Heaven Painted as a Christmas Gift

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Belle just stood there, stunned as Tommy went back inside the guy and vanished. Beside her, Nancy pulled out her cell phone.

  “Don’t I wish that would work,” Jewel said to Nancy. “Come on, I’ll show you how to call for real-world help.”

  Jewel took off at a fast walk toward the restaurant again.

  Belle glanced at the scared look in Nancy’s eyes and then took her hand and the two of them followed Jewel.

  Belle was so glad Nancy was with her.

  SEVEN

  JEWEL WENT THROUGH the door and headed for the front ordering area of the Sizzler where a young woman with colored blue-and-red hair stood behind the counter, waiting for a customer near the register.

  As Jewel went through the counter toward the young girl, she glanced back at the new recruits. They had both managed to come through the wall of the restaurant, eyes shut, and were now following her.

  They were learning, but this clearly wasn’t the best way to teach them. But there was no choice at the moment.

  Jewel merged into the young girl behind the counter, learning instantly that her name was Francee spelled with two “e”s because it made her special and different. She was taking night classes at Boise State University and had a boyfriend named Rob who didn’t satisfy her in bed, but that she liked to game with.

  Jewel quickly got Francee to look out the window and see the man sitting in the middle of the parking lot. Jewel made Francee feel extreme urgency as she grabbed the phone near the kitchen door and dialed 911.

  Francee had already thought the guy creepy, so it didn’t take much for Jewel, through Francee, to convince the police the guy was going crazy and was dangerous and that they needed to get here quickly.

  Then Jewel left Francee’s body after the police said they were on the way and faced Belle and Nancy. “That’s how we have to call for real help.”

  “You can control a live person?” Nancy asked.

  “We can,” Jewel said, heading back out to where Tommy had the pervert sitting on the sidewalk. “That’s what Tommy is doing with that guy to keep him from leaving.”

  “I would never want to spend time in that man’s head,” Belle said, clearly disgusted.

  “None of us do,” Jewel said. “But it’s part of the job and, luckily, another person’s memories flush out of our minds quickly.”

  Jewel went back through the wall of the restaurant just expecting the two new recruits to follow and not looking back.

  She got close to the guy with the dirty clothes and bad farm smell on the parking lot and asked, “You all right, Tommy?”

  “Just peachy,” Tommy said, sticking his head out of the side of the guy. “Trying to remember what exactly I did to the senator. Figured this guy could use a lot of that as well. He’s kidnapped and killed other girls before the two he has captive now. Want to help, Doc?”

  “Not really,” Jewel said as the two recruits joined her. “But I will, so scoot over.”

  Tommy’s head disappeared back inside the dirty man and Jewel ducked down and joined Tommy inside the pervert.

  Belle and Nancy and Tommy had been correct. Jewel saw instantly that this guy was truly evil in all ways. Tommy had him contained completely, but even with that she could see what he had done to other poor girls, where he had buried them, and what he planned on doing to the two in his basement.

  “Meet me in this pervert’s brain,” she said to Tommy and the two of them moved into the man’s brain, both shrinking down in size. Then, using her medical knowledge, she once again showed Tommy what to do to make this man scream in agony every time he thought of having sex, or even looked wrong at an underage girl or boy.

  In fact, this guy was so disgusting, she helped Tommy make the pain feel worse. Even the slightest thought of sex and this guy would feel his entire penis burning like the worst urinary tract infection in history.

  They had done the same thing to a senator who had been abusing young girls on their very first mission. They both figured it was the only way to protect young girls and kids from perverts like this guy and that senator.

  “Police are arriving,” Belle said from outside the guy.

  “Get this guy to confess,” Jewel said to Tommy, “and then let’s go find the two girls he has trapped. I’ll see what I can do to help the recruits understand what’s happening.”

  “Not the kind of training I was expecting them to get,” Tommy said.

  “But the kind we got,” Jewel said, remembering their first few hours as ghosts.

  Jewel crawled out of the guy and stood, shaking herself and shuddering, trying to force the pervert’s memories back and down and out of her mind. The late fall afternoon air felt wonderful around her and she let herself take a deep breath and look at the beauty of the changing colors of the trees before focusing back on the task at hand.

  Two Boise Police were approaching the guy, hands on their guns, asking if the guy was all right.

  Jewel had the two new recruits step back and said to them, “Now watch this. Tommy is going to get the guy to confess.”

  Suddenly the smelly pervert sitting on the sidewalk started shaking and sobbing. “I don’t want to hurt them. I don’t want to kill them. I have killed too many already.”

  “Has he really?” Belle asked.

  “I saw it when he went through me,” Nancy said. “He has.”

  One cop immediately used a microphone on his shirt to call for backup and both of them drew their guns, standing their ground. Jewel could tell that they had parked their patrol car so that they were recording all of this.

  The pervert was sobbing. “I have two girls in my basement, locked up. I don’t want to kill them. I don’t want to hurt them. Stop me, please stop me.”

  “You want to calm down now, mister?” one cop said, “and tell us what you are talking about.

  “Read me my rights, I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you who I have killed, where I buried their bodies, everything. Just stop me from killing innocent girls again.”

  Jewel was impressed as one of the cops looked at the other and then started reading the pervert his rights.

  Tommy just kept the pervert sobbing as he was read his rights and another patrol car pulled up.

  “Do you understand these rights?”

  Tommy had the pervert say, “I understand. Just stop me from killing the two girls in my basement.”

  “Where is your home?” one cop asked.

  Tommy had the pervert give the cop the address. “Just a few blocks from here up Franklin.”

  Jewel and Belle and Nancy watched as for the next few minutes Tommy had the pervert recite names of who he had killed, where he had killed them, and where their bodies were buried.

  Then Tommy made the pervert feel so much pain, he broke down crying and peed his own pants.

  That’s when Tommy left, climbing out of the pervert and shuddering while taking deep breaths of the afternoon air.

  “You all right?” Jewel asked, stepping up to Tommy and taking his hand.

  “Going to take a little time to forget that,” Tommy said. “But right now we need to get to that guy’s house.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Belle asked.

  By now the guy was being handcuffed by two cops and being yanked to his feet. Jewel indicated that the two recruits follow Tommy as he strode to the cop clearly in charge, an older man, and merged with the guy’s body.

  “Take that pervert to lock-up,” the older cop said. He then turned to another cop near him. “Get an emergency warrant for that residence. I’m headed there now.”

  Jewel turned and indicated that the two recruits follow Tommy. He climbed inside the patrol car and Jewel waited for the two recruits to get near the car. Then she simply shoved first Belle, then Nancy through the side of the car and into the back seat. Jewel then went around and climbed into the front seat while the two were getting untangled.

  “Sorry,” Jewel said as the two women got straightened out. “That’
s how we did it the first time as well.”

  With that, Tommy inside the cop clicked on his siren and headed out of the parking lot of the mall.

  Jewel had seen the images of those two poor girls in that man’s basement. She just hoped they would get there in time. The girls had very little air. They were supposed to die if the pervert didn’t return within a certain time.

  And that time was almost up.

  EIGHT

  BELLE FELT STUNNED riding in the back of the police car next to Nancy, speeding out Franklin Boulevard, sirens going on full. She wasn’t sure if her mind could take much more in one day.

  She was starting to become convinced she was a ghost after all, that she and Nancy really had been killed in that horrid accident downtown earlier. She had now walked through walls of restaurants, had a pervert walk through her, and been pushed through the wall of a police car. Yet she and Nancy seemed to be sitting fine on the back seat.

  She had no idea how any of that worked.

  Or if this was even real.

  In the front seat the ghost named Jewel was watching the road ahead as her partner, Tommy, was inside the real cop who was driving.

  “You all right?” Belle asked Nancy, turning to face her best friend in the world. Nancy looked stressed and worried, Belle could tell that much.

  “In shock I think,” Nancy said. “Too much information.”

  At that moment the cop slid the car onto a driveway and sped up a dirt road between trees.

  Belle glanced back as two other police cars followed.

  They came to a sliding stop in front of a single story ranch house that had needed paint for a decade or more. Belle couldn’t even tell what color it had originally been. What had been a nice lawn at one point had now grown up into dried weeds and brush.

  Jewel turned around to Belle and Nancy. “You’ll have to climb out on your own. Just like going through a restaurant door, just pretend you are opening the door and climb out.”

  Then Jewel did just that as the cop in the front seat got out as well.

  “Ready?” Belle asked Nancy.

  “Don’t see a choice unless we want to spend the rest of our lives riding in a cop car.”

  “Supposedly, we’re dead,” Belle said. “So I guess that would be the afterlife riding in a police car.”

  “Still not fun,” Nancy said.

  Belle watched as Nancy reached for the door handle, then in one motion opened the car ghost door and climbed out, going through the real door as if it were an illusion.

  Belle took a deep breath and did the same thing on her side, her eyes closed.

  A moment later she found herself standing outside the car.

  Jewel and the officer Tommy was inside were headed for the front door over a worn front porch.

  “We got the emergency warrant!” another cop shouted from another patrol car, then slammed the door.

  The cop Tommy was inside kicked open the front door and went in, gun drawn.

  Two other cops and Jewel followed.

  Belle and Nancy followed all of them.

  The inside was a trash dump and smelled like a backed-up sewer.

  “Girls are in the basement,” Jewel said as they entered the room.

  Then Jewel turned and headed down the stairs. The three cops were clearly already headed down.

  Belle glanced at Nancy, then shrugged. “I suppose it would be tough to hurt us,” Belle said.

  “Physically, yes,” Nancy said.

  Belle knew she had to see what she and Nancy had started. She had to see it through. So she quickly got out of the way of another young cop headed down the stairs and then followed him.

  The basement smelled worse than the sewer smell of the house as she went down the wooden stairs.

  Far, far, worse.

  Mold and death and rot.

  The smell choked her and she covered her nose and tried not to be sick.

  The only light besides police flashlights was a single bulb hanging in the middle of the mostly empty room.

  “They are hidden back here,” the cop that Tommy was riding in said as he started to pull aside a shelf.

  Behind the shelf was what looked like a metal wall with a combination dial on the side.

  Belle knew that huge walk-in safe had to be more expensive than this entire dump of a house.

  Tommy stepped away from the cop, looking panicked. “I don’t remember getting the combination from the pervert.”

  “Damn,” Jewel said, shaking her head. “I don’t either.”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Tommy said. Then he turned and shouted to the ceiling. “K.J., need help at once! Emergency!”

  Belle watched as K.J. appeared wearing only a light pink bathrobe. He instantly covered his nose.

  “Take Jewel and get back to the pervert who lives here. We need a combination from him. Two women’s lives are at stake. Hurry.”

  Then Tommy went back inside the cop who was ordering cutting equipment.

  Jewel looked at Belle and Nancy. “Go in there. Comfort the two girls inside. Just touch them, give them calming thoughts. They need to conserve their oxygen. Tell them help is on the way.”

  Then Jewel and K.J. vanished.

  Belle managed to avoid bumping into the four cops crowded down into the basement in front of the door.

  She took Nancy’s hand and without thinking the two of them went through the steel door, their eyes closed.

  Inside, a faint light bulb was glowing, hanging from a cord in one corner. The inside of the safe wasn’t much bigger than a small closet. Two young girls were tied up and on a filthy mattress covering the floor.

  Both girls clearly had been crying, both were dirty, but both were still alive.

  The girls had on jeans, stained dark blouses, and were barefoot. To Belle they looked young, far, far too young to be in this kind of situation.

  “Now what do we do?” Nancy asked, moving quickly to the young girl on her right while Belle went to the one on her left.

  “Help’s coming,” Belle said to the girl, but she didn’t open her eyes.

  Belle lightly touched her and instantly saw what the poor thing had been through since being taken in Seattle. It made Belle’s stomach turn, but at least the pervert hadn’t gotten around to sexually attacking them yet.

  Belle knew the girl’s name was Samantha and her only hope was to be home for Christmas. If Belle had anything to do with it, that would happen.

  “This one is Samantha,” Belle said. “Fourteen, from Seattle.”

  “This one’s name is Connie,” Nancy said. “Also from Seattle.”

  Belle focused on telling Samantha to just be calm, help was on the way, breathe lightly.

  Belle could tell that Samantha was having trouble breathing, but by sending calming thoughts her breathing became less panicked, less forced.

  Belle stood and went back out through the metal wall of the safe. “Tommy,” she said to the cop Tommy was inside, “the two girls in here don’t have long. Oxygen is running out.”

  Then Belle went back inside and sat beside Samantha, touching her, keeping her calm, learning about her love of horses and that she wanted to be a vet when she went to college.

  “There has got to be something we can do,” Nancy said. “I’m about to lose Connie.”

  “We get inside them,” Belle said. “Like Tommy did with that pervert. Jewel said he was making the pervert feel things differently.”

  Nancy nodded. “Let’s see if we can slow their breath and their hearts and buy them some more time.”

  “Even a minute might be the difference between living and dying here,” Belle said.

  “These two sweet girls can’t die in this stink hole,” Nancy said. “I’m not going to allow it.”

  Nancy then lay down with Connie, vanishing inside her.

  Belle did the same, finding herself completely inside Samantha. It felt really weird, but she also felt in control of Samantha.

  Belle immediately
willed Samantha to stay calm, to breath as shallow as she could, then she focused on slowing Samantha’s heart and breathing.

  Belle had Samantha think of good things, fun things, like last Christmas with her mother and father and brother. It had been a wonderful Christmas, especially when Grandma and Grandpa showed up Christmas morning.

  Belle just kept Samantha’s breathing very slow and shallow and her heart rate as low as she dared push it.

  But still, she could feel Samantha starting to slip away.

  There wasn’t much time.

  “Stay with me, Samantha,” Belle said. “Help is coming. Stay with me.”

  Suddenly the big vault door swung open and medical personnel slipped an oxygen mask over Samantha’s face.

  Belle stayed with her, keeping her calm, taking deep breaths. She wanted to be sure the young girl would be all right.

  “Belle, Nancy, it’s all right now,” Jewel said.

  With one more calming thought to Samantha, Belle moved sideways and up and out of the young girl.

  A moment later, Nancy did the same thing.

  “They are both going to make it,” a paramedic said. “Let’s get them to the hospital and fast.”

  Nancy quickly moved over to Belle. Jewel had left the safe.

  In all her life, Belle had never felt so relieved and so fulfilled in doing something.

  “We saved their lives,” Nancy said, softly.

  “Maybe that’s what this is all about,” Belle said.

  “I sure hope so,” Nancy said.

  So did Belle. She really, really hoped so.

  Nancy took Belle’s hand and the two of them stepped back out into the basement through the steel wall. Belle didn’t even close her eyes.

  Jewel and Tommy and K.J. were standing off to one side out of the way. All three were smiling.

  “Great job,” Jewel said.

  “Fantastic,” Tommy said.

  “Can we get out of this smelly place now?” K.J. asked. “I’m going to have to throw this bathrobe away and scrub with my best French soaps to clear this off me.”