Pennies for the Ferryman - 01

by Jim Bernheimer

  The detective looked at me harshly, “You lose this case for us and I will personally make your life a living hell.”

  I wondered if it would be worth the rest of the McNeil reward to have Elsbeth try to make Wycheck’s life miserable. Knowing her, she’d refuse on some lofty principle. Making friends with more violent ghosts just to annoy him seemed a bit of a dicey proposition, so I let it slide. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to get a bit of professional advice on my latest “case”.

  I called to him as he was headed to the door. “Hey Wycheck, suppose you had a crime committed and the victim doesn’t want to help you. Why do you think a guy wouldn’t cooperate?”

  Wycheck grunted. “He’s got something to hide. It’s the same old story, happens all the time. Why are you asking?”

  “Ghost stuff, I’m sure you don’t want to hear about it.”

  “For a change, I actually agree with you.”

  As you can see, we were the best of friends. Who couldn’t feel the love in the air as I made my way out of the police station and returned home. Mom and I shared a quick dinner. She actually had a night off, for a change, and one of the Assistant Mangers at Pizza Hut had bucked up the courage to ask her out to a movie. I wasn’t one of those sons who felt the need to cross examine any male interested in my mom.

  She’s always had a sensible head on her shoulders, so who was I to say that this person was wrong for her? Jimmy Wilkes meddled in his single dad’s dating life when we were back in high school. The woman he managed to drive off won the Lottery, so my worldly wisdom was grounded in lessons of “Instant Karma.”

  Besides, would anyone working around Mom really take me seriously? I was probably her “weirdo son” at that point. By the same token, what did I care about the people working at a restaurant thought of me? They weren’t really a problem.

  Solving McNeil’s murder, working through scheduling conflicts with Candy, and locating Karla Thompson – those were my problems.

  Once again, I found myself riding the exercycle to nowhere and watching the exploits of The Eye of Horus on VHS. They were south of the Mason-Dixon line this time and were investigating a famous church in Baltimore and making a big deal of the fact that Edgar Allan Poe was buried there.

  Darren was mostly the straight man. Their cameraman and “tech guy,” Russell Milner, was generally the clown and had an obvious fascination with capturing Karla’s backside on the camera. I’d managed to track him down, but in his email response to me, he said he’d been in the Pacific Northwest since 2004 doing documentary work and hadn’t seen any members of their paranormal group since leaving the area.

  I hadn’t located the third investigator, Richard Wallace. Richard did the dubbing for the videos. Thus far none of the mightiest search engines on the Internet could find the right Richard Wallace, as there were just too many of them and Mr. Milner had no clue as to his whereabouts either.

  You can only imagine my excitement at watching them set up a table and pull out the Ouija Board in the graveyard. In recent episodes, Darren used the board quite a bit. A few times even someone as easily distracted as I could see the blatant fakery.

  I was tempted to fast forward, but the remote was on the couch. Were I to get off the bike now, I would not be getting back on. So, I continued to watch the festivities.

  Russell uses the camera to clearly show the joke hand buzzer, which he shocks Richard with. There’s the usual horsing around that anyone would expect to see on something filmed for Public Access TV.

  “Will you children quit!” Karla hisses. “Darren’s still feeling nauseous and you aren’t helping!”

  “Getting all creeped out again Karla?” Richard replied, still glaring at the camera.

  “Just feels weird out here tonight. I keep getting the chills and Darren’s already vomited twice.”

  Russell chided her, “You’re probably just anxious to go to your uncle’s hunting cabin.”

  Richard laughed. “Oh yes, dear Karla. Tell our viewers all about your secret love nest in Scranton. Is this the trip where Darren finally makes an honest woman out of you?”

  While Karla joked back, “As if!”, off camera, Darren could be heard complaining about his crew not taking things seriously enough and sounded clearly uncomfortable with the direction the commentary was headed. Can’t say I blamed him, as he was being called out on TV in front of potentially several hundred viewers! I caught a confused look on Karla’s face and realized that this episode probably triggered one of their spats.

  Now that was something; I hopped off the bike, but it wasn’t to grab the remote. I grabbed my pad of paper and scribbled “Karla, hunting cabin, Scranton PA” on it. It was one of the few useful nuggets of information that I gleaned from the show.

  As I settled on the couch, ignoring the bike, I rewound the last minute or two to see if I’d missed anything else. Two minutes later, I was disappointed that I’d wasted that portion of my life. Finally, the group started to get serious – well, as serious as Darren could get them and started using the board.

  After a few false starts, the board was moving and they seemed genuinely excited as they asked questions to the spirits that may or may not be around them.

  Karla asked aloud, “Why are you here?”

  They called out the letters as the little pointer marked them. It spelled, “I wait.”

  “Are you waiting for a person?”

  “Y-e-s.”

  “Who are you waiting for?”

  Darren called out the letters, “R-O-S-S. Ross?”

  Russell chuckled, “Wonder if he means the guy from ‘Friends?’ Ow!” The camera swung wildly. “Feels like someone just pushed me!”

  “Did you just push Russell?”

  “Y-e-s.”

  Darren cautioned, “I don’t think you want to make it mad, Russ. Is this Ross person still alive?”

  “Y-e-s.”

  Needless to say, I was on the verge of wetting myself.

  “What do you want from Ross?”

  “V-E-N-G-E-A-N-C-E. Vengeance! Whoa! Do you want to get revenge on Ross?”

  A gust of wind blew their candles out and naturally Karla screamed. Darren collapsed next to the small table and was on his hands and knees dry heaving. After they righted themselves, they tried calling out to the spirit again. I had goosebumps for the next few minutes, but nothing answered them. It felt foolish watching something taped years ago and having my heart racing like I was doing house-to-house searches in Iraq.

  Nothing answered them – damn! Other than their sickly leader, they spent the rest of the episode talking about how “cool” that was. Funny, I didn’t think it was very cool. I watched it twice more, but the pattern was typical of anything associated with my power; I was left with more questions than answers and the few things I knew were very disturbing.

  “Well from the way you explain it, Mike, I reckon you should steer clear of Baltimore.” Brother Silas summed things up. “Whatever is up there, it either wants revenge on you or wants you to avenge it. Either way, it doesn’t sound good.”

  Saturday found me visiting Brother Silas at the Ebenezer Church of Deliverance. “Tell me about it. Do you think I can talk to Pastor Duncan about a ride up to the Scranton area? I sent him an email, but he hasn’t replied. That woman I was telling you about, Karla, might be at a hunting cabin up there.”

  “Reggie left town for a few weeks. His sister in Arkansas has taken a turn for the worse. I’m keeping her in my prayers.” I recalled Pastor Duncan mentioning this last week, but hadn’t realized the extent of her problems.

  I shuffled my feet, not really knowing what to say. When it comes to the “milk of human kindness,” I must be lactose intolerant. He walked over to his desk and took a package off of it. “I have a present for you Mike.”

  Looking at the label, it was from a scholastic supply company. Inside were a dozen little bottles filled with iron filings. They were the kind used in elementary school to demonstrate magnetism. “Okay, how do
you think I can use this?”

  “It occurred to me when those dogs were after you that you should probably have a way to hurt a spirit before it gets to you. Well, we know the iron in the pipe wrench seems to affect the ghosts. Just like I can see you and the spirits, I can see that wrench when you hold it, but when you set it down it fades after a minute. As I see it, I think you must impart some of your energy to the iron when you’re touching it. Hold one of the bottles in your hand.”

  “Okay.” I held up one of the spice sized bottles.

  “No, I can’t see it. Pour some of it into your palm. Yeah! I can see it now. Alright, now throw it, up against the wall. Just as I expected, I can still see it. Now what we need is a ghost to throw a little at and see if it hurts them.”

  “Elsbeth?”

  “Do you honestly want to hurt that young woman?”

  “No not really. Still, how is a handful of dust going to hurt one of them?”

  “Mike, the question you should really be asking is, ‘Is it the iron in the wrench or the energy that you impart to the wrench that is harming them?’ It might be no more useful to you than a handful of dirt and other than hitting them in the eye with it and temporarily blinding them; it could only make them dirty. Of course, the other possibility is that the iron is merely a conduit for the energy within you.”

  Scratching my head, I say, “You’ve had a lot of time to think about this?”

  He laughed in reply, “Everyone was put on this Earth for a reason. I believe that mine is to help people. You seem to need a good deal more help than others and I am uniquely qualified to assist. In Roman times, fighters used what was called a cestus. We call them brass knuckles today. I’d thought about getting you a pair, but they’re illegal in most states and the pipe wrench does much the same thing without you explaining to a policeman why you have one in your possession. Now, somewhere around here I have an old leather pouch from before my Army days. Don’t ask what I used to carry in it, but now I believe it contains a nice set of rosary beads. Try that top drawer.”

  It took twenty minutes of opening and closing drawers, but eventually I found it. Pouring some of the filings into the bag, I opened it for Silas to look in.

  “I can see the filings in there. The plastic from the bottle was insulating you. The leather isn’t,” Silas said, happy as a kid at Christmas. I’d become more open to new ideas, if this was my version of “holy water,” who was I to complain? Even if it doesn’t work, I could always throw the bag at the next nasty ghost like a rock. David went up against Goliath with a rock, right? I’ll have a heavy “beanbag,” a wrench, and a sword. Definitely not a Proton Pack from “Ghostbusters,” but I didn’t necessarily have a big movie budget either.

  “One thing I do want you to try with Elsbeth, is pour a line and touch it. After you touch it, see if she can cross that line. You may be able to use this to create a temporary barrier.”

  “Anything’s worth a try.”

  “Now, as to your other problem of getting to Scranton, I may be able to make a call or two and get someone to help you take a trip up there. No guarantees, mind you, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  The highlight of the following Monday was encountering the always pleasant Jenny Goodman in the library. I was availing myself of some high speed internet access and looking at the college website. I needed to choose which classes to take next semester. Sadly, “The Paranormal Experience 101 – How to best deal with things that go bump in the night” wasn’t being offered. As she walked by, I happened to look up and our eyes locked.

  I’ve always specialized in awkward moments. This was no different.

  “Hello Mike,” she said.

  With such a formal tone, I’m surprised she didn’t call me Michael. “Fancy meeting you here, I was just selecting my classes for next term., I can email you a copy to make certain we don’t overlap, or your Aunt will no doubt pull it from my records when I submit it.”

  “I’m only taking afternoon classes after the winter semester. I have a job in the mornings. How’s Candy?” she asked.

  I’ve never heard the word “Candy” sound like some kind of disease, but somehow Jenny managed.

  Casually I responded. “Busy. We IM each other, but she hasn’t had a chance to get up here since your birthday. Did you have a good time?”

  “I had a fantastic time!” She said both a little too quickly and perhaps a little too loudly. We drew a few stares from a neighboring table.

  “That’s good. Carlton seems like a nice enough guy.” Pushing her buttons was ridiculously easy.

  “Carlton is a great guy! He is a gentleman and you’re an ass!”

  Of course I could make a comment about “Mr. J. Crew” there being my age, going after a freshly minted nineteen year old, but for a change I held my tongue – for all of three seconds.

  “Yeah, he looked like a real momma’s boy, probably good for your image too. You just can’t buy that kind of respectability. Well actually, I’m wrong. His daddy can.”

  “You’re just jealous that he has one!”

  Jenny probably regretted it the moment she said it, as it’s probably the one really big button I have. Just ask any kid who’s had a parent walk out on them and they’ll know what I’m talking about. I spun back to face my computer screen. This conversation was “officially” over.

  Jenny waited there for a good ten seconds before walking away. Things had hit rock bottom between the two of us.

  I didn’t feel like surfing the Internet anymore. Someone probably needed to use the terminal anyway.

  After a fitful night of sleep, I woke up to find Elsbeth waiting in my room. Under other circumstances, I wouldn’t mind finding a female was in my room when I woke up, but since she’s dead, it more than qualified as a bit creepy.

  I reach out and touch her hand, “What’s the word?”

  “I spent the afternoon talking with Kevin. He’s a very nice man. Maybe you should just let it go? I’m sure there are other rewards out there.”

  Oh god, Elsbeth had the hots for him!

  “So, he doesn’t want the mystery of his death solved?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she whined.

  “That just means he has something to hide.”

  “Must you always be suspicious of everyone?” she asked sharply.

  I bit back my reply. Harsh words weren’t going to get me any closer to payday and I tried thinking it through. Given that I’d been awake for less than two minutes, it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. From an objective, completely hetero standpoint, Kevin was a pretty good looking guy. Also, considering Elsbeth was now asking me to abandon my hopes of “The Big Score” along with the associated vacation for her grammy meant that Kevin must be one sweet talker.

  “What did you two talk about?”

  “We had a very long and pleasant chat. He talked about going to watch his son’s basketball games and how proud he was of him and his two girls. His oldest is applying to Princeton,” Elsbeth said wistfully.

  “That’s fascinating. What did he say about his wife?”

  “We didn’t really talk that much about her.”

  “Of course, you two didn’t.”

  “Why do you say that?” she sounded defensive.

  I switched hands because it was getting irritating, much like leading this “horse to water” and watching her not drink. Maybe it was time for some harsh words.

  “Because he was flirting with you! You never talk about your ex-girlfriend or, god forbid, your wife to someone you’re sweet talking.”

  “You shouldn’t say such things about Kevin. He’s a nice man. Quit being an ass!” Elsbeth said with more than a measure of self-righteousness.

  Almost laughing at how remarkably similar she’d sounded to another annoying female who’d recently crossed my path, I continued, “What I see is a guy who was screwing around on his wife.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Did he ask you to come visit him again?”


  “Um, yes, but what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that he’s a cheater who hasn’t had an opportunity to score with a willing female in months. So are you going back to see him?”

  She looked angry at me. I wanted to scream that I wasn’t the one “playing her,” but even dead people seem to be unable to grasp what’s really going on sometimes.

  “What if I am?” she said indignantly. “He’s lonely and I’m lonely too!”

  “Fine, go be lonely together! Get naked and make little ghost babies for all I care! However, if you want Megan to see the fiftieth state anytime soon, you’ll realize that the reason he doesn’t talk about his wife is that when he was alive, he was probably diddling someone else. Ask yourself, why he wouldn’t want his murder solved. What’s he got to lose? It’s not one of his kids. It’s probably not his wife. The police ruled them out early on. They were on vacation in Florida when he went missing. Everything I’ve read about him says that he was a ‘well respected family man. That means he’s more interested in maintaining his perfect image than he is in moving on in the afterlife.”

  She faded away before I could tell her what I really thought of Mr. “Smooth Talking” Kevin McNeil, but I had a good theory. Now I just had to find the facts that the police had missed.

  Two days later, I delivered groceries to Megan. Elsbeth was nowhere to be found. The retiree looked at me through those big glasses of hers; reminding me of that woman Mom always enjoys watching on the “Golden Girls.” I reached down to pet the excited Sheba. It still didn’t hurt that much.

  “Elsbeth’s been out a lot lately and her new pet has been a bit lonely. Normally, I ask if she’s here and she’ll make that little bell ring and I’ll talk to her for awhile. Has she been helping you out?”

  “Not for the past few days. I think she’s talking to some other ghosts.” I refrained from saying exactly what I thought she was doing. They say it’s not good to speak ill of the dead. Except of course, so many of the dead people I’d met so far deserved it.