by Alexie Aaron
“Here we are. What gizmos do you want to take in?” Mia asked.
“Standard stuff: camcorder, digital voice recorder, those thingys Cid likes to carry around…” Ted listed.
“I love it when you talk all techy,” Mia said, leaning over and kissing him. “If Amber tries to choke me again, promise me you’ll stop her before the EMTs have to bring me around. I’m tired of getting my boobs fried.”
“I promise. That reminds me, later let’s play EMT and drowning victim.”
“No.”
“No? Ah come on, Mia…” Ted whined.
“Last time you tossed me in the lake first. It was bloody cold, not to mention rude.”
Ted laughed at the memory.
Mia couldn’t help smiling. It was funny. She gathered her equipment: salt, holy water and an array of silver and iron objects and stuffed them into the pockets of her cargo pants while Ted grabbed his pack of technical gadgets. They locked the truck and walked over to the front of the building. Ted pulled on the door, and as they expected, it was locked.
“I guess we go home,” Mia said in jest. “Or go around back to the old stage door.”
“Don’t confuse me with choices,” Ted said, leading the way through the alley. They found a dark-suited security man leaning against the building. He stood up straight when he saw the duo and tried to look menacing. Mia noticed his hands were shaking. She read his name tag, Jeff Marvin.
“Jeff, I’m Mia Cooper and this is Theodore Martin to see Amber Day. We’re from PEEPs. We’re here to help.”
The guard nodded. “Inside, past the desk and turn left. Her room’s got the big brass star on it,” he directed.
Mia nodded and waited until Ted opened the door. It was very evident that the man did not want to touch any part of the building.
“I wonder what’s got him spooked?” Mia asked.
“Spooks, probably, or the thought of spooky things. Hey, maybe he should contact a paranormal group to help out.”
“That’s us, Casper.”
“Hey, that’s racist,” Ted teased. “Just because I don’t tan…”
“Remind me to do all these types of things in the future with someone sane,” Mia said.
“K, but you’re going to be bored,” Ted replied. He put out a hand and caught Mia going to the right. “Your other left, dear.”
Mia stopped. She raised a finger to her lips hissing, “Listen.”
There was the sound of panting dogs in the hall just to the right of them. Mia crouched down and reached out a hand. “Puppies,” she said.
Ted took out a camera and looked through the lens. He focused it until he could see a faint outline of a large metal cage. “What kind of dogs do you see?”
“Poodles with pink and blue bows,” she answered. “I was wrong, they aren’t puppies just little ones…”
“Toys.”
“No, they’re real,” Mia said.
“Minnie Mouse, they are called toy poodles,” Ted corrected softly.
“Oh, I’ve always wanted a dog, but I don’t know anything about them. Can I have one, Teddy Bear?”
“I guess ghost dogs don’t cost anything to feed…”
Mia put her face on the bars and let the dogs lick her face. “I like these but maybe a hound or a lab…”
“Where are we going to find one? A ghost dog store?”
“No, silly, I want a real one. Please,” Mia pleaded.
“Ah, there may be a problem. Burt’s allergic, and dogs don’t like ghosts - what about Murphy?”
“Burt’s moving into my place, and Murphy can get his own dog. Who told you dogs don’t like ghosts?”
“I saw an episode of…”
“If you raise a puppy with a ghost in the house, they will like ghosts. If you bring a full grown dog into a house that is occupied by a spirit, the dog will freak,” Mia said, getting up from the floor. “Remind me later to let the dogs out. All dogs go to heaven. They should be able to find their way.”
Ted lifted an eyebrow. He wasn’t buying that old chestnut. He’d been bitten by some pretty mean dogs. And what about hell hounds?
Mia walked down the hall and stopped before the door with the brass star. She knocked on it.
“Come in,” Amber said.
Mia opened the door, pushing it slowing inwards, expecting a small room and was surprised by the suite of rooms before them. Amber sat behind a desk tapping out something on her laptop computer.
“Mia, Ted, it’s good to see you!” She got up and walked around the desk. She hugged each of the investigators before offering them a cup of coffee.
They accepted and Amber picked up the phone. “Jenny, bring in two coffees, one black and the other extreme sugar with a dash of cream, thank you.” She put the phone down and waved them over to a small sitting area. “I’m so glad you came right away. You don’t know how hard it is to convince frightened employees that spirits and whatnot aren’t really a problem.”
“I imagine the show girls…”
“No, they’re fine, now. It’s the security guys; you would have thought that their manhood was on the chopping block. Just a couple of screaming spirits - well, one was headless, then the head showed up and…”
“How many are we talking about?” Mia asked.
Amber rolled her eyes and repeated the events of the morning. “Four if you count the head and the body as one entity.”
Mia wrinkled her brow. “I take it the place wasn’t haunted before the reconstruction began.”
“Not to my knowledge. Juan Carlos swears the place was just a dusty old theater with possibilities.”
“Juan Carlos, he’s the…” Ted began.
“The owner and my fiancé,” Amber said proudly.
Mia now understood the large suite of rooms. “Congratulations!” she said, jumping up to give Amber a hug. “I’m getting married too.”
“Really, to whom?”
“Me,” Ted said.
“Stop teasing, who?”
“Ted. I’m marrying Ted,” Mia said seriously.
Amber looked confused for a moment. “Honestly, I would have never guessed it. I thought you were shacking up with our Burt.”
“She was.”
“And that tall-drink-of-water cop was nosing around.”
“He was,” Ted confirmed. “But I waited them out, and now Mia’s going to be Mrs. Theodore Martin.”
Amber smiled. “You know, I think you’d make an excellent pair. The more I think about it, the happier I get. Congrats, you two!”
Mia and Ted smiled. They were used to people’s disbelief of the geek marrying the freak, so it didn’t matter either way if Amber was happy or not.
“All this time I was sure that bitch Beth had her claws into you, Ted. Bravo on trading up.”
“Now I feel like a car,” Mia said.
“If you’re a car, you’re a Minnie Cooper,” Ted said and laughed at his own joke.
Amber shook her head. There was a knock on the door before it opened, and a young woman brought in a tray with two large cups on it and an array of snacks. She set it down on the coffee table and left without a word.
Amber waited until her guests had tasted the coffee before she started talking, “I’m so glad we’ve been able to put the whole possession/choking incident behind us. I do worry about the possession thing though.”
“I can teach you how to resist,” Mia told her.
“Please do that first. I would hate to wake up as the headless bimbo one morning.”
“It would be a pleasure. Why don’t we work on that while Ted noses around?” Mia suggested.
Ted drained his cup, grabbed a handful of cookies and jammed them in his pocket before leaving the room.
“You’re sure he’s the one for you?” Amber asked. “It’s not too late.”
“Met the parents…”
“Okay, well it will make a good first marriage for both of you,” Amber said sagely.
Mia cleared her throat before
speaking, “Amber, let’s work on blocking any intruders. When you think about your mind, how do you see it?”
“I see it as a mall. Lots of stores, lots of shoe stores. I like shoes.”
“K. What I want you to think of when you get the feeling someone’s pushing on you…”
“Like Chastity did at the farmhouse?”
“Yes, when that feeling comes over you, I want you to slide the doors to the stores closed. Pull in the stock, shut the gates, close the mall. Turn every door into a one way out. And if you feel something is already in, you just need to envision a janitor sweeping the entity away through the doors and slam them shut.”
“Sounds simple enough.”
“You have to practice. I know you have a lot on your mind, but you have to protect yourself. You have the gift of a medium, a porous mind. Unfortunately, no one showed you how to control it.”
Amber reached out and squeezed Mia’s gloved hand. “Thank you for looking out for me. When we first met, I thought you were a bitchy imposter, but I was wrong.”
Mia was used to people speaking frankly about how they felt about her. She knew her social skills made her seem unfriendly, and her defenses made her seem bitchy. “It’s okay; I thought you were a poser and a slag.”
“Touché,” Amber said and laughed. “Let me give you a tour of all the hot spots.”
Mia got up and waited until Amber reapplied lipstick and perfume before they could leave.
“This wasn’t the original star’s dressing room. Juan had them take three dressing rooms and make them into one for me. The original room is down here,” Amber said, opening the door and directing Mia deeper into the backstage area. They stopped in front of a worn door. Mia could see the outline where Amber’s brass star originally was nailed. She put her hand up on the spot and a name came to her. “Cherry O’Kelly,” she said aloud.
“Yes, how did you know?”
“It just came to me as if it was whispered in my ear,” Mia said. “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. This whole renovation is Juan Carlos’s baby. The building has a varied history. It started off as a burlesque house and sat vacant for almost a decade before someone made it into a movie theater. That lasted until the mall opened. Then it was used as a lecture hall, then a flea market, and then it sat empty until Juan found it.” Amber opened the door of the small dressing room. Inside, boxes and painting supplies were piled. “The renovation people use this as a supply closet. You can lock it, and there’s no window to the outside. That way all the expensive stuff doesn’t get ripped off,” she explained.
“So the renovations aren’t completed yet?” Mia asked as the room wavered and bits and pieces of another room pushed through the clutter.
“Nah, but they promised it will be up and running by the time the Amber Day Review is ready.”
“Amber Day Review,” Mia repeated. “You must be very proud.”
“It ain’t Hollywood, but I’ll take it. You have to starve yourself to get a part in that town. Here my curves are appreciated.”
Mia nodded absently. Her attention was focused on the strains of music that played just on the edge of reason. “Can you bake a cherry pie,” she said quietly.
“No, but there’s a supermarket down the street that sells a few,” Amber replied.
Mia snapped out of it. “Cherry pie and ice cream, yummy.”
Amber laughed and stepped aside so Mia could leave the supply room. “You’re going to be disastrous for my diet.” She locked the room, and they moved on down the hall. “This here is where the girls call home. It used to be for the chorus. We have the original vanity. They found it under the stage. The mirrors were replaced and the wood painted, but if you look close, you can see where the women scratched their names in the wood.”
Mia walked in and smiled at a lone show girl who was sorting through some costumes.
“This is Peggy, Peggy this is Mia.”
“She replacing Barbie?” the girl asked, checking Mia out. “She’s kind of short.”
“Oh, no, Mia’s not in the biz. She’s in well…”
“Extermination,” Mia filled in. “Just checking for pests.”
The girl seemed relieved.
Mia walked around the room and stopped suddenly when she entered a very cold spot. “It’s freezing here,” she commented, looking for the source of the cold.
“That comes and goes. We think there’s a problem with the air conditioning,” Peggy said.
“Is this where the headless woman appeared?” Mia asked Amber.
Amber looked over at Peggy.
“Yes, we were changing our costumes, and we heard this crash and a thump behind the costume rack. Barbie moves the rack and starts screaming, ‘It’s a lady and she’s got no head!’ We thought she was punking us so I took a peak, and OMG there she was on the floor. A woman with no head! We ran out of there. And then the head chased us.”
“Now, Peggy, that’s not exactly true. It appeared on the stage; it didn’t chase you.”
“How was she dressed?” Mia asked as she knelt down, looking at the stain in the old wood.
“She had on one of them old-fashioned getups you used to see baton twirlers in. Fancy though, sparkly. But she was naked everywhere else, no gloves, shoes or stockings.”
“Creepy,” Mia said as she got up. “You’re very brave to still be here.”
“Oh, I’ve been in the theater for awhile. Most stages have a ghost or two. You get used to it,” the young woman said. “I’m not letting a headless harpy get in the way of me making it out of the chorus line.”
Mia nodded in admiration. She caught site of Amber in the mirror. She was sizing up the girl, seeing if she was a rival or not. There was a notable chill in the air, but it wasn’t coming from the headless ghost. It was coming from Amber.
“Come on, Mia, I have more to show you,” she said turning on her heel.
Chapter Eight
Ted moved along the stage, taking note of the areas where trapdoors were. John Marvin, a stage technician, greeted him and described the three different kinds of traps. There was the drop trap, which was very similar to the one in the Rosemont Hotel. The flooring unlatched, causing the trap to fall down and swing away so that the performer, most likely a magician, could seem to disappear. “There would be mattresses or padding down below to cushion his fall,” John explained.
The next trap was a larger one. It slid away and a platform would rise below. Singers sometimes used this to make an entrance onto the stage. He pointed out the large area center stage where this trap was located. “And then there are the sneaky traps. I’m not sure what they’re called, but they snap open and shut so silently that on a dark stage you could fall into one and break a leg or arm on your way down. Mr. Carlos had us disable them and replace the areas with solid flooring.”
“Probably used by magicians too, I imagine,” Ted guessed.
“Yeah, kind of takes the magic away doesn’t it?”
“Were you here this morning?”
“I was, but I was below stage, working on the lights. We’ve been having a hell of a time with the old wiring,” he explained. “I heard Miss Amber’s music and Mr. Marc talking and then a lot of screaming and running feet. By the time I got topside it was over.”
“So you were down here. No one else was here causing mischief…” Ted led.
“Not that I could see. It’s pretty dark down here, but I have great hearing. I would have noticed if I weren’t alone.”
Ted nodded.
“Is the place haunted?”
“Too early to tell. I believe there are things that need to be explained though. Can you take me up to the control room?”
“Sure thing. Mr. Carlos said to give you full access. This way’s the fastest,” he said exiting the stage, opening a door to a narrow hallway. Ted noticed the inner wall had ladders attached to it in various places. “We use these to access the speakers and watch the girly show when they’re practicin
g. At the top there’s a panel that opens to the theater.”
“Why peek at the girls? Why not wait until they are performing?”
“For one, I’d never be able to afford a ticket. And you never get the emotional pull from a practiced bit. It’s the raw reality that I like.”
Ted wasn’t sure he agreed with the man, but to each their own. As long as the man wasn’t peeping into dressing rooms or windows, what was the harm?
They came to two sets of doors.
“These lead to the lobby. These,” John said, pushing through the swinging doors, “open into the employee elevator. It’s an old one, but it works better than the new one they put in, in my opinion. The new one is handicap assessable and the doors take forever to close. This one,” he said as he lifted the lever blocking the tiny metal cage, “will snap an arm off if you’re not quick.” He stepped in and motioned for Ted to follow.
Ted no sooner turned around when the tech dropped the lever and the machine sped upwards. It bounced to a stop. The tech showed Ted how to open the car and smiled as Ted caught on quickly.
“The only drawback is there’s no way to call it down when it’s up and vice versa, aside from yelling that is. The boss uses it. This way he doesn’t have to mix with the riffraff and doesn’t have to wait for the other one.”
Ted was getting a mob vibe from the mysterious Juan Carlos. Burt worried that the guy was a drug lord from South America. He promised to have Audrey look into his background before committing PEEPs with a contract. In the meanwhile, they were helping out a former employee. Good for their reputation, especially after firing Beth.
“This hall goes directly to the control room. Mr. Carlos’s office is at the front of the building. He has a private entrance into the control room from his office. We go in here and stay out of there.” John pointed to the various doors.
Ted walked into the control room and was pleasantly surprised that everything in it was state of the art.
“Don’t you love the new tech smell?” Ted said as he ran his fingers lightly over the various panels. “I see lights, music, air, and I’m not sure what…”
