“Is it unlocked?” Kurt asked.
“I don’t know. Probably,” I said with a shrug. “It’s a small town. And since you’ve had a visit from the sheriff already, several in fact, you know how close an eye people from Coventry keep on their surroundings.”
“You don’t think the neighbors will call the sheriff again if they see us going in?” Bobby asked.
By then Link and Rachel had joined us. They were all watching me expectantly.
“He’s my boyfriend,” I said. “I’ll send him a text letting him know you’re going in and it’s perfectly legal.”
“All right, all right!” Bobby exclaimed. “We’re in business. I’m going to go try the door.”
As I expected, the back door was unlocked. I followed the Ghost Seekers inside, and as I also expected, there was no power.
“Let’s get some lights set up in here. Something dim. I want it to mimic candlelight ambiance,” Kurt said as we all stood gathered in the kitchen.
“On it, boss,” Link said. “I’ll get some lighting from the van.”
“You want to stick around and see how it’s done?” Kurt asked.
“Sure,” I said. “I haven’t watched any ghost hunting shows, though. So I’m afraid I don’t have any frame of reference.”
“That’s okay. Your first will be the best,” Bobby said. “Kurt stays in front of the camera most of the time, but I’ll hang back with you and fill you in on what’s going on.”
“You’re not going to do the EMF reader or EVP with me?” Rachel asked.
“Not this round,” Bobby said. “The rooms in this old Victorian are too narrow for us to crowd together. Since I’ll be hanging with Brighton for this investigation, I’ll shoot some still photos.”
“K,” Rachel said.
“One thing I like to do is just shoot a flash camera into dark rooms. Sometimes we get some inexplicable things that way,” Bobby said when he turned his attention back to me.
“Most of the time we just get orbs,” Toto said.
“Orbs are a sign of the paranormal, though,” I said.
“Yeah, they are,” Toto responded. “Unless they are caused by a camera flash off of hardwood floors or wall coverings.”
“We still occasionally get something,” Bobby retorted.
“He’s right. We do,” Rachel said more to me than anyone else.
Link came back into the house and started to set up the lighting with Toto’s and Rachel’s help. Bobby stuck close to me.
“So what do you know about the history of Grant House?” Bobby asked while everyone else was busy.
“Not much. I’m actually kind of new to Coventry myself,” I said.
“Do you want to know?” Bobby asked. “Do you want to know why we chose this place?”
“I thought you chose it because it was abandoned. Same reason you tried to get into Hangman’s House.”
“We’re still working on the history of Hangman’s House, but Grant House we know a lot about. I can’t believe you live in a town like Coventry and you aren’t interested in this stuff,” he said.
“You should tell me why you’re interested,” I said with a shrug.
“Cool. So it’s called the Grant House because it was built by William Grant back in the late 1800s as a gift for his second wife. His first wife had died under mysterious circumstances in New York State, and the rumors that his second wife had poisoned her followed them here. Some people said that the second Mrs. Grant was a distant relative to the Skeenbauer clan, and that’s why they weren’t run out of town.
“Mr. and Mrs. Grant had to rent a house while this one was built. Originally, they intended to stay at the local inn, but the construction of Grant House took far longer than expected. A couple of laborers died on the job, and others complained of the specter of an angry woman tormenting and even hurting them while they tried to work. Mr. and Mrs. Grant insisted that the two workers who died here were drunk on the job, and they denied the rumors that the ghost was that of the first Mrs. Grant back from the grave to exact revenge on her husband, his much younger second wife, and anyone who helped them.”
“That’s pretty creepy,” I said. “But it seems like that all happened a long time ago. Why would the house be abandoned now?”
“If our research is correct, it’s been abandoned since around the 1970s. Before it was abandoned, it was owned by a string of people. None of the owners ever lived in the house very long. They would move out and try to rent the house out. No tenant would ever stay long, though. That went on for about fifty years. From the 1920s until the 1970s. Someone would buy the house thinking they were getting an extraordinary deal. They’d move out a short time later. Try to rent the house several times, and then put it back on the market for the next person to buy.”
“But that all stopped in the seventies?”
“The last owner lived in the house for three days,” Bobby said. “His accounts of what he saw in the house during that time led him to specifically make a will that left the house to the town of Coventry. He refused to rent it out, and he didn’t want anyone else living here.”
“So he’s not alive then and we can’t talk to him,” I said.
“Oh, no. That’s the thing. He came back here one last time twenty years after he abandoned the place and made the will. He came back here and took his own life in one of the upstairs bedrooms.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“His story is public record, Brighton. The man’s name was Gregory Peck. He left accounts of what he saw and instructions to make it all public with his lawyer.”
“So what did he see?” I asked.
“You sure you want to know?” Bobby asked. “We can wait until we’re not in the house anymore.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said.
“All right,,” Bobby said. “The story goes that Peck moved into the house in the middle of summer. Back then, people didn’t have air conditioning, so they had open windows and box fans instead.
“Peck had all of the downstairs windows open, but he only had a fan for two windows. The one in the living room was in the side window because there was a breeze coming from that direction. The front window was open to the street, but had no fan.
“He was unpacking boxes when he heard a strange sound from the front of the house.”
“What kind of strange sound?” I asked.
“At first he thought it was a rustling in the bushes under the window. Thinking it was a racoon or something, Peck ignored the sound at first. The noise grew louder, and Peck turned off the living room fan so he could get a better listen.
“It was then that he realized the sound wasn’t a rustling, but instead was scratching noises. He said that the sound made his blood run cold for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on. When he rushed over to shut the window, someone knocked on the door.
“Peck went to the door and opened it to find no one there. As he was closing the door and locking it, the scratching at the window started again. Only it was scraping the glass since he’d closed and locked the window.
“He got a hold of himself and shook off his thoughts of something sinister. Peck decided it was kids playing a prank, and went outside to run them off. When he went outside, he confirmed that no one was out there. The problem was that the front door slammed behind him.
“Peck looked inside the house through the front window and saw a black figure standing in his living room. He didn’t go back into the house that night, but instead checked into a motel. Peck waited until late morning to go back the next day. He checked to see if anything was stolen just in case what he saw in the house was a burglar. As he suspected, nothing was missing, but there were scratch marks on the floor outside of the bedroom he’d planned to use as his own.
“It was enough to freak him out, but Peck had just purchased the house. He didn’t want to give up on it. The idea of walking away from such a large purchase didn’t sit right with him. He convinced himself that the scratches could have be
en there all along and he just hadn’t noticed them because of the lighting or perhaps a rug in the hall. Peck further convinced himself that the dark figure he saw in the living room could have just been his own reflection, and the noise caused by an animal after all.”
“I’m guessing his excuses were wrong?” I asked.
“Yes, but at first he thought he was right. Nothing scary happened that afternoon while he unpacked his boxes and cleaned. A neighbor even came over with cookies and didn’t say anything about the house being haunted. Peck didn’t ask, but he took the neighbor’s visit as a good sign.
“That evening he made himself some dinner and watched television before going to bed. Peck was happy that he hadn’t abandoned the house, and he chalked the previous evening’s events off to nerves. While purchasing the house hadn’t been an unpleasant experience, he was buying a house for unpleasant reasons. Greg Peck had just gone through a divorce, and he thought that perhaps he was just still feeling the effects from that.
“Peck turned in for the evening and had an easy time going to sleep because he’d had a couple of beers while watching television. Convinced that nothing was spooky about the house and buzzed from the beer, he felt completely relaxed.
“In the middle of the night, he found out how wrong he’d been to come back to the house. When he awoke, Peck thought that a strong breeze was blowing the blanket and tickling his toe. When he come to all the way, Peck realized that his bedroom window was closed. But something was pulling on his foot.
“Seconds later, he was yanked onto the floor. He jumped up and looked around, but he was alone. Peck walked down the hall looking for some explanation for what was happening to him. He smelled sulfur and then the air around him turned ice cold before he was knocked to the floor.”
“A demon,” I said.
“Oh, so you do believe in this stuff,” Bobby said.
“I’ve seen movies,” I retorted.
“Okay,” Bobby said, but I could tell he didn’t entirely believe me. “Anyway, yeah. Peck believed that the thing that confronted him in the house was a demon. He grabbed his wallet from the nightstand and headed downstairs to the living room. There he met the dark figure he’d seen from the night before. Only it wasn’t just a shadow anymore. He wrote that it wasn’t really a solid figure either. The stench of sulfur was almost overpowering, and Peck said that the creature’s eyes felt like they were burning his skin. He only looked into them for a moment, but when he did, he felt like he was dying. In fact, later in life, he wrote that he saw him hang himself in the upstairs bedroom.”
“That could have been self-fulfilling prophesy,” I said.
“But the rest of it?” Bobby asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why did he and his wife get divorced? Was it possible that he had some sort of profound mental illness? What about the differences in the stories?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the first story is about a ghost, and the one about Gregory Peck is about a demon,” I answered.
“Hey, guys, come up here,” Kurt called out.
It sounded like he was upstairs. I hadn’t noticed that everyone but Bobby and I had gone upstairs.
“What is it?” Bobby yelled.
“There’s a definite cold spot up here. Rachel’s getting off-the-charts EMF readings too.”
“Let’s go,” Bobby said.
As soon as we got upstairs, I could tell the spirit was the same one that was outside in the yard. Other than the cold spot and the EMF reading, it didn’t manifest further.
But a loud knocking sound emanated from downstairs. It startled all of us even though everyone but me was supposed to be seasoned ghost hunters.
“Let’s go see what that was,” Kurt said. He patted my arm on the way by. “You’re good luck.”
“I’m going to stay up here and keep taking readings,” Rachel said.
“I’ll help her up here,” Link said and got out his phone. “I can get secondary footage with my phone if we need it.”
I shot off a text to Remy as we all made our way back down the creaky stairs of the old house. We’ve got activity in here. You should come inside now.
As soon as we were all down the stairs and trying to spread out in the living room area, a scratching started outside the front window. The exact thing that had happened in the story Bobby told me.
My first instinct was to panic, but a thought occurred to me before terror could take hold. What if it was a spirit that overheard Bobby telling me the history of Grant House, and it was just trying to scare us? Still, I wished I’d brought Meri along in case it was a horrible demon. He had his way of putting them in their place like no one else.
The next round of scratching began just as Remy walked in the door. He stopped halfway in and then stuck his head out the door to look at the outside of the front window.
“Do you see anything?” I asked.
“Not a thing,” he said, and the scratching stopped.
Remy had taken the wind out of the spirit’s game. The Ghost Seekers just sort of looked at each other, murmured somethings, and then broke apart to continue their investigation. Bobby, who had volunteered to stay at my side, eventually drifted upstairs to where Link and Rachel were investigating. I actually ended up playing some cupcake game on my phone for a couple of hours until the Ghost Seeker crew decided to break out sleeping bags and spend the night.
In my opinion, I decided that was outside of my civic duty and had Remy take me home, after we put a few quick warding spells on the house on the way out. The Ghost Seekers weren’t going to see anything more that night, and if they did, the wards would erase the footage when they left the house.
It probably wasn’t the nicest thing, but I didn’t want to stay there babysitting them. I wanted my bed.
Chapter Three
The next morning, I awoke to my phone ringing. I reached over to the nightstand and knocked it to the floor. That hadn’t been my intention, but my hand was asleep. My fingers just swiped at the device like a dead fish, but fortunately, the phone hit the thick rug that stuck out from under my bed and did not break.
Not wanting to actually get out of bed, I just sort of bent at the waist and tried to retrieve the phone without actually getting up. That left me in a state where I was hanging precariously halfway out of the bed. I had to either hoist myself back up using my good arm or just slide the rest of the way off the bed and try not to fall on my face.
As I was deciding, the phone that had gone silent began to ring again. “Yeah. Yeah,” I said to no one as I flipped it over to see who was disrupting my morning. It was Remy, and I knew that if he was repeatedly calling, I needed to answer.
Since I hadn’t decided how to get myself out of my predicament, I answered the call while hanging from the bed.
“Good morning, Remy.” I tried not to sound like I was upside down with all of the blood rushing to my brain.
“Good morning, Brighton. I have bad news.”
“Oh, what’s that?” I asked as I attempted to push myself back up.
The pins and needles returning to my hand almost landed me on my face, but I recovered. Before Remy answered, I was able to thrust myself up and onto the bed.
“You all right?” Remy asked.
“Yep, I’d just dropped the phone before. Anyway, what’s the bad news?”
“The town council would like to see you immediately,” he said.
“For what?”
“They didn’t tell me specifically, but word is they want to talk to you about our outing last night with the Ghost Seekers.”
“Did they talk to you about it?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Then how bad could it be?”
“Just get down here and go to Melissa Hanks’ office. She’s acting as the spokesperson for the council on this.”
“Oh, so I don’t have to appear in front of all of them or anything?”
“Nothing like that.”
“Great,” I said and rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. “Can you get a message to Melissa that I’ll be there in a half hour? I just need some time to get dressed and get coffee.”
“Will do.”
“I could still make them go away,” Meri said when I hung up the phone.
“I don’t even want to know what you’re thinking,” I said. “Come on. Let’s get some breakfast, and then I need to get going.”
After throwing on some clothes, I trudged down to the kitchen and fed Meri. I didn’t want to keep the council waiting, so I skipped food in favor of a big to-go cup filled with iced coffee and lots of hazelnut creamer. Okay, I did take the time for two big spoonfuls of peanut butter too. Meri glanced over his shoulder judgmentally twice in between bites of smoked salmon, but I didn’t care. It was good.
“Please work,” I said as I slid into the driver’s seat of my car.
It had been slightly less than reliable, but I couldn’t help but feel like it only broke down for a reason. The car had become like the house. It manipulated my life, and I hoped it was only for my own good.
Fortunately, the car wanted me to make it to my meeting with the council and it started right away. In the time it took me to drive to the courthouse, I downed the whole iced coffee. It just went down so easily.
Up in the top window of the courthouse was my favorite terrifying specter staring down at me. No one was around, and I was hopped up on caffeine, so I waved to it. I made my way inside the building, and as the elevator doors closed, I realized that waving at that hideous ghost might have been a terrible idea.
I held my breath all the way up, but as the doors opened on the top floor, it wasn’t there. The secretary was in Melissa’s office when I went in. She gave me a look I couldn’t quite read and nodded her head toward the inner office door.
“Go on in. She’s expecting you.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I knocked and waited for Melissa’s “Come in,” before proceeding inside.
Her face wasn’t a mask of fury, so I took that as a good sign. “Remy called this morning and said the council wanted to see me,” I said as I took the same seat I’d taken the day before.
Wicked Witches of Coventry- The Collection Page 38