Spookygirl - Paranormal Investigator (2 page)

“Great.” Dad didn’t look like he thought the idea was so great at all as he closed the door to the embalming room.

I went back to sketching Mrs. Morris in the Tranquility Room, which is where our in-house viewings and services are held. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” I said as I sat back down next to her casket with my sketchbook. I was drawing her portrait to practice facial proportions.

Hey, dead bodies make good models, okay? Living models want to talk and move and stuff; dead ones are peaceful and still. I know it’s called
life
drawing, but whatever.

After a while I heard Dad go upstairs to our apartment to shower and change; I kept right on working.

Yeah, Dad owns Addison Funeral Services, and we live in the apartment upstairs. Whenever I’m coming or going, I pass through the mortuary’s formal front parlor, which is always full of flower arrangements and smells like wilting carnations. The Tranquility Room opens off the parlor, and the showcase room with all the sample coffins is just down the hall. Dad’s office, a storage room, the prep room, and the embalming facility and freezer are at the back of the building, so it’s not like you’re parading past a pile of corpses whenever you’re coming or going. Still, I can see how it might seem a little freaky.

It doesn’t bother me, though. I’m used to dead people. They won’t leave me alone. But even being confronted by the grumpiest dead person beats being around Aunt Thelma. She stepped in and helped raise me after my mom died, but she’s strict and judgmental and I don’t like her. Staying with her half the time while Dad went back to school and got his business going…Well, I understood why he needed help for a while, even if I didn’t like it.

So now I eat and sleep and do my homework upstairs, while downstairs there are bodies in the freezer. It’s as weird as it sounds, I guess, but I like helping Dad with his business, and he could really use the assistance. He lets me
do stuff like hair and makeup—or as he sometimes calls it “death spackle,” since it looks so fake and slathered on when it’s not done right.

I
do it right. I’d kept Mrs. Morris’s makeup light, using just enough base to camouflage the chalky pallor of her skin. With her cheeks a little pink and wisps of white hair resting on her forehead, she looked like she’d just stretched out for a nap in her coffin.

It wasn’t such a crazy idea. Her family had sprung for an Eternal Rest 3500. You can’t find a better coffin without getting something custom made. Upholstered silk interior, padded with goose down…It’s comfy. I know. I’ve tried it out.

I was finishing my sketch when Dad came back down. “Is she being an agreeable model?” he asked, walking up to do his final prefuneral check. Dad didn’t really get my artistic new hobby, but he humored me about it. “You did a great job with her death spackle. Keep that up and you’ll have a career waiting for you.”

It’s true. People are always dying, so there would always be a market—not that I wanted to spend my life decorating the dead. I had other plans—plans Dad didn’t even know about. Still, I preened a little at the compliment. “She looks peaceful, doesn’t she?”

“Peaceful, sure. But I had to sew her mouth shut and
use eye caps to get her that way.” Eye caps are like huge contact lenses with little spikes; Dad puts them under corpses’ eyelids to keep them closed.

I added a few delicate charcoal curls along the portrait’s hairline. “I’m sure she didn’t mind.”

“If she did, she didn’t complain.” He grinned a little under his neat salt-and-pepper beard. “Almost done? I’m not sure how Mrs. Morris’s relatives would feel about her being an art project.”

I closed the sketchbook. “All done.”

“Great. Oh, I was looking at the list your school sent earlier—”

Ugh. And just like that, my mood crashed down a little. “Don’t remind me about school.”

He ignored my complaining. “I’m not sure we got you enough shirts. And are you sure you don’t want a backpack? You’ll have lots of books to carry.”

“I already told you. Mom’s messenger bag will be fine.” Purple with a lavender flower appliqué, it was the same beat-up old bag I’d used for years. It was one of only a handful of my mother’s things that I had. Dad thought it wasn’t big or sturdy enough to be a proper book bag, and he swore the shoulder strap was about to snap, but I knew he was wrong. Mom made it herself, and because of that, I knew it was strong enough to last.

“You might want something bigger, though.”

“I used it last year at Lakewood. It was big enough.” I’d stayed with Aunt Thelma so often last year that I’d been registered in her school district. Living full-time with Dad put me in a different district, so I would be transferring to Palmetto High for my sophomore year.

“Okay. But let me know if you change your mind. Anyway, Mrs. Morris is the only service scheduled for today, so I’ll be free this evening. How about we go out, grab some dinner, and pick up those shirts?”

Palmetto High maintained a pretty strict dress code; as a result of Dad’s overzealous single-parent nerves, I already owned enough plain white collared shirts and khaki pants to last me for three weeks without doing laundry. Then again, if buying another week’s worth of shirts would make him stop worrying a little, I was okay with that. “Sounds good.”

“Great.” Dad smiled again. “I should finish getting things ready in here. I think it’s time for you to go upstairs and—”

“Keep Buster out of trouble. I know.” Babysitting Buster was the other part of my job at Addison Funeral Services.

“Thanks for your help, kiddo,” Dad called as I went upstairs.

The apartment over the funeral home was teeny. The size made sense for a man living on his own, but it was pretty ridiculous for a father and daughter. The two bedrooms were practically microscopic; Dad had been using the second as an office, but he carted his computer and filing cabinets downstairs when I moved in. I didn’t really mind the cramped space—I would’ve gladly slept on a couch in the living room, or even downstairs in one of the display coffins, if it meant more time with Dad.

I put my sketchbook and charcoal in the dresser drawer where I kept my art supplies, then went back to the living room and looked around. “Buster!”

A squeaky howl echoed from my dad’s bedroom. I followed the sound and called Buster’s name again when I reached the bedroom doorway.

The air in the room was at least twenty degrees colder than in the rest of the apartment. The sliding door to Dad’s tiny closet was open; his neckties were floating and writhing in a circle near the bed, like a collection of airborne snakes in muted, mortician-appropriate colors. A nervous, giddy squeal emanated from nowhere apparent, causing the ties to shudder in midair.

Oh, Buster was definitely here.

“What are you doing, Buster?” Trying to sound as authoritative as possible, I grabbed for the nearest tie. It whipped away, the imitation silk brushing my fingertips.

Buster’s taunting, wordless cries seemed to pulse from the walls themselves; it was impossible to tell exactly where he was. To tell the truth, it was impossible even to tell
what
he was. I’ve never been able to figure it out, so I’ve always thought of him as a poltergeist. An abnormal one. He does poltergeisty things, like making noises or knocking stuff around, but real poltergeists are more like pockets of built-up negative energy. They’re not usually actual ghosts like Buster. He followed Mom home from an investigation like a stray dog when I was two and has just stuck around ever since. After Mom died, I let him follow me to Aunt Thelma’s, but after he smashed her favorite casserole dish—an accident
I
got blamed for, since Aunt Thelma insists I make up all my ghost stuff for attention—I told him to stay with Dad instead. Buster’s pretty good about obeying orders when he knows I mean business.

Well, most of the time.

He made a trembling shriek that sounded almost like a giggle, and the ties began to knot themselves together.

“You know how mad Dad’s going to get if he sees this,” I warned, stepping into the middle of the drifting circle of knotted ties. I reached for one again; this time I managed to get a grip before Buster could yank it away. Trying to pull it down was like being in a vertical tug-of-war with a linebacker. When the tie jerked upward and threatened to take me with it, I let go.

I didn’t mind letting Buster have a little fun, but Mrs. Morris’s guests would be arriving downstairs within minutes, and it wouldn’t do to have an abnormal poltergeist banging around overhead during a funeral service. In the same tone I would’ve used on a misbehaving dog, I yelled, “BUSTER! BAD BOY!”

Buster’s mischievous chortles turned into an anguished scream; he hated being scolded. The ties wadded themselves into a polyester ball and flopped down on my head. Wrinkled, knotted neckties hung off my shoulders and arms like ropes of seaweed off a swamp monster.

“CRATE, BUSTER. NOW!” I pointed toward the small, open trunk that sat in the apartment’s tiny living room. The cold air left the room in a whoosh that knocked several of the ties off of me, and the trunk slammed shut. A hurt, angry whimper chastised me from inside.

“Sorry,” I said, “but you know the rules. I’ll let you out as soon as the service is over.” I took a U-shaped piece of polished stone—obsidian—from a nearby shelf and slid it through the hole on the trunk’s latch where a lock would normally go. Obsidian was supposed to be good for controlling misbehaving spirits. I wasn’t sure why it worked, but it would keep him locked up until I set him free. With that taken care of, I gathered Dad’s ties, unknotted them, and hung them back in the closet. Except
for the occasional light thump as the trunk rocked back against the wall, Buster was quiet and calm.

Buster’s not really such a bad ghost. Like a puppy, he just gets a little crazy sometimes if we’re not strict enough with him. In his own ghostly way, I think he loves us. Mom was his favorite—she was the one who crate trained him—but he seems pretty attached to me, too. “He knows you’re like your mom,” Dad would say when Buster happily squawked at the sight of me or levitated one of his favorite toys in my direction. “He’s much more active when you’re around.”

Muted noises carried up from downstairs. Car doors slammed outside; the front door opened and closed; voices droned too quietly for me to hear what was being said. For the next two hours or so—or longer, if Mrs. Morris had lots of friends who wanted to pay their respects during the viewing before the service—I had to tread lightly. Sound traveled too well through the old building; improving the soundproofing between the apartment and the funeral home was high on Dad’s list of things to do, a list he often threatened to rename “Things That’ll Never Get Done.”

The sound restriction always made me a little stir-crazy. I couldn’t watch TV, and I couldn’t listen to music unless I used headphones. Hoping for a distraction, I browsed the bookshelves in the living room. My paperbacks were mixed in with Dad’s textbooks and reference books from
when he’d gone back to school for his mortuary science degree. That was a few months after Mom died, once the police investigation into her death ended and no charges were filed against Dad.

Aunt Thelma, of course, disapproved of her kid brother’s career change. (In fact, she disapproved of everything.) They never discussed it in front of me, but I had eavesdropped on plenty of their conversations over the years. Aunt Thelma nagged him a lot.

“And what happened to being a doctor?”

“You know I gave that up years ago.”

“When you met Robin and decided to be a ghost hunter.” No one could drizzle their words with disdain quite like Aunt Thelma.

“I was struggling with my internship before I met Robin.” Dad’s voice always sounded soft and weary when Aunt Thelma brought up my mom.

“You can still go back to medical school,” Aunt Thelma urged. “Take more classes. Try again.”

“It wasn’t right for me.”

“Oh, and ghost hunting was?”

“Paranormal investigation, Thelma.”

“At least you outgrew that. But funerals? Is this what you want to do with your life? Spend all day looking at dead bodies?”

“Maybe it is.” I knew what he was saying—at least these dead people would stay dead. For the most part. Even though he couldn’t sense ghosts the way Mom had, he’d had enough of them.

“A little girl shouldn’t grow up surrounded by the dead.”

“That’s why I need you to help me with Violet for a little while. It’ll be a tough couple of years—I’ll have to go to school, get an apprenticeship, establish myself in the field. I can’t do all that and take good care of her, too.” Dad’s voice had sounded rough and choked when he’d said that.

“She’s like her mother,” Aunt Thelma replied. The way she said it made it sound like there was something wrong with me. Ever since then, I’d always hated her a little.

I had already flipped through most of Dad’s mortuary reference books over the summer, and it was hard to find my own books among all the clutter on the shelves. Originally Dad and I had attempted to keep our books separate, but after Buster threw everything around a few times, we stopped trying to sort through the volumes and just piled them back on the shelves instead.

It took me a good five minutes to locate what I was looking for—Mom’s battered copy of
Wuthering Heights
,
her favorite novel. I grabbed it not for the story, but for the treasure hidden inside—a faded business card for Palmetto Paranormal, the investigation business Mom and Dad had run together before her death. I’d just found the card tucked in the book a few months ago, soon after I’d moved in. It was plain, just black type on white card stock that had yellowed over time, with a generic logo, Mom’s name, and the business’s phone number and e-mail address.

That was what I wanted someday—a business like Palmetto Paranormal. Maybe it’d be easier to deal with this ghost stuff if I could turn it into something more interesting. A little excitement would be a good trade-off for having to review the whole ghost how-to manual with every newbie that came my way.

I hadn’t told Dad yet about my plan, but I doubted he’d be too enthusiastic about it. He didn’t even know I’d found Mom’s card; he never talked about Palmetto Paranormal.