Swim Like Hell: A Visit to Superstition Bay

by Benjamin LaMore

  I kick a table upright and spread the cardboard out, making sure the Ouija board is face up. It’s a simple, no-frills version of the board – the alphabet laid out in two arcs in plain block script, with the letters from zero to nine in a line underneath. The word “yes” is written on the right-hand side, the word “no” on the other. That’s it. No pentacles, no demonic faces, no so-called occult decorations. It’s the real deal, though. The sorcerer I’d taken it from had used it with great success, and I’m an eyewitness to it. It’s a good deal clunkier than the chalkboard Jamie uses, but he has a rare skill when it comes to interacting with the physical world. Most ghosts can’t move anything physical at all, but if these guys could hurl furniture they should be able to move a piece of rock. I lay the planchette on the board in a neutral position and take a big step back to make sure I don’t mess up their connection with the board.

  “Don’t bother trying to hide yourselves,” I say. “It’s a little bit late for that.”

  A painting on the wall, a stormy sea seen through a porthole, rattles for a moment before it flips to the floor.

  Aha. There’s one of them. That’s the thing about poltergeists. Noisy, restless ghosts, they can’t go too long without making a ruckus. Now that I’m sure at least one of them is in the room with me I reach the kitchen doors in four seconds and lay a quick line of salt on the floor, effectively sealing the room on a spiritual level. It’s a rare ghost that can cross a salt barrier, so I now have a captive audience. I walk back over to the table.

  “Come on over,” I say. “Let’s talk for a moment.” I tap on the planchette and take a good step back, giving it (or them) access to the slate. After a moment it shifts on the board, then skitters awkwardly across it until it comes to rest on the “yes”.

  “Do you have a name?” I ask politely.

  The pointer jerks over to “no”.

  “Okay, I’ll call you ‘No’. What’s going on here? Why are you messing the place up?”

  When the pointer moves off the “no” the doors to the kitchen fly violently open. My head whips around, but nothing else happens in the room. After a moment everything that isn’t nailed down in the kitchen begins flying through the doors: food, utensils, pots, pans. I guess that that one wants to join in the conversation, but the salt is doing its job well.

  “I’ll get to you in a minute,” I say to the other poltergeist, whom I mentally dub Yes. “Okay, No, what’s going on? What’s got you so drummed up?”

  The planchette bumps across the board, the point finding letters with difficulty. I’m relieved to see it’s spelling in English. You can’t guarantee that a ghost will speak whatever language is local, since people have traveled far from their places of birth for centuries and a lot of people died in this area before it became “civilized”. I track the planchette as it moves across the arced letters.

  W O K UP S O M T H N G

  “You woke up something?” I ask. Spirits from the in-between level of the afterlife often have problems with spelling, either because they’re in a hurry or they just lack the mental cohesion to realize their errors.

  The planchette slides to “no”.

  S M T H N G W O K S

  What the hell? I run the words over my tongue. “Ah,” I say. “Something woke you up.”

  The planchette slides to “yes”.

  I’m pretty sure what has roused them and feel a small sense of relief. I made the right call: the Cleave is close by, indeed. Very close by, I figure, since no matter how terrible the weapon might be I doubt it would rouse spirits from their rest at any great distance.

  “You can’t leave this building, can you?” I ask.

  The planchette indicates “no”.

  “Why not?” Usually ghosts only stay localized because of a specific curse or strong emotional ties from their old lives.

  D E D H R E

  I sound it out in my head, not understanding the message at first. Then it hits: dead here. “Your bodies are still here? In this building?”

  The tip of the slate bounces to “yes”, this time punctuated by another thunderous crash from the kitchen. Yes is having a real tantrum in there, but I’m far enough away from the doors that I don’t have to worry about anything hitting me.

  “Did you die in here?”

  Again, “yes”.

  That explains their inability to leave. I figured it’d be something like that. “When did you die?”

  The planchette stays inert for a moment, then moves. D O N T N O

  Hm. I’m not aware of any heinous crimes associated with this building, and unfortunately I don’t have the time right now to dedicate to research. The other side of the coin is that I can’t leave them in here, or Ellen will be out of business and cameras will inevitably begin to flash. Whatever is going to happen has to happen now.

  Ellen isn’t any kind of killer, that much I’m sure of. Therefore, Yes and No have to have died before she’d taken ownership of the building. There’s no way to find out how or when, but one thing is certain. Ghosts aren’t created when people die gently. Whoever they’d been, they’d died badly.

  “If I can get you out of here, will you leave quietly? No more mess?”

  The din from the kitchen abruptly ceases, and I realize that Yes has been listening in on our conversation. The planchette hesitatingly twitches over to “yes”.

  “And one more thing. I want you to point me towards whatever it was that woke you up. Can you do that?”

  The movement of the pointer off the “yes” and then back onto it is the strongest motion it’s had so far. Looks like the deal is on.

  “Wait here,” I say, and walk over to the kitchen. “I’m coming in,” I call ahead. “Don’t hit me with anything.”

  Nothing flies at me when I go in, which I’m thankful for. There’s not a kitchen anywhere that isn’t full of sharp and hard things, and I can’t really think of one that I’d be comfortable having thrown at my body. I pick up two plastic measuring cups as I walk deeper into the kitchen, carefully stepping over the debris, until I come to the door which I know leads to the basement. I gingerly go down the stairs.

  The basement floor is cement, of course. I’d known as much. When I first came to Ellen’s place shortly after I moved to town I’d checked out her operation, just to make sure she wasn’t using anything that might be harmful to humans. The basement is old, not original to the house but still old. Prior to that the building had been on a crawlspace, and there’s still a hatchway that leads to the plumbing and electrical fixtures underneath the place. If I’m right, there’s more in that crawlspace than anyone ever knew. I find the hatch, open it and look inside.

  Dirt. Just as I’d hoped. The concrete had been laid long before Ellen bought the place, presumably before Yes and No had been killed if their testimony was to be believed. If their bodies are indeed still on the premises, this is where they’d be.

  I don’t have time for an excavation. I’ll come back later on, maybe with Adam Farelli in tow, and look into the crawlspace further. Who knows what else is buried down there. For now, though, all I’ll need is a couple of cups of dirt. Their decomposing bodies, whatever state they’d been in when they’d been buried, will have permeated the damp soil but had no place to go after that. Their bodies are still part of the dirt, or at least hopefully enough to serve my purpose. I take one of the measuring cups in each hand, reach into the crawlspace and scoop out two brimming cups of dirt.

  I walk up the stairs, carefully balancing the cups. When I pass through the kitchen doors I drag one foot, scattering the salt line. I walk over to the front door and nudge it open with my foot. Ellen is on the other side of it, evidently listening in on what was happening, and she jumps back, startled. She looks at me with wondering eyes and I nod easily back at her.

  “Listen to me,” I say to the dining room. “You’ve probably guessed by now that I know a bit about how to handle you. I’m trusting you to stick to our agreement, and to behave yourselves after
wards. If you don’t, I will find you again and treat you much less politely. Do you understand?”

  The room was silent. After a moment, I sigh.

  “If you understand me, fix something.”

  Two chairs right themselves with impressive speed.

  “You agree not to cause any problems?”

  Two more chairs stand at attention.

  “Good luck, then,” I say. I break the salt line and carry the two cups outside. I pour the dirt into the flower bed next to the wheelchair ramp. When I do so Ellen takes a surprised step back and I see her mousy hair suddenly blow back as if from a hard wind, but I naturally don’t feel a thing.

  “They’re gone?” she asks.

  “In a minute,” I say. “Hey, No! Time to pay up!”

  A light roll of waist-high wind runs down the steps, with five or six little pebbles from the parking lot floating in it. They come to rest on the porch in a crude arrow, pointing towards the shore. Specifically, towards Beadle’s. Then, a hard puff of air, the poltergeist rolls out into the salty night air.

  “I don’t think they’ll be coming back,” I say.

  “Where did they come from?”

  Off in the distance I hear the faint beeping of a car horn, no doubt gridlocked in the nighttime traffic of Beadle’s Cove. A popular night spot, geographically very close by. Lots of people, lots of noise. Lots of cover. That’s where Bruce is.

  “I’ll come back in a few days and explain everything,” I say. “Until then, I’ve got something else I have to attend to.”

  “Thanks, Ian. You come back after I reopen. Like I said, dinner’s on me.”

  This time I can’t disguise my grimace. I just hope the darkness covers it up.

  Twelve

  The town of Superstition Bay is built on the shore of the body of water it draws its name from. Generally speaking, the shoreline performs a gentle arc that sweeps out of the Gulf of Mexico before smoothly edging its way back in. From the air, the bay is almost a perfect half-oval, with the exception of a comparatively pronounced bulge just a few degrees east of center. As the town grew and expanded, the bulge became a demarcation line between two different lifestyles. To the east of the bulge is Perfect Point, known to the locals as Beadle’s Cove, or simply Beadle’s. Local lore says that the pirate William Beadle’s ship went down on the rocks just outside the cove in 1748, killing most of his men and throwing his treasure into the depths. Local historians are divided on whether he existed or not, but almost every day you can see boats anchored out past the rocks, flags marking where hopeful scuba divers still search in vain to find a trace of Beadle’s booty.

  Beadle’s is where families go to exhaust their patience, courage and bank accounts. It’s home to Superstition Bay’s mile-long boardwalk, lined with booths where you can toss rings at wooden pegs, throw darts at balloons, use mallets to catapult rubber frogs at swirling lily pads. Stands with fresh-cut fries, fried shrimp, cups of gumbo. And then twisting and flailing rides to make you want to throw it all back up.

  Way west of the bulge is the club district the locals call the Crawl, where folks go to have similar experiences in different ways. There’s a boardwalk that stretches down that way, too, but instead of arcades and sushi stands the doors lead to clubs and bars, and instead of strolling through the smells of corn dogs and frying burgers and the sounds of bells jingling and video games blaring you get the smells of liquor and sweat and hear bass beats loud enough to change your heartbeat and raucous drunk voices shouting from the doorways.

  Where the two ends flow together there is a substation of the SBPD, a two-story wooden octagon with wide lead windows that afford wide-angle views of both districts. There’s always at least three officers on duty to coordinate beach patrols, help lost children and separated tourist parties, arrange locksmiths for cars whose owners left their keys in them. The base is also a small infirmary with dedicated lines to Three Saints Hospital in case of drownings or other beach related catastrophes.

  I wish I’d been able to come check the area out earlier. Life at the beach seems to consist of shifts. The first shift, those with young families and throngs of kids almost old enough to legally drink, are long gone, exhausted parents massaging aching feet and hyperstimulated kids passed out in back seats clutching cheap stuffed animals, recent and future high school grads comparing sunburns and scored phone numbers. The second shift, the drinking age crowd, is just hitting its stride. Young men drink beer directly from the pitcher and girls try to outdo each other with shorter and tighter shorts and tops that are a hard cough away from police intervention. Both shifts consist of hundreds of individuals milling about like tides in a pond, but during the day most of the people are on or going to the beach. Would have made it a lot easier to spot someone trying to hide in shadows. Well, at least now I won’t get sunburned.

  I drive past Beadle’s, following the seaside road west until I reach the Crawl. Ellen’s poltergeist hadn’t given me very specific directions; the pebble arrow could have been pointing to either Beadle’s or the Crawl. I have no real reason to choose this direction instead of the first, other than the hope that Bruce wouldn’t want to risk luring the monsters amongst the families that were still out gallivanting, playing games and riding rides. I find a parking spot and get out of the Jeep.

  The Crawl is located in a geographic corner, where back in the 1920’s Superstition Bay’s city council had carved a massive inlet from the bay to an inland waterway where a small armada of trawlers and charter fishing boats make their berths. Two jetties made up of massive slabs of rock reach two hundred feet out into the bay like immovable arms, leading the boats back to the docks. A small strip of fisherman’s bars had sprung up immediately upon the completion of the inlet, and over the years the strip had grown into a stretch of bars, grills and clubs that is starting to be mentioned in the same guide-book paragraphs as Bourbon Street. Lots of shrimpers and oil rig workers blow off steam and money in the Crawl, which means that lots of trouble comes out of there. Police presence is constant.

  The buildings had been built along the ninety-degree arc formed by the inlet and the shore, making a reverse “L” of noise, alcohol and food. The boardwalk here runs along a rocky shoreline instead of a fine sandy beach. The spray of the crashing waves regularly throws a salty mist onto the boards, and those places with outside tables all have umbrellas on them. I climb the nearest wooden ramp onto the boardwalk and start checking out the crowd.

  I’m struck by the absence of many of the town’s supernatural regulars. An exiled elf who goes by the name Richard now usually open his fried peanut stand by six, but it’s still tightly boarded up. Dale Ibanez moved his fortune-telling stand down here from Beadle’s recently following some kind of incident but the stand still has its “Closed” sign up, and he’s never one to go home early and leave a sheep unfleeced. Even the gargoyle on the end of the jetty that everyone has always assumed is a decoration is gone.

  Conversely, the amount of new faces is unsettling. A beagle is trotting down the boardwalk, nose twitching along the planks. A leash is standing unaided straight up from its collar and judging by the way the men it passes turn and followed up with an appreciative glance I guess they’re seeing a good-looking woman holding the length of nylon. The “dog” glances at me with green eyes, measuring me with guarded interest. Then it reaches some kind of conclusion and continues along its path.

  Further along a young man in orange board shorts and a white tank top is standing by the railing, looking out into the dark sea. From time to time he looks down at a small pile of bones in his right hand, but he doesn’t say or do anything else. A group of elderly women wearing quaint powder-blue sun dresses, at least four of them although sometimes I seem to count five, are power-walking up the boards, jabbing long walking sticks into every dark corner heedless of whoever is in there. Everywhere I look I can see men and women walking slowly up the boards and the beach, surreptitiously gripping and caressing totems and tokens. And on the sh
ifting breezes I catch the scents of wolves, scales, strange herbs and sulfur.

  When it comes to magic, when it comes to the Grey, in this town I’m the closest thing to the law there is. And like many small-town lawmen suddenly confronted by outsiders, I don’t like any of these people being here. Strangers are never as careful of their surroundings as natives are. Any resident of any resort town can tell you that. Sometimes that lack of care can equal trouble.

  Except for the dog, most of them make it too much of a point to look away from me. Fine. They know who I am. Hopefully that means that my reputation will precede me, too. Unfortunately they have to know that I’m after the same thing they are, which means that they’ll be watching my every move in hopes of leading them to their prize. I take comfort in that, since it means that nobody has found the Cleave yet. If someone had, none of these “people” would still be here. I walk on, peering into the clubs and bars as I pass.

  I recall the picture of Bruce that Madeline had “painted” for me. There’s nobody remotely resembling him in sight, and since the majority of the boardwalk is built on a curve I can see a long way thanks to the blazing safety lights. Not that I expect him to be that easily spotted, but you never know. If he’s using magic to disguise himself I might be the only one who could see the real man.

  My stomach rumbles loudly. The bowl of pasta I’d wolfed down before passing out has been burned through by the Aegis tea, and now I’m feeling hunger pangs. I stop at a stand, buy a small basket of fried shrimp and a bottle of water and eat as I walk.

  I’m passing a small club called the Crest when I see him. I’m so surprised I almost stumble, but catch myself and continue my casual stroll. He’s seated at one of the outdoor umbrella-shaded tables of a beachside sandwich shack, as unsheltered as a tall tree in a rainstorm, looking pensively out over the noisy, colorful groups of people walking past.