The Ghoul Next Door: A Ghost Hunter Mystery

by Laurie, Victoria

  “Well, then, we’re stuck, aren’t we?”

  “No, we’re not stuck,” Steven insisted. “Gilley said that Luke was possessed last night when he walked out of the house. I think that ghost took over Luke’s body and was responsible for the murdered girl.”

  I wasn’t shocked that Gilley had been running his mouth without knowing for certain that was the case, but it irritated me no end that Gil had made a bad situation worse by saying such things to Steven. “We don’t know for sure that Luke was possessed last night, Steven. We only know that he was acting weird, got up, walked downstairs and out of the door. The next time we saw him, he was clearly in distress and covered in blood. Only Luke knows what happened.”

  “But what if he doesn’t?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I overheard one of the policemen at the scene say that when he put Luke in the car, he told the cop that he couldn’t remember anything about what’d happened.”

  I sighed and went back to pinching the bridge of my nose. “Steven, I don’t know how we can help. This is way outside of anything we’ve ever dealt with—”

  “That’s not true and you know it, M.J. I’ve seen the things you’ve dealt with firsthand. If anyone is going to get to the bottom of this, it’s you.”

  “I’m not a detective, Steven!” I said a bit too loudly. “I wasn’t there! I didn’t see what happened! I only saw Luke get up and leave the house. The next thing we know, a girl is dead and Luke is covered in blood that, quite likely, came from her.”

  “M.J.,” Steven said calmly, “please. You have to try to figure out what happened. I know this young man. He’s not capable of doing something like this.”

  I tapped the arm of the chair with my fingertips. I felt trapped and cornered and I didn’t like it. “Let me talk to Gilley and Heath,” I said at last. “If they agree to look into this, then we will. But if either of them doesn’t want to do it, then we’re out, Steven.”

  “Did I really mean that little to you?”

  The comment caught me off guard. “What?”

  “You heard me,” he said softly. “A year ago you would’ve dropped everything if I’d needed you. Now it’s like we’re strangers. Like there was never anything special between us, when you know there was. I know you do.”

  I nearly took the bait, but with effort I managed to keep my wits about me. “This has nothing to do with how I felt about you in the past, Steven. Nothing. This has everything to do with this being a matter for the police to figure out. If we get involved, we risk everything from obstruction charges to being implicated in the murder. It’s risky, is all I’m saying, and while I might be willing to get involved to help you, I won’t commit either Gilley or Heath to that without their buy-in.”

  Steven seemed to think that over. “Fine,” he said at last. “But if the situation were reversed, M.J., I wouldn’t hesitate to help you.”

  I clenched my jaw—that was an exaggeration and completely unfair. Steven wasn’t in my position, and I knew he’d never commit Courtney to such risks if the situation were reversed. I understood him far better than that. Still, I decided not to call him on it. I wanted off the phone and away from the guilt trip, so I simply said, “We’ll be in touch,” and hung up.

  “That sounded like it went well,” Heath said from the doorway of the bathroom.

  I started. I hadn’t realized he’d been standing there. “How much did you overhear?”

  “Enough. He wants us to investigate this?”

  I nodded. “He’s convinced Luke was possessed and that the spook made him do it.”

  “Wait a sec. We haven’t had a chance to talk to Luke to see what the hell was going on inside his head, so how does Steven know that’s what happened?”

  I sighed. “He had a little help arriving at that conclusion.” When Heath’s brow furrowed, I added, “Gilley told him Luke was possessed when he walked out of the house last night.”

  Heath shook his head and scratched the back of his neck. He wore a towel around his waist and droplets of water glistened off his bare chest and shoulders. “Leave it to Gil,” he said.

  “Hmm?” I asked, distracted by the sexy sight of him. “Oh, yeah. Gil.”

  “You rang?” said a voice from the hallway. Heath and I both jumped just as Gil appeared in my bedroom doorway. “Why, hello, gorgeous,” my BFF said the moment he laid eyes on a half-naked Heath.

  Heath blushed, which I thought was incredibly cute, before he recovered himself. “Keep it in your pants, Gillespie. You know I only have eyes for Em.”

  Gil sighed sadly. “Yes, I know. Such a shame.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. Then I remembered the conversation I’d just been having with Heath. “Gil, why the hell did you tell Steven that Luke was possessed last night?”

  Gilley made a face like he didn’t quite understand my question. “Because he was.”

  “We don’t know that,” I insisted.

  Gil blinked. “Wait. Didn’t you see what I saw? That boy had possession written all over his face. I mean, did his head spin around? No. Did he projectile vomit? No. But did I expect both of those things to happen the minute he sat up and stared at us like he did through the camera? Yes, yes, I did. That boy was full-on Linda Blair last night and you know it.”

  “No, Gil,” I repeated. “I don’t know it. I only know that Luke got up, looked a bit off, and left the house. What happened between the time he walked out and showed up again covered in blood is a complete mystery.”

  “A mystery that Sable wants us to figure out,” Heath said, looking to me to confirm.

  I sat back in the chair. “Yes.”

  “Has anyone asked Luke what the hell happened?” Gil said.

  “No,” I told him. “His lawyer won’t let him say a word to anyone. Whatever went down, we won’t know about it through Luke.”

  “Why won’t he let us talk to him if we might be able to help?” Gilley asked.

  “Because we could be called to testify about what Luke said to us in relation to last night.”

  “Ahhh,” Gil said. “So, Steven wants us to figure out what happened last night without being able to ask Luke?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why doesn’t he just hire a private detective?” Gil asked next.

  “I don’t think a PI is going to understand the whole ‘possession’ angle,” I replied, using air quotes.

  “Even if we can prove that Luke was possessed, how does that help him?” Heath said. “I mean, what jury has ever bought the whole the-devil-made-me-do-it argument?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, honey. But the one thing that’s bugging me is that if this spook can possess someone like Luke and get him to commit such a heinous crime, what’s to stop it from trying that again on somebody else?”

  Heath and Gilley were silent for a long moment, and the room felt heavy, like it was loaded with bad options. “We have to find out what this spook is really capable of, don’t we?” Heath said at last.

  “I think we do,” I replied.

  Gilley walked over to the bed, turned, and fell backward onto it. “How do we always get mixed up in crazy shit like this?”

  “Dunno, buddy. Maybe we’re just lucky.”

  Gil lifted his head and looked around at the bedcovers, his eyebrows bouncing. “Speaking of getting lucky . . .”

  I bolted out of my chair. “Don’t even think about going there,” I told him, heading out to the living room. Gilley followed me while I suspected Heath was getting dressed. I walked right over to Doc’s cage, where he lived when I wasn’t at the office, and opened the door so he could come out and climb onto the play stand on top. He blew kisses at me and whistled. I thought Doc had it pretty good, free of worry from spooks and demons and such.

  Gil took up the barstool in front of my kitchen counter. “Where do
we even start with this, M.J.? Our only link to the demon is currently sitting in a jail cell waiting to be arraigned.”

  I moved to the kitchen and opened up a cupboard to take down some Rice Chex cereal. I held the box up and shook it a little. Gil shook his head. Pouring the Chex into a bowl, I then rooted around in the fridge for some almond milk. Behind me I heard Doc say, “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!”

  After drenching my cereal, I put some into a much smaller bowl and walked it over to my sweet bird, who happily squeaked and got down to breakfast. “I think we should start with the woman who was murdered,” I said, as much to myself as to Gilley.

  “What’s that?” Heath asked, coming out of the bedroom.

  I looked up. “The woman who died last night,” I told him. “If her spirit has been grounded, then she’s the only other person besides Luke who might be able to tell us what the hell happened last night.”

  Gilley shuddered in his seat. “This whole business is so macabre.”

  I ignored him and moved back to the counter to take up the seat next to him and dive into my breakfast. “What if she’s not around?” Heath asked after moving over to the cereal box to pick from the package.

  I sighed, thinking that through. I felt blind on this one. “The only other idea I have is to go back to the house where Luke was living when he claimed all of this started to happen.”

  Heath and Gilley were silent for a moment as they considered that, until Gil said, “I have a question.”

  I turned to him. “Which is?”

  “What if the spook is still controlling Luke?”

  “Then at least they’re both locked up for the moment,” I said.

  Gil shook his head. “No, you’re missing my point. What if the spook has control of Luke and won’t let go? He’s in jail. It’s not like we’ll be allowed to pass him some magnetic spikes and lock down whatever’s gotten hold of him.”

  “True. But if we can find the portal of this spook and shove a few magnets into it, then maybe we can cut him off from his power source and he’ll eventually weaken.”

  Heath’s brow rose. “That’s a really good idea, Em.”

  “First I think we should focus all our efforts on trying to figure out who this spook is. If we can learn something about him, maybe it’ll help us understand why it’s been targeting Luke. I mean, these spooks usually go for kindred spirits, don’t they? Do we really think after meeting Luke only once that he’s this great guy who couldn’t hurt a fly?”

  “I guess it couldn’t hurt to check him out,” Gil said.

  I polished off the last of my cereal and pushed the bowl aside. “I agree. Let’s try and look into Luke’s background a little. See if he’s really as innocent as his sister claims.”

  “Shouldn’t we also get some background on the woman who was murdered?” Heath said.

  I blinked. Why hadn’t I thought of that first? “Yes, definitely. But, Gil, if you’d hold off telling us anything about her until after Heath and I try to make contact, that’d be good. That way we know what we’re getting is genuine and not influenced by anything we know.”

  Gil was taking notes on his iPhone. “Got it,” he said. Then he pushed back from the counter and added, “You two do what you do, and I’ll be digging up dirt.”

  With that, he left us. Heath and I headed out the door just a few minutes later, stopping by Mack’s office to drop off both of our passports, as Mack had asked us to let him take them to the police. My thinking was that he wanted to be absolutely certain Heath and I hadn’t been in the U.S. at the time of Bethany’s murder. The stamps in both of our passports from Scotland were undeniable, so I wasn’t at all nervous about turning them over. And if Heath and I handed over our passports and the police kept them for a while, then we couldn’t very well leave the country to face more demons and evil spooks for our cable show. Given what I suspected we were up against here, that was sounding like the one bright spot in a pretty cloudy future.

  Chapter 7

  After leaving both passports with Mack’s secretary, Heath and I drove over to the scene of the crime, so to speak. We parked just down the street from Courtney’s place and saw the yellow tape looped across the span of the steps leading up to the front door. There was additional tape across the door in the form of a large X, and a big yellow sticker was stuck between the door and the frame to seal it. Heath and I approached cautiously, both of us looking up and down the street—not for spooks, but for cops. We’d had a brief discussion in the car about the danger of showing up at the crime scene while under the suspicion of the police. The last thing we needed was to be seen poking our noses in places Detective Souter didn’t think they belonged, and I was absolutely convinced that if she knew we were here, she’d suspect that we were up to something like hiding evidence.

  There was no sign of the police or CSI, but I stiffened when I heard a siren in the distance. Heath moved close to me to take up my hand and walked right beside me as we crossed the street. Once on the sidewalk we both gazed up silently at Courtney’s front door. I pressed my lips together when I noticed a rusty stain on the door handle, and an additional faint rust-colored handprint on the door itself. There were also the familiar smudges of dark gray powder all along the door’s edge.

  I knew I’d need to open up my sixth sense to get a feel for the murdered girl, but I was hesitant in that way one is about diving into a cold pool. Heath seemed to have no such reservations. He lifted his chin a little and looked down the street, his eyes unfocused and that familiar expression I knew too well. “You’ve got something?”

  He nodded and began to move past me, taking up my hand again to bring me along. As I walked beside him, I opened up my own senses and felt the energy around us expand.

  It’s a little bit of a neat trick I discovered about working with Heath that when he and I are together, if we’re both using our sixth senses, our ability to pick up information and the presence of spirits expands exponentially. It’s a bit like putting a big antenna on a radio—the range is broader and the information coming in much clearer. It’s a sum-of-the-parts-being-greater-than-the-whole type of thing, and it’s one of the reasons I really love working with Heath.

  “She’s this way,” he said softly as we walked.

  I tried to detect the energy he was talking about, and I had only the slightest sense of her, but I knew that by keeping my intuition open I was helping him make his connection to the spirit of the dead girl stronger.

  “Is it the woman who was murdered?” I asked him.

  “Amy,” he said. “I think her name was Amy.”

  At that moment Heath stopped abruptly, and because he was leading me, I did too. I looked at him closely and saw his brow furrow. “Weird,” he said.

  “What’s weird?”

  Heath was turning his head this way and that, as if he was listening to more than one person in a conversation. “This girl feels young,” he said. “Didn’t Mack tell you that she was in her late twenties?”

  “He did.”

  Heath shook his head. “She feels about ten years younger. But it’s gotta be the same girl because her throat was cut.” I watched as Heath’s hand lifted to his own throat and he seemed to grimace a little.

  At that moment my own radar kicked into full swing and I felt a tug from just down the street. The smell of blood wafted under my nose, and I nearly gagged. I put my free hand over my nose—the scent was so powerful and nauseating—and sure enough as I looked farther down the street, I saw a door with the familiar yellow X across the door.

  I couldn’t feel the girl—she seemed to be communicating only with Heath—but I could sense the violence that’d occurred in the spot we were standing in. It was awful. The assault had been intense, and unrelenting. I felt myself cringing and stepping closer to Heath. Looking up at him, I saw that he’d closed his eyes and he was standing so stiffly I didn’t think
he was even aware of the fact that I’d moved closer to him. He’d also gone a little pale, and I had a feeling he was getting details that were far too grim to witness.

  I squeezed his hand, which had gone cold in my palm. “Babe,” I whispered, but he didn’t acknowledge me. “Heath,” I tried again, a little louder. I felt a shudder go through him and he opened his eyes, staring at me with such a haunted expression that I reached up to cup his face. “You okay?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, his eyes misting slightly. “Em, let’s get out of here, okay?”

  I nodded and took him by the hand again, leading him back across the street and to my car. Heath paused to fish out the car keys from his pocket, but his hand was shaking so bad that he dropped the keys. I ducked to pick them up first and said, “How about I drive?”

  He nodded and moved stiffly around to the passenger side. Once we were inside, I started the engine and cranked up the heat. Heath was pale and shaking and I couldn’t imagine what he’d gotten from the ether to affect him so much. I didn’t press him for details; instead I drove straight to Mama Dell’s. The minute we were through the door, Mama appeared, as if she knew someone was troubled and needed a good dose of Southern charm.

  “Well, good afternoon, y’all!” she said, sweeping toward us all smiles and open arms. She aimed those open arms toward Heath first and I was so grateful. “Darlin’, you feel cold!” she said to him, squeezing him tighter. I stood back and let Mama’s warmth funnel its way into Heath, and before my eyes some color returned to his cheeks and I sighed with relief.

  Mama let go of him after a bit and graced me with a hug too, but I could tell her mind was still on Heath. “Come in, y’all, and take a seat. I’ll bring you some coffee and some fresh buttermilk biscuits to warm your bones.”