Blood & Spirits

by Dennis Sharpe

  He just came from the hospital, checking on the girls. None of them are hurt bad enough to really be worried about. But the point is that they got hurt. He can’t help but feel almost as responsible for that as V does.

  The sorest spot for both of them was still that no one knew what happened to Julie. He’s got two of his crews at the house now, one on the power issue, and the other just cleaning the place up. For what he pays them to not ask questions, he‘s okay with having them go to work at three in the morning with no warning. He’s never had a complaint.

  Lewis’ sedan turns slowly into the lot and Frank can tell he just got out of bed. While he has no issue with waking up the people he has on payroll, his former partner is another matter.

  As the sun is rising he tells Lewis, off the record, that Calvin was at the house tonight, he hurt a lot of people, and really tore the place up.

  “Frank, listen to yourself.” His hushed tones are obviously to keep the service staff from overhearing, but his tone is cutting. “Look at the kind of people you’re working with. You used to be one of the best. I was proud to call you my partner. We made a difference back then, man. What happened to you?”

  They’ve had this talk before. It never goes well. If Frank were still on the force he and Lewis would likely be living together by now. They had so much in common, and Frank found it so easy to get caught up in how passionate he could be, but it always comes down to an ideal world versus reality.

  “I was proud of being who I was back then, Dave, but then it got to me. Watching the people we put away walk. Watching the difference we made be undercut by legal loopholes and judges who didn’t want to put people away, bad people walking from serious charges because of overcrowding in the jails and prisons.” He’s explained this dozens of times, and in every way he can conceive of. He’s cited examples and pushed Lewis’ face in the facts but he would not see them.

  “You are working with those bad people now, Frank! You’re working for one of the worst.” He said it because he knew it would bite. He couldn’t stand how much Frank cared about her.

  “You don’t know everything.” He was trying his best to stay calm. This wasn’t why he’d called him here. ”You don’t know about her. And right now, catching this maniac should be your first concern.”

  “I’m concerned about catching him, I really am, but I’m also concerned about you.” Lewis stands and drops cash on the table. “What happened to you, Frank?”

  CHAPTER 15

  THE OPEN MARKET THEATRE SITS one block off of the riverfront in Downtown Pekin. I’ve been to see plays here more than a few times. As local theatre goes, for small towns like this, it’s really not that bad. Tonight though, I’m not here for a show.

  The building was originally built for an open air market, thus the name, but it sits next to several other locations of historical significance to the community of the restless dead, or so I’m told. Garrett supposedly tracked a few spirits that move regularly though this area, and he’s supposed to be meeting me when he’s done with whatever he’s doing with them.

  I’ve met Lucy down here by the theatre more than a few times myself, so I’m more than willing to accept that he’s right about the area’s spirit traffic. Right now it’s not the thought of ghostly activity that’s bothering me, I’m more edgy now because he’s late.

  I try to call him and get voicemail. “Hey, it’s V. I was supposed to meet you at nine and it’s almost ten. I realize that spirits probably don’t worry about time, but I do. Call me back when you get this.”

  I hang up the phone and look down to put it in my purse. When I look up I see him walking toward me. Great, now I seem like an overanxious girl. Wonderful.

  “Ignore the voicemail I just left you.” I say it with a big grin so he’ll think I’m being cute. Why am I so nervous?

  We walk to where I’m parked and I offer to drive. It occurs to me as I’m starting the car that we only set up a meeting, I hadn’t actually told him why I wanted to see him, and yet here he is.

  I spend the next thirty minutes driving aimlessly around beautiful downtown Pekin, and explaining to Garrett who Calvin Hocker is and what he’s done to my house. I let him know about Carl and Jake and the body snatching from the cemetery and then I tell him that I want his help. Amazingly, he says he’ll do it.

  The location of Calvin’s house was one of the things I happened upon while rooting through the head of one of his nitwit cronies. I suggest we go and see if he’s there or if we can find any information on where he might be; maybe we can also find out what they’ve done with Rachel’s body along the way.

  He agrees and seems concerned for Rachel’s body as well. This guy is unbelievable. I just hope he really is what he seems to be.

  The house is in the county, middle of nowhere actually, and it has a long gravel driveway. If there’s anyone there they’ll see us coming a mile away, so I park on the road and tell him to sit with the car. I’m going to walk up to the house and if all is clear then I’ll call him to bring the car.

  He likes the plan, he just insists that I be the one to stay with the car. I don’t like not being there first hand if anything happens, but he’s insistent and it’s not a bad feeling to be protected every now and again, so I agree.

  I wait for fifteen minutes and it’s unbearable. I’m going over all the bad things that could have happened to him for the eightieth time when he calls and tells me it’s clear.

  Pulling up to the house it occurs to me that anyone can see the car from the road, so I pull around behind an outbuilding and then join Garrett on the back porch.

  I snap off the knob and push the door open as quietly as I can. We both walk in and I’m impressed by how quiet he is for a man of his size.

  When we find the door to the basement I motion that I’ll go down and he should go on searching this floor. We split up and I do my best to quietly descend the creaky rotting stairs into the musty basement.

  It doesn’t take long to find a room on the far end of the basement that Calvin was obviously using for a makeshift office. There are two computers, a filing cabinet, some camera equipment, and a photo printer.

  Going through the desk I’m amazed at the amount of cash this little hick has on hand. I stop counting stacks of bills when I get over one hundred grand. There are photos in the bottom desk drawer and spreading them out on the desk I see that they’re of Frank, Julie, Garrett, and myself.

  Now I’m confused. I just had to explain to Garrett who Calvin was, but it seems Calvin knows all too well who he is.

  I shove the cash and the photos in my bag, and open another drawer when I hear glass crash on the floor upstairs. I bolt for the stairs and sprint up them, arriving in the living room in time to see Garrett roll off of the body.

  Calvin is staring wide-eyed at the ceiling and lying completely motionless. I listen and I don’t hear a heartbeat. He’s not breathing either.

  “Don’t you think this’ll make it kinda hard to question him?” I blurt out, as there seems to be no need for stealth anymore.

  “He attacked me. I was defending myself,” he answers indignantly.

  “And you were scared of that little guy. He looks like he was in rough shape before he even got here. I mean look at those…”

  We both notice that Calvin is full of bullet holes. I assumed when I saw Leslie shoot him that he was wearing a vest or some kind of body armor. There’s no way this guy should have been able to do anything to anyone except bleed on them.

  “Okay, that’s fucked up. Let’s finish searching this place and get out of here.” I start to head back to the basement but Garrett grabs my arm.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I think that’s what you were looking for.” He points to a wooden crate in the corner. I lift the lid and see Rachel’s face looking up at me. It’s heavily decayed but it’s her.

  I don’t even have time to say anything before it’s the night we met all over again. An invisible sledgehammer hits me in the face and
knocks me to the floor. Only now do I notice the shadows moving independently through the room.

  Garrett is getting knocked around too until he pulls out a tarnished silver cross. Just holding it has made them drop him and move back. Then he says something I don’t understand, I think it might be Latin, and there’s the same intense strobe I remember from the funeral home.

  The shadows flee, but I doubt they’ll be gone long. I yell to him, “Help me get her to the car!”

  He rushes over and picks up the other end of the imitation casket, and we make a break for the door.

  “Are you ever gonna tell me how you do that flash of light thing? Is it the cross?”

  “We’ll call it…” He starts to answer, but I cut him off.

  “Magic? I’ve heard that one. Try being more descriptive.”

  He laughs as we load the crate into the trunk. The shadows are beginning to close in on us again, so I jump in the car assuming he’ll do the same.

  He doesn’t. The front of my Charger is lifted six feet in the air before I see another blinding flash from Garrett’s cross.

  He jumps in and slams the door. “I think we should go now.”

  I believe he has the right idea, so I slam her in gear and throw mud all over the yard as I head back for the road, and for home.

  I can’t help but laugh out loud at the insanity of the situation. I look over at him and he laughs with me.

  “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

  ***

  Frank walks into the backroom of Digital Playplace with a fractured notebook in one hand and bottle of rum in the other. He may not know how to fix broken electronics but he knew how to get it done.

  He’d found Julie’s notebook in the front parlor under pieces of a broken chair, rubbed most of the blood off of it, praying that it wasn’t Julie’s, and called to make sure he could get in to get it looked at tonight. Sometimes, he thought to himself, V didn’t appreciate how efficiently he got things done.

  Jay Fontana does computer restoration for several companies in the area; he’s also done some work for the police force on the side, that’s how Frank met him. He owns Digital Playplace. It’s a place where kids can come and play games on their network against each other, or on the internet. He’s a good guy, but likes his booze a little too much.

  Frank sets the bottle down on his desk before his heavyset friend even has a chance to look up. “You’re a good man, Frank. Don’t let anyone tell ya different. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Jay takes the notebook and looks it over, then he pulls out his tools. Popping the case off lets some thick red liquid drip onto the desk.

  He looks up at Frank over his glasses. “That’s not blood is it?”

  “That’s not a question is it?” Frank replies. That’s always the deal, no questions asked.

  He looks back into the notebook taking more of it apart, and then examining it with his magnifying lamp.

  “I can save the hard drive. Give me about an hour.”

  This is the reason Frank likes him, he’s fast and he’s good. He takes a seat next to the desk and lets the man work his magic. In no time at all he’s asleep.

  When Jay wakes him up, it’s to hand him a different notebook. Frank looks at it confused.

  “I had to put it in something. It works fine, man. No data loss for you.” He gives a wheeze of a laugh, and sits back down at his desk with the bottle. “I’ll only charge you for the new notebook and an hour’s labor. Three fifty should cover it.”

  Frank happily pays him and thanks him for his time on his off hours, and heads back to his car. In and out in less than two hours, not bad at all.

  Looking over the notebook it takes him no time to find what he’s looking for. Now he knows who was there when Calvin decided to crash the party.

  He starts the car and calls V. Pulling out of the parking lot he gets her voicemail. He leaves her a message. “I found out who the two clients were, Geoff Peters and Jerry Atkins, and I’m on my way to look into them now. Give me a call back when you get this”.

  Now he just hopes the rest of his night goes as smoothly as this has.

  ***

  Walking back into the house I’m impressed by how much Frank’s guys have already gotten done. It still looks like an abandoned house under construction. But they’ve managed to clean up and paint over the blood, get all the glass out, and get rid of the furniture that was broken beyond repair. Best of all the light comes on when I flip the switch.

  I look around with optimism, but still see no Julie. I hope Frank has a lead on her. Now I have three people who I care about that have just gone missing. I really can’t stand the not knowing.

  Garrett helps me again, carrying the wood box into the house and down to the basement. I take him into my office and show him where the trap door is under my desk. I think this was used for alcohol storage during prohibition, but now it will serve as a resting place for Rachel’s body.

  We gently lower the small box into the hole and close the door over it. I feel like we won at least one battle tonight, as we slide my desk back over the door and I sit down.

  Garrett sit opposite me as I empty the money and photos from my bag into the desk, leaving out the photos of him.

  I sit those photos on the desk and look up at Garrett expectantly.

  “I found these in Calvin’s house, with pictures of Frank, Julie, and myself. Any reason you can think of why they’d be there?”

  Garret looks at the photos and then sits back hard in the chair. “I guess this is the point where I come clean about a few things. I’ll start with what happened tonight when Calvin found me in the house. He said he was working for someone named Mr. Molder, and could pay me to just leave you there and walk away. I would be well compensated. When I refused that’s when the struggle began, and you walked in at the end of that.”

  He seems like he’s trying to gauge my reaction before he continues. I’m sure he knows I’m watching his memories as he’s telling me. I keep myself cool and even, trying to reveal nothing, and wait for him to proceed.

  “Tonight wasn’t the first time I met Mr. Hocker though.” And as he says this his mind becomes hollow.

  I raise my eyebrows slightly as I begin to panic and he smiles. He can manipulate thoughts like I can.

  Suddenly my mind is flooded with thoughts that aren’t mine. I’m not used to it and it takes a moment to acclimate myself to the environment he’s shoving into my head.

  I see him visiting Calvin in jail and removing his mind. That means that while that may have been Calvin’s body there tonight it wasn’t actually him. Something else was in control. That’s a scary thought.

  “I came across Calvin while I was investigating the spirits in downtown Pekin. Calvin was surrounded by them, like bodyguards. I’m pretty sure he didn’t know they were there. It was when I discovered that the spirits surrounding him were unquiet that I felt like I needed to know more about him. I know he was working for a man named Molder. I knew that before tonight, I got it out of his memories. He only dealt with him through middle men, like Mikey Moran. I know you’re familiar with him.” He stops speaking to point out Mikey in my memories.

  I can feel him in my mind, riding my thoughts and emotions as he talks. He’s better at this than I am though; to be as deep as he is I’d be causing pain. I’m frightened and aroused, and I’m sure he knows that.

  “He’s never actually met Molder. I get the impression that whatever it was controlling him tonight has met him, though. Molder might be the one pulling the strings with the unquiet spirits that are amassing and might also be the one who has your Lucy and Rachel. I think he might have something to do with that funeral home because I tracked the unquiet movements and found that they keep going back there. That’s how I stumbled on you.” He finishes and leans forward, pulling the memory of our first meeting to the forefront of my thoughts. Letting me relive the rush I felt tasting him, how my body had responded.

  I
do all I can to stay focused on the conversation at hand. “You didn’t think letting me know any of this before would have been helpful?”

  He cracks a wry smile. “I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

  I stand and walk over to him. I can see, in my mind and his, that we’re both thinking the same thing, both feeling the same desires. This is going to be incredible. To feel how he feels as he’s feeling me. It’s a dizzying turn on.

  I stand in front of him, posing. My back arched, pushing my chest forward as I lean down to him. I slice into my arm with my fingernail letting blood run down to my fingertips, and holding them out to him.

  He takes my fingers into his mouth and licks them clean, then runs his tongue up my arm to the blood source.

  I run my hand up the back his neck and his hands find their way to my hips lifting me up onto him.

  “So do you trust me now?”

  CHAPTER 16

  HER VOICE IS TINY AND SMALL. Her mouth is moving to speak or scream but there’s a distance to her voice that sounds miles away. Her white dress is fluttering out behind her as she’s running, but she isn’t moving.

  The darkness moves around her revealing shadow people, gripping her and trying to pull her back and to the ground and still she runs, still going nowhere.

  Her voice is melodious. Like a beautiful song being played so softly that only a few notes can be heard. Whatever she’s saying is important, her expression is of the most gravely earnest doctor giving life or death news to the patient in their charge.

  Her lovely gown is being ripped, and her skin is beginning to fray as the shadows continue to claw at her, and with all their might stop her from running, from speaking. She only shows more determination.

  Her voice grows slightly louder, enough to be heard for the briefest of moments. “Veronica, it’s you. It’s you he’s after!”

  ***

  I sit up in bed shaking. It was just a dream, a vivid and horrible dream. It takes me a minute to orient myself. I’m home, I’m in my bed, there’s a naked man next to me smiling.