“I guess they just didn’t want too many voices,” Claire finished. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Frank is the one going down there.”
“That’s something else.” Jack leaned forward in his chair. “Why are they sending him alone down there? That seems dangerous after everything I’ve seen on TV.”
Claire nodded and laid back on her bed. She was lying sideways and her feet to the floor. “That’s what I said, too. They didn’t send him, though. He volunteered.”
“Frank?” Marissa asked. “I don’t believe it.”
Claire nodded. “He’s leaving soon. Tonight or tomorrow.”
“Why?” Marissa asked.
Claire closed her eyes, feeling emotions coming on again. “Because he cares about me, about us. We’re in a tough spot, and he might be the only person who can help.”
“He’s a good little green dude,” Jack responded. The room went quiet for a second, all of them feeling the same fear. They’d all seen the news reports and knew what was happening in the south. “He’ll be fine. I’m sure of it.”
Claire knew Jack was trying to make her feel better, and she also knew she couldn’t be showing all of these emotions. They had things they needed to do over the next week or two. When Frank did return, they had to be ready.
She sat up and looked at the two of them. “We’ve been taking this seriously, but perhaps not as seriously as we should. That changes today. We’re going back to the funhouse and training again. You both in?”
Marissa nodded.
Jack stood up. “Hell yeah. I’m not letting that little green monkey kill more ghosts or witches than me when we get down there.”
We can’t take it seriously if everything isn’t out in the open, Claire thought. “Marissa, it’s time to talk about it.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Talk about what?”
Marissa looked at the floor between her feet but remained silent.
“Talk about what?” Jack repeated. His eyebrows were still raised as he turned to Claire. “One of you going to tell me?”
“It’s not my story to tell,” Claire responded. “Plus, I don’t know anything. Not really. Marissa told me a little bit, but not enough to matter. Now, though, we all have to hear it, because we have to get serious about training. We can’t let Frank do this alone.” She leaned forward, staring at Marissa. “We need you to open up to us.”
Marissa took in a deep breath and then let out a long sigh. When it ended, she began to speak, although she didn’t look up. “I saw ghosts when I was younger. I told Claire that a week or two ago, but nothing else. I don’t like to think about it.”
Marissa glanced at her arms, and Claire saw that goosebumps stood out across her flesh.
“See.” She nodded toward her right arm. “Even thinking about it starts to scare me. It’s why… It’s why this whole thing terrifies me so much.”
Claire shot a glance at Jack, wondering if he was about to say something mean, but he was leaning forward himself—he looked only concerned.
“I don’t know who or what it was,” Marissa continued. “Only that it was in my grandparents' house. I like to think it wasn’t them, but how do I know?” She shrugged. “Anyway, I was young. Nine or ten, I think, and my grandparents had a farm out in the country. They died, and we had to go out there to deal with the estate.”
Marissa grew quiet for a moment. Claire placed her hand on top of her friend’s. “It’s okay. We’re here, and this is important.”
Marissa nodded and swallowed. “They came at night. There were more than two, although I don’t know how many. They…They chased me out of the house.” She looked up then, tears in her eyes and her body shaking. “Out of the house, Claire. I was screaming, running wild. They were black shadows that flew around me, ran into me, and the cold. That was the worst because it was summer, and even at night, it should have been warm. But it wasn’t.”
She dropped her eyes. “It’s hard to describe it all now. I was young and I’ve mostly tried to forget it. My parents found me in one of their fields. I was screaming and curled up in a ball. The ghosts, they dissipated—just disappeared—when my parents showed up. I couldn’t stop screaming, though. I thought… I didn’t think I was going to die, only that I was going insane. That I had gone insane, and I’d never, ever come back to being normal.”
Marissa closed her eyes and steadied her breath. It took a few seconds before she was ready to talk again. When she did, she looked up and first found Claire, then Jack. “I know that I’m more scared than most people here. Maybe that’s because of what happened when I was a kid, or maybe it’s just my predisposition. I don’t know. But these ghosts, they scare me in a way that nothing else here has. That funhouse…It’s horrific for me. I’m going to go back to it. I’m going to try, but… Well, now you both know.”
Claire waited a few moments before she spoke, her hand still on Marissa’s. “I can only imagine what that much have felt like because of the things I’ve seen here. Otherwise, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. That’s all I’m saying. Fear is okay.” She looked at Jack. “Right?”
Don’t you say anything mean, or I’ll kill you, Claire thought.
Jack leaned back in the chair. He grinned. “I’m not going to go as far as to say that you’re sane, but yeah, nothing to be ashamed about, Sissy. I don’t know what being scared is like, because it’s never happened to me, but I get what you’re saying.”
Claire shot daggers with her eyes, and he caught them. His grin died away.
“Seriously. Claire’s right,” Jack told her. “We’ve got your back, and if those same ghosts show up this time, we’ll do to them what we did to Dracula. Nothing to worry about, okay?”
Marissa nodded. “Thanks. Both of you. I mean it.”
Claire stood and embraced her.
“I’m not going to get in on that,” Jack commented with a grin. “But I’m there in spirit.”
Chapter Thirteen
Ye’ve gotten yerself into a lot of trouble, Frank thought.
He’d returned to Miami and now found himself stalking the ghost who had nearly killed him once before. He’d done it for Claire, of course, but the reasons why didn’t matter too much right now. He’d come down here to find out where the witches were, but the only way he knew to do that was to capture a ghost.
Then make “it” talk. Although Frank had a sneaking suspicion that if ghosts had genders, this one was male.
Currently, Frank was watching the creature move down the beach. It was back to wearing linen shorts and a shirt but also flip-flops this time. Frank wasn’t so stupid as to be on the actual beach with it but was ten stories up on an ocean-facing hotel balcony. He had binoculars to his eyes and had been looking at the beach for the past hour, knowing that at some point the bum would return.
Sure enough, there it was.
“Now I just have to figure out how in the hell to trap the thing,” he grumbled, having absolutely no idea how to do it. Frank didn’t know the first thing about how to capture a ghost, but he did know time was short.
He lowered the binoculars, his eyesight strong enough to see the ghost once he knew its general direction, although obviously, the binoculars did help.
Frank started thinking, his head slowly moving in the direction the ghost was walking: heading closer and closer to Frank’s new hotel room.
A few minutes passed, and the ghost tossed a beer can onto the sand.
Litterbug, Frank thought.
An hour passed as the ghost slowly meandered. Frank eventually had to bring the binoculars back to his eyes in order to see it, but he watched as the creature hit the end of the beach, moving into the weeds and unkempt foliage.
That was when the idea came to him.
The beer can it’d tossed on the ground…and the end of the beach.
Ye might be as dumb as that damned centaur, he thought, yet this was the best idea he’d come up within the past twenty-four hours. If it didn’t work, he’d probably die.
>
But if it did? Well, he might actually be able to go back to Boston with some idea of where these witches were.
Frank wasn’t exactly thrilled with this plan. Nor was he sure it would work. And by “sure,” he meant he didn’t have a freaking clue. So many things had to go right to pull this thing off.
Frank was now at the far end of the beach—technically where it ended. Tall weeds cut off the sand, and though the ocean still washed up on the shore, no one would ever want to lounge around in these prickly plants. A day had passed since Frank watched the ghost disappear on this side of the beach, and he’d spent the latter half of it setting up his trap.
Frank was sweaty, dirty, and tired. He also didn’t know how long he’d have to freaking wait out here.
It could be this evening. It could be tomorrow. Could be never.
Frank peered down the beach, the nearest person a hundred yards away. He saw no sign of the ghost yet, and so he plopped down into the weeds and reached into the cooler next to him. He’d come prepared for this little stakeout. Frank pulled out a beer, popped the top, and took a long swig, feeling the can’s coolness on his hot flesh.
He’d been somewhat worried that someone might see a short, odd-looking man digging around at the end of the beach, come down here and ask him what he was doing. Frank wasn’t worried about actually being caught—he could teleport away if needed. He just didn’t want the area occupied by lifeguards or some other do-gooder.
No one had come, though, and Frank worked until the job was done.
Now, he waited.
The first beer drained away, and Frank thought about tossing it into the brush behind him.
“Nah,” he remarked. “Gotta be better than that beach bum of a ghost.” He put it in the cooler, then grabbed another can.
This continued until the sun began dropping below the horizon. Frank was getting tired of sitting out here. He hadn’t brought any bug spray, and the mosquitos had torn him up the entire day. His green skin had a nice red tint to it as well, a sunburn that was going to hurt like hell tomorrow. He was about to give up for the evening when his eyes caught something. Frank stood—his head barely above the tall weeds—and looked out at the long beach.
“Well, I’ll be damned. There it is.” Frank didn’t need binoculars to see the linen shorts and shirt moving toward him. “No flip-flops today, though.”
He didn’t think the ghost saw him yet, although Frank couldn’t be sure about that. Either way—whether it had or hadn’t spotted him—it kept coming.
Frank carefully placed his mostly empty beer back in the cooler, then took out the last unopened one. He stood back up.
“Hey, remember me?” he called through the grass and onto the beach.
The shorts and shirt stopped, pausing as if the figure had just seen Frank.
That answers that question, he thought. “Been watching ye for a long time.”
“Go away, leppy,” the apparition called back, the voice rushing over Frank like a tired wind. “It’s been a long day, and I don’t have time to deal with your nonsense. I just want to sleep.”
“The only sleep ye’re going to get is when I knock ye out,” Frank shot back. Can ghosts get knocked out? he wondered. He decided it best not to ask.
The ghost started forward, moving slowly, as if trudging to do a task that it didn’t want to do, but one that must be done all the same.
Frank waited until the ghost was maybe ten feet away, just before it touched the tall grass. The ghost’s shoulders were slumped forward as if it were staring at the ground. Frank cocked his arm back and launched the beer can. It flew straight and smashed right into what should have been the spirit’s face.
“SON-OF-A-BITCH!” the ghost roared, the linen sleeves moving as if it was holding its head.
Frank’s eyes lit up. Good. Very-freakin’-good.
The ghost streaked forward, moving as fast as anything Frank had ever seen. Frank remained standing right where he was, his legs spreading slightly for balance and his hands balling into fists.
Three…two…one…
The sound of dry grass cracking filled the night air as the spirit rushed toward Frank—right until it gave off a scream.
“What the hell?”
The ghost fell into the hole Frank had spent all day digging, then carefully laying grass over.
Frank stepped forward. The sun was almost completely gone, and the moon was ready to reign. He looked down into the hole. It was about ten feet deep and four feet wide. Two-by-fours lined each side, keeping the sand from falling in on itself.
Not a bad job, Frank thought while nodding.
“Let me out of here,” the ghost howled. “Let me out of here, or I promise you’ll be haunted until your last breath. Do you understand?”
The words rushed past Frank, no longer a tired wind, but something more akin to a hurricane. Frank only smiled into the pit. “No, I’ve got another idea.”
I just hope ye can’t fly or teleport, Frank thought. He walked away from the hole, moving through the grass to his dropped beer. He’d known he was taking a chance doing this—a very dangerous one. If the ghost could fly or teleport, or if it simply didn’t have to interact with physical objects, Frank would be toast.
Frank bent over and grabbed the beer, turning back around to the hole. He could hear the ghost hollering from inside it.
It was the beer can that made him realize the ghost interacted physically with all these things, the one it had tossed onto the beach yesterday. Sure, Frank should have known it from a bunch of other things, but that’s what made it click. So then he realized it was somewhat constrained by physics, then maybe gravity would take hold of it too. Frank wasn’t a scientist, clearly, but did it matter?
He popped the beer open and took a swig.
“Nope. Doesn’t matter in the slightest if I’m a scientist.” Frank walked back into the grass and to the opposite side of the hole. The ghost was still inside it, yammering away.
“Careful,” Frank cautioned as he sat down, dangling his legs over the edge. “You don’t want to make all this sand come down. I’ve got the two-by-fours, and the sand is wet down there, but you never know what might happen.”
He grinned.
“You’re a dead man,” the ghost responded, but it stopped moving and appeared to be staring up at Frank from the way the shirt sat on its shoulders.
“First things first. Ye a guy or a gal?” Frank asked. “I keep thinking of ye as an it, but I’m not sure that’s the proper nomenclature.”
“I’m a guy, or I was. Now I’m a ghost,” the ghost called up, anger rippling through the wind of his voice.
“Okay, ghost. Ye gotta name?” Frank took a brief sip of beer.
“You can call me Al.”
Frank raised an eyebrow. “I like that song.”
“And I’ll call you Betty,” the ghost shot back. “Now let me the hell out of here.”
Frank smiled. At least he’s got a sense of humor. “All right, Al. I’m going to level with ye. I’m not here for ye. In fact, I really don’t care that ye’ve been robbing these tourists. I know how tough it is coming from a strange place to a land that doesn’t want ye. What I’m interested in is how ye got here. I’m interested in the people who brought ye over.”
Frank shrugged. “In other words, who are ye workin’ for?”
“If I had eyes, you’d see me rolling them right now,” the ghost remarked. It sat down in the pit, leaning lightly against the wood. “I don’t work for anyone. Why do you think I’m out here every day? If I was working for someone, don’t you think I’d be doing their bidding?”
“Now’s not the time to be gettin’ fancy,” Frank told him. He looked around the area as if seeing it for the first time. “If ye haven’t noticed, there’s not a whole lot of help coming for ye out here. In fact, I’m pretty much your best friend.” He looked back down into the pit. “Now. If ye aren’t working for ‘em, I know ye’ve got some idea of who they are. I don�
��t think all ye ghosts simply showed up here at once, and telling me that’s what happening will only insult my intelligence.”
“Leppy,” Al said, sounding exhausted, “if I tell you what you want to know, you going to get me out of here?”
Frank leaned in a little bit. “You really can’t fly? I thought all ghosts could fly?”
“If I could fly, would I be sitting down here yipping back and forth with you? No, we can’t all fly. Some can, some can’t. I can drink beer, but I can’t fly. Plusses and minuses.”
Frank nodded. “I understand completely.” He took a sip of the beer, then shook the can. “About half left. You want it?”
He could tell Al was staring at him. “Yeah.”
“All right, I’ll give it to ye, ye tell me what ye know, and then, I’ll get ye out of the pit. Deal?”
The ghost sighed. “Doesn’t look like I got much of a choice. Let me have the beer.”
Frank stretched his arm out and dropped it straight. The ghost caught it like an expert baseball fielder.
“There ye go. Now get to talking.”
And to Frank’s surprise, Al did.
“What all do you know about witches, Betty?” Al asked. “You ever squared off with one?”
“Can’t say I have,” Frank answered, hardly paying any attention to the ghost now.
The two of them were out of the hole and across town. Frank actually liked Al—if that was his real name. They both had a hankering for beer, and Al had a pretty good sense of humor.
Frank honestly didn’t think he was mixed up in all this murdering business, either.
Al’s story was an interesting one, to say the least.
Al remembered being alive in the normal sense of the word, although he couldn’t say if it actually happened or not. He remembered Earth. “Well, that could just be these humans believing me and giving me those memories. I don’t know. That’s above my pay grade.” What he knew for sure was that he’d lived on the other side of the Veil and had been summoned over here.
“Spells,” he’d told Frank from inside of the hole.
Paranormal University: Second Semester: An Unveiled Academy Novel Page 13
