The Ghoul Next Door

  “Doesn’t matter,” Heath told him, a slight shudder traveling through his shoulders. “You know that, Gil. Spooks aren’t aware of time. And evil spooks don’t care about anything but opportunity.”

  I played with my straw nervously. The thing Heath hadn’t mentioned was how risky my plan of taking him to Brook’s murder scene was. “I’ll be standing nearby with a vest just in case things get sticky,” I told him.

  “Thanks,” he said. “If you’re right, I may need it.”

  “We should have a code word or something,” I told him, suddenly thinking of the idea.

  “A code word? For what?”

  “If you start to sense that this thing is trying to take over your mind, you should say something like . . .” I paused, trying to think up a word.

  “How about, ‘Run for your life. You’re about to be murdered!’” Gil suggested.

  I leveled my gaze at him. “Not helping.”

  “How about something simple like . . .” Heath paused, trying to come up with one himself.

  “Not as easy as it sounds, huh?”

  “Oh, you two!” Gil said. “If you need a safe word, use mine: banana.”

  Heath and I both turned wide eyes on Gil.

  “What?” he said. “Michel and I use it all the time.”

  I made a face. “TMI, buddy. TMI.”

  Gil rolled his eyes dramatically. “Yes, and you two are pure as the driven snow.”

  I felt a blush touch my cheeks. “We’ll come up with something,” I said quietly to Heath, who was grinning at me. “Anyway, let’s get a move on. I want to find this spook and shut it down before it has a chance to use someone to kill again.”

  With that, we paid the bill and were on our way.

  After dropping Gilley off at the condo, Heath and I headed back to Commonwealth Avenue. I was really nervous the closer we got to Courtney’s place. I had a feeling it’d be a pretty bad idea to get caught sniffing around the crime scene for the second time that day. What if Souter thought we were trying to retrieve a key piece of evidence or something? I mean, I’ve watched enough crime shows to know that snooping around a crime scene is highly suspicious behavior.

  Just as I’d suspected, as we turned onto Comm Ave and started looking for a parking spot, Heath pointed ahead and said, “Guess we’re not going back there today.”

  A patrol car with a cop inside was parked right in front of Brook Astor’s murder scene. “Dammit!” I swore. Fishing out my cell, I called Gil. “We won’t be getting close to Brook’s murder scene today,” I told him.

  “Is the place swarming with cops?” he asked, probably guessing we’d encountered an official roadblock.

  “Not so much swarming as one guy in a patrol car, but, yeah, it’s a deterrent.”

  “Well, I have another lead you can scope out. I found Luke’s old address. Got a pen?”

  I rummaged around in my messenger bag and retrieved a small notepad and pen before I scribbled down the address. “Did you talk to the landlord?”

  “I have a call in to him,” Gil told me. “I’m hoping he calls me back in a bit. You guys head over there and sit tight until I hear back from him, okay?”

  I showed the slip of paper to Heath, who plugged it into his phone’s navigation app and said, “Thanks, Gil. It should take us about twenty minutes or so to get there.”

  We drove our way through Boston’s winding streets, and I could see Heath focusing hard on the navigation app on his phone. Boston’s roadways can be confusing even to the locals. I managed to point him in the right direction a couple of times when he almost took a wrong turn at a rotary, but eventually we found our way to a street called Stoughton, and about midway down we found Luke’s old home.

  Even from our spot across the street the place looked creepy. “Yikes,” Heath said as he put my car into park. “Why would anybody want to rent that place?”

  The exterior of the home was wooden shingles stained so dark they were almost black. The shutters were an ugly muddy color and the front door was once red, but was now faded to an ugly pink. The windows were coated in grime and probably full of drafts, while the lawn was still brown and scrubby, and some bushes along the front appeared to be hanging on to life by a thread. Nothing about the place was either inviting or appealing.

  “Maybe it was cheap,” I said, squinting at the place with distaste.

  “It’d have to be,” Heath said. “And even if it was free, I wouldn’t live there.”

  I knew what he meant. The house gave off a bad vibe. As Heath and I were waiting on Gil to call back, we saw a silver Honda pull up and park right in front of the house. About ten seconds later, a white pickup parked behind the Honda and the occupants of both vehicles got out together.

  Exiting the pickup was a reedy-looking man I put in his late sixties to early seventies. He had silver hair and nondescript features. The owner of the Honda was a woman I recognized. Immediately I scrunched down in my seat. “You know her?” Heath asked me, noticing right away that I was afraid of being spotted.

  “Yep. And you know her too.”

  Heath peered out the window. “Hey, isn’t that the reporter from the news?”

  “Kendra Knight,” I told him.

  “What’s she doing here?” Heath wondered, just as Kendra and the man from the pickup truck shook hands.

  “Don’t know,” I said, feeling nervous about how close we were to them. The last thing I needed was for Kendra to do another feature story on me. “Maybe she’s investigating Brook’s murder now.”

  Heath started the car and put a hand on my shoulder. “Duck down,” he said, easing the car out from the curb. “We’re a little too conspicuous here.”

  We drove around the block and cruised slowly back down the street, tucking in behind a minivan, which we hoped would block the view back to us from the house. Then we watched Kendra and the man in front of the house; it appeared she was interviewing him, as she had her notepad out and she was scribbling in it as the man talked and gestured toward the house. This went on for a good ten minutes until Kendra shook the man’s hand again and turned to go back to her car. I saw her head lift in our direction and Heath and I both ducked low in our seats, peeking up over the dash.

  I let out a breath when Kendra got into her car and drove off. Meanwhile the man appeared to have gotten a phone call because he was on his cell pacing in front of his truck.

  “Think that’s the landlord?” Heath asked me.

  I sat up a little straighter in my seat. “Could be.”

  “Only one way to find out,” he said, hopping out of the car before I had a chance to tell him to hold on. I followed and caught up to him just as he began waving at the man to catch his attention.

  I heard the guy on the phone say, “The rent’s twelve hundred a month. If you want to see it, you can come by now, but I got places to be, so I can’t wait for you too long.”

  It was then that I noticed on the other side of the truck he’d leaned a FOR RENT sign, which he clearly planned on putting in the front lawn.

  Heath waved again and the guy said, “Look, I got someone here who seems to be interested, so I gotta go. Come by or don’t. I’ll be here for fifteen minutes or so.”

  “Is this the place that’s for rent?” Heath said the second the guy hung up.

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Mind if we take a look?”

  “Don’t rent the place to couples,” he said. “Too much of a headache when they find out they can’t live together and both of them skip out on the rent.”

  I laughed like he’d just said something funny. “I’m his sister,” I told the man. “We’re not a couple.”

  I saw the guy’s eyes shift from me to Heath and back again. “You don’t look alike,” he said, clearly suspicious.

  “Stepbrother and -sister,” Heath said, thi
nking quick.

  The guy rolled his eyes a little but waved us toward the house. “Come on, then,” he said. “But make it quick. I got another guy coming over in about fifteen minutes.”

  My phone rang at that moment and after a quick glance at the caller ID I sent it to voice mail. Heath looked back at me and I mouthed, “Gilley.”

  I had no doubt that Gil had been the one to call the landlord as we approached and he was calling me to let me know we could meet the landlord.

  “I’m John,” Heath said when the guy began fumbling with his keys.

  “Ray,” the guy said by way of introduction.

  “Nice to meet you,” Heath told him.

  Ray didn’t reply; instead he simply unlocked the door and walked inside, holding it open for us. Heath went through first and I followed. We entered into a living room and Heath came up short, causing me to bump into him a little. I moved to the side instinctively, wondering why he’d stopped so abruptly, and looked up to see him slack-jawed.

  Immediately I focused on the room and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  “All this will be cleared out,” Ray said from behind us as he also moved to the side. I had a feeling he was mistaking our shock for simply not liking the furniture strewn about on the floor. “The last tenant was a piece of work,” he told us. “Tossed the place. Then he cut out on the rent.”

  I nodded but I was barely listening to him. The interior of the house was exactly like the one in my out-of-body nightmare from earlier. Even the chairs where Heath had tossed the creepy man who’d pinned me down were wrecked in exactly the same way. As if the whole thing had actually taken place. “What the hell?” I heard Heath whisper as he moved close to me and took up my hand.

  “It doesn’t look like much, but it cleans up okay,” Ray was saying, making small attempts to pick up a few sticks of furniture.

  I squeezed Heath’s hand. Just being in the exact same setting from my OBE was really unnerving. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Heath’s head turn from side to side, and I wondered if he was looking for the creepy dude who’d attacked me to appear in the flesh.

  “The rent’s twelve hundred a month,” Ray said, and I saw that he was watching us closely. I knew we were acting weird.

  Taking a deep breath, I let go of Heath’s hand and said, “Let’s look around.”

  He got the hint and we moved deeper into the house.

  It was a small place, probably only about seven hundred square feet. The living room was narrow and not very long. There was a sofa parked up against one wall, but no TV or other electronics were in evidence. I had a feeling maybe Ray had taken those out when it was clear Luke wasn’t coming back.

  The area with the toppled table and chairs was closer to the door, and it’d served as the dining room. Behind that was a doorway, which led to the kitchen. I moved there and looked around. The place had the feeling of violence in it, but I couldn’t pinpoint anything specific. It gave me the serious creeps too, and I couldn’t understand how anybody would want to live here.

  What I didn’t pick up—and was a little surprised not to—was any sense of a spook. The house had definitely seen spectral energy; there were remnants of it in the ether, but nothing that I could pinpoint specifically as a ghost in the room.

  Still, I walked through the kitchen to another door and flipped the switch. An overhead light came on, illuminating a bedroom, which looked like it’d been tossed by a professional robber. The bed had no linens, just the mattress, which was slightly askew. There was trash on the floor and all the drawers had been pulled out of the dresser.

  I stepped carefully around the mess to the closet, pulled there by my own intuition. The door opened with a squeak and I peered inside. It was a small closet, not much room for more than a few clothes, but most of what’d been on the wire hangers dangling from the bar had been removed, whether by Luke or Ray I couldn’t tell. I reached for the string to the overhead light and heard Heath call my name. I tugged on the string and the dingy walls of the closet lit up with graffiti. I felt my brow furrow as my eyes scanned the walls. Deadly Dan was here, read one blotch of black ink. Slayer Sy was here, read another. Butcher Bill was here, read another block, and a knife with dripping blood was drawn next to yet another name, Gut-you-Guy was here.

  My gaze darted around the closet, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up on end. Each autograph was distinct enough to have been drawn by a different hand. There were at least a half-dozen autographs, and the one that my gaze finally came to rest on was one that sent a cold shiver down my spine.

  “Heath!” I called, riveted by the walls of the closet.

  “Yeah?”

  “Come here, please!”

  I heard his footsteps come up behind me, his cowboy boots striking the wood floors, and for just a fraction of a moment I felt a terrible foreboding at his approach. I shoved that thought out of my head as his hand came to rest on the small of my back. “Look,” I told him.

  I watched him squint at the interior of the closet and take in all the names. Some with pictures of knives next to them, and others with a few added lines of macabre poetry.

  And then I pointed to the back wall, midway down, to where it read, Lethal Luke was here. . . .

  Chapter 9

  “Whoa,” Heath whispered right before I heard another set of footsteps coming toward the bedroom. Thinking fast, I snapped a photo of the inside of the closet with my phone and quickly shut the door. We turned around just as Ray came into the bedroom. He eyed us suspiciously again. “Seen enough?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Heath told him. “And I think I’ll keep looking.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “We should go,” I said, taking hold of Heath’s arm and moving toward the door. Ray shifted his stance and I was starting to get uncomfortable around him.

  “I would’ve cleared all this junk out before you moved in,” he said, waving his hand around at the clutter.

  Heath shrugged as we passed Ray by, and I was glad he didn’t try to offer more of an explanation.

  Still, the landlord kept right on our heels and I was never happier to get out into the sun again. Heath and I didn’t say a word as we left, not even a good-bye or a thank-you, which was probably pretty rude, but we both just wanted to get away from that place and talk about the closet.

  Heath took up my hand as we crossed the street and we heard Ray’s truck start up. We kept our eyes on the prize and at last reached the safety of my car. Heath undid the locks and I jumped in, already fiddling with my phone to pull up the image. Heath leaned in so we could both have a look and that’s when three loud raps on his window made both of us jump.

  A woman waved at us through the window. “Hi, M.J.,” she said, a Cheshire grin on her face.

  My breath caught. “Shit,” I muttered.

  “No comment?” Heath whispered to me.

  “Oh, come on!” Kendra Knight called to us. “Talk to me, M.J. Please?”

  I was tempted to have Heath drive off, but I doubted she’d let us get away. She seemed a bit on the tenacious side, as all good reporters are. I looked at Heath to see what he thought. “Your call,” he said to me. “Say the word and I can get us out of here before she can even make it back to her car.”

  I squeezed his hand. “You’re pretty awesome, you know?”

  He grinned at me. “I memorized the awesome-boyfriend handbook.”

  That made me chuckle. Kendra tapped on the window again. “I’m not gonna go away, you know,” she told us.

  I sighed. “Better roll down the window,” I told Heath, clicking my phone off and tucking it into my pocket.

  “We have no comment,” Heath said the second the window was down.

  Kendra frowned. “I understand you may not want to talk to me,” she began, and I could tell she had a pretty good argument lined up for
why we should reconsider. “But when I saw you two across from this house, I got curious, and I’m wondering if you’re starting to put two and two together as well.”

  Okay, she’d piqued my curiosity. “Two and two?” I asked.

  “I thought you weren’t commenting,” she said with a sly grin. I leveled a look at her and she added, “If I share what I know, you two have to share what you know.”

  “We can’t share anything,” I told her, thinking she was fishing for an inside scoop on the murder on Comm Ave. “But you may speak to my attorney if you’d like.”

  Kendra blinked. “Your attorney? Why’d you retain a lawyer?”

  It was my turn to blink. Was she playing coy? “You know why we did,” I said, telling it straight without giving her anything to quote me on.

  “No, I really don’t,” she insisted. Then she squinted at me. “Why are you here?”

  “Probably the same reason you’re here, Kendra, but just for kicks, how about you tell us why you came by, and if it’s the same reason, then we’ll tell you?”

  There was no way in hell it was going to be the same reason.

  Kendra seemed to think that over. At last she said, “I’m here because this house was the former residence of three men charged with the brutal stabbing and throat slashing of innocent young women: Dan Foster, who murdered Bethany Sullivan, and Guy Walker, who murdered a young woman named Amy Montgomery in the nineteen seventies, and also, as I discovered this morning, Luke Decker, who right now is being held on suspicion of murder in the brutal slaying of Brook Astor last night. I’m thinking three murderers sharing a former residence is a pretty big coincidence, and I’m here trying to find the connection between the three.”

  I was stunned to realize that the very ghost Heath had connected with earlier on Comm Ave was murdered by a man who’d lived in this house, and my mind flashed back to the closet and the names on the wall: Gut-you-Guy was here. . . .

  I was also stunned to hear that Dan Foster had once lived here too.

  “Now how about you tell me what you’re doing here and why you’ve retained an attorney.”