by C. A. Larmer
She swallowed hard and tried to breathe deeply, tried to get the thought of nibbling creatures out of her mind. “Can I at least know where I am?” she begged. “Where I’m going to die? This doesn’t look like a lounge room.”
“It’s not. It’s a basement. No one will find you down here, not for a long while, plenty of time for you to die a slow and excruciating death. But hopefully in time to finish my book off, complete the final chapter. Perhaps I’ll take some evidence to plant on Oliver should I need to speed things up.”
He turned back towards the stairs again.
“What will you call this one?!” she cried out.
“Huh?”
“My death? What will you call it? I’m keen to know.”
He smiled. “The Haunted House Murder. I’ll write that Australia’s greatest ghostwriter scared herself to death. Like it?”
She shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I’ve heard better.”
He stared at her for a few tense seconds than burst into laughter again, shaking his head. “You always were hilarious, Roxanne. It’s a pity it has to end this way. We could have been quite a team. I wouldn’t have chosen you, you know. For the next murder. It’s only that you got too damn nosy. I tried to distract you. I tried to get you onto my book and off Oliver’s case. But you wouldn’t do it, kept getting diverted. And then when I saw you with Max the other night ...” He paused, his smile now icy. “You’re just like Caroline and Tina, you know? You’re all fucking bitches, too good for anyone.”
“I’m sorry, David—”
“Don’t even fucking try!” he boomed back. “You kissed me, Roxanne. You led me on. Then you go running back to that Max dickhead. What’s he got that I don’t have? He’s just a two-bit, half-literate photographer who’s never even had a film deal, let alone made one. That’s when I figured you deserved to be my third and final victim.”
“Final? You’re not taking anyone else out?”
“Of course not,” he said, a hand to his heart. “What do you take me for? A monster?”
He smiled sadistically again and began ascending the staircase.
“Please, David,” she called out. “Please don’t leave me here. I can help you with the book. I can help you write it—”
“Don’t do it, Roxanne,” he yelled back. “There’s no dignity in begging. Don’t embarrass yourself.”
Then he disappeared into the darkness.
Chapter 37
The night wore on and Roxy struggled to break free but it was no use. She rocked and stretched and heaved and screamed but her hands and legs were secured tightly and she realized with renewed panic that she was going nowhere. She was in the middle of a dingy, windowless basement, strapped to an old armchair that was so heavy, no amount of rocking could move it. Apart from the sofa, the room appeared almost empty. Through the darkness she could just make out several boxes in one corner, an old, rusty fan covered in stringy cobwebs, and what looked like a pile of mouldy blankets, and that’s where the scuttling sound was coming from. It had started up again soon after David left and seemed to be getting louder by the hour.
What if David was right? What if there was a family of vicious, hungry rats, just waiting for her to fall asleep, just waiting to attack?
Tremors of fear raced through her and Roxy thumped her feet heavily on the floor from time to time, which stopped the scuttling for several blessed minutes before it slowly started up again.
“Go away, go away, go away!” she screamed to no avail. Whatever was lurking under those blankets was not going anywhere.
During the night Roxy heard other noises, too—eerie whistles and piercing cries that sounded far off, above her head, outside of the house perhaps. Yet it didn’t seem to matter; each noise sent a shiver down her spine, each cry a stab of adrenaline that made her weary eyes shoot open, her back stiffen, her head pound even harder. She didn’t believe in ghosts but that didn’t lessen the fear any.
Eventually night turned into day and Roxy struggled to stay awake as she watched a sliver of light come through from the floorboards above. But even with better light, she could see no escape, no shards of glass to cut her ropes, nothing. At least the eerie noises had settled down and the scuttling had subsided.
Silence had finally returned and it was a blessed sound.
At one point Roxy had begun to sob, but very soon she was talking herself around, soothing herself, assuring herself she would be okay. She was still alive, wasn’t she? He could easily have killed her at any time last night. The fact that he had left her alive was a positive thing. She had to use it, to think, to work her way out.
She had already deduced that this house, long deserted, was a good distance from the main road. If it had been closer she might have got away last night when she’d made her run for it. Still, it didn’t stop her from screaming out from time to time, hoping that a stray bush walker or inquisitive kid would wander past. But it was no use. She was completely and utterly alone.
And worse, there was no way anyone back home would know where to find her.
How could they? Max didn’t even know she was away, and her mother and Oliver thought she was in Yamba. They had no idea she had driven up to Ballina, a good hour and a half away. And God knows where David had taken her after that. She could be anywhere, anywhere at all.
If only she had called her mum, she might have stood a chance. If only she had done as her mother had asked!
Roxy felt a wet, hot tear trickle down her cheek.
Her poor mother. Lorraine would have worked out by now that Roxy was missing, and she would be distraught. Frantic. But there was no way she could find her. No way.
As the hours wore on and the light slowly turned to darkness again through the floorboards above her head, Roxy felt her desperation return. And she felt an intense thirst, like no thirst she had ever felt before. Panic and fear were working her adrenal glands and every sense was on heightened alert. She wasn’t hungry, she realized, just desperate for water. She kept peering around but there was nothing. No hope.
Roxy’s head dropped to the side and she finally surrendered to slumber.
A distant screech woke Roxy and she sat up with a start, her neck aching from where she had slept crookedly. She peered out into the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust, her ears pricked for more sound. That’s when she heard the horrendous scuttling noise closer now, and louder than she remembered it, and her fear peaked. She tried thumping her feet but they were so heavy now, so hard to lift, and eventually fear gave way to exhaustion and she dropped back to asleep again.
“Creak!”
Roxy’s eyes flew open, her body went rigid, her ears pricked alert.
“Creeeeaaaaak!”
Was that a door opening above her? Roxy craned her ears. There were more creaks and then what sounded like footsteps on old floorboards above. She felt a wave of relief and was about to scream out when it dawned on her.
It could be David Lone. He could be back to finish her off!
Roxy struggled with her ropes, trying desperately to free herself then she stopped and listened again. The footsteps were now growing softer, they were clearly moving away, and Roxy realized she no longer cared if it was David, she just needed to be heard, she needed to get out of this dingy room and away from those tortuous, scratching claws.
So she took a deep breath and screamed and screamed and screamed until her throat gave way and she could scream no more.
Within minutes the footsteps were growing louder again and someone was rapidly descending the stairs, torch in hand, pointing it frantically around the room. The light found Roxy and rested on her for just a split second. There was a deep gasp, and then someone was hurling himself towards her.
Chapter 38
Roxy Parker had never enjoyed a glass of water more and probably never would again. She swallowed the exquisite liquid down quickly then held her glass out for more. The waitress obliged, giving her a puzzled look as she did so. She usually only got thi
s kind of reaction with her coffee.
“Easy, Parker,” Max said, smiling. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
“Sick but alive, Maxy. Alive!” She smiled back at him and then across to Caroline who was seated beside him.
It was two hours later and Roxy was safely ensconced between her two friends in a brightly lit café in the heart of Ballina, a light shawl wrapped around her, the shaking now subsided. The wall clock said 9:13 p.m. and Roxy was waiting for her pasta dish to arrive, but really it was only water that she wanted even though she’d already drunk several litres by this time. In the end the waitress had left the jug at the table, shaking her head as she walked off.
The trio had already been grilled by the local police and were waiting for Gilda to show up. She was en route now, but there was no way Roxy was staying a second longer at that creepy old house. Nor was she about to get carted off to the hospital as the ambulance officers had insisted. It had felt like days and days, but Roxy had only been tied up for twenty-four hours, not long enough to be seriously dehydrated, and she told them as much. Nor was she going anywhere without Max Farrell by her side. Not while David Lone was still out there. Somewhere.
In the end, the ambos had patched up her face and the police had let her depart, insisting she hang around the next day for more questioning, and so the trio had made their way to the nearest, brightest, safest looking café they could find in the heart of Ballina. And Roxy had ordered water, and lots of it.
“So tell me again how you found me?” she said, unable to take it all in the first time.
“Really, Caroline can take all the credit,” Max said, giving his sister a smile. “Oh, and your mum.”
“Really?”
“Well, it was your panicky mum who first alerted us to your disappearance. If it wasn’t for her we might not have thought to start looking. No offence.”
“None taken,” she said, smiling wearily. “Go on.”
“Well, your mum was clearly worried and that got me worrying. I mean, I knew she can be a panic merchant at the best of times, but this was not ordinary times. We all knew you were doing some research for David Lone’s book, so Oliver figured Lone should know where you were. But he couldn’t reach Lone either. And the paper hadn’t seen him for hours. To start with we thought you’d both come to some danger. I mean, writers were being killed off, you know? Then when Oliver got back to his place and couldn’t find his car, he started to wonder if he was being stitched up again. That’s when we all began to panic. So we met Oliver at your apartment to have a proper look around.”
“Oh, thank God I gave him that key all those years ago,” Roxy said.
“To be honest ...” Max paused, his eyes watered up. “God, I was so terrified that’s where we’d find you ...”
“Dead, you mean?”
He nodded, glanced at her briefly then away again. Roxy touched his hand, gave it a squeeze. “So what happened next?”
“We started looking through your files, trying to find some evidence of where you might be. Your mum told us you were in Yamba but that’s all we had to go on, and bloody hell I wish you’d name your files better. Talk about cryptic!”
She winced. “Sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter, we eventually found your desk diary and saw that you were meeting with a Mrs Porter, no other details, but Oliver did his Google magic and came up with a number. He rang Mrs Porter and she told us she suspected you’d gone on to see that Professor Green character.”
“He was harder to pin down,” said Caroline, taking up the story. “We found his number easily enough but he refused to pick up. Slacker!”
“It was pretty late by this stage,” Max offered but Caroline waved him off with one bangle-clad hand.
“Big whoop! There were lives at stake, for goodness sake! Anyway, we left him three frantic voice mail messages before the gravity of it finally got through and he rang us back. We thought he might know where you went after your interview, but he had no idea. Completely clueless! He did tell us, though, what he’d told you, about David Lone doing anything to get a good story. That he’d been booted from university for plagiarism, and for threatening Green’s life—”
Roxy blinked several times. “What? I didn’t know about that.”
Caroline sighed. “None of us did. Green told me David had threatened to ‘destroy’ him if he ever went public with the plagiarism ‘rumour’ as he called it. Apparently he never admitted to it, even though the evidence was strong. Green’s a tough character but David obviously put the fear of God into him because he did keep it quiet, all those years. They agreed David would leave uni and no more would ever be said.”
“But why didn’t Green tell me all of this when I interviewed him?”
She shrugged. “I reckon he’s still a little wary of David. I don’t know exactly what David said or did, but it had a major impact. In any case, he said you were on David’s side, writing a book for him, so I guess he wasn’t taking any chances.”
She sighed, too. He was right. She had made the cardinal sin when writing a biography. She had got too close to the subject. Ghostwriting autobiographies was different. You had to get close, you had to take a side—the side of the person paying you to write about them—but biographies were meant to be even-handed. Unbiased. Clearly Professor Green could see she was anything but.
“Okay,” she conceded. “So you got the truth out of Green and then?”
“That’s when it clicked!” said Caroline. “Up until this point, sweetie, we were trying to find you and David, we didn’t suspect him of anything. But then we started to think ... if David could threaten an old English professor for a degree, what would he do for his career? I mean, I always knew David was ambitious but I had no idea how much.” She shuddered. “I cannot believe I went out with that man—”
“This is not about you, Caro,” Max said, interrupting her. “So we started to wonder, what if David did all of this for his articles, for the book deal? We started to imagine, if David was the killer—and we still weren’t convinced he was—where would he possibly have taken you? We knew the other writers had died in ways that symbolized their writing style, so we started playing with the idea of a ghostwriter. How would you kill a ghostwriter?”
The waitress appeared with the chicken pasta and Roxy leapt upon it, her hunger now back in all its glory. “So you thought of a haunted house?” she said, twisting the dripping spaghetti onto a fork and thrusting it into her mouth.
“Not at first,” said Max. “You see, we all just assumed you had returned to Sydney and David had kidnapped you there. I thought maybe you’d show up at one of your old client’s houses, or maybe at that Balmoral bay where that rich socialite had been found dead—one of the places you’d written about in your books. So we rang Gilda and she got onto it, had a search party looking for you down near the rocks.”
“Oh God.” Roxy thought of the police scrambling across the bay, searching for her body, and shivered. She pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I didn’t realise.”
“Yeah, everyone was really worried, and then, well, at some point during the night someone started connecting ghostwriter with ghost train—were you on a spooky ride at some stupid fun park? Then Oliver said ‘haunted house’. And it made total sense. That would be the perfect place to kill a ghostwriter, a place full of old ghosts. But we didn’t know where to start looking. None of us knew of any old haunted houses in Sydney.”
“And that’s when it hit me!” said Caroline. “I knew the perfect haunted house! I lived in one back in my university days.”
“That’s right,” said Roxy. “You talked about it at Max’s party.”
“Mm-hmm, and David was right there with us, remember? He obviously decided that since you were up near Lismore anyway—Ballina’s just a quick drive away—well, he’d plant you there. The perfect place for a ghostwriter to die. And no one would ever think to look for you there.” She paused. “I just wonder why he didn’t put you in t
he bathroom ... that was the haunted room, after all. We looked there first, hadn’t even considered the basement.”
“I guess it was too small and there were too many windows,” suggested Max. “Anyway, so Caroline reminded us of her old haunted home up near where you were last seen, and we knew that it had to be the spot. It just had to be. So we jumped right on it.”
“No you didn’t!” she scoffed, slapping him lightly across the chest. “You and Oliver thought it was a crazy idea, until we ran out of options, then you started to see sense.”
Max looked sheepish. “It was morning by this time and we were getting pretty frantic. We didn’t know what else to do. The police were scouring Sydney but we felt like we needed to do something, and your mother was going nuts. So we decided to come up here and try our luck.”
“Except Oliver,” added Caroline. “He wanted to come, too, of course, but he would be breaching his bail conditions, so we couldn’t let him.”
“That’s all right,” said Roxy, scooping up more pasta. “He’s already apologized, about a hundred times over the phone.”
“So, anyway, Max and I booked the first flight up here, hired a car and, ta-da!”
Roxy sighed, letting her fork rest for a moment. “And thank God for that.”
“Oh thank God!” came a familiar voice across the half-empty café and the three friends looked up to find Gilda striding towards them, a look of relief all over her pretty face. She reached down and grabbed Roxy in a firm hug.
“You are such a bloody worry, young woman! I hope you called your mum. She’s been ringing me non-stop for the past twelve hours. She’s hysterical.”