Eustace Holder’s Paranormal Detective Agency

“You want me to interrogate the owl?”

Eustace sighed at Jason’s question. “Unless you have some heretofore unrevealed magical ability to converse with fauna, then I highly doubt you’ll be capable of performing such an action.” Most things Eustace said came off as pompous due to his posh English accent, but this time it sounded particularly pompous, even for him.

Jason glared at the barn owl sitting on a bare branch of an oak. He would have preferred to glare at Eustace, but that wasn’t possible. “You told me to ask—”

“I meant ask in the sense that we lay forth objects pertaining to the investigation and see if the owl is drawn to one or the other. I didn’t mean we should play good cop, incompetent cop with a bird.”

“It’s good cop, bad cop.”

“Not in our case, I’m afraid.”

Jason often had the urge to punch Eustace, but since that would involve punching himself, he unfortunately had to refrain. At the moment, however, he felt sorely tempted to sucker punch his own face.

“I am not incompetent,” Jason said.

“Of course not. Now, how about you interrogate that owl. He looks shifty.”

“Hey, you said—”

“Is everything all right?” said a frail voice from behind Jason.

He whipped around. Mrs. Finch had tottered outside into her backyard where Jason and Eustace had been arguing. She pulled her wool shawl closer to her bony frame as a breeze chilled the already cold December air. Hunched due to both weather and old age, she only came up to Jason’s chest. She was looking worriedly at Jason, but as she drew closer, she shot a wary glance toward the owl as if afraid it might fly at her.

“Yes, yes, it’s all good,” Jason said. He placed two fingers on his temple. “I’m just communing with the spirits. They’re very talkative today.”

“Nice save,” Eustace drawled. Mrs. Finch, luckily, couldn’t hear him. No one could except for Jason, although he often wished he couldn’t hear Eustace either.

“Oh, I see.” Mrs. Finch hadn’t changed out of her slippers and her white hair was a mess. Her eyes were dry but red-rimmed, and Jason wondered if she’d been crying again while he and Eustace had been bitching at each other. “Have the spirits said anything about…” She lowered her voice and leaned closer, which meant Jason had to bend in half to hear her next words. “…the omen?”

If his client had been anyone other than a feeble old woman who had just lost her husband, Jason would probably have responded with something flippant like the spirits say it’s a fucking owl or I saw the omen eating your garbage. Instead he said, “I’m still waiting for the answer to be revealed. Maybe you should go back inside. It’s cold out. And this might take a while.”

Mrs. Finch nodded and went back into her house. Jason watched her go, concerned she might trip over one of the loose flagstones in the garden path.

“You’re a little too good at lying,” Eustace said once Mrs. Finch was back inside. “I always preferred to be honest with my clients.”

“Oh, the spirits,” Jason said, rubbing his temples, “the spirits are telling me that Eustace Holder is a dick.”

Eustace let out a more exasperated sigh than usual. “I know you can’t actually commune with spirits.”

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“That’s different.”

It was different. Eustace wasn’t some spirit hanging around in the ether for psychics to tap into. Eustace had once been a paranormal detective until he went down the wrong alley at the wrong time and meet his fate at the hands of an anonymous attacker. As he lay dying in the streets, he did the only thing he could think of—he transferred his consciousness to the person nearest to him. That person happened to be Jason, who’d stumbled across Eustace’s body while dumpster diving. Now Eustace was stuck inside Jason’s head.

After taking some time to wrap his brain around this new state of being, Jason had agreed to continue Eustace’s work with the paranormal because, honestly, it was better than barely scraping by on jobs that were not exactly legal. But since Jason wasn’t an actual psychic and explaining exactly what had happened with Eustace made him sound a little crazy, Jason just pretended to know about ghosts and spirits and magic while Eustace gave him instructions inside his head. And Eustace had insisted they keep his name for the agency—Eustace Holder’s Paranormal Detective Agency. Jason had tried to get his name added, since he was currently the face of the agency, but Eustace had vetoed the suggestion.

Despite all that, solving paranormal mysteries had sounded like a noble quest, trying to find the truth about supernatural phenomena and helping those in need.

And now he was interrogating a fucking owl.

Mrs. Finch, at least, was someone in need—and maybe reminded Jason a little too much of his bubbe—but Jason didn’t know how to help her. Her husband had died from a heart attack a few days before. Pretty cut-and-dry, according to the coroner, but Mrs. Finch had insisted her husband had died because he’d seen the owl in their backyard. Mrs. Finch had first noticed the bird the night her husband died and now it wouldn’t leave her yard. She thought it was an omen or evil spirit. Jason thought it was just a bird and a horrible coincidence. Eustace, however, took Mrs. Finch’s concern seriously and wanted to properly investigate it.

“You really think we can get anything out of this owl?” Jason asked. “Or should we call it a day and go get hot chocolate?”

“You had hot chocolate this morning.”

“It’s hot chocolate season, it’s acceptable to have it with every meal.”

“No, it is not, and no, I am not ready to give up on this owl.”

Another cold breeze blew through the yard, and Jason wrapped his arms around himself. His long, black coat was too thin for this weather, but he didn’t have anything more appropriate. Besides, he looked totally awesome in that coat, and he didn’t want to cover it up. Eustace disagreed, but Eustace disagreed with Jason on a lot of things, like Jason’s hair (the bed head look was still in, so shut up) and Jason’s diet (pizza totally counted as a staple food). Jason tried to ignore him but having Eustace’s constantly critical voice in his ear made it hard to do so.

Jason scrunched his face tight against the wind and let out an annoyed breath. “How much longer then?”

“I’m not sure…” Eustace hmmed in thought. “Look at the owl again.”

Jason, who had still been facing Mrs. Finch’s house, turned back around. The owl sat on the same branch as before. It stared down at Jason with its dark eyes.

“Owls are nocturnal…” Eustace said slowly.

“Right…”

“So why is it out in the middle of the day?”

Jason squinted up at the gray sky. It was early afternoon, but the sun was dim behind the clouds and was already nearing the horizon.

“Maybe its confused by the weather,” Jason said. “Or from the Daylight Savings switch.”

“Birds don’t observe Daylight Saving Time.”

“They are truly wiser than us.”

Eustace hmmed again. “I wonder if there’s something keeping this bird in the yard. Perhaps an illness or injury that makes it hesitant to move. Or maybe it discovered an abundant food source…”

“It was playing in the garbage earlier. Maybe there’s food there.”

“I don’t think it was searching the refuse for food. It took that swatch of fabric as if it’s trying to build a nest.”

Jason noticed the navy blue fabric dangling from the branch next to the owl. It looked like it may have once been a knit cap. He wondered if Mrs. Finch had knitted it. His bubbe liked knitting—she was terrible at it, but she liked it anyway.

“If it’s looking for food or nest-building materials,” Jason said, “then it being here is just a coincidence, right?”

“I must eliminate all potential factors before making a conclusion. If the owl is here because of some physical, mundane reason, then we can reassure Mrs. Finch that it is harmless. But if no obvious reason can be ascertained…”

“Then it flew out of Satan’s butthole.”

The groan inside Jason’s head reached a new level of exasperation. Jason smirked proudly.

“No,” Eustace said firmly. “While the symbolic meaning of owls varies from culture to culture, there are many that see owls as harbingers of death or ill fortune. It could be this owl was a warning of Mr. Finch’s demise.”

“But an omen doesn’t actually cause a death, right?”

“No, omens aren’t the causes of things, merely signs of what’s to come.”

“So the owl isn’t dangerous, and the death it was warning about has already happened.”

“If the latter were true, why is the owl still here?”

Jason tilted his head and the owl followed suit. “Huh…if the owl was a sign that Mr. Finch was going to die…but it didn’t leave after his death… Oh, shit, Mrs. Finch!”

“My concern precisely,” Eustace said. “If the owl is a harbinger of death and it’s still here, there could be more death to come. The most logical option would be the elderly widow who struggles to open the door of the refrigerator.”

“We can’t let her die.” Jason turned back to the house, trying to spot Mrs. Finch through one of the windows.

“If she is destined to die, I imagine it will be from a natural cause. She is of an age where the body is breaking down—”

“But if we know something is going to happen to her, we could stop it!”

“How do you intend to stop a heart attack or a stroke?”

“I—I don’t know. We could…bring her to the hospital and get her a checkup—”

“A checkup might show the beginnings of heart disease, but a doctor won’t be able to stop the inevitable.”

“But we can’t just let her die!”

Eustace hmmed but it was a very different sort of hmm from usual. It was oddly thoughtful and cautious.

“Perhaps we should go get some hot chocolate,” Eustace said.

“Wait, what?”

“We need to regroup, to analyze our latest conclusions—”

“Our conclusions? You usually say my—”

“I feel the both of us need to get some perspective and yelling in an old woman’s backyard about her potential death isn’t doing us any favors.”

“Okay, good point.”

When the barista handed Jason his hot chocolate through the drive-thru window, it was piled high with so much whipped cream he could feel Eustace’s sense of propriety pricking up. But Eustace didn’t say anything, not even when Jason began slurping up the whipped cream, driving away from the window one-handed.

“We need to consider the reality of the situation,” Eustace finally said once they were parked in front of their apartment building and Jason’s hot chocolate was reduced to syrupy dregs. “If the owl is an omen—”

“You want to let Mrs. Finch die,” Jason said, wiping whipped cream off his nose.

“Do you want to tell Mrs. Finch the owl may be portending her doom?”

“…No. But still—”

“I understand your concern, Jason, but if she is destined to die, I don’t think there’s anything we can do to stop it.”

Jason blew out a defeated breath and slumped back in the driver’s seat. He wasn’t ready to leave the car yet, being in the middle of a conversation with Eustace. He didn’t need his neighbors to see him talking to himself. Again.

“Fine,” Jason said. “If that is what the owl means—and we don’t know that it is—I guess we can’t stop what’s meant to be. But couldn’t we give her a head’s up or something without being completely depressing about it? Like, I don’t know, tell her to enjoy every sandwich or something.”

“As someone who recently lost her husband of over fifty years, I think she’s well aware of the ticking clock her life is. Telling her to seize the day—especially coming from a twenty-something with ridiculous hair—”

“It is fashionable—”

“—might not be well received. I think our best option is simply to tell her the owl is not harmful and let her live out the rest of her days in peace.”

Jason scrubbed a hand through his not-at-all-ridiculous hair. “I guess…but only if that’s what the owl means. We have to go back there. Do that thing you were telling me to do—ask it some questions, sees if it responds in a demony way or not.”

“It wouldn’t necessarily be a demon—”

“Whatever. C’mon, let’s go back.”

“No,” Eustace said firmly. “Let’s do some research first. If the owl has stayed because it’s an omen of another death, it doesn’t mean the death it foreshadows has to be in the Finch house. We should look into any other deaths in the neighborhood that have occurred since the owl arrived.”

“Fine.” Jason finally got out of the car and walked toward his apartment building. “We’ll do some research.”

But after several hours of combing through obituaries online, it was clear there hadn’t been an abundance of death in the area since the owl had arrived in the Finchs’ backyard. If the owl was an omen, then whatever was meant to come to pass had not happened yet. Which made Jason tug at his hair again.

“We should go back to Mrs. Finch’s place,” he said.

“I don’t think that will be productive,” Eustace said in an oddly soft and comforting voice.

That just made Jason jump to his feet and grab his coat. “Owls are nocturnal. They hunt at night, right? If it’s not an omen and it’s only making a nest in Mrs. Finch’s tree, then it probably leaves the yard at night to find food.” He gestured toward the dark windows. “It’s night now, so if it’s not there, then it’s not an omen. Right?”

“Perhaps,” Eustace said warily. “An omen would defy natural impulses, so if it must leave the yard to hunt then it’s most likely not compelled by supernatural forces.”

“Exactly what I just said. Let’s go.”

Jason was already out the door before Eustace could respond.

“I don’t think it appropriate to bother Mrs. Finch at such a late hour,” Eustace said. “It’s almost ten o’clock.”

“Yeah, and Mrs. Finch probably goes to bed at like nine. We’ll sneak into the backyard without waking her.”

“I believe that is considered trespassing.”

“She hired us to solve this case, she’s not gonna call the cops on us.” Jason skipped down the stairs to the bottom floor of the building and ran through the front door. “C’mon, we’re going.”

“I can’t exactly stop you.”

At Mrs. Finch’s, the lights were all out inside, proving Jason’s assumption about her early bedtime. Jason slipped through the side gate and into the backyard. Glancing around in the dark, he didn’t see the usual owl-shape perching in the oak tree.

“Look!” Jason whispered to Eustace. “It’s not in the tree. It’s go—no, wait, it’s in the garbage again.”

As Jason’s eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom, he noticed movement near the trashcan outside the kitchen door. He fished around in his coat pocket until he found a small flashlight then pointed the weak yellow beam toward the shifting shadows.

The owl had its head in the same bag as earlier. A slash along the side showed where the owl had clawed it open.

“It could still be looking for food,” Jason insisted, his heart sinking at the continued presence of the bird.

“Perhaps,” Eustace said, and his voice had that soft, gentle tone to it again, as if Jason were a dog freaking out in a thunderstorm. Jason didn’t like hearing that tone because it meant Eustace was being nice to him, and Eustace was never nice to him. If he was being nice then—then—

“There’s probably lots of food in there.” Jason moved closer to the trash. “Lots of old person leftovers and stuff—maybe she cooks too much, still used to cooking for a full family or something…”

“Perhaps,” Eustace repeated, and that made Jason race over to the bag and snatch it away from the owl.

The owl hooted angrily at him while Jason shook open the bag and pointed his flashlight inside.

The was no food.

“Shit,” Jason hissed. He pushed around the piles of clothes, old magazines, and other odds and ends, trying to find something, anything, that might have attracted the owl. Pulling out a tobacco pipe, Jason sniffed it in hopes it might smell like food, but it just smelled like spit and old tobacco.

“There’s noth—fuck!”

The owl flew at Jason, snatched the pipe, then flew back to where it had been standing before. It glared at Jason.

Hoot, it said indignantly.

“Okay, okay, you can have the pipe. It smells like ass anyway.”

“Maybe it is simply building a nest in this yard,” Eustace said, but it sounded capitulating.

“Stop treating me like I’m fucking delicate.” Jason looked into the trash again. “If you think she’s gonna die, you can tell me.”

“We don’t know that she’ll die…”

Jason pulled something else out of the trash. An old sock, well-worn with a threadbare heel and a hole in the toe. A man’s sock.

Jason sifted through the contents of the bag again. A man’s sweater, the elbows worn away. A man’s baseball cap. Decades-old magazines on fishing and golf.

Lifting his head, Jason glanced from the bag to the owl and back again. The owl was clutching the pipe tightly in its claws.

“When my zayde died,” Jason said, “my bubbe threw out all his favorite clothes about a month afterward. She said she couldn’t stand seeing the things he used to wear all the time hanging in the closet or sitting in the drawer, as if he was coming back for them. Storing them away didn’t help. She wanted to get rid of them. She insisted, even when my dad offered to keep the clothes at our place. It was just too hard for her to have them around anymore, even in storage, even in a different house. She needed to know they were gone for good because otherwise there was a part of her that kept thinking he would come back.”

“An understandable response to grief,” Eustace said.

“Yeah, and I think Mrs. Finch may be a lot like her. The things in this bag, they’re her husband’s.” Jason shifted his flashlight’s beam toward the owl. “And I think…that’s him.”

There was an awkward pause. The owl blinked at him.

“When you say that’s him—”

“Look, you transferred your consciousness to me when you died—”

“That required a powerful, arcane ritual—”

“—so why not—”

“You think the bird is Mr. Finch?”

“Uh-huh.”

There was another pause. Jason and the owl were eyeing each other carefully. Eustace didn’t say anything for a little too long.

“Okay,” Jason said when the silence became uncomfortable, “I know it sounds crazy—”

“Actually, I’m merely taking the time to think it through,” Eustace explained. “I suppose…it’s possible…”

“Really?”

“When a spirit remains behind in this world, it can gain the power to move objects or even possess beings of lower intelligence. With a strong enough motivation, I suppose it’s possible that a spirit might be able to control an owl.”

Jason glanced from the owl to the house. “Motivation? Like wanting to watch over his frail wife of fifty-something years?”

“I think that could be strong enough. In which case—”

“It’s not an omen. Mrs. Finch isn’t doomed to die!”

“Well, technically, we’re all doomed to die—”

“I meant soon, Captain Buzzkill.” Jason took another long look at the owl. He waved. “Hi, Mr. Finch.”

Hoot, the owl said in acknowledgement. It lifted the pipe to its beak as if to smoke it.

“We must be sure it’s him, though,” Eustace said. “The owl is drawn to Mr. Finch’s things, which is strong evidence in favor of your hypothesis, but there’s one more thing we can do to be certain.”

“What, a mind meld?”

“No. I need you to say a phrase for me.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “A phrase? What phrase?”

“It’s a type of spell—”

“I can’t do magic, you know that.”

“You wouldn’t be doing magic, I would. But the words must be said aloud. So if you will, please repeat after me…”

Jason took in a shaky breath. He’d never helped Eustace with magic before. The fear he might get turned into a frog or cursed with eternal bacne rose in the back of his mind as he waited for Eustace to begin.

“Spiritus, te revela!” Eustace commanded.

“Spiritus, te revela…” Jason repeated, trying to keep the mix of fear and confusion out of his voice.

Something gray, like smoke, rose up from the owl’s body. The haze formed into the shape of an old man—Mr. Finch.

Jason’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit! It is him.”

“Indeed,” Eustace said, as awed as he always was at seeing the supernatural despite his years and years of dealing with otherworldly things.

The spirit of Mr. Finch hovered over the owl, watching Jason, his unruly eyebrows lowering in annoyance.

“Uh, I think he wants to go back into the bird,” Jason said.

“Of course. Reverte!”

“Reverte!”

Mr. Finch’s spirit lowered back into the owl, seeping through its eyes like spilled soda into a white carpet. The spirit disappeared entirely, leaving just the owl clutching Mr. Finch’s old pipe.

Hoot.

“Well,” Eustace said, “I think that settles this case.”

Jason, still a little wide-eyed from watching an old man’s spirit rise out of a trash-clutching owl, nodded. “Yep…and I solved it.”

Eustace cleared his throat despite not having one. “I believe it was a joint effort.”

“I figured out the bird is the dead guy—”

“And I proved it, which was honestly the hardest part.”

“Yeah, sure whatever.” Jason looked back at Mrs. Finch’s house. “It’s late, so maybe we can tell her we solved it tomorrow.”

“I think she will appreciate the good news that the bird is not an omen. I’m not entirely certain how she will respond to finding out her husband’s spirit is now inside it.”

“We can work on the best way to frame it tomorrow.”

Jason fished a baseball cap that said Women want me, fish fear me out of the trash. Carefully, he placed it on the owl’s head.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Finch.”

Hoot.