Vengeful Spirits series Box Set

by Val Crowe

  I looked down at my shoes. “It wasn’t because I was too old. It was because…” Because I felt like all the good things she used to do—singing to me and reading to me and telling me loved me—weren’t real anymore.

  “Because of Negus,” she said.

  I bobbed my head. “Yeah.”

  “I’m so sorry, kiddo,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “And it’s all over now. You don’t have to keep apologizing.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said.

  I sighed, shaking my head.

  “Do you want me to sing to you?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “You know, that might be nice.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Go get ready for bed, then. I’ll tuck you in.”

  I laughed softly. “All right, Mom.”

  “I mean it,” she said.

  And I did what she said. I ducked into the bathroom and put on my pajamas and brushed my teeth, and then I climbed into bed.

  She pulled the covers up over me.

  I rolled over onto my side. I closed my eyes.

  “Sleep tight, Deacon,” she whispered, rubbing my back. She started to sing, and her voice was sweet and clear.

  I felt myself drift.

  There was only the warm dark, and the sound of her voice, and sleep.

  NO ONE HERE GETS OUT ALIVE

  No One Here Gets Out Alive

  Vengeful Spirits, Book Three

  Val Crowe

  NO ONE HERE GETS OUT ALIVE

  © copyright 2018 by Val St. Crowe

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  Join my email list

  To find out information on new releases and all the Val Crowe news first!

  Join here.

  Also by Val Crowe

  Brighter

  Death Girl

  Ratcatcher

  Empire of Rust

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I just want to make sure you got the money,” my mother said over the phone.

  “What?” I sat up straight at the table in my vintage Airstream camper. “What money? Don’t give me money. You just bought an RV from Uncle Bill, and you’re having to furnish it and buy all-new stuff.” My mom’s previous camper had to be burned. Long story. “You need to hold onto your money.”

  “Deacon, no, it’s fine. I’m not destitute. I have savings. And I live relatively frugally, since I don’t have a mortgage or anything like that. I can afford to give you this money.”

  “But I don’t need it,” I said. “I still have money left over from the sale of the land my father left me. And if I need to, I can take a job or something.” My father had died a few years back. If I don’t sound too broken up about it, it’s because I never met the guy. He wasn’t around when I was growing up. I went to his funeral, inherited some land that I sold. Also the Airstream was out on the property. I kept it.

  “No, you don’t have time,” said my mother. “That’s why I’m giving you the money. You can use it to hire Dominique.”

  Ah. Right. Dominique Carlson. She was the girl that Negus—the thing who had possessed my mother years ago—was obsessed with. We didn’t know why, but I was going to find out. Because Negus was looking for me, and he meant me harm. I needed to find out what I could about him first, to protect myself. Maybe to go on the offensive against Negus. I didn’t know. I’d do what I had to do.

  “Mom—”

  “No arguments,” said my mother. “It’s the least I can do to help.” And now she sounded a little indignant.

  My mother wanted to help me track down Dominique and find Negus, but I’d told her I needed to do this on my own. Partly, it was because my mother was a bit of a disaster magnet. She tried really hard to do things that would help me, but they ended up backfiring a lot, and then there were consequences. Like the burned-down camper. Perfect example.

  Anyway, maybe I was being superstitious. Maybe my mother wasn’t a bad luck charm. But I wasn’t going to take any chances. The other reason was that there was seriously only so much of my mother I could take. She and I had repaired our relationship after a long time apart, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to spend every waking second with her or anything.

  I needed a break.

  And she wouldn’t admit it, but I could tell she needed one too. Also, she was going to have to rebuild her business as a medium and that would be tough since all of her equipment had burned up in her camper.

  Why did she need equipment? Because she was a fake. She couldn’t communicate with ghosts at all.

  Me, on the other hand? I could see ghosts. And yes, that was sort of my mother’s fault. Bad luck, like I said.

  “Fine, Mom,” I said. “I’ll take the money. But I didn’t get it, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I sent it to you with Paypal,” she said.

  Ah. Right. I had forgotten my mother’s extreme fondness for Paypal. She had set up a payment system through the service that enabled her to take credit cards from her customers and things like that. That meant she always had money in her Paypal account, and it was easier for her to send it electronically than to do it any other way. “Of course you did,” I said. “I’ll check. I’m sure it’s all there.”

  “Will you check now?” she said. “Before we get off the phone? I just want to be sure.”

  “Okay, Mom.” I rolled my eyes. “Hold on.” I took the phone away from my ear, and checked the email address associated with my Paypal account. Yup, there it was. Wow. She’d sent me a nice chunk of change there. I put the phone back to my ear. “It’s too much.”

  “Well, if you don’t need it all to hire her, then just use the rest on yourself, okay?”

  “Mom, seriously, you need this money for yourself, rebuild—”

  “Deacon, we’re not fighting about this anymore.” She huffed. “Just be a normal kid and say thank you and take your mother’s money.”

  I laughed. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said. “Now, I will talk to you later. And make sure that you keep enough fuel stocked that you can power the Airstream if you need to go off grid, right?”

  “Mom, I know this.” I sighed.

  “And water. Check your water tanks. You need water to survive.”

  “Mom, I have been on my own for a long time now.” Nearly ten years, actually, due to the fact I’d run away from home at sixteen. “I’m fine.”

  “Call me if you need anything,” she said.

  “I will.”

  “And call me if you find out anything about that Dominique person.”

  “Yes, I will. Sure.”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise.” How could we still be talking? I glared up at the ceiling. “Listen, Mom, I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay, kiddo,” she said. “Take care. I love you.”

  “Yeah, love you too.” I hung up the phone. Geez. Now, I could finish getting the Airstream ready to go back on the road. I was heading back to Thornford.

  * * *

  “I didn’t think you were heading back this way,” my best friend Wade said, getting up from the table to give me a hug. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that you’re here, though. I took the liberty of ordering you a beer.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, sitting down at the table. We were in a bar in Thornford, and it was late afternoon. It was a breezy day in early October. It had been a little over a month since the last time I’d seen Wade. “Anyway, I know I said I wasn’t heading back, but then I found out some interesting information from my mother about Negus, and I decided I needed to see Rylan.”

  “Rylan?” said Wade. “You’re not here to see me?”

  “Well, of course, I’m happy to see you,” I said. “How are things? None of the girls you’ve slept with lately have leapt to their deaths, right?”

  “Dude, I haven’t slept with anyone since the last time I saw you,” he said. “Nothing like contracting a sexually transmitted killer g
host to make you keep your pants zipped.”

  I chuckled. “True.”

  “And, uh, I don’t know… I went by Olivia’s grave the other day.”

  The smile slid off my face. “Oh, yeah?”

  “They have the headstone up,” he said.

  I nodded. “I should go up and check it out. Pay my respects.”

  “Yeah,” said Wade.

  It was quiet.

  I could see thoughts crossing his face about Olivia. He was thinking that he might bring up the fact that he’d slept with her, even though we’d made a pact together that neither of us would touch her since we both wanted her. He was thinking about the fact that he’d given her the aforementioned sexually transmitted killer ghost and that had killed her.

  Don’t say anything, I begged him. I’d rather not talk about it right now.

  He just drank his beer.

  I was grateful. “So, how are classes?”

  He shrugged. “Going all right. I’ve actually been going to class and doing the assignments and stuff. It’s less hard than I imagined it would be.”

  I snorted. Wade had been going to college for seven years, but he had decided he actually wanted to graduate, so he was knuckling down this year.

  “And your mom?” said Wade. “She’s doing okay without her camper?”

  “She got a deal from my uncle in upstate New York,” I said. “She’s got a new-to-her RV, and she’ll be back in business selling snake oil before we know it.” I turned around, looking at the door. “So, where is Rylan? I told her to meet us here around now.”

  “No clue,” said Wade.

  I pointed. “Hey, is that her?”

  A redhead with her hair in a sleek braid was leaning over the bar and whispering something in a brunette’s ear. They both had really nice asses. But if it was Rylan, I knew better than to look, or she’d beat me senseless.

  The redhead turned around, and it was Rylan all right.

  I gave her a little half-wave.

  She waved back. She whispered something else in the brunette’s ear and then pulled back. The brunette stuck out her lower lip, disappointed. Rylan spread her hands helplessly. Then she came over to us. She flopped down in a chair at our table and set down her beer. “Deacon, you are seriously screwing with my hookup here.”

  “Sorry,” I said, giving the brunette an appraising look.

  Rylan turned my face back to hers. “Stop wasting your time checking out chicks who don’t like dicks. What’s the big emergency? Why do I have to drop everything to be here with you, huh?”

  “I have a favor to ask you,” I said.

  “Well, is it a time consuming favor?” said Rylan. “Because after I take that fine piece of ass home with me tonight, I am packing up and shipping off for my biggest youtube shoot ever. It’s going to be seriously epic. I’m going to this campground where some guy killed his whole family ten years ago. It’s insanely haunted.”

  “Wade said you were doing something like that,” I said. “And that’s actually really great. I need you to let me tag along.”

  Wade’s eyebrows shot up. “Uh, after what happened at that amusement park, is that a good idea?”

  I turned to him. “I fail to see the connection.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He was sarcastic. “Every time you go someplace with a high concentration of supernatural activity, you stir it up and make it stronger, and then bad things happen. You have nearly killed people under the influence of ghosts on two separate occasions.”

  “Seriously?” said Rylan, looking concerned.

  “You were there for the first one, right?” said Wade, turning to Rylan. “Whatever it was, it was so bad, you guys won’t talk about it.”

  Rylan’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, uh, right. The fact that we almost killed that guy was definitely the most disturbing part.” She was wrong, of course. The fact that the spirits in Ridinger Hall had taken control of us and taken liberties with our bodies had probably been the most disturbing thing. However, I wasn’t sure what that said about me. Maybe I should be more worried about killing people.

  And the last time, when I’d nearly taken an ax to two people, that had been pretty disturbing. Again, it hadn’t really been me. I’d been influenced by powerful spirits. Anyway, I guessed Wade had a point.

  “Look, I’m just saying, you need to watch yourself,” said Wade.

  “I’ll be fine.” I waved this away.

  “This place is haunted by a guy who killed his whole family,” said Wade. He turned to Rylan. “How’d he do it?”

  “Stabbed them to death,” said Rylan.

  Wade shrugged at me. “Sounds totally safe.”

  “Seriously,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  Rylan furrowed her brow. “Okay, say I agree to this idea, and I let you tag along, what brought this on? I didn’t think you were gung-ho for this kind of thing. Furthermore, you’ll be on a youtube video, and people will find out about your abilities and is that what you really want?”

  “It’s not really about me,” I said. “So, you know how my mother was possessed by a thing named Negus when I was ten years old?”

  “What?” said Rylan. “Um, no. I don’t know this.”

  “Oh, right. I guess I never told you.” I took a drink of my beer. “Well, yeah, she was. And Negus—who’s some kind of ghost or spirit or phantom—he wasn’t very nice to me, but he also fed on my power.”

  “Right,” said Rylan. “I forgot about that. Ghosts can tap you like a keg and drain you dry.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Negus wanted to do that to me, and he’s apparently still looking for me.”

  Rylan made a face. “Well, that sounds less than good.”

  “Anyway, my mother remembered something about Negus. That while she was possessed by him, he would look at pictures of a little girl over and over again. And she figured out who that little girl is. Her name is Dominique Carlson, and she’s a film student.”

  “Wait, hold up,” said Wade. “This is news to me, too. You didn’t tell me this.”

  “I figured I’d tell you after I got here,” I said. I turned back to Rylan. “So, you call Dominique, and you tell her that you’d like to hire her to film stuff for your youtube channel. Then she comes along, and I’m there, and I can get close to her and hopefully get her to explain to me what her connection is to Negus.”

  Rylan took a slow drink of her beer, trying to process all this. “Um, I already have a camera guy.”

  “I thought you filmed it yourself,” said Wade. “When we went into Ridinger Hall, you did all the filming.”

  “Well, this guy wants to help out,” said Rylan. “His name’s Jonah Pickett. He used to go to Malbrooke. He says he knows you.”

  “Oh, right, Jonah.” Wade nodded. “Yeah, I think I’ve met him.”

  “And I don’t have to pay him,” said Rylan. “He’s just doing it for fun.”

  “Well, maybe you need another camera person,” I said. “I need to get close to Dominique.”

  “Why not just call her up and ask her questions?” said Rylan.

  “Just call her up? Randomly? I’m a strange man she’s never met. That’s going to freak her out,” I said. “I need to meet her organically. That’s the only way I can gain her trust.”

  “I don’t know,” said Wade. “It does seem complicated, dude.”

  I ran my finger around the rim of my beer glass. “Okay, okay. If things do get… a little exciting, that’s maybe not such a bad thing, you know? Because she’ll be more likely to open up if she’s scared and she needs help.”

  “So, your plan is to terrorize her and then manipulate her into giving you information,” said Rylan.

  “When you put it like that, it sounds horrible,” I said.

  “Maybe it is horrible,” said Rylan. “Besides, I don’t see why she’s going to agree to come and film for a youtube channel if she’s a film student. It’s probably beneath her.”

  “No, no, that’s the thing,”
I said. “I looked her up online. Everything she’s filmed thus far has been something haunted. She’s filmed abandoned houses and a seance and some weird creepy thing in the woods that couldn’t really be called a cabin anymore. Doing your channel will be right up her alley. Please, help me out. Just say yes.”

  Rylan didn’t answer. She drained her beer thoughtfully.

  “You always said you wanted me along on one of these things,” I said. “My presence will wake the ghosts up. It’ll make everything a lot more interesting.”

  “That is true,” said Rylan.

  “So?” I said. “What do you say?”

  “Fine,” she said. “But you will owe me a favor, and someday I will call to collect.”

  * * *

  “Um, so this is going to sound weird,” Rylan was saying into the phone. It was the next day, and she was sitting on the bed in my Airstream, doodling flowers onto a notepad while she talked to Dominique Carlson.

  I was looking on, bouncing on the balls of my feet because I was nervous.

  Rylan laughed at something Dominique said to her. “Yeah, I know, great way to start a conversation, right? I, uh, I understand you’ve done a lot of work filming hauntings?” She paused, listening. “Yeah, I, uh, I watched that student film you made about the cabin in the woods. It was amazing. You’ve really got talent.” This was true. The film was not very long, and I had made Rylan watch the thing.

  It was a short piece, maybe fifteen minutes, and it centered on some people hiking out to a cabin in the middle of a dense woods. There wasn’t a lot of talking or explanation, just strange, eerie shots at odd angles of people talking about how far they had to go and where they were going to camp for the night. Like The Blair Witch Project, but with less structure.

  Then they got there.

  And there were seven straight minutes of footage of the cabin, just shot after shot of the place, the camera crawling over its walls like a live thing. The cabin was utterly demolished. It was barely still standing. There were holes in the roof. The interior was the home to raccoons. And nothing, like, happened.