A ghost story. That was the prompt. But what kind of ghost story should I write? I know! Let’s mix a detective investigating a murder with a paranormal story about a seventh son and then introduce a ghost with an attitude! (I know I’d have an attitude if I were a disembodied spirit!)
What did I get? Why “Lucky Me” of course 😀
The crime scene investigation I worked today turned sour when the victim spoke to me.
My partner, Jack Barnes, and I had been called to a dimly lit alley in downtown Portland. The early morning mist had burned off, leaving the pavement damp. The multi-story brick and mortar buildings on either side huddled close as if protecting the small figure centered in their midst, though she was beyond anyone’s help.
The air at the mouth of the alley smelled of freshly baked bread and cinnamon, but the odor turned fetid as I neared the corpse.
Jack joined the uniform who’d called it in, but I kept walking, accompanied by a steady drip of water from an overhanging eave.
I knelt beside the body, taking in her position on the damp gray pavement, the congealing blood pool, and the utter destruction of the back of her head. That’s when it happened. Blue eyes popped open and short, well-manicured nails dug into my wrist.
“Help me,” she whispered, her voice parched and cracking. “Don’t let him do this again.”
Her eyes snapped closed, as I yelled, fell backwards into a shallow puddle, and scrambled to get to my feet and as far away from her as possible.
My partner glanced my direction over the bowed head of our lone witness and raised his eyebrows. “What’s up, Gus?”
I wiped my hands on my pants, backed another two steps from the corpse and asked, “Who called her death?”
Jack’s brows pulled together as he strode to my side. “The uniform. He was first on the scene. Didn’t take any brains.”
“Get the medics in here. She’s still alive.”
He grabbed my arm and squeezed. “Get a grip on yourself,” he whispered, his gaze darting around to see who else might be listening. No one paid us any attention. “What’s wrong with you?”
I looked down at the young woman who had just spoken to me and acknowledged the obvious. She was an undeniable corpse. Blue-tinged skin, stiff limbs, a neat little hole in her forehead and a crater the size of Texas where the back of her skull had been.
But she’d spoken to me. My wrist still tingled from the bite of her nails.
I wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my sleeve. I needed a break. The dead had never spoken to me before, and I’d been working homicide since I earned my release from a patrol car last year. I’d seen a lot of stiffs in my work, but never on my birthday. My twenty-eighth birthday.
Seven quadrupled.
I hated the number seven … with good reason. I was the seventh son of a seventh son, and I’d spent my whole life explaining that yes, the birth order thing is true, but no, I’m not psychic, and no, I sure as hell don’t know what the blonde at the next table thinks of you.
People can be such idiots.
But now a dead woman had spoken to me. Shit. What if all the seventh-seventh crap had a basis in fact?
I couldn’t bring myself to approach the body again, so I dusted off my hands and forced myself to look Jack square in the eyes.
“Why don’t I finish the interview and you check out the corpse?” I worked at sounding nonchalant, but my hands shook and Jack’s wary expression told me my face must be white as my grandmother’s sheets.
“What?” Jack asked. “Is our resident seventh-seventh feeling a little woozy?”
I scowled at him and marched over to the kid he’d been interviewing. I had no intention of discussing my own personal mythological hell. Ever. But especially not when I was spooked.
The kid’s story checked with what the uniforms had learned. A bunch of high school boys had been playing skateboard tag on the street, generally raising a ruckus and terrorizing pedestrians when our witness had veered down this alley and run smack into a crime scene. He’d hightailed it back to the street and gone looking for the nearest cop. It hadn’t taken long. The solid citizens had complained about the havoc the boys had been wreaking.
The patrol officer who answered their call had gotten significantly more than he’d bargained for. His perpetrators had morphed into witnesses and his quiet lecture on respecting others’ rights had given way to a full-scale murder investigation.
I closed my notebook and rubbed my temple. Dead end. No one saw anything suspicious, other than the corpse, and no one heard the shot that destroyed the victim’s skull.
But she’d spoken to me.
Hell’s bells. How was I supposed to work that into my report?
Want to read the rest of the story? It’s available at Spinetingler Magazine!
