River of Ghosts (Haunted Florida Book 2)

by Gaby Triana

  Kane looked at me inquisitively since I was talking to Linda, as if asking for a report on how she felt. I gave him a thumb’s up to express that Linda seemed fine. “Alright then, hope you all get some sleep. Anybody need anything from the food tent before I close it?”

  “I do.” I scrambled over to the big plastic tub containing the dry packaged foods and cans and grabbed a granola bar. The pork and beans hadn’t done it for me. As I was heading out of the tent, Kane held onto my arm.

  “Did she seem okay to you?” he asked, worry lines on his forehead.

  “I think she’s a little worn down, but she seems okay now.”

  “You sure?”

  “I think so. She’s in good spirits, doing her crosswords.”

  Kane laughed a shallow laugh in his chest. “Yeah, she loves those. Alright. Since you’re sleeping in the same tent as her, keep an eye on her, will you? Linda’s been with us too long, and I’d hate for her to feel sick and not tell us. She’s done it before. Kind of a martyr, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sure. I get it.” And with that, I headed to bed, knowing I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep. Hoping to God that nothing would visit me in my dreams. I unrolled the sleeping bag the crew had brought for me and lay on top. It was too hot to get inside a flannel-lined cocoon, so I lay over it staring up at the apex of the tent ceiling.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you out there,” Linda said from her chair by the open flap of the tent. “I’m afraid this place is affecting me more than any other I’ve been in recent years. I used to be affected quite a bit when I first started coming along on investigations, but this one…this one is different.”

  “Different how?” I rolled up the top side of the sleeping bag to form a soft pillow and readjusted myself until I was somewhat comfortable.

  “The entities here are older than most houses. More primitive and powerful. I told them in Atlanta that coming here wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “They said it was a unique location.”

  “Is that what they said?” Linda harrumphed, closed her crossword puzzle book, and slowly stood. She moaned in the typical way older folks did about their aches and pains and joints upon standing. “Goodnight, everybody.” She waved to the tech crew that was still doing some work out by the lantern.

  Everyone bid her goodnight, then she lowered her head and came into the tent. Eve had been nice enough to double up sleeping bags for Linda, and I would’ve given her my own for a third if I didn’t need it myself.

  “You know,” she said, out of breath, lowering to a seated position on the ground. “I do these for another reason too.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “When I was younger, I didn’t fully accept my gifts. I wanted them gone.” She spoke as she got her things ready for bed. “There were so many people who would’ve given an arm and a leg for my abilities, but here I had them and wanted nothing to do with them.”

  Linda pulled a small bottle out of her bag, uncapped it and placed a tiny pill onto her tongue before taking a swig of water from her bottle.

  “As I got older, I realized this was why I was here. I’d been given this gift for a reason, and that was to help people. You shouldn’t be afraid of your gifts either, Avila.”

  Looking at Linda, I saw the honesty in her face, the exhaustion in her eyes. She’d lived a good—what—sixty or seventy years? I couldn’t tell, but it had been long enough to accrue the kind of wisdom I should definitely listen to. I just wasn’t sure “gift” was the right word.

  “But I am afraid of them,” I said.

  Linda rested her head on a small pillow. “That will either change with time or with circumstance,” she said, turning off her flashlight. “Whichever comes first. I do think this will be my last, though.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Look at this old lady getting into a sleeping bag, Avila. But I came to help someone find closure, so I want to make sure she gets it.”

  Sometime in the night, I awoke to a revelation.

  Panting, catching my breath, I’d been dreaming about Sharon and why she’d asked me all those questions the day before. It wasn’t for the show. She wanted to know for herself. She had a personal connection to Villegas House, and Linda had told her that I would take her here. That was why Kane and Eve had sought me out. She said a Miccosukee woman would know about the house, and when they’d done their research, they’d found—me.

  Why did Sharon want to find this house, of all houses? It couldn’t have meant anything to her. Around me, the silence felt unsettling. A quick look at my phone told me it was 3 AM. I’d been asleep several hours.

  Linda had told me I shouldn’t be afraid of my gifts, and that was all I could dream about for half the night. No matter what images my brain had conjured up in the night, I could hear Linda’s voice in the perimeter telling me it was useless to be afraid. The spirits could be menacing, but they couldn’t hurt me—not physically anyway.

  I wasn’t so sure.

  I’d seen episodes of their show where Sharon would get scratched, or finger marks would press against someone’s throat. Right now, the crickets had quieted, and that, in and of itself, scared me. Did something walk outside the tent? The more I drifted in and out of sleep, the more I felt it was something physical, of this earth.

  Feet scuttling, hands grasping.

  Whispering.

  I sat up on my sleeping bag and listened. I might have been dreaming. My mind may have been playing tricks on me, but sure enough, I heard hushed voices and twitching sounds. The voices were not familiar, or even human, and then I heard the crunch of plastic and metal being hashed around. Was someone messing with the equipment?

  I wouldn’t be able to sleep again until I knew.

  These wild areas of Big Cypress could be dangerous if you weren’t vigilant. I didn’t want to find out too late that a wild hog or kowi—panther—had been on the prowl near my guests. Shuffling to my feet, I crawled to the tent flap, unzipped it open, and went outside. Just in case, I grabbed my phone, turned on the video, and got it ready.

  TEN

  Surrounded by tents, camp chairs, coolers, and our makeshift kitchen, I stood in the darkness and listened. Not a single movement. Not a shift of branch or leaf coming from the woods. In the stillness, I closed my eyes, detecting the very normal, very human sounds of loud breathing and snoring.

  From the trees came a silence that permeated my soul.

  Even nature wasn’t that quiet.

  The heroic part of my brain wanted to explore, assure the security of the crew’s safety as they slept, make sure no panthers were prowling, but the other part of me, the part that had been imbued with fear of the unknown since a young age felt paralyzed.

  Evil was out there, like the things I’d seen long ago.

  I felt them.

  What if ghosts watched us from the perimeter? What if they’d been waiting for us to fall asleep so they could invade our dreams, take our souls? Then I’d capture them on video, hand the footage over to the crew, and get the hell out of here. Scanning the camp, a million scenarios ran through my mind, not a single one of them practical or reasonable.

  Avila.

  No. No, I’d seen this movie before, the one where the unsuspecting scream queen followed the sound of her name being called, leading to inevitable danger. There was no way I’d follow. No way, except the voice sounded like Billie’s, or the way my brain attempted to piece together the memory of Billie. Why would my little brother be here in the middle of the Everglades? Maybe he was always with me, and only now did I notice.

  “Billie?” I watched the darkness through the staticky phone screen.

  The glades’ heat and humidity did nothing to quench the chills on my skin.

  “Billie?” I called again.

  Whispers carried through the humid air.

  My skin pricked with goose bumps.

  I floated through the camp in an out-of-body experience, except I was walking. I felt
the peat moss and cool moist dirt on the ground beneath my feet, the vibrations of the ground rising through my legs, the phone trembling in my hand. All reminded me I was alive. Mortal. Made of flesh, unlike whatever stalked the swamp. In fact, I’d never been more alert in my life, more tuned-in to the world around me, but which world—which dimension—did I walk?

  Villegas House—the wood, the sagging roof, the shingles—existed on one plane.

  Its heart and soul existed in another.

  And it watched.

  I stood facing the house. If I squinted just enough, the windows looked like manic eyes carved from a jack-o-lantern and the eaves looked like disheveled eyebrows, and that front door… I shook my head. This was nuts. There was no way the house was alive or real or looked like a face, or looked like it was grinning, or calling me, or any such imaginings. It was 3 AM, damn it, and I was under the influence of sleep with the sharpness of a woken mind.

  Avila…

  “No.” I shook my head, tried to squeeze the voice from my head. “No, Billie. You’re not here. You’re in my memory. This house is just trying to get me to come in.”

  Above me, a pair of shutters slammed together and wavered back and forth in the breeze. I ripped my gaze away from the slumping structure and looked at my feet to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Bare, dirty feet firmly rooted in the grass. The house wanted me to stare it down, challenge it, step inside, but there was no way I would.

  I was about to turn off my video when to my right, I heard the whispers again, only this time they didn’t sound like people discussing in hushed tones. They didn’t sound human or ethereal either. Taking steps toward the camp’s supplies tent, I paused to listen. Skitterings, if that was a word. Scuttling and discussion and scheming. The tent shook gently, stopped, then shook again. Half my brain knew it was critters, more than likely, but the other half…

  Come into the house, Avila.

  We need you.

  “No,” I told the voice. There was nothing special about me. I was an ordinary woman with an ordinary life. No way did ghosts know my name or need me. This was my brain, my sick, deluded brain playing tricks on me. “Go away.”

  I could do this.

  Coming around the side of the tent, I spotted it—the perfect cut-out window in the nylon siding and immediately knew what was going on. I crept up slowly, because what if it wasn’t? What if something besides critters were inside that tent?

  Avila, you’re psyching yourself out.

  I had seen this same scenario before. Anyone who lived in a natural habitat had. Swallowing my dread, I pushed aside my nerves and let the rational side of my mind take the reins. I pulled back the loose piece of nylon wavering in the minimal breeze, and peeked inside.

  Several sets of beady little black eyes looked back at me, frozen with guilt.

  A tsunami of relief washed over me so hard, my knees buckled. Raccoons I could deal with. Raccoons were of this world. Raccoons were harmless.

  “Shoo! Get out of here,” I ordered the creatures. Little trash pandas had ripped a perfect incision into our supplies tent, opened the Rubbermaid containers with their nimble hands, and were chowing down on granola bars and raw hot dogs.

  The raccoons shrieked then scattered. They jumped out of the tent and left a mess in their wake. They bolted into the woods, bouncing and criss-crossing each other in panic while I stood there gripping my freaked-out heart. “Shit.”

  In the night and darkness, they’d sounded like bandits. I wasn’t the only one awake now, as I tuned into real human voices crossing the camp. Familiar figures emerged from the dark and joined me at the scene of the crime.

  “What happened?” Quinn, fully dressed, and Kane, in only shorts and no shirt, crawled up to me. I averted my eyes from Eve’s shirtless husband and looked at Quinn instead. In his hand, he held a shotgun aimed at the ground.

  Seriously?

  “Raccoons got into our food,” I said, gazing at Quinn’s weapon. What was he doing with that thing? Nobody told me there’d be a gun at this camp. Shouldn’t there have been full disclosure of that at our initial meeting?

  “Wasn’t it closed up?” Kane whispered.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Knowing how to get to food is their specialty.”

  Kane peeked past me, craning his neck to view the carnage. All inside the tent floor were open wrappers, container lids, and punctured sports drink bottles. A soupy, nasty mess. Quinn peeked in as well, shaking his head. “Little fuckers.”

  Yes, they were, but raccoons weren’t the problem. Besides a perfect stranger toting a weapon around me, about ten feet away lying motionless on the ground was a small four-legged plump furry body. “Look there.”

  Kane stepped closer to the corpse already abuzz with angry flies. One raccoon hadn’t fared as well as the others. It’d been ripped open, its black and brown body torn to shreds, entrails everywhere, a pudding cup still in its dexterous little hands. “What the hell?” Kane covered his mouth.

  Quinn got in close to examine the raccoon then began checking for tracks. “What could’ve done this? Panther?” He aimed the gun into the woods, a cowboy ready for anything.

  Kane must’ve seen the worry on my face, because he touched Quinn’s arm and made him lower it with a quiet shake of his head. “Not now.”

  “Then when?” Quinn retorted.

  I looked past everyone at the woods. “A panther wouldn’t have mangled it. Panthers hunt and eat, not murder for sport.” The animal hadn’t been eaten. Instead, something had torn it apart without taking any of its meat.

  “Then, what did this?” Kane asked.

  “I don’t know.” We could crawl back into our tents, but the thin nylon walls would provide us with zero protection. “Maybe we should leave the island.”

  He looked at me, hands on his hips, lips pressed together. What was going on in that man’s mind? Something to do with ratings, viewership and lost investment, most likely.

  “Let’s get this cleaned up,” Kane said, looking around. “Quinn, help me put the animal in a garbage bag. We’ll double-bag it and hope the smell doesn’t attract anything else.”

  Kane gave me a knowing look. He knew about the nearby gators, because I’d mentioned them, but this wasn’t made by a predator.

  “Guys,” I said. “Something mangled that raccoon, something that didn’t even want to eat it. I don’t know any animal that would do this, and I’ve lived in this area my whole life.”

  The men listened but ignored me for the most part. It was clear they had no plans on leaving any time soon, certainly not in the middle of the night, and not until they’d captured something that could be minimally produced into an episode.

  Maybe I was freaking out for no reason. A wild hog could have ripped apart the raccoon, one that had been thwarted when I came to investigate. Maybe I was wrong and panthers were hunting tonight. I had to calm down.

  “Should we shoot this?” Quinn hoisted the shotgun over his shoulder.

  It took me a moment to realize he meant shooting footage.

  “Yeah, go ahead,” Kane said. “Get the camera. A few good angles and pics for studying later. I don’t know how to approach all this, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “It’s been more about the living than the dead,” Quinn added.

  In hushed tones, they talked about the show and how to package the shots they’d taken so far. Here I was, worried about whatever was in the house that wanted to harm us, and these guys’ minds were still on the show.

  I realized my own video had been running, but I’d had it aimed at the floor for the last few minutes. Turning it off, I put the phone back in my pocket and slowly backed away from the men.

  The house looked at me again. I stared back at the monster.

  I won’t go inside, I told it.

  Looming in the darkness, its mouth—the front door—yawned wide open.

  We all looked at it.

  What did it want with me? Why did it taunt me? I might have
been losing my mind. A raccoon had been torn to shreds a few feet from its front porch for no apparent reason, had not been carried off by its predator—I had a right to panic. Just in front of it were two men, obsessed over documenting the event, and inside my tent was an old woman who had warned us that something wanted us to die.

  I didn’t want to stay. I didn’t want to enter the tent either.

  What if Linda was wide awake, staring at the doorway with those vacant eyes, channeling DIE DIE DIE again? Empty of soul and filled with another’s energy. In the distance, I heard the thrashing of water and knew that the alligators were arguing, fighting over what morsels of food they had found. Though they continued to stay away, I knew gators were curious creatures and would eventually want to see what we were up to.

  We had to leave in the morning. I’d do whatever I could to convince them. I knew chances were slim, because I had little evidence of anything wrong, except for the raccoon and my feelings, but I couldn’t explain my fear.

  My people had been right. Had been for years. Villegas House was not to be messed with. As though the island wanted to prove my point for me, a cool breeze blew through, rattling the tents, winds of sweet, heavy rain. Overhead, vast dark clouds rumbled. Big Cypress was about to catch a summer storm, and the crew of Haunted Southland would finally get a taste of a real thunderstorm. The choices were to stick to our tents, airboat back to the village under a deluge to threaten all technical equipment, or seek shelter inside Villegas House itself.

  I would’ve taken any of those options, except the last.

  ELEVEN

  The sky opened, as shards of rain pelted us like bullets. Everglades thunderstorms were no joke, and this crew was about to learn the hard way that their tents were no match. Camp broke into a panic, as everyone scattered to collect things.

  Sharon shot out of her tent in unbuttoned shorts and tank top.

  Linda and BJ shuffled out of their tents, as we all rushed to gather bags, equipment, pillows, blankets, anything we could carry. “You take this! I’ll take that bag!” Linda shouted.