by Reyna Favis
Cam’s direct approach took me by surprise and my hands involuntarily balled into fists. I consciously opened and flexed my hands and took a deep, steadying breath before I spoke. Even with preparation, I did not succeed in controlling my temper as I vented my frustration. Looking Cam directly in the eye, I said, “I took you on as a mentor and I completely accepted your version of things. I was made to feel like shit for dealing with the dead as I had. I was working hard to reform myself. But then last night, the dead seemed to be in need of an ass kicking. So, maybe I’m not quite the asshole you made me out to be.” Cam’s concerned expression never wavered and the anger went out of me. He was not playing me. He was acting in good faith and he did not deserve my harsh words. Hunching my shoulders around my mug, I ducked my head and hid my face behind my hair. I did not want to look at him. I stared at the dark liquid instead as I tried to express myself in what I hoped were more gentle words. “Look, I had the sense from you that most of the time, the dead need only a small prompt to help them to move on. I was also under the impression that I had handled things badly my entire life and that there was no need for me to use force. Am I wrong on both counts?” I asked.
There were a few moments of silence following my rant, so I peeked through my hair to see if Cam was now in turn angry with me. His eyes were downcast and he appeared to be thinking. Maybe he gripped the empty coffee mug a little tightly, but his posture was relaxed and he did not otherwise seem agitated by my outburst.
“I’m sorry that I gave you the impression that you need to do penance,” he finally said. “Let me say it plainly for you… You are not to blame for how you handled things in the past. You did the best you could under the circumstances.” He blew out a breath and continued, “The core of this work is improvisation, because what we encounter resists easy classification. Your approach is not always wrong, but it’s mostly wrong. Let me get some more coffee and I will try to explain.” Cam stood up and shambled over to the coffee machine, pouring the remaining liquid into his mug. As he sipped, he gazed into the middle distance and mumbled to himself, “Where to begin…” I waited patiently in silence as Cam put his thoughts together.
“As in life, so in death,” he started. “Think of this as the guiding principle. In life, we have free will to make decisions for ourselves, for the good or the bad. The dead cannot be forced to pass over. They must freely consent to this act. In general, it is in their best interest to move on, but have you ever tried to convince a living person that something was in his or her best interest? You need to select just the right argument to convince them and even then, it may take some time if they are not yet ready to commit to change. In general, there is something unresolved – an action, an emotional conflict, a trauma – that holds the dead paralyzed in this existence. If you can provide them with some sort of resolution or completion, Zackie can accomplish her task and escort them to the other side.”
He paused and took another sip of his coffee as he considered how to proceed. “As for your previous modus operandi for dealing with the dead, yes, it is usually unnecessary to thrash them into submission. If I were to assign your behavior to an analogous situation in life, you would be the tough guy in a bar who beats people to a pulp for the smallest of offenses. In that particular context, your behavior is viewed as antisocial in the extreme.”
I flinched at this comparison and a reflex argument formed on my lips. In some ways, I must have agreed with him or I would not feel so guilty about everything. Instead of arguing, I turned to face him and said only, “Go on.”
Cam took a breath and continued. “I believe that I will ultimately be able to convince you not to indulge too frequently in a little bit of the old ultraviolence,” and here he winked at the reference to A Clockwork Orange. “Given our encounter last night, I think I start to see you more as my slightly misguided bodyguard. I have never seen a power like yours and, used correctly, it could be life saving. So, back to our guiding principle… If someone is a bastard in life, unless there is some epiphany that leads to a sudden conversion before death, it is likely that he will also be a bastard in death. I think this is what we’re dealing with for that entity in the field. For those singular bastards, a rapid and forceful response is not only acceptable, it is highly recommended if we are to survive.”
“A few more questions,” I interrupted. “Has something like this ever happened to you before?”
“Nothing so intractable. I have had stubborn spirits in the past who refused to depart until some issue was resolved, but the solution was usually fairly obvious. And definitely never two in a row who were steadfast in remaining earthbound.”
I closed my eyes and started rubbing my temples again. This was like a specialist doctor telling you that he’s never seen anything like your symptoms before. What you want to hear is that what you have is routine and he’s cured people with this same disorder hundreds of times before.
After a while, I paused in my ministrations and asked, “Have you ever seen so many of the dead in one place? In all my experience, I have encountered them one entity at a time over a much longer timeframe than what we saw yesterday.” I shrugged my shoulders and added, “It’s almost as if they have their own territories or maybe they’re waiting in line to see me.”
“Last night was an anomaly,” Cam said nodding. “One at a time with a break in between – that’s the usual occurrence.” Turning from the counter, Cam faced me to gauge my reaction as he said, “I have a theory that we’re like a power source to them. I think they may be in a stasis until they encounter a sibyl or someone with a little bit of power that they can draw from. Once they are animated, they pursue whatever their particular obsession may be. But like a battery, we run down with use, so another entity is unable to immediately draw from us, leaving us with the scenario of a single entity appearing at a time.”
“This makes sense to me. This stuff drains me like nothing else,” I agreed.
“I think maybe when the two of us work together, we have a gestalt situation and we are able to animate more of the dead across a shorter interval of time because of it.” Tilting his head to the side, he added, “Just another theory. We’ll see if it bears out.” Cam paused and rubbed his face with his free hand. Closing his eyes briefly, he sighed and then continued, “Right then. Just as in the SAR world after a mission, we should debrief. To sum it up, we had multiple disincarnates in a small geographic area, one of whom was extremely violent. We failed in every respect to send any of these spirits on to the next world.”
“So, why do you think we failed?” I asked. “What could we have done differently?”
Cam’s brows knitted as he thought and he chewed his lip. “I wish there was an easy answer,” he began, “but I don’t think that there was anything that we could have done to make this work. I do think that this problem is complex and it’s going to require some thought and digging to properly understand it before we can work out a strategy on what we’re supposed to do to right things.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I said. “It would be a whole lot easier if we had just made a mistake last night and we could go back and fix it.” I took a moment to rub my gritty eyes as I thought. “If we accept that the dead originate from the limited area associated with their death, the spirits we encountered yesterday at least died in close proximity to each other. Now, is that just geography or also temporal?”
“The hanged men were definitely associated temporally based on the dates on their markers.” Cam paused and then asked, “Do you think what’s going on in the house and the three dead men are somehow related?”
I tried to recall the details from last night before answering. “I don’t know what era the little girl is from, but the three men wore similar clothing and could be from the same time.”
“It would be a huge coincidence, don’t you think? It would be more plausible that three separate events occurred that led to three separate hauntings. The past was fairly violent and it wouldn’t surpr
ise me if death stalked that place for different reasons.”
We both went quiet for a moment while we thought. I glanced at Zackie and she was now sitting up and staring at us expectantly. You’d think we had food that she wanted. Just as she stood up and began to stretch, Cam broke the silence.
“Let’s do the easy thing and start with the internet,” Cam suggested. “I loathe the mold and dust when I’m forced to dig through some town hall’s archives. For the most part, I find that it’s possible to make serious progress using online tools. We have names and dates from the markers and that should get us started.”
Zackie and I followed Cam to his study and I was struck again by the similarities in how we lived. Our homes were controlled areas and this was probably a common thread for people like us. We had few possessions and little clutter in our lives. The only exception to that rule was the SAR equipment nestled in my trunk. Every other aspect of my life seemed unintentionally designed to present as little disorder and distraction as possible. Given the entropy that the universe threw my way on a regular basis, maybe my brain just needed a break from the chaos and so, subconsciously, I kept things simple where I could.
Cam took up his position in front of the laptop and adjusted the rolling office chair to a suitable distance from the desk. Zackie curled up under the desk and yawned mightily at us. The room had a futon and one overstuffed beige chair that had seen better days, but I was happy to relax into it after balancing on the stool for so long. Cam booted up his laptop and after about a minute, a handful of icons organized themselves on the screen. Cracking his knuckles, Cam set to work and double-clicked on an icon that looked like a sinuous dragon. “I’m pulling up a search engine that will access a genealogy database that I use for work,” he told me. Typing quickly, Cam entered in the text fields Peter Parke’s name and the years that bound his short life. In less than a second, a page appeared with a picture of the marker we had found near the crossroads and a short biography of the man.
“He was indeed executed by hanging,” Cam said. “The crime was murder and it looks like a pretty gruesome tale.”
Peering over his shoulder, I read out loud, “Hanged for the Changewater axe murders, which occurred on the evening of May 1, 1843 in and near the home of John B. Parke.” Scanning the write up, I confirmed that Joseph Carter was named as his accomplice.
“Look here,” Cam pointed to a paragraph on the screen. “According to this bit, the guilt of the two men remains doubtful. Even in their time, the public was not convinced of their role in the murders, but they were hanged anyway at the Belvidere Courthouse on August 22, 1845.”
“I don’t think they did it. Nothing slipped through in their thoughts that even remotely suggested that they were guilty of murdering anyone,” I said. Cam just nodded at this. He also didn’t get anything from the hanged men to make him think that they were axe murderers. Something that dramatic would be hard to hide from us.
“Let’s see if there’s any information on the Changewater murders,” Cam said as he brought up another window to do an internet search. Typing in the town’s name and the word ‘murders’ brought up nothing relevant, just a write up on the history of Changewater. We tried all the synonyms for murder and still came up empty.
“Go back to the link for the history of Changewater. Maybe it had another name in the eighteen hundreds,” I suggested. We pulled up the article and found that Changewater was the oldest town in Washington Township and had used this name at least as far back as 1769. There was just no specific information on the murders that we could get from an internet search.
“We know when the murders occurred and we know when the men were executed. We should be able to pull up some information from old newspapers,” Cam said.
“Okay, so we go to the library and start digging through microfilm?” I asked standing up.
“No need for that. I have access to a newspaper archive online for the genealogy work,” Cam said. I sat down again and made myself comfortable. “You have no idea how much easier life became for me when we entered the digital age.” Cam clicked and typed some more and I let my mind wander. The next thing I knew, I was awakened by my phone signaling an incoming text. Poking groggily at my phone, I accessed the text. My landlord was in the ER and he needed me to feed his dogs after their afternoon walk.
“Cam, I think something happened at the house. Joel is in the ER. He just texted me to help with his dogs.”
Cam looked up from the computer monitor with a worried frown. “Let’s go,” he said. “I will tell you about the murders later.”
CHAPTER 8
Cam was searching through a milk crate packed full with various small items when I pulled up next to his truck and parked. It was mid afternoon and we were still hours away from drive time traffic, so I had made good time getting to the hospital after stopping to walk and feed Heckle and Jeckle. Zackie stood at Cam’s side nosing briefly at the items as they dug through an assortment of neatly coiled leashes, flagging tape, orange webbing tied in a daisy chain and other things that were pushed aside too quickly for me to identify. The whole collection had a faint odor of insect repellent, which I surmised must also be in there somewhere.
“Ah, there it is,” he said as he pulled out bright red dog vest from the crate. As he fitted Zackie into the vest, the words ‘therapy dog’ showed in large letters on her flanks.
“You’re kidding me, right? She’s not a trained therapy dog too!” I said shaking my head in disbelief.
“Well, it’s not unheard of for a search dog to also be a therapy dog. Do you know K9 Simber?”
“The Shepherd-Husky mix? She’s a trailing dog, right?”
“Yes, that’s the one. She’s also a therapy dog. Her handler takes her to VA hospitals to cheer the veterans,” Cam informed me. “As for Zackie,” he said as he lowered his voice and gave a conspiratorial nod, “let’s just say there are times when it is convenient to appear to be a therapy dog.” Cam finished adjusting the vest and then said to her, “I’ll call you when we’re ready.” He then straightened and walked the two steps to my side, turning me away from the dog just as the blinding light flashed. “It’s more convenient this way,” Cam said to me as he led me to the emergency room entrance. “Zackie can come to us once we’re past any check in point where we’d need credentials. We’ll need her if anything followed Joel from the house.”
I felt my hackles start to rise the closer we got to the building. Hospitals were a no-go zone for me because of all the confused souls and without Zackie to shield me, I felt vulnerable to attack. Biting my lip, I stayed silent, but my gut was clenching as my muscles took over the blood supply. Everything I looked at came into sharper relief as my body prepared for a fight. Cam could sense my unease and he paused, grasping me by the arm. “Hoy, stand down, Fia,” Cam said. “Visualize a cage around yourself, like the shark cages divers use. The dead can pass around you, but they cannot get to you.” I did as he said, concentrating hard on making the bars of the cage thick and plentiful. When I had created an unbreakable cage, I nodded to him. “Right then,” he said and we continued to the ER entrance.
The reception desk was staffed by a middle aged woman who had a calm, capable demeanor and appeared to be the epitome of efficiency. When we asked her where we could find Joel Armstrong, her fingers flew around the keyboard as she accessed his information. As we waited for her to review the output, a biker staggered by us dragging a broken leg. He was carrying his helmet and blood was dripping steadily from his mouth. His left side was an exposed mess of road rash and deeper wounds. I averted my gaze to give him no reason to notice me, but I felt guilty about it. The nurse at last informed us that Joel had been admitted to the hospital. We were provided with a bewildering set of directions that we were assured would bring us to the reception desk of the main hospital.
“I hope he’s all right,” I said. I began to chew on a cuticle as I looked for the landmarks the nurse had described, while strategically avoiding eye co
ntact with the wandering souls. “I hope…” But I let the thought trail off because I was helpless to do anything for these souls.
“They don’t all need our help, you know,” Cam said softly. “The biker is only momentarily confused. He’ll find his way.” Gazing at the spirits who milled about in the hall, Cam said, “These too. Some of them will take a little longer to adjust, but none of them are stuck.”
After a few false turns, we found ourselves at last at the main reception desk. The irony of having trained search and rescue workers lost in this labyrinth of hallways did not escape me.
As if reading my thoughts, Cam grumbled, “We should have taken the flagging tape from the milk crate to mark our way.”
We were told by the receptionist that Joel was in the cardiac unit and he gave us visitor’s passes and another series of instructions to reach that area of the hospital. As we set off again, I allowed myself to hope that it was an unrelated cardiac incident and that I was working myself up for nothing. I went back to chewing on my cuticle and looking for landmarks.
“At last,” Cam said pointing down a long hallway. “Those must be the elevators to the cardiac unit.” I pushed the up button and we waited patiently for the elevator to arrive. We had the good fortune of having the elevator to ourselves on the ride through the upper floors. Just as the elevator doors began to open and we prepared to exit, Cam whispered, “Zackie, now,” and the three of us stepped smoothly from the elevator. I had to admire his technique. If there were security cameras on the elevator, there would be no record of Zackie coming up with us. The staff on this floor would assume that we had proper clearance for a dog, since we had made it past the main hospital reception desk.
We made our way past the nurses’ station without incident and followed the room numbers down the hall until we reached Joel’s room. I peeked in to make sure that he was not asleep or otherwise occupied and that it would be okay to enter. The room was a double and another patient was watching television behind the separating curtain. Joel looked up at me with surprise and greeted me with a warm smile. He seemed genuinely pleased to have visitors, so we stepped into the room and approached his bed. The muted colors of the walls and the bedding did little to create a sense of comfort. It was just gloomy and depressing in the room. Zackie was twitching her nose at the scent of disinfectant, which appeared to be used liberally on the floors and in the bathroom, but there was no overt reaction that a discarnate had attached itself to Joel.