Yes, I had a nice tidy theory going when I began photographing the last corner of the room. I lifted my foot over a pile of stuffed animals and nearly stepped right onto a beautifully crafted Ouija board. For several seconds I simply stared at it. The board was coated in dust like everything else, but even through the layer of film, I could see the ornate hand-painted design.
It looked nothing like most Ouija boards out there, which were really quite simple creations with the words “Yes” and “No” and the letters of the alphabet and numbers one through ten painted crisply on their surfaces.
This board had all the letters and numbers on it, but surrounding those was a dazzling nature scene with beautiful flowers, plants, and even a pair of birds.
Resting in the center of the board was a gleaming silver planchette, cast in the shape of a heart and with a beautiful light purple crystal set in the tip of the heart, which was clear enough to read a letter or number underneath.
After realizing exactly what I was looking at, I studied the board with caution. I don’t like Ouija boards, and I personally think the major game manufacturer who peddles them should seriously reconsider giving children the opportunity to play with such a potentially dangerous and damaging thing.
A shiver traveled up my spine as I bent down to take a closer look. If someone had been playing with this board fifty years ago, I thought, it might explain why the house had taken on such sinister energy. Glancing over at Heath and Beau, I saw the deputy squatting down by the body, poking at the clothing on the skeleton with his pen. “Heath,” I said softly.
He glanced up from looking over Beau’s shoulder and gave me a questioning look.
“Come here,” I mouthed. I didn’t want to make Beau aware of the Ouija board yet. There was something about it being in here and out in the open that was unnerving me and I wanted Heath to take a look before I decided what to do about it.
“Whoa,” my sweetheart whispered the moment he saw what I was kneeling next to. He looked over his shoulder at the deputy, who was still poking around the body. Heath squatted down too. “You found this just like this?”
I nodded. “It could mean nothing,” I said. Plenty of children played with these things without a single thing happening; however, in some cases, the Ouija board was notorious for opening up avenues of communication to some of the lower realms, and every once in a while we’d hear about some poor kid who was in fact taken over by something evil after playing with a Ouija board.
If any parent knew the potential risk for that to happen, they’d never, ever let their kids within a hundred feet of the thing. “Do you think—,” Heath began, but then his breath caught as he stared at the board.
I looked at it too and could hardly believe my eyes.
The planchette was moving.
Heath and I both stood up together and took a step back, transfixed by the fact that the little silver plank was tracing small lines in the dust on the board all by itself.
And, given that Heath and I were wearing enough magnets to make that insanely difficult for any spook, I was totally stunned and petrified. Something big, bad, and terrible was working to communicate with us.
The planchette moved at a snail’s pace over toward the far end of the alphabet where the amethyst crystal hovered over the letter T. We waited for it to continue, but it didn’t and I felt a tiny wave of relief. Maybe that’s all it was, just a small burst of negative energy that allowed the planchette to swerve over to the letter T before it lost steam.
“T,” said Heath, and it was more of a question than a statement, but the second he said the letter out loud, the planchette began moving again.
My shoulders tensed. Whatever was moving the planchette hadn’t run out of steam at all. In fact, it was now moving at breakneck speed and Heath was sounding it out, the planchette making it easier for him as it paused at the end of every word. “The . . . Sand . . . man . . . has . . . come . . . back . . . to . . . play . . . kiddos.” I gripped his arm.
“M.J.? Heath?” we heard Beau say. “You guys okay?”
Neither of us answered. We just kept our eyes on the planchette, which kept moving.
Heath continued to sound out what it was saying. “Little . . . d . . . d . . . come . . . to . . . play?”
A terrible note of intuition burst into my mind and I knew the Sandman was referring to me, and not my mother.
“Guys?” Beau said.
I held up a hand to get him to stop talking, and Heath and I both focused on the planchette. “Sand . . . man . . . will . . . play . . . with . . . little . . . d . . . d . . . if . . . she . . . takes . . . off . . . her . . . coat,” Heath whispered, and then he stiffened and turned to look at me. “He means you!”
I nodded. Heath turned his gaze back to the board, and before I could stop him, he kicked the planchette with his boot and it skidded across the floor and under a bookshelf.
My attention went from Heath, to Beau—who was looking alarmed—to the bookshelf, then back to the board. “How did it connect me to my mom?” I asked Heath.
He gripped my arm, and he gave the crack under the bookshelf a furious glare. “Don’t know, but we’re leaving.”
Beau’s jaw dropped and he looked close to panic. “But I’m not done!”
Heath’s grip on my arm remained firm. “I don’t care,” he said. “I’m getting M.J. out of here, and if you’re smart, you’ll pack it up and head out with us.” And then he looked at me as if to see if I’d object, and I nodded to show him there was no way I wanted to stick around.
“Well, what the hell happened?” Beau asked, his voice going up an octave.
“I’ll explain outside,” Heath said, turning with me toward the door. But just as we took our first steps, a silver blur flew right at us and Heath and I both ducked just in the nick of time. A loud THUD sounded at the far wall and we glanced up from our crouched positions to see the planchette embedded in the wall.
From its position, I estimated that it’d missed Heath’s head by a fraction of an inch, and if it’d been moving fast enough to embed itself in the wall, I shuddered at the thought of the damage it might’ve caused him had it made contact with his head.
“On second thought,” Beau said, staring at the planchette, “maybe we should go.”
Heath and Beau paused long enough to each grab one end of the body bag containing Mike Scoffland before the three of us made haste out of the house. As we moved through the front door, we nearly bumped right into two additional deputies. “Beau,” said the first one up the steps with a nod to his comrade. “We came as soon as we could. There’s a hell of a mess on Eighty-four. And what’s this about Cook attacking Kogan?”
“I’ll explain later,” Beau said, still holding firm to Scoffland’s feet. And then he seemed to realize both the new deputies were taking in the scene—the three of us in our colorful fishing vests and a body bag slung between us. Their expressions went from confused to barely veiled humor.
“You headin’ to the lake after dropping that off at the morgue, Beau?” asked the first deputy. His name tag read WELLS.
Beau’s face reddened, but after he motioned to Heath to set Scoffland down, he made no move to take off the vest. “Shut it, Matt. I ain’t in the mood, and where the hell is the coroner?”
“Griswald has his hands full with that accident,” Wells said. “Three dead at the scene and another died en route.”
I felt a pang of sadness. That did sound like a bad accident.
“We hear there’s a second body?” the other deputy, whose name tag read CARTER, said.
“Yeah, but I’m not going back in there to get it, Roy,” Beau told him. This got him more funny looks from the newly arrived deputies.
“What’s going on, Beau?” Wells said in that way that suggested he was wondering if Beau had lost his marbles.
/> “It’s a long story, and I ain’t talkin’ ’bout it here.” Beau glanced nervously over his shoulder before he added, “Roy, Matt, help me get this guy in the trunk. I ain’t waitin’ for the coroner.”
Matt’s eyes bugged wide. “Beau, what the hell’s going on?” he demanded.
Suddenly the door behind us slammed shut so hard that the five of us jumped. For a moment there was silence, and then doors began to slam inside and all over the house. Wells and Carter looked toward the house and their faces drained of color, and they both put their hands on the guns at their side, ready to draw their weapons, but Beau had seen enough for one day to know there was no point in that and he grabbed Scoffland’s feet again and motioned to Heath with his head. “Let’s go!” he commanded.
Heath grabbed his end, and to help things along I took up the middle. Scoffland was heavy and we struggled with him over to Beau’s patrol car. “Beau!” Wells said above the noise echoing from inside the mansion. But the deputy ignored him and wriggled his keys out of his pocket while awkwardly holding Scoffland with one hand and his hip.
“Beau!” Wells yelled again just as the lid opened and we half rolled, half shoved Scoffland into it.
Beau brought the lid of the trunk down hard and motioned to the backseat of his patrol car. “Get in,” he told us, and it suddenly dawned on me that Gilley and our rental car were nowhere in sight. Neither Heath nor I was about to argue—we both wanted badly to get the hell out of there—and we hopped into the back of the car, leaving the other two deputies to stare in shock after us.
Beau got into the driver’s side, started the car, and pressed hard on the accelerator. The car bolted forward, spinning dirt and skidding slightly down the drive, but Beau didn’t slow down. In fact, right before hitting the road, he turned on his light box and siren.
We hauled ass to the county morgue and on the way I called Gilley and told him where to meet us.
“You want me to come to the morgue?”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” I said drily.
There was a prolonged silence on the other end while Gilley debated the merits of leaving Heath and me to find an alternate way home, I imagined. Finally he grumbled, “Okay. See you in five.”
Beau pulled up into the rear lot of the municipal building and we came to a stop outside two double doors, where, presumably, dead bodies were taken from the coroner’s van inside to be dealt with. Once Beau had thrown the car into park, he turned in his seat to stare at us for a few moments before he spoke. “Can either of you tell me what the hell this is all about?”
“Not yet,” Heath said honestly.
The deputy ran a trembling hand through his hair and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he’d seen that day. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
I sat forward. “You’re not.”
He raised his eyes to me, and they looked so haunted and pained that I reached up to put my fingers on the cage separating us. “You’re not,” I repeated firmly. “Beau, Heath and I have seen stuff like this before, and it’s not your imagination. Everything you saw and experienced today was real.”
He swallowed hard before he said, “But, Mary Jane, I don’t even believe in ghosts. How can any of this be real?”
I felt the corners of my mouth quirk. It must be really hard to remain skeptical in the face of what we’d all been through that afternoon. “I know it’s hard to believe, but the sooner you accept that what you saw today was real, the sooner you’ll be able to come to grips with it.”
Beau nodded; then he shook his head, and went back to nodding again. “I need a drink,” he confessed, and then he eyed me a little ruefully. “Too bad I gave up booze five years ago, huh?”
Heath and I both smiled at his attempt to lighten the mood. At that moment Gilley pulled up in the SUV. “Would you mind?” I asked Beau, pointing to the locked doors that could only be opened from the outside.
“Sure—sorry,” Beau said, getting out to open my door for us. We shuffled out and stood for a moment in front of the deputy, but it seemed no one knew what else to say. “Oh, here,” Beau said, shrugging out of Gilley’s vest. “You guys should take this back.”
“Thanks, Beau,” I said, taking the vest.
Before we could turn away, the deputy added, “Is there someplace where I can buy one of those?”
I handed him back the vest. If he returned to the Porter house, he was going to need some protection. “Keep it,” I said.
For an awkward moment the deputy looked like he was going to hug me, but then he sort of thrust out his hand and shook both mine and Heath’s before turning to head up the ramp to the double doors, where, I suspected, he’d recruit someone to help him with Scoffland’s body.
Heath shrugged out of his vest and helped me with mine. Then we headed over to Gilley, who seemed rather impatient to get a move on, if the little honks to the horn he kept sending us were any indication.
Chapter 6
Gilley was covered in crumbs and food wrappers. In fact, he looked bloated and uncomfortable sitting there, waiting impatiently for Heath and me to get into the car and buckle up. “Tell me everything,” he said.
“Well—,” I began, but Gil interrupted me.
“Wait. Hold that thought. We can’t talk about this stuff without something to take the edge off.”
Heath and I exchanged hopeful looks. Like the deputy, I could’ve gone for a drink, too.
Ten minutes later, however, Gil had pulled up to LuLu’s Ice Cream Shop. I exchanged another look with Heath. Clearly, the two of us had a different definition of “taking the edge off.”
Gil bounded out the door like an anxious puppy and we had no choice but to follow him inside. At least he’d picked the best ice-cream parlor in all of Valdosta. LuLu made her ice cream from scratch, and it was truly heaven in a bowl.
“I’ll have one scoop of mint chocolate chip,” Gil was saying to the young teen behind the counter when we caught up to him.
“Did you want that in a waffle cone or a bowl?”
“Bowl,” Gil said, and I had to hand it to him. He was actually showing a little restraint. As the kid reached for the bowl, however, Gil said, “Cone! I’ll take the cone.” The kid moved over, got one of the big homemade waffle cones, and headed toward the barrel of mint chocolate chip. No sooner had she scooped out one round ball than Gil added, “Make that two scoops, please.”
The double soon became a triple. With sprinkles. Whipped cream. And a freaking cherry on top. The towering concoction was so unsteady that the girl behind the counter offered Gilley a bowl should any of it topple over, which of course some of it did even before he reached the table. “He’s a lotta work,” Heath whispered in my ear, but he was chuckling when he said it, and it got me to laugh a little too, which I badly needed after the day we’d had.
Heath and I each got a double cone of chocolate chip cookie dough and joined Gil at the table. “Okay, spill it,” Gil said, which I thought was hilariously ironic, as he said this while a big gob of whipped cream and sprinkles plopped onto the table, missing the bowl entirely.
While Heath got up to get Gilley more napkins, I started in, telling him everything that’d happened inside the house.
The more I talked, the faster Gilley ate, and I knew what I was telling him was likely stressing him out, but it was such a relief to get it off my chest, and he was bound to find out the details anyway. Valdosta was a relatively small town when it came to gossip.
When I got to the part about the planchette flying out from under the bookcase and nearly striking Heath, Gil stopped licking away furiously at his ice cream long enough to utter a frightened squeak. “Why’d it attack you?” he asked him.
Heath shrugged, but I could tell the near miss with the planchette had shaken him. “I was the one that kicked it under the bookcase. Maybe
this Sandman was pissed off about that.”
Gil then turned his wide eyes to me. “Do you have any idea what you’re gonna tell Christine?”
I shook my head. “Not a clue.”
“She can’t keep hiring people to go work at that place,” Heath said. Gilley pumped his head up and down.
“He’s right. She’ll get someone killed. I mean, someone else killed.”
“After what happened today with Scoffland, and the fact that we’ve now just uncovered another murder, I doubt anybody’s gonna be allowed back at that house for a long time,” I said, a bit relieved by that fact, actually. I had no urge to get back to Porter Manor anytime soon. “Maybe I can talk her into letting it sit vacant and unattended for a while.”
“Yeah, but what happens when the investigation is over?” Gil pressed. “I mean, at some point she’s gonna want to finish working on that house, right? She had to have forked over a ton of cash just to buy it, M.J. She’s not gonna want to abandon it altogether, will she?”
I sighed. I hadn’t been in town longer than a day and a half and already I was exhausted. This wasn’t what I’d signed up for. When we’d agreed to find out what was happening at Porter Manor, I’d thought we were going to encounter some old cranky spook who just needed a kick in the proverbial pants to cross over. I’d never expected to encounter some sort of insanely powerful evil spirit whose origins were unknown, and who apparently had some sort of history with my mother.
And the truth was that I didn’t want to deal with it. Whatever the Sandman was, he scared the hell out of me. There was something sneaky and sinister about him, and also something deadly. I knew he’d been at the root of possessing that construction worker who’d killed Scoffland, and also Deputy Cook, who’d stabbed the sheriff. What other minds could he take over and use to commit murder? Deep down I had another awful foreboding, and all I wanted to do was head back to Boston.
“He’s got a point, Em,” Heath said, while I silently debated what to do. “When the investigation is over, Christine is going to want to move forward with the renovation. And we either have to talk her into abandoning that place altogether, and convince her not to sell it to anybody else, or . . .”