“Will do. Thanks, Stymak.”
“My pleasure. Want to get to the bottom of this thing myself. And I wouldn’t mind meeting your psychometrist—that’s a cool skill.”
“I’m not sure how much you’ll like it once you’ve seen it up close,” I warned.
“Man, as long as we’re not sacrificing puppies, I’m good.”
I gave Carlos the eye and said, “No. No puppy sacrifices.”
“Cool. See you at ten,” Stymak replied and hung up again.
Carlos returned a long, thoughtful look and then cocked his head with an amused half smile. “Puppy sacrifice? Some people have the strangest ideas.”
“You’re talking about a guy who plays telephone with ghosts. Strange won’t even start in this race.”
NINETEEN
I have no idea how Carlos gets around on his own. He doesn’t seem to drive and I can’t imagine him taking public transit—unless there’s a paranormal bus system I’m not aware of. Usually he just turns up where he agrees to meet me, but this week I seemed to be playing chauffeur to the undead.
We had about an hour to kill and I thought I could skim through some of the books Phoebe had lent me while we waited at the pub. I didn’t want to get sucked into some compelling bit of research and then miss our appointment with Stymak, but since I had the opportunity to glance through the books, I figured I should grab it while I could and Stymak or Carlos would drag me out whenever one of them was ready to work.
CalAska was one of the early self-contained boutique brew pubs in Seattle. It’s small and has changed names and owners several times, but continues to serve decent house-brewed beer and pub food that’s a cut above the usual commercial-grade sandwiches and greasy fish-and-chips. I pored over a book about Linda Hazzard’s career as Washington’s first serial killer with a glass of root beer at my elbow. Carlos had a pint of stout in front of him, but he wasn’t drinking it. Not that vampires can’t drink alcohol, they just . . . don’t. Why bother with something that doesn’t affect you? To be intoxicated you’d have to have blood flow to the brain to begin with and they don’t. I figured the token beer was like the smoked sturgeon: a polite deception and a sort of payment for taking up space. Personally, I’d have liked to have a beer myself by this point, but I was having enough trouble keeping the soda down. I’d noticed the unhealthy thinness of everyone involved in the case and suspected it was now affecting me, too—the connection Carlos had mentioned in passing the night before might have had something to do with it, but I wasn’t certain.
My reading material wasn’t really helping on the digestion score, either. The more I read about her, the less I liked Linda Hazzard—and I hadn’t had a soft spot for her at the beginning. The author wasn’t sure how many people she’d killed in two U.S. states and New Zealand, but estimates ranged from a dozen to forty. Hazzard had believed fervently that fasting would “purify the blood,” improve health, and cure anything from shingles to cancer—and, of course, obesity. She’d left her home state of Minnesota for Washington in 1906. At least one victim of her fasting regimen was already in the ground by then. She hadn’t been prosecuted for that one, since as an unlicensed practitioner, she couldn’t be tried for malpractice under Minnesota law at the time. Apparently, killing a patient you had no right to treat wasn’t malpractice or murder.
Ironically, the opposite was true in Washington. She’d had no advanced medical training, but due to a quirk of state law, she was licensed as a doctor in Washington in 1907—where she was also immune from prosecution for the death of patients so long as they had been undergoing her “therapy” willingly. She wrote a book about her curative process and published it in 1908. She killed her first Seattle patients the same year—among them the mother of Ivar Haglund, the founder of Ivar’s Acres of Clams and the Salmon House in Northlake. Most of those who died under Linda Burfield Hazzard’s care had never had a chance to protest that they wished to quit the regimen of watered-down tomato broth, daily enemas, and violent “massage” that left fist-shaped bruises on their backs and foreheads, since she kept their friends and families at bay by locking the patients up in hotel rooms in Seattle or in cabins on her property in Olalla. When the patients died, their relatives rarely saw the bodies, and all valuables they’d owned vanished into Hazzard’s coffers. Sometimes she even billed the family for her services.
Enough patients simply lost weight, felt better, and left her care that she continued to attract more, even when her failure rate was suspicious—the richest patients tended to go home in urns. One went home with a bullet in his head. Whether he’d been killed by someone on the Hazzard property or shot himself to escape the treatment, no one knew, but it was interesting that though he was technically an English peer, his family was broke. Before she was finally caught and tried, Hazzard had managed to bury at least one Englishman who actually was wealthy, a lawyer, several socialites, a publisher, a civil engineer, and a retired U.S. congressman, among sundry others who were merely well-to-do and foolish.
She was brought to trial in 1912 over the death of an Englishwoman and the near-starvation and imprisonment of the woman’s sister. She had a studio photo taken of herself for the papers in which she wore a dress she had “inherited” from the dead sister. The author speculated that the photo was carefully engineered to create a sympathetic image of Hazzard as a beautiful woman who couldn’t possibly be a killer, thus softening up the jury to rule in her favor. It must have worked, because while it had taken a nurse and the British vice consul to bring her down, Hazzard had still skipped away to New Zealand with a revoked medical license after serving only two years for manslaughter—because her patients had “taken the cure” voluntarily, even if it killed them. No one seemed to know how many Kiwis had died under her care, only that she’d offered the same “cure” under various titles while she lived there.
She’d returned to Washington in the 1920s and operated her “sanitarium” in Olalla as a “School of Health,” until it burned down in 1935. No one else apparently died there except Hazzard herself, who continued to live on the property until she became ill in 1938 and, true to her beliefs to the bitter end, starved herself to death while fasting for “the cure.”
I looked up from my book, relieved that such a monster was long dead, and worried about what she might have been up to in the afterlife. I couldn’t fathom what the ghost of a fasting quack would be doing with the spirits of her victims and others like them, but it couldn’t be good.
Carlos noticed my blanched face and seemed about to speak when Stymak trotted into the pub and up to our table, wafting a hint of Washington’s finest weed in his wake.
“Hello! Ready to . . . tip some tables?” he joked.
“Yes,” I said. Carlos just looked amused as I stood up to follow Stymak to the back room.
Stymak gave Carlos a glance that turned into a scowl with a side dish of fear. “You’re . . . the psychometrist?”
Carlos nodded, but neither spoke nor offered his hand.
I recaptured Stymak’s attention as he recoiled—though I wasn’t sure if it was the vampire thing that was giving him the heebie-jeebies or the necromancer thing. He looked at me as if he would have said something, but shook it off, upset but trying to hide it.
“Let’s get started. Then we can get done faster,” I said.
Stymak nodded with the enthusiasm of a bobblehead doll in the back of a lowrider. “Yeah! I’ll go get John to unlock for us,” he added, almost sprinting to the bar to get a key from the man behind it.
I followed more sedately, keeping Carlos next to me. “He doesn’t like you,” I muttered.
“A good sign. I had half imagined he would be a charlatan. But I shouldn’t have doubted your abilities in reading . . . people,” he added, casting a glance at the book I’d stuffed back into my bag.
“I read just fine, thanks,” I replied.
“Without doubt. Let us discover what this bitch is up to.”
His use of the pejorative s
urprised me. “You mean Hazzard?”
“Hers is the name that all the artifacts sing. And not in praise.”
Carlos is a cruel bastard, make no mistake, but whatever he’d already gleaned from the objects I’d brought him seemed to have convinced even him that Linda Hazzard was as despicable in death as she had been in life. Without further comment I followed him into the back room that Stymak had unlocked.
Stymak had turned on the lights and was keeping busy around the wooden table and chairs in the middle of the room. The space looked as if it was usually used for storage, cleaning supplies, and occasional breaks for the staff. The lighting was harsh, but didn’t quite penetrate the corners, where shadows curdled. Stymak was nervous now, fidgeting with a messenger bag he’d unslung from his back and kept moving from chair to floor and back again.
“Um,” he started. “I’d usually lower the lights a bit. . . . I have a little electric lamp to put on the table, but if you guys don’t feel comfortable with that . . .”
It was Stymak who was uncomfortable, but even as I thought it would be better for him not to see Carlos so plainly, the vampire spoke up for me. “Neither of us is afraid of the dark. Do as you would prefer. We are in your hands.”
I wasn’t sure that made Stymak feel better, but it at least goaded him to stop fiddling and finish his preparations. He set the small lamp on the table. Then he arranged some chairs and put a few more items from his bag on the table: a pad of paper, some easy-flowing markers, and a large plate that he filled with fine white sand. He placed his digital recorder on the table also and stood back to study the setup.
Stymak looked at me. “I used to use candles—ghosts like the smoke—but I had to give that up when a few things got set on fire. And of course, you can’t smoke in bars anymore. Think it needs anything?”
I shrugged. I’d never experienced a true séance before, only fake ones, so I had no idea what might be useful.
Carlos caught my eye. “The objects you showed me. Put them on the table.”
I dug them out of my pockets once again and put the collection of odds and ends on the table near the lamp.
“Where did those come from?” Stymak asked, eyeing them with a frown.
“They came from various parts of Pike Place Market,” I said. “They seem to belong to some of the spirits who are possessing the patients.”
Stymak nodded. “Well, I think that should do it. Would you turn off the room light? Then we can get started.”
Carlos beat me to it and we sat down around the table as Stymak turned on his digital recorder and the little lamp.
It cast a dim light—just enough to see the objects on the surface in front of us, but not much beyond. The room was deep in shadow and the muted music from the taproom drifted in, giving the impression that we were far from civilization but not entirely removed.
“We should take hands with the people on each side,” Stymak said, but as soon as he touched Carlos, he jerked his hand back, taking a hard breath through his nose. “Ugh! Uh . . . maybe we should just put them on the tabletop . . . unless you guys think I’m cheating. . . .”
“We would know,” Carlos said.
“Oh. Well. Good. We can trust each other, then.”
I saw the energy around Carlos flicker slightly brighter than usual—I took that as amusement.
“We’ll trust each other,” I reiterated and put my own hands on the tabletop.
Carlos chuckled but did the same, and Stymak, looking spooked in the dim light, followed suit. His aura had gone a bit green ever since touching Carlos and it was clear that he was very uncomfortable with the vampire. I wondered if he knew what Carlos was. He hadn’t said anything. I would have to wait to find out.
Stymak closed his eyes and started off with a nondenominational prayer for assistance and protection. It reminded me of magical ceremonies that called on the four directions—the magical equivalent of a politically correct hedge on religion while at the same time getting the attention of whatever magical thing might be around to do the work required.
In the near dark, I let my Grey vision open as wide as possible without my slipping away. The energy around Stymak had begun expanding, brightening and spreading in all directions. The light it shed into the Grey was white, just like my own had appeared when I sank away from my body. But he wasn’t just bright; he was reaching out mentally, concentrating and casting his net outward, trolling for spirits.
Stymak spoke in the same quiet but bell-like voice I’d heard him use at the Goss house as his consciousness ranged outward. “We ask for the attendance of those spirits who have been drawn to Julianne Goss and others like her. Those spirits who have spoken through our friends. Come to us and speak. We are ready to hear you.”
He was unnaturally still and very quiet as his energy continued to expand and seek, growing brighter until, to my eyes, the room was awash in white light. He waited for a while, and then repeated his invitation. “Come to us and speak. We are waiting to hear you.”
The sand in the dish stirred and a few particles rose into the air, then more, making a small cloud that spread upward in a thin column. I heard a distant rattling and a roar that grew closer, like a train hurtling toward us. The sound reminded me of the rattle and roar the Guardian Beast made when it was bearing down, but here there was an added element: a howling keen that cut me through with dread and raised a churning in my gut that was more nauseating than Carlos’s presence nearby.
The cloud of sand hovering over the dish began to spread sideways, growing thicker in some places, thinner in others, taking on form and shadow in the pale light of the electric lamp. The cloud began to resemble a face. The face opened its sand-pale eyelids, the grains rolling away to reveal dark pits containing distant points of fire that dwindled toward more distant stars. It split into several faces, each turned in a different direction, the mouths moving out of sync.
“We come . . .” the faces whispered. “We are gathered.”
Something swooped in, screaming and clattering, and dragging a tail of the floating sand across the table to swirl around the edges of the room. The remaining sand billowed upward, coming back together into one large face that glared at us.
“Why do you trouble me?”
Even with his eyes closed, Stymak was frowning and looking slightly ill. Carlos glared at the apparition, his hands rigid and digging into the tabletop, but he didn’t move or speak. The sand outside our circle continued whirling around the room, drawing into the shape of a skeletal wolf that stalked the table, watching us.
“We wish to speak to those who are crying out for help. You aren’t one of them. Who are you? What is your name?” Stymak said, his voice now choked and rasping as the white energy in his corona faltered and flickered. He’d begun sweating and I saw a slight tremor in his hands on the table.
“Why should I tell you?” the ghost demanded, firming within her shell of sand and rising higher above the table. She was tall, almost stately, and angry, her scowl reddening the hazy world of the Grey.
Stymak was struggling, having difficulty speaking, the far-reaching clouds of his aura diminishing and pulling inward. I didn’t think this was how he’d intended the séance to go, but I wasn’t sure what to do aside from distracting the ghost’s attention from him.
“I know who you are,” I said, recognizing her now. “You’re Linda Burfield Hazzard. We don’t want to talk to you, Mrs. Hazzard. We want to talk to the others—”
“Doctor Hazzard!” she roared.
The skeletal wolf howled in chorus, stalking around us faster, hunching closer to the ground.
“Doctor. As you like,” I said, letting my disdain for her unwarranted title color my voice.
She turned all of her attention on me. Stymak remained as he was and the circling wolf-thing nipped at him as it passed. He shuddered and made a gagging sound, but nothing more.
“I thought you would be useful,” Hazzard said, looking me over. “So thin, so pretty . . . You shoul
d be mine, for all I’ve done.” She put out a hand to touch my face and I saw a thin streamer of ghost-stuff rise off my chest and yearn toward her—this must be the tie Carlos had seen. The skeletal wolf rushed toward me from behind her. I ducked aside and felt the strand between Hazzard and me pull uncomfortably tight.
The two forms clashed in a spray of white grit and a crash of bones. The tugging sensation in my chest broke off. Stymak and the sand collapsed to the table, leaving the ghost behind. Hazzard’s face deformed, twisting and tumbling, then re-formed as a skull more like the wolf’s than the woman’s, the illusion of flesh clinging in melting strands over it. The terrifying creature spun and scattered the items remaining on the table, then turned back to me, snarling.
“You disturbed the tribute. Had I known you before, you would have been mine,” the monstrous thing said. This was no ghost. It was something else—something much more dangerous. “Perhaps you still shall be, when the wheel turns, when the hunger of the damned is sated.”
The creature took another bite at Stymak, who twitched and jerked away, eyes still closed, uttering a small cry of distress. His energy collapsed toward him and he writhed as if it were crushing him, forcing a word out on his expelled breath. “Who . . . ?”
“I am Limos, the Insatiable! You shouldn’t meddle in my affairs!” the creature spat, biting at me, now, too.
I ducked again, but not fast enough and the ghostly teeth ripped loose a shred of light from my shoulder. I cried out from the rending pain that seemed to tear deep into my gut.
Carlos pushed hard against the table and stood up, knocking the furniture over. Notebooks, pens, and the recorder scattered around the room and the dish of sand shattered on the floor. “Enough!” he roared. “It is time for you to go back where you came from.” He put one hand out toward me as he kept his eyes on the dreadful thing between us. “Give me your hand,” he ordered.
I didn’t want to touch him, but if I didn’t do something the monstrous, incorporeal thing would tear more pieces out of me or Stymak, and I could see Stymak’s light dimming with every nip the creature took. I grabbed Carlos’s hand, shuddering at the touch.
Possession Page 24
