Page 9 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

She was still worrying after breakfast as she used the hospital’s landline to wrangle her way to a supervisor at the local impound lot, where a description of her phone, her car, the repair kit and first aid kit in the trunk, and the pallet of water in the back seat eventually bought her the chance to prove herself by unlocking her phone. They didn’t have any keys to give her, of course, but that was the next problem.

Hazel had just set the phone down and leaned back when somebody tapped at the door. It didn’t sound like Anita, whose knock was brisk and efficient, but maybe there’d been a shift change. “Come in?” she said and braced herself in case the new arrival was a cop.

The person who entered was tall, with a stylishly highlightedbrown bob and a short but immaculate pink manicure. Their white linen dress and tan sweater made them look like a J. Crew model, but their expression was tentative, and they stopped short just inside the door. “Um. Hi. I’m Stephanie Chapman. Lee’s wife,” she said, and paused as though to give Hazel an opportunity to scream and throw her water glass. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“No, not at all. It’s not like I’m busy here.” Hazel inspected the woman quickly. A good makeup job didn’t really disguise the signs of stress, but her gray eyes had no trace of red in them, and her voice was steady. She hoped that was a good sign. “Is Lee okay?”

“Yeah. Well, physically. And he’s got a good therapist. He’ll be fine. He just…couldn’t come and see you. He’s not great with, um…any of this.”

Hazel wondered if she meant the supernatural, or emotions, or both. “I understand. I’m glad he’s recovering.” She gestured to one of the gray chairs, now fully normal looking. “Have a seat if you’d like.”

“Thanks.” Stephanie perched on the edge of the chair, set her suede purse in her lap, and gave Hazel the look of somebody about to step out onto a very thin bridge.

“How much did Lee tell you?” Hazel asked.

Relief washed over Stephanie’s face with the preliminaries out of the way. “Some, I think? I knew his dad had hired a medium—Lee was complaining about that for a week. Sorry.”

Hazel waved a hand. “It’s a pretty normal reaction.” The irritation she’d felt when she’d first talked to Lee seemed far away and small now.

“He was waiting in the living room for you to be done, he says, and then he heard noises. Screaming, crashing, and he thought you might be—sorry—”

“It’s okay,” said Hazel, sparing her the awkwardness of saying that Lee had thought she was assaulting the old man.

“—so he ran over to Clarence’s room. He said he heard somethingroaron the way, like a bull or a lion, but not. Then he openedthe door and his dad’s room was somewhere else, with a floor made of blood, and you were fighting monsters.”

“Doyoubelieve that?” Hazel asked cautiously. “Because if not, my explanation’s not going to make a lot of sense to you.”

Stephanie’s shoulders barely moved as she shrugged. “Lee’s really hard to convince. Either what he saw was real, he had a psychotic break, or, I don’t know, there was a sinkhole full of hallucinogenic gas under the house and it happened to cave in at the exact moment you were having a séance. Would you say what he saw was right?”

“Basically, yes.”

“Then you saw the same things, which would be weird if we were talking about gas or psychosis, or you’re playing along and you’re willing to put yourself in the hospital over it. I guess that’s not completely out of the question, but…” Stephanie spread her hands, copper bangles jingling on one wrist. “I at least want to hear your side of the story.”

“That’s pretty impressive logic.”

“I had a lot of time to think last night.”

The hospital loudspeaker chimed: “Dr. Kendall, please report to room 513. Dr. Kendall, 513 please.” People passed Hazel’s door, talking softly, far calmer than anybody had been the night before.

“First of all,” said Hazel, “Lee was sort of right about Clarence’s room being somewhere else. Most paranormal activity happens in the ethereal world. That’s…okay, so picture a slice of layer cake.”

“Okay,” said Stephanie, blinking.

“The normal world is the bottom. Heaven, hell, other dimensions, they’re all the top. The ethereal’s the jam in between. It’s between us and the places beyond. It kind of soaks into both, and both get crumbs into it.”

Stephanie’s lips twitched. “That’s quite a metaphor.”

“I’ve been eating hospital food for a day. It also doesn’t completely work for manifestations, so I have to switch to radio waves. People like me can kind of tune in the ethereal nearest to us with rituals, andthere are places where it’s strong enough that just about everybody starts hearing songs through their fillings, so to speak. Sometimes you don’t even need to have fillings.” She wasn’t sure if that was true for radio or not, but the point remained, and Stephanie didn’t look too confused.

“I think I’ve heard the term before. Maybe in a book when I was in college.” Stephanie flushed. “A couple friends were into spirits and crystals and all that non—stuff. No offense.”

“None taken. Most of the pop culture takesarenonsense, and that’s a good thing.”

“Is all, um, magic dangerous?” Stephanie blushed as she said the word.

“Herbs and crystals and sending people healing energy, no, at least not as far as I’ve ever heard of. Summoning spirits or ghosts, or otherwise dealing directly with the ethereal? That’s a whole different can of worms. Sometimes literally.” Hazel shuddered at a few memories. “Ghosts that stay there instead of moving on can be really nasty, the place has its own native predators, and beings can enter the ether from the worlds on the other side.”

Stephanie leaned forward, round-eyed, resembling a kid around a campfire much more than the well-to-do suburbanite who’d walked in. “Those creatures were in Clarence’s room?”