Toe to Toe

by Deborah LeBlanc

  “Well, that’s not hard to figure out,” Buggy said. “Guy’s jealous. If he thought you were taking sides with Jack, it probably pissed him off.”

  “Pissed off I can understand,” Nonie said, “but what if he shows up and starts acting stupid because he’s mad? You know, throwing things around, moving through different rooms as a shadow?”

  Buggy shrugged. “All we can do is document what we see. I don’t think the producer is going to care what or who it came from. As long as we get activity on camera, we’re golden.”

  “When he saw how upset I was, he faded out. I think he’s still in the house. I just don’t know where.”

  Buggy gave her a stern look. “If he jumps out of some hidey-hole and scares me, I’ll bash in what little brains he’s got left.”

  “No brain bashing,” Nonie said. “Besides, no matter what you threw at him, it’d just go straight through his body. He’s a ghost, remember?”

  “All this talk about ghosts is giving me the willies,” Buggy said with a shiver. “Let’s go back downstairs and see what room we’ve been assigned to.”

  “Wait, there’s worse.”

  Buggy gulped.

  “Remember back at the Richardson house? The recorder and camera upstairs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I forgot to give you signals like we talked about at the funeral home. I blabbered all up in those recorders talking to Helen.”

  “Shit.”

  “I know, right? Now Jack’s got the recorder. He’s going to hear everything I ran my mouth about.”

  “Double shit.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  Nonie sighed. “Lie my ass off I guess. I don’t know.”

  Buggy blew out a breath. “We’d better get downstairs before someone comes looking for us.”

  With a nod, Nonie headed down the short set of steps from the first landing. She’d barely made it to the second step when something pushed her hard from behind, and she tumbled to the floor.

  “Are you all right?” Buggy asked, hovering over her.

  Groaning, Nonie got to her feet. “Yeah, but why did you push me like that?”

  Buggy’s face turned ashen. “I never touched you, Nonie. I was following one step above you when I suddenly saw you go ass over teakettle, onto the floor. Thank heaven that was a short landing!”

  It was then Nonie heard a giggle, a deep-throated giggle with malice laced through it.

  “Who’s here?” Nonie asked, holding onto the banister. “Guy?”

  No response.

  “Why would he push you that way?” Buggy said. “You could’ve broken a hand or a leg.”

  “Because I don’t think it was Guy. Someone else is here.”

  “Can you see them?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Buggy said. “Meet up with the group.”

  Shaken, Nonie simply nodded her head and headed towards the voices coming from the room with the hand-hewn wall and toilet.

  Shaundelle gave both a double-take when they walked into the room. “Where’ve y’all been? And why do both of your faces look so white it looks like you’ve put flour on them?”

  Not wanting to scare Shaundelle even before they started, Nonie came up with a bold-faced lie. “We went to the first landing to check it out, and when we were heading back down, I tripped and fell down the last two steps.”

  “Shouldn’t have been up there alone,” Tatman said.

  “Yeah, that’s what you get for wondering around on your own like that,” Shaundelle said. “You’re lucky you didn’t break something.”

  “Are you okay?” Jack asked Nonie.

  “A little sore, but I’ll survive.”

  As Jack and Tatman unrolled wires and set up the monitor on top of the piano, Jack glanced at Nonie. “See anything while you were up there?”

  “Nothing,” Nonie said, opting not to mention the shove. And she hadn’t lied to him. She hadn’t seen anything. “But we only went up to the first landing of the staircase. None of the rooms.”

  Jack continued to study her face for a moment longer as if knowing something had happened, but allowing her to reveal it in her own time.

  “So how are we breaking this up down here?” Nonie asked in an attempt to shake her concentration away from his lips. His full, luscious lips. Just staring at them started a fire burning in her belly.

  “Tatman and I are going to get my small generator out of the van since there’s no power here. The cameras operate on batteries, but not the monitor. After that, Shaundelle and Tatman will take the room that looked like it was once used as a dining room. I’ll take the other two rooms and you and Buggy will take the kitchen.”

  At the sound of “kitchen” Nonie felt like a block of ice slid down her spine. Of all the rooms they had to investigate down here, for some reason, the kitchen was the last one she wanted.

  “How about we switch,” Nonie said to Shaundelle. “Buggy and I will take the dining room and you and Tatman the kitchen.”

  Shaundelle’s eyes narrowed. “Is there something in that kitchen we should know about?”

  “I don’t know,” Nonie said. “We haven’t been in there yet.”

  Shaundelle pursed her lips and looked over at Tatman who shook his head.

  “Nah,” Shaundelle said. “We’ll stick with the dining room. More room to run the hell out of there if we do catch something.”

  “Why don’t you want the kitchen?” Buggy asked. “Seemed pretty innocuous to me. I mean, it is, right?”

  Not wanting to set off any alarms, Nonie shrugged. “Just not fond of rat turds everywhere.” But something was bothering her. She hadn’t seen any spirits when they’d gone into the kitchen, but her gut told her otherwise. Sure, one of them could have been Guy, and she hoped it was. But something else lurked in the dark corners of that room. And it was angry and disgruntled that they were there, and planned to get rid of them as quickly as possible. She hadn’t seen it yet, but knew it would reveal itself once she and Buggy were alone in the room.

  Jack handed Nonie the full spectrum camera and a digital recorder. This time he gave Buggy the Rem Pod and an IR camera.

  As he handed out more equipment to Shaundelle and Tatman, he reminded them about the plan. “Lights on for just a few seconds so you can get a handle on what’s in the room and won’t trip over anything. Then lights off. You’ll be able to see the room through the camera. The colors will be different, though.”

  “Where’s them walkie things?” Shaundelle asked. “I want to be able to get hold of somebody if anything weird goes down.”

  “Was just about to hand them out,” Jack said, then gave everyone a walkie-talkie. “Only use them if there’s a problem. No chitchat about who’ll be doing what next Saturday night, okay?”

  “Gotcha,” Shaundelle said. “But like me and Tatman can talk between each other, right?”

  “Sure,” Jack said. “Just keep the chatter about the case and keep it to a minimum. If you don’t, you might miss something.”

  “Like what?” Shaundelle asked, bug-eyed.

  ‘Voices, banging sounds, whispers. Things like that.”

  “Crap on a saltine—you mean we could hear whispering and banging?” Shaundelle said.

  “I’m saying just in case. You don’t want to be talking a blue streak and miss out on anything relevant that could be recorded. Now all of you stay put for a bit, Tatman and I have two more cameras to set up down here and get the generator, then we’ll be ready to go live.”

  As soon as the guys left to finish up the camera work, Shaundelle asked Nonie, “How come you wanted to switch rooms earlier?”

  Nonie shrugged and stuck to her story. “Too many rat turds on the counter. Creeps me out.”

  “So you’d rather I stick my hand in the turds than you?”

  “No, no,” Nonie protested. “I-I kind of freak out with stuff like that, and you’r
e a stronger woman than I am.”

  “Hmm,” Shaundelle said, then went over to examine the piano.

  As she clunked on the keys that were so far out of tune she might as well have been playing a ukulele, Buggy asked Nonie, “We’re going to be in deep shit in there, aren’t we?”

  “Where?”

  “The kitchen.”

  “I don’t know about deep shit, but I think it’s going to get messy.”

  “So why don’t we just back out now?”

  “Five hundred bucks, that’s why. It won’t be anything we can’t handle, but the cash I can definitely handle.”

  “You’ll give me a thumbs-up if anything shows, and I can’t see it, right?

  “You have my word.”

  Buggy studied her face for a moment. “For some reason that gives me absolutely no comfort.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The one thing Guy Skinard did best when he was bored was snoop, which was exactly what he was doing while, Mr. Know-It-All Jack, was giving everyone instructions downstairs. Since Nonie had been assigned the kitchen area, Guy figured it best if he check it out before she went inside. That way, if anything out of the ordinary was running about, he could let her know about it—and hopefully get back in her good graces.

  Dodging his way from room to room so Nonie wouldn’t spot him, Guy finally made it back downstairs and into the kitchen—and wished he hadn’t.

  There, standing near a fireplace where he assumed most of the cooking had been done years ago, stood a large black woman with a thick neck. She looked to be about thirty-five-years-old, was taller than he was by an inch and outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds. She wore a faded pink and white kerchief wrapped around her head, a brown dress that looked like it had been made out of burlap, and stood barefoot. She held a flat iron skillet in her right hand.

  “What you think you doin’ here in my kitchen, white boy? I sure as hell didn’t give you no invite.” She slapped the flat of the skillet against the palm of her hand as if to illustrate the sound it would make pinging against his head. Her eyes were squinty, her lips huge, and her nostrils flared from cheek to cheek. He could see through the woman to the wall directly behind her. “I think it be about time you gets to steppin’.”

  Guy held up his hands as if in surrender. “We were given permission to come here,” he said. “Sort of.”

  “What you mean sorta?” She took a step toward him, then stopped and cocked her head to one side. “You playin’ games with me or are you for real? I can see the cabinets on the other side of you. You one of us?”

  “If you mean dead, yeah,” Guy said. “Look, my girlfriend and some of her friends were told by the state that no one lived here and hadn’t for over ten years. They said as long as they didn’t take anything from the house—not that there’s much to take—they could do an investigation.”

  “What kinda investigation?”

  “They’re looking for ghosts.”

  The woman let out a loud belly laugh. “Your girlfriend got one up her nose and don’t even know it?”

  “She knows.”

  The woman took a step closer, her expression morphing from anger to curiosity. “How she know?”

  “She sees me.”

  “She see all the dead?”

  “Not all of them, but some. More than me if that’s what you’re asking.”

  The woman slapped the flat iron against her palm again. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Guy Skinard. What’s yours?”

  “Tiana Lewis. How long it’s been for you?”

  “How long has what been?”

  “Since you been dead, idiot. What you think I mean?”

  “A little over nine years.”

  Tiana twirled the handle of the skillet in her hand. “Me? Not sure. A hundred, hundred twenty-five years I suppose.”

  “You don’t look old enough to have been here that long.”

  “Boy, don’t you know nothin’?” Whens you die, you stay stuck at the age you died. I was fifty-two back in the day.”

  “So why are you still here?” Guy asked. “Didn’t the light come for you when you died? Didn’t you see it?”

  “Oh, I seen lights alright, but they was torchlights. White men, carrying torches. Hung me and my man out on that big oak tree out back. My eleven-year-old boy, too.”

  Guy felt his jaw drop. “I’m. . . I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  Tiana nodded slightly and slapped the skillet hard against her palm again.

  “What happened afterward?” Guy asked quietly. “Didn’t you see another kind of light? A bright, welcoming one?”

  She pursed her lips and lifted her chin. “Yeah, I seen it. My man and boy went right to it.”

  “What color was that light?”

  “Blue. Why you ask? Don’t you know the color? Ain’t you seen yours?”

  “Yes, but mine was purple.”

  “Hmm,” Tiana said. “Purple. That be my favorite color.”

  “Why was yours blue and mine purple you think?” Guy asked. “I hear other lights are white. Why the color difference?”

  “I look like Gawd to you?” Tiana said. “I don’t know the why part. You can ask Him when you decide to move on your ownself. That’s all Gawd’s doin’.”

  “Why didn’t you follow your light?” Guy asked.

  “And leave them men here to get away with what they did? Not me. Huh-uh. Somebody gotta make them pay.”

  “But you’ve been here so long. Don’t you think they’d all be dead by now?”

  A cold, steely look crossed Tiana’s face. “Maybe. Maybe not. That’s why I here. Waitin’.”

  “For what?”

  Before Tiana could answer, Guy heard voices in the hallway that led to the kitchen. They belonged to Nonie and Buggy.

  Tiana’s lips turned into a hard, straight line and her eyes narrowed. “Who’s that?” she demanded. “Them people you say wanna find a ghost?”

  Guy nodded. “A couple of them. Two women. I recognize their voices. One’s my girlfriend, the other is a close friend of hers.”

  Scowling, Tiana said, “This close friend got the eye her, too?”

  “The eye?”

  “You not too bright for a white boy, huh? The eye, boy. Can she see you like your lady friend can see you?”

  “Oh,” Guy said, feeling stupid for not catching on the first time. “No, she can’t see me. But she’s going to see that skillet you’ve got floating around in midair by itself. You might want to put that down for now.”

  Tiana twirled the skillet handle in her hand again. “This here ain’t goin’ nowhere ‘cept where it’s at.”

  “If they see it, they’ll take pictures and video it moving around in thin air. You want that?”

  “What’s that a video?”

  Guy shifted nervously from foot to foot as he heard Nonie and Buggy drawing closer to the kitchen. “It’s sort of like a camera only it takes constant pictures of things and people as they move around.”

  “A camera?”

  Blowing out an exasperated breath, Guy mimed holding a camera and made clicking sounds as he pressed his finger against an imaginary button. Then he mimed holding a camcorder and made whirring sounds, trying to mimic the sounds it made while recording.

  Tiana frowned, looking utterly confused.

  Hearing Nonie’s voice ever closer he held up his hands and said to Tiana, “Look, they’re going to be holding boxes that have lights on them.”

  “They bes’ not be bringing no boxes with lights up in here,” Tiana declared, holding up the skillet like a tennis racket.

  “No, no!” Guy said. “The boxes can’t hurt you. Nobody here is going to hurt you.”

  “You gots that right!”

  Suddenly a loud gasp then a short scream came from the kitchen entryway. Guy glanced over his shoulder. It was Nonie and Buggy, both standing with mouths agape, staring in Tiana’s direction at the skillet twirling in midair.

 
“Everything all right back there?” a man’s voice called from somewhere else in the house. By the tone of it, Guy guessed it to be Jack.

  “Uh-no,” Buggy wheezed.

  Nonie poked her with an elbow, her eyes flitting between Guy and Tiana, then called out. “Fine. Everything’s fine.”

  Evidently her assurance wasn’t required because Tatman abruptly popped his head around the kitchen entryway. “We’ve got power, so I’m gonna set up a stationary . . . fuck a duck!”

  Guy grimaced, figuring Tatman’s response to seeing an iron skillet swinging in midair was about as appropriate as it got.

  The camera Tatman held in his right hand shook as he aimed it at the skillet. He shouted at Nonie and Buggy, “Use your cameras for damn’s sake! Turn on the Rem Pod, the recorder, hell y’all do something!”

  Buggy fumbled with the Rem Pod, and when she finally managed to turn it on, the circular puck let out a shrill squeal that remained constant, and its lights began to flash like Christmas tree ornaments gone awry.

  As Nonie scrambled to get the digital recorder working Tatman, breathing hard and uttering “Damn . . . damn . . .” every couple of seconds tried holding his shaking camera straight while he yelled over his shoulder, “Jack, ya need to get in here now!”

  Guy couldn’t help but grin. He’d tried to get Tiana to lose the skillet, mostly for Nonie’s sake. But now, maybe the skillet wasn’t such a bad idea. If Tatman was this shaken up by what he saw, for all Guy knew, Jack might witness it and go running for the hills. He could only hope that would be the case. He’d love nothing better than for Nonie to witness Mr. Hunk turn into Mr. Chicken.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Nonie blew out a frustrated breath. She had the digital recorder running in one hand and was trying to hold the full spectrum camera steady in the other. She clearly saw the large black woman swinging the skillet as easily as she saw Guy standing not far from her. With Tatman in the room, however, she couldn’t directly address Guy or the woman. All she could do was stand there and look as astonished as everyone else. She heard footsteps rushing towards the kitchen.

  “Are you two getting this?” Tatman asked breathlessly. “I mean—I mean . . . holy crap!”