by Cat Knight
No one lurked.
The chill became absolutely icy. Her lips trembled. She had heard the voice. She was certain of that. She hadn’t drunk so much as to imagine the message. And she was alone. Well, she thought she was alone.
The stapler was shaking in her hand as she ran back to her desk. She dropped the stapler and heard the woman.
“GET OUT!”
Julia spun, but there was no one there. Panting, the hair on her arms rising, she reached for her bag. She didn’t take her eyes off the door.
Her fingers searched, and after what seemed like long minutes, they found it. She dragged it across the desk, not caring what she might dislodge.
Her only thought was to get out of the building, away from the man and woman who were hiding inside; her taunts.
She tiptoed to the door and stuck out her head. She looked both ways, like a young lass crossing a street, before she stepped out of her office. She fairly ran down the hall, focused solely on the front door. She had to get away. She had to escape. Halfway to the door, she heard him again.
“GO NOW!”
She didn’t bother to look back. She reached the door, jerked it open, and passed through it in a second. Too frightened to look behind, she pulled the door shut and locked it as quickly as she could. Could a ghost burst through a locked door? She didn’t want to find out.
Once locked, she turned away and made herself walk as fast as her legs allowed. She half expected a bony hand to grip the back of her neck, but nothing happened. She made the street unmolested. For that, and that alone, she was happy.
Julia beat Alden home, which was lucky. She had a few minutes to compose herself. She was tempted to pull out the bottle of brandy and swallow enough to erase her jitters. She resisted the urge and instead busied herself with dinner. She needed something to occupy her mind and her hands.
She had never considered herself a cook, but she knew enough to throw together a soup and salad. She knew it wasn’t Alden’s favourite, but that didn’t matter. While she worked, she wondered how she was going to attack her problem. She was pretty certain the voices were somehow human generated, but that didn’t make the voices any less scary. Every time she heard them, her heart jumped into her throat. Why was that?
Ghosts, real ghosts, didn’t exist, did they? Voices, voices either existed in the mind or were generated by those who liked to scare others. Either way, they couldn’t be attributed to spirits or souls or whatever. Wasn’t that right?
But what if the voices really were ghosts? The question dangled inside her head. The thought sunk deep into her soul, while others whirled in in her brain.
Admit it, your fancy-smancy studio is nothing more than a straight-from-the-grave horror show. All that money, all that work, all that hope. Gone, gone, gone. “Could it really be ghosts?” she whispered.
“Hey, babe.”
Julia let out a little cry and literally jumped away from the stove.
“Whoa,” Alden added. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
Julia blinked and forced a weak smile, hoping he hadn’t heard her. “My fault. I was sort of lost.”
He stepped up and kissed her cheek.
“Been there, done that. What a day I had.”
Julia nodded as though listening intently, while Alden peeled off his coat and threw it on the hook.
“Why is it that when the market dips the smallest bit, investors go crazy. People you thought were sensible and rational people, call every other minute to tell you to sell, sell, sell. He peeled off his coat and threw on the hook. “It’s all you can do to hold their hand and assure them their fears are all in that six-inch space between their ears. It’s maddening.”
She nodded and smiled and half listened. She could have told him that his client issues were miniscule compared to her ghost problems. His clients were real, weren’t they? They had names and voices. They might worry about pounds and pence, but they didn’t become disembodied and threaten him.
He poured wine as she served the soup and salad. Along with the wine came his blather. Alden gave her a blow by blow of his entire day, from opening bell to closing siren. And she almost listened. Well, she semi-listened.
After all, one panicked client was much like another, right?
One wheezy-voiced grandmother was about the same as a cigar-chewing barrister, right?
Why did Alden think they were so different that he needed to detail each? Julia smiled and spooned soup.
“I HAVE A GHOST IN THE STUDIO!”
Julia’s own eyes widened as much as Alden’s. She hadn’t meant it to come out like that. His spoon stopped in mid-air, and Julia knew she couldn’t take it back.
“What?” he asked.
In order to gain composure, Julia carefully placed her spoon on the table. She tucked her hands under her thighs to keep them from shaking.
“I have a ghost,” she repeated.
“Ghost,” he said. “What sort of ghost?”
“Well, I’m not exactly certain.”
“There are all kinds of ghosts. There are the kind you get on the telly. There are the kind that grab your email and send it to Timbuktu. And some ghosts are really spies. You know, James Bond. I’m sure I’m missing half a dozen more ghosts, so why don’t you tell me what kind you have.”
“None of those, I’m afraid. My ghost actually is two ghosts. No, I take that back. It’s three ghosts. The electrical one and two real ones. Well, I think there’s only two real ones but it could be over a thousand.”
“A thousand?”
“No, no, I don’t think so. That could hardly be true. I’m guessing it’s the same ghost a thousand times. Yes, that sounds correct.”
Alden reached across the table, and she offered her hand. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
“The beginning? I suppose that was the noise, a small, tiny noise in the middle of our recording. It wasn’t supposed to be there. I mean, it wasn’t there during the session. But Ears found it, and when he couldn’t get rid of it because it moved all over, well, that was the beginning.”
He smiled, and Julia went through the entire episode, from that first female scream to the last male warning. She left out the times she was scared out of her wits; she didn’t think that mattered. Still, she was fairly certain Alden read between the lines and noticed the tinge of fear in her eyes. During some of the rougher moments, he squeezed her hand.
Still, she knew he didn’t really understand the terror. That was good.
When she ended, he poured another glass of wine. Then, he smiled, his ‘we’ll-work-this-out smile’.
“The way I see it,” he began. “It’s either a case of deliberate sabotage, or your studio is truly haunted.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. But since I don’t believe in ghosts or haunting, I’d say you have a first-class enemy who wants to run you out of your new business.”
“The only people I can think of are Ears and Rattler, and I doubt either one of them has the wherewithal to pull off such an elaborate scheme.”
“I have to agree with that, so your nemesis is someone far smarter and far nastier.”
“Who?”
“If I knew that, this wouldn’t be much of a problem, would it? Tell me, you don’t have some long, lost school chum that you wronged many years ago?”
“No,” Julia answered far too quickly.
“Ahhh,” Alden said. “Something tells me you did indeed have an arch enemy. Who was she…or was it a he?”
Julia rolled her eyes.
Chapter Nine
Rattler pulled the box that held his stash from the wall of boxes and pulled out his pill vial. He was glad he had beaten Julia to the studio. Ears left the door unlocked, so Rattler just slipped past the studio and straight to the basement. He had ginned up his excuse if he met Julia, but there were only so many excuses he could use. For a moment, he considered moving his stash, but the basement was perfect. No one would ever dream Julia w
as a user. His goods were safe. And if someone did find them, well, then, the crap would fall on her, right? He would skate—or have plausible deniability. But he had to have better access. What he needed was a key.
“GET OUT!”
He turned quickly, but there was no woman standing behind him. What the… There had to be a woman there.
He heard her, and he wasn’t so far into the nether world of drugs that he should be hearing things.
His hands shook as he popped a pill into his mouth. Was it happening again?
Once before in his love affair with drugs, Rattler had started hearing voices. They weren’t warning voices, not that at all.
They didn’t tell him to leave or watch his step or anything like that. They were deep voices that urged him to buy a big knife and prowl the alleys where the homeless and senseless hid behind dumpsters and slept in cardboard boxes.
The voices assured Rattler that these denizens of poverty weren’t people, no, not people at all, these were people too stupid and too lost to whiskey and drugs to live. These were people that needed to be removed from the planet. That’s what the voices said. These weren’t really people at all; they were lost souls. His job was to cull these lost souls from the population. Once dead, their souls could recycle, and they could be happy in their next life. He was doing them a favour.
Luckily, he had the wherewithal to resist the voices before he started prowling the alleys. He entered rehab, which was scary enough. The first week in rehab had been filled with people and voices that weren’t really there.
That had been one ugly week, but he had survived. He recovered. When he left rehab, he changed his mix of drugs, and the voices hadn’t returned—until now.
“LEAVE!”
Rattler spun all the way around. He was looking for a man this time, and Rattler came up just as empty. There was no man there. But he was going to take the man’s advice. Rattler popped a second pill and replaced his stash. He was careful to make sure the box didn’t draw attention to itself. Just another box in the wall, man.
He backed up, staring at the boxes—and they began to move again.
No shivering this time. They just popped out, as if someone behind them was pushing them. Not all at once, but in twos, almost as if there were two people behind the boxes. But that was impossible. There was a solid wall behind the boxes, concrete. He waited, because he knew there was a message coming.
“Please,” Rattler pleaded. “Please, leave me be. Leave me alone.” But the boxes popped out until he could read them.
GET OUT
Rattler raised both hands, as if warding off a blow.
“I’m going,” Rattler whispered. “Don’t come at me. I’m going.”
Hands shaking, Rattler ran up the steps.
Chapter Ten
When Julia awoke, she was nervous. When she bathed, she shook. When she walked to the tube, she shivered. As she walked over the trembling sidewalk, her knees fairly knocked, and it wasn’t from the construction work. For some reason, she sincerely wanted to avoid work. It was the first time she could remember wanting to shirk her duty. She had always showed up no matter what the job. But not this job, not this day. She didn’t want to go inside; she didn’t want to sit at her desk. She was simply scared.
“Oh, grow up,” she told herself. “Are you going to let some troll ruin your life? Get a grip.”
As she removed the key from her purse, the door opened, and Ears charged out.
“What?” she asked.
He stopped in front of her, and his lower lip quivered. “You know what,” he said.
“No, no, I don’t. What’s the matter?”
“The voices, those terrible voices.”
“We’ll fix the recording, Ears. You know we can do that.”
“Not those voices, the voices!”
Julia shook her head. “You’re going to have to help me.”
“The voices are no longer just on the recording. They’re in the studio. They’re in the HEADPHONES!”
“In your headphones?”
“They’re scary, Julia, very scary, and I don’t do scary. Do you understand? I don’t do scary!”
He stepped around her and started for the street.
“Ears! EARS!” She called. He ignored her and kept marching. For a moment, she thought she might run after him, but she put away that idea. She had no way to change his mind. In fact, she had no real idea what he was talking about. Yes, she had heard the voices, but only a few times. It wasn’t as if the voices were echoing throughout the house. That, that would frighten anyone. So, she turned to the house and went inside before she remembered that she hadn’t asked Ears what he was doing in the studio to begin with.
She was halfway to her office as Rattler emerged from the basement.
She stopped as he spotted her and grinned.
“What were you doing down there?” she asked.
Rattler did a kind of fidgety dance, bouncing from one foot to the other. The smile on his face wasn’t permanent. It kept flashing on and off like a neon sign.
To Julia, he looked as if he was having some kind of attack. “To tell the truth, I was looking for them voices.”
“Voices?”
“You mean, you ain’t heard them? ‘Get out and Leave’? You ain’t heard them?”
She stared at him, and she knew there was something more to Rattler than a search for the voices. The problem was she didn’t know how to get him to admit to something.
“What did you find?” she asked.
He tapped his cowboy hat and leaned to one side, antsy. “Nothing, nada, zip. It’s the basement. I had an idea that maybe someone had done something down there.”
“Nothing?” She knew he was lying. Something had gotten to him.
He shook his head. “I can’t stay. Got a gig. Not as nice a place as this, but hey, a dude’s gotta eat, right?” He laughed as he slid around her. “Call me if you need a bass. I got time.”
“You bet.” She watched until Rattler disappeared out the door. Then, she quickly went to the door and locked it. As she did, she chastised herself for not asking how he got into the studio in the first place. Ears had a key, but Rattler didn’t. Julia guessed that Rattler either followed Ears through the door or was waiting when Ears arrived.
Either way, she was almost certain Rattler didn’t have a key, almost certain. As she walked toward her office, she heard the voice.
“GET OUT”, the woman ordered.
The voice stopped Julia in her tracks. She whirled in a full circle, but there was no one with her.
No one.
Fear rushed through her, quickly followed by anger. She balled her hands into fists and addressed the hall.
“I’M NOT LEAVING!” Julia called. “HEAR ME?! I’M NOT LEAVING, AND I SWEAR THAT WHEN I FIND YOU—AND I WILL—WHEN I FIND YOU, I’LL RIP YOUR HEART OUT!”
Her anger felt good, but she was not at all sure she could follow up with action. After all, she had no idea who was threatening her. She couldn’t even hazard a good guess. It was patently insane. Yet, she had worked too hard to give up. Not to mention that Alden had sunk considerable funds into the project. No, she wasn’t going to walk. Let the ghost eat on that for a day or two or three.
What was Rattler doing in the basement?
Julia didn’t believe for more than a minute that Rattler had been in the basement looking for the source of the voices. Rattler was a lot of things, but a knight in shining armour wasn’t one of them. She had never heard anyone describe Rattler as the first one out of the trench. He was more of a live-and-let-live type. So, what was he doing in the basement?
Julia started for the basement and took two steps before she stopped. While she was pretty sure there was nothing to fear in the basement, she wasn’t at all certain.
And certainty was a good thing. She slipped into her office and looked around for a weapon. Unfortunately, the only thing she found beside the stapler was a rather old umbrella.
&n
bsp; Yes, it did have a point, not a sharp point but a point, so it might not be totally useless.
Perhaps, if she needed a weapon, the umbrella would provide her time to actually acquire one. Umbrella firmly in hand, chin resolutely set, she headed for the basement.
The basement wasn’t a full basement. She had been made aware of that when she bought the property. It was basically a half-basement with one wall of empty boxes. Boxes she had saved from the move-in, because they might come in handy at some point in the future. She had acquired the saved-box syndrome from her mother who saved almost everything she ever touched. They now resided neatly stacked against one wall.
The rest of the basement was concrete floor, concrete walls, plumbing, wiring, ceiling rafters and one small closet. In one corner was the hot water heater and furnace, and they looked perfectly functional and untouched. For a moment, she wondered how long the hot water heater would last. Not long enough she thought, and chased the idea from her head. Then, holding tight to the umbrella, she started her search.
It didn’t take long. She found three items that struck her as odd. Tucked up against the rafter were two speakers, two speakers that she had not installed.
After all, her money had been spent above, on the studio and control rooms. Why would she place speakers in the basement? In fact, why were they there in the first place?
They didn’t appear to be wired to anything, but that meant nothing. She was perfectly aware that speakers and other equipment didn’t have to be ‘wired’ in order to work.
And if the speakers were working, they might well supply the voices everyone was suddenly hearing. In a way, she hoped the speakers were the source. That would make things easier.
The third thing she found was Rattler’s stash.
It wasn’t hard to find. The box wasn’t pushed in all the way, which was against all the rules Julia had learned from her mother. Symmetry was primary, but beyond that, all drawers were pushed in till they were flush.
No papers or plates or silverware stuck out over the edge of the table or counter. So, when Julia spotted the not-flush box, she suspected someone had pulled out the box for some unknown reason. So, she pulled out the box and opened it.
