Ghost Fire (The Ghost Files Book 3)

by Eve Paludan

  I half-believed what I was saying, but I wanted to make brownie points with Ellen, too, with some enthusiasm for the room redecoration. If it was up to me, I just would have bought the wedge pillows for adult fun time and called it a shopping day but…she smiled at me. Yay.

  Diego beamed. “Thank you! Thank you so much!” he said. “You two are so sweet together.” His eyes got a little misty.

  “What’s wrong, Diego?” Ellen asked, her hand in mine now.

  A single tear fell from his eye and he dashed it away. “Sorry. It’s just that my wife died of colon cancer last year. She saw me come home every night from teaching at the university and she stayed up late with me while I painted, sculpted, wove, sewed or cast bronze or welded iron. She and I had all of these great creative brainstorms. She was my muse and my cheerleader. She was my light and my energy. She died before I could get the gallery together. All of the years we were together, I just made things and mostly stored them and she didn’t get to see all of this unfold in a gallery setting. It doesn’t look like much when it’s all shoved into rented storage lockers. And we had no children, so I am left with only my art, much of which she inspired.”

  Ellen reached over with her free hand and squeezed his hand. “That’s so sweet, Diego. You must know that she’s here with you in spirit.”

  “Can you see her?” Diego asked as he handed me the invoice to check over. “Like in the old days when you saw dead people during our fieldwork?”

  Ellen nodded. “I know she’s here but I can’t see her yet. I think she’s hiding, Diego. I feel her.” Ellen closed her eyes for a moment and opened them. “Oh, she’s a little shy, so she went out of the room. And she’s not alone here. There are others.”

  “I thought there might be more than one of them,” Diego said. “I feel a prickling at the back of my neck, many nights, as I stayed late here in the gallery, getting things ready for the grand opening next week. I never felt alone here, but sometimes, it was not a comfortable feeling, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” Ellen said, and I saw her momentarily shudder, as if the Dark Master was still a fresh memory. I touched her lightly on the back to comfort her, and inadvertently startled her.

  “It’s me, Ellen,” I whispered apologetically. “Calm down.”

  “Of course it’s you!” she said too brightly. “Who else would it be?”

  Hmm. The name “Dark Master” popped into my head and then I was the one who was startled. I reminded myself that we killed him. I think.

  I calculated that Diego’s invoice was added correctly. As I handed over my American Express card with that invoice, which I signed, I tried to put it out of my mind that we had just spent almost what our first house had cost, and that the money that Ellen and I had squirreled away was, we’d said, for a heated swimming pool, but what I secretly thought was for a 1968 Shelby GT500 convertible, gone. That dream would be gone at the end of the month when I paid the American Express bill for this redecorating project.

  “We’ll have to make room for these things. Out with the old. In with the new,” Ellen said excitedly. I gulped, realizing that Ellen would want to ditch the decades-old vinyl recliner chair that I loved so much. It had been my dad’s. Maybe I would hide it from Ellen in the garage. I wanted to keep it.

  Ellen caught something out of the corner of her eye. She gave a sudden cry and I pulled out and used my newest electronic gizmo to detect a large shadow moving over her.

  “We’ve got a ghost, of some sort,” I said, in as calm of a voice as I could manage under the circumstances. “Big shadow!”

  The thing was huge and disappeared into the brick wall just after knocking over a sculpture and breaking it. Diego put a hand over his heart at the breakage. A distinct smoke smell was left behind and it did smell like burnt matches, not really like the Santa Ana wind.

  Suddenly, our invoice in Diego’s hands burst into flames. He cried out in surprise, letting go of a few of the choicer words in Spanish as he dropped the invoice into a garbage can. I got a water bottle out of my man purse, flipped open the sports top and squeezed the water forcefully over the small fire, squirting until the flames were out inside the metal garbage can.

  “I assume that this means I don’t have to pay for all of that stuff we just bought from you,” I joked.

  “It’s already in the computer. That was just the paper copy,” Diego replied just as snappily.

  “Of course,” I said. “I have to tell you, that was pretty weird with the whole spontaneous combustion thing after that thing shot through here,” I said to Diego. “Did you see that big shadow passing over my wife and you?”

  Diego nodded. “What was it?”

  Shudders went down my spine. “I don’t know yet. But it’s suddenly super hot in here.” I shook it off.

  “It gets weirder, Monty.”

  “How so?”

  “That’s not the first time I’ve seen that shadow thing. I’ve got one week until the grand opening during Art Walk week in Venice, and random items keep bursting into flames or breaking. This is my lifework of art in this building. I am beside myself with anxiety.” He looked pointedly at Ellen, who had her lips pressed together tightly, like she does when she is concentrating really hard.

  “What do you make of this?” I asked my wife. Her eyes were on Diego, and on something or someone behind him in the tiny office behind the display area of his art gallery.

  “Oh boy,” she said.

  “Oh boy, what?” I asked.

  “Not really the expression, ‘oh boy.’ I saw an actual boy, dressed in jockey silks. He was fully manifested from head to toe but not quite separated from the big shadow that you saw on the new gadget. They were joined by a thin flame of red and black that was like a rope between them. Definitely malicious on the part of the big shadow. The boy? He was just about thirteen or so. Slender. Pale skin. Scared looking. Just before he passed into the wall after the shadow, he made a scared sound, like a rabbit shrieking. I almost screamed myself but my tongue froze when I heard it. It was shocking and high pitched. He seems to be connected to the shadow but disembodied from it, except tied to it by the thread of flame.”

  “What does it mean, that there are two entities stuck together? One a young teen and the other, apparently, from the look on your face, the freaking monster from the id.”

  Ellen made an exasperated sound and my heart went out to her. “I don’t know yet, Monty. I’ve never seen two dissimilar entities sort of stuck together. The big shadow, well, I don’t even know what species it is, or was. And the jockey silks are throwing me. They look vintage. So I am wondering what that is about. I have to think about this and see the rest of the building.”

  “So,” I said to Diego, trying not to make it an accusation and failing to be subtle, “This invitation to us was more than just showing off your art before the First Friday gallery opening.”

  “Ah, yes.” Diego cleared his throat. “I must confess, Ellen…Monty…one of the real reasons I invited you here before the grand opening is that I was hoping you could tell me what’s going on with the crazy spontaneous combustion fires in the building. I really need your help. I’m scared to death. What’s happening here?”

  “Aha!” Ellen let go of my hand. She walked to the wall where she’d been staring intently and put her palm against the brick. “It’s pretty warm,” she said. “Hot, in fact!”

  She nodded at my messenger bag and I rooted in my man purse again for a digital infrared surface thermometer and the EMF detector.

  “We brought all of our equipment with us,” she said. “Do you mind if Monty sets it up? Just to see what’s going on?”

  “I was hoping you would offer. So, what do you expect to find here?” he asked.

  She turned to her former professor with a serious expression on her face and clasped her hands together in thought. “Diego, I’m still putting it together in my head. I’m pretty sure that there’s a poltergeist of some sort in the art gallery. And under hi
s malicious control, the ghost of a boy or a young man.”

  “What kind of vibes did you get from the boy?” I asked.

  Ellen sighed. “He doesn’t communicate normally.”

  “Like a ghost or like a child?” I asked.

  “Neither. I think he is mute or was when he was alive. And his brain waves are jumbled up so badly that I haven’t connected with him yet, to send a benevolent message.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

  “I think, but I am not sure…no, this is hard to discern, but I think he is or was autistic.”

  “Is the big shadow thing a bully, then?”

  Ellen nodded. “Oh yeah. He’s old and evil. I think so anyway.”

  “Great,” I said. “That’s all the poor boy needs is a malevolent ancient spirit riding his ass.”

  “What is it, or was it?”

  “I’ll tell you soon,” Ellen said. “I am still processing that there is a nonhuman entity in here.”

  Diego frowned. “What do we do?”

  I took the jeweler’s box out of my pocket. “The first thing we do is put Ellen’s chalcedony necklace back on to protect her from the evil entities in this building.” I fastened the clasp around her neck. Now she wore two necklaces, one from Diego and one from me.

  “What does that pendant do?” Diego asked.

  “It’s a chalcedony stone and it is like a flak jacket against bad ghosts. There’s no way she’s taking it off again. Not over my dead body.”

  Chapter Five

  Ellen suddenly said she had a significant headache.

  She is not a whiner or a complainer, ever, so this really worried me that she said something. It must have been a doozie of a headache. Diego went to the mini-kitchen in the back of his gallery to get her a chilled San Pellegrino mineral water and a couple of Tylenols. I sat Ellen down on the burgundy velvet chaise that we did not buy. And then I stood next to her and stroked her hair, looking into her eyes.

  “Sweetheart,” I said. “When we went to New Orleans on that too-short-lived vacation, I realized then that you were a magnet for victims of catastrophes, usually somewhat infamously historical ones. This connection today is no exception.”

  She nodded “It’s true. They are attracted to me like dust bunnies jumping on a Swiffer mop.”

  “I’m worried about you, that such a malevolent entity exposure is having an effect on your mental and physical health. What can I do to help? Should we go back to the hotel?”

  “No, no. I’m fine, Monty. I’ve been connecting with ghosts all of my life.”

  “Bad ones, like this?” I asked.

  She shook her head slowly.

  “Okay, then. Because this is the first time you have gotten a headache from a ghost, we need to nip this in the bud. Which one was it who gave you the headache, the boy in the jockey silks or the big scary shadow monster?”

  “You’re a quick one to connect my headache to the ghosts. It’s the boy or he might be older but he’s tiny if he is a man. He doesn’t have normal thought patterns. We all have brain waves and they transmit on certain frequency levels. He’s miswired in some way and I cannot see what brought him to this place where he is completely taken over by this…this horrible thing that controls him. The shadow monster from the id, as you call it.”

  “Which one is setting the fires?”

  I saw a glimmer of a tear in her eye, just the edge of pathos, that terrible sadness that she usually kept veiled behind her usually joyful demeanor. “The jockey is doing it but the big shadow thing is making him do it, I’m pretty sure. It’s not a human thing and maybe it never was.”

  I dared to ask, “Is it a demon?”

  Ellen didn’t reply.

  That scared me. I stroked her cheek gently. It was as if her compassion for ghosts lurked just skin-deep, waiting for the next tragic ghost to pull that sadness to a surface level, so that she could solve their problems. “I don’t know how you do this, Ellen.”

  “Do what?”

  “Cope with the magnitude of the pain and conflict you see in spirits and ghosts, and you empathize deeply with them to see how to help them. And then try to send them on their way to the other side. Did you really want to do this job?”

  “I was born for this, Monty. I can’t run away because it’s too hard. It’s not negotiable. I was given this talent to help people. It would be nothing short of a spiritual crime to walk away from this because I am scared or frustrated. In some way, I believe that I am meant to cross paths with all that I have, including Diego. Not only are they in my destiny. You are, too.”

  “You’re a wonder, Ellen Drew.”

  She smiled. “So are you, Monty Drew.” She smiled and stood up, wrapping her arms around my neck. I thought she was going to cry but she didn’t. She leaned into me and pressed her heart against mine, at the right height because of the high heels she wore.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. My body was tingling and this was a new sensation for me, one of a definite sizzle of electricity flowing between Ellen and me.

  “Drawing on your strength that springs from your love for me. It has great powers of protection and goodness to fight everything evil, more than a chalcedony stone or a silver necklace or any salt sprinkled in a circle. You fill me with the light of love. It is the ultimate power passed from one human being and directly to another. I feel vibrations of the deep and enduring love, compassion and passion that you have for me. The more you love me and look out for my safety and welfare, the safer I truly am.”

  “I do all that? Mr. Skeptical?”

  “Yes! You create thoughts about me that possess an electrical field that protect me. You think something about me and you manifest it. We do this all the time for each other. It is a symbiotic relationship. A partnership in more than wedding rings and a mortgage. It is supernatural in itself, Monty. We are joined by our own spiritual threads and they are golden and stretch. Whenever one of us is separated from the other, the golden cord holds us together. Our love is a living thing. We are not just connected. We are bound by something greater than we are.”

  My heart soared. “Oh my God,” I said, blown away by her. “Happy anniversary, Ellen.”

  She smiled at me just as Diego came back with her mineral water and Tylenols.

  After Ellen took the capsules, we sat around and shot the breeze for maybe 20 minutes to wait for her headache to subside before the tour of the co-op gallery continued.

  “Are you really better?” Diego asked, his face very concerned. I was still trying to get used to another man really looking at my wife with that kind of compassion. I pushed my jealousy down. Ellen was mine and she always would be.

  “I am really better,” Ellen said. “We can continue on our tour of the building.”

  As we walked to the elevator, I pointed to the stairs and Diego nodded as we took them down to the second floor.

  “Do poltergeists set things on fire?” Diego asked. “I mean, what exactly is a poltergeist, outside of the famous movie where little Drew Barrymore gets sucked into that other dimension of her house?”

  Ellen answered, “Poltergeists are disembodied spirits, like kids acting out by throwing a bad temper tantrum. They might break things, move things, set things on fire, like that invoice in your hand, and sometimes, they even try to hurt you.”

  Diego frowned and it was weird because part of his face didn’t even move. He’d said he’d had work done on his face and I thought: Botox.

  “Hurt us? Have you encountered a poltergeist before?” Diego asked.

  “Well, sort of,” I said. “Since Ellen and I do paranormal investigations for a living, we have encountered entities that were on the more-scary side of ghosts and spirits. More often than not, people call us to get rid of unfriendly ghosts. No one has ever thrown us a ‘Casper the friendly ghost’ situation.”

  Ellen added, “But don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this. We usually crack a case within forty-eight hours.”

 
; Diego nodded. “That’s a relief because we have just a little more time than that before the art gallery grand opening. Over the years and then recently, I knew what Ellen was doing with her God-given talents. She told me more about your business in an email after you two got back from New Orleans,” Diego said. “I never even imagined I was going to be a real client for your services when I invited you and Ellen out here. I mean, of course I knew that there was something here, but I figured it was my imagination fueled by my wife’s death or some hysteria on the part of my art co-op tenants downstairs.”

  “That happens more often than you’d think,” Ellen said, her big blue eyes wide and innocent. “Someone invites us somewhere because they feel something spooky is present, and blammo, the ghosts literally start coming out of the woodwork. In a big, big way.”

  “Why do you think that is, Ellen?” I interjected, because it did seem like that always happened to us.

  “There is a simple explanation,” Ellen said, looking at me and then at Diego as we paused at the bottom of the second-floor landing. “There is a law of attraction in the universe—if you think of something over and over, that the repeated visualizations in your thoughts will manifest what you are thinking of…”

  “The Secret,” Diego said. “I recently saw that film. The extended version was quite intriguing. Are you saying that stuff is true?”

  Ellen nodded. “Exactly. Because I am an empathic sensitive and a psychic, I am broadcasting thousands of my supernatural thoughts per day, on a frequency that ghosts definitely notice. And they are attracted to me. When they come to me, it is usually with problems to solve, or sometimes other agendas.” She exchanged a quick fearful glance with me. “Sometimes, they are bent on malice, but not usually.”