Sahm
Fair dealings in certain state offices depend entirely on who you know or if the person you’re dealing with in that state office likes you or not. So, you can only imagine how upset I was when a paranormal investigative team from Shikoku, Japan filed for the same permit that I did and got an approval faster than you can say, ‘Kalanimoku Building’There I was at 11:03 in the morning yelling at the poor state worker who herself was worn down
and brow beaten. Can the permit office be that much of a personal hell that one would think that this was their lot in life with no hope for anything better? It was about money of course and kick backs to sweeten the application for the permit, and who was I after all? Certainly, not a corrupted official but there for the grace of Robert Plant go I, pissed off and mad at the world. As luck would have it, in the evening while the paranormal investigation was in full swing at an undisclosed location on Merchant street, I was at home enjoying movie night with my family. My phone kept ringing but I didn’t recognize the number so I ignored it. When it rang a second time, it showed that the unusual number on the screen was coming from Shikoku in Japan but I let it go to voice mail. The number kept calling again and again until my wife finally hissed at me to answer the phone. On the next round when it rang yet again, I pressed the green phone icon on my screen.
“Hello?” I exhaled with impatience because I already knew what was coming.
“Please come to 856 Merchant street! We need help! We are waiting outside! Please help! Come right away!” The male voice had a Japanese accent and it repeated itself again a second time. “Please come to 856 Merchant street! We need help! Please come right away!”
“Come to do what?” It didn’t sound like I was being asked nicely to help, rather, it sounded like a command to a lower level soldier.
“Help!” The voice shrieked. “856 Merchant street! Please come now! It’s very bad! We need help!”
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on?! ” I yelled back into the phone. You gotta love the irony, the very people who got their permit approved over mine now needed my help. Son of a bitch if the phone didn’t go dead right then! All I did was put the phone down and popped in another movie. My wife gave me this look of disbelief like I’d murdered the Pope or something.
“What?” I asked her.
“I heard that whole conversation, we have to go help them! Whoever that was on the phone was really scared!” This was her reply and she was one hundred percent right if the 856 Merchant address was correct, except it wasn’t.
“That address is a parking lot behind the Hawaii National Bank and ‘O Tooles, so whoever that was is full of shit and trying to set us up, it’s that investigative team from Japan trying to have fun at our expense,” I reassured her by suggesting that she look up the location on Google maps. Within less than a minute she showed me the map on her phone and pointed to the building that is the Merchant street police station. “Maybe they were over here at this building and something happened, didn’t someone tell you that this building is haunted?”
“I’m not helping them,” I went back to watching my next movie but I could already see from my periphery that my wife was staring at me. In less than five minutes we were dressed and on our way to the parking lot address at Merchant and Nu’uanu.
….………
The hour was late so naturally, we found parking on Merchant street just across from the Pioneer Plaza. Walking toward the old police station, we weren’t able to tell if there was anything unusual going on and so we continued past the building until we were standing across the street from the parking lot behind ‘O Tooles. Sitting on the corner sidewalk of Marin street was what looked like the Japanese team. They had their heads down and some were massaging their own necks and shoulders. The only non-Japanese national was a local Portuguese guy who was a bit tall and lanky. When he looked up and saw us, he dashed across the street and greeted us with a sigh of relief. I immediately recognized him as the supervisor at the state office where my application for the same permit for this
the investigation was denied.
“I’m so glad you here! I’m Daryl Sahm! These guys really need help, they got in over their heads but I’ll introduce you to the team and let them tell you!” He walked away but stopped in his tracks when he realized that we hadn’t moved from our spot. He came back and expressed a look of concern, “Is something wrong? Everything okay?”
“Aren’t you the guy at the state office that denied my permit when I wanted to do this same investigation tonight? You are, right?” I was up close and never let my eyes once leave his.
“Oh yeaaaaah.….it was nothing personal, just red tape and fogginess you know?” He offered his hand and I didn’t shake it.
“So, why are you here with them?” I asked as I pointed across the street.
“Well, they’re Japanese nationals so since I work at a state office I took it upon myself to be their personal escort!” His arrogant smile is what put me over my limit, I couldn’t take it.
“I just figured out why that poor lady in your office looks like death warmed over,” I smiled back at him. “It because you’re an ass kissing piece of shit to your bosses while at the same time, you treat your employees like they’re mud under your shoe!”
“Excuse me?” He stood there not knowing what to say.
“Fuck you and fuck your face!” I was nose to nose with him now, daring him to say or do something, anything.
At that point, my wife and the head of the Japanese team came between us. The Japanese national had an eraser head hairstyle and turned to Daryl Sahm and spoke perfect English, “Mister Sahm please go away somewhere, you talk too much and you make things worse! Please go away over there!” He then turned to my wife and I and apologized. His name was Saito and he explained that they had actually been investigating the Cannon Academy building when the batteries on all of their equipment went dead. Even their cell phones and back up batteries were completely drained of their charge. They sent Daryl to Long's to buy up as many disposal cameras as he could afford and to bring them back, and that’s how they did their investigation, using only disposable cameras. Filming and recording audio was a complete bust. They’d only managed to snap off a few shots on their makeshift cameras when all of a sudden all hell broke loose. Some unseen force collectively lifted all of them off of their feet and threw them back to the ground. It happened a second and third time before the team could get their thoughts together and try to avoid another assault. So, they ran for their lives because their lives literally depended on how quickly they could exit the building. But that wasn’t the end of it, Daryl Sahm turned back on the spur of the moment, and challenged whatever haunted the building to try it again.
A sharp stinging sound pierced the air so suddenly that it made the entire team jump with surprise. Daryl had been slapped very hard across the face by something he couldn’t see and it knocked him to the ground. After that, they made a break for it and ended up at the parking lot behind ‘O Tooles. Against the protests of Daryl Sahm, they called me right away.
“So, what am I supposed to do?” At this point I’m irritated because it turns out that I was wrong, this team from Japan was not to blame because they had no idea that I’d turned in an earlier permit. They only knew what Daryl Sahm had manipulated them to know. But now they saw him for the blithering ass that he was.
“We ask for you because we want to show you something but only to you okay? You and your wife come to walk with me please?” He asked politely but there was an urgency behind his eyes. We walked the length of Nu’uanu and as we headed up mauka Saito told us that since it was taking a while before we finally arrived, he had one of his other crew members take the cameras back to where they had been purchased in order to have the pictures printed. Saito reached into the pocket of his baggy shorts and removed the red and white envelope with newly printed photographs in it. “This is why I call you because only you can see this.”
The envelope was filled with a collection of pictures that were all taken by the team with their own disposables. It was a seven man team and each man had a disposable camera that took twenty-seven pictures altogether. All one hundred and eighty-seven photographs combined captured the ghost of a young Asian woman who was holding up a piece of paper to the camera with something written on it.
“Lopaka....Daryl Sahm, not a friend...careful...”
….………
We parted company with Saito and headed back to our car and I explained to my wife that at one time I had performed a blessing at the Cannon Academy and had gotten to know the teachers really well. A short time later, one of the younger Asian female teachers passed away suddenly. The staff would later tell me that her ghost would appear quite often, almost as if she were in search of something.
“Those pictures make a lot of sense,” Saito said.
How the young Asian teacher came into the acquaintance of Daryl Sahm, I would never know. However, I had something saved up for him for later on. Something unforgettable and very permanent.
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