by Tim McGregor
“What?”
“Never mind.” Gantry slugged back the beer and set it down on the dresser beside the door. Removing his jacket and rolling up his sleeves, he stepped further into the room and addressed the girl in the bed. “Morning sunshine. Time to pay the piper.”
The girl didn’t move. The Englishman kicked the bed hard. “Oy! You!”
The transformation was immediate and startling. Asleep, the girl appeared peaceful and innocent. Awake, she seemed like fury incarnate. She gnashed her teeth and pulled against the restraints, her body jerking and twisting so hard the bed shook and bumped on the floor. The girl had bitten her tongue at some point and blood dribbled from the corners of her mouth, bubbling up in a pink froth. The eyes were bloodshot and filled with murder.
The older man and his nephew both took a step back as the girl came to life.
“Morning, Sadie,” said Gantry.
“Sabina!” corrected the nephew.
“Right. Sabina. Quite the fix you got yourself into here, isn’t it?”
The girl snarled and popped her teeth like a rabid dog. A rapid fire string of obscenities gushed from the girl’s throat in a cracked voice, all of it in the Romany tongue that Gantry could decipher no word of but its meaning was plain enough. ‘Fuck off’ being universal in any language.
Gantry shook a cigarette from the pack and lit up. He turned to the girl’s father. “How’d she get this way?”
“She and her cousins were playing around with bad things.”
“What bad things?”
Sergei nodded at something on the messy dresser. “That.”
Gantry picked through the mess of nail polish and trashy magazines until he found the strange board with the letters and numbers on it. “Ah,” he smiled. “A gypsy board.”
The girl thrashed on, her curses becoming louder and more frantic as the stranger lifted the instrument from the dresser. In a strange patois of English and her mother tongue, she snarled at him to leave it alone.
“Pipe down, sport,” Gantry barked back. He held the board up between his finger and thumb like it was contaminated and turned to the two men. “Why didn’t you get rid of the stupid thing?”
The men looked from one to the other. They didn’t know.
The girl named Sabina croaked something obscene about Gantry’s mother having congress with a goat. She underscored her point by spitting blood at him.
Gantry smiled. “This is the shittiest possession I’ve seen yet, girlie. Third rate.”
Taking the board in both hands, he snapped it over his knee and flung the pieces into the corner. The girl’s ranting ceased, her mouth forming an oval of shock. It held there as Gantry raised his hand and smacked the girl hard across the face.
“Oy!” He gripped the girl’s brow, holding her still. “I’m addressing the piece of shit inside this girl. Playtime’s over!”
The girl thrashed and flailed but the man held her down. She resumed her spew of obscenities, garbled in two languages.
Gantry hollered back. “Tell me your name.” The girl chomped her teeth, trying to bite his wrist. “Say it!”
“Viperkiss,” hissed the girl.
“Bullshit. Your real name.”
The tremors eased. “Wesley,” she panted.
“I knew it.” Gantry turned to the men cowering at the door. “This is no demon. Just another arsehole ghost.”
“How do you know?” Sergei trembled.
“No self-respecting demon would be this stupid.” Gantry addressed the girl again. “Alright, Wesley. You’ve had your fun. Time to piss off.”
“No! The girl wants me. She invited me in—”
“No she didn’t, chum. Out you go.”
“You can’t make me,” the girl hissed. “Besides, there’s someone else in here too. Says she knows you.”
“Yeah, yeah. OUT!” He took a haul off the cigarette and blew the smoke straight into the girl’s face. She coughed and sputtered and spit, and then something like black mist snaked out of the girl’s mouth and nostrils.
The father and nephew backed away, watching the cloud of darkness dissipate like steam.
“Presto.” Gantry straightened up and wiped his hand on his pant leg. “All better.”
Gabor took a tentative step back into his daughter’s room. “It’s really gone?”
“Yeah. You can untie her.”
“Thank God.” The man crossed to the bed and patted his daughter’s brow while the younger man loosened the knot at her wrist.
Gantry…
The voice issuing from the girl’s lips was entirely other. Not her own, nor that of Wesley. When her eyelids rolled open, the pupils were white and the two men sprang backward to get away.
The grin on the Englishman’s face slipped away and something close to concern coloured his eyes. “What did you say?”
Gantry… moaned the voice. Did you think we’d forgotten about you?
“Who is this?”
Not that easy…you owe us…the ledger needs balancing…
Gantry narrowed his eyes as he studied the girl. The capillaries in her face were bursting, gin blossoms blooming over her cheeks. “Get out. The girl doesn’t belong to you. You’re not wanted nor welcome.”
She’s still here…with us…just the way you abandoned her…
Gantry’s face took on a pallor. His teeth gritted. “Shut up.”
Do you want to speak to her?
Gabor and Sergei watched from the doorway. The Englishman’s hands were trembling.
There isn’t much left of her…they picked her bones clean…but she can still speak
Gantry lunged at the girl, locking his hands round her throat and shaking her violently. “Shut your fucking mouth!”
The men yelled at Gantry to stop, pulling him off the girl before he killed her. They dragged him away and the girl on the bed uttered an awful sound. Her back arched and she flopped to one side then the other. Her body coiled up and she vomited blood over the bed.
“Papa?” The voice that came was her own. She coughed and panted, tears coming fast.
Gabor and his nephew rushed to the girl’s side to comfort her. Gantry leaned back against the wall and wiped the sweat from his brow. He snapped his hand to shake out the trembling.
Gabor turned to Gantry, tears in his own eyes now. “Thank you. What do I owe you? Anything.”
John Gantry staggered out the door. “I’ll send the bill in the post.”
Chapter 5
MARIO WAS ACTING ODD.
Arriving late for her shift at the bar, Billie fully expected to get an earful from Mario about tardiness. He never missed an opportunity to scold any of his barkeepers for lateness and today would be her third late start in a week. Billie girded herself for just such a lecture before rushing through the door. Mario was behind the bar, squatting on his knees to count the inventory in the fridge below the counter.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, hanging up her jacket. “No excuse.”
Mario pushed himself to his feet. “Huh? Yeah, that’s all right.”
“No. It’s not fair, like you always say.” Billie swung behind the counter and reached for the clipboard in his hand. “And here you are doing my beer count for me.”
“No big deal,” he said. He seemed reluctant to let go of the list. “You sure you want to work tonight? I know you’ve been through a bad week.”
Billie took a second look at him. Was he joking? “Thanks but I’m fine. I’m sick of pacing the floor and waiting for news.”
“Sure,” Mario said. He hesitated a moment, avoiding her eyes. “It’s no problem if you want some time off. I can get Geoff or Jackie to fill in. Just say the word.”
“Are you going to give me the beer list or no?” She took the clipboard from him and knelt down to finish the inventory he’d started. “I’m good. You can go back to your office.”
“Yeah. Uh, sure.” The bar owner fussed with the lime tray and then straightened the bottles on the she
lf, as if lost in his own bar.
Billie looked at him. “Are you feeling okay? You seem kind of spaced-out.”
“What? No.” Mario slid away and headed for his office in the back. “If you change your mind and want to leave, just say the word.”
She watched him waddle away, wondering why her employer was acting so odd. It was out of character for him to be concerned with any of his staff’s problems, let alone be so accommodating with rescheduling the shifts. She shrugged it off and resumed the counting, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the bar got busy with the after-work crowd.
~
Working bar, there’s always one know-it-all braggart who thinks he can mix better than anyone and is more than willing to obnoxiously instruct every barkeep he comes across. Billie held her tongue as a man in a trimmed beard and sculpted hair told her how to do her job.
“See,” he said, “rim the glass with orange first, that way you get a hint of it.”
“Really,” Billie replied in a droll tone.
“It brings out the character of the whiskey. But that’s if you want to make a truly great drink.” He looked at the bottle she took down from the stand. “Are you really going to serve that brand?”
Billie stifled the urge to smash the bottle over the know-it-all’s head. The guy had sipped on a single drink over the last hour, blathering on and ‘correcting’ her mixes.
“Hey chief,” said a man’s voice. “Quit hassling the help, yeah?”
Billie looked up, the accent in the voice triggering something. John Gantry stood over the loudmouth on the barstool.
“Oh, I’m not bothering her,” the bearded man said. “I’m instructing her on cocktails.”
“Mate, the nice lady is a breath away from gouging your eye out with a broken bottle. Now, you wouldn’t want to mess up your perfectly coiffed hair, would you?” Gantry glanced up and smiled at Billie. “Hullo, luv. This tosser bothering you?”
Billie should have been used to Gantry appearing out of thin air by now. But she wasn’t. “What are you doing here?”
“Came for a drink.” He looked down the bar but all the stools were occupied. He looked at the loudmouth before him. “Time to clear off, son. Go be smug to some other poor bartender.”
“Get lost, dude.”
Gantry leaned in, crowding the younger man. “Listen, chief. You can vacate that barstool or you can eat it. Choose quickly now.”
The loudmouth sputtered but stopped. Gantry was tall and there was something in his eye that was pure viciousness and more than a little crazy. He looked to Billie for help. “Are you gonna let him talk to me that way? What kind of service is this, anyway?”
At the very least, Billie kept herself from smirking until the know-it-all huffed his way out door. “Where have you been?”she asked.
“Hell and back.” He slid onto the stool. “Pour me a pint, would you?”
“Should you be out in public like this?”
“If the filth walk in, I’ll duck out the back.” He took up the pint she placed before him and took a sip. “How’s your friend? The one in the hospital?”
She hadn’t seen Gantry in over a week. He’d been gone during the whole fiasco at the house on the hill. “How did you know about that?”
“I have spies. What happened to her?”
Billie took a breath, wondering where to start. “Something bad took hold of her. Like it possessed her.”
He tensed up at that, looking at her again. “What was it?”
“A dead woman named Evelyn Bourdain,” she said. “Gantry, I think we did something really stupid.”
Gantry glanced around the bar. “Can you get outta there for a tic? It’s too loud in here.”
“Give me a minute.”
In the alley behind the bar was a bench of rough milled lumber. They took a seat and Billie told him the chain of events as she remembered them. How she and Tammy and Kaitlin had gone to a place called the Murder House where she had found a body hidden under the basement floor. About Kaitlin’s erratic behaviour over the following days, her disappearance and how she and Mockler had found Kaitlin back at the Murder House. Gantry sneered at the mention of the detective’s name but he went silent when she told him about the weird people in robes performing some ritual and how Kaitlin had tried to kill her. His eyes widened when she told him that the skeletal remains in the house belonged to her own father.
He leaned back against the brick wall. “Christ on a stick.”
They watched a rat scurry through the garbage bins across the alleyway. “I’m worried about Kaitlin,” Billie said.
“I’m sure the doctors are doing all they can.”
“I don’t just mean her injuries.”
He snapped open his lighter. “You think this Bourdain woman is still after her?”
“I do.” Billie brushed something from her knee. “She scares me.”
“I should have twigged onto it sooner.”
She looked at him. “How could you have known?”
“The Murder House,” he said. “The name’s been popping up on my radar for weeks now. I didn’t know what it meant.”
His smoke swirled about them and she waved it away.
“How is it tied to you,” he asked. “How in the world did your old man wind up in that place anyway?”
“I have no idea. Mockler wants to re-open the case into my mother’s disappearance.”
“Wonderful. I’m sure super-cop will have this solved in a jiffy.”
“Hey.” She looked at him harshly. “He’s a friend.”
“Your ‘friend’ wants to lock me away.”
“You need to talk to him,” she said. “Clear this whole thing up.”
“You’re having me on,” he laughed. “You think it’s that easy?”
The rat in the alley scurried closer. Gantry scrounged up a piece of broken bottle and hurled it at the thing. Missing it by a mile, the rat just looked at them and carried on.
“Filthy buggers,” he said.
Billie straightened her back. “Can you help Kaitlin?”
“How?”
“Protect her somehow. I’m worried that thing is still after her. And she’s vulnerable.”
“What hospital is she in?”
“Hamilton General.”
They got up and Billie opened the back door.
“I’m not promising anything,” he said.
Making their way back inside, Billie slid behind the bar where Mario was wiping down the counter.
“Thanks,” Billie said to her boss. “I’ll take it from here.”
The bar owner stepped back and moved around Billie, giving her a wide berth.
“Any trouble?” she asked.
Mario shook his head and hurried away without saying a word.
Gantry watched it all with some amusement. “What’s with him?”
“I don’t know. He’s been acting weird lately.”
“To everyone or just you?”
“Just me,” Billie said. “I must have done something to make him mad.”
Gantry drained his glass, watching the bar owner disappear down the hallway. “He’s scared of you.”
“Why would he be scared of me?”
“You were on the news, remember? You’ve been outed as a psychic. It scares him.”
Billie shook her head. “Me?”
“It frightens some people, Billie. The whole psychic thing.” Gantry made his way to the door and called back. “Better get used to it.”
~
The fourth floor of the hospital was quiet when Gantry slipped through the stairwell door. A skeleton staff at the nursing station, the odd orderly pushing a cart through the halls. He stole a labcoat from a cart, threw it on and walked smartly past the station to the east wing.
The young woman in the bed appeared peaceful, her eyes closed and her breathing slow. Gantry studied her for a moment before reaching down for her wrist. Her flesh was cool to the touch but not cold. A good sign.
Thumbing back the lids, he inspected Kaitlin’s eyes. Blank and lifeless but there was a deep red around the iris where blood vessels had burst. A common side effect of possession, caused by extreme exertion. It’s what happened when two souls struggled for control within one body. From what Billie had told him, Kaitlin had lost the fight. But she was still alive, her pulse strong.
He lowered her jaw and put his ear to her open mouth. With certain possessions, the trapped victim could actually be heard screaming for help. Nothing more than a faint whisper but it was there if one knew how to listen for it. He heard no such sound. The woman seemed free of whatever had taken hold of her.
Easing her jaw shut, he leaned against the side of the bed and studied her. He had seen too much of this for one lifetime, people seized by something evil and tossed about like puppets only to be discarded, left broken. Even if Billie’s friend recovered, there was no guarantee that her mind would still be there. Most victims of possession were left insane, drooling in a catatonic state from the damage done. Much like Ellen had.
He shook his head and pushed away any thoughts about Ellen. He didn’t have time to sink into that quagmire of grief now. He had work to do, a few precautions to protect the young woman from anything hoping to come back for her.
Twenty minutes later he was back on the ground floor, crossing the lobby to the exit. He stopped just before the door and looked back. The security guard was reading a newspaper at his post and two women in scrubs were at the vending machines. Nothing more. He shrugged and passed through the door, thinking his radar must be off.
There was a fourth person in the lobby, one who had ducked behind a large potted fern when he saw the Englishman crossing the floor. Watching from his perch, he waited until Gantry had left before dialling a number on his battered cell phone.
“Hey. I need to talk to detective Mockler,” he said into the phone. He frowned at the response. “Then patch me through to him. Tell him Tapeworm called. John Gantry is back in town.”
Chapter 6
COMING HOME TO AN empty house took some getting used to. It had been almost a week but Mockler was still surprised to find the house dark each time he returned. Turning on a few lights did little to improve the feel of the place. Half the stuff was gone. More than half, he suspected. The house looked gutted and neglected, an abandoned dwelling suited for vagrants and crack-heads.
