Chapter One (please disregard any bad grammar, it's still a work in progress.)
“Shit.” Sonya turned the key. Insanity, she thought, is when you do something over and over expecting a different result.
She turned the key again.
Her old ’70 barracuda belched a sound that could only mean she was going to feel a world of hurt in the pocket book, before its dying call echoed into the chilly night.
“Damn it! Shit! Fuck!” Sonya banged the leather worn steering wheel between each curse. Her colorful language, unhindered by a window that wouldn’t roll up, awakened the night around her. Dogs barked behind wrought iron fences, their warning a sharp ringing in her ears.
Swathed in the sterile orange street light, just as perfect and spaced out from its siblings as the houses they illuminated, Sonya’s car refused to be coaxed from its coma. She wrenched the key from the ignition.
“Not tonight.” She grumbled, getting out of the car. She slammed the door behind her, uncaring when the shades of the nearest over-priced stucco mansion slipped open, its occupant zeroing in on her. With a little wave to her audience, she tried to ignore the snowflake sized black paint chips that had fallen away in her moment of immaturity. In a sad attempt to appear that she knew what she was doing, Sonya moved to the front of the car and yanked open the hood. The rusty hinges screamed in protest.
“Just, don’t be the alternator.” The barracuda was her only transportation, only way to get to jobs, and the biggest financial drain in the neck. She didn’t have the means to get a new part. For the hundredth time since she purchased the beast, she thought about selling it and getting something practical, like a Geo. Sonya gagged at the picture of her attempting to get the tiny death trap on wheels up a hill at a decent speed. She loved how the old muscle car made her feel when she pulled up next to those fiber glass if-I-get-hit-in-the-bumper-I’d-fall-completely-apart cars the racing kids drove these days. There was nothing like feeling the power of a Hemi engine and a metric-fuck-ton of iron and steel to make you feel like no one could touch you.
Sonya sighed, with no actual car knowledge, she wouldn’t be able to see what had her four wheeled official badass badge sitting immobile on the side of the road like a stubborn camel.
She could see no other solution. Her baby would need to be towed. She pressed her forehead against the edge of the raised hood and cursed again. She would have to lug all her equipment and walk to the job site. A good cardiac arresting five mile hike didn’t sound like her idea of a good time. Sonya slammed the hood closed with a hint of guilt when more paint flaked off. She fished inside the pocket of her pea coat to get her cell phone.
She located the saved number to Mrs. Klegal and hit send. The woman picked up before Sonya even heard a ring.
“Please, tell me your outside!” What sounded like dishes being thrown through windows punctured through Mrs. Klegal’s plea.
Sonya ran a finger over the crease the edge of the hood had made in her forehead.
“Um, no. I’ve got some car trouble-“
“No? No! You have to come now! Walk if you have to-I-I can’t take anymore of this!”
“Mrs. Klegal?”
“I’ve paid good money for you-“
“Mrs. Klegal.”
“To get rid of this pulterghost-“
“Poltergeist.”
“This is not good business young lady-if you’re not here in five minutes-I expect to be paid my advance in full! Do you understand me?”
Sonya jabbed at the angry red crease in her forehead with her index finger. “Yes Mrs. Klegal-“
“Good.” There came another crash over the line before the woman hung up.
Sonya wanted to call the woman back and maybe for once say to hell with the money, she wouldn’t be treated like that, when it started again. A familiar pain had begun to pulse at the base of her spine. Slowly, moving toward the base of her skull and out to every limb, the pain intensified as it lit every nerve under her skin on fire. Sonya fought to get a deep breath into her lungs as her hands begun to shake. The cell phone dug into her palm as her grip tightened around its protective case. This was a pain she knew all too well. Her knees threatened to send her ass to the pavement as she yanked out a small inhaler from her pocket with her free hand. She hoped she had had the foresight to have Laura re-charge the damn thing. Her body twitched hard enough for her weak knees to give up on holding her weight. She didn’t have time to think, with two quick pulls the pain subsided almost as quickly as it had began, the scorched nerves settled back into the dull ache that never really went away.
Sonya sucked in the night air in greedy gulps. It had come on fast this time. Too fast. She took a moment to compose herself, which meant ignoring three of Mrs. Klegal’s calls and getting back onto her feet. She gathered herself enough to call a tow company, explained to the kid on the other line where he could find her car and where it needed to be taken before deciding that it wouldn’t be a great idea to walk, and called a cab. Sonya corralled her equipment on the curb next to her dead status symbol and waited.
“It’s always something going wrong with you. I’m beginning to think you like all this drama.”
“Shut up.”
Every light in the Klegal household was lit when Sonya lumbered up the driveway. Typical for a house being plagued by a poltergeist, nobody ever wanted to be left in the dark when things started moving on their own. Something not so typical is seeing your client tearing down the driveway with tangled gray hair and ripped clothing screaming at the top of her lungs.
“I don’t care that you’re late! Just get that demon out of my house!” Mrs. Klegal clawed onto Sonya’s shoulders.
“Look, you really need to calm down Mrs. Klegal-“
“Young lady-no talking, just get moving.”
Shadowed by the frantic woman, Sonya walked up to an massive old colonial. Quaint wooden slat shutters covered every window of the two story beauty. The red brick walls and two stark white pillars adorning the porch gave her pause as she found herself lost in a distant memory.
“Well? Are you just going to stand there? That demon is destroying my home!” Mrs. Klegal pranced around her like a used up show pony on crack. Fear can do that to people. She would know. She still had a scar from her last client that had thought she was the anti-Christ when she told him the ghost of his mother-in-law refused to leave. Sonya started up the porch when a large crashing noise sounded from behind the front door. Mrs. Klegal yelped, her fingers digging into Sonya’s arm. Sonya sighed, wrenched out of the woman’s grasp, and adjusted her back pack before opening the door. As soon as she crossed the threshold, all noise stopped, as though the entity knew why she was there and what she meant to do.
Well it should, Jack’s here. She thought.
She shrugged out of her bag and tried to assess the damage. The living room had, by the look of the carnage before her, been the room the poltergeist found the most amusing to trash. Two white couches were over turned with the stuffing pulled out of several cushions. Both were squished against a china cabinet missing its glass panes, the shattered remains of china she wondered ever got used. Sonya kicked aside a broken pig figurine impressed by the strength of spirit.
“Do you see? The demon’s destroying everything!” Ms. Klegal screeched, releasing a string of spit that ended up clinging to the bottom of her medically enhanced chin. “Your website,” She seethed unaware of the extra moisture now moving its way down her neck. “Said that you were the best at this stuff, so get to it!” The older woman’s voice rose to a pitch high enough that Sonya had to resist putting a finger in her ear.
“Okay, you need to calm down.” Sonya said in her best learned from the internet professional voice. “Where did the attacks start?”
The woman jumped into action, her thin legs making quick work of the staircase leading to the second story.
“Up here! Move! Move!”
Tell the old bat to take another Zoloft. She’s addicted to them you know. I saw inside her medicine cabinet.
“I told you to shut up.” Sonya waved her hands through the air.
“What?” Ms. Klegal called from the top of the stairs, her eyes wide in surprise.
“Uh—I said I’m on my way up.” She bent and picked her bag off the floor. Whatever entity that plagued the house stayed quiet as both women walked down a narrow peach colored hallway. The sound of Ms. Klegal’s polyester pants rubbing together the only soundtrack as she led Sonya to a room just off the hallway in the back. The old woman motioned to the open door, but didn’t follow Sonya as she made her way inside. Several lights had been turned on in, from what Sonya could decipher, the master bedroom. Beside the bed turned diagonally and its covers bunched and torn, the room otherwise looked normal.
“And you say the attacks started here?” Sonya asked.
Ms. Klegal stayed in the doorway. Her eyes darted around the room as though she expected something to jump out and yell “boo!” Sonya swallowed the urge to do so.
“Yes, I would be in a dead sleep and I would be awakened by these little slaps on my face.” Ms. Klegal demonstrated with quick hits to her cheek.
“Hmm, Okay,” Sonya unzipped the front pocket of her bag and lifted out a small Sony Vaio laptop. “then it progressed to what I saw downstairs?”
The old woman blanched. Sonya didn’t think color could drain out of a person that quickly without some sort of outside help.
“Well, I,” Ms Klegal sputtered. “I sort of started it—I was just so mad—broke one picture—then, then, that demon did the rest!” She crossed herself.
Hello? Zoloft! Just cram it down that wrinkled sock she calls a throat.
The laugh escaped Sonya before she could stop it. Ms. Klegal glared at her, her jowls trembling in anger. But before the old woman could unleash another wave of saliva, Sonya sprang into action, pulling out five black candles, a mirror with a pentagram etched in its surface, and a bushel of sage from her bag. She rested each item on the disarrayed bed as though each one had a profound importance. She was eager to get on with it already so she could concentrate on more important things like getting her car to return to the living. Plus, she couldn’t ignore the pain that had started to thrum just below where her shirt met with her jeans again.
“I have to ask you a personal question. Well, two really.” Sonya put each candle on the floor until they formed a circle as she spoke.
“First, have you had any problems, any stressful situations lately?” These lines of questions were just a formality. Sonya could already tell that this home wasn’t a Brady Bunch type of home. Judging by the presence of only one car in the driveway, the frightened old woman in front of her was on her own. It almost made her feel bad for the woman. Almost.
Sonya placed the mirror inside the circle of candles before lighting the sage. “Second,” She crinkled her nose as the sage’s pungent fragrance filled the room. She had always hated the way it smelled, it reminded her of really bad B.O., but it seemed to calm restless spirits. “when can I expect the rest of my payment?”
“You’ll get your payment when the job is done. What are these things?” She pointed a bony finger at the candles.
“Just tools of the trade.” Sonya held the other woman’s stare.
“I need to call on my spirit guide,” She lowered her voice. “and, well, he always requires that I recite a special incantation before he’ll help me.”
Klegal snorted, but didn’t take her eyes off Sonya or the offending items on the floor.
“That stuff looks Satanic,” She inched back to the doorway. “I’m not paying you to make things worse here.”
Sonya lit each candle with slowly, murmuring strange words as she did so. “It can be very dangerous, calling the dark one.” She shook out the match. “Which is why you can’t be in the room.”
“But—I wanted to—your website never said anything about this.” She gestured to the ground causing her pulled eyebrows to disappear into her scalp.
Sonya placed her open palm against the flame of one of the candles. She let her eyes roll into the back of her head as she started chanting. “Dark Lord of the underworld, I call to thee,” She started to rock back and forth, fighting back the laugh that had crawled up her throat. When she lifted her head to the heavens, her hands outstretched above, she yelled. “Heed my call!” The rocking grew more intense, more desperate. Sonya growled deep within her throat to. “I shall give you the blood sacrifice you demand!”
A strangled yelp sounded from the doorway. Sonya lifted her eyelids just enough to see that Ms. Klegal had, indeed, took off.
You know, if you keep this act up, you’ll never get any more customers.
“So what? I’ve always wanted to free up more of my time. Then maybe I can explore my passions in life.”
What? Terrorizing small children?
“Ah, if I were to do that, what would you do in your spare time?” She pursed her lips together. “Jack, you know that we can’t have anyone around when we do this.” Sonya plopped herself on top of the blanket massacre on the bed and pulled her computer onto her lap. She moved the curser over the file labeled “Klegal” and clicked. All the research Sonya had done on the home, uploaded onto the laptop’s small screen. Old newspapers dating back to when the land had been nothing more than a pasture, and the registry of historical homes had yielded no reports about this home being haunted. Sonya had scoured the obituaries from all six families that had lived on or around the land. Some had died in the home itself, but they had been of the natural sort. No murders, suicides, hell, not even the land itself harbored secret Indian burial grounds or alters of human sacrifice.
“Huh,” Sonya clicked on a few more files, none of which offered any more information that could help. “I can’t explain it.”
I guess that’s your way of saying it’s time for me to work?
“That’s right,” Sonya sighed. A lock of raven hair fell into her face. She blew it back. “It’s a wonder why I bring any equipment at all. With you, the whole idea of all this stuff seems ridiculous.”
Aha! So you admit that you need me. It’s so touching, I think I might cry.
“To use the word of our most gracious hostess—get to it.”
A phantom laugh passed where she stood. A cold breeze raised the hair along her arms. She smiled as she putted around the bedroom making occasional noise so her neurotic employer would believe she was exiling the dead. As much as she hated to admit it, Jack was right, she needed him. It’s not every day a girl gets her very own ghost companion. Even if he did act like some Jiminy Cricket reject.
Well, found the problem. Jack’s voice sounded in her ear.
“Okay, spill it so we can get the hell out of here. I’m starting to get that dirty feeling when I’m around people who have too much money.”
Turns out, the spirit behind all this is just a kid. Couldn’t be more than six when she died. Poor soul. Drowned in a nearby creek, judging by her wet appearance.
Sonya went back to the lap top. She clicked on the Klegal folder. “There’re no creeks near here.”
Dried up by now I suspect. Little lady’s been passed for a century now. She thinks this was her home. Hasn’t left since.
“You’re telling me that a little kid ghost did all this damage?” Sonya glanced around the room, impressed. Poltergeist activity usually fell to the more angered, enraged, vengeful, adult spirits.
She says she only wanted to play with Ms. Klegal. The kid thinks that hideous woman is her mother.
“Gah—no wonder she started to break things, couldn’t imagine having a mother like that spazz.” Sonya shook her head and started to pack the candles. “Are we going to need to relocate her to Iron Town?”
No.
“Did you convince her that she was no longer living and needed to move on?”
After some coaxing, yes. I told her that her real mother would be there waiting for her.
Sonya wondered if her own mother would be waiting for her. She hoped not, because where she would go, her sweet mother would never be. “How sweet, Jack.”
It’s the kids. They always get to me.
“I know Jack,” Sonya picked up her bag. “I know.”
