The New Paranormal

by Jackson Tyler

  “Could you hop out of the car and open that gate for me?” asked Elliot.

  “Is this private property?”

  “Not exactly.”

  I scowled at him. “What do you mean by that?”

  “The land here is for sale, and no one lives at the house.”

  “I don’t think that’s how property law works.”

  “Would you stop being so good all the time?” said Elliot. “We’re trespassing, not committing murder.”

  I stiffened up.

  “Roman,” said Elliot seriously. “What if this is the crop circle that proves extraterrestrial activity, and we miss out because you don’t want to trespass on a deserted property?”

  I begrudgingly got out of the car. An angry wind slapped rain into my face. The weather was bitter tonight. I ran to the gate, swung it open, and gestured for Elliot to drive through. He flashed me a thumbs-up through the drivers-side window.

  I made sure to close the gate after we’d gone through, in case there were any farm animals around here that shouldn’t get loose.

  I didn’t mind the cold, but I appreciated the warmth as soon as I got back inside the car. I rubbed my thumb over my peridot pendant, smoothing away the rain. I considered myself a man of science, but having the protection crystal around my neck made me feel safe. Even if it was irrationally superstitious, it gave me comfort.

  “It’s nice out there,” Elliot remarked.

  “It’s terrible.”

  Elliot sighed and eased the jeep forward. Wet gravel crunched under the wheels. The ground was uneven, and I jostled uncomfortably in my seat as the jeep inched forward. I was grateful for my seatbelt, even if it was digging into my throat. The windshield wipers were going at full blast, but it was difficult to make out the shapes in front of us.

  Elliot turned the steering wheel and we veered off the gravel track and onto a muddy path that was barely wide enough for us. A fir tree scraped its branch over the windscreen and stroked its needly fingers over my passenger-side window. I shivered.

  “Are you sure you know where you’re going?” I asked.

  “Definitely,” said Elliot.

  I wasn’t certain that this was safe, but our work came with risks. I liked to veer on the safe side, but if there was a chance that taking this precarious journey could prove extraterrestrial life existed, I’d take it.

  Besides, I owed Elliot, and I trusted him in a way I could never trust anyone else. He was the smartest man I knew, a bona fide genius.

  Finally, we reached a clearing that overlooked a field of sweet corn crops. I squinted through the windscreen, and there it was: the crop circle. I knew it was probably a hoax, but if so, it was a good one. The geometric patterns were sharp and smooth.

  “Wow,” said Elliot. He opened his door and got out of the car. I grabbed both of our raincoats before I followed him. My boots could withstand the mud, but Elliot was going to regret his Chuck Taylors soon.

  I squelched through the mud and toward Elliot. We were standing on a slope that rose above the field.

  “This is the first crop circle I’ve seen in person,” said Elliot.

  “Same,” I said. I couldn’t help being a little bit awed.

  “God, I wish I could go down there,” said Elliot.

  “You’re not climbing down in this weather,” I told him sternly. The slope in front of us was definitely off the beaten path — full of brambles, rotting branches, and mossy tree roots. I could make it down in better weather, but I doubted Elliot would manage. I was solid, with thick muscles, while he was lanky and bony. It looked like the slightest breeze could blow him over.

  I trained my ass off so that if I ended up in a dangerous situation in the line of duty, I would be fit enough to handle myself and protect anyone else I might need to. Elliot had a real job and a social life, so he had better things to do with his time.

  “I know,” he said. “I wish the owner of that farm-” He pointed past the field to a small shack with dim lights glowing in the windows. “-would let us onto his property.”

  “He doesn’t want the attention,” I said. Elliot had been raving about this ever since Thursday, when he’d called and asked for permission to investigate. He’d been sharply told to keep his butt off the property.

  “It’s not like we’re weird alien tourists,” grumbled Elliot. “We’re paranormal investigators.”

  “I think that’s who he wants to keep away,” I said. Anyone with a smartphone and a YouTube channel thought they could call themselves paranormal investigators these days, and the owner of the farm had no reason of knowing we weren’t another pair of those cheap frauds.

  I clapped my hands together and rubbed them for warmth. “What’s the plan?”

  Elliot grinned. “There are cameras in the trunk.”

  We had surveillance equipment for this exact kind of situation. Elliot had been born wealthy, and his job as a dentist helped him stay rich. He poured most of his money into investigating the paranormal with me.

  I scaled a fir tree with a weather-proof camera and fastened it securely to the branches where it would remain unseen and secure from the elements. The feed would broadcast straight to one of Elliot’s many computer monitors at home, so we could record data and be aware if anyone was in danger from extraterrestrial forces.

  I didn’t know how to use half the stuff Elliot owned. His area of expertise was conspiracy theories: aliens and government cover-ups. I had more simple interests. I was Ghost Guy. He was all about the investigation, but me? I was in the paranormal research field to keep people safe.

  I climbed carefully down the tree and dropped myself the last few feet to the ground. I landed heavily, boots squelching into the earth.

  “Are you alright?” asked Elliot.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I don’t know how you do it.” Elliot looked me up and down.

  Elliot was my best friend — my only friend — and because I couldn’t be sure aliens weren’t visiting us, I participated in his investigations when he needed me.

  I shrugged. “I like helping you.”

  Elliot chuckled. “You’re always so considerate.” He squinted off into the field. “The crop circle is only a couple of days old. The UFO might come back. I want to be here if it does.”

  “I’ll get our chairs out of the trunk.”

  ***

  Two hours into our stakeout, I hadn’t seen anything in the cornfield except crops swaying in the breeze. It was gloomier now, the clouds no longer raining but pounding us with sleet that threatened to turn into hail. Elliot and I had given up our camping chairs in favor of watching from the car, but even with the windshield wipers going, I could barely see anything.

  When I had pointed out this flaw in our plan to Elliot, he had protested that the cloud cover was the best way for UFOs to get around unnoticed.

  If this was their plan, it was working. I could hardly make out the crop circle in the field in front of us, let alone anything moving around

  I took a sip of green tea from my thermos. Elliot’s eyes were starting to close, so I offered it to him.

  “What’s up?” he murmured.

  “Caffeinate yourself,” I said.

  He obeyed, took a sip, and made a face. “Why don’t you drink coffee like a normal person?”

  “Green tea has more antioxidants and less caffeine.” But I pulled out another thermos from under my seat. “If you need coffee…”

  “Roman, you’re amazing.” Elliot gratefully took the thermos and glugged it down. I sipped my tea.

  “I couldn’t let you fall asleep on the job.” I peered through a pair binoculars at a flashing speck in the sky.

  “Do you see something?” asked Elliot eagerly.

  I put down the binoculars. “A satellite. I saw a couple of airplanes while you were sleeping, though.”

  He yawned. “I wasn’t sleeping. I was drowsing.”

  “Resting your eyes. Whatever.” I shrugged. “I don’t think we�
��re going to see anything tonight.”

  “I know, but-”

  Before Elliot could finish his sentence, my phone rang.

  “Hold that thought,” I told Elliot. I answered. “You’re speaking with Roman.”

  “Hey, Roman. It’s Kyle.”

  Kyle was the night manager at the Cressley Hotel, where I worked as a bellhop. Everyone else who worked there thought I was obsessive and disturbed for thinking that the place was haunted, but Kyle, who had been there the longest, knew I was right.

  “Why did you call me?”

  “You’re always so friendly on phone calls.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I thought you’d like to know that we have a new guest on the fourteenth floor.”

  My heart flipped. “A new guest? What room are they in?”

  “Room 1405.”

  “Next to the stairwell?”

  “Yeah-”

  “I’ll be there in an hour and a half,” I said. “I’ll talk to you then.” I ended the call.

  Elliot raised an eyebrow at me. “Have our plans changed?”

  “There’s a new guest at the Cressley. On the thirteenth floor.” I rolled my eyes. I didn’t know why hotels insisted on labeling it the “fourteenth” floor. It didn’t change anything. There was a lot of dangerous psychic energy in that hotel, and it was at its worst on the thirteenth floor. I wasn’t sure if it was a coincidence, or if the ‘unlucky 13’ superstition had some basis in reality. I wouldn’t rule anything out.

  “Who is this guest?” asked Elliot.

  “Does it matter? They’re someone I need to help.” I opened the passenger side door. “We need to swap sides. You’re too tired to drive.”

  Chapter Three

  Isaac

  I flopped onto a musty bedspread. The bed frame creaked under my weight. I sat bolt upright again, alarmed. I was a pretty scrawny guy. This bed must have been… Well-used would be putting it politely. I bounced a couple of times. The bed groaned like a tired porn star, but it held me up.

  “What do you think, Hannibal?” I asked.

  He glared at me from under the lone chair on the opposite side of the room.

  “Well, this is our new home for a while. Better get used to it.”

  Our new home was room 1405 of the Cressley Hotel. The Cressley was the cheapest hotel in Seattle that rented rooms by the week: the perfect place for me to stay and get my bearings while I thought about what to do. It was a strike against the place that they didn’t allow pets, but rules were for suckers, and as long as housekeeping didn’t come to my room, Hannibal would go entirely unnoticed.

  I sat cross-legged on the bed to observe the room. It was tiny. It didn’t have its own kitchen — I’d have to use the shared area downstairs, next to the laundry if I wanted to cook — but there was an electric kettle and a microwave. Judging from the odd geometric patterns, the carpets here hadn’t been changed since the 70s. If I’d been surrounded by snow, I would have sworn I was in The Shining.

  But no snow here. Just a shitload of rain.

  In theory, I had friends in Seattle, but I hadn’t seen them in years — or spoken to most of them, except to wish them well when Facebook reminded me of birthdays. When I’d settled down with Sasha, there had been unspoken pressure to adopt her friends as my own. I eventually lost touch with the people from my life.

  Even when things were good between me and Sasha, I hadn’t been thrilled by the prospect of relocating three hours from the city for her job. Perhaps that was the beginning of the end. But I’d done it. I thought Sasha might have been the one. Nope, she was the fourth one. The fourth person who’d cheated on me. There was something about me that pushed my partners into other men’s arms.

  It was best not to dwell on that. That was the past now. I’d be more careful in the future. Much more careful. Perhaps I would eschew relationships entirely. Would I make a good player? I sat up and examined myself in the mirror across from the bed.

  I didn’t look like a player. I looked like an unemployed hippy. My hair was long, my collarbones protruded from beneath my tie-dyed sweater. It was a look that sold customers on my authenticity as a psychic. It was not a look that screamed do me now.

  I rummaged through my bag to find the packet of candy I’d thrown in there at a convenience station. It had somehow fallen right to the bottom. The whole bed was covered in my stuff before I found my sour snakes. Hannibal looked at the mess and then back at me with judgment in his narrow eyes.

  “I know it’s not great here, Hanny,” I said. “But this is where we live for now.”

  His expression didn’t change, but he curled himself into a circle and lay down. He’d come out in a few hours when he was less spooked. He must have been overwhelmed by unfamiliar sounds and smells.

  I had been driving for long enough that I should have been tired, but I was wired instead. There was something about this room that made me uneasy. Maybe it was the painting of dancing children on the wall. Their eyes were a little too pale, too small. It unnerved me. I turned the painting around, but I didn’t feel any better.

  I took a deep breath. I hadn’t been on my own — truly on my own like this — in a long time. I was psyching myself out. I’d gone soft in the suburbs.

  I got to my feet and tried to extend my hand to Hannibal. He sniffed at my fingers and accepted a pat on the head but stayed under his chair.

  “Come out when you’re ready,” I told him, even though I knew he didn’t understand English. Hannibal was my only friend right now. How sad was that?

  I looked around the room. The better acquainted I got with this place, the less it would freak me out. This was my chance to explore — and see if I could find anything worth stealing.

  There were no chocolates on the pillows, but there was a standard Gideon bible tucked away in the bedside table. I shuddered. Religion was as much of a con as any scam I ever pulled — even those times I pretended to be part of a church and held out a donation bucket to make food money. Would I have to go back to that life again?

  I had enough for now. Living with a lawyer for so long had meant I was able to save up some of the meager earnings I got from being a telephone psychic. She paid much more than half our living costs until we broke up.

  I should have known my eviction was coming. I didn’t like living with Sasha, not when Matthew was around so much. But I’d been comfortable enough. Why bother messing with an alright thing?

  I shook my head to clear my thoughts. That part of my life was over. No use lingering there in my mind.

  Inside the closet, there was only one spare towel, some moth-eaten linen, and an ironing board with no clothes iron to go with it. In the bathroom, I was surprised to see a plastic-wrapped bar of soap and a tiny bottle of complimentary shampoo and conditioner. The missing iron was in the cabinet underneath the grime-stained sink.

  After that, there was nowhere to investigate in this small room. I stared at my phone, trying to think of what to do now. I was restless. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, even though it was nearing midnight.

  The only good thing about insomnia was that, of all the problems I had, this was one I shared with twenty-five percent of the country. That meant there would be people online. Hopefully, tormented souls unable to sleep would look for peace anywhere they could find it. A few of them, inevitably, would end up on ezpsychic.com, where Genesis would be there to soothe them. I put on my flower crown and dashed some purple eyeliner under my lids to make my eyes more piercingly green.

  There.

  I checked myself in the webcam. I looked tired — I was tired — but I could pass that off as being haunted by the weight of all my paranormal knowledge. The wall behind me looked cracked and faded and worth exactly what I was paying for it.

  Luckily, I knew how to make my surroundings look as ethereal as I did. I thumbtacked a glittering rainbow tapestry to the wall behind me, and instantly, I looked more legit.

  I put my tarot cards at my side and
signed in to the site, marking myself as online and my services as available. Now to wait.

  Before 30 seconds had gone by, a knock struck the door to my room. Who the hell was knocking on my door at this time of night? I stiffened, alarmed.

  “Who’s there?” I yelled.

  “Uh- Room service.” A gravelly male voice came through the door.

  “You’ve gotten the wrong room!” I yelled back. “I didn’t order anything.”

  “It’s complimentary.”

  I sighed and got to my feet. Hannibal was still under the chair. I gently shooed him into the bathroom, where I had put his carry cage/temporary litter tray.

  “Stay,” I warned him. I couldn’t let the staff know he was here.

  “Coming!” I yelled at the man behind the door.

  I only opened the front door a fraction, enough to peek my head out, but I was unprepared to see the man in front of me. I didn’t know what I expected from room service, but this wasn’t it. The man in front of me was so broad he barely fit into his bellhop uniform. Blue seams stretched at the shoulders. He looked like he should have been a bodyguard rather than a bellhop. His skin was dark bronze, and his eyes were rich brown, ringed by shockingly bright whites.

  And his lips… Damn, they were nice lips.

  It had been a long time since I’d gotten laid. Longer since I’d been thrown around by another man. I felt tiny in his presence — to be fair, at 5’2” and a half, I usually felt tiny.

  He was beautiful. If I hadn’t been so tired, so overwhelmed — if he hadn’t been an employee and if I hadn’t had an illegal cat in my room — he might have been what I needed to relax.

  “It’s almost midnight,” I told him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He extended a chocolate muffin covered in saran wrap to me. I took it gingerly. I hated the texture of saran wrap, the way it squeaked against my fingertips, but who was I to turn away free food? “This is free.”