The Traveler: Book 5, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (2 page)

“Crowds,” Eddie said.

“I don’t need to be a psychologist to tell you why.”

“I don’t need a psychologist to tell me.”

Eddie sat on the couch in the doctor’s office. Plants crowded the window sills, texts lined the shelves, and a big aquarium housed an assortment of colorful fish. Everything in this office boxed him in. It was a decent-sized room with a high ceiling but he felt trapped.

Outside the darkness grew.

The shrink’s name was Colin and he sat opposite Eddie on an oversized armchair, with one leg crossed over the other knee. His laptop sat askew on the armrest. He hadn’t typed any notes yet. Instead he watched Eddie with a shrink’s know-it-all eyes.

This was their second session and Eddie was not seeing the point.

“Why don’t you tell me about the panic attack?” Colin said.

Eddie looked away.

“Edward, I want to help you but if you feel this isn’t working out I can refer you to someone else. You can benefit from therapy.”

Eddie turned back to the shrink. “I was in the mall, minding my own business. It wasn’t even that crowded. There’s this group of tourists, I think, coming down the concourse and they’re wall to wall and I start wondering if there’s anywhere I can go. And if I’m going to snap or if they’re going to snap. Because that
happens
in this crazy fucking world. We all have a switch and just the right set of circumstances can flip it.”

The shrink nodded like he understood. “What happened next?”

“
It
happened next. I’m fine one minute. Then heart in my throat the next because there were a few people in front of me.”

“What exactly happened?”

Eddie hated this. Since his brother’s death he’d made a point of solving his problems on his own: drug addiction, alcoholism, lack of a career. He felt like that was the only way. The minute you turned to somebody else for help was the minute you relinquished some necessary part of yourself.

“Take your time,” Colin said.

“I felt this tightness in my chest and I could feel the walls closing in. Then the mall started spinning.”

“Did you lose consciousness?”

“No. I stayed on my feet and fought through the crowd and I was fine.”

Colin closed his laptop and sat forward. “You and I both know why this is happening.”

“Yeah, so how do I get it to stop?”

“I am going to encourage you again to see Dr. Fairhill.”

“I’m seeing you.”

“But I can’t prescribe you anything. I believe an SSRI could help you.”

“I have a problem taking drugs. Because I used to take drugs.”

Eddie didn’t want to get back on the pill train. Pot had been his favorite but that had led to the harder stuff, which had gotten him into trouble. He had an addictive personality and had to be careful with anything really. Two months ago he’d started studying ancient Greek,
just for the hell of it
, and before he knew it he’d spent a few hundred bucks on reading materials and study guides. It was that easy for him to fall down a rabbit hole.

Colin smiled. “The risk of addiction with these is low.”

“Medication only masks the symptoms, right?”

“Yes, but it will also take the edge off, allowing you to heal more quickly.”

Eddie liked his edge. It made him who he was. It had pushed him to do better, to get cleaned up, to get back on his feet, to start his own business. He owed his success to his edge. Without it, he’d be just like all those other addicts he’d known in his twenties, men and women who drifted from one catastrophe to the next, leaving a wake of destruction for others.

“I don’t want drugs,” Eddie said. “That way leads to ruin.”

Colin nodded. “I respect your decision. I was an addict too.”

Eddie was taken aback. The shrink didn’t give off the reformed vibe. Eddie usually had good radar for that.

“I thought you people weren’t supposed to share personal details like that.”

Colin sat back in his chair and smiled. “I was never one to respect rules very much. Somebody helped me when I was an addict and I admired them. I started thinking I’d be good at helping others too and here I am.”

Eddie relaxed a little. The shrink was being genuine and Eddie was starting to like him.

“So if no drugs, what can we do?”

Colin reached over to his desk and held up a tuning fork.

“Don’t even try to stick that anywhere.”

Colin laughed. “Sonic therapy. I’m going to strike it.”

“That’s all?”

“No, you’re going to do the real work.”

“Which is?”

“I want you to go back in your mind to that day and night you told me about last time.”

“I do that all the time,” Eddie said. “It doesn’t help.”

“This time it will be different.” Colin put the fork down. “I’m going to get you in a relaxed state and then you can observe those events from a safe distance.”

“So what’s the fork for?”

“The sound will help.”

Eddie had vivid, sweat-drenched nightmares constantly. One time he’d woken up on his living room floor, with no memory of how he got there. He thought about that terrible day all the time, without any prompting. He didn’t want to
purposely
revisit it.

But maybe that was what he needed. In his mind he’d been running. Maybe he needed to come at it head on.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

***

Eddie was dimly aware of the shrink’s voice as he closed his eyes and heard the first strike of the tuning fork. The note was high-pitched and reverberated forever, till he felt it in his bones.

Colin’s voice was both soft and firm. “Now picture the warehouse and just watch the events unfold. You’re only a spectator. Do not judge the things that are happening or attempt to evaluate your choices or actions. Just watch and observe.”

In his mind, Eddie could see it all. He’d gone to the old carpet wholesalers with two highly-trained federal agents to chase down a lead. There they’d encountered violent resistance and Eddie had been forced to kill in self-defense. They’d left him no choice. What bothered him about it, though, was how quickly he’d made up his mind to kill the enemy. In a heartbeat, he’d gone from civilized and caring to mad dog crazy. He knew there was a switch, an internal trigger that everyone could pull so the survival instinct took over. He just hadn’t expected his to flip so easily.

One moment he’d been a reasoning man, the next a remorseless killer.

And the woman…

She’d been sick. They’d
all
been sick. But he’d faced a terrible choice: kill the sick people or be killed.

Surrounded, Eddie had opened fire on the unarmed. Healthy people would have fled at the first sound of gunfire.

But they weren’t healthy.

They’d just kept coming. And coming. One-by-one they fell. And the others kept coming.

And the woman…

Later, scrolling through the overwhelming list of the dead, Eddie had figured out her name. Linda Bismark. Forty-one. Schoolteacher. Wife to Ken. Mother to two children. Her kids were the same age Eddie and his brother Tim had been when both their parents had died in that car crash.

Linda Bismark, completely out of her mind, just kept coming. Even after he’d shot the others, she just kept coming. Linda Bismark walked right up to him. If it had just been him and her, he could have easily handled her. But there were others. Including a rogue federal agent with military experience who could have killed Eddie with one hand tied behind his back. Eddie had no choice but to shoot Linda Bismark.

In the head.

He realized he was crying. Then he heard the bell.

Myrna’s bones cracked as she lifted herself off the recliner. She’d fallen asleep reading again. She could barely get through a few pages without dozing off. The shame of it was she was enjoying the novel. It was a good old-fashioned murder mystery, the kind they didn’t make anymore. There were no vampires, ghosts, werewolves, magicians, sorcerors, witches, assassins, secret agents, or serial killers running around in the story, either, which she counted as a blessing. The plot didn’t involve kinky sex and it didn’t involve some secret biblical society trying to take over the world and it didn’t involve some relatively famous person’s brother, or sister, or cousin, or housekeeper. The books they put out these days were just dreadful.

But she’d gotten up for a reason.

Oh, right. She’d heard something.

She lived in an old house that was always creaking and making noise, so she wasn’t worried about it. And besides, she kept her late husband’s sawed-off, fully loaded, in the coat closet. If anybody got in they’d be treated to a free blast of lead.

She hobbled to the front door. Her hip ached something fierce. It always did, and especially so when she got up after reclining for a long time. But the reclining helped lessen the pain in her lower back which was usually worse than the hip pain. With age, everything was a trade-off and no matter what she tried, she never got to one hundred percent.

Myrna made it to the front door and peered through the side light. It was dark out and her eyesight was poor at night.

She flicked on the porch light.

Nobody there.

She waited a moment, her hand ready to reach for the coat closet. But nobody jumped out of the bushes.

Myrna shook her head and hobbled to the kitchen. She was overdue for her afternoon medication. She needed to take it right away so she could still fit in her evening pills before she
officially went to bed
, like her late husband always said.

She missed him every day. They had spent forty years together and though they hadn’t always been honeymoon-deliriously-happy, on the whole their marriage had been a good one. And that put her ahead of most people.

In the kitchen she found her pill container. She went to pull the evening box when she heard something again. A noise at the front door.

The tiny hairs on the back of her neck rose.

With a little more pep, she walked back into the foyer to check the front door. For a moment she thought somebody was watching her through the side light but then realized it was her own reflection.

All the same, her heart kicked into second gear.

Something like electricity passed through the air. She could feel it, whatever
it
was, slide across her like a dull razor against skin.

Myrna’s heart beat faster. If she didn’t calm down she’d have to take a nitro.

She peered out the side light but again nobody was there.

Her grandmother had been superstitious, warning her of the spirits that sometimes inhabited this world with us. It had terrified her as a youngster. As she grew up she became religious and no longer feared the so-called spirits because she knew they were only angels and wouldn’t hurt her.

Before, she would have asked Charlie to check the outside and he would have taken care of it. But he’d been gone for over a year and she had nobody to watch out for her anymore. Damn she missed him.

There was a noise behind her.

Her heart fluttered. A weak pain in her chest. She really needed to calm down or she’d need a nitro immediately and would have to call the ambulance again.

It was just the house.

It was just the house.

Another noise. Something had fallen in the kitchen.

Myrna opened the coat closet and grabbed the sawed-off. It was heavier than she remembered but at least it had a hair trigger. Even if her arthritis suddenly flared up, she’d still be able to squeeze off a shot.

“Who’s there?”

No answer.

She stepped tentatively toward the dark kitchen. Hadn’t she kept the light on? Maybe she hadn’t. Her memory was going too.

“Who’s there?”

Bump.

She spun and aimed the shotgun at the front door. And then she saw
it.

A ghost.

The ghost was a she. Its skin was electric blue and energy seemed to pulse through it. Her long hair was clumpy. Her clothes were torn. Tiny bugs burrowed into her skin.

Myrna dropped the shotgun.

The ghost held out her hands. Several fingers were broken.

Myrna’s heart felt like it was going to explode. She took out her cell phone.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

The ghost hovered toward her.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

“There’s a ghost, she’s going to get me…”

Myrna’s heart battered her chest. She could barely hear herself think as her pulse throbbed in her neck.

The ghost came forward. It opened its mouth to reveal two rows of rotting teeth and a black tongue.

Myrna had to get away but she couldn’t move. The ghost was closing. She didn’t know what would happen if it touched her, but she didn’t want to find out.

“Ma’am, are you there? Ma’am?”

Myrna said, “There’s a ghost.”

“Ma’am? Is someone in the house with you?”

The ghost was only two feet away. Myrna’s knees locked in terror. She’d never seen anything like this. She’d never imagined anything like this, not in her worst nightmares. Ghosts were supposed to be angels.

And angels didn’t look like this.

She needed to get away.

But then the visions came. Bright, vivid, utterly terrifying. Images of her husband with another woman. Pictures of their children, one by one dying or killing themselves. It made her head throb and her knees weak. The horribly ugly scenes battered her mind. They were all her worst fears come true. And somehow, she knew all these things had happened or would happen. Charlie had been a good man, but what she saw convinced her he’d cheated on her. And her son, in the hospital bed, rotting away from some disease…she knew it was going to happen. She had to do something to stop all this.

But she couldn’t move. The fear had paralyzed her.

The ghost was hideous. As it drew near, she saw the bullet wound just in the hairline near the ghost’s temple.

This woman had been shot.

She’d been
murdered
.

Now she was back. She wanted something.

She wanted to kill Myrna.

Myrna needed to get her nitro. Her heart couldn’t take this. Pain erupted across her chest. She was going to have a heart attack. She was going to die. Her life wasn’t supposed to end like this. She’d always wanted to die in her sleep, peacefully, before she lost her faculties and ended up in a home.

Then the ghost reached out.

She dropped the phone. “Please…”

The pain in her chest was excruciating.

***

“Think of the lives you saved,” Colin said.

Eddie did. On a regular basis. He counted them over and over, in the hopes it would quiet some of the demons that inhabited the dark recesses of his mind.

It was true he’d saved lives but the cost had been terrible. So many had died.

“You know what else is bothering me?” Eddie asked.

“I’m a shrink, not a mind-reader.”

Eddie smiled. “Why didn’t this all bother me right away?”

“You’re a man.”

“I resemble that remark.”

Colin smiled. “Men and women process emotions differently. It’s linked to evolution, many people believe.”

“Finally, you drop some science on me.”

Colin nodded. “When there’s a crisis that affects a family or a larger group of people, you need someone that can keep a level head during and right after the event to ensure the group doesn’t implode.”

Light bulb moment for Eddie. “You need a good man in a storm.”

“Exactly. I’ve seen it happen so many times with grieving families. The men will show up in my office, six months to a year after a loss and wonder why they’re just now feeling depressed. I think that’s what’s happening with you. Just because you didn’t experience these emotions in the moment doesn’t mean you were never going to experience them. You just held them off till the crisis had safely passed. It’s a coping mechanism.”

“Evolution, huh?”

“Can’t get around billions of years of it.”

Eddie agreed. “I think work would help. I need to occupy my mind.”

“Something
low-stress
would be good. You’re not yourself, Edward. Not yet.”