Fiction Friday - Safe Haven by Angie Capozello

Virgil was proud of the fact that he never needed therapy. There were not many field agents at the Tactical Paranormal Response Unit that could say that. Some simply reached their limit for dealing with horrors. For others, having one borrowed psyche dropped into their heads was one too many.  The shelf life of a field agent was generally three to five years, and then came the rubber rooms and therapy sessions and the orderlies with their plastered-on smiles…

After eight years and fifteen personality transfers Virgil was still reasonably sane, and it was all because of the peculiar regimen he imposed on himself after every mission. He had a list. A long one.

He rested his elbows on the balcony of the cheap airport hotel he was staying at and took a drag on an unfiltered Lucky Strike.  He had kept some of the habits he picked up along the way, like the cigarettes, but never any of the important ones.  Anyone could pick up smoking, or quit, it wasn’t what defined a person.  Maybe he’d keep the drug runners’ skill at racing small boats through the bayou…

His hands started to shake as his thoughts drifted into the latest borrowed persona.  The hooker lying on the bed in the room started reading to him again.

“Your parents are dead. You and your sister went into foster care. Your sister is dead.”

He ground out the cigarette and went back inside.  Miranda was a gem, a call girl who knew how to keep it professional, and never asked any questions. She wasn’t anything special to look at, but that didn’t matter – he didn’t hire her for that. She never even took off her clothes.  All she had to do was read him the list whenever he got shaky, and he paid her well for it.  He referred to it as detox.

“You are thirty five.  You hate sports.”  Virgil didn’t hate sports, he hated blocking out all the raw emotions from frenzied, drunken fans.  Click, another piece of himself slotted back into place, blotting out the other person’s love of football.

The door buzzer interrupted her litany, and he had to fight off a surge of rage that was purely his own. Everyone at the Agency knew not to bother him for at least a week after he got back from a mission. He needed that week.  Which meant it was either an enemy at the door, or an emergency at work that he was in no shape to deal with.  He motioned for Miranda to go back into the bathroom and picked up the loaded gun he kept on the nightstand.  A quick glance out the peephole, and a brush with the visitors’ mind told him everything he needed to know.

A leggy café-au-lait beauty in a crisp business suit waited outside.  “I know you’re in there, Virgil,” Agent Lares said. “I’m calling in that favor you owe me.”

He threw the bolts and yanked open the door.  “Dis had betta be good, ma cher.”  Damn. The other persona was still bleeding through.  He hands were shaking so bad he nearly dropped the gun. He started reciting the list in his head. I am not a creole wannabe drug czar.  I’m a washed up Hollywood has-been turned government spook. 

Lares brushed past him.  “We’ve got a kidnapping case that’s gone bad, and I need a map reading. I brought the pendulum.”  She set a tablet PC on the bed, already cued up to a map program, and held out a crystal point attached to a ring by a short chain.

“It’s safe, Miranda,” Virgil said to the hooker. He pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket and tossed her a few.  “Get us some dinner, this won’t take long.”

Miranda nodded, giving Lares an appraising glance. “I’ll get the usual,” she said, and picked up the key card for the door on the way out.

“What’s my focus?” he said to Lares, more a snarl than a question.

She pointed, and the ghost of a small girl materialized next to her.  Lares was what the Agency called a Ghost Talker, named after the WWII Navajo Wind Talkers. Only instead of passing coded messages, she passed on messages from the dead.

Virgil made sure to sit down before the little ghost put her hand in his.  Her faded psyche felt like splinters of ice being driven into his already battered mind.  He snatched up the pendulum and slid the ring over his middle finger, letting the crystal hang straight down over the map.  His head snapped back and he stared blindly up at the ceiling.  His inner eye was all he needed now.

Roads flew past, lined with trees.  “He’s not in town. West. Scroll. Scroll.  Zoom in. Further. Scroll.”

Lares sat opposite from him, working the map with taps on the screen.  He could see the trees open out into plowed fields. “Keep scrolling.  Stop. Back up. Left, dirt road.  A farm. Outbuildings. A hayloft.  Two little girls.” He choked and gripped the crystal in his hand, hard enough to draw blood.  The pain snapped him out of the trance before he got too close to their minds.  “They’re alive,” he croaked, shaken, and tossed the pendulum aside in favor of a glass of water that Lares held out to him.  She motioned the ghost to step back.

“How long was I out?” he asked.

“Forty five minutes.”

Miranda sat at the small table in the corner of the room, her dinner finished.  She handed him a bag that that smelled like bacon, and an MP3 player.  “She asked me to record your list for you.”

He nodded.  Lares knew him all too well. There was no way he could sit this one out, not when there were kids involved.  He pulled out the rest of the wad of bills and tossed it to Miranda.  “I may call when I get back.”

She flipped through the money. “I’ll be free all week,” she said, and left without comment.  She really was a professional.

Twenty minutes later they were in Lares’ car and tearing along the coastal highway into the countryside.  Virgil had the earbuds in, eyes closed, listening to Miranda’s lovely voice reading out all the sordid details of his life with clinical detachment.  He took another bite of the burger she had brought him.  It was greasy, smelly, and wiped out the craving for home-cooked jumbalaya the other persona loved.

He didn’t open his eyes until the car screeched to a halt. The farm was in poor repair - half the buildings had roofs missing, and there wasn’t a window intact anywhere that he could see. An icy splinter of panic from the small ghost in the back seat sent his mind reeling, and Lares had to slap him to get his attention.  “Put up a shield, Virgil!”

The cajun drug runner had no idea what she was talking about.  He was not that man.  There were two terrified little girls nearby.  He dove out of the car and followed Lares at a run, and he could hear them screaming.  He couldn’t get a grip their assailants’ mind; he couldn’t even get a grip on his own.  All he could do was send out a psychic shout and hope no-one was near the edge of the hayloft.

The girl’s voices cut out from the shock of it, and a heavyset man with a knife lumbered into view overhead.  Lares made a violent sweeping motion with her hand, and the ghosts of all the cattle slaughtered here stampeded toward the kidnapper.  He staggered back and slammed into the wall of the barn. Lares all but flew up the ladder to the loft in hot pursuit.  She gave him a single, well placed blow to the jaw and he collapsed in a blubbering heap, completely drained by the ghosts.

Virgil made straight for the girls. Their fear hit him like a palpable wave and blew away the last bits of the borrowed persona.  This was what he did. He helped people. It was who he was, the one who could blunt their pain and terror, and pave the way for their minds to heal.  He knelt down and they ran to him, flung their arms around his neck and started crying.

How many times had he comforted his little sister like this?  They had been separated by the foster system, but lived only a few miles apart. She used to run away when things got really bad, and he would tell her all the things he was telling these girls.  He was here, they were safe now. It was going to be okay.  It was never okay for his sister.  Their case worker always found them, and took her back. One day, her foster father made sure she would never sneak out again.

These two would be all right though. They had a family that loved them. He could see it all in their minds, and he reminded them of it. Mother, father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors…

They were quiet, each with a head resting on his shoulders when he felt Lares’ hand brush his hair.  “The police are here, and their parents have been notified.  We need to get them outside before that bastard wakes up.”

“I’ll go down the ladder first,” he said. It only took a few minutes to get the girls down the rickety ladder to the ground floor.  Children are resilient, and know how to climb. An adult wouldn’t have handled it half as well, after all they had been through.

As they walked out of the barn into the late afternoon sunlight, the girls clung to his hands and wouldn’t let go. There were too many strange people, too much noise from all the sirens.  It was only when they heard their parent’s voices on a borrowed cell phone that they finally went with the paramedics to be checked over.

Virgil felt another splinter of ice in his mind as the little ghost held his hand.  He comforting thoughts to her too.  She needed it.  They were wheeling a gurney with a small black body bag out of the farmhouse.  She gave his hand one last squeeze, and disappeared.

Lares gave him a grateful look as the spirit faded.  “Sally says thank you.”

“I know.”  He tapped out a cigarette and lit it up. “Give me a lift back to HQ?”

“Not the hotel?”

He thought about the room, and the safe haven it represented for him.  No, he didn’t need it now.  The last of the emergency vehicles had pulled away, to make way for the forensics crew.

“Nah. I’ve got a few weeks of paperwork to catch up on,” he said.  “Let’s get out of here.”

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This story is based on characters from a novel in progress. It won an honorable mention in the 2011 Writer's Digest annual competition for genre short story, and I'm thrilled Johanna invited me to share it with you here.  If you liked it, you can find more of my writing at http://techtigger.wordpress.com

-- Angie