CHAPTER THREE
Despite the bouts of pain that stil stabbed me from time to time, I managed to show up to work the next afternoon, much to the surprise of Ash and Shay.
“Honey, if you want to go home, go home,” Shay said to me as I put on my apron. “Ash said you were almost dead.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at Ash. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“Perry, you nearly chewed through my seatbelt,” he said, widening his eyes believingly at Shay.
“Your seatbelt is from 1982,” I told him. “It’s old.”
“Hey, I’m from 1982,” Shay cried out. Shay wasn’t old by any means. With her bubbly personality, youthful Pakistani complexion and round face, Shay looked younger than I did. She was also the nicest boss ever, providing you didn’t get on her bad side.
“1982? Nah, you mean 1992,” I said, covering up smoothly.
Shay shook her head and let out a laugh. “OK, Scary Perry, if you say you’re fine, then I believe you. You certainly act fine.”
The fact was I was faking it. The medication made me tired and even though it dull ed the pain, it was stil there. It’s a strange sensation to feel the throbbing but not the pain. It couldn’t be a good thing; my body surely knew that something was amiss in my nether regions. The only good thing I had going for me was that I got a fine sleep thanks to the Nyquil and I didn’t have to ride my motorbike Put-Put to work; my dad had a meeting at a church and said he’d drop me off. Both my parents were OK with me staying home but I could see I made my dad just a little bit proud when I told them I’d manage and that making a living was more important.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t total bul shit.
Anyway, I was soon sucked into the world of lattes and cash machines and overpriced pastries while trying to keep my cramps at bay. The distractions were certainly helping and I was almost grateful for the dude who spil ed the entire container of milk on the fixings counter.
I was crouched down wiping the spil up from the floor with a wet rag when I heard a voice emanate from near the cashier.
“Pardon me, ma’am, would there be a Perry Palomino here?”
For the second time in two days, my heart skipped a beat and then froze.
I kept low and pivoted in time to see Shay behind the counter, pointing my way. In front of her was a very tal , very well -built man dressed in hiking boots, faded jeans and a green checkered shirt underneath a tan leather jacket.
He didn’t have to turn his ginger head in order for me to know his eyes would match his shirt exactly. But he did and looked right at me.
Maximus.
To say I was devoid of thought would be an understatement. As with Rebecca the day before, I could only blink, my arm continuing to mop up the milk like it was on autopilot.
He smiled, a wide flash of white teeth against weather- beaten, freckled skin and sauntered over to me like he hadn’t a care in the world. He stopped right before me so I was nose to his boots, which were just as worn and dusty as his jeans.
“Miss Palomino,” he drawled in his light Louisiana accent. He held out his large hand for me. Without thinking, I put mine in his. It looked so small in comparison.
He lifted his hand up until I was at my feet. I had risen as if he had Jedi powers.
“What…uh, what?” was my very intel igent response.
He squeezed my hand and that action sent two competing feelings through my body. One was uneasiness, that this was a friend of Dex’s, or an ex-friend, but at least an associate to a past that kept trying to rear its head in my life. The other feeling was one of warm shivers because he was oh so handsome, maybe even more so now that we were out of the grime and desolation of Red Fox (where I had met him before), and he and Dex never real y got along to begin with.
Stil , the question remained and I couldn’t help but blurt out, “Maximus! What the hel are you doing here?”
“Why Perry, you haven’t changed at all ,” he said with a smirk. “Do you mind if I steal you away from your, uh, position, for a few moments?”
I looked over at Shay. Even though she was in the middle of talking to a customer, her eyes met mine and she gave me a slight nod and a deliciously bemused smile.
Unfortunately, Ash’s expression was one of utter distrust for the tal , handsome stranger. I couldn’t blame him. Maximus stuck out in Portland like an exotic flower in a bed of weeds (even though half the weeds probably got a similar shirt from Urban Outfitters).
He continued to hold my hand while I awkwardly held the milk-soaked rag in the other and he led me to the corner of the shop where a table sat unoccupied.
In true gentleman fashion, he pul ed out my chair and gestured for me to sit down.
I did, feeling out of it and stupid. He pul ed up the other chair, his long legs sprawling out underneath. He rested his elbows on the table and looked me over slowly.
I made sure to do the same to him. It gave me time to gather my thoughts.
I had only known Maximus for a short amount of time. A weekend, real y, back in October. It was the second Experiment in Terror episode that had Dex and me trotting out to New Mexico to uncover a so-cal ed poltergeist. Only it wasn’t a poltergeist at all , but the work of an evil shaman, or medicine man, and his bewitched lover, who conspired to bring her husband’s ranch to its knees.
Maximus was the one who had set it all up. He had been cal ed in because he is, in some ways, like a ghost whisperer. Obviously he doesn’t have Jennifer Love Hewitt’s boobs in this case, but what he does, or what he says he does, is pick up on the readings, or “imprints,” of the people who died. He can figure out what they were doing and thinking in their last moments of death. Some of Maximus’s “power” went further than that, I believe, so that it was almost a psychic ability. But neither Dex nor I saw any sign of this condition when we were with him in Red Fox. >
The only thing Maximus deduced was that “nothing died there,” which could have been a lucky guess. Dex seemed to think that Max was just ful of it and trying to scam the living by saying he could talk with the dead.
I wasn’t sure what to think. In some ways I’m the same, so it’s not like the ability is far-fetched or impossible. On the other hand, I never saw any proof of this power directly. He had proved before that he cared for me and for the Lancasters, yet I was always a bit suspicious of his true motivations. Maximus and Dex had a fal ing out after col ege, after Dex’s ex, Abby… Stop, I shouted to myself. I didn’t want to think about that anymore. Even the sound of her name caused a shiver to run through my already weak body.
“I’m sorry,” Maximus said quickly. He reached out and placed his hand on my arm and gave it a quick squeeze. “I didn’t mean to intrude by dropping by like this. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I squeaked and tried to act more composed.
“I’ve just been sick lately. Nothing to worry about, though.
Anyway, Maximus…what the hel ?”
“Right,” he grinned again and leaned back in his chair. “I forget that this is all new to you.”
I must have shown my confusion on my brow because he continued, “I moved to Portland about six weeks ago. I thought Jimmy or Dex would have told you.”
At the mention of them, my face grew cold as stone.
Jimmy had mentioned something about Maximus and Portland back at the Christmas party in December, but at the time I had been so focused on not pummel ing the snot out of Dex’s girlfriend Jenn, that it hadn’t real y sunk in.
“It must have slipped my mind,” I said somewhat truthful y.
He scratched his cheek, his stubble making a scratchy sound. “No worries. But here I am. I was biding my time, wondering if I should look you up. Then Jimmy gave me the push.”
I raised my brow. “Jimmy gave you the push?”
What did Jimmy have to do with Maximus anyway? It had struck me as weird that he had been the one tel ing Dex and I about him.
“You real y have been out of the loop, haven’t you darlin’?”
I wasn’t a fan of the word darling, but it sounded oh-so charming coming out of his mouth.
“I’m sure if you’ve been talking to Jimmy, you know what happened.”
He nodded with sympathy. “Yes, I do. I heard. That’s partly why I’m here.”
“Here, in Portland?”
“No. I was always planning on moving here, or at least the Pacific Northwest, anyway. But I got in touch with Jimmy a few months ago, inquiring if there was any work for me.
Dex and I did go to the same school, remember. well , Jimmy wasn’t too sure about me and my ways, I could tel .
But then a position became…available.”
I looked at him sharply. “What position?”
“We want you back on the show.”
Whoa.
“Show…,” I stammered. “Experiment in Terror?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said, and leaned forward across the table. He smel ed like cinnamon.
“I quit the show.” Boy, did I ever, in the world’s most dramatic quitting scene.
“We know. But the reason you quit wasn’t because of the show itself. It was because of who the cameraman was.”
My face scrunched up at the thought of Dex.
“I reckon I’m right, aren’t I?” he said. His jade peepers were looking inquisitively into mine. Man, I knew I was so easy to read.
“Wel , yes. But that’s not the whole thing.”
“So you wouldn’t come back on the show if there was another cameraman?”
“No,” I blurted out. I didn’t even think about it but that’s what my first reaction was. No way, no how. Dex or no Dex, I was done with that whole thing. It was life-threatening, unpredictable and an unreliable way to make an income.
My parents would kil me, if the ghosts didn’t get me first, and, to be honest, I didn’t want to be in any situation that would have me wishing Dex was with me.
He cocked his head. “You sure about that?”
OK. So I wasn’t. I looked down at my yucky rag ful of milk, then up at the counter where Shay and Ash were busy.
I was probably pushing it by continuing to talk to Maximus instead of working.
“I should get back to work,” I said, getting to my feet.
“Hey,” he said, coming around to me. Next thing I knew I was in a cinnamon-scented hug with someone over a foot tal er than me, wrapped in very firm, very wide arms. I had no choice but to rest my head against his hard chest.
“I’m real y sorry about what happened,” he said into the top of my head.
I tried to shrug but he held me there.
Final y he released me and my cheeks went hot from the unexpected intimacy.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said shyly, stepping back and avoiding his eyes.
“You don’t have to answer me now, you know. You can think about it. There’s some other stuff Jimmy has me doing on the side, so it’s not a huge rush. We just think it would be a great thing, for all of us.”
“I’l think about it,” I told him and shot Shay another glance. She and Ash were ful -on gawking at me.
I took a step toward them and was about to tel Maximus I’d see him sometime when he reached out and grabbed my arm. He pul ed me back to him. His boldness surprised me.
“That’s not the only reason I’m here,” he said, and for a change I saw his cheeks flush the same color as his hair.
He dropped his arm from mine and reached into the front pocket on his shirt. He snapped it open, pul ed out a cream-colored business card and held it out for me.
I took it from him as he handed me a pen from the other pocket.
“Could you write down your number? It seems you’ve changed yours.”
“Oh, right. Yes.” I wrote it down on the back and gave it back to him.
“I’m going to cal you now,” he said simply. “Wil you answer?”
“Um, yes?”
“What wil you say if I cal to ask you to the movies?”
“Um…” Now I was total y caught off-guard.
“Um, yes?” he asked hopeful y, his ful lips twitching at the corners. “Don’t tel me you’l think about it.”
I didn’t know what to say. He was asking me on a date.
This was more than surprising. It was intriguing. A rare butterfly fluttered around in my stomach and that’s when I realized I hadn’t felt any cramps for the last five minutes.
I tried to play it cool.
“Yeah, sure, yeah, that would be great,” I stammered.
“Thank you.”
So much for playing it cool.
He grinned at me in return and stuck my phone number into the pocket. He did a mini bow and drawled, “I’l be seeing you darlin’” before turning his sturdy frame around and sauntering out of the shop.
If this was a romance in the South, where he was from, I would have dabbed my face and chest with the rag ful of dirty milk.
I walked back to the counter, unable to hide the strange smile on my face. There were no other customers so Shay and Ash were able to interrogate me uninterrupted.
“Who on earth was that hunk of fine meat?” Shay asked, putting a thrust to her hips.
I laughed. “He’s an old friend of mine.”
Ash stil didn’t look too impressed. He gave me a funny look and turned to clean out one of the blenders. “He didn’t look like just a friend.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Wel he is. He was on the Red Fox episode when we were in New Mexico.”
“Thought he looked familiar,” he grumbled, and turned on the water ful blast so he couldn’t hear me. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought Ash was jealous. Poor guy.
There was a chance he had been sending me signals all along but I was too clueless and self-absorbed to pick them up. Can men and women real y not be friends after all ?
Seemed all my friendships had something unrequited going on and they never ended well .
“You gave him your number sweetie,” Shay said knowingly. “Something tel s me you may be more than friends now.”
I waved at her but smiled and blushed at the same time. I had never given Maximus much thought, despite thinking he was a good egg and a looker at that, but now things were different. Especial y now that I knew how he felt about me. It made my toes tingle.
After I reveled in my giddiness, Shay tapped me on the shoulder and placed a mop in one hand and a disinfectant spray in the other.
“Hate to burst your bubble, girl, but there’s a bathroom that needs cleaning.”
And there went my high.
I gave her a defeated smile while I swal owed my sigh of disgust and trudged off to the women’s washroom with the mop and spray in hand. I entered the empty room cautiously, afraid of the smel I knew what was lurking, afraid that for some reason it would trigger my cramps again or make me lose my lunch. At least I had a mop to clean it up.
The bathroom wasn’t too bad today, despite the shop being relatively busy. I locked the door behind me and got to work, making sure I was both thorough and quick in case a customer was waiting.
I tackled the toilet first, trying not to lean over the bowl too much. The smel was vague but it was present.
While I worked, I thought about how strange it was to have two people from my past show up in the last two days.
First Rebecca, wanting to check up on me – or make me feel sorry for Dex. Then Maximus, wanting me to rejoin Experiment in Terror, but with him, and then asking me out to the movies. It had been a good few months of anonymity, of avoiding the past, of hiding from it. But somehow, it had found me. No matter how hard I tried to stay away from ghost-hunting, from Dex, from that life, I was pul ed back into it. I wondered if it would ever go away and I wondered if there was a reason for it. Something I didn’t understand yet.
Something beyond this world.
I was busy, deep in thought and scrubbing the stopper in the sink, when it happened.
The lights in the bathroom suddenly went out.
I let out a cry of fright. Then a cry of agony.
A rush of pain hit my insides, so intense that I could only drop to my knees on the cold, hard ground. I fel over, clutching my stomach, feeling the slick tiles beneath my head. The ground trembled as if people were running outside of the bathroom, in my direction.
And then I heard a noise I never thought I’d hear.
The consistent drone of a wasp flying around somewhere near my head. I froze automatical y, my breath stopped and I didn’t blink.
The door shuddered back and forth and I heard the cries of Shay outside of it, but I couldn’t pay it any attention.
There was a wasp in the dark bathroom with me.
I’d been in a similar situation before.
Without warning, the buzzing from the wasp stopped.
I felt it land on my cheek, its tiny legs brushing against my skin.
If my world was black before, it now turned even blacker.
Whether it was from pain or from fright, I don’t know. I was gone.
When I woke up, I was lying on a stretcher being wheeled down a hal in what looked to be a hospital. all I could see were the panels in the ceiling above my head as they slowly went past. They were perforated and white, except for the corners, which seemed to leak this black fluid. It came out in clumps, narrowly missing me as it fel to the ground in a splat.
I turned my head, it was as heavy as a pipe, and looked at the person beside me pushing the stretcher. He was a doctor, or a surgeon. He was wearing a mask, his kind eyes focused on mine.
“Not much longer til you meet her,” he said through the mask, the fabric bumping up and down with his mouth’s movement. “Everything is going to be just fine.”
“What happened to me? Where am I going?” I asked, my voice coming out congealed like jel y.
“Hush now; you’l need your strength. The hard part is over. She wil live. You did a great job.”
The doctor took one hand off of the metal handle and laid it on my forehead. His palm was ice cold.
I flinched but felt surprisingly constricted. I looked down at my arms. They were strapped in place by heavy, thick leather.
“You were a great host,” he added. His eyes went across the stretcher. I was suddenly conscious of someone else beside me. Flabbergasted, I turned my head the other way to see who he was talking to.
Her dreads were swept up underneath a white cap, but it was the demon girl from the other night. She had a mask on, covering up those terrible, sharp teeth, but her red, predator eyes were the same.
“Perry, Perry, Perry,” she whispered. A low cackle erupted from her throat. “Oh, you had no idea, did you sweetie?”
What, I tried to say but my lips were too dry.
The movement suddenly stopped and the stretcher was stil . The doctor and demon girl left my side abruptly, and I was alone, strapped down, facing a door at the end of the hal way.
“Hel o?” I cried out.
I lifted my head and shoulders up as much as they could go and looked around me. There was an old man sitting on a chair outside the door, hands resting on a cane, his eyes concentrated on his feet. There was no one else around. I looked down at my legs. I was stil in my Port-Town uniform; skinny jeans, black polo shirt, black apron. There was a sticky, wet sensation on my jeans when I shifted, especial y around my crotch. With whatever happened to me, I wondered if I had peed my pants in fright.
A weird skittering sound, like light nails brushing against steel, came from my right, from the ground. I turned and looked to see a large creature that looked like a wood bug undulating past me. It was the size of a dog; its grey, segmented shel of a body moving back and forth with each step of its many spindly legs. >
My breath stuck to my lungs and I was unable to let it out until the wood bug skittered past the old man and around the corner. The old man, his attention stil at his feet, paid the giant insect no attention.
What the f*cking f*ck was going on? This had to be another dream. I had to stil be on the floor in the bathroom at work, that wasp stil crawling on my face. Even though what happened earlier was terrible, it was stil preferable to what was happening here.
A low, steady creak came from the front of me.
The door I was parked in front of opened and who stepped out of it but Dex Foray. He was holding a bundle of something wrapped in thick, white cloth, holding it like a baby.
Seeing Dex’s face both scared and calmed me. He looked much like he did the last time I saw him. Handsome in a rough, dark way. Eyes like mahogany-glazed coal. It would have fil ed me with hatred so frighteningly uncontrol able, but I couldn’t feel anything but confusion and fear.
“I didn’t think she’d make it,” he said in his gravel y voice. He was talking to me, I think, but looking at whatever he was holding in his arms. “Thank you, Perry, for doing this for us.”
“What are you talking about,” I whispered. I tried to get a better look at him but was distracted by a redness that was spreading on the sheet beneath me. I hadn’t peed my pants – that was blood that covered my lower half.
“Oh, God. What happened to me?” I squeaked. I tried to break free of the restraints but I was held firmly in place.
The leather cut into my skin as I struggled, but I didn’t care.
“Relax, Perry,” came a voice from behind. I tilted my head up to see Abby standing over me. Abby, Dex’s ex- girlfriend. Dead ex-girlfriend.
Unlike the last time I saw her, she wasn’t mangled into a mil ion bloody pieces. She looked like a normal, pretty col ege student. Straight blonde hair with a red tint. A pink dress that flared out from the waist. She looked completely normal.
Until she smiled.
There were wasps crawling on her teeth.
She promptly shut her mouth and swal owed until the moving bumps under her lips disappeared, then walked over to Dex. She put her arm around him and peered at what could only be a baby in the blanket.
“It has my eyes,” Abby said in her Fargo accent and looked up at Dex. He was now staring straight forward at the wal , not moving.
“Would you like to see?” Abby asked me, taking the bundle out of Dex’s stiff, frozen arms. She walked toward me with delicate precision, her shoes echoing extra loud in the strangely silent hal . As she came forward, I looked at the old man with the cane, wondering if he could help free me. He was now looking at me, his eyes black, his mouth wide open in a silent scream. It seemed to carry on forever, his gaping, empty mouth with no sounds coming out, the blackness of his throat, until Abby was all that fil ed my view.
My horror was indescribable.
“Of course you want to see the baby,” Abby said, and lowered the bundle until it was right in front of my face.
It was a baby, all right.
A baby covered in a very fine coat of black hair all over its little body. It was nestled deep in the white blanket. I stared at it, mesmerized. Horrified.
The baby moved a bit onto its side and the change in position caused a single wing to flap out of the blanket. It was as thin and delicate as a bat’s, wrinkled in its folded state and covered with throbbing veins. The baby lifted its head and opened its eyes.
They were a dark black-brown, like Abby’s, like she had said. The baby did have her eyes.
The baby then opened its mouth to reveal shark-like teeth. It regarded me with contempt and, in a rush of guttural, vibrating words that reached deep into my skul , said, “I’m stil inside you. You can’t get me out.”
The old man’s scream finally found its way to me, blasting down the hal like a radio that has just switched on.
He screamed for the both of us.
Moments later, I was in an operating room with an exquisite pain tearing through my insides. The same doctor who pushed my gurney earlier lifted his head sharply. He was between my legs, blood on his arms. He looked at someone off to his right.
“Patient’s awake!”
I felt a commotion behind my head, a few beeps from machines, and a mask was placed over my mouth. My eyes rolled back.