The Moonlight Monsters Detective Agency Volume One Read online

  As her being focused back on her physical body, Tina looked down at the table to the picture Anna was sketching. It was Anna herself, and beside her the little blonde girl from her vision.

  Out in the hallway, the cover of the piano banged open and the first few tinkling notes of Chopsticks began to play, with childlike precision. The grown-ups in the room all exchanged an uneasy look.

  Tina jumped up and ran out to the hallway. The Hernandez family were quick on her heels. The piano was open with the stool pulled out, but the spirit was gone.

  ‘So now you see,’ Juan said.

  ‘I never doubted it,’ Tina replied. She could feel the residue of the spirit that had inhabited the room just moments ago. It was child-like and innocent, but also lost and lonely.

  At that moment her cellphone started to ring and all three adults jumped.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tina muttered.

  She pulled out her phone. It was Boris.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Ya, Tina?’ Boris answered, ‘I’ve arrived on Godot Road, but I can’t see a damn thing in this light. Where are you?’

  ‘Give me a second,’ Tina said, and then turned back to the others. ‘It’s my partner, he’s just arrived. I better go out and show him the way. I’ll be back in a moment.’

  She stepped outside into the cold icy night. Somewhere overhead the thundering rush of an airplane descending sounded out in the darkness. She walked down the path and out onto the road, keeping her eyes peeled for Boris. At the end of the street, with his huge hulking figure shrouded beneath a heavy fur overcoat and a Russian hat, was her partner.

  Jeez, she thought, in the darkness and snow the werebear looked like he’d be every bit as terrifying to the unawares as whatever it was that was lurking in the shadows of the house she’d just left. She’d have to remind him to take off his hat at least, before he went inside and gave them all a heart attack.

  ‘Over here!’ she called.

  Boris spun on his heels and began crunching across the snow towards her. ‘Ah,’ he smiled, ‘there you are. It is a cold evening, no?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tina snorted, ‘as if you even feel it.’

  ‘So what we got here?’ Boris asked as he joined her on the Hernandez’s driveway.

  ‘I’m thinking poltergeist,’ she replied, ‘a little girl – and the presence is pretty damn strong too. I don’t suppose Ernie pulled up anything on the computer system?’

  Boris shook his head. ‘Nada,’ he said, ‘all theses houses were only built last year. I had a look at the housing records myself.’

  ‘Huh,’ Tina nodded. ‘Ok, text the Egghead and ask him to run the address through the newspaper archives for the last year – see if he can dig up anything about a little girl, maybe a missing person’s report or a death.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Right, the house is back this way. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the Hernandez family.’

  They stepped into the front-room and Tina noted with relief that Boris had already taken off his hat and opened his coat before stepping inside. The young family had already stomached enough fright for one lifetime.

  ‘Guys,’ she said, ‘this is my partner Boris Rachmaninoff. Boris, this is Juan, Karen and little Anna.’

  ‘Ah hello little one!’ Boris called to the little girl, ‘What a beautiful young princess!’

  Anna’s face broke out in a smile and Tina felt a powerful image flash forth out of her mind – that of Santa Claus. Oh man, Tina thought, holding a hand over her mouth to cover her smile. The poor kid thought Boris was Santa.

  ‘Oh she likes you!’ Karen Hernandez smiled, ‘she doesn’t usually take to strangers.’

  Boris laughed with hearty delight. ‘Ha ha, yes, I have a whole den of cubs myself, but none so pretty as this one.’

  As Tina watched her chuckling partner with his huge fur-coat and beard, she realized that he did kind of look like Santa. Better keep that one to yourself, she thought. She turned back to the young couple.

  ‘Is there anywhere in particular where the disturbances take place more than anywhere else?’ she asked them.

  Juan nodded slowly. ‘Actually, yes,’ he said, ‘Anna’s room. That’s why we thought originally that it might be her who was doing it.’

  Tina nodded to herself. Makes sense. ‘Do you mind if we take a look?’ she asked, ‘If it’s any conciliation, I’m fairly certain now that your daughter is not the source of the problem.’

  ‘By all means,’ Karen said, ‘it’s the second door on the left upstairs. Do whatever you have to.’

  ‘Ok,’ Tina said, ‘Boris, let’s go.’

  ‘Goodbye little one!’ Boris cried to Anna and the little girl’s face lit up once more with a bright smile.

  They climbed the staircase to the hallway upstairs. The presence was strong now. The spirit was close.

  This is the one,’ Tina said, pausing outside Anna’s room. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  She clicked the switch on and the room filled with light. It was a typical little girl’s room – pink wallpaper, a whole brigade of stuffed toys and dolls. Long lace curtains hanging over the window. But there was something else here too. She could see Boris’s breath when he spoke.

  ‘Do you feel it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘she’s here.’

  The spirit was so palpable it was almost as if there was another living person in the room. Tina focused her psychic energy, her mind spreading out into the ether around her.

  ‘Hello?’ she spoke, ‘Can you hear me? My name is Tina. I’d like very much if you could come out and talk to me.’

  The dresser drawers began to tremble as she felt a voice reply. “No! No! I only want to play!”

  Boris eyed his partner warily. He hadn’t heard a thing beyond the shaking furniture.

  ‘You can play with me if you want to,’ Tina said.

  The fixtures shook even louder. “No! I only want to play.”

  Tina turned to Boris. ‘Will you go downstairs and get Karen and Juan to bring Anna up here?’ she said, ‘I have an idea.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ Boris nodded. He turned and left, his loud footfalls sounding out through the walls as he followed the staircase down below.

  ‘Would you like to play with Anna?’ Tina asked.

  The closet door slammed open, and a cold breeze blew out, rustling the lapels of Tina’s coat.

  “Yes! Yes, I want to play with Anna.”

  The spirit was powerful – powerful and restless.

  Boris arrived back with the Hernandez family. As Anna stepped into the room the spirit went wild. Every piece of furniture started to shake and a breeze as strong as a full wind blew around them.

  “Anna!” the ghost cried, “Anna come play with me!”

  Slowly a little porcelain doll rose up from the dresser. It hovered for a moment in mid-air, before flying across the room and hitting the wall. Immediately after this, a teddy bear rose up and began spinning around in circles. Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez looked terrified, even Boris seemed a little spooked. But as Tina watched young Anna, she realized that the little girl wasn’t scared at all. In fact she was smiling and looking across the room past the others. Her eyes were fixed on a spot in the corner.

  ‘She can see her,’ Tina whispered, ‘she can actually see her.’

  With intense concentration, Tina let herself slip out of her body and over onto Anna’s wavelength. It all made sense now. The girl’s abnormal mode of consciousness had formed the perfect conduit for the spirit to return to the realm of the living.

  Slowly, Tina turned and looked to the spot where Anna’s gaze was transfixed. And then she saw her – faint, but there nonetheless – a little girl in a blue frock with blonde curls. This was not Tina’s first time dealing with lost spirits. In fact it was quite a common occurrence for a human soul to become trapped on its way to the next world – whether by an untimely and unexpected death or by a particularly gruesome end. By the generally happy counte
nance of this spirit, Tina was confident that it was the former. It shouldn’t be too hard to guide her back to the right path then…

  Tina stepped towards the ghost. ’Hello there,’ she smiled, ‘I bet you’ve been very bored lately, huh?’

  “Yes, it’s so boring here!”

  ‘Is that why you woke up when Anna came? Because you wanted to play?’

  The spirit nodded frantically. “Yes,” she said, “I was only playing, but then I fell down. I want to play!”

  ‘Well that’s understandable,’ Tina smiled, ‘but I’m afraid you can’t play with Anna anymore – don’t you see that her mommy and daddy are scared?’

  The ghost looked for a moment in the direction of Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez but didn’t seem to fully comprehend their presence. “But I want to play! How can I play?”

  ‘I’ll tell you how,’ Tina said, ‘but first, let me ask you a question. I want you to look around you very closely. Now tell me, do you see a very bright light?’

  The little ghost looked up towards the corner of the ceiling. “Um, yes,” she said.

  ‘Well there are lots of friends to play with where that light is coming from,’ Tina told her, ‘all you have to do is go to them. Why I bet if you listen very closely you can even hear them calling to you.’

  The spirit’s face lit up. “Hey yeah!” she said, “They sound like fun.”

  She stepped forward a little, as though to listen closer to the sound of something that only she could hear. As she did so, she started to fade.

  “Don’t worry, I’m coming.” The little girl called. She paused for a moment and turned to face Anna Hernandez.

  “Bye Anna,” she said, “I have to go now.”

  Anna raised her hand and gave a little wave. To the astonishment of her parents, she said: ‘Bye-bye.’

  The ghost walked further away from Tina, fading more and more as she did so, until she was finally gone completely.

  In an instant, the breeze disappeared and the teddy bear dropped to the ground. All sense of the spirit had now left the house. Tina looked to Boris and the giant werebear winked back.

  Juan and Karen Hernandez had swept up their daughter and were cradling her, with shining wonder in their eyes.

  ‘She’s never spoken before,’ Juan explained, ‘not one word. It’s a miracle.’

  ‘Well I guess it is that time of year,’ Tina grinned. She turned to her partner. ‘Come on Boris, we better get moving. I’ll buy you a coffee on the way home.’

  ‘Wait,’ Karen Hernandez called, ‘there must be something we can do for you, in return for your help…’

  ‘Hey,’ Tina shrugged, ‘we were only doing our job.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Juan said, ‘and what department did you say you were from again?’

  ‘It’s a special department,’ Tina replied, ‘you’ve probably never heard of us. I hope you never have to again either.’

  As they stepped out of the room, Anna reached out and patted Boris’s shoulder. ‘Santa,’ she said.

  So was that the gift of the ghost to her playmate, or had the experience awakened something in the little girl that had been lying dormant inside her all along? Who knew? All Tina could say for certain was that in this strange universe anything was possible. As they walked through the snow down Godot Road, her cellphone started to ring. It was Ernie.

  ‘Ernie the Egghead,’ Tina answered, ‘what’s the word?’

  ‘Get this,’ Ernie replied, ‘I’ve just pulled up a newspaper article from the summer before last. When they were building those houses out there a little girl – Angela Murray – happened to stray into the construction site and fall off a set of scaffolds. She died instantly. The accident halted construction for months…’

  Tina said nothing. That was close enough to how she’d figured it.

  ‘So does that help the case then?’ Ernie asked, ‘did I solve it for you, yet again?’

  ‘Pfft,’ Tina snorted, ‘we’re already on our way back. Sheesh Ernie, try to keep up.’

  ‘Yeah well in that case, I’ve got something else for you,’ Ernie said, ‘a phone message – I’ll forward it onto you now.’

  He hung up the phone.

  ‘What was that about?’ Boris asked.

  ‘Turns out our ghost was one Angela Murray,’ Tina replied, ‘a little girl who died on the construction site out here. Dollars to doughnuts it was on the same spot as the Hernandez household.’

  They arrived at the car and Boris opened the doors. They climbed in.

  ‘Ernie said he had something else for us too,’ Tina said, ‘a phone message, whatever that could be…’

  Her cell beeped.

  ‘This must be it now,’ she said and brought the phone to her ear.

  ‘Alright Tina love?’ a voice spoke, ‘Sam Parker here – I guess by now you’ve realized that there wasn’t any Robert Stoker then. I suppose you’re pretty pissed off, huh? Well I don’t blame you love, but give me a moment to explain myself here…’

  ‘It’s that bloodsucker, Sam Parker,’ Tina hissed to Boris, ‘he’s finally called back looking for his money.’

  ‘Yeah well it’s not like you’d need Lieutenant Colombo to figure out the cash was mine all along, eh love?’ Parker continued, ‘that’s right, the dough was mine, but you have to understand; that demon wanker nabbed it off me and I knew if you and Smoky the Brute took me in that day then I’d never get it back. So you can see the predicament I was in, right? Because listen love, let me tell you; it cut me right open to have to lie to you like that – goes against my whole nature, it does – but I didn’t have any other choice. Anyway I’m sure that clears it all up, so I’ll give you a call in another few days and hopefully catch you when you’re in, eh? You can arrange the transfer of the money back to me then, yeah? Alright then love. Toodle-oo. Tarrah… Nice one.’

  ‘Hah,’ Tina snorted as she closed the phone over. If parker thought she’d just hand all that money over to him without at least seeing proof of ownership then he had another thing coming. But then again, it wouldn’t hurt to let him go on thinking that for another few days – at least until she’d coaxed him back to the station. They had him on evading arrest now, as well as practicing without a license. It looked she was about to finally get her man.

  ‘Come on, Boris,’ she said, ‘I told you I’d get you a coffee. I think there’s a nice place by the airport.’

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ Boris agreed and pulled the car out of the frosty, snow-painted cul-de-sac.

  # # #

  Hells Bells

  It was a few days before Christmas and Moonlight City was alive with frantic shoppers and happy families. Under the bright green, red and yellow lights over Dawkin street, a long line of traffic slowly rumbled forward, car horns bleating and exhaust fumes rising up in the cold air, their headlights joining together to form the blanket of light that hung over the city beneath the dark winter sky. In her SDA company Mercedes (that’s Supernatural Detective Agency, or Monsters Detective Agency to those in the know) sat detective Tina Peterson. And she was not feeling the festive spirit.

  Nearly two hours ago she’d received a call from Sam Parker, a British vampire who’d tried to set himself up (illegally) in the city as a paranormal private detective. Parker had helped lead her to a large drugs bust a few weeks ago – problem was he’d lied about just who owned the money in question (it was his) and then disappeared before she had time to get an answer out of him. Then last week he’d called the office offering to explain himself and, since Tina still had a warrant out for his arrest, she’d told him to call into the station – neglecting to inform him that he’d be doing any explaining from between the walls of a prison cell.

  But Parker never showed up for their appointment, Tina guessed the crooked vampire must have gotten wise to her plan and backed off. So naturally Sam Parker wasn’t Tina’s favorite person in the world. And, when he’d called that afternoon begging her to meet him downtown, Tina was more than happy to f
inally get a chance to bring him in.

  She drummed her hands on the wheel, willing the traffic forward with her every being, stopping short of actually psychically forcing the cars to move. (Tina was an eighth demon, a heritage which had afforded her certain extrasensory abilities, though she only used her gifts in the service of the SDA.) As she listened to Chris Rea sing “Driving Home for Christmas” on the radio (an ironic choice since very few cars in Moonlight City were driving anywhere that evening – reports had it that the whole city was in gridlock), she reflected on the phone call she’d had with Parker earlier. The vampire had sounded panicked and upset, he’d practically begged her to come down and meet him – in the multistory car park of the Waterside Shopping Mall, for some reason – swearing that something awful was about to happen. But Tina wasn’t buying it. Sam Parker was a crook, a smooth-talking con-artist who could think fast on his feet and tell a lie as straight-faced as the truth – if he ever actually told it at all, that was. Plus, he had pretty strong mental defenses built up, so Tina couldn’t even read him without the vampire catching on and blocking her out within a minute or two.

  No, she wasn’t taking any chances with Sam Parker this time, that’s why as soon as she had him in her sights she was taking him down.

  Forty minutes later she reached the entrance to the Waterside car park. She rolled down her window to purchase a ticket from the bored teenage attendant in the booth and then drove on through. The lot was packed; Tina barely passed one or two empty spaces as she worked her way towards the roof. Not like it mattered – she wasn’t planning on sticking around for too long.

  She came out onto the roof, the sky a soft blend of orange and magenta above the city and the concrete parking lot sluiced with snow-slush and mud. Up ahead she spotted her man. Sam Parker was leaning against the wall with his hands in the pockets of a long grey trench-coat and his shoulders slouched forward anxiously. Guy probably thinks he looks like Bogart in that jacket, Tina observed, when it only makes him look more like what he is – a two-bit hack con-man. That said, with his scruffy blonde hair and stubble he was kind of cute. The last time Tina had seen him he’d been buried under a hood and shades – the standard attire for a vampire out in daylight. She stepped out of the car and started crunching across the snow towards him.