elohar

"Damn." The word, as it left John Gage's mouth, was more than half a sigh. Roy DeSoto, sitting across the kitchen table with his head on his folded arms, made no reply.

A soft knocking sounded somewhere off in the corner and Johnny roused his tired, aching muscles to look around idly for the source of the sound. Nothing presented itself to his probing gaze and the sound wasn't repeated. Just as he gave up and settled down again, though, light footsteps ran through the equipment bay. He turned to watched the door. The engine was still on mop-up and the two paramedics were alone in the station. There came a series of crashes, like someone throwing around the tools from the station's big, rolling toolchest, and Johnny jumped up and went out to see what was going on.

The empty bay rang with his footsteps. The toolbox sat in the corner where they'd left it, neatly locked and apparently undisturbed. There was no one in sight, in spite of the footsteps he'd heard just seconds before. Johnny walked around the squad, peeked in the windows, even got down on his hands and knees to see if someone was hiding underneath. He looked in the closet, tested the locked door to Cap's office and walked through the dorm, the locker room and the latrine. Finally he went out through the open bay door. It was nearly midnight and the street was deserted. Even in darkness, there was nowhere on the firehouse lawn for anyone to hide. He strolled around the outside of the building, looking for any sign of someone tampering with their cars in the back lot, but then gave up and re-entered the station through the kitchen door.

Roy still sat with his head down at the table. "I couldn't find anyone," Johnny said. "Man, was I just imagining things or did you hear that too?"

Roy raised his head then. "Hear what? I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention." His eyes were red-rimmed and sorrow and exhaustion lined his face.

Johnny rubbed his shoulder in passing. "Rule number one, man."

"I know. But it's hard."

"Yeah, it's hard." Johnny resumed his seat and sighed. "Damn."

The rumble of the returning engine disturbed the stillness of the night. In a few seconds the rest of the crew filed into the kitchen, looking as tired and bedraggled as the paramedics felt. It was Cap who caught Johnny's eye and reluctantly voiced the question.

"The little girl?" They already knew the answer by their shiftmates demeanor.

Johnny simply shook his head as the other four men dragged themselves into chairs.

"Damn," Cap said.

"I'm gonna make some coffee," Chet announced. No one objected. As tired as they all were, as late as the hour, none of them felt inclined to sleep. He put the coffee on and brought six cups over to set on the the table. While they were waiting for the coffee to brew, Johnny got up, got a glass of water and brought it back to the table. There was no conversation as the six men sat, each engrossed in their own private thoughts.

Again there came a knocking, startling in the quiet night. Glancing around at his men, puzzled, Cap got up and went to the back door, but there was no one there. While he was standing there, peering out into the darkness, another knock sounded, seemingly from the cupboard by his right shoulder. He snatched open the cupboard, but found only ordinary groceries. Even as he closed it there was another knock, this time sounding from the kitchen table.

"See? That happened earlier," Johnny said. "I been hearing weird things ever since we got back tonight. Just before you guys got back it sounded like someone was running around in the bay and throwing tools or something, but when I checked there was nothing out of place."

Marco crossed himself and glared at Chet. "It's that ouija board! I told you it was bad news. You never should have brought that thing into the station!"

"It's not bad news, Marco," Chet said. "It's just a toy. Anyway, it didn't work. All we did was use it as a harmless way to kill a couple hours."

"You mean a brainless way to kill a couple of hours," Cap said dryly. "I can't believe we spent the whole evening sitting around a piece of cardboard waiting for invisible forces to move a piece of plastic around." Though they had all taken a turn at the board, the little triangle that was supposed to point to the letters and words hadn't budged an inch.

The conversation was interrupted when the six coffee cups sitting in the middle of the table began to shiver and tremble, tinkling lightly as they rattled against one another. Five of the firemen started, ready to dive for shelter.

"Earthquake!" Mike said.

Only Johnny hadn't reacted. He was staring at his glass with a strange expression. "Guys, look at my water," he said. Though it sat not three inches from the trembling coffee cups, the water in his glass was perfectly still. As suddenly as they'd begun, the cups stopped moving. For a full sixty seconds a breathless quiet reigned in the firehouse kitchen.

"Cap! Maybe it is a ghost," Chet burst out excitedly. "Maybe there just wasn't any spirit here earlier, but now there is and it wants to talk! We should get the board out again."

Hank Stanley looked around the table at his men. He didn't know what to believe about the strange things going on in his fire station, but right now his crew was focused on something other than the disastrous response they'd just been on and in his book that could only be a good thing. "What the heck," he said. "Get out the board and let's see if our 'guest' has anything to say for themself."

Chet ran for his locker and came back with the ouija board, a cardboard surface with the letters of the alphabet ranged in a rough oval. The letters zero through nine ran across the top of the board and "yes" and "no" were in the bottom corners. He set it in the middle of the table, put his fingers lightly on one side of the triangular pointer and said, "okay! There's supposed to be at least two operators, so who's going to do it with me?"

"Uh uh," Johnny said.

"Uh uh? What do you mean, uh uh?"

"You're too much of a prankster. If anything happens with you on the board we'll all think you're the one doing it."

Chet scowled but he was too honest to dispute the point. "Okay, well, who then? You're as apt to play a dumb joke as I am."

"I'm not touching it," Marco announced.

"How about me," Cap said. "Everyone trust me?"

"Is that a trick question?" Johnny asked.

"What was that, Gage?"

"I said, 'yes, sir! Absolutely!'"

"That's what I thought you said. Roy? Care to join me?"

Roy was sitting back in his chair watching, but he just shook his head at the captain's question.

"Guess that leaves you, Mike. What do you say?"

Characteristically, Mike didn't say anything. He just shrugged, sat down across from the captain and put his fingers on the pointer.

"Okay," Cap said. "Now, what are we supposed to do agai--" before he could finish the question the pointer came to life under the hands, racing in circles around the board. The two men sitting there looked down at it in dismay. "I'm not doing that."

"Neither am I."

It stopped for a second, pointing to the letter E, then moved to the L. "Quick!" Cap said, "Somebody grab something and write this down!"

Johnny pulled his notebook and pen out of his pocket and recorded the letters as the others called them off. When the pointer suddenly went still they all turned and looked to him expectantly. He looked at what he had written and shrugged, then slid the notebook into the center of the table for them all to see. It said:

e l o h a r b a k h o b i t u l h e r t s h e d.

"That doesn't make any sense," Cap said.

"Well, maybe it's just warming up," Chet suggested. "Maybe we have to ask it questions."

Cap and Mike hesitantly put their fingers back on the pointer and Cap said, "is there someone there?"

The pointer moved deliberately to "yes".

"Okay, what's your name?"

Again the plastic triangle flew over the cardboard, Johnny writing the letters down without trying to make sense of them. When it stopped he had:

t h e s a l l i e m b a x t o n.

"The Sallie?" Johnny suggested uncertainly.

"Sallie?" Cap asked. "Is your name Sallie?"

The cursor went to "no" and again the pointer spelled out t h e s a l l i e m b a x t o n.

"Do you have a message for us?" Chet asked.

This time, when the plastic triangle went still, Johnny had written in his notebook:

h i m g o b a k h o b i t u l

"Don't try to say it out loud," Marco warned. "It could be the name of a demon and if you say it out loud you give it power over you!"

"No, look," Mike said. "It starts out 'him go'." He addressed the board. "Are you trying to tell one of us to go somewhere?" Immediately the cursor slid to "yes".

"A ghost is telling us where to go," Chet snickered.

"This is starting to sound like one of Kelly's pranks," Johnny observed.

"If it is," Cap said, "I'll be very interested to find out how he's pulling it off!"

"Okay," Johnny said, "I might regret asking this but, where do you want us to go."

h o b i t u l.

"Hobitul . . . hobitul," Cap mused. "Are you trying to say 'hospital'?"

YES

"It can't spell!" Johnny realized. "Look, if you take 'him' and 'go' and 'hobitul' out of the message you have 'bak'. I bet that's 'back'! It wants one of us to go back to the hospital."

Though none of them were watching the board at that moment, Cap and Mike still had their fingers on the pointer. It moved, startling them.

YES

"Back to the hospital," Marco said. "That has to be Gage or DeSoto. They're the only ones who've been to the hospital tonight. Who do you want to go to the hospital?" he asked the board.

e l o h a r

"Look, I'm sorry," Cap said. "We don't understand you. Tell me, why do you want him to go?"

h e r t s h e d

"Hert shed," Johnny tried. "Herts hed. Hed herts. Hurt his head?"

YES

Now Cap was peering suspiciously at his two paramedics. "Did one of you guys hurt your head tonight?"

Roy and Johnny looked at one another questioningly. Johnny shrugged. "I might have tapped my helmet on the doorway as we were coming out of the house. I didn't get hurt though."

"Yeah? Well, maybe you ought to run to Rampart anyway. Let them have a look at you. Just to be on the safe side."

"Rampart?" Johnny squawked. "Cap! I'm fine! I don't want to go to Rampart! I wouldn't even know what to tell them when they asked why I was there!"

"That part's easy. You tell them your captain found out you bumped your head and didn't tell anyone and he made you come in for a check up."

"But, Cap!"

"Johnny, listen. I don't know what's moving that pointer around that board, but I don't believe it's Mike and I KNOW it's not me. Go get checked out. Roy can drive you in in the squad. If you're okay, great. No harm, no foul. But, just to be on the safe side, I want you cleared before you come back to work.

* * * *

Twenty minutes later Johnny sat on an exam table in Rampart. It was a slow night in the emergency room and he had the unwelcome attention of both Drs. Brackett and Early as well as nurse Dixie McCall. Kelly Brackett clicked off his penlight and shoved it back in his pocket. "Well, Gage, while I can certainly understand your captain thinking you needed your head examined, as far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with you now that hasn't been wrong with you since I met you."

"Ha ha, very funny," Johnny said sarcastically.

The two doctors laughed and Dixie giggled. Before anyone could speak again, though, the phone ran. Joe early answered it, then passed it to Johnny. "It's for you. Your captain."

Johnny took it. "Cap? It's Johnny. The docs said there's nothing wrong with my head."

"Nothing NEW wrong," Brackett corrected him, sotto voce.

Johnny, listening to the phone, ignored him. "Uh huh? Wow! Really? Well . . . I'm fine. I don't know what to tell you. Okay, well, we'll be back in a little bit then. All right. Okay. 'Bye."

The medical staff were listening to his end of the conversation, intrigued. "Johnny, what's really going on here?" Joe Early asked.

The younger paramedic hesitated, torn between sharing a wild story and not wanting to expose himself and his stationmates to ridicule. He tried to catch Roy's eye, to get his opinion, but Roy ws looking down at the floor. Mentally, Johnny flipped a coin and the story won, so he explained about Chet and the ouija board and all the strange things that had happened that night. "And now, Cap says, things are going nuts over there. There's banging and crashing, stuff falling off, they keep hearing what sounds like a little kid crying. And no one knows what to do." As he finished he looked up hesitantly to find the Rampart staffers staring at him with expressions he couldn't decipher. "So now you probably think we're all crazy, don'tcha?" he asked.

"I gather that you don't believe in ghosts," Dr. Early said. "Or, at least, that you really don't want to."

"Well, I, no, well, you know, I mean ghosts, for heaven's sake, but then, and you, you," Johnny faltered to a stop and glanced around the room. "You guys believe in ghosts?"

"Well," Joe said, "I certainly don't disbelieve in them."

Dixie leaned back against a medicine cabinet, crossed her ankes and her arms and said, "you fellas should spend some time here alone on a quiet night. We have some very spooky things that happen. There's one elevator that keeps getting called down to the basement, by the morgue. Movement you only catch out of the corner of your eye, cold spots, voices in empty rooms . . . ."

"I was here one night when we were swamped," Brackett said. "Nursing home sent an old man over with a possible M.I. I got outside the door of the treatment room and there was a catfight going on inside. I don't mean real cats. I'm talking two women. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but there were not happy. Frankly, neither was I and I went charging in determined to throw them both out so I could treat my patient. The minute I opened the door, the voices stopped. There was no one in there but one feeble little old man. He died just a few minutes later."

"So, you don't think we're crazy?"

"Well, I didn't say that, Gage. Say, instead, we don't think you're crazy because of this."

"What, exactly, did the ouija board say?" Dixie asked. "Can you remember?"

"I can do better than remember. I've got it all written down in my notebook." He handed his notebook over and Dixie and the two doctors leaned over to study it.

"Elohar?" Dixie asked.

"Yeah, we never could figure that one out, though."

"You know," Joe said thoughtfully, "I have a niece who, when she was a child, had a speech impediment. She couldn't recognize the 'y' sound, so she'd say 'es' instead of 'yes' and tell you she didn't like the 'olk' in her egg."

Suddenly enlightened, Johnny jumped off the table and turned to his partner, so quiet and withdrawn all night. "Roy? Roy, did you hurt your head at the fire tonight?" He reached for his own penlight and took two steps forward. They brought him just close enough to catch Roy when his legs suddenly gave out under him and he pitched forward unconscious.

* * * *

The quiet that suddenly settled over Firestation 51 was eerie and the four men gathered there waited, tense and expectant, for the disturbances to return. After it had lasted for half an hour, Cap decided the show was over for the night and it was time to get his crew in their bunks. They took turns in the shower, no one taking more than the bare minimum of time to get the soot and grime off, and climbed in bed.

"I wonder what's keeping Gage and DeSoto," Cap said as he reached for the light switch. At that moment the phone by his bed rang. He answered to the sound of his junior paramedic's solemn voice coming over the phone line.

"Cap? It's Johnny. Elohar means 'yellow hair'. Roy had a cerebral hemorrhage. He was behind me coming out of the fire and he must have taken a blow to the head. The docs say he probably doesn't even remember it.

"Good Lord," Stanley breathed. "How is he?"

"They're taking him to surgery now. They think they caught it in time and that he's going to be all right. But, Cap? Doctor Brackett said that if Roy had gone to sleep with that injury, he'd have never woken up again."

* * * *

At the nurses' station, Johnny hung up the phone with trembling hands. It was going to be a long time before he got past the realization of how close he'd come to losing his best friend tonight.

"Everything okay?" Dixie asked.

"I guess. As long as Roy's going to be okay. Cap's gonna call the chief. They'll go get Joanne and bring her in. He said I can stay here and wait until the surgery's over."

Dixie smiled at him and patted his arm. "It's going to be all right. Joe and Kel are the best. Even before they started, the medication was beginning to relieve the intra-cranial pressure."

"Yeah, but . . . . My God, Dix! If it hadn't been for that ghost or," he shrugged, "whatever, if it hadn't been for that, I'd have gone to bed like nothing was wrong tonight and in a few hours I'd be waking up to find my partner dead in the next bunk over."

"Good thing he has someone up there keeping an eye on him," Dixie said.

Johnny nodded. "I just wish I knew who to thank."

Footsteps echoed down the hall and Johnny looked up sharply, but it wasn't anyone he knew. A strange young man in a black suit approached the desk reluctantly, caught Dixie looking at him and leaned in, blushing.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I know I'm not supposed to be here, but this is my first night and I don't know where to go yet."

"Well, maybe we can help you," the nurse told him kindly. "What do you need?"

"I'm from Peregrine Brothers' Mortuary. I'm supposed to pick up a little girl who died in a fire last night. A Miss," he consulted his clipboard, "Thesallie Marie Baxton."

Johnny started and he and Dixie exchanged a look. "What did you say her first name was?"

"Thesallie," the man from the mortuary said. "Isn't it unusual. I've never heard it before myself."

The end.

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