Seeing is Believing (Cuttersville #3)(6)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Not that she reminded him of his grandmother at all. Nope. His grandmother was old, for one thing, but Jessie Stritmeyer was outspoken, bossy, calculating. There was none of that in Piper. Nor did he ever see her wearing those bedazzled baseball caps his grandmother had always favored. Which made him nostalgic, and glad he’d decided to come back home. It had been five years since he’d seen Gran.

“Good point.” He leaned on the dryer and crossed his ankles, feeling a little vain. He wanted Piper to steal another glance at his bare chest. But she wasn’t even looking at him.

“Did you see that?” she asked, taking a step closer to him as she studied the far corner of the basement.

He didn’t see anything but plastic storage containers and cobwebs. “What am I supposed to see?”

“Something moved.”

“A small something, like a mouse, or a big something, like a cat?” Either way, he wasn’t sure it mattered. It was a dirty old basement. All kinds of shit was probably living in it.

Piper shook her head. “Like a person size.”

Brady strained to see into the dark. “I don’t see anything.” If a homeless bum was squatting in Shel and Boston’s basement, even the shadowy corners wouldn’t cover that up, so he figured they were safe.

“It went under the stairs.”

She sounded afraid. Her voice had dropped down to a whisper and she had maneuvered herself so that she was on the opposite side of him from where she had seen whatever she had seen. This would be an excellent opportunity for him to show that he was no wimp. He could go under filthy stairs and face down a fictitious ax murderer. Maybe even a real ax murderer. Then maybe she would fall into his arms in relief and press her braless br**sts against his bare chest.

What he should not do was try to punch another ghost. That little impulse had clearly upset her. He wasn’t sure he believed in ghosts exactly, but then again, he had certainly seen enough evidence of them, especially in this house when he was a teenager. There was no other explanation for some of the things that had happened, and Piper clearly saw something. Which meant there were either ghosts or she was insane, and he really didn’t think that the latter was the case. So if a living person running around the basement was unlikely, the logical conclusion would be that Piper had seen a spirit. He’d certainly believed in ghosts when he was fifteen, so it surprised him a little that he even had any skepticism. Maybe the city had taught him that.

He wasn’t sure he liked it.

“What did it look like?” He found himself whispering back, though he wasn’t really sure why they needed to whisper. All they needed was a creepy music soundtrack playing, and they’d be in a horror film.

“A black blob.”

That was specific. “Have you seen it before?” Brady moved forward, his gym shoes crunching on the old shifting and dusty tiles.

She hesitated.

He looked back at her. “You can tell me.” He meant that. He wasn’t going to judge her. He did think it was cool that she saw something other people couldn’t. What happened to someone to allow that? Were they born that way? Was their mind somehow more elevated or open than other people’s? Whatever it was, it was cool to be able to do something most people couldn’t. He wished he could say that about himself.

“When I was a teenager, I saw something down here like that, just a black blob. It really scared the bejeezus out of me. I don’t come down here unless I have to.”

Which made her taking his shirt to the dryer a very sweet gesture. Brady was genuinely touched. At the same time, he was pissed that something dared to scare Piper. What kind of an ass**le ghost was this guy? “Don’t worry. I’ve got it.”

Big man in the basement, that was him. He mentally eye-rolled himself. About the most danger he’d ever been in was when he’d fallen out of his girlfriend’s bedroom at fifteen to avoid getting caught by her father. He dodged traffic, not bullets.

Piper made a sound in the back of her throat as he took a step forward. She looked torn between not wanting to go with him and not wanting to be left behind. Brady figured he might as well take advantage of the opportunity. “Come on,” he said, and took her hand in his. Not even her father could object to a little hand-holding in the face of malevolent spirits.

Her hand was tiny in his, and she squeezed back with a pressure he wasn’t expecting. It had been a long-ass time since he had held hands with a woman, because most women he knew were too independent for it, and he had to admit, he kind of liked it. He dug feeling like the big strong man next to her instead of the loser who couldn’t buy a career woman dinner and a night on the town. As he walked, Piper inched in even closer to him, until their hips were bumping.

“Is this the right way?” he asked her.

“Yes. There.” She pointed to the corner under the stairs.

All Brady could see was a stack of boxes and old shelving with floral contact paper on it in avocado green and brown. An ancient blender rested on one, but the others were empty. “Okay, let’s just take a closer look.”

He didn’t think he was going to see anything at all. It was a matter of whether Piper was going to see anything or not. All he could do was just look around and wait for an all clear from her.

“So, do you see anything?” he asked, turning to see her face.

What he didn’t expect was her eyes to go wide and a bloodcurdling scream to leave her mouth.

           Chapter Three

“WHAT? WHAT’S WRONG? WHAT DO YOU SEE?”

It took Piper a second to slow down her heart rate as she pointed behind Brady to the blender on the shelf. “Oh, my God, that is the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in my life!”

She hated spiders. They eased into places you weren’t expecting them, like silent, furry intruders, and this one was huge. A silver dollar was smaller than that arachnid. She could slap a saddle on it and ride it to the back field for God’s sake. It was so enormous that she forgot about the black shadow and the fact that she was holding hands with her childhood fantasy.

Brady’s mouth dropped and he loosened his grip on her hand. “Are you kidding me? You’re screaming over a spider? Jesus, I thought a killer clown was under the stairs or something.”

That startled Piper out of her fear. “A killer clown? Why would there be a clown down here?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But what’s scarier than a clown? Not much. Be honest.” He shook their mutually clasped hands to emphasis his point. “A painted-on smile? Come on, that’s messed up.”