Shuttered Secrets

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” Donna said.

  “You giving up? The dolphins will be happy to see you,” Michael said.

  “Don’t try your reverse psychology on me, Mikey,” Donna said. “You know Ry and I are going to smoke you and you’ll be forced to take a Segway tour.”

  Michael grunted.

  “All right, everyone. If you’re done bellyaching—ha ha—here is the last one,” Nancy said.

  One whiff of this one told her it was going to be a doozy. She dipped a finger into the cup and found it both spongy and squishy. She hooked a finger into the mess and popped it into her mouth, trying to pretend it was a delightful scoop of perfectly normal frosting. Her stomach almost instantly lurched as a series of flavors that had no business being together exploded in her mouth. The spongy texture of a cupcake or a Twinkie. The sickly sweet softness of cream. Definitely a Twinkie. And then the unmistakable pungent taste of mustard. The tastes all collided at once then and nearly took her to her knees. And to make matters even worse, it was Dijon mustard, which always had a very distinct tinge of sweaty feet.

  A moment later, she realized Michael’s worst nightmare had come true. Both his parents clearly knew Michael’s abhorrence of mustard. Riley wondered which one had come up with this horror. Saving it for last was particularly cruel. They’d lured him into a false sense of security. The Twinkie covered in Dijon mustard would have been a war her taste buds would have lost anyway, but with the residue of seven other devilish concoctions still residing in her mouth, this last one was especially heinous. Riley’s stomach lurched again. It was such a shockingly horrible experience that she threw her head back and cackled, and then was caught in a vicious cycle of laughing, gagging, and trying to wipe at her eyes while they were still covered with the sleep mask.

  “I feel like this one is my fault!” Donna said, coughing. “I jinxed us. Oh hell, this is … so …”

  “Noooooo!” Michael said. “Oh my God … why … oh no …” This was followed by gagging so dramatic, it sounded as if a cat were trying to dislodge a hairball. “Why … ohh sweet Jesus. If I weren’t already an adult, I would file for emancipation!” Another dramatic heave.

  Now Donna was cackling too, doing so with such intensity that the vibration of it shook Riley’s chair.

  “The combination … it’s so …” Carla coughed hard, then sneezed. She let out an involuntarily little scream. “Oh my God.”

  Riley had her forehead on the table and was laughing so hard she was practically crying. She needed to spit the foul thing out, but she couldn’t stop laughing long enough to do it.

  “I can’t!” Michael shouted, followed by a chair being pushed back along the hardwood floor.

  Riley lifted her head enough to pull up her mask, and watched as Michael, hand to his mouth, went sprinting into the kitchen. Jake was bent over at the waist, laughing so hard he could hardly stand up. Nancy rested against a wall, hand to her chest as she cackled and wiped at her eyes.

  Donna and Carla pulled off their blindfolds, too, and the three of them spit the food into their cups, no longer caring about things like decency. All five of them had just started to get themselves under control when another wave of dying-cat gagging sounded from the kitchen.

  “I can feel it in my eyes!” Michael called out, which sent everyone into hysterics again.

  Riley got up to hurry past Michael’s sister and parents to find him at the counter, his arms resting on the lip of the sink and his forehead on his arms. He dry-heaved every few seconds. She tried to tamp down her laugh, and placed a hand on his very sweaty back. “You okay?”

  He groaned in response. “I threw up a little.”

  After letting out a very undignified snort, she poked around in the cabinets until she found a glass, then filled it with water from the dispenser in the fridge door. After downing half of it herself, she refilled it and returned to him.

  “Here, drink this,” she said.

  Pushing himself to a standing position, he turned around and rested his backside against the counter and took the water. He chugged down half of it, then stopped and pressed his free hand to his mouth. “That unmoored some of the Dijon mustard seeds hiding behind my teeth and now …” He coughed. “Oh, it’s truly awful.”

  Riley’s stomach rumbled a little. “You had to know one of them was going to use mustard against you.”

  “I didn’t think they’d actually do it.” Michael swigged some water, sloshed it around, and then spit into the sink. He shuddered. “I thought I was their favorite. Clearly, I was wrong.”

  Riley stood in front of him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Vacation decisions are serious business. You’ll appreciate the mustard once you’re lounging on a beach somewhere.”

  The sound of tinny voices floated in from the living room, followed by a soft “Noooooo!” Another wave of laughter went up and Riley figured Jake was playing a recording of Michael’s mustard-induced meltdown for Donna and Carla. A small smile graced Michael’s face at the sound of it, even if she could hear his stomach grumbling in protest.

  After a moment, he said, “Thanks for doing this. My dad was really happy you agreed to play. They both love you,” he said softly. He stared at her for a beat, then brushed an errant curl out of her face before cupping her cheek and gently rubbing a thumb back and forth across her skin. “So do I. Love you, I mean.”

  Riley eyebrows hiked up. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She flushed. “Me too. Love you, I mean.”

  He grinned, then bent down to kiss her. It was sweet and tender—and ended very quickly. “I know we just said ‘I love you’ for the first time, and not to kill the mood or anything, but babe, your mouth tastes like a sewer.”

  She gave a shudder. “So does yours.”

  Carla poked her head into the kitchen. “C’mon, lovebirds. We gotta tally up the scores.”

  Riley let him go and took several steps back. “This defeat will be so horrific, it’ll haunt your nightmares. Which is saying a lot, coming from me.”

  “Harsh!” he said, following her with a goofy smile on his face. “I’m a lucky guy.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Just as Riley was heading into work the next day, her stomach still a little off from yesterday’s food challenge of doom, Nina texted her that the investigation at Julie’s was a go for the following evening at 11 pm. Her waitress hours meant she could finish a shift at The Laughing Tiger at 10, hurry home to shower, and still make it to Julie’s in time.

  The night of the investigation, Riley arrived first, so she parked in front of the house across the street and waited. She knew one other person was attending tonight, but Nina hadn’t disclosed who. Riley wouldn’t have minded seeing one of the guys from the Southwest Ghost Investigators again, and she was in the middle of trying to remember the names of the two younger guys who worked with Xavier and Nina when a woman pulled up in front of Julie’s house. Nina arrived shortly after.

  Riley only loitered in her car like a creeper for a few seconds this time, rather than minutes, and then joined the pair standing on the sidewalk.

  While Nina was in her mid-forties, the new member of their trio was closer to early thirties. She reminded Riley of a pinup girl, with short curly brown hair, high-waisted black slacks, and a white shirt tucked into them. When she wasn’t on ghost-hunting expeditions, Riley guessed, she was a fan of vintage dresses, red lipstick, and couture shoes.

  “Hi, Riley,” Nina said. “Riley, this is Olivia. Olivia, this is the clairvoyant I was telling you about.”

  Olivia smiled warmly at Riley and held out a hand to her. “Nice to meet you.”

  Riley shook it. “Nice to meet you, too.”

  “So, what kind of information do we have?” Olivia asked. “Do we know the spirit’s name?”

  Nina said, “I asked Julie about her tonight when I was confirming times with her. She never met the previous owners when she was going through the pro
cess of buying the house, and the realtor never disclosed any information. All Julie has are a couple of possible names based on the mail she sometimes gets here. She said she left a few of the letters on the kitchen counter. Iris Velasco and Amy Velasco. Mother and daughter, sisters … we don’t know.”

  Olivia nodded.

  “So, as usual,” Nina said, addressing Olivia, “I would rather not give you too much information about the haunting itself before you go in. Riley, if you can keep what you saw last time to yourself until later, that would be appreciated.”

  “No problem,” Riley said.

  “Olivia, I would like for you to go in first and do your usual sweep of the place. See what you pick up on, then Riley and I will join you afterward with the equipment.”

  “Cool,” Olivia said. “See you in there.”

  Riley watched her walk up the front path and then let herself in through the unlocked door. There was only one light on inside downstairs. Riley watched the shadow of Olivia move to the left and out of sight. Hopefully none of Julie’s neighbors thought Riley and company were a trio of house burglars.

  Though the silence that descended on Nina and Riley hadn’t lasted long, Riley felt compelled to break it. “How do you know Olivia?”

  “We met at a psychic expo a few years ago. It was in Ohio and we clicked in part because we’re both from Albuquerque.”

  Riley nodded absently at that, wondering what in the world a “psychic expo” was like.

  “She’s seen quite a few apparitions in her day, but she’s primarily clairaudient and a clairsentient. She hears voices and senses feelings,” Nina said, answering a question Riley hadn’t asked. “Picking up on emotions is at the heart of her ability.”

  Riley always thought of mediums as being able to see ghosts, but Nina was proof enough that one could be highly sensitive and hardly ever set eyes on a spirit. “Which clair are you?”

  “Clairaudient and claircognizant. For you, spirits appear visually with little warning. For me, it’s almost always thoughts that pop in my head. I don’t need a doorbell because before someone even pulls up in front of my house, a voice will say ‘Someone is here.’ I might not know which someone it is, but I usually have a warning. Many psychics have some combination of the four clairs, but often one or two clairs are more dominant than others, like your predominant one being clairvoyance. But after what happened at the séance, when you sensed Megan’s pregnancy, and the anger you say you felt from the ghost at the grocery store, you clearly are clairsentient, too. Strong intuition. Hopefully coming with me on assignments like this will help hone your intuition even more and get you to trust it.”

  She could practically hear Jade cheering in her head.

  “Let’s start getting ready,” Nina said.

  From Nina’s trunk, they unloaded a lot of the same equipment Riley had used on the investigation at the ranch: tape recorders for EVPs, four camcorders and tripods, as well as electromagnetic field readers. What was new was a box of blue plastic cylinders. There were nine in the box Riley took out of the trunk. They looked like rows of neatly arranged Russian dolls.

  “What are these?” she asked.

  “Motion sensor lights,” Nina said. “I keep trying things out. If a spirit passes by one of these, sometimes it’ll trigger the light to come on. It all depends on the spirit and how strong their energy is. I figured since this one showed herself to you, there was a good chance she’d do it again.”

  They had just walked up to the porch with all of their materials when the door opened and Olivia poked her head out.

  “I just finished up. This should be interesting. This one is … feisty.”

  Riley had a brief flashback to the Poltergeist of Aisle 3 and hoped the woman inside hadn’t grown increasingly pissed since the last time she’d been here.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Riley,” Olivia said. “She’s not malevolent. She’s desperate to tell us something, though.”

  She cocked a brow at Olivia. Maybe this was what Detective Howard felt around her, always worried she was reading his mind. Riley reminded herself that Nina had said Olivia was a clairsentient and could pick up on feelings—which clearly applied to the living as well as the dead.

  “Can you grab the tripods? There are still two more propped up by the car,” Nina said.

  “Sure thing.” Olivia made her way across the front walk while Nina and Riley headed into the house.

  The inside was dark save for a couple of nightlights plugged into sockets near the baseboards in the living room. Riley wondered if Julie’s whole family was at the grandparents’ house two doors down, or if they’d sprung for a hotel for the night.

  Riley followed Nina into the dining room, where they placed the equipment on the table. Olivia joined them with the tripods. Without a word, she grabbed several of the motion sensor lights out of the box and wandered off to place them in strategic places around the house.

  “Even though the owners say the majority of the activity happens upstairs,” Nina said, focused on checking the battery packs on the camcorders, “we’ll set up two cameras down here. One to record the kitchen, and the other facing the base of the stairs.”

  Once the cameras were primed and recording downstairs, they took the rest of the equipment to the second floor. Riley held her breath during the ascent, half-expecting the woman to do another demonstration of her fall down the staircase while Nina and Riley were on it. But the house remained still, the only sound on the top floor coming from Olivia in the master bedroom, and the faint shuffling of her movements as she laid out a few more motion sensor lights.

  Another camera was set up in the middle of the hallway where Riley had been sitting last time, recording both the top of the stairs and the doorway of the master bedroom. The last camera was set up between the master bedroom and the office, so that if the woman decided to lift and drop the credenza directly opposite the camera, they might catch it on film.

  They reconvened at the top of the stairs when they were done. Nina gave each of them tape recorders, while she pocketed an EMF recorder. “For the first hour or so, I just want to get a feel for the place. Move around if you want to. Follow any sensations you have. Investigations are often frankly boring, Riley. It’s also common for nothing to happen the first time we show up with equipment, or even the first dozen times.”

  Olivia laughed softly. “Remember Thatcher’s place?”

  Nina groaned good-naturedly. “The client was convinced his house was ‘teeming’ with ghosts. Our initial evaluation told us the place wasn’t remotely haunted, but Thatcher didn’t believe us. Over the course of a month, we spent I think sixteen nights there, usually in five-to-six-hour blocks. Found absolutely nothing.”

  “We made bank on that one, though,” Olivia said. “Not our fault he didn’t believe us.”

  “True enough. Thatcher helped me pay off my car.”

  For the next hour, they rotated who hung out in which rooms. Riley spent a good chunk of time in the hallway in the same location she’d been before, sitting beside one of the tripods, waiting to see if the woman made a repeat performance. She asked questions while standing near the credenza, the tape recorder held out and recording the ambient noise of the house.

  By hour three, Riley was bored out of her skull, which she supposed was better than being terrified. She lay flat on her back on the floor of the master bedroom, near the end of the four-poster bed. The doorway to the bathroom was a few feet away, and her tape recorder lay on her chest but wasn’t on. Riley saw it rise and fall in her peripheral vision, her head turned toward the window on the right side of the room. All she could see outside was the top of a leafy tree, and a too-bright street light behind it doing its best to shine through the spaces in the branches.

  Her mind wandered to the package on its way back to her from California. It was bizarre to think that not long before she was born, dropping a film cartridge off at a one-hour kiosk in a big box store would have been the norm. Someone could drop t
he film off, go about their shopping, and pick up their pictures on the way out the door.

  Though it was even stranger to think that the cell phone—a pocket-sized camera—hadn’t been a reality back then. Now, dozens of pictures could be taken instantly; needing to wait an hour to see them seemed like an eternity.

  Much like the time spent in this boring house.

  She rolled her head back to the neutral position so she could stare at the ceiling. It felt like she’d spent three eternities in this house. How in the world had Nina and Olivia done this for sixteen nights, especially when they’d known it wasn’t haunted? Maybe they’d played a lot of card games. How she longed for a game of solitaire! She didn’t even like solitaire.

  A bright light flashed on in the bathroom and Riley sat bolt upright.

  Something had triggered the motion sensor light.

  She turned toward the open doorway of the master bedroom, thinking one of the other ladies had wandered in, but the space was deserted. The faint hush of a voice told Riley that the ladies were either talking to each other, or one of them was attempting to get more EVPs.

  The light in the bathroom turned off and her gaze swiveled back to the bathroom’s doorway. She couldn’t see anyone. In the midst of convincing herself that a towel or flap of toilet paper had triggered the sensor, she heard a soft scrabbling sound. Remembering what Nina had told her about shutting down one sense to enhance another, she closed her eyes and listened.

  The scrabbling shifted to the gentle rustle of paper, then the crinkle of plastic. A drawer slid on its runner and then slammed closed. Riley’s eyes popped open and she quickly got to her feet. Swallowing, she cast another quick glance at the open doorway of the master bedroom, saw neither of the other women, and then inched toward the en suite bathroom.