Spirit Taken Read online

  Cilla blinked hard and pulled herself from the memory. That visit had been almost a month ago, and in that time, the dumpster had been filled and emptied several times. There was no lack of garbage and rotting wood. Melissa had been fortunate to find some cheap laborers to help in the cleanup. When Melissa found a contractor to help her organize the renovation, they set out a schedule which needed to be strictly to adhered to in order to get the work done quickly and efficiently. It was the only way she was going to afford to make the house habitable without going into serious debt. Now Cilla worried that Melissa was going to have a bigger obstacle than the money pit the house could become.

  Chapter Two

  “She’s worried,” Smith stated, his chin dropping to his chest as he studied his hands. “She said some of the workers have experienced something, sensed something, and they’re spooked. They already heard stories about the place, and some of those guys are incredibly superstitious. Melissa hasn’t been able to give them a straightforward answer about what is going on, and now they’re threatening to walk.”

  “Smith, people don’t walk if a few things have been moved around.”

  “They do if the things moved have caused accidents,” Smith said sharply. His eyes had that haunted look, and Cilla knew there was more happening in the decrepit mansion than he was letting on.

  “Tell me,” Cilla demanded.

  “Mark was in the dining room. He had a ladder and was doing some patch work on the plaster.”

  “Wait, Mark is the big guy with the beard?”

  “No, the skinny guy with the ponytail,” Smith countered. They had been out to the house one other time since Melissa started the renovation and met a few of Melissa’s hired workers, a generally motley bunch who seemed to be enamored of Melissa and willing to do whatever necessary to make her happy. The fact that they threatened to abandon her made Cilla more concerned. “So anyway, he was working in the parlor on the front wall facing the driveway. He had the ladder pushed up against the wall, and he was leaning over toward the side, probably reaching too far. He claimed he saw a flash off to his left. When he twisted to look, the whole ladder shifted to the side, and he went down.” Smith stopped speaking, his face uncommonly serious. “He wasn’t hurt, at least not seriously. Some pretty decent bruises, according to Melissa. He wasn’t standing high enough on the ladder at the time to make it dangerous. But he insists he was alone. He knew for sure no one else was there. He had watched the rest of the crew leave.”

  Cilla continued to study Smith, waiting for the other part of the narrative, the other shoe to drop. She knew him well enough. There was something else that was bothering him.

  “Has anyone been hurt?” she asked frankly.

  “Not yet,” Smith answered, “but there was a message left in one of the storage rooms downstairs off the kitchen.”

  “What kind of message?”

  “It’s one of those things you actually need to see to understand,” Smith replied, rather evasively.

  “Does that mean you think I need to go there?” Cilla looked at her old friend and felt a surge of sympathy for him. The hauntings in the old house had terrified them all, the spirits had been powerful, and it was sufficient to cause anyone hesitate to revisit the scene. However, if she needed to go, she would.

  Smith’s eyes flew to her face, the light flashing across his glass lenses like a flashlight beam as he nodded.

  “As soon as we can,” he confirmed, and Cilla suppressed a sigh.

  “You realize, this isn’t like a paying job.” Smith was driving his old car, a compact that smelled like pizza and faintly of feet. Cilla attributed this second pungent odor to the unmatched shoes that scattered the floor in the backseat. It wasn’t, however, her biggest concern. They were going to the mansion, so Cilla could look at the message left behind by the spirits, and Smith was strangely solemn. “She doesn’t have the money to pay anything. It’s all going to the renovation.” Smith’s mouth was pressed into a narrow white line, a crease lining his brow.

  “I don’t expect payment,” Cilla responded tartly. “She’s a friend. I just want to help. Not,” she broke off and stared out the window as the flashes of pale blue and grey went by, “that I really am looking forward to dealing with whatever it still there.”

  “You think it’s an old spirit, don’t you?”

  “It makes sense. The residence was established on misfortunes, unexplained deaths, before Ruth and her family lived there. She may have been the strongest spirit we ran into,” Cilla felt herself tugging at her lip and put her hands in her lap, “but she wasn’t the only one there.” Melissa’s home had been standing for over a century, and the building had taken lives from its very inception. Tragedies threaded it’s past.

  “That’s what I assumed too.”

  “I suppose we’ll have to try another investigation,” Cilla said, her voice heavy. “This time gather the information we already have to narrow in on the energy. We need to learn the reason for the haunting.”

  “Yeah, and maybe this time, call in Father Becker. It might help if this other entity is as negative as it feels. Ruth had a reason to be there, and she wasn’t an evil spirit. She was just lost. Sad.” That Ruth had suffered through the death of two children explained her continued presence in the mansion. Whatever had been there before her might have sown seeds that helped grow her anguish.

  Cilla nodded. “Yeah, I agree,” she answered. “Did you call Melissa and tell her we were coming out? I figured we needed to make our time count. We still have to get this graphics job to finish, and I have a message from a guy wanting us to look into a haunting at his office.”

  “Really? An office haunting? How bad would your job have to be if you came back and haunted your coworkers?”

  “I don’t think this place has always been used for that kind of business. I think this building used to be a factory.”

  “Um,” Smith grunted.

  “Hey, could we stop at the office store on our way? I have a few things I need to get,” Cilla asked.

  Smith gave her an inquisitive glance but nodded. He pulled his little car into a parking space outside the store and killed the engine. Most of their paranormal equipment they bought online, but there was always the paper, ink, and pens to buy. Fargo had been left at Cilla’s home, but she planned to buy him some treats while she was out. She had a feeling with the additional investigations of the ghostly kind that they were about to embark on, she would need something to tempt him with.

  “So, this new client,” Smith asked, slipping out of the driver’s seat and slamming the door behind him. “When are we due to meet him?”

  “I invited him to come in the morning,” Cilla explained. “He called late yesterday. He sounded pretty distraught, and, not to be rude, but we could use the cash.”

  “Yeah, speaking to the choir,” Smith agreed as the automatic doors opened with a sigh of cool air, and they walked inside the store. “What’s this guy’s name? Have you done any checking up on him?”

  “It’s Brandon something,” Cilla answered, pausing to peruse an entire wall of pens and mechanical pencils in a rainbow of colors. “He didn’t want to tell me much over the phone. Maybe he’s embarrassed. I don’t know. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.” Cilla had a gift, true, but it wasn’t very effective with the living. She couldn’t read minds, and she certainly couldn’t figure out what someone was thinking over the phone.

  “What did he say the problem was?”

  “I know he recently purchased an older building downtown. He’s hoping to renovate it and use it as an office for himself and some others. He was also planning on leasing out space, but he said there was a snag.”

  “I assume the snag is of the spiritual sort?”

  “I’m guessing,” Cilla picked up a package of multicolored pens, glanced at the price tag, and replaced them.

  “He admitted he had a dilemma but didn’t want to explain it to me over the phone.” She snagged a multipack of
cheap pens. “Not that it’s usual. I guess I’ll find out soon enough if this is a legitimate problem, or if this guy was just blowing smoke.”

  “I can’t decide which I’d prefer,” Smith said wryly. “With Melissa’s definitely haunted dwelling, I don’t know if we need another spook in our life.”

  “But this guy will pay,” Cilla said, glancing toward her friend.

  “True,” he acknowledged.

  “Now let’s get some fresh batteries. I have a feeling we’re going to need them for the next stop,” Cilla continued, and they headed for the cash registers.

  The house looked deserted from a distance. The drive was cleared, but the lawn was a weedy mess which stretched to the slanting porch, long tendrils of vines climbing the walls as though the earth was trying to swallow the structure. Blank windows reflected the silvery sky. Cilla felt a creeping sensation, even at this distance. There was something malevolent here, something that peered out at them, something wrong.

  They guessed the construction workers would be done for the day, and the residence was indeed empty apart from the single person they saw on the shaded porch as they pulled up and threw the car into park. Melissa met them at the doorway, her face a shade too strained, her arms crossed in front of her chest. Cilla normally automatically wanted to picture a pair of delicate wings sprouting from Melissa’s back like a fairy princess, but today, she looked all too human, all too tormented.

  Smith abandoned Cilla at the foot of the porch stairs and galloped up to the door, halting just in front of Melissa, visibly restraining himself. Cilla could read his body language all too well. He wanted to catch the other woman in his arms, to console her, and maybe more. Any other day, Cilla might have been amused by his impulse, but today, Melissa’s finely carved face was set with an icy stillness as though she was holding it together, but just by the skin of her teeth.

  “We’re here,” Smith said unnecessarily.

  Melissa’s eyes passed from Smith’s face to Cilla and then back. “Thank you for coming,” she answered, her tone careful. “I just, I didn’t know what else to do.” Her expression was cool, but her hands were clenching and unclenching.

  Cilla climbed the stairs, impulsively putting an arm around the other woman.

  “You did exactly what you should have done,” she announced decisively. “Now show us.”

  Melissa nodded, and Cilla stepped back as they entered the parlor. They bypassed the sheet shrouded railing of the imposing staircase and entered the short hallway. At the back of the house was the kitchen, but the entry was closed off by a high sheet of protective plastic.

  Melissa didn’t continue into that chamber, however, but halted in front of the closed door. Cilla knew the cramped chamber. She had scrutinized it on another occasion after hearing about the attack on a former owner which took place in the room. The distraught woman reported she had been effectively trapped in the house, the front doors held closed by some unseen force. In terror, she fled the front area where she had been working, and raced toward the rear of the home, hoping to escape through the back door. She had halted here in the passage by the open doorway to this narrow chamber. As she observed, a wingback chair, massive and substantial, had come sailing from the far side of the room, hurling through the open doorway, and slamming into the wall hard enough to leave a gouge in the plaster.

  Jayne, the former owner, had been shocked, and the event marked the last time she entered the house. She and her husband let the bank foreclose on the residence since they realized they would not be successful in selling the place. They wanted to wash their hands of the entire fiasco, and only the news that some other woman was looking into purchasing the place had brought them back into the picture, approaching Cilla to reveal their story as a precautionary tale for Melissa.

  Now Cilla entered the bare room behind Melissa. The chamber looked much like it had previously. Most of the furnishings which had once been in the home were cleared out, and this room was no exception. They had, however, kept a small table and the single chair which had almost killed Jayne on that disastrous day. Cilla had no doubt in her mind, considering the damage to the wall, if the chair had struck a body with the same force, the result would have been fatal. She was just as sure Melissa had no idea of the role the chair had played in the story.

  It looked innocent today, but that was in comparison with the macabre arrangement above the dark maw of the fireplace. The original mantel was affixed to the wall, the painted surface chipping from years of wear. On top of the mantel shelf were four items, each more peculiar than the last.

  The first was an antique clock, the body of it an arched wooden style, fashionable in thousands of homes in the early 1900s. This one had a yellowed face and the gilt hands were curled inwards on the ends. It was perhaps from the last century, and time hadn’t been kind. The glass over the face was cracked, and there was a corresponding dent in the wood just above the face of the clock. There was likewise a delicate veneer of dust, but Cilla suspected it had not been in use during the last few years.

  Next to it but spaced a few inches away was a second clock, this one a clock radio, the type most commonly used in the 1980s, the plastic face lit up with several numbers in sour green digital lines. The faux wood sides and top were free of dust. Cilla frowned, but let her eyes scan to the right.

  The third in line was a glass domed clock, the face and weights hanging from delicate chains inside were a porcelain burgundy surface with brass innards. The hands were brass as well, polished and gleaming in the light from the window. It was in excellent condition, but Cilla knew her parents had one that dated back from the second world war that looked similar. Someone had cared for this piece. Cilla resisted the urge to step closer to look at the inner workings of the timepiece and peered at the last item on the mantle.

  The fourth was a peculiar cuckoo clock, the dark carved wood on the surface dust covered as though it had been brought straight from the musty attic to its current position without human hands ever touching it. The heavy weights that emerged from the underside of the box were shaped like stylized pinecones and lay next to it on the shelf in a tangle of chains. The door was sealed, no little wooden bird peeking out. There was, however, something ominous about it.

  “They all read 6:17,” Smith breathed.

  Cilla drew a little closer and realized that he was correct. She instantly recalled the antique grandfather clock they had seen in the front foyer, the hands forever fixed at that same time. 6:17. Now these displayed the same. She drew in a breath. There was something significant in this message. Someone was demanding to express something.

  “Look closer,” Melissa replied, her voice strangled. “At the digital one. Tell me I’m crazy.”

  Smith stepped close. The digital clock looked boxy and innocent, the numbers still flashing on the darkened screen. They had been standing there for some time, but the numbers hadn’t changed.

  Then the strangeness of it struck Cilla like a blow. The clock was lit up, but the power cord could plainly be seen wrapped in a tangled bundle behind the box.

  “No power,” she breathed.

  Smith muttered an obscenity and took a slight step backward.

  “Batteries?” Cilla asked cautiously.

  “It doesn’t take batteries,” Melissa explained. “I found it in one of the upstairs bedrooms a week ago. It was totally dead, and I tried to plug it in. It didn’t do anything then, but I checked the underside, anyway. There is no battery section. This one was built before that was a common feature. If the power went out, so did this clock. It has AM and FM stations too. No CD player.” She wavered. “I threw it away in one of the garbage bags upstairs when I realized it was broken.”

  “Then how did it get down here, and what is powering it?” Smith’s question echoed what the rest of them were considering.

  “How did any of them get here?” Cilla drew closer. “Do you recognize them?”

  “The glass domed one I do,” Melissa answered. “I dis
covered it yesterday and dusted it off. It doesn’t work though. The cable that holds the spinning weight has snapped.” She paused. “I don’t remember what time was on the face when I found it either.”

  “What about the wooden clock?”

  “I think I might have seen it upstairs, but I can’t recall which room. It was busted too.” She was twisting her hands in front of her, obviously reluctant to touch any of the clocks. “But I’ve never seen the cuckoo clock. I didn’t know it existed.”

  Cilla was stepping slowly around the little scene, holding her fists to her side. She could feel it now, the chill of buzzing inside her head, just the hint of a spiritual whisper.

  “They are sending you a message,” she declared faintly. She eased back along the row of objects, her eyes scanning them each in turn. “I wonder what it could mean?”

  Smith was glaring.

  “There has to be a way they could rig this thing, so it would light up like that,” he growled. He reached out, and before Cilla could stop him, picked up the clock radio. With a flicker and a faint popping sound, the green blinked off the screen.

  “It’s off,” Melissa blurted out.

  Cilla raised one eyebrow. “Whatever was powering it is gone,” she told them.

  “You could feel it?” Smith still had the clock in his hands, turning it over gingerly.

  “Yes, for a few minutes there.”

  “I still want to look into this one. The others would have been easy to set up, but that screen lighting up was a trick. I want to make sure it couldn’t be done with any human tinkering.” Smith looked toward Melissa. “Is it okay if I take it?”

  “Sure,” Melissa countered. “Anything you want.”