Chapter Seventeen
WHILE RECORDS WAS chewing through the history of the building, we decided to pay a visit to the guy who lived in the haunted apartment before the mailman.
I didn’t have high hopes for him, since he’d lived there the longest—well over a decade.
So chances were, he couldn’t sense the screaming ghost in the bedroom.
But, it was worth checking out. People are phenomenally good at rationalizing things they don’t want to know.
Can’t say I blame them. By the time we got to the car, I’d started to question whether I’d actually seen a ghost woman, or I was so eager to put this case to rest, I’d dreamt the whole thing up.
My talent was impossible to ignore. Foolproof.
Until it wasn’t. And I was left looking like a rank amateur jumping at shadows.
Psychic ability was less like the standard five senses—either you saw something or you didn’t—and more like talent. And even I had my off-days.
The atmosphere in the car was pensive. I always hated looking useless in front of Carl. But I hated letting down Jacob even more. He cut his eyes to me. “You’ll figure it out,” he said simply.
He always knew just what to say.
Sergei Kostic lived in a rest home in Portage Park, wedged between an orthodontist clinic and a discount mattress store.
The building had the aura of a faded Polaroid, and everything was some shade of beige.
A bit worn around the edges, sure. But functional enough, if you didn’t mind the smell of industrial disinfectant.
Through the cafeteria doors, a bored bingo caller droned out numbers while players hunched over their cards like wartime cryptographers.
An aide pointed out Kostic in the far corner.
He’d been a tall guy, but now there was a permanent hunch in his back.
He had a full head of snow-white hair most guys his age would envy.
And he was guarding his bingo cards like they might try to escape.
I was the lead. It was up to me to do all the talking. “Sergei Kostic?” I projected as much routine boredom as I could muster as I flashed my ID. “I’ve got a few questions about your previous residence, if you don’t mind—”
From the corner of my eye, I saw the woman next to him topple from her seat, and I instinctively lunged to help her. Except the moment I blinked, I saw there was no one on the floor. For that matter, there were no bingo cards on the table…and the seat was empty.
Evelyn had tensed, and Jacob had shifted to help me. But both of them were watching me. Not the seat. Which was still empty.
But I’d seen the old lady fall. And I could even give a pretty detailed description Caucasian. Heavyset. With drawn-on eyebrows and unnaturally orange hair.
Nothing like the distorted, screaming blur in the apartment bedroom that might have been a woman.
“I don’t mind,” Kostic said.
“What?”
“You said you had questions, if I don’t mind.
Well, I don’t mind. I’m three spaces away from a bingo in any direction, and plenty of folks around me are down to one.
I doubt I’d win…and even if I did, the prize is a back-scratcher.
I’ve already got two, and I like ’em just fine.
There’s only so many back-scratchers a guy needs. ”
An orange-haired woman appeared beside him, not quite on the empty chair. She looked up from a nonexistent bingo card as if someone had startled her, then keeled over—and disappeared.
Kostic followed my gaze, then looked back at me, puzzled. Jacob and Evelyn tried to look nonchalant.
“Right,” I said. “Can we step into the hall so as not to disturb your neighbors?”
He shrugged. “Fine by me.”
He levered himself up with one hand on the seat back and the other on a cane, the hardcore type with a four-footed base. It took him three tries to launch himself out of his chair, but he managed.
To say I needed to check my stride to let him keep up with me was an understatement.
Jacob, Evelyn and I all shuffled along beside him while he tip-tapped his way toward the exit.
Why had he planted himself so far away from it?
Why hadn’t I considered this before I asked him to speak to me in the hall?
Why hadn’t I just interviewed him on the spot?
Well…that question, I could answer. I found the orange-haired repeater phenomenally distracting.
We’d passed the main group of curious bingo sharks and were in the home stretch when an old man staggered in front of me, face-planted, and disappeared.
My shoe squeaked against the tile as I backpedaled.
“Watch the floor,” Kostic said. “There’s a tile there where they ground down a high spot but it can still catch your toe. ”
A few steps later, I stole a glance over my shoulder. The repeater fell again when his foot found the tripping hazard that no longer existed. And while he was somewhat transparent, he was also so distinct I could describe him right down to the dentures.
There was a small lounge outside the cafeteria for the residents.
Against the far wall was a table with a half-done jigsaw puzzle with a picture of a windmill, at least according to the box.
Whoever had started it had put together the perimeter and a blob of purple flowers in the foreground, but the hard parts were still up for grabs.
I nearly sat…but then a faint flicker in the chair resolved itself into a thin woman with precisely styled gray hair. She was making a choking-gesture.
I opted to remain standing. “We’re just checking out some complaints about your old apartment on George Street. Did you ever have any problems there?”
“Water pressure wasn’t great. And the pigeons were always crapping on my car. But it was no worse than anywhere else. Although…there was a winter when the heat went out in the middle of the night. Lemme tell you, that was really something, waking up to see my own breath!”
The breath-fog was also a phenomenon that happened in the presence of a strong enough ghost. Though given the fact that Kostic had gladly plunked down beside not just one, but two repeaters?
I doubted it was spirit activity clouding his breath.
Still, it gave me a good excuse to attempt to dig deeper about the bedroom.
“How was your sleep there in general?” Smooth.
Though if Kostic thought it was a weird question, he didn’t show it. “July and August were no treat, it was stuffy in there, even with a fan going. But other than that….”
He went blithely on about how unremarkable the bedroom was, while I tried not to be too obvious about the woman at the puzzle.
If she was a full-fledged ghost, I couldn’t just leave her choking like that.
But she wasn’t making eye contact with me.
And eventually, I detected a rhythm to her flailing that ended with a subtly flickering reset, and I determined she wasn’t suffering.
Kostic was the perfect witness. Chatty, amiable, and eager to help. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a psychic neuron in his brain. When I’d run out of plausible things to ask, Jacob took pity and intervened. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the tenant who moved in after you left, would you?”
“Well, now that you mention it…”
The rest of us all leaned in eagerly.
“…he did play his TV awfully loud.” Damn it. I berated myself for getting my hopes up as Kostic launched into a story about visiting his downstairs neighbor, Murray, a few months back, wherein he was bothered by the very same TV we’d all heard there on day one.
We thanked him for his time and I left him with my card in case he thought of anything more, though it was clear enough to me that either he predated the ghost in the bedroom…or he simply lacked any ability whatsoever to perceive her.
On our way back to the car, I spotted not just one, but two more repeaters. One was slumped in a phantom wheelchair, and another one fell down the two steps leading to the sidewalk.
Jacob and Evelyn both flinched every time I did.
Jacob knew the score by now, but I figured Evelyn deserved an explanation.
“They’re not ghosts,” I said quietly. “Not in the traditional sense of the word. The moment of death can make a mark, and when it’s violent or startling or just plain weird enough, I can sense it. ”
She nodded, gears turning.
“It’s just that one moment, over and over, like a film loop. I call ’em repeaters.”
Evelyn looked worried.
“They’re not suffering,” I reassured her. “They’re not…personalities. They’re nothing more than a surge of trapped energy.”
As we headed for the car, I caught Jacob eyeing her bag as if he might abscond with her experimental SPECs and get a good look at all the local repeaters for himself. But he refrained from the suggestion.
Evelyn, for her part, stayed quiet as we headed back to HQ. It was only normal to be freaked out by the idea that we’re so surrounded by death. No doubt that knowledge shed a whole new light on her invention.
But as Jacob pulled into the garage, she surprised me by saying, “Tell me more about the repeaters.”
“They’re like…the afterimage you get when you look at a bright light too long, then look away. Not visually,” I clarified. “But they’re more like a residual image of something that’s not really there.”
“Not in the physical plane,” Evelyn said. Then she considered, and added, “Maybe not even in the etheric. But one of the other planes of being we spoke about—places we don’t have a name for yet? Maybe that’s where your repeaters live.”
“Maybe so. But the fact remains, a repeater will only manifest from a sudden death. They can’t travel around like a strong ghost can. And Records hasn’t found any evidence of a death, violent or otherwise, in Boswell’s apartment.”
Even as I said it, my cop sense piped up, That just means there’s no evidence of a death.
That wasn’t entirely true, though. There was evidence.
It just took a medium to see it.
Back at HQ, we hadn’t even gotten our badges scanned before Jacob’s phone buzzed and he answered with that automatic professional calm. I only heard his end of the conversation. “I’m here now. Uh-huh. Right away.”
Jacob had gone still. Not the easy stillness he wore when he was thinking through a case, either…but the tight, cautious stillness he gets when something’s up. He tucked away his phone.
“I’ll debrief the Director on the case.” He was trying for a casual delivery, but it came out stiff.
Maybe he just referred to Laura as “The Director” for Evelyn’s sake, so we didn’t seem too chummy with our boss in front of National.
But when he looked at me with a suspiciously bland smile that didn’t reach his eyes, I felt my stomach drop.
It wasn’t just that he was uneasy with her. There was that damn review, too—the “satisfactory” rating that read like a warning.
“I could go fill her in,” I offered.
“And let you weasel out of the paperwork?” Jacob nailed the playful tone chillingly well. “Not a chance.”