After Moonrise: Possessed / Haunted

“Aubrey, why don’t you tell me about your death and from there I can—”

Raef was interrupted by a shriek that moved across his skin with the force of a blow. Aubrey’s mouth was wrenched open as she screamed in agony, a sound that was echoed eerily by her living sister, then her spirit wavered, like heat waves off a furnace, and she disappeared.

2

“So you saw, or at least heard something?” Mrs. Wilcox’s words were clipped, and in the silence that followed Aubrey’s disappearance her voice sounded unnaturally loud.

“Aubrey manifested and spoke to me. Briefly.” Raef answered her, although he didn’t look at the older woman. Instead, he was watching Lauren carefully, noting that her empty expression hadn’t returned, and even though her face couldn’t be called animated, she at least didn’t look zombielike anymore. And also noting that the torrent of emotions that had poured from Aubrey had been abruptly cut off. He cleared his throat, wishing like hell his coffee had a shot of Jack in it. “Please have a seat, Miss Wilcox. There are several things I need to go over with both you and your—”

“Why don’t you go home, Mother?” Lauren surprised him by interrupting in a brisk, no-nonsense voice as she sat in the chair beside her mother’s. “It would probably be better if I answered his questions alone.”

“What if it returns, Lauren?”

“Mother, I’ve told you before that I see Aubrey a lot. She’s dead. That doesn’t make her an it. She’s still Aubrey.”

“I wasn’t speaking of your sister’s ghost,” Mrs. Wilcox said coolly. “I’m referring to the horrid fugue state that sometimes comes over you.”

“Mother, I’ve tried to explain this to you before, too. It doesn’t just ‘come over’ me. There’s a reason for it.” Mrs. Wilcox’s face remained implacable and Lauren sighed. “I’m not going to be driving. If I zone out again I’m sure Mr. Raef can babysit me long enough to get me home.”

“Lauren, I …” her mother began, and then seemed to check herself. She stood and inclined her head formally to Raef. “I assume you will be certain my daughter returns home safely?”

“I will,” Raef said, not liking the family drama he’d stepped into.

“Then I will speak to you later, Lauren. It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Raef.”

After the door closed behind her mother, Lauren sat and met Raef’s gaze. “She’s not as cold and uncaring as she comes off as being. But all of this is just too much for her.”

“Define this,” he said.

“This would be my sister’s death and the fact the police have been unable to solve it. Add a dash of Aubrey haunting me with a sprinkle of possession and stir in a big blob of my soul being drained and you get a recipe that would freak out anyone’s mom.” Lauren’s voice was calm, her body appeared relaxed. It was only in her blue eyes that her desperation showed.

Raef got up and walked to the credenza. He topped off his coffee and then poured a generous cup for Lauren. “Cream or sugar, Miss Wilcox?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Both, and if we’re going to work together I wish you’d call me Lauren.”

He fixed the coffee and then handed it to her. “Lauren it is. My friends call me Raef.” He resumed his seat and gave her a brief smile. “Actually, my enemies call me Raef, too.”

“Do you have many enemies, Raef?”

“Some,” he said. “Do you?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“How about your sister?”

“No. That’s just one of the reasons this whole thing is so awful. None of it makes sense.”

“Tell me what you know about your sister’s death, and I’ll see if I can begin making some sense out of it.”

“I don’t know where to start.” Lauren’s impassive expression tensed and when she sipped her coffee Raef noticed her hands were trembling.

“Start at the beginning. When was she killed?”

“July 15. She was alone, even though she shouldn’t have been. I’m almost always with her on jobs—” She paused, flinched in obvious pain. “I mean, I used to almost always be with her.” Lauren corrected herself and regained her composure, then continued in a steadier voice. “July is in the middle of our busy season for maintenance, so we often had to split up to finish jobs on time.”

“Maintenance? What type of work did you and your sister do?”

“Landscaping. July can be a rough month on plants if we don’t get enough rain and the Oklahoma heat turns up early, like it did this past July. Plants burn up if they’re not maintained properly through the heat. Aub and I own Two Sisters Landscaping. Or at least we did.” She faltered again, and took another sip of her coffee. “I’m sole owner now.”

“Of the company? As in you are the biggest stockholder?”

“Own the company as in Aubrey and I started it, ran it and were its first two employees.” She met his eyes. “Yes, we actually got our hands dirty. A lot.” She held up one hand and Raef’s brows lifted in surprise when he saw that instead of being well manicured and delicately white, Lauren had short, bluntly clipped nails and obvious calluses on her work-hardened palm. He would have never guessed that the daughters of a rich Tulsa socialite would be into something as blue-collar as landscaping.

“I would have thought a psychic would be better at hiding his thoughts,” Lauren said.

Raef looked from her hand to her eyes. Then, much to his own surprise, he heard himself admitting, “I usually am.”

“Dirt-digging girls from rich families must seem pretty unusual to you,” Lauren said.

Raef gave her a lopsided smile. “Sounds like it’s a reaction you’re used to.”

“Let’s just say our family wasn’t thrilled when Aubrey and I opened the business six years ago. We were lucky they couldn’t stop us.”

“Explain that,” Raef said. He didn’t feel the prickle of foreboding he usually did when he stumbled on what would eventually become a lead for solving a murder, so he really didn’t need to question Lauren about her family’s attitude about her business, but he realized he wanted to question her—wanted to know more.

And that was odd as hell.

“Aubrey and I received an inheritance from our grandfather when we turned twenty-one. It was ours to do whatever we wanted with—so we started our own business, but instead of buying a chic little boutique in Utica Square someone else could run, or following family tradition and investing in real estate, we bought plants and dirt. At least, that’s how our mother put it. Our decision wasn’t popular, but it was ours to make.”

“So, how was business?”

“Excellent. It still is. We have five employees and have had to actually turn away jobs. That’s why Aubrey was alone that day—we’d overextended and she was the expert in aquatic plants. So she went by herself to Swan Lake.”

Raef felt a shock of recognition, and couldn’t believe he hadn’t put two and two together before then. “Aubrey Wilcox, middle of July, electrocuted to death while she was working with the water plants on the Swan Lake island.” Then he realized why he hadn’t recognized the name on his appointment book. It wasn’t a murder investigation. The death had been ruled accidental. What the hell?

“It wasn’t an accident,” Lauren said firmly, as if she was the mind reader.

“But if I pulled the police report it would say your sister’s death was accidental, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes. Does that mean you won’t take the case?”

“No, I’ll take the case.” Which was nothing unusual. Sometimes families needed his services for closure. Hell, not just his services, but psychics in general. The police could tell the bereaved over and over that it was suicide, or an accident, and they would still hold on to the hope that there was a bad guy, a reason, a focus for their rage and despair. That’s where a Psy came in—and it was one of the reasons they’d become big business, even in a world that was mostly filled with Norms who were uncomfortable with psychic Gifts. By communicating with the spirit of the dead person directly, a psychic could help families come to terms with the truth, move on, find closure. Of course, Raef personally usually preferred a good, old-fashioned murder case—hatred and anger he could deal with. Despair was another story.

“Aubrey told me she was killed.”

Raef shook himself mentally. “I thought your sister’s spirit was having a hard time communicating about her death.” He’d witnessed that. He’d asked her about her murder and she definitely hadn’t communicated with him.

“She is having a hard time communicating. When I say she told me I don’t mean that she actually said, ‘Hey, sis, I was murdered.’ I mean she told me in here.” Lauren closed her fist over her heart. “There are things she’s not allowed to put into words, but I can feel them. She and I have always been two halves of the same whole. I don’t know how else to explain it because if you’re not us, it might be impossible to comprehend. Add to the whole confusing mix that whatever is going on after Aub’s death is affecting me, and you have some serious weirdness. Raef, the truth is, even I don’t understand what’s really happening. I was hoping you could help me—help us. Please help us, Raef.”

Raef paused, studied Lauren and collected his thoughts. When he finally spoke it was slowly, as if he was processing information aloud. “The police ruled her death an accident, but your twin has made it clear to you, and only you, that she was murdered. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And even though she manifests to you, which I’ve witnessed, there still seems to be some barrier between the two of you, as if she’s being blocked or controlled by another force?”

“Yes, especially when she tries to communicate with me directly about her murder.” She sounded incredibly relieved. “You can’t know what a relief it is to talk to someone who doesn’t call me a freak and who will actually listen to me!”

His smile was authentic, but grim. “Try being a nine-year-old who can Track negative emotions, and only negative emotions. I understand what it’s like to be discounted and called a freak.”

Lauren expelled a long breath in a relieved sigh. Her shoulders relaxed and she finally took a sip of her coffee. “Good. Then we talk the same language.”

“So your sister is actually possessing you,” he said, looking up from the notes he was taking. That was unusual. Possession by a spirit wasn’t unheard of, of course, but spirits didn’t usually possess family members. He couldn’t remember ever hearing of one twin possessing another.

“Well, I don’t know if you’d call it real possession. She manifests, like she did earlier, and we can talk.” She paused, blinking hard as if trying to keep herself from crying. “I miss her. A lot. I don’t feel normal without her.” Lauren shook her head and wiped at her eyes. “But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that when she does try to communicate with me about her death, she gets ripped away from here and I can feel what’s happening to her, and it’s like …” Lauren’s words trailed off. She shuddered. “It’s like I’m being killed, too.”

“Hang on. Your sister’s already dead. Maybe what you’re feeling is her struggle to stay attached to you while her spirit is being drawn to the Otherworld. Lauren, the truth is that for most spirits it is difficult for them to remain on this plane of existence. They should be moving on.” He tried to speak soothingly, but he wasn’t good at the touchy-feely stuff. Plus, it was looking more and more as if he should just refer Lauren and her family, dead and alive, to the After Moonrise medium.

“You’re not getting it,” Lauren said, looking more and more animated. “Aubrey isn’t moving on. She can’t. He’s not done killing her.”

“Come again?”

Lauren sighed. “This is what Aubrey has been able to tell me: her killer has bound her spirit. He’s bound all of their spirits. Physical death was just the beginning of their murders. He doesn’t stop until he drains their souls of life, too. You have to find him. He’s not done killing.”

3

“And you know that this psychic serial killer is draining spirits because your sister told you in there.” Raef pointed to where Lauren still clenched her fist over her heart.

Her spine stiffened and her chin went up. “Don’t patronize me, Raef. I know it the same way you know you’re talking to ghosts of the dead instead of your own overactive imagination, even though no one else can see and feel what you do.”

“All right.” He nodded his head slowly. “You got me there.” He stood up and took his keys from his desk drawer. “Then let’s go.”

“Go?”

“To the scene of Aubrey’s accident.”

“You mean to the place she was murdered,” Lauren said firmly.

“Either way, I need to check it out.” He raised a dark brow at her when she didn’t move. “You did know that it is my standard procedure to go to the site of the death, didn’t you?”

“Yes—yes, I knew,” she stuttered. “It’s just that, well, I haven’t been back there since.”

“Not once? Not even when your sister has been manifesting to you?”

Lauren shook her head. “No.” The word was a whisper.

“I can take you home first,” he said, walking around his desk to her. “We can talk afterward and—”

“Would it be better if I come with you?” she interrupted, her voice sounding firmer. “I mean, for you and the investigation.”

“It probably would be, especially because your situation is so unique.”

Lauren stood. “Then I’ll go.”

THE TRIP FROM THE After Moonrise downtown offices to Midtown’s Swan Lake was short and silent. Not that Raef minded. He was naturally quiet and never had understood the need most people felt to chatter uncomfortably to fill a peaceful lull. He also had to ready himself for what would happen when he visited the site of a death and opened himself to the psychic images left there. Accident or murder, it wasn’t exactly a walk in the damn park, and it was always better to take a quiet moment to center himself first.

As he drove down Utica Street, he glanced at Lauren. Her face was pale and set. She was staring straight ahead. He thought she looked like a marble sculpture of herself.

“It’s not going to be that bad,” he said, turning right at the entrance to the lake and parking his car along the curb that ringed the area. “I’m the psychic, remember?” Raef tried to add some lightness to the moment.

She turned cold blue eyes on him. “She was my sister. My twin. We’ve been together since we were conceived. Psychic or not, going to the place where she was killed scares me.”

Before he could even try to come up with something comforting to say, her gaze moved from his to Swan Lake. She shook her head and gave a little humorless laugh, saying, “It’s stupid to call this place a lake. It’s tiny. Except for having water, there’s nothing ‘lake’ about it.”

“They call it Swan Lake because Swan Pond doesn’t sound right,” he said.

She looked back at him. “I hate this place.”

He nodded. “That’s a normal reaction, Lauren. Your sister died here—of course you have a strong negative reaction to it.”

“There’s more to it than that.”

He wanted to tell her that the relatives of the dead always felt like there was more to it than simple death, even if it took their loved one peacefully, in the middle of the night, during the winter of life. Instead, he swallowed back the condescension and said, “Are you ready? You can wait here if you need to.”

“I’m ready, and I’m going with you.”

She sounded one hundred percent sure, but her face was still unnaturally pale as they walked slowly to the sidewalk that circled the oblong-shaped body of water. Raef thought that Lauren had been right—the place was no damn lake, even if it was pretty and well tended. The sidewalk had only a fourth of a mile circumference, or at least that’s what the helpful signpost said. It was the same signpost that talked about the different types of waterfowl that could be found in the area, in particular noting the mated pair of swans for which the lake had been named.

The sign also asked visitors not to feed the fowl, including the swans. And it insisted everyone except “authorized personnel” remain outside the fence that ringed the area.

“The entrance to the dock that takes you to the island is over there.” Lauren pointed down the sidewalk to their right.

Raef nodded and they continued walking. He glanced around them. The October morning hadn’t turned cold and cloudy yet, as Channel Six weather had predicted. Big surprise that they got it wrong. So it was a gorgeous morning, but an off hour, only just before 10:00 a.m. Too late for morning walkers and bird-watchers, and too early for those who liked to eat their lunch at the park. There was only a retired couple sitting on a bench on the opposite side of the lake, reading a paper together. Good. Less gawkers, he thought, while he followed the line of the sturdy green fence that ensured park visitors didn’t disturb the waterfowl. A flurry of honking and splashing pulled his gaze to the lake. One of the swans was bullying a group of ducks that must have drifted too close to his personal space.

“They’re mean,” Lauren said. “Doesn’t matter how pretty they are—they’re mean and dirty. And the biggest reason my company has to come out here so often.”

“You still have the contract to maintain the plants here?”

Lauren nodded, but she looked uncomfortable. “Aubrey wants it that way. She doesn’t like to let a little thing like her death get in the way of good business.”

“But you said you hadn’t been here since her death.”

“I haven’t. I have five employees, remember?”

Then Lauren’s use of the present tense about her sister’s wishes caught up to his thoughts. “So she communicates with you about your business?”

“She communicates with me about lots of things, just not about her murder. Actually, I don’t feel right unless she and I are talking. I don’t feel whole without her….” Lauren’s words trailed off as she came to an awkward silence. As if just realizing what she’d said, she shook her head and attempted a smile. “I’m repeating myself, but it’s hard not to. My life isn’t the same without her.”

Raef started to comment, but Lauren’s humorless laugh silenced him. “Yeah, I know. It’s normal for me to feel her loss. Normal for things to be different. Normal to grieve.” She shook her head, looking out at the small lake. “I’ve heard it all. Not one single person really gets it.”

There didn’t seem to be anything Raef could say to her that hadn’t been said, obviously to no effect, by others. Plus, maybe Lauren was right. He’d never heard of a twin manifestation and possession before. Maybe there were unusual forces at work in this death. Who was he to scoff at the abnormal? Hell, he lived in Abnormalville; even the other psychics at After Moonrise kept him at a distance. You don’t have to be a Greek god to know that if you invite Discord to a party, all hell is gonna break loose.

Shit, his life sucked.

They’d come to a locked gate in the fence, and Lauren stopped. Just inside the gate there was a small wooden dock and a slim, slatted walkway that led from it to the island of craggy stone, foliage and a waterfall-like fountain cascading down one side of it that sat in the middle of this end of the lake. “There.” Lauren’s voice was pitched low. “It’s out there that it happened.” The eyes she turned to him were haunted with sadness. “You’ll need to go out there, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

She drew a deep breath. “Then let’s go.” Lauren flipped open the metal cap that held an elaborate keypad for the locking mechanism on the gate. Her hands shook only a little as she pressed the series of buttons that made the gate whir and click, and finally open. Without waiting for him, she strode through it and onto the dock. It was only then that she stopped, hands fisted at her sides, eyes looking at her feet, at the water, at the shore. Everywhere except out at the island.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Raef said.

“Okay. Yes. Okay. I can do this.”

Lauren stepped onto the walkway. Raef stayed close to her, worried that she might pass out and fall into the damn water. That was something neither of them needed. They were halfway to the island when Raef steeled himself and then dropped the barriers he usually kept firmly locked around his mind.

Death, he whispered to himself, come to me.

He braced himself for the influx of terror and anger and hurt and pain that always flooded him so near the site of a death.

And there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The only thing he felt was the brush of the unseasonably warm October breeze and his own confusion.

“Here.” Lauren had reached the island. Raef realized he’d stopped and quickly closed the distance between them. “This is where it happened.” She pointed a shaky hand at the base of the rocky island where it met the water. There were several floating plants that looked to Raef like lily pads, along with some bushy clumps of underwater grasses. “Aubrey was replacing the water lilies, trimming the black bamboo and cleaning the algae from the spirogyra. She stepped down there—” Lauren motioned to a ledgelike edge of the island “—and was working with the plants, half in and half out of the water. The mechanism that powers the pump to the waterfall is under that ledge. The police say she cut the electrical line while she was working with the plants. The pump shorted out, sending an electrical current through the water and killing Aubrey. Technically, that’s what happened. But it was no accident.”

“Are you sure?”

Lauren’s pale cheeks flushed. “I already told you. I am absolutely certain my sister was killed!”

“That’s not what I’m asking. I want to know are you sure that this is where she died.”

“Of course I am.”

“Her death happened here and not at St. John’s?” Raef made an impatient jerk of his chin at the hospital that was directly across the street from Swan Lake.

“Yes. She was dead when the joggers found her. They even came to her funeral. I talked to one of them myself. She was floating facedown in the water right there, tangled in the spirogyra grass.” Lauren’s hand was still a little shaky when she pointed to the spot below them where her sister’s body had been discovered. “There—right there is where they pulled her from the pond.”

Raef didn’t say anything else. He just continued to stare at the water and the odd, curling grass that floated like Medusa’s hair just beneath the surface.

Nothing. He felt nothing.

“Raef, what is it? What’s happening?”

“Your sister couldn’t have died here.”

Lauren frowned at him. “Of course she did. That’s the one part of the police report that was completely accurate.”

“How about the coroner’s report? Are you sure it concurred?”

“Yes. The coroner listed her time of death as more than an hour before the joggers called 9-1-1.”

“You’ve read it? You’ve seen the report?”

“Yes and yes. I’ve scoured over it. I practically have it memorized, much to the TPD’s irritation. Raef, what is it?”

“There’s nothing here. No psychic Tracing of a death at all. And that is impossible.”

Lauren opened her mouth, but instead of speaking, a strangled gasp wrenched from her. She swayed, her eyes fluttering, and Raef moved quickly to her side, steadying her by grasping her arm.

“Easy there. I’ll figure this out and—” His words broke off abruptly as emotions rippled through him. But they weren’t death scene emotions, familiar if numbing in their violence. Instead, joy and warmth and a poignant sense of longing filled him. He tried to throw up his mental barriers, but his traitorous Gift ignored it, leaving him naked and defenseless to the onslaught. Then the air beside Lauren rippled and her twin’s ethereal body manifested.

“I knew you’d come. I knew you wouldn’t let us down. I remembered you from that article in Oklahoma Today magazine last year.” She grinned impishly. “It said you were the best psychic detective in Oklahoma—that you were like an Old West sheriff. You always got your man.”