Donn's Hill

by Caryn Larrinaga

  Mark snickered, and Kit jabbed him with her elbow before turning back to me. “Okay, Miss Comedienne. You’re all set.”

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

  “We’re going to start here, exactly where the last sighting was. If we don’t get any activity within an hour or so, we’ll move into the house.” She winked at me. “But I’m betting on you being our lucky charm. I think we’ll get something in record time.”

  “What exactly do you want me to do, though?”

  “Oh, just do your psychic thing. Keep an eye out for anything spooky. Speak up when you see something—anything—that seems out of the ordinary.”

  On that vague note, she stood up and headed back toward the van, leaving me to wonder what they expected me to do. A few minutes later, she returned with Yuri. He was wearing a lavalier mic as well, and his eyes were bright behind his narrow glasses.

  Yuri clapped his hands together. “Everyone ready?”

  Mark stood up and moved outside the circle of logs to stand beside Kit. She helped him lift a bulky camera rig onto his shoulder, and he checked a few things on the device before telling Yuri, “Camera set.”

  “Sound ready,” Kit said.

  The three of them looked at me. I felt a sudden surge of anxiety. What would happen when I said I was ready? Would the ghost jump out of a tree and tackle me? Was this some sort of elaborate joke they played on newcomers to Donn’s Hill—telling them they’re psychic and then taking them out to the wilderness where they pull their pants down and capture the whole humiliating thing on camera?

  I swallowed. “Ready,” I croaked.

  “Stand by,” said Yuri.

  “Camera rolling,” Mark said.

  We stood in the silence for a few moments.

  “Action!” Yuri declared.

  Contrary to Kit’s confident prediction, nothing happened right away. Mark shot Yuri talking into the camera, giving the background on the cabin and telling the story of how Richard Franklin, the prep-school bully, had died in the area. Kit spent some time in the woods, recording audio of an owl hooting and other night sounds. Yuri insisted that Mark get some footage of me, standing in the middle of a circle of logs, twisting up my face and trying to concentrate on anything I saw or heard. The expression my face had settled on probably looked more confused than extrasensory. How was I supposed to know what “being a psychic” looked like?

  I prayed that something more interesting would happen and that Mark would catch it on camera so we wouldn’t need any shots of me looking as though I was struggling to see the hidden picture in a Magic Eye poster. I nearly collapsed in relief when Yuri finally told me I could sit down.

  “Cut!” he said. “I think that’ll do it. Okay—let’s go lights out.”

  Kit moved around the circle, shutting down the floodlights and plunging us into blackness. I stared straight ahead, blinking to encourage my eyes to adjust, but it took a while. Clouds covered the sky, hiding the moon and the stars and keeping us in the dark.

  “Infrared set,” said Mark.

  Yuri took a seat on one of the logs, facing the cabin. “Let’s get settled in, everybody. This is where the real fun begins.”

  I sat down across the circle from him so I had a view into the woods. The breeze picked up again, carrying cold air across my face and down the back of my neck. Shivering, I pulled up the hood on my sweatshirt.

  “Stand by.” I could hear Yuri’s voice but couldn’t make out any of his features. He was a silhouette, a shadow outlined by darkness.

  “Rolling,” called Mark.

  This time Yuri didn’t shout action. We simply sat in the gloom, waiting, giving the spirit a chance to “warm up to us,” as Yuri called it. I wasn’t a fan of the idea. It felt odd, perching on a log and hoping that a killer ghost would feel comfortable enough to come out and say hello.

  I stared out into the woods, thinking about Richard Franklin. I pictured a handsome rich boy who never had to ask for anything. My mental image looked a lot like Josh—sandy hair, high cheekbones, smug smile. Josh had grown up with everything and never seemed to get used to not getting whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it.

  What would Richard Franklin’s life have been like—two parents, a top-notch education, and loads of cash? So much more than most people could hope for.

  What happened to make him so angry? I wondered. So violent? What would he have grown up to become if he hadn’t decided that heights and alcohol were a good mix and tumbled to his death?

  The temperature was dropping much more quickly than it did in town. The wind shifted directions, picked up speed, and blew across the top of the cabin toward the lake. A strange sound—half howl, half moan—filled the air around us. I stiffened. The noise made my blood run cold, like long, icy fingers were running down my spine.

  “It’s the hole in the roof,” Yuri shouted over the din. “It’s like blowing across the top of a beer bottle.”

  The wind intensified. It blew back my hood and lifted my hair, thrashing and tangling it. I opened my mouth to speak, but air was forced down my throat. I buried my chin in my chest and gulped, trying to breathe against the gale. One of the floodlights blew over. Apparently, the storm of the century was rolling in.

  I heard Mark shouting, but the wind carried away most of his words. “… shelter! … into the cabin!”

  Kit and Yuri grabbed the equipment nearest them and bolted, disappearing around the corner of the cabin. I moved to follow them, snatching up a hard case, but the wind seized it. The case became a sail and yanked me back toward the lake. I lost my footing and fell against a log bench, toppling backward into the dirt. My lower back burned from scraping against the rough bark of the log.

  I scrambled up and darted sideways toward the cabin, hugging the case to my chest and my body to the wall. My head ached. The wind jabbed at me. It felt aggressive, as though it wasn’t just a part of nature doing its thing. It seemed to be targeting me, desperate to get a hold of me and drag me into the water. I leaned closer into the cabin and dug the nails of my free hand into it. I clawed my way forward, seeking purchase like a rock climber, only I was moving horizontally across flat ground.

  At last I reached the front of the cabin. I crooked my arm around the corner, anchoring myself there against the wind. I needed to pull myself the rest of the way around the bend then make a mad dash for the door. Only a few yards stood between me and the safety of the cabin’s interior, but I felt completely drained. Fighting the wind had taken so much energy. I felt as though I’d run six miles, not shambled sixty feet. It was all I could do to hang on to the side of the cabin, fighting to keep from being carried away by the wind.

  A warm hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me around the corner—Mark. His curly hair blew in every direction, and he shouted something, but I couldn’t hear anything over the screaming wind and the howling roof. He dragged me the rest of the way into the cabin and heaved me inside.

  Kit and Yuri were in the kitchen, each clutching a small electric lantern. Mark’s camera was still rolling from its place on his shoulder. I slammed the door shut behind us, but it didn’t do much to drown out the noise from the storm. The wind was blowing into the cabin through the hole in the roof, stirring up plastic cups and tossing them around the room.

  “The back bedroom!” I shouted. “Its window was shuttered last time. It might be safer there!”

  The other three nodded, and we dashed for the hallway and ducked into the bedroom. Once the door was closed, the noise from outside subsided quite a bit.

  Unfortunately, the stench was back.

  It was that same sickly sweet odor I’d smelled the last time I’d been in the cabin. It reminded me of the time Josh and I had forgotten to clean out our cooler when we got back from a camping trip in Moab. Some raw chicken had rotted in there for a few days, and the stink had drifted through our apartment like a ghost, impossible to pin down.

  The smell in the cabin was even worse than that rancid chicken. I p
ulled my sweatshirt up over my nose, but the stench was relentless. It punched its way through the fabric and shot into my nasal passages, making my eyes water.

  Kit gagged. “Where’s that coming from?”

  I stared at her, surprised. “You can smell it too?”

  “Of course I can smell it.” She pulled her sweatshirt over the bottom half of her face, muffling her voice. “I have a nose, man.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Yuri and Mark, and they both nodded. Everyone could smell it this time. We all looked at the closet. It was the only possibility. The door was closed, hiding God-knew-what, and I didn’t want to know what was behind it. No thanks, Monty. I’m good with the Money Machine. I don’t need whatever’s behind that curtain.

  But what I wanted was irrelevant. The door creaked open, revealing the closet’s interior.

  Someone was hiding inside.

  I screamed, and then a bit of relieved laughter bubbled out from between my lips. Brian Andersen was sitting inside the closet, huddled in the darkness.

  “Brian, you scared the hell out of me!” I told him.

  He didn’t respond.

  Yuri leaned forward with his lantern, brightening the closet. The light played across Brian’s rigid features. His eyes were glassy, and his mouth was open in an expression of shock. My stomach lurched. He was dead.

  BANG!

  It sounded like a gunshot. My pulse screamed in my ears, and I whipped around, wildly scanning the room to find the cause of the noise. One of the shutters had come loose, and the wind had slammed it against the window. It swung open again then collided with the window frame, generating another deafening crack before the wind grabbed at it and ripped the shutter off entirely.

  Transfixed, I stared out the window and into the darkness. There was something outside—someone outside. The wind was carrying dust and debris past the window, but some of it was hanging in the air, defying all laws of nature and forming the unmistakable shape of a face. It was like a piece of abstract art—the longer I stared at it, the clearer the face became. The dusty lines coalesced into a strong jawline and side-parted hair, and a pair of eyes formed from the swirling particles of leaves and earth. Thin bands of blackness became a mouth, twisting into a sinister grin that spread across the thing’s face from ear to ear.

  I knew immediately that Yuri was right—it was Richard Franklin. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew it, as surely as if the ghost had handed me a business card. Another certainty flashed in my mind: If we stay here, we’ll end up just like Brian.

  I spun back around to face the others. Yuri was shouting into his cell phone, and Kit was screaming at Mark to keep filming. It was bedlam—I needed to get their attention.

  “We need to get out of here!” I yelled.

  My shout was punctuated with a yawning moan from outside. A moment later, something huge and heavy landed on the roof of the cabin. The entire structure shook, and a splintering sound came from overhead. The ceiling was giving in.

  I heard someone scream, “Run!”—maybe it was me, I’m honestly not sure—and I obeyed the order, dropping the black plastic equipment case and putting every ounce of my strength into bolting from the bedroom. I ran out of the cabin and across the yard, protecting my head with my arms. The wind pummeled me, trying to knock me off course, but I powered forward, running at an angle to compensate. The van was only fifty yards away—I could see its shape through the darkness—then forty yards, thirty yards, twenty, ten. My legs were already angry about my earlier battle to get into the cabin, and they protested this second sprint by burning furiously. At last, I made it to the van and reached for the handle to pull open the sliding door.

  The instant my hand touched the van, the wind stopped. It was as though someone had thrown a gigantic off switch and shut down all movement. The air was suddenly still and silent.

  I heard pounding feet behind me and looked back just as Kit, Yuri, and Mark skidded to a stop.

  Mark’s face was pale and drawn. “What the hell was that?”

  Kit, to my complete astonishment, was grinning. “That was the greatest thing we’ve ever caught on camera.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I was having major déjà vu. For the second time in a week, I was sitting in the open door of the Soul Searchers’ van, huddled in a blanket while being interviewed by a sheriff’s deputy. It was even the exact same deputy, a tall imposing woman with a long braid of sleek black hair.

  My body felt as if I’d just been in a barroom brawl. On top of that, I was mentally drained. I squinted against the flashing red and blue lights that illuminated the clearing in front of the cabin; they were starting to give me an icepick headache.

  “Seems like you have a knack for finding dead bodies,” the deputy said when she finished taking my statement. If the words had come out of Graham’s mouth, they would have sounded like a friendly joke. But coming from Deputy Wallace, they sounded accusatory.

  I pulled the rough brown blanket tighter around my shoulders. “Believe me, it’s not something I’m doing on purpose.”

  Deputy Wallace narrowed her piercing brown eyes and stared at me for a few moments before snapping her black leather notebook shut. “We’ll be in touch if we need any more information.”

  She strode away toward her squad car, where Yuri stood talking to another deputy. I glanced at my watch. It was three in the morning. We’d been at the cabin for more than seven hours, but it didn’t feel that long. All of the night’s events were mashed together in my head, and it felt as though they’d happened in mere minutes. My body knew the truth; my legs screamed for an Epsom salt bath.

  Despite my exhaustion, my mind raced. Brian Andersen was dead. Brian, the first person who’d made me feel welcome in this town. He was a husband and a father. I hated thinking that sometime in the next few hours his daughter would find out that her dad was gone forever.

  It hit too close to home. I forced myself to think about another angle. Was Brian’s death connected to Tom Bishop’s? What would Penelope have to gain from killing Brian? The fact that the bodies had been found in the same location was too big of a coincidence to ignore. There was the possibility that Richard Franklin’s ghost was responsible, but that didn’t feel likely. All the other deaths at the cabin had been ruled as tragic accidents. According to Graham, Tom Bishop’s death was being treated as a homicide, and Brian didn’t end up in that closet by accident. He’d been left there.

  I chewed my lip as I thought in circles. Tom Bishop. Wet footprints. Chai tea. Brian Andersen. The diner. Penelope. The cabin. My head was pounding. I was too tired for this. I needed to sleep.

  Mark and Kit were sitting on the road a few yards away. I left the van and walked over to join them, careful to stay on the asphalt. I felt safe there, out of Richard Franklin’s reach. I settled down on the road beside Mark, who was watching the EMTs unload a stretcher from an ambulance. The vehicle was backed up almost to the front door of the cabin, and the building was swarming with deputies.

  “I don’t get it,” Mark said. “Where did the wind go?”

  It had been hours since we’d made the mad dash through the storm, and ever since I’d reached the blacktop of the road and touched the van, there hadn’t been so much as a light breeze. The night air was calm and still, and even the clouds had dissipated. The moon hung over us, shining down like a giant searchlight.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I was worried when the emergency crews showed up. I thought something bad would happen to them too.”

  Bewilderingly, nothing had. Was there greater safety in numbers? Or was Richard Franklin’s ghost just not interested in them for some reason?

  Yuri joined us. He took a small cloth from his pocket and used it to clean his wire-rimmed glasses. His broad shoulders were slumped forward, and his usually bright eyes appeared dull. He looked as tired as I felt.

  “How are you holding up?” His Russian accent was even more pronounced than usual, as though he didn’t have the energy to enun
ciate the way he normally did.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  Yuri squeezed my shoulder and pushed his glasses back onto his face. “Hang in there.” Then turning his attention to Mark, he asked, “Would you mind coming with me to the sheriff’s department? They want to go over the footage we collected tonight, and I could use your help spooling through it with them.”

  Mark stood and brushed off his backside. “Sure. No problem.”

  “Good. Kit, why don’t you and Mac head back to town? Deputy Wallace says she’ll take us home when we’re done with the footage.”

  Kit got to her feet and offered me a hand. I grabbed it, and she helped pull me up. I didn’t have the energy to jump up and down for joy, but I wanted to. We were finally going home. At last, I could get some sleep. We dropped off our blankets at the deputy’s car and climbed into the van.

  Within minutes, we were humming along the highway on our way back to Donn’s Hill. I glanced over at Kit, worried that she might be too tired to drive safely. I certainly wasn’t in any condition to be behind the wheel, but she looked wide-eyed and alert.

  “Aren’t you worn out?” I asked.

  She glanced at me before turning her attention back to the road. “Worn out? How can you be tired at a time like this? It’s so exciting!” She bounced in her seat.

  I stared at her. “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious. This is great!” She reached out a hand and clapped me on the knee. “I knew you were our lucky charm. I knew it the second I met you.”

  My mouth hung open, and it took me a moment before I could formulate a response. “You think this was lucky? You’re excited about everything that happened back there?”

  “Let’s see.” She started ticking points off on her hand, lifting her fingers from the steering wheel. “None of us were seriously injured; all our equipment is fine; and the cameras captured the most compelling evidence of an atmokinetic spirit ever! That ghost can control the weather!”