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  Don’t Wake the Dead

  The Wraith Files, Case #53

  by

  C.C. Wood

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s twisted imagination, are used fictitiously, or with permission. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, and events is entirely coincidental. However, there are dead people in this book.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s rights because that makes you a jerk. Please purchase only authorized editions.

  Copyright © Crystal W. Wilson 2014

  EPUB Edition

  Cover by

  Jena Brignola, Bibliophile Productions

  Editing by

  Tania Marinaro, Libros Evolution

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Epilogue

  Contact C.C.

  About C.C.

  Titles by C.C. Wood

  Dedication

  To T.A. Thank you for being my real-life Teri and making me laugh all the time. When we die in 40 or 50 years, I hope we can be ghost friends and scare the shit out of people together.

  Chapter

  If I’d realized he was in the elevator, I wouldn’t have stepped inside. I always tried to avoid him, but I wasn’t paying attention that morning.

  “It’s you.”

  I looked up from my phone and fought not to cringe. Immediately, I returned my attention back to the screen of my phone.

  He leaned into me. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

  Ducking my head, I focused on responding to Jonelle’s text as I pretended that he didn’t exist.

  Suddenly, I felt an icy cold tingle on the side of my face. I jerked away from him, banging my shoulder into the wall. He stood next to me, his tongue hanging out of his mouth like some sort of overgrown puppy.

  The other two people in the elevator, a man and a woman, turned and gave me concerned looks. Then they looked at each other as if to say, “You’ll help hold her down if she loses her shit, right?”

  I smiled wanly. “Sorry, I tripped.”

  The woman glared at me, but the man eyed me speculatively. I shrugged, trying to look as harmless as possible.

  They turned their backs toward me but I could tell that they were on guard. Irritated, I glared at the man to my right. Quickly, I pulled up the note app on my phone and typed him a message.

  Leave me alone. And don’t ever lick my face again, asshole.

  “I just wanted your attention. Why won’t you talk to me?” he complained, his voice quieter this time. “You’re the only one who seems to see or hear me.”

  Bcuz I am.

  “But why? Why do they all pretend they can’t see me?” Now his tone was verging on whiny.

  They can’t. You know they can’t.

  “I don’t understand. Why can’t they see me?”

  Usually I tried to be considerate when talking to someone in his position, but we’d had this conversation before. In fact, we’d had this conversation at least once a week since I’d been hired at the insurance firm. If I was alone in the elevator, I would express my annoyance out loud but this time I was hampered by the two other occupants. He knew it too, which was why he was still bothering me. If anything, he was tenacious and willfully ignorant.

  I’ve told u a million times, Jerry. Ur dead. Uve been dead for a long time.

  “I can’t be dead,” he argued.

  Sick of arguing with him, I typed him a final message.

  U R a ghost. Don’t bother me again or I’ll come back with holy water and banish ur ass.

  Though I wasn’t even sure if holy water would work, it seemed like a viable threat. Maybe my words were cruel, but Jerry had been haunting this building daily for the last four years that I worked here. At first, I managed to ignore him, but I made the mistake of responding to his questions once when I was alone. Since then, he tried to talk to me every time he saw me. I was pretty sure he looked for me.

  “Bitch,” he muttered.

  I realized then that not only did Jerry understand that he was dead, he enjoyed being undetectable. He liked moving among the living mostly unseen. The harassment he dished out to me was his way of relieving boredom.

  Still, he had no intention of moving on. He wanted to remain here, even if no one else could see or talk to him. Probably so he could look up women’s skirts or lick their toes in the elevator, the pervy fucker.

  When the elevator reached my floor, I rushed off, accidentally bumping into the woman near the doors.

  She huffed in annoyance.

  Glancing back, I apologized, “Sorry.”

  I didn’t wait to hear a response from her or Jerry, already hurrying down the hallway toward the offices that held the insurance company that employed me.

  The receptionist, Claire, smiled and waved at me as I entered. I nodded to her and headed straight toward the break room where the employee lockers were located. I put my purse inside my locker and took a quick trip to the ladies room. Once I was done, I headed back into the break room for a cup of coffee. It was the same routine I went through every workday morning.

  As I added sugar and creamer, my boss, Mike, stuck his head into the break room.

  “I need to see you in my office before you start your shift,” he stated.

  “Okay,” I replied.

  Before I could ask him if everything was okay, he disappeared. That was a bad sign. Mike might not be the friendliest man I’d ever met, but he never ended conversations so abruptly.

  My stomach twisted as I stirred my coffee. I might not be clairvoyant, but I had an idea what was coming. I’d been hearing rumors about company restructuring for a couple of months.

  I made my way to Mike’s office. I noticed halfway down the hall that I’d left my coffee on the counter in the break room. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have been able to drink a drop right now anyway.

  I knocked on his open door and stuck my head in when he called out.

  “Hey, Mike.”

  His face was serious as he gestured for me to come inside. “Please clos
e the door behind you.”

  That’s when I knew my worries were well founded. Mike had a stringent open-door policy in the office. Meetings, unless they were reprimands or terminations, were always held with the door open. Mike wanted his employees to trust him and refused to hide in his office.

  I shut the door and took a seat in the chair across from his. Lacing my fingers together, I rested my hands in my lap and waited.

  Mike sighed and mimicked my pose, his expression unhappy. “You’re an intelligent person, Zoe, I’m sure you already have an idea of why I called you in here.”

  “If this has something to do with the rumors of company restructuring, then yes,” I answered.

  “I’m afraid it does.”

  “Go ahead and spit it out, Mike,” I invited.

  “General Insurance is eliminating over a thousand positions this year. All claims centers will pare down from five hundred to four hundred claim reps. As much as I hate this, I have to terminate people based on seniority and you’re one of my newer reps.”

  My eyebrows lifted. “After four years, I’m a newer rep?”

  He shrugged. “It’s twenty percent of my staff, Zoe. A few of these terminations are for people who’ve been here longer than you.” His face fell. “For what it’s worth, I hate doing this and I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Mike,” I replied.

  Even though it wasn’t okay as I claimed, I couldn’t be angry with him. He had a job to do, even if he didn’t necessarily like it.

  I hauled myself out of my chair. “So I take it I have the day off?”

  He sighed and I felt a twinge of remorse for my quip. “I’ve enjoyed working with you. Please put me down as a reference. I’ll give any prospective employers a glowing recommendation.”

  My smile was half-hearted but I appreciated his effort. “Thanks, Mike.”

  I trudged out of his office, unsure of what to do next. Retracing my steps, I returned to the break room. My full coffee cup was still sitting on the counter. I poured it down the sink and washed the mug.

  I didn’t bother to go to my cubicle. I stopped bringing personal items to work when I realized that Norma, the woman in the workspace directly behind me, was a kleptomaniac and stole everything on my desk that wasn’t nailed down. Except for my work files. Those she was happy to leave.

  Removing my bag from my locker, I left the break room and took one last look around the place I’d worked for the last four years. The bland grey carpet and white walls weren’t much and the generic landscape paintings hanging throughout the offices were actually damn ugly, but I’d enjoyed my time here.

  Now, I was leaving for good.

  I said good-bye to Claire as I left. She seemed to know exactly what was going on because she looked sad.

  The elevator doors opened up and I was face-to-face with Jerry the Annoying Ghost again. He sneered at me as I stepped on.

  “Back so soon?” he asked.

  After I pressed the button for the first floor, I faced him. “For the last time. I gotta tell you, Jerry, I won’t miss you.”

  “Miss me?” he asked.

  I was actually kind of glad I was alone in the elevator with him so I could speak freely without people thinking I was a fruitcake.

  “It’s my last day. I won’t be back.”

  He actually looked surprised. “But who’ll I talk to?”

  I laughed. “No one, Jer. No one. You should really think about moving on.”

  The elevator steadily descended toward the bottom floor with no stops.

  “You can’t leave me,” he demanded. “I won’t let you.”

  The elevator dinged as it halted on the lobby level.

  “Good-bye, Jerry,” I replied.

  “I’ll find you. I won’t let you leave me here alone,” he spat out. His words were venomous and full of menace, but they were empty. He’d never be able to leave the elevator unless he went to the next plane.

  “Fuck you, Jerry,” I answered levelly, marching off the elevator car as the doors slid open.

  I could hear him screaming at me as I walked through the lobby and out the front doors, but I didn’t look back.

  Like all ghosts, he was stuck in the past and that’s where I intended to leave him.

  Chapter

  As soon as I walked through the front door, Teri materialized in the living room.

  “What are you doing back so early?” she asked. “You get fired or something?”

  I dropped my purse on the floor and tried to hang my keys on the hook by the front door. I missed the hook and they hit the floor with a clatter. I left them there.

  “Zoe?”

  “Got it in one,” I answered. “I was fired.”

  “Shit. Does this mean you’re gonna move out? It’s been kinda nice having someone to talk to after all these years.”

  Sighing, I kicked off my shoes and stripped off my jacket. “No, I have some money saved and the mortgage is low enough that it’ll last me a while. Thanks to you.”

  Teri grinned at me. “Hey, I can’t help it if everyone in town believes the rumors about this place.”

  She didn’t know the half of it. The Kenna gossip mill insisted that six people had died in this house over the years and that it was haunted by a demon.

  In reality, there had been two deaths here, but nothing like they thought. The first owner had died in her sleep at the ripe old age of ninety-five. Teri had been found hanging in the garage in an apparent suicide. She was adamant that wasn’t case, that she’d been murdered. In fact, she mentioned it a lot.

  Whether it was true or not, it had happened thirty years ago, so there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  “We should get drunk,” Teri stated.

  “We can’t get drunk, Teri. You’re a ghost. Ghosts don’t drink.”

  “I know. I fucking miss it too. That and smoking.” She paused. “And sex. God, do I miss sex. Do you know how difficult it is to have an orgasm when you don’t have a physical form?”

  I clapped my hands over my ears. “TMI! Do not tell me things like that!”

  She sneered at me. “Well who am I supposed to tell? My pickings are slim for friends. You’re my best friend by default.”

  “Oh great, so even the ghosts in this town would rather be friends with someone other than me,” I quipped.

  “Hey, that slutty girl likes you.”

  I glared at her. “Jonelle isn’t slutty. She just isn’t ready to settle down.”

  “She goes through men faster than a teenage boy goes through hand lotion.”

  I grimaced at her analogy. “Ick.”

  Teri nodded. “Yes. It’s also accurate.”

  I shook my head and walked past her toward the kitchen. I didn’t intend to get drunk but a bottle of hard cider, or two, wouldn’t be unwelcome right now.

  As usual, Teri was exaggerating. Jonelle did date a lot, but only because she didn’t want to settle down. She wanted to enjoy her youth while she still had it…at least that’s what she claimed. I had a feeling it had more to do with the fact that she didn’t trust any man to stick around when the going got tough.

  “Speaking of the cock hopper, you should call her.”

  I glared at Teri over my shoulder. “First of all, don’t call her a cock hopper. Ever. Or I’ll be forced to revoke your daytime TV privileges.”

  Teri gasped. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would. Secondly, why would I call Jonelle right now? It’s the middle of the day, she’s probably at work.”

  Jonelle worked at a salon in Weatherford. Fridays and Saturdays were her busiest.

  My resident ghost rolled her eyes. “Because she’s your best friend and she might want to know you just got canned so she can be supportive or some shit.”

  “I’ll call her later.” My phone slid across the counter toward me and I jumped, whirling to face her. “Dammit, Teri, I told you not to do stuff like that.”

  She smirked at me. “I’m getting better at moving thi
ngs. I’ve been practicing.”

  I regretted encouraging her to interact with objects. Once Teri figured out how to move things, she liked to freak out my friends and family when they came to visit. After a couple of years, my mother refused to set foot in my house anymore.

  “Call her,” Teri insisted.

  “Fine,” I snapped, snatching up the cordless phone. I sighed, realizing I would probably have to cancel my landline soon in order to save money.

  Jonelle picked up on the third ring. “Hey, girl. Are you sick?”

  I hesitated. “Uh, no. Why do you ask?”

  “You’re calling me from your home phone at ten in the morning on a weekday,” she explained.

  “Oh. Um, no, I’m not sick.”

  “Is something else wrong?” she asked.

  I sighed when I felt Teri’s cold finger prod my shoulder. “Yeah. I got fired this morning.”

  “Damn. Did you finally lose your shit on that sneaky, thieving bitch in the cubicle next to yours?”

  I huffed out a laugh. “No. They’re downsizing. My office alone is cutting one hundred reps.”

  “And you’re one of them?” Jonelle prompted.

  “Yeah.”

  “That blows, sweetie. Are you going to be okay? Do you need some cash or anything?”

  I smiled at her offer. Jonelle was such a generous friend. “I should be good. I have some money saved.”

  “Okay, well let me know if that changes,” she stated. “I can float you a loan.

  “Thanks, Jonelle.”

  We chatted a few more minutes, then her client arrived and Jonelle had to hang up.

  I put the phone back on the charging stand and found Teri staring at me, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “Feel better?”

  I scowled at her. “Yes.”

  “Then stop frowning at me. It’ll give you wrinkles.”

  Rolling my eyes, I grabbed my hard cider and carried it into the living room.

  Teri followed me. “Well, it’s ten-fifteen.”

  “Okaaay,” I drawled in response, unsure why she was announcing the time to me.

  “The firefighter next door likes to workout in his backyard this time of day.”