Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Chapter 18

Grant opened the gas on one of the back burners and struck a match. It ignited with a whoomf and settled down into a neat blue circle of quietly-hissing flame. He set a copper-bottomed pot filled with tap water onto the burner.

“Whole bean all you got?” he said, peering into the stainless steel canister where Paige kept her stash.

“Sorry.”

He thought for a moment.

“You have anything made of silk?”

A few minutes later, Grant was pouring a handful of beans into one of Paige’s socks and beating them into grounds with a meat pulverizer.

On the other side of the kitchen, his sister was fishing through a drawer jammed to bursting with junk that either didn’t have a home or had fallen out of use—a refuge of forgotten toys.

Paige fished out the fat Seattle phone book, let it thud against the counter.

“Haven’t seen one of these in awhile,” she said.

It was waterlogged and dogeared. Grant imagined it sitting on the front steps like a lost kitten for days in the rain before Paige had finally surrendered and brought it inside.

She fanned it open.

“E for exorcist?” she asked.

“I guess.”

Grant looked over her shoulder as she thumbed back to the yellow pages.

“It’s not in the Es.”

“Don’t priests handle these things? Maybe we can talk to whoever’s in charge of whatever-the-hell parish we’re in.”

“It’s so easy in the movies,” she said, prying the pages apart. “They make it sound like there’s this whole industry. Okay, here we go. St. James Cathedral. It’s that big church on First Hill. Bunch of phone numbers.”

Grant scrolled the list with his finger.

“Not seeing anything related to exorcism. What about demonologist?” he said.

“Is that a real thing?”

“I think so.”

Paige flipped through the Ds.

“Nope. No wonder people don’t use phone books anymore.”

“You think it’d be possible for me to get my phone back?”

“Why?”

“So I can call the church. Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“Seriously. Go get my phone.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Did you turn it off when I handed it over last night?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You understand that when we run out of battery power, we’re pretty much cut off from the outside world in here.”

Paige rushed into the living room. Grant heard a drawer squeak open, papers shuffling. She came back holding his phone and hers.

“You’ve got a little less than a quarter of a charge,” she said. “And fourteen missed calls from someone named Sophie.” Her right eyebrow went up. “Lady friend?”

He grabbed his phone.

“She’s my partner.”

“Well, it looks like she cares.”

“Everyone at the station is probably wondering where I am. How much battery life do you have?”

“Half.”

“Let me have yours.”

“Why?”

He slid open the back of his phone, popped out the battery, set it on the granite countertop.

“Because people can track me to your house if this phone is running.” Paige handed over her phone. “Can you get me that number?” he asked.

She flipped back to the listing for St. James Cathedral and called it out.

An elderly-sounding woman answered on the second ring, “St. James.”

Grant put the phone on speaker and set it face-up on the kitchen island.

“Hi, who am I speaking with please?”

“This is Gertrude. What can I do for you?”

“I was trying to reach the parish priest.”

“Just a moment.”

The hold Muzak was a Gregorian chant.

After thirty seconds, a soft-spoken man answered, “Jim Ward.”

“Hi Jim, my name’s Grant.”

“How can I help you, Grant?”

“My sister and I are dealing with an issue in her house.”

As Grant listened to the long pause on the other end of the line, it occurred to him that he didn’t have the first idea of how to say this.

The priest finally nudged him on. “Could you elaborate?”

“I think we have some kind of—I don’t know—entity.”

“Entity?”

“Yes.” He hoped the priest would take the ball and run with it, spare Grant the humiliation of having to provide a blow-by-blow for something that was sounding more ridiculous every second.

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

“There’s something upstairs that is … I don’t really know how to put this ... not of this world.”

An even longer pause.

Grant stared at Paige across the kitchen island.

“I know this sounds weird,” Grant said. “I promise you it’s not a joke. I couldn’t be more serious or more in need of help.”

“Are you a member of St. James?” the priest asked.

“No, sir.”

“Is your sister?”

“No.”

“What exactly is it that you would like for me to do?”

“To be honest, I don’t have the first clue about where to begin with something like this. I was hoping you would.”

“Do you believe this is demonic activity you’re dealing with?”

“I don’t know. I think it might be.”

“We’re really not equipped for this in any of our Seattle parishes, but there is a priest trained in the rite of exorcism in Portland.”

“Could you put us in touch?”

“There’s a protocol for these types of matters. It’s just you and your sister?”

“Yes.”

“And do you suspect possession?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Do you believe this entity has control over you or your sister?”

Grant met eyes with Paige.

“I don’t know.”

“I would be happy to meet with both of you. I’m booked up today, but you could come by my office first thing Monday.”

“What’s this priest’s name? The one in Portland?”

“The better course of action would be to have you meet with me first. Then I could make a referral.”

Grant said, “That won’t work for us. I want you to take down our address. It’s Twenty-two Crocket Street in upper Queen Anne—the freestanding brownstone on the corner. Please communicate to this priest in Portland that we need to see him.”

“If this is a true emergency, I could come by myself after I leave the office tonight.”

“Are you equipped to handle something like this, Father?”

A brief pause and then: “Well, it’s not exactly a science, but I’m not the best suited for this type of thing, no.”

“Then don’t come here alone. Give the address to the other priest or don’t do anything.”

“I’ll see what can be done.”

“Thank you.”

Grant gave him his phone number and hung up.

The water was boiling on the stove.

He walked over and lifted the pot off the gas.

“That guy isn’t sending anybody,” Paige said.

“You’re probably right.”

Grant emptied the silk sock filled with fresh coffee grounds into the hot water. He stirred them in with a wooden spoon and topped the pot with its lid.

“You’re looking pale,” Paige said.

Grant nodded. He felt dizzy too, and his headache was becoming impossible to ignore.

“It was a long night. I just need some coffee,” he said.

“Coffee won’t fix this. Should I run through the list of symptoms? I know them pretty well.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You’d have to be a pretty bad detective to actually believe that.”

She was right, but he wasn’t ready to give up on the hope that his headache and sour stomach were just the parting gifts from a terrible evening followed by an even worse night’s sleep.

“This is just the beginning. You have no idea how bad it’s about to get.”

Paige walked over to the pot and lifted the lid. Pungent curls of steam made a brief appearance before dissipating. She picked up the wooden spoon and gave the darkening liquid a few stirs.

“I’ve been where you’re at,” she said. “Wanting to hold off. Thinking I could control my own deterioration.”

“I’m not sending another person up there, Paige. If that’s what you’re getting at.”

“But when it was me hurting, that was—”

“Different, yes.” Grant leaned against the counter.

“Because it’s okay as long as I’m the one needing help?” she asked.

“Because my sister was dying.”

She let the spoon clatter to the counter and turned to face him.

“It wants someone else, Grant. Do you think I can’t feel it too? Do you think it won’t bring me to my knees all over again if we hold off? You saw how I looked last night. I’ll be just as bad off, if not worse, in another twelve hours.”

“We can’t keep sending men up there. Who knows where they’re going, what they’re doing, when they leave your brownstone.”

“I don’t like it either. You may not understand, but these men are more than just clients to me.”

“I get that.” More than you know.

“Look, we can put this off now, but there will come a time—I promise you—when you beg me to bring someone over. I don’t want either of us to get to that point.”

Grant circled the island and took a seat on one of the stools. He crossed his arms on the cool tile and let his head fall onto them. Felt like his brain had been submerged in a bucket of ice water. Each thought arrived cut into slices, and as Grant struggled to assemble them, the only thing that surfaced out of his fog was that she was right—he couldn’t hold out forever.

Paige came over to him.

“You know we don’t have a choice,” she said softly. “But there’s a good reason to do it soon.”

“What’s that?” he said without lifting his head.

The room had become thick with the rich aroma of coffee. On any other day, that smell alone would have been sufficient to give Grant a pleasant dopamine pregame in anticipation of the real thing. Now it struck him as flat and unappealing.

“I just thought of it this morning,” she said. “Don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “We have a chance to learn something about that thing that’s living in my room.”

For a brief second, curiosity broke through the mounting pain. Grant heaved his head off the cool comfort of the tile.

“How?”

“It’s kept me a prisoner for two weeks, and I still don’t know anything about it.”

“Because you’re always unconscious when it shows up.”

“And when it’s all over, my client’s gone and I don’t have a clue about what happened. Tonight will be different. We’re going to make a video of the whole thing.”

“With what?”

“My phone. I’ll leave it on the dresser. There’s no reason my client will think to look for it. His mind will be on other things.”

Grant considered this. Concrete visual evidence was exactly what they needed, and not just for themselves, but for any help that eventually showed up. At the very least, it was more of a plan than anything they’d had up until now. But the idea of watching his sister with another man was beyond what he could handle. Listening to them last night had been hard enough.

“That’s good,” he said finally. “We need intel on what we’re dealing with.”

Grant struggled onto his feet, went to the stove.

“Coffee?” he said.

“Please.”

He pulled two mugs down from their hooks underneath the cabinets and slid a coffee filter over the top of each one. Lifting the pot, he poured over the paper, careful to avoid a scalding splash as the grounds collected and the holy, black liquid passed through the paper.

“Smells like coffee,” Paige said.

He carried the warm mugs over to the island.

“This is how the cowboys rolled,” he said, placing one of the cups in front of his sister.

“We even have a whorehouse.”

“Can’t stop yourself, can you?” he asked.

“From what?”

“Pressing every last button you see.”

“You do have a lot of them.”

They drank, not minding the bitter grinds that had escaped the filter.

“Not bad,” Paige said.

“It’ll do in a pinch.”

“We’re in one.”

For just a moment, the simple act of holding the steaming mug made things feel slightly better. A small, familiar thing in the midst of an alien chaos. Their world may have been upended, but he could still make a cup of coffee.

He said, “It might not work, you know. Video might show us nothing.”

“Pessimistic much?”

“I’m not saying we don’t do it. We just can’t hang our hat on one thing. We need to do more.”

“Like what?”

“There was this woman we brought in on a murder case several years ago.”

“You mean like a psychic?”

“No, she got really upset if you called her that. She billed herself as a trance medium, whatever the hell that means. And yes, she’s even weirder than it sounds.”

“Did she help?”

“I don’t know. She seemed to think so, although the case was never solved. I might call her.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re desperate.” He slugged back a big swallow of coffee. “You know, if this were a haunted house movie—”

“It’s not.”

“But if it were, our job would be to find out what happened in this house.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how some tragic event always precipitates a haunting? Like a murder?”

“I can’t quite believe we’re having this conversation. Those are film tropes, Grant. What’s happening to us is real.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

She stared at him, frustrated. Shook her head finally, said, “I don’t know.”

“Then let’s at least do something. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn’t. At least we’ll be trying. Isn’t that the whole point of your video?”

“Fine.”

“So what do you know about this house?”

“Nothing. I moved in two months ago.”

“Well, we need to find out everything we can.”

“You mean like if the prior resident was an insane caretaker who murdered his entire family?”

“Yes, that kind of thing. We’re sort of stranded here, but I have a friend I can call.”

“Who?”

“He’s a private investigator.”

“Grant, I know we need a little outside help, but this isn’t going to come back to bite me in the ass, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t have people digging into my private life.”

“Paige, this guy’s a friend.”

“Still.”

“And more importantly, the last guy in the world to cast a stone.”

“Okay. I trust you.”

“Then let’s make some calls.”

Grant picked up the battery to his phone, reassembled everything, and powered it up.

“I thought they could track you with that.”

“I just need to get those numbers for the PI and the freakshow.”

As he scrolled through contacts, the phone began to vibrate in his hand.

“Damn,” he said.

“Who is it?”

He set the phone on the tile, Sophie’s name burning across the screen.

Paige said, “You got the numbers. Turn it off.”

He shook his head.

“I’m thinking that’s not the right play. Sophie isn’t going to stop. It’s not in her programming.”

“So what are you going to do?”

He picked up the phone.

“I’m going to talk to her.”