F. Paul Wilson - Haunted Air

"You been watching cartoons?" he asked Charlie.

"Not lately."

He glanced around, found the remote on the recliner, and hit the number of the Weather Channel. "Might as well see what the weather's going to be."

The Weather Channel came on, but the set immediately flipped back to the Cartoon Network. Lyle tried again, with the same result. Annoyed now, he punched random numbers, but the set always returned to the Cartoon Network.

"What is this shit?"

He went to the window and peered outside.

"What you looking for?" Charlie said.

"Oh, I've heard stories of pranking kids using a universal remote on a neighbor's set."

The yard was empty.

"Yo, maybe it the Fosters, you know, messing with our heads again."

"This seems too petty, even for them. Besides, I'm pretty sure they've got other things on their minds this morning."

Hell with it, he thought, and hit the power button.

The screen went dark. But a second later it buzzed to life again. He hit power half a dozen times in a row but the damn set kept turning itself back on.

Charlie said, "Lemme deal with this."

He reached behind the set and pulled the power plug, killing the picture.

Lyle held out a hand for a five. "Now why didn't I think of-"

They both jumped as the screen lit again, this time with Jerry the mouse flattening the head of Tom the cat with a frying pan. Lyle pointed to the plug in Charlie's hand.

"You must have pulled the wrong one."

"The other's the VCR. Look at it. The display still lit."

"Pull it anyway."

Charlie reached back and yanked out the other cord, but Tom and Jerry kept up their nonstop mayhem.

Charlie threw down the cords as if they were live snakes. "I'm geese, man."

"Hey, don't bail on me. You're the electronics guru here. Figure this out." But Charlie kept moving, disappearing into the kitchen. "Where you going?"

"Where I go every Sunday at ten: church. You should give it a shot, bro, because there ain't nothin' electronic wrong with that TV. It's haunted, yo, know'm sayin'? Haunted?"

Lyle turned and watched the cartoon characters race about on the screen of the unplugged TV. After the last couple of night's crazy visions of Charlie with a hole in his chest, Lyle had begun to wonder if he might be cracking up. But he wasn't imagining this TV thing. They'd both seen it.

No way he was buying into a haunted TV set, though. There had to be an explanation, a rational one-like some kind of battery inside-and he was going to find it.

Lyle headed for the garage and his toolbox...

3

Jack sat in the rear of Julio's and sized up his latest potential customer. The man had introduced himself simply as Edward, without offering his last name, a precaution Jack could appreciate.

A few of the regulars were already at the bar getting their first dose of the day. Morning sun filtered through the funeral procession of dead ferns, Wandering Jews, and spider plants lining the front window, then moved on to light up the cloud of tobacco smoke hovering over the bar. Jack's was the only table without the burden of upended chairs. The relatively cool air back here in the shadows wouldn't last; the day was promising to be a scorcher. Julio had opened the rear door for cross ventilation, to waft out the smell of stale beer before he had to close up and turn on the AC.

He approached now with a coffee pot.

"You want anything in the Java, meng?" he said as he refilled Jack's cup. "Little hair o' the dog?"

Julio had his name on the front window. He was short and muscular, with a pencil-line mustache. And he stank.

"Had a canine-free night," Jack said, and tried to ignore the odor. He'd got his first cup up front, which Julio had poured from the far side of the bar. He hadn't noticed the smell then.

Julio shrugged and turned to the customer. "Top you off?"

"That would be lovely," Edward said with a Barry Fitzgerald brogue.

Come to think of it, he sort of looked a little like Barry Fitzgerald too: sixty-five, maybe even seventy from the look of his gnarled hands, white hair, compact frame, twinkling blue eyes. He was oddly dressed: on top he wore a graying T-shirt that might have been white once but had spent too many cycles in with the dark wash; below the waist he was dressed for a funeral with black suit pants-shiny in the seat from wear-and black socks and shoes. He'd brought a large manila envelope that lay between them on the table.

Edward frowned and sniffed. He rubbed his nose and looked around for the source of the odor. Jack felt he had to say something.

"Okay, Julio, what's the new aftershave?"

Julio grinned. "It's called Chiquita. Great, huh?"

"Only if you're trying to attract radical chicks who happen to be nostalgic for the smell of tear gas."

"You don't like it?" He got a hurt expression. He turned to Edward. "What you think, meng?"

Edward rubbed his nose again. "Well, I, um-"

"You ever been Maced, Edward?" Jack said.

"Well, no, I can't say that I have."

"Well, I have, and it's pretty close to Chiquita."

Just then the old Wurlitzer 1080 against the front wall roared to life with "Paradise by the Dashboard Light."

Jack groaned. "Meatloaf? Before noon? Julio, you've got to be kidding!"

"Yo, Lou!" Julio called, turning toward the bar. "You play that, meng?"

A rhetorical question. Everyone in the place-except Edward, of course-knew Lou had a jones for Meatloaf songs. If he had the money, and if the other regulars didn't strangle him along the way, he'd play them all day and all night. One night a couple of years ago he overdid it. Played "Bat Out of Hell" one too many times. Some writer from LA-a friend of Tommy's, this jolly-looking guy Jack never would have guessed had it in him-pulled out a .357 and killed the machine. Julio had picked up this classic Wurlitzer as a replacement and didn't want it shot up like its predecessor.

Lou shrugged, grinning and showing sixty-year-old teeth stained with fifty-nine years of nicotine. "Could be."

"What I tell you 'bout Meatloaf when the sun out, eh? What I tell you?" He strode over to the jukebox and pulled the plug.

"Hey!" Lou cried. "I got money in there!"

"You jus' lost it."

The other regulars laughed as Lou hamimphed and returned to his shot and beer.

"Thank you, Julio," Jack muttered.

Meatloaf's opuses were hard to take on any day-twenty-minute songs with the same two or three lines repeated over and over for the last third-but on a Sunday morning... Sunday morning required something mellow along the lines of Cowboy Junkies.

"So, Edward," Jack said after a sip of his coffee, "how did you get my name?"

"Someone mentioned to me once that he'd enlisted your services. He said you did good work and weren't one for telling tales."

"Did he? Mind telling me who that someone might be?"

"Oh, I don't think he'll be wanting me to talk about him, but he had only good things to say about you. Except for your fee, that is. He wasn't too keen on that."

"Do you happen to know what I did for him?"

"I don't think he'll be wanting me to talk about that either." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Especially since it wasn't exactly legal."

"Can't believe everything you hear," Jack said.

"Are you telling me then," Edward said, flashing a leprechaun's grin, "that you're as gossipy as the village spinster and you work for free out of the goodness of your Christian heart?"

Jack had to smile. "No, but I like to know how my customers find me. And I like to know which ones are shooting their mouths off."

"Oh, don't worry about this lad. He's a very careful sort. Told me in the strictest confidence. I might be the only one he's ever told."

Jack figured he'd let the referral origin go for now and find out what this little man wanted from him.