The Haunting of Heck House

by Lesley Livingston

  “So …” Cheryl was torn. The jacket sleeve hung limply in her hand. “I say classic?” She didn’t sound so sure.

  Tweed nodded. “If you think that’s bes—”

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” the bundled speaker suddenly exclaimed. “Pick one! I’m suffocating here!”

  It startled the twins so badly that they both yanked their respective sleeves, the jacket flew up into the air and the defective speaker spun like a top on the workbench. Its red indicator light pulsed in time with the speaker’s wails of “WoowOOooWOOOwoooo” as it spun. It looked a little like the light from the top of one of Wiggins Cross’s handful of police cruisers on the one and only time the girls had ever seen one speeding down Main Street with light and siren flashing and blaring. That was three years earlier when there had been reports of a stray dog in town.

  The twins watched in astonishment as the speaker slowed and stopped, tipping over on its side. There it lay, making strange gurgly sounds.

  “Um.” Cheryl peered closely at the little piece of equipment. “Sir? Are you … y’know … gonna barf?”

  “Don’t be vulgar,” the little metal box responded. “Also … maybe.”

  “I can put a bucket out,” Tweed suggested, “only, you don’t have a mouth.”

  The red light, which had gone dark as the speaker lay there inert, slowly gleamed to life—almost as if it were a bright red eye opening.

  “Harry Houdini’s ghost!” the speaker exclaimed.

  The girls got the distinct impression that, if it could, it would have skittered backward across the table.

  “Where am I?” the thing demanded. “Who are you two urchins? Why do I sound like an old Victrola?”

  “An old what-now?” Cheryl asked, agog and still glancing around to see if Pilot or Pops or maybe Artie Bartleby was hiding somewhere, pulling the twins’ collective leg.

  “A phonograph,” the speaker said in answer to her question. “A talking machine.”

  “You are,” said Tweed.

  “I’m what?”

  “A talking machine.” She peered at the speaker from beneath the dark fringe of her bangs, fascinated. The voice was definitely emanating from the defunct speaker. It wasn’t a trick—or, if it was, it was the best bit of ventriloquism ever.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” The speaker sniffed haughtily. “I’m no machine, I’m a magician. I am the Great Simon Omar! Although, I confess that I do feel somewhat strange at the moment … Fetch me a looking glass.”

  The girls blinked at each other.

  “A mirror, you dim bulbs.”

  They blinked some more. “Um ...” Cheryl tried to put it delicately as she said, “You … you don’t actually have eyes, though.”

  “A mirror!” The glowing red light pulsed madly.

  “Okay, okay! Don’t get your woofers in a knot.”

  Shaking her head and muttering in disbelief that she was actually taking orders from an inanimate object, Cheryl trotted around to the other side of the workbench. The twins had collected a plastic bin full of mirrors large and small, useful in the vampire-hunting trade for identifying the fiends by their lack of reflection. Cheryl found the bin and rummaged through it, extracting a lady’s compact that had a magnifying mirror on one side and a regular one on the other. She passed it over to Tweed who, uncertain as to exactly which bit of the speaker would actually be able to “see” its reflection, held it up toward the front side of the little metal box, where there was a mesh grill through which the sounds of the movie would normally filter. But now, it made the sound of a horrified gasp!

  The red indicator light on the top of the speaker blazed alarmingly bright. Tweed and Cheryl found themselves staring at it, and then realized that it wasn’t a light at all. Rather, it looked more like some kind of faceted red jewel—like a big fake ruby—that had somehow wound up embedded in the metal housing of the speaker. Apparently, that’s exactly what it was.

  “The jewel! That’s the jewel from my mystic’s turban!” the speaker exclaimed as Cheryl poked it with a finger. “Ow!”

  “What’s it doing in our speaker?” Cheryl asked.

  “Well, how should I know? I don’t even remember how I got here. Wherever ‘here’ is …” The glow from the stone seemed to oscillate, as if it were a crimson eyeball, rolling a glance around its surroundings.

  Cheryl and Tweed exchanged a glance.

  “What do you remember?” Tweed asked.

  “Erm … I’m not sure. I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

  “How do you know who Dudley is?” Cheryl said in a menacing tone. The whole carnival thing was still something of a sore spot for her, and the mere mention of Winchester P.Q. Dudley’s name was generally enough to light her up like a stick of dynamite with a too-short fuse.

  The speaker seemed to sense that he’d just set foot, so to speak, on dangerous ground and backpedalled furiously. “Er … who?” he asked.

  “You said his name a few seconds ago.”

  “Never heard of the colonel.”

  “Except you know he’s a colonel.”

  “Oops.”

  “Spill it, Speakie.”

  “Shutting up now.”

  Cheryl reached out with both hands as if she was about to grab the speaker by the throat before she realized what she was doing.

  “Wait a minute …” Tweed frowned fiercely, suddenly reminded of something. “Did he say something about a ‘mystic’s turban’ …?”

  “I think so.” Cheryl shrugged one shoulder.

  “Hang on,” Tweed muttered and jogged over to a corner of the barn stacked with an assortment of seemingly random objects the girls had collected from the field across the road after the carnival had so hastily cleared out.

  The girls had mostly done their trash collection out of a sense of duty—keeping the field tidy and all, town pride, don’t be a litterbug, that sort of thing—but they discovered it was a treasure trove of useful stuff. Things like an enormous Styrofoam mini-donut that must have fallen off the top of one of the food shacks, a jumbo bag of unused industrial-strength glitter and a “You Must Be This Tall to Ride this Ride!” sign.

  Who knew when such awesome oddments might come in handy?

  Tweed shifted over the height requirement sign so she could get at the contents of a plastic bin they’d filled with the smaller bits of carnival detritus and, after a moment’s digging, found what she was looking for: a bunch of note cards from the curiosities tent that had been left behind, scattered amongst the empty display cases (empty because Cheryl and Tweed and Pilot and Artie had loaded most of the assortment of stuff into Pilot’s plane so they could send the mummy princess into the Great Beyond, accompanied by her worldly goods). The cards had been printed with paragraphs that described individual items on display and the words jewel and mystic turban had twigged something in her memory. Tweed shuffled through the little stack of typewritten cards until she found the one she was looking for.

  “Aha!” she exclaimed in a triumphantly deadpan monotone. “I thought I remembered something about that …”

  “Remembered something about what?” Cheryl asked.

  “One of the artifact note cards the carnies left behind had a description on it for something called ‘The Spirit Stone of Simon Omar, World-famous Wizard of the West End,’” she said.

  “What?” Cheryl blinked. “Who?”

  Tweed handed the card over to Cheryl, who held it up in front of her face and read the faded, typewritten words out loud.

  “‘Once thought to be a … uh … a charl-a-tan and a sham’—”

  “Lies!” the speaker blurted.

  “Shh!” Cheryl silenced him and kept reading.

  “‘Simon Omar, mystic and stage magician who claimed an ability to commune with spirits in the beyond, shocked and surprised his West End audience during one evening’s performance in 1917 when he proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he possessed real magic powers’—”

  “Seriously?” Tw
eed asked, a shadow of skepticism darkening her gaze.

  Cheryl shrugged and kept reading. “‘The magician’s arcane talents were fully demonstrated when he quite unexpectedly’—aw, holy moly, Tweed! listen to this— ‘when he quite unexpectedly blew himself to smithereens whilst summoning entities from the beyond!’”

  “Right in the middle of my second encore!” the speaker enthused.

  “Wow …” Tweed whistled low. “Way to bring the house down.”

  “I’ll say!” Cheryl peered at the last line of the information card. “Says here that ‘the ruby jewel from his gold-lamé turban was all that was left of him’ … Yeesh. Messy.”

  “Ah yes. I remember now,” said the voice wistfully. “That was the performance where I finally managed to punch all the way through to the spirit plane. The afterlife.”

  “So … what happened?” Cheryl asked.

  “It punched back.”

  The twins flinched in tandem.

  “A rather unfortunate incident, really,” Simon Omar’s disembodied voice continued. “Some departed shades can be a tad on the grumpy side, you see. And if one of ’em decides to throw a spectral temper tantrum, and you happen to make contact at just the wrong moment, they can sometimes muster up an awful lot of arcane energy. The end result is usually nothing more than a dazzling light show and a deafening ka-boom. In my case, the entity I’d managed to disturb from eternal slumber decided if I really wanted to talk to the dearly departed that badly, then I might as well just … dearly depart.”

  “Gah!” Cheryl shuddered in horror.

  Tweed blinked. “You mean a ghost … exploded you?”

  “Thereby turning me into a ghost, myself,” Simon Omar explained. “And then, it seems, the grumpy old spook trapped that remaining spectral essence in my turban jewel for good measure. Just to teach me a lesson, I suppose. Ah, well … as theatrical demises go, I’m sure it was spectacular! No doubt secured me a place in the annals of famous magicians, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Um.” Cheryl shrugged a shoulder. “We’ve never heard of you.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “No, seriously,” Tweed confirmed. “No offence, but you actually kind of wound up bouncing around in the back of a truck, part of a rinky-dink travelling carnival run by a nefarious scammer named Colonel Winchester P.Q. Dudley. Along with a bunch of fake stuff made up to look like rare artifacts. You and the mummy princess were probably the only real curiosities he had. And he probably picked you up at somebody’s lawn sale or at a flea market.”

  “Mummy princess? Dudley?” The speaker actually sounded like it was frowning in thought. “Dudley … ah, yes. It’s coming back to me now … flashes of memories of my time with the carnival …”

  “What do you remember?”

  “Potholes.”

  “’Scuse me?”

  “The carnival truck had terrible suspension,” the speaker complained. “I rattled around in my case like a lone pea in a pod! I remember now! And that Dudley fellow. The Colonel. Dreadful showman. No panache!”

  Cheryl leaned her elbows on the table, intrigued by the talking speaker. Tweed settled herself on a stool, likewise fascinated. Under normal circumstances, a pair of twelve-year-old girls might not have had such cucumber-cool reactions to a piece of supernaturally possessed machinery. But, then again, Cheryl and Tweed weren’t what anyone usually thought of as “normal.” And a magic speaker was kind of a step down from the paranormal encounter they’d experienced only a few days earlier (although they’d never suggest such a thing to it—that would be rude).

  “D’you remember the carnival’s mummy princess?” Cheryl asked. “She’s a pal of ours.”

  “Never met her,” Simon answered. “Although, now that you mention it, I do recall admiring her sarcophagus from afar. Never spoke though. I mean, it isn’t like I’ve exactly been the life of the party for the last hundred years or so, y’know. All I could do was lie there like a piece of cheap costume jewellery on that ratty old velvet. That, at least, seems to have changed.”

  “Well …” Tweed considered that, her head tilted to one side. “I think it might have been the mystical shockwave blast from opening that portal into the Egyptian afterlife. You remember, Cheryl?”

  “Sure.” Cheryl nodded. “That explosion lit up the sky like a firecracker going ka-boom!”

  “Right! And remember how the portal kinda spat out all of Dudley’s carnival junk that didn’t belong to the princess?”

  “Oh yeah.” Cheryl nodded. “It was like a mini meteor shower. There must be Duds—y’know, carnival bits and bobs—all over town! Tweed’s right—that must have been what happened to you, Mr. Speakie! That blast shot you through the air with enough force to jam you into that speaker. Well, not you. Your turban-bauble thing.”

  Tweed peered at the speaker closely. “That was some pretty powerful magic … maybe it gave you the ability to talk, too.”

  “Maybe it’s just ’cause he’s a ‘speaker’ now!” Cheryl tried not to snort in amusement at her own pun. The speaker sort of glared at her. “Um. Heh. Kinda neat that you managed to keep that funny accent and all …”

  “Now, listen here, missy—”

  Suddenly, there was a knocking on the barn door. The twins jumped.

  “Hide the squawk box!” Cheryl hissed, shoving the stack of note cards into the front pocket of her knapsack, which was hanging on a hook on the work table, and flapping her hands at Simon Omar. “It’s probably Pops!”

  “Roger, roger!” Tweed whispered as Cheryl ran for the door.

  “Hey!” the speaker protested. “Mfff!”

  “Shh!” Tweed said as she grabbed the thing, muffling the sound grill with one hand. “Be quiet now or you’ll get us in a heap of trouble!” She stuffed it in a drawer, slamming it shut just as Cheryl pulled back the bolt and a bright flood of sunshine spilled through the doorway, buttering the dusty floor of the shadowy interior like a fresh-popped piece of toast.

  It wasn’t Pops. It was Pilot.

  “Oh, hey there, Flyboy!” Cheryl said brightly, tossing a relieved wave at Pilot as he stepped through the door. “Howzit goin’?”

  “Well, my day was going along just fine,” Pilot said with a crooked grin, “right up until Pops asked me to check if you girls needed a hand with anything …”

  Cheryl and Tweed noticed then that there was a hopelessly knotted bit of bubblegum-pink skipping rope tangled around Pilot’s ankle. In one hand, he carried a beat-up-looking pool noodle, and there was a Nerf dart stuck to the brim of his baseball cap with its suction cup. A light dusting of something that resembled powdered sugar coated one shoulder of his jacket and the side of his face.

  Pilot had obviously run afoul of the twins’ ACTION!! set-up out in the lot.

  “Where in the Sam Heck did you two find a giant Styrofoam mini-donut, might I ask?” he asked, brushing at the fake sugar.

  Cheryl grinned and waved in the direction of the empty field across the road from the Drive-In. “Carnival leftovers,” she said.

  “Ah.” Pilot plucked the baseball cap off his head— and the Nerf dart off his cap—and with the sleeve of his jacket wiped his brow, pushing the sweat-damp blond hair back from his face. The day was already growing hot and he wandered over to the big old fridge that sat chugging away in the corner of the barn and fetched himself a cold bottle of soda. “That repair job is thirsty work but I think we’ve almost licked it. Anyway, Pops wanted me to ask you two if you’d managed to take care of that tweaky speaker. I’m guessing that mess of booby traps out there means you’re on the job in your usual no-nonsense fashion.” He grinned, knowing full well that the girls never could perform mundane tasks without resorting to a game of ACTION!! “Did you find out which squawk box was wonky?” he asked.

  “Yeah! We found it all right!” Cheryl blurted, hardly able to contain her excitement at the girls’ new-found mystical phenomenon. A spirit-possessed piece of equipment from right there in their own beloved Drive-In! Pilot
would be amazed. “See,” she continued breathlessly, “the wires were all frayed and stuff and so we took it down—’cause we figured you could give us a hand later rewiring it, after you’re done helping Pops with the second projector—but that wasn’t what was making it act up!”

  “Okay.” Pilot shrugged. “I’ll bite. What was it?”

  “That’s just it …” Tweed took up the tale, serious and ominous. “We were right in the middle of an ACTION!! sequence. But then … something weird kind of … happened.”

  “Weird?” Pilot grinned. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me where you two are concerned?”

  The girls gave him identical looks.

  “Okay, okay.” He put up a hand, forestalling outrage. “What weird thing kinda … happened?”

  With a dramatic flourish, Tweed yanked open the drawer and presented the mystically compromised speaker box. “This,” she said, gesturing (appropriately enough) like a magician’s assistant, “is what happened!”

  Cheryl emulated her cousin’s flourish (only with a bit more of a jazz hands/ta-da! kind of vibe) and the two of them waited to see how Pilot would react to the talking magic speaker …

  Which suddenly refused to utter a word.

  A long silence stretched out in the dusty air of the barn. Pilot scratched at his ear and cocked an eyebrow. The girls exchanged a confused glance and Tweed poked the speaker with a fingertip.

  “Uh … Mr. Omar? Sir?”

  More silence.

  “Simon?”

  No response.

  “Who are you talking to, Tee-weed?” Pilot asked.

  “The magician,” she said, frowning. “He’s trapped in the speaker.”

  “Magician …?”

  “Not the actual magician,” Cheryl attempted to clarify, adding her own finger-pokes on the speaker’s other side. “More like … his spirit. Mojo. Thing.”

  The speaker remained utterly inert.

  “Hey! Speaker Boy!” she yelled in what would seem most likely to be the speaker’s ear. “Wake up!”

  Pilot crossed his arms and looked like he was trying really hard not to laugh. Tweed nudged Cheryl with her elbow and gave her a slight head shake. Maybe they’d lost the trans-dimensional connection or something. But one thing was certain: if the not-quite-departed spirit of the magician wasn’t going to cooperate, there wasn’t much they could do about it.