The Haunting of Westbane

Chapter Two - Prognosticator

Elijah

I had the garage door open, and an odd assortment of chairs set out around an old coffee table. I’d picked up a dozen donuts, and made a pot of Death Wish coffee to welcome our prospective members. I was pretty surprised when both of the ladies had agreed to join us, albeit reluctantly on Mayah’s part.

Harley was the first to show up. She came roaring in, driving an old beat-up pick-up truck with a bad muffler. Somehow, she made all that rust look cool. She hopped down and slammed the door shut. I hadn’t seen her in a few months. Her blond hair was a different shade of pink than I remembered, but everything else was the same. Short-shorts showing off long, white legs, with a tattooed spiderweb up one thigh. Her tiny midriff was bared in a crop top, her belly-button ring sparkling in the sun.

Jeremy was always on her case about needing to eat, and I kind of agreed. She was perpetually on the scary side of slim. And then there was the way she wore a heavy, almost goth application of make-up, with the aforementioned rose-colored hair cut short and spiked. But, even though I had never been able to put my finger on it, there was always something about her that sucked me in and drove me mad.

“So...” she grabbed a jelly-filled donut and kicked back in a folding metal chair. “I hear you are trying to get into the big-time, Eli? If there’s money involved, I’m in!” She flashed me a grin before she sank her teeth into the donut Jeremy had emphatically pressed in her direction. I had to look away as she licked a gob of jelly off her lip.

S.hit. Only Harley could make a powdered jelly donut look obscenely hot.

Jeremy pulled up his rolling desk chair. He gave Harley a fist bump before he poured himself a cup of coffee and grabbed two donuts in one hand. He took a sip of the coffee and made a face. “Damn Elijah! Why you got to make this s.hit so strong?” He dumped out half the cup so that he could cut it with milk and mounds of sugar. “It’s no wonder you never sleep, man.”

Anthony pulled into the driveway next, riding his motorcycle. His reddish hair was tied back in a ponytail, and he was trying desperately to grow that “biker beard” but somehow he just couldn’t pull off the look. Maybe it was his milky-white skin, and his baby blue eyes... He was the oldest one of us, but he always looked like the baby.

“Hey, Harley!” He yelled in tones that would definitely not win him a place with the Hell’s Angels and dropped his long, lean body into the chair next to hers. “I heard you were back.”

“I’m back,” She said around a mouthful of donut, “In a professional capacity.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He poured himself a cup of coffee. “Is Brendan coming?”

“He’s supposed to be picking up my cousin.” Jeremy continued sipping his coffee, which must have been barely lukewarm after he added all that milk.

Five minutes of achingly polite chit-chat later, Brendan rolled up in his ever-so-practical Honda. Brendan was our tech nerd, our AV guy, our equipment manager. He usually ran the command center while the rest of us did the actual work of investigating, and that suited everyone just fine. He had the nerdy glasses, but the rest of him looked like a juiced bodybuilder. I often got the picture of him being at home, coding with one hand while the other lifts one of those kettlebell weights. He had tall, dark, and handsome down in a way that almost made me jealous. He made my average build and average good looks seem completely unremarkable. He would make a young Brad Pitt look dull.

I watched curiously as Mayah stepped out of the passenger side of the car. It was a little shocking to see the grown-up version of Jeremy’s kid-cousin. She still had a lot of that strikingly black hair, but it had been contained in a thick, curly braid down her back. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, and her curvaceous body was only half visible under an oversized t-shirt and a pair of form-fitting jeans.

She followed Brendan at a little distance. Her face was unreadable, but her body language was shy and uncertain. “Hey Mayah! Come on in and make yourself comfortable!” Jeremy bellowed at her. A small smile twitched over her lips and she came and squeezed herself in next to her cousin.

“Alright, we are all here,” I said, taking my spot at the coffee table. I was already on my second cup of coffee, and I could feel the caffeine buzzing through my veins. “I think most of us know each other... I guess you ladies haven’t met yet though, right? Harley, this is Jeremy’s cousin, Mayah. Mayah, this is Harley.” The two ladies smiled at each other, although on Mayah’s part, it was a barely perceptible curving of her full lips, while Harley beamed with open friendliness.

“So, we are going to be changing things up, trying some new stuff, see if we can’t bring some interesting new elements into our investigations,” I said carefully. “Harley will be joining us as a fourth investigator, and Mayah... well... um... what title should we give you Mayah? I really hate the term psychic.”

An eyebrow raised up above the rim of her sunglasses. I felt her eyes on me, but I couldn’t see them. “Prognosticator?” she suggested, with a faint edge of sarcasm in her voice.

Anthony snorted in his coffee cup, splashing java on his waspy red beard and quickly trying to wipe it off with his sleeve. “That sounds an awful lot like a proctologist. That’s not sexy at all.”

“Medium?” Brendan suggested.

“Clairvoyant?” Harley threw in.

“How about ‘Spiritual Consultant’,” Jeremy said, “That’s vague and open to interpretation, right?”

“Oh, I like that!” I jotted it down on my notepad. “What do you think, Mayah?”

She lifted a shoulder, “Whatever works for you.”

“Great.” I pulled out a file folder. “So I thought we’d do a couple of small cases... sort of get a feel for how we will work together. I’m thinking we’ll have Mayah accompany us for the initial interviews and walk-throughs. She can relate her... uh… impressions to us before we go in for the actual investigation. Harley... I’d like you to sort of be Mayah’s spokesperson on camera.”

Harley scratched the back of her neck. “You mean... I’m pretending to be the psychic?”

I cringed. “No. No pretending. You’ll just be.... the Aaron to her Moses,” I shifted uneasily. I couldn’t help but feel we were moving into hokey territory here. I flipped open the file, moving on as quickly as possible. “I’ve got a case here, a residential haunting.” I spread out some photographs. “The Edwards family purchased this property last year. The house was built in the 1940s by a German cabinet maker. There are reports of lights turning on and off, doors opening and closing, objects moving and going missing, and reappearing in strange places. The couple has a two-year-old son, and they feel that their son is being targeted. The child is apparently terrified of his bedroom and won’t sleep in his crib anymore.”

Mayah leaned across the table and slid the photos closer to her. Her forehead wrinkled as she studied the picture of the small, cute house. Her finger traced over the lines of the roof, the front door, and an upstairs window. I wanted to scoff at her. She was taking this “spiritual consultant” position pretty seriously, wasn’t she? I wanted to tell her that her input wasn’t required yet.

She pushed the pictures back toward me. “That’s not the original house.”

“Huh?” I looked stupidly at the picture. “What do you mean?”

“The German cabinet maker... he built the house on a pre-existing foundation.”

“How do you know that?” Brendan asked, tipping his head curiously.

She sighed and sat back, pulling her knees up to her chest. She didn’t answer, but instead stared out of the garage door toward the street, her face a blank mask.

Harley caught my eye across the table. I could clearly read her skeptical expression. I knew we were both thinking the same thing. This girl has a strange, passive-aggressive way of making herself the center of attention.

And it was going to be super annoying.