by Terri Grimes
I thought for a moment. “I guess not.”
“Studies have shown that the portals are usually located close to where the entity that created it died.” He raised a cookie to my mouth as he hand fed me.
I chewed as I thought it over. “Interesting. Who conducts the studies? Do you have a panel of ghosts that you query who give you the statistics on where each portal is located? Seriously, how does that work?”
He wiped a solitary Fig Newton crumb from my lower lip. I resisted the urge to caress his finger with the tip of my tongue.
“Paranormal investigation is a highly technical and scientific field,” he said. “That’s evidenced by the high tech equipment we use. It’s not all smoke and mirrors, as so many people think.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound disrespectful. This is all so new to me.”
“It’s all right. Don’t worry about it, no offense taken.” He pushed his chair back from the table and brushing the cookie crumbs from his shirt, stood. “I’ll be honest with you. Even though Lillith blessed your house, we still have that portal to close or else that demon is going to pop right back in at some point.”
“I didn’t realize that nasty thing could come back. She said the negativity was in the candle now and I was okay providing that candle didn’t come back into the house.”
Sam shrugged. “In a sense, she is correct. But with that portal open, anything could pop through that thing. I should have thought to put the medallion in the portal to close it when she was cleansing the house but…” He sighed as he looked down at his watch. “Times a-wasting, princess. It will be daylight before we ever get started.”
I pushed back my own chair as well, rubbing my throbbing temples as I stood. Demons, portals and plains of existence, it was all so confusing to me. My head was spinning from the reality of it all. It wasn’t a reality I wanted. If I could will it all to be a bad dream and have it go away, I would. But I couldn’t and there was a portal upstairs waiting for us to somehow banish it. As Sam said, time was indeed a-wasting.
I stared at him, suddenly vulnerable. “Are you going to be able to get rid of this portal?”
Leaning against the kitchen counter, he cocked his head and shrugged. “I’m not certain it ever goes away. But I’m damn sight going to try to close it for good, Gertie.”
I walked over to him, setting the mugs in the sink on my way. I tilted my face upward and looked in his eyes, my skin tingling at the nearness of him.
“I guess that’s all I can ask.”
“Don’t worry. Everything will be okay,” he said softly as his hand cupped the side of my face.
“I hope so, Sam. God, I hope so.”
~ * ~
With Timmy cutting out on us, it was a two-person team. I took a deep breath. “Are we ready to do this?”
Still leaning against the counter, Sam straightened his body and nodded. “Let’s get this party started.”
We walked into the dining room to gather our equipment before heading back to the second floor.
“I could understand if you were doing a remodel of the house, but for an earthquake to instigate an increase in paranormal activity, well let’s just say you don’t hear that every day,” Sam said as he opened the back plate of the digital voice recorder.
I bit my tongue to keep from telling him I didn’t give a flying fig about what caused the increase in paranormal activity. I just wanted it stopped.
Sam narrowed his eyes as he turned his attention to me. “You haven’t been doing any remodeling, have you?”
“Does it look like I’ve done any remodeling? You don’t honestly think I would decorate my house to look like old fashioned elderly lady on purpose, do you?”
His vision panned the room and its late forties décor. “No, I guess not. I see your point.”
The furnishings in my house were tasteful and expensive back when they were first purchased. In fact, they were probably worth a small bundle now. But the entire house did have the look of being furnished by someone’s elderly old-fashioned grandmother. And with good reason, because it had been furnished by my old-fashioned grandmother. That was okay by me though and I was in no hurry to change the décor. It made me feel close to her, almost like she was still here at times.
“What about the medallion? I thought you weren’t surprised in the least about the medallion being in the wall. Or at least that’s what you said earlier.” I paused in mid equipment check to see his reaction.
“Let me clarify,” he said as he removed the old batteries and tossed them in the garbage can. “I wasn’t surprised to see the medallion, but what I was surprised about was that someone had the good sense to put the medallion there in the first place, grounding the entity. And with there having been no remodeling done for a great number of years, that tells me that medallion has been in your bedroom wall for a very long time.” He inserted two fresh batteries in the recorder and after an expert flick of the thumb, shut the back with a snap.
I nibbled on my lower lip, putting aside all pretense of readying the equipment. “What are you trying to say? That one of my grandparents put that medallion there?”
Placing extra batteries in his front pockets, he said, “Yes. It’s possible, Gertie. In fact, it’s probable. You need to at least consider the possibility.”
I stared at him, my demeanor somber. “You’re trying to tell me my sweet little old grandmother was a ghost hunter. Is that what you want me to make me believe?” I shook my head a couple of times.
He loaded a fresh memory card into the handheld digital video recorder. “Could have been your grandfather, or maybe even both of them.” He snapped the tape drive of the DVR shut with a click. “All I am saying is the medallion didn’t materialize out of thin air. Someone, at some point in time, had to have closed the portal with that medallion, both the religious properties and the magnetized fields of which grounded the demon on the lower plane of existence that it inhabited.”
“And you said all of that without taking a second breath. No wonder you amaze me, Sam Valentine.”
He flashed me a sexy wink, taking his camera in hand, removing the lens cap and placing it on the dining room table before he continued, “And since your grandmother was the one who plastered the wallpaper all over your bedroom, well…” He looked at me, waiting.
I had no answer. What could I say? Every word that came out of his mouth made sense. More sense than I wanted to admit to.
Sam handed me the voice recorder and a small flashlight before picking up the digital camera and slinging it over his shoulder by the long strap. “Shall we?” he said, nodding towards the staircase leading to the second floor.
And then, after I replied with a quick grin, we were off.
Fifteen
Three hours later and we were ready to call it a night. The only light in the upstairs study, where we sat, was from the streetlight shining in the windows on the left side of the room.
“I can’t believe that thing didn’t make its presence known tonight when Lillith was blessing the house,” I said as I shook my head in dismay. “I mean, come on, not even a fight? But even stranger is that the entire upstairs has this creepy vibe I didn’t feel earlier when Lillith was here. It’s like he’s still here, watching us. Waiting. Do you know what I mean? Do you feel it too?”
We placed the Saint Ubaldus medallion in the center of the portal in my bedroom, closing it as soon as we came upstairs so I knew there was no way the oppressive atmosphere could have been coming from the demon.
With a grimace of discomfort, Sam stood causing the chair to creak in his wake. “Yes, I feel it. There’s a defined heaviness in the air. I agree it’s strange that we didn’t notice this heaviness in this room earlier with Lillith.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see the gesture in the dark. “Yeah, that is weird.”
“Shit,” Sam cursed.
“What?”
“No, that couldn’t be.”
“What couldn’t be? What
are you talking about?” I was beginning to become alarmed at his reaction.
“Damn son of a bitch!” Sam spat. “I think I know why Lillith didn’t get a fight when she banished the demon.” He blew his breath out in a whoosh. “Shit, I should have figured this out earlier. Damn! I could kick myself for being so blind.”
“Hello, freaked out female here. Would you care to enlighten me? Share a little information, dude?”
“Sorry, Gertie. I don’t know how much you remember of what I told you about portals. But the demon can pop in and out at will through the portal.”
“Sure, I remember you saying that. What’s that got to do with anything though?”
“Here’s my theory,” he said leaning in close to me as he spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “What if the demon jumped in the portal and went to the lower realm while Lillith was doing the banishing ceremony? She would only be able to banish what was here.”
“And since the demon wasn’t here at that moment in time,” I said.
“It wouldn’t be banished,” Sam finished for me.
“Dang!”
“And then how easy would it be to pop back in to this dimension once Lil left. That asshole was betting on the assumption that we would forget to close the portal during the cleansing.”
“And the son of a bitch bet right,” I groaned.
Sam’s chair creaked as he shifted. “Gertie, what could be worse than that scenario?”
“Not much.”
“That’s where you’d be wrong.” His chair creaked again as he leaned back in it. “What could be worse is if we had closed the portal.”
“Sam?” I leaned forward, my gaze locked with his.
“Yes, Gertie?” He leaned in close to me, our faces mere inches away from each other.
“When we stuck the magnetic medallion in my bedroom wall before we came in the study, what was the purpose of that again?”
“To close the portal.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yes, Gertie, unfortunately we closed the portal with the demon on this side. We’ve trapped the demon in this dimension.”
“Christ on a cracker, are we ever screwed!”
There wasn’t much Sam could say to that. What was done was done. And now I’d used my only magnetized religious medallion to close the portal and trap the demon. To my misfortune, I had trapped the demon on the wrong side though.
“Tell you what, let’s call it a night. Let’s not freak out until we see if we caught any signs of the demon still being here. I’ve got hours and hours of DVR footage to go over, not to mention everything we captured with the voice recorder tonight, if indeed we did capture anything.”
“Maybe we’re wrong and Lillith was able to get rid of McNasty after all.”
“Stranger things have happened. You never know.”
“Even though we didn’t hear anything out of the normal, do you think we may have gotten something on the tape, err, I mean voice recorder?”
He stood and walked to the tripod, turning the DVR camera off with a shrill click. “I wouldn’t be surprised, Gertie. When you get the creepy vibes like we did here tonight, even though you don’t hear anything with your naked ear, often that’s when you get a plethora of EVPs on the digital voice recorder.”
I didn’t know whether to be glad about that or scared crapless. On the one hand, I wanted to know for sure if the demon was still here. But on the other hand, sometimes ignorance could be bliss.
By the light of the small flashlight in his hand, I saw Sam extend an arm towards me, indicating that I should exit the room first. He followed behind as we left the second floor study, closing the door firmly behind us.
I turned and gave Sam a weary smile. “I don’t know about you, but a cup of coffee would hit the spot. Can I interest you in a cup? It’s Mountain Roast.”
By the dim light projecting from our small flashlights, I could see him nod while a seductive smile played on his lips.
“Harvested by Juan Valdez himself, no doubt?”
“Natch,” I giggled.
“Well, how can a man refuse an offer like that? Count me in for a cup.”
With grins on our faces, we turned to the left to walk down the hallway to the staircase leading to the first floor and the relative safety of my kitchen. But three steps into our journey and we both stopped in our tracks.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered, my smile fading.
“I did. It sounded like a door knob being turned repeatedly.”
“That’s the sound I heard too. What do you think it was?”
The realization hit me as we slowly turned. Sure enough, the knob on the door of the study was moving. The door we had just closed. Curious, we watched as the knob turned to the right, then to the left. When it turned back to the right again Sam quipped, “rightie tightie, leftie loosie.”
My smile returned and I giggled, ending with an unladylike snort that caused Sam to snicker.
Our humor was short-lived when the door burst open so violently it bounced back on its hinges. Just as rapidly, a large black smoky mass shot out of the doorway, slamming into Sam. He flew backward through the air, landing on his butt two yards from the door in the middle of the upstairs hallway.
I yelped, jumping back for a quick second. Then, heedless of the danger, I ran to his side, kneeling down to look at him. “Are you hurt? Are you okay? What happened? What the hell was that?” The questions spewed fast and furious from my lips as the adrenaline shot through my veins. What the hell had just happened?
Sam’s mouth was open but no words were coming out. His gaze was fixated on something behind me.
“Ah, ah…” he tried to speak, despite the wind being knocked out of him.
I turned my head to see what his vision had been locked on, instantly regretting it. “Good God!” There, standing behind me, loomed a seven foot tall black shadow of what appeared to be a very large, very scary and very pissed off man with a pair of goat horns prominently protruding from his forehead.
Keeping my sight locked on the shadow, still on my hands and knees, I scrambled to the right side of the hallway, next to the railing. Horrified, I watched the shadow move in that direction with me.
“Sam, what do I do?”
“Get away from the railing. Scoot over to the wall, Gertie,” he whispered as he lay prone on the hallway floor.
I scrambled to the left. Again, the writhing black smoky mass followed me. I whimpered as the dark mass bore down on me. It was so close that I could feel the coldness of it. It oozed negativity. It was as if all the anger, hate and evil in the world had been rolled into one very large, very dark, very angry black mass. My emotions changed as the blackness covered one foot, working its way up my leg. An unnatural hatred and anger coursed through my veins, growing stronger as more and more of my leg was enveloped by the black mass.
I whimpered.
“This is your house, Gertie. This energy doesn’t belong here. Reclaim your house and tell it to leave. Do it,” he commanded. “Do it now.”
I took a deep breath, the anger in me growing. “Leave. You are not welcome here. Leave my house. Leave now.”
I heard a deep, evil laugh reverberate through the upstairs, its echo bouncing off the walls in the hallway. “Flash me a shot of leg first?”
“I said leave!”
Just like that, it was gone, just as quickly as it had come. I turned toward Sam. “Was that it? Is it gone? Is it really gone?”
“For now it would seem it is,” he said.
My body felt out of control as I shivered. The reality of what occurred hit me full force. “What was that, Sam?”
He stood, coming to stand next to me. Reaching a hand down to me, he pulled me up. “That, my dear, was evil. Pure unadulterated evil known as, Orcas, the demon prince.”
~ * ~
My hands wrapped around the hot steaming cup of coffee Sam set in front of me. Putting a filled cup at his place, he pulled out a kitchen chair and sat opposite me.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my own limbs still shaking with the shock of it all.
“I’ve had better nights, but what about you?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I’m not the one that was knocked flat on my butt.”
“Yeah, but I’m the one that’s used to getting knocked on his butt by malevolent entities. This is your first rodeo, kiddo.” His features seemed clouded with worry as he reached an arm out, clasping my quivering hand in his warm, steady one.
I tossed my head with fake bravado. “It would take more than a punk like that to shake me up,” I said with a forced nonchalance.
Sam looked at my quaking limbs before speaking. “Sure, Gertie, you’re a tiger.”
“You’re damn skippy I’m a tiger.”
“Just know that I’m here for you, Tiger.”
“I know you are and I appreciate that, Sam.”
He gave me a lingering stare as we sat across the table from one another. Then draining his coffee cup, he pushed his chair back from the table and put the empty cup in the sink.
I pushed my chair back as well and stood, waking over to the kitchen counter where we’d laid the equipment when we came downstairs. Sam started breaking down the equipment for the night.
“Can I help you review the evidence or anything tomorrow?” I ventured as he extracted the used memory card from the small digital device. “I’d be glad to do whatever you need.”
He stopped in the middle of packing his equipment in the black case and turned to me. “You don’t have to do that.”
“No,” I insisted. “It’s okay, I want to do it.”
He raised his eyebrows in one big sexy arch. “Are you sure? It can get monotonous.”
I uttered a playful groan, a smile playing on my lips as I resisted the urge to flash a saucy wink his way. “Oh course I’m sure. I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to help.”
“Well,” he drawled, “my momma always taught me that it was bad manners to turn down a pretty lady when she offers to help.” His grin was a mile wide.
Somehow, I doubted that was what his momma taught him, but who was I to call him out? As I watched Sam pack the second black case, my nerves started to get the better of me. Every time I thought about climbing those stairs and going into my bedroom to get my things for another long night on the couch, the more nervous I got. Yes, I was still sleeping downstairs, but I needed to go upstairs to get my pajamas not to mention the pillows and blankets. Between all of Sam’s talk about ghosts of murders and rapists earlier and then to have him attacked not once, but twice, it had me on edge. It was apparent and had been for sometime that the entity inhabiting my home was not a nice entity. I really should have known from the start. I mean, come on, angelic ghosts don’t go around grabbing your boobs or pinching your butt.
