Shake, Rattle And Haunt

by Terri Grimes

  “What’s the problem, sweetie? Animal, vegetable, mineral,

  or—” Her voice took on a conspiratorial tone, “man? Or in particular, a handsome hunk of a man driving a custom white van?”

  “I told you, Sam is just a friend. And anyway, nothing is wrong,” I lied. “Can’t I sit and chat with my favorite cousin?”

  “Sure you can.” She stepped to the side on the stairwell, motioning me to go ahead of her. “Lead the way, cuz.”

  ~ * ~

  A slight April breeze made the porch swing sway with a gentle motion, causing the ice to clink in our beverages. I toyed with the slice of lemon perched on the rim of my glass, dipping it in the tea as I tried to think of a way to broach the subject.

  “If you dunk that lemon slice one more time, it’s going to be lemonade, not iced tea.”

  I stopped in mid dunk, fixing my eyes on Lori’s. I could see concern in her expression.

  “Why don’t you stop butchering that poor lemon and tell me what is really going on with you?” She patted me on the arm.

  “I was just wondering if you’ve ever noticed any cold spots in the house?”

  “Cold spots?” Her brow knitted together. “How so?”

  “Cold air in the upstairs hallway when you’re not expecting it,” I clarified.

  “You mean when we were growing up or now?”

  “Um, well, anytime I suppose.” I looked at her, playing with my lemon slice again.

  Lori leaned over me, grabbed the glass of tea out of my hand and set it safely on the porch railing while at the same time pitching my lemon slice in the flowerbed with an obvious practiced ease. She smirked. “Lemons are good for flowers, right?”

  I shook my head and held my hands up with a shrug. “We’ll find out, won’t we? Back to my question though. Have you?”

  “It’s an old house, Gertie. Old houses are drafty.”

  Her tone sounded clipped to me, a little too clipped. I raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m not talking drafty hallways in the winter, Lori. I’m talking about a sudden blast of icy cold air in the middle of a hot, humid summer day. The kind of draft that makes the tiny hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.”

  She clasped her hand around mine and held it. “How long have you been sensing a presence in the house, Gertie?”

  “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

  Lori chuckled. “I know you’re crazy, but that’s why I love you.” Her amusement faded. “How long, Gertie?”

  “A couple of months. Just since the earthquake.”

  “Oh, yeah, I heard about that earthquake, even in California. Wasn’t there some controversy about whether it was 5.6 or 5.2 on the Richter scale?”

  A tiny laugh slipped between my lips. “It’s the Midwest. There’s always a controversy. You know that, you grew up here.”

  “True. It wouldn’t be the Midwest if there wasn’t some sort of controversy for the old timers to gossip about.”

  Her expression was soft and gentle. My anxiety eased. “You sure you don’t think I’m imagining things?”

  “Of course not. If you say there is something here, then I believe you.”

  “Funny,” I said. “Out of all of our family, you are the very one that I would say wouldn’t believe in things that go bump in the night.”

  Lori’s lips curved into a mysterious and somewhat reassuring smile. “Do you remember when I flew home from California for Grandpa’s funeral?”

  “Yes,” I said, wary of where she was going with this.

  “I never told anyone, but I saw Grandpa in the downstairs bathroom when we all came back here after the funeral.”

  My jaw made a light clicking sound as it dropped open. It took everything I had in me not to break out in a big rolling belly laugh. What was it with our grandparents and bathrooms? I leaned back in the porch swing. “What did Grandpa say to you in the bathroom? What were his final pearls of wisdom? Don’t forget to flush? Did you wash your hands?” I couldn’t help it, I giggled. I was encouraged to hear Lori laughing with me.

  “That would be just like Grandpa, wouldn’t it,” she chortled.

  I nodded, wiping away tears of laughter. “Flush twice,” I began.

  “Because it’s a long way to the kitchen,” Lori finished.

  We collapsed against each other laughing even harder.

  “Did he ever catch you when you were coming out of the downstairs bathroom and ask you if you could hear what was going on in the living room?”

  “Oh yeah. And then, when you would say yes, he would point to the bathroom and say, ‘that’s good because we could all hear what you were doing in there!’”

  I wiped more tears of laugher from the side of my cheek where several streams of liquid were running. “I would be so embarrassed every time he did that, thinking he really could hear me in the bathroom. I started using the upstairs bathroom whenever people were in the living room.”

  “Me too!” Lori squealed.

  After our laughter subsided, she spoke in a quiet, subdued tone. “He did have a message for me that day when I saw him in the bathroom. It was a rather odd message, even for Grandpa.“

  “Really? What did he say?”

  “He said I should consider taking up golf because the greens there were to die for.”

  I giggled. “No pun intended I hope.”

  Lori giggled with me. “Only our grandpa would come back from the other side to tell us how great the golfing greens are. He even tried to nudge me toward the type of clubs I should buy.”

  “No way, you’re kidding me. I never would have thought Grandpa was a club snob.”

  “Oh, believe it. Just as he started fading, he said not to forget the specialty store on Pendleton Pike. As I said, his image was fading and so was his voice. But I could catch something about this store on Pendleton Pike being the best place to go for a good sturdy bald medal.”

  My ears perked up. “Medal? Are you sure he said a bald medal?”

  “Yeah, he said medal all right. That was the one thing that came through loud and clear. It sounded something like you bald us medal.” She clinked the ice in her now empty glass of tea. “I haven’t gotten around to taking up golf yet but my guess is this bald medal is either a brand name or is a special club you use in golfing like a wedge or something.”

  “Iron.”

  “Pardon?”

  “They call the clubs irons,” I clarified.

  “Oh, okay. Well, anyway, I’m pretty sure a bald medal is a special type of club, err, I mean iron.”

  “Um, yeah, I’m sure that’s just what it is.”

  Lori scrunched her brow as she spoke in a nonchalant tone. “So that’s why I flew out here for a visit.”

  “To take up golfing?”

  She grinned. “In a round about way, yes. I’ve had this overwhelming sense of urgency lately, that I should go to that store on Pendleton Pike and pick out a set of clubs, one of those bald medal clubs in particular. Oops, I mean irons. I’ve even been dreaming about driving on Pendleton Pike and pulling into the parking lot of that store. How weird is that?”

  “That’s pretty strange, I admit.” I forced a smile on my face but inside my knees were knocking together. I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, she was referring to a Saint Ubaldus medal. The very medal I needed. And now, thanks to my grandfather and cousin, I knew where to get one.

  “So how about it?”

  “How about what?”

  Lori gave an exasperated sigh. “Holy gosh, what do you think we’ve been sitting out here talking about? Duh. I’m heading over to the golf club store on Pendleton Pike.”

  “Oh. You’re heading over there now?”

  “Of course. That is why I came here after all. So how about it, are you up for riding along?”

  I shrugged. “Sure, I’d love to.”

  “Good, because you’re driving.”

  With that, Lori jumped up from porch swing and ran in the house to get her purse. My cousin was
far more like our grandfather then she knew. Neither of them had ever let any grass grow underneath their feet that was for sure.

  Twenty One

  We arrived at Phil’s Psychic Emporium in record time thanks to my dainty lead foot encased in the cutest pair of dark chocolate Nine West boots. Not quite spring footwear, but they looked ass kicking awesome with my favorite skintight skinny jeans. I was entertaining the idea of dropping by Sam’s home office to see what, if any, evidence he had so far, so I wanted to look my best.

  “I feel like I should jump out of the car and kiss the ground,” Lori said, gasping as the clouds of dust and stone kicked up by my tires settled as we squealed into the parking lot on two wheels.

  “Maybe if you had told me this was the parking lot I needed to turn into before we were passing it, I could have managed to do a four wheel turn into it instead of a two wheel one.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Lori said knowingly. “You forget I’ve seen you drive before. Hell, I was with you for two of your three tries at the driving test when you were sixteen. Remember that?”

  Oh, I remembered that all too well. “All I can say is thank God for Long’s donuts. If I hadn’t stopped by Long’s Bakery for that dozen of glazed on the way to my third attempt at the on-road driving test I’d probably be still be trying to get a driver’s license.”

  “And if your four hundred pound Bureau of Motor Vehicle’s examiner hadn’t been a major donut addict and if he hadn’t skipped breakfast that morning,” Lori finished for me with a laugh.

  We continued to giggle as we walked into the store and made our way down the aisles.

  As if the name of the store wasn’t a dead giveaway, even from first glance it was very apparent this wasn’t a golf club store. But I think it was the aisle of holy water vials that gave my cousin her first clue as to what kind of store Phil’s Psychic Emporium really was.

  “Maybe the holy water is for blessing the golf clubs so they’ll have a good game,” Lori offered.

  “If your score is anything like Grandpa’s was, I think you’ll be needing that holy water,” I said with a snicker.

  She turned to me and opened her mouth to deliver a snappy comeback when every ounce of color drained out of her face.

  My heart sunk to my feet and a cold chill ran up my spine. This wasn’t going to be good and I knew it. Lori was putting two and two together and was coming up with four. But I didn’t realize how bad it was until my vision followed her pointed finger, which was beginning to shake.

  I looked as she continued to point wordlessly towards the top shelf. There, above the vials of holy water, were several bottles of eye of newt.

  “Damn,” I mouthed as I ogled the tiny eyes in the clear glass bottles, which seemed to be staring back at us.

  Lori gave a little shake of her head and continued to point. That’s when I realized she hadn’t been pointing to the clear glass bottles of eye of newt at all, but instead was fixated on the large book placed strategically, next to the vials. Worse yet, the newt eyes that weren’t staring at us seemed to be fixed with adoration on The Modern Witch’s Guide to Dark Spells. “This is a voo-doo store, isn’t it?”

  I ignored her comment and quipped, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” as I reached for the book.

  “Don’t touch it,” she hissed, slapping my hand away from the book. “You don’t know where that thing’s been.”

  “It’s just a book.”

  “It’s an instrument of the devil, that’s what it is.”

  I snorted. “A book can’t hurt you. It’s the people using the book that you need to be worried about.”

  “Speaking of people,” Lori rasped as she grabbed my arm and shoved me against the back wall. She cowered there with me while a fresh faced young girl with blonde braids and a pink flowered dress came down the aisle. She stopped in front of the eye of newt display. Clucking happily, the teenage girl picked up one of the containers and dropped it in her overflowing shopping basket. She took a few steps then stopped. Turning around, the girl clasped her hand around an additional bottle and put it in her basket with the other vial. She turned to look at us as we cowered against the wall. “You can never have too many of these things, you know,” she said with a smile before turning and making her way back down the aisle to the checkout counter.

  “How about it, Gertie, do you think we need a few more newt eyes or are we good?” Lori deadpanned.

  I grabbed her by the shoulders, glaring at her eye to eye. “Are sure this was the place Grandpa said to come to?”

  “Yes, I’m positive,” she whispered back just as urgently.

  “You do realize what he’s done, don’t you?”

  “Unfortunately,” she replied, sounding none too happy about it.

  “Our dear sweet departed grandfather has sent us to the Sam’s Club of occult supplies.”

  Lori tugged on my arm as she made her way to a door near us that had Fire Exit emblazed across the front of it in bright red letters. “We’re out of here, Gertie. Grandpa can play his not-so-funny jokes on someone else. I’m done.”

  “No.” I stood in the center of the aisle and planted my feet firmly, folding my arms across my chest, refusing to budge. “I’m not leaving here until I get what I came for.”

  “We came for a golf club,” Lori screeched. “I really don’t think they sell golf clubs here, Gertie.”

  I shook my head. “You’ve got it all wrong, Lori. You’re the one that was so convinced the medal Grandpa was talking about was a golf iron. Neither Grandpa or myself claimed a medal to be anything golf related.”

  She stopped pulling on my arm and stood in the middle of the aisle staring at me with a confused expression on her face. “What aren’t you telling me, Gertie Ann Sugarbaker?”

  “You know how you saw Grandpa in the downstairs bathroom the day of his funeral?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly.

  I chewed on the corner of my lower lip before gathering the courage to continue. “The reason I was so quick to believe you was because I saw Grandma in the upstairs bathroom this week.”

  Lori blinked several times.

  “She told me I needed to use a magnetized Saint Ubaldus medal to ground the demon to a lower realm.”

  “The demon?” she whispered.

  “Um, yeah. You see, I thought I had a ghost plaguing me at the house ever since that earthquake we had in February. But as it turns out, it’s a third level demon.”

  “A third level demon,” she repeated in a daze.

  She was beginning to worry me. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  I had to finish. I had to tell her the rest of it. “And the man you saw backing out of my driveway this morning? He’s a ghost hunter and has been doing a paranormal investigation of the house.”

  Lori smiled at me. “Of course he has,” she said in a flat voice.

  “That’s how we discovered it was a demon we were dealing with and not just a ghost.”

  “Naturally.”

  My cousin didn’t seem to be taking this very well. I knew the best thing to do would be to find the medallion aisle and get out of this occult mega store as quick as we could. Maybe we could stop by Sam’s place and once she saw what a professional outfit he ran, she would be more open to the possibility of a demon inhabiting our grandparent’s former home. Maybe.

  ~ * ~

  With the aid of a friendly Phil’s Psychic Emporium employee, who was sporting a minimum of twenty different piercings that we could see and probably quite a few more that we couldn’t, we were able to find the magnetized Saint Ubaldus medallions without incident. Lori had raised her eyebrows slightly when she saw the six medallions I put in our cart, but to her credit, she didn’t say a word about it. A quick swipe of my credit card and we were soon on our way.

  Once we were back in the car and seat belted, I grabbed my cell phone out of my purse and flipped it open. I punched a few num
bers and put the phone to my ear.

  “Lo,” Sam’s rich baritone chimed.

  “Hey, it’s me,” I said.

  “Hey me.”

  I gave an obligatory giggle.

  “Did your cousin make it in okay?”

  “Yup, she arrived safe and sound just after you left this morning. And I do mean just after you left.”

  “Now see, if you hadn’t been greedy and—”

  “My cousin is right here next to me,” I said, cutting him off.

  “Hi, Sam,” Lori shouted, leaning in close to the phone.

  Sam laughed. “Hi Lori.”

  “He says hi,” I relayed to Lori.

  “What have you ladies been up to this fine spring morning?”

  “After overfilling our guts at Le Peep, we hung around the house a bit and then did a little shopping. I suppose I should have checked with you first about this, but it sort of slipped my mind. Anyhoodles, I was wondering if Amanda had any luck finding the magnetized things we discussed.”

  “The Saint Ubaldus medallions?”

  “Um, yes, I believe that’s what it was.”

  “You haven’t told your cousin about your paranormal problems, have you?”

  “Well,” I drawled.

  “Gertie,” he said with a gentle tone.

  “I did, I did. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “Oh?”

  “I explained all about your investigation to her over sweet teas on the front porch. Isn’t that right, Lori?” I said, omitting the fact that while I had told her Sam was investigating my house, I hadn’t told her he was also investigating my body and quite well I might add.

  Lori looked up from where she had been flicking the dial on the dashboard radio, trying to find something other than rap or country music. “What?”

  “Just say yes,” I hissed in a whisper as I tried to cover the phone so Sam wouldn’t hear.

  I heard him sigh. “Don’t put it off, Gertie.”

  “I didn’t. I swear,” I assured him. “I told her. And that’s just the problem.”

  “How is that a problem? Didn’t she take it well?”

  “Um, no,” I admitted. “Anyway, about Amanda, did she find a place to get them?” I asked.