by Sean Michael
Darnell offered him a tray with four coffees on it. “Take your pick.”
“You got one for me? Thank you.” Oh, that was more than decent.
“Of course we did.” Jason looked at the others. “We good to go in?”
“Come on. If they bother you, I’ll threaten to burn the place down.” He was too tired and sore to feel threatened right now. He was tired to the bone of the constant drama from something that wasn’t really there.
Will laughed, looking surprised.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to actually burning the house down,” murmured Blaine.
“At least there’s insurance, one way or the other.” Although he didn’t know if the insurance would pay if they thought he’d actually done it. If he did decide to go through with it, he’d have to look into it so he didn’t get caught. God, was he actually thinking this?
“We’re going to figure this out before it comes to that,” Jason assured him. “Let’s do this.”
Will hefted the camera, and Jason made an “after you” motion.
He led them into the kitchen and doctored his coffee with a shot of cream. He drank deep, letting the heat and sweet soothe him. The caffeine worked its magic too, making him feel more awake.
“Day two at the MacGregor mansion. We’re starting in the kitchen again,” Blaine began as Will did a panorama of the kitchen. “Payne?”
“Yeah?”
“Were all the bowls upside down and stacked like that last night?”
He looked over at the glass front cabinets and, sure enough, all the bowls were on their rims and balanced instead of right side up and nested together.
“Holy fuck.” Will moved in, panning the camera across the cupboards. “It wasn’t like this when we were here yesterday. I’ve got the footage to prove it too.”
“Yeah. I’ll fix it in a little while.” Asshole. Why did he have an asshole ghost? Or asshole ghosts as the case could well be.
“Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see what happens if you fix it now.” Blaine pointed at the camera. “To see what happens and document it.”
“Oh. Okay.” Then he was going upstairs and changing clothes. Maybe taking a shower. He didn’t need to be here while they played rearrange his cupboards and shelves with the ghost, did he?
“Mr. MacGregor is going to set his bowls back the way he usually keeps them,” Blaine narrated, as Will filmed.
He put the bowls back together, cursing the ghost under his breath. One of the bowls vibrated, knocking against the others. “Stop it!” he snapped.
Something whipped the bowl in his hand away from him and threw it against the wall on the other side of the room, where it shattered.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” He was tired and fed up, and he didn’t want to play anymore.
Another bowl whipped across the room, the entire group of ghost hunters ducking as it sailed past them.
“Stop it! You motherfucker! These are mine!” He slammed the cabinets closed and held them shut.
Flynn moved to help him, and Jason held his hand out. “No! Not this time. We’ll get involved with the next incident, but we need a baseline.”
Payne thought this was incredibly unfair. He needed help. He needed support. He did not need the five of them standing there staring at him as the ghost tried to get rid of all his dishes. Maybe it didn’t approve of his taste.
The dishes all rattled louder, the sound building as the cupboard doors pushed hard against him. Then all of a sudden it stopped. Just like that. One minute it was loud and strong and chaotic, and the next it was over. Like sunshine after a thunderstorm.
Will grunted. “Huh. All of a sudden the air is lighter.”
“Yeah. Also yay.” Payne didn’t dare let go of the cupboard doors.
“You’re feeling that too, Will?” Blaine asked.
“Yeah. How can I not? It’s like suddenly being able to breathe again.”
“Yeah. Yeah, this volley is over,” Blaine said.
“Good deal.” Payne stepped back from the cupboard, forcing himself not to shake. “I’m going to brush my teeth. I’ll be back.”
He was halfway down the hall before he realized they were following him. He didn’t need company in the bathroom, right? They followed him all the way up the stairs, though, to his room, stopping just short of coming in with him.
“Can’t be too careful,” Jason murmured.
“I’ll be fine.” He hoped.
“We’ll stay out here. But leave the bedroom door ajar and don’t lock the bathroom door, okay?”
“Okay. The other bathrooms are along the hall if you have the need. They’re all renovated.”
“How many bathrooms does one hallway need?” Will asked.
He didn’t answer. Obviously Will didn’t care for him, or for his home. The house had seven bedrooms and eight baths—four on the second floor and four on the third. The first and attic didn’t have any. He closed the bedroom door behind him. He wanted his privacy. Surely he’d be fine in his own room.
He brushed his teeth and washed up, using the time to shake off the last of the fuzziness from having fallen asleep while he was working. Then he changed his clothes quickly. It didn’t feel right to be still wearing yesterday’s clothes. They were no longer clean, and they were rumpled, and he wasn’t the kind of person who was comfortable like that.
The guys were waiting in the hall when he opened the door, all watching Blaine, who was facing the other way, his head cocked.
Payne wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Hell, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know.
“Give us a minute,” whispered Jason. “Blaine has something.”
“Okay.” He went back in the bedroom and closed the door, sat on the edge of his bed, hands folded together in front of him.
There was a knock, and Jason popped his head in. “I didn’t mean you had to leave. Only that we were waiting on Blaine to do whatever it is he’s going to do.”
“No worries. I don’t want to interrupt.” He wasn’t a part of their group, and he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be that involved, really. Half of him thought he should go away while they were doing their thing; the other half thought that this was his house, and he wasn’t leaving it.
“We’re totally cool with you being right there with us—this is your house, your ghost. We need you there.”
God, no matter what he did, he was off-kilter with these guys. Had he always been so… awkward? Of course, now that he was working exclusively from home, he had no way of gauging how well he interacted with others, because he didn’t have to anymore. Not in person, anyway.
Jason motioned for him to come back out to the hall and join them. “Blaine has sensed a couple of presences since we got here. The one downstairs with the bowls, but there’s a different one here.”
Definitely two ghosts? Did that make him an overachiever? “Is that good or bad?”
“We don’t know yet, but it does lend credence to our theory that there are at least two different entities here, and we think they’re warring. And you are caught in the middle.”
“Go team me.” He tried not to sigh, really he did. It was bad enough to have one ghost, though, and now they were telling him he had at least two.
“This isn’t your fault,” Will, of all people, told him.
“I hope not. I didn’t have ghosts before.”
“They came with the house,” Flynn told him.
It was almost funny. It was like a very bad joke. Only it wasn’t a joke—it was his life.
“Yeah. I need to check the library. I left my computer in there.” He didn’t like it when they… it… whatever threw books around, but if they got it into their heads to toss his computer, it would break, and he couldn’t afford that.
“We’ll come with you,” Jason said easily. And the entire group followed him, Will filming as they went, Jason making remarks now and then.
“You get used to it,” Blaine told him.
“What’s that? The ghosts?” He could believe that. If it weren’t for the bouts of violence, he wasn’t sure he would have called anyone in to deal with it in the first place.
“The ghosts. The camera. The weirdness of it all.”
“I hope not. I don’t want it to last long enough for me to get used to.” He’d hoped he could call these guys in, they’d film the house, they’d find the ghost, and they’d get it dealt with. And he’d imagined that might take a few hours, maybe a whole day or night. Now they were on their second day here, and he’d gone from a ghost to at least two.
Flynn laughed. “Good answer.”
“Not that you guys aren’t nice, but this is stressful, the haunting thing.” The having people he didn’t know not only in his house but in his space, watching him all the time.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I was trying to keep things light. We’re going to see you through this. We’re a good team, and we may joke around and fool around, but this is what we do. We will figure this out, okay?”
“I don’t mind. I’m not a fuddy-duddy. I’m just tired.” Exhausted, really.
“Fuddy-duddy. What a great word.” Flynn patted his back.
“I knows lots,” he teased, trying to match the lighter tone.
“I bet they’re all big ones too,” Will said.
“Oh, I know a few short ones.” Ass. Dick. Plebe. He had plenty of choice words for Will.
Jason laughed. “We all know the four-letter ones.”
“Those come in handy.”
Will chuckled. “They won’t let us use them on TV, though.”
“True. I’ll try to watch my mouth.” He peeked into the library, sighing at the sight of a row of books stacked neatly on the floor. He supposed the stacking was an improvement over them being flung all over the place.
“Okay.” Blaine nodded and moved ahead of him, Will following with the camera. “Here we have a row of books, neatly stacked on the floor. This feels like the work of a separate entity from the one who was throwing bowls across the room in the kitchen. Payne MacGregor, the owner of the house, is going to check out the books, see if there’s any significance to them.”
“They’re children’s stories—The Five Little Peppers, What Katy Did, Little Women, all sorts.” The entire Famous Five series and the Narnia books too. They’d been his grandmother’s favorites.
“Do these particular children’s stories mean anything to you?”
“They were Gram’s. She loved them.” His strongest memory of his grandmother was lying in bed while she sat in a chair, rocking slowly back and forth as she read to him every night when they visited. Some nights she’d read for hours before he fell asleep.
“That confirms what I’ve been thinking,” Blaine said. “One of the entities here is your grandmother. She’s trying to let you know she’s here. And the nonthreatening and nonviolent rearrangement of the books leads me to think she doesn’t mean you harm. In fact, she may be trying to warn you or look out for you. It would be natural for her to be stuck here with the house if she was actually murdered. Maybe she was pushed down the stairs rather than fell.” Blaine touched the books, fingers lingering over them.
Payne shivered at the thought of his gramma being murdered. No way was he thinking about that. Bad enough that she’d died like she had.
“Now we need to figure out how to communicate with her—find out what she wants.” Blaine made it sound so matter-of-fact, normal.
“Well, tell her I’ll do my best to give it to her.” At least he thought he would. He supposed it would depend on what she wanted.
“I imagine she just heard you,” Blaine noted. “Now we need to figure out who this other entity—or entities—are.”
“I’m going to… I don’t know. Fix myself a bowl of cereal.” He was peckish, and this whole situation was so bizarre.
“How about we go down to the basement, first,” Jason suggested. “You can show us around.”
He opened his mouth to answer, but when he took a breath, he found himself sitting in the kitchen with his coffee. He looked around at the guys who were all staring at him, camera pointed right at him. What the hell?
“Is that you, Payne? Are you back with us?” Jason asked.
“What? Of course it’s me. Don’t be ridiculous.” He didn’t understand what was happening. Why couldn’t he remember coming to the kitchen? Or making himself coffee?
“You want to see the footage?” Will asked. “We’ve got ten minutes of you being a zombie and refusing to let us anywhere near the basement door.”
“Stop fucking with me.” Zombies weren’t real.
“Nobody is fucking with you,” Will growled and took the camera off his shoulder, fiddled with something, then turned it in front of Payne so he could see the screen. “Watch the playback.”
“…show us around.”
He saw himself—or someone who looked an awful lot like him—shake his head and suggest they stay where they were. When that didn’t work and the guys insisted they move down the hall toward the basement, he simply refused to talk. He stood there, staring into space, his hands by his sides.
“All right, let’s go get a cup of coffee, then. How does that sound?” The guys led the way, Will obviously staying behind to film as Payne finally followed them. The team stopped at the door to the basement, but he pushed past them and went to the kitchen, giving the basement door a wide berth as he passed it. The guys followed him into the kitchen, where he sat. He didn’t budge as Darnell made the coffee and set it down in front of him. Which was where he was now. And he had no memory of what he’d just seen or how he’d gotten from the library to the kitchen.
“Sorry. I guess I’m more tired than I thought.” That had to be the explanation.
“It’s more than that,” muttered Will.
“Will is right. We think the other entity is riding you. It’s trying to keep you from going downstairs or letting any of us downstairs.” Blaine looked toward the locked door to the basement. He seemed worried. “I think that might be where its power is.”
“No one needs to go down there. It’s dangerous.” Payne couldn’t emphasize that enough.
“Is that you, Payne?” Jason asked, crouching next to him and looking into his eyes.
“Of course it is. It’s important, okay?”
“Okay. But how do you know it’s important to stay away from the basement? How is it dangerous?”
God, they were so pushy about the whole basement thing. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to think about it. It was best to leave it alone.
“Think about it,” Flynn said. “You were happy to show us the rest of the house and tell us all about the renovation. Why this reticence about the basement?”
He shrugged. It was dirty down there, stinky, dangerous. He’d opened the door once, and the smell had been awful, the steps incredibly steep. He’d decided then and there not to go down and to buy a lock for the door so no one could accidently start down there and do a header like his grandmother had.
“There’s a lot of history in the basements of these old places, isn’t there?” Justin asked. “A lot of them had kitchens and the servants’ rooms.”
“There is. These places are wild.”
“So why aren’t you renovating down there too? Why not fix it up? I bet there’s a huge hearth for cooking that would make a beautiful fireplace. There’s a lot of space down there that you’re missing out on.”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. He just knew that he didn’t want to go down there, and he didn’t want to talk about it.
Jason’s eyes suddenly went wide. “Oh, honey. Your nose is bleeding.”
“What?” He put his hand to his nose and pulled it away to find his fingers covered in blood. “What the hell?”
“Dammit.” Flynn pulled some tissues out of his pocket and handed them over. “That started the moment you gave a free answer on your own, not the answer the ghost wanted you to.”
“You
don’t know that for sure,” Jason insisted.
“Bullshit I don’t.” Flynn shook his head. “I dealt with this with Blaine.” Both Flynn and Blaine shuddered, then held hands. “We can’t pretend this isn’t happening.”
“Can someone hand me another Kleenex?” This wasn’t some little trickle of blood; this was a bad nosebleed. He’d never had one so bad.
“I’m out,” Flynn said.
Darnell looked around and grabbed him a couple of paper towels.
“I think… I think I want to go lie down.” He didn’t feel so good. He wasn’t usually that squeamish about the sight of blood, but there seemed to be so much of it.
“Someone should go with you,” Flynn suggested. “I don’t think you should be alone right now.” The rest of the guys nodded in agreement.
Payne stood up, finding himself extremely dizzy. He swayed as everything went out of focus, then fell into someone’s arms, the world going black.
6
Will caught MacGregor as he fainted, and Jason rescued the camera before it could fall and smash into God knew how many pieces.
“What the fuck!” He hoisted MacGregor into his arms, carrying him like a child. The guy was surprisingly light. Clearly all those clothes hid a fairly trim frame.
“Take him to his bedroom,” Jason told him. “And stay with him. Something has got a hold of him. Something not at all friendly.”
Will grunted. “Wouldn’t it be better if someone else stayed with him?” He wasn’t exactly MacGregor’s favorite person. By a long shot.
“You have him. Just take him and make sure he doesn’t….” Jason shrugged. “I don’t know, explode or whatever.”
“While you guys do what?” Will growled, not expecting an answer. He didn’t want to be sidelined. He began walking his burden up the stairs. Macgregor leaned into him, relaxed and boneless, totally unconscious.
He went into MacGregor’s bedroom and turned to find the guys had trooped up after him. He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t exactly need the escort, you know.”
Jason was manning Will’s camera. “We’re trying to document everything, though. And I wanted to know if he woke up once you got him away from the basement door.”
