“But, Gil,” I said, already seeing a dozen problems with that. “How’re we supposed to boost their energy to escape the portal without making the Widow crazy strong?”
Gil nodded to Michel, who pulled out from underneath the table a tennis racket strung with what looked like piano wires. “Tennis, anyone?” he said merrily.
I leveled a dark look at Gilley. “Are you kidding me?”
Gil waved his hand with a flourish and said, “Show ’em what it can do, Michel!”
Michel pulled a handful of paper clips from his pocket and tossed them up into the air. He then swung the racket and we all ducked, covering our heads. I heard several small thwacks and waited another half second to lift my head, preparing to yell at both of them. To my surprise, Michel was holding the racket like a trophy and immediately I could see why. All the paper clips were stuck to the metal wires. “It’s magnetized?” I said.
“Yep,” Gil said proudly.
Next to me Heath began to chuckle, and he held out his hand for the racket, which Michel gave to him. “Nice work, Gil,” he said.
Gilley eyed Michel adoringly. “It was Michel’s idea.”
“Is there only one?” John asked.
Gil nodded. “We didn’t have time to make any more than that.”
Heath turned to me. “Should we wait until we can make more of these?”
“That’ll take time,” Gil said. “Those things aren’t as easy to string as you might think.”
“How’d you come up with this?” I asked. We’d stuck to our spikes for so long that I’d stopped thinking there was anything better.
“Well, at first we thought maybe a bat or a club would work,” Gil said, “but when John described how the Widow’s demon could break itself up into small parts, I thought a racket might be better. You could have yourself a nice Whac-a-Mole party with it! Every time the Widow or her demon comes at you, just whack ’em, and whack ’em hard. They’ll begin to weaken soon enough. I figure the demon will tire out first and he should go back through the portal, leaving the Widow without her power source. You’ll need to keep after her until she’s so weak that she goes back through the portal too, and once you accomplish that, just start yelling to the prisoners—you have their names, right?”
Gil had given me the list of known names of the nine men drowned in Kidwellah’s moat. The reason the list was only nine names long was that we didn’t think that the men the Widow had drowned when she was alive were in the portal with her, because she wouldn’t have had the ability to capture their souls while she was alive. “Got it right here,” I said, pulling the list from my own pocket.
“Good,” he said. “Call them one by one and tell them to come to the top of the portal. Then point the Super Spooker at them and hope it gives them enough energy to break free.”
Heath sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his long black hair. “This is seriously dangerous,” he said. “Are you sure about this, Em?”
“No,” I said with a halfhearted laugh. “But what choice do we have? I mean, we can’t just leave them to spend eternity with the Widow. And what about Clarence? Doesn’t the inspector deserve to have his father’s remains back? As long as the Widow remains on the loose, he’ll never be able to retrieve those remains and get closure.”
Across the table Gopher had been sitting silent—unusual for him—while he played with the thick bandages covering his hand. “You don’t have to do it,” he said, and we all turned to look at him.
“What did you say?” I wanted to be sure I’d heard him correctly.
Gopher cleared his throat and lifted his chin. “We have enough footage. If it’s too dangerous, we can just walk away, and tell the audience that the Widow still haunts this castle.”
“Not!” I said, and Gopher looked back at me in surprise. “Dude, the minute we say something like that, you know some dumb amateur ghost hunter is gonna come across the Atlantic and go on a hunt for the Widow and they’ll not likely live through the encounter. And you know what? That guy will be followed by a dozen more after him.”
“Then we could lie,” Heath suggested. “We could say something like the Widow was imprisoned in her portal and will never haunt the castle again.”
I shook my head. “You’ll still get the same group of amateur ghostbusters checking out Kidwellah to see if that’s true. Naw, I’m afraid we’ve opened up this can of worms, and we’ve either gotta put the lid on or scrap the film altogether.”
All eyes turned to Gopher, who squirmed in his seat. “Chris would never go for scrapping the film.”
“That’s what I thought,” I said. “So it’s settled. We’re definitely taking on the Widow. Tonight. But we’re not taking a full crew with us. That’s too many people for Heath and me to worry about, so we’ll take volunteers, but before I open it up to that option, let me just say right up front, Meg and Kim, you’re out. You stay here, wear your vests, and keep Gil safe. Understood?”
The girls looked immensely relieved and they both pumped their heads up and down like a couple of bobbleheads.
I motioned to the boys. “You may volunteer at will.”
Michel immediately raised his hand and Gilley tried to get him to lower it, but the photographer was insistent. I winked knowingly at Heath. Gil was so cute when he was enamored. “Michel volunteers,” I said, just to irk Gil. It worked. He glared hard at me.
“I’m in,” John said, and I couldn’t help but notice the way that Kim bit her lip and barely held back from reaching out to touch John. I had a feeling their little romance wasn’t quite as over as they both pretended.
“Thanks, John,” I said. “Anyone else?”
Gopher sighed. “Yeah, I’ll go,” he said.
I grinned. “Sorry, pal. You’re going to have to sit this one out.”
“Why?” he asked, clearly insulted.
I pointed to his hand. “No way am I taking someone with an injury like that along. You can stay behind, but you’re not allowed to pester me on the headset, got it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, but I could tell he was relieved.
“I’m in,” said a voice from behind me, and I turned to see Inspector Lumley standing in the doorway of the dining hall.
“We didn’t expect to see you here,” I told him as he came forward and took a seat. He looked like he’d been up all night.
“I just came from my office,” he admitted. “I knew you’d be taking on the Widow tonight and I wanted to help in any way I can.”
I eyed Heath and he nodded. “Okay,” I said. “You’re in. If anyone can get your brother to come out of that portal, it’ll be you. But you’re going to need to get some sleep before we set out—at least a couple of hours. I’m not taking some sleep-deprived, punch-drunk man along on a hunt this dangerous.”
“No problem at all,” he assured me. “What time are we setting off?”
“Midnight,” I told him. “If you leave after the meeting and go right to bed, you should have at least seven hours to recuperate.”
“Which access point are we going to take?” Heath asked, reaching for Gilley’s iPad to pull up the blueprints of the castle.
That was the hardest decision we were going to have to make. If we picked the wrong location to strike an attack on the Widow, then we could pay for it with our lives. I studied the map of the castle and finally made up my mind. “There,” I said, pointing to the entrance from the kitchen. “We’ll go in there and take the Widow and her demon on in the large main hall of the south wing.”
“But that’s not near her portal,” John said. “I mean, if we’re guessing that her portal is in that secret passageway I opened on the second floor.”
“Oh, I’m positive it’s there,” I assured him. “But if we can make it to the main hall, we??
?ll have a lot of room to fight her and wear her out. We’ll be covered in magnets, and there won’t be any water or narrow hallways around. If we get into trouble, we can always jump out the door to that little patch of rock I landed on.”
“Isn’t that a ten-foot drop?” Heath said, like he really didn’t like that idea.
“Beats getting tackled by the Widow,” I replied.
“Good point.”
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to draw the Widow and her demon out into the open one at a time, and the four of us,” I said, pointing to myself, John, Michel, and the inspector in turn, “can all box her in while Heath pounds on her with the racket and weakens her to the point that she retreats.”
“Then what?” Gil asked when I’d stopped to think through the plan.
“Well, then we’ll have to head upstairs and try to push her into the portal, while getting the others out.”
No one at the table looked like they thought that was a very good plan, but I’d thought it through for hours and hours, and any way you sliced it, it was a very dangerous mission that would call for a lot of improvisation and could go horribly wrong in a dozen different ways.
“Okay,” Heath said at last while he stood up to effectively end the meeting. “We meet back here at eleven thirty to go over the plan one last time and gear up. Until then, let’s all try to get some shut-eye.”
Chapter 15
I woke up at ten o’clock, anxious and fidgety. Heath was still asleep, so I spent the next hour lying awake, staring at the ceiling. At last I heard him say, “How long you been up?”
“A little while.”
He pushed himself onto his elbows and considered me blearily. “I know what’ll take your mind off things.”
I pushed him playfully and said, “No way, buddy. No time for hanky-panky. We need to be downstairs in twenty minutes.”
“I could work with that,” he said, wrapping his arms around me to pull me underneath him for a kiss.
I indulged him for only that, then wriggled out from underneath. “Come on. We’ve gotta get moving.”
We were the first ones into the war room, or at least I thought until I heard someone giggle from the kitchen. I poked my head through the doorway only to pull it back immediately. Heath looked at me curiously as I walked quickly away. “Gil and Michel,” I whispered.
“So?”
“They’re having. . . er. . . a moment.”
“Ahh,” Heath said with a light laugh. “Good for Gil. Have you noticed how much more cooperative he’s been lately?”
“Yes. And I’m praying that it continues. Gil tends to run through the boys, so we’ll see how long this lasts.”
About eleven twenty the others began to make their way into the dining hall. The inspector showed up first, and he looked very handsome out of his dress shirt and blazer. Tonight he wore a white long-sleeved polo and dark jeans, and I could tell the few hours’ rest had done him some good, although there was still a hard edge to his eyes, something that he’d developed the minute I’d suggested his mother may have had a hand in his father’s murder.
Meg arrived and got to work making us some hot tea, and Kim and John came in together. Something the rest of us pretended not to notice. Gil and Michel came out of the kitchen when Meg went in, and I noticed that Gilley’s shirt was on inside out. No one said anything, but we all noticed and snuck secret smirks at one another, which I thought was funniest of all.
At last Gopher arrived, and he took up a seat next to Gil. “Dude, did you get dressed in the dark?” he asked, pulling on Gil’s shirt.
Gilley looked down at himself and turned bright red. Both he and Michel blushed down to their toes. “Oops,” Gil said, after clearing his throat. He quickly turned his back to us and turned his shirt the right way out.
The attack team then geared up, donned headsets, and made our way over to the entrance to the south wing via the kitchen. It took us only moments to move the shelving aside again and we all squatted down in front of the door. “I’ll lead the way,” I told the boys, but Heath shook his head and held up the racket.
“I’m on point, Em. You navigate me from behind, okay?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Nope.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. After you, pal.”
Heath crawled forward to the front of the line and I tucked in right behind him. We moved through the door and I whispered, “Do your best to hold on to your nerves until we get to the main hall, fellas. Spooks are attracted to fear, so stay calm.”
My words were much easier said than done, I knew, but nobody complained and we all moved forward through the door and stood up again. Then we continued down the hallway, creeping along on tiptoe as we slowly inched our way forward. We instinctively paused at every creak, moan, and groan coming from the old castle.
Faintly I could hear the sound of a door slamming intermittently. I thought it might be the very door I jumped through the last time the Widow had me cornered. Heath stopped to listen every time it slammed, and finally I leaned in and said, “That’s normal. There’s a door leading to the outside that slams with the wind.”
He nodded and we moved a bit faster after that. At last we came to the end of the corridor, and I motioned to the right in the direction of the central hall. I had a hand on Heath’s shoulder, and I could feel the tension radiating through him. He’d never admit that he was scared, but I knew that his near drowning by the Widow had to be setting him on edge.
The hallway we were in was short and it emptied out into the large central hall. Heath paused and held up his camera, turning the viewfinder so that we could all see the area illuminated. When I looked through it, my breath caught. I hadn’t realized when I’d been in here the first time that the walls were practically oozing with spectral energy. They were slimed with ectoplasm—a sort of oozy substance that some spooks leave behind when they walk through something solid, like a wall.
But this was ectoplasm on a scale I’d never seen before. Great dark swaths of it coated every wall both up and down, and I shivered because I had a feeling that this particular ectoplasmic mess wasn’t created by the Widow, but by her demon.
“You actually spent time in here?” Heath whispered to me.
“I didn’t know it looked like this,” I told him, still in frightful awe of the scope and size of the slime.
“What is that?” the inspector asked from behind me.
“It’s ectoplasm,” I said. “And I think we should be careful to stay away from the walls, guys.”
I wanted to move forward again, but Heath wasn’t budging. He just kept sweeping the camera up and down the walls. I could feel the tension running through him kick up a notch, and I knew that he had to be struggling internally. I gave him a minute and then I saw him square his shoulders and step forward into the main hall.
As we entered, we fanned out to walk side by side, everyone’s eyes roving the walls and hallways to the left and right to make sure nothing was sneaking up on us. “Should we head upstairs?” John asked.
I looked over at him and saw that he was looking a little pale and clammy. “You okay?” I asked. I hoped he wasn’t going to freak out again and take off running. That would spell disaster for both him and us.
“Yeah,” he said, but he hardly sounded confident.
“Do you want me to carry that?” I asked, pointing to Gilley’s Super Spooker.
He shook his head and I put a reassuring hand on his arm. “Hang in there, buddy. We’ll get through this.”
Michel was also trembling and looking scared, while the inspector was faring only slightly better, or at least he hid his fear better. I had a feeling the vibe in this place was doing its number on everybody. I motioned to Heath to head to the stairs. We needed to get on wi
th this or get the hell out of here.
As we were making our way over to the stairs, the door I’d leaped out of suddenly blew open with a loud bang.
We all jumped, but John actually shrieked. I clamped my hand over his mouth, but I had a sinking feeling that his outburst had given us away.
“Em!” Heath whispered.
I looked at him and saw that his chin was lifted in the direction of the upstairs landing. There, at the railing, was the Widow, levitating two feet off the ground as she smiled evilly down at us.
In my ear I heard Gilley shriek. It was the first I’d heard from him since entering the south wing, and I knew he was reacting to the appearance of the Widow.
Immediately Heath handed off the camera to me and stepped in front of me, holding up the magnetized racket threateningly. Michel and John also edged closer to me, which blocked my view of the Widow.
I tried to peer around Heath’s shoulders, but I was boxed in, and for several seconds I didn’t know what was happening. Then Gilley gave another shriek and shouted, “Michel! Look out!” And I knew Michel’s camera had picked up something.
An instant later Michel vanished from my side as he flew across the room to land in a heap on the floor. I realized belatedly that the demon had come up from the rear, and struck us from behind.
Heath whirled around as the demon—a big black mass of shadow with red glowing eyes—came around for the second attack.
“Hit it!” I shouted just as Heath swung hard with his racket. The demon and Heath’s racket connected, and Heath was knocked off his feet from the force of the blow, but oddly there was no sound. It simply connected, sent the demon tumbling backward, and in the explosion of energy, Heath fell back to the floor.
I tried to get to Heath to help him get up, but John was in my way again, and with the inspector behind me, John got to him first.