“I hope you enjoy your stay,” she told Jason, handing over the key to his room. “Just don’t be too disappointed if we don’t live up to the hype.”
He chuckled at that and bounced the room key in his palm. “Oh, I have a good feeling. Things are going to happen here.”
“We aim to please. Just remember the town of Twilight Ridge has a lot to offer, especially with the scenery. The leaves are turning colors and people are starting to decorate for Halloween, and it’s a great place to visit even if you don’t see any ghosts.”
“Well, I’m still hoping for ghosts. If not, then I’ll just visit some of the antique shops. I’m not much for just taking a walk to look at leaves but I’m sure I’ll find something that will keep me--”
Over on the wall just inside the front door, a painting slipped its hook and fell to the floor with a loud bang.
Jason spun around, his backpack sliding off his shoulder and his key dropping to the floor.
“There, you see? It’s happening already.” He began rubbing his hands together in glee. “I need to have my camera with me at all times. Oh, I wish I’d gotten that on film!”
Katie didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was just a painting falling, and that things like that happened every day in normal, non-haunted buildings. It certainly didn’t mean that a ghost was trying to redecorate the Heritage Inn.
Then again, at the back of her mind, she had to wonder if maybe that was exactly what it was. Ghosts came and went as they pleased and as long as they didn’t put any of her guests in danger--or her either--then they could move as many paintings as they liked.
Still, she couldn’t help but wonder...did something happen to bring the ghosts out of wherever they’d been hiding?
Riley came downstairs just as Jason was collecting his bags again, dressed to impress in his best button up shirt and pressed slacks. He’d switched out of his contractor clothes so he could be her co-host for the day.
“How’s it going?” he asked Katie. “This our next guest?”
“Yes, hi, I’m Jason. Are you the other owner? Let me ask you, would it be possible to get a tour of the basement? You know, where Maggie Harper kept her victims?”
Katie tried to keep her expression from turning sour. Always show the guests a smile. That was what all the blogposts had said when she was doing online research about how to run her own Inn. Always smile. Always be friendly. It was just that the idea of showing off the basement like some sideshow attraction appalled her. The other two guests checking in this morning had asked her the same thing, and she’d barely kept herself from shouting at each of them.
She and Riley hadn’t gone down there, into the basement, any more than they’d had to since the police had cleared all the bodies out. There was still stuff down there that needed attention, like the crack in that wall, but they were procrastinating.
She absolutely did not want to bring her guests down there.
“I’m afraid we can’t let you down in the basement,” she told Jason. “Guests can use the common room and the dining area, but the rest of the Inn is off limits. Sorry.”
He seemed honestly disappointed. “Well. Um, what if I paid an extra fee? I’m sure there’s something we could work out.”
“No,” Katie told him again. “I’m sorry, but the basement is off limits. It’s a, er, liability issue.”
“Well, I could sign a waiver. There must be some amount that would cover your insurance premium?”
Katie shared a look with Riley and she could tell that he was tempted to take the offer. It was going to be up to her to put her foot down.
“No, Jason. No tours of the basement. Sorry. You’ll just have to wait for the ghosts to filter up here.”
His eyes grew wider. “So there are ghosts in the basement?”
“No, that’s not what I... Listen, we just can’t do it. Okay?”
Riley came to her rescue. “Tell you what, Jason. If we do end up seeing ghosts downstairs you’ll be the first to know, and we can revisit the idea of giving tours at that time, okay?”
“Well. I suppose that’s okay, but you’re missing out on a goldmine. People would pay really well to be able to see where all that happened.”
“We’ll keep that in mind.” He managed a smile that was a twin of Katie’s own. “Now. Do you need any help up to your room? I’d be glad to show you the way.”
“Er, no.” Jason obviously got the hint that he was being told to leave, even if it was being done politely. “No, thanks. I can manage it.”
When he was gone, Riley took Katie’s hand in his. “It’s all right. I’ll put a lock on the door to the basement so no one gets any ideas.”
She kissed his knuckles. “Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you here. Oh. You’re still bleeding.”
The back of his one hand, where he’d torn his knuckles, had started to scab over but hadn’t quite closed up yet. She could taste the coppery tang of his blood on her lips. Looking down at the wound, he swore, and shook his fingers like they suddenly stung now that he was thinking about them.
When he did, several drops of blood flew off and landed on the floor, soaking in immediately.
“Careful,” she told him. “You’ll get blood everywhere. Wow, this is going to be a lot harder than we realized, isn’t it? You banging on the pipes every other day, guests who want to treat our new place like a set from Jigsaw, and we have to start lunch for everyone soon...”
“Hey, now. It’s okay. We’re in this together. You and me. We’ll make this place something special and then who knows? Maybe we’ll move back home, maybe we’ll find...”
“Another place to do the same thing all over again?” She laughed softly. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Great minds,” he told her, pulling her close to hug her tightly. “I love you, Katie.”
“Love you, too, Riley Harris. By the way, do you think you can rehang that painting over there?”
“Uh, sure. No problem. How did it fall?”
She let her smile turn mischievous. “Maybe it was ghosts.”
Chapter 5
It was the middle of the afternoon before Katie and Riley had a chance to sit down and relax.
In the common room off to the side on the first floor, they dropped onto the couch and Katie kicked her shoes off. Lying back into Riley’s lap, she grabbed up the remote control before he could and then flicked through channel after channel. There was nothing good on. Reruns. Cooking shows. CNN was running a report on orange production in California and she stopped there, letting the reporter’s voice drone on without really listening.
“Do you miss it?” Riley asked her.
“Hmm? Miss what?”
“Being out west. I seem to remember you telling me that you flipped quite a few houses in California.”
“I have, yes.” She remembered a year spent out there, actually, with four different properties. She remembered the sun, and the beaches, but what she remembered most was that it was just plain hot. “I don’t miss it, though. I mean, I do, but I don’t.”
“I think I understand. You miss doing the work you love. Do you think you can be happy out here? Running an Inn?”
She snuggled into him closer. “I think I’ll be happy wherever you are. I have to say that was a pretty good first day, don’t you agree?”
“Our guests sure seemed like they were happy. I had fun cooking lunch for them. A couple of them were really interesting.”
“Not that one guy. Tyrell Littleton? That guy’s a real ass.”
Riley laughed uproariously at that. “Yeah, he was all mouth, wasn’t he. Well, we don’t have to have to be their best friends. We just need to keep them entertained and fed and happy.”
“I’d say we’ve made a good start.”
“Yeah, me too.”
A voice from the entryway caught them both off guard. “I’d say so, too.”
They looked up to see Victor Akers standing there. He had a came
ra strapped around one shoulder and a parabolic microphone in one hand attached to some sort of metered box with a coil of wire. He held the mike up and panned the room with it, then checked the little meter.
“Sorry,” he said to them. “I was just scanning the Inn, room by room. So far I haven’t found anything. You don’t mind if we look around, right? We covered that in our e-mails.”
“Sure,” Katie said with an indulgent smile. “That’s no trouble at all. Remember, the basement is off limits.”
“Right. I remember you telling Jason that. It’s a shame, really. I’ll be there’s all sorts of activity down there.”
Katie squeezed Riley’s hand. Victor had no idea how right he was.
Victor panned the microphone around again. He checked the meter one more time. “Still nothing. Well, sorry to bother you. I’ll let you get back to whatever you were watching.”
“Actually,” Katie said, sitting up, “I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind me asking you a question.”
“Shoot.” He tucked the mike away into the holder on the side of the meter box. “I’ve certainly quizzed you two enough. What can I answer for you?”
“I was just wondering why you do this. All this paranormal investigation stuff, I mean. Is this like a hobby for you?”
Victor shook his head. “It’s a sideline for me. People actually pay me to investigate their homes for ghosts. Or sometimes I get asked to check out abandoned buildings. I have an hourly rate, and a whole set of procedures. It takes time to do a proper investigation. That’s why I booked four days here. I figured, from the news reports that I’ve read, that I’d be tripping over evidence here. So far, nothing.”
“But what do you get out of it?”
He shrugged. “This is where I’m supposed to tell you that I’m searching for the meaning of life. That I’m looking for the reason we have to die, or proof that there’s an afterlife. It’s not like that. At least, not for me.”
“What is it then?” Katie pressed.
“It’s a long story, but I don’t mind telling it.” He waited a moment, gathering his thoughts. “When I was young, we lived in an old house, in an old part of the neighborhood. It was a home, and there wasn’t any history to the place. No murders or grisly scenes of torture. Nothing like that. Still, there was always something about the place for me. Something I could feel, but not explain.”
CNN was rambling on about crop failures in Idaho now, and Katie turned the TV off.
“I guess I was eight years old when I first saw it.” Victor’s eyes grew distant, and Katie could tell he was looking into the past. “I’d had a dream that night. A dream about a dead girl living in the walls. I didn’t know what it meant because I’d never had a sister and there hadn’t been any little girls around our house, ever. At least not that I was aware of.
“The next morning, I asked my parents about it. They got very quiet when I asked about the girl in the walls. That was when my mother let on that I did, in fact, have a sister. Or at least I did for all of three days. Before I was born, my mother had a baby girl. She was too sick to survive, but she lived for three days at home with us before she passed away.”
Katie found herself fascinated by the story. The way he told it, she almost felt like she’d been there herself. She imagined learning that you had a sibling that no one had ever told you about, and one that was dead long before you could ever get to know her at that.
Victor wasn’t done yet.
“They told me that story, and then they brought me into their bedroom. They showed me a little shelf they kept there, and the shrine they’d erected to a little girl who had been part of our family for just a brief period of time. Maria Beth, they named her. So I stood there, and I said hello to her. My parents laughed and thought I was being cute. What they didn’t understand was that for just a moment, only a few seconds, I saw her face. She was older now, as if she’d decided to grow up with us after all. The girl in my dreams had been my sister. She was haunting us, trying to hold onto being part of our family.”
He stopped his rambling long enough to look at both of them with a sort of apologetic smile. “Anyway. That’s why I do this. After a few years, Maria Beth left. I never knew why. I never knew where she went. She was just gone. I’m not looking for proof of life after death. I have that already, as far as I’m concerned. What I’m looking for, is an answer to my question. Where did my sister go?”
Katie was impressed. He took this seriously. “Well, I hope you find what you’re looking for, but if you don’t you’re always welcome to come back.”
“Thank you, Katie. I appreciate that. Well, I’ll leave you alone now.”
Riley cleared his throat. “You said people pay you to do these investigations, right?”
“Sure. I mean, this is fun and all but a man’s got to live. I have to eat, and I have bills to pay. I have an ex-wife to support as well. That all takes money. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t get paid for doing what I’m good at.”
“Well, that raises a question for me,” Riley told him.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“Is someone paying you to be here?”
Victor didn’t answer right away. It seemed to Katie that in that silence, he was saying more than he could have with words.
Finally, he nodded to them and waved his hand at the room. “This time it’s just for me. Even I have to take a vacation every now and then.”
“This is your idea of a vacation?” Katie asked him.
“Sure. Isn’t it yours? I mean, you must have purchased this place for a reason.”
“Money,” Katie said quickly. “I bought it for the money. That’s what I do. I find investment properties and fix them up, to make a go of them.”
Victor regarded her closely, then he nodded and turned away. Somehow, she didn’t think he quite believed her.
Which was fair enough, because Katie didn’t believe that answer either.
Not this time.
Chapter 6
When night finally came, Katie was ready to drop.
The day really had been one of the longest Katie could remember ever having, but it had gone really well. All of the guests had stayed at the Inn for lunch, and Riley had shown off his talents in the kitchen to everyone’s rave reviews. Beef stew with freshly baked bread. They wouldn’t be able to make that sort of thing every day, of course. Some days it was just going to be cold cuts and pre-sliced sandwich bread, but for their first day of operation they wanted to go all out.
The conversation had been lighthearted, for the most part, although several times Jason or one of the other guests had brought up the subject of ghosts.
Hearing what had happened to Victor when he was younger, now she could understand the focus he and the others had with ghosts and the paranormal.
When the flowers in the middle of the table had tipped over for no apparent reason, Jason had gotten so excited that Katie thought he was going to have a heart attack.
After a half hour of everyone taking photos and looking through thermal imaging scopes at the half-eaten meal, Katie had started clearing plates. Anyone who was still hungry got the idea and stopped with the ghost hunting nonsense to finish their food before she took it all away.
Nothing more than that had happened, anyway, and after lunch everyone had gone their separate ways to explore the town. Katie heard at least two of them talking about finding the cemetery. She wished them better luck with that than she’d had. The cemetery was another place she avoided as much as possible.
After that, Katie and Riley had cleaned up and spent a quiet afternoon together, just the two of them. The wine they had uncorked was delicious. Maybe her senses were a little revved up from how smoothly things were going, but she thought that was just about the best wine she had ever tasted in her life.
Now it was bedtime, the wine just a distant memory, and they were both too tired to do anything except fall under the sheets and turn out the bedside lamp. She had been looking forward
to some private time with Riley, and a celebration of a very intimate kind, but that just wasn’t going to happen.
Maybe, she thought, that she could stay up just a little bit longer. Riley needed to know how much she appreciated him, like only a woman could do. Sure. She could stay awake. Just a little bit longer.
She reached for him, and trailed her hand over his belly, and before she knew it her eyes were closed and she was asleep.
When she woke up, she was on the streets of Twilight Ridge. The sun was just coming up and the breeze was warm for October, and it rattled the dry and colorful leaves in the trees all around. It felt like it was going to be a great day.
Only, Katie didn’t remember how she got here. She remembered going to bed, but not getting up or getting dressed or coming down here, to...whatever street this was. Seriously, where was she? Somewhere on the far edge of town, down by the access road to the grist mill, she thought. Yes. There was the sign for the tourists, showing the way to the historical cemetery.
Well. She wasn’t going that way. Time to get back to the Inn and let Riley know she was sleepwalking. How on Earth did she get down here, all dressed and ready to meet the day?
The world around her was eerily quiet. No birds chirping. No cars on the street. No dogs barking and as much as she disliked the sound of dogs barking, it was easy to miss it when it was gone. Usually, there was always a hum in Twilight Ridge, a constant murmur of people talking and laughing and living their lives.
Now, there was nothing.
This was too weird for her. She needed to get back home, to Riley and to her guests. She turned, trying to orient herself to find which way was home. The streets were easy to remember, and the one she wanted should be right over there. At least, she thought that was right. Or was it that way?
Behind her, she heard a whisper on the wind.
“...Katie...”
The voice sounded unreal. Inhuman.
Ghostly.
She didn’t wait to see what was calling her name. She ran.
With no direction in mind, and no idea which way she was going, Katie ran across a field and kept going, raising her arms up to cover her face when trees appeared in her way. They slapped at her arms, snagged at her clothes, and she ignored the pain and kept going. She could not let the thing following behind catch her.
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 50
