Eye of the Beholder

By Thomas Grant Bruso

In the middle of a psychic session with Madame Petri, David hears a ghostly voice calling his name. But he is not sure if it's the elderly fortuneteller exaggerating the reading or bizarre grumblings coming from a mysterious old man in a painting hanging in the psychic's foyer.

 

When Madame Petri disappears in a ball of flames, David rushes home, terrified. From that moment on, David and his policeman boyfriend, Zane, find themselves trying to solve the series of murders and mayhem that begin to haunt David.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
• Release date: Nov 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648901416

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A NineStar Press Publication

www.ninestarpress.com

Eye of the Beholder

ISBN: 978-1-64890-141-6

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Grant Bruso

Cover Art by Natasha Snow Copyright © 2020

Published in November, 2020 by NineStar Press, New Mexico, USA.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact NineStar Press at [e-mail].

WARNING:

This book contains sexual content, which may only be suitable for mature readers, and mention of suicidal ideation and past trauma.

Eye of the Beholder

Thomas Grant Bruso

Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

About the Author

For Paul, as always

Chapter One

What do you see? I asked.

I was sitting across from Madame Petri at the oval-shaped table in the dimly lit backroom of her business, Spiritual Crossings.

The devil-white glow in the medium’s iron-gray eyes pierced through me. A dead body, she said. Her bloodred nails were sharp and pointy like talons and wrapped around the cloudy white edges of the crystal ball.

I bit back the sour taste of Cote Rotie from an art exhibit event I had hosted earlier in the evening. All I wanted was a reading of my future, I had told myself after closing the gallery and walking three blocks to Madame Petri’s Spiritual Crossings. Now, I turned to the neighborhood medium and shuddered, my gut clutching.

Some of my art friends had recommended her to me.

You’ll like her, one of them had said. She’s colorful and full of spirit.

Go in with an open mind, somebody else had told me.

Maybe I need new friends.

Clenching the border of the velvet-soft tablecloth, I leaned forward to see if I could glimpse what she had seen in her crystal ball.

There was a bright light in her gaze when she noticed me rising off my seat a few inches to get a better look at the dead body in the cloudy glass ball. But I was drawn back to my chair with a hand clutching my shoulder from behind and pushing me back into my seat.

Blackness swallowed the light in her eyes as if a switch had been turned off inside her, and her gaze fell back to the crystal ball, which was dimming like the low lights in the room.

A steely silence engulfed us.

Balls of sleet smacked against the front glass window in the outer foyer, and the soft sound of thunder rumbled around us. Lights flickered overhead, and a cold draft snuffed out some of the burning incense candles in the dark alcove behind me. A murmur of fear climbed the back of my throat, and I let out a mousy squeal.

When I looked up at Madame Petri’s waxy face, her expression froze.

I clenched my teeth, biting down hard on the cloying taste of cigarettes in my mouth.

Over Madame Petri’s shoulders, I noticed shadowy movements in the other room, and beyond the half-open velvet curtains, the drifting clouds of smoky incense danced like ghosts in the pallid light.

A pale, narrow face stared back at me from the inky blackness: decrepit, deathly white.

I shouted and rose from my chair, breaking the medium’s stern concentration.

Madame Petri stared up at me, her firm grip on the white glass ball unmoving. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

I sucked in short, tight breaths, glancing behind Madame Petri to the outer room, to the far wall where an abstract painting of a haunted face of an old man glared back at me.

David.

I heard my name and froze. Looked around. Let out a deep, shaky breath.

Nothing there.

A trick of the light, that’s all it was, I thought. I adjusted my eyes to the dense grayness and took my seat across from Madame Petri.

I’m sorry, I said, wiping my clammy palms on my jeans. I thought I saw something.

You saw it too, Madame Petri said. The lights in the room dimmed and died and came back.

My mouth was cotton dry, and I shook my head, staring into the still deadness of the medium’s eighty-year-old eyes, thick and hazy with cataracts.

Saw what? I stared over her shoulder again at the dark slashes of color in the evocative painting hanging askew in the foyer. It looked like one of the paintings hanging on the walls of my art gallery.

Death, Madame Petri said, a crackle in her voice. She raised a jewel-encrusted finger and pointed at me. Somebody is going to die.

I rubbed my arms to ward off a chill and heard the harsh warnings of my partner in the corridors of my mind, ridiculing me for shelling out a day’s worth of work to talk to a psychic. How much did it cost you this time to have your future predicted by that phony would-be clairvoyant?

Then the sound of somebody whispering evoked a troubling memory of dead voices. Their small screams floated in the dark like distressed spirits.

What was that? I asked, clenching the arm of the chair.

Madame Petri looked around the room and then over at me, a web of wrinkles bracketing the edge of her small mouth. Her tangerine-orange lips stretched into a wide, clownish smile. The spirits, dear. They’re coming.

I rose to leave. As I pulled out two twenties from my wallet, Madame Petri reached across the table for my hand. Her fingers were dead cold, and I felt a tremor of electricity when she touched me. Be careful, she said, flipping over the Death card from the pile of her tarot cards and tapping it with a black, pointy fingernail. He who opens the gate must shut it.

I jerked my hand away and tucked my wallet back into my pants pocket.

The lights flickered again and went out.

Panicking, I stayed still in the dark, calling out for Madame Petri, and hearing movement ten feet from where I stood behind my chair.

Madame Petri, I said. Are you there?

The heightened smell of decay and burnt flesh and cigarettes aggravated my senses, and a spark of strong pain ignited in the back of my mind.

David.

I heard movement at the other end of the room, somebody bumping into something, and a vase falling and crashing to the floor. Glass shattered.

When I called out Madame Petri’s name again, there was no answer.

I navigated in the dark to the foyer, staying close to the edge of the room and reaching out for the wall to help guide me to the front door.

At the opening to the velvet curtains, lights flashed and turned on in the adjoining rooms. My heart was pounding, my breath short and raspy.

I went to the rain-smattered front door and pushed it open, turning around once at the sound of a door creaking open behind me down the hall, its hinges squawking in protest. I called out Madame Petri’s name, but there was no response. I couldn’t see her anywhere in the semidark hallway through the hazy tendrils of smoke from the blown-out incense candles, but my gaze drifted to the far wall where the painting of the decrepit face of an old man was mounted.

Madame Petri, I called out. I reached into my back pocket for my half-smoked pack of Salem’s and my Bic lighter. Flicked it a few times, my hand shaking hard, my heart pounding.

Nothing.

A cold, wet rain blasted me on the back of the neck, and I shivered from the early evening chill.

I lit the end of my cigarette, barely managing to work the lighter, and inhaled a lungful of smoke before shoving the pack of smokes and the cigarette lighter back in my pants pocket.

Then quickly, as if a bolt of lightning flashed through my jumbled thoughts and illuminated my worst nightmares, I glimpsed the haunted painting again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. The man in the painting was gone, the canvas blank.

Animalistic, ghostly murmurings in throaty growls awakened down the hall.

I ran.

Chapter Two

My partner, Zane, arrived at our house an hour after I returned from my psychic reading.

The front door slammed shut and his heavy footfalls stomped down the hall. He was complaining about how the world was full of criminals and that the city was getting unsafe.

He approached me with a wan smile, thumbing through the day’s mail. Junk. Junk. And more junk.

There’s a telephone bill in there somewhere, I said, rearranging the damp dishtowel I had slung over my right shoulder.

His kisses were hard on my neck, and I smiled against the scruffy texture of his scratchy beard. He smelled like hay and sweat.

I kissed him. Have you been rolling around with horses? I asked.

Only the young male stallion who started work today. I mounted him in the station’s restroom at lunch break.

I slapped him with the end of the dishtowel. You’re an idiot.

He let out a loud guffaw and ambled to the fridge for a beer.

Don’t fill up on liquid. Dinner will be ready soon.

Yes, dear. There was a pop as he uncapped his Heineken. He wrapped an arm around my waist and mapped the length of my neck with gentle kisses. Whattcha cookin’?

I bent forward to turn down the heat and closed my eyes at the achingly soft plea in his voice.

You not feeling up to a little tumble between the sheets tonight? The moist peck of his lips on my skin stirred a pleasant response between my legs, awakening a familiar hardness.

It’s not that, I said, mixing the spaghetti sauce I picked up from Pick N Save on my way home tonight.

Then what? he whispered, pressing his growing erection against my backside.

My body stiffened at the soft sounds of his shallow breathing in my ear. He brushed his nose in the crook of my neck, and I dropped the spatula into the pan, the end of it sinking beneath the simmering sauce. Do you know how much I love you?

I bit my bottom lip and let out a soft, contented groan. He set his beer bottle on the table, and I gripped the edge of the counter, leaning my head against his shoulder.

You’re tense, he said, massaging my neck.

Something strange happened today, I said, killing the heated moment.

The tomato sauce bubbled and splattered across the stovetop.

Zane stopped massaging my neck, his hands falling to my waist. He had lost his erection.

I’m sorry for being a buzzkill, I said.

I’m horny as hell, David.

I turned and wrapped my arms around his neck. I promise we’ll fool around after dinner, but—

I thought I could get dessert first.

I stared at him, grim-faced.

He reached behind us on the counter for his beer, gulped it down. I don’t like that strange look in your eyes.

Madame Petri’s ghostly face flickered across my mind. I shook my head and quivered.

What is it? he asked. You’re shaking.

I pulled my hands away from him and walked over to the kitchen table by the window, then sat down.

Did something happen at the gallery today? he asked, pulling a chair out next to me and giving me his undivided attention. His piercing dark eyes studied me.

I shook my head, kneading my hands in my lap. How was I going to tell Zane about my visit to Madame Petri’s Spiritual Crossings? I heard my friends’ encouraging recommendations of the mysterious fortune-teller. But I knew not everyone was open-minded to tarot cards and crystal balls, especially Zane.

I stopped at Madame Petri’s shop this evening after work, I said, staring at him for a reaction.

He finished his Heineken and got up to get another one.

Zane? I said.

He grabbed his beer and shut the fridge. I thought I asked you to stay away from her.

"Something happened during