I resisted the urge to groan. Steven often struggled with the nuances of our American colloquialisms. “Good idea,” I said, too tired to get into it. “We’ll look for the needle in the tailor shop after the shoot.”
Because it was early and we had some time to kill, Steven and I took showers, (okay, so we took one long one together), got dressed, and headed down to breakfast. We needed to report for duty by eight thirty a.m., but the time change was throwing me, and when we got to the hotel café I noticed it was only seven.
I ordered up a big plate of fruit and a Western omelet; Steven went for fruit and granola, and eyed my omelet when it arrived. “Do you want me to tell you what that is going to do to your arteries?” he asked. Steven’s a heart surgeon by trade.
“Oh, please,” I groaned with a wave of my hand. “All my grandparents lived well into their seven-ties or eighties, and my dad is still going strong. No heart disease in the family. I think I’ll live.”
Steven’s eyebrows lifted a little, but he let it go. I dove in with earnest and was only on my second bite when I heard, “Morning, guys!”
I swiveled in my chair and noticed Heath behind us, looking a bit worse for wear too. “How’d you sleep?” I asked, while Steven pointed to a chair, motioning for Heath to join us.
“Not great,” he admitted, taking the seat. “I’ve been in some creepy places before, but nothing like this hotel.”
“Did something else happen?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Heath said, smiling up at the waitress who was pouring him coffee. “About three a.m. the knocks started.”
“Knocks?” Steven said.
I smiled. I knew what Heath was likely referring to. “Sometimes ghosts will make their presence known by making knocking sounds,” I explained. Turning to Heath I asked, “Is that what you mean? Some spirit was trying to get your attention by knocking?”
Heath nodded. “And then the TV went on and off, on and off from about four to six a.m. I swear, I couldn’t get a moment’s peace.”
“Did anyone give you a name?” I asked.
“Some woman named Carol,” Heath answered, rubbing his eyes tiredly. “She kept saying someone was in her room or something.”
I cocked my head and stared at him. “Freaky,” I said. “Do you know that Carol came by my room early this morning too?”
“You’re kidding!” Heath now eyed me with interest. “Did she knock and flip your television on?”
“No, she scared the crap out of me by appearing on my balcony,” I admitted.
“Fully formed?”
“Like she was in the flesh,” I said. “I think maybe we should start with her after the shoot so that we’ll have a chance at getting some sleep tonight.”
“Great idea,” Heath agreed. “And we’re still going to work on Sophie’s murder, right?”
I sighed wearily. This was turning into a heavily loaded working weekend. “Absolutely, but I think we should also try to find out what the hell that
thing
was that came out of the elevator,” I added. “I’d hate to think what could happen if a regular hotel guest came up close and personal with something like that.”
“Whatever it was, I’d prefer not to get too close to it,” Heath said with a small shiver. “Frankly, that whole encounter freaked me out so much that I came really close to leaving here last night and heading back home.”
“I feel ya,” I said. “But if we don’t do something about it, Heath, who will?”
He smiled wryly. “Let Angelica and Bernard have a turn.”
I laughed. It was clear that we both shared a rather limited opinion of Captain Comb-over and Madam Hateful. “Now
that
I’d pay to watch,” I said.
“It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with at the shoot,” Heath said.
I pushed my breakfast dishes away as I polished off the last bite of omelet. “Let’s just hope the two of us get paired up, and not with one of them.”
As it turned out, we weren’t that lucky. When we had all gathered in the lobby at eight thirty a.m. and were directed into the only conference room not currently being renovated, called the Renaissance Room, where crew members were just finishing up arranging the set. Gopher pulled the four mediums aside and said, “For the first part of the shoot, I’ll want girls against boys. M.J. and Angelica will start us off; then we’ll switch it up and go with Heath and Bernard.” Out of the corner of my eye I caught Angelica’s reaction, and she looked less than pleased. “Then we’ll break for lunch, and when we come back we can try a different grouping: Heath and M.J. against Angelica and Bernard.”
Heath and I exchanged glances. At least we’d get paired up after lunch.
I was then directed by one of the stagehands over to a chair, where a woman with lots of brushes and powders got to work on my face while another woman began putting some curls into my hair.
Between the two of us, Gilley is more the girlie girl, and he looked on happily at the edge of my chair while I was made over.
“Steven tells me that you didn’t have any unusual readings on the meters?” I asked him.
“None,” he said. “There were a few blips around the revolving door leading into the mezzanine, but nothing spiky enough to warrant getting you out of bed. Still, we were up until three checking all the floors.” Gilley yawned loudly for effect.
I noticed that Gil was wearing his magnetic sweatshirt. “You can’t be near me when we’re shooting if you’re wearing that,” I advised him.
Gil looked down. “But I want to watch,” he complained.
“Well, then take off the sweatshirt,” I said. “You’re going to throw off any energy coming through these haunted possessions if you’re nearby.” From Gilley’s exaggerated pout I could tell that he was struggling with the idea, but after a moment’s hesitation he did remove the sweatshirt, folding it and placing it far away from the cameras. “Thanks,” I said as I was allowed up from my chair and directed over to a small, well-lit area in the middle of the large conference room that held a round table covered by a black velvet cloth and a crystal ball in the center.
I took my seat and eyed the crystal ball skeptically. “You’ve seriously got to be kidding me,” I mumbled as I thought about how goofy this whole thing was.
After a bit, Angelica took the seat next to me, but she avoided eye contact and seemed a bit stiff, so I didn’t try to engage her. Instead I occupied myself with watching the crew at work as they looked through their cameras and monitored the lighting next to both Angelica and me. Some guy carrying a long pole with a furry-looking microphone on the end of it edged over to an X at the corner of the square mat put down for our little stage, and then someone with a clapboard walked in front of one of the cameras and held it up before he said, “
Haunted Possessions
, Angelica and M.J. Take one.” Then he clapped it closed and we looked at our “host,” a guy I hadn’t met yet who introduced himself to the camera.
“Good evening,” he said. “I’m Matt Duval, and this is
Haunted Possessions
. Tonight we’re going to be looking into the lives of several everyday people who swear they own objects that are possessed by unseen forces. These folks have come to us for help, and we’ve acquired a top-notch team of psychics to determine whether these objects are in fact haunted, and if they are, what to do about it.”
Matt then turned to Angelica and me. “Our psychic panel is made up of four psychics: M. J. Holliday from Massachusetts, Angelica Demarche of California, Heath Whitefeather of New Mexico, and Bernard Higgins, also of California.”
As the camera passed over me I felt the urge to nod and smile, but internally I was feeling a bit like a fool. I think it was Matt’s melodramatic voice as he narrated. This all just seemed silly to me.
After we’d each been introduced, Gopher yelled, “Cut,” and we were divided into our groups, with Angelica and me at the table and Heath and Bernard watching off to the side. I caught Steven’s eye as he stood out of the way at the back of the room, and smiled as he held up his thumb, giving me some encouragement.
After we’d taken our seats a woman holding a beautiful china bowl came into the room, and the crystal ball in the middle of the table was removed to make room for the bowl placed in the center. She smiled shyly at us, and I reached a hand across the table and said, “Hi, I’m M.J.”
“Patty,” she said, shaking my hand.
Patty turned and offered her hand to Angelica, but Madam Hateful simply scowled and said, “I do not want to interact with you before they begin shooting again.”
Patty blushed and I rolled my eyes, irritated that I’d been paired with such an impolite bitch. One of the lighting guys held up a little meter next to Patty, then next to the bowl, made a slight adjustment, and gave a nod of approval before clearing out of the way. Matt came back to stand on his X, and the guy with the clapboard did his thing; then Matt introduced the scene.
“Patty Murphy from Ojai, California, has had this bowl in her family for four generations. Recently she noticed that the bowl was acting suspiciously; she claims to have witnessed it moving on its own. She suspects that it may be haunted, so let’s check with our experts, M.J. and Angelica. Ladies, please give us your impressions.”
Matt moved out of the way, and the cameraman closest to us moved in for a tighter shot. No one had really given us any instructions, so I focused on the bowl, letting my energy wrap around it to see what might be causing these strange occurrences. I got nothing from the bowl, but when I focused on the woman across the table, I noticed immediately that there was an energy standing right next to Patty and, for lack of a better word, hugging her fiercely. “I’m so sorry about your mother,” I said to her as I realized in a quick flash who was standing next to Patty.
Patty gasped, and her eyes opened wide before filling with moisture. She was clearly too stunned to respond, so I added, “She’s showing me an L, like Lynn.”
“Her name was Linda,” Patty confirmed.
I smiled in encouragement. “Was it cancer?” I asked gently, feeling that familiar nauseated feeling I always get when a spirit energy tells me he or she had cancer.
“Of the pancreas,” she said, letting a tear drop. “She was diagnosed on May sixth, and she died on May twentieth. It was too fast for any of us to even digest.”
On the edge of my energy I could feel the attention and focus of everyone in the room. They were riveted. I went back to the bowl and saw a wedding cake. My eyes darted to Patty’s left ring finger, and I saw her engagement ring, and then I thought I could put it together. “You’re planning a wedding, right?” I said, feeling out the message.
Patty opened her mouth to respond, but before she could speak, Angelica suddenly moaned loudly and fell forward headfirst onto the table. I was so startled that I lost focus and put my hand on Angelica’s shoulder. “Are you all right?” I asked, bending to her ear.
That was when Angelica threw her arms in the air, clipping me in the mouth hard, and she began to moan and wail. “It’s possessed!” she howled. “It’s possessed by
evil
!” As if on cue the bowl in the middle of the table abruptly jumped. It literally hopped about an inch in the direction of Patty, and everyone in the room also jumped.
“It’s not evil,” I growled, holding my lip and feeling that throbbing sensation you get when you’ve been punched in a sensitive area. “It’s her mother insisting she use the—” But I never got a chance to finish.
Angelica leaped to her feet and picked up the bowl, holding it high above her head with her eyes wide and crazy. She then threw the delicate china piece as hard as she could, and it smashed against the back wall into a bazillion pieces.
Patty screamed in horror, I gasped, and the entire camera crew seemed to react at once. Gopher yelled, “Cut!” and people rushed forward.
“My bowl!”
Patty cried as she ran to the shards of porcelain littering the ground. “This was my
mother’s
bowl!”
I stared in stunned horror at the poor woman sobbing on the ground while she gathered bits of porcelain; then my eyes cut back to Angelica, who looked like a cat that had just eaten the canary. It dawned on me in that instant that she knew she was facing away from the camera, and when she swiveled back around she flung her arm up onto her forehead and went down on the ground as melodramatically as she could muster.
Meanwhile, I rushed to Patty’s side as she was crying uncontrollably, shaking and trembling while still trying to collect the pieces. “Honey, I’m so sorry,” I said to her.
“How
could
she?!” she wept. “How could she
ruin
it?!”
Gopher came and crouched down next to us. “What the hell just happened?” he whispered to me.
“You hired a
freak
for this show!” I snapped at him. “The bowl moved because Patty’s mother was trying to get her to use the heirloom in her wedding. There wasn’t an evil thing about it!”
“Evil!” we heard Angelica moan from behind us. “The bowl was evil!”
“This is ridiculous!” I yelled, and got up, hoisting my hands firmly onto my hips to glare angrily down at Gopher. “That bowl was a family heirloom, for God’s sake!”
Steven and Gilley had also come forward, and both of them were doing their best to help Patty pick up the broken pieces of her most treasured family possession. Gopher seemed completely at a loss about what to do. He bent down to the woman and apologized profusely, telling her that the insurance would cover the fair market value of the bowl.
That was when I threw up my hands and shouted, “I am
so
done with this!” and I stormed off in one of my better huffs.
I parted the crew like Moses at the Red Sea and shook my head as I passed Heath, who seemed to be on the edge of doing the same. “Good luck,” I said to him, and shoved open the double doors leading out of the Renaissance Room. Behind me I could hear the quick steps of feet hurrying to catch up to me. “Don’t even try to talk me out of it, Gilley,” I growled, and the footsteps stopped.