It's Friday again, so that means I have another short story for you. This is the fourth Friday in a row that I've had a story in this series ready, which is easily the most consecutive Fridays I've posted a story since I started this blog two years ago. I'm really enjoying this series and these characters. Admittedly, this installment is a little slower and more expostion-heavy than the first few parts, but it's an origin story, and only the first half of one at that, so what did you expect? You can find the last installment here; there's a link to the other chapters there as well. If you read it, leave me some feedback, please! If you don't, it's kind of like going to a play and not clapping when it's over!
Biggs
and Wedge Occult Occurrences:
The
First Case Part 1:
A
Medium’s Tale
“This
is definitely a bad idea.”
“It’s
not a bad idea, boss,” Lexy answered, for what had to be the hundredth time.
Alexa Fogel, fresh out of college, ran the Haunted Hops, the bar me and my
partner Wedge owned, and was also an unofficial assistant for our occult
business. Even though the bar made money hand over fist, she was always trying
to find ways to drum business up even more. Chalk it up to youthful exuberance,
I guess. This time, though, she had come up with a way that I was particularly
against.
Whether
she knew it or not, though, I’d go along with anything she asked me to.
“Listen,
Hank,” she said as she reached up to adjust the black-and-blue striped tie she
was making me wear as we stood in my office in the bar’s basement. She was one
of the few people in the world who called me by my first name instead of just
calling me “Biggs” or “Biggsy.” “Weekly World Now magazine is a big deal.
Millions of people across the country read it. This interview is great exposure
for the bar and for the occult stuff too. And exposure means business, and
business means money. You like money, don’t you,” she asked slyly, looking up
at me under lowered eyebrows as I towered a foot over her.
“Not
as much as I like peace and quiet,” I answered grumpily, but again, I’d do
anything for her… anything short of actually telling her that, that is.
She
finished adjusting my tie, smoothed down the front of the black suit jacket I
wore maybe once a year, and stepped back to look at me. “There we go. You look
great, Hank,” she said. Then she wagged her finger at me and grinned. “Now,
stop being a grump. I’m going to go upstairs and send the reporter down. Just
be yourself, you’ll be fine!” Standing on her tiptoes, she leaned towards me
and kissed my cheek, and then turned on her heels and walked out.
I
watched her walk away, going over in my head all the reasons why I could never
act on what I felt for her. Shaking my head, I walked behind my desk and sat
down, opening the bottom draw to take out the bottle of Glenfiddich 1937 I kept
there. Easily one of the best… and most expensive… scotches in the world, this
bottle had been a gift from a very wealthy client and I had been holding onto it
for a few years now, only having a shot of it for very, very special occasions.
I figured the hell this interview would probably be would qualify, so I opened
the bottle and took a large gulp before sealing it up in the desk again as I
heard the reporter coming down the stairs.
She
walked into my office with a big smile on her face, looking young enough to
make me wonder if the magazine had just sent in intern instead of a real
reporter. “Mr. Biggs, hello! My name is Melissa Adaire, from Weekly World Now.
Thank you so much for agreeing to do this.”
“You’re
welcome,” I tried to sound as friendly as possible, if only for Lexy’s sake. I
gestured to the chair in front of the desk and as she took a seat, I asked,
“So, where would you like to begin?”
“I
can’t help but notice the rather large replica of the Millennium Falcon that
hangs from the ceiling upstairs,” she said as she took out her tape recorder
and pressed record. “Why don’t we start with the infamously mysterious time you
and your partner visited Skywalker Ranch?”
“No
can do.” I shook my head. “We signed about eight different legally binding,
ironclad nondisclosure agreements over what happened there. All I can tell you
is that the Falcon up there is one of the gifts we received from a very
grateful client in that case.”
She
laughed. “I didn’t think I’d get anywhere with that, but it was worth a try.
Why don’t we start with you, then? You’re a medium, correct? Tell our readers
briefly what a medium is, for any who might not know.”
“Okay.
A medium is basically anyone who can communicate with spirits, usually through
senses and feelings, but sometimes through more direct means, like just
talking.”
“And
how did you find out you were a medium?”
I
sighed slightly. I didn’t enjoy telling this story, but I had promised Lexy.
“My grandmother died when I was seven. Shortly after that, whenever I picked up
my toy phone, I would hear her talking to me. I told my parents about it, they
just thought I missed my grandma and had made her my imaginary friend, you
know? But after awhile, they would overhear me talking about things that had
happened before I was born that I couldn’t know about, things that she told me
on the phone. Understandably, it freaked them the hell out. When I saw how much
it bothered them, I told my grandmother I couldn’t talk to her anymore, and I
never heard her voice on the phone again.”
She
tilted her head. “You mean you were able to, um, banish her that easily at such
a young age?”
“I
didn’t say I banished her,” I snapped slightly, “just that I never heard her
voice again. I was seven. I had no idea about mediums or spirits or banishings
yet. I was just a little boy talking to his grandmother, and when it got scary
and I asked her to stop, she did. Probably just because she loved me, I guess.
When I did learn all about banishings and everything, I did go home and release
her,” I added softly.
“Okay,”
she said. “So how did you go from there into becoming a full-fledged medium?”
“I
grew up. My grandmother was the only spirit I ever talked to, but as I grew I
could feel them all around us. It scared me, but after seeing how my parents
reacted to the thing with my grandmother, I never mentioned it to them. And
then when the existence of spirits really came to light all over the world, it
all clicked for me, that I was what the news was calling a ‘medium’ and that I
could talk do what these people on the news could do.”
“Is
that when you set out as your tour as a medium?”
I
shook my head. “Hell no. I didn’t want anything to do with this stuff at first.
I went to college, got a degree in English. I wanted to be a writer.” I
laughed, a bit more bitter-sounding than I had intended. “It took me a few
years after that to realize that there wasn’t any money in writing unless you
were already a famous writer, so I gave that up. The only real marketable skill
I had after that was my abilities as a medium, so I started doing the John
Edwards Crossing Over-type stuff, first in little clubs, then in colleges, then
in stadiums. The only difference between me and John Edwards, though, was that
when I did it, it usually wasn’t a load of shit.” Realizing what I said, I
looked at the tape recorder. “Sorry.”
“Don’t
worry,” she laughed, “it happens all the time. I’ll just edit it out later.
What do you mean when you say usually?”
“There’s
no such thing as a sure thing at a medium show,” I answered. “Here’s a trade
secret for you. People are never haunted. Places? Sure. Items? All the time.
But not people. So if I was at a show, and nobody there had anything on them
that was haunted… I had to make something up fast. Luckily for me, if you have
hundreds of people together, odds are there will be a few haunted family
heirlooms around so I only had to make things up a few times, but it did
happen.”
“Did
you feel bad those times when you had to lead people on?”
I
shrugged. “Yeah, but once I got popular as a medium, the money was flowing in
faster than I could count it. I was a cocky twenty-something making more money
than I ever expected, and I helped people talk to the dead. To say I was full
of myself would be a gross understatement.”
“What
changed?”
“I
got one hell of a rude awakening.” She looked at me, obviously waiting for me
to elaborate. “I was backstage at one of my shows… my last show, as it turned
out… and a very wealthy couple paid a whole lot of money to see me backstage
for a few minutes. It turned out they wanted to see me because they thought
their house was haunted. I told them I didn’t do banishings and that they
should find someone else, but they offered me an exorbitant amount of money, so
I couldn’t turn them down.”
“So
you took the job even though you knew you weren’t qualified?”
I
laughed. “Like I said, an exorbitant amount of money. And remember, I was cocky
as hell. Plus, all the spirits I had ever dealt with before were ghosts, like
my grandmother. Ghosts; pure, friendly spirits just hanging around their loved
ones, like my grandmother was. I figured all I had to do was learn how to do a
banishing, and I’d be all set.”
She
gave me a knowing grin. “It sounds a bit like that isn’t what happened,
though.”
“You
could say that.” I shook my head and loosened my tie, sick of wearing it. “It
started out alright. I learned about the double pentagram to summon and bind
the spirit. I learned how to use chicken blood to paint the double pentagram in
the center of the focal point of the haunting. I went to one of the occult
supply stores that had popped up everywhere and bought a hand axe anointed in
innocent blood to banish the spirit. I figured I was all set. I told the
wealthy couple to head out to their weekend home for the night and went to
their house, swaggering around like I was the cock of the walk. I didn’t even
use my senses as much as I should, ignoring what I felt from the spirit,
focusing on finding the focus of the haunting. Once I did, I painted the double
pentagram, sat down with the axe on my lap, and reached out to summon the
spirit… and that’s when all hell broke loose.”
“What
happened,” she asked, leaning forward in her seat.
“For
one thing,” I answered as I leaned down and pulled the bottle of scotch back
out of the desk drawer, “I realized what I had missed when I was ignoring my
senses. This wasn’t one of the ghosts I was used to dealing with.” I raised the
bottle to my lips and took a drink, ignoring the surprised look she was giving
me. I wasn’t sure if she was surprised I was taking a drink mid-interview or
was surprised I hadn’t offered to share. Either way, I didn’t care; the warmth
that was already spreading through my body was something I desperately needed
to get through the rest of this story. “I was suddenly face-to-face with my
first poltergeist. A raging, violent poltergeist. As it let out a very inhuman
roar and everything in the room that wasn’t nailed down started flying through
the air, I realized everything I thought I knew about spirits up until that
moment meant precisely dick.”
“That
must have been… rough,” she said, her voice revealing just how inadequate she
knew that word was.
“It
was the single worst moment in my life,” I answered, taking another short drink
before putting the bottle back in the drawer. “I was shocked into inaction
until a Ming vase missed taking my head off by about a millimeter. I pulled
myself up to my feet and lunged axe-first at the poltergeist, stumbling over
the electrical cord of a lamp that was skidding across the floor. Somehow I
managed to chop the axe into the poltergeist’s thigh, and that should have been
the end of it.”
“But
it wasn’t?”
“Nope.
The hand axe might have been real, but there was no innocent blood. Which made
it about as effective against a spirit as a cotton swab would be against you or
me. The poltergeist actually looked at it for a second while I stared,
dumbfounded, until the poltergeist hit me with the back of its hand, knocking
me on my ass. I scrambled backwards as fast as I could… and completely
obliterated the bloodline keeping the pentagram together. Free now, the
poltergeist took off after me at full speed, and I got up and ran faster than I
ever ran before, making it out the front door just as I felt its nails scratch
down my back, drawing blood. Luckily, it couldn’t leave the house, so I was
safe.”
She
was on the edge of her seat. “What happened next?”
“What
happened next?” The pain of reliving that memory aside, I grinned in spite of
myself. “Wedge happened next.”
To
Be Continued…
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