Brave words, but I’d seen that lock kick over and tighten. I knew it was going to be difficult getting out of here.
They can’t hurt you.
That phrase kept running through my head, but I wasn’t all that sure I could rely on it. No, ghosts weren’t supposed to be able to hurt you. Still, I knew very well there were things they could do. If they really wanted to.
The scream came again, only this time I was prepared and I didn’t flinch.
“Just what is it you want from me?” I demanded. “Spit it out. I don’t have much time. Let’s get it over with.”
There was an eerie moan. I tried to see, but it was black in that room. No moon. No light. I was trembling. Could the ghost sense that? I wasn’t sure. I had to pretend an attitude I wouldn’t have been able to sustain if the lights had been on.
“Okay, that’s it. You had your chance. I’m leaving.”
I started toward the door, wondering what on earth I was going to do to get it open. But icy fingers touched my arm, making me jump.
“Wait,” it said.
I hesitated, working hard to hold it together. “Wait for what?” I grumbled. “I haven’t heard anything compelling yet.”
“Don’t you know me?” the voice said. “I’m your Aunt Tina.”
I drew in a startled breath and bit down hard on my lip to keep from gasping. “Aunt Tina?” I said in a strangled voice.
“Yes dear. Of course. Your mother’s sister. Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
I heard her gasp at that.
“No, I’m sorry Aunt Tina. I have amnesia. I don’t remember anything.”
“But your mother….”
I was swinging back and forth between excitement and fear. A ghost was talking to me—and she knew me. I took a deep breath. Stay calm. “Do you know where she is?”
There was a rustling sound. I turned, trying to see her in the dark, but all I saw was a sort of foggy gloom. I trained my sight on the area the voice was coming from, but that didn’t help.
“No, dear. I’m so sorry, but I don’t. I haven’t seen her since they all left. I died shortly after. And you…you were in that accident at the lake….” Her voice rose as she seemed to remember that, as though she was a bit surprised to think of it.
“Yes.”
“But I thought you were….”
“Dead. I was. At least, that’s what they tell me.”
“Oh no. You’re not dead. I can see you. You’re alive.”
I turned, wishing I could see her in the darkness. Suddenly I needed to know so badly. “Am I? Am I really?”
“Oh yes.”
“But…”
“Gran Ana.” She said the name as though it was a curse.
My heart was beating very fast and my breath was coming even faster. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”
“She brought you back, didn’t she? No one else would be able to harness that kind of power.”
I reached out, wanting to touch her, but my hands didn’t make contact. “What did she do?” I said so softly, it was almost a whisper.
“That’s the question. What did she do?” Her voice had changed. It was no longer loving. Now it was closer to the way one would imagine a cackling witch might speak. “You do know that she’s evil, don’t you?”
“No.” I couldn’t stand to hear that. It was as though a lifeline I depended on was suddenly being pulled away. “No, I don’t believe that.”
“Of course she is. She ruined things for your mother. She held control over your father like one of those crazy witch moms. You know the kind I mean. The kind who can’t let go and let their sons live their own lives. She was always interfering. And now, she’s doing it again, isn’t she? She’s trying to control you.”
I was shaking my head wildly, but I couldn’t get her words out of my brain. Was that it? Was that what was going on? I wanted to ask her, I wanted to know what she knew, but before I could get to the truth, a voice came from out in the house somewhere, a human voice, coming closer all the time.
“Hey! Who’s in here? What’s going on?”
Snap. Just like that, the ghost disappeared, leaving behind a sudden emptiness. I spun around, searching the darkness, but I knew she was gone. Was it really my aunt? How could I judge that? But whoever it was, I could feel her retreat and I barely got myself calmed down and in order before the door burst open and Kenny Sands was shining his flashlight in my face.
“Oh!” I cried out and almost swooned into his arms. “I was…the door was locked and I was…”
“Hey,” he said, startled but willing. “Come on sweetheart. Don’t faint on me. Here, I’ll hold you up.”
And he did. I have to admit, I took advantage of that. I was exhausted from what I’d just been going through, and his arms felt so nice and protective. Embarrassing as it might be to acknowledge, I let him hold me and give me comfort for a moment or two. I needed it badly. This whole thing had shaken me to the core.
“Did something scare you?” he asked me.
“Uh…no, not really. Only the door closed and my flashlight went out and I couldn’t seem to get the door unlocked again. So, yeah, I guess you could say I was a little scared. At the time. Not now.”
His arms tightened, but not with ardor. “Hey, that’s good. I know what. We’ve got to record that. We’ll recreate what happened to you. We’ll put you back in the room and lock the door and….”
“No,” I said loud and clear. “Not in this lifetime.”
The problem was, as I was relaxing in Kenny’s muscular arms, I looked over his shoulder and saw others of the crew arriving, along with Shane who was standing there, wondering what the heck was going on. The only thing that kept me from blushing with chagrin was the fact that beautiful Clarissa was on his arm and leaning against him.
So there.
I slowly disentangled myself from Kenny, meanwhile ignoring the questions he was asking me about what had happened and why I was there. I looked at Shane. He looked at me. And then he told Kenny the truth.
“She grew up in this house,” he told him. “I can understand why she might have wanted to come take a look at how you were treating it.”
“Oh really?” Kenny grinned at me. “Hey, you should stick around. We’re going to be doing some ghost hunting in an hour or so. Maybe you’ll see somebody you knew.”
Right. Exactly what I was hoping for. Not.
Kenny started fooling with some of the equipment they had stored on the landing. There were others coming into the house. I could hear them below. They all seemed to be TV people, workers involved in all the phases of a location shoot. The fact that this set was actually the place where I had grown up was crazy.
A short, muscular man with dark curly hair came up the stairs, swinging a flashlight in an annoying way. He nodded to us and headed for one of the bedrooms.
“Hey Mario,” Kenny called out to him, waving a piece of recording equipment in his direction. “Don’t go off somewhere. We’ve got work to do tonight. I want to set up some…”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be here,” Mario said curtly and disappeared into the room, slamming the door.
A young woman in jeans with a t-shirt that proclaimed “I’m a Wild One” in bright crimson letters had come up right behind him. She had a denim jacket slung over her shoulder and a crazy swirl of tattoos up and down her arms. She’d obviously been accompanying Mario up the stairs, but once he had so pointedly closed the door to his room, she flushed and stood uncertainly in the middle of the landing.
Shane and Clarissa whispered something to each other and left to go downstairs. At the same time, Kenny’s partner Derek came up. He gave me a look as though I should understand that we had a bond of sorts, the two of us, but since I didn’t have a clue what that could be, I ignored him.
But I couldn’t ignore Kenny. He seemed to have taken a liking to me and he was having me hold things for him while he began the lighting setup. At the same time, he w
as exploring his philosophy of life and telling me all about why he was into ghosts and other spirits of the night.
“I’m a fulltime believer, but I know a lot of it is all a hoax,” he was saying. “Okay, so first we shoot a bunch of stuff that looks real, get people scared, entranced even. Spooky Blair Witch stuff. That should cover about three episodes. But then we get wind of local corruption. Small town corruption, the best kind. We worm our way into town businesses, get peoples’ trust, and when we get enough evidence, we blow the lid off this paranormal/supernatural sham. One by one we shame those who have been complicit in advancing this fiction and making money off it.”
Uh-oh. Now I was beginning to see why my grandmother was so adamant about stopping these people.
“Wouldn’t that include you?” I happened to mention, regarding those making a buck or two off ghosts.
He looked startled. “Well, yeah, but we don’t cover that. That would be self defeating.”
“Of course.”
He gave me a raised eyebrow. “This is my second time coming here to Moonhaven you know.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Back when I was in film school I used to have a late-night TV show covering the occult. We sort of went viral for awhile. Got very popular, had lots of fans. Especially teenagers. At one point, we came to town, following a lead that there was something going on up here, but it didn’t pan out. So I was stoked to get another bite at the apple. You know what I mean?”
I wasn’t sure that I did, but before I had time to ask for an explanation, Rennie returned in her usual flamboyant fashion.
“Hey everybody, I’m back!”
Her voice rocketed up the stairs and seemed to stun us all. But then she was charging up the steps toward us and I looked down at her and asked, “Where have you been all this time?”
“I had to go home to get Gordon, my little brother. You remember him.” And because she wasn’t paying proper attention, she slipped on one of the top steps, lost her balance and started to flail.
Luckily, a 6 foot 5 red-headed youth was right behind her and caught her before she could go flying down into the five-sided foyer below. It was Gordon, her brother, and I’d met him before.
“Gordon, you saved my life!” she cried as she regained her footing.
“Yeah, whatever,” he said a bit sullenly.
She got back to business immediately. “Listen Kenny,” she said as she reached him, “I know you were saying you were short handed and needed a PA for setting up shots and such and I just happened to think of my brother. He spent a few months down in LA last year, working at a studio, and he might be just what you’re looking for. He’s got experience. That’s rare around here.”
Rennie sounded so sincere and hopeful, but Kenny stared at Gordon as though appalled.
“Oh crap. I remember you. Gordie, isn’t it? You were a PA on ‘Gorillas Attack at Dawn’, weren’t you? You tried to work with us at Meglamania Studios.”
“Yeah. That’s right.” Gordon looked as hopeful as Rennie.
But Kenny shook his head, frowning. “You were a disaster, as I remember. Totally incompetent.”
“Oh, but listen,” Rennie cried. “That was a year ago. He’s older now. He’s wiser. He’s had more experience. And besides, there’s no one else in this town who has a clue about these things. No one who’s worked on any kind of filming. You need him.”
Kenny shook his head. “No thanks. I can ruin this whole project on my own you know. I don’t need Gordie to help destroy it, like he almost destroyed ‘Gorillas’.” He turned as if he was talking to me, throwing his hands out to the side like a hopeless shrug and rolling his eyes. “The guy destroys everything he touches. Total incompetence. I wouldn’t let him empty the ashtrays.”
“Hey,” Gordon sputtered. “Hey, no, I’m not ….”
The tattooed girl stepped forward, placing herself right in front of Kenny so that he couldn’t ignore her. She pushed her lanky black hair out of her eyes and spoke intensely. “Hey Kenny, I could really use a hand. And that might free me up to get on camera more…”
Kenny waved her away with a look on his face that was almost as insulting to her as he’d been to Gordon. “Naw. Forget it, Lilah. You’re our grip…and to tell you the truth, you’ve really got a face for gripping. That’s about the limit of your talents, I’d say.”
Lilah’s mouth fell open. “But you’ve never let me….”
Kenny’s patience was thinning. “Leave me alone, okay? I’ve got to make plans for tonight and I don’t need all you yahoos hanging around like a room full of beggars.” He pointed at Gordon. “Especially you. You’re not part of this crew. You have no business here that I can think of.”
Gordon stuttered helplessly. “I…I…”
Kenny waved him away. “Get outta here. I could hire kindergarteners who could do better than you did on that set.”
By now, Gordon was furious. His face was suffused and contorted and purple, his hands balled into fists. “You never gave me a chance,” he yelled at Kenny. “I had to cover up for your screw-ups and you blamed them on me.”
Kenny made a face and mocked how Gordon had said that. “You never gave me a chance.” He laughed. “Don’t be such a baby. Cry baby. Little girl.”
Gordon let out a snarl and went for his throat, like a Rottweiler to a bloody steak.
“Hey!”
Shocked, we all converged on the two of them, pulling Gordon back off him. Rennie grabbed his arms and I stood in front of Kenny, and Kenny laughed. Gordon was so angry, I was afraid he would have a heart attack right there on the landing.
“Bye bye,” Kenny said to Gordon, waving at him mockingly. “Go ruin somebody else’s life why don’t you?”
Derek had been standing there with his hands in his pockets watching this, and he finally stepped forward and spoke. “Not so fast, Kenny-baby. Gordie’s not such a bad kid. He always did have potential. And anyway, I already decided to hire him.”
“You what?” It was Kenny’s turn to be shocked.
“I’m hiring him.” Now he was the one with a mocking smile on his face. “We need someone with experience.”
Kenney snarled. “Yeah, but not bad experience.”
“Good, bad, what does it matter? I’m hiring him. I’ve got equal say in these things and you know it.” He grinned at Gordon, relishing the moment of triumph over Kenney. “Welcome on board, kid. Just try to keep from attacking your bosses. That’s all I ask.”
Gordon looked uncertain at just what was going on. Kenny looked angry.
“I guess I’ll have to take what I can get,” he said nastily, “but I’m not going to pay him anything until he proves he’s worth it.”
“What?” Gordon was shocked again. It was like we were all taking turns on an emotional Ferris wheel. “Rennie!” Gordon whined, looking at his sister, like he probably had every day of his life, especially when the ice cream had just fallen out of his cone and he needed a new one. It was that kind of look. Big sister will fix things!
“Hush, honey. It’ll be fine. You’ll show these guys. I know you.”
They were muttering among themselves and Rennie turned to me and whispered, “Help me here. I know I can’t get rid of these people. So what else can I do? They’ve got to take Gordon on. I need a spy among them. If they take Gordon and put him to work as a PA, I’ll have eyes and ears in this house to help me keep track of what is going on. You understand?”
I scrunched up my face. “What’s a PA?”
“Production Assistant. A Go-Fer, basically.”
She leaned a little closer. “And as far as I’m concerned, my own private spy. Without Gordon here, I’d be blind. The Council will try to kill me when they find out about all this. So I have to prepare to defend myself.”
I shook my head. “Rennie, you’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not! But don’t talk about it.” She put her finger to her mouth. “Loose lips and all that.”
I opened my own mo
uth, then closed it again. Okay. I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Obviously, only Rennie could do that. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves.
At the same time, I heard Clarissa saying to Shane, “Come on. Let’s get out of this madhouse. Is there some place we can go and have coffee or a glass of wine? We need to talk.”
I looked down at where they were standing on the inlaid pentagram in the foyer. I could see them perfectly from where I was positioned. The stairway curved down and opened up right above the inlay. It was really quite beautiful.
“Sure,” Shane was saying. Was it bad that his voice sounded almost like a cat’s purr? “We’ve got some things we need to go over. Let’s go.”
“I just need to go up and get my wrap.”
She smiled at him and wiggled a little. She was spectacularly equipped for wiggling. She wiggled all the way up the stairs, with him following close behind.
And then she caught sight of herself in the hallway mirror and stopped, looking closely. At first I thought she was just admiring herself, but then I realized there was a touch of alarm in her voice when she said, “Uh…wait. Just let me run on into my room and freshen up a skosh. It’ll only take a minute. You’ll be here when I get back?”
He gave her a melting smile. “Of course.”
Of course. Ugh! I watched her walk away—very sensuously--and I wanted to scream. I turned to Shane. “Well, I guess you’re set for the evening.”
He frowned at me as though I was being childish and he was “oh so adult”. And understanding. And mature. Again--ugh!
“This isn’t like a date or anything like that,” he noted, as though talking to a child. “It’s business.”
“Ah. A business date. Of course. How could I doubt you?”
He frowned, looking almost ferocious. “I don’t get you, Haley. This is my job.”
“It’s your job to take the Black Widow Spider lady out for wine or coffee?”
That was what I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue and held it back. What was the point after all?
Instead, I stomped off. Down the stairs. Toward the front door. I was going to leave. I think they call it high dudgeon. That was what it felt like.
Witches in Wonderland Page 5