Martin laughed. "I agree with you there." The barman passed by to serve someone and gave him an odd look. "It's okay," Martin told him, "I'm talking to the ghost."
"Yeah?" The barman grinned. "What's he drinking?"
Gerry gave the man a bleary look. "I'll have a beer!" he said hopefully.
"Finest quality Scotch."
"Sheesh!" The barman turned to inspect the row of optics and rubbed his jaw. "We haven't got any of that." He winked and walked away.
"Damn!" Gerry sighed and laid his hand on Martin's shoulder. "Lemme tell you about my daysh," he said in a confiding tone. "We didn't do half the things theesh folks do. You should see what that Bruce guy gets up to with that girl in his offish! And that Laurel!" He pursed his lips. "Whoo-ee!"
"I suspected that about Laurel. Which girl is with Bruce?" Martin asked. For an absurd moment he found himself wondering how ghostly testimony would be handled in a divorce hearing.
Gerry nodded towards Joanne. "Thash her! And him a married guy!" He shook his head. "Man, playin' around and him a married feller too. Did I tell ya, I was married?"
"Yes."
"Yeah, a real nice gal named Sally. We had two kids, Sam and li'l Joshephine. She's a redhead jus' like your girlfriend. Gotta picture of them shomewheres…" Martin made a mental note of the names as Gerry fumbled inside his overalls and eventually produced a dog-eared black and white photograph. "Thish ish them, taken' outshide our plashe in Albany."
Martin squinted at the image of a young blond woman standing on a wooden porch with her arms proudly around the shoulders of two small children. One was a little girl, no more than four, her face the image of her mother. The boy, a year or two older, had the look of his father. "You have a nice family, Gerry. You've got reason to be proud."
"Yeah." The ghost sighed as he tucked the photograph away.
"We'll get you back with them, I promise," Martin said, squeezing his shoulder.
A door at the back of the bar burst open and a woman came running out, pursued by a low wave of foamy water. "The glass washer's busted!" she yelled, ducking around the corner. A bright actinic flash, a sharp crack, and a low, sullen boom announced the destruction of the machine. Shards of glass peppered the wall of the back room, a few fragments clattering through the open door to fall musically on the bar-top.
Girls screamed and there was a general surge away from the bar. Laurel returned from powdering her nose at that very moment and immediately took charge.
"Oh, sheesh, this ish too much for me!" Gerry stood upright and saluted sloppily. "Shee ya later pal. I'm goin' shomewhere quieter." With this, he faded from sight.
Over the din of the crowd Martin noticed the music change abruptly. After a series of low, plangent notes, Jim Morrison's sonorous baritone began singing The End. Puzzled at the choice, Martin glanced over to the music console.
Dave emerged from behind it and began swaying and weaving in time to the music. As he moved, the thudding of his foot on the floor added an irregular beat. People were giving him a wide berth and looked at him with a mixture of amusement and trepidation. The man danced on, oblivious.
Bruce returned just then, with Claudia not far behind him. His face was set in an angry expression which turned darker when he saw the dancer and the mess behind the bar.
Claudia came up and took him by the arm. "Martin!" she said, putting her lips to his ear. "We've got to talk! I found something…"
At that moment the lights went out and the music died.
"Aw, fuck!" Bruce's voice roared in the darkness. "We didn't need a power cut, but at least it stopped Dave playing that fuckin' tune again!" There was a click and a flare of yellow flame as he held up a disposable lighter. "Let's go onto the deck."
Picking their way carefully, they moved outside. The veranda roof and the fly-screen had kept the snow away from the wooden deck, but the air was biting cold. Bruce snapped off the lighter and glanced back into the bar, where someone had produced torches. The beams flickered around, illuminating stray faces and bodies here and there as the party guests dispersed in search of another venue.
"When you told me Gerry had moved down here I thought I'd check the office," he said. "Someone's taken the Scotch from the cabinet."
"Oh, bloody hell!" Martin rubbed his forehead and sighed. "We'd better get it back, or Gerry's spirit may be lost forever, never mind the Scotch."
"It must be close or he wouldn't be here," Claudia pointed out.
Martin looked around. "He's not here right now," he told Bruce. "He faded just after that explosion in the wash-up area."
"Could someone have hidden the bottle behind the bar?" Bruce asked. "That would explain how the ghost got down here."
"I just don't know. I keep getting the image of a genie being stuck in a bottle."
Bruce snorted. "Some genie!"
"You never know, the old genie story may be based on someone's real encounter with a similar spirit in the past."
Bruce gave him a dirty look. "Well, let's leave the paranormal philosophy for a moment, Martin, so we can go back in there and find it!"
The room had mostly emptied of people. Laurel looked round at them. "I ordered the electricity turned off and two of the bar staff are mopping up the mess."
"Laurel, did you take the Scotch from the cabinet in my office?" Bruce asked.
"I never took any bottles from the cabinet," she said, looking affronted. "The only others who had access to it would be Greg or Joanne. Ask them."
"It's not Joanne," Bruce replied absently, looking round. "She was with me. Where's Greg?"
"I think he went to call Pete to come check the electric system."
A distant yell came from the direction of the reception hall, followed by a series of muffled thumps and bangs. Soon after, Joanne Ashby appeared, silhouetted against the open door. "Bruce? Dave's just fallen down the stairs. I've called for an ambulance."
Chapter Nine
Martin watched from the door of the cabin as the ambulance departed down the drive, its strobe lights flashing brightly in the darkness. Claudia came back from the car, carrying a box of some kind under her arm. She pecked him on the cheek as she passed by into the cabin.
"There he goes again, off to hospital," he said, closing the door. He leaned against it. "The local health authority should issue Dave with a season ticket!"
Claudia sat on the edge of the bed, busy with the laptop. A pile of CD jewel cases were spread beside her on the covers, the empty file box lying on its side next to them. She looked up. "Perhaps they did; he seems to be their best customer around here. Come here!"
She waved him over, and he settled on the bed behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder. "What've you got there?"
"A collection of DVDs I liberated from Laurel's office. What with all the excitement in the restaurant and Dave's fall, I didn't get a chance to tell you."
He stiffened. "You took them from her office?"
"Yep." She glanced back. "Martin, don't get all pious on me. Laurel's up to something and we need to find out what. It may be connected with the spirit that attacked her." She frowned. "There's something else too. Remember when we were going to investigate, I couldn't find my bra?"
"Yes?"
"She knew where it was, but there's no way she could've seen it lying under the bed. It was too far out of sight."
He thought it over. "Okay, I'll grant you that. How would she have known?"
"I have a hunch she saw where it fell," she said, darkly.
"You mean she's been using the cameras to spy on the cabins?"
"I think so, yeah."
"Okay, this needs to be settled. Load one up and let's see what we've got. How did you get hold of these, anyway?"
"When Laurel asked you to dance, I saw the chance to slip away and nose around her office. It was unlocked when I got there; they don't seem that big on internal security around here.
"I looked around but couldn't find a VCR. Then I saw her PC had a DVD re-writer
drive installed. If she's taking camera feed from somewhere, I knew she was likely to have some way of storing the images. There was a stack of blank DVDs alongside the PC." She patted the jewel cases. "I found these in a file box labeled 'Dave's Bonus.'"
"'Dave's Bonus?' How did you figure out they'd be in there?"
"It was on a shelf, tucked away in a corner. The rest of the boxes and the shelf they were on had a fine layer of dust on them; that box and the shelf in front of it was clean."
"Clever!" He pecked her on the cheek and she smiled. Although he was still uncomfortable about her unexpected display of theft, he loved the way she basked in his admiration.
"Okay, you've done the deed," he said, picking up a jewel case at random. "What have we got?" He opened the case and examined the surface of the disk. "This has nothing but a date written on it." He mentally adjusted for the US system of putting the number of the month before that of the day. "This was recorded two weeks ago."
She glanced at it, took the case from him, and slipped the disk into the drive in the lap-top. "Let's find out what's on it, shall we?"
Booting-up the video player program she clicked a few keys and worked the mouse-pad until the screen cleared and a moving picture came up.
"Damn!" He frowned. "It looks like this cabin."
"Not quite." She pointed. "The door through to the bathroom's in a different place."
"But it's still footage taken from a cabin, love."
"Yeah." She gave him a sideways glance and frowned. "I don't like the look of this; I wonder whose cabin she's bugging?"
He pointed at the screen. "The main door's opening!"
On the screen, Bruce Baker slipped through the door. "Joanne?" he called.
The sound quality was poor but they could hear her faint reply. "In here!"
He crossed to the bathroom door and opened it. Steam rolled into the bedroom and he stepped inside. Shadows moved in the cloud of steam.
Claudia leaned back against him and shook her head. "It looks like dear Laurel's gathered proof of Bruce's infidelity!"
"He may just be visiting her," he said reasonably.
She gave him a withering look. "Martin, look at the date-time display in the corner. It's eleven-fifteen at night." She pointed at a detail on the screen. "The bedside clock reads the same. No-one 'just visits' at that time of night!"
"Okay, granted, I was wrong—oh dear!"
Claudia whistled softly. "I'll say!"
On the screen Joanne had emerged naked from the bathroom, her hair wrapped up in a fluffy yellow towel, the tight brown knot of her pubic hair clear and sharp. Bruce was following close behind her—close behind her, his hands rolling her generous breasts back and forth as she walked.
"Do you think she looks a little…I don't know, indifferent?" Claudia asked with a lopsided smile.
"You're right; she doesn't seem that bothered about what Bruce is doing," he replied.
They watched enthralled as Joanne stopped by the bed and sat down upon the edge of it. Bruce stood before her, a broad grin on his face as he unbuckled his pants and let them fall. He followed them with his underpants.
"Oh, my!" they said in unison.
Claudia giggled. "Well, she may have been indifferent to what he was doing to her tits, but I can see that has made a different impression!"
"You're not wrong, darling! Christ, he's hung like a bloody horse!"
As Joanne smiled, clasped Bruce by the butt and lowered her head towards his cock, Martin reached across and stopped the playback.
Claudia pouted. "Aw, spoilsport! Why are you raining on the parade?"
He kissed her and held her close. "Because, sweetheart, there are a dozen jewel cases here. Taking a wild guess, I'd say they all follow the same theme, but not necessarily with the same cast."
"You mean Laurel may have recorded other folks in the act?" She slapped her head as soon as the words left her lips. "Doh! Of course; she's using a splitter box. There has to be more than one camera."
"So, let's load them up one by one, and see what we've got. I think we've uncovered something big."
She giggled. "I take it you're not just referring to Bruce?"
He wagged a finger at her and smiled. "Behave!"
Even sampling the DVDs for a few seconds of play each took the better part of an hour. They saw more shots of Joanne with Bruce; Greg with Donna; several un-named couples, mixed and same sex, who apparently had occupied two staff cabins over the course of three months. There were examples of man-on-man, woman-on-woman, threesomes, foursomes, bondage, S and M—and even one guy with an inflatable doll that reduced Claudia to helpless laughter when they watched the sequence.
The penultimate DVD wiped the smile off their faces.
"Shit! That's us!" she shouted.
The sequence ran in all its lascivious detail and they watched aghast. "Oh, bloody hell!" He worked out angles in his head. "I think we'd better find that hidden camera."
"Forget that for now!" She stabbed the off button with unnecessary force and turned to him. "Just let me get my hands on that Laurel!"
* * * *
Laurel looked up from her magazine as the knock sounded on her cabin door.
"Who is it?" she called, glancing at the clock. "It's after ten!"
A man's voice answered. "Laurel, we really need to talk."
"Martin?" Her heart gave an involuntary skip and she rolled out of bed. "Just a minute!"
Quickly she ran a brush through her hair and dabbed a little powder on her face. After a second's thought she dabbed some perfume behind her ears and between her breasts. After another second's thought, she untied her pajama trousers and dabbed more perfume on her pussy. It stung, and she winced and hopped a couple of times. "Ooh, shit!"
She examined herself in the mirror and gave her reflection a lopsided smile. "It'll have to do." Her pussy twitched at the prospect of a good night to come, and her smile broadened. "Okay, I'm coming!" she called gaily, and went to the door.
When she opened it, it was pushed back with considerable force and she was suddenly face-to-face with a very angry-looking Claudia. A handful of jewel cases were waved under her nose.
"What the hell is all this, Laurel?" the young woman demanded, pushing her back into the cabin.
She recognized the cases and felt the blood drain out of her face. "What're you doing with those? They were in my office! They're private property!"
"So are the lives of those you've filmed!" Claudia put a hand between her breasts and pushed her bodily onto the bed. "Including us, I may add!"
Martin came into the cabin and shut the door behind him. He turned a sad face to her. "Laurel, you've got some serious explaining to do!"
All the pep and bluster drained away from inside her, and left her feeling more depressed than she'd ever done. "I'm sorry!" she said in a moan. "We didn't mean any harm."
"Harm!" Claudia spat, and looked on the verge of exploding.
Martin laid a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. "Easy, dear. Let's talk this through."
"It was something Dave and I put together," Laurel said quickly, looking from one to the other. "He secretly installed the cameras in some of the cabins when he did maintenance work on them. We filmed the people strictly for our own use."
"You got more than just titillation out of these, Laurel," he said sternly. He drew a case from his pocket and held it up. "Remember Bruce and Joanne? If Ursula had got hold of this somehow, there'd be hell to pay. A divorce court would lap up this footage!"
"It wouldn't have happened!" She stood up, feeling the anger rising. "Do you think I was blackmailing them?"
"Seriously? No, we don't. They must still be having an affair; otherwise Joanne wouldn't have been giving Bruce a blow-job in his office tonight. They'd hardly give you more ammunition if you were blackmailing them."
"What?" she gasped.
"Never mind that!" Claudia shouted at her. "The point is, what the fuck did you think you were doing bugging our
cabin?"
Martin cast an anxious glance from Claudia to the walls. "Claudia, keep it down a bit, love! The whole resort will know if you yell like that."
"I'm not sure I care!" She rounded on her and dug a fingertip into her chest. "You've been after Martin from the moment he got here. Well, he's mine, see? And you know it, you menopausal vampire!"
"How dare you!" She made to slap the young woman but Claudia deflected her hand easily and pushed her away.
"I dare because you dared!" She sneered. "The only way you could get to see my man's body was to bug the cabin!"
Hot tears sprang to Laurel's eyes and she sat down heavily on the bed again. "I'm sorry!" She spread her hands and looked at them imploringly. "You don't know what it's like, being in charge around here! I'm on this fucking site twenty-four-seven. I've got to appear cool and calm at all times; cope with stupid emergencies like Dave falling down the stairs tonight."
She looked up at Claudia. "The only guy I've managed to score with since my divorce five years back is a burned out pothead half my age from Milwaukee who just happened to be as lonely as I am!" The tears spilled and ran down her cheeks. "And he's no bargain! First he was possessed by an evil spirit; now he's gone and fallen down stairs and broken his fucking leg!"
She pressed her hands to her face and sobbed, feeling all the misery of the years welling up inside her.
Claudia huffed and walked away, her arms folded across her chest.
*
Martin had watched with awe and not a little pride at the way Claudia had launched into Laurel. When Laurel had made to slap her he thought he was on the verge of witnessing a full-on cat fight. Now the older woman was slumped on the edge of her bed, her head down and weeping her eyes out.
He walked over, plucking a tissue from a box on the bedside table and handed it to her. "Here, take this, Laurel."
"Thanks," she sniffled, and blew her nose into it hard.
"Laurel, I understand how you must feel." He looked at Claudia then back to her. "I was divorced. Before I met Claudia, I felt just as lonely, just as worn-down and miserable at times." He spread his hands. "This isn't my day job, in case you've ever wondered. I work in the British Inland bloody Revenue for my sins. You know how people feel about tax men. There aren't many who feel comfortable around us in a social situation, let alone accepting a date. It was only my work in the paranormal, the good I could do there, that kept me going."
Mr. Grey and the Spirit from the Sky Page 13