Eyes to See

by Joseph Nassise

  I heard a car pull up next to me, figured it for the cab I was trying to flag down, and held out a hand in a signal for him to wait.

  “You can’t just leave us here with …” He waved his hands around, flustered and unable to make himself say it aloud.

  I smiled, knowing it was not a pleasant sight. “Of course I can. I’m not the one who left her to die.”

  “It wasn’t like that!” he said sharply.

  Again, I really didn’t care. His guilt or innocence made no difference to me.

  He must have sensed that I wouldn’t be moved on the topic, for his anger suddenly went as quickly as it had arrived. “Can you give me a moment to talk with them?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, filling my voice with disinterest. I needed the money, but I’d be damned if I let him know that. First rule of any negotiation: never let ’em know you’re desperate.

  The wait wasn’t very long. Whatever he said to them must have worked, for Thompson returned after a moment and passed me an envelope. I could tell by the feel of it that it was thick with cash.

  I told the cabbie I wasn’t going to need him after all, made a quick check of the pockets of the duster I was wearing to be certain that my tools were still in place, and then asked the question that would separate the men from the boys.

  “So who’s going in with me?”

  2

  NOW

  There was a long moment of uncomfortable silence. I could picture them standing about, looking everywhere but at each other, all of them hoping that one of the others would speak up so they wouldn’t have to.

  Eventually one of them did.

  “I’ll take you,” Olivia Jones said into the silence.

  You go girl! I thought, surprised at the old lady’s bravery and sheer chutzpah, but then shook my head.

  “I’m sorry Ms. Jones, but you won’t be able to help me. I need someone strong enough to stand by my side and tell me what’s happening during even the worst of the confrontation. If I need help, that person has to act as my eyes and be able to physically assist me in getting back outside.”

  I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t object. She seemed like a feisty old bird, but what I was asking was a lot for someone her age.

  “Anyone else?”

  More silence.

  I decided to give them a five count. If no one volunteered by the time it was over …

  Five …

  Four …

  Three …

  “Fine. I’ll do it.”

  It was Thompson again. Had to hand it to the man; he wasn’t shy about stepping up and getting involved. Too bad he hadn’t seen fit to do so on the night of Velvet’s death. Might have saved himself and his fellow tenants a whole heap of trouble if he had.

  Maybe he’s learned his lesson, I thought, then snorted in derision at my own optimism.

  Life just didn’t work that way, I knew.

  I quickly explained to him how it was going to work. I needed him to act as my eyes once we were inside, telling me everything that was happening around us, no matter how small or insignificant it seemed to him. “The Devil’s in the details” went the old saying, and when it comes to ghosts, nothing is truer. They can’t speak and often are limited in how much impact they can have on their physical surroundings, so you have to watch carefully in order to figure out what they might do next.

  That’s what made this situation so interesting. If what Thompson said was true, the sheer amount of power this ghost could call under its control was astounding. And the more powerful the ghost was, the more it knew. Death did that. Gave them some kind of connection to the world around them in a way they’d never had while alive, let them see and hear and know things that they had nothing to do with and no business knowing. It’s true; the dead know our deepest, darkest secrets.

  Understanding those secrets was a different story.

  There was always a first time, though, and maybe tonight would be the night.

  Maybe tonight, when I cornered this ghost and asked her if she had seen my daughter, she’d put me on the road to finding Elizabeth.

  Satisfied that Thompson understood his role, I let him lead me up the stairs and into the building. As I stepped over the threshold, the smell of the place hit me like a fist in the face. Mold and mildew mixed with the smell of too many people in too small a space, the stench of urine overlaying it all like a terrible garnish. It was enough to make me wish I’d lost my sense of smell along with my sight.

  My face must have broadcast my reaction, for Thompson mumbled, “You get used to it,” beneath his breath and then he took out his keys and unlocked something that creaked and rattled as he pushed it open.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Security gate.”

  I remembered it now from the news coverage. There had been some early speculation that someone had left it open behind them and that was how the killer had gained access to the building. That was before they’d understood that Velvet herself had let her killer in, that she’d not only invited Death inside but had taken him with her upstairs.

  “Steel?” I asked.

  “Iron. Heavy son of a bitch, too,” he said, as he swung it back into place with a loud clang that echoed in the small space.

  Iron.

  One part of the puzzle solved.

  “Let me guess: this place has bars on all the windows, too, right?”

  He grunted. “’Course it does. Every place on the block does. Upper floors, too. Damned thieves would climb the fire escapes and rob us blind if we didn’t.”

  “And those are iron, too?”

  “Yep. Harder to cut through.”

  Like running water, iron is anathema to a ghost. They can’t cross it. Was it possible that Velvet wanted to leave and simply couldn’t?

  I thought about it for a moment and then dismissed the notion. The security gate wasn’t permanently closed. If she wanted to get out, all she had to do was wait by the gate for someone coming in or out to open it and then slip on past.

  No, she was here for some reason.

  Not daring to take the elevator, Thompson led me down the hallway until we reached the emergency stairwell at the other end.

  Like most tenement buildings, this one was poorly lit. The dimness allowed me to see the vague outlines of the steps ahead of me as Thompson started up.

  I followed.

  I felt her the minute I put my foot on that first step. You know that feeling you get when you know someone is watching you, that sense of pressure in your mind, that creeping sensation at the base of your neck? That’s what it’s like for me. Except in my case, rather than sensing the living, I’m attuned to the presence of the dead.

  Just as they are attuned to me.

  She was somewhere on one of the floors above me and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was now as aware of me as I was of her.

  I could tell that she wasn’t happy that I’d come to pay her a visit, either.

  Thompson was climbing the stairs ahead of me, oblivious to both my split-second hesitation and her presence high above us, and so I dutifully followed behind. He was rambling on, probably to help calm his nerves, telling me that Velvet’s apartment was on the fourth floor and that she had been murdered inside. No sooner had he said the word murdered than the temperature in the stairwell dropped from a cool seventy-five to somewhere below freezing.

  “Jesus!” Thompson said, startled. “I can see my breath.”

  It wasn’t just the cold that had the man’s teeth chattering in his head.

  He was scared.

  To tell you the truth, so was I.

  Cold spots are nothing new to paranormal investigators. The accepted theory is that ghosts use the ambient energy in a given space, including heat, to manifest themselves or to fuel other types of supernatural activity. Usually the temperature differential is no more than a handful of degrees, the kind of thing that you need an infrared thermometer to confirm for sure.

  Wh
at was happening now was something else entirely.

  I could actually feel the frost as it formed beneath my fingers where they gripped the metal railing. The air took on that harsh, biting quality it gets in the depths of winter, when every breath seems to burn a little going in and out. Goose bumps rose all over my flesh and I was suddenly glad for the coat I wore.

  What the hell had I gotten myself into?

  But it didn’t stop there.

  A sudden, overwhelming sense of despair washed over us. One moment we were perfectly fine and the next, drowning in a sea of emotion. It was the helplessness of a young child lost at the county fair without a familiar face in sight, the horror of a prisoner facing a life sentence in a six-by-eight box of a cell, the utter hopelessness of watching your family slaughtered horribly before your eyes while you lay bound on the floor, unable to do anything to stop it, all rolled up into one neat little package. It thundered into our heads as if put there by God Himself.

  I staggered beneath the weight. If it hadn’t been for the lodestone hanging around my neck, I would have been utterly defenseless. As it was, I was nearly driven to my knees. I’m not a geologist or a trained parapsychologist. I don’t understand what it is about lodestone that makes it an effective defense against ghostly activity any more than I understand how my microwave works. That doesn’t stop me from using either one, however, and I’ve made a point of carrying some lodestone with me whenever I think I’m going to face off against something otherworldly. I learned early on that there are plenty of things out there that don’t hold our best interests at heart, so when it comes to the supernatural, I’m a firm believer in the old Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared. So today I had a good-size piece on a thin silver chain strung around my neck.

  Unfortunately for Thompson, I hadn’t brought enough to share and he was left to face the full force of the psychic attack on his own.

  It proved to be too much for him.

  He collapsed with a grunt, crashing into me with barely any warning, his dead weight nearly sending us both tumbling back down the steps to the landing below. Only my grip on the ice-cold railing kept us upright and prevented a sudden and decidedly uncomfortable end to the business at hand. As it was, I ended up with a fat lip from the elbow I took in the face as he toppled backward, unconscious.

  Velvet didn’t want any guests, it seemed.

  Tough. She’d made the mistake of pissing me off, and when I get angry I have a tendency to not think too straight. Rational decisions, like getting out of there before she could do further harm to either me or Thompson, just didn’t enter into the equation. I tended to get all “full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes” and shit.

  Like now.

  Rather than making my slow and careful way back down the stairs with Thompson’s unconscious form in my arms, I laid him down gently on the steps, felt for the railing, used it to maneuver my way around his body, and continued upward.

  The pressure was still there, the weight of the emotions that she was sending down onto my shoulders like an extra fifty pounds I had to carry to the top, but I gritted my teeth, shouldered the burden, and put one foot in front of the other, again and again, until I reached the second floor.

  I stopped on the landing and listened for a moment. I could hear the thump of a radio turned too loud somewhere down the hall and beyond that a baby crying, but these were normal sounds, the kind of things you’d expect.

  Just another night in the Rox.

  Satisfied that nothing was amiss, at least not here, I continued upward.

  About midway to the third floor, the pressure in my mind backed off, and by the time I hit the fourth-floor landing, it had vanished altogether. Either the sweet, saintly Velvet was feeling regret about knocking my companion unconscious or she was conserving energy for her next attack.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out which was more likely.

  A lone lightbulb illuminated the hallway before me. To anyone else it would have been a weak and unsteady light, but this close it rendered me effectively blind, and that wasn’t something I wanted at this point. I already had enough to be worried about. Wrapping my hand inside the sleeve of my duster, I reached up and smacked the bulb sharply with my fist. There was a tinkle of falling glass and the light vanished, leaving me standing on the edge of the stairwell in the sudden darkness.

  A very welcome darkness, given the fact that I had no trouble seeing in it.

  The hallway stretched out before me, half a dozen doors on either side, all of which were tightly closed. The apartment I wanted was at the very end of the hall, facing me.

  Number 43.

  The place where Melissa Sullivan, aka Velvet, had met her end.

  I started toward it, moving confidently through the darkness.

  The first of the apartment doors swung open as I passed, slamming into the wall with a booming crash. Just as quickly it slammed closed again.

  Ignoring it, I continued forward.

  The second door did the same, as did the third, and then the rest of the doors all along the hallway quickly followed suit, slamming open and then shut, open and shut, over and over again, until the narrow space was filled with the booming sound of their cacophony.

  Unable to force me to back down, Velvet was now trying to scare me off.

  Sorry sister, but that’s not going to work.

  I marched determinedly down the hall, ignoring the ruckus around me, until I stood before her apartment. The door was slightly ajar, as if beckoning me to enter.

  Was it an invitation or a trap?

  I didn’t know.

  There was only one way to find out.

  3

  NOW

  I nudged the door the rest of the way open with my foot, allowing me to see beyond it, into the apartment itself.

  Thompson had explained the layout to me on the way up the stairs earlier so that I would know what to expect when he led me inside, but with night having fallen and the shades drawn, it was dark enough that I could actually see fairly well. The place was a one bedroom, set up railroad style, a long stretch of rooms from front to back; a short entryway led into the kitchen, which in turn led into first a living room and then a bedroom. The front entrance was directly opposite the door to the bedroom at the far end and, with both doors open, I could see all the way to the rear wall where Velvet’s ghost stood with a forlorn expression on her face, in front of the grime-covered window, staring out through the iron bars at the side of the tenement building next door.

  Like most ghosts, she shone for me brighter than the living, surrounded by a faintly luminous silver white glow that made her seem to pop out of her surroundings. As I stepped across her threshold, she turned slowly in my direction, giving me a better look at her.

  She was a gaunt, hollow-eyed shell of her former self, dressed in the tattered clothes her killer had left on her body. She was hanging in the air about a foot off the floor. Her long hair was tangled and clumped together in certain places with a dark, sticky substance that I took to be blood. She stared at me for a moment, her eyes burning with intensity, and then she seemed to lose interest, her gaze falling to the floor before she turned back to face the window again.

  I waited to make certain she wasn’t about to do anything crazy and then made my way through the apartment with slow, measured steps. I kept my gaze on her the whole time, ready to take action if she decided to object to my presence. My caution was unnecessary, however, for she never even looked at me after that first penetrating glance, allowing me to reach the bedroom without incident.

  So far, so good.

  Now that I was inside, it was time to see what I could do to send her on her way.

  There are quite a few methods for making an unruly ghost abandon its current haunt. Thanks to some trial and error over the last few years, I’ve settled on several techniques that I prefer and I always start with the ones that are the least intrusive.

  I start by simply asking the ghost to leave.

&nb
sp; I spoke to her firmly, using her full name to reduce the chance of her acting as if she didn’t know that I was speaking to her.

  “Melissa Anne Sullivan. Your life here is finished. It is time to leave this place and move on.”

  I always feel a bit pompous spouting off like that and it makes me want to wave my hands around in the air in front of me like I’m some kind of amateur magician, but this time I managed to squelch the impulse. Still, I couldn’t argue with the results. Seventy-five percent of the time the tactic actually works and the ghost moves on to wherever ghosts go.

  Unfortunately, this was not one of those times.

  Velvet ignored me.

  A little more pressure was apparently required.

  Reaching into the inside pocket of my duster, I withdrew a few items: a reporter’s notebook and pen, a cigarette lighter, and a small white candle. I scribbled a hasty note on a clean page of the notebook, and then tore it free. I put it on the floor and stood the candle on top of it.

  Velvet stirred slightly, proving she was paying attention after all, but she didn’t move from her position by the window. After a moment’s hesitation, I continued with what I was doing.

  I picked up the lighter and lit the candle.

  The flame flared brightly and then bent at a forty-five degree angle until it was pointing directly at Velvet, almost as if in accusation.

  Her head came up slowly in response.

  The note and candle ritual has been around for centuries. You can find reference to it in texts as ancient as Artemidorus’s Oneirocritica and Cicero’s On Divination. I’d personally used it on more than a handful of occasions, and each time it had done the trick. The writing on the paper acted as a physical representation of my desire, in this case my command for Velvet to depart, and the flame represented the earthly element needed to “charge” the command and force the ghost to obey.

  From a ghost’s perspective, it’s a bit like being manhandled out the back door by a couple of heavyweight bruisers with no necks, whether you wanted to go or not.