A creepy chill spread up his spine as if his body was scared. Ghosts? Nah. He didn’t believe in that crap. Mounting his bike, he decided to check the place out.
When he googled the Sunset Cove teahouse he found lots of hits. The first, listed on the Traveltales site, read, “Ghosts and Ghouls, the Sunset Cove has the reputation for all things supernatural.” Fuck! What had she got herself into? A creepy twilight zone!
He roared into the darkness with his jaw clamped tight. The next time he met a new woman, he would really check her out before he got involved. He was way too old for this shit.
The dead quiet of the street didn’t help his mood. He parked out front of the teahouse, dismounted, adjusted his balls and his gun, and headed for the front door.
No one answered when he knocked the first time, but that only made sense. The hours posted on a small sign in the window indicated that the place closed at five.
And ghosts don’t answer doors.
With that thought, the door opened.
10
Be Careful What You Ask For
“If there weren’t luck involved, I would win every time.” — Phil Hellmuth
Rebel looked at the open door, squinted, and looked at the door again. A cold breeze flowed from the entrance, circling him, and squeezed in on him as if it had arms of its own. It pulled him. A heavy sense of foreboding weighed on his shoulders as if he had reached the end of a nightmare, the part where the demons from hell emerge from the shadows and swallow him whole. He grunted and looked around, but the front foyer was empty.
He took one last look around the street and the yard, shuffled his feet and entered.
Nice trick, he thought. Someone rigged the door to open when a body approaches and then they blast them with cold air. That’s how they keep up their reputation for all things supernatural. Good way to keep away trouble too. Easier than feeding a junk-yard dog.
They couldn’t fool him with cheap theater tricks. It would take a lot more than that to scare him. Ignoring how the tightness in his chest made it hard to breathe, he stepped in.
As his first foot crossed the threshold a silent tendril of fear slithered up his spine and crawled along his scalp, as if it were a demonic spider whispering, “You should be afraid. You should be very afraid.”
He took two steps inside, and the door slammed behind him with a loud bang. A lock bolt slid closed with a thud. He turned in the darkness and grabbed the door handle, but it burned in his hand as if it was made of hot coals, and he let it go. He was trapped.
Squaring his shoulders, he shook his head. More theater, he told himself. Someone wants to scare me. That’s all it is. They want to keep strangers away. With today’s technology, it wouldn’t be hard to do any of these things. Pranks, that’s all that was happening to him.
Maybe someone was filming him. He ran a hand through his hair.
The place was as dark as the night outside, graveyard quiet and cold. Deathly cold. He shuddered. The air had an old, musty smell that fed the fear rising in his heart.
He pulled out his cell phone and toggled the app turning it into a flashlight. The place could be used for a movie set. It was the perfect haunted house. Old furniture, faded wallpaper and a creepy chandelier. But it wasn’t the furnishings so much as the feel of the place that creeped the crap out of him.
Light appeared under the doorway of one of the rooms on the right. It flickered as if it was there one minute and not the next. A candle? Must be. But why would someone light one candle in a big house?
Well, it could be a séance or some shit like that. Or maybe a night yoga session. People were into doing all kinds of things in the dark. That was one thing he knew for sure.
The shadows gave him the jitters. It wasn’t just dark in this fuckin’ house it was dark with a side of sleazy shadows slithering here and there at the edges of his vision. They felt oppressive and real, as if they had a life of their own. Just shadows, he told himself. Just fuckin’ shadows.
Since when were there shadows in darkness?
Should he turn on the overhead lights? Nah, that would tell people inside and outside that he was there. Walking as quietly as he could he edged towards the room with the light in it, listening to the growing sound of laughter, and chairs moving. They were men’s voices, but he couldn’t get what they were saying, so he put his ear to the surface of the wooden door.
It started to vibrate, not a little but a lot, and blistering-hot steam rose from the cracks within it. He jumped back, issuing an involuntary yelp. The door opened wide and for a millisecond he glimpsed a room full of ghosts. They all turned to look at him. The closest, dressed in rags, stood six inches from him, and in his arms he held his severed head covered in maggots. Blood dripped from his neck onto the floor, as his eyes blazed.
Gut wrenching fear tore through Rebel’s system. He had to escape. A horde of ghosts surrounded him, laughing. He raised his hands to protect himself, and his cell phone dropped to the floor.
Light from the room grew stronger and brighter, as if a thousand candelabras had been lit just for him, just for this moment.
“What have we got here,” said one ghost, dressed in an old-fashioned cop uniform.
An enormous, half-naked V-Viking, with a battle axe in his right hand, peered down at him. “Looks like bad news to me.” Then he mumbled in an ancient tongue, words that sounded grim and threatening.
The head in the headless man’s arms grinned a gruesome grin and he chuckled. “We can take care of that.”
“Wait,” said Rebel, finding his voice. “Wait. I mean you no harm.”
“Why are you here?” asked the cop in that flat, demanding voice that all cops have.
“I . . . I’m looking for a girl.”
They laughed.
“Seriously. She . . . I need to find her.”
“Who goes looking for a live woman in a haunted house?” said the Viking.
“You do,” quipped the headless one, as blood dripped onto the ground and vanished into mist.
The Viking gave him a look sharper than his blade. “Why do you think your woman would be here?”
“I was told she came here to talk to a guy named Rufus.”
The ghosts all looked knowingly at one another. Clearly this made some sense to them.
***
While the pirate ran a steamy hot bath, filled with fragrant bubbles, Charlie and Rufus sat on the back steps admiring the full moon. Charlie had put her clothes back on.
“I don’t want to share you,” he said.
“Not even if he just watches?”
“I want to be with you, alone.”
Charlie gave him a hard look. “Rufus, I’m tempted, but I’ll be honest. This isn’t going any farther. I have no intentions of being intimate with you or your pirate sidekick.”
“You just want me to stop haunting Mad Dog.”
“Yes. I mean no.”
He blew air towards her, ruffling her hair away from her face. “You’re not the sort of woman who has trouble saying what she’s thinking. Just say it.”
“I’m confused. I came to town to get away from my life and decided to help my brother while I was here. He’s always getting into messes. I thought it would be easy.”
“Nothing’s easy.”
Aw hell. His sexy, sizzling, low baritone voice fried her say-no circuitry. She swallowed. “Nothing’s working out the way I thought it would.”
He gave her a sideways look. “Tell me about it.”
“I read your cards.”
“No. Don’t tell me about me. I know me. Tell me first what made you run away from your life.”
The sincerity in his stormy-gray eyes ran deeper than any well. “There was this man. He seemed okay. On the rough side, but I like my men like that. I thought we could have a good time.”
Rufus’s eyes softened with understanding and he just listened and waited for her to tell him the whole story. How cool was that.
“The guy was fun
and all that, but then it turned out he was into selling people. People, for Christ’s sake, young girls, as if they were bottles of rum.”
“So, you left town.” His eyes smoldered, and smoke lifted into the air around them.
“Yeah, and came to my brother’s house. If I wanted to go all Doctor Phil I’d say I took his problem on because I couldn’t fix my own.”
“Nah, you took it on because you care. Seems to me that’s your problem. Babe, you got a big heart. But you gotta think with your brains.”
“And that’s why I’m spilling my guts to a ghost in the middle of the night.”
His bad-boy smile slid across his face. “You gotta get over the dead part, Babe.”
“It’s kind of in the way.”
“I don’t know about that. When two hearts meet, dead or alive, that’s something to celebrate and you and I . . .”
A voice from above them broke their conversation. “What’s taking you guys so long.” The pirate hung his head out of the upstairs window.
They both laughed.
“No bath tonight,” said Rufus.
The pirate threw down a wet towel. “Another night, Charlie.” He disappeared out of view.
Rufus played with her hair again. “I want you to know that I’m truly happy to have met you, even if I had to die for that to happen.”
“Now there’s a pick-up line a lady can’t resist.”
He laughed and then abruptly stopped. “Someone’s here.”
“What?”
“Someone’s in the house. Stay here. I’ll check it out.”
His silvery-blue specter vanished and she was left alone, but there was no way she was staying put, even for a drop-dead-handsome ghost.
***
Rufus appeared beside the Viking in the circle around Rebel. “Did I miss something?”
“This man’s looking for you,” said the cop in his New York, Irish accent.
“Well, you found me.”
Rebel’s mouth dropped. “You’re dead.”
“What do you want?”
“I . . . I’m looking for Charlie.”
“You’re the guy who smuggles young girls.”
The ghosts gave a collective groan.
“Uh. Just immigrants who want a new home. I’m helping them and their families out.”
“Yeah right,” said the policeman.
Rebel shrugged. “There’s good money in it. And they have more of a chance here than they would ever have where they come from. Their families pay me to take them.”
The ghosts looked at each other, and without a word spoken the lights flickered and they moaned, the dirge of the dead, a low, gravelly groan scary enough to raise all the local dead.
The house opened and closed all its doors. The walls moved in and out, undulating, breathing a curse. More ghosts arrived and shimmered into view, a ghastly array of the undead. A fire in the hearth that had not been lit for over a hundred years flamed with a brilliant blaze.
The smell of the burning flesh in hell rose in spurts of steam from spaces between the floorboards. And a flurry of demons shot through the air like black, malevolent clouds.
“I . . . I . . . just want to talk . . .”
A demon entered his mouth and he said no more.
***
Charlie stood and brushed the dirt off her backside. Like hell she was going to wait.
Following the noise, she reached the open door as the demon entered Rebel. Her hand shot to her mouth. The whole house quivered with dissonant energy. A wall of ghosts she had not seen before stood around him with angry eyes, chanting unearthly words.
Rebel’s eyes went round with fear and all the color drained from his face. Then the demon flew out of his mouth and Rebel dropped to the floor with a thud.
Without thinking, she rushed to him and checked his pulse. He was dead.
When she looked up, the house had settled, the fire blazed no longer and all the ghosts had disappeared, except for Rufus.
“You killed him.”
“No, we didn’t kill him. His own evil drew evil to him and that is what killed him. We were just witnesses to the justice of the universe. You can’t do the kinds of things he did without paying for it. There will be no peace for him, ever.”
Part of Charlie wanted to cheer. After all, the good guys had won. But once upon a time she had liked this man. Hell, she had lain with this man. To celebrate his death did not feel right. She looked up at Rufus, knowing that her face showed her mixed feelings. There was no way to hide that.
“I’m sorry,” Rufus said in his low, calm voice. “I’m sorry that you ever had to meet such a man.”
“I can’t believe he was all bad.”
“No man is all bad. We’re all fatally human.”
She laughed. His gallows humor rocked. “I guess I should dial 911.”
He nodded.
Charlie stood up and crossed her arms across her chest. “Rufus, for a dead guy you sure know a lot about life.”
“Yeah, too bad I had to die to figure it out.”
The look on his face was so sad, Charlie reached out to him, to give him comfort, but all she could feel was ice-cold air. “Rufus, I wish . . .”
“I know, Babe.”
11
A Royal Flush
“When every other possibility seems impossible, the impossible must be possible.” ~Harley
A policeman in full uniform arrived and said his name was Constable Zane Reynolds. After giving her a firm nod he went straight to Rebel, took his pulse and shook his head. “Dead.”
Charlie pursed her lips. How could she possibly explain what had happened? Death by haunted house? Rufus stayed by her side, but the policeman didn’t see him, or at least didn’t acknowledge seeing him.
Constable Reynolds stood up and looked around. “Are you all right?”
Peachy. Just peachy. “Uh, fine. He was dead when I found him.” Sort of.
He nodded. “And you were alone?”
“Uh.” How could she answer?
“I see.”
But did he?
“Eric?” The cop called out to the air.
The Viking ghost shimmered into view. “She’s not at fault. The guy is a human trafficker.”
The constable’s eyebrows shot up. “In Sunset Cove?”
“He was after me.” Charlie found her voice. “I know stuff about his business. I can tell you about his latest deals and I think I know who he’s working with.”
Reynolds nodded. “We’ll get all that later. First, I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I am. The . . .”
“Ghosts,” the cop filled in.
“Yeah, the ghosts took care of me.”
“Did they kill him?”
“No, not exactly.”
“Was it the house?”
“No.”
“Do you know who or what killed him?”
“I’d say a heart attack,” said Rufus, who shimmered brighter.
Zane nodded at Rufus. “And what caused this heart attack?”
“Do you really want to know?” asked Eric.
“It’s my job,” said Constable Reynolds. “I am the law in this town.”
“Yeah, yeah, the Mounties always get their man,” said Rufus. “But do they always get their demons?” Sarcasm dripped from Rufus’s ghostly mouth.
“Demons, eh?”
“Demons,” echoed Eric with a wizened smile.
“All righty, then. I’ll tell the medics I suspect a heart attack.” He turned towards Charlie. “My report will say that you officially identified the deceased. If you don’t need medical assistance, I suggest you get out of here before more people arrive and you have to deal with them. Try to get some sleep.” His eyes softened. “Dealing with these—” he hesitated “—guys can be disconcerting.” He looked up at Rufus and smiled. “But I assure you, they mean no harm.”
“Dead right,” said Rufus.
“I’m okay,” said Charlie, w
ho had an overwhelming desire to throw her arms around Rufus but held back. This relationship would take some getting used to.
Zane nodded. “Think about what you want to tell me about what happened here tonight and come see me in my office tomorrow. I’ll finish my report then.” He handed her his business card.
A cop who talks to ghosts, has a relationship with this crazy house and cares about little old me. Hmmm. Nothing is normal in Sunset Cove.
***
Rufus stayed the night with Charlie at Mad Dog’s place. The first night with a new man was always interesting, but this one even more so. His presence made her feel whole in a rather unexpected way, as if he were the perfect jigsaw piece to complete the puzzle that was her.
Dawn came and Rufus still stood by her side. They had talked most of the night, telling each other about their lives and their dreams.
Her last thought before she fell asleep was, If only we could cuddle, or, better yet, get it on . . .and on . . .and on.
At six she awoke. She yawned and stretched.
Rufus ruffled her hair with his breath. “I should go. I need to be elsewhere.”
“To haunt?”
“To recharge. Do ghost stuff.”
“So, you really are a good ghost?”
Rufus’s bad-boy smile glowed and faded into a blue, silvery mist. “Babe, I’m good. Trust me, I’m very good.”
Rather than sleep, she hit the shower, changed into fresh leggings and a sweater and headed for the cop shop. She would sleep better after giving her statement.
The police office looked pretty much like what she expected: rectangular, efficient and boring. It smelled of paper, stale coffee, and dust. She could sense the despair of people who had been through its walls. As much as she and her family had never been friends with cops, she had respected their role in keeping order in a messed-up. The good ones were saints in her mind.
The young woman at the front directed her to Constable Zane Reynold’s office. She found him sitting in an office chair, looking like a postage-stamp Mountie: clean, crisp and purposeful. “Close the door and take a seat. I’ve had my coffee, so I won’t bite.”
The Biker Ghost Meets His Match (Gambling Ghosts Series Book 4) Page 5