by Alexie Aaron
“I had a feeling and asked Father Santos to stop by when he could. There was no way I would allow that ghost to take my husband. No way.”
“Why did he choose to try to possess me during the crossing over?” Ted asked.
“I don’t know. He must have come down here, saw the cross, and saw it as an opportunity.”
“But why possess me?”
“He wanted to work on his machines himself. He didn’t want to share. I think that he would have taken you, started up the cycling, and placed us all in the dimension with Roustan Rose. He, like Dr. Rose, would have used us for his own amusement.”
“Why?” Ted asked.
“Because that’s what all maniacal inventors do,” Mia said lamely.
“And how would you know this?” Ted asked with an eyebrow raised.
Mia snorted. “Everyone knows that.”
“I think you’re making it up,” he said, putting his hand to her jaw.
Mia responded by pulling Ted’s head to her and kissing his lips. “I love you. I would have moved heaven and hell to get you back,” Mia said.
Ted released her and stared down at her. “Thank you for coming back to me.”
“Where else would I go?”
“So you’re only here because you’ve got nothing better to do?” Ted questioned.
“That’s not what I meant,” Mia said, backpedaling.
Ted pulled her into his arms and kissed her soundly.
“Whew! What were we talking about?” Mia asked, dizzy.
“Don’t care. I’m going to lock some things down, and then we can join them for dinner. I have a feeling Glenda is buying.”
“We do need to finish this,” Mia said. “But I want to go home.”
“I do too. Be with Brian, lie in our own bed… Wake up to see you beside me.” Ted inspected the machinery.
“It seems like years,” Mia said, watching him knock wood posts into drilled holes in the gears. “What are you doing?”
“I’m locking this down. Thorn has this house ready to cycle. Gravity could start it while we’re gone. Last thing we need is to come back to a house full of monsters.”
“Or no house at all,” Mia said. “I don’t know if Glenda’s deposit is going to cover a missing house.”
The two finished and ran up the stairs. Mia went into the washroom to clean up. She took a look at herself in the mirror. Her eyes had dark circles under them from the fatigue. Her body hurt, but she would heal. The most important thing was to be with her husband and their friends. Mia quickly braided her wild hair. She walked out and found the group splitting up into vehicles. Dieter wanted to ride with Mia and Ted. Murphy declined the invitation. He said he would watch the house.
“I want you to come,” Mia said.
“Mia, sometimes being with all of you is too much for me,” he said honestly. “I’m used to solitude.”
“I just don’t want you to be left out. You’re my friend, and I care.”
Murphy smiled. “I know. I’m going to hang around the neighborhood. Let me see what or who I can scare up.”
Mia nodded. “We’ll be going home soon.”
“I look forward to it.”
“Me too,” Mia said and left him.
Murphy watched Mia climb into Father Santos’s sedan with Ted, Dieter and Glenda. The rest took the van. The house was empty. After he checked out the hot spots, he moved outside and took a turn amongst the snow-laden trees. He used his axe to knock off some heavy accumulations that were hurting the pines. The sky was clearing up, and he could see some stars. He stood there for a moment and oriented himself.
“Nice night,” a female voice said behind him.
He turned to see a woman of thirty years looking back at him. She wore her brown hair back, and her face was pale with a smattering of freckles across her nose. Her dress was old and mended but clean. She carried a portmanteau. She set her bag down and reached out her hand, her brown eyes twinkling. “My name is Rori O’Neill.”
“Stephen Murphy,” he said, taking off his hat before shaking her hand.
“I died runnin’ away from the fire. My remains nurtured that large oak there. It grew out of a fallen tree.”
“I died when a tree fell on me on my property out west.”
“We have somethin’ in common then, Mr. Murphy.”
“Call me Stephen.”
“Stephen, then you must call me Rori. We are, after all, in modern times.”
“It’s hard to get used to,” Murphy confessed.
“I know. Gone are the days of sittin’ by the fire and telling each other tales.”
“Now all sorts of boxes do it for us.”
“Stephen, have you seen the view from the park?”
“No.” Murphy put out his arm and Rori linked hers through his. “Please show me the way.”
Rori giggled. “The electric lights are under inches of snow, and it looks like a fairyland.”
Murphy and Rori walked into the park. True enough, the lights were glowing under the snow, giving the area an enchanted atmosphere.
“When I was a maid in the old house around the corner, I would spend my half-day off here. Sometimes I would bring a picnic lunch.”
“Did you like being in service?” he asked.
“The family I worked for were kind and generous. They weren’t what you would call rich, but they were able to employ a cook, a handyman, me, and my sister. She was a nursery maid.”
“Did she die in the fire?”
“I don’t think so, but I really don’t know what happened to her. The family was away visitin’ relatives back east. They took Karen with them. The fire broke out, and Mrs. Mallory, the cook, instructed me to pack a bag and head out of town. I tarried too long packing my sister’s belongings”
Murphy noticed the heavy bag she carried. “Is that why you carry the portmanteau?”
“I was holdin’ on to it when the smoke overcame me. I don’t remember burnin’. I think I was long dead before then.”
Stephen liked the way Rori’s words dropped off at the end. His grandmother had a similar lilt to her voice.
“Rori, I know a smart lady named Audrey McCarthy. She may be able to find out what happened to your sister.”
Rori’s face lit up. “I would be beholden to her.”
“She wouldn’t want that. Audrey is a special woman.”
“Are you sweet on her, Stephen?”
“No, she’s a friend.”
“Stephen, I feel myself fadin’. Come back when you can. I save my energy for the wee hours when the park is empty.”
“Goodbye, Rori,” Murphy said and watched the woman smile, pick up her bag, and walk off into the night.
Chapter Thirty-one
Glenda looked down the long table at her guests. They were, for the most part, tired. Living day and night in a haunted house had to be hard on the nerves. When she’d originally proposed the idea, Glenda thought that they were dealing with a standard bump in the night type of haunt. This multidimensional house was as amazing as it was horrible. The house had so many secrets: bones in the walls, portals to monster-filled pockets in inner-space, and an inventor who would stop at nothing to see his experiment through to completion. She had seen the ceiling open up and lights, Mike told her were souls, ascend to what she hoped was heaven. She saw Mia taken too.
“This paranormal investigating is really dangerous, isn’t it?” she said.
Burt, who was sitting next to her, heard her softly spoken words and replied, “It can be. Most investigations aren’t. We just seem to get the hard ones.”
“I think that’s because you have the team that is capable of handling it,” Glenda observed.
“Ah, a different take on God only gives you what you can handle,” Burt said.
“Actually,” Cid said, leaning in, “it’s… but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able…”
“I think Mia would cry bullshit on that one,” Mike s
aid.
“Michael Dupree, how dare you swear when we are talking about God,” Glenda scolded. “That’s not the boy I raised.”
Mike turned red.
Mia’s ears picked up when she heard her name, but she didn’t enter the conversation. She chose to eat her salad and listen to the happier subjects that were being discussed on their end of the table. Orion and Ted were regaling her, Audrey, Father Santos, and Dieter with their visit to the Dark Vault.
“You’re telling me that those stone guardians of buildings are real?” Dieter asked.
“I’m telling you that the stone guardians are modeled after these creatures,” Orion cleared up.
Father Santos looked on with amusement. He preferred not to dwell on the many odd creatures of this world. He preferred to keep his eyes heavenward and fight the battles that heaven presented to him. He and Angelo Michaels had been friends for longer than either cared to admit. He understood that Angelo wasn’t human, but since he rarely had to deal with him with wings, it was easier to not think about it. Angelo was part of Santos’s team of professional paranormal investigators. Beverly Martin and Gerald Shem rounded out the group. PEEPs was a young group, but they had been put in some very frightening situations.
“What are you thinking about, Father?” Mia asked.
“You.”
Mia blushed. “Am I in trouble again?” she asked.
“No. Father Alessandro has left you in my hands.”
“You poor man,” Mia said, lifting an eyebrow.
“He liked to discuss you and Murphy. He called you two Damon and Pythias.”
Mia frowned and admitted, “I don’t believe I know their story.”
Santos closed his eyes a moment as if he were trying to recall the story. “Damon and Pythias were the best of friends. They traveled the world together in search of adventure. They were visiting Syracuse when Pythias, who was rather mouthy, made some disparaging remarks about the king of Syracuse. The king did not like that, had Pythias arrested, and pronounced a death sentence upon him. Pythias accepted his fate, but he requested to return to his home in order to settle his affairs and say goodbye to his loved ones. The king, who wasn’t one to be duped, said that he doubted that the earnest Pythias would return, knowing that he would be facing a death sentence. Damon offered to stay in Pythias’s stead. If he did not return, the king could take Damon’s life. Well, the trade was made, and Pythias went home. On the way back, his ship was attacked by pirates. Pythias swam to shore and proceeded to run in order to get back to Syracuse in time. Long story short, he made it just in the nick of time and stopped the king from executing Damon. The king was so impressed by their friendship that he canceled the execution of Pythias and asked the two to stay on and act as his advisors.”
“So this is Murphy and me, why?”
“Your friendship. You risk your life for him, Mia, and he risks his damnation for you. You both would risk all for the other.”
Mia grasped Ted’s hand under the table. “Not all,” she corrected. “But we do have each other’s backs.”
Santos nodded his head. He saw Mia reassure her husband, and he hoped that he hadn’t started any problems with his comment.
Mia spoke up, “Father Alessandro understood that we all are working without a script. There are more than two ways of doing something and dozens of results to any action we take. He taught me to not take myself too seriously. One time, he said, ‘Really, Mia, you’re just a walking feather pillow. Get over yourself.’”
This brought laughter from Ted and Santos. Cid, who had been eavesdropping, smiled.
“So what’s next?” Father Santos asked Ted.
“It’s not my call. Glenda needs to decide how far we go with the house. I can try to move it back to the point where the pocket dimension is permanently closed. I will have to cycle the house and, hopefully, stop the machine at the right point. Or I can try to complete Richard Thorn’s experiment, and the house may actually disappear.”
“All of it?”
“All but the foundations, I hope,” Ted said.
“You don’t know?” Mia asked.
“I have nothing to compare it to but the chronical of the experiment when Thorn first tried this,” Ted admitted.
“Where are you going to be when the cycle is going on?”
“Cid and I will be in the basement.”
Mia’s face filled with fear.
Santos spoke up, “Is it worth risking your and Cid’s life?”
“Mia, tell him what we face if those monsters get out,” Ted requested.
“Cannibalistic, supercharged entities, succubi, incubi, and the shells of their loved ones. There was only one soul left, and Roumain told me the monsters turned on Dr. Rose after we left.”
“How did this go on for so long?” Santos asked.
“My understanding is, the number of innocents taken by Renee was low. Whomever watches over these types of places was satisfied with the loss of three humans every ten years. Now, because of my dispatching Renee to the Dark World where she could hurt no one, we have chaos.”
“One life is too much,” Santos stated and reached across the table and took Mia’s hand. Mia opened her mind and felt the calm that was Paolo Santos fill her. He let go after reading her and sat down again. “Ted, is there not an automated way perhaps?”
“The robot arms!” Cid shouted from the other end of the table. The patrons of the restaurant looked over at the group and shook their heads.
Ted nodded, a big smile forming on his face. “We could do it. I’m sure we could do it.”
Mia felt the stress fall off of her.
“We’re going to have to take some time, maybe a few days, to build the programs and adapt the arms.”
Burt, who’d tuned into the conversation after Cid’s outburst, said, “As long as we set up monitors to watch the house for any activity, I think we can send everybody home until you’ve perfected the machinery.”
“First, Glenda has to make up her mind. House or no house,” Ted said. “It will take too long to program the arms for both scenarios.”
“We’ll talk later. Right now, I see our steaks arriving,” Burt said, “And I’m hungry!”
“That was my line,” Mia said.
~
Murphy was waiting for them beside the back porch of Roustan Rose. He approached Audrey. “May I have a few moments of your time?” he asked.
“Yes,” Audrey said, surprised. “Can we talk inside? I have to admit I didn’t bring an adequate coat to keep me warm outside.”
Murphy nodded. He followed Audrey and Orion in. Orion made motions that he was going to leave the two of them alone, but Murphy asked him to stay too.
“I would like to hire your services as a researcher,” he started and explained about Rori O’Neill.
Audrey jotted down the information and stood there a moment thinking. “It shouldn’t take me too long. If there is any information on Karen O’Neill out there, I’ll find it. But, Stephen, I don’t want you to pay me.”
“I can pay you. Mia has my money in the bank, and you have a wedding to pay for. I insist. Or would you rather have a favor?”
“Gerald Shem has cured me of favors,” Audrey said with a chill. “I will accept the job and invoice you for my time.”
“Thank you, I’ll tell Mia what we have agreed,” Murphy said and disappeared.
“I will never get used to A, seeing Stephen Murphy in the first place, and B, seeing him disappear,” Audrey said to Orion.
“Welcome to my world,” Orion said, hugging his fiancée.
Mia walked into the kitchen. She sat down at the kitchen table and put her feet up. She looked over at the couple and said, “Before you ask, I’m too old to be a flower girl.”
Audrey laughed.
“But not too old to be spanked,” her grandfather warned.
“That kind of punishment went out years ago. Besides, I’ve been a model citizen.”
“You can say that in p
resence of a priest?” Orion asked.
Mia whipped around to look behind her and fell off the chair.
Audrey laughed so hard, she excused herself to run to the bathroom. Orion helped his granddaughter up.
“I thought you would be halfway to Ralph’s by now,” he commented.
“I’m waiting on the result of the big meeting going on behind closed doors. Ted, Mike, Burt, and Glenda are discussing the options. Meanwhile, Cid and Dieter are swapping out the expensive cameras for roving Opticals, with the exception of the hot spots. Jake will be monitoring Roustan Rose remotely. Murphy has volunteered to stay here and watch the house, but he wants a few hours off each evening. Mike will be here at that time.”
“I’m sure Rori O’Neill has something to do with that,” Audrey said.
“About that, give the invoice to me. I’ll write you a check, unless you need some funds upfront?”
“Mia, how do you feel about Rori?”
“Murphy is an excellent judge of character, Audrey. I’m happy he’s found someone to spend time with.”
Orion was reading his granddaughter’s thoughts as she was speaking. Mia was truly happy that Murphy may have found someone with similar interests to converse with. Mia didn’t have a proprietary bone in her body concerning Murphy. Ted, however, was another matter. Mia may have the attention of many beings, but she only craved the attention of the tall genius from Kansas. She wanted nothing more than to make the world safe for her son and her husband.
“You look tired,” Orion said.
“I am,” Mia answered simply. “I feel like I fell out of the sky and hit a house.”
“Would you like me to look at that wing?”
“I’ll have Judy look at it when we’re at home. As soon as I get Dieter settled and Brian tucked in for the night, I’m going to sleep and, hopefully, have entity-free dreams.”
“Mia, you’re going to have to explain that,” Audrey requested.
“Sariel uses my dreaming time for training. He’s been understanding because of this unusual investigation, but I made a commitment.”