by Mark Lukens
Nigel didn’t answer.
“Or another explanation is that there really is something supernatural going on here,” Shane said.
“Give me a break,” Nigel said.
“I think Laura’s right,” Shane said. “She feels the evil here, too. I don’t think it’s just some ghosts we’re dealing with.”
“What do you mean by that?” Nick asked.
“I think there could be some demonic activity here,” Shane said. “Ghosts are usually spirits trapped between life and the afterlife. But demons could explain the visions we’ve all been seeing. Demons could be pretending to be the people that we knew, like my friend from my childhood and the old lady from the Cranston House.”
“I investigated the Cranston House before,” Nigel said. “I even spent the night there and I didn’t see a damn thing.”
Shane looked at Nigel. “Maybe if you weren’t so drunk all the time, you would see something.”
Kristen barked out a nervous laugh, and Shane couldn’t help smiling. He loved the way she laughed.
“Screw you,” Nigel mumbled.
Shane looked at Harold. “You just said you saw your brother in the woods behind this manor earlier today. And Warren saw his daughter. They both saw that black liquid in the basement. Who else has seen things?”
“It doesn’t really seem like a big deal now,” Warren said. “Remember the hardhat we found earlier with the word BOSS on it? It was missing earlier when we were in the sunroom. And now it’s back again.”
“That’s something physical,” Nigel said. “The gas cans being emptied, the hardhat being moved around … all of those things are physical things. Somebody, one of us, or someone hired by Nick Gorman, has been doing those things. Not ghosts.”
“Demons are physical beings,” Shane said. “Unlike ghosts, they can do physical things, they can materialize in our world and they can touch us. They can hurt us.”
Kristen practically shivered with fear.
Footsteps sounded from upstairs, like someone was walking around up there right above the dining hall ceiling.
Nigel smiled up at the ceiling. “There,” he said. “That must be the crew Nick hired for this hoax. They’ve been hiding in this manor the whole time.”
“I don’t have a crew here,” Nick said.
Nigel marched towards the foyer, shining his light in front of him. “We’ll see about that.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
“Nigel, wait!” Shane said.
Nigel didn’t listen—he kept walking towards the foyer.
“We should stick together,” Shane said, looking at the others.
They all followed Nigel through the foyer to the ballroom, and then up the stairs to the second floor balcony.
Nigel walked down the hallway, getting closer to Room 214 for a moment, and then he stopped. He cocked his head like he was listening, concentrating.
More footsteps sounded from the floor above them.
“They’re on the third floor,” Nigel said and he headed down the hall for the stairs at the end of it.
Moments later they all gathered on the third floor. It was dark up here, the only light coming from their flashlights and the occasional flashes of lightning that lit up the rooms on each side of the hall for a moment.
They checked each room along the way to the sunroom.
• • • • •
Harold was the last one in the group, bringing up the rear. He stayed behind as they searched the rooms one by one, stepping into each one and shining their flashlights around.
He was about to catch up to the others, but he heard someone whispering in a room they had just searched. He turned back towards the room, walking a few steps back down the hall. He stood in front of the open doorway and shined his flashlight in at the room. For a second he thought he’d seen someone inside the room—a flash of movement, someone moving deeper into the darkness.
“Harold,” the person whispered.
It was his brother. That was his voice.
Harold stood in front of the doorway, about to enter the room alone as the rest of the group worked their way down the hall. None of them had even looked back to see what he was doing.
“Harold … I need help.”
Harold almost took a step inside—it was like his body was moving before he’d even thought about it. He forced himself to stop.
No, he told himself. He even shook his head no. He wasn’t going to go into that room. He had only been hallucinating. There hadn’t been a shadow moving in the room. There had been no voice whispering to him. His dead brother was not in that room. He was experiencing a side effect from the gasses escaping from below this manor and nothing else.
He hurried to catch back up with the group.
• • • • •
All of them entered the sunroom. Lightning flashed again, lighting up the room for a second. The rain thrashed against the row of windows and the tops of the tree branches scraped against the glass as the wind howled through the eaves.
“There’s no one up here,” Warren said.
Nick turned to Nigel. “We’ve searched every room along the way. Are you satisfied now that I don’t have a crew here?”
“No. They’re here. They’re in those passageways inside the walls.”
“Give me a break,” Nick mumbled, turning away from Nigel.
“That’s how they’re getting around,” Nigel said. “You hired the construction crews to create those passages inside these walls, and then they made sure that they were safe enough to travel through them, and then you had the construction crews leave their tools and materials behind so you could concoct the story about the accidents and the evil spirits that drove them away from this island.”
Nick just shook his head like he had given up trying to reason with Nigel.
“And you’re in on this too!” Nigel roared at Kristen as he turned to her.
Kristen opened her mouth to answer, but then she just snapped it shut again like she was too shocked to respond. She shook her head no, mimicking her uncle’s gesture.
“Let’s stop arguing about crews and hoaxes,” Shane said. “We need to get out of here. This place is dangerous.”
“Not this again,” Nick said, rubbing at his temples like a massive headache was coming on.
“It’s too dangerous,” Shane said. “This is getting out of control. Even if you won’t believe that there might be demonic activity here, then at the very least you should concede that the earthquakes and possible toxic gasses are enough of a reason to leave.”
“He’s right,” Kristen said. “We should leave.”
“I agree, too,” Harold added. “Definitely because of the seismic activity.”
Nick looked at all of them, not hiding the pure disgust on his face. “I wish all of you would stop your fucking whining.”
Everyone was shocked into silence for a moment. The only sound was the pouring rain and raging wind outside.
“I invite you all here to share in this momentous occasion,” Nick continued as he paced around the large room, “this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find proof of ghosts, of spirits, of an afterlife, of a world beyond our own, and what do I get? A bunch of frightened children whining the entire time.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Shane said. “We’re just talking common sense and safety here.” He gestured at Harold. “Your expert said there’s seismic activity under this manor and possibly poisonous gasses. I got stuck in a room earlier. Laura and Warren got stuck in the basement. Someone, or something, emptied all of our gas cans. This has gone too far.”
“You’re pathetic,” Nick mumbled. “No wonder your TV show got canceled.”
Shane didn’t take the bait. “You made me the leader,” he told Nick. “You said once we were here on this island that I was going to call the shots. That’s why you hired me. And as the leader, I’m calling this off.”
“What are you going to do?” Nick asked with a mean smile on his
face, his arms stretched out wide. “Go out into the rain and lightning? Go down to the docks and wait there until morning for the boat to come back?”
“I’ll stay on the front porch if I have to.”
“I’m leaving, too,” Kristen said.
Nick stared at his niece. “I expected a little more backbone out of you.”
Kristen looked instantly crushed by her uncle’s words.
“Come on,” Shane told Kristen. He looked at the others. He wasn’t going to wait for them to follow. He left the sunroom and started walking down the hallway with Kristen, heading for the stairs at the other end.
Shane heard the others following him out into the hallway—he heard Nick yelling at him. “You’re going to abandon the ghost hunt of a lifetime? You’re really going to walk away from all of this? Destroy your only second chance at a career?”
Shane didn’t turn around or answer—he kept on walking.
“I hope you read your contract well,” Nick said in a sing-song voice like a bully teasing a child on the playground.
Shane stopped. He looked at Kristen beside him. She looked nervous.
The others caught up to them and Shane turned around to face Nick who was at the front of the pack. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” he asked Nick.
“One of the clauses states that if you walk out, then you forfeit all of your fees.”
Shane shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? What good is money if you’re not around to spend it?”
Nigel sighed heavily, expressing his disagreement with the melodrama.
Shane didn’t care. He didn’t care what Nigel thought anymore, and he sure as hell didn’t care what Nick thought.
“Wait a minute,” Warren said. “Maybe we need to look again at Harold’s explanation. Not demons,” he said as he looked at Shane. “And not a hoax,” he said as he looked at Nigel. “Maybe Harold is right about the hallucinations from the gasses. Could those gasses reach all the way up here to the third floor?”
Warren looked around for Harold to answer his question.
Harold wasn’t there.
“Where’s Harold?” Warren asked.
“I thought he was right behind me,” Billy said.
“Shit,” Shane breathed out. “We can’t keep wandering off by ourselves in the dark.”
“I don’t think he wandered off,” Laura said. Her words were low and ominous.
They all shined their flashlights at Laura, spotlighting her in the darkness. She looked scared.
They all turned back towards the sunroom down the hall.
“Harold!” Shane yelled down the hallway. “He has to be back there somewhere—in the sunroom or in one of those other rooms.”
A crashing noise sounded from far down the hallway.
They all froze, all of them pointing their flashlights down the hall towards the sunroom.
“Harold?” Shane called.
A shadowy figure stood at the end of the hall, but then it darted into one of the rooms.
“Shit,” Shane said. “Was that Harold?”
“That didn’t look like Harold,” Warren said. “Too big. Too fast.”
Shane looked at Laura who only shook her head no. She didn’t think it was Harold, either.
“Harold!” Warren yelled down the hallway.
They all moved a few steps down the hall, their flashlight beams knifing into the darkness in front of them.
A loud pop and more crackles sounded from inside the walls. It sounded like pieces of wood were snapping loose, like things were shifting and breaking, like it would only take a few more strategic lynch pins to give way before this whole structure came crashing down.
There was a growl from deep down in the darkness somewhere, like the low warning sound from a watchdog.
“What the hell was that?” Kristen whispered and came to a stop.
They all halted, waiting, staring down the wide hallway. Another darker shadow moved across the hall. Small objects flew at them from the darkness, raining down on them, pelting them like hail and then bouncing down all over the wood floor.
Shane shined his flashlight beam down at the little white objects all over the floor. He bent down to pick one of them up and then almost dropped it when he realized what it was.
Kristen stifled a scream.
It was a tooth, recently extracted, with blood caked all over the root.
The screaming from down the hall began … a man’s scream. But the screams and cries sounded muffled, like they were coming from behind the walls.
Something crashed around inside the hallway walls on the right side, pushing the plaster out, cracks radiating from each spot where the thing pushed on the walls. Now Shane knew what had caused the cracks and damage to the second floor hallway. And then the pounding stopped … everything was silent.
“Harold!” Shane yelled and started running down the hall towards the sunroom.
The others followed Shane.
“Stay together!” Shane warned. “We need to check every one of these rooms.”
They checked each of the rooms along the way back to the sunroom, shining their flashlights and camera lights into the room. But Harold wasn’t in any of the rooms. And when they got to the sunroom, he wasn’t in there, either.
“Harold!” Warren yelled, looking around at the sunroom. Shane checked each of the windows, but they were all intact and closed.
“Harold!” Warren called out again.
No answer from Harold now, no screams anymore … Harold was gone.
“Fuck this!” Kristen yelled and bolted out of the sunroom. “I’m out of here.”
“Kristen, wait!” Shane yelled. He didn’t want them splitting up again. He ran after her.
The others followed Shane as he ran down the hall.
Shane nearly caught up with Kristen on the steps that led down from the second floor to the ballroom. She was shuffling down the steps so quickly that he was afraid she was going to trip and fall, but somehow she managed to keep her balance and make it all the way down.
“Kristen, stop! Wait a minute!”
“I’m not staying inside this house for another minute!” Kristen screamed as she ran across the parquet floor of the ballroom towards the foyer.
Shane didn’t yell back at her, he saved his breath and poured all of his energy into running after her. He agreed with Kristen, he just needed the others to see it, too. Maybe after the teeth that had been thrown at them (Harold’s teeth? They had to be.) they would understand the evil they were dealing with now.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
By the time Shane got to the foyer Kristen was already outside the Thornhill Manor. She had left one of the massive front doors wide open. Shane stopped by the stacks of construction supplies and found a half-folded blue plastic tarp. He pulled it off of the pallet of bags of plaster and took it with him out onto the front porch.
Kristen was already out by the iron gates by the time Shane got to the edge of the front porch by the steps. He draped the plastic tarp over his head and shuffled down the wood steps to the cracked pathway through the front yard. He ran past the leaning fountain that was overflowing with dark water now, and he ran up to Kristen who stood in front of the gates, staring at a set of chains wrapped around the gates with a shiny new padlock connected to them.
“What the hell?” Shane said.
Kristen turned to him and shook her head in disbelief. “He locked the gates. I can’t believe he locked the gates.”
“Here,” Shane said. “Get under the tarp.”
She didn’t argue, she got underneath and held part of the plastic tarp up over her head. The rain drummed on the tarp like thousands of tapping fingers.
“I can’t believe he did this,” Kristen said again.
“Why would he lock the gates?” Shane asked her.
Kristen shivered underneath the tarp.
“Kristen, why would your uncle chain the gates shut? Why would he force us to stay here?”
She didn’t answer. She was looking out at the darkness beyond the front gates where the tall grasses waved back and forth in the unrelenting wind and sheets of rain. Beyond the field of grasses and weeds, the tree branches and shrubs rustled—a frenzy of activity. But it seemed like something among all that motion out there had grabbed her attention.
Like when she was on the patio earlier, Shane thought.
“Kristen …”
“I don’t know,” she said in a voice so low Shane almost didn’t hear her over the wind and rain.
“I know he came here to film a documentary about a haunted house on a haunted island,” Shane said. “But it seems like there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
Kristen looked at him like he finally understood.
“Laura seems to believe Nick is here for another reason.”
“I think so, too,” Kristen said. “But I don’t know what the reason is … I swear. He hasn’t told me. He’s changed a lot in the last year since …” She let her words trail off like she was saying too much.
Shane held an arm around Kristen’s shoulders, drawing her in closer so they were both protected underneath the tarp. “Since what?” he asked, but he could already guess what it was.
“Since his diagnosis. Pancreatic cancer. The prognosis wasn’t good. He didn’t tell me about it, but I don’t think his last visit went very well.”
“So you think this is some kind of a bucket list thing for him? Something he’s always wanted to do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I don’t think this is a bucket list thing. He’s been interested in buying this island for some time.”
“He’s buying this island?” Shane asked. He couldn’t hide his surprise.
Kristen groaned like she shouldn’t have said anything, pulling away from Shane a little.
“I’m sorry,” Shane told her. “I won’t say anything. I just want to know what’s going on … what’s really going on.” He hesitated for a moment, then asked: “Is there any possibility that Nick is doing all of this … that this is really a big hoax?”
Kristen looked at him, bracing herself for the accusations coming next.