by Tim McGregor
Contents
frontispiece
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Family tree
Afterword
Contact
books and stuff
the SPOOKSHOW
A Haunting in Crown Point
Book Six
Tim McGregor
Chapter 1
AT THE APPROACH of the new year, the ancient Romans looked to the two-faced god Janus for wisdom during the transition from one year to the next. Possessing two faces allowed Janus to gaze into the past while peering into the future. The Romans who revered this god of beginnings and endings are dust now, but their custom carries on in New Year's celebrations to this day when, on that cold December night, we all attempt to become temporarily psychic, grasping for meaning in the past while trying to divine our fortune in the year to come.
Nothing changes. Behold another tawdry New Year’s Eve in a crowded bar, overheated with patrons, all raising a glass as the clock ticks down.
“Gemini,” Kaitlin said loudly, reading from the horoscope on her phone. “That’s me. The planets will pull you in opposite directions as Saturn anchors you to the past while Uranus pulls you into the future. Be mindful that your thrill-seeking side doesn’t land you in trouble. Keep your eye on the big picture and the details will sort themselves.”
Looking up from the small screen, she expected to see delighted anticipation on the faces of her three friends, but all she found were eye-rolls and flushed cheeks from too many cocktails. Ingrates. “Are you even listening?”
“Enough horoscopes, Kay,” groaned Tammy. “You’re gonna make yourself crazy with that shit.”
Kaitlin planted a fist on her hip. “Aren’t you curious what the new year will bring?”
“I hate spoilers.”
“Too bad, Scorpio.” Kaitlin consulted her phone again to prognosticate Tammy’s zodiac. “Mars will have a big influence on the coming year as change will affect both your career and personal life. Keep your heart open to new romantic possibilities but don’t forget that your true friends keep you grounded. Also, you will get a puppy.”
Tammy choked on her beer. “What?”
“I made that last part up,” Kaitlin confessed. Satisfied, she turned her attention to Jen, who was resplendent in a sparkly cocktail dress of her own design but whose new, and very tall, Louboutins had started to hurt. Kaitlin scrolled down the screen and stopped at Jen’s zodiac. “Leo.”
Jen waved her away. “Kaitlin, please. You’ve been obsessing over horoscopes since you broke up with Kyle.”
“Thou protests too much,” Kaitlin said, throwing a droll eye at Jen. “Even you, the non-believer, reads her horoscope.”
“But I don’t put any stock in it.”
“Of course you don’t. Now then. Leo. Timing may not be everything but it can certainly help. Now is the time to wrap up long-term projects that are bogging you down so you can immerse yourself in newer and greater forms of expression.”
Jen tried another eye-roll, but the faint smile on her lips gave her away, clearly pleased with what she had heard.
“And last but not least,” Kaitlin said, pivoting to face the fourth musketeer. “Aquarius.”
“Billie doesn’t need her horoscope,” Tammy interjected. “She’s psychic, remember?”
Billie Culpepper laughed. The sly jab, while not particularly funny, was a good sign in and of itself. While Jen adamantly refused any notion of the paranormal and Tammy remained on the fence, the four of them had become comfortable enough to tease Billie about it and that, strangely enough, made her happy.
“Well don’t keep us in suspense,” Jen said. “What does it say?”
“Aquarians will be well advised to brace themselves for the challenges ahead that will test their mettle and reveal their fortitude in adversity. Beware the moon, as the lunar eclipse may carry a surprise. Grit your teeth and bear it, because it may be a stormy ride. Pack an umbrella.”
“That describes the year I just had,” Billie protested. “Shouldn’t it be sunshine and roses after this?”
Tammy guffawed. “Where do you find this shit, Kay?”
“What? This guy’s horoscopes are usually bang on.” Kaitlin squinted at Billie with mock suspicion. “Are you sure you’re Aquarius?”
Billie slapped her forehead. “That’s the problem. I’ve had the wrong birthday all this time.”
Tammy tried to wave down the bartender. “Just pull out your crystal ball, Billie, and cast your own fortune.”
Jen balanced on one foot and lifted the other, to relieve the pinch from the pricey shoes. “Speaking of birthdays, we need to start planning yours, Bee.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Any birthday with a zero in it requires a party,” Jen protested. “That’s the rule.”
Billie shook her head. “I hate birthday parties.”
“Fine,” Jen said. She dropped her foot and lifted the other one. “We’ll just make it a surprise party.”
Tammy watched her friend balance like a flamingo. “What crazy dance are you doing?”
“It’s these shoes. They’re killing me.”
“So take them off.”
“And stand here barefoot? That’s just tacky.”
“You’re such a girl,” declared Tammy, whose own footwear ran more toward a clunky motorcycle boot. “Once midnight hits, half the chicks in here will be shoeless.”
“Tee minus two minutes,” said Kaitlin, eyes on the clock.
Jen clapped her hands in anticipation. Of the four of them, the owner of the Doll House loved New Years in its entirety. Not just the hooplah at midnight but the bright promise of newly made resolutions and fresh starts. “We need to get another round.”
“I’m trying!” Frustrated, Tammy all but leaped over the bar to grab the bartender’s arm.
Billie slipped her phone from her pocket and checked the screen for the millionth time that night. No messages.
“Any word?” Kaitlin asked, slipping her arm through Billie’s.
“Nope. Guess he won’t make it.”
“There’s always next year.”
“Sure.” Billie nodded.
Mockler was supposed to be here with her on this night, but the dying end of the year had other plans. Three of the detectives in the homicide unit had fallen ill with the flu and the lack of bodies wreaked havoc on the shift rotation. Mockler, who wasn’t scheduled to work the graveyard shift for another week, suddenly found himself rotated up to the night shift on the 31st of December. That meant no date for New Year’s Eve. Billie mulled over Kaitlin’s consolatory note about next time but that was a whole year away and, according to the wonky horoscope Kaitlin had read, it was going to be a bumpy ride.
~
In the month of December, there were two nights that no detective in the Homicide Unit wanted to work: Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Besides the obvious fact that everyone wanted to be home during the holidays, there was a more cogent reason behind the reluctance to work those two specific nights.
“Murder loves Christmas,” Detective Odinbeck was fond of stating and Detective Ray Mockler’s experience so far had proved his partner right. There was always a rise in violent crime on the night t
hat kids set out a plate of cookies for a fat man committing a break-and-enter through the chimney. Similarly, New Year’s Eve also proved to be particularly harsh on the mortality rate in the city of Hamilton.
“Domestic violence, you can understand,” Detective Odinbeck said, putting his feet up on his desk. The bullpen of the homicide unit was quiet and dim, lit by desk lamps. Mockler and Odinbeck were the only bodies on the entire floor, and so far, the phones had stayed quiet. “There’s a lot tension at Christmas,” he went on. “The in-laws are staying over, the house is too crowded, there’s too much booze. It’s no wonder people go apeshit.”
Mockler leaned back in his swivel chair, a bowl of popcorn in his lap. “Maybe. But what about New Year’s? Presumably the in-laws have gone home, Christmas has come and gone. Why the spike in violence on that night?”
“That’s just drunken stupidity,” Odinbeck replied. He nodded at the bowl of popcorn. “You gonna share that with the class, junior, or do I have to hit you with a stick?”
Mockler handed across the bowl and licked the salt from his fingers. “There’s more to it than just stupid drunk people.”
“Oh? Stupid crack-huffing people?”
“It’s the Cinderella letdown.”
“This ought to be good,” Odinbeck mumbled through a mouthful of kettlecorn. “Go on.”
“Expectations run pretty high on New Years, right? All that maudlin stuff about the past and the baloney about resolutions and being a better person.” Warming to the subject, Mockler tilted forward in the chair. “The clock strikes midnight, everybody smooches everybody, and they sing that old song that no one knows the lyrics to. Twenty minutes later, they realize that nothing’s changed. They’re still the same schlump they’ve always been. Then they get angry.”
The older detective shook his head. “That’s too simplistic.”
“But that’s the thing, Odin. People are simplistic. Everyone wants a magic bullet. Resolutions mean hard work. No one wants that. And there’s so much empty expectation built up around New Year’s that you’re almost guaranteed to be disappointed. Like Cinderella at the ball, the clock strikes midnight and we turn back into pumpkins. Or worse, we realize we’ve been pumpkins the whole time.”
Odinbeck rocked back in his chair like a grandfather on a porch. “You come up with that theory all on your own, chief, or someone help you with it?”
“I’m still polishing it,” Mockler said. “Check in with me next year, I’ll have it worked out properly.”
“You don’t much care for New Year’s, huh?”
“Does anybody?”
“I like kissing pretty ladies,” Odinbeck said. “That’s the high point of the night for me.”
“I see. And Cheryl doesn’t mind you smooching ladies at midnight?”
“We have an understanding.” When the younger detective finished making a gagging sound, Odinbeck said, “Where’s Billie tonight?”
“Out with her friends.”
“Well maybe you ought to get on the phone before you miss the big moment, Romeo.” Odinbeck checked his watch, his smile drooping suddenly. “Shit. We missed it.”
“We did?”
The older detective thrust his wrist out to show his partner the watch face. “Five minutes ago. We missed the whole thing because you were rambling on about your dumb theory. Happy New Year, asshole.”
“Poof. You’re a pumpkin.” Detective Mockler dialled Billie’s number on his phone. He let it ring and ring, but there was no answer. After the thirteenth ring, he gave up.
~
Thirty minutes into the new year and the pumpkins were popping up all over the place. A young woman on the dance floor teetered off her stilettos and face-planted to the floor. A man with perfectly coiffed hair vomited on two of his friends and when these compadres leapt out of the line of fire, they upset the drinks of another set of patrons and harsh words were said that could not be unsaid and then one pumpkin threw a punch.
Tammy was still singing, repeating the only phrase of the song that she knew. Jen, who had slipped out of her shoes by this point, turned to the other two. “What does Auld Lang Syne mean, anyway?”
“Happy New Year?” guessed Billie.
“I think it’s Scottish for ‘better luck next time’,” said Kaitlin.
“It means times long past,” hollered a voice behind them.
They all turned as John Gantry squeezed through the press of bodies to where they huddled away from the brawl. “Hullo, ladies.”
“Johnny!” Tammy shouted by way of greeting. Gantry swooped in and kissed all of them, leaving one a little flushed and the others wrinkling their noses at the smoke breath.
“All right, Billie?” Although he had appeared empty-handed a moment ago, the Englishman now brandished a bottle of champagne in his hand. The cork fired across the room, knocking over a cocktail like a bowling pin.
“Where have you been hiding?” Billie said grimly.
“On a beach in the Caribbean,” he said. “But my pale English flesh can only take so much sun.”
Billie had no idea if he was telling the truth. Gantry was like that. “So you came back to snowbound Hamilton?”
“Someone’s got to be sure you’re staying out of trouble.”
He flashed his leering grin at her but something about Gantry seemed off. The leer was too forced and the quips not as sharp. It wasn’t until he raised his glass that she saw a slight quaking that swirled the bubbly in his glass.
She touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
“Just having a nic fit.” As if busted, he set the glass down onto the bar and balled his hand into a fist twice as if to wring out a kink. “A few lingering tics, that’s all. It’ll go away in time.”
Reminding herself that the man had been laid out on a mortuary slab, she said, “Have you seen a doctor?”
“Like a witch-doctor?”
“Funny. I mean a real one. Like that doctor friend of yours, the surgeon?”
“Jameson? The man isn’t qualified to be a barber.” Gantry laughed and then glanced over the faces in the room. “Where’s Officer Friendly tonight?”
“He had to work.”
He laughed again, cold and cruel. “What a prat. That’s why I’ve avoided getting a proper job. Couldn’t stand the hours.”
A peel of laughter rang out, Kaitlin and Jen falling over themselves from something Tammy had said. Gantry clocked the trio and noted how Billie was, as ever, outside the mirth. Close enough to claim allegiance to her tribe but never quite a part of it either. “What’s on your mind, Culpepper?”
Billie shrugged, a reflex habit that she had been trying to break. Possibly a resolution for the new year. “Just that. The Culpeppers.”
“You mean Slow Tom?”
“Poor Tom,” she corrected him. “I still can’t get over the fact that we’re related.”
“That’s family for you. Pains in the arses, all of them.”
Until recently, Billie hadn’t known the name of the legless little ghost who had haunted her home since the day her eyes had been opened to the dead. She had referred to him, unfairly, as the Half-Boy, but had recently learned his real name. A medium like herself, Tom Cleary had been sold to a fraud named Crump who had used the boy in seances and, later, had murdered and mutilated the child. Fearing retribution, the boy’s family fled their shanty in Hamilton to a nearby small village and changed their last name from Cleary to Culpepper.
“I’m not even sure what Tom is to me,” Billie said. “A seventh cousin? A great uncle times five?”
“You’d need a genealogical table to figure out that one, luv. Does it matter?”
“Of course. He’s family.” Billie drained the champagne from her glass and made a mental note to slow down. She’d had enough already and could feel her balance drifting leeways, her words running a little less guarded than usual. “It’s more than that, though. It’s the awful family history. His and mine.”
Gantry listened, his fingers
twirling a cigarette waiting to be lit.
“This so-called gift we have. Being psychic is like this genetic flaw that gets passed down and screws up everyone’s life. It ostracized Tom and led to his murder. It drove my mom crazy and now I have it. It’s like we’re cursed or something.”
Gantry smiled. God knew why. “You are cursed, Billie.”
“What?” she sputtered, the words slurring as they tripped out. Her mind was trying to latch onto what Gantry was hinting at. Had some ancestor of hers and Tom’s been cursed long ago, condemning them all to misery? Who had cursed them, a witch or priest? God himself? “How do you know we’re cursed?”
“Because you have family, silly. History.” Leaning back, he levelled a queer look at her. “What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing.”
Gantry took up the champagne bottle and tried to top up hers but Billie covered her glass. “You’re not alone. Every family is cursed in its own way.”
“You should write Hallmark cards.”
“Sounds too much like a proper job. Cheers.” He chimed his glass against hers and threw back the bubbly. “Stay out of trouble while I’m gone, yeah.”
“You’re leaving again?” The floor seemed to tilt as he pushed through the crowd. Billie steadied herself against the bar and shouted after him. “Where are you going?”
“Home,” he hollered back. “Bit of family trouble to sort.”
He wasn’t making sense. Did he ever? “You have family?”
“Yep. Which makes me about as cursed as you are!”
Gantry vanished into the sweaty throng of drunken pumpkins. The floor listed under Billie as if it had become the deck of a sea-tossed ship. Mercifully, a vacant bar stool appeared and she carefully lowered herself onto it and waited for the yawing to cease. On the puddled floor before her lay Jen’s shoes, forgotten and cast about in the reverie. Clutching the stool to keep steady, she retrieved her friend’s fancy footwear and settled them in her lap. The shiny black patent was speckled with grit from the floor and she brushed it away, admiring the signature red soles. Peering through the press of bodies before her, she tried to pinpoint the other three musketeers.
