What Haunts Me (10 page)

As we pulled into the street, I caught sight of the darkened stadium lights rising up from AT&T Park and knew we were somewhere in the SoMa district. Glancing down at the dashboard clock, I realized it was almost five in the morning. I'd been knocked out for hours. Except for the occasional early morning commuter or trash truck, the streets were empty and quiet. I leaned back and closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew we were pulling into the garage of my building. Billy parked and came around to assist me. I needed her help climbing out of the low bucket seat, but once I was standing I could walk to the elevator on my own.

She unlocked my front door, grabbed my elbow, and led me to the couch, then dumped my personal items onto the nearest table and disappeared down the hallway. When she returned she was carrying a plate with a ham and cheese sandwich on it, which she unceremoniously placed in my lap and said, “Eat.” They were the first words she'd spoken to me since we'd left the hotel. I could smell coffee brewing and hoped she'd made some for me too.

As I ate, the last twenty-four hours began to come back to me. I remembered everything up until the point of leaving my apartment, and then…. Well, that was the problem. I couldn't exactly remember what happened after that. By the time I finished my sandwich, Billy had returned with two steaming mugs of coffee. She put one on the table in front of me, the other she took with her and sat in the armchair. As she sipped, she stole glances at me over the rim of her cup. I reached for my own cup and relaxed back into the sofa with it, wondering where I should start or if she'd start for me. She didn't, so I did.

“Spill it Billy, all of it. And I don't want to hear stories about your grandmother or how much you hate Vokkel. I want to know why he's after me, what that guy Caleb saw me do that was so special, and everything else you haven't been telling me!” All of the anger I'd felt the night before was coming to the surface with a vengeance, causing a surge of adrenaline that went straight to the lump on my forehead. The man with the mallet was back and he was hard at work.

She blew on her coffee and took another sip, then put the cup on the table and angled her head as if she had a question. Her expression was thoughtful, her eyes slightly downcast. After a moment she looked up, directly into my eyes.

“This talent, or sight, or whatever you want to call it…it comes in various levels or abilities.” She paused and I nodded for her to continue. She held her hand up, and with each point she drew a finger inward to her thumb. “There's seeing the ghosts, there's being aware of what they're doing to people and eliminating them, then there's communicating with them, and finally there's controlling them. We,” she waved her hand between us, “are of the final version. And you…well, I guess you're the super version….”

My jaw must have dropped to the floor and my expression must have been priceless, because her eyebrows shot up in amusement and she stifled a laugh. “Sorry, you should see your face,” she smiled again. “So, it's not just us that come in different levels of paranormal cognizance….” She seemed to be unsure if that was the right definition, but continued anyway. “It's the ghosts too. Like I said before, some of them are newbies, meaning they have just started to haunt people. Some have been doing it for a very long time and have had multiple victims. Some are truly evil spirits…demons, I guess. Those are the ones that we can communicate with, and people like you and me can control them, too.”

Considering this new information caused an eruption of new questions. I was surprised when only one came to the forefront of my mind. “Can they hurt us?”

She didn't hesitate. “Yes George, they can hurt us…they can kill us if they're strong enough.”

“They killed her, didn't they?” I didn't have to clarify the “her”; she knew I was talking about her grandmother. She nodded sadly and I asked, “How?”

The glimpse of emotion passed and she cocked her head to the side, sarcasm blooming in her eyes. “Thought you didn't want to hear stories about my grandmother?”

I wanted to ring her neck, to throttle her until her head rolled around like a limp rag doll's. I was past games and sarcastic remarks. My head hurt, I was tired, and I was agitated. And I was scared. Emotion could be a funny thing when it was this intense; it might display itself in one's expression or in their body language, and in my case both were screaming at Billy.

She held her hands up in surrender and said, “Okay, sorry. She kept a diary. Aunt Justine found it when she went to clean out her apartment. She wrote that the 'demons'…,” Billy made quotation marks with her fingers to emphasize the word, “were coming after her because she'd killed so many of them. She documented every kill, every sighting, and she kept track of what sort of ghost they were by using a star system to identify the level of their strength. One star for weak, and so on up to four stars for powerful; two-thirds had four stars. Like you, she could see the really, really bad ones and she could kill them. That's not easy if they've got that kind of power. They usually get away from us. The other thing was the quantity of ghosts she saw. On average we'll see a few per day and that's if we're looking for them, but she could find several in an hour and she could get them all. You can do that too…Caleb saw you do it. The last painting she did was
What Hunts Me
. It was in her apartment, and written in pencil on the back of the canvas was a note that said, 'They're chasing me now. It won't be long before they kill me.' The painting was dated two days before she died.”

“How can you be sure her injuries weren't self-inflicted? Was there evidence of something else?”

She nodded. “She was paranoid, and her apartment had six deadbolts on the door, all of which were locked tight. Her windows were covered with metal security shutters that closed and locked from the inside. The place was a fortress. The initial medical examiner's report said that she was stabbed several times by someone of incredible strength, and the angle was impossible for self-inflicted wounds.”

I was shaking my head. “Wait a second; you said the other day that someone from the gallery went to her apartment and broke in when she didn't answer.”

“True, and that's what happened. He was this big guy according to Justine, almost seven feet tall and upwards of three-hundred pounds, a body building type. It took him several tries. He pounded the door with his entire body, eventually separating it from the frame, bolts and all.”

“Okay, you also said the official report called it suicide….”

She was nodding again. “The medical examiner is an appointed position in this city. Aunt Justine has influence in those types of things and had been instrumental in getting her friend appointed to the position back then. She went to him and asked him to personally perform the autopsy, and to alter the official report. Since she was a good friend and he had political aspirations, the last thing he wanted to do was alienate her and her money, so he did what he was asked to do.”

“I don't get it…why did it matter? I mean, who would really care if she was killed or committed suicide?” It occurred to me after I asked that maybe Justine cared for image reasons; maybe suicide was more socially acceptable than murder, especially when the deceased was already known as mentally disturbed. But I knew Justine, and I didn't see her as the type of person that would rather have her cousin's murderer go free than have her image tarnished.

“Because the diary also mentioned Vokkel…not by name, but by his initials, F.V. Justine didn't know who he was until the funeral, but she knew that he was a threat to her. Granny had written that she thought Vokkel had read her diary and knew what she was, how powerful she was. She said that he'd tried to get her to do things in Switzerland to hurt people. When she came back to San Francisco, she thought she was free of him, but then he showed up again….” There was so much distress in her eyes that all my earlier anger faded away and I wanted to go to her, maybe hold her until it went away. The pain seemed so much more intense than the hatred she'd shown toward Vokkel before.

Before I could decide what to do, she looked up at me and quietly said, “He raped her…that's how she became pregnant. He came to her apartment one night and just…raped her. When he was done, he told her that if she said anything to anyone, he'd kill her. He had Edgar keep a close eye on her until he could be sure he'd impregnated her, then he came back and told her again to keep her mouth shut and carry the baby to term or he'd kill not just her, but Justine too.”

I couldn't stand it anymore; I got up and went to her, pulling her up from her chair and holding her tight. She didn't fight me, she just laid her head against my chest and sighed deeply. When she pulled away she had tears rolling down her cheeks, but she stayed silent. I let her go and went to the bar and poured two whiskeys; she didn't argue about the time of day, which was a little after six a.m. by then. She took the glass and sat down on the couch, pulling her legs up underneath her; fortunately she'd removed her boots first. She drank fast, then placed the glass on the coffee table and quietly said, “Thank you.”

I sat on the other end of the couch and finished my drink, which only fueled my exhaustion. I looked over at Billy to find she'd fallen fast asleep. I grabbed a throw blanket and gently draped it across her, then went to my room and fell into my bed.

I woke up later that morning and immediately realized two things; my head didn't seem to hurt as much as it had just hours earlier, and Billy was no longer in my apartment. The latter of those realizations came through like some sort of sixth sense—I just knew that I was alone. I went into the living room and found the throw blanket folded neatly on the couch and a note lying on top of it, asking me to come over as soon as I was awake. Since the hundreds of questions were quickly multiplying into thousands, I thought getting over to Justine's was a great idea. I made coffee, jumped in the shower, and got dressed quickly. After downing two cups of much needed caffeine and some toast, I left for my neighbor's apartment.

Billy answered the door and I was immediately put out with her. She looked refreshed and well rested, whereas I felt like I'd been run over with a bulldozer. I nodded my greeting and moved past her, and she snickered at my reaction. Justine was seated comfortably in the living room. She stood when she saw me enter and a look of deep concern crossed her face.

“Oh dear, your head.” She reached up to gently touch the outskirts of the bump. I'd removed the bandage that Caleb had applied to find a nasty cut that would probably leave an even nastier scar.

I smiled down at her with reassurance and said, “It's okay Justine, just a bump and minor cut. The swelling has actually gone down quite a bit from earlier.” That was a lie of course; if anything, it seemed to have increased in size, but I didn't want her to worry any more than she already was. Billy shot me a thankful glance and sat down on the sofa and Justine followed. I took one of the arm chairs and leaned back and sighed.

“You look tired dear…would you like some coffee?” Justine asked. I was about to answer in the affirmative when Anne arrived with a tray, complete with cups, sugar, creamer, and a steaming pot of coffee. The tray also held a plate of cookies, the smell so fresh and warm that I knew they'd literally just come off the cooling rack. Anne's cookies were a ten in my book of the best things in life, and the idea of gobbling a few of those down improved my mood dramatically.

Coffee was served, cookies were dished out, mostly to me, and Anne took a seat in the remaining arm chair. I looked between the three women, instantly realizing that Anne was as much a part of all of this as Justine and Billy. I wondered how she fit in.

“We didn't get to why Vokkel is trying to get his hands on me.” I directed this question to Billy. “So you want to tell me about that?” I was feeling calm, which I thought was good, because I was pretty sure I was about to learn some things that would shatter any semblance of control I might be clinging to.

Anne was the one who spoke. It surprised me because in the years I'd known her, I didn't think I'd heard her say more than a sentence or two at a time. “I was there, in Switzerland, with Billy.” She glanced at Justine for reassurance. “So was Edgar. We were classmates…but Edgar and I…were different, and Vokkel wants to be like us.” Maybe the knock to the head had caused some sort of comprehension deficit, because I could swear the woman in front of me wasn't a day over forty-five, if even that old. But if I understood what she'd just said, both she and Edgar would need to be somewhere near Justine's age, or at least the age that Grandma Billy would have been if she'd lived, which was over seventy at least.

Dumbfounded and clueless as to what she meant, I stupidly said, “So let me guess, you're a vampire or something?” I laughed. The sound was a little manic and I could feel my earlier calm slipping away.

Normally a statement that stupid would have spurred a flippant response from Billy, but she refrained from commenting. Maybe we were still riding that wave of compassion from earlier that morning. The three women looked at each other and then turned their attention to me.

Anne sat back a little and said with a slight sigh, “Let me try and explain.”

Yes, I thought, that would be good.

“Think of it as a confluence of events,” Anne said.

“A confluence?”

“Yeah, you know—three streams—” Billy began sarcastically, before I cut her off.

“I know what a confluence is, Billy!” I snapped.

The tenderness we'd experienced earlier that morning was gone now, and so was the emotionally damaged woman I'd tried to comfort. The brazen, strong vixen I'd met and disliked before was back, and I was suddenly struck with the notion that I was glad. I wanted that woman on my side…I wanted her strength. We were stuck in a momentary glaring contest with each other, she with an obnoxious smirk on her face and me scowling. With the realization that I preferred her current personality to the vulnerable one, my scowl turned into a slight smile and she returned it with one of her own, almost as if she'd read my mind…
again
.

Anne cleared her throat in quiet annoyance and said, “As I was saying, it's like a confluence, but instead of streams of water, its streams of power…more or less.” She leaned forward a bit. “As Billy explained to you earlier, there are levels of ghosts and levels of ghost killers. Let's use your experience with the junkie last night as an example. Now it didn't happen last night, but I believe it was only seconds away from happening. You are, at the very least, of the highest level when it comes to power from a ghost killer. The ghost you met last night was of the highest level of ghost; are you following me?” She didn't wait for an answer.

“If the timing had been perfect, you would have killed the ghost at the same moment he killed the girl. When those two things happen simultaneously, the victim doesn't die, causing a third reaction, thus the confluence. Instead, the victim sort of absorbs the power of the ghost and I think maybe a little of your power too, and it makes them live a long, long time. Like me and like Edgar.…”

I couldn't formulate a response. What she was saying made even less sense than what was currently happening to me. But it also made plenty of sense if you weighed the fact that what was happening to me was actually happening.

“Both Edgar and Anne were aware that something had changed them…they knew they had been ill and dying,” Justine said as she glanced at Anne. “Anne lived in Geneva as a girl, and in her early teenage years she had become quite ill. The doctors of the time didn't know what was wrong, but they knew she was dying. When the event took place, she momentarily saw her demon, and it drove her mad. We don't actually know what ailed Edgar or where he's from originally, we just know that like Anne, he was brought to the institution because he was thought to be mentally disturbed,
and
he was talking about ghosts and demons, which was what they specialized in. Their mental illness was brought on by what they saw at the time of their transformation; they simply could not grasp what had happened to them. Since the institution was also a school, they all attended classes together and were familiar with each other. Billy somehow sensed their difference and was able to befriend them, and after many private and late night discussions, the three were able to determine what had happened to cause this difference. Billy also shared her sight with them, and that, too, helped them understand.”

I held up my hand. “Wait a second.” I directed my question to Billy. “I thought the people we saved weren't aware they'd been ill. How could Anne and Edgar know?”

“We think it's because they were supposed to die at the hands of their demon, like that girl last night. Her ghost was trying to kill her, not just haunt her. It wanted to bring her death on faster than the natural order of things, but when a powerful ghost killer interferes at just the right moment, the memory loss or whatever you want to call it doesn't occur. Instead, they eventually remember everything.” Billy angled her head towards Anne.

I turned to Anne and asked, “And you told Vokkel about it?”

Anne shook her head vigorously, “No, no, I didn't. I knew he was bad news. Billy and I were friends and we shared everything, including our experiences with Vokkel in our one-on-one sessions with him. He scared the hell out of both of us. It was Edgar. We begged him to keep it a secret, especially from Vokkel. But Edgar was always a little off, probably even before it happened to him. He had this need, to be…loved, or wanted, or….” She let out an exasperated sigh. “I don't know what it was, but by going to Vokkel and telling him everything, he endeared himself to the man. Vokkel took him under his wing and that's where he's been ever since.”

This was making my head hurt again and I leaned forward and dragged my hands through my hair, narrowly missing my lump and causing an even bigger headache than the one that was creeping up on me. I sighed loudly and said, “Okay, let's back up a bit. Anne, if you're the same age as Grandma Billy, how come you look so…young?”

She smiled and shrugged. “All I can say is that I just don't age that fast.” She looked at the other two women for a split second, then smiled at me. “And I'm…let's just say I'm a lot stronger than a woman of my age would normally be, physically that is.”

Any sane, normal man would have laughed at Anne's answer. He might have even thought these three women were delusional—candidates for padded rooms with strong locks. But I was no longer normal, and I was definitely beginning to doubt my sanity, so instead of letting my jaw drop in disbelief, I simply said, “That certainly explains Edgar's incredible strength….”

I was thoughtful for a moment, and finally asked, “So Vokkel wants me because he thinks I have this power or whatever it is? Why does he think that?”

Billy responded, “Because you do have it, George. Caleb's an idiot, but he knows what he saw you do. As far as Vokkel is concerned, I'm guessing that Edgar sensed something that night he discovered you, and Vokkel has had people following you ever since.”

Justine spoke. “Frederick is a monster that has tried to manipulate your kind for a very long time. He's done it for money, power, and influence. But that isn't his concern at the moment. He's dying, and I think he believes you're the only one that can save him.”

I looked at Justine for a long moment before I replied, “How? Why?”

Billy spoke, “Because he has his own demon, and if he can get you to do your thing at just that right moment…” she trailed off, I assumed she thought I understood, but I was still confused.

“But I thought the ghost had to be in the throes of actually killing their victim. How does he expect me to pull that off?”

Billy smiled. “George, George, George….” There wasn't any sarcasm in her voice; it was more like the tone an adult uses to talk to a child who's having trouble comprehending a lesson. I was entirely too tired to give her the satisfaction of a response, so I waited her out.

She smiled again. “You can, whether you know it or not, talk to them. I'm guessing Vokkel wants you to convince his ghost to kill him, you'll be there and do your thing, and the ghost will disappear and Vokkel will live.”

The little mallet-wielding devil that had plagued me just hours before had returned and he'd brought reinforcements. Rubbing my temples, I asked no one in particular if they had any aspirin. Anne was kind enough to go find some. After I'd swallowed the tablets, I looked around the room, my eyes settled on the painting,
What Hunts Me,
and I shivered.

“Okay, so what now?” I asked tiredly.

“We go into hiding,” Billy said firmly. “You and me. We blow this town, get out of here, and go someplace he won't find you.”

“Excuse me!” I was flabbergasted and couldn't come up with anything more intelligent to say.

Billy's eyes narrowed; not the icy green daggers, but something close to it. She said, “Look George, if Vokkel is right and you can do this—and I don't have any doubts that you can—what do you think he'll do next?” She wasn't expecting a response, and I didn't give her one. “He's not going to just let you go—”

“Well shit, Billy!” I sighed, and looked to Justine and Anne apologetically. “Sorry for the language.” I turned back to Billy. “If I can do this thing, what makes Vokkel think I won't turn on him and get him killed anyway?”

“For one, you can bet Edgar will be there to monitor it all, and if he's touching you, he'll see all the ghosts in the room and know exactly how things are going down. Let's not forget, Edgar isn't above hurting people; in fact, I think he gets off on it. So he'll be the enforcer, and if you don't do it right, he'll probably kill you on the spot.”

I sighed again, then said, “And the other thing?”

Justine shifted slightly and said, “Billy, Anne, would you leave us for a few moments? I'd like to speak with George alone.” She said it so sweetly, but with a slight undertone of authority. They both rose without another word and left the room. Justine patted the spot on the couch that Billy had just vacated and said, “Come, dear, sit by me.”

I did as I was told and moved to the couch next to Justine. She took my hand in hers and looked at me, glancing awkwardly to the lump on my forehead. A momentary flash of concern crossed her face and then vanished as a spark lit up her eyes and she smiled. Sometimes when Justine smiled you got a hint, or maybe it was a reflection, of the younger woman she once was. The mischievous and intelligent glint in her eyes and the slight up-turn of her mouth showed a beauty that must have broken a hundred men's hearts. I saw that now, and even with all the chaotic thoughts running around in my head, I wondered why no man had ever captured her heart. I did know that I loved this old lady dearly, and that I would do as she asked.

“George, I've loved and lost so many people in my life.” She squeezed my hand. “I know you've also suffered loss. I couldn't bear to lose you, or Billy; you are my family. Anne,” she smiled affectionately, “has devoted her life to me and for that I will be forever grateful. But Billy is right, you must run, you must hide. Frederick is very powerful, he has a great deal of money, and he has many friends. Perhaps they aren't as powerful as you are, but they are very dangerous and they will do anything for him, and his money. He knows now that you are what he suspected, and he won't stop until he has you.”

“Justine, I can't just run away, I have a life here, a home….” Did any of that matter now? I was pretty sure there was no way I could go back to my job and the life I'd had just a few short weeks ago. I sighed. “Why did he suspect that I was…?” I shrugged resignedly. “
Am
what I am?”