by Tim McGregor
“You make it sound easy,” Kaitlin mused.
“I don’t mean to, because it’s not.” Billie glanced out at the snow falling on the street. A faint web of steam was clouding the interior of the window. Running a fingertip through the condensation, she drew a smiley face in the steamed glass. “But it’s like any other skill. It takes practise to master it.”
Scepticism narrowed Kaitlin’s eyes. “You’ve mastered it?”
“No, but it doesn’t scare me as much as it used to. I’ve been thinking of it more like a disability than anything. You just adapt to it.”
“Does that mean I can park in the wheelchair space?”
Itchy fingers won out and Kaitlin tore into the pastry. Watching the snow come down, she asked, “Did you ever go back to that psychic woman you told me about? The woman with the little girl?”
Madame Ostensky, a third generation psychic with a shop on Roberts Street that had been operating since the time of the flood. Billie had had a few run-ins with her, neither of them good.
“Marta? She doesn’t really like me. Why?”
“I stopped in there just after Christmas,” Kaitlin said, scooping up the sticky poppy seeds with her finger. “I wanted to have her run my Tarot.”
Tarot. The image of the cards, the major and minor Arcana, still sent a shudder down Billie’s spine. How her mother would make her run the cards for her. Billie pushed the memory away.
“What did the cards say?”
“I didn’t get that far. She pegged me as a friend of yours, refused my business.”
“How did she know we’re friends?”
“Duh? She’s psychic, remember.” Kaitlin’s gaze went back to the window. The smiley face Billie had doodled was melting. “Do you ever wonder why psychics are always women?”
“Not really.”
“Is it just a gender thing? That old stereotype about men being logical and women being intuitive?” Kaitlin’s fingernails rattled off the tabletop, musing on the subject. “Or the whole gypsy thing? Why that?”
Billie didn’t much care for the term. It used to simply be pejorative but there was more to it now. “Gypsy?”
“The scarves and bangles. The crystal ball and so on. The way people refer to you as a gypsy.”
That didn’t sit well. “What people?”
“Evelyn Bourdain,” Kaitlin said. “Those weirdos who killed Owen.”
Bad memories. The kind Billie hoped to forget but knew she never would.
“I’m gonna look into it,” Kaitlin announced.
“Look into what?” Billie asked. “Psychics?”
“I don’t really know anything about them. The history of psychics, the gender difference. The gypsy connection. Time for some research.”
Red flags went up. Kaitlin’s interest in the paranormal could be borderline obsessive. Billie tried for diplomacy. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Aren’t you curious? Besides, I need something to distract me from own brooding.”
“Kyle?”
Kaitlin sighed. “It just makes me angry when I think about it. Three years, down the drain. So, having a little research project to do will help. Who knows. We might learn something useful.”
Billie thought it unlikely but stuck with diplomacy for the time being. “Maybe.”
The smiley face on the glass began to run, smearing downward until it took on the hollowness of a skull.
~
There was little left to film. A pile of charred logs and a scattering of ash dampened by snow, but reporter Amanda Troy was determined to make the most of it. If she was ever going to climb out of the soft news ghetto of community events and feel-good sob stories, she needed something juicy to bite into and she knew in her bones that there was something here. All she had to do was dig it up.
“There’s not a lot here to shoot,” complained Barzo, the videographer with the big camera saddled over one shoulder. “Just a pile of burnt sticks.”
“We have the gorge as a backdrop,” Amanda said. “It’s cinematic as hell. Start up at the rim and pan down to the ashes.”
The gorge in question was a stunning ribbon waterfall tumbling into a crescent shaped bowl carved out of the escarpment known as the Devil’s Punchbowl. A bonfire had burned out of control just before Christmas and when the smoke cleared, three sets of human remains were found in the smoldering ashes. A minor arson incident became a bustling crime scene. And, despite the tight-lipped nature of the investigation, rumours swirled about and Amanda Troy, entry-level journo for the Hamilton Bay News, sniffed out a tasty news piece buried under the cinders.
“You ready?” Amanda asked her cameraman, looking uneasy at the darkening sky overhead. “We’re losing the light.”
Barzo adjusted the camera, a red cyclops light winking on. “All set. Go.”
Taking a deep breath, the woman with the microphone checked her gut and launched into the news item.
“Four weeks ago, a crime was committed here at the bottom of the Devil’s Punchbowl. Called to the scene of an arson, police uncovered the remains of three individuals in what has been described as an occult themed crime.”
The camera angle, sweeping the rim of the gorge that jutted a hundred feet into the sky, swung down the frozen waterfall in a dramatic pass and settled onto the blackened timbers of a dead fire.
“Although police remain silent on the identities of the remains, information has come to light suggesting that one of the bodies is that of Szandor LaVey, head of the local chapter of the Church of Satan, who was recently reported missing. Sources close to the investigation claim that one of the other remains belong to a local ghost-hunter named Owen Rinaldo. It has been suggested that this latest crime is just the tip of the iceberg in a recent surge in occult crime in the Hamilton area.”
Barzo smiled as he focused the camera closer on the fair-haired reporter. Amanda Troy could be a demanding taskmaster to work for, but when she bit into something particularly nasty, she was gold on camera.
~
Four hours later, the news piece was edited down, approved and broadcast on the local news spot that followed the national news. On screen, reporter Amanda Troy circled the broken, charred timbers as she addressed the camera.
“Although the police refuse to comment on the nature of the crime, it’s difficult not to see a connection between this tragic event and the desecration of a church in Beasley that occurred just a week before.”
The shot of the camera-friendly reporter cut away to the shaky video image of a church interior in shambles, punctuated by the grainy shot of a decapitated deer head affixed to a statue. Another jump cut and Amanda Troy loomed back into frame.
“This incident was preceded by another fire just a month prior. During the night of Halloween, an abandoned estate on the escarpment burned to the ground in a similar case of arson. This house, the site of a number of unsolved homicides over the years, was known as the Murder House, and long reported to be haunted.”
The camera zoomed in closer, a tight angle on Amanda Troy’s face as her flawless features flattened to a deadpan of investigative solemnity. “These incidents, coming after other crime scenes with apparent occult trappings, suggest that there is something sinister at work within the Ambitious City. The true question is, what is behind it? Is it a younger generation, left adrift with no spiritual guidance? Or perhaps a post-millennial mistrust of organized religion that has sparked a resurgence of older, perhaps dangerous cults at work within our own community? Whatever the answer may be, many residents are concerned that something diabolical is at work within the Hamilton-Wentworth area, something that the authorities are reluctant to admit to. Amanda Troy, HBN News, Hamilton.”
The news article concluded, the broadcast cut to a commercial break where a poorly animated Panda bear sang the praises of an insurance company.
“Turn that crap off,” barked the man with the broom, sweeping up the floor of the church basement. “I can’t stand that reporter.�
��
The white-haired woman clearing away the refreshment table reached up to kill the television suspended in the south corner. She froze when the preacher’s voice bellowed across the hall.
“Leave it,” said Reverend Joy, his eyes on the screen. “I want to see if there’s more.”
He was folding the collapsible chairs after the Wednesday night ‘Coping with Loss, Living with Christ’ meeting. The turnout was a mild success, four more souls than last week’s meeting. After the last of the congregants had left, Miles had switched on the news as they put away the chairs and cleared the basement meeting hall. The news piece by Amanda Troy had caught the reverend’s attention when he heard the term ‘cult’. He remained transfixed to the broadcast, a chair half-folded in his hands, but when the news resumed, the weather reporter appeared with the forecast. Bleak and cold for the foreseeable future.
Reverend Joy looked at the two parishioners helping him tidy up. “Did she say a church was desecrated?”
“Aye,” replied Mrs Rickman. “Just last month. Some vandals left an animal carcass inside St. Bartholomew's. Dreadful stuff.”
“A carcass?” Reverend Joy was shocked by the details but even more shocked that he hadn’t heard of it until now. Since parachuting in to save the nascent church, he’d been scrambling so hard to get up to speed that he hadn’t had time to lift his head to the news, local or otherwise. What irked him more was that someone from the other houses of worship in the vicinity hadn’t come around to inform him of the sacrilege. Surely if it could happen to one church, it could happen to any of them. “What kind of carcass?”
“A one-eyed goat is what I heard,” Mrs Rickman confirmed. “Black mass stuff.”
“Enough with the horror show, Mrs. Rickman, please,” groaned Miles. He stood the broom upright and draped his arm over it. “It was just kids up to no good, probably high as a kite. Who else would do such a thing?”
The Reverend leaned the chair against the wall with the others. “And what of these occult crimes she mentioned?”
“There’s been a dreadful lot of it,” Mrs. Rickman said. “The police deny it all but what else do you expect from them? They don’t want to cause a panic, do they?”
“Have you heard that too, Miles?”
“It’s all gossip and bullshit, if you’ll pardon my French. But it does make for grabby headlines.”
“I suppose it does,” replied Joy, making a mental note to look into it when he had the chance. He agreed more with Miles’ take on it but if the parishioners were whispering about black masses, he’d need to address the issue at some point. If only to keep it from bubbling into some moral panic.
Mrs. Rickman clicked her teeth in pious dismay at the scoffer sweeping the floor. “That’s how they worm their way in, you know, these cults. They’re counting on you not to take them seriously.”
“Ha,” bellowed Miles. He swept a hand across the air, picturing a headline. “The devil is loose on the streets of Hamilton! Lock up your goats!”
The two volunteers continued to grumble their varying points of view and Reverend Joy stepped away, leaving them to it. He didn’t see the man lingering in the doorway until he almost knocked into him.
“I’m sorry, I almost ran you over.” The Reverend stuck out his hand. “It’s Noah, isn’t it?”
“Hi Reverend.” Noah Kemp shook the parson’s hand. The dark lines under his eyes suggested that his lack of sleep had not improved. “Nice of you to remember.”
“If you came for the Living with Loss meeting, I’m afraid we finished up ten minutes ago.”
The younger man glanced past the Reverend to the people tidying up the basement hall. “That’s not why I came. Is there somewhere we could talk?”
The one that got away, thought Joy. Noah had been extremely upset over something on his first visit to the Ministry of Eternal Salvation but had been reluctant to reveal the reason why. The Reverend hoped that the man’s reticence was peeling back this time around.
“Come upstairs,” Joy said, leading the way back up to the nave of the church. “We’ll have a bit more privacy up here, where it’s quiet.”
Shuffling into the aisle between the pews, Noah hung his head low, hands dropped into the pockets of his heavy winter coat. “I’m not sure how to even start.”
“I can see this is difficult,” replied the Reverend. “But the first step is to just say it out loud. Whatever it is, just let it out. It does no good trapped inside your heart.”
Noah Kemp emitted a long sigh before his eyes lifted to meet the man in the collar. “Reverend, do you believe in ghosts?”
Chapter 5
“WHY WON’T YOU try?” Billie said. “Just one letter.”
Tom wasn’t budging. Perched atop the bookshelf like an aloof house cat, he didn’t even look at her.
“I can see you took a stab at it.” Billie held up the small chalkboard, pointing out the chalky scratch marks on the slate. “Which is great but you have to keep trying. I didn’t learn to write properly until I was in grade school.”
His head rotated in her direction, the small eyes forlorn under the brim of his wretched cap.
Was he coming around? It was so hard to tell with him, his features set into a Sphinx-like mask. “I was bad at school,” she said. “Always last in my class. A few of my teachers told my aunt that I was just slow.”
Poor Tom shifted atop the book shelf, his gaze now directly on her. Billie sat down on the scuffed hardwood floor that badly needed sweeping and crossed her legs. Picking up the broken nub of chalk, she drew a line on the dusty board.
“It was awful, being the slowest kid in the class. The endless remedial classes I had to take. Some of the meaner kids used to call me retarded.”
She doodled on the chalkboard. A simple daisy, crudely drawn. Looking up from the slate, she observed the boy dropping to the floor with a lithe grace, again belying his mangled frame. He leaned forward, trying to see what she had drawn. Billie spun the board around to his angle.
“Daisies are my favourite flower. I know they’re plain-Jane and everything, but they’re pretty. And they grow everywhere.”
The lad dragged himself forward. Billie laid the chalk on the floor. “Forget the letters for now. Draw me a flower.”
His head tilted up to look at her, his expression all suspicion, like she had asked him to paint her portrait.
“Come on. One flower isn’t gonna kill you.”
Bad joke, that. But the boy didn’t react to it. Instead, he reached down to fetch the chalk. For a spirit, Tom Cleary was unusually powerful. Where most lost souls could barely muster enough strength to blow out a candle, the Half-Boy tossed around heavy objects with ease. He had physically fought, and trounced, John Gantry on more than a few occasions, mopping the floor with the slippery Englishman. Drawing with chalk was a breeze.
Or not, as it were. Billie held her breath as she watched him scratch at the chalkboard. The thin hand trembled and the line shuddered erratically over the slate in a scrawling mess. The boy hurled the chalk away and flung the board across the floor where it thudded against the baseboard.
“Okay,” Billie cooed. “It’s okay. You tried, that’s all that matters.”
The look in the boy’s dark eyes was devastating, as if he’d been tricked into something. Billie reached for him but he scampered back on his hands.
“Let’s forget the chalkboard for now,” she said, needing to talk him down from the ledge before he vanished. “Maybe we can try something else. Like Scrabble tiles. They have letters on them.”
Tom looked away, his eyes drawn to the door as if sensing some visitor in the hallway. But instead of retreating to the shadows, he crab-walked forward and scaled the wall next to the entrance. Snatching her black duffel coat from the peg, he dropped to the floor and began rifling through the pockets.
“What are you doing?”
The boy hobbled back, jerking the coat after him like the carcass of some prized animal he had killed a
nd dragged home for dinner. Flinging it before her, he continued going through the pockets, emptying it of loose coin, a bus token, a roll of rocket candy and two sticks of cherry lipbalm.
“What are you looking for?”
A five dollar bill flew out, along with a stale grocery list and a few receipts. Finding a scrap of paper, the boy dropped the coat and studied the message written there, no word of which he understood. He held it out to her.
“What is it?” Taking the square of notepaper, she read the message. A woman’s name, followed by a phone number. The message Jen had given her. She looked at Tom and shrugged. “This isn’t anything.”
His fist hammered the floor, simian-like.
“Tom, this is just someone who wants a psychic. It happens all the time but most of these people are a little, you know, screwy.”
The boy folded his arms, waiting.
“Oh come on,” Billie groused. She looked at the name again. Robin. No details, nothing else to go on. Why was the boy so adamant about this? Capitulating, she fetched her mobile from the coffee table. “Fine. You win.”
Two rings, followed by a woman’s voice. “Hello?”
“Is this Robin?” The woman confirmed that it was and Billie continued. “This is Billie Culpepper. You left a message for me at my friend’s shop, the one on James?”
“Oh. One second,” the woman replied. There was a muffled silence on the line, like the phone was being covered. When the woman returned, she was whispering. “I’m so glad you called. I really need your help.”
“I see. What about?”
A pause. “I can’t talk about it over the phone. I don’t mean to press my luck but could we meet somewhere? Anywhere that’s good for you.”
This was already complicated. Billie fired an annoyed look at the boy.
“Please,” the woman added. “You’re the only one who can help me.”
Lapsed Catholic that she was, the guilt cranked those old gears inside her. “Okay. How about Cafe Limoncello?”
“The bakery on Ottawa Street?”
