Pagan House is haunted (from PUNK MINNEAPOLIS)

an excerpt

(this excerpt from my published novel is censored for the internet)

“I channel the Goddess in my singing.” Bunny Umber nodded just enough to rattle her tall mound of dreadlocks. “The tone opens new doors of consciousness, and it’s all intuitive. I have a band. The Bunny Umbers.”

“Oh.”

“We haven’t played anywhere yet. We rehearse at the Pagan House sometimes.”

“Cool! I wanted to film a scene from my mummy movie on the freight elevator but it doesn’t work. They say the whole place is haunted.”

“Movie?”

“For cable access.”

“Oh. That. The elevator never did work in anybody’s lifetime, that I know. Pagan House is haunted, I’m sure. It’s haunted with a ghost, at least. It’d be a great place to film a horror movie. It’s a shame you weren’t there when I was attacked by a bat. And it didn’t look one f### like a rubber toy on a string. It was real and it was like an animal, a really ugly furry scrawny f###ed-up animal. It had these really ugly long wings. And it flew over my head and then went around and around the room until I thought I was going to die. Then it just went away somewhere. And then there I was left standing in this empty room wondering if I’d just imagined it. It was a sign of bad luck, for sure.”

“How’s the place haunted?” Raven asked.

“I was f###’n attacked by a monster bat!”

“That’s not haunted.”

Bunny Umber frowned. “There is more, but it gives me the creeps to even think about it. People say they heard a woman singing. Or something. And it sounded like it was coming from the basement. Nobody can even find the door to the basement, and if you look in those windows you don’t see anything down there but dust and junk all piled up, if the sun is at the right angle and you can see at all.

“Once we tried to look in those windows, when we heard weird noises. But we didn’t see anything. Not that those little basement windows have ever been washed. Maybe the door down there is at the hardware store next door. Maybe what we heard was just somebody stocking the shelves over there. F### if I know. Like I’ve got rune stones glued to my forehead or something. Though I am psychic. But I don’t know about that one. It just all sounds scary for some reason, that’s beyond me.”

Raven’s eyes grew wide. “Maybe your ghost was from the hardware store. But still a real ghost!”

“Maybe. But I usually don’t get the creeps from people at hardware stores. There’s just something weird about a basement that nobody can get to. I got out of there after the bat almost killed me. Or at least ripped all my dreads out. It was a sign, I know. It meant something bad was going to happen. I won’t go there alone, anymore. They say Pagan House used to be a hippie commune but then everybody just split one day, like bats out of hell. They say the hippies left in a real hurry and never came back. Not for nothin’. I won’t go in there again unless I’m with my band.”

Sandra rolled her eyes. “Well then�"duh�"we know it ain’t haunted by hippies if they all left.”

Bunny Umber put her finger up to hush her. “I once had a dream that they left one hippie behind. And she was very sad to be left behind. She was sitting in the middle of the room, crying. It was like a basement room, because those kind of rooms are the saddest rooms of all, if you can feel what I’m feeling. It was the saddest thing I ever dreamed. There’s nothing sadder than a lone hippie�"like a lone wolf. It’s like the opposite of a hippie orgy. Every time I step into that place, I think of how horrible it is to be lonely so I won’t ever go there alone. Besides, Pagan House is for band practice and who practices their music alone, anyway. How f###ed up.”

“What do you play?” Raven asked.

“I play these Egyptian bells on a stick that are really spiritual. And why would I stand somewhere alone and shake my stick?”

“Oh. Like a tambourine or something?”

“That’s it!” Bunny Umber nodded. “But it’s bells on a stick. And I don’t think a tambourine is very spiritual. My bells are spiritual. Maybe they’re from India or China. Someplace spiritual. I found them at Reach Out. It’s a challenge to shoplift bells. You have to walk out real slow.”