28
“My tale begins with an introduction even more cliché than your own, as it truly was a dark and stormy night. At the time, I lived in a house with much more history than the one in which we are currently chatting, a charming brick bungalow in Pilsen—back when it was daring to live in that neighborhood—with hardwood floors and leaded glass. A home in which I’d not always resided alone.”
And now I found myself leaning forward in my seat.
Hale went on. “That fateful night as I climbed into my bed, I was startled by a creak in the floorboards. True, the old house shifted and groaned whenever the temperature changed, but this particular sound was one I’d not heard in quite a while. Not since my partner’s untimely and unfortunate death.”
It was hard to imagine Hale paired up with anybody. Then again, I’d managed to achieve “couplehood” myself, so I guess there really is someone for everyone.
“How did he die?”
“The year was 1982…so, I’m sure you can guess. How it took him and spared me, I’ll never know.” He shook his head sadly. “As I was saying—I was alone. The lights had been extinguished. The curtains drawn. Nothing to see by except the slim, amber beam of the digital clock. And just as the readout flipped from 11:59 to midnight, a shadow passed between the clock and myself, and the distinct creak of a footfall sounded beside the far side of the bed. His side.”
This time when I chafed away the goosebumps, I didn’t have to act.
“It was the anniversary of his death, I realized, something I’d been dreading so long the days had begun to blend. My hand fell to the bedside table, but he told me to leave the lights out. He couldn’t bear for me to see him. Not like that. ‘Charles,’ I told him, ‘I know it’s you. Please. Let me see you.’ But he refused to let me bear witness to what he’d become.”
I’d seen plenty of ghosts in my time—some so real and solid I’d mistaken them for a living, breathing person, and some so twisted and mangled they were better off dead. But I’d never had to encounter a dead loved one face to face. I don’t know that I could handle it if I did. Not if they were anything other than glowing with warm fuzzies and white light.
“A sudden chill stole over me, but I couldn’t find it within myself to be afraid. Not of my dear Charles. I patted his side of the bed and said, ‘I don’t care if I cannot see your face. It’s enough to spend just one more night together.’ For, surely, there was a reason he’d come to visit.”
My guess? It was obvious. The anniversary of the guy’s death.
“Alas, not only did Charles refuse, but I shall never forget the fervency with which he spoke: ‘I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.’ The words haunt me to this very day.”
Section E, Part 6: The subject need not report a positive answer in every sensory mode. It is recommended a strong response in even one heuristic be followed up with further testing.
Hearing the voice would’ve been good enough for me, but between the shadow, the conversation and the cold spot, this thing was a freaking trifecta. And to think I’d started the night ready to throw in the towel. Late as it was, I found my second wind. The so-called writer in me was itching to leap up, run back to my side of the flimsy drywall, peck out my official report, and send it winging off to Laura’s inbox so she’d have it bright and early the next morning. With any luck, by this time tomorrow, the stay-at-home douchebag would be history.
Hale said, “I feared it would be the last I saw of him, but he assured me that I brought him some small comfort by turning my thoughts to him.” He stood and crossed the room to the electric fireplace where a fake log was glowing orange, and grabbed a statuette off the mantle. It was one of those 70’s ceramic things you see at thrift shops and garage sales, figures that are supposed to be people, but without any distinguishing features aside from the general proportions of a person. “I would never truly be alone in this world, he said, as long as I kept some souvenir of him by my side.”
He handed the statuette to me. I struggled to come up with an appropriate response. “Wow.” Hale seemed to be expecting something more, so I guessed, “Charles made this?”
“Heavens, no. Charles was a sharp dresser and he had a good knack for color, but he didn’t immerse himself in the arts to the extent that I did. This is my own dalliance with the medium of raku.”
I suspected I was missing something. It was supposed to be a person. Right? “So…it’s a portrait?”
His smile deepened. Not a happy smile. More like evil glee. “More than just a portrait, my dear boy. It’s a relic.”
Handing someone human remains without warning them first is always a massive dick-move. But doing it to a medium? Major level shit. I quelled the urge to throw the ugly thing down and smash it on the floor, and instead placed it carefully on the coffee table. “What’s in the clay? Hair? Teeth?”
“Not what’s in the clay…what’s on it. Charles had been cremated, and wanting to ensure I preserved his ashes for posterity, I stirred them into the glaze. The flashes of color you see—here, and here—I like to think they were his own personal touch. Magnificent, isn’t it?”
“It’s really…something.”
Hale held his hands on either side of the ceramic as if he was reading its aura. “Even after all these years, when I really focus, I can feel his presence so clearly, it’s as if Charles is right here with me, ready to regale me with an amusing anecdote, or dither over which wine to have with dinner.” He ran his palms over a buffer of empty air. “His presence is strong tonight. Can you not feel it?”
I didn’t need to fake the hesitancy I felt. Plenty of Psych tests contained a piece of someone—a do-gooder who’d donated their body to science. A couple of months ago, Darla and I commandeered and sifted through every last test in the FPMP Midwest’s arsenal. Ghosts? Not a one.
But maybe that had more to do with the personality of the deceased than the potential for a spectral attachment.
I’d been sucking down white light ever since the word relic was uttered, but now I doubled down and threw a bunch of mojo at my protective balloon. Once the prophylactic was in place, I reached out….
And found nothing.
I tried harder. Still nothing. For all the vibes it put out, the statuette might as well have been a big ceramic bong. Hale was watching me closely. “What is it I’m supposed to feel?”
Hale’s mood shifted warily. “Not everyone possesses the sensitivity to touch the world of spirit.”
Maybe not, but its inhabitants can be pretty keen to possess the ones who do. I’d done a piss-poor job of separating the knowledge I’d accrued as Victor Bayne, official medium, from that of my never-seen-a-ghost Victor Baine identity.
Hale stood up and headed for the door to show me out. “And on that note—it’s late, and I’ve kept you from your husband’s loving arms quite long enough. Good night, Victor.”
He was annoyed with me again, that much was clear. I could’ve pressed harder to try and turn the conversation back to my advantage, but why bother when I’d have enough “word count” to fill up an official report?
As I headed back next door, I ran through the conversation again, thinking more like a cop than a storyteller. Pilsen, near southwest side. Sylvester Hale and a guy named Charles. A year after his death in 1982. Visual, audio, and kinesthetic perception. Clearly enough to recommend an intensive mediumship training program—one that would make him Darla’s problem, not mine.
I cracked open the laptop, planted myself at the kitchen counter, and to the rhythmic sound of the elliptical upstairs, opened a fresh report. Chicago PD incident reports were still more familiar to me than the FPMP’s paperwork, but red tape is red tape. I started filling in the blanks, but the narrative came up sooner than I thought. And as I replayed the conversation in my mind, a tiny doubt began to niggle.
Why had Hale been so invested in me getting a vibe off that statue? Because he wanted someone to verify what he was feeling? Or because he was eager to see me fall for a
steaming pile of bullshit?
The more I thought about it, the less it added up. Hale hadn’t been acting like anything was wrong at the haunted toilet, even after he was all yoga’d up. If he was strong enough to see, hear and feel his partner’s spirit, how was it the complainer in the locker room didn’t freak him out?
I couldn’t rule out the possibility that it had something to do with the manifestation of his talent. I saw things. Darla heard them—sometimes long distance. Richie felt cold spots and Faun Windsong got vague impressions. Maybe there was some kind of physical, tactile aspect necessary to light up Hale’s psychic perception. Too bad a quick search of “haunted objects” yielded zip. Even on the FPMP’s specialized database of weird.
I minimized the search and pulled up what I had on Hale to see if there was anything I could find on his guy Charles. For all I knew, the dead guy was actually the Psych, and it was something in his makeup that let him reach across the veil on the anniversary of his death strongly enough for even an NP to notice. I scrolled through Hale’s records, past the digital stuff and into the scanned paper, looking for something I could use to get a last name on Charles. A mortgage. A phone bill. A Pilsen address.
And that was when I saw that when Hale’s ghostly visitation had purportedly occurred, he’d been living just outside St. Louis. Normally, I’d figure there was some rational explanation, like a long-distance romance or a weird, under-the-table rental arrangement. But his W2s showed that at the time he’d claimed to have lived in his south side bungalow, he was really lecturing at a private college in Missouri.
Part of me wanted to believe that maybe he’d just managed to be incredibly discreet about living with a same-sex partner with an HIV death sentence. It was a way different time, after all. But banking statements, property tax records, even a parking ticket…everything pointed to Hale living a good four-hour drive away from where he’d claimed to be.
And another thing. It takes a lot of effort to stick around once your clock gets punched, at least in terms of a full-fledged ghost and not just the stain of a repeater. Even if the guy was gone, but the anniversary caused some stars to align in such a way as to thin the veil and let him cross back over, he’d have to have something pretty important to convey, something he hadn’t been able to say in all the weeks and months leading up to his last hurrah. What was the message he’d been so eager to deliver? I checked my recording.
I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.
Maybe those weren’t the ghost’s exact words, and what he said was just being conveyed through the filter of Hale’s pompous delivery. Still, there was something “off” about it. I jabbed the sentence into my keyboard. Not with my cursor in the report’s narrative…but a search bar.
A bunch of results popped right up. Not creepy sex definitions from Urban Dictionary, either, but the most popular best-selling ghost story the world has ever known: A Christmas Carol, by Dickens.
Charles Dickens.
Not only was the phrase uttered by Hale’s partner a direct quote from the restless spirit of Scrooge’s old partner, Marley, but apparently last night’s rerun of Liquid Sight had featured a psyactive-induced time travel visit to Dickens during the penning of that very story.
Damn it.
If I’d been laying down my report with pen on paper, I would’ve wadded the damn thing up and lobbed it across the room in disgust. But since I’d finally got my work-issued laptop to limit downloading its updates during the hours when I’d most likely be asleep, I restrained myself from flinging it down on the floor.
Hopefully catching Hale in the lie would be enough to make my trial run a success in Laura’s eyes, but that didn’t take the sting out of being played for a fool.
I knew something was fishy about that story even as I heard it. I’d just wanted to believe it, because it would give me a definitive answer to the problem of whether or not Hale had talent. Looking back, a bunch of stuff hadn’t added up. Dead folks didn’t linger near their body parts unless they were stuck there by a violent murder or a freak accident. They didn’t spin out literary sounding pronouncements peppered with the word cannot. And they didn’t generally stick around after a miserable wasting death, because they’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, and have had plenty of time to wrap their head around starting the next leg of their journey.
Now I knew why Hale was so eager to have me confirm I felt a vibe off that statue: to make an ass of me. Pure and simple.
“What’re you so pissed off about?” Bly—he’d felt me fuming, all the way upstairs, and come down to see what the emotional commotion was.
“This was all for nothing. The old man’s just messing with my head. And he almost had me going there, until he tried to convince me that his craft project was haunted. Here’s what I don’t get—why would anyone fake mediumship? Seeing ghosts sure as hell doesn’t win you any popularity contests.”
“The media makes out the world of Psych to be all kinds of awesome. One great big thrill ride. You know different, and I know different, but we’re just the schlubs on the front line. And certain people who’ve convinced themselves they want to be a part of the action don’t really care how they get here. Sometimes they want it so bad, they even convince themselves.”
Especially if you’re struggling for relevance and you’ve got nothing to lose. Even so, it was ridiculous to waste weeks of my life for absolutely nothing. “He’s an NP. Not a doubt in my mind. Can I go home now?”
“Just as soon as the report is accepted—and since Laura’s got a personal stake in the field of mediumship, I’m guessing she’ll do it first thing. So finish it up and send it in.” He grabbed a garbage bag from the cupboard and headed for the stairs. “I’m gonna go pack.”
“Pack what? Everything here is just a prop. It’s not like any of it actually belongs to us.”
“Fringe benefit: socks, underwear and toiletries are free game.”
The hair goop could go straight in the garbage for all I cared, but I supposed on principle I should at least take the underwear. And while I was raiding the closet, I could make sure there were no more dead rats lurking around. If I was stuck spending one more night in the place, I’d sleep better knowing any potential dead rodents were safely ensconced in the trash bin out back.
I grabbed two trash bags—one for socks and one for rats—and tromped upstairs to take a look.
The third floor wasn’t quite as ominous now that I knew the stink had a terrestrial origin, and I was on a fast track out of there. I’d been in the townhouse for weeks now, longer than I’d stayed anywhere I didn’t intend to actually live. But now the scary murder house trappings looked more like clothes and furniture, just a bunch of objects I had no strong feelings about one way or the other. Staging. Nothing more.
The upstairs had nine-foot ceilings, which didn’t feel all that high—not until I tried to get a gander at the upper shelves and couldn’t quite see, though not for lack of jumping. As I poked around for something to stand on, Bly came upstairs to see what all the thumping was about. I picked up some exercise contraption that looked like half a yoga ball mounted to a manhole cover and said, “Will this thing bear my weight?”
“The bosu?” He shrugged. “If it can hold me, it’ll hold you. But why?”
“I just need to see something quick.” I dropped it on the closet floor. It wobbled.
“Not that way, you’ll put your eye out. Flip it over and stand on the flexible side.”
I wasn’t so sure about my ability to stay upright on a rounded surface, but once I turned it flat side down, it did seem a lot more stable. I grabbed the clothes rod and stepped up. Wobbly at first. But I got my sea legs pretty fast. “What’s the purpose of this thing, anyway?”
“To torture me. Obviously.”
As eager as I was to get back to my old life, I’d miss him, I realized. As fake husbands went, I could’ve done a lot worse.
I gave my knees an experimental flex, and when the “
bosu” didn’t pop, went up on my toes. It added a good eight inches to my height, but it was just shy of enough.
“Do you want me to go get you a chair?”
“Nah, almost there.” Just a little bit more.
“Seriously, don’t start jumping. It’s late, and the emergency room is full of frozen winos.”
“Don’t worry, I got this.” I grabbed the clothes bar. It was stable enough, but too low for a pull-up and too high for a push-up. I tried getting some traction on the wall, but only ended up making a bunch of loud squeaks and leaving a big rubber scuff mark on the paint job.
“Yeah. I’m getting a chair.” Bly headed back downstairs.
I spotted a big round eye-hook overhead, the type of thing you’d suspend a punching bag from, or maybe a sex harness. (I’d ended up leaving that date early. Anyone willing to convert an entire spare bedroom to a sex playground would clearly require more creativity and effort in bed than I was willing to put out.) It was a hefty ring. Whatever had originally dangled from it, no doubt it would be sturdy enough to give me a two-second boost.
I put the bosu directly underneath, climbed back on, and tried a couple of short, experimental hops. So far so good. Then I set my sights on the ring…and I made a jump for it.
I’m no gymnast, but it would’ve been hard to miss, seeing as it was less than a foot away. Pulling myself up one-handed would be another story. I’d planned to use the wall and the clothes bar for some assistance. And, heck, I only needed a few seconds to verify the lack of dead rats. Even so, I was prepared to miss. To flail. To knock something over. So I was phenomenally pleased with myself when I caught the ring firmly in my grasp.
Only to have the entire closet ceiling come down.
29
“Are you okay?” Bly was down on one knee beside me, where I lay sandwiched between a ceiling panel and the bosu.
“I think I just had a chiropractic adjustment.”
Bly picked up the panel and I rolled out awkwardly and discovered that an entire set of folding stairs was attached. I peered up into the trap door I’d revealed. “No one said anything about an attic.”
Murder House Page 18