by Gillian Zane
“We have a deal?”
I took his hand in mine and shook it.
Looks like I was going to be on a nationally televised reality show. My afterlife couldn’t get any weirder.
13
The Saint James House
The mansion was a sprawling late 19th century colonial, with tall and domineering columns that soared upward to an imposing roof. From what I could tell, the original house was a two story building with a large front facade, but not a lot of depth, so the previous owners had made additions. The house now had three added on wings that jutted from the house at 45 degree angles and looked at odds with the historic original property, but also somehow fit the look of the house. Each one had a new entranceway added, with newly paved sidewalks leading to the front doors.
If I had been any girl, standing on the path that led to this house, I would have turned around and walked away. The house didn’t look welcoming. I could tell the new owners had done some work to brighten up the place, but it wasn’t enough. There were new gardens that wrapped around the front, the windows sparkled and boasted a new coating of paint, there were even wind chimes and potted, hanging plants twisting in the wind on every available hanging nook and cranny. Yet, none of that lightened the feel of the property. If houses had personalities, this one would be a grumpy old man.
“It’s like they designed it to look like a haunted house,” Drake said in a low voice, even though no one but me could hear him. He had shown up again this morning unexpectedly, having left me at the restaurant, and then alone for the two days I had to wait out the film crew getting in place. It had been a boring and stressful forty-eight hours since I was unable to return to Karma, or face Persephone’s wrath. I was excited to get to work.
Standing in front of the house taking in the creepy building, I tried not to fidget because of the camera pointed at my face to catch my reactions. The constant scrutiny forced me to keep my reactions in check and not respond to Drake like I wanted to. All I could do was shoot him a look and a slight nod. I was trying to be subtle, but I could tell the camera guy caught it.
The man behind the camera had introduced himself as Teddy, and he seemed like a nice guy. He was a little too aware for me, but I couldn’t hold it against him. The camera was intrusive and made me itchy and uncomfortable. Because of the damn thing, I had spent 2 hours in make-up for something I could have done with a thought. Now I was self-conscious of the paste on my cheeks and every move I made. My stomach roiled with nerves in fear that I might manifest something accidentally and cause a shit storm.
Again with the mind reading, Drake said, “We are in a haunted house, anything you do can be blamed on the ghost.”
I couldn’t help the smile of relief that spread across my face. I shot Drake a grateful look.
“Are you getting any feelings?” Roselle asked in response to my smile.
The twins trailed behind me with weird gadgets in their hands, clunky looking radio type objects, and handheld sensors that had big dials on them and measured some sort of nonsense.
There was another cameraman whose job was to focus on the twins. He had introduced himself as Gregor and shared that this was his first ghost show. Roselle fiddled with the gadget that looked like a vintage radio. She turned it on and it began to emit a toe-curling squawk.
“No,” I said. “This place seems manufactured to be creepy, though.”
“That it does.” Teddy pointed the camera at the house when Roselle shot him a death glare. The cameramen were there to shoot the footage and not include commentary, according to her. She had given them the speech before we got out of the vehicles, but it seemed both men were ignoring her.
“The family of unit one is out for today. We’ve installed cameras in the family rooms and tonight we’re going to do a sweep to draw out the entity. Hopefully we can get this spirit or demon to show itself.” Roselle led the way up the front steps of the main unit that still used the preexisting front entrance. She used a key to let herself in.
“The family will come back in tomorrow morning, and we’ll work with them while trying not to intrude on their daily life,” Raul added.
The moment I stepped through the entrance of the house, all thoughts of stupid camera pointed in my direction dissipated. A grand staircase cascaded down to the front parlor and next to it hung the biggest chandelier I had ever beheld. A large room bisected the foyer and I glanced to my left and right, catching sight of shelves filled with books and a dining table that could seat the Senate. This was only one unit of the complex? Insane.
I heard whispering and glanced up to where the staircase met the loft area above. Two teens, no older than fifteen, gripped the bars of the bannister and looked down at us.
“I thought you said the family was out of the house.” I directed this statement to Roselle, but saw Drake making a negative motion with his hands to stop me from saying more. I looked back up at the teens, they were gone.
“They are. Did you see something?” Roselle asked.
“I thought I heard something,” I covered.
“That would be actual ghosts,” Drake said. “I knew they might exist, but I didn’t expect to actually see any.”
“Unbelievable,” I muttered.
“Let’s split up. Cas takes the first floor, Raul and I will take the upstairs and attic, which is where most of the activity has been reported,” Roselle said, enacting her first power play. More activity means more camera time.
I nodded, not willing to fight her. Unlike her and her brother, I wasn’t too big on the idea of being on camera. Plus, I wanted to check out the library.
I wandered inside, lost in thought about what I had seen. Even though I knew the lines between life and death were muddier than I believed, I didn’t expect actual ghosts to be haunting this place. Actual real, dead souls, stuck in some kind of transition. How horrible it must be for them.
I pretended to be interested in the books, reading off spines book after book. The owner of the house had varied tastes. Her shelves were stocked with the classics, self-help books, and fiction in almost every genre. There was a desk in the middle. A shiny, brand new computer sitting on it looked very out of place.
“They’ve already installed cameras in here,” Drake said and pointed up at a knick knack on one of the shelves. They had a team come in here this morning for a preliminary set-up, but they are going to do some install on camera, for the showmanship of it.” I looked where he indicated and saw what appeared to be a paperweight, but I could see the glint of glass that was most likely the lens.
“Each camera has a spark of energy to it. You can feel it if you concentrate on the room. You’ll pick up other things like the outlets and computers, but the cameras will be in places that don’t make sense. Just like you can detect negative energy, you can also detect positive and generated energy, you are just used to detecting human produced energy. You aren’t trained as a Karma op to detect mechanically produced energy, but it’s the same concept.”
I nodded and tried to concentrate on the room. The only thing I sensed was the computer and a few wall outlets. I shook my head.
“Keep trying,” he said and wandered through another wall at the back of the room.
I tried again, and this time I felt the prick of electricity coming from high on the shelf. There was another one on the other side of the room and I turned around, noticing an obvious camera that was placed on the shelf and not hidden. So they had one real one, and one hidden one.
“Cool trick.” It slipped out and the camera man gave me a questioning look.
“Uh, how they have the shelves set up.” It was a lame cover up and I didn’t look Teddy’s way. I eased past him, following Drake into what was the kitchen. I scanned the room and found the obvious cameras and the not so obvious ones. It was like that in every room.
I found the cameras placed in straight-forward areas in the dining room, living room, and hallway. But when I went into the two downstairs bathrooms and mas
ter bedroom, there were no obvious ones, only hidden ones, including one above the shower.
“Are you picking up anything from the house?” Teddy prodded me to get on camera, since I was quietly looking around the house, giving nothing they could use for final edits.
“Nothing down here.” I turned a corner and found myself in a long, skinny room that ended in a plain wall. It looked like it had once had a door there, but had been sheet-rocked over.
“I think this used to be a hallway, it leads to the other units,” Teddy said in a hushed voice. The area was wide for a hallway and was now filled with boxes, and some random pieces of furniture. Only one window broke the expanse of wall, and it was covered with thick curtains that barely let any light in to reveal the room.
“This area isn’t used much,” I said.
“The family stays away from this area. They said there have been some issues here,” Teddy informed me. For a cameraman who was supposed to stay quiet and only film, he was well informed. I appreciated that he knew what he was talking about and that he refused to bend under the pressure of the twins.
Something clattered at the back of the hall and Teddy and I both started.
“Rodent?” Teddy asked, but he didn’t sound like he believed it himself.
“I don’t know. Do you have night vision on that thing? Can you see in this darkness?” I flicked a switch on the wall, but nothing came on.
“There’s nothing,” he said. The clatter came again, and Drake brushed past me to investigate.
“Who are these people?” The whisper soft sound of a female’s voice floated from the back.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Teddy.
“No, I didn’t hear anything but the beating of my heart. Are you recording this?” he asked. I pulled out the little recorder Raul had given me and shook my head, but turned it on.
“That ain’t the old snob,” another voice said, light as a whisper on wind. The voice was distinctly male though, as opposed to the last voice which sounded distinctly female.
“There it is again.” I rewound the tape player and played it. There were garbled sounds, but ten seconds into the recording there was something that sounded like words. I played it again.
“The old, what is that snob?” Teddy asked.
“That’s what it sounds like, old snob,” I laughed. This was exhilarating. To think actual ghosts could be caught on a recorder. Even though I was a person who was lacking life, I figured all the dead went to Afterlife. I didn’t think it was possible to be stuck here on Earth, with the living, a shadow of a life clinging to the past. What would it take for this to happen to a soul?
It was exciting and horrifying at the same time.
“You think they are calling you an old snob?”
“I would hope not. Maybe that’s who has them trapped here?”
“You think there is something that traps spirits here?” Teddy asked.
“Why else would a spirit stay in this creepy old house?” I peered around at the dank storage hallway.
Teddy shivered, visibly. “You feel that?” He rubbed his arm with his free hand and I felt it too, the considerable drop in temperature. Drake was looking behind boxes and he peered up as two shadows, in the shape of humans, drifted into view. They moved like humans, but I could barely make out their features.
“They’re here,” I whispered.
“Where?” Teddy asked excitedly. I pointed to the two shapes and he filmed in that direction.
“Cassie, I’m going to need you, alone…to help me deal with this,” Drake said. I glanced in his direction. The only light was from the one mounted on top of the camera. I saw the two shadows swarm around him erratically and Drake had a pained look on his face.
“He’s dead,” I heard the whisper of the girl’s voice.
“He ain’t, he’s talking to her,” said the boy's voice. “Dead can’t talk to the living.”
“Cassie!” Drake’s voice sounded strained.
“Teddy…”
“I’m not getting anything, Cas.”
“I have to do a ritual, to call them forward. I can’t get it on film,” I made up on the fly.
“What do you mean?” He looked at me with confusion.
“I need to be alone, with my spirit guide. He won’t do this if anyone else is in the room, and certainly not on camera, it compromises his principals,” I said emphatically.
“I was told to never turn the cameras off, straight from production, Cas. Nothing I can do about it.”
“Well, you don’t have to turn the cameras off, just go film in another room, one where I’m not in it,” I said and motioned to the door.
“Cas,” he pleaded. “Don’t put me in this position. The production company will be angry.”
“Teddy, give me ten minutes, and I promise you can come back in here and you’ll hopefully get something much better than some grainy words on the recorder.”
“Fine, but ten minutes, no longer.” He pointed the camera down and exited the hallway, shutting the door behind him.
“What’s the matter, Drake?” I hissed.
“You trust me?” he asked. He was in front of me. He took up so much space, even slightly translucent. He looked at me pleadingly.
“Yeah, Drake, I trust you.” He let out his breath and nodded his head. Then he placed his hand on my shoulder, and I actually felt the pressure of his hand. Followed by the goose flesh and coldness.
There was a flash of light, and a tugging sensation on my body from the air around me. It felt like the space around me had turned to jelly and I was being sucked through.
“What in the…” The world had gone gray, like someone had drawn out the saturation on a photo. Wisps of light filtered in and out of existence, swirling around the hallway like dust motes. The boxes that were here before looked different, less there, less real.
“We’re in the in-between, the world that separates Afterlife from the living world. This is what you walk through when you go into a portal. This is where lost souls…get lost,” Drake said. He was staring at two figures, now recognizable as human. They were ghostly, barely visible.
One was a tween boy, maybe twelve from the looks of him, the other a girl who looked older, but only because of the darkly suspicious look on her face. She might have been no older than the boy. They were dressed out of date, in suspenders and corsets. The clothes looked expensive, even for old-fashioned clothes. The girl had lace trim, and the boy wore rich wool slacks. They were both clean, with clear skin and good teeth.
“Witch,” the girl spit.
“How’d she do that?” The boy cried and their voices were louder than before. I could hear their distinct tone, their southern accents.
“I’m not a witch,” I said calmly.
“You—you can see us?” The girl looked horrified.
“I can, we can both see you.” I nodded at Drake. He had moved closer to me. I could almost feel his skin against mine he was so much of a presence.
“We’re here to help,” I said, my palms raised to convey my docility. They both looked ready to bolt. The girl was looking around wildly, scared that something might jump out at her any moment.
“Nothing can help us,” the boy said morosely. His translucent eyes met mine and I saw the horror, the time lost, within those eyes.
“I can, I promise, you just have to tell me…”
“Are you a witch? Father says only witches can contact the dead,” the girl whispered.
“Trust no witches!” Another shape barreled into the room. It was another boy. He was larger and more visible than the other two. His voice was a hiss. His face was ravaged with hatred. One second he was down the hall and the next he was in my face. I couldn’t restrain the gasp of fear that leached out of my mouth.
“Charles!” the boy cried.
“Charles!” the girl echoed in horror.
“Step back, boy,” Drake growled. The new addition to the party was in my face, glaring at me like I had done
him wrong. I could feel his breath on my face, if that was possible.
The boy named Charles continued to glare at me, but his face was slowly morphing into surprise as he realized I was staring right back, and not looking through him.
“Charles.” The others put hands on him and they pulled him back. He growled in protest.
“I mean you no harm, I’m here to help,” I repeated.
“We don’t need the help of Satan’s whore,” the new boy spit the words.
“I beg your pardon. I have nothing to do with Satan, and I’m definitely not a whore. Who taught you this language, kid?” I fired back.
“I ain’t no kid and I ain’t stupid, you’s a witch!” His yell chilled the air and a box tumbled to the ground, spilling its contents on the floor. The other two children looked scared, really scared. They were fading, worried looks on their faces as this Charles raged in the hallway.
“You need to calm yourself,” I said, tired of this kid’s temper tantrum. He was dressed shabbier than the other two, in overalls, and there was something smeared on his cheek. Was that blood? His eyes were crazed, and there was no denying it, he had more energy than his counterparts. Too much energy. Could this be the poltergeist that haunted the home?
I went by instinct and reached out. I reached out to him and felt the energy that thrummed through his soul.
There wasn’t much. It wasn’t like a karma fix, it was darker life energy. I pulled it away from him, into me. I watched as he faded before my eyes and I stopped abruptly, scared at my own power.
The kid knew what I had done.
Fear replaced anger. He was terrified.
“Witch,” he hissed and then winked out of existence.
There was banging on the door. Loud banging. Teddy’s voice. I felt Drake’s arm, really felt his arm, around my shoulders. We could touch in this realm. It reassured me and I fell into him and let him tuck me into his shoulder. I craved his touch like nothing I had craved before. The life energy swirled inside of me and I wanted to vomit it up. It didn’t taste right, not the way I had taken it.
