The Ghost Hunter's Daughter

by Caroline Flarity

  Geneva fired up Emi and once again illuminated the monstrous, electromagnetic fur ball.

  “I want a better look at this thing,” Geneva said, handing Emi to Anna. She walked around the bed to view the spew-hole from the side. A particularly long wiry hair lashed out of the hole, whipping a thick trail of static mist inches from her cheek. Geneva retreated back next to Anna, her face pale.

  Anna held Emi as steady as possible despite the trembling in her arms. Her headache had shifted from behind her eyes to the top of her head, and a tunneling pain drilled into her skull as if determined to make mincemeat of the gray matter inside. Through gritted teeth she asked Geneva to get the Windex bottle on the drafting table. Geneva reappeared moments later with the bottle in hand.

  “It’s holy water,” Anna said. “Let’s spray this thing down.”

  “How many ounces should I use?”

  “We're not in a lab. Just start squeezing!”

  Geneva pumped the bottle at the wall and the electromagnetic hair ball immediately began to evaporate. She kept pumping until the last traces of the “spider hole” disappeared.

  “Yep, it's evil, whatever it is,” Anna said. She released Emi’s trigger. “The good news is that it's not that strong.”

  “Jack needs to know about this,” Geneva said. “Sick or not.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Energy-Sucking Vampire

  Geneva drove Anna to the Fagan house, making the seven blocks in about as many seconds. Anna saw Saul’s blue SUV parked in the driveway next to Jack’s sedan. What was he doing there? The guy was friggin’ everywhere.

  Anna and Geneva entered the Fagan house and maneuvered through the pathway into the kitchen. Saul sat at the kitchen table, talking on his phone and jotting notes onto a notepad. His powder-blue polo shirt featured the green crocodile logo that might as well have spelled out d-o-u-c-h-e. He bared his teeth at Anna in a blinding smile and ended his call.

  “Anna, perfect. I was just trying to track down your number. I have an appointment with your dad and rang the bell a few times, but he didn't answer. His car’s in the driveway, and the door was open, so—”

  “So, you just let yourself in?”

  Saul leaned back in the chair and regarded her coolly.

  “If Jack has a problem with that, I’ll address it with him.” He gestured to the basement door. “What exactly happened here?”

  The shattered door had been crudely patched up with plywood and adorned with a shiny new doorknob. Anna jiggled the doorknob. Unsurprisingly, it was locked. She pounded on the door, the cheap plywood grating against her fist.

  “Dad!”

  Anna pressed her ear against the door and heard a faint scuttling in the basement. The rats, no doubt, but she’d bet anything that they weren’t alone. Jack was supposed to be resting in bed, but it looked like he’d found something else to do. She turned to Saul.

  “I can hear him,” she lied. Bleary-eyed and exhausted, Anna doubted that she could break the basement door again. “You’ll have to kick the door in.”

  Saul smirked. “That's a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

  “He's sick, okay? And hurt. He might need help.”

  “I’m Jack’s colleague,” Geneva said, extending her arm to shake Saul’s hand. “Dr. Geneva Sanders, and I can assure you that this is somewhat of an emergency. So, please.”

  Saul grumbled but got to his feet. He kicked the door with his shiny leather shoes, once, twice, and the third time it broke open. Anna descended the stairs with Geneva and Saul at her heels, barely registering the soft crunch of dead flies under her feet. She turned left at the bottom of the steps and there was Jack, sitting on top of a hoard pile under one of the new hanging lightbulbs, his hands deep inside a black garbage bag. His eyes, shifting and nervous, narrowed at the sight of them. Scattered atop the debris in the basement were the tattered remains of the same garbage bags that Anna hauled to the curb the night before.

  “What have you done?” It was Saul, turning in a circle and taking in the colossal mess before him. He stumbled as his foot kicked into a busted bottle of drain cleaner.

  Jack didn’t seem to hear him. He peered sheepishly at Anna. “You know,” Jack said, “I realized that Uncle Pete's stamp collection might have been in one of those bags.”

  Shock rumbled in Anna’s gut like milk way past its expiration date.

  “You brought all of it…back down here?” She struggled to comprehend it as the words left her mouth.

  The wrinkles around Jack’s eyes were deep gashes. He searched for words, looking like a stranger, looking like the freak everyone at school thought he was.

  “It's like an itch in my brain,” he finally said. “It won't let me be.”

  Everything inside Anna sagged. She’d been a fool to think that she could rein in any of her father’s chaos. The downward spiral that started with her mother’s death had finally reached its sorry conclusion. He couldn’t get any lower, any loonier. She thought about Jack in the institution she’d have to visit on the weekends, eating apple sauce with a plastic spoon. She’d need to live with either Freddy or Dor until graduation. She could still count on them. Couldn’t she? Why did they suddenly feel so far away?

  Saul took a tentative step toward Jack, the ground beneath his feet creaking. He took another step and a charred plank of wood snapped in two.

  “Ah, geez, Jack,” he said. “Now that I’ve seen this, how the heck am I supposed to get you that loan? You're nowhere near ready for an inspection. I gotta tell you, buddy. You really let me down. I'll have to check on that new office and make sure you're not trashing that property, too.”

  “But…you checked on it last night,” Anna said.

  Saul turned to her. “You're mistaken.”

  “No, I’m not. I saw you there at, like, three o’clock in the morning.”

  Jack and Geneva exchanged a puzzled glance.

  “Is that true, Saul?” Jack asked, relieved that the focus had shifted away from him.

  Saul made a big show of looking insulted. “This is ridiculous.”

  Anna wasn’t backing down. “You were there, and you know it.”

  Saul crossed his arms. “Jack, I’d appreciate it if you would control your daughter. Let’s not make this situation any worse.”

  “Dad. I saw him.”

  “Anna, cool it,” Jack said. “Just answer the question, Saul. Were you there?”

  Geneva spoke up.

  “Can we all calm down, please? Everyone just take a moment and get centered. Whatever's going on”—she looked around warily at the hoard-laden basement—“I'm sure it can be worked out. But right now there's something urgent we need to talk to Jack about, so, Mr.…?”

  “Saul.”

  “Saul. If you wouldn't mind…” She nodded at Anna.

  Anna took Emi out from her backpack. “Emi is operational,” she said, pointing the machine at one of the exposed lightbulbs and pressing the trigger. The blue beam revealed the electrical orbs moving like a flock of starlings around the twitching magnetic field that encircled the bulb.

  Jack gaped at the display and then at Geneva.

  “You'll get the Nobel Prize for this,” he said, making his way off the hoard pile, his blackened sneakers alternately crunching into debris and slipping over scraps of wet garbage.

  “Either that or an infomercial,” Anna said. The machine was getting heavy, and she moved Emi’s beam down, off the lightbulb, giving her arm a rest.

  Suddenly Jack’s hand dug into her sleeve. As he yanked her toward him Anna instinctively pulled back, looking down, as she did, into the dark hole beneath her, licked with pale flames. A hole she was falling into. She tightened, bracing for the ensuing fall. But then a wiry magnetic hair whipped a trail of gray mist inches from her face, and she realized that she wasn’t falling. Anna’s finger remained pressed on Emi’s trigger; its blue beam hit the concrete floor beneath her feet. She was standing on another one of those nasty-ass spid
er holes.

  Jack dragged Anna toward him and Emi’s beam whipsawed around the basement, revealing a curtain of static mist. The basement was corrupted in more ways than one. She refocused Emi’s beam back to the patch of concrete on the basement floor. Under Emi’s blue light, a dark hole birthed a thousand-legged electrical monster.

  “It’s another one of those things,” Anna said to Geneva.

  “I see it,” Geneva said. “I see it.”

  Anna looked to Jack. “There was one in Geneva’s room, too.”

  Fascinated, Jack reached one arm toward the edge of the magnetic hair ball. His hand, tinged blue under Emi’s beam, went straight through several twitching gray hairs like they were a hologram.

  He turned to Geneva. “EMFs?”

  Geneva was ashen-faced. “They must be. That’s what Emi was designed to pick up. Is there an electrical source under the basement?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “We discovered a similar anomaly without an apparent electrical source on the wall above my bed.”

  Saul cleared his throat, and they all swiveled their heads toward him as he backed up in the direction of the stairs.

  “I'll leave you all to your new gadget. I’m afraid I have another appointment.”

  That was his reaction? I have another appointment. Anna’s bullshit detector went off. Shouldn’t Saul be having a fit that two of his “properties” faced this troubling affliction? It was like he wasn’t even surprised.

  Anna took a couple quick steps toward the stairs, blocking Saul’s exit.

  “You were at the office last night.”

  “You know,” Saul said, tapping a finger on the side of his head. “That's right! Silly me. I did stop by to make sure the water and gas were on. Apologies all around. Now, excuse me.”

  Anna didn’t budge, watching Saul’s eyes dart around the room. The same eyes that had seemed to follow her, Dor and Freddy from freshly-seeded lawns as they pedaled down New Bloomtown streets.

  “Get out of my way.” Saul glowered at her, lunging forward. Surprised, Anna staggered backward, her finger still glued to the trigger. Emi’s blue beam landed on Saul, and he brought his hands up to shield his eyes. Jagged bolts of gray lightning shot out of his fingers and a thick static mist swirled around his hands.

  “He’s doing it!” Anna said, her headache squeezing her skull with fresh vigor.

  “Turn it off,” Saul pleaded from behind his freakish hands.

  Anna kept the beam on him.

  “Now we know who’s making those EMF holes.”

  Saul’s voice turned soft. “Please turn it off.”

  “What did you do to our house?” Anna yelled, as Geneva and Jack took a step toward her and away from Saul.

  “Turn it off, and I'll tell you.”

  “And Geneva's room?” Anna kept the blue beam on him. “How many times did you sneak into the office to make that thing on her wall?” She looked at Geneva. “Now we know why the EMF readings were so high.”

  Saul spoke with a childlike cadence. “Please stop. It will hurt me.”

  Perfect. Anna wanted him hurt.

  Jack put a hand on her arm.

  “Anna, enough.”

  Reluctantly, she released Emi’s trigger.

  “The light from the machine,” Jack said. “It will…harm you?

  Saul looked at them with hollow eyes. “No. It will hurt me…when it comes back.”

  Geneva stepped forward.

  “I think we need to boil some tea and have a talk upstairs,” she said. “Jack, let’s escort our guest to the kitchen. Anna, get some holy water on this mess and then meet us upstairs.”

  Jack seemed reluctant to leave Anna’s side.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” she said. “We zapped the other one the same way. It’ll take three, maybe four ounces, tops. Easy peasy.”

  As the others climbed the creaky, fly-littered stairs, Anna took the Windex bottle out of her backpack, unscrewed the top and poured holy water onto the floor. She turned Emi back on, directing the blue beam at the wet concrete. The portal was gone. But who knew how many of those festering electromagnetic holes were hidden under Jack's hoard? Something small scurried through the junk heap closest to her. Perhaps only the rats knew. They’d created a labyrinth of tunnels through the hoard piles, further destabilizing them. And from the smell of things, those same tunnels had become their burial chambers. So gross.

  Anna joined the others in the kitchen, sucking in a lungful of the relatively fresh air. She nodded at her father to signify that the deed was done. Jack turned his attention back to Saul, slumped in a kitchen chair. Tears dropped from Saul’s cheeks onto his popped collar as he sobbed, his shoulders hunched and shuddering. Given such a pathetic display, it was hard not to feel sorry for him.

  Geneva and Jack stood on either side of Saul’s chair. Floor space was limited among Jack’s growing kitchen hoard. Anna had no choice but to stand directly in front of Saul, who was starkly lit by the hanging lamp above the kitchen table. She’d never seen a man cry except for her father. Wait, that wasn’t true. Freddy had cried the night Penelope died. He'd tried to hug her on the lawn and she’d pushed him away, but not before noticing his watery eyes.

  Jack put his hand on Saul’s shoulder and urged him to explain himself, assuring him that everything was going to be okay. Anna noted her dad’s grime-crusted nails; a not-so-white knight he was. Geneva was more reserved, giving Saul a weak smile when he glanced up at her, contrite and guilty.

  Geneva plucked a clean hand towel from the hoard under the table and passed it to Saul. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose with a loud honk before placing his hands on the kitchen table. His palms rolled upward in a gesture of openness, or perhaps resignation, but his eyes remained downcast.

  “The trouble started many years ago,” Saul said. “It was 1986 and I was a kid, thirteen years old. Me and my two buddies, Lance Hickey and Sammy Mulligan, met up at this old, abandoned shack that we’d discovered in the woods behind the ACME. We usually hung out there and played Dungeons and Dragons. But that Saturday, Lance brought a Ouija board he found in his older brother’s closet, and the three of us ending up sitting on the rotten wood floor, each with a finger on the pointer.”

  Anna and Jack exchanged a knowing look. They’d heard many stories with similar beginnings from some of Jack’s most miserable clients. More often than not, spirit boards led to no good.

  “It was all a big joke at first, all of us pushing the pointer to spell out curse words and such. Then Lance decided I should ask it a question. He was pretty much the head honcho of our threesome, but I didn’t let him push me around. So, to kind of get his goat, I asked, ‘Does Megan's carpet match her drapes?’ The story around the neighborhood was that Megan McNally let Lance get to third base. Lance pushed the pointer to YES, and me and Sammy made a big deal of oohing and ahhing.”

  Jack cleared his throat, glancing at Anna.

  “It was Sammy’s turn,” Saul said, “and he asked the board if Ernie Halstead, this kid in our class, was a homo. Sammy was always wondering about the sexual status of other boys, paranoid that any homos might be around. So, I said, ‘Why, you wanna french him?’ Sammy’s face got red and he punched me in the shoulder. Last I heard, he moved to Reno with his boyfriend and opened a pet store.”

  Saul looked up then, a smile playing at the corner of his lips.

  “Go on,” Jack said, stone-faced.

  “Anyway, Lance told us to put our fingers back on the pointer. He asked another question about Megan McNally. I won’t repeat it. It was pretty vile.”

  “Thanks for that,” Jack said.

  “Nothing was happening, and Sammy and I wanted to quit and play D&D, but Lance got the hard look in his eye that he had when he was real serious about something. He told me to say I’d sell my soul to the devil if it talked to us. I said no way. Lance started chanting, ‘Chick-en-shit, chick-en-shit!’ Sammy joined in. He was such a follower.

  “At t
his point I had to go to the bathroom something fierce, but when I got up, Lance stood in front of the door, and Sammy started laughing in this shrill way that made my insides twist. Lance said, ‘C’mon, chickenshit, say you’ll sell your soul to the devil,’ over and over, until I finally said ‘Fine’—my bladder was aching at that point—‘I’ll say it.’ We sat on the floor again, each of us with a finger on the pointer. And then I said it.”

  Saul banged his fists into his thighs. “I said I’d sell my soul to the devil if it answered a question. I’d do anything now to take that back, because wouldn’t you know, as soon as the words came out, the pointer starts shaking. All three of us let go. But then, all on its own, it scrapes across the board and points directly at me. Lance said to put my fingers back on it and, like an idiot, I did. You see…” Saul scanned their faces. “We were all terrified, but excited, too, eager in a strange way, like when you see an accident on the highway.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Anna said under her breath. Jack gave her a sharp look.

  Saul bowed his head again. “I put two of my fingers, one from each hand, back on the pointer, and it started moving in smooth circles around the board. I asked what it wanted, and it spelled H-E-N-R-Y.”

  “Who’s Henry?” Jack asked.

  “Me,” Saul said. “Henry’s my first name. Saul is my middle name. No one but my parents knew that. I tried to release my fingers but I couldn’t. My arms were dead weight, glued to the pointer. It was holding them there. Then Lance stood up and said Gino's Pizza just got a Pac-Man and he wanted to check it out. There was an ugly lightness in his voice, a cheap mimicking of childhood exuberance. None of us were ever children again after that night, especially me. I begged them not to go, but they did.

  “Once I was alone the temperature in that shack dropped so low I could see my breath, and this was late May we’re talking about. I still couldn’t move my hands, and I…I lost control of my bladder. It was so cold the wet spot on my jeans froze over. So cold I thought I’d freeze to death.”

  Saul shivered in his seat as if lost in the memory.

  “At least it would be over, I thought, but it wasn’t. The pointer jerked my arms across the board, spelling out Y-O-U A-R-E M-I-N-E, and then my fingers finally released. I stumbled out of the shack and into the woods, too cold to feel the sticker bushes tearing my skin. My mother screamed when I walked in the house, bloodied and urine-soaked, eyes like saucers. But I never told her what happened. I didn’t want to make it mad.”