by Eva Pohler
“That’s no trouble, Miss,” he said. “I have to take it all apart anyway. I’ll go ahead and get started.”
He took out a flashlight and shined it on the knob.
As Ellen and Tanya headed downstairs to wait, there was a knock at the front door.
“I bet that’s Jeanine,” Tanya said.
Ellen took a deep breath before opening the door to let the psychic inside.
The psychic wasn’t at all what Ellen was expecting. Jeanine was short, petite, probably in her late thirties, with shoulder-length, frizzy brown hair, pale skin, and big spectacles. In her old-fashioned high-buttoned blouse, she looked more like a librarian than a woman skilled in the paranormal.
“Hey, Jeanine,” Tanya said. “Come on in. This is my friend, Ellen.”
“Nice to meet you,” Ellen said as she shook the psychic’s hand.
Jeanine held onto Ellen’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I sense you’re nervous. Don’t worry. I’ve done this before, okay?”
Ellen fought the blush spreading across her face and failed. “Of course.”
Jeanine entered the foyer and stood at the base of the stairs to the second floor with her eyes closed. “I sense a great deal of energy in this house.”
“Can you sense anything in particular?” Tanya asked anxiously. “I need to know if there’s evil here. Can you tell?”
Jeanine opened her eyes and frowned. “I see someone beside you, Tanya. Someone who knows you. She followed you here.”
“Who is she?” Tanya glanced nervously at Ellen.
“Dorian? Marian?”
“Vivian?” Tanya asked. “My mother had a cousin named Vivian.”
“That’s it,” Jeanine said. “She’s here to tell you that you need to let your mother go. Your mother’s spirit is ready to leave, but she’s holding onto a frail body with a faulty brain because she’s worried about you.”
Tears flowed from Tanya’s eyes as she patted her chest and fanned her face. “How sure are you that it’s Vivian and that she’s speaking about my mother?”
Ellen wrapped an arm around Tanya’s waist, worried her friend was going to lose her balance and falter to the floor.
“I’m so sorry, hon. I’m so, so, sorry. Vivian is leaving. She said what she needed to say. She’s gone now. I’m so sorry. I’m very sure.”
“Maybe my mom wasn’t calling me Vivian,” Tanya said in a breathless voice as she continued to stagger against Ellen. “Maybe she saw Vivian next to me. Do you think that was it?”
“It could be,” Jeanine said.
Ellen didn’t know what to believe. She held her friend but looked at Jeanine with skepticism. This woman knew Tanya, but Ellen wasn’t sure how well. Could the psychic have made up the whole thing? Most of Tanya’s friends knew about the struggle she was going through with her mother. Was the psychic just trying to give her good advice? Or had she really seen the spirit of Vivian?
At that moment, all three women were startled by the locksmith crying out, “Ahh! Ahh!”
Ellen climbed the stairs to the second floor with the other two women at her heels. When she reached the landing, she rushed over to the attic steps and peered up the stairwell. “Miguel?”
He bolted down the dark stairs toward her, his tools jangling around in his tool box. He exited the attic stairwell, dropped his toolbox on the floor, and flattened his back against a wall. “Jesus.”
“What’s wrong?” Ellen followed him into the hallway. “What happened?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I saw the ghost,” he said in between quick breaths. “Oh my Jesus, I saw her.”
The three women gawked at one another in stunned silence.
“Was she a full-bodied apparition?” Jeanine asked. “Or was she more like a hazy, transparent aura.”
“Full bodied,” Miguel said, still breathing heavily. “Very thin, though, and freakishly white. Scary as hell.”
“What was scary about her?” Tanya asked.
“She threw a book at me,” he said. “And she told me to get out. She growled it, like a dog.”
“Then what happened?” Jeanine asked.
“I didn’t hang around to find out.”
“If she’s an evil spirit, I’m out of here,” Tanya said. “I can’t take this right now, Ellen. I hope you understand.”
Ellen did understand. “It’s okay.”
“Wait,” Jeanine said. “Don’t give up so easily. We can perform a cleansing ritual. Let me get my sage smudge stick out of the car. I’ll be right back.”
“Hurry,” Tanya said.
“Let’s wait for her downstairs,” Miguel said.
“Good idea.” Tanya followed the locksmith down.
“Are you sure you want to stay for this?” Ellen asked Miguel. She hoped he would. There was safety in numbers.
“I left half my tools up there,” he said. “I don’t want to have to replace them.”
They met Jeanine at the front door. In one hand, she held a bunch of dried sage bound together with twine. It looked like a hand-held broom. In the other hand, she carried a beautiful shell bowl with a box of matches in the bottom of it.
“Do we have running water in this house?” Jeanine asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Ellen said.
“Hmm. Okay. Can you help me open all the windows on both floors before we get started? That way the spirits can flee along with the smoke.”
“Wait, you aren’t going to light that thing, are you?” Ellen asked. All they needed was to accidentally burn the place down.
“That’s how she gets the evil out,” Tanya said. “And it’s the only way I’ll even consider buying this place.”
They opened the windows in each of the rooms on the bottom floor before going upstairs to the bedrooms.
“What about the attic?” Miguel asked. “Do we need to open the window up there, too?”
“We’ll save that for last,” Jeanine said.
Ellen touched Tanya’s shoulder. “I think Sue will be disappointed if we do this. She was excited about this place being haunted.” Ellen could hardly believe what she was saying. Had she decided to believe in ghosts? Had she decided to give this cleansing ritual any credibility?
“I’m only forcing the impure, negative, and evil spirits to leave,” Jeanine said. “I sense so much energy in this place. I think you’ll continue to have visitors here.”
“Just not evil ones,” Tanya said. “Right?”
“That’s right,” Jeanine said.
Ellen wondered how the psychic could guarantee such a thing. What would prevent other evil spirits from coming here after the ritual? Or what if the same ones came back? She decided not to bring this up in front of Tanya. She needed her friend to believe in Jeanine’s abilities and reassurance.
The bedroom windows were difficult to budge. There were two that even Miguel couldn’t open.
“No worries,” Jeanine said. “We’ve given them enough escape routes. Let’s begin downstairs.”
They followed Jeanine to the bottom floor and watched her light the end of her sage stick. Once it made a decent flame, she blew it out until only burning embers were left at the end of the stick. Then she held the sage over the abalone bowl to catch the ashes. “Ready?”
They nodded. Ellen felt a lump in her throat and wondered what the hell she’d gotten herself into.
“Before I cleanse this place, I need you to bathe yourselves in the smoke, as a protection.” Jeanine showed them how to use their hands to pull the smoke over their faces and bodies. “This will prevent any of the spirits from attempting to possess you.”
Tanya giggled nervously. Ellen gave her friend a smile but was holding back from muttering, You’ve got to be kidding me.
The locksmith didn’t seem a bit phased. He was a true believer.
Once they had fully bathed in the smoke, Jeanine went to the living room, waved the smoking stick throughout the room, and said, “I cleanse this room of all impurities, negativity, and evil
. Fly away, never to return.”
Ellen watched the smoke swirl throughout the room until it found its way to the open window. Jeanine repeated this step in every room on the bottom floor, including the bathrooms, pantry, and closets.
When they reached the base of the stairs to the second story, something flew past Ellen’s ear.
“What the hell was that?” she asked, clutching her chest.
“One of my picks,” Miguel said, finding it on the old wooden floorboards.
Another flew down and grazed Tanya’s elbow. “Ow! That hurt!”
“Get behind me,” Jeanine said. “We have a fighter.”
“Shit. I may need to pay you more money for this,” Tanya said, gasping. “Has this ever happened before?”
“A long time ago,” the psychic whispered. “When I was first getting started.” Then out loud, she said, “I cleanse this house of all impurities, negativity, and evil. Be gone! Never to return!”
The floor above them creaked and shuddered. It sounded like a herd of buffalo frolicking around up there. Then it stopped.
Jeanine reached the top of the stairs. “I cleanse this house of all impurities, negativity, and evil. Fly away, impure spirits, never to return.”
They went through each of the rooms on the second floor without another incident.
Now it was time to go to the attic.
Chapter Eight: The Doctor’s Ledger
“I think I’ll wait down here,” Miguel said. “Maybe she’ll like you ladies better.”
Ellen would rather the locksmith go up with them, but she supposed doing so was a little outside of the scope of his job description, so she nodded and followed the other two up. Her heart was beating hard and fast, and she could feel it all the way up in her throat. Whether this was an apparition or a real person, it seemed as though anything could happen, and Ellen was terrified.
Jeanine entered the attic first, followed by Tanya. As Ellen crossed the threshold, she gazed about the room but saw no sign of the ghost girl.
“Could one of you open that window?” Jeanine asked.
There was one window on the center front exterior wall, shaped like a clamshell. Ellen went to it and found a handle for cranking the window open. It was really hard to turn and only opened the window about six inches. “Is that good?”
Jeanine nodded as she stepped over the litter of papers and books on the floor to wave the sage smudge stick around the room. “I cleanse this house once and for all of all impurities, negativity, and evil. Leave this place never to return, but guardian angels and all positivity are welcome. Be gone, evil! Be gone, impurities! Fly away! Fly away, never to return.”
They all three watched as the smoke curled around the room and made its way through the clam-shaped window. Jeanine batted it in that direction with the smoking stick. Ellen was worried an ember would fall on the litter of paper and books on the floor and start a raging fire, but Jeanine was careful with her bowl and put Ellen at ease after a few minutes.
“Is it working?” Tanya asked.
“Yes,” Jeanine said. “I can feel the negativity leaving us.”
Ellen thought this was as good a time as any to put on the latex gloves she had in her shoulder bag and bring out the Ziplock bags.
Tanya stopped fanning the smoke toward the window and gave Ellen a quizzical look. “What are you doing?”
“Collecting evidence.” She found a book on the floor—some kind of medical book—and popped into the bag, sealing it shut. “I found a lab online that will check for prints and DNA and match them up against a bunch of different databases. Maybe we can identify our ghost and help her find closure, if that’s what she needs.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to ask Jeanine?” Tanya continued to bat the smoke toward the window. “Jeanine, can you sense anything about the ghost girl?”
“I can sense her energy, but I don’t see her,” Jeanine said. “I think she’s a very troubled spirit—not evil, just troubled. What is all this stuff?”
“Old medical equipment,” Ellen said as she took the pillow case from the one empty bed and stuffed it into another bag before sealing it shut. Before she moved on to gather another piece of evidence, something shocking caught her attention. It was a long hair, a human hair, as white as cotton, lying on the bed. Ellen picked it up in her gloved hand and put it in one of her bags. “I wonder how old this hair is.” She held up the bag to show it to them. “I think it’s from our ghost. Maybe the lab can identify her from it.”
All fear left Ellen as her excitement over solving the mystery of the house built up inside of her. The website had said it would take thirty to sixty days for them to analyze any samples she shipped to them, and it was not cheap, but she felt it would bring her peace of mind. She didn’t say it out loud to the others, but it would answer the question once and for all of whether their ghostly girl was dead or alive.
“Whoever she is, she has unfinished business here,” Jeanine said. “The house is clean of impurities, but I still sense the girl’s presence. I think she’s very attached to this house. Something happened to her here that she hasn’t yet recovered from. She’s looking for answers. I think it has something to do with her mother.”
Ellen’s mouth dropped open.
“What’s wrong?” Tanya asked.
“That’s what Millie Forrester said the ghost asked her. This was years ago, I think. The ghost appeared to Millie in her bedroom and asked where her mother was.” Goose bumps tingled all up and down Ellen’s arms. “And when Millie asked the ghost who her mother was, the ghost said ‘Cynthia.’”
“If you can discover what happened to the girl’s mother, maybe the ghost will finally be at peace,” Jeanine said.
They heard someone coming up the attic steps. The hair raised on the back of Ellen’s neck.
“Everything okay up here?” It was Miguel.
Ellen had forgotten about him. She sighed with relief and almost laughed at herself. “We haven’t seen any sign of the ghost.”
“Oh, thank you, Jesus,” Miguel said. “If I can just get these tools back, I can finish my work downstairs.” He knelt on the floor and picked up a small case. “Man, these pins are expensive. I’m glad I won’t have to replace them. It looks like the ghost kept one of my picks, though.”
“Maybe it will show up somewhere here in the house,” Jeanine said. “Ghosts will often move things around like that.”
“This is the book she threw at me.” He held up a thick, black, leather-bound notebook. “It’s a ledger book, I think. It looks really old.”
He knelt on the floor flipping through the pages.
“Can I see that?” Ellen asked.
Miguel gave her the book. On the very first page, she saw a table with the headings Client, Patient, Age, Diagnosis, Treatment, Paid, and Month. The first line was filled in with Marcia Gold, Marcia Gold, 70, severe melancholy, BR/FF/OS/MT, Mortgage Credit/March ’30.
“Marcia Gold?” Ellen said out loud. “Wasn’t she the daughter of the original owner?”
“I think so,” Tanya said. “The paperwork on the house said ‘only living descendant,’ remember?”
Ellen nodded. “She paid with mortgage credit? Do you think Marcia gave Dr. Piers the house in exchange for treatment?”
Tanya shrugged. “Maybe.”
According to the ledger, Marcia was the doctor’s only patient for the first six months of his practice. Then in September, another patient was listed: Hilary Turner. The client was James Turner. According to the entry, Hilary was seventeen years old and diagnosed with “neurasthenia and grave insomnia.” In the “Treatments” column were the acronyms BR/FF/OS/MT/ST. The ledger indicated the monthly payment was $125.
“One of his patients was only seventeen years old,” Ellen muttered.
Tanya peered over Ellen’s shoulder. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. And check this out,” Ellen said. “This doctor was making good money—a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month in 193
0 from each patient. Wow.”
“That was a lot of money during the Depression,” Jeanine commented.
As Ellen scanned down the list she saw other names added over the next pages, and an entry in December of 1931 marked Marcia Gold “deceased” at age 71. A notation was made as to her cause of death: “Died in childbirth.”
At age seventy-one?
“Look at this.” Ellen pointed the notation out to Tanya.
“That’s got to be a mistake,” Tanya said.
“I’ll just go downstairs to finish rekeying the lock.” Miguel climbed up from the floor and collected his case of pins.
As he went downstairs, Tanya asked Jeanine, “Should we close the windows now?”
“Let me put out this stick, first,” she said. “We need to make sure all the smoke has left the house.”
The three went downstairs. Ellen sat at the old wooden table in the dining room looking over the doctor’s ledger as the other two handled the smoke. Miguel sat at the opposite end working on the lock. She felt a little guilty for not helping with the windows but was now more interested in learning about the house’s patients than she was in ridding it of impure spirits. She held the book up in the diminishing light pouring in from the kitchen. It wouldn’t be long before dusk came, so she eagerly combed through the book as quickly as she could. She was hoping to find out if Marcia really had given birth at age seventy-one, and, if so, what had happened to the baby.
On the inside back cover, she found a key:
BR = Bed Rest
FF = Force Feeding
OS = Organ Stimulation
MT = Massage Therapy
ST = Shock Therapy
DT = Drug Therapy
SJT- Straight-Jacket Therapy
Ellen shuddered.
The ledger showed Hilary Turner as the only patient until April of 1931, when Victoria Schmidt joined her. The client was Karl Schmidt, and the diagnosis was hysteria. Every acronym, including the one for straight-jacket therapy, was listed in the “Treatments” column.