by Tracy Lane
Pants On Fire Press
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Pants On Fire Press, Winter Garden 34787
Text copyright © 2013 by Tracy Lane
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher, Pants On Fire Press. For information contact Pants On Fire Press.
All names, places, incidents, and characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Illustrations and art copyright © 2013 by Pants On Fire Press
Art by Natalia Nesterova
Book & eBook design by David M. F. Powers
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First edition: 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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eBook ISBN: 978-0-9860373-1-3
Softcover ISBN: 978-0-9827271-7-1
To my children Barry, Kenneth, Jesse, and Brittany. Looking at life through your young eyes kept me young at heart.
To my friend Rusty Fischer, without you none of this would be possible.
Prologue
“Silas…”
The voice was eerie, barely above a whisper. Jake paused, his sneaker poised above a grave as he stood in the middle of Dusk Cemetery.
It was nearly midnight and he’d grabbed the wrong flashlight before sneaking out of his bedroom window. It had run out of juice halfway through the graveyard, and he’d been blindly stumbling around ever since.
The moon was full, but it was frequently obscured by heavy cloud cover and he had to wait until another patch moved through to see very well.
He wasn’t scared, so much. Jake had a special relationship with graveyards, and this was far from his first time at the rodeo. Still, it was the first time a headstone had ever talked to him.
The voice grew louder.
“Silas…”
It was a female voice, sounding dark in a way a ghost might: dark and deep and frosty.
He risked another step, letting the moonlight guide his path. It was a big cemetery, and well-maintained as cemeteries go. There were headstones everywhere, some leaning, some taller than Jake.
“Silas…”
Jake turned to the left to follow the sound. It was coming from a massive tombstone two feet taller than he was, and three feet wider. He pointed the flashlight at it, but the beacon was dim, even after he banged it three times on the palm of his hand.
Then, suddenly, it lit, falling upon the dead soul’s name: “Rose Colder.”
It was there on the gravestone, but the flashlight flickered out just before he could read the dates.
“Silas…” came the eerie voice again, so close he could hear the ghost’s lips smacking.
But, wait. Did ghosts really have lips to smack?
Jake parted his own lips and spoke for the first time since walking into the graveyard. “R-R-Rose?”
He hadn’t meant to stutter, but he couldn’t help it. He heard a rasp, or a cough, and then the crunch of dry leaves behind the headstone.
“Silas?” was the reply, and then the rustling of cheap plastic against flesh. The clouds broke, the moon shone down, and a giant, yellow monster reared from behind the headstone, smiling.
Smiling?
“Gotcha!” said the beast, in a boastful, girlish voice. It was a girl, a giant girl, a living girl in a big, yellow raincoat.
“W— who are you?” Jake stammered, trying to hold his ground. He had to look up a good four inches to see her face.
Her eyes glittered beneath her short, greasy hair. She was heavy, but with her big smile and that cheerful way about her, she looked more nice than scary.
“I’m Tank,” she said proudly, inching closer to him with big black and white sneakers crunching over dry, dead leaves. “Who are you?”
“Jake Weir,” he said, relieved he didn’t stammer that time. “And who…who’s Silas?”
“Don’t you know?” she asked, sitting down on one of the large marble slabs that surrounded Rose Colder’s grave. She patted the one next to him, and he sat, too.
He didn’t know why, but even in a graveyard, even after pranking him in her big, yellow raincoat that made her look like a linebacker for an NFL team, this “Tank” girl didn’t scare him.
Much.
“No,” he replied.
Tank frowned. “Rose Colder,” she explained, “snuck out at midnight to meet her boyfriend, Silas Miner, in this very cemetery over a hundred years ago. But Silas’s Dad didn’t approve of his son dating a commoner, so he kept Silas from seeing her and sent a couple of local thugs to teach Rose a lesson. When the thugs showed up, Rose fought back…and lost. They buried her here, and legend has it that every night, at midnight, she rises from her grave to take revenge on the men who ended her life.”
“So…so that’s why you were calling me Silas?”
Tank nodded, and then slugged him on the shoulder. “What are you doing here, anyway?” Jake shrugged. He didn’t really want to tell her.
She pulled a flashlight from her raincoat pocket and flicked it on, right in his eyes. “Hey!” He held up a hand to shield his face.
“Wait, hold up.” Tank pointed the beam up. “What’s that on your hat?”
Jake blushed. He’d grabbed the hat at the last minute, not thinking about it. He had so many of them, and they all looked alike: black ball cap, neon green writing that spelled “Paranormal Properties.”
“You…you work for that TV show? The ghost hunting one?”
“You know about it?” Jake was surprised. They’d just gotten into town, and his parents hadn’t even filmed an episode here yet. That’s what he was doing out in the graveyard at midnight, trying to find something extra special for a new episode.
Of course, they’d kill him if they found out, but he figured it would be worth it if they finally got more than a handful of people to watch.
“Know about it?” Tank shouted. “I watch it every week! You know, the live feed on the web page. We don’t have any local channels that play it.”
Jake beamed in appreciation. “Cool,” he said.
“So,” Tank urged, nudging his knee with her own. He noticed she was wearing plaid pants under her yellow rain coat. “Do you work for it or what?”
“My Mom is the host. My Dad is the cameraman.”
Tank gasped and shoved Jake with each word. “No. Way! Get. Out. Of. Town!”
She stopped shoving him and stood up instead, yanking him by the sleeve of his T-shirt. Dragging him from the cemetery, she said, “I love your Mom. You have to tell me all about her.”
“Where are we going?” he asked, finally regaining use of his feet and catching up to her.
She saw him at her side, looked down and let him go. “There’s a diner around the corner, open all night. I’m buying you a hot fudge sundae and you’re going to tell me all about what it’s like to have famous parents.”
“Famous?” he chuckled as he followed her past the cemetery gate. His Mongoose bike was sitting there, dry and rusty, just where he’d left it.
“Sure thing.” She reached behind some bushes and lifted out a green ten speed with just one hand.
They mounted their bikes and, now that he was looking for it, Jake saw the neon sign for the Dusk Diner just around the corner. Yet, something was still bugging him. “Hey,” he said, “what were you doing in the graveyard at midnight?”
Tank shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“So you went to a cemetery?”
She shrugged again, pedaling off. While struggling to catch up, Jake heard her say, “Hey, I met you, didn’t I?”
Chapter 1
“I need more cable, Jakey.” Stephanie Weir called from inside Grant House, one of Dusk, North Carolina’s one hundred and twenty-seven registered haunted addresses. “I want just the right amount of light in here for my intro to this week’s episode.”
Jake’s mother was a fit thirty-six-year-old. She always had her long, chestnut brown hair tied back in a ponytail and wore dark maroon lipstick to match her manicured nails. (She always joked that her “faithful viewers” expected a TV ghost hunter to wear maroon fingernail polish.)
Mrs. Weir favored tan hiking boots, khaki cargo pants and an olive green turtleneck because, after years of experience, they were the only articles of clothing that, she said, “looked good and let her move quickly.” That is, let her move quickly if a ghost should ever show up.
All those years and countless episodes of Paranormal Properties later, and she was still hoping.
“Yes, Mom,” Jake grunted from the back of the van, which was all black except for the bright green paint that spelled out “Paranormal Properties” on both side panels. It was written in that goopy, neon green, ghostly lettering that dripped like blood off the two Ps.
Jake looped the extra cable over one shoulder and was just about to step out of the back of the van when he heard his father’s voice bellow, “Two more battery packs, Jake! STAT!”
His Dad, Dennis Weir, was as trim as his wife. Mr. Weir had dirty blonde hair that he kept short and often got sweaty – and spiky – beneath his Paranormal Properties ball cap.
Jake gritted his teeth and called out, “Sure, Dad!”
For as long as Jake could remember, he’d been his parent’s “do boy.” Do this, do that; go here, go there; pick this up, drop that off. He didn’t mind so much. Instead of an allowance he got a paycheck, which was never all that much, but still usually a few bills higher than most of his friends’ allowances.
Not that he had many friends to share it with. The Weir family didn’t just keep busy, they kept moving. From town to town, from haunted house to spooky graveyard, wherever there were ghosts, you could find the Weirs.
Jake could never understand it. His parents were the most dedicated, detail-oriented people he knew. Why they chose to spend their lives seeking out haunted houses and “hunting ghosts” was a mystery to him.
His Dad had an engineering degree and had worked for a software company for most of Jake’s early years, which he had spent in Reno, Nevada — a city that was hard to remember. His mother had been an English teacher who graded papers at the dinner table every night with a cup of chamomile tea keeping her company. Between the two of them, their potential was enormous.
Then, one night, there was a bump in the garage; and the next night, and the night after that. Jake’s Dad bought a video camera and set it up, recording from midnight until morning. Each night when the bump happened, there was a small flash of light within the dark garage.
3:30 every morning. Bump. Flash of light.
Just like clockwork.
3:30. Bump. Flash of light.
3:30. Bump. Flash.
Jake’s Dad sent the video to a few “paranormal experts” he had found after scouring the Internet for “paranormal experts”; perhaps not the wisest move. Jake’s Mom started bringing home ghost stories from her school’s library and reading them at the table after grading her students’ homework.
One of the paranormal experts who actually responded was a local man who came to their house and showed his parents some clippings. Jake was in third grade back then. No, fourth grade? It had been so long, he could barely remember.
But he did remember that when he asked what was on the clippings, his parents had clammed up and hid them away in a desk drawer after the man left. Jake waited until they were out of the house to read the forbidden clippings: they explained how, at 3:30 a.m. some ten years earlier, a man had hung himself in the garage. In their garage.
His parents were convinced it was a ghost and wanted to share the truth about spirits with the American public. Jake was convinced it was time to move out of their house.
As it turned out, they both got their wish. Mr. and Mrs. Weir quit their jobs, bought the van, had it painted, packed up their belongings, along with some secondhand video equipment and a ghost hunting map from the local bookstore, and the family hit the road. Paranormal Properties was born. Since then, they’d traveled all over the place. Fresno. Albuquerque. Miami. If it was haunted, they’d be there.
Jake knew it wasn’t a “normal” life, per se, that Mr. and Mrs. Weir were anything but poster parents for normalcy. But they were his parents, and ghost hunting was all any of them knew anymore. Would he have liked a bigger bedroom and a little more sleep? Would he trade in his ghost hunting parents for more “normal” ones? Not on your life.
Considering, it was a surprisingly eventful life at that. Every week, they’d pull up to a new stop, the bags from another fast food meal littering the uncarpeted floor of the van as Jake’s mother would pop out while his Dad followed, lugging his ever-present camcorder.
Jake actually kept a road atlas in his backpack; it had a gold star for every town they had moved to in the last three years, plus a “start date” and a “finish date” under each star. Jake was up to thirty-seven stars by now, over twelve new towns a year.
Twelve new reasons to say “goodbye” whenever he made a new friend or two.
Then again, homeschooling didn’t exactly make for long-lasting friendships to begin with. But Jake hoped this last move could just stick for a while. After all, in paranormal circles, Dusk, North Carolina was pretty much the “Area 51” of haunted towns.
127 reported haunts, 34 cemeteries and over 2,798 documented paranormal sightings in the last decade alone. It was officially America’s third most haunted location.
With all those haunted locations, and time for only one per week to feature on his parents’ show, Jake hoped they’d be staying for—
“Jake!”
“Jake?”
“Jakey!” his parents both bellowed at once.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” he muttered, dashing up the steps to Grant House. They cracked beneath his grubby gray sneakers, but Jake no longer noticed the spooky features of every “paranormal property” he visited each week.
He’d seen enough rusty nails, moldy cobwebs and dusty, white sheets covering antique furniture to last him a lifetime. Make that two lifetimes.
Inside Grant House, Jake’s parents were fussily framing out camera angles and playing with the lighting. The house was old and big, but not that old and not that big. It was dusty and musty and the floorboards creaked, but no more than most timeworn homes.
Besides, even if they did exist – which Jake was positive they didn’t – it would be hard to hear any “ghosts,” what with his parents’ constant, lighthearted bickering.
“That’s too bright, Dennis,” his Mom was saying, primping her bangs just so in the small compact mirror she always kept in a side pocket of her pants.
“Come on, Steph,” Dennis Weir replied as he continued to adjust the lights in the house’s parlor area. “Look at that broken window behind you. It adds just the right, spooky touch to your intro, but we won’t be able to see it if the light’s too soft.”
That was when Jake showed himself, juggling supplies for his parents.
“Thank you, Jakey!” his Mom squealed suddenly, clapping her hands together dramatically. (Hey, she wasn’t a TV show host for nothing!) “Come give Mama a hug!”
He set the extra cable down just far enough out of reach so he could escape one of his mother’s notoriously energetic hugs. She pouted playfully, but then quickly forgot about affections as she set about memorizing her lines for that evening’s introduction.
He turned to his Dad. “Your battery packs,” he said.
“Hey,” his Dad chuckled, lookin
g down at the stack of extra camera batteries in his son’s hand. “I only asked for two.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, handing them over before turning on his heel and heading out of the parlor. “But I know you’ll only ask for more in five minutes, so I brought extra.”
Jake hurried out of the house before either of his parents could lure him toward a camera. Nothing his parents’ show could dish out would trump his fear of being on camera. The farther he stayed away from his Dad filming his Mom, the better he felt about all this paranormal paranoia.
He felt much better by the time he’d gotten back to the van. He leaned against it, reaching into one of the bottomless pockets on the side of his black cargo pants – they matched his Paranormal Properties T-shirt and ball cap – for one of his cinnamon jawbreakers.
He’d discovered the little suckers at the general store – that’s what they called convenience stores in Dusk, North Carolina, “general stores” – around the corner from the Weirs’ latest shabby apartment building. They were just like “regular” stores, but had signs that said “General Store” over their doors. They sold things like pickled pig’s feet and homemade (homemade!) beef jerky; and, of course, cinnamon jawbreakers.
The old guy at the counter – and he was there no matter what time of day or night Jake showed up with a hot dollar burning a hole in his pocket – sold them in a plastic jug by the cash register.
They were sweet and gooey and good for a quick pick-me-up in between meals, which were infrequent and fast thanks to his parents’ tendency to forget to eat while on the job.
How can they do that? Jake wondered idly, chomping on his cinnamon red-hot and savoring the juices that danced across his tongue. How do they forget to eat?
“What’s that you’re jawing on, kid?”
The voice literally made Jake break his jawbreaker right in half, suffusing his mouth with a fireball of hot, sticky sweetness. (“Huh,” he realized, “so that’s where they get their name!”)