Under the Cheaters Table

by Etta Faire

  I stared out the window of his truck, watching the still mostly barren trees drift by in a blur of greenish brown. I unzipped my purse, still trying to figure out a way to segue naturally into this.

  After a full minute of awkward silence, Justin finally spoke. “Chez Louie. You’d think someplace with a fancy name like that would be hard to make reservations to. Nope. No problem,” he said, mindlessly picking up the lipstick that had escaped my purse when I was feeling around for the severed foot. His truck was otherwise spotless and he liked to keep it that way. He handed it back to me.

  “Weird,” I replied, finally placing my fingers on the bony thing. “You know what else is weird?”

  He turned his head to the side, tapping a hand along the steering wheel to the Green Day song playing in the background. I pulled out the scruffy foot with the surprisingly cute toe ring and watched as his eyes widened for a second.

  He stopped tapping and his mouth dropped open just enough to see his canine teeth. The car behind us honked and he looked up to notice the light was green.

  “Shelby doesn’t want this to get out, so you are hereby sworn to secrecy,” I said as we moved through the intersection.

  “You can’t do that, Carly. You can’t swear someone to secrecy without their consent, especially not after you tell them the secret.”

  “What does this foot mean?” I asked, ignoring the mansplaining. “And I know you know what it means.”

  He stared at the road ahead of us, so I continued. “Bobby took all their savings from their mattress bank and left this grouse pin in its place.”

  “How much?”

  “Shelby guesses about three thousand.”

  “Shelby should have said something sooner.”

  “I also happen to know this pin is a sign,” I said, watching his face, looking for any trace that he also knew it was a sign. “I don’t know what it’s a sign for, but I was hoping you could tell me all of that.”

  He didn’t flinch or answer, and we sat in silence the rest of the way to the restaurant. As soon as we pulled up to the location the GPS said was our destination, we knew something was wrong.

  The parking lot to Chez Louie was pitch black, not a single light was on. No street lamps. No lit signs or restaurant lights.

  Justin opened his door slowly and looked around. “Wait here,” he said.

  I practically jumped out of the truck and ran to catch up to him. He was trained to think like a cop. I was trained to think like a person who’d watched way too many horror movies in life. And everybody knows the person who stays in the car always gets it first.

  He didn’t seem to mind me walking closely beside him like I was glued to his arm, which was good because there was no other option.

  The sound of our footsteps shuffling along the gravel was just about the only noise in the parking lot as we made our way through a night only slightly darker than that time just before God announced we could have light.

  A cold breeze blew through my curls, sending a shiver up my spine. I tapped my phone’s flashlight app on, but it really didn’t do much except illuminate my feet as I tripped along toward the restaurant.

  Justin pulled the front door open slowly, turning his head this way and that. A nervous male’s voice shouted into the darkness. “Just a few more minutes, folks. We are working to fix the p…p…problem.”

  Just like me, most of the people in the restaurant had their flashlight apps on, casting an eerie glow along the annoyed patrons’ faces. About four of the wait staff scurried around with candles and lighters.

  A small person, probably a woman (my eyes hadn’t adjusted to zero light yet), came rushing toward us. When the figure got close enough, I could tell she was waving her hands around.

  “Uh, I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice cracking a little. “We’re not seating right now. We’re… uh… having some technical problems with the lights. They just shut off about five minutes ago. I’m sure we’ll get them on in a second, if you want to wait.”

  “So they suddenly went off?” Justin asked. I could tell his police training was kicking in. “Nothing else weird?”

  The woman went on. “It’s crazy. The ovens and fans work. We’ve checked the circuit breakers. It just seems to be the lights themselves.”

  Justin turned to me. I could tell by his expression in the light of his phone he wanted to stay to make sure everything was safe. I wanted to stay too, for my own this-has-to-be-paranormally-caused suspicions.

  The woman pointed her flashlight toward the booth by the front door. “You can wait here if you want.”

  We didn’t sit down. We moved into the dining area where the manager was still trying to keep the situation under control, pretty much just repeating the part where he was sorry and sure things would be taken care of soon.

  “Crème brûlée on the house,” he said like he was expecting applause. He didn’t get any.

  I definitely got the sense something paranormal was here, strong and unknown. I could almost feel the intensity vibrating off the floor and the walls like it was oozing up from the basement where the old speakeasy used to be.

  Whatever it was must’ve been the reason Feldman couldn’t haunt at his speakeasy.

  The lights flickered a few times then came back on. Mild applause filled the dining area and the bald, short manager laughed awkwardly. “See? I told you we wouldn’t be eating by candlelight all evening. Enjoy your meal.” He hurried off.

  The hostess from before smiled her relief as soon as the lights came on. She was already holding our menus and showed us to a spot by a window. I counted the patrons, only eight tables were filled in the whole place, but then it was a random Tuesday night.

  The restaurant didn’t look anything like a pharmacy now. The walls were done in a soft golden yellow with dark red wooden trim and wine bottles all along the back wall. The smell of garlic made my stomach rumble.

  “The garlic shrimp was amazing at the seance. This place catered it,” I said to my boyfriend.

  Justin nodded, shifting his gaze up from his menu every once in a while like he expected a gunman to pop out from one of the large potted plants along the back wall.

  “It’s thirty-five bucks,” I said, louder than I expected, when I found the item I loved on the menu. “No wonder this place is empty.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he replied. Justin always paid, because he was the one doing a much better job at adulting in our relationship. He had a career and a great job with benefits and time off. I was the one working minimum wage with student debt. Still, I felt guilty ordering something so extravagant. I searched the menu for something else.

  When the waitress came to get our drink order, I tried to find out if she thought the light problems had been caused by paranormal activity without sounding like a crazy person. “That sure was weird with the lights and everything. Anything else weird happen here? Anything unexplainable or creepy?”

  Justin raised an eyebrow at me.

  “Nope,” she said. “Just the lights.”

  “I heard this place used to be a pharmacy with a speakeasy in the basement.”

  Her smile was wide and superficially white. “That is so interesting. I did not know that. But then, I’m new here”

  “You’re all new here,” I said. “The restaurant just opened a couple months ago, right?”

  “Today is actually my first day,” she said, bouncing away after Justin and I both ordered wine.

  Great. Leave it to me to get the one waitress who wouldn’t be able to help me corroborate Feldman’s story.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a woman in black pants and a white blouse falling face first across the aisle in between tables. Her head smacked the hardwood floor hard while the tray she’d been carrying flew from her hands and crashed on an older man’s shoe.

  Her face grew red. “That’s it!”

  The manager came out from the kitchen, the same little bald man as before. “Emma, can I have a word with yo
u?” he said in a hushed tone.

  Emma was not catching on that his hushed tones were a hint for her to be quieter. “No.” She took her apron off and threw it on the floor next to the tray. “There’s something wrong here. Seriously wrong. I almost broke my neck that time. I quit!” She stormed off, past the gaping mouths of the patrons in the restaurant.

  The manager rushed over to the man whose shoe was full of about a hundred-dollars worth of garlic sauce. “You know I don’t like to complain,” the man began. I realized it was Mayor Bowman, Jackson’s uncle. He was lying. He loved to complain.

  “I’m so sorry,” the manager said, over and over.

  The mayor stretched his leg out, groaning, scowling, and shaking his head, probably to let everyone know this inconvenience was so extreme it should probably warrant a discount or something.

  A thin teenage boy in a similar black-and-white outfit approached our table. “Sorry for the wait,” he said, voice cracking a little. “I’m new. Do you know what you’d like?”

  “Uh, I don’t think we’re your table. We’ve already been helped.”

  “Sorry. Tonight’s my first night.” He smiled awkwardly with a mouth full of braces then hurried off at an abnormally fast pace, looking in all directions as he walked, like something was behind him, like he was being followed.

  “He’s terrified,” Justin said, crossing his arms. The slats of his dark wooden chair creaked under his weight as he shifted to look around. “Is there a particular reason you chose this restaurant? Like a ghostly one?”

  A smile escaped my lips. Maybe I was going to get to investigate things after all.

  I tried to pay attention to the room to see who else was here with us, to see for myself if I felt it was dangerous.

  The manager, who was still pretending to be very concerned with the mayor’s shoe even though three other employees were also cleaning the mess up, looked up and noticed me. He excused himself, tucked his rag into his pocket, and walked over. The mayor turned his head to see who could possibly be more important than his shoe. His face fell when he saw me.

  “Excuse me,” the manager said when he reached our table. “Carly Mae Taylor?”

  “It’s just Carly,” I said. I blinked at the man, recognizing him now. He’d been the manager at the Thriftway when I worked there in college. It had been a while. “Mr. Peters? You’re still managing?”

  He nodded. “I own this place, regrettably.”

  “Regrettably?”

  Justin leaned over, and I remembered I should introduce them, even though they probably already knew each other. Potter Grove was a very small city, after all. “Mr. Peters was my old boss, way back when,” I explained to Justin as they shook hands.

  “I just returned to Potter Grove,” he said. His receding hairline was drenched in sweat, and he dabbed at it with the same rag he’d just used to wipe the mayor’s shoe. His voice quivered as he told me how he lived in Illinois the last eight years while his wife struggled with cancer.

  “She needed special treatments we couldn’t get in this small town.” He twisted the rag in his hand. “She passed away this last fall.”

  I put my hand on his and told him how sorry I was even though I’d never met the woman, never even known he was married, or that he’d moved away. The only other conversations I’d ever had with this man started and ended with him handing me a broom and saying, “A time to lean, a time to clean.”

  “After she died, I used the life insurance money to buy this restaurant, and…” He looked around, stopping himself mid-sentence. “Is it true, you’re a medium now?”

  Justin looked at his phone, pretending not to care about the conversation I was having with my old boss. My boyfriend wasn’t really comfortable talking about my mediumship yet.

  “Yes,” I said. I didn’t mention the part where I took on dead people’s cold cases, working for free because ghosts didn’t really have money, just secrets and memories they could share with me that might help me solve my own mysteries of life. “I heard this place used to have a speakeasy in the basement,” I said, hoping, once again, for confirmation of Feldman’s story.

  “Yes. It’s still pretty much in tact down there. I’ve been wanting to restore it to its glory, but that’s when things started happening…”

  Our waitress brought our wine. “I’ll be back later to get your order,” she said when she noticed the owner talking to us.

  Mr. Peters stopped the waitress. “Whatever they want, it’s on the house.”

  “Garlic shrimp,” I shouted at the poor girl. “Uh, whenever you’re ready to jot that down.”

  Mr. Peters waited until the waitress left to continue. He leaned in and whispered, looking around as he spoke. “I wonder if I might have a word with you privately sometime soon about the situation I’m having. It’s… a paranormal one.”

  “I’m not a Ghostbuster, Mr. Peters,” I whispered back. I laughed. He laughed. Justin downed his wine. “I can only communicate with ghosts. But yes, call me. I definitely want to help you with whatever it is you need. On the house, of course.”

  “Thank you,” he said. His shoulders eased a little. He looked me straight in the eye. “Because every day it gets worse. I think there’s a demon here.”

  And just like that, Feldman’s story checked out enough for me. He couldn’t haunt here because a dark force was already here, preventing him from doing it.

  “Actually, why wait? As soon as we’re done eating dinner,” I said, downing some of my wine. “I’d like to see what you’re talking about.”

  Chapter 5

  Just Your Everyday Demon

  It wasn’t going to be anything like the Exorcist. Or, at least that’s what I told myself because when you think your life is like a horror movie, the Exorcist is not the one you want to be the main character in.

  Plus, according to Jackson, most people erroneously called the darker energies in life demons, poltergeists, or curses. But, in reality, they were just angry ghosts. And I could reason with an angry ghost. I’d done it many times before.

  Still, projectile vomiting was all I could think about as I walked arm in arm with Justin, a very reluctant walker who dragged his feet and rolled his eyes whenever I looked over at him, while we followed Mr. Peters around the side of the building.

  The cold air whipped my cheeks, making my nose run. I sniffed in the smell of garlic and meat sauce from the restaurant’s kitchen.

  Now that the lights were back on, I could see the old pharmacy better. It was no longer the dilapidated building I remembered it being. Whoever fixed it up did a great job. It was now a beautiful, wooden two-story with a balcony on top and a large veranda-like porch on the bottom, more like a Cracker Barrel than an old bootlegging joint in need of an exorcism.

  “I bought this place for the speakeasy. I wanted to have a piece of the town’s history, maybe put a club underneath the restaurant.” Mr. Peters walked fast as he spoke, motioning for us to follow him down a set of very dark stairs that seemed to lead to hell. “Back in the twenties, people would walk around to the back, just like we’re doing now,” Mr. Peters said. “But they’d have to have a password to get in.”

  Justin and I walked slowly down the stairs. “You should put a light in,” Justin said.

  “Tried,” Mr. Peters replied as he jammed the key into the lock like he’d done it a thousand times before and opened the door. A moldy, dank smell wafted over us as soon as the door creaked open along its hinges. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “One-hundred percent,” I lied. It was closer to two percent.

  Mr. Peters flicked on the light switch by the door then hustled across the room to turn on another lamp. It was still very dark. “After one of the original owners was murdered, the basement was used mostly as storage by the other businesses it turned into,” he said. “But the bar is still here. Most the lounge area too, under the cloths.” He motioned around at what looked like covered furniture off in one section. A large, empty, du
sty bar stood pretty much right in front of us, kind of like if Walking Dead combined with Cheers for a weird episode I’d totally watch.

  “So, what makes you think there’s a demon down here?”

  “I don’t think. I know. And there’s at least one. There could be more,” he corrected me, and I cocked my head to the side.

  Justin chuckled by the front door, then went back pretending to scroll on his phone.

  Mr. Peters had always been a reasonable man, a little on edge and OCD-ish with his compulsive cleanliness philosophy, but nothing out of the ordinary. I was starting to worry about him now, though.

  He stared at his feet as he talked, like he was afraid to look around. “The first time I came down here, I saw a dark figure out of the corner of my eye. Then another. Circling me. I couldn’t breathe right. I swear something was choking me. I told myself it was all in my head, until I saw this…” He pointed to the bricks along one of the back walls in the lounge area where an antique wood stove stood.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Get closer.”

  It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the light. I scanned the brick wall and broken trim around the doorway, trying to guess what it was I was looking at. Chances were, I wasn’t going to be impressed or scared. I’d seen far too much over the almost full year I’d owned Gate House.

  Still, I suddenly got the feeling I was being watched, studied almost. It was an all-encompassing uneasiness, and the strong smell of sulphur took over my senses. I looked straight at the spot Mr. Peters told me to. At first I only saw brick. But like one of those “magic eye” pictures, my sight began to focus on a pattern. A message. And a human head. Curly hair, an oval shaped face. 3D almost. I let out a very loud gasp. It was my face.

  Justin stuffed his phone in his pocket and rushed over. “What is it?”

  “Die,” I said, pointing. The words came into focus and I read them aloud as they seemed to hover just above the bricks. “Leave or die.”