What's a Ghoul to Do? (11 page)

Flipping on a few lights as I went, we made our way to the kitchen to turn off the first TV. To be sure, I also unplugged it, then turned to Gilley and Steven and said, "It might be best if we split up and turn each set off. I'll take the ground floor; Gil, you take the second; and Steven, why don't you take the third and fourth. I only noticed one TV the top floor anyway."

"Split up?" Gilley said anxiously. "Do you think that's wise, M.J.?"

I blinked at him. "What do you mean, do I think it's wise?"

"Could be dangerous," Steven said, and I noticed he'd gone a little white too. "For you," he added quickly as his eyes darted around the kitchen. "I would hate to think of something happening to you as a guest in my house."

"I see," I said. "So, you think it's better if we stay together in an empty house and take three times as long to turn off all the televisions?"

"Well, he's got a point, M.J. It
could
be dangerous," Gilley said anxiously, looking with longing toward the van outside.

I scowled at the two of them. This was exactly why I didn't want Steven along in the first place. "Fine, gentlemen. Come along then. Let's turn the sets off so we can focus on your grandfather, Steven."

We moved from room to room searching out the televisions as Steven navigated the house for us. In a way it did work out, because the place had a gazillion rooms and one of us was bound to get lost.

When the last set was turned off and unplugged I said, "That does it! Now we can get to our baseline test and get the equipment set up and—" I was cut off by a noise that sounded like a loud motor coming from downstairs. We looked at one another quizzically, listening.

"What
is
that?" Gilley said.

"I don't know," Steven answered, moving out of the room. We followed him to the staircase and listened again. We could hear voices talking over the motor, and it grew louder, as if it were amplified and coming closer. And suddenly we knew what the noise was, just as it started coming out of the room we had just vacated.

"That's impossible," Steven whispered, and we turned back to the room, where a TV was blaring at full volume. On the screen two men drove a boat and discussed casting techniques. Even more unsettling, the television's plug was out of the electrical socket and sitting on the floor.

"M.J.," Gilley whined. "Do something!"

"What exactly would you like me to do, Gil?" I asked him. I'd never seen anything like this before. "It's not like I can just snap my fingers and—" I stopped. Just as I'd actually snapped my fingers, every set seemed to have shut off. We all looked at one another, listening for any sign that a set was still on somewhere in the house. "Shit," I whispered. "This is going to be a tricky bust."

"I don't think I like this," Gilley whined, moving closer to me and reaching out to snag my jacket as if I might leave his side.

"Perhaps we should go to a hotel for the night and come back in the morning?" Steven suggested. "I mean," he added, clearing his throat, "you two must be very tired from the trip."

"Great idea!" Gilley said, letting go of my jacket and dashing out of the room. "Come on, M.J.! Let's go get some rest!" And with that he bolted down the stairs.

Steven smiled at me, then went after Gilley. I had no choice but to follow them. By the time I'd made it downstairs, Gilley and Steven had grabbed all of the equipment and my backpack and were lugging it out to the van. Faster than you can say, "Boo!" they had it tossed in and were ready to roll. "Guys," I said, trying to slow them down, "I think we should stay."

Gilley looked at me to see if I was serious, then made a huge show of stretching his arms wide above his head and yawning. "Man! I am beat! That was a much longer car ride than I expected. I don't think I could possibly stay up tonight to help you. I think we should come back tomorrow."

"I don't want you to think you need to work through the night," Steven added. "I'm not a… how do you say . .. driver of slaves. If Gilley's tired, I think it would be better to come back in the morning."

Just then the whole house lit up and the noise of twelve televisions could be heard blaring from inside. Gilley didn't wait for me to try to talk him into it; he simply jumped in the van and started the engine. Steven turned away from the house and moved to his car in a half walk, half jog. I rolled my eyes, took one last look at the house, and mumbled, "Fine."

Steven led the way to town, about ten miles back from the way we'd come. A sign welcomed us to Uphamshire, population 4,056. Steven parked in front of a two-story Victorian, and we waited while he got out and walked up to Gilley's window. "We should stay here tonight," he said.

"Where are we?" I asked, peeking out at the house.

"Helen's Bed-and-Breakfast. She's an old friend of my grandfather. You two wait here while I make the arrangements." Gilley nodded agreeably, and Steven headed inside.

When he was out of earshot I gave Gilley a small whap on the shoulder. "We should have stayed, Gil."

"M.J.," Gilley began, "you know what my job is. I'm a van man. It was your idea to get me to go inside and help out, so you have only yourself to blame."

"Whose idea was it to allow Steven along?" I retorted.

"Oh, come on!" Gilley insisted. "Those TVs were freaking me out!"

"They can't hurt you, and you know it," I insisted. "Geez, Gil! If I'd known you were going to act like a sissy girl, I would have come alone."

"I wasn't the only one who fled the premises," Gilley groused. "Your Dr. Delicious bolted too."

"He's not
my
Dr. Delicious," I snapped.

"Whatever," Gil said, turning away from me as he muttered, "Please let there be a minibar in the room."

We waited in silence for the next ten minutes until Steven came trotting out. "I've gotten us a couple of rooms. Helen is preparing them now, and they will be ready in about a half hour. Anyone up for a drink?"

"I am!" Gilley said.

"Great," Steven said, not waiting for me to answer. "There's a bar within walking distance. We can leave the cars here."

Gilley was out of the car in a flash. "Let's go!" he said happily.

I sat for a minute and debated going for a drink with the two of them or sitting it out in the van. "M.J.?" Steven said when he noticed I hadn't gotten out of the van. "You are following?"

I sighed, looked at Doc, who had his head tucked under his wing and was fast asleep, and decided maybe a drink wasn't such a bad idea. "Yeah," I said.

With Steven leading the way, we walked to a bar just down the street called Down the Hatch. "Quaint," I said as I read the sign.

"Not on the inside," Steven countered. He was right. Inside the place was definitely a dive bar, with wood-paneled walls, dirty floors, and the smell of grease and old beer hanging in the air.

We found a booth and settled in. Steven flagged a waitress, and, after we gave her our order, I scoped out the place while Gilley and Steven struck up a conversation. I didn't join in on their banter. I was still a little miffed at Gilley for bolting so quickly. We had a reputation to protect, and if word got out that one-half of our team was a big fat chicken, then our referral business could be in jeopardy.

My eyes wandered around the bar from patron to patron, taking in the locals, when I felt a thud against my energy.

The way I'm able to pick up the presence of someone who has crossed over is by feeling a sense of pressure against my energy. Think of it as if your eyes were closed and you felt someone invade your personal space. For me the feeling is a hundred times more pronounced, and there's no way to turn away from it once it happens.

When I feel this, I have two choices: I can acknowledge the energy and strike up a telepathic conversation with it, or I can ignore it and hope it goes away. I tried the latter route, as all I wanted to do was have a drink, head back to the B and B, and do a face plant into a pillow, but the energy thumping against mine wasn't having any of it.

Finally, after taking a sip of my cranberry and vodka, I opened up and thought,
I
am open. What is it you need to say to me?

Immediately I felt a powerful shattering sensation around my chest. My eye was drawn to the doorway and a dark stain imbedded in the wood floor. Getting up from the table I walked over to get a better look, and when I came close to the stain I saw in my mind's eye the body of a man lying on the floor.

Coming back to the table where Gilley and Steven were both watching me warily, I asked, "Who was the young man murdered over there?"

"What?" Steven asked as he looked from me to where I was pointing.

"There was a young man murdered in that doorway. He says someone shot him."

"You're telling me this place is haunted too?" Steven asked, his eyes large.

"Get used to it," Gilley explained. "Any structure older than fifty years usually has something walking around inside of it."

"I have never heard of a murder here," Steven said.

"His name begins with an L," I said, still conversing with the young man. "Larry, like the Three Stooges."

"He's talking about the Three Stooges?" Steven asked me.

"You know them?"

"Of course. I have watched them in both Argentina and Germany. They are very funny men."

"I think so too!" Gilley said with a dreamy look at Steven.

"As I was saying," I said, wanting to pull them back to the murder here at the bar. "If he's able to reference the Three Stooges then that would give us a time frame of within the last seventy-five years or so."

Steven got up suddenly and headed over to the bar. We watched as he motioned for the bartender and spoke to him briefly while pointing to our table. The bartender nodded and headed into the back. Steven then returned to our table and said, "The owner's a guy named Chris. His family has owned this place for fifty years."

A minute later a short and extremely rotund man with white hair and pronounced jowls waddled over to us. He looked like one of the Weebles I had when I was a kid. Stopping at our table he said, "Good to see you back in town, Dr. Sable. Jeb said you wanted to ask me about the history of this place?"

The thud against my energy increased tenfold, and I blurted out, "Who was killed over there?"

Chris's milky eyes swiveled to me. "Excuse me?"

"That old stain on the floor," I said, pointing to it. "Someone named Larry was shot over there, wasn't he?"

"You a reporter?" he snapped, suddenly defensive.

"No," I answered. "I'm a medium."

"I don't care about your size, honey. How do you know about Larry?"

I smiled. "I wasn't referring to my size. I'm the kind of person who talks to dead people, and right now this guy Larry is saying he was shot in your doorway."

Chris's jaw dropped slightly, and he looked from me back to Sable. He barked, "This some kind of joke?"

"No, this is no joke. I have seen it for myself. She really can talk to the dead."

Chris waited a moment, perhaps to see if any of us would burst out laughing at the prank we were pulling. Larry buzzed in with another message. "Larry says you've been talking about putting in a new floor, but it won't help. You'll always see a stain over there," I said, pointing with emphasis back to the bloodstain.

Chris looked to where I pointed, then narrowed his eyes at me. I looked him straight in the eye, my expression calm but serious. After a moment he seemed to make up his mind and turned away from our table to waddle a few steps and drag a chair back to us before taking his seat.

"That was over forty-five years ago," he began. "My dad had just bought this place. There was this group of young punks in town, good-for-nothin's. They had been causing a lot of trouble for the local businesses, smashing windows, breaking and entering. They'd rob you blind, then go that one step further and trash up the place. Back then, not a lot of people carried insurance, so it was even harder to recover from something like that. A few folks even went out of business.

"The police weren't much help; our sheriff had been injured in WW Two, and he was useless. My dad knew it was just a matter of time before the gang targeted him, so he spread the word that he wasn't going to let the punks get away with it. He and I camped out every night for a whole week with our hunting rifles, taking turns on watch as we waited for them to strike. Sure enough, one night the gang broke a window and three of 'em piled in."

Larry had stopped banging on my energy. It seemed he was listening to Chris too. "There were only three?" Gilley asked.

"Yeah," Chris said. "We learned later that they called themselves the Stooges. I guess they were big fans of Larry, Moe, and Curly."

Steven looked sharply at me and mouthed,
Whoa.

I winked at him as Chris continued. "Dad and I watched from behind the bar as they came in and were about to trash the place. Then Dad yelled, 'Freeze!' and they did for a second, but then one of them picked up a chair and tossed it at us. We ducked and came up shooting. I was so scared; I mean, I was only about nineteen at the time."

"And Larry was killed," I said.

"Yeah. When the dust settled one was injured, the other had run off, and the third was dead on the floor, right where you pointed. To this day I'm not sure if it was my bullet that killed him," Chris said sadly.

Larry buzzed a thought into my head. The message had a sense of urgency. "Larry says he's sorry, Chris."

"So he's really here? You can hear him, for real?"

"I can," I said. "He keeps repeating, 'Tell him I'm sorry,' over and over. I think that's the reason he's been hanging out, refusing to cross over. He wants to apologize."

"Please tell him I said all's forgiven, and I'm sorry for the way it worked out."

I felt Larry's energy begin to recede—he'd heard. "He's stepping back," I said. Before Larry had a chance to completely disconnect from me, I encouraged him to leave this dimension. "He's gone," I said when he severed the connection.

"This is some friend you've got here, Steven," Chris said.