F. Paul Wilson - Haunted Air

Charlie's grin had a sour twist. "I know you lost that busta accent."

"Did I?" Lyle had to smile. He'd been affecting a mild East African accent for so long now-used it twenty-four/seven-that he'd thought his Detroit ghetto voice dead and buried. Guess not. "Shows how much I was worried about you, man. You're my blood. I didn't want this whole house comin' down on your head."

"I 'predate that, Lyle, but Jesus was with me. I wasn't afraid."

"Well, you should have been. An earthquake in New York. Whoever heard of such a thing?"

"Maybe it's a warning, Lyle," Charlie said, still pacing and sipping. "You know, the Lord's way of telling us to get tight."

Lyle closed his eyes. Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. You were so much more fun before you got religion.

My fault, he supposed. My bad.

A few years ago, when they'd been working a low-budget spiritualist storefront in Dearborn, a faith healer came to town and he and Charlie had gone to see how the guy worked his game, Lyle had kept his eye on all the wheelchairs the healer had brought along, and how his assistants would graciously offer them to unsteady looking old folks who tottered in-the same folks who'd "miraculously" be able to walk again after the healer prayed over them. While he was doing that, his younger brother had been listening to the sermon.

Lyle had gone home and written up notes for the future when he opened his own church.

Charlie had bought a Bible at the tent show, brought it home, and started reading it.

Now he was a Born Again. A True Believer. A Big Bore.

They used to make the bars together, pick up women together, do everything together. Now the only things that seemed to interest Charlie were reading his Bible and "witnessing."

Yet no matter what he did or didn't do, Charlie was still his brother and Lyle loved him. But he'd liked the old Charlie better.

"If that earthquake was the Lord's work and aimed at us, Charlie, he sure shook up a lot of people besides us."

"Maybe lots of people besides us need shaking up, yo."

"Amen to that. But what was with that scream? You've got to let me know when you're going to pull a new gag. The house shaking and the ground rumbling were bad enough, but then you throw in the scream from hell and everyone was ready to run for the river."

"Didn't have nothing to do with no scream," Charlie said. "That was the fo' reals, bro."

"Real?" In his heart Lyle had known that, but he'd been hoping Charlie would tell him different. "Real what?"

"Real as in not something I cooked up. That sound didn't come from no speakers, Lyle. It come from the house."

"I know. A bunch of these old beams shifting in the quake, right?"

Charlie stopped his pacing and stared at him. "You connin' me? You really gonna sit there and tell me that sounded like wood creaks to you? Betta recognize that was a scream, man. A human scream."

That was what it had sounded like to Lyle too, but it couldn't have been.

"Not human, Charlie, because the only humans here besides you and me were our uninvited guests, and they didn't do it. So it just sounded human, but wasn't."

"Was." Charlie's pacing picked up speed. "Come from the basement."

"How do you know that?"

"I standin' by the door when it went down."

"The basement?" Lyle felt a chill ripple along his spine. He hated the basement. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Didn't 'xactly have time. We had guests, remember?"

"They've been gone for a while now."

Charlie looked away. "I knew you'd wanna go check it out."

"Damn right, I do." He didn't, not really, but no way he was going to sleep tonight if he didn't. "And would you sit down or something? You're making me nervous."

"Can't. I'm too jumpy. Don't you feel it, Lyle? The house has changed, yo. Noticed it soon as we come back inside after the quake. I can't explain it, but it feels different... strange."

Lyle felt it too, but wouldn't say so. That would be akin to buying into the same sort of supernatural mumbo jumbo they sold to the fish. Which he refused to do. But he had to admit that the room lights didn't seem quite as bright as before the quake. Or was it that the shadows in the corners seemed a little deeper?

"We've had a nerve-jangling week and you're feeling the effects."

"No, Lyle. It's like it ain't just us in this house no more. Like something else moved in."

"Who? Beelzebub?"

"Don't you go crackin' on me. You know you feel it, dawg, don't tell me you don't!"

"I don't feel nothin'!"

Lyle stopped and shook his head at the double negative. He'd spent years erasing the street from his vocabulary, but every once in a while, like a weed, it popped through the Third World turf he'd been cultivating. Ifasen's accent said old Third World, his dreads said new Third World; Ifasen was an international man who recognized no barriers-not between races, not between nations, not even between life and death.

But Third World was key. The affluent, white, New Age yo-yos who made up the demographic Lyle was chasing believed that only primitive and ancient civilizations retained access to the eternal truths obscured by the technophilia of western post-industrial civilization. They'd accept just about anything an East African named Ifasen told them, but would brush off the same if it came from Lyle Kenton of Detroit's Westwood Park slums.

Lyle didn't mind the act; kind of liked it, in fact. But Charlie wouldn't make the effort, declining to become what he called an "oreo." So he became the silent partner in the act. At least he agreed to dress the part of Kehinde. Left on his own he'd be baggied out with a dukey rope, floppy fat sneaks, and a backward Tigers cap. A hip-hop Born-Again.

Lyle jumped and spilled some beer on his pants as the phone rang. Man, his nerves were jangled. He looked at the caller ID: Michigan. He picked up.

"Hey, sugar. I thought you'd be on the plane by now."

Kareena Hawkins's velvet voice slunk from the receiver. The sound gave Lyle a rush of lust. "I wish I were. But tonight's promotion ran way over and the last plane out is gone."

He missed Kareena. She ran the PR department of a Dearborn rap station. At twenty-eight she was two years younger than Lyle. They'd been just about inseparable before he moved east, and had been carrying on a longdistance relationship the last ten months, the plan being for Kareena to move east and get a job with a New York station.

"So take a morning flight."

He heard her yawn. "I'm beat, Lyle. I think I'll just sleep in."

Lyle couldn't hide his disappointment. "Come on, Kareena. It's been three weeks."

"Next weekend'll be better. I'll call you tomorrow."

Lyle pressed his case awhile longer but to no avail. Finally they ended the call. He sat there a moment, staring at one of the crummy pictures on the wall and feeling morose.

Charlie said, "Kareena ain't gonna make it, I take it?"

"Nah. Too tired. That job of hers is-"

"Hate to say it, bro, but she playin' on you."

"No way. Don't talk like that."

Charlie shrugged and mimed zipping his lip.

Lyle didn't want to admit it but he'd begun suspecting the same thing. He'd gotten the growing impression that despite all her early enthusiasm for a career move, Kareena had cooled to the idea of leaving her comfy niche in Dearborn and challenging the New York market. And now she was cooling on him.

Only one thing to do: Take some time off next week and head west. Sit her down, talk to her, show her how important she was to him and how he couldn't lose her.

He looked at Charlie and said, "Let's go check the cellar."

Charlie only nodded.

Lyle led the way down to the first level, through the old-fashioned linoleum-floored kitchen, and down the cellar steps. He flipped the light on and stopped, staring.