Occult Detective

by Emby Press

  Another nod.

  I gave her half a smile. “Don’t like Brussels sprouts too much, huh?”

  She made a face. “I hate them. So does Brian. I don’t think Dad likes them, either. But we have ’em every week because they’re so nutritious.”

  “There’s lot of nutritious food that doesn’t taste like Brussels sprouts,” I said.

  “Yeah, tell me about it. Better yet, tell Mom.”

  I thought about having Karl tell her, instead, but we weren’t here to settle the family’s dietary issues. “Brian knows about your ability.”

  “’Course he does. He won’t tell, though – I told him if he rats me out, I’ll make his head fly off his shoulders and go right through a window.”

  “I don’t think telekinesis works that way.”

  “No.” A twitch of a smile. “But Brian doesn’t know that. Besides….”

  “Besides, what?”

  “He hates this shithole town as much as I do. We wanna go home.”

  “You miss your friends, don’t you?”

  “My friends, my school, all the places we used to hang out, the mall – everything.”

  “You haven’t made any friends here?”

  “No, the kids at my school suck. Nobody’s nice to me – not even the dweebs who don’t have any friends of their own.” She went back to studying the floor.

  Kids can be cruel, especially to outsiders. But I hoped that Claudia’s new classmates wouldn’t push her too hard – or they might come to regret it.

  I’d once read a book some professor wrote called The Shadow Imploded. It’s about telekinesis, which the book called TK. Most of it focuses on a case study in Maine from back in the Seventies. Some high school girl developed TK power in the days before anybody knew much about it. I guess she was kind of geeky and got picked on a lot, by kids who didn’t realize they were messing with dynamite. The girl herself probably had no idea what she was capable of, at first. And then a few of the kids pulled some mean trick on her at the prom, and she just lost it. I mean totally. Destroyed the building where the prom was being held, and most of the senior class along with it. Burned down half the town, too, before somebody finally put a knife into her back.

  I hoped Claudia Irwin wasn’t another ticking time bomb, like the girl in Maine had been, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Then I had an idea.

  “Claudia.”

  She raised her head and looked at me.

  “I’m not going to tell your parents what you and your brother have been up to.”

  Hope started to break through the misery on her face. “You’re not? Seriously?”

  “Seriously. But this has got to stop. You’re scaring your parents to death, especially your Mom.”

  Claudia didn’t say anything.

  “If this keeps up, she’s going to snap,” I said. “There’s only so much stress a person can take – and who knows what that will lead to? Divorce, alcoholism – maybe even mental illness. Is that what you want, Claudia? Destroy your parents’ marriage, and maybe put Mom in a loony bin?”

  She began to cry softly. “No – ’course, I never wanted that! I just thought if we scared them enough, they’d take us back home, and things would be just like before.”

  “That’s not going to happen, kiddo. You and your brother’s tricks might drive them out of this house, but they’ll just find another one – and it’ll still be in Scranton. Your dad quit his job back in Long Island, remember? Your Mom did the same. And they sold the house, right? There’s nothing for them to go back to. Far as they’re concerned, this is home – whether you like it or not.”

  She stopped crying and started looking pissed off again. “Fuck!” she said. “Mom says I’m not supposed to use that word, it’s not ladylike, but I don’t fucking care.”

  “I say it myself, once in a while,” I said. “Most people do. Just try not to say it around your parents and teachers, if you want to avoid a lot of hassle.”

  “Fuck.”

  “If it makes you feel better, say it a hundred times before we go back downstairs—I don’t mind. But instead of swearing, you might want to listen to an idea I’ve got for improving your, uh, social standing.”

  What she was thinking was written in the scorn that appeared on her face. What did somebody my age know about her problems?

  “You play any sports, Claudia?”

  “Just in Phys Ed class.”

  “Is there one sport that you enjoy, even a little bit?”

  “I guess volleyball’s okay. I’m not real good at it, though.”

  “I bet you could be, though,” I said. “Especially since you can make that ball go wherever you want it to. Or you could, with a little practice using your ability.”

  “You want me to be a jock?”

  “What I want you to be is happy. Or, at least, less miserable than you are now. If you learn to use your power unobtrusively, you could be a star on the volleyball court.”

  “What’s that mean – ‘unobtrusively?’”

  “It means, don’t be obvious about it. If volleyballs starting changing course in midair, like that Wiffle ball did, people are gonna know that something funny’s going on. But I bet with a little work, you could have the deadliest serve in the league. And when you spiked the ball, it would stay spiked.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Maybe.”

  “You’d be a star athlete for your school, Claudia. And as a result, you know what else you’d be?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Popular.”

  Her eyes widened, as if I’d just said a magic word. Maybe, to a teenager, I had.

  What I was suggesting to Claudia was dishonest and unsportsmanlike. Absolutely. It would be unfair to every team she played against.

  But if the alternative was having a persecuted, bullied Claudia strike out one day, the way the girl in Maine had … then fuck it. Compared to a massacre, I’d say the local teams losing a volleyball game once in a while would be a pretty good trade.

  Frowning, Claudia said, “But, what you said I should do – isn’t that, like, cheating?”

  She had a sense of morality. Good – it would serve her well, later in life. But for now, I had to guide her around those moral objections. Fortunately, coming up with rationalizations for sketchy behavior is something I’ve had a lot of practice with – I’ve been doing it most of my life.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “You didn’t do anything dishonest to get your ability, did you? You were born with it. Right?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Tell me – is bring tall an advantage in volleyball?”

  “Sure it is.”

  “And some girls are taller than others, right? They didn’t do anything to get that way – it just happened to be in their genes.”

  “Well, if you look at it that way….”

  “How about quick reflexes? Pretty handy on the volleyball court?”

  She gave me a slow nod. “Yeah, I guess they are.”

  “And some girls are born with quicker reflexes than others. They can’t help it – that’s just the way they are, right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

  “So, what do you think – should tall girls with good reflexes refuse to play on volleyball teams, because they’d have an advantage over the slower, shorter kids?”

  She looked at me in silence for several seconds.

  Finally, she said, “You know, you’re pretty smart – for somebody who’s old, I mean.”

  “I wish you’d explain that to my daughter, Christine. She seems to think I’m dumber than a box of rocks, most of the time.”

  That wasn’t true about Christine – at least, not any more—but I was trying to get on the kid’s good side.

  “You have a daughter? Is she my age?”

  “Not anymore, but she was, once. She’s 23, now.”

  And likely to remain that way for a long, long time.

  “So, you’re saying I should be
come some super-volleyball-jock, so the other kids will like me.”

  “I’m not telling you what you should do, just pointing out what you can do” I said. “Frankly, I figure if you just hang in there a while longer, you’ll stop being the new kid. You’ll make some friends, and start to fit in better. Then high school won’t be hell for you – at least, not more than it is for everybody.”

  She laughed at that.

  “But my point is,” I said, “if you want to move things along faster, and be more than an average high school girl, your gift could take you a long way—as long as you’re careful how you use it.”

  Anything to avoid another bloody prom, a few years down the road – or something even worse.

  “Okay, I’ll think about it.”

  “What you decide is your choice, of course. But here’s something that’s not: you and Brian terrifying your parents. That stops – now. Otherwise, I will rat you out to your parents – you and Brian both.”

  “You’d do that, huh?”

  “Bet your ass I would. What you’re doing to your Mom and Dad is torture – and it’s pointless, besides. You just ain’t going back to Long Island, kiddo. Might as well face the fact, and move on.”

  “Yeah, well, I still think it sucks.”

  “Sure, it does. And sometimes stuff sucks, and you just have to put up with it. That’s called real life. So, do we have a deal?”

  She looked at me some more. It occurred to me that she might be wondering if she could reach out to my heart with her terrible talent – reach out, and stop it dead.

  “Yeah, Sergeant,” she said at last, “we’ve got a fucking deal.”

  “Good. When we get downstairs, I’m going to tell your parents I did some mumbo-jumbo up here, said some special prayers or something, to get rid of the ghost. You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to—but back me up later, if they ask you. That all right with you?”

  She made a face that, I was pretty sure, had a smile concealed underneath the surface. “Yeah, I guess. What the hell—you’re gonna tell a lie for me. Seems only fair that I tell a couple for you.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  She looked at me a little more, head slightly tilted. “You’re a pretty weird cop – I mean that in a nice way, okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks. And you’re a pretty weird kid – I mean that in a nice way, too.”

  I told Mr. and Mrs. Irvin that I’d performed a special anti-poltergeist ritual while Claudia and I had been upstairs. I admitted that I wasn’t an exorcist, but reminded them that dealing with supernatural occurrences was my job. The same ritual, I said, had been successful with poltergeists in the past.

  Then I told the family that if there were any future manifestations, they should call me, and I could guarantee to put an end to it. I gave Claudia a little extra eye contact as I said that last part, and she gave me a tiny nod in response.

  As we drove back to headquarters, I said, “Nice job with the vampire thought control, there, Karl. You must be learning to read my mind.”

  He gave an exaggerated shudder that I caught out of the corner of my eye, just like he’d intended. “I sure hope not,” he said. “Probably be like taking a stroll through the city sewer, without hip waders.”

  We’d gone another block before he said, “It was the kid, wasn’t it? The girl?”

  “Both her and her brother, but she did the heavy lifting – literally. They wanted the parents to move back to Long Island, since the kids don’t like Scranton too well.”

  “Hard to imagine,” Karl said, showing some fang in half a smile. “So, the kid’s a TK, huh? Just like what’s-her-name, Hallie—up in Maine, all those years ago? The one who destroyed her whole town?”

  “I don’t think Hallie was her name, but yeah – seems like the same ability. Whether it’s as powerful … no way to tell.” I shrugged. “I’m hoping for a different outcome with this one, though.”

  “You and me both, Stan. You and me both.”

  BODY OF PROOF

  Thomas Deja

  Maybelle Tremens did not like using the room her lover, Colin Palmersdale, had put aside as her ‘office.’ Having an office implied that she was utilizing her ability to absorb and manipulate the ambient magical energies—something that the city of Nocturne had in abundance—for mercenary as opposed to altruistic reasons. At her request, Palmersdale had decorated the place as spartan as he could with a desk, two chairs, and little else. Truth was, her office was not this small room off to the side of the living room; it was upstairs in her library, stacked top to bottom with every grimoire and spellbook she could lay her hands on.

  Still, there were those rare times when Maybelle had to see people who claimed to have supernatural problems, and some of those people were willing to pay sizable amounts to the charities she cared about to consult with her. Which was why she was sitting opposite a thin, sniveling young man named Arthur Prescott.

  “I imagined something more…opulent,” Arthur sniffed as he took in the bareness of the room.

  Maybelle templed her fingers. “I do not require much, Mr. Prescott. If anything, the sparseness helps me focus on the tasks at hand.”

  “Alright,” he replied, rubbing his nose with his sleeve.

  When there was no further elaboration coming, Maybelle leaned back and asked, “What did you want to see me for?”

  “Is what I tell you confidential?”

  “Pardon?”

  Arthur’s rat-like face subtlely changed. Maybelle noticed how the man’s eyes shifted to the sides. “Are you obligated to keep everything I tell you in confidence? By not letting anything get beyond these walls?”

  Maybelle had a bad feeling where this was going. Arthur seemed a little less than trustworthy. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, priests…and lawyers, and doctors, people like that. You can tell them anything and you’re protected from what you say from getting past their office. Are you like them? Can I trust that you won’t tell anyone anything I tell you right now?”

  “Mr. Prescott, I have to assume that your situation is supernatural in nature?”

  The man made a face. All he needed was some whiskers and she’d be compelled to give him some cheese. “Obviously.”

  “Contrary to what you would think, the majority of people in Nocturne refuse to believe that they exist in one of the greatest repositories for mystical energies in America. Even if I told someone, chances are very likely they would not believe me, and furthermore they would consider me insane.”

  “You have to promise me confidentiality, Mrs. Palmersdale—”

  “It’s Tremens. I’m not married.”

  Another face from Prescott, this one uglier and more condescending than the one before. “Ms. Tremens, I gave a lot of money to that orphanage to assure I would not have this information spread all over town.”

  “Fine,” Maybelle said, with a sigh. “If that will put you at ease, then yes, I will allow this conversation to be confidential. Can we now discuss what it is you need from me?”

  The man seemed to relax. He sank back in his chair. “You are aware of who my father is?”

  “Yes. Cavanaugh Prescott, the shipping magnate.”

  “Exactly,” Arthur said firmly. “The other day, he came to work after a rather lengthy absence. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but someone is either impersonating him or is manipulating him.”

  “O…or he could have just returned home from an extended vacation and decided to resume his work.? It’s not like he hasn’t done that before, if you’re to believe the Star.”

  “No, no. That’s impossible. Cavanaugh Prescott died two weeks ago.”

  That bad feeling intensified in Maybelle’s gut intensified. “With all due respect, Mr. Prescott, your father is fairly big personage in this city. If he passed away, it would be everywhere.”

  “Not in this case,” he insisted vehemently. “My father is positively dead.”

  “And you know this ho
w?” Maybelle asked, bracing for an answer she was already afraid she knew.

  “I know,” the younger Prescott, who had done nothing to endear himself to the magician said, “because I killed him. I murdered my father.”

  *

  Obviously, Maybelle required proof of her potential client’s claim. This entailed Arthur Prescott taking her deep into the swamp.

  Why, oh why, she thought to herself as they trudged through the muddy grounds that surrounded Nocturne, lifting up the skirt of her battle coat so it did not get dirty, do I spend so much time walking through mud?

  Arthur had trudged through the swamp, his sensible shoes turned in for rain boots that went up to just below his knee. Their every step was accompanied by a liquid noise as the mud sucked at their legs. He tried to pretend that he was in charge; his stance and stride came off as someone’s idea of how a decisive, aggressive and forward thinking man would move, but truth be told he looked like a joke. Maybelle began to wonder if part or all of the sniveling, privileged young man’s story was delusional.

  “I was that close to getting my inheritance when this happened. That’s why you have to resolve this,” he stridently told here before glancing about theis section of swamp with a confused look on his face. “Hmm…I know it’s here.”

  “You know you buried your father in this patch of swamp—which, to be fair, looks like every patch of swamp we passed on the way to this particular patch of swamp?”

  He made a shocked face. “I had to bury him here. This mud has a highly acidic content. It would liquify his corpse all the quicker. My plan was to fake a death at sea, thus a lack of body. By the time anyone suspects anything—if anyone does—and if they did find his grave, all they’d find is a pile of rotted, damaged bones.”

  “I do wish you wouldn’t indulge in telling me details,” she said as she stepped over an exposed root.

  “You agreed to confidentiality, remember!” Arthur whined. He looked toward the right, his face brightening like a child’s, “There it is!”

  He made to take her hand, but she pulled away at the last moment. She followed him at a short distance until he was standing over a ragged hole in a moss-encrusted clearing. He pointed excitedly. “I buried him here!”