Unquiet Souls

by Christine Pope

  But she figured it was better to keep things light for now. The last thing she wanted was for either one of them to be off-balance today. Too much was at stake.

  And, in addition to everything else, she really didn’t want Colin Turner to suspect anything was going on between her and Michael. Not because she worried that he’d be angry about the situation, but more that he’d try to come up with some way of exploiting the sexual tension between the two of them in order to make the show more interesting.

  “As soon as I’m done with this coffee, we can go,” she said.

  “Okay. There are a few things I need to do first, but I’ll take care of those now.”

  Audrey didn’t ask what those “things” were. Returning phone calls, checking his email?

  Making sure that all the protections he had put in place in the house were still working properly?

  He got up from the table and left the kitchen. She made herself stay where she was, and sipped coffee and looked out the window at the backyard. The fog had rolled back in again, and the morning was gray and damp. Not the most auspicious beginning to their showdown with the Whitcomb mansion’s demons, although she knew that in Southern California, a day might start out gloomy as hell, and be bright and sunny by noon.

  She did her best not to think about Michael, about the touch of his lips and the way his hair had brushed against her cheek when they kissed, but, as with most mental exercises like that, the harder she tried to push the memory into the background, the more it seemed to dominate her thoughts. It was idiotic to be obsessing over him like a girl with a high school crush, though. Sometime during her college years, she’d realized she wasn’t the sort of person who fell in love easily, whose hormones dictated her actions. In a way, that made life easier, because she wasn’t subjected to the kind of heartbreak some of her friends experienced with their own boyfriends. On the other hand, she’d found herself reflecting more than once that it might be fun to experience really falling for someone, falling crazy hard, just to know what it was like.

  Well, if her current obsessive thought processes were any indication, that was exactly what was happening now with Michael Covenant. Probably the last person she should have become fixated on, but she realized the universe did like to play these little jokes on her.

  In one way, though, she and Michael were supremely compatible — they’d never have to try to explain their interest in the paranormal to the other person. That particular obsession seemed to be hard-wired into both of them.

  There were still a few swallows of coffee left in her mug, but it had already gotten lukewarm, so Audrey gave it up as a loss and went over to the sink to rinse out the cup. After placing it in the top rack of the dishwasher, she straightened up, her gaze straying to the window above the sink.

  Someone was standing out in the backyard, watching the house.

  She startled, then stared back at him. As far as she could tell, she’d never seen the man before — he looked as though he was in his late fifties, tall and almost gaunt, with prominent cheekbones and hollow, sunken-looking eyes. His black coat hung loosely on his frame, as if he had once filled it out much more than he did now.

  And then she blinked, and he was gone.

  Her heart was beating a mile a minute in her chest. Audrey held on to the edge of the tile countertop, glad for the cool ceramic beneath her fingertips, reminding her that it was real, that she was inside the house and safe. There had been something terrible in the stranger’s dark eyes, an abyss of despair and rage and endless, echoing sorrow.

  Footsteps sounded on the tile floor and she whirled, then relaxed slightly when she saw it was Michael standing there, looking at her with some concern.

  “Audrey, what’s the matter?”

  “I — ” She swallowed, then forced in a breath, telling herself she was all right, that maybe she’d just imagined the man standing in the backyard. “I saw someone. He was standing there.” She shifted so she could point at the window over the sink, at the small lawn that formed the center of the yard.

  Michael came over to the sink and looked out through the window, brow furrowed. He was so close that Audrey felt his jacket brush against her arm, but right then, she couldn’t be concerned with her physical responses to him. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “He — he disappeared. I don’t think he was real.”

  Turning back toward her now, frown deepening. “Describe him.”

  She rubbed her lips together. They felt dry, sore, even though she’d put on lip gloss before she came downstairs. “Tall and thin…really thin. Dark hair and eyes. He was wearing a long black coat, but it didn’t look exactly like an overcoat…more like something you’d see in an old photograph. What did they call those? Frock coats?”

  “Jesus.”

  “What is it?”

  Michael turned toward the window again, although the yard remained empty, still and quiet in the foggy morning air. “I think you just saw Jeffrey Whitcomb.”

  “I what?”

  He took Audrey by the hand and led her over to the table, had her sit down. “The man you described sounds just like the pictures I’ve seen of Jeffrey Whitcomb.”

  “What was he doing in your yard, Michael?” Her hands were shaking, so she knotted them together, hoping that would get them to calm down.

  “I don’t know. Maybe as a warning…maybe he knows what we have planned for his demon-summoning spells in the basement and is trying to scare us off.”

  “You’re saying his ghost is trying to frighten us?”

  “Well, it would have to be his ghost, since he’s been dead for almost a hundred years now.” Michael shrugged. “That’s the only reason I can think of for him to be appearing now. Of all the phenomena reported in the Whitcomb house, I’ve never come across anything that sounded like it might have been his ghost.”

  “I thought you said this house was protected,” Audrey remarked then, trying not to sound accusatory and probably failing miserably.

  “The house is,” he replied calmly. “Not the yard. He probably couldn’t get any closer than that, which was why he materialized out there, and not in here with you.”

  Was Michael’s explanation supposed to be reassuring? She didn’t find it particularly so, not if it meant that the shade of Jeffrey Whitcomb could still wander around the property…that demons might be able to come up on the front porch and leer in the windows.

  When she didn’t respond, Michael added, “Ghosts can’t hurt you, Audrey. Unlike demons, they have no bodies that can interact with the physical plane.”

  “Maybe,” she said, her tone dubious. “But they can still scare the shit out of you.”

  That remark only made him chuckle. “Come on. You’ll feel better after you’ve had some breakfast.”

  She wasn’t so sure about that. However, going out to breakfast meant putting some distance between her and the spot where she’d seen Jeffrey Whitcomb’s ghost lurking, and that sounded like a very good idea to her.

  “Sure,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Flappy Jack’s was reassuringly normal, and Audrey’s appetite recovered enough for her to demolish a Denver omelette and some hashed browns. After she was done eating, though, her stomach wanted to knot itself up all over again, because their next stop was her house. Even though she knew they weren’t going inside the house itself, she didn’t want to think of what she might see in the garage.

  This was your idea, she told herself as Michael pointed his ancient Land Cruiser east along Foothill Boulevard. Besides, the car’s insured. Even if the demons have trashed it, you can get it fixed or replaced.

  That sounded very logical, and was true enough…up to a point. She didn’t know whether she’d be able to adequately explain to an insurance adjuster how her car had managed to get damaged while it was sitting inside a locked garage.

  They pulled into the driveway. Just as it had been the last time the two of them were here, the exterior of the house looked peacef
ul, unchanged. A person would have to try to peek past the blinds to see the utter destruction within, and this wasn’t that kind of neighborhood. People were too busy living their own lives to snoop like that.

  Still, Audrey shivered as she got out of the SUV and closed the door. She could have blamed the chill she felt on the damp, unappealing morning, but she knew it was much more than that.

  Michael came over to her, right hand extended. She took it, glad he was offering her that small amount of comfort. Funny how the touch of someone’s hand could be so reassuring…or maybe it was only that she held Michael’s hand, and he had a bit more to offer in this sort of situation than your ordinary person.

  Still….

  Hand in hand, they walked toward the garage. It was small, added to the property in the 1930s, and could only accommodate a single vehicle; Audrey’s parents used to take turns parking inside. Rather than undo the padlock on the main door, she went to the side of the building, where there was a separate entry. She got out her keys, went to the green color-coded one — “g” for green and garage — and put it in the lock. It turned easily enough, although she didn’t know whether that was a good sign or not.

  “I’ll go first,” Michael said.

  She wasn’t about to argue. “Okay…but be careful.”

  He sent her a brief, unsmiling look. “I’m always careful.”

  Well, almost always, she thought. You weren’t all that careful last night….

  Better not to let her mind follow that particular path. The last thing she wanted right now was to be distracted.

  Slowly, he opened the door inward, then fumbled for the light switch on the left side of the door. How he’d known it would be there, Audrey wasn’t sure, but she supposed it seemed like the logical location for it.

  The lights flared on.

  “Well, hell,” he said.

  All the windows in her Corolla had been smashed in. From what she could see as she peered over Michael’s shoulder, it looked as if the upholstery had been torn to shreds. The hood of the car was ripped away from the hinges, those same hinges bent as though something inhumanly strong had pried them apart.

  Well, actually, that was probably exactly what had happened. Audrey did her best to look at the scene clinically, to calmly enumerate the damage. Maybe then it would be easier to accept the reality of her poor little car being destroyed.

  The hood was still there. It was propped up against the driver-side door of the car, words splashed on it in pale blue paint — the same color as the paint on the exterior of the house. Several spare cans had been stored on a shelf at the back of the garage.

  Letters made up of slashes of paint read, Your next.

  Audrey shook her head. “Apparently, demons have a shaky grasp of grammar.”

  Michael looked down at her, opened his mouth as though he were going to reply, then shook his head. After a pause, he said, “We’ll get you a rental car.”

  “We can worry about that later,” she replied. “At least now I know that the car is a no-go.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Stop apologizing,” she told him. “Or rather, there’s no need to apologize, unless you came over and did this while sleepwalking or in a fugue state or something.”

  “No, this was our friends from the Whitcomb mansion.” He paused and looked northward, roughly in the direction of where that peculiarly haunted house stood. For a second, Audrey was worried that he might suggest they go over there right now, but instead he added, “I’m glad the production has a large insurance bond. Colin and I argued about that, but I insisted. At this point, though, it’s probably better not to mention any of the damage here until we’re done with the shoot. Colin’s going to be shaky enough, going back to camera work after a long hiatus, and there’s no point in upsetting him with insurance claims.”

  Yes, Audrey could see how that might put a mercenary like Colin Turner off his stride. Waiting a day or two wasn’t going to make much of a difference. At least she had someplace to crash until they got all the logistics sorted out.

  All right, staying at Michael’s place presented its own set of issues, but nothing the two of them couldn’t handle. They were both adults, after all.

  “What now?” Audrey asked. A glance down at her watch told her it was barely eleven; they had a long ways to go until their scheduled four o’clock meet-up at the Whitcomb property.

  “We’ll go back to my house,” Michael replied. “And then I’ll see how many protection strategies I can teach you before we have to come back here and face those demons.”

  Not so long ago, she would have dismissed all this as mumbo-jumbo, the sort of psychological chicanery people indulged in to make themselves think they had some sort of control over their environment. But once you’d established that demons were real, and that the ghost of a long-dead man could appear outside your window and stare at you balefully, then you probably had to accept all the rest of it, too.

  White sage incense burned from a censer on top of one of the bookcases in the library. It was sweeter and more aromatic than the sage bundle Rosemary had used to smudge Audrey’s house, although Michael wasn’t using it for the same purpose. White sage helped to clear the mind, to purify a space of negative energies, a necessary prelude to what they would be doing next.

  “You aren’t particularly religious, are you?” he asked. He’d been rummaging around in a drawer in his writing desk, and now approached with several amulets hanging from leather cords draped over one hand.

  “Not really,” Audrey replied. “We went to church now and then when I was really little, but my parents stopped taking me when I was around five or six.” She paused, giving him a sideways look. She recalled how he’d said during their first meeting that he was an ordained minister, although he hadn’t mentioned which denomination. Should she ask? Probably better to wait…it was pretty clear to her that he wasn’t Catholic. “Are you going to try to convert me?”

  “No,” he replied, his expression completely serious, although she’d been teasing him…just a little. “But we’re dealing with demons here, and belief in a higher power is absolutely necessary to protecting yourself — and giving yourself the strength to drive them away.” He draped one of the necklaces around her throat, a point of some kind of black crystal with a silver cap. “Black tourmaline,” he explained. “It can’t be matched in terms of protection from negative energies and spirits. I keep a chunk of it in every room, and I always carry a piece in my pocket when I leave the house.”

  Audrey recalled how she’d seen a rough black stone sitting in one of the bathroom cabinets. At the time, she’d been occupied with other matters, but now she thought she understood why it was there.

  “And of course you know what this is,” he went on, this time dropping a long chain with an ornate silver cross over her head. “It can serve as a reminder of the higher power we’ll invoke to protect us — physically, mentally, and spiritually.”

  “Okay,” she said, hoping she didn’t look as foolish as she felt. While she knew all this was real, that the stakes were real, some part of her still couldn’t help wondering whether this was all part of some elaborate prank.

  “And the prayer of protection,” he said. “This is the simplest, and the most used. There are others, but if you memorize this one, it should be enough.”

  Prayers and charms and chunks of black stone that would protect her from vicious, otherworldly enemies. About all Audrey could do was nod.

  “The light of God surrounds us;

  The love of God enfolds us;

  The presence of God watches over us;

  Wherever we are, God is!”

  She’d been prepared to be amused by such an invocation, but somehow, Michael’s voice had deepened as he spoke, and he suddenly seemed taller and broader, as though he should be wearing armor and wielding a spear as he struck down the unrighteous. The gray glint of his eyes was sharp as steel.

  The hair had lifted at the back
of her neck, and she swallowed.

  “Repeat it,” he told her.

  Feeling foolish, Audrey said the words of the prayer. They sounded weak and ineffective coming from her mouth, but Michael must have been satisfied, because he nodded.

  “That should work. But say it again — as many times as you need so you know you have it completely memorized. It’s one thing to repeat the prayer here, when you’re not under any sort of pressure, but it’ll be completely different if you’re having to say it while facing an onslaught from a group of demons.”

  “The light of God surrounds us,” Audrey began, then recited the rest of the prayer without a hitch. Luckily, she’d always been good at memorizing things — song lyrics, phone numbers, quotes from movies and books — so this wasn’t any kind of a challenge for her. When she was done, she asked, “Why didn’t you teach me all this from the beginning? I could have used some of this protection that first time I went into the Whitcomb mansion.”

  “Because I didn’t think you would accept any of it,” he replied. He still stood very close to her, and she wished he would pull her into his arms, offer some reassurance that way, but he apparently didn’t think that would be a good idea. If only she was brave enough to reach out to him…. He went on, “You were hired to be the show’s skeptic, remember? But then your own psychic abilities began to manifest, and I realized you needed to be able to protect yourself, not just have me do it for you. You’re now much more open to these energies than you were a few days ago. This — paradoxically — makes you both stronger and more vulnerable. Understand?”

  She thought she did. Or at least, she could see why being open to those sorts of vibrations might create a whole new set of problems. If she hadn’t been flexing her psychic muscles, so to speak, would she have even seen Jeffrey Whitcomb’s shade standing out in Michael’s backyard?