Pork raised an eyebrow. “What do you need to talk to her for?”
“You said she acted scared when she was showing you the building, right?”
Brushing his mustache back and forth, he took a moment to remember. “Yeah, you could say that. That’s why I thought the place may be haunted.” He opened the passenger door on the SUV and climbed in. “But I still don’t see why you’d want to talk to her,” he confessed.
Betty climbed in and shut the driver’s door. “I need to find out as much as I can about that bar. Maybe then I can help Muddy.”
Her father made a harrumphing noise and shook his head. “Betts, it was an accident.”
“How can you say that, Pop?” she argued. “You were the one that told me you believe in ghosts and hauntings and stuff. You said you had weird experiences on the road.”
“I know what I said,” he defended himself, “And I still stand behind it.”
“You just won’t stand behind me.”
“No, I do.”
“You told me earlier to write down what happened to me in the basement. You wanted to use it as a selling point for the bar. Did you even believe me, then?” she blurted out, feeling hurt.
“Of course, I did,” he replied. “I believe you heard something.”
“But not a ghost?”
“As I said before, there are a lot of things we can’t explain. I believe those things could be ghosts. But they could be a lot of other things, too. I just don’t want us jumping to any conclusions, yet.”
“I can’t believe this,” she snapped.
“I suggest we call in a psychic or a ghost hunter first,” he offered. “They can actually give us more solid evidence if we have a haunting or not—and if the ghost is evil.”
“We don’t have time for that. I know what I saw, and I know the place is haunted.”
“Foxy?” Pork asked, looking in the rearview mirror at the redhead in the backseat. “You were on the stairs, too, correct?”
“I was at the bottom and Betty was on the landing,” she informed him. “But don’t ask me if I saw anything,” she put up her hands defensively, already aware of what was coming next. “I couldn’t see the top of the stairs from where I was.”
“But you can definitely say you didn’t see anything.”
“I’m not saying one way or the other,” she shot back. “It could have been an accident—”
“Foxy,” Betty groaned.
“It could have been something else,” she added, finishing her original statement. “I thought I heard someone laughing after Muddy fell down the stairs, but just assumed it was my imagination. Now I’m not sure. I’ve never seen a ghost, but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.” She shrugged, “and after all this talk about spirits and curses and ghosts, I’m starting to think that there is more to this. Maybe she really was pushed.”
“Thank you, Foxy,” the blonde-haired woman smiled. “At least I have someone’s support.”
“You have my support,” Pork exclaimed, looking hurt. “I believe the place is haunted, too. I’m just not sure about someone pushing Muddy. I don’t want you to worry yourself unnecessarily over this ordeal. You get all worked up, sometimes, and it concerns me.” He looked at her with his same soft fatherly eyes he used to give her when she was little. It was true, he loved and cared about his daughter, he just didn’t always understand her.
“Okay, so if it isn’t a ghost, and I was just caught up in the moment, then Muddy should be just fine,” she commented, “But if, even by the slimmest chance, it was a ghost, then shouldn’t we do something about it? If we sit by and do nothing, and then Muddy dies, I won’t ever be able to live it down. There could really be a curse!”
“Now, hold on, hold on,” he put up his hands for everyone to slow down. “What is all this about a curse?”
“I’ll tell you more about it on the way to the realtor’s office,” she shot back at him. “If you’ll just tell me how to get there.”
Pork sighed and leaned forward a little in his seat.
“It can’t hurt anything,” Foxy added. “We’d just be asking a few questions,” she looked at her friend for confirmation.
“Right,” Betty agreed.
“All right,” Pork groaned. “I’d hate to see Muddy in trouble, and I hate to be in trouble with my own daughter even more.”
“Good,” Betty smiled. “Now you’re starting to see my point, Pop.”
Pork couldn’t help but laugh a little. Somehow, his entire life, his daughter always got her way. “Turn right out of the parking lot,” he pointed.
CHAPTER 13
* * *
“Come in,” came the woman’s voice from inside the office.
Opening the door, Pork was the first one through.
Upon setting eyes on the man in her doorway, the realtor looked like she just might faint dead right there at her desk. “M-Mr. Daniels,” she sputtered. “To what do I owe this visit?”
Betty couldn’t help but notice the woman’s countenance of utter fear—another clue that only confirmed what she already believed. The Old Bar was haunted by something evil.
“I just had some questions for you, Mrs. Perkins.”
“And who are these lovely women with you?” she asked, physically slumping into her chair as if trying to get away from the trio who had unexpectedly invaded her office.
“Look, hon,” Pork asked, taking a seat across from her. “That building you sold me, it doesn’t happen to be haunted, now does it?”
“H-haunted?” she asked, trying to sound both innocent and surprised at the same time. Unfortunately, her acting skills were terrible. “Why of course not. What would ever make you think such a thing?”
“Oh, maybe because of the crying and screaming from inside the walls,” Betty cut in, “or the man who pushed my friend down the basement stairs.”
The woman’s face only grew paler at these descriptions, her mouth hanging slightly open from shock.
“Were you aware the building was haunted when you sold it to me?”
“I-I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she muttered, absentmindedly shuffling through papers on her desk. “There is no such thing as ghosts or hauntings.”
“Is that so?” Betty questioned.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she pretended to be looking through her work, scribbling down nonsensical notes, “I am a little busy right now and have other matters to attend to.”
Pork stood up from his chair, turning into a towering mammoth over the desk. Despite his teddy bear attitude, he still had the spirit of an old biker inside him, making it so he could be very intimidating when he wanted to be.
“M-Mr. D-Daniels,” she whispered.
“Did you, or did you not know that the building was haunted?” he asked, his voice serious.
It was in that moment that Betty knew, yet again, how much her father loved her. Even if he had doubts about the ghost or worries about his daughter, he would do whatever it took to make her feel happy and satisfied.
The realtor looked like she just might fall out of her chair with how low she’d scrunched herself down. She hesitated, looking up at the man—all tattoos and leather vest—staring down at her. “Okay, okay,” she burst out into fits of fear, “I knew it,” she began to cry, “I knew the place was haunted all along.”
Pork took his seat, never erasing the rock-hard expression on his face. “I see.”
“I had to sell it,” she admitted, breaking out into shakes. “I just couldn’t stand that place looming on my account any longer. If I had to go in there again, I knew I might just go insane.”
“What happened?” Betty asked, leaning in on the desk and spotting the little glass dish of chocolate candies. Grabbing one, she popped it into her mouth.
“I took the building a few years ago,” she admitted, “right after the previous owners had taken off in a frenzy. I thought it would be an easy sale. Great location, nice space. The only real problem seemed t
o be the fact that the second floor was sealed off.”
“Sealed off by the previous owners,” Betty asserted the fact.
“Y-Yes. The wife fell down those stairs after they collapsed, so they walled it up.”
“That’s what they told you?” Betty asked.
“Well, it’s what my supervisor said when I took the account.”
“Do you believe that?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure what I believe anymore.”
“And you couldn’t sell the place until now?” Foxy asked.
“On and off during those first two years, I showed various interested clients. However, none of them ever decided to buy. Sometimes it was just because they thought the building was too cold or it gave them a weird feeling.” She swallowed hard. “Other times it was because strange things happened during the showings. One client accidently got locked in a closet, another almost got electrocuted.”
Betty remembered unplugging the sign earlier that day, how she had almost been electrocuted.
“The more frequently I showed the building, the more things like that happened. Pretty soon, no one wanted to even see the place.”
“Until I came along,” Pork added.
The realtor nodded. “Correct.”
“What happened to you?” Betty asked. “What made you so scared of the place?”
The woman hesitated, looking at each of the guests in her office with apprehension. Finally, she sighed and shook her head. “I was in there by myself one day. Some kids had broken in the night before and I needed to make sure nothing was damaged or broken.” She sniffed, her cheeks turning red as her eyes started to mist up again. “The front door slammed itself shut and all of the lights went off. I tried to get out, but the door was locked tight. Same with the back.” She shivered. “The only light came from the tiny window at the front. I was about ready to fall apart, but then I heard it.”
She paused, her eyes glossing over as if she were a million miles away.
“What did you hear?” Betty pressed quietly.
“A man’s voice from behind the wall in the stairwell. He was saying horrible things, making threats. He said he was going to get out of there and come chop me up into little bits with his axe.”
Foxy gasped quietly.
“Then he started to laugh. I’ve never heard something so evil. It was like listening to the devil himself laughing through the wall, pining to get out.” Her hands clenched up tightly into fists, her knuckles turning white. “Then I heard him hitting the wall,” she whispered, her voice barely audible even in the tiny room. “He was using an axe, or something, trying to force his way out.”
Shaking her head, she let out a low sob.
“What happened then?” Betty asked.
“I heard a woman’s voice, screaming from the basement, screaming for someone to let her out.”
“How did you get out?” Pork asked.
“The door just opened,” she told them. “Right when I thought he might get through that wall, the door swung wide and I ran out.” She shivered violently. “I still have nightmares about it.”
They all sat in the silence for a moment, taking in the horrors of what they’d just heard.
“Who is he?” Foxy asked. “Who is the man with the axe?”
They all looked to the woman behind the desk for an answer.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But, I think he may have been a serial killer that killed women in this area back in the early nineteen thirties. If I remember correctly,” she mused quietly, “he was caught and hung from the rafters on the second floor of a building.”
“The second floor of my building,” Pork sighed. “And now he’s loose.”
CHAPTER 14
* * *
“Do you believe me now, Pop?” Betty asked her father as they walked out of the reality building.
“I’m inclined to,” he nodded. “Like I said, I’ve seen my share of strange things, but nothing like this.”
“I believe it,” Foxy added. “If Betty, Carlos, and the realtor all have experiences from the building, how can we not?”
Pork nodded. “I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never know Carlos to lie, and why would a normal professional woman like Mrs. Perkins have such a strong fear of the place if she didn’t have a reason?”
“What about me, Pop?” Betty shot back. “do you believe me?”
He nodded. “I do. I never doubted you heard something this morning in the basement. I just didn’t want you getting worked up over Muddy’s fall.”
She grabbed her father and hugged him tightly. “I know you just worry about me.” She nodded. “But now we have to do something.”
“Like what?” Foxy asked.
“We need to figure out what happened in that building,” she swallowed hard, “and then get rid of that ghost.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, the trio were all crowded around a tiny table in Fawkes, Arizona’s local library. The building was a small affair, having once been a cattle rancher’s estate which the city had bought and converted into the library.
The history of the town was photocopied from newspapers and then printed off into volumes of books. These were kept on a special shelf in the attic where most of the rest of the history sections was.
Each of them sat with a different volume open from the town’s early years, each searching for any news or information about an axe-wielding serial killer in the area. Most of what they were finding was dull, small-town news that hardly related to their problem at all.
Thanks to Merriweather, the librarian, they had a constant supply of coffee coming their way to help cut into the tedium.
“There is something that’s been bothering me,” Betty admitted, interrupting the silence of their morbid study.
“What’s that?” Foxy asked.
“They walled up the staircase, right?”
“Isn’t that how Carlos described it?” Pork chimed in. “I mean, you said he helped put up the wall himself.”
“Right, and maybe that worked,” she guessed.
“What do you mean?” Foxy asked.
“Maybe that kept him at bay for a while.”
“Why only for a while?” Foxy shrugged.
“Well, according to the realtor, when she got locked in the ghost was making his threats from behind the wall. He said once he got out, he’d kill her, right?”
“So?” her father asked.
“So, maybe the wall really did block him in. Maybe he had a little control, like messing with the electricity or the locks on the doors, but he couldn’t attack anyone.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Pork replied.
“So, how did he get out to push Muddy down the basement stairs if he was walled in upstairs?”
The three sat in quiet for a few moments before Pork had a look of realization come over his face. “Uh-oh,” he mumbled.
“Uh-oh?”
“This morning,” he admitted, “I wanted to see how badly the stairwell was collapsed, to see if it was better to try and fix it up or to leave the wall there for the time being.” He shrugged a little sheepishly. “So, I chiseled out one of the bricks, figuring I could just put it back in easily if I decided to leave the wall.”
“You made a hole in the wall?” Betty exclaimed.
He nodded. “I wanted to look through. I saw that the stairs weren’t collapsed at all.”
“Dad,” she barked. “You let him through.”
“I’m sorry, but how was I supposed to know?” he defended himself.
“He’s right,” Foxy commented. “We can’t point fingers. There was no way for him to know what he was doing.”
“But Muddy got pushed down the stairs,” she blurted. “She could be cursed.”
Foxy stood up and looked her friend in the eye. “Let’s just calm down, okay? This just means we need to work faster to figure out a way to get rid of the ghost, right?”
Betty bit her bottom lip and nodded
. “Right. The sooner we can solve this problem, the better.”
They all got back into their work, digging right into the old archives for something—anything—that might help them to better understand how to get rid of the ghost.
After about an hour and a half of searching through stories about lost pets, local award ceremonies, and the occasional fender bender, Foxy finally stumbled upon something. “I think I’ve got it,” she exclaimed. “Right here.”
“Let me see,” Betty insisted, scooting closer. Pork similarly moved in to look over their shoulders.
“Woman found murdered near Oakley farmhouse,” she read the headline out loud. “A local woman was found dead this morning just outside the Oakley farmhouse. Mr. Frederick Oakley found the gruesome scene only moments before sunrise. He immediately called in Sheriff Dixon to come and investigate the scene. According to Doctor Howard, the woman appeared to have died of severe blood loss from large open wounds which appear to have been created by an axe or another similar instrument.”
“Flip forward,” Betty urged her. “See if there are any other murders.”
Foxy obeyed, turning the pages until they found a second, third, and fourth murder.
“This has got to be him,” Betty exclaimed.
“Here,” Foxy announced. “This one is about a woman gone missing. Annabelle Worthlin, who’s own sister had been murdered the same night she disappeared. The local sheriff believed the killer took her with him.” She turned the page.
Instantly, Betty pointed down at the page—at the picture of the building. “Look, it says they tracked the girl down to the bar. One of her shoes was found out back.”
“And they investigated the owner of the bar, Franklin Pence. After finding the bloody axe in the basement, the people in town went nuts. They didn’t wait for a trial and just strung him up by one of the rafters in the upstairs room of the building.”
Turning the page again, they all gasped. There was an image of the man hanging from the rafter.
“That’s disturbing,” Foxy whispered.
“What about the girl?” Betty asked. “What happened to Annabelle Worthlin?”
THE BIKER AND THE BOOGEYMAN (The Cracked Mirror Series Book 1) Page 6