Foreword 1 page

Loren L. Coleman

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea, apparently shared by so many people, that magic‑if it does or could exist‑would somehow make everything easier.

That you can get something for nothing.

You hear it in conversations all the time. After something happens that was easier than it should have been, someone will shrug and say, “Must have been magic.” Searching for the solution to a hard problem is described as “needing some magic.” And a windfall, a bonus, a lucky occurrence: “magical.”

I suppose the quick and easy answer for this is to blame some of the old fables. Aladdin and his magic lamp, for instance. On the surface, it sounds like such a great deal. Three wishes, no waiting. Don’t need a permit, no license, and the IRS doesn’t even have a check‑off box for the value returned from the djinn. There is no downside. Right?

Ahh, but the fine print. That’s what everyone tends to forget when reminiscing about the “grand olde days,” when magic was real and talking fishes still granted wishes for the low, low price of being returned to the water. Even in the Disney animated flick, Aladdin’s wishes don’t bring him the happiness he thought he would receive. No sudden drop‑off on Easy Street for him. In the end, he’s lucky enough just to break even.

If you think about it, he was fortunate to even make that.

Because there has never been an invention or discovery for which someone did not pay a price. Often a heavy price. And right on the heels of implementation often follows the disreputable element. The shady side of the street. You know:

Crime.

Feats of skill led to gambling. Corporate espionage is only a shade younger than corporations. And nothing revitalized the porn industry like the internet.

Which is what made me wonder about the shadier side of all this magic for which everyone yearns. Would the IRS (or someone) try to collect their due from chiseling wishmongers? What happens when magic is used to handicap the ponies? What kind of people are going to step forward to save us from all this “easy living?”

And once magic is outlawed, will only outlaws have magic?

Reading this anthology, you may begin to find answers to some of these questions. We’ll scratch the surface, certainly. Poke at some of the softer bits you’ve been hiding. In the end, though, I think you’ll find that this is only the beginning. The start of the path‑one filled with many twists, turns, and pitfalls‑but worth taking regardless. That you knew all along that you could not get something for nothing.

Because nothing is free.

Not even magic…

Web Ginn House: A Zoë Martinique Investigation by Phaedra M. Weldon

A toaster spun across the room straight for my head.

Luckily I was out‑of‑body (OOB to the initiated), so the blasted thing drove right through me and into the ceramic clown behind me. Crash!

I hate clowns.

But then again, how rude! I didn’t feel the solid object, but I sure as hell was going to remember it later as a migraine on the physical plane. Oh, I could choose to go through things, like doors and walls, but when I did that, I was prepared. Nothing like walking down Peachtree Street and having some very angry spirit bean you with a kitchen appliance.

Though I’m not sure which is worse‑the flying ginzu knives or the hideous furniture flashback to 1964, complete with plastic couch cover.

Whoa! Look out‑a juicer!

Oh, speaking of rude, let me introduce myself. Name’s Zoë Martinique. Long e sound. Not like toe. I’m not a ghost or anything‑not even a distant relation to Danny Phantom (but it’d be cool to have his white hair)‑but a living, breathing (and ever curious) Latino Irish American who just happens to travel out of body.

Sounds weird, huh?

Yeah, most people hear Latino and Irish, and before they see me, they think, “She either looks like Jennifer Lopez or Opie Griffith.”

Hell, you think if I looked like JLo, I’d be incorporeal in north Georgia dodging toasters? Nope. I’d be making me some sexy music videos and racking up husband number two.

I’m a stick with mounds of brown hair, brown eyes, and freckles.

Ack! This time a Betty Crocker cookbook spun at me, hard cover open, pages flapping in the wind. I moved to the side and did a nice duck behind the sofa. The book dented the wall behind me, just missing‑I stopped and glared at the garish figurines on the shelf‑what were those things? Gah ‑ceramic harlequins.

Hideous.

Mental note: I really hate clowns.

If I could, I’d let loose with some rather colorful metaphors about now, but even incorporeal, the SPRITE equipment set up throughout the two story house would hear me on tape. And that just wouldn’t do.

Oh, yeah, SPRITE stands for Southeast Paranormal Research Investigators for Tactical Extermination. Uh‑huh. What killed me was their obnoxious little logo of a fairy holding a ghost around the neck.

Sick, sick, sick.

But with that kind of publicity, I’d rather not be noticed by them. I might be invisible to the naked eye, and I’m not that sure I won’t show up on film, but for some strange reason I can be heard. Learned that the hard way once and nearly gave one of my targets a heart attack.

Let me set the stage here so it doesn’t seem like I’m babbling.

I learned I could go out of body six years ago, and once I got past that whole adolescent need to spy on people (like boyfriends, hussies who stole my boyfriends, cheating boyfriends), I learned I could make money with this little talent and have for the last two years. I rent out my services for information gathering. Well, okay, I snoop. The code word is Traveler‑I’m a Traveler for their information needs.

Don’t try this at home, kiddies.

I’ve also learned the more under‑the‑table it sounds, the more money customers are willing to pay. People prefer to dish out high dollar for something they think is illegal‑and I have a mortgage that keeps a roof over my physical body, which is at present resting comfortably in my condo near Piedmont Park.

I sell my services on eBay. I know, odd modus operandi (I love using those words), I admit, but as I said before, I Travel for people, and my friend and Magical MacGuyver of all things spooky, Rhonda Orly, handles the business end of things. eBay was her idea.

And as of two days ago, three days before Halloween‑which is tomorrow‑I received a request from a repeating client. I never know their names or their locations, just their e‑mail addresses. This guy’s handle was [email protected]. Did a good bit of odd Traveling for him these past two years.

Paid good too. His requests were pretty straightforward. Snoop on this meeting, report back in detail. Watch this couple, report back. Watch this building, tell me what happened between yadda time and yadda time. My information wasn’t admissible in court‑I had no physical proof (as an incorporeal entity I couldn’t lift anything solid, so no takey evidence from the scene). I couldn’t even take pictures like a private investigator.

But the clients didn’t seem to care. They trusted me, and I enjoyed the work. I often thought they’d find my methods a bit… questionable. And if not the methods, then maybe my attire. I usually went out in black leggings, black turtleneck, and black bunny slippers. They were so cute with their nylon whiskers and pink ears. I could honestly say I loved my job.

Except when it put me in front of hurling objects.

My instructions sent me to Web Ginn House Road in downtown Lawrenceville, Georgia. I live in Atlanta. The assignment was to investigate a haunted house, though my client neglected to tell me I’d be sharing space with a spook team. Oh, I believed in ghosts. Trust me. My mom has a couple living at her house‑and I don’t mean one or two ghosts, I mean a couple as in they’re together. Tim and Steve. Quite a pair. She lives in Little Five Points‑the artsy part of Atlanta.

But as for actually seeing ghosts other than those two‑nope. This was a new experience for me. And it was just classic that I was doing it the night before Halloween.

Yay. Go me.

This time I wasn’t paying attention when two of the members of SPRITE meandered into the room. The hurling of dangerous objects immediately ceased when they stepped in with their equipment held out in front of them and flashlights fixed to their foreheads.

“Randall, look over there!” the thinner of the two men said in an excited whisper. He was pointing in my direction, so I exited stage right, out of the line of fire of whatever electronic ghost snooping gadgetry they had in their hands.

“How the hell did these kitchen appliances get into the living room?” Randall, the wider of the two, with less hair, stopped looking down at his display and looked at the ceramic mess to the right of the couch. He had a light strapped to his forehead, and he shined the beam onto the floor.

“I told you I heard something in here,” the thinner one said. I thought his name was Herb, though I wasn’t sure. “I hope the cameras caught this on tape.”

“Oh, hell. Clowns,” muttered Randall. “I hate clowns. Menacing alien creatures.”

I liked him.

“Well, you know what this proves, don’t you?”

“What, Herb? That ghosts hate clowns?”

I slapped my hand over my mouth. Nearly chuckled out loud on that one.

“No, that poltergeists aren’t always phenomena attached to teenagers entering puberty. No kids live here.”

Poltergeist?

Interesting. Maharba never mentioned anything about poltergeists.

I felt a slight vibration then, something racing up my back. It was the same feeling I’d had right before the first object sailed through me. Martinique Spideysense.

Yep! And there it was! I didn’t actually see what the flying object was at first because this one came from the living room and not the kitchen. I did feel it as it passed through my chest‑a sort of odd pressure.

There was a moment of dizziness as I moved back to see a clock smash against the wall beside the ceramic mess. Whatever this thing was, I got the impression it was targeting me.

Oh joy.

“You see that? The clock’s still plugged in.” Herb moved over the broken ceramic toward me.

Still plugged in? Electricity. Was that why I felt like I’d been zapped? Might be‑I’d always heard that electronic equipment went fritzy around electromagnetic entities (or so Rhonda had said on occasion). So why shouldn’t they have the same effect on out‑of‑body girlies like me?

“Herb… rewind the thermal imager…”

That’s when I saw the first of what looked like a whitish tentacle ooze its way around the feet of the couch. I stepped back and stared at it with mounting fear as it wound itself around the stubby couch leg on the front right. Another appeared from beneath, a soft white iridescent squidlike arm, and wrapped itself around the front left.

“Oh geez…” Randall said. “Do you see that?”

“Oh, the fuck I do!” I blurted out and moved out of the way just before the entire couch launched itself into the air and came at me. I had just enough time to duck down the hall to my left as the yellow‑with‑pink‑flowers piece of furniture bounced into the wall and landed on top of the floor‑model television.

Sorry about the furniture, but what the hell was that? I ran down the hall and circled around to the den, avoiding the kitchen and its whirling appliances altogether. I was getting winded, which in Traveling speak meant I’d been out of body a good while. Four hours appeared to be my limit before all sorts of nasty afflictions screwed up my physical self.

Headache (migraines), lethargy, upset stomach, dark circles under the eyes‑not attractive to the opposite sex.

I stopped in my astral tracks once I entered the den.

It was there, standing in the center of the room, all glowy and horror‑movie‑of‑the‑week.

A giant squid. And I mean a giant freakin’ squid. The thing looked as if it were made out of smoke and ash. A monochromatic nightmare of infinite proportions.

This thing made clowns seem normal.

Well‑maybe not.

And the mother was staring right at me.

Oh, no way!

The tentacles were stretched out all over the house, but here in the den was where the body was. I’d overheard the SPRITE team talking about the upstairs bedroom being the central area where most of the activity was centered, not the den.

So, how come no one told this wacko sea animal he was in the wrong room?

Astral wind picked up, and I actually felt my incorporeal hair stand on end. Two of the tentacles lashed out at me, and I screamed as I watched them try to wind their way around my ankles.

Try being the key word here.

They melted right through me. Coiled and then oozed away.

It never touched me.

Well, not completely true. Something happened, because I was abruptly cold. While Traveling, I never experienced the elements. I could actually step out of my body naked (which had been my first one or two full experiences) and not feel a thing.

But my teeth were chattering. My ankles were the coldest, and they were knocking together. Ah! Even my bunny slippers had frost on their nylon whiskers.

Yikes!

“There it is again!” Herb shouted from the end of the hall. The two SPRITE members had moved to the start of the hallway where I had backed into.

Thunder vibrated within the house. Two more members of the team bounded down the stairs from the bedrooms, their little devices up and ready as they descended.

“Oh, Jesus, what happened here?” came a female voice. That would be the one called Boo. The one that looked most like Rhonda, with black hair and pink eyeshadow.

“Boo,” Herb said in a whisper. “You and Ron circle back around to the den and get a shot of this thing.”

Yeah, I thought. Shoot it. The giant squid looked as if it were listening‑it wasn’t making any more attempts at snagging me, or at throwing anything. I stood rooted to the spot in the hall‑not because I was scared stiff, but because my legs weren’t working. I jerked at them a few times, but I was locked in place!

What is up with this?!

“What is it you see?” Boo said and I heard her moving in the house.

“It looks like…”

A giant freakin’ squid. A huge, bulbous octopus with more than eight tentacles. A larger than life Cousteau nightmare. A‑

“It looks like a woman.”

Blink. No‑it looks like a‑

Oh, no. I turned my upper body since my lower half wasn’t budging. It felt as though I had ice shackles around my ankles. Herb and Randall were looking at the monitor and then up at me.

At me!

“It is a woman,” Randall said in voice full of excitement. “And she’s wearing… bunny slippers?”

Damnit.

Boo and her partner appeared at the opposite end of the hall near the front door. The light from her monitor illuminated her face, exaggerating her features. “Where is this woman ghost?”

“Right there,” Randall pointed directly at me. “You can’t see her?”

Boo looked up from her monitor and squinted down the hall. “No. She’s not showing up on the camera.”

Well, thank goodness for small favors. I was already panicked enough to know I showed up on the thermal imager.

I paused in my erratic thoughts as Randall and Herb started a rather hesitant walk down the hall in my direction. If I’m incorporeal, which means I’m without a warm body, how is it I show up on a thermal imager? Do I look all blue?

“What is it doing?” Herb said. “It looks like it’s… looking at us.”

“Nah,” Randall said in a soft voice. “It doesn’t even know we’re here.”

A movement in the den caught my eye, and I looked back at Squidward long enough to see several tentacles slither out down the hall in either direction toward the ghost hunters.

I watched in morbid fascination (while trying to make my legs move) as the glowing, whitish limbs wound down the hall toward the unsuspecting and evidently unseeing people. One tentacle reached out for Randall’s monitor.

“Look out!” I shouted.

Well, he heard me, but not fast enough to prevent the monitor from bashing up into his face. I heard a crunch and knew the force had done some damage to his nose. He fell back against the wall and was on the floor in seconds.

I heard a yell to my left and turned in time to see Boo’s camera fly out of her hands and bean her partner in the side of his head.

“Ron! I’m so sorry, that wasn’t me. It was that ghost woman.” Boo yelled out.

Me? I did not do that. And I could argue this out loud with both her and Randall. But at that moment I felt as well as heard a low growl. It seemed to come from the floor and up through my ankles.

I looked back into the den door in front of me. The huge squid was gone, and I got the distinct impression it was below me now.

And coming up through the floor under my feet. Now, I didn’t know if this was a bad thing, but it couldn’t be good. If the tentacles around my ankles had had such a nasty effect, I did not want to stick around and see what the entirety of the creature did if its body swallowed my incorporeal one.

So I did the only thing any respectable astral presence would do.

I got the hell out of there.

In truth, I concentrated on my silver cord, the one that anchored my spirit to my body, and I followed it back, leaving the squid, and SPRITE, far behind.

What I didn’t mention was what a really bad idea this little trick was.

Traveling back into my body this way, instead of easing back as I normally did, caused a great deal of stress on the physical. Meaning when I slammed back into my body (there’s an interesting velocity that picks up along the silver cord), it hurts.

Mom said it looked as though I’d been shocked with a couple of those paddle things the doctors use to restart the heart. It actually felt a lot worse than it looked. The only way I can describe it from a physical standpoint is to imagine your blood replaced with liquid fire.

Acid. Everything burns.

The immediate reaction lasts maybe about two minutes, and then I’m usually a jelly lump on the floor catching my breath. The burning‑that lasts a lot longer. Ouch.

I managed to stay on top of the little single bed I’d set up in my office for my traveling jaunts. Usually I fell off when I used my cord. I opened my eyes. I focused on my ceiling and concentrated on my breathing.

In. Out. In. Out.

Ow, ow, ow.

I could imagine my blood as the sparkling, crackling fire, and my veins were the fuse melting away as it grew closer to my heart.

The pain subsided, and a dull ache in the back of my head surged forward. I groaned out loud and lay very still for a while. I caught the front LCD face of the clock beside my desktop computer. Three seventeen in the morning.

Time for a nice glass of water, vitamins and‑

Holy Mary Mother Of God!

I’d sat up slowly, and my black leggings had pulled up to my knees as well. My ankles were black and blue. Literally, black and blue! It looked as if someone had hammered on them with a meat mallet. I touched them tenderly (ouch!) and sucked air in between my teeth.

So‑could I stand on them?

I tried and promptly landed on the Pergo floor, knees and elbows first. It wasn’t that I couldn’t put weight on them‑well, okay, I couldn’t. It hurt too much, and tears instantly sprang to my eyes. I am not afraid of crying. At least not by myself.

This was the first physical manifestation I’d seen of something that happened while I was traveling, and I didn’t know if I’d done something permanent.

My purse lay in a heap on the floor a few inches away, and I reached in for my cell. No bars left. Curse me and my inability to remember to plug the damned thing in.

Well, to find out what I could about the present owners of that house, the Brentwoods, I simply learned what SPRITE knew‑which was plastered all over the article in Creative Loafing the next morning. Elderly couple, just moved here from Florida, escaping the hurricanes, wanting to find a place to retire and make a life after spending years traveling. No children. All their money was tied up in the house.

And the previous owners? Now, that’s the strange part. The Smiths had a single child, a daughter, who now was an almost grandmother. Daughter was born in 1960. But if she’d created a poltergeist back in her puberty years, would it have lived this long?

Something in my gut told me not so. According to what Rhonda had told me on my newly charged phone, these things remained, but without something feeding it, the thing would linger in a weakened state. So why was it so absolutely all‑fired creepy now?

There was a gear missing in this mechanism for disaster, and me with my hobbled ankles wasn’t sure what it was, or how to find it, or even how to fix it once I did. I’d spent the entire afternoon on the couch surfing the web and Googling all over the place.

I set my iBook on the coffee table and decided it was time to test my ankles and the just‑over‑the‑top lovely braces my mom had brought over at lunch. Time because hydraulic pressure was going to pop my bladder and send me shooting straight up into the cat lady’s condo above me.

I scooted forward, put my feet beneath me, and with a deep breath, stood straight up‑and stayed there.

Interesting. Pursing my lips, I took a few steps away from my couch around my coffee table. I could feel the bruises on my ankles, but they didn’t hurt. Not like they had earlier. Was I already healed? Wow… was this a super new power?

“What the hell are you doing?”

YOW!! I nearly shot out of my body right then, my mom scared me so bad. I turned and nearly fell over. “Geesus, would you not do that?”

She came from the kitchen (I had no idea she was still in there) and stood behind the couch. “Zoë, those braces aren’t meant to be walked on.”

“Well, duh‑I know that. But look.” I pointed down at my feet. “I can walk!”

“Because the braces are supporting you.” She put her hands on her amble hips. “Try it without the braces.”

I did.

I fell down.

“I have to pee,” I said from the floor.

Mom towered over me. “Then I’ll help you. I used to change your diapers, you know.”

Ugh.

Rhonda was in the living room holding the remote and flipping channels when we came back in. She must have entered while I was in the bathroom. She’d put on nice pants, a white shirt, and a black blazer. Only the black lipstick, nails, and spiked bracelets gave her true nature away. Oh, that and the flat black matte Betty Page coiffure.

Two clicks to Channel Two Action News. “Check this out.”

I looked at the clock over the television. It was after five. Wow, where was the afternoon?

“… as promised… a very startling… and creepy… Halloween event.”

The screen broke from the anchor to the Smith house, where I’d been last night. Only it was a night shot, and the wind around the autumn trees did look spooky. Jump photography, two flashes of special effects lightning, and we were in the house with a guide.

Randall. Only he looked awful. The monitor had broken his nose, and his eyes were bruised. The man looked like a raccoon.

I listened with interest as the SPRITE member showed the camera crew the mess and then gave an account of what they saw, and then to my surprise, they played the video they’d taken of me.

“Nice profile,” Rhonda said.

And it was, but just not something I wanted filmed. Not that I thought anyone was going to recognize me in the shot.

“We’re not sure if this is the entity causing the nightmares the Smiths have been through these past few weeks since buying the house,” Randall was saying. “We did catch her voice on tape.”

The image changed to a voice image with a straight line and then a squiggle. Then I heard my voice say, “Look out!” as white letters clarified it for the television audience.

Oh, greeeeeat.

If there was one thing distinctive about me, it was my voice. Gravely. Rough. Deep. Kinda manly.

“Sounds as if she was warning you,” the reporter commented as they stood in the living room carnage.

Randall nodded. “Yeah, yeah. And she did, because right after that is when the camera and monitors we were holding jumped out of our hands.”

“So you’re saying maybe she’s more of a guardian angel?”

Randall smiled. “Right now, I don’t know what to believe. We hope to make contact again tonight.”

Rhonda switched off the television. “You know what this means?”

I was still on Guardian Angel. Aw. How sweet. “Randall looks like a raccoon?”

“It means the whole area’s going to be crawling with people. Kids trying to get in to see the ghost. Freaks. Groups singing outside in midnight vigils to stop the evil.”

In a word, mob.

“You need to get in, find that fetter keeping that thing anchored to that house, destroy it, and get out. You don’t need SPRITE taping you anymore.” She tilted her head to the side, almost resting it on her shoulder. “And please… please… keep your mouth shut. If you don’t I’ll kick your damaged ankles.”

Mental note: Rhonda is mean.

Goth chick wasn’t kidding when she said mob.

Circus might have been more appropriate, though. There were indeed prayer groups with heads bowed, people with signs saying “Ghosts have rights too,” and even a few men in white collars preaching the dangers of doing God’s work.

Wasn’t even a full moon tonight and the crazies were there for their Halloween fix.

The SPRITE van was in the driveway, their little fairy logo incongruent with the kids in sheets and black robes. Several news vans were there as well. Must not be much happening on this Thursday night.

Rhonda stayed in the background, blending in (LOL!) as I made my way past the cameras and reporters to the back of the house. There I found an open door and slipped inside, happy I wouldn’t have to sieve through the wood. I can do it, but I don’t like to. Especially not glass. Too cold.

I stopped in the kitchen. There was equipment everywhere. Camera lenses pointed at me from every angle. Luckily none of them were turned on and running.

Yay.

I moved to the hallway and the den. Fewer cameras here, and none of them looked like thermal imagers. My guess was they’d keep those in their hands, as they had the night before.

I stood in the room’s center. The television in the corner was dark, the books on the shelf all in place. My guess was that since the thing had been centered in here, maybe the fetter was too.

So, what would it look like? Would it glow? Jump up and down?

Sing?

I wanted to shout out, call to it. But not if they could actually record me. Think, think, think.

What had SPRITE done to provoke it the night before?

“Randall we can’t work with all those people outside.” That was Herb, and he didn’t sound happy. “I told you not to do that interview‑not till we were done.”

They stopped right outside the den, in the hallway, where I’d been stuck the night before.

“I thought it needed to be shown that we’re not crazy people.” Randall said.

“I know we’re not crazy, and so do you. Why should it matter who else does?”

“But we actually have proof, Herb. We need to show it around.”

Did something just vibrate on that shelf?

“Randall, just because we got something on tape doesn’t mean people will believe. Hell, someone could say that was Boo we caught on the imager.”

Yep, something was definitely vibrating over there.

“That was not Boo,” Randall said a bit louder, and I wouldn’t have been too shocked to see him stomp his foot. “I know what I saw.”

A book sailed across the room. I ducked, and it slammed into the two‑person sofa.

“Randall, we both saw it, and we heard it too. There’s something in this house.”

“Then why are you ashamed of it?”

Another book flew across the room, followed by a trophy. I ducked both of them and then looked at the two SPRITE members. Uh, hello? Moving objects?

“I am not ashamed of it, Randall. Geez.” Herb put his hands in the air. “We just didn’t need that circus outside.”

This time the television actually lifted in the air and sailed at the door.

Right at them.

“Move, you idiots!” Okay, so I think my outburst then was justified, right?

Randall and Herb both looked in time to see the television hurtling at them. A few girlie screams, but the two ducked out of the way.