by B. C. Sirrom
No Such Thing
By S.J. Bell
I disliked Jonathon Crawford immediately. He was the kind of New York hipster who was completely insufferable to anyone outside his social circle. If you wanted something from him, your best course of action was to relentlessly kiss his pretentious, materialistic ass. If not, your instinctive response to his presence would be a nearly-irresistible desire to punch him in the face. Between his Buddy Holly glasses, Harry Potter scarf, mismatched clothes, corduroy jacket, and a head of hair meticulously coiffed to convey the impression that he hadn't spent any time at all preparing it, the smugness and disdain was palpable.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn’t just the care that Crawford put into his appearance which bugged me. My boss Gerald was also very concerned about how he presented himself. He could spend half an hour in the morning preening over his thick black hair and goatee, and he wore suits all the time. Although he didn't look a day over thirty, he was a product of the early Victorian era, and looked the part. Looked it almost too well, in fact. One of the reasons the patriarch had apprenticed me to Gerald was the hope that I could help him to stand out less.
But Gerald, despite some rough edges, had respect for others. Mr. Crawford, by contrast, was the type of person who was totally and utterly convinced that he was just plain better than everyone else. Arrogance rolled off him as a thick and heavy miasma, like stench rolls off of garbage.
I was glad that I didn't have to talk to him. Being merely an assistant, I could hide behind my computer and play Minesweeper while listening in and controlling my baser urges.
"So, uh…," Crawford said, "paranormal investigations, right?"
Gerald nodded. It said as much on the door.
"That means you investigate hauntings?"
"Among other things," Gerald said. "Do you believe you are being haunted?"
"Well, not me specifically, but yeah, my building's haunted. I think. Melanie thought it might be something about dimension vortexes or something. I think she was high at the time, she's a great girl, but she thinks it's still the six-"
"Sir? The facts?"
Crawford blinked, not used to being interrupted. "Uh, right, right. Well, I own an apartment building over in Williamsburg. It was my grandfather's, see, and when I inherited it, is was a run-down place with only a few tenants. I had a little money, and a few friends who liked the area, so I kicked the old tenants out, renovated the place, and turned it into a co-op. It's a great place to live. Well, it was until the rich pricks started moving into the neighborhood..."
"The haunting, sir?” Gerald asked.
Crawford frowned. "I was getting to that. It started a while back, maybe… sixth months or so? At first it was simple things. Dreams, mostly."
"Dreams?"
"Yeah, really freaky ones. Melanie had them first, so of course we all think 'Okay, Melanie's been hitting the weed a little hard lately.' But then Karl and Abby started getting the same dreams. Woke them up in the middle of the night, sweating."
"Well, Mr. Crawford, bad dreams are not necessarily indicative of a haunting. Was Melanie vocal about these nightmares?"
Crawford nodded knowingly. "I know what you're thinking, man. Power of suggestion. Mass conversion hysteria. I thought the same thing. Thing is, it didn't stop. It got worse. Then just about five weeks ago, they stopped being dreams."
"What do you mean, stopped being dreams?"
"I mean we started seeing things when we were wide awake. Like, hallucinating. Freaky as all hell, man. We'd be, like, hanging out in our living rooms or something, just chilling, and all of a sudden we'd see shit that wasn't there."
"Hmm. What was the content of these dreams and visions?"
"Well, we'd be in our homes, doing whatever, or going about our business. Something normal, basically. When they were waking visions, it usually segues right in from whatever we were actually doing at the time. It starts with a feeling of… disquiet, I guess you could call it. Like something's off. Something that we couldn't place wasn't quite right." He snapped his fingers. "You know, like when you get the sudden sense that someone's behind you?"
Gerald nodded. "Go on."
"Well, we'd be feeling that, and then we'd look around and see we were alone. Then we'd see her."
"Who?"
"The ghost. She's a young girl, late teens, ratty hair, ratty clothes, like a homeless person. Crazy look in her eyes. You see her, and then she comes at you screaming gibberish, and once she touches you… you snap out of it, screaming in terror."
"Hmm. Has this happened to you personally?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Freaky shit, man."
Gerald slouched pensively in his chair. "I see. And the experiences of the others are the same?"
"Pretty much."
"Any chance it could be an environmental factor? Some kind of toxin?"
Crawford gave a cocky smile. "I know what you're talking about, man. No, that ain't it. We told Melanie to take her vices up to the garden. We got a garden up on the roof, you see, with sculptures and everything. Pride of the building. It's awesome."
"Well, maybe something in the walls? In the water?"
Crawford shook his head. "God, I hope not."
"You haven't checked?"
"I'd have to tear the place apart! I've already done that once before. If it is a haunting, then all I need to do is get it exorcised or whatever."
Gerald pursed his lips tightly, a gesture I was familiar with. He used it when he wanted to scowl at a client but didn't want to chase him away. "Well, this is an unusual case, Mr. Crawford. If you don't mind, I'd like to come by your building and see it for myself."
They scheduled an appointment for tomorrow before shaking hands and saying farewell. As the door closed behind Crawford, Gerald turned to me.
"Your assessment of the client, Mr. Thompson?"
"I want to bludgeon him to death with his own ego," I said. "Wouldn't take long, it's very heavy."
Gerald chuckled. "I can see where that impulse comes from, but be serious."
"Seriously? Narcissistic, arrogant, egotistical…"
"All of which mean generally the same thing. His pride is significant, Kyle, but not all there is to him. Look deeper."
I leaned back in my chair. "Well, he's materialistic, for one. Very concerned with appearances and possessions. If he had enough personal funds to renovate an apartment building, he probably comes from money. He takes a lot of interest in looking good. Maybe an inferiority complex or something. Desperate not to appear pathetic. A lot less smart than he thinks he is. He said 'mass conversion hysteria,' for example. Seems genuinely concerned about this haunting, though. Do you think it's a haunting?"
Gerald shook his head. "There is no such thing as ghosts."
I blinked. "That's… resolute, coming from a two-hundred year-old vampire."
"It is exactly because I am a two-hundred year-old vampire that I can speak with confidence on the matter. There is no such thing as ghosts. Banshees, werewolves, Greek sirens, nearly ninety percent of what you've heard about has some basis in fact, but no ghosts. I've been investigating incidents like these on the patriarch's behalf for the better portion of those two hundred years, and I have never seen anything to suggest that the spirits of the dead linger in the world of the living. Most of the hauntings I've looked at are the product of creaky old houses, superstitious minds, or guilty consciences."
"And you think that's what's going on here?"
"No, not in this case. It's possible, but if Mr. Crawford's description was accurate, it fits the profile of another sort of supernatural happening. Something that I know for sure exists."
"You have a theory?", I asked.
"It's a psychic. She -- or he -- is projecting these hallucinations through telepathic contact."
"For what purpose?"
"Possibly she's unstable. The human mind has a natural tendency to keep to itself, so mo
st psychics instinctively repress their abilities. Many live their entire lives without even realizing they have powers. The progression of these incidents -- first dreams, than waking visions -- suggests a deterioration of control over her abilities. But there's another possibility, one which necessitates caution: this could be an act of deliberate malice on her part. You did a good job assessing Mr. Crawford, but you must also learn to extrapolate. Between his narcissism, his wealth, and his lack of intellectual mettle, he's likely to have a very poor grasp of the consequences of his actions. There's a good chance that this psychic was wronged by him in some way, and desires revenge. Or she could be doing it for profit. Scare away the tenants to ruin his business and force him to sell the place."
I narrowed my eyes skeptically. "The old Scooby-Doo plot? I don't know, Gerald. Wouldn't that have people flocking to the place?"
"Tourists, yes, but not tenants. Visiting a mysterious place and living there are two entirely different things. In any event, we shall wait until we investigate the building itself before drawing conclusions. Bring your tazer tomorrow; we may need it if we catch the culprit red-handed." He picked up the phone on his desk and started dialing.
"Who are you calling?," I asked
"A friend of mine who may be of assistance."
Gerald's friend was a woman. We met up with her the next day, just outside the Bedford Avenue subway station. She looked about forty, and her waist-length brown hair was beginning to gray, but nevertheless she was strikingly attractive. If Olivia and I weren't so happy together, I might have asked her out. She wore a simple green sundress with an earthy pattern and a hairclip made of a felted flower. The flower was, I thought, a bit much. But it worked. Gerald introduced her as Vivian Willoway. She was a psychic herself.
Gerald also introduced her companion, a rugged-looking man of around thirty with stubble, a square jaw, and muscular, working-class hands. He wore a leather jacket over a t-shirt and jeans and glared silently at us from behind dark glasses. Gerald introduced him as Gavin Brown, adding that he had not been expected to join us.
"Viv asked me along," Gavin explained in a thick Australian accent.
"Your talents should not be necessary in this matter," Gerald replied.
"Well, probably not, but I just happened to be in town today, I had nothing to do, and I figured, well why not? Another pair of eyes can't hurt."
From the way Vivian smiled as she leaned back against him, and the way Gavin's large hand held her so lightly by the waist, I guessed that there was another reason she asked him to join us. Gerald obviously figured the same, and he scowled.
"Oh, there's that look again," Gavin said tiredly. "Honestly, Gerald, do you always have to be such a grump?"
"This is business, not an event to which dates are brought."
Gavin clicked his tongue dismissively. "A more sour man I've never known." He looked past Gerald to me. "And this would be the new assistant you mentioned?"
"Uh, yes." I nodded, and somewhat nervously shook his hand. "Kyle Thompson, nice to meet you."
Gavin nodded.
"If you don't mind me asking, sir…," I continued, "what is it that you do?"
He smiled a large, intimidating smile. The smile of a jungle cat about to pounce on its unsuspecting prey. "Troubleshooting."
I blinked. "Troubleshooting."
He nodded in a slow and vaguely menacing manner.
"And, uh… what kind of trouble do you shoot, exactly?"
His serious expression broke as he laughed. Vivian snickered while covering her mouth and elbowing him. Even Gerald nearly cracked a smile. I flushed red with embarrassment.
"Forgive him, Kyle," Gerald said, "he likes to play these childish games with new acquaintances. Mr. Brown is a kind of freelance consultant. He travels around fixing anomalies for a variety of well-informed clients."
"Anomalies?"
Gavin launched into a short, cocktail-party elaboration of his job. "Every once in a while, you find stuff that's weird even by paranormal standards. Things that violate the laws of the universe. Not just the average, everyday laws, but the unabridged rulebook that also incorporates vampires, psychics, and the like. Knots in the fabric of reality, you might say. I've got a particular talent that lets me see these knots. And, when necessary, I can untie them."
"A talent which, while useful, shall not be necessary in this case," Gerald added. "As I told Ms. Willoway, I am convinced we are dealing with a psychic here."
"Well, friend," Gavin retorted, "you've been convinced of things before, only to learn you were wrong. Who knows what we might find?"
Gerald frowned.
"Come on, Gerald," Gavin said, "I offered to take Viv out today, and you know how hectic my schedule can get."
Gerald shook his head, but saw that it would take more time to get rid of Gavin than it was worth. "Fine," he conceded. "Our client's house is just down the block."
Gerald led the way down Bedford Avenue, and the rest of us followed at a few steps distance. Beside me, Gavin whispered to Vivian. "Must he always be so caustic?"
Vivian gently nudged him in the ribs. "Hush, Gavin. He's an old man, and he's world-weary."
"A curmudgeonly old fart is what he is. No patience for a young man who wants to spend time with his love."
Gerald wheeled around. "Do you have something that you'd like to say to my face, Mr. Brown?"
Not fazed at all to find Gerald suddenly in his face, Gavin shrugged. "Merely that you had done such a marvelous job insulating yourself from the petty distractions of life. Things like, you know, pleasure, happiness, a little May-September romance…"
"May-December," Vivian corrected him.
"You're not Decembrish yet, love."
She laughed delicately, which only seemed to make Gerald's answering glare more intense.
"Mr. Brown, if you must tag along, please at least try to take this seriously. This is…,"
"Business," Gavin said with a tired sigh. "Yes, yes, I know. Don't worry, Gerald, I'm wearing my professionalism on my sleeve."
"Then pull it from your sleeve and pin it to your lapel, because we're here."
He gestured to a small, five-floor building, walls painted fairly recently. A small stoop led up to a solid wood door.
"Vivian?", Gerald asked expectantly.
Vivian knit her brows in concentration. "There's a psychic presence here, certainly, but… it's strange."
"Strange how?", Gerald prodded.
"It feels distant, somehow. Normally, a rampant psychic will project some kind of an impression through the general area. If she smells apple pie, for example, everyone feels a bit of a craving for apples. I feel a presence here, but I'm getting no impression."
"Like she's asleep, perhaps?", I volunteered.
"No, I don't think so. When you're asleep, your body is still aware. That's why a loud noise or a rude shove can wake you up. This is… it's like she can't feel anything. Like she's… disembodied. Like a ghost."
Gerald shook his head. "There is no such thing."
"How do you know if you've never seen one?", Gavin quipped.
Vivian squeezed his hand. "Gavin, please, don't antagonize him."
Gerald ignored Gavin's interruption. "Very well, let us see if a look inside clears up the matter." He climbed the steps and rang the doorbell. After some talk back and forth through the intercom, the door swung open and Crawford appeared. He wore an outfit at once completely different and exactly the same as the one he had worn yesterday, except for having changed the corduroy jacket for a grey hoodie. A black line across the hoodie's midsection had been twisted into cursive letters forming a sentence: life is good. Crawford frowned slightly as Gerald introduced everyone.
Crawford leaned in close and whispered to Gerald. "This isn't, uh, going to cost me anything extra, is it?"
"Of course not," Gerald said aloud. "Miss Willoway consults with me on cases like this
out of personal interest."
In truth, her fee was probably paid by the patriarch, the city's head vampire. He was the one who backed Gerald's paranormal investigation business, and we reported to him on all our cases. Detective work was just a way for us to keep him informed of supernatural goings-on around the city.
"Oh, well that's okay, then!", Crawford said cheerfully. "Come inside. You like the place? I do. Very bohemian, very intimate."
A look around the foyer revealed narrow corridors, clean but rather unremarkable. "Indeed," Gerald said. "If you don't mind, may I see where the apparitions have been occurring?"
"Everywhere, man. That ghost's all over the place."
"Well, is it more intense in any one place? Maybe here on the ground?"
"The opposite, actually. They started up top, up on the fifth-floor walkups."
Gerald raised his eyebrows. "Upstairs?"
"They've been working their way down."
Gerald and Vivian exchanged glances. Gerald's working theory had been a homeless person who happened to be a psychic camping out somewhere in the area, but it was unlikely that one would have taken up residence on the fifth floor.
"Are there any vacant apartments on that floor?", he asked
"Yeah. Karl and Abby moved out," Crawford responded.
"Were there any before the incidents started?"
"Nope."
Gerald grimaced. "Hmm. May I see the fifth floor apartments?"
"Sure thing, man. Anything to get this thing dealt with. Come on, elevator's right over here."
I raised an eyebrow. "Um, elevator?"
"Yeah," Crawford said. "What's the matter, you claustrophobic? Because I got a friend who knows this…"
"No, it's not that. Just… you said it was a walkup?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "So?"
"Uh… how can it be a walkup if you don't have to…"
"Thank you, Mr. Thompson," Gerald cut in with some irritation. "If you will lead the way, Mr. Crawford?"
During the elevator ride up, the four of us nodded politely while Crawford enthused about the building and its history. We'd heard the short version already: It had belonged to his grandfather, who was something of a real estate magnate in the city. When gramps died, Crawford inherited the building, renovated it, and turned it into one of the most exclusive buildings in the city (according to him). Membership was by invitation only. "We're more of a commune than an apartment building," he said. "Really tight-knit."
He led us to an apartment, presumably the one that belonged to Karl and Abby before they moved out. They had taken most of their things with them, and what remained was aggressively bohemian. Bare brick walls and exposed pipes were balanced out by large, luxurious windows on the south wall and track lighting. The extensive floor space was covered by a carpet, which a housekeeper was vacuuming. Crawford quickly shooed her out -- with some difficulty, as she didn't speak English -- and made apologies to us. I noticed that Vivian kept her eyes locked on the cleaning woman as she walked out the door, and that Gerald, despite ostensibly listening to Crawford, watched Vivian carefully for her reaction. Eventually, she turned to Gerald and shook her head no. Crawford, meanwhile, babbled on about the apartments until Gerald, mercifully, raised his hand to cut the younger man off. "Ms. Willoway?", Gerald asked. "What does your sixth sense tell you?"
"There is something here. Close by, too, but… again, I can't get a clear impression." She started to pace around the room, slowly, head down and eyes closed. It occurred to me that she was playing some kind of telepathic version of Marco Polo; tracking when the impressions were strong versus when they were weak. "It's alternating strong and weak, which makes it hard to track by intensity. And what I can hear doesn't make sense."
"Whoa," Crawford said. "Is she, like, psychic? For real?"
Gerald waved him off and focused on Vivian. "Can you connect with her?"
Vivian knit her brows in concentration for a minute, then threw up her hands. "I'm sorry, Gerald, it's too weak and indistinct. But it is stronger up here than it was on the ground floor."
Gerald frowned. "Hmm. Mr. Crawford, would it be possible to speak to the other tenants?"
Crawford agreed and we spent the next two hours going around to all the different apartments in the building, being introduced to the tenants. It was almost physically painful: a virtual menagerie of upper-class idiots masquerading as working-class scroungers. One was a man with a scruffy beard and mismatched designer-label clothes who claimed to be a film buff, but derided everything we brought up to him as "corporate" and "Hollywood". Another was a woman dressed in rose glasses and a faux Native American headband out of the 1960's, presumably Melanie. She took a shine to Vivian immediately, and babbled about fashion and metaphysics for fifteen minutes in a very high and fast voice while Vivian patiently nodded and smiled. A third seemed to take pride in his ratty, thrift-store clothes and cheap décor, but also had a brand-new smart phone and very expensive looking entertainment center, not seeming to notice the paradox. Everyone wanted to talk about some new band that none of us had heard about. Never mind the haunting. This building was suffering from a much more disgusting infestation.
At each stop, the routine was the same. We would be introduced and Gerald would interview the tenants about the haunting. Meanwhile, Vivian scanned the room, and Gavin also wandered about, touching nothing but examining everything. In the end, Vivian would shake her head, Gavin would shrug, and we would move on to the next. We went through the fifth floor, and then the fourth, and so on and so on down the building, each step seeming to take us not only further into the belly of this hell-beast, but further away from any answers. Vivian confirmed that the impressions were stronger on the upper levels, but we kept going down because there was nowhere else to go.
Finally, we would up on the ground floor, in Crawford's apartment, tired and frustrated and bereft of anything pointing towards a solution, or even a workable theory. We stood around, nobody saying anything, the silence and lingering sense of our failure violently oppressive.
Eventually, I had to speak up, just to have some sound in the room. "Maybe it's a ghost after all?"
"There is no such thing," Gerald said impatiently.
"Your assistant has a point, Gerald," Gavin said. "We haven't uncovered any possible cause. Maybe it's time to think outside the box?"
"It's a psychic," Gerald insisted. "A rampant psychic is the only explanation that accounts for all the phenomena."
"But it doesn't," Vivian said. "The lack of a clear signature, the inability to form a connection, not to mention…,"
"There is no such thing as ghosts," Gerald repeated. "It's a psychic."
"Maybe it's a psychic ghost?", I offered.
Gerald threw me a scowl intense enough to melt through steel. I sighed, turning to Crawford. "Mind if I get a drink of water?"
"Be my guest."
I wandered over into the kitchen area, while in the main room Gerald argued with Vivian and Gavin. He repeated, over and over like a mantra, that there was no such thing as ghosts. But that argument was less and less convincing as an alternate explanation failed to present itself. I took a glass from the cabinets above the sink and glanced over my shoulder, thinking Crawford had followed me in. But he was out in the room, watching the argument. I tried to zone out the increasingly-loud voices as I filled the glass in the sink.
Halfway through my drink, I realized abruptly that the voices had stopped. I stuck my neck out of the kitchen, expecting to find the others standing around in helpless silence. Instead, I saw the room abandoned. I blinked. How had they cleared out so fast? I looked one way, and then another, and as my gaze swung back I found that the furnishings of the room had vanished. I stepped forward, nervously, into the now impossibly bare room. Something was very, very wrong here. I felt it suddenly, the vague sense that someone was behind me, watching me.
I turned around, an
d there she was.
She was a teenage girl, with olive skin, blue eyes, and long, disheveled brown hair, wrapped up in the ratty clothes of the lowest of the underclass. She stared off into space, lips moving silently, muttering to herself as if insane. I almost called out to her, but at the same time, I worried what would happen if she noticed me. So I stood there, watching with trepidation as she turned her head slowly, slowly, until she was looking right into my eyes.
Galvanized by that penetrating stare, I dropped the glass in my hand and pulled out my tazer. "Gerald!", I yelled, unsure if he could hear me, or even if he was there. The girl's lips moved and she spoke to me, but I understood nothing. To my ears, it was a stream of wild, nonsensical babbling. She stepped towards me, and I took a terrified step back. "Stay back!", I yelled. "Back!" She didn't listen, and took another step, and then another, and two almost at once, crossing the distance between us faster than should be possible. I squeezed the trigger, but the tazer darts passed right through her. Panicked, I turned to run and found her right in front of me, inescapable. She flew at me as if she had wings on her feet. With no escape, I threw up my arms to protect myself…
Inexplicably, she fell two feet short as I stumbled backwards into a pair of warm, comforting arms. "Don't be afraid!", a voice, soft but firm, whispered in my ear.
"Vivian?", I asked. "What is… what's going…?"
"Shhhhhh," she said soothingly. "Calm down, Kyle, calm down. That woman, whoever she is, is the cause of all this. She's trying to make a telepathic link."
The girl was still yelling at me. But when I listened carefully, I realized that it wasn't the nonsense that I first thought. It was language. I didn't know what language, and so I couldn't understand a word of it. But it was very clearly made up of words and phrases. She was trying to communicate, not scare me. Trying desperately, in fact.
"And what are you doing?", I asked Vivian.
"Keeping her away, for now. I need you to calm down. The mind has a natural defense against telepathic invasion. If it triggers, you'll be cut off completely from psychic contact."
"Sounds good to me, the last thing I need is to tangle with…"
"No. I need you to keep this channel open. I need you to make contact."
"Why the hell should I do that?"
"So that I can connect with her through you. It's our only chance to learn what's going on here."
I swallowed hard. Closing my eyes, I breathed slowly in and out, trying to calm down. My heart was pounding in my chest, but as I focused it slowed to a normal level. "Alright," I said. "But stay with me."
With Vivian keeping hold of me, I reached out to the young woman, who still stood mere feet away, yelling words that I didn't understand. She jumped at me, seizing my forearm in both hands. As she did, a flash of emotion filled my consciousness. It was a thousand thoughts and feelings at once, most of them painful, at an intensity that almost floored me. It lasted a fraction of a moment before Vivian pushed her away again. I barely kept it together.
"She's trying to make a complete merge," Vivian explained. "Pouring all her emotions and memories into your mind at once."
"Why?", I asked
"It may be the only use she knows for her abilities. Try again, I'll filter it as best I can."
Again, the girl ran at me. Somehow, Vivian ensured that she didn't reach us, but instead kept running in place. She remained within arm's length, though, so with trepidation I reached out and took hold of her hand.
Even with Vivian in control, it was overwhelming. A barrage of images flew through my head, the entirety of a woman's life as seen through her eyes. A man -- father? -- beating her with his fists. The same man, twisting her arm until it broke. Her injuries were tended to by an older woman, herself bruised and battered. Dim and almost forgotten, a song -- sung by the older woman without moving her lips. Mother was loving, but sick. She heard voices, took pills to keep them quiet. But when she did, she lived in a haze. Father was with the mob, dealing in drugs. To him, mother was a convenient fuck-toy. Her daughter -- their daughter -- was a nuisance. She was sixteen when she found mother swinging from a noose in the bedroom. Fearful of what would happen when father got home, she stuffed some things in a backpack and escaped.
The streets of a busy city, filthy and stinking. Freedom, but nowhere to go. A shelter for the night. Her backpack gone in the morning, stolen by a bunkmate -- a hard beginning to a hard life. New clothes from some charity outfit. A cardboard box behind a dumpster for a home. She smells of trash constantly. Hunger. Naïve, she had never expected the hunger. But what could she do? Go back to father? Never. So she scrounges for food in garbage cans, dives in fountains for change left by stupid tourists to whom everything is a wishing well. Sometimes she tries her hand at picking pockets or purse-snatching. Rarely successful, these criminal ventures often lead to running from the police, or a beating at the hands of wronged would-be victims.
One day, a windfall: a large bill found on the sidewalk. A good meal for once, from a food stand owner that wrinkles his nose at her unwashed body. She eats in privacy near her new home. A mistake; she should have eaten in public. As is, she barely gets two bites before the smell attracts a fellow transient. He beats her. Brutally and viciously, the beating of a desperate man. Her change and her leftovers are stolen. And also, as she lies helpless, her virginity. It's an afterthought on his part, but she can't fight back, so why not? Flesh has many needs, and a man with nothing satisfies them when he can. He leaves her broken, and vanishes into the streets.
It's the only time she's raped, but what happens when the hunger overwhelms her doesn't feel much different. A shelter provides a shower, soap to wash off the unappetizing stink of the streets. Shoplift some perfume. Lay it on thick to cover what smell remains. New clothes from the charity, feminine and in fairly good repair. She looks reasonable. The true professionals snicker at her, but she has some waifish charm. Men with low standards -- or strange fixations -- exchange smiles with her. They opens their wallets to her the same way she opens her folds to them.
Then the man. The man she'll never be able to forget. Different from the others. Not slovenly or fat, but well-dressed and fashionable. Dark sunglasses hide his eyes, but not his smile. A friendly smile, she can't help returning it, but a wicked smile. Predatory. The smile alone sends shivers up her spine. She isn't selling, not today. But he offers a large bill, and then another, and promises of more, and she may keep her legs closed. Too good to be true. Something is very, very wrong. But the hunger is gnawing at her again. She goes with him.
Now the memories become frantic, recalling panic and palpable terror. A large room, empty but for some strange devices, their purpose unknown to her. Despite his promise, he strips off her clothes. Not roughly. First upon her clothes, then upon her flesh, his touch is soft and delicate. But it repulses her. Her skin crawls. He takes control of her body, pushing and pulling limbs as if she were a mannequin, contorting her until she is on her knees, begging. Then he orders her to look at him. That smile, sharp white teeth and the promise of violence, and then the dark glasses come off and my God, the eyes. Wicked, evil, wrong eyes. The devil's eyes. The eyes bore into her soul, make her breath catch in her throat. The eyes stop her heart, cut her spine and leave her paralyzed, the eyes so bright and baleful, the eyes full of darkness, the eyes, the eyes, the God-forsaken eyes!
There was a scream, a scream of horror and fear. Maybe hers, maybe mine, maybe both. For a second I was falling, and then I landed on a hard floor. I was in a cold sweat, and my breaths were fast and desperate. Gerald's face loomed over me, concerned and fearful for my safety. "Kyle?", he said. I didn't respond immediately. I couldn't find my voice. "Kyle, are you all right?"
I wasn't sure. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second before opening them again, and then tried to take stock of my situation. I was in Crawford's room, lying on the floor
, but propped up against something warm and breathing. Vivian. When I fell, she must have fallen with me. Gerald, I noticed for a second time, was in front of me. Crawford and Gavin stood behind him, Gavin stoic but obviously concerned and Crawford understandably freaked out. "Yeah," I said, in delayed response to Gerald's questioning. "Yeah, I think so." My tazer was still in hand, held by white-knuckled fingers. It had discharged into the wall. As I relaxed, it clattered to the ground, resting besides the shattered remains of a drinking glass. I was then uncomfortably aware that I was lying against Vivian's breasts right in front of her boyfriend, and quickly let Gerald help me to my feet. Vivian rose of her own accord, and in seconds Gavin was by her side. He moved to embrace her, but she did so for only a moment before pushing him away. "I'm fine," she said. "I've had worse." The wavering in her voice brought doubt to the truth in that. I took a few steps toward the couch and sank down onto it, my heart still racing. Safe, I reminded myself. Safe. Safe.
"What happened?", Gerald asked
Vivian and I both started talking at once, then we both stopped talking at once, then I yielded the floor to her with a casual gesture. As she recounted what we'd seen, I calmed myself and cast my eyes about the room. The spotless bare brick walls seemed even more offensive than before.
"I don't think she's from around here," Vivian opined when done relating our experience. "She spoke to us, but not in English."
"I wasn't aware telepathy had a language", I commented.
"It does and it doesn't. On a basic level, a ball is always a ball, but the language you learn in infancy determines what the ball means. That might be part of her problem: she's trying to communicate, but nobody can understand her. Telepaths react very poorly to being alone, that may be what's causing her to go rampant."
"The cleaning lady?", I suggested.
Vivian shook her head. "She thinks in Spanish. This girl sounds completely different."
"These memories you saw", Gerald asked, "Did any details jump out at you? Anything that might point to her identity?"
Vivian closed her eyes and focused. "I saw images of city streets and buildings, but not like New York. Very old, crumbling buildings. Some streets paved, others cobblestone. Eastern Europe, maybe Greece, but I can't be sure."
Gerald frowned, the mystery becoming at once more impenetrable and more desperate. "What about this man? You said he had… evil eyes?"
"I'm sorry, Gerald, I wish I understood it better than that, but I don't. Something about those eyes was terrifying to her, as if…," she trailed off.
"As if what?", Gerald insisted.
Vivian bit her lip nervously. "As if she knew they would be the last thing she ever saw."
We expected Gerald to repeat his mantra for us once again. But he didn't. Maybe he didn't want to seem like he was trivializing the situation, or maybe it was that he wasn't sure anymore. We had run bone-dry on ideas, and he paced back and forth, at a complete loss.
"This doesn't make sense," I said, thinking aloud. "I mean, I'm not really up on the subject, but don't ghosts typically haunt places close to where they lived or died? We're halfway around the world from both. And if she's not a ghost, then how did she get here? A homeless woman can't afford a plane ticket."
"Sex trafficking," Gavin said, more matter-of-factly than I liked. "The guy with the eyes took her. They might have her stashed in a basement somewhere around here…"
"If that were the case, I would be able to get a read on what she's seeing and hearing", Vivian said. "But she's feeling nothing, it's like she's comatose."
"The basement is just as ridiculous," Gerald added, "the impressions are stronger on the upper floors, she has to…,"
Gerald stopped short, both his words and his pacing. A look of sudden realization crossed his face, followed by a withdrawal into deep thought. "Vivian," he said finally. "These eyes, what did they look like?"
Vivian strained to recall. "Hazel. Very bright. Other than that, I don't know. She remembers what she felt more than…"
"And when he looked at her, what did she feel?"
"Incredible fear. Like she couldn't move for fright."
Gerald whirled on Crawford. "You said you had a garden on the roof of this building?"
Crawford nodded swiftly.
"Take us there."
The roof garden was really more like a large deck with planters. Thick, leafy bushes competed for space with bench seating along the edges, whereas the center held a patio table complete with umbrella and chairs. In some flowerpots in the corner, someone had made a half-hearted attempt to grow organic tomatoes. The corners of the roof were dominated by abstract sculptures, like you might find in the garden of a country mansion. I didn't have a lot of time to take it in, because mere seconds after entering, Vivian's voice cried out in a wavering tone. "Gavin!", she called. "Look!"
We followed Vivian's pointing finger to a sculpture in the corner. Unlike the others, which were geometric shapes meant to create an impression, this one was starkly realistic: a white marble statue of a young woman on her knees, naked and emaciated. She reached up as if pleading to some unseen individual, her face a mask of shock. Gavin's jaw dropped in disbelief. He removed his sunglasses, almost unable to believe his eyes. I couldn't believe mine either. "Oh, yeah, that's a nice one, isn't it?", said Crawford, apparently missing completely the horror in Vivian's voice and the paleness on Gavin's face. "It's expensive, too. Imported from Europe. But it's not really a good fit, we thought…,"
"And this has been around at least since the time the haunting started?", Gerald asked.
"Uh… yeah, come to think of it," Crawford said. Whoa, you mean you think the statue's haunted? I had no…,"
I practically yelled at this incompetent imbecile. "It looks exactly like the girl in the visions! How could you not notice it?!"
Crawford raised his hands defensively. "We never paid much attention to it, okay? I thought it would look good up here, but it creeps everyone out, so…,"
Gavin muttered a curse before shoving us aside and taking command of the situation. "Stand back, everyone."
I didn't quite follow what was happening. Gavin knelt in front of the statue, placing his hands on its shoulders. For a minute there was something imperceptible in the air, a strange indescribable tension, and then it was gone and the statue was alive. It happened literally in the blink of an eye. Like a cheaply-made TV show, the statue was stone one frame and a flesh-and-blood woman the next. Her muscles gave out and she tumbled to the ground, gasping for air. Then, with a great wail, she rolled into a fetal position and started weeping and babbling in her native tongue. Gavin stepped back as Vivian rushed forward, taking the girl into her arms and stroking her, shushing softly. Crawford stood aside, shocked into silence.
I remembered those eyes, those vile and godless eyes from this woman's memory, and my mind put together the puzzle Gerald had solved mere minutes before.
"There is no such thing as ghosts…," Gerald said from behind me.
I whirled around and finished his sentence. "But there is such a thing as a gorgon."
Technically, there wasn't such a thing as a gorgon, either, but that legend was rooted in truth. On occasion, as a result of one of the "knots" Gavin dealt with, a human being can develop unusual abilities. One such ability, a very rare one, was called the Basilisk's Eye. It allowed the user to change the physical nature of something by directing his gaze at it, often into a hard substance resembling marble. Gerald explained as much to me later, leaving out the details of how and why, which he said were unimportant. (Olivia confided still later that Gerald himself probably didn't understand them.)
One of those accidents of fate had apparently empowered the artist from whom Crawford had bought his statue. Crawford gave us the artist's name, and a quick look at his website confirmed him to be the same person Vivian and I had seen in the girl's memories. His website also listed quite a few o
riginal sculptures for sale, virtually all of them human subjects. The extent of the catalog made my skin crawl.
It was a brilliant scheme, if you were an amoral monster of a man. Why spend years in art school learning to sculpt a human being when you can use human beings as material instead? If he were careful enough, he might even have gotten away with it, too. The police might notice similarities between statues and victims, but what police detective would ever suspect magical petrifaction?
But this artist had been undone by something he never could have foreseen: he made one of his pieces out of a girl with latent telepathic abilities. Trapped in stasis, a consciousness in an unseeing, unhearing body, she reached out with an ability that she didn't even know she had. But by the time she was strong enough to actually make contact with someone, she was halfway across the world, in a country where few thought in her language, and nearly insane from the isolation. So she became desperate, and shouted with the entirety of her consciousness at anyone she could find. This turned her communications into an overwhelming white noise which ensured people wouldn't be able to understand her. She was terribly lucky that Gerald was called in, and thought to bring Vivian with him.
The case was solved, but the clean-up had just started. For nearly an hour we were up on that roof where Gerald and Gavin, on a conference call with the patriarch, tried to work out where we went from here. Crawford was shooed away to his apartment, ordered to speak to nobody about any of this until we had a chance to talk to him about it in detail. Before leaving, he gave the girl his hoodie to cover herself. Probably this was also some small effort at redemption. Vivian huddled together with the girl on one of the benches. Neither spoke the other's language, but Vivian's firm but soft embrace and tender stroking of the girls' hair spoke in a universal tongue. I sat aside, waiting for someone to order me to do something. I wished I could be more active, but this was way out of my depth.
Finally, Gerald and Gavin put their phones away. Gavin walked over to Vivian and brushed her cheek gently. "Sorry, love, but it looks like I'm going to have to cancel our dinner. The patriarch wants me on the next flight out." He shook his head sadly. "This is a right mess, I'll tell you. I'll probably be traipsing about for months tracking down this loony's victims."
She just took his hand and squeezed it, a silent gesture of understanding. "Call me when you can."
Gavin grinned wryly. "You'll be in my thoughts. Always."
Vivian smiled warmly. Gavin gave her a quick peck on the lips, than came over to shake hands with Gerald and I. "I owe you an apology, Mr. Brown," Gerald said. "It turns out your assistance was very much necessary today."
"Think nothing of it, Gerald," he replied. "I sure as hell didn't see this one coming. Kyle? Stick with this guy. He's a big grump, but he's damn clever. You'll learn a lot from him." Then Gavin turned and left through the door leading downstairs.
"So what happens to her?", asked Vivian.
"We'll figure out where she's from, then the patriarch will arrange for her to return home," Gerald said.
Vivian frowned. "Home to what? An abusive father, or the life of a homeless runaway?"
"They have social services in Europe, Ms. Willoway. These matters will be…,"
"Yes, and for all we know they're underfunded and corrupt, and in any case there's no way for them to deal with a burgeoning psychic…"
"Have you a better idea?"
"I'll take care of her."
Gerald rubbed his forehead, feeling an impending headache. "I share your sympathies, Vivian, but she is not some stray cat that…,"
"Kai can work it out somehow."
"Kai is going to have to alter the memories of everyone in this building, and then the patriarch is going to want him off to Europe to assist Gavin. There's no possible…" Gerald never finished that sentence. The steely look in Vivian's eyes told him she wouldn't be budging. Finally, he sighed. "The patriarch wants her returned. Provide her some clothes and a meal and a bed for the night, and if you have a problem take it up with the patriarch in the morning. Kyle?"
I rose to my feet as Gerald turned to me.
"Take the rest of the day off. There's no reason for you to stay here. After Kai and I get done, the patriarch is going to want a detailed report and… well, like Gavin said, it's a mess, and you'll just be underfoot. Go home. Spend some time with Olivia."
Disinclined to argue, I nodded. "I have to say," I told him, "I never saw this one coming, either. I would have guessed ghosts well before gorgons."
"I do not say that there is no such thing as ghosts simply because I have no evidence of them, Kyle. I say it because the idea doesn't make sense. Suffering and pain are the province of the living, not the dead. They are commodities that we create from ignorance and consume in powerlessness." He cast a long, sad glance at the young girl who had so recently been Crawford's ornament. I followed Gerald's eyes and noted again the cursive writing on the front of Crawford's hoodie: life is good. Seeing it on her was an irony Crawford and his people would not appreciate, I thought. Or maybe it wasn't irony at all. Curled up against an older woman stroking her hair, it seemed to my eyes that she was just beginning to realize she was anything but utterly alone in the world.
Gerald spoke again. "Go home to Olivia, Kyle. When you reach my age, you will realize that life is too short to waste, and too long to be endured."
About S. J. Bell
Into the Burning
By Charlotte Dhark
Ava Drake has had a lot of chaos in her life. Losing her adoptive parents, banishment from her shapeshifter clan because she refused to give up her mixed race child, and most recently, finding out that her two year old daughter is manifesting gifts that haven’t been seen in over 100 years.
