JAYWALKING TO DEMONSPACE by Buffi BeCraft and Randall BeCraft
Ten Hughes is a guy with the usual problems. Riiight. 1) Find a a good day care that takes kids with special problems. - Does being dead count? 2) Show up for traffic court. - Apparently, you can be arrested for dimensional travel without a liscense. 3) Diversify career options. - You can't call it ghost-hunting if the ghosts keep showing up! Mechanic by day, dimensional commuter in his dreams. Both worlds collide when Ten takes a job as a medium to investigate haunted house. Now the question is: Can he stay ahead of the learning curve enough to keep from being eaten by wraiths, arrested by demons, and avert a preschool poltergeist tantrum of hellish proportions.BUY THE BOOK *** READ THE EXCERPT
EXCERPT:
Using the damp end of his bath sheet, Ten Hughes wiped the shaving cream leftovers trapped in the fan lines around his eyes and checked for stray nicks that would make folks think he’d tried to slit his own throat.
“Man, what a way to start the day.” The freshly-shaven, hollow eyed mug that grimaced before tossing the towel over the shower rod appeared exactly like Ten felt. “Death by sleep-disorder. You know the eulogy is going to suck. Here lies Ten Hughes. Chronic insomniac. Strange, asleep or awake,” he told the scary middle-aged reflection.
Maybe he needed a new image? He was getting way too old to be called by his high school basketball jersey number. Just yesterday, some idiot kid paused his mid-manic texting and smirked. “Seriously? Ten? Like the number?” Yeah, there were days he wished for normalcy and a cease-fire from the stupid jokes.
Shuffling out of the bathroom, he scooped up the plain white mug off the counter and contemplated using his given name. Franklin? Frank? Oh, hell no, that was not happening at all. The idea was on the same par as the last swig of cold coffee that hit the back of his throat, sliding down in a bitter lurch. He tugged his favorite baseball cap on hard; the worn fabric trapping his hair against his head as it nearly scraped the top of his ears.
Ten would admit to being weird. But a dork? Nah. Someone named Franklin should be teaching English lit and wearing an argyle sweater. Whatever the hell argyle was, it sounded itchy. It sounded fashionable for someone about thirty years older than the thirty-six he already had on him.
Women, except for in his dreams, were picky creatures with hidden motives. Grease-monkeys were hardly fashionable. Necessary though, when the alternator went out The problem wasn’t liking women that way. Ten liked women, a lot.
He also liked comfortable clothes and doing things his own way. He shaved before the whiskers got out of hand and got a haircut when he felt like it. For dress up, Ten had his bowling-shirts, though he didn’t really bowl. Basketball was still his game. Between that and fishing, he found both crowds and isolation that kept his secrets safe and his peace of mind secure.
Ten stopped, his work boots sinking into the thick pile of the carpet as the negative energy infusing his aura lured his emotions downward, a holdover from his dreams. The dark and dangerous dreams edged at his thoughts, a dirge that threatened to drag him under. No, he told himself and the dark unsettled energy, I am happy with my life.
One hand balled into a fist, Ten reached with the other to touch the cool textured wall in his living room. The realness of the here and now, his world, centered him. Under his fingers, the faint textured pattern applied during the last remodel was soothing and calm. Positive energy and the collected memories of a lifetime of living in this house eased the memories of the things he did and saw in his nighttime dreamscape.
The house was his sanctuary. Small but adequate, and located in an indifferent neighborhood going through gentrification. Inherited from his parents almost thirteen years ago after the driver of a semi fell asleep at the wheel and literally ran over their tiny compact car. On a more positive note, they’d been one of those disgustingly-in-love couples; neither one of his parents would have survived long without the other.
At any rate, Ten had never lived anywhere else and the house fit his needs perfectly. He’d grown up here. In the same neighborhood where he’d caught the bus from the time he began kindergarten to the day he decided to stop struggling to fit in and dropped out.
Over the years, he’d kept himself busy by painting the walls when they needed it, uncovering and replacing the wood floor with carpet. The girly flower-covered sofa with its weird camel-hump had been replaced by a comfortable sectional with built in recliners. Gone too were the dainty glass and brass and glass coffee tables his mom had loved. In Ten’s opinion, the only real furniture a guy could kick his feet up on one side, drop a pizza box on the other, was sturdy wood.
For the most part though, the house was the same as the one he’d grown up in, with the same pictures and accumulated junk that his parents had collected during their marriage. Ten liked to think that it gave the house a good vibe without being creepy. The comforting energy that he relied on at the conclusion of the day worked its magic, sweeping the darkness into the crevices and lifting the weight from his shoulders. The day now had the bright newness a morning was supposed to have. Ten anticipated trying to figure out why Dan Hay’s little sedan wouldn’t accelerate over thirty without choking down. Today was going to be a good day.
Ten started towards the door, then stopped. He stared, confused at the empty hook where his keys usually hanged. Automatically, he patted his pockets, wondering if he left them in yesterday’s jeans. He glanced up, the hook was still empty.
“Denny!” The cold shiver started at the base of Ten’s neck. Stoically, he suppressed the shudder, drawing down his eyebrows when what he really wanted was to roll his eyes and laugh at the old trick. Ten hadn’t fallen for that one since he was eight. “C’mon Denny. I don’t have time to play poltergeist games.” Manifesting slowly, the short see-through figure of a child crossed his arms and pouted. Ten wiggled the fingers of one hand, palm out, and tried for the same stern attitude his dad used to use on him. “I’ve got to go to work.”
“I want to go with you.” Levitating up, Denny held out his small arms, forever caught in the innocent needy stage before a child starts to exert his independence. “You don’t take me anywhere no-mores.” Pictures and knick-knacks’ started trembled in place, a sure sign that Denny’s mood might go from the cute and pouty almost-five-year-old he’d died as to a demonic apparition having one hell of a tantrum. “I want to go to school with you.”
Catching and holding the ghost-child close, Ten wondered anew how something made up only of spirit and soul could have such solid mass and weight. Even Denny’s clothes changed depending on the spirit’s mood or what he’d been watching on TV.
Of course, no one else he’d ever met perceived ghosts the way he did. Sometimes, though someone may think they saw something when Ten was touching a spirit. But that was rare and Ten had tried over the years to limit his PDAs, or public displays of apparitions, to late night trips to the park so Denny could play.
He squeezed the ghost-child. “Remember, I stopped going to school a while ago. I go to work in a boring garage now.” Denny hung on tight. His mutinous pout was as much a barometer as the trembling pictures. Ten swung around, implementing plan B with the ease of a seasoned negotiator. “And I need my keys to get to the job so I have money to pay the cable company to keep your favorite TV show on.”
Anything cartoony or populated with puppets was Denny’s favorite. The more bright colors, and sing-along, the better. Thank the gods that the days of the hideous purple dinosaur had been replaced by childish Hispanic explorers and racecars. Ten could sit down and watch those without the urge to pray for a second ice age. That stupid singing, dancing dino was a disgrace to reptiles universally.
“Okay.” Denny grinned, gap-toothed as ever and wriggled to get down. The remote leapt of the coffee table, flying right into the boy’s hand; a neat trick Ten often wondered the mechanics of how it was accomplished.
Aiming the remote at the seventy-two inch plasma TV, he switched it to the cartoon channel. “Keys, Den.” Ten reminded, swiping them out of the air when they literally dropped out of nowhere. “Thanks buddy.” With Denny engrossed in old-fashioned wabbit hunting, he slipped out the door. Good-byes always made the ghost clingy and hard to leave behind.
Lingering summer heat hit Ten as he power-walked to his truck, parked on the street instead of the garage where Denny might hear him drive away. At the first light, he felt like congratulating himself for his grand escape. Then the first prickle of guilt hit him. He drove the rest of the way to work trying to convince himself that he wasn’t abandoning a five year old at home. Denny would have been four and a half years older than him had he lived, and frankly, Ten had to work.
The guilt rode him hard. Ten reminded himself that wasn’t sluffing off oldest friend in the world. His and Denny’s relationship had evolved from imaginary friend, to grade school curse, to the present. Ten shook his head. He didn’t even know what to call his relationship with Denny anymore.
He sighed. Yep, not only was he old. He was strange.
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