They're standing there in the middle of a dirt parking lot in Makiki. They're screaming at each other, the woman who called me about her haunted house and her two grown-up adult children. They're screaming at each other. Siblings, male and female. She's screaming at her brother for making things worse; he knows the house is haunted, and he provokes the ghosts to come out and do more. The spirits comply and harass the sister.
The mother is embarrassed and is doing her best to be a mediator, but it's not working. I walk away, and she follows after me. She puts a check for $40 in my hands, and I give it back to her.
"Call me when you've got it all figured out," I tell her while she apologizes at the same time.
"Oh, okay," she replies. "When should that be?"
Her two adult kids are still going at it, pointing a finger, and slapping a thumb out of the way. "When you can finally agree on what's going on."
I'm trying to get to my car, and she's in front of me now, walking backward and trying not to fall over her own feet while talking at the same time. "I really do think my daughter is possessed, you know? It's just my son; he can't stop making fun of her."
"Everybody's possessed nowadays," I don't break my pace as I walk the block back to where I parked. "It's a thing, soon as something changes in a person's daily habits, everyone thinks there's a possession."
"Maybe I should have had my daughter meet you without my son around? Do you think that might have been better?" Her eyes are pleading with me, she's desperate. We're almost half a block away, and I can still hear them arguing.
"Maybe." She's walking alongside me now, I can see my little beat up car huddled between the Toyotas and Chevys up the street.
"I don't know how much longer I can put up with this, you know? It's interfering with my job and a relationship I've been working on. I need a life myself, you know?" She's getting agitated and emotional, and she's going to start crying any second. We're standing at my car, and I have the passenger's side door open. I place my wooden bowl on the seat. It has the bag of salt in it that I use for my blessings. I grab a handful. We're just far enough away that I can't hear her son and daughter argue. Perfect timing, she's crying. She's not just regular crying, she's ugly crying. I take my handful of salt and stuff it in her mouth. I hold one hand behind her head and the other over her mouth. I recite the Hawaiian prayer for expelling an unwanted spirit from her body. Slowly, her form collapses to the sidewalk, I make sure I hold on to her, so she doesn't hit her head. A few people walking their dogs pass by us. I look up and smile, "Epilepsy, I got it, everything's fine."
They smile back and continue walking. In a few short seconds, a dark shadowy figure emerges from the woman's body and stands above it momentarily until it dissipates with an errant wind that happens by. This woman Janet Freitas was the one who was possessed. The woman's two children called me a month ago and said their mother began to act strangely after a man she'd seen had passed away. Not long after, they would see her in the house dressed in that man's clothing, where she adapted his walk, talk, and mannerisms. She even began to wear his cologne, but what was most disconcerting is that she began to talk exactly like him, in his voice. They'd called other people to perform a blessing on their mother before, but each time, the thing that possessed her got wise to the ruse and would leave her body. They let me in on the plan. They would create a distraction by arguing with one another while I made her believe that I was disappointed with the whole thing by leaving. Sometimes, you have to literally think on your feet.
.......................
I sat two blocks away at a traffic light. I was headed to the ocean to cleanse, my phone rang, and the screen identified itself as 'Unknown.' I knew who it was, so I answered.
"Aloha,"
"I need your help," the voice stated on the other side of the line. "It's Boy."
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