Welcome to the Spookshow: (Book 2)

by Tim McGregor

  Ten minutes later, Gantry stood outside of the building on Barton Street, looking up at the third floor windows. Billie’s flat was dark. No one home.

  “Christ.”

  Climbing up three flights left him winded and a little woozy after the patch job that butcher did to his forehead. No wonder the man didn’t practise anymore. Gantry patted his pockets for his cigarettes but remembered that he was still without a light. He’d want one before walking into that place. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t even want to be here.

  The door was locked but he tapped it a certain way and something clicked and he pushed the door open. Locks were never problem for him, especially the cheap kind. His eyes went down to the mess of salt over the threshold. The girl had been doing her homework.

  He passed through the living room, noting the mess left behind and continued on into the kitchen. He knew she wasn’t here but hoped to find something that would tell him where she had rabbitted to.

  The place was quiet. The little legless bastard that had attacked him before was long gone but he wasn’t the one Gantry was leery of. The ghastly mess that had ripped a chunk out of his noggin back at the church was the thing that had spooked him. That was power. Whatever it was, ghost or demon or black hole of pure fucking evil, it wasn’t here.

  What the hell had Billie gotten herself mixed up in with that thing? The girl had guts and she had a natural ability unlike any others he had seen, so why had she gone out looking for trouble? Mockler’s trouble to boot. Of all people, why that sad sack of shite?

  He picked through the mess on the table and scanned the photos and notes stuck to the refrigerator door. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for. Some clue as to where she would have gone. There was a chance she may have run for the hills with that awful thing skulking about. Recalling the way the flies crawled in and out of its mouth made him shudder.

  There was nothing here. He crossed back through the living room and stopped cold when he saw the back of the door. The paint was scorched black as if blasted with a blowtorch. Angular scrawled lines, forming a simple message:

  the

  whore

  is

  mine

  36

  “BILLIE?”

  Maggie hauled the grocery bags to the counter and hurried back to close the faulty screen door before the bugs got in. The house was quiet, the cat curled up asleep on the armchair under the picture window.

  “Honey, you home?” She padded down the hall and looked in Billie’s room but her niece wasn’t there. Maggie frowned. Billie’s car, or the one borrowed from her neighbour, was back in the driveway. Had the girl gone for a walk?

  The cat stirred as she crossed to the window. The sky was overcast and the trees rippled from a heavy wind. Not exactly a beach day but she could hazard a good guess as to where her niece was. The cat in the chair stretched its legs and rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Trudging through the sand was becoming difficult and Maggie huffed at the effort. Cresting the gentle dune, she looked down at the lake. There was only one person on the beach, looking out at the water with her knees tucked up under her chin. No beach blanket or umbrella. Not even a swimsuit. Just her shoes on the sand next to her. Dark clouds tumbled across the lake, coming north.

  “The water’s rough today,” she said, coming alongside the girl. When Billie didn’t respond, Maggie shrugged out of her light jacket, laid it on the damp sand and eased down onto it. “Looks like there’s some nasty weather headed our way.”

  Billie stared out at the water with her arms wrapped around her knees and the fall of her hair hiding her face.

  Maggie brushed the sand from her hands. “Did you go for a drive this morning?”

  The girl nodded but didn’t offer anything more. Maggie watched the waves roll in. “Where did you go?”

  “Home.”

  Billie tucked her hair behind her ear and Maggie could see her eyes. They were red and puffy. Maggie reached into a pocket and came away with a wad of folded tissues that she kept eternally at the ready. She gave the wad to the girl. “The old house? Whatever possessed you to go there?”

  Billie shrugged, dabbed a tissue against her eyes. “I guess I just wanted to see it.”

  “Last time I drove by it, it was in bad shape.”

  “It’s nice now,” Billie sniffed. “The family that bought it fixed it up.”

  “I see. So you just woke this morning wanting to see the old place?”

  “I guess. I dunno. I’m not sure what I was looking for. But it wasn’t there.”

  The wind picked up and both of them turned their heads away from the kicking sand until it died down. Billie balled the damp tissue up in her fist. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “When did mom start to go off the deep end? How old was she?”

  Maggie frowned, disliking the question. She had to think about it, calculating backwards. “Hard to say, really. Late twenties? Maybe earlier.”

  Billie twisted her lips into a smirk like she already knew the answer. “I’ll be thirty in three months.”

  “I know. What would you like for your birthday?”

  That wasn’t what she was getting at. Billie took a breath. “Did you ever wonder about all that stuff with mom? If it was true? The tarot cards and the palm reading. Seeing dead people? Even just a little?”

  Maggie picked a twig out of the sand. “Your mom sometimes knew when things were going to happen. Before they did. It was spooky sometimes.”

  That word again, Billie thought. “Like what?”

  “Deaths in the family. She knew before anyone else did. I remember when our dad died. He’d been in the hospital. I was at Mary’s house and she was chopping carrots for something. Then she just stopped and said that dad was dead. The hospital called thirty minutes later.”

  “And what about the ghosts? Seeing dead people?”

  Maggie tried not to frown when she turned to her niece. “Do we have to talk about this?”

  “I have it too,” Billie confessed. “Seeing ghosts.”

  Maggie stiffened. She kept her gaze levelled on the clouds over the lake.

  “I think that’s what drove her crazy,” Billie went on. “Seeing the dead. She couldn’t deal with it.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Billie looked at her aunt. “You knew I had it too, didn’t you? That’s why you took me to all those doctors. Dragged me to church twice a week. I get it now, I do. You tried to protect me from it.” She shrugged again. “It worked for a while. But it’s here. I can’t block it out and it’s going to drive me insane the way it did to mom.”

  “Stop it.”

  “It drives them all crazy, doesn’t it? All those aunts you told me about, the spooky ones? They all went insane too, didn’t they?”

  The woman snatched her niece by the elbow. “Stop it, Billie. You don’t have it! You had an accident, you’re not thinking straight. That’s all!”

  “I tried to convince myself of that too. It doesn’t work anymore.” Billie shook the woman’s hand off. “Do you think I want this? I’d give anything to have my old life back. It didn’t matter that I had a dumb job or I was just drifting through life. This is worse.”

  Maggie rose to her feet and peeled her jacket from the damp sand. “You are not your mother, Billie. Don’t believe that for a second.”

  A thousand hateful words stung through her brain but Billie kept her mouth shut and watched her aunt march away. She turned and looked back at the lake. The storm clouds were almost here.

  ~

  Billie snatched the clothes from the chair and stuffed them back into the bag. She hadn’t a clue where she was going. Not back to the apartment but not here either. She just needed to be somewhere else.

  Maggie appeared in the doorway. “You’re not going?”

  “I should get back,” Billie said. The anger had drained off but she wasn’t in the mood to reconcile just yet.

&
nbsp; “I don’t know how to help you with this,” Maggie said.

  “It’s okay. Honest. I’ll figure it out.”

  Maggie came further into the room. “It’s not okay. Sit down.”

  Billie grumbled as she sat, twisting the stale tee-shirt in her hands. Waiting to be lectured or admonished.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Maggie said, folding her hands in her lap. “If this is real, then maybe it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Maybe it has more to do with how one chooses to use it.”

  “It’s not good for anything. It’s like having a disease.”

  “Why would God give this to you?” Maggie held up a finger, as if asking her to wait. “Don’t roll your eyes at that. I’m trying to understand this. Why would He give you this ability if he didn’t want you to use it? Maybe this is what you were meant to do.”

  “Or maybe God has a sick sense of humour,” Billie countered. “What exactly am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Help people.”

  Billie let her chin drop. “What people could I possibly help?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Maybe people who are grieving. Maybe the dead themselves.”

  “How? Point them to the bright light? There is no light, Maggie. There’s just these phantoms with all their rage and despair and awful tragedies. I can’t help them. And some of them are vindictive. They lash out.”

  Billie flung the rumpled garment at the chair. “I tried to help. Twice. I screwed up and made everything worse.”

  “How could you have made it worse?”

  “There’s this guy. I tried—” She clipped her words, not knowing how to explain it without sounding like a complete lunatic.

  Her aunt perked up, leaning forward. “What guy? Like a boyfriend?”

  “What? No,” she said quickly. Recalling his last words salted the wound and she didn’t know why this all got so confusing when it came to him. “He’s a friend. I think he’s in danger. Real danger.”

  “Then you have to help him.”

  “I did. But I made it worse.” Billie fumed. Why couldn’t she understand this? Because it’s messed up beyond belief, she reminded herself. “And now he doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “And he’s still in danger?” When Billie nodded, Maggie held out her hands, as if the answer couldn’t be any clearer. “Then you have to try again. Even if he doesn’t want your help, you have to help him if you honestly think he’s in danger.”

  Billie sank into the chair. “It’s complicated.”

  “It’s couldn’t be any simpler, honey. If you can help someone, then you have a duty to do so.”

  “No. I don’t want this. It scares me.”

  Maggie looked out the window. The pane was cloudy with cobwebs and dotted with the dried husks of dead insects. “What’s this man’s name? Your friend?”

  Billie clutched her stomach the moment his name tripped over her lips. A wall of nausea overwhelmed her instantly and she dropped to the floor, snatching up the flimsy wastebasket. One sharp dry heave and then it subsided. Accompanying the stomach churn was a vivid image of the man in question, his face contorted with pain. Hot tears ran down his cheeks like he was enduring something unimaginable.

  Another twist to this freakshow that had become her life. When would it stop?

  Coming to the rescue, Maggie cupped her palm over her niece’s brow. “What is it, honey? Are you sick?”

  “It’s him,” she gasped. The police detective in question. “He’s in trouble. Like right now. ”

  37

  HE FELT SICK to his stomach.

  He wished he could throw up. At least he would feel better afterwards but whatever it was churning his guts was not making its way up. It hung low, turning his knees to shaky twigs.

  Raymond Mockler looked at the drink in his hand. Could be the hooch, he wondered. The sensible thing to do would be to fling the rest of it down the sink but he wasn’t in a sensible mood. He wanted to be numb. Comfortably numb, just like the song said. A few more of these and it would be like sinking into a warm tub, the world nothing more than a vague ripple in the water.

  He also wished he had a match. And some gasoline. So he could burn every one of these paintings and sketches Christina had done of that awful face. She’d certainly been burning the midnight oil on this artistic phase she was going through. Picasso had his blue period. His fiancee was deep into what he termed her scary-as-shit-nightmare-psychotic-episode period. Sleepwalking to her studio every night and painting in this weird possessed state. He would find her down here, gently guide her back to bed and close the door. An hour later and she’d be gone again, shuffling back to the studio to paint.

  It was unsettling, the look in her eye or the movement of her hand. She didn’t speak or protest when he took the brush from her hand and led her back to bed. In the morning, she’d claim to have no memory of it. Then she would sleep all day, snoring through the phone calls from her boss wondering where she was.

  There was more than a good chance that this evil fucking face she kept painting was the source of his roiling stomach. Or it was the house itself because it wasn’t just the studio that brought on the nausea. Every room in the house made him ill. So what did that mean? Asbestos in the piping? Toxic lead paint under all those other layers of pigment, leaching out to poison them both? Deadly mold leaking spores into the air to embed themselves in one’s lung?

  Maybe a match was needed for the whole damn property, not just the paintings. Wasn’t that how they treated plague houses in the olden days? With cleansing fire? Because that’s what this place felt like now. A plague house. Unclean and septic.

  That, he mumbled to no one, was how most people died of gunshot wounds. Well, the bad guys anyway. Sepsis. It wasn’t the bullet that killed them but the damage afterwards. As the slug ripped through intestines and organs, it made a hell of a mess. Partially digested food or fecal matter leaches into the bloodstream, poisoning the victim. With the bad guys, they’d avoid hospitals altogether, getting some hack-doctor to patch it up. So the sepsis went untreated and the son of a bitch died a slow death. It was an awful way to die. He had seen firsthand evidence of that.

  “Stay in school kids,” he laughed. “Just say no.”

  Some small part of his brain was still rational. You’re trashed, it told him. Go to bed.

  Sure, he replied to that rational part. Bed. That cold and pitiless void he shared with this woman who was no longer the woman he had known. She was an imposter, an alien. A pod person who resembled Christina but showed few signs of emotion. Invasion of the Depressed Nocturnal Artist. Great flick.

  Another woman’s face materialized before his mind’s eye, her name rattling around his skull before he could push it away. He winced recalling her last words, feeling the sting of betrayal. Why did he feel that? Of all things, betrayal?

  It was Gantry’s fault. Again that slippery limey was to blame, luring another one into his weird schemes. Still, why did it sting? He barely knew the woman. Sure, they had gotten along and he had felt a strange ease around her but that didn’t explain the sting. She was messed up, snookered by a charismatic lunatic. He had wanted to protect her, that’s all. Simple as that.

  Liar, the little voice returned. It’s more than that and you know it.

  Mockler leaned against the door jamb. It was confusing. He’d never been good at sorting out his own feelings. Not in the moment, anyway. Everything got mixed up when he thought about Billie. Churning up with his attraction to her and the ease he felt and the betrayal there was a tidal wave of guilt for even thinking about this. And the little voice was having a field day.

  You’re engaged, you cheating fuck. She’s just a girl. Don’t blow up your life for someone you barely know.

  Pushing away from the jamb, he marched to the kitchen and flung the drink into the sink and ran the water until it was cold and splashed it over his face. It’s just lust, he reasoned. That’s all. Happens all the time. Forget her and carry on.

/>   And Billie Culpepper was crazy. She had rattled on and on about what? A fucking ghost? That his home was haunted? She was as bad as Gantry. Worse.

  But what if she’s right? It would explain a lot of weird shit around here.

  Mockler looked at the empty tumbler and regretted throwing it away. Another belt and maybe that nagging little voice would shut off.

  The idea of it was ludicrous. Being haunted. Then the idea was repulsive. And then it flipped to feeling violated and churned into outrage. Then just plain rage.

  “Show yourself!” he bellowed into the room, to the house itself. “I dare ya! Stop being a coward and face me!”

  It felt good, the outburst of anger. Then he felt silly and self-conscious, yelling at something that wasn’t there.

  A figure drifted past the kitchen doorway. Christina, padding silently on bare feet to her studio.

  He followed her. She was back at it, already slashing at a large swath of paper with a stick of charcoal. Without a stitch of clothing, her long frame lit by a row of candles all the way around the room.

  How had she lit them all so fast? There had to be two dozen of the shallow tea candles. There was no way—

  Christina’s hand dropped to her side. The brittle charcoal broke in two as it hit the floor. When she turned around there was something wrong with her eyes.

  And then she opened her mouth and all the flies came boiling out.

  38

  BY THE TIME she hit the highway, the sun had gone down and the needle on the fuel gauge was quivering over the quarter tank mark. Another delay she didn’t need. She should have fuelled up in Port Rowan when she had the chance.

  There was no way to get home any faster. The six was a provincial highway that cut through half a dozen towns on the way, forcing her to slow to a measly 40 kph every time. She tried Mockler’s number for the fifth time. It rang without being picked up. That was unusual for most people. For a cop, it frightened her.

  Calling the police was the obvious default but she hesitated, unsure of what to say. Just do it. She thumbed through the phone again but this time noticed an unread text message. When had it come through? Hitting it, the message was short.