I'm a Discount Spiritual Medium. Dead People are Tough Customers!!

I'm a Discount Spiritual Medium. Dead People are Tough Customers!!

The woman in front of me was in tears, sobbing as I clutched her cold, clammy hands from across the table. She looked desperate, and it was my job to help her. After all, she had paid the twelve dollars cash, up front.

"Harold Myers, we call you forth from the other side, to speak to you. Hear our voices and heed our cries."

A sad wailing noise began to emit from hidden speakers all around the room. The hydraulic table started to lift and turn slightly, as if one side had just begun to float. If the woman got down on her hands and knees, she might see the movement beneath the table leg, making it rise. But nobody had ever done that before. At least, not so far.

I cleared my throat, giving an irritated glare up at the camera mounted in the corner of the room. The loud wailing began to dissipate, as my partner turned the volume of the recording down slightly so I could be heard.

"Your wife is here, Harold. She wants to see you one last time, to hear your voice."

This is where it always got a little weird.

See, the thing is, I'm a REAL medium. I can actually see dead people, just like that little kid in that movie. But the problem is, nobody wants to hear what the dead are saying. That shit is way too depressing.

Suddenly there was a man standing in front of me, his face half-eaten by worms. Nightcrawlers and spiders skittered out from his mouth as he spoke, spilling grave soil on my fresh carpeting. I tried not to flinch backwards in sheer terror, but it was difficult. After a few seconds I was able to put on my small fake smile again and could speak. But those worms crawling out of his nostrils made it difficult to concentrate. I kept trying to decide if there were two of them, or just one long one that was kinda stuck up there, like a slimy, wriggling septum piercing.

"What the fuck do you want, bitch? I killed myself to get away from you."

I paused for a second, trying not to cringe, and instead to reflect just the right amount of gravitas and spiritual piousness.

"What do you need, my love? I am at peace on the other side, but if you need me, I am here for you," I said, trying to impersonate the dead man's gravelly voice as best I could.

"Dude, what the fuck?" Harold said, looking irritated. "No ad-libs, asshole, I know you can hear me. And that’s not what I sound like."

I held up my hand to the woman, as if taking a second to receive the next transmission. The whole time I tried to give off the vibe of someone being electrocuted with a very low voltage, my body shaking and eyelids flickering open and closed. I began to speak again, slowly, as if with a great effort to stay composed.

"I can't wait to see you again one day. The worst part of being dead is not being able to gaze upon your beautiful face each morning," I let my voice waver, rising and falling as if the transmission from the netherworld were fading in and out.

"Really!? Oh, Harold! I knew you loved me. I just wish I could take it all back! Everything I said, I didn't mean it!"

Harold spat out a cockroach and looked at me with murder in his eyes.

"You tell that bitch I'm haunting her ass for cheating on me. Every night while she sleeps I'm casting a bad juju on her… And I'm gonna spit in her mouth," he added, as an afterthought.

"OOoooh, the transmission is faaaading… I have to go now, Darcy. But I want you to know how much I love you. You mean the world to me, my dear."

She burst into tears and stood to give me a hug. I'd see a big tip out of this one. But Harold would likely come visit me tonight to give me a good scare. I'd have to hang up extra sage. Ghosts fucking hate that shit.

Darcy left a little while later. She had a glow about her, and would go on to tell her friends and family about my work. If I was lucky, maybe I would get a referral or two out of it.

Another crying widow, another bloodless husband spilling grave soil on my new carpeting. I got out the DustBuster and started to vacuum up the brownish black muck. A few errant worms disappeared into the vacuum as well. Nobody else could see them but me. When I went to empty the dirt into the garbage, there was nothing inside the DustBuster except some lint and hair. That happens sometimes.

For a long time I worried I was crazy, until I figured out how to make a buck out of my ability to see the dead. By this point, I've pretty much gotten used to it. Although sometimes the spirits catch me off guard.

The main problem with the dead is that they are never happy to be dead. They always have unfinished business, especially nowadays, since we've all gotten so good at procrastination with the advent of social media and everything else designed to sap our time, memory and brain power. Unfulfilled wishes mean the dead are gonna stick around until those issues are dealt with. And unfortunately most people’s kids are just as overworked and distracted as their parents, so the unfinished business never gets finished, and the world fills up with more and more dissatisfied ghosts. At this point they’re everywhere.

"Good job, dude," Sam said as I emerged from the seance room. He gave me a brisk high five. "Ten dollar tip! Man, she really bought it."

Sam had been my best friend since elementary school, and he was the only one who knew about my special skills. He was also the one who had come up with the ill-conceived notion of exploiting my powers for financial gain. I tried to explain why that was a bad idea, but all he could see were dollar signs. Eventually I relented, mostly because my unemployment ran out and job prospects in town are slim to nil.

"Yeah, we sure fooled her. Listen, can you cut the wailing noises down to maybe fifty percent next time? I swear, I'm starting to get hearing damage."

"We talked about this! I'm the special effects expert, remember? We need the decibel level to be high or the effect will be ruined. Trust me, I know what I'm doing."

"You take one film class at community college and suddenly you're an expert? Just a notch, okay? I swear my ears are gonna start bleeding from that Halloween tape. And make sure you rewind it this time, I don't think I'll be able to explain if it starts playing Monster Mash again."

"Oh, right! I'm on it," Sam said, clearly having forgotten.

He ran into the back room and I followed after him.

"Listen, I think I'm gonna duck out early and go see my dad. We're not getting any more customers today anyways," I said, feeling a bit rattled after my encounter with Harold.

"No can do. There's a Mark in the waiting room, you gotta do your thing."

"Can you please stop calling them that?"

"No, I mean his name is literally Mark Jacobson. He's got a half hour booked with you for a palm reading and seance."

"Palm reading? Since when do we even offer that? I've never done palm reading before in my life! I don't know what the hell I'm doing!"

"You really need to start reading my emails. I sent you something last night about this. I'm pretty sure I did, anyways."

"Alright, just send him in. But don't book any more appointments for this shit, I'm not a palm-reader! I'm a medium! I see dead people! Do you have any idea how fucking traumatizing that is? To see dead people all day long, day in, day out, and be forced to blatantly ignore their messages? Because it's not fun, man. And twelve bucks a head ain't cutting it anymore. We need to raise prices."

"Hence the palm reading. Listen, just read that email I probably sent you. Go in there and sit down and put on your Spirit Daddy face. Tell them they have good life lines and that the crest of their palm indicates newfound wealth coming from a source which you can’t clearly see just yet, but could after six to ten more visits. Okay, now hurry, it's almost five thirty. We gotta get him in and out before closing time so I don't miss the start of the baseball game."

I exhaled as loudly and dramatically as I could and eventually marched back into the seance room with my arms dangling limply at my sides, shuffling with each step like an exhausted teenager. Sitting back down at the table, I wondered not for the first time what the fuck I had been thinking getting into this line of work. Not to mention my choice of business partner.

The door to the seance room must have opened and closed without me noticing, because when I looked up there was a man sitting down in front of me. I tried not to show my surprise, but obviously failed, because he quickly held up his hands as if to apologize.

“My apologies, I can be a bit sneaky sometimes, I’ve been told. It must be a product of my profession. My name is Mark Jacobson. There’s something very important I need to ask my former business partner and… Well, I hear you’re the best.”

I ignored the urge to stand up to greet the man more appropriately, and stayed where I was, sitting across the table from him. Given the circumstances, it seemed best to just dive right into it.

“You have come to speak to one who has crossed over?” I asked.

“I have. But first, I was told there would be a complimentary palm reading?”

Sam. You son of a bitch.

*

After an awkward first attempt at palm reading that ended with Mark Jacobson sighing in frustration and retracting his hand from my grip with a scowl on his face, I tried my best to regain my composure.

“Sorry, I’m new to palm-reading,” I admitted. “But speaking to the dead - that is my bread and butter. Now, please tell me who you wish to contact. It may take a moment to locate their spirit and bring them here. Try to think of a fond memory or an image that brings you great joy which you associate with this person, and then tell me their name.”

I wasn’t sure if this last part actually did anything, but it helped make the customer feel more involved.

“My partner, Leonard Fleming,” the man announced. His eyes were closed as if he knew the routine already. I wondered if I was not the first medium he had met with.

“Yes, I can feel him being drawn to us already. He wishes to speak to you about a matter of great import. Take my hands and say his name again, but this time I want you to ask him to join us here. Say it three times. ‘Leonard Fleming, join us here.’”

The man did as I asked without hesitation, and I again had the impression that he’d done this before. And more than once. Whatever this man wanted to talk to the dead guy about, it was important. I could feel it.

I took a deep breath and began my act.

“Leonard Fleming, we call you forth from the other side, to speak to you. Hear our voices and heed our cries."

For a few long moments we both sat there in silence. I looked around the room as covertly as I could as the wailing sound began to emit from the hidden speakers and the table started to rise gently beneath our hands.

Rather than being alarmed by this, Mark Jacobson looked plainly annoyed by it. He scrunched his brow in frustration, as if put off by this sudden intrusion of noise and table levitation. His gaze drifted down to the pneumatic table leg, and he rolled his eyes as if he’d seen it all a thousand times before.

I felt him starting to pull his hands away, as if ready to get up and leave. Instead of letting him go, I gripped his hands more firmly, pulling him in toward me.

“My partner has a penchant for theatrics,” I whispered. “Trust me. I can do this.”

He relaxed a bit and I took a moment to let go of one of his hands and made a gesture to the camera to cut the effects. We’d come up with the hidden signal at my insistence, after the “Monster Mash” incident.

The music and sound effects dissipated and the table dropped softly back down to the floor.

I tried to make contact again, reaching out a little more forcefully this time.

"Leonard Fleming, we call you forth from the other side, to speak to you. Hear our voices and heed our cries. Answer us, please. We need to speak to you."

I felt something reaching out to make contact. It was weak at first, fading in and out. Whatever it was felt like it was a great distance away, a projection of a projection of a projection.

Finally, a man's image began to flicker in front of me. Fading in and out like a broken television signal.

"He's here," I said, having completely abandoned my usual routine. "Something's wrong. I don't know how much time we have. What do you need to ask?"

The man hesitated, as if trying to get a read on me.

"I don't feel anything. Are you sure?"

"Yes," I replied, trying to maintain the signal. "Hurry. Ask what you need to ask. He will hear your question and give an answer."

Mark Jacobson let out a sigh and asked his question. It was not the typical sort of question, either. I decided again that this was not a typical seance. Something about this was very different from anything I had done before. The image of the dead man in front of me was almost invisible, not anything like my usual sightings which were vivid and so real I could smell the decay coming off the rotting corpses. This man looked like he was… still alive.

“Samuel Jackson,” the man said, his voice fading in and out, barely audible.

“That can’t be right,” I muttered out loud. In that instant my concentration was lost and the vision of the dead man was gone. I let go of Mark Jacobson’s hands and looked up at his confused and anxious face.

“What? What did he say? Did he give you a name?”

“Yeah, but it… I mean, I guess it’s a pretty common name. He said Samuel Jackson. Does that make sense?”

As soon as the words escaped my lips his eyebrows went up in surprise.

“No. No, that can’t be right. If it is then that means…”

He looked genuinely terrified. Maybe this wasn’t about a Snakes on a Plane sequel, after all.

“Are you absolutely certain that’s what he said? Are you positive?”

“Yeah. I mean, the signal was going in and out really bad, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. But that part came through clearly. He definitely said Samuel El… Jackson.”

I tried to stop myself from adding the “L” to the middle of the name and only partially succeeded.

“Samuel Jackson,” I corrected myself. “Sorry, force of habit. The man is an icon.”

“Right. True enough. But if this is correct… I’m sorry, I need to go. Right now. Thank you for your services, you have been EXTREMELY helpful, although this was not the answer I was looking for, it is AN answer to a question which we, which I, have been very curious to know the answer to,” the man rambled, getting to his feet and heading towards the door of the seance room looking like he had seen the ghost and not me.

“Great! Don’t forget to tell your friends and receive twenty-five percent off your next visit!”

That was all I managed to get out before the door slammed shut in my face and the man was gone. He didn’t even leave a tip.

“Damn, dude. What the hell did you say to that guy? He didn’t even leave us the customary ten percent that I usually manage to squeeze out of cheapskates. Just bolted out of here like he saw a…”

“Don’t say it.”

“Ghost.”

“He didn’t see a ghost. I did. And I told him the truth. I told him what the dead guy said.”

“What!? Why!? We’ve been over this, man. The dead don’t have anything useful to say. It’s all anger and hate and unfulfilled wishes, you said so yourself.”

“Well, this guy actually had something to say. Something useful. And I got the feeling Mr. Jacobson had been to a bunch of different mediums before he came to see us. The guy saw right through your little special effects show.”

“Of course he did! I told you the wailing noises need to be louder! I reduced them by ten percent just to show you how much it impacts the overall experience. Now I have to reconfigure everything again,” he said, as if this didn’t just mean turning a volume dial from nine to ten.

“No, it had nothing to do with that. Something about this guy was different. The whole thing was weird. It was like he knew all our tricks and just wanted a straight reading. He even picked up on the pneumatic table leg - I saw him roll his eyes when he noticed it. He’s a pro.”

This managed to stop Sam in his tracks. He looked me in the eyes as if actually hearing me for the first time.

“So, what did he want?”

“Something about a betrayal. He asked the dead guy who ‘the betrayer’ was. It felt all ‘Game of Thrones’ in there for a minute. That was when the dead guy said the name. It seemed important, so I told him what he said.”

“Man, what the hell did you do that for? We don’t know what we’re getting into now. This could be some secret agent shit. CIA, FBI, NSA - we don’t have a clue who these guys are. You might have just doxxed an American spy in North Korea who has been tasked with protecting our freedom from threats domestic and abroad!”

“Have you been watching Homeland again? Man, only the first season or two were any good.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, it picks up again later on. You just need to give it another shot.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“And besides, you’re missing the overall point I’m trying to make. This is dangerous. The dead are dead for a reason and you’re not supposed to be able to see them. Just because you can doesn’t mean you need to be telling people what they say. It could bring about armageddon, or the zombie apocalypse, or worse, it could put us out of business!”

“I don’t think that would be worse than the end of the world, but point taken. Now come on, let’s close up shop. You’re gonna miss the start of the baseball game and I’m gonna miss dinnertime with dear old dad. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow.”

He was already putting on his coat, despite recent talk of potentially causing armageddon.

“And Sam,” I said as he was heading out the door. “No more palm readings.”

“Got it, boss. Whatever you say,” he mumbled as he walked out the door, clearly not having heard a word of what I just said. “Have a good night, see you tomorrow!”

Neither one of us had any idea what the next day would hold, despite my psychic abilities I was no good at telling the future.

If I’d been able to tell, though, I would have stayed in bed. It was going to be a very, very bad day.

Even worse than usual.

When I returned to the shop the next day I was only slightly surprised to see a giant sign was now hanging out front. It swayed in the breeze and I stared at it for nearly a full minute before walking past.

It was a giant hand with an eye on it. In large letters it proclaimed “PALM READING” and below that in much smaller letters it said, “and speak to your dead relatives.”

I brought a chair out from the waiting room, ignoring Sam as he said good morning. I took the chair outside and put it on the sidewalk beneath the new sign, listening as Sam protested. There was a black permanent marker in my pocket which I took out and uncapped. Then I got on top of the chair and scratched out the part that said “PALM READING” on the sign, leaving a giant black smudge and “speak to your dead relatives,” in its tiny print. Then I went around to the other side of the sign and did the same thing.

“I told you NO MORE PALM READINGS!” I yelled at Sam as he followed me back inside.

Once back in the shop, I realized that there had been someone sitting in the waiting room all along, and they had been watching the whole scene with disinterest.

“Oh, hi,” I said awkwardly. “Sorry about that. I’ll be right with you.”

I pulled Sam into the seance room and shut the door.

“Who the hell is that?”

“Uh, a customer? I thought that was obvious.”

“Since when do we get customers at this time of the morning? Can’t you tell him to come back? I need time to wake up. I haven’t even had my coffee yet. Harold kept me awake all night being intentionally spooky.”

“Listen, just talk to the guy. I don’t think you’re gonna need your morning coffee once you find out what his name is.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.”

“On second thought, just tell me.”

“Samuel. L. Jackson.”

“WHAT!? It is not.”

“Sorry, force of habit. Not that guy. It’s Samuel Jackson with NO ‘L’.”

I stared at him in numb shock, trying to decide if there was someone else here named Noel.

“You know? The BETRAYER? He’s here, dude! Isn’t that fun? I told you this would bite us in the ass and it did. Now, talk to the guy and tell him you’re a phony and you were just trying to come up with a name and you watched The Negotiator last night and it just kinda came to you. Okay, good luck. I’ll send him in when you’re ready. He already paid.”

Sam started leaving the room.

“Hey, Sam,” I called after him. He turned around and looked at me. “I think this goes without saying, but I’m still gonna say it. Don’t play the tape. No effects. Just let me talk to this guy, okay?”

He looked at me incredulously and scowled.

“Are you sure?”

“Very.”

“Okay. Good luck man. You’re gonna need it.”

*

The man came into the seance room a minute later, his face unreadable. All I could tell was that he was tired. And angry. And hadn’t shaved in several days.

Oh, and did I mention he was angry?

“You really fucked me,” he said immediately, and I could tell he didn’t want to sit down, but did anyways. Even from across the table I could see he was on the edge of his seat, coiled like a spring about to explode.

“Look, I don’t know what this is about,” I replied, already knowing what this was about.

“Sure you do. You gave my name to my boss yesterday. And now I’m here to find out who told you to say that.”

I hesitated, squirming in my seat. This was getting very uncomfortable.

And then the man removed a pistol from his waistband and pointed it at me from across the table, making me even more uncomfortable.

“Tell me the truth,” he said. “It was Deborah, right? Or Bob?”

“I don’t know who those people are,” I replied honestly. “The man who gave me your name has crossed over to the other side. I’ve always had the ability to hear the dead, and even to see them… But his voice and his image were broken. Distorted. It’s possible I made a mistake,” I said, raising my hands up like a hostage. Which, I realized, I now was.

He motioned for me to lower my hands with an angry flick of the gun in his hand. I just hoped Sam was paying attention to the cameras. But he probably wasn’t.

“I can tell your boss I made a mistake. You just have to get him on the phone for me, that’s all. We’ll get this all straightened out,” I said, hearing the fear in my voice. I’d never had a gun pointed at me before.

“My former employer is… tied up at the moment,” the man said with a smirk that I didn’t like one bit. He paused as if thinking about my words for a moment longer.

“So, you actually CAN see them? You call them forth and they come to you?”

I nodded.

“Hmmmm, maybe you’ll be of even more help than I thought.”

I shook my head.

“I’m actually of very little help to most people. My services are primarily in giving people false reassurance and token words as opposed to actually conveying the words of dead people. They are typically not very kind.”

The man scratched his head with the gun and dandruff flakes wafted down onto the shoulders of his black shirt. I tried not to stare at them and failed.

“You and I are going to take a little field trip. If you try to tell your friend out there what’s happening then I’ll kill him. He doesn’t seem very bright, so I’m guessing he won’t figure it out unless you spell it out for him. So don’t try.”

He marched me out of the room with a poorly-concealed pistol jammed up against my back.

“We’re going out for… hotdogs,” the pistol poked me hard in the spine. “Uh, not hot dogs. It’s only 9AM. We’re going out for… coffee!”

I blurted all of this out with the hope that Sam would maybe catch on to what was happening, despite his stupidity.

“Okay, have fun,” he called, raising the worn-out Teen Cosmo magazine he was reading even higher so that it completely covered his face. “Ten ways to make him notice you during band practice,” the cover proclaimed, next to a picture of Miley Cyrus from back when she was Hannah Montana.

“Grab me one!” he yelled as the door was swinging closed.

*

One thing I learned from listening to true crime podcasts for many years - NEVER go with the criminal to a second location. That’s where all the bad shit goes down.

At all costs, they say, avoid being taken to a second location.

“Okay, here we are,” Samuel Jackson said as we pulled up outside the second location.

It was an old house. Worn-out and dilapidated beyond repair. The place looked like a haunted mansion from a movie about a haunted mansion. It was painted in dark colors, the shutters hanging from their hinges and broken. A wrought-iron gate had been ajar and we’d driven through it to proceed up a very long driveway lined with ancient trees.

I could practically hear the violin instrumental playing scary music in my head. There was even a belfry sitting atop the structure, complete with a disused bell which probably contained bats. Even without entering, I could tell the place was haunted. There was a dark aura emanating from within, leaking out through the walls of the place. It would be even stronger inside, and I guessed there would be several ghosts in there. Maybe more than several.

Places like this had a bad energy. And they could actually harm you if you had a psychic connection as strong as I do. Hence, I really didn’t want to go inside. Remember the grave soil on my carpet? Imagine what a ghost ten times stronger than that could do, on its home turf, no less. It could reach right into my skull and grab my brain by its stem and squeeze. And I had no doubt I would feel it.

“This place is bad,” I said. “It’s bad news. We should go. We shouldn’t be here.”

“No shit. Of course it’s bad. This place is a portal to hell. And we’re gonna open the gateway,” Samuel Jackson said, holding the barrel of the gun up to my head. “Now move.”

*

Despite my objections I was marched into the house. As soon as we were through the door I felt the negative energy of a dozen different spirits. They emerged from the walls and stalked down the halls toward us, slowly picking up on my ability to recognize them.

“You should not have come here,” one said immediately. “He does not respect the boundaries. Do not trust him.”

“I know,” I said, pointing at the gun. “He’s gonna kill me if I don’t help him.”

“Who are you talking to?” Samuel Jackson asked.

“Dead guy. He says we shouldn’t have come here, you don’t respect the boundaries. And that I shouldn’t trust you.”

“Well, he’s right about that. Move it.”

He pointed the gun toward the living room further into the dark recesses of the home. I walked past the disapproving ghosts and tried not to stare at their rotting features, and the worms and bugs that crawled across their skin through pockmarked holes.

“In there,” he said, pointing at a room with symbols painted on the floor. Candles were already lit and burning in a circle and my first thought was that this guy had zero respect for fire safety, leaving these burning here unsupervised.

“The man who built this house was a dark sorcerer,” Samuel Jackson said. “His powers were extensive. We believed that he created a gateway here, in this room, which could be used to access the netherworld. But we haven’t been able to unlock it completely. We needed the man himself to do it. And now that you’re here, we can speak to him directly. We can bring him back. And with him, we will raise an army of the dead!”

Someone made a muffled sound from the corner of the room and I saw my client from the day prior was tied up in the corner with another man and a woman beside him. Rags were stuffed in their mouths, secured with duct tape. They looked terrified and desperate, and were shaking their heads, staring at me with wide eyes.

I tried to give them a discrete look, which said, “I got this.” But really I was just trying my best not to piss my pants. The dead people had now followed us into this room and were slowly congregating in a circle around the symbols painted on the floor, and the flickering candles were illuminating their faces with an eerie glow.

“You will call upon him when I give the signal. I will have the portal open and you must bring him forth. Then he will show us the way to keep this doorway open, so that we can bring forth the dark one and call upon the end of days.”

Fuck. I hate when Sam is right.

“Okay, sounds like a plan,” I said, trying to stay calm. “Or, hey, I have this crazy idea. What if we don’t end all of existence? I mean, it’s a nice day out there. We could go to the beach. Get ice cream. There’s so much to live for, why not just…”

He pulled back the hammer on the pistol and raised it until it was pointed at my skull.

“Right. Okay, let’s do your plan then. You just let me know when you’re ready. Oh, and what’s this guy’s name?”

“You may call him Master Davros. He will be your new god.”

“Great. Okay, I’m into it.”

The man pulled a knife from his pocket and managed to slice his palm with it intentionally, while still holding the gun somehow. I was kinda hoping he would fumble it and shoot himself accidentally, but that didn’t happen.

He started squeezing his bloody palm over the center of the symbol-covered floor. It dripped down onto the chalk outline of a pentagram and hissed, letting out a puff of smoke as if he had spilled acid instead of blood. Then he began to chant. The words were dark and ominous, their meanings buried in an ancient language that I did not understand.

The dead were staring at me, waiting to see what I would do. They looked unable or unwilling to intercede, as if terrified of what the master might do to them if he actually emerged from the netherworld.

A swirling vortex appeared in the center of the room, a dark power emanating from within it. I saw horned creatures poke their heads out to look at us, their features monstrous and horrifying - but they were unable to stay on our side and looked as if they were burnt by the sun of our world - even just the few rays of it which broke through the shadows caused their skin to sizzle and smoke.

“Now,” Samuel Jackson said, clearly focused on the vortex as he continued his chanting ritual, raising the gun to point it at my head again. “Do it now!”

“We call you forth from the other side to speak with us,” I began, my voice trembling and uneven. “Leonard Fleming, hear our voices and heed our cries.”

It took a second for the man to realize what I had done. I was not calling for the person he wanted. But I had never intended to do that. It seemed like a really bad idea to start the apocalypse. I’d rather get shot in the face than do that.

“Leonard Fleming, come back to our world and kick this guy’s ass,” I said, ducking down behind a nearby sofa as Samuel Jackson fired his gun at me several times, missing with each shot.

The man who came back through the portal was wrinkled and haggard, his hair snowy white - but I guessed it probably didn’t look like that before he was shoved through the gateway into hell by his coworker, the betrayer.

It didn’t take long before he had his hands wrapped around Samuel Jackson’s wrist and was squeezing it tightly, twisting it behind his back and causing him to drop the gun. It helped that I was distracting him since he wanted me dead.

I went over to help him and the two of us grabbed hold of the man as he fought us and slapped at us ineffectually with his bloody hand. Then we shoved him through the portal into hell.

We snuffed out the candles and watched as the portal slowly closed up, demon hands reaching out to swipe at us desperately, trying to drag us in. A few made last-second attempts to crawl out and escape the underworld, but then scrambled back inside quickly, looking like kittens testing the heat of an oven before finding it unbearable.

“Well, so much for not believing in the existence of hell,” I said. “What was it like there?”

The man gave me a look, as if saying not to ever ask him that question again.

“What do you think it was like?”

“Uh, bad?”

“Multiply that by a billion. Regardless, thank you for saving me. That piece of shit would have left me there forever and would have unleashed hell on earth if he could have.”

The people who were tied up in the corner called out again, a little more desperately this time, and the two of us started going over to help them.

At the last second, just as the portal was about to close completely, a tentacle snapped out from within and reached for me, grabbing hold of my ankle.

I screamed and tried to grab hold of anything I could to stop myself from being dragged into the portal, but it was useless. The sizzling, smoking skin of the tentacle had wrapped me up tightly, and whatever was on the other end of it was far stronger than me.

My fingernails broke off and splintered as I tried desperately to dig them into the wooden floorboards. The pain was horrible, but I knew that being stuck in hell would be worse, so I dug my fingers in even more desperately, the blood only making them slicker.

I howled and cried out in sheer terror as the portal got closer and closer. It was closing but it would stay open just long enough to take me through to the other side.

And then, at the last possible second, a sound of fire being extinguished came from the far side of the room. As the last forgotten candle was put out by my savior, Leonard Fleming, the portal closed, chopping off the tentacle an inch short of my foot.

What was left of the demon squid held on in a tight vice grip, refusing to let go. I pried it off with disgust, then watched as it turned to ash before my eyes, the particles floating away on an unfelt wind.

“Thanks,” I said to Leonard as he reached out his hand to help me up. “You saved me.”

“Hey, it’s the least I can do,” he replied. “You saved me first. I guess we’re pretty much even.”

“Oh.”

For some reason that kinda took the wind out of my sails. The idea of someone owing me a life-debt was appealing in a way I had not foreseen.

I looked over at the other three paranormal researchers, or whatever they were.

“I definitely saved you guys too. And I didn’t see any of you lift a finger just now. That’s all I’m saying. If you want to owe me one, I’m okay with that.”

They nodded awkwardly in unison, still tied up and gagged.

My phone rang.

“Hang on a sec, let me get this and then I’ll help untie you. Hyello,” I said, sliding the icon up on the screen to accept the call.

“Dude,” Sam said on the other end. “Where the HELL are you? I’ve been waiting for that coffee for like twenty minutes!”

I hung up immediately.

Suddenly I decided to take a vacation. A day off. Hell, maybe even a week off.

After all this, I was gonna sleep like the DEAD