Dirty Deeds

by D V Wolfe

  “I think I could use some backup,” Nya panted. Then she turned to look at Walter. “There’s a spirit named Betty in there and she is pissed.”

  “Oh god,” Walter said. “That’s my wife!”

  14

  Nya and I kept Walter and Noah behind us as we started for the back door.

  “I can shoot,” Noah said in protest.

  Nya turned and gave him a quick nod. “We know you can, but Walter’s unarmed. In case this gets hairy, we need you to protect him.”

  Noah stood up straighter and moved closer to Walter behind us. From inside, we could hear the sound of more glass breaking and furniture being dragged across the floor.

  “Shit,” I said to Nya. “What’s she doing?”

  “Redecorating from the sound of it,” Nya muttered as we moved through the mudroom and then the laundry room. The sounds of destruction seemed to be coming from the kitchen in front of us.

  “HUNTERS!” An unearthly voice screamed when we came through the kitchen doorway. A rolling pin caught me in the chest and Nya was barely quick enough to deflect a cutting board that was hurled at her like a frisbee. Noah and Walter were still behind us, just on the other side of the laundry room doorway. “SO MANY NIGHTS OF, ‘I’M SORRY, BETTY’, ‘I HAVE TO BROADCAST, BETTY’! YOU SPOILED BRAT HUNTERS! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE AND LEAVE MY WALLY ALONE! YOU MONSTERS ALWAYS TAKE FROM HIM, YOU NEVER CARE WHAT IT DOES TO HIM TO GIVE YOU ALL EVERYTHING HE HAS! EVERYTHING THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MINE!”

  The spirit of the old woman had a perfect bun on top of her head and a floral summer dress on. Wind that only seemed to exist on her plane was stirring the hem of her dress and causing flyaways to escape her bun. Her face was contorted into a mask of mad-dog rage and with every sentence, she seemed to swell, taller, and larger in the kitchen.

  “LEAVE WALLY ALONE! I HAVE GIVEN HIM PEACE! PEACE FOREVER FROM HIS BURDEN! BE GONE!” And then she lunged, hitting Nya and I in the chest and shoving us, back against the wall. Her face and head were twisting, her jaws becoming long like an alligator’s, opening wide, pitch blackness in their depths, the teeth lengthening as she snapped at us. I had the sawed-off in my hand, but she had us pinned to the wall and I couldn’t raise my arm. Beside me, Nya squeezed her eyes shut and groaned in pain as she forced her arm from where it had been pinned to her chest and fired a wrought iron round through Walter’s wife. Betty screamed in pain, flickered, and disappeared. The weight pinning me to the wall let up and I raised the sawed-off, ready to fire as soon as I saw her again.

  “Sorry about your china cabinet, Walter,” Nya said, noticing where the wrought iron round had ended its journey, after passing through Betty.

  “She’s so angry,” Walter said.

  I turned to look at him. “How long has the spirit of your wife been haunting your house?”

  Walter shook his head. “This is the first time I’ve heard or seen her!”

  Nya looked at me and then back at Walter. “Do you have hunters out here often?”

  Walter shook his head. “No, I haven’t had anyone out here for a while now.” Walter glanced at me. “Well, except Taggert apparently, when he snuck up on me in the bathroom.”

  I nodded. “Tags is good at that. Maybe we stirred her up by showing up here and she felt the need to make an appearance and tell us how she felt through the art of throwing shit,” I said.

  Nya was about to answer, but her eyes met mine as we felt it at the same time. The pressing weight was back, pushing us towards the walls. I lifted the sawed-off, bracing it with both hands, pumping the action before my arms could be pinned down. She hadn’t appeared yet, but we could hear her voice. “YOU TAINTED, BROKEN USERS, GET OUT OF MY HOUSE AND LEAVE MY HUSBAND ALONE!” Then she swooped through the room. I fired and I heard another shot from Nya’s gun ring out, this time, imbedding itself into Walter’s fridge door. The pressure let up and Nya and I sighed in relief.

  I heard Walter groan from the doorway and I turned to look at him. “When Betty died, did you bury her?”

  Walter shook his head. “Are you kidding? After all the necro-witches, possessions, ghouls, and other shit that I’ve seen over the years? No, she was cremated.”

  Ok, so there wouldn’t be any remains to burn to get rid of her.

  “What about her things?” Nya asked. “Her hairbrush, toothbrush, clothes?”

  Walter shrugged. “I gave her clothes to charity. I don’t think I ever got around to throwing the other things away.”

  This was not good. The smart money was on Betty being the thing blocking Walter, well, if spirits can block Harbingers. This was a new one on me, but, she’d said ‘she was giving him peace’ from the job. Nya hurried across the kitchen like a cat stalking its prey.

  “Where are you going?” I called after her.

  “Bathroom!” Nya shouted back.

  I hesitated, not sure if this was the kind of thing where she’d want me to follow her.

  “Bane,” Nya shouted. “Get in here.”

  I turned to look at Noah. “Take Walter back outside.”

  Noah grabbed Walter by a shoulder and turned him, pushing him towards the back door. I dug two new shells out of my back pocket and reloaded the sawed-off as I crunched across the kitchen floor on the scattered rock salt and broken glass. I got to the bathroom to find Nya dumping items into the sink. There was a toothbrush, hair comb, and a makeup compact.

  “That cabinet over there,” Nya said, pointing to the right side of the bathroom. Look for anything that doesn’t look like it would belong to Walter.”

  I dug through the cabinet and paused as we felt the shove of pressure again. I banged my head on the bottom edge of the cabinet and I heard Nya groan. I turned to see her pinned against the sink. We were screwed. Both of us had had our backs to the door, and the room in general, when she’d reappeared. We could turn to see her over our shoulders, but trying to get our arms up to shoot was a losing battle. I tried as hard as I could to raise the sawed-off, thinking of how Nya had been able to force herself to move the first time Betty had appeared. I willed myself to do it, repeating the command over in my head: move! Betty was growing larger, filling the room and I could feel icy fingertips touch the back of my neck just as I saw them elongate from her left hand and skim the back of Nya’s neck. Nya’s hand twitched at her side.

  BANG!

  A cloud of rock salt pelted us from above. The pressure and the cold fingers vanished. I dragged air back into my compressed lungs and turned to see Noah, standing in the doorway with the ten-gauge. I turned to look at the wall between Nya and me. The sheetrock had a large hole in it now and rock salt, mixed with bits of sheetrock were crumbling to the floor together.

  “Sorry,” Noah said. Nya smiled at him. “Perfect timing, Noah.” She scooped up the items from the sink and headed down the hall. I followed after her, pumping the action on the sawed-off, ready for Betty’s next attack. “I think I missed one or two,” Nya called back. “Noah, can you grab them? They’re still in the sink.” I turned to look behind me in time to see Noah’s ears turn slightly pink as he scrambled to grab the fine-tooth comb and a hair scrunchie that Nya had left behind.

  “Where are we going?” Noah called to Nya.

  “Outside,” Nya said. “With you two armed to keep Betty off our asses, we should be able to make it out. Then we won’t have to shoot up as well as burn down, Walter’s house.”

  We’d made it back into the kitchen before we heard Betty scream again. The haunting sound, echoing through the house. I saw her going straight for Nya up ahead of me and I pumped the action.

  “Hit the deck, Nya!” Nya dropped to the ground and I fired. Betty flickered and vanished.

  “Man is she pissed,” Nya said, getting slowly to her feet and gathering back up the items she’d been carrying. We pushed through the back door and I started looking around for a good place to burn the stuff. Nya was ahead of me. She pulled the lid off of Walter’s round grill and removed the grill plate with one hand while d
ropping items out of the crook of her other arm into the bottom of the grill.

  Noah scrambled to pick up anything she dropped and added them to the rest of the pile amongst the grill ashes. Nya gave him a warm smile and patted his shoulder. Walter was standing motionless at one end of the deck, staring back at his house. I searched the shelf of supplies next to the back door and found a half-empty bottle of lighter fluid. I grabbed it and scrambled over to the grill. Something grabbed me from behind, lifting me off the ground. I let go of the sawed-off and the lighter fluid. I let out a scream as the force turned me over in the air and bashed me against the side of the house. My back had taken the hit but it had jarred my neck backward and I was having trouble seeing as it pulled me off the wall again. Then Betty’s force threw me like a lawn dart, launching me into the backyard. I tried to remember to relax my muscles before I hit the ground and to turn to land on my ass. It still hurt like hell when I made contact, the hard ground, knocking the air out of me. I skidded forward on the tall grass and weeds, towards the edge of the yard. Apparently, at one point, either Betty, or Walter, or maybe both of them, had decided to try growing cactus, because I had landed on one of them. I felt spines dig into my left thigh and butt cheek and I struggled, trying to move off the cactus. I was jerked upward again, but the force holding me was becoming more erratic as it batted me around in the air. My vision was blurry at best and the air smelled like burning plastic. There was sobbing now and screaming. Then the voice, as if right in my ear whispered, “Walter.”

  Then I crashed to the ground. I heard a sound like breaking celery and my first panicked thought was that I’d broken something. I kept my eyes closed as I tried wiggling my fingers and toes. All good there and no pain beyond some muscle tenderness and the cactus spines in my ass. I tried to move my arms to push myself off the ground and I quickly figured out what had happened. I had been dropped right on top of a patch of zucchinis and I had squashed them. The center stalk had taken the brunt of my weight and snapped off underneath me.

  I felt a little stupid for my momentary freak out over the possibility of a broken limb and I scrambled to my feet and looked back at the porch. Nya, Noah, and Walter were all staring at me. White smoke was rolling off the grill beside them, carrying the burning plastic smell up to the heavens as Betty’s personal effects were burned and melted into oblivion.

  “That was impressive,” Walter said with a scowl. “Until you killed my zucchinis.”

  “You’re welcome,” I wheezed, only then realizing that along with my pride, the air had been knocked out of me.

  I stumbled back to the porch and leaned over a chair, tenderly reaching back to feel for cactus spines. I couldn’t feel any sticking out of me, but the stinging told me they’d definitely been there at one point. I gingerly sat down, favoring my left side.

  “Now what?” Noah asked, coming to join me.

  I looked up at Nya and she shrugged. “We wait around for a bit and see if Betty comes back. If she does, we missed something, if she doesn’t we can go on our merry way.”

  Walter sat down hard on his lawn chair again and I turned to look at him. He looked much older and much more tired than he had when we first arrived.

  “You alright, Walter?” I asked.

  Walter shook his head. “Good ole Betty. She always told me that the hunters got more of me than she did. She was patient. She knew what I had to do and man, did I love her for it. She treated it like it was my job, not who I was. Every night after the evening broadcast and before I had to make the late broadcast, we’d sit on our couch, her feet in my lap and we’d watch Columbo. When I’d get a vision, she’d grab the notebook off the coffee table and take notes while I described to her what I saw. I’d take the notes, go make the broadcast, and come back to her. She always looked a little sad, but she’d catch me up, put her feet back in my lap and we’d keep watching.”

  There was a hot ache in my chest, listening to Walter. What a beautiful woman. And to see her like this, like something Walter would broadcast about for hunters to go track down? I stood up and moved over to hug Walter. He froze but gave me an awkward hug back.

  “I’m sorry, Walter.”

  I didn’t want to ask, but with hauntings, there was always something that brought them back and we needed to know why Betty had waited two years to make an appearance.

  “Walter,” I said after a moment. “Why would Betty come back now? I mean, didn’t she pass a couple of years ago?”

  Walter nodded. “Two years ago.” He paused to think about it for a moment and then shook his head. “I mean, our anniversary was last week, but wouldn’t she have come then?”

  I nodded, that was probably not it.

  Nya stood. “Let’s sweep the house one more time to see if she’s really gone.”

  Walter looked like she’d punched him in the gut when Nya said that, but he nodded and I left Noah with him while Nya and I checked the house again. She went room to room and I grabbed a broom off the wall in the kitchen and began sweeping up the broken glass and rock salt. Ten minutes later, the floor was clean and I’d covered the hole in Walter’s fridge door with a piece of duct tape, hoping it would be good enough for now. The round had flattened out and broken a pickle jar inside the fridge but hadn’t gone through the back wall which was a mercy. I was in the process of cleaning up the inside of the fridge when I heard Noah behind me.

  “Why does it smell like pickles in here?” he asked.

  I stuck my head out from around the fridge door to see Noah, holding the ten-gauge and keeping Walter close and behind him.

  “What,” I said. “You didn’t know? Hauntings always smell like pickles.”

  Noah glared at me and I went back to cleaning. Nya finally joined us and shook her head. “No Betty incidents in the rest of the house, what about in here?”

  I shook my head. “Nada.”

  Nya took a dramatic stance and pretended to smooth her hair and take invisible glasses off. Then in a cute little voice, she said, “This house is clean.”

  I gave her a slow clap with the dirty pickle rag in one hand and she wrinkled her nose at me.

  “What smells like pickles?”

  We waited another half hour, just to be sure. We were all sitting on the back porch with Walter. We were quiet. A painful memory of watching my dad, struggling to deal with my mom’s death, replaying itself as I watched Walter. Suddenly, his expression changed. He winced in pain and he dropped his head down, raising his hands and pressing them to either side of his head. He started shaking.

  “Walter,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “The visions….” Walter moaned. “They’re back. So many. Visions.”

  I got up to stand in front of Walter. He whipped his head up and I almost yelled in surprise when his eyes met mine. But he wouldn’t have been able to see me, not with so many images and colors flashing in his eyes. It was like watching an out-of-focus movie happening simultaneously on two side-by-side screens. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, the colors and images were gone, but he was panting.

  “Walter, are you…,” I began, reaching for him.

  “I need to lay down,” he said, moaning and getting to his feet slowly. “I’ll be fine. I just need time to unravel things. Then, I’ll get on the air…” Noah and I helped Walter across the porch to where Nya was holding the back door open, looking relieved but also worried for Walter. We got him inside and to his room. I stepped out of the room while Noah helped him get into bed.

  “We’ll lock your back door on our way out, Walter,” I called through the bedroom door.

  “Thanks,” Walter wheezed. It was hard to tell if that was just for us locking the door behind us or for everything else. I was going to guess it was just for the door. We’d stormed in, ruined his relaxing break from the visions, riled up the spirit of his dead wife, then shot her in front of him, multiple times, at least the vision of her. We wreaked havoc on his house in general, burned her belongings a
nd returned Walter to the thankless job of Harbinger, where he now had a backlog of visions to sort through, from the sound of it.