Gee. When the demon hordes do finally break through to our dimension, I hope they at least start with Wall Street.
Manny flew back to Iowa with me for one day and a night. I had spoken to Mama not at all and had texted her less and less. It was time to see her again, sit down and hash out the past over one of her barbecue chicken dinners. I’d scream a lot and pout a little and we’d make peace over lemon meringue pie. She’d kept secrets and she did things she shouldn’t have, but Mama’s heart was where she always left it: in the right place.
Before I went home to see Mama, though, there was something else to do. Manny and I rented an SUV at the Oskaloosa airport and loaded a heavy steamer trunk into the back.
“Don’t worry,” Manny said. “We’ll take care of your BAE.”
“Is that short for ‘baby?’” I asked.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. I mean, I assume…”
“Oh, Iowa. As soon as we get back to Brooklyn, we’re going shopping and I’ll give you a crash course. If you’re going to be a New Yorker, you need lessons in how to blend in.” She looked me up and down. “With style.”
She reached out and squeezed my hand to let me know she wasn’t as harsh as she sounded. “BAE. B-A-E. Before Anything Else.”
“Brad was Before Everything Else,” I said. “He was my BEE. Now, I don’t even know the girl who was Brad’s honey. I think she died a little in a mental hospital. Then she died a lot after…after New York.”
“As long as you commit to wearing so much plaid flannel and thinking of him as your BEE and you as his honey, you haven’t changed that much. Your dead boyfriend will still recognize you.”
“Manny?”
“Yeah, hon?”
“Sh. It’s short for shut up.”
“Sorry.”
We drove to Medicament and went straight to the Evers farm, back to the tall grasses. In my absence, the tall grasses had lain flat. My dead farm boy boyfriend had not.
Brad stared at us as we got out of the SUV. Winter would hit soon and it was time to set Brad free.
Lesson 79: Every human life is priceless and far too short. It doesn’t matter if you die young or old, the tragedy carries just as much weight in tears for those who loved the dead.
I blanked out for a moment and, when I paid attention again, Manny was speaking. “We’ll start with new shoes. As fashionistas go, you’re a fixer upper.”
“As long as the shoes have toe caps. I’m working at the funeral home on Monday.”
“What? Why?”
“Sam finally called. She has a shift for me at Castille.”
“Still waiting on the why,” she said. “It’s a funeral home. Funerals are what the Choir Invisible is meant to prevent.”
“Because there is more than one way to serve. Because funerals are for the living.”
When we pulled up at the Evers farm, the place looked deserted except for Brad’s ghost. He stood not fifty paces from where the baler ripped his arms away.
He stared at me as we stepped out of the SUV. I saw my dead farm boy boyfriend a little differently now. I wasn’t blinded by tears and emotions. No iron-winged butterflies beat at my insides. I saw my lover as a young man trapped in a process he did not understand. I didn’t understand much more than he did, but now I knew what to do.
“Um…Brad?” I called. “Look at the sky, honey. The clouds are changing every minute. You aren’t changing just standing there. It’s time to join the natural processes of life, okay? We’re going to figure this out so you can move on. It’s going to be good, I think.”
He stared at me, saying nothing. I tried not to look at the bloody stumps at his shoulders.
Manny opened the back of the truck and, together, we lowered the steam trunk to the soft shoulder of the road. A few minutes later, we wrestled the lamp of Tighloon over the fence.
The lamp glowed and, behind Brad, the echo of his life’s only anguish appeared. In bright white and dark black and shades of gray, we saw what happened. Manny and I watched as Brad, still alive, brought the big baling machine to a halt. Dead Brad turned to watch, too.
Live Brad climbed down from the baling machine to speak to a tall man in a fedora and a long coat. We couldn’t see his face yet. All I could see was that he had a broad back.
Showing off his deep dimples, Brad smiled broadly as he removed his work gloves to greet the man. He held out his hand to shake.
The tall man seized Brad’s hand and threw him toward the whirling teeth of the huge machine. Brad stopped himself before the blades got him, but the big man grabbed him again.
Manny drew in a sharp breath. “Oh, no. No. Oh, no. Oh, my god!”
I looked away as the murder progressed. Dead Brad watched himself, his face darkening as the echo’s events unfolded along their bloody course.
When it was done, Brad’s black and white echo, now armless, stumbled back toward his family’s house.
The big man turned to watch him go and, for a moment, his face came into focus as Brad looked back at him in terror.
Manny took in another deep breath and let it out through her teeth in a slow hiss. “For a minute there, I was almost sure the bad guy would turn out to be Vlad. Same build.”
“Yeah. I thought it was a jerk from high school who cut in front of me at a water fountain once,” I said. “I wish it was that guy who murdered Brad. That would make more sense. An angry used car salesman with ’roid rage and a history of concussions would make more sense. But you know who that was, right?”
Manny nodded and studied my face. “You recognized him, too.”
Tears slipped down my cheeks. “Yes. I know the man who killed Brad.”
“I thought you didn’t remember him,” Manny said.
“From Mama’s hidden album. She thinks I don’t know where she hides the pictures, but she takes the old pictures out once in a while, when she’s drinking. That’s Peter Smythe. From Mama’s wedding album. My father.”
“It’s got to be…I don’t know, some kind of enchantment. Peter Smythe is dead. He’s buried by the Keep’s destroyed church.”
“Apparently not.”
I turned to my dead farm boy boyfriend for the last time. “I’m so sorry. If he wasn’t my father…if I didn’t live here…if you didn’t live here…if I hadn’t asked you to the Halloween dance…if, if, if…”
I hadn’t allowed his ghost to get this close before. I reached out and touched Brad’s cheek.
I felt his anger and my sadness. I felt loss, his and mine. I thought of his last message to me. After he hung up on the 911 operator screaming at him to stay on the line, he struggled to dial the phone with a pencil in his teeth to leave a message for me.
“I will never hold you in my arms again, Tam.” That’s all he could manage before he fell to the floor.
Until I understood his anger, I thought that message — the utter loss in his voice — carried all the love and passion in the world. Now I saw Brad’s message was sent in sadness, but fury, too. When I checked my dents-for-dimples blind spot, I knew I’d misunderstood his last message completely.
Why my father killed Brad, I didn’t know with certainty. I guessed he killed Brad to make me a shade seer and a member of the Choir Invisible.
“Tamara?” Manny put a hand on my shoulder. “There’s nothing more the lamp can show us unless you want to see it happen again.”
“I don’t.” My gaze stayed on Brad. Instead of receiving his anger, I sent him my memories.
“Remember Christmas night? You and me, naked under the Christmas tree lights? Remember how I took your hand and pulled you out to the tall grass? Remember how we laughed so much?”
Brad’s anger softened as his sadness grew deeper.
“It’s time to find out what’s next,” I said. “Wherever you go, forget about me. Whatever happens, I don’t think you have to suffer loss anymore. I hope not.”
Manny handed me the canteen. She said a prayer as I uncapped it.
&nb
sp; Brad shook his head. He leaned close and I trembled. I drank from the canteen in long, deep swallows. I closed my eyes as he leaned forward and kissed my wet lips. For a fleeting second, I thought I felt his arms wrap around me again. It was like our first warm embrace at the Halloween dance. On our first date, I’d been dressed as a fighter in a Hapkido gi. Brad was a zombie.
Circles.
When I opened my eyes, Brad was gone, off to find out what comes next.
Manny took me in her arms. I cried into her neck. After a long time, she gently kissed my tears away. “It’s okay, sister,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“Yeah. Sure. Everything’s great.” I straightened and looked at the sky. The clouds had set sail under a high wind, moving north. Darkness would fall soon. It was time to go home.
Mama would fix her chicken. We’d eat lemon meringue pie in front of the television.
Tomorrow Manny and I would return to our lives in New York, for however long our lives and New York lasted.
“The demons will come,” I told Manny. “That’s inevitable, isn’t it?”
“Vlad would have agreed,” Manny said.
“You knew my father.”
“The man I knew was Peter Smythe,” she said. “I can’t imagine why he would do that to your boyfriend. He was a demon killer.”
“I think he did it to make me like him.”
Manny stayed quiet so long I thought she would add nothing. Finally, she said, “The demons have their seers, too,” Manny said. “It’s a sure bet that when war comes, Iowa, Castrator of Demons, is a big player. They know who you are. Maybe Peter did what he did to make you strong. If they showed up here…without singers like you, awake and alive, singing war cries and swinging swords — ”
“That wasn’t his choice to make,” I said. “Victor said my father died in the spring.”
“We thought he did,” Manny said.
“Obviously, he didn’t. No matter what his reasons, he killed Brad. When I find Peter Smythe, I’ll kill him.”
“You’re talking patricide, Tam.”
“Killing close relatives isn’t just for royal families, Manny. Not when they deserve it. Peter Smythe is definitely weakening the barrier between human snacks and hungry demons.”
“But maybe he was trying to strengthen th — ”
“His reasons don’t matter. His actions matter. If he was trying to make me into a singer for the Choir, he succeeded. But he killed Brad. He killed everything I was going to be.”
“Well, yeah,” Manhattan said. “That’s not cool.”
39
And now, candidates, we look to the future. I think we’ll win because the demons only know hate. We’re fighting for peace and love. They’re fighting against toddler sandwiches and human pancreas pizza.
The Choir Invisible will scour Twitter for new recruits among the psychics and ghost hunters and paranormal investigators. We’ll seek you out in mental hospitals and homeless shelters. Together, we’ll fight with ancient weapons for the love of sweet coffee and the joys of living in the 21st century.
Our swords and spears and arrows and blessed ammo will cut and chop and mash. The Choir Invisible will sing. The demons will fall.
We will leave a legacy of safety. We will never allow children’s fears of the monsters under the bed to become a reality in this dimension.
Lesson 80: It’s hard to let the dead stay dead, of course. In quiet moments, I still think of my farm boy boyfriend. I remember his confidence and his dimples and the way he made me laugh and the way he made me feel when he was mine and I was his.
As I write this, I am preparing for war, focusing on the tasks ahead and living as much and as well as I can, while I can. I am doing, not crying.
Mine is just another of those farm-girl-runs-from-ghosts-and-moves-to-the-big-city-to-slay-demons-and-discovers-her-true-calling-coming-of-age stories. It’s a glorious and mean and tragic start. The best stories all start that way. I hope you’ll continue on this journey with me so it doesn’t end as it began. We have to turn this circle into a straight line that ends in a happier place. That is everyone’s job, whether they sing in the Choir or not.
Lesson 81: The pain of losing those we love never really goes away. I still love Brad, but you and I have much to lose and so much more to win.
I cannot rush to follow Brad into whatever comes next. Singers have too much to do and no time to waste. The world doesn’t know it, but they depend on us.
Join the Choir Invisible and fight for the living. I have learned that when you fight for life despite everything you have lost, the haunting lessens.
A Note to the Readers
Hello, Dear Reader,
True story:
A few days ago, I moved a couple of bodies. I needed the money. It was a horror and that’s the truth of capital D, Death. The blood and the sores on the tongue…now is not the time to go into what I saw and what I had to do. You don’t want to know the details of cold skin through thin, Nitrile gloves, the wild gaze of the deceased and congealed blood stretching between the pale lips of a slack maw. My point is, I’ve written a lot of dark and gritty stuff, some of it based on real life. The Haunting Lessons, my first deep foray into urban fantasy, is more upbeat and fun. I have a couple of people to thank for that.
A young writer approached me for help with her first publication. Holly (Pop) Papandreas had a true story. It was an intriguing and creepy novella and she told her story well. Holly wanted to share it with the world but she wasn’t sure how. She worried about reviews and the thousand little details behind publishing any ebook. I encouraged her to write and helped her out with some technical details. You’ll find her short story, Ouija, A True Story, on Amazon.
We talked and talked some more and pretty soon I had our main character, Tam, based on my new friend. We traded story beat ideas back and forth and pretty soon we had a couple of collaborations going. Our first story outline was about hunting demons in New York. It was fun, but a bit short for a novel. I put it aside for a future project. The future showed up on my doorstep sooner than expected. The future is like that.
About the same time, Jerry Benns, publisher of Charon Coin Press, approached me with an idea I didn’t really care for. He asked if I wanted to contribute to an anthology. Jerry’s a nice guy and I loved the idea of being part of another anthology. (I’d been part of the Horror Within Box Set and I will soon contribute to a non-fiction anthology with my friend Sher Kruse, the author of Butterfly Stitching.)
Good news, except Jerry wanted a ghost story for his anthology. I’d never really written a ghost story and wasn’t into it. I put Jerry off and told him I’d noodle with the idea. As often happens, I awoke with insomnia (again) and, in the fleeting, hypnagogic state between waking and dreaming, ghosts and demons came together in one, larger story. I called Holly and the project got moved up in my schedule.
It would have been easier to give Jerry the first few chapters of this book and stop at, “Psychiatry works!” (I love that line.) That would have been fine. But tears and stories do find their way, don’t they?
Our outline awaited and I pounded out the first draft of The Haunting Lessons in eighteen days during National Novel Writing Month. This is my sixteenth book, but it wouldn’t have been so light and fun without Holly’s input, so she’s co-author.
I still owe Jerry a ghost story for his anthology. I’ll give him one. The muse is never further away than another terrible bout of insomnia. Jerry also has my thanks for spurring me to write in a genre I did not initially groove on. I found my groove outside of my comfort zone, much as Tam did in The Haunting Lessons. At our best, there’s a little Tamara Smythe in all of us. I hope that’s true, anyway.
I’m sure you’ll see more of Tamara’s evolving story in 2015, in books two and three of the Ghosts and Demons Series. Holly and I have planned at least three. Three is a power number.
Thank you for reading The Haunting Lessons. If you liked this one, please leave a review wher
ever you bought this book. For a slightly more serious apocalypse, you may enjoy This Plague of Days, too. For more on all my books and podcasts, please visit the information hub of my network, AllThatChazz.com.
To find out when the next book in this series is released, sign up for the update letter on the author page at that site.
Cheers, mates!
~ RCC
December, 2014
About the Authors
Thanks again for reading
The Haunting Lessons,
Book One
by
Holly Pop &
Robert Chazz Chute.
To find out when the next book in the Ghosts & Demons Series will be released,
please sign up for the All That Chazz update letter at
AllThatChazz.com.
Holly (Pop) Papandreas is a writer and student. She has lived in Texas, the Midwest and New York. Her fondest wish is to write for a living. Be sure to read Holly’s creepy and scary novella,
Ouija: Based on a True Story.
Robert Chazz Chute is a former newspaper and magazine journalist. His writing has won seven awards. He lives in Other London. You can find his blogs, podcasts and many novels at AllThatChazz.com.
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The Haunting Lessons: 1, 2, 3, 4, I Declare a Demon War (The Ghosts & Demons Series) Page 19
