Chapter Four
My focus keeps slipping, and now there’s a ghost harassing me on the subway.
This is the second time today that a spirit has wormed its way through my protections.
The first was at the bodega this morning.
Mrs Hernández was sitting in the corner of the store reading her newspaper and ignoring everything else, including her customers and her husband, just like she did when she was alive.
I asked Mr Hernández how he was coping – his wife died only a few months ago; there are still tributes to her behind the counter.
He said he’s doing okay – that he feels as if his Katalina is still there with him, and that’s comforting.
So I left the ghost of Katalina alone, making a note to check in with Mr Hernández again, in case that comforting feeling turns into something less pleasant.
Now there’s a dead businessman staring down at me, his waxy skin shimmering and his red tie askew.
He’d been holding onto a grab handle like it was a normal workday, standing near a woman who kept shifting uncomfortably, as if she knew something was there and it was making her skin crawl.
His wife maybe, or a work colleague, or perhaps just a woman he always shared a subway ride with.
Then his head snapped around and his cold, dead eyes locked onto mine and whoosh – he was right in front of me.
I blame Callum for this. I haven’t been able concentrate since I saw him yesterday.
I still can’t believe I agreed to work with him again.
I’m filled with a mix of apprehension and a disturbing level of excitement and it’s throwing me off my game.
This spirit would normally be safe from me, because unless I open my mind to them, they remain locked out.
But to keep them locked out, I need focus , which apparently, I don’t have, so this spirit is about to have a very bad day. He can blame Callum too.
The woman sitting beside me rubs her arms, feeling the chill of the dead hovering over us.
The ghost opens his mouth, his jaws stretching unnaturally wide, and I wince, preparing myself for what comes next – a screech so shrill I put my fingers in my ears.
Why do they always have to yell at me? Luckily, on the New York subway no one looks at you twice if you pull out a rosary and start muttering Latin.
A few moments later the spirit fizzles away with an anticlimactic ‘pop’.
I get off at Christopher Street, ducking around a woman who must have died in the eighties if those massive shoulder pads are anything to go by, thinking focus, focus, focus , as I head to the Trattoria where I’m meeting my client.
We can’t meet at her house because she won’t go anywhere near the place.
‘Haven’t you ever seen A Tale of Two Sisters ?’ she’d asked me.
‘Is that a horror movie?’
‘A Korean horror movie. We know how to make horror movies.’
‘I don’t watch many horror movies.’ Why would I, when half the time I’m walking around in one?
I wave to Maria as I enter the restaurant, a trail of fallen leaves blowing in behind me. She’s at a table with two glasses of red wine.
‘Thank you for squeezing me in on your weekend,’ she says.
‘I know I should have done this straight away, but every time I thought about it, I freaked out. I’m not usually one for hiding my head in the sand, but it’s a lot, you know?
’ I nod. I do know. She takes a sip of wine.
‘I mean, there’s a ghost in my house,’ she whispers.
‘I’m nervous just being this close.’ Her house is around the corner.
‘Do you need a drink before you go in? I got you one.’ She gives me a very stressed smile.
‘No, but thank you.’
She hands me her keys. ‘Will you be okay?’
‘I’ll be fine. But if I’m not back in an hour, call the police, just in case.’ Maria’s eyes saucer.
The house on Washington Street was built at the end of the nineteenth century.
It was once a hospice run by the Sisters of Camillus de Lellis, until the building was sold off by the church.
Maria lived there happily for three years before there was even a hint that something wasn’t right.
It started with cold spots, which she excused as bad heating, then bumps and creaks she attributed to the old building moving.
But then objects started to shift around.
A cup magically moved from the coffee table to the kitchen counter, a bathrobe hung behind the door when she was sure she’d left it on the bed.
When she began catching a dark shape in the corner of her vision, she called me in.
As soon as I stepped into the house I sensed it.
I didn’t need to see the presence to know it was there.
When I told Maria, she nodded once, picked up her handbag and walked straight out. That was nearly two weeks ago.
The spirit’s energy hits me as soon as I unlock the door, along with a heavy, musty scent that I don’t think is due to the house being closed up.
I climb the two flights of stairs to the open plan living space and kitchen.
I can sense the spirit, feel its energy, but it’s not in this room.
I head up to the next floor, where the TV room and master bedroom are, but they’re both empty too.
I grumble impatiently; of course this thing would make me walk up four flights of stairs.
The temperature drops a few degrees as I climb to the top floor, and that’s where I find the spirit.
It’s in one of the bedrooms, kneeling beside the bed, hands clasped in prayer.
I blink, then blink again. It’s a nun. She must have lived in the house when it was the hospice.
But why wouldn’t a nun move on? Nuns believe in heaven; you’d think they’d be excited to get there.
While I’m trying to make sense of what I’m seeing, the nun turns and looks at me.
She’s an old woman, her waxen skin heavily wrinkled. I pull out my rosary.
The spirit’s attention turns to the string of onyx beads clasped in my fist, then she shows me her hands. She’s holding a rosary too. Is this ghost trying to bond with me? No that can’t be… Whatever. I have a job to do. This old lady is dead, and Maria doesn’t want to share her house with the dead.
The nun’s jaws open wide, her lips stretching across yellowing teeth.
She releases a ghastly wail that rings in my ears.
The same musty stench I noticed downstairs overpowers the room.
I cough and gag. Then she’s moving towards me and she’s fast, her rosary across her open palm, her lifeless eyes locked on me, her long white habit billowing.
I back away with an embarrassing squeak, stumbling over a rug and banging into the wall, thumping my funny bone in the process.
‘Fuck!’ I cry out.
The spirit stills, the dark voids of her eyes widening. She scowls at me. Then she hauls back and wails again.
I do a classic double take. Did this ghost just tell me off for swearing? No. No, that’s impossible. The sprits never engage with me except to bellow. I’m just all over the place today.
I concentrate my energy on the apparition, using my mind to hold her at a distance, then take a quick breath and start to whisper the Latin words.
Ego te spiritum expello. I drive you out spirit. Tuum tempus hic fit. Your time here is done. Virtus mea te ex hoc plano percutit. My power strikes you from this plane. Dominium habeo. I have dominion. Desine esse. Absum. Cease to exist. Be gone .
There’s a soft glow that starts in the spirit’s chest, a radiant light that slowly spreads, rising out of her and glinting off the silver crucifix that hangs from her neck.
Then, bit by bit, her body dissipates until only her face hovers in midair.
We stare at each other, the nun’s disembodied floating head and me.
That’s when she smiles, and then she’s gone.
‘I’ll have that wine now,’ I say to Maria as I drop into a chair. That had to be the weirdest exorcism I’ve ever performed.
Maria pushes a full glass of red towards me and I swallow half of it in one gulp.
‘What happened?’ she asks. ‘Did you do it?’
‘Did you know a nun?’
‘Yes, Sister Genevieve. She worked at the hospice for years, and I think she missed the place. She’d catch the Staten Island ferry over once a week and I’d make her tea. She died four months ago. Oh no! Don’t tell me it was her?’
‘I think it might have been.’
‘Oh, I would have let Sister G stay.’
Too late now . ‘I think the spirit was happy to move on,’ I say. ‘She… smiled.’
‘I should probably have guessed it was her. You know the moving cup and bathrobe? She always straightened up for me when she visited.’
Oh great. It was a kindly tidying nun. Still, it never goes well when a ghost lingers too long. The living have their time, and the dead need to move on when that time is done. Sister G’s time was done four months ago.
‘Do you think she’s in heaven now?’ Maria asks.
‘Absolutely,’ I say. I finish off my wine with another large gulp.
‘I’ll send through my final invoice when I get home.
’ I hand her the keys thinking, I’m adding a weekend surcharge for that job!
When she looks reluctant to let me leave, I add, ‘And I checked the whole house before I left. You have nothing to worry about, it’s definitely clean. ’
I can’t hold back my grin. This house is clean.