by Anton Strout
I picked one end of the table to start with, took off my gloves, and began to run my hands across everything he had on display. A pair of wedding flutes. Nothing. A Legion of Doom lunchbox. Cute, but nothing either. A hideous collection of early eighties fast-food glassware. They didn’t trigger my power, but I knew they were valuable because the paint on them had turned out to be toxic. Still nothing. My confidence started to waver. Had I picked the wrong table? It had felt so promising.
Chip-tooth watched me closely as if I might try to steal something. Clearly he hadn’t heard of my reputation from the other vendors. I didn’t blame him. Still, I found it frustrating. I was about to give up on his merchandise and go check out some of the Victorian furniture I had noticed two tables back, when my fingers touched a rectangular video game unit. The name Intellivision was printed across the top of it and the majority of the unit was plastered withStar Wars stickers. Two keypad controllers with circular push pads dangled lifelessly from tightly wound cords. Next to it was a pile of game boxes-twenty in all.
Instantly the electric snap of connection flowed up my arm and I fought to keep my poker face in place. I picked up the gaming console, and held it in front of my face as I pretended to examine it, but what I really hoped was that it hid my sudden look of interest. I closed my eyes and the market around me fell away.
In the vision, I was a young male, eleven or twelve years old. I focused quickly for clues to his name or location because if I didn’t figure out who he was or where he lived, it would be impossible to sell this long-lost property back to its original owner, a gambit of mine that’s proved incredibly lucrative over the years, especially with childhood memorabilia like this.
I was in a bedroom and the dйcor clearly indicated the late seventies or early eighties. From a hook on the back of the bedroom door hung bell-bottomed corduroys and a plaid cowboy shirt complete with pearl white snaps. It was the Farrah Fawcett poster, however, the one every boy in my middle-school class had drooled over, that convinced me of the time period. The Intellivision console was pristine back then and the boy was cutting up bubble gum stickers withStar Wars characters on them. He proceeded to tape the assembled clippings across the face of the console, carefully avoiding the controllers. May the Dork be with you. He then proceeded to add color-coded stickers to the corner of each game box, but I couldn’t make rhyme or reason as to what they meant.
The world of the vision shifted and fell out of focus. When it surged again, what I saw made me feel real sorry for the kid.
Time had passed in the room and now the kid’s mother was there. She had discovered the console and the stickered boxes, and with the ferocity of a feral cat, she tore aStar Wars sticker from the unit. Thankfully for me, she did what mothers who were pissed at their kids always did-she called the teen by his full name. Kevin Arnold Matthews. I had what I needed to try and find him, but I couldn’t escape the vision. Kevin begged for her to leave them alone, but the mother just ignored him.
The vision went blurry again. I knew time had passed because Kevin’s toys had all shifted place. He was standing there, watching and crying as his mother packed up the unit and games and, this time, threw them away. I felt the burn of his tears, his nose thick with snot.
Whatever caused this hateful display in this boy’s mother, I didn’t know. It was beyond my power. Only select glimpses were imprinted on items like the game console. I had to do a great deal of interpretation to figure out the whole story behind an item, and I constantly had to remind myself that I was human and therefore wrong sometimes.
But my interpretation of this vision so far was that the woman was a stone-hearted bitch for throwing the games out in front of Kevin. I felt compelled to return them to him, though, and I hoped they would help the guy reclaim a bit of his youthful idealism or happiness. If I was able to find him via the Internet. Sometimes I simply couldn’t track someone down if his name didn’t come to me in the vision and I’d end up selling the item back to another antiques dealer who simply thought I had a good eye. When everything fell in line, it felt great. It was those little victories that kept me going. Well, that and being able to pay my maintenance with the finder’s fee they hopefully felt compelled to cough up. Kevin Arnold Matthews, I repeated to myself over and over.
I heard a voice that called from outside the scene in my mind’s eye.
“You like George Plimpton, huh?”
I felt my concentration snap back to the real world. Being torn out of a vision prematurely was always disorienting. Like clockwork, my low blood sugar kicked in and I felt a little weak in the knees. I set the console back on the table gingerly and fished in my coat pocket for my Life Savers. They were the most portable and convenient source of quick sugar short of carrying a syringe full of pure glucose. Less pointy, too.
The chipped-tooth Indian was smiling. I knew I had blown my poker face. Damn.
“I’m sorry?” I said, trying to focus on the immediate world around me.
“George Plimpton,” Chip-tooth repeated, this time with a phlegmy chuckle. I could see the dollar signs light up in his eyes.
“The actor?” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as I could. Next to the console was a Mickey Mouse phone, and hoping to draw attention away from the Intellivision, I picked the plastic rodent up and tested its ancient rotary dial. “What about him?”
Chip-tooth’s attitude shifted and he put his pudgy thumbs through his belt loops. “He did a series of commercials for Intellivision. Now you wanna make me an offer on that or you gonna fondle my stuff all goddamn night?”
I didn’t appreciate his impatience or the attitude. I continued examining the phone for a few seconds more before I slowly put it down and took up the console again. “It’s not in the best shape. There’s some wear and tear to it. How much you asking for that and the pile of games?”
“A king’s ransom,” Chip-tooth said and proceeded to laugh with such force that he started to cough. His body shook with the violence of it. I thought the big guy might keel over right in front of me.
“Seriously,” I said when he finally recovered. “How much?”
He scratched his sizable gut with one hand. With the other he rubbed his chin in thought. For a moment, he looked as if he was mulling it over sincerely, but I was sure he already had a set price in mind.
“Well,” he said, drawing his words out, “seeing as how it’s got a little damage to it, I suppose I could let it all go for two hundred dollars.”
I stifled a knee-jerk urge to laugh in his face.
Two hundred dollars? He was insulting my mad phat antiquing skills! To anyone but the guy I was going to return it to, the console was worthless because of the stickers all over it. I cursed myself for blowing my poker face. I also cursed Chip-tooth for his greed.
“Three dollars,” I counteroffered, totally deadpan.
“Don’t waste my time, son,” Chip-tooth fired back.
“Three dollars,” I repeated with even more conviction.
Chip-tooth sighed and shook his head.
“Listen, son,” he said, poking one of his pudgy fingers at my chest. “That console is a gen-u-ine piece of history-of rock and roll history, in fact. I purchased it at great expense from none other than Yoko Ono herself. She and John Lennon bought it in seventy-five and they used it until the day he got shot right here in New York City. That makes it worth two hundred dollars and not a dime less.”
He was so full of shit that I felt real anger building inside me, but I simply kept calm and looked him straight in the eye.
“First of all,” I said, pushing his finger away from my chest, “even if this console had ever been within forty miles of John Lennon, you’re still as full of shit as the Hudson River. Lennon died in 1980. That gaming console didn’t release until later in the year,after his death. Now I’m gonna give you twenty dollars for this, tops, and you’re going to take it. You know why? Because I know my shit.”
Chip-tooth snorted and rolled his eyes.
“You don’t believe me?” I said, grabbing the Mickey Mouse phone and dashing it to the ground. “Ask anyone here.”
He stared at me, angry and dumbfounded, and then turned to look around. The sound of laughter rose from several of the nearby booths and I almost felt sorry for the guy. I pulled out my wallet, and held a twenty out toward him.
His face dropped in defeat. Without argument, Chip-tooth took the twenty and began to wrap the console and games in silence.
My cell phone vibrated to life in the pocket of my brown suede coat and I nearly jumped out of my skin. The last thing I expected in the predawn hours was a phone call on my private line. I pulled it out and checked the display.CONNOR CALLING.
Connor Christos was my Other Division mentor. He specialized in working with ghosts, but was surprisingly not a part of the Department’s Haunts-General Division. They took more of a ghost-busting approach to their work, while Connor was more of a spirit spotter and ad-hoc psychologist to the lingering undead, when his lack of patience didn’t get in the way. Why he was calling me this time of night, I had no idea.
I flipped my phone open and was greeted by an earful of static.
“Hello?” I said. Another wave of static crashed into my ear and I pulled the phone away as fast as I could. “Connor?”
“Simon!” Connor called out through the choppy signal. “Did…wake…ou, kid?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I was already up.”
There was desperation in Connor’s voice.
The signal on my cell phone continued to break up. It sounded like listening to an old-time radio as it was being flipped through a variety of stations.
“Still hav…trouble…sleeping?” Connor asked. In the background, I heard a loud crash from his end of the phone line. “Dammit!”
“Never mind my nocturnal problems,” I said, dismissive. “Is everything okay?”
Another wave of static crackled in my ear and I pulled it even farther away.
“Need…help. Can you meet…University…Seventh?”
Maybe it was the bad connection, but I thought I could hear nervousness in his voice and I didn’t like it. Usually he was the calm and collected one.
“University and Seventh?” I repeated. “Yeah, I’m up on Seventy-Ninth, but I can be down there in about ten minutes. Traffic should be light.”
“Thanks, kid,” he said, “and hurry.” The static rose once more and the line fell dead.
Something strange was brewing and a horrible feeling began building in the pit of my stomach. I needed to get moving, but Chip-tooth was still taking his sweet time finishing his packing job.
“Can you bubble wrap it?” I asked. “And hurry up. I’m packing for battle.”
3
After I hung up with Connor, I jumped a cab and headed downtown. Thirteen minutes later, the cab dropped me off at West Eighth and University and I headed toward Washington Square Park. I looked for signs of Connor, but didn’t see him. When I came across a small crowd of drunken late-night tourists fleeing toward Union Square, however, I figured I was on the right track. They jostled their way past me, and I lifted my shopping bag over my head and out of harm’s way. A clamor of footsteps and the crash of metal came from the alley between Sixth and Seventh, and I ran toward it while the last of the tourists snapped a few quick pictures.
The alley was filled with a weak yellow light from high overhead and I slowed as I followed the sound, partly out of caution but also because the last few blocks had winded me. I followed the alley along another fifty feet before it turned right. I rounded the corner and found Connor standing a few feet away with his back to me. Something stirring farther along in the darkness had caught his eye. At my approach, he turned and held a single finger to his lips. His muss of sandy brown hair looked more unkempt than usual and there was a strange white streak an inch wide in it that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.
“What happened to your hair?” I whispered. Then realization dawned. “You’ve been skunked!”
“You’re kidding,” Connor said with an almost school-boyish glee in his voice. He tugged at his hair, trying to pull it far enough forward to see for himself. “Really?”
“You’re excited about it?” I asked. “Makes you look older.”
“Course I am,” he whispered back, beaming with pride. “You know it’s something special to be skunked, kid. A mark of prestige in the Department. It means you looked the devil in the eye and lived to tell about it.”
“That’s comforting,” I said, feeling for the retractable bat hanging from my belt. “So now you’re in their elite littleHair Club for Men?”
“Theyprefer to be called the White Stripes, thank you,” Connor shot back.
“I know that, but they’re sooo not hip enough to pull that off,” I said, adamant.
Connor shushed me and sighed before changing the subject.
“You’re late, kid,” he whispered. There was a bit of venom to his tone. “And thanks for saying I look older. You’re all heart.”
I ignored his attitude. “What’s the sitch?”
Connor turned back to the dark and unexplored section of the alley.
“I was minding my own goddamn business walking up University,” he said, “when I heard a scream. It was hideous-like someone getting their back waxed. Then, out of nowhere, this spectral phantasm appears, streaking up and down the alley and scaring the souvenirs right out of a group of tourists.”
I looked at the ground. Shot glasses with the Statue of Liberty on them, “I Heart NY” T-shirts, bootleg copies of cheap Asian porn videos, and postcards showing the New York skyline were scattered all around. There was also an odd assortment of broken clay pieces mixed in with everything, but they didn’t look like any kind of tourist chatchke I knew of. I stepped carefully over the mess and moved closer to Connor.
“What’s with all the broken pottery?” I asked. “Did someone drop their kiln?”
Connor shrugged. He looked distracted and there was a shortness when he spoke. “That was already here before the tourists dropped all their stuff. Maybe it has something to do with the ghost. I dunno. I’m too busy trying not to die right now.”
“Sorry,” I said, “but isn’t this a job for Haunts-General? Ghosts aren’t really my thing. They give me the stone cold heebie-jeebies. I’m not trained for this.”
I eyed Connor’s streak again and ran my hand through my own jet-black mop of hair, hoping it wouldn’t meet the same fate.
“Don’t fall apart on me now, kid,” Connor said. “You had all the training sessions.”
“Training sessions?” I said. I threw my hands up. “The Enchancellors haven’t even covered apparitions with me yet. When I asked one of them about ghosts, they handed me a pamphlet entitledTen Simple Ways Your Job Will Disfigure You! Nothing I’ve learned at the Department has trained me to tangle with anything like that. If it gets ahold of me as well, the other investigators will be calling us the Skunk Twins.”
“Look,” Connor said. “No one from Haunts responded and I was nearby…”
A clatter that sounded like overturning garbage cans interrupted him. I stared into the darkness, but in the pitch black of the alley there might as well have been an entire army of zombies riding in giant zombie tanks. Still, if itwas zombies, I had at least read a pamphlet on them.
Connor spoke again, this time his voice dropping to an exasperated whisper. “I just happened to be at the wrong place at the right time, okay, kid? There were all these people standing around, snapping pictures of the damn thing like it’s some goddamn movie star, so I start moving in on it. It must have sensed I wasn’t afraid of it, because it hauled ass down this alley in the opposite direction, which is what I expected. At that point, I figured it could do one of two things: If it was aware it’s a ghost, it’d just pass through an alley wall and I’d have lost it, but if it thinks it’s still alive, it would feel cornered when the alley dead-ended. It wouldn’t have anywhere to
go and I could keep it at bay until Haunts-General showed up.”
Something in the shadows moved closer, but I still couldn’t make out what it was or even where it was. I felt pretty close to useless.
Connor signaled for me to move farther along the right side of the alley. Since he outranked me in the Department and had a hell of a lot more experience, I complied. Connor crept down the other side of the alley, but kept whispering.
“I didn’t expect this phantasm to make a break back up the alleytoward me, though. Before I could react, it phased right into me, but I resisted its energy. This spirit isn’t acting like anything I’ve ever encountered before. Something weird is up. Now it’s cornered somewhere back here.”
Keeping a noncorporeal being from passing through an agent hadn’t been covered in any of the assigned reading, handouts, or company e-mails.
“It actuallyphased through you?” I asked. “What did it feel like?”
The thunderous sound of another trashcan overturning rang out. I jumped, hating myself for reacting like such a noob in front of my mentor. Connor didn’t even flinch. He tugged at the white streak in his hair again.
“You don’t ever wanna feel it, kid. It felt like someone running electrical current straight through me. It was like a billion fist-sized rocks pummeling my body all at once.”
He tugged harder at the strand so he could just barely see the ends of it.
“Nice souvenir of a standard op.” He sighed. “As if I didn’t feel old enough! Well, as least I’m a White Stripe now…”
Saying he felt old was ridiculous. Connor was only ten years older than me, although I don’t know how I would have reacted if I’d been striped. Hell, there was still a chance it might happen before the night was through.
“We wrap this up soon,” I said, mustering the little bravado I could, “and I’m buying the drinks, ’kay? Maybe it’ll cheer you up…old man.”