Excerpt 2: Sole Possession

In this part, Andi has convinced David that they should find a medium to help with their ghost problem.

***

They found the subdivision they were looking for. “Pretty nice,” Andi commented, looking around at the large new houses. “I guess being a psychic pays okay.”

“Money for nothing,” David muttered.

“Oh my God, you sound like my dad.”

“Your dad’s always sounded like a smart guy to me.”

“Let’s just give her a chance,” Andi said as they went up the driveway.

The woman who answered the door looked much younger than Andi. She was very pale and thin, with long straight auburn hair. “Hi, I’m Julie,” she said. “You must be Andi and David? Come on in.”

Faceless angelic figurines, like the ones Andi’s own mom collected, crowded the table in the entryway. Huh, Andi thought. It wasn’t the kind of collection she expected from a psychic. She thought Julie would usher them into the living room, but instead the girl said, “Come on upstairs.”

She led them to a bedroom where the rock posters on the walls clashed with the canopy bed. Andi realized, belatedly: She still lives with her parents. Or at least her mom.

David gave her a you have got to be kidding me look, and Andi didn’t blame him at all. She wanted to leave. But as long as they were there, they might as well give the girl a chance.

“Go ahead and sit down,” said Julie, sitting down herself on the only chair and waving toward the bed. Andi and David awkwardly arranged themselves side by side.

“Ooh, I can see your auras,” Julie said. “Wait…wait.” She peered at them. “Yours is like, all brown and gray,” she told David, waving her hands. “It’s like, Oooh, I’m depressed, I don’t want to listen to you.”

“I’m not depressed,” David said.

“Yeah, it’s all like, Ooh, you’re wrong, you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Julie went on. “That’s what brown and gray means.”

Andi asked, “What about my aura?”

“Oh, yeah, yours is like…” She stared at Andi for a few moments. “It’s orangish yellow. I can tell that you’re very scientific.”

“Scientific?”

“Yeah. Like you…you like details, you know. Like facts and figures.”

David snorted. “That’s just completely wrong.”

Andi saw a look of alarm flash across Julie’s face before she covered it. “That’s the thing about auras. They show the real you. Not the you that you show everybody else.”

Andi couldn’t resist. “Do they show the real you that not even you know about?”

“Sometimes,” said Julie. “Exactly.”

Andi couldn’t think of a thing to say to that.

A woman’s voice called from downstairs, “Julie?”

“Oh crap, my mom’s home,” said the girl. She went to the door and opened it. “Mom, I’m with a client right now,” she yelled down.

Andi couldn’t quite make out what the mother said back. It sounded a lot like, Client, my ass.

The auburn-haired girl shut the door again with a little more force than was necessary and flounced back to her chair and sat down. “Okay. So you two wanted to know about why you were having problems.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m afraid it’s because you have clashing auras,” she told them. She sounded like a doctor telling a patient he needed to have his gall bladder removed.

David cleared his throat. “We aren’t having any problems.”

Julie looked from him to Andi and back again. “What do you mean?”

“That’s not what we made an appointment with you for,” Andi told her. “We wanted to talk to you about getting rid of a ghost?”

She saw the light dawn on Julie’s face. "Exactly, right. You have a ghost. And that’s the problem between you.”

“Not exactly between us,” said Andi. “Just…a problem.”

“And what do clashing auras have to do with it?” said David.

“Well, you know. Ghosts are attracted to different auras, and, I mean, well actually if there’s clashing auras that can be bad and ghosts can be attracted to that, so, you know.” She looked up at them. “One of you is a Taurus, aren’t you?”

“No,” said Andi and David at the same time.

“Really? Because I’m really getting that kind of Taurus energy, but…okay, let’s back up though. When did the ghost come to live with you?”

“It’s in the house we’re trying to sell,” said David.

Andi noted how he said, unconsciously, we’re trying to sell, rather than, I’m trying to sell. It didn’t mean anything, but she still liked it, being a part of that we.

“Right, whatever,” said Julie, shaking her head. “How long has it been there?”

“A long time.”

“Let me see if I can talk to the spirit realm and see what kind of ghost it is.”

“Okay,” said Andi, though she was a little sorry as soon as she said it. Surely this was going to go nowhere. “What time do you want to come over to the house?”

“What? Oh, I don’t need to go to the house. I can do it right here!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, totally. I just concentrate and send my vibes over to the house.”

“You need to Mapquest it or anything?” David asked.

“No, no, no. You guys just be quiet for a little bit, okay?” Julie crossed her legs in the chair and set her hands down on her knees, palms up. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes.

After a moment, she started chanting. “Ohhh, spirits, speak to me…ohhh, spirits, I summon you with my psychic powers…ohhh, spirits, show me who is in these people’s house…”

Andi felt acutely embarrassed.

After a few more moaning sentences like this, Julie took in a dramatic breath. Her eyes still closed, she said, “Oh! I see now! Yes! I see it!”

She opened her eyes and looked at them.

“Well?” said David.

Julie smiled. “It’s a little girl,” she told them in a sweet voice. “Your ghost may be scaring you, but the truth is, she’s just an adorable little girl. She’s as scared of you as you are of her.”

“Really,” said Andi.

Julie nodded. “So I can come over and ask her very nicely to leave,” she told them. “Little kid ghosts, they always listen to me, it’ll be no problem. Let’s see, I can…well I can’t go tonight cause I’m going to that Killers concert, but how about tomorrow? And hey, as far as payment goes, I’ll make you a deal. Usually I charge six hundred, but since it’s just a kid, I’ll make it five hundred, tops.”

“Yeah. I don’t think so,” said David. “If it’s just a little girl, I think we’ll just let her stay.”

“No, you can’t—wait! Wait!” Julie closed her eyes again, touching her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “I’m getting something else too! There’s…there’s a man with the little girl! A very scary young man, oooh, he’s awful!”

“Julie,” Andi interrupted her. “I think we’re going to go.”