Rest Stop (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 4)

by Catie Rhodes

  “I ‘spect we were.” Kevin squinted at the wall. “You know, it all happened so long ago, I don’t even remember what Susie looked like. All I remember is what a good friend she was.”

  Griff dug in his messenger bag and took out a copy of one of Susie’s pictures. Kevin, holding his beer in both hands, leaned forward, staring at the picture, the same far-off expression on his face.

  “Yep. There she is. Boy, I had an awful crush on her.” He reached out to nudge Griff. “You ‘member them high school crushes on a girl you knew you’d never have? But you couldn’t quit hanging out with her and hoping? That’s how it was with Susie. She was too sweet to tell me to get lost, so there I was.”

  “I bet it burned when Susie took up with Coach Culpepper.” Griff took another sip of his beer, his throat working to make it go down and stay there.

  “Yeah, but it was one of those things where you know it ain’t going to work out. I mean, what’s he gonna do? Kick his wife out and move Susie in?” He killed the second beer and went to get a third, his steps unsteady. He flopped back into his chair. For an awful moment it looked like it was going to dump him onto the ratty maroon carpet. “For a long time, I thought she’s blowing smoke. Lying, you know.” He raised shaggy eyebrows at Mysti and me to bring home his meaning. I nodded.

  “You still think it was her imagination?” I had a good idea it wasn’t, but I wanted to hear what Kevin would say. Griff shot me another look. I rounded my shoulders.

  Kevin’s face turned a dull red, and he stared at the beer in his hands. “I think I’d still believe it if I hadn’t followed ‘em one day.” He chuckled, not even able to look at us. “Can’t believe I did it. Followed ‘em out to the old rest area. They walked into those woods, pulled down their pants, and did what people do.”

  Judging by the look on his face, Kevin stayed for the whole show.

  “And you stayed friends with Susie afterward?” This time Mysti spoke up, earning her own glare from Griff.

  “It pissed me off, if that’s what you’re asking. I ignored her for about a month. Then she called me boo-hooing because she’d missed her period.”

  “Did Culpepper know about the pregnancy?” Griff spoke quickly, probably trying to beat Mysti or me to the punch.

  “Oooh, yeah. Pretty much ended their little romance.”

  “What happened?” I asked. “I mean, was it a big ugly scene?”

  “I went with her to his office one day during football practice. He blew a fuse. Threw some money at her and told her to get rid of it.” Kevin ran his tongue over his lower lip, squinting at the wall behind me. “It was me who took her to the clinic in Dallas. Had to cough up extra money because Coach was cheap. And it was me who took the reaming on using condoms from one of the nurses.” His lips twisted into an unhappy smile. “Y’all know what’s funny ‘bout the whole thing?”

  Griff shook his head. I didn’t move. None of it was funny to me.

  “Poor little Susie was a like a dog whose owner kicks it from day one. She went through the abortion, came back to town, and started mooning after him.” Kevin picked up his empty beer can but didn’t bother to get up for another. “‘Course the Coach had enough sense to be scared off by then. She was so hurt. Saddest thing I ever seen.”

  I hurt for Susie, deep in my chest where all my failed relationships hid out. I was a grown woman and still expected things to work like they do in romance novels. A girl not even out of high school would have gagged on such a bitter taste of heartbreak.

  “You think she broke the story to get back at Culpepper?” Griff frowned at the table.

  “It’s real possible.” Kevin stood and put one hand on the table to steady himself. “Going for another beer. You want one?”

  Griff shook his head. “You have any idea where Susie might’ve gone?”

  “She told me she was running away and that she’d write once she got where she was going.” He sat back down, never having gone for his new beer. “Never did. About a month after she disappeared, it got around town Margaret hired a private detective. Culpepper cornered me at school. Said he’d tell about seeing me with Susie the day she disappeared if I didn’t get out of town. Laid into me pretty good.”

  “You mean he beat you?” Mysti’s nose wrinkled.

  “Yep.” Kevin pushed back his graying hair and showed us a deep scar on his forehead. “The ring he used to wear back then—probably too fat for it now—caught me just right.” He left the table to get another beer, swaying on his feet and holding on to the cabinets.

  Griff leaned close to me and whispered, “The snow globe.”

  I took it out of my bag and handed it to him. By the time Kevin came back, Griff had it sitting on the table at his place.

  “Aw, Susie loved this thing.” He picked it up, smiling, and turned it over to make the snow swirl.

  Griff nudged me and gestured to Kevin. I watched the globe carefully but saw no sign of movement inside it. I shook my head at Griff. He deflated and sat immobile while Kevin upended the globe and stared into it.

  “Funniest thing.” Kevin spoke to the snow globe. “Got the feeling that last time I talked to Susie, she’d moved on from Culpepper, met somebody new.”

  “Why’s that?” Griff sat straighter.

  “Intuition, I guess. She didn’t mention Coach once, but she had that same glow about her she had when him and her was together.”

  Griff questioned Kevin several more times but got nothing more out of him.

  Ten minutes later, we sat in the SUV in Kevin Douglas’s yard. I don’t know how Griff or Mysti felt, but I felt like I’d committed the losing error of a baseball game. I held the globe on my lap, moving it back and forth between my hands. The black opal flared to life on my chest, and white light glowed from the globe.

  “She’s here.” I might have said more, but the vision took over my conscious. Then I was again looking at the world from inside Susie Franklin’s body. Susie and I trod through the weeds on the side of a two lane road, which stretched off into the foreseeable distance. The coming night had stained the wide open sky a blurry purple color and whatever heat the day held had begun its retreat. Susie shivered and pulled her coat around her. Her apprehension seeped into my emotions. I wished I could tell her to go back home. Nothing but bad stuff awaited her.

  The sound of a car coming toward us fast filled our ears. Susie turned and peered into the deepening dusk and smiled, her body relaxing with relief. The car appeared on the horizon, its headlights almost blinding. The driver slowed to a stop on the deserted highway right alongside Susie.

  Fear of something I didn’t want to see blossomed in me, but I forced myself to stay with Susie. I might see who picked her up.

  I tried to look for details on the car, but Susie’s attention was focused on the window. Because I was inside her body, mine was, too. She leaned down to peer into the passenger window, her heart picking up speed. A blurry figure leaned across the seat and rolled down the window. His words were warped with the passage of time and my inability to access that part of the spirit world.

  Susie’s feelings, however, told me a lot. No longer was she afraid. Susie felt relieved to see this person. She got into his car, pulling her duffle bag into her lap. I saw the top of the snow globe peeking out.

  I came back to myself to see Griff had us halfway back to town. Mysti turned to him.

  “Peri Jean’s okay. You can slow down.”

  The noise of the SUV’s engine eased, and the passing landscape slowed.

  “I’m sorry.” My mouth felt thick and full of fur, as though I’d woken from a deep sleep. “Did I scare y’all?”

  “Your eyes rolled back. Griff got a little upset.” Mysti patted my leg and handed me a bottle of water. “I told him you’d be fine.”

  “You don’t do anything like that, Mysti.” Griff’s voice had a tight, defensive edge to it. “You were just gone, Peri Jean. Scared the hell out of me.” His forced laugh sounded like bones rattling on a dark
night. “At least tell me you saw something pretty good in exchange for giving me a few more gray hairs.”

  “I think I did.”

  Griff pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store and turned off the SUV’s engine. He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to face me.

  “Take a drink of water, and then tell me what you saw.”

  I did as he asked, going through the whole vision. “My two takeaways? She took the snow globe with her when she ran away, and she knew the person who picked her up.”

  “No ideas where he took her?” Griff took out his cellphone and began tapping in notes.

  I shook my head.

  “No ideas where he picked her up?”

  I thought about it, going back over my memory of the surroundings several times. “Not really. The highway had two lanes and was sort of deserted.”

  “This is still a breakthrough,” Griff said. “I’d like you to continue trying to contact her.”

  He went inside the convenience store and came back out with a couple of boxes of fried chicken and a bag of drinks. We took it back to the motel and ate in the room Mysti and I were sharing. Or not sharing, as it happened. Griff and she retired to his room soon after we finished eating. I listened to the headboard bang on the wall as I sat staring at the snow globe and trying to think of a surefire way to contact Susie.

  When Mysti took me on as her student, she showed me several traditional ways mediums contacted the spirit world. I set the snow globe on the table in front of me with the track shirt on one side and Susie’s picture on the other. I focused myself, shutting off the chatter of my mind, and concentrated on the items. I went deep inside myself and called for Susie.

  At first nothing happened. I kept up my efforts, the intense concentration draining my energy. The snow in the snow globe began to swirl again. This time, instead of lighting up, it darkened. The cartoonish letters spelling Reno were replaced by a familiar setup I couldn’t quite place.

  A wide driveway branched off into parking spaces in front of a white brick building. Next to the building, metal squares dotted the impossibly green lawn. I waited to get pulled into Susie’s body, but I stayed where I was, looking over the whole scene at one time.

  A car came up the driveway and pulled into one of the parking spaces. It was an old Ford, probably a model from the 1940s. The car was beat all to hell with one red door, one black door, and a mashed in front fender. The car sat there, engine ticking as it cooled. Was this the car Susie got into? I didn’t know. The other vision didn’t give me this kind of overview.

  The car’s driver door popped open, and a young guy wearing blue jeans and a plaid pearl snap shirt got out. He went around to the back door and opened it, leaning inside, gathering up a bundle. It must have been heavy because he bent his legs, straining to lift his burden, and took two staggering steps backward.

  I noticed the shock of Susie Franklin’s white-blond hair before I saw anything else. Her head lolled on the guy’s arm as he carried her inside. I stared at his face and saw nothing familiar. All I knew for sure was he wasn’t Kevin Douglas.

  The vision ended as fast if someone had turned off a TV. I sat at the small table breathing hard, my sweat growing cold. The greasy chicken congealed into a nauseous lump in my stomach. The shakes started and came so hard and fast I slammed my knee into the table’s leg. The pain broke me out of my fit, and I tried to force myself under control, grabbing the sides of the table with both hands and clenching my body as tight as I could. Little by little, the panic lessened its hold on me. I closed my eyes and leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling.

  I was pretty sure the last vision took place at the rest stop Mysti and I passed on the way into Nazareth. I thought I remembered Griff saying it had been a crime scene in the disappearances to which he wanted to connect Susie’s disappearance. All of a sudden, I knew I had to go out there. If I ever wanted to find out what happened to Susie, the rest stop would have the answers. I grabbed the snow globe, Susie’s school photo, and the track shirt and shoved them all into my bag. Then I grabbed Mysti’s car keys again.

  My cellphone buzzed with a text message.

  I felt the magic all the way in here, Mysti wrote. Give us a few minutes, and we’ll join you.

  I paced on the walkway outside the row of motel rooms, getting antsier by the moment. It felt like something was pulling me, begging me to get in the car and go out to the rest area by myself. Unable to help myself, I took a few steps toward Mysti’s Toyota but stopped. I’m smarter than this. The urge came again to go, go, go. This time, I distanced myself from it and tried to identify where it came from. It was gone as though it had never been.

  Griff and Mysti came out of his motel room. He held a shotgun in one hand. “You can’t be too safe.”

  Mysti took one look at me and stopped short. “What is it? Your skin’s the color of Elmer’s glue, and you’re sweating.”

  The itch to leave came again, this time whispering for me to take the shotgun from Griff and leave him and Mysti behind. Now, I knew the thoughts didn’t come from me. I’d never try something so foolish.

  Mysti raised her head to stare at the sky and turned in a slow circle, her chest rising and falling faster by the second. “Something’s trying to pull you out there.”

  “You feel it, too?” My relief made me take a step toward my mentor, seeking the comfort of her confidence.

  “I’ve never felt anything like it.” Mysti continued staring at the sky as though waiting for the next wave to hit. “If all the people who disappeared felt that, they didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Let’s go see who or what wants the pleasure of our company.” Griff used his key fob to unlock the SUV, and we piled in.

  A full moon hung overhead, its cool light silhouetting deer standing along the roadside. Most of them whirled to run from Griff’s SUV. They jumped over the barbed wire fences as though they had oiled springs in their hind legs and kept running until the darkness swallowed them.

  “I remember the rest area being somewhere right around here.” Griff let off the gas. “Either of you see it? Wasn’t there a sign?”

  “There.” Mysti pointed to a driveway with a chain stretched across it.

  Griff pulled up to the chain. “I’ve got bolt cutters.”

  “It’s private property,” I said. “Let’s climb over.”

  I expected an argument from Griff or Mysti but didn’t get one. The chain was too high for me to step over, so I ducked under, the stupid “Hokey Pokey” song playing in my head. I held Griff’s shotgun while he helped Mysti navigate the chain. Together we walked down the long narrow driveway toward two narrow buildings, presumably restrooms, set amid a scattering of covered picnic tables.

  I took out the small flashlight I carried in my bag and shone it around. From the looks of it, the chain didn’t keep too many people out. Broken brown glass, probably from beer bottles, carpeted the asphalt lot. Rotting paper rested on the picnic tables. Some scholar had spray painted a pentagram on the side of the restroom with the words “The Devil Lives Here” next to it.

  “Found a message board online where a bunch of people claim the missing people were killed here at the rest stop.” Griff took out his own flashlight and shined it across the words. “Folks say it’s haunted by their souls. Supposedly the restrooms are full of graffiti.”

  “Did anybody find proof a crime took place here?” I stood back from the building, knowing I’d have to go in at some point but wanting to put it off as long as possible. It was easy to understand why people thought this place haunted. A low hum of something nasty came off it. Though I couldn’t see any spirits walking, I felt something not right in the air, in the ground, in the very molecules of this place.

  “If so, it’s not public.” Griff took a few steps toward the squat building housing the restrooms and glanced back at Mysti and me. Mysti hung back, her arms crossed over her chest. She stared at the building the way I’d stare at a coiled up rattlesnake
. Noticing both Griff and me watching her, she moved forward, her lips set in a determined line. I caught her arm.

  “I’ll go in. Susie may not even contact me again tonight. You stay here in case something goes wrong.”

  “You’re shaking, and you’re going to let me stay out here?” She choked out a short laugh. “What kind of mentor would I be if I didn’t go with you?”

  “I’m going in first.” Griff walked ahead of us. “Might be someone dangerous in there.”

  Normally, I’d have marched in right alongside him, but the closer I got to the building, the worse I felt. Nausea and dizziness scuba dived in my head. My footsteps felt too light, as though I might float away.

  Griff reached the door and turned back to me. “Did you see which side Susie was carried into?”

  I sorted through my memory and took a few steps backward to recreate the scene in my mind. I raised one arm and pointed to my left.

  “Women’s.” Griff kicked open the door and went inside, making as much noise as he could. The light from his flashlight flashed in the high narrow windows. Several times, he yelled, “Anybody in here?” He came back out. “It’s clear. One stall door is jammed closed, but nobody’s in the stall.”

  I turned to Mysti. Together, we took a deep breath. I cleared my mind as she’d taught me and thought about Susie. Maybe she would show up and give me some answers before I had to spend too much more time in this little pocket of hell. We walked toward the open door. Griff stood aside to let us pass and handed Mysti his flashlight. She shone her light on the wall with the stalls and I turned my light on the row of sinks set under the windows.

  Grim streaks of black mildew smeared the tile walls. Three of the four sinks had no faucets. The basins bore the same dark stains as the ones covering the walls. The fourth basin contained some sort of nest made of twigs and scraps of garbage. I didn’t want to meet whatever called it home. Cold sweat ran down my back, and my mouth took on the texture of sandpaper. The dizziness swirling in my head turned to a steady hum I felt in my back teeth. My stomach heaved and rocked as my body tried to adjust. I turned my flashlight on the stalls.