Elizabeth Basque - Medium Mysteries 01 - Echo Park (16 page)

Silence filled the room. JJ hadn’t been in the habit of thinking of anyone else but himself in a long time. He wouldn’t have then, either, if not forced to.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he said to Carla.

Carla just hovered. She didn’t bat an eye. I didn’t blame her. Could I have forgiven JJ, who had ordered her life taken from her, without a second thought? I doubted it.

JJ couldn’t calm down. I didn’t really blame him for that either, but I wasn’t sympathetic. He kept looking around for an escape, or something he could use against us. He couldn’t hurt the ghosts, but Julie and I were vulnerable. His eyes landed on a crowbar nearby.

I don’t know what he was thinking, because hurting either me or Julie would only make things worse. He was programmed for defense mode, I supposed.

Before he even finished thinking whatever he was planning to do, Carla floated forward and stuck her fingers deep into his arms. He jerked his hand away, shivering, repulsed.

“
Just think how you’d feel if I took over your whole body,” Carla whispered into his ear.

“
There’s room for all of us in there,” Michael added. Mack nodded agreement and moved toward the now pathetic JJ.

“
Okay, okay!” JJ shouted. “Stay away from me! I’ll do anything! Don’t possess me!” He shuddered.

They moved away temporarily. JJ looked at me, shaking now. “I can’t take this, lady,” he said. “You said you could help.”

He approached me and Julie, and to our surprise, got down on his knees, all the while keeping an eye on the spirits in his garage. “Resolve the problem, you said. What do I have to do to make you all go away?”

Now, we were getting somewhere.

Chapter Twenty-six

“Get up,” I snapped at JJ. “You’re pathetic.”

JJ rose. “Can’t you just make them go away? Please?” His voice had risen an octave, and he sounded like a whiney kid.

“Perhaps I can. Probably. It really depends on you.” I turned to Snake and added, “and you.”

Julie was kind of enjoying being the heavy for once, but she didn’t show it. “Sit!” she commanded, pointing at the tattered bed JJ used.

Both men immediately sat on the mattress, as far apart from each other as possible. Neither one of them looked at the other.

“
You both say you want these spirits to leave you alone,” I declared.

“
Ye—Yes,” Snake answered. JJ nodded emphatically.

The place was dirty, disgusting. I looked around, and found a fairly recent newspaper. I unfolded a section and laid it down on JJ’s Eazy Boy chair before sitting. Julie sat on the armrest next to me. Our ghost friends, Mack, Carla and Michael hovered, menacingly, but also curious.

“Okay, here’s how this works.” I pulled out a cigarette and lit it. I took a couple of puffs, sizing them up intellectually. Neither seemed too bright to me. Probably due to the drugs. They waited with forced patience.

“
I am what you call a psychic, or Medium. People hire me to communicate with the dead. Usually relatives who have passed recently, that kind of thing. Understand?”

They nodded.

“Part of my job is to get to the heart of unresolved problems between the living and the dead. Many times, the dead—the ghosts, spirits—are unable or refuse to go to what you might call Heaven, because they have unfinished business here on Earth. Such is the case with the spirits that have been haunting you.”

I paused to give them time for this to sink in. Seemed like they needed it. JJ finally nodded, but Snake remained confused.

“I don’t know what all this has to do with me,” he concluded defensively. “I mean, yeah, I know Michael…” He glanced at Michael’s shadowy image. “Or I
did
know him, but we weren’t close. I didn’t have anything to do with what went down.” He spoke directly to Michael now. “I haven’t even seen you, dude, in like…” Snake’s voice trailed off, confused, as he tried to figure out how long it had been.

“
Well, you’re just a lucky one, then, aren’t you?” Mack grinned. “You’ll do.”

“
I’ll
do
? Do for what?” He had that panic in his eyes again.

I tried to keep this professional. “Communication is what I help with,” I continued. “I help people, here in this world, and those in the spirit world understand what they need to so that everyone can go on with their lives.”

“I understand,” JJ told me. “I said I was sorry.”

“
I don’t think you
do
understand,” Julie said quietly. “But you need to.”

Julie looked at me and gestured to Carla. I shifted my gaze to the girl and she hesitated, but then nodded.

“Everybody has a story,” I explained. “You two, when we’re done with you, are going to change how your own life stories turn out. I think you need to understand someone else’s story, in order to help you do this. Carla is going to share her story with you. Aren’t you, hon?”

Carla nodded, and floated a little closer to them.

“Hold on,” JJ said. “What is she going to do?”

“
She’s going to just touch your hand, and show you.”

“
No! No way do I want no ghost touching me!” Snake growled as he got up again and backed away from Carla.

Suddenly, the lights went out. It was pitch black in JJ’s little garage, that is, except for the three spirits hovering and kind of glowing eerily. We couldn’t see each other, but we could see them, very clearly. And they weren’t happy.

“So,” I spoke into the darkness, “you guys want to live like this for the rest of your lives?”

I heard Snake tripping over something a few feet away, and crying out like a little boy. The temperature in the room, which of course had dropped when we all entered, fell to an icy forty-ish. I knew we would have been able to see our breath, if we could have seen anything.

“Christ!” Snake cried. “All right!”

Julie and I were smiling when the lights came on as quickly as they had gone out.

“Now come, sit back down, and relax. You’re not going to die or anything.
Yet
.”

Carla waited until Snake sat back on the bed, sweating now in spite of the cold. “I can tell you, show you both at once,” she offered.

The two men gulped simultaneously.

Carla really was too kind. She smiled at them, and nodded. “Just hold out your hands,” she instructed, “and when I touch you, you will understand. I won’t hurt you,” she promised.

It would have been comical to watch, had the stakes not been so high. The two men each put a shaking hand out for the girl ghost, Carla. For their sake, she approached slowly, gingerly.

She waited for them to calm a little, but they didn’t seem to be anywhere near calming down, so Carla nodded to them with encouragement. “Close your eyes,” she told them.

They did.

Carla softly laid each hand on a hand of Snake’s and JJ’s. The men tensed a moment, but then relaxed, their heads turned slightly as if listening.

It only took a moment, but I knew Carla was sharing with them everything she had with me and Julie; her life, her mother, the circumstances that led to her death. That fateful night she tried, unsuccessfully, to pull her mother away to safety.

She drew her hands away, but stayed close by as they opened their eyes.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Both Snake and JJ were clearly moved by the experience. Carla stayed just in front of them, watching their reactions intently. She really didn’t want to harm them; but she did want them to understand. She wanted them to know that their actions affected other people.

Snake looked like he’d just watched a sad movie. He gazed into Carla’s eyes, thoughtfully, and forced himself to keep from tearing up. He shook his head a little in wonder; he’d never really listened to anyone before, much less
felt
what another had gone through. He could only hold her gaze for so long, then he hung his head down.

Carla shifted her eyes—which were fading a little from the amount of energy she’d just used to transfer her story to them—to JJ.

JJ had known Carla and her mother, even if not very well.

Carla was tuned into JJ now, and read his thoughts. “You didn’t think my mom should have brought me with her,” she noted.

JJ couldn’t take his eyes off Carla. It was all still sinking in. “No. No, I didn’t.”

“
Why not?” Carla asked. “I mean, you sell to mothers all the time. Pregnant women, even. You don’t care. As long as you make your money, and you don’t have to work too hard, and you don’t get caught.”

“
I’m sorry,” JJ said, and this time, his apology sounded slightly more sincere. “I guess I know they have kids. The guys, too. I just never saw them. Only you.”

“
And you saw me because I took care of my mother,” Carla said. “Even when she needed her fixes, or had some crazy scheme, I never left her side.”

“
Yeah.”

JJ was having trouble with these emotions, I could tell. He suddenly got defensive. “But your mother scammed me.” He scowled. “She got me good. I’m still not all the way recovered from that.”

Carla’s jaw dropped, but it was Julie who spoke up now. “
You
haven’t recovered?? Jeez, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

JJ realized too late his selfish comment. Julie stood now, and got in his face. “You know, I could probably fix it so that you don’t have to deal with any of this, anymore.
Ever.
How would you like that?”

But Carla, who was shimmering now, her body outlined but her core little more than shiny dust, shushed Julie.

I put a hand on Julie’s arm to calm her. Violence would beget violence. That was not my way.

Carla reached down and stuck her finger into the extension cord on the floor, and her form reappeared more clearly. She still watched JJ. She was pretty good, I thought. She was letting him get it for himself. The room was so quiet I could hear JJ gulp.

“I don’t know what to say,” he offered to Carla. “I didn’t know it would end like that. And I didn’t know you. You didn’t deserve to…die like that.”

Carla reached for his hand again, and this time, he didn’t flinch. His apology couldn’t change the past. He knew that. I could tell by the look on his face.

“Maybe I deserve to be haunted,” he told us.

“
Maybe you do,” I said, “but that’s not for me to decide.”

“
Then, who decides?” JJ asked bluntly.

Snake looked up now, curious about the answer as well.

“Why,” I answered, “The haunters. The ghosts decide.”

“
But, what can I do? Michael won’t leave me alone.”

Snake was listening intently now. Whatever JJ had to do to get rid of Michael, Snake intended to do the same thing to get rid of Mack.

Be careful what you wish for
, I thought to myself. Out loud, I told them, “There is something you can both do. And we’ll tell you soon. But first, I think, there is one more soul’s story you need to know about.”

Carla moved aside, and now, Michael came forward.

Michael wasn’t as gentle with them as Carla had been. Maybe because they were guys, after all, and he wanted to be a little macho, a little tough. Or maybe he just wanted to get this over with.

“Give me your hands,” he simply said.

They did.

Julie and I, Carla and Mack, watched as the three closed their eyes and Michael showed them his side of the story. Again, it only took a moment. But for Michael, it seemed to take a great toll on him. His expression was anguished as he sent images, feelings, of his life into the two living men. When he finished, he pulled away. If he could have sat and leaned back, he would have.

As it was, though, the two men looked at him, not with the sympathy they’d given to Carla, but with grave faces. They were the faces of men who didn’t necessarily like bad news, but were used to it. Neither spoke.

I stepped back into my role as Medium Mediator. “Snake, JJ,” I began, trying to push aside the thought that their names were really stupid. “Now, perhaps you both have a little understanding of the importance of your actions.”

They were, I believe, ashamed. They both nodded.

“How do you feel now?” I asked them.

“
Well, how do expect me to feel?” JJ demanded. “I don’t like this shit. None of it. I don’t like being haunted, and I really don’t like knowing
why
, now. But, I still don’t know what I can do to change the past.”

“
You can’t do anything to change the past,” Mack remarked grimly. He’d been so quiet I’d almost forgotten he was there. “Though many of us would like to,” he added a little mysteriously. I made a mental note to try again to get his own history out of him. It was high time he told me. And perhaps, if I knew the old ghost’s story, I could find a way to help him go Home. But that would be for another time, another place.