by Gary Jonas
“See? It’s not that difficult. Just a matter of focus. Shall I have Isis scratch you again?”
“Uh, no.”
Lakesha looked past me, her expression changing to puzzlement. She stood, but before she could move around the table, a kid pushed through the curtain of beads. Oddly, the beads didn’t move.
The boy looked to be around eight years old. He wore a yellow shirt, brown shorts, and flip flops, and his finger was digging for gold in his right nostril.
“That your son?” I asked.
“This is Demetrius, and he stays with his aunt, who happens to be a friend.”
Demetrius moved close to me, kept mining while looking from Lakesha to me. He looked to be the saddest kid I’d ever seen.
“What seems to be the problem, little man?” I asked, turning in my chair.
He shifted his sad eyes toward me, pulled his finger from his nose and wiped a booger on my shirt.
“What the hell, kid?” I stared at the slimy snot streaking my shoulder. “This is a Red Hot Chili Peppers tour T-shirt.”
“It still is,” Lakesha said. “Demetrius, how did you get here?”
“Walked,” he said. His voice sounded hollow. “Auntie is gone.”
Lakesha looked confused. “Where?” she asked. “How?”
“Three people busted into the house and took her. Can you bring her back? I’m scared.”
“A home invasion and abduction?” I asked. “Sounds like a job for the police.”
“The police can’t help,” Lakesha said.
“Of course they can. And if they can’t, they can call in the FBI or something.”
Lakesha rolled her eyes. “You’re half-baked, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know cops can handle abductions.”
“Not this kind. Get up. Their house is a block over. We’re going to go check it out.”
“You want to mess up a crime scene?” I pulled out my phone again. “Let’s just call nine-one-one.”
She snatched the phone from my hand and tossed it on the floor behind her.
I gave her a confused look.
“No cops. Get up.”
“Do I look like law enforcement to you?” I asked as I walked over to retrieve my phone. Isis growled at me when I leaned down.
“You look like someone the cops busted for possession with intent. Let’s go. Demetrius needs our help.”
“What he needs is a bath, a change of clothes, and some manners. And I need some tissue to wipe the snot off my shirt.”
She sighed. “Demetrius, sweetie, what year were you born?”
“Nineteen seventy-two.”
I looked at the kid as I shoved my phone into the pocket of my jeans. “Oh, come on. He can’t be more than ten.”
“Take a closer look at him.”
“And get another booger wiped on me? I don’t think so.”
“Demetrius, sweetie, can you turn around for me?” Lakesha asked.
He nodded and turned. From the middle of his head down to his lower back was a massive gash. I’ll spare you the details, but I will say I’m glad I didn’t eat anything before going to Lakesha’s place.
“Holy shit,” I said, leaning away.
“His father sliced him open with a chainsaw, then killed his mama. Son of a bitch sliced off her head and took it with him. His Aunt Regina found the bodies. She killed herself a week later. Couldn’t live without her sister and nephew. Of course, her nephew was still there.”
“So the kid’s a ghost?”
“You’re a quick one, aren’t you?”.
“So I have a ghost booger on my shirt?”
“He’s frightened, so he’s manifesting.”
“That doesn’t make the booger any more attractive.”
“Your father put me in charge of you, Brett. He wants you to help people and it’s time you earned some of that money he sends you each month.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to help the living?”
“The dead need help, too, boy.”
“Wait a second. You said his aunt is dead too, right?”
Lakesha nodded.
“But you just said she was abducted.”
She nodded again.
“How do you abduct a ghost?”
“With powerful magic. Still think the cops are suited for this?”
“Maybe a ghost cop.”
“Do you know any ghost cops?”
“No.”
“Then that suggestion isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”
“I see what you did there. But I’m not a ghost hunter.”
“You are now,” she said and pointed to the snot on my shirt. “And you’ve got a head start on the job because you already got slimed.”
CHAPTER TWO
The house Regina and Demetrius haunted stood in the center of the next block. It looked abandoned. It also looked creepy as hell. The houses on either side had fresh paint, while Demetrius’s place looked battered with broken hurricane shutters hanging off the windows, cracked glass, peeling sideboards, and a bent gutter. It was a little too easy to see a face on the house with the windows as eyes, the gutter swooping down to add anger, and the door as an open mouth screaming for blood.
“They filmed a horror movie here once,” Demetrius said as he walked up the broken cement walkway leading to the building.
Somehow that didn’t surprise me.
I tried not to look at the gash in the kid’s back. He still looked solid, and as he jumped onto the porch, his flip flops slapped against the concrete. I tossed a look Lakesha’s way, but she gazed down the street at a couple of kids throwing a softball in the front yard a few houses down. An old woman sat in a rocking chair holding a glass of fresh lemonade.
“You go on inside, Brat,” she said. “I’m going to talk to the neighbors.”
“Brett,” I said.
“Go on,” she said and moved toward the street.
Demetrius waited for me on the porch. “Movie crew was here for a month,” he said.
“Anyone famous in it?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Ain’t seen a movie since I died, so I can’t say for sure.” He walked through the door into the house.
It was like watching a movie when he stepped right through the solid wood.
“You don’t see that every day,” I said and reached for the doorknob. It broke off in my hand. “Oops.” The doorjamb was splintered, so I pushed on it and the door swung open.
Sunlight drew a rectangle into the dark house. Demetrius stood in the front room. The inside stank of mold. The floor was covered in dust except for boot prints moving in and out of the house. I studied the prints, but I couldn’t tell how many people might have crossed the floor. I went with three. I based that on different-sized prints, and on the fact that Demetrius had said there were three people. He might be dead, but I figured he could still count.
I stepped into the house, expecting it to be hot, but the air inside felt so cold I got an immediate chill. The room felt like it was pressing in on me, and the thought that I’d just been swallowed by the house amplified the shiver.
An old dust-covered chair sat rotting in the corner. A broken table leaned on the floor, two legs missing. Shards of glass littered the center of the room. Squatters and meth-heads had probably spent some time inside, too. Graffiti covered the walls. Some clown painted a bunch of cuss words on one wall, and another featured a giant dick with a line of piss raining down on the floorboards. Classy. On another wall someone spray-painted in blue, Julie and David forever. But the forever was crossed out, and in black paint beneath it was scrawled: guess I was wrong.
A cardboard sign leaned in one corner. It read, Why lie? I need a beer! Dark spots stained the floor under the dust. They were rust colored, so they could have been blood. Then again, it could have been spray paint. I wasn’t a detective.
“Is this where you spend your time, Demetrius?” I asked.
He shook his head and poi
nted into the depths of the house. “I stay in my room. Want to see?”
Judging by the state of the front room, I wasn’t too keen on seeing a dead kid’s bedroom.
“Where was your aunt when the men broke in?” I asked.
“With me in my room, like always. I’ll race you,” he said and darted down the hallway to the bedrooms.
I walked over, glanced into the kitchen, which was beat to hell, and featured a grouping of butcher knives stabbed into one wall. I didn’t want to go in there, so I followed Demetrius down the hall. There were three bedrooms and a small bathroom. The first bedroom was closed off. I shoved the door open and peeked inside. A tree limb poked in through the broken window, spearing the wall. The room smelled like piss. With the mold and urine smells, I couldn’t decide whether to breathe through my nose or my mouth.
Smell it or taste it? Neither option was good.
“Come on, Brat!” Demetrius said, sticking his head through the door.
“Brett,” I said.
“That’s not what Auntie Lakesha said.”
“Is Lakesha your real aunt?” I asked.
He shrugged and disappeared.
I pushed his bedroom door open.
The ceiling had a massive hole in it, and a hangman’s noose hung from a rafter.
“Auntie Regina hanged herself right here.” He spoke the words the same way he might have said, sometimes I get chocolate chip cookies.
“Wouldn’t the cops have taken that down?”
“They did, but she does it again every night.” Sometimes I get a glass of milk to go with those cookies.
The rest of the room was crowded with pieces of wood, a cracked mirror, a rusted bed frame, and an open toy box with a painting of Marvel super heroes. I recognized some of them. The closet door stood open and ratty clothes still hung from wire hangers. A dried-up pile of crap sat on a few water-damaged comic books. I didn’t look closely enough at the pile to tell if it was human or animal. Truth be told, I didn’t want to know.
I reached out to touch the noose, but my hand passed through it. It looked solid, but it was ghostly.
“That’s Auntie Regina’s. You shouldn’t touch it.”
“You a comic book fan?” I asked.
He smiled and nodded.
“Who are your favorite heroes?”
He pointed at the toy box. “They’re right there. Spider-Man, Power Man, Iron Fist, Black Panther, and Brother Voodoo.”
“Between the movies and the TV shows, I know most of them, but who’s Brother Voodoo?”
“Jericho Drumm. He helped the Werewolf fight some bad guys. It was so cool. He had his brother Daniel’s ghost inside him and could send it out to possess people.”
“Sounds wild,” I said.
He nodded. “My uncle used to read his old comics to me. He was cool. He was married to my Auntie Lakesha.”
“Yeah? What was his name?”
“Uncle Paul.”
“I have an Uncle Paul too. What happened to your Uncle Paul?”
Demetrius shrugged.
“All right, can you tell me what happened when the folks came and took your Aunt Regina?”
He pointed at the noose. “Auntie was getting ready to hang herself again, but someone broke into the house. Normally nothing will stop her, but this time something pulled her backward through the walls into the parlor, and a man and woman held her with beams of light while another man pulled her inside him like Brother Voodoo would do with Daniel, only Auntie Regina didn’t come back out.”
“Did any of these people cut themselves?” I asked.
He gave me a confused look.
“Did any of them draw blood? It’s a way to work magic.”
“They caught her in beams from big flashlights and the other guy held up a thin black box and just pulled her inside. That’s it. No blood. Then they just walked out.”
“The guy pulled her into the phone or into himself?”
The kid tilted his head at me. “We ain’t got a phone here.”
“The thin black box,” I said.
He shrugged.
“They didn’t see you?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did they say anything?”
“One of them said, ‘There she is, get her,’ or something like that.”
Which meant they couldn’t see her at first? Did the flashlights have anything to do with that?
“Brat?” Lakesha called.
I didn’t answer.
“You in here? Demetrius?”
Demetrius walked through the wall.
“There you are,” Lakesha said.
“Brat’s in my room.”
I shook my head. If she had the damn ghost kid doing that, too, it was going to get on my last nerve.
Footsteps sounded down the hall and Lakesha stepped into the room. “Learn anything?” she asked.
“I learned that you’re a bad influence on ghost kids.”
“About Regina’s abduction.”
“You see this?” I asked pointing at the noose.
“Uh-huh.”
“Ghost chick hangs herself every night.”
“Ghosts often get stuck in a loop. What else?”
“She was your sister?” I asked.
“No.”
“Sister-in-law?”
“I don’t want to talk about that.” She turned to Demetrius. “Sweetie, can you tell me what you told Brat?”
“Brett,” I said through clenched teeth.
Demetrius told her about the men and woman.
When he was done, I said, “I saw one of those ghost hunter shows where they put a flashlight in the middle of a room and a ghost turned it on and off.”
She blew air out of her nose. “Don’t believe everything you see on TV.”
“So ghosts can’t do that?”
“Didn’t say they can’t,” she said. “But why would they bother?”
“So they could communicate?”
“You just spent ten minutes talking to Demetrius. You think ghosts would rather speak or do Morse code with a flashlight?”
“Well, if someone can’t talk to them…”
She shook her head. “They’d talk to someone who could.”
“Maybe they want to be on TV.”
“Doing what? Stupid Ghost Tricks?”
“Letterman is off the air,” I said.
“Will you save Auntie Regina?” Demetrius asked. “I don’t want to stay here alone.”
“Kid, you haunt this place,” I said. “What is there to be afraid of?”
He stared at me. “Evil spirits, shadow people, demons, diableros, and the men who took Auntie Regina.”
Lakesha raised an eyebrow. “Just because someone’s dead, doesn’t mean there’s nothing to fear.”
“I guess not. Can we get out of here?”
“Why? Are you creeped out?”
“I’m tired of breathing in the mold and piss fumes.”
“Probably not the healthiest thing we can do.”
“Exactly.”
“Demetrius?” Lakesha said. “Can you stay here and let me know if Auntie Regina comes back tonight at eleven?”
He nodded.
“Why eleven?” I asked.
“Because that’s what time she killed herself. Her spirit should be pulled back here at that hour.”
“And if it’s not?”
“Let’s just hope she shows up.”
“So she was taken last night? And the kid didn’t come to see you until this afternoon?”
“Time is sometimes off for ghosts. Of all people, you should understand that one.”
“That’s right, take your shots.”
“Come on, Brat, we have work to do between now and eleven.”
“Brett,” I said.
“That’s what I said.”
CHAPTER THREE
On the walk back to Something’s Brewing, Lakesha told me what little she’d learned from the neighbors. Two white g
uys and a girl pulled up in a beat-up car of some kind and went into the house. They left inside of ten minutes.
When we got back to the store, Isis was standing guard on the glass countertop. Lakesha flipped the window sign to Open and motioned for me to head to the backroom.
As I walked by Isis, the cat growled.
I started to turn toward the cat, but Lakesha shoved me forward. “Don’t tease the cat,” she said.
“I wasn’t. She growled at me.”
“She doesn’t like you.”
“What did I do?”
“You brought bad mojo into the store.”
“Really?” I said as I pushed through the beads.
“Your father pays me to deal with you. Isis doesn’t understand the concept of paying rent, so she’s not so forgiving.”
I sat at the table, while Lakesha pushed the tapestry aside to reveal a door. She went into a hidden room. A moment later, she returned with a bottle of Diet Coke. She twisted off the cap as she sat across from me.
“Not going to even offer me anything?”
“Hadn’t planned on it.”
“I’m thirsty. It’s hot outside.”
“It’s August. What do you expect?” She nodded toward the Tarot cards. “Cut the deck.”
The backs featured a Rosicrucian cross on a checkered background with a caduceus or dot inside each box. Aleister Crowley’s Thoth deck.
“You don’t want to talk about your sister-in-law?”
“Cut the deck.”
“So you were married to a guy named Paul?” I asked as I cut the deck. The card I picked showed a weird-ass plant with eight purple flowers representing the Eight of Disks.
Lakesha studied the card. “Prudence,” she said. “Intelligence in material matters.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it would be prudent not to ask me about my life.”
“Right.”
“Shuffle the deck.”
I did as she said.
“Cut,” she said. “This time, think of Regina.”
“I don’t know her.”
“You know of her.”
“All right.”
“Now cut.”
I did. Eight blue sticks crossed each other while two thick, metal rods pressed them down. The rods looked nasty – sharp spears with twisted Keebler Elf-looking dudes at the top. Ten of Wands.