Dead Endings: Chapter 6

Getting an unresponsive and completely out-to-lunch woman home was not as easy as Everett had hoped. She did meekly follow his lead, but even the most casual observer could pick up on her silence and absent state of mind. Even as he sat next to Cailen during the cab ride, palms sweaty and trying his damndest to project innocent goodwill, he thought he could feel the disapproving scrutiny of the cabby in the rearview mirror. When they finally made it to the apartment, his relief was profound.

Guiding Cailen to a couch, he thought he caught a hint of awareness returning to the slate-gray eyes as she took in her familiar surroundings.

“You just stay there,” he told her. “I’ll make tea…or something.”

She stayed there.

He poked through the cabinets and was delighted at not only finding tea, but a wide selection of it. Unsure of which to make, he grabbed some choices and presented the brightly colored bags to her for approval. He held up each one, hoping for a response. When he got to the Ayurvedic Chai, he was rewarded with a slight lifting of the chin.

Back in the kitchen, he got the water going and leaned heavily against the counter. The growing heat from the little burner comforted his clammy hands. He hadn’t even realized he’d forgotten to put his gloves back on since they’d left Markle’s. It felt like a lifetime ago already.

He glanced over at Cailen. She sat quietly, glasses tucked neatly into one of the little pockets on the front of her dress. Everett had rescued them after she’d dropped them during check-in at the hospital’s lobby, but she hadn’t made an effort to put them back on yet. She looked like a lost child sitting there, huddled in the baggy folds of her coat.

Everett slowly lost the high from his small victory with the tea as he studied her motionless form. Gabriella had said she would come out of it, but he remembered her standing there with the blood, and the gun, and Gabriella lying on the floor. Suddenly, he wanted something stronger than tea.

Abandoning the bubbling water on the stovetop, he opened the small cabinet he’d seen Cailen retrieve the scotch from after returning from Warner’s apartment on their first ghostly encounter. The heavy bottle felt cool in his hands. He didn’t want to make something like this a habit, but he thought Cailen would appreciate it after the day’s events. He poured them both small glasses and set one carefully in front of her for whenever she was ready.

He ambled back to the kitchen and took out his phone. It was time for some answers. Gabriella picked up after a few rings.

“Hey,” he said, a bit awkwardly. Grilling someone laid up in the hospital for information seemed in bad taste, but she’d said to call.

Happily, even on painkillers, Gabriella comfortably took the lead. “I think I know what’s going on,” she said without preamble.

Everett started. He hadn’t expected the answer.

“One second!” he blurted. He grabbed his glass, took a throat-searing sip of it, then rasped out, “Okay!”

She sighed into the receiver. “Whoever’s killing these people is doing it to talk to the spirit that’s leaving the playbacks.”

“Someone is…what?”

“Someone’s murdering people and using them like a damned telephone,” she said with feeling.

Everett opened his mouth and then closed it.

“I don’t get it. How does killing someone let you talk to other dead people?”

“It’s not the killing part that makes it work, exactly. This is just my theory, but I think they’re hurting people enough to bridge that gap between life and death. They die eventually, of course, but it’s that window of…dying, I guess…that they’re after. ”

“That’s really messed up.”

She gave a short, humorless laugh.

“There’s more.”

He shifted his position against the counter and sipped his scotch.

Gabriella took a deep breath and told him what had happened before they entered the bedroom, and what the spirit had said through Cailen.

“So that’s why there was a gun…”

“She nearly took her face off, Everett. If I’d been a second later…” Gabriella fell into silence on the other end of the line. Everett waited.

“I think,” Gabriella finally said. “I think this spirit, whoever he is, killed himself and is goading someone else into it. Or trying, anyway. Both at Warner’s and Markle’s, the spirit talked about suicide. It was cajoling the murderer to join him in death.”

Everett frowned. “Well, he’s not very good at it. I didn’t see any other bodies at Markle’s. Our killer hasn’t offed himself…unless,” he added hopefully, “maybe he took a dive off a bridge somewhere after the murders?”

“I wish. The strength of the playback at Markle’s is a bad sign. I think the spirit that’s leaving them is still around. It was powerful, and still fresh. There was a sense of…grounding at Markle’s that wasn’t there at Warner’s. And if that spirit is still around, it means it hasn’t gotten what it wants yet. Add that to the lack of a second body and I think you’re right. Our killer hasn’t turned the knife on himself yet.”

“Then,” Everett said quietly, “it’s going to happen again, isn’t it?”

There was no uncertainty in Gabriella’s voice. “Yeah. Yeah, it will.”

“What do we do?” he asked.

She took her time answering. “One of my dad’s friends is pretty up there in the police. As soon as I can get out of here, I’m going to pay him a visit. I’ll explain what I can. We don’t have anything really specific to give him, but he knows a bit about what I can do, so he’ll believe me. If they know that these three murders are connected, then maybe they can look back into it and identify someone who was either seen with them, or near them before they were killed.”

Everett wasn’t so sure. The lack of an obvious connection between the victims made predicting the next one seemingly impossible. He told her so, but she already knew it.

“After Markle’s, we’re kind of at a dead end,” she said. “I can’t wait until another stabbing shows up at your news desk to pick up the lead again. I have to do something.”

He took one last drink of the scotch, finishing it. When the scorching heat in his chest died down to a warm glow, he declared, “I’m coming with you. Wait for me there.”

“Wait, what about Cailen? I wanted to ask you to stay with her.”

His inner fire died down even further, but it was replaced quickly by solid resolve. He looked over at the huddled form on the couch.

“Oh…” he said in surprise.

“What? What’s wrong?!”

“Nothing,” he said slowly, staring at Cailen from over the countertop. “She’s drinking scotch.”

Everett heard Gabriella sigh in relief from the other end of the line.

“Thank the Lord,” Gabriella said. “Can you put her on?”

Everett dutifully handed Cailen the phone. Her smoky gray eyes met his.

“Gabriella,” he explained.

Cailen gingerly pressed the phone to her ear as if unsure of what it was.

“Yes,” she said at length. Then, “No.” “Fine,” she concluded into the receiver.

She handed the phone back to Everett. He watched her carefully. A bit more energy seemed to return to her under the naked concern of his stare.

“I’m…fine,” she said, with a little more feeling.

“Gabriella?” he said back into the phone.

“She needs more time, but she understood me. I think she’s over the worst. Might be best to give her some space to ‘wake up.’”

Cailen slowly shed her coat. One of the sleeves seemed to give her a lot of trouble. She stared at the cuff in confusion.

Everett turned away and whispered, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Maybe a little more scotch wouldn’t hurt…”

One more scotch and several more monotone offers of “I’m fine” finally convinced Everett to be on his way. He lingered in the door.

Cailen slowly blinked back at him. The blinks started to take on an impatient edge.

“I’ll call later,” he promised.

She stared impassively at him until he closed the door. And with a final click, he left her.

***

Pain. Real, honest-to-God pain throbbed in Cailen’s hand. She touched the bandages on her knuckles. Small red spots peeked through the white gauze here and there. She poked at one of the spots and the throbbing sharpened unpleasantly. She stopped.

It had been hours since Everett’s departure. Cailen had spent most of that time sipping alternately on scalding tea and the remaining scotch from her glass. The heat from both drinks made great strides against the remaining fog in her mind, but she still received occasional flashes of images and emotions other than her own.

Happiness, anger, a joy so powerful and pure that it felt deranged… She pressed on the bandages again. The physical ache chased away the feeling.

She still couldn’t recall some of the events from Markle’s apartment. Not that she really felt like pressing too hard on those memories. Her undamaged hand crept to her stomach. The ghostly feeling of intestines slipping through a gash in the muscle wall made her shiver. She hugged her discarded coat to her body.

Not mine, not mine, she reminded herself.

With determination, she set the coat aside and took a deep breath, daring Markle’s memory to return. It didn’t, thankfully.

She stood and paced the living room. As she made tight circuits around the coffee table, she unbound her long hair. The faint odor of fireworks mixed with the scent of her minty shampoo. It shouldn’t have, but it made her smile.

She wondered why the evidence of her own almost-death didn’t unsettle her as much as Markle’s memories did. She tried clearly recalling the events from earlier.

The gun, the blinding light, and the belated explosion of sound.

Her smile grew. It almost felt funny. ‘Startled’ was the best she could manage. She had tried to blow her head off and all she felt was a little surprise.

No doubt Gabriella would find her reaction a little disturbing. Maybe Cailen didn’t have room for her own fear. Gods knew Markle and that other thing had hogged way too much space inside her head.

One thing that she did find sobering was what she’d gleaned during Everett and Gabriella’s conversation. Through her fuzzy perception, she’d heard Everett’s horrified disbelief loud and clear. How, or better yet, why was someone killing people just to talk to a ghost?

She felt an echo of Christopher Markle’s rage at the thought. He hadn’t been ready to die. Not one bit. The force of his anger had steamrolled her like a kite caught in a wind tunnel back at the apartment. That boiling fury had been a toxic cocktail of disbelief, fear, and confusion, dragging him away from his humanity and into formless insanity. If she thought taking a shower would help clean her of his emotional filth, she would have taken several baths already.She had, however, learned something new through divesting herself of Markle’s memories and feelings.

There had been a sense of…familiarity to the dead man’s confusion. Mixed in with the black tide of his other emotions, she thought she’d sensed a strain of incredulity. Of course, that could’ve been part of his overall denial of what had happened to him, but it bothered her enough to try to call Gabriella. Gabriella hadn’t answered, and thanks to her recent vacation abroad, her voicemail inbox was full. Not that Cailen could complain–her own ancient flip phone was missing several important keys and had no sound. She had no idea if it even had voicemail.

As if the mere thought of using the phone gave it power, it suddenly rang.

She stared at it and wondered if her psychic powers were growing. The voice on the other end didn’t turn out to be Gabriella, however.

“Hello?” said a low-pitched, but unmistakably female voice. So not Everett, then, either.

“Er,” Cailen said, suddenly wishing she hadn’t picked up.

“This is Elizabeth. I’m calling for Gabriella Benitez…?”

It took several seconds for Cailen to recall an “Elizabeth.”

“Elizabeth from the cemetery?” she asked uncertainly.

“Yes!” the other woman replied. “Is this…Gabriella?”

Relaxing a bit, but still puzzled, Cailen relayed that Gabriella wasn’t in.

“I tried calling her cell phone, but…” Elizabeth sounded far too disconsolate for a simple unanswered call.

“I can take a message for you,” Cailen offered.

“It’s…urgent,” Elizabeth said. “I’m calling about her ‘spiritual’…um, job.”

Cailen’s puzzlement grew. “Can you tell me more?”

The pause on the other side of the line seemed doubtful.

“I’m also…” Cailen sighed inwardly. “…in the ‘spiritual’ line of things.”

Elizabeth still hesitated.

“I’m serious,” Cailen said, with more conviction than she felt. “I deal with this sort of stuff. I might be able to help.”

“It’s about Christopher,” Elizabeth finally said in an almost whisper. “I want to talk to her about Christopher…”

Her voice quavered at the mention of his name. Cailen felt a responding tremble in her own gut. Carefully, very carefully, she asked, “What about Christopher?”

“I…” The other woman’s voice broke. “I can’t, not like this. I have to see her!”

“I can try calling her again, but if you can just tell me a little more…”

All pretense of holding it together seemed to leave the other woman. Cailen heard a ragged intake of breath, followed by the stifled sound of crying.

Cailen had never been any good with this sort of thing. She made what she thought were soothing sounds into the cradle, but she couldn’t quiet Elizabeth’s sharp and inconsolable distress. Then, through the hitched sounds, she heard, “I know wh-why he died…”

Cailen stared at the phone. “Say that again.”

“Please come,” the other woman begged. “I’m scared. I c-can’t take this anymore. I know who did it. He told me.”

The hair on the back of Cailen’s neck stood up.

“Christopher told you…?”

“Please come,” Elizabeth repeated, more quietly now, as if she was running out of steam.

Cailen’s eyes flicked to the window to see that the sun had dipped below the horizon. She had already braved a cemetery, crashed a funeral reception, been possessed, and nearly blown her head off. And she could still feel Christopher Markle’s warm, slippery entrails in the back of her mind.

“Please,” Elizabeth said once more, with what sounded like crushing misery.

“…I’m on my way.”

To be continued in Chapter 7.

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