Chapter 23
Danny left in the early afternoon. But only after we’d spent a few more hours in bed and he got a free lunch off of me.
He took a shower after the meal and headed out, promising to see me soon.
As always with Danny, I prepared myself for that goodbye to be the last, and saw him off with as much pleasantness as I could muster.
Knowing that I had an afternoon and the evening to myself, I focused on my mission.
Finding the ghost in the house and trying to, at the minimum, figure out its name and where it had come from, was paramount.
If possible, knowing that much would help me develop a method for trapping it so that I could get it out of the house.
With that information, I felt it was possible I could even get it to allow itself to be trapped and transferred outside where it would have more freedom to roam.
You can convince yourself of anything if you really want to believe it.
Even if you’re a medium.
However, after several hours of scouring the house, every nook and cranny, and even attempting to summon the ghost in a plethora of ways, I was unsuccessful.
Dust bunnies that I’d been meaning to clear out for far too long were addressed in the process, so it wasn’t a total loss.
However, the sun was setting when I finally admitted to myself that I had failed once again.
I found myself making another simple dinner—a quick salad topped with grilled chicken, before heading out to the atrium.
Candlelight was illuminating the room and the blue glow of my laptop was casting my face in a sickly hue when I took the first bite of my dinner.
The ghost that had been following me forever was standing in the corner, behind a spider plant, glowering at me as I ate and ignored it.
“Talk toooooo meeeee.”
I ignored it, taking another bite of my salad. My hard and fast rule is I summon ghosts is that they do not summon me.
Going through my email, I found that I’d gotten quite a few requests for summonings throughout the day.
Fortunately, more than half were not prepaid, so I was able to shoot off several emails that I’d be happy to help the client with their spirit-summoning needs once a payment had been made.
Those requests were moved aside, leaving me a measly five requests to complete before I could have my night to myself.
My first summoned ghost answered questions about a missing family locket—an heirloom apparently—and asked that a message be forwarded to her daughter.
An easy enough job for the money paid. The second and third summonings were fairly common as well.
Questions about family happenings and messages to be relayed, so I wasn’t too bothered by them, either.
The fourth summoning was one of the more problematic requests that, unfortunately, I receive far too often.
From reading the email, I already knew that the person requesting the summoning was simply testing my abilities.
They wanted me to contact someone they knew had passed on, get information that only the ghost would know to prove I was the real deal, and then relay it back to them.
These types of jobs severely annoy me. So, I did what I always did when I had such a client.
I summoned the ghost, received the information I needed, and forwarded it back to the client.
Then I opened a spreadsheet on my laptop and added the email to a list of “special” clients.
If they ever emailed back from the same address and asked for further work, they would be charged a much higher rate than any other client who was simply looking for closure or answers.
Everyone in the spreadsheet paid at least fifty-percent more than any other client.
I felt perfectly fine with this practice. Waste my time, I waste your money. Simple as that.
The final ghost summoned for the evening turned out to be a Screamer.
One of the ghosts that was so freshly dead and traumatized by the experience that it couldn’t remember anything and all it does is scream, wail, and moan.
They’re the absolute worst. Not simply because they are annoying, but because I always refund the client’s money and have to explain why I couldn’t help them at this time.
In those emails, I explain to clients that if they want to try back in a few months, the ghost may be more talkative.
I will happily try again at the same rate that they paid at the time of the first summoning, but at the current time, I was unable to help them with their request. Many clients understood, but some of them simply labeled me a fraud and never tried to contact their deceased loved one. At least, through me.
One of the drawbacks of dealing with the dead for a living.
After composing the email and issuing a refund, I had to spend another half hour convincing the Screamer to leave the atrium.
When a ghost is carrying on to such a degree, it’s difficult to get them to even hear you, let alone listen.
Fortunately, the Screamer wasn’t one of the worst I’d ever dealt with.
A half hour to solve a Screamer problem in the atrium isn’t the most time I’ve spent solving a problem like that, so I felt lucky.
As I was wrapping things up for the evening, I checked the clock on my laptop.
There was still an hour and a half before bedtime.
Having some time to watch a bit of television with a snack always made my evening better after summonings.
It helps to bring myself out of the world of the dead and back into the world of the living.
When I closed my laptop, blew out the candle, and headed back to the house, I was interrupted by a sudden cold ghost of wind.
Turning to see what had caused the gust, since the atrium door to outside was closed and locked, I jumped back with surprise.
Chester was floating before me in the atrium, half of his spirit form in the middle of the table.
He looked as though he had popped out of the table like a jack in the box.
Chuckling to myself as I took him in, I removed my hand from the knob to the house door and approached him.
Chester looked grave, though I suppose all ghosts do when you think about it.
Black ooze was dribbling from the corners of his mouth and his eyes looked more sunken than usual.
Typically, such a look on Chester meant he had been concerned or busy with something that bothered him.
That thought made my brow furrow as I stood before him.
“What’s up, Chester?” I asked.
“A ghost saw a dead woman’s body.” Chester said, not bothering to find a gentler way into the conversation. “You told me to look for a dead woman.”
My heart sank.
“Marcella?” I asked quickly.
“I do not know,” Chester said. “Oliphius told me that he saw the body.”
Oliphius, like Chester, was a ghost. Obviously.
However, he was a Haunt, spending all of his time in downtown Sage Grove.
If there was a body or another ghost in his territory, it would only make sense that he would be the one to report it to Chester if Chester went around talking to all of the ghosts.
I wasn’t as familiar with Oliphius as Chester was.
However, every time I’d encountered him, he seemed as reliable as any other ghost.
Which is to say—reliable, but use caution when believing everything they say.
Even Chester’s memory could not be fully trusted.
“Let me get my keys,” I said quickly. “You can take me to Oliphius and—”
“He can’t remember where it was,” Chester said, cutting me off with his ethereal voice.
He was bobbing up and down, sinking further into and then rising out of the table in front of me, as though on a short spring.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Chester bobbled a moment before stopping.
“Oliphius has no memory,” Chester explained. “He can remember events, but places and time…”
The ooze at the corners of his mouth dribbled off, dropping to the ground, and disappeared before hitting the table.
“When did he see the body?” I asked the obvious question.
No one had reported a woman missing in Sage Grove in quite a while.
The only person that I knew that was missing was Marcella, but that hadn’t exactly been “reported.” When an unhoused person—in general—is missing, it doesn’t get reported.
Other unhoused people are reluctant to go to the cops and the general public doesn’t care enough to say anything.
It’s a sad, yet true, fact about unhoused people and how they are treated by society.
“Maybe,” Chester thought about the question, “a week ago. Or a month. Last Christmas?”
I wanted to roll my eyes at Chester, but knew better. He was trying his best, and only relaying what Oliphius had told him. Ghosts have no real sense of time. You don’t watch the calendar or count the days when time no longer means anything, after all.
“Oh.”
Chester’s head bobbled.
“Well, does he have any thoughts on where it might have been?” I asked the logical question.
“He does not,” Chester answered immediately.
“Crap.” I exhaled the word.
Chester nodded to the affirmative once more.
“I will ask more of my friends,” Chester declared. “I will not rest until I have found this woman for you.”
I did my best to give him a warm smile as he began bobbing up and down like a fishing bobber again.
“Rest tonight, Chester,” I said. “You’ve worked hard and found something to start. You’ve done well. Don’t overwork yourself.”
Chester considered what I said.
“I will begin my search tomorrow.”
“Sounds great,” I said. “Thank you. Go rest.”
He gave a bow, turned, and immediately breezed through the table and the atrium wall, back out to the woods. Even ghosts need to give their brains a rest. No. I don’t know how that works or why ghosts aren’t full of infinite energy. But everything needs to recharge from time to time.
I sighed, and watched Chester disappear into the woods. Then, with nothing else to do, I turned and went into the house.