Now.
“Seven…seven…seven,” Jason said. He was unsure he was doing as Midge instructed. She had given him a three-minute crash course and stood over his right shoulder, whispering words of encouragement.
Just go through the digits one-by-one; repeat them over and over in your head and see if any of them stick. Try to see them in bright black on a white or pale-yellow background. That helps me anyway.
What did she mean by stick?
He wasn’t sure as she told them the instructions, but when he reached seven, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He nearly jumped! Him! Jason Von der Lehr! The founder of the Boston Paranormal Society! Spooked at the cynical age of 37? Crazy.
Midge was the newest team member and the first woman teammate. The other men on the team teased Jason about the team’s lack of inclusivity.
The other team members practiced and worked within the harder sciences. They arrived at each investigation with crates and crates of equipment: meters, cords, interfaces, sensors, and all manner of other stuff. Midge carried fewer items, usually just a meditation pad, cushion, and sometimes a bell. She had created a new modality for detecting spirits. She used meditation as her primary tool.
Her approach was to question the customer for some of the deceased’s favorite numbers or words or, as she had done that day, she sat down on the mat and freestyled it. She had worked through colors and the days of the week before starting on numbers. She’d noticed a slightly elevated response to 2, but then 7 had hit hard. Such a strong response usually indicated a sequence of numbers. She began again with zero and worked her way back to seven, when it again gave her the gooseflesh and the sensation that she was in a groove.
Jason was big on grooves. It was his published research in a journal that drew Midge to the team. Jason and Midge got along right from the start. Jason had been looking to add some softer science services into his team’s offerings. He hated to admit it, but a big reason for this was to appeal to more impressionable people. Jason was passionate about his work and his integrity, but a guy had to pay rent.
Grooves were psychospiritual ruts left by the deceased. Echoes. Some measure that a human had lived, suffered, thought, and was happy in their place. They were measurable but controversial.
After Midge had uncovered a sequence of numbers, she wanted someone to verify it. It was easy to deceive oneself, so she had taught Jason how to meditate and sat him on her cushion.
“Whoa,” Jason said from the firm round pillow she called a zafu. From where she stood, Midge said the hair on his neck stood up and saw him shiver.
I bet he just hit that third seven.
She had instructed him about how to unwind a sequence of numbers. Jason was nothing if not open-minded. He was a natural meditator.
Moment of truth.
Midge prayed silently that their sequences would match. It was her first outing with the team, and, like Jason, she also had to pay rent. She liked Jason, liked the team, and enjoyed the work; she wanted to be a good fit and wanted to be a part of it.
The widow, Myrna, slumped on the couch. Midge felt certain that she was asleep.
“So far, I have 7…7…7…2. You said your sequence had five digits, right?”
As Jason tried to uncover the sequence of numbers Midge had found, he was careful to avoid looking at her. He understood such things as “cold readings” were real. They were the tools of every mentalist, but they were after truth, not entertainment.
Without preamble, Myrna coughed once, then lurched forward so drastically it was like she had died in one breath and returned to life in the next.
“Seven, seven, seven, twenty-seven! July 27, 1877. That was Harry’s birthday,” Myrna rasped out. The team watched her, fearing she would die for real before completing the ceremony and before they got paid.
Yes! Midge thinks to herself. She was pleased that she’d shown her value to the team.
Eric, the team’s astrologer, couldn’t help himself.
“Typical Leo. Even in death, they need to be the center of attention.
Jason flashed him a stern look. Eric stopped smiling and found something on the opposite side of the room to scrutinize.
“He was a lovable goof that never met a stranger,” Myrna said, turning away from Midge before wiping another tear away.
Midge wanted to like her; she didn’t want to risk doing anything that might make them change their mind about her. She studied Myrna closely. The look felt authentic, but it also looked constructed. Like something she’d practiced in front of a mirror.
Earlier.
“That’s just sad,” Tony said, reading from a face-up newspaper. It lay balanced on a tall leaning stack of others, and he would’ve bet his paycheck that none of them had been read.
The 48 point-font headline read:
Twelfth Child Goes Missing – Puzzled Police Probe Public for Help in Suspected Foul Play.
“Not pithy for a headline now, is it?” Eric said but then returned to their van for an adapter before anyone could answer his question.
“What kind of man who could do such a vile thing?” Myrna said, catching Midge’s eye.
Why can’t I shake this feeling she’s hiding something?
Now.
Midge’s attention was yanked away by the laughter that seemed to drift down from the attic.
All of them gazed at the ceiling.
“Did we get that recorded?” Jason said.
Sheldon looked sheepish for a second, then shook his head.
“Let’s get them up ASAP.”
As Sheldon jumped into action, Midge pulled Tony into the foyer outside the sitting room.
She pulled him closer so that no one would hear her.
“Did that sound right to you?” she whispered to Jason.
“What do you mean?”
Midge looked hesitant; she didn’t want to do anything to upset the investigation or upset her chances of joining the team.
“Look, if your intuition is telling you something, just say it. Don’t worry about passing the provisional period. We just put that in to scare out the posers and dilettantes. As far as I’m concerned, you’re on the team. If that’s something, you still want.”
“I do. I want that a lot.”
“So, spill already,” Jason said, glancing over his shoulder at the others in the sitting room.
“Did that sound like an 84-year-old man’s laughter?” Midge said.
“It happened so fast. Sheldon messed up…”
Jason wouldn’t blame his tech guy. He decided the final responsibility and blame were on his shoulders.
“It didn’t sound like an old man laugh to me,” she said.
He looked at her, impressed.
“There’s more,” she said.
“I’m listening.”
“The grooves.”
“What about them?” he asked, embarrassed. That was his field – why was he the one answering and not asking the questions? His respect for Midge doubled.
“Well, aside from the numbers of his birthdate, we haven’t found any grooves, have we?”
They had not. Aside from the numbers, they had found no grooves.
“No, we haven’t,” Jason said.
“And they’ve lived here fifty years?”
“Yeah.”
“Which would mean…”
Once a spirit moved on, the grooves began to decay right away. Harry had been gone for five months, according to Myrna. If he was haunting the place, there should have been a lot of grooves from half a century of living there.
“Harry has already moved on.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Midge said.
“But there is something here,” Jason said, trailing off and leading them back into the family room.
Tony had assumed they were conducting a simple eviction.
“So, do you want us to help Harry move on?” he said.
“Oh, my. Do you think it’s really Harry?” Myrna said.
Who else would it be? Midge thought.
“None of our children ever gave us any grandchildren,” Myrna said, gazing out the window at the flowers in the garden, squeezing her lips together tight and wiping her eyes.
She’s losing it, Midge thought.
Classic grief symptoms.
The laughter started again.
“Recording,” Sheldon stage whispered to the room.
“Sounds like it’s coming from the basement,” Eric said.
Then more laughter sifted down from above.
“Claude and Marie were pregnant the one time, but she miscarried,” Myrna said, staring into her garden again.
“That’s coming from the attic,” Tony said.
“Do we have two distinct centers of activity, Shel?”
Sheldon glanced down at his computer for an instant before nodding.
Well, that’s new.
“Anyone ever hear of a spook doing that? Speaking from two distinct locations at the same time?” Jason asked.
He scanned the faces of his teammates. They each shook their heads in turn.
Laughter floated in from the garden. Jason raised his eyebrows to Sheldon, who then held up three fingers.
We witnessed spectral voices from three distinct epicenters. Unbelievable.
“The thing about Harry, he always wanted them. Grandkids,” Myrna said, wiping her eyes.
Eric stepped over to her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“But you were saying about helping him move on?” Myrna said to Tony.
Tony locked eyes with her.
“It would be nice to keep him around if I could.”
“Well, what you’re thinking of as your husband…”
“It was supposed to be a little girl,” Myrna said, sniffing.
“What you are remembering about Harry…” Tony tried again to steer her back on track.
“He was devastated when we got the news.”
Myrna was staring at something a thousand miles away and seventeen years past.
“Um,” Tony said.
“Let me,” Jason said, guiding the group into the master bedroom with the smoothness of a tour guide at a museum.
“Myrna, you see this?” Jason said, stepping forward to widen his arms to indicate Harry’s clothes in their closet. A faded yellow plastic disk marked the separation between his and her garments with cheerful HERS / HIS labels on its sides. “Think of this as being the total of who Harry was.”
Jason looked up and caught Myrna’s eyes and saw that she was following him.
“If this is…was Harry, then his ghost is this,” Jason said, dropping his right arm and gripping the leftmost garment, a silky thing, still on its hanger with his left.
That was his jacket! The one he wore the day we met.
The two centermost garments sandwiched the yellow disc, a pale blue silk jacket for him, and a forest green, warmer wool sweater for her.
The sweater was what she had worn that day. It was a sign for her.
“If I’m honest, we both wanted grandkids.”
Ninety percent of their haunting calls ended with Tony working his magic and sending the spirit packing. He sensed this job was different. Tony relaxed and let another branch of the team take the lead. He instantly looked twelve years younger.
“I thought the kids would help him forget about us never having grandkids,” Myrna said, rubbing her eyes.
The entire team had almost shifted to ignoring her random sayings.
Jason, however, was the Skipper. He couldn’t afford to be lax.
“What did you say, Myrna?”
“The kids. I thought they would make him happy. I was hoping they’d make him want to stick around.
Eric floated to where Jason and Midge stood. He held the newspaper up discreetly so only they could see the headline he had read earlier.
“Uh-oh. Well, there goes any chance we have of getting paid today,” Jason said, resigned.
“I’ll call the police,” Eric said, slipping from the room.
“Midge, please take Myrna into the garden and have her practice that meditation ritual you showed me earlier,” Jason said.
Midge understood Jason wanted Myrna out of the house. She didn’t need to be there for what was coming next. The police would be there soon. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be getting paid, but they still needed to help twelve lost spirits find their way from the house where no grandkids had ever played.
Stories by Shawn 