Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls

  “M. J.!” I heard again.

  Then I was being roughly shaken by unseen hands, and I felt myself startle awake and I was staring into Heath’s intensely brown eyes. “What’s going on?” I muttered, realizing I’d only been asleep and having a very vivid dream.

  “It’s Gilley!” he said urgently.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s gone!”

  Chapter 5

  I jumped to my feet and stared around the cave, searching for Gilley. Heath, Meg, Kim, and John were staring back at me, but Gilley was nowhere in sight. “Where’d he go?” I demanded.

  Meg and Kim shrugged and John explained, “We were all asleep. I woke up about ten minutes ago, and realized the fire was getting low, so I went to get some driftwood and when I came back, I saw that Gilley wasn’t in the cave. I checked around, and he’s nowhere.”

  A thought occurred to me. “What time is it?”

  “A little after seven.”

  “Did you check the causeway?”

  John shook his head. “No.”

  I grabbed one of the flashlights and dashed out of the cave. Hurrying past the stairs, I barely resisted the urge to look up because I could almost feel the presence of the phantom staring down at us from high above. Running over to the causeway, I stopped at the platform and saw that the storm surge had subsided a bit, but it was still gusting and waves were still washing up over the worn cobblestones.

  “Gilley!” I shouted across the water.

  When no one replied, I called again ... and again ... and again. By the end I was practically screeching.

  “Where could he have gone?” Heath said, moving up next to me.

  My heart was racing and panic coursed through my veins. “I don’t know,” I told him as tears welled up into my eyes for the third time that day. “But we have to find him!”

  Heath looked uncertainly up the stairs. “He wouldn’t have gone back up, would he?”

  Deep in my gut I felt strongly that Gil wouldn’t have willingly gone there, and I was quite certain that if the phantom had come down the stairs and entered our cave, we would have known it. The demon was just too powerful.

  “He wouldn’t have gone back up,” I said firmly, “and why he moved away from our group I have no idea. I mean, Gil’s practically attached at my hip even when we’re not in some haunted location—so I can’t imagine why he’d leave us without saying anything.”

  It then occurred to me that Heath and I were the only ones out there. “Where’re the others?”

  “Back at the cave.”

  I took his hand. “Come on, we have to make sure we stay together and don’t lose one more person. We’ll look for Gilley as a group.”

  Heath and I hurried back to the cave and saw that Kim and Meg hadn’t moved, but John was nosing around near the back of the cave.

  “Did you find him?” Meg asked.

  I shook my head. “John!” I called. “We have to stay together.”

  “I found a set of footprints,” he said in reply while waving us over. Heath and I darted over to join him. “What size shoe does Gilley wear?”

  I stared down at the footprints. They were about Gilley’s size. “He went this way!” I said, and darted forward to follow the prints.

  Heath caught me by the shoulder. “Remember, we go everywhere as a group.”

  I nodded distractedly and waited for him to call to Kim and Meg, and then, when everyone was huddled together, we moved forward, pointing our flashlights down at the ground to track the footprints.

  They led to the very back of the cave and a somewhat narrow tunnel, where the sand stopped and stone became part of the floor. “He must have gone in there,” I reasoned.

  “How can you tell?” asked Meg.

  “Because there are no footprints coming out.” Without waiting around to discuss it, I boldly entered the tunnel and began hurrying along. Shuffling noises behind me told me the others had followed.

  The tunnel was wide enough for two people to walk abreast, and Heath quickened his pace to come up next to me. In his hand, I noticed, he firmly held on to two spikes. “That’s a good idea,” I said, handing over my flashlight long enough to pull out my own two spikes. Over my shoulder I held them up and told the others, “Make sure you’re armed, people.”

  With a bit of satisfaction I heard the plastic caps on the canisters being removed and the sliding metal of spikes as our crew followed orders.

  The tunnel curved slightly ahead, and I could see a beam of light coming from it. Heath placed an arm across my middle, stopping me, and John, Meg, and Kim came up to huddle right behind us. “We don’t know if Gilley’s in there, so let me go first,” he whispered cautiously.

  I shook my head. “No. We’re stronger as a group. We go in together.”

  Three other heads nodded vigorously. “Okay,” Heath relented, removing his arm from in front of me. I stepped forward, and the tunnel opened up to a good-sized cavern, in the center of which sat my best friend, cross-legged on the floor with his back to us, thumbing through a weathered old journal.

  “Gilley!” I cried when I saw him.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” he screamed, jumping to his feet and reeling backward.

  “Shhhhhhh!” Heath commanded.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Gil repeated.

  “Stop it!” I ordered.

  “Hee, hee, hee!” Gil wheezed, grabbing his chest with one hand like Redd Foxx while his eyes bulged out to stare at us.

  I moved quickly into the cavern and up to him. “Honey,” I said, gripping him by the arms. “It’s us.”

  “You scared me!” he shouted.

  “Gil,” Heath warned, putting a finger to his lips. “Keep it down, buddy.”

  Gilley took a few more deep breaths and continued to stare at us with his wide eyes. “Why does it matter how loud I am?” he finally asked.

  “We don’t know what’s in here,” I said to him. “This cavern could be haunted too.”

  Gilley’s wide eyes got even bigger. “It could?”

  “You didn’t think of that before you came in here?”

  “No!” he shouted, looking around wildly.

  Heath gave him a dirty look but didn’t reprimand him again, which was wise, because when Gil gets really worked up, it’s hard to rein him in. “What were you doing in here by yourself, honey?” I asked in a nice soothing tone.

  Gil blinked and took a minute to answer me. “We were low on firewood. Everyone else was asleep, so I went to look for more, and I found the tunnel at the back of the cave, and I was just curious to see where it led—you know, in case the gold was hidden back here—and I came to this room and found all that.”

  Gilley pointed his flashlight to where he’d been squatting and it was then that I noticed the makeshift camp.

  There were a dust-covered lantern, two sleeping bags, a kerosene heater, and a couple of backpacks. And something else caught my eye and made me gasp.

  “What?” asked Heath as I moved away from Gilley to the object on the ground.

  “Look!” I said, squatting down to pick it up.

  Heath’s face registered complete surprise when I held it up. “No way!” he said, hurrying over to me to inspect the metal spike I’d just picked up. “Is it magnetized?”

  I stood up and moved to one of the packs. When I held the spike near one of the buckles, we all heard a clink as the metals connected. I inspected the spike closely. “Magnetized spikes are standard equipment for most serious paranormal investigators,” I said.

  “Whoa!” said John. “Ghostbusters were in this cave?”

  “That’s not all,” Gilley added smartly, and he moved away from the wall to the journal, which he’d dropped when we called his name. “Guess whose journal this is!” he said.

  No one said anything.

  “Go on! Guess!”

  Again, we all just waited him out and said nothing.

  “Wrong!” he crowed, completely ignoring the fact t
hat we weren’t playing along. “It belonged to Jordan Kincaid.”

  My jaw dropped. “The guy who fell off the cliffs?”

  Gilley smiled like a Cheshire cat and held out the journal to me. I took it and inspected the cover. The leather-bound book had the initials JCK embossed in the lower right-hand corner, and I opened it and studied the contents.

  Kincaid had very symmetrical writing; he didn’t use cursive, but wrote in a block style. His sentence structure was short and to the point, and I wondered if his conversations with people went that way too.

  “Did you read this?” I asked Gil, already knowing the answer.

  “Of course I read it! And you won’t believe what I found in there!”

  “What?” Heath asked.

  “Kincaid was gay!”

  I did a mental head scratch. Thinking back to an interview I’d seen of Jordan Kincaid on 60 Minutes, I’d never have guessed he played on Gilley’s team.

  “He was gay?” Heath said. “Man, I saw him in an interview a few years ago and I didn’t get that vibe from him at all.”

  “Me either,” I said. “Are you sure, Gil?”

  Gilley looked insulted. “Of course I’m sure!” he insisted. “My gaydar is never off.”

  One of my eyebrows rose skeptically. “Your gaydar is always off, Gil.”

  “Nuh-uh!” he snapped.

  I waved an impatient hand at him. “You think everyone in the world is gay.”

  “That’s because everyone in the world is gay—they just haven’t admitted it yet.” With that, Gilley bounced his eyebrows at Heath, who cleared his throat uncomfortably and moved a little closer to me.

  I sighed. We didn’t have time for Gilley’s games. “What is it about this particular journal that tells you Kincaid may have preferred men?”

  Gilley held his hand out for the journal and I gave it back to him. Turning to the middle section, he pulled out a folded letter, which he then handed to me.

  I looked at it for a moment before unfolding it and held it so that Heath could read it over my shoulder. It read:Dear Alex:

  If you’re reading this, I’m probably dead, and if that’s the case, then I’m really sorry that I insisted we come here. I know I haven’t always been honest with you, and I also know it’s been tough keeping you in the shadows so that no one found out about us, but I want you to know that I love you.

  Loved you.

  And, wherever I am right now, I’m probably still head over heels for you and only you. Those groupie girls never mattered to me; they were only to keep up appearances and I hope you know that. I knew you were the one the very first time we met, and I’ve never doubted it. I’m so sorry I left without telling you to your face. I hope you understand that once this job was over, I planned on telling the whole world about us. I meant what I said last week. I wanted to marry you and I don’t give a damn what my parents think. And if we had come back with the gold, well, we could have lived an amazing life together, away from prying eyes and judgment.

  Anyway, the one thing you have to do for me if I don’t come back is get off this stinking rock and never, EVER come back. I’ve figured out where Dunnyvale hid his gold, and it’s not anywhere we thought. It’s in a place that’s kind of impossible to get to, and I can’t risk taking you with me because if anything happened to you, I couldn’t handle it. I’m going in alone, and I really hope I come back to you. If I don’t make it past the phantom tonight, then you have to leave, because you will have been right—this job was too much for us.

  The note ended cryptically there with just Jordan’s signature, and I felt my heart go out to the man I’d assumed was just another shallow rich playboy, living off his trust fund. I also had to agree with Gilley—the letter really did point to Kincaid’s preference for men ... or Alex at least.

  I sighed and folded the letter carefully back up. Tucking it into my back pocket to review later, I said, “So what happened to Alex?”

  Gil shrugged. “Dunno. The last journal entry was written to Alex as well.” Gilley flipped through the pages of the journal and handed this to me again. I read the entry out loud so that everyone could hear.

  “‘Dear Alex. I know you waited until I was asleep to sneak off to the crypts, and I know you think they’re safe from the phantom, but I woke up to tell you that the answer came to me in my sleep. We’ve been looking in all the wrong places, and I now realize exactly where both the disk and the gold are. I see you’ve only left me a few spikes, but I’m going for it. If I don’t make it back, this letter is for you.’”

  “Crypts?” Heath asked. “The castle’s got crypts?”

  “Disk?” Kim said. “What disk is he talking about, and where did he think the gold was?”

  I turned to look at Gilley, hoping that he might have a clue, but he only shrugged and shook his head. “Got me,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to look through the whole journal yet. I just got finished reading that letter when you guys all sneaked up on me.”

  I remembered the ghost of Lord Dunnyvale, and his instruction to start with Alex. But I couldn’t commit my team to such a dangerous undertaking as ridding the castle of the phantom right now.

  “We need a plan to deal with this phantom and get Gopher back,” I said to the group when I realized they were all looking at me expectantly. “But first we need to get off this freaking pile of rubble. Let’s see if we can get back across the causeway.” I then turned and led my team out of the cave, pausing only briefly to say, “Gilley, bring that journal.”

  We made our way out of the cavern, back through the tunnel, and finally out of the cave to the shore. With some relief, I realized it had stopped raining. I held my flashlight up, and although the causeway was slick, and there was the occasional small wave that crested over the edge, it looked passable. “We’ll need to hustle,” Heath advised, looking at his watch. “We’ve only got about twenty minutes left to get across it.”

  Without speaking, I stepped onto the causeway and started to jog. Gilley must have decided that he needed to be the first one to reach the beach at the other end, because he flew by me. “Be careful!” I called. “It’s slippery.”

  And no sooner had I said that than Gilley tripped and went down. “Uh-oh,” Heath grunted, moving past me to hurry to Gilley’s side.

  My best friend was holding his knee pathetically and whining. “Ow, ow, ow!”

  I hustled over to him and crouched down. “You okay?”

  “NO!” he yelled, right in my ear.

  “Dude,” I growled, standing up, really irritated with him and this whole stupid adventure.

  “Sorry,” he groused. “But that hurt.”

  I inhaled and extended my hand. Gil took it and I helped him up. He limped for a step or two, but then seemed all right.

  “What’s that?” Meg said from behind me.

  A chill ran down my spine, and I looked behind me back toward the rock, but then I noticed that Meg was looking down about six feet out into the water where the journal was just starting to sink below the waves.

  I pointed my flashlight where I saw her looking and gasped. “Gilley!” I yelled, sinking to my own knees and trying to reach out to it. “You dropped the journal!”

  Heath’s hand landed firmly on my waistband and he pulled me back from the edge. “Careful!” he said. “The water’s deeper than it looks here and the currents are likely to pull you under if you fall in.”

  I got back to my feet and sent an exasperated look at Gilley. He looked mournfully up at me. “I’m sorry!”

  I was so angry that I simply turned and stomped off. Heath came with me and slipped his hand into mine. “It was an accident, M. J.,” he said after a bit.

  “It was careless,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “We can figure this all out without it,” he insisted reasonably. “And at least you still have the letter.”

  I stopped and blinked up at him. “I do?” And then I felt all my pockets discovering that I’d tucked the lette
r into my back pocket. With a relieved sigh I started walking again. “A load of good that’ll do us,” I said after a bit, my foul mood returning. “The important parts were all in the journal.”

  When we finally reached the shore, our feet and pants up to our shins were all soaking and I couldn’t have been more cold, tired, and miserable. All I wanted to do was crawl into the van and point it back to the B&B.

  We found the van right where we’d left it, but only then realized that Gopher had taken the keys. “Look in his backpack,” I told John, who’d been shouldering it all the way from the top of the rock.

  John sifted through the contents while Heath shone his flashlight into the interior. No keys.

  “I think I saw him put them in his pocket after we got out of the van this morning,” Kim said quietly.

  “Why did we only take one van this morning?” Gilley wailed.

  I remembered that it had been Gopher’s idea. He’d wanted to save on gas.

  Bone-weary and in a now truly terrible mood, I stared up the road and began to walk. “Looks like we’re hoofin’ it,” muttered John from behind me.

  I sighed again. This night just continued to offer up crap sandwiches. Heath held out his hand to me as we got to the steep part of the climb up the road. “Come on,” he said. “It can’t be that far.”

  Unfortunately, it was close to five miles. It took us well over an hour to reach the B&B. When we arrived, there was a note on the door from Anya saying that she was sorry we’d missed dinner, but that she’d have a hearty breakfast waiting for us in the morning.

  Once we’d tiptoed inside, Meg asked, “Should we use the other van to go alert the authorities about Gopher?”

  I was beyond exhausted by then, and every muscle in my body ached, but thoughts of Gopher’s welfare made me say, “Yeah. We need to see if they’d be willing to send a search party to the castle.”

  But Heath reminded me about the permissive-access paper Gopher had shown the constable. “They’ll never go for it. We assumed all risks when we went to the rock. You heard what that constable said, that the village wouldn’t help us if anything happened. Plus, if they do go, that phantom’s likely to make mincemeat out of them.”