Gridlocked Guesthouse (Locked House Hauntings Book 1)

by Mixi J Applebottom

  Tiffany smirked, even though she tried hard not to. Rachel had worked so hard on this, and all it took was the mockery of a group of college students to really elevate any tactical errors.

  "Rafael is the ghost's victim so far

  Good luck getting out with your car

  The murders have started

  Beezer just farted

  Grab fucking clues and let's jar." Ben burst out with his unexpected (and mediocre if you ask me) limerick and everyone burst out laughing.

  Ricky, seeing Rachel getting progressively more and more upset, put an end to the riffing and shouted, "Alright! Go figured out the damn clue, you only have till six, or two of you get the ax."

  Lucy hesitantly wandered into the safe room. "Guys, are we sure Rafael is okay? He's so pale... Does anyone know what he took?"

  Rachel shrugged. Ricky shook his head. Nobody else knew anything. "Hey, I'll keep an eye on him and you can hunt for clues with Beth," Rachel offered, determined to keep this night on track.

  There was giggling and dispersing as the booze flowed more freely. This time, as they slowly searched out the house, it was obvious there was going to be a lot more to discover. There were, in fact, as they searched, padlocks of all sorts. There were lots of things to unlock, and a key that was hidden in plain sight--it was in a clear puzzle-box. Still. Nobody had any ideas what to do with the paint chips.

  Beth and Zane sat together in the safe room working on the puzzle box, gently rotating it around in their hands. There wasn't a single obvious way to open it. Zane stared at her pretty hands and the concentration in her eyes as she gently ran her fingers on the box, pressing softly at it as if there would be a hidden button. He also, as she was distracted, took a moment to stare at her ample bosom.

  Her eyes flickered up to his for a moment, while he was staring through the box into her deep cleavage line. She blushed and looked back down. I don't know if she thought he was looking at the box, or if she knew secretly in her heart that he was starting to lust for her. But either way, they were having a pleasant time in the safe room.

  Ricky and Rachel sat at the dining room table with the still barely breathing Rafael. Lucy was right, he was definitely toeing the line between life and death for this role. It had been completely unnecessary to drug him, but he was a twenty-one-year-old man-boy wanting to impress everyone. Especially Lucy. He wanted her to see how damn dedicated he was to being a professional actor. It was something they continued to bicker about. When they met, last year, he was still planning on being an engineer. He was a responsible grown man who wanted to provide for a wife someday--but then, something changed within him. He joined a play and realized his true calling was the arts. Why would he sit at a desk all day crunching the dull boring numbers over and over again? His entire life would just be calculating airflow in yet another room. That wasn't how he wanted to live.

  He wanted more. He wanted a bright happy new role to play, he wanted to breathe and create and be beautiful. No more of this desk work. Nothing like that anymore. He still craved to be a stable, supportive man, but he also needed to create.

  Okay, now if I'm honest, I don't know all of that. I don't really know him, other than Lucy made it pretty damn clear that he had switched from a family-feeding engineer program to a wild goose chase as an actor. So I am guessing I'm pretty on the money with his internal stuff. Either way, he was out cold, in the dining room. Let me tell you where everyone else was.

  Mike, Ben, John, and Beezer had gone up to the master bedroom. They had been slowly and pleasantly searching the dressers and the bed. Mike kept holding up the nearly white paint chip to different creamy objects, but so far, he hadn't found a match. Ben found a small shoebox with several dirty pictures of Mr. And Mrs. Jamison. The boys were hooting and hollering at the photographs. The Mrs. was dressed in silky, sexy getups, and the Mr. was wearing a facemask. Beezer kept pointing at her cross-eyed nipples while Ben snorted with laughter. "Do you think this is Rachel and Ricky all dressed up?"

  Beezer retorted, "I guess they needed a little R and R, if you know what I mean!" His laughter bubbled across the hallway to Tiffany and Mikaela; they were searching the twins' room. They weren't very good searchers. Honestly, I think they got distracted with the first thing they found and completely forgot to search the rest of the room.

  The first thing they found was a stuffed animal sitting in the crib, and it did, in fact, match the paint chip the girls were holding. It wasn't the item that Rachel had planted, it wasn't a clue. A red herring, so to speak. They were both holding it, though, petting it gently and whispering about how important this particular stuffed elephant must be. If you squeezed it hard, it was supposed to say, "Mama loves you!" in a chipper little voice.

  But the batteries were struggling after years of neglect and it was slow and moaning and sounded much more like it said, "Ma murlves you," which Tiffany mistakenly heard as "Ma murders you" and thus thought it was a very, very pertinent clue.

  "Do you think they meant for us to find the answer so quickly? How could Amelia have been the murderer if she was in fact mutilated so terribly? Plus, what about the word 'grid'? Maybe she meant to write 'guilt'?" Tiffany whispered fast and intensely to Mikaela, who was squeezing the elephant over and over.

  "Maybe we should put this back. If we've already solved it, then what are we going to do with the rest of the weekend? Rachel will be so upset." Mikaela said slowly, squeezing the little elephant again.

  While they argued over the clue, that was technically a red herring, I'll tell you what Jenny and her goats were up to. They were standing outside, even at this ungodly hour. She was hoping they would tinkle and nibble on some plants, and thus be less likely to eat the furniture in the house. Lucy was standing next to her, trembling in the cool night breeze. "Can you believe Mike blocked us in with his stupid van? How the hell will we get out of here? How the hell did he even get it in there?" She let out a big huffy breath of annoyance and her breath grew frosty in the air.

  "We should head back in; it's freaking cold out here," Jenny retorted.

  "Hey, what are the names of these two?" Lucy pointed at the goats.

  "Cletus and Carson. They are both white, but if you are paying attention, Cletus has a black patch on his right ear. Otherwise, they are just little snowballs, aren't they?" Jenny said, and both goats perked up, kicking and dancing back to the house.

  Lucy looked up and saw the room that nobody died in, the room that she asked if it was also safe, that very room--which I might add nobody was in, in case you haven't caught on yet. Rachel and Mikaela were in the twins' room, and the boys were in the master bedroom, laughing at R and R in their ridiculously poor taste idea of evidence pictures.

  Nobody was in this room, but Lucy looked up and saw the lights flicker on and off, and when they came on again, the unmistakable silhouette of two small children were in the window. It startled her because she was certain there were no children in the house. The lights flickered again, off, then on, and the silhouettes were gone.

  She nudged Jenny, "Did you see that in the window?" And Jenny shook her head and they stomped back inside, goats and all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There were thirteen people in this house and if I introduced them one after another in a long drawn-out string, you'd surely die of boredom. But I figure maybe I should just dot them in the story one at a time, like pats of butter in a properly made scalloped potato dish. Let me tell you about John. He had been, in fact, dating Tiffany up until last week. They'd been going steady for a while, and it was super scandalous.

  She got pregnant.

  He was amazingly excited and immediately proposed. Bought flowers, and his whole life was falling into place. Did I tell you he was graduating this year? He was a smart one. He would be a business accounting major, but his plans were to run the accounting department in a big business, like Google or something ridiculously huge. He wanted to make it big. He was determined and smart. And savvy. And he loved that girl s
o damn much!

  Anyway, so she turned down his proposal, and even worse than that, she aborted their baby.

  Poor John was absolutely devastated.

  He was a wreck. That was why he was so drunk. I might add that nobody else was stumbling and staggering around trying to drink themselves half to death. But John had already gotten absolutely plastered. He stood with the other men in the master bedroom--where Mr. Richard Jamison froze to death--and they were still looking at the dirty pictures they thought were R and R.

  He was holding a bottle of vodka in his right hand. It had started out discreetly, but soon he was non-discreetly taking large chugs from the bottle. "Hey, you should slow down, buddy," Mike said, looking at his friend.

  John just took another swig. He stumbled as they stepped to leave the room, and Mike realized John was drunk. He could hardly stay upright.

  So Mike did the friendly thing and knocked John down on the bed, wrestling the vodka from him. "Sleep it off, you dumb drunk asshole." He slugged halfheartedly at John.

  He resisted; he wanted to play the game or something. But once he was on the bed, the room spun. Mike clicked off the light and took his own sip from the vodka. It was shit, nothing smooth or delicious about it. He was snoring not five minutes later.

  And that was how John got left alone, in the dark, on the master bedroom.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lucy checked on her boyfriend Rafael again, and she was concerned with how cool his body felt. She ran her fingertips to his neck and tried to feel for a pulse, but she didn't know what the hell she was doing.

  Instead, she opened his shirt and pressed her ear tightly to his chest. She could hear the soft thumping of his heart. "How long was he supposed to be out for?" she asked Rachel.

  Rachel just shrugged. Ricky said, "Lucy, go have some fun. Stop fussing so much about him; he's fine. He knows what he was doing." He didn't. Let's be honest, besides Rafael's deliberate dedication to the role, he was still just a moron college kid. I'm not even certain he knew exactly what he had taken. Just... something a friend of a friend gave him to make him look dead "for a while."' That was good enough for him.

  Jenny grabbed Lucy's hand and left her precious pets with Rachel in the kitchen. "Let's go see if Beth and Mikaela found anything interesting." Jenny had a soft, sweet smile, and she was a good girl. If nothing else, she could distract Lucy from the worries of the middle of the night sort. She was rightfully worried that Rafael was slowly dying and nobody was helping him. That his skin was growing cold as his heart and lungs struggled to function. Maybe Jenny didn't want Lucy to notice his fingertips and lips slowly turning darker shades of blue. He should have been in an ambulance, not half propped in a chair.

  But they left him and soon were giggling up the stairs just as Ben and Mike and Beezer were coming down. Without any hesitation, Beezer rubbed himself on the girls as they tried to pass on the stairs. He was first in line and Ben followed his lead in a sweet, gentle lie, "I'm so sorry," and his body also, casually grazed the ladies. Jenny let out a laugh, but Lucy frowned.

  Mike did not fondle the women, instead putting his hands up in a mock, "don't shoot me"' pose. Lucy high-fived one of his hands, but Jenny, in a fit of comedy, just pushed her little breasts into them. Mike looked awfully startled, and Beezer let out a proper hoot and holler. He didn't even squeeze them, just stood, startled, with his hands high-fiving her breasts. She winked and up the stairs the ladies went, leaving a very flustered man.

  He was red as a tomato when they entered the library. They found in the library two padlocks and two combination locks. Two locked desk drawers and one locked a small chest. The other appeared to lock a lamp, which made no effing sense, and Beezer immediately commented on this. "Why the fuck would someone put a lock on a lamp? Why. The. Fuck." It wasn't a question; it was just an announcement.

  Mike slowly flipped through the books, hoping for a scrap of paper. "Do you guys see anything this... white color?"

  Beezer let out and exasperated sigh and said, "Dude, white is white, color-matching is a girl's job. I'm gonna cut one of these locks." He made a scissoring motion in the air.

  Ben made a masturbatory gesture in reply.

  Mike rolled his eyes.

  While the boys searched the library, Rachel finally took a serious but tipsy look at Rafael. "Do you think Lucy is right? Should we be checking on him more?"

  She turned to Ricky, and he replied by sticking his tongue down her throat. "Your party is a big success," he whispered into her ear, biting and licking at her neck, taking a long pause to sniff her scent before attacking her again with his horny lips.

  "Stop, please." She pressed a hand to his chest, not pushing him away, just lightly enough to hold back his kisses. He stared at her. I'm sure he felt like the luckiest man in the world. He had a girl who loved to throw parties. And maybe she was a bit too much of a control freak, but seriously, she was something else. She had spent months prepping for this party, and her nerves were shot from anticipation. In a good way--and a bit of a bad way, if he was being honest.

  He held still at her fingertips, staring into her eyes. "You are a success," he mouthed silently to her, staring into her eyes.

  "Do you think he's okay?" she said again.

  And for the first time, Ricky finally looked at Rafael. And he might have noticed the blue lips and blue fingers, or the shockingly shallow breaths, or even that his skin was so cold already. He might have noticed, if the lights were all on, or if there hadn't been a very loud, very frightened scream from upstairs.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I'm sorry about the cursing, but I mean, these are college students. I just want you to really immerse yourself in what they would have been thinking and feeling. And it's basically sex and drama and booze and swearing. I can't tell the story any other way.

  So the person screaming was Tiffany. And you might be curious about her anyway, because you already know she just dumped John, refused his proposal, aborted his baby. That was how "nope, not gonna" she was.

  But you're probably dying, just wondering but why?! John seemed like such a nice guy, a bit of a drunk this weekend, but he was allowed the pain. Clearly it was a brutal breakup. But sorry (not sorry), I'm gonna introduce you to Mikaela.

  Mikaela was twins with Zane if you remember. And she wasn't the one screaming, but she was scared as hell too. Mikaela had not gone to college, not like the rest of them, who were college mates. She had a kid when she was fourteen. I know! Totally shocked you with that one, didn't I? She didn't seem the type!

  She had long black curly hair, and was a little over dressed in a cocktail dress and, well, she would be in heels, but she already kicked them off. Her dress was black but had a hell of a lot of sparkly sequins (which you might want to remember). She was here, taking one of the few moments in her life where she wasn't being wildly responsible. From that very moment a baby grew in her belly, she became an adult. Right now, she had an apartment that she paid for herself and held down a very sophisticated secretary job. She also did odd jobs at night, including cleaning two houses. That girl was damn determined to make a kickass life for her and her little boy. He was already eight years old and thought of her as a superhero. He was sleeping over at Grandma's house tonight, in case you were worrying that she left him home alone. But no, Zane coaxed her to leave the house and be a normal twenty-two year old. And so, this was the first time she'd left him for a whole weekend. And it was the first time in a very long while she hung out with people her own age and just breathed.

  Right now, she was standing in the twins' room with Tiffany, and they were now both screaming. She was standing on the rocking chair in her bare feet and sparkly dress, frightened little sobs bursting out. She was shuddering, the chair underneath her rocking beneath her flailing.

  Mike was the first one up the stairs. He was a big man. Tall, yes, but big arms and a big heart. He saw her first. Breathtakingly gorgeous twenty-two year old in a tight sparkling dress, curls flying,
and he froze.

  It felt so intimate. Her fear. He stood, blocking the doorway suddenly. She was intimately afraid. Her bright dark eyes caught his and his heart stopped and started again and everything was moving. Zane was at his back, shoving Mike, who practically fell into the room. Mikaela had tears forming. And Tiffany was standing, her skinny hips and smooth stomach heaving with another scream, holding a toy elephant. "What happened? Why are you screaming?" Zane was the first one with words, and they were big, bellowing man words.

  He helped his sister off the chair and she pointed wordlessly at the corner of the room.

  Zane turned and saw the creature. It was small, tiny little body with little wings. It was screaming back at them. The sound was unbearable, like trilling high-pitched monsters. Then it took off, launching itself off the wall and down towards Tiffany. She threw the toy elephant and charged the doorway, crashing into Beezer, who was standing there poking his head in. The hit was so hard it nearly knocked Ricky and Rachel, who were behind Ben, behind Beezer, in a long string of nervous young people, down the stairs.

  Mike finally got his wits about him and saw the tiny flying rodent. It was on the floor now, half crawling, half running, its tiny mouth opening and shutting as it scurried. It wasn't as fast as a mouse, but the way it moved! Those tiny long fingers and how it scuttled a bit like a crab. Mike reached down and picked it up, and the bat let out another scream. The scream was ear piercing, easily touching notes a human can't quite hear. But it felt ghastly. Mike tried to look calm, despite the fact that he'd never held a bat before, and just opened the window and tossed it out. The bat managed to fly mid toss and moved crazily in the air--more like a butterfly than a bird. Zig-zagging down to the grass where it certainly feasted on delicious bugs and whatever, I don't know. Just, it did bat stuff.

  But Mike turned around and tried to look like the big man that his body was, but his insides still felt like that small, lost little boy. And he beamed, a big bright manly smile that women would have swooned over if they had only been looking. Instead, Tiffany sobbed into Beezer, who looked horribly uncomfortable. And Zane held Mikaela.