Speed Dating with the Dead

by Nicholson, Scott

  “Sorry to bother you,” Violet said, wishing somebody, even one of the fat-assed SSI perverts, would come along. Because the room smelled like a possum had died in the walls and something fluttered against the ceiling—either bats or the world’s largest mutant moths. Violet decided she’d done her duty and was about to back out of the room when the hall light caught a metallic glint.

  She squinted at the short tube and the bulk behind it.

  A gun? On the floor?

  There were only a couple of reasons why a gun would be out in plain sight, and neither were the stuff of flowers and sunshine. Violet took another step forward, peering into the gloom, half expecting to see Janey sprawled in a pool of her own blood and brains. Janey didn’t seem the suicidal type and was the kind of crotchety old bag who’d probably live to be 120 just to piss off the nurses in the old folks’ home.

  “Janey?”

  Her vision adjusting, Violet saw the bathroom door was open, and the kitchenette was bare. That left only the bed….

  It was partitioned off from the main room but enough showed so that the rumpled, dangling blankets were visible. Janey went three steps deeper, looking for a pallid foot.

  Murder...yeah, plenty of people got motives.

  Violet stopped.

  Including me.

  Janey wouldn’t keep suspected embezzlement a secret. She pretended to loathe gossip but those creased, cracked, reptilian lips loved to spit poison. When Rhonda had been busted with the toilet paper, her name had blared out in bold letters from the staff memo. And Janey’s glee was evident in every sentence, right down to the reminder that “Employees who don’t put the White Horse Inn first will not be employees for long.”

  Violet was innocent. She couldn’t hurt a fly, unless it was landing on her pancake syrup. Then she could mash it good, mash it, mash it, mash it--

  She glanced back toward the hallway and the low murmur of approaching voices. She couldn’t be seen in this room. “Motive, means, and opportunity,” as the cop shows put it. Sure, forensics tests might eventually prove she’d not fired the weapon, but in the meantime she’d be out of a job, broke from legal fees, and sleeping on a cold iron cot surrounded by lonely, desperate convicts instead of snuggling next to Phillippe.

  Plus, Janey’s office was waiting, and Violet held the all-access pass in her hand, skin sweaty around the metal. With luck, she could search the bottom cabinets before anyone found Janey’s body.

  She backed to the hall, hearing distant laughter. She looked both ways to make sure no one was watching and closed the door. She banged on it until the approaching group of ghosthunters rounded the corner, then gave one more emphatic, “Miss Mays?” before shrugging and heading back downstairs. She glanced at her watch.

  Ten minutes of prowling for loose cash, then a date at the bar.

  Chapter 24

  “You’re freaking me out, Dad.”

  Not that Wayne Wilson’s tears were as scarce and sacred as Buddha bones or anything, but Kendra hadn’t seen him cry since—well, probably five years ago, when he’d quit drinking for the last time.

  He’d cried when Mom died, choking and wailing and occasionally letting slip with “Why, God?” But sometimes he’d be sitting in front of the television and silent tears would slide down his cheeks, his eyes as dull as whatever baseball game he happened to be watching. Tears that reflected the colors of the screen, made somehow more disturbing by the sparkles of green and blue. They were the kind of tears that had no cause or reason, and she’d wondered if they would ever end.

  These tears had that quality, of having leaked from cracks on a parched cliffside after seeping, crawling, and trickling for miles to find their way to the surface.

  He turned his head, as slowly as a ventriloquist’s dummy. He was smiling, and that was even creepier.

  “She’s here, honey,” he whispered.

  Kendra looked around the room, expecting that fat lady in the lime-colored blouse. But the room was empty except for the Ouija board on the coffee table.

  “Some of the hunters are getting antsy,” she said. “You might want to check in at the control room.”

  “We’re done,” he said, in that same spaced-out voice. “Now I know.”

  “Know what?”

  Dad stood up, so wobbly that Kendra’s breath caught and she glanced around his feet for a bottle. Her nursing days were done. She was Emily Dee, not Florence Nightingale.

  “Your mother’s okay,” Dad said.

  “I barely had a mother, remember? Pictures and stories, that’s all I got, and I don’t have much more of a father.”

  Ouch. The words hurt to say them, but they felt good in a way, because they were honest. Digger was more of a fictional character these days than a human being. If only she could erase him like she could Mom.

  The verbal slap seemed to pull Wayne back to Planet Earth. “I saw your mother.”

  A quiet “Wacaroni” was all she could manage.

  His face was earnest, eyes shifting from dull gray to a bright green. “She was standing right there in the corner and she...and she….”

  His pointing finger lowered. “She said your name.”

  “Mine? Like, she’s dead, she jumped the shark on me when I was barely out of kindergarten, and now she cares?”

  She’d said the words louder than she’d meant to, and they rattled off the flat walls of the room and gave an echo among the bathroom tiles. The force behind them was driven by fear as much as anger, because she’d found ways to push Dad’s buttons over the years, through careful trial and error. But now he appeared beyond control, ready for a shrink and a rubber room.

  Dad didn’t believe in ghosts. Dad barely believed in Dad.

  “Man, you two must have been the perfect couple,” she said.

  “No, but we made the perfect child,” he said, fumbling at his hip for his walkie talkie.

  “Dad, there’s nothing here,” she said. “There never was.”

  “I made a promise,” he said.

  “When have you ever kept a promise? How many times was the Tooth Fairy three days late? How many times was I the only kid whose parent didn’t show up for the soccer game?”

  “Kendra, this isn’t the time to—”

  “I know. It never is. There’s always ‘one day.’ In case you didn’t notice, I’ve got boobs and all my permanent teeth and a driver’s permit and ‘one day’ I’m going to be packing my stuff and heading for art school. And a year later you’ll be sitting there wondering where what’s-her-name went.”

  Wayne held the walkie talkie in front of him, thumb resting on the “send” button. “She’s here.”

  He brushed past her, lifting the walkie talkie to his mouth. Kendra reached out and slapped at it, knocking it onto the floor. The case cracked open and the batteries tumbled across the carpet.

  Her heart fluttered with rage, but a ball of ice lodged in her belly. Dad had never hit her, never even really spanked her, but once in a while he exploded over the smallest thing. And now she was just like him, a character in her own comic book.

  Not Emily Dee, not a hero. Just The Digger’s Daughter. A loser.

  She looked at her right hand, the one that had drawn reams and reams of goofy mice, fanged fairies, satirical superduperheroes, and even a few sly caricatures of Digger himself. Despite all Mom’s guidance, maybe this was the hand’s true purpose—not to create, but to destroy.

  “She told me to get you out of here,” Wayne said, falling back into space-cadet mode.

  “She’s dead,” Kendra said, her voice quavering.

  “She came back.”

  “Where?” Kendra flung up her arms to indicate the shabby elegance of the dark room. “Where?”

  “Here.”

  “Here is nowhere, Dad. Why should she come back to this dump, of all places? Why couldn’t she show up for my eighth-grade graduation or when I won my red ribbon in the Smart Art contest? Pierced ears and first period? When I got my skateboard scar? I
guess I should be glad she bothered to show up for my birth.”

  “You were born here.”

  “Jesus in butter toast. I was born in Charlotte, remember? Unless I was abandoned by gypsies or dropped by a UFO.” Her hand still trembled, so she wrapped it into a fist, but that was even scarier because it felt good.

  “This is where we made you. We weren’t trying or anything, it just happened.”

  “Dad, you’re scaring me.” And, Mom, if you can hear me, YOU’RE scaring me, too.

  “On our honeymoon. Here. In this room.”

  “Too much information.” She didn’t want to think about her parents making out, but she wondered why Dad was so sure this was the place. When Cassie, the trailer-park chick at middle school, started swelling in the belly at age 13, she’d told her classmates that “a woman knew.” But she doubted if the man ever knew.

  “In a weird way, this is where we all started. The three of us. And now we’re all together again.”

  “Except the part where Mom’s dead. I’m worried about you, Digger.”

  He stooped and gathered the walkie talkie batteries. As he did, the shadow behind him seemed a little slow in shifting. But the room was dark, she was jumpy, and she didn’t trust her senses right now. Especially the faint aroma of smoke and the soft, slithery sounds coming from the corners of the room.

  Wayne pressed the button on the reassembled walkie talkie. “Digger here. We got activity in 218.”

  The speaker spat static and Burton’s voice came through in broken bits. “...problem...control room...equipment on the fritz....”

  “On my way,” Wayne said. He looked at her. “Come on.”

  “Be there in a minute.” She wanted to prove she didn’t need him. She could stand on her own, tough it out, take his best shot. I ain’t afraida no ghost.

  “She’s here,” Wayne said, and then he was gone, as elusive as any wayward spirit.

  He left the door open, but the entering light did little to repel the gathering gloom. If only she had her sketch pad, her shield, her greatest weapon. Doodle Girl, saving the world one sketch at a time. Saving herself.

  “Okay, room,” she said aloud, startled by the sudden shattering of the silence. She addressed the room because she didn’t want to address her mother. Her mother was only an idea at this point, a memory. A dream of a warm, loving lap, crayons, and laughs. Nothing you could hug when the night grew deep and cold or you scabbed your ankle or freaked out after taking your first puff of grass.

  They always leave you with nothing.

  “Whaddya got?” she said.

  Meaning: Mom, I’d get really freaked out if you’re here.

  Sounds came from the hallway, and they were the normal chatter of a ghost-hunting group, complaints about logistics and equipment failure. Kendra wasn’t brave enough to close the door, because then she’d be alone with—

  Alone with her thoughts, and no pen and paper to hide behind.

  “Mom, where are you?”

  “Hey,” someone whispered.

  She jumped, though the whisper sounded real enough.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Me,” said the boy, and Bruce stepped from the shadows.

  “How long have you been here?” she said, hiding the quaver in her voice. For just a heartbeat, she’d hoped—or feared—it had been her mother after all.

  “Not long,” he said.

  “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

  “Daddy doesn’t know where I am.” The boy’s head hung down and his skin was sallow in the weak light.

  “You overheard our argument, didn’t you? Is that what you do, sneak around and spy on people?”

  “No, just bored.”

  “Well, go be bored somewhere else.”

  “You mom’s gone.”

  “That’s what I figured. But it’s not any business of yours.”

  “Hey, look, 218 is open,” said someone in the hall.

  Bruce moved with startling speed and slammed the door. The room was now almost fully dark, lit only by light from the lampposts below.

  She couldn’t discern the boy’s outline, so she shouted in the direction of the door. “What did you do that for, twerp?”

  He giggled as if playing a game. Someone pounded on the door from outside.

  Kendra moved across the carpet, bumping her shin on the coffee table. She bit back a curse and continued to the door, feeling her way in front of her. Voices from outside the door expressed annoyance:

  “It’s locked. We’re supposed to hunt here.”

  “This is the worst-organized paracon I’ve ever attended.”

  “At least the ghosts are having fun.”

  Kendra felt along the door until she found the knob, then turned it, bracing herself for embarrassment. Instead, the handle froze.

  The room grew darker and Bruce was making a strange noise behind her, halfway between a yowl of pain anda low chuckle. She clawed at the door, desperate for light and air, longing for escape. She knocked on the wood, which was pointless, since the people on the other side were knocking as well.

  Fingers brushed across her hair. The little twerp was pestering her, playing games. “Stop it, Bruce. Or I’ll….”

  What? Tell on him? Give him a spanking?

  The voices on the other side of the door were receding, as if the hunters had given up. “Wait!” Kendra shouted. “I’m locked in.”

  The fingers were gone and now there was a squeak, as if Bruce had climbed up on the bed. Then the bedsprings creaked in rhythm, and she could barely make out his form jumping up and down as he cried in a sing-song chant:

  “Lock the door and throw away the key,

  Stay and play with Mommy and me,

  Lock the door and throw away the key,

  Stay and play with Mommy and me.”

  “Is your mommy here?” Kendra shouted.

  He giggled and scrambled off the bed. “No, but yours is.”

  Then he crawled under the bed, his muffled laughter almost spookier than his sudden appearance. The little guy had probably gone bonkers, stuck here at the hotel all the time. Nothing to do but find hidden doors and hallways, sneak around and play tricks on the guests, and get people in trouble. She’d probably feel sorry for him as soon as she got done kicking his little butt.

  She was kneeling and peering under the bed when the room exploded in light, the door swinging open. Cody stood there in his SSI jumpsuit, a flashlight in his hand.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Nothing,” she said, trying to act cool, though her cheeks were hot and flushed. “This little twerp—”

  She looked under the bed. Nothing there but a rumpled tissue and a thin coat of undisturbed dust.

  “I saw Digger leave the room on the video monitor,” Cody said. “When you didn’t come out, I got worried.”

  Kendra rose and sat on the bed. “Digger’s not the only one seeing things that aren’t there.”

  “You can’t trust anything here,” Cody said. “The MAC Attack is going apeshit. The readings are all over the place. Something’s active for sure.”

  “Not you, too,” she said, exhaustion seeping into her bones. Here she was in a darkened bedroom with the stud-muffin Future of Horror, who was apparently paying attention to her whereabouts, but all she wanted was a warm bath and a stack of Red Sonja comics. She was so sick of ghost hunters and their pathetic attempts to reach the Other Side.

  “You better get out of here,” Cody said as Digger’s voice erupted in a burst of fuzz from his walkie talkie.

  “Nah, I like this room,” she said, lying back on the bed.

  “I don’t mean the room,” he said. “I mean the inn.”

  “And let the Digger win? You got to be kidding.”

  “Damn it, Kendra, don’t be so hard-headed. You don’t mess around with demons.”

  She was almost pleased at his anger. Passion was passion, after all, and even though she didn’t quite know what to do with it,
arousing it inspired a certain kind of creativity and power. No wonder ghost hunters created their own drama, and invisible drama was the best kind of all. “You better get that,” she said, as Digger repeated his request for all SSI personnel to report to the control room.

  “I’m not leaving without you,” he said.

  “What’s with people and promises?” she said. “They must have put something funny in the complimentary coffee.”

  Cody crossed the room and she closed her eyes, sensing him looming over her. She wondered if he would try anything, but he’d left the door open and he was still wearing that ridiculous jumpsuit. And she wasn’t sure what she would do if he bent close, what with the peeping twerp and the mysterious self-locking door and the fact that she was going to carry her virginity to college. She held her breath and Digger summoned his staff once more.

  She sensed Cody’s hesitation, and then the child’s whisper came.

  “Stay.”

  Kendra opened her eyes. “Did you hear that?”

  Cody shook his head. “Come on. The hunt group is coming.”

  Chapter 25

  The Roach was sure the portal lay below, in the basement.

  Intellectually, there was no reason to assume demons would emerge from the ground. Hell was not a lake of fire beneath the surface of the Earth. God had sent the fallen angels to do His dirty work, and so they were as likely to drift down on snowflakes, sluice along on a river current, or ride the wind like the spores of a diseased fungus. No, demons didn’t come from a place—they were everywhere, at all times, in their own dimension and moving parallel to the human world.

  In some locations, the fabric between the two dimensions grew thinner, particularly in sites of geographic tension, and The Roach had formed a theory that the nearby Eastern Continental Divide had played havoc here. The blue quartz he’d observed was pocked with crystals, and while the New Age devotees held crystals to be a healing power, The Roach believed energy itself was neither good nor bad. The results of that energy, however, meant the difference between salvation and damnation.

  When Wayne Wilson had summoned everyone back to the control room, The Roach had directed his group to rendezvous with the rest of the hunters. He worked best alone, though he wasn’t above using innocents to lure demons into the open. If a spiritually vulnerable person opened themselves to invasion and possession, no demon could resist. The trick was to destroy the demon before it took over the host.