Demons Are a Ghoul's Best Friend

by Victoria Laurie

  “And did you?” Muckleroy said.

  “Yes,” said the dean. “And we almost made it. To this day I don’t know if Eric ever made it to the tree, but I managed to get back to the cabin, and I found a screwdriver in Jack’s toolbox. I had just gotten to work on the last screw holding Nicky’s shackles when the cabin door flew open and Jack came in. He saw us, and something terrible let loose in him. He grabbed Nicky’s hair and slammed his head so hard against the wall that Nicky was knocked out. I tried to dodge around Jack and get to the open door, but he grabbed my arm so hard that my shoulder became dislocated. I remember screaming, and the horrible pain, but not much else for many moments. I only remember Jack putting my good arm back in the shackles, and that’s when Eric appeared in the bedroom doorway.”

  “Eric was still alive?” Steven and Gilley said in unison.

  The dean nodded. “I don’t know how, from the looks of his wounds. He was bleeding from his chest and his head, and he was so pale and weak he could barely stand. Jack was too busy trying to restrain me to notice, and I made sure to keep up the fight while Eric picked up the bloody hatchet Jack had used on his victims and he hit Jack in the back of the head with it.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” said Muckleroy as he crossed himself. “It’s like a scene out of a horror movie.”

  The dean sank down to the floor and stared blankly at the wall where the shackles hung rusty and old against the rotting wood. “You would have thought that the blow Eric gave him would have finished Jack off, but that monster just got up and staggered around the room.”

  “How did he end up over there, then?” asked Gilley, pointing to the skeleton on the bed.

  “I shouted at Eric to hit him again, and he did. I think he used up every last bit of life he had left in him, because he drove that damn hatchet right into Jack’s heart, and the bastard fell back on the bed and died.”

  The room fell silent again as we all gazed at Jack’s skeleton. Finally Muckleroy said, “How long after that did Eric die?”

  The dean closed his eyes, and a tear slid down his cheek. “It wasn’t long,” he whispered. “Eric crawled over to where Nicky was lying on the floor by the door and wrapped himself around his little brother. I heard him breathe maybe two or three more times, and then he was still.”

  “Who found you?” I asked.

  “My father, or rather, Winston Habbernathy. I started screaming for help at first light, and the dean had come to check up on his brother. He found me here.”

  “Who’s his brother?” Gilley said.

  “Why, Jack, of course,” said the dean distastefully.

  “Hatchet Jack was the dean’s brother?” Muckleroy exclaimed.

  “Yes, Bob, I’m afraid so. You see, Jack was Winston’s older brother, and my adopted grandfather, Morton Habbernathy, planned to leave the school to both Jack and Winston. But as Winston explained, when Jack came back from Vietnam he was a different man. Winston described him as angry and given to violent mood swings. According to Winston, Jack even punched his father out when Morton wouldn’t let Jack drive the family car. Things eventually got so bad between Jack and his father that the old man disinherited Jack and left the school solely to Winston. Jack disappeared shortly thereafter. Winston believed he became a drifter, one of the thousands of vets who felt disenfranchised with their homeland on their return from war.”

  “Then how did he end up here again?” Muckleroy said.

  “Winston said that at the end of the school year Jack simply appeared in the doorway of his office. He’d been living off what he could earn on the bowling circuit and he said he was tired of traveling and just needed a place to stay and a good job. Winston felt pity for his older brother, but was still a bit nervous about Jack’s mood swings, especially around the children. He made a deal with Jack, and that was that he could build this cabin and maintain the grounds during the summer, and if Jack behaved himself, then Winston would consider keeping him on once the school year began again.”

  “But something happened, didn’t it?” I asked, sensing there was a little more to the story.

  The dean nodded. “Yes. My father said that one night he found Jack drunk, soaking wet, and covered in scratches and bruises. When Winston demanded to know what had happened, Jack said he couldn’t remember, but that he had found a wallet somewhere in town, and it didn’t belong to him.”

  “Whose wallet?” I asked.

  “A boy named Richard Crosby. Winston always felt like something terrible had happened that night. That Jack and this Richard Crosby had had some sort of altercation, and that Richard had come out on the losing end.”

  Immediately I felt a presence bump hard up against my energy, and when I directed my attention toward it I gave an audible gasp. I recognized the energy. “Ohmigod!” I said, staring at Gilley with wide eyes.

  “What?” Gilley said, giving me a puzzled look.

  “It’s Richard!” I said. Gilley shook his head; he didn’t make the connection.

  “The ghost from the View Restaurant?” Steven asked, and I blinked at him, amazed that he’d caught on so quickly.

  I pumped my head vigorously. “Yes!” I said. “Jack killed him!”

  “Freaky,” Gil said.

  “Would someone please explain to me what’s going on?” said Muckleroy.

  I turned to him and explained that Gil, Steven, and I had all eaten at the posh restaurant on Mirror Lake, where we’d met a waiter named Andrew whose brother had disappeared some thirty years earlier. I explained that the spirit of Andrew’s brother had come through to me and said that he’d been murdered, drowned at the hands of someone else.

  “That is freaky,” said Muckleroy. “So this Richard Crosby was Jack’s first victim?”

  “Probably,” I said. “And also might have been the catalyst for his deciding to choose younger and more manageable victims. Thirteen-year-olds are easier to tackle than sixteen-year-olds.”

  “Didn’t Winston think about going to the police?”

  “Yes,” said the dean. “I suspect he did. But my father was a fiercely loyal man, and because he didn’t know for certain he made the grave mistake of waiting and watching. He decided to keep a very close eye on Jack, which is why he would come to check on Jack early every morning. And, as it turned out, that’s why Nicky is alive today. A few more hours with the brain injury he sustained and he wouldn’t be with us.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” said Muckleroy. “Winston Habbernathy shows up here and sees two dead bodies and two seriously hurt little boys, and he doesn’t go to the police about it?”

  The dean nodded sadly. “Yes, I’m afraid he felt that if it ever got out what horrible things his brother had done, people would hold Winston accountable. After all, Winston knew how unstable his brother was, and I don’t think he was strong enough to handle the ridicule and shame that would have followed.

  “For a while I was the only person who knew the truth. Nicky was in a coma, and when he regained consciousness he had no memory of what had happened, and he had serious developmental issues, so my father knew he would never tell. And to keep me quiet Winston promised me the thing that I’d always wanted: a family and a home and a good education. I never blamed him for caring about his brother. I knew Winston was a good man, and to his credit he treated me like his own flesh and blood from day one.”

  “But didn’t the doctors question him when he showed up at the hospital with two children with severe wounds?” I asked.

  The dean sighed. “Nicky was the only one in need of their attention. Winston had done three years of medical school before his father died, and he’d had to quit to take over as dean of the school. He reset my shoulder and tucked me away in his house while he took Nicky to the local hospital. There he claimed that Nicky was his nephew, and that his brother had left him in his care while on a fishing trip. He explained Nicky’s injury by saying that Nicky had fallen out of a tree and hit his head. Later he told people that his brother had dro
wned on the fishing trip and that he planned on adopting his nephews. Winston managed to obtain some forged birth certificates for Nicky and me, changing our names in the process, and within two years the State of New York granted his request for adoption of his two nephews, Nicholas and Owen Habbernathy.”

  “I can’t believe anyone bought that!” Gilley said.

  The dean gave him a patient look. “It was the seventies,” he said. “People around town weren’t as suspicious as they are now. Besides, my father was a very upstanding member of this community. No one suspected that he wasn’t telling the truth, because he would have no reason they could think of to lie.”

  “So he covered up the murders, buried Eric by the big tree, and burned down the dock?” I asked.

  “Yes. He wanted Eric to be laid to rest away from this island. Since the tree had been symbolic of escaping Jack, it seemed a natural place to bury him. As for the burning of the dock, well that wasn’t the real target. My father wanted to burn down the cabin, but he started the fire on the dock, and the accelerant leading from the dock to the cabin didn’t catch. The fire department arrived and there wasn’t time to remedy the situation. After that my father couldn’t very well attempt to burn down the cabin again; that would have drawn serious attention. So he took out the charred remains of the dock and hoped that no one ever ventured onto the scrubby island again. He didn’t really have reason to worry, because within a few months the scrub had become so overgrown here that it completely hid the cabin anyway.”

  “So no one else knew about any of this?” said Muckleroy.

  “Just you and Winston?”

  “And Skolaris,” I said, sliding one more piece of the puzzle into place. “I’m betting he knew.”

  Owen looked sharply at me, but as the hard stares from the rest of us bore into him, he knew it was time to give up the ghost. “Yes,” he said after a long moment. “Bill Skolaris knew.”

  “How’d he find out?” Muckleroy asked quietly.

  “My father needed to trust someone to watch over me while he tended to Nicky at the hospital. He and Bill were the best of friends, and so he let Bill in on what had happened. At first Bill was very supportive of keeping things quiet, but then the greed must have set in, and the blackmail followed.”

  “That’s how Skolaris got your dad’s house,” I said. “Skolaris forced him to give the deed over.”

  “That and a hefty pay increase,” said Owen.

  “And everything was quiet until we started putting up those posters, and Skolaris got greedy again,” I said.

  Muckleroy lifted an eyebrow as he too made the connection. Turning to the dean he said, “Why’d you do it, Owen? Why’d you kill Bill?”

  The dean shook his head. “He was going to ruin everything,” he said, and for the second time that day the dean’s eyes welled with tears. “Skolaris said that if I didn’t give him more money he was going to take those posters to the police and tell them all of it. I begged him not to, and I told him that I’d already sunk all of our extra cash back into the school’s renovation. I couldn’t possibly come up with more money. But that didn’t satisfy him—oh, no. He decided to use the trauma of what happened to me to his advantage. He told me to meet him on the grounds that night, and he pushed one of the posters in my face. I tried to back away, but that’s when he pulled out a hatchet and began waving it around. Something in my head just went off. It was like I couldn’t control the impulse. I grabbed that hatchet and I struck him until he fell to the ground.”

  “So that was you who came after me?” I said. “You were chasing me across the lawn after murdering Skolaris?”

  “No,” the dean said wearily. “I was running away from what I’d done. My car was parked behind the main hall, in the administrative lot. I thought for sure that you had clearly seen me and you were on your way to the police. I was trying to get to my car and get away when Nicky found me, and in a moment of panic I told him to bury the hatchet while I went to his apartment and came up with a plan. It was there that I received the call from the dispatcher on my cell phone. She said that something terrible had happened at the school, and that I needed to get right over there. I realized then that you hadn’t gotten a good look at me, and the police might be looking for Hatchet Jack, not me.”

  “So you showered, changed into Nicky’s pajamas, and looked like you’d just gotten out of bed,” I said.

  The dean looked down at the ground. “Yes,” he mumbled. “But at the time I had no idea that Nicky was going to end up accused of the crime. I hadn’t realized he’d get caught with the hatchet.”

  Muckleroy tucked his small notepad away into his pocket and reached behind him to pull out a pair of handcuffs. “Dean Habbernathy, you have the right to remain silent…”

  As the detective led Dean Habbernathy away, I found it interesting that Muckleroy read Owen his rights after the dean had made a full confession—in other words, any lawyer worth his salt could get the confession bounced out on its ear. Something told me Muckleroy was very aware of that too.

  Gilley and Steven helped me clean up the equipment, and after closing the bedroom door to shut away the horror inside until the police could deal with it, the three of us headed to the front door of the cabin, wanting to be as far away from this awful place as possible.

  Gilley and Steven stepped outside first, but I paused in the doorway when I felt a little tug that called me to look back at the bedroom door. Standing there against it was the beautiful smiling face of Eric. The vision of him caught me a little off guard, and I stood staring at him dumbly. I’ll be okay now, he said, and I watched as he looked up above him and a ball of light came down to engulf him. Before I even had time to react he was gone.

  “M.J.?” Gilley said from outside. “You ready to go home?”

  I glanced over my shoulder, making a mental note to contact Dory with a full update on her sons. “Yeah,” I said, feeling a smile spread to my lips. “I sure am.”

  Hours later we were sitting in front of a fire at Karen’s place, sipping the wine I’d bought from Lance and feeling good about ourselves. “I can’t believe how involved this thing was,” said Karen as we finished telling her the story. “And I can’t believe you guys left me here to sleep while you all chased down the bad guys.”

  “What were you gonna do?” I asked her with a smirk.

  “Flirt the truth out of the dean?”

  “Hey,” Karen said, grinning back. “Don’t knock flirting; it’s gotten me through some pretty tough spots before.”

  “Trust me,” I said, “the thing that’s gotten you through those tough spots was the fact that you’re a knockout, not the fact that you can flirt.”

  From outside there came a now familiar thumping sound. Gilley’s head snapped to attention. “Ohmigod!” he squealed with delight. “Could that be Mr. John Dodge returning for his ladylove?” Gilley loved romance.

  Karen stood and set down her wineglass. “Actually,” she said with a hint of mischief, “I believe that ride is for the three of you.”

  We all got up and followed her curiously to the front door, where Charlie, the pilot who had whisked her away earlier, stood with his hat tucked under one arm. “I’m here to pick up the passengers, Miss O’Neal,” he said.

  Turning back to the three curious folks behind her, she said, “All aboard for Cabo San Lucas!”

  Gilley squealed so loud I thought he punctured my eardrum. That was quickly followed by his mad dash to his room to pack his belongings. “Really?” I said to her as Steven and I stood dumbly looking at Charlie and the waiting chopper on the front lawn.

  “Really,” she said. “You guys deserve a vacation, especially after all you’ve been through. John owns a lovely all-inclusive time-share there. He’s asked that you be his personal guests for the next ten days.”

  “I’ll get my things,” Steven said, and hurried after Gilley.

  “But what about Doc?” I said, stunned that she seemed to be serious.

  �
��Take him,” Teeko said. “Something tells me he’ll feel right at home in the tropics.”

  I leaned in and gave her a giant hug. “Thanks, girlfriend.”

  “Just do me one favor,” she said as I was about to turn away and do my own packing.

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t come back without having figured things out between you and Steven.”

  “Kind of a tall order,” I said to her.

  “Well, you have ten days to work it out, M.J. I believe that should be plenty of time.”

  “Okay,” I said, narrowing my eyes at her. “I’ll figure it out with the good doctor if you figure it out with the good billionaire.”

  Charlie cleared his throat and turned away from the door.

  Karen looked over her shoulder at him and gave a small sigh. Looking back to me she held out her hand and said, “Deal,” and I knew then that I was in deep doo-doo.