Dry Spell: A Mercy Watts Short (2 page)

And that is just what Jeremy and Ellen did, but the brown man didn’t go away. He became interactive. He found Jeremy’s lost wristwatch that had been gone for two weeks. He turned off appliances when they’d been left on too long. It could have been chalked up to failing parental memories, but Janine would say, ‘The brown man told me where it was, Daddy’ or ‘The brown man said you forgot to turn off the TV when we went to church.’ Ellen was frightened, but tried to behave like an adult, not a teenager in a horror film. She was able to keep it together until the brown man hit the five-week mark. Janine started mentioning a girl that her parents should help. She was quite put out that they weren’t doing anything, when clearly something should be done. Over that last week before Ellen’s visit, more details began coming out. The girl was underground. She wanted to go home and that she had a pink bike. The most important thing to Janine was that she was underground and she didn’t like it. Janine said the brown man showed her these things and would go back to playing with her dolls while her parents tried to control the cold shivers going up their spines.

“Janine’s telling you about a dead girl?” I said.

“I think so. What else could she mean?

“Do you think she knows what she’s saying?”

“No. I don’t think she knows what dead is.” Ellen lifted her head out of her hands and looked at me with swollen eyes and trembling lips. Then she looked back at the counter and the tears started afresh. My shoulders tightened further into an unbearable knot. Ellen was a crier. I’d seen her cry hundreds of times. She cried to get her way, to get out of trouble, but I’d never seen her cry like that before. She was losing her grip rapidly.

“I get off shift at seven. I’ll call dad as soon as I get home,” I said still rubbing her back.

“What will he say?”

“He’ll look into it. We’ll figure something out.”

“There’s something else. It’s why I came tonight, why I didn’t wait or call.”

“Something worse than that?”

“I think so.” She hugged me until my ribs hurt. “I want you to believe me,” she said.

“I will,” I said never doubting for a moment that I would.

“Tonight Jeremy had a dinner meeting, so I gave the girls their dinner and baths by myself. After I put them to bed, I kept feeling bothered, uneasy, like the room was filled up. Mercy, I felt like I wasn’t alone, like something was invading my personal space. I told myself that I was spooked by Janine’s talk and I was letting my imagination run away with me, but then Janine got up to ask for a glass of water. She does that sometimes. I was in the kitchen and when she walked in…Mercy, she said, ‘Why are you standing so close to Mommy. She doesn’t like you.’ I almost threw up and then the feeling was gone. I asked Janine and she said that the brown man left. I grabbed Janine and put her in bed with Jilly. I got in with them. If we had a gun, I would’ve gotten it. When Jeremy came home, I told him and came straight to you. I had to get out of there.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said, although I wasn’t exactly. My experience with ghosts was minimal and I wanted to keep it that way. My experience with the mentally ill wasn’t much greater. There was a reason I didn’t focus on psychology in my training. I had enough crazy in my life already.

“Come over for dinner tomorrow and see what you think,” said Ellen.

“What time?”

“Five.”

“I think you should go back to that psychologist or find a new one,” I said.

“Okay. Thanks for listening.”

“I love you,” I said.
 

Ellen hugged me and walked out the treatment room door. She seemed to feel better. I didn’t.
 

When I got off work the next morning I called dad. As expected, no one answered the phone because it was Sunday morning. My mother was at church and Dad usually turned off his phones. Sunday was the day he was selective. I left a message and he called me back an hour later. I was in.
 

“Mercy. What’s this about Ellen?”
 

“Don’t make fun of her, Dad.” I told him what Ellen told me. “What should I do? I could recommend a new psychologist.”
 

“Think, Mercy. You know how to do this.”
 

“No, I don’t. This isn’t a real investigation.”
 

“Isn’t it?” he asked. “You’ve got a witness and a crime.”

“Come on, Dad.”
 

“You come on. I don’t doubt my witness until I have a reason.”
 

“You always say that people lie, even when they don’t have to.”
 

“They sure as the hell do, but you don’t start out thinking that this is impossible. You won’t be able to see the how picture comes together.”
 

“So you’ll help?” I asked.

I could hear him scratching his stubbly chin and that meant he was thinking. “What do you want me to do about it?”
 

“I want you to look into the house's history. See if anything has happened there,” I said.

“I’ll tell you right now, it hasn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Ellen and Jeremy have lived there for, what, five years?”

“About.”

“That house was built in the fifties, so it doesn’t have much of a history. If anything had happened, they would’ve heard about it by now. People love to tell people about grisly murders on their property.”

“Does that mean you won’t look into it?”

“No. I’ll do it. I’m simply telling you what I’ll find. What are you going to do?” Dad asked, still scratching.

“I’m having dinner over there tonight. I guess I’ll talk to Janine.”

“Good luck. Four-year-olds are shitty witnesses. Try coloring, but nothing too distracting.”

“Thanks, I guess. Ellen will be grateful no matter what you turn up.”

“Well, I need to pay her back for all the nights she drove your drunk self home.”

“It was only that one time.”

“I’m sure it was,” said Dad.

That afternoon I woke up in my bed, restless and exhausted. I had to force myself to get up. I made a cappuccino and took a shower. At four-thirty, I walked out of my cool apartment into the thick air of a St. Louis summer. I was surprised by the intensity of the heat, as I always was. We were in the middle of a drought, the first in years. I couldn’t remember when it last rained. I wished for an air-conditioned tunnel to my truck, but braved the heat without one. I could’ve fried an egg on the hood, and my rear didn’t appreciate my sitting before I thought. I should've put a towel down. On that sunny afternoon, a dinner at Ellen’s didn’t seem like such a necessity. The sun baked the fear right out of me, but since canceling wasn’t an option, I went.
 

Well, I went eventually. I decided a quick pit stop was prudent. I loved Ellen more than I could say, but she could not cook. She was the kind of mom where the house would be super clean, all costumes would be hand-sewn, pictures would be beautifully scrapbooked, but food came out of a can, bag, or box. My mother was the opposite. Everything, including bread, was made from scratch and the one costume she ever made me had no arm holes or a head hole for that matter. That was a rough Halloween. I wore my costume upside-down. I hoped I would be a cooking mom because cleaning certainly wasn’t my thing and I had to do something. Until that time, I had Aaron and Kronos. Dad assigned Aaron to be my partner when I was forced to investigate his former partner’s murder. Kronos was the Star Trek-inspired restaurant Aaron owned with Rodney. They were both friends of my Uncle Morty and that’s how I knew them. I guess I’d say we were friends, but they felt more like family. I certainly didn’t pick them.
 

I parked in back of the restaurant and went in through the staff entrance. Manuel was manning the grill, but there were only a few things on the flat top, since it was before the evening rush when Kronos became the neighborhood place to be.
 

Manuel turned toward me like the former marine he was, his muscular arms tense and his long spatula ready to whack the crap out of me. Manuel could kill me with that spatula. I wouldn’t even know what hit me.
 

“Hey, Mercy,” he said, lowering his weapon of choice. “You want something? It’s early for dinner.”
 

I cringed. “Dinner at Ellen’s.”
 

Manuel chuckled. “You don’t want can o’ soup and box o’ stuffing. You’re getting picky.”
 

 
“She’s not that bad,” I said. But she was. Actually that would be a good meal for Ellen. You can’t screw up can o’ soup. And I was picky. Mom had raised me to eat well. She didn’t believe in cans or boxes or bags.

“I had that pie she brought to your mom’s birthday party. What was that?”
 

“Nobody knows,” I said, breaking into a smile. “Can I get a quick Worf burger?”
 

“Fries?”
 

“Nah. I have to eat something over there,” I said.
 

“I wouldn’t.” Manuel started making my burger and I went out into the restaurant to find Aaron and Rodney behind the long vintage walnut bar, adding up receipts under a display of Klingon rank insignia in a glass case. It was amazing that anyone, much less everyone, wanted to eat at Kronos. Aaron and Rodney looked like a couple of Comic-Con rejects with well-worn, holey super hero tees and old-school sweat pants with the loose elastic up around their ankles, instead of successful restaurateurs. Aaron’s hairnet was a nice addition to the look.
 

Rodney thrust a pencil in his curly hair that stuck up like a 50s beehive. “What’s Ellen serving? One of her crockpot things? Dr. Pepper is not a proper marinade.”

“How’d you know I was going to Ellen’s?” I asked.

“Tommy. You gonna catch the ghost?”

I got myself an iced tea and came around the bar to perch on a stool like I had severe arthritis. Sleep had only intensified my stiffness. “Do I look like Bill Murray to you?”

Please say no.

They didn’t say no. They thought about it. I knew I looked rough after two weeks of night shifts but still the old ghostbuster was going too far.
 

“I’ll help you,” said Aaron finally.
 

“Do what?”
 

“Catch him.”
 

“Um…thanks.” Aaron didn’t look like he could catch a bus, much less a malevolent ghost.
 

“I could make a special hotdog to lure him into your trap.”

“There’s no trap. I don’t even know it’s a ghost. It could be Janine’s imagination,” I said.
 

Rodney nodded, looking way too serious. “It’s a ghost. For sure. Has to be.”
 

Manuel came out with my Worf burger and twirled his finger at his temple before going back in the kitchen. I took a bite. Pure heaven. That didn’t come out of can.
 

“So you two have no trouble believing Ellen’s daughter’s being haunted?” I asked.

“Nope,” said Aaron.
 

“Our flat top is haunted,” said Rodney.

“Your flat top grill is haunted? By what?”

He leaned across the bar and whispered, “Don’t know yet. Sometimes it turns off when it’s supposed to be on. Sometimes it turns on when it’s supposed to be off.”
 

“Sounds like an electrical problem. You should get that looked at,” I said.
 

“By a paranormal investigator?”
 

“By an electrician, weirdo.”
 

Aaron shook his head and his pink hairnet slipped down behind his thick, perpetually smudged glasses. “It’s a ghost.”
 

“I can’t believe this. First Dad and now you two.”
 

“What do you believe in?” asked Rodney.

“Science.”
 

Aaron and Rodney stared at me for moment like I’d said Star Trek was lame and totally predictable, a sacrilege in Kronos. Then they blinked and began designing a ghost trap on the back of a receipt. It involved a cat carrier and electric fencing. I finished and paid, but they barely looked up.