Bone Key (7 page)

Reaching up, Dean yanked on the chain that started the ceiling fan going, and he left the big sliding door open but closed the screen door to keep the bugs out. He considered warning Sam about the mosquitoes, then decided it would be more fun for him to learn that lesson his own self. 60 SUPERNATURAL

“What in blazes are you doing in my house?”

Whirling around, Dean saw a man wearing a blue cap, a blue jacket, and white pants. Dean also clearly saw the wall behind the man. In all his years of hunting, Dean had encountered many a spirit. Few of them had ever been this—well,
coherent
.

“Uh—”

“I asked you a question, young man. This is my abode, and I wish to know what you’re doing in it!”

“And you are?”

“Captain Terrence Naylor, of course! Now answer my blasted question!”

FIVE

Greg Mitchell had kept telling his wife Krysta that Key West would be the perfect place to spend New Year’s. It wasn’t until they’d been there for three days that she’d admitted that he was right. As a happily married man, Greg was used to never being told that he was right about something, so he considered Krysta’s admission to be a major victory.

Her skepticism was born out of Key West’s not being the best place in the world to go scuba diving. They’d dove in Hawaii and in Turks and Caicos and in the Cook Islands and in Papua New Guinea, and any number of other locations that had far better diving than the Keys could offer. But what Key West had that those places didn’t was the excellent night life. Every night, they went to a different Duval Street bar, drank good beer, and listened to good music. One night, they even did ka-62 SUPERNATURAL

raoke, the pair of them “singing” both “Time of My Life” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.”

Today, they had been all set to take another dive, but the wind was fierce, and the water too choppy for diving. Luckily, the dive shop had called them at the hotel and told them so they had time to make other plans for the day.

They decided to be touristy and see various sights. “Wanna go to the Little White House?”

Greg asked, as they sat at the foot of the bed in their hotel room at the Hyatt on Front Street.

“What about the Hemingway House?”

“I guess. I mean, it’s just Hemingway.” Even as he said the words, Greg wished he could have taken them back.

“ ‘Just’ Hemingway? Ernest Hemingway is the greatest American writer!”

“Only if you don’t count every other American writer.” They’d been having this argument for years. In fact, they had it before they started dating, as they’d first met in an American literature class in college where the subject came up. (The professor, of course, was on
her
side, but most of the class was on his.)

Krysta opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it, then held up a hand. “We’re not doing this. Look, whatever you think of his writing, he lived here, and there’s this great museum dedicated to him.
And
it’s full of cats.”

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Greg blinked. “Cats?”

Nodding, Krysta said, “Yup. A whole mess of them. And they’re all six-toed.”

“You’re kidding!” Greg felt his eyes grow wide.

“Oh, that’s
great
. Polydactyl cats are just
cool.
” A cat person his entire life, his and Krysta’s apartment back home in Lawrence, Kansas, currently held three felines, who were being cared for by Greg’s sister while their providers were on vacation. Shaking her head, Krysta got up and moved toward the door, grabbing her large black Coach bag on the way. The expensive purse didn’t really track with the T-shirt, shorts, and mesh sandals she was wearing, but Krysta insisted that she needed something big enough to carry all her stuff, and Greg had long since given up trying to argue.

“Why can’t you just say ‘six-toed’ cats like everyone else?” she asked.

“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Greg said as he grabbed the battered old Kansas City Royals cap he’d had since he was a kid and followed her out. “Hemingway was the kind of writer who would use ‘six-toed’ instead of ‘polydactyl’, but

‘polydactyl’ is a perfectly acceptable word to use for anyone who’s remotely educated.”

Closing the door behind them—if you didn’t pull it shut, it didn’t always close all the way, and they had valuables in there—they proceeded down the hall to the elevator. Krysta started rummaging 64 SUPERNATURAL

in her purse while saying, “Yeah, but the term’s imprecise. All ‘polydactyl’ means is having more fingers or toes than usual. ‘Six-toed’ means precisely what the cats in the Hemingway House are: six-toed. Aha!” That last was when she finally dug her sunglasses out of the huge purse. Greg hated it when Krysta wore the sunglasses, because they covered her amazing blue eyes. They had come out of the English class not liking each other, but met again the next semester at a party held in a mutual friend’s dorm suite. She’d changed her hair color, so he didn’t recognize her, and started hitting on the woman with the amazing blue eyes, not discovering until they’d been up all night talking (well past the point where the party had fizzled out) that she was his nemesis from the American Lit class. Her eyes were like pools of moonlight, and she only groaned a little when he’d said that out loud the first time.

Tapping the down button for the elevator with his right knuckle, Greg said, “I thought we weren’t having this argument.”

“We aren’t—this is an argument about you being a pretentious academic twit, not an argument about the relative merits of Hemingway’s writing.”

“I could’ve sworn I tied this to Hemingway,” he said with a smile.

“Yes,” Krysta said tartly, “and I ignored that in Bone

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favor of calling you a twit. I
said
I wasn’t having this argument.”

Shaking his head and laughing, he said, “I love you.”

Her blue eyes twinkled just as she put the sunglasses on over them. “I love you, too.”

It was a short, pleasant walk down Front to Whitehall, then down Whitehall several blocks until they reached Olivia Street, passing several houses, restaurants, and such on the way—not to mention one of the entrances to the Little White House, which had been Harry S Truman’s preferred vacation spot while he was president, eschewing Camp David (which back then was called Shangri-La). Across the street from the Hemingway House was the giant lighthouse. Looking up at the huge cylindrical structure, Greg said, “We should go there after Hemingway.”

“Um, okay.”

Shooting his wife a look at her hesitant tone, Greg asked, “What?”

“Well, you know there’s no elevator, right? You have to
walk
all the way up to the top of that thing.”

“Yeah, so?” Greg said indignantly, not liking the implication.

“All right, but when we’re halfway up and you’re all winded from hauling the Buddha Belly up all those stairs, don’t come crying to me.”

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Self-consciously patting his potbelly—which Krysta had affectionately dubbed “the Buddha Belly” two years ago—he said, “I thought you
liked
the Buddha Belly.”

“I love it, my sweet, but it’s an impediment to stair-climbing.”

“Bah. And fooey. I will climb the stairs, and I will laugh at your mockery of my fitness.”

“Assuming you can breathe, sure,” Krysta said with a smile and a peck on his cheek. Said peck did not mollify him. “C’mon, let’s go look at the paean to an overrated author.”

Krysta stuck out her tongue, then proceeded to the ticket booth in front of the brick wall that surrounded the house. Behind the booth was an ivycovered gate, currently open. After paying the entrance fee to a bored-looking young woman in the booth who looked put out by them interrupting her reading of
Entertainment
Weekly,
they proceeded through the gate and up the stairs to the house. A smiling young man with small eyes, a big nose, and crooked teeth greeted them as they approached. “Hello! Welcome to the Hemingway Home and Museum! Is this your first time?”

There was no one else around. Greg had noticed that there were fewer people on the streets this morning than there had been other mornings, and he attributed that to it being the day after New Bone

K

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ey

Year’s—which was part of why they’d planned for their stay to extend past the holiday. “Yes, it is.”

“My name’s David, and I’ll be running the tour, which starts at fifteen minutes past the hour. Until then, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have.” As if anticipating the first one, he continued: “The house was originally built in 1851 by Asa Tift, who was a marine architect and a wrecker. Ernest Hemingway made this his home in 1931.”

Krysta asked, “Why is there a brick wall around the house? Security?”

Greg wasn’t interested in that—he was looking for the cats, and was surprised not to see any.

“After a fashion,” David said in response to Krysta’s query. “Originally there was a simple chain-link fence around the property, but Mr. Hemingway wanted privacy from the people who would stare at the house. Mr. Hemingway was quite the celebrity, and Key West is a much more casual locale than, say, Hollywood, so—”

“Where are the cats?”

Suddenly David got nervous. “Er—I’m afraid—

you see—”

“What is it?” Greg asked.

“Are you all right?” Krysta added, concern in her voice.

Palming sweat off his forehead, David said, “It’s nothing, I just—anything else about Mr. Hemingway you’d like to know?”

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“Are the cats really descendants of the polydactyl he had?”

Krysta put in, “My husband is more a cat person than a Hemingway person, I’m afraid.”

David winced. “Oh, I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“What? Why—” Suddenly, Greg felt a hand grab his shoulder. Whirling around, he saw—

Nobody. But he still felt the hand.

A voice cried out, echoing off the brick walls and vibrating within Greg’s ribs, seeming to come from everywhere at once. “Get out! Get out, get out,
get out
!”

The hand pushed Greg, sending him stumbling down the stairs toward the gate. Greg tried to get his feet under him, but couldn’t get solid purchase, and fell to the ground. He winced in pain as his right arm struck the pavement.

“Oh my God,
Greg
!” Krysta ran to him, kneeling down next to him. “Are you all right?”

Greg clambered to a sitting-up position and looked at his forearm. He had several abrasions, it was bleeding, and dammit it
hurt.
Looking up at David, the tour guide looked as if he’d seen a ghost. “What the hell was
that
?”

That voice came back. “I said, get
out
, goddammit! I’m sick and goddamn tired of goddamn
cat-
lovers
!”

Now Greg was starting to get seriously freaked Bone

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out. “What— Who—?”
It has to be a recording of
some kind, or over a speaker. Has to be.
Even as he tried to rationalize that, he didn’t really believe it. When a voice came over a speaker, you didn’t feel the voice in your soul. The voice continued. “She can stay.
He
has to go!”

“Er,” David said, “ah, okay. I mean, of course, Mr. Hemingway.”

Greg blinked. “Mr.
Hemingway
?” Now he knew this was some kind of trick. He got unsteadily to his feet, only able to use his left arm and Krysta for support. “This is bogus. Hemingway’s
dead
, you stupid dork, and I’ve got a skinned arm, and I—”

Again with the voice: “Of course I’m
dead
, you numbskull! But this is
my
house, not a cat haven.”

Krysta started talking to this thing as if it
was
Hemingway. “I thought you loved cats.”

“I loved
my
cat,” the voice said. “That doesn’t mean I want my house to turn into a goddamned petting zoo! Now get out!”

Greg felt the hands once again, two of them this time, on his chest, even though he couldn’t see anyone other than a shocked-looking Krysta and a stone-scared David. He tried to grab at whoever it was, but he just flailed at nothing. The hands pushed him violently backward. Greg tried to keep from backing out through the gate, but the invisible hands were just too strong. 70 SUPERNATURAL

He cried out as he again fell to the ground on his right arm. “Ow! Dammit!”

Krysta ran through the gate after him. As soon as she cleared it, the gate closed with a resounding metallic clang that sent several ivy leaves plummeting to the sidewalk.

“God, Greg, I’m so sorry. I’ll call 911.” She grabbed her purse and started rummaging around in it for her cell phone.

Greg put his left hand on Krysta’s arm. “No, no, it’s okay. We’ll just go to a drugstore and get something to put on it.”

“You sure?”

“The last thing I want to do is try to explain what just happened to an ER nurse.”

Krysta smiled. “Okay. C’mon, I think there was a drugstore on Duval.”

She helped Greg to his feet. He looked at the Hemingway Home and Museum. He noticed that the young woman in the ticket booth did not consider the manifestation of Hemingway’s ghost to be sufficient reason to stop reading about movie stars, as her nose stayed buried in the magazine.