“All set.”
“Okay.” The reporter shook hands with both Sam and Lacey, Herb right behind her. “Thanks for your call, Lacey. See you on the news.”
“Thank you, Marina, Herb. Appreciate you coming out.”
Sam held the door for them, then closed it behind them and leaned against it. “Whew,” he said. “She’s like a badger, isn’t she, digging out details.”
“You have no idea,” Lacey said.
“And she was on your ass all during Derrick’s trial?”
“All the time. It was a nightmare.”
He shook his head. “I think I’m starting to understand why you chose to resign. Having her question your every move would get old real quick.”
“Real quick,” Lacey affirmed. “And don’t let that wide-eyed innocent look fool you. She files everything away for future reference and forgets nothing.”
He kicked away from the door and pulled Lacey into his arms. “No problem there,” he said. “I’ve never been crazy about reporters and I’m not going to change now.” He nuzzled her neck.
“I know. And I know you hate this kind of stuff, but you’re really great at it. And”—she giggled at the tickly sensation of his lips under her ear—“we should be able to sell a lot of pottery next Friday night. Next thing you know, you’ll be bigger than the Kardashians.”
“Oh, please, no,” he said. He slid his arm around her shoulders. “What say we head home? We can start celebrating early.”
~~~
FOUR
Thursday evening, they had an early dinner and prepared for the cross-town trip to Kagel Canyon. Getting anywhere in LA except across the street took a concerted effort and a lot of time. They hopped on the freeway and merged with the other thousands of cars that fed the evening rush hour.
“At least it’ll be a quicker trip home,” Lacey grumbled as she piloted her little Rav4. Although she knew the freeways were never devoid of traffic—ever. It was just a fact of LA life.
Sam studied his map as she drove. He much preferred orienting them himself rather than relying on GPS. Okay by Lacey. She trusted Sam more than she trusted the digital assistants anyway.
Kagel Canyon was in foothills above Burbank, the higher ground that folded like a rumpled rug pushed against a wall. The road followed the meandering curves of the canyon and climbed steadily higher. Unlike the roof-to-roof subdivisions that carpeted the basin floor, here the houses were all separated, each on a different level than the one below, dotting the edge of the road as the terrain allowed.
“It’s coming up on the left,” Sam said, checking addresses. “Should be the next driveway.”
Lacey noted the rural mailbox beside the driveway and turned up the slope. The driveway was fairly steep, then leveled out in front of the house. She parked behind a larger SUV and a small sedan.
The house was white with forest green trim, a two-story with the small footprint demanded by the terraced grade. It was older, but looked clean and cared for. Roses edged the front lawn and a flagstone path led to the raised porch.
As soon as Sam and Lacey walked up the few steps to the wide, wooden porch, the outside light came on and the front door swung open.
“Hello,” a male voice called. “Right on time.”
He stepped out to greet them. Price Reed was probably mid-thirties with baby-fine blond hair and startling blue eyes. He wore khaki slacks and a blue polo shirt, and stuck out a hand to them.
“Sam, Lacey,” he said as they shook hands. “I’m very pleased to meet you. Come on in. Vicky is upstairs with the girls, just finishing their baths. She’ll be down shortly.”
He led them into the living room, a homey space with blue fabric couch and chairs, a maple coffee table and a natural stone fireplace. Darker blue curtains were caught back on either side of a tall window, and a cushioned window seat made a cozy nook.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” Price asked as they took seats on the couch.
“Maybe later,” Lacey said. “Your house is charming.”
“Well, that’s what we thought,” Price said. “But underneath the surface, it’s anything but. We certainly never expected… what we got.”
Just then a door opened somewhere upstairs and a high-pitched giggle could be heard, accompanied by running footsteps.
“Girls, no running,” a female voice called. The quick footsteps slowed and quieted, but the creak of wooden stairs heralded the descent of two young girls, both clad in terrycloth robes. They rounded the doorway and stopped, wide-eyed to see strangers.
“Melody, Tansy, come here,” Price said. He held out his arm and the girls scrambled to him, the younger one leaning against her dad’s thigh while the older one stood behind her. They stared unabashedly at Sam, apparently fascinated by his copper skin and blue-black ponytail.
“Girls, this is Sam Firecloud and Lacey Fitzpatrick. They’re going to help us get rid of the ghost.” He put his hand on the head of the younger girl. “This is Tansy. She’s four. And Melody”—he squeezed the older girl’s shoulder—“is six.”
“Hi,” Lacey said, leaning forward. “Nice to meet you.”
“Hi,” Melody said shyly. Tansy just turned and hid her face against her dad’s shoulder.
Both girls had dark hair, blunt cut to chin length with a fringe of bangs across their foreheads. Melody sported a purple robe while Tansy’s was pink. The fresh scent of floral soap enveloped them.
“Where’s your mother?” Price asked.
“She’s coming,” Melody said. She bit her lower lip as she contemplated Sam. “Are you a ghost-buster?”
Sam smiled. “Sort of,” he said. “We help people who have problems with ghosts.”
“Do you kill ‘em?” Melody’s eyes were bright with wonder.
Sam shook his head. “Oh, no. We help them to move on, to go where they need to go. They don’t belong here, with living people, but sometimes they get stuck. We help them go on to the ghost place where they belong.”
That same creak of the wooden step alerted them to the last member of the family. Vicky Reed joined them, Price making the introductions.
“I’m so glad to meet you,” she said, shaking their hands and settling in a chair across from them. She had the same dark hair as her daughters, cut shorter into a flattering, curly style. Her eyes were dark blue and direct. “We’re at our wits’ end here.”
“I can imagine,” Lacey said. “Let me explain how we normally work. Sam will do a walk through the house, getting what sensations he can, and I will film him on my phone. This usually takes twenty or thirty minutes. Afterward, we’d love to sit down with you again and hear about what you’ve been experiencing. Sam may be able to corroborate what you see, hear or feel, but very often we have to research the property to find out the ghost’s story. Once we know that, then we can help him or her to move on.”
“Do you want to know where…?” Vicky’s eyes shifted toward the staircase.
“Not yet,” Lacey said. “Sam likes to walk first, getting his own impressions. Then we’ll want to hear all about what you’ve felt. Is that all right?”
Vicky and Price traded looks. “Sure,” he said. “So we just stay here?”
“If you don’t mind,” Lacey said. She turned to Sam. “Is this a good spot for them?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” he said. “I don’t feel any trauma in this room at all.” He glanced around. “Matter of fact, the whole lower story feels okay. I’m pretty sure we’ll concentrate on the upstairs.”
“Oh, okay,” Vicky said. “Um, I wasn’t prepared for that. The girls’ room isn’t picked up…”
“Not a problem,” Lacey said. “Sam doesn’t really see the physical surroundings. And we won’t disturb anything.” She smiled to reassure Vicky and the woman nodded.
“All right.”
Sam looked to Lacey. “Ready?”
She held up her phone. “Ready.”
~~~
FIVE
They stood up
and Sam walked directly to the staircase. Lacey switched on her phone’s video function and followed. He stood at the bottom stair and gazed upward, but Lacey knew he wasn’t looking with his eyes. He stood for a moment, questing, then began to climb the stairs slowly.
While he didn’t touch the banister, Lacey slid her hand along it so she could stay balanced as she filmed. She kept a couple steps behind him, just in case he stopped abruptly.
He didn’t. At the top of the landing, he stepped up and planted his feet. Like so many older homes, the landing acted as an entry hall of sorts, and there were four doorways to choose from. Lacey glanced at them quickly; master bedroom on the left, two smaller bedrooms straight ahead, a bathroom on the right.
“It’s here,” Sam said. He put a hand out toward the second door from the right, the only door that was closed all the way. “Would you open it?”
Lacey stepped forward without a word and turned the knob. The door swung inward.
“Want the light?” she asked softly.
“Please.”
She flipped the switch, and the central light fixture flooded the room with brightness. Then she stepped back out of Sam’s way.
The room had been converted to an office. Desk, chair, computer. A day bed to one side.
Sam stepped inside. “Shock. The kind that is so sudden, so unexpected, it stops the breath.” He held one hand to his throat. “She struggles to breathe. To comprehend. A loss too terrible to be true.” He stood very still, his eyes only slits, his nostrils flaring. “It feels like… someone punched a hole in her heart, and her essence, her soul is all… leaking out. Everything inside her is… draining away.”
For a moment he was motionless, no movement except the slow rise and fall of his chest. Lacey focused on that, knowing as long as he was still breathing, he was okay.
A small scuffing noise sounded behind her. She glanced down in alarm; Tansy peeked around the door frame from the outside. Her dark blue eyes were huge in her face, and she held her bottom lip in her teeth.
Lacey carefully put a finger to her lips, motioning the girl to silence. Tansy nodded, just barely dipping her chin.
“This is where it starts,” Sam said. “And where it ends.” He moved a few steps closer to the outside wall, to a window covered by sheers. He held one hand out, palm down toward the floor. “This is where she died. Not right away. It took years. Decades. She died a little every day. Every day.”
For a moment, only silence filled the room. Lacey breathed slowly, her breath deliberately shallow, and watched Sam on her screen. She was peripherally aware of Tansy behind her. Luckily the girl stayed very still.
“That’s all here,” Sam said finally. He turned back toward the center of the house.
Lacey backed carefully out the door, pulling Tansy along with her. She left the way open for Sam, who walked past the two as if they weren’t there. He stopped in front of the other small bedroom—the girls’ room from what Lacey could see—and stood, head down. Lacey held Tansy’s hand with her left, her right keeping the video centered on Sam.
He gave a short shake of his head and moved on to the last doorway, to the master bedroom. He stepped inside just past the door frame. Lacey peered around him at the king-sized bed and a heavy maple dresser.
“Do you need the light?” she barely whispered.
“No. There’s nothing here but grief. Pervasive. Mantling. Like a heavy blanket, weighing her down. She barely functions. The sorrow is… too heavy to be borne. Too heavy. Every night she prays for death. Every day she wakes is… hell. Like a prisoner pacing her cell. Just waiting… waiting for death.” He turned back toward Lacey. “That’s all.”
Again Lacey pulled Tansy gently out of the way and let Sam lead. He trotted down the steps, his hand on the banister. Lacey knew he was done.
The three of them trooped into the living room, where sight of them brought a sharp inhale from Vicky.
“Tansy! I thought you went to the kitchen. What are you doing? Did she bother you?” The last question was for Sam.
“Not at all,” he said quickly. He and Lacey took their seats, but Tansy was reluctant to break her contact with Lacey.
“She was fine,” Lacey said, squeezing her hand. “She stayed very quiet.” She smiled at the girl, who beamed back at her.
“Well, I’m sorry,” Vicky said anyway.
“No harm done,” Sam said. “Could I trouble you for a glass of water?”
“Of course.” Vicky was on her feet. “I’ve got soda, iced tea…”
“Water would be great,” Lacey said. “Can I help?”
“No, I’ve got it. I’ll be right back.”
While she went to the kitchen, Price leaned toward them. “So did you get anything?”
“Oh, yeah,” Sam said. “Although I’m not sure how it lines up with what you told us before, about a threat.”
Price frowned, clearly surprised. “Oh?”
“We’ll go over it,” Sam said.
Vicky brought water for both of them and Sam drained half of his at a gulp. Lacey sipped hers and set the glass on the side table.
“So why don’t you tell us what you’ve experienced?” She’d gotten her digital recorder, notebook and a pen from her pack. She started the recorder and set it on the coffee table, then sat back with her pen poised.
Price looked to his wife and gave her a small nod.
She pulled in a deep breath. “I guess it started with me. I heard noises in the upstairs room—the office. It actually wasn’t going to be the office. We had the girls each in her own room, Melody on the left and Tansy on the right. I would sometimes hear… sighing, or what could be soft moans. I kept thinking it was the wind. I checked that window I don’t know how many times, and sometimes the sound did seem louder there, but Price checked it and never could find a gap or a place for air to come through.” She paused and shifted her eyes from Sam to Lacey and back. They waited expectantly.
“Then Tansy started calling it the ‘sad room.’ When I asked her why she called it that, she just said it made her feel sad. She didn’t like being there.”
Vicky looked at her youngest, who kept her head down, her eyes averted. Lacey touched her lightly on the shoulder.
“Was it a feeling only?” she asked the girl. “Did you ever see or hear anything?”
Tansy would not raise her head. “I heard crying in there. At night. Not loud, but… I heard it a lot. It would wake me up, and then I would go to Mama and Daddy’s room.” The girl peeked at her parents uneasily.
“We’d tell her it was just her imagination, or she’d had a dream, and take her back to her bed. We kept thinking it was just getting used to the house, it being an older house with creaks and groans. We thought she’d get past it. But then she started going into Melody’s room, and Melody would let her sleep there. That’s when we decided it would be easier to put both girls in the one room. Tansy sleeps fine in there.”
“So anything else in that other room?” Sam asked.
Vicky shook her head. “No, but the moaning is still there sometimes. And it does feel sad in there. Heavy, you know? I don’t know that I ever noticed it before Tansy said anything, but now I do.”
“All right. What else?” Sam looked from Vicky to Price, then to Melody.
“Then… the attacks started,” Price said. He held back, reluctant, as if unwilling to put it into words.
“Go on,” Sam urged.
“It was a Saturday, what, two months ago?” He looked to Vicky and she nodded. “I was out back in my shop, working. The girls were playing in the yard. Suddenly I heard Tansy crying. I went out and saw her on the ground; she said someone knocked her down.”
Sam turned to Tansy. “Can you tell me what happened?” he asked gently.
Tansy ducked her head, but then peered up at Sam. She glanced to Lacey, who smiled encouragement.
“I was chasing a butterfly,” the girl said in a soft voice. “Someone pushed me down. Hard. I don’t know who.”<
br />
Sam listened closely and nodded. “Can you show me? Where did they push? How hard?” He crooked a finger at her. “It’s okay. Do to me what they did to you.”
Tansy hesitated, unsure. She appealed to her parents.
“Go ahead,” Price said. “It’s okay.”
The girl edged over to Sam, then raised both hands and braced her palms against his shoulder. With an indrawn breath, she shoved him as hard as she could. He rocked sideways on the couch.
“Wow,” he said, “that was a good shove. So it knocked you down on the ground?”
Tansy nodded.
“Did it hurt?”
The girl rubbed her own shoulder. “It was sore for a little while.”
“But nothing else happened?”
Tansy shook her head. “Not to me.”
Both Sam and Lacey swiveled toward Melody.
It was the older girl’s turn to duck away from the attention. She stared down at her bare feet.
“Go on, honey,” Vicky said. “Just tell them what happened.”
Melody didn’t look up. “We were playing tag. Tansy was ‘it,’ and she was chasing me. I was running, and all of a sudden someone grabbed my hair. I felt a hand like this.” She held up one hand with the fingers clawed. “It grabbed me this way.” She put the clawed hand to the back of her head, gathering up a hank of hair and tugging it backward. “It hurt,” she finished.
“I’m sure it did,” Sam said soothingly. “but you didn’t see anyone, and nothing else happened?”
Melody shook her head, then raised her eyes to Sam, big, blue bewildered eyes.
“So nothing’s happened since then?” he asked the adults.
Price sighed. “The girls haven’t played out in the yard much. They’re afraid to get too far from the house. So, no, nothing since then.”
“Well,” Sam said, sitting back, “I got no sense of malice at all, no threat. I got overwhelming sadness, grief and loss. That dovetails with what you feel in that bedroom.” He nodded to Vicky. “The heaviness and the moaning. The feeling is almost… debilitating. But I felt absolutely no aggression, no anger, no intent to do harm.” For a moment, he gazed off at the ceiling, his eyes unfocused.
Revenge Walk Page 3