by Bryn Donovan
“Mrs. Girard,” Morty said. “You’re gone?”
Nothing.
“That’s it,” Andi pronounced, and she and David took their hands off the board.
“Well, Mr. Girard,” the psychic said. “You’ve got an interesting family history.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“No one said it was.”
“I never even saw this lady,” Andi said. “How many ghosts are in here?”
“Well, I’m guessing there’s only one man in a black suit,” Morty replied. “It’s easy to miss details when you’re scared out of your mind.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” David said.
Andi felt as though the two of them were ganging up on her. Still, she had to admit that the simplest explanation was probably the correct one.
“So by my count, you’ve got three,” Morty said. “We’ve got our man in the black suit. We’ve got Irene here—”
“That was amazing,” Andi interrupted, laying her fingers on the planchette again. “Talking to her like that.”
“And our third one is Katherine Girard.” Morty looked at David.
“My mother,” David acknowledged.
The triangle jumped under Andi’s fingers.
She yelped as it skated across the board from Good-Night. to Good-Eve. “It’s another one.”
“Man oh man,” Morty whispered. “It’s like fishing in a stocked pond.”
“What if it’s the man in the black suit?” Fear rolled over her. He’d tried to push a man’s chainsaw into his face. Who knew what else he could do? She didn’t feel the coldness that had preceded him before, but whoever it was, she didn’t want to deal with the person on her own. “David, put your hands back on here.”
He did, regarding her with some concern. As soon as he touched the device it began to move.
Hello, David.
David gave Morty a startled glance. “Hello.” Why did he sound so unfriendly when the spirit had used such a kind tone?
But he couldn’t sense her tone. As far as he knew, it was the man in the black suit.
Andi asked, “Is this Katherine?”
Yes.
David stared at Andi. “Not really.” His jaw clenched.
“I think so,” Andi told him. When he kept looking at her as if for further confirmation, she said, “It’s a she. That’s all I can tell. Except she sounds nice.”
“I…” He took in a deep breath, looking down at the board. “God. I don’t know what to say.”
The planchette spelled out, I love you.
“I think she’s talking to you there,” Andi said with a half-laugh. She was trying to defuse David’s tension, but she failed. Seeing him look so shaken, as vulnerable as a child, made her feel like she would melt into a puddle.
David said, “Tell her…tell her how much I always wished I could have known her.”
“She can hear you,” Morty assured him. At the same time, Andi felt the spirit’s reaction, a rush of warmth and longing. “She wishes that, too,” she told David.
He looked back down at the board. “So can I talk to you all the time?”
No.
“Why?”
Rules.
“What rules? Whose rules?” David demanded.
Andi thought, Heaven’s? God’s?
It took time for Katherine to spell out: The living need to live.
Morty cleared his throat. “You got any questions, Mr. Girard, better ask them now.”
“Yeah, okay. Mom…” He said the word in a self-conscious tone. “Are you…are you all right now?”
It struck Andi as a strange question. Then she comprehended that he wanted to make sure she wasn’t a tortured soul, like the woman pictured on Carlos’s votive candle. He was asking if she were free from pain after what must have been a painful life.
Katherine answered, Yes.
David’s shoulders went slack with relief. Morty’s eyebrows raised in mild surprise.
“Then why are we seeing you here?” David asked.
You need to leave.
He looked up. “I don’t understand this.”
Morty didn’t take his eyes off David as he asked, “Katherine, were you murdered in this house?”
Yes.
Morty gave David a shrug and a look that was half, Sorry, and half, I told you so. “Who murdered you?”
Gordon.
David closed his eyes for a moment. Andi wished she could take his hand, but she didn’t want to take any of her fingers off the planchette. “She was killed by her husband, too,” she whispered. What the hell was going on in this house?
Morty said, “He was the one who slit your wrists, in the bathtub?”
The device went to Yes and then traced out, In my sleep. It jerked around the board, spelling faster. “I woke up,” Andi read aloud. “I was above me. Blood.” Feeling ill, she asked, “You woke up…and you were looking down on your own body?”
Yes.
Andi thought, Oh, my God. What a way to wake up from a nap.
“Pretty typical,” Morty said. “Same with near-death experiences.”
“Mom, I…I’m sorry.” David looked up at Andi and Morty. “I don’t know what to say to her.”
David’s mother spelled out:
Tell John I love him.
“John,” David repeated. “John who?”
She began to spell out, W-I-L-L-I…
“Willingham?” David asked.
Yes.
His mouth fell open. “Are you saying you…were you in love with him?”
Andi sensed a touch of defensiveness from Katherine as she affirmed: Yes.
“Wow,” David said. “Well…he’s a really nice guy.”
The planchette careened over the board to land at Good-bye.
“Wait, wait. Shit,” David said. “Mom—sorry about the language—Mom, you still there?”
Under their hands, the planchette stood still.
Andi withdrew her hands, looking up at David, awed.
“They don’t stay very long,” David complained to Morty.
“Sorry, pal,” the psychic said gently. “They never do. It takes a lot of energy. And you’re lucky you talked to her at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hardly ever have any luck with the ones people love,” Morty said. “Parents and kids, husbands and wives, anything like that.”
“I would think that’s how you would make most of your money. Preying on people who were grieving.”
The psychic took no offense. “Yeah, I’d be a rich man if I could contact family members all the time. But it’s like there’s a barrier against it or something. I had a mentor who told me that, too.” He shrugged. “He told me getting comfort from the dead was like trying to warm your hands by the light of the moon.”
Andi rubbed her own cold hands together. “She said there were rules.”
“Yeah,” Morty said. “That was really interesting.”
“You thought that was interesting?” David asked. “Because what I thought was really interesting was finding out that my father murdered my mother.”
Andi reached for his hand. “David, I’m sorry.” He pulled away, pacing the room.
“I should have known.” He stopped. “And my great-grandpa killed my great-grandma? What the hell kind of family is this? Do we have psycho-killer DNA?”
“No, of course not,” Andi said.
“Actually, a lot of people think there might be a genetic predisposition to violence,” Morty informed them.
Andi whirled to face him. “Not helping.”
“He’s right,” David said. “I’ve always known it.”
“I bet you take after your mother,” she told him.
His face softened. “It was really her.”
“Yeah.” This time when Andi came over to him and took his hand, he didn’t pull away. “She wanted to tell you she loved you.”
He nodded.
“David, you get what this means,
” she said, thinking it through herself. “She didn’t die because she was sad after having you. She wouldn’t have left you if it had been up to her.”
He started to say something, then didn’t. He cleared his throat and tried again. “She sounded nice, didn’t she?”
The vulnerability in his voice nearly broke her heart. “Yeah. She did.”
“Andi, thank you,” he said. “You helped me talk to her…it changes things for me. Only you could have done that.”
Warmth kindled inside Andi. She squeezed his hand. Then looked over his shoulder at Morty. “Well, not only me. Thank Morty, too.”
“I didn’t do that much here, babe,” he said, more matter-of-factly than with any sense of modesty. “You’re like a magnet. How are you feeling?”
It was funny he should ask. “Tired,” she said, just then noticing it. “Like after a really hard day of work.”
“You should sit back down a minute,” he suggested.
She lowered herself back down to the floor, into a cross-legged position.
“Mr. Willingham,” David said suddenly. “I can’t believe she had a torch for him.”
Andi didn’t find it so surprising. Mr. Willingham was, after all, kind of a silver fox, though she wasn’t going to mention that.
“I wonder if he knew?” David asked.
“I guess you’ll find out. You have to give him her message.”
“Yeah…that’s going to be kind of weird. But it’s what she wanted.”
“There’s something else she wanted, too,” Morty pointed out.
Andi and David looked up at him.
“She wanted us out of this house,” he reminded them. “I say we go get some dinner and try to figure out what to do next.”
Chapter Fifteen
The restaurant, with its red-and-white-checked tablecloths and cheery neon signs, seemed like a warm little heaven to Andi after their evening in the cold, brooding house. Cheesy ’80s rock played over the loudspeakers. Andi had a soft spot for cheesy ’80s rock.
“I’m starving,” she said as she devoured her slice of stuffed spinach and broccoli pizza.
“Course you are,” Morty said. “You used up a lot of psychic energy back there. How long have you known that you have talent?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean, babe.”
Andi put her fork down. “I would see things a lot as a kid. But everyone thought I was crazy. I thought I was crazy.”
He nodded. “I’ve heard this one before.”
“Here’s what confuses me,” she told him. “They gave me meds, and sometimes they worked. There were a couple of years in grade school where I didn’t see anything…and I didn’t all the way through high school and after.”
“I think I know why,” David said in a low voice.
“What?”
“Remember what you told me the first day we met? You lived in five different houses when you were growing up.”
Andi felt a little surprised, not to mention flattered, that he remembered this random detail.
“Houses your parents were fixing up.” David glanced at Morty. “Old houses.”
“Sure,” Morty said. “Can’t see any ghosts if they’re not there to see.”
“Oh, my God,” Andi said. “I think you’re right.”
“You’ve got a real gift,” Morty told her. “If you keep working with it, who knows what you could do?”
“Working with it? I wouldn’t even know how to do that.”
He smiled. “I’ll show you the ropes, kid. Think about it.” Before she could respond, he went on to say, “For instance, in the next couple of days I can show you how a banishing is done.”
Andi looked around at the neighboring tables. Anyone overhearing this conversation would believe they were lunatics. The couple with the sullen teenagers on one side of them, and the group of guys who looked as though they’d come from the same office on the other, paid no attention to them. The music made it too loud to eavesdrop. Maybe Morty liked this place for that reason. She asked him, “What’s a banishing?”
“It’s like an exorcism. Except it’s not for demons. It’s for ghosts. So it’s a little friendlier. It’s kind of like getting rid of guests who have stayed too long. You’re just sort of politely suggesting that they go away.”
“Who says I want my mom to go away?” David interjected. He looked from Morty to Andi, challenging them both.
Andi hadn’t considered that. How must he be feeling? This was his mom they were talking about. He’d just met her for the first time. Before tonight, he’d never known a parent who talked to him kindly.
Morton Silva looked solemn. “Let me explain another way. Exorcism sends a demon to hell. A banishment…more often than not, you’re sending a spirit to heaven.”
“Heaven and hell,” David repeated.
“’Fraid so, brother.”
David nodded, fiddling with his fork, although he’d barely touched the piece of gooey pizza on his plate. “If there’s heaven, then why isn’t my mother already there?”
“She might be now, for all I know. Before tonight, she had a lot of what we like to call ‘unfinished business.’”
“She wanted David to know she was murdered,” Andi said. “So he wouldn’t think she killed himself because she didn’t love him.” David flinched, and she regretted her bluntness.
“Right. Setting the record straight,” Morty said. “Spirits, they’re big on that. And she also had a message for her gentleman friend.”
“That wasn’t all,” David said as the server arrived with another pitcher of beer. “She told us to leave. Why did she and Irene want us to go?”
Morty poured a beer and set it in front of David. “Easy. They want you away from the man in the black suit Andi here saw.” His voice lowered. “He didn’t deign to talk to us, but he sounds like one bad-ass ghost. Irene and your mom might have been sticking around just to warn people against him. If they haven’t moved on already, maybe they will once we clear that douchebag out.”
David nodded. “Yeah, okay. So when can we do it, tomorrow?”
“It’s not going to be that easy.”
“Of course not.” David took a swig of the beer.
Morty steepled his fingers. “What we need to do first is figure out if you’ve got any remains on the property.”
“Remains of what?” Andi asked.
David gaped. “You think there are dead bodies?”
“I don’t know,” Morty said, “but it’s a good bet.”
Ew, Andi thought.
David shook his head. “My mother was cremated. She had her ashes sprinkled over the…the big rose garden.” He tilted his head. “The one she and Mr. Willingham designed. He handled the ashes.”
Morty nodded. “So she’s had a proper sending-off. That’s good. But I’m not so sure about the other lady we talked to.”
“Irene,” Andi said. “Everyone said she disappeared and didn’t come back. She could be buried there.”
“There’s no reason to assume it,” David countered.
“But don’t you think it makes sense? I mean, if she just ‘disappeared.’”
“True.”
“Why does it even matter?” Andi asked Morty. “You think she might want a proper sending-off, too?”
“Exactly,” Morty said. “You die and no one acknowledges it, they just stow your body away somewhere…it’s insulting. If we can find the bones and give them a decent burial, that will help with getting Irene to move on.”
David leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “What exactly do you recommend? Digging up the whole grounds with a backhoe?”
“No. I suggest Ms. Petrowski here tells us where the bodies are.”
“What?” Andi laughed incredulously. “I have no idea where they are!”
“I know you don’t now,” Morty said, “but I bet you will, if you think about it.”
“No way.” For the first time,
she doubted the psychic’s instincts. “How would I even figure that out? Why me?”
Morty looked at the ceiling. “You know why, babe. I’ll try to help, too. We can go back and take another sweep tonight. But you’ve got a better read on these people than I do. When we were talking to Irene, what did you see?”
“I didn’t quite see her,” she said. “But it was like…she smelled like some kind of old-fashioned perfume, you know? She was very ladylike. And she had blue eyes. When she told us to leave, she wasn’t mad. She was worried about us.”
“Andi, you’re freaking me out,” David said.
“Well, tough,” she retorted. “I’m sick of trying not to freak people out. I’m just telling the truth. I see what I see.”
Morty beamed. “Good girl.”
David stared down at the checkered tablecloth. “Sorry. I just… It’s going to take me a little time to deal with all this.”
The psychic clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t take too much time there. We’ve got a lot to do.”
* * *
David couldn’t believe they were returning to the god-forsaken house that very night. Why was he even going along with it? He didn’t want to be there. The house for damn sure didn’t want them to be there.
When Andi flipped on the switch, the gasolier lit for a moment and then with a pop went black.
David spread his hands in disbelief. “Jesus. The electrician was just here.”
“What a surprise,” Morty said.
“The second electrician,” David persisted. “The first guy didn’t get it right either. The lights just kept going out.”
“I’m trying to tell you, it’s pretty par for the course.” The psychic opened his suitcase and drew out two flashlights. “You two share this one,” he said, handing it to Andi.
“Have you got a lighter?” Andi asked him. “There’s a candle on the mantel I could light.”
Morty reached into the front of his polyester jacket and handed her a red lighter with flame decals. She went over to the fireplace and picked up the tall red glass votive Carlos had left behind.
As she tilted it to light it, Morty wandered over to take a look. “La Anima Sola. Did you bring that in?”
“No. Another contractor did. Does it mean something?”
“The lonely soul?” Morty asked. “You bet, babe. Usually it means a soul in limbo. You light one of these, you hope someone gets out of Purgatory and into Heaven.”