Jemma’s Ghost

“Jemma’s Ghost” was deleted from my second novel, Finding Persephone, when one of the beta readers objected to it because while ghosts and spirits are expected in the paranormal and/or horror genres, they do not necessarily fit within science fiction parameters. After much deliberation, I deleted this chapter from the final manuscript. I didn’t want to, but as William Faulkner once wrote, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
I have, however, resurrected this particular “darling” for you.
A short background for anyone who has not yet read Finding Persephone: Grant, Gregory, and Gabriel are Lyostians, an alien race of human replicants who operate a health clinic and spa called GatesWay. Jemma is a client whose crush on Gregory became more dangerous than he could handle, resulting in Jemma’s untimely death.
The facility’s maintenance crew refused to clean the dance studio on the sixth floor.
They were offered more money but insisted it wasn’t about the money. They were threatened with dismissal but said they would quit first. The crew foreman would not explain and simply declined to discuss it further. Unable to maintain the dance floor at the facility director’s standards by the interns alone, Dr. Grant relocated all the dance classes to the lower floors.
When Gabriel, the human resources manager, gave the ballet instructor the new classroom assignments, he could not miss the expression of relief on her face and questioned her. Speaking in a low voice, she told him that some of her ballet students reported seeing a woman wearing a blue dress reflected in the mirrors, but when they looked around, no one was there. “It didn’t happen often,” she said, “but too often to be any one person’s imagination.”
Lyostians are not superstitious, and ghost stories do not exist in their culture. Upon hearing Gabriel’s report, Dr. Grant immediately went upstairs to investigate and found nothing. He checked every corner of the room and inspected the mirrors from every angle. Using a laser pointer, he calculated the reflective and projective properties of the buildings around them, but
there were no direct lines of sight. Finally, standing near the elevator doors, he looked at the expanse of the entire sixth floor. Infuriated at the waste of space, Dr. Grant angrily pressed the elevator button. When the chime signaled its arrival, he heard Jemma whisper, “Gregory?” precisely as he’d heard it the evening she died. Turning around quickly, he saw the flounce of a sapphire blue dress reflected in the mirror across from him.
There was no one else in the room.
After a brief discussion with his brothers, the sixth floor was closed. The elevator button was disabled, and Gabriel padlocked the exit door. They were not afraid of Jemma’s ghost, but the last thing they wanted was a rumor that the building was haunted by a woman wearing a blue dress.
After sunset the following Sunday, Dr. Grant and one of the interns hung curtains matching the building’s blue and white awning over all the windows on the sixth floor. They bricked the elevator entrance and permanently sealed the exit door. Before returning to their tunnels beneath the building, they agreed never to say a word to anyone about what they saw and heard that night.
No one ever returned to the sixth floor. The dance studio was left to Jemma, who waited patiently for Gregory to join her as she twirled in front of the mirrors, admiring the sapphire blue dress that matched her eyes.

PJ Braley

PJ Braley is the president of Citrus Writers of Florida. She has been writing all her adult life, but when she began writing a story about aliens negotiating the labyrinth of human love while trying to save the planet,
everything she wanted to say fell into place. The release date for her third book, Persephone’s Children, is November 15, 2024. Learn more about PJ Braley and The Fire Slayers saga at pjbraley.com or contact her
at PJBraleyinFlorida@gmail.com.