Rattling Chains Page 4

  Police medium. That was actually a pretty good job for him—away from people, low pressure. Violent deaths tended to create ghosts, and mediums were dispatched to crime scenes to send victims’ ghosts on their way. He’d been taught a wide variety of skills at the Centre for exactly that purpose—psychology, grief counselling and—for extreme cases—exorcism rites from a dozen different cultures.

  After several years, a medium might join the regular police force—solving crimes rather than cleaning up after them.

  “So…you’re my partner?” If this were a movie, the cop’s gruffness wouldn’t last. Harlan would save his life and they’d become a mismatched pair of friends, cracking wise and sharing a beer after work. It seemed unlikely. Also, Harlan didn’t want to be responsible for saving anyone’s life, his own included.

  The officer snorted, shooting Harlan a withering, lingering glance that took his attention off the road for far too long. “Partner? Not fucking likely. Look… Here’s how it goes.” He held up his hand horizontally, near the car roof. “You’ve got the cops, up here at the tippity-top”—he lowered his hand a little—“then the crime scene techs, then the crime scene clean-up crew, then you. You’re a fucking ghost janitor.”

  Well, that was how crime scenes worked, chronologically. Seeing as this particular cop’s job was, for the moment, babysitting Harlan, he couldn’t help but wonder where the man fell in his own hierarchy. He knew better than—or at least, wasn’t confident enough—to voice his thoughts. He nodded meekly, sitting in silence for the rest of the drive.

  Eventually, his companion turned on the car stereo, which blared to life so loudly that it startled a sound out of Harlan. It was a country song Harlan had never heard before—not that Harlan listened to country music.

  The car stopped in front of a nondescript, derelict brick warehouse, with nothing to distinguish it from a dozen others they’d passed.

  Harlan undid his seatbelt and touched the door handle. The policeman didn’t move or speak. They stared at each other for a moment, Harlan’s eyes quickly dropping to the level of the man’s chest. The officer took a long swallow from the coffee cup that was sitting in the cup holder between their seats then turned off the car but made no move to get out.

  “Right.” Harlan was the first to break the silence between them, which almost never happened. “I’ll just…” It didn’t matter, he tried to convince himself, that this would be—presumably—his first solo ghost. He’d trained and studied for years for this exact moment. Still, he felt woefully unprepared.

  He opened the door, got out, the wet gravel—it had rained the night before, the soft patting of drops against his window helping him sleep, but giving him strange, furtive dreams—crunching beneath his feet, stone against stone, mixed with cigarette butts and other small bits of trash. There were several sheets of corrugated metal leaning against the building, large pieces of machinery Harlan couldn’t identify, and some lumber haphazardly stacked on a broken pallet.

  He couldn’t see a ghost, not yet, but there was a kind of sparkle, a shimmer, by the heavy, metal door leading into the warehouse that let him know a spirit was nearby.

  The door had been secured with a chain and padlock, but the lock swung from the end of the chain now, its shackle neatly severed, presumably by the police. Standing on his tiptoes, Harlan peered through the grilled window in the door, his heart already racing in anticipation of a jump-scare—ghosts, once they realized someone could see them after so long being ignored by the living, had a tendency to act out, like bored, lonely toddlers. The glass was coated in grime that wouldn’t come away, even when he wiped it with a corner of his T-shirt.

  The tip of Harlan’s thumbnail was between his front teeth before he realized it—not biting, not yet, just holding it, pensively. He jerked it away before he started chewing in earnest, hoping Officer Definitely-Not-Partners hadn’t seen his moment of weakness. A glance at the car showed that his attention was in his lap—hopefully on a phone.

  Sighing, Harlan pulled the door open. It moved smoothly and quietly, without the shriek of rusty hinges he’d expected. It was a little disappointing, honestly. It didn’t fit with the spooky atmosphere.

  The interior was large, cool and dimly lit by filthy glass-block windows set high in the walls. Stepping inside, Harlan automatically closed the door behind himself. It was, he reflected, probably a stupid thing to do. If the ghost were dangerous, not only would he have something between him and escape, but the policeman couldn’t see him and would be less likely to hear him if he screamed. Not that he expected much help from that direction, honestly, and the place didn’t feel dangerous.

  The opposite, actually.

  Harlan closed his eyes, his breathing and heart rate slowing properly for the first time since the phone call that had awoken him.

  The Centre had a small, non-denominational chapel, for kids with a spiritual or religious inclination or those who believed their powers came from the divine. A boy a few years younger than Harlan, Malcolm, had limited power over water, which he maintained was a gift from God. He’d been quite a little prick about it when he’d first arrived, constantly quoting the Bible and finding fault with the other kids. Most of them would have happily given up their powers and returned to their normal lives, and barring that, would’ve used them against Malcolm, if the punishment for misusing them hadn’t been so severe. None of them wanted to lose TV and Internet privileges for three months. Finally, Mr. Addison—Tom—had taken Malcolm aside one day and explained that he should, perhaps, keep his religion to himself.

  Harlan hadn’t pointed out that, powers from God or not, Malcolm’s parents had ditched him at the Centre, just like the rest of them.

  It was a bit of a point of contention, actually, between Harlan and the religious kids. He believed in an afterlife, obviously—what else could ghosts be, if not proof of its existence? Still, no ghost he’d ever spoken with had told him any kind of grand, overarching, unifying, all-encompassing revelation of God, nature or the universe.

  Harlan had rarely visited the chapel. While he barely remembered his parents, he was firmly in the group who would have given up his powers for a nickel, and he felt that any divinity who’d inflict this on him wasn’t worthy of shining his shoes, never mind worship. He’d never sensed the peace, the deep sense of connection that others had described when visiting a holy place—at least not in the Centre’s chapel. He’d sometimes snuck out of his dorm at night, moving cautiously so he wouldn’t wake Leon, who’d want to follow him because Harlan was older. Leon was always begging Harlan to show him ghosts, no matter how many times Harlan told him there weren’t any just wandering the buildings.

  With a stolen flashlight—Harlan hadn’t stolen it himself. He’d traded a baseball he’d found just inside the Centre’s fence for it and thought he’d definitely gotten the better end of the deal—he’d go to the Centre’s gym. He’d plopped in the middle of the floor, the flashlight safely wedged between his feet so it wouldn’t roll away, leaving him with vertigo in a dark, windowless room, helpless until the lights were turned on in the morning and he was caught, his flashlight confiscated.

  He’d simply sat in the vast, empty space, stretching away and above him in all directions, imagining that the same depth was below him, that he was suspended in the middle, with nothing but his own breath to anchor him to anything. Then, for a moment or two, he thought could feel the touch of the divine.

  This warehouse had the same quiet softness, the tranquil emptiness, as the darkened gym. Calm come over him after a few slow, steady breaths and Harlan was the most relaxed he’d been since before the phone call—since he’d been ejected from the Centre three days before, including while he slept. His dreams had been troubled, even before the rain, since Tom had told him he had to leave.

  Reluctantly, Harlan opened his eyes again. He had a job to do…apparently. Though he could see dust in the air, motes shivering in the faint light the cracked, grimy windows allowed in, the conc
rete floor was surprisingly clean. It showed signs of having been swept recently, and he doubted the police had bothered. A neat-freak ghost?

  There was a light switch beside the door, and he flicked it on automatically. Nothing happened, which he’d expected, and he switched it off again, just as automatically. The building probably didn’t have power, so it wouldn’t matter what position he left the switch in, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave it ‘on’.

  “Hello?” he called, his voice echoing in the dim, cavernous space.

  He heard a sudden, frantic sound from the far end of the building—familiar, but not quite identifiable. He cautiously made his way through the warehouse, feeling a bit foolish going towards a disturbance rather than away. He dodged a few old-fashioned wooden desks with all their drawers pulled out, a few lying beside them like bureaucratic entrails. A few overturned chairs. Machinery. The detritus of production, though Harlan couldn’t tell what the building had produced or stored.

  In the corner farthest from the door was a makeshift cage, cobbled together mostly from pallets and wire. Inside were several pigeons, still fluttering and darting in small, frantic, futile bursts around their home.

  The hairs on the back of Harlan’s neck prickled, but he didn’t turn around, addressing the birds instead. “I’m sorry I startled you. You’ve probably been through a lot in the past few days.”

  Slowly, one feather, one beady, watchful eye at a time, the pigeons settled back onto their two-by-four perches, cooing amongst themselves.

  Harlan cooed back as best he could, which, admittedly, was not very well.

  “They’re beautiful,” he said aloud. And they were. No two birds were alike. The feathers on their necks gleamed purple and green, catching the faint, dusty light. Their body feathers were all uniquely patterned in grey, black and white. A few were white and cream or fawn, rather than grey. Harlan had always liked pigeons, left crumbs for them in the Centre’s courtyard so he could watch them eat from his bedroom window. He’d found an injured one once and had tried to keep it in his chest of drawers, to nurse it back to health, but it had been discovered—or, more likely, ratted out by one of his roommates—and taken away. He still wondered what had happened to the bird.

  There was a gruff sound of acknowledgment behind him, and Harlan allowed himself to turn.

  A woman stood there, tall and proud and daring him to judge her too-big overcoat, her stained, ripped sweatpants and her unwashed hair.

  Well, what was left of a woman. If she’d been physically present, Harlan suspected she would have smelled of sweat and food and probably bird shit, but ghosts, when they had a scent, never smelled the way they necessarily should. This one smelled like a pigeon—dust, breadcrumbs and feathers. The way she glared at him out of the corner of her eyes, her gaze darting away when he looked directly at her, reminded him of a pigeon, too.

  “My name is Harlan,” he said, softly, once he was reasonably sure she wouldn’t bolt or attack him.

  “Millie,” the ghost replied. The pigeons cooed in response to her voice and she smiled at them. She was missing one of her lower incisors but was no less beautiful for it. “I’d offer to shake your hand, but…” She laughed, a harsh sound that ended in a cough, a memory of lungs she no longer had.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Millie.” And he meant it. Strangely, the discomfort he felt talking to people—living people—and the strangeness they saw in him never seemed to arise when he spoke to ghosts. Even though they were, after all, the remnants of people.

  “Do you know what happened to you?” Based on her words, he suspected she knew she was dead, but this was his first time out on his own, and it was natural to fall back on the ghost communication script that had been drilled into his head. He wished the officer had given him a little more information than…none. Knowing the date of Millie’s death, something about the circumstances, anything, would have been useful.

  “Yep.”

  Harlan hoped she didn’t notice his sigh of relief. “You know that you’re…?” Fuck. Out on his own and he still couldn’t just come out and say the ‘D’ word. ‘Dead’ had been treated almost like a swear during his training. The textbooks never used the word ‘death’. It was always a softer euphemism—deceased, departed, passed on…

  “I know I’m dead.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You think, just because I’m here like this, with only my birds for company, that I’m slow?”

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am.” Ma’am? He’d never called someone ‘ma’am’ in his life. Where did that come from?

  Millie snorted. “Don’t ‘ma’am’ me.”

  She knew she was dead. That was half his work done right there. He could skip step one in the Grief Counseling textbook—‘when the client isn’t aware that they are deceased’. ‘Ghost’ had been nearly as much of an anathema as ‘dead’. Harlan had been taught to think of them as clients, instead.

  “What’s keeping you from moving on? No, wait, that’s not what I’m supposed to… Uh, do you want to talk about it?” Step Two—once you’ve gotten a client to acknowledge their passing, calmly help them move past the trauma of the event. Do not become emotional, no matter how tragic the circumstances.

  Millie gave him a cagey look. “New on the job, huh?”

  He nodded, blushing, wishing he could take back the gesture. The Three Cs—Calm, Cool and Collected. He wasn’t making a very good impression.

  “I’ll make it easy for you. I don’t need to sing ‘Kumbaya’ and tell you what those assholes”—Millie’s eyes literally sparked, the industrial lighting above them glowing for an instant before dimming again. She cleared her spectral throat—“what they did to me. It’s over. It’s finished. I’m going to my rest, right?” She laughed, the sound ending in a cough again. “I’m done. But these guys”—she pointed to the pigeons—“they’re still here. They need somewhere to go. You promise…? You promise me that you’ll do well by them?” Another brief flash of light, gone in a blink.

  Harlan nodded. He wouldn’t have just left them here anyway, to die of thirst. “I promise.”

  Millie stared at him, a long, hard look, then she nodded, once. “Good. I’ll hold you to that. You break your promise, and I swear I’ll come back and haunt your ass.” The clatter of wings and she was gone, not even the sparkle remaining to show that she was still there, invisible.

  The pigeons stirred. One took brief flight, moving restlessly around the cage, before settling again.

  Harlan watched the birds peck and scratch and preen, content in their tiny corner of the world, enjoying the peaceful feeling of the place. With a regretful sigh, he traipsed back to the door he’d entered from.

  The officer had hardly moved, barely looked up when Harlan opened the passenger door and slid inside.

  “Did you do it? Five more minutes and I would’ve come in after you.”

  “…Pigeons.”

  That made the man look up. “What?”

  Harlan bit his lower lip hard, forcing himself to repeat, more emphatically, “Pigeons. The old lady, the client, the—the ghost, she kept pigeons. She wanted them to be safe. That’s why she stayed.”

  “Those flying rats?” The man grimaced. “So, what? Is she gone or not?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Good. Maybe you’re some fucking use after all. Let’s go. We’ve got lots more places to hit.”

  “No. Not until we call the SPCA or…something.” Harlan wasn’t sure who to call to take in a flock of pigeons.

  “For some fucking pigeons?” He waved a dismissive hand. “Forget ’em. The crazy pigeon lady’s gone. We’re finished here. The fewer of those things around, the better.”

  Harlan wasn’t sure if he meant the pigeons or the homeless woman. He didn’t think he wanted to know.

  “No!” The volume of Harlan’s voice startled him, uncomfortably loud in the enclosed car, and the cop shot him a look of utter disbelief.

  “Whoa! All right, fuck, we’ll save the
pigeons. But you’re making the call.”

  Harlan insisted they wait while the pigeons were caught and loaded into carriers for transportation. He even got out of the car and anxiously informed the animal control officers that they all had to stay together as a flock, that he’d be checking up on them. Working with the police had to carry some clout, even if he was at the bottom of this particular cop’s hierarchy. These pigeons were going to be loved and cared for. He’d promised, and he’d make sure of that.

  He’d finally caught a glimpse of the cop’s nametag. C. Hamilton. He’d been amusing himself while waiting for the pigeons to be picked up by thinking of what the C could stand for—Clod. Confused. Claptrap. Hamilton’s rank was probably indicated by his badge or epaulettes, but Harlan had no idea what they meant.

  Watching the last pigeon being loaded, Harlan asked, “How did they find her body, anyway?”

  C is for Coronary.

  “What?”

  “M—the homeless woman. The ghost—” The word came more easily now. “I just…”

  “Oh, that old broad. The city’s tearing the building down. They sent some guys in to inspect the place and found her body.”

  That was a shame. The warehouse had good, quiet energy. He wondered what would be built in its place, how long it would have taken for Millie’s body to be discovered otherwise.

  “There, the fucking birds are safe. Can we fucking go now?” Hamilton was already turning the ignition.

  Harlan nodded, then froze, his neck stiff. “Wait. There’s something…” He frowned. There was a prickling at the edge of his senses—the ones that detected ghosts, not the ordinary sort. Something dark.

  Ignoring him, Hamilton drove away before Harlan could home in on the feeling, and soon he’d forgotten about it, washed away by the wailing country music, the smells of the city and the flood of ghosts they passed.

  Hamilton dropped Harlan off in front of his apartment building. “Half an hour late. Only one ghost down. Fucking pitiful.” He reached past Harlan and opened the passenger side door. “We’ll do better tomorrow, right?” he asked, the inflection in his voice making it clear that ‘we’ meant ‘you’. The cop had done little enough to help dispatch the ghost. Harlan might be a glorified janitor, but that made the cop a glorified chauffer.