Sticks and Stones Read online

  Sticks and Stones

  A Haunted Series novel

  by Alexie Aaron

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

  ~

  Copyright 2019 – Diane L. Fitch writing as Alexie Aaron

  ALSO BY ALEXIE AARON

  HAUNTED SERIES

  in order

  The Hauntings of Cold Creek Hollow

  Ghostly Attachments

  Sand Trap

  PEEPs Lite: Eternal Maze 3.1

  PEEPs Lite: Homecoming 3.2

  Darker than Dark

  The Garden

  Puzzle

  Old Bones

  Things that Go Bump in the Night

  Something Old

  PEEPs Lite: Checking Out 9.1

  PEEPs Lite: Ice and Steel 9.2

  The Middle House: Return to Cold Creek Hollow

  Renovation

  Mind Fray

  The Siege

  NOLA

  Never Forget

  The Old House

  Restitution

  A Rose by Any Other Name

  The Long Game

  Given Enough Rope

  The Return

  Risen

  The Candle

  Book of Souls

  A Daughter of Nyx

  Sideshow

  Crossroads

  Sticks and Stones

  CID GARRETT P.I. SERIES

  Cid

  High Court

  Tiny Houses

  The Promise

  Coming soon: Walnut Grove House

  CIN FIN-LATHEN MYSTERIES

  Decomposing

  Death by Saxophone

  Discord

  The Wages of Cin

  Unforgivable Cin: An Opera in Three Acts

  STAND-ALONE PARANORMAL SUSPENSE

  The Knight of Pages

  SHORT STORIES

  Evil

  I dedicate this book to the people of this world who stand up to name-calling, who use the labels foisted upon them as a battle cry. And to the people who give themselves names to send a message that they aren’t just freaks, geeks, and oddballs. They are the world’s salvation.

  Table of Contents

  Debra

  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

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Glossary

  Alexie Aaron

  Debra

  Debra blamed her life plan for what was happening around her. She had always planned out her life. It started with her early forays into lemonade stands, bargaining with shopkeepers for lemons just past their pretty and her grandmother for her county fair award-winning recipe. Debra entered into her first entrepreneurial enterprise at a very young age in order to secure a box of sixty-four count Crayola crayons to start the school year with. With these crayons, she would rise to the top of her class. No one had sixty-four crayons, especially not the costly Crayola brand.

  She organized her equipment and claimed a spot down the street from a bus stop on the south side of the street where the buses notoriously ran late. Debra didn’t need a permit. This was before the villages and cities demanded underaged industrialists pay to sell their wares, often at a money-losing price. Lemonade stands were just a way to pass the summer hours until the participants got bored and moved on to something else. But not for Debra. She not only made her crayon goal but tucked away a mighty sum for school clothes and, more importantly, reinvesting in her next venture.

  Halfway into the school year, her goals of being an artist were forgotten when Debra received permission to have a cupcake stand at the open house in order to earn money for UNICEF. She didn’t have to rely on her baking skills. Debra had already petitioned several local bakeries for donations on the promise she would display a photograph of the baker and the particulars of the shop on the front of her stand. She convinced the owners that it was a charity write-off or, depending on the mindset of the baker, they could take it off on their taxes as advertising.

  The stand was a hit with the tired parents who trudged through the halls after a long day at work. One father suggested that Debra have coffee available next time. She did. Debra moved on to other baked goods that could also be brought home. She made quite a lot of money with her stands. UNICEF did receive a nice portion of the money collected, after Debra’s costs were considered, and her administration fee, of course.

  By the time Debra left school, she had not only achieved her college fund but still managed to snag most of the community scholarships available. To give Debra credit, she did mention the institutions that helped her in her valedictory address at Harvard.

  But what did her life plan have to do with her collection of Lladró porcelain figurines currently flying around her living room? What did it have to do with the torture her pristine, turn-of-the-century, renovated mini mansion was receiving, as her furniture was lifted and tossed by unseen hands against the paneled walls and bookcases? Was this payback for the money she skimmed here and there? Was this Karma? If not for her, there would have been no money earned at all. She had saved all her earnings, tucking them away until she became disenchanted with the business world - whose stockholders didn’t agree with Debra’s creative bookkeeping - and decided to purchase the house of her dreams and retire.

  “That damn shrink!” she shouted, getting up from her hiding spot behind the sofa. She dodged the Lladró clown, stormed upstairs to her office, and slammed the door. She walked into her refuge to think about how a little restlessness that had been diagnosed as stress by her general practitioner had eventually turned into a full-out assault of poltergeists.

  “Ms. Carter, you show all the signs of severe mental stress. I can’t, in good conscience, prescribe you more potent drugs without getting a specialist involved. Either you take a leave of absence and chill or start seeing a psychiatrist - not psychologist, you blew by that suggestion five years ago.”

  “It’s not me. It’s everyone else. Why can’t people understand, if you want to make money, you have to forgo family, fun, and fuc…”

  “Ms. Carter!” the GP admonished. “If you don’t get control of your symptoms soon, you’re going to die. You can’t spend it from the grave.”

  “Spend it?”

  The doctor looked at the woman in shock. “You’ve earned all this money, but you don’t spend it?”

  “I pay my
bills, taxes, and give whatever the current national average is to charities.”

  The doctor wrote out a prescription, clipped it to a card he drew from his desk drawer, and handed it to Debra. “Dr. Klinkhammer is the best there is. I suggest you listen to her. If anyone can lead you out of the hell you’ve made for yourself, she can.”

  Debra looked at the man across from her and saw the sincerity in his eyes. “I’ll make an appointment as soon…”

  The GP handed her his phone. “Now.”

  She surrendered.

  A loud crash downstairs, followed by the constant sound of nails scratching on wood, yanked her back into the present. The problems with her perfect home had started with the sounds of scratching. Debra thought she’d had an infestation of mice. The exterminator was called in. He laid traps, not convinced that there was anything to trap. No leavings or gnawing from the last hundred years presented themselves. Still, Debra was adamant about him doing something. He suggested the use of humane traps, but Ms. Carter didn’t really care. “Just get the vermin out!” she shouted at him before walking into her office and slamming the door.

  Many of the traps were sprung when the exterminator returned. Attached to the traps, however, weren’t dead mice or the feared rats. Instead, there were tiny crudely constructed ragdolls - many of which had gone under the guillotine of the spring latch, their round heads lying beside the bodies, their painted mouths open in horror. The exterminator suggested to Debra that she had a prankster on her hands. He suggested that she notify the local police and get a better security system for her home.

  The security company came highly recommended. The salesman looked at the high-strung woman who lived alone and had assumed a bevy of cats would soon follow. He suggested that she opt for window and door locks and a motion capture camera on the landing of the second floor and the foyer. Had she known this was the attitude of the man, she wouldn’t have felt bad at all for what happened to him in the attic.

  “Cats indeed!”

  The salesman had been up there listing the types of alarms needed for the gabled windows when he heard a plink behind him. He turned around, and aside from a small pebble resting atop an old piece of statuary, he couldn’t find the source of the sound. He walked deeper into the attic, and something hit him on the shoulder before dropping to the floor. He flashed his light downwards and was almost relieved that it was another small stone. He looked up into the rafters expecting to see a line of rocks – perhaps a previous homeowner’s collection – balanced on the crossbeam. He assumed that the vibrations from his walk across the space must have dislodged the stones. There was nothing there but a few cobwebs that some brave spider had manufactured in the recently cleaned space.

  He tested the flooring with a few bounces before heading for the far window. That was when it rained stones. They came straight down, and by the time the man made it to the attic exit, he had several contusions and four small scalp wounds. The police were called immediately. They arrived and searched the attic. No one was found, and interestingly enough, there were also no stones found anywhere in the attic.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  The door to the office shook as if a hand bigger than life beat on it.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  Debra put her hand over her mouth to refrain from answering. She had been warned never to answer three knocks. This advice came from the internet and from a few movies she managed to sit through. Whether this information held any truth to it was an unknown, but Debra would not be tempting fate by ignoring it.

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  “Go away,” she whispered.

  “Why?” a disembodied voice hissed over her shoulder.

  Debra all but scrambled out of her chair. She sat in the middle of her desk with her feet drawn up, her arms around her knees, and her head tucked securely down as far as she could considering her lack of flexibility.

  “You have this big house to yourself,” the voice said from behind her. “Why not share it with us?”

  “Who’s us?” Debra demanded.

  There was no answer.

  Debra was mad. “First you come in here uninvited, and now you demand a portion of something you’ve not earned. Well, you can just go to hell!” she shouted.

  The room was quiet.

  “I’ve worked my whole life to afford this house. Dr. Klinkhammer said for me to invest my money in a home, so I purchased this house with cash! What have you done?” she asked, feeling bolder. Debra got down from the desk and walked over and opened the door.

  There was no specter standing there with a fist raised for knocking. The shiny wood floor had no feet attached to it, only the reflected light from the room behind her. Debra stomped down the stairs. “You think you can control me with your scratching, pounding, and stones. You’ve just picked on the wrong woman. I’m a person of means, and I mean to destroy you and every spirit that has ever known you. You’ll be begging the Devil for a place in Hell when I’m done with you!” she threatened.

  The living room had figurines scattered around on the floor, but only the clown had met with a permanent end. His sad little smile was all that was left. His body was broken in six places. Debra looked around for the source of the large crash she heard but didn’t find anything. What could produce that sound and not result in damage?

  She walked over, reached over the back of the sofa, and with both hands pushed the drapes to either side. There she found the source of the crash. The ultra-expensive picture window had been reduced to a bushel of pebbled glass.

  Debra felt her body be lifted into the air and pushed out the glassless window and dumped upside-down in the spreading yews.

  Passersby noticed the pink high-heeled slippers before they saw the legs attached to them sticking out of the shrubs. They heard language better suited for an R-rated movie echoing off the outer wall of the home. The curtains were flapping out of the open window as if a mighty wind had moved through the building.

  The lady of the house didn’t call for help, which was odd under the circumstances. Instead, she delivered a long stream of threats peppered by many colorful euphemisms - sixty-four of them to be exact, one for every crayon in the box.

  Chapter One

  Burt Hicks watched the people milling around and sitting down before him and rued the bravado that gave him the idea that he would have anything to teach them. True, he had been hunting and studying paranormal phenomena most of his life, but the team he had assembled brought other experiences with them that dwarfed his.

  Mike Dupree, who was the other founding partner of PEEPs, had the natural ability of engaging with the homeowners, television watchers and, sometimes, ghosts that they were dealing with. His anchorman looks only scratched the surface of the handsome man beneath. His quick wit and knowledge of the subjects he interacted with made him a pleasure to film.

  Ted Martin, who had sailed beyond Burt in technical knowledge, had invented quite a few of the new machines that the Paranormal Entity Exposure Partners used. Ted had a way of solving the many problems of recording, analyzing, and communicating with the unknown entities. He patented his work and sold it to other industries. The money from the sold patents afforded him a living that was comfortable for him, his wife Mia, and their family.

  Mia Cooper Martin had continued to use her abilities as a sensitive to help the group cut corners during an investigation. Her childhood had been a rough one, but this gave her empathy for both sides of a conflict. This benefited the haunted homeowners and the lost spirits involved in the confrontation that brought PEEPs into their realm. Physically, she had changed much since the first meeting between her, Burt, and Mike. Today, she exuded a calm that only age and experience could earn her. Gone was the fidgety victim. She had been replaced with a loving wife, a nurturing mother, and a compassionate friend to both good and evil beings.

  Burt watched as Stephen Murphy moved through the room. The ghost kept an eye on Mia while engaging with the o
thers who he let see him. This farmer who had lost his life in his early thirties looked much older than the rest. The hard work of his era was etched into his skin as much as the mirth of his soul showed in the twinkle in his eyes. He was Mia’s friend when she had none. There was a bond there that Burt had given up trying to figure out. Where there was Mia, there was Murphy, and that was that.

  But as bonded as Mia and Murphy were, so were Ted and Cid Garrett. The two smart gifted men had bonded as tweens in a Kansan middle school. Their friendship kept them sane during the abuse their less intelligent peers gave them. Cid had gone in a different direction after school. He took his natural abilities as a carpenter into the home construction trade. The housing slump brought the unemployed Cid to Ted who supported and housed his friend. Cid stepped into the shoes of an investigator and cameraman when one of their original group left the team, but not without long contemplation. Now he split his time between being a finishing carpenter for a high-end renovation group and PEEPs.

  Audrey Stavros laughed at something Mia whispered in her ear. The bouncy redhead, who had unexpectedly given birth to her daughter Breda Ismene on the floor of Mia’s first-floor bathroom recently, was sharing a story about the infant with Mia. Breda carried the flame of Audrey’s red hair into her generation with a happy gurgle. According to Audrey, Breda’s brother Luke was enchanted with his new sister. He would stand and stare at the infant while she slept for hours. Brian, Mia’s eldest natural son, looked at Breda’s red hair and the red hair of one of his twin sisters, Maeve, as an omen. Sensing a bond of friendship developing, he started calling the babies Thing One and Thing Two.

  Jake, the ghost in the PEEPs computer system, was tasked with setting up the background films and monitoring the Martin defense grid, while listening in on the gossip. He kept an eye on the redshirt of the group Enos Ahlberg.