The Garden (Haunted Series)

by Alexie Aaron

  “Ten points Slytherin,” Ted said in her earpiece. Mia kept the praise to herself.

  Burt turned the key in the lock and pocketed the key explaining, “Just in case it locks us in down there.”

  He placed a light disc on the landing and tossed one down the stairs. Even though the stairwell became a friendlier place, the group descended slowly, wary of anything that could precipitate a fall.

  The group stood together on the landing and viewed the massive room around them. Alan found a control panel and flipped several switches, filling the space with the illumination and the hum of florescent lights.

  Long steel counters ran the outer wall. Several drains and sinks were placed at intervals. Cupboards with cloudy glass doors were hung from the low ceiling. Rows and rows of canning jars containing murky fruits and vegetables dominated the storage space.

  “I’d toss the lot,” Mike advised. “It may look good, but I wouldn’t eat anything that has been sitting in those containers.”

  Alan pointed out the professional grade gas stove in the corner. “This must have been some operation at some time. Seems excessive for a hobby gardener.”

  “My mother still cans but not on this scale,” Mike admitted.

  “It’s coming back into vogue,” Audrey piped in. “Ever since Martha’s been out of jail, the suburban homemaker is ripe for another challenge. Jam and jelly making has replaced scrapbooking.”

  “Careful, Audrey, your research is showing,” Mia teased.

  Audrey laughed and responded, “Damn, I hate it when that happens.”

  Slam!

  The sound came from the top of the stairs. Slam! It echoed once more through the basement. The lights started to flicker but held.

  “Here we go,” Mia said under her breath.

  The jars in the cupboard began to rattle.

  “Duck!” Mike shouted as the contents of the jars bubbled and boiled before bursting, shattering the glass doors.

  Mia pulled Audrey down behind the stainless steel garbage cans. She tossed a few of the lids to the men to protect their faces from the flying glass. They huddled together until the explosions stopped.

  The odor of old and rancid food filled the basement.

  “Talk to me, Mia, your heart rate is elevated,” Ted’s concerned voice asked in her ear.

  “Some bitch of a ghost just exploded mason jars full of rot all around us. It smells of decay and syrup. It’s gonna put me off my pancakes.”

  “Do you need assistance?”

  “Hang on.” Mia bobbed her head up and saw that the activity had stopped. “Burt, do you want Cid’s or Ted’s help?”

  “Ted, over.”

  “Yes, Red Leader, over.”

  “Have Cid stand by to help if we can’t open the kitchen door, over,” Burt ordered.

  “Will do, over.”

  Burt stood up and surveyed the mess. “I’d like to continue. I think the entity may have to recharge. Mia, are you seeing anything?”

  “Aside from peach-topped Dupree and Cherry’s Attorney, no.”

  Audrey laughed in spite of herself. She enjoyed the casual atmosphere of the ghost hunters. “I’d like to continue, if I have a vote,” she said standing up.

  Alan and Mike brushed off the canned fruit and nodded.

  “Be careful, the ground is covered in…”

  “Yuck,” Mia filled in. “Gross, slippery… Are those pearl onions? Someone tell me they are onions and not eyeballs.”

  Mike kicked at a few. “They’re onions, dear.”

  “Phew!” Mia said tiptoeing around the worst of the mess. “Nothing worse than finding body parts.”

  “Aside from the horror aspect, why?” Audrey asked.

  Alan spoke up. “Body parts mean we bring in the police.”

  “Oh.” Audrey thought a moment. “Are the rest of you getting the vibe that other things besides canning went on down here? Those long steel counters seem a bit, well, like they belong in a funeral home,” she observed.

  “Without evidence we can’t say for sure,” Burt answered her, giving a stern look to Mia who hunched her shoulders. “I’m sure each of us has the idea that the old lady may have nurtured her garden with things not found at the Home Depot Garden Center. But this is our imaginations running wild. Let’s keep to the facts until proven otherwise.”

  Alan nodded in agreement. Mike looked at Mia and narrowed his eyes, warning her not to disagree with Burt. She once again shrugged her shoulders innocently.

  Audrey noticed this shorthand. For whatever reason, it seemed to her that the males were keeping Mia on a short leash.

  “There are two directions to go. I’d like to check out the equipment room with the garage door to the outside,” Burt said. “But I think the rest of you would like to get to the subbasement before the entity recharges.”

  “Yes, please,” Mia said.

  “I’m with her,” Audrey said.

  Mike nodded, and Alan agreed to lead the way, having been there before.

  “Are we going to have to clean that up?” Mia whispered to Mike.

  “Probably,” he told her.

  Audrey overheard the two. “I could suggest to Alan to bring in a cleaning team.”

  “No, the more people here, the more danger there is of bad rumors getting out about this place,” Mike counseled. “We’re all from farms, we’re used to mess.”

  Mia wanted to point out that she wasn’t born in a barn, but the ever-listening Ted anticipated this and hissed in her ear, “Let it go, he’s just calming the clients.”

  “K,” is all she said.

  “Pardon?” Audrey asked her.

  Mia pointed to her earpiece.

  “Oh.” Audrey wondered if the leash extended to the men in the command center. “How long have you been with PEEPs?” she asked Mia.

  “I’ve consulted for a little under a year. I’ve only become a fulltime member recently.”

  “Fulltime means what?” Audrey inquired.

  “I get paid,” Mia answered simply.

  The group stopped at the northeast corner of the basement. “I was examining this poisons case when I noticed the door behind it,” Alan explained. “I shifted the cabinet over, and this is what I found.” He stepped back and displayed the roughhewn wood door with a viewing hatch that opened on this side of the door. “For a moment I thought it was another entrance to the garden exit over there,” he said pointing behind them. “But upon opening it, I found another stairway.”

  He opened the door and let it swing inwards. The smell of damp earth moved out of the doorway. He turned on a flashlight and moved towards the door.

  “Stop!” Mia shouted.

  Burt grabbed Alan and pulled him back hard, causing the two of them to fall down. A loud grinding sound accompanied the flash of steel as sharp pointed bars slammed down from the ceiling. Without Mia’s warning Alan would have been impaled.

  “God in heaven!” Alan said getting to his feet. “How, what, Jesus, what happened here?”

  Everyone looked at Mia.

  “It’s a case of me being closer to the ground. I saw the holes for the bars open up as the door swung open.” She approached the now-barred entrance. Mia fussed about at the edge of the doorjamb and found a lever. She pulled down on it, and the bars screeched their way to the ceiling. “Must be a counterweight on the other side,” she said offhandedly. “May I suggest we get Cid in here to build a safety measure before we try this again?”

  “It didn’t do that before?”

  “How far did you get?”

  “I went down the stairs and found the subbasement and came back up.”

  “How long ago?”

  “A few months.”

  “Could be all the activity loosened something,” Burt reasoned.

  “My question is,” Audrey started, “what was the homeowner trying to keep out?”

  “I think the question should be who was she trying to keep down there?” Mike asked.

  “Or wha
t,” Mia added, sending chills through the group.

  Burt gave her a look. Mia rolled her eyes.

  “Let’s see the garden exit, Alan,” Mike requested. He shook his finger at Mia behind Alan’s back. Audrey caught the movement and shook her head. She was thinking the same thing as Mia.

  Mia was however lagging back, listening to Ted congratulating her on receiving the first Bela Lugosi award of the investigation.

  Chapter Nine

  The entrance to the garden from the north side of the basement was a double set of oak doors. Once Alan opened them, he propped them open with two cinder blocks he found just outside. He led them up the dark ramp, moving his flashlight from side to side to check for icy patches. The temperature here in the tunnel was at least ten degrees colder than the outside air.

  “Bear with me, the ramp is actually built into the north wall of the garden. You can’t tell from the outside, but in many places the wall on this side of the garden is ten feet across.”

  “Very similar to how they built the walls of forts,” Audrey informed them. “This way the inhabitants could utilize the protection of a double wall and the space in between them.”

  “I don’t get it,” Mia said honestly. “Why go to the trouble of this enclosed space? From the age of the building, I don’t think they would be protecting themselves from Indian attack.”

  “Hell of a rabbit fence,” Mike said, feeling the solidness of the cold walls. “Seems to me these walls hold a lot of secrets.”

  Mia didn’t take the bait. She put her gloved hands in her pockets. She would not volunteer to touch these walls without further research.

  Alan had reached the top of the ramp. He and Burt muscled the doors open. They placed a few cinder blocks to hold them in that position before stepping aside so that the others could walk in.

  Mia hated it immediately. The formal beds of pruned roses reminded her of death. The ropes that traveled the walls in the spring would support rose vines. They would look beautiful in the late spring, but Mia saw only razor wire. She forced herself to look up and away from the hibernating plants. The sky was blue and welcoming. “Ted, this is Mia, over.”

  “Ted here, over.”

  “My impression of the garden is that of a prison. The air is thin, and I feel nauseous. I am looking at the sky in order to find my balance, over.”

  “Hang on, Mia.”

  “Burt, this is Ted, over.”

  “Burt here, over.”

  “Mia needs to leave the garden. Her senses are being overwhelmed. If you can’t take her out now, I would like to come in and extract her, over.”

  Burt sighed and looked over at the sensitive. She was white as a sheet and wavering. Her head was angled towards the western sky. “I’ll bring her out. Have Cid watch the console, and meet me at the kitchen stairs, over.”

  “Done and done, over.”

  Burt strode quickly over to Mia and scooped her up as she fainted. “Mike, I’ll take her out. Continue the tour, stay together. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Is she alright?” Audrey asked.

  “She’s fainted. We’ll know more later,” Burt said as he moved quickly into the tunnel.

  “Might I have a piece of earth?” Mia mumbled still unconscious.

  “Come on, Mia, wake up.” Burt entered the basement and slowed his pace as to not slip on the glass and the food on the floor.

  Ted was bounding down the steps. He saw Burt and said, “What the fuck?”

  “She fainted. I caught her before she hit the ground,” he explained.

  Ted took her unconscious body from Burt and took the stairs two at a time. “Hang on, Minnie Mouse, Ted’s here,” he cooed as he ran out of the kitchen and into the foyer where he and Cid were setting up the command center.

  “Thorns and stickers hurting, digging, wrapping, twisting, death, death, death!” Mia screamed unable to pull out of her trance. “Mary Mary quite contrary…” a deep voice recited out of Mia’s limp form.

  “Mother of God, what’s happening to her?” Cid asked.

  “She’s locked in a trance, I think.”

  “Her heart rate is very high,” Cid said, checking the window on the monitor where Ted had her vitals displayed.

  “What should I do?” Ted said, laying her down on an upholstered bench just inside the front door.

  “Kiss her. You’re her prince charming…”

  “For cripes sake, how old are you?” Ted snapped at him.

  Mia started panting and clutching at her neck. Ted panicked and bent down and kissed her long and hard on the mouth.

  She opened her eyes. “Whoa, reel that tongue back in, we’re amongst company,” Mia said quietly.

  “For fucks sake, what happened?” Ted asked.

  Mia tried to rise but was too weak. “I don’t know.”

  “Is she alright?” Cid called over from the command console.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “So the kiss worked.”

  “It appears to have worked.”

  “You owe me an apology,” Cid said smugly.

  “You’ll get it. Right now, I’m a little busy.” Ted smiled down at Mia and stroked her face. “You gave us quite a scare.”

  “I’m sorry. It came upon me without warning. There was a flood of negative emotion. Last thing I remember is that I tried to focus on the sky, and then I was here and you were kissing me.”

  “Anything like this happen before?”

  “Only when I touch things with my bare hands. This was a nightmare I couldn’t wake from. You saved me…”

  “Ahem, we saved you. Burt carried you to the stairs, Batman brought you up here, and I told him how to revive you,” Cid listed.

  “And that was?”

  “I kissed you,” Ted said, his voice cracking.

  “Cool, like Prince Charming,” Mia purred and reached out and touched Ted’s face. “All this time I thought you were a dark knight, now I find out my boyfriend’s a prince.”

  Ted liked that she called him her boyfriend. He wanted Tommy Ellis in the fifth grade to hear that. Or Rick Sherman in gym class. There were many more that Ted would like to know that this beautiful creature was his girlfriend - this geek with the size eleven shoes, his youth spent wearing wader pants as his lean frame and inseam didn’t occur too often in retail stores.

  “What are you thinking about?” Mia asked.

  “Mmmm, sorry, I was lost in amongst the baggage of my youth,” he explained. “Do you think you can sit up?”

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  Ted helped her up. Mia patted the seat beside her, and Ted got off his knees and sat down. “Thank you again. I think that I should talk to Mike about having Father Santos on speed dial. Something got a hold of me and wasn’t going to let me go.”

  “Like Amber?”

  “I guess.”

  “Excuse me, Ted, Burt wants an update,” Cid said.

  Ted got up and walked over to the console, and Cid handed him the headset. “Ted here. Mia is out of trouble, but I don’t think it’s wise for her to continue here without Father Santos, over.”

  Mia watched him make a face as he listened to Burt. “I don’t care if you don’t want to owe any favors. My understanding is he volunteered, over.” Ted moved his fingers indicating that Burt was talking. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I think I’ll take Mia home now…”

  Mia opened her eyes wide in amazement. She waved her hands to get Ted’s attention.

  He ignored her and said, “I think we can come to an understanding. I’ll partner with Mia, so we can finish the first sweep of the house. But she doesn’t go into the basement, the subbasement or the garden without having Father Santos here.”

  He waited a moment and listened to Burt. His jaw was set firmly, and Mia thought he was the handsomest man alive.

  “I understand that you’re my boss, but the risk is too great for me to give a flying fuck what you want. I’m not coddling her. Remember what happened to Ambe
r. Well if it weren’t for Cid’s quick thinking, Mia would be heading for the hospital right now. We will talk later, and please listen to me. I want to be perfectly clear. I don’t need you, PEEPs or a job. I’m here as a team member, and as a team member I am responsible that no one gets left behind, or falls into a possessed state for that matter. You don’t need a sensitive here. Anyone with a fucking set of eyeballs can tell the house is haunted.” Ted took off his headset and handed it to Cid.

  He walked over and plucked Mia’s com out of her ear, walked back and handed it to a stunned Cid. He then put on his coat, walked back and picked her up in his arms. “You know in the scary movies when the guy has a chance to save the group by leaving and he doesn’t?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not that guy. In a moment Burt’s going to come thundering in here, and I’d rather be gone.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Mia said. “I can walk.”

  “Good, because, Frodo, you’ve got to lay off the second breakfast. You’re killing me here.”

  Mia punched him on the arm and stood up a moment before grabbing his hand. They left the building and stood on the porch. “You know we don’t have our own car here,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, and I don’t have the keys to either PEEPs vehicle.”

  “So I guess we’ll walk to the end of the drive and call a cab.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Are we fired?” Mia asked as they headed down the drive.

  “I am.”

  “Well then I am too. Where you go I go,” Mia insisted.

  “I’ve got a mortgage, and my savings are slim.”

  “I’ll sell the peninsula.”

  Ted stopped, turned and looked down at her. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I may have overreacted in there, I was so scared for you,” he admitted.

  “Teddy Bear, you don’t have to be right for me to be on your side. I love you.”

  “I feel guilty leaving PEEPs in the lurch,” Ted admitted as they reached the street.

  “Mike and Burt have been in worse spots. They will explain that I needed to be checked over. That will explain our absence. Then they will come a begging. It’s up to you whether you want to listen to them or not. I don’t want to be the cause of you losing something you so enjoy doing.”