Voicemail

“I’m a medium, Lacey. I speak for the dead.”

For something completely different, here’s a ‘page test’ for a short…ish (LOL) supernatural serial that I’m thinking about making happen.

From our most distant history, humans have known that something which came before us lurks out there in the shadows, still bound to the laws which our first parents were given the freedom to disobey. Follow that law, and they'll treat you kindly. Break it, and only Heaven can help you.

It’s been six years since Lacey finished her first year of college and her half-brother Miguel - the only family she has - never showed up to help her move out of the dorm. Discovering that Miguel was involved with something called The Underground didn’t help her find him until she finally turned up Jonas, Miguel’s former mentor in the shady business of keeping fay things where they belong. Though skeptical they'll succeed and reluctant to face up to his own failure to keep Miguel safe, Jonas has agreed to start their search by looking up a sometime colleague of his - a medium named Tim Chamoun.

source: pawel szvmanski on unsplash

Lacey had been to this part of town a few times before, but if she was being honest, she’d never been sober. Even if she had been, she wouldn't have noticed the dark little bookstore tucked in between the noodle shop and an anonymously crumbling condemned façade. The building housing Words Unspoken was in nearly as bad of a condition, but at least someone had cared enough within the last few years to paint the bricks black. The bay window at street level held a dusty display, draped in glittering fabric, of books with titles like The Super Natural and Magick in Theory and Practice. In one of the two painted-shut second floor windows was a cheap and flickering neon sign: PSYCHIC.

“This is the best guy in town?” Lacey asked, hanging back as Jonas went to push open the shop door.

“Heh - I didn't say he was the best,” Jonas said. “He's my best. Hell of a difference.”

“Oh. Great,” she muttered.

“Wasn’t trying to lie to you. You'd better get used to it, that’s all. People like us - me and Mikey - we live and die by exact words.”

As soon as they were inside the bookstore, Jonas led her off to the right and up a flight of steep, narrow stairs. Original to the building, she thought, varying the length of her steps to make it up them without stubbing a toe. The door at the top had a plastic page protector taped to it, the contents a handmade sign advertising rates for various flavors of psychic readings. The investigator ignored her skeptical look and knocked forcefully. “Timothy! It’s Quinley. Brought you some real work.”

There was a long pause before the door was opened by a skinny young man with coarse, prematurely gray hair, still pulling his T-shirt down over the top of his jeans. “Who says I want it? You still owe me two hundred for the last one.”

Jonas reached into his back pocket and held up one of Lacey’s stacks of twenties. “I’m good for it this time.”

“No kidding? …All right, I’m in.” Timothy poked his head out of the door and looked over at Lacey with interest. “So you’re his client, then? Hi, I’m Tim. I hope you’ve got a strong stomach.”

“She’ll be fine,” Jonas said, before she could answer. “Her name’s Lacey. She’s Mikey’s baby sister.”

His eyebrows jumped. “Mikey’s - oh, shit. I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well, get in line.” Jonas smiled ironically. “Hey, you gonna let us in?”

“Oh! Yeah, yeah. C’mon.” He pulled the door open and stepped out of the way. Lacey followed Jonas into a room curtained off from what she supposed was a small studio apartment, judging by the visible slice of grease-yellowed kitchen beyond the mattress on the floor. Tim quickly tugged the curtain all the way to the wall. “I've just got some stuff to put together first. Y’all make yourselves comfortable, ok?”

“Sure,” Lacey said, since she didn't know when Jonas was going to let her say anything else. The man just grunted and sank into one of the chairs, about three inches deep. She tentatively sat down on the other and found it held her weight a little better. Silence fell as, somewhere behind the curtain - both it and the chairs looked like something rescued from a theater closure - their host turned off his pitched-up anime music and began to rattle around in the background.

Lacey waited a couple of minutes, then leaned over to Jonas and whispered, “So is he…you know, a real psychic?”

“Oh, no way,” Tim called cheerfully from what sounded like the kitchen. She flinched at the shame of being caught gossiping, as much as at Jonas’ eye-rolling. “Psychics get themselves put on government watchlists trying to stop terror attacks and global pandemics. I’m more concerned with making sure the local PD’s tip line doesn’t identify me as the guy who knows where all the bodies are.”

“You’ve still got this place mic’d up, huh?” Jonas said.

“Hey, cold readings pay my rent. I’m not going to leave information on the table.”

“Figures. I should’ve known better than to come in here without a bug zapper.”

“I’ll take it as a sign of the strength of our friendship,” Tim said as he edged around the curtain again, carrying a large tray. “I’m a medium, Lacey. I speak for the dead.”

She looked sharply over at Jonas. “The dead?”

“Best to rule out the obvious possibilities first,” he said, unbothered. “If Tim finds him, at least you’ll know what happened.”

It made sense, in an unpleasant and unsettling way. Lacey nodded slowly.

Tim was unstacking a set of small glasses. “It doesn’t always work, of course. People get beyond reaching, or they don’t want to take my calls. Who is it you want to talk to?”

“My brother, Miguel,” she said, biting her cheek at the intrusion again of his secret second life. “Um - Mikey.”

“Oh.” He frowned uncomfortably and pushed a glass of thick amber tea into her hands. The minty steam hit Lacey in the face just before her fingers started to tingle from the heat. “Well…I’ll ask around, anyway. I assume Mr. Quinley had you bring something of his?”

“Yes, here.” Lacey set the glass down so she could dig in her backpack and hand over Miguel’s house keys. Front door, back door, shed, thin wire ring holding them together. All accounted for. Wherever he’d gone that day, he hadn’t thought he would need them.

“Thanks. Jonas, give me a hand.”

Jonas heaved himself up from the chair and Lacey took her tea back, seeing they wanted to move the table. She wasn’t in the habit of drinking tea without ice in it, but ventured a fluttering sip anyway and found it sweet enough not to matter. Suddenly remembering her missed lunch, she reached over and swiped a butter cookie from the tray just as the two men moved it out of reach.

“You never make me tea anymore,” Jonas grumbled.

“It’s not for you, you mooch. It’s for the clients. This goes easier when the bereaved don’t pass out from shock.”

“This is Mikey we’re talking about, Timothy. I am the bereaved.”

“Nobody’s bereaved,” Lacey said hotly through a mouthful of crumbs.

“My apologies,” Tim said, standing up from the floor with the edge of the rug in his hands. “I hope you’re right.”

Jonas helped him roll up the rug, and he leaned it against the wall in the corner. Lacey raised her eyebrows at the revelation of a large, circular sigil painted in black on a smooth board tacked to the floor. Tim got down again and poured a quantity of coarse salt into a divot routed around the sigil’s edge, using a cloth to carefully sweep every last grain into place. He switched on a white-noise machine that sat next to the door, and then he came back to the table, gesturing to Lacey to shift her chair back as well. “There’s one rule you need to follow,” he said seriously. “No matter what you see or hear, do not cross that line. Don’t pass anything over it, and don’t get close enough that I could put a hand out and pull you in. Anything that wants you to do it, no matter how good the reason sounds, is lying. Understand?”

“…yeah, I understand.”

“He means it,” Jonas said sharply.

She felt like a child being told not to play in a blind turn in the driveway, so she pressed her lips together politely and tried to sound more sincere this time. “I’ll stay right here. I promise.”

“Good.” Tim opened a small container and shook out a varied handful of pills and herbal capsules. “Pythia’s secret sauce,” he said, gesturing with a glass of water. “Cheers. If nothing goes wrong, I should be back in about an hour.”

Lacey wanted to ask if things went wrong often, but she was starting to feel nervous. She filled her mouth with tea and watched the medium set a small metronome to ticking and tuck himself into a seated position inside the circle. As she wondered if they’d get any results, or if such a thing was even possible, his shoulders gradually sagged and his chin nodded toward the floor. Slowly, his hands turned upwards and his palms opened before his relaxing fingers. His lips and eyelids gaped gently. The trance, at least, was real.

Jonas refilled her tea glass, and she drank mechanically. The ticking seconds and then minutes dragged on.

“Does it usually take long?” she asked in a hush.

“Not usually,” Jonas said. He’d kicked back and settled in with his hands folded on his stomach. “Sometimes, though.”

“Mhm.”

Another long stretch passed in fuzzy silence.

And then, suddenly, Tim’s body jerked to life.

Lacey gasped and instinctively pressed herself back into her chair as his head rolled up and lolled to the side, bobbing under the control of something that didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with it. His eyeballs were twitching rapidly and violently under fluttering lids.

A horrible feeling churned in Lacey’s stomach. “I-is he-?” she squeaked.

“It’s normal,” Jonas said. “Have a cookie.”

She let him press it into her hand, and chewed and swallowed obediently. There was no room in her mind for questions. The muscles in Tim’s throat were visibly working, as though to swallow back something himself, and his back had started to arch.

A column of fire erupted from the sigil with a roar, slamming into the ceiling and lighting up the room with a blaze of unbearable heat. Between the flames, Lacey could just see a limp but unharmed human form drifting upwards, chest first.

“Oh, shit,” Jonas hissed.

Lacey glanced over at him, eyes wide. “So that’s not n-”

“No, it is not fucking normal. Shut up.”

Her heart pounded as she tried and failed to shrink further, sure now that she’d been slipped some kind of hallucinogen herself. Nothing else made sense. This simply wasn’t real. As suddenly as they’d appeared, the flames receded into little tongues lapping at Tim’s floating feet. His mouth, bile dribbling from both corners, opened into an inhumanly distorted grin.

“Ⱨłłłł ₮ⱧɆɆɆɆⱤɆ! ł'₥ ₴ØⱤⱤɎ, ฿Ʉ₮ ₥ł₲ɄɆⱠ ₵₳₦'₮ ₵Ø₥Ɇ ₮Ø ₮ⱧɆ ₱ⱧØ₦Ɇ Ɽł₲Ⱨ₮ ₦Ø₩...”