz noted the lack of living people in the hall and wondered if the bright-eyed woman was slightly touched in the head. She turned and looked straight up at him.

  “I’m talking to you, there in the chandelier. You’ve been following me now for two days. Would you like to come in for a talk? We might as well get to know each other.”

  Fritz was stunned. It was the first time since his death that anyone had actually talked to him like he was a person other than the ghosts he kept company with occasionally. Granted, she did point out his location in the ceiling’s lighting fixture, but, for all intents and purposes, she didn’t appear discombobulated by the situation. As a gentleman, he hesitated to accept an invitation from a woman to visit her bedroom.

  He cleared his throat for he wanted to make a good impression and said, “Why, thank you, but it might appear unseemly for a gentleman to call on you without a chaperon.”

  “I hardly need a chaperone at my age and it’s the twenty-first century,” Sonya replied. “It would be much easier on my neck if you popped down here to my level.”

  “Twenty-first century?” Fritz mumbled. There it was. He was utterly shocked by his loss of worldly time.

  “Yes, I can tell by your dress and your manner, you are most likely from the early nineteenth century. Now, I must go inside because if someone sees me talking to th
e ceiling here in the hall, they may call the closest sanitarium to deploy their pick-up team to collect me.”

  Fritz saw the wisdom of her comment and answered, “Yes, dear lady, I’ll be right down.”

  They had a lovely talk and Fritz, for the first time in almost two hundred years, found himself feeling more alive than dead and more human than ghost. Since then, he’d stayed close to Sonya and always called her Sunny. Even though Willard didn’t show signs of accepting Fritz’s presence in the house, the three of them made a nice family. Sonya kept the two males from being too disagreeable with each other and they, in turn, were completely devoted to her in every way.

  “Fritz,” Sonya was saying from the kitchen sink as she continued to fill her watering can, “I don’t like it when you don’t materialize when you’re in the house. We’ve talked about this. If I can’t see you, I’m likely to walk through you and that gives me the shivers. Play fair.”

  “Sunny,” he said with a charming Scottish brogue to his voice, “I just wanted to bring you a surprise, but that horse’s back end of a dog always ruins the moment.”

  A butterfly lit on the window seal of the kitchen window. The afternoon sunbeams illuminated the iridescent gold decorating its slender, blue, filigree wings. It stayed perfectly still as if waiting.

  “Put your finger out, Sunny,” Fritz asked gently. Sonya complied and the fairy-like insect climbed aboard. For a moment, the room was quiet except for the soft ticking of the old grandmother clock in the hall. All too soon, the fragile creature pumped its wings and fluttered out again into the sunlight and the well-tended flower garden.

  “Was that you’re doing, Fritz, dear?” Sonya asked sweetly.

  “It isn’t easy getting your point across to our purer dwellers here on Earth,” he answered, “but butterflies have a special rapport when it comes to love.”

  “You’re a ghost, my dear, Fritz. I think a spirit might have the advantage over a living human.”