Good Lord, Deliver Us (9 page)

What had she said? Something about
working for the ....

"City?"

"With my credentials, I get work when
the city decides to round up fortunetellers. I go in as a 'client.'
Hear the pitch. Figure out how the 'miracles' are worked:
ectoplasmic manifestations, sudden cold spots on the neck, voices
of the dead. Then, expose the hocus-pocus. Testify in court that
it's fraud. That the city's now prosecuting 'religious liberty.'"
She nodded to herself. "I like that. Bust the bloodsuckers. Save
some credulous old ladies a buck or two." She shrugged. "But its
not steady work. With too little money to solve the city's
problems, K.C. cops run a three-year rotation: they bust
fortunetellers this year, hookers next year, and murderers the
next." She gave Z a smile that, on anyone but such an innocent
young girl, could be interpreted as cynical. "My day job is
teaching psych at a Catholic girls' school. St. Francis in Kansas
City, Kansas."

The explanation of her background
delivered, Jamie Stewart went back to work, busying herself by
looking in this box and that, sifting plastic "peanuts" to find
what she wanted, taking out jars and packages. Food?

"Much of this ghost business," she
began again, continuing to lecture, "is the church's fault, of
course. All those medieval stories about otherworldly creatures.
Angels, cherubim, seraphim, tortured souls of the damned. Scare
your parishioners with old-wives' tales and every sicko in the
congregation thinks he's got demons in the attic."

She got up to nudge the
empty boxes to one side and to slide other containers close to the
mattress, sitting down to take out
more
items: crackers, peanut butter,
bread, instant coffee, plastic "silverware," cups, paper plates,
and toilet tissue, organizing these necessities by grouping them in
piles, on and off the mattress. "The church used to do a lot of
exorcisms in the Middle Ages," she continued. She
was
a teacher, after
all. "But that kind of mumbo jumbo's an embarrassment now. At
least, in modern countries like the United States.

"Finding out that I did paranormal
work for the city, a couple of church biggies got in touch with me.
Since then, I get the first call to go check out any 'spiritual
presence' that's reported in KCK -- except for statues that drip
blood or crosses that appear mysteriously on church walls. The big
stuff is still reserved for church officials. But your more routine
ghostly manifestation, that's my beat. Viewed one way, my job is to
keep a proper distance between church officials and the people
they've brainwashed." She frowned. Then relaxed.

"As I look at it,
my
real
mission
is to convince troubled families that their rebellious teenagers
are not possessed by the devil. Then recommend agencies where the
whole family can get practical help." The girl shook her head
defiantly, her corn-silk hair shimmering in the lamp
light.

Finished with what she'd been doing,
the ghost hunter glanced up at Z again. "I've got the basics
unpacked. Always do that first. I won't know what electronics I'll
need until I get a look at the rest of the house."

"I'll come."

"That's sweet." Again, the
look. Again, the Mona Lisa smile. As to what she was thinking -- if
anything -- Z didn't have a clue. But had he ever? With
any
woman? "Be assured
that your presence is unnecessary. I'm a big girl. Even know some
dirty tricks to use in the clinches, if you know what I
mean."

"Nothing better to do."

Again, the mysterious smile. "No way
to argue with that."

Scissoring her legs under her, the
girl stood up, Z never tiring of watching young woman do "girl
things" like that.

"OK. For starters, you can switch off
the light." Saying that, she slipped her feet back into her
"dockers."

Moving to obey, Z reach
down to turn off the lamp, the room plunged into total darkness,
Miss Stewart snapping on her penlight so they could see. (If being
able to detect dark shapes from darker shadows could be
called
seeing
.)

"I'd like to use a regular flashlight,
but ...."

"Neighbors," Z agreed.

And they were off again, Z letting the
girl pass him to take the lead, the ghost hunter clicking open the
bedroom door, the two of them stepping into the hall.

After that, they went dead slow, the
girl manipulating her narrow light like a dentist uses a steel
pick, to probe -- each -- cranny as the two of them inched
along.

What she was looking for, Z couldn't
guess.

Finished with scrutinizing the short
hall, Miss Stewart spent the same ridiculous amount of time in the
living room.

As far as Z could tell, the only thing
"spooky" about the house was that the girl's footsteps were all
that could be heard. (On crepe soles, Z moved like the fleeting
shadow of the "invisible man," no sound except the squeak of
floorboards underfoot.)

The living room ... smelled like the
rest of the house.

Dry.

Musty.

The odor ... of old-woman
flesh.

And ... something else. .... An ...
animal smell. Urine. Wet fur. ..... All smells of long
ago.

Nor was there anything in the room
they hadn't seen on first glance.

If you didn't count fuzz
balls.

Here.

There.

Drifting out of corners on the
air-puffs Z made by walking by .....

That's right! The crazy old woman
who'd lived here had been called the "cat lady."

Using his own penlight, Z captured one
of the strange "fuzzles," tearing it apart to find it to be mostly
cat fur ...

Thud! ... the sound of the girl
colliding with Z, Miss Stewart apparently unaware he was there and
walking right into his back.

Not that Z minded.
(It
was
something
of a shock, though, to discover what she'd grabbed in order to keep
herself upright!)

"Sorry," she said softly, smiling up
at him.

"Dark," Z mumbled, letting her know he
understood.

It was a little bit later
that Z discovered what
he
wanted to know. With Miss Stewart across the room
inspecting something by the arch, Z used his light to check the
front door lock ... finding no signs of tampering. If someone was
breaking in like the girl thought might be the case, it wasn't by
the front door.

Finished with the living room, the
girl motioned Z over, the two of them following the girl's slender
beam through the arch, across the narrow hall, and into the kitchen
at the back: a larger room than Z had imagined.

The strobing penlight showed: hook-ups
for a gas stove; electric outlets at the back of the space where
the refrigerator had stood; and faded, badly scarred linoleum
counter tops. (Had the nutty, previous occupant been using a
cleaver to chop up cats?)

Above the counters were old-fashioned
cabinets, their heavy doors mostly open, barren shelves lined with
cracked oilcloth.

As Z had figured from his
"walk-around" that afternoon, access to the backyard was through
the kitchen, Z crossing the room to discover that no matter what he
did, he couldn't budge the back door. ... Not a fraction of an
inch.

Why?

Using his light, Z
discovered that the door had been
nailed
shut!
Moreover, battened down by someone
with no carpentry skill, round, hammer marks in the woodwork
telling him that; bent nails adding their collaborative
testimony.

But ... why?

The only reason Z could imagine was
that the crazy old "cat" lady was afraid of prowlers.

Backing out of the kitchen, neither Z
nor the girl speaking in the empty old house, the two of them took
a couple of steps down the hall, the girl stopping to twist the
scratched-glass knob on another door, shoving the door in to reveal
the bathroom, the girl pausing in the doorway, Z coming up close
enough behind her to see over her head.

Perfume.

Musky. As puzzling a scent on the
fresh, young girl as her age-old smile.

Taking a step inside, the
girl tripped the stool's handle, water gurgling from the tank, then
hissing in slowly to fill the rust-streaked, narrow-throated bowl.
"I asked the Vice Chancellor to have the water turned on in the
house." In spite of her brave talk about the nonexistence of the
spirit world, Z noticed she was speaking quietly. "I don't mind
doing these jobs, and I don't mind doing them alone, but I try to
get at least
this
modern convenience."

Z hadn't thought about the empty
house's water being turned off. Or what that meant to someone stuck
in the house overnight.

Off again down the hall, they explored
the larger bedroom. Which was ... larger. Nothing else.

Backtracking, Miss Stewart stopped at
a thick-painted hallway door located between the kitchen and the
bath.

"Basement," she said. "On the floor
plan, anyway."

Jamie Stewart was still using her
"quiet" voice. Perhaps, because louder noises in the hollow house
sounded so ... ugly.

Trying to unlatch the door's simple,
old-fashioned bolt -- but failing -- she gave way to Z, Z using his
strength to squeak the rusty bolt from its keeper, the girl turning
the wobbly, tin doorknob and pulling, the warped door shrilling
open to reveal the basement's black throat.

Starting her descent without a word,
all Z could do was follow, the two of them tramping down steps that
were dirty, concave, splintered, narrow, and steep.

Down ten steps only, the
girl stopping on the final riser, Z coming to a halt on the step
behind her, the basement at their feet not the kind of space a
clean person wished to enter. Z didn't like the place's smell,
either. An odor, less of age than of ... death ... prompting him to
wonder if the loony Bateman prof had buried her cleaver-killed cats
down
here
? (More
realistically, the cellar smelled of ... long-dead
rats.)

Z watching, the girl gave the black
pit a quick once-over with the light, the basement turning out to
be the root cellar Z had thought likely.

Opposite the stairs, concrete steps
trudged up a steeply slanted cinder-block shaft, those risers
ending at the underside of the padlocked, overlapping backyard
doors.

The girl continuing to slash the light
-- here -- there -- Z saw that the ceiling of this crypt-like hole
was so low the open crossbeams would barely clear his head, the
ceiling nothing but exposed, angle-braced floor joists.

Rickety shelves hugged the walls, the
shelving for canned goods back in the days when people still did
canning, the ledging now empty, looking like it could barely hold
its own rotted weight.

The floor was ... powdered dirt ... as
uneven as wind-waves on a lake ... the dirt's dryness a testimony
to the effectiveness of drainage around the outside of the house.
Here and there, but mostly to the right, flattened pieces of
cardboard boxes covered the bare dirt.

Near the top of the old cellar's
concrete walls were narrow windows, the wavy glass in them
sometimes cracked but everywhere intact.

Spider webs sagged between the
ceiling's open floor joists. ... Old webs. Ragged.
Dirty.

The
only
positive thing to say about
this ... hole ... was that, since it was below ground, it was
cooler than the house above.

As the girl continued to carve up the
gloom with her little light, Z saw that decrepit tools had been
left leaning against an open space along the far right wall. A
cankerous sharpshooter spade. A rusty garden rake. A thick-handled,
old-fashioned pick. An ancient manure-fork, minus a middle
tine.

To sum it up, this was a small,
decrepit basement -- under a small, decrepit house.

Making sure the little flashlight's
knife-edged beam didn't cut its way out a basement window, the girl
directed the light up and around Z as best she could to show the
way out of the pit.

Finally up and in the hall, Miss
Stewart beside him, Z creaked the door shut, the two of them
scurrying back to their bedroom sanctuary.

After Z shut the sleeping room door
behind them, the young woman switched on the lamp, at the same time
pocketing the penlight.

"Now, what?" Z muttered, blinking
rapidly to get his eyes adjusted to the sudden light. In this
unpleasant house, he was almost pleased his voice was
shot.

"Now, we rig the place."

Squatting like a duck, knees
impossibly wide, the girl began searching in a box again to drag
out an old-fashioned, gooseneck office lamp, the bulb inside the
beat-up metal shade a purple color instead of white, something Z
thought curious. The lamp's cord ended in electric jacks: no doubt
because of its conversion to DC current.