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Chapter 2: Ghosts, Zombies, & Cults
Scene 1: The Dead Go Missing
Less than three hours later, just before dawn, I was awoken by a banging on my shop's door. At first, I thought Dave had come back with a new round of complaints but I could see through the display window as I walked down to the shop floor I was at least luckier than that. Peering through the peephole of the door, still not quite awake, I was greeted with a wide-eyed freckled teenager with auburn pigtails and a backpack over her t-shirt and jeans.
"Mr. Beauregard?!?" she was yelling as I opened the door. "Are you Geoffrey Beauregard? The Private Detective?"
"Yes," I yawned, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. "Among other things. Can I help you? Maybe interest you in a working watch?"
"I'm Sherry Franklin," she said quickly, ignoring my snark about how early it was. "Patrick's cousin."
"Straight A's," I said, smiling and shaking my head at the thought of my conversation with Patrick.
"What?" she blinked. "Oh, right. I guess Patrick told you about the party. That's kind of why I'm here. I need your help. I rode all the way from the library."
Sherry brushed past me inside, leaving her bike at the door, and took her shoes off at the antique couch to rub her feet on the coffee table. She looked exhausted. I brought a pitcher of water and glass from the kitchenette. She thanked me and drank it in between sentences.
"Something's happened to my parents, to my mom."
Gulp.
"First they weren't at their graves when we visited for dinner."
Gulp.
"Then the vision in the library."
Gulp.
"And now I've got a spontaneous tattoo."
Gulp.
"And the police are useless, and my feet are killing me," she momentarily finished, taking a long drink and finishing her glass.
"Slow down," I said holding up my hands against the barrage of words she'd just thrown at me. "One thing at a time. What do you mean their graves? Whose graves?"
"My parents' graves," Sherry answered, setting the now empty glass down on the haunted coffee table opposite the couch.
"Your parents are dead?" I asked as I refilled her glass.
"Yes, they died a month ago," she answered, "And now they're missing. My mom is being tortured. I saw it. And my--" I cut her off.
"Wait a moment," I said as I limped to grab a notebook and pen.
My leg throbbed from my spill at the bowling alley, but I ignored it. Sitting back down, now with pen and pad, I took out my pipe and packed it with fresh Dragon's Breath. With the strike of a match and a long draw in, my mind expanded and I was ready to listen.
"From the beginning," I said through the smoke I exhaled. "You went to the cemetery and…."
Sherry took another swig of water and continued, "And I had the crap scared out of me by Patrick. He was hiding behind their headstones and jumped out when he saw me coming."
I nodded and admitted her told me about the surprise party.
"That's just it," she said, "There was no party, just me and Patrick. My parents weren't there. At first, I didn't mind. Since they've been ghosts, they sometimes get dates and times mixed up. So I rode my bike to the library where they used to work. I go there a lot."
I nodded before asking, "And Patrick? Did he go with you?"
She shook her head no. "He said he finally had a case of his own. He called it the Case of the Missing Dead People."
I groaned at this. I'm not sure which bothered me more; that he was going solo when he knew better, or that terrible title.
"He tried to get me to stay with him. I think he was scared of being alone in the cemetery at night. I told him that just wasn't my bag and he pouted. Still, he was determined to have his 'cemetery stakeout' so I bailed. Found myself a cozy beanbag in the mystery section of the library and curled up with Hercule Poirot til I fell asleep. Then I had that vision of my mom."
"Mhmm," I said as I stoked the embers in my pipe. "What happened in your dream?"
She stood up and paced as she spoke, "It wasn't like a normal dream. Like, it wasn't my eyes that were seeing, you know? And my mother was there in front of me, her ghost body stretched out on some sort of medieval wrack. Her wrists and feet were bound with a chain that looked made of fog. And she was screaming, howling in pain."
Sherry took a moment before going on. I was jotting down what she said as quickly as I could.
"'What do you wa-ARRGGH!!', mom cried and I could just make out somebody in a hood to my right slowly turning the crank to the wrack."
She brushed a pigtail behind her back and mimed cranking a large wheel.
"Like this," she said, "And I could feel myself laughing at it 'Hehehe!' like I was really giddy but my voice was all high and whiny. The crank turned and turned and turned until there was this loud POP!"
Sherry made a loud clap with her hands and collapsed into the armchair on the other side of the coffee table. I was writing furiously, my pipe sat on the table forgotten.
"That's when I woke up," she said and shuddered. "I can still hear my mom's screams. And later I noticed this on my arm."
She pointed down at her arm, seeing a new squiggly mark near the shoulder. It looked as if she'd been burned.
"So I called 911,” Sherry went on, "But they weren't helpful at all." I smiled sympathetically. I could have guessed as much. "He said that since the vic was already dead and the cry for help was in my dream, there's nothing they can do. 'We can't just send officers out looking for ghosts in the middle of the night. Imagine the overtime!'," Sherry impersonated the operator with a goofy voice before continuing, "After I hung up. I didn't know what to do. Then I saw a newspaper with your ad on it, Mr. Beauregard. My parents followed your cases in the paper, especially after you hired Patrick. They said you can help solve any paranormal problem. Well, I have one."
I'd run that ad for the last month and a half with no results. Strange that this would be what it lead to. "Yes, you do," I agreed with her, "Show me the mark again. Where you felt burned." She did so, raising the short sleeve of her t-shirt up to the shoulder. On it, black as night, was a symbol I had only seen once or twice and had only begun to understand. What Sherry had mistaken for a squiggle was actually a circle containing the letters A, E, N, and S. From what I gathered, it was the sigil of a paranormal group of language-related entities, either living through words or empowered by them. I wasn't sure.
"Do you know what it is?" Sherry asked, her voice concerned but calmer now.
"Only partially," I answered, truthfully, "Not enough to give you a satisfying answer. But I'll do what I can to help your parents."
"Thank you, Mr Beauregard," she said sounding slightly relieved, "I hope my mom's ok."
"Don't worry, Sherry. We'll find her," I promised. "Try not to fret. I know what you saw was scary, but ghosts have a different sense of pain than you and I. The 911 operator could have been more tactful, but it is true that there's not much damage you can really do to a ghost. They're not like zombies or trolls or even banshees."
"Really?" she asked.
"Really," I answered before asking, "Where's Patrick, now?"
"Still on his cemetery stakeout, I guess," she answered before asking, "Is that the kind of thing you guys normally do, by the way?" she asked skeptically.
"No," I said, "No it's not. Dammit Patrick." I grabbed my keys off the wrack by the register and whistled for Jingles to join me. He was bustling down the stairs and with us seconds later. "Come on, Sherry. We're going to go see what trouble your cousin's gotten himself into."
"I told him to watch out for zombies," she said as I closed the door behind us.