The Garden (Haunted Series)

by Alexie Aaron

  “Care to share what happened in the garden?” Mike asked Mia.

  “Sure, but I’d like to wait until all of us are together. That way I only have to tell it once.”

  “That bad?” Ted looked down at her, and she nodded.

  “It was probably the most brutal thing I’ve experienced.”

  Audrey walked into the room and announced. “I’ve convinced Burt to join us in here. I found some eighty-year-old brandy and spent the last few minutes washing some glasses. I suggest we gather around the fire and catch up.”

  Cid pushed Burt in on his roller chair and assisted him into the twin wing chair in front of the fire. He handed the iPad to Ted, who was pleased to see that Burt had every system going through the device. Ted set it down where he could keep an eye on it while keeping the other eye on Mia.

  Cid sat down at Mia’s feet, choosing to stretch out his legs and resting his back against the sturdy sofa. Audrey returned with the brandy and handed a snifter to each person. She chose to sit next to Alan who had set himself adrift in a fainting couch at the edge of the firelight.

  Audrey sat down, curling her legs under her to not crowd the tall man. She watched the people assembled there. She glanced over at Mia who didn’t know what to do with the big bowled glass. Ted was demonstrating by holding it in the palm of his hand and swirling the dark amber liquid. She laughed as she tried it, sloshing some over the rim in her exuberance. She licked her hand. Mia seemed happy as she tasted the brandy. She took a big sip. Mia coughed and waved her hand in front of her tearing eyes. “Whoa!”

  Mike smirked and said, “Forgive her. She’s not from this planet.”

  Ted ignored the comment, and Mia wagged a finger at him. She smiled and took a deep breath. “Before I get loaded, I would like to explain what happened to me. Audrey, if you could grab a pen and paper, I have some names we need to look up.” Mia waited for Audrey to resettle herself before beginning.

  “I grabbed the man’s hand, trying to pry it off of Mike. My aunt Bev assured me I would be able to touch entities, she was right.” Mia went on to tell them the whole story, pausing only to catch her breath before telling them, “I screamed and pleaded to be let go. I heard something above me, and next thing I knew, Stephen Murphy was pulling up bushes, ripping away the rose roots. You see I – my out of body persona - was imprisoned in the ribcage of the man. Murph split the chest open and pulled me from the earth like a mandrake.”

  “What were the names of the men again?” Audrey asked.

  “I don’t know my captor’s name, but the others were Sugarland Pete, Little Eddie and Bosco.”

  “They sound like - forgive my lack of political correctness – hobos,” Alan pointed out. “The man was in depression era clothing. I think we are dealing with hobos.”

  “Murphy was fighting something very powerful. All we saw was thick gray smoke,” Cid said. “Mia, did you see anything?”

  “Not from underground. I heard him yelling at Murphy though. When Murphy’s up and running again, I’ll ask him to describe the man. I wonder if he’s the evil presence we felt in the garden and perhaps the subbasement.”

  “Why did he attack me, the hobo?” Mike asked.

  “He wanted us to listen to him. Maybe he was just trying to get our attention,” Mia reasoned.

  “Ghosts,” Burt said, looking at first Audrey and then Alan, “don’t know how to communicate to the living. It takes a lot of energy to break the veil, and sometimes they bungle it and inadvertently cause harm. We had twin autistic boys that choked me with plaster dust and nailed Mike in the jewels with a book of fairytales. They were just trying to tell us something.”

  “Can ghosts kill?” Alan asked.

  “Yes,” the PEEPs team answered at the same time.

  Audrey took a deep drink of the brandy, trying to fight off the chill of their answer.

  “I think that this investigation is multifaceted,” Burt said. “We have the human element: David Bonner, Sam Centers and Hagan Fowler. We have the supernatural element: the garden and, yes, Hagan Fowler’s belief that he is…”

  “Was,” Ted corrected.

  “Excuse me, was possessed,” Burt acknowledged this correction with grace. “And then we have the paranormal. What a selection we have. The residual haunting of the maids as they go about their chores. There is the active haunting of a girl who lost something and found it in the most amazing way – thanks ladies. Our proprietress is hanging around in one shadow but actively angry and breaking every G Damn vase on the second floor. And then we have the very male entities: the behemoth, the black mass, who doesn’t like us males much. Accuses us of thievery, and when he’s not chucking Spode at Mike, he’s tossing Cid at Ted.”

  Cid started laughing. He patted Ted on the knee. They exchanged looks of brotherhood.

  “If I were going to give this investigation a title, it would be Full House. There is so much here to explore. Honestly, Alan, I don’t think we can finish this in a day or two. It’s going to take time. We may never get to the end of it. Unless we get lucky, and that’s where Audrey’s research is going to be the keystone of our success,” Burt said, raising his glass to her.

  “To Audrey,” Mike said. Mia, Ted and Cid raised their glasses. Alan touched his with hers, and they all took a drink.

  “Okay, who bet that there were bodies in the garden?” Mia asked.

  Everyone but Burt raised his hand. “Burt, you’re going to have to go to the bank. I can confirm that there is one body and three more to find. I’ll have Bernard send over the ground penetrating radar tomorrow. I think since we already have gotten to know the Cook Country Sherriff’s Department we might as well start digging up the bodies. I will have Father Santos arrange for their burial.”

  “I guess I can see this is much more of a project that I ever dreamed,” Alan admitted. “I have an appointment to sit in on David Bonner and Sam Centers interrogation tomorrow. So, I’ll work on the human element.”

  “That leaves the rest of us to solve the puzzle of what is feeding all of these entities,” Burt said. “To do so, we need alert minds. I suggest we get some shut eye.”

  “Couldn’t we stay here, Alan?” Audrey asked.

  “Have you ever slept in a haunted house?” Mike asked her.

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to, if you have the choice. I suggest we get some food in us, sober up and head to our comfy beds, and meet back here after noon.”

  “Murph’s got to get back to the farm,” Mia reminded Ted.

  “He can ride with me, if he keeps his hands off the radio,” Burt said.

  Mia wrinkled up her face. “He better ride with me.”

  Ted cleared his voice.

  “Us,” Mia amended. “We’ll drop him off. He deserves to listen to a little Patsy Cline after saving my bacon.”

  “Then let’s close up shop. Make sure the doors are locked. We don’t need any more human elements. Cid and I will take the big truck. You can have the van, Mike.”

  Mia sat up. Ted told her to stay and finish her drink and enjoy the embers of the dying fire. Audrey walked over to the dining table and stacked her materials. “I really don’t know if I should keep them lying out unprotected,” she said to Mia.

  “We could put them back, but then you’d have to drag them down again. How about you choose the most valuable, research wise, and take it with you,” Mia suggested. “The place has security. PEEPs is leaving all our equipment up and running. The only thing that could mess with us is the ghosts. I have a feeling the dangerous ones have spent their wad already today. I think it’s going to be a quiet night.”

  “That’s good sound thinking.” Audrey picked up a gardening journal and the family bible and stuck them in her briefcase.

  Mia watched the fire for a moment. She felt a tingle beside her. She looked over and smiled at Murphy. She reached out and squeezed his hand. “Thank you, Murph.” He returned her smile. “Ted and I are taking you home. You did good here, but y
ou, like us, need to recharge.”

  Audrey looked at Mia who looked like she was enjoying a conversation with herself. Some people couldn’t handle their brandy.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Burt awoke to the smell of bacon and coffee. He had chosen to sleep on Ted’s hand-me-down sofa in the farmhouse living room, instead of climbing the stairs with his mending but still sore ankle. He wasn’t sure Mia was in the house so he reached for where he left his jeans last night and found them neatly folded with a clean set of boxers and shirt on top. Fresh socks were setting by his shoes, and part of him expected to see a note from his mother pinned to his backpack.

  Ted’s house had lost the primness of April’s décor. His family’s castoff furniture did little to add any ambiance to the place. But it was free and comfortable. Soon he would have to find a place of his own. Maybe build one. He liked the openness of Mia’s house. It made being single somehow less lonely.

  Heavy footsteps pounded the steps. Burt turned in time to see Cid disappear around the corner headed for the kitchen. The front door opened, and Ted walked in carrying an armload of wood.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” Ted said, bringing the wood in and settling it in the empty wood box. “God bless that Murphy. As soon as he learned how to actually cut wood in this dimension, he’s been keeping me stocked,” he explained.

  Burt watched as Ted knelt down and began to clean the grate. This done, he arranged the wood for a future fire.

  “Breakfast is ready,” Cid announced. “Do you need any help getting to the table, Burt?”

  “I think I can make it. Be there in a jiff.”

  Ted left him to get dressed.

  The kitchen was bright with morning sun. He was surprised to see a feast of bacon, sausage and scrambled eggs laid out on the table. Stacks of buttered toast sat at each end of the table. He sat down, and a fresh mug of coffee was placed in front of him by Ted.

  “To whom do we owe this bountiful breakfast?” he asked as he loaded his plate.

  “God, I imagine,” Mia said, wandering out of the laundry room. She had a basket of socks which she set down.

  “Mia cooked the meal,” Ted explained.

  “Mia can’t cook bacon or sausage, or couldn’t?” Burt said puzzled, and quickly added, “No offense.”

  “None taken. Cid instructed me on what I was doing wrong. I made the eggs all by myself,” she said proudly.

  “While you were snoring away, we were doing chores,” Cid told him. “Mia did the laundry in exchange for my culinary assistance in the kitchen.”

  Mia sat down and snagged a piece of bacon. Ted came in fiddling with some gadget. Mia got up, took the oily thing away from him and set it on the counter. “Eat first,” she ordered.

  Burt suppressed a laugh.

  They ate in companionable silence. Once appetites were sated and coffees refilled, Mia returned Ted’s project to him, and she and Cid grabbed the dishes.

  “What are you working on?”

  “It’s an energon cube.”

  “Come again?” Burt asked. “Like in Transformers?”

  “Well that’s where the idea came from. You know the problem with the ghosts sucking the battery power out of the cameras and blowing the fuses in the mansion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I got to thinking, what if we offered them an alternate source?”

  “Great idea,” Burt said. He marveled at the genius of his tech.

  Mia and Cid finished up the dishes. Cid headed out to tinker in the barn. Mia kissed Ted on the head and told them, “I’m heading home. I’ve got accounts to do and my own laundry to manage.”

  Ted looked up. “Thanks for helping out.”

  “My pleasure,” she said softly. “See you gentlemen later.”

  Burt waited until she left the house before speaking. “Did she have nightmares last night?”

  “Yes. One of her greatest fears is being buried alive. Thank you for insisting she stay here with us. Mia doesn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

  Burt took a sip of coffee. “You know something? I don’t feel uncomfortable. Envious of you, but I don’t have any negative feelings towards you two as a couple. It took me a while, but I thought if Murphy could accept that Mia would want to be with a beanpole like you, then I may as well give it a try.”

  “That’s big of you, old man,” Ted said wryly.

  “I know. Speaking of Murphy, anyone see him?”

  “Nah, I heard his axe up near the old woods, so I think he recovered from yesterday’s adventure.”

  “What did it feel like?”

  “You have to be more specific,” Ted said as he twisted wires together.

  “To pick him up and carry him?”

  “Like wood. He didn’t give off any heat. He was solid and weighed more than Mia.”

  “How was that possible?”

  “Mia says that she thinks it’s energy that generates from him. Mia, on the other hand, can now touch the ghosts. That’s how she saved Mike, by prying away the hands that were crushing him into the wall.”

  “Is it a talent she’s always had or is it something new?” Burt asked.

  “She doesn’t know. I wonder if Angelo’s hand is in some of the things that have been happening to Mia. I don’t like the man. He too easily uses people in order to achieve his objective.”

  “So he is a man?”

  “Far as I know. Mia’s not making any bets on what he is. She feels that within all of us are gifts. Mine is well…” he raised his project and said, “this. Yours is the ability to see the big picture. Mike is intuitive. Cid’s a builder and a teacher according to Mia. You and I’ve tried to help her with her cooking, but Cid just connects with her in a way we can’t.”

  “What do you think of Audrey McCarthy?”

  “She’s a doll. All that energy and good looks.”

  “You’re biased as she’s a redhead.”

  “Yup. Mia likes her. Says she genuine.”

  “How did she handle herself in the morning glory room?”

  “Like a careful novice. She wasn’t ready when you ran off up the stairs, Burt. It was too much too soon. We didn’t even let Beth in on an actual investigation until months after she joined us,” Ted pointed out.

  Burt nodded. He looked at the kitchen clock. “Ten. I’ve got to take a shower and make a few phone calls before I head over to the house. What time is Mia expecting the GPR people?”

  “One or there abouts. She backed them up. Thought we would need some time to sort out things before more people descended on us.”

  “Did she talk to Beverly about helping out?”

  “No, she knew that now that the police are involved that her aunt would decline the invitation.”

  “I wonder what those too were looking for?”

  “I expect Alan will be able to enlighten us on that later,” Ted said.

  “I hope so, it would save us some agro if we knew more,” Burt said, getting up and testing out his ankle. “I’m getting more mobile. It’s my weight. If I weren’t so fat…”

  “Don’t go there, dude. If you weren’t, you’d be dead and buried in that garden somewhere. Mia’s convinced that it was your girth that saved you.”

  “Mia has an odd way of thinking, but a kind soul, still the same.”

  “That she does,” Ted agreed.

  ~

  Mia met the GPR people in the parking lot of the Gruber mansion. She was surprised to see the ease with which the machine worked. It resembled a lawn mower with an iPad attached. “All you have to do is keep to the grid you have established,” the grad student Brad mentioned. “The problem you may run into is the existing plants. The more roots, the less distinct images you will get.”

  “Can I connect this GPR with the in-house computer system?”

  “Yes, do you want to do this now?”

  “Hold on.” She touched her com. “Ted, over.”

  “Ted here.”

  “I just fou
nd out I can send the data directly to your computer, over.”

  “Fine by me. This way we can have another set of eyes to help you, over.”

  “I’m going to call you, give the phone to Brad and you too can work together. You gents talk the same language, over.”

  Mia handed Brad her phone once she connected with Ted. In minutes they were up and running. The two geology students left, confident their GPR was in good hands. Mia rolled it down to the back of the building where Cid met her at the open garage door. He was armed with cans of day-glo spray paint, stakes and shovels. Between the two of them, they managed to move the GPR into the garden without attracting the attention of the presence that attacked Murphy. Mia had her ghost deterrent tucked securely under her belt just in case.

  They started where the ground had been disturbed by Murphy. Mia ran the GPR over the area to give Ted a base reading of what an old grave would look like on the computer. Next they ran it over where they doubted they would find anything, to give a baseline for Ted in which to compare the data. After marking the grave of Mia’s kidnapper, she and Cid decided to run a grid in the unplanted areas first. Their thought was that the pulling up of plants was what brought forth the angry presence of the male entity. They would try to get as much work finished as possible before uprooting any more trouble.

  Any anomaly was marked. When they had finished with the open areas, Mia pulled up the plants while Cid moved the GPR over the planting beds. They had found two possible graves when she felt the eyes on her. Slowly she turned around to see a man dressed in work clothes not dissimilar to what Murphy wore but of a more recent vintage. He had his hands on his hips and wore a look of pure hatred on his face.

  “I have the gardener shooting daggers at me right now,” Mia told Cid and Ted. “I’m going to try to talk to him.”

  “Be careful,” Ted said in her ear.

  She walked over to the entity, and with her hand behind her on the gun, she spoke, “My name is Mia. I’m here to look for lost souls. I’m looking for Sugarland Pete, Little Eddie, Bosco and their friend.”