by Etta Faire
I turned my gaze downward. Oh God, another Roy. “At least you didn’t marry him this time,” I said.
She pulled something tiny and furry out of the box and held it out. It barely took up any space along her palm. “Instead of money, I found this.”
It was instantly familiar. One of the signs in the scrapbook I’d found in the basement. Some sort of an animal’s foot with white fur, and long yellowed claws protruding out from its three toes.
I realized my lip was curled and I hadn’t reached out to take the taxidermied foot from her even though she was still holding it out for me.
“It’s a grouse pin,” she said. “I looked it up.”
Somehow I got myself to take the bony, weird thing with a surprisingly cute silver toe ring on its middle digit, the initials BFF engraved into the metal with a heart.
“Worst Best Friends Forever pin ever,” I said, plopping down on her black comforter. She sat down next to me and smoothed out the wrinkles on her 60’s-looking capris.
“BFF isn’t for best friends forever, or at least I don’t think it is. It’s Bobby Furgus Franklin. I also read it’s a Scottish thing, these grouse pins. They used to wear them when they went hunting. And people also gave them to their significant others when they’d go on a long trip, as a way to remember each other.”
“Awww. I knew it had to be romantic,” I said, leaning into her, trying to get her to smile. “I need to take this to Justin. Why didn’t you show the police this earlier?”
She shrugged. “I guess I didn’t want people to know for sure that Shelby Winehouse had been stupid once again. I mean, everybody already knew it. I knew it. But the missing money and this grouse pin with his initials on it, it was like a ha-ha added onto the way things ended for us. And I didn’t want people to talk about it and pity me, the stupid woman with five kids and no husband or savings, living out of her parents’ house.” She put her head in her hands. “I honestly thought he loved me.”
I put an arm around her bony shoulder. I knew how this town operated, and she was right. They would’ve pounced on that part of the story. But, I honestly saw it as a positive sign. “I don’t think this was meant as a ha-ha. I think it’s an IOU. One of those ‘we’re not through yet. Here’s a tiny, severed foot to prove it’ moments.”
This made her smile. I had no idea what the severed foot actually meant. All I knew was that Bobby and his two brothers were bear shapeshifters that no one had seen for more than a month. Or at least, I hoped not.
Last month, three bear skins had been strung up behind the barber shop. No one knew why or who’d done it. And to make matters weirder, bear skins were in one of the photos on the page in my scrapbook marked “Signs,” right next to the foot I now knew was a grouse pin.
Of course, Shelby didn’t know her boyfriend was a shapeshifter or that his brothers (and her baby) probably were too. And she always looked at me like I was crazy when I worried about those bear skins.
But we had the “dating a bear shifter” thing in common. I recently discovered Justin was one too. And when you’re dating a bear and you see bear skins strung up in your town for no reason, you have to think maybe somebody’s trying to tell your bear shifter something.
Thing was, even if Justin knew, he wasn’t sharing that with me.
“How much money did Bobby take?” I asked my friend who was still staring off into space.
“Probably around three thousand.”
“You had three thousand dollars stashed in your mattress? Are you crazy?”
“You know I don’t trust banks. They steal your money.”
I resisted the urge to point out the irony here. But at least it explained why Bobby’s debit card hadn’t been used, something I only knew because Mrs. Carmichael told me, not my police officer boyfriend.
I slipped the foot into the pocket of my skinny jeans and headed downstairs when I stopped midway down. Something was walking with me, close enough for the hairs on my arm to stand on end, but not close enough to touch me. It was like a heavy coldness right by my side, hard to ignore, but I tried.
Ever since I moved back to Potter Grove last summer, strange things had been happening to me. The strangest was my strong mediumship abilities, which I’d never had before. But ghosts were coming out of the woodwork to communicate with me now. So naturally, I’d started taking on their cold cases, helping the dead to solve their murders so they could move on with their after-lives.
The thing that was following me here seemed different, though.
The front door opened and the sound of four rowdy kids arriving home with their grandpa took over my senses, indicating my time to go.
“Staying for dinner,” Mr. Winehouse asked when he followed the kids in and saw me coming down the stairs. He was a tall man in his 60s with a ruddy, weathered complexion and reddish gray hair. He took his firefighter jacket off to reveal a t-shirt with the same logo.
I shook my head no. “Can’t. I have plans.” I was lying. I just had a rule about eating with kids: I tried not to do it.
I loved kids, but I didn’t grow up with siblings, and I didn’t have children yet. So, maybe I was being snobbish about the whole thing, but I liked to eat dinner without someone opening their mouth to show their already-chewed food because someone else farted.
When I went to leave, Mrs. Winehouse pulled me to the side by her husband at the front door and lowered her voice. “I’m real worried about Shelbs. She’s usually our trooper. Even when she was a single mom with the four boys, she’d rather have worked three jobs than move back in with us. Isn’t that right, Ryan?”
“Yep, but don’t get us wrong, we love it,” Mr. Winehouse quickly added, looking over at Shelby who was holding the baby while staring aimlessly off at the ceiling while three of her kids ran around her in a circle, the oldest filming it on his phone. “But we’re worried.”
Mrs. Winehouse continued. “Has Justin mentioned anything? Are there any leads on Bobby yet?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. I didn’t tell her the part where nobody was really looking. Shelby had given Bobby an ultimatum when his brothers’ Christmas visit lasted until almost February, and Bobby was allowed to take the or-else option.
“They haven’t given up yet,” I said, because, apparently, lies are like potato chips for me.
She nervously cracked her fingers as she talked. “We need to find Bobby, one way or the other. It’s this not-knowing thing that’s killing Shelby.”
Shelby did look like she was dying, but I didn’t think it was the not-knowing part that was doing it to her. I maneuvered my way through the circling children and hugged the cadaver good-bye. She barely looked at me.
The cold feeling that had followed me down the stairs suddenly shot over my entire body, making me gasp for air. I searched the room, but didn’t see anything. Was it Bobby? Had he passed? Was he making contact? I shook the feeling off, refusing to believe it until a painful chill crawled up my spine and across my chest. Someone was riding on me, and unlike every other ghost I’d ever encountered, this one wanted me to know about it.
I concentrated on each step as I trudged over to the front door, my breathing labored.
“You okay?’ Mr. Winehouse asked, watching me with a raised eyebrow, his first-responder instincts probably kicking in.
I nodded that I was fine, even though I wasn’t sure. I’d never experienced anything like it before.
Chapter 2
Turning Points
I stumbled through my kitchen door. It felt like every cell in my body had been forced to carry a tiny five-pound weight, and it was pretty apparent we were all seriously out of shape. But I somehow managed to make it to my living room where I sunk into the soft crimson fabric of the settee.
The room spun a little when I tried to focus on anything too hard, especially the damask wallpaper. I avoided that, mostly because it made me sick anyway.
The sound of an excited dog’s nails clattered along the hardwood, but I was a
fraid I’d throw up if I turned toward the noise.
My dead ex-husband appeared beside me. He was bright today, full-color almost. I could see every hair on his beard and pockmark in the leather of his jacket’s elbow patches. “And just when I was telling the other ghosts how well you were aging,” he said, “the old person in you had to come out and prove me wrong.”
I closed my eyes but I could still tell the annoying man was hovering right by my face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Fine.”
“I would say you’re cute when you lie, but I’d be lying,” he said. “The upside to that, of course, is that I’m an adorable liar.”
I scrunched my already-closed eyes up tighter, which made my head hurt. But I was in no mood for my ex. Rex licked my hand and I smiled, instantly regretting it because it made me realize my mouth-muscles hurt too.
Then, as suddenly as it came on, the chilling, nauseating feeling travelled across my body in a gust that started at my toes and ended through my sinuses like it had taken a flying leap out.
It was gone. I bolted up, relieved. “I feel better now,” I said, moving my neck around with ease.
“I bet.” Jackson pointed to the middle of the living room where a tall, darkened ghost hovered in front of us. I looked the apparition over. It really didn’t have much detail or form to it, just a weird dark mist-looking thing that I wasn’t even sure had ever been human.
Rex barked uncontrollably at it.
“It’s okay, boy,” I said, stroking his back to calm him down. He was tense, his fur stiff. “What are you, and what do you want,” I asked the thing in the room.
I threw my ex-husband a look. Ghosts were supposed to follow a certain protocol if they wanted my help, which included Jackson vetting and approving them. And part of Jackson’s job was making sure they followed the rules.
“Sorry, Carly,” Jackson said, moving between us, glaring at the spirit. “If you’ve heard of Carly’s abilities then you know how this business is run. All clients must meet with my approval first. No exceptions.”
The thing hovered closer to my ex. I knew from past experiences that if spirits got too close to one another, they repelled each other like the polar opposites of magnets. It didn’t happen this time.
It made a low, almost humming noise, and I wasn’t sure what to do or expect, so I backed away, thinking about the bundles of sage I always kept in the top drawer of my credenza. Even burning a little of it seemed to get a ghost to leave, if only momentarily. I turned to get it, but heard something in the humming noise. There was a voice in there.
“I need your help,” it said through mostly low-pitched vibrations.
Jackson must have heard it too. He answered. “I’m very sorry. But we have a long list of clients already waiting. You’ll have to get in line to be interviewed about your intentions. You must follow the rules.”
“I’m about to turn,” the voice said, over and over. “Need your help fast.”
“What does that mean?” I asked my ex.
“I think it’s trying to tell you it wants to skip the line because it doesn’t have time to wait. Its energy is transforming from a ghost to something else,” Jackson said.
“What the hell else is there?”
“Darker energy. People sometimes mistakenly call them demons or poltergeists.”
I turned to the dark form still floating in front of me. “Yeah, I’m not channeling with you, sorry. Hard pass. I’ve seen The Exorcist, and we are done here. And, not only that, unless you can show yourself in a normal ghostly form, I’m getting the sage.”
“Try, try, try,” the dark mist said through the humming sound coming off of it as it lightened into some sort of a striped pattern.
“Maybe if we all think happy thoughts and clap our hands,” Jackson deadpanned by my side.
The thing balled itself into a swirl of black-and-white stripes, like a dark mist swirling inside a glass ball. But the ball almost took on a pulsating rhythm as it grew larger and smaller again and again.
I watched Jackson’s reaction, much the same way I watched flight attendants during turbulence, the only sure way to know when to start screaming that we’re all going to die.
Jackson yawned, and shook his head. “Such theatrics,” he said. Rex, on the other hand, was still tense, barking every once in a while at the dark thing in the middle of our living room.
After a full minute of pulsating, the thing finally stretched along its ends until it took the shape of a tall, slender human, the stripes fading and turning into the soft pinstripes of an outdated suit.
The ghost in front of us was almost transparent like it was weak, but something told me not to trust that assessment. His eyes were little slits along a long, horse-like face, his hair light, probably blonde. “Feldman Winehouse,” he said with a vibrating voice.
“Winehouse. Shelby’s relative,” I said.
“Quite a showman.” Jackson hovered around the apparition, close but not close enough to cause a reaction. “Or should I say a conman?”
“I need your help,” the ghost said with almost perfect clarity now, making me wonder if he had been conning us before. “And you need my help, too. Neither one of us has much time.”
“We have all the time in the world,” Jackson said. “We’re not the ones turning.”
I could feel the anger in Feldman’s energy now as he glared at my ex-husband. “You think you’re clever, huh? You’re Henry Bowman’s direct descendent, huh? A far cry from your great grandfather. That’s for sure.”
“So you’re saying you knew my great grandfather?”
He nodded. “Did business with him.” He looked Jackson up and down. “And you’re no Henry Bowman. It’s not just the fact that you’re smaller and daintier, with a lot of feminine qualities that I’m sure the ladies loved back when you were alive…”
“The paid ones seemed to like me fine,” Jackson said, making me shake my head. His back was to me, blocking my view of our guest, so I couldn’t see much of what was going on.
The ghost went on. “But you don’t have Henry’s smarts. Henry Bowman knew when to make a deal.”
“Get on with your point,” Jackson said. “No one here is trying to be Henry Bowman.”
“Potter Grove is turning too. You feel it. I know you do. The signs are there.”
I thought about the tiny foot I had stuffed in my pocket. The bear skins. The glass figurine. He was right. There were signs. A lot of freakin’ signs.
“What are you getting at?” I asked.
“You want answers. I’ve got answers. But, I want answers too. Maybe we can help each other out. But I need to cut the line.”
Jackson whispered to me. “Carly doll, don’t believe him. This man is clearly a liar and a charlatan who doesn’t want me to check him out. I would’ve heard if my great grandfather had done business here in Wisconsin, especially with questionable sorts like this. Henry Bowman simply lived off his wealth, a man of leisure.”
“Please stop pretending your family wasn’t full of questionable sorts,” I chimed in.
Jackson’s face fell. “You’re not seriously going to do a channeling with a strong, changing spirit you can’t trust. One that hasn’t been vetted yet.”
He had a point, and I probably should have listened, but instead I said, “I channeled with you, and you are last on my list of trustworthy apparitions. I know you think I’m the dumb version of you, someone who needs your guidance on everything. But I don’t.”
“Sounds like you know everything,” Jackson said, disappearing. I knew I’d hurt his feelings, but I didn’t care.
I turned to Feldman as soon as he left. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying I’m helping you out. I’m only hearing you out. Go on.”
Feldman’s smile was wide and confident, a man who thought he had the upper hand on the stupid woman in front of him. His voice was even less shaky now. I could understand him perfectly. “I have to say when I heard there
was a strong medium in Potter Grove, I pictured an old bag, not a cute, young bird like yourself.”
I didn’t respond.
“You should smile when someone compliments you,” he said. “Maybe say ‘thank you.’”
“And you should stop calling condescending bullshit compliments.” I went to the bookshelf in the living room where I’d begun keeping the weird scrapbooks I’d found around Gate House, and pulled out the one labeled A Crooked Mouse.
I plopped it on the dining room table and flipped through its pages. “The only reason you’re still here and my ex-husband isn’t is because there have been signs.” As soon as I reached the page about the signs, I pulled the grouse foot out of my pocket.
I tapped on the photo of the glass figurine of a bird. “I saw this one at Delilah Scott’s house.” Slowly, I moved my finger over to the photo of the bear skins on posts with large empty eye sockets. “Bear skins were recently found staked up on a fence behind the barber shop. Eyeless ones like these. Not bearskin rugs. And now this grouse foot was found at your… relative’s house, the Winehouses. These are hundred-year-old photos that also seem recent. What is going on here?”
“The relatives you’re talking about are my brother, Terry’s, family. He was probably the one who did me in.”
“We’ll get to that. What about these signs?”
“Accept my offer and I’ll show you. But, I can only tell you what I can tell you. Henry came to me with a business proposal right after those bluenose puritans got their way in ’20. He wanted to be a silent partner in what he believed would be a very lucrative business. He was right.”
“So you owned a speakeasy or did some bootlegging together.”
He nodded. “It’s where I died. It’s where I should be haunting. But I can’t. Something’s there, a strong dark force, preventing me…” He looked me up and down, suddenly distracted from his rant.