Reddit Stories 2019

The Scam

The scam was simple. When death was sudden - surprising, people had questions. Ryan offered them answers for a small fee. Even the most sceptical were willing to accept his comforting words when there was nothing else.

Ryan embraced the art of it too. He would always start with a very serious talk of expectations. He would warn them that there was no flash to a seance and even connecting with the dead was rare. But when the day came, he would wear the cloak, roll his eyes back, and let the fog machine go wild. A simple understanding of airways and a nice fan could add the flair he denied existed. Even those who saw through the fakery were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt if he offered pretty words.

It was supposed to be a simple scam.

It was not.

The woman's name was Agnes - a true mark of her age. She looked... unwell. She moved with a limp and spoke with difficulty. Her skin was unnaturally pale and her skin was folded beyond recognition. Ryan imagined that she had a cane in life but it seemed such objects did not survive death. Fortunately clothing did. Ghost logic.

Most concerning were the holes in her chest. Seven. A spectral ooze leaked from them, which Ryan dubbed as ghost blood. She smiled, her eyes focused on him as she made her way down the hall. She didn't blink and her feet sunk just barely into the floor. Both aspects gave Ryan chills.

"Hello, dearie," she said.

Ryan took a deep breath. He glanced to the man by the table, Jacques, to see if he saw the same sight. Judging from his blank gaze, he did not.

"Uh," Ryan uhed, "hello. Are you, um, are you Agnes?"

Jacques eyes shot up. He shifted in his seat, excited at the prospect of talking to his grandmother once again. "Is it her?"

"Why yes, dear," Agnes said to Ryan. She glanced at Jacques and a frown took her face. "Are you the ghost detective?"

"Ghost detective?" Ryan asked. He had to bite back the laughter. Jacques shot him a confused stare, which Ryan ignored. In all his years, he never met a ghost. He was convinced they didn't exist. But it was hard to argue with the hole-ridden woman standing partially in the table between him and Jacques.

"Is it her?" Jacques repeated, agitated.

"Yes," Ryan said.

Agnes smiled. "Jacques told me all about you."

"Ask her where it is," Jacques demanded. He looked around the room, eyes darting straight over Agnes. "Go on. Ask."

"He said that you would find me, dear. After it all happened. He said that you would find me." Outside a hummingbird buzzed by the feeder in the window. Agnes eyes focused on it for a moment, sparking with something that Ryan would, hesitantly, call life. Then she returned her unblinking gaze back to him, expression as blank as when she first shuffled down the hall. "Hello, dearie."

Ryan felt a pang in his heart. The kind of guilty feeling he was encouraged to feel all too often at school. "What happened?"

"No!" Jacques yelled, pounding his fist on the table.

Both Ryan and Agnes turned to him in surprise and worry. Agnes tutted. "He was always a violent child."

"Ask her where it is," Jacques said through gritted teeth. His eyes were as wild as the day he first walked into Ryan's motel room he pretended was an office. Most of his clients arrived in tears. Still, his money was as good as anyone else's.

"He wants to know where it is," Ryan said. "The lockbox."

"I'm old, dear, not deaf. Do you want tea?" Agnes asked as she shuffled toward the kitchen. Out of absent minded impulse, he followed her, pausing only to answer Jacques confused gaze.

"She's going this way."

Shrugging, Jacques followed.

"He was like this even when he was a child," Agnes explained as she prepared the tea. Without, of course, actually preparing anything. She reached for the kettle and cups, but did not move them. Still, this satisfied her. "His mind gets fixated on something and he can't let it go. The lockbox was his father's."

"What happened?" Ryan asked again.

"Who fucking cares," Jacques said.

"Language!" Agnes chastised. She turned to Ryan with a sweet smile and tilted her head slightly. "Hello, dearie. How can I help you?"

"You were telling me about the lockbox," Ryan said with a sidelong glance to Jacques. Ryan was not the sort to judge. It didn't serve his business well. But the tattoos, particularly the kind and location of them, and Jacques aggression made him nervous.

"Oh, yes. Sorry, dear," Agnes said, wrapping her hands around nothing. "My memory isn't what it used to be. The lockbox belonged to his father. I don't know what was in it but Jacques was asking me about it a few days ago. I couldn't tell him, of course."

"Why not?"

"Why not what?" Jacques asked.

Agnes turned her unblinking eyes to Jacques and dropped to a whisper. She flashed Ryan a grin. The kind of grin his old boss gave him when she figured out how to cut costs and before she gave him a bankers box. "I buried it with the bastard."

Ryan bit his tongue to contain his reaction. "And you don't know what's in it?"

"Why does that matter?" Jacques said, drowning Agnes out. "Did she tell you where it is?"

Ryan cast a glance to Agnes, piecing together an answer. Her holes dripping ghost blood gave him the answer he needed, but he had to know. "What happened?"

"That doesn't fucking matter!"

"Jacques was always such an angry child," Agnes said sadly. She looked at the invisible cup in her empty hands for a moment before turning back to Ryan with a blank stare. "Hello, dearie."

"Where the hell is my goddamn box?"

"She buried it," Ryan said.

"Where?"

"It's with his father," Agnes said.

"Hangman's road. There's a farm. Old, dead tree." Ryan looked past Jacques. "Can I ask, what's in it?"

"None of your business," Jacques said, shoving past him. He shoved a wad of cash in Ryan's hands.

"I don't know," Agnes said sadly. "But it's with his father at the old Hargove Cemetery."

"Thank you," Ryan said, already shuffling to the door.

"Whatever," Jacques said.

Agnes waved goodbye. "It was nice to see you, dear."

Ryan made a quick count of the money. It was the exact amount they agreed, not a cent more. Usually his clients were kind enough to leave a tip. And maybe, for the briefest moment, Ryan felt bad about what he did. But while he worked though six feet of dirt and made plans to skip town, he remembered that this job required much more work than usual.

Usually the scam was simple.

But a little hard work always paid off.