The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK ®. C.J. Henderson
on their spouses in New England same as anywhere else. They stole from their bosses, needed background checks, wanted to find lost property or people from their pasts, required security like everyone else. Nardi had seen Bloods selling crack behind the playground at Allan Halsey Memorial High School the same way he had behind the playground at Thomas Jefferson High in Brooklyn, and every other high school throughout the five boroughs. There was no “safe” America anymore. The green was going to hell in all the same ways as the concrete—just a little slower, that was all.
Which is what had made Arkham perfect for Nardi and his pals. For five years they had built their business and life was good for them. They held the security contracts for nearly three/fifths of the businesses in town. They were the first contact point on the speed dial list of four/fifths of the town’s lawyers. They had all the work they needed; which was what angered Nardi when Berkenwald took a job like the one he was stuck with that night.
“So?” he asked the house absently. “Let’s make with the spooky noises. Let’s get this over with.”
In New York Nardi had found plenty of opportunities to placate the wealthy. Those with money were always finding some new way to waste it. Years ago the slugs bleeding cash could not move into a new property without calling in a fung shui master to make certain it was properly positioned in the universe. Now, in Arkham, the chic move was to have your home desensitized by a supernatural security team.
“What a crock of shit,” muttered Nardi.
Berkenwald, getting wind of the new chump rage, had let it be known to only a few, close personal friends, mind you, that the agency had been called in to clear a few major hauntings back in New York. Hinted at terrible moments, let it be known they simply did not do that sort of work anymore. Too stressful. The hideous terrors that awaited the uninitiated…
The suckers had begun throwing money at the agency immediately. Any new bride or social matron who heard a noise she did not like, felt a draft that seemed a little too frigid, awoke in a cold sweat, et cetera, knew what to do—buy some peace of mind.
But Berkenwald had booked more work for them that week than they could cover. And thus Frankie Nardi, himself, the owner of the company, who should have been working on his model railroad set-up in his basement at that very moment, and dreaming of a date with his hammock for the next day, was instead stuck doing a point-by-point sweep of some ancient rathole for ghosts.
Ghosts, for Christ’s sake.
“Does it get any stupider than this? I don’t think I want to know if it does.”
“Don’t tell me you want the world to smarten up, Nardi,” a voice said from behind the detective. “That would lose you a lot of business.”
“I’m retired, remember?” He threw the line over his shoulder to the woman coming in the doorway. “The more business I have the less I like it.”
“I think you’re just afraid to run into the Headless Horseman or one of his pals. Something like that would be hard work,” she said with a bite in her voice as she dropped her bags heavily on the floor, “and we all know you’re afraid of that.”
“Yeah, nothin’ with tits is a feminist when there’s heavy-liftin’ to do.”
The woman was Madame Renee, her profession, medium. Born Brenda Goff, she had cultivated her over-whelmingly Middle Eastern looks until a nose too big and brows too bushy had begun to work in her favor. As her love of all things covered in, filled with, or simply made from sugar had stolen her figure, she had made her shape a badge and transformed herself once more. Dancers had a short shelf-life, she had told herself when she had traded her tights for a beaded curtain and a crystal ball. Fortune-tellers could work from a wheelchair.
“Sweet as ever, ain’t ya?”
“Oh, don’t crawl up my ass; I’ve got all the shit I can handle today, and this job is half of it.”
“You’re not a happy man, are you, Frank?”
Madame Renee reached out to touch the detective on the cheek but he ducked the contact, his glower showing open hostility. ”Look, “he told her curtly, “we’re here to de-ghost this dump, and as stupid as I feel about this nonsense, a job is still a job. Mark told me you’ve got the checklist, so, if you do, then let’s get to it. The faster we prove the Ghostly Trio isn’t hiding up the chimney, the faster we get to go home.”
With a shrug, the madame sighed and pulled out the official Nardi Security Occult Clearance Form from the large carpet bag she seemed to always keep with her. Without trying again to lighten the mood, she simply started calling off routines and posing questions while Nardi poked, prodded, and peeled back this and that part of the old house. Between them they searched every room for cold spots, listened carefully to each wall with their stethoscopes, made certain a mirror would reflect light in every room, and tested the air on every floor to make certain no unwanted chemicals, smells, gases or aromas were present.
They set up motion detectors in every passageway and sound-trigger tape recorders in every room. Powder was sprinkled around doorways and across table tops and mantlepieces to record the motion of any invisible forces. Hairs were secured across the doors of cupboards and the drawers of dressers with nothing more than a finger smear of saliva. If anything with the slightest physical presence moved within the old house outside the living room where Madame Renee and Nardi would be camped out for the night, it would be known.
The madame, of course, had her own bag of tricks to perform. She rolled her bones, did an open reading with the tarot deck she had made herself, and set herself to staring into the crystal shard she used for focus to reach out beyond herself to bind herself with the house’s aura—searching for unwanted visitors. After that, as Nardi went room by room, setting his machines and traps, she pulled back into herself, and then opened her own aura to the building and to all and any that might be within it. Reaching deep within herself, she peeled back the layers of modern life, of concern over her daughter’s college expenses, moved past the aches and pains a body some one hundred and sixty pounds past its medically approved weight-for-its-height felt constantly, dug down inward until she had found the pure essence of her inner being and revealed it completely and utterly.
By the end of the night the pair were utterly exhausted—Nardi from covering the old place attic to basement as well as every room of the three floors in between, Renee from having thrown herself open past all boundaries. She had poured her soul and heart into every bit of wire and plaster and mahogany the old home had to offer, placing herself out before it, helpless and beckoning, and had received nothing for her efforts.
This fact confused her greatly.
“What are you talkin’ about?” asked Nardi. The detective desperately wanted to fall back into the recliner he had chosen as his bed and shut his eyes, but a job was a job and so he coaxed the woman further.
“Com’on, spill it.”
Renee propped herself up on the couch with one of her massively fleshy elbows. Staring at Nardi, knowing he did not believe in anything they were doing, she struggled to find a way to voice her concern. Finally, she simply told him what was on her mind.
“Listen, I don’t want to go around and around with you on this, so I’ll just say it. I did several readings of the house before we got started—future glances, stability predictions—that kind of stuff. It’s the low end of what I do for one of these things. Then I fired off the big guns, really put myself out there, bared my soul, big irresistible hunk of ectoplasm for anything nasty in the area and…I didn’t get a bite.”
“Disappointed?”
“No, you Italian shit. If you had a soul that could be touched by anything you’d know I was more than earning my fee here. If this was a spirit shanty, I would’ve paid a price, believe me.”
“Then I don’t get it,” answered the detective honestly, stifling a yawn. “What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that something should have come for me.” When Nardi said nothing, she continued,