by Karina Halle
Maximus.
To say I was devoid of thought would be an understatement. As with Rebecca the day before, I could only blink, my arm continuing to mop up the milk like it was on autopilot.
He smiled, a wide flash of white teeth against weather-beaten, freckled skin and sauntered over to me like he hadn’t a care in the world. He stopped right before me so I was nose to his boots, which were just as worn and dusty as his jeans.
“Miss Palomino,” he drawled in his light Louisiana accent. He held out his large hand for me. Without thinking, I put mine in his. It looked so small in comparison.
He lifted his hand up until I was at my feet. I had risen as if he had Jedi powers.
“What…uh, what?” was my very intelligent response.
He squeezed my hand and that action sent two competing feelings through my body. One was uneasiness, that this was a friend of Dex’s, or an ex-friend, but at least an associate to a past that kept trying to rear its head in my life. The other feeling was one of warm shivers because he was oh so handsome, maybe even more so now that we were out of the grime and desolation of Red Fox (where I had met him before), and he and Dex never really got along to begin with.
Still, the question remained and I couldn’t help but blurt out, “Maximus! What the hell are you doing here?”
“Why Perry, you haven’t changed at all,” he said with a smirk. “Do you mind if I steal you away from your, uh, position, for a few moments?”
I looked over at Shay. Even though she was in the middle of talking to a customer, her eyes met mine and she gave me a slight nod and a deliciously bemused smile. Unfortunately, Ash’s expression was one of utter distrust for the tall, handsome stranger. I couldn’t blame him. Maximus stuck out in Portland like an exotic flower in a bed of weeds (even though half the weeds probably got a similar shirt from Urban Outfitters).
He continued to hold my hand while I awkwardly held the milk-soaked rag in the other and he led me to the corner of the shop where a table sat unoccupied.
In true gentleman fashion, he pulled out my chair and gestured for me to sit down.
I did, feeling out of it and stupid. He pulled up the other chair, his long legs sprawling out underneath. He rested his elbows on the table and looked me over slowly.
I made sure to do the same to him. It gave me time to gather my thoughts.
I had only known Maximus for a short amount of time. A weekend, really, back in October. It was the second Experiment in Terror episode that had Dex and me trotting out to New Mexico to uncover a so-called poltergeist. Only it wasn’t a poltergeist at all, but the work of an evil shaman, or medicine man, and his bewitched lover, who conspired to bring her husband’s ranch to its knees.
Maximus was the one who had set it all up. He had been called in because he is, in some ways, like a ghost whisperer. Obviously he doesn’t have Jennifer Love Hewitt’s boobs in this case, but what he does, or what he says he does, is pick up on the readings, or “imprints,” of the people who died. He can figure out what they were doing and thinking in their last moments of death. Some of Maximus’s “power” went further than that, I believe, so that it was almost a psychic ability. But neither Dex nor I saw any sign of this condition when we were with him in Red Fox. The only thing Maximus deduced was that “nothing died there,” which could have been a lucky guess. Dex seemed to think that Max was just full of it and trying to scam the living by saying he could talk with the dead.
I wasn’t sure what to think. In some ways I’m the same, so it’s not like the ability is far-fetched or impossible. On the other hand, I never saw any proof of this power directly. He had proved before that he cared for me and for the Lancasters, yet I was always a bit suspicious of his true motivations. Maximus and Dex had a falling out after college, after Dex’s ex, Abby…
Stop, I shouted to myself. I didn’t want to think about that anymore. Even the sound of her name caused a shiver to run through my already weak body.
“I’m sorry,” Maximus said quickly. He reached out and placed his hand on my arm and gave it a quick squeeze. “I didn’t mean to intrude by dropping by like this. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I squeaked and tried to act more composed. “I’ve just been sick lately. Nothing to worry about, though. Anyway, Maximus…what the hell?”
“Right,” he grinned again and leaned back in his chair. “I forget that this is all new to you.”
I must have shown my confusion on my brow because he continued, “I moved to Portland about six weeks ago. I thought Jimmy or Dex would have told you.”
At the mention of them, my face grew cold as stone. Jimmy had mentioned something about Maximus and Portland back at the Christmas party in December, but at the time I had been so focused on not pummelling the snot out of Dex’s girlfriend Jenn, that it hadn’t really sunk in.
“It must have slipped my mind,” I said somewhat truthfully.
He scratched his cheek, his stubble making a scratchy sound. “No worries. But here I am. I was biding my time, wondering if I should look you up. Then Jimmy gave me the push.”
I raised my brow. “Jimmy gave you the push?”
What did Jimmy have to do with Maximus anyway? It had struck me as weird that he had been the one telling Dex and I about him.
“You really have been out of the loop, haven’t you darlin’?”
I wasn’t a fan of the word darling, but it sounded oh-so charming coming out of his mouth.
“I’m sure if you’ve been talking to Jimmy, you know what happened.”
He nodded with sympathy. “Yes, I do. I heard. That’s partly why I’m here.”
“Here, in Portland?”
“No. I was always planning on moving here, or at least the Pacific Northwest, anyway. But I got in touch with Jimmy a few months ago, inquiring if there was any work for me. Dex and I did go to the same school, remember. Well, Jimmy wasn’t too sure about me and my ways, I could tell. But then a position became…available.”
I looked at him sharply. “What position?”
“We want you back on the show.”
Whoa.
“Show…,” I stammered. “Experiment in Terror?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, and leaned forward across the table. He smelled like cinnamon.
“I quit the show.” Boy, did I ever, in the world’s most dramatic quitting scene.
“We know. But the reason you quit wasn’t because of the show itself. It was because of who the cameraman was.”
My face scrunched up at the thought of Dex.
“I reckon I’m right, aren’t I?” he said. His jade peepers were looking inquisitively into mine. Man, I knew I was so easy to read.
“Well, yes. But that’s not the whole thing.”
“So you wouldn’t come back on the show if there was another cameraman?”
“No,” I blurted out. I didn’t even think about it but that’s what my first reaction was. No way, no how. Dex or no Dex, I was done with that whole thing. It was life-threatening, unpredictable and an unreliable way to make an income. My parents would kill me, if the ghosts didn’t get me first, and, to be honest, I didn’t want to be in any situation that would have me wishing Dex was with me.
He cocked his head. “You sure about that?”
OK. So I wasn’t. I looked down at my yucky rag full of milk, then up at the counter where Shay and Ash were busy. I was probably pushing it by continuing to talk to Maximus instead of working.
“I should get back to work,” I said, getting to my feet.
“Hey,” he said, coming around to me. Next thing I knew I was in a cinnamon-scented hug with someone over a foot taller than me, wrapped in very firm, very wide arms. I had no choice but to rest my head against his hard chest.
“I’m really sorry about what happened,” he said into the top of my head.
I tried to shrug but he held me there.
Finally he released me and my cheeks went hot from the unexpected intimacy.
; “Don’t worry about it,” I said shyly, stepping back and avoiding his eyes.
“You don’t have to answer me now, you know. You can think about it. There’s some other stuff Jimmy has me doing on the side, so it’s not a huge rush. We just think it would be a great thing, for all of us.”
“I’ll think about it,” I told him and shot Shay another glance. She and Ash were full-on gawking at me.
I took a step toward them and was about to tell Maximus I’d see him sometime when he reached out and grabbed my arm. He pulled me back to him. His boldness surprised me.
“That’s not the only reason I’m here,” he said, and for a change I saw his cheeks flush the same color as his hair.
He dropped his arm from mine and reached into the front pocket on his shirt. He snapped it open, pulled out a cream-colored business card and held it out for me.
I took it from him as he handed me a pen from the other pocket.
“Could you write down your number? It seems you’ve changed yours.”
“Oh, right. Yes.” I wrote it down on the back and gave it back to him.
“I’m going to call you now,” he said simply. “Will you answer?”
“Um, yes?”
“What will you say if I call to ask you to the movies?”
“Um…” Now I was totally caught off-guard.
“Um, yes?” he asked hopefully, his full lips twitching at the corners. “Don’t tell me you’ll think about it.”
I didn’t know what to say. He was asking me on a date. This was more than surprising. It was intriguing. A rare butterfly fluttered around in my stomach and that’s when I realized I hadn’t felt any cramps for the last five minutes.
I tried to play it cool.
“Yeah, sure, yeah, that would be great,” I stammered. “Thank you.”
So much for playing it cool.
He grinned at me in return and stuck my phone number into the pocket. He did a mini bow and drawled, “I’ll be seeing you darlin’” before turning his sturdy frame around and sauntering out of the shop.
If this was a romance in the South, where he was from, I would have dabbed my face and chest with the rag full of dirty milk.
I walked back to the counter, unable to hide the strange smile on my face. There were no other customers so Shay and Ash were able to interrogate me uninterrupted.
“Who on earth was that hunk of fine meat?” Shay asked, putting a thrust to her hips.
I laughed. “He’s an old friend of mine.”
Ash still didn’t look too impressed. He gave me a funny look and turned to clean out one of the blenders. “He didn’t look like just a friend.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Well he is. He was on the Red Fox episode when we were in New Mexico.”
“Thought he looked familiar,” he grumbled, and turned on the water full blast so he couldn’t hear me. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought Ash was jealous. Poor guy. There was a chance he had been sending me signals all along but I was too clueless and self-absorbed to pick them up. Can men and women really not be friends after all? Seemed all my friendships had something unrequited going on and they never ended well.
“You gave him your number sweetie,” Shay said knowingly. “Something tells me you may be more than friends now.”
I waved at her but smiled and blushed at the same time. I had never given Maximus much thought, despite thinking he was a good egg and a looker at that, but now things were different. Especially now that I knew how he felt about me. It made my toes tingle.
After I reveled in my giddiness, Shay tapped me on the shoulder and placed a mop in one hand and a disinfectant spray in the other.
“Hate to burst your bubble, girl, but there’s a bathroom that needs cleaning.”
And there went my high.
I gave her a defeated smile while I swallowed my sigh of disgust and trudged off to the women’s washroom with the mop and spray in hand. I entered the empty room cautiously, afraid of the smell I knew what was lurking, afraid that for some reason it would trigger my cramps again or make me lose my lunch. At least I had a mop to clean it up.
The bathroom wasn’t too bad today, despite the shop being relatively busy. I locked the door behind me and got to work, making sure I was both thorough and quick in case a customer was waiting.
I tackled the toilet first, trying not to lean over the bowl too much. The smell was vague but it was present.
While I worked, I thought about how strange it was to have two people from my past show up in the last two days. First Rebecca, wanting to check up on me – or make me feel sorry for Dex. Then Maximus, wanting me to rejoin Experiment in Terror, but with him, and then asking me out to the movies. It had been a good few months of anonymity, of avoiding the past, of hiding from it. But somehow, it had found me. No matter how hard I tried to stay away from ghost-hunting, from Dex, from that life, I was pulled back into it. I wondered if it would ever go away and I wondered if there was a reason for it. Something I didn’t understand yet. Something beyond this world.
I was busy, deep in thought and scrubbing the stopper in the sink, when it happened.
The lights in the bathroom suddenly went out.
I let out a cry of fright. Then a cry of agony.
A rush of pain hit my insides, so intense that I could only drop to my knees on the cold, hard ground. I fell over, clutching my stomach, feeling the slick tiles beneath my head. The ground trembled as if people were running outside of the bathroom, in my direction.
And then I heard a noise I never thought I’d hear.
The consistent drone of a wasp flying around somewhere near my head. I froze automatically, my breath stopped and I didn’t blink.
The door shuddered back and forth and I heard the cries of Shay outside of it, but I couldn’t pay it any attention. There was a wasp in the dark bathroom with me.
I’d been in a similar situation before.
Without warning, the buzzing from the wasp stopped.
I felt it land on my cheek, its tiny legs brushing against my skin.
If my world was black before, it now turned even blacker. Whether it was from pain or from fright, I don’t know. I was gone.
~~~
When I woke up, I was lying on a stretcher being wheeled down a hall in what looked to be a hospital. All I could see were the panels in the ceiling above my head as they slowly went past. They were perforated and white, except for the corners, which seemed to leak this black fluid. It came out in clumps, narrowly missing me as it fell to the ground in a splat.
I turned my head, it was as heavy as a pipe, and looked at the person beside me pushing the stretcher. He was a doctor, or a surgeon. He was wearing a mask, his kind eyes focused on mine.
“Not much longer till you meet her,” he said through the mask, the fabric bumping up and down with his mouth’s movement. “Everything is going to be just fine.”
“What happened to me? Where am I going?” I asked, my voice coming out congealed like jelly.
“Hush now; you’ll need your strength. The hard part is over. She will live. You did a great job.”
The doctor took one hand off of the metal handle and laid it on my forehead. His palm was ice cold.
I flinched but felt surprisingly constricted. I looked down at my arms. They were strapped in place by heavy, thick leather.
“You were a great host,” he added. His eyes went across the stretcher. I was suddenly conscious of someone else beside me. Flabbergasted, I turned my head the other way to see who he was talking to.
Her dreads were swept up underneath a white cap, but it was the demon girl from the other night. She had a mask on, covering up those terrible, sharp teeth, but her red, predator eyes were the same.
“Perry, Perry, Perry,” she whispered. A low cackle erupted from her throat. “Oh, you had no idea, did you sweetie?”
What, I tried to say but my lips were too dry.
The movement suddenly stopped and the stretcher
was still. The doctor and demon girl left my side abruptly, and I was alone, strapped down, facing a door at the end of the hallway.
“Hello?” I cried out.
I lifted my head and shoulders up as much as they could go and looked around me. There was an old man sitting on a chair outside the door, hands resting on a cane, his eyes concentrated on his feet. There was no one else around. I looked down at my legs. I was still in my Port-Town uniform; skinny jeans, black polo shirt, black apron. There was a sticky, wet sensation on my jeans when I shifted, especially around my crotch. With whatever happened to me, I wondered if I had peed my pants in fright.
A weird skittering sound, like light nails brushing against steel, came from my right, from the ground. I turned and looked to see a large creature that looked like a wood bug undulating past me. It was the size of a dog; its grey, segmented shell of a body moving back and forth with each step of its many spindly legs.
My breath stuck to my lungs and I was unable to let it out until the wood bug skittered past the old man and around the corner. The old man, his attention still at his feet, paid the giant insect no attention.
What the fucking fuck was going on? This had to be another dream. I had to still be on the floor in the bathroom at work, that wasp still crawling on my face. Even though what happened earlier was terrible, it was still preferable to what was happening here.
A low, steady creak came from the front of me.
The door I was parked in front of opened and who stepped out of it but Dex Foray. He was holding a bundle of something wrapped in thick, white cloth, holding it like a baby.
Seeing Dex’s face both scared and calmed me. He looked much like he did the last time I saw him. Handsome in a rough, dark way. Eyes like mahogany-glazed coal. It would have filled me with hatred so frighteningly uncontrollable, but I couldn’t feel anything but confusion and fear.
“I didn’t think she’d make it,” he said in his gravelly voice. He was talking to me, I think, but looking at whatever he was holding in his arms. “Thank you, Perry, for doing this for us.”
“What are you talking about,” I whispered. I tried to get a better look at him but was distracted by a redness that was spreading on the sheet beneath me. I hadn’t peed my pants – that was blood that covered my lower half.