Under the Cheaters Table

by Etta Faire

  I turned to the dark form still floating in front of me. “Yeah, I’m not channeling with you, sorry. Hard pass. I’ve seen The Exorcist, and we are done here. And, not only that, unless you can show yourself in a normal ghostly form, I’m getting the sage.”

  “Try, try, try,” the dark mist said through the humming sound coming off of it as it lightened into some sort of a striped pattern.

  “Maybe if we all think happy thoughts and clap our hands,” Jackson deadpanned by my side.

  The thing balled itself into a swirl of black-and-white stripes, like a dark mist swirling inside a glass ball. But the ball almost took on a pulsating rhythm as it grew larger and smaller again and again.

  I watched Jackson’s reaction, much the same way I watched flight attendants during turbulence, the only sure way to know when to start screaming that we’re all going to die.

  Jackson yawned, and shook his head. “Such theatrics,” he said. Rex, on the other hand, was still tense, barking every once in a while at the dark thing in the middle of our living room.

  After a full minute of pulsating, the thing finally stretched along its ends until it took the shape of a tall, slender human, the stripes fading and turning into the soft pinstripes of an outdated suit.

  The ghost in front of us was almost transparent like it was weak, but something told me not to trust that assessment. His eyes were little slits along a long, horse-like face, his hair light, probably blonde. “Feldman Winehouse,” he said with a vibrating voice.

  “Winehouse. Shelby’s relative,” I said.

  “Quite a showman.” Jackson hovered around the apparition, close but not close enough to cause a reaction. “Or should I say a conman?”

  “I need your help,” the ghost said with almost perfect clarity now, making me wonder if he had been conning us before. “And you need my help, too. Neither one of us has much time.”

  “We have all the time in the world,” Jackson said. “We’re not the ones turning.”

  I could feel the anger in Feldman’s energy now as he glared at my ex-husband. “You think you’re clever, huh? You’re Henry Bowman’s direct descendent, huh? A far cry from your great grandfather. That’s for sure.”

  “So you’re saying you knew my great grandfather?”

  He nodded. “Did business with him.” He looked Jackson up and down. “And you’re no Henry Bowman. It’s not just the fact that you’re smaller and daintier, with a lot of feminine qualities that I’m sure the ladies loved back when you were alive…”

  “The paid ones seemed to like me fine,” Jackson said, making me shake my head. His back was to me, blocking my view of our guest, so I couldn’t see much of what was going on.

  The ghost went on. “But you don’t have Henry’s smarts. Henry Bowman knew when to make a deal.”

  “Get on with your point,” Jackson said. “No one here is trying to be Henry Bowman.”

  “Potter Grove is turning too. You feel it. I know you do. The signs are there.”

  I thought about the tiny foot I had stuffed in my pocket. The bear skins. The glass figurine. He was right. There were signs. A lot of freakin’ signs.

  “What are you getting at?” I asked.

  “You want answers. I’ve got answers. But, I want answers too. Maybe we can help each other out. But I need to cut the line.”

  Jackson whispered to me. “Carly doll, don’t believe him. This man is clearly a liar and a charlatan who doesn’t want me to check him out. I would’ve heard if my great grandfather had done business here in Wisconsin, especially with questionable sorts like this. Henry Bowman simply lived off his wealth, a man of leisure.”

  “Please stop pretending your family wasn’t full of questionable sorts,” I chimed in.

  Jackson’s face fell. “You’re not seriously going to do a channeling with a strong, changing spirit you can’t trust. One that hasn’t been vetted yet.”

  He had a point, and I probably should have listened, but instead I said, “I channeled with you, and you are last on my list of trustworthy apparitions. I know you think I’m the dumb version of you, someone who needs your guidance on everything. But I don’t.”

  “Sounds like you know everything,” Jackson said, disappearing. I knew I’d hurt his feelings, but I didn’t care.

  I turned to Feldman as soon as he left. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying I’m helping you out. I’m only hearing you out. Go on.”

  Feldman’s smile was wide and confident, a man who thought he had the upper hand on the stupid woman in front of him. His voice was even less shaky now. I could understand him perfectly. “I have to say when I heard there was a strong medium in Potter Grove, I pictured an old bag, not a cute, young bird like yourself.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “You should smile when someone compliments you,” he said. “Maybe say ‘thank you.’”

  “And you should stop calling condescending bullshit compliments.” I went to the bookshelf in the living room where I’d begun keeping the weird scrapbooks I’d found around Gate House, and pulled out the one labeled A Crooked Mouse.

  I plopped it on the dining room table and flipped through its pages. “The only reason you’re still here and my ex-husband isn’t is because there have been signs.” As soon as I reached the page about the signs, I pulled the grouse foot out of my pocket.

  I tapped on the photo of the glass figurine of a bird. “I saw this one at Delilah Scott’s house.” Slowly, I moved my finger over to the photo of the bear skins on posts with large empty eye sockets. “Bear skins were recently found staked up on a fence behind the barber shop. Eyeless ones like these. Not bearskin rugs. And now this grouse foot was found at your… relative’s house, the Winehouses. These are hundred-year-old photos that also seem recent. What is going on here?”

  “The relatives you’re talking about are my brother, Terry’s, family. He was probably the one who did me in.”

  “We’ll get to that. What about these signs?”

  “Accept my offer and I’ll show you. But, I can only tell you what I can tell you. Henry came to me with a business proposal right after those bluenose puritans got their way in ’20. He wanted to be a silent partner in what he believed would be a very lucrative business. He was right.”

  “So you owned a speakeasy or did some bootlegging together.”

  He nodded. “It’s where I died. It’s where I should be haunting. But I can’t. Something’s there, a strong dark force, preventing me…” He looked me up and down, suddenly distracted from his rant.

  Raising his eyebrows, he circled me, a dark smoky kind of force. “I know you.” His fading got more color as he circled. I could see the thick waves of his hair now, the deep wrinkles around his eyes. I guessed his age to be around 40. “I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you before.” He shook his head. “You didn’t age. You’re Henry’s nanny.”

  “I’m not Eliza. I just look like her.”

  “You’re not her, huh? Could’ve fooled me. Not much of a nanny, though. Never did see you watch any kids.” He cocked his head to the side. “Did Henry keep that photograph of you? I mean, her.”

  My heart raced. He knew the picture. The one I’d found in one of the scrapbooks where Eliza was naked and dancing on Henry Bowman’s desk, in front of Henry and two other men.

  I played dumb and shrugged.

  He moved so he was right up next to me. “Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  He was trying to intimidate me, and it was working, but I couldn’t show it. I kept my breathing normal, my heart rate slow.

  He was a chilling dark force of cold vibrations that seemed to be able to stand still in one spot and circle me all at the same time. I took a wide stance with my hands on my hips, focusing only on his face. I couldn’t let him know I was afraid.

  He went on. “There’s only one photograph with that lady in it, as far as I know, a very specific photo indeed,” he said in a way that made me fold my arms over my bulky sw
eater. “A dancing picture taken on the day the bears and birds were supposed to sign a treaty. Instead of signing, we were all cursed.”

  I hadn’t known anything about a treaty. I was already getting information. Hee-hee. My heart raced.

  But something still wasn’t right. I had that photo etched in my memory. The faces of those men. Every hair on their heads, every angle of their brows. I’d already identified one of them as James Hind, the father of the suffragette who didn’t really commit suicide. He’d mentioned something about a curse when he’d heard a gunshot coming from his daughter’s room.

  I turned my head to the side. This guy didn’t look like the other man, though. The unidentified, younger one in the picture, although the age would’ve been about right because I’d placed the photo around 1901 to 1906. Feldman was lying.

  “I only know about that photo,” Feldman continued. “Because I was the one who took it.”

  “I accept,” I said, barely able to get the words out fast enough. A channeling from that day, that moment, was very enticing. I calmed myself down. “I mean, maybe. It does sound like you might be able to tell us a lot. And we need answers. But I also need to check things out to make sure you’re telling me the truth and that you can be trusted.”

  I knew by Jackson’s disappearance I was probably going to be doing my own vetting this time.

  “Perfect. Allow me to give you some facts,” he said. The man had a crooked smile, and it slowly formed across his horse-long cheeks. He quickly morphed into an almost completely lifelike form now. I could count the pin stripes along his suit if I wanted to, smell the bootleg liquor wafting through his lapels, the remnants of a speakeasy.

  He was by far the strongest ghost I’d ever encountered, aside from Mrs. Harpton and Ronald, who might not even be ghosts.

  His teeth were a golden shade of yellow and he liked to show them off when he talked, but it was the kind of smile I wasn’t entirely sure was intended to be friendly.

  “My death,” he began. “Took place during a snowed-in weekend at my speakeasy in Landover, Wisconsin in 1923. Otherwise known as the basement of the pharmacy on Ninth and Main. It was a private poker game, only my best friends were there. One of them slit my throat, that much I know. I want you to figure out which one.”

  Chapter 3

  Changing Entities

  A humungous purple, glittery unicorn hangs above the entrance to the Purple Pony. And every time I pass under it, I picture it crapping minimum wage on me like sad fairy dust.

  I had a master’s degree, yet I was stocking beaded necklaces and incense for barely any money.

  At least the inside of the hippie store wasn’t nearly as garish and colorful as the outside. It was surprisingly understated and modern with nice oriental rugs and potted plants all over. It was kind of like the owner herself, Rosalie Cooper, a large woman who looked every bit the part of the peace-loving hippie on the outside with her graying dreadlocks and shapeless dresses adorned with moons. But on the inside, she was a tough businessperson with a no-nonsense attitude.

  Not today, though. When I entered the Purple Pony the next afternoon for work, it sounded like someone was snacking on rocks. Rosalie sat over the counter with a bag of Corn Nuts, and I instantly knew something was wrong.

  My boss had been doing really well with her New Year’s resolution to “make healthier food choices,” which was what she was calling the diet she was on because she’d read that labeling a diet a diet triggered your body to produce more fat cells in a stubborn retaliation of some sort.

  I pretended not to notice the Corn Nuts. “Jackson’s being a control freak again,” I said.

  “I told you to sage the crap out of that bastard a long time ago,” she replied, barely looking up. She wiped Corn Nut dust from her gray dress.

  I had been right. Something was wrong. The woman only cussed when she was upset, and “bastard” was a big one for her.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded along with the crunching. “What did Jackson do this time?” she asked.

  I told her all about Feldman Winehouse, including the fact he was a “turning ghost” and how Jackson had pretty much forbidden me to do a channeling with the guy, which meant, of course, I was probably going to do one for sure.

  “Controlling jerks are right once a year. Listen to him,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Nobody channels with a demon, and stays human for long,” she said nonchalantly, waddling into the back room. I knew what was coming next. She was going to come back with one of her “big books on everything.”

  I was right. When she returned, she was carrying a large faded black leather book with a tattered spine that read The Encyclopedia of Paranormal Activity. “Found this beauty in my garage last year.”

  She plopped it on the counter and opened it, licking the Corn-Nut coating from her fingertips as she did.

  “I’m not even sure the ghost is telling the truth,” I said. “He may just have said he was turning so I’d let him cut the client line.”

  Classic rock streamed from a speaker overhead. Shopping music, even though no one was shopping to it. The upscale hippie store was empty again today. Tourist season wouldn’t really start for another month or two.

  She tucked her thick gray dreadlocks up into a bun. “I heard about a man who channeled with a dark energy for just one hour. One hour. He was never the same. They had to mush his food up for him and spoon feed him…”

  “You’re making that up.”

  She grabbed her reading glasses from their usual spot by the cash register and thumbed through her book. “Listen to this. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but it can change form. Human apparitions are no exception. Harmless human energy can change to a deadly dark force for a number of reasons, but anger appears to be the underlying cause.” She ran a finger along the page as she read.

  “Feldman Winehouse is a very angry spirit,” I said. “But then, so is Jackson. And so was the suffragette…”

  “Most ghosts are,” she replied. “But when the anger becomes all consuming, it changes them.”

  She continued reading. “And according to the book, the known reasons for this dark-force change include: when entities are pushed out of a place they feel entitled to haunt by a stronger, darker ghost. If they have bottled-up hatred for living beings. Or if a supernatural entity passes, such as a shapeshifter, griffon, or omni when he or she was wronged or hurt in life.”

  She paused to chuckle. “Shapeshifter. Griffon. Whatever.”

  I bit my lip. I’d never told anyone about the shapeshifters I’d seen around Potter Grove, like the one I was sleeping with, but they were definitely anything but laughable, especially not the sleeping-with part, which was amazing. I couldn’t mention that to Rosalie, though. She believed in ghosts, but laughed at shapeshifters.

  “What’s an omni?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “According to legend, it’s a shifter that can take on more than one form.” She went on reading from the book. “It looks like after the spirit has successfully turned, the darker energy is commonly referred to as a poltergeist, demon, or, in some cases, a curse.”

  I gulped as it hit me. “Last night, Feldman told me he wasn’t able to haunt at the speakeasy he used to own here in town. Maybe that’s why he’s changing.”

  “Speakeasy? I didn’t know we had one of those.”

  “Yeah, me either. Apparently, it was in the basement of the pharmacy on the corner of Ninth and Main.”

  Her face drained of color. “Interesting,” she said, grabbing another handful of Corn Nuts.

  “You’ve heard of it?”

  “Barely. I think it’s that new restaurant now. Chez something or rather. Sounds expensive and phony.”

  “Chez Louie,” I repeated. “We know that place. Well, I mean not personally, but they catered the last seance. Remember?”

  “They did, didn’t they,” she said. She shoveled more Corn
Nuts into her mouth and crunched away like she was punishing her teeth.

  I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and texted Justin that I was in the mood for French cuisine. We were already planning to go out to dinner after I finished my shift. Might as well check out the old pharmacy, see what was going on there that would make it so Feldman couldn’t haunt the place.

  Justin texted back: Did you just use the word cuisine? I’m pretty sure we don’t have that in Landover.

  My fingers couldn’t move fast enough. “Haha. Just make a reservation at Chez Louie, the new place.”

  I looked back at Rosalie. She was pointing at a passage in the book, her finger shaking. “Here’s the part I was looking for,” she said, swallowing a Corn Nut so quickly she coughed it back up again. “Contact, especially channelings or seances, with suspected poltergeists, demons, or curses should not be sought out due to the strength of the entity’s paranormal energy and its evil nature.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means don’t do it, you fool. They’re cheaters and liars, desperately looking for any opportunity to take over a human’s body because they will no longer have even a ghostly one soon.”

  Chapter 4

  Background Checks

  The whole way over to Chez Louie, I tried to think of a good time to tell Justin about the tiny severed foot I now had in my purse.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if it was some sort of ominous shapeshifter sign.

  “You look beautiful,” he said when I hopped into his truck after work. Just a few minutes before, I’d changed into his favorite black dress in one of the hippie shop’s dressing rooms while quickly finger sweeping my curls into a bun to show off my neck because one time he mentioned he liked my collar bone. Collar bone? Who knew I needed to show that one off more often?

  “You look good too,” I replied because the man could not look bad if he tried. Smoldering brown eyes with just a touch of vulnerability. Scruffy dark hair — tousled enough to look sexy without trying too hard.