J. H. Sked Read online

  Basement Blues and other stories

  by J. H. Sked

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2011 J. H. Sked

  This ebook is dedicated to Craig Sked - world class piper, great friend, and the best brother I could have asked for.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to an actual person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Basement Blues

  One

  The woman sitting in my office chair was stunning. White blonde hair carefully slicked into a chignon, Dolce and Gabanna bag, scarlet nails, smartly tailored blue pants suit. She was also dead, which I was having a bit of an issue with.

  Not that I'm prejudiced - my own partners are what you might call life challenged, and I have a little condition of my own - but the smell was getting to me. She'd sprayed some very expensive perfume over herself, and the average human wouldn't have noticed it through the scent.

  I am not average. I'm also not human, and the scent of decomposition was growing stronger by the minute.

  Eventually I lunged for the window, pushing the sill up and leaning out for great gulps of fresh night air. It was either that or throw up on our latest client, and I was fairly sure that suit was designer. I couldn't afford the bill.

  "I'm sorry," Susan Armstrong said from behind me. Her vocal cords were starting to rot, giving her a husky, slightly grating voice.

  "It isn't your fault," I said, still leaning as far out of the window as I could. I didn't have to turn around to know that she was crying. I could smell it.

  Sunset had been nearly twenty minutes ago. Astrid was late and Ruth was in the field. I needed at least one of them here. I never know what to do with a crying woman. How to handle a crying zombie was so far out of my league I might as well be on Pluto.

  A noise outside the main door caught my attention, and I started to relax. At least one of the girls was in.

  A moment later, Astrid stuck her head around the door jamb and took in the scene.

  "I think we need to go upstairs," she announced, and disappeared again. Vampires have a strong sense of smell- not on the same level as mine, but still acute. She would have smelled the corpse - now wobbling to her feet on 4 inch heels - from the lobby.

  Our building has a roof terrace. It was late enough that nobody else was using it - no office drone in their right mind hangs out after sunset in this part of town - and although small it is open to the night air, which was a major requirement right now.

  We sat Susan down at the little plastic garden table with the cracked white chair. Astrid produced a pack of cigarettes, and I almost pounced on her to get one. I hate the smell of tobacco smoke, but even in the fresh air Susan was pretty ripe.

  "Hope you don't mind," Astrid said as she lit up. Her tone left little doubt that it wouldn't matter much either way. Never get between a vampire and her nicotine fix. Actually, never get between a vampire and anything they really want.

  "Hell, go for it," Susan shrugged. "It's not like it'll kill any of us." She smiled bitterly.

  "How did you hear about us?" I asked. Our agency wasn't known for advertising. The paranormal community is pretty small and very firmly in the closet.

  Our walk-ins were usually humans who had no idea what we were.

  "Your on-line ad." Susan rummaged in her bag while Astrid and I looked at each blankly.

  "We have an ad?" I whispered.

  "We're on-line?" Astrid whispered back.

  "Here." Susan held out the print-out of a web-page.

  ""Human or superhuman - or just plain inhuman - we can solve your problem. Blue Moon Detective Agency." Seriously?" Astrid rolled her eyes and passed the sheet back to Susan. "Bloody awful tag-line."

  "You do understand we can't cure you?" I said. That solve your problem thing was worrying me. I could imagine a number of ways potential clients could take that.

  "I imagine a good splash of butane and a match would cure me just fine," Susan said dryly. "At least according to Hollywood."

  Astrid shrugged. "That works on most things. The movies can't get everything wrong."

  We both sniggered.

  "So - you want us to find your killer?" I asked.

  "I know who killed me," Susan said.

  "Do you need help bringing him or her to the police?" I was groping at straws here, and knew it. Astrid sighed.

  "Now that would be impressive." Susan raised an eyebrow. "Hello, zombie? I ate the bastard."

  "Much as I'm enjoying watching Billy stuff both feet in his mouth," Astrid said, nudging me to shut me up, "Why do you need to hire us?"

  "My basement is haunted. I need you to find out why, and what I need to do to stop it."

  Okay. I didn't see that one coming.

  "Are you sure this is a haunting?" Astrid asked. "A lot of the time people think they have a ghost and it really isn't one. Especially if you have an old house."

  Susan sighed. "Look. I'm a zombie. I have a bit of a heads up on the supernatural. You are a vampire. You -" she frowned at me "are some sort of shifter, and whoever just popped onto the roof behind me is a ghost."

  Ruth wiggled her fingers at us. "She's got me, there."

  "My point is," Susan said, watching our partner saunter over the tarmac towards us," I know my basement is haunted. This isn't me freaking out over air in the pipes or the house frame settling."

  Ruth flipped her red hair over her shoulder. "Why don't you show us the house?"

  Two

  Astrid and I followed Susan in my car. Neither of us would be able to tolerate being in her car with her.

  Ruth, not having the olfactory issue, rode with the zombie to get some more information from her. Susan had a nice little red BMW. I couldn't help wonder what the upholstery must smell like. Not even a human would be able to buy that car once she was done with it.

  Our first technical difficulty started at the house.

  Astrid couldn't go in. Since it had belonged to the guy Susan ate, and wasn't really hers, her invite didn't count. Apparently whatever governs that part of the paranormal law of reality didn't recognize ownership by eating your killer.

  Since we'd never lived there neither Ruth nor I could invite her in either.

  Eventually Astrid went back to the car to sulk, and Ruth and I followed Susan into the house.

  The second technical difficulty hit me as we stepped through the front door. Houses smell, okay? They smell of the people who live there, and their pets, and the mud on their shoes and the deodorant they spray on every morning. They smell of wood and plaster and damp brick, and if you're really unlucky, mould and mildew. And those are the houses that haven't had a corpse occupying them for the past six weeks.

  I took two steps into the house and bailed. Astrid strolled over while I was hanging off the porch, throwing up my last week's worth of dinner onto an unlucky rosebush.

  "Vicks?" She shoved the blue jar under my nose.

  "Whiskey?" I looked up at her hopefully, nostrils buried in the glorious scent of camphor and menthol.

  She handed over the little hip flask without a word. I rinsed and spat, then took a large swallow. Mr. Walker, meet my tonsils.

  "You going to try again?"

  "Oh, hell to the no!" There wasn't enough whiskey on the planet. Ruth was on her own for this one.

  Three

  The third technical hitch happened some thirty minutes after Ruth had gone into the house: it spat her out.

  Astrid and I were sitting silently on the hood of the car, watching the house. Well, Astrid was watching the house, which was a plain white painted two-story clapboard. Susan had told us it was built in the 1920's, and while it looked good for its age it also showed the years in a settling foundation and bulging window panes.

  I was watching
the moon, just starting to rise fat and almost full over the down-town buildings. I'd be missing work for the next couple of days.

  So I was starting to moon-dream, and Astrid was trying not to get twitchy over how long Ruth had been in the house, when a rumbling, coughing noise erupted from below the porch and a rolling ball of ectoplasm was forcibly ejected into the garden. On the bright side, she missed the rose bush I'd baptised earlier. As a negative, she brought with her quite a few dust bunnies, a number of centipedes, and a couple of large, extremely traumatised spiders.

  "No."Astrid placed one hand firmly on the back of my neck.

  "But-"

  "Billy!" Astrid bent over and hissed into my ear. "We are in a human neighbourhood. If I ever have to explain to another one why you are chasing the wildlife in human form, I swear I will put catnip in your underwear for the next fifty years!"

  She hopped off the car as the front door burst open and Susan came running out, looking horrified and wailing. "Stay here. Calm zombie-girl down before we end up drawing attention."

  "Astrid." When she turned back I asked, "Have you ever heard a noise like that?"

  She nodded. "About once a month. You get hair balls, Billy. It's gross."

  She went off to comfort Ruth, who was flickering - something she only did when either extremely frightened or angry. Catching a glimpse of her face, I was betting on the pissed off option.

  I did what any sane man does when confronted with an angry red-head, and headed off to calm the zombie.

  "I don't know what happened," Susan said again."She wanted to see the house, so I showed her. Then we went down to the basement and everything went nuts."

  "Nuts in what way?"

  "The lights started flickering on and off. Then the washer lunged across the floor at us. I was running for the stairs when the main light exploded, and there was this big dark shadow and then something yanked Ruth through the wall."She sniffed. "I thought - I guess I thought she was dead."

  "Susan," I said. "She's a ghost. Trust me on this, she's already dead."

  She sighed. "I know. But she looks like a living person most of the time, and - and she was nice to me, okay? That doesn't happen very often nowadays."

  "Okay. Why did you run? What scared you so much down there?"

  "I told you," she said. "The washing machine tried to get us."

  I must have looked as confused as I felt.

  "Billy," she said. "I can't heal. If that machine had hit me and broken my leg, I'd be crippled as well as undead. "

  "Has-" my throat was suddenly dry. "Has this thing attacked you before?"

  She nodded. "I stopped going down there after the last time, and it wasn't as fast or as scary then as this time. I thought maybe nothing would happen with Ruth being there." She shrugged. "I guess it doesn't mind an audience."

  I rubbed a hand over my mouth and stared at my client. "Susan, you aren't being haunted. This thing is trying to kill you." Permanently. Or even worse, trap her in the basement with it, as something to play with.

  Four

  Once I'd filled the girls in, things started moving pretty fast.

  We decided that the safest thing would be to check our client into a little motel down the road. Although the action had stayed in the basement so far, none of us wanted to take the chance of it staying that way.

  Susan went back inside to pack a bag. Ruth went with her, which neither Astrid nor I were crazy about, but we couldn't think of a good reason to stop her. If it was too dangerous for our partner, we had no business sending our client back in, and we knew it. Didn't mean we had to like it, though.

  We were back on the car, sitting quietly. One of the best things about Astrid – no unnecessary chatter. We've been friends for a long time. Neither of us feels the need to talk just to fill the air.

  Astrid suddenly straightened and snapped her fingers. "Mike," she said, and I groaned.

  "Really?"

  "Know any other reliable mediums?"

  I grunted and Astrid nudged me in the ribs. "It's not his fault he's allergic, you know."

  "He sneezed on me, Astrid. Repeatedly." And not in a place I could easily clean, either. Oh, no. He'd managed to hit the back of my neck. At full volume.

  It was beyond disgusting.

  "He needed five stitches," Astrid said.

  "And if he'd done that to you, he'd have needed a body bag." I extended my hand, feeling the urge to flex my claws.

  "I wouldn't have climbed onto his lap to start with," she retorted primly.

  I felt my eyes narrow. At the time, Mike had no idea what any of us were, and we were trying to keep it that way. I was role-playing, okay? Besides, he’d been really good at scratching behind my ears, and I’d wanted more. Bad kitty.

  I was saved by answering when the front door popped open and Susan and Ruth came out. Thankfully, our zombie had only packed one bag. Granted, it came to her waist and was wider than me, but I've known women who couldn't go for an overnight stay without a matching set of luggage.

  Astrid jumped off the car and went to help.

  I stayed on the car and sulked a bit longer over bringing Mike on board. On the bright side, it meant I wouldn't have to go into the house with him. Having your medium sneeze himself into a coma is generally a bad idea. And a human on-site meant that Astrid could be invited into the house. I stretched and climbed off the car, feeling a lot perkier.

  Five

  We dropped Susan off at the motel and went back to the apartment we shared.

  Yes, the ghost has her own room. Ruth can manifest pretty much at will. Something about the three of us together means she can also become corporeal. She can’t eat or drink, and she doesn’t need to sleep, but she can interact with the living world. She told me once that the best thing about our little group meant being able to take a real bath for the first time in fifty years.

  Astrid called Mike Lin on her cell phone on the way over. He got his latest boyfriend to drop him off, although said boyfriend insisted on escorting him to the apartment door, and looked very relieved when Astrid answered. I know this since I was winding around her ankles at the time.

  I took a moment to wonder what the boyfriends reaction would have been if I’d answered the door in my human form. I doubted I’d have the chance to put the idea into practice; Mike doesn’t do needy or insecure very well, and he’d seen the look too.

  His face turned carefully blank and he nodded curtly to the boy as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  I slunk over to the couch and watched him lean against the door and sigh.

  Astrid nodded. "He's walking back down the hall."

  "Good." Mike sighed again. "Bugger. There goes that little moment in time."

  "Maybe you should give the kid a break," Astrid said. "You're a good looking guy, Mike. Can't blame him for feeling nervous."

  Mike shook his head. "If he can't trust me, I'm not interested, dear. I have enough shit from my family, I don't need any more from my lovers." He shook his head and headed for the couch, dropping a casual hand on my head as he sat down.

  I froze, waiting for the snot attack.

  Nothing.

  "Antihistamines?" Astrid guessed.

  Mike nodded, looking pleased. "And immunotherapy. Darryl has a cat."

  Astrid headed into the kitchen. "Soda?"

  "Please. Just not the diet stuff."

  She came back with a couple of cans and tossed him one, then settled into her favourite chair. "That was Darryl?"

  "Yes."

  "You went through a series of fairly painful injections for the guy, but you're willing to boot him out for a moment of insecurity?"

  Mike concentrated on rubbing me behind the ears as I purred happily. "It's complicated, Astrid."

  "It's only as complicated as you make it, Mike. I'll say one more thing and then butt out, before you tell me to. You deserve to be happy, Mike. Until you accept that, you'll keep finding reasons to end relationships."

 
; Mike kept his head down. "Thank you, Astrid. Now how about we move onto your little haunting, okay?"

  It took another coke and a good deal of explaining. Mike knew about ghosts, of course. And he knew Astrid was a vampire, which wasn't too hard for a medium to figure out. He didn't know about zombies. Or my little condition.