Elizabeth Basque - Medium Mysteries 01 - Echo Park (12 page)

“
Right-side up when we have guests, please, Mack! It can be disconcerting to my clients,” I said as we hauled our shopping bags into my bedroom and dumped them out on my bed.

Mack followed us in and now floated right-side up, but the wicked grin stayed on his face. “I want to tell you
everything
that happened!”

“
Okay. Shoot,” I said.

Mack was like a little kid with a secret. “A-haunting we will go, a-haunting we will go!” he sang, building up the suspense as he was wont to do. Because Mack was flitting back and forth in excitement and making a cold breeze, Julie sat herself primly in an overstuffed chair in the corner of my bedroom to get out of his draft. She wrapped an afghan around herself and regarded Mack with not a little trepidation. She was all ears, though she was nervous.

“Before you tell your story, Mack, I just want to say, Julie, I’ve been in the Medium and Psychic business for a couple of decades, and people like you come to me for spiritual guidance in things they can’t see, but feel and can’t explain. I help people to make sense of the psychic realm, put things into perspective, and help them connect with the dead, mostly loved ones. Eventually, and reverently, may I add, I entice the ghosts to go Home, into the light.”

I paused and looked at my ghostly housemate. “I know you have been ‘a-haunting,’ Mack, and that you must have had terrific fun, but please remember how very serious my business is and treat it with some measure of respect.”

“Believe me, I do,” Mack said, subdued now. He shimmered in and out and I turned on my bedroom TV and muted it, nodding toward the remote.

He touched it and got a boost. “You do good wahk and I nevah want to minimize what you do.” He paused. “Back to the hauntings, though, can I
please
tell you what happened with Snake?”

“
Sure.” I smiled and cut the tags off our purchases as we listened and organized our outfits.

“
I know you wanted the dailies on our hauntings, so heah ya go. I can tell you that this guy wanted nothing moah than to be left alone and would do almost anything to get rid of me.”

I was trying to maintain a professional demeanor, without much success. It wasn’t easy because purposeful hauntings were not anything I liked to participate in as a Medium. Plus, Mack’s wicked sense of humor was infectious.

“What did you do to him, Mack?” I asked.

“
Plenty. I had the pleasure of visiting one of the pushahs that Michael seldom used, but who he thought would be a great candidate to take down. This particulah dealah goes by the name of Snake. A fitting name, I thought, for one so slimy, but I found out that the reason he calls himself Snake is actually because he
has
a pet snake; it’s a boa constrictor that’s tame and was probably really small when he bought it, but it’s this huge snake now, Pauline. You should have seen it. It looked like it should have its own show on the Discovery Channel.”

“
Oh, this should be good,” Julie said.

“
You haven’t hahd nothin’ yet!” Mack replied and took another power boost off the TV remote to stay visible.

“
So, Snake uses his snake to his advantage to impress drug buyahs, gals, and anyone who comes ovah. He pitches a frozen rat in the cage and then they watch him eat it before they get their fix on, or even
while
they are getting their fix on.”

“
So much for the entertainment at his house,” I said.

“
I know! So, ovah the past couple of days, I let the big snake out of his cage at least a few times a day. Obviously, the snake doesn’t have the run of the house because he is big enough to kill a sleeping person, or a drugged one, for that mattah. Snake—the man—was dumbfounded, at first. He installed another latch on the snake’s cage, but that did no good because
I
am the one who kept letting the boa constrictor out. He put a set of bahbells on top of the cage, but then, every time he left the room, the creature was apparently strong enough to topple those ovah, too. Or so he thought.”

“
I bet this made Snake more than a little nervous,” Julie said, her eyes bright.

“
Oh, yeah. It also made Snake uneasy when I began dimming the lights by drawing powah from the sockets, so I could keep moving the bahbells off the snake’s cage and letting him out. I also burned out light bulbs on a daily basis. Soon the place only had one lit bulb left. And then he would come back and the snake would be out of the cage again—the serpent weighs a lot and if it doesn’t want to go back into his cage, they have a big struggle, every time!”

Despite my resolve to stay respectful, I giggled.

“I would turn on the kitchen faucet or shower, and Snake would rush to turn them off, glancing around his studio apartment nuhvus as hell. He stahted getting paranoid that someone was messing with him and he looked in the closets to see if someone was playing a trick. He settled down to watch a game on TV and I made the screen go all snowy by taking a powah hit. Then when it came back, I changed the channel to a horror movie. It was a
Chucky
flick, right at the good pahts.”

Now Julie was giggling.

“I haven’t gotten to the best paht. Okay, this is the second-best paht. The best paht, I’ll save for last.”

I nodded.

“I laid in wait for clients to come to Snake’s place. A client showed up to buy. He was shaking, not having fixed for a couple of days. Snake brought out his scale and carefully doled out the light-brown heroin powder.”

“
Go on,” I said.

“
The client, he was a pock-marked man in his fifties who looked sixty-five. Oh, he’d been doing drugs a
long
time and barely had teeth left. He watched Snake weigh out his buy with anxiety, and Snake also weighed out his complimentary fix to appease him. Snake always kept his windows closed and shades down when he was doing business, which wahked out perfectly for me. I touched the TV remote, making snow on the screen, and then…I took a deep breath and blew! I blew and blew and blew like the big bad wolf and that heroin went everywhah.”

I burst into laughter and Mack continued his story.

“Then, the client yells, ‘What the fuck?’ and he’s glancing around for an air conditioning vent or some other reason for the sudden draft. But there was no explanation they could see. Snake cussed, too, and glanced around, getting more paranoid with each ghost trick I played on him. And this particular trick cost him money. He had to measure out all new stuff and I blew that away, too, and passed through both of them and made them really, really cold! The buyah, shivering, left without anything, but at gunpoint, he made Snake give him his money back so he could go score somewhere else.”

“
Wow,” I said. “You wrecked a drug deal!”

“
Good for you, Mack,” Julie said.

“
It ain’t ovah yet…Snake
was
beginning to suspect a ghost. And it scared him. He’s like this tough guy, able to hold his own in any normal situation, but these strange occurrences definitely had him spooked.
I
had him spooked,” Mack said proudly.

I nodded. “You go!”

“The icing on the cake is coming. Snake had
another
client over the next day. Because of my haunting, he had quickly gotten into the habit of getting his clients in and out as fast as possible. No idle chit chat. Not only was he growing more freaked out by the day, but his customers were spreading stories about him, how he took their money and then spilled all the H. He couldn’t afford to lose any more business.”

“
Sweet,” I couldn’t help saying in admiration for Mack’s hard work.

“
Snake had everything ready to go for a deal when he let anothah fellow into his place, and they quickly settled down for the buy. They sat at his kitchen table, and Snake measured out the powdah. This client wanted to taste the stuff, to tell if it was good, and figuah out what it was cut with. So, just as he was dipping a long, dirty pinky fingernail into the powdah to put on his tongue…” Mack pointed at Julie. “What do you think happened?”

“
You let the snake loose?” she asked.

“
Yuh-huh. Snake’s massive boa constrictor slid across the floor lightning-quick and wrapped its beefy-thick coils around the guy’s leg, making its way up to his waist.” Mack snapped his finger. “That quick, ladies! Boa constrictor, like in a horror movie.”

“
Oh my God,” I said.

Mack continued, “The client screamed in terror, and wet his pants, which scared the big snake and caused it to tighten its hold on the man, cause he was warm! The dude jumped up, overturning the whole table, which was piled with heroin. Murky drug dust flew everywhere. And still, the snake, huge and heavy, clamped tighter, throwing the screaming guy off balance.”

“Oh
my
!” Julie said, her eyes wide with wonder.

“
Snake was at his side in a moment, telling him to calm down and stop fucking yelling or the snake would bite him. Snake had to use all of his strength to pry the constricting serpent off and unwind him. Lamps were broken, furniture was overturned, the whole enchilada! Pandemonium reigned!”

I giggled. I just couldn’t help it.

Mack continued, “‘What the fuck!’ the junkie yelled, and Snake apologized as he took his pet back to its cage, wondering how the hell it got out
this
time, even threatening the poor snake with getting donated to a zoo. But when he turned back to the kitchen area, Snake found he was all alone. And the ruined heroin was all over his dirty floor with snake trails crisscrossed through it. Yep, now he realized there was heroin all over his pet snake!”

I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Best paht, heah it comes. Yah should have seen da guy trying to sweep up heroin with a dustpan and whisk broom and crying.
Crying!
Then he had to wrestle that ten-foot snake into the filthy bathtub and wash it off. While he was filling the tub and trying to get the snake into it, I pulled the diverter knob for the showah and the wahm bath he planned for the snake turned into a shower, and then I turned the water on full-blast cold!”

Julie cracked up. I did, too.

“Then, as he’s cussing up a stohm, the big snake wrapped around
Snake’s
neck, bit the shit out of his shoulder and dragged him in the tub while he screamed bloody murder. Cold wattah splashed everywheah. By the time he got himself loose, gasping and cursing, and got the snake washed, dried off with every clean towel in the place and back in his cage—with a fifty-pound sack of cement on top of the door—Snake was shaking, soaking wet from head to toe and sobbing into the couch cushions with an ice pack on his shoulder. I almost pissed myself, Pauline! Well, if a ghost could…”

I giggled again. “But the main thing is…is the
snake
okay?”

Mack let loose a roaring laugh. “Yuh-huh, the snake is fine.”

Chapter Twenty-two

“Mack, can you please go find Carla?” I asked. “I want to see how she’s doing with her haunting.”

“
Sure, and you ladies need to get in the black outfits anyway. I need to stop at the transformah down the street and whet my whistle. Then, I’ll find Cahla for yuh.”

“
Thanks, Mack,” I said.

After he left, Julie and I got into our fake cat burglar outfits with the fetish-looking black boots. They weren’t hooker boots—not patent leather—but soft black grained leather with stacked heels. I loved them and they made me look taller and more intimidating. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to run in them.

When we were ready, Julie and I looked at each other in the full-length mirror next to my antique dresser.

“
Gorgeous, if faintly dominatrix-ish,” she remarked.

“
Oh, gee thanks, and here I was, going for the cat burglar look.”

“
That’s all right. Black is your fashion friend. You can project any attitude in black and black understands.”

I nodded. “You would know. You always look great.”

“Thanks.”

“
It’s true.”

“
I like Mack,” Julie said, out of the blue. “He understood how important it was, to scare the daylights out of that drug dealer, but he never lost his sense of humor.”

I grinned. “I think he enjoyed this haunting a little too much. If ever again I need a partner in crime to go ‘a-haunting’ with me, Mack is the perfect ghost for the job.”

“If he’s still around,” Julie said.

“
What do you mean?” I asked.

“
Well, he might go into the light, to Home. Right?”

“
Yeah, of course I hope he will,” I replied quickly, my heart pounding in fear. If Mack left, I would truly be all alone. I
did
want him to go Home, but he clearly was hanging on tight to his baggage and not making any plans to leave Earth for the next plain. I wanted him to go, yet selfishly, I didn’t.