Restless Spirits Boxset: A Collection of Riveting Haunted House Mysteries

by Skylar Finn

  “It’s time,” I told Jazmin. “Numbers dropped off after last week’s episode. We need something big to get the viewers back.” I gazed up at the cabinet. “Do you think I’d survive if we pulled it down on top of me? I hear near-death experiences are easy to market.”

  “Dial it down, Lucia,” said Jazmin as she stood on the sofa and looped heavy-duty fishing wire through the top corners of the cabinet. “Remember the knife incident? I had to rush you to the emergency room for twenty stitches on your forehead. I never got the blood out of my car seats.”

  I rubbed the divot near my hairline left over from the scar. “It was totally worth it. I hit five hundred thousand subscribers with that video.”

  “You should prioritize your health over your viewers.” Jazmin’s foot got caught in the sofa cushions, and the cabinet rattled as she accidentally tugged on the other end of the fishing line. I steadied her before anything truly tragic could happen. “Otherwise, Madame Lucia might become one of the ghosts she’s supposedly summoning from the other side.”

  “Ooooh.” I jumped on the sofa and waggled my fingers around Jazmin as if I were casting a spell. “Madame Lucia meets her maker and returns from the dead. Now that’s clickbait.”

  Jazmin hooked her foot around my ankle and sent me sprawling across the worn crimson sofa cushions. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “It’s catalogued. For now,” I added, rolling off the sofa.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Who’s today’s caller?”

  I consulted my journal full of notes, stories, ideas, and phone numbers. Being a successful call-in psychic was no easy feat for someone who’d never learned the fine art of organization. I flipped to the most recent page in the hectic planner and rooted out the information I needed.

  “Jenna Mulroney,” I read off the page. “Abusive dead husband, miscarriage, blah blah blah. She wants her unborn kid to know she loves him, or her, or it. I’m not sure how far along she was. I’m thinking we could rig the creepy kitchen shadow and pipe in some baby crying sound effects.”

  Jazmin grasped my face in both hands and forced me to look at her. “Lucia, please. Have some sympathy for these people. They’re not calling because they want their stories plastered all over the Internet. They genuinely need Madame Lucia’s help.”

  “What they need is a good psychiatrist,” I said. “Don’t mess up my hair.”

  She ruffled the braid. “You look fine. Where’s your kimono?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “Go get dressed,” she ordered. “I’ll finish up out here. Don’t come out until you’re in the Madame Lucia zone. Break!”

  She smacked my butt hard enough to sting, like a coach encouraging her star quarterback to make the winning play of a tied championship game. I yelped and returned to the bathroom to complete my transformation to Madame Lucia. The kimono was part of my costume. It was a floor-length satin robe that swamped my willowy frame with its garish pink and purple floral pattern. It swished as I swung it around my shoulders and tied it tight enough to hide the Blondie T-shirt underneath. To finish off the look, I glued on some fake eyelashes, painted my eyelids with glittery blue shadow, and drew fuchsia lip liner beyond the perimeter of my mouth. Part of Madame Lucia’s draw was her theatrical appearance, despite how corny and unrealistic it was. If any of my viewers met me in real life, they wouldn’t believe the great and powerful psychic medium Madame Lucia was actually Lucia Star, college dropout and failed actress. Madame Lucia was full of bravado and success. Lucia Star was a desperate wash-up just shy of her thirtieth birthday in need of fast cash. Frankly, I preferred Madame Lucia.

  “It’s go time!” Jazmin shouted. “Move your butt, Madame Lucia.”

  I sauntered from the bathroom. “Children of the sun and moon,” I said, dropping my voice into an accent somewhere between a Spanish casanova—rolling every “r”—and a dog’s growl. “Madame Lucia, the renowned spiritualist, has arrived to soothe your weary hearts and troubled minds.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jazmin said. “Save it for the camera.”

  I flounced to the sofa, which Jazmin had draped with patterned throw blankets to make the space look more hectic and ethereal than it already did. The coffee table was decorated with my orbuculum—a spherical hunk of clear glass I’d found at the flea market—the tarot deck, an assortment of candles, sage bundles, and a bunch of crystals. We had a TV monitor set up to show video conferences. That way, our viewers could see the reaction of the caller. Across from me, Jazmin set the camera up on a tripod. Long lines of fishing wire trailed across the floor and waited at her feet. When the time was right, she could tug on the appropriate wire to trigger a “moment,” as Madame Lucia called them. Fishing line was the oldest trick in the book, but it worked and it wasn’t visible on camera, so we stuck to our strengths. We had more sleight-of-hand subterfuge up our sleeves, like projections and shelves rigged to drop. We stuck to practical effects that horror movie makers used to rely on before CGI was a thing.

  “Two minutes,” Jazmin warned as she connected the camera to my laptop. We broadcasted the web show live. That way, people were less likely to accuse us of altering or editing the footage in post. It made the ruse more real. Our productions relied on my ability to improvise. The people who called were paying customers, not actors we hired to give a performance. My performance mattered most, and I worked best under pressure.

  I yanked the curtains shut and lit the candles to set the mood. Jazmin released a spurt of mist from the fog machine to give the room a smoky, 1920s underground speakeasy feel. Jazmin and I blew a kiss to each other, caught the other’s gesture, and pocketed it. It was our good luck ritual before every show, silly but effective.

  “Live in five, four, three, two—” Jazmin pointed at me to take it away.

  “Good evening, spiritualists, channelers, and curiosity chasers!” I spread my arms wide, allowing the kimono sleeves to flare out like the wings of an enormous tropical bird. “And welcome to Madame Lucia’s Parlour for the Dead and Departed, where I, Madame Lucia, connect with the dead and not so departed.” I gave a hefty, dramatic wink to the camera. “For you viewers who have never tuned into a session before, I must warn you. Mediumship is not for the faint of heart. As I always say, we must proceed into the spirit realm with the three Cs: confidence, candidness, and caution. If you lack but one of these, who knows what you might bring back from the other realm.”

  Behind the camera, Jazmin rolled her eyes. I contained a grin. The more ridiculous Jazmin considered my performance, the more views tended to roll in. I turned up the intensity of my accent.

  “Today we’re speaking to someone from” —I consulted my notebook— “Trenton, New Jersey. Her name is Jenna Mulroney. I’m going to see if I can get Jenna on a video call so she can walk us through some of her concerns.”

  I dialed the number we had on file. The video conference app buffered on the TV monitor. Jenna answered after one ring, and the monitor loaded a low-resolution image of her. She was young—thirty-one or thirty-two—and had the face of a woman who was once considered pretty before a damaged marriage and the death of her unborn child beat the humanity and happiness out of her. Her pixelated eyes searched for comfort in her computer screen. In me. Jazmin’s warning resonated with me. This woman was broken, and it was my job to infuse her with a tiny bit of hope.

  “Hi, Jenna,” I said. “This is Madame Lucia. Can you see and hear me well?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you so much for returning my call. I’ve been anxious to speak with you.”

  “And the spirits are anxious to speak to you,” I replied. “Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that our conversations are broadcasted live on YouTube. Do you consent to your story and experience being shared with other spiritualists who wish to gain insight into the world of the dead?”

  “Absolutely,” Jenna said. “If someone else finds help because of my experience, I’ll be over the moon.”

  “Thank you for your coop
eration,” I said. “Why don’t you get us started, Jenna? Tell us your main reason for contacting me today. And remember the three Cs—”

  “Confidence, candidness, and caution,” Jenna recited. She twisted her hands around each other, picking at her nails and adjusting her knuckles. “Where to begin… I guess at the beginning. Five years ago, I married the man of my dreams. He was perfect in every way. Tender, caring, passionate. I thought I was so lucky. Every woman in the world should envy me.” Jenna ducked her head, and her hair swung forward to obscure her face. “But after a few years, he changed. We began to fight. It was little things, like the way I loaded the dishwasher or too much spice in a dinner dish. I chalked it up to bad days at work or other frustrations. I made excuses for him. It got worse. He started hitting me and—” Jenna’s voice trembled and broke off. I waited patiently while she recollected herself. “Anyway, it was every once in a while, when he’d been drinking. Six months ago, I got pregnant. I thought it might be a fresh start. Babies are meant to be blessings. He accused me of sleeping with another man and beat me again. I lost the baby, and I was so enraged that I seriously considered killing my husband. But I didn’t have to. He drove his car off a bridge one night.”

  “Jenna, I want to commend you for having the bravery to share your story,” I said as the woman plucked tissues from a nearby box and mopped her face. “If I recall, you contacted me because you thought your baby—did he or she have a name yet?”

  “Anthony.”

  “—because you thought Anthony might be having a hard time crossing over to the spirit realm,” I went on. “Can you explain to our viewers what you saw and felt before coming to this conclusion?”

  Jenna squared her shoulders as if summoning the confidence of Madame Lucia. “Recently, when I’m alone in my apartment, I’ve been hearing things from the spare room. A crib rocking back and forth. A baby laughing, sometimes crying. But when I went into the room, the noises would stop. One day, I found a little rubber giraffe on the floor in there. It’s a popular teething toy, but I hadn’t bought anything for Anthony yet. It appeared out of nowhere.”

  “Hmm.” I closed my eyes and swayed back and forth, my kimono sleeves undulating like twin waves beneath my arms. “Keep talking, Jenna. I sense a presence in the room. If it’s Anthony, he’ll take comfort in the sound of your voice and grow stronger.”

  “Anthony?” Jenna squeaked. “Baby, is that you?”

  Jazmin yanked on a piece of fishing wire, and a throw pillow on the armchair adjacent to the sofa hurled itself to the ground. Jenna gasped and covered her mouth.

  “There is definitely a spirit here,” I murmured. “But is it truly Anthony?”

  “Mommy loves you, Anthony,” Jenna said, gripping her computer close to her face so the viewers had a great shot of her bloodshot eyes. “You can go in peace now. I won’t be mad.”

  Jazmin lazily tugged on another strand of wire. A row of decorative nesting dolls, lined up on the top of my bookshelf from tallest to shortest, committed suicide one by one.

  “I don’t think it’s Anthony,” I whispered dramatically.

  Jenna sniffled and wiped her nose. “Then who is it?”

  Jazmin flipped on the projector, which cast a pearly outline on the wall behind me. She maneuvered the “ghost” from one side of the room to the other in a quick dash, shut off the projector, and then threw a baseball into frame. The ball careened into the teapot on the coffee table. The pot shattered, spraying water—not hot tea since we’d planned this gag ahead of time—all over me. I blotted my sopping face with the sleeve of the kimono.

  “It’s your husband,” I revealed in a terrified whisper.

  Viewers weren’t into sob stories. I’d learned that during my first year of broadcasting live. They didn’t want to sit around and watch someone else mope about their dead love or mother or kid or dog. They wanted hard and fast action. They wanted to be scared out of their seats. They wanted to feel the prickle of hair standing up on the back of their necks, and I was more than happy to provide it to them. After the big drama, I always gave the caller a happy ending. They deserved a peaceful conclusion to their hectic haunting experience. But first, I had to put them through some scary theatrics.

  “I can feel his aura.” I picked up the bundle of sage from the coffee table, lit it with a match, and waved it around. Jazmin let another wisp of smoke out of the fog machine, upping the effect. “Be gone, impostor! Your hold over Jenna has finished. Your wedding vows were nullified with your death! Leave her in peace.”

  Jazmin triggered another trick, opening the door of the china cabinet. We were approaching the big finale. A plate fell out and shattered on the floor. For once, I was glad my mother disapproved of my business ventures and never watched the show. She couldn’t yell at me for taking advantage of the family heirlooms if she didn’t know I was demolishing them for profit.

  “Be gone!” I howled again, jumping on the sofa and brandishing the sage like a knight facing a fearsome dragon. “I banish you from the living realm!”

  Jazmin put all of her weight behind the fishing wire. The cabinet tipped forward, slowly at first so all of the dishware spilled out in a cascade of smashed porcelain. I waited until the last second before diving out of the way, and the cabinet landed on the sofa with an ear-splitting crash right where I’d been standing. Glass rained down on me as I wiped fake sweat from my forehead. One sharp piece caught me above the eyebrow. Jazmin grimaced behind the camera.

  “You cannot win,” I warned the fake spirit, letting the blood from the cut dribble down my cheek. Injuries made for excellent content. “You are no longer of this world.”

  “Leave her alone!” Jenna begged through the monitor. “You monster!”

  “Wait,” I said, pressing my palm to my chest. “I feel another presence. Is it…yes, I think so…it’s Anthony!”

  Before Jazmin could pull off another trick, the door to the apartment burst open and the landlord of my building, Evan, stormed into frame. He was as tall as an NBA player with none of the grace. He walked like a monkey whose limbs were replaced with spaghetti, but his absurd height wasn’t enough to hide the shiny bald patch in the middle of his gray hair at the front of his forehead.

  “What the blasted hell are you doing, Lucia?” he thundered. Broken glass crunched under his feet as he noticed Jazmin operating the camera. “Damn it, are you recording your ridiculous web show here again?”

  “Uh, no?”

  “You nearly decapitated Mrs. Lindon when you threw that old television out the window last month,” he scolded. “I had to waive her rent for three months to get her to drop the lawsuit. That was the last straw. I should’ve kicked you out then. Look what you’ve done to this apartment!”

  “Madame Lucia?” Jenna said, peering into her webcam. “What’s going on? Are the ghosts still there?”

  “Ghosts?” Evan planted himself in front of the camera. I signaled Jazmin to cut off the live broadcast, but she was too busy wrestling with Evan over the equipment. He wrenched the camera out of her hands and turned it on himself. “Listen up, idiots. If you think any of this is real, you’re wildly mistaken. Lucia Star is not a psychic or a medium or whatever dumb magician you think she is. She’s a swindler and a fraud, and you’re wasting your time and money if you call or watch—”

  Jazmin slammed the laptop shut, cutting off the live feed at the same time I hung up on Jenna’s video conference. Evan relinquished the camera to Jazmin, satisfied with the damage done.

  “Clean this up,” he said. “And then I want you out of here. Tonight.”

  “You can’t kick me out. I signed a twelve-month lease!”

  “Are you kidding?” He spread his arms and spun around. No matter which way he turned, he was met by a different disaster area of the apartment. “Look at this place! Your security deposit won’t begin to cover the repairs. You’ve violated your lease ten times over. You’re lucky I haven’t called the police.” He kicked one of the fallen nesting do
lls and sent it spinning across the floor. “If you’re not gone by eight o’clock tonight, I will call them. Good riddance.”

  He slammed the door behind him on his way out. I turned to Jazmin.

  “How much of that do you think made it onto the live video?” I asked her.

  “Not much, probably.”

  “So pretty much everything?”

  “Pretty much, yes.”

  I flopped onto the sofa. Broken glass pinched my skin like prickly thorns. “Madame Lucia is dead.”

  The video blew up. It was by far the most popular episode on Madame Lucia’s Parlour for the Dead and Departed YouTube channel, but it ruined any chance of staging another false adventure into the spirit realm. The comments section was full of outraged spiritualists, amused naysayers, and vindicated I-told-you-soers. Without a home, I ended up at Jazmin’s place the next day, where I spent hours scrolling through the poorly worded, grammatically inferior debates of faceless Internet trolls, binge-watching Charmed on Netflix as I ate Jazmin out of house and home, and mourning the tragic, abrupt end of the only activity I could reasonably claim as a career. After two boxes of Lucky Charms, eight Pop Tarts, and a two-liter bottle of cherry soda, I threw up in fizzy technicolor and lay myself to rest on the floor of Jazmin’s bathroom, my face pressed against the cool teal tiles. When she got home from work, she dumped an armload of groceries in the kitchen to pick me off the ground.

  “Oh no,” she said, hauling me up by the armpits. “You don’t get to do this, Lucia. You are an adult. Suck it up.”

  “I’m a failure,” I moaned. “My mother was right about me. I can’t go through with anything. Not college. Not acting. Not Madame Lucia. Oh, God, I’m going to end up broke and alone for the rest of my life. I liked Madame Lucia! And now she’s gone. Dead. So much for clickbait.”

  Jazmin ran a clean washcloth underneath warm water and began washing dried blood and crusty sugar off my face. The octagonal pattern of the tile floor was etched into my cheek like weird fish scales. “You do realize you’re grieving a fictional character, right? Christ, what is this, chocolate syrup? It’s not coming off.”