Murmurs in the Walls: The Meatloaf
Episode IV
Thank you for your patience with today’s episode! I usually try to have my posts ready to publish bright and early Saturday morning, but the past few weeks have involved a lot of upheaval and unexpected travel for our family. We’re starting to settle back into a routine, but I decided to take a little extra time to work on this week’s episode to make sure that the quality was up to snuff. Enjoy!
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Murmurs in the Walls is a serial paranormal mystery novella featuring Judith Temple, psychic detective. This is Season 3 of Case Files of a Psychic Detective.
While Murmurs in the Walls can be read as a standalone story, you may appreciate the characters and their interactions more if you are familiar with Judith’s previous adventures, Down in the Holler and Beasts of the Field.
Season 1, Down in the Holler, is now behind a paywall but will soon be available in paperback and e-book. Season 2, Beasts of the Field, is currently free to read! Click here to read Beasts of the Field.
← In Episode III: The Revelation, Judith began her investigation of the Pickens family’s supposedly haunted house and made several revealing discoveries.
As she parked in the dusty patch of earth that served as Courtney’s driveway, Judith’s phone erupted in the jaunty opening jazz notes of White Christmas’ “Sisters”.
Judith snatched up her phone. “Hello?”
“I invited a friend along to dinner tonight!” In the background of her sister Constance’s phone call came the crashing chaos of a sword fight in progress. It still amazed Judith how any and every object, from a stick to a whisk to their mother’s hair dryer, served as a makeshift weapon in her nephews’ imaginations.
“A friend?” Judith gave a resigned sigh. Constance had a habit of showing up to family gatherings with unexpected guests – new friends she’d met at the hair salon or her boys’ play groups or the park – and thankfully Judith had already planned her menu to accommodate at least four people, rather than the original attendance list of herself, Constance, and Constance’s husband Steve.
“Also, I’m bringing three desserts because I couldn’t choose between ice cream, brownies, and the sourdough scone recipe I texted you the other day.”
“Three desserts seems excessive.”
“And I’m bringing wine.”
A handful of ghosts, or apparitions, as Judith preferred to refer to them – young and old and in-between, with clothing and hairstyles separated by decades – lingered around the outskirts of Courtney’s property, watching with silent eyes as Judith sat in her car. But they knew the drill by now: Judith would make time for them in her precise, orderly fashion after she finished her business with Courtney and Brian.
It would, however, need to be a short session today, if she was going to get back to Lexington in time to make dinner for Company. Getting ready for Company had always been a stressful affair in Judith’s childhood home; baseboards had to be dusted and scrubbed, rooms had to be tidied within an inch of their lives, the food had to be in the oven at a pre-determined time, or, if her mother’s anxious spiraling was to be believed, all hell would break loose. It had taken Judith years to begin to wiggle free of that worry-fueled cycle that loomed on the rare occasions that she was scheduled to host a get-together.
“You’re not serving leftover chicken, right?” Constance said.
“I don’t understand your prejudice against chicken salad sandwiches. They’re excellent, healthy, and use up the remainder of my shredded chicken.”
“The chicken that you roasted on Monday. That’s not dinner party food. Please tell me you’re making Gigi’s meatloaf.”
“I did recall that you requested it.”
Constance squealed. “You’re the best. I never have the patience for her meatloaf, but I love it. Thank you, I love you – Declan, you do not do that to your brother! Room, now; battle’s over – Sorry, I gotta go. Declan just clobbered Matty in the face with a lampshade.”
Judith bid her sister a quick goodbye over Matty’s shrill wails, only to be cut off when Constance hung up abruptly, leaving Judith to the sudden silence of her car in the quiet countryside.
“My objective for today is fairly straightforward,” Judith said.
Kortney, her face pale and her gaze jumpy, sat on the couch, while Brian bounced in his seat beside her.
“I’m going to gather psychic impressions of the house, which shouldn’t take more than an hour or so,” Judith continued. “Should any further investigating or testing be required, I will perform that next week.”
“Is it safe for us to stay here that long, do you think?” Kortney said. “A whole week?”
“Have you experienced any unusual phenomena since my last visit?”
“Well, nothin’ as intense as last time –”
“The microwave’s actin’ weird,” Brian piped up. “And the car alarm keeps goin’ off at night.”
Judith made a quick note in her notebook. “Do you have a security system or camera?”
“No, we ain’t got nothin’ like that,” Kortney said. “It’s probably just raccoons, though, or possums messin’ with the car. We don’t got no garage or nothin’ like that, so the critters crawl all over the car at night. But Brian’s right, the microwave is actin’ up. Turns off in the middle of warmin’ somethin’ up, or it overheats. I’ve hadta use the fire extinguisher on it twice. The thing is, we haven’t had it more’n a coupla months. It’s probably just defective. I’m gonna get a new one soon as I save up enough.”
“I’m going to get to work on my readings now,” Judith said, “before you tell me more about it. Because I’ve been investigating the house, I already have far more frontloaded information than I prefer when seeking out psychic impressions, so it will take more mental energy to ensure that I’m not letting my prior experience affect my impressions.”
“Um – yeah. Sure.” Kortney stood and skirted back toward the kitchen. “Come on, Brian. You’ve got homework.”
“But, mom, I wanna watch –”
“Brian.” Her voice sharp, Kortney’s eyebrows raised in a warning glance, and Brian grumbled and shuffled after his mother.
“I’m going to start outside,” Judith said, striding to the front door and slipping out into the midday cool of early Spring.
Spring and Autumn were her two favorite seasons in Kentucky. Summer was all too often hot and sticky, and Winter was chilly, wet, gray, and dreary for months on end. But Spring and Autumn stayed largely within Judith’s preferred range of 50-70 degrees Fahrenheit, and many days brought temperatures that stayed within 60-65 degrees, her ideal temperature for outdoor activities.
As Judith stepped outside, the apparitions that waited along the fringes of the property raised their eyes with hopeful glances, but Judith held up her hands. “I’m just getting a reading on the outside of the house. I won’t be finished for another hour or two.”
“You say something?” Kortney’s head poked through the not-quite-closed door.
“Oh –” Judith’s mind stalled, flustered. It didn’t seem wise or necessary to inform Kortney that she had been staying near the property for an hour or more after their appointments to talk to lonely ghosts, but anything less than the bald, honest truth was difficult for Judith to invent on the spot. “I just said I won’t be finished for another hour or two.”
Nodding, Kortney slipped back inside, and Judith took a moment to exult in her own quick thinking. Perhaps she was getting better at navigating nuanced conversational strategies. She had answered Kortney’s question, in the strictest sense, but she had left out the troublesome context. And she had done so without having had time to pre-plan her response to the interaction; that was progress.
Judith took a quick look around the wood-enclosed property, with thick trees encroaching on the yard, casting wavering shadows on the ground. A steep hillside rose behind the house, rolling into budding green mountain foothills. The little red house had probably been a lovely cabin at one time but now had peeling paint and a roof in poor repair.
Closing her eyes, Judith reached out, trying not to tense.
The sharp, stabbing headache arrived with a clamor, the noise of decades of memories in the old house.
Summer days in the blow-up pool, children getting spoiled by doting grandparents, eating sweets and drinking from the hose and splashing sunburned toes in the squishy mud.
A man, hurling words like shards of glass back and forth with a woman, each embedding tiny bloody pinpricks in the other -until one day the door slams behind the woman and doesn’t open again.
An elderly lady, shuffling between her plants, her cats, and the squirrels and birds and raccoons and possums that creep out of the woods to sniff at the food she leaves out for them, as she oscillates between kindness and bribery, gentleness and a quiet desperation for something like love.
And a man, the hair on his forearms dark and thick, his hands meaty. Frigid, hard-edged rage billowing out from him like a cloud of smoke caught in a wintry valley, trapped in place by soaring mountains and oppressive cold.
Judith opened her eyes, her heartbeat pounding hard in her head.
She’d seen that man before, wielding a blade, his fury coalescing into murderous sharpness. She’d seen him drive a kitchen knife into a man who was hardly more than a boy and leave him on the ground, writhing in a last, futile agony.
A weight on her fractured ribs, crushing the air from her lungs
Moonlight on a long, sharp silver blade, hurtling toward her, slicing into her flesh
Blood, warm and wet, oozing into her shirt and down over her skin, mingling with frightened, salty sweat
With a sickening jolt, Judith realized that her legs and arms were shaking with a jittery violence. Sinking down, she sat in the damp grass and stuck her head between her knees, sucking in breath after breath and trying to force different memories into her head.
Orwell’s wild growl, his heavy form surging through the darkness, tackling the weight from her lungs
Shirley’s porch light flicking on, a lighthouse of safety in a black night
Tim’s arm around her, hurrying her across the grass
The sudden shift in gravity as Tim, suddenly so close and warm and solid, scooped her legs out from under her –
Why was she thinking about that? It was completely beside the point.
It was one thing to use positive memories to combat negative ones, but quite another thing for her mind to slide into those particular remembrances. She needed to find other positive memories to use.
More neutral, rational memories.
“It doesn’t add up.” Judith navigated her car north along the winding highway. Early afternoon sunlight tumbled in jumbling slats of light onto the road, waving with the budding trees. The quiet Saturday traffic consisted of the occasional car meandering southward or parked on the side of the road while its occupants stared out at a scenic outlook or took advantage of a good fishing spot. “I saw several place memories, a few of which even involved the same man I saw before – the murderer. But most of them were innocuous, just previous owners wandering the hallway or making breakfast or watching a sunset. I kept looking for an apparition, some kind of spirit that could be responsible for the moving objects, but I didn’t sense anything like that.”
“Well, what are your options?” Bob’s voice sounded brighter today than it had during their last conversation. Perhaps he was due for another treatment soon. During Judith’s mother’s bout with breast cancer, the first few days after treatments had been the most difficult. But Bob still hadn’t said the word cancer, and Judith knew from experience that, like pregnancy, cancer was something that should be discussed only if the person in question brought it up first.
“Many of the reported phenomena have natural explanations,” she said. “Faulty electrical wiring, a shoddy HVAC system, poor architecture.”
“What about the stuff that you haven’t found a natural explanation for?”
Judith resisted the urge to correct Bob’s sentence structure aloud and settled for rephrasing his question in her own mind. “The incident with the moving objects has three possible explanations: misperception, paranormal phenomena, and fraud. I could have misperceived the objects as moving under their own power when they, in fact, were not. Perhaps there was an earthquake that I somehow didn’t feel. I don’t believe that is the case, but I will investigate it as a matter of course. Under the umbrella of paranormal phenomena –”
“Such linear thinking,” Bob chuckled. “It’s a gift. But go on.”
“In terms of paranormal theories, demonic activity is one explanation. I am skeptical of this idea, as neither Kortney nor Brian has made any mention of religion or attacks aimed at their faith, but I will label it a possibility. On the other hand, there may be some type of apparition in the house that is moving objects as a means of communicating or getting attention. But if so, then I am quite shocked that it did not seek me out today, when I was quite open to conversation.” Judith swallowed, a sour taste forming in her mouth. “And then, of course, there’s the possibility of fraud.”
“There’s always the possibility of fraud.”
“Brian could have been throwing objects, or perhaps he rigged up some lever-and-pulley system that would fling objects across the room.”
“Far-fetched, but possible.”
“I never said that all of the theories have equal merit,” Judith said, needles of irritation prickling her spine. “I’m simply laying out all of the possible options.”
“All right, all right, Judy. Do your thing. I can tell you right now, though, there wasn’t any earthquake in your neck of the woods today. I just looked it up on the Google.”
“It’s just ‘Google’, Bob.”
“Yeah, yeah. My point is, if what you’re describing is accurate –”
“It is.”
“Then it’d be mighty hard for you to misperceive objects flying around the room willy-nilly and knocking each other over. Now, fraud, on the other hand –”
“It wasn’t physically possible for Brian to have thrown all of those objects,” Judith cut in. “He was huddled in a corner when I came into the room, and I watched things fly all around the room for several minutes before they finally calmed down.”
“Maybe the mom is in on it.”
“I found no evidence of hidden strings or other rigged-up systems that could explain the phenomena.”
“So let’s go back to the paranormal stuff. You don’t think it’s demons, huh?”
“As far as I’m aware, most possession cases are centered around religion and religious belief. I have yet to find anything remotely religious in the Pickens home, and neither of them has mentioned anything that aligns with my knowledge of demonic possession. So that leaves us with an apparition, some spirit causing mayhem in the house.”
“You said you didn’t sense anything when you did your reading.”
“That’s correct.”
“Judy,” Bob said, the knowing smirk in his voice sending a wave of frustration through Judith’s body, “you’re missing something.”
“I laid out the possible options, and I am thoroughly investigating each one –”
“You left one out. A big one.”
“What did I supposedly leave out?”
Bob’s laugh crackled across the phone line, bouncing along with the sunlight that leapt around the car with each toss of the trees’ branches. “I think this case might take a little longer than you thought.”
As soon as Judith pulled out a cutting board to start chopping onions, Orwell stationed his massive, shaggy gray body at her feet and didn’t budge. He watched while she measured spices and breadcrumbs, stared at her with wide, hopeful eyes while she sauteed onions, let his pink tongue loll out of his mouth while she mixed the glaze. When she pulled the ground beef from the refrigerator, a thin line of drool snaked from his mouth and waggled toward the ground.
“You can lick up anything that drops on the floor,” Judith said. “But I hope you’re not under the impression that this is for you.”
Orwell cocked his head at her.
“This is human food. I will allow you to lick my plate when I’m finished, but I am not making this for you.”
Orwell’s tail started to thump on the floor as she spoke, and his eyes never left her face.
Judith looked at the ground beef, ready to be dumped into the bowl of onions, bread crumbs, and spices. She would have to mix it with her hands, at which point she would be unable to touch anything without first thoroughly washing her hands. And Orwell looked so foolishly hopeful. Perhaps she ought to give him a treat before she dirtied her hands, just to placate him for a few minutes.
Striding to the pantry, Judith collected one of Orwell’s favorite bacon treats and a rawhide bone. Orwell’s tail thumped and thudded like a thunderstorm against the wood floor when she brought it out of the pantry.
“Now, please focus on this rather than on my cooking,” Judith said as Orwell slipped the treat and bone from her hand and settled himself beside the kitchen island, his tail still wagging.
Judith turned up the volume on her speaker just a few notches. As a general rule, she didn’t listen to loud music out of care for her cochlea. But certain tasks – deep cleaning, house painting, making meatloaf – required it.
Music blaring, Judith dumped the ground beef into the waiting bowl with a thunk and started to massage the mixture together with her hands. This was by far her least favorite part of the process. The meat was cold and gloppy on her fingers, and the spices and breadcrumbs ground into her skin like sand, coating her fingers. But there was no other way to make Gigi’s meatloaf.
Music blaring, Orwell gnawing, her hands kneading, Judith worked the concoction together, letting her thoughts drift toward Brian and Kortney. Flying, crashing objects, the mundane place memories shot through with the house’s distant memory of murder.
Perhaps Bob was right. It seemed so implausible, and yet the signs were there –
Just as Judith reached a critical point – the mixture just beginning to combine nicely, though there were still chunks of spices and breadcrumbs that refused to join with the meat – the doorbell rang.
Raw meat clinging to her skin and sticking in chunks to her fingers, she paused, looking toward her front window. Constance really had the worst timing. Dinner wasn’t scheduled to begin for another hour, and, though Constance helped with great enthusiasm, Judith’s kitchen always ended up in disarray whenever she tried to assist in cleanup.
Judith stared at her meat-covered fingers. Should she wash her hands, which would take at least a minute or two, given the amount of meat stuck to her skin? She wasn’t finished with mixing, so she would only have to get her hands dirty again. And her skin was always dry and flaky; did she really want to aggravate it more by excessive handwashing?
Holding her meat-smeared hands in the air, Judith made her way toward the front door.
The doorbell rang again.
“Coming!” With her elbows, which, thankfully, were a bit pointy, Judith inputted the code to disarm her security system. The alarm was always on, now, anytime she was home alone, after –
But she didn’t need to think about that. What she needed to think about was how to open the locked door.
Judith frowned at the knob of the deadbolt, working through a possible course of action. After a moment’s consideration, she used her elbows to fumble the deadbolt until it thunked open.
“The door’s unlocked,” she called. “You can come in.”
The door opened, but the person on her front porch was not Constance, or even Steve. This person was taller, and in place of his uniform he wore jeans and a collared shirt. He wasn’t wearing his wide-brimmed hat, and, as if he’d just taken a shower, his hair didn’t bear the ever-present indent of his hat band.
Her slimy, meaty hands in the air, Judith stared. “You’re at my house.”
Tim smiled. “I am.”
“I’m having Constance and Steve over for dinner in an hour.”
“In an hour?” Tim checked his watch. “Constance said to be here at five-thirty.”
“Why would Constance say – oh.” Like a disrupted synapse, Judith’s thoughts flickered, words catching halfway between her brain and her mouth. “You’re the guest. She didn’t say – why would she tell you the wrong time –” Realizing her hands were still in the air, heat surged into Judith’s face. “I have meat on my hands. I’m making meatloaf.”
His smile turning to a lopsided grin, Tim leaned his head through the doorway. “While listening to Meatloaf?”
“It’s the only appropriate music.”
“How can I help?”
The sliding and clattering of nails rushed along the wood floors, and Orwell, tail thrashing, skidded to a stop against Tim’s legs. Rawhide bone forgotten, he threw his body against Tim, who greeted him with equal enthusiasm.
“Hey, buddy!” Tim knelt to rub his hands along the dog’s belly. “Who’s a good boy? Are you a good boy?”
“I’m almost finished with the meat, and then once I shape it and add the glaze, I’ll put it in the oven. I’m going to steam broccoli and set the table while it’s cooking.”
“I can do that.” Tim stood up, and Orwell, bouncing on his paws, stayed beside Tim as he followed Judith toward the kitchen. “Also, hello.”
Judith’s every nerve was firing with an intensity that was almost painful, in spite of the warmth blooming somewhere in her chest, and she was fairly certain that her face was red and hot enough to have its own heat index. “Oh. Hello.”
“Helloooo!” came Constance’s voice from the living room, and with a sudden icy anxiety Judith realized that she had forgotten to lock the door after Tim arrived. She couldn’t leave it unlocked. What had she been thinking?
“Hello there!” Wearing an apron that was far too small for him, Tim removed the broccoli from the stove as Constance burst into the kitchen, with Steve trailing behind her.
Constance threw her arms around Judith in a fervent hug, then looked at Tim. “You’re here already!”
Tim smirked. “You told me five-thirty.”
“I did?” Constance laughed. “Sorry. Mom brain. Anyway – desserts!” With a thump, she dropped a mini-cooler on the kitchen island. “Can I stick the ice cream in the freezer? And maybe I could warm up the brownies and scones in the oven. They taste so much better when they’re warm. And do you have decaf coffee?” Constance opened a cabinet above Judith’s coffee maker and started rifling through beverage mixes. “They’ll be delicious with coffee, but I can’t have caffeine after three, or I’ll be up until two in the morning. When I was in college, I could drink coffee at midnight and still fall right asleep for a solid eight hours, but those days are long gone! Now I’m an old lady. If I have even one glass of wine, I fall right asleep.”
“That’s a normal effect of aging,” Steve said.
“Steve, I’m allowed to say that I’m aging, but you’re not. Tim, this is my husband, Steve.”
Steve reached out to shake Tim’s hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’ve been informed that you grew up in Kentucky, were in the military, worked as a park ranger, and are now sheriff of McFerrin County.”
“You’ve been informed correctly.” Tim’s smile took on an interesting tilt, as though he had a private joke stirring just below the surface.
Judith looked away from Tim for a moment to check on the meatloaf, only to find Constance’s eyes on her, a satisfied and slightly smug grin on her face.
“You’ve been invited to a wedding,” came Steve’s voice. Judith turned toward Steve, who, having apparently moved on from his introduction to Tim, was now staring at Judith’s fridge. “I don’t recognize these people.”
“Is that Melissa’s invitation?” Tim stepped over to look. “I got one too.”
“Melissa?” Constance said.
“She’s from Salt Fork, near McFerrin,” Tim said. “She’s the woman Judith saved last year.”
“I didn’t –” Judith began.
“That’s right!” Constance darted across the kitchen to examine the invitation. “Oh, she’s getting married? In two weeks? That’s kind of fast, isn’t it, after what happened with her last guy? Wait, is that a baby in the picture? Does she have a baby? What a cutie! Maybe she’ll be the flower girl. Someone would have to carry her, of course, but that would be adorable.”
With Constance singlehandedly taking the reins of conversation, Judith focused her energies on getting the meatloaf safely out of the oven and trying not to notice how comfortably Tim slid into the dynamic of her family, or how he had folded his sleeves up to his elbows –
Why was she looking at his forearms? What was wrong with her? Forearms were completely irrelevant to getting dinner on the table.
“Thanks for having me.” Tim stepped onto the porch into the deepening darkness. “Even if it was a bit of a surprise.”
In a puddle of light from a streetlamp, Constance and Steve climbed into their minivan. “Drive safe!” Constance called from the window, waving at Tim.
“Are you driving back to McFerrin tonight? It’s already dark,” Judith said. Stick to neutral topics. Concrete details. Don’t look at his forearms.
“I have some training to do at the Lexington office tomorrow. I’ll be staying downtown tonight.”
“Oh.”
“My training’s supposed to finish up around four, if you’re free for coffee.”
“I-I should be finished with work by then.”
Hands in his pockets, Tim nodded with a smile, and silence slipped between them, broken by the chirping of the first spring crickets. “Have you thought any more about doing dinner sometime?”
Suddenly breathing seemed excessively complicated. What was the process, again? Wasn’t it supposed to be autonomic? Why was she having such difficulty with an involuntary bodily function? Judith looked anywhere but at Tim, scrambling for words.
“You don’t have to answer right now. Just thought I’d ask.” That same, tilted smile crept back onto Tim’s face, wiping away the stalled, awkward moment. “Did you know that your sister basically married a male version of you?”
“What?”
“You and Steve have a few similarities.”
“Steve looks like Gregory Peck.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess he does, a little bit. That’s not what I’m talking about, though.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
Tim chuckled. “You’re both analytical. And blunt.”
“Steve is a physics professor. I could never work in academia.”
“I’m not talking specifics, just a general impression.” Tim shifted his weight, and, to her chagrin, Judith found herself again noticing that jeans and a collared shirt suited him just as well as his brown and khaki sheriff uniform. “It’s always funny to meet someone’s family. You get a whole new perspective on them as a person.”
“Constance is the only family member of mine who you’ve met. My parents aren’t the most social people, and my brother lives in California,” Judith said. “I’ve never met your family.”
“We can fix that. My mom lives just a little ways outside McFerrin, and my sister just graduated college last year. She’s working in Nashville.”
“I wasn’t trying to imply –”
“I didn’t think you were.” Tim smiled again.
Judith squeezed her hands together. How did he do that, take all of her eccentricities in stride, smile just when she thought she might implode from embarrassment?
“I’d better get going,” Tim said, moving toward the steps. “Thanks again for dinner. Your Gigi’s meatloaf is something else. I’ll – uh, see you tomorrow.”
As Judith stepped back inside, she watched Tim’s loping stride as he walked through the darkness to his car, then climbed inside and waved, the orange lamplight catching on his hair. She closed and bolted the door. As his car thrummed into motion and drove away, she activated her security system.
Orwell, still panting with the evenings’s excitement, stuck close to her side as she walked down the hall to her room. Her breath hitched at the arched kitchen doorway, and Orwell’s cold, wet nose nudged her palm. Ruffling his ears, she forced herself to the end of the hall.
Closing her bedroom door, Judith shuffled forward and, letting out a tight, conflicted breath, flopped face first onto her bed.
Thank you so much for stopping by the read Murmurs in the Walls! If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know with a like, comment, or restack!
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→ Keep reading! Episode V: The Diagnosis
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For those who are interested, here is Judith’s traditional meatloaf-making song:
Just as a warning, if you are unfamiliar with this song, it is almost a full ten minutes long and leans hard into the rock opera vibes.1
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Funny story: Meatloaf has a special place in my family lore because one of Meatloaf’s songs, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light”, which has a *ahem* questionable baseball sequence in the middle of the song, was playing on the radio when my then-sixteen-year-old parents went on their first date. They both sat in awkward silence for the entire song because they were both too embarrassed to be the one to turn it off.
Excellent! Constance is a great sister. And my money is on the problem being a poltergeist caused by Brian.
Yep, Tim's got it bad. Pretty sure I had that same look when I met my wife. Ah, l'amour. :)