Wraith

by Phaedra Weldon

  Tim wasn’t letting this one go. “Soon you can graduate into contractions, and maybe even conjunctions.”

  Rhonda looked up from the book. “Tim, if you weren’t already dead, it’d be so easy to snap off your—”

  “Girls, girls,” Steve said calmly, as Nona turned the page of the newspaper for him. He was perfectly capable of manipulating a page in the newspaper (remember when I said I thought ghosts that could manipulate the physical world had an edge up on things? Well, think about how irritated I was sitting there watching him not use that ability)—it was just that Mom liked doing it. “You’re both pretty. Now get along.”

  “Wait, back up a bit.” I frowned at Rhonda. “Abysmal plane? Whazzat?”

  I saw the joy brighten her face, plump up and actually color her cheeks. She looked like a goth chick high on blood. “It’s such a recent theory that not many parapsychologists even know about it yet.”

  “And?” My arm ached again. I kept it under the table and rubbed it as Rhonda spoke. It felt warm through the bandage.

  “Well, we all know about the three bodies. The physical, the mental, and the astral.”

  I nodded. Yeah, basic metaphysics. Not something that’s taught in public school, but if you live with Nona…

  “The physical is the living anchor to life, it’s where the soul sets up house for a period of time to learn. The mental is where the subconscious and conscious connect and where sometimes there’s a connection between it and the physical planes. Like with me and Nona. We use thoughts as living things.”

  Uh-huh. Yeah. Right. I’ll get back to you two on that one.

  “Then there’s the astral, where your”—she nodded to me—“barriers, so to speak, are weakest. Meaning using the mental plane, you can move your astral body from the physical body and move about the physical plane without your physical body. Which is why I first called you a Traveler.”

  Not true. I first called me a Traveler—after she said I traveled. Hiss.

  I nodded. “Okay—review time over. What is the Abysmal?”

  “Well, you know where Tim and Steve reside, right? On the Ethereal, outside the astral. That’s where ghosts, spirits, Shades, angels, etc., live. Well, the theory is that the Ethereal has a counterpart called the Abysmal. For lack of a better analogy, think of Heaven and Hell. Heaven being the Ethereal and the Abysmal—”

  “Being Hell.” I arched an eyebrow. Lovely.

  “Yeah. Kinda. That’s where the darker entities in this form reside. Phantasms, chimeras, Wraiths, bogeymen, phantoms—they stay there.” She glanced at each person sitting at the table.

  Okay, she had my attention.

  Steve spoke. “So why is it that you on the physical, can see us on the Ethereal?”

  “Same reason Zoë here can travel back and forth. Weak barriers. Either through strong wills, like yours and Tim’s, or small, damaged tears in the fabric.”

  “So these nasties”—I had a really great image of Trench-Coat in my mind—“are all locked behind barriers. Who set up these barriers?”

  Rhonda’s shrug did not lighten my mood, or help to reassure me. “Mother Nature. God. Yahweh. Buddha. Creation. Put a name to it if that helps. They are all separated with tiny leaks where will is used for manipulation. Think about when Tim and Steve move physical objects. That took a long time for them to master. They both chipped away at that barrier separating them from this plane until it thinned. Which might have a lot to do with why they haven’t ascended.”

  “You mean gone to Heaven or Hell,” Nona said.

  “Maybe. Depends on the individual. What bothers me is this Trench-Coat. Notice he had to kill Tanaka’s physical body before he could take the soul. He’s broken through the physical completely to manipulate it, but he’s still bound by the barriers.” She looked at me. “Which is probably why he wasn’t able to touch you or take you, even though you were in astral form. Your Traveler capabilities made you visible, but you were still tethered to a living body.”

  I pursed my lips. “So—what if he had touched me? You know—with me still technically stuck to a body?”

  Rhonda looked grim. “That could be bad.”

  Uh-oh. Do I panic? He did touch me. And he did nearly take me. But no one knew that. I looked at my buttered biscuit. My stomach twisted as I remembered the feel of his hand on my arm, which now burned beneath the bandage.

  Oh hell. It could be bad. What bad? How bad? Oogy bad?

  A nice but distracting vibration began in my right jeans pocket. My phone was calling. Or rather, letting me know something was happening in the cyberworld. I have a mighty little phone and PDA combination. I can stay in touch with friends—if I had any living—and keep up with the world.

  I get e-mail on the thing as well, and the message flashing on the color screen warned of an incoming client request.

  Now, with a business based on information gathering, when it came to gaining clients, I had had to improvise.

  I once used “Astral Travel” in the ad. After several months of advertising in small Atlanta papers like Creative Loafing and even running ads in the AJC, I’d come up with nothing, other than a few scary people who claimed to be Alexander the Great and Charles Manson.

  I really didn’t have the heart to tell that one girl that Charlie Manson wasn’t dead yet, even though she really looked the part, right down to the swastika on her forehead and the beard.

  That’s when I handed the whole thing over to Rhonda.

  She was the genius behind bidding out my services on eBay. The ad ran like a legitimate service for research, and since the means by which I gain information (like snooping on the dot-com guys the night before) aren’t legal (not to mention are unbelievable), and sure as hell wouldn’t stand up in court, most people wouldn’t ask too many questions about my methods.

  And the more illegal people think something is, the more willing they are to pay for it.

  I hadn’t believed that—till Rhonda helped me get things set up online, right down to a PayPal account for immediate payment.

  It hadn’t worked at first. No one had bid for a month, and I’d nearly decided to keep my job at Target when the first client came through.

  I knew them only through the screen name given on eBay. They made their payment and it cleared and I investigated a local insurance company that had supposedly “lost” several claimant’s policies and refused to pay out.

  Needless to say, there was nothing I could do physically when I discovered the truth—that they had pocketed the money and were planning on closing down shop. I got the account numbers, names, and addresses of those involved and gave back a detailed report on how it was done and what they needed to look for.

  The story broke in the AJC two days after I handed in my findings to the client (typed up on white paper and no return address).

  After that, I had clients on a regular basis, and many of them repeaters.

  I checked the message. This one was a repeat client. I’d also had Rhonda set it up to where the bidder could give me a few lines of information on the job. Hey, there were some things I wouldn’t do—like snoop on two people making out.

  Ew. I have my standards. There are sleazy detectives who do that kind of thing. Go pay them.

  And besides, I hadn’t had sex in so long, watching that kind of action just brought me closer to my vibrator.

  Hrm…I said that out loud, didn’t I?

  “New job?” Nona was being nosey. But she’s allowed, being my mom and all. “Make sure to dress warmly—it’s getting on toward winter.”

  It was fall. Sheesh.

  “Yeah.” I scrolled down to read the text and paused. “That’s weird.”

  “What is it?” Tim asked.

  Rhonda had pressed her nose back into the book of everything.

  “Repeater. Wants me to snoop in on a meeting between a Mr. Hirokumi and a Lieutenant Daniel Frasier. It’s at two this afternoon, downtown. Whoa…and it’s in the same building.”

 
“Wait.” Steve looked up again from the paper, then manipulated the newspaper himself, evidently not willing to wait on Nona.

  He turned back two pages, and I watched him scan the text. Steve finally nodded and pointed to the type. “I knew I’d seen that name. That guy you saw murdered? Tanaka? He worked for a Mr. Koba Hirokumi. He’s the president of Visitar Inc.”

  Holy shit.

  A longtime repeat customer wanted me to spy on a cop and a man who is tied to the victim from last night. “Okay, coincidence overload. My spidey-sense is not happy with this one.”

  Nona pulled the paper toward her and scanned the article. “Zoë, you said this is a repeat client?”

  “Yeah, this one’s been with me since I started this information-gathering gig two years ago.” Which was another factor that was raising hair on my arms, as well as clenching my stomach even tighter.

  I’d never refused a client before (other than Alex and Charlotte Manson) but I was seriously considering at least questioning this one. And if I’d not witnessed Tanaka’s murder the night before, nothing about the request would have seemed amiss to me.

  I felt the mark on my arm, could even imagine the outline of his handprint on my skin. With a slight intake of breath, I held my bandaged left arm beneath my right and debated whether to tell everyone—especially Mom—everything that happened.

  I wanted to scream that he’d touched me. That’d he’d left a mark. That it hurt and I was scared and just not sure what to do.

  I’m not sure, but I think at that moment I came closer to crying for my mommy than I had in fifteen years.

  Too bad she was busy turning Steve’s pages for him.

  3

  MOM hadn’t been exaggerating about the weather. It’d been chilly when I’d driven to her house around nine. But the sun had been shining then, and it looked like it would be a fairly nice day for November.

  Since then gray clouds conjugated overhead, spreading their monochromatic joy over the city. The people I saw on the streets on the way to my condo huddled beneath thin jackets and sweaters as the wind made tiny twisters of brown, yellow, gold, and red leaves.

  I lived in a building near the Midtown Eight movie theater on Monroe Drive. I chose it because of the spectacular view of Piedmont Park (add in the hot bods—though all gay—in the Atlanta summers) and the Atlanta skyline. Midtown itself rests as a halfway point between downtown Atlanta and the northern upper-class area of Buckhead.

  But still on the hub.

  When I moved to Atlanta, no one lived in Midtown—scary place. Run-down, vacant graffiti-splashed buildings, and a high crime rate kept the prices low. Then there was this incredible influx of the homosexual community. They started buying houses, fixed them up, and decided to stay. Some sold and moved into Grant Park, a few miles southeast.

  Now we have nice restaurants, shopping, and more traffic than the old roads can handle. Crime is still a problem, but we’ve got the Atlanta PD nearby.

  It was close to twelve thirty when I pulled my car into my parking space. Since taking MARTA would make me late for my assignment, Mom eagerly volunteered herself and one of her housemates to drive me to the Bank of America building.

  Originally she’d wanted either Tim or Steve to go with me to snoop on me snooping on this meeting. But they were housebound, as Nona liked to say. They died tragically in that house, and their existence as ghosts depended on the structure.

  Don’t ask, I don’t know why.

  Their dependence on the house was part of the limits the two had tested since discovering they were dead. I always thought of Beetlejuice and the Maitlands’ imprisonment—only without the giant sandworms part.

  In order for them to travel more than a hundred meters from the house, I’d have to carry with me some physical part of the house itself. Tim preferred it if Nona carried a piece of the brick. Steve was more partial to one of the old skeleton keys.

  The problem with this was that after I jumped, what then? I couldn’t carry the damned thing physically, so they’d be stuck in my condo with my apparently comatose body.

  Steve’s suggestion of me jumping from my car was out of the question. I wasn’t going to leave my body that vulnerable in a car, in a parking garage, with my mom hanging about.

  Nasty things happen in multidecked parking garages. I read about it in the papers all the time. People get robbed in garages. And their cars are broken into and things are stolen. Not that I really thought that someone would steal my body (except maybe in one of those organ extraction stories), but what if they thought I was dead and dumped me out and stole my car?

  And besides, what if some nice neighbor saw my unmoving body and freaked? What then? What if I woke up on a morgue table after they did an autopsy?

  Talk about waking up dead.

  So as a compromise, Nona agreed to pick me up in astral form and take me there and hang out in the parking lot. Rhonda would mind the store, and Nona bent the rules a little so Tim could help. On the promise he wouldn’t abruptly disappear and spook the customers.

  Steve, of course, would be with Mom.

  So alone I went upstairs to my place, saying hello to Jimmy the doorboy (the kid’s gotta be eighteen at most).

  I lived on the eighth floor, facing the park. The layout was simple and open. A marble foyer greeted me after coming through the door, then into a large living area with a gas fireplace and sliding-glass doors to a balcony.

  To the left was the kitchen, complete with a gas-stove island in the center and a cutaway in the separating wall so I could cook and still watch Oprah on my big-screen television.

  I really wanted one of those plasma wall-mounted deals. I make okay money, but I’m also a budgeter. I’ve gone two months at a time with no bids, so I have to make my pay—when I get it—last. Mortgage and food take precedence. Oh, and Haagen-Dazs.

  I’d furnished the place in antiques, thanks to my mom and her nose for finding bargains. The couch was the only modern style piece that I’d given myself for Christmas last year. A dark brown suede seven-footer with lots of forest green and wine red pillows. It sat between the television and the kitchen. It did wonders for the dark oak of most everything else.

  The walls I’d painted in olive green with off-white trim. Everything sort of complemented everything else. Or so I thought. I’m sure my framed Waterhouse prints weren’t the “in” thing in design, but they were my favorite.

  Especially the one called The Magic Circle. That one hung over my fireplace. Just looking at it gave me goose pimples.

  I also had a few of my ceramic dragons about the living room. Here and there.

  To the right were the two bedrooms. The master was mine, of course, complete with both shower and garden tub. I had a nice sleigh bed I’d refinished myself, along with a few antique pieces here and there, including an armoire I’d converted into an entertainment center and put a television in.

  I’d always thought it’d be nice to wake up next to someone and have fruit and cheese and some Le Madeleine’s strawberries Romanoff and French roast coffee in bed and watch the morning news together.

  Of course that had never happened. The only guests I’d had since I moved in were…well…Mom and Rhonda and the boys. That was a sad and sobering realization.

  I’d cry about it later.

  The spare bedroom, which was the first one to the right of the living room, was my office. I’d had the doors reinforced (and the walls) of this room, a cozy twelve-by-twelve with two Mac computers, two twenty-inch flat-screens, a scanner, and a PC, which I kept in the corner for any emergencies.

  On occasion I did get the weird, superencrypted file, and that’s when I knew the client was young and had more money than sense. I really knew that when I’d open up the doc file and he wanted me to off his little sister or she her little brother.

  Those were the ones where I returned money and refused. I had never offed anyone in my life.

  At least not yet.

  Facing the computers sat a
small, single bed. Something from my childhood. I barely fit on it, but it was comfortable enough for me to rest on while I traveled out of body. I’d gone astral once or twice in a standing position—which in hindsight seemed kinda silly—and my body, of course, with no pilot on board, fell over. On one occasion I’d needed stitches.

  I didn’t do that anymore if I could help it.

  Before heading into the office I moved to the control switch beside the door and threw the warding shield to protect the entire condo. My imagination had sort of worked itself up into believing Trench-Coat watched me now and was waiting for the opportunity to find my body and catch me.

  Even thinking about that made my arm twitch where he’d touched me.

  Sometimes having an imagination was a real bitch.

  After checking the fax machine to read the entire eBay transaction, I went to the bedroom to get my cat-suit. Since I was still freaked by Trench-Coat, I took it into my office and sealed the door.

  The client, known to me for two years as maharba@maharba.com, had deposited the money directly into my PayPal account. With extras.

  I checked my account online. Extras meaning besides the standard fee for a snoop at five thousand, they’d put in an additional ten thousand.

  That much money alone would carry me through several months without another job, as well as get my medical and dental insurance caught up.

  Hey, I get cavities too.

  I think it’s all that late-night Java Mocha ice cream and Sara Lee cheesecake.

  Whatever might happen between this Hirokumi and Lieutenant Frasier was damned important to this client.

  I toyed with the idea of not changing into my cat-suit. I hadn’t washed it yet after last night’s little scare, and I imagined it had Trench-Coat cooties on it.

  I could go naked. Wouldn’t matter. There wouldn’t be any ghost-seeing kids in a corporate headquarters, right?

  After thinking about my recent run of luck, I changed into the suit and sat in front of the computer and did something I’d never done.

  I tried finding out who maharba was.