Murmurs in the Walls: The Poltergeist
Episode XI
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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 available in paperback and e-book. You can get your own copy here! Season 2, Beasts of the Field, is free to read until June 21st! Click here to read Beasts of the Field.
← In Episode X: The Voicemail, Brian reached out to Judith when his psychokinesis returned with a vengeance.
Well, they had made it through approximately fifty percent of the questions before getting distracted.
Judith suspected that their mutual distractability was at least partially due to the fact that the questionnaire had been going quite well. From an objective, unbiased, statistical perspective, of course. Despite differences in the makeup and dynamics of their childhood home environments, many of their essential life values were aligned, as were their opinions and desires regarding long-term family life.
It hadn’t exactly helped increase her focus, however, that Tim had kept scooting closer to her on the bench, even if, as he had claimed, it was to help him better read the questions in the dim evening light. And it hadn’t helped when she’d sensed Tim’s arm slide along the back of the bench or felt him lean in so close that the side of his face pressed slightly against her hair, crunchy from Constance’s hairspray. And it certainly hadn’t helped when she’d said, You’re being distracting, and his response had been a smirking Who, me? Distracting? into her hair.
But when she’d turned her head to inform him that they needed to focus because they still had several questions to go, she hadn’t made it through the entire sentence.
It wasn’t until she’d heard a pointed whoop and a crackle of whistles, hoots, and laughter from some of the other wedding guests that she had leapt back, red-faced, and realized that the two of them were still very much in view of the rest of the wedding reception.
Tim’s solution, though he was significantly less bothered by the unforeseen attention than she was, was to pull her from the bench to a nearby tree.
It wasn’t the first time that Judith had kissed someone behind a tree, but her previous forays into displays of physical affection had blurred the line between romance and a scientific experiment. In those instances, she’d primarily been immersed in practicing techniques and gathering data. But this time she didn’t have the bandwidth to focus on technique. The little mental capacity she did have she used to occasionally catch her breath or notice that Tim’s hair was, indeed, very soft.
Then, tinkling over the noisy banjo music blaring from the reception, came a muffled ringing.
“Is that your phone?” Tim leaned back slightly, a smile in his voice.
Judith stumbled into him, realizing that while standing on tiptoe her feet had, at some point, slipped out of her shoes. “What?”
“Lucky it didn’t go off during the ceremony,” Tim said as the ringing quieted, and he leaned forward again as if to return to their previous activity.
Judith stopped, a familiar pain shooting into her forehead. Her eyes squeezing shut, she raised a hand to her temple, pressing with her fingertips. “It’s on silent.”
“Doesn’t sound very silent.” Tim’s suit jacket rustled as he chuckled, and then he went still. “You okay?”
“The only people I have on Emergency Bypass are you and Constance. And -” The pain in her head slowly receded, replaced by a cold tightness in her chest.
Tim stepped back, and the bark of the tree caught on Judith’s dress as she slipped down a few inches. He held her arm as she fumbled her feet back into the impractical high-heeled shoes that Constance had bullied her into wearing, and Judith hurried back to her purse, which sat placidly on the bench.
She snatched out her phone. The screen lit up with one missed call and one voicemail, both from Kortney Pickens.
Judith bit her lip, her fingers cold as she tapped on the voicemail and raised the phone to her ear.
Miss Judith
It wasn’t Kortney’s voice, but Brian’s, his words tripping out in a tentative, tearful trembling.
It’s happenin’ again, an’ I can’t - I can’t make it stop.
In the background was the incoherent roar of a man’s voice, a faint crash, a shattering.
Judith drew in a quick breath that strangled in her throat. Tucker.
Then a screech, a thudding clatter like something heavy being tossed aside.
And Brian’s whispering, shaky voice. Help me. Please.
The call cut off with a beep.
Bright spots popped into Judith’s vision, and she forced her lungs to work again, dragging in a tight breath as she put the voicemail on speaker and played it again for Tim to hear.
At the sound of Brian’s terrified voice, Tim’s face fell. In spite of everything - the voicemail, the stomp-clapping wedding reception nearby - Judith had the sudden urge to hold tight to Tim and the unguarded softheartedness in his face.
Slipping the phone from her hand, Tim replayed the message once, twice, leaning his ear closer during the moments Brian was silent.
“Is this the kid whose mom has bad taste in men?” he said.
Judith nodded.
“The voice in the background - is that the guy? Can you tell?”
Clutching her purse, Judith started toward the mess of cars shoved into a corner of the clearing and wrestled her voice out from her frozen throat. “Tucker. I don’t know who else it would be.”
Tim strode alongside her and took her arm when she wobbled as the heel of one of Constance’s shoes caught on the uneven ground. “Where do they live?”
“I think about twenty minutes from here. Just outside Queensburg. ”
“That’s in Bayton County. I’ll give Sheriff Quinn a call on the way -”
“No.” Judith skidded to a stop. “No, don’t call him yet, not until I know what’s happening with Brian.”
“It sounds like what’s happening is a domestic violence situation.”
“But he called me. Brian has RSPK. He said it’s happening again, and he can’t make it stop -”
“What’s RSPK?”
Judith paused, pressing her lips together and weighing her words, then took a deep inhale.
“You know what,” Tim said, taking her hand and striding forward again, “you should probably tell me in the car.”
Judith called Kortney’s phone five times, and each time it went to voicemail.
Closing her eyes, she pushed past the ache in her forehead and reached out for Brian, for Kortney, even for Tucker, trying to get a reading on something, anything. But she received only snippets, little bursts of color and sound.
Glass shattering against the wall
A scream, shrill and angry and frightened
The coffee table flipping like a feather in the breeze, smashing to the floor with a splintering crash
“So with this psychokinesis stuff,” Tim said as he sped, red and blue lights blazing, down the dark, winding highway, tunneled by towering trees. “The kid can move things with his mind?”
“Not intentionally.” Rubbing her temples, Judith gave up and slumped back in her seat. “He was as surprised as everyone else when I told them he was the one causing the objects to move.”
“But stress makes it worse?”
“Yes.”
Tim nodded, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Just trying to wrap my mind around what we’ll be walking into.”
“Do you have your Kevlar?”
He shook his head. “I was off today and going to a wedding. Didn’t think I’d need it.”
Quiet descended on the car, settling thick in the air. Judith stared out the window at the knife-point tips of the pine trees and the mountainous ridges of the sycamores and cedars, deep black against the charcoal sky, and forced her racing thoughts to a standstill.
When something warm and calloused curled over her hand, Judith started, jerked from her forceful dissociation.
In the dark car, Tim squeezed her hand. “We’ll be there in a couple minutes. It’s gonna be okay.”
Judith grasped his hand and squeezed it back, stifling the stubborn thought that strained against her and, she suspected, against Tim as well:
You don’t know that.
When Tim’s car veered into Kortney’s driveway, the woods were dark and silent, but from behind the curtains the house flashed, the lights strobing in a frenzy. A man’s voice came in muffled bursts through the wooden walls, terror running like a current through his incomprehensible words.
Tim leapt out of the car the moment it ground to a halt.
With a sudden, unceremonious shimmer, Ernest Berry appeared outside Judith’s door, his face tight-lipped and wide-eyed.
“What’s happening?” Judith said, scrambling from the car.
“I don’t know,” Tim said as he rushed up the concrete steps. “But it doesn’t sound good.”
“No, I was talking to -”
“Ma’am, he’s got a knife,” Ernest said, his voice a tense whisper.
“Tim, he has a knife.” Judith stumbled up the steps behind Tim, who stood with his shoulder pressed against the exterior wall, holding his handgun down toward the ground.
A handgun and a set of handcuffs he’d snatched from his car, that was all he carried going into the frenetic, flashing house filled with muffled screaming. Tim had insisted on calling Sheriff Quinn, but law enforcement couldn’t arrive in less than twenty minutes. Anything could happen in twenty minutes. He had no Kevlar, no backup -
“Stop it, stop it now, you freak!” came a ragged sandpaper voice from inside the house.
“Stay here.” Tim’s quiet tone was hard and sharp, the soft playfulness stripped away.
“But Brian -”
“The guy has a weapon.” Tim reached for the doorknob. “Stay here.”
Without another word, Tim tried the knob, which turned in his hand, unlocked. He shoved the door open, his arms swinging up, hands clutching his gun. “Sheriff! Drop your -”
His steps faltered, his voice cut off.
Through the open doorway, Judith caught a glimpse of a horrible tableau.
A whirlwind of dishes and lamps and books and knick-knacks flying through the air, swirling with dizzying force -
In the living room, Tucker, his face white and his hands trembling, holding a kitchen knife at Kortney’s throat -
Kortney’s eyes glassy, her mouth in a silent scream -
And at the back of the house, crouched in a corner of the kitchen, where Judith could barely see him through the fritzing lights that flashed on and off with the fury of a lightning storm, was Brian, his hands over his ears and his freckled cheeks streaked with tears.
From Brian’s room, Judith could faintly hear the place memory of Michael Reed’s death play in a distorted, ghostly loop, speeding and slowing and catching as if overloaded by Brian’s distress. You said sixteen. There ain’t sixteen boxes here. You said sixteen. There ain’t-ain’t-ain’t -
“Drop your weapon,” Tim said, his voice at once low and thunderous as he advanced on Tucker.
Tucker jerked back, yanking Kortney with him. “Are you blind? Stop him, get him!” He thrust the knife away from Kortney and pointed it toward Brian, his voice rising to a panicked shriek. “It’s him, that little freak -”
In the staccato moment that the knife was away from Kortney’s neck, Tim pounced.
Tucker jerked the knife back too late, and the blade clattered to the ground as Tim forced Tucker to the floor. Kortney collapsed and huddled against the wall, her knees drawn up and her eyes frantic.
“He’s panicking, ma’am.” Ernest’s voice materialized beside Judith on the tiny porch. “The little boy. He don’t know how to make it stop.”
Judith’s eyes jumped back to Brian, hiding in a far corner of the kitchen. The knife that Tucker had clutched in his hand was suddenly whipped off the floor as though snatched by an invisible hand, and it joined the chaotic tornado of objects that whirled about the room.
Holding tight to the frame, so tight her knuckles glowed white in the darkness, Judith pushed herself through the doorway.
“Brian,” she said, raising her voice above the strange, roaring wind that filled the house.
“Judith, stay back.” Tim’s eyes snapped up from where he held Tucker pinned to the floor, wrestling to secure the handcuffs.
“He needs help.”
Tim’s gaze leapt from Brian and the swirling debris that catapulted through the air, back to Judith, to Kortney, and then to Tucker, who kicked out with feral, terrified violence, struggling to get free.
A wary resignation crossed Tim’s face as he readjusted to hold Tucker down. “Be careful.”
Judith stepped into the living room, into the turmoil of flying objects, whooshing through the room in a chaotic tumult. Holding up her arms as a shield, she pushed further in. “Brian, this man is a sheriff,” she called. “His name is Tim. He’s arresting Tucker, and no one is going to hurt you or your mom any more.”
The bookshelf that towered at one end of the living room, its bulk rising to the ceiling and taking up nearly the entirety of the wall, rocked in its place. With the typhoon of books and knick-knacks having cast everything off its shelves and into the air, it was almost empty, but the old, heavy wood creaked and groaned.
With a screech of wood on vinyl, the couch suddenly jolted into motion, scraping across the floor and slamming into the opposite wall. It toppled a standing lamp, which crashed to the ground with a tinkling shatter.
Judith dodged a book that careened through the air inches from her head. “Breathe, Brian. Remember? In for four and out for seven.”
Through the doorway to the kitchen, she could see Brian, still curled into a ball in the furthest corner, his face wet and his hands over his ears. His breath came in panicked gasps, his freckled face scrunched in fear.
“Think of things you can feel, Brian. Can you feel the floor or the wall behind you or your shirt on your -”
Something heavy struck between Judith’s shoulder blades, throwing her forward, just as another object smashed against the side of her head. She hit the ground with a force that stuttered the breath in her lungs.
From somewhere - near or far away, she couldn’t tell - Tim yelled her name. Gasping for air, she pushed herself up onto her elbows, struggling to get to her knees, to her feet.
As if from far away, there was a crack, a sudden violent creaking.
Then the world burst into a cacophony of force and sound. All at once, there was a groan of old, heavy wood, and something hit Judith’s body, again knocking her breath away.
She tumbled, rolling, striking her back, her shoulder, her head, her limbs tangled with whatever had struck her.
There was a splintering crash, so forceful that she could feel it in her bones, rattling her jaw.
She skidded to a stop along the vinyl floor, pressed down by something heavy on top of her.
“Are you okay? Judith, are you okay?” Tim’s voice was close, beside her ear.
Blinking to clear her vision, Judith’s eyes focused on Tim as he pushed himself off her. In a daze she turned her head, and there, where moments ago she had been collapsed on the floor, was the massive bookshelf, its thick shelves splintered by the force of its fall.
Her lips numb and her voice trapped somewhere inside her, Judith sat up. Tim pulled her to her feet, and for some reason he pressed the sleeve of his jacket up against her head.
Her shoes were gone, lost somewhere, and shards crunched under her feet. “Brian,” she called, stumbling closer to the kitchen. Holding onto Judith, Tim curled himself around her as they pushed forward, picture frames and books and a little wooden bird whizzing by them. Tim let out a grunt as something struck his ribs.
They made it through the kitchen door, inched toward the kitchen table.
Brian’s wide eyes caught on Tim, who was taller even than Tucker and holding tight to Judith, and the little boy’s face blanched.
On the counter, the knife block tipped over with a thud.
With a scraping gasp, Judith dropped to the ground, yanking on Tim’s arm. Tim ducked just as the few remaining knives shot out of their places, embedding with a sickening patter of piercing thuds into the drywall behind him.
With a stifled cry, Brian covered his face with his hands.
“Tim’s not hurting me, Brian, he’s safe.” Crawling through the legs of the overturned table, Judith reached out, stretching her arm toward him. Almost there, she could almost touch him.
Footsteps pounded closer just as Judith found Brian’s hand. The boy’s shoulders shook, his hands clutching his face.
But then there was someone else beside them. Kortney’s arms went around Brian, pulling him into her lap, rocking him, and the roaring that filled the house changed pitch, slowing, quieting.
There ain’t sixteen boxes here. Michael Reed’s voice fizzled out, the words withering to silence.
At a flurry of movement in the living room, suddenly Tim threw himself back toward Tucker.
Handcuffs and all, Tucker scrambled to his feet and rushed at the front door, making a break for the dark woods.
Then he reeled back with a scream, tripping over the toppled bookshelf and landing with a thud against the broken shelves.
As Tim leapt forward, grabbing hold of Tucker, Judith glimpsed in the front entryway the opaque form of Ernest Berry, his usually bashful eyes lit with fury.
“It’s okay, baby, it’s gonna be okay.” Kortney’s ragged voice whispered to Brian as she held him, and he pressed his face into her shoulder.
The tornado of objects slowed like a passing storm, loose papers like fallen leaves drifting to the ground. A book fell from the air with a clatter, then a vase, a pillow, a lamp. The roaring died, and a cottony quiet seeped through the room.
Her breath coming hard, Judith turned toward Tim, and found him, his face grim and pale, looking back at her.
Then, at first so faint they could hardly make it out, came a mechanical wail. It grew, ballooning through the silence, until with a rising pitch it stopped outside the front door of the little house, and through the flimsy curtains at the front window came the flash of red and blue lights.
“I think you should get checked out.”
Shivering beside Kortney’s front porch, Judith came back to the present moment with a start as something slipped over her shoulders. She hadn’t heard Tim come up beside her, but suddenly she was wearing his jacket and he was holding some sort of rag or towel to her head.
“What?” she said.
“By the paramedics,” he said, nodding his head toward the towel in his hand. “That vase got you pretty good.”
“Oh.” Judith touched her forehead and winced. In the headlights of Sheriff Quinn’s car, her fingers came away red. “Head wounds bleed a lot. It’s superficial, I think.”
Her gaze strayed to Kortney, whose face was splotched red and purple. In the ambulance, she sat on the gurney, still holding tight to Brian. He lay curled up beside her, and her arms wrapped around him as though daring the paramedics to try to move him.
“Hey.” Still keeping pressure on her forehead, Tim reached his other arm around her, pulling her into him. “They’re okay. You did it.”
Judith let out a breath, a fraction of warmth returning to her body, a fraction of tightness easing from her lungs as she leaned into him.
Around them, the woods lit up in red and blue, sending strange flashes into the thick darkness. She hadn’t seen Ernest since he’d stood in the doorway, blocking Tucker’s path. But perhaps he’d just made himself scarce. This bustling of officers and sharp voices wasn’t for him, the ghost of a country boy who’d never left Bayton County.
Tim’s arm nudged her toward the ambulance and the paramedics who strolled through the crime scene with their own special brand of calm. “Come on,” he said quietly, moving her forward with him.
Shuffling across the damp grass in her bare feet, Judith looked up into the ambulance and met Brian’s red-rimmed eyes.
And, though every muscle in her body was exhausted, and though for a moment she thought her face had forgotten how, Judith looked back at Brian and smiled.
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!
→ Keep reading! Episode XII: The Debrief
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Oh thank heaven.
This is a phenomenally well written action scene; I could practically hear the sound of the wind and objects and everything. You could give lessons on Marvel on pacing.
Also, because FINALLY:
THE SHIP. THE SHIP. THE SHIP HAS SAILED. Touched bows, even.
Phew!
Also, you were so sly with the long-awaited kiss that I almost missed it.