Page 9 of Shadow Scorching

“What’s your feeling on this guy?” I asked.

“My senses are tingling. I’d say an eight.” Sophia was a good barometer for how dangerous a situation was. We had a scale set up from one, where the case could wait for a while—to ten, where events sounded like full-blown emergencies.

I straightened. “Take his info and then bring him back to the conference room.” I turned to Orik and Dante. “Looks like we may have a case. Come on, let’s go.” I finished my latte, then returned to my office where I got my tablet, notebook, and digital recorder.

We gatheredin the conference room a few minutes later, shortly before Sophia brought back a man. He was human, and he sat down, looking around nervously. Sophia handed me his file and introduced him.

“This is Michael Caramite, and he has a problem with spirits in his house,” she said.

“Hello, please, relax. I’m Kyann Sarasan, and together with Dante Franco,” I motioned to Dante, “I own the Shadow Blade Investigations Agency. This is Orik Valhom, and over there, is Carson Dreyfus.” I glanced through the folder. “I see you were referred to us by Garland Wells?”

He nodded. “She’s a friend of mine. She said you were the best. And call me Mike, please.”

“That’s nice to hear.” Garland had been a client of ours for a couple of years. We’d helped the puma shifter find her long-lost twin sister. “Well, why don’t you tell us what your problem is? Do you mind if I record the meeting?” I held up the recorder.

“Not at all,” he said. “Well…Belinda—my wife—and I bought a new house about three months ago. We have three children. Two boys, seven and four, and a twelve-year-old daughter. The boys are Jules and Rupert. Our daughter’s name is Kinsey.”

“Where’s the house?” I glanced in the folder. “I see—on the Eastside? Redmond? In the Eleena neighborhood?” The Eleena neighborhood was one of the oldest districts in the city, and was located near the Redmond Watershed Preserve. It was also one of the most haunted areas on the Eastside.

“Right. We’re on Lakesmith Drive,” Mike said. “As I said, we moved in about three months ago, and until the past two weeks, everything was fine. It was on Thanksgiving when things began to happen.” He paused, staring at the table. “I didn’t believe it at first. I didn’t want to, I guess. It was too much on top of trying to fix up the house.”

“You’re renovating?” I asked. Hauntings often started due to renovations. It was as though disturbing the house disturbed the sleeping spirits.

“Yes, there are some changes we need to make. The house is an old fixer-upper. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to afford it.” He paused, then said, “It began on Thanksgiving day. The day before we had started tearing off wallpaper in the living room, and I took down a couple of the doors in the attic. We’re planning on thoroughly reconfiguring the attic into a family room. It’s partially finished, but no where near what we envision for it.”

He shifted in his chair, then continued. “Belinda had called us to dinner, and the kids were helping her put the meal on the table. I was in the living room, when I heard something. I turned around to see one of the silver candlesticks on the mantle float into the air and hang there. For a moment, I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing, but then the candlestick shot toward me.”

“Did it hit you?” Sophia asked.

He shook his head. “I’ve got good reflexes, or it would have hit me in the head. I ducked to the side and it spun right past where I’d been standing and hit against the wall on the other side of the room. It was moving so fast that it left a dent.”

“You’re lucky you got out of the way,” Dante said. “What happened after that?”

“My wife asked me what the noise was, but I didn’t want to scare her. I told her I’d dropped something. Dinner proceeded without incident but after, while we were all in the living room watching a movie, the TV began to scramble, and we saw a bunch of shadow figures on the screen. It freaked out the kids, but I told them it must be crossed signals. Meanwhile, I kept thinking of the movie Poltergeist. The rest of the evening, everything seemed normal.”

“Was that it?” I asked.

“No,” Michael said. “The next day was quiet, but on Saturday—the day after Black Friday—when I went to start stripping the wallpaper off the walls, we began to hear heavy footsteps all around the house. At that point, my wife confessed that she walked into the kitchen that morning, every cabinet door and drawer had been open. She also said she had felt watched for over a week, as though something was trying to take control of her thoughts. Since then, we hear noises and footsteps, we see shadows on the walls where there shouldn’t be any. But the kicker was last night.”

The look on his face told me that whatever he was about to tell us, wasn’t good.

“At three AM, Belinda and I woke to Jules screaming. As we ran into his room—he shares a room with Rupert—Rupert started yelling. Both were in hysterics by the time we reached them. Jules held out his arm. Three bloody claw marks had ripped across his arm. I took a picture of them. We don’t have pets. Rupert loves his brother—he was asleep and woke up when Jules started screaming. Jules kept talking about thesquid ghost.”

“Squidghost?” Sophia asked.

“They saw some creature—the one who scratched Jules—that looked like a squid. Neither Belinda nor I saw anything, but Rupert swears he saw it too. We grabbed the kids and headed to the hospital. Of course, the doctor checked for child abuse, but Rupert told them no, he’d seen something in the room—some creature. After they bandaged up Jules, the doctor suggested I talk to the police, in case some psycho had broken into our home. But we know it wasn’t any one human. I told Garland about it, and she suggested we talk to you.”

He settled back in his chair, a haunted look on his face. Fear rolled off him in waves. I could almost smell it. It was like a cold sweat, pungent and sharp. Wondering if this was a new part of my emerging powers showing itself, I filed it away to consider later.

I tapped the table with my pen. “Are you still staying in the house?”

“I am,” Michael said. “My wife and the kids are staying with her mother, who lives in Renton.”

“Has anything happened since then?” Dante asked.

The circles under his eyes darkened. “Every night. I hear steps, things move on their own, doors open and close. I woke up to find one of the kitchen knives by my side, in the bed. Ididn’t put it there. And I dream, horrible nightmares filled with fire and flame. And in the nightmares, I’m facing a man who’s carrying an axe. And then, I see a rock and it’s covered with blood.” His voice fractured as he began to shake.

“Hey, it’s okay, you’re safe,” Dante said, leaning over to clap Michael on the arm. “This is a safe place.”

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