The Guest House Hauntings Boxset

by Hazel Holmes

  “That was a lot,” Clara whispered as she sank against Ezra’s chest for a sweet moment.

  “It was,” he admitted. He kissed the top of her head as he hugged her. “But it’s nice to tell someone, isn’t it? It’s a relief to let someone else outside the house know what’s going on.”

  “It is.” They kissed. “Speaking of which, I should probably get back to our guests.”

  The lights flickered.

  “Oh no,” Clara whispered. “Please don’t tell me they’re going to intrude on this.” Panic froze her. She didn’t want to deal with the ghosts and their tricks. She didn’t want to bring anyone else into the scary world she was forced to exist in.

  “I’m sure it’s just the weather,” Ezra assured her. “I’m telling you, they’re not those kinds of ghosts. They’re not malicious.”

  Then, everything went dark.

  49

  Clara gripped Ezra in a panic. She knew this kind of thing would happen when they had ghosts in their house. She knew they couldn’t be as nice as they seemed. They were ghosts. As much as Ezra tried to convince her they were kind and safe, she never fully believed it.

  She felt awful for inviting Sam and Brittany over in the first place. She knew she shouldn’t have. It wasn’t safe for them to be here and she felt irresponsible roping them into this. It was something she and Ezra should’ve dealt with on their own. They should’ve sold the bed and breakfast and moved as far away as they could get.

  “It’s okay,” Ezra assured her.

  “It’s not okay,” her voice hitched. “I know it’s them!”

  “Clara, we have to keep calm,” Ezra’s voice was quiet but firm and steady. “We have guests here who don’t know what’s going on. We must guide them and take control of the situation.”

  “How?” Clara asked, lowering her voice to a whisper.

  “We don’t know it’s the ghosts,” Ezra replied. “We haven’t seen them. It could still be the weather. It’s always storming around here.”

  Clara scoffed.

  “The first thing we should do is get everyone together,” Ezra continued. Then, he raised his voice. “Brittany! Sam! Are you guys okay in there?”

  There was no response. That was when Ezra started to get worried. He still didn’t think the ghosts were malicious. They never even tried to hurt them before. But not hearing from their guests was concerning. “Brittany? Sam?”

  Still no response.

  “See,” Clara said, her voice rising in panic. “Something’s wrong. I can feel it.”

  “Let’s go out to the dining room and see if we can find them,” Ezra said.

  “I’m scared.”

  “It’s going to be okay, I promise. I love you so much, Clara. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. I will keep you safe.”

  Though it didn’t ease Clara’s fear completely, Ezra’s confidence made her feel a little safer. His voice didn’t waver. He was determined to protect her, and she knew he’d do his best. She trusted him more than she trusted anyone else. Even if she wasn’t fully convinced he stood a chance against a family of ghosts.

  Her trust in him allowed her to move forward. They walked carefully through the kitchen, reaching out for objects to avoid running into them. Ezra was most familiar with the space, so he led the way into the dining room.

  “Brittany?” he called out. “Sam?”

  Clara was surprised the ghosts hadn’t made an appearance, but that only made things more terrifying. She was certain they had done something to Brittany and Sam, and she didn’t know what to do about it. How did you fight ghosts?

  Even Ezra was starting to worry about them. He believed the ghosts weren’t out to get them, but what if they were? What could they do?

  Finally, their fingers found the doorway into the dining room. They shuffled forward through it.

  A cold touch landed on both of their backs. Before they could make sense of what was going on, fabric was shoved in their faces. They inhaled in a panic. They tried to twist away, tried to fight their attackers.

  Before they could, darkness rendered them useless as they thudded to the floor beside each other.

  50

  Sunlight falling into Clara’s eyes woke her. Her whole body was stiff, especially her back, which ached against a hard, cold floor. She was confused. This certainly wasn’t her bed. Why did her body hurt so much? Where was she? She tried to stretch, but her hands and feet were bound.

  Her eyes popped open to reveal she was lying on the attic floor. The exposed wood beams stretched above her head. Boxes crowded around her. The space that seemed so open before now felt tiny, suffocating. She strained against the ropes binding her hands and feet.

  She was so shocked and panicked she couldn’t make a sound. She wanted to scream for help, but she didn’t know where her captors were, and she didn’t want to draw more attention to herself. So, she took in her surroundings first. She felt a slight bit of heat against her back. Was it something dangerous?

  Clara didn’t even want to know. Her brain came up with a million possibilities, none of them good. But she needed to be aware of all the dangers of this situation she found herself in. So, in a quick and careful movement, she rolled over onto her other side.

  “Ezra,” she called out. His eyes were closed, his body dead weight. Was he dead though? She wouldn’t be able to make it through this if he were dead. She couldn’t bear to lose her husband. Just the thought of it sent her into a panic. “Ezra, please wake up,” she begged.

  Ezra heard Clara calling out to him, but it sounded like she was yelling from a distance. She sounded terrified, and Ezra tried to claw his way out of his black hole to her. He called out to her, but it seemed she couldn’t hear him.

  “Clara,” he finally mumbled as he stumbled out of sleep.

  “Ezra, I’m so glad you’re okay.” Tears fell freely.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m okay, but I have no clue what’s happening. I think maybe the ghosts trapped us. I don’t know why they did it, but I’m terrified. What will they do to us?”

  As some of the haze was wearing off, Ezra noticed his bound hands and feet and realized they were in the attic. He slowly remembered what had happened right before he passed out.

  “I don’t think it was the ghosts,” he said. “I think we were knocked out with chloroform, or something like it anyway. I don’t think ghosts have access to such things. Plus, I don’t think they’d be able to bind us and carry us up to the attic. It seems that they can do some things in this world, but they don’t have as much stretch and autonomy as living people do.”

  “Then who did this?” Clara asked. Then, it dawned on her. “I’ll bet it was Nathaniel. I told you we needed to be careful with him! He was probably so angry that he came back to hurt us. Kill us so he can have the property to himself. Do you think Brittany and Sam are okay?”

  “I don’t know, but they didn’t answer when we called out to them. It isn’t a great sign. Hopefully, they’re trapped like us but…”

  Clara started crying, really crying. It was her worst fear come true. She’d been waiting for this to happen, trying to avoid it. Now she was faced with the terror that plagued her.

  “What do we?” she asked.

  “We must keep calm,” Ezra replied. “If we don’t, we’ll never get out of this.”

  “Oh, you’re never getting out of this,” a familiar male voice said.

  “It can’t be,” Clara whispered.

  Brittany and Sam were coming up the stairs, guns in their hands.

  51

  Brittany and Sam stood in front of them, looking at them like they were prey and Brittany and Sam were lethal predators.

  “What’s going on?” Ezra asked as some of the shock faded.

  “We’re figuring out what to do with you,” Brittany said simply. A sick and twisted smile played on her face. “We can’t kill you the same way we killed Lyla and Richard’s family
. It’ll look too suspicious, especially with Billy gone. Especially since we plan to pick up the property as soon as it goes on the market. We want to avoid reopening the case, which is why we have to do this to you now. We can’t afford to take the chance of being looked at too closely. We’re confident in our work, but we understand we’re not professionals. It’s too much of a risk.

  “We have to do things differently this time. We must find a way to make it look like Nathaniel killed you. Shouldn’t be too difficult. As you already pointed out so nicely, he does look mighty suspicious.”

  Clara and Ezra struggled up to a sitting position. Brittany and Sam watched as if they were amused by seeing them struggle. Doing this simple movement allowed them a moment to ground themselves. Brittany and Sam were here, in front of them. They knocked them out and bound them. They killed Lyla and Richard’s family.

  “It’s funny, your worries about Billy,” Brittany noted. “He tried to warn Lyla and Richard about us. You see, we didn’t resort to murder right off. We tried to drive them out first. There are lots of ways to get into this house aside from the front door. There are a lot of hiding spaces. We moved things around, tried to make them think their house was haunted, or that they were going crazy. Anything that might get them to leave.

  “It didn’t work, obviously. We stopped when Billy caught us. He went and told Lyla and Richard about us. We explained it away, but he never trusted us again. He proved to be a good scapegoat though, so I no longer harbor any bad feelings towards him.”

  The inconsistencies in the ghosts’ behavior were starting to make sense. Sometimes they seemed helpful, kind even. Other times, like when Clara’s dress was laid out on the bed, they were terrifying. She started to realize that the more terrifying times were probably Brittany and Sam trying to scare them away. She wished she let them. No property was worth losing their lives over.

  However, she knew deep down that if Brittany and Sam weren’t stopped, they’d likely kill again. So, if she could turn back time and choose to avoid this place, she wasn’t sure what she’d do.

  “Why?” Clara asked as she tried to get over her shock enough to deal with the situation in the rational way she knew she should. “She was your friend.”

  “She was,” Brittany admitted. “It wasn’t easy to kill her and her family. I wish I didn’t have to do it. I wish we hadn’t become friends so it wouldn’t have been so difficult. I simply had no choice.

  “You see, our bed and breakfasts are so different that they wouldn’t be competitors, but I want them both. I want them all. I love owning mine so much, and we’ve been so successful, I’ve been driven to expand.

  “Plus of course there’s the lifestyle we love. It’s expensive. We need more money, so I have this idea of building a network of bed and breakfasts in the area. I want to do different themes for each one. I want to cater to different types of guests, making this region a wonderful place for tourists. I’ve already done so much work to bring people in. It’s time I profited more off it.”

  Clara couldn’t believe it. Brittany was willing to kill her friend just so she could have her property. What did that mean for them? It wasn’t difficult to see where this was going. If she was willing to kill her friend for a profit, she’d have no problem doing the same to Clara and Ezra. They had to buy themselves time. They had to figure out a way to get out of this.

  “You were working together though,” Clara pointed out. Ezra let her take the lead. She was always much better at talking to people than he was. “You could’ve bought other properties. You didn’t need to have this one. You didn’t need to kill your friend.”

  “Maybe,” Brittany shrugged as she looked at her gun. Her smile turned into a frown and she looked genuinely sad for a moment. “But Lyla wasn’t helping me anymore anyway. I’m not sure that she was a friend anymore in the end.”

  She looked back at Clara with a gaze full of anger and hurt. “I’m sure you read all about it in that stupid diary,” she continued. “Lyla thought I was scamming her or something, simply because she couldn’t keep track of her own finances. The idea I’d do something like that was ludicrous though. I didn’t need her money. I have my own.”

  Clara wasn’t sure she believed that, based on how defensive Brittany was. She suspected that was a motivator behind why Brittany killed them, either to avoid getting caught doing something illegal or because her pride was wounded. Maybe a mixture of both influences. She supposed it didn’t matter at that moment. Brittany needed to see an ally. Their lives depended on it.

  “That’s awful,” Clara said. “I can’t imagine how hurtful it’d be to be accused of something like that by a friend. Lyla did write about it, but it sounded like she was lying. I didn’t doubt your trustworthiness for a second, that’s why I still wanted you to come over. I’d love to work with you on future projects.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” Brittany scoffed.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Clara insisted. “We’ve all been under a lot of stress lately, I totally understand. You could let us go and we could forget all about this. We can go back to how things were, and we can work together to bring more people in. The plans we have are solid. I can already tell they’re going to be successful. It’ll allow you to expand as much as you want to. There are plenty of other gorgeous properties in the area.

  “If you’d rather us be out of the way, that’s okay too. We value our lives far more than this property. You can have it.”

  “Oh, we will have it,” Sam assured her, with that cocky confidence that never seemed to leave his voice. “But who really trusts what a captive says? It’s easier to kill you and then buy it. You’ve done such a fantastic job with the renovations already. We wouldn’t even have to put much work in before it’d be ready for opening night.

  “Sure, we’d have to wait a little while after your deaths to open, showing the proper respect of course. But this newer generation loves spooky stuff far more than those before them. We plan to capitalize on your deaths. We’ll sell the idea of a haunted bed and breakfast in a remote area surrounded by wilderness.

  “It won’t appeal to everyone, of course. It will draw in a certain demographic though, and the bed and breakfast we already own will draw in the other side of the population. We’ll keep expanding until everyone has a place they’d love to stay, so we can profit off all tourists. It’s going to be great.” He shrugged. “Too bad you won’t be here to see it.”

  Terror gripped Ezra and Clara tighter than ever before. They knew by looking at his face that they weren’t leaving here without a fight. A fight they weren’t sure they could win.

  52

  Nathaniel was still angry over the confrontation with Ezra, but it wasn’t just Ezra. He was angry at all the kids in school who bullied him once they found out what his grandfather did. He was angry at the adults later in life who noted how his life could’ve been so much better if things were different, a constant reminder whenever he’d forget. He was angry at the people who avoided him after Olivia and Kyle’s deaths, people who suspected his father had something to do with it. He was angry at all the people who attended his father’s funeral and acted like they hadn’t gossiped about him being a murderer all this time.

  Still, after a couple of weeks of cooldown time, Nathaniel was less angry than he once was. He understood Ezra’s concerns to some extent. It was kind of odd that Nathaniel wanted to work at the bed and breakfast, but he wanted to work there. The bed and breakfast felt like home, and he looked up to Ezra. He thought he could learn a lot from him, and he kind of still wanted to work there. He kind of wished he had been a little calmer and approached the conversation with a level head.

  He debated the topic with himself as he drove to the bed and breakfast to pick up his last paycheck. Should he apologize? He considered it. He considered trying to get his job back, but he wasn’t even sure if he wanted his job back. He was still angry after all. It was still hurtful to be kind of accused of something awful. He didn
’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to do.

  Those thoughts were clouded over by concern when he saw Brittany’s car in the driveway. Nowadays he always had an initial bad reaction to the couple, probably because of all the times his father warned him about them. He wasn’t surprised to see they had made friends with Ezra and Clara. They tried to become friends with everyone in town, trying to bring more guests to their business and make as many connections as they could. Still, he wasn’t thrilled to see them there. He almost turned back around and went home, almost decided to wait until later to pick up his check.

  The fact that it was Brittany’s car stopped him. He figured Sam was at work and Brittany was probably inside talking to Clara. Nathaniel parked his car over by the café entrance, so he could avoid running into Brittany. He walked up to the café door and went to open it like normal. It was locked.

  He peered inside, surprised. Ezra was always up early, always working in the café by now, and he didn’t keep the doors locked during the day. Yet the lights weren’t on and it didn’t look like anyone was inside.

  I’m telling you, Brittany and Sam had something to do with it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they killed Olivia and Kyle themselves. Probably Richard and Lyla too. I tried to warn them…

  Billy’s words came out to join his son as Nathaniel stood in front of the café. He thought about going to the front door and knocking, but his father stopped him. There was another way in.

  “They’re really going to hate me if I do that,” he whispered. “They already think I want to kill them.”

  He couldn’t sneak into their house. He knew how to, sure. He’d found all the secret spots while playing hide and seek with the children, but Ezra and Clara would hate him. They’d probably call the cops. He’d be arrested with no good explanation of why it looked like he was trying to break in.

  Nathaniel glanced back at the car and cursed under his breath. He went over to the woodshed and opened the rickety door. The smell of pine reminded him of his father as he walked carefully over broken pieces of bark and tiny twigs. He walked past the rows of logs to the back corner of the shed where he picked up a board that lay over the floor.