Yeah, it’s a little nerve wracking to be a woman driving alone at night in LA, but I have multiple advantages most women don’t. First, I can toss fireballs. Well, sorta. I mean, there’s more to them than simple fire. A brief puff of flames the size of a grapefruit wouldn’t really do much damage to anything. My ‘fireballs’ are lava based—thank you, Gaia—and have some solidity to them. I’ve never used one on a person before, but I’d like to think a six-pound magma-cored wad of fire moving at the speed of a fastball pitch is going to surprise the heck out of a mugger a whole lot more than pepper spray.
Second, Millicent has my back. I was almost carjacked once due to being stupid and running low on gas. Had to stop to fill up on my way home and some dude pulled a knife on me. Honestly, I can’t imagine the kind of tragedy of poor life choices leading up to anyone wanting to carjack an old Honda Accord, but guess what my luck is like, right? So, Millicent appears right in front of us when this guy has a knife on me. Remember the librarian from Ghostbusters? Yeah, she did something similar. I think the dude is still running.
Anyway, not the most ideal thing to be driving around alone after dark, but I’m not defenseless. Other than worrying where the trifecta is headed—and now an angry spirit who enjoys choking people—life is reasonably calm.
I wake up a little after ten, still thinking about Vincente.
Millicent has become more of a roommate than a haunting. She’s worked out the finer details of drawing power from electrical appliances like my television and computer, which enables her to be ‘solid’ more often than not. She helps out sometimes cleaning, but mostly spends her time meditating, reading, or watching TV. I can’t complain, though. She doesn’t generate laundry nor consume food. It’s great having her around, and she also keeps an eye on the place when I’m away.
Not that it’s really necessary. Beverly Hills isn’t what one would call a high-crime area.
After a shower and quick breakfast, I try to call Vincente. He answers after six rings, probably assuming I’m a telemarketer. Hey, I might’ve once worked as an exotic dancer and later did phone psychic work, but I’ll never sink to the level of telemarketing. I do have some standards.
“Hello?” asks Vincente, his tone hesitant.
“Hi, it’s Allison Lopez. From the radio show?”
He mutters, “Someone’s trying to trick me,” in Spanish.
“No trick,” I reply in Spanish as well. “It’s really me. I felt something last night when we spoke on the air. Enough to make me want to really help you. More than just a few minutes of radio show.”
He chuckles, then switches to English. “Do you call everyone back?”
“No. Only when I get a strong feeling about their situation.”
I concentrate on our connection, re-establishing it fairly quick. Second time is always faster, plus there’s an electromagnetic path to follow via the phone. He’s in a bucket on one of those extending arm things, working on the hardware at the top of a telephone pole. Hard to say where he is, but the area’s built up like a proper small city, not open scrub desert like around his house. At a guess, he’s maybe in Boron or Kramer Junction. I can’t tell if he’s working on phones or electrical components, but his hard hat has a Southern California Edison logo, so I’ll assume he’s there for the power lines.
“Wait just a second,” says Vincente. “Is this Reya? Marty put you up to this, didn’t he?”
“No, I promise you this isn’t a prank from your coworkers because they heard you on the radio. Is this a bad time to call, since you’re working on a pole right now?”
He pauses. “Not a bad guess.”
“You’re wearing a green plaid shirt and a hard hat. There’s a beat-up green Jeep pickup truck with huge tires rolling by you sporting a big POW-MIA flag.”
“Holy shit,” he whispers… then starts looking around.
“No one’s got a camera on you. Tell ya what. Hold out a random number of fingers on your left hand, but keep it in the bucket so no one on the ground could possibly see it with a camera… three. Two. Now five.”
Vincente looks up.
“No drone, either,” I say. “I really am psychic, my friend. Did you realize you had red marks on your neck last night?”
His face pales. “Yeah. I did… how did you know? Wait. Don’t answer.” He chuckles. “You’re going to say ‘I’m psychic.’”
“Yep.” I grin. “So, do you have a few minutes to talk or is this a bad time?”
“I’m just about done here. I can talk. Give me a sec to switch to hands free.”
He plugs in earbuds, pockets the phone, and resumes fiddling with one of the components on the pole. “Okay, so what do you need to know?”
“Tell me about the paranormal things going on at your house,” I say. “How long have they been happening? Can you think of anything that might’ve changed to set it off?”
“I’ve only been in the place for five months. Weird things started happening the first night I slept in the house. Small stuff at first, feeling like someone was in the room with me. Lights turning off or on. Cabinet doors opening. Thought I heard a little kid laughing outside at night.”
Uh oh. When most people hear of a child haunting, they go straight to feeling sad. I get scared. Why? Because it’s incredibly rare for them to be legitimate children, and I don’t mean it in the sense of kids born out of wedlock. Demons adore impersonating innocence to trick people and play games. Case in point: the Jaguar god messing with Stormy and Psycho Sally from the radio station by making them think we had a little girl haunting the studio. Okay, so he’s not a demon, but same concept, supernatural beings preying on humans’ instinctual need to care for our young.
Actual child spirits aren’t supposed to linger as ghosts because it’s unusual for a child to have ‘unfinished business’ or the presence of mind to ignore the glowing tunnel. It took a lot of talking for me to convince Peter Laurie to take the step ‘into the light’ so to speak. Kids don’t have the same hesitation. With them, it’s more of an ‘ooh, shiny!’ and they run right to it. Case in point, Peter’s daughter wasn’t hanging around as a spirit and she died a bad death.
Vincente Espina hearing the voice of a child on his property escalates the situation, especially considering the entity is physically attacking him. This could very well be a demon trying to kill him.
“Mmm. Bear with me a sec. Taking notes.” I jot down ‘lived there five months’ ‘hears kid ghost’ ‘strangulation marks, rope’ on my notepad. “Okay… do you know anything about the person who owned the house before you?”
“You think it’s them?” asks Vincente.
I frown. “What makes you ask that? Did something bad happen there?”
Vincente closes the hatch on the metal box he’d been working in, then lowers the bucket arm, descending gradually toward the truck below. “The previous owner died there. The realtor didn’t have much detail. Bank put it up for sale, just wanted to get rid of it, I think. Place was so cheap I bought it without going there in person, decided based on pictures.”