GHOST SITTER
by Daina
Threats-Burke
Jake
Bloomfield sighed deeply. This was perhaps, no, definitely the strangest case
he’d ever defended and, so far, he was making little or no progress. The eyes
of every newspaper, daycare and occult in Dallas had been following the entire
story for the past three days, and with
the Texas summer in full swing, his stuffy office made the heat from from any
outside interests seem like subzero breezes.
He
turned away from the window overlooking the street 5 stories below, then looked
at his client with another sigh.
“Okay,
let’s try this again. The defense calls Joshua Cord to the stand…” said Jake.
“This
is stupid, Jake,” sighed Josh, looking up at him tiredly.
“Joshua,
gimme a break, already! You’re gonna
have to explain this to a jury soon. All you gotta do is explain the whole
story from the top without throwing in a lot of weird stuff.”
“I
keep tryin’ to tell you, the whole thing is weird,” said Josh, turning to look
at the empty chair next to him and shaking
his head. “Whaydaya want me ta do, lie?” he said to Jake.
Jake
raised his hands up in resignation.
“Alright, alright, I’m sorry, kid! I just keep getting confused on this
whole deal.” He sat down and lit a cigarette, then flipped to a new sheet in
his notebook.
“Bad
for your health, Jake,” reprimanded Josh.
Jake
stared at him, then, without removing his Marlboro, tucked his lighter away and
said, “You’re bad for my health, y’know that?” Josh grinned and Jake sighed.
“Ready?” he asked.
Josh
nodded slowly, tossing his trimmed blond hair out of his aquamarine eyes.
Jake took another
drag, then blew the smoke slowly. “Will the witness please state his name?”
“Jake,
you’re my lawyer! You oughta at least know my name by now!” came the surprised
reply. “Or have you been guessing the past two days?”
“I
know, Josh, but not everyone else in the jury is gonna know who you are,” Jake
groaned.
“Well,
then they should check the newspapers.”
“They’re
not supposed to…oh, forget it, Josh, just humor me!”
“Joshua
Cord,” he said, with an understanding nod.
“And
how old are you, Josh?”
“10.”
“Y’know,
you look more like 7, kid,” said Jake, with a grin.
“You
look more like 40 when you smoke,” replied Josh. Jake looked at him and he looked back with his
innocent-but-mischievous grin and shrugged “Well, ya do!”
Jake
jammed his cigarette out. “Better?”
“Definitely.”
“Can
we go on?”
“You
were the one who stopped, man.”
“Okay,
okay, so let’s just do it,” said Jake,
realizing that even he was ready to call it quits for the day. “Now all you
have to do is just tell the jury exactly what happened during the time period
in question, in your own words.”
“Whose
words did ya think I was gonna…?”
“Start
from the beginning, Josh,” interrupted Jake.
“Touch nothing.”
“We haven’t even got
inside yet!”
“Yeah, but you’ve got
that look in your eye. Now, I’m tellin’ you, don’t touch anything.” Josh and
his friend Robin Wheeler opened the door to the shop they were standing outside
of and walked in.
“Robin
Wheeler, 21-year-old black female, 5-feet-4-inches, 127 pounds, dark hair,
brown eyes, college student and daycare teacher,” muttered Jake aloud.
“Yeah,
she’s all that,” Josh shrugged.
“Now,
explain to me one more time how you now Miss Wheeler,” said Jake.
“I
told you before, Jake, she works at the daycare I go to. My mom works out of
state and my dad’s usually really busy or really tired, so Robin started
babysitting me after the daycare closed at night. Then we started hanging out
together. David and Leanne wanted to have her as a live-in for me, but she
couldn’t make enough with us to do that and school at the same time.”
“So
you two are fairly close?”
“Yeah.
She’s like a combination of a really cool aunt and a big sister to me. She
picks on me a lot, but she won’t let anybody else do it. She’s like a friend of
the family. Me, David and Leanne think she’s okay.”
“David?
And Leanne?”
“My
dad and my mom,” Josh replied.
“Okay,”
said Jake, scribbling thoughtfully in his notebook. “Go on.”
As their eyes adjusted to
the dim light, Robin and Josh stood momentarily awed by the sight of the dusty
clutter in front of them. Racks of books, bottles, shrunken heads and other
strange items lay before them, almost packed together in closely lined aisles.
The door closed behind them, causing a little greeting bell above it to ring.
Josh gasped and jumped closer to Robin, grabbing her arm.
“It’s a bell, Josh,” she
sighed, brushing her wavy black hair out of her face to look at him. “Get off
me.”
“This place is weird,” he
said. “Weird people don’t necessarily have to like weird things, y’know.”
“I am not weird, I just
do things my own way,” she replied.
“I was talkin’ about me,”
he said.
“You’re not weird,
either,” she said, her brown eyes gazing at him. “And whoever told you that…”
“Is dead meat, I know,”
finished Josh, with his famous grin. “I was just trying to get on your nerves.”
“Congratulations, you
just did.” She began to pull away from him and he stopped her.
“Wait! What are we doing
here, anyway?” he asked.
“Jason told me this was a
good place to find old books.” She replied.
“Jason, the guy you went
out with last week?”
“Can we please not start
on my social life?” she sighed, walking
down an aisle.
“You don’t have a social
life, Rob,” said Josh seriously.
“Thanks, Josh. Just what
I needed, a 10-year-old smart aleck telling me about my non-existent social
life.” She muttered.
“Isn’t Jason the guy with
with the machete collection?”
“Josh, three machetes is
hardly a collection.”
“Yeah, it’s a massacre.”
Robin laughed at him and shook her head. “Can we please get outta here?”
“Hold yer water, willya?
We just got here,” she said, gesturing at him to be patient. She stopped to
rifle through a box of dusty comics, leaving him standing rather awkwardly,
just watching.
Oh,
well, he thought, might
as well see what’s in here. He wandered to the next aisle over and began
exploring. He peered at the shelf of
shrunken heads with great interest for a moment, then, after looking up and
down the aisle to make sure Robin wasn’t watching, he gently picked one
up. Another head sat directly behind
it, staring at him reproachfully.
“What’d I say?” it
demanded. He yelped and jumped back as Robin’s arm reached through the shelves
and took the head from him. “Quit touchin’ stuff!”
Josh weaved through his
aisle back to hers where she stood grinning smugly at him. “Robin! How’d you
know I…?” he began.
“Josh, I know you like
the back of my hand,” she replied, shaking her head at him. “Besides, before I
got to be a 21 year old, I was a 10 year old who picked stuff up when people
said don’t. Now, stay by me and keep your hands to yourself.” Josh nodded and they slowly moved up the
aisle, Robin looking at the different items with interest and Josh behind her
somewhat fearfully. She stopped and he bumped into her. “Not that close,” she
groaned.
“Sorry,” he said,
stepping back and shrugging apologetically.
She looked up and pulled out a dusty old book and, almost
simultaneously, Josh bent down to grab a strange old bottle from lower shelf.
He opened it and took a whiff, then held it away from himself in disgust.
“Oh, God, this stinks!
Smell this,” he said, standing up to show Robin.
At the same time, she
bent down, saying, “Hey, check this out. It’s a book full of remedies for potions.”
They passed each other, then stood back up to meet again. As they did, the book
hit the edge of the bottle, sending it and its contents sloshing all over the
book and Robin.
“Oh, great!” she snapped,
dropping the book and standing up. “As
if I asked to have nasty smelling gook all over me.”
“You definitely smell,”
said Josh, holding his nose.
“Well, thanks for your
support, Josh,” she grumbled sarcastically, wiping at her wet clothing. “What
was that stuff, anyway?”
Josh, who had just looked
down, opened his eyes wide in surprise. “Acid?” he ventured.
“Wha…oh my God.” Robin
peered at the spot where Josh was looking and stared in shock. Where there had once been a large puddle
next to the open bottle, was now a large hole in the floor.
“Get your clothes off,
quick!” panicked Josh, grabbing at Robin’s shirt.
“No, wait, calm down,”
she said, holding him still. “If it were acid, I’d be screaming in pain by
now.” She looked back at the hole, then put her hand through it to see if it
were real. As she was pulling her hand back, she noticed she could barely see
the floor, as if it were made of very clear colored glass. Yet she still had
her hand in it and it moved easily in and out of the space where the hole had
been, as if it were still there. “What is this stuff?” she gasped softly. In
the background, there was a rattling as if a bead curtain had been parted.
Josh, who had seen and
heard enough, replied, “Let’s not hang around to find out.”
The two looked at each
other, then Robin said, “I’m outta here.”
They both jumped up and
walked quickly for the door, picking up speed as they went. By the time they
hit the front door, they were running. In fact, they didn’t even see the little
Japanese man standing by it until Robin’s hand was almost on the door.
“May I help you?” he
asked. This time, they both yelped, Josh throwing his arms around Robin and
Robin springing back from the door handle.
“N-N-No, we…we were just
l-leaking, I mean, l-leaving,” she stammered, moving sideways out the door as
if to avoid touching the man. Josh whimpered and nodded in agreement, still
attatched to her side. “H-Have a nice day,” she added, then, as the door
closed, the two ran for her car, jumped in and roared off. “Holy jeez,” she
gasped. “Holy jeez, holy jeez…”
“Omigod,” gapsed Josh
next to her, “omigod, omigod…” When they finally relaxed enough to stop
babbling, Robin looked at Josh and they both said,
“That was too weird.”
They began laughing wildly at that.