1

“No, you may not stay. This is my house now, and quite frankly, I’m getting tired of arguing with you about it.”

        “It isn’t fair. I’ve been here for eighty-nine years, and have nowhere else to go!”

        “Well, that’s a load of crap if ever I heard one.”

        “Your generation is so rude!”

        I rolled my eyes. I’d been arguing with the creature for nearly an hour and was ready to go take a nap. For obvious reasons, the man who’d sold me the house hadn’t bothered to mention that the place was haunted, but I should have at least been suspicious. I mean, $20,000.00? For a six-bedroom, five-bath, three-story Victorian home on six acres of prime land? The housing market wasn’t that bad, so yeah, I should have guessed.

        Something tells me I did have a suspicion or two, though, because that same something kept me from bragging about how little I’d paid for the house. Everyone assumed I had spent my entire inheritance on it, and I’d been bombarded with questions from friends and family alike about how in the world I was going to pay for its upkeep now that I clearly had no money left, or because what I did have would get devoured by massive mortgage payments.

        Ha. After paying for it in cash, I still had tons and tons of money and a gorgeous old house, too.

        I also had an irritating spirit squatting in its interior, one that had supposedly been quite the bad-ass in its day, or so he told me, and which was now refusing to vacate. Let me go back for a moment.

        Three days ago, I finished moving in. There wasn’t a whole lot to move, really, since I was coming from a tiny apartment with closet-sized rooms. But that was okay – now that I was filthy rich (for me, anyway), I could take my time furnishing this new place one room at a time, filling it with all the lovely things I’d always wanted.

        That night, as I curled up, happy and peaceful, on my mattress (I’d tossed the old bedroom set, planning to go shopping the next day for a new one) I began drifting into a blissful state of repose. Began. The actual repose part never happened because something cold swept through the room and groaned loudly right into my ear.

        I’m not a jittery person, and have been known to calmly ignore birds flying at my windshield and keep driving without so much as a twitch. I’ve never enjoyed Halloween “haunted” houses because the sudden hand grasping my ankle from the darkness was a boring expectation that caused me to simply stop in my tracks until it let go, so I wouldn’t lose my balance and fall. I even had a cat once that took some kind of perverse pleasure in jumping off high places onto my head when I’d pass by, unsuspecting. Rather like the Green Hornet’s Kato. Did that faze me? Nope. I’d just pry the overheated kitty out of my hair, place her gently on the floor, and keep going.

        So when I got groaned at by this – this thing in my house, I sat up and glared around at the darkness, thinking, “Really? Dude!”

        At first there was nothing, but then another blast of cold air caused me to climb off the mattress so I could wrap myself more tightly in my quilt. “Who are you?” I demanded. “I was trying to sleep, for Pete’s sake!”

        Another groan.

        I remember wondering if maybe the whatever-it-was had spent a lot of time in Hollywood. “Okay. Fine. If that’s all you have to say for yourself, I’m going back to bed. Go away.”

        “Wait!” It had sounded more like a whisper than a command.

        “For what?”

        “Listen to me! This is my home! Get out!”

        “Sorry. I bought it and now it’s mine. You get out.” And with that, I had lain down again, cocooned in my quilt which I pulled up over my head, and gone to sleep.

        The next morning, I was awakened by the sound of cookware being tossed about in the kitchen. Since I only owned one pot and two pans, the racket wasn’t very impressive. Irritating, though. I got dressed, grabbed my Bible from a box under the window, and stormed downstairs.

        The kitchen would have been a mess if I’d had anything in it besides the pathetic collection of cooking vessels, some paper plates and one set of flatware service. Oh, and a sleeve of Styrofoam cups. As it was, the lone pot was teetering on the edge of one of the counters, one of the pans was on the floor, the other pan plastered against one of the walls, the cups were tipped over, and the paper plates were flying about like Frisbees.

        “How childish!” I said, ducking to avoid one plate and catching another as it flew past. “Who are you – the ghost of Pee Wee Herman? Oh, wait, no. He’s not dead yet.” I flung the plate back in the direction from which it had come.

        Suddenly, the plates dropped to the floor, the pan on the wall slid down and clattered onto the counter, and something began shimmering in front of me. A moment later, it almost solidified into what looked like a man in a pair of light brown trousers held up by suspenders over a bloodied T-shirt. He had a mustache but was otherwise hairless.

        “Why aren’t you terrified, woman?” he demanded, glaring at me from under some pretty sparse eyebrows.

        “Of what? Something that can’t even change its clothes?”

        That seemed to surprise the creature, and he took a step back, gaping. Then he stood straighter, clenched his fists at his sides and said, “I’ll have you know I murdered eighteen women just like you!”

        “Just like me, eh? So they were all divorced, were they?”

        “Well, no, not all – ”

        “And they all worked selling toys at the local Flea Market over the objection of their mothers and fathers?”

        “What?”

        “And every one of them was an only child who inherited an obscene amount of money from her parents’ estate because her parents died in a car accident before they had time to cut her out of their will for getting divorced and working at a Flea Market?”

        “Well, no, but – ”

        “Then they were not just like me!”

        He frowned at me for a second. “You know, if I were alive, I’d have a headache. You’re obnoxious.”

        “No, I’m aggravated, and you’re making illogical assumptions. Who are you?”

        “In life, I was – ”

        “Don’t you dare say ‘Jacob Marley’.”

        “I wasn’t going to, you infuriating young woman!”

        “Good. So… you were saying?”

       “Yes. In life, I was Malcolm Thomas Cavell.” He raised one of those skimpy brows at me, waiting, I believe, for me to look impressed.

        I wasn’t. “Never heard of you.”

        The translucent man sighed. “Before your time, then, I suppose.”

        “Hey, that reminds me – why do all the bad guys have three names? I mean, yeah, most of us have middle names, too, but we’re rarely referred to that way.”

        “You’ve lost me, I’m afraid.”

        “Pretty polite for a mass-murderer, aren’t you. And now that you’ve succeeded in waking me up, I’m going to make coffee. Get out.”

        He made a grotesque face but didn’t move.

        “Are you pouting?”

        No reply.

        I shook my head and walked through him to the counter where I grabbed the pot and brought it to the sink to fill it with water. Placing the Bible on the small counter section beside the stove, I turned the burner up to its highest setting and opened the cabinet above to reach down the jar of instant coffee.

        “What’s that?” His tone had been casual.

        “What’s what?”

        “That.”

        “This? A pot.”

        “No, the other thing.

        “Instant coffee? That reminds me,” I added in a mutter, “I have to go buy a decent coffee-maker one of these days.”

        “No, no, the other thing.”

        “I spy, with my little eye… what in blazes are you talking about? You know what – how’s this: stop talking and disappear. Go to… Curacao, or… St. Croix, maybe. I don’t care. Just get out of my house.” I’d been thinking of a place much further south, to be perfectly honest, but didn’t feel like cussing that early in the morning.

        He didn’t answer, and a moment later I realized I was alone. Blissfully, happily alone.

        Sad to say, my solitude didn’t last. Three days later and an hour ago, the blasted thing showed up when I was stepping out of the shower. While throwing my back-brush at him had been ineffective, it felt appropriate. He had at least had the decency not to goggle at me.

        Now, having finally realized why I’d never heard of Malcolm T. Cavell – eighty-nine years ago, my mother was in diapers – I told him he had no idea what my generation was like.

        “Maybe not, but you’re certainly rude!”

        “What?! You come barreling into my bathroom when I’m undressed and you have the gall to say I’m rude? Ha!” I finished dressing, picked up my Bible from the night stand and waved it at him. “Listen, dude, you are not going to get me to leave!”

        “Ah. And what’s that you’re holding?”

        “Never saw one of these before?”

        “I have, but…”

        “Then why’d you ask?”

        “I asked the other day, too, when we were in the kitchen, but you seemed too stupid to realize what I was referring to.”

        “Not stupid, tired. Needing coffee. How long did you live here before you killed all those women?” It had occurred to me that there might be eighteen more of these spirit-things in this house waiting for the right moment to pop out at me and insist that I leave.

        “I didn’t.”

        “Er, what were you doing here, then?”

        He sighed. “You may as well sit down. It’s a rather long story.”

        I didn’t have time for this. “Why don’t you leave instead. I can go look it up at the library.”

        “I’m not leaving.”

        After thinking about this for a bit, I decided to hear him out. Why not? I was going to get him to leave one way or another, so I might as well get an interesting story for my trouble. I perched on the side of my new bed. “You are. Leaving, that is. But please feel free to tell me what happened before you go.”

        He mumbled something that sounded like, “Blasted women!” before going to the chair beside my nightstand and doing a pretty good imitation of sitting. Then he stared off into the distance, shook his head a few times, and finally began what turned out to be quite a tale.

2

“All right. Tell me if I understood all that correctly.” I had scooted back onto the bed while he was talking, making myself comfortable. A nice cup of coffee would have been the perfect accompaniment, but I’d chosen to wait until he was done.

        I’m not into psychology, so all of his lamenting about a rotten childhood, a selfish mother, and an absentee father had only been of marginal interest. “After leaving home at fourteen,” I said, “you found jobs working as a handyman at various houses in the area, right? And most of the people who hired you were women, but they started to remind you of your horrible mother, so one day, when one of them told you that you hadn’t fixed her stairs properly, you snapped and stabbed her to death with a screwdriver. Nice. You got away with it by arranging her body so it looked like she’d fallen down the stairs, landed on your toolbox, and impaled herself. Then you contacted the police and they believed you because you’d never been in trouble before, and because there was no logical reason why anyone would kill someone he hardly knew and who was a major source of income.”

        “Exactly.”

        “You say it actually felt good and – hold it. How come you didn’t have blood all over your clothes and stuff? You didn’t explain that.”

        “Ah, well before getting the constable, which is what we called a policeman back then, I went upstairs, washed, put on some of her husband’s casual clothes, and then went out into the yard and buried my own under the porch. I rubbed some dirt on the man’s shirt and pants to make them look like I’d been working in them, and ripped a few spots here and there so they’d look old.”

        “Clever devil, aren’t you.”

        “What? W-why would you call me that?!”

       Hmm. “No reason. All right, so since you literally got away with murder, you eventually had an opportunity to do it again, but this time you, er, it was a younger woman and you – as you put it – forced her to be nice to you before killing her. I have to say, that’s pretty disgusting.”

        “Why? I was entitled to some enjoyment. Besides, it wasn’t like she was going to be able to tell anyone after.”

        “Yeah. Disgusting. Anyway, you moved around, never really a suspect in any of the deaths until the last one, who you didn’t actually kill. The woman who lived here – you managed to wound her badly but didn’t get a chance to finish her off before you were caught and shot by her husband and the police officer who was with him.”

        His expression went sour. “Indeed. Why did the husband have to have a gun, too?”

        I shrugged. “You say the police and various citizens in the area were getting suspicious because in every instance, the murder victim had employed you at one point or another, yes? Didn’t you realize they would figure that out? I mean, wow – how idiotic of you! Or were you just delusional?”

        He glared. “You have no idea how fortunate you are that I’m dead.”

        A few seconds of thought about that one, and I burst out laughing. “That’s the most irrational statement I think I’ve ever heard!”

        “How?” He sounded deeply offended. “I mean, if I were alive – ”

        “You’d be over a hundred years old, assuming you weren’t an infant when you committed those murders!” I laughed harder.

        Through the tears, I could see he was working it out. “Fine. I’ll grant you that much. But what makes you think I still couldn’t harm you?”

        “At a hundred-something years old? What could you do? Gum me to death? Poke me with your cane? Bump into me with your walker?” I almost choked, and rolled onto my back, laughing too hard to continue.

        The air in the room suddenly got colder, and a loud whoosh knocked several items from my new dresser.

        He was gone.

      I got myself under control, grabbed my Bible, and went downstairs for breakfast. I had a new set of dishes, glassware and silver, a whole set of pots and pans, a well-stocked pantry, and my refrigerator was full for the first time in years. Despite the unexpected housemate, life was starting to get good.

        I probably shouldn’t have spent so much time talking to the spirit-thing-murderer-guy-whatever, and it might have been unwise to anger it like that, I told myself over a hearty meal. On the other hand, I wasn’t about to let it intimidate me, and at some point, I was going to get it to leave. Yes?

        Maybe, but not quite yet.

        “You don’t take me seriously enough, child.”

        “I’m thirty-two. And what do you want now?” At least I’d been able to finish eating by the time this next visitation occurred.

        “You may not appreciate how dangerous I am, but I assure you, she did!” He had been holding one hand behind his back, and now drew it forth and raised it to chest-level.

        Dangling from where he gripped it by a mop of tangled, curly hair, was a severed head.

        “Ew.” Like him, it wasn’t entirely solid, and despite the gross-out factor, I relaxed. “Friend of yours?”

      “Looks like you were right,” said the female head, swiveling her eyes to look back and up at him. “She doesn’t frighten easily.”

        “Is this supposed to be one of your victims?” I closed the dishwasher and returned to the table to sit. This was beginning to get tedious.

        “Number twelve, I believe.”

        “Awesome.” I raised my brows at the head. “Why did you agree to be part of this? Don’t tell me you’ve been living here, too!”

        “No, of course not! No, we’re just fr- hey!”

        “She’s a little confused because of the way she died.” He had thumped the head against the edge of the table, his scowl almost scary.

        I looked at them for nearly a full minute before saying, “So you’re friends. Probably from way back, too. Great. Ghost hustlers.” I sighed. “That does it.”

        “What are you saying, madam?”

        “Don’t ‘madam’ me!” I have no idea why I said that. Probably imitating my own mother who had always used that expression to sound authoritative, even when its use was uncalled-for and irrelevant. I got up and went to the other side of the kitchen where I retrieved my Bible.

        “Oh, great,” the head groaned.

        “Get out of my house,” I said, my voice quiet. No point in yelling, right?

        “What are you going to do with that?”

        “With what?”

        “That – that thing in your hand, is what!”

        I stared at the Bible. “Oh. Gee, I don’t know – any suggestions?”

        “Quite a few, actually, and all of them are painful.”

        “Now who’s being rude?”

        Before he could respond, someone started to knock at the kitchen door.

        “Oh, you so dodged that bullet!” I hissed, heading away to answer it. “Get lost – I’ll finish dealing with you later!”

        The now-familiar blast of cold air ruffled the pretty lace curtains over the sink as my “housemate” vanished. “Be right there!” I groused in a semi-shout as whoever was outside knocked again.

        “There you are!”

        I stared. My cousin Mike. The one who had made sure I knew what an airhead he believed me to be for blowing my inheritance on what he called a white elephant (referring to my house).

        “Well, are you going to invite me in?”

        “Why? I thought you held this place in the highest contempt – or is it just me you feel that way about?” And what had he meant by “there you are”? He knew exactly where I was… on the other hand, I’d been ignoring all my calls over the past few days.

        “Aw, come on, cricket-face, you know I was only looking out for your best interests!”

        No, you were angry because you weren’t named in the Will. “Don’t ever call me that again, Mike.”

        He grinned. “Sorry. I promise. Now may I come in?”

      Stepping aside, I waved him in, unhappy. I knew he was hoping to find me living in dusty squalor, no furniture, no television, nothing but a big, empty Victorian mini-mansion devoid of anything nice. Why? So he could rush off and gossip to the rest of the family, making sure they acknowledged that he’d been right about this being a huge mistake on my part.

        Ha.

        Not that the truth was much of an alternative. Now he’d get to see that the place was getting both fixed and furnished, and would demand to know how. I was beginning to think the M.T. Cavell presence was better than having Mike here.

        “Huh!” This grunt of surprise followed his opening my cabinets and seeing how well-supplied I was. Nosy creep. “Where’d all this come from? Neighbors feeling sorry for you?”

        “Do you mind? I don’t recall ever going to your house and poking through your closets!”

        He didn’t reply, but moved on to the drawers. “Did these come with the house? They’re really nice.” He was clearly referring to my silverware.

        “No, they came with a price-tag from Macy’s.”

        He turned to face me, leaning back against the counter without closing the drawer. “Oh, hon, no! You spent the last of your cash on knives and forks? That’s so… that’s so… so sad!”

        I was sure he really wanted to say “pathetic.” I crossed my arms over my chest, thrusting out my chin, “Spoons, too.”

        Mike did the tongue-clucking thing as he shook his head. “You know, the family would have been more than happy to donate kitchen stuff. You didn’t have to spend money you don’t have for things like that. I mean, how will you pay the electric bill? Or the mortgage? And what if you get sick?”

        “Get out of my house.”

        “What? I’m trying to be a good – ”

        “No, Mike, you’re being perfectly horrible, and you know it. You came here to gloat and I’m so not in the mood for that today. Or any day, come to think of it, so take your pity and leave.” It seemed that throwing others out of my house was my new job in life.

        He straightened, slapped the drawer shut without looking at it, and stalked off to the door. I fully expected him to raise an arm, index finger pointed upward as he vowed vengeance. He didn’t, though, but did cast a furious glare at me as he went out.

        I sighed, shut the door gently, took a bottle of water from the fridge and went to the living room. Through the huge front windows, I watched Mike’s car disappear down the winding driveway. I unscrewed the bottle, and before taking a sip, had a good giggle.

        That, I told myself, had felt great.

 

3

The library’s archives were fairly complete. After only fifteen minutes of searching through their microfilm of newspapers past, I began to find articles about serial-killer Malcolm Thomas Cavell. For some reason, only seventeen murders had been attributed to him, making me wonder if maybe the eighteenth’s body had never been discovered.

        Yuk.

        If I hadn’t succeeded in chasing the miscreant out of my house earlier – and I was about positive that I hadn’t – I’d be sure to ask him about it next time he materialized.

       Anyhow, it looked like he’d been accurate about the rest. The descriptions of the murders matched his, and sure enough, he’d been caught and killed in what was now my house. In one of the bedrooms, in fact. But which one? From the black-and-white photograph, it was impossible to tell. No identifying details had been captured in the snapshot, like a closet door (the one in the Master Bedroom had a deep scratch that looked like it had been there a long time) or a window (one of the arched frames in another of the six bedrooms was missing a bit of the gingerbread-like carving holding the top pane).

        Temperature! I was sure one of those bedrooms would be colder than the rest. But if that was the case, why hadn’t I noticed it when I first went to look at the house? Or… ah, right – the heat hadn’t been turned back on yet, so the whole place had been freezing. Apparently, the previous owners had left after a mere two weeks, but during that time had gotten a new heating system installed. When they moved out it had been shut off, of course. Since it had been late winter when I met the dastardly real-estate agent there, I was unable to detect anything unusual about the levels of coldness in all the various parts of the house.

        Come to think of it, no electricity had been turned on whatsoever, which I did think a bit odd at the time. Other vacant houses I’d looked at had at least been supplied with temporary lighting and heat. Not this place. We’d met there early in the day, so there had been enough sunshine pouring through the massive windows to see by. I should have listened to my instincts and asked about it.

        On the other hand, I doubt I would have refused to purchase the place had I known about the haunting. I mean, at such a low price it was darned near impossible to turn down! Besides, I could always get rid of whatever was haunting it.

        I returned home, determined to discover in which room the bastard had met his fate. It didn’t matter for my own purposes, but if I ever started having guests, it wouldn’t do to give them a room where some lunatic criminal had been killed. And even with the baddie banished from the house, it wouldn’t be very nice to give that room to someone, would it? Then again, that might be exactly where I’d invite someone like my cousin Mike to spend the night – before I kicked MTC out.

        “Back again, are you?”

        “No. You’re hallucinating.” I went into the kitchen and opened the windows. It was a lovely spring day and the house could only benefit from some of those fragrant breezes blowing past.

        “Where did you go?”

        “None of your business, but I went to the library. What happened to the eighteenth victim? They only found seventeen bodies.” I took out a canister of coffee and scooped some into the filter of my lovely new coffee maker.

        “Oh, my. Poor young Vanessa. I was a bit careless, I’m afraid. She tumbled down a ravine trying to get away from me – we were having a picnic, you see.”

        That sounded weird. “Why would she have gone on a picnic with you? Weren’t you just the handyman?”

        “A very handsome handyman, I’ll have you know. She was defying her parents. Stupid sow.”

        I refused to address the slur, instead pointing out that he hadn’t, after all, killed that one.

        “Not directly, but I did cause her death. Same thing.”

        “No it isn’t. She could have survived. Have you found another place to live yet?”

        “Have you?”

        “Does it look like it? You may leave now. I’m busy.” I went into the dining room to consider what color to paint the walls. In the daytime, a subdued shade of green might be nice, but at night it could look depressing. I’d been contemplating this for the past two days and still hadn’t come up with a satisfactory choice. French blue. Hmm. Cream? Or pale yellow with creamy white paint on the thick moldings?

        “What are you doing?”

        I didn’t answer. I couldn’t blast him with cold air, but I could certainly give him the cold shoulder.

        “I can hurt you, you know.”

        I left the room, grabbed my purse from where I’d slung it over the back of a kitchen chair, and pulled out my Bible. Back in the dining room, I placed it on one of the deep window sills and continued my contemplation.

        “Ectoplasm can cause things to move. I could toss more than paper plates at you. Decapitate you, even. Or drag you up onto the ceiling!”

        I smiled. “I know you aren’t really Malcolm Cavell.”

        Silence.

        I shoved my hands into my front jeans pockets, eyes narrowed. “You’re the Thing that influenced him, though. You convinced him to be what he was, playing on the weak places in his mind and emotions. You’re a fraud. An evil fraud, and I know it. I also know I have the authority to throw your windy ass out of my house.” I picked up the Bible.

        “Oh?” The Thing’s voice was ever so slightly higher. “How’s that?”

        “I think you know exactly how. Want me to use it?”

        To my intense satisfaction, both the spirit and the fake severed head began to fade. “You – I’ll – one of these days – I’ll – ”  

    "You’re sputtering. Like a dying flame. Why don’t you go out altogether and spare us both the embarrassment of your impotence, eh?” I raised the Bible and began to open it.

        “It’s not fair! This was my habitation!”

        “Tough. We’re done.” I opened the book at the center, the location of Psalms.

        A final blast of cold, a loud “whoosh!” and my unwanted resident Elvis-ed. Left the building. Vanished. Vacated. Gone. Poof.

        I chuckled and took out the piece of vellum folded neatly between the pages, opened it and nodded.

        “This Certifies Your Completion Of Our Exclusive On-Line Exorcist Program. Use It Wisely.”

        I knew the spirit hadn’t been afraid of this silly piece of paper. The words of the book itself had been the source of its fear, but the person who had left the Certificate there in the hotel room may have believed it was genuine, even if I knew better. Still, I’d been prepared to brandish it in case my confidence had wavered. I wondered what would happen if the original owner ever ran into something like the being in my house – or maybe he already had, and realized he’d been ripped off by the company giving the on-line class.

        I closed the cover, traced a finger over the gold words, “Placed by the Gideons,” considered using it on Mike if he ever showed up again, and grinned.

Impressum

Texte: Judy Colella
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 04.09.2013

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