Freak tails

My name is Frank Curry, I am a freak hunter for lack of a better term, it’s the family trade and has been for more than six generations. What do I mean by freak?
Well let’s put it like this, I get called anytime something can not get explained away by the everyday cops and believe me that is more than you might think.
Family legend has it, the first case that was taken by a Curry man was to prove to the local people that there was no monster living in a near by swamp. The only problem was that no matter how hard he argued his case with the said swamp monster he could not convince the swamp monster that he did not exist. As it turned out he (the Swamp monster) was a very kind hearted thing that wound up being the town sweetheart.
Not all the cases in the history of our little company have ended on such a high note; there have been a few nasty ones here and there. Then again we have had some real interesting ones, like this one…..


“The case of the haunted house wife.”

It was late July 1996 when I got the call.
The phone call came from the very distraught husband of Mrs. Packs. He told me that his beloved wife of some twenty years had started doing very odd things for the past three weeks and he was concerned with her well-being. When I ask him what sort of odd things; he simply begged me to come and meet with them. And so I did.
The flight was uneventful, with the exception of the overweight fellow sitting next to me that insisted on sleeping on me, nothing happened. The small town the Packs called home was an unassuming little place (sort of like the place on those Christmas cards) the population was around a thousand people even though you would never have known by looking at it.
I rented a car and drove to their house, the sun was out, a soft breeze was blowing through the trees overhead which were filled with happy little song birds singing and small children playing atop of well kept lawns. (I was really starting to wonder if I had somehow found myself in a Norman Rockwell painting). The little red brick house they called home was unassuming, tucked safely behind its foot and a half tall white picket fence with a lawn jockey standing sentry. (except the aforementioned likeness of some Christmas card setting that is). It looked just like every other house for the last ten miles.
As I crossed the surgically kept lawn I noticed that the windows were all black, and had no reflections. I knocked on the front door and came face to… well I can’t say face to face with Mr. Parks I mean the poor bastard must have been four feet tall if he was an inch. It was more like chest to face if anything.
“What’s the story on the windows?” I asked. Now that I was inside I could see that the windows were not only open but the curtains had all been pulled as well.
“It’s been this way for days. Almost like the sun and wind are too scared to come into our home any more.” Mr. Pack explained.
“And the heat?” I ask attempting to pull my shirt and jacket away from my now soaked chest as nonchalantly as I could. It didn’t work… I felt like a banana trying to peel itself. “That too. Feel free to take your jacket off if you wish.” He said. We walked around the house and he told me their two children, Mark a fifteen year old boy and Kim his older sister were staying with family. As we walked down the hallway I could feel the change in the air, it was getting hotter than the rest of the house but somehow the closer I got to the door at the end of the hall the colder I got. Suddenly I knew how a microwave dinner felt, burnt on the outside and still frozen at the center.
“Now I know that you deal with this sort of thing all the time, but I feel that I should warn you ahead of time. She gets pretty nasty from time to time, more so when I bring someone in to help her.” He turned towards the door but quickly turned to face me again. “Not that you were the last choice or anything.” He added quickly as thought he thought I might have been offended or something.
“Mr. Pack. Most of the time… I am the last person to get called.” In fact, I’m always the last person to get called. It doesn’t do much for the self esteem I tell you.
Standing in front of the bedroom door he took a deep breath and opened it.
I had never experienced anything like it in my life, I felt like I was standing in the middle of a blast furnace and yet… I could see my own breath. The wallpaper had ducks swimming on a lake at one spot and a little farther there was the hunter and his faithful dog hidden away behind tall grass. I watched as the hunter and his dog began to close in on the ducks, and proceeded to shoot at the ducks as they flew away. This was being repeated a thousand times all over the wall. “They do that all day and all night, the ducks will be back in an hour and it will start all over again.” Mr. Pack said. “Other than the stray shots every now and again you just get use to it.” In the far end of the room sitting in an old wood rocking chair in front of a window facing in, sat what I could only guess was Mrs. Pack, darkness radiating out from her like some demented black fountain. I remember thinking to myself… this must be what it’s like to stare into a black-hole. I knew that less than fifteen feet away from me the rest of the world was enjoying the bright beautiful sun light, and yet here and now I found myself engulfed in darkness. She sat there smiling at me in the center of all the darkness. It wasn’t so much that she was smiling at me that made me uncomfortable it was more the way she was dressed. The first thing I saw was the massive ruby ring on her left hand ,which was holding a long silver cigarette holder with a glowing green cigarette in the end. On her wrist she wore a jewel incrusted gold cuff. She wore a skin tight off the shoulder red velvet dress that came down to just below the knee. She wore black Patton leather stiletto hills, a string of pearls hung around her neck and a little red hat sat atop her slicked back jet black hair. By God I was standing in the presence of the worlds first and possible only… demon clapper? A long intense moment of silence fell while I attempted to decide exactly what I should do next, and then she spoke.
“Who is this? Not another on those bad old doctors again is he?” Never in all my life had I ever heard a voice that high come out of any living thing. “No dear.” His voice brought to mind the little husband off the old cartoons with the massive mean tempered wife. “This is Mr. Curry, he’s going to try and help us.” Mr. Pack spoke from behind me where he had slipped without me even noticing. “Ahhh come on snuck-em’s… do we really have to do this again? I’m getting board with this game; can’t you come up with another one?”
I turned around to look at Mr. Pack. “What is she talking about?” The expression on his face told me that she had done this to him before. “She likes to play mind games with people sometimes. I don’t understand most of what she says… and those who do usually don’t stick around long enough to explain it to me.”
I was beginning to understand that Mr. Park was not all that bright. “So she’s not going to attack me or anything is she?”
“Honey? Do you think I could attack anything in this outfit? I can hardly move.” Her high pitch voice was like finger nails on a chalkboard. Looking at her again, I thought the matter over and decided that she probably had a very good point and continued the interview. “Mrs. Pack…”
“Call me Rose sugar.” I walked closer to her as slowly as I could. “All right Rose. What can you tell me about yourself?” I knew that these questions would get me nowhere, but I also knew that I had to start somewhere. “Well sweetie what do you want to know?”
“Well first off may I sit with you?” Her face glowed a little.
“He’s the first one you’ve brought to see me that has manners.” She said to Mr. Pack who was now hiding behind the bedroom door.
“I like a man with manners.” And she motioned for me to take a seat in the chair next to her. I searched my memory as fast as I could and decided that the chair had not been there before.
“I know what you’re thinking and your right it was over there in the corner, in the dark. You couldn’t have seen it if you had wanted to baby. Now come on over and have a seat.”
Weather she had read my mind… or this was just another one of her games I could not tell, but ether way I was committed to sitting there now. “Now…what is it that you want to know baby?” I was now so close to her that she could reach out and touch me… if she had wanted to. “Rose, where is Mrs. Pack? I need to know that she is all right.”
She rolled her eyes, and I mean she rolled her eyes; they spun in her head like tops.
“Why do you want her? She is soooo boring. I’m more fun… don’t you think?”
“Well Mr. Pack over there doesn’t think so. He has asked me to come and find out what has happened to his wife.” She leaned towards me and whispered to me. “He’s even more boring than she is. They were made for each other… if you ask me.” I was starting to think her words had more truth in it than any one in the room would care to admit.
“That may very well be true… but for the time being he would like to have her back. Is there something that we can do to convince you to let him have her back?”
Again she rolled the eyes, this time accompanied by a deep sigh. “Under two conditions.”
Mr. Pack peeked out from behind the door excitedly. “What?” He asked before once again disappearing behind the safety of the bedroom door.
She smiled at me then at him. “You…” She said pointing at Mr. Pack. “Got to take this girl out dancing. And from now on… you have to pay more attention to this woman. That is why she found me after all.”
I had to interrupt her there. “I’m sorry. Did you say she found you?”
She wrinkled her noise at me. “Did you see this place when you came in? Why in the world… would I want to be here? I was having fun when she called on me. I’m ready to get back to the party. You living are more dead than we are!” I couldn’t help but to laugh with her. For the most part she was right. “I could take you with me… a sweet little thing like you would have a blast.” I couldn’t believe what she had asked me that. “No thank you. I think I’ll stick around here for a little longer, if… that’s all right with you.”
“Suite yourself… sooner or latter you will end up at the party anyway, when you do look me up.”
“I sure will. Until then… go have some fun, and let these poor “BORING” people alone.”
“I will.” She looked over at Mr. Pack. “I’ll be back in three weeks to check on you two… if I find out that you didn’t do what I told you to do…” A moment of silence passed.
“Let’s just say… you have not seen my bad side… ok?” He shook his head so hard and fast I thought it would come completely off his shoulders. “You got it, Take her out dancing… pay more attention to her. No Problem.”
“If I come back you will not get rid of me honey. And when you die… I will make sure that you spend eternity tied up hung upside down in a closet somewhere, you got that!”
Before Mr. Pack could answer, the darkness was gone. The wall paper was still and light and wind was coming through the open window behind Mrs. Pack. Who was now wearing a very drab house coat, curlers in her hair, fuzzy house shoes on her feet, and a massive ruby on her hand. Mrs. Pack almost fell out of the chair, but Mr. Pack was there at her side to catch her. I didn’t think the poor bastard could move that fast. “Are you back?!” He asked her with a worried look on his face. “I never really left… I’ve been here the whole time. I could hear and see everything that happened, I just couldn’t do anything about it.” Her tinny little voice cracked.
“Did you mean what you said? You will take me dancing and you will pay more attention to me now?”
I stood up and started for the door. “I don’t think he has much choice in the matter. You have some pretty convincing friends.” She looked down at her hand and the ring.
“She wanted you to have this.” She slid the ring off her finger and handed it to me.
“She said for you to keep it, so you wouldn’t forget your promise to look her up when you got there.”
I took the ring and Mr. Pack walked me to the front door. “Thank you so very much. I can’t tell you what a relief it is that it’s all over with.”
“Well. Just remember that you made promises to both of them and I don’t think you want to break your promise to Rose, or your wife.” He shook my hand and paid me my fee.
“Good luck to you both.” And I was off to catch my flight home.

“Then there are so many other cases that have been interesting.”

“The man in mauve”
1988 Philadelphia PA.

A young couple had just bought what they thought would be their golden nest egg, a set of apartment buildings on Pine Street not a stones throw from Broad Street and the Art college. There simply was no way that this could lose. The problems started when they hired a contractor to remodel the place. They were taking the three buildings and converting them into one, but they soon found out that not all of the former tenants had left the place.
Once the building on the end was closed off from the ally there were reports of tools being moved in the night, nothing was ever taken, just moved. At first it was thought to be homeless people but when the contractor had one of his men stay the night things got real interesting.
He was a young Italian man by the name of Razeeo (Raz) that got ask to spend the night, when the crew arrived the next morning this is the story he told.
“I ah set up a cot up there in the first apartment and settled in for the night right? Everything was quiet, at least in side anyways. Then at 8:45 I hears something in the front room. So’s I go check it out. When I get to the door I see this guy standing there in this outfit.” Raz stopped for a moment as if considering his words. “It was Mauve; double breasted, butterfly collar, jacket open, no shirt, and matching paints.” Pausing once again to catch his breath. “When I sez to him, ‘Yo… you ain’t suposta be in here… this is a privet building.’… But he don’t pay me no mind. So I walks over closer to him right and sez to him… ’Yo, you deaf or what, you got to get the hell out a here’. He’z still playing like he don’t hear me so I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder… but my hand goes right through him and he disappears right in front o me.” Raz looked around at the other men around him.“So now I thinks, I got to be dreaming or something so I goes back to my cot. But, before I gets back I hear something behind me. I turn around and what do I see the same guy again, but it looks like he’s talking to somebody this time. I walk over to him and he starts toward me and walk right through me like I’m not there. He walks halfways to my cot, before he stops and turns around, looks at me and screams like a little girl. The next thing I knows he’s leaning up against the wall acting like he’s dieing or something. I’m just standing there and all of a sudden I gets knocked to the floor and I seez things getting knocked over all the way to the door. After a while I pick myself up and go looking for this guy… you know the one with the suite, but he’s gone. I go lay down and a hour latter the whole thing starts over again. I had to sleep in the hallway.”

Naturally the poor guy is fired for being drunk on the job but things still get found out of place. Then when the new tents broke their lease and moved out… the owners started to worry, but it took complaints from the people upstairs before they did anything about it.
That’s when they called me.
I interviewed the people upstairs first. Then I set up in the apartment in question for the night, hopping to see this for myself… and sure enough right at 8:45 the show started. I sat and watched the first act in awe, but did nothing until the first repeat of the night.
“Can you hear me?” I asked.
He jumped a little and looked at me like I had come from out of nowhere.
“Ah, I knew I shouldn’t have had that third martini, now I’m seeing things.”
He said them he turned and disappeared before my eyes. A few minutes latter the second act kicked in and I could do nothing to stop it. After the third attempt I decided to take a more hands on approach. As soon as he showed up I grabbed him.
This turned out to be a very bad idea, the next thing I knew the once empty room was now filled with stuff. Off to my right there sat a bright orange love seat against the wall and above it hung a calendar which read February 1978. On the floor was green deep shag carpet and on every available surface there was little statues of men in varies, shall we say compromising positions. It suddenly accrued to me why this man was wearing what he was. Before, I could think anything more the door behind me opened and two men walked in. One was the man in Mauve, the other I could not see a face, it was blurry.
I could however hear what was being said.
“You little bitch! Who were you with last night?” The blurry figure squealed at the other. “No one. I stayed home all night… by myself. Where the hell were you?” The mauve man yelled back.
The two exchanged quite a few insults back and forth before the Mauve man started for the back.
He walked a few feet and turned around.
“You know I’m leaving you. Tomorrow… Mat and I leave for California.” And he turned to exit the room, but the blurry man yelled something and pulled a gun from his jacket shooting the Mauve man in the back, once again falling to his death right there in the short little hallway.
A few moments passed and the whole thing started over.
“Ah, I knew I….”
I interrupted him. “You should not have had that third Martini, I know… now shut up and listen. In a very few seconds you will walk out of here. Where are you going?”
Visibly startled he said. “How did you know that?”
“I don’t have time to explain, who are you going to see?”
“Well No one, why should I?”
I tried to say something, but he turned away.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh. It’s Charles, my soon to be ex. I guess I have to go let him in. I’ll be right back.”
“No. wait he knows about you and Mat, what ever you do don’t say his name. If you do he is going to kill you.”
“Who are you anyway?” He asked.
“Look… bring him up here and tell him you are not feeling well and you want to be alone… when he says your not alone let him look for himself and then ask him to leave, all right?”
He did as I had said and I stood there and watched as it played out before me one more time not knowing what was coming next.
Charles did not like it but he left with little more than a few nasty words. Then the Mauve man returned.
“Now, why did I just lie to him?”
“What day is it?”
He looked at me for a moment. “February 9th 1978, why?”
“Well… for me it’s February 9th 1998, I don’t know how… but I seam to have traveled back in time and by the looks of it saved your life. Tomorrow… you leave with Mat, past that I have no idea what is to happen to you, but for tonight… I think you’re safe. Good luck to you.”
As soon as I spoke the words, I found myself alone once more in the little apartment. I waited for a while to see if anything else was going to happen, but nothing did so I went to sleep for the night. The next morning, I woke up gathered my things and left the building. When I stepped out onto the side walk I heard a voice.
“Excuse me.” I pointed to myself.
“Yes you. Oh my God …it is you. After all this time, I thought I was crazy… but here you are.”
“I’m sorry… do I know you?” I ask.
He smiled at me. “Well, you did for one night at least.”
“I’m sorry, but I think you have me confused with someone else.” I said and turned to walk away, but he stopped me and handed me a picture. It was the man in Mauve.
“Twenty years ago today I moved out of this building and twenty years ago last night, I saw you for the first time and you saved my life.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“You remember Charles the one I sent home that night?”
Things were starting to come together for me.
“That was you?”
“Yes. Anyway, a week after I left he was arrested for killing someone right up the street. If I had told him about Mat and me… he would have killed me that night. But somehow, you came to me, and you saved me. I’ve been waiting for twenty years to be right here, right now, just to see if you were real. “
“Well… here I am.”
He smiled at me for a moment. “I owe you, you know that. And I have tried to think of an appropriate thank you gift and this is what I came up with.”
He handed me an envelope. “Thank you so much!” and he turned and walked away down Pine Street.
I watched as he walked away before I opened the envelope, inside I found $73,000 dollars and a note.


I do not know your name, but you saved my life. When I found out what Charles had done and realized I had almost been his victim. I started saving money. I put ten dollars a day back and waited for today, I know it isn’t much but it’s all I could afford.
Thank you for everything and I wish you well in life.

I went back to my clients and told them that they should not have anymore trouble and went home.
I had thought about contacting the poor construction worker, but then what would I have told him? I closed the case and felt better about my job and myself. I had saved a life and that was defiantly something.

I hope you enjoyed your time here with me today. Come back anytime you want I’ve got more stories like these. And I enjoy the company to boot, so until next time take care and good bye.