by Amie Gibbons
“You’re dead, Eddy,” Carvi said, sitting down on the other side of the man. “You were possessed by a ghost and committed suicide.”
“What? I don’t understand. I need to get up for work. We have a big case going to court next week.”
I swear I glimpsed Carvi rolling his eyes.
“I can’t move,” Edmund said, strain coloring his voice. “Why can’t I move!” His voice picked up steam as his head thrashed and colored, veins straining with obvious exertion. “I’m dreaming! Need to wake up. I can usually wake myself up.”
“Edmund.” I lay my hand on his shoulder. Could he even feel it? “You’re dead. Can you calm down, try to remember? We need to know a few things.”
“You need? You need! I don’t give a fuck what you need! Get me out of here!” He pulled like he was strapped to a bed and straining against his restraints.
“This is getting old,” Carvi said. “Eddy, you’re dead. So are a bunch of other men. We need to know what you can tell us about any virgins you’ve fucked.”
“Wait, what!” Edmund’s head fell back to his pillow. “Excuse you? That is none of your business.”
“Oh, I think we have a winner,” Carvi said. “Tell tell, Eddy. You’re stuck here until we figure out what the ghost did to you, so unless you enjoy being trapped in limbo, fess up. Whose cherry did you pop and how bad did it go?”
“Did she tell you that? I… what is her problem!”
Heat like steamed anger lifted through my middle, cooking my heart til I swear I was gonna slap him.
I clenched my fists.
He was the victim here. He was traumatized. He was acting out just like I had because of the trauma.
“Edmund,” I said softly, “we’re not accusing you. We’re asking. Somebody killed you because of this. They killed a lot of men. We’re not saying you did anything wrong. We’re asking what happened because one of these men took a girl’s virginity and she sicced a ghost or somethin’ on any man who’s done that and had it go badly in the city. So we need you to focus. Cuz til we figure this out, there’s almost twenty of you stuck in limbo, and more are comin’.”
“There hasn’t been another while we’ve been in here that I can tell,” Carvi said. “But that could just be because I can’t sense new ones since I got the sense of them from that trip to the astral plane. We’ll have to check on the astral plane after this.”
I sighed.
I was gonna need more coffee.
No, a giant drink.
“Obviously something bad happened,” I said.
“Yeah,” he scoffed. “You could say that. I… I was in law school. I met her at a law and med school mixer. And this was years ago. Years. Who is still bitching about a lousy lay after that long?”
“How many years?” Carvi asked.
“I don’t know. I was in my third year of law school, so five.”
“What happened?”
“We met, we hung out a few times. I got her back to my place. She… what did she think I wanted her there for? She kept saying later she thought we were just hanging out as friends and I surprised her when I kissed her, but then she said she wanted to see what sex was like and relationships come out of friendships all the time. Relationship? I just wanted to fuck her. I never said anything about a relationship.”
I clenched my teeth and pinched my arm. Hard.
“She told me she was a virgin and I said I didn’t mind. It went soooo bad, I mean seriously, the worst sex I’ve ever had. She was crying and saying how bad it hurt. I mean, talk about a wood killer.”
Ohhhhhhh, somebody had done the world a favor takin’ this guy out.
“And after that she acted like I asked her to marry me or something,” he said. “I mean, everybody knows you take a girl home like that, it’s casual. She tracked me down at a party and pulled me outside to talk like a week later.
“She pitched a bitch fit when I told her I wasn’t interested in seeing her again. And she told everyone she met after that from the law school what I’d done. And I mean everyone she met. Just casually, he took my virginity, it was bad, and then he dumped me. No girl in my class would go out with me once that got around. Who does that?”
I dropped the pinch.
It wasn’t workin’ anyway.
“Who screws a virgin and then just leaves her like it means nothing!” I screamed at him. “You deserved everyone to know, you giant walkin’ dick!”
Carvi slapped his forehead.
“Okay,” Carvi said, taking my arm and pushing me behind him. “Edmund, you fuck any other virgins?”
“I lost it to another virgin back home in Minnesota, but we were dating all of high school. It ended fine. The only virgin to go batshit crazy on me-”
“Ent!” Carvi said. “Eddy, I’ve fucked more people than I can count, females, males, more virgins than a Muslim’s wet dream, and even I think you need to be punched. What’s the name of the girl? And is she still in Nashville?”
Edmund snorted. “I don’t know if she’s still here. Her name was Penny, but it wasn’t her real name.”
“So, Penelope?” I asked.
“No, it was a nickname that wasn’t actually short for her name. Something about the red hair,” he said.
“Last name?”
“Like I remember.”
“God, at least Thomas was a human being about it. You’re just an asshole!” I said.
“What about what she looked like?” Carvi asked.
“I don’t know. Skinny, hot little body, probably average height. I know she had reddish hair, the curtains matched the drapes, and a tight pussy,” he said.
Holy kitten crap on a cracker, I was gonna punch this guy myself.
“You are… evil!” I yelled. “Can we leave him in here?”
“We can for now,” Carvi said. “Only one more.”
“What! You can’t leave me here!” Edmund said.
I chuckled. “We can’t get you out til we solve this. Consider it a time out to sit and think about what you’ve done, maybe do some prayin’ before St. Peter judges you.”
We walked away.
“You really with me on that one?” I asked.
“If I don’t remember the names of everyone I’ve fucked, that’s one thing,” Carvi said. “I’ve had thousands of years of play toys and most are long dead. Guy like that, I don’t care how much pussy you get in a few years, you only remember that little about a virgin, you either are lying, or so self-centered you probably do deserve to be punished.”
I smiled and reached for his hand, squeezing it.
“You know what I just realized,” I said.
“What?”
“You haven’t hit on me once since the case started.”
He chuckled. “Lea, the second I started acting as your therapist, I had to drop that. Until we deal with this, and it’s going to be a process, you are officially off limits to me. I can’t act as a therapist and have you trust me while I try to fuck you. Since your issues are about sex and trust, me trying anything would break your trust in me.”
I felt…
I couldn’t tell.
Tears filled my eyes and I dropped his hand so I could cover my face, sobbing.
“Lea,” Carvi whispered after a minute, “I have your trust. I have no interest in abusing it.”
“How can you be so nice right now, so good, and be the guy who threatened to rape me to scare me enough to get something done fast?”
He sighed. “Because people aren’t black and white, lea. I realize how much damage that did to you, and I am sorry about that, but, just like with the men we’ve been talking to, people aren’t all one thing. Some are good guys who pulled a dick move. Some are good guys period. And some are full on dicks in this arena who could be perfectly decent in other aspects of their lives. People are complicated.”
I sniffed, picking up the pace.
“Just one more?” I asked.
He nodded.
“You remembering the last few we tal
ked to?”
“Yep.”
“Thanks.”
“If we relied on your memory, we’d have to pop out after every one to write it down.”
“Hey!”
He just smiled, walkin’ faster.
###
“Hey, Stewart,” I said, walking up to the next one.
He was in bed too, an empty pill bottle on the covers.
Oh yeah, we never did figure out how Edmund was killed. Since he was in bed without a mark like this guy, it was probably pills.
“Hello,” he said, voice even and calm.
Was this another who didn’t know he was dead?
He sat up, sitting on the edge of the bed and crossing his arms.
“You can move!” I jumped back.
The only one who was able to move in here was…
Grant!
“You’re magical,” I said.
Stewart smiled. “I’m a witch… was. You’re the psychic?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Do you know things in here too? We’ve only ran into two other guys who did.”
“Maybe Thomas is magic too then,” Carvi said.
“But he couldn’t move,” I said.
“Maybe not magic enough,” Stewart said. “But yeah, if he knows things on this plane, he has some magic. You’re investigating these murders.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah,” I said. “What do you remember?”
“I was getting ready for the Halloween shift at work. I’m a bartender at Five Points and we’ve got the huge block party for Halloween.” He took a deep breath. “I was shaving and the mirror rippled. Suddenly I was looking at a reflection of a young woman staring back at me. She said a lot of stuff, horrible things about how I deserved this. How I messed with her head and betrayed her.
“I don’t remember the details, and her image is fuzzy. Then I wasn’t in control of my body. She walked me to the bed and grabbed my sleeping pills. I use them since I work nights and they help me stay asleep during the day with all the noise outside. Construction.”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t gonna judge usin’ sleeping pills, trust me.”
“Okay,” he said, “I just… anyway, I take half a one and that’s usually enough. But I had a new bottle, almost full, and I downed all of them. Turns out that’s not a myth, overdosing on sleeping pills can kill you. I had to sit and watch my body lying there from here, waiting for someone to find me. My phone started to ring and the number said it was work, wondering where I was. Nobody found my body until you guys started looking into it and busted in, maybe an hour ago. Time feels a little funky in here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We were able to pinpoint the guys all affected by this in the astral plane and told the team where to look.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what is causing this, but I think it has something to do with sex. And I don’t quite remember the time before the possession, I think because I was trying to fight the spell and was focused on that, but…”
“It does,” I said. “The ghost or whatever is focused on guys who took a girl’s virginity and it went badly, or more it ended badly. We’re trying to figure out who started it. Do you have any stories like that?”
He closed his eyes. “Shit.”
“That’s a yes?” I asked.
He took a deep breath. “My soon to be ex-wife. She was a virgin when we married. It was a big deal to her. That night was supposed to be special and beautiful and all that and it wasn’t.”
“Can we get more details?” Carvi asked.
“It could be relevant,” I said when Stewart made a face. “Especially since you married her, suggests things are different than the others.”
“I couldn’t get in easily,” he said, voice hollow. “She said keep going. It was our wedding night and we were supposed to have sex, so after some foreplay, I tried… she told me to, so I shoved in.”
He looked at me and flinched.
I tried to wipe the look off my face and he just shook his head.
“She screamed,” he said. “Not in a good way. I’d never been with a virgin and she was sooo small. I pulled out immediately and she was crying. She said later she felt guilty she ruined our wedding night. I had to tell her so many times that she didn’t.”
Tears filled my eyes and I sniffed.
Another one of the good ones captured by this ghost.
“Anyway,” he said, “we worked our way up to it after that. I mean, she had never done more than second base before that because she was taught good girls don’t do that outside marriage, so we worked our way up to sex over a few weeks. But she had a very hard time with actual intercourse. She had pelvic floor disfunction, basically where the muscles in there tighten up and makes sex difficult or painful. She was getting treated for it but it… it took a toll on her. She thought I was mad at her since we couldn’t have sex very often.”
“How did it end?” I asked.
“She left me,” he said. “Out of the blue when I was away for a boys’ weekend. She dropped me off at the airport on Friday, saying she loved me and would see me Monday. And over the weekend, something happened. I think she was talking to friends who had been telling her for a while I was a bad guy who traumatized her and that’s why she had the medical issues, I’m not positive, but things I’ve heard since then…”
He shook his head, taking a deep breath.
“The texts and calls over the weekend got strained and weird, fast. She texted me that she wanted a divorce on Sunday and would be out of the apartment by the time I got back on Monday.”
“Wow,” I said.
“She hasn’t contacted me since then,” he said. “We have just been communicating through our lawyers, and she… the things she has been saying, putting down in the information for the court, are horrible. She’s saying I raped her on our wedding night, that I pushed her into doing blow jobs because of her medical issues. That the stress from me wanting sex is what caused the issues.”
“And we have another one who sounds like he’s more the victim than the woman,” Carvi said. “Notice anything?”
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“Both of the times where the guy, unless he’s lying, is obviously the wronged one, the girl was in severe pain from losing it, the guy stopped because of it, and she cried rape later. In this case, years later.”
“So the ghost is looking at that as…” I paused. “Because they were traumatized.”
Carvi nodded. “All of these are where the woman felt victimized, mostly by the man leaving afterwards, so it was emotionally, but there’s also ones where she was physically traumatized. I think we’re looking for one where it was both, which is why the ghost is going after either.”
“But that’s all virgins,” I said. “It hurts them all.”
“But that’s not trauma,” Carvi said. “Pain doesn’t mean trauma. Even if the guy left afterwards, doesn’t mean she’ll see the act itself as traumatic, even with pain.”
“What makes something traumatic?” I asked.
It was his turn to raise his eyebrows. “Well, someone not wanting to do it and doing it because she felt she should, so she forced herself to do something she didn’t want to do sounds like a damn good recipe for trauma.”
I looked at Stewart. “Like a virgin thinking she must have sex on her wedding night.”
“Or a drunk woman who thinks she’s too old to be a virgin so she has to then, and gets drunk to do it,” Carvi said.
I clenched my teeth but nodded.
He wasn’t talkin’ about me.
I needed to focus.
“We also need to find Edmund’s ex,” I said. “Because I’m guessing she was traumatized too. If he’s like that, he’s probably not very nice in bed.”
Carvi nodded. “Good thinking.”
“I think we have our three main suspects,” I said. “Stewart, ex-wife’s name and where we can find her?”
“Carolyn Carlson,” he said.
“I’m assuming she went back to her maiden name, anyway. Don’t know where she moved to, but she should still be here. She works at a PR firm downtown. Probably doing something out for Halloween though. She loves Halloween.”
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “Is she a witch too?”
He shook his head. “Knows some stuff about all this since I am, but she doesn’t have any real power and she… she kept saying she wanted to learn, but had a hard time with me doing magic. She grew up in a family that thinks of magic as a bad thing, if it was real at all. She wasn’t severely religious, but she was raised that way, and some of it stuck. I think she wanted to learn from me as a sort of rebellion against that and it made her uncomfortable.”
“So we have the Annabeth woman,” I said. “This Penny, no last name. And then Carolyn here.”
“Got it in one, lea,” Carvi said.
I turned to Stewart. “Our friend Grant is also stuck in here and he’s wandering around. You could try to find him and see if there’s anything you guys can do from in here, or just keep the other guys company since they’re all stuck.”
“How do I find them?” Stewart asked. “Limbo’s huge.”
“This is a small realm of limbo,” Carvi said. “Walk around, you’ll run into someone.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“This isn’t all of limbo, lea,” Carvi said. “This is a very specific layer that is just for this spell. Haven’t you noticed we didn’t run into any other ghosts in here, just these guys?”
“Oh,” I said. “Guess I didn’t really think about it.”
He shrugged.
“So they’re not only stuck in limbo, they are limited to one layer of it with all the other guys like them, but nobody else, so they don’t even have others who aren’t stuck to come talk to them, except Grant and Stewart, who only can do that because of magic?”
Carvi nodded.
“This spell is lookin’ worse and worse,” I said.
“Definitely created to punish the men,” Carvi said. “But, at least now we have a few more obvious suspects to go question.”
Chapter nine
“Why do ghosts always do this attack because heart broken or family members wronged you shit!” Dan snapped when we got back to the office and filled him and Jet in on what was going on. “Why, for once, can’t one of these assholes go on a killing spree of kiddie rapists? Now there’s a ghost I could get behind!”
