Starting Over
Disclaimer: Oz does not belong to me. I am just borrowing him until the voices go away. The characters I made up are mine alone. I am making no profit from this in the monetary sense, although the satisfaction of completion is profit of a sort.
Feedback: this is always useful, particularly when constructive. But as a wise lady once warned – all flames will be returned with spelling and grammar corrected. You have been warned.
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Part 3
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At the café where they had taken refuge – much though he hated to give custom to a rival – David paid for three coffees and handed one to Emma, his hands still shaking slightly. Emma's were too, he noted as she took the cup, the coffee spilling slightly. Leaving the third cup on the counter, he blew on the surface of his own to cool it, and gazed helplessly at his wife. Emma looked as distraught as he felt, and there were tears in her eyes. Just yesterday they had been sure of how the world worked. They had been in despair, it was true, and worried about who might be attacking their business and how long they could keep it running, but they'd understood how things worked. Now everything was uncertain.
The Monico was haunted.
David wondered if that might start to make sense if he told himself often enough. On one level, he thought perhaps he'd always known. It was the only explanation that really made sense, and enough people had told him. But he'd never allowed himself to believe. It was just too ridiculous. Clinging to the belief that ghosts did not exist was far easier than confronting the reality of them in the business he'd invested so much into. He couldn't get over how calm Oz had been about the whole thing. Seen this kind of thing before? How and why? It made David's head spin just trying to think about it.
And speaking of Oz…
Giving Emma a loving and hopefully reassuring kiss on the top of her head, David picked up the third coffee and headed over to the far corner of the café, Emma close behind. In that secluded corner Oz held the payphone to his ear, listening intently and scribbling the odd note on a piece of paper.
"Thanks. I'll try that," he was saying as they approached. "Yeah. Uh…no. No need to tell anyone I called. Unless they ask. Okay. Bye." Hanging up the phone, he looked across at David and Emma, waving the piece of paper he was holding. "Got a place to start."
"Start?" Emma let out a sigh that was close to being a wail, and flopped onto a chair at the nearest table. "Start? How about starting with 'I want this all to go away now, please'?"
"Well, that's kind of the plan," Oz told her, sitting down opposite. David pulled another chair close to Emma's and squeezed her hand, physical reassurance being all he had to offer.
"What did your friend tell you?" David asked, still finding it all hard to take in. It was also hard to believe that someone who was apparently drifting aimlessly around the country and had wandered randomly into his café could have contacts who were expert ghost-hunters, or whatever. And yet here they were.
"Gave me a few leads," Oz took a cautious sip of his still too hot coffee before continuing. "Stuff we'll need to pick up before we can get this thing exorcised."
"Exorcised?" Emma looked horrified, her voice becoming shrill.
"Well, yeah." Oz gave her a quizzical look. "Traditionally, that's how ghosts are got rid of."
"I saw that film," she was shaking her head firmly. "I can't, it…it's just too much."
"Well, I don't know any other way," Oz explained as David put an arm around Emma's shoulders and gently kissed her cheek. "But as far as I know, that's not how it usually goes."
"That's comforting," David muttered sarcastically, not the slightest bit reassured.
"Your call," Oz shrugged. "It's your place."
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Oz slowly drank his coffee while he waited for David and Emma to return from 'getting some air'. Having made the decision to stick around and help them out, it was a little frustrating that they were having so much trouble coming to terms with what was happening, but also understandable. It was a lot to take in all at once. But on the other hand, as far as he could see, the only way to save their home and livelihood was to get rid of the ghost. That meant an exorcism of some kind. They were going to have to come to terms with the idea sooner or later.
And sooner or later seemed to be upon him already as, glancing up, he saw the couple returning. They looked somewhat shaky still, but resolved.
"Okay," David began as they took their seats once more. "We want to understand. But this is like a whole new world for us."
"I get that." Oz nodded. He hadn't found it such a leap, but then, he'd grown up in Sunnydale, home of the Hellmouth. He'd seen people possessed by the spirits of dead lovers in his High School, been attacked by zombies, witnessed every adult in town fall under the spell of cursed candy, and watched the mayor turn into a giant snake at graduation, and consequently tended to be fairly open-minded about these things.
Looking at their expectant expressions, he realised with some reluctance that he was going to have to cast himself in the Giles role and explain everything from scratch. At least, explain his working hypothesis from scratch.
"Okay, now, bear with me here," he began. "This is just from reading up this morning and getting an opinion from my friend. He knows way more about this stuff than I do."
"Okay." David nodded, listening intently, as Emma rested her head on his shoulder, his arm tight around her shoulders.
"Like I said," Oz continued. "The area where the Monico is now? It used to be a graveyard." He'd learned that there was a spot outside the walls of the old cemetery where criminals and beggars were buried, way back in the early days of the settlement – un-consecrated ground. The Monico had been built on that very spot. "So, I'm guessing the site had some seriously bad karma to begin with."
"And then the Monico was built there," David surmised.
Oz nodded. "Yeah. According to the records, it did well enough to begin with, but then something happened."
"Oh?" Emma was starting to take more of an interest, sitting back up straight and watching him closely.
"I'm not sure exactly how it went," Oz admitted. "There wasn't much evidence. It looks like there was some kind of murder, but it was all hushed up.
"Ooh," Emma's eyes went wide at the suggestion that she'd been living on the site of a murder.
"The newspapers from the time are full of rumours about the theatre being haunted," Oz carried on with the story he'd unearthed. The evidence was sketchy, but it seemed likely that something had been disturbed, restless spirits or something: either by the murder, or they caused it. "It's all kinda vague. But your not-so friendly household ghost seems to have taken up residence about that time. The theatre closed down pretty quick after that, and the place has been pretty much unusable ever since. You're not the first people to try."
"There'd been some work done before we took over," David recalled. "But I just thought we were lucky with the price."
"Yeah but…" Emma's voice trailed off and her brow knitted in concentration. "Damn."
Oz gave her a quizzical look.
"Damn," David agreed with his wife. Looking at Oz, he explained: "We had some trouble getting the renovations done. There were lots of accidents on site."
"And we had to change building firms twice mid-job," Emma added.
"And now we know why," David sighed, obviously unhappy with it all.
"We do," Oz agreed. It was hardly surprising to learn that they'd had difficulties even before opening for business. What was surprising was that they'd stuck at it for so long. Denial could be a powerful thing.
"So where does that leave us?" Emma wanted to know.
"Well, to summarise," Oz said. "Lots of serious negative energy hanging around. I'm not sure we can do much about that. But it shouldn't matter as long as we can shut down this particular ghost that doesn't like to share the real estate."
"But how?" David asked, plaintively.
Oz hesitated slightly before replying. "It's kinda dangerous. Are you sure you want to get into this?"
"Are you sure?" David turned the question back around on him.
It was a fair question, Oz had to admit. He had no stake in this whatsoever. Except that he'd promised he'd help. He wasn't sure if getting involved like this made him completely insane, or just suicidally reckless, but he knew he couldn't walk away from it now. Whatever, he nodded.
"I said I'd help. I meant it."
David and Emma looked at each other for a long moment. Then David took a deep breath and looked back at Oz. "This is our home. Our business. We've put everything into it. We're sure. Let's do it."
Oz gave him a brief nod of acknowledgment, running over in his mind the instructions Giles had given him and mentally editing the older man's wordiness into something easier to understand.
"What do we have to do?" Emma asked, her eyes filled with fear but her expression hardened into firm resolve.
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According to Giles, it was all about de-anchoring the spirit from the area it had attached itself to. In this case, that was the Monico. There apparently was a whole process involved in this, not to mention a dress code that was all about conductivity and natural fibres, but what it all boiled down to was basically telling the ghost it no longer belonged on this plane of existence, and to push off. Figuratively speaking. In practice, of course, nothing was quite that simple.
Giles had also said that people who attempted this and got it wrong tended to end up either dead or insane, which was not the most reassuring insight he could have passed on. Oz hadn't mentioned that part to David and Emma. They were frightened enough as it was.
They spent the rest of the day gathering the resources Giles had recommended, reading up as much as possible, and generally preparing. Having to guide David and Emma by the hand through all this brought home to Oz just how much he already knew and took for granted. Sunnydale life had been an education in itself, and so had Scooby tenure, however brief it had turned out to be.
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Getting back into the Monico to perform their DIY exorcism was the first problem. The ghost was now seriously disturbed, and clearly had no intention of letting them close enough to dispose of it. Battling with the front door drew far too much attention from curious passers-by and forced them to retreat around the back. Gaining entry was no easier there, but was far less conspicuous.
In the end, David simply broke a window, wincing as he did so at the thought of deliberately damaging more of his property.
The ghost did not like that. The broken glass came flying back out of the window, showering over them and forcing a brief retreat, arms flung across their faces for protection against the painfully sharp fragments. Re-grouping, they advanced again. Oz was the first to climb in through the broken window, scraping his elbow on a sliver of glass they'd missed. Turning back to help Emma through, he knocked that last tiny shard out before anyone else could be hurt by it.
All seemed quiet as the three of them finally made it back inside, peering around warily. David went to turn on the light, as it was becoming dark, but flicking the switch had no effect. He looked across at Oz with fear in his eyes, so Oz made sure his own face remained blank, betraying no trace of his own uncertainty. He'd brought a flashlight, which he now switched on as he headed for the door.
Further investigation and different avenues of research had yielded a few more clues as to what had happened here, long years earlier. Piecing together the evidence, they'd learned that a group of young actors based at the old theatre had dabbled in an unwise ouija board experiment, during which something had obviously happened as afterward all were said to have been increasingly nervous. They'd seemed almost 'haunted' one contemporary had recalled. At last the growing tension between them had led to a violent argument, during which one young man was pushed downstairs to his death. Although the incident was hushed up, almost immediately afterward the rumours of haunting had begun, and the theatre closed soon after. It seemed likely therefore that either the foot of the stairs or the room in which this ouija board experiment had taken place would be the main focus of the ghost, and it was a fairly a safe bet that whichever place the ghost tried hardest to keep them from would be the focal point to cast it out from.
For now though, it seemed to be settling for trapping them in this room. As Oz reached for the door handle it suddenly burst into flames, forcing him to jerk his hand back, away from the searing heat. The flames disappeared, just as abruptly, leaving no trace that they'd ever been there.
"I'll try," David offered, a slight tremor in his voice. He reached for the handle and no flames appeared, but as he touched it he too jerked his hand back. "Cold!" he gasped, and indeed for a brief moment there was the appearance of ice on the handle.
This was getting them nowhere. Oz decided to try something different. Remembering that this door opened outwards, he eyed it thoughtfully for a moment before aiming the hardest kick he could manage at the spot just below the handle.
Rather unexpectedly, the door burst open first time, despite the pressure he could feel behind it holding it closed. Oz decided to give the credit either to desperation or ghostly tricks, rather than admit to himself that for the second time in under a week he'd managed to tap into wolf-strength.
As the three of them nervously headed deeper into the old theatre, Oz leading the way with his flashlight, the darkness increased. To make matters worse, the hallway began to fill with mist, making it almost impossible to see where they were going even with the flashlight. Soon they had to link hands or risk losing one another in the murk, groping their way along by touch and memory as they headed for the main stairs. More than once one or another of them tripped over unseen obstacles, stumbling and pulling the others down with them. Each time they picked themselves back up and carried on, although Emma began to whimper quietly to herself despite David's murmured reassurances.
The closer they got to the stairs the colder the air around them became, until all three were shivering uncontrollably, their breath appearing as white mist before their eyes. At last Oz felt the wall beneath his fingers give way to the sloping feel of the stair banisters. The cold increasing, he could feel, deep down, that they'd found the main focus of the ghost: the force of its venom was almost tangible in the air.
"We're here," was all he had time to say before the very air before them seemed to explode, throwing them all to the floor as a sheet of flame shot down the corridor over their prone bodies. Emma screamed, and David curled his body over hers for protection, while Oz flattened himself to the floor and thought hard.
"Leave me!" a disembodied voice boomed in the wake of the fire.
The flames seemed to have burnt away the mist, although the passageway was still dark, but now a howling wind threatened to blow them all away, picking up loose items and hurling them at them.
"It isn't real," Oz shouted at the others over the deafening noise of the wind as he picked himself up off the floor and, clinging to the banisters with one hand, tried to dig in to his backpack with the other, searching for the items they'd prepared.
"It feels real," David shouted back, while Emma almost screamed, "Those flames were hot!"
"Mind games," he yelled. "Don't fall for it."
They had props to set up, incense and charms. Those were mostly just window dressing, Giles had said, but with a case like this it was best to cover all angles. But getting said props to remain in place proved nigh on impossible under the circumstances, with the ghost throwing everything it had at them.
Finally giving up on getting everything to stay in place unaided, they simply got on with the rest of the procedure. David and Emma held the charms and burning incense in their hands as they began the Latin chants that backed up the rest of the incantation. Both stumbled over the unfamiliar words, but Oz had given them the same advice Willow had once given him: you don't have to understand it; you just have to say it.
He wondered what Willow would say if she could see him now.
That was not a good line of thinking to pursue. He forced his mind back to the task at hand, lighting his own incense stick and shouting out the surprisingly simple incantation Giles had directed him to. It ran along the hackneyed lines of 'begone, foul fiend' and carried on from there. Apparently the tone of voice was more important – you had to be very firm and repeat as often as necessary.
Chanting and shouting incantations was not easy when the room seemed to be spinning around you, the air changing from burning hot to icy cold and back again, thick mist making it impossible to see anything, and while being pelted with objects both hard and soft – not to mention sharp. Determined to see this through, though, the three stubbornly persevered.
And then, quite suddenly, it all stopped. There was a moment of absolute stillness followed by a flash of brilliant light and a sound reminiscent of a thunderclap, and then total silence. Gasping with relief at the sudden release from attack, all three slumped to the ground where they stood.
For a long moment the only sound was that of ragged breathing slowly evening out. Oz eventually broke the silence.
"May you live in interesting times," he remarked, apropos of nothing.
"What's that?" David raised his head to glance quizzically at him.
"It's a curse, isn't it?" Oz thought for a moment about some of the interesting times he'd lived in and nodded. "I totally get that."
"So is it all over now?" Emma asked, hopefully. "Absolutely definitely for sure?"
Oz nodded. "I'm pretty sure it's gone."
"Pretty sure?" Emma looked anxious again. "But not absolutely sure? I mean, shouldn't you have a way of checking, like, a…a spectral Geiger counter, or something?"
Oz laughed out loud at that, for the first time in…he couldn't actually remember how long. It felt good.
"It's gone," he told her firmly. "Absolutely definitely for sure."
It was funny how certain he was about that. He could feel it, deep down inside. It felt odd – a bit like the first time he'd tapped into werewolf-enhanced senses to smell someone out while in human form, which was all very disturbing when you actually came to think about it, so he preferred not to.
Emma was looking around at the mess, dismay written all over her face. "So what do we do now?" she asked, wearily.
"Pick up the pieces." David bounced to his feet, suddenly all enthusiasm. "Now we know our ghost isn't going to knock them straight back down again." He whirled around to face Oz. "What are your plans?"
"Hadn't made any." Oz was slightly taken aback by the unexpected question.
"'Cause we could really use your help." David was using his most wheedling tone.
"Thought I'd already done that." Oz could see where this was leading and decided to play dumb. He didn't feel up to making any big future-shaping decisions just at the moment.
"You can't just de-spook the place and then take off again like the littlest hobo," Emma told him, firmly. "Stay."
"It'll take twice as long to get back on our feet if we don't have staff, and you're the only staff we've got," David pointed out. "And then we'll have to have a grand re-opening. You don't want to miss that."
Oz hesitated, unsure.
It felt good to be wanted, to have friends again after leaving all his behind. David and Emma were so normal, haunted café notwithstanding, they actually made him feel normal again – after focusing on his wolf-side for so long, it made a nice change. He hadn't felt so…content in months. Working at a coffee bar in San Francisco might not have been what he'd envisioned for himself, but it didn't have to be forever, and this felt like it could be a healthy place to hole up and lick his wounds. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Plus, he thought it might be a good idea to earn a regular wage for a while since his savings were pretty much gone, and here was a steady job he already knew he could do, all his for the taking.
"How 'bout a raise?" he suggested, trying not to smile.
David beamed. "I'm sure we can negotiate something."
"When we've paid for the repairs…" Emma put in, firmly. Gratitude would only extend so far, apparently.
Of course, there were werewolf issues to consider. David and Emma didn't know about that, and he wasn't sure how they'd react if they found out. They'd found the ghost hard enough to deal with. But he'd been a werewolf for the last two and a half years now, with most of his Sunnydale friends of the non-Scooby variety never suspecting a thing. And he'd never felt guilt over not telling them because, why should he? It was his private business, besides being not the easiest subject to raise. He decided not to worry about it until the next full moon hit. No sense borrowing trouble.
David and Emma were now fussing over one another's war wounds. Leaving them to it, Oz had started to pick things up off the floor in the spirit of being helpful when Emma suddenly spun around as if she'd just remembered something.
"Why didn't you want anyone to know you'd called?" she asked, curiously.
Oz was puzzled for a moment, unsure what she meant.
"On the phone," she reminded him. "When you were talking to your friend in Sunnydale. You said not to tell anyone you'd called."
"Oh." That was a tricky one. How to summarise the Willow situation quickly and concisely, and in a way that would satisfy Emma? "Messy break-up issues." That pretty much covered it: his entire reason for ending up here.
"By the way," David added, cutting across whatever response Emma had been about to make. "Thank you."
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Epilogue:
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With the ghost banished, never to return, and with a lot of hard work invested into straightening the place out, the Monico was quickly back on its feet. Almost as if potential customers had known about the ghostly vibes and accordingly had stayed away, they now came flocking in. Trade had never been so good, and it was starting to look like David and Emma's dreams might come true after all.
Alone in the café one day during a brief lull in business, Oz heard the door open and, looking up, was surprised to see a familiar face. "Devon."
"Surprise!" his old friend called out, cheerfully.
Oz greeted him with a warm handshake and very nearly a smile. "What are you doing here?"
"Had a gig in town. Thought I'd check out the new digs," Devon explained, looking around quizzically. "So, barman, huh?"
"Also, chef," Oz pointed out although, truth be told, he spent little time in the kitchen now that the café was getting back on its feet and David trusted him alone in the bar. But Devon's reaction was not one to miss for the sake of a technicality.
Devon laughed out loud, bemused at the notion. "No kidding? Man, how in hell did that happen?"
"Seriously?" Oz replied. "I have no idea."
David's arrival from the storeroom forestalled any further discussion, as Oz had to introduce the pair.
"David: owns this place," he explained, waving his hands between the pair. "Devon: old friend. In town for a gig. How'd that go, by the way?"
"Rocked 'em," Devon replied, airily. "New guitarist is gettin' better. Not sure he'll work out, though. Really can't talk you into coming back?"
"Sorry, man," Oz refused to be drawn.
"Rewind," David looked at Oz. "You were in his band?"
"Lead guitarist, until he decided to go walkabout," Devon confirmed, leaning casually on the counter. "Haven't had the same sound since."
Oz appreciated the backhanded compliment: it was nice to know he was missed, even if there was no way back.
"I was in a band once," David told them, wistfully. "Back in college…" he tailed off, apparently lost in memories.
"Playing or singing?" Devon helped himself to a muffin from behind the counter.
"Me? I played. Keyboard mostly," David explained.
"Any good?" Devon mumbled through a mouthful of chocolate chip.
"Not as good as we thought we were," David sighed. "But better than some I could name."
"So what happened?"
David sighed again and rolled his eyes. "We grew up and got jobs. Joined the real world."
Oz looked around, thoughtfully. "So this is the real world, is it?"
Devon stayed a while chatting, wanting to know exactly how Oz had ended up here, and passing on every scrap of Sunnydale gossip he could think of while scrupulously avoiding the subject of Willow: Oz mentally blessed him for finally learning how to be tactful. Once he'd had gone, David wandered over to Oz and eyed him thoughtfully.
"So," he remarked, casually. "Both former band members, then."
"Apparently so," Oz agreed.
"Hey, maybe we could join forces?" David's face was filled with puppy-dog enthusiasm. "Musically speaking, that is. Rediscover our glory days."
"I'm not sure I had any glory days to rediscover," Oz told him.
David rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean!"
Oz raised an eyebrow. "Keyboard and guitar does not a band make."
"But you'd be willing to jam?" David wheedled. "And if I can find a singer, maybe…?"
"Jam would be good." Seeing Devon again had reminded Oz how much he missed playing with the band, although potentially getting into another felt slightly more permanent than he'd intended. "For now."
Check out the continuing saga of Oz in San Francisco at Jo's Reader's Digest, link in my profile
© J. Browning, September 2004