The Haunting at Grays Harbor (The River Book 8)

by Michael Richan

  Christina examined Steven’s eyes as he spoke.

  You lost a child, too, didn’t you? she said.

  Steven twisted his shoulder a little, uncomfortable at the idea of speaking about Jason in front of Maynard. He looked back at Christina, and could see he’d almost won her over.

  Yes, he said. I did.

  He’s part of the reason you need to keep the vortex going, isn’t he? she asked.

  Yes, he is.

  Her dark eyes darted back and forth, looking at him, examining his face. Alright, she said. As long as you promise to come back and tell me what happens, I’ll do it. I want to know what you find out. It’s lonely here, and it would be nice to talk to someone other than my mother. She’s not much fun.

  You have my word, Steven said, smiling at her. You know, you seem more grown up than most nine-year-olds I’ve met.

  I might be nine, she replied, but I’ve spent more than fifty years trying to drain every bit of knowledge my mother had. I learned a lot from her. I just hope I don’t turn crazy, like her. That seems horrible to me, to be insane. To not even know how off your rocker you really are.

  Thank you for your help, Steven said.

  Sorry about the stabbing, she said, giving him a coy smile. Then she faded from their view and was gone.

  Maynard dropped his trance and the three of them left the River.

  “Alright,” Maynard said, “back to Barbara’s to clean up that rod. Let’s go.”

  “You OK, son?” Roy asked, reaching out to Steven, grabbing him by the shoulder.

  “I’m fine,” he replied. “A little sore where she hit me. I saw you react, too. Did she get you?”

  “Just a fly fart,” Roy said. “Barely felt it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  They climbed back up the attic ladder at Barbara’s house, Maynard first, then Steven. Steven helped Roy with the last few steps, then they walked around the boxes to the opening in the knee wall.

  Steven remembered the first time he’d seen the rod, hanging in midair behind the panel. It had seemed so fantastic and unusual. Now, as the occasional spark crackled from the core as the coil rubbed against it, the rod looked broken and pathetic, like something that needed to be put out of its misery.

  Maynard removed a bag from his backpack and slipped it over the rod. It looked almost twice as large once it was covered.

  “Special lining on the inside,” he said. “Creates a buffer around it. Makes it transportable without having to touch it.”

  Maynard cinched the bag closed and pulled. The rod came out from the behind the wall and into Maynard’s hands.

  “That’s it,” he said. “We’re done.”

  “Seems so anticlimactic,” Steven said.

  “Too bad we couldn’t have just done that in the first place,” Roy said.

  “The bag protects you from the hallucinations it produces?” Steven asked.

  “Completely,” Maynard said. “It’s like using an oven mitt.”

  “I notice it still floats,” Roy said, as they moved back to the ladder.

  “Not a problem while we’re in here,” Maynard said, “but when we walk from the house to my trailer, I’ll hold onto it differently so it doesn’t look so odd.”

  They walked back through the house, Maynard trailing his bagged rod like a child carrying a helium balloon on a string. Steven smiled when they passed the room where Sam White had set up his ghostbuster machine. He was looking forward to talking with Barbara, and explaining how they should be able to move back in.

  ◊

  Barbara was seated on one of the beds, and the girls were playing at the table. Steven, Roy, and Maynard stood facing her.

  “Barbara, this is Maynard, from Utah,” Steven said. “He drove up to assist us.”

  “All the way up from Utah?” Barbara asked, rising from the bed and extending her hand to him. “Oh, that’s a long way for you to come.”

  Maynard smiled. “It was no problem,” he said, shaking her hand.

  “You should be good,” Steven said. “Thanks to Maynard, the rod is gone. The house should be fine. I don’t see why you couldn’t move back in.”

  Barbara sighed and looked down at the ground. “Are you sure?” she asked, looking back up at him.

  “Pretty sure,” Steven said. “We’re reasonably confident that the rod was the cause of your problems in the house. With it gone, you should be fine.”

  “But why was the rod there, in the first place?” she asked. “How do you know it won’t come back?”

  “Maynard is disposing of it,” Steven said. “That one won’t come back.” Steven turned to look at the girls. They were playing with dolls on the table. He could tell Georgina was listening to what they were saying, pretending to play.

  “Do you mind if we talk to Georgina for a moment?” Steven asked. “It might shed some light on where it came from.”

  “Sure,” she replied. Barbara turned to look at her girls. “Georgina, would you come here please?”

  The girl put down the doll she was holding, and walked toward her mother. She had her head down, as though she was in trouble.

  “I know that look,” Barbara said to her daughter. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Georgina replied weakly.

  “Georgina,” Steven said, “we already know you went to the house, the abandoned one on the next street. Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

  “Oh, Georgina, you didn’t!” Barbara said angrily. “I told you to stay away from that place. You disobeyed me!”

  “It was Haley!” the girl protested. “She made me go in.”

  “Oh, don’t blame Haley!” Barbara said. “You have your own head on your shoulders.”

  “You went into the house?” Steven prompted the girl.

  “Haley dared me to,” Georgina said. “They said since I was new, I had to go in. They were all talking about Murder Marie. They said I had to go into the house and walk down to the basement, where Murder Marie buried her victims.”

  “So you went in?” Steven asked.

  She turned to look at her mother again.

  “Answer him, Georgina!” Barbara said sternly. “This is important!”

  “Yes,” the girl said quietly.

  “Tell us what happened,” Steven asked.

  “I walked in, down a hallway into the kitchen, and then down some steps into the basement. It was dark, and very scary. They said I had to lift the board off the grave and look at it. When I got near it, it moved, and scared me. I ran out. Then I came home.”

  “Do you remember when this happened?” Steven asked.

  “It was a few days after school vacation started,” Georgina said.

  Steven looked up at Barbara, who had raised a hand and held it over her mouth. “That’s when it began,” Barbara said. “That’s when the people started appearing.”

  “We think that she brought something home with her, from that house,” Roy said.

  “I didn’t take anything, I swear!” Georgina protested.

  “You didn’t take anything,” Steven said, crouching down to her level. “It followed you home.” He turned to Barbara. “I doubt she was aware of it. Something in the house decided to use your daughter. That’s how the rod ended up at your place.”

  “So you think it’s safe to go back?” Barbara asked.

  “We do,” Roy said. “The rod was the cause of it, and it has been removed. I doubt there will be another, but I would advise your daughter not to set foot in that abandoned house again. Just steer clear of it.”

  “I won’t go back, I promise!” Georgina said.

  “We had to move into this motel because you disobeyed me, young woman,” Barbara said to her daughter. “You’ll not go near that house again, you hear me?”

  “I won’t,” the girl replied.

  “I don’t care if Haley or anyone else dares you to! All this mess because Haley dared you to go into a house!”

  “It was Murder Marie!” Geor
gina said.

  “I don’t want to hear it!” Barbara said.

  “We’ll go,” Steven said, standing back up. “Unless you need some help moving back in.”

  “No, I can get it,” Barbara said. “We’ve only got a couple of suitcases here. I can’t thank you all enough.”

  “We’ll check on you in a couple of days,” Steven said. “If things aren’t back to normal when you get home, call me.”

  “I will,” Barbara said. “Seriously, thank you all. Thanks for driving all the way up here to help, Maynard.”

  “You’re welcome,” Maynard said, giving her a smile.

  “We’ll let you pack,” Steven said, as they turned to leave the room. He shut the door, and he could hear Barbara yelling at Georgina.

  “She’s in trouble!” Roy snickered.

  “It’s not her fault,” Steven said. “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Exactly why parents tell their children not to do certain things,” Roy said.

  “Hear, hear!” Maynard agreed.

  ◊

  They invited Maynard to stay the night at Eximere before he left to return to Utah. He readily accepted.

  Steven called Eliza to bring her up to speed as they drove from Aberdeen back to Eximere. She seemed happy and relieved that things were resolved, though apprehensive about Maynard. They tried to reassure her that Maynard was someone she could trust.

  As he hung up the phone, Steven asked Roy, “You do trust Maynard, don’t you?”

  “We were forced to trust him,” Roy said. “It was that, or lose the place. He seems like an upright kind of guy. Time will tell.”

  “He accepted our invitation to spend the night pretty quickly,” Steven said. “Apparently the wood burning stove wasn’t so appealing anymore.”

  “I would have responded the same way,” Roy said. “Who wouldn’t want to explore the place? Especially now that the lights should stay on.”

  “We talked earlier about having some leverage over him, to make sure he keeps quiet. We still don’t have any. Do we need to get some?”

  “How would we get it?”

  “Compromising photos?” Steven said, half laughing.

  “Seems like a shitty thing to do to someone who just helped us out,” Roy replied.

  “We should err on the side of caution. I don’t want Eximere brought down because he opens his mouth to someone about it.”

  “Let’s just see how this evening goes before we set him up, shall we?”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence, Maynard following their car with his truck and trailer. Once they reached the pull off for the road to the tunnel, Roy jumped out of the car to repeat the process of getting through the gates.

  When they reached the tunnel, Maynard stopped him.

  “I’m a little concerned about leaving my truck and trailer out in the open for the night,” he said. “I realize it’d be a nightmare to try and get it all the way out of that tunnel, but what if I just back it into the tunnel entrance and stop once we’ve cleared the doors? That way you can shut things up and I won’t have to worry?”

  “Can’t see why not,” Roy said.

  Steven drove his car into the tunnel, and then waited while Maynard maneuvered around, eventually backing his trailer and then truck into the tunnel. Once he cleared the doors, Roy shut and locked them from the inside, and Maynard turned off his truck.

  The three then rode in Steven’s car through the tunnel until they reached the door that led to the stairs.

  Maynard was lugging a suitcase and his backpack, but Steven and Roy were empty handed. As they started down the stairs, Steven offered to take one or the other for him, and Maynard passed him the suitcase. Steven noticed it was old fashioned, with hard sides, looking very much like the kind he’d watched a gorilla throw around a cage in a commercial of his youth.

  Christ, what’s he got in here? Steven thought as he lifted it and felt his back strain.

  They eventually reached the bottom, Steven wondering if he had ibuprofen in his overnight bag at Eximere. They emerged from the bottom door and into the open area, the house and grounds spread before them, looking better than ever.

  “That’s more like it,” Roy said.

  They walked the path to the house and up the steps to the entryway.

  “Feels different,” Maynard said. “It feels…” He paused.

  “Euphoric?” Steven asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the word, I suppose,” Maynard said. “Like every care in the world is gone.”

  Roy walked into the breezeway and looked at the table along the wall. Their emergency supplies were still there: batteries, candles, lanterns.

  “Guess we won’t need these,” he said, gathering them up.

  “Hopefully,” Steven added. “I’m going to take your suitcase upstairs, Maynard. There’s several bedrooms up there. I’ll put it in one of them for you.”

  “Thank you,” Maynard said, setting his backpack down on the ground. “I’ll follow you up in a bit,” he said, wandering toward the back yard as if he was in a daze.

  An hour later, after they had eaten and settled in, the three of them were sitting on the back porch. Roy was drinking an old fashioned, and Maynard was drinking water.

  “I don’t know why you need the booze,” Maynard said. “I feel like I’m high just sitting here.”

  “I don’t need it, I like it,” Roy said. “There’s a difference. Want me to make you one?”

  “Nah, I never touch the stuff,” Maynard said. “Did when I was young, but haven’t for forty years.”

  “Don’t know if I can trust a man who doesn’t drink,” Roy said.

  “We’re well past that, aren’t we?” Maynard replied.

  Roy sipped at his drink and they sat silent for a moment, enjoying the air. It looked like dusk was upon them.

  “What really bothers me,” Steven said, looking out into the yard, “is that my great-great-great-grandfather Thomas is out there, acting as fuel for Unser’s mad plan.”

  “When I talk with him,” Roy said, “he doesn’t seem aware of it at all. He thinks Unser buried him out of his hatred of gifteds, just like we originally thought.”

  “It would seem that Unser’s plan was far bigger than either of you imagined,” Maynard said. “We know he’s using them,” he said, motioning to the graves in the back yard, “but do we know how? Have you found anything that gives away how he’s doing it?”

  “We need to take him down to the basement,” Roy said. “Show him the legend shelf. And the room with the sphere.”

  Maynard sat up in his chair. “Really? What are we waiting for?” he stood up.

  The other two rose from their chairs. “Alright,” Steven said. “Follow me.”

  He led the others to the library and slid open the bookcase, revealing the stairs. They descended, and once they reached the bottom, entered the large room with the many project tables. Steven led Maynard over to the table that held the legend shelf. Roy followed behind.

  “Our friend Eliza used this to control the Marchers that were topside,” Steven said. “Rerouted where they could go.”

  “He protected the place well,” Maynard commented, looking down at the shelf. “See the blue?” he asked.

  “The blue lines?” Steven asked.

  “Yes, those,” Maynard replied. “That should have tipped you off that it was a vortex.”

  “We had no idea about vortexes,” Roy said from behind them. “We wouldn’t have figured that out.”

  Steven was about to offer that Eliza’s legend shelf didn’t have blue lines, but then he remembered the confidential nature of her work, and didn’t want to have to explain to Maynard why she had a shelf.

  “Now we know,” Steven said instead, looking back down at the device.

  “Have you catalogued all of these?” Maynard asked, looking at the various projects sitting on the many tables in the room.

  “None of them, really,” Steven said. “W
e have no idea what most of them do.”

  “Except for one,” Roy added. “The one in the room over there.” He pointed to the door in the back of the workspace. Maynard saw where he was pointing and began walking toward it.

  They entered the small room that held three devices, all sitting on a single table. Steven pointed to one with a sphere mounted on a clear base. Inside were two discs, one above the other, motionless.

  “When we first found this device,” Steven said, “the discs inside were spinning. They would generate a pulse that caused the drain. The closer you were to it, the stronger the effect.”

  “Fascinating,” Maynard said, leaning over the device, looking at the inscriptions on a black rim that surrounded the sphere. “A device to keep other gifteds from meddling. Brilliant.”

  “Worked too slow, though,” Roy said. “We figured it out before it completed its task.”

  “It was barely on,” Steven said. “Had it been at full speed, we’d have been drained very quickly. We’d be useless now.”

  “And these other two?” Maynard said, sidestepping to take a look at the other devices on the table.

  “We think this one was used to hold what the discs collected, in these little cubes,” Steven said, pointing to the device next to the sphere. “You can see they’re all broken. We think that Unser’s mother, Anita, was consuming them.”

  “That would have made her very powerful, I assume,” Maynard said.

  “That she was,” Steven replied.

  “This other one,” Roy said, pointing to the device on the other side of the sphere, “we have no idea what it does. These three projects were segregated from the others out there, so we figured it must be important.”

  Maynard moved to the third device and observed it. Steven joined him, realizing he’d never really spent much time looking at it. In its center was a metal pot with a lid, like a pressure cooker, but not as tall. Wires extended from the base of the pot, connecting to a clear gelatinous ring that haphazardly surrounded it. Steven dropped into the River, and the device looked exactly the same, except for the ring. He could detect movement within it, so he got closer to it to have a better look.