A Brady Paranormal Investigations Box Set

by Harper Crowley

  Behind Jess and Russ, a burly figure limps out of the forest, favoring his bum knee. George Smith surveys the clearing with a grim nod, like he knew this was going to happen eventually.

  “George? How did you get here?”

  “I figured something was going to happen tonight. You kids don’t give up too easily. I had a feeling, so I hiked up to check it out. Damn good thing I did, too. You kids all right?” he asks.

  “We’ve been better,” I say.

  “What happened?” Russ asks.

  George scratches his chin under his beard. “Damn fools thought they could make drugs out here and sell ‘em without anybody noticing.”

  Even though I know the answer, I have to ask. “Was that you in the Bigfoot costume?” I regret the words as soon as they leave my lips.

  George chortles. “Hell no, girl. You know better. I can’t believe you saw him!”

  “I saw something.” I gesture at the injured guys. “Something big, but I don’t know what it was.”

  “That was the real Bigfoot, sure as shit.” He rubs his hands together, the excitement shining in his eyes so bright I don’t need the flashlight to see it. “I can’t believe I missed it. I was holding your sister back, and that wasn’t easy.”

  Even though I saw something, I still can’t admit it was Bigfoot. It’s just not possible. Says the ghost hunter.

  “What about you?” George asks Buck. “Did you see it?”

  Eyes guarded, he shakes his head. “I don’t remember. It all happened so fast.”

  George’s face falls. “I’m guessing I’ll go call the sheriff,” he says. “You got these two?” He points at Buck and Trapper. None of us mentions their dad. We don’t have to. He’s not a threat to anyone, not anymore.

  “Yeah,” I say with a confidence I nowhere near feel. “We’ve got this.”

  After George disappears down the trail, Russ groans, rubbing his head. “What’d he hit me with?”

  “The butt of the gun. Where were you?” I ask Jess.

  “George grabbed me and pulled me out of the way. But don’t worry,” Jess says with a grin. She waves the selfie-stick in the air, still topped with the GoPro camera. “I’ve got everything on film.”

  “Everything?” I ask, the word loaded with meaning.

  Jess glances from me to Russ, her eyes wide. “Everything. It’s not uploaded yet, but it’s there.”

  My mind whirls with her admission. With that footage, we could be famous, like she’d said. We could really make it. But... I don’t know if I can do that. It feels wrong, like we’re betraying the creature that saved our lives. Bigfoot hunters would flood the area, and that could get the beast killed. What a wonderful way to say thank you. I take a deep breath.

  “Delete it,” I say. “Don’t put it on the website. Don’t upload it to the forums, just get rid of it.”

  “Why?” Jess frowns, staring at the camera in her hand. “I thought you’d be excited. We should post this all over the place. It’s our ticket to being famous.”

  I waver at her words. Russ wobbles to his feet, and both of them watch me with such hope, such longing, that I almost say to go for it, but I can’t. Whatever this creature was, it saved our lives, and I can’t repay it by proving its existence and inviting all sorts of scientists and amateur Bigfoot hunters to try to capture or kill it.

  “No. We can’t post it. It’s not right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod. ‘Yeah, I’m sure. Delete it.”

  Chapter 27

  “I can’t believe the bait-and-tackle shop was all a front.” Ceri stares morosely into the cup of coffee cradled in her hands. “For making meth, for God’s sake. That kind of thing doesn’t happen around here.” She ignores the camera recording us on a small tabletop tripod.

  Nothing bad happens in a lot of places until it does, but I don’t say that to her. There’s a lot I don’t say. A lot that isn’t included in the manila envelope in the bag next to me, full of papers and pictures and transcripts and notes I’d printed at the local library. I wish I could tell her everything that happened out there in the woods, but there’s no way she’d believe me even if I tried.

  “I’m just... I guess I’m glad in a way that I know Jason didn’t leave me, you know? I always knew in my heart that something happened to him, but I didn’t have any proof.”

  “And now that Buck’s cooperating, you might get that.”

  She sniffs. “I guess. Did you know Jason’s parents moved out of Atopka right after he disappeared? Like a month later. It was awful. And now, I think I might be the only one who remembers him here. The only one who knows who he was. God, that sounds awful, doesn’t it? I mean, I know his parents must care, wherever they are, but they left without answers, without the truth. And I was the only one still looking for him.” Her hands tighten on her mug until her knuckles turn white. “I can’t believe I dated that bastard, and he knew all along what happened to Jason. He knew, and he didn’t tell me. If he was here, I’d kill him myself, I swear.”

  She wouldn’t be the only one. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think Buck knew when he was dating you. I think it was later, much later, when his dad brought him into the fold.” My mind reflects on Buck’s rambling as the sheriff and his men led him and his brother out of the forest. “He said it was his dad’s fault.”

  “What do you think?” Ceri’s eyes meet mine.

  I have to think for a minute before I respond. “It’s tough. I mean, Buck’s no innocent, and neither are his brothers, but his dad was the ringleader.” My phone buzzes. Jess.

  Are you done yet? Your stupid dog has peed on the same bush four times. He’s embarrassing me.

  I type back: Almost. Give me just a couple more minutes.

  Hurry.

  “I’m sorry we had to block you from the website.”

  She waves my apology away. “Don’t worry about it. You were right. Dad had my username and password. He would have snooped around until he figured out what you were doing, and then tried to stop you. You did the right thing.”

  “Well, it’s fixed now, so you should be able to hop on and view everything we posted, as well as give your take on what happened.”

  Her eyes light up. “I can do that?”

  I nod. “Most people don’t, but you’re welcome to. A lot of our clients get overwhelmed after an investigation ends, or embarrassed if we caught them faking it and don’t want to post. Some would rather just put it all behind them and move on, and that’s fine, too. You can do whatever feels right for you.”

  “I think I will,” she says. “And not just for me, but for Jason, too. He deserves to be remembered by as many people as possible, and maybe this can help with that. Maybe I’ll even start an online memorial for him.”

  I reach across the table and squeeze her hand. “I think that’s a great idea. And if you ever want to, I’m sure you’ll find a lot of support for making a physical one, too.”

  Her eyes drift away, uncertain. “Yeah, I guess I never thought about that. I wonder what his parents would think, or if they would even care.”

  I’m sure they would, but I don’t say anything. This isn’t my moment, and it isn’t my grief. “Whenever you’re ready, let us know. We would love to help with anything you need.”

  “Thanks,” she says. “I’m so glad you came out here.” Her lips twitch in a smile. “Even if my dad isn’t.”

  A quick laugh bursts from my lips. “Yeah, it’s probably a good thing we’re leaving.” My phone vibrates again, but I ignore it. Jess can wait a couple more minutes. Besides, it gives her and Russ a little more time to finalize where we’re going next. I don’t really care as long as they have indoor plumbing and good, strong Wi-Fi. A girl has to have some standards.

  I pull the manila envelope out of my bag and set it on the table. “Every time we conclude an investigation, we hand over copies of all of the evidence we gathered, the recordings we did, and the printed posts we made during that time. It�
��s kind of like a journal of the events. I’m going to warn you, there’s a lot there, and it’s not edited”—well, most of it isn’t edited—“so you’ll have to slog through a lot to get to the meat of it, but it’s there. The edited versions are online. A lot of our clients prefer the raw footage, so that’s what we go with for our exit interviews.”

  Ceri picks up the envelope reverently, as if it’s some sacred, holy object, and presses it to her chest, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. “I don’t know what to say, except thank you.”

  I give her a warm smile. “You’re welcome. I know this has been hard for you, but I hope it’s been worth it.”

  “It has,” she says, her voice stronger. “It definitely has.”

  After I leave Ceri, I meet Jess and Russ outside in the parking lot. Before she gets into the van, Jess shoves Bear’s leash at me. “How come I always get stuck on dog duty?”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Because Russ is better at computers than you are.”

  “Whatever.” She huffs and slides into the back seat, her phone replacing the leash in her hand. In the passenger seat, Russ types on the laptop wedged between his knees and the dashboard. All of the van’s windows are open to catch a breeze and maybe air out the place before we take off.

  “Any luck?” I ask, leaning on the open window. I know he’s always working on something, but he usually doesn’t tell me unless it’s a go.

  “Yeah, I think I got a good one.” He gives me a crooked smile. “You’re going to love this.”

  “What is it? I’m going to warn you, I’m definitely not up for another Bigfoot case, at least for a while.”

  He chuckles. “Nope, this is better. Way better. Aliens outside of Tombstone, Arizona. Isn’t that awesome?”

  I slide into the driver’s-side seat and plop Bear into the back, mulling over Russ’s words. Aliens outside of Tombstone. That’s definitely different than chasing Bigfoot around Oklahoma, and I’ve always wanted to go to Tombstone. Maybe we can do a ghost story and the alien case at the same time.

  Jess hops in the back seat. “What do you think? Are you in?”

  I buckle my seatbelt. “Oh yeah, I’m in. No enormous hairy monsters, no creepy gothic ghosts, just your run-of-the-mill, old-fashioned aliens. Piece of cake.” At Jess’s peal of laughter, I hope I don’t have to eat those words. It wouldn’t be the first time, though, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

  Chapter 1

  “I never knew you liked Tombstone,” Russ says, side-eyeing me from the passenger seat.

  “It’s not the town. It’s the cowboys,” Jess pipes in from the back. I stomp on the brakes, and she squeals indignantly. “Hey! Watch where you’re driving.”

  “Sorry. There was a thing in the road,” I say. “I had to brake quickly so I didn’t hit it.”

  Russ snickers.

  “A thing,” Jess says, her voice deadpan. “You can’t even come up with a better excuse than that?”

  I shrug and turn on the radio, scanning through stations until I find the most obnoxious country music I can and play it full blast. Anything’s better than listening to my sister make fun of me. It’s the videos of the strange lights zooming across the sky that brought us here, not the cowboys. Sure. Keep telling yourself that.

  Russ puts on his headphones and leans back in his seat, content to play around on the forums. Jess fumes behind me, muttering swear words that would make our aunt blanch, and I ignore her for every single mile until I see the city-limit sign.

  An hour later, Jess stands next to a massive wooden sign for the Boothill Graveyard. Russ pans it with his camera, slowly enough for the audience to read it and know where we are.

  All around them is a rocky desert landscape dotted with gravestones worn smooth with time and the sun’s relentless rays. Small scrub brushes and weeds struggle to survive in the barren ground. Prickly pear bushes and mesquite trees sprout between the graves, odd bursts of life among all of this death. Even here, in the middle of the desert, nature desperately searches for something to hold on to. Some of the graves are identified with crosses, while others have tall rounded markers listing the deceaseds’ name and death date. Behind us, a small souvenir shop touts merchandise from T-shirts to shot glasses and everything in between.

  “Okay, guys,” Jess says. “I know we’ve teased you a lot with where we are, but we’re finally here, live, in Tombstone, Arizona, at the famous Boothill Graveyard. Isn’t this amazing? We’ve never been here before, and we jumped at the chance to take a case near here. But we can’t be near Tombstone and investigate, without actually investigating in Tombstone, can we? No, we can’t. So this week, we’re going to bring you two investigations.” She ticks off one finger.

  “One will be in this most infamous town, and the other,” she ticks off a second finger, “will be about mysterious alien lights that were caught on video over the Huachuca mountains. To try to keep things straight, we’ll upload everything into separate folders, but things might get messy with the live shows. We’ll do our best to organize all of the live feeds and hold several Q and A’s though.”

  She waves at the nearest grave with a flourish. “But first, before we go too far into all of that, we wanted to give you a live tour of Boothill Graveyard, the place where the infamous outlaws Billy Clanton and the O’Laury brothers, Frank and Tom, were killed in the shootout behind the OK Corral.” She rubs her hands together in anticipation. “I can’t wait to show you around.”

  Good thing she’d been researching facts about the place on the way in, or we wouldn’t be able to film this live.

  “Okay, so Boothill Graveyard was founded in 1878,” Jess says. The wind whips her pink-and-black hair in front of her face, and she tucks it behind her ears. “There are supposedly up to two hundred fifty bodies buried here, and some of them are among the most well-known outlaws in Old West history.”

  Jess touches the top of one of the wooden crosses, which reads Unknown. “Did you know that we don’t really know where all of the bodies are buried or if they’re buried in the right spots? Over the years, the weather and the sun have worn away the names on many of the grave markers, and some were never identified with their true names to begin with.” She puts a hand on her hip. “People didn’t exactly have driver’s licenses back then, and out here, it seems like a lot of people ran away from home and recreated their identities as lawman or lawbreaker, basically whoever they wanted.”

  A wooden fence circles the cemetery, providing little protection against vandals or trophy hunters, but as I scan the graveyard, I don’t see any sign of damage. Some of the graves are further protected by iron fencing, and every one that I can see is piled with rocks

  “This has got to be one of the most historic places we’ve ever been to. There are people here who died in the famous OK Corral shootout. And do you know why they called it Boothill Graveyard?” Jess pauses for effect. “It’s because that’s how they died, violently, with their boots on.”

  Russ zooms in on my sister’s face. For the first time in a while, she actually looks happy. Maybe I’m not the only one who likes the Wild West. Who knew? For all of her harping about saunas and spas, she seems to be digging this place. Or maybe it’s the fact that we’re not camping this time. Bear squirms in my arms to get down, but I scratch him behind the ears and hold my ground. If I let him down, he’ll pee on somebody’s grave, and that’s not a good way to make a first impression.

  Jess and Russ wander through the cemetery, stopping at various graves and telling the history, mostly sordid, of their inhabitants. “Like this one, Lester Moore,” she says. “He was a Wells Fargo agent from Naco who got into a gunfight over a package. His gravestone reads: Here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a forty-four, no Les no more.”

  They continue around the cemetery, and when they get back to where Bear and I are waiting, Jess starts to wrap things up. “This town has been on our bucket list for years, and I can’t believe we’re finally here! We can’t wait to show you everyth
ing Tombstone has to offer, from the people to the haunted locations to the amazing depth of history.”

  As she begins to tell our viewers about our next stop, my phone rings. I glance at the screen. It’s a local number. Good, it’s probably our client, Beau Jimenez. Russ said he emailed him my number and told him to call whenever he was available, so I bet it’s him. “Hello?”

  The person on the other end clears their throat. “Hi, I’m Beau Jimenez.” His voice is thick with a twangy drawl. “Are you Ms. Brady?”

  “Yeah.” I walk away from Jess and Russ to a quieter part of the cemetery, so we don’t accidentally record any of the conversation on Jess’s video. “Please, call me Meredith.”

  “Are you in town already?”

  “Sort of.” I kick a small clod of red dirt. It bursts into a little cloud of dust, coating my worn sneakers. “We’re in Tombstone right now, filming a segment on Boothill Graveyard.”

  “That’s a great place. I bet your subscribers will love it. Are you all thinking about coming to the ranch later on tonight? Lucia’s making chili and cornbread, and there’ll be plenty left if you’re hungry.”

  My stomach grumbles at the thought. I haven’t had chili from anywhere but Wendy’s in years. “That would be awesome. We can even start our interviews and discuss the evidence you sent us. It’ll give us a jump start on our investigations tomorrow.” In my mind, I picture the video and images Beau had sent us. From a distance, the pictures don’t look like more than an extra set of stars or planes, but the videos of the lights zooming through the sky, pausing, then flickering were really cool.

  Beau chuckles. “You don’t waste any time, do you now?” Cue the butterflies in my stomach. I’m a sucker for a low western drawl. Seriously, Mer. Get a hold on yourself. You don’t even know what this guy looks like. He could be in his sixties with a twenty-four-pack beer belly.

  “Time is money in our business, and our viewers are really excited for new footage.” I laugh. After we firm up plans to meet later this evening, I wander over to Jess and Russ.