by Kim Hornsby
“Rachel told me that a ghost murdered someone.”
“Having had her inside me,” Eve said, “I’d believe that. She’s got a screw loose.”
I jumped in. “We have no proof that a ghost murdered a person, but this woman is dangerous.”
When I’d grilled Eve on the inhabitation, she’d been both freaked out and honored to have Jacqueline inside her. “Like being in a horror movie, except I was the monster,” she said. I didn’t think the incident was as fun as Eve had let on at the time of the dinner party. Carlos had told me that Jimmy had to sit up all night with her, Eve being too frightened to go to sleep. I wondered if Eve used that as an excuse to worm her way further into Jimmy’s heart. I couldn’t help but think that of Eve, even though her heart was purer than my mom and me who wouldn’t stop at pretending to be scared to get a man to show his protective side. The night we talked of her inhabitation I knew Eve was scared of our evil ghost. “Can you tell me if she murdered someone, Eve?” I’d asked.
“Negatory. When she jumped in me, I was only able to access her current mood, not memories. I remember her thinking she wanted to shake things up.”
Jacqueline had planted the seed that Caspian might have been involved in the smuggling of Chinese women and I’d bristled at the possibility.
Ron broke through my train of thought. “How many ghosts are in this house?”
“We don’t know for sure,” I answered. “Caspian says six, including the cat…” Shit! I’d mentioned his name. I bit my lips closed like the singing canary I was.
“Who’s Caspian?” Ron asked.
I took a deep breath and set my coffee cup down on the table. I could either distract or give Ron an overview of the sea captain ghost who was AWOL or spill my guts. I chose the safe one. “He’s another ghost in the house. The husband of the evil one.”
Eve was silent. What a gem she was in the best and worst of times. There was so much she could have added to my last sentence.
“How often do these ghosts appear?”
Ron had moved on. “The woman is more elusive.” I wanted to steer the conversation back to Jacqueline, the scary ghost. Caspian’s name, I realized wasn’t a big secret if Ron watched my show on YouTube, which I assumed he did because he’s a frickin’ detective and probably nosey as heck. “The man appears more, but we haven’t had contact from anyone recently.” That wasn’t entirely true, but I didn’t want to talk about Jacqueline stabbing me in the back last night.
My mother arrived silently in the doorway, like she’d sneaked down the hall, trying to eavesdrop, which is probably exactly what she did. Subterfuge was her middle name. Rachel Subterfuge Primrose.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said with a touch of sneak in her voice.
I tried to block out the fact that my mother was buzzing with intense physical feelings for her boyfriend, feeling sexually alive and beloved. “Good Morning, Old Mom,” I said.
Ron stood, like a gentleman, and then crossed to her.
“I was trying to let you sleep in, like you always do.”
“I never sleep in,” my mother said, lying through her pearly whites.
The sexy vibe jumping off them almost made me lose my coffee and I gulped down the bile that had risen in my throat. “Ron was saying you kicked so much last night, he’s tempted to sleep in the bloody bedroom,” I said to her.
“What’s the bloody bedroom?” Ron followed my mother to the coffee maker.
Aha! Ron did not watch my show and that made me both disappointed and delighted because he had so little information on this house. “It’s the torture room in the house with blood all over the walls.”
My mother ruined my joke. “She’s joking Ron, but look at your wide eyes,” she said, laughing. “It’s just a nickname Bryndle has for a room with a mural,” my mother answered, revealing to me she was downplaying the ghostly action in the house to her lover. I wasn’t sure why she wasn’t giving up all our secrets but knew my mother well enough to realize that she had a devious reason to withhold information. She always did.
I detected the cologne Eau Savage and heard another body enter the kitchen. The room was filling quickly. “Carlos. Buenos dias.” He hadn’t applied cologne to come downstairs at eight in the morning, I was sure, but his clothes had a leftover scent. Or Jimmy Big Ears was wearing Carlos’s clothes.
“Hola,” Carlos said in his morning stuffed-up voice.
I listened, and, from what I got, I was able to determine where everyone was in the room, including Hodor, who’d risen to greet Carlos.
“Are we headed to Portland today or tomorrow?” Carlos asked. The hotel manager had asked us to come Monday, so my answer was short and sweet.
“Neither.”
“He wants us there on a slow night, so we’ll go Monday,” Eve said. I pictured her not looking up from her phone as she talked. That girl spent way too much time on her phone these days. I knew this from when Caspian was around. And with my super-hearing, I could detect her lovely thin fingers tapping at lightning speed. No one could type as fast as my cousin.
“Monday?” My mother pulled a chair so close to me I could smell her coffee breath. “I thought we’d all go to Seattle on Monday and do more work at Mrs. G’s house.”
This was news to me. “You, me, and Ron?”
“I told him we could.” She sounded so disappointed that it was satisfying to burst her bubble.
“Did you ask me, and I forgot?” I knew the answer was no. My mother always assumed I was at her beck and call.
“I didn’t know you were going to Portland. Ron needs you in Seattle ASAP.” My mother was whispering near my ear while, across the room, Carlos told Ron all about how that sugared creamer was bad for you.
“Sorry, not sorry, Mother. You should have run this by me. I have a show to film on Monday in Portland.”
“I was just going to tell you. I assured Ron you’d help with our investigation.” Rachel sounded desperate like her relationship depended on this, which might have been true, although I didn’t detect Ron was into Rachel to get to me, a psychic who could crack his case for him. Or was that the big secret he kept from Rachel?
“We’re booked Monday night, Tuesday morning,” I said.
Carlos shuffled to the table. “We could head to Seattle right after, instead of coming back here. I need to pick up that EVP monitor at Floatville.”
A trip to my houseboat would be good: check on a few things, pick up the mail. I hated to leave Cove House, it being Caspian’s home. What if he showed up and I was gone?
“Tuesday will be fine, won’t it, Ron?” My mother’s desperate whisper in my ear had returned to normal.
Ron stood behind my mother now. “We can start your work on the case Tuesday. I’ll tell my chief it’s been pushed back one day.”
What the heck? I was working on a case and was scheduled in like a guest star on a TV show?
My mother was in deep doo-doo.
Chapter 5
Portland was sunny and warm, in direct contrast to our coastal fog at Cove House. Eve kept saying what a gorgeous day it was, and I knew it wasn’t just the sunshine that had her exclaiming her happiness. Eve was in love, like a star-struck teenager who’d just touched the hand of Teen Magazine’s latest singing sensation.
She was in love, but alone. Jimmy had returned to the Seattle area to work this week. We’d all parted in the driveway earlier and although I’d strained to hear if Eve and Jimmy kissed, I heard nothing smoochy when they said goodbye. Eve was getting better at subterfuge herself, probably spending too much time around Rachel. My mother and Ron were already in Seattle, having left the day before for Ron’s apartment, a place my mother did not like apparently. She’d told me she could not spend more than a day at his place the space being too small, “undecorated and the hall smells like onions.”
“Too bad you can’t stay at your own house,” I’d said, hoping to get an estimate of when her house would be ready to move back into. How long did
an extermination take? Rachel had been with us for weeks avoiding the chemical spray that knocks creepy crawlies dead.
“You want me to get sick?” she’d asked.
Our investigation was set for midnight at the Grand Hotel in the old part of Portland near China Town. The manager had reserved two connecting rooms for us to operate out of and as we parked directly in front of the hotel, I wished I could see the place even though Eve described it to me in intimate detail.
“Red brick, ten floors, like something in Pioneer Square, restored, a red tent thing over the front door that says The Grand Hotel in white script font, a restaurant on the first floor around to the right of a corner, it’s called The Aristocrat.” Eve’s explanations had become more concise lately. “About as wide as four lots on Aunt Rachel’s street, eight stairs carpeted to the front double glass doors.” Eve sounded tired and I wondered if she hadn’t slept well last night or if she just hated describing every single detail in her sight. I didn’t blame her, if so, but I hung on her words to get a feel for the place.
Inside, the lobby was “dark wood, expensive looking, like the Great Gatsby era, potted palms, chandeliers, sort of like Cove House but maintained, bigger and nicer,” Eve said, as Hodor and I followed her to the front desk. Since discovering Hodor’s affinity for the harness, I’d been having him lead me all over the place, including a walk along the sea cliffs yesterday where he would not let me get too close to the edge. Eve had stood guard watching, ready to scream if Hodor started to lead me over the edge. However, with the harness off, Hodor was my silly boy who wouldn’t come when called.
Although I’d told Eve about Jacqueline stabbing me and had every intention of following up in the bloody bedroom on Saturday night, we didn’t. Ron was a pervasive body in the house and I didn’t want to summon spirits with Ron nearby. Sunday night was out too because we had a power outage and although we could have taken candles to the bloody bedroom and not relied on electricity, we couldn’t film with most of the equipment not fully charged when the lights went out at nine. Contacting Jacqueline again was on the agenda for when we returned to Cove House later this week.
Still no sign of Caspian. I’d returned to the third floor late at night to summon him with no results. The emptiness of that third floor was painful.
After checking into The Grand Hotel and getting key cards, we headed off to the restaurant to wait for a meeting with the manager. Eve and I sat in the extremely uncomfortable chairs while Carlos lugged in the equipment we’d use on tonight’s investigation. The nice part about being blind was that I couldn’t see disapproving looks from Carlos about him having to do all the work now. I also could not see disapproving looks from anyone about having Hodor in a restaurant. Eve didn’t give a flying fig but if my disability was hers, I’d have been smiling apologetically all over the place, giving way too much credibility to strangers’ opinions. Eve simply remarked that Hodor was getting the once over and she’d put up her hood to better ignore the looks.
“Not fair,” I said. “I don’t have a hood.”
Eve laughed. “You have better than a hood. You’re blind.”
“I’ve been wondering if my eyes look weird,” I said to her as we waited. “Should I start wearing sunglasses or something?”
Eve didn’t answer immediately.
“Because if one eye looks up to the corner of the room and the other is pointed to the floor, I’d like to know.” I didn’t think this was the case, having looked in the mirror when Caspian was around. I hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary but also wondered if things changed when I was truly blind.
“Sunglasses would be ultra-cool, but you have pretty eyes that point wherever you turn them.”
I’d think about sunglasses for these public situations. After all, I was a performer and loved an audience. The waitress arrived and spoke directly to Eve who ordered us tea then asked for an “extra grande order of greasy fries.” That girl could pack away more food and never gain an ounce. We’d just eaten a big lunch at Spook Central of leftover spaghetti from last night’s dinner and only three hours later, Eve was ordering the biggest plate of fries they had.
Since I’d entered the hotel, I’d had a sense that I’d been here before, which was strange without vision, the usual sense to trigger such a thought. It came and went quickly, then, as we waited in The Aristocrat, I had a flash of memory of a dinner party in this very room, many years earlier. I’d been pretending to laugh in a group of people, but had actually been so full of sorrow, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever feel happy again. But I couldn’t remember ever being in this hotel before.
“There’s our man,” Eve whispered to break my train of thought. “Gavin is seeing the guide dog on the floor, looking at you, and now coming over. Nerd alert.”
Gavin Smythe, the hotel manager, had contacted me a few weeks ago to tell me of the ghost on the seventh floor. We’d exchanged emails and then spoke on the phone last week. This was a dream case for a paranormal investigator, summoning the ghost of a child who follows other children down the hall into the elevator.
“You must be Bryndle,” a deep voice said, not sounding like a nerd.
I stood. I wasn’t good at greeting people as a blind person but turned towards the voice and extended my hand. “Gavin.” A cold, soft hand took mine and shook gently like he was afraid of hurting me because I’m blind. I attached a firm shake back to show him who he was dealing with.
“Please sit down. This is my assistant, Eve.” I gestured towards where I thought Eve was and took my seat, always assuming the chair was still behind me, exactly where I’d left it.
“Thank you for coming. I’m very grateful you chose the hotel as one of your cases.” Gavin was under the impression we were overloaded with amazing ghostly opportunities when really, we only got this type of case every month or two.
“Our pleasure. This ghost is intriguing. I know you’re busy, so I’ll get right to business. What can you tell me about the ghost?”
Eve’s fries arrived, and I heard Gavin say, “charge it to me,” to the waitress before he answered my question. “Guests and employees have seen the ghost of a little girl on the seventh floor for years. According to what they’ve said, she’s somewhere between eight and ten years old, long dark hair, wearing a winter coat and carrying a muff, the hand warming accessory from olden days.”
I nodded. The child was probably from before the 1950’s when muffs were used instead of mitts for little girls of a certain stature.
Gavin continued. “She looks like a real child who’s lost her way. Not see through.”
I meanly made a mental note that Gavin didn’t know the word transparent.
“Guests have approached her to see where her parents are and she disappears through the wall, into room 714. Other times, she’s been in the elevator and people have tried to talk to her, but she doesn’t make eye contact or answer. She doesn’t appear to hear them. Other times, she’s been seen knocking on the door of 714 crying and when the guests inside opened the door, she disappears. She’s never been seen inside 714.
“Why 714?” I asked trying to look at Gavin just above his speaking voice.
“A tragic death occurred in that room in 1922. A businessman shot himself and died.”
“What was the man’s name?”
“Clement Halliday. I’ve tried to research the name and come up empty.” He wanted me to think he’d done all he could before calling us.
“Is there a time of day when the girl appears most often?” Middle of the night is the time most spirits can come through, but I needed to know if she was an everyday at four p.m. kind of ghost.
“Doesn’t seem to be a specific time. On the few occasions our staff and guests have seen her since I’ve been here, it’s usually late at night.”
I took a sip of the tea, realized it hadn’t any sugar and set the cup on the table, out of the saucer, intentionally. “Eve, can you add one teaspoon of sugar?” I turned to where Gavin sat. “Are there p
eople staying on the seventh floor tonight?” I’d asked him to avoid booking guests in for our night’s investigation.
“No one. It’s all yours.”
“Excellent. And we’re free to use the room across the hall from 714?”
“Use any room you like. Will you need two nights or one?”
“Just one,” Eve said through a mouthful of fries.
I nodded. “We’ll start our investigation around ten, see what we get.”
“Will you tape for your show?”
“We will. And we’ll show you anything we get tomorrow morning. Eve will have you sign waivers for legal purposes. I’m sorry I can’t ask you to join us, but ghosts are shy, and we operate with only the three of us.” I didn’t want a person I did not know at a summoning, especially because I knew basically nothing about the ghost or about Gavin. I wasn’t sure of his reason for calling us.
Just in case, I didn’t want to expose the spirit of a child to a non-believer.
Chapter 6
After living in a drafty old house of creaky oldness, our hotel room was charmingly warm and inviting. Even though the wall with the window looking out on the street was red brick, the room was modern with two queen beds swaddled in white, pristine sheets and tightly pulled blankets. Eve told me all this as I sat on my bed and listened, imagining the room around me.
Hodor’s Costco dog bed was set beside mine but as an added precaution, I’d covered my queen bed with a freshly washed blanket from Cove House to keep black-haired Hodor from giving away the fact I let my dog sleep with me on the bed. Not that we expected to do a lot of sleeping in this room but if things went well, we might get to lie down here and there, try to get some zzz’s before we met with Gavin the following morning for breakfast in The Aristocrat.
