Demons Are a Ghoul's Best Friend

by Victoria Laurie

  “You really think that will work?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” I said. “My goal is to find something metallic that he might have touched a lot to connect with him.”

  “Something metallic?”

  “Yes. Metal holds energy for long periods after someone touches it. If there was something that Skolaris touched a lot, like a set of keys, or a ring, or even his watch, then it will really help me to get a handle on his energy.”

  “Okay,” said Muckleroy, scooting back from his desk.

  “As it happens I’ve already got a small team over there, looking for any clue about why he might have been murdered.”

  “Did you find anything in his financial records?” I asked as we followed Muckleroy again.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Bank records all indicate regular deposits and withdrawals. Nothing unusual catches my eye at first pass, but it’s early in the investigation.”

  It didn’t take us long to arrive at Skolaris’s house. We parked at the curb and could see a small stack of brown paper bags being deposited on the front porch. Each bag was labeled EVIDENCE in black Magic Marker.

  Muckleroy knocked on the door frame as he entered the house, calling out, “Hello? Jim, are you guys in here?”

  “Hey, Detective,” said a man in uniform wearing blue latex gloves, and booties over his shoes. “We were just wrapping up.”

  “Anything good?” Muckleroy asked.

  Jim shook his head. “Naw, nothing much to speak of, anyway. The guy didn’t even own a computer.”

  “There might be one he used at the school,” said Muckleroy. “Do me a favor and call Dean Habbernathy. See if we can get permission to search Skolaris’s office at the school. If he won’t cooperate let me know, and I’ll call the DA to get the search warrant.”

  “On it,” said Jim, then looked curiously at Steven and me.

  “They with you?”

  “Yeah,” Muckleroy said, but he didn’t introduce us.

  “We’re going to have a look around ourselves.”

  “Sure thing,” Jim said, holding out a set of house keys that looked brand-new. “We couldn’t find the keys to the house on the body, so we called the locksmith out and had him put on a new dead bolt. Do me a favor and lock up after you’re through?”

  Muckleroy took the keys, and Jim left along with two other similarly dressed men, each grabbing a few of the paper bags on the porch on their way out. Once they’d gone Muckleroy turned to me and asked, “This is your show, M.J. Go to it.”

  I smiled and faced forward into the hallway, trying to get centered and focused. “This way,” I said as I turned toward the stairs and headed up.

  Steven and Muckleroy followed me. “I think I’ve got a male energy here,” I said. “Not grounded. He’s indicating that he has crossed over.”

  “How can she tell?” I heard Muckleroy ask Steven.

  “Grounded spirits feel heavier to her,” Steven explained.

  “Spirits on the other side feel light.”

  “Oh,” Muckleroy said, and I could tell by his tone that he still didn’t quite understand.

  I was too focused on trying to pull the male energy closer to me to elaborate for Muckleroy. I stopped on the landing of the second floor and waited. The energy was very light and soft, almost feminine in its touch, even though I was convinced it was a male I was tuning in to. “Come on,” I said gently to the spirit. “Where do you want me to go?”

  I felt the smallest of tugging sensations in my solar plexus and was compelled to move down the hallway. I passed a bedroom and hesitated, for a moment unsure about entering it or not. The light tug came again, and I knew then that it was originating from a room at the end of the hallway.

  I moved quickly to that room and stood in the doorway taking in the decor before moving inside. This was obviously the master suite, with a large mahogany bed and matching dresser. The room smelled of scented cologne and furniture polish. My attention moved to the dresser, and I walked over to it, looking down at all the objects there. There was a pipe and a tobacco pouch, a plastic lighter and some loose change. There was also a small wooden box, and curiously I removed the lid.

  Inside was a silver pocket watch with a golden dial. I picked it up gently and looked at it in the sunlight streaming in from the window. “Jackpot,” said Muckleroy. “That’s got to be Skolaris’s pocket watch.”

  I closed my hand around the watch and shut my eyes. Immediately the light touch of the spirit I was connecting with intensified, and I got the initial W in my head. I felt the spirit was trying to sound out his name, and in my head it sounded like Win Ton. “This didn’t belong to Skolaris,” I said softly. “This belonged to Winston Habbernathy.”

  “Is that who you’re connecting with?” Steven asked.

  I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “And he’s telling me how much he loved this house.”

  “Well, it was in his family for a long time before he sold it to Skolaris,” said Muckleroy.

  I felt my brows knit together. “That’s wrong,” I said, feeling out the message coming into my head. “Winston is telling me that the house was stolen from him.”

  “Stolen how?” asked Muckleroy.

  “I can’t tell,” I said. “All he keeps saying is that it was stolen. He wanted to leave it to the children, but it was forced away from him.”

  “I am not understanding this,” said Steven.

  “Makes two of us,” I said, still focused on Winston. “He says it served him right in the end.”

  “Served who right? Skolaris?” asked the detective.

  “Hold on,” I said, growing impatient at the nagging questions from Steven and Muckleroy while I tried to make sense of what Winston was trying to tell me. “He’s saying he had to strike a deal, and that the deal was a crime. But it was to cover up a crime as well.”

  “Is she making sense to you?” I heard Muckleroy ask Steven.

  “No more than usual,” said Steven. “With M.J. I’ve learned to stay quiet and let her work it out.”

  “I’m trying to get him to tell me about what happened with these crimes he’s talking about, but he’s not elaborating. I also asked if he’d seen Skolaris on the other side, and he’s saying Bill is still in shock, but they’re working on him.”

  “Huh,” said Muckleroy. “Almost sounds like he’s at a hospital for the dead.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at the detective. “That’s exactly where he is,” I said. “Sometimes a spirit can cross over willingly, but be in a state of panic or shock about what’s just happened to them. They are assisted by friends and family until they calm down and feel better about having to leave the earth plane.”

  “Wow,” said Muckleroy. “Being dead sure gets complicated.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, closing my eyes again. In my head I said, Talk to me about Hatchet Jack.

  The reaction I got was so intense I was unprepared for it. An emotion so heavy it felt crippling hit me like a ton of bricks, and I immediately started to cry. “M.J.?” Steven said, his voice alarmed. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, my God!” I said, reaching back behind me to steady myself against the dresser. “He’s saying he’s to blame! He’s saying it was all his fault. The boys died because of him!”

  Steven pulled me into his arms, and I sobbed and sobbed. “Shhh,” Steven whispered. “It’s all right.”

  Winston must have realized that he was emoting right through me, because he pulled his energy back and I felt immediately better. I gave one last hiccuplike sob and I was fine again. “I’m better,” I said, wiping my eyes. “Jesus, that was intense.”

  “What made you cry?” Muckleroy asked me as I stepped back from Steven.

  “It wasn’t me crying,” I said. “It was Winston. He feels that he’s to blame for the boys being murdered.”

  “So he was Hatchet Jack?” Muckleroy asked, scratching his head. He was as confused as we were.

  “No, but I think he
knew what was going on and he didn’t stop it,” I said. “The poor man feels terrible about it. All that sobbing was him through me.”

  “Can you ask him if he knows who murdered Skolaris?” Muckleroy said.

  I shook my head. “He pulled away. I think he realized he was really upsetting me and he zipped off.”

  We all looked at one another, more confused than ever, when Steven said, “Now what?”

  Before I had a chance to answer, my cell rang. I answered it and was greeted with Gilley’s excited voice. “Ohmigod! M.J., you have got to come back to the ski lodge immediately!”

  “What’s happened?” I demanded. The intensity of his rapid speech was making my heart race.

  “Something you have to see to believe,” he said. “But I will tell you that I think I just cracked this case wide open!”

  “We’re on our way,” I said. “See you in fifteen.”

  Chapter 12

  “What exactly am I looking at?” I asked Gilley as we all crowded around his laptop and squinted at the screen, which held three separate frames of still images, all of them photos of Northelm’s graduating classes.

  “You really don’t see that?” Gilley said, pointing to the group of smiling children standing at the edge of a dock.

  “Gil,” I said evenly, as my patience began to wear thin.

  “Here’s a clue,” Gilley said, ignoring the warning in my tone. “What’s the difference between these two photos?”

  “There’s a dock in one and not in the other,” said Steven.

  “Exactly,” said Gilley smugly. He then rooted around in some papers to his right and said, “When I was researching sightings of Hatchet Jack I stumbled across this one call to the police dispatcher in late fall of 1976.”

  “A burning dock,” I said, looking at the paper he handed me. “Yeah, so?”

  “So,” Gilley said, handing me another paper from the police blotter. It was the second report called in about a sighting involving Hatchet Jack running over water. My brows knit together as I tried to piece all this together, but before I could Gilley pointed to the computer screen again and moved the scroll bar to the third photo in the group he had selected. “This photo was taken in 1975. What does that look like?” he asked, hovering the cursor near an outcropping of trees on the scrubby island in the center of Hole Pond.

  I squinted hard and moved my head closer to the screen. When I realized what I was looking at I gasped. “What?” Steven and Muckleroy said together.

  “It’s a cabin,” I said. There was what appeared to be a small cottage on the island in the middle of Hole Pond.

  Steven and Muckleroy looked at each other to see if either understood why I was so excited. Neither did, so I explained, “That’s where Jack lived!”

  Jaws dropped, and the two men stared at me in stunned silence. “He lives in that old cottage?” Muckleroy said.

  “You’ve been there?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But my senior year of high school my dad and I went fishing at Hole Pond. I remember some sort of construction happening on the opposite side of the island. And a little while later I think I vaguely remember someone saying that Owen’s father, Winston, was putting a small cottage in the middle of the island, which we all thought was nuts, because for such a small island the ground was probably really marshy. When I came back to Lake Placid after college the whole island was so overgrown and scrubby that I’d completely forgotten about it.”

  I hugged Gilley. “You are a freaking genius!” I said.

  Gilley blushed. “I blame it on all the coffee I’ve had today,” he said humbly.

  I clapped my hands excitedly. “Okay, gentlemen. Tonight is the night we put that evil son of a bitch away forever. Gilley, take some notes; I’ve got a plan.”

  Gilley grabbed a legal pad and hovered his pen over the bright white page. “What’s first?” he asked.

  “First we need to find a local pool-supply store, and we need to find it fast.”

  “Come on, you guys!” I said, looking anxiously at my watch. “We’re coming up short on time here!”

  Gilley, Steven, and Muckleroy were all puffing heavily as they carried the last of the flotation-dock squares along the row that we’d tied together and dropped it in the water. I was hurrying along behind them with a piece of rope that would secure it in place with the others. The flotations were called Instadock, and they were commonly used in large swimming pools, where coaches liked to walk beside their swimmers as they swam down the lanes. As I’d spent many years in high school looking at the bottom of a pool through my swimming goggles, I was very aware of them and their handiness.

  “Do we have time to get another one?” Steven panted over my shoulder. I looked at my watch, then at the distance between the last square and the small beach of the island. “I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s quarter to six, and I need you rested as much as possible before we start this thing. Please tell me you can jump that?” I asked, pointing to the five-foot leap Steven would have to make to hit the beach.

  He nodded. “I can make that,” he said.

  Standing up and wiping off my wet hands I turned to Gilley, who was looking around nervously. “Gil, you can head back to the van now and monitor from there. I’ll need you to track Steven’s every step, okay? I’ve got to know when he’s made it to the dock.”

  “On it!” Gilley said, and dashed down the Instadock, heading for the van in the parking lot.

  “Where do you need me?” Muckleroy said, still puffing hard from all the labor I’d put him through.

  “You’re in the van too,” I said. “I don’t want Jack distracted by too many bodies.” Then I glanced to the edge of the pond at Dean Habbernathy, who was pacing back and forth and looking extremely upset about our whole production. “And, Bob, make sure the dean doesn’t get in the way.”

  Muckleroy frowned as he looked over at Habbernathy. When we’d briefed the dean on our plans he’d vehemently protested, insisting that we not go onto the island, and he hadn’t piped down until Muckleroy threatened to get a warrant for the entire school grounds. “On it,” Muckleroy said, and he walked quickly down the Instadock, waving at the dean to follow him to our van.

  “I should go then and get into position?” Steven said.

  “Yeah,” I said, turning to him with a grateful smile. “And listen, about snapping at you the other day…”

  The corner of Steven’s mouth curled up. “I am beginning to understand how focused you need to be on these jobs,” he said before I had a chance to explain. “I will try not to be such a distraction to you in the future.”

  I gave him a wide grin. “Thanks for understanding,” I said, and glanced at my watch. “Oh, crap! You only have ten minutes! Do you have the map?”

  “I do.”

  “And the magnetic grenade in case things get dicey?”

  “Right here,” he said, reaching into his pocket to pat the lead pipe he carried.

  “Okay,” I said, blowing out a breath. “Just remember it’s important that you work to feel scared. You’re a big target for Jack, and he might not chase you, but I’m hoping that if you can give off a sense of fear he’ll be too tempted to pass you up and give chase. And if he does, you really need to be careful, okay? This son of a bitch is dangerous, and I need you to make it here in one piece.”

  Steven stroked my cheek and gave me a gentle kiss before he said, “And I need you to make it in one piece as well. Be careful yourself.” With that he turned and jogged away.

  I watched him for a moment before I turned to the island. Backing up a few yards I ran to the edge and leaped off, landing easily on the beach. From here there was the trail that I’d cleared out while the boys were laying the dock. It wound all the way to the deserted and boarded-up cabin in the heart of the island.

  The place must have been well made, because it had held up well for thirty years. The windows and door were boarded up, and there hadn’t been time to get inside yet. This was m
y last task before Jack appeared, as I knew he would, because Lance had told me he’d been chased along the trails leading near the island by Hatchet Jack thirty years ago on a Friday evening around six p.m. I just hoped that in re-creating this little scenario, everything went as planned. That Jack didn’t actually catch up to Steven and knock him out, and that Steven made it here to me without Jack giving up the chase.

  I knew Jack’s portal was nearby, but I hadn’t had a chance to search for it, and I had to get the planked-up door removed before Steven and Jack showed up, so my plan was simply to have Jack lead me directly to it.

  I reached down and quickly unzipped my duffel bag. Putting on my wireless headphones I said into the microphone, “Gilley, do you copy? Over.”

  “I gotcha, M.J.,” Gil said. “We’re all in position except for Steven.”

  “Is he close?” I asked anxiously, glancing again at my watch.

  “I’m here,” Steven said, slightly out of breath.

  I relaxed only a little. “Great. Steven, you’ll need to start jogging slowly right at six p.m. If you hear footsteps behind you then increase your speed, but head directly here, okay?”

  “Robert,” Steven said.

  I was walking over to the cabin’s front door with a crowbar in my hand when he said that, and it made me pause.

  “Who’s Robert?” I asked.

  “The man you say when you are understanding something, correct?”

  I grinned. “That’s roger,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  “How’re you coming on the front door, M.J.?” Gilley said.

  I raised the crowbar and jammed it into the tight crevice between the plank and the front door. “I’m workin’ on it.” I grunted, pulling back on the crowbar with a groan.

  “Better hurry it up,” Gilley said anxiously. “We are three minutes to go time.”

  I moved the crowbar down a few inches and pulled back again. The old wood came away much easier than I’d expected, and in another minute I had the wood plank almost completely off. “Two minutes!” Gilley called excitedly. “Steven? How you doing?”