Nearly Departed Read online

  Dennis had purchased a package of cigarettes in addition to the supplies for Bobo’s anticipated display of pyrotechnics, hopeful that the nicotine would do something to soothe his electrified nerves. Instead, the smoke had only given him a headache, which was just as well since carrying both a smoldering cigarette and a can of gasoline was not the most brilliant of ideas. He had wandered for a bit before coming across a street he recognized, and by the time he arrived back at Elspeth’s house, the sun was almost directly overhead and his stomach was growling.

  Several attempts at pounding on the front door, both with the knocker and with his fist, failed to result in either Elspeth’s or Bobo’s presence to greet him. When he finally entered on his own, the house seemed deserted. He meandered through the familiar areas of the dwelling, checking Evy’s room first, now devoid of the chair, and then searched the connected kitchen and dining room. Eventually, he found his way to an open door leading out behind the house, and the sudden sound of Bobo’s laughter told him that he had finally located the other two living entities in residence.

  The backyard was landscaped in much the same way as its more evident counterpart at the house’s front. Rows of flowers bordered a well-kempt lawn, kept invisible from neighbors by a tall wooden fence. A single, ancient tree stood off to the left side of the area, beneath which a white table and matching chairs had been set. Bobo and Elspeth sat opposite each other, with a game board between them, and Evy’s chair stood at the yard’s far corner, looking for all the world like an innocent piece of furniture.

  “Took you long enough, mate!” Bobo called when he saw Dennis approaching. “We was thinking you’d been kidnapped!’

  He sort of had, Dennis thought with a shiver. He had decided during his walk back that he wouldn’t mention the encounter with Spinner. There was no need to worry Bobo needlessly, and Elspeth could easily confirm the reason for his presence, should anyone happen to ask. He had briefly imagined that a squadron of police officers would be waiting for him upon his return, but had decided that Spinner wouldn’t have let him go if he had been planning anything of the sort. With a carefully neutral expression, Dennis walked forward and examined the game in progress.

  “How are you at Backgammon, Dennis?” Elspeth asked. Dennis ran his eyes across the game board and tried to make sense of the pieces.

  “I’ve never played,” he confessed. He turned his gaze to Bobo, whose face was lit by a near-perpetual grin.

  “I’m winning,” Bobo proudly declared.

  “No, you aren’t,” countered Elspeth good-naturedly. She winked at Dennis. “He hadn’t played before either. Some of the finer points are still eluding him.” There was a clattering of dice and some pieces changed position on the board. Judging by the look of bemused mirth on Bobo’s face, the finer points of the game were the least of his worries.

  “So, are we going to do this?” Dennis asked. Both Elspeth and Bobo looked up with varying degrees of amusement on their faces, and suddenly Dennis felt incredibly silly standing there with his gallon-sized jug of accelerant.

  “It can wait until we finish the game,” Elspeth said. A fair enough statement, Dennis thought, but he didn’t feel particularly productive as an observer. He trudged over to where Evy’s chair sat and gave it an accusing glare.

  “What have you gotten me into?” he demanded in an exaggerated voice. Although the chair was seemingly vacant, Dennis preferred it that way. He didn’t see much appeal in complaining at an object that could offer input. “One minute, I’m just an author with a stupid hobby, and the next, I’m getting forced into cars at gunpoint while my partner the fraudulent shaman plays Parcheesi with a British version of Martha Stewart.”

  “Backgammon!” yelled Bobo. Dennis felt his ears burn and his face turn red. He hadn’t realized that he’d speaking loud enough for his words to carry back to the table, and he wondered how much of what he’d said had been overheard. He stole a quick look over his shoulder. Based on the carefree way that the game continued to progress, he figured that the part about his encounter with Spinner had gone thankfully unnoticed.

  The gas can landed with a sloshing thud as Dennis dropped it, and he sat down in front of the chair. For a moment, he thought he heard a faint hint of laughter, but it could have been coming from a house nearby. A piece of stiff material dug into his hip, and after a moment of contorted grasping, he pulled out Spinner’s business card, now slightly wrinkled by his efforts. The information printed on it was straightforward and simple enough, but one detail caught Dennis’ attention. Under the name “Malcolm R. Spinner,” was a line of smaller text, spelling out the words “Private Investigator.” The man wasn’t a detective after all, at least not of the official variety. While the fact put Dennis more at ease than he had been, it also raised further questions.

  Questions which would have to wait, it seemed, as Bobo was suddenly at Dennis’ side, having bounded across the yard like an overgrown puppy.

  “Alright, then, September,” he said, snatching up the gas can. “Let’s have us an old-fashioned exorcism!”

  “I don’t remember anything about gasoline in those rituals,” replied Dennis, climbing back to his feet. The brief moments sitting had left some moisture clinging to the underside of his legs, along with a few blades of cut grass. He brushed at them with one hand, eyeing Bobo warily.

  “You must have slept through that part,” Bobo said.

  “What?”

  “Did you get matches?”

  “No, I figured we’d use a lighter. What was that you just said about sleeping?

  Bobo plopped the gas can down on the chair. “Bad idea to use a lighter for this, mate. With matches, you can toss ‘em.”

  “Ask Elspeth for some matches, then!” Dennis said. “And tell me what you meant by sleeping!”

  “No time for that now, we have an exorcism to perform.”

  Dennis eyed Bobo with a flat glare. “Are you always so intentionally difficult?” As expected, Bobo grinned in response.

  “It’s a movie, September. An old one, even. You know, with the girl and the priests?”

  “Haven’t seen it.”

  “And the backwards stairs?”

  “Now it sounds like one of those M.C. Escher drawings,” Dennis muttered. “Alright, fine, start dousing the chair. I’ll go get some matches from Elspeth.”

  “Right here, Dennis,” the woman chimed, materializing next to him. She held out a cardboard box of oversized fire starters, probably designed for getting fireplaces going. Dennis took them with a nod of thanks, and reminded himself to get more sleep that night. Ironically, he was at greater ease with the idea of dealing with Evy than he was with the surprise of the girl’s sister sneaking up on him. At least he hadn’t yelped.

  Nearby, Bobo was whistling as he emptied the gas can onto the chair. It took less than a minute before the final drops fell onto the worn upholstery. When the task was complete, Dennis stepped forward, readying one of the elongated matches.

  “Okay, as soon as I light this, we’re going to want to get back a bit,” he said.

  Bobo nodded seriously, glancing back towards the tree. “How hot are you thinking it’ll be?”

  “This was your idea, you tell me,” Dennis muttered. “I just don’t want to take any chances.” He struck the match and waited for the flaring sparks to calm into a steady flame. Then, with a quick look to make sure that both Elspeth and Bobo were a safe distance from any danger, he flung the match at the chair and sprinted away.

  After a minute or two had passed, Dennis stormed back towards the chair, a wide-smiled Bobo in tow.

  “Make sure it don’t go out this time,” suggested Bobo helpfully.

  “Do you want to do this?” Dennis scowled.

  “Hey, you’re the big-shot doctor, I’m just the advisor. The assistant, if you will.”

  Dennis struck another match and watched it burn for a few seconds. “Funny how the assistant sat back here and played Baccarat while the big-shot doctor
played errand boy,” he said.

  “Backgammon,” Bobo corrected. He readied himself to run as Dennis held the match up, and the pair retreated back to the tree as the tiny flame sailed towards the chair. This time, the effect was instantaneous, and a brief roar of spawning fire reached Dennis’ ears as he ducked behind the massive trunk.

  He wasn’t sure what he had expected. Ethereal screaming, maybe, or some kind of exotically-colored smoke. Instead, the pyre looked incredibly mundane, or at least as mundane as could be expected when it consisted of a brown armchair and a gallon of unleaded fuel. It was hard to tell through the waves of heat and oily smoke, but the chair seemed to be enduring the conflagration with impressive resolve.

  “Well,” Bobo began after several moments of watching the blaze, “at least it’s pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Sure,” replied Dennis. “In a mad arsonist sort of way.” The flames continued to lick at the chair, although they were slowly shrinking as the fuel ran low. When the last flicker of the inferno finally died, the chair remained where it was, apparently no worse for the wear.

  “I suppose that’s the end of it,” said Elspeth quietly.

  “Do you really think that she’s gone?” Dennis asked, surprised. Elspeth looked up with an incredulous smirk.

  “I was referring to the fire, Dennis. I suspect that Evy is alive and well, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Here, now, that can’t be right!” Bobo protested. “That was a gallon of petrol, that was! It was enough to burn bricks!”

  “But not antique furniture, by the looks of it,” mused Dennis. He stared across the yard at the object in question. The grass beneath it had dried out and cooked, but the chair itself appeared to be completely untouched.

  “Bollocks!” Bobo pushed away from the protective cover of the tree and stomped towards the burnt area on the grass. Dennis started to protest, but it was clear that his words would have no effect. He hurried to follow, anxious to see what Bobo was up to. The bigger man stood with his hands on his hips, regarding the chair with a mixture of detachment and frustration.

  “What the hell is going on here?” growled Bobo. Neither the chair nor its currently absent spectral inhabitant offered anything in the way of a response, and Dennis hurried to offer potential explanations in their stead.

  “It might not have been hot enough,” he ventured. “Sometimes it takes a lot to get things going, especially when the wood is really hard.”

  “What are you, a bleeding Boy Scout?”

  “I was,” Dennis confessed. He swept a palm over the chair’s frame, taking care not to touch the wood. “It isn’t hot at all,” he stated. He stared down at the upholstery, which had remained equally untouched by the inferno. “You know, you’d think that the cushions would have been singed, at least.”

  “You’d think the whole bloody chair would be!” Bobo exclaimed. He grumbled something under his breath and took his anger out on the chair with a well-placed kick.

  A deafening explosion assaulted Dennis’ eardrums at the same time that a violent shockwave, hot and powerful, threw him away from the chair and across the yard. He landed badly, and what little breath the detonation hadn’t forced from his lungs was quickly expelled by the painful blow of his back slamming into the ground. A high-pitched ringing in his ears blocked out any other sounds, and it took several moments of bewildered blinking before he realized that the painful disk of bright light at the center of his vision was, in fact, the sun. The entire front of his body felt like it had been pummeled by a fist made of red-hot iron, and it only intensified when he instinctively curled up in an effort to breathe.

  He might have stayed there for hours had his mind not reminded him that both Bobo and Elspeth had probably been hit by the blast as well. With a groan of effort that was inaudible to his own ears, Dennis waged an internal war against his protesting muscles until he had finally wrestled himself into a huddled kneeling position. Bobo was several yards away, propped up on one hand as he twirled a finger in his ear canal. The ridiculous open-mouthed expressions passing across the man’s face told Dennis that his friend had also lost his sense of hearing, and was trying to regain it by any means possible. He scanned the yard, mildly concerned at how suddenly vibrant the colors seemed, until he spotted Elspeth’s dainty figure splayed out near the overturned table. He made an effort to stand and stagger towards her, but instead had to crawl forward on all fours, lest his aching limbs rebel and impede his progress.

  Dennis was relieved when Elspeth waved off his attempts at helping her, and more than a little jealous when she climbed to her feet unaided. A black and white mess of Backgammon pieces littered the ground nearby, as Dennis discovered rather painfully when he sat on a die hidden in the grass. He watched as Elspeth pushed the table and its surrounding chairs back upright, the entire thing like a scene from a silent movie accompanied only by a perpetually ringing bell.

  Muscles ached in protest as Dennis was suddenly hauled to his feet, but the feeling that he had lost a fight against a rabid bulldozer had mercifully begun to subside. He let himself be led to one of the chairs, and tensed painfully as he fell into it. Given the choice, Dennis thought, he would have preferred to stay on the grass. Bobo walked around from behind him, his giddy demeanor having returned with such fervor that Dennis wondered if the man had taken a blow to the head.

  Words were mouthed to him, but the ringing in Dennis’ head had not yet faded to the point where they were intelligible. He pointed to his ears meaningfully.

  “I can’t hear anything,” Dennis said. The sound of his own voice came to him as if through miles of cotton. It must have been louder than he’d intended, though, because Bobo made hasty shushing motions in response. A few moments later, two glasses were placed on the table. Remembering his experience from earlier in the week, Dennis took a careful sip of the contents before downing one of the containers in grateful relief. One surprise glass of gin had been more than enough.

  “Anything broken, Dennis?” asked Elspeth from behind him. Her words were muffled and carried an odd buzzing quality, but at least he could make them out.

  “I don’t think so,” he replied. His vision, which he hadn’t even realized had been tunneling, faded back to normal. “What happened?” He looked over at Bobo, who was staring off in the direction of the chair. Steeling himself against further surprises, Dennis followed his gaze.

  The chair remained where it had been, upright and unaffected by the events of the past several minutes. If anything, it looked moderately better than it had earlier, probably as a result of having any still-clinging dust either burned or blown away.

  “I don’t think she liked that much,” Bobo observed.

  Dennis snorted. “Really? What was your first clue?” Something about the scene seemed a little bit strange, even when he ignored the obvious. It was another moment before the hidden detail became apparent. “Flowers,” Dennis stated, pointing towards the chair.

  “Flowers?” repeated Bobo. “What about them?”

  “Look at the flowers behind the chair,” Dennis prompted. “What do you see?”

  Bobo squinted for a few seconds. “Irises?” he guessed.

  “Quite right,” interjected Elspeth. Dennis glanced over to see the woman picking up the last pieces of the scattered game. “They’re lovely, aren’t they?”

  “Very lovely, ma’am,” Bobo agreed.

  “Yeah, lovely irises,” said Dennis hastily. “What do you notice about them, though?”

  “That they’re very lovely!” Bobo declared. He beamed at Elspeth, who shared a smile with him.

  “They’re also still there,” Dennis impatiently pointed out. “That blast was powerful enough to knock the table over, but the flowers that are two feet away look fine.”

  “Oh, actually, Dennis,” said Elspeth gently, “I’m afraid it was me who knocked the table over.” She brushed at herself idly. “The whole thing toppled with me when I tried to catch myself, and it brought a few of the chairs
down with it.”

  Dennis considered this for a moment. “Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that the explosion only hit the three of us?”

  Bobo shrugged. “Looks like it.”

  “That’s impossible!” Dennis exclaimed. Bobo shrugged again.

  “More impossible than a ghost what haunts a chair?”

  “Yes!” sputtered Dennis. “Well, no. I don’t know!” He gritted his teeth and felt one of his eardrums pop back into place, putting him slightly off-balance. “Anyway, it’s not supposed to work like that. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

  “I don’t know that I could take another one of her reactions,” Bobo said. He scratched his head as he regarded the chair, much in the way that a shepherd might regard a sheep that was trying to fly. He turned back to Dennis. “So, what now, boss?”

  “Back to talking, I suppose,” Dennis sighed. His fingers made a metallic noise as he drummed them on the table. “I need to figure out a way of getting her to trust me, though.”

  “Yeah, she didn’t seem too keen on telling you anything,” Bobo agreed. “Though she was pretty keen on you, eh?”

  “Oh, yes, Evy fancies herself quite the vixen,” Elspeth cut in. She put the last of the retrieved game pieces back on the table and sat down in a vacant chair. “One of the fellows I hired before was rather taken with her.” Both Dennis and Bobo turned to listen. “I suppose it’s a small miracle that she always shows up in the same state,” Elspeth continued. “I rather doubt she’d have been willing to put her clothes back on otherwise.”

  Neither Bobo nor Dennis said anything in response, but both men exchanged a look. It hadn’t occurred to Dennis that the ghost might be capable of shedding her garments, and the thought definitely added an unexpected element. He was already feeling guilty about lying to Alena, and he doubted that it would improve if he was treated to a spectral striptease. Still, he had to admit, the thought did bring to mind some interesting images.

  “Actually,” Dennis murmured, “maybe that’s the answer.”

  “Oi!” exclaimed Bobo with a furtive glance at Elspeth. He lowered his voice to an urgent hiss. “You’re not thinking of doing the nasty with her?”

  “No, you dolt,” Dennis replied. “I’m thinking that I know of a way to get her to open up to me. Not like that!” he added in response to Bobo’s widening grin. “I just bet that I know a situation where she’d be willing to answer my questions.” He made a show of adjusting his clothes. “I’m going on a date with a ghost.”