A Ghostly Charm

by MJ Fredrick

  “So, you grew up together? Here on the island?” “Since middle school,” Mal replied.

  “Have you ever been to Gettysburg?” the man, who’d been introduced as Mick, asked. “I swear, we had some serious chills when we went out there.”

  Mal sat on his heels. Maddy watched his expression change, relax, as he went into man-to- man mode.

  So sexy, watching men relate to each other. Not that Mal was hard to look at in any case. And what was she doing letting her thoughts go there?

  “What happened?” he asked Mick.

  “Oh, we didn’t see anything, but the emotions were so powerful. We knew we weren’t alone. And those boys are so sad. I’ll never forget it. I left there with memories that weren’t my own. You definitely need to go, see what you feel.”

  “Sounds awesome. We’ll have to check it out.” He motioned for Maddy to place a candle at a spot beyond his reach.

  “So, since middle school?” she redirected. “Were you born here or was Justin?”

  “Neither. Justin moved from Maryland, and I moved from Texas.”

  “I thought that was a Texas accent. Not many ghosts there?”

  “Enough. More here, though. So, do you want to interview me?”

  She sat back and folded her arms, aware of the defensive stance, but too late to undo without drawing his attention. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “For your article.”

  “It’s not about you. It’s about the tour.”

  “But how good is your article going to be if you don’t believe?” He rose and held a hand out to help her to her feet.

  She hesitated, then took it, releasing it the moment she got to her feet to brush off her butt. “And you’re going to try to change my mind with an interview?”

  He lifted a hand in concession of the unlikelihood of that. “Maybe just enlighten you a bit.”

  “Won’t the tour do that for me?”

  “Depends on how active the spirits are.” He walked toward the parlor doors where they’d left their things. Unerringly, he picked up hers and handed them to her.

  She opened her mouth to ask how he knew, but the smug expression on his face told her he wanted her to ask, to notice that he’d noticed. So she kept to the topic as she hefted her camp chair over her shoulder. “I suppose it would be rough running a business where you can’t predict outcomes.”

  He led the way to a spot by the fireplace with his own gear. “Can you in any business?” He set up his chair with a single shake and placed it in front of the fireplace.

  It was Maddy’s turn to concede. “Seems a risky venture.”

  He flashed a smile, all white teeth and crinkled eyes, and motioned her to sit beside him. “The only kind worth taking.”

  As if she needed another barricade to her attraction, if the whole ghost-hunting thing wasn’t enough. Senseless risks were, well, just senseless. She hesitated, wondering at the wisdom of accepting his invitation. What the hell? It was only for a couple of hours, right? What harm could it do? She might get her story tonight. So she unfolded her chair beside his and sat, playing with her charm bracelet as he instructed everyone to gather their belongings from the hallway.

  They assembled their chairs in a circle around the pentagram that, to be honest, gave Maddy chills to look at. Why, she didn’t know. She didn’t believe in any of this. Maybe it was all the lore she’d heard associated with it. While they organized, Justin set up two video cameras focused on the circle. What did he expect to see?

  Once they were settled, Mal stood in the center of the pentagram. That was all he needed to do to command their attention.

  “Tonight, we’re having a séance.”

  Titters ran through the crowd as usually happened when he made that announcement, but Mal sought Maddy’s reaction. Her expression, as expected, was skeptical.

  “Bring your chairs, because there’s no telling how long it will take.”

  “Who are we calling, the murderer or the victims?” Maddy asked, arms crossed.

  “There’s no evidence the murderer haunts this place. We want to talk to the victims.”

  “Why?”

  Mal blinked. “Because this is a ghost tour.”

  “Have you ever had a séance before?” She held up a hand before he could answer. “A successful séance?”

  He stepped through the circle toward her. “Once, in Salem, we were able to contact two witches hung in 1692.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How did I know?” He looked around the circle at the other intrigued guests. “This is my job.”

  “I meeean,” she dragged the word out, “how do you know you contacted witches?”

  She certainly wasn’t his first skeptic, but frustration already bubbled low in his stomach. That was new. He could usually keep his good humor. His job depended on it. Today he had to dig a little deeper. “We ran a tape recorder during the séance. We heard some weird stuff during the séance, but when we played the tape back, we could hear voices.”

  “And what did they say? ‘We’re the witches of Salem?’”

  He snorted. At least her skepticism was accompanied by humor. “Well, clearly, they wouldn’t say that since they denied being witches at their trials. But no, they didn’t talk to us. They talked to each other. It was hard for us to understand, because they didn’t speak the same English we do. We ran it through our computer to slow it down, and even then, it was hard.”

  That detail impressed her. He could see her mouth relax, her eyes soften.

  “It’s on their website,” Joyce said. “The tape is.”

  Maddy made a note to check that out when she got to her room. “So, the witch talk. What did they say?”

  “What do you think they said?” He folded his arms in a pose mimicking hers. “They were unhappy. They were religious women in their time, and they’ve been kept out of heaven because they weren’t buried in hallowed ground. They were thrown into a ravine, and they still want to see the face of God.”

  “That is so sad,” Rosemarie, the hoodie-wearing woman said, her hand at her throat. “Why doesn’t someone consecrate the area where they’re buried now?”

  “We suggested that, but no one believed us.” “You would think they would do it out of a sense of decency, instead of because you told them you talked to ghosts,” Maddy said.

  “You think I would go to authority figures and tell them I talk to ghosts?” Mal asked her.

  “Why not? You lead a ghost tour.”

  “And as you should know, you have to choose your audience.”

  She inclined her head in concession.

  “We’re ready to begin,” Justin said in his somber tone.

  “Do we need to hold hands?” Vivian asked.

  “Maybe to start, to bring us all into focus, but it’s not necessary for the spirits,” Justin said.

  “Are you conducting it?” Maddy asked, and her heart tripped when Mal pulled his chair next to hers and offered his hand, palm up.

  She looked over, saw only that crooked smile and his nod, encouraging her to put her hand in his. Not that she needed that much encouragement, only an excuse to touch him.

  His hand was warm and smooth, but hard. Square. Masculine. She resisted the urge to trail her fingertips over the calluses at the base of his fingers. He laced his fingers through hers when she tried to shift her hand in a less intimate way. Somehow his fingers between hers felt intimate. On her other side, Rosemarie reached out expectantly, and Maddy lay her hand in hers, her bracelet clinking in the quiet room.

  A shiver of apprehension rippled through the circle, almost a physical thing. Justin took a deep breath and began with a prayer for protection. His words sent a chill through her. She didn’t believe, but some things you just didn’t mess with.

  “We’re calling the McDavid family here tonight. Is there anyone from the McDavid family here in the room with us tonight?”

  She wanted to giggle. Mal must have sensed it because he squee
zed her fingers. She let out her breath on a little choke and out of the corner of her eye, she saw him frowning at her. A breeze rushed through the room, sending the candles flickering. Rosemarie’s hand tightened on hers, and one of the other women squealed. When the wind died abruptly, the hair on Maddy’s neck stood up, despite everything she knew to be real.

  “Is someone here?” Justin asked. “Is a member of the McDavid family here? If you are, rap two times.”

  Everyone held their breath. Maddy could feel it even as she forced her own breathing to remain even.

  The first rap nearly had her vaulting out of her seat. Mal shifted his hand so it rested on her thigh, reassuring. That she needed reassuring irked her, but she didn’t give into the urge to pull away. The second rap didn’t startle her as much, but she’d never wanted to lean into a guy so bad in her life. He had to feel her heart pounding, and he rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand.

  “Did you die in this house?” Justin asked.

  Two more raps. Every hair on her body stood at attention even as she reminded herself it could just be someone outside, someone the brothers paid to scare the bejeebers out of them. She would just relax and enjoy being scared, get in the spirit, so to speak.

  “Were you murdered here?” Justin asked. Two raps.

  “Can you go into the light?”

  One rap.

  “Do you see a light?”

  One rap.

  “Are you alone?”

  One rap. Another thrill went down Maddy’s spine.

  “How many?”

  Six slow raps. Maddy felt herself grinning. Now that she wasn’t working so hard to disprove this, she could see why people wanted to do this. She could almost forgive Mal and Justin for duping them.

  Behind them, one of the empty chairs scraped across the floor, and a nervous squeal ripped from Maddy’s throat, followed by a giggle. Mal shushed her with a quiet chuckle.

  Justin asked another question she didn’t hear, and a cooler slid across the floor.

  Then one of the ghost groupies leaned forward and pointed to the center of the circle, a gurgle of fear emerging from her. Something dark and thick came up through a crack in the floor, started spreading wider across the floor.

  And then sucked back down through the cracks, as if it had never been there.

  A scream crawled up the back of her throat, but she fought it back. She couldn’t feel her left hand, Rosemarie was squeezing so hard. Maddy didn’t take her eyes off where the stain had been, but she was pretty sure her knuckles were white.

  Even Justin’s voice sounded shaky when he said, “Did you do that?”

  Two raps.

  “To scare us away?”

  One rap.

  “To prove your existence?”

  Two raps.

  “Can we help you?”

  One knock. If a knock could sound sad, that one did.

  “I’m sorry,” Justin said. “I’m sorry. Thank you for being here with us tonight.”

  “It’s over?” Maddy asked when Justin fell silent.

  “Yeah. Sorry.” Justin slumped back in his chair.

  Mal dragged his hand from hers with reluctance, then shook his hand and stretched his fingers teasingly.

  “Was that blood?” one of the women asked, her voice shaky as she stared at the center of the circle. “Was that blood?” Her voice rose the second time.

  Maddy slipped to her knees in the circle, running her hands over the floor. It was damp, but no wetness remained. She lifted her fingers to her nose. She couldn’t identify the scent, but it wasn’t blood.

  It wasn’t Karo syrup, either.

  “Where did it go?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at Mal.

  Whose eyes were glazed as he stared at her ass.

  She sat on her heels quickly and snapped her fingers in front of his nose. “Watch it.”

  He winked. “I was. And when you looked back at me like that—” He shook his head. “Damn.”

  She hopped to her feet. “I’m going to see where it went.”

  Mal rose, too. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Hm.” She would not allow that idea to be appealing. She followed him out of the parlor and down the hall, wishing she’d thought to bring her own flashlight.

  “Did you like it?” he asked as the voices of the other guests faded behind them. “The séance?”

  “It didn’t seem to unnerve you much,” she said. “It’s almost like you were expecting it.”

  “I’ve been in séances before.” He opened a door, then closed it.

  “I can’t imagine they would ever be commonplace, especially not with a manifestation of blood.” She followed him to the next door as he peeked in and moved on.

  “I think you underestimate my nerve, especially when you were holding my hand so tight my fingernails were turning blue.” He stopped and stepped in front of her. Too close. “You were scared.”

  “I...” She took a step back, encountered the wall and swallowed. “I might have let myself get carried away by the moment.”

  “Do you do that often?” he asked with a tilt of his head. “Get carried away?” He took another step and she breathed him in, male, primal. Delicious.

  Bad. She pushed both hands against his chest. “Is that why you came with me? To get me alone? I’m not falling for your charm, buddy.”

  “Buddy?” He quirked a brow at her, but stepped back, hands raised in surrender, his expression unrepentant. He turned and opened a third door, revealing a descending staircase. “Let’s go see what we can find.”

  Mal led the way down the basement steps, aiming his flashlight into each corner before shining it on the ceiling. “You can’t even get to the parlor from here. The ceiling is solid, not even slats in the wood floor above.”

  “There must be a crawlspace, then,” she said, taking his flashlight and walking deeper into the basement.

  “So what are you going to do?” He moved up against her. “Tear up the floor to find it? Because I don’t think our lease covers that.”

  “No, I’m going to go under the porch. That’s the most logical entrance.”

  “You’re going to go now. In the dark.”

  She blinked. “Why not? Don’t tell me you aren’t afraid of ghosts, but are afraid of spiders.”

  He swallowed. “Geez, spiders? What did you have to go and say that for?”

  She stepped closer, shining the light between them, and narrowed her eyes. “You’re having me on. What don’t you want me to find?”

  “Find whatever you want. But wait until morning, how’s that? Then you can crawl to your heart’s content.”

  She studied him, then moved back. “You won’t try to stop me?”

  “Sweetheart, I don’t think it’s possible to stop you.”

  “Oh, I didn’t say you’d succeed.” She flipped the flashlight around and handed it to him, barrel first.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “I think I’m in love.”

  When they returned to the parlor, everyone was gathered around Mick, who held a digital recorder in front of him as if it was a snake.

  “What’s going on?” Maddy asked.

  “Can’t stay here,” one of the women, Sarah, stuttered, barely able to form the words, she was shaking so badly. She moved away from the group and wrapped her arms around herself. “People died in this room. Violently.”

  Maddy frowned. Wasn’t this what these people had expected? “Right, but that was over a hundred years ago. They’re long gone.”

  “How do you explain the blood, then?” one of the other men asked.

  She opened her mouth to say it was a trick, but couldn’t bring herself to do that to Mal. Besides, she hadn’t found any proof.

  “And this?” Mick held up his recorder and punched “play.”

  She heard Justin’s voice, low and calm, emerge from the small speaker, then a soft buzz, then—

  “He can’t hear us,” a voice said in a sibilant tone.

>   “He can’t help us,” another voice said.

  “He’s coming! He’s coming!” A third voice rose in panic, just before the sound of the cooler being dragged across the floor.

  Chills all over her body, she turned to Mal and Justin. “What is this?”

  “Sounds like EVP,” Justin said.

  “What’s that?” Maddy demanded, tired of these terms buzzing around her already busy mind.

  “Electric Voice Phenomenon,” Justin said. “Like in the movie ‘White Noise’? Ghosts can sometimes communicate through recording devices.”

  “Maybe you didn’t erase it. maybe it was an old conversation,” she said.

  “‘He’s coming, he’s coming?’” Mal asked, looking shaken for the first time this evening. “Pretty coincidental.”

  “And yet easier to believe than ghosts.”

  Justin moved to one of the video cameras, flipped open the view screen and rewound the video. “Christ,” he muttered, and everyone swarmed him. “Orbs. Everywhere.”

  “The thermal camera,” Mal said, and pushed through the stunned group to the other camera.

  Maddy followed, and even as she did, she heard the same voices from the digital recorder come from Justin’s camera. Her mind worked on how it could have been recorded from one device to the other with no one else hearing it. She had no idea, but then she wasn’t a techno-geek.

  What she saw on Mal’s camera chilled her to the bone. She could see the heat signatures of everyone sitting in the circle. She could hear Justin’s words. And before the first rap, she saw a heat signature register near the fireplace. If she squinted, she could see the outline of a man. That, she could almost explain. The draft she’d felt during the séance could have come from the fireplace. But then another figure joined the “man.” And another. And another.

  The same words played back, and after the agitated words, “He’s coming, he’s coming!” the apparitions disappeared.

  Maddy stared at the screen awhile longer, then drew back to see Mal looking at her, as stunned as she was.

  “What is it?” The Ghost Groupies gathered around, and Maddy couldn’t take her eyes away. There had to be an explanation. There had to be.

  “What’s wrong?” After watching the video the second time, Mal joined Maddy near the fireplace. “Are you looking for heat sources?”