Darkness falls and she will take me by the hand,
take me to some twilight land ...
where all my love is gray, where I can't find my way,
without her as my guide.
- Roy Orbison,
Mystery Girl
The girl's reflection looked at him from the windowpane. Her eyes brought to mind St. Elmo's fire that Gabe once saw playing through the rigging of his grandfather's sloop.
"Gabe?" Chris Ebbing's voice startled Gabe from his reverie. "Are you okay man? I thought I heard you fall."
Gabe turned to look back at the crime scene photographer. "I'm ... fine. Do you see anything in the window?"
Chris looked at Gabe quizzically, then peered through the curtained casement. "Just the house next door. Should I see something?"
Gabe looked again. Finding Chris's reflection he looked for his own, but saw only the petite white-haired girl staring back at him.
"He's not going to see me. Only you can ... right now anyway." Mary's voice drifted in Gabe's mind.
"How?" Gabe said aloud.
"How what?" Chris said. His brows were knitted together in concern. "Are you sure you didn't hit your head or something? You don't look so good."
Voices from below distracted both men. A team of three crime scene technicians were making their way into the house.
Gabe turned to Chris. "Get pictures of the area where the victim was found, there probably won't be much of use since the paramedics removed the body." He almost managed a normal tone.
"Body? I thought I heard on the squawk-box that the girl they found was alive." Chris responded.
"She was." Gabe's voice was almost a whisper. "I need to get started downstairs." He finished with forced volume.
Gabe turned and proceeded down the stairs. He did not want to give Chris a chance to ask any more questions. He must be hallucinating. He'd never heard of ephedrine causing any neurological side effects like these, but maybe combined with caffeine and sleep-deprivation....
You don't really believe that horsecrap do you, asked a voice in his head, his own this time.
"I'm not a side-effect. I'm real and we're stuck together." The girl again. The voices in his head were ganging up on him.
"Look, I can understand you're having a hard time, you're very old for the First Sight. This really sucks for me too you know. Least you're not dead."
Gabe stood motionless at the bottom of the stairs. He rubbed his temples with both hands. His head was really starting to hurt. The crime scene technicians were standing just inside the front door, looking to him for orders. God his head hurt. He had to keep going. Routine kicked in. He latched onto it as a drowning man to a lifeline.
"There are two areas. One down here." Gabe gestured toward the living room. "And one upstairs. Start with those, but I want the whole house covered." Gabe's voice was almost level.
"I can help you. If you'll listen." Gabe whirled around toward the staircase when the girl's voice once again sounded in his mind.
"Abrams and I aren't the only ones who kicked the bucket in this hell-hole. Might want to take another look at those marks on the floor, Mr. Bigshot Detective."
Gabe looked down. By his foot was one of the marks that had attracted his attention to the staircase. The world narrowed to only that mark, striated scratches on the hardwood finish. Like a piece of rough sawn wood with great weight had been dragged across it. He stopped were the marks met the staircase. The mark seemed to go under the first step. He knelt, nose inches from the floor. The first kickplate of the stairs was ill fitted. It was not readily apparent from a distance, but unmistakable under close scrutiny. On any other night Gabe would have seen it immediately.
Gabe stood up and looked back over his shoulder and caught sight of one of the techs, a kid fresh out of college. Gabe searched his mind for her name.
"Merrick. Bring that fingerprint kit over here please." Gabe hoped he'd used the right name. Strange he should worry about that when he was hearing voices in his head.
"Still hung up on that, are you?" Mary stated flatly.
"Normally people with the gift are more open minded. Get over it."
"Start here where the stairs meet the floor. I'm going to go outside for a minute." Gabe determined to ignore the girl's voice. Maybe it wasn't ephedrine, or the Chinese take-out, or even the horror of the scene downstairs. Maybe he was finally cracking up. But given a choice, he'd sooner believe he was going insane than acknowledge that the girl's voice might somehow be real.
Gabe walked out the front door and made for the miniscule backyard. He needed to clear his head. The yard was relatively deserted. The property abutted the yard directly behind it. Thankfully no emergency vehicles with their garish lights were visible from here. Quiet. Gabe took a deep breath and released it slowly. Good, he felt better already.
"Fresh air is not going to help." Mary's voice evidenced irritation.
Gabe looked around, but no one was in sight. "Okay. I give. There's a dead girl's voice in my head. I have gone mad. That's it. Kaput. Over."
"Stop being a whiny loser," Mary scolded.
"You've just been possessed. Not exactly accurate, but that's the simplest way to put it."
"Okay. I'm not hallucinating, I've just been possessed by a teenager." Gabe waved his arms in time with his speech. "I think I like the insanity theory better, less complications."
"You don't know the half of it." Her voice held an edge of distress now.
"You've seen so much but you don't have a clue what's really going on. I'm real and everything you saw was real. What you've seen is only the beginning. This night isn't over yet." Mary paused.
"Abram's spell went awry. It should have exorcised the demon without killing the possessed. You saw the physical results in the downstairs room but only one of the magical effects."
"Abrams? Creepy little guy, sweater, bowl, symbols, mumbo-jumbo? Wait a minute, you're saying..."
"Yes. He was a demon. Or rather, he was being used by a demon. Abrams was really quite harmless before all of this. Never much of a caster, though. You and I are bound together because he screwed the pooch with that last spell."
"Great. Wait a second. You said that was just one of the magical effects. What else can go wrong tonight?" Gabe felt sure that he did not want to know the answer to that question.
"Lesser demons can't just go around possessing people. Once summoned to this world they can only be bound by witchcraft."
"Demons? There are more than one of those things out there?"
"Oh sure. Most aren't as violent as our fella, but they're all pretty wicked. Britney Spears? Demon. Freddy Prinze, Jr.? Definitely possessed. Didn't think he made it that far on talent, did you? I mean, come on, did you even see Scooby-Doo? What Buffy sees in him, I don't know."
"Anyway, the spell Abrams used is supposed to send the demon back to its own world. His lame casting sent it somewhere else in this world. Told him he should've waited for the Sister."
"Okay." Gabe thought a moment before continuing. "Assuming that I'm really having this conversation ... what happens next? How do I get rid of the demon?"
And how do I get rid of you, he wondered.
"I heard that."
"Sorry," Gabe mumbled. Was he actually apologizing to the voice of a dead girl? Yes, he supposed he was.
"Better be. You need me, fingerprint boy. Now, normally this type of demon will control the person it possesses, sometimes channeling a limited amount of its power through that person into this world. You saw what went down upstairs. What he became. An ordinary person would have been killed by the defense I used."
Mary's voice was hushed.
"Once the house is searched it will become clear what evil these creatures are capable of. And after this spell, I don't know what kind of powers it might have. The question is, where did the bastard go?"
"I wish I stayed home," Gabe said.
"Gabe, who are you talking to?"
Gabe whirled to see Jack Casey standing at the corner of the house.
"Uh...," Gabe stammered. Embarrassed, he looked towards Jack's familiar face. Gabe's blood turned to ice. A baleful yellow glow illuminated Jack Casey's eyes.
"Oh 
."
© 2002 Austin Hale
