Declan’s not your run-of-the-mill medium. Word down on Afterlife Avenue has it that Dec will only work with certain kinds of undead, and he keeps only a selective few on his payroll... and those spooks are about to meet his parents.
Thanks to the standard American diet, the junk food offerings of Millburg Minimart consumed five of the seven aisles in the store. I gave a half-hearted effort to wipe the wet leaves from the bottoms of my boots on the worn entry mat, grabbed a lime green shopping basket with a tennis-ball-sized hole in the side, and headed toward all-things-cheese flavored.
Dad’s favorites.
Mine, not so much. But tonight’s reunion wasn’t about me. Snacks for two. Or four. I glanced over my shoulder at Bev and Sol, unsure what the final headcount would be, so I erred on the side of plenty and headed for the checkout. Twice, the Cheezy Whippy can toppled through the basket’s hole. I picked it up once. Solomon caught it midair the second time and returned it to the basket. I glared at him then around the shop. No one saw. Thank goodness.
The fall raindrops were still trickling from my scalp when I reached the register. I heard a couple of lady shoppers moan about the drop in temps and that the rainstorm has ripped nature’s organic oranges and reds from the oaks. I’m glad for the change in weather. I used my free hand to zip my winter coat up to my Adam’s apple, glad to no longer explain my choice of wardrobe or endure the curious stares when I choose to bundle up no matter the Fahrenheit level.
I sat the basket sideways on the counter for the clerk, a gaunt, tattooed young kid who couldn’t make eye contact with me if his life depended on it. With each reach into the shopping basket, I watched the gooseflesh rise and multiply in ripples on the skin around his sweatshirt collar—despite the space heater’s orange radiation stale warmth around us. Despite his long sleeves, double-layered shirts, and cut-out finger gloves. Despite the beanie on his head.
He was cold.
I know the look. The turtling of the head into the shoulders, chin to chest, eyes down. The bone-chilling freeze. Poor tortured soul. I’m accustomed to it by now, but by no means was one suffering from an ailment like mine ever comfortable.
Beverly and Solomon saw to that.
And the clerk could see my two ingrates. I nodded for them to leave the store ahead of me. Reluctantly, they did so; a trail of otherworldly gloom followed them out to the rain-soaked sidewalk. The kid dared a glance up.
Then right back down again.
I glance behind me, my eyes a little wider and a little more receptive than when I’d entered the store only a few minutes before—wide enough to see but not to take too much in. A skill learned over the years. Much like a baby playing peek-a-boo who truly believes he can’t be seen behind a thin swaddle, I like to believe I can’t be tagged if my lids hang at half-staff.
Three more lurked. One by the milk cooler. One by the stockroom door. One behind the chattering ladies in line behind me.
I wondered if these three follow the kid. I wondered if they’ve made their requests known. Or were they one of the hundreds of dead-but-not-so-dead ones that float and hover around those with the ailment? Begging. Haunting. Hanging on until we do their bidding.
Sometimes hanging around much past completion of their wishes.
I whip my head around toward my purchase, pay the kid in wadded-up bills from my pocket, and told him to keep the change. I didn’t want any of them to know what I am.
What I can do.
I certainly didn’t need this kid, God help him amid his curse, seeking counsel from me. I didn’t need him to know what I am. That I’m like him in more ways than he’d imagine.
And I didn’t need to add three more ghosts to my payroll.
Three is plenty, thank you very much.
I gathered the plastic sack of yellow and orange-powdered gut rot and joined my gang on the sidewalk. The rain had let up, but the drizzle tapped out an unkempt rhythm on the shopping bag. My boots swung through the mess of wet leaves, once kicking an empty soda can hidden underneath.
“No,” I said to Sol.
He didn’t listen and moved the can four feet down the sidewalk. Grinned at me, even. Taunting.
“Stop, Sol.”
He couldn’t resist cans and bottles. That’s why he’d played with the cheese can in the store. Showing off. Letting off some pent-up ghoul. He’d been behaving rather well over the last few days. It was time for a show, I guess.
Solomon didn’t listen and lifted the can five feet off the ground and sent it skimming through the rain like an air hockey puck, pinging off trees and stop sign poles until it was out of sight. He smiled and nodded at Beverly, who rolled her eyes and huffed. She’s never been a fan of Solomon’s theatrics.
I wouldn’t mind them, much like a toddler’s mom can drown out ridiculousness as a matter of her own sanity. Keep the tot from touching the hot stove. Keep him from wandering into traffic. Maybe keep him from picking his nose, at least in public. But all the other stuff? Eat spaghetti with your toes. Fine. Repeat the last four words you heard the cartoon character say five hundred times. Fine. Wear a sock on one hand and Dad’s underwear on your head. Fine. None of that stuff really matters.
Solomon’s much like a toddler, but when he brings his antics to the street, Bev and I become more than a little miffed. His energy draws others. And, like I said before, I like to keep my payroll small.
I’m an atypical medium. I don’t put up with the lonely and despairing, seeking to send great-grandmama a “love you, miss you, see you soon” message from beyond. I don’t have time for that. And those poor souls, God rest their souls, have nothing to give me in return. They’re time-sucks and soul-drainers.
And, unfortunately, many mediums fall victim to the ebbs and flows of the underworld, doing the bidding of a dozen undead at a time.
I’m not that kind. Not that kind of medium and not that kind. The pathetic kid at the checkout likely won’t have a life past that checkout. Work, keep head down, send a few messages, repeat.
I could train him how to drown out all but the heavy hitters. How to profit from the past lives of criminals and colluders. And there really aren’t that many of those types of ghosts around. The mobsters—I’ve served three. The serial killers—two of those so far, but the outcome wasn’t pleasant, so I sent them on their way. The thieves—many. Solomon is my current employee and physical safe-cracker.
And there’s Bev. She laundered the money for some pretty powerful people—all of them still living. And easily spooked, much to my wallet’s joy. Her price was low and her return was high. She’d feed me account numbers if I kept her in touch with a few of her chosen ones still living. I’ve kept her on. And thank God the massive, large-breasted woman died with her bathrobe on. Tattered and blue with ripped pockets, her lighter always falling out. Hair pulled back in a messy gray bun. Cigarette still hanging out of her mouth, still releasing tendrils of smoky ribbons. Sometimes I swear I pick up a twinge of nicotine. She swears that’s not how it works on her end. It’s simply the power of suggestion.
Bev’s voice is deep and gravelly, but she says that’s not how it works, either. She wants me to go to an audiologist. So I can be proven wrong. So he can tell me all of my hammers, stapes, and anvils remain totally still as she rattles on about how she pulled one over on the governor. Or how the chief of police moved his mommy three counties over for fear that Bev—when she was on this side of the veil—would reveal to her his dirty scam. To prove me wrong once and for all that she telepaths her half of the conversation into my brain, bypassing the mechanics of my ears.
I, on the other hand, must speak my mind.
And carefully. A couple of times she’d gotten me so worked up in public that I yelled at her, drawing attention to myself from the living and dead alike. After that, she siphoned me an account number so I could afford a Bluetooth. No one’s the wiser if I have to correct one of my employees in public. Most people in the city have an earpiece of some sort while they walk the sidewalks and hallways talking to themselves. Now I do, too.
Solomon’s thing is telekinesis. That’s what I pay him for. I keep his great-grandchildren in school and educated and feed dollars into their mother’s account when needed. He provides me with security. After all, I deal with death and dying, and my clientele is partial to all manner of weapons—the living and the dead.
We reach the corner where the pop can pinged its last. Solomon grinned, and I stepped on the can, smashing it flat and put it in the sack with the snacks. He stopped grinning. Bev wriggled her cigarette at me with her tongue and grinned. She likes it when Solomon pouts.
A couple more blocks in the damp before reaching home base. An apartment rental that Bev and Sol secured for me. A rare moment when the two worked seamlessly together, as they had a living contact in common. I supply Mrs. Fredrickson with news of her dead husband—one of Solomon’s marks back in the day and, as it turns out, one of Bev’s side-beaus. Mrs. Fredrickson loves to be angry, raging over his affairs (there were many) and his crimes (also multiple, and more coming to light as the months go on), so the intelligence my gang supplies, along with tidy sums of cash from an account Bev whispered into my brain (all Mr. Fredrickson’s ill-gotten dough), keep me in well-appointed living quarters.
I fished my keys out of my pocket. Solomon could work the lock, but I didn’t want him expending otherworldly energy out in the open, so I did it myself. The heavy steel gauge door swung into my space. Incense and potpourri of pumpkin spice and vanilla bean greet me. Any other would think it a warm, welcoming smell. I’m trying to mask Bev’s smoke and Solomon’s rot. Mrs. Fredrickson’s never complained, and she’s been down here many times. It’s in my head if not my nostrils.
I set the bag down on the counter and unpacked the snacks, lining them up just so. Cheese puffs. Balls. Curls. Chips. Crackers. Whippy. I glared at Solomon. “No. Leave the snacks.” He slunk to the corner. I felt sorry for him, so I gave him the smashed can to mess with. He reflated it and clanged it off my chairs and table legs. Like handing a toddler a wooden spoon and a pot lid. Bev rolled her eyes and hefted herself to the corner. Man, I’m always so glad she died with her clothes on.
I took off my soaked jacket and scarf and hung them on the backs of the table chairs to dry. I turned up the thermostat. Always set on seventy-six, I cranked it to eighty-two. I knew it wouldn’t help, but it made me feel better.
He’d be here shortly. For our yearly ritual of snacking and VHS reruns. My dad. And he’d likely bring in the cold.
I sat back in my recliner. I’d sprung for the heated one with massage capabilities. I figured I deserved it after all I put up with. Bev wished she could sink her tired essence into a recliner. I waved her off. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to her whine. Solomon, tired of the can, retreated to his corner opposite Bev. They watched me as I examined the sheet I’d hung before our outing to procure the snacks. A white bedsheet draped from a fishing line that I’d secured in hooks on the wall. A projector, old school, so Solomon had worked it through Bev who worked the setup into my head so I could go big screen this year.
Because I’d planned not to do this again. To go out big and be done with this ritual.
How much longer can it go on? I dreaded telling Dad, but he needed to move on.
I’m getting nothing but grief for my trouble. Exactly what I try to avoid at all costs. Grief and grieving.
I work tit for tat. I won’t be horrified or tormented into helping those masses, no matter how many of them try to find me. Most have given up thanks to an informant I once served. I delivered four messages for Gregory and then charged him to do what he did best when he was on this side of the sidewalk. Inform. Inform as many of the between-worlds kind that Declan Morose isn’t for hire. Declan Morose is an atypical medium and they should find some other sensitive spirit to taunt and tickle.
Gregory had done his job well. Between his word out on the street and a dozen tricks I’d learned over forty years on the job, I’d whittled the chaos down to two main buddies and the occasional side job.
Gregory had tried to give the message to my dad. But Pop would have none of it and had insisted from his deathbed night until now that we stay in touch.
Once a year. For the last fifteen years.
Same lineup of cheesy snacks.
Same movie.
The gooseflesh prickled down my spine. The furnace struggled to keep the thermostat’s needle in the sixties.
He’d arrived. I glanced toward the kitchen, following Solomon’s hollow eyes and Bev’s slightly startled gawk.
Great. Dad brought Mom.
I studied them and sighed.
The kind of ghouls I served weren’t that needy in real life. Hard-core criminals rarely fall into that category. And most of them were only slightly needy in their deaths.
Dad, though. I should be glad he visits just once a year. He thought late October would do fine, seeing as how I’d be incredibly busy after the first of the year. Most unlearned think that Halloween and the thirteenths that fall on Fridays are busy times for mediums. January and February are the worst. Post-holiday let-downs and February’s lost loves have a way of sucking souls from bodies. I tend to stay indoors and do extra bidding for Sol and Bev. So they can be my bouncers.
I stood and faced the kitchen. Faced my parents. Dead. Dad fifteen years. Mom five. No amount of bouncing, informing, or tits-for-tats could keep my parents away from me this year.
“What’s up?”
Mom shrugged, guilt trip pouring off her see-through shoulders.
Dad rolled his eyes. “Can we be a family this year? Just once?” He flicked a bony hand toward the sheet where Bev and Sol hovered.
“No. They stay.”
“I have something to tell you, Dec. I don’t want an audience.”
“I always have an audience, Dad. You know this.” I’d asked Bev a few years ago if I was hearing my father speak to me or if he was planting thoughts like she did. She rolled her eyes. Told me he wasn’t that talented of a ghost and probably never would be. He was speaking. I was hearing. It was simple.
I unscrewed the lid from the Cheezy Whippy and opened the crackers. “Want some?” I offered a loaded saltine to my mother. She loathed junk food. Never let me eat anything after school but grapes and apples. Even blamed my ailment on the sugar content of the elementary school’s chocolate milk. Dad had tried to explain it to her. She’d have none of it. I think she’s come around now, though.
“Not funny, Declan.” She turned her back to me. Her blouse billowed around her waist. I couldn’t see what color. I knew she was in jeans and a teal shirt when she passed. But I couldn’t make out the color. Bev had been with me for such a long time that I could pick details out on her form that I couldn’t on the fresh ones. Mom, much to my dismay, was considered a fresh one. Destined to hover for quite some time. “Not funny at all. And I don’t appreciate that insensitive Gregory fellow telling me to stay away from my only son.”
I stuffed the cracker in my mouth, the salt sucking away what little moisture was there. I wanted a water bottle from the fridge, but I wasn’t going to step into the kitchen. With my parents. No matter how thirsty I was. I wasn’t sorry Gregory warned Mom off. She could bother someone else with her woe.
I turned back to the projector setup. I popped in the VHS tape and adjusted the volume as the images began to dance on the screen in front of us.
“Wait a minute, Dec. We need to talk.” The pause button depressed on the VCR. I glared at Solomon. He floated backward with palms up. Wasn’t him. He always took gloating credit for his tricks.
I pressed play again.
Pause depressed.
Mother. That’s why he’d brought her. Dad couldn’t telekenese and he wanted my attention.
“No. We need to watch this, so you and Mom can be appeased and on your way.”
“I taught you better, Dec. I taught you to listen with your gift. To help people. Not to simply appease.” The ‘s’ on appease slithered out of him snake-like. A scare tactic. Overused and underrated.
“Not a gift, Dad.” I pressed play down and held it there. Solomon grinned. He wasn’t the only one I’d had to bully into behaving today. “An ailment.”
Dad glared at Mom who fumed and popped open the bag of cheese puffs, sending a spray of crumbs and orange dye all over the kitchen floor.
“Blasphemy.”
“Tell that to the poor kid at Millburg Mart. Or the ones that walk hunched over in the mall trying to buy underwear in peace, bombarded by broken souls. Try telling that to me, Dad. At the ripe old age of three when you found out I could talk to the dead, you used me.”
The scene escalated quickly. We’d never talked like this before. Always a playful ritual around the snack counter. Always a sit-down-and-watch moment, and then he’d leave.
“I developed you.” He slid forward, nose to nose with me, only the thin veil between life and death separating his exhales from my inhales. Bev moved behind me, ready for action, her nicotine, usually revolting, now comforting and strong in my senses. Solomon hovered near Mom, ready for ghost-on-ghost defense.
I pressed play again. Not to be bullied or horrified. Dad allowed it, calling Mom off. The gears in the VCR spun the images of childhood one after the other. My coming-home day. My various birthdays. Learning to ride a bike.
The home movie attempted to mark milestones of normalcy. Dad and I had watched this film for years. I’d often wondered what would happen when the tape wore out. I don’t have a backup. I’m not nostalgic. Why would I be? The images in front of me are from one tiny pocket of my childhood. The other pockets were stuffed to overflowing with ghosts and devils and Dad gaining from it. I never understood why he wouldn’t move on. I’d figured it was out of guilt for using me.
As if sensing what I was thinking, he said, “This is what I wanted to talk to you about.” He nodded toward Mom.
“I need to come clean.” He leaned in close and whispered to me, “So she can move on. I’m tired of her neediness. Of being shunned by so many here because she’s got such a temper. Gregory did a number on the other mediums. They won’t take my calls.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I figure if I come clean about what I did,” he nodded toward Mom, “She can be at peace.”
“What you did was bleed your son of any real life instead of getting him the help he needed.” Mom winced when I said this. She’d not believed me or dad. Thought us to be playing games. An inside father-and-son joke.
Dad looked confused. Through his form I could see the kitchen behind him and the mess Mom had made. She continued to flick cheese curls onto the floor. “What? I’m not sorry for how I raised you. I’m sorry for what I did to her.” He pointed to Mother.
“What are you talking about?” She asked.
He moved toward her. On this side, he’d have put an arm around her shoulders and led her to the couch to have a chat. On that side, all he could do was hover. She pulled back.
“What are you talking about?”
“Miriam. Sweetheart. I’m the reason you died.”
Her eyes widened. My eyes widened. Solomon and Bev withdrew closer to the curtain where ten-year-old Declan took a forward flip into the neighbor’s swimming pool. The tape failed to pick up the three bodies floating in the pool. Souls of bodies, anyway. I’d always been terrified of that pool. When a kid tells you they don’t want to jump off the diving board, there may be more than one reason why.
The temperature dropped another five degrees. My poor furnace. “What do you mean, Dad? Mom had a heart attack.”
He straightened his form and hovered over the recliner. “That’s what they thought it was. But I did it. I needed some company. I was lonely, Dec. You ostracized me. You and that Gregory fellow. But now I just need her to move on. It’s not the same as it used to be—”
A shrill shriek like that from a school bus about to lose its brakes escaped from the depths of my mother. The VCR ground to a halt, pausing twelve-year-old me in flannel Christmas pajamas on the fluttering bedsheet before disappearing in an explosion of sparks and plastic bits. Solomon froze a few of the pieces just inches from my face. Gears and black ribbon from the crushed VHS drifted to the floor when he released his hold.
Bev told me to duck. I did so, barely clearing my scalp of the flying jar of cheese balls. It exploded with a pop against the walls. Balls in the living room. Curls in the kitchen. Mom wreaking havoc with the Cheezy Whippy can while Dad tried to calm her.
Solomon was in his element. Catching and flinging containers, curls, and balls back at hollow forms that would never feel the impact—but my walls could. I told him to stop throwing, just catch. I hoped Mrs. Fredrickson had her hearing aids turned down.
“Duck again,” Bev said. She’d nestled herself in the corner, grinning with that dumb cigarette that never burned out hanging from her mouth. I listened and turned in time to see a spray of orange goo heading toward my head, the slime splattered all over the sheet in bright drips. Thank God it missed the recliner.
“How long you gonna let this go on?” Bev asked.
“How long you gonna float there until you earn your keep?” I snarked back.
Bev laughed and hovered horizontally over my enraged mother, her hands reaching down toward Mom’s head. I couldn’t hear what she said. But then again, Bev wasn’t saying anything. Mom looked up at Bev, gave her two middle fingers and then tunneled through the wall to the outside, leaving a trail of orange powder, goo, and crumbs smudged on the paint job in her wake.
Dad’s form froze, staring at me.
“That went well, I think.” I fished the broom from the side of the fridge and began cleaning up the remnants of the temper tantrum. Solomon tried to help, but toddler that he is, created more work as he played with the cheese balls and exploded the occasional puff in putrid orange dust balls.
Dad still said nothing. “Movie’s over, Dad. Destroyed like my childhood. You can move on. Mom certainly isn’t ready, not with the issues she needs to work through.”
This enraged him. His plan had backfired. He wanted to be free in the in-between. Now Mom was loose, and his time was up. He tried to say something, but the process had already begun. He’d cleared his conscience. The veil was clearing him out, pulling him to a place beyond the reach of any earthly medium.
I didn’t feel anything. No pity. No sorrow. My ailment had caused our family so much dysfunction. One parent exploited me. One parent ignored my pain. And given what I’ve seen over the years, I’m not easily surprised. Not even that Dad had drug Mom to the in-between.
I continued to sweep up the cheese dust from the hardwood floors. Solomon played with the black VHS ribbon, ignoring his empty cans and containers. He’d found a new toy for the moment. I put the broom down to empty my wax pot. There were cheese curls in my pumpkin vanilla spice. I’d rather smell Bev’s smoke.
A knock on the door stalled my cleaning. I hoped it wasn’t Mrs. Fredrickson coming to see what the chaos was about. I opened the door a crack, then let a fall gust blow it all the way open.
The kid from the minimart stood in front of me. Bundled tight in layer upon layer. His head ducked at first, then slowly rose to meet me. He took in the scene behind me. I followed his gaze. Cheese everywhere. Cheesy floors. Cheesy sheet flapping in the wind against the wall. His pale face flashed red then back to ghost white again as he saw the VHS tape dance in a hollow mummy form, Solomon’s puppet on a black ribbon string. Bev hovered in the kitchen like an old bat looking for a place to land, dropping unreal ashes onto the piles of really real cheese curls.
I looked back to the kid who met my gaze full on.
“Sir. Would you please do something about your mother?”
Bev stopped her hovering. Solomon dropped the ribbon into a piled heap on the floor.
“You’ve got to help him, Dec,” Bev said.
“I know.” The kid thought I was talking to him. Bev knew I was responding to her. I looked behind him. In the midafternoon drizzle, a growing line of pathetics waited their turns to speak with this poor tortured soul. “Bev, call Gregory.” This would mean more work for me. More time out in public. I’d owe all three ghouls on the payroll, but I couldn’t turn my back on the kid.
“You want to come in?”
He stood frozen at the doorway. Shivering.
“Listen, kid. You can come inside with me and this mess and these two freaks, or you could stay out here with your paparazzi—”
He nearly knocked me over. Bev stood guard until Gregory showed lest the three forms from the minimart—and my mother—should try to enter. I offered to take the kid’s coat, but he clutched to his layers. “Got anything left to eat?”
“Got a name?”
“Aaron.”
I tossed him a sleeve of saltines that had escaped my mother’s rage. “Well, Aaron, the cheese on the sheet should still be edible.”
He shrugged and swiped a cracker across the homemade movie screen. Delivering messages for the dead or eating sprayed-out condiments from a bedsheet—it’s all in a day’s work.
I watched Aaron as he watched Solomon, who’d returned to molding monster shapes with the VHS tape. The kid quit shivering the more crackers he ate. A few hours before, I’d been willing to leave him to his demise. The price all mediums pay. But my mother was contributing to his misery and no one deserves that.
I thought of the payouts I’d have to split. The ghostly employees we’d have to share. Lots of learning to take place over the next few months. Years, actually. It’d taken me a good decade to put together my posse, and some of those decided to go the way of Dad and move on.
But Aaron wouldn’t have to spend his days in misery at Millburg’s earning minimum wage one hour, doing the dead’s dirty work the next.
He’d spend them here with me. Out of the ebb and flow of the underworld. Learning not to be so scared. Not to be a target of the dead’s beckoning. Learning to grow a backbone.
Learning to be a bit…atypical.
