by Mark Lukens
After packing an overnight bag and a travel bag, she got back into her car to fight the traffic on the freeway to the airport.
• • • • •
Two hours later Kristen was onboard the small jet as it sped down the runway and lifted up into the air. She was the only passenger. Jessica, the attendant, strolled down the aisle and asked Kristen if she wanted anything to eat or drink.
“Just a bottle of water for now, Jessica,” Kristen told her. “Thanks.”
Jessica showed a smile of perfect teeth and left Kristen alone.
Kristen stared out the window as she relaxed in the luxurious chair.
After Jessica walked back up the wide aisle and gave her the bottle of water, Kristen was alone again. She stared out the window, watching Los Angeles drop down below her as they cruised up into the air.
She took her IPad out of her travel bag and fired it up. She flipped through saved items until she came to the file on Shane Edwards.
Shane Edwards was born in Elyria, Ohio. He had lived there until he was twelve years old. When he was twelve something terrible had happened and he and his family moved to Louisiana. The story went that Shane and his friend Michael Lachance were dared by some other boys to enter the Cranston House, a supposedly haunted house at the edge of town. The boys met at the Cranston House on a late afternoon and twelve year old Shane and twelve year old Michael entered the house, breaking in through one of the ground floor windows. After a few hours, Shane and Mike hadn’t come back out. The other boys were getting nervous, and when they heard the screams from inside the house they ran.
When the police got to the Cranston House, they found Shane waiting outside. He was shook up and he told the police that he’d seen “Old Lady Cranston” inside that house. But Old Lady Cranston had been dead for decades. Then Shane told the police that he had entered the home with his friend Mike, but he couldn’t find Mike anywhere.
The police found Mike thirty minutes later; he was hiding in a dark corner of one of the living rooms, sucking his thumb. His face was covered with deep scratches. He had wet his pants. He was unresponsive and traumatized. The police asked Mike over and over what had happened inside the house, but he never told them. He never told anyone. He never spoke again.
Mike ended up in a mental institution and Mike’s parents blamed all of the boys involved in the prank, but they blamed Shane most of all. They believed that Shane did something to traumatize Mike while they were alone inside the house. Even though the police questioned Shane several times, no charges or lawsuits were ever filed. Shane’s family moved to Louisiana a few months later.
In Louisiana, Shane grew very close to his grandmother (his mom’s mother) who introduced Shane to the world of the paranormal. Rumors were that Shane’s grandmother was a local psychic, holding the occasional séance and telling fortunes with playing cards.
And that’s when Shane’s fascination with the paranormal really began to grow. Maybe he was searching for an answer to what he’d seen in the Cranston House, or maybe he was looking for an answer to what had happened to his friend Mike inside that house.
After high school, where Shane excelled in his studies and was a starter on the varsity football team, he went to a local community college. He took prerequisite courses while working fulltime at a friend of the family’s construction company. But two years later, after the death of his grandmother, Shane began to perform investigations of the paranormal on his own. He started his investigations in his own area of Louisiana, benefiting from the reputation his grandmother had built. But a few years later he branched out to other states and he quickly became famous in ghost hunting circles. He was known to lock himself inside of haunted locations, paying someone to chain the doors shut while he spent the night in an abandoned building. He was also known for his techniques of antagonizing the spirits, something he claimed to have learned from his grandmother.
Eventually Shane wrote a book about his experiences at these haunted locations. He called his book Extreme Ghost Hunting. In the introduction of the book Shane credited two things for his lifelong interest in the paranormal: his traumatic experience inside the Cranston House when he was twelve years old and the time he’d spent with his grandmother.
Shane’s book Extreme Ghost Hunting became a surprise success for a few reasons: the evidence Shane had collected at the haunted sites was some of the best results ever recorded, and he already had a pretty large social media platform. His good looks and charm didn’t hurt him, either. His book was successful enough to catch the eye of TV producers in Hollywood. This was five years ago when ghost hunting shows were trending. He signed on with some producers to do a show called Extreme Ghost Hunting, titled just like his book.
The TV show did well in its first season compared to most of the other ghost hunting shows. But at the beginning of the second season there were some disputes between Shane and his producers. And that was when the producers were caught doctoring footage and the show was canceled. Shane’s career was ruined.
Kristen clicked on one of the episodes of Shane’s former TV show that she had downloaded on her IPad. She watched the black screen for a second as it loaded, and then the show started.
The show opened like a lot of the other ghost hunting shows did; there was some spooky music and a montage of chilling images and iconic symbols of hauntings: crooked tombstones in an overgrown graveyard, dilapidated structures, abandoned buildings, brick tombs, underground tunnels. And over these images, Shane narrated: “My name is Shane Edwards and I’ve been searching for the paranormal all my life. I’ve seen things most people wouldn’t believe, and I’ve even caught some of it on film. And now I scour the globe in search of the most haunted places on Earth. I go alone, with no camera crew, no production team—only me and my own cameras.”
Kristen fast-forwarded a little to a shot of Shane fixed with a camera harness that had a camera facing out from his chest, and a smaller camera attached to a steel rod that focused on his face as he walked the dark halls of an abandoned building.
A seasick feeling came over Kristen as she watched Shane walk through a dark building with the camera aimed at his head; Shane’s head seemed to remain stationary as the background bobbed and reeled by in a blur with every movement he made. And as he walked the dark halls, everything, even his face, was shot in the greenish glow of night-vision.
“I had Hal, the superintendent of the property, lock me in this building for the night,” Shane said into the camera. “He wrapped chains around the door handles and locked them shut with a padlock.”
There was a grainy flashback shot in black and white of Hal wrapping the chains around the door handles and locking them with the padlock.
Back to Shane:
“I am locked in this building. I am totally alone with …” and here Shane paused dramatically as he looked around, the dark background spinning wildly with his movements. “… with whatever might be in here.”
Kristen watched a little more, but she couldn’t help the shudder that rippled through her body. She wasn’t sure if she could do what Shane had done … lock herself inside an abandoned building alone at night. She wasn’t even a believer in the paranormal, but the idea of being alone in the dark frightened her.
She shut off the IPad and sat back for a moment in the luxuriously comfortable chair, listening to the drone of the jet as it flew through the air high above the ground.
Her mind drifted back to the meeting she’d just had with Nick and she wondered again what he might really be after on that island.
She grabbed her IPad again and Googled legends about islands in the Caribbean. A list popped up in a nanosecond. The usual stuff: hauntings and ghost stories, pirates and buried treasure, ghost ships and sunken vessels, voodoo, zombies, the Bermuda Triangle. She scrolled down through a few pages but she didn’t find any mention of Devil’s Island.
Kristen clicked on a few of the websites about Caribbean Island legends, but they didn’t answer the question
of why Nick would be so intent on finding something on this particular island. Nick wouldn’t be dropping everything to go film a documentary on a supposedly haunted island. Nick produced feature films, not cable channel documentaries. He was interested in the paranormal so maybe he believed that this place was really haunted. Could that be it? A documentary that absolutely proved the existence of ghosts would be groundbreaking.
Still, was that reason enough to actually purchase the island?
She looked back at the list of Google suggestions. Buried treasure? Nick had more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime so the money wouldn’t be a draw for him. But then there was the notoriety of finding buried treasure, especially if it was from a famous pirate. But if it was buried treasure he was after then he would’ve brought a different crew down there, not a ghost hunting crew.
Voodoo and zombies didn’t make much sense, either. And neither did the Bermuda Triangle.
Nick had always been an adventurer and a risk-taker. Kristen believed that Nick secretly wanted to make discoveries that no one else had ever made before, explore new and forbidden territories. But underneath it all, Nick was still a pragmatic businessman. His adventures were for himself in his own free time, and he didn’t usually mix them with his business life. No, she thought, he wouldn’t invest all of these resources and drop everything else if there wasn’t something down there on that island that he wanted very badly.
She thought about the research she had done on the small island and the Thornhill Manor that stood on it.
It had been gruesome research. Terrible things had happened on that island and in that manor, if the accounts she’d researched were to be believed. She shuddered again just thinking about the horrible things that she’d read.
Thank God she wasn’t going there.
CHAPTER NINE
Barstow, Louisiana—boat marina
Kristen, dressed in a dark business suit/skirt and black high heels, walked down the wide walkway of the pier. She walked past a line of boats that ranged from yachts to fishing boats to recreational boats. She was about to enter a small building constructed right on the pier. The building was covered with old wood siding, some of it mildewed and rotting away in the humid air. An ancient sign was fixed over the top of the door proclaiming this place as Krabby’s Korner. It looked like some kind of combination of diner/bar/bait and tackle place.
But before she reached the doors of Krabby’s Korner, she saw a man dressed in a ragged T-shirt, stained pants, and yellow rubber boots that went up to his knees. She supposed he was some kind of dockworker. She changed her mind about the building and hurried over to the dock worker, intercepting him before he could go inside.
“Excuse me, sir.”
The old man stopped and his leathery face broke into lines of wrinkles as he smiled at her. A few of his front bottom teeth were missing and she had to tear her eyes away from those vacant teeth.
“What can I do for you, pretty lady?”
“I’m looking for this man.” Kristen pulled out a photo of Shane Edwards from her purse and handed it to the dockworker.
He studied the photo for a moment in his grimy fingers.
“His name is Shane Edwards,” she told him. “Do you know him?”
The smile left the dockworker’s face as he stared at the photo. “Yeah, I know him.”
“I need to find him. Can you tell me which boat he lives on?”
The dockworker eyed Kristen. “You a cop or something?”
“No.”
“Lawyer?”
“I work for a man named Nick Gorman. You might have heard of him before. He’s a director and producer in Hollywood. He’s made a lot of movies.”
The dockworker gave no indication that he’d heard of Nick.
“Anyway, I have a business proposition for Mr. Edwards.”
The dockworker handed the photo back to Kristen. “I don’t know about all this. He doesn’t like to be bothered.”
Kristen shoved the photo back into her purse and pulled out a hundred dollar bill. She handed it to the dockworker.
The man took the money and crumpled it down into a pocket of his dirty work pants.
“I’ll tell you which boat is his,” the man said. “But you can go bother him. Not me.”
• • • • •
Fifteen minutes later Kristen stood in front of Shane’s sloppy and neglected houseboat—it looked to her like an old trailer home set on top of a boat. The name of the boat had been painted recently over the rusty aluminum siding and it should’ve been obvious: Ghost Ship. She could’ve saved a hundred dollars and roamed around until she’d found it, but it was Nick’s money anyway, and fifteen minutes saved was worth it.
Shane’s boat was squeezed in between two other boats that were nearly as neglected as his.
Kristen boarded the boat carefully, stepping across a two foot gulf between the pier and the end of the boat. She held onto the metal railing on top of the fiberglass wall and steadied herself as the boat rocked slightly. She wished she would’ve worn a different pair of shoes.
She walked across the littered deck to a sliding glass door that had dark drapes pulled all the way closed beyond it. She stood in front of the glass doors, listening for any sounds from inside. And then she knocked on the glass.
“Go away!” a man’s voice yelled from inside.
Kristen knocked again.
“I said go away,” the man inside said again, but now he sounded much closer to the door.
“Mr. Edwards, my name is Kristen. I work for Nick Gorman. He has a job opportunity for you.”
“The Nick Gorman,” the man asked from right behind the sliding glass door, but he hadn’t pulled the drapes aside yet.
“Yes, that one.”
The drapes were pulled back and the door slid open quickly. Shane stood in the doorway. He was even more handsome in person than his photograph. He was tall and nothing but lean muscle. His Hawaiian shirt was open revealing a tanned six-pack of abs. But he was rough-looking; unshaven, hair messy.
His eyes were lit up with excitement. “What’s the job? Are you guys scouting for film locations? I can take—”
“It’s a haunting.”
Shane’s face dropped. “A what?”
Kristen continued quickly. “Mr. Edwards, please hear me out for a moment. I know all about you. I know you’re the best. And we need the best.”
“How did you find me?” He looked past Kristen at the pier, staring down past the line of boats like he was trying to spot someone. “Who told you I lived here?” he asked again and his dark eyes were right back on Kristen. “Was it Petey?”
“If we could just talk for a moment, Mr. Edwards …”
“Yep, it was Petey,” Shane grumbled.
Shane walked away from the doorway, but he left the door wide open. He disappeared into the gloom.
Kristen was about to enter, feeling like the open door was an invitation to her. But she looked down at the threshold, trying to be careful of her footing with her heels. Across the threshold of the door was a line of what looked like salt mixed in with a dark line of some other kind of substance.
“It’s just iron fillings and salt,” Shane said from inside. “They keep the demons out.”
Kristen smiled at him like it was a joke.
It was a joke, wasn’t it?
But the look in Shane’s eyes said that he wasn’t joking.
Kristen’s eyes were already beginning to adjust to the darkness inside the cabin as she entered. All of the shades were drawn over the windows. There were some clothes piled up in baskets in the corner like they were ready to be taken to the Laundromat. There were also religious items and trinkets all over the place; crucifixes and crosses hanging from lamps and hooks on the walls, small statues. A leaning bookshelf was crammed with books on demonology, ghost hunting cases, and several copies of the book Shane had written: Extreme Ghost Hunting.
Shane plopped down on a small lumpy couch against
the paneled wall that had a coffee table in front of it that was littered with beer cans, a few more books, and a plate of leftover food. It looked to Kristen like he probably slept on that couch.
She glanced at the small kitchen that was only steps away from the coffee table. The sink was overflowing with dishes. There was a box of cereal and a bowl and a spoon next to it. There were more beer cans and a Big Gulp cup cluttering the small counter space, a dead plant in the corner.
“Sorry … the maid quit,” Shane said.
A collection of cameras and recording equipment caught Kristen’s eye. The equipment was stacked up on a chair next to a doorway that must lead to the bedroom and bathroom.
“Is that your equipment?” she asked him.
Shane didn’t answer.
Kristen looked at Shane, her posture ramrod straight, her hands folded neatly in front of her. She tried her best to exude corporate confidence. She held her head high and she kept her eyes on Shane. “I know you’re having financial troubles, Mr. Edwards. I know you could use the work.”
Shane still didn’t say anything. He just watched her like he was an animal studying its prey and waiting for the right moment to pounce.
“You need the money, and we need you. We’ll pay you three times your normal fee. We’ll pay all travel expenses. We’ll supply any equipment or gear you need, and any supplies. Just make a list.”
Shane got up from his couch and walked towards Kristen. She tensed suddenly, but then she relaxed a little when he brushed past her and walked into the tiny kitchen.
Kristen turned and watched Shane. She took a step backwards, moving closer towards the open door which was a bright rectangle of light behind her in this gloom.
Shane ran a hand through his messy hair and then he looked at Kristen. “Sorry. Your job offer sounds great, but I can’t help you. I quit the business a few years back. I’m a joke in the ghost hunting business in case you haven’t heard. I actually used to have a TV show—”
“I’ve done my research, Mr. Edwards. I know all about what happened.”
