Renovation Read online

  Renovation

  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.

  ~

  Bought by Maraya21

  kickass.so / 1337x.to / h33t.to / thepiratebay.se

  Copyright 2014 – 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

  Darker than Dark

  The Garden

  Puzzle

  Old Bones

  Things that Go Bump in the Night

  Something Old

  The Middle House: Return to Cold Creek Hollow

  Renovation

  PEEPS LITE

  Eternal Maze 3.1

  Homecoming 3.2

  Checking Out 9.1

  Ice and Steel 9.2

  CIN FIN-LATHEN MYSTERIES

  Decomposing

  Death by Saxophone

  Discord

  This book was partly inspired by Jacob and my new HGTV addiction. I dedicate it to the tech wizard of Wichita and to all of us DIYers who should know better before picking up a sledgehammer.

  I would also like to thank the Facebook Divas and my family, who never cease to amaze me with their support.

  Table of Contents

  DIY

  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

  Alexie Aaron

  DIY

  “Hand me the adjustable wrench?” John asked his son. He had his head down, studying the large bolts that were holding up the foyer chandelier. He had set his toolbox down across the joists. “I can see that it just needs a little tightening,” he said, putting his hand out to receive the asked for tool like a surgeon on television.

  He waited, and not only did he not receive the requested tool, but when he looked up, his son wasn’t there. “Now where has he got to?” he asked himself, looking around the wide empty expanse of the attic. He could have sworn Tim had been standing just to his right. John moved his eyes to the spot and realized his mistake. If his son had been sitting where John’s peripheral vision had picked him up, Tim would have fallen through the ceiling to what would certainly have been his death.

  John took off his glasses and sat back on his heels while he rubbed the lenses with the tail of his flannel shirt. He looked around and tried to dispel the creepy feeling that had settled on him. Shaking his head and stifling a curse, just in case his twelve-year-old did venture up to the attic to help his old man, John selected the wrench from the menagerie of inherited tools, fitted it to the bolt and began the job of tightening it.

  “Righty tighty, lefty loosey,” a voice whispered in his ear.

  John, who was leaning precariously away from the solid flooring, decided to follow the advice of the voice and finish the job. His core instincts were to drop the wrench and crawl away from the whisper, but this would not have served the hundred-year-old chandelier or the plasterwork ceiling. Also, he had promised his wife he wouldn’t die today.

  He tightened the loose bolt and took the time to test the other bolts to make sure they too were secure before he backed away from the job and looked around him. There was nothing there. No specter, no black mass forming, no transparent white lady, nothing. He laughed as he packed up his tools and got to his feet, careful not to hit his head on the low ceiling.

  “John!” his wife called. “Are you finished?”

  “Just now. Have you seen my assistant?” he asked. “I’ve lost not only my right hand man but my sanity.”

  Mindy, who had last seen their son headed for the garage on an errand she assumed John had sent him on, replied, “You asked him to get you a crowbar. He’s probably having trouble finding it in all that mess.”

  John descended the pull-down stairs, careful to place each of his size elevens firmly on the treads. He handed his wife the toolbox before he finished his trip down. “I didn’t ask him for a crowbar. I asked him to stand by and hand me tools,” John clarified.

  They heard a pounding of feet on the backstairs and turned to see the errant helper run towards them, out of breath, carrying a rusted piece of iron.

  “I couldn’t find ours, but I saw this in the back corner and…” the sandy-haired, freckle-faced boy stopped dead in his tracks. “What?” he asked, seeing the mixed expressions on his parents’ faces.

  “Who told you to get the crowbar?” John asked, goose pimples rising on his arms.

  “You did. I was looking out the little round window on the east end of the attic and you whispered, “Get me a crowbar, sport.”

  “Sport?” John asked.

  “Yes, you called me sport just like Grandpa used to,” the boy said.

  Mindy looked at her husband and watched as tears started rolling down his face. Tim looked at his father, confused. He turned to his mother and asked, “Did I do something wrong?”

  Mindy put a protective arm around her son. “No, honey, just a memory washing your dad’s eyes clean of dust.”

  “I’m sorry,” John said, wiping his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “It’s just that I thought I heard someone giving me instructions up there while I was fixing the support for the chandelier. Righty tighty, lefty loosey, my old man used to say. I thought I just imagined it, or it was a ghost.”

  John took a last look up at the rectangular opening of the attic access before lifting the lower part of the ladder and allowing the spring to raise the rest of it into place.

  He looked at his wife and son and the horrified looks on their faces. They were staring past him.

  He turned around quickly. Standing four feet from him was a man. He smiled at John, his gold teeth catching the light from the wall sconce. He reached up and scratched at his two-day beard and squinted. He put out his hand towards Tim and asked, “You got that crowbar, sport?”

  Tim, frozen in fear, just mumbled incoherently. Mindy took the rusted crowbar out of his hands and thrust it towards the man.

  “Mighty obliged,” he said. He reached for the tool, and as his hand touched the bar, he disappeared.

  “Was that your father?” Mindy asked walking forward, her hand out, feeling the empty air in front of her husband.

  “No.”

  “He was dressed kind of peculiar,” she said. “Kind of looked like pajamas.”

  “How can you be so calm?” he asked his wife, amazed. He’d only just stopped from pissing himself. Tim was still standing there open-mouthed, drool pooling
in his lower lip. He walked over and gently shook his son. “It’s gone, Tim. Everything is alright.”

  Mindy looked back at the men in the family and shook her head. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just a ghost. These old houses are bound to have them. Come on, I’ll get you that lemonade you asked for, Tim.”

  They followed her down the stairs, holding on to each other as if an inch of separation would be disastrous.

  “Dad,” Tim hissed.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t ask mom for any lemonade. I hate lemons,” he confessed.

  “I know, son.”

  Chapter One

  “Well, it’s do-it-yourself month,” Cid said walking into the PEEPs office, carrying a tray of freshly baked scones. He set it on the table and continued, “DIY projects are upon us. I’ve set up a help line for those homeowners that get themselves in over their heads.”

  “They should call it DYI,” Mia commented.

  “Are you being dyslexic, dear?” Ted asked his petite wife.

  “No, DYI: do-yourself-in. And yes, I think you have an excellent idea, Cid. I would have loved a rescue person to call when I found myself hanging from a thread while trying to decipher simple instructions.”

  “There is an art form to writing instructions so the least savvy of the do-it-yourselfers can understand,” Audrey pointed out.

  Mike, who was busy adding the right amount of milk and sugar substitute into his mug to ease the high-octane caffeine effects Ted’s coffee had on his stomach after a night of drinking, commented, “Homeowners should leave the backbreaking work to the professionals.” He looked around for a clean spoon, his puffy eyes barely focused. It was a miracle he even found his way out of the city, let alone traveling the hour’s worth of winding roads to get to the Martin farm, hidden in the woods just west of the town of Big Bear Lake, Illinois. Who had meetings on Saturday mornings?

  “I blame cable,” Cid said. “They make it look so easy. I’m a professional contractor, and I’m telling you that it takes more than a commercial break to sand a wood floor.”

  “Cute hosts, that’s why I watch them,” Audrey admitted. “Cid, you should look into having your own show,” she suggested. “You’ll be up to your eyes in offers when the DYI - damn, Mia, you have me doing it now,” Audrey grumbled and corrected, “DIY crowd gets a look at you in your tool belt…”

  Mia opened her mouth to say something rude, but the gentle pressure of Ted’s hand on her knee restrained her.

  Mike, however, had no restraint, “Audrey, don’t let that tool belt fool you; it’s a strap on.”

  Burt coughed. “Can we get back on topic?”

  “Whoa, what topic? Did the meeting start?” Mia asked. “I didn’t call Murphy in yet.” She got to her feet, strode over and opened the door and shouted, “Murph, get your boney ass in here. Meeting’s starting!”

  The farmer, who had been stacking split logs on the pile, turned around, taking time to check out that his behind was just as he remembered it before he picked up his axe and moved quickly to the annex they had built onto the barn.

  Mia settled down and nodded at the ghost as he moved through the door and took up his position leaning against the wall behind Mike.

  “All present and accounted for,” Mia announced.

  Burt looked at the sensitive and nodded. “As Cid mentioned, there are a lot of people this time of year in the process of renovating their properties. Regardless of whether a professional is doing them or they are attempting the less daunting tasks themselves, the results are the same. Spirits who have been dormant are waking up. We’ve had so many requests that I’m surprised the Paranormal Entity Exposure Partners site hasn’t crashed,” Burt said.

  “It won’t crash,” Ted insisted.

  The site crashed. It didn’t have the decency to wait and come belly up until after the meeting. Ted’s PEEPs siren went off during the meeting. He rolled his chair over to the console and began typing furiously on the keys. The same text error kept coming up. Cid walked up behind him and shook his head as he watched Ted sort out the problem.

  “What the hell?” Ted said as a line of text filled the screen.

  If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

  “Napoleon Bonaparte,” Cid said, identifying the quote.

  “Napoleon?” Mia asked getting up. She walked over and stared as Ted valiantly fought the line of text as it eventually filled the monitor screen. She kept quiet, very aware she could barely operate her iPhone and could only offer her husband moral support.

  “Did we get hacked?” Mike asked.

  “Not from the outside,” Ted said, continuing to type commands. “There,” he said with satisfaction.

  Mia watched as the screen cleared and the PEEPs trademarked icon once again dominated the header of the investigative group’s website.

  “Emergency over,” Ted said. “Burt, you were saying?”

  Burt waited until his team settled themselves back down before speaking, “I’ve decided to divide us up into two groups, just for the prescreening process. Since Cid and Mia have more experience in construction than the rest of us, I’m going to split them up. Giving each group a DYI, damn, DIY expert. How about me, Cid, Audrey on one team, and Mike and the Martins on the other?” he asked.

  CRACK! Murphy’s drop of the axe made his presence known.

  “Sorry, Murphy,” Burt said in the direction of the sound. “I wasn’t forgetting you. If you want to go on a prescreening investigation, you can choose your group. I just figured that you wouldn’t want to be bothered with the boring stuff until we had begun a promising investigation.”

  Mia and Ted watched Murphy contemplate Burt’s explanation. He no longer seemed offended. He raised his arm and formed an impressive bicep.

  “Murph says that he’ll wait until you need to bring in the big gun, but he thanks you just the same,” Mia interpreted.

  Murphy smiled and pushed his hat back on his head.

  Mia did her best not to roll her eyes or shake her head, but she was thinking of ways to wipe the smug bastard’s smile off of his spectral face.

  “Here are the lists. I broke them down into geographical areas. I think, for right now, we should stick to a hundred mile radius…”

  “Unless a considerable amount of cash is offered,” Mike added. “The coffers are empty, folks. I had to ask Ma for an infusion of cash. Until season three is up and running and the sponsor money becomes available, we need to curb our expenses.”

  Audrey frowned. She had to turn down a paying gig in order to attend this meeting. “How much time will we need to set aside in order to visit each perspective haunt?”

  “I think, this weekend and then after work hours for the next week or two,” Burt replied.

  “I’ve got a business to look out for,” she informed the group. “I may be late if I have to journey too far during rush hour.”

  “I’ll take that into account when I’m dividing up the list,” Burt said. “Cid, will that work for you?”

  “I’ll work it out,” he said. “My present job… the punters are a bit eccentric but understanding.”

  “He’s talking about us,” Mia explained, putting a protective arm around Ted. “We’re building onto the farmhouse. As with any renovation project, we have encountered a ghost, but in this case, he’s come in useful,” she said, winking at Murphy.

  “Remember he’s the fella who put the entrance to the cellar too close to the well,” Mike said, remembering his plunge into the icy water two years ago.

  Murphy hit his knee and laughed silently.

  “That’s why we love him,” Ted said.

  “Any other business before I adjourn?” Burt asked.

  “I know it’s a delicate subject,” Mike began, looking at Mia, “but is there any news on Father Santos? Is there a funeral planned, for instance, a memorial? The guy deserves to be remembered by his friends and by the people he saved.”

  Mia thought about her answer be
fore she spoke, “The last thing about Father Santos that I heard from Father Alessandro was that Angelo still has Santos’s body in the mountains of Italy. So a funeral isn’t in the offing. Angelo is convinced that Santos is alive and is keeping the priest’s body on a kind of life support. If Santos is alive or dead, Father Alessandro fears that Santos’s soul is caught up in the dead zone some sensitives call the dark world. The dark world is where the deer-woman sent Honor Blackwell. I hope not. It’s not like anything I have ever experienced before.”

  “You’re not thinking of a rescue mission, are you?” Mike questioned.

  “Ted and I have talked about it. But I assured him, as I will assure all of you, that without a guide, I wouldn’t attempt a journey like that. From what I’ve heard and read, it’s a black nothingness. You exist in the pain of being alone, forever alone. How could you even figure out how to find someone in that?”

  “Technically, he wasn’t a spirit when he was in contact with her antlers,” Cid said. “He died after the goring, and he received last rights. I’d say that Santos is sorting things out and will try and contact us if he needs help or to tell us he’s doing fine.”

  “That’s such a comforting thought,” Mia said, reaching over and patting Cid’s arm. “Thank you for that.”

  Cid blushed.

  “You will let us know,” Audrey confirmed. “We’d all like to be of help, if help is needed.”

  Mia looked around at the group, taking in their earnest faces. Murphy patted his heart, indicating that he too would like to be in the loop. Mia, however, would make sure that her friend stayed well away from anything that ate spectral beings. “I will keep you all updated,” she lied.

  ~

  Angelo paced the aerie. He had left his office after three solid days of research. Father Santos, if he indeed existed in the dark world, there was no way humanly, birdmanly, or spiritually possible to enter that realm without peril. No one had ever come back from there. It was a place of nonexistence.

  The Gray Ladies had done their best to sustain his friend’s body in a living state. Was all of this for naught? He consulted the sages, each of them consulted others, and they came back with the same answer: if his soul had found its way there, then he was not coming back.