She stood in the doorway for thirty seconds, her dark eyes darting from one side of the living room to the other. Finally, she stepped in and seemed to close the door reluctantly. Another ten seconds went by before she moved to the sofa and lifted each cushion, inspected it and then ran her hand in the crevices.
“What are you looking far? We haven’t lost anything.” The man looked at his wife. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her the truth. Grandpop’s spirit is still in this house and he won’t leave. I told her we wanted her to get rid of him.” A low distant rumble of thunder drifted across the room. She glanced quickly at the ceiling. “He’s your Grandpop but he’s getting to be a real pain in the rear.”
He nodded his head at his wife in agreement and then looked toward the Feng Sh ui woman in slight bewilderment. “He’s not under the cushions. Why are you looking there?”
“What we do is to restore harmony to a home. Usually we do this by moving things, doing re-arranging of the furniture and in rare cases removing something.” She kept on looking under the cushions.
“That’s what we want you to do.” The wife nodded toward the staircase. “We want you to remove Grandpop. He shouldn’t be here.”
The Feng Shui woman straightened up, still holding the second cushion and looked at the staircase. “I sense evil,” she intoned in a rough voice. She closed her eyes and looked upward. “A great evil lives in this house. I will have to do a major exorcism. Your grandfather is firmly entrenched.” She opened her eyes and seemed slightly befuddled. “What did I say? There’s seems to be something terrible here.”
“Something about a major exorcism.” He waited a few seconds and then asked, “How much is a major as compared to a minor exorcism?”
“He’s really not evil,” the wife said. “He’s just a pain and he shouldn’t be here.” She hesitated for a second looking at her husband. “I don’t really know where he should be.”
The Feng Shui briefly surveyed the room, the moderate furnishings and decided the pair could afford a five hundred dollar exorcism. “It may take three or four visits before your grandfather is completely and forever exorcised. For you good people, I’ll do it for five hundred dollars. Of course, if I have to bring in the Feng Shui master, then the price will have to go up.” She waited until the wife slowly nodded at her husband.
The woman replaced the second cushion. “Now, where is he?”
The man started to reply but cocked his ear toward the stairway and held a finger to his lips. A faint noise drifted down the steps. Then masculine laughter followed by giggling, defiantly feminine. He tiptoed to the steps beckoning the woman to follow. “We could put up with him as long as it was only him.” He listened for a moment at the laughter and giggling. “But now the old coot has started bringing women home.”
He eased up five steps and waved for the woman to follow. A louder peal of laughter came from the hallway at the top of the stairs followed by shrill laughter. “Come on,” he whispered as softly as possible. “We’ll break in on them. They should be ashamed of themselves.” He moved up three more steps and glanced back at the woman still standing at the foot of the stairs. “Come on.”
The Feng Shui woman slowly moved up two steps. Her foot was on the third step when a loud thumping broke out from the hallway. The electric lights flickered and a few flecks of paint slowly drifted down from the ceiling. “What was that?” She stepped back to the living room floor as snow appeared on the TV screen. “Where is that noise coming from?”
“The second bedroom on the right.” The wife glanced up the stairs. “Sometimes it’s louder than that. He’s yelling at the top of his lungs and the woman he has with him is screaming. It’s terrible. I have to cover my ears sometime. He is so vulgar.” She paused for a second. “And the women are no better.”
“Whoa,” the Feng Shui woman whispered backing to the middle of the living room. “A few questions. One time you’re saying woman and then the next time it’s women. Which is it?”
The husband walked down the steps, making no effort to be quiet. “It’s women. The old fool usually brings a different one home every day. It’s embarrassing. We haven’t had anyone visit us for over a year.”
The Feng Shui woman glanced up the stairs into the dark hallway. The thumping began again, half as loud as the previous. A doorknob rattled as someone began beating quietly on the door. “How do you know it’s your grandfather? It could be a poltergeist or a demon. To get rid of one of them causes the price to go up.” She listened to the two sounds. The thumping seemed to be quieter while the rapping on the door intensified. “Are you sure you guys haven’t just locked grandfather in his bedroom? I know how it is with old people suffering from Alzheimer’s. Put him in a nursing home and be done with it. It’s going to be a hundred dollars just for this visit.”
“No, no!” The wife gently but firmly pushed the Feng Shui woman towards the stairway. “He’s been dead for two years. He’s buried in the Church Cemetery outside of town. At least ten miles away.” She stopped as the rapping became louder. “I don’t know who is doing the rapping. Sometimes I think it’s the woman trying to get out of the bedroom. She wants to get away from the old goat.” She pushed the woman to the first step. “Go on up and open the door. Chase him and that hussy back where they belong and I don’t care where that is.”
“Stop pushing.” She stepped back from the step. “How do you know it’s your Grandfather?”
“I remember the sound of his laughter.” The man went up three steps. “Plus he arrived the very night he was buried. He was buried that afternoon and he was in his room that night.”
She stood still, making no effort to climb the stairs. “Have you seen him?” She waited a moment as the two people shook their heads. “Have you ever opened the door while the noise was going on?” She frowned as both nodded vigorously. “Well? What did you see?”
The man reached out and took her hand. “Come on up. I’ll show you.”
“No, no! I don’t think so. At least not right now. What did you see when you opened the door?”
The man waited a few seconds waiting to see if his wife would answer. “Actually, I’ve not seen anything. As soon as I opened the door, it was quiet as a tomb.” He flinched as loud static came from the TV. Thunder rumbled from the kitchen. “Usually there’s a smell I can’t identify.”
The wife moved up beside the woman. “I know what the smell is. It’s that old cheap perfume those tramps wear mixed in with his trashy cigar smell. And then on top of that, there’s a faint lingering smell of sulfur and brimstone.” She stopped as the upstairs’ sounds died away. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know where that smell came from.”
The husband frowned at his wife. “I don’t smell that. You make it sound like my granddad is an escapee from hell.”
The lights went off, the floor shook, lightning flashed across the hallway followed instantly by a clap of thunder. The lights began to glow a dull red, flickered twice and came back on.
The wife had her hand over her mouth. “You shouldn’t have said that. You know it makes him angry if you mention anything having to do with the dead.” She paused for a second looking at the ceiling. “At least it makes somebody angry.”
“I see, I see.” The Feng Shui woman backed away from the steps. “I can definitely see that this is going to be a major, major exorcism. Why don’t we make an appointment for next month and then I’ll come back with the Feng Shui Grand Master.” She began walking backward towards the front door. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
“You can’t do that,” the wife whimpered. “You just can’t leave us here
with that monster upstairs. You’ve got to get rid of him.” She took the Feng Shui woman by the wrist and began pulling firmly.
The husband grabbed her other wrist and pulled her to the first step. “You have to come with us. If you don’t, I’m going to run an ad in the paper saying that the Feng Shui demon chaser refused to even look into a haunted bedroom.” He paused for moment as the noise went up a notch. “I don’t think that would be too good for business.”
The woman snatched her wrists back. “OK, OK. It’s blackmail, is it? Maybe I was a little hasty.” She looked first at the husband and then at the dark hallway at the top of the steps. “Turn the light on. It’s dark up there.”
The wife stood behind the Feng Shui and flicked the light switch twice. “It never works except when the electrician is here. Then it works perfectly.” She firmly pushed the woman up on the first step.
The Feng Shui stood on the first step with one foot poised on the next. Wrinkles appeared on her forehead as she turned her head slightly to listen. “It seems like the sounds intensifies as we go up the steps.” She removed her foot from the second step. “Did you hear that? It went down.”
“Don’t pay any mind to that. It’s just your imagination. Come on.” The husband quietly went up to the