Othernaturals Book Three: Bloodfather

By Christina Harlin

The boy’s ghost showed them where he died, then led them to the creature that had killed him – a creature still burning with rage and desire.

Disgraced by his involvement in the tragic death of four women ten years before, psychic Andrew Fletcher hid from the public eye until Rosemary Sharpe and the Othernaturals team convinced him to join their ghost-hunting web show. Now Andrew has the chance to redeem himself by solving a decades-old mystery in the small town to Clancy, Missouri. A child went missing, the case unsolved for over thirty years, until Andrew discovers that the boy’s ghost was merely waiting for someone who could hear him speak. Andrew must keep one brutal truth from the boy’s mother, but in doing so, his reputation as a psychic might be saved.

Jon’s ubiquitous ghost has silently watched over the small town and his tormented mother since his death. To show the team his gratitude for their help, Jon leads them to the site of a bizarre haunting, a church possessed by a bloodfather ghost, the terrible remnants of the man responsible for Jon’s death. This is no ordinary haunting, the bloodfather no harmless spirit but a powerful force built from a lifetime of bloody, secret rites. When the team ventures inside the church, Stefan McCandless’s best friend, his resident ghost Brentley, is abducted into the bloodfather’s oblivion, the bloodfather making one demand for Brentley's return: Bring me Ashley James.
Now, with Brentley’s safety, Stefan’s peace of mind and Andrew’s reputation at stake, the Othernaturals are working against time, against the belief-driven power of sympathetic magic, against a soul that long ago descended into madness that reached beyond death.

Bloodfather is the third book of the Othernaturals series, the paranormal investigations of the psychically gifted Othernaturals team.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christina Harlin
• Release date: Oct 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311054838

Christina Harlin

Christina Harlin is the author of the "Othernaturals" series, featuring the adventures of a ghost-hunting team, each with his or her own otherworldly talents, passions and secrets. Her stand-alone works of supernatural fiction are "Deck of Cards" and "Never Alone". With co-author Jake C. Harlin, she has published the outrageous parody of romantic thrillers, "Dark Web." Together, Christina and Jake conduct the podcast "Underground Book Club", where they present talk and advice about self-published writing and writers. Having worked for over twenty years as a legal secretary and paralegal in law firms in Kansas City, Christina's experiences there have played no small role inspiring her comic mystery series of Boss books chronicling the ongoing misadventures of Carol Frank. Christina enjoys computer games, puzzles, great television, movies, and novels. Christina lives in the Kansas City area with her family.

Book preview

Othernaturals Book Three:

Bloodfather

Christina Harlin

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Christina Harlin

Visit the author at http://www.christinaharlin.com

Cover art by diversepixel.com.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Prologue

Chicago, Illinois

1999-2003

The Fletcher parents were a pessimistic couple, doggedly stuck in a grimy life, producing nothing but children they did not want or need out of a Protestant obligation to be fruitful. Some like-minded apathy had brought them together, and festered between them. They fed their children and kept them reasonably warm, and considered their job done unless someone was visibly broken or bleeding. Even then, the reaction was one of disgusted resignation. Why’d you have to break your arm? Do you know how expensive that’s going to be?

Children understand quickly when they are unloved; it can create in them a sense of deficiency that never leaves. The four Fletcher children coped imperfectly and differently with their parents’ weary neglect. Angela became the adult, taking responsibility for everything. Aaron withdrew into stupid silence, burying himself in the fantasy worlds of comic books. Starved for recognition, Abigail hurled herself into sexual relationships by the time she was twelve.

Andrew Fletcher, the youngest, was their angry child. He was psychic – and where he had gotten that particular talent he had no idea whatsoever – and there is no one quite so unnerving as an angry psychic, who can see through your lies, or who knows exactly what you want (or don’t want) to hear. The Fletchers’ youngest son was eerily spot-on when he made vicious observations, despite his serious, innocent little face. Sometimes as children, psychics have difficulties with adjusting when they see the world differently from others, and they suffer fear and scorn as a result. Andrew never had this problem. From early on, he trusted no one, perfectly aware that he was freakishly different. He knew how to keep to himself.

Thanks to his sneaky insight, Andrew knew that most parents adored their children. He knew that his parents were not just neglectful people but rather unpleasant ones too. He could see inside their thoughts and when he finally dared to look good and hard, what he found was so disheartening that he never cared to look again. Resentment built in him for so long that it became like another useless organ, a second appendix serving no purpose except to ache and eventually explode.

The Fletcher parents worked constantly but unproductively, their failure so consistent that it simply must be intentional. Somewhere along the way, they were sabotaging themselves, and by proxy, their children. Children do not need wealth if they are loved. Since the Fletcher parents provided neither, Andrew equated them in his mind. Love and money must mean the same thing. Andrew planned to be pre-med. Doctors both made money and were loved, because they helped others. Using his special intuition, he would become a kind of well-paid saint, respected and adored.

Andrew Fletcher graduated high school in 1999. He was not an exceptional student, but good enough for an Illinois state university in Chicago. As he was such a gifted psychic, one might think that Andrew could ace tests without effort. Of course nothing was ever that simple. When it came to test-taking, few people were so unconsciously accommodating as to list the answers for him, even assuming he’d be able to hear them clearly and word for word.

Anyway Andrew cared little for academic scholarship. All he wanted was to escape. He could afford to go to college thanks to the government’s sympathies. He received grant money because he was the youngest of four children, and his parents had next to nothing.

*****

Dorm life was a merciful equalizer. Nobody noticed that Andrew was poor when all the young men were scruffy and living off Ramen noodles. Andrew’s roommate was a big shy boy who spent all of his time in chat rooms online, typing with fervor about Batman, so he and Andrew never became more than genial acquaintances. No matter. There was another young man down the hall: gangly, dark-haired Troy Atkinson with the wise-assed smile.

In his private room, Troy had the nicest TV in the dorm, plus a great gaming system and all the best new games and a cable setup that let Troy get pay-per-view. Troy would let guys come to his room every night to watch the best stuff or play games on the console. He was open and generous with his luxuries. Troy’s mind was a placid, undemanding place where Andrew’s sneak saw nothing to fear. Andrew had met no one more content or self-assured. Being around Troy, one could suppose that nothing would ever go wrong.

In their dorm, most of the guys called Andrew Drew for short, as his family had, but Troy called him Fletch. Like the movie, Troy said. Andrew had to admit he’d never watched it, meaning that the film was soon shown to him and he was expected to love it. Andrew had never liked movies, but he loved the cool nickname. Almost overnight, Troy and Andrew were inseparable, effortlessly clicking the way that best friends often will.

Troy did not act like a rich boy, or at least, he didn’t act like a boy who ever considered money of any importance. While other guys might talk about their family’s houses and cars and vacations, Troy said nothing. He didn’t even keep a car on campus. Yet over time, Andrew picked up imagery and memories from Troy of an alien lifestyle: car services, a house of countless rooms, private school, summers at a beach house on Lake Michigan, winters in the Alps. Troy didn’t seem to think his life was extraordinary. Troy didn’t talk about money, not because he didn’t have any, but because the concept was largely meaningless to him.

Troy had a credit card in his wallet and he charged everything on it, never looking at a receipt or a balance or a bill. Andrew had once dared to ask if he owed Troy any money for a pizza they’d just eaten and Troy had looked a bit perplexed. He glanced at the credit card he held and said something very strange. Nah, it’s on the card. Andrew was shy to ask exactly what that meant, but his sneak was on the job. To Troy, using that credit card was the end of the matter. It was a magic money card. The payment of the bill was a foregone conclusion that was handled elsewhere, by someone who never bothered Troy for accountability.

When November came, Troy asked Andrew, Want to come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner?

Andrew couldn’t afford to go back to South Dakota for the holiday and didn’t want to anyway. He looked forward to meeting Troy’s family with equal parts anxiety and joy. By the time the long weekend finally came, he understood enough about Troy that he was not completely astonished when a black town car with a chauffeur collected them outside the dorm. Troy called the driver by name as the man loaded their backpacks into the trunk, and the driver responded good-naturedly, Good to see you, young Mr. Atkinson. School’s going all right? Very good to meet you, Mr. Fletcher.

No one had ever before called Andrew Mr. Fletcher without sarcasm.

They were transported half an hour outside Chicago, into a world Andrew had only seen through a television screen. This was no mere upscale neighborhood. This was not even a neighborhood per se, but a several square miles of estates and manors, real old money and privilege. In this late fall landscape straight out of greeting-card art, there were gates and perfectly manicured grounds. Far back, among trees, Andrew got glimpses of mansion rooftops hinting at enormity. Finally the driver turned onto a lane with a wrought-iron gate, which swung open when he placed a call.

Troy’s family lived in a winged grey stone manse that would have looked appropriate with archers in the turrets and a moat. Behind the mansion was an enormous separate garage, a swimming pool, enough surrounding land to encompass the small private lake with a fishing dock, and further down the winding driveway, a smaller-scale castle they called the guest house, easily twice as large as the home Andrew had grown up in.

Andrew spent four days with the Atkinson family, yet it was a whole new lifetime for him, in a world he had only suspected might exist. Troy’s parents were successful people, mother the CEO of a profitable Chicago shipping company, and father the leader of a team of designers at a car company, but Andrew’s sneak discovered they were descended from families that owned oil wells in Texas and mineral rights in New Mexico and factories in Connecticut. They were wealthy going back for generations. Born rich. To Andrew, people got rich when they did something that their families had never thought to do before.

The Atkinsons seemed almost oblivious of the luxury they lived within. Andrew saw beautiful art throughout the place. In the front hall was a sculpture by someone called Henry Moore. When he dared lay a finger on its cool stone, he knew it was an original. He saw a silent servant cleaning, a personal assistant bringing in Mrs. Atkinson’s dry-cleaning, a plaque of keys to nine different vehicles, the merry chauffeur who would bring a car around from the garage if one was needed, and do the driving, if one did not feel like taking the wheel.

The Atkinsons were gracious to Andrew beyond his belief. Troy’s mother was delighted that her son had made a friend, Troy’s father was pleased because Andrew was a positive influence. Troy’s grades were better than they’d ever expected. Andrew sneak discovered that Troy had nearly flunked out of high school and almost refused college altogether, agreeing only to attend the local state university under extreme pressure and if they promised him he could live away from home, in the dorm. Andrew was welcomed like he was Troy’s life raft.

Mr. and Mrs. Atkinson only asked Andrew where he was from. South Dakota, he answered, and then they pressured him no further.

The Thanksgiving dinner looked like a famous painting. Andrew didn’t know at the time that it was Norman Rockwell’s idealized Thanksgiving dinner he was imagining, but he knew the picture, and this was it, in elegant dress. They had both a turkey and roast duck. The side dishes (shallots? bisque?) were exotic to a boy whose family’s big Thanksgiving tradition had been hot bread with dinner rather than cold. The feast was prepared by a chef, and served by staff. Mrs. Atkinson assured Andrew that they only used staff service at meals for special occasions, as if this made the Atkinsons ordinary Americans.

Troy’s sister Monica, six years older than he, was also home for the holiday. Tall like her brother but otherwise very dissimilar, Monica was elegantly starved, white-blonde, her clipped face too sharp to be beautiful. She was striking indeed. She certainly struck Andrew, who fell head-over-heels in lust with her exotic sophistication. She was an actress in Chicago theater. Currently she rehearsed for a post-modern version of Othello. She was to play Desdemona, in a wheelchair. Much like his ignorance of Norman Rockwell, at the time Andrew didn’t know enough about Shakespeare’s play to wonder why Desdemona’s being in a wheelchair was important or strange. Monica’s parents were fine-tuned to her slightest expression and treated her with great delicacy. Andrew detected that they were a little afraid of her, like she was a dangerous explosive. To Andrew that seemed exciting.

When Andrew attempted to flirt with her, and made a good show of it, she bestowed him with a promising smile and said, You call me when you turn eighteen.

I turned eighteen last month, said Andrew.

Oh my goodness, had said Monica. Nothing else happened between them that weekend, but her oh my goodness stuck to Andrew’s skin, burning a promise on him.

So much did the Atkinsons like him that Andrew was invited to spend the Christmas and New Year holidays with them in New Hampshire, as their guest.

When the magical Thanksgiving weekend ended, Andrew called South Dakota and his mother answered.

I won’t be coming home at Christmas.

You got a girlfriend? asked his mother.

No, Troy’s family invited me.

Must be nice, said his mother. We’ll be working most of the holiday anyway.

He had not expected her to, but it would have been nice if she’d acted a little disappointed. For Christmas his parents sent him a card with twenty dollars in it (two tens rather than a twenty-dollar bill, which seemed somehow tackier). The card said, Have a great time, and Andrew realized that they didn’t even know where he was going. His mother hadn’t asked.

The two weeks in New Hampshire were spent in yet another house the Atkinson family owned. The exquisite colonial had been made ready for holiday celebration by a team of unseen workers and decorators. Andrew joined in four dinner parties. They took an honest-to-God sleigh ride. A long black car arrived to chauffeur them to church for Christmas mass. There was a New Year’s Eve Ball, food and wine and beautiful music: real musicians with harps and cellos.

At one point an overwhelmed Andrew asked Troy, Do you spend every Christmas like this?

Not every year. Mom likes to spend it in Paris sometimes.

Andrew feared that these fine rich people could smell poverty on him. Any time now, someone would mistake him for a worker or a waiter. But the Atkinsons made him part of their family and he was treated with all due respect. Mrs. Atkinson kindly realized that Andrew had no clothes for occasions such as these, so he was dressed by tailors alongside Troy, whose clothes never pleased his mother. Andrew Fletcher, who had rarely owned an article of clothing that was new, found himself at a New Year’s Eve Ball in an exclusive country club, wearing a tuxedo specially tailored for him. Mrs. Atkinson looked him over and said with a wary laugh, Oh my dear boy. I have created a monster. Debutants actually flirted with him. So did their mothers. But Andrew only had eyes for one woman in that crowd.

At the ball, he danced with Monica Atkinson, who thought it was sweet that he didn’t really know how to dance. He read her thoughts and heard these words: I will show this one how to dance, but she wasn’t thinking about dancing. They shared a not-too-chaste kiss when the clock struck midnight. Later, back at the Atkinson house, once everyone else had gone to bed, she invited him inside her room. She presented her back to him so that he could undo the eight hidden hooks on the pearl-colored gown that was almost the same color as her hair. Andrew was deft and graceful in handling small things like hooks, as Monica would soon discover.

Monica sent him back to his own room much later, asking him to be discreet about their fling. He understood. It was actually a relief for a girl to do the brushing-off for a change, and a taste of her was all he’d really wanted. Monica’s drama was too complex for an 18-year-old.

Andrew crept so as not to wake anyone. He opened his room’s door and found Troy starting awake in the alcove by the tall window in Andrew’s guest room.

Dude are you banging my sister? asked the groggy, amusingly rumpled Troy, still in his own tux.

Andrew had barely reassembled his own tuxedo for the trip back and now began to carefully hang up the coat. I won’t do it again if you don’t want me to.

I don’t care. But, you know she’s got lots of boyfriends right? I mean you’re not going to start thinking you’re engaged or anything.

Shit no. Andrew was a bit disgruntled that Troy would think him so naïve. She’s way older anyway.

You learn anything interesting from her? asked Troy. He saw Andrew’s questioning glance. I mean like information, dumbass. Did you pick her brain? I’m looking for anything about her apartment. She’s got this awesome apartment downtown and I want to use it this summer while she’s at Shakespeare Workshop in London. But she says her friend wants to stay there instead, and she’s stringing me along. Did you get anything?

We didn’t talk about it.

Yeah, but you don’t need to talk to somebody to know what they’re thinking, Fletch. You could spend the summer there with me. It’s almost on the lakeshore. Were you planning to go back to Podunksville? I don’t think so. Maybe you can sex her up and talk her into it. Use your mind-reading tricks. Fletch, speak. Come on boy, you’re boring me.

This teasing finally got through to Andrew, who put his hands in the pockets of his tuxedo trousers and felt the thrill of that fine fabric. He didn’t think he would ever tire of luxury. He did not know how to ask the question without sounding like an idiot but he tried anyway. You think I’m a mind-reader?

Dude for weeks now you’ve been answering questions I only asked in my head. And the shit you know about people! You know my parents better than I do and you never ask them anything. Sorry if I’m freaking out your delicateness there but I’d have to be a pretty big moron to not see.

Yeah, I’m not delicate, asshole. Most people don’t believe in stuff like that. Or I scare them. His thoughts flashed momentarily to his family, their uneasy sideways looks when they didn’t think he’d notice.

Why should I be scared of you? I think it kicks ass. You should have told me, but I get that you’re kind of a sensitive flower about it, so whatever. We should go play poker though. Does it work on poker? I bet you could clean up. Pay for college.

I don’t even know how to play.

We can fix that. What else can you do, aside from knowing what everyone is thinking?

That’s about it, Andrew lied. He liked Troy very much but this secret was too much to share all at once. Isn’t that enough?

Enough to get things done, said Troy. So maybe you can let me know if my sister is going to let us have that apartment for the summer.

Doing so was easy. Andrew was polite and casual toward Monica at the late breakfast the family shared, never indicating that the pair of them had been a tangle of lips and limbs only nine hours before. Monica might have told him not to make a big deal out of their night together, but she was less than delighted when he complied so well.

As if they were mere friends, he asked banal questions. Did she like living in Chicago? Was her apartment close to her theater? While she answered, he put his sneak to work and saw that she was indeed planning on letting her brother use the apartment for the summer, but an older friend would be staying too. She didn’t want Troy trashing the place with parties that Troy was far too young to throw legally anyway.

Andrew knew how to make himself more desirable to women. The trick was to make them do the chasing. He didn’t return to her room for the rest of the vacation, did not ask for her number or pester her for attention. By the end of the break, Monica was fidgeting in his presence and trying everything to be alone with him. He avoided her and made it look like an accident. Troy noticed some of these ploys and covered his mouth to hide laughter, pretending instead to be stifling a cough.

Andrew was able to assure his friend, Her apartment is ours this summer.

Troy was giddy with the news. He said, Don’t worry about this ‘older friend’ bullshit – Monica’s friends are all flakes. Just means we’ll have someone who can buy beer for us.

*****

For the next few years, Andrew lived with wealth, and all the boredom and imaginary need wealth can create. Andrew and Troy were technically still in college and yet that faded into the background of their lives, something they did in order to justify their existences (and keep Troy’s parents happy) but which left them with 140 hours a week to do something else.

Women filled much of the time. Both young men hit that final growth spurt that made them as tall and strong as they would ever be, that filled them out and darkened their jaws. Two good-looking young men with an extravagant high-rise apartment were noticeable, and the women were everywhere and eager. In high school, Andrew had burned his way through girls because of his desperate need to be loved and his equally desperate need to be left alone.

He told himself his womanizing was different now, not teen romance games, but a mutual agreement to use each other, and certainly not his ongoing hunger to be loved and to trash that love before it could trash him first. Andrew could live with himself because he told the women the truth ahead of time. He would actually say, You’ll hate me in the end, to the beautiful things that stared up at him with their expectant smiles. He assured them, I’ll know things about you that you don’t want me to know. He was astonished to hear the same thought in pretty head after pretty head: I’ll be the one who is different.

Serial seduction was not the only activity that Troy and Andrew enjoyed. Troy did teach Andrew to play poker. Unfortunately Andrew’s ability only worked against inexperienced players, and these were usually not people playing the big money games. Professional players, who had learned the art of the bluff and the poker-face, had immensely strong defenses in place, as if some layer of their mind were being forced into an opposite belief that confused the hell out of his sneak. Andrew was no better at the game than any seasoned player might be. It was not worth the money it cost him.

There were better ways to make money (and which resulted in quite a bit more tail, if truth be told). Troy thought of it: they held séances. Andrew was not capable of summoning spirits. As for reaching out to the great beyond, there either was no such place, or Andrew was simply unable to put a call through. He was perfectly able to sit at a table and tell people what they wanted to hear, peppering it with intimate details. Your grandmother is telling me about the day the two of you bought a box of candy and opened it in the car, and ate it all before you got home. You both checked your teeth for chocolate before you went in the house, and hid the package under the car seat.

Such memories could be skimmed off a primed person’s mind like bugs drowning on the surface of a pool. Troy arranged séances for $500. Then $1,000. To Andrew’s surprise, he was most often wanted at bachelorette parties. He met a lot of women that way.

Word got around. The one professor on campus who dared to say aloud that she believed in psi phenomena, and promoted its research, actually invited Andrew to participate in studies. He took the Zener card tests and blew them away, he read minds, drew projected images. The results were published in journals about as respectable as such things could be, such as Paranormal America, though such journals were not considered empirically scientific. The articles had names like The Miracle Mind of Andrew Fletcher and Practical Applications for Psi Powers, Featuring Guest Psychic Andrew Fletcher.

He did too well on the tests, so that others cried that the results must be faked. Troy reminded him that there was no such thing as bad publicity, Fletch.

He received email from fans and believers. He was invited to events, readings, psychic conventions full of frauds. He was taken to haunted houses (which were never truly haunted) and to sources of unexplained phenomena (which were almost always explained). He was shown into homes to investigate ghosts or to drive away evil spirits. The ghost of our father is still here, or The ghost of my wife is haunting these halls, or sometimes, I can feel a horrible evil spirit lingering here, and I need to know how to get rid of it.

These haunted people seemed often to be very troubled individuals who were desperate to divert their worries onto something supernatural so they didn’t have to face certain truths, like unfaithful spouses or bankruptcy or the fact that life can sometimes feel banal and pointless. If Andrew hadn’t been young and cocky with a bright future before him, he would have grown depressed by it all. This was what he kept telling himself.

During the near three years he was a celebrity, Andrew found one real ghost. She haunted a sparkling new glass-and-technology-box house, a little girl who had been buried in secret on the land. If the construction company had dug the basement seven feet further to the north, they would have found her bones. The owners of the house asked Andrew to have a look because something scared our housekeeper so badly that she quit working for us that very day.

He found the ghost at once in the back yard; even the most mildly psychic person could hardly have missed her. She was one genuinely pissed off little ghost, the victim of a very wrongful death if not outright murder – Andrew could not get clear details – and she was aggressively ready to put the spook into anybody who bothered her. Having a house encroaching on her unmarked grave infuriated her. Before the house came, there had been blossoming trees and rabbits playing on the grass.

The little ghost was not very talkative, though Andrew did try to be helpful. "This is my spot," she informed him, and that was the end of the matter as far as she was concerned.

What do you think? the owners asked when he returned to them.

Andrew showed them the part of the lawn where he thought the girl was buried.

Oh, we don’t want to dig up the yard. This is new grass.

He could see why it was important to them: the grass was absolutely beautiful, the most thick, lush grass Andrew had ever seen, and it would certainly be a shame to tear it up just to put some unknown little girl to her eternal rest. So he said, Then, maybe plant an apple tree or something just about here, add some flowers and one of those birdbaths. She likes animals. Put up a swing for her. Make it someplace a little girl would like to hang out, and then don’t let anybody else use it.

They agreed to have their gardener work on that. "A little tree," had specified the wife. Andrew never heard from them again, so it had either worked, or they had decided it didn’t matter. They gave him $700 for a consulting fee, which seemed like a ridiculous amount of money for half