Room 9 and Other Ghost Stories

by Amy Cross

  “It'd really help,” he replied, “if you'd tell me exactly what's going on.”

  “I...”

  She paused, before suddenly a smile crept across her face.

  “Do you want to get ice cream?” she asked.

  “Ice cream? At -” He checked his watch. “Rose, it's almost ten at night. Where the hell are we going to get ice cream this late?”

  “I guess you're right,” she replied, as the smile faded. “I should have realized, it's too dark. Everything's too dark. I just hoped the stars...” She looked up and widened her eyes, as if she wanted to take in all the light she could from the hundreds of stars above them.

  After waiting for a couple of minutes, watching her staring straight up, Ricky finally cleared his throat. When that didn't work, he figured he had to try something else.

  “So,” he said eventually, “do you want to... go for a walk?”

  Slowly she looked back down at him, and now the tears were gone from her eyes.

  “Sure,” she said, reaching out to take his hand. “I'm sorry if I scared you, Ricky. I just wanted to say that stuff out loud for once, instead of in my head. Come on, we don't need ice cream. Let's just go for a nice walk.”

  With that, they began to make their way along the shore of the lake, two dark figures disappearing into a night that was still pitch-black despite all the stars above.

  V

  Today

  “Sheriff Gorman!”

  Stopping at the door to the station, Gorman watched as an umbrella-wielding figure ran desperately through the pouring rain, jumping over several puddles in the car park before finally joining him under the awning. Closing the umbrella, the figure – a young woman with large, striking brown eyes – smiled at him.

  “You probably don't remember me,” she told him, “but I'm -”

  “Deborah Culstone,” he replied. “You're a reporter.”

  “That's right,” she said with a smile. “I don't know whether to be impressed by your memory or by my memorableness!”

  “Is that even a word?” he asked with a sigh, already well aware that the conversation was likely to be headed onto his least favorite topic.

  “It is now,” she replied. “It's terrible weather we're having, isn't it? Apparently it's got all the meteorologists stumped, it's almost defying logic with the way it seems to be highly localized in this county. I just heard that most of the roads into Vantage have been blocked by fallen trees.”

  “And yet you managed to get here anyway,” Gorman said with a forced smile. “How about that, huh?”

  “I guess you could say I'm pretty determined,” she told him. “I've actually been calling your office for a few weeks now, trying to schedule an interview. God knows how many messages I left, but you never got back to me.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Obviously there's been a failure somewhere along the line,” she continued, “but the thing is, I'm writing a story about the fifth anniversary of Rose Hillard's disappearance and, well, it's going to go ahead regardless, but I'd really like to get some quotes from you. I mean, it'd hardly be fair and balanced if I didn't talk to the most important man in the case, would it? You wouldn't be able to defend yourself.”

  “If I asked you nicely to turn around and leave Vantage,” he replied, “and never come back, is there a chance in hell that you'd just... do that?”

  “No,” she replied with a faint smile.

  “I figured,” he muttered, holding the door open for her.

  ***

  “The alleged sightings of Rose a few counties over were followed up, I believe?” Deborah asked as she sat in Gorman's office a few minutes later, reading from her notebook. “I assume nothing came of that avenue of investigation.”

  “Oh, sure,” Gorman replied, propping his cane against the wall and heading to his desk. “I found Rose Hillard ages ago, I just never thought to mention it to anyone.”

  “How's the leg?” she asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

  “It's my hip, actually,” he replied, “and it's fine, thank you for asking.”

  Deborah looked over at the bottle of pills on his desk.

  Sighing, Gorman grabbed the bottle and dropped it into one of his drawers.

  “You were hit by a car, I believe?” she continued. “Not long after the Rose Hillard investigation had started fading from the headlines? Hit and run, wasn't it? That's got to hurt. I mean, you can't even track down the person who almost killed you.”

  “If I get to retirement and that's the worst injury I ever sustain,” he replied, “then I guess I can count myself to be extremely fortunate.”

  “Has no-one ever shot you?”

  “No, M'am.”

  “Huh. You do surprise me.” She smiled as she looked at her notes. “So the sightings that were reported in the months following her disappearance were definitely dead ends?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because I looked into them,” he continued. “Most of them were genuine cases of mistaken identity, and a couple were just malicious attempts to waste police time. There's absolutely no evidence to suggest that Rose Hillard ever left the town of Vantage following her disappearance, and it's my opinion that she certainly didn't leave the county. In most cases like this one, evidence is disposed of as soon as possible, which means a very short time for travel. A twenty-five mile radius is my best guess.”

  “So you're certain she's dead?”

  “I think it's by far the most likely explanation. Trust me, I know how the mind of a killer works.”

  “Such a shame,” she continued, holding up a photo of Rose. “She was so pretty, and apparently such a smart and ambitious young woman. Photogenic, too. Of course, that can be both a blessing and a curse.”

  Gorman smiled, although he found it difficult to look at the photo of Rose's face for more than a fraction of a second. Looking down at his desk, he started neatening a pile of papers as a way of distracting himself.

  “Interesting,” Deborah said after a moment.

  “What is?” he asked.

  “You clearly don't like seeing her face. Could it be that you feel guilty, Sheriff Gorman, for never having caught her killer? I imagine that must burrow into your soul, especially at night. Does your conscience ever whisper into your ear when you're trying to sleep, reminding you that you let poor Rose Hillard down?”

  Looking over at her, he saw that she was still holding the photo up.

  “Of course I feel guilty,” he said after a moment. “The resolution of the case was not as I would have preferred.”

  “What would you have preferred?”

  “For her to have turned out to be alive.”

  “So what do you think actually happened?”

  “I don't think we need to -”

  “Kidnapped, obviously,” Deborah continued. “She'd hardly be the first pretty young lady to get snatched from a rural location and then... Well, we all know what happens to young ladies in such situations. The only question, usually, is where the body is disposed of and what attempts are made to conceal the evidence. My understanding from covering many such cases is that usually it's relatively simple to discover the bodies, since the criminals involved generally aren't exactly masterminds, so I've got to wonder whether the person who kidnapped and killed Rose Hillard was very smart, or just lucky that the body wasn't uncovered.”

  “Are you impugning my handling of the investigation?”

  “Impugning? That's a big word for a man who's in charge of a small town.”

  “Did you came here to insult me?”

  “I came to see if there's any news about Rose Hillard,” she replied. “It's a case that captured the public imagination five years ago, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of interest now that the five-year anniversary is rolling around. I came to get at the truth, to perhaps provide some closure for her family -”

  “Leave them alone.”

  “Why?”


  “They're good people,” he continued, “and they don't deserve to have the past raked up.”

  “They deserve to know the truth. It's horrible to think of her killer still being out there, feeling all smug because he thinks he's managed to get away with it. Besides, what if he's struck again somewhere else? What if this case is linked to others and more innocent people have died because of mistakes that were made right here in this office?”

  “I'm confident that this is not at all possible.”

  “How can you be so sure?” she asked. “Is it common for killers to slaughter one victim, hide the body perfectly so that no-one ever finds them, and then take early retirement from the game?” She waited for him to answer. “If I didn't know better, Sheriff Gorman, I'd be tempted to suspect that you're withholding some vital information from me, something that actually makes this story make sense.” She smiled. “Not that I'm impugning your reputation, obviously.”

  “The Rose Hillard investigation is very much an ongoing concern,” he replied firmly. “That means that possible leads are still being followed up on a regular basis, and I absolutely believe that we will find both the culprit and the body. I know the media wants every case to be wrapped up neatly so that it fits in with the news cycles, but that isn't how the real world works. Sometimes, proper detective work simply takes time.”

  “Five years, in this case.”

  “Why would I lie?” he asked. “Why would I drag my feet at all?”

  “To protect someone? Yourself, maybe, or someone close to you? Maybe even Rose herself, for some reason. I've been around the block, Sheriff Gorman, and I know that the human mind can twist itself into all sorts of knots until it believes black is white and right is wrong. Plus, this seems to be a perfect example of Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is either that you're incompetent, which isn't the case, or that for some reason you're holding back with the truth.”

  He stared at her, fully aware that nothing he said would be able to get her off his trail.

  “Thank you for your time,” she continued, closing her notebook. “If I have any further questions, I'll be sure to get in touch, and in the meantime I'll be staying at the motel down the road for a few nights while I work on my story. I just hope... Well, I hope that you haven't been losing too much sleep over this case. I'm sure the mystery of Rose's disappearance has been haunting you for the past five years now.” She turned to leave, before stopping as she noticed the door of the safe still hanging open. “An interested approach to security,” she told him with a smile. “Nothing valuable in there, I hope?”

  “Absolutely not,” he replied through gritted teeth. “Just a few documents that wouldn't fit in my desk.”

  Thirty seconds later, as soon as Deborah Culstone had finished her goodbyes and left his office, Gorman was on the phone to a local judge, seeking to obtain an emergency search warrant for a room at the local motel.

  ***

  “This is an outrage!” Deborah shouted barely two hours later, as one of Gorman's deputies held her in the doorway of her motel room. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

  “Conducting a search for stolen material,” Gorman replied, holding up the hurriedly-arranged and faxed warrant for her to see. “And before you ask, no, I don't have any obligation to tell you what I'm looking for. I told Judge Oakes that I have reasonable grounds for suspicion, and he knows me well enough to be satisfied with that explanation.”

  “This is intimidation,” Deborah continued, watching in horror as Karyn and a couple of other officers continued to go through her possessions. “We live in the United States of America, Sheriff Gorman, not Soviet Russia. You have no right to go rampaging through a journalist's private possessions -”

  “Unless I have good cause,” he replied, picking up one of her notebooks from the nearby desk and flicking through it, “and I do have good cause. So tell me, Ms. Culstone, is there anything you want to tell me before my officers complete their search? If you admit to any wrongdoing now, your cooperation would materially improve my inclination to go easy on you.”

  “Found a laptop!” Karyn called out.

  “We'll need the password,” Gorman told Deborah.

  “Sure. It's gotohell, all one word, lower case.”

  “We can easily take it back to the office and brute-force it,” he replied. “We might be out in the sticks here, but we still know how to get access to a hard-drive.”

  “I'm surprised you even know what a hard-drive is,” she spat back at him.

  “The password,” he said firmly. “Now. If you refuse, you're just wasting my time, and that's going to piss me off more than ever.”

  “Fine,” she muttered, pulling away from the deputy's grip and heading over to the desk, where she typed her password into the machine. “Happy now? There's nothing on there apart from my research and some notes! Oh, and some racy photos I sent to a few of my favorite boyfriends over the years. I do hope you'll all avert your eyes when they come up on the screen.”

  “Check her emails,” Gorman told Karyn. “See if she's arranging any exclusives. Also check for hidden partitions and encrypted sections on the drive. I want you to go through that thing with a fine-toothed comb and make sure there's nowhere she could hide anything. Pay particular attention to media files.”

  “What exactly are you expecting to find?” Deborah asked him. “You're acting like there's something very specific that you're worried about.”

  Ignoring her, he watched as Karyn continued to work on the laptop.

  “This is going to be part of the story, you know,” she continued. “My cover piece on the ongoing failed search for Rose Hillard is now going to include a full account of the day the local police department came storming into a journalist's motel room and raked through her possessions. What's wrong, Sheriff? Are you getting paranoid? Are you worried that I might succeed where you failed and actually find poor Rose Hillard?”

  “I doubt that's going to happen,” he replied.

  “There's nothing here,” Karyn said after a moment, closing the lid of the laptop.

  “Check again,” he said firmly.

  “Sir, there's nothing -”

  “Check again!” he shouted.

  While Karyn got back to work, Gorman watched as Joe began to check under the mattress. Slowly, he was starting to feel that perhaps he'd jumped the gun, that Deborah Culstone's arrival in town really had been a coincidence, and that she had nothing to do with the missing disc. If that was the case, however, he was back at square one and he had to assume that for some insane reason, Michael Hillard had decided to implicate himself in the crime. The idea made no sense at all, but at the same time it was the only possibility that in any way fitted the facts. All he could think was that perhaps Michael had lost his mind.

  “Fine,” Deborah said, folding her arms across her chest as she took a seat on a chair in the corner. “I can wait all afternoon while you and your goons finish this wild goose chase. Rest assured, though, that I will find out what you're looking for, and I will find out what you're hiding. I've met men like you before, Sheriff. You think you've got some god-given right to keep everyone safe and hide the truth, but that's not going to happen here. The truth about that girl is going to come out, no matter how horrific it might be. You can't protect the people of this town forever.”

  VI

  Five years ago

  “So,” Ricky said eventually, after they'd been sitting in his car for almost ten minutes, watching the dark house, “are you sure you want to go home tonight? It's just that you seem kinda reluctant.”

  “I'm fine,” Rose replied with a faint, forced smile as she kept her eyes on the front door. She opened her mouth again, as if she was about to say something else, but no sound came out.

  “Are you...” He paused. “Are you scared of something?”

  She turned to him.

  “You know you can tell me, right?”

  She nodded.

  “I mea
n,” he continued, “there's this look you get in your eyes sometimes, Rose, like this real... I don't know, but it's like sadness and dread and fear.”

  “Do I have it now?”

  “You've got it all the time. Even when you seem happy, even when it seems like you're having a real good time, you've got these eyes... They're really beautiful, I mean they're gorgeous, but every time I ever see you I can tell that there's something in the back of your mind, something dark that you maybe don't want to think about.”

  She smiled again, with a hint of tears in her eyes.

  “You're beautiful,” he added finally. “You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life. I just wish I could find a way to take that sliver of sadness out of you. You deserve to be happy, you know that? I wish I could protect you.”

  “I don't need that,” she replied. “Do you have any idea how much damage is caused in the world by people trying to protect other people? I'm not a child.”

  “Yeah, but -”

  “You really notice things about people, huh?” she continued, interrupting him. “That's cool. Not a lot of people do that. They just go through life without really spotting the little things. Or if they notice, they just ask if there's a problem and they believe you if you tell them there isn't. My mother's like that. Sometimes I think she must never even really look at me at all, 'cause otherwise she'd...”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “It's kinda hard to miss it with you,” he replied, glancing at the house. “What's in there that scares you so much? Did something bad happen to you?”

  “It's nothing,” she told him. “Everyone has crap to deal with, right?”

  “Yeah, but -”

  Before he could finish, she leaned closer and kissed him on the lips. Although she kept her mouth closed, she held her face against his for a few seconds before pulling back and biting her bottom lip, and a faint shiver seemed to pass through her body.