A Brady Paranormal Investigations Box Set

by Harper Crowley

  Graham roars and tackles his uncle. The gun blasts, and Graham crumbles to the ground, doubling over a spreading dark stain on his stomach.

  I shriek his name and drop to his side, pressing my hands to his wounds. He groans, and his eyes flutter open against the pale, pasty white of his skin.

  “Look what you’ve done! Goddamn you!” Graham’s uncle grabs my arm and jerks me to my feet.

  I wrench myself back and forth, but he’s too strong. “I didn’t do anything. You shot your nephew!”

  “It’s your fault. This could have ended now, here, and no one else would have had to get hurt.”

  “Besides me,” I say, my voice flat. A coldness spreads throughout my body.

  He shrugs. “The cliff is steep. It’s happened before.”

  Graham’s head rolls to the side. He’s regaining consciousness. Good, at least he’s not dead. There’s been enough death in this family. I silently will him to play possum until help arrives so he doesn’t draw attention to himself.

  “Is that what happened to Graham’s mother?” I let his uncle draw me away to take his focus off of the wounded man on the ground.

  The air stills. Graham’s uncle weighs his words. “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” he says. “You’re not walking out of here.”

  I bite back my question about what he’s going to do with Graham and his obvious gunshot wound and wait for him to continue. The longer I can keep stalling, the better. I can barely hear something in the distance, and it sounds an awful lot like sirens.

  “Anne was sleeping around on my brother for six months before I caught her. I suspected it—I’m sure we all did—but I didn’t have proof until I caught her coming back from her lover’s house one night. We argued.” He stares out over the bluff and across the water. “And, well, she slipped.” His eyes focus and meet mine, daring me to argue. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did.”

  “An accident.” In my head, I can see him standing here and arguing with the lovely blonde in the picture, only in my version, she doesn’t slip. “Did it get physical?”

  His hand tightens around the gun. “She laughed at me. She said I had nothing. No proof. That my brother would never believe me. I grabbed her arms, and she slipped. I swear to God, she slipped. And then I went down in the river and took care of it. We MacIvers take care of our family, no matter what.”

  The chilling, clinical way he says it tells me there’s more to the story. “She wasn’t dead, was she?”

  His uncle’s shoulders sag. “It doesn’t matter, does it? The rocks...” His voice fades away. “I was doing her a favor. She wouldn’t have wanted her family, her husband, to see her that way.”

  “Where is she?”

  He waves his free hand at the house. “Buried. Under the arbor. Next to her lover. The damn caretaker’s son. He figured it out and started asking questions.” Graham’s uncle lifts one shoulder then drops it. “Family always takes care of family.” He says it so cavalierly and casually that it takes me a few seconds to absorb that he just admitted to killing not one, but two people.

  A pregnant pause, so full of meaning that it fills the air, settles between us. “And now you’ve gone and screwed things up again. The cops will find your body this time. There’s no way I’d be able to hide your body before they get here, and Graham will fall in line, like he always does, because he’s a good boy.”

  We stand at the edge of the cliff, next to the dead, overhanging oak tree, and the wind picks up even more, whipping my hair into a frenzy. I tug it behind my ears and gulp. There’s got to be some way out of this. There has to be. I can’t die out here.

  “Now, are you going to jump, or do you want some help?” Graham’s uncle asks, a sneer curling his upper lip.

  I raise my head to face him. I don’t want my last glimpse of life to be the rocks waiting to bash my head in below me.

  From the corner of my eye, I see movement. Graham staggers to his feet with murder in his eyes, and I barely have time to leap out of the way before he slams into his uncle. With a startled cry, Graham’s uncle tumbles over the edge of the cliff, arms whirling, taking his nephew with him.

  Chapter 20

  I throw myself at the edge of the cliff, fingers scrabbling over the edge, but it’s too late. My mind immediately returns to that rough, roiling water, and I can’t look, imagining Graham’s bloody, broken body being tossed about amongst the rocks. I have to look. I need to look, but I can’t. I can’t bring myself to remember him like that, and not smiling, laughing, and joking with us. I don’t want my last memory of him to be his lifeless body being tossed around in the river, bobbing in the current, too far gone for me to help.

  I roll away and collapse on my back, feeling numb. The clouds drift across the sky, and every once in a while, a star peeks through. The sirens grow louder. We’re not that far away from Oak Cliff. Why in the hell has it taken them this long to get here? If they’d been five minutes sooner, Graham might not have... I choke back a sob.

  Behind my head, there’s a scuffling, scraping noise. “I could use a little help here.” Graham grunts.

  I lunge to the edge of the embankment and peer over the cliff. Graham clutches a thick, twisted root from the dead tree, his legs pinwheeling over the river beneath him. His pale face drips in sweat, and he bares his teeth from the strain of not letting go.

  He’s alive!

  “I got you. Just hold on a second.” I reach down and grasp his wrist, quelling the panic in my gut from being this far over the edge myself. I scream for help from Russ, Jess, anyone, and behind me, I hear a bark and an answering yell. Someone’s coming. Okay, so Bear won’t be able to pull us up, but someone else is on their way. Thank God.

  Crack.

  One of the roots attached to the main one he’s clutching snaps off, dead and rotted, and Graham dangles. One of his hands breaks free and wraps around my wrist, digging into my flesh, pinching off nerves and making my hand go numb. His legs scrabble for purchase on the dry, dusty earth on the side of the cliff, but he can’t find any. I slide farther over the edge.

  “I can’t hold on,” he says, gritting his teeth. “You’ll go over the edge, too.” His fingers slip another inch.

  “Don’t let go, damn it. Help’s coming.” I grip his wrists tighter. He is not going to die on me. Behind me, sirens and vehicles roar into the yard, so close they must be on top of me. I barely resist the urge to look over my shoulder, because if I do, I won’t see anything, and I might accidentally lose my grip on Graham.

  “Meredith!” a familiar voice shrieks. “Hold on.”

  Seconds later, strong hands grab my ankles and drag me back onto the grass, pulling Graham with me. “We’ve got you.” Russ collapses on the ground next to me, his chest heaving with exertion. “What the hell happened?”

  Jess runs her hands over my arms and shoulders and then pulls me into a fierce hug. “Thank God you’re all right,” she says. “I was so worried.”

  “Oh, you know, it’s fine. Just another day in the neighborhood.” I glance at Graham, whose pale face and bloodstained shirt tell a different story.

  Russ snorts. “I’ll say.”

  A couple of paramedics and police officers race up to us, quickly assess the situation, and whisk Graham away with Shelley by his side. As I explain what happened, my favorite cop, Officer Fontaine, swaggers up to us.

  “You again?” he sneers.

  “Like a bad penny.” I force myself to my feet with a pained grimace. “I just keep turning up.”

  “I should arrest you.”

  “Fine.” I hold out my wrists. “But can you at least check to make sure the real bad guy is dead first? I’ve had enough of things that I thought were dead, coming back.”

  He peers over the edge of the bluff and whistles. “That’s a mighty long fall.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.” Part of me wants to glance over the edge myself, to make sure Graham’s uncle really is dead, but I don’t want that image stuck in
my head for the rest of my life. Between my parents and the bones Graham found, I’ve seen enough dead people. “I’m glad I don’t have to be the one to fish him out.”

  The corners of the officer’s lips twitch. “Why don’t you come back to my car and tell me all about what happened?”

  “What, no handcuffs? I’m impressed.”

  “Keep it up, and I’ll be mighty tempted.”

  Jess puts her arm around my waist as we walk toward Fontaine’s car. “Be nice,” she says. “His patience isn’t going to last if you keep this up.”

  “I’ll try. Hey, where were you? I could have used your help back there.”

  “We got locked in the cellar. It must have been Graham’s uncle. We found the passageway, then Bear found us and led us out.” Her voice trails off as a familiar black-and-white shape limps toward us from the house.

  “Bear!” I hobble over to him as quickly as I can and scoop him up, squeezing his body tightly against my chest. I hold him up against the floodlights being erected around the scene and inspect him for damage. Thankfully, I don’t see any. He licks my face. “Thank God you’re all right, boy.”

  “We found him alone,” Russ said from my other side, “and we knew you’d never leave him willingly. It took us a few minutes to get through the door.” His expression turns sour. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to you sooner.” He nods at the ambulances. “We really should get you checked out.”

  I shake my head. “I’m fine. I’ll be sore as hell tomorrow, but you should see the other guy.” My attempt at humor falls flat, and they grimace. I sigh. “Oh well, let’s go tell Officer Fontaine everything we know so we can go to bed. I’m exhausted.”

  Jess pulls out her phone and stares at the screen. “Holy crap. You should see the ratings. We should do this more often.”

  I grab her phone and toss it as far as I can in the grass. I would be fine if I never did anything even remotely like this ever again.

  Chapter 21

  Two days later...

  The police and crime-scene technicians gather around a hole in the ground ten feet away from the one they dug three days before. From inside the hole, a thick black bag emerges, and the techs grab it then lift it onto a gurney next to the hole.

  Jess, Russ, and I watch silently from the side of the house as the police and crime scene techs exhume Graham’s mother’s body. They haven’t made a definitive statement that it’s her, of course, but we know. It’s right where Graham’s uncle said the body would be. The body. So much easier than saying “Graham’s mother.”

  Graham, his sister, and his father stand on the other side, partially hidden by the police. Graham has one arm around his father and the other around his sister. Shelley weeps into his shoulder while his father watches stoically. I wonder if he knew this day would come and if it brings any closure to finally know where she is, or even if he knew deep in his heart that she wasn’t coming back.

  The shadow of a man leaning heavily on a cane crosses ours and Mr. Rasputin limps to a stop next to us. “God rest her soul. Now maybe they can be together.”

  My gaze flits from the solemn proceedings to his pale-blue eyes. “Graham’s mother and your son?”

  He nods. “She never loved her husband. He was her way out, an escape from an alcoholic father and an absent, negligent mother. She only married him after my boy went away to war.” He frowns, and the lines on either side of his mouth deepen. “They got into an argument, the night before he left, and she said she couldn’t wait for him, even though he begged her.”

  “But she didn’t leave, she stayed in the house.”

  Mr. Rasputin grimaces. “The cruel twist of fate. Irony, if you will. Her parents promised Graham’s father the estate if they lived in the MacIver house, but that they would get nothing if they left.”

  So Graham’s mother thought she was escaping, but in reality she was merely moving from one trap to another. “And then your son came back,” I say, my voice flat. I can’t help but feel sorry for Graham’s mother, even though a part of me is also numb because of what’s happened.

  “Yes. He tried to keep away, just like she did, but they couldn’t help it.”

  “And that’s when Graham’s uncle caught them, killed her, and buried her,” Russ says.

  Mr. Rasputin’s shoulders shake under the stress of the secret. “I swear I didn’t know.” His eyes beseech me to believe him. “My boy, Bradley, he was frantic. He lost his mind. He was desperate to find her. And then he disappeared.” Mr. Rasputin’s gaze travels to the first hole in the ground. “And the next weekend Graham’s uncle paid some hotshot gardener from Atlanta to plant more roses around the house. Beautify it, he said. Help bring it back to its former glory.”

  Bear whines at my feet, and I reach down and scratch him between his ears. It’s almost as if he, too, is affected by what happened.

  “Is that why you stayed?” Jess asks Mr. Rasputin.

  The old man nods. “I knew my boy wouldn’t leave, not without telling me. I tried telling that to the police too, but they said he was a young soldier, back from war. He probably ran off to sow his oats.” He says the last part bitterly, as if he’s memorized the casual cruelty of Oak Cliff’s past police force. He probably has.

  Graham looks up over the crowd, and his eyes meet mine. He bows his head and says something to his sister and his dad before limping toward us. Shelley throws herself into her father’s arms and resumes her weeping. I bet this wasn’t the ending she envisioned when she emailed us the original video. It isn’t what I expected, either.

  “Hey,” Graham says. He’s still pale, but he looks a lot better than he did before.

  Russ raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Graham attempts a smile. “The doctors said the bullet hit me in the side and went right through some muscle. Didn’t hit any organs or do any major damage. They didn’t want to let me out this soon, but I wanted to be here for”—he glances over his shoulder— “this.”

  Oh yeah, I know how that feels. When they called me to identify my parents’ bodies, I wanted to be anywhere else, but I had to do it. Somebody had to.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks me.

  “Just ducky,” I say.

  He grimaces. “Liar.”

  I let out a breath in a big whoosh. “I’ve been called worse.” I take his arm and lead him away from Jess and Russ. What I want to tell him isn’t something I want her to hear. He follows me to the side of the house, away from the police tape, the walkie-talkies and flashing lights, the body bag, and the two gaping holes in the ground.

  “I’ll be fine, really, but I guess this is bringing back a lot of memories. When my parents went missing, my world stopped.” I stare at the ground, at Bear, at anything to try to avoid the memories clawing their way to the surface. “I was eighteen, a senior, and suddenly my parents were gone, and I had a fourteen-year-old sister I was responsible for. That is, until Child Protective Services came and took her away from me.” I wrap my arms around my waist. Those were dark days, and there are a lot of gaps and holes that I still can’t fill. “And when they found my parents’ car, they asked me to identify their bodies. My aunt’s terrified of flying, so there wasn’t anybody else who could do it.”

  Graham’s eyes fill with pain. He reaches out and squeezes my hands. “I’m so sorry.”

  “So yeah, I understand wanting to be anywhere else but where you are but still powering through it because you have to... And because the alternative is too awful and would hurt the ones you love.” My eyes find my sister, whose long hair hides her face as she and Russ hunch over their phones. They’re probably updating the forums or checking for new subscribers. “It sucks, it really does, but you do it because you have to.”

  He wraps his arms around me. I breathe in the comforting foresty scent of his cologne and force myself to relax. Graham’s uncle is gone.

  “So what are you going to do next?” he asks, his voice low.

  I shrug.
“I don’t know. Take a break somewhere warm. Russ said we have some money coming in, so we might rent a cabin for the winter and rest. Recuperate. I think we’ll have enough to last until spring. Jess’ll graduate then, and we’ll really be free.”

  I can see a cozy little cabin, maybe an Airbnb nestled in the mountains in Tennessee, a place of peace and quiet. No ghosts, no murderers, no monsters. It would be nice.

  Russ frantically waves me over. I make it a point to obviously turn away. He can wait, at least a few more minutes. “What would you like to do about the ghost? We don’t advertise it on our show, so Shelley hasn’t seen it, but we have a teammate, Violet, who can cleanse the house for you after we leave. She does a lot of metaphysical stuff, and this is one area where she might be able to help you and your mom’s spirit rest. It’s nothing major, but it’s worked for every house she’s done so far.”

  Graham stares at the house, taking in its boarded windows, peeling paint, and crumbling foundation. Then he turns to me, jaw set, and shakes his head. “No. I don’t...I don’t think I can do that. Not yet. If my mom is haunting this house—and I’m not saying she is”—he holds his hand up—“but if she is, then she knows. And I’ve been without my mom for so long, that even if it’s in spirit form, I don’t want her to leave just yet.” He grimaces. “Is that stupid? That sounds stupid. And really immature.” He scrubs his face with his free hand. “I’m an idiot, aren’t I?”

  I touch his arm. “No, you’re not. We’ll leave the house alone then, but if you change your mind in the future, let me know and I’ll give her a call.”

  He nods. His sister calls him over, and he pauses before giving me a hasty hug. “My dad wants to talk to you,” he says. “Is that okay?”

  It takes me a few seconds for that to sink in. His dad wants to talk to me? I was definitely not expecting that. “Yeah, sure. That’s fine.”

  With one last hug, he hurries over to his family. Geez. That felt awkward. Unfinished. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. Part of me hopes so. Russ waves at me again, but I hold up a finger. It’s not even the middle one, but he flips me off anyway. I ignore him because Graham’s father is slowly making his way toward me. He looks older now than he had the last time I’d seen him. His shoulders stooped, the lines on his face deeper and his gaze distant.