Séance, Part Two

So, not your standard cheating spouse case. More your standard “Tom Jurgen, detective of the supernatural” case. We discussed fees, and he promised to send a retainer to my PayPal account. Yes, I actually have a PayPal account. It seemed safer than handling checks these days.

“So what’s the case?” Rachel carried a mug of coffee to her workstation on the far side of the office. She’s my girlfriend. Red hair, hazelnut eyes, long legs, and slightly psychic powers, which come in handy when she helps me with my cases.

“Possible demonic possession. You know. The same old thing.”

“Better than vampires.” She sat down and fired up her computer.

I turned back to my computer. Marcus had already paid the retainer into my account, and emailed me a list of names from their séance:

Warren Pierce. He’d apparently listened to his grandmother and become a lawyer. His phone number and email address went to one of Chicago’s biggest law firms.

Frank Starrett. He’d studied economics. No phone number or email.

Anis Welch. Art history major. No contact information.

Natalie McGinnis. She worked at a PR agency.

Joseph Busch. No information.

Charmaine Attlee. Dead.

I went on the internet to check out Charmaine. The Chicago Tribune website had a short article three days ago: “Murder-suicide in Evanston.”

Charmaine Attlee, 26, had apparently stabbed her boyfriend, Brian Anderson, 27, to death, then stabbed herself. No forced entry, no note, and no history of conflict, according to the story. They’d been discovered by Charmaine’s sister Neva after not hearing from either of them for three days. Which meant the killings were almost a week old.

No mention of “Azar” scrawled on the wall in blood. Maybe the cops had left that out—just in case some psycho tried to confess to the killings. It happened.

Still, I wondered how Warren Pierce had gotten word of it. Since I had his number, I called him first.

“Warren Pierce, how may I help you?” Marcus had given me a direct line.

I introduced myself. “Marcus Keene is . . . concerned that Charmaine’s death is connected to a séance he and your friends were part of in college—“

“Yeah. That’s why I called him. Weird night. I mean, my grandma told me to become a lawyer, and, well, here I am.”

“Do you remember Azar?”

“Oh, yeah. That was wild.”

“Do you remember what Charmaine said as Azar?”

He hesitated. “Something about coming from hell. It wasn’t her voice, it was like the voice from The Exorcist. She—it—was pretty scary, I don’t mind saying that. Then Charmaine was—rolling her head, jerking around, puking. We tried to hold her down, and Joe was going to call an ambulance, but then she was all right. A little groggy. We helped clean up, and Nat helped her into bed, and then we went home. Natalie called her the next day to make sure she was all right, and Charmaine didn’t remember anything. So we figured she’d just gotten too drunk. We were drinking a lot in those days.”

I remembered a certain amount of drinking at DePaul when I was studying journalism there. No séances or demons, though. Apparently I didn’t get invited to the best parties. “So you called Marcus when you heard about Charmaine?”

“I sent him an email.”

“How did you know about the word ‘Azar’ on the wall? It wasn’t in the story online.”

“Neva called me. Charmaine’s sister. She was pretty shaken up, but not hysterical or anything. But she saw it, and asked me what it meant. I told her, uh, I didn’t know.” He hesitated. “But I remembered. That’s why I emailed Marcus.”

“Have you heard anything from Azar since that night?”

“No. Thank god.”

I read him the list of names. He didn’t have any contact information for most of them—just Natalie McGinnis, like Marcus. I thanked him for his time and asked him to call me if he remembered anything else.

Then I called the PR agency and got through to Natalie. I’d searched Facebook and found her profile. Young and blond, with a tight smile and smooth shoulders in a blue tank top. Her photos showed her with family and friends at the Taste of Chicago, a national park somewhere out west, eating in restaurants and drinking in bars—all the usual stuff you post when you’re young and carefree.

She’d read about Charmaine, and still sounded shocked. When I told her about Azar, though, she gasped and didn’t speak for so long I wondered if she’d passed out and dropped the phone.

“Hello? Are you all right?”

She caught her breath. “I just—I dreamed about Azar last night.”

Oh hell. “What happened?”

Her voice trembled. “I was in Charmaine’s room, and we were doing the séance, and then she started talking like Azar. Then she turned into Azar. Big and green, with three horns and two forked tongues. Like, seven feet tall. It kind of roared, like, ‘I have come from hell! I will own you! All of you!” Another pause, breathing hard. “Then I woke up.”

“This is the first time you’ve had that dream?”

“Y-yes. What do I do? Is it going to come for me next?”

I wished I knew what to tell her. Find an exorcist? Throw out all her knives? Drink lots of coffee? “I . . . don’t know. Let me run down a list of names with you.”

Natalie knew the bank where Frank Starrett worked. No idea about Joe Busch or Anis Welch. I calmed her down as best I could. Which wasn’t much. Sometimes I do more harm than good. 

I started a search on the internet while I called Marcus and Pierce back. Neither one of them had dreamed of Azar, and both wanted to know why I was asking. I stayed vague, not wanting to spread more panic.

The only “Azar” I could find was some politician. There were variants—Azaroth, Aezorith—but nothing that seemed helpful. 

So I called the bank where Frank Starrett worked as a mortgage VP, up in Rockford. Yes, he remembered the seance, and he’d read about Charmaine’s death. No, he hadn’t dreamed about Azar. No, he didn’t know how to contact Joe Busch, the last name on my list. Yes, he was suddenly very nervous.

Starrett did remember that Busch had been a philosophy major, and that his hometown was Western Springs. And his middle name was Quinn. That wasn’t much to go on, but maybe it was a start.

Time for lunch. I made myself a sandwich and read the news on my laptop at the kitchen table. The COVID-19 lockdown was still on. You couldn’t go to the store without face masks and gloves. Idiots were protesting the restrictions, demanding “liberty.” The president was still trying to reopen the economy. The death count was flattening out in some states, rising in others. But the Brookfield Zoo had a nice webcast of penguins wandering out of their habitat.

Rachel made her own lunch—cheese and crackers. She’s a vegetarian. “It’s my turn to make dinner, isn’t it?” She groaned.

“We’ve got that split pea soup from last week. All you have to do is take it out of the freezer.” We take turns making dinner. I’d actually made the soup, but this didn’t feel the right time to remind her.

“That’s about as much cooking as I can handle right now.” She shoved a cracker into her mouth and crunched loudly.

“Tough gig today?” Rachel’s a graphic designer. She can work from home even when we’re not sheltering in place.

“Just this whole quarantine thing. You want to go for a walk later? We can stay six feet away. I’ll wear my cutoffs.” She grinned and licked her lower lip.

I smiled. “It’s a date.”

“What’s with your case?” She made a cracker sandwich.

“It’s . . . interesting. And a little scary." I gave her the story. "Hey, have you ever held a séance?”

She snorted. “Are you kidding? You know the kind of people I hang around with.”

“Are they for real? Séances, I mean.”

“Of course. Maybe. Sometimes.” She shrugged. “I had this one, uh, friend who really liked them. This is before I met you. Sometimes I think she was joking with us. Other times?” She shrugged. “We did really talk to the dead. It got creepy.”

“Like grandmothers? Or Abraham Lincoln?”

Rachel shook her head. “It was all just random. Whatever spirit happened to be close. Some of them didn’t even speak English.”

“No demons?”

“Not while I was there. After the first few times I got bored, and a little nervous. Too close to necromancy for my delicate tastes.”

“Hah.” I’ve seen Rachel stare down vampires. Nothing delicate about her. I took a shot in the dark. “Ever heard of a demon called Azar?”

“Yeah, I used to date him.” Rachel sounded like she wanted to punch me if the table wasn’t in her way. “What, just because I’ve been possessed once or twice—not to mention kicking one in the crotch that one time—I’ve got every demon in hell on my speed dial?”

I shook my head. “I have to find a guy named Joseph Q. Busch and find out if he’s having dreams about Azar—that demon I asked you about? And warn him. And Anis Welch. She was an art history major, so unless she’s with a museum or teaching at Podunk University, I’ve got no idea what she’s doing now. At least it’s not a very common name, like Joseph Q. After that, I don’t know. Figure out some way to protect Natalie McGinniss?” I shook my head. 

Rachel squeezed my hand. “You can’t save everyone.”

I knew that all too well. “But I have to try.”