Elizabeth Basque - Medium Mysteries 01 - Echo Park (13 page)

I heard the wingback chair overturn in the living room.

“Mack’s back. Let’s go in the living room, Julie.”

She followed me in there.

Carla was there, touched a TV remote and shimmered before us. “Look at you two. Are those Catwoman Halloween costumes?”

“
Something like that,” I said. “We’re trying to look tough and intimidating.”

Carla said, “Then you should have shades at night, like in the movie,
Men in Black
.”

I laughed and went through my sunglasses and found the perfect pair of aviator-style reflector shades. Julie pulled a pair out of her purse and we modeled them for Carla.

“Those will work,” Carla said.

We put them away in our handbags.

“How did it go with your haunting?” I asked gently.

“
I’ll tell you in a minute. First, hello, Jules.” Carla floated to Julie and put her spirit arms around her.

Young Carla took her haunting job much more seriously. Perhaps because she’d so recently died. Perhaps because she’d had an addict for a mother, and had lived on the streets, had seen things Mack might not have in his lifetime. She didn’t think of this as a “fun” haunting or a prank.

When she let go of Julie, her little face was dead serious.

“
Ready?” I urged.

Carla nodded. “My hauntee was CoCo, a young dark-skinned woman…a heroin dealer who was kind of a ditz. She didn’t have the experience of a longtime drug dealer. I had met her a few times when my mom went to score at her place, but CoCo got busted and went to prison and we didn’t see her for a while. She went through rehab in prison and they let her out on parole because she did great in the program. Within a week, she came right back to Echo Park and started up her old business of dealing so she could use again. She’s still young, and hasn’t learned what other dealers know…not to get hooked on what you’re selling.”

Thank God I had never mixed myself up with illegal drugs, so I was almost clueless about the ins and outs of being a drug dealer and what you should or shouldn’t do. But Carla, even at her tender age of twelve, did know.

Street-smaht girl, that Cahla
came Mack’s thought in my head.

“
What happened when you went over there?” I asked.

“
The first night, I moaned into Coco’s ear, wailing like a lost child. As soon as CoCo woke up from her drugged sleep, I would switch on lights, the TV and even the blender in the kitchen.”

Mack nodded in approval. “Did she think she forgot to turn things off herself?”

“Yeah,” said Carla. “She was so messed up on drugs that she couldn’t remember if she forgot to turn off lights and even the blender, which had margarita mix in it and sprayed all over the kitchen.”

Carla took a power boost off the remote and continued, “She kept trying to nod off again and she shook off my whisperings and moaning as bad dreams. She finally dragged herself out of bed to turn off the lights and blender, and settled herself back in bed. I gave myself a power boost off the fan she had blowing on her and I appeared before her. I’m pale, and I have a gunshot wound and blood on me and plus, she recognized me and screamed my name. And then she said, ‘Shit just got real.’”

Mack clapped his hands a few times. “That’s the way we do it, Carla.”

“
Wow, she said that?” I asked. “Then what?”

“
She thought she needed a tiny fix, to make me go away, to get back to sleep. And make me disappear.” Carla paused. “But I didn’t disappear. I went upside down and floated in front of her because Mack said upside-down ghosts are scary for the living.”

I nodded. It sure was if you weren’t expecting it.

“So, she does her tiny fix and fake-fake goes back to sleep, shutting her eyes tight, even though I am moaning and sometimes singing
Twinkle
,
Twinkle Little Star
in this creepy lullaby way where my voice is echoing and disembodied. Mack taught me how to do that, too.” Carla didn’t smile when she said, “CoCo put the pillow over her head and she wasn’t fake sleeping anymore. She was real crying and kept saying the same thing, ‘Shit got real.’ Finally, she cried herself to sleep.”

A sigh escaped me.

“Fast forward to 4:30 a.m. when the alarm mysteriously went off, blaring some Baptist minister spewing a brimstone and hellfire sermon.”

“
Just what CoCo needed after the previous scare,” Julie said.

“
Yuh-huh,” Mack agreed. Obviously, he was proud of Carla. So was I. She floated toward Julie again and continued talking, “I watched, and waited, as CoCo went through her daily routine. She plastered on makeup to look as normal as possible for her buyers. Then she sat at her laptop and watched YouTube or played solitaire while she waited for sales to roll in.”

She hesitated. “And then I used a trick another ghost taught me.”

Mack looked puzzled, his brows arched in a quizzical expression. “What did you do, Carla?”

“
I put my fingers through CoCo’s while she was at the computer, and brought up websites with images of heroin-addicted babies.”

“
Bravo!” I said.

“
Thanks. CoCo’s eyes saw the horrible, sad photos of the poor babies on the screen, her eyes got big and she said, ‘How is this happening…?’”

“
Pretty clever,” I said.

“
There’s more. Then I brought up a blank document and typed, HOW MANY OF THESE HAVE YOU MADE HOW MANY HOW MANY HOW MANY and down the screen, until CoCo cried out, knocking her chair back and falling to the floor. A day of this brought CoCo to the brink. I flipped lights on and off, sorrowful cries, unwanted websites and typed messages from the beyond.”

“
Cahla, this is more than you. It takes too much powah for one ghost to do all that.”

“
I
showed no mercy,” Carla said, looking a little guilty.

“
She deserved it,” I said. “And besides, Michael’s soul is at stake.”

“
And other souls, too,” Julie said, “future souls like unborn drug babies, were at risk as well.”

“
There’s one thing I didn’t tell you all.” Carla hesitated and shot Mack a guilty look.

“
What?” Mack asked.

“
I wasn’t alone. I got another ghost to help me. Marcus. He was a big guy, about eighteen, who had also died recently, and from a drug overdose. He’d died after mainlining for only the second time.”

“
Where did you meet him?” I demanded, a little too quickly.

“
It’s not important,” she replied.

“
Please, Carla, tell Pauline,” Julie said. “She only wants to help.”

I nodded. Ghosts did have their secrets. Even little girl ghosts.

“I’ll tell you, not exactly where. But in Echo Park, there’s something special about it and there’s a big ghost gathering every evening when the sun goes down and the lights go on all over the place. There’s a special spiritual energy in Echo Park and the ghosts go up and down all the stairs, all night long, rehearsing for…the big stairs of light that they hope will come - -”

Mack nodded. “That was kind of a secret, Cahla. Not just how haunted Echo Park is, but about the stairs and what we do on them.”

“I know, but it’s Pauline! And Jules!”

“
You can’t tell anyone else about the stairs, okay, sweetie?”

“
Okay, Mack. I’m sorry.”

“
It’s okay. Let’s hear more of your story.”

“
So, for the next two days, CoCo was haunted constantly by me and Marcus in her apartment. Marcus had permanent vomit on his shirt and white foam on his face from the overdose, along with a pale face more death-like than most ghosts. Just like Michael looks really sick. Marcus…his eyes were dull and dry, according to CoCo’s thoughts.”

Carla continued, “So, Marcus taught me that people get freaked out by our reflections in mirrors and we sneaked up on her. Of course, CoCo screamed bloody murder when she saw his reflection behind her in the bathroom mirror. She dropped the mascara she was applying into the sink and ran for the front door.”

“She didn’t make it,” I said, knowing.

“
Nope. She didn’t because I stood in between CoCo and freedom. I floated about a foot off the ground and glared at her. She ran into her bedroom and bed where she covered herself with blankets so she couldn’t see anything.
And cowered.”

“
Here’s the thing about ghosts,” Mack said. “Getting under your covers will not save you. If a ghost wants to be under the covers with you, you’ve had it. You’re gonna have a heart attack.”

Julie’s eyebrows rose. “Then what, Carla?”

“CoCo thought she must be hallucinating, at least that’s what she said,” Carla reported to me. “By the time Marcus and I thought we were almost done haunting her, CoCo was talking to herself, sometimes muttering, and sometimes screaming loudly to the lights and appliances that switched on and off.”

“
Wow, good job,” I told Carla.

“
Wait, there’s more. A lot more.”

“
Go on.”

“
From under her bed sheets, CoCo called her clients who were due that day and told them she was sorry, she was under the weather, and that they would have to wait. She acted like she didn’t care if they needed their fixes. She did enough heroin to get calmed down, or so she thought. And she took a nap for a few hours while we occasionally made noises and turned lights on and off, in case she was fake sleeping again.”

“
Such is the demise of an addict,” I said. “Apparently nothing, not even two scary-looking ghosts haunting your home, can stop you if you are in need of a fix. And then a nap.”

“
Yeah, at that point, after a couple of hours, we got sick of haunting her when she was nearly unconscious, so we woke her up by throwing a glass of water on her.”

“
Wow!”

“
CoCo still wasn’t sure whether she was truly being haunted or whether she was going insane. After  we splashed her with water and she jerked awake and sat up, Marcus let loose a really scary monster laugh like in a horror movie and he did it really loud. And then she got paranoid, screamed and completely freaked out. She didn’t stop screaming. She was a maniac and she did something we didn’t expect.”

“
What did she do, Carla?” Mack asked softly.

“
CoCo drew her loaded .357 Magnum from under her pillow and went in the living room where she kept her personal stash. She was irritable, jumpy from not having a dose of the stuff for hours now. I pushed a book off the glass coffee table. CoCo spun around and fired the gun, shattering the glass with a loud crash.”

“
Holy moly, Carla!” I nodded for her to go on.

“
CoCo, shaking now, held the gun in one hand while she reached into a desk drawer for her supply. She sat at her desk and, shaking, brought out her kit. Tinfoil, lighter, needle.” Carla bit her lip. “Me and Marcus watched while CoCo mainlined.”

“
That’s repulsive,” I said.

“
We were both grossed out, but we knew we needed to wait…just wait for the drug to make CoCo hazy and foggy. She finished and took the needle out and was all…sighing in this horrible way. I can’t describe it, but my mom used to do the same sound. It used to give me the shivers to hear it. It was not a sigh from sex or tiredness or anything, but from a drug that went in the veins and unleashed a kind of…sick joy.”

“
Do you need a moment, Carla?” I asked gently.

“
I’m okay. CoCo was going to have a smoke, but she was pretty messed up. Her eyes kept jiggling around as she held the lighter to her cigarette, and she kept missing the cig with the lighter, like she couldn’t see straight.”

“
She probably couldn’t,” Julie said.

“
Well, at that point, Marcus and I weren’t going to let her be.”

“
What did you do?” I asked.

“
I got just in front of CoCo’s front door, while Marcus crept up behind her with her shaking lighter and cigarette. Marcus tapped her on the shoulder, but CoCo just shrugged him off. She said to him…the F word…and ‘Leave me alone.’”

“
She should have been a lot more scared than that,” I said.

“
I know! Once she had the gun around her, she was pretty high and mighty about ghosts in her crib, like nothing would get to her. So Marcus got an idea. He rose up into the air above her and flipped upside down. He moved in front of her and brought himself lower, meeting her face to face. He brought his face close to hers, so that he would have touched the cigarette that fell out of her mouth when she saw him.”

“
Did she scream or anything?” I was puzzled. What the kids did was pretty darn scary.