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Coffee? Tea? Beelzebub?
The windows and doors were all tightly shut, but a frosty chill crisped the air nonetheless. The old woman pulled an afghan off the back of the armchair and picked up her Earl Grey to take another sip, taking small comfort in its warmth. The cup rattled against the saucer as she replaced it with a thin, trembling hand. However, long after she let go, it continued trembling on its own.
As the old transistor radio on the tray next to her tinned out a Tony Bennett tune, the coffee pot in the kitchen shook violently. Lawrence had never been fond of Tony; he always remarked how much better Perry Como was and referred to Bennett as "that cheap knock-off."
The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gay
Tony continued crooning. Despite a twenty year difference in their ages, she had always melted when she heard Tony. Perhaps, she thought, that was why Lawrence never liked him.
The glory that was Rome is of another day
The commotion in the kitchen continued and she turned the radio up louder.
I left my heart in San Francisco
Lawrence had never been happy in San Francisco, but once the children were born they decided to stay.
High on a hill it calls to me
In the old days, San Francisco was a perfect place to live. Lawrence took work right out of the navy and made a fair living. They'd bought a small house on Cole where they raised their kids. Over the years, they watched the neighborhood first boom, then decline, as the section between Oak and Frederick was overrun with the beatnicks with their coffee shops and black berets. Then came the hippies with their horrendously painted vans and long hair. The summer of '69 was more than Lawrence could take and he wanted to move out, but she convinced him to stay. The 70's were quieter, although the neighborhood still declined. But the neighbors were always friendly enough. It could have been worse, she often told Lawrence; their friends in the Castro area and North Beach were all but driven from their homes by the flood of homosexuals that started coming around '73.
To be where little cable cars climb half-way to the stars
The cable cars still ran through Chinatown and Russian Hill, but mostly for the tourists. You could go down to the Wharf and ride one all the way up Hyde to Nob Hill, but she hadn't been on one in years.
The morning fog may chill the air, but I don't care
After Lawrence died, she found a small apartment in Parkside. It wasn't much, but it was cheap, and the neighbors were, for the most part, sociable. Occassionally she would volunteer at the handicapped center, but her knees got too bad to keep that up for long. Most days she just sat in her apartment, listening to the radio, and the ghost.
My love waits there, in San Francisco, above the blue and windy sea
She often felt alone, these days. David moved to Concord, and Cindy was so busy with her computer business that she never stopped by anymore. The next time either of her children came to visit it would be to pick through her belongings to see what they wanted. She hadn't seen either of her grandchildren since they were small. David Junior must be, how old? A tear welled up when she realized he would be in his twenties now. She remembered the little boy who stumbled around her house on shaky, toddler's legs, and sat on Lawrence's lap watching television.
A knock at the front door yanked her from her thoughts and back into the real world. She turned the radio off, then rose on her own shaky legs and walked to the door. She had to stand on her tip-toes to peek through the peephole. A pair of men stood on the landing at the top of the stairs. The older one, slightly chubby with shoulder-length brown hair, was dressed in black pants, a red shirt, and black leather jacket. His much younger partner was a handsome Hispanic clad in an immaculate gray suit with a blue tie.
"Yes?" She croaked, opening the door to the length of the security chain.
"I'm Christopher Ford, Mrs. Swanson, and this is Jake Cisneros. We spoke on the phone earlier?"
"I told you I didn't want to subscribe to the Chronicle."
"No, ma'am. You called us about ghosts?"
She was hoping this was the man she had called, but needed to be sure. For several months now she'd been aware of the presence in her small apartment. When it first came, it mostly left her alone. Lately, however, the entity had proven itself to not be the ghost of her Lawrence, as she initially suspected, but rather an evil force bent on terrorizing her. The local bishop himself had visited her abode, but left pale and trembling, with the spirit none-the-worse for the experience. In a fit of desperation, she had asked around at the church potluck and was recommended to Christopher Ford, who billed himself as an "amateur paranormalist." She wasn't sure what that meant, but he assured her on the phone that he was very familiar with the activities of the supernatural and that he would be able to help her.
Closing the door again, she slid the security chain off its latch and opened the door. Ford was much shorter than she had originally thought, and his straight hair reminded her of the hockey players her husband had kept meticulous track of. And if Ford was shorter than she thought, then Cisneros was even more handsome, reminding her of a young Douglas Fairbanks before he married that awful Mary Pickford.
"Can I ask you where the focal point of the activity is?" Ford said, pulling a small box from the inside of his jacket and stepping boldly into her home.
"Excuse me?" Mrs. Swanson asked, confused.
"Where does the ghost stay?"
"Oh!" she said, with sudden comprehention. "He lives in the coffee pot."
Ford glanced up from the device he was holding and looked at Jake, who shrugged and pulled a video camera out of a duffle bag.
"You said your coffee pot?" he asked her, turning in her direction.
"Oh yes," she said, and led them into the kitchen. The mess the monster had made the night before had been, thankfully, cleaned up before he had arrived. Olivia Swanson always kept a tidy house, and would continue to do so regardless of inconsiderate demons.
"Was this coffee pot a gift?" Ford asked, looking at the old, metallic percolator. He alternated between tapping on the side of the pot with his finger, and glancing at the device he was holding in his hand. "Definite EMF," he said, as an aside to Cisneros.
"DTS reads 23 degrees," Jake agreed.
"Wow," Ford said, genuinely impressed. "Below freezing. This sucker's pulling all the energy he can."
"Yes," she said, interrupting their stream of technical babble. "As a matter of fact, my mother bought that coffee pot for Lawrence and I on our wedding day. My father hated it, said it was far too extravagant. It may not look like much now, but it was very expensive when it came out, you know."
Glancing up at her, Ford scratched his chin. He then took a small notebook out from his pocket and scribbled some notes. He nodded to himself before handing the notepad to Cisneros, who, having read what was written, nodded his agreement and gave it back.
"Now, you say this spirit gets violent?"
"Quite," she said, sighing. "It throws things around, makes a horrible mess of the kitchen."
"Hmm," Ford grunted. "What sorts of things does it throw? Dishes? Cups? Food?"
"Mostly my wedding pictures. We had a set of fine bone china, but the last of those was broken last week."
"Another wedding gift?"
"Yes. It belonged to my great-grandmother."
"Let me guess," Ford said, making his way toward the duffle bag, "on your father's side?"
"Yes. Quite right," she agreed, wondering how he knew that. "My father never wanted Lawnerence to have it."
"Mrs. Swanson," Jake said, breaking his self-imposed silence. "Would I be remiss if I supposed that your father didn't like Lawrence?"
"Oh no," she said, in a tut-tut voice. "He hated him. Always did. Said Lawrence would amount to nothing."
"How long ago did your father die?" Ford asked, returning to the kitchen with what appeared to be the kind of foil-lined bag the nice boy from the Chinese restaurant used to keep the food hot when he delivered to her.
"About a week after Lawrence. He was 97."
Ford whistled appreciatively.
"The old bastard made sure to outlive him, eh? Mrs. Swanson, I'm fairly convinced that the ghost in this residence is that of your father. You may be wondering why your father would be so violent and destructive, but it seems apparent that he's destroying your last memories of Lawrence, whom he never..."
Just then there was a frantic knocking at the front door. Mrs. Swanson excused herself and glanced through the spyglass. Nodding to Ford that it was all right, she unlocked the door and opened it. A heavy-set man of Greek descent, dressed to the nines in a pair of motor oil-stained blue sweat pants and a once-white T-shirt, entered the apartment.
"Liv?" He always called her that, even after she had told him she preferred Olivia. "I need to use your phone. There's some bastard parked in a no-parking zone I need to have towed."
As the man made his way over to her phone, she told Ford and Jake that he was her landlord. He shouted at the phone, obviously trying to compensate for noise on the other end, and told someone named "Louie" that he needed a tow.
"You know," he said, slamming the phone back onto the cradle, "it really burns my ass that people think they can just -"
As he rounded the dividing wall between the living room and the small kitchen he found himself face-to-chest with Jake. He tilted his head around and glanced into the kitchen itself at Ford, who was clipping guide-wires from a large battery to the sides of the foil-lined bag.
"Who the hell are you?" the landlord asked.
"This is Mr. Ford and Mr. Cisneros," Mrs. Swanson said, standing next to him. "They're here to help me with the ghost."
"I told you, Liv, there's no such thing..."
"As I was saying," Ford interjected. "Most so-called 'Ghost Hunters' rely on Feng-shui or holy-water or some other Hollywood nonsense. Not us. We use science. The majority of spiritual manifestations use electromagnetic energy to interact with our world, hence the bag. If an EMF is strong enough, a ghost won't be able to cross it."
Mrs. Swanson nodded. She wasn't sure what he had just said, but it all sounded terribly scientific and, she supposed, made a great deal of sense, if one understood it. The landlord, for his part, stood stock-still, with his head tilted around Cisneros to keep an eye on Ford.
"Now, most entities concentrate on a particular object or person," Ford continued, lifting the percolator and carefully setting it into the bag. "If you remove that object, the ghost can no longer affect the household."
"Chris," Jake said, glancing down at the camera. "You better seal that thing. Temperature's dropping again. Daddy's getting mad."
"OK, this is bullcrap," the landlord said, barging past Jake. "Spengler, Venkman, I want you both out of here now. Are they taking your money Liv? They're scam artists." He punctuated this last statement by ripping the wires off the metallic bag and knocking the battery off the counter.
At that moment, the lights in the kitchen dimmed, and didn't come back up.
"Hmm," the landlord said, glancing up. "Must be a short."
"I don't think so," Ford replied, backing his way out of the kitchen.
A slight, but growing, clattering noise caught the attention of the four. The coffee pot, still sitting in the open bag on the counter, started rattling back and forth with increasing agitation. Just when it seemed that it couldn't move any faster, the top blew off, and thick, slimy black goo gushed out of the top like an oil tap, splattering onto the ceiling, the counter, and the landlord.
"This is his favorite trick," Mrs. Swanson said to Jake, used to the spirit's tantrums.
The coffee pot tipped over and started pouring gallon after gallon of the thick, burnt-coffee smelling ichor onto the floor. Then something else started to emerge. At first, it seemed like steam rolling off the coffee, but it gradually grew thicker and more definite; a pale, glowing-blue mist snaked its way out of the percolator and into the kitchen, just in front of the landlord. In moments, the smoky wisp had increased in thickness, until a man-sized plume had solidified in the middle of the room. As the four watched, it defined itself, until the shape and facial features of a stern-looking man in his mid 50's was resolved.
"What the shit?" the landlord muttered, finding himself now staring into the eyes of the spirit.
The ghost looked down at him, then at the others. Slowly, it's lower jaw dropped until its mouth was an impossible maw, a gaping hole that defied definition. A wind ripped through the apartment and into the fanged-pit, and creating a suction that threatened to pull them all into it. The landlord's toupee disappeared down the cavernous gullet and he screamed in terror. Ford, grabbing Mrs. Swanson's hand, pulled her into the living room, out of the worst of the wind, then they hastily made their way through the front door. Jake was just a hair behind them.
Out on the landing, all was silent. The three caught their breath and waited.
Suddenly, a picture frame shattered through the front window and fell away to crash into the ground below. More crashes, then the sounds of shattering glass filled the apartment. Once or twice, they heard the landlord howl, but whether in fear or pain they didn't know. A horrible groaning noise echoed through the night before the bookshelf slammed to the floor with a heavy thud. Dish after dish whizzed through the broken window, or shattered on the walls just inside.
The door flew open and, like a refugee from a war zone, the landlord appeared. He was trembling, his mouth hung open limply. His lower jaw shook as if he were trying to articulate the horror, but no sounds came out. He stood for a moment in the doorway as if deciding if he had the energy to make the run to Napa. A frightening roar from the kitchen sealed his decision and he half ran, half stumbled down the stairs and through a small crowd that had been attracted by the violence. The noises inside continued, growing louder and more threatening.
"Oh dear," Mrs. Swanson said. "I'm terribly sorry about this. I should have called you long before his behavior got this bad."
"No need to apologize," Ford said, stripping off his leather jacket. He reached into the inside pocket and pulled out a small leather bag, with a tiny dreamcatcher on it, and a silver and turquoise crucifix. Taking one in each hand, he charged back into the into the apartment.
The crashing and growling increased, then and a vicious thump against the wall made both Jake and Mrs. Swanson wince. Strange, flashing lights lit the apartment's interior, lighting the windows like spotlights. With thick, charcoal words the spirit started to speak, but those outside the apartment couldn't make out what it was saying. Ford responded by shouting back in what sounded like Latin.
Slowly, but noticeably, the tumult in the apartment began to decrease. The dishes stopped flying, the strange lights ceased, and the growling quieted. Eventually, all was silent again.
After a few tense moments, Ford emerged, holding the foil bag in one hand and the battery in the other, both properly connected to each other once again.
"Well, Mrs. Swanson," he said, shrugging his leather jacket back on. "I believe your troubles are over."
Suddenly, the crowd below erupted into thunderous applause. Ford made his way down the stairs, waving and muttering humble thank-yous. He made his way through the crowd and around the corner, just in time to see the yellow Marin Towing truck pull away with his van.
"Aw shit," Jake muttered behind him.
"Jake," Ford replied, without turning around, "call me a cab, would you?"
"You're a cab."
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