Chapter 11
“Oh, did I tell you?” Mel said on the drive back. “That one guest at your Inn, the ghost hunter?”
“You mean Gary Wargo?”
“That’s the one.”
“I haven’t met him.”
“Well, I did.” Mel winked at her. “I met him in the biblical sense. Twice. He’s a beast between the sheets.”
“Mel!” Katie laughed, and it felt good. “You are absolutely incorrigible.”
“Mmm-hmm. He used a different word for it, me and Gary, but that’s me all right.”
“Lush,” Katie teased.
“That’s closer,” Mel purred.
Katie hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed her friend. Just having her here for company made her feel better. She still wasn’t sure what had come over her, back there at the hospital. Something about the story Officer Norstrom had told her had really set her off. Mark Keats was missing. Martin Keats had been missing, too, only he’d actually been dead...
She shook it off for now, pushing it to the back of her mind to think about later. Whatever it was would come to her. Maybe in a dream.
They got to the Inn quickly enough, but when they parked, Katie sat in the car instead of getting out. She stared at the building. This place she called the Heritage Inn was becoming a truly viable business. This was her home for now. Being in this town was different. A whole new chapter in her life. At the same time, she felt like she fit in here.
In an odd sort of way, all the ghosts were a part of that. She didn’t know if anyone else in the world could do what she did. None of the ghost hunters who had booked rooms and stayed here showed any real aptitude for sensing the dead. There’d been one who claimed to speak to the dearly departed and then had proceeded to have a half hour long conversation with Katie’s Great Uncle Carl. Only, Katie didn’t have a great uncle. That guy had cancelled his reservation and left in a hurry after being caught in his lie.
The rest were good meaning sorts, and they were fun to talk to, for the most part, but if there were all these ghosts here in town waiting for someone to help them...
She could help. Did that make this the right place for her to be?
All of that was just a distraction from what was really on her mind. She knew she should get out, and go inside the Inn. She just couldn’t make herself do it.
“Hey,” Mel said to her. “It’s okay. I’ll go in with you.”
“What? I’m fine.” She looked away as she said it, unable to meet Mel’s gaze.
“No, chickie. You’re not. You’re worried about seeing Riley, and what he’s going to do.”
With a long exhaled breath, Katie nodded. “Yeah. I guess I am.”
“Hey, listen. I’m sure it’s going to be fine. You love him, and he loves you. The way you’ve talked about him I know he’d never do anything to hurt you.”
Katie smiled at her friend. “Thanks Mel. You’re right. I’m just being silly.”
They went inside together, and the Inn seemed bright and safe to Katie. She didn’t know what she’d been so worried about. Two of the guests were in the common room, talking to each other over cups of coffee while the television played in the background.
The one that Mel had called a beast, Gary Wargo, raised his cup in a greeting. Mel blew him a kiss and gave him a look that promised there would be more between-the-sheet time for him later.
He gave her a look in return that absolutely smoldered.
“Actually, Katie...” Mel hesitated, shifting from foot to foot. “Would you mind if maybe I caught up with you later? I, um, want to show Gary my Ouija board.”
Katie rolled her eyes. She knew exactly what Mel wanted to show the man, and it certainly didn’t start with O.
“No, seriously,” Mel whispered. “I told him about it earlier. It’s a really old board. There’s this vibe that comes off it whenever you touch it.”
“You sure that’s the vibe you’re looking for right now?”
Mel pretended to gasp. “Pervert. I only want to bring Gary up to my room for...scientific purposes.”
Katie understood perfectly well what her friend was getting at. She didn’t want to interrupt her time with Gary, and she knew she should just make a funny comment like she always did and then walk away.
Only, she really didn’t want to leave Mel’s side. Not until she knew for a fact that Riley was over whatever issues he had been going through earlier.
The vase, shattering against the wall, came to mind. She swallowed back the emotions caught in her throat.
Then she took a breath, and told herself that she was a big girl and there was no reason to be afraid of the boyfriend who she loved with all her heart. They would talk it out, whatever was wrong.
“Go ahead, Mel,” she told her finally. “I’ll be upstairs. I’m guessing that’s where Riley is. I’ll catch up with you later for dinner?”
“Um, yeah,” Mel answered distractedly. She was already heading in to the common room. “Much later. Give me a couple of hours at least.”
Hours? Wow. Maybe the man was a beast.
Katie kept her comment to herself. Mel would never change. Truth be told, Katie would never want her to. How many people could say they had a best friend like her?
No one but her.
In a better mood than she had been for a while, especially after finding the dead child in the well, she went upstairs. She remembered Martin’s dead hand grabbing hold of her ankle, and shivered, but it passed quickly. That was done. She could move on and get back to real life now. It was just one more ghost in a town that seemed to be full of them, and now Martin Keats could rest.
She was humming a tune to herself by the time she went down the hall to her room. She was already planning out the rest of her week. Like a week in bed. That would be perfect. With Riley, of course.
She took one last moment to breathe, and prepare herself, and then she opened the door to her room. It was nice, being able to use her hands again.
It was dark in there. The lights were turned off, and the curtains pulled across the window. It even took her a moment to realize that Riley was there, sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for her.
“Hey,” she said gently. “Um. I’m back from the hospital. I think we need to talk. Can we do that? Just...talk?”
He stood up, just a silhouette in the dark, and held out his arms for her. “I’m glad you’re home.”
Relief flooded through her. Everything was all right, just like Mel had told her. She rushed over to him, putting herself in his arms and resting her head down against his shoulder. “Me too. I’m so glad to be here. Riley, I thought I’d done something wrong. You were so mad before, you know? I was so scared that I was going to come home and you were going to--"
She was spun around, off balance, as Riley grabbed her arms and dragged her over to the door and then pushed her down to her knees at the floor.
“I told you to pick this up!” He jabbed a finger at the broken pieces of the vase from before. “You’re supposed to take care of things around the house while I do a man’s work. How do you expect me to keep this place running--” He shoved her closer to the broken glass. “If you can’t even--” She fell on her injured hands, spikes of pain going up her arms. “Clean up your own mess!”
His hand was so cold on her arm. A grip of pure ice. She couldn’t break free.
Katie wanted to scream. She wanted to stand up and tell Riley off, shout in his face and demand to know what was wrong with him. She wanted to slap him and push him away and hurt him the way he was hurting her.
There was a lot of things Katie wanted to do. When it came down to it, she didn’t do any of them.
Instead, she stayed there on her hands and knees, telling him over and over that she was sorry. “Riley whatever this is just talk to me and we can fix it, I know we can fix it. Please, Riley? Please, I’m sorry just talk to me please talk to me!”
She hated herself for blubbering like she was. Never in h
er life had she ever let a man treat her this way. No way was she going to let anyone make her feel this small--even Riley.
But she loved him.
Until this moment, she thought he loved her, too.
No. She knew that he loved her. She knew this was wrong, and there must be something going on with him that she couldn’t see. That was all it was. She just needed to try and understand. She just needed to be there for him, with whatever was going on. She just needed to do what he asked and not make his life harder for him.
Wait.
No.
Katie heard the excuses she was creating, and she hated herself all over again for them. It was a minute, maybe longer, before she realized that Riley wasn’t even there anymore. She was still pleading with him to tell her what was wrong, and he’d already walked out of their room without her noticing.
She was shaking from her tears, angry and frustrated and yes, scared. With her bandaged fingers, she started to pick up the shards of glass, thinking that this was what Riley had asked her to do. She should do it. If only she did what he asked, then everything would be all right.
Halfway through picking everything up she stopped herself, and stared at the fragments laying against her palm.
Then she angrily tossed them across the room. No. He was not going to make her feel like this. She was not going to let him do this to her.
Getting up to her feet, Katie straightened her shoulders and stalked out of her room. She was going to find Riley and demand answers, or demand he leave. This was her Inn. Her life. He was a part of it so long as he treated her with respect and showed her the love she deserved.
The same love she had for him.
“Riley!” she called out to him. “Where are you?”
“Katie,” a voice whispered to her.
Only, it wasn’t Riley answering her. It was Mel. She was leaning out of the door to her room, waving Katie to come inside.
“What are you doing?” Katie asked her. “Look, I’m trying to find Riley.”
“Shh, keep your voice down. Get in here. Quick.”
Katie did, even though she didn’t know why. “Mel, what are you doing? What’s going on? I need to find Riley. I need to make him talk to me.”
“No, you don’t,” Mel told her. “Sit down, chickie. You need to hear this.”
She pointed to the chair in the corner of the room for Katie to sit, then she sat down on the bed next to Gary Wargo. Between them was a darkly stained piece of board about half an inch thick. Numbers and letters were painted ornately on top, with the word YES in the upper left hand corner and the word NO in the upper right. A smiling sun and a frowning quarter moon were pictured prominently, too.
Mel’s Ouija board.
“What is this about?” Katie asked her. “I really want to go and find Riley. He and I have things to talk about. He wasn’t any better, Mel. He was...mean. He’s never been mean. He’s just not himself. He needs to talk to me, or--”
Or it’s over, she’d been about to say, but she stopped herself short of letting the words out.
“He’s not himself,” she said instead.
Gary shifted on the bed. “Funny you should say that.”
“Oh really? Well, you’re going to have to forgive me because I don’t find it funny at all.”
He raised a hand to tell her he didn’t mean it that way. “I meant that Riley is exactly what we want to talk about.”
“What? Mel, why is he talking about my business? What did you tell him?”
“I didn’t have to tell him anything,” Mel promised her. “He saw everything on the stairs before, remember? Besides. We were in here, and we were playing with the Ouija board while we...um, played with each other, and the board started spelling out Riley’s name.”
Katie gaped at her. “Mel, what were you doing asking the board about me and Riley?”
“I wasn’t!” she said. “We were just moving the planchette around and it spelled out Riley’s name.”
“Yeah,” Gary said, with a firm nod. “That wasn’t all it spelled out either.”
“Mel, what in God’s name is he talking about?”
“Katie...” Mel didn’t seem to know how to put into words whatever was bothering her. “The board told us that the man in this Inn isn’t Riley. It’s someone...something else.”
Silence fell in the room. Katie’s gaze fell on the Ouija board, and stayed there.
What in the hell did she get herself into this time?
Chapter 12
“We should have candles.”
“Gary, for the last time,” Mel said in exasperation, “we don’t need candles. I’ve done this dozens of times. Me and my sorority sisters used to do this in our bedrooms in our underwear with flashlights. You don’t need candles.”
He raised his eyebrows at that, and stared Mel up and down, and Katie knew he was imagining her in a strapless D-cup and a lace thong.
She ignored him, and the growing sexual tension in the room between Mel and her new boytoy, and concentrated on the Ouija board instead.
“Well, I’m a ghost hunter,” Gary kept arguing, “and I’ve seen this ritual performed at least a hundred times, and I’m telling you the burning flame of a candle wick creates an open conduit between our world and the world of the spirits--"
“She said we don’t need candles!” Katie snapped. “Now, please, can we just get on with this?”
She and Mel were sitting cross-legged on the floor of Mel’s room, with the Ouija board between them and the planchette resting on top of it, centered over the letter A.
The triangular shaped marker, the planchette, of this new board of Mel’s was made of yellowed ivory. Katie had guessed bone at first but it was longer than her hand and a good inch thick and it was hard to picture any animal having a bone that big to carve into this shape. The circular window near the point had been fitted with a piece of magnifying glass to better see the letters underneath. It felt cold to the touch, even through the bandages on Katie’s fingers.
She didn’t believe them when they told her what the board had said. There was something wrong with Riley, sure, but he was still Riley. She was not ready to believe anything else. Instead, she was making Mel prove it.
This wasn’t the first time they had consulted with a Ouija board. The first couple of times it had seemed silly to Katie. Just a bit of fun in old houses with creaky floors and drafty windows. Then it turned out that the Ouija actually worked, and the noises they were hearing and the cold spots they were feeling were actually from spirits trying to communicate.
Since then Katie had been given her fill of ghosts. If she never saw another one in her life, she could die happy.
Okay, poor choice of words...
Anyway. She knew the Ouija board could work as a conduit between the living and the dead. She also knew that what Mel and Gary Wargo were telling her was just crazy. Riley wasn’t Riley? What in the hell was that supposed to mean?
“Are you ready?” Mel said to her.
“Yes. No. Just get on with it, all right?”
Her friend gave her a look as she settled her fingertips on her side of the planchette. “Katie, we’re just trying to help. There’s no reason to snap at me.”
“You mean like Riley’s snapping at me?” His hands had been so rough on her when he pushed her down to the floor. She remembered the thorns in his words, tearing at her mind. That was between her and Riley, though. Not her and Mel. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m angry and I’m taking it out on you.”
“Mmm-hmm. Tell me something I don’t know, chickie.” She dragged up a smile. “Don’t bring that anger into this. The board will sense it. We might end up bringing something really bad into your home.”
“There’s nothing else in this house,” she said testily.
“Are you sure?”
She opened her mouth to argue that of course she was sure, but then she shut her mouth without saying a word. Was she sure? Was she really?
No. She
wasn’t. There might just be worse things out there than she could even imagine.
“I just want to know what’s going on with Riley,” she said, miserably. “You said the board knew something. Let’s see what it is.”
She put her own bandaged fingers on her side of the triangular marker piece, and then she and Mel both closed their eyes.
“Ouija board,” Mel said, her voice taking on a very serious tone, “we ask for your wisdom. Do you know where Riley Harris is at this very moment?”
Katie felt the pull on the planchette. It felt like Mel was trying to tug it away from her, to make it go where she chose rather than wherever the truth was on the board.
She knew that from Mel’s side it would feel like Katie was pushing it towards her. That was the nature of the spiritual energy the Ouija focused for the user.
The planchette settled to a stop with the circular window over the word YES.
Do you know where Riley Harris is at this very moment?
YES.
Mel peeked an eye at the answer, and then went on. “Is he in the Heritage Inn?”
The planchette moved.
NO.
“That’s because he left,” Katie grumbled. “We argued, and he left.”
The planchette moved in a perfect circle around the board, coming back to rest in the same place, the upper left corner.
NO.
Katie’s skin began to crawl as she opened her eyes to each new answer, and then closed them again.
“Remember to watch the attitude,” Mel reminded her.
Katie stuck her tongue out at her.
Mel closed her eyes. “Ouija board, has Riley Harris been in the Inn all day?”
The planchette moved in a circle again.
NO.
This time Katie didn’t close her eyes after the answer was revealed. This was impossible. Riley had been here. Riley had talked to her. He yelled at her. He grabbed her. Yes, none of that seemed like something Riley would do.
But it was still Riley.
Wasn’t it?
“Then who was here with me?” Katie asked, before Mel could say another word. “Who was that in my bedroom?”
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 66
