The Ghoul Next Door (16 page)

“But you could go see Guy Walker,” Gil said. “He’s still alive, at least according to the prison record I pulled up this morning.”

I looked at Heath. “What do you think?”

He tapped his knee with his fingertips. “I think it might be the only way to figure out who or what this spook is.”

“I agree.” Turning back to Gil, I said, “How do we get in to see Walker?”

Gil pulled the laptop toward him and began to type. “You simply send a request to the prison. They’ll inform Walker, and if he’s not in solitary or otherwise banned from visitations, they’ll let you come up. Visitors are allowed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. With luck we can have you talking to him the day after tomorrow.”

“Do you think he’ll agree to see us?” Heath asked. “I mean, he doesn’t even know us.”

Gil smirked. “Walker’s been in prison for over thirty years. I doubt there’s anybody left on the outside who comes to see him anymore. He’ll agree to see you out of sheer curiosity.”

“Do you think we’ll be safe?” I asked, nervous about going into a prison, even for a visit.

“Sure,” Gil said, like he visited them all the time. “Just don’t make eye contact with any of the other prisoners, and if Walker asks you anything personal, like where you live or what you do, try to keep it really vague.”

“That’s a given,” I said as a small shudder went up my spine.

“I can go alone,” Heath said, reading me well.

Gil stopped typing and looked up. “Actually, it really should be just M.J. who goes to see Walker.”

I blinked. “What? Why?”

“If you’re not a relative, they only allow one visitor at a time. And Walker’s not going to turn down a visit from a girl. Trust me.”

“Unless he plays for your team,” I told him with a wink.

“Oh, please,” he said, swiveling the laptop around. “Does that look like a face pretty enough to be gay?”

On the computer screen was the image of an old man with mean beady eyes, bushy white eyebrows, and thick silver hair. His face was turned down in a lethal-looking frown, and he definitely looked like someone you’d want to avoid in a dark alley.

Heath took up my hand. “Isn’t there a way to get us both in?” he asked.

“I can try,” Gil said, swiveling the laptop back toward himself and fluttering his fingers above the keyboard. “I’ll have to get creative, though. Maybe I’ll go the route of calling you two documentary filmmakers. That may work.”

•   •   •

As it happened, that did work. We got the e-mail the following morning that Walker had agreed to see us, and the prison was allowing us to come together. We had to be there at ten a.m. sharp and the prison was in New Hampshire—Walker had been transferred there years earlier, as it was a prison that specialized in housing older inmates, many of whom had health issues. Heath and I were up early and on the road to beat the rush hour traffic, but it still took us a little longer than we’d estimated. Still, we’d packed in a little extra time just in case, so it turned out okay.

At the prison, Heath and I were put through a full pat down and told to empty our pockets. We then had to turn over our phones and keys and other personal items, but Heath was allowed to keep the camera he’d brought along to record our interview with Walker and also to help keep up the “documentary filmmaker” facade.

We were then escorted into a windowless room and told to wait to be called in with the other visitors. Heath and I looked around the room—it was empty, and we shared a smirk.

We waited for about twenty minutes and at last the door opened and we were told to follow the guard down another hallway, through a locked door, and into a narrow cement block room with a row of cubicles that were really just desks with a chair. A window of Plexiglas separated us from an adjoining room that was the mirror of the one we were in. After we had a chance to look around at our surroundings, Heath pulled a chair from one of the other cubicles and we sat in silence while we waited.

At last a door in the other room opened and in shuffled an old man, bent with age, followed by an armed guard with a set of keys. The old man wore a muddy-looking jumpsuit and plastic sandals and pretty much nothing else. I recognized him from the photo that Gil had shown us only by his beady eyes. Guy Walker from the photo had been at least thirty pounds heavier and about fifteen years younger. This man just looked like a crotchety old dude shuffling to the café for a cheap cup of coffee and the morning special.

Guy stopped in front of the chair on his side and regarded us for a very long moment before he finally pulled it out and took a seat. “What?” he said, his voice sharp and jagged like rusty scrap metal.

I took out a photo that Heath and I had taken the day before of the rental house where Luke had lived. “Recognize this?” I asked.

Walker’s eyes held mine for another long pause before they moved to the photo. I could tell he recognized it, but he didn’t comment.

I put the photo down and took out the one of the closet. I’d had it printed out and blown up. “That’s you, right?” I said pointing to his name in the closet.

Walker’s eyes again flickered to the photo, then back up to me. His expression was unreadable. I searched the ether around him. I felt only one spirit connected to him. A female who felt distant and weak. Most likely it was Walker’s mother, and her connection to her son was tenuous because he wasn’t a good person. I see this sometimes with people who are inherently bad. They have very few spirits around them. I think it’s because they lose any semblance of spirituality, and so it becomes hard for the spirit world to connect to them.

“My name is Mary,” I said to him. “The same as your mother.”

Walker cocked an eyebrow.

“Mary died in the month of November,” I told him, seeing in my mind’s eye the image of a calendar page marked with the word “November,” and also the image of a gravestone. “She had diabetes and she lost part of her leg to it.” I waved my hand down around my own right leg. “She says it was very cold the month she died. It felt more like winter. I sense that the weather contributed to her death in some way.”

“What’re you doing?” Walker snapped. He couldn’t figure me out and it was irritating him.

“I’m a spirit medium,” I said, matter-of-factly. “And I’m connecting with your mom right now.”

“Bullshit.”

I smiled tightly. “She’s not surprised you don’t believe me. But she said to tell you that she’s glad you keep her picture on the wall of your cell. You’ve tucked it behind something else, but you know it’s there and it brings you comfort. It brings her comfort too.”

Walker’s fist banged on his side of the desk. “What the hell is this?” he yelled.

The guard at the other end of the room took a step toward him and I held up my hand to show him everything was okay. “Mr. Walker, I need to talk to you about something that most people don’t believe in. But I think you do. And in order to convince you that I know what I’m talking about, I needed to prove to you what I can do. Your mom really is talking to me about you. You can believe that or not. I don’t really care—it’s not the real reason I’m here.”

“You’re talking in circles,” he said, starting to push away from the table.

I decided to speak quickly and play a little fast and loose with the truth. “The other day I was walking along Comm Ave in downtown Boston and I came across the spirit of Amy Montgomery. The girl you murdered. She’d been wearing a white dress that night. That’s what drew you to her. You saw it even though it was dark outside. She was like a moth and you were the flame. But it wasn’t you that wanted to kill her, was it, Guy? It was the shadowman from the house on Stoughton. The one that followed you day and night and filled your head with dark thoughts and turned your dreams to nightmares. You heard his footsteps behind you everywhere you went, and you felt his presence in that house. You couldn’t get away from him. You couldn’t eat or sleep because he haunted you morning, noon, and night.”

Guy Walker’s face drained of color. He’d stood all the way up by the end of my speech, and as I finished speaking, he sat down heavily and just stared at me. “How do you know about him?” he whispered.

“Because he’s been following others, Guy. He’s been following a friend of mine, in fact. And that friend now stands accused of murder. But I’m hard-pressed to believe he’s responsible. I think it was this shadow. The same one that followed you, and pushed you to kill Amy.”

Guy looked around the room nervously, the flinty expression he’d worn into the room now a distant memory. This murderer, this mean, awful man, was visibly scared. “Don’t talk about him!” he whispered.

Heath and I exchanged a surprised look. “Why?” Heath asked him.

Guy swallowed hard. “You’ll call him,” he said softly.

“Who is he, Guy?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Stop it,” he said. “Let it be!”

But I couldn’t. Too much was at stake. “Guy,” I said, waiting for him to look at me before continuing. “I’m not just a medium. I’m someone who deals with the worst the spirit world has to offer. My partner and I”—I pointed to Heath and back to me—“we shut these spooks down for a living. It’s our specialty. If you’ll tell us what you know about this spook, even if it’s just a name or where we can find him, we will figure out how to stop him before he gets inside the mind of someone else.”

Guy shook his head adamantly. Then he put his hands over his ears and hunched down low, as if he was covering himself for some sort of attack. “He finally stopped coming to me and now you want to call him back? Don’t. Don’t do it!”

“Walker,” the guard barked. “You okay?”

Guy shook his head, then nodded, then took his hands off his ears, but he continued to crouch in his seat. “I don’t want him to come back,” he said.

“Who, Guy?” I asked, leaning forward and trying to coax a name out of him. “Just tell me if you know his name.”

Walker shook his head again and let it drop down to the desk with a loud thunk. The guard looked at us and took another step forward, his hand on his utility belt. Suddenly, Guy’s head lifted and he sat up straight. I held my hand up again to show the guard that everything was fine, but he seemed to hesitate, his gaze firmly on Walker.

That’s when I felt Heath’s hand on my arm. I looked down, then over at him, but he was staring straight ahead at the prisoner. I turned my head slowly and stiffened. Guy was staring at me in a way that made my skin crawl. “Hello, Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” he sang. Then he laughed, as if he delighted in making me uncomfortable.

I looked at him closely, even while goose pimples prickled my arms. Something about Guy Walker was definitely different. His eyes—mean before—were downright sinister now. And there was something in his expression that went beyond mean. It was even beyond cruel. I can only describe it as an evil so intense it sent my heart racing, and I was suddenly very glad for the Plexiglas between us. Guy snickered again. “Cat gut your tongue?” he asked me, playing on the words with a wicked grin.

“Who are you?” I asked, but my voice came out hoarse.

Walker smiled. But this wasn’t Guy Walker anymore. This was someone—or some
thing
—else. “Who am I?” he repeated. “I’m Gut-you-Guy and Killer Ken. I’m Butcher Bill and Murdering Mike. I’m Deadly Dan, Mary, and Lethal Luke. But always, I’m Sly Sy the Slayer. I’m six for the price of one. But soon I’ll be seven. Then eight. Then nine and ten. Which will you be, Mary? Will you be a friend of seven? Or did we already take you? Weren’t you one of the first, Mary? Or will we pick you next?” Guy leaned forward to exhale on the Plexiglas, fogging it, and then he lifted a finger and drew a heart with the name Mary in the middle and then he added what looked like a knife going through it. “Like my artwork?” he asked me, snickering again.

Heath stood up and reached for me. Guy’s chin came up and he studied Heath as if he’d just realized he was in the room with me. “I know you,” he said, that evil grin returning. “I’ve been in your head. Once I’m in, I’m never out. Want to play again, Indian boy?”

I realized that Heath was in immediate danger and I pulled out of his grasp and bent forward with my fist clenched. I pounded on the Plexiglas as hard as I could. It worked—Guy’s attention came off Heath and he focused on me. Ignoring the guard’s shout, I pounded on the glass again. “Hey!” I yelled. “Focus on me, you son of a bitch!”

Walker’s eyes homed in on me and I realized his pupils had dilated to the point where his irises looked black. That same sick smile continued to play across his face and he licked his lips as if he were about to be served a juicy steak.

Despite the cold fear traveling up and down my spine, I leaned in close. “I will
end
you, spook! Do you hear me? I’ll find a way to end you!”

And that’s when Walker’s face changed to one right out of a horror movie. He bared his teeth and lunged at me from the other side of glass, toppling his chair and sending me back several quick steps. The guard on the other side shot forward to grab Walker’s arm and in a move that should not have been possible for a guy so old and withered, he spun around and attacked the guard with hands that looked like claws and the bared teeth of a wild animal.

Heath grabbed me around the waist and literally lifted me off the ground in his haste to rush toward the door. Behind us I heard screams, and I knew they were the guard’s, and then an alarm went off and there was some sort of other commotion. Twisting in Heath’s arms a little as he pulled the door open, all I saw was a mass of armed guards pouring into the room behind us and the swing of billy clubs just visible above the desk. Through the din of noise I swear I heard the whump of the blows, and a small piece of me hoped that whatever spook was inside Guy Walker felt the brunt of them.

Heath carried me quickly out to into the hallway and he didn’t stop until we were met by a guard who was coming toward us looking angry enough to use his own billy club. “What the hell did you say to him?” he shouted at me.

Heath set me down. I was trembling and clenched my fists to try to still the tremors. “Nothing,” I told the guard, who was now in front of us breathing so heavily through his nostrils he sounded like a bull. “I just asked him about Amy Montgomery’s murder.”