by Kim Hornsby
As I settled back in bed, I thought of something. “Eve?”
She came to the door. “Yes.”
“Did you ever tell me what color the bedspread is on this bed?”
“I don’t remember saying. It’s not just one color though.”
A chill of happiness spread throughout my body. “Is it black, tan and teal stripes?”
There was a pause while I crossed my fingers under the blanket, waiting for the answer.
“Yes. How did you know?”
Chapter 8
Our meeting with Gavin Smythe was what paranormal investigator dreams are made of when they aren’t dreaming about kissing gorgeously handsome ghosts. Or being visited in the middle of the night by one. I woke believing that Caspian had come to me last night and we’d gotten all hot and heavy on the bed, him above the covers and me under them, unfortunately. The smile on my face would not calm down, not even for our meeting and I was sure Gavin Smythe thought I was a touch crazy.
We told him that the ghost of the little girl, Amanda, made contact. Carlos showed him the footage of me holding the bear in the elevator. Eve had briefed me to say that earlier Carlos had discovered something almost as good as me being inhabited. He found an anomaly of a light-colored shape the size of a small person entering the elevator where I sat with the bear. Our temperature detectors showed a blob of green coldness on the screen right over the shape. Carlos played the footage for Gavin and from my seat beside him, I heard his breath catch in his throat.
“That’s amazing,” he said.
I knew that any skeptics might think that I was simply trying to act like a little girl from my spot on the floor of the elevator, but the footage of the coldness merging with me, was impressive, Eve had assured me. The moment the green blob covered my body, it disappeared, and I started speaking like Amanda.
Gavin was convinced of the ghost’s appearance and inhabitation and took to his walkie-talkie to summon someone named Dave to our table where we were tucked into the corner of the restaurant. “I hoped you’d find something but never imagined…” his voice trailed off. Footsteps approached on the tile floor and the hotel manager greeted Dave. “Take a look.”
I listened while everyone watched the screen. Everyone but me. I hated being blind but at moments like this, I hated it more than usual. I was lucky to pick up on a sense of wonderment from the two men who were watching the tape and a sense of satisfaction from both Eve and Carlos. But I wanted eyesight too. I wanted to read Dave’s expression, not just feel that he was a big paranormal skeptic and was trying to figure out how we jimmied the tape to look like this.
“I sense you don’t believe it, Dave,” I said, mostly to mess with him. “I assure you, as I sat in the elevator last night, the ghost of a little girl inhabited me.” I took a sip of my tea.
“It isn’t that I don’t believe in ghosts,” Dave said, but never finished. He didn’t need to. We came across this all the time.
“It’s that you don’t believe we see them. It’s fine,” I said, setting my mug on the table. “Eve? Can you order me two scrambled eggs and wheat toast with jam, please?” I was ravenous, having been up all night and down a couple of meals. Eve and Carlos had ordered room service as soon as it was up and running at five and had eaten burgers and weren’t as hungry as me. I’d had a shot of whiskey just before the second try in the hall, hoping to be loose enough to find a ghost. I hadn’t eaten anything since the spaghetti lunch, not wanting food to diminish the expensive whiskey I traveled with. Now, I was as hungry as a bear after hibernation and ready to consume some calories.
“Do you think the ghost is gone for good now?” Gavin asked once the tape stopped.
“I do.” I knew everyone was looking to me. “Eve gave her good reason to pass on.”
Eve ordered my breakfast from the far side of the table and added an omelet, hash browns and bacon for herself.
“Fried egg sandwich,” Carlos said when asked what he’d like, “with a side of melon and berries and yogurt.”
I knew Gavin would pick up the bill and felt the need to explain why we were ordering everything on the menu at The Aristocrat. “Being up all night has made us hungry.”
“And Moody expends a huge number of calories when she’s inhabited,” Eve explained.
Dave excused himself and left just as Gavin took a call on his walkie-talkie about a disgruntled customer, mad about poor elevator service last night. “Excuse me,” Gavin said. “I’ll be right back to cut you a check and talk about having the hotel on the show.”
“Tell your disgruntled customer, they can see this episode next week on YouTube,” I added.
“Let’s talk about that when I return,” Gavin said.
As he walked away, I had the clear impression that Gavin was going to try to weasel out of our agreement to air the hotel footage. Or at least ask me to postpone it. But, I would not give in to any reason he might have to keep the hotel’s haunting from his patrons. I happened to think it would be great for business. We’d run across this before and Eve kept facts and figures on her phone from other clients to support that theory.
Besides, we hadn’t been able to follow up with the final episode of The Eatery show yet seeing the owner’s girlfriend was charged with a murder attempt and the courts had told us to sit on the tape that had us all discovering she’d put arsenic in his power drink.
We needed this haunted hotel show to air next week or I was going to have to substitute something amazing. Like the fact I had gone blind.
***
“Come straight here,” Rachel said on the phone as we hit the highway and headed north.
My mother wanted us to meet her at Floatville when we hit town. Did she think we were heading out dancing before touching down at my home? We had no intention of going anywhere else but the houseboat. We’d just left Portland and had a few hours before we’d enter the doorway at my floating home in Seattle, when my mother’s ringtone, Bad Moon Rising, had come up in my phone.
“I’ll see you in three hours,” Rachel said. “I know how fast Carlos drives.”
Three sentences in and already Rachel was nagging about my driver and friend. I decided to twist the knife. “We’ll be there in two. The Marshmallow is burning rubber like no one’s business and the wheels just might fall off.”
Carlos was actually a careful driver, especially since the day I asked him to promise to keep it under seventy for my sanity as a blind backseat driver who couldn’t take the wheel in a dire emergency.
“Ron is waiting for you to do a reading at Mrs. G’s house tonight because you promised Tuesday,” Rachel said.
“Can’t he wait until we get to town and get some sleep?”
“No, you told him Tuesday. What’s a good time so we don’t keep him wondering? He’s an important detective.”
“And I’m an important psychic,” I said.
“Don’t get too full of yourself, Smarty Pants,” she said. “We’re talking about the law here.”
My mother said this like she had any amount of respect for the law, something she’d always thumbed her nose at while stealing from clients’ wallets when they left the room.
“That’s rich,” I chuckled. “The law. OK, Rachel. First, we need sleep.” We were fantasizing about getting prone and unconscious at Floatville ASAP.
“I’ll tell him midnight.”
“Where are you? I hear my coffee grinder. Are you at my place still?” The grinder was a sound I knew very well. My mother had ground coffee at her house. You didn’t need to be a genius to figure this one out. Or a psychic.
“Floatville,” she said. “Remember, you said I could sleep here because the chemical fumes at my place make me nauseous? I’m waiting for you. I thought you’d be here by now and we could talk.”
“See you in a few hours then. Don’t piss off my neighbors.” Once my lovely mother told the nice people in the boat on the next dock to turn down their music. “My daughter is grieving and she’s gone blind!�
� she’d screamed loudly off the dock. I’d had to call them to explain my mother was nuts.
“You think you’re so funny,” Rachel said before she cut off the call.
Something was up with Rachel, but I did not want to get into it until we got to Seattle. I was exhausted and because of that my resistance and comebacks to Rachel was low. I needed sleep but Carlos really didn’t like it when anyone went to sleep while he had to stay awake and drive. “It’s disrespectful,” he’d once said turning the music to a million decibels in the van.
Already, I’d heard Eve’s soft sleeping noise that was not unlike a tiny snore. I needed to stay awake to keep my driver company. To amuse both of us on the drive I recounted the conversation to Carlos who agreed that Rachel was hiding something about her and Ron, the house, the case, or Floatville.
We just didn’t know what.
***
It was just after one when we pulled into Mrs. G’s driveway. Rachel had directed us to park on the street but Carlos said Ron’s truck was in the driveway, so we slid in behind him. It was raining. Soft rain, like a gentle caress on the face. Not! The rain was pile driving the pavement as we scurried into the house under the mega-umbrella Eve took everywhere like the most amazing assistant that she was.
Inside the house, I immediately felt something strange and almost announced my finding. Instead, I kept my mouth shut until I heard who was with us on this middle of the night adventure.
“Ron, Rachel and another man,” Eve whispered into my ear.
“Hello Ron. Who’s your friend?” I asked, taking off my wet coat.
“Moody, this is my partner, Gibson,” Ron said, his voice scratchy like he hadn’t spoken in a while.
The fact that Ron, who’d just spent a very long weekend at my house in Oregon called me Moody, led me to believe that we were putting on a pro show for the new guy. Maybe Ron finally watched my show on YouTube. I got a slight vibe from Gibson as he shook my outstretched hand. One, he was worried I’d realize something about him and two, he didn’t believe in hocus-pocus and was here as a favor to Ron.
“Don’t worry, Gibson,” I said. “Your secret is safe with me.” I did love to toy with non-believers.
Rachel cleared her throat. “Tell them how this is going to work, Bryndle.” Her voice was careful, nervous, and I wondered why. Everyone was treading on such eggshells tonight, it made me want to pick my nose in front of them and swear like a soldier. Instead, I kept it light. “I’m going to bring the house down with evil spirits and you guys better get out your crucifixes,” I said.
“Bryndle!” My mother poked my back, something she’d been doing ever since I could remember.
Eve chuckled beside me. She appreciated a good joke.
“Eve and Carlos will accompany me to the bedroom where we’ll start rolling tape. Carlos always films, so that’s not an option.” I sensed Ron was about to tell Carlos that he couldn’t film. “I’ll start there, see what I get.” I turned to where I believed Carlos to be. “Ready, mi amigo?”
“Lista, Moody.” Carlos sounded like he was smiling too.
“Keep the cops out of the shots,” I added, taking Eve’s offered arm and walking through the kitchen to the bedroom. The thing about my new improved psychic ability since Caspian hit the on switch, was that things were coming through to tell me if the coast was clear to walk straight down the hall or if there was a laundry hamper in the way. It wasn’t vision, just a sense that it was all clear to keep walking. This was major stuff and I was elated to get those signals.
As Eve and I walked the hall, I’m sure she felt that I wasn’t clinging to her the way I had been.
“Can you see?” she whispered.
“No, but I’m sensing where to go.”
She squeezed my arm and I had a vision of Eve’s happy smile.
“Mucho cool,” I added turning at the bedroom door and stopping just inside. “Mrs. G’s bedroom. Where they found her dead in her bed.” I walked by myself to the bed and stopped. “Carlos, are we filming?”
“4, 3, 2...”
“Investigation 68, Mrs. G’s house, Seattle.” I put my hands out in front to hover over the bed. “There is evil here. And fear. The victim died in fear.” I dug deep to try to channel Mrs. Giovanni, the lovely neighbor who’d been so kind to my mother and got lots back. This was so unlike that last time I came in here with the psychic switch soldered shut. “Mrs. G. It’s Rachel’s daughter, Bryndle. Are you with us?” I waited. The room smelled musty like it had been shut up for months, which wasn’t so. “Mrs. G? I think someone murdered you. I want to prove you did not die naturally.”
Ron cleared his throat from the doorway. “Sorry,” he whispered, probably to my mother who would have shot him a look of WTF.
“Are you with us, Mrs. Giovanni? Can you let us know you’re here?” The air around me grew cold, like the heat had been sucked from the area.
Carlos’s meter clicked faster. “Anomaly over the bed,” he said.
“Teresa,” my mother said. “Who did this to you? I want to find the murderer and put you to rest.”
Normally, I’d be furious that my mother spoke during an investigation, but she was friends with Mrs. G and as I stood in the coldness of the room, I got the sense that the ghost before us was trying to contact my mother. “Can you enter me, Mrs. G? Come inside me and speak through my voice?”
Dead silence and coldness filled the room. I waited. I didn’t really want Mrs. G inside me. As well as having just entertained a ghost the night before and being fresh out of hospitality, Mrs. G had a smoker’s cough that I really did not want to be a part of.
Nothing entered me but Carlos said the anomaly over the bed was moving. I had to believe it was difficult for a ghost to enter an Alive or they’d all be doing it and loads of us would be worried about ghost invasions. “Tell us what happened the night you died.” When nothing happened, I sat on the bed and put my hands on the pillows, knowing the cops were worried I was disturbing a crime scene, but not caring. “Did someone kill you here, Mrs. G? Who was it?”
“Curtains fluttering,” Eve said.
Carlos moved to the window. Or at least I think that’s where he went.
“We feel you here.” I turned my head and spoke to Eve. “Marker and paper.”
Eve set a tablet of paper on my lap with a black marker and I held the marker over the paper. “Can you write through me? Tell me who killed you.” I waited, then set the tip of the marker on the tablet. It started to move. I closed my eyes, knowing we were filming and there was no way I could read what was being written. Eve got the message and moved in to read as I wrote.
“Gibberish, twirls, lines, some letters but not words,” she said.
My marker was now flying across the page to the end, then another line, then another. I reached the bottom of the page and turned it, this action not my own. I sensed desperation. I’d filled the whole tablet when the room became warm and my marker stopped moving.
Eve took the papers and marker from me.
“She’s gone,” I said. I was exhausted and although I felt like flopping on the bed behind me, I had to end the episode. “Mood Peeps, that’s called Automatic Writing, something we haven’t done on the show before. When an entity tries to communicate through me to write something. I have rarely experienced it but wanted to try tonight and brought the marker and paper just in case.” I cocked my head and tried to look like I was staring out into space and thinking. “Eve, can you make any sense of what was written?”
“The first pages appear to be just loops and letters, but on the third page, there are words. I think she wrote in another language. Maybe in Italian, but I’m not sure. I don’t speak that language unfortunately.”
I stood and threw my arms out, my head back. “Thank you, Mrs. G. We will be back.” I turned to where I believed the others stood watching. “Carlos. Let’s cut there and I’ll sign out now. We’re done.”
I heard the heaviest feet head down the hall and assumed t
he cops were on their way to the kitchen. My mother left as well. I knew this because her perfume scent was only lingering, not pervasive, as usual. When I thought they were gone, I tried one last time to contact Mrs. G knowing non-believers in the room sometimes hinder the investigation. “Mrs. G? Can you give us one last clue? Do something or tell me something to help me find who did this to you?”
We listened. My team watched. I presumed the light was on and they could see the room.
“Was it your daughter who killed you?”
I fell forward, stumbling to land on the bed. “Someone pushed me.” I got up. “Mrs. G? Did you push me, just now?” Nothing more happened. “Was it Lola who killed you? Please help us.”
Nothing more.
We waited another five minutes, me saying the same thing over and over but got nothing. I wasn’t sure how to interpret the push that led me to fall on the bed. I’d felt something on my right shoulder and was so close to the bed’s edge, as I took a step forward to get my feet under the rest of me, I hit the bed and tumbled. Did the contact mean it was Lola who killed Mrs. G or that it wasn’t? I had no sense of either.
But one thing was clear. We needed to find someone who spoke Italian.
We stood in Mrs. G’s kitchen arguing over who would take the writings to a translator. Officially, I owned the paper and it was mine.
“Bryndle, you are here helping the police,” my mother said in that voice that told me I was being a petulant child. “They will take it from here.” She must’ve taken the tablet from Eve because I heard Eve make a little noise like she wasn’t sure what to do.
“Mother,” I countered, prepared to bring out my big guns. “Just remember that I am in charge of this summoning and it was the initial prediction that you used to get Ron involved.” I said this last part like I was going to reveal her lie if she didn’t give Eve back the tablet.
“The police will find a translator, Bryndle. You agreed to helping them tonight. You don’t need to retain control of the papers.”
