PsyCop Briefs: Volume 1

by Jordan Castillo Price

  “How old?” Jacob prompted.

  “Nineteen twenties.” I guessed. “Maybe earlier.” Ancient history wasn’t my strong suit.

  “I meant his birth age.” Jacob quelled a smile. He was totally getting off on the whole venture.

  “Forty?” Hard to tell behind that squirrel tail on his upper lip. “No…younger, I think. Thirty-five.”

  Jacob looked hard at the floor, which was obviously much newer than the repeater, though at least the granite tile formed a grid we’d be able to use. Since we were both wearing suits, and since we both projected the air of, “I’m entitled to be here and I know exactly what I’m doing,” none of the lobby’s pedestrian traffic interfered with our training exercise. The current building had gone up in the sixties according to the cornerstone facing Clark Street. It housed lawyers and accountants now, and the occasional inscrutable generic LLC. Whatever it had been a few decades prior, I supposed it didn’t matter now. We had no reason to dig and nothing to solve. This repeater was an accident, not an “accident.” I figured if someone had actually aimed that brick at him, there’d be more of him left behind to complain about it, even if the brick-lobber was long dead. He was safe to practice on. Ethically safe, I mean.

  I hoped so, anyway.

  I squatted low and tapped a tile with the clicky end of my pen. “This row, two columns in toward the elevators.” Jacob’s laser focus shot over to the tile I’d specified. Intentionally, I hadn’t said which tile the repeater’s other foot was on. I also didn’t tell him I was looking to see if he could read some other detail about the repeater, now that he had a general description of the guy. I propped my elbow on my knee and waited, twirling my pen where it dangled between my legs. I gathered some white light too, but not with any sense of urgency, only the idea that it would be nice to power up. Instead of the protective white balloon I usually placed around myself in my mind’s eye, I created a mist—a cloud, a vapor—and I imagined it encompassing both Jacob and me. Whether or not it actually accomplished anything, I had no clue. Likely it was wishful thinking, this idea that I could expand my coverage to include him if we weren’t physically touching and concentrating like all get-out on the power transfer. But this territory was so damn uncharted that I couldn’t say for sure it wouldn’t work, so I might as well try.

  Jacob stared at the floor so hard I saw a vein throb in his temple, then turned to me where I waited and watched, and said, “How’d he die?”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Don’t ask. Guess.” Doubt flickered across his brow. “Yeah, I know, it’s about as satisfying as yesterday’s decaf. But no one’s breathing down our necks, plus I’m here to tell you if you’re warm or cold, so you might as well take advantage.”

  He squared his shoulders, closed his eyes, and huffed out a breath. Two seconds ago he’d been raring to go, but now I could tell he was getting frustrated, fast—he hadn’t even offered a passing leer at my suggestion he take advantage of me. Poor guy. He was so used to being good at everything, it was murder for him to keep spinning his wheels. What he didn’t understand was that he was already good at Psych, scary good. When the ectoplasm flew, he really was the man of steel, at least in the vibrational sense. I watched him now as he battled to pick up on his own perceptions. Maybe if he hadn’t always been told his sixth sense was nonexistent and his third eye couldn’t see squat, he’d have an easier time getting a handle on his abilities. That didn’t matter, though. I’d seen him project. I’d felt him grab my light. Once his breakthrough came, he’d be able to take his customary position at the overachiever end of the bell curve.

  “Gunshot,” he announced.

  I kept my voice neutral, because maybe he just needed to de-specify. Maybe he’d felt the impact and then filled in the rest of the pertinent details with assumptions. “Where?”

  His brows drew together. He took in a breath and let it out slow, and then tentatively, he touched his chest. “Here.”

  Darn it.

  I straightened up. My knees clicked. I shook out my sport coat and shifted my holster. “False hit—happens all the time. Go ahead and get centered—take your time—and see what else pops into your head.”

  He closed his eyes and thought harder, then turned to me and said, “A stabbing, maybe?”

  My poker face is pretty good, but he could tell he was getting colder. Obviously if he’d scored a hit I would’ve been excited for him, so my lack of expression was as good as calling him a loser. His face fell. “You’re thinking too hard,” I said. “You were having fun with it a minute ago. Focus on that.”

  A flicker of brick, a brief but hideous moment of impact, and the repeater disappeared. And then he was back again, gazing up. Jacob turned toward the wall and glared at the floor tile. So much for fun. “It’s something weird, isn’t it? Fire. Explosion.”

  “Now you’re trying to read me. Forget about me. Think about the old repeater instead, him and his big mustache. Just him.” The hitch in Jacob’s brow smoothed. I waited a few seconds, then said, “Now—what’s the very first thing that pops into your head?”

  “Run over…by a wagon, maybe?”

  I didn’t sigh—I wouldn’t dare—though I wanted to. Normally, Jacob’s analytical mind was a great asset. Not at the moment, though. It was too busy with conjecture to let any extrasensory impressions come through.

  “Try clearing your head,” I suggested. “You know, think about not thinking. Focus on your breath.”

  I’m pretty sure hands-on-hips isn’t a pose any of the New Age gurus recommend, but Jacob planted his arms akimbo anyway, and attempted to force himself to relax. No way was I about to point out the irony. He stayed that way for the duration of a few heartbeats, then opened his eyes and said, “Strangulation.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and I truly was. Not having his way was so foreign to him, every minor delay in getting what he wanted felt like an insurmountable failure. “You want to salt this one, or leave him be and come back later?” I didn’t care one way or the other. Even if I exorcised him, we’d find another. We always did.

  “Not yet,” Jacob said. “Just…gimme a hint.”

  “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Let’s take a different tack.” Maybe this thing he was trying to do—reading me, rather than the repeater—showed some promise. I pressed my fingertips to the back of his hand. I didn’t shove white light into him, but I didn’t shield myself from him either. Centered. Neutral. Open. Those things are pretty abstract concepts, and I don’t do particularly well with abstractions. I was certain, though, that once we were on the same page, things would only get easier. I counted out a few breaths, then eased away from Jacob and said, “Getting anything?”

  Maybe I was centered and neutral, but Jacob’s frustration was still running away with him at a good clip. He turned back and glared at the floor, then the elevators, then a douchey businessman who was talking too loudly on his cell. I watched the talker nearly collide with a revolving door—and when I turned back, Jacob was glaring at the ceiling tiles. I was just about to call it a day and steer him toward the car when a massive heebie jeebie prickled through me, so visceral my arm hairs sprang to attention and my stomach did a flip-flop. He’d raised his hand to shield his eyes, and he was in the same position as the repeater—and I mean the exact same, right down to the tilt of their heads, the set of their shoulders and the slight bend in the weight-bearing knee.

  Jacob wasn’t watching my eyes, so he didn’t see me taking notice. I went very, very still so his attention could stay where it was. The moment of impact hit—a mere flicker—then the brick appeared and the repeater broke his pose. Jacob snapped out of it at the same instant with a quick shake of his head. “Nope,” he said disgustedly. “Nothing. Might as well salt it.”

  He seemed pretty set on being fed up with himself. I took in a deep, careful breath while I tried to figure out how to break it to him that his reception wasn’t so shoddy after all. />
  Everyone's Afraid of Clowns

  1

  Halloween is magical for some folks. Me, I mostly see it as a chance to sneak a big bag of candy into the shopping cart. Ghosts and monsters and things that go bump in the night don’t need a special holiday to put me through the wringer. I deal with weird entities all year long. But there’s weird, and then there’s weird. I had it on good authority there’d be actual children at the party where we’d agreed to put in an appearance.

  “We don’t have to stay long,” Jacob assured me. “An hour, tops.”

  I hadn’t breathed a word about my lack of enthusiasm for this particular social obligation. Hadn’t even rolled my eyes. Jacob, though…he knew. Maybe not in a telepathic way, but what difference did it make when he could read my thoughts in the set of my shoulders and the gaps between my sentences? I’ve got an obscure paper license behind my badge, one that declares Victor Bayne - Level 5 Medium is clearly too important to be expected to show up at social events. At least that’s what my last few boyfriends made of it. But since I’ve paired up with another PsyCop, and a clever one at that, I’d need a more plausible excuse to play hooky when I wasn’t in the mood for people. Either that or tag along for the ride and do my best to fly under the radar.

  Sure, I’d daydreamed about weaseling out of this particular shindig, but I’d never thought it could actually happen. Being half of a couple isn’t all easy kisses and inside jokes. It’s occasionally doing things you’d rather not, especially when you’d prefer to stay home and half-watch scary movies you’ve seen umpteen times. Luckily, it was easy to take cues from Jacob. While I don’t expect him to act as my crutch, when I need to navigate a social setting, being with him really is a valuable perk. For instance, I’d voted on bringing the extra wine in the back of the cupboard to the party, but according to him, wine wouldn’t quite cut it. Halloween was one of those occasions where you were expected to be seasonally appropriate…even if you threw everything together last-minute, which due to our crushing work schedules, we typically did.

  Only the truly prepared have time to drive all the way out to a suburban cornfield just to find a stupid gourd. It was a lot easier to hit the old lot on Montrose, the one that had been a car wash in its previous life. Maybe one of these days we’d plan far enough ahead to escape Chicago for a few hours and take a trip to the country. But not this year, not today.

  The only thing worth looking at in this particular pumpkin patch was Jacob. Sure, he can rock a suit, but tonight he was a study of dark-on-dark, black hair, black goatee, black jeans and black leather jacket. Even though I’m pushing forty, I’m still as much of a sucker for a leather jacket as I’ve ever been. Sadly, even a vision of Jacob in leather looking dashingly intent couldn’t elevate the lame-o surroundings. There was a fly-by-night quality to the lot’s setup, and its flimsiness contrasted with my mental image of how “things” were supposed to be. Neat, square hay bales outlined a perimeter, and a puny scarecrow stood watch over bushels of apples and winter squash. Tarps covered the old blacktop, where pumpkins were arranged in clusters according to size and price. Streetlights shone down, obliterating any potential view of the stars. Shoppers were sparse. People bundled in winter coats milled around despondently. The single animated person there was a guy trying to pump up his kids’ enthusiasm and get them to pick something out. They were too busy texting to notice.

  Thankfully, Jacob wasn’t invested in creating any memories. His family life has been as close to picture-perfect as a family can be, so he doesn’t get all sentimental over things that might have been. Tonight we were on the same page—we usually were—and all he wanted to do was score a random pumpkin and get going. “Vic? What about those painted ones?”

  “Sure.” That way it would look like we’d put in some extra effort without actually having to carve something.

  The painted pumpkins were stacked beside the register on a hay bale, perfect for grab-and-go shopping. But although I marched up with every intention of choosing one at random, I’ve always had a soft spot for Halloween, so I couldn’t help but try to pick out something good.

  I couldn’t find anything.

  All of them were smiling. Cats, ghosts, monsters too. All of them wore the same, identical gap-toothed leer. Seeing them all together like that, the attempt at differentiating one design from another seemed all the more half-hearted. Even the clown-painted pumpkins weren’t scary. And everyone’s afraid of clowns.

  I doubt any of the foster families I’d lived with had enough means to hire a clown to traumatize us on our birthdays. My suspicion of clowns came from the movies, though not in the way it usually happens.

  I’d started sneaking into R-rated films when I was way too young to understand them, but tall enough to pass for a burgeoning adult, which I’d been doing since I was thirteen. (Sometimes I think I’m still doing it.) Once in a while, the employee in the ticket booth would call my bluff and demand to see a driver’s license. But most of the time, they couldn’t be bothered.

  The moldering second-run cinema a short bus ride from my high school had never once carded me. I think they just needed the business. They were always running gimmicks and promos, like guess the number of beans in a jar to win a free ticket, or free small popcorn to the first twenty customers, or half price Halloween double feature to anyone who came in costume.

  I’m not big on advance planning, but that year, I was prepared—getting into the double feature meant getting out of the boring duty of accompanying the younger kids trick-or-treating. Most days I wore all black anyway, but that day I upped the ante with a black blazer, sleeves pushed up, naturally. After gym period, I gelled my hair into a cheesy widow’s peak. Add a set of plastic dime-store fangs, and I was ready for my close-up. Okay, so I wouldn’t be winning any vampiric costume contests, but it did save me $2.50 on my ticket.

  Thanks to Patrick Swayze, ghost movies had started losing their edge by the early 90’s, but gory, predictable slasher flicks were still a dime a dozen. This was good. Not because I couldn’t appreciate subtlety, but because armpit hair and random boners weren’t the only thing puberty had brought me. Ghosts. Sometimes movies get ’em right nowadays—especially the creepy Japanese flicks with English subtitles. But back before I figured out I possessed anything more than an overactive imagination, movies weren’t actually that scary. Cinematic boogeymen were nice and blatant, hockey masks and chainsaws. And the characters who ended up minced and mangled had done something so stupid—opening that door, venturing into the basement, going off to have sex in the woods—that whatever those lamebrains got, they deserved.

  I’m not sure why the dilapidated theater bothered opening its doors for a weekday matinee. Even with the half-priced Halloween double deal, attendance was sparse. By the light of the decaying snack bar promotion, the cavernous space with its rows and rows of stained seats felt hollow and forbidding. All the other moviegoers had spaced themselves out, ten or twelve seats away from their nearest neighbor. Was it some natural law, maybe a magnetic field that caused strangers to distribute themselves so carefully? Hard to say. That’d be an awful lot like physics, and I had trouble maintaining a steady C- in loser math.

  It wasn’t the fear of blocking others’ view of the screen that sent me creeping toward the back of the theater. The place was so empty I didn’t need to worry about getting in anybody’s way. It was more that I’d developed an overall preference for slinking in at the last minute and sitting at the back of the room. Not the very last row, though. Those seats were up against the wall at a rigid angle. The second-last row, right in the middle. My seat. Really, it was. I’d carved my initials in the armrest and everything.

  Just to be clear, my main reason for sitting all the way in the back was not the anticipation of an anonymous hand-job. It only happened that one time. I could hardly call the handiwork anonymous, either, because I was fairly sure my five-minute friend was the kid with the braces who worked at the sub shop across the street. At least I
hoped that was why he smelled like cold cuts.

  Sitting all the way in back did make it harder for me to lose myself in the movie, since I could see the edges of the screen, the point where the projected reality met real reality and the glamour fell away. Not only was I there to indulge in some distraction, but I’d positioned myself to be distracted from the distraction itself, so I couldn’t get sucked in too deep. Even that young, I’d had some high level avoidance techniques all figured out.

  Film rolled. Same plot, same setting, and only nominally different actors. A group of kids in the middle of nowhere, and wouldn’t you know it, the car breaks down and it’s nearly dark. The very blonde girl is wearing heels, so we all know how she’s gonna end up. And the guy who’s too much of a smartass for his own good? He’ll buy it ironically. They always do.

  I was postulating this detail almost a quarter of a century later, of course. Other than tiny flashes of clarity that I tend to question, my actual recall is not nearly that good. Mainly I do remember sitting in my initialed seat, sipping from a can of warm Pepsi I’d smuggled in, and watching a movie that was supposed to be scary, but was actually comfortingly predictable.

  It was entertaining enough until someone crept into the row behind me. That’s when my memories start feeling different, less like something I’ve conjectured in my 20/20 hindsight and more like the physical, visceral experience of something that came surging right back, juicy with adrenaline and fear.

  I remember straightening. I remember flexing my toes in my sneakers, like I could grip the tacky floor with them right through the worn rubber soles if I needed to make tracks fast. I remember the smell of fake butter-scented oil covering traces of scorched popcorn hull. I remember the horsehair-and-innerspring cushion creaking beneath my bony ass as I shifted my weight, trying to look casual. And I remember the thread of apprehension coiling like worms through my innards as I warred with the thought of leaving. Because I’d put actual planning and effort into my costume, dammit, and I wanted my half-priced movie.