[Fic] OC: Nowen Jones and the Case of Mr Haas
Here's a story about a character I've had banging around in my head for a little while. It may be the start of something, or I might just leave it at this.
Anyways, read, enjoy & let me know what you think:
Story is behind the cut.
Nowen Jones and the Case of Mr Haas
I’m Nowen Jones (yeah, that’s pronounced “No-one”). I guess you could call me a dole bludger. I got a permanent exemption on medical grounds since I saved my GP’s wife from some sort of demonic possession. He said either I’m crazy or he’s crazy, and he’d prefer to go with the first option. I live in a shitty little flat owned by a shitty little Vietnamese lady somewhere in the western suburbs. It’s all I can afford based on my pay rate for being “the scum of the earth”. That’s what she calls me. Probably on account of all the weird stuff that keeps happening around me. It’s usually nothing major; nothing that would ever make the news: just bad things happening to good people, who I get to help: great, huh?
Oh, and I have a cat, sort of. His name is Cretan. He follows me around, everywhere. I figure he’s on some kind of personal journey, so I called him Cretan after Odysseus. It also sounds like “cretin” which is what I think he must be if he’s always following me around. I later found out that Odysseus was from Ithaca, rather than Crete, but there you are. The Odysseus name’s sort of a tie-in to mine; my father got blown up in Iraq before I was born, and my mum was too busy being cut up about him to think up a name for me. Sure enough, once she’s in the birthing-room, dosed up on pain-killers, she has a vision of Odysseus and the Cyclops: the Cyclops asks his name, he says “Nemo” which means “No one” and then Odysseus stabs him in the eye while he’s sleeping; great stuff. Anyway, once mum comes to, she’s holding me in her arms and for some reason decides she’s been given a sign, calls me “Nowen” because she thinks it’s the modern equivalent. Thanks mum.
You may have noticed that I mentioned a demonic possession in there. You’re not hallucinating (as far as I know); you really read that. Demons are real, elder gods and all that are real, sorcerers are real, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Not that I’m happy about it. I found out the hard way, when a wizened old man decided to give me the “You’re the Chosen One” speech. In retrospect, I think he was high, but the meaning turned out close enough to truth for it to count. It turns out that I’m like Buffy, only less female, less cute and less perky. I’m definitely less perky. I hate this gig, I really do, but how am I supposed to just stand aside and let all those bad things happen? I can’t, but I can do something help, so I do. That doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.
* * * * *
“Excuse me, sir. Is this your cat?”
I look up at the ticket inspector. I look down at Cretan, curled up on the seat beside me, licking himself.
“Nope, I’ve never seen it before in my life. I think it got on at Sunshine or something. I told it it’d better have a ticket, but I don’t think it listened.”
“Funny guy. Can I see your ticket, please?”
I hand her my ticket, and the card for being crazy that gets me half-price tickets, and she jots down a few things. It begins to rain outside and I figure my miserable luck is going to rub off on her as soon as she steps out of the train; she’ll drop her pad or something, and any record of me will mysteriously be destroyed. Just like every other piece of information about me, save my Centrelink records- and I honestly think that’s only because I go into the Footscray office every Friday and hand them a piece of paper that says I’m still crazy.
The ticket inspector begins to explain that I’m not allowed to bring pets onto public transport. I would counter by saying I couldn’t stop Cretan from following me if I tried, but I’m not sure that’s such a good plan. She asks me where I’m going, and I indicate a green Coles bag by my feet.
“I’m taking this goodie basket for my grandma. You haven’t seen any big bad wolves around, have you?”
She gives me a dirty look and hands me an infringement notice. “Just get your cat off the train, sir.”
Then she gets off the train and, sure enough, as we’re pulling out I spot her trip and go down like a sack of bricks. I shrug and give Cretan a scratch behind the ears.
* * * * *
Cretan and I stand outside a large house in Essendon. The street has that uniquely quiet aura you get on weekdays in middle-class suburbs that want to grow up to be upper-middle-class. The house’s facade is covered in vines and big bay windows completely fail to reflect the afternoon sun because of the massive oak in the front garden. I look down at the piece of paper in my hand to read:
Mrs Haas, 52: dead husband.
Weird shit: possible spirit.
Then the address; I’m very descriptive with my notes to myself. She found me through Dr Hambling, my GP, after she spoke to him about seeing things at night. He heard a few things which sounded familiar, so he sent her my way. I could hardly say no, when she called and cried about seeing her dead husband getting tortured in her lounge room. It seemed like the kind of thing I’m good with.
As I push the maroon-painted iron gate aside, it creaks loudly. I walk up the terracotta stepping-stones to the door, Cretan at my side, and press the doorbell. I dimly hear Big Ben ringing inside and smile a little. Cretan sits up straight as the door opens and Mrs Haas looks out. I can see that she’s been crying, and I hand her a tissue.
“Mrs Haas, I’m Nowen. Yes, that’s my name. Mum’s a bit odd. May I come in?”
She opens the door and Cretan shoots past her to get inside. I apologise and explain that he’s not something I can really do anything about. She says it’s alright and asks if I’d like a cup of tea. I’m a tea man at heart so it behoves me to accept her fine offer, of course. I tell her I take it black with three sugars. She looks at me strange, but boils the kettle all the same.
Once I’ve got my cuppa I ask her to sit down and tell me what’s going on. It takes a bit of effort for her to speak, and I notice that we stay out of the lounge room, even though it’s between the front door and the kitchen where we end up talking. So, perched uncomfortably on a bar stool, she tells me how every night for a week she’s been woken by screaming coming from the lounge. First night she heard it, she ran downstairs to see a bunch of see-through men clubbing the shit through her husband, who’s been dead about two months. It goes without saying that she’s pretty traumatised by all this, but she’s not much of a religious person so she writes it off as a bad dream. The thing is, it happens again the next night, and the next night, and the next, until she thinks she’s going mad. So she sees Dr Hambling, who sends her to me.
Hooray, I think. This sounds like fun. I push Cretan off the counter and he goes to sulk in the laundry.
“Alright, Mrs Haas, do you have anywhere else you could stay tonight; family, friends, or a hotel maybe?”
She says she could stay with her sister-in-law in Coburg. I tell her about how ghosts only hang around in our world if they have “unfinished business” and that I specialise in sorting that kind of stuff out. It’s my specialty, I say, because I specialise in it. She brightens at that.
“Oh, if you could put Thomas’ soul to rest I’d be ever so grateful.”
I bet you would, Mrs Haas. Cretan looks at me. I’m ashamed to lie to her, since it sounds to me like his soul’s got nothing to do with this at all.
* * * * *
It’s eleven-thirty, and I’m sitting in a very comfortable leather armchair waiting for the weird shit to start. Cretan is poking around Mrs Haas’ lounge room with the air of a cat who’s bored out of his skull, while I’m on my third cup of tea. I’m going over the options in my head and not really liking where my head is taking me. There are several possibilities, none of which are palatable. Unlike the general presumptions, ghosts don’t come back for “unfinished business”. When you’re dead, you’re dead and there’s no coming back. Sometimes though, a spirit gets hijacked on its way out by something malicious and can be worn around like a bad suit. Of course, they need an anchor of some kind to keep them from being sucked down the plughole back to wherever they come from. That anchor has to be something or somewhere close to the original spirit, like a precious belonging, a loved one or a house. I have already pulled apart the lounge room with no luck, but that isn’t stopping Cretan from having another go. I figure that the room itself is the anchor, but I figure that I’ll be able to ask soon enough.
Suddenly, as if he wasn’t expecting it, Cretan sprints away from the convalescing apparition in front of me. He hides under my chair and I can hear him spitting as what I have no doubt is the spirit of Thomas Haas swirls into clarity. What I’ve always found interesting about spirits is the way they are reliable with time. It’s not that midnight has any special significance to them: it’s just the point on our little rock that’s furthest from the Sun at any given time. They just like to show up in the dead of night to fuck with us because it seems like the most appropriate time to do it.
The first spirit finishes his appearing trick and I say hi. It does a double-take when it spots me lounging in the armchair and opens its mouth to say something; as if it needs to. I tell it to shut up and wait for its buddies to arrive. They do, complete with oogly-boogly and moaning and the screams of tortured innocent souls. Then they spot me and get all confused and quiet. I figure it’s because of the jar I’ve got sitting in my lap. It’s got a label written in thick black Texta saying “To fuck up ghosts”. I think they can read my awful, awful handwriting. Cretan hops confidently onto an arm of the chair. I have their attention.
“Alright, fuckwits: what are you doing here?”
They protest and demand the same of me. I shake the jar at them and they shut up. I ask again and they say they won’t tell. I shake the jar, but it doesn’t work this time. One of them leans forward, asks:
“What’s in that, exactly?”
“Stuff to fuck you up. Listen...”
“Like what?”
“It’s a secret concoction brewed by the monks of Sandaea and thrice-blessed by a Tibetan hermit whose touch can bring frogs to life; perfect for exorcisms.”
They look at me for a second, then at each other, and then back at me. “I reckon he’s full of it,” says one of them. I can feel Cretan staring up at me, and I’m pretty sure I can figure out what his look means: “Busted.”
They float towards me, crossing the room in a second or two. They start talking about how they’ve been practicing touching things, how they’re pretty sure they can move small stuff, like internal organs and the like, but big things like a whole person might be a little difficult. One of them flicks a portrait off the mantelpiece to demonstrate just that. It shatters on the wooden floor.
Of course, Cretan’s off like a shot; he bolts off the armchair and under the couch. I curse his stupid fur and try to think up a way to get them off my case. Then I look again at where Cretan’s hiding. I notice that he’s backed up against something that isn’t a leg of the couch. I realise that I missed it before.
Before the spirits can react, I’m up and through them and I flip the leather couch off its legs. There behind Cretan is a box the size of a postcard. I reach down and grab it and turn triumphantly to the spirits. They try to look neutral but when I go to open it they rush forward and try to grab at it. Now, it takes a lot of effort for a spirit to manipulate things in our world; in particular it takes a lot of concentration. If you can get them to panic there’s pretty much nothing they can do. So, I’ve got their anchor and I’ve got them worried. That’s good enough for me.
“So, gentlemen, you were going to tell me what you’re doing here?”
The ghosts moan about pain and torture and stuff; I don’t really listen. Then one of them drops a name I’ve heard before. I’m not sure where, but it’s ringing bells in parts of my brain I usually don’t go because they’re dangerous and a guy could get hurt wandering around them alone. I ask them again but they tell me there’s no way they can say; it would be a fate worse than death apparently. I roll my eyes and open the box.
They disappear in a flash of brilliant red light that leaves me half-blind for a minute. I curse them and go flick the light switch. Cretan’s by my side giving me a funny look, but I ignore him and look into the box. In it are only two things: a small grey rock and a wad of sponge. I return Cretan’s look and close the box. I figure I should hang onto it, just in case those spirits decide to try anything again.
* * * * *
After a night of sleeping in Mrs Haas’ very comfortable bed I give her a call to say everything’s all right. When she gets back I tell her a big fib about how her husband wanted to tell her one more time just how much he loved her before he left, and how the torture was symbolic of the agony he felt in the afterlife not having given her his parting message. I think it went down well. In the meantime, I have a very interesting box and a worrying name to give me more nightmares.
Anyways, read, enjoy & let me know what you think:
Story is behind the cut.
Nowen Jones and the Case of Mr Haas
I’m Nowen Jones (yeah, that’s pronounced “No-one”). I guess you could call me a dole bludger. I got a permanent exemption on medical grounds since I saved my GP’s wife from some sort of demonic possession. He said either I’m crazy or he’s crazy, and he’d prefer to go with the first option. I live in a shitty little flat owned by a shitty little Vietnamese lady somewhere in the western suburbs. It’s all I can afford based on my pay rate for being “the scum of the earth”. That’s what she calls me. Probably on account of all the weird stuff that keeps happening around me. It’s usually nothing major; nothing that would ever make the news: just bad things happening to good people, who I get to help: great, huh?
Oh, and I have a cat, sort of. His name is Cretan. He follows me around, everywhere. I figure he’s on some kind of personal journey, so I called him Cretan after Odysseus. It also sounds like “cretin” which is what I think he must be if he’s always following me around. I later found out that Odysseus was from Ithaca, rather than Crete, but there you are. The Odysseus name’s sort of a tie-in to mine; my father got blown up in Iraq before I was born, and my mum was too busy being cut up about him to think up a name for me. Sure enough, once she’s in the birthing-room, dosed up on pain-killers, she has a vision of Odysseus and the Cyclops: the Cyclops asks his name, he says “Nemo” which means “No one” and then Odysseus stabs him in the eye while he’s sleeping; great stuff. Anyway, once mum comes to, she’s holding me in her arms and for some reason decides she’s been given a sign, calls me “Nowen” because she thinks it’s the modern equivalent. Thanks mum.
You may have noticed that I mentioned a demonic possession in there. You’re not hallucinating (as far as I know); you really read that. Demons are real, elder gods and all that are real, sorcerers are real, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Not that I’m happy about it. I found out the hard way, when a wizened old man decided to give me the “You’re the Chosen One” speech. In retrospect, I think he was high, but the meaning turned out close enough to truth for it to count. It turns out that I’m like Buffy, only less female, less cute and less perky. I’m definitely less perky. I hate this gig, I really do, but how am I supposed to just stand aside and let all those bad things happen? I can’t, but I can do something help, so I do. That doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.
* * * * *
“Excuse me, sir. Is this your cat?”
I look up at the ticket inspector. I look down at Cretan, curled up on the seat beside me, licking himself.
“Nope, I’ve never seen it before in my life. I think it got on at Sunshine or something. I told it it’d better have a ticket, but I don’t think it listened.”
“Funny guy. Can I see your ticket, please?”
I hand her my ticket, and the card for being crazy that gets me half-price tickets, and she jots down a few things. It begins to rain outside and I figure my miserable luck is going to rub off on her as soon as she steps out of the train; she’ll drop her pad or something, and any record of me will mysteriously be destroyed. Just like every other piece of information about me, save my Centrelink records- and I honestly think that’s only because I go into the Footscray office every Friday and hand them a piece of paper that says I’m still crazy.
The ticket inspector begins to explain that I’m not allowed to bring pets onto public transport. I would counter by saying I couldn’t stop Cretan from following me if I tried, but I’m not sure that’s such a good plan. She asks me where I’m going, and I indicate a green Coles bag by my feet.
“I’m taking this goodie basket for my grandma. You haven’t seen any big bad wolves around, have you?”
She gives me a dirty look and hands me an infringement notice. “Just get your cat off the train, sir.”
Then she gets off the train and, sure enough, as we’re pulling out I spot her trip and go down like a sack of bricks. I shrug and give Cretan a scratch behind the ears.
* * * * *
Cretan and I stand outside a large house in Essendon. The street has that uniquely quiet aura you get on weekdays in middle-class suburbs that want to grow up to be upper-middle-class. The house’s facade is covered in vines and big bay windows completely fail to reflect the afternoon sun because of the massive oak in the front garden. I look down at the piece of paper in my hand to read:
Mrs Haas, 52: dead husband.
Weird shit: possible spirit.
Then the address; I’m very descriptive with my notes to myself. She found me through Dr Hambling, my GP, after she spoke to him about seeing things at night. He heard a few things which sounded familiar, so he sent her my way. I could hardly say no, when she called and cried about seeing her dead husband getting tortured in her lounge room. It seemed like the kind of thing I’m good with.
As I push the maroon-painted iron gate aside, it creaks loudly. I walk up the terracotta stepping-stones to the door, Cretan at my side, and press the doorbell. I dimly hear Big Ben ringing inside and smile a little. Cretan sits up straight as the door opens and Mrs Haas looks out. I can see that she’s been crying, and I hand her a tissue.
“Mrs Haas, I’m Nowen. Yes, that’s my name. Mum’s a bit odd. May I come in?”
She opens the door and Cretan shoots past her to get inside. I apologise and explain that he’s not something I can really do anything about. She says it’s alright and asks if I’d like a cup of tea. I’m a tea man at heart so it behoves me to accept her fine offer, of course. I tell her I take it black with three sugars. She looks at me strange, but boils the kettle all the same.
Once I’ve got my cuppa I ask her to sit down and tell me what’s going on. It takes a bit of effort for her to speak, and I notice that we stay out of the lounge room, even though it’s between the front door and the kitchen where we end up talking. So, perched uncomfortably on a bar stool, she tells me how every night for a week she’s been woken by screaming coming from the lounge. First night she heard it, she ran downstairs to see a bunch of see-through men clubbing the shit through her husband, who’s been dead about two months. It goes without saying that she’s pretty traumatised by all this, but she’s not much of a religious person so she writes it off as a bad dream. The thing is, it happens again the next night, and the next night, and the next, until she thinks she’s going mad. So she sees Dr Hambling, who sends her to me.
Hooray, I think. This sounds like fun. I push Cretan off the counter and he goes to sulk in the laundry.
“Alright, Mrs Haas, do you have anywhere else you could stay tonight; family, friends, or a hotel maybe?”
She says she could stay with her sister-in-law in Coburg. I tell her about how ghosts only hang around in our world if they have “unfinished business” and that I specialise in sorting that kind of stuff out. It’s my specialty, I say, because I specialise in it. She brightens at that.
“Oh, if you could put Thomas’ soul to rest I’d be ever so grateful.”
I bet you would, Mrs Haas. Cretan looks at me. I’m ashamed to lie to her, since it sounds to me like his soul’s got nothing to do with this at all.
* * * * *
It’s eleven-thirty, and I’m sitting in a very comfortable leather armchair waiting for the weird shit to start. Cretan is poking around Mrs Haas’ lounge room with the air of a cat who’s bored out of his skull, while I’m on my third cup of tea. I’m going over the options in my head and not really liking where my head is taking me. There are several possibilities, none of which are palatable. Unlike the general presumptions, ghosts don’t come back for “unfinished business”. When you’re dead, you’re dead and there’s no coming back. Sometimes though, a spirit gets hijacked on its way out by something malicious and can be worn around like a bad suit. Of course, they need an anchor of some kind to keep them from being sucked down the plughole back to wherever they come from. That anchor has to be something or somewhere close to the original spirit, like a precious belonging, a loved one or a house. I have already pulled apart the lounge room with no luck, but that isn’t stopping Cretan from having another go. I figure that the room itself is the anchor, but I figure that I’ll be able to ask soon enough.
Suddenly, as if he wasn’t expecting it, Cretan sprints away from the convalescing apparition in front of me. He hides under my chair and I can hear him spitting as what I have no doubt is the spirit of Thomas Haas swirls into clarity. What I’ve always found interesting about spirits is the way they are reliable with time. It’s not that midnight has any special significance to them: it’s just the point on our little rock that’s furthest from the Sun at any given time. They just like to show up in the dead of night to fuck with us because it seems like the most appropriate time to do it.
The first spirit finishes his appearing trick and I say hi. It does a double-take when it spots me lounging in the armchair and opens its mouth to say something; as if it needs to. I tell it to shut up and wait for its buddies to arrive. They do, complete with oogly-boogly and moaning and the screams of tortured innocent souls. Then they spot me and get all confused and quiet. I figure it’s because of the jar I’ve got sitting in my lap. It’s got a label written in thick black Texta saying “To fuck up ghosts”. I think they can read my awful, awful handwriting. Cretan hops confidently onto an arm of the chair. I have their attention.
“Alright, fuckwits: what are you doing here?”
They protest and demand the same of me. I shake the jar at them and they shut up. I ask again and they say they won’t tell. I shake the jar, but it doesn’t work this time. One of them leans forward, asks:
“What’s in that, exactly?”
“Stuff to fuck you up. Listen...”
“Like what?”
“It’s a secret concoction brewed by the monks of Sandaea and thrice-blessed by a Tibetan hermit whose touch can bring frogs to life; perfect for exorcisms.”
They look at me for a second, then at each other, and then back at me. “I reckon he’s full of it,” says one of them. I can feel Cretan staring up at me, and I’m pretty sure I can figure out what his look means: “Busted.”
They float towards me, crossing the room in a second or two. They start talking about how they’ve been practicing touching things, how they’re pretty sure they can move small stuff, like internal organs and the like, but big things like a whole person might be a little difficult. One of them flicks a portrait off the mantelpiece to demonstrate just that. It shatters on the wooden floor.
Of course, Cretan’s off like a shot; he bolts off the armchair and under the couch. I curse his stupid fur and try to think up a way to get them off my case. Then I look again at where Cretan’s hiding. I notice that he’s backed up against something that isn’t a leg of the couch. I realise that I missed it before.
Before the spirits can react, I’m up and through them and I flip the leather couch off its legs. There behind Cretan is a box the size of a postcard. I reach down and grab it and turn triumphantly to the spirits. They try to look neutral but when I go to open it they rush forward and try to grab at it. Now, it takes a lot of effort for a spirit to manipulate things in our world; in particular it takes a lot of concentration. If you can get them to panic there’s pretty much nothing they can do. So, I’ve got their anchor and I’ve got them worried. That’s good enough for me.
“So, gentlemen, you were going to tell me what you’re doing here?”
The ghosts moan about pain and torture and stuff; I don’t really listen. Then one of them drops a name I’ve heard before. I’m not sure where, but it’s ringing bells in parts of my brain I usually don’t go because they’re dangerous and a guy could get hurt wandering around them alone. I ask them again but they tell me there’s no way they can say; it would be a fate worse than death apparently. I roll my eyes and open the box.
They disappear in a flash of brilliant red light that leaves me half-blind for a minute. I curse them and go flick the light switch. Cretan’s by my side giving me a funny look, but I ignore him and look into the box. In it are only two things: a small grey rock and a wad of sponge. I return Cretan’s look and close the box. I figure I should hang onto it, just in case those spirits decide to try anything again.
* * * * *
After a night of sleeping in Mrs Haas’ very comfortable bed I give her a call to say everything’s all right. When she gets back I tell her a big fib about how her husband wanted to tell her one more time just how much he loved her before he left, and how the torture was symbolic of the agony he felt in the afterlife not having given her his parting message. I think it went down well. In the meantime, I have a very interesting box and a worrying name to give me more nightmares.