Later that night, when she'd eaten and the cartons had been thrown away, a healthy dose of kale consumed, and she'd stepped into the shower slipped into her favorite blue stitch onesie. An odd choice, perhaps for a hard-nosed businesswoman, she curled up on her soft, plush white sofa, a fire blazing in the fireplace: the crinkle and spit sound filling the air with a chilled comfortable, laid-back atmosphere. The tv showing an old film Lina ignored in favor of relieving the torture of viewing the pictures she kept of her, a single glass sat next to a lone half-empty bottle of the finest Scottish whiskey.
Her spooky encounter long forgotten.
When Kiera had left for Paris for a work assignment. Lina had found herself without a friend for a time; Alexa had found herself without a sister to confide in. One night after one too many glasses of Yvette Daniels, Lina had found herself staring into a deep dark galaxy of brown orbs, asking herself why she had never noticed just how beautiful Alexa's eyes were. In a short time, that question had extended to every part of the red-headed woman's body.
That first kiss had been like being attached to a firework, a Catherine wheel as it soared higher into the fathomless night sky until with a satisfying explosion, every hidden emotion imploded within her. For the first time in a very long time, she was feeling something.
A tear trickled down her cheek, another followed until they collected in a pool on the screen of her cell phone. Alexa had wanted to keep them a secret from Kiera and why Lina still could not understand how difficult it was to fall so hard in love with someone so unexpectedly and have it all handed back heartlessly and without care.
So Lina had gone with her self respect and ended their relationship ignored every one of Alexa's calls, and had her thrown out of Leonard Inc.
Suddenly in her hands, the cell phone alarm began to chime; shocked, Lina threw it into the air; she'd not set the alarm clock for this time, or anytime.
Just as her curious, suspicious gaze was set on her cell phone, the alarm on her tv that she'd never used since she had acquired it began to go off loudly, Lina's eyes strained wide open. Two full saucers of green flicked her gaze to the sounds as suddenly behind her the old clock on the wall began to chime; it had never chimed before or even worked; she'd kept it because she liked the look of it, and it fit the decoration of her bookcase next to it, yet now it worked with a cut-glass shrill shriek.
"What the hell is going on?" Lina shouted over the noise that grew louder.
Quickly the unceasing ringing is soon replaced by the terrible sound of clanging chains from the hallway; Lina shivered and shook as her heart seemed to stop beating, the hairs on her arms rising upward, she couldn't speak, and she couldn't move her feet had become weighed down with lead.
They grew louder the eerie, ghostly clang of steel chains echoed closer, as soft infrequent footsteps appeared somewhere in between the clatter of chains.
Lina clenched her jaw tightly as from around the corner, a ghostly image appeared.
"Leon." Lina gasped hoarsely.
Leon stood as still as night. His ghostly image, see-through and grey, cast all around him, trapping him in an otherworldly prison chain made of keys and padlocks. Black books filled with dastardly deeds, and the heavy purses representing the wealth accumulated through foul deeds wrought in steel wound about his middle.
Lina stared ahead, afraid.
"Lina." His voice echoed, the chains moving loudly as he pointed.
"Y..yess."
"I am here to warn you." His dead voice chilled Lina to the core as his lifeless eyes watched her. "Warm you that if you do not change the path that you have chosen, then this is the fate that awaits you." He lifted his arms to show the chains, and they rattled ominously.
"What has happened to you?" Lina asked, her voice shaking.
Leon let out a pained groan. "This is my punishment, my restitution for my selfishness during my years on earth."
"But, Leo..."
"Tonight Lina, you will receive a visit from three ghosts, heed their warnings, Lina, or else this is your fate, destined to walk the earth like this."
Lina's eyes popped out of their sockets. "What! But I don't want to be visited by ghosts; tell them to leave me alone, Leon, please." The raven-haired woman pleaded with the ghostly image. "Do this one thing for me."
"Heed their warnings, sister," Leon said.
"Leo, don't go!" Lina shouted, finally jumping up and chasing after the retreating image, but it was gone.
Leon was gone, and with him, so went her peace of mind, "Three ghosts!"
Lina shivered violently as her eyes nervously strayed to her cell phone again to check the time.
Ever since her ghostly apparition, she'd been at odds with herself. Had she really seen what Lina thought she'd seen?
Leon's ghostly figure wrapped in chains.
"No, it can't have been what it seemed, I've been working too hard, I'm sleep deprived that has negative effects on the body and the mind." Lina chanted again for the hundredth time; it was what she'd been trying to console herself with since it happened, and Leon's image disappeared. The trouble was that it wasn't working, the vestiges of worry still haunted her, the scent of Ashe and coal that the apparition had brought yet lingered. A lasting memory that reminded her it had been no fiction she'd created in her mind, this had really happened.
Images of Alex sprung to mind; it was a bittersweet experience.
With fingers trembling, Lina pulled back the covers of her bed and climbed inside the vast mattress. If there was one thing to point out her loneliness, it was looking across at her large King sized bed and feeling so small, it was as though she were a little doll inhabiting a large surface meant to for two.
Her eyes clouded with tears as she slid her trembling fingers across the silk bedsheets, recalling a time not so long ago when she hadn't been alone in this big full open bed.
Alexa.
The memory was still raw, too raw Lina wanted to cry, to curl up into a ball and forget, forget the feel of soft silky lips against her own, forget laughing at the sight of her own red lipstick brushed across Alexa's pale lips and cheeks.
"No, I will not let my mind go there again. I will sleep and go to the office early in the morning, let the world celebrate a stupid materialistic festival like a hypocrite. Most don't even believe in a God or Jesus anyway!" Lina spat out the words seeming to echo around the room ominously.
Suddenly incoherent sounds of weeping and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory made Lina shiver with fear. After listening for a moment, Lina jumped from her bed, her feet tiptoeing to the window where she heard the noises coming; opening the window, she stuck her Raven haired head out into the bleak, dark night, desperate in her curiosity. She looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering here and there in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Lina had seen Leon wearing.
Whether the creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, Lina could not tell, but they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when she walked home.
Lina stood for a moment gazing out into the night, her mouth agape as her eyes tried to figure out any remaining figures, her brain trying to work out what was real and what wasn't.
Rushing to her bedroom door, she locked it, slipping the key onto the dresser next to the door, and then ran back into her bed, lifting the covers over her mattress and closing her eyes.
Too exhausted to keep her eyes open, Lina soon fell asleep.
Xxx
When Lina awoke, it was so dark that she could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of her bedroom looking out of bed. She was trying to pierce the darkness with her big green eyes when the chimes of a nearby church struck the four quarters. So she listened for the hour.
To her astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve, then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when she went to bed. The clock was wrong. Very wrong.
She pulled out her cell phone from the side of her bed. Sure, some mistakes had occurred, yet the numbers had reached twelve and stopped.
"This isn't possible,' said Lina, "That I can have slept through a whole day and into another night.!
The idea of being an alarming one, Lina scrambled out of bed and groped her way to the window. Rubbing the frost off with the sleeve of her cute onesie before she could see anything, she could see very little.
All she could make out was that it was still very foggy and icy and that there was no noise of people running to and fro and making a great stir, as there would have been unquestionable if night had beaten off bright day and taken possession of the world.
Lina went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more she thought, the more perplexed she was; and, the more she endeavored not to think, the more she remembered.
It held no logic that she could understand; her mind strayed again to Leon; whenever she rationalized the events, she always returned to her dead brother and his ominous warning.
"Three Ghosts." Lina worried aloud, clutching her cell phone to her breast, her eye drawing down to the screen seeing a message written there she had not noticed before.
She winced at the name, she should have blocked her, but every time she'd tried, she couldn't bear to do it.
Hey,
I know you really don't want to talk to me, I understand that, but Kiera is distraught; please come to Christmas dinner for her, you can ignore me if you like, but she's so sad she's failing her best friend.
Lina let out a huff, "whatever."
Light flashed up in the room upon an instant, blinding Lina momentarily. The door handle's sound rattled and moved by an unseen hand, as slowly the once locked door opened fully. Lina, startled, found herself face to face with the unearthly visitor who opened it.
Lina gasped loudly. The figure who stood in the doorway watching her expectantly was a face she'd known, one she'd loved, one she'd respected, how was it possible she stood in her doorway now?
"Yvette?" Lina questioned, her voice shaking with fear and anxiety.
Her handsome face broke into a small meager smile; it was nothing like that of which she'd bestowed upon her in life; it filled Line with none of the warmth she had done either.
She moved further into the room, approaching Lina quickly; too quickly, she seemed to glide across the ground in moments.
"Fear me not little, Lina Leonard, But I am not who you see before you. I am not she, I am here in the guise of someone you do not fear, I am here as someone you'd know. Indeed, I could have come with any visage, but tonight I am your Yvette." The spirit smiled kindly.
"You are the spirit that was told to me?" Lina questioned.
"I am."
"And which are you?"
"I am the ghost of Christmas past." The spirit who bore Yvette's face answered quickly.
"Distant past?" Lina questioned; she was a science geek, not a history nerd.
"Your past," Yvette replied.
Lina groaned; it was worse than she thought it would be; she didn't want to revisit her past, too much, too painful.
"Come, take my hand." The spirit with Yvette's face said softly but with determination.
Lina hesitated. "Listen, I think before you even think about going back to my past, you need to put up a trigger warning, especially for me."
"Come, we leave now." She motioned to the window.
"But I'm human, I'm not Supergirl, you know I cannot fly, oh you know, I know what's happened you've mistaken me for Supergirl, hey that's fine. She doesn't live here, though, and I hear tales that she is just a fictional character. "Lina shrugged innocently.
The spirit cracked out a smile, revealing hidden beneath pearly white teeth. "If you say so, come we leave now, Lina Leonard."
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall and stood upon an open deserted road with fields on either side. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a bright, cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground.
"I can't believe it," said Lina clasping her hands together as she looked about her.
"You remember this place?" The spirit asked.
"Remember it, of course, it still haunts my dreams," Lina said as she watched a few cars pass by, the place had a mixed bag of emotions for her.
"Then you will remember the way?"
"Of course I do," Lina answered as they walked forward, soon leaving behind the road and coming towards a small town, people walking haphazardly, seemingly without purpose; Lina watched them, unsure how no one saw her there.
"They are not real, they cannot see us, not hear us or feel us." The spirit spoke, seeing the question in her green eyes.
"The school is not empty," said the ghost. "A solitary child, neglected by her friends, is left there still."
Together they walked through the door, Lina anxious to come face to face with the past. The hallway was just as she had recalled it, old ancient pictures hung on the walls of past headmasters and owners, the elite who ruled with an iron fist, the innocent children who attended the cold, sterile brutal boarding school existence.
She remembered well the absence of love and care; the feeling of inadequacy that filled her again was intense.
Rounding the corner, they came to a large common room, an open fire lit in the center of the room; in front of the fire keeping warm sat a little girl, her raven black hair pulled back into ratty pigtails, her head buried in a book, Lina stalled at sight, a breath tore from her as she watched.
The school had been built in the mid-1800s. It kept many of the old features, including the massive fireplace, they'd lit to save heating expenses as all the children had departed for the holidays—all the children except for little Lina.
"It's me," Lina said sadly, rushing forward when she saw the girl look up, her big sad green eyes searching for something, only Lina knew what she searched for. It was what she still searched for.
She had thought she had found it, she'd been wrong.
"You were lonely." The ghost asked as teardrops fell down Lina's face.
"It was my first Christmas without my mother, she would always make it so special a time for us, even though we didn't really have very much, my father and stepmother felt I would do better at a boarding school." Lina's voice shook with the memory. The long ache of loneliness vibrates like a steel blade through her soul.
"Why are you not with them?" Lina watched the girl again. Taking a slender fingertip to trace across the top of her head, "I never knew, Lilith came to get me during the Summer break, and nothing was spoken of it, no apology, no explanation, there was nothing."
"Come, the night wears on. We must make haste to our next destination." The spirit spoke suddenly.
Lina gasped. "But I can't leave her, leave her alone here with no one."
The spirit stared at her with Yvette's familiar brown eyes. "She is a ghost of the past, what is done is done, it can no longer touch her."
"She is me, of course, it can touch her!" Lina shouted angrily.
"Come, we must see another Christmas."
The spirit lifted its hand, and in the blink of an eye, the scenery changed, the dull dark, dreary room turned to a bright white, the child transformed into an older version of herself, leaning over a table dressed in a white coat, examining a test tube.
Lina gasped as she recalled the scene. "I remember this!" She shouted excitedly.
They watched as Yvette strolled through the door a happy smirk on her face, her warm, loving brown eyes fixed on the woman in front of her.
"Yvette," Lina whispered as she took in the face she had loved, her heart filling with warmth.
"Okay, so I know you said you didn't want anything, but..." Yvette said comically.
"What have you done?" Lina said with caution.
"Well, I was going past the bookstore; you know that one where you stand outside looking in like it's porn and your an addict, and....."
"She loved you." The spirit spoke as they watched Yvette pull a package from behind her back.
"I loved her, she was the first person to see me and see me, not a Leonard, she was special."
Lina felt the sting of tears welling in her eyes.
"You were happy this Christmas with her? You think she'd want you like this?" The ghost said. "The woman you have become."
Yvette had been a brilliant interlude in her life, but love came in many forms, and theirs had not been forever. A year after they broke up, Yvette had died in a plane crash.
Lina shook her head. "Life, it's a strange thing, one minute your Regina Mills, enjoying your own self made happy ever after. Then out of the blue that one person comes along who can make everything fall down around you, and no matter how much you scrape and scrape, how much you battle, things are always going to go against you; I'm a Leonard we don't get happy endings."
"Wrong, humanity chooses their own fate, every one of your family chose to crawl into a pit of decadence and sleaze, you are the one who chooses her own fate, Ms. Leonard, not your father, nor stepmother and not your brother. Yvette saw the goodness in you, was she the only one?"
Lina's mind went to Kiera, her best friend, to the small group of friends she'd made since moving back to New York City. "No, she wasn't the only one."
"Let's see another time." The spirit said as Lina gave the people before her another last look, she remembered holding her that close, the feel of Yvette's heart beating against her chest had made her feel safe, she'd loved Yvette Lina really had done. She was always her first love, but what she'd felt for her was nothing for what she'd felt for Alexa.
Alexa, who had broken her heart in two and frozen what was left of her crumbled soul.
Lina watched them fade away as the vision before they transformed, and suddenly they found themselves in a familiar room.
"Not here, spirit."
"You must see."
"I know this scene very well, I dream it every damn night, I replay it every time I close my eyes I do not need to see this again!" Lina shouted, pleaded with the spirit, but nothing would work.
The scene played out as she knew it would, as she recalled.
The front door to the apartment burst open, and in stumbled two bodies, both grasping and pushing the other, hands moved frantically over clothes, ripping and tearing until in a messy lump Alexa and Lina fell to the couch. Alexa rising above Lina, a triumphant smirk across her lips, "I win, Ms. Leonard, you know what that means."
Lina chuckled. "And what makes you think I didn't let you win."
Alexa lifted an eyebrow, leaning her upper body down to get closer to Lina. "You mean to say you made me win because you really like me on top."
"Well, being at the bottom has its advantages when you are on top." Lina flirted.
"I can see those advantages." Alexa smiled, lowering her head until their lips met, the sound of lips meeting and tongues dueling were the only sounds to fill the air.
Lina felt tears fall down from her eyes as she watched; it wasn't hard to remember it hadn't happened that long ago.
"You love her." The spirit said, watching her charges expression as she watched them.
"She didn't want me," Lina said, strained.
"She doesn't look uninterested to me." The spirit observed.
"It's sex spirit; it's not a great romance; anyone can fake something for sex." Lina shrugged.
"Or was it you chose to ignore what you were feeling, chose to take what you saw as rejection and run because you are afraid, afraid that Alexa could actually love you, love you the way you love her."
Lina pursed her lips and flared her nostrils in anger; the spirit was wrong.
The play before them continued getting to the bit that she knew was about to happen.
She watched herself break away, momentarily from the kiss; she felt it still, pressing her fingertips against her lips; she felt them tingle and burn.
"Alexa, Wait."
"What's wrong? Am I hurting you?" Alexa asked, concerned.
"No, I... I hate lying to Kiera, she called me last night wanting to meet me for lunch, but I had to lie because she doesn't know about us." Lina bit her bottom lip.
Alexa rum her hand through her short red hair, rising up from her lover. "I don't know, I need more time."
"How much more time Alexa, you've been saying this for months."
"I don't know, I just don't know how she'd react I've never dated one of her friends before."
"So, she's not in love with me, and I love her as a friend, there is no reason she would be angry with us." Lina reasoned. "She's not a child Alexa."
Alexa let out a sigh, rising from the couch, leaving Lina alone there.
"You don't want to tell her." Lina heard herself say she listened to the raw hurt in every single word.
"What, of course, I do."
"No, you don't, you really don't want to tell anyone about us, so we have to sneak around and hide," Lina snarled, she'd hated it before, but now it was all beginning to make sense. "You are ashamed of me."
"Lina, no way, why would I be ashamed?" Alexa said earnestly, moving towards the angry woman.
"The usual reason, you know what, Alexa, let me do you a favor, we're done, over, now you don't have to worry, I won't embarrass you any longer." Lina's voice was fierce with a rage she didn't feel.
"Lina, no." Alexa stepped forward, grabbing hold of Lina's arm to stop her leaving. "Please, give me time."
"You can't even tell your own sister about us, and when that sister is Kiera Daniels, the sweetest woman alive, what is there to be afraid of?"
Alexa opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out; how could she explain it? It didn't even make sense to her. Taking her silence as the answer, Lina laughed mockingly. "Good answer Alexa, goodbye; call me when you grow some boobs."
The slamming door made Lina jump watching herself leave, she found herself staring at the withering form of the woman she'd left behind.
Tears began to fall down Alexa's face.
"Alexa," Lina whispered.
"She doesn't look like someone who just got rid of a chain around her neck." The spirit spat out sarcastically. "She looks forlorn, she looks heartbroken."
"She.. she just misses the sex." Lina tried to defend herself.
The spirit shook his head. "Your Alexa, has she been hurt?"
"She's not my Alexa, but I guess she has yes."
"So, why would she not be afraid, just like you? Why would she not be afraid that what hurt her once wouldn't hurt her again, the arrangement you had worked, it was safe, what if she wanted more, but she was scared." The spirit softly spoke.
Lina frowned. "You don't know Alexa, she is fearless."
"No one is fearless, even the greatest warriors feel fear in their hearts, what makes them great is that they still charged into danger, sometimes even someone you think is untouchable by human frailties are just that, human."
Lina turned her green eyes to Alexa, still sobbing her shoulders dancing up and down with the effort, tears falling freely down her damp cheeks.
"She tried to call me so many times," Lina whispered.
"Maybe she grew her boobs as you put it, only you never listened."
"I thought it was more excuses, or to tell me she was glad we were over," Lina said sadly.
"You see what a cold heart does, it turned you away from warmth, she cries for you, you made her fear come true, and now she cries for you." The ghost motioned toward the crying woman.
"But I...."
"It is too late now, and this was our last visit; we must make haste for another spirit will come within the hour; we cannot be late."
"What, no!"
"Yes."