by Page Turner
“I know what you mean,” Penny said, laying a hand on Viv’s arm. “She looks pretty dead from over here. Well, dead or sleeping.”
“Sleeping with her eyes wide open?” Viv said.
“You’d have some weird dreams, wouldn’t you?” Penny said.
“You know, I never dreamed when I was alive,” the spirit piped in.
“No one asked you, hot stuff,” Penny replied.
Viv and Penny slowly walked together over to where the second body lay on the ground. Seriously, Viv wasn’t kidding. She looked like Snow White did in the old cartoon. Lying on her back with her arms folded on her stomach. The only different was that this Snow White wasn’t in a fancy glass case. And Viv was right, her eyes were wide open.
“Karen, get over here,” Viv said.
Karen was still staring into the bloody blotch on the first victim’s chest.
“Seriously, Karen, stop ogling that corpse and get over here,” Viv said.
She did.
Penny nodded knowingly at Karen. Giving her a look Karen had come to recognize. “You want me to feel, don’t you?” Karen said.
“Good girl,” Viv said.
Karen sighed. “It’s been a long day. I don’t know if I can…”
“You can,” Viv said. She took Karen’s chin in her hand and stared directly into her eyes. “You’re stronger than you think.”
Viv had some pretty sharp edges in general, but when she softened, there was nothing sweeter. At least not to Karen.
“Okay, Viv,” Karen said. “I’ll feel.”
“Karen, meet Snow White, Snow White, Karen,” Viv said, gesturing to the woman lying on the ground.
“Who’s leaving?” Karen said.
“I’ll go,” Penny volunteered. “The other victim is annoying me.”
“You’re no picnic yourself,” the spirit said to her.
“You’re not even the ants at a picnic,” Penny snapped back at the spirit, as she headed away from the scene.
“If you need me after, I’ll be here. And Penny will be back in just a few minutes. You know we’ll be here,” Viv said.
“You’ve always been good at aftercare,” Karen replied.
“Shhh, don’t tell anyone,” Viv said.
“Who would I tell? No one would believe me anyway,” Karen said.
Viv smiled. They held one another’s hands and looked into each other’s eyes, waiting, while Penny walked away.
But the moment Penny was out of range, Karen felt the wind get knocked out of her. She hunched over sharply, like anything that folds for storage when you kick in its joints. “Oh God,” she said. She felt like she was going to throw up. Everything started to spin.
Viv waited. Watched.
Karen crumpled into a ball on the ground. She suddenly couldn’t remember who she was. What she was doing here.
Karen looked up at the stranger standing over her. A woman with a camera hanging around her neck. A tall thin redhead wearing a pair of paint-splashed overalls with striking eyes, eyes which seemed to change color every time she looked at them. Who was this Amazonian woman looming over her? Where were they? And who was that person lying on the ground next to her? Why was she sleeping with her eyes open?
None of it made any sense.
“Karen, are you okay?” Viv said, crouching down. When she did, the camera around her neck swung close enough to Karen for her to bat feebly at it like a baby swats at a hanging mobile. Viv stood back up to protect the camera.
“Who’s Karen?” Karen replied. “Is that Karen?” she said, gesturing towards Snow White. “Are you Karen?”
“Karen, cut it out,” Viv said.
“Do you have a knife?” Karen said.
“This isn’t funny. I’m not Penny,” Viv said. “Stop the lame jokes. I don’t like them.”
“But you said to cut it out. How am I supposed to cut it out if I don’t have anything to cut it with?” Karen said. Karen started to cry.
This wasn’t normal. Karen typically maintained her composure when channeling someone else’s feelings via empathy. She could detect what the other person was experiencing but never lost herself in those emotions the way she seemed to be doing now. And she never forgot her own identity or who she was.
Viv stared impatiently at the edge of the clearing. C’mon Penny. How long could it take to walk a spirit around the block?
“Cut me,” Karen said to Viv. “If you want it cut, you’ll need to cut me yourself.”
Viv picked Karen up off the ground. “Alright, knife player, we’re gonna go on a little trip,” Viv said.
“Where are we going?” Karen said.
“You’ll see,” Viv said, moving Karen back into the woods.
“Ahh,” Karen said. “I see. You’re gonna cut me with the tree branches. How romantic. Maybe a lash with ash?”
“This has to be the weirdest feel you’ve ever done, Karen, honestly,” Viv grumbled.
“Who’s Karen?” Karen said again.
“It’s what I call the trees,” Viv said, shaking her head.
Karen started to mumble incoherently. It didn’t sound like any language that Viv had ever heard.
When they emerged from the woods, Viv could see Penny again, off in the distance. Karen collapsed on the ground as they got closer to her.
Penny jogged up through the grass to meet them.
“Geez, Viv, what the hell did you do to her?” Penny said.
Viv shrugged. “I don’t know what happened. Those were some weird feels, whatever they were.”
“Did you get enough pictures?” Penny said.
“I think so,” Viv said. She pulled out her cell phone. Called in the scene to emergency services. Read off her agent number. Let them know that there was one person dead but that the second one was still alive but unresponsive. A quick call, one she’d made hundreds of times at different scenes. Something she could do in her sleep by this point.
Viv put her phone away. “We should probably go see Martin at headquarters, let him know what we found,” she said.
“Guess we’ll have to visit your mom another time, Viv,” Penny said.
“Guess so.”
PsyOps
The Department of Psychic Operations, or PsyOps for short, was located underground in a building whose ground level storefront housed a variety of failing businesses. Around Halloween it became a costume shop that sold cheap trinkets that probably wouldn’t give you cancer and could make you look like a passable witch. Or a sexy nurse. Or a sexy nurse witch.
Another time it had been a bakery that made low-fat donuts that tasted terrible. They did cause you to lose weight though since most people didn’t want to eat for the rest of the day after choking one down. So that was a plus.
Initially PsyOps had posted a guard on the premises. An invalidator, the kind of tuey that implanted thoughts into people’s heads that made them dismiss their beliefs. The idea behind this was that the guard on duty would sit in the shop, and if anyone wondered why random customers were going out back, ones who didn’t work behind the counter, then the invalidator would cancel that out with doubt. Within a minute or two, the customer would dismiss their suspicions as silly. Why would they ever think that? There were plenty of crummy shops, just like this one. Nothing to see here, folks.
But after a while, the department realized it could cut costs by not posting a guard at all. The businesses themselves were sufficiently terrible to keep people away. A few folks inexplicably bought things, but most people found the stores depressing and left.
As a result, the original invalidator guards were laid off. This was a big problem at first. Formerly confident residents were plagued by nagging doubts. Others reported issues with the neighborhood street lamps. They seemed to be dimming at random. But when PsyOps went to check, other witnesses s
wore that the lighting had been just fine. Nothing had ever happened.
The matter was never resolved and was moved indefinitely to the gaslighting division.
Several hundred psychic intuitives worked in this one branch of PsyOps, in the heart of Skinner, the Psychic City. The agents passed through the tacky shop. Pretended to the use the bathroom. Sneaked into the service elevator.
And down they went.
It wasn’t glamorous. But in a weird way, it was home.
“Well, if it isn’t the Three Bears,” Martin said as Viv, Penny, and Karen stepped off the service elevator.
“I keep telling you,” Viv said. “We’re not bears. Bears are something else entirely.”
“Viv, you act like I haven’t traveled,” Martin said.
“Only because you act like you haven’t traveled. Haven’t you ever been to San Francisco?” Viv said.
“It’s an analogy,” Martin said. “Do you have to take everything so literally?”
Martin Meek had been their boss at PsyOps for four years, which was an awfully long time for anyone to have the same supervisor there. Especially since all the supervisors were normals, and most normals couldn’t stand tueys. But not Martin. He’d been managing them back when the team was just a duo, when it had been just Penny and Viv, before Karen joined the investigative team.
“And besides, when would I have time to travel? Have you seen our current case load? Poor Amarynth’s buried up in Connections.”
“Bad news for you then, Martin,” Penny said.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Martin said. “You didn’t find another one, did you?”
“Yeah. One. Well one and a half. Called it in. The normal police will be there soon. And the paramedics,” Viv said.
“Still ours though,” Penny said. “Definitely not something the normals will crack.”
“Damn,” Martin said. He looked at Karen. “What’s wrong with her?”
Karen pulled the hoodie she was wearing further over her head so that it completely obscured her face, slouching. A makeshift cloak of invisibility.
“She’s had a rough day,” Viv explained. “Feels.”
“Right. Feels,” Martin said. “Okay. Fine. Whatever. Don’t tell me.”
“Martin,” Penny said. “Don’t be difficult. It’s literally feels. She read the second victim’s emotions, and it fucked her up. Be nice, okay?”
Martin wasn’t kidding when he said that Amarynth was buried up in Connections. He’d accused Viv of being too literal, but he was just as bad sometimes.
They couldn’t even see Amarynth at first due to the clutter that surrounded her as they approached her office space. They’d only been able to find her corner of the department by keeping an eye out for her causality board, a renowned hot mess.
Most agents had busy causality boards, but Amarynth took it to a new level. And this new level was busy even by her standards. While most causality boards told cohesive stories when you looked at them, Amarynth’s didn’t even come close. Hers didn’t make any sense to the casual observer. Her causality board was less like a movie storyboard and more like an abstract collage of magazine clippings that didn’t look like anything until you stepped far enough away.
And even then, you weren’t exactly sure what you were seeing.
It was the Magic Eye poster of intuition.
Penny had been certain the first time she met Amarynth that she was looking upon a spirit and not a real live person. This was because Amarynth had the same kind of checked out uber madness that was standard issue in the spirit world, where life and death no longer mattered. It was only with time that Penny came to realize that Amarynth’s idiosyncrasies stemmed from a life marked by seeing what other people couldn’t and frustration from her complete inability to convey that to another person. Amarynth warned people repeatedly about what would happen, and no one listened. The Cassandra of PsyOps.
This was a common affliction among connection agents. But poor Amarynth seemed to have it worse than most. She was able to see even more disparate links than any other connector working for PsyOps. This could have been a huge boon if she’d been better at connecting the dots for others, but unfortunately she was tragically terrible at explaining things. Even the highest quality causality board, normally a great help for connection agents, failed Amarynth. She couldn’t seem to use it properly.
However, over the years, Viv, Penny, and Karen had come to trust that Amarynth was on to something. No matter how crazy it sounded.
They learned to follow her advice even if it sounded completely illogical. Which it often did.
Well, mostly. Viv still struggled with it sometimes. There had always been something about Amarynth that gave her the creeps. Something that made it especially hard for her to trust the agent.
“Hey Amarynth,” Viv said.
“You need to go to jail,” Amarynth replied.
“Excuse me?” Viv said.
Amarynth rolled her eyes. “Do I have to spell everything out for you?”
“It’s okay, Amarynth,” Karen said. “We know you can’t.” She had meant for it to sound sympathetic, a kind of reassurance, but Penny burst out in laughter.
“Oh man, that’s a good one. Sometimes you really surprise me, Karen,” Penny said.
“Not me,” Amarynth said, clearly not amused. But then again, none of them had ever seen her laugh, come to think of it.
“Okay, well, we need to go to jail. Which jail?” Viv said. Getting information out of Amarynth often required asking very specific questions. And she’d learned early on not to ask too many questions at once because Amarynth found this infinitely more frustrating than answering questions one at a time. The last thing you wanted to do was overload Amarynth. More than one consultation had ended with her becoming overwhelmed and storming out of her office space to go hide in one of the many unmarked closets scattered throughout headquarters.
For some cases, they had time to spare, and they could afford to mess around with a meltdown or two from Amarynth. But something about this case felt different to Viv. More serious. Closer to home. Not that she could explain why. Is this how Amarynth feels all the time? Viv wondered. No wonder she’s such a mess.
“Which jail? The East Watson Correctional Center,” Amarynth replied. She wrote down the jail’s address on a piece of paper seemingly from memory and handed it to Viv.
“I just know the address,” Amarynth said, answering the question that no one was asking aloud.
“And why are we going to the jail?” Viv said.
“Because of a case,” Amarynth said.
Viv sighed in frustration.
“She means,” Karen said. “What should we do once we get there?”
Viv shot Karen a sharp glance, irritated at the interjection.
“You’re going to ask the prison guards about Neia Stavropolous and Stephanie Mack,” Amarynth replied.
“Who?” Penny said.
“Oh! Right! Okay, I can explain that,” Amarynth replied. She spun around to face her causality board. “Those were the two women you found earlier, when you called in the newest case.”
She pointed to a headshot that looked like it had come from an employee ID. “This is Stephanie Mack, the deceased victim. She worked at East Watson.”
Karen felt a cold chill run through her, remembering the state of the woman’s body. The blood. The demon with its wings outstretched. Or was it two women sitting back to back? She’d been unsure in the moment and was even less sure now.
“Yep, that’s her,” Penny said. “That’s the spirit I was talking to.”
“We’ll have to take your word for it,” Viv said. “Her face wasn’t identifiable at the scene. It was… altered.”
“Mmm,” Amarynth said. “Unpleasant stuff.” She pointed to another picture. “And this is Neia Stavropolous. She a
lso worked at East Watson. Hopefully still will, once she recovers.”
“Snow White!” Viv said.
Amarynth turned to face her with an incredulous look. “What?”
“Sorry. The victim who was comatose. I call her Snow White because she was lying there like Snow White did when she was poisoned by the apple.”
Amarynth stared at Viv, not seeming to understand.
“In the cartoon? The movie? You know, the old one where she sings ‘Someday My Prince Will Come.’”
Amarynth frowned. “Um okay, whatever you say.” She paused. “And you say I’m bad at explaining things.”
Penny laughed. “…Did you just tell a joke?”
Amarynth smiled. “Did I?”
“How is she anyway? Snow W—I mean, Neia,” Karen said.
“She’s stable. They took her the hospital. Funny thing, too. She woke up and promptly confessed,” Amarynth said.
“What? Why are we going to the prison then? This is an easy case,” Viv said. “Killer confessed. Case closed.” But even as she said it, she had a feeling it wasn’t true. That inexplicable intuition again.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Amarynth said. “Only one problem. They physical evidence doesn’t support it at all. This isn’t a credible confession.”
“Okay, so the physical evidence isn’t there… allegedly,” Viv said.
“Oh c’mon, Viv,” Penny said.
“What?” Viv snapped.
“You know Amarynth wouldn’t just say that it doesn’t match if it did. She’s never led us astray before,” Penny said.
“Maybe not astray per se, but she’s led us on a wild goose chase or two,” Viv said.
“Wild goose chase?” Amarynth muttered, clearly unimpressed. “Geese are sociopaths. Pure avian evil.”
“Well, maybe,” Penny said to Viv, ignoring what Amarynth was saying. “Maybe sometimes she takes the long way around the barn sometimes –”
“The barn?” Amarynth grumbled, in an identical underwhelmed tone of voice.
Karen stifled a giggle.
“But she always gets us there, to where we need to be,” Penny finished. “She’s never sent us down the wrong path. Sometimes it seems that way, at first, but ultimately? She’s our girl.”