Dark & Disorderly

by Bernita Harris

  “Oh, fuck,” said Thresher. “It’s probably her husband’s. He’s barely dead. Hasn’t been time for re-registration. She just might have saved our goddamned lives with it. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Have to impound it.”

  I wondered if Thresher would surrender his sidearm. He’d plugged the zombie with it a few times.

  Johnny quoted a special regulation that absolved him, so he claimed. Obscure—or new—and unwelcome, judging from the other man’s reaction. They wrangled over it. Fucking this and fuck that skipped amiably over the surface of the conversation like stones—but the water underneath sounded dark and deep. They didn’t like each other. I think Thresher lost to the local bureaucracy.

  Eventually, the crowd dispersed.

  “Lillie,” said Johnny. “We have to talk.”

  I don’t know when he left. I remember him helping me clean up the mess, sweeping up the broken glass, carrying the sofa slipcovers out to the garbage after I’d removed them. The sofa was even uglier without them. I remember him picking up the pieces of the Shadow Woman, running a careful finger over the face half-hidden by flowing hair and raised, cloaked arm, and then saying, “Pity. A beautiful piece.”

  I remember big warm hands guiding me, the edge of the old recliner chair at the back of my knees. I remember sinking back against the cushions like water into sand, a hand brushing my hair and his deep voice saying, “Lillie, sleep.” I remember the sound of my boots hitting the floor, and the feeling of a blanket covering me gently and snugly. No one had tucked me in for a long time.

  But I don’t remember his questions or my replies. Maybe I was stupid with a kind of shock. Maybe because they covered the same ground I had gone over and over in my mind since last night.

  I dreamed of stones. Piled above me as I lay as in a long barrow. Heavy and old. There was torchlight and keening and the glint of copper and silver and red gold. I was alone with the dead in the choking dark. An anxiety dream, no doubt, for my troubles weighed like boulders and I could see no dim passage out.

  10.

  I was late checking in for work because I had to rent wheels. Though not from the dealership that had enjoyed Nathan’s custom. The paperwork took some time, as did walking there in the rain.

  The small office I shared with Ted Dempster, the bylaw control officer, was empty. Ted had gone on his morning round of parking meters.

  I didn’t mind sharing an office, since we were both out and about a lot. Ted liked having someone to natter with and he wasn’t afraid of me. He found my work more interesting than fence, dog and weed complaints; though he agreed, after I pointed out certain similarities, that our jobs were much the same. And he hoped that I’d get to exorcise his mother-in law some day. He said her mean, sparkly eyes were as sure to haunt him dead as living.

  Ted proved an active help, since he was a town native and knew all the local gossip. When one has not grown up in a place, the buildings can appear as two-dimensional and false-fronted landscape, the people like the pop-up characters in a child’s storybook, without history or context. Ted filled me in on area history, connections and people. Especially people. Ted, it seemed, was related to most of them.

  I tried to reach Ric, but Works said he was off today. My call to his house switched immediately to voice mail, so I left a request for him to call back. A nasty thought had occurred to me last night while cleaning up the living room. Maybe this pair of attacks weren’t entirely personal. Maybe someone or something planned to target Talents in general. Likely an improbable concern on my part and probably just a desire to feel less centered out, but I figured Ric should be made aware of the possibility.

  Then I tried the hospital again. Reception still refused to provide any information about Bobby’s condition, not even a “resting comfortably.” That was not good.

  I flipped through the files filling my in-tray, sorted them in two stacks according to urgency and wrote a priority list and tentative schedule to drop off at the front desk. If something came up needing immediate attention while I was out on a case, people had to have a reasonable idea where to find me, because a cell phone was not an option. Clean House applications for private dwellings under the Old Town’s spectral clearance program made up most of the second pile. That was an ongoing and never-ending process, though people often tried regular psychics before they applied to the town and got to me.

  Demand for exorcism of a poltergeist from the curator of the local museum. Alleged poltergeist apparently having caused damage to exhibits. While reading over Uncle Raymond’s will last night, I noticed the codicil bequeathing to the museum numerous items of antique furniture. A family tradition apparently. Nathan had groused about that. I never understood why, since Nathan’s taste, unlike mine, ran to modern.

  Included in the application was an interesting, incomprehensible and shivery coincidental mention of “curse stones.” With eerie certainty, the bean sidhe had said, No curse runs forever. I wondered if curse stones operated in the same fashion as the “curse tablets” employed by the Greeks and Romans and Byzantines. Needed to do research on the subject so I’d know what to expect from such artifacts.

  Request about a private and very old burial ground on land to be subdivided. Approval and/or removal contingent on a determination of the cemetery’s exact parameters and the absence of resident spirits. The developer did not want sales for his spanking-new project inhibited by disgruntled apparitions. A minority of descendants afraid of hassle by ancestral ghosts. Those were planning approval problems, not mine. Location way to hell and gone. Have to check the address on the town plat to be sure the location was within the proper jurisdiction. Then I remembered the local council had a shared service agreement with the township. The regional agreement included my services and me.

  I still didn’t know the area or even the town that well. Too busy to play tourist, my knowledge of geography, of streets and locations was entirely work-related and limited, like red flashing lights on a Google map.

  Ghost problem in the basement of the old courthouse, a portion of which was still used as overflow holding cells, though the rest of the building operated as a motor vehicle branch and traffic court with offices leased to a few businesses upstairs. The result of a suicide while in custody. Forgettable name. No photo of the deceased given, which annoyed me. I didn’t like to waste energy dispatching the wrong ghost.

  This one sounded like a recorder ghost, sad and embarrassing. Particularly since the young man’s arrest had been a case of mistaken identity. The family threatened to sue everyone in sight for negligence. So did the next offender unfortunate enough to be placed in the same cell, for emotional trauma. Though the ghostly replay was not visible to everyone, the audible effects apparently were. A note attached at the end of the file requested my immediate resolution of the situation. The city wanted to mitigate damages. Also, the staff in the offices above were about to bolt and their union was making loud noises about working conditions.

  The case appeared to require nothing more than a simple and routine exorcism, the only thing remarkable about the apparition being its frequency. Could do that one this afternoon, providing my energy level was not depleted. No request for attendance or official witness to the act of dispatch. Sometimes family demanded to be present at this sort of exorcism. They had the right but I hated it. Smacked too much of death row executions with me as the Ghost Killer.

  The next one seemed the most urgent—complaints from one of the rent-assisted housing projects about a nasty emanation “touching” children. The apparition apparently roamed the complex’s playground on occasion, but reports centered mostly on a particular end unit—dirty promises and spectral fingers and kids terrified to be in their beds at night. This was a malignant pedophile ghost. Compassionate leave or not, I wished they had called me in for this.

  A priestly exorcism proved ineffectual. I shook my head. Not unusual if an entity did not ascribe to the representative religion in its former life.


  Sometimes ghost claims were just a ploy to get transferred to a more desirable housing unit. Though the subsidized housing followed a cookie-cutter design, when you have no other place to go, small status markers mean a lot.

  Sometimes claims evolved simply an excuse to cover damage to a unit. Blame a poltergeist, instead of the drunken boyfriend. I didn’t think that was the case here—no claims of property damage.

  In cases when the so-called manifestation resulted from psycho-projection and not a ghostly presence, all one could do was a degauss and inform the people involved that the projection and disturbances would likely reappear until and unless the underlying emotional issues were dealt with.

  In the worst cases, claims were a cover-up, a rationalization for child abuse. An extensive report from child welfare pretty well ruled out that possibility. However, the necessary parapsychological background questions seemed to have been well covered. Everything pointed to a pedophile ghost. I’d have no qualms about burning this one.

  I accessed the municipal database for previous tenants, along with the street directories and the list of voters, collated and eliminated. Then I searched the archives of the local papers for death notices in the last ten years. As a last resort, I sometimes had to have the police dispatcher run the address through the database, though I didn’t like to do that if I could help it. Since they were often busy with current crime and I had to wait for a slow period. With the concern over Bobby, now would not be a good time.

  A specific identity made it easier to focus an exorcism, as if the spirit had an electrical signature shaped by its mortal name and image. Contrary to some claims, the Godforsaken were individuals, unless they are so faded and worn by time they are little more than a collection of electrons—senile, so to speak. Sometimes one ran into a recent but senile spirit, as helpless and confused as when alive. That sort was a sad thing—but always raised the worrisome question that they may have been secret perverts when they were alive.

  Of course, a search wouldn’t show up an itinerant ghost or the ghost of a visiting “friend” or relative, but I always tried to narrow down the list of possible suspects. Kept the Committee for Public Safety happy when I submitted my quarterly report.

  I’d come up with nothing and was deep in dither over whether or not to call the dispatcher when the door behind me banged open. Loud. Like last night.

  I leaped to my feet and faced about, ready to project my vacated chair at the intruder. Ted rocked on his heels for a moment before limping to his desk.

  “Nice to see you too, Lillie,” he said, wiping slopped coffee off his hands and dabbing at his shirt with a napkin. “I didn’t bring you any coffee because I didn’t know if you’d be in. I can see you’re wired up enough without it.”

  “I’m sorry, Ted. Just twitchy, I guess.”

  He fielded the box of tissue I tossed at him. “No wonder. I heard about last night. Hell of a thing. Want to talk about it?”

  “Thank you. Not right now. Any word on Chief Bobby?”

  “He’s hanging on. That’s all I know. Life support. They said he might lose an arm if he makes it, pretty well mangled. And I hear that Stan Sullivan, that useless waste of skin, is acting chief.”

  We shared a bleak glance before I sank down in my chair and covered my face.

  “Well, now,” Ted said into the silence,” is there anything that pressing in the backlog? Maybe you could take another day or two off. You look as if you could use it. The weather’s cleared up a little but it was really pissing down out there when I came to work. Apt to come on again. A good day to stay warm and dry. Pay no attention to the disapproving bitches at the front desk with their time clocks. They don’t have to be out in it. They spend more time yowling in the lunch room than they do working anyway, so who are they to talk?”

  I grinned at him feebly and shook my head. “C’mon, Ted. The women in the front office aren’t so bad. And Bette has always been extra nice. I’ve several cases that need attention, rain or not. One in particular. Over in the assisted housing in the west end of town. Could be a pedophile ghost. I’ve been trying to find a possible antecedent but no luck.”

  Ted slurped at his coffee and stared up at the ceiling.

  “Yeah, Bette’s nice. Always was. Knew her in high school. Lemme see now… That project was built on the old Prichard place. I used to go hunting mud turtles out there in a pond next to the lane below the farmhouse. Or I did until my father forbade it. Wouldn’t recognize the place now. Prichard’s son was town clerk for a while. A real piece of work. There were rumors…”

  His gaze snapped back to mine. “Leonard Prichard. Just gossip, you understand.”

  “Oh, of course. Thank you, Ted.” I turned back to the computer and found a picture in the newspaper archives. Something to compare on-site.

  I was preparing to leave when a call came in from dispatch. Rhoda’s flat voice requested my expertise—for once her word choice was without derision—on Cemetery Hill. Police business always claimed priority. My assisted-housing pedophile would have to wait.

  11.

  Cemetery Hill rose out of the flat land along the highway like a boss on a shield. I stood under a lowering sky at the edge of a narrow pit and looked down. Likely my imagination, not my nose, identified a certain malicious taint in the scattered dirt and fresh-turned earth.

  The body lay partly disgorged from its coffin in a tatter of rotted fragments of clothing and mud. A stake shattered the remains of its rib cage. A sodden clod of yellow clay slid down the pile of excavated earth, split on a bare broken root and slopped on what might be the remnants of a long skirt and delicate leg bones.

  The frisson that chilled the nape of my neck had nothing to do with the drip of rainwater from the massive oak above, nor the suggestive sucking sound made by the soggy ground releasing my boot heels when I backed away.

  Bodies are very bad when they are fresh and raw with blood. When I can hear the screams ripped from the bones and the mouths of butchered flesh, there’s a mental identification, an agony of empathy.

  Bodies are very bad when they are crawling and squirming with carrion beetles and fly maggots and puffed with liquefaction. That’s a physical revulsion.

  Bodies are also bad when they are desecrated in a grave. That’s a spiritual shudder. An offense to decency, to our oldest taboos.

  The stake gleamed fresh. The skull was missing.

  I stepped closer and crouched to see better. Definitely missing, not just disarticulated.

  Someone had scoured away the lichen and chalked the grave marker. A name, a partial date and a single benedictive word stood out from the face of the faded marble, above the plinth, below the Celtic cross. They wanted to make sure they had the right one.

  Lily St. Claire…1868…Aibhinn.

  Aibhinn… Care had been taken to chisel the word deeply, so it had survived the slow obliteration of more than a century’s wind and weather.

  I didn’t know if the inscription was meant as a curse or a dedication. I preferred to think the latter. I did know it meant that someone had known and believed her to be a woman of power back then. And the choice of grave below the name for this specific desecration meant someone knew—or suspected—a concrete connection now. That frightened me because I didn’t know myself whether there was a connection, even though the bean sidhe named me cousin. I hoped the designation was a mere courtesy.

  There was no ghost, not the slightest shadow of pale emanation, to either read or interview. If this spirit walked, it walked elsewhere.

  I pulled back my hood to listen for eldritch voices in the wind. Nothing haunted the air. Below the racing clouds, the whole hill seemed smothered in silence like a cloak. The sound of traffic from the highway below came muted and remote.

  I shook myself like a goose, turned and made my way over the uneven ground past other gravestones. The lots in this part of the cemetery ignored the tidy rectangles of the newer section on the flat field below the hill. I found myself mutte
ring “sorry” under my breath as, by necessity, I ducked under bushes and trod on resting places and sunken slabs, taking a quick catalog of visible names as I spiraled the pit.

  Many were neutral: Galway, Cowan, Asseltine, Kilduff, Auchinvale, McCammon. However, on either side the hole, like guardians, two old and leaning stones bore a name that might explain the Gaelic: O’Dea. I bent and peeled away the encroaching golden lichen. From County Clare. Tales surrounded that name and place and family.

  A uniformed constable was tying one end of yellow police tape to the urn atop an ornate and ugly granite tombstone at the curve of the gravel drive a little lower down. He spotted me as I straightened. He yelled and gestured. I unclipped my ident tag from my plastic rain cape and waved it back at him. He shook his head and motioned again, more emphatically. I guessed no one below had told him I was up here.

  I spread my hands wide and picked my way past the graves toward him. Showed him my identification, smiled and kept my teeth out of it while he called in to check me out, staring at me all the while as if I were bat shit. Which had to be deliberate, because I knew he’d seen me at the station and knew I was an automatic call on reports like this. Maybe he’d read the name on the stone above.

  When he was satisfied, I ducked under the tape…

  …and met Johnny Thresher where the winding path met the winding roadway with another with another detective in tow. That was no surprise; the authorities didn’t dare dismiss an incident like this as just another example of sick vandalism by drunken louts. Not anymore. Bodies and bones could mean an influx of more highly undesirable apparitions. Stronger entities. Like zombies and God alone knew what else.

  Thresher proceeded to give me a comprehensive look over, the kind that noted the pain beginning behind my left eye, the ache in my left shoulder and the loose hem on my right pant leg.