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Here at Padme's Library I feature all genres but followers have probably noticed that 95% of the posts and 99% of my reviews fall under the LGBT genres, so for this year's Pride Month I am showcasing 20 of my favorite M/M hauntings in no particular order. Hauntings of all sorts perfectly blended with romance, drama, humor, and heart, creating unforgettable reads.
Personal Blogger Note:
Personal Blogger Note:
I know that Pride Month 2021 is officially over but as my mother has been in the hospital since the last week in May and I sit in a hotel room across the street, my blogging time fell behind. My Happy Pride Month series is important to me so I will be posting Pride throughout July.
One Last Note:
Some of those on my list I have read, reread, & even listened/re-listened so I've included the review posted in my latest read/listen. Also, those that are read/re-read as a series the latest review may be an overall series review. If any of the purchase links included here don't work be sure and check the authors' websites/social media for the most recent links as they can change over time for a variety of reasons.
One Last Note:
Some of those on my list I have read, reread, & even listened/re-listened so I've included the review posted in my latest read/listen. Also, those that are read/re-read as a series the latest review may be an overall series review. If any of the purchase links included here don't work be sure and check the authors' websites/social media for the most recent links as they can change over time for a variety of reasons.
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Body & Soul by Jordan Castillo Price
Summary:
Psycop #3
Thanksgiving can't end too soon for Victor Bayne, who's finding Jacob's family hard to swallow. Luckily, he's called back to work to track down a high-profile missing person.
Meanwhile, Jacob tries to find a home they can move into that's not infested1with either cockroaches, or ghosts. As if the house-hunting isn't stressful enough, Vic's new partner Bob Zigler doesn't seem to think he can do anything right. A deceased junkie with a bone to pick leads Vic and Zig on a wild chase that ends in a basement full of horrors.
Original Audiobook Review October 2020:
I don't think I can add anything to my original review. Once again, the blending of mystery, humor, paranormal, heat, creepy, romance . . . well it's just absolutely brilliant! Vic and Jacob just keep getting better and better. As for Gomez Pugh's narration? That too keeps getting better and more fitting with each adventure.
Original ebook Review March 2020:
Another new partner for Victor Bayne and let's hope this one is a keeper. I think this one is even creepier than the previous entries. Where the case leads Vic and Zig(his new partner Bob Zigler) is so not what I was expecting but HOLY HANNAH BATMAN! I couldn't put Body & Soul down. That's it, that's all you're getting from me about the mystery side of PsyCop #3.
As for Vic and Jacob? Who knew there was so much to think about when it came to househunting when you see dead people? Another element of ghost & spirit stories that I've never thought about before, and Jordan Castillo Price's world building and character development is pretty amazing when it comes to Vic's "talent". Jacob is still incredibly supportive especially about finding properties that didn't have any kind of history that could lead to spirit roommates. The scene where he rips into their estate agent over just such a thing, well if I didn't already believe in his love for Vic and his passion for standing up for his love than that scene cemented it for me.
I don't think I'll say much more because I'm off to start book 4, Secrets. I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those series that if the author chooses to write only a 5 sentence coda or 100 full length novels, I'll be first in line(once I get caught up) to gobble it up. Victor Bayne, Jacob Marks, and the whole PsyCop universe is incredible storytelling at it's finest that leaves me smiling, cringing, laughing, "awwing", and a dozen other emotions on the feelings spectrum. A definite keeper from start to finish.
RATING:
As for Vic and Jacob? Who knew there was so much to think about when it came to househunting when you see dead people? Another element of ghost & spirit stories that I've never thought about before, and Jordan Castillo Price's world building and character development is pretty amazing when it comes to Vic's "talent". Jacob is still incredibly supportive especially about finding properties that didn't have any kind of history that could lead to spirit roommates. The scene where he rips into their estate agent over just such a thing, well if I didn't already believe in his love for Vic and his passion for standing up for his love than that scene cemented it for me.
I don't think I'll say much more because I'm off to start book 4, Secrets. I have a feeling that this is going to be one of those series that if the author chooses to write only a 5 sentence coda or 100 full length novels, I'll be first in line(once I get caught up) to gobble it up. Victor Bayne, Jacob Marks, and the whole PsyCop universe is incredible storytelling at it's finest that leaves me smiling, cringing, laughing, "awwing", and a dozen other emotions on the feelings spectrum. A definite keeper from start to finish.
Summary:
When a ghostly dandy and his roguish companion try their hand at matchmaking, things definitely go bump in the night.
For centuries, foppish Captain Cornelius Sheridan and brooding John Rookwood have haunted the mansion they duelled and died for. Now these phantom foes must join forces to save both their home and their feuding descendents.
But when Captain Sheridan sacrifices his afterlife for the sake of true love, will Rookwood risk everything to keep his companion by his side, or is it too late to say "I love you"?
Publisher's Note: This book is related to the Captivating Captains series.
When a duel ended with both men dead I doubt either expected to be stuck with each other for eternity but that is exactly where they find themselves some two hundred years later. Rockwood and Sheridan have been pushing each others buttons as well as letting their families know they(and others especially a frisky feline) linger. As a old classic film fan, The Captain's Ghostly Gamble reminds me kind of a mix of The Odd Couple meets Topper meets Beyond Tomorrow, but oh so more.
Ghostly Gamble is a delightfully humor filled novella that is perfect for this time of year. Matchmaking ghosts, bickering frenemies who have spent way more time together then they ever expected, descendants who aren't completely honest with each other, and then there is the moment where everything becomes clear(but what that moment is and what "becomes clear" is something you have to read for yourself😉😉) there is plenty packed into this Captivating Captains short that will make you smile, laugh, smile again, and laugh some more.
Halloween isn't the time you normally expect to find a romantic comedy but it does happen, they don't always work but The Captain's Ghostly Gamble does. A truly delightful read for any time of year but an extra special treat now. I was aware of this story last October but unfortunately time just wasn't on my side and it just kept slipping down my TBR list but I came across it the other day and jumped at the chance before time decided otherwise again. I'm glad I found it again because The Captain's Ghostly Gamble is a true gem.
RATING:
Peter Cratchit's Christmas Carol by Drew Marvin Frayne
Summary:
Peter Cratchit, a young lad preparing to make his way in the world, is the eldest son of Scrooge’s lowly clerk Bob Cratchit. Peter flourishes under the tutelage of his “Uncle” Scrooge and seeks to make his mark as a man of business, like his uncle before him.
One Christmas Eve, as Scrooge lays dying, Peter embarks on a risky ocean voyage that he believes will secure the future for his family. Onboard, Peter finds love, happiness, and success, only to lose it all by the voyage’s end.
Returning to London, Peter shuns his family and instead finds himself living on the streets, haunted by his failures and his dead lover, selling his body just to survive while he waits for the winter cold to claim him once and for all. But winter snows also mean Christmas is coming, and for the Cratchit family, Christmas is a time of miracles. Can a visit from three familiar spirits change Peter’s life again? Is there one more miracle in store for the lost son of one of Dickens’ most enduring families?
I'm just going to say it: this was amazing!
It never really dawned on me to see if there was any Xmas Carol stories in the LGBT genre but when this one crossed my path, I was intrigued from the beginning. Not only was it a Dickens' style story but it involves his characters and I was very interested to see how the author would bring them to life. The reasons behind Peter's ghostly visitors may be a bit different than Scrooge's but never the less poignant. My heart broke for Peter at times, I found myself internally screaming wanting to make Peter see this way or that, to turn left instead of right, but the author had Peter's journey set and I was just along for the ride.
If you are simply expecting a gay retelling of the Charles Dickens classic than you will be disappointed, Peter Cratchit's Christmas Carol is the character's own story, yes he knows his Uncle Scrooge's holiday adventure, yes he's visited by his own three spirits, yes he has to learn his lessons, to discover what is important in life but they are different lessons and that is what makes this story so good. A blending of classic and new.
I've only ever read one other Drew Marvin Frayne before(and it was just a few weeks ago and another Christmas short) and to be perfectly frank, I was skeptical about an author "tinkering around in Dickens' playground" but I needn't have been because the author makes this story unique, intriguing, heartbreaking, heartwarming, and one that should be read any time of year. Charles Dickins' A Christmas Carol is my absolute favorite Christmas story and one I read, watch, listen to every holiday season multiple times, now I may not read Peter Cratchit's Christmas Carol every year but I will definitely re-visit it for years to come. As I said above, Drew Marvin Frayne's take is a blending of classic and new, not a re-telling in any way, shape, or form but if you need a label or tag then I suppose "sequel" probably best describes it. Whatever label you want to use, it is not to be missed.
RATING:
The Bone Orchard by Abigail Roux
Summary:
After leaving a trail of terror and death in his wake, the notorious “Missouri” Boone Jennings finally meets his match in San Francisco when US marshal Ambrose Shaw catches up to him. The story of his capture, and the marshal’s bravery, has already become legend back east by the time Pinkerton inspector Ezra Johns gets off the train from New York City to testify in the murderer’s trial.
When Ambrose is unable to give witness to the evils he’s seen, Ezra becomes their lone hope for putting Jennings in a noose. But if Ezra thinks that’s his biggest problem, he’s got plenty to learn about life—and the afterlife—in the spirited West.
Fortunately, Ambrose is there to assist, and more than happy to oblige Ezra—in the courtroom or the bedroom. He spent his life bringing justice to the Wild West, and if he has a say in it, that’s how he’ll be spending his death too.
Summary:
After leaving a trail of terror and death in his wake, the notorious “Missouri” Boone Jennings finally meets his match in San Francisco when US marshal Ambrose Shaw catches up to him. The story of his capture, and the marshal’s bravery, has already become legend back east by the time Pinkerton inspector Ezra Johns gets off the train from New York City to testify in the murderer’s trial.
When Ambrose is unable to give witness to the evils he’s seen, Ezra becomes their lone hope for putting Jennings in a noose. But if Ezra thinks that’s his biggest problem, he’s got plenty to learn about life—and the afterlife—in the spirited West.
Fortunately, Ambrose is there to assist, and more than happy to oblige Ezra—in the courtroom or the bedroom. He spent his life bringing justice to the Wild West, and if he has a say in it, that’s how he’ll be spending his death too.
Audiobook Review October 2019:
Really not much more I can add to my previous reviews of this wonderful Roux novella. Still an amazing blending of old west and ghostly romance. Watching time move forward through the eyes of the ghosts, Ezra and Ambrose is an interesting take on progress. As for the narrator, Nick J Russo, well I can't say I've listened to an audiobook with his narration before but his voice is perfectly suited for the two lawmen and their evil enemy, Boone Jennings. Not sure which was more memorable, the deep-voiced Ambrose, the soothing-toned Ezra, or the evil cackling Jennings? He brings life to this amazing story that I look forward to re-listening to for years to come.
Re-Read Review July 2018:
I'm not sure what took me so long to re-read The Bone Orchard and I'm not sure what more I can say that I didn't say in my original review over 3 years ago. I grew up watching westerns(I still watch plenty actually😉) and even though Hollywood never shined a light on same sex connections of the era, Abigail Roux really helped me to remember what I loved about those old movies: good guys vs bad guys. Now for those who haven't read The Bone Orchard, I won't give anything away but I will say that Jennings may win a few battles throughout the pages but never count a US Marshal or a Pinkerton agent down, especially the ghostly variety. Despite Jennings evil ways that brought him to the hangman's noose, Orchard is a fun read that entertains. This is one I'll be re-reading for years to come.
Original Review April 2015:
In this Abigail Roux creation we have lawmen, outlaws, hanging, shootouts, all the elements of a great western and then of course we also have ghosts. Oh and for Roux fans, we also have a great little surprise treat near the end of the story. Knowing her work as I do and I never saw it coming, afterwards, I realized I should have had more of an inkling that it might happen, but I didn't and that made it all the more sweeter. Ezra and Ambrose have an instant connection that goes beyond their common lawmen occupation and it's just fun to watch unfold. In Marshall Ambrose Shaw you have the quintessential old west lawman, in Inspector Ezra Johns, you have the apparent bookish Pinkerton agent and you really don't expect their commonalities to go beyond the badge but boy does it ever. Throw in the evil ways of the outlaw Boone Jennings and you have the workings of a great western and of course love story doesn't go unnoticed. A perfect addition to your bookcase.
Really not much more I can add to my previous reviews of this wonderful Roux novella. Still an amazing blending of old west and ghostly romance. Watching time move forward through the eyes of the ghosts, Ezra and Ambrose is an interesting take on progress. As for the narrator, Nick J Russo, well I can't say I've listened to an audiobook with his narration before but his voice is perfectly suited for the two lawmen and their evil enemy, Boone Jennings. Not sure which was more memorable, the deep-voiced Ambrose, the soothing-toned Ezra, or the evil cackling Jennings? He brings life to this amazing story that I look forward to re-listening to for years to come.
Re-Read Review July 2018:
I'm not sure what took me so long to re-read The Bone Orchard and I'm not sure what more I can say that I didn't say in my original review over 3 years ago. I grew up watching westerns(I still watch plenty actually😉) and even though Hollywood never shined a light on same sex connections of the era, Abigail Roux really helped me to remember what I loved about those old movies: good guys vs bad guys. Now for those who haven't read The Bone Orchard, I won't give anything away but I will say that Jennings may win a few battles throughout the pages but never count a US Marshal or a Pinkerton agent down, especially the ghostly variety. Despite Jennings evil ways that brought him to the hangman's noose, Orchard is a fun read that entertains. This is one I'll be re-reading for years to come.
Original Review April 2015:
In this Abigail Roux creation we have lawmen, outlaws, hanging, shootouts, all the elements of a great western and then of course we also have ghosts. Oh and for Roux fans, we also have a great little surprise treat near the end of the story. Knowing her work as I do and I never saw it coming, afterwards, I realized I should have had more of an inkling that it might happen, but I didn't and that made it all the more sweeter. Ezra and Ambrose have an instant connection that goes beyond their common lawmen occupation and it's just fun to watch unfold. In Marshall Ambrose Shaw you have the quintessential old west lawman, in Inspector Ezra Johns, you have the apparent bookish Pinkerton agent and you really don't expect their commonalities to go beyond the badge but boy does it ever. Throw in the evil ways of the outlaw Boone Jennings and you have the workings of a great western and of course love story doesn't go unnoticed. A perfect addition to your bookcase.
Body and Soul by Jordan Castillo Price
"Uncle Jacob? Did you get to shoot anybody since last summer?"
Jacob’s nephew, Clayton, asked this with the eagerness and joy of a kid who’d just learned that school was cancelled. Clayton was in fifth grade. I have no idea how old that would make him.
"You shot someone last summer?" I muttered, smoothing my napkin on my lap to the point where I probably looked like I was playing with myself. Not exactly the impression I’d wanted to make on Jacob’s family on our first Thanksgiving together.
The muttering? Not usually my style, but I was feeling uncharacteristically mouthy. It seemed like the moment I had a thought, it made its way through my vocal cords and out my mouth before I had a chance to pat it down and make sure it wasn’t going to jab anyone. I’d been this way since I’d stopped taking Auracel and Seconal over a month ago. Here I thought I’d been mellowing all these years, when really, it had just been the drugs.
"No," Jacob answered patiently. "I try to avoid shooting people." And then he looked at me. "Carolyn and I walked in on an armed robbery in progress at the convenience store on California and Irving. It was a clean shot to the leg."
Departmental policy allows us cops to decide whether to go for a lethal or a non-lethal shot when a criminal’s got an unarmed civilian at gunpoint. If Jacob had shot someone’s leg, I had no doubt it was exactly where he’d been aiming. Jacob is a Stiff, the non-psychic half of a PsyCop team, and not only are Stiffs impossible to influence by sixth-sensory means and impervious to possession, but they’re usually crack shots. The Stiffs who I know, anyway.
I’m the other half of a PsyCop team, the Psych half. Not Jacob’s team; Carolyn Brinkman was Jacob’s better half, on the job at least. I didn’t currently have a Stiff of my very own. Maurice, my first partner, retired, although I still lean on him way too much. Lisa, my second partner, was kicked off the force when they discovered that she was as psychic as Jean Dixon. She’s off being trained for the psy end of the whole PsyCop business now, out in California. Technically she's just a phone call away, and yet sometimes it feels like she’s on an entirely different planet. Even when she gets back, I won’t get to partner with her, since they only pair up Psychs with Stiffs.
And then there was my third partner, Roger. The bastard kidnapped me for some under-the-table drug testing, and I’d been so gullible I’d practically given him a key to my apartment. Roger was rotting in a jail cell, last I’d heard. The whole affair was pretty hush-hush. Maybe I could’ve gleaned a few more details, if I was the type to obsess about the little things, like where one’s arch-enemy is incarcerated, and whether or not he’s shown up for roll call recently. But, frankly, I’ve never found details very comforting. I think about them, and I just get overwhelmed. Roger went bye-bye, and I came out of our encounter intact. That’s all I really need to know.
Six weeks later and I was still on medical leave. I felt fine, probably due to the amount of actual blood cells coursing through my system in lieu of the drug cocktail I was accustomed to.
"Did you ever shoot anyone?" Clayton asked me, eyes sparkling.
"Sure."
"Wow. Did you kill ‘em?"
Clayton had Jacob’s phenomenal dark eyes. Or Jacob’s younger sister Barbara’s eyes. Which were Jacob’s father’s eyes, as well as the eyes of the wizened old lady at the head of the table who was about a hundred and five. She’d been giving me a look that could probably kill an elephant ever since we’d gotten there and Jacob had introduced me as his boyfriend.
I think he’d primed his family over the phone. But still. He had to go and say it out loud and rub it in. Because that’s the way Jacob is. Not that he’d be bringing a man home for Thanksgiving for any other reason. But that’s beside the point.
"Clayton Joseph," snapped Barbara. She might have had Jacob’s eyes, but she certainly couldn’t hold a candle to his cool composure. "That is not an appropriate question for the dinner table."
Grandma Marks glowered at me from the head of the table, her dark eyes, half-hidden in folds of wrinkled skin, threatening to pierce me right through. I’d figured she hated me because I was doing the nasty with her grandson. Maybe she had a thing against psychics. Hell, maybe both. I’m usually just lucky that way.
"Bob Martinez retired down at the mill," Jacob’s father, Jerry, announced in a blatant attempt to change the subject. If we’d been in Chicago, where I grew up, Jerry would have been talking about a steel mill. But we were in Wisconsin, an alien land of rolling hills and cows with signs advertising something called "fresh cheese curds" every few miles. I gathered that the mills made paper in this alien, wholesome land where Jacob had been born and bred.
"And when are you going to think about retiring, dad?" Barbara asked. She had a trace of an accent that sounded Minnesotan to my untrained ear. I wondered if Jacob had ever had that same funny lilt. Probably once, but it’d been erased by him living over half his life in Chicago.
"Your father’s got another ten years in him, at least," said Jacob’s mom, Shirley. Shirley wore her hair in a white, poofy halo. I suspected she’d been a blonde in her younger days. "What’s he going to do around here but get in my way?"
"Your mother plays Euchre on Tuesdays and Thursdays," said Jerry, as if his retirement hinged around a card game.
"You have hobbies," said Barbara. "You could fix up your woodshop and actually finish a few things."
"Ah, I’d rather earn an honest wage than stay home and make birdhouses."
"And you could teach Clayton all about woodworking."
"He’s too young," said Jerry. "He’d cut his finger off."
"Wood is stupid," Clayton added.
I wondered if calling wood stupid was heresy in this land of trees and paper. But Grandma didn’t fall out of her chair clutching her heart, so I figured that kids were allowed to say the first thing that popped into their minds these days. Or maybe they always had been. I must have been on my third foster home by the time I was Clayton’s age. I was probably in fourth grade, held back for being thick, stubborn, and socially retarded. But that would’ve put me at just about the age where I’d learned that my opinion was neither desired nor appreciated.
Jingle bells announced the opening of the front door -- that and a massive blast of arctic air, complete with a whorl of snowflakes.
"Uncle Leon!" Clayton leapt up from the table and thundered toward the door.
I looked at the empty place setting across from me and heaved an inward sigh of relief. I’d been hoping that an actual person would fill it, that it wasn’t left open as a tribute to Grandpa Marks, or some other long lost family member.
Leon rounded the corner of the dining room and Shirley stood up to greet him. I glanced around at the rest of the table to see if I was supposed to stand up, too. But Jacob and Jerry were still sitting. Jerry was even packing away mashed potatoes like he was trying to beat everyone else to the punch.
Uncle Leon was in his mid to late sixties and had the same white hair and rounded snub nose as Jacob’s mom. Shirley kissed him on the cheek and unbuttoned his thick corduroy jacket. "Jacob brought his friend with him," she said, gesturing toward me. "This is Victor."
She peeled Leon’s coat off him and whisked away with it just as Leon turned to shake my hand. He led with his left hand, which confused me. His bare right arm flapped at his side, with his right sleeve rolled up to his shoulder.
I shook his left hand in a daze.
Leon nodded his head toward his right shoulder. "Lost it at the mill in seventy-eight. Damn thing still hurts."
I blinked. Leon’s right sleeve wasn’t rolled up. It was pinned to the shoulder of his shirt. He didn’t have a right arm -- not one made out of real flesh and blood, anyway. And I could still see his missing arm. The party’d finally gotten started. Hooray.
"Oh," I said. "That sucks."
"Shirley tells me you’re a PsyCop."
I nodded. "Yeah."
"That’s some kind of program they got going on down there," he said. His ghost arm joined his corporeal arm in pulling out the chair across from mine. "What kind of talent you got?"
I sank back into my seat and swallowed a mouthful of dryish turkey meat I’d been talking around for the last several minutes. "Medium."
"No shit?"
Grandma frowned harder, but Leon didn’t seem to notice. "Can I get you anything to drink?" Shirley asked me, but I mumbled that I was okay.
"That girl Jacob works with, she’s a telepath, isn’t she? Wow, a medium. How ‘bout that?" Leon’s ghost hand caressed the silverware as he spoke. I wondered if I looked like a freak for staring at his salad fork while he talked to me. "So how strong are they, your impressions?"
I drained my glass of soda to wash down the turkey and wished I’d taken Shirley up on her offer of a refill. "Pretty strong."
"What, do you hear ‘em talking to you? In their own words?"
"Uh huh."
"Holy cow, now that’s what you call a psychic. We got ourselves a Marie Saint Savon right here at the table."
Good old Marie had died right around the time I’d been shoehorned into the police academy. She’d been the world’s most powerful medium, and no one could touch her talent. Not that I could figure why anyone would want to. I was surprised that Leon actually knew her name. Maybe it was a generational thing. She’d been big news maybe fifteen years ago, and then was quickly forgotten by almost everyone but the psychic community.
"That’s got to make your police work a little easier," said Leon. "Huh?"
I nodded and swallowed some mashed potatoes. They were salty enough to stimulate my flagging salivary glands. A little.
"Only if you work homicide," Jerry piped in. The whole family had been skirting around my psychic ability, but since Leon had started the ball rolling and I didn’t seem too tender about the topic, it’d become fair game.
"I do."
"Holy shit. I didn’t know they used mediums in homicide."
Grandma glared at Leon.
"You mean medium, like a psychic medium?" Clayton asked.
"Uh huh."
"Wow, you see dead people?"
"That’s just in the movies," Barbara said. "Like the telekinetics who can shoot bullets with their minds." Metal was incredibly resistant to telekinesis, but I’d trained with one guy who could fling a mean stone. He got these splitting headaches afterward, though, so he was never one to show off with party tricks.
"I can see them," I said.
The table went quiet. "Whoa," said Clayton. "Like, right now?"
I avoided looking at the spot where Leon’s arm was flopping around on the table. "There aren’t any spirits here for Victor to see," Jacob explained. We knew that to be the case because we’d called Lisa Gutierrez in Santa Barbara and asked her if there were any ghosts in Jerry and Shirley’s house, and she’d said no. Lisa’s precognitive, and if she says no, the answer is unequivocally no.
I guess she couldn’t have known about Leon’s arm. Not without us asking specifically.
"And when you see ‘em," Clayton went on, "are they all scary and gross?"
"Sometimes."
Everyone at the table seemed to lean forward just a little. Even Jacob.
"Can you see right through them?"
"Sometimes. Or sometimes they look like regular people."
Leon’s facial expression was open and eager, but his phantom limb was clenching and unclenching its fist, and bright red droplets had appeared all over it as if it was sweating blood. I buried my face in my glass, tilting a final droplet of soda onto my tongue.
"Can you touch ‘em?" Clayton asked, his voice dropping down into a reverential whisper.
I swallowed around a hunk of turkey that’d lodged in my esophagus. Jacob slid his glass over to me, and I took it and drank it down. He’d been drinking milk. I just barely kept myself from gagging.
"You don’t want to touch ghosts," I said.
The house around us, the very air, went quiet. Everyone strained forward to catch whatever crumbs of information I might care to scatter. Because we’re a nation that grew up on Lovecraft and Sleepy Hollow and Friday the Thirteenth, and people are dying to know if all that shit’s really real.
"They’re creepy," I added. And I swallowed some more milk.
"Why don’t you tell Uncle Jacob and Uncle Leon about the report you did on salamanders?" Barbara suggested to Clayton.
"Creepy how?" Clayton asked.
"Clayton got an A minus," said Barbara.
"Creepy how?"
"I don’t know," I said. I’d started spreading my food around my plate, mixing my corn and my potatoes, ruining both. "The way they look in scary movies? Pretty much like that."
"How can you say that?" Barbara demanded, suddenly so vehement that I wondered how I’d ever pegged her as a sheepish single mom in her pale yellow cardigan and perfectly creased khaki pants. "When people die, they go to heaven."
Oh. Christian. Or had Jacob said Catholic -- or was that the same difference? I didn’t remember, must not have been paying close enough attention when Jacob had tried to prepare me.
"Barbara," said Jerry. Her father didn’t have a follow up ready. Just her name, sounding like a warning.
"If he says he sees spirits, then he does," Leon said, hopping to my defense despite the fact that he made me squirm in my seat. Or, more accurately, his right arm did. "They have tests." He looked to me for affirmation. "Don’t they have tests?"
"All kinds of tests," I said, burying the last of my corn.
"And being able to see them, you’re what, a level three? Four?"
"Five," I said. Level five was a couple of steps down from good old Marie. But Marie was only a step lower than God. Or maybe Satan.
The table went quiet again.
"Are you a millionaire?" asked Clayton.
"It is not polite to ask people how much money they make," said Barbara. She was the same age as me, thirty-eight. She had Jacob’s flashing dark eyes and high cheekbones, but she looked just as worn out as I always felt. Even more so, now that we were attempting civil dinner conversation.
"It’s okay," I said. "No, I’m not a millionaire. I make more money than a regular detective, but not as much as my supervisor."
"And you spend as much money as someone who’s lived through the Great Depression," Jacob added, sotto voice.
Clayton scrunched his face up. I saw mashed potatoes lurking behind his teeth. "You should find Al Capone and make him tell you where his vault is."
Jerry and Leon laughed, but the way they kept their eyes trained on me, I could tell they were hoping that maybe I’d think that dredging up Al Capone was a grand idea. And I just so happened to need a couple of assistants over the age of sixty-five.
"He’s probably not around," I said. "He’d be a little old by now."
Everyone chuckled, except for Barbara, who evidently thought I was a devil-worshipper. And Grandma, who was possibly giving me the evil eye. And Clayton, who couldn’t make sense out of my lack of financial savvy.
Leon smacked the table with his left hand as he laughed. His spectral right hand followed suit, only it pummeled the table with much greater force than its counterpart. Spectral blood flew, spattering the white tablecloth covered in cross-stitched cornucopia, doe-eyed pilgrims, and smiling Indians.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a protective white bubble around Leon’s arm.
"Are you warm, honey?" asked Shirley. "You want me to open a window?"
I was about to tell her not to bother, when I realized that I felt the prickle of sweat along the back of my neck. "Yeah, okay," I said, as I shrugged out of my flannel shirt and let it bunch on the seat of my chair. I was glad I’d taken the time to find a T-shirt without any holes or stains on it.
I took a deep breath and looked at Leon’s ghost hand. It quivered like it was hooked up to an electrical wire. Like that frog in the biology class whose legs kick when you give it a shock. No, I hadn’t been absent that day. And yeah, I’d puked. Me and Janet Neiderman.
"I’ll be right back," I said, knocking my chair into Jacob’s as I scrambled to make my way toward the upstairs bathroom. There was a half-bath on the first floor, but I figured that everyone at the dinner table really didn’t need to hear me retching if I couldn’t bring my gag reflex under control.
Why did I have to go and think of that goddamn frog?
I dodged past Jacob’s old bedroom--now Shirley’s very own sewing room--and nearly skateboarded down the upstairs hallway on a pink and blue rag rug. Darting into the bathroom, I slammed the door shut behind me. It had a hook and eye lock on it, which might keep Grandma out, or maybe Clayton, if he didn’t lean on the door too hard.
I breathed, and I looked around. It was a normal enough bathroom, more colorful than mine, with blue and yellow sunflowers on the shower curtain that kind of matched a border going around the top of the painted walls, but not quite. I pulled open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet in hopes of finding a nice bottle of cold medicine, or maybe some valium. Neither one would make Leon’s nasty ghost arm go away completely, but they’d sure make me care about it a whole lot less.
The right side of the cabinet was filled entirely with old lady perfume, facial cream, nail polish, and hair mousse. The left held cheap plastic razors like I use, aspirin, foot spray, a stick of green deodorant, cotton swabs, and antihistamines.
Of every drug that had ever been invented, Jacob’s parents owned the only two types that affected my talent less than antibiotics.
I pawed through their drawers in hopes of finding a stray muscle relaxant or even an expired tube of motion-sickness pills. I found a bunch of washcloths and some sunblock. Sunblock. In a small rural Wisconsin town on the border of Minnesota that saw the sun maybe two hours each winter if it peered closely enough between the snowflakes.
I looked underneath the sink and found a pair of rubber gloves and a bunch of cleaning supplies. Damn it.
I tore the medicine cabinet doors open again, hoping to find something that I’d missed before. And then my eyes fell on the nail polish remover.
I turned the bottle around and read the back. Acetone was the first ingredient. And the seminar I’d attended fourteen years ago called Inhalants, the Silent Killer was as fresh in my mind as if I’d just taken it yesterday.
And here I thought I hadn’t gotten much out of the Police Academy.
I wasn’t a habitual huffer, not like the anorexic girl at the Cook County Mental Health Center -- the institution that’d housed me from seventeen to twenty-three -- who’d shown me how to get the most bang for my buck with a can of cooking spray or a plastic baggie and a jar of rubber cement. No, I didn’t enjoy killing my brain cells randomly, but I was a pragmatist. The arm wasn’t going to go away all by itself. And I really needed it to stop waving at me if I wanted to make it through dinner.
I could saturate a wad of toilet paper and hold it over my mouth and nose, but acetone’s a stinky chemical, and I’d end up reeking of it. Instead, I set the bottle on the rim of the sink and plugged one of my nostrils, sniffing it carefully in hopes of zapping the specific neurons that enabled me to see Leon’s damn spastic missing arm without leaving me stinking like a Chinese nail salon.
I felt a little floaty and had developed a sharp headache over the top of my skull by the time anyone came to check on me.
Luckily, it was Jacob.
Since he didn’t need to know I was huffing his mother’s nail polish remover, I put it away and washed my face before I answered the door.
He leaned in the doorjamb, looking incredibly sexy in a long-sleeved, chocolate brown silk knit that clung to every muscle like it’d been painted on him. He crossed his arms and gave me his most earnest you-can-trust-me face, pouty and a little doe-eyed.
"Everything all right?"
"It’s...um. I dunno."
"You went a little pale at the table."
It wasn’t so surprising that Jacob noticed it when I saw something. Maurice Taylor, my first partner, used to tell me sometimes that I’d disappear if I got any whiter, and he hadn’t been joking about my ethnicity.
My eyes stung from the acetone I’d just sniffed, and I pressed my fingertips into my tear ducts to try to relieve the itch. If I knuckled my eyes like I really wanted to, they’d get all red and I’d look totally high. "Your uncle Leon seems like a cool guy."
"He is."
"But...I can see his arm."
Jacob stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. He sat down on the rim of the tub and took one of my hands between both of his, and he waited.
I avoided his eyes and stared at a tile on the floor that was set a little crooked. "I’m trying really hard to be a decent boyfriend," I said. "But I think I might not be cut out for it."
"Stop it."
"No, it’s true. I don’t know how to have a family. And evidently, I can’t function without having a buzz on."
"What are we talking about?" Jacob asked. "Are you breaking up with me or telling me you want to start going to Narcotics Anonymous?"
My heartbeat, already racing a little from the acetone, did an unpleasant stutter when Jacob said the words "breaking up" aloud.
"I mean, you know. Come on."
"No, I don’t. What’s going on?"
God damn. I’d started hugging myself without realizing I was doing it. Ugly habit. Ugly, ugly habit. I forced myself to try to stand normally, but I felt like my arms and legs weren’t screwed on right. "I just wanted to...you know...be with you and your family for the holiday."
Jacob nodded slowly. "Okay. And that’s what we’re doing. If you need to leave, I’m trusting you to tell me so."
"I don’t want to leave in the middle of dinner." I stared up into a painted-on sunflower. "I thought the house was clean," I said.
"And I had no idea that Leon’s arm would qualify as a ghost. If you don’t want to go, we can move you, say that you need to sit by the window."
"I’d rather sit across from Leon than Barbara, arm or no arm."
Jacob smirked. "Can’t say I blame you."
I thought about that damn bloody limb performing acrobatics that were totally out of synch with what Leon’s face and body language were telling me. "This is gonna sound stupid," I said. Which I can pretty much use to preface anything that comes out of my mouth. "But I wonder if it knew I could see it and it was showing off."
Stupid or not, Jacob considered the idea. "Maybe it’s got a spiritual equivalent to a cellular intelligence. Who knows? But if amputated limbs can be present in the spirit world, it explains why they still cause pain for some people and not others just as much as the idea of a bunch of neurons misfiring."
Could people have their phantom limbs exorcised? It was possible -- or at least they could have them scrambled with electrical interference, once the technology of Psych science caught up with the psychology and biology of it.
"If I just had some Auracel, everything would be okay." I take prescription Auracel to block out the visions. Or I used to take it...until I stopped. Which was fine, inside my apartment. I guess I’d conveniently forgotten about the real world outside it. Only certain pharmacies in big metropolitan areas carried the drug, so even if I could call The Clinic and have them fax a prescription, chances were we’d have to go to Minneapolis to have it filled.
Jacob stood and pulled a little paper cup from a cutesy holder mounted on the wall beside the medicine cabinet, and filled it with tap water. "How many?"
"How many what?"
"How many Auracel?"
I realized he was digging in his pocket, and it was as if the clouds broke open and a beam of sunshine landed right on him.
"You have some?"
He smiled at me. He’s got a special grin that’s all mine. It somehow manages to be reassuring and to promise that he’ll fuck me halfway through the mattress later, all at once. "I’ve got to tell you: I’m relieved this is only about Auracel." He handed me the paper cup.
"How many do you have?"
"Ten."
"Wow. You’re prepared."
"I was a boy scout."
"That’s creepy. And hot. At the same time."
Jacob pressed a tablet of Auracel into my mouth, running his thumb back and forth over my lips after he did. I turned away to swallow some water. In fifteen minutes or so, the pill would start kicking in. My relief was greater than my disappointment, but just barely. "I really wanted to do this without the meds."
"Which was your idea, not mine."
That was so not fair. My life was perfectly fine until suddenly I had this live-in boyfriend who wanted to interact with me, and I realized that I was almost always high. Maybe it had been my idea to go cold turkey, but I’d done it because of Jacob.
"Talk to me," Jacob said.
"You’re gonna decide I’m too much trouble, someday."
"Uh huh," he said with absolutely zero conviction, flipping my hand over to press a kiss into my clammy palm. His goatee tickled at the base of my thumb.
I felt the first effects of the Auracel kicking in, a little dryness to my tongue, and a tingle in my fingertips that was only intensified by the feeling of Jacob’s hot mouth grazing my skin.
"Stop it," I said. "I’m not going back downstairs with a hard-on."
I felt Jacob grinning into my hand, and then his tongue traced my life line.
"I mean it."
"So you want me to suck you off in my parents’ bathroom?"
Dirty. Dirty, dirty, dirty. Jacob talks dirty so well, and I always love it. My cock stirred a little. The promise of the Auracel high made me sluggish, though, and I had enough self-control, even with a sexy hunk of manmeat going down on my thumb, to save it for later. "After dinner."
Jacob let go of my hand and pulled my T-shirt up over my stomach. He pressed a kiss into my solar plexus. "Dessert," he said, breathing the word against my bare skin and pulling a long shiver up my spine. "I’m looking forward to it."
And here I’d been expecting pumpkin pie.
Jacob went downstairs first, promising to tell his family that I reacted to my medications sometimes. Which was technically true. He wasn’t saying that I’d had such a reaction at the table, after all. Jacob knows all about being technically truthful. His partner, Carolyn, is a telepathic lie detector.
All eyes landed on me as I tried to low-key it back to the table. Jacob refilled my glass with orange soda and his mother pulled my plate out of the microwave and set it back down in front of me. "Everything all right?" asked Jerry.
"It’s fine," I said. "I’m good."
"Nothing wrong with taking a pill when you need one. Y’know, I need to take pain pills for this arm," said Leon. "Crazy, isn’t it? Arm’s not even there, and it hurts."
"You never told me that," said Shirley.
"It’s true." Leon dug a capsule out of his pocket with his corporeal hand, while his ghostly hand twitched on the tablecloth. "Arm’s acting up today," he said. "I think I’ll take one right now."
"You don’t need to do that to make me feel better," I said.
The ghost arm waved a "pshaw" at me.
"Bob down the street lost a foot in Korea," said Jerry. "He still feels it, too."
"What about skeletons?" Clayton asked me. Do you see skeletons?"
"Skeletons are nothing supernatural," Barbara told him. "They’re inside everyone’s body. Everybody has one."
"But I seen this movie."
"Saw," Barbara corrected him.
"Or zombies," said Clayton, ignoring her. "Are zombies real?"
"No," I said. "When bodies die, they’re dead."
"But what about in the hospital, when they take that electrical shock thing with the paddles, and they yell, ‘Clear!’ and they shock you...." he jumped in his seat as if he’d been hit with a thousand volts. "And you were a flatline, and then your heart starts beating again?"
I thought about it. Not that I was worried about giving a fifth-grader a scientifically accurate answer; I was thinking about electricity, and how the most knowledgeable paranormal expert I knew said that ghosts were made of electrons. "I don’t know," I said. "Maybe those people aren’t all the way dead, and the machines aren’t accurate enough to tell."
"You should see how it works the next time you’re at a hospital," said Clayton. "Then you’d know."
"I don’t go to hospitals," I said.
"Never? What if someone shot you while you were being a cop? Then where would you go?"
"I have a special...um, doctor."
Everyone had craned to the edges of their seats again. You could hear a pin drop.
I sighed to myself and decided I might as well talk about it, since everyone seemed so eager to know. Even Grandma. "Actually, now I see this panel of two doctors and a psychiatrist, and they all have to be in the room at the same time to make sure that nobody’s doing anything they shouldn’t be doing...."
Jacob’s nephew, Clayton, asked this with the eagerness and joy of a kid who’d just learned that school was cancelled. Clayton was in fifth grade. I have no idea how old that would make him.
"You shot someone last summer?" I muttered, smoothing my napkin on my lap to the point where I probably looked like I was playing with myself. Not exactly the impression I’d wanted to make on Jacob’s family on our first Thanksgiving together.
The muttering? Not usually my style, but I was feeling uncharacteristically mouthy. It seemed like the moment I had a thought, it made its way through my vocal cords and out my mouth before I had a chance to pat it down and make sure it wasn’t going to jab anyone. I’d been this way since I’d stopped taking Auracel and Seconal over a month ago. Here I thought I’d been mellowing all these years, when really, it had just been the drugs.
"No," Jacob answered patiently. "I try to avoid shooting people." And then he looked at me. "Carolyn and I walked in on an armed robbery in progress at the convenience store on California and Irving. It was a clean shot to the leg."
Departmental policy allows us cops to decide whether to go for a lethal or a non-lethal shot when a criminal’s got an unarmed civilian at gunpoint. If Jacob had shot someone’s leg, I had no doubt it was exactly where he’d been aiming. Jacob is a Stiff, the non-psychic half of a PsyCop team, and not only are Stiffs impossible to influence by sixth-sensory means and impervious to possession, but they’re usually crack shots. The Stiffs who I know, anyway.
I’m the other half of a PsyCop team, the Psych half. Not Jacob’s team; Carolyn Brinkman was Jacob’s better half, on the job at least. I didn’t currently have a Stiff of my very own. Maurice, my first partner, retired, although I still lean on him way too much. Lisa, my second partner, was kicked off the force when they discovered that she was as psychic as Jean Dixon. She’s off being trained for the psy end of the whole PsyCop business now, out in California. Technically she's just a phone call away, and yet sometimes it feels like she’s on an entirely different planet. Even when she gets back, I won’t get to partner with her, since they only pair up Psychs with Stiffs.
And then there was my third partner, Roger. The bastard kidnapped me for some under-the-table drug testing, and I’d been so gullible I’d practically given him a key to my apartment. Roger was rotting in a jail cell, last I’d heard. The whole affair was pretty hush-hush. Maybe I could’ve gleaned a few more details, if I was the type to obsess about the little things, like where one’s arch-enemy is incarcerated, and whether or not he’s shown up for roll call recently. But, frankly, I’ve never found details very comforting. I think about them, and I just get overwhelmed. Roger went bye-bye, and I came out of our encounter intact. That’s all I really need to know.
Six weeks later and I was still on medical leave. I felt fine, probably due to the amount of actual blood cells coursing through my system in lieu of the drug cocktail I was accustomed to.
"Did you ever shoot anyone?" Clayton asked me, eyes sparkling.
"Sure."
"Wow. Did you kill ‘em?"
Clayton had Jacob’s phenomenal dark eyes. Or Jacob’s younger sister Barbara’s eyes. Which were Jacob’s father’s eyes, as well as the eyes of the wizened old lady at the head of the table who was about a hundred and five. She’d been giving me a look that could probably kill an elephant ever since we’d gotten there and Jacob had introduced me as his boyfriend.
I think he’d primed his family over the phone. But still. He had to go and say it out loud and rub it in. Because that’s the way Jacob is. Not that he’d be bringing a man home for Thanksgiving for any other reason. But that’s beside the point.
"Clayton Joseph," snapped Barbara. She might have had Jacob’s eyes, but she certainly couldn’t hold a candle to his cool composure. "That is not an appropriate question for the dinner table."
Grandma Marks glowered at me from the head of the table, her dark eyes, half-hidden in folds of wrinkled skin, threatening to pierce me right through. I’d figured she hated me because I was doing the nasty with her grandson. Maybe she had a thing against psychics. Hell, maybe both. I’m usually just lucky that way.
"Bob Martinez retired down at the mill," Jacob’s father, Jerry, announced in a blatant attempt to change the subject. If we’d been in Chicago, where I grew up, Jerry would have been talking about a steel mill. But we were in Wisconsin, an alien land of rolling hills and cows with signs advertising something called "fresh cheese curds" every few miles. I gathered that the mills made paper in this alien, wholesome land where Jacob had been born and bred.
"And when are you going to think about retiring, dad?" Barbara asked. She had a trace of an accent that sounded Minnesotan to my untrained ear. I wondered if Jacob had ever had that same funny lilt. Probably once, but it’d been erased by him living over half his life in Chicago.
"Your father’s got another ten years in him, at least," said Jacob’s mom, Shirley. Shirley wore her hair in a white, poofy halo. I suspected she’d been a blonde in her younger days. "What’s he going to do around here but get in my way?"
"Your mother plays Euchre on Tuesdays and Thursdays," said Jerry, as if his retirement hinged around a card game.
"You have hobbies," said Barbara. "You could fix up your woodshop and actually finish a few things."
"Ah, I’d rather earn an honest wage than stay home and make birdhouses."
"And you could teach Clayton all about woodworking."
"He’s too young," said Jerry. "He’d cut his finger off."
"Wood is stupid," Clayton added.
I wondered if calling wood stupid was heresy in this land of trees and paper. But Grandma didn’t fall out of her chair clutching her heart, so I figured that kids were allowed to say the first thing that popped into their minds these days. Or maybe they always had been. I must have been on my third foster home by the time I was Clayton’s age. I was probably in fourth grade, held back for being thick, stubborn, and socially retarded. But that would’ve put me at just about the age where I’d learned that my opinion was neither desired nor appreciated.
Jingle bells announced the opening of the front door -- that and a massive blast of arctic air, complete with a whorl of snowflakes.
"Uncle Leon!" Clayton leapt up from the table and thundered toward the door.
I looked at the empty place setting across from me and heaved an inward sigh of relief. I’d been hoping that an actual person would fill it, that it wasn’t left open as a tribute to Grandpa Marks, or some other long lost family member.
Leon rounded the corner of the dining room and Shirley stood up to greet him. I glanced around at the rest of the table to see if I was supposed to stand up, too. But Jacob and Jerry were still sitting. Jerry was even packing away mashed potatoes like he was trying to beat everyone else to the punch.
Uncle Leon was in his mid to late sixties and had the same white hair and rounded snub nose as Jacob’s mom. Shirley kissed him on the cheek and unbuttoned his thick corduroy jacket. "Jacob brought his friend with him," she said, gesturing toward me. "This is Victor."
She peeled Leon’s coat off him and whisked away with it just as Leon turned to shake my hand. He led with his left hand, which confused me. His bare right arm flapped at his side, with his right sleeve rolled up to his shoulder.
I shook his left hand in a daze.
Leon nodded his head toward his right shoulder. "Lost it at the mill in seventy-eight. Damn thing still hurts."
I blinked. Leon’s right sleeve wasn’t rolled up. It was pinned to the shoulder of his shirt. He didn’t have a right arm -- not one made out of real flesh and blood, anyway. And I could still see his missing arm. The party’d finally gotten started. Hooray.
"Oh," I said. "That sucks."
"Shirley tells me you’re a PsyCop."
I nodded. "Yeah."
"That’s some kind of program they got going on down there," he said. His ghost arm joined his corporeal arm in pulling out the chair across from mine. "What kind of talent you got?"
I sank back into my seat and swallowed a mouthful of dryish turkey meat I’d been talking around for the last several minutes. "Medium."
"No shit?"
Grandma frowned harder, but Leon didn’t seem to notice. "Can I get you anything to drink?" Shirley asked me, but I mumbled that I was okay.
"That girl Jacob works with, she’s a telepath, isn’t she? Wow, a medium. How ‘bout that?" Leon’s ghost hand caressed the silverware as he spoke. I wondered if I looked like a freak for staring at his salad fork while he talked to me. "So how strong are they, your impressions?"
I drained my glass of soda to wash down the turkey and wished I’d taken Shirley up on her offer of a refill. "Pretty strong."
"What, do you hear ‘em talking to you? In their own words?"
"Uh huh."
"Holy cow, now that’s what you call a psychic. We got ourselves a Marie Saint Savon right here at the table."
Good old Marie had died right around the time I’d been shoehorned into the police academy. She’d been the world’s most powerful medium, and no one could touch her talent. Not that I could figure why anyone would want to. I was surprised that Leon actually knew her name. Maybe it was a generational thing. She’d been big news maybe fifteen years ago, and then was quickly forgotten by almost everyone but the psychic community.
"That’s got to make your police work a little easier," said Leon. "Huh?"
I nodded and swallowed some mashed potatoes. They were salty enough to stimulate my flagging salivary glands. A little.
"Only if you work homicide," Jerry piped in. The whole family had been skirting around my psychic ability, but since Leon had started the ball rolling and I didn’t seem too tender about the topic, it’d become fair game.
"I do."
"Holy shit. I didn’t know they used mediums in homicide."
Grandma glared at Leon.
"You mean medium, like a psychic medium?" Clayton asked.
"Uh huh."
"Wow, you see dead people?"
"That’s just in the movies," Barbara said. "Like the telekinetics who can shoot bullets with their minds." Metal was incredibly resistant to telekinesis, but I’d trained with one guy who could fling a mean stone. He got these splitting headaches afterward, though, so he was never one to show off with party tricks.
"I can see them," I said.
The table went quiet. "Whoa," said Clayton. "Like, right now?"
I avoided looking at the spot where Leon’s arm was flopping around on the table. "There aren’t any spirits here for Victor to see," Jacob explained. We knew that to be the case because we’d called Lisa Gutierrez in Santa Barbara and asked her if there were any ghosts in Jerry and Shirley’s house, and she’d said no. Lisa’s precognitive, and if she says no, the answer is unequivocally no.
I guess she couldn’t have known about Leon’s arm. Not without us asking specifically.
"And when you see ‘em," Clayton went on, "are they all scary and gross?"
"Sometimes."
Everyone at the table seemed to lean forward just a little. Even Jacob.
"Can you see right through them?"
"Sometimes. Or sometimes they look like regular people."
Leon’s facial expression was open and eager, but his phantom limb was clenching and unclenching its fist, and bright red droplets had appeared all over it as if it was sweating blood. I buried my face in my glass, tilting a final droplet of soda onto my tongue.
"Can you touch ‘em?" Clayton asked, his voice dropping down into a reverential whisper.
I swallowed around a hunk of turkey that’d lodged in my esophagus. Jacob slid his glass over to me, and I took it and drank it down. He’d been drinking milk. I just barely kept myself from gagging.
"You don’t want to touch ghosts," I said.
The house around us, the very air, went quiet. Everyone strained forward to catch whatever crumbs of information I might care to scatter. Because we’re a nation that grew up on Lovecraft and Sleepy Hollow and Friday the Thirteenth, and people are dying to know if all that shit’s really real.
"They’re creepy," I added. And I swallowed some more milk.
"Why don’t you tell Uncle Jacob and Uncle Leon about the report you did on salamanders?" Barbara suggested to Clayton.
"Creepy how?" Clayton asked.
"Clayton got an A minus," said Barbara.
"Creepy how?"
"I don’t know," I said. I’d started spreading my food around my plate, mixing my corn and my potatoes, ruining both. "The way they look in scary movies? Pretty much like that."
"How can you say that?" Barbara demanded, suddenly so vehement that I wondered how I’d ever pegged her as a sheepish single mom in her pale yellow cardigan and perfectly creased khaki pants. "When people die, they go to heaven."
Oh. Christian. Or had Jacob said Catholic -- or was that the same difference? I didn’t remember, must not have been paying close enough attention when Jacob had tried to prepare me.
"Barbara," said Jerry. Her father didn’t have a follow up ready. Just her name, sounding like a warning.
"If he says he sees spirits, then he does," Leon said, hopping to my defense despite the fact that he made me squirm in my seat. Or, more accurately, his right arm did. "They have tests." He looked to me for affirmation. "Don’t they have tests?"
"All kinds of tests," I said, burying the last of my corn.
"And being able to see them, you’re what, a level three? Four?"
"Five," I said. Level five was a couple of steps down from good old Marie. But Marie was only a step lower than God. Or maybe Satan.
The table went quiet again.
"Are you a millionaire?" asked Clayton.
"It is not polite to ask people how much money they make," said Barbara. She was the same age as me, thirty-eight. She had Jacob’s flashing dark eyes and high cheekbones, but she looked just as worn out as I always felt. Even more so, now that we were attempting civil dinner conversation.
"It’s okay," I said. "No, I’m not a millionaire. I make more money than a regular detective, but not as much as my supervisor."
"And you spend as much money as someone who’s lived through the Great Depression," Jacob added, sotto voice.
Clayton scrunched his face up. I saw mashed potatoes lurking behind his teeth. "You should find Al Capone and make him tell you where his vault is."
Jerry and Leon laughed, but the way they kept their eyes trained on me, I could tell they were hoping that maybe I’d think that dredging up Al Capone was a grand idea. And I just so happened to need a couple of assistants over the age of sixty-five.
"He’s probably not around," I said. "He’d be a little old by now."
Everyone chuckled, except for Barbara, who evidently thought I was a devil-worshipper. And Grandma, who was possibly giving me the evil eye. And Clayton, who couldn’t make sense out of my lack of financial savvy.
Leon smacked the table with his left hand as he laughed. His spectral right hand followed suit, only it pummeled the table with much greater force than its counterpart. Spectral blood flew, spattering the white tablecloth covered in cross-stitched cornucopia, doe-eyed pilgrims, and smiling Indians.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a protective white bubble around Leon’s arm.
"Are you warm, honey?" asked Shirley. "You want me to open a window?"
I was about to tell her not to bother, when I realized that I felt the prickle of sweat along the back of my neck. "Yeah, okay," I said, as I shrugged out of my flannel shirt and let it bunch on the seat of my chair. I was glad I’d taken the time to find a T-shirt without any holes or stains on it.
I took a deep breath and looked at Leon’s ghost hand. It quivered like it was hooked up to an electrical wire. Like that frog in the biology class whose legs kick when you give it a shock. No, I hadn’t been absent that day. And yeah, I’d puked. Me and Janet Neiderman.
"I’ll be right back," I said, knocking my chair into Jacob’s as I scrambled to make my way toward the upstairs bathroom. There was a half-bath on the first floor, but I figured that everyone at the dinner table really didn’t need to hear me retching if I couldn’t bring my gag reflex under control.
Why did I have to go and think of that goddamn frog?
I dodged past Jacob’s old bedroom--now Shirley’s very own sewing room--and nearly skateboarded down the upstairs hallway on a pink and blue rag rug. Darting into the bathroom, I slammed the door shut behind me. It had a hook and eye lock on it, which might keep Grandma out, or maybe Clayton, if he didn’t lean on the door too hard.
I breathed, and I looked around. It was a normal enough bathroom, more colorful than mine, with blue and yellow sunflowers on the shower curtain that kind of matched a border going around the top of the painted walls, but not quite. I pulled open the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet in hopes of finding a nice bottle of cold medicine, or maybe some valium. Neither one would make Leon’s nasty ghost arm go away completely, but they’d sure make me care about it a whole lot less.
The right side of the cabinet was filled entirely with old lady perfume, facial cream, nail polish, and hair mousse. The left held cheap plastic razors like I use, aspirin, foot spray, a stick of green deodorant, cotton swabs, and antihistamines.
Of every drug that had ever been invented, Jacob’s parents owned the only two types that affected my talent less than antibiotics.
I pawed through their drawers in hopes of finding a stray muscle relaxant or even an expired tube of motion-sickness pills. I found a bunch of washcloths and some sunblock. Sunblock. In a small rural Wisconsin town on the border of Minnesota that saw the sun maybe two hours each winter if it peered closely enough between the snowflakes.
I looked underneath the sink and found a pair of rubber gloves and a bunch of cleaning supplies. Damn it.
I tore the medicine cabinet doors open again, hoping to find something that I’d missed before. And then my eyes fell on the nail polish remover.
I turned the bottle around and read the back. Acetone was the first ingredient. And the seminar I’d attended fourteen years ago called Inhalants, the Silent Killer was as fresh in my mind as if I’d just taken it yesterday.
And here I thought I hadn’t gotten much out of the Police Academy.
I wasn’t a habitual huffer, not like the anorexic girl at the Cook County Mental Health Center -- the institution that’d housed me from seventeen to twenty-three -- who’d shown me how to get the most bang for my buck with a can of cooking spray or a plastic baggie and a jar of rubber cement. No, I didn’t enjoy killing my brain cells randomly, but I was a pragmatist. The arm wasn’t going to go away all by itself. And I really needed it to stop waving at me if I wanted to make it through dinner.
I could saturate a wad of toilet paper and hold it over my mouth and nose, but acetone’s a stinky chemical, and I’d end up reeking of it. Instead, I set the bottle on the rim of the sink and plugged one of my nostrils, sniffing it carefully in hopes of zapping the specific neurons that enabled me to see Leon’s damn spastic missing arm without leaving me stinking like a Chinese nail salon.
I felt a little floaty and had developed a sharp headache over the top of my skull by the time anyone came to check on me.
Luckily, it was Jacob.
Since he didn’t need to know I was huffing his mother’s nail polish remover, I put it away and washed my face before I answered the door.
He leaned in the doorjamb, looking incredibly sexy in a long-sleeved, chocolate brown silk knit that clung to every muscle like it’d been painted on him. He crossed his arms and gave me his most earnest you-can-trust-me face, pouty and a little doe-eyed.
"Everything all right?"
"It’s...um. I dunno."
"You went a little pale at the table."
It wasn’t so surprising that Jacob noticed it when I saw something. Maurice Taylor, my first partner, used to tell me sometimes that I’d disappear if I got any whiter, and he hadn’t been joking about my ethnicity.
My eyes stung from the acetone I’d just sniffed, and I pressed my fingertips into my tear ducts to try to relieve the itch. If I knuckled my eyes like I really wanted to, they’d get all red and I’d look totally high. "Your uncle Leon seems like a cool guy."
"He is."
"But...I can see his arm."
Jacob stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. He sat down on the rim of the tub and took one of my hands between both of his, and he waited.
I avoided his eyes and stared at a tile on the floor that was set a little crooked. "I’m trying really hard to be a decent boyfriend," I said. "But I think I might not be cut out for it."
"Stop it."
"No, it’s true. I don’t know how to have a family. And evidently, I can’t function without having a buzz on."
"What are we talking about?" Jacob asked. "Are you breaking up with me or telling me you want to start going to Narcotics Anonymous?"
My heartbeat, already racing a little from the acetone, did an unpleasant stutter when Jacob said the words "breaking up" aloud.
"I mean, you know. Come on."
"No, I don’t. What’s going on?"
God damn. I’d started hugging myself without realizing I was doing it. Ugly habit. Ugly, ugly habit. I forced myself to try to stand normally, but I felt like my arms and legs weren’t screwed on right. "I just wanted to...you know...be with you and your family for the holiday."
Jacob nodded slowly. "Okay. And that’s what we’re doing. If you need to leave, I’m trusting you to tell me so."
"I don’t want to leave in the middle of dinner." I stared up into a painted-on sunflower. "I thought the house was clean," I said.
"And I had no idea that Leon’s arm would qualify as a ghost. If you don’t want to go, we can move you, say that you need to sit by the window."
"I’d rather sit across from Leon than Barbara, arm or no arm."
Jacob smirked. "Can’t say I blame you."
I thought about that damn bloody limb performing acrobatics that were totally out of synch with what Leon’s face and body language were telling me. "This is gonna sound stupid," I said. Which I can pretty much use to preface anything that comes out of my mouth. "But I wonder if it knew I could see it and it was showing off."
Stupid or not, Jacob considered the idea. "Maybe it’s got a spiritual equivalent to a cellular intelligence. Who knows? But if amputated limbs can be present in the spirit world, it explains why they still cause pain for some people and not others just as much as the idea of a bunch of neurons misfiring."
Could people have their phantom limbs exorcised? It was possible -- or at least they could have them scrambled with electrical interference, once the technology of Psych science caught up with the psychology and biology of it.
"If I just had some Auracel, everything would be okay." I take prescription Auracel to block out the visions. Or I used to take it...until I stopped. Which was fine, inside my apartment. I guess I’d conveniently forgotten about the real world outside it. Only certain pharmacies in big metropolitan areas carried the drug, so even if I could call The Clinic and have them fax a prescription, chances were we’d have to go to Minneapolis to have it filled.
Jacob stood and pulled a little paper cup from a cutesy holder mounted on the wall beside the medicine cabinet, and filled it with tap water. "How many?"
"How many what?"
"How many Auracel?"
I realized he was digging in his pocket, and it was as if the clouds broke open and a beam of sunshine landed right on him.
"You have some?"
He smiled at me. He’s got a special grin that’s all mine. It somehow manages to be reassuring and to promise that he’ll fuck me halfway through the mattress later, all at once. "I’ve got to tell you: I’m relieved this is only about Auracel." He handed me the paper cup.
"How many do you have?"
"Ten."
"Wow. You’re prepared."
"I was a boy scout."
"That’s creepy. And hot. At the same time."
Jacob pressed a tablet of Auracel into my mouth, running his thumb back and forth over my lips after he did. I turned away to swallow some water. In fifteen minutes or so, the pill would start kicking in. My relief was greater than my disappointment, but just barely. "I really wanted to do this without the meds."
"Which was your idea, not mine."
That was so not fair. My life was perfectly fine until suddenly I had this live-in boyfriend who wanted to interact with me, and I realized that I was almost always high. Maybe it had been my idea to go cold turkey, but I’d done it because of Jacob.
"Talk to me," Jacob said.
"You’re gonna decide I’m too much trouble, someday."
"Uh huh," he said with absolutely zero conviction, flipping my hand over to press a kiss into my clammy palm. His goatee tickled at the base of my thumb.
I felt the first effects of the Auracel kicking in, a little dryness to my tongue, and a tingle in my fingertips that was only intensified by the feeling of Jacob’s hot mouth grazing my skin.
"Stop it," I said. "I’m not going back downstairs with a hard-on."
I felt Jacob grinning into my hand, and then his tongue traced my life line.
"I mean it."
"So you want me to suck you off in my parents’ bathroom?"
Dirty. Dirty, dirty, dirty. Jacob talks dirty so well, and I always love it. My cock stirred a little. The promise of the Auracel high made me sluggish, though, and I had enough self-control, even with a sexy hunk of manmeat going down on my thumb, to save it for later. "After dinner."
Jacob let go of my hand and pulled my T-shirt up over my stomach. He pressed a kiss into my solar plexus. "Dessert," he said, breathing the word against my bare skin and pulling a long shiver up my spine. "I’m looking forward to it."
And here I’d been expecting pumpkin pie.
Jacob went downstairs first, promising to tell his family that I reacted to my medications sometimes. Which was technically true. He wasn’t saying that I’d had such a reaction at the table, after all. Jacob knows all about being technically truthful. His partner, Carolyn, is a telepathic lie detector.
All eyes landed on me as I tried to low-key it back to the table. Jacob refilled my glass with orange soda and his mother pulled my plate out of the microwave and set it back down in front of me. "Everything all right?" asked Jerry.
"It’s fine," I said. "I’m good."
"Nothing wrong with taking a pill when you need one. Y’know, I need to take pain pills for this arm," said Leon. "Crazy, isn’t it? Arm’s not even there, and it hurts."
"You never told me that," said Shirley.
"It’s true." Leon dug a capsule out of his pocket with his corporeal hand, while his ghostly hand twitched on the tablecloth. "Arm’s acting up today," he said. "I think I’ll take one right now."
"You don’t need to do that to make me feel better," I said.
The ghost arm waved a "pshaw" at me.
"Bob down the street lost a foot in Korea," said Jerry. "He still feels it, too."
"What about skeletons?" Clayton asked me. Do you see skeletons?"
"Skeletons are nothing supernatural," Barbara told him. "They’re inside everyone’s body. Everybody has one."
"But I seen this movie."
"Saw," Barbara corrected him.
"Or zombies," said Clayton, ignoring her. "Are zombies real?"
"No," I said. "When bodies die, they’re dead."
"But what about in the hospital, when they take that electrical shock thing with the paddles, and they yell, ‘Clear!’ and they shock you...." he jumped in his seat as if he’d been hit with a thousand volts. "And you were a flatline, and then your heart starts beating again?"
I thought about it. Not that I was worried about giving a fifth-grader a scientifically accurate answer; I was thinking about electricity, and how the most knowledgeable paranormal expert I knew said that ghosts were made of electrons. "I don’t know," I said. "Maybe those people aren’t all the way dead, and the machines aren’t accurate enough to tell."
"You should see how it works the next time you’re at a hospital," said Clayton. "Then you’d know."
"I don’t go to hospitals," I said.
"Never? What if someone shot you while you were being a cop? Then where would you go?"
"I have a special...um, doctor."
Everyone had craned to the edges of their seats again. You could hear a pin drop.
I sighed to myself and decided I might as well talk about it, since everyone seemed so eager to know. Even Grandma. "Actually, now I see this panel of two doctors and a psychiatrist, and they all have to be in the room at the same time to make sure that nobody’s doing anything they shouldn’t be doing...."
The Captain's Ghostly Gamble by Catherine Curzon & Eleanor Harkstead
John Rookwood peered through the grimy leaded windows and saw lights approaching along the driveway. It was the same every year—uninvited guests always arrived on their anniversary.
“Captain, they’re nearly here! Stop preening, man!”
“Guests!” Captain Cornelius Sheridan didn’t look away from the ornate mirror where he was admiring his own reflection. He beamed at himself before pouting, then placed one hand on his hip. As John watched, Sheridan turned a little to the left, a little to the right, admiring his own form, clad as he was in a suit of shimmering gold silk.
He frowned and adjusted one of his lace-shrouded cuffs very slightly, then considered his reflection again, turning his shapely calf a little before he leaned down to brush an imaginary smut from his white stocking. “Does one need more powder, Rookwood? One doesn’t want to look gauche for one’s chums!”
“You have natural pallor enough, Captain. Besides, they’re not our chums.”
A large conveyance had drawn up to the front door. John turned up the collar of his greatcoat, watching as two passengers, a man and a woman, climbed out.
“The damned impertinence of it, turning up uninvited every year. Wandering about my house, disturbing our peace. They’re lucky I haven’t taken a pistol to them.”
“Natural? Lord preserve me from natural! More powder and a touch more rouge on the lips, I think.” Sheridan put his elegant hand to his silken cravat and slightly adjusted the diamond pin there. An even larger diamond was housed in the ring he wore, and it glittered as brightly as his eyes. “My home, Mr. Rookwood, lest we forget.”
At the sound of their guests letting themselves in at the front door, John sighed. “Rookwood Manor has been in my family for generations, as well you know, you damned dandy interloper!”
“Indeed, sir, Sheridan Manor was once home to your people, but one believes there was the small matter of a duel and now it is mine.” Sheridan glanced at John and beamed, his handsome face now fashionably pale. He bowed low, a cloud of rose perfume billowing from the decadent cuffs. “Let us go and say hello to our newest friends, Mr. Rookwood!”
John bowed in return, doffing his tricorne hat. “That duel was unfair—therefore, in default, Rookwood Manor is still mine, I think you’ll find.”
As John’s heavy boots thumped over the floorboards, a woman’s voice echoed up from the entrance hall.
“Did you hear that? I swear I heard footsteps!”
“Ooh, the young lady sounds so terribly nervous!” Sheridan hugged himself in amused excitement then clapped his hands together. His grin was positively wicked as he added, “What fun!”
“Should be easy to get shot of them, then!” John looked over the bannister as the couple began to set up their equipment. He’d seen quite a lot of this caper over the years, gadgets galore ranged through his house with nary a by-your-leave. How terribly rude. “Well, then, Captain, as my footsteps have served to scare her witless, would you like to go next? I’d wager you shan’t terrify them in the least, but I’m happy to watch you try!”
The two men peeped down into the baronial hall below, where the enormous studded oak door stood open on the autumn night. Leaves swirled in around the feet of the second visitor, a young man with a large bag slung over his shoulder. He threw it down and looked up at his splendid surroundings, his face set into a scowl.
“Oh, now what a handsome gent!” Sheridan touched his hand to his breast and quirked one eyebrow. “If my heart had not already stopped, it would certainly have just skipped a beat. Who have we here?”
He began to descend the staircase, polished shoes shining in the light of the chandelier, the diamond buckles on his toes twinkling. With a glance back at John, Sheridan hopped down the last two risers and landed neatly in front of the couple, who continued to unpack their infernal equipment. Then he blew a sharp blast of rose perfume into the young lady’s face.
She stumbled back a step and nearly lost her footing on the uneven floorboards. “What—what was that? Dan, can you smell it? Roses. They say that the highwayman who haunts this place smells of roses. I’m not imagining it, am I? And it’s suddenly so cold in here!”
“You do know that it’s all bollocks, don’t you?” Dan tutted and shook his head. “I can’t believe you’ve even talked me into this. The sooner it’s on the market, the sooner some big hotel chain buys it and the sooner I get to buy that Ferrari I’ve always wanted, so let’s get the night finished and lock the bloody door on this dusty old hole.”
“Can you please not say bollocks when I’ve got the EVP recorder on, Dan?” The young woman crouched down to rummage about in a trunk. “I can’t believe you want to sell this place—my family lived here too, you know. And anyway, a haunted house is much cooler than a Ferrari.”
“Oh, he’s one of yours!” Sheridan called upstairs to John. “A Rookwood, which makes him suddenly far less attractive! A Rookwood who intends to sell my bally house!”
“Balderdash—it’s Rookwood Manor, after all, and will you just look at that handsome face!” John followed Sheridan downstairs. Could the young lady hear him, or even see him? She had glanced in his direction and was gawping at the stairs.
“Dan! I can hear footsteps again!”
But Dan had turned his back, so John prodded him on the shoulder to get a better look. Was this impertinent young man worthy of the name Rookwood?
“Stop pissing about, Jenny,” Dan huffed. “Funny isn’t it, really? Here we are, a Rookwood and a Sheridan, spending one last night in the place where our great-whatever-uncles however far removed supposedly rattle their chains and flap their sheets? And by tomorrow the For Sale board will be up!”
Peter Cratchit's Christmas Carol by Drew Marvin Frayne
Scrooge was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. He died some two years past on this very day, Christmas Eve. I would it were not so; yet I suspect the old man would not agree. He became rather infirm at the end, frail and forgetful, and though he did his best to remain cheerful, I know he hated to show weakness of any kind. It wasn’t a matter of pride, nor vanity; no, it wasn’t for his sake that he cared so. It was that, as he himself often said, he had become a sort of safeguard, a protector, to his family and to his community, and he hated the thought of us carrying on without him there, watching over us all. And we, of course, would clasp his hand and tell him that he would be looking over us in the next life, and that such thoughts brought us great comfort, and they should bring him great comfort too. And he would sigh, and agree with us, and settle in, at least for a while, until another great spasm wracked his breast, and his chest would heave with immense, raggedy gasps for air, and his worries arose all over again.
He died a good death, if it could be said that any death should be regarded as good. Though I have not spent nearly as many years as Scrooge did on this planet, I have knocked about a bit, and circumstance has shown me both great fortune and great tragedy. And as such, I have come to believe there is no good death to be had in this world. I have seen many poor wretches, past all hope of recovery from whatever it was that ailed them—whether it be an infliction of the body or the soul—beg for death, pray for it, and have watched it come in many guises, be it the cold, or the cough, or the cutthroat. I have seen their prayers answered, even if those answers came in some form of pain they had never envisioned. And yet I say, when the end did finally come, each and every one begged to stay, begged for their final breath to be forestalled, begged to live for even one moment more. Yea, though I have been on this world for less than a quarter of a century, I have come to know its horrors and have learned the greatest horror of all is that there is no world, no life, beyond this one.
Scrooge would not have agreed with this; oft he told us the tale of his visitation by his old friend, Jacob Marley, dead seven years in the grave before his return, and the further visitations by the three spirits who haunted him, also on a Christmas Eve. To Scrooge, there was no greater evidence of providence than this, and he lived such feelings in his heart for the rest of his life. I was glad of it; we all were, all of London town, though those of us who were closest to him felt his change of heart and his largesse most keenly. And many was the time, as a young man, on a Christmas Eve like this one, I sat cross-legged on the floor at Scrooge’s feet and listened to his tales of Christmas ghosts and astonishing spirits, of visitations to the past, and of the wondrous things that are yet to come.
Yet even then, I was a skeptic. After his tale was complete, Old Scrooge, as wise at reading faces as he was at managing his business, would frequently tousle my hair and tell me, “Young Master Peter, you must have the conviction of your faith. It is not enough to simply believe; you must know Christmas, and keep it in your heart all the year long.” Such words were enough for Tim and for the others; but I, I would only smile, and say, “Yes, Uncle Scrooge,” in a manner and tone that were always respectful, but that the cunning old man also knew to be mollifying. And Scrooge would then bend quite low—for he was a tall, wizened old fellow, and I have always been inclined to be undersized—and he would say to me, “You must not fear the world so much, Peter Cratchit.” And I would nod, and he would pat my cheek, or sometimes playfully pinch my nose. But what he meant by those words, I cannot say. In my experience, there is much to fear in this world, and much calamity the world will set upon the unwary soul who is not ever vigilant.
A growl in my stomach disturbed my thoughts. Time to dispense with these ruminations on the past; I was hungry. I willed my body out of its bed, a small recess in the side of a crumbling brick building used for the storage of livestock, a cramped pen to house the beasts before they were led to slaughter. The recess provided some shelter from the elements; there had been rain last night, so it was useful to keep dry, though the rain had been only a drizzle, and the weather was unseasonably temperate for so late in December. That was no small mercy.
The recess had once been a side door, now sealed up, when the building had been used for some other purpose, long forgotten to time. The smell of animal excrement that clung to the building—and to those who worked or, like me, dwelt within her—was formidable, but it also meant the alley I called my home remained deserted during the nightly hours. Safety in this life often comes at great cost. Those who have suffered at the world’s hands know this lesson all too well. The men who tended the animals had assembled a small cleaning station, clean water and a strong lye soap, behind the building, and they charitably did not begrudge my use of it from time to time, provided I did not tarry, and they did not see me. I hastened in my morning ablutions and made my way out to the street.
There was a bakery on Saint Martin’s Close; it was there I would seek to break my fast. Every morning, my repast was the same: two hot buttered rolls and a small tankard of ale. The only difference was whether the baker would tally the cost of his labors on my tongue or on my tail.
I made my way down Carol Street to the main Camden Road. I used to live on this very road, as a youth, but far down the other end from those places where I now worked and resided. Camden Town was named for Camden Road; the road was the heart of the ward, bisecting it in the north and making up the entirety of its western edge. It was impossible to be in Camden Town and avoid the Camden Road. And yet, in all of my wanderings through this neighborhood, I always avoided the familiar façade of my former house, with its chipped paint and ill-fitted front door. I was more interested in the thick, oaken door that led to the alley behind the bakery, where the business received deliveries of flour and other such supplies. I knocked. Some days, the baker answered promptly, as if expecting me; other days, like today, I had to wait. He was a busy man, having woke well before the dawn to assemble his breads and rolls and pastries and cakes. His bakery was a small one, but he did a good measure of custom, enough to keep him in flour and dough and sugar and coal for the ovens. Still, he had only one boy to help him prepare the daily wares—in this neighborhood, even relative prosperity resulted in genuine poverty.
Whether the boy was his son, or some urchin off the street, I do not know. The baker and I did not converse on such matters. It was, in part, because the man’s well of English was so deficient that any conversation would prove inconsequential at best. I could not identify his native tongue, and he spoke only the English of a tradesman and knew the terms for barter and exchange, and little more. My own English improved greatly under the tutelage of Ebenezer Scrooge, who gave me books to read and provided college-trained tutors to sharpen my intellect. I was beyond basic schooling by the time our families came together; but my mind was quick and hungered for knowledge, and Uncle Scrooge filled it with book after book on all manner of subjects—history, literature, economics, philosophy, mythology, the principles of business. I eagerly took it all in, save perhaps the poets, who I found too disordered, too insubstantial, to truly relish. Still, for an occasion such as this, the silver portion of my tongue was not really necessary. It was my tongue’s other talents that the baker was interested in. I suppose, in the end, this, like so much in life, was simply a matter of business. I needed what the baker had to offer; he felt the same. Talk would only prolong the necessities of exchange.
The man finally answered and hurried me inside. In nicer weather, he sometimes took his payment in the alley, but he did not like the cold and the damp, so he ushered me into a cramped cookery room stuffed with coal- and wood-burning ovens. I had no objection to being enveloped in warmth; it made for a pleasant change of atmosphere from my usual status at this time of year.
I could see by the sights and sounds of his distresses that my morning patron was more harried than usual. His eyes were darting around the room. His gestures were quick, and rough, and impatient. He was a large, hirsute man, with a rotund belly and a gray, prickly beard, which, at the moment, was dusted in a rather generous supply of flour.
I was no longer fond of beards; I generally preferred smooth-faced youths, like myself, and not the wooly chins of older men, though, in my line of work, older men were my main custom. And this was business, not pleasure, and the baker felt the same as I, especially today. Even as he penned me into his back kitchen, he continued to bellow orders to the boy out front. I often wondered what the boy thought of our exchanges. Perhaps it was of no consequence to him. Perhaps he was grateful he did not have to provide a similar service. Or perhaps he did. Who can say.
The Bone Orchard by Abigail Roux
Chapter 1
Marshal Ambrose Shaw shoved through the doors of the Continental Hotel, squinting into the dim interior. He headed for the rowdy saloon, following the sound of the piano, and gave the patrons a once-over before moving toward the bar and the dapper tender behind it.
The man greeted him with a nod, tossed a rag over his shoulder, and came over. “What can I get you, sir?”
“Top-shelf,” Ambrose said, jutting his chin toward the row of bottles above the mirror on the back wall. Anything from below the bar, even in an establishment as fine as the Continental, was sure to make a man blind. As the bartender moved away, Ambrose reached into his vest and pulled out a cigarillo he’d rolled the night before. He placed it between his lips, then patted himself down, looking for a light. He found none, which was why he hadn’t smoked the damn thing earlier. With a sigh, he reached in again for a folded-up piece of paper he’d been carrying with him clear across the country.
He spread it out on the bar, smoothing his fingers over the creases.
The bartender set his glass and bottle beside the paper, then silently lit Ambrose’s cigarillo for him.
“Obliged,” Ambrose said around the cigarello. He tapped the drawing of the man on the paper. “You seen this man hereabouts?”
The bartender raised both brows, then met Ambrose’s eyes again. He shook his head slowly, but his eyes darted to a dark corner of the saloon, to a table that was shielded from the doorway by the player piano.
Ambrose sighed deeply, smoke wafting from his lips. “Is that right?” he murmured.
The bartender’s eyes darted toward the corner again, and he moved away, putting as much distance between himself and Ambrose as the bar back would allow. Leaning to his left, Ambrose could see “Missouri” Boone Jennings in the mirror behind the bar, and he tracked the man’s movements. He took the cigarillo from his lips and set it down, then pushed back his overcoat, revealing the pommel of the six-shooter at his hip.
The saloon cleared almost by magic, with gamblers, grifters, miners, traveling businessmen, drunks, and dancing girls scrambling for cover or slinking away to safety in corners and behind solid tables. Even the piano had gone silent. Ambrose didn’t turn around; to do so would have been deadly. Instead he watched Jennings in the mirror, trying to judge the distance of the reflection.
Jennings stood from the table he’d been drinking at, his feet spread apart, his jacket pushed back to reveal twin sidearms. His fingers tapped the ivory butt of one gun. “You come to take me, Marshal Shaw?”
“That I did,” Ambrose answered. He kept his back to Jennings, almost a dare for the wanted man to shoot him down like a coward. Jennings wouldn’t do that, not in front of people who would tell the tale.
“You been on my dust since St. Louis. Took you long enough, Shaw; I hit the damn ocean before you found me.”
Ambrose smiled sadly. “Had a handful of funerals to attend. You been collecting quite the bone orchard.”
“You find any witnesses to testify to my . . . ownership of that bone orchard?”
“Not any left alive.”
Jennings’s shoulders relaxed. “Then you’re wasting your time, ain’t you, Marshal?”
“Last one I saw buried was nothing but a boy.” Ambrose took a gulp of whiskey, then set his glass back down with a clink. “I decided I ain’t going to let you get in front of a judge.”
Jennings moved, his muscles tensing, his hands merely a flash. Ambrose pulled his gun and turned, firing. Bottles behind the bar popped and exploded. The glass in Ambrose’s hand burst into a million fragments. The mirror shattered, filling Ambrose’s vision with glittering shards of light like quartz dust on a sunny afternoon.
Jennings went to his knees, though Ambrose couldn’t say where he’d hit him. Then warmth and pain began to spread through his belly, and the shards of refracting light surrounding him turned blindingly white, brighter and warmer until he could see and feel no more.
*****
Ezra Johns was hot, dusty, and sore. It had taken five rail days to make his way from New York City to San Francisco. After the chilly peaks of the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada range, with stars so large and bright Ezra thought he must have been taken to another world, the heat of the California coast was enough to knock him back.
He stepped out of the carriage in front of the Continental Hotel and Saloon. Down the street, he could see the monstrous frame of the Palace Hotel, where the trial would be held. Just two years old, it was arguably the most luxurious building west of the Mississippi, built in 1875 with all the modern fineries of the time. The Pinkerton Agency would never pay for a room there, though, so Ezra would make do with the Continental.
It would be but a short walk each morning to get there for the trial. Ezra had been summoned to testify against one “Missouri” Boone Jennings, a man wanted for murder as far back east as New York. As many as eleven deaths had been pinned on Jennings, who was notorious for his cruelty and violent nonchalance. None of those eleven murders, and there were probably even more than that, could be proved. None but the Irish dockworker Jennings had beaten to death in the streets of New York City.
Ezra had investigated that murder. He had a leather satchel full of evidence and witness statements. Proof beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jennings was the killer. And it would ultimately be Ezra’s testimony that would put Jennings in a noose.
That was what his superior had told him, anyway, to justify dragging him across the country.
Ezra entered the Continental. The saloon appeared to be under construction, with workers hanging an ornate mirror behind the bar. Ezra gave the dining room and saloon another glance before heading for the proprietor’s desk.
“We have one room available,” the attendant told him, casting a hesitant glance at his ledger.
“Is there a problem?” Ezra wiped down his spectacles so he could read the book.
The man winced and looked around, as if making sure no one else could hear him. “An injured lawman died in that room some time back. Our guests complain of there being . . . spirits.”
“Spirits?” Ezra couldn’t keep the amusement out of his voice. He smiled and gave the attendant a nod. “Well. I’m not opposed to double occupancy, so I’ll take it.”
He received his key and turned down assistance with his luggage, considering he only had his small canvas bag and the leather satchel full of evidence. He didn’t intend to let anyone handle that until it reached the court.
He trudged up the flight of stairs to his room, sighing in relief when he was finally able to close the door behind him and shrug off his frock coat. He’d not been prepared for the warmth out here; he might have to find a mercantile to purchase a summer coat.
The room was a nice one, almost comparable to his accommodations back east. It had a bed large enough for two, a washbasin and a private entrance to a water closet, not one but two armoires, and a sitting area. It was possible this room was the honeymoon suite. Considering the affordable rate, there must have been some powerful lore to keep it from being rented nightly. Ezra didn’t put much stock in spirits or hauntings, but he was grateful for the discount.
He set his bag on the end of the iron-framed bed, but before he could begin unpacking, he heard a scratch at the door. He turned, frowning as he watched the doorknob rattle. After a moment, the door creaked open, and just as Ezra was beginning to second-guess his belief in the afterlife, a man pushed the door open.
He was handsome. Blond, with a well-groomed mustache, a tan that gave evidence of many days spent in the sun, and blue eyes so clear they seemed almost silver peering out from under the brim of his hat.
“Can I help you?” Ezra asked, flustered from the intrusion.
“Name’s Ambrose Shaw.” He pushed the door open wider. His saddlebag was draped over his shoulder. “Man at the front desk said you might not mind sharing a room.”
“Oh. Oh! Of course not.” Ezra gestured to the room, then walked forward and offered his hand. “Ezra Johns.”
Ambrose looked down at his hand and nodded, but he didn’t take it.
“Right.” Ezra backed away to allow Ambrose into the room. He wasn’t sure if the lack of a handshake was supposed to mean something in the west or not, but he was too distracted to be offended. “Ambrose Shaw. You’re a US Marshal, aren’t you? You’re the one who finally brought down Boone Jennings?”
“I suppose I am,” Ambrose said, gravel in his voice. “Where’d you hear that?”
“The telegraph wire. News reached the east two weeks ago; it was huge. I work for the Pinkerton Agency.” Ezra fumbled in his pocket for his badge and showed it to Ambrose. He’d heard about the steely-eyed western lawmen with their unflappable demeanors and six-guns strapped to their thighs, but he’d not been prepared to meet one. Or room with one. “I was brought in to testify against Jennings.”
“For the murder of the Irishman, right?” Ambrose nodded and tossed his saddlebags onto the delicate rocking chair in the corner. Dust rose around it.
“That’s correct, yes. I was told there was no one else to testify, that all the witnesses . . . But you tracked him across six states and two territories.”
“I did.” Ambrose grunted. “Man shot, strangled, beat, knifed, and poisoned victims all across the damn country, but I never could prove it was him.”
“But you were involved in a gunfight with him, were you not?”
“That’s what I’m told.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I don’t remember.” Ambrose gestured vaguely to himself and gave Ezra a crooked grin. “I certainly can’t testify to it.”
Ezra frowned in confusion, but nodded anyway, not wanting to appear inexperienced in front of the legendary marshal. “If you can’t testify, then why are you here?”
“To watch,” Ambrose growled. He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes catching the light from the hurricane lamp and glinting dangerously. “I came to see him hang.”
Ezra’s mouth was suddenly too dry for him to swallow. “I . . . I suppose that’s a good reason.”
Ambrose removed his hat and set it on top of the washbasin in front of the dainty mirror as he walked past. “You’re the prosecution’s golden bullet,” he told Ezra. They stood on either side of the bed, staring at each other. Ezra’s heart was beating harder than was healthy. Ambrose studied him from under lowered brows, his eyes magnetic, his jaw clenched. “Best not miss,” Ambrose said before turning and walking into the washroom.
Ezra put a hand to his heart and sat heavily. The bed squeaked beneath him. It wasn’t hot in here at all. In fact, he was shivering.
“God help my aim,” he whispered.
*****
When Ezra awoke, it was to the chirp of birds outside the window, the creak of wagon wheels and shouts of merchants, and the gentle, husky breaths of the man sharing the room with him. Ezra sat up, rubbing his eyes as he reached for his spectacles.
Ambrose was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner, watching him.
“Good morning,” Ezra mumbled to the marshal. He received a grunt in return. “Did you sleep there?”
“I don’t sleep,” Ambrose told him. “Best get ready. I intend to see Boone Jennings hang today.”
Ezra swallowed hard, nodding as he fumbled out from under the bedcovers. He splashed tepid water from the washbasin on his face, shivering even in the heat of the summer morning. He glanced in the mirror at the rocking chair, but Ambrose had moved. The chair was still rocking, but the marshal was nowhere to be seen.
Ezra turned, eyes sweeping the room. How the hell had he done that? It must have been a western lawman thing, like an Indian in high grass. The marshal’s saddlebags were nowhere Ezra could see either. Ezra shrugged and proceeded to dress, muttering to himself about the heavy frock coat he would be forced to wear through the first day of the trial.
As if he wasn’t going to be sweating already as the only witness capable of putting Boone Jennings in his grave.
“You seem nervous,” Ambrose said, his gruff voice just inches away from Ezra’s back.
Ezra jumped and turned, wide-eyed and blinking. “I am now, thank you! Do you make noise when you move?”
Ambrose pursed his lips and frowned. “Not really.”
“Could you try?” Ezra snapped as he shrugged into his vest and wrapped his tie under his collar.
Ambrose’s lips were still pursed, but one eyebrow slowly raised, and he nodded as if giving the request real thought. “Sure.”
Ezra turned to fix his tie in the mirror. He glanced up, expecting to see the marshal’s reflection, but the man was gone again. Ezra rolled his eyes and returned his attention to his appearance once more.
Once he’d finished, they made their way downstairs, Ambrose falling in step with Ezra. Ezra was clutching his satchel with the evidence for the trial so tightly his fingers were beginning to ache.
“You okay?” Ambrose asked. For some reason, he seemed to be fighting a smile, as if he found such serious business as life and death amusing.
Ezra gave him a tense nod.
“Still nervous,” Ambrose observed.
“You’re not helping,” Ezra said through gritted teeth.
“Sorry.”
Ezra gave him a sideways glare, then glanced toward the desk and offered the attendant a pleasant smile. “Good morning.”
“G-good morning, sir.” The man gave Ezra an odd, questioning look. What western custom had he violated now? “Is your room to your satisfaction?”
“It is, thank you.”
Ezra gave him a second glance as they walked past, then looked Ambrose up and down. “A little haughty of him not to speak to you.”
“I get that a lot,” Ambrose said with a shrug. He waved a hand at himself. “Folks don’t speak to the likes of me.”
“Really?” Ezra almost tripped over the doorway when they reached it. He turned and pushed the large wooden door open, holding it to let Ambrose walk out into the bright sunshine before following him. “Do people not recognize you as the law?”
Ambrose turned and squinted at him, his silver eyes sparkling in the sunlight. He laughed and headed off down the sidewalk. “That must be it,” he said over his shoulder.
Ezra stared after him, frowning for several moments before hurrying to follow.
Jordan Castillo PriceAuthor and artist Jordan Castillo Price is the owner of JCP Books LLC. Her paranormal thrillers are colored by her time in the midwest, from inner city Chicago, to small town Wisconsin, to liberal Madison.
Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who's plagued by ghostly visitations. Also check out her new series, Mnevermind, where memories are made...one client at a time.
With her education in fine arts and practical experience as a graphic designer, Jordan set out to create high quality ebooks with lavish cover art, quality editing and gripping content. The result is JCP Books, offering stories you'll want to read again and again.
Catherine Curzon is an author and royal historian of the 18th century.
In addition to several non-fiction books on Georgian royalty, available from Pen & Sword, she has written extensively for a number of internationally-published publications, and has spoken at venues and events across the United Kingdom. Her first play, Being Mr Wickham, premiered to sell-out audiences in September 2019.
Catherine holds a Master’s degree in Film and when not dodging the furies of the guillotine can often be found cheering for the mighty Huddersfield Town. She lives in Yorkshire atop a ludicrously steep hill with a rakish colonial gentleman, a long-suffering cat and a lively dog.
Eleanor Harkstead likes to dash about in nineteenth-century costume, in bonnet or cravat as the mood takes her. She knows rather a lot about poisons, and can occasionally be found wandering old graveyards. Eleanor is very fond of chocolate, wine, tweed waistcoats and nice pens, and has a huge collection of vintage hats. She is the winner of the Best Dressed Sixth Former award and came third in the under-11s race at the Colchester Fire Swim.
Originally from the south-east of England, Eleanor now lives somewhere in the Midlands with a large ginger cat who resembles a Viking.
Drew Marvin Frayne is the pen name of a long-time author (Lambda Literary Award finalist) who is finally taking the opportunity to indulge his more sentimental and romantic side. When not writing the author lives with his husband of 20+ years and their dog of 10+ years in a brick home in the Northeast.
Abigail RouxAbigail Roux was born and raised in North Carolina. A past volleyball star who specializes in sarcasm and painful historical accuracy, she currently spends her time coaching high school volleyball and investigating the mysteries of single motherhood. Any spare time is spent living and dying with every Atlanta Braves and Carolina Panthers game of the year. Abigail has a daughter, Little Roux, who is the light of her life, a boxer, four rescued cats who play an ongoing live-action variation of 'Call of Duty' throughout the house, a certifiable extended family down the road, and a cast of thousands in her head.
Jordan Castillo Price
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Catherine Curzon
Eleanor Harkstead
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Drew Marvin Frayne
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Abigail Roux
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EMAIL: abiroux@gmail.com
Body and Soul by Jordan Castillo Price
Peter Cratchit's Christmas Carol by Drew Marvin Frayne
The Bone Orchard by Abigail Roux
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