The Broken Clock is Right Thrice: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective #4

Chapter 23 - Good and Drunk

"She discovered that a great deal of the suffering in this world is due not so much to original sin, but to a kind of original stupidity; an unimaginative, stubborn stupidity."

~ Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie/John Oliver Hobbes in the introduction of Mauprat, the novel by Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin/George Sand

Back at the lounge, Chad looks up at his Spirit Box and shakes it above his face. "How do you play something back on this thing?"

The rest of the guests, now reconvened, sit in a semi-circle opposite Chad, cocktails in hand.

Sunglasses leans into Zandra's ear. Quietly, he says, "Where's Emile?"

"Still in a trance," Zandra says and coughs into her sleeve. That gets Sunglasses to back up. "I helped her get into it, but I couldn't break her away."

Sunglasses pulls out his smartphone. "Where? Could I see?"

Not a chance.

"Let her be. We'll review the Spirit Box when she gets back. I underestimated her. She's good. Very good," Zandra says.

"You sure? This is exactly the sort of thing I'm here to document."

"Then maybe you should pay more attention to what's happening right in front of us, child," Zandra says and waves a hand toward Chad's feeble attempts at the Spirit Box.

"You're too fucked up to be using that thing. Give it to me," The Crocodile says and twists the square out of Chad's hands.

"And you can't play back a recording without the app on my phone," Sunglasses says, approaching The Crocodile for the Spirit Box.

Sunglasses takes a cord from his suit jacket and connect his smartphone to the Spirit Box. He taps on the phone's screen a few times.

"It's about five minutes in, after we hit record," Bexley says.

"Try 10 minutes. You're fucked up, too," The Crocodile says.

"No, it was 15. We were in the room with all the antique weapons on the wall, the armory," Sunglasses says. He taps the screen a few more times before an "ah-ha" expression surfaces on his face. He holds the smartphone out for the rest of the group to hear.

The recording plays the sound of Chad, Bexley, The Crocodile, and Sunglasses all talking over each other. One of them shushes the rest, and they fall silent. After a pause, Bexley says, "Is anyone here with us?" Breaking out from the squeal of the Spirit Box scanning AM/FM radio waves are the words, "weather report."

"We're in a big house, but outside it's summer," Chad says on the recording.

The words "winter here" come in reply.

That gets the group talking over themselves again, with a sharp bout of flatulence punctuating the end of the recording.

"Olfactory confirmation," Chad says.

"Where did you learn a big word like that? I thought you were fucked up. You pretending again so no one sees how stupid you really are?" The Crocodile says.

"It was probably you," Bexley says to The Crocodile.

"Or the spirits," Chad says.

Sunglasses sighs. He says, "Let's put a lid on this for now. Did the other group find anything?"

"Well, speaking of getting fucked up," Carter says as he mixes himself another cocktail. "This entire exercise was exactly that. I've been on snipe hunts that were more productive."