Remy easily popped the lock on the back door with a touch of magic. We went inside and looked around for security cameras, but as I’d suspected, there were none. Their philosophy on security was probably something like who would break into a morgue that’s practically in the middle of nowhere?
There were always those people who had… romantic feelings toward the dead, but I doubted that was much of a problem in our little county. And if it was, I chose not to think too deeply about it.
“Any idea where the bodies might be?” I asked.
“How about we look for files.” Remy narrowed his eyes.
Great – I thought. I was the weirdo.
“I just thought maybe the file was near the body,” I said defensively.
“You’re right,” he said with a chuckle. “The file might be there with the body.”
“So do you think it’s in the basement? Does this place have a basement?”
“Only one way to find out.”
The building did have a basement, and not surprisingly, it was where the body was kept. There was an office on one side and cold storage on the other.
There were no files anywhere, but there was a computer. Lockers lined one wall of the office, and when I looked inside, I found boxes containing the deceased’s belongings.
“I’m going to try and find his stuff,” I said.
“I’ll look for files on the computer,” Remy said.
“Hey, that’s a good plan. I bet even in a small place like this, most of the records are electronic now.”
A few minutes later, I found the locker with Kurt’s things. I took the box out and went through it as gingerly as possible. It felt invasive to be going through his things, and I wanted to be as respectful as possible.
“So you want to know?” Remy asked.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“He died from strangulation. His neck wasn’t broken.”
“Oof.”
“The coroner’s notes say it looked like he struggled against the rope as there were marks up and down his neck. Possibly because he changed his mind.”
“He wasn’t struggling against the rope because he changed his mind,” I said as I moved Kurt’s pants to one side of the box. “He was struggling against the person trying to kill him.”
Underneath everything was a plastic baggie with Kurt’s phone in it. I took it out of the box and then out of the bag. It had a fingerprint reader on the back, but a little magic was all it took to open the phone. It still had a charge.
If going through his clothes felt like an intrusion, going through his phone was ten times worse. Still, I reasoned that I was trying to help him. If Remy and I didn’t figure it out, his killer would never meet justice.
I went right for his text messages, and what I found wasn’t shocking. He and Rachel had been having problems. In fact, they’d nearly broken up right before showing up in Coventry. Kurt was especially upset the night before he died when Rachel took off after Bobby.
“What is it?” Remy startled me.
“It seems as though he and Rachel were having problems.”
“She’s so tiny, though. There’s no way she dragged him up into that tree,” Remy said. “Maybe if she was a witch, but she’s not.”
Before I could respond, we heard a door slam shut somewhere in the building. I quickly began putting Kurt’s things back into the box while Remy shut the computer down.
“Do you think we can get out without being seen?” I whispered.
“I don’t know who would be here,” Remy said.
“Maybe someone forgot their wallet or something,” I said. “I hope no one called the cops.”
“I don’t think anyone called the cops,” he said. “They would have had to follow us in here to know we’re here.”
“Unless someone who works here is a witch, and they came back because they forgot their wallet,” I said.
“Let’s just get out of here.”
We snuck up the stairs, and Remy poked his head out of the stairwell to see if anyone was around. Nobody was in the tiny lobby area, but we could hear someone down the hall moving around.
“Maybe we should just wait until they go?” I whispered.
“What if they go downstairs for some reason?” he whispered back.
“Hello?” the person down the hall called.
“Crap, go,” I said, and we made a break for it.
I heard the person call out “hello” again as I softly closed the back door behind us. We sprinted for my car and dove in like the mob was after us.
Remy barely had his seatbelt buckled, and I was whipping the car out of the parking space and peeling out of the lot.
“That was close,” he said once we were on the road.
“Do you think they saw us?” I asked.
“The car was still invisible until we got out of the lot,” he said, “but I’m going to need a cheeseburger or something. That took a lot out of me.”
“We’ll get some on the way back. Why don’t you call in a to-go order to the diner?” I said.
Remy got two cheeseburgers, and he ate one of them in the car on the way back. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to eat mine when we got back to my house. Something I’d seen at the diner had shaken me to my core. As soon as we pulled up out front, Remy volunteered to go in.
“No, it’s okay. I can do it,” I said.
“No, really. I’ll go,” Remy insisted.
That was when I looked up and saw why he wanted to go in. Thorn had said he could come over because something had come up with Dani. I discovered what that was. He was inside the diner with his daughter, and a woman I could only assume was his ex-wife. I immediately scooted down the seat and hid so Thorn wouldn’t be able to see me if he looked out the window.
“What are you doing?” Remy asked. “Why are you hiding? You have no reason to hide.”
“Please go get the food. Please hurry,” I said.
I had no idea why, but the notion of seeing Thorn while he was with his ex-wife and daughter turned my stomach a little. It was probably anxiety and a little anger too.
He wasn’t exactly straightforward with me about what he was doing. If he had been, I would have understood. The fact that he hid it caused me concern, but I didn’t want to deal with it right then.
So Remy hurried in, picked up the food, and we were off. When we got home, Brody’s car was in a different spot. He’d gone to pick up Annika from work, and fortunately, they’d gotten their own dinner because Remy and I hadn’t grabbed anything for them.
“Any word on the Ghost Seekers?” Annika asked.
“They were going out for pizza and should be back any time,” I said.
“Where were you guys?” she tried to ask casually.
I looked over at Remy and he shrugged. “We were at the coroner’s Office. We broke in to find out exactly how Kurt died.”
“Oh,” Annika said. “Did you find out?”
“We did. It was strangulation.”
“Ooohhh. So he really could have been murdered.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Good job. I’ve taught you well,” she said with a chuckle.
“Wait, you got her into doing this?” Brody asked.
“I’m a bad influence. What can I say?” Annika countered.
Chapter Nine
The Ghost Seekers arrived a little while later. Bobby smelled like beer and was being sullen and withdrawn. Rachel was keeping her distance from him too, and that was unusual. I wondered if he was taking Kurt’s death hard because the two of them hadn’t been able to reconcile.
I was in the living room when Chris, Link, and Toto went upstairs to begin filming. Bobby trailed behind them and made a snarky comment about getting some camera time.
Rachel went the other way into the kitchen. I didn’t want to follow right behind her because it would have seemed creepy, but I also didn’t want her poking around the house alone. Thankfully, Meri went after her.
“I’m
going to go upstairs,” Annika said.
“I’ll come with you. I need to make sure my room is spotless in case they wander in there,” Brody added.
“Thank you for this,” I said to my brother. “Thank you for not getting upset about them doing this investigation.”
“It’s your house,” he said. “She left it to you. I’m just a guest.”
With that, Annika and Brody went upstairs to keep an eye on the crew. That left Remy and I in the living room.
I waited a few minutes and then went into the kitchen to see what Rachel was doing. She had her recorder out and was whispering questions.
When I went into the kitchen, she turned to look at me but did not stop what she was doing. She’d ask a question then stop, rewind the recording, and listen. So far, Rachel hadn’t picked up anything.
“Don’t you have to speed up or slow down the recordings sometimes?” I asked.
That was one thing I remembered from an article I’d read at some point about ghost hunting. People would hear EVP when they slowed the recording down.
“I think what those people are hearing is just their mind picking up on something that’s not there,” she said.
“But you get recordings that you can just play back?”
“You hear things sometimes. Whether it’s really the voice of a ghost or the power of suggestion, I don’t know.”
“So you don’t really believe that a ghost possessed Kurt.”
“I didn’t say that. All I said was that I don’t know if this EVP stuff is real, but it plays well for the cameras. The viewers at home want to believe, so it’s easy to get them to hear things.”
“You know he didn’t break his neck when he died.”
“What?”
“I said I wonder if he broke his neck when he died?” I said. “I wonder if it was instant or if he suffered.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“It is.” I kept my face as calm as possible.
“Why are you goading me about him? What are you trying to do?” Rachel put the recorder in her pocket and took a step toward me.
“I’m not trying to goad you.” I was. “I’m just wondering if his spirit is still around. The more violent the death, the more likely there will be a haunting, right?”
“I’m going to go join the guys and see if I can get some more camera time for this episode,” she said and brushed past me.
Chapter Ten
Later in the evening, the crew took a break to get a drink and rest. Nothing had really happened, but I’d mostly expected that. The house seemed like it would protect me aside from the demons in the basement.
“I think we’re going to go down into the basement next,” Chris said right on cue.
“What?” I should have seen it coming.
“I promise that Bobby isn’t going to draw any pentagrams on the floor, but we have to get some footage in your basement. Please, Brighton.” Chris steepled his hands together like he was begging.
“All right,” I said. “And then you guys are done, right?”
“We’re done here,” Chris said, “but we’re going to the cemetery across the road after this. We want to make sure we’re there for the witching hour.”
“Awesome,” I said and offered him a huge cheesy smile.
Everyone else got up and started to go down to the basement. The Ghost Seekers anyway. Annika and Brody were hanging out in the living room in front of the fire. Remy and I were still at the kitchen table when Chris turned around and sat back down with us.
“We’ll be leaving soon,” Chris said. “I just wanted to make sure that I thanked you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “I’m sorry that we met the way we did, though. I’m sorry that Coventry wasn’t a happy stop for you guys.”
“Well, if nothing else,” Chris began, “I wouldn’t have even had my own show if we hadn’t come here. I would have always been in the background.”
“Oh,” I said because I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“I’m sorry. That must have sounded awful. It’s one of those things that just slips out before you have a chance to really think about what it means,” he said and stood up. “I’m going to go downstairs with the crew. Will you two be joining us?”
“Yes,” I said. “We will. Remy?”
I hadn’t spent much time in the basement. Mostly just going down there to use the washer or dryer and then running back up to the kitchen as quickly as possible.
For some reason, demons liked to manifest down there, but I had no idea where they came from. Since they didn’t appear anywhere else in the house, I’d tried to ignore it as much as possible.
The remaining crew of the Ghost Seekers, along with Meri, were down in the basement. My familiar sat on top of the washing machine observing the group he called the Ghost Squeakers, but none of them paid him any mind. Little did they know; he was the one creature who could save their lives and probably their immortal souls too. I wasn’t quite clear on that one, but they were demons.
Remy, Annika and I stood back and watched as the Ghost Seekers made their way through the darkish, but ambiently lit with stage lighting, basement. Chris talked some more about the history of the house and what could have been lurking there. Toto occasionally filmed Rachel doing EVP while Link’s camera flashed at an attempt to catch spirit photography. Bobby appeared to just be looking around.
In fact, at one point, he wandered off into a side room that I didn’t even know was there. I hadn’t gone that far into the basement, but he found what Chris assumed, for the camera, was an old fruit cellar.
Along the back wall was a boarded-up section. “Cut the camera,” Chris said when he spotted it. “What is that?”
He turned to look at me, but all I could offer was a shrug. For whatever reason, I hadn’t been that far in the basement. There could have been millions of dollars in pirate treasure down there and I would have never known.
“There’s a breeze coming from behind it,” Rachel said. “It’s a doorway to somewhere.”
“We have to open it up,” Chris said. “You seriously didn’t know this was here?”
“I don’t come down here much, and I don’t go past the washer and dryer,” I said.
“You’re going to let us open this up, right?” Chris asked. “You have to. This is huge. Don’t you want to know what’s in there?”
I didn’t want to know, but I supposed I should. Remy was shooting me a warning look, but honestly, if it was going to be opened, I’d rather when there were tons of people around. I temporarily forgot that if there was something hideous in there, we’d have to use our powers in front of humans. I embraced the comfort of having so many people around without thinking.
“Okay,” I said.
“Do you have a hammer somewhere?” Link asked. “Or perhaps a crowbar?”
“I need to see if I have a toolbox,” I said. “Perhaps out in the shed. Give me a minute.”
I went outside to check the shed while everyone else in the basement waited. Sure enough, there was a toolbox out there with a hammer. I took it back into the house.
“Let me do it,” Link said, and I handed him the hammer. “I was a carpenter before I joined the show.”
For a moment the breath caught in my throat, but then I remembered that Meri’s spell would have told me if Link was actually Grey. Besides, Link had been with the Ghost Seekers, there was no way he could be Grey.
Unless Grey killed Link and is masquerading.
I pushed the thought aside and had faith that Meri’s spell would protect us.
My thoughts were interrupted as the sound of Link tearing away the first board hit my ears. We all stood around and watched for a few minutes as Link tore the rest of the wood down.
Behind it was an opening in the wall, a dark chasm that seemed to go on much farther than an auxiliary fruit cellar.
“Is that a tunnel?” Toto was the first to ask.
“It can’t be,” I said. “That
’s crazy. It’s got to just be a root or fruit cellar.”
Chris shined a flashlight into it. “I can’t see the back of it.” He swept the light from side to side. “But you can see the walls. Looks like a tunnel to me.”
“I can’t believe it,” Remy said. “I had no idea they went to any of the houses.”
“You knew about this?” I asked him.
“I didn’t know about this particular tunnel, but I knew they were under the town,” he said. “But most of them are condemned. No one goes in them anymore.”
I knew he meant there were tunnels under the courthouse, and that’s why he’d said it. He was letting me know why he hadn’t told us, and Remy was explaining to the Ghost Seekers why they couldn’t go in the ones under the places they were visiting.
“Let’s see what’s in there,” Bobby said and started down the dark corridor.
“Bobby, wait,” Chris said, but he followed him.
Toto went too with the camera raised. “I’m going to get it all.”
“Guys, wait,” I said, but they were completely enrapt by the tunnel.
I was curious too, so I followed along. Remy was behind me. When I looked back, Meri sat at the opening watching us. I wasn’t sure how far he would follow, but I knew he intended to protect us.
The tunnel went on far beyond the edges of my house and my property. It branched off in several places too, but every time we came to a spot that might have connected to tunnels under other buildings, it was sealed off. Not with wooden boards either. Someone had taken the time and effort to cut the Hangman’s House tunnels off from the rest with concrete walls.
There also seemed to be no paranormal activity in the tunnels. A strange breeze coming from somewhere was the closet thing. I’d hoped that we’d find the source of the demons in there so that I’d at least know where they were coming from, but we didn’t find that. That was probably a good thing considering the Ghost Seekers were with us.
Eventually, the crew decided that they had enough footage to cobble together a show. None of them wanted to spend any more time in the tunnels, and they didn’t want to spend another night in the house either.
Wicked Witches of Coventry- The Collection Page 44