Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls: A Ghost Hunter Mystery

by Victoria Laurie

Quinn gave his empty glass to a waitress, who replaced it with a full pint. “No one quite believed the story. That is, until a few of us bolder lads went to have a look for ourselves.”

  I sucked in a breath of surprise. “You’ve seen the phantom?”

  “Aye,” he said. “It was right after word spread that a terrible demon had been set loose at the castle. Me daddy, in fact, was one of the men who helped retrieve the Frenchman’s body from the rocks. He told me that when he set foot on that island, he knew something had changed, and he vowed to never go back there.

  “I, of course, was far too curious for me own good back then, and I gathered me courage and decided I’d go to the castle and have a look for myself. I was only about fifteen at the time—you know how impulsive and daft you can be when you’re young?”

  Heath and I both nodded.

  “Aye, I knew you’d understand. So, the very next day I crept across the causeway at low tide and made it up to the top of the rock when out of the castle a monstrous shadow appeared and came racing toward me. I’ve never been so bloody scared me whole life!” he said, shaking his head at the memory. “And I ran down those steps faster than any Olympic sprinter, I tell you!”

  I smiled at the visual. “Oh, I’ve seen that thing up close and personal. I know how it can put a rocket booster to your feet.”

  “Aye,” he agreed. “And I didn’t stop runnin’ till I’d reached the shore on this side. And other than a few times when duty has called me back across the causeway, I’ve not returned to that cursed place. Nor could you convince me to go up those stairs ever again,” he said.

  I remembered Quinn arriving on the rocky shore when we reported the dead man at the base of the cliffs. He’d kept very close to the causeway, and I remember him eyeing the top of the rock nervously. Something clicked in my head then, and I said, “The phantom never comes down the stairs, does he?”

  Quinn gave me a sardonic smile. “No,” he said. “We’ve learned over time that it only haunts the top of the rock.”

  “But where did it come from?” I asked. “I mean, you can point to its first appearance twenty years ago, but was there any mention of it before then?”

  Quinn shook his head. “None a’tall. And no one in the village knows why it suddenly appeared other than it was released when the Frenchman went for Dunnyvale’s gold. We all believe Dunnyvale himself set the phantom as a trap should anyone get too close to his treasure.”

  I remembered Dunnyvale’s ghost insisting that he’d had no part in setting the phantom loose.

  Meanwhile, Quinn was still recounting how tame Dunlow had been prior to the Frenchman’s interference. “Why, I remember playing at Dunlow as a wee lad,” he was saying. “Me schoolmates and I used to go there nearly every chance we had. In those days, the castle had a few ghosts roaming the grounds—but most of them were quite tame. None of them ever frightened us or attacked us. Not until the phantom.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I remembered again Ranald telling me the phantom was put there by someone other than himself. But who, and why? “Have you ever heard of anyone making something of an outlandish claim, like they were responsible for bringing the phantom to the castle?” I asked.

  Quinn laughed heartily at the suggestion. “Why, no, miss. There’s no legend or story of that sort connected to the phantom.”

  Another thought occurred to me. “What if the phantom wasn’t placed at the castle by Lord Dunnyvale, but by someone more current? Someone who, say, twenty years ago heard that a Frenchman was after Dunnyvale’s gold?”

  Quinn looked at me as if I’d just said the oddest thing. Shaking his head, he told me, “I’ve heard some fairly strange boasts in the village and around this pub, I assure you, but no one’s ever claimed they were responsible for delivering Dunlow its phantom.”

  Heath looked at me curiously, but I didn’t want to go into what I knew in front of Quinn, so I moved away from the topic to another related one. “What can you tell us about the incident four years ago with Jordan Kincaid?”

  Quinn sucked in a breath and blew it out in a heavy sigh. “Ah, now, that’s a terrible tale as sad as the first one I’ve told you.”

  “We’re all ears,” I assured him.

  “As you know, it happened four years ago. We heard that the famous Jordan Kincaid was determined to come to Dunlow and find Dunnyvale’s treasure. When he arrived, we did our best to warn him about the phantom, and he seemed to listen to us and take it all seriously. In fact, he abandoned his first plans to go there alone, and came back a few months later with two companions.”

  “Was one of them a man named Alex?” I asked carefully.

  Quinn scratched his head. “You know, I’m terrible with names, but Kincaid did have one man in his group, and one woman. The gentleman’s name might have been Alex, though I’m not certain.”

  “He had a woman with him?” I asked. For some reason, that surprised me.

  “Aye. And she was a beautiful lass, let me tell you. ...” Quinn’s voice drifted off and his eyes held a faraway cast to them. I could tell he’d been very attracted to Kincaid’s companion. “She was Russian, I think,” he said.

  Heath and I looked at each other, the memory of the notepad written in Russian floating between us. “Do you know what her role was?” I asked.

  Quinn looked at me curiously. “Role?”

  “I’m assuming that everyone Kincaid brought with him had some sort of expertise for the mission.”

  “Well, that I wouldn’t know. I believe I was too busy admiring the lovely lady’s figure to pay much attention to what she was there for,” he told me with a hearty chuckle.

  Heath smiled knowingly and I barely resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Anyway,” I said, getting us back on track, “you were saying?”

  “Oh, right,” said Quinn. “So, Kincaid comes to the village with his two traveling companions and they set off for Dunlow loaded down with camping gear and gadgets and all sorts of odd-looking equipment. They planned to stay somewhere on the rock, and take their time explorin’ the castle. I thought they were daft for wanting to take on the phantom, but I also thought that if you were determined to fight that demon, the best way to go about it was the way they’d mapped out. As I’ve said, the phantom doesn’t come down those stairs, so if you can study it from relative safety, and find a weak spot, you might be able to defeat it.”

  “So what went wrong?” Heath asked.

  “Well,” Quinn said, tugging on his chin. “Everything. The man in Kincaid’s party was captured by the phantom and sent insane. Kincaid fell to his death, and the woman barely escaped with her life. It was a terrible tragedy made all the worse by the fact that our coast guard station had been assigned a new recruit from outside our village who wasn’t familiar with the legend of the phantom. He went to the rock to help recover Kincaid’s body, and curiosity got the best of him. We heard the tale from his partner, who went back to secure the boat and bring along the stretcher, that the new man went up to explore the top of the cliff where Kincaid had fallen, and disappeared.

  “His partner couldn’t raise him on the radio, so more help was sent for, and I arrived just in time to watch the poor man teeter on the edge of the cliff, covering his head with his hands, before he too fell to his death.”

  Quinn finished his story with a shuddering breath and a long sip of beer. His eyes appeared haunted by what he’d seen. “Since that day, we’ve a standing rule in this village: If you’re fool enough to go explorin’ the rock of Dunlow—you’re on your own and there’ll be no help for you other than to recover your bones from either the water or the base of those cliffs.”

  Quinn reminded us again why there was so little effort made to help us find Gopher, as he’d just finished telling us the same tale we’d heard from Anya. “Do you know where we can find the woman who was in Kincaid’s party?” I asked.

  Quinn shook his head. “She left the day after Kincaid’s father came to claim his son’s body, and I�
�ve no idea where she went after that. You might want to ask him, though.”

  “Who?”

  “Kincaid’s father. He and the woman had a terrible row outside the morgue the day after the accident.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  “I don’t know for certain,” Quinn admitted. “I just remember hearing from more than a few local blokes that they’d been yelling and blaming each other for the young man’s death.”

  “Well, there’s no chance of that,” I said to him. When he looked at me curiously, I explained. “Jeffrey Kincaid, Jordan’s father, committed suicide a year and a half after his son’s death.”

  O’Grady looked stricken. “I’d no idea,” he said.

  “I read about it on the Web,” I told him.

  “Oh,” he replied. “I’m not much for the Internet, I’m afraid. Too many wee ones at home always at the computer. I’ve not sat down at it since me and the wife bought it three years ago.”

  Just then a terrible crack of thunder sounded right outside, and the lights went out. “Oh, bloody hell!” Quinn swore. “Not again!” He then excused himself and moved out of the booth. Heath put some money on the table, and then he and I followed the rest of the patrons, who shuffled through the dark to the outside.

  Once there, we dashed through the pouring rain to the van, and after slamming closed the doors, we had a moment to consider the storm. “I think this one’s even worse than the one we got caught up in,” I said as bright lightning lit up the sky all around us and wind whipped the trees to and fro.

  Heath started the engine and put the wipers on their highest setting. “We’d better get back to the others.”

  We arrived at the B&B only to find it—and all the surrounding houses—completely dark. “Looks like the storm took out the power grid,” Heath said.

  From inside I saw a small circle of light bobbing up and down the curtains. “At least we’ve got flashlights,” I said, opening the door to hurry into the inn.

  We found Anya in the kitchen lighting a few candles. “This tempest’s going to be a wee bit of a nuisance, I’m afraid,” she said, looking apologetic as she darted about lighting several more candles. “And it might be a touch cold tonight, so I’ve set out an extra blanket for each of you on your beds.”

  Heath and I told her not to worry about us and went in search of the others.

  We located Gilley and the girls in the sitting room, huddled in front of the fire. “Hey,” I said in greeting.

  “Hi, guys!” said Meg.

  “Hey,” said Kim.

  “Humph,” said Gil.

  Great. Gilley was in a mood. How unusual ... and yes ... the voice inside my head is dripping with sarcasm.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Heath asked.

  Gilley looked at him like he was exceptionally slow on the uptake. “There’s no electricity!”

  “Really?” I mocked, holding up the candle Anya had given me. “Why, Gil, I hadn’t even noticed!”

  He scowled at me and muttered something I didn’t catch under his breath.

  “So we have to use candles and our flashlights for a night. What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal, M. J., is that without electricity there is no Internet. I can’t charge my phone, and I can’t use the computer to translate the journal, and if I can’t do any of that, then I can’t help us find Gopher!”

  Oh. Okay. He had a point and that was a problem. “Sorry, buddy,” I said.

  Heath and I sat down and filled the group in on what we’d learned from Quinn.

  “That explains why none of the local authorities will help us find Gopher,” Kim said.

  I stifled a yawn. “Yeah, but we still don’t know who this mysterious Alex person is. I mean, all we really know about him is that he’s the guy Quinn said was sent insane by the phantom.”

  “She,” said a voice from the hall.

  We all turned to see John coming into the room. “Hey, dude!” I said. “Where you been?”

  John shrugged out of his wet coat and came to sit next to Kim by the fire. “I asked Anya earlier if she’d had Kincaid and his group here four years ago. She said they hadn’t stayed with her, but she thought they’d spent at least one night at the Dunlee Inn. I headed there and spoke with the owner, a Sean somebody.”

  “What’d he say?” Kim asked.

  “He said that Kincaid had stayed with him back then. They’d booked two rooms for one night the evening before they’d gone off to Dunlow. I then asked if he remembered an Alex in their group. He said he didn’t know of an Alex, but he knew of an Alexandra.”

  My eyebrows rose. “You said Kincaid booked two rooms. There were three in the group. Let me guess, Alexandra and Kincaid stayed in the same room.”

  John pointed a finger gun at me. “Bingo.”

  I smiled at Gilley. “Guess your gaydar was a little off target, huh, buddy?”

  “Whatever,” he said with a flip of his wrist, clearly still in a mood.

  “Did the innkeeper give you a last name?” I asked hopefully.

  “He said he couldn’t remember, but he did tell me she was a total knockout. He described her as tall with long red hair, gorgeous face, a good rack, and a great set of legs.”

  “Gee, if only he could have gotten a better look at her,” I said drily.

  John smiled. “He also said she was Russian, if that helps.”

  “Well that makes sense—the notepad was written in Russian. It must have been hers, then. And that means that we know that her first name was Alexandra, and her last name begins with an N.”

  “You know where we might look?” Heath said.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “The local paper. I’m pretty sure they would have covered the tragedy of Kincaid falling to his death—it made national headlines back in the States, after all.”

  I brightened at the suggestion. “You’re right! And if they covered the story, they likely got everyone’s name.”

  “We can check there in the morning,” John said.

  “Not if the electricity doesn’t get turned back on,” Gilley grumbled.

  I sighed. He could be such a pill sometimes. “We’ll keep our fingers crossed that it comes back on by then.”

  I should have crossed my toes too, because in the morning the electricity was still out all across town, and steady gusts of fifty- to sixty-knot winds with sheeting rain weren’t helping the situation.

  “This sucks,” said Gilley, still pouting at the breakfast table.

  I had to hand it to Anya: She’d managed to make us all breakfast of fruit, leftover rolls, oatmeal with raisins, and hot tea in spite of having no electricity. “I’ve a kettle that fits right over the fire,” she said smartly. “Comes in quite handy during weather like this.”

  I smiled and thanked her for her efforts, while subtly elbowing Gilley in the ribs. “Be nice,” I hissed when Anya wasn’t looking.

  He scowled and hunched farther into the blanket wrapped round his shoulders, nibbling away at his third breakfast roll like a hungry squirrel with his last nut.

  The room was quite chilly, even though I had on long underwear and two sweaters. Heath joined us, rubbing his hands together and blowing on his fingers. “Brrrrr,” he said, sitting down and reaching for a cup of steaming tea.

  The temperature had dropped significantly, and as I looked out the front window, I wondered if Gopher was suffering from hypothermia. I tried to remember what he’d been wearing. ...

  “You thinking about Gopher?” Heath asked, reading my mind.

  “Yeah. I’m worried about him in this weather.”

  Heath followed my gaze out the window. “That castle was cold.”

  “And damp.”

  “Great ghost-hunting conditions, though,” Gilley remarked. “If that phantom weren’t there, I wonder who we’d be able to make contact with. I mean, you could probably talk to Kincaid or that French guy, no problem.”

  And just like that, an idea bloomed
in my mind. “Gilley,” I said admiringly, “I do believe you’re a bit of a genius.”

  He lowered his lids and said, “Well, duh!”

  That made me laugh.

  “What’s the plan?” Heath asked.

  I focused on him. “Maybe Dunnyvale had it wrong,” I said. “Maybe we don’t start with this Alexandra chick. Maybe we start with the first sign of trouble.”

  Heath nodded. “The Frenchman.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’ll never get across the causeway today, though,” Gilley remarked. “I checked the weather on John’s phone—thank God he had a chance to charge his before the electricity blew. The winds aren’t going to die down until tonight, which means the storm surge will be covering the causeway all morning.”

  That unsettled me, because I felt we might be running out of time. “What time is low tide tonight?”

  Gilley bent down to retrieve a notebook from his backpack. “Should be around seven thirty, and you’ll have until about nine thirty to get back if the surge isn’t high.”

  Heath and I exchanged glances. “I’m in,” he said softly.

  Gilley looked sharply at us. “Hold on,” he said. “You’re not thinking about going back to that castle in the dark, are you?”

  “What choice do we have?” I asked him.

  “To stay here today and go tomorrow morning!”

  “Gilley,” I said, using my best “Please remain calm” voice. “We can’t let an entire day go by without doing something for Gopher. My gut says he’s running out of time.”

  “It’s too dangerous!” Gil insisted. “M. J., look at what happened just before dusk the last time we went to the castle! You almost died!”

  I inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Honey,” I said softly. “I’m not going to go up to the castle. The Frenchman, the coast guard officer, and Kincaid all died at the base of those cliffs. It stands to reason that I might be able to reach at least one of them there on the safety of the shore and talk to them without encountering the phantom.”

  “You don’t know that it won’t come down the stairs after you!” Gilley insisted, his eyes wide and frightened. “M. J., be reasonable! Now that we know how deadly that thing is, I’m not up for you going there at all, much less at night. You know spooks get stronger at night. And we’ve already made that thing angry. We don’t know what it’s really capable of. It could come down those stairs, and in the dark you’d never know it until it was on top of you. At least in the daylight you might see it coming.”