by H. P. Bayne
Dez exhaled through pursed lips. “All right. Fine. I don’t like it, but I see your point. I guess we’ll be getting everyone out of town soon anyway, right?”
Sully didn’t answer, just finished the process of exiting the vehicle. He waited until Dez gained his side, leaving Pax to play his usual guard duty with the vehicle. Then they headed toward the front veranda.
Neither of them had so much as the opportunity to knock before the door was yanked open, revealing a panicked-looking young woman. Her hair appeared to be in need of a wash and her eyes were ringed by dark circles.
“Are you the ghost hunters?” she asked.
Sully peered up at Dez in time to see his usual smile of greeting fade, quickly replaced by wide eyes and a dropped jaw. “Pardon?”
“I called, asking for someone to look at my house,” she said. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting them for another hour, but I still thought it was you.”
Sully jumped in, given Dez wasn’t likely to. “If you need help with ghosts, you’ve got the right people. Can we come in?”
The woman didn’t reply, merely yanking the door open wide with a grateful smile. Once they were inside, she stuck out a hand. “Andie Lewchuk. Nice to meet you.”
Sully shook. “Oliver Chadwell.”
Dez, Sully noticed, didn’t introduce himself—no doubt a wise move given the way the last name was likely to tip the woman off. Unfortunately, it seemed she wanted full introductions as she turned expectant eyes way up on Dez’s face.
Dez began to fumble the play. “Oh, uh….”
“My colleague, Lachlan Fields,” Sully said.
Dez’s widening grin suggested he was rapidly settling into the ruse. “I’m actually a private investigator. My buddy here’s the one with the experience with ghosts. I help out with other questions of a more practical nature that might arise.”
Andie’s still-hopeful expression suggested she wasn’t in need of further convincing. Sully could imagine where she was coming from. Having tangled with Harry Schuster in the past, he knew how terrifying the man could be. If this woman had seen him—or the others for that matter—she had plenty of cause to be in the market for someone who could give her back some peace.
“Why exactly were you wanting ghost hunters?” Dez asked.
The woman showed the two of them into the living room and indicated for them to sit on the couch. Sully noted much of the furniture was Betty’s, suggesting Lowell still owned the place and was renting it out as furnished. But little else looked the same in here. Sully remembered it as dark, dusty and depressing. While there was a solid weight to the atmosphere—the definite feel of more than one spirit—it was otherwise like night and day. The new renter clearly made the effort to keep a tidy place, a fact easily revealed given the way the rooms were now flooded with light. All of the curtains were pulled back, showing off crisp white walls, refinished hardwood floors and well-tended furniture. What was more, not a speck of dust was visible on the small table next to Sully’s spot on the couch.
The house, it seemed, wasn’t repaying Andie for her trouble.
“I moved in here a few months ago,” she said. “At first, it was awesome. The rent was fair and the owner seemed like a good guy.”
“Who’s the owner?” Dez asked.
“Lowell Braddock.” She narrowed her eyes as if sizing Dez up. “Looks a lot like you, actually. Weird.”
“Yeah,” Dez said. “Weird.”
Sully pulled the conversation back on track before Andie went too far down the Lowell path. “You were telling us about the ghosts?”
“Ghosts?” The word she repeated back at Sully ended in a squeak. “You mean there’s more than one?”
He grimaced. “Sorry. I think so, yeah. I’ll know more once I have a look around. For now, I’d like to hear what you’ve experienced.”
A clatter sounded from the kitchen. Andie’s head wheeled toward the noise, eyes huge. “What was that?”
“Do you live here alone?” Dez asked.
She nodded tightly.
Dez cleared his throat loudly. “Uh…. Listen, I’ll stay here and keep talking to you while my colleague goes to check it out, all right?” He finished by meeting Sully’s eyes, brows lifted in question and more than a little anxiety.
Sully resisted the smirk at his brother’s predictable show of fear. “Yeah, okay. On it.”
More banging sounded as Sully approached, drawing a startled yelp from Andie. “That’s never happened before!”
“It’s all right,” Sully said. “He’s noisy but he’s not a threat.”
He’d had a sense of Noisy Ned since leaving Ravenwood, as if the poltergeist had been tagging along. There was no getting away from it. Having found himself back in a house populated by several spirits, Ned was making himself right at home.
Sully entered the kitchen to discover the source of the problem: cupboard doors, first one, then more, opened and shut, opened and shut, the violence of the movement rattling the dishes inside.
“Stop it,” Sully ordered. “You’re scaring her. Nothing here is a threat.” Finding no sign of anyone else in the kitchen, Sully started to back away. He thought better of it, giving one last command. “And you’re not staying here either.”
The banging stopped, and Sully returned to find Dez an equal shade of white to their unexpected client.
“Ned?” Dez asked.
Andie’s head flipped between them. “Who’s Ned?”
“Don’t worry. He’s not yours. He’s with me.”
“He followed you?” It was Dez’s turn to end a question in a squeak.
Sully grinned, as much to show a lack of concern as a sense of amusement at Dez. “Yeah. But he’s fine. No big deal.”
Dez looked like he had plenty of arguments on why it certainly was a big deal, but given Andie’s obvious anxiety, he wisely kept them to himself.
“What is it you’ve been experiencing exactly?” Sully asked.
“I hear voices a lot, mostly a male muttering things. I can never make out what he says. I thought I heard a woman once, but I told myself I misheard. One ghost was enough, I thought.”
“Did you ever see anyone?” Dez asked.
“Once. A man. He looked old to me and thin, with a yellow shirt. His chin was all stubbly and his eyes….” She trailed off, and Sully waited her out, expecting her to say how they possessed the wild appearance of a man locked in terror. That was how he knew Harry, after all. “They were just fixed on the basement door, staring.”
Dez exchanged a look with Sully before returning his gaze to Andie. “The basement?”
She nodded.
“I’ll check it out,” Sully said. “But is it all right if I look around the upstairs first?”
“Sure,” Andie said. “Go wherever you need to. Just make him leave, all right? Make them all leave, if there’s more than one. Please.”
“I’ll do my best,” Sully promised.
“Need me to come?” Dez asked.
“Nah, it’s all right. I’ve got it cased. Stay and chat.”
Dez didn’t need to be told twice, smiling and nodding before settling back onto the sofa.
It lasted only a few seconds. Sully was a few stairs up when Dez rushed over and caught his wrist. “Shit,” Dez said. “I forgot. Harry.”
Sully spoke in hushed tones to avoid Andie overhearing. “That was two years ago. I’m stronger now. A lot stronger. Harry can’t possess me. Not anymore.”
“I don’t know, man….”
“Look, if I get the sense I’m getting in over my head, I’ll call, okay?”
Dez didn’t appear sold—who could blame him, given Sully had twice tried to kill himself under Harry’s influence?—but he backed away, anyway. To Sully, the move revealed exactly how much had changed between them, or at least how much Dez had changed. Just a couple of years ago, Dez had been a hovering, overprotective presence at Sully’s side; the fact he wasn’t hovering showed he’d learned to trust Sully’s ju
dgement, experience and abilities. As welcome as it was, it was a little sad, too, the fact a once-central part of their relationship was now relegated to memory.
But it was also a boost to Sully’s self-confidence; if Dez believed in him, he could rest assured his confidence in himself wasn’t ill-placed. Sully gave Dez one more smile, then climbed the rest of the way up the stairs.
By the time he got to the top, Betty was there, waiting for him.
She smiled a greeting despite her still-bloody and shot-up state.
He did his best to return her smile. “Hi, Betty. I’ll admit, I’d hoped you’d moved on already. Is Harry here too?”
Harry answered the question for himself, appearing in the doorway to their old bedroom and drifting over to stand next to his wife.
Harry had changed. The expression of horror once seemingly locked onto his face was gone, replaced by a sunken and exhausted look. A man beaten.
The reason, Sully suspected, was to do with the third ghost. The short time he’d spent in this house in the past hadn’t allowed him to identify which of the rooms belonged to the couple’s adult son, Thackeray. Then a recent parolee, having been set up by Lowell for a repugnant crime he hadn’t truly committed, Thackeray had been forced to hide out in the house to avoid local vigilantes.
It seemed someone had found a way to keep him here for good.
Thackeray sat on the end of the bed in what was likely a spare room, slumped over with head in hands. As Sully watched him, Betty moved toward the bedroom door. She paused there, eyes first fixed on Sully, then Thackeray and then back again.
Her message was clear: Please, help him.
“You and Harry, you’re just here because of him, aren’t you?” Sully asked. “He’s having trouble crossing over.”
Betty nodded, but Harry wasn’t offering the same acknowledgment. Sully focused on Harry next. “You’ve been looking for someone to help your family, but the new tenant here isn’t responding well to you. And you’re not just looking for a way to help your son. You want Lowell dealt with too, right?”
That earned Sully a nod.
Sully provided what answer he could. “I’m working on it.” Then he slipped past Betty, into her son’s old room.
Thackeray had yet to move, to acknowledge the visitor, and Sully found his confidence slipping as he regarded the man. He hadn’t known him well, had really only had a couple of conversations with him—not nearly enough to form any sort of bond. Whether anything he had to say would be enough to persuade Thackeray to go was anyone’s guess.
All he knew was he had to try. For Andie, but most of all for the Schusters.
A chair stood in the corner of the room, and Sully picked it up, placing it in front of but slightly to the side of Thackeray, putting him in a spot where he could meet the ghost’s eye, should he look up, without being right in his face.
“Thackeray? I don’t know if you remember me. We met a couple of years ago. My name’s Sullivan Gray and I used to work with your mom at the Black Fox. I want to help you—all of you—but I’m going to need you to look at me, all right?”
Thackeray didn’t move, but Sully felt a tinge of pain in his face that gradually grew—an indication Thackeray was beginning to let him in. The pain wasn’t Sully’s but Thackeray’s; he’d learned over time to differentiate physical pain from ghostly. It was evidence of a bridge forming between the two, so Sully did nothing yet to raise his own walls, accepting the continued discomfort at least until he’d convinced the ghost to meet his eye.
“Thackeray? I’m sorry this happened to you. You didn’t deserve any of this. I really do want to help. I think I know who did this to you. If I’m right, he tried to kill me too. I’ve been in hiding for two years because of Lowell Braddock. I’m done hiding.” He looked over his shoulder, found Harry standing there, watching. “I’ve dealt with Roman Gerhardt,” Sully told Harry. “I’m going to take care of Lowell too.”
When he returned his gaze to Thackeray, the youngest Schuster had lifted his head from his hands.
Sully had seen a lot in his life, his gift having forced him to witness all manner of gruesome injuries. Thackeray’s weren’t enough to faze Sully, but they would have been plenty to horrify most anyone else.
He’d been viciously beaten, one eye completely sealed shut, the other pulverized into non-existence. His nose was so badly broken it had shifted over significantly and his lips had torn, likely due to being bashed repeatedly against his teeth. Sully couldn’t see anything but blood in and around Thackeray’s mouth, but he suspected it contained a number of broken or lost teeth.
Despite the fact Thackeray had been covering his face, his hands were blood-free, suggesting he hadn’t been conscious for most of this beating.
Then Sully looked closer. The hands weren’t entirely free of blood after all. He could see some red in the area of Thackeray’s fingernails.
Was it possible he’d managed to scratch Lowell hard enough to come away with bits of his skin and blood? If so, Thackeray’s body might hold Lowell’s DNA—enough to merit an arrest and quite possibly a charge.
That was, of course, assuming Lowell was the one who did this. Sully had yet to receive a definitive reply.
He sought it now. “Thackeray? It was Lowell, right? He’s the one who did this to you.”
A nod.
“Son of a bitch,” Sully muttered. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
He believed he had the answer to his next question as well. Andie had seen Harry staring at the basement door, and Sully thought he knew why. He met Harry’s eye once again. “Thackeray’s body. It’s in the basement, isn’t it?”
This time, Harry nodded. Something in his face changed, drooping eyes widening, corners of his lips turning up just a little.
Hope.
Sully had a hope of his own: that Thackeray’s body, once uncovered, would give them definitive proof to use against Lowell. Even if he never faced justice for anyone else, if he went down for this, at least, Sully would be satisfied.
He stood, returning the chair to the corner before heading back down the stairs. He sensed without needing to look that Harry and Betty were on his tail. Thackeray, though, remained where he was. Sully didn’t expect anything else of him. Some ghosts wanted to stay as far away from their bodies as possible. Given the family seemed to have become trapped in this house, the upper floor might be as far away as Thackeray could manage.
Dez’s eyes fixed on Sully as he re-entered the living room, and Sully waved for him to follow. With Dez now, too, at his back, Sully walked through the kitchen to where he thought he remembered seeing the entrance to the basement.
“Oh no,” Dez moaned. “Another basement? We don’t do well with basements.”
“Sorry.”
“Shit.”
Harry remained at his side as Sully pulled open the door and flicked on the light. Instantly, he was struck by an odour, one of intense decay. He peered at Dez, but saw nothing to indicate he’d smelled the same.
He checked anyway. “You don’t smell that?”
“Smell what?” Dez’s eyebrows shot up a second later, suggesting he’d grasped the meaning of Sully’s question. “Oh, my God. You aren’t saying—”
“That Thackeray’s down there? Yeah. I am.”
“Ah, shit.”
Sully led the way down the stairs, Dez all but pressed up against his back. He had to feel the chill, given Harry and Betty were very nearly in the same position.
“Hey, Sull? That cold…?”
“Yeah. Harry and Betty. You might want to step back a bit. You’re kind of right in the middle of them.”
Dez’s shudder came out an audible noise in his throat, and he paused on the stairs a few seconds, allowing Sully to reach the bottom with his ghostly followers.
Sully turned to look up at him. “You’re fine now, man.”
Dez took a tentative step down, then another. “Speak for yourself.”
Sully flashed a smile before giving
the basement a quick once-over. He’d expected a dark, dingy space, a cement or dirt floor and ceilings left open to reveal duct work. What he actually saw was a fully finished basement with laminate flooring and carpet with painted drywall covering the remaining surfaces. The main room in which they stood had been repurposed as an entertainment and exercise space, a television along one wall and a sizeable sofa within easy viewing distance. An exercise machine and a large box containing weights and bands stood nearby. Black and white pictures of European cities graced the walls and a sizeable area rug lent added a touch of colour.
It was comfortable and homey. The most unlikely setting to hide a body.
“I can’t imagine it looked like this when Betty lived here,” Dez said. “The Schusters didn’t do much with the upstairs. No way they bothered with the basement.”
“You’re right,” Sully said. “I think Lowell did all of this to conceal any evidence of what he did to Thackeray. If I was to guess, I’d say he killed him down here too. All the evidence will be under the floor or behind the drywall.” He looked from Dez to Harry and Betty. “Am I right?”
Two nods confirmed his suspicions.
“Did they say yes?” Dez asked. Having received a nod from Sully, Dez continued with another question. “Why bury him in the house, though? Why not take him somewhere no one’s going to find him? The Black Woods, for instance. No one would ever find a body in there if it were deep enough in.”
“Neighbours,” Sully said. “Lowell likes his flashy cars and expensive clothes. Him pulling up in a neighbourhood like this is bound to draw attention. No doubt people noticed when he showed up to collect rent or check the property. If he’d left here lugging anything the size of a human body, someone would have noticed and questioned it. Probably easier to leave Thackeray here and plaster over everything to conceal evidence. I’m thinking the body’s not just underneath the floor. He’s probably buried too. Otherwise, it’s likely someone would have noticed the smell at some point.”
“Where is he exactly?”