Pacheko Paranormal Investigations
When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses. I knew as soon as I got the call from Cassian, I’d go down. My problems with the squad, those missing witnesses, everything that went down with Elsie McKinney and her suitcase full of dough – none of that mattered the minute he hung that mystery in front of my nose. Cassian knew I was a sucker for the weird ones, and boy, did he use that to his advantage.
The body was in one of the back alleys off Magnolia Square. The glitz from the arcade lights flickering over her splayed body. No one’d even had the decency to cover her yet.
Cass stood by the dumpster, collar turned up against the rain. “It’s another one,” he said, handing me a lit cigarette.
“You sure?”
He shrugged. “See for yourself.”
She was young. Twenty-something. Blonde. Cheap blouse, hemmed skirt, scuffed shoes. The flesh from her right leg, knee all the way down to her ankle, was carved out right down to the bone. Little notches or hashmarks or something were marked on the skin along each cut.
I took a drag from my cigarette.
The others had been the same. Different parts, but same method. Same little marks. I even took ‘em to this girl I knew at Dulaney in case they might be some sort of hieroglyphic but she’d never seen anything like it. I’d already ruled out zombies – messy eaters – and wendigos – same – but the problem was there wasn’t a whole lot of flesh-cutting creatures out there. Most wouldn’t leave a whole corpse like this, either. You’d be lucky to find a finger bone. Human intervention had been ruled out with Corpse #3 – the classic locked room scenario with zero trace evidence. Just the body missing a two-foot-long strip of torso and, once again, no leads in sight. That just left a spirit.
I sighed and took another drag.
I fucking hate spooks.
“What d’you think?” asked Cassian.
“I gotta run something down,” I said. “I’ll get back to you.”
Me and Carmela went way back. She’d helped out on that first “unusual” case that set me down the path of the weird and wonderful, and sure, maybe we had a thing once or twice, but now it was all business.
Carmela had a spot down on Duncan in between a Thai place and a massage parlour. It was decked out just like you’d expect with a big neon sign flashing “Palm Readings $20” next to a list of all the “services” she offered. I don’t know that I put much stock in that sorta thing, but Carmela’s always been straight with me, and I’ve seen some things I never would’ve believed if I hadn’t been there, so I figure anything’s possible.
“You still owe me for that window, Theodore,” she said when I walked in, little bell tinkling above me. The place reeked of some flowery incense shit so thick it got stuck in the back of my throat.
She’s the only one gets away with calling me Theodore.
“Yeah, and I’ll pay it, but I gotta question that’s right up your alley.”
She snorted and crossed one leg over the other. “At this rate, I oughta start charging you a fee.” She nodded at the file I was holding. “Whatcha got?”
I slapped the folder down on the black lace tablecloth and flipped it open to show her the pictures from the first eight bodies. Normally I wouldn’t show a lady this sort of thing, but Carmela wasn’t like other women. She had more steel than most men I knew.
She sifted through them, pursing her bright red lips and tapping the table with her bright red nails. “You know you got yourself a wraith, don’t you?” she asked finally. She pushed one of the pictures towards me and used one of her long, long nails to point at the hashmarks. “See that right there? It’s runes. Old magic. It’s like a…” She snapped her fingers, searching for the word. “Like transmogrification. The wraith ain’t got no form per se. It’s gotta change the flesh to use it.”
“Use it for what?”
Carmela shrugged. “Lotta stories about that, but the stories say if a wraith collects enough flesh to make a new body, it can come back to life.”
“So why doesn’t it just take it all from one corpse?”
“Who knows why any of these things do what they do? Probably to do with some curse or another.”
“So how do I catch it?”
She shrugged again. “You could try the standard exorcism but there’s no guarantee that’ll work with a wraith. Course by now it’s probably just about got enough to make its body, so… You could just let it play out. Doubt it’ll kill again once it’s alive.”
“Great. That’s helpful. You don’t have a friend or anything who would know how to handle this?”
She sorta sighed and clicked her tongue. “Fine. You go down Chadwick and talk to Roxie at The Harbour. She’ll sort you out. That it?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” I scooped up the pictures and put them back in the folder.
Carmela tapped the centre of the table with her fingernail. “Theodore,” she said in that tone that meant she wasn’t playing around.
I tossed a twenty on the table and walked out.
Magnolia Square was down-at-the-heel. Duncan was kinda sketchy. Chadwick, though, you better have a revolver in your pocket, and another strapped to your ankle. The Harbour was where everyone went to make their deals, which made me being there an iffy situation. Sure, I wasn’t technically a cop, but I did have a reputation, and most of the clientele at The Harbour knew it. I just had to keep my head down.
Roxie had a booth in the back with a bouncer standing in front keeping everyone away. I went up anyway, gave Carmela’s name, and after a second, Roxie gave the OK. “You don’t look like no friend of Carmela,” she said, sizing me up. “You look like a cop.”
“No cop,” I said, sliding my card across the table. “Paranormal investigator.”
She picked up the card by the corner and raised an eyebrow. “That’s a new one.”
“I got a wraith I gotta get rid of.”
“You got yourself a mess of trouble, then,” she said. “I don’t deal with wraiths. Too messy.”
“Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“You?” She laughed – not one of those delicate giggles women do but a deep belly laugh. “Oh, honey. It takes years of practice to get a wraith proper.”
“What if you do it improper?”
“You die.”
“Okay, that’s not an option,” I said. “What do I gotta do to get you to help? It’s killed young girls all over the city.”
She sighed and looked away, drumming her fingers on the table. “Well, I guess I could do it. But it’ll cost.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen hundred.”
“Fuck me sideways you gotta be joking.”
“Hey, I’m the one risking my life.”
“Fine.” I’d pin the bill on Cassian in the end, anyway, so it was no skin off my nose. “What do we do?”
“I’m gonna need you to get me some things. And I need to see the bodies.”
“This better be worth it, Pacheko,” Cassian said as he led us down to the morgue. “I had to pay the attendant and the coroner just to get you two in here.” He gave Roxie a long side-eye. “She the real deal?”
“Trust me,” I said.
Inside the morgue, Cassian pulled out the gurney with the latest victim and Roxie set up her candles and crystals all around the body. Then she took some sort of foul-smelling oil and dabbed it on the girl’s head, wrists and feet. Finally, she poured a fine powder into a bowl and lit it on fire. Purple smoke billowed up, and she walked around the room muttering to herself and waving the smoke around.
“What’s that for?” Cassian whispered, but obviously not quiet enough, ‘cause Roxie shot us daggers.
“Just be quiet,” I said.
After she’d put the smoke all around, Roxie stood at the girl’s head, holding the bowl up, and kept chanting some crazy language I never heard and then I heard this humming sound, and it kept getting louder and louder until I had to cover my ears, but that didn’t help. My vision went blurry and the whole room got cold, and then it was there. The wraith.
It stood at the foot of the corpse, opposite Roxie, and looked... Christ. I can’t even describe it. There were pieces of flesh sort of slapped together like a real macabre patchwork quilt, some of it practically rotting. The latest piece was right there on the calf, all pink and rosy. In between the flesh pieces… It was like a swarm of insects or these tiny black dots just buzzing around at a maddening speed.
Roxie gave me the signal and I gripped the knife – silver, blessed by three holy men, and dipped in witch hazel – she’d had me get and rammed it right into the thing’s back. The buzzing and the humming got so high and so loud it felt like my head was splitting open and I couldn’t take a breath. Whether it was fifteen seconds or fifteen minutes, it felt like fucking forever and I was pretty damn sure I was about to wind up dead.
And then it stopped. The wraith was gone, a pile of flesh pieces on the floor where it’d been standing, and Roxie passed out, too. I felt like I was coming off a six-day bender and Cassian looked worse than I felt.
“Right,” I said, grabbing Cassian’s shoulder. “I’ll put my invoice in the mail.”