Rest Stop (Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thrillers Book 4)

by Catie Rhodes

  Of the four toilet stalls, one had a door. Judging by what I could see in the bowls of the other three toilets, I knew I didn’t want to know what sanitation horror lurked behind door number four.

  “Susie?” I dug in my bag for the snow globe and took it out. Mysti turned her flashlight on it. The globe was dark and still. The heaviness of this place blanketed me, darkening the gloom, pushing me down. Something moved against the back wall of the restroom. Mysti let out a sharp scream. I jumped and had to juggle the snow globe to keep from dropping it. I crept toward the sound.

  “Peri Jean, don’t.” Mysti’s voice trembled with an edge of high panic. This was the first time I ever heard her sound truly scared. I was a few steps away from where I thought I’d heard the sound and kept going. I instigated this whole trip. My pride couldn’t stand it all being for nothing. Not with Griff watching and a possible semi-regular paying gig riding on it. It didn’t matter how this place made me feel.

  I shone my flashlight on the filthy wall, running it over where someone had written “He is watching you” in red paint. At least I hoped it was red paint. Odd thing was, it looked wet. I shoved the snow globe under the arm holding the flashlight and reached out to touch it.

  “Peri Jean, no,” Mysti screamed. Her running footsteps pounded behind me, but she never got there. Or maybe she did, and I had disappeared. Her shouts came from far away. She yelled for Griff to help her, to do something. I turned back around to face them and found the restroom empty. Bright overhead lights beamed down on me, and the white tile sparkled around me. I turned off the flashlight, shoved it into my back pocket, and turned back to the wall and touched the spot where I’d seen the writing.

  The writing was still there, but it had changed to it “He’s here.” I touched it, and my hand left a red smear on the clean tile.

  Every muscle, every nerve in my body sang soprano, and my skin tightened. I turned a slow circle, expecting someone to be waiting behind me, but I had the bathroom to myself. It was past time to get out. Faintly, very faintly, I heard Mysti and Griff calling my name.

  “I’m here,” I yelled back as loud as I could, walking around the bathroom in search of a spot where they seemed close. The formerly dilapidated bathroom was so clean I actually smelled bleach and hand soap. The only similarity it shared with the place I entered with Griff and Mysti was that one stall door was closed while the other three hung open.

  “Peri Jean?” Mysti sounded farther away than ever. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so. I’m right here.” The black opal around my neck flashed with power. I touched it, hoping it would beam me back to Griff and Mysti. It shot magic into my fingertips, but I stayed where I was. Wild, electric fear buzzed at the edge of my brain. I needed to get out before it got the better of me, and I lost control. “Can you hear me?”

  Nobody answered. The world had gone silent other than the hum of the electric lights. This had to be a vision, and there had to be a way to exit it. Maybe Susie wanted me to see something in the snow globe. I held it up and saw the water inside had gone blood red.

  “Ugh.” Revulsion overrode my good sense, and I raised the snow globe to throw it. At the last second, I thought better of it and set it down near my feet.

  I glanced at the door where I came in and had an idea. Taking deep breaths and trying to keep the hysteria bubbling inside me at bay, I walked toward the door and reached for the handle. My hand hit an invisible field, causing iridescent ripples of color to flash, and stopped an inch or so from the handle. I pushed harder. The color ripples dimpled but stopped my progress. I was trapped.

  The horror I’d been trying so hard to contain exploded. I slammed my body at the door and hit the same wall of resistance. It threw me backward and dumped me on my ass in the middle of the tile floor. I gained my feet and repeated the exercise, with the same results. I saw the snow globe out of the corner of my eye and went to pick it up again. The red water was gone. Inside the snow globe was a miniature of the restroom in which I was trapped. A curled figure lay on the floor, blood spreading around it. I recognized my purple blouse and tan cowboy boots. I batted the thing away from me. It slid across the floor came to rest underneath the row of sinks.

  It was then I heard the sound. It was a shuffling, secretive sound, like feet sliding on a gritty floor. Another thumping, pattering sound accompanied it. Maybe I’d been hearing it the whole time I lost my shit; maybe it had recently started. I didn’t know. All I knew was the sound came from the fourth stall, the one with the closed door.

  Every instinct screamed at me to run, but there was nowhere to go. I stood paralyzed, the black opal heating to a burning lump on my chest. The tiny sounds of locusts humming and branches rubbing together outside drifted into the room. They echoed off the walls and floors, louder in the reverent silence than they had any business being. I finally got one foot to move, but it was in the wrong direction, away from the parking lot. Instead, I took one step after another to the closed bathroom stall, unable to stop, barely able to breathe through the apprehension clogging my throat.

  The door swung open as I approached, whining on its hinges. The stall’s occupant raised her head to stare at me through darkened, hollow eye sockets.

  A scream—not my own—ripped through my head. I felt strong hands around my neck and a knee digging into my stomach. The hands relaxed, and the person crawled off me.

  I snapped myself back into the bathroom and the horror suspended over the toilet in front of me. I recognized the shock of blond hair. Susie Franklin. Wild and painful prickles danced underneath my skin, flooding my bloodstream with spikes of energy. Still, I couldn’t move. Some force held me in thrall.

  Susie had been suspended over the toilet with a chain that ran out of one of the vent windows high in the wall. Her killer had taken her eyes and hollowed out her chest. Her hand held a broken strand of beads. One by one, the beads slid off the strand with maddening slowness, plummeting to the floor where they disappeared in an iridescent ripple.

  The layer between this place and the real one, my mind supplied.

  Whistling came from outside the building, some tune I didn’t recognize. Footsteps crunching on the asphalt. I was no longer alone. He’s here.

  The chain suspending the woman tightened. It groaned against the window sill. The corpse in front of me swayed, her feet sliding on the dirty floor. This was the furtive sound I’d heard two lifetimes ago, when I was still innocent of the abomination before me. The whistling continued throughout it all. The corpse stopped moving. Hollow footsteps sounded outside the building, a metronome to the whistled tune.

  He’s coming. I’ve got to run. Whoever did this, whoever hurt Susie Franklin is coming inside this bathroom. Even if everything I’m seeing and hearing is an echo of the past, I’m in it. He might be able to do something to me. But where do I run?

  The door swung open, and I backed against the wall. Someone came into the bathroom with me. There was no way for me to tell if he was the same man I saw carry Susie into the restroom because he wore a hollowed out animal head as a mask. The horrible thing might have started out as a horse, but great care had been taken to replace the horse’s ears with rabbit ears. Deer horns had been affixed to the top of the animal’s head. The snout was open, displaying boar’s tusks.

  My visitor held aloft a long knife with a hook—the kind hunters used to gut their kills—set into the blade. The knife had red smears on it. The hands wrapped around its handle were bloodstained, their cuticles colored black with blood. But the knife was nothing compared to what I saw when I raised my eyes to the killer’s face. What I saw helped me find my voice, and a scream I didn’t know I had in me pealed out of my mouth, abrading my throat with its force.

  It was the absolute void of nothing in the killer’s dull eyes. It nearly drove me mad with terror.

  My chest tightened, and my heart throbbed. My vision wavered. Time stood still. My mind tried to shut down from the fear. If I didn’t get myself under con
trol, I wouldn’t be able to help myself, and I had to help myself because there was nobody else to help me.

  The man in front of me cocked his head to one side like a dog trying to understand what his human master is saying. The corners of his dead eyes crinkled. Is he smiling at me? Oh, no, I think he is. I screamed because there wasn’t another damn thing I could do.

  Somewhere distant, Mysti’s voice came to me. She chanted the words, “Bring her back. Bring her back where she belongs. This is her time and her place. Separate her from where she does not belong.”

  The black opal burned at my chest, its magic causing my adrenaline to spike even harder. I rocked on my feet and reached out a hand to steady myself.

  “Mmmm-mmm. Ain’t you something special. Just what I been waiting for,” said the man with the abomination on his head. His hand tightened around his knife. He raised it head high and sprang at me. I danced away and brought my knee up, aiming for his family jewels. We never connected. The iridescent wave, which kept me from grabbing the door to the parking lot, appeared between us.

  “Guardian of the light, protect Peri Jean Mace. Bring Peri Jean Mace back to the place where she belongs.” Mysti’s voice reverberated both within and without my body. I shook with the force of it. A crack appeared in the corner of the room, letting in blinding light and the smell of fresh air.

  The killer, following my gaze, let out a low, rumbling growl at what he saw. The crack widened a tiny bit. He turned his attention back to me, his stare like a hot probe on my skin.

  Please, please just a little bit more. I crept toward the opening, twisting often to make sure the bad man wasn’t right behind me. When I got close enough, I reached for the crack’s edge and tugged, trying to pull it wider. The crack at the top extended nearly to the ceiling. I pulled and prayed, doing everything I could to make it wide enough so I could get back to Mysti and Griff.

  “Periiiiii Jeeeeaaaan.” The bad man’s whisper shook the whole world.

  I faced him and pressed my back against the wall near the crack. Icy sweat ran down my body, and I began to shake.

  The bad man reached behind him and pulled out the snow globe. He shook it at me, making the fake snow inside float and swirl. “There’s no escape, Peri Jean Mace.”

  He bent his knees and leapt at me. I screamed and held my hands out to ward him off. He hit the membrane and dissipated into a million little colored dots. The black opal sent painful shocks into my skin. Had it made him disappear? I didn’t think so. The killer seemed to know exactly how to operate in this place. He was playing with me.

  The black opal heated again. The shiny clean bathroom began to fade, the nasty old bathroom visible behind a dull film. Mysti and Griff charged toward me, blurry and hazy, and still not quite with me.

  “You see her?” Mysti screamed. “Grab her. Pull her.”

  Griff snatched one arm and Mysti got the other. They jerked at me, their faces contorting with effort. I tried to come toward them, but something held me fast. I turned to see what it was, and the man wearing the horse head had my legs. I kicked at him, sobbing.

  “Banish the one who does evil.” Mysti let go of me and reached into the pocket of her skirt. She came out with her hand cupped and threw the contents at my captor. I fell into Griff, who staggered backward with my weight. We tumbled onto the floor together.

  “You okay?” He said the words between gasps.

  I tried to speak but couldn’t do more than wheeze. I gripped Griff’s arm in thanks, and he nodded his understanding, still panting from the effort. I began to brush whatever Mysti had thrown from me. It had a gritty texture and stuck to my clammy hands.

  “What is this shit?” I wiped my hands on my jeans and left behind tiny white specks.

  “Blessed salt.” Mysti threw her arms around me and held me so tight I felt her heart drumming in her chest. She pushed away from me and stared into my face. “Are you okay? What happened? Was he a ghost?”

  “I’ll answer all your questions on one condition,” I said.

  “What?”

  “We get the fuck out of this piss palace.”

  “Not a problem.” Griff got to his feet and pulled me up with him. We lit out of the bathroom as fast as we could. The sky outside was light with dawn. I stopped to stare at it, my mouth hanging open. It couldn’t have been later than one in the morning when we rolled up to the rest stop. Where had the hours gone?

  5

  Griff and Mysti bundled me into the SUV. Griff got a blanket from the cargo area and spread it over me. I realized I was shaking head to toe and reached for it, pulling it up to my neck. I curled into a ball on the seat, leaned my head on the window, and watched Griff and Mysti go back into the restroom. They came out carrying armloads of candles, Mysti’s athame, and vials of mystery substances. They schlepped their bundles around the side of the SUV. Dimly, I heard the cargo doors open, heard their voices as they deposited their loads, but it seemed as though they were distant, like characters on TV.

  Griff and Mysti climbed into the front of the SUV. The engine started, and we went backward.

  “You ready to tell us what you saw in there?” Griff’s voice floated back to me.

  The words wouldn’t come. I didn’t want to do anything other than lay there in my blanket, watching the scenery roll past.

  “Leave her be.” Mysti dug in her bag and came out with a piece of wax paper twisted on both ends. “I think she’s slipping into shock. Get us out of here, and I’ll take care of her.” Mysti unbuckled her seat belt and climbed into the back with me. She pushed the piece of wax paper at me. I ignored it.

  “Don’t make me force this into you.” Her voice carried a note of determination. “It’s my special remedy for shock, and it’s going to help you feel better.”

  “Let’s get out of Nazareth.” Griff drove down the road that brought us into this crazy place. “We’ll take a few hours off.”

  Mysti pushed the wax paper at me, and I turned my face away from her. She sighed.

  “Peri Jean? Take Mysti’s remedy.” Griff made his voice sound cheerful, as though nothing was wrong. “It’ll help. I promise.”

  Mysti shoved the remedy at me again. I wanted to try it because I felt awful, but I couldn’t quite get my hand to reach for it. Mysti unfolded the paper, revealing a black, sticky substance.

  “Lick it. You’ll like the taste. It’s sweet. I use tamarind as the base.”

  I reached for it, hand shaking so hard I could barely control it. Mysti took my fingers and closed them on the wax paper. I pushed it at my mouth, barely parting my lips in time. The oily sweetness of tamarind coated my tongue. I forced myself to swallow. Mysti pushed a water bottle to my lips, and I drank.

  “There. Give it a few minutes.” She sat back next to me.

  I closed my eyes against the world, unable to do anything else. Within a few seconds, Mysti’s concoction hit my bloodstream, steadying me, pushing out the chills I felt. It kicked my brain back into gear. My thoughts grew more coherent. I went over what I saw in the bathroom back at the rest stop and sucked in a deep breath.

  “He’s after me. The guy—the one who killed Susie—he said he’s coming for me.” Thoughts of where I could go and what I could do washed away rational thought. “I’m going to end up like Susie.”

  “We’re not going to let anything of the sort happen.” Griff pulled into a gas station that also had a fast food restaurant inside. “In there or here in the vehicle?”

  “I don’t want food. I have to figure out what to do so he can’t get to me again.” The words tumbled out, each one faster and more unintelligible than the one before it.

  “He’s not going to do it this second,” Mysti said. “Let’s get some food in you, and we’ll talk about what you saw. Griff, go through the drive-thru.”

  He did and ordered what Mysti told him. I glanced around at all the other cars, expecting to see a man wearing a taxidermic, bastardized animal head get out of one of them. Griff took our paper sack
s of food from the cashier and drove to a parking place. I didn’t want the sausage biscuit they’d ordered for me, but they bullied me into taking a bite. Realizing how hungry I was, I ate two sausage biscuits and accepted a carton of milk. I sipped it, and normalcy crept back in.

  “He knew my name.” I shivered. “He shook the snow globe at me and said he’d see me soon.”

  “Who?” Griff closed the empty container his breakfast came in and set it aside.

  I described the man I saw in the bathroom, my speech alternating between too fast and too slow.

  Griff’s face turned chalky. “Was it the same guy in the vision you had back at the motel?”

  I recalled as much of the vision from the motel as I could, in as much detail as I could. Then I forced myself to think about the man who said he’d see me soon. The pearl snap shirt.

  “He had on the same shirt in both visions.”

  “Think about the vision where you saw his face,” Griff said. “Is there any chance he was someone we’ve met?”

  Griff didn’t dare lead me by saying Bobby John Culpepper’s or Kevin Douglas’s name, but I knew who he meant and shook my head. “It wasn’t either of them.”

  “You’re sure? Don’t be afraid to tell me who it was.” He half turned to stare at me. “I’ll do everything in my power not to let him get to you.”

  “The guy wasn’t Bobby John Culpepper or Kevin Douglas.” I squirmed in my seat, trying to figure out how to explain what I’d seen and where I’d been. “It was like I was in the past and the present at the same time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The guy I saw had Susie Franklin’s corpse suspended over the toilet in the rest area.”

  Griff’s eyes widened and Mysti sucked in a breath.

  “There’s never been a body found in the rest area,” Griff said. “I’d have seen reports of it in my research.”

  “She was dead,” I said. “Real dead. Like her eyes had been cut out, and she’d been gutted. But here’s the freaky thing. Her body was fresh. Blood was still dripping.”