The Siege by Alexie Aaron Page B

before.  I think we should get Father Santos in on this.”
    “Mia, may I give you some advice?” Erin asked.
    “Sure, go ahead.”
    “Don’t bombard Burt with priests and doctors without letting him agree to having them involved.  If Burt takes action, then he owns that there is a problem. This way, he may be more successful in dealing with it.”
    Mia nodded.  “That’s very wise.”
    “My mommy’s the best,” Audrey blurted out.  She started singing, “My mommy can beat your mommy…”
    “I definitely will have the pump turned down,” Erin whispered.
     
    ~
     
    Dave and Murphy arrived back to find that Cid had left Dave a hot meal warming in the oven along with a thermos of hot chocolate.  Murphy nodded his approval.
    “I think this is positive reinforcement,” Dave said, searching out a set of hot pads to extract his hot plate.
    “Tough guy,” Murphy said gruffly.
    “I have to keep my rep, dude.  Look at you with your axe.  No one’s going to mess with you.  I’m five foot five in a six foot world; I have to keep my guard up.”
    Murphy pointed to Dave’s chin and said dryly, “Evidently.”
    “Shut up,” Dave countered and poured himself a mug of the hot chocolate.  “I’ll be with you in the barn after I warm up a bit.”
    Murphy tipped his hat and disappeared.
    Dave stared at the plate before him and saw that it wasn’t just some slop mounded in the middle of the plate.  Instead, a breaded pork chop was nestled in the middle of mashed potatoes and two green vegetables.  A smattering of apple crisp hugged the plate.  This was a lot of hard work for Cid to go through for him.  Dave felt bad about his constant needling of Saint Cid.  But if Cid acted like this, how was Dave going to possibly keep up?  He didn’t want to come up short.
    Something flashed by the kitchen window.  He excused it as a bird, but when two other white masses followed the first, then Dave knew something paranormal was going on.  He set his plate back in the oven and grabbed his coat as he ran out the front door and around the farmhouse to get behind whatever was moving about the property.  He saw a trio of what Mia would call “healthy” spirits.
    “They’re healthy or have a lot of energy,” she had stated as they sat on top of a large mausoleum in the Big Bear Lake Cemetery.  Mia had brought him there to give him some training.
    “How do you know?”
    “Look at the weight of them.  I’m not explaining this right.  They look three dimensional like a person but opaque.  When they fully manifest, it will be hard to tell the difference between them and the living, so you need to look for these three things.  One: they move faster than a human.  This is the distortion you see in cheap Hollywood movies. They’ve captured it quite well.  I wonder if they have sighted individuals on payroll.  Two:  they don’t breathe or blink.  Some people will tell you that they have dead eyes, but the real powerful ones, like our pal Murphy, have a twinkle or gleam in them.  Three:  I’m told their fashions are out of style.  This is where I get into trouble.”
    Dave wasn’t an expert on fashion either, but the three male spirits that had their backs to Dave exhibited the first two tells.  An inexperienced sensitive would go boldly up to the three and ask what they were doing, but Dave knew from his experience at Lucky’s that ghosts were dangerous.  He hung back and watched the trio as they took turns looking through the back wall of the barn.
    He needed to warn Murphy.  Could he simply walk by these creatures?  He could if they didn’t sense that he could see them.  Dave started whistling as he stomped through the two inches of freshly fallen snow on his way to the barn.  He deliberately did not make eye contact with the three, and for window dressing, he stopped at one point and looked around as if he thought he heard something.  He shook his head, which was some doing as a big ugly