The Ghoul Next Door

by Victoria Laurie

  Guy Walker’s face drained of color. He’d stood all the way up by the end of my speech, and as I finished speaking, he sat down heavily and just stared at me. “How do you know about him?” he whispered.

  “Because he’s been following others, Guy. He’s been following a friend of mine, in fact. And that friend now stands accused of murder. But I’m hard-pressed to believe he’s responsible. I think it was this shadow. The same one that followed you, and pushed you to kill Amy.”

  Guy looked around the room nervously, the flinty expression he’d worn into the room now a distant memory. This murderer, this mean, awful man, was visibly scared. “Don’t talk about him!” he whispered.

  Heath and I exchanged a surprised look. “Why?” Heath asked him.

  Guy swallowed hard. “You’ll call him,” he said softly.

  “Who is he, Guy?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Stop it,” he said. “Let it be!”

  But I couldn’t. Too much was at stake. “Guy,” I said, waiting for him to look at me before continuing. “I’m not just a medium. I’m someone who deals with the worst the spirit world has to offer. My partner and I”—I pointed to Heath and back to me—“we shut these spooks down for a living. It’s our specialty. If you’ll tell us what you know about this spook, even if it’s just a name or where we can find him, we will figure out how to stop him before he gets inside the mind of someone else.”

  Guy shook his head adamantly. Then he put his hands over his ears and hunched down low, as if he was covering himself for some sort of attack. “He finally stopped coming to me and now you want to call him back? Don’t. Don’t do it!”

  “Walker,” the guard barked. “You okay?”

  Guy shook his head, then nodded, then took his hands off his ears, but he continued to crouch in his seat. “I don’t want him to come back,” he said.

  “Who, Guy?” I asked, leaning forward and trying to coax a name out of him. “Just tell me if you know his name.”

  Walker shook his head again and let it drop down to the desk with a loud thunk. The guard looked at us and took another step forward, his hand on his utility belt. Suddenly, Guy’s head lifted and he sat up straight. I held my hand up again to show the guard that everything was fine, but he seemed to hesitate, his gaze firmly on Walker.

  That’s when I felt Heath’s hand on my arm. I looked down, then over at him, but he was staring straight ahead at the prisoner. I turned my head slowly and stiffened. Guy was staring at me in a way that made my skin crawl. “Hello, Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” he sang. Then he laughed, as if he delighted in making me uncomfortable.

  I looked at him closely, even while goose pimples prickled my arms. Something about Guy Walker was definitely different. His eyes—mean before—were downright sinister now. And there was something in his expression that went beyond mean. It was even beyond cruel. I can only describe it as an evil so intense it sent my heart racing, and I was suddenly very glad for the Plexiglas between us. Guy snickered again. “Cat gut your tongue?” he asked me, playing on the words with a wicked grin.

  “Who are you?” I asked, but my voice came out hoarse.

  Walker smiled. But this wasn’t Guy Walker anymore. This was someone—or something—else. “Who am I?” he repeated. “I’m Gut-you-Guy and Killer Ken. I’m Butcher Bill and Murdering Mike. I’m Deadly Dan, Mary, and Lethal Luke. But always, I’m Sly Sy the Slayer. I’m six for the price of one. But soon I’ll be seven. Then eight. Then nine and ten. Which will you be, Mary? Will you be a friend of seven? Or did we already take you? Weren’t you one of the first, Mary? Or will we pick you next?” Guy leaned forward to exhale on the Plexiglas, fogging it, and then he lifted a finger and drew a heart with the name Mary in the middle and then he added what looked like a knife going through it. “Like my artwork?” he asked me, snickering again.

  Heath stood up and reached for me. Guy’s chin came up and he studied Heath as if he’d just realized he was in the room with me. “I know you,” he said, that evil grin returning. “I’ve been in your head. Once I’m in, I’m never out. Want to play again, Indian boy?”

  I realized that Heath was in immediate danger and I pulled out of his grasp and bent forward with my fist clenched. I pounded on the Plexiglas as hard as I could. It worked—Guy’s attention came off Heath and he focused on me. Ignoring the guard’s shout, I pounded on the glass again. “Hey!” I yelled. “Focus on me, you son of a bitch!”

  Walker’s eyes homed in on me and I realized his pupils had dilated to the point where his irises looked black. That same sick smile continued to play across his face and he licked his lips as if he were about to be served a juicy steak.

  Despite the cold fear traveling up and down my spine, I leaned in close. “I will end you, spook! Do you hear me? I’ll find a way to end you!”

  And that’s when Walker’s face changed to one right out of a horror movie. He bared his teeth and lunged at me from the other side of glass, toppling his chair and sending me back several quick steps. The guard on the other side shot forward to grab Walker’s arm and in a move that should not have been possible for a guy so old and withered, he spun around and attacked the guard with hands that looked like claws and the bared teeth of a wild animal.

  Heath grabbed me around the waist and literally lifted me off the ground in his haste to rush toward the door. Behind us I heard screams, and I knew they were the guard’s, and then an alarm went off and there was some sort of other commotion. Twisting in Heath’s arms a little as he pulled the door open, all I saw was a mass of armed guards pouring into the room behind us and the swing of billy clubs just visible above the desk. Through the din of noise I swear I heard the whump of the blows, and a small piece of me hoped that whatever spook was inside Guy Walker felt the brunt of them.

  Heath carried me quickly out to into the hallway and he didn’t stop until we were met by a guard who was coming toward us looking angry enough to use his own billy club. “What the hell did you say to him?” he shouted at me.

  Heath set me down. I was trembling and clenched my fists to try to still the tremors. “Nothing,” I told the guard, who was now in front of us breathing so heavily through his nostrils he sounded like a bull. “I just asked him about Amy Montgomery’s murder.”

  The guard’s eyes narrowed. “Bullshit,” he said. “Walker’s been tame for years, and plenty of people have come here to ask him about that night. What’d you say to him?”

  I shook my head, sticking to my story.

  The guard glowered down at me, but he stepped aside and pointed to the door leading out. “Go!”

  We didn’t wait for him to change his mind, dashing out as it buzzed. The angry guard escorted us all the way back to where we’d come in and we collected our personal items as quickly as we could.

  I shook the whole time, and just wanted to get out of there. Around us we could hear bits of excited conversation from the other guards. “. . . almost bit Gary’s nose off!”

  “. . . four guys to pull him off!”

  “. . . Tased him three times and he still got up!”

  Heath grabbed my hand after I’d gotten all my things and he held tight until we had walked all the way back to the car. Once we were inside, Heath started the motor and turned on the heat even though the temp inside the car wasn’t that far off from comfortable. I continued to shake for a bit, and he rubbed my back. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  “What the hell was that?” I said in reply.

  “One of the creepiest spooks we’ve ever seen,” Heath said. “Which is saying a lot, considering what we’ve encountered in just the last nine months.”

  I looked up at the prison nervously. It was as if I could feel the malice of that awful, evil energy wafting out of the walls; like some horrible odor it seeped through the cement blocks toward us. “We should go,” I said. “Now.”

  Heath pu
t the car into drive and backed up out of the space. We didn’t say another word until we were back on the freeway. “You okay?” Heath asked again, fiddling with the heat once more to turn it down.

  “Yeah,” I said. But that was a lie. I’d never seen anything like the change that’d happened when Walker had lunged at me. He’d looked like a zombie, all teeth and nails directed at me. It’d been terrifying.

  “I think we should believe Luke,” Heath said. “At least the part about a spook haunting him.”

  I nodded but my thoughts were someplace else. I kept replaying the whole interview with Walker over and over in my mind. Something was bothering me about it—beyond just the freak show aspect of it. There’d been something in the switch between Walker and the spook possessing him that was niggling away at me, but what it was I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

  “Where’s your camera?” I asked suddenly.

  “Uh . . . in the backseat. Why?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead I unclipped the seat belt and turned around to look for the camera. Finding it on the passenger side of the car, I hauled it forward and replayed the video from the interview, praying that the spook’s presence hadn’t drained the battery or otherwise distorted the image, which often happened with video.

  Luckily the video was clear, but the battery was low. I was only able to view the first minute or two before the camera died. Frustrated, I closed my eyes and thought about what I’d seen. There was something. . . .

  “Did the camera record?” Heath asked.

  The sound of his voice made me jump. “Yeah. But the battery died. We’ll have to wait to get home to view it.”

  Heath and I drove in silence for the next half hour or so before he said, “Kendra said that she only found three murderers connected to that house.”

  “Which means, in addition to Luke, there’re at least three other killers,” I said, knowing exactly where he was going with that comment.

  “Do you think they’ve all been caught?”

  “God, I hope so. I’d hate to think that only three out of six are behind bars.”

  “That’s assuming that Luke really did murder Brook Astor.”

  I sighed and turned to stare out the window. I’d really wanted him to be innocent, but if that spook had gotten inside his head, then of course he could’ve been responsible for Brook’s murder. Still, something about the tape was bugging me. Something that didn’t fit, and I was anxious to get home and download it to Gil’s computer so that I could figure out what it was.

  It took us another hour, but eventually we made it back to the condo. We came through the door to find Gilley on the phone to his sweetheart. He all but ignored us when we came in.

  “Hey, baby!” Doc sang from his perch by the window. “What you doin’?”

  I went straight to him and lifted him off his perch. I needed some feathered love. Doc gave me a sweet kiss and made smoochy noises. When I held him close in a gentle hug, he said, “Love you,” in my ear, and that put a smile on my face.

  “No, I miss you more,” Gil said. “I do! I miss the sound of your voice. I miss the brown of your eyes. I miss the feel of your lips. And I definitely miss your—”

  “Gil!” I said quickly, knowing he was about to get inappropriate for mixed company.

  “Sorry, Michel. Gotta go. The prude police have arrived and are probably waiting to put me to work.”

  Right on cue Heath handed Gil the camera. Gil rolled his eyes but took the camera and got off the phone with Michel. “Did you break it?”

  “No, the battery’s dead. And M.J. really wants to watch the video.”

  Gil set down his phone and moved over to his laptop. Taking up a plug, he got the camera hooked up and juiced it enough to download the video. “Anything good on the tape?”

  Heath smirked. “Good wouldn’t be how I’d describe it. More like useful. Probably.”

  I gave Doc one more kiss on the beak and set him back on his perch. He whistled at me as I turned away, and thought that as soon as we resolved this case, I was gonna take a few days off from chasing ghosts and hang out with my bird for a spell.

  Gilley got the video powered up and we all sat on the couch to watch it. I expected that watching the video would make the experience of meeting Walker less creepy. I was wrong. As we reviewed the video, right around the time when I began to talk to Walker about the spook, a dark shadow appeared against the wall directly behind him. What was even freakier was that neither Heath nor I remembered seeing a shadow in the room with Walker and the guard. But it was clearly there on film, lurking against the wall. And when Guy’s head hit the table, the shadow disappeared, and immediately following that, when Walker lifted his chin, we could all see the shift in him clear as day.

  “That is freaking creepy!” Gil said, his eyes wide as he stared at the screen.

  “It gets worse,” I said, studying the footage.

  Even with my warning, Gil still managed to shriek when Walker leaped forward at the glass, his teeth bared and his hands trying to grab at me through the Plexiglas. The video jumped around a lot after that as the guard became Walker’s next victim and Heath grabbed me around the waist to take me out of there.

  I paused the playback and turned to the two of them. “Did you two catch that little bit with the heart?”

  “The one he drew of your heart with a knife going through it?” Gil asked, hugging my throw pillow.

  “Yeah,” I said, my mind going back to it. There was something around that that was bugging me. “Gil, can you rewind to that part again?”

  Gil made a distasteful sound but did as I asked. “What is it, Em?” Heath asked.

  “Don’t know,” I said, focusing again on the footage. “But there’s something I’m missing and I’m waiting to figure it out.”

  We watched in silence as Walker leaned forward to fog the glass, his black eyes watching me through the Plexiglas the whole time. “Yeah, he’s a freak,” Heath said when we reached the end of that sequence again.

  “Gil?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Rewind a little more, would you? I want to start from the beginning again.”

  Gil hit the rewind button and began to play the footage again. I watched Walker come in, stare at us with little interest, and pull out the chair to take his seat. “Ohmigod!” I gasped, pointing urgently to the screen. “There!”

  “Where?” Gil said.

  I leaned forward and hit the pause button; then I rewound it to the moment when Walker reached for the chair. “See that?” I asked. “He pulled the chair out with his right hand!”

  “So?” Gil and Heath said together.

  I pressed the FORWARD button and wound the footage forward to where Walker was drawing on the Plexiglas. “And now he’s left-handed. See? He’s drawing with his left index finger.”

  “So?” Gil said again, but Heath seemed to know where I was going. “The spook is left-handed?”

  I nodded. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

  I rewound the tape again all the way to the beginning and pointed out every instance when Walker gestured or used his right hand as the dominant hand. “There!” I said, pointing when Walker scratched the stubble on his chin. “He’s using his right hand. I’m telling you, Guy Walker is right-handed.”

  “And Luke is left-handed, right?” Heath said. I could tell he was putting it together too.

  “Yep. But whoever killed Brook Astor was right-handed.”

  “I’m lost,” Gil complained.

  I got up to pace the room while I worked it out for myself. “If this spook really is getting inside the minds of these men and taking over in order to murder women, then why would Luke—who’s already left-handed—kill with his right hand when the spook is left-handed?”

  “Makes no sense,” Gil said, but more to me than to the line of my argument.
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br />   “I’m leaning toward the theory that Luke didn’t murder Brook Astor. I think he may have been headed home after doing God-knows-what with that spook inside his mind, and he stumbled on Brook, who was either already dead or dying when Luke found her. He may have stopped to try to help her, and that’s how he got blood on his hands.”

  “But why wasn’t he the one to call the police?” Gil asked. “I mean, he finds a bloody woman on the stairs a few doors down from his house and he doesn’t call nine-one-one?”

  “Honey,” I said, “you saw him get right out of bed and head out the door that night and leave his cell on the nightstand. He had nothing to call them with.”

  “There’s another possibility,” Heath said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Luke could’ve been possessed by that thing and completely unaware of anything until he was finally released by the spook. And that could’ve been right at the moment when he found Brook’s body.”

  My brow rose. “Yes,” I said, nodding. “That makes sense! That’s why Luke isn’t talking to anyone. He thinks he might’ve actually killed Brook while he was possessed by the spook!”

  “It’d be good to get that confirmed by Luke himself,” Gilley said.

  I sat back down in a chair across from the boys. “I know, but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.”

  “There’s one fly in the ointment still,” Heath said.

  I smiled crookedly at him. “Only one?”

  “Maybe a few more than one, but the one that’s still jumping out at me is, why is Luke’s name in that closet?”

  “Lethal Luke,” Gil mused. “Wait till the cops get a load of that.”

  “We can’t tell them anything about it,” I warned him. “We can’t tell anyone about it. If they get wind of that, Luke’s sunk.”

  “They’re bound to find out, M.J.,” Gil pointed out. “I mean, I got a look at the police report that went alongside the coroner’s report, and the murder weapon is missing. The police can’t find it, and I’ll bet they’re tearing the city apart looking for it.”

  That shocked me. “The murder weapon’s missing?”