Page 3 of Ghouls Gone Wild

Gopher nodded at Kim, who said, “We found out which shelter he’s in. It’s a small, privately run place not far from here.”

  “Tell the tour guide we’re going to be late. I want to run by the shelter first.”

  Several people at the table squirmed in their chairs, and Gilley made a face that suggested I’d spoken out of turn. “Um, M. J., can I have a word with you over there, please?”

  I frowned, wondering why everyone was acting weird. I followed Gilley over to a corner in the large room and he leaned in to whisper in my ear. “Can you maybe lay off the demands a little?” he asked.

  My eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

  Gil shuffled his feet nervously. “Look, I’m not gonna beat around the bush with you, but sometimes, M. J., you can be a bit of a pill, and these guys are all starting to think you’re sort of a diva.”

  My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me? How have I been acting like a diva?”

  Gilley sighed. “Where should I begin?”

  I folded my arms across my chest defensively. “Um . . . anywhere?”

  “Okay,” Gil said, “how about starting with your insistence on approving all locations prior to shooting?”

  I shook my head, completely confused. “Gilley,” I said reasonably, “I did that because I didn’t want to walk into any surprises, I mean, who knows where these bozos could have set us down! Some rickety old castle that’s falling apart and could be a death trap for us?”

  “It says that you lack faith,” Gil said gently.

  I took that in for a minute. “Fine,” I conceded. “What else?”

  “Demanding to meet with the tour guide.”

  Again my jaw fell open. “You saw what he did to that puppy!” I nearly shouted. “And you want me to sit back and not say anything?”

  Gil placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Of course that’s not what I expect, M. J., but maybe insisting on it first thing was a bit over-the-top? And now you’re trying to change the schedule again, honey. I mean, have you heard yourself lately?”

  I blinked at my partner, opening and closing my mouth as I tried to form words. I wanted to argue my point, but the truth was that I knew Gilley already understood it, and that he still thought I was being a little too demonstrative was sobering. Finally I sighed and leaned against the wall. “Fine,” I said after a lengthy pause. “I get it.”

  “Do you?”

  I closed my eyes. “Yes,” I said grudgingly. “I’ll lay off the attitude.”

  “Let me do the asking from now on, okay?”

  My eyes opened and I flashed him a smile. “I’ve already formed a reputation, huh?”

  “A bit,” he said, returning my smile.

  “All right. You win. But see if we can fit the pug in sometime today, will you?”

  “Consider it on the agenda.”

  I looked over Gil’s shoulder and saw that my breakfast was getting cold. New attitude in hand, I got back to the table and smiled politely at the crew. “Wonderful day for a ghostbust, don’t you think?” I asked a bit too cheerfully.

  That won me several nervous smiles. I decided to quit while I was ahead and just eat.

  After breakfast we loaded into the huge van Gopher had rented and headed toward town. We arrived very soon afterward at a street I recognized from the footage I’d seen on the DVD Gopher had sent us.

  It had stopped raining, but there was a cold mist in the air that chilled me to the bone despite the warm coffee and hearty breakfast. We unloaded from the van and were met by the guy in the bowler hat who had pulled the poor defenseless pug down the haunted street.

  He smiled at us as we got out of the van, appearing delighted to see us. His smug expression made me even angrier, and I couldn’t wait to put him in his place.

  The man in the bowler was introduced as Fergus Ericson, which fit. He looked like a Fergus to me and as the cameras came out and Gopher pointed to me, he said, “And this is our star, M. J. Holliday. She’s a psychic medium from America and the one who specifically asked to be introduced to you.”

  Fergus puffed his chest out. “Oh, a medium, do you say?” he asked Gopher before stretching out his hand toward me. “Lovely to make your acquaintance, miss,” he said jovially.

  I stared moodily at his hand before shaking it with only one pump and letting it go. “Tell me, Mr. Ericson, do you make it a habit to traumatize poor defenseless puppies?”

  This won me an odd reaction. Fergus laughed merrily. “Why, no, miss, sometimes I like to traumatize the kittens too.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m not joking, Mr. Ericson,” I said evenly.

  Ericson’s smile broadened. “Aye,” he said. “I didn’t think you were.”

  I glanced at Heath, who was frowning and balling his fists in anger. “Why would you feel it necessary to torture small animals?” Heath asked him bluntly.

  “Because they make such good little canaries, don’t you think?”

  “What?” I asked him. “What do you mean, they make good canaries?”

  Ericson waved at the cobbled street and motioned for us to walk forward. Without thinking about it, I fell into step with him. “Don’t you remember your mining history?” he said. “When the miners went down into the shafts, they took a canary along with them. When the birds dropped dead, they knew they needed to get back up top, and be quick about it.”

  “What does that have to do with what you’re doing to these poor animals?” I demanded.

  “They let me know where the ghosties are, Miss Holliday. And as it’s the way I make my trade, I couldn’t very well get along without the little darlings, now, could I?”

  Ericson’s soft voice and seductive brogue were at complete odds with how detestable I found him. I had no idea how to react to someone who so obviously didn’t care whether I judged him, and I was at a loss as to what to say next. I looked over at Heath for support, but his head was down and his shoulders were hunched. I suspected he was concentrating on keeping his own temper in line.

  I took two more steps and walked into hell. Or, to this day, what I’m convinced hell actually sounds like. My energy felt as if it was being assaulted from all sides; screams and wailing and a torrent of terror hit me like a battering ram.

  I stumbled back and grabbed my head. “Agh!” I moaned. Someone gripped my arm tightly and tried to pull me forward, but that was toward the horror that was surrounding me. I became completely disoriented, nauseous, and terrified. The noise around me felt like it was happening both inside and outside my head, like it was permeating through me, and the volume kept turning up, and up . . . and up.

  “Make it stop!” I shouted. But it wouldn’t. Instead, it got worse. “Gilley!” I screamed in agony. “Get me out of here!”

  I couldn’t see and I couldn’t hear above the noise, and I couldn’t feel anything besides the terror running up and down my spine. Finally I was aware that I was moving, and in another moment I was able to lift my head up. I realized that Gilley was half carrying me, half dragging me down the street. “Get Heath!” he shouted to someone nearby.

  And that’s when I realized that I was still hearing screams, but they came from only one source. Gilley set me gently on the ground next to the van. He lifted my chin and looked at me with grave concern. “M. J.? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  My head bobbled on my neck. I felt sick as a dog and like I was being sucked down, and down, and down, as if I were melting or fading away. “Water,” I gasped. “Gil, give me some water!”

  The screaming stopped and as Gil rushed to get a bottle of water out of the van, I saw Heath’s limp body being pulled between two of the crew over to where I sat.

  Gopher eased him down to the ground and held Heath’s head between his hands. “He’s out cold!” he said, then looked at me, his expression frightened and concerned. “What happened to you two?”

  Someone chuckled behind Gopher and wearily I looked at the maker of the offensive noise. “They’ve had a taste of Briar Road, is all,” said Ericson, standing just behind Gopher.

  I swallowed hard, and considered whether I could lean far enough forward to throw up on his sh
oes. “You . . . total . . . dickhead . . . ,” I managed.

  Gilley came back to my side and held up the bottle of water. “Here, honey,” he coaxed. “Drink this.”

  I took a small sip but continued to glare at Ericson, who was thoroughly enjoying himself at our expense. “Let that be a lesson to you,” he said to me with a shake of his finger. “And next time, perhaps you’ll think twice about crossing the Atlantic to issue me a lecture.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and strode casually away.

  Chapter 2

  Heath came to about ten minutes later. And even though he was soon fully conscious, he remained pale and withdrawn for the rest of the morning. “Tell me what happened,” Gopher said gently while the camera propped on Russ’s shoulder made the softest whirring noise.

  I wiped a stray hair out of my eye and huddled a little deeper into the blanket someone brought me. “I don’t know how to explain it,” I said, looking over at Heath, who merely shook his own head.

  “I’ve never come across anything like that,” he said. “Never.”

  “Was it a ghost?” Gilley asked me.

  I nodded. “Yeah, but it wasn’t just one, Gil. It was thousands.”

  “And they were all screaming,” Heath added with a shudder, “in tremendous pain, like they were each being subjected to some kind of torture.”

  I looked back up at Gopher. “It was overpowering. So much trauma and pain and terror in one small section of land . . . my God. It’s a wonder anyone can walk down that street.”

  Gopher turned to Gilley. “Did you feel anything?”

  Gilley shook his head. “No,” he said. “Well, except maybe a little light-headedness, but nothing too extreme.”

  Gopher sighed. “What should we do?” he asked.

  I shivered again. “I don’t know what you could possibly do, Gopher. I mean what can anyone do? There are thousands and thousands of tortured, grounded souls on that street, and you will never get me to set foot there again.”

  “I’m with M. J.,” Heath said. “No way, man. Briar Road is off the agenda.”

  “Should we abandon the entire location?” Gopher asked.

  I looked at Heath and smiled contritely. “Maybe going blind into this wasn’t such a great idea.”

  Heath shrugged. “M. J., there’s no way you could have known what we’d encounter. I mean . . . that was just unnatural.”

  “This is going to be expensive,” Gopher said gloomily. “And I don’t think the network’s going to like it.”

  I frowned and eyed Heath again. He shrugged in silent understanding and nodded. “I suppose we could take a look at the caverns, Gopher,” I said.

  Gopher brightened and gave me a pat on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit!”

  I wondered if the pun was intended. “Hold on, guy,” I added. “If we get down there and it’s anything like Briar Road, we’re not going to be able to continue. And someone’s going to have to make sure we come out quick if we get into trouble.”

  “No sweat,” Gopher agreed. “We’ll have your back, M. J.”

  Next, I focused on Gilley. “Honey, can you please do some research and find out what exactly happened on Briar Road? Some great catastrophe had to have taken place there to cause such turmoil. Also, see if whatever happened on that road also happened in the caverns below. We’ll need to know what we’re getting ourselves into and if it’s worth the risk of heading underground.”

  Gilley saluted. “I’m on it,” he said.

  I turned again to Heath. “We need a sea-salt bath and we need it soon.”

  He nodded dully. “Yeah, good idea.”

  “Why a sea-salt bath?” Gopher asked as I got wearily to my feet.

  “To help clean and repair our auras,” I told him. “It’s sort of like getting a vitamin B shot. It should help us feel better in no time.”

  “Do you need me to get you some sea salt?” asked Meg.

  “Yes,” I told her. “I mean, yes please, Meg, that would be really great.”

  She blushed and slung her purse over her shoulder. “Any particular kind?”

  “Natural sea salt is the best,” I said. “And lots of it. Something tells me we’re going to be taking a lot of baths while we’re here.”

  Several hours later Heath and I were fresh out of our respective tubs and sitting in the inn’s main parlor, warming our feet by the fire. “I feel like we’re way out of our league, here,” I said.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, M. J.,” he confessed, and I knew exactly what he meant.

  “We need some serious protection,” I told him. “Crystals, maybe some magnets, something to help combat the effects.”

  Heath leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. “My grandfather would know what to use.”

  “Is he gifted like you?”

  “Was,” Heath said. “He used to know a lot about the spirit world. Sometimes he’d drift off into a trance, and there was no waking him from it. He’d be completely out of it for hours, and then, all of a sudden he’d be back and he’d talk about all the dead people he’d walked with out on the plains.”

  “Does he ever come to you?” I asked.

  Heath eyed me from his chair. “Sometimes,” he said. “Every once in a while he’ll show up in one of my dreams.”

  “Do us a favor and try to contact him,” I said in all seriousness. “Maybe if he sees that you have a need, he’ll come visit you while you’re sleeping tonight.” Heath looked doubtfully at me. “Worth a try at least,” I reasoned.

  He smiled. “It is,” he conceded. “Okay, I’ll call out to him before I hit the hay. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll respond.”

  “And I’ll do some scouting around for someplace we can get some crystals.”

  Gilley came into the room at that moment, followed closely by the camera and sound crew. He seemed to be enjoying that fact, or so I gathered from the constant smile on his face every time they were around.

  “Hello, dahlings!” he said with a grandiose hand flourish.

  “Gil,” I said.

  “Guess what?”

  I sighed tiredly. “You’ve discovered something riveting in your research?”

  Gilley rocked back and forth on his heels. “I did!”

  “What is it?” Heath asked.

  Gilley looked around at the many available seating surfaces, and finally moved over to sit next to a lamp where he positioned himself just so on the couch, before glancing up at Jake, the camera guy. “How’s my lighting?”

  “Fine,” Jake said in a way that told me he was sick of answering that question.

  Gilley turned up the wattage on the made-for-TV smile and said, “I found out why Briar Road knocked you guys on your keisters.”

  Heath leaned forward. “What’d you find?”

  “Sooo much,” Gil said. “For starters, that road is one of the oldest in the village. It dates back to the middle of the tenth century, in fact. And it’s seen its share of tragedy too. There have been at least five major waves of bubonic plague that have run rampant through this village over the millennia.”

  I eyed Gilley skeptically. “I don’t think so, buddy,” I told him. “I mean, yeah, I would expect a place as old as this to have its fair share of spooks, but the intensity of that street, Gil . . . I don’t even know how to describe it! It was like my skin was on fire and the level of panic was out of this world.” I turned to Heath and he was nodding his head vigorously.

  “It was beyond description,” he said, “but M. J. comes pretty close to what it felt like.”

  Gilley nodded as if he knew just what I was talking about. “I get it,” he assured me. “And I really think I understand why it hit you two in exactly the same way. See, in the mid-sixteenth century the plague came through here with a vengeance. At that time, Briar Road was part of a densely populated quarter of this village, filled to bursting with lots of small shops and residences. Most of the village’s poor lived on or near Briar in cramped close quarters. Problem was, with all that traffic and humanity packed into such a small space, the Black Death had plenty of victims to choose from, and it wasn’t long before the entire street was lined
with dead bodies.

  “About two weeks into the height of the plague, and in a poorly thought-out attempt to contain the spread of it, a few of the village’s noblemen decided it was a good idea to set up barricades at each end of Briar Road, which they did, blocking the residents in. And then, the noblemen set fire to it.”

  My jaw dropped. “They burned the whole street with all those people trapped inside?”

  “Yes,” Gilley said somberly. “And then they repeated that action a few years later when the plague returned.”

  I was horrified. “But how could they do that? I mean, Gilley! How could they burn all those people alive? It’s barbaric!”

  “Welcome to the Middle Ages, M. J.,” Gil said. “Back then, they were a bit less concerned with preserving the lives of the less fortunate.”

  There was a long silence that followed. I didn’t know what to say, and I was so torn between my disgust over what had happened to those poor souls and a grim comprehension of what had hit Heath and me on Briar Road. “Now we know why it felt like our skin was on fire,” Heath said, mirroring my thoughts.

  “Good God,” I whispered. “Gil, please tell me that we’re not going to encounter that in the cavern below Briar Road.”

  “You should be fine once you get underground,” he assured me. “I couldn’t find anything close to that tragic for the caverns. It looks like it was used primarily as a refuge for the village poor once they caught on to the fact that the noblemen were likely to set them on fire if they appeared sick.”

  At that moment Meg came into the inn carrying a bundle of packages. “Hey, guys!” she sang when she saw us.

  “Hey.” I nodded absently at her, my mind still on the victims of Briar Road.

  Meg dropped several of the packages at my feet. “I got you some stuff,” she said happily, and this pulled me back to reality.

  I sat forward and attempted a smile. “Thanks,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught Gilley giving me a small thumbs-up, which irritated me no end because I actually can be nice when I want to. I just have to want to.