Sole Possession

by Bryn Donovan

  “Thanks,” Andi said.

  Gloria went on to say, “This is going to ratchet up your asking price like nobody’s business. Too bad about needing a supporting wall, though—that’s not going to be cheap.”

  “We don’t need a wall,” Andi told her, and explained about the original house plans.

  “Great,” Gloria said. “So you’ll get the beam in, then do the kitchen and the floors?”

  “Yeah,” David interjected. “Andi doesn’t do beams. We’ll hire someone else for that and bring the engineer back to consult.”

  “Sounds good. And what’s your landscaper doing out back here?”

  “He’s taking out the big trees closest to the house.” He and Andi joined her at the window. “They’re hurting the foundation. Some roots are getting into the plumbing, too.”

  “Good to get that taken care of,” Gloria said. “It’ll bring more light in here, besides.”

  They watched as Mr. Willingham, on a tall ladder, revved up the chainsaw and brought it to the base of a large branch.

  Andi screamed.

  David jumped. For a split second it struck him as comical, as though Andi yelled because Mr. Willingham was going to hurt the tree.

  The chainsaw in the man’s hands jumped up toward his face. As his head snapped back, his body lurched backward off the ladder. When he pushed the saw down it hit his leg, sending a spray of blood into the air as he fell. He hurled the tool to land several feet away.

  “Call an ambulance!” David roared at Gloria and Andi.

  Gloria grabbed her cell phone from her purse and began to dial. David tore out the back door and reached Mr. Willingham’s side.

  The older man sat up in the yard, his head bent over, holding his leg. Above the knee, shredded denim revealed flesh like raw ground hamburger. Blood soaked half of the leg of his jeans.

  “Here.” David stripped off his long-sleeved shirt so that he wore only his undershirt. “Slow the bleeding.” He quickly tied the shirt around Mr. Willingham’s leg, just above the wound. The man grunted, his teeth set against the pain.

  “You’re going to be okay,” David said, though he didn’t know why. He had never seen a wound this bad before, not up close. But the bleeding did seem to slow.

  The back door banged and Gloria ran over to them. “The ambulance is on its way.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  Her eyes widened as she saw the landscaper’s leg. “I’m going back inside in case they come to the front door.”

  “Andi can tell them what to do.”

  The real estate agent snorted as she headed back to the house.

  What was that about? David asked Mr. Willingham, “How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  David felt a stab of guilt for hiring him. Was the man getting too old for this kind of work? But he seemed as strong and healthy as ever. “Did you lose your balance?”

  The gardener looked at him as though he were an idiot. “No.”

  The ambulance arrived. David gave a shaky exhale of relief as two EMTs eased the injured man onto a gurney to take him to Evanston Hospital.

  “I’ll see you over there,” he said, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Mr. Willingham. Of course I’m going.”

  The shadow of a smile appeared on the older man’s face. “I said you could call me John.”

  David wasn’t able to smile back. “Yeah, I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”

  The medics loaded Mr. Willingham into the back of the vehicle.

  Where was Andi? Why hadn’t she come outside to see if the man was all right? In the house, he found Andi on the floor against the wall, elbows on her knees, hands pressed up to either side of her head.

  Gloria turned to him. “What am I supposed to do with this one?”

  “What’s going on?” David asked. “Andi, you all right?”

  “She says she saw someone,” Gloria said.

  Andi looked up at him. “He hurt Mr. Willingham. You didn’t see?”

  “No.” He recalled that Andi had shouted before the accident, not after. “Who was it?”

  “A man in a black suit.”

  David felt cold.

  “You are both talking nonsense.” Gloria’s sure voice cut through the air. “David, you’re not listening to this, are you? This girl needs help.”

  Andi got to her feet, her eyes blazing. “I am not crazy.”

  David stepped between them. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m going to go,” the agent said. “I’m a Christian woman, David. I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense.” God only knew what Andi had said to her before he had come in.

  “I know, I’m sorry. Look, thank you so much for calling the ambulance. I’ll call you.”

  “All right,” she said, slightly mollified. Her high heels clicked on the floor as she headed out.

  David crouched down in front of Andi and put his hand on her shoulder. He felt her trembling. It had really frightened her this time…whatever “it” was.

  “You saw Clarence again, right?”

  “It wasn’t Clarence.”

  Her insistence took him aback. “What do you mean? You saw the guy on the stairs, right? The man in the black suit.”

  “It was a different man. In a different black suit.” Her voice caught. “This was worse.”

  David’s brain locked up like a computer screen. He couldn’t process this. “Andi, that’s crazy. Two different men?”

  “Yes! This one was really bad.”

  Maybe Gloria was right—maybe Andi was losing it. “All right. How was he different?” he asked, although he feared this would lead him down the same path of madness.

  She nodded, seeming reassured by the question. “This guy…he’s way taller. His nose is different. His head wasn’t bashed in.”

  “You couldn’t have seen him clearly.”

  “I saw him perfectly. He just came right up to Mr. Willingham, put his hands right next to his on the chainsaw—” Andi demonstrated the action “—and he tried to shove the chainsaw right in Mr. Willingham’s face.”

  There could not be two different dead men in dark suits walking around his house. There just couldn’t be. “You were saying before that you didn’t know if you even see ghosts all the time. That medication makes it better.”

  She glared up at him. “It mangled his leg. It was not my imagination. You know Mr. Willingham. Would he have had a freak accident like that, all by himself?”

  He had no reply.

  “David, this one was different. Different from any of the others. Ever.”

  The misery in her voice melted his resistance. He laid his hand on her shoulder again. “All right,” he said. “Different how?”

  “Evil. Just…evil.” She shook her head, adding in a murmur, “I saw his face in the wood…”

  “What?” He was crazy about her…but crazy was exactly how she sounded. “Andi, you’re scaring me.”

  “You should be scared.”

  He turned away and paced to the other side in the room. Suddenly he asked, “How many ghosts are in this house?” addressing not so much her as the house itself.

  “That’s what I keep saying we should find out.”

  * * *

  “Where did you find this woman?” David asked Andi the next day as he drove them to the address.

  She winced at the question. “Craigslist. I mean, where was I supposed to look?”

  David shrugged. “How did you pick this one?”

  “She didn’t live too far away from the house. And she was one of the only ones who didn’t have any typos in her ad.”

  “Yeah, I would never hire anyone with a typo,” he said with a sly sideways look.

  “Very funny.”

  “Do you still have that ad in the weekly?” he asked her.

  “I let it expire. I got a call last week about a tiling job, and the lady was all mad when
I told her I was tied up for a while.”

  As she rode, Andi wished she’d tried harder to convince David to find a psychic in the first place. Maybe Mr. Willingham wouldn’t be in the hospital right now if she had…or maybe a psychic wouldn’t have been able to prevent the incident, anyway.

  The night before, Andi had stayed with David at the hospital until his old friend got out of surgery. After the doctor told them Mr. Willingham wouldn’t lose his leg or have permanent damage to it, David persuaded Andi to go on home. Andi found out this morning David had remained there until around four a.m. Dark smudges underscored his eyes from lack of sleep.

  They found the right subdivision. “Pretty nice,” Andi commented, looking around at the large new houses. “I guess being a psychic pays okay.”

  “Money for nothing,” David muttered.

  “Oh my God, you sound like my dad.”

  “Your dad’s always sounded like a smart guy to me.”

  “Let’s just give her a chance,” Andi said as they went up the driveway.

  The young woman who answered the door was very pale and thin, with long auburn hair. “You must be Andi and David.”

  “Okay, you don’t get credit as a psychic for knowing that,” David said.

  The girl stared at him. “What?”

  “Forget it,” Andi said. “So, you’re Julie?”

  “Yeah. Come on in.”

  An assortment of faceless angelic figurines, like the ones Andi’s own mom collected, stood on the table in the entryway. Huh. She wouldn’t have expected a psychic to like those.

  Instead of ushering them into the living room, the girl said, “Come on upstairs.”

  She led them to a bedroom, where the rock posters on the walls clashed with the canopy bed. Oh, my God, Andi thought. She still lives at home.

  David shot Andi a look that said, You have got to be kidding me. Andi didn’t blame him at all. But it would have been awkward to leave, and they might as well give the girl a chance.

  “Go ahead and sit down.” Julie pointed to the bed and took the only chair.

  Andi and David arranged themselves side by side.

  “Ooh, I can see your auras,” Julie said. “Wait…wait.” She peered at them. “Yours is, like, all brown and gray,” she told David, waving her hands. “It’s like, ‘Oooh, I’m depressed, I don’t want to listen to you.’”

  “I’m not depressed,” David said.

  “Yeah, it’s all like, ‘Ooh, you’re wrong, you don’t know what I’m talking about,’” Julie went on. “That’s what brown and gray means.”

  Andi asked, “What about my aura?”

  “Oh, yeah, yours is like…” She stared at Andi for a few moments. “It’s orangish yellow. I can tell that you’re very scientific.”

  “Scientific?”

  “Yeah. Like you…you like numbers, you know. Like, facts and figures.”

  David snorted. “That’s just completely wrong.”

  Alarm flashed across Julie’s face before she covered it. “That’s the thing about auras. They show the real you. Not the you that you show everybody else.”

  Andi couldn’t resist. “Do they show the real you that not even you know about?”

  “Sometimes,” Julie said. “Exactly.”

  A woman’s voice called from downstairs, “Julie?”

  “Oh crap, my mom’s home.” She opened the door and yelled out, “Mom, I’m with a client right now.”

  Andi couldn’t quite make out what the mother said in response. It sounded a lot like, Client, my ass.

  The auburn-haired girl slammed the door shut again and flounced back into her chair. “Okay. So you two wanted to know about why you were having problems.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m afraid it’s because you have clashing auras.” She sounded like a doctor telling a patient he needed to have his gall bladder removed.

  David cleared his throat. “We aren’t having any problems.”

  Julie looked from him to Andi and back again. “What do you mean?”

  “That’s not what we made an appointment with you for,” Andi told her. “We wanted to talk to you about getting rid of a ghost?”

  The light dawned on Julie’s face. “Exactly, right. You have a ghost. And that’s the problem between you.”

  “Not exactly between us,” Andi corrected her. “Just…a problem.”

  “And what do clashing auras have to do with it?” David asked.

  “Well, you know. Ghosts are attracted to different auras and, well, actually if there’s clashing auras that can be bad and ghosts can be attracted to that, so, you know.” She looked up at them. “One of you is a Taurus, aren’t you?”

  “No,” Andi and David said at the same time.

  “Really? Because I’m really getting that kind of Taurus energy, but…okay, let’s back up though. When did the ghost come to live with you?”

  “It doesn’t live with us,” David said. “It’s in the house we’re trying to sell.”

  Andi noted how he said we’re trying to sell, rather than I’m trying to sell. It didn’t mean anything, but she liked being a part of that we.

  Julie shook her head. “Right, whatever. How long has it been there?”

  “A long time.”

  “Let me see if I can talk to the spirit realm and see what kind of ghost it is.”

  “Okay,” Andi said, regretting it as soon as she said it. Surely this was going to go nowhere. “What time do you want to come over to the house?”

  “What? Oh, I don’t need to go to the house. I can do it right here!”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, totally. I just concentrate and send my vibes over to the house.”

  “You need to MapQuest it or anything?” David asked.

  “No, no, no. You guys just be quiet for a little bit, okay?” Julie crossed her legs in the chair and set her hands down on her knees, palms up. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. After a moment, she started chanting. “Ohhh, spirits, speak to me…ohhh, spirits, I summon you with my psychic powers…ohhh, spirits, show me who is in these people’s house…”

  Andi’s ears burned with embarrassment.

  After a few more moaning sentences like this, Julie took in a dramatic breath. Her eyes still closed, she said, “Oh! I see now! Yes! I see it!” She opened her eyes and looked at them.

  “Well?” David asked.

  Julie smiled. “It’s a little girl,” she told them in a sweet voice. “Your ghost may be scaring you, but the truth is, she’s just an adorable little girl. She’s as scared of you as you are of her.”

  “Really,” Andi said.

  Julie nodded. “So I can come over and ask her very nicely to leave,” she told them. “Little kid ghosts, they always listen to me, it’ll be no problem. Let’s see, I can…well, I can’t go tonight ’cause I’m going to that Killers concert, but how about tomorrow? And hey, as far as payment goes, I’ll make you a deal. Usually I charge six hundred, but since it’s just a kid, I’ll make it five hundred, tops.”

  “Yeah. I don’t think so,” David said. “If it’s just a little girl, I think we’ll just let her stay.”

  “No, you can’t—wait! Wait!” Julie closed her eyes again, touching her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “I’m getting something else too! There’s—there’s a man with the little girl! A very scary young man. Oooh, he’s awful!”

  “Julie,” Andi interrupted her. “I think we’re going to go.”

  The girl’s shoulders sagged. “Okay.” She gave an appealing look to them. “Hey, listen, don’t tell my mom what I was talking to you about, okay? This business…I mean, it’s kind of a secret.”

  “But you told her we were clients,” Andi said. “What kind of clients did she think we were?”

  “Oh, I sell Silpada jewelry, too. I have home parties. You want to buy some?”

  “No, thanks anyway,” Andi replied.

  * * *

  Scruffy let out a very big sigh for such a litt
le dog.

  “What’s the matter, boy?” Andi asked, reaching over to scratch him between the ears.

  “He didn’t get much walking today,” Lissa said from the couch, where she was watching the news. “Do you think you could take him out for a longer walk?”

  Andi sighed herself. She had just taken a hot shower and was in her bathrobe, and it was chilly out. “I’ll take him down the block,” she said. “We’ll go for a longer walk in the morning.”

  “You know, I need to talk to you about something.”

  Crap. That was never the beginning of anything good. “What is it?”

  Lissa put the cheery anchorwoman on mute. “I wasn’t going to complain because we’re not going to live together that much longer. But you’re really not doing your share around here.”

  “I know. You’re right,” Andi said. In the last few weeks, though Lissa had been as neat as ever, Andi’s housekeeping had really sucked. She thought of the dirty dishes piled up in the sink. Lissa had a lot going on right now. They had always gotten along fairly well as roommates. Andi hated to think of it ending on a sour note.

  Maybe Lissa would understand if she knew about everything that was going on. Andi wanted to be close with her sister, more than ever now that she was going off and getting married.

  “Lissa, I’m sorry. Things have been really weird with that house.”

  Her younger sister pouted. “I know, old houses are trouble. But still.”

  “This one’s a whole different kind of trouble.”

  “Why? Bad foundation?”

  Andi thought of David’s mysterious ancestral history. “You could say that. Look, if I tell you about something, will you promise not to tell Mom and Dad?”

  “Of course,” Lissa with a touch of indignation.

  “Okay, I’m just going to say it.” Part of Andi’s brain told her that this was a bad idea. “The house is haunted.”

  Lissa laughed. Andi didn’t.

  Lissa said, “What?”

  “You know how when we were growing up and I had problems? How I would see people who weren’t there? Well, that’s been happening again.”

  “Oh my God,” Lissa said. “Andi, since when? You need to see a doctor.”