Call out to the Dead

Jo wouldn’t let me out of bed the next day and kept looking up new things that were intended to help my body regenerate blood cells. I woke up at like noon with a bottle of B12 vitamins next to me with a note from Jo stick to it and a bottle of water behind it.

When I got up to go to the bathroom I realized why the note emphasized me staying in bed as much as possible. The wound on my ankle -although it wasn’t just aching inherently like it would have been if it weren’t for Michael- almost made me collapse with the first step that I took.

The facts here were I was going to be out of commission for a minute. I only wished I’d had the courage to ask what had become of Erika. As soon as I knew Michael was gone before I really woke up the first time just as enough light had come through the window to be noticeable I grabbed my rosary wondering when the next time I’d feel safe enough to take it off would be.

“Hey guess what I found when rummaging through your things!” Jo announced as she walked into my room sometime around noon.

I had to laugh. “You know not everyone tells you when they’ve been going through your shit.”

“I’m a special type of nosey bitch.” She said easily standing by the side of my bed hands still crossed behind her back. “Well, as I was saying, I found the perfect thing for you in this your time of need.” Then from behind her she pulled a black cane with a silver handle and base both intricately decorated with swirling filigree. “Now once that thing on the back of your leg heals up enough you’ll be ready to get up and around.”

I smiled. Time and time again she proved she was the best friend anybody could ever want. “Thank you Jo. Don’t you have a class today?”

She scoffed. “I can’t leave you here alone when you can barely walk are you crazy. I’m still trying to score blood from the blood bank. You are A positive right?”

There are some things you think you’ll never hear. Jo saying she was trying to “score” blood is pretty much at the top of the list.

“What? How the hell do you score blood? How do you make that shit sound like a drug deal?” I asked carefully pulling myself to lean against the headboard.

“Well, lets just say I’ve got friends in weird places.” She said with a smirk sitting down next to me on the bed. “It’s not like we can take you into the hospital for vampire caused anemia. Well, unless you want to pretend the anemia and the chunks taken out of you are unrelated. You could say they’re animal bites but then you’d probably have to get rabies shots.”

I cringed. Rabies shots were not a fuckin’ game. I’d done that once. No one wanted to do that twice.

Then my phone rang. Jo pulled it off the charger and handed it to me. It was daylight out so I knew it wasn’t going to be anything vampire related so when I didn’t recognize the number I wasn’t all too worried.

I answered it on speaker anyways.

“Hello.”

“Hello, this is Detective Stone is this Eliza O’Shea?”

“Yes this is she. Joanne Wilson is with me too and you’re on speaker.” That’s when I got tense. This was really the last thing I needed right now.

“Well there’s been some progress in the Janet West case. I’d like to talk to the both of you again.” His voice never wavering, I suspected he lived up to his name.

Jo spoke then. “So are you going to come out here again?” She didn’t want to tell him what to do but she wanted to suggest this before he could suggest us coming out to him.

“Sounds fine. Don’t go anywhere.” Then without anything further he hung up.

I groaned. “Totally not what we needed today. Ugh, we need to get him out of here quick. Don’t want him here after the guys start popping up.” As I sat there thinking about the whole thing I pulled my hair back and started weaving it into as formal of a braid as I could in that moment. “Will you bring me a pair of long pants and long sleeved top?”

The nightgown Michael had helped me into after I‘d calmed last night wouldn’t cut it for Stone’s visit. I wanted to hide the bandages so the lies would be less complicated.

The simpler we could make this the better it would be. Stone thought something was up, I could tell by the way he sounded over the phone. Something had really come up.

Jo helped me steady myself enough for me to get the black sweats she’d brought for me on then left me to go get ready herself knowing I could handle the rest.

I knew then that my ankle wasn’t going to get any extra time to heal up a little more before I started to get up and around on my cane. I got up only letting the toes of my bad foot hit the ground before getting a good grip on the cane and starting to limp on. I probably was maybe more in crutch territory with the current severity of the wound but make do with what you have they always say.

I made it to the kitchen and started rummaging through the medicine cabinet, looking for something for the pain. Aspirin was the first thing I found.

“Umm, bad first choice. Aspirin thins the blood most def not what you need.” Jo said as she just so happened to walk into the room.

“What the fuck don’t you know?” I asked roughly tossing the bottle back into the cabinet.

Then she came to my side. “Just go settle in the living room, I’ll find something. Don’t worry Eli.”

I just nodded and limped away. The wait was what was going to be the worst. Every minute it took him to get here put him here another minute closer to sundown. The sun set far too early these December days. It was already 2:30 the sky starts to get murky at sometime around 4 right? I’m pretty sure they come out of their sleep once the light is obscured enough not to do much harm not at full dark.

“How are we going to get rid of him before the guys start heading up?” I asked loud enough for her to hear me from the kitchen.

“Pray?” She spoke as she walked out with a bottle of water in one hand the other closed around what I assumed were pills.

“That’s what I thought our options were. Fuck.” I gratefully took the water and the pills from her. “Bless you kind woman.”

Looking worried was what Jo seemed to major in these days. “So what are you saying about your ankle?”

“Tripped on the steps and twisted it.” I said keeping myself from shrugging because I knew it would just throw my body out of the very limited comfort I’d found. “The simplest answer tends to be the right one. It also would give me a reason to favor one arm too.”

Detective Stone didn’t get out to my house until little over an hour later. We started off doing all the polite things offering him coffee and anything else hospitality dictated.

He wouldn’t sit though. He accepted the coffee but was just walking around the living room while Jo went to make the coffee. He was looking at everything. The old family photos, the antiques scattered about the room, every move he made told me he was being deliberate. He wanted me to be concerned as he did this. He hoped I was sweating. He was trying to profile me as I was profiling him.

“This house is like a museum isn’t it?” I asked just to break the silence.

“I suppose. The oldest house in town that hasn’t fallen out of the original family’s hands, it’s almost novel. It’s a family history at the very least.” He spoke not turning back to look at me.

“Most definitely that. We never really change anything in the house until we have a family to accommodate. This is still pretty much the way my parents left it.” I spoke trying to imply that he couldn’t read too much about me from the things he was seeing.

“So what will they call the house after you get married and the airs of this house aren’t “O’Shea” by name?” He asked almost just to taunt me about my limited family. Trying to rattle me.

“Names aren’t important. You’ve had a family haven’t you? When your sister –if you have a sister- changes her name when she gets married would she stop being your sister? Obviously not. We didn’t name the house the “Old O’Shea House” we’ve always just called it home.” Maybe he got to me a little bit.

He turned now standing there examining me and my side of the room.

Jo broke his focus when she came in with the coffee on a serving tray with cups, sugar, creamer, milk, everything she could think of.

I saw there was already a cup made sitting at the far corner of the tray as she sat it down. She probably put Baileys in hers. She picked up her cup after sitting the tray down and sat next to me on the couch.

“So what’s come up Detective Stone?” She asked with her cup clasped between her hands to keep them both warm.

He finally sat to make his coffee, thanking us politely. “We’ve finally gotten the tracking from the phones. We found what we believe to be Janet’s remains. We’re confirming that with DNA. What we have found out is that everyone was pretty shocked when they heard her last call was to you.” Here came the suspicions anyone would have anticipated. “Then people told us you two had visited her that day at the diner. They said she didn’t seem too excited to see you guys.”

Well that made it a wee bit worse than just the phone call. I’d forgotten about that. That was a little daunting. I had a sinking suspicion that told me Detective Stone might be meeting our pale tattooed friends.

“Should I be calling my lawyer, Keith Truman?” He was the premier lawyer even remotely close to this sleepy little town. My parents were his only clients in this neck of the woods and he dealt with all the legal stuff after they died and was quite kind to me even though the simple property stuff was probably below him in his career. I would trust no one else.

There was a look a cop got when he heard the name of a lawyer they knew could get the devil acquitted. It was gratifying in the greatest way.

Jo put her hand on my arm. “Cool your jets, I’ll tell him. No need to bring your lawyer into this yet.” Her voice pacified me for the moment. Long enough to let her tell what she’d spun up. “My major in school is Theology. I study all the different spiritualties. Only reason that’s relevant is because I have a different belief system,” Ok so she wasn’t lying yet. “Because I have psychic visions. Premonitions.” Whelp, there’s the lie. “I felt something bad looming, she didn’t seem happy to hear that from me because she was having a nagging feeling of dread hanging over her head. Kinda like those days you wake up dreading getting out of bed and when you do you go outside and find your tires slashed.”

The people in town would probably believe that from Jo. They had a lot of trouble wrapping their heads around all the things she believed in. A town this small the people aren’t complicated we have atheist –or people who just don’t care- and Christians. Not too many people can relate.

His skepticism went crazy here. “Really? You expect me to believe this crap?”

“Only if you like the truth.” She stood firmly. Obviously that liquid courage was working.

So he asked her to explain it all again. From the beginning to the first time he met us. The best thing I could do was shut up. He had me exactly the way he wanted me, upset and mouthy.

He made her go over the story and into all the stupid minutia that she was falsifying as she spoke.

I started noticing how quickly the clocks seemed to be ticking knowing at about 4:30/4:40 our lovely fanged friends would undoubtedly be out.

I started to focus on the window noticing the rapidly darkening sky.

“You’re awfully quiet over there; did your friend over here “see” your words ruining the whole lie?” He asked me distracting me from the sky.

“You’re so good at talking to everybody in town ask them if they’d doubt Jo was different.” I spoke locking our eyes hard but somehow apathetically.

He looked at me trying to find something to say. He noticed the cane propped up against the couch next to me. “The cane part of the museum?”

There was a sudden relief in my ankle, my wrist, and my hip. He was up.

“She tripped on the steps.” His voice rang from the hallway. He’d come in through the door in my room. Michael leaned against the wall crossing his ankles propping his right foot on the toe of his barely laced boot.

I almost groaned. Great now I’d seem like a battered woman.

Detective Stone almost jumped out of his seat. This wasn’t a man used to getting snuck up on. It was obvious he had a thousand questions for Michael but there was something else stopping him. He stood, “I’ll show myself out. I will be back though.”

I was stunned. Michael used some intimidation mojo on the guy. I had a feeling the man would have more questions next time I saw him.

I didn’t say anything until I heard the door closed. I looked at him and couldn’t help but think he just made this worse. The mess he -or his kind, I suppose- made.

“What the hell Michael? He already thinks we could be suspects! Jo had to tell him she’s a psychic!” I grumbled.

“Then I’d think you be glad I got rid of him.” He spoke in an obviously measured tone.

“No! Being randomly run out of a place is going to make him even more suspicious!” I painfully dragged myself up reaching for my cane.

He moved off the wall obviously intending to help me.

“Stop. I don’t need any more of your help.” I said as I started to “storm” toward my room. It –walking, I mean- didn’t hurt as much as it did when it was still light out. Everything about vampires seemed to thrive at night.

I walked by Michael causing him to press his back against the wall because of my rosary. He seemed surprised and it changed to disappointed when his eyes drifted down to see my rosary in it’s place.

I just wanted to get back to my room so I couldn’t be bothered with it right then.

I barely got over the threshold into my bedroom before I realized I had to pee. Never was I more glad to have the attached bathroom.

The only problem when I walked in, a vampire taking a bubble bath in my tub.

“What the hell?” I said when I laid eyes on the man in my tub wearing shades. “You guys have been up for like 5 minutes how the hell are you all already causing trouble?”

Phil laughed and brought the dark colored wine bottle to his lips. “It’s a skill. This is a killer tub.”

Even I laughed before turning around to go back.

“Lock the door!” He called behind me.