There Goes the Neighborhood

by Gary J. Davies

7. A Quiet Retirement

  "Super bubbles!" exclaimed Bert Freehop, with sudden inspiration. That was the ticket. He'd pick up a plastic hoop-kit for blowing giant bubbles at that new toy store in town this afternoon, plus plenty of extra bubble-strengthening glycerin at the pharmacy. He'd get the kid some squirt guns to shoot them down too, of course, as they attempted to escape on the wind. No little twerp of twelve could possibly resist that! When his niece Holly arrived tomorrow, he'd dump the stuff on her, and the overjoyed kid would be occupied with bubbles all week out in the front yard, weather permitting, and leave him to the sacred peace of his back yard or the quiet sanctity of his study.

  The front yard was just a buffer zone anyway; he never had much use for it himself. His Mary would have enjoyed the front yard he supposed, but Mary was gone, bless her soul. Hell, he would give Holly the damn front yard. In fact, he'd modify his will to leave the house and everything else to her lock stock and barrel, after he was done dithering away through his retirement and had pushed on to join Mary.

  Bert lowered his binoculars and rested his eyes for a few moments before returning his attentions to the far back-yard bird feeder, where several songbirds were joyfully eating away his pension money. Meanwhile he continued to plan for his niece's visit. He would set the girl on to kites if she tired of bubbles, and point her towards the nearest field where she could fly them, which was fortunately at least a quarter of a mile away. He'd stuff her with ice cream in the evenings, so much ice cream that she'd never utter a word during his favorite TV programs.

  If she ate too much and got sick and had to spend the evening in a bathroom? Well, so much the better. He had two bathrooms in this big old house anyway; that was hopefully one more than he'd ever need. All the toys and food required to pull this off would cost him a few bucks, there was no way around that, but it would preserve his sanity for the week that the kid was here with him. How the hell had he let his sister Jane talk him into this anyway?

  Out of the corner of his eye Bert spied a flash of blue and white, accompanied by a harsh cry, and re-aimed his binoculars. His unaided eyesight wasn't what it used to be. Just as he suspected, it was a blue jay. No, a pair of them. Probably headed for one of his feeders. He couldn't help liking the beautiful birds, but he almost wished that they wouldn't come around quite so frequently. Like relatives, jays were at best a mixed blessing. The rowdy, harsh voiced jays would doubtless roust away some of the sweet singing goldfinches and chickadees to hog the seed. Bert shook his head in disapproval. He had come to outer suburbia for peace and quiet.

  The phone rang in the kitchen, and the obnoxious noise poured out the screened windows onto the back porch and into the yard, scaring away even the jays. "Hell’s bells!" Bert cranked, as he scrambled towards the phone. This made two phone calls in two days, far more than was either normal or tolerable. He'd have the blasted contrivance taken out if this continued.

  He hoped it was Jane, calling to tell him that she and Ken had changed their minds and canceled their impromptu cruse to the Bahamas, and wouldn't be dropping little Holly off after all. But no, it was his old boss Harold Knox again, wondering if he'd changed his mind yet about 'early' retirement.

  In truth retirement hadn’t stacked up to his lofty expectations, but he wouldn’t admit it, especially to Knox. "No damn way, Knox. Am I mistaken or don't you have a whole new office building stuffed to the gills with young hotshot engineers? Why the hell do you want me?"

  "I don't really want YOU Bert, you're a royal pain in the ass, but I could sure use your design work, at least for a couple days a week. What do you say?"

  Bert had poured himself into his work during the years after Mary's death, but now he had finally left the old apartment and job and was trying to make a fresh start. Or rather, no start. His life was free of important commitments now, and he was getting to like that. He couldn't go back now. "Sorry Knox, I don't think so. I've got birds and bubbles and nieces and that book I’m writing and what-not going on here right now, and I don't think I could get away if I tried. Not that I'm trying. Besides, you know what I think of that new office building of yours."

  "Sure, I know you liked the old building’s architecture better. But listen Bert, we have a nice, quiet, out-of-the-way office for you that was recently vacated. I've already stuck tree and bird pictures up on the walls and put your name on the door. You just give me a call when you change your mind."

  "I'll call maybe to see how you're doing, you old shit head, but that's about all. Now get back to work, YOU’RE not retired yet!"

  The doorbell rang as he hung up. It was obviously going to be one of those kind of days; the pushy jays had just been the start of it. He irritably stomped his way to the front door and jerked it open, already preparing to slam it back into the wide-eyed faces of girl scouts or Hare-Krishna nut-jobs, before they could even fake a smile. But it was Jane and little Holly, a full day early.

  Jane looked the same, a bubbly butterball all gushy with smiles for no earthly reason. "Surprise Bertie! We were able to get away sooner than we thought. Holly has just been so anxious to see you and your new house, we simply had to come as soon as we could."

  The kid looked just like her latest Christmas picture minus the fake smile and goofy red Christmas dress, and she was a couple of inches taller than he remembered but still tiny. "Hi Uncle Bert, what shakes?"

  "Not too much anymore, kid. Hey, look at you! You're twice as big as I remember you!" Actually she was still a tiny little shrimp; Bert long suspected that she was a product of some illicit fling of Jane’s with a dwarf. A carnival had passed through town at about the right time.

  "And you’re twice as big as I remember you, Unc. Put on a few pounds?”

  "Now, Dear," stepped in Jane, "be nice to your Uncle Bertie."

  "Come, come Jane, the kid's just being obnoxious," consoled Bert. "It's her heritage from her parents, let her enjoy it. Besides, I am gaining weight. I plan on being spherical by the time I age to two hundred, so I can just roll around to get places. Just think of what I'll save on shoes."

  “Oh Bertie, always standing up for Holly; that’s why you’re her favorite uncle!” gushed Jane, never mind that Bert was the kid’s only uncle. A bouncy ball of energy, Jane shot back towards the car for suitcases.

  Bert shook his head in wonder. His dense-headed sister always missed his insults completely. Her husband Ken, the big lout, was just as dense. You could bounce insults off either of them all day and they never even noticed. Bert couldn’t figure out if it was a disadvantage or a blessing, but it was yet more evidence for his dwarf-fling theory. The kid had way-more brains than both alleged parents put together.

  “I was heading over-town to a toy store, Holly, you want to tag along?” asked Bert, flashing his new dentures affably. He’d hook her on bubbles and kites right in the store, he figured.

  “No thanks, Unc, I’m way beyond the toy stage.” She walked past Bert into the house, leaving him speechless.

  Beyond soap bubbles and kites? Precisely at what age was that supposed to occur? At sixty-four Bert was more determined than ever to see that new toy store. He hadn’t blown bubbles in years. First he scrambled to retrieve two huge suitcases from Jane as she came puffing up the walk with them. They each weighed a ton; did Holly have a traveling rock collection?

  “It’s mostly old books, Bertie,” explained Jane, as Bert struggled to get the suitcases up the porch stairs, through the front door and into the house, exercising muscles that by rights should be only theoretical at his age. “Holly has taken up some rather unusual hobbies of late. You’ll get a real kick out of it.”

  Holly was in the living room at the foot of the stairs, talking to herself and shaking hands with the empty air. “Nice to meet you Mrs. Trigglebaum.” Pause. “No, just for one week.” Pause. Laugh. “Yes, I agree, he can be a pain in the ass.”

  “Humor her, Bertie,” whispered Jane solemnly. “Our doctor says she’s just going through a phase. Imaginary friends
and such. Perfectly normal.”

  Bert wasn’t convinced. Trigglebaum had been the name of the old lady that owned the house before he did. He didn’t remember ever mentioning the name to Jane, but of course he must have.

  “Mrs. T says I should sleep in her room, Unc. Would that be all right with you?”

  “Oh sure Holly,” replied Bert, winking at Jane. Appealing to invisible friends was obviously how the kid planned on taking over his household. “Of course; whatever Mrs. T says is fine by me. By the way, which is her room?”

  Pause. “The room you’re using, she says.”

  “My, what a surprise! Does she have any suggestions about where I should sleep?”

  Pause. “I can’t repeat her suggestion, Unc; I’m not supposed to know those kinds of words yet.” Pause. “Her son Johnny says he wouldn’t mind company in his room, if you lie on your stomach so you don’t snore.”

  “Lucky me. So which room is Johnny’s?”

  Pause. “End of the hall, next to the bathroom.”

  “That sounds convenient. The room with the purple wallpaper?” Bert quizzed cleverly.

  Pause. “No, the one with the blue wallpaper that you painted over in white. There haven’t ever been any rooms with purple wallpaper.” Pause. “You shouldn’t have brought up the subject of wallpaper Unc, Johnny is still a little upset about that paint job.”

  Bert was frazzled. How the hell had Holly known about him painting that room white? Had it been blue before? He couldn’t remember. That room was his study, where he was writing his book on grass. Not one of those lame gardening books, though he’d throw in a chapter on that stuff too, to pacify those dullards who mistakenly bought the book expecting to find lawn keeping how-tos. No, his book would be an expose that would lay bare the whole exciting inside story on grass: natural and related human history, biology, benefits to mankind, poetry, erotic anecdotes, etc.

  Grass fed most of the world, after all. He also had it on good authority that grass had helped wipe out the dinosaurs and made room for mankind. To top it off, most men nowadays spent more time and effort cutting grass than they expended for any other weekend activity, including sex. The book would be a sure-fired best seller, if he could only find the time to write it. Maybe sleeping in the study to pacify the kid would be his big chance to finally get some work done on it. If the grass book sold well, he had some equally exciting ideas for a book on dust.

  “Well, I better be going now,” announced Jane. “Ken is finishing with his packing, then we’ll be off for our cruse.” She exchanged hugs with Holly and Bert and was gone in a dash, leaving Bert very much alone with his niece, not counting any Trigglebaums.

  “So, you can see and talk to ghosts, I take it?”

  “You catch on quick, Unc.”

  “I’m a collage grad-u-ate. But I’m still making that run to the toy store. Sure you won’t come? We could stop for ice cream.”

  “No, that’s OK, I never touch that stuff. I’d rather stay here and talk with Mrs. Trigglebaum for now. She can show me around, and help me unpack my fra-gi-les.” She glared at Bert coldly.

  “You’re still pissed off at me for that are you?”

  “You took advantage of me when I was just a little child, Unc, you with your fanciful stories of little creatures that live in the boxes that bear their name. You had me looking for the blasted things for years. My peers practically laughed me out of kindergarten. Kids have it tough enough, without bearing that kind of burden.”

  “Well I apologize, for what it’s worth. But what did you want from me? The dull unvarnished truth about where Styrofoam peanuts really come from? That they aren’t dried white poop left by magical creatures called fragiles that live in suitably labeled boxes?”

  “Well, what you told me was more fun than the actual truth I suppose. And you were almost right; gnomes and sprites and their kin do hang out in boxes sometimes. They just don’t poop spongy white stuff.”

  Nodding to feign agreement with that useless bit of nonsense, Bert headed for the door. “Say, Mrs. T. doesn’t mind keeping an eye on things while I’m gone, does she?”

  Pause. “She says good riddance.”

  More anxious than ever to win Holly over to super bubbles and have her forget this goofy ghost business, Bert made the run to town and back in record time. When he returned he talked Holly into making bubbles with him. It went very well for a few minutes. Both of them were soon running all over the front yard, blasting away with the water guns at shinny bubbles that tried to escape on the wind.

  “Your bubbles hit Mrs. T!” Holly suddenly shouted, after an abrupt wind shift. “You hurt her! She’s screaming!” Holly started crying and ran into the house and upstairs.

  Bert gathered up the bubble apparatus and followed her in, not sure what he should do. He never had any kids of his own, though he and Mary had a good time trying to. What the hell did it mean, when a kid went bonkers over imaginary bubble-accidents? Didn’t he have an old copy of Dr. Spock’s baby book someplace? In Mary’s old things? Was the answer in there?

  The girl had locked herself in his/hers/Mrs. T’s bedroom, where through the door he could hear her still crying softly. “Holly honey, I’m sure Mrs. T will be all right.” After all, she was imaginary, or already dead, or both.

  Presently the girl stopped sobbing and opened the door. “You’re right, Uncle Bert; she’s all right now," she announced cheerily. "You just destabilized her photo-plasma for a while is all. Some materials do that, like iron or silver. I didn’t know about glycerin doing it.”

  “Well, now that we know, we can avoid using it around her, right?” He gave Holly a little hug. “She’s not mad at me, is she?”

  “No; not any more than usual. She knows it was an accident.”

  “What a relief.”

  “Thanks Uncle Bert,” she said. “And thanks for pretending that you believe me about ghosts and stuff. Mom and Dad just kind of ignore the whole thing. At least you give it a chance.”

  “You gave the fra-gi-les a chance, right? Besides, I’d like to think that the world is actually full of ghosts and fairies, and space aliens and unicorns and their ilk. Maybe I’m just too old a geezer to see that stuff myself.”

  Holly looked at Bert thoughtfully. “All that stuff really exists, Unc; do you really want to be able to see it like I do?”

  It wasn’t a question that he got every day. “Sure, why not?” What did he have to lose? Why not pretend to see ghosts while the kid was here?

  “It’s kind of a burden you know, seeing what other folks can’t.”

  “Well, you don’t get something for nothing kid, that’s life. Do the other twerps tease you about this ghost business?"

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. It’s even worse than the fra-gi-les thing. Mostly they leave me alone though. I guess I spook them sometimes, like when I can see the future.”

  “You can do that too?”

  “A little. Comes with the territory.”

  “Sounds like pretty lonely territory though. As I dimly recall, growing up is a tough enough business already.”

  Holly nodded sadly. “I thought it would be cool, being able to do what the other kids couldn’t. They just think I’m even more of a freak though. It might help if someone else I know could do it too. You sure that you won’t mind?”

  “I suppose not,” he said, laughing. “Might even perk up my retirement. But now let’s get some dinner, I’m starved. You like spaghetti?”

  “Sure, who doesn’t? Can I make us some tea?”

  “What kind?”

  “A special elfin blend. You’ll be a changed man.”

  Bert later remembered eating a bowl of spaghetti and then sipping the bitter tea that Holly gave him. Suddenly he felt totally wasted. The room began spinning and a hundred voices howled around him, seeping up from the depths of the Earth. A thousand cadaverous glowing hands reached out to grab at him, while as many bloated walleyed faces and shriveled, skeletal figures grinned and mouthed
obscenities at him.

  He tried to pull away from them but there was nowhere to go; they were everywhere. He somehow walked or was carried or floated to the sofa, but it offered no refuge. They were there also, laughing and poking at him, with insubstantial, translucent hands that passed through his flesh and bone to chill his spirit.

  Through it all, Holly was beside him saying words of comfort, holding his big hands in her small ones, and scolding his tormentors and pushing them away when they were too rough. A large ancient book floated open in the air beside her, from which she chanted in some sort of language that he had never heard before, but somehow sounded familiar, as though it bore some long forgotten elemental kinship to his very being. Gradually he relaxed, as her incantations droned on and on. Abruptly everything went black.

  When he woke up it was morning, judging by the sunlight that streamed in through the windows. He was still on the old sofa, and Holly was slouched in sleep on the floor against it, still holding his hand.

  He wondered at how delicate she looked in sleep. Her ears were slightly pointy, he noticed. Her slim features were perhaps more elfin than dwarven; maybe he had mistaken her heritage slightly. Her eyes opened, catching him staring. They were huge, blue, twinkling elfin eyes, exactly the same as an elf illustration that he recalled seeing once in a bookstore.

  “Are you all right, Uncle Bert?” she asked. “I was worried.”

  “What was in that tea?” croaked Bert weakly.

  “The usual. Toad-wart moss, and a few nether-worldly ingredients conjured through the Serene Vortex. The trick is to use just enough toad-wart to not quite kill. Same principle as used in ancient Zoroastrian rituals. Then just as the subject is drawn into the Vortex, a rite of Arcanum is chanted from the Book of Mega-Toth.”

  “Right. So you didn’t quite kill me? Good; that could have messed-up retirement. What was that language that you were blabbering?”

  “I don’t know. It was xenoglossia of course, the chant and the language were themselves induced by a spell embedded in the book. It probably sounds impressive but anyone that opens the book in the presence of someone that drinks the tea can do it. So I’m not sure exactly what it was that I chanted, but it worked for me OK, so I figured it would work for you too.”

  “Dandy. So it was a proven technique then; that makes me feel lots better about it.” He sat up slowly, moaning from the splitting headache. What had really happened? The kid slipped him a mickey and spooked him out while he was woozy?

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked the old lady sitting in his rocking chair. She was slightly translucent and almost colorless; like the half-baked, faded image on an old double-exposed photograph.

  “Mrs. Dorthea Trigglebaum, young man, who the duce did you think I was?” The thin, wrinkled old lady’s image shimmered a little, and she abruptly looked thirty years younger and more solid. She floated up and towards him. “Is that more to your liking? You men put so much stock in age and looks.” She lost a few years more, adding more youthful curves, sumptuous legs, red lips, and flashing green eyes.

  “Aw, Ma,” said a different, male voice. “You know how tired that makes you!” A translucent, smiling, affable young man of maybe twenty-five floated across the room to shake Bert’s hand. Bert felt no hand, but a cold chill traveled up his arm to his spine. “I’m Johnny, Mr. Freehop. Glad to meet you. Heard we’re going to be roommates. If’n you don’t snore.”

  “Ah, I guess so,” was all that Bert could mutter.

  “This live dude can see us now?” asked a raspy voice. A hairy old man in cowboy duds came riding through a wall on a faded horse.

  “This is Hank,” explained Mrs. T. to Bert and Holly. She was once again an old lady. “He used to ranch all the land around here. His ranch house was remodeled to make this one.”

  Bert held his aching head, trying to make sense of things. “What the hell are all of you doing in MY house?”

  “Well what the blazes are you doing on MY ranch sonny?” returned Hank. “You a court’n this-here woman?” He pointed a glove covered finger at the blushing Mrs. T.

  “He’s been sharing my bed for two months Hank. On the other hand, he hasn’t even noticed me until now, and he wants to sleep with my son tonight. Don’t you like women, Mr. Freehop?” She lost a few years and batted her eyes at him.

  “My preference is still for live ones; no offense intended.” He glanced at Johnny, who looked about five years old at the moment, and was chasing a translucent yellow cat through the kitchen. The other bedrooms were too stuffed with odds and ends, so it looked like he and Johnny were indeed paired up for certain. “I don’t suppose that your son could settle for the living room couch for a few nights?”

  Mrs. T. grimaced as though a spider had been shoved under her nose. “Oh no, I’m afraid that wouldn’t do a-tall. We can only go about as we did in life, you know. Johnny never slept in the living room.”

  “Too bad. Oh well, I guess I could make do with the couch then,” conceded Bert, becoming more annoyed by the moment.

  “As long as you don’t mind my snoring,” said a strange voice. A chill froze Bert, as something cold passed right through him. From Bert’s own spot on the couch a large, black bearded man rose and turned to face him. “I’m Jake Trigglebaum, and you ain’t sleeping with my wife no more, that’s certain.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it. Not that she isn’t, er, wasn’t an attractive woman. So you snore, do you Jake?”

  “That’s why sometimes he sleeps down-stairs, of course,” explained Mrs. T.

  A translucent cow trotted through the living-room, and Hank went thundering after it, whooping happily. Mr. T. whispered something to Mrs. T. and the pair went floating up the stairs, laughing as they shed clothing that disappeared when it hit the stairs. Johnny was nowhere to be seen. Bert and Holly were finally alone for the moment.

  “Isn’t this fun, Unc?” bubbled Holly. “Lots better than an empty old house, isn’t it?”

  A woman’s impassioned moan came from upstairs, and he thought that he heard bedsprings squeaking rhythmically. “How long will this last?” Bert asked.

  “Mr. and Mrs. T? This is the third time they’ve done that since I’ve been here. Fifteen minutes is average. I’m beginning to think that I won’t get much sleep in that bedroom.”

  “Dandy. But no, I mean that Toad Wart stuff you gave me. When will it wear off?”

  “It’s permanent, Unc. Say, I was thinking we could go outside and look for elves or something, and watch the extinct animals run around.” Holly headed for the back yard, avoiding eye contact with Bert.

  “It’s permanent?” Bert muttered repeatedly, as he followed her out after a moment of stunned inaction. “Holy shits!” he shouted, and he pulled Holly back inside, to keep both of them from being trampled by several duck-billed dinosaurs that trumpeted loudly as they fled from some sort of snarling, long-toothed beast from hell.

  “It’s just dinosaurs, Unc,” laughed Holly. “You’ll get used to them. They don’t like it inside buildings, but they’re all over outside. They can’t hurt you, they’re all dead.”

  Bert peeked outside through a window. The whole damn yard was a swarming sea of translucent extinct dinosaurs, mammals, and other creatures. There were huge sauropod s with long necks and tails, reaching into the trees and trying unsuccessfully to eat real leaves. There were stegosaurs, tyrannosaurs, and triceratops, lions, tigers and bears, woolly mammoths, giant ground sloths and long-necked camels, and hundreds of others. Most were ignoring each other and even walking through each other without seeming to notice, but a few were fighting or mating. One big tyrannosaurus was poised at a bird feeder, where it kept trying to eat the pesky blue jays, who totally ignored it. The noise was awful, but the only ones that he saw clearly or heard loudly were the ones that he was paying attention to at the moment.

  “They can see us?” he asked.

  “Sure. We’re real. They usually have no trouble seeing us. They’ll keep trying
to eat you and stuff, Unc, but you can pretty much ignore that.”

  “Fat hairy chance. What do you mean by ‘pretty much,’ Holly? Are they dangerous?”

  “No. They don’t have the brain power or spirit power or whatever to consolidate enough to influence reality. That’s very hard to do even for human ghosts.”

  “That’s good to know. Most of them don’t even see each other?”

  “No, not when they’re from different ages. They can only see ghosts of what they were used to seeing when they were alive.”

  “I need a drink.” Bert opened a cupboard and pulled out a small bottle of brandy that he kept for emergencies unlike this.

  “You don’t drink.”

  “I do now.” He sat down at the table and stared at Holly, who stared back apprehensively as he swigged down several ounces. “So you went through this yourself three months ago young lady, and figured it out all by yourself?”

  “Pretty much. Mom and Ken weren’t any help. I’ve gotten the most insight from dead folks of course, and from my spell books.”

  He shook his head and laughed. “You’re the most remarkable damn kid I’ve ever met.”

  Holly smiled. “Thanks Uncle Bert.”

  “Where’d you get the spell books? That’s how this started, isn’t it?”

  “Right. The books I started with were gifts from my father. My real elf father, not Ken. He visited me last fall.”

  “When the carnival came back to town?”

  “You know about my real dad?”

  “No Holly, just a suspicion. You don’t resemble Ken at all. Besides being small, you’re very smart and good looking. Too much so to have gotten it all from my side of the family.”

  “Are you mad at me about all of this, Unc?”

  “Sure I am, but what the hell.” He took one last swig of brandy, then picked up a bucket full of bubble-soap. “You want to do more bubbles?”

  They went to the front yard. This time however, they ran after the dinosaurs and others that were mobbing the area, blowing bubbles onto them. Glycerin tainted bubbles indeed caused them minor distress and soon put the creatures on the run. Bert hadn’t had so much fun since before Mary died.

  Suddenly the Earth shuddered, as if shook by some gigantic footstep, and with a boom of cloudless thunder a glowing dragon-like beast appeared in the middle of the front lawn. It opened its tooth-lined mouth impossibly wide and inhaled, howling like some gigantic, whining, shop-vac gone mad, causing tornado-force winds that sucked a hapless nearby duck-billed dinosaur to its waiting mouth. The dino’s ghost shriveled and disappeared down the throat of the dragon as if the beast were inhaling smoke. Other animal-ghosts in the area stampeded away.

  “What is that thing, Holly?” shouted Bert. The thing seemed to hear him shout, and turned towards them. A forsythia bush near to it was uprooted and suffered a fate similar to that of the dino, but the bush had to be briefly chewed. “Hey, the damn thing ate my bush!” Bert yelled angrily, while coming to the terrifying realization that the thing was attacking real things as well as spirits. This thing wasn’t harmless like most of the ghosts.

  “It’s a demon, Unc,” explained Holly. “A really bad one. Run for your life and soul.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him, and the two of them stumbled towards the house against the howling wind that tried to pull them to the creature.

  As they entered the house and Bert let the front door blow closed, he saw that the beast was walking towards them ponderously on claw-studded legs each thicker than his own over-stuffed body. A long tail with a pointed club on the end swished behind its elephant-sized body. “That thing will tear right through this house to get to us. What do we do?”

  Holly was already running up the stairs. Bert started up after her but she was coming back down already when he had gone only a few steps. She carried a thick, ancient, leather-bound book covered in strange runes, perhaps the same book that she used on Bert the previous night. She started chanting in some ancient language as the book floated in the air and opened before her.

  She faced the front door, which was suddenly ripped from its hinges and swallowed whole by the demon. A foul stench of death and decay filled the air, as though a tomb full of rotting bodies had been opened. The demon's reptilian head entered through the shattered doorway and moved towards Holly slowly on its long serpentine neck, eyes glowing amblers that locked with hers, mouth open and flashing dagger-sharp teeth dripping with blood, over which ran a forked, reptilian tongue. Holly never flinched or skipped a beat in her chanting, which was ignored by the demon. Its head moved towards the small girl steadily, unhurried, as though the monster was savoring the moment, and had all eternity to capture its prey. At Holly’s side Bert prepared to grab her and run.

  Suddenly to Holly’s lone little high-pitched voice others were added; as clear and pure as bell chimes on the wind. Smells of apple blossoms and herbs overpowered the demon stench. Translucent and then solid images of a dozen short little pointy-eared folk garbed in ancient gray cloaks, each man or lady no larger than Holly, appeared all around the girl, chanting in chorus with her.

  The demon paused, confused and uncertain for several long moments. Then it shook itself and gave a hateful roar, and seemed to gather itself to at last strike at Holly. The chanting came to a crescendo, but the demon merely seemed to smile, certain again that it would prevail.

  At that moment Bert threw the whole bucket of glycerin-laced bubble-soap into its face and mouth. It shrieked as flesh melted from bone, and flailed at the door frame for a few moments in pain and hate, before it withdrew rapidly outside, to disappear with a clap of thunder and a wink of darkness.

  The room erupted in shouting and laughing, as the little people danced and gave each other high-fives. Holly and Bert were lifted off their feet and trooped around the room. The little folk than faded away but for one tiny man, who turned to admonish Holly. “Your fun and games drew its attention to you. You need to be more careful, young lady.” But he smiled and kissed her forehead and nodded at Bert before he too simply disappeared.

  Bert was still in a daze. “That was your father, wasn’t it? Those were elves; real elves!”

  “Yes. A combination of both living and dead kinfolk. The live ones like my dad used astral projection.”

  “Makes my side of the family look pretty dull.”

  “Not my Uncle Bert the demon slayer,” smiled Holly, as she hugged him.

  Bert and Holly abandoned bubbles altogether and stuck to kites for most of the remaining week. Before Holly left, Bert gave her all of the unmixed glycerin he had left to carry with her always in a tiny squirt gun that she wore on a silver necklace. "Better than pepper-spray," declared Bert.

  Bert’s retirement never recovered from her visit. He abandoned the house most nights to the ever horny and noisy Trigglebaums, though he returned almost daily to feed the birds and watch them for a time. Of course it wasn't the same, what with the dinosaur ghosts and such. He changed his will to leave the house and everything else to Holly, whom he planned to haunt mercilessly someday.

  Bert traveled widely, fixing his spirit to resorts in Hawaii and other places where he planned to visit free of charge after dying. He spent many nights in a cheap hotel where he and Mary had honeymooned many years earlier. Mary was always there, waiting for him. He spent most nights quietly in Knox’s new office building, and worked again for Knox two days a week. As a new building it was blissfully free of ghosts, almost.

  “I want a second desk and computer workstation, Knox, and a partition to divide my office in two. Plus a fold-away cot for each side.” Bert turned to face the wall. “That OK with you?” Pause. “Oh, Bill wants to finish the Hartblumb design he started before he died. Just put the files in his computer and he’ll work on them. No extra charge of course; me and him are a package deal.”

  ‘You’re nuts. Bert, completely nuts. But as long as you get work done, I really don’t give a shit.”

  “Nobody else wanted
this office because Bill Jakobs died here, Knox. That’s really why it was available for me, right?”

  “True enough. But if the ghost of Bill is going to finish the Hartblumb project, Bert, I’m afraid that you’ll need to work full time instead of our agreed-to two days a week.”

  “Why? What does Bill’s work have to do with me?”

  “If there is no ghost, you’ll need to be here to do the job yourself. On the other hand, if there really is a ghost, I don’t see how he can finish the design right if the rest of our team can’t communicate with him through you. Either way, it looks like your retirement is over-with.” Knox smiled his shark smile.

  Knox was right. It was either that or quit altogether, and Bert had found that aside from needing the extra money, he actually enjoyed working two days a week on his own terms. Bill was already bugging him to communicate with Knox on issues with his work. Bert could see retirement slipping away from him completely now, after already suffering radical revision due largely to Holy.

  Suddenly Bert had an idea that would it make it unnecessary for him to increase his work schedule. Smiling, he opened his briefcase and pulled out a large, ancient, rune covered book and a small paper bag. “You like tea, don’t you, Knox? Let me brew you some of this very special blend that my niece gave me. Drink some and you’ll be a changed man. Then we’ll talk this thing over some more.”

  ****

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