Ghost Town (23 page)

“You'll get your chance at Amber, don't worry. But right now, there's something else I need you to do.”

The Dark Lady gave Mitch his instructions, and he listened very carefully.

“Thank you. Enjoy
the rest of the conference.”

Jenn handed the book—a tome relating “true” accounts of vampirism
throughout history—to a teenage girl wearing a black gown, a long black wig, black lipstick, and black false nails. The girl smiled as she took the book and left with her boyfriend, a skinny kid with a peach-fuzz goatee who wore a Ramones T-shirt and looked bored as hell. Jenn envied them. She would give anything to be wandering through the Exhibition Hall, talking, laughing, and checking out the various booths, with her biggest problem being how much money she could afford to spend buying useless junk.

The day before, her life had been chugging along just fine. The store had been busier than usual thanks to the Dead Days crowd, and Tonya had been manning the fort while she had been there at the hotel, helping to get the Exhibition Hall ready to open. She had gone back to the store in the early afternoon to answer some questions on-camera for Erin, which had been a nice break in the routine, but otherwise it had been business as usual. She had been looking forward to seeing Trevor again, and she had been curious to meet Drew and Amber, especially after reading about them in Trevor's new book. And had she been hoping to see if there were any sparks still left between them? Maybe.

But then Tonya had died, followed by those two poor people in the museum. Oh, and don't forget that crew member of Erin's who had died the week before. That made a grand total of four people dead . . . so far.

But as bad as that was, what freaked her out the most was seeing the word
Stop
appear as if by magic, etched in the surface of the museum room over and over, as if carved by dozens of unseen hands. Until that moment, the supernatural had been nothing more to her than a pastime, a game of what-if to play in her imagination. She read nonfiction books on the paranormal the same way other people read novels. She enjoyed imagining that the stories were true while she read them, but once she put the book down, the game was over.

But that afternoon, she had lived one of those stories. Hell, she
was
still
living it. And as much as she wanted to believe that it had been some kind of elaborate Dead Days prank, she knew it wasn't. The supernatural was real. And that meant the world wasn't the way she thought it was. If something like what she had seen in the museum could happen, then
anything
could happen. She wasn't naïve. She knew the world wasn't a safe place. But until that day, she hadn't known just how unsafe it was. It was bad enough that you had to protect yourself from other human beings who might hurt you, whether on purpose or by accident, and of course, there was always the possibility of death from injury or disease. But now she knew that there were worse things in the world than all that—much worse—and there was nothing you could do to guard against them. If a supernatural force could carve a word into wood, what could stop it from boring a hole through your heart or brain, killing you instantly? You would drop dead without ever knowing what hit you. And it could happen at any moment, without warning.

When Trevor and the others had decided to accompany Erin to the college, Jenn had begged off, claiming that she would rather remain at the hotel and sell books at the Forgotten Lore booth, as she had originally planned to do that day. She had said it would be comforting to do something normal, that it would help to take her mind off Tonya's death. At first, Trevor had been reluctant to let her stay, but Drew had said it was a good idea, and Trevor had relented. He had offered to stay with her, but she had insisted that he go with the others. If something . . . bad . . . happened at the college, his friends would need him. Besides, how could she pretend that things were normal if he was hanging around? She could tell that her last excuse—although true enough—had hurt his feelings a bit, but he had said he understood and left, not before promising that he would call to check on her and making her promise to call him if she needed anything.

She had given him a quick kiss to reassure him that everything was OK, and he had been so surprised that he had departed without
further argument. She smiled. Trevor liked to talk, but she had always known how to shut him up.

But the real reason she hadn't gone with them to the college was simple. She was afraid.

She didn't think she could take witnessing another paranormal event. It felt as if she was barely keeping it together as it was. If anything else happened, she feared she might lose it altogether. She had called a cousin of hers who lived in Evansville. Noelle was going to come get her the next day and take her away from Exeter. She planned to stay with Noelle while she adjusted to everything that had happened. She thought she might even sell the bookstore and move out of Exeter for good. After this weekend, the idea of continuing to live in the “Most Haunted Town in America” no longer appealed.

She pulled herself out of her dark thoughts when a man approached her booth. She was grateful to have another customer to distract her, and she flashed him a welcoming smile.

“Looking for anything in particular?” she asked.

The man stared at her with eyes as flat and dead as a doll's.

“As a matter of fact, I am,” he said, his voice toneless. Then he slowly smiled, and a dark glint came into his gaze. “My name's Mitch. And I'm looking for you.”

Drew noted how
Amber kept glancing around as they walked.

“Keeping an eye out for Mitch?” he asked.

She looked at him and smiled. “Like you aren't? On the surface, you may be an educated, rational, modern man, but underneath, you're still a caveman protecting his mate.”

Drew grinned. “Ugh. Me no comment.”

They were in Tri-County Community College's library. The building had two stories, with an open-air atrium that rose all the way to a skylight in the ceiling. Erin's crew was setting up near the circulation desk on the first floor, where the library's director stood chatting with Connie while waiting to be interviewed. Not far away, Trevor was taking readings with the EMF detector, while Carrington tried to capture EVP with the digital audio recorder. Erin stood equidistant between them, filming first one, then the other, with her handheld camera, as if she couldn't decide which man was more important to focus on.

Drew and Amber had decided to take a walk through the library to see what, if anything, she might be able to sense about the place. Currently, they stood next to the second-floor railing, gazing down at the scene below. In the middle of the atrium was a landscaped area filled with flowers and green plants of various kinds, and next to it was a small lounge area where students could buy coffee and pastries, sit at a table, and chat or watch whatever was playing on the flat-screen TV. Rows of computer stations took up the rest of the main floor, and Drew wondered
if the library had any physical books at all and, if so, where they were kept.

“Looks more like a student center than a library,” Amber said, echoing his thoughts.

“I guess if you want students to register for classes these days, you have to up the fun factor,” he said.

“Well, it certainly looks like they take their fun seriously here.”

The library had been transformed for Dead Days. The staff members were dressed in old-fashioned black suits or dresses, making them resemble Victorian-era undertakers. Most of the students wore costumes, and while a few of their outfits were whimsical—one couple was dressed as a plug and a socket—most were ghoulish in theme: monsters, ghosts, zombies, masked slashers, and the like.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
was playing on the flat-screen, and the students in the lounge area were laughing and singing along with the lyrics. Erin had told them that there was a maze of some kind there, but so far, Drew hadn't seen it. Maybe it was farther back on the first floor, where it couldn't be seen from above.

“I wish Erin hadn't insisted on coming here,” Amber said.

“Do you sense something?” Only a couple of months ago, Drew would have dismissed the notion of paranormal abilities as nonsense. Now here he was, asking his lover if she was picking up anything on her psychic radar, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Life could be pretty damned strange sometimes.

“You know how it is in August, when the air is so humid and heavy it feels like a weight pressing down on you? It's felt like that to me ever since we set foot on this campus. I don't have any trouble believing this place was built on the site of an old prison and that a lot of people died here. I'm worried that the college is a can of gasoline, and Erin's a match.”

She shuddered, and Drew put his arm around her shoulder.
“Erin was right when she said we couldn't stop her. It's not like we could've taken out a supernatural restraining order on her.”

Amber smiled. “I suppose not. I just don't understand why someone who knows that dark forces exist—and that they're responsible for the deaths of four people—would knowingly provoke those forces.”

“Ego,” Drew said. “Erin believes she's stronger than any supernatural entity, and she intends to prove it by documenting proof of paranormal activity for the world to see.”

“And get famous in the process,” Amber added.

Drew nodded. “It's also possible that on some level, she is deeply terrified of the supernatural, and because of that, she's driven to confront it. Some people flee what they fear, some attempt to face it and overcome it, and some are compelled to rush headlong toward it, regardless of the consequences. They can't help themselves. Erin may be expressing a death wish.”

Amber frowned. “Isn't that the title of an old movie about a vigilante who hunts criminals in New York?”

Drew smiled. “Yes, but it refers to one of Freud's theories. He postulated that all living things have an innate desire to return to the inanimate. In other words, the purpose of all life is to die.”

“That's a cheerful thought.” She fell silent for a moment before continuing. “Drew, I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Mitch before. I guess I was just too ashamed.”

He still had his arm around her, and he tightened his grip to give her a hug. “I understand, but as far as I'm concerned, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Amber slipped her arm around his waist. “I love you, Drew Pearson.”

“I love you, too.”

They turned toward each other then, embraced, and kissed.

“Isn't that sweet?”

They broke apart and turned to see Connie standing there, a mocking grin on her face.

“Erin's ready to start filming her interview with the library director. I thought you'd want to be there . . . that is, unless the two of you have something better to do?” She gave them a teasing smile, then turned and headed toward the stairs.

“You work for a very strange woman,” Amber said.

Drew sighed. “Tell me about it.”

“The land the
college is built on has a unique history,” Erin said. “Can you tell us a little about it?”

The library director, a scarecrow of a man dressed in a black suit and wearing a large top hat, seemed nervous at the prospect of being filmed. He glanced at Ray or, more precisely, at the camera he was holding, and then he eyed Sarah's boom mic with suspicion, almost as if it were a snake that might attack him any moment.

“Uh . . . where do I look? At you or the camera?”

Erin's smile was a bit strained as she answered. “At me. Just pretend the rest of my crew isn't here.”

Drew figured that the crowd of students and staff that had gathered to watch the filming wasn't helping the director's nerves any. And neither were Trevor and Carrington. Trevor continued scanning the area with the EMF detector, while Carrington was using the infrared thermal scanner. From what Drew understood, the latter device could be used both in light and in the dark, but he didn't see how it could get a decent reading with so many people gathered around. Wouldn't their combined heat signatures interfere with the scanner?

Unlike everyone else, Connie paid no attention to the director and Erin's crew. She glanced right and left, looked up, down, backward, and forward, her head continuously moving, as if she were searching for something. No, Drew thought, more as if she were
scanning
for something, using her senses the same way Trevor and Carrington used technology. It was a ridiculous thought. As long as he had known her, she had never demonstrated intuitive insight,
let alone the kind of uncanny perception that might be considered psychic. She was a straightforward, logical, and, above all, unimaginative thinker. At least, she had been before now. People could change. Drew sincerely believed that, or he wouldn't have become a psychologist. But in his experience, people didn't make radical changes within the space of a few hours. So how could he explain Connie's atypical behavior? Perhaps she was simply doing her best to adjust to the situation she found herself caught up in. Or perhaps she was feigning interest in the investigation in order to get closer to him. Just because she had appeared to make nice with Amber, that didn't mean that Connie still didn't consider her a competitor. Or maybe there was a different reason, one far more sinister in nature. A lot of strange things had happened since they had come to Exeter. Maybe the change in Connie's personality wasn't so much situational as supernatural. It was a far-fetched idea, to say the least, and his suspicions could very well be a product of his imagination. After all, he was only human, and it was only natural to become a bit paranoid when dealing with malevolent otherworldly forces. But it was precisely because they
were
dealing with such forces that he decided to keep a close eye on Connie from then on. If she had been tainted by Darkness, as they suspected Mitch had been, they needed to be on their guard.