I bent at the waist and hung over the rail, looking hard for ghosts in the water. But the surface was just grayish, greenish rushing water. Nothing more.
Since a ghost could theoretically hang out on the banks, just like those empty beer cans, I hiked up the river, pausing periodically at the guard rail and squinting down into the river. After walking what probably amounted to several city blocks, we came across a black metal footbridge.
I trooped to the center of the bridge with Roger tailing me and stared down, fully expecting to see faces flowing past twenty feet below. Nothing.
We crossed to the other side and combed through that for at least an hour. My stomach continued to churn, and I surreptitiously opened the antacid wrapper inside my pocket with my thumbnail. I crunched on the tablets whenever I could sneak one into my mouth without Roger noticing. I wished I’d eaten something a little blander for lunch, like maybe gruel. It's hard to try to pick out ghosts with your stomach screaming for your attention.
Eventually I spotted a park bench half-hidden among a cluster of scraggly shrubs and made my way over. I sat, and Roger sat beside me. He pulled out a notepad and started writing, presumably detailing all the areas we’d scanned and come up empty.
I cast my mind back to the files from the morning. I’d memorized the kids’ first names: Michael, Lucy, Dawn, Hubert... who the hell names their kid Hubert, even in the 70’s? Must’ve been a family name. I pressed my thumb into my forehead. I stared in the direction of the river and actually tried to see the kids. Nothing.
I let my breath out and sagged against the park bench, draping my elbows over the back. The cell phone store would be open. I figured we could go back there, scan the place, and call it a day.
I looked at Roger and was about to say as much when I saw it. There was a face in the bush behind Roger’s head.
I focused on the face and it grew clear. A man, late thirties-early forties, with the top of his head sliced off.
I wanted to jump back and yell out the first swear word that popped into my head, but there was Roger. I have no idea why, but I just couldn’t let Roger know I’d been spooked, just like I wouldn’t tell him about my stomach ache. Probably it's a guy thing. I just blinked.
The shallowly-decapitated guy’s eyes widened, as if he’d just realized that I could see him, or maybe as if he’d just seen me. He’d probably want to tell me what’d happened. Industrial accident. Gruesome mob hit. Whatever.
A hand appeared in the bush beside the face and reached toward me.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I snarled, and it was Roger who jumped.
I ignored Roger, went around him, and grabbed at the bush, tearing off a branch. The ghost with the shave-topped head groped at me again.
“What the fuck do you want?” I said, swinging the branch like a baseball bat. It passed right through his hand. “Talk to me, you stupid fuck.”
A second head coalesced. It was mutilated like the first, but its scalp flapped from the side of its skull like a bad toupee. Another hand reached out of the bush toward me, and another.
“Stop it,” I yelled, swatting the bush with the branch I’d torn off. Another mutilated head appeared, and another. They weren’t exact copies of each other, either. Like a bunch of different, unrelated guys got clipped by a ceiling fan on a rampage.
Another pair of hands sprouted out, and another, and something cold and psychically slimy trailed over my wrist where a spectral hand touched me.
I whirled away and ran toward the river, the branch still in my hand. I was screaming, but I didn’t give a fuck. I barreled into the guardrail, which clipped me right at hip level, and flung the branch into the rushing water.
“Aaaaaaghhh!”
And then I threw up.
Chapter Four
I think if I were anyone else, they would’ve taken me to the hospital. But...think about it. A guy who sees dead people, and a hospital where people are dropping like flies. Bad combination.
There’s a special clinic in the near north suburbs where I fill out inane psychological tests every four months to see if I’m crazy yet and get my prescriptions. It’s a low, blond-brick building, constructed ten years ago at the end of a residential street. There’s no signage on the building, so I’ve always just referred to it as “The Clinic.” And no one had ever died there. Not yet, anyway.
After my freak-out and apparent collapse, Roger called Warwick, who rushed over in person to take me to The Clinic.
There was a Paranormal Psychiatrist on staff who I’d been seeing so long that he called me, “Mister Bayne,” instead of, “Detective.” Doctor Morganstern, man of a thousand sweater vests. He was the one who’d gotten me into the Auracel trials a year before the FDA gave the drug a stamp of approval. I wondered if he had any fun new drugs that would help me hold it together.
A nurse drew a couple vials of blood, took my vitals, and ran through my physical symptoms without going into my psychic experience. I’ve always gotten the impression I was only to discuss those things with Morganstern.
I lay back in a comfy bed, in a room that looked more like a very small hotel suite than a hospital room. The bedspread and curtains were done in a muted floral pattern, and there were a couple of live plants on the dark wood nighstand. I peeked into a cabinet expecting to find a television, but the cabinet was empty. No big deal. If there were a set, it probably would’ve had cable, and so my static station would’ve been playing all-day soap operas.
There was a brief knock on the door and a woman in her early thirties let herself in. She was slim and pretty, with ash blonde hair cut short and just a little spiky, with glasses so delicate I could’ve crushed them in the palm of my hand. She wore a boxy sweater over brown corduroys. “Hello,” she said, glancing down at a clipboard she carried and then back at me. “I’m Doctor Jennifer Chance.”
Oh, God. I had a big breakdown in a public park and I had to deal with some doctor I’d never even met? Great, just great. “Is Doctor Morganstern around? Did you page him? Not that there’s anything wrong with you -- I just want to talk to Doctor Morganstern.”
“I’m sorry,” Doctor Chance said. I thought I could detect some genuine sympathy there. “Doctor Morganstern is in Japan.”
“Oh,” I said. And that seemed to be all there was to say about it. I wanted to argue with her, to try to put off doing anything until Morganstern was back, but I wasn’t sure my problem, whatever it was, could wait. I hadn’t realized how attached I was to him until he wasn’t there.
Doctor Chance took my account of what had happened to me, what I’d seen, what I’d done. It seemed odd to me that she wasn’t wearing...oh, I dunno. Scrubs. A lab coat. But then again, neither had Doctor Morganstern.
Chance questioned me for nearly an hour, writing notes even as she spoke. I wondered if that was something like being ambidextrous, the ability to speak and write at the same time. I’m lucky I can walk and breathe simultaneously without choking.
Chance shuffled some papers. “Your intake sheet says you vomited and then partially lost consciousness. What have you eaten today?”
“A Polish sausage, a curly fry, some coffee.”
“And earlier?”
I felt like a lecture would be coming, but there was nothing I could do to avoid it. Then again, I had no reason to think Doctor Chance was the lecturing type. I sighed. “Coffee. And coffee the day before. A donut yesterday morning. That’s all.”
“Is it common for you to skip meals?”
“No. I don’t know. Yeah, I guess.” She wrote some notes. “It’s a cop thing,” I added lamely.
“I’m scheduling an upper G.I. for you first thing in the morning. Eat bland foods as your appetite allows, then no food after midnight, no water after two a.m., and no more coffee today. Got it?”
“You think I have an ulcer, don’t you?”
“It’s too early to say. But given your medical background, we have to take more precautions than we do with the general public.”
Right. It was more likely that the force wanted to keep me alive so they didn’t have to go through the trouble of finding and training another Psych.
“Drugs?” she asked.
Shit. I wanted to lie about how much Auracel I’d taken the day before. I always lied. But they were testing my blood as we spoke, and lying wouldn’t get me anywhere.
“Auracel, ninety milligrams about twenty-four hours ago.” Chance recorded the number without making me repeat myself, or mentioning that it was triple the highest recommended dosage, or doing a spit-take. I probably should’ve told her about the Seconal, but Seconal’s been discontinued for some time and I hadn’t exactly gotten it through a reputable connection. If it showed up in the tests and they called me on it, I could just say I’d forgotten.
“Would you be able to sleep if you stopped your medications until tomorrow morning?”
“Yeah. Of course. I mean, I’m not dependent or anything. I don’t take them every day.” Just on a bad day. Like a day in which I’ve seen a bush full of scalped heads.
Just thinking about it made me crave an Auracel with a Seconal chaser.
I made an appointment to return at seven a.m., an ungodly hour, but since I wasn’t likely to sleep and couldn’t eat, it was probably for the best.
“About the sleeping,” I said, wondering if I could get my hands on some barbiturates legally. “If you knew of something that could take the edge off -- maybe you could write....”
“We’ll see after your blood work comes back. Good night, detective.”
Was it night? I checked my watch. Quarter past seven. I wanted to be home. I wished I’d been born with the ability to teleport instead of hearing the dead. And I wondered if Roger’d bought another cup of coffee for me while he was waiting.
I opened the door to the lobby and nearly bought the idea that my desire to teleport had made it happen; Jacob stared at me from a seat directly across from the door. He had on a pair of jeans, one of his incredibly form-fitting black T-shirts, and a plain leather jacket. He was on his feet and halfway across the room before I even cleared the doorway. “What happened?” he asked me.
I blinked and looked around. A yellow streetlight shone through the thick safety glass on the door. The receptionist’s window was dark and he was gone for the night. We were alone -- except for the surveillance camera that was trained on us. They don’t take any chances at modern psych facilities.
I shook my head. “I dunno. They’re doing some tests.” I took Jacob by the elbow and steered him toward the door. Despite the fact that there were no faces swarming in the popcorn texture of the walls, no spirits popping out of the philodendrons, I really, really wanted to be home.
Jacob’s car was parked in a handicapped slot next to the front door. He opened the passenger door for me and it felt like we were going to the prom. I wondered if anyone was watching. “How’d you end up here?” I asked him. “Did Roger call you?”
Jacob closed my door and got in the driver’s side. “Maurice did.”
My struggle to figure out how Maurice figured into everything must have shown on my face. “Maurice is your emergency contact,” Jacob told me.
“Oh,” I said, because that was true. I wondered how Maurice knew to tell Jacob -- and then I realized the whole “I’m gay” conversation wasn't going to be necessary at all. “Oh.”
Chapter Five
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the emergency room?” Jacob asked me for the third time. He was driving with both hands on the wheel and he looked like he’d be happy to run down anyone unlucky enough to get in his way.
“I don’t go to hospitals,” I said. “I can’t. Not without something to block out the ghosts.”
Jacob pressed his lips together in a grim line and glared through the windshield.
“This is the same clinic I go to for everything except dental and vision, Jacob. It’s fine. It’s...it’s more than fine. It’s the only place qualified to deal with Psychs, and besides that, it’s state of the art.”
He didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride home, and I was worried he was pissed off at me. I almost apologized to him, except that he was the type of guy who’d probably ask me what I was sorry about, and I wouldn’t be able to answer him.
I left Jacob in the kitchen while I flipped on all the lights in the apartment and checked the closet for spectral heads. All clear.
I turned around and found Jacob blocking my way out of the closet. I wondered if he’d appreciate the irony. He stood with his arms crossed, biceps bulging. It was a pose he’d struck when I’d first met him, in which he’d looked all buff and sexy. Now he looked mostly mad.
“Any idea why Lisa called me from Santa Barbara and told me to leave?”
I eased forward, and Jacob reluctantly allowed me into the bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to remember if the message I’d left for Lisa was anything that should’ve sent her into a tailspin, but I didn’t think it had been, even if I had just seen a bunch of submerged heads right before I’d called her.
“No.”
Jacob sat down beside me and the bed creaked. He let his breath out slowly. And when he spoke his voice was soft, as if he’d just let all the anger out of himself, too. “I couldn’t figure out what she was trying to tell me, and on top of that she was whispering so that I could barely hear. She said you were in danger. From the living and the dead.”
Lisa. Did she know how to leave a melodramatic message, or what? Not that I didn’t believe her -- which is saying a lot, since she was off consorting with the Moonies of her own free will. But until she could give me some specifics, there really wasn’t much I could do.
I could feel Jacob staring at me from the side. “That’s why I’m worried about that clinic,” he said. “What if they don’t have your best interests at heart?”
I laughed before I could even control it, an ugly little bark that was too loud and sudden in my stark bedroom. “Christ, Jacob. I’d lay money on it that they don’t. The force, the government, whoever...they want a medium. A class five. Can I expect them to keep me comfy and cozy and safe? No. But I can count on them to do what it takes to keep me upright and babbling.”
“...and that partner of yours?”
“Roger? You think I need to worry about a guy who buys me Starbucks?”
“Look,” said Jacob. “Here’s what you should do. Take your cash card, and mine, and withdraw the maximum amount from each account. Then go to the train station and buy a ticket with cash....”
“What? Why should I go anywhere? I don’t even know what this supposed danger is. And where would you be in all of this?”
Jacob stared at the side of my cheap white laminated dresser. “Here. Figuring out what’s going on.”
“You expect me to go somewhere without you?”
Jacob’s jaw worked for a moment, and then he put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. “You’ve got to get away from me. Lisa said....”
“Lisa said? You told me you couldn’t even understand her!”
“She said I brought it.”
I stared. I tried to piece something into that phrase that would make sense of it. What did he bring me? A stomach virus? What about something more insidious...like hope?
I really, really wanted a Seconal.
“Look,” I said, doing my best to put on a voice that was incredibly reasonable sounding. I did a pretty good job. “She didn’t give you a full message, so we can’t act on it. I don’t know what she meant. Do you?”
Jacob looked at me sideways.
“That’s what’s wrong with Psychs,” I said. “The sixth sense doesn’t match up with the other senses, so anything we describe comes out flawed. It’s like trying to describe how purple smells, or what pain sounds like.”
Jacob stared at my knee as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to look me in the eye. “But we can’t just sit back and do nothing,” he said. He’d quieted down, but his voice st
ill held a clipped urgency. “You didn’t hear how panicked she sounded.”
Good thing. I’d already thrown up and sort of fainted. I didn’t need something else to worry about. “It’s not going to help for me to go running off,” I told Jacob. “If the clinic, or whoever, is as dangerous as all that, they’ve probably got some kind of chip in me already.”
Jacob finally did look me in the eye, and his face went ashen.
I shrugged. I’d been on a short leash ever since I can remember. That's how I’ve turned out to be such a liar. “Lisa did her job,” I went on, trying to calm Jacob down. “She warned us. Now we know to look out.”
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