Red Velvet Waffle (The Diner of the Dead Series Book 15)

by Carolyn Q. Hunter

  “Looking forward to this year’s Founder’s Day Picnic in a few months?” she asked, referring to one of the town’s largest events. “I’m in charge again.”

  Of course, you are, Sonja wanted to say but didn’t. “Great. I guess we’ll be working together then.”

  “I guess we will,” she nodded. “Ta-ta, dear.” Walking out of the building, Corrie climbed into her car outside and drove off.

  “You could have at least bought a cup of coffee or something while you were here making everyone’s lives miserable,” she muttered quietly so no one would hear. Moving around the counter and to the booth where Benjamin was, she sat down. “What was that about?”

  He shook his head. “Oh, she’s been bugging me to buy the farm ever since Sam died,” he admitted. “I guess your boyfriend opened his mouth about what I said this morning.”

  “I’m so sorry about that.”

  “Everyone knows about my little haunting by now,” he sighed. “Corrie was trying to use it as bartering chip to convince me to sell.”

  “I heard,” Sonja groaned. “But why does she want to buy it?”

  “Ever since she came over to borrow some stuff for one of her events, she’s been harping on it.”

  “Borrow?”

  “Yeah, Sam had a bunch of old stuff in the basement, cellar, and the attic.”

  “There’s a basement and a cellar?” Sonja questioned. She wasn’t even sure what the difference between the two was.

  “Yeah, the cellar is closer to the back of the house. It’s just a small brick room that used to be for storing coal. I think they also used to keep fruit and veggies down there because it was cold. Now it’s just become another little storage area for old junk.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway, she came over and went through a bunch of stuff to potentially borrow and salvage for some antique event last month,” he shrugged. “I guess she decided she loved the place. She says she wants to use it for entertaining, hold barn dances, galas, ghost tours at Halloween, stuff like that.”

  “She wants to boost her business?”

  “Basically.”

  “Well, I’m glad you told her off,” she nodded triumphantly. “And don’t let other people get you down. This rumor about the haunting will blow over like all the rest of them.”

  “I just hope no one heard that you’re staying over tonight,” he whispered, “I wouldn’t want people to start suspecting something was going on between us, and I’d hate to come between you and Frank.”

  “I know,” she smirked, trying to hide her current anger and sadness about her boyfriend. “I better get back to the kitchen,” she told him.

  “Can I get a refill on the coffee?”

  “Sure,” she said, standing up and walking toward the kitchen to grab the coffee pot. Her thoughts were on Corrie still. What was her real interest in the farm? Was it really just for her business, or something more?

  And, if Frank turned out to be right about the ghost being a prank, was Corrie’s desire to own the farm enough to make her fake a haunting to scare off Benjamin?

  CHAPTER 5

  * * *

  Sonja drove over the small wooden bridge across the canal and up the long driveway toward the Hinkley farmhouse at about nine in the evening. She was supposed to have dinner with Frank that night and maybe catch a movie, but neither one had bothered contacting the other.

  It seemed their relationship was on the fritz at the moment.

  Sonja was still angry about the earlier exchange, but she was hoping they could resolve this issue soon. She couldn’t take the tension anymore.

  As the farmhouse appeared at the end of the drive, she couldn’t help but notice that every window was filled with yellow light—making the home look like a beacon against the dark rural backdrop.

  Pulling up between the barn and the farmhouse, she grabbed her overnight bag from the passenger seat and got out of her van.

  Walking up the front steps to the porch, the door swung open before she could even knock. “Thank heaven you came,” Benjamin sighed. “I thought for sure I’d end up having to spend the night here alone, again.”

  “I promised I would come, and here I am,” she smiled, stepping forward.

  Opening the screen door, he let her inside.

  As she walked into the living room she started having flashbacks to a year ago when she and the TV crew of The Spook Show had gotten trapped in the farmhouse because of a storm. Everything looked exactly the same, down to the positioning of the furniture. She was still learning about her power to see ghosts back then, and it had been one frightening evening, to say the least.

  Her hope was that tonight would be less spooky.

  “I’m really sorry about all of this,” he confessed. “I just didn’t know what else to do.”

  “No problem,” she shrugged, setting her bag on the old corduroy couch. “Where am I sleeping?”

  He hesitated, looking sheepish.

  “What?”

  “Actually, if you don’t feel uncomfortable, I’d prefer it if you slept in the bedroom with me.”

  Sonja’s jaw dropped open. Maybe Frank had been right all along and this whole thing was a ploy to make a pass at her. The thought only lasted a second when she realized she was being ridiculous.

  “You know, Frank is my boyfriend.”

  “I know that,” Benjamin acknowledged. “And seriously, I’m not interested in any funny business at all,” he shrugged. “I’m just a little freaked out.” Sighing, he plopped back onto the plush chair near the fireplace. “Sonja, I’ll tell you, I’ve spent most of my life in the same boat of thought as Frank. Even when I worked with The Spook Show, I was almost one hundred percent certain that ghosts didn’t exist, and I was okay with that.”

  Sonja took a seat on the couch, leaning on the arm and realizing just how comfortable she felt in this house and with Benjamin. “Believe me, Ben, I understand your feelings more than you could ever know.”

  “Until last night, I always had a logical answer to explain away anything strange. Finally, when that voice whispered in my ear, I couldn’t explain my way out of it anymore,” he shivered as he remembered his experience.

  “I spent a few months trying to deny it after I had my first real experience,” she confided in him. “Then, I realized I couldn’t escape it. It was the truth and it’s been a part of my everyday life since.”

  He nodded, “Maddy said you were extra sensitive to ghosts.”

  “You could say that,” she admitted. “I don’t share my experiences with many people, basically because of the way Frank reacted earlier. I assume that’s how most people will act.”

  “I wouldn’t be too hard on Frank,” he encouraged her. “How can you blame him? He’s probably never had a real ghostly encounter in his life.”

  Sonja shrugged, “he’s had a few, thanks to hanging around me, but none so out of the ordinary or frightening that he even stopped to think about it.”

  “Well, give him time,” Benjamin forced a smile. “Maybe he’ll get haunted one of these days.”

  “Maybe he will,” Sonja agreed, wondering if it would be too mean to try and convince one of the ghosts she encountered to haunt him. She snickered quietly even thinking about.

  Benjamin stood up from the chair. “So, do you want some tea or coffee?”

  “Coffee? Isn’t it a bit late for that?”

  “When you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you’re more likely to try and stay up late.”

  “I suppose,” she nodded, standing up. “I’ll have tea.”

  “Coming right up,” he smiled, heading into the kitchen.

  “By the way,” she said, following him, “is there a bedroom I can sleep in next to yours?”

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  They compromised about the sleeping arrangements. Sonja slept in the guest room next door, so long as she kept her door wide open to hear everything that was going on in Benjamin’s room. It took a little work
on Sonja’s part, but she managed to get him to agree.

  Convincing him to go to bed was nearly impossible. Between the immense amount of caffeine still pulsing through his system and his inherent fear of going back to sleep in that room, she’d basically had to push him up the stairs. It hadn’t been an easy feat considering he was a bulky farmhand who stood over six feet tall.

  Unfortunately, he was also afraid of the stairs, too, thanks to the fact that someone had been murdered there last December.

  As Sonja lay on her back in the bed, she thought of the farm's history and all the people who’d died there—most of them violently. With all of those dead bodies piled up throughout the past, how could you not believe the house and surrounding farm was haunted?

  The earliest rumored death was a young man who had hung himself in the barn after accidentally killing a girl in town. That was many years prior, when Haunted Falls was still a new community.

  Since that event, people had claimed to see the outline of a dead body hanging from the barn rafters at night. Mrs. Hinkley, when she’d been alive, had even hung a scarecrow up in the barn around Halloween to spook all the trick-or-treaters.

  Since the original death, two other people had died of a hanging on the farm. One had been on the stairs in the house and another in the barn.

  Sonja shivered under the covers even thinking about it. The last thing she needed to do was freak herself out before anything happened—if anything did happen, that is. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if Frank had been right about it just being a mean prank. The way Corrie had talked about the haunting made her suspicious.

  The woman knew all about setting up great parties and events, why wouldn’t she have the skills—or at least the connections—to set up a fake haunting to scare Benjamin off?

  Shifting lower under the covers, she decided she would wait out the night before she made any decisions. Before finally letting herself sleep, she perked up her ears to see if Benjamin was doing okay. By the sound of it, he seemed to have fallen asleep.

  “Thank goodness,” she whispered.

  Laying there in the silence, listening to Benjamin’s slow breathing in the next room, she began to slowly drift off.

  * * *

  Sonja sat straight up in bed with a start, her heart leaping within her chest. A loud knocking from downstairs echoed through the whole house. It sounded as if it was the front door—just like Benjamin had described.

  “Did you hear it?!” he exclaimed, running into Sonja’s room and throwing himself on the bed. “Did you hear it, too?”

  The knocking came again, harder and louder.

  “How could you not hear that?” she confessed.

  “I told you it was real,” he rubbed his calloused hands together eagerly. “It’s the ghost.”

  Sonja threw back the covers and stepped out of the bed onto the cold hardwood floor. “We’ll see about that.”

  “You’re going downstairs?”

  “Of course,” she insisted, throwing her fuzzy robe over her tank top and sleep shorts. “You told me to come here and investigate it, didn’t you?”

  Benjamin looked nervous, hesitating. It was so unlike him, Sonja thought. Whatever it was, really had him spooked.

  “Come on,” she ordered, marching out the door and down the stairs.

  The knocking grew louder, reaching a fever pitch of urgency as if someone couldn’t wait for another second to get inside the farmhouse.

  Reaching the bottom of the steps, Sonja suddenly felt chilled. Was she really going to open that door herself?

  A second later she felt Benjamin standing right behind her, so close that his chest was touching her back. “Are you going to answer it?”

  She nodded, regaining her confidence, and stepped down toward the door.

  “There won’t be anyone there,” he informed her. “There never is.”

  She jumped when the door rattled in its frame with another round of hard knocking. Why didn’t the darn door have a window or a peephole?

  “Go on,” Benjamin encouraged, never leaving the stairway the entire time, ready to bolt back up at the first notice of anything supernatural.

  Reaching out, she gripped the doorknob and slowly turned it. Then with one fell swoop, she swung the door open and felt herself jump in fright.

  Standing there was a tall, dark figure, filling the entire doorway.

  “Sonja,” it uttered.

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  “F-Frank,” she stammered angrily, seeing her boyfriend standing there. “What are you doing here?”

  “Frank?” Benjamin shouted, stepping down and looking out the door. “What are you trying to do?” he barked. “Scare us out of our minds?”

  The sheriff, dressed in his same jeans and t-shirt from earlier, and carrying a duffle bag over one shoulder, sighed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

  “It’s nearly ten thirty,” Sonja scolded him. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking, as the sheriff, that it was my responsibility to investigate this too.”

  “Oh, really?” Sonja folded her arms defiantly. “Are you sure it wasn’t just so you could keep an eye on your girlfriend?”

  “Sonja,” Frank shouted, but then caught himself. Breathing in deeply, he let out the air in a whoosh. “I came to apologize.”

  Sonja felt her stiff muscles soften a little. “Apologize?”

  “That couldn’t wait until morning?” Benjamin complained.

  Sonja waved him off, wanting to hear her boyfriend out.

  “I realized I’d been a jealous fool earlier,” he admitted. “I should have more trust in you, Sonj’.”

  “Yes, you should,” she agreed.

  “Also, as sheriff, I should have been more understanding of a citizen in need. With all the strange things that have happened in the last year, I shouldn’t just brush a death threat under the rug—even if it’s still unclear who it came from.”

  “A ghost,” Benjamin replied, folding his muscular arms. “It came from a ghost.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Frank said. “I’m still not going to say I believe in ghosts, but I’m not going to discount either of you if you do.”

  “Good,” Sonja said, “because I do.”

  Frank sighed, clearly still not understanding viewpoint on the issue. “Either way, I think it can’t hurt to have two of us here as witnesses. If it’s a ghost,” he paused to look them both in the eye, “or not, we’ll find out together.”

  Sighing, Sonja was glad he had apologized, but not sure she was ready to forgive him quite yet. Still, she felt she could be civil.

  Glancing at Benjamin for approval, Sonja shrugged her shoulders. Ben groaned but nodded.

  “Come in,” Sonja instructed Frank, stepping aside to grant him entry.

  * * *

  Soon, they were all settled in for the evening. Benjamin in the master bedroom, Sonja in the guest room, and Frank on the couch downstairs.

  Frank had tried to convince Sonja to stay up a bit longer and talk to him, to try and work things out, but she just wasn’t in the mood. She was tired and still a little cranky from his comments earlier in the day.

  It was unlike her boyfriend to act so callused and mean, but she knew that everyone had their moments once in a while. When people felt vulnerable or defensive, they often let their emotions carry them away.

  She knew, by morning most likely, she’d be able to forgive him and fully accept his apology.

  For now, however, she needed to sleep.

  Unfortunately, as before, just as her eyes closed and she began to drift, she was roused by a quiet tapping noise. At first, she paid it no mind, assuming it could be a bird tapping on an outer wall somewhere, or a tree branch scraping a window.

  However, the tapping seemed too rhythmic, too consistent to be either of those.

  Sitting up, she listened closely, realizing the noise kept time almost like the ticking of a clock. It seemed to be
coming from just outside her room. She needed to check it out.

  Slipping out of bed again, and beginning to wonder if she’d get any sleep at all that night, she tiptoed to the door—hoping not to wake Benjamin.

  Rounding the corner, she came to stand at the top of the stairs. The tapping was definitely coming from the stairwell. What could it be? A rat in the wall? Old boards settling? Or the ghost of the man who had died there?

  Heading down the stairs, Sonja felt the walls on either side, carefully examining them for any vibrations. Coming to the middle landing where the stairs turned down toward the entryway and living room, she found where the tapping was coming from.

  The wall was slightly warm as if someone had just had their hand there moments before.

  “Weird,” she whispered.

  “Sonja,” came the hushed voice from below. Looking down, she spotted Frank at the bottom of the stairs. She moved away from the wall and took two steps down toward him.

  “I heard tapping.”

  “I can hear it, too,” he confirmed. “Do you think it’s our specter?” he asked, saying the word specter slightly sarcastically. It was clear he still believed it was either all in Benjamin’s head or the work of a prankster.

  Sonja folded her arms. “I can’t say for sure, but let’s not wake up Ben, okay?”

  As she spoke, she watched Frank’s eyes widen, looking at her. Then she realized. He wasn’t looking at her, he was looking behind her.

  “S-sonja?” he stuttered nervously.

  “Cut it out, Frank,” she ordered him. “I know you think this is all a big joke but—”

  “Sonja,” he whispered again, a little more eagerly, never taking his eyes away from the stairwell. Lifting one shaky finger, he pointed up the stairs.

  “What?” she asked, spinning to look behind herself.

  Hanging there, right in front of her face, was a pair of swinging feet. Each time they swung to the right, the toes would make contact with the wall—creating a consistent tap, tap, tapping sound.