What a Ghoul Wants

  “Did you hear that?” the constable said, drawing my attention back to him.

  “What?” I asked, unsure what specifically he’d heard.

  The constable paused his rowing and looked in the same direction where the splash had come from. “It sounded like someone just fell into the water,” he said. Then his eyes swiveled to me. “You didn’t see anything over there, did you?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to alarm the kind man, and even if I’d told him what I’d seen, there wasn’t anything he could do to help Mr. Lefebvre now.

  After another search of the water with his eyes, the constable got back to rowing. “This castle has always given me the willies,” he muttered.

  When we made it to the shore, I barely waited for the constable to secure the boat before I was out of it and scrambling up the bank to the bridge, where a very tall ladder was angled against the stone. I eyed it a bit warily until Bancroft came up beside me and promised to hold it steady.

  “How will I get down once I make it up there?” I asked him.

  He pointed his flashlight up the stone. “There’s a watchtower with a set of stairs leading down into the courtyard. Just climb through the open window and you’ll be able to find your way from there.”

  I thanked him and got to the task at hand. I made it over to the other side within just a few minutes.

  John greeted me as I was coming up the walkway to the front steps. After giving me a brotherly hug, he said, “There’s a lot of yelling going on in there.”

  I eyed him quizzically until I picked up the faint sound of raised voices coming through the thick wooden front door. “Who’s upset now?”

  “One of the other guests. First, he was ticked off that someone was yelling loud enough at three in the morning to wake him—”

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess—Gilley?”

  “Yep. Gil’s been doing a lot of shrieking since you headed over to the south wing.”

  I sighed wearily. “Is Mr. Crunn kicking us out?”

  John actually laughed. “Nope. The opposite. He’s suggesting that the guy find other accommodations more to his liking. They’re arguing about it right now actually.”

  I rubbed my eyes tiredly. Man, was I beat. “I have a feeling I know who the guy is.”

  “He’s a total douche bag,” John commented as we both turned to the door.

  When John opened it, the full volume of the man in the main hall yelling at poor Mr. Crunn came to my ears and I winced. “Jesus,” I said, nudging John in the side. The ghastly man had worked himself up into a frenzy, yelling so loud his complexion was crimson, and he was pointing his finger straight into Mr. Crunn’s face. “I’ll sue!” he bellowed. “I’ll sue you lot for the full cost of our holiday and pain and suffering and I don’t give a blast who owns this old pile of rubble, even if it’s owned by the bloody queen!”

  “Mr. Hollingsworth, please!” cried Mr. Crunn. “It is hardly conceivable that we would be responsible for such unfortunate happenings as these! And while I am quite sorry that your stay with us has been made unpleasant by recent events, I can hardly compensate you over and above the cost of your stay here, especially as you and your wife have suffered no other ill effect other than to have had your sleep interrupted this morning.”

  “No other ill effect?!” Hollingsworth bellowed. “What about the emotional toll? Here we are, on holiday in this musty old place, which you lot have overpriced, I might add, and we’re not here but a day when there’s not one but two deaths on your doorstep! Not to mention Mrs. Hollingsworth and I couldn’t leave if we wanted to! Mechanical failure to the drawbridge, my aunt Petunia! The emotional toll on my wife alone has been enough to warrant a sizable contribution from this establishment!” In the corner I saw his poor wife cringe as her husband’s beady eyes flashed to her.

  “Mr. Hollings—”

  “Plus room and board! Plus a bit extra for petrol to see us back home! Now loosen those purse strings, Mr. Crunn, or I’ll sue, I will!”

  “Hey, hey, hey!” I snapped, moving forward quickly to the two men. “That’s enough!”

  “Mind your own bloody business!” Hollingsworth yelled at me.

  “When you yell loud enough to wake the dead, pal, it becomes my business!” I meant that quite literally too.

  Hollingsworth stepped forward threateningly and John shot to my side like a rocket. “The lady said to chill out, buddy,” John said, holding himself to his full height, and he was at least three inches taller than Hollingsworth. For good measure, John even poked the belligerent man in the chest. “Now get back upstairs and stop causing a scene, or you and I are gonna have a problem.”

  Hollingsworth’s eyes appeared to welcome the challenge. He snarled menacingly and pushed up the cuffs of his bathrobe, and that’s when Michel stepped forward and aligned himself with John. “Don’t even think about it, bloke,” he said levelly.

  Next to me, Gilley also sidled up, crossing his arms over his puffed-up chest like he was Dwayne Johnson.

  With the four of us squaring off against him, Hollingsworth didn’t have much choice but to back off. He gave us all a really dirty look before stalking away with threats to ring up his solicitor and sue our pants off. We waited until he’d disappeared up the stairs to relax our stance. “I hate that guy,” I muttered.

  “Maybe we should feed him to the Grim Widow,” John said.

  I smiled wickedly at the thought, but then I remembered his wife and my eyes sought her out, hoping she hadn’t heard. By the horrified expression on her face, she had. “Aw, crap,” I muttered. “Ma’am,” I said, moving over toward her, “I’m really sorry. That wasn’t very nice of us.”

  She said nothing. Instead she ducked her chin and hurried off down an adjoining hallway. I noticed she didn’t go up to her room to join her husband, which I thought was smart. In the state of rage he was in, she’d be a fool to be locked in the same room with him. Of course, I probably already thought her a little bit of a fool for staying with him in the first place.

  “I’m dreadfully sorry to have dragged you into that,” Mr. Crunn said, pulling my attention back.

  “It’s not your fault, Mr. Crunn,” I assured him. The sweet old man looked as exhausted as I felt. “I think you should turn in, sir.”

  But the old man shook his head. “I can’t, Miss Holliday. The police may need something from me, and I have poor Mrs. Lefebvre’s tea to prepare.”

  “The police probably don’t need you for a little while yet, Mr. Crunn. Why don’t you see if you can catch at least a little bit of sleep until then, and we’ll go prepare the tea for Mrs. Lefebvre, okay?”

  Crunn looked ready to drop, and he sighed gratefully. “Thank you, Miss Holliday,” he said. “The kettle is in the kitchen on the stove and the tea is on the shelf above it. There are several tea service trays already set out for breakfast. Mrs. Lefebvre is in room two twenty-seven. It’s down the hall on the left from your room.”

  I waited for Crunn to move off before I motioned for the boys to follow me. I wanted to tell them about what I’d learned from the constable. They were full of questions that I couldn’t answer, and now that the adrenaline from confronting Hollingsworth had worn off, I was finding my thoughts becoming muddled again. And when Gil demanded his sweatshirt back, I didn’t have the energy to fight him, so I shrugged out of it and gave it over.

  Once the tea service was prepared, I handed off the duty of taking it up to Mrs. Lefebvre to Gil. My ever supportive (insert sarcasm here) BFF almost said no until Michel said he’d be glad to go with him, and then Gil’s sullen mood turned downright perky. I didn’t think Michel would return Gil’s obvious affection for him, but that was an issue best dealt with later, after I’d had some solid sleep. As Gil and Michel left to take the tea service upstairs, I put a hand on
John’s shoulder and said, “I’m going to bed. Wake me in six hours. Once Heath gets back, the crew has a lot to discuss.” I then headed straight upstairs to bed, and was asleep almost before my head hit the pillow.

  John didn’t wake me in six hours. Or eight. Or even ten. He left me alone for nearly eleven solid hours, so when I woke on my own at four p.m., I was much better rested, but seriously out of sorts.

  Emerging from my room, I was about to go in search of someone from the crew when I found John coming up the stairs. “I was about to come get you,” he said.

  “Is it really four o’clock?”

  “Yep. Teatime. You hungry?”

  My stomach growled loudly. “Apparently so.”

  “Come on. Heath’s downstairs. He’s been waiting for you to get up and I had to threaten bodily harm when he said he wanted to wake you.”

  I was a little miffed that I’d missed my sweetheart’s return from the hospital. “I told you to wake me at eleven a.m.”

  John offered me a sideways smile. “One thing I know about you and Heath is that you are the two most sleep-deprived people on this crew. Whether you agree with me or not, you needed some rest, M. J.”

  After a moment I put a hand on his arm. “You’re right, guy. Sorry I snapped at you.”

  “You didn’t snap,” he said, allowing me to go first down the stairs. “It’s all good.”

  We reached the landing and began to make our way toward the left to a hallway that I had yet to explore. As we neared the entrance, however, a strong arm snaked around my middle and I was pulled backward into someone else. “Hey, babe,” Heath whispered into my ear. “I missed you.”

  I turned and flung my arms around him. He was warm and strong, and his breath felt wonderful against the crook of my neck. “God, it’s good to hug you!” I whispered.

  He squeezed me tight, pulled back, and gave me a sweet kiss. “Me too.”

  “Oh, are they at it again?”

  I turned my head to see Gilley standing behind us with his hands on his hips and an annoyed look on his face. I couldn’t help but also take in the enormous sweatshirt draped over most of Gil’s body. It was puffy and bumpy—no doubt filled with fresh magnets—and it made him look like the Michelin Man.

  “Aw, cut ’em some slack, Gil,” John said. I had to hand it to our sound tech. He was seriously turning out to be one good egg in my book.

  Behind Gil I saw someone else wave and realized it was Michel. I waved back and then my stomach gave another loud rumble and Heath laughed. “We should get you something to eat,” he said, taking my hand and leading me into the hallway. I glanced behind me and saw that Gilley, Michel, and John had fallen into step behind us.

  We emerged into a large dining hall with a currant-colored carpet, round tables draped in crimson tablecloths, and burgundy curtains along the windows. At one of the larger tables sat the rest of the Ghoul Getters crew, in the middle of a heavy discussion by the look of it.

  As the four of us approached, they all looked up and their happy expressions at the sight of me made me feel really good inside. “Hey, guys,” I said as Heath pulled out a chair for me.

  “How’re you feeling?” Meg asked right away.

  “I’m good.” My eye fell on the basket of baked goods in the center of the table and I added, “Just hungry.”

  Kim pushed the basket toward me, while Heath waved to an elderly woman clearing a two-top. “Mary, can we please have another cup of tea?”

  “And two more for us too, please?” Gil added, pointing to himself and Michel. “Oh, and maybe another basket of those yummy pastries while you’re at it if you don’t mind?”

  The elderly woman seemed taken aback by so many requests, but recovered herself and with a nod hurried off to get us more tea and goodies for the table.

  I lifted a buttery scone out of the basket and decided not to wait for the tea. I was too famished. “I assume the drawbridge is back down again?” I asked after I’d swallowed the first delicious bite.

  “It is, but no one’s owning up to dismantling it in the first place,” Gilley said. “We think it was an inside job.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “He would’ve had to use a ladder to climb down from the watchtower on the other side, and then he’d have to get that ladder across the moat, haul it and a boat up out of the water, and disappear. Way too much work, if you ask me.”

  But I wasn’t so sure. “He could have easily come in through the side door that Crunn led us through when we first accompanied him to Merrick’s body.”

  Gil leaned in and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Crunn could have done it, you know.”

  I blinked. “Done what?”

  “Dismantled the drawbridge.”

  I scowled at him. “No, he couldn’t. He was in here with us, remember? I came across that drawbridge just a minute or two before entering the front hall last night and he was behind his counter while you guys were trying to figure out what to do about Gopher and the rest of the crew.”

  Gilley made a face. “Crap. I forgot about that. Okay, so it couldn’t have been Crunn.”

  “Thank you, Sherlock Holmes,” I deadpanned. “Plus, I don’t think anybody with intimate knowledge of that side entrance would ever brave it in the dead of night right after Heath was nearly drowned.”

  “So how did an outsider do it?” John asked. “And why?”

  Heath leaned forward to answer. “I took a good look at the rigging of the bridge on this side, and if someone dismantled the system, they’d still have three minutes to exit over the drawbridge before it was too high to get past. The thing takes forever to open and close.”

  “So you’re saying that somebody could have tampered with the mechanism and either run across the bridge and jumped, or gotten across by boat?” I asked.

  “Easily,” Heath said.

  John scratched his head. “But that still leaves the question of why. Why lock us in here?”

  “Maybe they weren’t locking us in,” I said. “Maybe they were locking Lefebvre out.” Several puzzled expressions eyed me across the table. “He was the only one killed last night, right?”

  Gilley shivered into the silence that followed. “This place gives me the weirds.”

  I didn’t pretend to look surprised, and instead turned to Heath. “I assume someone’s filled you in on my run-in with the Widow last night?”

  “I did,” John said, raising his hand. “And now that you’re here, we can finally vote.”

  Our beverages and pastries arrived just then and I thanked Mary, who looked very much like her brother, Mr. Crunn. I guessed her to be in her early seventies, but she was quite spry. “What are we voting on?” I asked when she’d left us again.

  “To stay or go,” Gil replied, glaring hard at Gopher. I had the feeling that I’d come to the table in the middle of a pretty good argument. “Gopher wants us to stay and shoot more footage, and some of those fools”—Gil paused to point across the table at Kim and Meg—“also want to stay.”

  Kim scowled at Gilley before turning pleading eyes on me. “My mom just lost her job, M. J., and she can’t make it on unemployment. I need this job!”

  “So do I,” Meg added quickly. “I’ve got student loans up the wazoo, and this gig was hard enough to find. If we quit, I’ll have to go back to waitressing at the IHOP.”

  I held up my hand and focused on Gilley. “You sent Chris the footage I took from last night, right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “The footage of the Widow when she first jumped out at you and all the other stuff too!”

  Exasperated, I turned next to Gopher. “How can Chris watch that and not think it’s good enough?”

  “Oh, he loved it,” Gopher said, tracing small circles
with his finger on the tablecloth.

  “Which is the problem,” Heath muttered.

  I picked up another scone and broke it in half to spread on some homemade butter. “I don’t know that I’m following what the heck the problem is. Any time one of you wants to make some sense, please clue me in.”

  “We knocked Chris out of the park with what you caught on film,” Gopher explained. “He wants to do a full-length movie.”

  I dropped my knife and stared in shock at my producer. “What?”

  Gopher opened his laptop and peered at his screen. “He says, and I quote, ‘That is the scariest shit I have ever seen!’”

  I offered him a level look. “He should try living through it.”

  Gopher smiled tightly. “Yeah, I know, and remind me to thank you for being such a trouper about trying to rescue us last night.”

  “I wouldn’t have had to, Gopher, if you’d at least left us a note or something.”

  Gopher pointed to John. “I told him we were going out on the moors!”

  “No, dude, you didn’t,” John said firmly. “You said you were going on a bust with or without me. You never said you were leaving the castle.”

  “Well, I’m not stupid enough to go into the south wing after what you guys went through when M. J. went back to retrieve her stuff, especially not after what happened to Heath! Seriously, do I look like an idiot?”

  Absolutely everyone at the table dropped their eyes or looked away.

  “Oh, thanks, you guys!” he growled. “The point is, we’ve got some really amazing footage, and Chris thinks it’s a serious winner, but we need more if we’re going to make a full-length feature out of it.”