Authors: Victoria Laurie

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls (30 page)

BOOK: Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls

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“Someone I love?” she asked, the small hint of her Russian accent surfacing and a bit of humor mixed in. “M. J., my parents have no need of a ghostbuster. They live in a brand-new condo in Orlando. No ghosts there.”

I squeezed the phone in my hand, regretting what I was about to say and wishing there were another way to convince her. “I’m not talking about your folks,” I said carefully. “I’m talking about Jordan.”

Through the phone line I heard her gasp. In a hoarse whisper she said, “Jordan is dead.”

“Yes,” I said. “But his spirit is currently trapped at Dunlow. He’s reliving the moments right up until his death over and over again, Alex.”

“What are you even talking about?” she demanded, her tone harsh and accusing.

I shifted the phone to my other ear. “The first night we came here was really foggy, but we wanted to cross the causeway and get a look at what we were up against. About halfway across we heard a man desperately calling out the name Alex, but in the dense fog we couldn’t pinpoint his location. The next day, as we were climbing up the stairs, we heard the same man crying out again for Alex to please help him. When we looked at the far side of the cliff, we saw the spirit of Jordan Kincaid dangling off the edge of the rock. My partner and I ran up the rest of the stairs and tried to save him, thinking he was a real person, but when we got to him, he slipped away and fell to the rocks below.”

I couldn’t imagine what my telling all this to Alex was doing to her, but still I continued ... because I had to. “His spirit is stuck in the ether, Alex, and the phantom is so terrifying that his ghost can’t let go. It can only replay what happened to him that awful night over and over and
over
again while he waits for you to come help him. He’s begging you to come back and change the outcome.”

I listened hard for Alex’s reaction, but I couldn’t even hear her breathing on the other end. Finally, a small sob came through the line, followed by a sniffle. “Please, tell me you are lying,” she cried. “Tell me that you just made that up so that I would agree to come help you!”

I looked down at the ground and wondered if I’d reached a new low. “I’m so sorry, Alex, but it’s the truth. I want to help Jordan cross over so that he can finally be released from his nightmare and find some peace, but I can’t get through to him while the phantom’s on the prowl. If you want me to help the man you were going to marry, the man you loved, then you have to come here and help me deal with the phantom.”

I listened to Alex cry softly for a bit, hoping someday she’d forgive me. At last, she sniffled loudly, took a breath, and said, “Fine. I will book the ticket and be there tomorrow.” With that, the line went dead.

Gilley and I met Alex at the airport. She wasn’t hard to spot. Tall, leggy, and almost unjustly pretty, Alex probably could even have turned Gilley straight if she’d wanted to. “Wowsa,” he said when he first saw her.

“Her Web photo doesn’t really do her justice, does it?” I said as we watched her cut through the throng at the baggage claim.

“Uh ... no.”

Alex was roughly five nine, with small hips, broad shoulders, a thin athletic frame, and a heart-shaped face settled perfectly on an elegant neck. Her very long hair was flame red, which accentuated her porcelain white skin and emerald eyes. If I hadn’t needed her help so badly, I likely would have turned and left her beautiful self at the airport.

“Wait till Heath gets a load of her,” Gilley whispered with an elbow nudge to my side just as she spotted us and began to walk purposefully in our direction.

“Aw, crap,” I muttered. I’m not exactly a plain Jane, but this woman was supermodel gorgeous. How could you compete with that?

“Hello,” she said when she reached us. “I’m Alex Neverov.”

Gilley giggled like a schoolgirl, blushed a deep shade of red, and actually curtsied.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and instead extended my hand. “You’ll have to excuse him,” I said. “I’m M. J. and this is my partner, Gilley.”

But Alex was laughing. Taking my hand and giving it a firm pump, she said, “It’s nice to meet you.”

I motioned for her to follow me to the van, and Gilley sidled up next to her and said, “Can I take you for your luggage?”

I gave him an exasperated look and Alex giggled again. “Do you mean can you take my luggage for me?”

“Uh ... yeah,” he said, blushing again. “That.”

This was going to be a long drive back to the inn.

When we reached our hotel, we found Heath in the bar. He was working his way off the pain meds he’d been prescribed and was substituting it for something a bit milder. Like beer. “Hey, buddy!” Gilley called when we entered with Alex after getting her checked in.

Heath swiveled around carefully and I swear he did the Wile E. Coyote
BAROOGA!
eyes when he saw our Russian friend. Oh, yeah, and he also snorted beer out his nose.

I sighed and sat down at the next table over. This was going to be a long day.

“Sorry about that,” Heath said, working furiously to mop up the table with his dainty little cocktail napkin. I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the foam resting on his upper lip. “I’m Heath, and you are
way
more gorgeous than your picture!”

“Gee, Heath,” I said evenly. “Got beer?” (Huh. Look’t that. I had the heart to tell him after all.)

He looked confused until I made a motion across my upper lip. He quickly wiped his sleeve over his face and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry,” he said again.

Alex laughed merrily and laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, Heath, and it’s very nice to meet you too.”

“Can I get you something to drink?” Heath and Gilley said together in a rush.

“Oh!” Alex said, slightly taken aback by all the enthusiasm ... and nasal spray. “Uh ... I think I will have a sparkling water with lime if you all will join me for some refreshment.”

“Coming right up!” Gilley said, dashing off to the bar.

“I’ll get the lime!” Heath said, moving far faster than he had in the last two days to chase after Gilley.

“I’d love a vodka and cranberry,” I muttered, glaring hard at their retreating backs.

“Oh, M. J.!” Alex said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for your order to be left out.”

“Don’t sweat it,” I told her. “I’m sure I can flag down a server.”

And we actually were treated to some rather immediate table service from three separate waiters, all making goo-goo eyes at Alex. Reluctantly, one of them even took my order.

Gil and Heath returned with one bottle of sparkling water, one chilled glass, and one accompanying lime—each. They set their prizes down on the table in front of Alex like obedient golden retrievers looking for a cookie. “Why, thank you,” Alex said politely as she considered the two sets of refreshments in front of her. “I’m quite thirsty, so this won’t go to waste.”

Heath and Gilley smiled huge, and that was when Heath caught me giving him the evil eye. He quickly lost his smile and moved back into his own chair, where I’m sure he started to consider spending every night in the near future bunking with Gilley.

An awkward and uncomfortable silence followed until my drink was brought. The waiter set down a vodka-grapefruit instead of a vodka-cranberry, but I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to send it back.

After he left, Gilley asked, “When did you start drinking greyhounds?”

“When you two failed to ask me if I wanted a drink from the bar,” I snapped, still irritated with both of them for making me feel like chopped liver.

Gilley’s face softened a bit, and I think he finally started to feel sorry for me. I watched him get up and come around to give me a quick peck on the cheek before he said, “Let me fix it for you, okay, sugar?” He then took my glass and headed to the bar.

“What a charming man,” Alex said.

“He has his moments,” I told her. Heath slumped farther down in his seat.

“I’m sorry, M. J.,” he said. “I should’ve gotten you something.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Gilley returned with a vodka-cranberry with two lemons and a bowl of nuts for us to share. And I think that finally broke the ice and relaxed the mood among all of us, because we settled into easy conversation for a bit until Alex brought us around to the topic at hand. “So, tell me about your encounters with the phantom.”

We took turns telling her the story of our first, second, third, and fourth encounters. I was the one who filled her in on our last dance with that hateful spook, and how we’d been so fortunate to discover the hidden stairway in the church and the underground tunnel underneath the causeway, which—I also pointed out—had not been outlined on the castle blueprint.

Alex was surprised and I think quite impressed by our discovery. “I so wish we’d known about that four years ago,” she said with a hint of sadness.

“Well, we know about it now, and I think we can use it to our advantage,” I told her.

Alex nodded and took a sip of her sparkling water. “We’re going to need all the advantages we can get when we take on the phantom.”

“What can you tell us about it?” Heath asked.

“The phantom?”

“Yes.”

Alex inhaled deeply and seemed to gather her thoughts. “It’s an incredibly dangerous spirit,” she began. “I’ve been able to trace its origins, in fact.”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “It came from South America, right?”

Alex’s eyebrows rose. “Yes,” she said. “How did you know?”

“We met the ghost of Gaston Bouvet. He more or less took us through what happened to him the night he died. A lot of what he said was in French, but we managed to decipher a few words.”

Alex leaned forward. “Tell me more about your encounter with him.”

“He was in the tunnel with the crypts, and Jeffrey Kincaid brought him a present, which Bouvet indicated came from South America. When he opened it, the phantom was released.”

Alex’s face registered a mixture of emotions, from shock to understanding to great sorrow. “I always suspected the rumors were true,” she said softly. “That Jordan’s father was somehow responsible for the phantom.”

“What did Jordan think?” Gilley asked.

Alex shook her head sadly. “He didn’t believe it, which was why he came here, actually, to clear his father’s name, find the gold, and send the phantom back to hell.”

“Did Jeffrey ever tell his son what happened that day with Bouvet at Dunlow?”

“No. Jordan was only twelve when it happened, but he clearly remembered his father leaving for a bit of treasure hunting with his dear friend from France, and returning a week later so distraught that he had to be admitted to a mental hospital for several months.

“According to Jordan, once Jeffrey was released, he was never the same, and he never spoke about what happened that day at Dunlow. I met Jeffrey Kincaid only once, when he came here to take Jordan’s body home, and our exchange was heated.”

“Why was it heated?” Gilley asked.

Alex looked down at her hands. “Jordan never told his father he was coming here, and in his grief Jeffrey accused me of convincing him to come, even though it was the other way around.”

I wanted to learn more about the phantom. “You said you know of the phantom’s origins. What can you tell us about it?”

Alex took another sip of her water. “I’ve traced its birth all the way back to the Incas,” she said. “There is a legend that goes back to the Tupac tribe in Peru that speaks of a time when the Spanish conquistadors invaded their society and corrupted it, taking their gold and disrespecting their people. At that time, some of the most powerful shamans within the great nation gathered together and invoked their ancestors to bring to life a powerful protective spirit. This spirit emerged as a dark phantom, and the shamans invoked it to protect their gold, because they knew the conquistadors valued that above all else. They also gave the phantom spirit the ability to call up the conquistadors’ worst nightmares, driving them mad and chasing them from their land, which was hilly and treacherous. Many conquistadors were driven right off the high bluffs that made up the Tupac’s terrain.

“The phantom worked wonders to secure the tribe from the conquistadors, but the shamans didn’t realize that it might have worked a little too well until they encountered their own issues with the wraith. According to the legend, when the phantom was created, it wreaked havoc, not only on the Spanish invaders, but also on the Incan youth too, whose hearts had not yet learned to hold their courage and steel their minds against a force like the phantom. The shamans decided that their protective spirit was too dangerous to remain on the loose, so they then created a talisman to trap the phantom and hold it until such time as it was needed again.”

“That sounds an awful lot like our phantom,” Heath said.

“I’m convinced it’s the same one of the legends.”

“And this talisman sounds like a portal key,” I said.

BOOK: Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls

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