Spookshow V: Half-Boys and Gypsy Girls, page 8
The open casket rested at the far end of the room, flanked by wreaths on both sides.
Billie took an empty seat near the door, staying out of the way of the mourning party. She glanced at the coffin again, but all she could see were two thin hands clasped together. Half-Boy sprang onto the empty chair next to her. His head twitched about at every movement in the room like a pigeon alert to danger. She smoothed her hand down his back to calm him.
She had prepared an excuse for being here if any of the mourners should ask if she was family or friend to the deceased woman, but no one approached her. A few minutes passed and then the room seemed to dim by a degree. What she was waiting for began to unfold. The boy sensed it, too, craning his neck to see over the people in the room.
Lucretia DiNotta entered the room, invisible to anyone, but the psychic and the crippled boy next to her. Her appearance resembled the one in the black and white photograph. A young woman in her early 20s, but without the smile. Her hand dabbed away tears as she looked through the faces of those who had come to mourn her. She glanced once at the casket and then turned away.
The boy at Billie’s side had begun to fidget in his seat, tensing up as if ready to bolt from the room. She wondered if he disliked being around other ghosts or if something else was making him uncomfortable. She kept quiet and waited for the next moment, the reason she had brought the boy to this place.
A crest of warmth flushed over her, coming from outside the room. There was a stillness to it that immediately lowered her pulse, a silence that baffled her ears against all other sound. She turned to see if the boy was feeling it too, but her heart sank when she saw him cower at it. He gripped her arm and hunkered behind her as if to hide from it.
“It’s okay,” she cooed to him. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
Lucretia’s DiNotta’s face brightened as the warmth fell over her. She smiled and Billie could see her teeth now. The woman was bucktoothed, but she no longer bothered to hide them. She stepped away from the mourners and their grief toward the beacon coming from the hallway.
Then, she stopped and looked directly at Billie and the child hiding behind her. “Is he coming too?” she asked.
The boy shrank away at the dead woman’s voice. Billie took his hand and squeezed it. “I think you should go with her.”
The boy shook his head.
“Listen to me. You saved my life twice now.” Her voice was already cracking and she struggled to keep it calm. “I don’t know how to thank you for that, but I can’t keep you here. You deserve better.”
His tears cracked into ice as they fell onto her arm. His grip on her hand clamped tighter.
“Go with her,” Billie pleaded. “She’ll show you the way.”
The dead woman held her hand out to the boy.
Billie watched him swipe his forearm over his eyes, as if shamed by his tears. She touched his cheek, her voice breaking. “I love you, but I don’t even know your name. You deserve to be at peace.”
He jerked his hand away. His face darkened, in anger or pain or both. The boy dropped to the floor and scuttled up the wall to the window. The glass broke as he smashed through it and then he was gone. Everyone in the room startled at the noise, their heads snapping toward Billie.
Lucretia DiNotta let her hand fall to her side. “I suppose he’s not ready. What will happen to him?”
“I don’t know,” Billie answered.
The dead woman left the room and the warmth dissipated shortly thereafter. An older man in a dark suit approached Billie and asked if she was a friend or family to the deceased.
“Neither,” Billie said as she hurried from the room.
Chapter 11
“I QUIT,” BILLIE declared.
Kaitlin sat across the table in the busy cafe. “What do you mean, you quit? Quit what?”
“The spookshow,” Billie replied. “Talking to ghosts, being a psychic. I’m done with it.”
Kaitlin leaned back with a puzzled expression, as if she hadn’t heard her friend correctly. Patrons swept past their table toward the counter, the cafe filling up quickly.
Billie hadn’t been in the mood for company when her friend had called. Left shattered at the boy’s refusal to cross over, she had circled the block outside the funeral chapel for him, but Half-Boy was gone. Walking home, she kept glancing back to see if he was following, but the street remained empty. Instead, other phantoms had sought her out, slithering from the shadows or rising up out of the earth before her. Her guard had slipped and the dead swarmed in, drawn to her. She pushed them out of her way, deaf to their tales of tragedy and rage. There was only one ghost she wanted to see, but every time she looked back, he wasn’t there.
The dead followed her home, crowding into the narrow stairwell as she climbed the steps to her apartment. A few continued to weep, but some had become angry at being denied, shouting after her and tugging at her coattails like persistent children.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Billie spun around and roared at them to go away. More than just a scream, some other force swept out of her and pushed the dead away. They tumbled and scattered down the steps like daisies in a windstorm.
That had been the moment of decision, to quit the dead and get her life back.
Salt had been poured over the threshold of her front door, more of it spilt into the window sills. The only tangible line of defence to keep the dead out of her home. Billie still didn’t understand how it sealed them out, all she knew was that it worked. There was one window left to secure, but she wavered, the tin of sea salt in her hand. This window was faulty, the pane never slipping properly into its casement, making it drafty in the winter. It was also the one the Half-Boy used to crawl in and out of her home like a burglar in the night. She didn’t know why he insisted on physically opening the window. As spirit he could simply pass through solid brick and glass, but, for some reason the boy chose to raise the window pane. Maybe, she wondered, it was his own skewed sense of etiquette.
Billie turned away and returned the salt tin to the kitchen counter, leaving his window unsealed. Her phone rang five minutes later. Kaitlin wanted to meet for coffee.
“How can you just quit?” Kaitlin asked. “Is that even possible?”
“Why not?”
Kaitlin fired back a look of suspicion, expecting a joke. “I don’t know if it works that way, Billie.”
“There’s no need for it anymore.” Billie tucked her hair behind her ear. “It’s served its purpose. Now, it’s over. I never wanted this ability in the first place.”
“What purpose are you talking about?”
“I found my mother’s remains and now she’s laid to rest,” Billie shrugged. “The Bourdain woman is gone and you’re out of danger. There’s no need to talk to dead people anymore. I just want to put it all behind me. Especially now.”
“Oh.” The look of disappointment in Kaitlin’s eyes was sharp.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know about that last part. About being out of danger.”
Billie sat up. “Did something happen? Is she back?”
“No,” Kaitlin said. “But I keep thinking about it. She’s always there in my dreams. I’m always tense, like something awful is going to jump out and hurt me.”
“I’m sorry. You look a little exhausted.”
Kaitlin rubbed her eyes. “I haven’t slept properly in ages. My nerves are shot and I’m just…angry all the time.”
“Is Kyle looking after you?”
“No. He just tells me to get over it. All we do is snap at one another now.” Kaitlin’s eyes fell to the mug in her hand. “Jen doesn’t want to talk about any of this stuff. Same with Tammy.”
That sounded familiar. Billie had experienced the same thing when her abilities first disrupted her life. She remembered how isolating it had been. “It’s a bit of a conversation killer, isn’t it?”
“That’s just it though. I think that if I could talk through it, then I could deal with it. If I could understand what happened to me, to all of us, then I could deal with it better.”
“I don’t think there is a way to understand it,” Billie said. “I don’t understand any of it. How it works or why it happens. There’s no logic that applies to it.”
Kaitlin looked up in surprise. “How can that be? You live with this stuff all the time. You must understand something of what it all means. The ghosts and the hereafter and all the weirdo paranormal stuff.”
Billie looked up at the younger woman’s eyes, eager for help, pleading for some scrap of understanding. “I wish I did, but the truth is, I don’t have a clue. I don’t know why some people move on after death and others don’t. I don’t know why I have this ability to see the souls that are lost and trapped here. I don’t even know if there’s a heaven or hell. All I know is that I’m tired of looking for meaning in something that appears meaningless. I just want to put it all behind me. I want my life back. That’s all.”
Kaitlin’s face drained, the hope dying in her eyes.
“I wish I had answers for you, Kaitlin,” Billie added. “I honestly do, but all I have are questions. And I’m sick of asking.”
Their table jostled from a passerby, the cafe filling up with the after-work rush. Billie reached for her things. “Let’s get out of here.”
Back on the street, Kaitlin said little, withdrawing into herself. Billie linked her arm around her friend’s elbow as they walked down John Street. “You’ve been through an awful experience. Like any trauma, it takes time to get over it. Do you still see that therapist?”
“Not anymore. I thought I didn’t need her.” She laughed. “It’s kind of funny now.”
“Call her,” Billie suggested. “Maybe you could talk through it with her.”
“And tell her about this? She’ll think I’m crazy.”
Billie pulled her along. “You are crazy, Kaitlin. You’re seeing ghosts.”
~
“Bingo!” Detective Odinbeck exclaimed, hanging up the phone. “We got a match!”
Mockler looked up from his monitor. “Who was that?”
“Hoffmann,” Odinbeck said, rising out of his chair. “He said we got a hit on the fingerprints of the antler man. Victim identified.”
“Who is it?”
“He wants to show us in person, the big drama queen. Let’s go.”
Mockler rose and followed his partner through the cubicles to the other side of the homicide bullpen. Detective Hoffmann sat behind his desk with a grim expression. Latimer leaned against the wall. Both men looked up when the secondaries entered.
“So, the gods have cut us a break?” Odinbeck said. “What do we got?”
Hoffmann reached into the printer and handed up the sheet. Mockler drew alongside his partner to scan the photograph on the page. A standard driver’s license photo, the man pictured meant nothing.
“Justin Burroughs,” stated Hoffmann. “Lately of 1240 Hastings Avenue.”
The name bit hard. Mockler scrambled his brain to dredge up where he knew it from. “I know that name,” he uttered.
“You should,” Hoffmann said. “He’s your case.”
Odinbeck lowered the page in his hand. “Our case?”
“He’s wanted on an assault charge on Kaitlin Granger three weeks ago.”
Justin. The details came screaming back to Mockler instantly. Justin Burroughs and another man named Owen had tried to kill Kaitlin when she was in the hospital. Both men were part of some ghost-hunting team that Kaitlin had gotten mixed up with. They were also under the control of something evil that lurked within the hated Murder House. Less than a week later, these two men had abducted Billie and taken her to the house. Something terrible had happened there and Mockler felt a chill recalling it all.
“I remember now.” Odinbeck turned to his partner. “He went after Billie’s friend when she was in Hamilton General. Part of that awful shit that went down at the Murder House. Remember?”
Mockler would never forget it, no matter how long he lived. “I don’t believe this,” he said, scanning the details on the page again. Justin and his accomplice had fled from the Murder House minutes before he and Billie had burned it to the ground.
“That makes antler-boy your case now,” Hoffmann said. He gathered up the murder book, a binder that held the pertinent paperwork, and placed it in Mockler’s hands. “To be honest, I’m kinda grateful. I hate spooky cases like this.”
Odinbeck winced, as if he’d swallowed something bitter. “You gotta be kidding me. This shit case?”
“Prior investigation means you two are primaries now,” Hoffman declared. “But don’t worry, we got your back.”
Odinbeck stayed to rib the other investigators about passing the bloody buck. Mockler went back to his desk. The murder book felt like an iron anchor in his hands.
Laying the book down, he leafed through the reports, trying to recall a name. Justin had an accomplice with him, another amateur ghost-hunter type. The two of them had website where they posted their adventures. Tapping at the keyboard, he called up the report on the assault on Kaitlin and found the man’s name. Owen Rinalto. The two men had vanished together. If Justin had ended up dying in some bizarre ritual, then where the hell was Owen?
~
Why hadn’t he been rescued yet?
The man in the darkness sat on the cold floor and pulled his knees to his chest. He had been trying to keep track of the passing days, but the number got mixed up. The cell he was in had no window. There was no way to see sunlight or nighttime, no way to mark the days. It was always night.
His friend had escaped. He had promised that he would get help and return to rescue him. Had that been three days ago or four?
Don’t cry, he scolded himself. Justin will come back. He wouldn’t leave you here.
The man in the darkness hugged his knees tighter to stay warm. He tried to remember how the two of them had come to be in this foul dungeon. Everything was a blur. He remembered the big house on the hill. He remembered the woman who had promised them so many things. They had tried to help her, but something went wrong. Something had ruined the plans and the last thing he remembered was running through the woods with Justin, tripping over the branches and scrambling up to keep going. The old house was on fire and the inferno lit up the night behind them.
Then, everything went dark and they woke up in this cold room where there was no light and no window. There was a door. It opened once a day and someone with a flashlight would blind them, toss in a bowl of cold meat and take out the slop bucket. Sometimes they were questioned about the woman in the house.
Justin had decided that he’d had enough. He sat next to the door for hours, waiting for it to open. When it did, he rushed their unseen jailer, smashing his head into the wall. The two of them ran, headlong into a dark corridor. Their captors chased after them. He couldn’t keep up with Justin and the raw hands of their jailers pulled him down. Justin ran on, hollering that he would get help and come back to rescue him.
Three days or four? The man in the darkness could not remember. He shivered against the cold and tried ignore the scuttling sound of the rats sharing the darkness with him.
Chapter 12
WITH THE VICTIM identified, the next task was the toughest of the lot. Informing the family. Mockler climbed out of the car before a two-story Craftsman on Leland Avenue and steeled his gut for the duty before him. The irony wasn’t missed, how the case had shifted to his desk just before this wretched task had to be accomplished.
Detective Odinbeck closed the car door and looked up at the house. “You ready, chief?”
“Nope,” Mockler replied. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, a method he used to shut down internally, to close off his emotions to avoid being swept along in the grief he was about to dump on this poor family. “Let’s go,” he said.
Mockler had met Justin Burroughs’s parents before, shortly after the assault on Kaitlin Grainger. Dennis and Anita were nice people. He was a mechanic, she a bank manager. There was nothing unusual about either of them, nothing to hint at their son’s near obsession with the paranormal. Dennis and Anita were lifelong Ti-Cats fans. They liked to go to Mexico for two weeks every winter.
Dennis Burroughs answered the door and his face went ashen when the detectives introduced themselves. He seemed to sense what was coming next. Anita was the opposite, her eyes brightening with hope that the two police officers at her door were here with good news about their missing son. Odinbeck asked if they could all sit first. He knew immediately that the mother would collapse once she heard the news. Better to have her on the sofa first.
Mockler cleared his throat and informed the parents that their son was dead. The next 20 minutes played out exactly as he knew it would. The shock, the denial, the confused questions before the awful truth came down and crushed both of them. Anita went down, Dennis struggled to stay upright. The two detectives split the task, knowing what to do without even a glance at one another. Odinbeck took Anita, Mockler asked Dennis for a glass of water.
They sat in the kitchen, Dennis looking at the floor with a shell-shocked wash on his face. Mockler stayed quiet for a few minutes. He had already asked all of the pertinent questions in his previous interview with Dennis Burroughs about his son. How Justin spent most of his time chasing ghosts with these strange devices that read electromagnetic waves. How he and his friend Owen had a website that documented their investigations into the paranormal. How Justin had gone missing just before the assault on the young woman in the hospital.
“Is there anyone you’d like me to call?” Mockler asked. “A family member, a friend?”
Dennis shook his head. “There’s a hundred people I have to call now, but at the moment I can’t think of a single name.”
“The names will come back. When they do, I can make some calls. Get someone over here to help.”
