Page 23 of Ghouls Gone Wild

  Heath lifted his head, squinting at me sleepily. “Was not.”

  “Then how do you explain how we woke up?” I snapped, completely flustered and desperate to find my jeans.

  “You were groping me.”

  “I was not!” I insisted.

  Heath sighed and pushed up onto his elbows. “I’m still on my side of the bed,” he countered. “Which means you rolled over and tried to cop a feel.”

  I felt heat sear my cheeks while I tried not to look at my appearance in the mirror over the dresser. My hair probably resembled a rat’s nest. And my breath probably stank. And I was sure I looked completely ridiculous in blue plaid boxers and a brown T-shirt. Why hadn’t I asked for something a little more matchymatchy last night?

  Heath shook the small vial of pills next to his bed. “Need more Vicodin?”

  Ah, that’s why.

  “No thanks,” I said, locating my jeans, sweater, and shoes and clumsily gathering them all before quickly moving into the bathroom. “I’ll just get dressed in here and be out of your way.”

  “Take your time,” Heath called. “There’s no rush.”

  I got dressed in thirty seconds. Flat.

  “Thanks again for letting me crash with you,” I said, coming out of the bath to grab my coat and purse.

  Heath chuckled. “M. J.,” he said softly.

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t bite, you know. Well, that is, unless you want me to.”

  “Um. Okay.” I had no idea what to do with that. So I turned and bolted from the room.

  I found Gopher just coming out of my room looking fresh as a daisy. “Hey, M. J.!” he said when he saw me. “How’s the leg?”

  “Fine,” I said, distracted. “Is Gilley in there?”

  “He’s in the shower. Might want to call up for more towels if you plan on taking one yourself, though.”

  I scowled and used my key card to step into the room. Steam wafted out of the bathroom and I closed the door to give Gil a little privacy, then tried to do something with my appearance, but it was no use. I needed a bath.

  “Hey!” Gil said, looking pink from his shower, when he saw me sitting on the bed watching television about ten minutes later. “How’s the leg?”

  “It’s fine. You done in there?”

  Gil looked behind him. “Yeah, but we’re short on towels.”

  I sighed. “I’ll shake myself dry. I need a nice dose of cold water. Now.”

  Gilley gave me an odd look when I passed him on the way to the bathroom and then he burst into a fit of giggles. “Someone’s in looooooove!” he sang.

  “Shut. Up,” I snapped. But Gil ignored me and opened his mouth to say something else, so I slammed the door in his face. Two minutes later I was standing under the spout, trying really hard not to get my stitches wet and attempting to forget about Heath, which, as the shock of cold water splashed down on my head, was somewhat easier than I’d expected.

  My respite was short-lived, however. When I finally came out of the bathroom, all three of my ghost-hunting team members were in the room. “There she is!” Gil sang when I appeared.

  “Can’t a girl get some privacy?” I mumbled.

  “Now that she’s here, will you fill me in?” Heath asked, and he looked a little impatient.

  I wondered why until I saw the tangled mess of wires and plastic on the table and remembered the small radio thingie we found at the castle. “Oh, yeah,” I said, “you were going to let us know what you’d found.”

  Gilley sat forward with a sparkle in his eye. “You have found a really amazing little gizmo, M. J. Do you know that?”

  I sat on the bed next to Gopher. “No. But I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

  Gil smiled winningly. “This little contraption is one heck of a device,” he began.

  “What does it do, Gil?” I said impatiently. I wanted him to cut the theatrics and get to the point.

  “I suspect it drives the ghosties wild,” Gil said plainly. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”

  “What does that even mean?” Gopher asked.

  “It means that this thing revs up the atmosphere to a degree and frequency that ignites the electromagnetic energy and charges both positive and negative ions to a superfrenzied state!”

  “In English, please?” I begged.

  Gilley tapped his chin thoughtfully, as if he was searching for the best way to explain. “You know how anytime it rains, we have good conditions for ghost hunting?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The moisture helps the spooks travel around on our plane more easily.”

  Gilley nodded. “It does,” he said. “So imagine if you could create an atmosphere that could not only make it easier for the spirit world to travel more easily among us but merge the two planes so that the spirit world was laying right on top of ours, making the two planes like one.”

  I blinked, looked at the remnants of the gadget on the table, blinked again, and gasped. “You’re telling me that that little radio brings the spirit world right into ours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can someone please explain this to me in laymen’s terms?” Gopher whined.

  Heath seemed to be following because he said, “I think what Gilley is trying to tell us is that contraption creates an atmosphere which allows any ghost within hearing distance to easily interact with the world of the living.”

  Gilley nodded smartly. “Exactly,” he said. “And it also supercharges them, allowing them not only to interact, but heightening their ability to affect physical objects. It would require very little energy for them to throw something or slam a door.”

  “Or make a broomstick fly,” Heath said softly.

  I looked sharply at him. “Oh . . . my . . . God!”

  “Now we know how the witch became so powerful,” Gopher said.

  “Yes,” Gil agreed. “When this little charmer gets turned on, it’s like giving a shot of steroids to a spook. It makes them superintense, superpowerful, and nearly unstoppable.”

  I remembered the metal spikes and how they’d had little effect on the witch as long as the machine was on. “It altered the electromagnetic frequency,” I said. “That’s why when we uncapped the grenades, they only had a mild effect.”

  Gilley looked thoughtfully at me. “The spikes didn’t work?”

  I shook my head. “They only slowed them down a teeny bit, Gil.”

  “Whoa,” he said, fiddling with one of the dials. “Cool!”

  “And what about that speaker?” Gopher asked. “Remember? The box was hooked up to a speaker.”

  Gilley stroked his chin. “It would have enhanced the range of the box,” he said.

  “How far?” I asked.

  “Depends on the size of the speaker, but I’d say at least a quarter mile. Plus, you should know that this puppy was on a timer. It was set up like an alarm, to turn on for two hours beginning at nine. Gopher told me that you had a hard time coping in the castle until you turned it off. I’m pretty sure it affected you just like it affected the ghosts. It would have pulled you out of the living world and more easily into the spirit world, and the effect would have been similar to when you have an OBE. You would have felt disoriented because your body would still be trying to hold you to the physical world, while your mind pulled you into the ghost’s realm.”

  No one spoke for a few seconds and my mind went back to the footage we’d captured of Fergus’s tree and those three swinging corpses. I now knew they were spooks, brought to life by the box, which must have been able to reach the tree. “So someone is purposely trying to harm us,” I said, breaking the silence.

  “And they’re using this gadget to enhance the witch’s power to do it,” Heath agreed.

  “Do you think this thing is the only one out there?” I asked Gilley.

  He frowned. “Probably not, toots. I mean, the gizmo was configured out of an old ham radio and spare parts. It’d be really easy to put together another one.” Something nudged at the edge of my memory, but Heath spoke to me and it flittered out of my mind.

  “M. J., I don’t get why you felt the effect of the gadget so intensely and I didn’t.”


  “You’d taken a Vicodin, remember? That must have grounded you pretty solidly.”

  “I didn’t take a pain pill and I felt okay,” Gopher said.

  “Yeah, but you’re not a medium,” I told him honestly. “Heath and I are affected by changes in electrostatic energy a lot more than the average Joe.”

  “So what now?” Gopher asked. “I mean, where does this lead us?”

  “Down another rabbit hole,” Heath replied with a sigh. “None of this stuff makes any sense! I mean, why would someone act so recklessly? That thing is really dangerous. You’d think someone would be concerned for their own safety being around that.”

  I smiled ruefully. “Ah, but they weren’t around it, were they? They had plenty of time to set up the timer and get someplace safe before we walked into the party.”

  “But who would be out to get us?” Gilley asked.

  “Someone who knows we can talk to spooks,” I said, a tiny thought taking hold in my head. “And someone who must be afraid of having us around.”

  Gopher asked, “So, which spook do you want to focus on?”

  I looked at Heath, knowing he was thinking of Cameron, but that tiny thought at the back of mind had taken seed and I wanted to follow it. “Joseph Hill,” I said.

  Gilley frowned. “Why him?”

  “The gadget was found on his property, Gil. For all we know, he could have rigged it, set it on that timer, and gotten caught up in the heightened activity when the witch showed up. He could be more responsible for his own death than we’ve given him credit for.”

  “Do we know for certain that he’s grounded?” Gil asked.

  “No, but there’s an easy way to find out.”

  “You want to go back to the tree,” Heath guessed.

  “I do.”

  Heath inhaled deeply, playing with the small vial of pills in his hand before pocketing them and saying, “Okay. I guess I can live with the pain. Let’s go see if Mr. Hill is interested in a little one-on-one time.”

  We made it back out to Fergus’s and parked in front of his house. Heath rang the bell and I stood nervously behind him, keeping my eyes peeled for any spectral activity.

  We’d had a short chat on the way over about how vulnerable that contraption from the castle made us. If we couldn’t use our grenades, there wasn’t much else in our arsenal that we could rely on should things turn ugly. About the best we could do would be to race back to the van and hope for the best.

  “He’s not answering,” Heath said, ringing the buzzer again, which sounded like an angry hornet.

  “Guess that means he won’t mind if we head out back and check out the tree.”

  Heath nodded, but cautioned me by saying, “Let’s agree to make this as quick as possible. If Hill doesn’t show in fifteen minutes, we’re outta here.”

  “Agreed,” I said, and we set out for the back of Fergus’s house.

  In the daylight the tree didn’t look nearly so ominous. The rainstorm that had blanketed the area with wind, rain, and electricity was all gone and sunshine beamed through partly cloudy skies. The day felt, if not exactly warm, definitely pleasant.

  “One thing about all of this is bothering me,” Heath said.

  The corner of my mouth lifted. “Only one thing?”

  Heath chuckled. “Okay, one in particular.”

  “And that is?”

  “Why the timer?” I looked at him curiously, not understanding what he was talking about right away. “Remember?” he asked. “The timer on the ghost enhancer. Why was it set for nine p.m.?”

  “Obviously it was a trap,” I said.

  Heath nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t really convinced. “But for who?”

  “Whom.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “Someone set it for us.”

  “But who knew we would be at the castle at nine o’clock last night? I mean, we only decided to go there right before we left, right? It wasn’t like we called ahead and told people we were coming.”

  “Who else could it have been set for?” I pressed. “I mean, you and I would have been the only two people around who would have been so adversely affected by something like that.”

  By now we were close to the tree and Heath paused to look up at it. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”

  I followed his gaze. The mighty oak was magnificent in the full light of day. “I wonder how old it is,” I said.

  “Several hundred years, I would think.”

  I edged closer to place a hand on the trunk. I love trees. I spent a lot of time as a little kid in the branches of one that grew right outside my parents’ bedroom window. I would climb up there when my mother was very sick and dying of cancer and I was kept from her because my father felt she needed her rest. He never believed she wouldn’t make it, and thought time spent alone and away from any form of distraction or noise would help her recover.

  So, as a lonely little kid who dearly missed her mother, and who didn’t understand why she couldn’t see her, I would climb that tree and sit on one of the branches next to her window, close my eyes, and pretend I was sitting right next to her, holding her hand. It was the closest I could come to her at the time, and touching the trunk of the oak tree brought a huge wave of melancholy over me, and I began to tear up a little.

  “M. J.?” Heath said, and I felt his hand on my shoulder. “You okay?”

  I opened my eyes. “I’m fine,” I said, hating that my voice trembled and more tears fell.

  Heath’s expression went from concerned to compassionate. “Your mom is hovering right over your shoulder, did you know that?”

  I gaped at him. Those words were my undoing and I began to weep in earnest. Heath reached forward and hugged me fiercely. “Hey,” he said gently. “It’s okay, doll. It’s okay.”

  But I couldn’t stop crying. I missed my mother so much it physically hurt, and I’d never really gotten over her loss, even though it had been twenty years since she passed. It was the one great irony to my abilities: I could talk to the dead with ease, but never really trusted that the voice coming through to me specifically was my own mother’s and not in my imagination—so after a while, she’d stopped trying to communicate.

  But Heath had developed something of a rapport with her, and I knew that when he told me she was around—she really was. “I miss her,” I blubbered.

  “She knows,” he said gently.

  I took a deep breath and fought to regain some control. It felt really good to be hugged in the shadow of that tree. It even felt right. I leaned back from him and looked up into his handsome face. “Heath,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s something I want to say.”

  “I’m listening.”

  I took a deep breath, looked up into his eyes, then over his shoulder, and said, “Joseph!”

  “I don’t get it,” Heath said, his brow furrowed.

  I pointed over his shoulder. Heath turned around and jumped a little. Standing under the very branch we’d found him hanging from was Joseph Hill.

  Heath and I both stared at Joseph for several seconds and the poor man looked terribly distraught. “Could you lend me a hand?” he asked, plain as day.

  Heath was the first of us to recover from the shock of seeing him in full form. “Of course. What can we do for you, sir?”

  “I’m afraid that I’m having a bit of trouble,” Joseph said. “Someone’s broken into me home, and I can’t seem to get the police on the line.”

  Thinking fast, I pulled out my phone and pretended to dial. “I’ll call them right now, Mr. Hill.” I then held the phone up to my ear, paused for effect, then asked, “I’ve got the police on the line. What would you like me to tell them exactly?”

  “Tell them someone’s in me house!” he snapped impatiently. “And tell them not to dawdle this time like they did the last time! If they don’t come quickly, I’m likely to take matters into me own hands!”

  My eyes swiveled sideways to Heath while I pretended to tell the police exactly what Hill had said. He gave me an encouraging nod to keep up the ruse.

  “They’d like it if you could give a descr
iption of the intruders,” I told Mr. Hill.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but paused, then looked confused. “I must not have got a good look at them,” he confessed, scratching his head. “But I thought I had,” he added. “Yes, I thought I had. So why can’t I remember?” he mumbled, and then, without warning, his hands went to his throat and he began making choking sounds. He then began to struggle, and flail his arms, and that’s when we saw what looked like a length of electrical cord appearing out of thin air and held by unseen hands wrap around Joseph’s neck. The scene went on for only a few seconds more before poor Joseph disappeared into thin air.

  “Oh . . . my . . . God!” I nearly shouted, turning to Heath. He was staring at me with big round eyes.

  “It wasn’t the witch!” he gasped, and I nodded vigorously in agreement. “Joseph Hill was—”

  “Murdered!” I cut in. “He was murdered in his own house!”

  We simultaneously looked up at the branch where Hill had been cut down. “So someone strung him up here to make it look like a suicide, or like the witch had taken over his body and killed him!” Heath guessed.

  I had goose bumps running all along my arms and a chill shivered down my back. “Come on,” I said to Heath. “We need to get the heck out of here before someone sees us.”

  “And by someone, you mean the murderer,” Heath said softly as he and I both looked around suspiciously.

  “Yep,” I said, limping quickly away from the tree.

  We reached the van shortly thereafter and both of us shuddered before buckling ourselves in. “We have to tell the police,” I said.

  “Tell them what?” Heath asked, starting the van and checking the mirrors before pulling away from the curb.

  “About what Joseph said! That someone broke into his home and strangled him!”

  “And how would we tell them we know this?” Heath said, looking at me pointedly. “I mean, they’ve treated Gilley and Gopher with such warmth and respect, I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to take our word for it.”

  I frowned. “Right,” I said, picking up on the sarcasm. “Okay, but we . . . hold on.”

  “What?”

  “You missed the turn,” I said, pointing at the road. “I think we were supposed to go left back there.”