Wraith

by Phaedra Weldon

  “The price for her insight was to let her do a blessing on you. I know you’re not possessed. And now she feels satisfied, and the door’s open for me to ask her more questions.”

  “I was the price? You could have shot me with that gun.” That’s when I noticed she didn’t have it anymore. “Where is it?”

  “Put away. Safe. And yes, Zoë, you were the price.”

  “Did you get something, Nona?” Rhonda asked.

  “Yeah…” She sighed as she moved away from the shelves to the table and sat down slowly in the chair I’d been in. I figured it was probably still warm.

  What Mom said next struck a chord somewhere deep inside of me. “We all believe that Trench-Coat’s touch has changed you. I’m afraid it’s done more than that. A seer called you Wraith. In the usual sense of the word it means ghost, spirit, spectre, and so on. Zoë, the word Wraith is related to writhe, which means to twist. I think your spirit, your astral self, has been twisted in some way—maybe in a way that could affect your physical life as well as your astral.”

  Twisted. “This is bad.”

  No one commented.

  My appetite disappeared. I looked at Mom, at Rhonda, at Tim and Steve, and back to Mom. “Can I reverse it?”

  “I don’t know.” Mom shrugged. “I’m not sure I’m right. Or any of this is right. I just think you need to stay indoors and away from this case—look what it’s already done.”

  Stay indoors? Was she kidding? “Mom…a man was murdered. I saw who—erm, what—did it. Now it’s going to be craziness trying to prove it, but I can’t just sit here while it might kill someone else.”

  “And what if that someone else is you?”

  There was a ferocity to Mom’s voice I hadn’t heard well…ever. Oh, she’d yelled at me through the years. Lots. But this tone was close to panic.

  “Mom, I need to help. I need to do something. Daniel suspects Reverend Rollins, but the police can’t touch him without evidence. Maybe I can find that evidence. I just go and listen in on Rollins for a while. See if I can find out if there’s any truth to the connection between him and Hirokumi and Tanaka’s death.”

  Mom went to the counter, retrieved a worn, rooster-feathered duster, and started whacking at things. Including Rhonda, who moved as quickly out of Mom’s way as possible. “Zoë, this discussion is over. You’re not spying on that man.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. Something was different. Had been since she walked in the door. Earlier she’d thought Trench-Coat was the aftermath of some ice-cream binge, now she looked honestly worried.

  And when Mom worried, so did I.

  “What is it you’re not telling me, Mom?” I tried softening my voice. Using that old “gee Mom you’re right but you have to tell me the secrets” voice.

  I wished I’d not done that.

  Sometimes I just don’t know when to shut up.

  She kept whacking those feathers at things. The longer she stayed silent, the faster she whacked. I was glad I wasn’t in the way of that insane duster.

  Abruptly she turned and pinned me to the back wall with her eyes. Ever seen Debbie Reynolds mad? I have. Not a pretty picture. And me being the daughter—well—I’d done it more than I care to admit.

  “Since the morning I saw you in the back of my car, that morning the police called me, I’d accepted the fact that you could die before me. And a parent never wishes or believes they could outlive their children. Especially not a mother and her daughter.

  “But you—you weren’t dead. And somehow you’d gained this ability to bypass death. Instead of destroying you, that rape changed you. Made you stronger. And I was glad of that. But now something just as threatening has happened again. Trench-Coat changed you, but into what? A Wraith? Something twisted—so bent it may never completely rest in Heaven? I don’t know. You don’t know. We can only assume this faceless bitch was right.” She paused and closed her eyes, feather duster on her hip. One breath. Two breaths. She opened her eyes. “In all these years, did you ever stop to wonder why you’ve never seen another astral Traveler, Zoë?”

  Uh, er, nope. Not lately anyway. I shook my head. I’d not seen this level of passion in Mom since she spoke at the gay pride rally in Piedmont Park back in June.

  “Well, Zoë, I’ve wondered. That’s all I’ve wondered about since you finally showed me that mark on your arm. Since I realized you weren’t invincible, and my baby could indeed die. What happens if it takes you? Do you die? Or does it take your body as it becomes one with you?” She was sobbing by the time she said the last. “Or does it leave you as nothing more than a living husk of the one and only bright thing in my life?”

  She put the duster down and finally moved past me into the tea shop. A hot pot of water was always ready, and she poured some over a spiced lemon bag in a plain white mug. Her hands were shaking and she spilled hot water on the table.

  I went to her then and took the pot away from her. In the movies, this would be the moment I’d take her in my arms and kiss her deeply.

  Uh…wait. No. Not my mom. That would make a whole different kind of movie, in a genre I just didn’t feel like getting into right now. “Mom, what did you find out today? What’s got you so scared?”

  “I’m not scared.”

  Oh, of course not. You’re shaking and you’re telling me, your twenty-eight-year-old daughter, you weren’t going to allow her to do this.

  Like you can stop me?

  “Mom.”

  She looked up at me then, and I’d not realized how much taller I was than my mother till that moment. Was she shrinking? “You don’t know what’s out there, Zoë. On that plane—the Abysmal. Things that thrive on fear and the innocent. You don’t belong there. And they know it. Now that he knows you’re there, it won’t be long before the darkest things of all do.”

  The hairs on my arms stood on end at that moment. I forced a smile, but the truth was she’d just creeped me out. Reeeeally bad.

  I saw fear in her eyes. She knew something—something terrible. Something she wasn’t going to share with me—not yet. I could see that much in her eyes.

  And maybe…maybe it was best I didn’t know. Because I thought of Daniel at that moment. And of Tanaka. William Tanaka deserved to have his killer brought to justice, and I believed Daniel was the man to do it.

  With my help. And if I knew what really waited for me out there, on a plane the average man or woman never saw, I might not be up to being the best I could be. I might just hide in my closet and chew on my boots.

  And if my libido was going to lead the way, then so be it. At least I could do something here, something constructive with my gift.

  I said these things aloud to Mom, and watched the worry in her eyes just get deeper. Tim and Steve seemed to have vanished, though that didn’t mean they weren’t somewhere nearby.

  “Please, Mom. I’m just going to eavesdrop—just long enough to see if there is a connection between Rollins and Tanaka’s death. I won’t actually do anything—that’s up to Daniel and the police.”

  She didn’t say anything at first, just looked at me. A few seconds of this, and Mom took the cup of tea and moved to the tea-shop counter, where she grabbed up a wooden stir stick from a yellow-and-green tin.

  “Zoë, this isn’t your job.”

  “I know that.” I smiled and walked in closer. “And you’ve never acted like this before. Care to let me in on your paranoia?”

  Please?

  She stirred the tea. “Reverend Rollins is a powerful man, Zoë. And he’s not the pure-souled man so many believe he is.”

  “Hello—televangelist.” How much more crooked a word did she need here?

  “That’s not the reason. There are several men of God that truly follow the Good Book, and they reach thousands on television. Those that are sick and can’t attend church, or those who may not live close enough to a church to hear the words of peace and love.”

  “Okay—now you’re sounding like a Born Again, and that’s cre
eping me out more.”

  “I don’t dismiss Christianity, Zoë. I don’t dismiss any religion, not if it helps people come to grips with whatever it is in their life they feel destroys them. It may not be my path, but it sure as hell isn’t the absolute wrong path. Have I not taught you this?”

  She had. And I’d listened. “I just have this problem with big showy preachers on television, that’s all.”

  “And with Rollins you should. He’s evil. He’s dangerous. And I don’t want you near him.”

  Isn’t it amazing how moms have that uncanny ability to switch gears like that?

  I shook my head and blew at a stray strand of hair. Apparently a lot had come loose from my braid. “Wait. First you were spouting oogies about what was on the Abysmal plane like you’d been there and had the shit scared out of you. And now you’re tooting the righteous horn by declaring Reverend Rollins a sinner but not because he’s a preacher?”

  Mom shook her head and then motioned me to sit at one of the chairs behind the counter. I did, and she grabbed up a brush from somewhere (moms have that teleportation ability to produce objects out of thin air, ever noticed?) and started yanking at my hair. I was happy she upbraided it first.

  “I know it’s hard for you to take me seriously most of the time. You feel you’re always right about things, but this time I need you to shut up and listen to what I’m saying.”

  I did, and winced as she pulled hair from the crown of my head. I shouldn’t let her do this—my scalp was going to be bloodied in a few seconds. But I needed to know what it was she was afraid of. And if fixing my hair was going to loosen her tongue, then bloody away.

  “I’m no hairdresser—but these white hairs are odd. They’re not wiry like normal gray hairs”—she paused in her brushing and I could feel her pulling at the hairs sprouting from my left temple—“and they don’t feel bleached. Did you mean for your hairdresser to do so few?”

  “Yes. Move past the hair, Mom.”

  She continued. “Men like Rollins attract the wrong kind of people, dead or alive. They believe in money and power and will stop at nothing to achieve them.” Mom paused. “Or protect them.”

  I moved away from her, leaning forward, and turned to look up into her face. “You act as if you know him.”

  Mom’s expression was a little frightening. She looked cold and calculating herself, but then again, I’d seen that look before when she was contemplating the last slice of cheesecake. “No. I just know people like him. Something awful could happen to you.”

  I let her brush my hair a bit more. Then she wove it into a single french braid down my back.

  Neither of us spoke.

  “Got it,” Rhonda said from the shop, and appeared in the archway between the two rooms. I’d been so intent on Mom’s speech I hadn’t even noticed she’d slipped away. She held a scrap of paper in her hand. “Got that address. And let me tell yah, this guy doesn’t take any chances. He’s guarded to the teeth.”

  I went to Rhonda and retrieved the address—1313 Mockingbird Lane.

  With my best scolding look I wadded the slip of paper up. “The real address, thank you?”

  “Oh, I thought it was sort of appropriate.”

  I had to agree, even though snooping on the Munsters might have been less exciting, and probably less dangerous.

  Rhonda produced another piece of paper. This address put the house on Northside Drive, closer to the governor’s mansion, as well as a few infamous Falcons football team members.

  I turned to Mom. “You going to give me a lift?”

  “No.”

  Shock. Amazement. Anger.

  Oh, I ran several emotions at that moment. “No?”

  I think in all of my years on this earth she’d never actually said no to me. Not even as a teenager had she said no. It’d always been “I’d prefer you didn’t,” or “You might want to rethink that,” or even “Are you really sure that’s what you want?”

  All of those responses had elicited in me the proper decisions—mostly because all of them dredged up doubt and guilt in some fashion.

  But not the word no.

  Mom stood very still behind the tea-shop counter, the stool I’d sat on still in front of her, her hands clasped under her breast.

  I watched her for a few seconds to see if there was some glimmer of humor in her expression. Nothing.

  After getting my bag, I gave Rhonda a glance and walked to the front door. Steve abruptly appeared beside it.

  “Don’t do this, Zoë. Your mother has a bad feeling about this. She’s certain something bad will happen to you.”

  I nodded. “She also had a feeling about Anna Nicole being a man, Steve.”

  Didn’t even glance back at Mom, though I could feel her watching me.

  The sun had set when I stepped outside. The wind whipped around my ears, cold and relentless.

  Mom was scared.

  And when Mom was scared, I was terrified.

  But I wanted to help Daniel, and I was letting my libido lead the way. And I knew if I stayed here, or even in my condo, I’d only spiral myself into a lumpy depression over what might or might not be happening to me. I had to get out and at least do something.

  You know…daughters really should listen to their mothers.

  15

  THE whole place just screamed, “I’m up to something.”

  Kinda up there with “Neener nee!”

  Rollins’s spread was a palace better suited to Miami. Or California. It sprawled in an L-shape in the center of three acres in a stucco-and-palm-tree sort of style. A twelve-foot matching wall fence surrounded the entire property except for the black iron gate at the entrance.

  Forty minutes after I left Mom’s I stood outside of the property, facing that gate. Two stone gargoyles watched me. I watched them. And the hairs on my body, resting safely back at my condo, stood on end. I’d swear those things moved.

  Gargoyles. Big bats with humongous teeth.

  Rhonda came through on the transportation. She drove me out here in her Beetle and was now exiting the road at the farthest end. Mom’s attitude had creeped her out too.

  Most of the time we sort of tolerated my mom’s eccentricities for the cuteness they deserved. But she’d rarely gotten so scary. The last time was the night I went out with friends, that night in college.

  The night my life changed.

  Okay Zoë, keep thinking like that, and you’ll talk yourself out of this.

  Another voice piped up from somewhere behind my ears, Not a bad idea. You could always just go home and eat ice cream. Growl.

  “Now don’t wear yourself out too quickly,” Rhonda had said on the trip here. “Don’t go all solid and such. One, they’ll see you, and two, you’ll deplete your energy reserves. I mean, what happens if you run out of power while being Wraithy? I’m hoping the outcome’s not something like being a wandering soul. You know, like your body dying and not letting you back in.”

  “Geez, Ro,” I’d said. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

  “Sorry. I think I’m a little more worried about this than I wanted to let on. We don’t really know where the Symbiont—”

  “Trench-Coat.”

  “—Trench-Coat comes from; Ethereal or Abysmal, or who summoned it. Who was the other person my friend saw with him? And it’s been right around twenty-four hours since your first corporeal trip.” The red LCD from her Beetle’s dash gave her a rather undead appearance, which I think she would have liked. “What about fuel? When was the last time you ate?”

  “Uhm…”

  “Oh hell, Zoë. Was it this morning?”

  “I was supposed to have pasta and shrimp, remember? But you took me to the doctor instead.”

  “We were going to go afterward, but you went all Wraithlike and saw a ghost. Then it was you that ran off after your libido for the detective…”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blame the Wraith.

  We’d both given each other a moment of silence. Rhonda spoke first. �
�If you run into him…”

  “I know. Shoot back home. But you’d better have a ton of aspirin ready. The headaches after I do that are getting a bit more intense.”

  “Not to mention that really freaky thirst thing you got going on. How many containers of Sunny Delight did you guzzle before we left your place?”

  “How many did we pick up at Kroger?” I’d actually put away only one.

  I’d often wondered what would happen if I had to pee really bad while out of body. In a usual sleep, hydraulic pressure forced me up and into the bathroom. But when it came to being astral, my body was pretty much tied to it. It wasn’t going anywhere unless I returned to it.

  And vice versa.

  All of these variables didn’t sway my good old Irish stubbornness. Or my Latino romanticism of me finding the answers and having Daniel Frasier fall hopelessly in love with me.

  Barf.

  Anyway, back to my present predicament. I sieved through the gate, shivering just a bit at the iron. Glad I wasn’t a fairy—that was real iron back there. The taste of it lingered oddly in my mouth.

  Hadn’t had that happen before.

  The lawn stretched out before me like smooth, dew-laced hills. The inside of the wall was well groomed with flowering plants, many of which slept for the winter. Fruit trees stood in intervals, and I could see their sparkling auras even without the aid of the moon overhead.

  The full moon would be visible once the clouds parted.

  The house sat several hundred yards ahead of me. Lights were on in the main building, the front entrance illuminated around a parked white limo. Nice ride.

  I was looking for something in particular. A menace I suspected lived on these grounds. Hell, anyone with this much property always had two or three of them.

  Dogs.

  And if I could smell in this form, I’d be able to know easier. Why dogs? One thing about the astrally traveled—animals seemed to know. Or they could see. Either way, if a dog were around, it’d sense me and start barking.

  Not that it could really hurt me or anything. But it could make the inhabitants inside nervous. And I needed them relaxed so they’d feel at ease and say something naughty.