When the two way mirror fell away, the cops monitoring in the other room jumped up, some reaching instinctively for their weapons, but there were two people standing at the back of the room, looking on in mute horror: Kevin and Rachel.

The cops in the now exposed room pulled their service weapons, and Romano barked, “Sit down, now, and stop … whatever the hell you’re doing.”

That was when the funniest thing happened: Rachel stood up for him. “You can’t talk to him like. He hasn’t done anything.”

Everybody, even Ruby, looked at her in general disbelief. Romano’s blocky shoulders slumped, as if someone just strapped a two ton weight to his back. “No offense, Davies, but what the fuck..?”

“What has he done?” she shot back sharply, not at all cowed. In fact, she seemed even more defiant than before. “He came here of his own accord, to answer your questions. As far as I’ve seen, you’ve been badgering him like a hostile witness. And now you’re pulling guns on him, and all he did was stand up.”

Consternation was contagious. Everyone was looking at each other with varying levels of confusion, except for Kevin , who achieved perfect Keanu vacancy in his expression, and Rachel, whose hazel eyes burned with righteousness. Gryphon heard Hugh laugh, and say, You can pack it in, Ruby. Our boy has lawyered up without even knowing it. Best weapon in the universe.

Romano scoffed. “Haven’t you noticed the mirror is gone?”

“Yes – but why do you assume he’s responsible for it? Did he hit it? Did he smash the tape recorder, the camera? From what I saw, he was just sitting there. How do you think he broke the mirror if he was just standing there?”

It was logic, and now it had backed them into a corner. Either they had to admit it was done in some supernatural fashion, – which he just assumed they’d never want to do – or they had to admit he didn’t do anything. A lose-lose situation, and from the triumph in her expression, she knew it. It was lawyer heaven.

Romano, who had holstered his gun, made vague hand gestures that could have indicated he was swatting an invisible fly. “But … you saw … somethin’ weird happened!”

“There’s no legal definition of weird. He’s made no hostile gestures. If he wants to leave, he can leave, unless you arrest him.” Rachel paused, but in a way suggesting she was simply cocking her weapon before firing. Certainly the look on her face suggested that Romano was about to get it with both barrels. “But if you do arrest him, Officer, make it good. A trumped up charge, one I can get blown out of court in two seconds, could be grounds for a harassment charge.”

Hugh continued chuckling, deeply amused by all of this. This is why most cops hate lawyers.

I don’t get it, Ray admitted. Why is she helpin’ us alla the sudden?

Because she’s a lawyer, and she saw a grand opportunity to fuck off the cops, Hugh replied.

Because she thinks he’s not guilty, Mr. Aronofsky said. Even the police can figure out the timeline doesn’t make sense, they just wanted to squeeze a bit more information out of him. She must believe he doesn‘t have any more. Or she wanted to defuse the situation, and if that‘s true, we should probably give her a medal.

Although Hugh’s explanation might account for some of it, Mr. Aronofsky’s theory probably was the correct one. Even Ruby was strangely passive, waiting to see how this resolved.

It resolved pretty much as Gryphon hoped it would – the cops caved. They didn’t have grounds to arrest him, or at least not good ones, and he had a feeling Rachel was one of those barracuda lawyers who tore apart anything weak that happened into their sight. The final argument was the potential that he – ostensibly a material witness – might flee, as he was living in a motel, and admitted to basically being homeless. That led Rachel to ask, “You going to flee, Gryphon?”

In his stead, Ruby replied, “No. Why the hell would I?”

And that was pretty much that. The cops could pursue it if they wanted, and they might, but for now it was done. He was basically released into Rachel’s custody, even though Shane and Clay were out front. Ruby still wouldn’t let him take over again, not until they were out of the cop shop, but at least she attempted to adopt his voice.

Everyone was staring at them as they emerged, as it was a small precinct house, and everyone must have heard the glass go. But it was hard not to laugh when the senior cop on the floor asked the detective what had happened, and he responded, morosely and bitterly, “Nothing.” Romano’s posture was tight, and he seemed to have these weird twitches, like not handcuffing him and beating him with a nightstick was causing him actual physical pain. The urge to laugh – as cruel as it was – was almost unbearable.

The five of them – Shane, Clay, Kevin, Rachel, and him/herself – left, and Ruby finally ceded control to him once more, and he sagged against the outside wall, feeling as weak and dizzy as he usually did after such a thing. “Don’t ever do that again,” he muttered under his breath. “Not unless I’m actually in trouble.”

You were, dickhead. And I got you out of it, didn’t I?

“Huh?” Clay asked.

“Talking to Ruby,” he told him, which got him a quizzical glance. What, hadn’t he introduced them?

The four of them went to a local coffee shop, as Rachel suggested they should “talk”, which was bad enough coming from a woman, and yet worse when she happened to be a lawyer. Especially a lawyer who could make a bunch of angry cops suddenly impotent by simply throwing a couple of sentences at them.

They got a quiet corner table and overpriced coffee drinks before Rachel got down to business. She gave him a deadly serious look, almost faking her concern with true conviction, and asked him, “Gryphon, have you ever been diagnosed with MPD?”

MSG? Ray repeated, obviously confused.

Sylvio sighed. No, moron, MPD: multiple personality disorder.

That made Gryphon laugh, a sharp, harsh thing that startled people at the nearest table. “No, I don’t have multiple personality disorder, although I did wonder a bit when it first started. They’re real people; most of them have had much richer and interesting lives than I’ve had.”

“What happened in there?” Clay asked, looking between him and the lawyers with an almost palpable neediness.

Kevin shrugged, stirring his grande double espresso for no reason beyond giving him something to do with his hands. “I have no idea. It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen – and I‘m from San Francisco.”

“Ruby gets nervous around cops,” he told Shane and Clay, as he was sure the lawyers probably just thought he was nuts. “She emerged, and got angry. She broke some things.”

I trashed that shit hole!

“Yes, you mentioned that name,” Rachel said neutrally, like she was trying to subtly lead a witness. “What was her last name again?”

He sighed, letting her know with an angry look that he was aware of what she was trying. “Her name is – was – Ruby Eileen Cavanaugh, she was born in Saginaw, Michigan but spent most of her childhood in Monroe. She has a half sister, Rosie, that’s she’s been estranged with since almost the very beginning, and her father died in prison, serving a twenty two year sentence for killing her mother’s boyfriend, who was Rosie‘s father. As you can imagine, she had a fun family. Not big on reunions, unless someone brings the Kevlar. She also really has a thing against serial killers …”

And that’s when the penny dropped. Holy shit, it almost all made sense now.

“Serial killers?” Clay repeated. “She was killed by one, right?”

“Yeah.” He stood up, and realized he had to have a talk with his people, but couldn’t while the legal beagles were giving him the third degree. “Uh, I have to hit the bathroom. Can you guys fill ‘em in?” He gestured at Shane and Clay, who basically nodded, although Clay looked slightly preoccupied.

The after dinner crowd had thinned out, so he appeared to have the white tiled men’s room to himself, but he found a relatively clean stall and ducked inside. If they couldn’t see him, they could just assume he was on a cell phone. “You’ve been steering me, haven’t you?” he demanded, staring at an unbelievably gross toilet, but speaking to Ruby. The room had a really odd smell, the combination of lemon fresh urinal cakes and piss, along with a roasting coffee scent wafting in front the vents. It was not a good mix.

Steering you? What are you, a car?

“You know damn well what I mean. This isn’t coincidence. The dead have been warning me about “him”, and we just happen to find Laurel, who knows who he is? I’ve been manipulated all along.”

And of course you blame the whore, Ruby snapped.

“No, I blame the one who is good enough to do this without me even noticing, and Ruby honey, that’s always been you. You have a gift for subtlety the others can’t match.” He sighed, and Ruby at least had the good graces to not deny it further. “Okay, so why are the dead scared of this guy? He’s just another killer.”

There’s a serious implication that he’s not, Ruby said. He might be like you.

“Like me?” That was startling as much as it was reassuring that this hadn’t just happened to him.

Yeah, but … different.

He remembered what Laurel had said, about him :He didn’t know what he was doing, but he knows now. So had he figured out how to make this work for him? Could he teach him?

What the hell was he thinking? The guy killed his entire family. What he could teach him he didn’t want to know.

“Is he really coming for me?”

The length of her pause was disconcerting. I think so. I doubt he’s coming back for his family.

He took a deep breath, nodding even as a dread chill seemed to grip his bowels. Crazed serial killer “agent” coming for him – maybe he was a religious nut too; maybe he’d hit the bugfuck nuts version of a royal flush. Then Gryph recalled his nightmare, and realized he may have had the wrong end of the stick. “Do the dead want him dead?”

Like you can’t possibly believe.

Okay then. He knew what he had to do.

When he returned to the table, they stopped talking en masse and looked at him, the lawyers expressions scrubbed to a frustrating neutrality, while Shane looked like he always did – so relaxed he was verging on a coma – while the light of zealotry seemed to burn in Clay’s eyes. “If you want to have me involuntarily committed, run in for some tests, fine,” he told the lawyers. “I could use the vacation. Just give me until the weekend. And once the coroners finish exhuming the remains from your property, feel free to move in. Laurel only wanted someone to see, someone to get her message – now that it’s been delivered, she and her family are gone. Your house is no longer haunted.”

Some surprise registered in Kevin’s movie star blue eyes. “You know that without going back?”

“She wasn’t really a poltergeist, or she’d have joined my crew. She was just a ghost with a chip on her shoulder. Ghosts have a tendency to move on once they’ve made contact with someone, or at least settle down.” He looked at Clay, as he had a feeling he could use his zealotry, make it work for him. “Clay, I need you to do me a favor.”

“What?”

“I need you to find me the most haunted place in the general Portland vicinity. And I mean violently haunted. A place where doors always slam, a place where things always break, where it’s freezing cold in the dead of August. Maybe even a place where people have felt threatened or been assaulted. I need a poltergeist pit, and I need it now.”

What the hell are you doing? Mr. Aronofsky asked, and the fact that he cursed was a good indication of how worried he was. And from the expression on Clay’s and Shane’s faces, they were completely in agreement with him.

He couldn’t say now, but what he was doing was preparing for war. He had no idea what Louis Stanhope wanted with him, but it was a good bet that he wanted him dead because he was a psycho loony. But the dead wanted him dead, and he felt it was only fair that he give them a fighting chance to get their revenge.

Did he mean so much to the dead that they would keep him alive no matter what? He was going to put that supposition to the test.

“We were the first. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he knows now. He’s coming back. He’s ready this time.”

“Ready? For what? To do what?”

“Gryphon? Clay said, and touched his shoulder.

For some reason, that did it. This fragile reality shattered; whatever the rapport between him and the angry dead were, it just ceased to exist when other people tried to barge into it, and he felt the backlash like a physical thing. It seemed to hit him square in the chest, an invisible fist, and he dropped to his knees on the grass, struggling to pull a breath through bruised lungs.

“Oh, shit. You okay dude?”

Gryphon put his forehead against the ground like he was praying to Mecca. “Damn it! Couldn’t you just leave me the fuck alone?!”

Clay stepped back, but he could feel his scorn coming off in waves. He didn’t need to look at him to confirm the disgust. “Me? What the hell were you doing?!”

“You made contact, didn’t you?” Shane asked, joining them.

Gryphon felt like he had ridden out the nausea, so he sat up, wondering why it always had to feel this bad. “Yes. Call the police. There’s bodies buried here, a woman and her four children.”

“What?” Clay sounded almost angry about it.

“Umm, I’m not sure the cops’ll believe us,” Shane replied hesitantly. “I believe you, but they’re not known for taking things on faith.”

He was right, of course, but it seemed like a shitty thing to say. He climbed to his feet and started stumbling through the backyard, which seemed too pretty and perfect to be real. Of course it wasn’t; it was some landscapers Sunset magazine ideal of a backyard, a place where no one ever lived, and nature didn’t dare defile anything with a weed or a speck of dirt out of place. It would probably look like this for an hour or two, then need a touch up. They probably spent enough money on this to house a homeless man for a year.

He dropped to his knees at the far end of the garden, a few feet from where the fence severed the grounds from the rest of the land. He ripped up patches of rolled up sod like carpet and threw them aside. He started digging through the dirt with his bare hands, the soft, rich layer of bought topsoil soon giving way to the harder, more rockier native dirt. Shane finally joined him with a shovel, and he sat back on his haunches and left him to it, as a shovel could move a lot more dirt than he could.

He was vaguely aware of Clay talking to some people, but he didn’t know who until he heard a woman ask, “What do you think you’re doing?”

She was a light skinned black woman, extremely attractive, although her black hair was pulled back so tightly it seemed to give her face too many angles. She was wearing an expensive, well tailored suit, a modest knee length skirt instead of pants, and had sensible flats on that Julie would have him know were still expensive. Gryphon instantly thought ‘lawyer’ looking at her, and didn’t know why.

Behind her, following her, was a white man in his early thirties, long and lean, looking a bit like Keanu Reeves’ smarter brother. He too was dressed in an expensive suit, gray with a white shirt and red power tie, and he too provoked the feeling “lawyer”. These were the property owners, the ones who hired Spirit Guides.

She looked down at his face, met his eyes, and froze. It wasn’t quite terror, but something uneasy played across her face. Gryphon wondered what she saw in him, and then decided he was probably better off not knowing. “You have ghosts,” he told her. “Five to be exact. And perhaps a cat. They’re buried here.”

The man came up beside her, paused, and something in his face told Gryph that it was he who made the call, not her. “What do you mean they’re buried here? Who could have buried them?”

“This place was an abandoned field before you bought it,” he told them, although Gryphon had no idea how he knew that. “They were buried here then. When they plowed the land, cleared it for you, they missed the bodies. Maybe not by much, but they did.”

The woman looked at the man, her husband, and whispered, “This is insanity. I don’t know how you can believe this shit. And now they’re tearing up our grass. They’ll probably charge us for it too.”

“Rachel, honey -” he began, in the placating tone of husbands everywhere. Did they take a class to learn that tone?

“He stabbed Laurel,” Gryphon said, gaining their horrified attention. “He also stabbed their oldest children, Chelsea and Jeremiah. He drowned Molly in the bathtub, and simply tied a cord around baby Skylar’s neck. I don’t know what he did to the cat.”

“He?” The man asked, the lawyer who hired him. His eyes were the color of water in a swimming pool. “Who’s he? Who are you talking about?”

“Her husband, Louis.”

There was a smell in the air, sickly sweet and rotted, corrupted, and it was worse than any other smell on Earth. Gryphon knew what he had uncovered even before Shane said, “Holy shit.”

He hardly needed to look to see what Shane had turned up. Inside the pit of dark soil, a single dirty piece of ivory was sticking up like a finger, but since fingers were made up of several small bones, he figured it was a rib. “Her name was Laurel,” he told them, still feeling like he was barely holding on to the face of the Earth. He hugged himself for warmth, but it didn‘t seem to help. “And she wants to stop him.”

****

He was right that they were lawyers – Rachel Davies and Kevin Holloway, each specializing in different fields. She was criminal law; he was property law. As soon as the rib was unearthed, Rachel was on her cell to someone, and in spite of the fact that they were smack dab in the middle of nowhere, the cops responded in five minutes, with a meat wagon in tow. They started cordoning off the scene almost instantly, and questioning them. Not the home owners, them. The rich – and perhaps the legally inclined – were different.

The cops were a stocky guy named Romano who had the build of a vending machine, and a younger, taller guy named Sweeny, who was apparently always good cop to Romano’s bad cop. The two enjoyed questioning him; they didn’t seem to believe he was a psychic, especially when Gryphon himself objected to that characterization. They didn’t seem to understand how he could know so much about the deceased without having somehow participated in it.

Although he wasn’t arrested, they were all taken down to the station to discuss it, and that included Davies and Holloway. But still, Gryphon had a feeling he was the only one waiting alone in “the box”, a small, cold room with a two way mirror, and a small video camera on a tripod in the far corner. The only light was fluorescent and buzzed overhead like angry bees, and while he sat shivering in the hard plastic chair, Ruby was getting increasingly annoyed.

She didn’t like cops as a general rule. But being in an actual stationhouse, even a clean, relatively empty one in rural Oregon, still brought back many bad memories. She was arrested several times, roughed up a couple of times, and some cops tried to bully her into blow jobs and other sexual favors more times than she bothered to count. She didn’t like cops. She especially didn’t like being in interrogation rooms. The light overhead, which had been flickering slightly when they came in, was now flashing like a disco light, and he could smell the slightest tinge of ozone, the scent of burning wires. He looked in the mirror, saw his haggard face and mussed hair, and told the cops surely on the other side, “You can’t film me. It doesn’t work. I warned you about electrical equipment, didn’t I?” He wondered if it was going to explode into flame.

We don’t need to stay, she insisted, for the hundredth time. We can just walk. Those fucking pigs can’t stop us, kid, and you know it.

He’s not in trouble, Mr. Aronofsky said. But he will be if you just storm out of here. So just be patient.

So says the person without a criminal record, Ray interjected.

Eventually a plainclothes detective he met earlier came in, a guy named Murphy, a rumpled looking middle aged guy who could have come from Central Casting after you requested a grizzled cop to come stand in the background of any Law and Order episode. He had thinning brown hair combed over his pale scalp unsuccessfully, and it went up on one side like it was attempting to flag down a cab. He sniffed, and said, “What’s that smell?”

“Your camera burning itself out. I told you not to put me in a closed room with electronics.”

He glanced at it as if searching for signs of arson, and then glanced up at the light curiously before taking a seat. He had files, which he rested his thick fingered hands on. “So, Gryphon, do you wanna tell me how you know all this, or are you just making it up? You know, you can admit it now; the Holloways never have to know.”

He sighed, and scrubbed a hand through his hair, getting tired of humoring these people. “I’m sure forensics will get back to you eventually, and tell you I’m not making this up. And I’ve already told you how I know all this, you just choose not to believe me. Which is fine, I don’t care.”

“Because you talk to dead people?” He opened the top folder and looked at the pages within.

“Oh god, I hate that stupid movie. Look, they come to me. I can’t control it; I wish I could.”

“So they told you how they died, and where they were buried in the Holloway’s back yard?”

The sarcasm just dripped from his voice. Ruby snarled Pig, and Gryphon glared at him from across the table. “Laurel Stanhope told me, yes. I know it sounds insane, but it’s true.”

The man nodded, in a way that suggested he wasn’t even listening to him. “The Stanhopes were reported missing ten years ago, by Laurel Stanhope’s mother. She hadn’t heard from her daughter for a while, and the trailer the family lived in had been moved. But the Stanhopes had affiliated themselves with an odd religious sect, and it was assumed they were following their leader. There wasn’t a lot of follow up.”

“Religious sect? Like what, that Bhagwan guy?”

“No, some kind of fundamentalist Christian sect. It was assumed they were heading to Utah; their leader had a huge compound down there. Contact with outsiders was forbidden.” Murphy finally met his eyes, and his look was steady and strangely emotionless. “It’s assumed they’re still down there. The cult is some kind of “the Armageddon is coming” group, they won’t talk with anyone with government connections. But you’re telling us they’re all dead.”

“Not all of them. Louis is still out there.” And according to Laurel, coming back. For him? Was he the one? Why? Why would he be coming for him?

“Uh huh. Tell me, Mr. Ashmore, where were you living ten years ago?”

That made him laugh humorlessly, shaking his head. “I was still in junior high school in Bridgeport, Washington. I don’t think I’d even discovered jacking off as a hobby yet. You wanna pin the brutal murder of an entire family on me?”

“We only have your word right now that anyone was murdered. For all we know, the Holloway home was built on an old, illegal graveyard.”

There was a brief rap on the door, and then a female cop came in, a hard faced brunette who could have doubled as an overly stern librarian, and put a small portable tape recorder on the table. “The camera just isn’t working, so -”

The recorder shut itself off with an audible click, and both the cops looked down at it curiously. The female cop tried to start it again, but it immediately shut itself off once more, with a strange noise that suggested the tape was eating itself.

“What did I tell you about me and electronic devices?”

“Would you stop with the bullshit?” Murphy snapped, slapping his palm on the table. “You’re not a psychic; you don’t talk to dead people. You’re either a con artist, a material witness, or a killer, and I want to know which one, now.”

That was it. Gryphon was so tired he didn’t realize the furious Ruby was making her move until it was too late. She took him completely by surprise. One second he was there, in control, and then suddenly he was shoved into the back of his own mind, his weariness losing out to her rage, her will overpowering his. Ruby, no! he shouted, but she wasn’t listening to him.

“You cut the bullshit,” she growled at Murphy, standing up. There was a noise like ice cracking, and the mirror was showing a thousand spider web fractures, some still growing out from the center as he watched. “He’s told you the truth; it’s your fucking fault if it’s not what you want to hear.” One of the florescent tubes blew out, but didn’t explode … or at least not yet.

Both of the cops were looking at him – her – with wide eyed surprised, and he didn’t know if it was due to the fact that his eyes had changed, or his voice, or both. “Please sit down, Mr. Ashmore,” Murphy said, sticking to the script.

The female cop took a step back, and put a hand on her taser. “Think that’ll do you any good, bitch?” A huge spark jumped from the quiescent taser, making the cop jump, and the taser clattered to the floor as the lens of the burned out camera blew out in a tiny cloud of glass dust. “You can’t fight us with electricity, or haven’t you idiots figured it out yet?”

Murphy remained seated, but his left hand had disappeared from the table top. If he was going for a weapon, he was dead, so Gryphon sincerely hoped he wasn’t reaching for it. “Who are you?”

Ruby, stand down, Gryphon demanded, aware that it would do no good at all.

“I’m Ruby fucking Cavanaugh, pig. I was victim number four of the Mainline Killer in Detroit – you know, serial killer Jerry Wayne Dougherty? He killed a whole bunch of whores before anyone bothered to notice him, ‘cause we’re just disposable meat to all of you, ain’t we?”

Not this rant again, Hugh groaned.

“This kid is playin’ by your rules, and I have no fuckin’ idea why, but I ain’t gonna stand by and watch you try and railroad him ‘cause you fat asses didn’t bother to follow up on a case. So some white trash woman and her dumb ass kids got offed by her fruit loop husband – so fucking what, right? Happens every day. You solve the fucking case, or we’ll do it, but don’t think we’re gonna take your shit.”

“We? Who’s we?”

Ruby glared at Murphy, and the camera fell off the tripod, exploding into a dozen different fragments on the floor. The female cop was looking between it, him, and the now severely cracked mirror, waiting for a sign.

Shane warned him they would refer to him as a “psychic”, as that was the term more people were familiar with – in a supernatural sense – than “agent”, and Gryphon honestly didn’t care. They could call him Patsy the Dog Faced Boy as long as they paid him.

The woman who had called in Spirit Guides was a middle aged, matronly woman with a nervous disposition, who was named Theresa Horne. Her house was done in early showroom, with a touch of kitsch including a cabinet full of collectible Hummel figurines that he ached to shatter into a million pieces, beat their big eyed, pasty, creepy little ceramic faces in.

All that anger for figurines? Mr. Aronofsky commented.

They’re a fucking crime against good taste, Hugh insisted, coming to his defense.

There were various pictures scattered about separate rooms, homely children who’d apparently grown into homely teens, fragments of a typical and probably unsatisfying life. A small yippie dog – probably a Chihuahua or a Pekinese or something – growled and yipped from behind a closed bathroom door, but as soon as he got close it started whimpering and retreated as far from the door as possible. Why he had that effect on animals he had no idea, but part of him just didn’t want to know.

He was walking through first to see if there were any dead here, while the guys set up equipment in a room he wouldn’t pass through again, and Shane talked to Horne. Clay and Shane already knew he would mucho fuck up the equipment if he got near it, and he would give them a false positive reading like they wouldn’t believe; like all the minions of hell had risen up in this woman’s living room, looking for a place to crash. While they would know it was just him, the client wouldn’t.

The tour didn’t take long, as it was a small split level. In the laundry room, he found a flickering light bulb, but the others insisted they weren’t doing it. Then Hugh pointed out a noise he almost didn’t notice, a very energetic hum. Gryph couldn’t help but chuckle, as it was too damn funny.

He made his way back to the kitchen, avoiding the living room where Clay was still scanning with his equipment.

Hangdog Shane looked at him with his sleepy eyes, and asked, “Anything?” Theresa looked at him, eyes bright beneath far too much make up, thick eyeliner making her look like a raccoon – or perhaps just an enthusiastic Goth.

“Yeah. You need to insulate your house, as there are many gaps where the draft is getting through. Also, you might want to get your wiring checked; faulty wiring is responsible for more house fires than you may believe. But there’s no dead here.”

He didn’t wait to see anyone’s response, he simply left, figuring Shane was man enough to handle any fallout.

He clamored into the back of the van and laid down on the thin carpet they had put down to cushion the equipment, wondering why he was so tired after a small house tour. Because you’re still sick, Mr. Aronofsky pointed out. True enough.

He looked around for reading material, and found a newspaper folded up into a small plank shape. He grabbed it and unfurled it, glancing at the headlines, wondering who they were bombing now and if anyone had even bothered to make up an excuse. But that wasn’t what grabbed his attention.

‘Local Psychic Dead’, read the small headline at the bottom of the page. There was a tiny thumbprint sized black and white photograph of a long faced woman with a nimbus of frizzy hair held back by a scarf in a pseudo-hippie fashion, her mouth a dark slash and her eyes too wide and too painted to take her seriously. The caption beneath the photo simply said Madam Paula.

Holy shit, Taneesha exclaimed. Ain’t that that bitch you wanted to go hassle?

Indeed it was; it seemed like he didn’t need to confirm that. The small article that accompanied the headline – which further claimed that she was a “self-professed” psychic, a clarification they probably should have stuck in the headline – said her car had gone off the road at around one in the morning the other night, and plowed square into a tree. There was no signs of another car involved or alcohol, but the investigation was continuing.

I wonder if she saw that coming, Hugh sniped.

But Gryphon felt a coldness settle in his bowels, climb up his gut like it was working its way slowly towards his esophagus, and he had no idea why. “We – nobody went out that night, right?” he asked. “River Road. Did anyone go out to River Road?”

You think one of us did that? Ruby exclaimed, sounding offended. Kiddo, if we wanted to ice the bitch, why do something as mundane as make her car crash? We’re usually more creative than that.

That was true, which bothered him even more.

River Road is, like, on the opposite side of town from your shitty motel, Sly said grudgingly. It’s pretty rural. If I’m thinking of the right one, it has kind of a blind curve, and a lot of people have wiped out on it. Why the county never does anything about it I have no idea.

“There’s more than one River Road?”

Sly snorted derisively. Fuck yeah. Isn’t that like Main and Maple? Every city has like six of ‘em. It’s as inevitable as a street named after Martin Luther King always being in the worst part of town.

The article didn’t give much more information than that, except her true full name was Paula Gregeros, and she had been twice divorced, survived by her parents and a sister. She had written a book, ‘What The Dead Can Teach Us‘, but there was no word on whether it sold well, leading him to think that it didn’t. People generally didn’t like to speak ill of the dead in public, so no one would say ‘her book tanked; they couldn’t even sell it shredded as kitty litter’, so they just wouldn’t mention it at all.

Why did this bother him? Accidents happened all the time, especially car accidents, so what was his problem? Simply that he thought she was a fraud and wanted to expose her as such to her adoring public? (Which was probably about three and a half people, if he really thought about it.) Coincidence; all it was.

So why did he suddenly feel so scared?

He tried to put it out of his mind and read the rest of the paper, but he didn’t really see the words; they all slid past him like they were melting on the page. Although he eventually did get distracted when he reached the comics page, because he started wondering about something that had bugged him ever since childhood – who the hell read the Family Circus? It was never funny, it wasn’t even drawn particularly well, so why did he seem to see it in the comics section of every damn paper he picked up in any damn state? Why did everyone publish the same decades old crap? It seemed to be one of life’s unanswerable questions.

Clay opened the back of the van and started aggressively shoving the equipment back in, scowling at him like he’d taken a dump on the client’s patio. “Would it kill you to be more tactful?”

“What? I didn’t call her a liar, I just said she didn’t have a ghost.” He heard Shane getting in the driver’s side in the front, so he asked, “Was there a ghost or not?”

“We didn’t get a single sign of one,” he replied laconically. “We coulda stuck around, but when we hit the laundry room, I knew what you meant by the wiring. She has a surge in the line. I gave her the number of an electrician I know.”

Clay sighed, and shot a hard look at the back of Shane’s head as he continued loading in equipment, and then slammed the doors shut.

True believers, Hugh said. Watch ‘em.

There was an awkward silence that lingered, even after they got back on the road, headed for their next “client”, which he was sure would be as much of a bust as the last. Although he knew Clay was sulking, he decided to break the silence. “So, have you guys ever actually found a haunted house?”

“Oh sure,” Shane replied, as always helpful and yet strangely detached. He was so laid back that if he were any more relaxed, he’d be clinically brain dead. Or a reality television producer, whichever. “We’ve gotten are share of odd readings.”

“What did you do? You’re not exorcists, right?”

“Right. We just try to establish contact. We’ve had mixed success.”

This is such bullshit, Taneesha snapped.

“Did you used to have a psychic with you?”

“Well …”

“We tried people who claimed to be, sure,” Clay admitted hesitantly. “But usually they just thought they were.”

“Melanie was good, though.”

Gryphon shoved himself up to a sitting position against a case of equipment, and asked, “Melanie?”

Clay shrugged and looked out the window, while Shane continued. “Melanie Hu. She seemed to be the genuine article, as far as a psychic goes. She wasn’t like you, she wasn’t an agent, she was just … sensitive to things. She moved about three months ago, though, to Vancouver.”

“Why?”

It was Shane’s turn to shrug. “She said she was getting a bad feeling about things, and couldn’t stay in Portland anymore. She said she was having nightmares, that something was coming, but she didn’t know what, and she didn’t want to stick around for it.”

Okay, that’s creepy, Ruby said. Weren’t you having nightmares, kid? Something about some guy coming after you?

Oh please, he’s not psychic, Hugh protested.

Yeah, he just collects dead people like fucking bowling trophies, Ray snapped. Shit, where the hell do you draw the freak line?

That was a good point. But Gryphon couldn’t say anything without the Larry and Moe hearing him.

After a while, Clay futzed with the radio, but the reception was piss poor; whether it was just a cheap radio or the presence of him and all his passengers in the van he couldn’t say. But since it seemed like a hellishly long drive into the countryside, he finally had to ask, “You guys know where River Road is?”

Without missing a beat, Shane asked, “Which one?”

Damn it. Sly told him, Tell him the one near Adams Property.

That sounded like a funny and really specific direction, but he repeated it, and Clay gave him a sharp look out of the corner of his eye. “Ya mean where Madam Paula hit that tree?”

So everyone knew but him. Beautiful.

“You want to see if she’s still there?” Shane wondered.

“No, I was just curious. Did you guys know her?”

He got a stereo shaking of heads. “We knew of her,” Clay replied. “But we didn’t know her.”

“I flipped through her book in the library once,” Shane offered. “She came off with a sort of Ramtha vibe, which sounds like shit to me, and there were three obvious typos in as many pages, so I didn’t check it out. Things like that annoy me.”

“Have the dead taught you anything?” Clay was now looking back at him with a somewhat sardonic twinkle in his eye.

“Oh yeah. But most of it’s illegal.” The saddest thing was, that was the complete truth. He knew how to use almost every firearm and weapon imaginable, how to set a fire and make it look like an accident to even forensic investigators, the going rate for a blowjob, the best parts of town in which to score crack, prison etiquette, and many other things that had no purpose in his life, unless he wanted to become a criminal mastermind. And while that job undeniably paid well, he was honestly too lazy to embark on such a thing. It seemed like something you had to work up to, like cross country skiing.

After what seemed like an hour on the road, they finally started up a gravel driveway, and as they parked, Shane admitted, “I don’t know if we’re gonna get a hit on this place either. The house is brand new, and internet searches show the grounds was never used for anything as long as the records go back. But the couple insist so many weird things have been happening here they’ve delayed moving in.”

“And they’re loaded,” Clay said, as he opened his door and got out.

“Now, c’mon, that’s not the only reason I agreed to this,” Shane protested weakly. “They seemed sincere.”

Ooh, maybe they built their home on an ancient Indian burial ground, Ruby said, with far too much enthusiasm.

I refuse to believe anything that’s ever been in a Spielberg film, Hugh insisted.

What about Schlinder’s List? Mr. Aronofsky countered.

I refuse to believe he looked like Liam Neeson.

You guys are all fuckin’ nuts, Ray exclaimed.

He got out of the back and stretched, working the kinks out of his back as he looked around. Yes, it was a new house, and an impressive one. A three story Victorian style house with a huge wrap around front porch, complete with an old fashioned style porch swing that seemed straight out of the South, painted a robin’s egg blue with contrasting icing white trim. It was the nicest house he had ever personally seen. He bet it had marble counters, and maybe a chandelier, because rich people always had that kind of stuff, didn’t they?

The air was fresher out here, with nary a neighbor or a cow flop, and he looked around as he heard Shane tell Clay, “I don’t think they’re here yet. They don’t live here now; they were comin’ in -”

Gryphon had an undeniably eerie feeling come over him, a sudden chill, and heard a cat meow very loudly. He turned, and saw a fluffy black cat pacing in front of the high cedar fence that marked off the backyard. Also standing there was a woman in a very short black skirt and a red blouse, her bottle blonde hair long and wavy, starting to go black at the roots. He was about to call over Clay and Shane, figuring this was one of their clients, but then he noticed her legs.

There was blood running down her legs, pooling on the cobblestone walkway, and he slowly realized that her red blouse was torn – and not really red at all. The blood had soaked through, well into the fabric, and he imagined it had once been once been white, but there was no obvious sign of that anymore. The rips in her blouse, exposing nothing but blood caked flesh, were probably from the knife. The cat twined around her legs, kinked tail held high, but didn’t seem to notice the blood. How could that be? There was no way he could see a dead animal; he’d never seen a dead animal.

“Do you see?” she said, her eyes so pale they were virtually colorless, a shade of gray that seemed like an afterthought. There was blood running down her arms as well, dripping off her hands, splattering the sidewalk.

“I -” he began, and then found himself unable to speak, his throat seizing up.

“What?” Shane asked, getting equipment out of the back of the van.

Clay must have seen him staring, because he came over and tried to see what he was staring at. “What? What is it?”

The woman turned and walked into the backyard, leaving a trail of blood. Gryphon didn’t want to, but he felt strangely compelled to follow, and as he did, the cat sat in the middle of the path, waiting almost patiently for him to catch up. What was this?

“Do you see somethin’?” It was Shane’s voice, but it sounded strangely far away, like he was shouting from the end of the street. “Gryph?”

The cat led him into the backyard, on the off chance he didn’t notice the blood, and there, standing amid the nicely landscaped garden, where a rose arbor led to a burbling koi pond, was four people …

No. The woman, and her four children. The oldest was a girl, maybe about eight, dressed in what looked like pajamas, her straight brown hair hiding most of her face, but not the stab wound in her chest, that had marred her white and blue starred pajama top and gray pants with a wide swath of crimson. There was a boy too, maybe six, dressed in similar pajamas, his short hair a sort of ash blond, but he had some kind of Batman logo top on, and the black obscured the blood. He was holding a baby wrapped in a blanket, age unknown, and it wasn’t bloody, just had a bit of rope – or maybe laundry line; he couldn’t tell – tied tightly around its throat. There was a toddler sitting on the ground, a girl in a pink nightdress, petting the cat. Her pale blonde hair floated around her head as if it was underwater, and her skin had a bluish pallor.

Gryphon felt cold and ill, bile rising in his throat. The bodies were here; he could almost taste the sickly sweet decayed flesh in his mouth. He felt something brush against his leg, and looked down to see the cat. This made no sense – why was the cat here? Was it real? Or did one of the dead want it so bad it manifested here, a side effect of their own refusal to die?

“Do you see?” the woman said again.

He nodded, swallowing hard. “I see,” he croaked, barely able to speak.