What's a Ghoul to Do?

  "Yeah," he said grimly. "But I'm still reserving the right to head to the van if things get too freaky."

  I laughed and gave him a pat on the back. "Poor Gil. Look what having a crush on an unavailable man has brought you to."

  "Say what?" he said, cutting me a look.

  "Dr. Delicious. You have a crush."

  "No, not that," Gil said. "I was asking about the unavailable part."

  I laughed at the serious look on his face. "He's straight, buddy."

  "He's European; it's the same as being gay."

  "He's Latin," I said.

  "Oh, I stand corrected, he's not gay … he's bi."

  "Whatever you need to tell yourself, honey," I said, surrendering.

  We parked the van behind Steven again and got out to unload. Once we had all of the equipment piled onto the front steps, Steven opened the front door. The three of us walked in, listening intently for the sound of a blaring TV. We were met with only silence, so I turned and began to bring in the equipment. Gil and Steven joined me, though more than once I caught them pausing to listen again.

  "Televisions?" Gilley asked once we'd hauled in all our stuff.

  Nodding, I turned to Steven. "Is there someplace we can store the TVs so they won't get damaged?"

  "There's a wine cellar below the kitchen. They should be okay down there."

  I motioned with my hand in an after you gesture, and we began with the nearest TVs on the ground floor. While we worked I got a chance to scope out the place in the daylight. It was incredibly impressive for a "hunting lodge." I counted fourteen rooms on the main floor alone, complete with gourmet-sized kitchen, drawing room, solarium, library, formal dining room, sunroom, and indoor pool. The furnishings were opulent, mostly French antiques, and suited the place well.

  As Gilley and Steven carefully took the first TV to the wine cellar, I had a moment to myself in the kitchen. Testing the surroundings for spiritual energy, I closed my eyes and sent out my radar. I got a hit right away, but it was elusive. Male energy. Older. A sense of confusion seemed to surround him, and then I felt it drift away. I opened my eyes and looked out the window. The view over the sink showed the grounds, and to the right, the side of the indoor pool's wall extended out from the house.

  My intuition was drawn to that area; in fact, I felt a great sense of urgency to go there. Looking left I saw a door that led outside. "Guys?" I called down the stairs. "I'll be right back." I headed out the door.

  Outside I held my hand up to block the sun—I'd left my sunglasses inside. I blinked a few times and followed my intuitive instinct, stopping in front of the far wall of the indoor pool. I bent down and touched the ground, which was covered with leaves and debris. In my mind's eye I saw a rake, and smiled. Yeah, this spot definitely needed a little attention. Standing up, I couldn't understand why I'd been tugged out here to this spot, so I looked around. Maybe I'd gotten it wrong?

  Behind me was a short lawn before thick woods, which spanned as far as the eye could see. I felt compelled to go to the woods, but decided I'd better wait until after we'd done our baseline test. I turned back toward the house just as I felt another, much stronger pull to my right, and paused for a moment to assess that pull on my energy. When a spirit wants me to go in a certain direction, I often feel a sense of being tugged right or left. The more forceful the tugging feeling, the more urgently the spirit wants to get my attention.

  This particular pull was incredibly intense, much stronger than to the woods or by the pool. Curious, I followed the tug and ended up in front of a large window. Peering through the window, I could see that I was next to the library. I stepped away and felt another tug, this one straight up. I put my hand on my brow again to shield my eyes from the bright sun and looked up. Something caught my attention in a window on the third floor. I could have sworn I saw a curtain move. I backed up and kept staring at the window. It didn't look open, so no breeze should have ruffled the curtain. Then, one floor below it, I saw one of the sheer curtains give a distinct swish of movement, followed by a dark, shadowy figure passing behind it.

  "M.J.!" Gilley called, and I jumped.

  "What?" I asked as I tore my gaze away from the window to see Steven and Gilley standing by the kitchen door.

  "What's up?" Gil said.

  "I thought I saw something up there," I said, pointing to the window. "Steven, whose bedroom is that?"

  He took a moment to answer, a look of shock on his face. Finally he said, "That is my grandfather's bedroom. And that spot you're standing on is right where they found my grandfather's body."

  I moved over in spite of myself. Steven and Gilley walked over, and the three of us looked from the ground back up to the bedroom.

  "I thought your grandfather fell from the third story," Gilley said.

  "He did. His shoe was found on the ledge just above his bedroom, and the window was open from that bedroom," Steven said, pointing to the bedroom directly over Andrew's room.

  "Weird," I said as my eyes moved back up to the window above Andrew's. "I could have sworn I saw movement up there, too."

  "You saw someone?" Steven asked me.

  I shrugged my shoulders. "I saw something. Not sure what, at this point."

  Gilley said, "What did you see?"

  "I saw the curtain move first on the third floor, then on the second, and then a dark shadow passed in front of your grandfather's bedroom window. My guess is that either someone's in your house or it's Andrew making his presence known."

  Turning toward the house, Steven said, "Only one way to find out."

  We followed Steven back inside and through the maze of rooms to the front staircase. Climbing the stairs, we made our way to the second floor. "I can't believe your grandfather took all these stairs," Gilley said as he puffed his way up.

  "There's an elevator leading from the kitchen to his suite."

  "Well, why didn't we take the elevator?" Gilley complained.

  "It takes forever and makes a horrible racket." Just as Steven finished we heard it for ourselves, as a loud clanging noise came from a room at the end of the hallway on the second floor.

  We ran to the room just as the elevator doors closed. "Come on; it's headed back to the kitchen!" Steven said, and raced back out of the room. We chased after him at full tilt down the stairs as we tried to beat the elevator. As we ran we could still faintly hear the racket of the elevator as it groaned down. Panting fiercely, we reached the landing and ran back to the kitchen just as the elevator came to a stop.

  Steven halted in front of the elevator, holding an arm out across my stomach in a protective motion. Gilley came up on his other side and we braced ourselves as the doors slowly opened.

  Chapter 6

  With a terrific groaning sound the twin doors separated while I prepared myself for battle against any nasty poltergeist. As the opening became larger my eyes darted about the interior, looking for anything that could jump out at us, but when the doors finally stopped moving we all stared at an empty interior. Gilley blew out the breath he'd been holding, "Ohmigod! That is so weird!"

  Steven stepped forward into the elevator. I saw him shiver and asked, "What?"

  "It is like ice in here," he said, and turned in a circle with his arms outstretched.

  Gilley whipped a digital thermometer out of his back pocket and turned it on. He extended his arm into the elevator and read the gauge. "He's right," he said, moving the thermometer in and out of the elevator. "Fifty-two degrees inside the boxcar," he announced, then took two steps back and reset the gauge. "And seventy-four out here. Definite poltergeist activity," he said, setting his jaw.

  "We can't assume anything yet, Gil," I cautioned, and just as I said this I saw Steven wobble a little inside the elevator. "Steven?" I asked, stepping toward him. I watched as his eyes rolled back slightly in his head and he took an unsteady step back against the boxcar. "Shit!" I swore, and rushed to his side, catching him around the waist as his knees buckled and the icy cold hit me.
>
  "I feel weird," Steven said weakly, and put his hand to his head.

  "Help me!" I said to Gilley. "We need to get him outside, now!"

  "What's happening to him?" Gilley asked as he ran to the other side of Steven and we began to move him out of the elevator.

  "He's absorbing too much energy—he could black out any second if we're not quick!" I yelled.

  We managed to get Steven outside, which was no mean feat, since the man was substantially taller than both of us. Once out on the lawn we eased him down to a sitting position, and I quickly straddled his legs and grabbed his head, which seemed to be bobbing around on his shoulders. "Steven!" I commanded in a stern voice as I looked into his unfocused eyes. "Listen to me! You've absorbed some of the energy in the elevator. You need to listen to my voice and mentally come to it. Do you understand?"

  "Mmm . . . uhmmm . . . mmmm?" Steven mumbled incoherently.

  "What's wrong with him?" Gilley asked me in a high-pitched voice.

  "I think that was his grandfather in the elevator, and I think he just came in from the mist. Steven's absorbed some of that residual energy, and he's feeling really spacey right now. In a minute he'll either lose consciousness or come back to us and start to feel nauseous."

  Gilley edged back ever so slightly. "What do we do?"

  "Try to talk him back. Buddy, can you get me some water from inside?"

  "You want me to go back in there … alone?" he asked me, his voice still squeaky.

  "Damn it, Gil! Get me some friggin' water!" I snapped impatiently.

  "Okay, okay," Gil said, and jumped up to head toward the house.

  I continued to hold Steven's head in my hands as I talked to him. "Steven," I said, "you must hear me. I need for you to mentally come forward to my voice. Think about the words that I'm saying. Try to make sense of them. I need you to feel the sunshine over your head and the ground you're sitting on. Here," I said, taking one hand off his face to place his palm on the ground. "Do you feel the texture of the grass? Can you smell the flowers close by? Really try to sense those things for me, okay?" Steven mumbled again, but after a few blinks I could see his eyes begin to focus. "That's it," I said. "You're doing great. There's a breeze. Can you feel that? And there are birds; do you hear them?"

  Steven gave me a tiny nod.

  "Good job; you're doing great. Just keep focusing on my voice, and feel everything around you."

  "Here's the water," Gil said quietly from my side.

  "Thanks, honey," I said softly to him, feeling bad about snapping.

  "What else can I do?"

  "He's coming back on his own, but it won't hurt to rub his hands and feet."

  "I'm on it," Gil said, and quickly moved to take off Steven's shoes.

  A few minutes later Steven seemed to be just about back to normal. "That was terrible," he said, holding his stomach. "I feel awful."

  "Give it a little time yet," I coaxed. "The nausea will pass in a minute."

  "What happened to me?"

  "The elevator probably contained a great deal of your grandfather's energy. It's a small, confined space that can fill up quickly. So when you went rushing in there you absorbed a lot of it, and your grandfather had just come in from the mist, or that middle plane. So when you soaked up that energy you would have felt like you, yourself, were going to' that plane."

  Steven looked at Gil. "I must be woozy—I can't understand a thing she's saying."

  "You're not alone," Gil said with a wink to me.

  "In other words, Steven, you probably felt like you were fading right out of your body," I clarified.

  Steven nodded. "Yes," he said. "That is a very good way to say what I felt. It was like a balloon. I was feeling like a balloon drifting away."

  "Exactly. Now try to take a sip of the water."

  He did and then looked down at his feet, where my partner was giving him one hell of a foot massage. "Gilley," he said with a slight wave. "That is feeling very good, but I think you can stop now."

  Gil flushed slightly. "Just doing my duty," he said with a smile.

  "I feel better," Steven said after another minute. "The sickness has passed. Why did I feel that?"

  "No one really knows for sure. But a lot of people who have your experience often feel sick to their stomachs for a short period afterward."

  "Will this happen to me again?" Steven asked.

  "There's a trick that you can do the moment you feel that frosty, in-your-bones cold. Just imagine that your legs are like the trunk of a giant tree and that your roots go deeply into the ground. The term is called 'grounding,' and it works very well for keeping you firmly in your body."

  "I shall do this from now on," Steven said, and took another sip of water.

  "Can you stand?" I asked.

  "Yes," Steven said, getting to his feet. "I actually feel fine now."

  "Great, but I still think you should take it easy for a little while." I looked over at Gilley and said, "Come on, Gil. We've been off protocol since we started this thing. Let's get the rest of the TVs into the wine cellar and get to the baseline ASAP."

  For the next half hour Gil and I focused on moving the televisions into the wine cellar as Steven looked on. I worried as we took a very large flat-screen down the stairs that there wouldn't be enough room, but as we came down the steps I could see it was a much bigger space than I'd anticipated. "Wow," I said as we set the television down against a back wall. "This is huge."

  "My grandfather loved fine wine," Steven said, following us down. "In his later years, some of his medications prevented him from drinking any, so he gave much of his collection away to his good friends."

  I walked over to a rack that still held a few bottles. "I see he kept the best for himself."

  "Actually, those are wines from Argentina and Germany. My grandfather liked me to feel at home when I visited."

  "Ah," I said, and set the bottle down, looked off to my right, and noticed three steps down leading to a closed door. "Where does that go?" I asked.

  Steven came over to my side. "I don't know," he mused. "I think it leads to more storage."

  "Oh, my aching back," Gilley whined behind us. "How many more of these things are there?"

  "Three," Steven said, turning away from the door and heading up the stairs. "And only two are as heavy as that one."

  "Remind me next time to stay home and do paperwork," Gilley grumbled, and followed after Steven.

  I stayed behind for a moment, gazing at the door. I suddenly felt as if I were missing something.

  "M.J.?" Gilley called from the kitchen.

  "Coming!" I said, and turned away from the door. I'd worry about it after the baseline.

  It took us the rest of the day to get the baseline test done. We broke for a quick lunch of canned soup, then went back to work, mapping out each room and taking measurements. For all my protests at having Steven along, I was actually grateful for a distraction from my constantly complaining partner. Gilley definitely wasn't cut out for this kind of job. He was used to sitting in his van and jotting down the measurements I called out to him over the walkie-talkie. Our baselines usually took an hour or two, due to the normal-sized houses we worked on.

  By contrast, the Sable lodge, or "the Manse," as Gil had come to call it, held thirty-seven rooms not including the cellar. Dusk was beginning to settle as we finished up on the third floor. Wanting to concentrate solely on the baseline, I had avoided opening my energy to any tugs, pushes, pulls, or thumps, though I'd certainly been jerked around in several rooms. Andrew's bedroom was the strongest, along with one of the guest bedrooms, but I'd also felt a few tickles in the solarium and the library.

  "That's everything," Gilley said, finishing the last measurement. "Can we go eat now?"

  "I think we must," Steven said to him. "By the number of times you've asked about food, you may need a shot of insulin if we don't feed you soon."

  "I happen to be hypoglycemic," Gilley said defensively.

  "
Should we eat here?" I asked.

  "No, we should not. There is a wonderful place in town that I'm quite fond of. Is it all right to leave the equipment here, or should we pack it?"

  "Let's leave it. I can haul in two of the monitors from the van to record any weird activity while we're at dinner." As if on cue, the lights in the room flickered on.

  "Whoa," Gil said, as we all looked at the light fixture over our heads. "Come on," he said, tucking a pencil behind his ear. "Let's get the monitors hooked up before we miss anything."

  We had the monitors moved inside and the DVR set to record about twenty minutes later, just as the last threads of dusk were coating the sky with shades of purple. Gilley and I got in the van, and Steven came to my window before getting in his Aston. "Will you need to check on your bird before we go to the restaurant?"

  I smiled at his thoughtfulness. "No, thank you. Doc's got plenty of food and water, and I put him in front of a window, so he should have plenty to look at. He's fast asleep by now, anyway."

  "Okay, then, just follow me."

  We drove behind him back through town to the west side, opposite Helen's B and B, and pulled into a driveway at Annie's Steakhouse. Gilley parked, and we got out to catch up with Steven. On the way we passed a gray sedan that looked very familiar, and I paused briefly in front of it. "What's up?" Gil said, looking back at me.

  "I could have sworn this was the car that passed us on the way up here today."

  "The one you thought was trailing Steven?" Gilley said, coming back to take a look.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Well, that makes sense," Gil said. "See the rim of the license plate? Uphamshire Motors. It's a local car."

  "Ah," I said with a nod. "That explains it. Come on, then; let's get some grub." We met Steven at the front door, and I was surprised that there was a line waiting to get in. "Wait here," Steven said, and slipped inside. He returned a moment later and gave us each a wink. "Shouldn't be long," he said confidently.