A Ghostly Ride in Gulfport (Gulf Coast Paranormal Book 10)
Page 6
Chapter Nine—Midas
The kid staggered into the carousel, and his awkward movements brought to mind images of stumbling zombies. Obviously, the guy was on crack or something. Why else would he have ignored me when I yelled at him? Bruce had stepped outside to take a leak but was gone longer than I expected. Suddenly, Cassidy was in front of me, talking, speaking my name, but I couldn’t hear her. My ears were ringing with the gunshot, but I hadn’t shot any gun. Someone else had. But who? Did someone shoot me?
And stranger still, the young man I saw was fading. Didn’t Cassidy see him? She was practically stepping on him. I’d covered my eyes for a moment, just to collect myself; when I opened them, he was fading right before my eyes. What just happened? Why did I feel as if I had stepped into a sticky fog?
“Midas, can you hear me? Are you hurt? Baby, can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you. Did you hear that shot?” The rest of the team raced into the metal shed that housed the collapsing carousel.
“Hey, everything is okay. We just need a minute.”
“Midas Demopolis! No more guns on investigations! You know the rules!” Sierra fussed at me as she eyed Cassidy suspiciously. Sierra acted like she wanted to say something else but held her peace.
“I didn’t shoot my gun, Little Sister. I don’t even have it with me. It’s in the SUV.”
Everyone got quiet and began to look around for anything that would create such a noise. After a minute or two, I explained what I saw: the bloody teenager who stumbled into the carousel area, the mumbled voice behind me, the sound of a gun and the guy falling to the ground. I was pretty sure I saw a murder take place, only the victim was long dead. And I was shaken up pretty badly. It had been a long time since I’d been so deeply affected by the paranormal. I’d had some weird experiences in my day, missing time, pictures of the past, but this one took the cake.
“If you guys would give me a minute,” I said. Thankfully, my team respected my wishes. Cassidy put her hand on my shoulder as Sierra hurried everyone else out.
I hugged her immediately because that was all I knew to do. I shook my head. “I think I’m done for the night. I’ve been off my game all day. I should have listened to Papa Angelos and stayed home tonight.”
“Why would he tell you that?”
“I don’t know. He called me this afternoon and said, ‘Midas, leave the ghosts alone for a little while.’ Then he hung up the phone. I called him back, but he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. I’m worried about him.”
“Why would he say that? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t know. He either knew something I didn’t or…I don’t even want to think about it.” I rarely talked about my family troubles with Cassidy. Or with anyone, for that matter. I did not have a good relationship with my parents, but they weren’t entirely to blame. Papa was the only person in my family I was close to, even though the Demopolis clan was large and rather protective. I was a ghost hunter, after all, a huge disappointment to my very traditional Greek family. “Let’s at least go back to the van. You show me your drawings, and I can tell you what I saw. Maybe you can draw it for me.”
Cassidy frowned as she let me go. “You know, you could have just told me this when I asked you what was up earlier.”
“I know. Communication isn’t my strong suit. I’ll work on that.” We hurried back to the van, and I quickly radioed Sierra to give her our status.
She didn’t ask a lot of questions but said, “Keep me posted.” Cassidy and I climbed in the SUV, and she pulled out a sketch pad. With a worried look in my direction, she flipped the pad open, studied the image and showed it to me. “Does this look familiar?” she asked.
It was a teenage boy. He wasn’t remarkable at all, except for his youthfulness. He wore a blue dress shirt and black pants and had wild hair. He was definitely from the ’80s with his mullet haircut. I swallowed at the sight of him. “Yeah, that’s the guy I saw. Do you know who he is? Am I looking at Benjamin Pettis?”
“Yes, Midas. Meet Benjamin, or Benny or Ben as his sister called him. I don’t know much more than that yet. I expect that when I begin to paint him, a doorway will open and I will see more. I’ll touch the paint and he will show me exactly what happened to him.”
“Why did he charge me like that?”
She shrugged as I handed the sketch pad back to her. “He probably didn’t even know you were there. If you were seeing a residual haunting, or a replay as you like to call them, he was focused on whoever was in that carousel area at the time. Not you.”
I tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully. I was acting like a rookie when I knew all this. “He was bloodied when he got there, like he’d been in a fight or something. I didn’t think he’d be so angry. I wasn’t prepared for that. I truly wasn’t. I only wanted to help him, just like Dom. I can’t ever help the ones who need it the most.” I wasn’t crying, not exactly, but I was rubbing my eyes furiously. Why was I feeling this heartbreak so heavily tonight? My watch alarm went off; better late than never. Battery must be dying. I looked at my watch and sighed. Now it all made perfect sense.
Today was Dominic’s birthday.
If he had lived, he would be twenty-eight. But he hadn’t lived. Someone had killed him. He was dead and gone. Now here was another lost boy, dead and gone. Benjamin Pettis had been buried, at least. That’s more than my cousin had for a very long time. But Benjamin was here now. That had to mean something. He wanted our help—my help!
“Let’s go home, Midas. Let’s call off the investigation for tonight. We’ve got quite a bit of footage already. Let’s go home.”
“No, don’t do that. That’s what these guys live for. Let the team work. It’s not their fault I’m screwed up in the head tonight, and we need the evidence. But I think they can manage without us.” We radioed Sierra again, and she came to pick up the keys to the Gulf-A-Rama. She hugged me and waved at us as we drove away. I drove Cassidy to her house, got out of the SUV and locked it behind me. I wasn’t going home tonight. I wasn’t going to do anything except be here with the woman I loved. Where I was happy.
We’d barely gotten into the house good when she was kissing me. How did she know that time with her was exactly what I needed? I locked the front door and turned off the lights. She pulled off her top and tossed it on the couch. Domino came out to complain but only meowed once before stalking back down the hall. Cassidy walked backwards toward her bedroom, unzipping her blue jeans as she went. I did the same. By the time I reached her room, she was already under the covers and the side lamp was on. She slapped on her radio, which played something soft and sweet. I didn’t care what she played. All I knew was I needed her. I needed to forget. I needed to feel safe.
******
When I woke up, the clock said two. How long had I been asleep? Cassidy wasn’t in the bed, but I didn’t have to guess where she was. I knew. She was in her studio. I made a brief stop in the restroom, washed my face and hands and then went to find her.
Exactly as I expected, the studio lights were bright. A peppy instrumental was playing, but Cassidy was nowhere to be seen. I studied the painting and shuddered at the sight of it. This was what I saw earlier! Benjamin Pettis, bleeding and broken. He was lying on the ground next to the carousel looking like a broken doll. God, there was so much detail in his face. Cassidy was truly talented. The carousel horses were fierce-looking and colorful. The ground was littered with tickets and random pieces of paper, but the focus of the painting was definitely Benjamin.
“Cassidy? You in here?” I called as I studied the details more closely. I heard nothing; there was no sign of her at all. But then I noticed a smudge in the upper left-hand corner of the painting. She’d touched the painting! Just like she said she would, she touched it and went there. I’d heard her explain how it all worked before, but it was still beyond me. And that’s when I saw her, at least the edge of her, at the lower right-hand corner of the painting.
“Oh my God
! She’s in the painting!” Somewhere in this painting, somehow, Cassidy was there. She was in that wild scene, in that horrible moment. That can’t be right. I must be dreaming!
I flipped on a nearby lamp and waved it in front of the painting. There was no doubt at all. That was Cassidy’s red nightgown, and that was the edge of her smock. You couldn’t mistake her for someone or something else.
Oh my God. That was Cassidy!
Chapter Ten—Sierra
“I’m not going in that funhouse, Joshua David McBride. No way on God’s green earth am I going in there!”
Joshua’s smirky expression did not promote confidence. I knew exactly what his goal was—to scare the hell out of me. He’d been acting like a jerk all week, but I had no idea why. Maybe because our little “lovebug,” as he stupidly called Emily, couldn’t or wouldn’t sleep for more than three hours without waking up screaming. Maybe because I asked him to take the garbage out for the nine-hundredth time or maybe because I didn’t immediately run off to the Victoria’s Make-Me-Feel-Fat Secret store to use the gift card he bought me. Whatever his reason, I wasn’t stupid enough to put myself in a position to let him scare me to death. He knew I hated clowns with every fiber of my being.
“You heard the voice in the ghost box. It said ‘funhouse’ and ‘go.’ It wants us to go to the funhouse, Sierra. It’s a blasted invitation. What more do you want? Are we here to investigate or not?” Joshua said as he shoved the black and silver box toward me. I didn’t touch it. That thing gave me the creeps, as Cassidy would say. After Midas’ early departure, I already had the heebie-jeebies, as I would say!
“I don’t trust that thing, and I don’t trust you. We don’t have any reports of anything happening in that funhouse beyond the usual stupid teen pranks.”
Jocelyn radioed us, and I happily answered. She said, “We’re at the Ferris wheel but haven’t seen anything. Bruce heard footsteps a few times, but that’s it. Where else should we go, Sierra? I’d like a shot at the carousel, if you guys aren’t going. We checked, and we do have that sound on the audio. It could be a gunshot, or it could be something else. Maybe we can recreate it, do some debunking.”
I sighed, feeling kind of ashamed by her enthusiasm. Jocelyn was always enthusiastic. Me? I felt tired and like a stick in the mud. I narrowed my eyes at Joshua as a kind of threat. “Okay, thirty minutes at the carousel; Joshua and I are going to walk through the funhouse. But just thirty minutes. Meet you at the van. And will you guys remember to gather up those two stationary cameras on your way back? I don’t want to leave even a cord here.”
“Roger that!” I could hear Jocelyn smiling through the radio. I still couldn’t piece together what happened with Midas earlier. Bruce was pretty vague about it all, saying that Midas had been sick or something. I’d find out the details in the morning for sure.
“Lead the way, then, but I want you where I can see you. And I swear if you scare me I’ll never wear lingerie again.”
“Promise, Sierra Kay.” He kissed the top of my head with that goofy grin on his face. “So, there’s a chance you’ll go shopping soon?”
“Get moving, McBride. Time’s a-wasting, and we’ve only got thirty minutes.” I nudged him playfully as I smothered a yawn. By the time we left here, it would be two in the morning, way past my new-mommy bedtime. At least we’d get a few hours of sleep since Emily was at her grandmother’s house. And with any luck, I’d sleep in the van on the way home. If I could score the front passenger seat, anyway. That was the only comfortable spot in that vehicle.
“Did you see that?” my husband asked as he paused. “A light. A green light. I think it came from the funhouse.”
“What kind of light? Like a flashlight?”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“Joshua…”
He waved his hand behind his back as if he wanted to shush me. Well, I sure as heck wasn’t having any of that. I raced in front of him with the IR camera. If there was someone here, I’d pick them up quicker with this handy gadget. If there were living humans hiding inside, we’d find them faster if I led the way.
“Hey,” he started to complain, but he quickly shut his mouth when I pointed to the screen. “Fine, but go slow.”
“No worries,” I said as my heart pounded in my chest. We stepped inside the funhouse, which was little more than a crumbling two-story maze of rooms. The exterior walls featured clowns juggling, clowns smiling down at me, clowns eating carnival food. God, I hated clowns. I think it had something to do with seeing that horrible movie when I was a kid. The interior didn’t appear much better. More horrible artwork and lots of trash. Apparently, the clown mouth door had blown away in a storm and nobody had bothered to replace it. The missing door gave the place the illusion that you were walking into the open mouth of a hungry clown. I shivered at the idea.
Focus, Sierra Kay.
All kinds of rubbish had blown in here, and I saw plenty of evidence of rodent activity.
“You see anything?” Joshua asked as he walked behind me.
“Nothing yet. Man, it’s dark in here. Hello? Is anyone here?”
We both froze as the sound of footsteps above us creaked and groaned on the rotting boards. “We’ve got to go up there, Sierra. Damn it all. Let me go first.”
“Sure,” I said as I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. I kept the IR camera rolling as Joshua’s flashlight came on and he began to swing it around. There were too many open doors for me. Each turn we made, there was another atrocious mural. But if we wanted to solve the mystery of who was walking around up there, we’d have to navigate this horrible space. Evidently, the steps going upstairs were at the end of this lower-level maze.
“Joshua, I hate you,” I said as I held on to the back of his jacket.
“I know. I hate me too.” He glanced back at me as he shined the flashlight at his chin and made a scary face.
“Idiot,” I whispered, though I couldn’t help but smile.
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all week.”
I kissed him but only quickly; I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea about my intentions. No way was I up for a make-out session in this horrifying place. “There! I saw the light. It’s at the end of the hallway! Go, Joshua!”
Right away we began trundling through the blacked-out maze, but there was nothing to see. Whatever glow I saw, and Joshua had seen earlier, it was gone now. I swung the IR camera around and turned to watch behind me when I saw the skirts of the prairie girl’s dress.
And that’s when the hair raised up on the back of my neck. “Joshua, we’re not alone. Did you see that?” I watched the entrance where the girl disappeared and walked toward it. “Little girl? I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Sierra. What is your name?”
I paused in the doorway but continued to record. “Joshua, did you see it?” I asked anxiously, but he wasn’t there. Joshua was gone. “Josh! Where are you?” I shouted, uncaring who heard me now. Let the whole planet hear me!
I heard footfalls running upstairs, but the sound wasn’t the same as earlier. These were heavier. I heard Joshua yelling and sprinted down the hall to the end of the maze. There was a narrow—and I do mean narrow—set of stairs that led up to the top floor. I cleared the stairs in record time; my camera went on the fritz, so I just booked it and ran for my life. There were only two rooms up here, and the dividing wall had fallen down on one of them—two wide rooms had become one. The area I found myself in was loaded with clown-like mannequins in horrible poses. There was a clown holding the head of a werewolf and a rather short one with its mouth open in a silent scream. Each “arrangement” was scarier than the last. I mean, they were crappy and cheap-looking but still scary as hell.
“Damn it,” I said under my breath. “Joshua, you better come out right now. No bull crap! You promised!”
“Over here. Come quick.” His voice was coming from the other side of the room, behind the clown with the werewolf head.
“Come quick,” the voice said again. I took a few more steps toward the sound. Come to think of it, that didn’t sound like Joshua at all. I stared hard at the IR camera and then looked using my own eyes. I could almost swear the eyes of that werewolf head blinked. I screamed bloody murder and ran back down the stairs. I didn’t stop until I fell out the front door.
Chapter Eleven—Cassidy
“Hey, what are you doing? Thinking of taking up painting?” I asked as I sipped my decaf tea from my favorite mug. Midas was bent over my painting, and I thought perhaps he was going to touch it. That seemed a strange thing for him to do.
“Cassidy! You scared the hell out of me. I thought…I mean…what is this?” He had gone pale.
I set my mug down and closed the door behind me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. That’s Benjamin Pettis. You can’t tell? You saw my sketch earlier.”
He hugged me but never took his eyes off the canvas. “I get that this is Benjamin Pettis. And yes, I recognize the face from your sketch and from my encounter, but this right here—isn’t that you? What are the odds that you would capture that red nightgown and that smock together? You’ve painted yourself into the scene. I don’t like that, Cassidy. I’m not telling you what to do, you’re a grown woman and all, but knowing how connected you can be to these images…”
“What are you talking about?” I bit my lip as I stepped closer to the canvas. Did I really need to ask that question? I could plainly see the corner of my flouncy red nightgown and the edge of my bleached-out denim blue smock. “Oh my gosh. I don’t remember painting that. I swear I don’t.” It was my turn to go as white as a sheet now. I clutched my stomach as I felt the butterflies bouncing around inside. “That’s me, isn’t it?”