Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  We walked in and he did a quick tour of every downstairs room, nodding to everything he saw. My clipboard was on the floor by my toolbox. He picked it up as we went, ticking off items with the stub pencil I keep tethered to it. “Nice job,” he said. He walked to the base of the stairs and looked down at my bounced toolbox and scattered kit. He crouched beside me and helped me repack it. When we stood up, he nodded at the steps. “Okay, Marcy. Let’s go.”

  He started up the stairs. The lights flickered, just once. Raymond glanced back at me and kept climbing. I followed. By the time we reached the top of the stairs, the lights were flashing without any rhythm. It made me queasy. On the landing, Raymond glanced into the bathroom and, after three flickers, added another tick mark to my clipboard list. He turned toward the smaller bedroom. “Knock it off, will you? You’re making me sick.”

  She did. Raymond has that effect on most people. It’s why he’s an AD. We were plunged into darkness. I heard the jingle as he took a Maglite out of his cargo pocket and snapped it on. He turned to me. “Now. What does she want?”

  “She isn’t a diva, Raymond. She doesn’t want blue M&Ms in her dressing room or more camera time. She’s a ghost. You can’t just ask her what she wants.”

  I want Monty to come back. He needs to apologize. She was abruptly standing in the doorframe, blocking our entrance to the room. Raymond can’t hear ghosts either, so I was the only one who flinched. He saw my twitch and raised his heavy brows and gave a short nod, his signal for “go ahead” when everything was quiet on the set.

  “Who’s Monty?” I asked.

  She flickered. Sometimes that happens. Ghosts forget who they were, or they get a burst of emotion and can’t seem to hang on to their materialization. She vanished.

  “She wanted someone named Monty to come back. But she’s gone now. Maybe that was all she needed. Just to say she wanted Monty to come back.”

  “Okay.” Raymond snapped on the light switch in her room and stepped inside. Clipboard in hand, he toured it. He nodded to the rat poop and curtain rod, and checked them off my list. Then he came to the tally marks on the wall by the peeled wallpaper. “What’s this?”

  I told him. His eyes grew darker. “She still gone?” he asked and I nodded.

  I hung back as he crossed the small landing and looked into Jenny’s sewing room. He frowned slightly and walked over to the window. “It’s closed,” he said, and I nodded from the doorway.

  “So you can feel the cold in there?” I asked.

  “It’s not . . .” I don’t think I’d ever seen Raymond hesitate before. New experiences for both of us tonight. “It’s not really cold.” He rubbed his arms as if to be sure of it. “It’s more like . . .” And then his chin dropped to his chest and he went to his knees.

  If the room had been on fire, I’d have been more willing to go in there. But I did anyway. He wasn’t completely passed out, but I think that made it harder to grab him under his arms and drag him out of there. I’m five feet five inches and Raymond is a husky fellow about half a foot taller than me. His efforts to stand nearly knocked me over. But I got him out onto the landing. I was on the point of dragging him down the stairs when he gave himself a shake and staggered onto his own feet. “Let’s go,” he said, and held on to my arm as we went down the stairs toward the door. He slowed at the landing and looked all around. I didn’t. I went straight to the door and put my hand on the doorknob.

  “She around?” he asked me as he stood holding my clipboard.

  “No,” I said, but as I looked up the stairs she materialized at the threshold of her bedroom. I had a brief impression of raggedly cut dark hair, jeans, and a Mötley Crüe T-shirt. Her face was a blur. She flickered like an old film. Maybe she didn’t remember how she had once looked. Monty Winslow, she said. He has to come back and say he’s sorry. Tell him you found this. In a hole in my wall.

  She was gone. I’d had a brief impression of a piece of jewelry dangling from a chain. Something sparkly.

  “In the Shape of a Heart,” I said to myself.

  “What?” Raymond demanded. His usually swarthy skin was still pale, like too much milk dumped in coffee. It wasn’t a good look on him.

  “An ’80s song my mom liked. Jackson Browne song, about dropping a necklace in a fist hole in the wall.”

  He took my arm. “You aren’t making sense. Let’s get you out of here.”

  It’s easy to forget other people don’t hear ghosts when you do. “She was there for just a moment, at her door. She wants us to find someone named Monty Winslow. And show him a necklace that she dropped into a hole in her wall.”

  He looked sick. “So that means we have to go back upstairs into that room, and try to find a necklace tonight?”

  “Tonight?” I echoed him feebly. I just wanted to go home, take a very hot bath, and find a nature documentary and fall asleep to hyenas eating gazelles. Something natural and restful. “How about tomorrow, during the day?”

  “We have a schedule to keep,” he reminded me. He added, “If we have to tear a hole in a wall, it’s better we do it now. And maybe stage the necklace to be found when we’re taping.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “Yeah, that might be good. The viewers might love that.”

  The man amazes me sometimes. It’s all about the show for him.

  I hefted the weight of my toolbox onto my hip by adjusting the shoulder strap, wondering as I always did why I carried so much stuff in it, and followed Raymond. He had already started back up the stairs. Over his shoulder he asked, “Which bedroom do you think?”

  “Hers, I think. If she punched a hole in the wall and dropped a necklace in it, it’s probably in there.”

  We both halted on the landing. I was afraid. I’d never encountered phenomenon at this level before, nor interacted with a ghost who changed moods and attitude so quickly. “Hello,” I said softly. “May we come into the room? To locate the necklace?”

  I felt no response and saw nothing. I shrugged at Raymond. He gave me a tooth-clenched smile and I followed him into the room. The light was steady again.

  Raymond was methodical. He began with the wall patch closest to him. He used my hammer to reopen it. He peeled the patch free, then tapped a long break in the wallboard down to the first cross brace between the wall studs. Chalky bits of Sheetrock fell to the floor. He peered in. “I hate that blown-in insulation stuff. It always falls to the bottom of the wall space.” He poked around in the insulation with his flashlight. It looked a lot like masticated newspaper. “Nothing,” he said aloud, and moved on to the next patch. He had to push the bed frame away from the wall to reach it. Its metal feet screeched against the old linoleum. He tapped the patch free with my hammer and then carelessly ripped it out, letting it fall to the floor. It made a larger hole than the one before. He clicked on his flashlight and peered inside. “Nothing,” he said again.

  Look again.

  “Look again,” I echoed her, and he tore the Sheetrock wider until we saw it, caught and dangling on a bent nail inside the wall.

  “It’s there,” he said, and reached inside to take it. After a moment, he said, “It’s hung up on something.”

  I spoke softly. “No. She’s holding it there.”

  Only Monty takes it from here.

  “She says she’ll only let Monty remove it.”

  “O-kaaay,” Raymond said thoughtfully. He touched it with fingertips only, arranging it so that it wasn’t obvious but it would be found if anyone took a second look in the crack. “I’ll be sure that Giselle finds it. I’ll tell her that the house looks like someone was searching for something in the walls. She’ll be on it like a beagle on a rabbit trail.”

  Only Monty!

  “She’s adamant. Only Monty removes it.”

  Raymond looked at me. He sighed. “Go home. I’ve got some staging of my own to do here. Get some sleep and be back here by noon.”

  I left him there.

  I wasn’t late the next morning, but Giselle behaved as if I we
re. “Oh, look, she stopped for coffee! Well, I’m so glad that’s more important than being here for us.”

  I tried to look appropriately shamed and hid behind my sixteen-ounce vanilla latte. The prospect of actual coffee shop coffee had been the only way to lure myself out of bed. I hadn’t really slept. I kept seeing the teenager in the closet, the blood spouting up between her fingers. I texted Raymond three times in the night, asking if he was all right. Each time he’d only texted back a smiley face.

  Raymond had obviously arrived very early, even before the crew had come to get the establishing shots. Every kitchen cupboard door was standing open, and there were two fresh holes in the living room walls. “It wasn’t like this the first time we viewed the place,” Bert complained. “This is gonna cost us!”

  “Looks like someone was searching for something,” Raymond observed. “Like maybe someone hid something here and didn’t take it when they moved out.”

  “Drug money,” Grandma Chris said darkly. “I saw a boy with a red shirt on the corner. Probably a Crip or a Blood.”

  Giselle’s head swiveled like a puppet’s. “Oh, Ramon! Do you think so?” She has spent the past two years convinced that Raymond is Mexican and really named Ramon. She often cites him as an example of how diverse her crew hires are.

  Raymond nodded. “Probably not money, Chris. They broke holes in the walls, so it was hidden a long time ago, I think. But someone remembers it. When I got here, the kitchen window was jimmied open. Someone broke in last night.”

  “Tweakers,” Grandma Chris announced darkly. “Sweetie, don’t you touch anything. It might have meth on it.”

  Sweetie didn’t even look up from her iPad screen.

  Raymond cleared his throat. “Okay, to work. Establishing shots are done. Time for some action. Marcy, stick around. I may want more rat poop.”

  Raymond walked the crew through the sequence he’d decided on. He was right about Giselle. She was wriggling with eagerness. But he made her do the outside shots of them first seeing the house, and then walking up to it. He requested some outdoor footage of the opened kitchen window and the muddy boot prints where “someone” had climbed in. Once the cameras moved inside, Giselle could barely hold up her end of the dialogue. I saw her stoop down to peer into the cupboard below the kitchen sink with uncharacteristic interest in the plumbing. There was one drawer in the kitchen that was closed; she opened it and then pulled it out to look behind it.

  My rat poop and other decorations met with cast and crew’s approving ews as we progressed through the rooms. I felt no sign of the ghost. When we reached her bedroom, the light switch didn’t work. I scowled at that; the rainy gray light coming through the crusty window wasn’t very illuminating. Raymond shrugged. “Probably just the bulb.”

  “It worked last night,” I said quietly. He shot me his “shut up” look and took a cautious step into the room. All remained calm. I frowned to see that my rat poop had been moved, but said nothing. I felt a tingling tension in the air and could not keep my gaze from wandering to the closed closet door.

  Raymond unclipped a massive flashlight from his belt. He played it over the room. “Looks okay to me. We’ll get some light up here.” He moved the beam over the walls, and as it traveled over the enhanced holes we’d made in the Sheetrock, there was a sudden bright glitter of returned light. No one reacted. He did it again and Giselle gasped.

  “What’s that?” she demanded, scuttling across the room and falling to her knees. “Bring the flashlight!” she demanded, and Raymond had to thrust it to her through the mob of crew that had clustered close.

  “Wait, don’t touch!” Bert suddenly commanded. “I want lights and cameras on this. I think this is going to be our big hook for the new season.

  Giselle clasped her hands into fists and held them in front of her bosom. They shook with her eagerness. Second Chances has a great crew. Grip and Electric thundered down the stairs to fetch more lights and extension cords and equipment, while our camera crew began setting up tripods and talking white balance. When the bright lights went on, even I gasped.

  I’d always heard of sparkling, brilliant diamonds. Best I’ve ever done is Austrian crystal earrings. But the pendant in the wall spat light back at us in a way that had the cameras moving to get shots that were more than blinding glare. Giselle, Bert, and Grandma conferred outside the bedroom, and when Raymond barked, “Quiet on the set!” the rest of us stood in breathless silence.

  Giselle does great as a reality show hostess, but her acting skills are limited. They performed their standard patter of “Oh, so dirty, so much to fix, but great potential; oh dear, rat droppings!” but Giselle could not keep her gaze off the damaged wall. Her shriek of surprise when she discovered the pendant seemed to me more like a triumphant squawk. Close-up of her startled face, of Bert’s surprise and Grandma’s puzzlement, followed by close-up of the treasure. It was a simple cross, silver with sparkling stones set in it. As Giselle drew it out of its cobwebby hiding place, a torn piece of age-browned paper came with it, folded around the fine silver chain.

  “It’s a note!” Bert exclaimed, and at that moment their surprise was as genuine as mine. He unfolded it carefully while Giselle possessed the pendant. I watched her tug on it stubbornly as Bert read aloud. “It says, ‘Ask Monty Winslow. He knows.’ What on earth could that mean?” Bert has a wonderful, resonant voice, and he played the moment to the hilt. It was fortunate the cameras were on him, for the dismay on Giselle’s face was plain. I folded my lips as the camera zoomed in on the crumpled note. It’s not that hard to “age” paper with a quick dip into tea. Raymond prints all his instructions, but something about the careful cursive in the note still seemed awfully familiar to me.

  “I can’t get it free!” Giselle complained.

  “Let’s not break it,” Bert counseled her and as he bent to help her, Raymond cut the cameras.

  “Leave it there!” he suggested. “The drama will be so much greater if we can find this Monty and he’s the one who actually takes it out of the wall.”

  The rest of us trooped out of the room and down the stairs to let them argue in private. We ate dry sandwiches and drank coffee and waited. When they descended, it appeared that Bert and Raymond had prevailed against Giselle. She was not pleased about it.

  In the times throughout the shooting day when the cameras were turned off, Giselle made her feelings plain. “Finders, keepers!” she exclaimed more than once. Grandma was prone to side with her, and when the day’s shoot was over, I followed them back up to the ghost’s room. Did anyone besides me notice that no footage had been taken of “Jenny’s sewing room”? No one else mentioned it and I didn’t bring it up.

  Crouched by the crack, they took turns peering in at the trapped pendant. Grandma immediately offered to take the necklace to have it appraised and cleaned. Bert was more pragmatic. “Sure, we can do that. But there are bigger things to think about beyond what it’s worth. Look, the audience we can draw with this, especially if this Monty fellow has a good story to tell, will outweigh the short-term pleasure you get from having a sparkly necklace. You don’t even know if it’s anything more than a piece of costume jewelry.”

  “Let’s get it appraised,” Grandma repeated. “For the story. Real diamonds would make this episode grow legs and run!”

  “Break the hole wider and let’s see if we can’t at least get it out.” Giselle commanded.

  “No!” Bert and Raymond were a chorus. “We need to have it stay just like that until Monty can see it.”

  “And what if we can’t find this Monty?” Giselle demanded.

  They’re real. And it’s antique. Monty’s mother gave it to Jenny when she married Monty. It’s a family piece. Monty was furious when he found out that Jenny had given it to me. I’d never heard a ghost catch back a sob before, but she did. Jenny was different from all the other foster moms I’d had. She didn’t talk much, but she listened. She really listened. She asked me what music I was playing in my headp
hones, and I told her. And the next week, she got me a Mötley Crüe T-shirt. She was so quiet that I talked a lot more than I ever had. I even told her when I thought I was pregnant. A few days later, I found out I wasn’t. But that night, she came to my room and sat on the foot of my bed, and I told her everything. I told her I’d been having sex with boys since I was thirteen. And she started crying. She said, “You poor little lamb!” And then she took that necklace off her neck and put it on mine. It was still warm. She said it would remind me that my body was mine and I should treat it well. I promised her I’d do my best . . . She told me just to reach up and hold onto it and it would help me remember not to do anything that wasn’t good for me . . .

  Do not react, I counseled myself. I could feel the room becoming more and more charged. I wondered if she were drawing energy from the argument between Giselle and Bert.

  But it didn’t work. I tried. But sex was . . . when you’re a foster kid, sometimes it’s all you’ve got to trade for anything. For a boy to walk you to the bus, or buy you a can of soda from the school machine . . . Monty caught me making out with a boy in the garage. I . . . I didn’t have my shirt on. He hit the boy, and he slapped me and dragged me into the house shouting for Jenny and calling me a slut. And when he saw I was wearing the necklace, he said I’d stolen it. He tried to rip it off my neck but the chain was too good. He yelled that I was a cheap slut, and I wasn’t worthy to wear his grandmother’s necklace, that I was shaming it by having it touch my filthy body. He said it was worth thousands of dollars, and then he said he was sending me back to the foster care people, that the money they gave him wasn’t worth having a whore under his roof, shaming him. The chain nearly strangled me.

  The knowledge flooded into me, not as words, but at the speed of thought. I lifted my hands and covered my ears. That didn’t hold it back.

  Then Jenny hit him. She screamed that she’d given it to me, that it was hers and she had the right to give it to me. She yelled that things were only worth as much as people valued them. Monty was so astonished that he let go of me. Jenny never fought back when he hit her, but she tried to protect me. He turned on her. Then Jenny stepped between me and him, and told me to get out. I ran away up to my room. I thought she was mad at me too. I took off the necklace . . . and downstairs, I could hear them fighting . . .