Page 13 of Ghouls Gone Wild

  “And then what?”

  “Then we focus back on finding her portal, I guess.”

  “Does my grandfather know where it is?”

  I asked Sam that question, but his energy was already fading, which is the one big bummer about connecting with the dead—they can’t sustain the contact for long before all their energy is drained. “He’s pulling back,” I told Heath, “but I think he’ll come around again to help us tackle that bridge when we cross it.” And then I felt the energy sever completely and I was alone again in the room with Heath.

  “I think I might know where we should start,” Heath said.

  “Where?”

  “We need to go back to the Crystal Emporium and ask Bonnie about anyone local who might be powerful enough to call up the witch.”

  I pointed a finger at him. “Good thinking. She seemed to know a lot about the legend.”

  Heath cocked his head slightly as if he was listening to something very faint. “And I also think we should check out the footage from Cameraman.”

  “Why?”

  Heath shrugged. “Just a feeling,” he said. “My gut says we need to view it.”

  We left the room and went in search of Gopher. While we were walking, Heath sent him a text and Gopher replied that he was just finishing downloading the footage to his computer. He suggested that we meet in his room to view it together.

  Gopher’s suite was on the second floor—one level down from Gilley’s and mine—and Heath and I arrived just a minute or two later to find his door partly ajar. “Come on in, guys,” he called when we knocked.

  We entered and found him hovering over his computer, set on a table identical to the one in my room. Heath indicated that I should take the only other available chair, and I sat down next to Gopher, leaning my body to one side to make sure Heath could see over my shoulder. “I haven’t looked at this yet,” Gopher said, his fingers moving over the mousepad to the folder where he’d stored the footage. “And play,” he said, tapping the Enter key.

  I squinted at the small rectangle on the screen as it came to life, and at first I didn’t know what I was seeing, but then the focus was adjusted and I could see that Cameraman was following right along behind Heath and me as we traversed into the close before all the rocks started flying.

  The footage was nearly a replica of what I’d witnessed down in the caves, but I could see where Heath’s posture had suddenly shifted, and knew that was roughly the moment we began to hear the knocks.

  The rest of the scenes down in the close were again very similar to what I remembered right up until small rocks and stones began to pelt the walls as the wave came toward us. The camera moved to capture Sound Guy’s terrified face before he ran to the nearest exit and threw aside his fluffy microphone and boom.

  The ensuing footage was a little nauseating for me to watch because Cameraman was also running and the scene jostled and bounced along to the top of the stairs. There was no sound on the footage, but you could tell the men were still running scared as they reached the street and continued fleeing away.

  At one point they came to a stop, and the camera swiveled side to side. I imagined the pair were trying to decide which way to go. Sound Guy pointed toward an alley and then the footage was in motion again showing the crew running down a side street that I thought might have been parallel to the van.

  It turned out I was right, because at the end of the alley both men stopped again and tried to determine where to go next, finally choosing to head up the street they were on, which would have put them very close to where the van was parked.

  My sense of direction was right on target, because a moment later the unmistakable image of our rented vehicle came into view. “The van!” I gasped, pointing to the screen. Gopher nodded, but stopped when he saw the camera capture his own mad dash out of the van to race up the street. I knew that was the moment Gopher decided to leave Gil and come to our rescue.

  Sure enough, as he bolted out of sight, the crew must have determined that they should get to the van, because they began to head straight for it. But as they drew near, a shadowy, smoky figure appeared. Clearly a spook. It hovered above the ground, and it approached the van menacingly, like a predator stalking its prey. Something else flickered just off to the side, but I was too caught up by the image of the ghost making its way to the van to pay it much attention.

  As it got very close, the camera dipped, and nothing but the cobbled pavement was visible. I waited tensely with my heart pounding, hoping the camera would swing back up to the van again.

  I got my wish just a moment later when the van came back into view, and what I saw caused me to cover my mouth in horror. The black smoky shadow appeared to be struggling with Gilley next to the open door of the van. My partner was flailing his arms and legs and obviously screaming his head off, but he managed to squirm his way back into the van, where he slammed the door, shutting out the ghost.

  The spook appeared angry and it zipped all about the van looking for a way in. When it found no weak spot, it began to slam into the van. We could tell that the ghost was making an impact, because the vehicle visibly shook every time it was hit.

  It was awful to watch, because I could remember the sound of Gilley screaming for help in my ear, and I could only imagine how terrified he must have been.

  I also realized that Cameraman and Sound Guy appeared to be rooted to the spot, watching it all unfold, because the view through the lens was still and focused correctly. I also knew that what they were seeing must have scared the crap out of them.

  In the next set of frames Cameraman zoomed in on the eerie shadow still zipping all about the van, slamming into it. It was the ghost of Rigella—of that I was certain—and horrified as I was by what she’d done to Gilley, I was also fascinated by her strength and ferocity.

  Her ghost had no real shape to it, just a large black glob of smoke darting all over the van. It was obvious that she had significant power, because the van was now rocking slightly from side to side and then the passenger-side window shattered and glass splayed out in a thousand directions.

  “Whoa!” I heard Heath whisper.

  “Holy shit!” Gopher remarked.

  “Good God!” I added, and then the three of us collectively sucked in a breath when the van began to roll down the hill and out of view. Cameraman dashed forward to the corner and pointed the lens at the van, which hit something in the street, causing it to bounce, veer sharply left, then tumble end over end out of view again.

  For the longest, most horrific minute the camera simply continued to record the image of the street, and I could clearly see now that there was a body lying smack-dab in the middle of the path that the van had taken . . . and something else glistened under the lamplights as well.

  “Hold on,” I whispered as the camera swiveled back up to where the van had originally been parked, then down to where it had disappeared, and then was abruptly shut off. “Go back a little, Gopher,” I said, moving my chair closer to the screen.

  Gopher rewound the tape about ten seconds and I pointed at the screen. “There!” I shouted.

  “Where?” Gopher and Heath said together.

  “See that?” I asked, moving my finger along the monitor.

  Gopher squinted. “What am I looking at?”

  “That puddle there,” I said. “That’s where the van was parked, right?”

  “I think so,” Gopher said. Then he slowly wound the tape forward frame by frame. “Yes,” he said. “I remember I parked under that streetlamp to give Gil as much light as possible.”

  “What does that look like?” I asked.

  “A puddle,” Heath replied.

  I nodded. “But look at the rest of the street, guys. There aren’t any other puddles around. Remember? It hadn’t rained all day.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Where’d that puddle come from?” When both men looked at me with confused expressions, I said, “The van!”

  “Condensation?” Heath offered. I knew he wasn’t catching on to what I was getting at.

&
nbsp; “Brake fluid,” I said. “I bet it was brake fluid.”

  I saw Gopher’s eyebrows shoot up high on his forehead. “You think the van’s brake lines were cut by the witch’s ghost?”

  I shook my head slowly and looked meaningfully at Heath. “No, I think they were cut by the person who called the witch up thirty-five years early.”

  Gopher sat back in his chair and looked at me as if he was missing something. “Thirty-five years early?” he said. “What’re you talking about?”

  Heath explained to Gopher how the woman who owned the Crystal Emporium had told us that the spirit of the witch arose every one hundred years, but this time around she was three-and-a-half decades early.

  “Maybe the witch got her dates wrong,” Gopher said reasonably. “You know how these ghosts can get confused. Maybe she thinks she’s right on time.”

  But I was shaking my head. Intuitively, I knew I was right. “Roll the tape back again,” I suggested. “Right to the point where the spook first appeared.”

  Gopher rewound the footage and sure enough, in slow motion we could clearly see the witch’s shadowy image arrive as a big black blob, but that flicker of something I’d seen for only a second was also apparent. Something just out of view edged toward the van from the rear, then slipped down near the ground. It then bobbed back up, then down, then up again, until it disappeared altogether near the front of the van.

  “What is that?” Heath said.

  I got up from my chair and moved to the narrow strip of carpet between the beds and the dresser. I squatted down into a crouch and duckwalked forward a few steps—like someone trying to keep out of view of a window.

  Both men stared at me in stunned silence. Gopher was the first to speak. “I need to take this footage over to the police station pronto, and I need to insist that their crime lab check the brake lines.”

  I stood and pointed at Heath. “And you and I need to go ask Bonnie if she knows of anyone who might have wanted to call up the witch.”

  Chapter 8

  We found yet another shocking surprise when we arrived at the Crystal Emporium. The store was closed. A sign was posted on the door that read CLOSED DUE TO A DEATH IN THE FAMILY.

  “Uh-oh,” I said to Heath. “That can’t be good.”

  “I wonder if Rigella’s already struck down someone in Bonnie’s family.”

  “Let’s hope not,” I said, but I had a sinking feeling all the same.

  The sign did not suggest when the store might reopen, but as we walked away, a woman standing in the doorway of the shop next door said, “It’s a cryin’ shame, isn’t it?”

  I stopped. “Who died?”

  The woman shook her head sadly. “Bonnie’s brother, Cameron,” she said. “He was run down just the other night comin’ home from the pub. Was crossin’ the street, mindin’ his own business, when out of nowhere a van just ran over him, the poor soul!”

  I felt the blood rush out of my face. “Oh, no,” I whispered, turning to Heath and grabbing the sleeve of his coat to steady myself. Our van had killed Bonnie’s brother!

  “Do you know when the funeral services will be?” he asked the woman carefully. “We’ve met Bonnie and liked her very much. We’d like to pay our respects to her if we could.”

  “Why, they’re goin’ on today, lad,” she said to him. “In an hour or so. I was just about to find my way there, in fact. Would you like to join me?”

  “We would,” I said, working to get control over my shock. “But we’ll need to pick up some flowers.”

  The woman smiled and crooked her finger at us. “Then come inside,” she suggested. “You can be my final sale of the day.”

  Belatedly I realized the shop she was standing in front of was a florist’s.

  Heath followed behind the woman from the flower shop; her name was Mary McCartney and she arranged a beautiful bouquet for us to give to Bonnie and her family.

  When we arrived at the church, there was already a throng of people there, and Heath and I held back a little, as we were clearly not dressed for the occasion. But I still felt attending was the right thing to do.

  We placed our flowers near all the others and I looked around for Bonnie. I caught sight of her in a section of the church right near the casket, seated next to a younger woman in her early twenties who was obviously pregnant. I assumed that must be either Bonnie’s sister or Cameron’s wife, and either way it enhanced the tragedy of Cameron’s loss, especially since both women looked so stricken. Another wave of guilt washed over me. “I feel like it’s my fault,” I whispered to Heath when we took our seats near the back of the church.

  “How could it be?” he asked. “Did you call up the witch? Did you cut the brake lines to the van?”

  I looked up at him and our eyes met and I felt another tickle of attraction, which only added to my guilt. I had a boyfriend, after all. And Heath was several years my junior. What the heck was wrong with me lately? I averted my eyes and stared down at my hands. “I was the one who made the decision to come to Edinburgh,” I admitted. “Gopher was really okay with our first pick, but when I saw Wendell being abused by that bastard ghost-tour guide, I couldn’t stay away.”

  And just as I said that, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Someone was watching me. I glanced up again and discreetly looked about. It was a total shock to see the very man I’d just been talking about staring pointedly at Heath and me.

  “Speak of the devil,” Heath said, and I saw he’d also caught sight of Fergus Ericson.

  “What is that awful man doing here?”

  “It seems to be a fairly tight-knit community,” Heath observed, his eyes straying around the room at the people moving about to comfort Bonnie and the woman beside her. “I guess even jackasses can do the right thing now and again.”

  I sighed and went back to staring at my hands. This whole trip sucked and at the moment I didn’t care if we’d soon be ratings gold—I just wanted to take Gilley home where I could keep him safe. “Maybe Gopher will have some luck at the police station and they’ll look at that footage and then discover that the brake lines really were cut and drop the charges.”

  Heath grimaced. “The brake lines being cut might be a little hard to prove,” he cautioned.

  “Why?”

  “Remember what the van looked like once it had finished rolling down that hill? It was knocked up pretty bad, M. J. I bet they’ll theorize that the lines were severed during the crash.”

  That had me worried. I couldn’t even entertain the thought of Gilley spending time in a foreign jail. My best friend was like a pampered Pomeranian. He tended to yap loudly when he wasn’t getting enough attention, and I doubted the thugs in prison would put up with that for long. I knew he’d never survive the experience.

  I sighed in frustration and thought about how I could best help him, but nothing came to mind. I was going to have to hope that Gopher could show the police the video and they’d see enough freaky stuff to be convinced that not only were Gilley and Gopher not responsible, but that at least Gil had actually been a victim right along with Cameron.

  Beside me Heath’s posture stiffened and I glanced his way. “What’s the matter?”

  “He’s here,” he whispered.

  “Who’s here?”

  “The guest of honor,” Heath whispered. “Cameron.”

  “Bonnie’s dead brother is here?!” I exclaimed a little too loudly. Several heads swiveled round to stare at me with reproachful glares.

  “We’re at a funeral,” an old man snapped. “Try to have some respect for the dead!”

  I held up my hands in surrender. “Sorry!” I whispered. And when he seemed satisfied that I wasn’t about to commit another faux pas, he turned back around. I leaned in close to Heath and asked, “Is Cameron grounded?”

  Heath dipped his chin. “Yes.”

  “Oh, no,” I muttered. That was the worst possible news. If Cameron was stuck in the land of ghosts, I didn’t think I could ever forgive myself for insisting on coming here and causing this unfortunate chain of events. “Can you get him to cross over?”

  Heath closed his e
yes and mouthed, “I’m trying” just as the priest began to call for quiet and for everyone to take their seats because the service was about to begin. My knee bounced and my impatient attention went from Heath to the priest conducting the ceremony. I couldn’t sense Cameron at all, and I was stuck waiting for Heath to fill me in.

  My fellow medium took his time. Heath’s brow furrowed while he concentrated, but finally he relaxed his posture and leaned over to whisper in my ear, “I can’t get him across.”

  “Damn it!” I swore under my breath, completely forgetting I was in church. “Is he giving you a reason?”

  “He’s worried about the baby,” he said, pointing to the pregnant woman sitting next to Bonnie. “He’s saying this is all wrong, and he’s very anxious about the child.”

  “So he knows he’s dead?” I asked, careful to keep my voice very low while the priest read some scripture.

  “He seems to,” Heath confirmed.

  “Which makes it harder for us to convince him to cross.”

  “It does,” he agreed.

  Not all ghosts are confused about their demise. And while it is true that the majority of grounded spirits haunting our world do not fully comprehend that they have actually died, a strong minority in their ranks fully comprehend that their bodies have stopped living, but their souls refuse to cross over because something is keeping them stuck in the middle. Many of these spirits are worried about a loved one who they think is still alive, or they’re afraid of crossing over and being judged because they didn’t live a virtuous life.

  And then, of course, there are energies like Rigella, who refuse to cross because they are so evil that they continue to get a kick out of scaring, messing with, or harming the living. These energies are by far the most dangerous, because they’re not content with merely making scary noises or moving the occasional chair. No, they actually create a portal to the lower realms—a place where nothing good roams—and they gather power and knowledge down there to use against poor unsuspecting types. Or those against whom they hold a grudge.