Ghost Town

by Jason Hawes

  “Not too elder of a statesman, I hope.” He turned to face forward, and if he didn’t sound especially happy, he at least sounded somewhat mollified. “But it might work.”

  I’m so glad my star approves, she thought wryly. When she had originally e-mailed Carrington and asked him to be in her documentary, she had only read his Wikipedia entry and a third of one of his books. If she’d had any idea what a pain in the ass he would turn out to be, she never would have contacted him. Still, she had to admit he was good on camera. He exuded a natural, if somewhat cheesy, charm mixed with a gravitas that worked well for the subject matter. Kind of like a combination of Boris Karloff and Peter O’Toole.

  She glanced into the rearview mirror and saw that Trevor’s Prius was still right on her tail. Trevor drove, Jenn sat next to him in the front passenger seat, and Drew, Amber, and the new woman . . . what was her name? Connie. They all sat in the back. Erin still wasn’t clear on just who Connie was or why she had asked to ride along to the museum. She was gorgeous, the kind of woman whose very existence made other women feel inadequate. She wondered how Amber was taking the addition of Connie to their field trip. If Erin had been in Amber’s place and a woman like Connie was hanging around her boyfriend, she wouldn’t have been happy at all. In her experience, all men had roving eyes—and roving eyes all too easily led to roving hands. And a woman like Connie was hard to compete with. Well, that was Amber’s problem, not hers. She had a movie to make.

  She was surprised that Jenn had decided to come along. The woman seemed to be having a hell of a time dealing with the murder of her employee, and Erin figured the last thing she would want to do was visit another crime scene. Maybe it was a moth-to-the-flame kind of thing. Or maybe she figured the killings were linked, and she wanted to help find her employee’s murderer and bring him or her to justice.

  Erin broke off her musings. It was time to get to work. She pulled out her cell phone and called Ray, but when he didn’t answer after the first few rings, she thought he was going to ignore her call. He had a tendency to do that, especially when she shifted into what he called her “micro-micro-manager mode.” But just as she expected his phone to go to voice mail, he picked up.

  “Don’t freak. We’re here,” he said before she could speak. “All of us.”

  “Good. You got your equipment set up?”

  “Working on it with all due speed, my liege.”

  “We’ll be there in a couple of minutes. Make sure you get a shot of us pulling up and getting out of the car. And we’ve brought some friends along. Make sure you film them, too.”

  “Friends?” Ray asked, but she disconnected without answering. She didn’t want to waste any more time talking. She wasn’t worried that he would be offended by her hanging up on him. Her crew knew what she was like when she was working.

  As she slipped her cell phone back into her jeans pocket, Carrington asked, “Do we have access to the murder scene this time?”

  “I’ll work on that when we get there.” Her source in the police department—a dispatcher who didn’t mind supplementing what she viewed as her too-meager paycheck—had called to tell her about the deaths at the museum, just as she had called about the one at the bookstore the night before. But that was the extent of Erin’s influence with the local authorities. She hadn’t been able to get past Chief Hoffman that morning to film inside the bookstore, but she really wanted to persuade him to let them film in the museum. The setting was just too visually perfect. She supposed she could always use some footage they had already shot of the museum, maybe add some new footage later, once the crime scene was cleaned up and the museum reopened to the public. But it would be so much better—so much more real—if she could shoot while the scene was still an active one.

  She checked the rearview one more time, as if she were afraid that Trevor and the others might change their minds and drive off. But of course, they were still there.

  She had lied to Carrington about her motivation for inviting them to join in the investigation of the crime scene—assuming that they could do more than stand on the sidewalk and shoot footage of Carrington talking at the camera this time. But she wasn’t actually certain why she had asked them to come along. It was mostly instinct, she supposed, along with curiosity. They weren’t like other paranormal investigators she had met, and they certainly weren’t like Carrington. They were serious about the paranormal but in a different way from others. They were more matter-of-fact about it, as if they didn’t merely believe it but had actually experienced it. That impression had been strengthened by attending their presentation on the Lowry House. Their story was hard to believe, damned hard, but if it was true, then maybe they would be able to get at the truth of what was happening in the town. And if so, she was determined to capture it all on film.

  She grinned. Just try to hide your secrets from me, Exeter! she thought. I’ll find them out, every one, and show them to the whole world!

  A sudden gust of wind slammed into the driver’s side of the Beetle, causing the VW to swerve to the right. Erin thought the car was going to jump the curb and hit a large oak tree at the edge of someone’s yard, and adrenaline shot through her system. She yanked the steering wheel to the left. The Beetle’s tires squealed as it fishtailed, but then Erin managed to get the car under control again and straightened their course.

  Carrington scowled at her. “I realize you’re in a hurry, my dear, but getting us killed on the way to the museum isn’t going to get your film made any faster.”

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, and she eased her foot off the gas pedal and drove five miles under the speed limit the rest of the way.

  The scene was a repeat of that morning at Forgotten Lore. Several police cars were parked outside the museum, along with a paramedic vehicle and several news vans. Reporters—the same ones Amber had seen that morning—stood on the sidewalk, gripping microphones and talking into cameras with almost feverish urgency. From the expressions on their faces, they were even more excited than they had been earlier, and Amber wondered what it would be like to have a job where you looked forward to something terrible happening, where you lived for others’ deaths. But what gave her the right to criticize? Hadn’t they come for the same reason?

  “I feel like a ghoul,” she said.

  Drew took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Erin and Carrington might be primarily interested in making a film, but we’ve come to help if we can. There’s nothing ghoulish about that.”

  Before Amber could respond, Jenn said, “I don’t know if I can do this. I thought I could, but now that we’re here, I’m—I’m not so sure.” She trembled, and her face was pale.

  Amber reached over the seat and put a hand on her shoulder. Jenn started at her touch but then relaxed a bit.

  “It’s all right,” Amber said. “You can stay in the car if you want. Right, Trevor?”

  “Of course.” He spotted a parking place and slipped the Prius into it. Once parked, he turned off the engine, but he left the keys in the ignition. He turned to Jenn. “I’ll leave the keys so you can play the radio if you want. Will you be all right by yourself? I’ll be happy to stay if you—”

  She smiled and patted his hand. “It’s sweet of you to offer, but I’ll be fine. I’m not sure I believe everything about what happened at the Lowry House”—she glanced quickly back at Amber and Drew in the backseat—“but if there’s anything you can do to find out what’s happening, and maybe even stop it, I want you to do it.”

  Amber admired Jenn’s bravery. She knew how difficult it was to deal with trauma, especially when the paranormal was involved. It changed your whole view of reality, made you feel as if you didn’t know what the rules were anymore—or if there even were any rules.

  Amber was sitting in the middle of the backseat between Drew and Connie. Just because the woman had started being nice to her didn’t mean she was going to let her cozy up to Drew.

  He leaned forward so he could speak with Connie. “If you wouldn’t
mind, perhaps you could stay with Jenn.”

  Maybe he thought that Connie, as a psychologist, would be able to take care of Jenn if she lost control of her emotions. Or maybe he simply wanted to keep Connie and Amber apart, which would be fine with Amber. Besides, she wasn’t sure she believed the woman’s reason for coming with them to the museum. “What better way to learn about what you do than to tag along on an actual investigation?” she had said. But something about it had sounded false to Amber, as if Connie had an ulterior motive for wanting to be included. At first, she had thought it might be because Connie wanted to stay close to Drew, but that didn’t feel right. The longer she was in the woman’s presence, the more she bothered her, and not because Amber saw her as a rival for Drew. There was something else going on, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. A lot of it had to do with the way she spoke.

  “I think I’d be more useful if I went with you. I am a trained observer and an expert in human behavior, you know.” Connie smiled. “Of course, so are you, Drew, but it can’t hurt to have another shrink along to serve as an extra set of eyes, can it?”

  There it was again. This time, it was the use of the word shrink. It didn’t seem like the way Connie would speak. Evidently, Drew felt the same way, for his brow furrowed as he gave Connie an appraising look.

  “It’s all right,” Jenn said. “Honestly. And if she can help you three in any way, I want her to go. For Tonya’s sake.” Her voice quavered when she spoke Tonya’s name, and for a second, Amber feared she would break down crying. But Jenn managed to keep a rein on her emotions, although Amber doubted it was easy for her.

  Trevor checked with Jenn one more time to make sure she would be OK, she assured him that she would be, and then the four of them got out of the car and started walking toward the museum. Erin and Carrington were already there, but instead of shooting footage herself with her handheld camera, three other people were taking care of filming while Erin stood off to the side, presumably directing, although it looked as if she was just standing and watching. One of her crew operated a camera and one a boom mic, while the other was busy dabbing makeup on Carrington’s face. The cameraman—a skinny, black-bearded guy wearing a Teen Titans T-shirt—was shooting the crowd that had gathered on the street near the museum. Amber remembered a story she had once read in which the crowd that gathered around accidents was made up of the same people every time. It had been a spooky story, and it was an even spookier idea, especially now. Because the crowd sure seemed like the same people who had gathered outside the bookstore that morning. Some in costume, some not, and the news reporters were definitely the same. It was probably just her imagination, but after what she, Drew, and Trevor had experienced at the Lowry House, she knew that just because an idea seemed too strange to be real, that didn’t mean it wasn’t. She wondered if, on some level, she would always mistrust reality, always wonder if things weren’t really as they appeared on the surface. Maybe, she decided, but that wasn’t necessarily bad, considering some of the things that lurked beneath the thin veneer of what most people thought of as reality. Better to be a little paranoid and alive than too trusting and dead.

  And speaking of paranoid, she scanned the crowd to see if Mitch was there. He had always been controlling, but the vibes he had given off outside the hotel earlier had raised all sorts of alarm bells for Amber. Something had happened to change him, to deepen his anger and bring it closer to the surface. She was more frightened of him now than she ever had been before. She saw no sign of him, though, and more important, she didn’t sense his presence. Trevor believed that she was psychically sensitive, and while she knew that her dreams sometimes provided insights she couldn’t get through rational means—as with her nightmare about Tonya’s murder—she wasn’t ready to believe that she possessed true psychic powers. Still, she was relieved not to feel Mitch anywhere close by.

  She was also glad that she didn’t catch any glimpses of the shadowy figure she had seen standing next to Mitch outside the hotel. She hoped that sighting had been a result of her imagination, too, but she feared otherwise. She really needed a chance to talk to Drew about Mitch and to tell both him and Trevor about the apparition she had seen. But she could hardly do it now, especially with Connie in tow. She supposed she could try to put up with Connie for Drew, if for no other reason than to make his life at work easier. But she didn’t have to like it.

  The Beyond the Veil Museum, like Jenn’s bookstore, was housed in an older building. Two buildings, actually, connected by an additional section that been constructed between them over the years. The property was enclosed by a black wrought-iron fence, and each building was two stories high and painted a dark purple with black shutters and a black roof, like a cartoon version of a haunted manor. This effect was compounded by the mechanical skeletons erected in the museum’s front yard. They stood in various poses near headstones engraved with names such as Mr. and Mrs. Kreep (dressed as a bride and groom), Prof. N. O. Boddy (in a tweed jacket with elbow patches), and Dee Ceased (in a cheerleader outfit complete with curly blond wig). The Digger Brothers both held shovels, but while one was digging down from the surface, the other was digging his way up out of the ground. The skeletons—plastic bones yellowed and clothes faded from long exposure to the elements—moved with slow, whirring motions, jaws clacking in arrhythmic cadence. The tableau was supposed to make the museum appear to be a fun tourist destination, but considering what had happened within its walls that day, Amber found the skeletons more disturbing than cute.

  “Couldn’t they have turned those things off?” she said.

  “I think they’re amusing,” Connie said. When everyone looked at her, she added, “In a morbid way, of course.”

  Amber exchanged glances with Drew, and he responded with a little shrug. They made their way through the crowd until they reached Carrington, Erin, and her crew. The boom-mic operator was a petite girl in her early twenties whose short hair had been dyed a garish blue more suitable for an anime character, and the makeup artist was an older woman in her thirties with long, flowing hair that had gone prematurely white. Like the cameraman, they were dressed in T-shirts and jeans, and both women wore flip-flops despite the cool weather.

  The cameraman turned to look at the four of them as they approached. “I assume these are the friends you mentioned, my queen.”

  “Shut up, Raymond,” Erin snapped. She pulled out her cell phone and ignored them while she made a call.

  He turned his attention back to Amber and the others. “She’s in a foul mood because the chief won’t let us inside. I’m Ray Somers. That’s Sarah Brooks, and she’s Pattie Jordan.” He nodded to the mic operator and the makeup woman, who both smiled in greeting.

  “As you can see, our stalwart camera monkey has a bit of a mouth on him,” Carrington said. “But he’s right about Erin. The chief didn’t even come out to talk to her this time. He turned her down over the phone.” Pattie dabbed at his nose with a makeup sponge, and he brushed her hand away, scowling. “That’s enough! You make my skin look any more orange, and everyone will think I’m a jack-o’-lantern.”

  Pattie gave him an irritated look and then looked at Amber and the others. She turned toward Erin and asked, “Should I make them up, too?”

  Erin was still on the phone, evidently waiting for someone to pick up, since she wasn’t talking yet. She waved Pattie’s question away without answering it.

  Pattie looked at Sarah. “What do you think?”

  “Don’t ask me, sweetie. If I’ve learned anything working with Erin, it’s that there’s no way to guess what she wants. Ever.”

  Pattie sighed. “True that.”

  There was something about the tone in Sarah’s voice as she said “sweetie” that made Amber think the younger woman used it not as a generic term of endearment for a coworker but rather as a person speaking casually to her lover.

  “Shit!” Erin shoved her cell phone back into her pocket. “Now he won’t even answer!”

  A
mber assumed she was talking about the chief.

  “When you spoke with him earlier, did you tell him I was here?” Carrington asked.

  Erin shot him a withering look. “I hate to break this to you, Arthur, but you’re only a legend in your own mind.”

  Ray smirked, and Sarah and Pattie looked as if they were trying very hard not to smile. Carrington, however, did not look amused.

  “I suppose we’ll have to shoot some interior footage later,” Erin said. She turned to Amber and the others. “Sorry I had you guys come here for nothing. I even had Arthur bring his ghost-hunting equipment.” She gestured to a pair of metal cases resting on the sidewalk next to the fence. “I thought you might be able to use it inside, and we’d see what sort of readings you’d get.”

  “What kind of equipment?” Trevor asked. He sounded as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.

  “Top of the line, of course,” Carrington said. “Would you like to see?”

  “You know it!”

  Carrington led Trevor over to the cases. He turned one onto its side and opened it, and Trevor became even more excited as Carrington began showing him the contents.

  “Do you really think you’ll be able to find out something if you go inside?” It was Jenn. They turned to see that she had joined them. Her eyes were red from crying, but she seemed in control of her emotions at the moment.

  Amber looked at Drew. He appeared uncomfortable, and she knew why. He didn’t want to promise something they couldn’t deliver. She turned back to Jenn.

  “You were at our presentation,” she said. “Everything we said was true. We did it once, and we can do it again.” She hoped.

  Jenn looked at her for a long moment, as if she were searching Amber’s eyes for any hint of deception or overconfidence. Finally, she nodded. She took out her cell phone and made a call.

  “Peter? It’s Jenn. I’m standing on the sidewalk outside the museum. I have some friends here with me, and I think they might be able to help.”