Page 20 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

A few of them might really have believed that, Hazel thought. Most cleanup crews she’d met had been very familiar with the potential surprises in even an average house.

“The basement didn’t go that far west, not on the official floor plan,” Stephanie went on. “So they went downstairs and yeah, there was a little padlocked door in the west wall. Clarence had put a ladder in front of it. I never would—well, I didn’t go there much, but most people wouldn’t have noticed. I’m pretty sure.”

“Probably not,” said Hazel. Most people didn’t notice much, herself included at times. She switched the phone from one side of her face to the other, giving the sweat on her cheek time to evaporate, and sipped her soda. “It sounds like he was quite the amateur handyman.”

“He was a lot of things.”

Clarence Chapman, once the deputy sheriff of Moon Mill, Pennsylvania, had apparently gone a good way pastnot a nice guy. The crew head had called the police as soon as he’d found the padlockeddoor. The police had broken the lock, opened the door, and removed all need for conjecture.

“I should’ve wondered why the cops hadn’t gotten around to bugging me,” Hazel said.

Stephanie went on to explain that three boxes and two large jars had sat on a set of small metal utility shelves, and while the dust had grown thick on them in the months of Clarence’s illness, it hadn’t gotten completely opaque. When the first officer down had trained her flashlight on one of the jars, she’d clearly seen the human tongues floating there.

All of the boxes held hands. Most, but not all, were dry, skeletal, or both.

Clarence had preferred easily storable trophies.

“I only know what’s been on the news, really,” Stephanie said after a long pause to drink more of her beverage. “The police haven’t told us much at all, except they’ve asked a bunch of questions, which does make sense. For a day or two, they were treating Lee as a suspect, or an accomplice, but—I mean, maybe they do think that, still, but our lawyer says a bunch of the, um, Clarence—”

Hazel put the woman out of her misery. “Lee has an alibi for many of the murders, doesn’t he? Even though the police don’t know exactly when they took place. They must go back a while then.”

“He would have been just a kid. Maybe not even born yet, for some of them.”

“Jesus.” Forty, fifty years of killing. “Did anybody even suspect him before?”

Stephanie sighed, a gustywhooshto express the overwhelming scale of the problem. “Not that they’ve been willing to say, and he sure doesn’t have a record. I don’t know. I bet some of his colleagues found him creepy, and more of them willsaythey always found him creepy if the story comes out, if you know what I mean.”

“Sure. Memory works backward more than we’d like.” Hazel toyed with the metal tab on her soda can, trying to recall what sheknew about serial killers. Forty or fifty years was a long time to go under the radar, even with the additional camouflage a cop would have. Chapman must have practiced much more self-control than was normal—or he must have had unusual help.

Hazel remembered the heads above Clarence’s bed, creepy even before the room had changed, and then the hands that had tried to come out of the wallpaper. The ethereal reflected the physical, even when the inhabitants weren’t trying to control it.

“Are you worried about the victims’ ghosts?” she asked, sitting up straighter as she took on her normal role. Strangers or near-strangers usually only called her for one reason. “I don’t think they’ll cause your family any trouble if they haven’t already. Like I said, my situation’s a little complicated, but I’m glad to come out if I’m wrong, or I can advise you remotely.”

“We’ve been okay so far. I did get concerned, so it’s good to hear that we shouldn’t have problems, but mostly I just figured you should know. I hope it’s not too much.”

Hazel blinked again, but this time the surprise was positive. “No—that’s really nice of you.”

“It seemed like the least we could do. Especially…” Hazel heard ice cubes rattle at the other end of the phone before Stephanie sipped her drink. “We’ve had reporters already. None of us mentioned your name, but I know they’ve got ways of tracking down information. At least a couple of them would probably love to know that Clarence hired a medium before he died.”

“Ugh,” said Hazel. The paramedics had found her at Chapman’s house, her name and maybe photo would be in official records, and a quick Google search could probably reveal the rest. Steve at the impound lot had probably spread his story far and wide too. “Well, I appreciate the advance warning. Maybe they won’t be able to find me.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”

“Thanks. I think I’ll need all the luck I can get.”

Chapter 11

Taptaptaptap.

She was getting ready for bed when she heard the noise, standing at the bathroom sink and rubbing peach-scented moisturizer onto her face. Being a channel for unearthly forces was no reason to give up on a beauty regimen, after all, and dry skin got itchy after a while. More importantly, the routine and the scent kept her grounded in normal, physical reality.

So Hazel tried to ignore the sound at first. It was probably an animal—a squirrel on the roof, a bird at a window, maybe even a rat downstairs. She’d have to deal with the third eventually, but even it could wait for daytime.

Taptap.

The movement by the window hadn’t been an animal.

Maybe. She still wasn’t sure whether she’d seen the face or not; stress and her reflection in the darkness could produce all kinds of images. Even if ithadbeen there, that didn’t mean every other unexplained sight or sound was supernatural. Hazel had seen plenty of moths beyond the glass and heard plenty of creatures living their lives just outside her walls.