PsyCop Briefs: Volume 1

by Jordan Castillo Price

  I remember all that, the pissed off clench of high alert. And I remember rolling my eyes when the creep in the back row sidled his way across several seats and planted himself just behind my right shoulder.

  In my dozen years as a PsyCop, I’ve seen enough gruesome shit to instill a better sense of self-preservation. But at that age I was such an ignorant twerp, I was all sneer and swagger. I turned around to confront the guy—probably with a brilliant remark like, “Excuse me?”

  There was nobody there.

  I remember it with utter clarity. I heard the guy. Knew it was a guy, even. Knew exactly where he was positioned relative to me. Except he wasn’t.

  Even though the rest of the sparse crowd was too busy watching the movie to be paying any attention to me, I hunched in on myself, feeling stupid. Apparently someone had used the narrow back row to cut across. No big deal. I settled back in my stiff, creaking seat, took a cautious sip of my warm pop, and stared straight ahead. In the movie, flashlights were dying, a storm was rolling in, and the soundtrack was starting to get spooky. Though I’d been jostled out of the moment, it wasn’t exactly an intricate plot. I slipped right back into the experience of the film—at least as deeply as I ever allowed myself to—and I watched the smart-aleck guy fight with the snotty kid brother while the high-heeled blonde tried to make peace…and I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Not up on the screen, but just over my right shoulder.

  Okay, asshole. I vividly remember thinking that. Now I got you.

  I held my head very, very still, and I looked only with my eyes. The guy behind me was leaning forward, sprawling across the seat-back, cradling his chin in his hands. Dozens upon dozens of empty seats, and he was right there in my personal space. If not for that fluke hand-job, I would’ve whipped around and told him to get lost. Instead, I continued to scope him out in case I might get lucky again. Pale. That was all I could see without turning my head. Angling for a better look, I scratched the nape of my neck so I could tilt my head, and finally, then, I caught a decent glimpse.

  Not only was the guy behind me in costume, and not only was he at least a venerable forty years old, but he was dressed as a clown.

  Even the potential of getting fondled didn’t cancel out my revulsion. I stood up to move, and turned at the last moment to shoot the clown a dirty look for creeping me out of my own damn seat.

  He was gone.

  Clown or no clown, I wasn’t about to put up with somebody fucking with me. I threw myself against the seatback, fully prepared to find him huddled down in the back row, dick in hand, snickering to himself. But other than a scattering of trash on the floor, the row was empty.

  2

  Heebie Jeebies—the gift that keeps on giving. A quarter-century later and I was still chafing gooseflesh off my forearms.

  “Do you see something?” Jacob murmured. He gets off on watching me do my thing.

  “No. Not really.” I scanned the parking lot. It was clean. “Just thinking.”

  “Tell me.”

  Although Jacob was crowding me worse than a dead clown in a run-down movie theater, my barriers didn’t shoot up. He was allowed in. Take that any way you care to. It was a comfort, actually, to have hooked up with the one guy who thinks Hooray! when the dead start bleeding through. “Not much to tell. It was a long time ago.”

  Jacob picked up a massive, ugly smiling pumpkin and headed for checkout. Twenty bucks—highway robbery—plus tax. The teenaged boy behind the hay bales needed to count my change three times. I’m guessing he would’ve preferred I put it on my card, but knowing what I know about electronic surveillance, I just can’t bring myself to swipe it through a tablet. Everyone knows those things are only good for YouTube videos and solitaire.

  Jacob handed me the smiling whatever while he beeped the lock and opened the car door, then took it back so he could settle it in carefully for the ride. I would’ve just thrown the damn thing into the backseat and let it fend for itself. Then again, I would’ve ended up scraping pumpkin guts off the upholstery after we took a sharp turn and ended up playing roller derby.

  Pumpkin situated, we buckled ourselves in. He pulled into traffic, went a few blocks, and stopped.

  Red light.

  Not anywhere near us, more like two blocks up the street, but traffic was frozen for the whole stretch of road. Was it a clean intersection? I wasn’t sure—I didn’t drive this route often enough to have every haunted crash site memorized. I craned my neck to see if I noticed anyone wandering in and out of traffic…literally. But it was cold and dark and miserable out, and the only pedestrians were huddling in their coats, not rambling around hoping to get in the final word with the driver responsible for their current state of deadness.

  “So,” Jacob ventured, since it seemed we were settling in for a nice long wait. “This thing on your mind—the long time ago…how long?”

  I considered how much emotional scar tissue surrounded the clown memory. Not much. I’d only had a glimpse, after all. He hadn’t followed me home to lurk in my closet. He hadn’t touched me. He hadn’t even said anything. Any anxiety I currently felt was due to the anticipation of a house full of shrieking tweens, not the clown ghost.

  My decision to go ahead and talk was based mainly on the knowledge that Jacob would really get off on hearing about it. And when he’s looking all slick in a leather jacket, I can’t resist. I eased my hand onto his thigh, dropped my voice down low, and said, “I was sixteen. It was a darkened movie theater. Typical nineties slasher flick. I was sitting there alone in the second-last row—”

  “The one on Sheffield?”

  “I dunno. Could be.” I gathered my thoughts and put on that ghost story voice he digs so much. “So I was sitting there. Alone. In the second-last row….”

  “It was that general area, though, right? Near the El? Or was it the one on Broadway?”

  “Maybe.” I struggled to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “It was a run-down, turn of the century, single screen theater with floors like flypaper, and horsehair hanging out of the seats. Does that set the stage for you?”

  “The Mercury? Biograph? The Music Box?”

  “I don’t know. I was just a kid.”

  “But was it in Lakeview or New Town?”

  “Lakeview. I guess. Probably.” I paused to see if there were any more urgent questions. Apparently he had his bearings. I regrouped, imagined the feel of the darkened theater, gave his thigh a subtle grope, and said, “It was Halloween, and anyone in costume got in for—”

  Jacob braked, a little too hard for the flow of the creeping traffic. “Halloween, to the day?”

  “Whose story is this—do you mind?” Apparently, he did. In one of those decisive police driving moves that no one ever seems to question, he nosed out of line and swung a U-turn. “What are you doing?”

  “If we drove past, maybe it would spur your memory.”

  “I remember the important parts.” Damn it, who the hell cared which specific theater it was? Couldn’t he tell I was trying to put on a sexy-voice? “What’s the deal? Usually when I talk ghost, you stop and listen.”

  “I was listening. You were sixteen, it was Halloween, and you saw something.” He swung around a poky driver trying to parallel park and high-tailed it toward Lakeview. “Whatever it was…what if it’s still there?”

  I spared a glance in the direction of the backseat. The ugly pumpkin grinned back at me. “I thought we were late.”

  “It’s not that far out of the way.”

  No, not as the crow flies. But Halloween was as big a hindrance to traffic as a freak October snowstorm or a Bulls NBA championship win. Despite Jacob’s assertive driving, it took us nearly forty-five minutes to traverse three neighborhoods. And once we were in a spot where I could’ve used some extra time to get my bearings, traffic picked up while I tried to fit together my jigsaw puzzle of a memory. We were zipping down Broadway when I finally spotted it—a tall, narrow building with a green awning where the marquee use
d to be. I checked the opposite side of the street. An old McDonalds. The kid who gave me a cheap thrill hadn’t smelled like salami after all. It was fries. I felt the pieces fit into place with a satisfying snap, and said, “There.”

  “The coffee shop?”

  “It wasn’t a coffee shop then.”

  In fact, it could hardly be called a coffee shop now. It looked more like a catch-all meeting place for every obscure group from Boystown to Wrigleyville. We crept by it four more times in search of parking, and each time I scanned the gaps between the handbills plastering the windows to determine if the overhead lights were even on. On our final lap, I saw someone at the door usher in a few guys with a flashlight, money changing hands, so I kept my mouth shut while Jacob pulled another U-ey to grab a spot opening up just across the street.

  “How’s that for parking?” Jacob said. I was gracious enough not to mention I could hear him muttering a little bit louder each trip around the block. “And they’re open, too. Perfect timing.”

  With whatever renovations had occurred over the past few decades, the façade didn’t feel quite like the old theater to me. And yet there was a sense of deja vu as I approached, where if I really concentrated, I could feel myself swallowing spit around those cheap plastic fangs. Before I could get too self-congratulatory about finding the place, it occurred to me that I was barging into a big old building that was probably haunted, with no antipsyactive drugs, not even a packet of salt in my pocket, and I grabbed Jacob by the elbow before he could barrel on through the door and charge right into who-knows-what. “Hold your horses, mister. Let me get my bearings.”

  Jacob stopped and looked at me, dark eyes sparkling with eagerness. I’m still putty in his hands when he gives me that calculating leer. Unfortunately, before I could bask in his approval, he turned his attention toward the door. Sure, he got off on the idea of me being a medium. But when it was all said and done, he was way more interested in the ghosts.

  I considered saying it was a long shot we’d find anything at all based on a single glimpse I got back when I only needed to shave once a week, but why rain on his parade? We hardly ever had the chance to go out together, and wasn’t ghost hunting preferable to a Halloween party full of strangers and their kids? That was probably overly optimistic on my part. I do still have a healthy fear of ghosts. Seeing what I’ve seen and knowing what I know, of course I do. In all likelihood, though, if we found anything at all, it would probably just be a repeater. Those things were tame, more like a smattering of leftover death energy than a ghost. I could disrupt the signal, Jacob would get all hot n’ bothered watching me do my thing, then he could take me home and do his thing. Win-win all around.

  Or it could be seriously haunted.

  I ignored Jacob’s eager body language and shifted my awareness.

  White light. It’s not really light, and it’s probably not white—but since the shorthand works, that’s good enough for me. I visualized it streaming down from the heavens, surging in through my third eye. And I felt it filling me with the mojo that allows me to break the death barrier. This power source isn’t tangible and it’s definitely not measurable, but that’s just because no one’s come up with the right equipment to see it just yet. I’ve tapped it enough times to trust it’s there, and to know with certainty that in some clumsy or rudimentary way, I’m able to use it.

  If it’s awkward for me, it’s twice as bad for Jacob. He can’t see this stuff like I can—but I’ve learned the hard way he can suck up my white light without batting an eyelash. He moved to take my hand, and regretfully, I had to step away. “You had your shot back in the car. Look with your eyes, not with your hands. I’m charging my batteries now.”

  “Sorry.” He cocked his head toward a rainbow flag. It felt natural to be grabby in Boystown. “Habit.”

  I was wearing my black wool peacoat, and those pockets went deep. I stuffed my hands in to keep from discharging my light into Jacob, and also hoping I might find some prop I could call upon in case we were blundering in on something scary. The more I searched—and the more I came up with nothing but spare change and gum wrappers—the more spooked I felt. Jacob was raring to go, holding open the door, and it occurred to me that I’d grown phenomenally blasé if I was willing to face off with a freaking ghost clown just to give him a few jollies. Blasé, or stupid.

  I headed in.

  3

  It was dark inside, except for emergency exits and flashlight beams. I dug deeper into my pockets looking for a pen light, but it was in my work overcoat, so I didn’t even have that. A guy in an old-timey carnival barker costume with a wooly fake mustache told us, “Ten dollars.” Jacob paid the guy, who handed him a pair of plastic wristbands, and said, “Down the hall and to the right.”

  We headed down the darkened hallway, me trying to place it in my memory, Jacob with a flashlight out. Of course he had his flashlight, even in his leather jacket. He’s nothing if not prepared. He flicked it over the wristbands and read, “Men 4 Men Haunted House.”

  “Huh. Guess I can’t say you never take me anywhere.”

  “Tonight’s the last night.”

  “Yeah, they’ll need to start putting out the Christmas decorations soon as they lock up behind us.”

  Jacob passed me a wristband and I took it, careful not to brush fingertips but now regretting that we’d ended up at some big gay Halloween thing and couldn’t even touch each other. I fastened the band and scanned for something familiar in what little I could see. “I’m not sure this is even the place.”

  “Slow and steady. I’ve got your back.”

  I was on the verge of surrendering to the obvious smartass reply when Jacob pushed through the swinging double doors and a jolt of memory hit. Me, shouldering through the lobby doors and smelling that intense fake butter popcorn smell, then wishing I had a few more bucks to buy a popcorn, even a small one, and hoping no one searched my backpack for the contraband carry-in Pepsi.

  Yeah. This was definitely the place. Luckily the doors hadn’t changed, because once we were through them, the darkened lobby looked nothing at all like it had in my high school days. The concession stand was covered with espresso machines and pastry displays. The arcade games were ancient history. And the old smoking lounge off to the side? Now it was a makeshift stage with a big chalkboard on the wall inviting everyone to next Thursday’s open mike. The secondhand tables and chairs were deliberately mismatched, and stilted art that screamed “local” crowded the walls. It felt crappy and cluttered, but only five years’ worth of clutter and crap. Not twenty-five.

  “This way,” a chunky guy in a skeleton T-shirt called out, gesturing with his flashlight for us to stop drifting toward the empty cafe and go through the balcony doors. I’d never been up in the balcony—I’d always presumed it was in total disrepair. Not sure what had me more spooked, the thought of digging up a ghost or my fear of falling through a rotten floorboard. But Jacob plowed on ahead, and I tried to tell myself that if the floor could support his bulky gym-rat physique, my skinny butt would make it through unscathed. Despite my attempt at a positive, can-do attitude, the farther in we got, the more my blasé confidence leached away. My heart fluttered as the passage narrowed, turned, and narrowed again, and I felt like a steer being prodded through the processing plant. It was dark and close and warm and musty. I opened up my internal valve and let white light surge in, then pushed out a protective membrane to cover both Jacob and me, straining so hard to do it that I broke a sweat. We approached a final door, lit by a single red bulb. Jacob gathered his courage and reached for the doorknob.

  The door flew open and a figure burst through. “Bewaaare!”

  I jumped back, grabbed for my sidearm and came up with a handful of nothing. Lucky for the guy in the zombie mask I was off duty—although it was quite possible Jacob might deck him right through the fake rubber skin.

  “You are about to behold sights and sounds that would drive a lesser man insane. You will be called upon to reach
down deep and connect with your primal masculine nature to navigate the horrors within. Are you ready?”

  When it became apparent that Jacob was too busy keeping himself from smacking the guy to answer, I muttered, “Sure.”

  The guy handed me a restaurant pager. “Only when you receive the mystical signal may you progress to the next ghoulishly diabolical level.”

  I stared stupidly at the piece of plastic. It flashed red and buzzed.

  “Step up to the gaping maws of terror—and proceed.”

  Jacob shot the guy a nasty look and strode through the door. As I followed, the guy quietly added, “In the event that the overhead lights come on, follow the instructions to the emergency exit.”

  Lame. My adrenaline ebbed, and I shifted my attention to pulling down more white light. Maybe the douchebag in the mask was just a guy, but with live people wandering around in costume, I reminded myself, the dead ones would be a lot harder to spot. Our flashing plastic disc urged us forward, and we trooped down a short hallway and passed through the door at the end marked SECOND CLASS CITIZENS. I was steeled against the probability of some poor schlub of a volunteer leaping out in front of me, yet poised to scan the room for something scary, when a light flashed so brightly it blinded me. Not metaphysical white light, either. A strobe, aimed right in my face.

  “Fuck.” I turned aside and knuckled my eyes. Technically I should be able to see spirits whether or not my retinas froze. It’s not like I see them with my physical eyeballs. But I’ve got to navigate all the planes of existence at once, and I needed my physical sight to at least get through the damn room.