Luvya Getcha

LUVYA GETCHA

Martin Price

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Martin Price

© Martin Price 2011

Smashwords Edition

The right of Martin Price to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988

All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, no part of this e-book publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the purchaser

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and events are all from the author’s mind. Any resemblance to persons either living or dead is purely coincidental

© Cover Design by Carmine Trip

Also by this author:

Becoming Hugo Forst

The Reason I’m Still Here

Flowers from a Different Summer

Sad’s Place

Steam

Marsha’s Bag

As the Flies Crow

Short Stories:

Africar

Bad Return

*****

For Katie, Kelly, Finley & Elijah

Luvya Getcha

*****

The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core. Scratch a lover and find a foe.

Dorothy Rothschild Parker

Table of Contents

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

The End / Back To Top

Chapter 1

There was a hand sticking out of the riverbank, a skeletal hand. Richard Beckett saw it but his wife, Jasmine, saw it first.

And she touched it.

And that was when Richard lost her.

To the owner of that hand.

‘I’ll call the police,’ he said, unaware right then that he had lost his wife. He took out his phone, and began to make the call.

But then: ‘Hey, is that a telephone you’ve got there?’

That voice, it had come out of Jasmine’s mouth…but it hadn’t sounded like Jasmine’s voice. It was her, all right, crouched there in front of that hand, looking around at him through the dark, glossy fall of her hair, but that voice! It was just too husky, and too direct, to be Jazzy Beckett’s voice.

‘Did you hear me, you idiot?’ Jasmine said…or rather, Jasmine’s mouth said. ‘If that is a telephone you’ve got there, then you can put it down, and right now! Just drop it!’

Startled, Richard did as she said, he dropped the phone, like it was suddenly too hot. ‘There, it’s done. But what the hell's up with you, Jazzy? We’ve got a dead body here. I need to call the police.’

Jasmine stood. Turned around. Came over to him. ‘What you need is to do nothing…apart from listen to me. But first I need to get acquainted with this body here.’ She began to run her hands up and down her body, her hips gyrating, her breasts thrust out, her tongue poked out, and running it around her lips.

Richard laughed, just couldn’t help himself. ‘Oh please, stop this, would you? This is a serious situation! Stop acting like you’re someone else.’

‘I’m not acting,’ Jasmine said. ‘I am someone else. Your wife is no longer around, she’s not here, I have…expelled her.’

‘Expelled her?’ Richard said, bemused.

Jasmine looked up at the sky, then made a hand weave gently, this way and that. ‘Yes, expelled her, and now she is drifting around, hither and thither, like a ball of fluff on the breeze.’

She snapped her gaze back to Richard. ‘So now you’ve got me. Yes, little old me, living inside your wife’s body. It’s not a bad body, either, I must say. A little on the stringy side, though. She could do with a good Sunday roast, with apple pie and custard to follow. Nevertheless it will do. Yes, it will do.’

She introduced herself to him then, like they were strangers at a cocktail party. ‘Carolyn Crossley, my name is, but you can call me CC, just like my friends used to.’

‘CC?’ Richard said. ‘Is this really happening?’

‘It is,’ CC said. ‘Your wife is no longer around. I’m the one in charge here, me, little CC. Your wife touched my hand, and I jumped into her, quick as a fox snatching a hen. Now, are you just going to gawp at me all day, or are you going to help your wife?’

Richard Beckett was here by the riverbank at the bottom of their garden, after the storm last night that had made the river swell and become so violent that the rushing, boiling water had torn great chunks out of the banks, on both sides, and what had been exposed, aside from the many tangled bunches of tree roots, had been that skeletal hand.

That skeletal hand that Jasmine had been foolish enough to touch…and now…this?

And what was this, exactly? Some kind of elaborate joke that he could not, as yet, understand? If it was, then fine, bring it on, whatever, a joke was a joke. But, what he did not want was for this joke to just go on and on until it drove him mad…

It was, though; already he could feel it munching into his brain, when all he wanted was everything back to normal. Just he and Jasmine, standing by the riverbank, watching the muddy-brown water flow by.

‘Help her?’ Richard said. ‘What do I do, exactly? Pull you out of her mouth and put my wife back in there somehow?’

‘No. What you do is find Max Trumain and bring him to me. Then you can have your wife back.’

‘Please,’ Richard said. ‘I’m finding this a little difficult, you know?’

‘I bet,’ CC said, nodding. ‘But you need to stay with me on this…because I need you. And you need me. That’s the thing, you see. That’s the thing more than any other thing: that you need me. So let’s get to it, shall we? Let’s get down to business.’

She looked down at the phone then, lying there at his feet. ‘Pick that up.’

He did.

‘Is it a telephone?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Richard said, playing along with this, in spite of himself. ‘It's an i-phone.’

‘An i-phone? You use your eye to make a telephone call?’

‘No. It's the name of the phone.’ He held it out for her to look at.

She did, by craning her neck and peering down at it. ‘How small is that? And no wires! No dial, either, that you stick your finger in to ring the number. So how does it work?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not interested in how things work. I just buy them and use them.’

‘Like a woman with a vacuum-cleaner, you mean? Like, she doesn’t need to know how it works, just knows that it sucks up all the shit, right?’

‘Yeah, something like that,’ Richard said, and then, feeling desperate, and knowing that he sounded desperate, he put his phone back in his pocket, and after that, he suddenly grabbed Jasmine by the upper arms. Shouted into her face: ‘Please, Jazzy, stop this, stop this right now - !’

‘Get your hands off of me!’ CC snarled back at him, and right then, he caught a whiff of her breath, like rotten meat wafting out at him and then breaking over his face. Not Jasmine’s breath, that’s for sure. Her breath always smelled sweet; if ever there was a mint devil, then it was Jasmine Beckett. She got through packets of the damn things.

‘Pull yourself together!’ CC went on. ‘What are you, a man or a mouse? If you’re a mouse, then your wife’s days are numbered. Because I’m just going to hang around here, come rain or shine, until you bring Max Trumain to me. Simple as that. I won’t eat, I won’t drink, I’ll just hang around here until finally this body here dies.’

‘My God,’ Richard breathed. ‘This is a nightmare!’

‘It’ll be an even bigger nightmare if your wife dies, wouldn’t you agree? And it won’t just be her...’ CC all of a sudden cupped Jasmine’s belly, and tenderly, too. Not that there was much of a belly to cup, but of course, you didn’t need the physical sign. The symbolic sign was enough.

‘She’s pregnant?’

CC nodded. ‘Not by much. A few weeks, that’s all. That’s pretty much how far gone I was when Max Trumain killed me that day. Killed me and then buried me here by this river.’

‘Pregnant,’ Richard whispered. ‘My God, we've been trying for years, and nothing. We started to think it would never happen.’

‘Well, it has, finally,’ CC said. ‘So what are you going to do? Help me? Or are you just going to let these two people die?’

Richard Beckett knew there was only one way to go with this, no other way. He could only do as CC said, no matter what. Even so, he had never felt so helpless! So helpless and so confused! He felt like he needed the rest of the week, maybe even the rest of the year, to get his head around this.

But he didn’t have the rest of the year…and probably didn’t even have the rest of the week. Just now, right now, was all he had. So what he did was set the controls to automatic pilot, and hope for the best.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’m talking to my wife, but yet I’m not talking to my wife. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘It is. You’re talking to your wife’s face, but you’re not talking to her spirit. You’re talking to my spirit, the spirit of Carolyn Crossley.’

‘Or CC for short.’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay,’ Richard said, composing himself, not succeeding, just trembling, really, and feeling dizzy, but pressing on, anyhow. ‘And this Max Trumain, he killed you, and then buried you right here, by the river.’

‘Yes.’

‘When was this?’

‘The summer of sixty-four. What year is it now?’

‘Two-thousand and eleven,’ Richard said. ‘Which means you’ve been dead for over forty-five years.’

‘Forty-five years,’ CC said. ‘That means that Max Trumain would be in his eighties by now.’

‘Could even be dead,’ Richard suggested, like he hoped the CC woman would say, Yeah, you’re right, he could even be dead, probably is, so let’s call the whole thing off, eh?

She didn’t. What she said was: ‘Yes, he could be, and if he is, then so is your wife.’ She pointed across the river with one of Jasmine’s pale, elegant hands. ‘You see those woods over there? I’ll take off into them…and that'll be the last you’ll see of me. Those woods, they are Blackthorn Woods. You can get lost in there and never be found. People have gotten lost in there and never been found.’

‘I know that,’ Richard said. ‘But why would you do that? It won’t be my fault if Max Trumain turns out to be dead.’

‘No, it won’t,’ CC agreed. ‘But what you need to understand, Mr…ah…what’s your name, by the way?’

‘Richard. Richard Beckett.’

‘Right, Richard Beckett. And your wife’s name is Jazzy, yes?’

‘No, it’s Jasmine. Jazzy is her pet-name.’

CC gave him an offhand look. ‘Yeah, like I give a fuck. I don’t, that’s the truth of it. And it was that, my cold streak, that got me killed that day, that’s the plain fact of it. So you see, Richard, if Max Trumain is dead, or if he isn’t dead, but instead you bring the police here, then I will take off into those woods. It is not an idle threat. I will do that. Make no mistake about it.’

‘I believe you,’ Richard said. ‘Looks like Max Trumain will have to be alive then, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, it does…if you want your wife back, that is.’

‘I do,’ Richard said, and right then, he all of a sudden felt exhausted, like he’d just run in a half-marathon. Just wanted to collapse, fall asleep, and quite possibly never wake up again.

‘Good, so you want your wife back. Well that’s a start then, isn’t it? But just in case I haven’t painted a clear enough picture for you, then please allow me to do so. I could sit here on this riverbank and pleasure myself all day with a large vegetable. Or maybe go one further, and find some randy farmhand around here to give me a good seeing to. Failing that, if I get bored waiting around for you to return with Max Trumain, then why don’t I just wade out into the river and simply drown this pretty woman of yours? It’ll make no odds to me. It’s not my body. Why would I care?’ She gave him a hard, blunt look. ‘Is that picture clear enough for you?’

‘A little too clear,’ Richard said…and then…he grinned. It seemed to him that he’d been sucked, and deeply, into this joke, this elaborate joke, which, at the moment, he hadn’t gotten to the bottom of. But he would. Eventually he would. Then he and Jazzy would laugh together like a right old pair of idiots. ‘Pleasure yourself with a large vegetable,’ he said, grinning harder. ‘Jesus.’

She gently waved a hand in front of his face. ‘You’re still not getting any of this, are you?’ CC said, but of course it was not CC, there was no CC. Only Jasmine...and this elaborate joke, of course.

‘Yeah, I’m getting it, all right,’ Richard said. ‘I’ve been well and truly had here, haven’t I? A randy farmhand indeed. Whatever next?’

‘Yes, whatever next,’ Jasmine said. Had to be Jasmine, no other sensible explanation for it. But then she showed him her wedding ring by holding up her left hand, the fingers splayed. ‘How much does this ring here mean to your wife, do you suppose?’

‘Pretty much everything,’ Richard said, the grin beginning to shrink a little on his face now. ‘Why?’

Just like that, the ring was removed, and then tossed into the river. No threat. The job was simply done in a jiffy. In a heartless jiffy.

‘No!’ Richard screamed. ‘Oh no, the fuck no!’

He jumped into the river. The river carried him away. He did not find the ring, even though he plunged down, several times, grasping, grasping, grasping. But nothing. In the end, all he could do was grab hold of a tree root, as greasy as it was, and haul himself back up onto the bank.

Then he lay there, on his back, panting and coughing, coughing and panting. And crying, yes, he did that, too. He cried. And the river rushed by his feet. And the sun glowed in his eyes. And the wind, the somewhat chilly wind, made him shiver.

Then a shadow fell over him. ‘Are we ready to talk?’ CC said. ‘Are we really ready to talk?’

‘We are,’ Richard Beckett said. ‘Yes, we are.’

Chapter 2

He stood, soaking wet, his feet squelching in his shoes. And there she was before him, not Jasmine, no, certainly not Jasmine. Richard Beckett had now come to terms with that, even though it was hard, extremely hard. It was CC. CC living inside Jasmine’s body, that beautiful body. That beautiful body that CC could do anything to, and Richard would be powerless to stop it.

All he could do now was go along with this. No choice. It was that, or CC would kill Jasmine by either drowning her in the river, or taking off into Blackthorn Wood, and then hiding in there, until Jasmine died of the cold and hunger.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘What do I need to know, and to do, to get my wife back? But first I have a stipulation: please don’t harm her. By that I mean, please don’t harm her unnecessarily. I love her with all of my heart. That being the case, I will do all I can to bring this Max Trumain to you. I really will. I mean, you have no fucking idea how I will do all I can to bring him to you!’

‘You know, I think I do,’ CC said, smiling with Jasmine’s full, sensual mouth. ‘I think I do because even though I am one hell of a bitch, I still understand love and what it can do to someone. How it can turn them inside out. It happened to me, that's why. Max Trumain, he broke my heart, and then he broke my neck. When I was just nineteen years old. That means I’m an old granny now, doesn't it?’

‘You’re sixty-five, or thereabouts,’ Richard said. ‘Back then, yes, maybe you would have been seen as an old granny. Not these days, though. These days you’re still pretty much rocking at that age.’

She laughed, and it was Jasmine’s laugh, that charming giggle of hers…but of course it was not her laugh. Not Jasmine driving it, anyhow. ‘Rocking, eh?’ CC said. ‘Never heard that expression before…although I do know about rock n' roll, as in Eddie Cochran and Elvis.’

‘Elvis is dead,’ Richard said. ‘He died all fat on the toilet, back in the seventies.’

‘My God!’ CC said. ‘He was fat, and he died on the toilet? Are you pulling my leg?’

‘No,’ Richard said. ‘A lot of things have happened since you were last here, but we haven’t got time for any of that, have we? For a history lesson?’

‘I would say not,’ CC said. She gazed up at the house then, the large four-bedroom place that Richard and Jasmine had spent the last twelve months renovating, and there it was, looking pretty much how it must have looked the day CC died: all painted up, clean and tidy.

‘Is that your place?’ CC asked.

‘Yes. We bought it last year. It was rundown, but we’ve put it back together again.’

‘Nice. That’s where I lived, along with a girl named Linda Mason. It wasn’t ours, though. Rented. Max Trumain was the owner. He owned lots of places in this area back then.’

‘So what happened? Did you have an affair with him?’

‘Yes,’ CC said. ‘And he was married, of course. Married to this monstrosity with a ridiculous beehive hairdo and pearls around its craggy neck. I couldn’t understand it. Why stay with her when he could have had me? And I was gorgeous, you know. Had it all going on: the looks, the intelligence, the personality, and boy, I could suck a cock like the guy thought he'd died and gone to cock-sucking heaven.’

‘TMD,’ Richard remarked.

‘Hmmm?’

‘TMD: too much detail. Let’s just move on, can we, CC?’ He made a rolling action with his arm. ‘So Max Trumain killed you. Why?’

‘Well, that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I told him I was pregnant, he lost his temper, I lost mine, I slapped him, he slapped me back, only it was more than just a slap, it was a whack with all of a big man’s weight behind it, and that was it, I was dead with a broken neck. Dead here by this riverbank.’

Richard nodded.

CC said, ‘What happened after that, I don’t know. Only that Max must have buried me. Who else could have done it?’

‘Well, I thought you'd know that,’ Richard said. ‘Given that you're a spirit, a ghost, whatever.’

‘I'm no ghost,’ CC said. ‘Never will be…because I don't want to be. That's why I stayed here, waiting for someone like Jasmine. Waiting patiently. A ghost may find out the answers to its death, but after that, all it does is wander about aimlessly. That isn't for me.’

‘Okay,’ Richard said. 'So we don't know for sure that Max Trumain buried you here. Likely he did. But what about this Linda girl? Linda Mason, did you say?’

CC nodded.

‘Would she have had a part in it?’

‘In burying me, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps,’ CC said. ‘But I can’t imagine it. Linda was a nervous, polite little thing, who wouldn't have strayed outside of the law. If she’d known Max Trumain had killed me, she would have gone to the police. I’m sure of it.’

Richard glanced at CC’s bony hand jutting out of the bank, like it was trying to snag a fish out of the water. ‘Well, clearly she didn’t go to the police because there you are, still buried in the ground. Mostly buried, anyhow. It was the storm last night that uncovered your hand. If not for that, then you’d still be there, undiscovered.’

CC nodded.

‘So what about this Linda Mason?’ Richard said. ‘What happened to her?’

‘That’s for you to find out,’ CC said. ‘Looks like you’ll have to play the detective. Any good at detective work, are you?’

‘I’m a counsellor. I counsel inmates, mostly, in the prisons we have here in Hampshire. That doesn’t make me any kind of detective, but I do know how to listen…and how to take in information. And that’s what I need from you, CC, information. Anything at all that'll help me track down Max Trumain. So what do you know?’

‘Like I said, he’d be in his eighties by now, and that he used to own many properties in this area. Aside from that, that’s just about all I know. You have to remember that I was nothing but a young girl back then, and a young girl in love, at that. To me, Max Trumain was a god, and what you mostly do with a god is worship him.’

‘If that’s what you did, then that doesn’t seem to make you so cold at all. You were a young girl in love, like any other young girl in love.’

‘Yes, I worshipped him. But that didn’t mean I was an idiot. You worship a god so he will give you what you want. It’s a selfish act: you please him so that he will please you. Did I know that Max Trumain had money, big money? Yes, of course I did. If I'd given birth to his child, then that child would have wanted for nothing. Nor would I. So I stalked him like a hunter stalks its prey, and I caught him, and he made me pregnant, just as I wanted him to. But when I told him I was pregnant, he told me - after damn near having a heart-attack - that he was going to stay with his wife, and so I told him that if he did stay with his wife, then I would make his life a misery. And that’s the cold part of me. That’s the unreasonable part of someone like me, who finds it perfectly acceptable to chase an animal down, but doesn’t find it so perfectly acceptable when that animal turns around and bites her.’

‘And would you have made his life a misery?’

‘You bet I would have. By the time I’d finished with him, his life wouldn't have been worth living. But of course I wasn’t given the chance. He killed me. He didn’t mean to kill me, I’m sure he didn’t, because I believe he loved me. I know he loved me. He had his wife, though. His children, too. He didn’t want to upset the apple cart.’

‘So he killed you. But all the same it was an accident. So why do you want your revenge?’

‘Who said anything about revenge? My reasons for wanting Max Trumain here are personal. You don’t need to know. All you need to know is that I want him here.’

‘Unfinished business, eh?’

‘Yes, unfinished business,’ CC agreed. ‘So best you go and fetch him. And me? I’ll just sit here by this river and wait.’

‘No need for that,’ Richard said. ‘You can go up to the house. Wait in there.’

‘No. If I do that, then you’ll know I’m all comfy and warm and no harm will come to me. You’ll lose the urgency. But this way you won't. Why's that? Well, the moment you stop for a rest or a drink or something to eat, you’ll think of me sitting here by this river, getting cold and tired and hungry. You’ll think of Jasmine, of your beautiful Jasmine. Of your beautiful Jasmine…slowly…dying.’

She looked him up and down, then. ‘Now go up to the house, change out of those wet clothes, and then find Max Trumain. And you’d better find him. If you don’t, and Jasmine dies, then you’ll have a lot of explaining to do. To the police. To your in-laws. To your friends. God, you could even be found guilty of murder yourself! Suddenly you’ll be the one in prison, not giving counselling but receiving it! What do you think of that, then?’

‘Not much,’ Richard said, miserably. ‘Not much at all.’

‘I’m sure,’ CC said. She glanced up at the house again. ‘And no funny business, either.’

‘Funny business? What kind of funny business?’

‘Like gathering people together. Family and friends, I’m talking about. You could get some of them to guard the river so that I can’t jump in and drown Jasmine. Then you could get a couple of the others to restrain me, and then take me up to the house. After that, you call a doctor. But that will do you no good. Why? Because it’ll be me, CC, in this body here. It will always be me…and you'll know that. You'll know it, but no one else will, because I can be Jasmine, of course I can. I can easily be Jasmine. After all, that’s who people will see when they look at me, anyhow. Just the same old little sweet Jasmine. "Hello Mummy, hello Daddy, I’m not the one who’s gone mad. Richard’s the one who’s gone mad. He thinks I’m someone else! Oh God, what’s wrong with him?" '

CC raised Jasmine’s eyebrows. ‘You see how it'll look? It’ll look like…’

Richard held up a hand. ‘Yeah, I know how it'll look. But I won’t be doing any of that. I just want to find Max Trumain, and as soon as possible. But what if someone comes here, anyhow? People do.’

‘I can make myself scarce. No big deal. I’ve been doing that for forty-five years, anyway, by hiding under the ground here with no one knowing a thing about me. You just find Max Trumain. That’s all you need to do.’

Richard nodded, and then he was gone…although he almost tripped over the wheelbarrow there, the one in which was a spade, a shovel, and a gardening fork. He smiled around at CC, embarrassed. Then he went up to the house. Went up to the house with what felt like a long, wide strip of hell suddenly laid out before him.

Chapter 3

He made it up to the house, went inside, slammed the door shut. Fell back against it, panting, his heart hammering, water dripping off him and pooling around his feet on the waxed, boarded floor. The long, narrow hallway ahead of him pitched and rolled, like a gangway on a ship in a storm.

He felt sick, his stomach gurgled, and for a moment he thought he'd need to lurch off to the bathroom and puke. But in the end the only sickness he felt was the one you feel when everything in your life has all of a sudden gone horribly wrong, and all you can do is stand there, useless, like a machine unplugged from the power supply.

That wouldn’t do, though. Standing there was the last thing he needed. What he needed was to gather up his thoughts, the ones he could do something with, the constructive thoughts, and then find a way out of this mess.

But my God what a mess!

How did he even begin to make a start on it?

He didn’t know, had no idea. Just knew that most of his mind was still in denial, and so he pulled himself away from the door, he turned, and yanked it back open. Grinned out into the back garden like a man who had simply woken up from a bad dream, and there she would be: Jasmine, his Jasmine, the lovely Jasmine. Not the evil, foul-mouthed bitch who had lived inside Jasmine in that bad dream from which he had just awakened.

What he saw as he stood there, grinning, was Jasmine, only now she was naked from the waist up. CC had taken off Jasmine’s top and was cupping Jasmine's breasts.

CC called out: ‘Well, what have I got here then, Richard? Only gone and found myself a couple of