The Ghost Hunter's Daughter

by Caroline Flarity

  Jack pulled the blue velvet bag with the cross on it from his jacket pocket. From the bag he removed a crucifix and a small "sprinkler" vessel containing holy water that was attached to a thin chain.

  “By the power of Christ, I command you to be gone!” Jack said, swinging the vessel at Izzy. Drops of holy water soared through the air and landed on Izzy’s bare chest with tiny pops.

  Izzy raised his head from his horizontal position and turned to Jack with a puzzled expression. “What’s up, bro?” he said. The small burns were merely a nuisance. His attention moved to the wall behind Jack, to a poster of a woman with her breasts exposed.

  “Titties! Titties! Titties!” Izzy said, and soared through the air with his arms and legs splayed, pressing himself against the poster, nuzzling it, drool falling from his lower lip.

  Jack flicked holy water. “By the power of Christ…”

  Damn it. Jack’s approach was all wrong. Crouched behind Izzy’s bed, Anna spotted the iron box between the folds of Izzy’s smelly blanket. They needed to get this pig spirit, or whatever it was, out of Izzy and back into that box.

  “Dad!”

  Jack whirled around, his eyes widening at the sight of Anna’s head peering from behind the mattress. “I said get the hell out of here!”

  “On the bed. The box. Look at it.”

  Annoyed, Jack grabbed the box off Izzy’s blanket.

  “The Jesus stuff won't do it,” Anna whispered. “It’s from ancient Celtic times—pre-Christianity, B freakin’ C.”

  Jack brushed some dirt off the etching. “Pagans?”

  “Sort of.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Research first. Isn't that what you taught me?” Anna wasn’t above a little butt-kissing in her predicament. At least Izzy's lustful attentions were still focused on the poster.

  “What now?” she said, standing next to Jack on the crusty carpet, hoping that he was right and Izzy wouldn’t remember any of this.

  “We need to ramp up the power of Source in the last traces of this holy water or we’re out of luck,” he said. “To do that we have to tap into the spirit’s belief system. What do you know about it?”

  “The Celts worshipped nature,” she said. “Animal spirits. Water spirits, too. Important bodies of water were considered, like, spiritual crossroads.”

  Izzy stopped slobbering on the mangled poster. “Goblin Girl?”

  Anna froze. As Izzy turned to her, the razor-sharp spikes on his head sliced through the poster and into the wall, sending plaster, paint and paper shavings to the floor. Izzy dropped to the carpet and walked toward her, sniffing the air and snorting. Large swaths of saliva oozed from his lower lip.

  Jack raised his hand, flicking more holy water. “Get back!”

  Drops of water sizzled across Izzy’s chest and he shot upward, the spikes on his head lodging into the ceiling. Izzy grunted as plaster rained down around him, and then, realizing he was stuck, roared.

  Anna cringed as Izzy’s rage compounded the pain behind her eyes. She’d gotten in way over her head on this one. This spirit attachment was stronger than expected, and they were almost out of holy water. While Izzy thrashed about, pedaling his feet while impaled in the ceiling, Anna spotted a deep and inflamed gash on one of his ankles. She suppressed a grim smile. Penelope went out fighting.

  Jack began pumping her for more information about the box, and Izzy managed to swivel his eyes toward Anna. They flared for a moment with hate and recognition and then shifted, unfocused and wild, sinking further into his wrinkled face.

  Surrounded by endless darkness the only sensation was that of a light wind. No, not a wind, Izzy realized. He was moving, sailing through the darkness into more darkness. He saw two faint, twinkling stars in the distance and grew desperate to reach them. The wind hastened as he picked up speed, flying through the blackness toward the pair of lights.

  Growing closer, he saw that the stars weren’t twinkling. They were static. But something bobbed up and down in front of them, jerking from one to the other. Closer still, Izzy saw it was a skinny, barrel-chested man, his face lined with deep wrinkles. The man had a blond scraggly beard and wore an oversized vest made of bronze on top of a blue robe. And the lights weren’t stars. They were holes. A way out!

  Izzy rocketed toward the holes, crying out with need. But the bearded man dug one of his hands into Izzy’s hair, yanking him back from the light holes. No longer surrounded by blackness, Izzy was dragged down an endless hallway lined with doors on either side. The bearded man pulled on each doorknob with his free hand. When he found one that opened he shoved Izzy through the door and slammed it shut. Izzy’s eyes adjusted to the murky light, his scalp burning. He heard a lock engage.

  Izzy sat on the floor of a vast warehouse, filled as far back and as high as he could see with columns of open air racks. Naked mannequins were stacked on the towering shelves. He stood, stumbling on his infected ankle toward one of the columns, arms outstretched and expecting metal to brace his fall. But the base of the column bent like cardboard under his hand. The column quickly snapped back, but the damage had been done. From a great height a mannequin whistled through the air, crashing to the floor and kicking up a dust cloud. I’m in hell, he thought, for killing that bitch of a dog.

  Izzy hadn’t meant to kill the dog. He’d gone to the Fagan backyard almost every night for a month, but that night he’d finally jumped the fence. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do to Anna, bang her, choke her, maybe both. The plan was to figure it out when he got her alone. There’d been a weird pulsing in his head, urgent and cold. But now that he was there, closer to doing it, it was more of a satisfied hum. Lately, he imagined every girl he saw screaming in pain, but liking it. Even the most extreme videos now bored him. Izzy needed more pain, more screaming. He wanted Anna to scream. He wanted to make her scream.

  He’d heard the growl when his sneakers touched the ground and crouched in front of the doghouse. Sneering at the girly paint job, Izzy flicked his lighter, illuminating the beagle and her litter. There was another growl, wolf-like, as the dog shot out and bit into his ankle. He’d kicked at her with his free leg, lost his balance, and fell. When the dog came back at him, snarling, Izzy kicked her again, this time connecting hard with her side. Something inside the dog cracked, and she retreated into the doghouse.

  After limping back to the fence at the edge of the Fagan yard, Izzy lit a cigarette to settle his nerves. He thought about getting another kick in, maybe stomping the dog’s head. The visceral want of it sent hot blood rushing to his face. Instead, he’d taken a last mournful glance at Anna's dark bedroom, flicking his clove cigarette on the ground before pulling himself back over the fence and bracing against a sudden wind.

  A low rumble in the warehouse became a roar as mannequins tumbled down by the dozens, crashing to the floor and kicking up huge plumes of dust. They all had faces now, Anna’s face. The mannequin closest to him twisted its neck toward him, its Anna-face coming to life. “Do you mind?” it said. “Your stench offends.”

  Izzy turned away, distracted by a movement in the air. A great cloud of dust was slowly funneling into the darkest corner of the warehouse, about a football field away. There was something else in the warehouse, lurking in that dark corner. It was blacker than the dark abyss and, every instinct told him, exponentially more evil than the bearded man. Through his growing panic, Izzy registered a pulling sensation beneath his shoulder blades. As his hands went to his chest, his fingers were quickly lost in the soot-colored fog rising off of him. One of the dust plumes funneling toward the dark corner was coming from him. The thing in the corner was sucking it out of him. It was eating him alive.

  Izzy screamed, scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward the door. He threw his shoulder against it until it opened and then sprinted back down the corridor. The doors and floor evaporated around him, and he sailed again through the dark abyss, searching for and then finding the pair of lights, knowing now what they wer
e. The bearded man no longer scared him and Izzy flew at him, shoving him aside. Izzy floated close to the light-holes—which were actually eye holes, his eye holes—and looked into his bedroom. The bearded man roared in surprise and came at Izzy, fists raised. They battled for control of Izzy’s eyes.

  Anna forced herself to look away from Izzy’s crazed and wrinkled face. “The Celts believed that water spirits were links between Source and the earthly dimension. That seems relevant, right?”

  Jack nodded. “I can use that.”

  Izzy grunted and pushed hard against the ceiling, freeing his spiked head. He dropped to the floor, snarling at them as Jack swung the vessel. The small sprinkling of holy water missed him entirely. When flustered, Jack had crappy aim. Izzy crawled toward them drooling on the carpet, snorting and sniffing, his nose pointed in the direction of Anna's crotch.

  Jack wrapped a hand around Anna’s bicep. “You’re getting out of here, now!”

  Part of her wanted nothing more than to do a running dive out of Izzy’s bedroom window, but this was her mess to clean up. Anna yanked the vessel from Jack’s hand and held it up toward Izzy.

  Her voice booming, she yelled, “You have totally pissed off Sequana, goddess of the River Seine!”

  Izzy cocked his head at her and snorted, his puckered face pinched with fresh alarm.

  “You dare to defy her natural order of death and rebirth!” Anna brought her arm back. “This water holds the venom of her wrath!”

  Anna flung the vessel at Izzy. The last few drops of water soared through the air, landing on his face. A series of large, sizzling blisters spread down his neck. Izzy shrieked and retreated, cowering in the corner of his room, emitting the keening, high-pitched squeals of a piglet.

  “The spirit,” Anna said to Jack. “It really is a pig, isn’t it?”

  Jack shook his head. “Animals always cross over. This thing was once a man, and men have egos. If we can get him to show off, it might wear him out.”

  Jack poured a circle of salt on the floor around him and Anna.

  “This circle represents the center of our souls,” he shouted at Izzy, “that which is eternal and cannot be harmed.”

  Izzy sniffed around the perimeter of the circle, but did not cross the salt barrier. Jack and Anna relaxed a smidge. It was a win. If the spirit inhabiting Izzy’s body believed the circle was an un-crossable boundary, it would act as one.

  “What did boars mean to the ancient Celts?” Jack asked.

  “They were brave beasts,” she said, “hard to hunt and kill. Soldiers had boar hair weaved into their armor.” Anna pointed to the boar's spikes on the lid of the box in Jack’s hand. “They thought the boar hair made them fierce warriors, upped their odds to survive.”

  Jack studied the box.

  “I think I know what this is,” he said, stepping to the edge of the circle. “We have to provoke it.”

  Jack stood at the edge of the circle, taunting Izzy. “So, the mighty boar seeks shelter inside a puny boy?”

  Hot air puffed from Izzy’s nose.

  “Perhaps you’re just the runt of an old swine’s litter and not a warrior at all.” Jack laughed derisively, then nodded at Anna. Her turn.

  Anna used her best Sydney mean-girl voice. “Are you afraid of real girls, too, like the waste case you inhabit?”

  Izzy stomped his back legs and snorted, sniffing the barrier resentfully.

  “Could it be you're not a mighty boar at all, but a man, a lowly tailor?” Jack said. “A soldier's servant? Did your armor fail them? Did you pay with your life?”

  Izzy’s spine stiffened, his eyes circles of shock and rage. He roared and charged, crashing into the invisible barrier surrounding Anna and Jack, squealing in pain as a few of his spikes snapped off on impact. Injured, Izzy ran back to the mutilated poster and nuzzled it for comfort.

  “We command you, abhorrent spirit,” Jack screamed at him, “return to your hiding place! Back to your bristle box!”

  Anna had to admit, Jack’s supernatural sleuthing skills were on point. She braced herself for Izzy’s charge, digging her heels into the scuzzy carpet, but he only whimpered, his spikes wilted and torn.

  Jack raised the vessel. “This is your final warning!”

  Beaten, Izzy slumped and slid down the wall. His mouth went slack and then opened wide, his chest heaving as he vomited. But it was no ordinary puke stream. It moved with intelligence. Long and thick with coarse bristles, the vomit shot across the room, slapped against the open lid and oozed down into the box. The lid slammed shut unceremoniously and Izzy collapsed, his head lolling to one side. His hair and features returned to normal, but several bald and bloody patches remained on his scalp.

  Someone pounded on Izzy’s bedroom door.

  “Izzy? What’s going on in there?”

  Izzy’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of his mother’s voice and he trained them on Anna. She stood there stunned by the hate and fear he radiated until his eyes rolled up into his head and he lost consciousness. Anna and Jack made a hasty exit out of the window, bringing the box with them, and hurried back to Jack’s sedan.

  • • •

  Later that night, back home at the kitchen table, Anna held the iron box while Jack poured the last splashes of a jug of holy water into a glass bowl. The box zapped her fingers lightly, out of gas but still trying to punish her for her betrayal.

  “Doesn't look like enough water,” she said.

  Jack took the box from her and dropped it into the bowl. The water instantly corrupted.

  “When the entity's weak, like Pig-Man the Tailor here, you don't need much. It’s also the last of what we have in stock.”

  Scum-filled foam rose in the bucket, close to overflowing.

  “It's not working,” Anna said.

  “Patience.”

  The foam died down. The water calmed to a murky cesspool and then cleared to a pristine brilliance. It was done. The Pig-Man had moved on to a sty in the hereafter.

  Anna slapped Jack on the back. “Nice!”

  It was the wrong move. Jack started wheezing. He tried to catch his breath, failed, and then, racked by a sudden convulsion, retched up a large, black loogie on the table.

  Anna was repulsed. “What is that?”

  Jack coughed and wiped off the edges of his mouth. “Must be from the fire.”

  Anna went to the sink, filled a glass of water and handed it to Jack.

  “Allergies, the smoke inhalation, years of exposure to troubled spirits. It’s all taken a toll. I’m getting older,” Jack said, “not recovering as fast.”

  “So quit,” Anna said, sitting back down. “Drains still get clogged, right? Go back to being a plumber and we’ll just be normal again.”

  It was a nice dream, but she could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t hearing her.

  “What you did tonight…” Jack said. “You have all the right instincts. Maybe tonight was supposed to show you that. Maybe—”

  “Right,” she said, “everything happens for a reason. Like what happened to Mom?”

  Jack’s eyes darkened, but then he placed a hand over one of hers.

  “The Fagan name means something in the paranormal community,” he said. “We have a real chance right now to expand. Now that Geneva’s working with us, think about all the people we can help, people who have nobody else to turn to. There are plenty of plumbers in Bloomtown, but only one person who does what I do. And we need the money.” He squeezed her hand. “Can I count on you or not?”

  Did she really have a choice? “Sure,” she said, taking back her hand, “I'll keep training the new elf, but only if this office thing is kept on the low. No interviews or ads in the Bloomtown Gazette.”

  “The elf is working for free. More importantly, if what she says is true about her invention, she could be our ticket out of this mess. Imagine how easy it would be to track spirit attachments if we can see them in 3-D! Not to mention the cash people will pay to get a look at what’s
keeping them up at night.”

  “Okay, but you have to get yourself checked out, and soon.”

  “Soon as I get insurance.”

  Anna started down the path to the stairs and then stopped, calling back to her father. “Is it true that animals always cross?”

  “It is,” Jack said.

  Anna nodded, grateful that she didn’t have to worry about Penelope. She climbed the steps, eager for her uncluttered bedroom and soft mattress.

  “And you're still in trouble!” her father called after her. But she knew she wasn’t.

  Anna needed to sleep, but first she should email Doreen and ask how things were going with her mom. Freddy, too. He’d definitely want to hear about the goings on at Casa Izzy. But she was unsettled by the cloying withdrawal of not having gazed upon Craig’s loveliness in several hours. She would go online instead and see what he was up to. Her decision made, the pounding in her head settled, pulsing softly like a distant but ominous tribal drum.

  Chapter Ten

  Nerdgasm

  Anna left for the new office on Washington Street at ten o’clock on Saturday morning. After six days of the world’s longest headache and barely any sleep, she longed for a dark room and icy washcloth. But with Jack unwell, it was up to her to continue working with Geneva. Instead of resting or seeing a doctor, Jack planned on spending the day checking the “release status” of dormant objects in the basement. When a bound spirit let go of their object and crossed into Source, the object had to be retagged and either returned to the client or stored with other cleared objects to avoid any “cross pollination.”

  It was an important task, but Anna was surprised that Jack didn’t jump at the chance to see Geneva. His things in the basement trumped everything, she guessed.

  Trudging down Eden Street, Anna checked her phone for any Izzy-related news or threats, praying that Jack was right and Izzy wouldn’t remember the exorcism. She’d hoped that memories of Izzy drooling and terrorized would bring her closure, but instead they made her nauseous and uneasy, as if she’d somehow diminished herself irretrievably.