The Case of Kilts: A Colm Ramirez Mystery

Content Warning

epidemic, mental illness, violence

  

by James Ipse

Most people think Fresno is about as fashionable as a pig in a hand-me-down flannel nightgown.

Actually, Fresno has contributed a surprising amount to the fashion scene.  In fact, one of the leading designers of men’s underwear is a local.  Most Fresnans point to that as a way of denying the truth about Fresno fashion, which is that we’re about as fashionable as a pig in a hand-me-down flannel nightgown.

Personally, I never paid attention to the local community of designers, models, and photographers panhandling on the internet.  That was their world.  Mine is the supernatural.

My name is Colm Ramirez, and it’s my job to deal with it when supernatural things cross over into our world.  And when it did, I found myself thrust into the fashion world.

November.  The midday gloom cast a shadowless light over the alley as I rang the service-entrance bell of a seedy bar in a rough part of downtown, not far from where I live.  I don’t go to bars as a general rule – I’m only 19 – but this was work.

The door opened a crack and an enormous gangbanger with a Mohawk and a leather jacket peered out at me. 

“I’m Colm Ramirez.  I’m the new model.”  Undercover.  Gotta love it.  My client insisted.  My most frequent client.  I’d already exorcised poltergeists from her last two homes and tracked down a so-called “psychic” who had made off with a couple thousand dollars in cash he’d insisted he needed to “borrow” to cast a spell for her.

The gangbanger flashed a broad smile.  He had gorgeous teeth.  “Oh, hey, come on in.  I’m Julio.”  He held out his hand for me to shake as he opened the door to admit me.

The room I’d been let into was a small storeroom, now taken over with five portable makeup stations – like T.V. trays with mirrors surrounded by lights trying to get cozy with the cases of napkins and straws – and a half dozen wheeled garment racks.  The door to the lounge stood open, propped with a crushed Styrofoam cup, showing a half-installed runway cutting across the blue carpeting beyond.

So far nothing seemed to have a supernatural vibe to it.

My client, Lisa, poked her head in from the lounge.  She’s about 40, slightly round, and tends to dress in flowers and lace.  That day she sported a frilly blouse with daffodils on it over a utilitarian dress skirt.  She grew up in Clovis, our suburb to the East, and has the standard Clovis hairstyle of bangs with a bump on the top of her head.  I’ve never quite understood that hairstyle.  For a while there was a company in Clovis selling a product on television to help women create the look.  Only available by calling 1-800-somethingorantoher.  See if you can explain it.  I can’t.

“Ah, Colm, you’re here, good,” Lisa gushed.  “Rahim, Colm’s here!”

Rahim was a heavy Middle Eastern man with salt-and-pepper hair, moustache, and a personal style that seemed to have jumped the tracks somewhere between golf pro and circus clown.  He swaggered into the storeroom from the lounge and flanked Julio, as both of them studied me up and down.

“Isn’t he a bit thin for your stuff, Lisa?” Rahim asked.

“Hey, with every other male model in Fresno sick, I do what I can,” Lisa said.

That’s why I was here.  The other models kept coming down with a mysterious illness, and Lisa didn’t think it was natural.

“Tell you what,” Julio said, “I’ll let you have Ian if I can have Colm for the underwear show.”  It was only then that I realized that Julio was our famous underwear designer.  He doesn’t look the part.

“Works for me,” Lisa said.  “That good for you, Colm?”

Great.  Just what I needed.  Walking a runway in November in nothing but underwear.  “Sure,” I said, “whatever you need.”

Julio and Rahim nodded to each other, and then Julio said, “Then let’s get you measured.”

•   •   •

The models arrived one by one as Lisa, Julio, and Rahim tried desperately to teach me how to walk on a runway.  Turns out, there’s more to it than just walking.  I guess I should’ve realized that.  I get snippy with people who think my job is easy – why I should I think modeling is easy?

“Spot your turn!” Lisa kept screaming at me.

I still don’t know what that means.

A slightly chunky guy about my age came in through the storeroom, clinging to the doorjamb for support as he struggled for air.  I didn’t care how white he was normally – he clearly had no color in his face.

I jumped off the runway and jogged up to him.  “Shit, you O.K., bro?”

He nodded, then shook his head.

“Ian?” Lisa said, walking up to him.

“I’m all right,” the guy gasped.  “Just… food poisoning.”

Lisa shot me the look that told me that this was what the other models had.  I closed my eyes and centered myself so I could turn on my supernatural senses.

Ian collapsed into my arms before I could do anything else.

•   •   •

Turns out one of the models – a tall and improbably thin redhead named Kris – is an E.M.T. in her real life, and she took over monitoring Ian almost as soon as he fell, improvising a bed for him on the catwalk.

I hovered nearby, acting like I was worried about my new best friend.  “Is he going to be all right?”

“He’ll be fine,” Kris said.  “He’s the eighth guy to come down with this.  We never did figure out what it is, but they’ve all got really low blood pressure, like they lost blood.  You taken any drugs recently, Ian?”

Ian shook his head.  “Claritin.”

“Allergies,” Kris explained to me, as if I didn’t know.

“What else causes low blood pressure?” I asked.

“Age, usually,” Kris said.  “Heat stroke.  Dehydration.  Not usually a problem in November.  Of course, you can self-induce it if you know how.  Lots of Munchausen cases do that, because it makes them faint and causes people to make a fuss.”

“But this is happening to several different guys.  It’s like they’re being attacked.  How would you do that?”

“I wouldn’t,” Kris said.  “It’s probably a virus.  So no kissing him.”

“Straight,” Ian gasped.

“In that case, go away and let him rest,” Kris said, flipping her hand at me.

Lisa sat in a booth in the far corner of the room.  I slid onto the bench opposite her.  “Is that what the rest of them were like?”

“Yes,” Lisa said.

“Any other symptoms?” I asked.

“Headaches.  They’ve all got headaches.  Is it supernatural?”

There was a residual tingle around Ian, but it was impossible to tell if it had something to do with the illness or if he’d used a tarot deck or something recently.  I shrugged.  “Too early to tell.  So who might want to sabotage the Fashion Series?”

Lisa scoffed.  “We’re not exactly a threat to Milan here.”

“Well, if it’s supernatural, it has to be someone with some sort of ability, so that narrows it down.”  I glanced over and noted that Rahim had taken over my spot grilling Kris on Ian’s well-being.  “Been pissing off any of the local ritual magicians?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What about Rahim and Julio?  It’s weird that it’s only hitting the guys.”

Lisa shrugged.  “Can’t speak for them.  Julio’s more hurt by it than I am.  I mean, I have some ladies’ stuff I can show, at least.”

“What about Rahim?” I asked.

“Women’s sleepwear,” Lisa said.

“You the only designers in the shows?”

“Yes.”  Lisa fiddled with a saltshaker on the table.  “The Thursday and Friday shows are the local boutiques showing stuff they sell, not really fashion shows.  We’re not in those.  They’re not showing lines, they’re selling dresses.”

“And what do the three of you get out of this?” I asked.

“Nothing really,” Lisa said to the sky.  “I show more as a courtesy to the organizer.  We get maybe five or six local buyers and a handful of fashionistas.  Honestly, we’re a bit of a joke in the industry.  If you want to be taken seriously, you need to get into Los Angeles or New York.  That’s what Julio does.  Around here most of our tickets get sold to the models’ families.”

There was no way my family would be buying any tickets.  The only thing worse than a gay son is a son who is a supernatural investigator.  And the only thing worse than that is a gay son doing supernatural investigations in his underwear.  Or, in this case, someone else’s underwear.

“So where else do you show?”

“I do kilts and plaids, Colm,” she said.  “And I’m not really going to make a splash in Scotland.  No, I’ve got a nice, little niche online.  The Scottish revival community knows me.  And, since I know you’re going to ask, Rahim is mostly a subcontractor for department store house lines.”

I hate cases where the guilty party doesn’t walk up and announce what they’re up to.  Believe it or not, that’s how most of my cases go.  Something about the ability to work the supernatural makes people feel invincible.  “Do you mind if I blow my cover to interview Julio and Rahim?”

“I’d rather if you kept it quiet,” Lisa said.  “Aren’t you supposed to be good at this undercover thing?”

“My formal P.I. training never went that far.”  By “formal P.I. training” I meant quitting an internship program almost immediately after starting it.

She glared at me.

“Fine.  I won’t tell them what I’m up to.  But if they decide I’m creepy, it’s your fault.”

•   •   •

“So, Colm, what do you do for a living?” Julio asked.

It was a simple question.  Direct.  Not out of line.  But I couldn’t answer without blowing my cover.

Ian’s mother had come to take him home, and the ladies were rehearsing the sleepwear show while I tried on Julio’s underwear in the back room.  This process involved me standing there, shivering, naked, as he fished around in a huge rollie bag for different cuts and colors for me to try on.  He handed me a silver pair of sport briefs.  “Oh, this and that,” I said, slipping them on.

“That’s a good cut,” Julio said, “but now that I see it on you, your skin isn’t as dark as I’d thought.”

“Half Irish,” I said.

“Let’s try the blue.”

I slipped off the underwear off and added it to the “reject” pile.  “I work one night a week in a coffee house.  My boss is a ritual magician.”

“Really?”  He seemed genuinely interested, even though he didn’t look up from the rollie.  “Never really got into that occult stuff myself.  Here, try this one.”

It was the same cut as the previous one, but blue with white trim.  I had to admit, it was the most comfortable pair of underwear I’d ever worn.  “Well, most people have friends who dabble,” I said.  “Or enemies.”  I really hoped I was being subtle.

He laughed.  “Yes, that’s a keeper.”  He started fishing out boxer briefs and comparing the colors to my skin.

Well, clearly that line of questioning was going nowhere.  “So tell me about your business,” I said.  “What’s it like working out of Fresno?”

“Oh, Fresno’s great,” he said, handing me a vibrant purple pair.  “I get to put the ‘Made in America’ label on all my stuff, but the overhead’s a lot lower than working in L.A.  Put that in the ‘keeper’ pile, too, if it fits.”

“What’s the business like?  I mean, is it as cutthroat as the T.V. says it is?”

He pulled out a handful of fly-front briefs — none of which seemed to be the standard white cotton — and began sorting.  “Well, I don’t get a lot of the personal drama,” he said.  “I think the whinier designers are scared of me.  But the buyers don’t buy clothes because they like you.  They buy clothes because they can sell them.  So I’ve always got to be on my toes.”

“So, no one’s poisoning male models to shut you down?”

He laughed again, his smile infecting his whole body.  “Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s just a flu bug,” he said, selecting the yellow pair for me.  “I recommend Purell.”

•   •   •

When it became clear that Rahim was going to be busy directing the ladies until well after my meal break, I cut out to go home.  Lisa had vanished a half hour before, a stack of papers under one arm and her laptop under the other.

I live in an old warehouse on H Street.  As hot as it is in the summer, it’s at least that cold in the winter.  But as I entered the little brick building, the cold felt positively arctic.

That’s never good.

I reached for the warding staff I keep by the light switch.  It wasn’t there.  I flipped the light on instead.

The big, open room in the back of my warehouse looked like a tornado had passed through it.  My weight bench lay on its back, free weights scattered across the concrete floor.  My crash pad sat in a corner, scrunched up as if hiding its face behind its hands.  The various weapons I keep displayed on the walls lay in rough piles on the floor.  My warding staff leaned against one of the support columns, upside down, as if it had sailed, spinning, across the room and come to rest only when it wedged against the electrical conduit.

I crouched into a defensive stance and crept across the floor toward my warding staff.  My whole body tingled reflexively as I crossed the threshold.  Whatever had done this was supernatural, and it was still here.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  But I don’t work magick.  And the various spells and stuff to protect a home are only so useful.  Besides, it’s rare for supernatural entities to come to my home.  Keeping a warding staff by each door is usually plenty to turn them around before they enter.  But those that do get past the warding staff tend to be nasty and tend to be grumpy at having had to deal with a warding staff.

I grabbed the staff, spinning it around upright.  It’s about six feet long and well-weighted, so it behaves a lot like a Japanese bo in a street fight, but also keeps away the various demons and monsters when used properly.  “Who’s there?” I called out, turning slowly.

The old offices in the front of the building serve as my apartment and official place of business.  A shimmering creature emerged from the darkness there.

Demons are strange.  They appear both completely tangible and real, and yet at the same time they’re not there.  Not see-through, like in the movies.  Simultaneously there and not.

This one stood taller than me (which isn’t unusual – I’m 5’2″) with a catlike face and birdlike feet.  It wore what I can only describe as a fleece skirt.  It inclined its head to taste the air in my direction, revealing a set of fangs that would have made Dracula jealous.

“All right,” I said.  “What do you want?”

It cocked its head and narrowed its eyes.

With demons it’s hard to know how intelligent they are.  Some are dangerously smart.  Some are just puppets of a higher intelligence.  A lot of them don’t speak English.  “If you’ve got something to say, say it.  Otherwise, move along.”

Its feet lifted off the floor and it sailed towards me, fangs-first.

I swept with the warding staff.  It roared like a lion and deflected toward the wall.  Its body morphed, forming a sinuous tail that flapped behind it like a ribbon in the wind, and then the tail became the whole body, like a tadpole.

I turned to face it again.  Demons are generally easy to defeat if you know what their weakness is.  Problem was, I had no idea what sort I was looking at.

It flanked to the left and came after my ear.  I ducked, waving the warding staff over my head.  This time it smacked the staff with its tail.  I struggled to hold on, but lost my balance.  I slammed down onto the concrete.  The demon came after my ear again.

Rolling, I got the warding staff between me and it.  It backed off slightly.

Silver.  In a number of pantheons silver is toxic to demons.  One of my swords has a custom silver blade.  I sprang to my feet and ran to the wall where it had been displayed.

The demon hit me from behind.  My head jerked forward and I felt its teeth sink into my eardrum.  Immediately, my head throbbed and I could literally feel the blood draining out of my body.

I spotted the jeweled hilt with the Celtic knot sticking out from under the shattered remains of my bamboo blowgun.

I hit myself on the head with the warding staff, and the creature let go.  I dove for the sword.  I came up with it still in its sheath.

The demon chuckled as it flitted around in front of me.  I held out the warding staff with my left hand, sword in my right.  The demon hovered in the air, flipping its tail and sizing me up.  Carefully, I let the sheath slide to the floor.

The demon drew back immediately.  Good.  Whether it was scared of the silver or scared of the sword didn’t matter.  At least I had it on the defensive.  I sidestepped away from the wall to give myself more range of motion, but the spilled free weights made the footing treacherous.

The demon charged again.  I warded up with the staff, and then swept across with the sword.

The demon’s head fell at my feet.  Its body vanished in a puff of lightness.  Its mouth snarled once more before it, too, faded from existence.

•   •   •

A quick phone call to my friend Will, the local expert on all things demonic, told me it was probably an asakku that had attacked me.  They’re Mesopotamian blood-sucking demons associated with diseases of the brain.  The standard way to defeat demons from those pantheons is, apparently, to trick them into giving away their powers in exchange for valuable gifts, and then double-crossing them and chopping off their heads.  That works fine if you happen to speak one of the ancient Sumerian dialects.  Brute force can be effective, too.

Asakku are part of a pantheon that nobody worships any more.  And that made chatting with Rahim a priority, because people who call up a dead religion generally do so from their own cultural heritage.

I found him alone in the bar, sitting on the floor with a bunch of 3×5 index cards, each with a model’s name on it, spread out in front of him.  He was placing Post-it notes containing color-coded symbols on each of them in turn.

“Hey,” I said, slipping in and sitting down on the runway.  “How’s it going?”

“I’d prefer if the lineup didn’t keep changing,” he said.

“Strange question for you.”  I studied his face.  I’m not the best lie-detector out there, but hopefully he’d give something away with his reaction.  “What do you know about asakku?”

He didn’t look up from his cards.  “I know you take a -8 penalty for ranged attacks against them.  Makes your magic longbow useless, and if you send a bunch of them after a level-2 party, they don’t let you be the Dungeon Master any more.”

O.K., I’ll admit, it was a week later before I got that one.  I never got into roleplaying games.  Both too much and too little like real life.

Rahim rearranged a bunch of his index cards and swapped around some of the Post-its.

“Huh?” I said at last.  “No, I mean, like, the demons from mythology.”

He looked up at me through his eyebrows.  “You mean real world demons?”

“Sure.”

He shrugged.  “Not a lot.  I was raised Muslim.  We frown on fooling around with demons.”  He pounced suddenly, rearranging six Post-its with a dramatic flourish.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to figure out the show order.  Each Post-it is a different outfit.  I’ve got to make sure each girl is wearing something that fits her, has time to change, and can actually get around the runway before she has to start taking it off.”

His explanation, I had to admit, made a lot more sense than my first thought that it had been some bizarre New Age ritual.  “Doesn’t just happen, huh?”

“Very little does,” he said.  “Except maybe entropy.  Everything else requires a human hand in it.”

•   •   •

I texted Lisa to tell her I had some information, and she invited me to come up to her house for dinner.  She lives in a little Spanish-style house east of the 41 freeway that had seen better days.  The house, not the freeway.  The freeway’s actually in great shape.  One of the few things in Fresno that still is.

When I got there, the front door was open despite the cold, the security door shut but obviously not locked.  Black smoke and a stream of obscenities came from the kitchen.  I sometimes think the only reason Lisa isn’t fatter than she is is because she’s such a lousy cook.  I knocked on the security door.  “It’s Colm!” I called out.

“Come in!” she screamed back from the kitchen.  I stepped into the blasting heat from her wall furnace and locked the security door behind myself.  Lisa’s decorating style was, shall we say, eclectic, as if a discount importer had decided to use her walls as a backup showroom.  She had masks from all over the world, furniture from at least five design movements, and paintings where the only common element was the floral theme.  The house itself set off my supernatural-tingly sensation again, which was annoying since I had just exorcised it six months earlier.  I looked around to see if I could spot a source.

A thick tile sat on her coffee table.  It had been used for magick so many times it seemed to glow.  As I approached it, I noticed the texture on it, which reminded me of chicken footprints.  Belatedly, I realized it was Cuneiform.  “Lisa, what have you been up to?” I asked.

“What?”  She emerged from the kitchen, wearing a carbon-stained apron.  “Oh, that!  Found that in a second-hand shop.  Thought you’d appreciate it.”

“Lisa, do you know what this is?”

“Cuneiform tablet replica,” she said, ducking back into the kitchen.

I ran my finger along its edge.  I could feel the age.  “I don’t think this is a replica, Lisa.  Do you know what it says?”

“No idea,” she called back.  “I just thought it was pretty.”

I snapped a picture of it with my phone and sent it to my friend Will.

I thought about it for a while.  Lisa had to be at least slightly supernatural-sensitive to have realized that all those problems she had called me about weren’t just everyday weirdness.  Anything putting out this much energy… well, she should have been able to sense there was something strange about it.

“So what have you learned?” she called from the kitchen.

“Your models are being attacked by something called an asakku,” I said.  “Demons that feed on human suffering.  From ancient Mesopotamia.”

“How do you know that?” she asked, poking her head back out.

“Saw it.  One attacked me.”

She went back into the kitchen.  “Wouldn’t the rest of the models have seen them, then?”

“No,” I said.  “You have to be supernatural-sensitive to even have a chance of seeing a demon, and even then, it takes training.  Have you been trying to read this Cuneiform?”

“Read it?  I don’t even know which way is up!”

“Lisa, I think this thing might be the focus,” I said.  “I’m going to break it.”

“No!”  She rushed in from the kitchen like a protective mamma bear and grabbed the tablet to her breasts.

My hackles went up.  “Why do you care?  It’s a cheap replica.  I’ll make you another one.”

She hugged it tighter and backed up a step.

“Shit, Lisa,” I said.  “Two exorcisms.  A dozen emergency calls in the middle of the night.  All this time, it was you, wasn’t it?”

“What?  No!” she protested.

But it was the only explanation that made sense.  Magick-sensitive Lisa, secretly able to summon demons and poltergeists.  And then getting to be the center of attention while the supernatural P.I. sorts it out.  “Seriously,” I said.  “All this time I’ve been bailing you out, and you’ve been conjuring it all.”

“Don’t be silly, Colm.”

“All this time!” I yelled.  “And it turns out you’re a classic case of Munchausen syndrome by conjuring!”

“Colm, how can you even think that?”

“Call off the fucking demons, Lisa.”

She shook her head.

I took a step towards her, holding out my hand.  “Give me the tablet.”

“No!”  Her face had grown red and she ran back toward the bedrooms.  I jumped over the coffee table and chased her.  She stopped in the arch of the hallway and pivoted back, muttering in a language I hadn’t heard before.

“Lisa, stop!”

It felt like a gust of wind passed through the house, and six separate asakku appeared around her.

Well, fuck.  And me without my sword or warding staff.

One by one, the asakku snarled in my direction.

I took two steps back.  The rightmost asakku cocked its head, neck stretching, as it pondered my ear.

This was about to hurt.  A lot.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, backing towards Lisa’s hall closet, where she stored her internet orders that have been completed but aren’t ready to ship.  “Would the six of you like something pretty in exchange for giving up attacking people?”

“What are you doing, Colm?”  Lisa sounded genuinely interested.  Munchausen cases are a special kind of out-of-touch with reality.  They often forget they aren’t actually the victim the instant help arrives.

I opened the closet.  Sure enough, she had a whole case of her signature kilts in there – Irish tartans done with box pleats instead of knife pleats, a feat which I’m told is next to impossible to sew correctly and for which she gets over $2,000 per garment.  “Here,” I said, dragging the case out.  “Would you be interested in pretty new man skirts to replace your worn-out sheepskin?”

All six asakku tilted their heads and studied the clothes.  I laid a few out and held up two more.  “There’s enough for everyone,” I said.

“Colm, no!” Lisa yelled.  “Those are mine!”

The asakku closest to me, which had a distinctive mane around its head, looked at Lisa and then at me.

“Well, I’d like to trade these to you, but…” I said.

The lead asakku snarled at Lisa.  The other five turned to look at her.

“Call them off, Colm!” Lisa’s voice trembled and she backed towards the hall.

“How?” I asked.  “I don’t speak ancient Babylonian.”

Actually, Will had tried to teach me the warding spell, but bad things happen when I try to pronounce ancient languages phonetically.

As if on an unspoken cue, all six asakku lunged at once.  Two attached themselves to Lisa’s left ear, the other four to her right.  She grabbed her head and screamed.  “Colm!”

“I can’t take down six!” I yelled.  “Offer them the trade!”

“All right!  All right!” she cried.  “A kilt for each of you!”

Six catlike faces suddenly turned in my direction.  Their bodies had all morphed and become tadpole tails.  They shot towards me, but I held my ground.  Their trajectory was downwards.

Each of the six spun around a different kilt.  The kilts seemed to shimmer, then vanished without vanishing.  The asakkus’ bodies re-formed, each wearing one of the pricey garments.  The lead one turned to me and spoke in a clicking voice, a forgotten language.

And then they vanished.

I have no idea if they fully understood the deal or not.  I have no idea what exactly I agreed to.  But I could sense the supernatural leaving the house, leaving behind nothing but termite-eaten wood and plaster.

Lisa sat on the floor, crying.

Just then, my friend Will texted me back.  Yep, that’s the one.  Conjuring spells.  Be careful.

•   •   •

The other models recovered quickly.  We wound up with six guys in the underwear show – which means we each walked the runway and then had just enough time to throw the underwear we were wearing to one of the girls backstage and jump into another pair before going back out again.  Luckily there were only a dozen people in the audience to make fun of us, though they all had cameras.  I’m sure I’m on YouTube.

And Julio asked me to model for his next print campaign.  And, unlike the show, that’s a job that actually pays.  Which was good, since Lisa, obviously, never paid me for my time.

She’s doing well, by the way.  A supernatural-friendly psychologist I know has been treating her.  And I’ve almost gotten to the point where I can forgive her.  Assuming, of course, that that’s the last time I have to face either a blood-sucking demon or a fashion show in Fresno.

I’d rather face the pig in the hand-me-down flannel nightgown.

About the author and the piece 

James Ipse tells us this was written back in 2011 as part of a series of novelettes he was writing for Kindle, but deliberately shorter and targeted to a themed anthology. The anthology passed on it, as did at least nine other markets. He didn’t feel he could publish it as a standalone, so it sat on his hard drive for over a decade. We’re glad it finally found a home here.

©2025 by James Ipse. All rights reserved. May not be used for A.I. training.