Dead Waters

by Anton Strout

  The clear, heavy piece was an award of some kind. Etched into it was a film reel that ran around the entire base of the piece. “I’d like to thank the Academy,” I said. “Looks like the professor had a little bit of vanity in displaying his accolades.”

  “Just check it out,” Connor said. “I’m going to Knock and see if there’s any way to draw the late professor’s spirit out if it’s lingering.”

  “Careful,” I said, shuddering. “Last time I saw you Knocking, you were half out of your mind and raising most of the graveyard at Trinity Church.”

  “Don’t remind me,” he said. “I still feel the Spirit of Concussions Past when I think of that night.”

  Connor went around the desk and sat down in the professor’s chair, taking a moment to focus himself before getting down to business. I sat myself down in one of the chairs opposite him, cradling the Lucite award in my arms like a newborn. Without another thought, I pressed my powers into it.

  As my psychometric vision kicked in, the image of Connor sitting at the desk morphed into one of Professor Redfield. At the moment he was old but quite alive and doing the exciting task of grading papers while drinking what amounted to a small fishbowl of scotch.

  It was strange seeing the professor alive again in one of my visions, this time old. Before, he had been young and lively, nervous in the face of battle; now he was simply an old man in professor mode.

  I rewound through images of the events that had taken place in his office like searching through old newspaper records in a library. A variety of people came and went, and I ignored most of them. The bulk looked like the odd student here or there simply coming to their professor during office hours. I kept going through them until I caught sight of a group of lingering students in one long section of the vision. I drew my focus in on them and pulled my mind into those specific moments. The old man sat at his desk, holding court. Five students sat around his office, intent on every word he was saying. The last and most attentive was an eager young blond girl named Elyse who hung on his every word. A tall, black muscular guy with ear gauging, Darryl, took notes on a laptop while a chunky kid with a video camera and the unfortunate nickname Heavy Mike listened intently with a couple of other film school hopefuls—a punked-out blond Hispanic kid name George and a skinny brown-haired kid, Trent. Professor Redfield was busy regaling them with stories of the glory days or horror cinema, hearkening back to the extreme makeup that Lon Chaney used to wear.

  The sway he held these students under was a bit creepy, but I watched as long as I could before I felt my blood sugar depleting itself.

  When I came out of the vision, Connor was still seated at the professor’s desk. “Well?” he asked. “No luck on my end. If the professor’s spirit is lingering around here, there isn’t anything earthly that he’s attached to. What about you? Anything, kid?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “From what I saw, it looked like Mason had a little posse. Film geeks doting on his every word, laughing at his every story. Whether it was grade grubbing or not, I’m not quite sure. The adoration bordered on cultish.”

  “We should check it out,” Connor said. “Someone has to know something more about the professor. Who he hung with, who might have had it out for him. Did you catch names?”

  “Only a couple of them,” I said. “There was an Elyse, Darryl, Trent. . . a big guy they called Heavy Mike. Subtle, right?”

  “Anything more than first names, kid?” Connor asked. “It’s going to take a lot of wandering Manhattan going on just that.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “That’s the problem with reading Professor Redfield’s belongings. They’re his stuff. It shows me some stuff about him, but I can’t really dive into the past of the others unless they’ve handled his objects, too. Even then, it’s not a sure thing.”

  “Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us, then,” Connor said, getting up from the desk, “but not tonight. Despite this being the city that never sleeps, I doubt we’re going to get anything but drunken stragglers to question this time of night.”

  “I can start asking around tomorrow,” I said, heading for the door. “Maybe I should hit that solo.”

  Connor gave me a look. “You sure? Why?”

  We stepped out of the professor’s office and headed through the deserted halls of the university. “If I bring you along all old looking with that white stripe in your hair, everyone’s going to think I brought a cop with me. No one’s going to talk.”

  “Jesus, kid,” Connor said, stopping in the hall. “You make me sound like I’m a hundred.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean that. It’s just. . . look at you in your Bogie trench coat. You aren’t exactly college-age looking. I’d peg you for a cop.”

  “Fine,” Connor said, heading for the doors to the outside world coming up ahead of us. “Have it your way. I can sleep in, then.”

  “Now, Grandpa. . .” I said, starting after him.

  Connor looked over his shoulder at me, shooting me with a look of pure hatred as he pushed out onto the streets of New York City once more. “I’m meeting up with Aidan over at Eccentric Circles,” he continued. “Having a day job and spending time with my brother on a vampiric schedule is leaving me sorely lacking in the sleep department. You’re welcome to come with.”

  Part of me was instantly jonesing for the decadent disco fries they served at our Departmental hang out, but I shook my head.

  “I should probably head home,” I said. “I think there’s a few things I need to iron out with Jane still.”

  Connor shrugged. “Your funeral. Suit yourself.”

  “You know,” I said, turning to head off toward my apartment, “you used to be a lot less sassy about things when you thought Aidan was dead.”

  Connor smiled. “Sorry, kid.”

  9

  Jane was out cold when I got home, and rather than risk waking her by trying to slip silently into bed, I crashed out on my couch in the living room. I had fallen asleep there plenty of times when I was single and I convinced myself it would just be easier, but when I woke in the morning, I just felt lame for doing it. I scribbled a quick note telling Jane that I loved her, left it on the pillow next to her in my bedroom, and hurried out of my apartment as I slipped my satchel over my shoulder before she could wake. If I was lucky, I could catch the early-morning rush of students bustling around New York University.

  I hit up Bagels on the Square for one with everything and enough coffee to wake the dead before skulking around the empty fountain in the center of Washington Square Park. I hoped to find someone who could tell me more about Professor Redfield, but other than a few students calling him a whack job or a lovable eccentric, I spent more time fending off the weed dealers than getting anything accomplished. Frustrated, I moved out of the park and made my way up University Place a few blocks in search of a more productive venue.

  Stuck somewhere between my guilt from avoiding Jane this morning and still asking around campus about the professor, I found that I had wandered into one of the antiques stores around Tenth Street. The store was long and narrow, but packed with an eclectic mix of furniture, none of it looking more than sixty or seventy years old. Just seeing the type of stuff I was used to picking through as a psychometrist helped take away some of my stress, and as I worked my way back through the mostly deserted store, I thought maybe I could unstress myself a little more by contending with some of my Jane issues, too. The recent developments with my powers left me unsure about the whole Jane situation, but I was willing to try to push myself past all the angry flare-ups that had been happening. Maybe if I baby-stepped my way into pricing out some dressers with her in mind, it would at least be a step in the right direction.

  Near the back of the store was a mixed collection of bedroom pieces, almost all of it having seen better days. Still, a few bits of furniture showed some promise. One was a dark brown art deco–looking unit with brushed brass pulls on the front of it. I went over to it, stripping off my gloves.
If I was going to find something special enough for Jane to have after all my ridiculousness, it had to be the right piece but also one that wasn’t too psychometrically charged that I might trigger off it once it was in my home. I lay my hands down on top of the polished-smooth top of it and pressed my power into it.

  My mind’s eye pushed back through the history of the object, searching its past. The image forming in my mind resolved into that of an empty and unfamiliar bedroom. The whole place was tastefully done up in the same mid-Century style of the dresser with the focus of the room being a king-sized bed, which I sat upon, that took up a large portion of the space. I pressed myself into the mind of whoever I was, trying to gather what information I could about the dresser’s previous owners.

  Nothing. The mind was a complete blank. I fished around in the emptiness for the thoughts of another, but still nothing.

  “What the hell . . . ?” I asked, out loud. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before, but something odd struck me when I spoke. My voice. What usually happened in one of my visions was that I always sounded like someone else, but not this time. I sounded like me.

  I looked down at the person’s hands in his lap. They were my own, settled on top of my satchel. How I was myself in this vision, I didn’t know, but before I could give it much more thought, I noticed movement in the sheets of the bed I was sitting on.

  I bolted up and spun around. Something was rising up in the middle of the bed, as if a line was drawing up the bedspread from its center point. I backed away from it, feeling for my bat at my side and relaxing a little when my hand found it in my holster. I pulled it free, extended it, and waited.

  The sheet fell away, revealing a haunting and familiar face—Cassie, the ghost tattooist from the antiques store at the Gibson-Case Center. Her dead eyes were covered by her dark, giant hipster sunglasses, with a hint of a blood trickling out from behind them. Her tattoo gun was in her hand and she revved its motor. The dangling cord of the device dissolved off into a swirl of mist trailing behind her as she stepped through the bed toward me.

  “No,” I said to myself, as firm as I could to control my panic. I swung my bat at her, but it passed right through, her solid form twirling into a cloud of mist before re-forming in my bat’s wake. She revved the needle gun again and kept advancing. I couldn’t hit her, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out if she could attack me, not with that needle gun in her hand.

  The backs of my legs hit the dresser behind me. I had every plan to dash left, then forward toward a closed door that hopefully led out of the room, but before I could run, the sound of sliding drawers hit my ears.

  The dresser drawers on either side of my legs fell to the floor and a pair of human arms reached out from within, wrapping around my body. I recognized the tweed sleeves of the jacket; Mason Redfield’s arms wrapped tight around my legs, immobilizing me.

  Trapped. Screw this, I thought. Time to pull myself out of the vision. I closed my mind’s eye, only to have it slam back open on me. I willed it closed again, but again, it came flying open. All the while the tattooist kept advancing on me. I had never personally taken a beating as myself in a vision before, and I didn’t plan on starting now.

  The tattooist crept closer, which meant only one thing: I had to free myself from the professor’s arms. Now. I slammed my bat down along the side of my left leg as the two arms wrapped around me. The blow stung my leg, but it hurt the professor’s arm more than it did me.

  The arms let go of my legs, and I ran for the door across the room. The blind tattooist cocked her head, listening for my steps, correcting her course. I pulled at the doorknob.

  Locked.

  I spun and pressed my back against the door. Across the room, the younger Mason Redfield I had seen in my psychometric vision pulled himself out of the dresser, shattering it apart into a pile of wreckage. My brain filled with their raw emotional states from when I had first experienced both of them—the woman’s jealous rage and Mason Redfield’s fear from the night I had seen him fighting ghouls with the Inspectre. I started to sweat, slamming my head back against the door as all the emotions took over.

  I hefted up my bat as the two of them closed with me. Maybe my bat would affect them or maybe it wouldn’t. Either way, I’d find out, going down swinging as best I could.

  The pain in my leg still throbbed from where I had hit it with the bat. No, that wasn’t quite right . . . not where I had hit it. This was something else, a strange pulsing sensation on my other leg, higher and closer to my hip—my phone on vibrate. I reached into my pocket and pulled it out, flipping it open.

  “Hello?”

  Static came through on the line, but I could hear the faint sound of a voice behind it all.

  “Hello?” I shouted into it.

  It crackled again, and then through it all, “. . . kid?”

  “Connor!” I shouted.

  The psychometric vision rushed away from me and the real world snapped back to the inside of the store on University Place, where I fell face-first into the dresser I had been reading. My head slammed down onto it, and I fell to the floor, dropping my phone. The cool tile pressed against me and I scrabbled for my cell, my hand closing over it.

  “I’m here,” I shouted. The sound of footsteps came toward me from the front of the store. I held my phone back up to my ear.

  “You okay, kid?” Connor asked. “Took you long enough to answer.”

  “Yeah,” I said, using the dresser to steady myself as I helped myself up. “I was just dealing with something.” I didn’t dare tell him about the episode for fear that he might take me off active. For now, I simply had to resist using my powers.

  The owner of the shop I had heard coming in came around the end of the aisle, a look of concern on her face. I smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. She gave me a nervous smile back and retreated.

  “Any luck tracking down leads on the professor?” Connor asked.

  “Not much. Got a bunch of people saying he was a bit eccentric, as you might imagine, but I could have told you that before wandering around down here. Seemed mostly positive from what I was able to gather so far.”

  “You think maybe you could head on up to the offices?” he asked. “Things are backing up here and I’m afraid for our partners desk under this level of paperwork.”

  “Yeah,” I said without hesitation, starting off east through the Village. “Not a problem.” The thought of sitting down at my desk and not using an ounce of psychometry for a little while felt like the best idea in the world right now.

  I slipped my phone back into my pocket and pulled my gloves back on. To double ensure I didn’t trigger a blessed thing, I jammed my hands down into my jacket pockets. My brain and emotions needed to settle. It saddened me that sometimes shopping was far more perilous that dealing with zombies and vampires.

  10

  Hours of paperwork back at the office kept me nice and distracted from the mental confusion of earlier in the day. When Jane texted me hours later saying she was at Mason Redfield’s apartment working, I felt settled enough that I headed out into the dark and the rain to meet up with her.

  I opened the door to Professor Redfield’s high-rise apartment before ducking underneath the police tape and stepping in. Outside the patio doors rain poured down, giving the low light of the apartment a creepy look. Jane was sitting in one of the professor’s giant wing chairs with a bunch of books on her lap and a satchel lying at her feet. A variety of candles, charms, and chalk bits were scattered on the floor in front of her. She was engrossed in one of the books and looked up only when I closed the door behind me. She let out a tiny yelp.

  “Sorry,” I said. I craned my head, looking around the quiet, empty apartment. “You said they had you working. . . Did they leave you alone here?”

  Jane nodded. I went over to her and started picking up the bits and pieces scattered by her feet.

  “Unbelievable,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” she said, grabbing my w
rist to stop me. “I haven’t seen any sign of Aqua-Woman. I’m just wrapping up warding the place. Sorry I screamed. When you came through the door, I thought you might have been the ghost of the professor.”

  “Do I look like I’m a ghost in my late fifties?” I said. “I know working for the Department is probably aging me prematurely, but come on.”

  Jane stood, wrapped her arms around me, and kissed me. After a moment she stepped back and looked up at me. “Better?”

  “Much,” I said, smiling. “How’s it going?”

  “I think it’s going good,” she said.

  “Think?”

  Jane let out an exasperated sigh. “Look, I’ve never done this before.” She grabbed up the book she had been reading. “Director Wesker came through here and spent about seven seconds instructing me on how to properly ward a place before he had to run off on another case. This skeleton-staff work schedule is killing me. I think I’ve protected the place with the symbols on the walls and even laid down a few traps if anything paranormal returns to the scene.”

  I walked around the main living room area looking at the variety of symbols drawn on the wall in Jane’s handwriting. There were all kinds that looked vaguely runic to my eye, but what did I know? I was out of my element.

  “So what do you think?” I asked. “You think this woman in green was bound to the professor somehow?”

  “I don’t know,” Jane said. She started packing up her stuff, handing me a small pile of books. “Here. I thought these looked promising for you.”

  “I already tried to get a read on the stuff in here,” I said.

  “I figured maybe with all the distractions your powers have been giving you lately, you might want to chance it again.”

  “Sure,” I said. I stuffed the books into the messenger bag hanging at my side, not even getting into why I had zero plans to read anything with my powers right now. “But getting back to my question . . . what do you think? Was that woman bound to the professor?”