Call Me Dreamer

by Ryan Maitland

  “Oh? Did it?” I asked, trying to look innocent.

  “Jane…” the sheriff almost growled. “I’m not an idiot! I know what I saw!”

  “Okay! Fine!” I hissed, annoyed that I didn’t have a believable explanation at hand. “The house is haunted, but I’m on good terms with them! I promise I’ll tell you all about it, but later! Okay? Just don’t tell anyone else, especially not Beth, okay?”

  The sheriff looked at me for a long moment, as if assessing whether I was telling the truth, before sighing, “Okay.”

  “Good! Thank you!” I told her before heading back downstairs.

  Halfway down, Peter told me that somebody was coming up the drive.

  I was at the bottom of the stairs when the knocking started. I opened the door to find Anne and a man I assumed was her husband, Ben. They were both in their late forties and wearing comfortable clothes of jeans and long-sleeve shirts. Ben had a receding hairline and a bulging middle, while Anne tended towards skinny.

  “Hello! Welcome!” I greeted them, ushering them inside and taking their coats, trying hard not to look into their heads.

  Ben offered his hand and I knew it would be rude not to take it, so I shook it, bracing for the mental connection. Skin-to-skin contact is the best connection I’ve ever experienced with my telepathy. The signal is so strong that I can’t really block it out, so I tend to avoid it with people I know and care about, while seeking it out with strangers I’m trying to size up. The impressions I got from Ben’s mind is that it seemed like such a big house for such a little girl; he then wondered how I was able to afford it working for his wife.

  “Please, feel free to look around,” I told them, slapping a false smile on my face.

  “This house is amazing!” Ben enthused, looking around. “And huge!” he added. “It must have been terribly expensive!”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised!” I told him. “I actually got it much cheaper than you’d think!”

  “Oh? Was it a fixer-upper?” he asked, supplying the explanation he’d most believe. I love it when people tell me, straight up, the explanation they’re going to believe! It makes lying so much easier!

  “It sure was!” I told him.

  “Plus, the house is haunted!” Beth chimed in, coming through the dining room door.

  “Haunted?” Ben asked, apparently oblivious to the house’s reputation.

  Anne slapped his arm and chided, “Oh! Everyone thinks that because it’s an old house and needed a little TLC!”

  “Yeah, people seem to let their imagination just run wild and believe the craziest things!” I chuckled, somewhat nervously.

  Anne led her husband away as a knock at the door alerted me to another visitor. I opened the door to see a tall, lanky, man in his early-to-mid-twenties wearing a bright blue suit. He was looking at everything but me, like his head was on a swivel. I noticed he was wearing a button that said ‘The government is LYING to you!’ This immediately put me on guard, considering I freelance for a clandestine part of the CIA…

  “Tim!” Beth called joyfully. “You made it! I’m so glad! I really wanted you to meet Jane, here! She owns the house, outright, and works at a lovely little antique store down the road!”

  Beth turned to me and made further introductions, “Jane, this is Tim Foyle! He’s a journalist for the local paper and has his own blog with the most interesting stories!”

  “Really…” I murmured, a little stunned… It was at this moment that I realized, albeit too late, that Sarah was completely right and Beth was trying to play matchmaker and that she had matched me with Tim! A psychic teenager freelancing for the CIA while trying to blend into a small town, and who lives in an actual haunted mansion, should not date a conspiracy-theorist journalist! That is the complete opposite of who she should be dating! Beth and I were so going to have a talk! That is… once I figured out how to have the talk without upsetting her… or telling her any of my secrets…

  “Hello,” Tim greeted, holding out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you! I’ve heard so much about this house!”

  I shook his hand, this time welcoming the connection between our minds, and got glimpses of theories about satanic rituals done in the basement, a backyard full of bodies, and wondering how many pets have disappeared near the house…

  I broke off contact with him and welcomed him inside while trying to hide how nervous the man made me. Sarah had not prepared me for this!

  What was I going to do?

  Chapter 4

  The Séance

  Okay, I confess that before this evening, I didn’t know what a séance was… It’s not something that ever came up in my upbringing, which was severely lacking in anything remotely resembling anything useful, and it’s not a topic that comes up in everyday conversations, not that I have many of those to begin with…

  I decided to find out as subtly as I could…

  “So, how do you want to do this?” I asked Beth, who seemed busy clearing off the long dining room table that came with the house, likely from somebody that had bought the house and abandoned the furniture in favor of spending as little time as possible in the house. I kind of have quite a bit of furniture this way… Honestly? It was one of the appeals of the house!

  “Well first, I’ll light some candles,” Beth explained, sounding excited. “Then we’ll all gather round, holding hands…”

  “Holding hands?” I nearly shrieked, startling Beth a little.

  “Yes,” Beth answered, looking a little stunned. “Why? Is that a problem?”

  “No! No problem!” I tried to assure her, though I couldn’t keep the fear out of my voice. “I’m just…” I struggled to find a lie she might believe. “I’m just a bit of a germaphobe!” I told her. “But it’s okay,” I tried laughing it off. “I’ve got some hand sanitizer, so I’ll be fine!”

  As far as lies went, it wasn’t my best… it wasn’t even that believable! But it seemed to work well enough as Beth just shrugged her shoulders and continued with her plan.

  “Well, anyway,” she continued, “then I thought I’d turn off the lights so we only have the lights of the candles to see by, then we’ll try to call the spirits of the family that used to live here.”

  “Oh. Okay,” I acknowledged, more nervous about holding someone’s hand than I was about Peter and Wendy acting up.

  The dining room table is long and can comfortably sit ten people, with four on each side and one at each end. This meant that if everyone was to hold hands in a circle, it was going to be a bit awkward… I think Beth had figured I’d invite more people, but it looked like she was going to make do as best as she could by spacing us out further apart. She seated everyone, placing me between her and Tim, with her and the sheriff on the ends and Anne and her husband opposite me.

  Subtlety is not one of Beth’s strong suits…

  There were at least a dozen small candles held in their dishes that Beth lit using a box of matches, giving the air an acrid smell of phosphorous. She placed these candles around the table before turning off the lights. The candles were enough to illuminate everyone in a soft, flickering, glow. All-in-all, the effect was not unpleasant, and, in a different setting, might even be romantic, but I was busy trying to control my rising panic at the thought of having to hold the hands of two people at the same time.

  Normally, when I hold an object, I can control my telepathic ability, but when I touch someone, skin-to-skin, the signal is too strong to ignore. When I’m prepared for it, it’s not so bad, like when shaking a person’s hand, but I’ve never had occasion to hold two people’s hands at the same time.

  I was nervous, to say the least…

  Once everyone was seated, and the only light came from the candles, Beth sat down in front of the board she had brought with her. It looked like a game board, but had letters, numbers, and a few choice words, like ‘yes’ and ‘no’, on it. There was also a triangular… thing that seemed to be intended to be a pointer of sorts.

  I glanced a
round the room and I saw that Wendy seemed to be just as confused as I was. At least she had Peter there to explain things to her…

  “Now, join hands and we shall call on the spirits!” Beth declared, holding out her own hands.

  With a deep breath, I took her hand and braced myself for the flood I was sure to get. I was not disappointed, as I could see around the table through Beth’s eyes and I could hear her thoughts about what a lovely couple Tim and I made…

  Ugh…

  I held out my other hand for Tim and did my best to block out his thoughts, which seemed focused around how the government might be using occult magic, maybe similar to this, as a form of mind control…

  I opened my eyes, hoping to focus on what was right in front of me as a means of blocking out thoughts that were not my own. It worked… to a degree… I wasn’t able to block everything out, but I found that I could ignore it if I distracted myself…

  Imagine you’re sitting in a room with two large stereos, one on either side of you. Each stereo is tuned to a different radio station and is playing different music as loud as the stereos can go. Maybe one is playing pop music while the other is playing death-metal. Now imagine that you must carry on a conversation while this music, that nobody else seems to hear, blares in your ears.

  That should give you some idea of what I was experiencing…

  I could hear Beth calling out with some prearranged script she was following, but I was too busy ignoring everything I was getting to pay attention. The worst part was when Peter and Wendy floated to the center of the table, their ghostly bodies unfazed by the solid wood, and started making faces at me… faces that only I could see, but mustn’t react to, for fear of embarrassing myself further…

  Those scoundrels came dangerously close to making me laugh! In front of everyone! It’s not often that the two of them had me so powerless, so it seems they were making full use of the opportunity! Maybe I could use this later to get out of playing tag…

  This whole thing went on for a while, but eventually Beth seemed to give up on ghosts with a sigh and broke contact, signaling that the séance was done and that it had been a failure, which was a great relief to me.

  “I was so sure it would work this year…” Beth lamented with a sigh.

  “Why were you so sure?” Tim Foyle asked, sounding professionally interested.

  “Well, this house has a bit of a reputation…” Beth started, sounding a little nervous, like she might scare me away or something.

  “Reputation?” Tim asked, sounding more intrigued. I wondered if he was thinking dirty thoughts.

  “A reputation for being… well, haunted…” Beth finished.

  “Really?” Tim asked, sounding more and more like a journalist. He turned to me and asked, “Jane, have you had any experiences that would suggest this house was haunted?”

  “Not really,” I lied. “I mean, sure, there are strange sounds in the night, but that’s just the house settling. It’s an old house and old houses creek.”

  “Not like the stories I’ve heard!” Beth countered. “Did you know, that before Jane came along, nobody could stay in this house for more than a week? And now, here she is, more than a year later! Still living in the house!”

  “Interesting…” Tim commented, stroking his chin, thoughtfully. “Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Oh, Jane doesn’t scare easily,” Anne answered, coming to my defense.

  “That’s true,” Beth agreed. “Just the other day, I saw her handling a great big spider like it was a… a… kitten or something!”

  “I don’t get why people freak out over spiders…” I sighed. “I mean, they’re not pests! They eat the pests!”

  Tim looked at me in a way I couldn’t readily decipher. Was that professional curiosity? Was it some weird personal interest? Or worse! Could it be some sort of… attraction?

  Shudder…

  Thankfully, I was at least partially saved by the sheriff’s phone going off. She excused herself to the receiving room and I made one or two awkward attempts at small-talk, which kind of ended badly, so it doesn’t really bear repeating… like, ever… Okay? Okay!

  “I’m afraid duty calls,” the sheriff announced, poking her head back into the dining room. “Jane, thank you for inviting me. It was a nice party,” she added, half-sincerely.

  After that, the party kind of fell apart… Beth kept trying to get me and Tim to talk to each other, while I did my best to avoid talking to him for fear that I would say something that would get me into trouble. Plus, Tim is kinda creepy, even to me…

  Since everyone seemed interested in the house, I gave them a quick tour, omitting the private areas, and despairing at the library with the built-in shelves that were conspicuously barren. I mean, I had a few books on them, but most of them were abandoned by previous owners… I had bought one or two used books, since they were pleasant to my extra sense, but there were still many empty shelves…

  Beth looked like she was about to say something to help alleviate this condition, but I hustled everyone out and showed them a room that somebody had tried to convert into a kind of game room, I think… There was an eight-sided, felt-topped, table with places for drinks and game chips, along with a dartboard with several darts sticking out of it that I suspected Wendy and Peter used on a regular basis. I try to avoid playing with anything sharp… I tend to bleed easily and I don’t really have any blood to spare…

  When it became clear that the séance was going to be the highlight of the entertainment, Tim excused himself, claiming he should contact his office to see if there was news on what business the sheriff had.

  “They found a body in the cemetery,” Wendy informed me, helpfully. I guess she had been snooping on the sheriff when she took that call. I kept my face carefully neutral at this news, reminding myself that this was not my problem.

  Once Tim left, Beth and Anne, bless their hearts, offered to help me clean-up, which I accepted gratefully, while also noting that nobody had really touched my homemade jerky…

  I tried not to take it personally and reminded myself that this meant more for me!

  By the time everyone had gone, it was still mid-evening, so I figured I had some time before I really needed to think about going to bed. I made enough coffee for two cups, mostly to ensure I wouldn’t collapse on a couch, and hoped for an uneventful rest of the evening as I surfed the internet for a bit…

  You know, I wish I was so lucky…

  Chapter 5

  New Assignment

  Less than an hour later, while I was streaming a cooking show about grilling and seriously considering getting a charcoal grill, Peter called out, “There’s a man in the driveway!”

  “It’s Earl!” Wendy clarified, which was enough to get me up and moving to the door, opening it just as Earl, carrying a large bag, was starting up the steps of the porch.

  Earl works at the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, and is technically my ‘handler’ but I prefer the term ‘liaison’ since that makes me sound less like a trained monkey. He’s in his thirties, with requisite ‘dad bod’ and wears a suit everywhere he goes. He also wears a black hat that covers his light brown hair and has an asymmetric goatee that’s slightly bigger on one side.

  “Evening, Jane,” he greets with a small smile. “I’ve got a new assignment for you!”

  “What kind?” I ask, suspicious at his unannounced visit.

  “One that’s time-sensitive,” he answers as if reading my thoughts. He can’t actually read my thoughts because, although he oversees a team of psychics, including yours-truly, he isn’t actually a psychic, himself.

  “A missing-person?” I ask, knowing that this is kind of my forte for the work I do for the agency.

  “Afraid not,” he tells me. “We want you to spy on a foreign diplomat.”

  “Earl, you know I don’t like that kind of job!” I whine. I’m not big on invading people’s thoughts without a really good reason and using my ability to spy on peop
le just feels wrong to me, given how much I value my own privacy.

  “I know, but this one is important!” he counters. “We think lives could be on the line!”

  “Oh, all right…” I concede, stepping aside so he can come inside.

  He nods and gets right to work, setting up equipment on my dining room table while I close my laptop and move it to one of the empty seats. Earl’s equipment consists of a video camera mounted on a small tripod that he sets up at one end of the long table and a small laptop with an antenna attached to it and an outward-facing camera behind the monitor, and a small tape recorder. He also pulls out a plastic bag holding a watch with a leather band before pulling a small notebook from an inside pocket.

  This has become Earl’s standard setup for the assignments I agree to. There were multiple layers of redundancy built in. The camera, tape recorder, and computer would each record the session, separately, just in case Peter and/or Wendy decided to play poltergeist and suck out the power of everything in the room for their antics. This way, if any two devices failed, there would still be one source for at least a partial recording. I think the computer also broadcast the, presumably encrypted, video feed to some secure source. The notebook was the last resort, as Earl would be scribbling anything important within it.

  As for the watch, I’m guessing that was to be the focus for this session. ‘Focus’ is a technical term that Earl uses and just means the object I’m going to hold to get a connection to whoever the target is going to be.

  I glance at Peter and Wendy, who are floating along one wall, watching Earl, to make sure they won’t do anything. They seemed to be staring at Earl to make sure he didn’t do anything that might hurt me. The last time Earl had come by, I was in the head of a soldier that was being tortured, which meant that I was being tortured. I ended up with several bruises that were a ‘psychosomatic’ response to the experience, which just means that if the mind believes strongly enough that something is happening to the body, it will make it happen to the body.