by Eve Paludan
“Ellen is like a radio antenna for ghosts and spirits,” I said.
She smiled. “I’ve been attracting ghosts since childhood, starting with my dead father at age seven. It’s never really stopped. I work with it as an asset.”
Diego said to me, “I always knew that Ellen had something special about her when she was my student, which I first saw on the anthropology fieldwork we went on together, years ago. Not only was she a gifted grad student assistant in the field with the paper I was writing, but she gleaned impressions of history off the ghosts that she met on the way and her hunches always played out into solid research of people and places. Even artifacts could give her an impression of their past. I learned then that she’s a gifted sensitive but had no idea that her talents had developed this much. Are you a medium, too?”
“I’m the skeptic,” I replied. “The science guy. That’s why we make such a good team. We keep each other grounded or aloft, whatever the occasion demands. We have balance and we will get to the bottom of this…poltergeist haunting. And the spontaneous combustion fires. And who the guy in the green-and-yellow jockey silks is.”
“I never said the color of his clothes,” Ellen said. “How did you know that, Monty?”
I scratched my head. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember seeing him and that wouldn’t show up on our recording equipment. It’s inexplicable, for now.”
“I think I know what’s going on,” Ellen said. “Your sensitive skills are developing but you are only seeing spirits in your subconscious, not your consciousness. It’s like you see something fleeting out of the corner of your eye and you are not sure you really believe it, so you dismiss it consciously, but then your subconscious files away the memory anyway with all of the information.”
“Wow, so I really saw it and subconsciously blew it off?”
“Something like that. There’s a catch, though. If you don’t recall the image fairly quickly as a short-term memory, the bit of information may never pass to the long-term memory and it will be lost. I think it was a fluke that you even mentioned the color of the jockey silks, but it definitely came from what you saw.”
“Interesting,” I said. “But I prefer to stay the science guy of this team and leave the woo-woo to you.”
She smiled. “Whatever makes you comfortable.”
“What do I need to do?” Diego asked, as I saw another planned vacation turn into a ghost hunt, and now, specifically, a poltergeist hunt for some entity that liked to play with fire.
“We need a complete tour of the building,” Ellen said. “I know you meant to show us all of the other galleries in the building that belong to all of the co-op artists in your collective, but I want to see everything else, too: the workrooms, closets, storage rooms, basements, even the bathrooms. I even want you to open cabinets.”
“All right,” Diego agreed.
I said, “I have our Trifield meter, FLIR thermal imager, EMF spot thermometer, EVP recorder, infrared camera, night-vision goggles, and our newest piece of technology, a MEL-SDD Shadow Detection Device.” My anniversary present, I thought. “And more tools of the trade.”
“Ellen may be the emotional half of the team, but you’re a valuable technogeek,” Diego said, in an admiring way.
“Neither one of us could do this without the other,” Ellen said, and I loved the way she looked at me and included me when she talked to him, still establishing boundaries between herself and Diego. My heart was full of her. Sometimes, I think she was most beautiful when she was telling people how she couldn’t be a paranormal investigator without me.
“We have a big problem, Ellen,” I said, as I got a temperature reading of the wall.
“I already know,” she replied. “The ghosts aren’t cold. They’re hot!”
I nodded. “I’ve never seen anything like this!”
“We are in uncharted territory,” Ellen said. “Even for us.”
“You better bring a fire extinguisher on this tour,” I told Diego.
He nodded and pulled out a heavy box from under the desk where he kept his cash register. He called for the gallery intern to bring him a box cutter then sent him home for the rest of the day, speaking in Spanish.
“Hector’s already worked for hours today, getting everything staged because I told him you were coming to shop. I know he must be exhausted,” Diego explained.
It was pretty warm in the gallery now. Diego took off his suit jacket and necktie and undid a couple of buttons on his tailored shirt. Diego cut open the Amazon shipping box and removed several spray cans from the six-pack of Fire Gone AFFF Fire Extinguishers. When he bent over, I saw what he wore inside of his shirt: a silver crucifix with a rose in the center. It looked like a woman’s necklace. I looked away politely.
“Nice. A multipack,” I said and took one of the fire extinguishers. I shoved my can extinguisher in my man purse with my paranormal investigations equipment. Diego shoved one in his suit jacket pocket and carried the rest in the box.
“I need to take a couple of these to each floor to the artists in the co-op,” Diego said.
“Have they had spontaneous fires on the other floors, too?” Ellen asked.
“Minor ones. So far, every fire has been in the presence of a human who did not start it. It’s very alarming to my co-op artists and to me to have stuff bursting into flames for no reason that we can ascertain. I have an investment in this building which I bought for cash on a short sale and of course, all of my art is here. My entire oeuvre! They have all of their art, too, and some of them are even using arts grants for their materials and to pay their small leases for the studio and gallery space to me.”
Suddenly, all the lights went out, we heard screams through the ductwork, and I smelled smoke like burnt match heads.
“Madre de Dios!” Diego whispered.
And then I smelled it, too. That scent like burnt match heads. Ellen and I said it at the same time: “Ghost fire.”
Chapter Six
Diego said, “Oh no! Not this again!”
We stood in the dark and I grabbed Ellen’s hand with one hand and a penlight from my man purse in the other. I clicked it on.
“You’re such a good Boy Scout,” Ellen said, squeezing my hand. “Always prepared.”
“That’s my job,” I said.
Diego had a pen light in his pocket. “First thing to do is get the lights back on. Follow me downstairs to the basement and I’ll get the breaker reset.”
“I guess that’s where we start the tour of the building,” Ellen said and squeezed my hand. I squeezed hers back.
“Why do I get the feeling that bad things always happen in a basement?” I said to Ellen, as we followed him down to the first floor.
“It’s nothing we can’t handle,” Ellen said.
Then he opened a small closet-looking door and there were dark narrow stairs. I couldn’t see the bottom of the stairs.
Ellen said, “Wait!” Diego and I paused.
“What are we waiting for?” Diego asked.
“For it to leave the basement,” Ellen said, and shuddered.
“It? It! Do we even want to go down there?” I asked her.
“We probably need to, but wait until it finishes…feeding,” she replied. “Shine as much light as you can down the stairs.” Diego and I shined our pitiful flashlight beams down the stairwell.
She took a couple of deep breaths. “I’ll go first,” she said. My stomach was in knots. To my shame, I let her go down first. I should have walked point. I knew better.
The three of us went down a set of narrow steps to a sandy basement where our shoes seemed to squish on soft things. I tried not to imagine what they were. His penlight illuminated the breaker panel and then I added my light to his and he got the lights back on upstairs by re-setting the breaker switch. I heard it snap and then from upstairs, someone shouted, “Thank you!”
It smelled bad down there. Very bad. I could hear Ellen catch her breath and soon we were all breathing thro
ugh our mouths.
“Don’t freak out when the lights come on,” she said softly to us. I steeled myself. When Diego pulled a string from the ceiling and when the ceiling bulb came on, we stood in the center of an old utility room whose floor was littered with the bodies of dead dogs and cats. They all had bloody necks. The concrete walls had scratch marks that looked like claws, about eight feet high.
My mouth dropped open. “Oh, the poor pets! Should I set up my equipment?” I asked Ellen.
“Don’t bother. It’s gone from the room right now.”
“What is it?” Diego asked.
“It’s our shadow thing,” Ellen said. “But now I know what it is, just by the mess that’s left here.”
“Is it a vampire of some sort?” I asked.
“No!” Ellen gave me a sharp look. We had never encountered one vampire in all of our paranormal investigations. She looked at Diego. “Upstairs, in your gallery on the third floor, I saw some sort of taxidermied, mostly hairless creature with spines on its back, one that I didn’t recognize. It looked like sort of a cross between a wolverine and an opossum. Do you know what it is?”
Diego said, “I know what the seller told me it was when I bought it in Columbia and brought it back here, just as a morbid art curiosity for my gallery display where I have the Day of the Dead exhibit.”
“I’m not even going to ask how you got that disgusting thing through Customs,” I said to Diego. I turned to my wife. “What is that stuffed animal upstairs?” I asked Ellen. “Is it the same thing that killed these dogs and cats?”
She nodded. “What sucks blood, smells bad, and can stand on its hind legs and shred concrete walls with its claws? Say it with me, Diego,” she said.
Together, they said the word: “Chupacabra.”
After I caught my breath when I heard the word, I said, “Ellen, is the chupacabra spirit attached to the taxidermy animal?”
She shook her head. “Not any more. It’s been let loose and it’s become the big shadow thing that is tormenting that poor boy in the jockey silks.”
I scratched my head. “Who let the chupacabra out?” I asked.
Diego grimaced. “I bought it from a Santeria vendor of various charms and potions. He swore that it was a replica, not the real thing, but made from the skin of a capybara.”
“Well, it’s not a replica, and it’s sure not a capybara,” Ellen said. “But something released the animal spirit from the body in this gallery and now it’s preying on defenseless animals in the neighborhood. And took that jockey’s ghost a prisoner. To do its bidding.”
I set up the camera on the tripod. I also set up some audio equipment. “I’m going to take some video here in this room, after we leave it to see the rest of the building.”
Ellen nodded. “Wise idea.”
She looked at Diego. “We’ve known each other for a long time, Diego. What I am about to ask you might hurt your feelings, but I need an honest answer.”
Diego sighed. “Ask.”
“I know that you are a devout man. But have you been messing around with the spirit world, a world in which you have not had guidance to be messing around?”
He hesitated. “Yes. I have.”
“Well, that was bright,” I said. “What in the heck have you been doing that you would release the spirit of a chupacabra?”
Ellen glared at me for a second. “Don’t judge, Monty.”
“Sorry,” I said. “This is your area of expertise.”
“Diego? What did you do?” she asked gently.
“I’ve missed my wife so much,” he said. “So, I used some things that I thought were safe to try to contact her. I wanted to talk to her. Bring her back. I got some spells off the internet. Pink candles by mail order. And, crystal bowls of holy water into which I placed a lock of her hair. I didn’t even think it would work.”
I resisted the urge to do a face plant.
“Did you say anything special? Over and over?” Ellen asked him.
He nodded. “Do you want me to tell you what it was?”
“Oh my, no,” Ellen said. “Please don’t even think the words again.”
“I did something very wrong, didn’t I?” Diego asked.
“It’s never wrong to miss a loved one or want them back,” Ellen said. “But there are ways to go about such things without just doing it randomly.”
“Can you help me, Ellen?”
“Let me ponder for a little while of how to fix this situation while we do the tour of the rest of the place.”
After I was finished setting up the recording equipment, I told Ellen, “Should I help Diego remove the bodies of the animals down here? It seems so sad. People are going to be missing their pets.”
Ellen swallowed hard. “They need to stay here for right now. The chupacabra is going to come back here when we go upstairs. This is his den. Let’s see if we can get him on camera and on our shadow-sensing and audio equipment.”
“I’ve got a hot temperature reading, Ellen, on the south wall,” I said, when I checked my instruments. “It’s 80 degrees and rising.”
Ellen looked a little pale by the light of the single bulb. “He’s coming back. Let’s go upstairs and let the equipment do its job for a little while.”
We walked back up the stairs to the first floor and Diego locked in our equipment. He turned a key in the door and made his way to the co-op gallery on the first floor. “You said you wanted a complete tour of the gallery. I want you to meet Ezekiel and his entire family of artisans.”
He led the way to the door of the first floor gallery. There was a sign that read, “Dry Bones Artistry” and I said, “Hey, Ezekiel and Dry Bones. That’s a play on words, right? Like the song lyrics?”
Diego nodded. “Exactly,” and opened the door to the gallery. There seemed to be a bustle within, and I did catch a whiff of ghost fire, that burned match head smell that seemed to be the precursor to trouble. I probably would have been able to smell it better if my wife’s perfume wasn’t still so heady.
“Before we go in the Dry Bones gallery, I need to know this: Does the jockey go down there with the chupacabra in his den?” I asked Ellen.
“You don’t want to know,” she replied and brushed her bangs from her big blue eyes, which looked worried.
“I guess that’s my answer,” I replied. I squeezed her hand gently and we followed Diego into Dry Bones to meet Ezekiel, one of the co-op artists in the building.
Chapter Seven
There was sage burning in small bowls in the corners of the gallery. I laughed inwardly. Like that would stop a chupacabra. Not!
Ellen could barely stand to be in Ezekiel’s Dry Bones art gallery with its art and sculptures made up of bones of animals. Horses to be exact. It was killing her, my sweet animal lover, to first to see the remains of dogs and cats in the basement, and now, to watch a whole family decorating and painting horse skulls and arranging horse bones in different displays in shadow boxes and gluing them down. I knew she might not even be able to eat dinner if she let herself get twisted up too much about this.
Diego introduced us. “Ezekiel Gallegos, this is Ellen and Monty Drew, the couple I told you about. They really came for the art but they are staying for the paranormal investigation of our strange fires and other spiritual disturbances in the building.”
Ezekiel shook our hands and his was cool and initially struck me as somewhat unfriendly, but I would let Ellen judge him. When he shook hands with her, her face went a little pale and she said, “Pleased to meet you!” in a tight, formal way. I wondered what vibes Ellen was getting from him. She had a bit of a frowny brow going as she saw more and more of what they were doing in this first-floor gallery.
Ezekiel had his whole family, from kids to a grandmother in long gray braids, doing all kinds of stuff with the bones, painting designs on the skulls in a Southwestern style, and attaching feathers and suede strings. Even the kids were stringing the vertebrae on necklaces with shells and beads. Ezekiel himself wa
s a 3D sculpture artist, and the bones were his medium.
He walked past a sculpture that was a horse’s skull covered with thin sheets of copper that were green with patina. The skull had been made into a fountain, with a copper pipe protruding from it. It just didn’t strike me as a birdbath that birds would use. But I am not much of a judge of art. I know what I like when I see it.
“This is a custom piece,” Ezekiel was saying. “Right before the grand opening, we’ll set up the fountain in front to get people to walk in during First Friday.”
It was morbid to me, to make death of one of the earth’s most beautiful creatures into art, and yet I could not stop looking at the work tables in this gallery. Though I was utterly fascinated by the folk art and the primitive nature that looked very tribal and even reverential toward animals, I could not even imagine how Ellen didn’t jump out of her skin and scream. Now an entire room of horse death surrounded her and called itself art.
But my sweet lady, Ellen, was also a professional. We were on a paranormal investigation and part of the job is finding out stuff that you wish that you never knew existed. She was a pro at covering up her emotion to everyone but me. Only I knew that she was quite disturbed by the art in the room.
With her voice trembling only a bit, she politely said to Ezekiel, “So, your artwork is very interesting.” And when I heard Ellen use the word “interesting” in that manner, she usually used it in a way that meant “appalling.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Decorating the skulls of horses and goats has been a family craft, passed down from my grandparents and my great-grandparents. We also make antler art and carve items from horns and hooves. Right now, we are getting the horse skulls ready for the gallery opening in just a couple of days because those sell really well and for a lot. It is a cultural tradition and one that is deeply ingrained in our roots to create art from natural materials but it is also the way that my family supports itself in the recession.”
I looked at some of the skulls on the work table. They were in varying shades of cleanliness, some of which still seemed to have flesh attached.
