Speed Dating With the Dead (6 page)

“You’re one of the ghost busters.” she practically squealed with delight.

“We don’t bust anything, ma’am.”

“You’re on the team, right?”

“Spirit Seekers International, at your service.” He touched the bill of his cap like a jet pilot about to embark on a flight. Digger had taught them the importance of showmanship.

By this time, the husband had caught up. The glass definitely contained alcohol. “Don’t you try to catch the ghosts, tell them to ‘Go toward the light’ or whatever?”

“That’s a misconception,” The Roach said, leaning forward to read the name badge on the woman’s generous breast. “We can’t vacuum them up into glass jars and release them in the woods like a raccoon trapped in a henhouse. For one thing, we have no idea where a ghost is supposed to be. For all we know, it might go toward the light and discover the light is caused by the flickering flames of hell.”

The woman, Amelia G. according to her name badge, chuckled. “Religion and the afterlife shouldn’t mix.”

“The television shows treat ghosts like they are a problem to be solved. The last thing a dead person needs is a ghost whisperer trying to psychoanalyze them.”

“Well, I’ve had some success with that,” Amelia said.

“She has an Ouija board,” said hubby, Donald G.

Kendra, who had finished registering a couple of women, said, “You shouldn’t mess with those things.”

“Young lady, I’ve been communicating with spirits since you were in diapers,” Amelia said.

“I had a friend who tried to commit suicide after a midnight séance.”

“Not everybody can handle messages from beyond.”

“It’s not the messages that are the problem. It’s the kind of people who need to hear them.”

“Come on, Kendra,” The Roach cut in. “You know the rules of the road. There is no right or wrong in this field, only theories.”

Kendra could never resist tweaking those who took the dead too seriously. A little humor was one thing, but nobody wanted to be around a sarcastic brat. The Roach didn’t like parenting Kendra, but Digger was doing a lousy job of it. And Digger didn’t realize how much danger his daughter was in.

“All I’m saying is that it’s just a piece of pasteboard with some letters on it,” Kendra said. “But you better check your spiritual condition before you play.”

Amelia sniffed. “The dead can tell who’s playing for keeps.”

“Tell them about the Commodore,” hubby said.

“That’s for the beach house,” she said. “I’m here to channel Margaret Percival.”

“Why don’t you come say hello?” Kendra said, pointing to the wall. A portrait of a woman with short, curly hair and sad eyes hung above an antique tea table.

According to hotel legend, the portrait had been found at a 1950’s flea market by a maid, and she’d sworn it bore an uncanny resemblance to the vanished Miss Percival. Taking it as a sign from God, the maid had purchased it and given it to the hotel. The Roach figured it was just another flea-market hype job, since the hair style was wrong for the era, but the hotel had gone so far as to attach a copper nameplate beneath it that read “Margaret Percival.” The nameplate appeared much newer than the ornate but chipped wooden frame.

The Roach was about to give his opinion when the portrait fell from the wall, the glass shattering.

“I caused that,” Amelia said. “With my mind.”

“I wouldn’t admit it,” Kendra said. “The hotel might stick damages on your bill.”

The Roach examined the wall where the portrait had been. A tiny hole was ringed by plaster dust. The picture hook had apparently lost its grip.

She’s got a mind like a claw hammer, then.Bet she uses the head of the hammer on hubby.

“She’s a demonologist, too,” hubby said.

The Roach shot her a glance. She was too young to know better. Anyone claiming to be a demonologist was worth avoiding. The real ones, like him, worked best in secret. It was an unfortunate calling, not a hobby.

“Among other things,” Amelia said with pride. To hubby she said, “You’d best notify the hotel staff before someone gets cut.”

“Why bother?” Kendra said. “A little blood is just what we need to get the party started.”

“Blood magick,” Amelia said to her. “Are you a virgin, dear?”

“Excuse me?”

 ”Are you familiar with Aleister Crowley?”

“Come on, Kendra,” The Roach said, ferrying her away. “Some more guests are checking in.”

“Cool,” Kendra snapped. “Maybe they’ll be old perverts, too.”

Amelia glowered at the teen. “I would hate to fetch a demon on you.”

“You don’t want one of her demons,” her husband said, arching his eyebrows into arrow tips. The Roach wondered how many demons he’d been subjected to during the course of the marriage. Plenty, by the looks of it.

“Why don’t you two come to the medium parlor?” The Roach said, appealing to Amelia’s ego and letting her assume her presence was awaited with all the anticipation of a visiting queen’s. “Wayne Wilson is expecting you.”

“I hope it’s in one of the haunted rooms.” Amelia G. stepped over the broken glass and followed The Roach down the hall, hubby trailing and sipping his drink.

“I believe they’re all haunted,” The Roach said.

“Got any demons here?”

“Only the ones you brought with you,” The Roach said, wishing it were true.

The hall was buckled and warped, the angles slightly skewed by decades of wooden bones shifting on concrete footing. The scarred oak floorboards creaked under their feet, and mirrors placed at strategic angles suggested subtle movement at the edges of the shadows. The Roach had been in a number of reputedly haunted structures, and most of them had age and faulty architecture in common. It was another of those contrived truisms of the field: ghosts avoided clean, well-lighted places.

They were heading up the stairs to the second floor when a brittle crash sounded on the landing above. The Roach looked back at Amelia, whose plump face bore a look of childish pleasure.

“Sometimes I don’t know my own power,” she said.

Either that, or the game has already begun.

“I’ll inform the front desk,” hubby said, as if pleased at a chance to escape, lest Amelia’s glare turn him to glass and then shards and slivers.

“Wayne’s going to love you,” The Roach said.

Amelia beamed, though The Roach was sure she’d completely misinterpreted his statement.

Too bad you’re not clairvoyant, because if you could see the future the White Horse demons have in mind, you’d be swallowing that smile.

Chapter 9

“How’s it going?” Wayne said, patting Kendra on the shoulder and looking at the check-in sheet.

“Forty-three so far,” Kendra said.

“We’ll put you through college yet.”

“Unless I run away from home and join the circus.”

“You’re already
in
the circus, honey.”

“Well, they’ve certainly sent in the clowns. You’ve got psychics, remote viewers, a couple of cranky quantum physicists, and a woman who claims to be the reincarnation of Madame Blavatsky.”

“As long as she didn’t pay in rubles.”

“I’ve got a feeling she’ll probably add a hillbilly to her past-life collection by the time the weekend’s over,” Kendra said, rolling her eyes to indicate the surroundings.

The hotel had given them its “history room” for registration, the walls replete with old photographs, door handles, wallpaper samples, and other relics of the building’s past. A glass case held an ancient Royal typewriter, its black ribbon cracked and curled. Beside it was a tattered copy of “The Yearling,” and a placard explaining author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had stayed at the hotel in the summer of 1936, taking breakfast in Black Rock and dinner in Boone. The glass case also held Southern Appalachian artifacts like corn-husk dolls, a dulcimer, a ceramic moonshine jug, furrier’s tools, and a hand-stitched quilt that looked as if it has been pieced together with dust. The room smelled of linseed oil and old paper.

“It’s all about presentation,” Wayne said, imparting a basic business principal disguised as a parental lecture. “Give them a little atmosphere and let their imaginations do the rest.”

Kendra rolled her eyes. “I know, I know. ‘People don’t buy products, they buy emotions.’ Jeez, Dad, why don’t you get out of the ghost game and launch a political consulting firm?”

“There’s not much imagination in that. Plus you’re on the losing team half the time.”

A tall man with a dramatic swoop of gray in his dark hair entered the room. He wore a rumpled tan blazer and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, exposing the wiry hair on his chest. “Is this where we register?” he said, in a low, mellifluous tone.

“Step right this way,” Kendra said, motioning him to the table.

“I paid in advance,” he said. “Martin Gelbaugh.”

As Kendra checked his information and gave him his badge and packet, Wayne lifted the lid on the ancient piano in the corner. He poked the lowest C, and as the note reverberated against the room’s wooden surfaces, he tapped a note higher up the register. The two harmonics clashed, horribly out of tune even to Wayne’s untrained ear.

“The upper C is about eleven vibrations per second flat,” the man said.

Wayne looked at Gelbaugh, studying the hands that appended the badge to his suit jacket. The fingers were gaunt but graceful, like those of a musician or fine craftsman. “Perfect pitch, huh?”

“I’m not convinced that ‘perfect’ exists,” he said, smiling at Kendra. “Unless perhaps it’s the angelic demeanor of this lovely young lady.”

The gallant attempt at flattery would only enrage his daughter. She was convinced that every man over the age of 20 was a hopeless perv, and Wayne endorsed that sentiment. But she disguised her grimace so that it could be mistaken for a shy smile.

The customer is always right, even when he’s an asshole. I’ve taught her well. The Digger’s daughter.

She’s your daughter, too, Beth, but I hope your lessons have ended. Everything we knew might have been wrong.

“She could be the only angel here, Mr. Gelbaugh,” Wayne said, falling into a dinner-theater role to match that of the guest’s. “I’m Wayne Wilson, your host.”

“I’ve read a lot about you.”

“Half of it is true, but nobody knows which half, not even me,” Wayne said. Kendra shot him a look that said
Don’t pile it on too thick.
Or maybe
Lame-o-rama.
He wasn’t so good at teen translation these days.

“Is it the half that says you’re a huckster who doesn’t even believe in the afterlife and is only in it for a fast buck?”

Wayne felt his face shift into a cold mask. He studied Gelbaugh’s eyes, looking for a twinkle of mischief, but all he saw was an inquisitive challenge. The tension was heightened by Kendra’s expectation of a response. Maybe he could surprise them both.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe, or what you believe, or what anyone believes,” Wayne said. “All experience is subjective, and no one’s yet to offer irrefutable proof of life, much less the afterlife.”

Gelbaugh touched his forehead in a mock salute. “So you’ve been reading about me, too.”

“Sure. I subscribe to
Fate Magazine
and hit the paranormal blogs like everybody else. Unless a dozen people are out there pretending to be Martin Gelbaugh, you get around.”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t come to crash the party. I’m just an innocent bystander.”

“Nobody’s innocent,” Wayne said.

A group of four came to the table, drawing Kendra’s attention. Wayne moved closer to Gelbaugh, not sure whether he welcomed the man’s presence. Gelbaugh was a famous critic of the paranormal, but instead of debunking its science, he challenged the foundation of consciousness. The Gospel According To Gelbaugh went something like, “You can’t prove one plus one is two, because you can’t even prove what ‘one’ is. And if you show me a mathematical formula, all you are showing me is a piece of paper with strange markings on it, and I have no way of knowing not only whether the markings are actually there, but whether the piece of paper exists.”

Wayne had to admit, as radical theories went, Gelbaugh’s was pretty unassailable. The man had published a book called “God Equals Absolute Zero,” and it created a brief buzz before its convoluted logic bored even the fickle pop-psychology crowd.

Gelbaugh’s reputation had decayed from metaphysical whiz kid to cranky nay-sayer in the space of a decade. Now he was trading on the last of his reputation, hanging around the fringes, finding new purpose in the paranormal fad. And he’d paid his registration in cash, too far down the ladder to request free admission in exchange for a panel appearance.

“Come now, Mr. Wilson, if we’re going to debate guilt and innocence, you should at least join me at the hotel bar,” Gelbaugh said.

Wayne licked his lips, the bittersweet bite of whiskey aroused from its slumbering tomb in his memory. Sure, he could have one drink. Just one. This time, he could manage it.

Then, in a flash of prescience that could have convinced him of psychic ability if he were so inclined, he saw himself sitting on a bar stool, elbows riding the oak railing, head tilted into the gray fog of cigarette smoke. Glass tinkling, murmurs of conversation spiked with occasional cracked laughter, the TV set tuned to championship poker or semipro boxing, the drinks coming faster and faster until it was morning and he would awaken against the toilet,  vomit and apologies burning his throat, Kendra forced into playing the grown-up of the family once again.

You want to talk about horror...

“Maybe later,” Wayne said. “I’ve got to check on the control room and the hunt schedule.”

Gelbaugh gave a knowing nod, and Wayne wondered if his drinking habits had been part of Gelbaugh’s homework. “Sure. How about after tomorrow’s panel? ‘The Nature of Spirits.’ One could take a number of meanings from that title.”

“It’s supposed to be open-ended,” Wayne said.

“Naturally,” Gelbaugh said. “What better way to kick off a paranormal conference than to turn on the metaphorical fog machine and cloud the collective consciousness?”