by Etta Faire
“What the hell else is there?”
“Darker energy. People sometimes mistakenly call them demons or poltergeists.”
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ends until it took the shape of a tall, slender human, the stripes fading and turning into the soft pinstripes of an outdated suit.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 sweater. “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.”
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More Books
By Etta Faire
Must Love Murder: A Sketchy Matchmaker Mystery, book one
P.S. I Poisoned You: A Sketchy Matchmaker Mystery, book two
Rockin’ Around the Killing Spree: A Sketchy Matchmaker Mystery, book three
Over My Dead Husband’s Body: A Ghosts of Landover Mystery, book one
After the Suffragette’s Suicide: A Ghosts of Landover Mystery, book two
Behind the Boater’s Cover-Up: A Ghosts of Landover Mystery, book three