Mind Fray

by Alexie Aaron

  “I would have done the same thing. After all, it was just a feeling.”

  “Well, Mary, as Wilford told you, was a feisty old thing. When she was young, she probably was hell-on-wheels, so I believed her when she admitted she wasn’t going to back down until her husband did. They had made the second story when they heard footsteps behind them on the stairs. ‘Did the hobos come back?’ I asked her. She said, ‘No, although, I could have sworn it was the Reverend Wilson.’ She explained he was the hell-fire preacher from her childhood. He caught her stealing apples from his yard and gave her the strap. Her husband later told her that he was certain it was the guard at Ellis Island who slapped him around when he got out of the line he stood in with his parents while they were waiting to be processed. Both Mary and her husband knew that it was impossible for these men to be there, but they opted to nod a greeting as they passed him on the stairs on their way back down. Mary said they didn’t breathe again until they were behind closed doors.”

  “What did you think of her story?” Mike asked.

  “At first it was just a story, and then it became a confession,” Barb told them. “I think I can tell it now. I’m sure by now Mary has met her maker. No harm done, right, dear?” she asked her husband.

  Wilford nodded.

  “Mary said that the hobos continued to use the house and left quite a lot of trash around. The police were there regularly evicting the men, but the house attracted them like… Wait, let me get this right,” Barb nodded her head and recited, “Like bachelors to a peepshow.”

  Mia thought of Murphy and the burlesque house and laughed. “I like that.”

  “The confession?” Mike prompted.

  “Oh yes. After one night when several of the hobos ran out of the house screaming, Mary decided to put an end to it all. She walked over there with an old kerosene lamp, lit it, and tossed it in the window. She walked back into her house and wouldn’t let her husband call the fire department until it was too late to save the place.”

  “Whoa, you mean it was Mary who burned down the house?” Mike asked.

  Barb nodded. “She said it was quite peaceful after that. The township sold the lot to a developer, and he put up those ranch homes.”

  “Mary’s husband had passed on by the time they were finished. Curious, she ventured in when they had an Open House. Mary said she could feel something stirring, so she left after only viewing one of the homes.”

  “I bet it was in the one on the right,” Mia said.

  “What is it?” Barb asked Mia.

  Mia looked at Burt. He gave her a thumbs-up.

  “We’re not sure. But the evidence points to a very strong ghost - we would use the word entity – residing there. It reads your mind and uses your fears against you.”

  “The Viet Cong soldier,” Wilford said.

  Mia nodded. “And Sister Ignatia.”

  “At the same time,” Mike underlined.

  “Yes. We have experts working on how it got in there. Once we gather enough information, we hope to communicate with it and ask it to leave,” Mia assured them.

  “Seems to be rather a nasty entity. I don’t think it’s leaving,” Barb said, running her hands along her goose-pimpled arms.

  “You’re safe in this house,” Mia said. “The house will protect you.”

  “You talk about this place as if it is alive,” Wilford scoffed.

  “It’s just my way. Some houses are good houses. They have experienced nothing but love and care. Other houses haven’t had it so nice. The Native Americans would explain that this home, as everything on this plane of existence, has a Manitou, a spirit. Your house is strong and will not let the entity in. You’re safe here.”

  The Druthers were silent. Mia’s words seemed to reassure them.

  ~

  “Curly has made the circuit of the first floor of the house with no interference. Unfortunately the basement and garage doors are closed. Someone will have to go in there and open them. Quickest route would be through the garage. Max has left us his opener,” Ted reported to Burt when they arrived back to the command center.

  Mia slipped into her chair. Cid brought up the footage, and Mia began to view it. To Mia, it was like watching from a mouse’s point of view. When the machine entered each room, it moved to the middle. As it reformed into a ball, the monitor screen split into four, each quadrant showing a different view and in a different spectrum. Slowly, Curly rotated to capture the whole room in the four spectrums.

  Curly entered the Madisons’ office and repeated the procedure.

  “Stop,” Mia ordered. “Go back slowly… slowly… There!”

  They clustered around Mia, until Ted brought the feed up on the other two monitors.

  “This is the infrared feed,” Ted noted. “What do you see?”

  “Over, sitting in the desk chair, looking at Curly,” she directed, “Do you see him?”

  “I see a definite cold form in the chair,” Burt said. “Move forward slowly,” he requested.

  Curly rotated out of the infrared spectrum, and as the next spectrum camera filmed the same area, Mia gasped, back-wheeling in the chair. “Its eye is three inches from the lens,” she said hoarsely.

  The others could only see the empty chair. Mike put a reassuring hand on the sensitive’s shoulder and whispered, “Remember, this was taken ten minutes ago. It’s not looking at you.”

  Mia nodded, oddly comforted by his words. “Sorry, gentlemen, but I lost my perspective for a moment. Ted, please continue to roll the footage,” she asked meekly.

  Ted glanced over at his wife, who was holding on to Mike’s hand which was on her shoulder. He had to decide then and there that Mia and Mike were not doing anything wrong. Mike was providing comfort to a fellow investigator, and Mia, who seemed so fragile emotionally lately, wasn’t doing anything more than accepting the support. Ted turned back and continued the footage.

  Mia watched as the entity followed Curly on his rounds. The others saw him only when he was being filmed in the infrared spectrum.

  “He’s trying to figure out what Curly is. The being is asking, is this a toy or a threat? Perhaps it’s also thinking that this is something the entity can use to threaten us with,” Mia observed. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but I don’t see this entity as anything we can negotiate with.” Mia looked around her and asked. “Where’s Audrey?”

  “She’s working under the marquee,” Cid informed her. “Don’t worry, Murphy’s with her.”

  “Burt, if you’re ready for a meeting, I’d like to get started. Cid and I have information you need to know before you decided how to go further with this investigation.”

  “You heard the lady,” Burt said. “Let’s get Curly out of there. We’ll meet up in ten minutes. We have to have salt and put other precautions in place before we turn our back on that house.”

  He, Mike and Cid left the trailer. Cid donned his vest before leaving to open the Madisons’ front door to retrieve Curly.

  Mia got up and walked over to the file boxes and began to gather the large, blue kosher salt boxes. She set them on the corner of the table and sighed.

  “What’s the matter, Minnie Mouse?” Ted asked, getting up from the console and walking over to Mia.

  “I’m not sure I’m up to this,” she admitted.

  “Are you tired? Do you want to go home?” he asked, taking her into his arms.

  Mia took a moment to gain strength from Ted before speaking, “It’s just that my emotions are all over the place. One minute, I’m loving everyone, the next, I want to disembowel them. How can I get an accurate reading on that thing in there if I can’t handle my own thoughts and feelings?”

  “I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” Ted admitted. “All I can do is be here for you. I may not be the voice in your ear when you’re battling ghosties, but I am sitting next to you. Talk to me, Mia. Let me know what’s going through your head. Together maybe we can figure this out. Maybe it’s time to bring Dave Hult in?�
��

  “Not here, not now. The entity in there is too much for me. That thing masquerading as Gabor the Great is the most powerful ghost I’ve come across. I’m almost certain it’s a ghost, Ted. Demons don’t have a handle on the complexities of the human mind like this thing does. It would destroy Dave before he got his foot in the door. In his mind, he’d be back fighting the motorcycle gang and trying to save his friend within seconds of that thing latching onto his nightmare.”

  “Bev?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. She’s a stronger sensitive than me, but she’s got her hands full with Sabine right now. This thing, from the information we’ve gathered so far, is an expert at effing around with your mind. Historically, it has been able to take on several minds at once.”

  “Let’s join the others. They all have different perspectives. You don’t have to do this yourself. We PEEPs are a strong bunch of nerds. Together we will either figure this out or, maybe just maybe, we may have to walk away from this investigation.”

  Mia looked up at Ted.

  “We can’t quit.”

  “We can if we have to,” Ted said. “Remember, Mia, the living need to be protected too. Max and his wife may have to abandon the house and have the property quarantined. Right now, they’re safe. I doubt that Mrs. Mullens will go snooping anytime soon. We have to think of the others waiting out there for us too. All too often they depend on you, and, yes, Murphy, to get them out of problems. There comes a time when you may have to say, “Run, Dude!”

  Mia laughed. She followed Ted out of the trailer. He got down first, and she let him gently lift her to ground level. She turned around to head to the conference table that had been erected under the specially constructed open-air tent and stopped in mid step. There, sitting around the table were the Paranormal Entity Exposure Partners, each wearing a tinfoil hat. Mia burst out laughing.

  “What are you laughing at?” Ted said.

  Mia looked back at her husband. He was wearing an admiral’s hat made of tinfoil. “Here’s yours,” he said, producing a tinfoil set of Mouseketeer’s ears from behind his back. “It was Cid’s idea. Audrey made them. We thought you could use a little levity. Our Mia is much too serious these days.”

  Mia grabbed her hat and put it on. She was aware of the stares the curious neighbors were giving them but didn’t care.

  Murphy took in the group and smiled at Mia’s reaction to the stunt they played on her. He too was aware of her present difficulties in keeping her emotions under control. He assumed it was the pregnancy. Although she didn’t really show yet, it didn’t mean that she wasn’t experiencing changes that he had no clue how to deal with. Chasity never bore him a child, and he had no exposure, beyond sitting behind a pregnant neighbor in church, with child-bearing women. He, however, was aware of the worry lines that had increased on Ted’s face. Angelo’s previously confessed fears about her condition worried him. He too had been the victim of some sharp words from Mia when none were needed.

  Burt had exiled her to the trailer which no doubt was done for her and the baby’s benefit. Still, it had to sting to be riding the bench when such a challenging situation had presented itself.

  Murphy wasn’t frightened of ghosts or demons. It seemed like a waste of energy to him. For him, priests and deer-women were to be avoided. The talk of a Darkworld also gave him the willies. But this being who seemed to fester in the very earth around and inside this home didn’t seem to be anything more than a guy standing his ground.

  It was difficult for a ghost to deal with the world of the living. How do you accept that you can no longer have a say in the color someone paints your house, or whether to kick up a fuss when a hundred-year-old tree is felled to put in a parking lot. He didn’t have this trouble with the Martins, but he did with the others who had tried to inhabit his farm. He tried to see it from the entity’s point of view. Perhaps he should have a conversation with this thing. But not before the meeting and telling Mia what he had planned.

  Mia watched Murphy arrive and proceeded to close the salt ring, enclosing him in with the other investigators. She took a moment to search his face. He looked back at her, keeping his face as unresponsive as possible. The stare-off took seconds, but the result was, Mia knew something was up. She angled her head and mouthed, Stay here.

  Burt waited until Mia sat down before starting. “I’d like to have Cid and Mia report on their findings first. Audrey has some follow up information which we all need to hear. Cid…”

  Cid gave them the rundown on Gabor the Great. He passed out a copy of the photo they made of the handbill. “We have to assume this is a twin to the one the couple found in The House of Doom.”

  “So this Gabor the Great was a mentalist,” Mike confirmed.

  “He was, but the man pictured here isn’t Gabor,” Cid said. “Gerald Shem is working on discovering who, if anyone, this is a drawing of. The important thing to note is, the paper is most likely from a hanging tree.”

  Burt winced. He had a big collection of books dealing with the lore of contaminated texts. He never would have imagined that a handbill would be printed on paper from a hanging tree. The paper made from these gruesome trees and edifices were traditionally thought to be the conveyors of hexes. The receivers of the texts would have to physically touch the paper in order to have the curse take hold. “Here’s the problem I have with the handbill: it’s gone, most likely burned in the first fire.”

  “That’s true,” Mia said. “But I think, instead of a curse, the handbill was more of a doorway. You can burn a witch board, but it doesn’t stop what you already let in.”

  “Who or what was let in?” Burt asked.

  “I’m hoping that Audrey or Shem will be able to shed light on this,” Mia confessed. “Here’s a perfect example where research is the most powerful weapon.”

  Audrey shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She wasn’t used to being put on the court as a starter. She was more comfortable riding the bench. Did she think she was capable of the job? Yes. Mia had been her advocate from the very beginning of their meeting. If she was going to trust Mia, then she would also have to trust herself. She looked around at the people sitting at the table. If ever there was a time to show them what she was made of, it was now.

  She cleared her voice. “I have some information that may help us and perhaps should be forwarded to Mr. Shem,” she began. “About twenty or thirty years before Mildred Styles’s novel was published, there was a fierce competition in Europe and Russia in the medium and mentalist world. The strongest were sought by the courts of now defunct kingdoms. Royal houses were in competition with each other for not only land, but to be seen as fashionable. And mystics and mediums were in vogue. A mentalist only had to attract enough attention, and they were in.”

  “Seems to me that a mind reader could take advantage of the situation,” Mike mused.

  “And did. There were a few who were rumored to hold sway over their patriarchs,” Audrey informed them. “Romanians get a bad rep from our monster movies. I’m sure the travelers, gypsies, didn’t help matters, but for the most part these people were connected to the old world. And so, they had access to a lot of lost information. Like…”

  “How to summon spirits,” Burt interjected.

  “Yes. Information that may have been passed down through families, as we would pass on a cookie recipe,” Audrey said wryly. “I had already been on the trail of mediums of that time period when Mia found the handbill. This shortened my search quite a bit. What I found out was, Gabor the Great was from a long line of mystics, mediums and mentalists.”

  “The three M’s,” Mike joked.

  Audrey dismissed his comment and continued, “Gerald Shem’s right. The Gabor listed on the handbill is Anatolie, but the picture is of his cousin Cezar. Cezar was beheaded, some dispute over the unauthorized removal of jewels from a castle he was working in. I found his likeness in a painting, thanks to Jake tapping into a facial recognition program. Here’s the copy. It’s a littl
e dark because the varnish has aged the piece, but I think you can see the resemblance.” Audrey passed the iPad around. “Don’t be afraid, I assure you Apple, although seen as evil in some countries, isn’t made from a hangman’s tree.”

  Mia appreciated the humor but still didn’t handle the iPad. She let Ted show it to her as she kept her hands nervously wringing under the table in her lap. “Have you sent this information to Gerald?” Mia asked.

  “Yes. He was quite pleased. Evidently he had gone off on another track and had reached a dead end.”

  “Woo hoo! One for our team!” Cid said excitedly. He looked at the serious faces of the others and calmed down.

  “How was Cezar beheaded?” Mia asked quietly.

  “I don’t know.”

  Burt raised his hand.

  Mia nodded.

  “In that time, they would have used a large stump of a tree. The head was held down and a sharp sword… Well, you get the picture.”

  “And this stump…” Mia prodded.

  “Could be the source of the paper,” Burt concluded.

  “But who cast the spell to let Cezar in?” Mia asked. “Anatolie or…”

  “Someone who resented Anatolie’s success,” Audrey guessed. “But why?”

  “I may be just a tech, but I do know a thing or two about games,” Ted began. He waited until he had everyone’s attention. “Mystics, Mediums and Mentalists were used for more than entertainment. Countries rose and fell according to information gathered. Perhaps we need to look at the bigger picture. Let’s say Gabor the Great was the toast of MidAmerican theaters. If the Gabor family could gain a hold in certain audience member’s heads, like the politicians of the time then…”

  “Influence could be had,” Cid jumped in. “Whether or not we went to war for instance,” he threw out.

  “Or perhaps where the money of our rich was spent,” Mike offered.