Page 10 of Guarded By the Gargoyle

But no one answered. I began to feel nervous. Big Nicky was looking at me expectantly and I wasn’t producing results. I tried again.

“Hello?” I called. “Is there anyone on the Other Side who wishes to speak to Nick Valentino? Anyone at all?”

Suddenly, a face became clear in the mist. It was a woman’s face, pretty but angry and somewhere between thirty and forty. I frowned—had his mother died young?

“Myra?” I asked uncertainly.

“No, I’m not Myra,” the spirit said, scowling at me. “But you asked if anybody wanted to talk to Nicky and Ido.I have plenty to say to that rat bastard!”

“I really don’t think—” I began, but before I could finish the face had formed into a long funnel of smoke and rushed right into me.

The spirit dust entered through my nose and mouth, filling me to the brim with the dead woman. Her taste was bitter and acrid, like secondhand smoke, and I could feel myself choking on her anger.

Suddenly my mouth began talking—the dead woman was using my tongue and voice box to convey her message.

“Nicky, you lousy bastard!” she snapped, making me lean forward in my seat to scowl at the Mob boss.

“Mama?” Nicky Valentino looked at me uncertainly.

“No, it’s not Myra—what a horrible Mother-in-Law she was!” the dead woman exclaimed. “She raised you to be a Mama’s boy and look at you—all these years later andstillthat’s all you are! Just a big baby crying for his Mama!”

I wanted to stop her from spewing the angry words out of my mouth but I had never been Indwelled before and I felt lost and disorientated. According to my Pop-pop, Indwelling was one step below Possession, meaning that the host—in this case me—shouldbe able to expel the spirit inside them. But I had no idea how to do that.

Meanwhile, it seemed that Big Nicky had figured out who was talking to him through me.

“Kitty?” he asked, frowning. “Kitty, is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me you big asshole!” she snarled. “Finally I get a chance to give you a piece of my mind!”

It was a very disorienting feeling to have my features making faces that went with emotions I didn’t feel myself and to hear words coming out of my mouth that I hadn’t thought of to say. I felt like a puppet being jerked around on strings, but I still didn’t know how to stop it.

“You were theworsthusband!” Kitty went on relentlessly. “Leaving your dirty underwear all over the floor…never putting the toilet seat back down…not to mention the way you cheated on me day and night with anything that would hold still long enough for you to screw it!”

Okay, Ireallyhad to stop this. Big Nicky’s face was red with anger and I could just imagine how pissed off he was getting. He had come here for a nice, comforting talk with his dear departed Mom and instead he was being berated by an angry ex.

“Get out! Get out of me!”I shouted mentally at the dead woman. But I felt her resisting me.

“Not until I have my say! I’ve been waiting twenty years to tell Nicky Valentino what I think of him!”

So much for just asking her to leave. I was going to have to expel her some other way.

I pictured reaching around inside myself like a woman feeling in a dark cupboard. I had an idea if I could get hold of Kitty somehow I could grab her with a psychic hand and yank her out of me, but her spirit felt slippery under my psychic fingertips—slippery and slimy.

“You scum!” Kitty shouted through me. “You womanizing, cheating, lousy, dirtybastard!”

Big Nicky’s face got even redder.

“You can’t talk that way to me, you bitch!” he growled.

Things were rapidly getting out of control. But the next moment, they got even worse because I heard Kitty say,

“I know you had me killed! You had the brakes cut on my car. Youwantedme to crash that day.”

Shit—now I was inrealtrouble. I was listening to the details of a homicide, but not just listening—I was shouting them out loud! Or at least, Kitty Valentino was shouting them through me.

“You killed me! Youkilled me!”she howled so loudly it hurt my throat.

“Okay, that’s enough!”I snapped at her mentally.“I don’t know if he killed you or not but I can’t have you using my body for your revenge!”

---