by Jamel Cato
She gave me a quizzical stare.
“Remember how surprised you were when you came to open the door, but I was already in the house?”
“Yes.”
“The maid let me in.”
“But we don’t have a maid.”
The frown that followed told me she was finally catching on.
Chapter 5
The first thing I did was get Pat to sign my liability waiver form. Ghosts don’t scare me, but lawsuits do.
The second thing I did was cut the grass. Struggling with that old push mower was a better workout than any hotel gym could offer. I was only halfway through the front lawn when my favorite security guard and a heavyset female companion approached me. Buzz Cut walked right over and stopped my mower with one of his shiny boots.
As he sneered at me the fat woman asked, “May I ask what you think you’re doing?”
I said, “You may.”
“See that, Mrs. Riles,” Buzz Cut said. “I told you he had a smart mouth.”
“I can handle this, Mr. Bullard,” she snapped. Then she turned to me. “I worked in the Charlotte public schools for thirty-five years. You don’t scare me.”
I was impressed with how she had elucidated her entire worldview with just two sentences.
“If that’s the case,” I said, “then you’re probably educated enough to see that I’m just cutting the grass.”
“I can see that. The problem is that the Homeowners Association has an agreement with a professional landscaping company, and we don’t allow illegitimate private contractors.”
“I’m not a private contractor, so your argument is moot. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to finish up before Thanksgiving.”
“Mr. Bullard, call the Police.”
I shrugged.
When that tactic didn’t frighten me, Mrs. Riles said, “Who are you?”
“A man cutting the grass.”
Her cheeks became flush. “Where is Mrs. Hollenbeck? Perhaps I should speak with her.”
“Pat is inside the house tending to Ronnie. You’re welcome to speak with her, but if you’re the person responsible for those threatening letters from the Homeowners Association, I doubt if it will be a pleasant conversation.”
“Correspondence from the Association is for the homeowner, not the hired help.”
“Well I’m not the hired help so it looks like you have no point again. Now, before we spend all day exchanging pleasantries, let me just tell you that I’m willing to go in the house and write down my whole life story if you and Sergeant Pepper here are willing to finish the lawn for me.”
Bullard took a menacing step in my direction, but Mrs. Riles put her arm out like a crossing guard and said, “You seem to know an awful lot about Patricia. Are you the reason Bobby left?”
I smiled so hard my lips cracked. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m actually a colleague of Dr. Berquist's, Pat’s brother. Alan asked me to come over and check on his sister while I was in town for a scientific symposium over at the Triangle.” Sometimes I even shock myself with the high quality of my lies.
“What kind of symposium?” she asked skeptically.
“It’s a conference on the latest applications of Fractal Photon Renumeration.”
There I was, a black man with a Harvard vocabulary standing in the Deep South doing menial labor. Queen Bee and Buzz Cut had no idea what to make of me. After some thought, Mrs. Riles said, “Well, if you’re going to cut the grass, you might as well fix those hedges while you’re at it. This overgrown mess is a black eye on the whole community. Patricia should be ashamed. Let’s go, Mr. Bullard.”
And just like that they were gone. But I knew they would be back.
Chapter 6
After I finished the lawn, Pat gave me a tall glass of fresh lemonade and an apologetic smile. “I see you’ve met Christine.”
“Yeah. You could’ve rescued me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I started to come out, but I didn’t want to have another screaming match with her. It’s not ladylike. What did she say to you?”
I could tell Pat was worried that Ms. Riles had told me something that she didn’t necessarily want me to know. “She asked me if I was the reason Bobby moved out.”
Pat huffed. “That woman! She would stick her fat nose up a possum’s ass if it fit.”
Now there was a phrase you didn’t hear all the time. “Don’t sweat it. I didn’t tell her anything. She really just wanted to know if my landscaping skills were up to par.”
Pat was relieved. “Thank you again for taking care of the grass.”
I was just about to probe for more information about her marriage when Ronnie rolled into the room on his motorized wheelchair.
"Bleed…bleed," he moaned. Drops of blood were falling from his right nostril. Some of them had spattered the lime green golf shirt he was wearing.
Pat swung into action. She materialized a handkerchief out of nowhere like a magician then deftly held it against Ronnie's nostril while simultaneously squeezing the upper portion of his nose between her thumb and forefinger. With her other hand, she gently leaned him forward in his chair, all the while cooing comforting syllables.
This was my first good look at the boy. He had a small, thin body that was twisted into his chair in what looked to be an uncomfortable fashion. Pat said he was sixteen, but he was the size of a ten-year-old. His head was small—too small for his body—and there were extra folds of skin under his slightly bulging eyes. He had sandy brown hair just like Alan. Actually, all of his features resembled Alan’s. I figured the family genes were dominant.
Despite the fragility of his body, Ronnie was dressed like an executive on a golf vacation. As Pat tilted him forward in his chair to keep him from choking on his own blood, I could clearly see J. Lindenberg on the tag of his shirt. There was a Nautica sailboat icon on his khaki shorts and his feet were ensconced in a pair of the John Lobb golf sandals that I had seen in a tattered magazine in the waiting room at my doctor's office.
To look at Ronnie Hollenbeck was to see fortune and misfortune at the same time.
The bleeding stopped after a few minutes and Pat leaned her son back in his wheelchair. His eyes focused on me and, after a moment of confusion, he began excitedly pointing at my shirt and yelling, "Pank! Pank!"
Pat tried to calm him. "Ronnie! No, honey, no." She rubbed his arms. "It's okay, honey. This is Dr. Tiptree. He knows Uncle Alan."
"Pank," he said again softly.
I stepped forward and extended my hand. "Hello, Ronnie. I'm Tree."
He shook my hand and I noticed that his palm had only a single crease.
"Tree," he said amusedly. "Tall tree."
"Not that kind of tree," Pat interjected.
I crouched down so he and I were eye level. "You must be pretty smart," I said.
Ronnie smiled and a bead of drool rolled down his chin.
"Don't patronize him," Pat said, folding her handkerchief inside out and wiping Ronnie's chin. "He’s challenged, but he's not stupid. He knows what a tree is."
I stood. "That's not all he knows."
"What?"
I pointed my index finger into my chest. The t-shirt I had put on to cut the grass had the formula for Max Planck's constant sprawled across it. The shirt had been a gag gift from the Chairman of the Physics Department. He gave one to all the new professors. "Ronnie was letting me know that he recognized this."
Pat looked at me and lightened her disposition. "Alan has the exact same shirt. I thought it looked familiar. He must've told Ronnie what it means."
"Even if he did, Ronnie's recall is still impressive."
"I guess," Pat said while straightening Ronnie's hair with her fingers.
"That's not the only thing that impresses me about Ronnie," I said.
Pat looked at me inquisitively.
"He's the best dressed young golfer I've ever met."
She smoothed away a wrinkle from his shirt. "I don't k
now what it is about golf, but Ronnie likes to go over to the course and watch the men play. He loves it. We go over there practically every day. Bobby had the Club order a special cart so Ronnie could ride to all eighteen holes. They even had his initials printed on the seats. It was nice of them. Anyhow, since he can't play, the least I can do is let him look the part."
Ronnie said, "Course, Mommy! Let's go to course!"
"See what I mean," she said. "It's weird."
In my line of work, weird is a synonym for clue.
I explained to Pat what would happen next. "I'm going to stay here tonight and take some readings. Tomorrow I'll fly back to Philadelphia to have the readings analyzed and get some other things I'll need. On Monday, I'll come back here and get down to business."
Pat seemed displeased. "There's nothing you can do now?"
"I'll know better after tonight. We need to figure out what we're dealing with before we can get rid of it."
"How long will all this take?"
"It depends."
"You can't give me a ballpark figure? A week? A month?"
When I was new at this, I would attempt to answer this question because I believed it would help my clients rest easier. The problem is that the question is unanswerable. I’ve seen it take hours and I’ve seen it take months. Entities call in reinforcements. Extensive travel or deep research may be required. Your opponent might listen in on your initial client meetings and then cunningly go on vacation for the period of time you claimed it would take to get rid of them. And sometimes, the creatures you want to evict really, really want to stay.
All that is why I put my hand on Pat's shoulder and said, "I promise you I will do everything in my power to solve this problem as quickly as possible. I won't rest until you have peace again. When I'm done here, these things that have invaded your home will be gone forever. Once I identify them, I have a device that will eliminate them from every plane of existence."
That last statement was technically a lie, but the monsters who might be listening didn't know it.
Chapter 7
I went out to my car to retrieve some of my equipment.
As I stood behind the open trunk lid of my rental car counting digital tapes, a small girl with pigtails came skipping over. Her body was nearly transparent.
"Hey Mister."
I looked down at the child ghost.
"Hi. What's your name?"
"Tammy."
"Nice to meet you, Tammy."
She stood on her tiptoes to peer into the trunk. "Are these your toys?"
"My ex-wife would say so."
"Why does your wife have an X?"
"Because sometimes we would play hide-and-seek and she couldn't find me no matter how hard she looked."
Tammy considered this for a few seconds. "I bet I could find you."
"Not if I hid inside your head."
She giggled. "You can't fit in my head."
"Sure I can."
"Cannot."
"I can. Close your eyes and count to three and I'll prove it."
She closed her eyes. "One…two...three." When she opened her eyes, I was nowhere to be found.
* * *
Ghost Fact #272: A ghost's eyelids, like the rest of its body, are almost entirely transparent. Closing its eyes does nothing at all. To simulate the effect of closed eyes, a ghost subconsciously shifts itself into another dimension where photons never escape the Sun and everything is black. The funny thing is that most ghosts, like most people, don't understand the physics behind it. For them, it's like magic.
* * *
"Hey! Where'd you go?" Tammy yelled as she twisted her head in every direction.
"I'm here," I said.
"Where?"
She turned left. She turned right.
"Inside your head."
Her eyes grew wide and she slapped her hands to the sides of her skull. "How'd you get in there?"
"That's a secret."
"Can I come in too?"
"There's not enough room for you, me and your brain."
"Oh. Then you come out and I'll go in," she offered logically.
"You can't come inside your own head. It's against the rules."
"Aw," she pouted.
"I'll tell what though," I said, nodding toward the house. "If you promise not to scare Miss Patricia and Ronnie ever again, I'll teach you how to do it before I leave."
Tammy casually levitated into the air and looked over my shoulder at Patricia's house. Fright gripped her tiny face. "I don't scare Ronnie. They scare me."
"Who scares you?"
Tammy disappeared into thin air without another word.
Chapter 8
Back in the house, Pat informed me that she had gotten the guest room ready for me.
"Thanks," I said, "But I'm going to sleep on the couch in the living room if you don't mind."
Apparently, she did mind. "The couch?" she asked with clear distaste.
"Jump on the couch, jump on the couch," Ronnie yelled out cheerfully.
"We do not jump on couches," Pat corrected him. Then she turned back to me. "Why would you sleep on the couch when we have a perfectly fine guest room?"
I had no doubt that Pat’s guest room was fine. It probably had fancy mints, designer sheets and fuzzy slippers.
"In most cases like this, the entities can usually be found where the residents of the house are least likely to be. In the middle of the night, you and Ronnie are least likely to be in the living room. That's why I setup my equipment there. I need to stay nearby to monitor it."
"Hmm," she said. "If that's the case, then maybe you should sleep in the garage. Ronnie and I never go in there."
In case that wasn’t an attempt at sarcasm, I said, "The garage is too cold. Entities like warmth."
Actually, I was the entity who liked warmth. I don't do garages. I have standards.
"What about Bobby's office?" she asked. "We never go in there either."
She really didn't want me sleeping on her couch.
"Yeah, but sometimes Bobby goes in there late at night. And so do you."
"How would you know that?"
“There are two distinct ARE signatures in there, both human.”
Pat’s expression told me I was speaking Greek.
I pulled a black device from my pocket that looked like the love child of a digital camera and a stapler. “Remember when you saw me walking around the house waving this?”
“Yes. You said you were taking some kind of measurements.”
“ARE is shorthand for Aural Residual Energy. Every living thing has an aura. Each time you visit a place you leave a tiny bit of it behind. This device can detect those bits.”
“And this residual thing can tell I’ve been in Bobby’s office?”
“In a way. It can tell the difference between a human aura and a nonhuman aura. It picked up human signatures in there. Since you and he are the only humans that have been in there recently, ergo it was you.”
I didn’t mention that it had also picked up multiple inhuman auras.
“Ronnie goes in there sometimes to get paper from Bobby’s printer so he can draw on it. How do you know it wasn’t him?”
“Children and adults have different types of signatures. Teenagers sometimes give it trouble because their signatures are a mix of both, but an ARE of someone Ronnie’s age is easy to flag.”
Pat digested this information and then asked, “Can it tell where’s Bobby’s been when he comes home late from work?”
“That’s a different kind of detector,” I said. “It’s called cheaters.com”
“That one I’ve heard of,” she said with a wry smile. “They specialize in detecting BWCOTs.”
“B-W-what?”
She waved a hand toward her shapely figure. “Bastards Who Cheat on This.”
I decided I liked Pat, regardless of what she wasn’t telling me.
We came to a compromise about the sleeping arrangements. Pat said I could stay i
n the living room and take my measurements if I agreed to sleep on the rollout bed they had purchased during the years they traveled the country searching for a medical professional who could help Ronnie.
The twin sized contraption was too small for my six-foot-two-inch frame and had a metal bar that dug into the small of my back. But that didn’t stop me from falling fast asleep as soon as all my gear was set up.
Because nighttime is the right time for most supernatural entities, you would think that someone like me would rarely sleep well. You would be wrong. Early in my childhood I learned that there are rules governing how the spiritual world interacts with the physical world. One of those rules is that people in the physical world cannot be disturbed or attacked while they are asleep. Things in the shadows can cause nightmares and make you too afraid to close your eyes, but sleep itself is a safe zone. I don’t know who enforces this rule, but I praise him or her with my snoring every night.
That’s why I was surprised to be awakened by the feeling of tiny pin pricks on my face. I opened my eyes to find that I was looking at the underside of some kind of six-legged arachnid latched on to my head. It was about the size of my hand and had five sets of round eyes perched atop stalks, every one of which was staring down at me.
“What the f—” I started to yell before a long, tongue-like appendage burst from a maw in the creature’s belly and shot into my open mouth, cutting off my speech. It felt like a slimy anaconda was trying to burrow down my throat.
Eyes bulging, I grabbed the creature by the hard shell protecting its upper side and flung it across the room. Tiny chunks of flesh were painfully ripped from my face as five of its six legs separated from my skin.
I screamed and shot upright, my face stinging from what felt like a hundred cigarette burns.
The nightmarish spider turtle crashed into an end table then bounced off the carpet, rolling to a rest on its back. It whined and wiggled its legs helplessly, unable to turn itself over.
My scream caused about a dozen sets of inhuman eyes to turn in my direction. Pat’s living room was filled with a horrific collection of varied monstrosities. Bulbous caterpillar-like creatures the length of golf clubs slithered across the walls and furniture. Jet black canines with enormous hooked fangs sniffed the air. At least five red-skinned, tattoo-decorated humanoids like the one I had seen earlier were scattered about the room. A pair of them seemed to have been discussing a book of photography they had found on Pat’s coffee table when my noise interrupted them.