NOLA (12 page)

Mia never saw what was behind the pulsating flash of enormous male reproductive organs.  She backed up and almost ran away when she remembered why she was there in the first place.  She moved backwards slowly.

“Ha huff ha huff ablooooooooooooooooooooooooh!” the creature now doubled the size of the penis.  It now resembled one of the great worms from the movie
Dune
.

Mia’s stomach turned, but she kept on course.  She noticed that a few of the construction men and women were looking at her oddly.  Evidently, they weren’t being treated to the show-of-shows Mia was seeing.

“Ha huff ha huff ha huff ablooooooooooooooooooooooooh!”

Mia turned around and started to run as the enormous thing, no longer resembling anything attached to a human male, shot forward, its size rivaling a Thanksgiving Parade balloon.  The testicles bounced on the ground making a sickening slapping sound as the demon chased Mia.  She ran to the truck and stopped, pretending to catch her breath.  She was doubled over with her hands on her knees.  She watched as the demon continued its pursuit of her.  She righted herself and walked slowly around the truck, maintaining the look of horror on her face.

The demon followed her.  She waited for it to catch up before stepping behind the truck and out of sight.

The demon moved quickly around the truck and straight into Father Peter.

“We meet again, Huff and Puff,” he said calmly.

Mia noticed that the priest had drawn a rectangle on the muddy sidewalk with a chalky green substance.

“Ablooooooooooooooooooooooooh!” the creature shrieked.

The priest chanted something.  Mia recognized a few of the words.  He was using Latin, but it wasn’t any litany she had heard before.

“Go back home now, Huff and Puff, disturb these people no more,” Father Peter commanded.

The rectangle opened up.  Father Peter put one hand out in front of him and gnarled his fingers and commanded, “Go!”

Mia felt the pull of the vortex and saw to her horror that Father Peter was being pulled towards it.  She wrapped her arms around the priest and dug her heels into the ground.

“Ablooooooooooooooooooooooooh!” the demon screamed as the front of his penis was sucked into the vortex.

Mia looked around the priest to see what she would later describe to Ted as the most unnatural sex act she had ever witnessed, as the vortex fought to pull the huge genitalia into it.  The humongous Target-red balls inflated to stop the progression, but the pull was too much, and they too were drawn into the ground.  The last thing to go was the demon himself, a randy little chap with a bowler hat wearing a Burberry raincoat.

Father Peter chanted and moved forward, pulling Mia with him – she was too spellbound to release him – and smudged the green chalk.  The vortex disappeared.

“Mia, you can let go now,” Father Peter said, patting her clasped hands gently.

Mia unlatched her fingers and took a step back.  She flexed her digits as she tried to make sense out of what she had just seen.  “Kind of puts you off sex,” she said, unthinking, to the priest.

He ignored her and collected his supplies, putting them deep into his pockets.  “Huff and Puff is a rare treat,” he said, winking at Mia.  “I always feel a bit dirty after I deal with him.”

“I’m hungry,” Mia admitted.  She looked up at the sky and saw the sun struggling against the clouds.  The rain had stopped, so she unbuttoned her raincoat.  Mia shook it out and folded it as small as it would go and jammed it into the backpack she wore under the coat.  Then she extracted a pair of well-worn combat boots.

Father Peter walked over and helped balance her as she hopped around, exchanging footwear.  She started to tie the boots when the father bent down and did it for her.  Mia couldn’t help feeling like she was still being thought of as a child.

“No, I’m being gallant,” Father Peter said.  “It’s the least I can do after you saved me from hell.  I didn’t realize that I was too close.”

Mia gave up blocking the man from her mind.  His admission of error had softened her feelings for him.  Father Peter, after all, was just a man.

Her boots tied, Mia pulled a fistful of bills out of one of her cargo pants pockets and handed the wad to the priest.  “While I dispose of these things, please order us some food.  I don’t care what, as long as it doesn’t resemble the family jewels,” she said.

Father Peter watched as Mia jogged down the street, freed from the confines of the red slicker.  She jumped up and tossed the red boots into the bin.  She landed and turned around, an expression of pure glee filled her face.  If he didn’t know better, he would have thought that Mia Martin was just starting to have fun.

Chapter Eight

Murphy stood behind Ted, watching the monitors.  He saw a lot of activity going on in the library, some spectral, but mostly just the other PEEPs members setting up.  PEEPs found that the library was still open when they arrived.  Since the librarian didn’t want the readers to be inconvenienced by shorter hours or cameras in the way, Burt decided that PEEPs would start off their efforts in the basement. 

“There’s an old dude in the basement,” Murphy declared.

Ted was surprised. The team hadn’t set up a camera in the old book room as of yet.  “Where?”

“Standing in the hall.  He’s watching the team work.  He’s very interested in what they are doing.”

“What does he look like?  Jake, show Murphy the stills you captured last night,” Ted instructed.

A series of time lapse pictures appeared.

“Ain’t him.”

Ted brought up his scanned copies of the old newspaper articles.  The obituary of the philanthropist first.

“Ain’t him.”

“Okay.  This is all I could find of the homeless gentleman, Chester Vogel. It’s a mug shot.”

“That’s him.”

“Would you be opposed to talking to him, man-to-man, ghost-to-ghost?  Chat with him, and maybe in the conversation, toss in the question about why he hasn’t moved on. But don’t get too preachy.”

Ted watched the ghost as he thought about the request.

Finally, after a very agonizing five minutes, he spoke, “After the children.  The children come first.  Audrey is very worried.”

“Thank you, Murphy.  I’ll alert Burt of your intentions.”

“Who will speak for me?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Who will speak to the investigators for me?”

“Cid or I, if you prefer.  I know it’s tough not having Mia here.  I’ve brought along a box full of energon cubes for you to use as needed.”

“Sabine wondered why I wasn’t here from the start.”

Ted wasn’t surprised that Murphy had talked to Sabine.  She had called Ted earlier in the day to apologize for sneaking around the farm for the purpose of checking up on him and Brian.  She also insisted he order Murphy some coyote urine.

“I wanted you here, but you already know that.  I’m not in charge.  I can only raise an idea or an objection.  I think you need to have a heart-to-heart with Burt.”

Ted watched a look of irritation cross his face.

“He’s changed,” offered Ted.  “You’ve been in his head.”

“It’s because I’ve been in his head that I don’t want to talk to him.  He still loves Mia,” Murphy blurted out.

“I picked up on that too,” Ted admitted and sighed.  “But we’ve got to remember that Mia chose us.”

“Us?”

“Murphy, I’ve known from the beginning that I have to accept that she loves you too.  I’m an insecure guy, so it sometimes fucks me up.”

“Me too,” Murphy revealed.  “But I won’t poach.”

“I kinda feel like I did,” Ted admitted.

“You didn’t know. Mia didn’t know.  All is well, you and I are friends.  You saved Mia.  You went into the well and brought her up.”

“Only after you started her heart,” Ted said.

“We’re Batman!” Murphy announced, imitating Christian Bale.

Jake covered the monitors in bat signals in celebration.

Murphy nodded to the screens, “He’s trouble.”

“I know, but he does make life interesting,” Ted said.

~

Burt sat down in Miss Hodges’s office with Mike.  They had set up a laptop with a large screen at one end of the desk.  Cid was standing, filming the interview.

“Miss Hodges, we caught some interesting things on film last evening,” Mike started.  “We would like to get your opinion or maybe an explanation.”

Burt brought up the echo, and before he played it, he explained, “This was taken with an infrared video camera.  Are you familiar with infrared?”

“I know it picks up heat signatures,” Miss Hodges replied.

“It also shows us cold areas.”  Burt went on to explain what each color represented before he nodded to Mike.

“Cid, our technician, heard a repeating sound last night.  It seemed to be coming from the checkout counter.  We couldn’t see anything until we used the infrared.”

“Sounds?” she questioned.

“You’ll hear it on the tape.  Perhaps you’ve heard it before,” Mike put forward. “We’re going to play it at normal speed a few times, and then Burt will slow it down.”

Miss Hodges nodded and leaned in.

Cid took a step to the right, so he could focus the camera on her face as Burt had instructed him before they began.

Burt played the tape.

Thump swish thump.  Thump swish thump.

It took Miss Hodges a moment and she smiled.  “It’s the sound of checking in books, stamping the dates inside.  Looks like a woman.  A large woman.  Oh my, I think I know who it is!  I’ll be right back,” she said, pushing away from the desk.  She walked out of the office, her sensible shoes clicking on the polished wood floor.  She stopped a few feet from the door and took something off the wall and returned with a framed painting.

“This is Hilda Schultz.  She was a large woman of German heritage.  She worked tirelessly under the supervision of the head librarian Edward Miller.  Hilda died years before I started here.  She was a legend.  She didn’t read too many words of English, but she enjoyed the library so much that when the depression came and they couldn’t pay her, she came anyway.  Can you communicate with her?  I know someone that speaks German fluently.”

“Unfortunately, she’s what we call a residual haunt or an echo.  The energy here plays a recording of her.  She’s long gone, but her image and actions live on,” Mike explained.

“That’s so beautiful,” Miss Hodges gushed.  “Can I have a copy of this to show the others?”

“We’ll make a copy for you,” Mike told her.

“I hope that years from now my echo plays here,” she confessed.  “I love this place.”

“I have an unusual question.  If your residue stayed here playing over and over again, what would you be doing?” Mike asked her.

“I’d be reading to the children.  I never get tired of that.  To see their faces as you introduce Mother Goose or Dr. Seuss to them, well, it’s…  It’s my high,” she said, happy with her description.

~

Mia felt a headache coming on.  She and Father Peter had been working for several hours.  She turned to her partner on, as he was fond of calling it, the
Heaven Express
and saw that he, too, was looking rather ragged at the edges.  They were moving towards the fairgrounds where they would meet up with the others.

“I’m not a complainer, but I’m very tired,” she said, looking up at him.

“Mia, I’m exhausted, and I’ve got a migraine.”

“Me too.”

“I’ve been doing these walks for five years now, and each time I venture out, I forget how much it takes out of you.”

“Most sensitives don’t have back-to-back crossings,” Mia commiserated.  “We’ve had four crossings and Huff and Puff.  By the way, what do you call the other demon, the tall one?”

“Sticks.  He looks like he belongs in a Tim Burton movie.  Tell me about the demons you’ve encountered?”

“There was one that was attached to a brave young man.  This kind of demon can’t move on to another host unless the victim dies.  Hagan had to endure intense pain, mental torture, and a jail sentence, all to stay alive.  He knew if he had taken his own life, or been killed in another way, that the demon would move on to someone else.  Hagan couldn’t bear the thought of another person having to deal with the strife this demon brought.  And so he did everything he could in order to stay alive.”

“Since we know that they can’t be killed, how was this conflict resolved?”

“The young man’s health weakened, and the demon was ready. He forced Hagan to end his life so the demon could move on to where he could kill without hindrance.  A guard got to Hagan in time, and he was hospitalized.  A friend of mine, Angelo Michaels, brought in some demon specialists, and once the exorcism was completed, the demon was taken away in a metal coffin of some kind.  I was told he would be trapped in there for an eternity.  I didn’t ask where they took it, but I’m confident it won’t be set free to kill again.”

“And the host?”

“He opted to live out his jail sentence in the hope that he could help others he came in contact with.  He was a very special person,” Mia said, remembering Hagan Fowler and his sacrifice.

“My first demon was a nasty piece of work,” Father Peter said.  “I was a young man fresh out of school, ready to take on the world.  I was determined to be the first African-American Pope.”

“Ambitious,” Mia commented.

“Yes, and foolish.  My ego was only surpassed by my stupidity.  That’s when this happened.” He waved his arms around before patting his chest.  “I used to be ordinary.  I wasn’t observant or psychic.  The only mind that I read was my own.”

“I’d like to know what happened, but I respect your privacy if you don’t wish to tell me,” Mia prefaced.

“It was a hard lesson in humility and in honor.  I was sent to give last rights to a dying member of the parish…”

Father Peter
, oh how he loved the sound of his name.  Called by God, sponsored to the Pontifical North American College by the dioceses of Baton Rouge, and ready to save the world, he walked with more than a spring in his step; he walked with a strut.  He’d always known he was to serve God, but his ambition and political leanings were more than a vice, they were his downfall.