by Morgana Best
I considered it, and thought I couldn’t be any worse off by telling him the truth. “I interviewed Professor Bill Dolan about ancient spells for my story on Morpeth ghosts.” Well, it was close to the truth, anyway.
Crawley crossed his arms across his chest. He did not look happy. “You showed me the text on your phone. What was the purpose of that? Were you trying to let me know you were onto me?”
“What text?”
“Don’t play smart.” Crawley took a step closer. I backed away. “Answer me! Did you show me the text that said ‘govi’ to show me you were onto me?”
I shook my head. “No! Someone kept texting me that. I have no clue who sent it.”
Crawley bared his teeth at me. “You’re digging your own grave by lying to me like this.” He was so close to me I could feel his rancid breath on my cheek. His eyeballs looked yellowed. The stench of decay shrouded him. I tried to stop my stomach from clenching.
I thought, WWBD? What indeed would Buffy do in such a situation? She would most likely impale him with Mr. Pointy, or do some clever moves. If only I had been a Slayer. I had to keep my wits about me, and wait for a chance to escape.
Crawley loomed over me. “Cut the nonsense. I know you know I’ve been using zombi bottles to get spirits to work for me. But I bet you don’t know that my family’s had Baxter Morgan here in a bottle for years, working away. All the spirits have been working for my family since 1840.”
Oh no. Not another one. I’d recently returned from London where I had come up against the Black Lodge, whose members had conducted rituals in the belief that it would regenerate their youth. “So you’re over a hundred and seventy years old?”
Crawley looked shocked, and somewhat offended. “Are you crazy? No, I’m thirty two. My ancestor Joe Crawley killed Baxter Morgan with black magick, and put him in a zombi bottle.”
I interrupted him. “But how? How did your ancestor know how to do that? That’s an African thing to do. I thought all the early settlers in Australia were Irish, Scottish, and English?”
“Some of the Morpeth settlers had trade connections with Africa. In fact, the original Campbell of Campbell’s Store had coins minted in Africa. Joe Crawley spent ten years in Africa, and what he learned, he passed on to his sons, who passed it on to their sons, and so on, down to me and my brother. Our family became wealthy, and everything went well for us. We put spirits to work for us to bring us money and success. Joe was given land grants, and got rid of anyone who opposed him, and all his descendents followed suit.”
Crawley was so engrossed in his narrative that I took an opportunity to size up the distance to the stairs. Too far. I need to think of something, and fast.
“Now tell me, who is Scotty?” He reached out, snatched my arm and dug in his fingers.
I yelped. “I honestly don’t know. I only know he runs a ghost tour. He told me that he always speaks to the ghost of Baxter Morgan and says the ghost wants to know where the treasure is.”
David Crawley cackled. I wondered if insanity ran in his family. Surely his family couldn’t harm others for generations and come off scot free. “Baxter Morgan has been here since 1840.” He pointed to a shelf holding an array of bottles. “He worked hard for our family. We told him he was unjustly accused and hanged with the Jewboy Gang. Somehow that got around town. He worked hard for us, though. Then my stupid brother let him out.”
I was interested, in spite of my dire predicament. “Let him out? What do you mean?”
“Des and I were arguing about the sale of this property. Des doesn’t believe in the family ways. He grabbed Baxter Morgan’s bottle and dashed it to the ground.”
“What happened then? Where did his spirit go?”
“Who knows? The other spirits are all in their bottles. Let me give you a personal demonstration of zombis.” At that moment, he turned his back on me.
I made a dash for the stairs, and went up them faster than a rat up a drainpipe. Crawley made no attempt to lunge at me, and I discovered why when I reached the trapdoor. It was locked. I pushed and shoved. It was immovable. I could hear Crawley chanting, so went back down to look for something I could use as a weapon.
Crawley was already well engrossed in some type of ritual he was performing, but not too engrossed to wave a handheld device at me. The trapdoor remote. No time to worry about that; I had to find something with which I could defend myself.
I eyed the skulls; perhaps I could hit him over the head with one. Surely there was something in here I could use. The chanting stopped and I became aware of Crawley looking at me.
“Nothing’s happening to you.” He seemed puzzled at first, then enraged. In three strides he made it over to me and shook me. “Have you done something? They’re not working for me. You should be dying by now!”
Crawley dropped me and ran over to the shelves. He seized one of the bottles, large and encased by mirrors, and opened it. For a while he stared in it, and then screamed at me, “Salt! You’ve used salt!”
I ducked behind a table, threw a skull at him and then hit him with some facts.
“Yes. If you feed salt to zombis, then they’re free to desert their masters. The reference is Elizabeth McAlister, A Sorcerer’s Bottle: The Visual Art of Magic in Haiti, 1995; Louis P. Mars, ‘The Story of Zombi in Haiti’ in Man: A Record of Anthropological Science, Volume 45, 1945.”
Crawley launched himself over the table at me. I hit him with the other skull, but it glanced off. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me hard, but I whipped around and threw a handful of red brick dust in his eyes. Before I’d come over to his house, I’d put red brick dust in one of my pockets and crushed eggshells in the other. I had hoped they would give me some measure of spiritual protection.
That only gave me momentary relief, as he then turned back to his supplies and brought out a ritual dagger. My first thought was that it looked too Wiccan for him. My second thought was that I wished I had found it.
Crawley turned to me with renewed purpose. I was deathly afraid. He was bigger and stronger than I; I could think of nothing else to save me.
Crawley smirked and made his way to me. I backed behind the table, looking around desperately for something to use against him.
Suddenly, for no reason that I could see, he halted, and stared fixedly in utter horror over my shoulder. I wanted to look behind me, but dared not take my eyes off him. I was totally freaked out. Understatement of the century.
Finally he spoke. “How did you get in?”
I backed off to one side and looked behind me.
Scotty.
I hoped he was here to rescue me and was not one of Crawley’s henchmen. I hadn’t heard him come in, but I’d been otherwise occupied.
“You will tell me what happened to Baxter Morgan.”
“Listen old man, you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
Scotty no longer looked like a harmless old man. He was menacing somehow: taller, ominous. “You filthy Burker! You will tell me what happened to Baxter Morgan.” His tone held a note of compulsion, of command.
Crawley stepped back, and lowered the dagger marginally.
Scotty moved closer to him. “It was Joe Crawley who killed him, and he was supposed to be his friend.”
“What’s it to you, you old fool?”
I spoke up. “I told you. Scotty says the ghost of Baxter Morgan speaks to him about the treasure.”
Crawley made for me with the knife, but before I had time to get out of his way, Scotty closed the ground between them. Crawley stabbed him in the chest with the dagger. I screamed.
To my horror, Crawley then passed right through Scotty and fell to the ground.
Scotty bent over Crawley, who scrabbled backward until he was backed against the wall. “I heard everything you told this young lass. You told me I was hanged in Sydney, but my good friend Joe Crawley killed me with black magick, and then made me work for him. I was fooled all these years. I found the treasure, and now they’re all free.
”
It took me a moment or two to realize that Scotty’s treasure was in fact the imprisoned spirits in the zombi bottles.
Crawley was terrified. “But, your name—Scotty?”
I again spoke. I just can’t help myself when it comes to facts. “Scotty is of course a nickname given to people from Scotland, and a Burker is the name for a body snatcher from Scottish legend.”
Crawley would have lunged at me then, but the air was suddenly thick with spirits, and some of them were hideous, screaming ghouls. I had to focus hard to keep the energy away from me.
Scotty turned to me. “Leave now, lassie, quickly. This will not be pretty.”
I seized the trapdoor remote and ran for the stairs, just as the spirits closed in on Crawley. I will never forget the look of pure terror on his face, or the gut-wrenching screams which lasted until I was through the trapdoor and into the room above, before snapping off abruptly.
I shut the trapdoor and slid the chair across it, picked up my iPhone and ran across the room while texting. Just then Jamie appeared in the doorway.
“Jamie, what are you doing here?”
Jamie looked sheepish. “I’ve come to rescue you.”
I snorted rudely. “A bit late aren’t you? Your timing’s useless.” I added several quite rude words in quick succession.
Jamie moved aside and I saw two men who looked quite MI6 standing next to him.
My face went beet red.
Chapter 20
Jamie and I were sitting in The Servants Quarters Tearooms, debriefing over sticky date pudding with ice cream and whipped cream, not the fake cream that I prefer, but for once I wasn’t complaining. I had solved Baxter Morgan’s murder and I had solved my own attempted murder.
‘Heio facif crawke trues ti kulk me.’
Jamie showed me the text that I’d sent him from Crawley’s house. “What does that mean? Is it Latin?”
I shook my head. “That’s just my typos. It says, ‘Help. David Crawley tried to kill me.’”
Jamie raised an eyebrow.
“I’d turned off the autocorrect as it can’t understand my typing.”
The eyebrow rose even more.
My tone became a little defensive. “I was running at the time,” I said, and then I added, “Where were you, anyway?” I took half of Jamie’s sticky date pudding with one skilled swoop of my spoon by way of punishment.
Jamie frowned. “The realtor was showing me the barn, and we were about to head back when your text came in. I pretended I wanted a close look at the tennis court, and texted you back, and just then the realtor had a call and then he told me that the property had just been withdrawn from sale. The realtor hurried me out of there. I doubled back and tried to break in, but there was no way in. That’s when I went for back up.”
“Who were those guys?” No answer, so I said, “Official Secrets Act, I suppose?”
Jamie just smiled.
I paused for a moment to ground myself. Gavin King was going to be happy; Morpeth was certainly full of ghosts now. All the previously trapped spirits had returned to wander through Morpeth, or do whatever ghosts did. I wondered if Eliza Cantwell had been one of those trapped by David Crawley and whether she was now reunited with her son. I wondered what had become of Scotty. I wondered how everyone had been able to see him when he was a ghost.
“Jamie, do you know if ghosts have appeared to people? I mean, ghosts that look real and are seen by lots of people at the same time?”
I thought Jamie was going to avoid the question, but after a little hesitation, he answered, “Yes.”
I was going to push it, but decided to leave it there. I changed the subject. “You know, Crawley said he only tried to run over me once, with the truck, not the car.”
“He would have been lying.”
“No, I don’t think so. What would have been the point? He was trying to kill me at the time.” I shuddered. “Crawley tried to kill me only after I showed him the text from the blocked sender. That was his reason to try to kill me. The car was before that. I hope there isn’t anyone else out there trying to kill me.”
I caught a worried glimpse on Jamie’s face before he covered it. “Surely not. It was most likely a coincidence, an accident.”
“What if it was the Black Lodge? I’m the Keeper of the Society, whatever that means. Aren’t they rival, um, groups, societies, whatever? I wish someone would contact me and tell me what being Keeper means and what the Society actually is. I don’t know anything about it at all. All I know is that I’ve been able to see and sense ghosts since Aunt Beth died and left me the Keepership, if there’s such a word.”
One look at Jamie’s face, and I knew he was withholding information from me, information about the Society. I thought about challenging him then and there, but decided to wait for an opportune time.
Then several things happened at once.
Gavin walked past eating a pie while exclaiming happily at an Electromagnetic Field Detector. No doubt the readings were off the screen.
I had a text from Melissa. “Bad news, Skinny is insisting you go part time.”
I was panic stricken. I could barely afford my mortgage on full time pay. My old Ford needed a new battery and front brake pads. My credit card was maxed out. Diva refused to eat all but the most expensive brands of cat food.
Another text arrived hard on its heels. The mysterious blocked sender again. ‘Job offer could prove fatal.’
What job offer? I was about to have my hours cut on the only job I had. I was caught in a web of inexplicable texts, secret societies, and hidden enemies, and worse still, continual letters from debt collection agencies. It was as if fate was conspiring against me to keep me poor, and in the dark.
I looked up to see two men walking toward us. The two who looked MI6-ish. To my surprise, they addressed me, not Jamie.
“Ms. Sales, we would like to make you an offer of employment.”
I went into research mode, my synapses processing rapidly. Jamie’s sudden appearance. The presence of these men in Australia. It was all because they wanted me to do something for them. Had I been a seer, I would have run for the hills right then, for what lay ahead of me far surpassed any horror I had known until this time.
* * * The End * * *
Book 3
A Basis for Murder
Chapter 1
It all started when Melissa called to give me the bad news about my job.
“I’m very upset about how Merlin ended. I can’t tell you any spoilers, though.” Melissa’s voice broke on the end of the phone, and I could hear snuffling sounds.
Merlin had ended years ago, but Melissa was always behind with TV shows. She hadn’t even started watching The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones yet. “Melissa, are you crying? It’s only a TV show, after all.”
“No, of course not.” Melissa’s tone was decidedly snappy. “Anyway, you cried when Misty and Rory left. We’re not all Doctor Who fans, you know.”
She had me there. At any rate, Melissa was typically months, if not years, behind the times. I’m sure everyone else in the world had known for ages how Merlin had ended.
“Misty! Are you still there?”
“Oh sorry, Melissa. I was thinking.” I gently pushed my cat, Diva, away with my toe. Diva didn’t like me speaking on the phone; she was an attention junkie.
“Are you alone?”
I groaned out loud. I knew that Melissa was asking if Jamie Smith was still around. He had turned up unexpectedly the other week and then had left again just as suddenly. He worked for some secret government organization like Torchwood, minus the aliens but plus ghosts and the paranormal. I always thought of him as someone like Mulder of The X-Files. Of course, Melissa didn’t know that, with it being a secret organization and all, so she thought he was a less than satisfactory boyfriend. Truth be told, he wasn’t my boyfriend at all. I’m sure he didn’t think of me in that way. “Yes.” My reply was a little curt.
“Misty…”
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I cut her off. “Please don’t start on that again, Melissa. I know you don’t like him, but …”
Melissa in turn interrupted me. “No, no. It’s just that I have some bad news. I’ve only just got home from Keith’s place, and he confirmed that Skinny Troll is cutting back your hours as of next week.”
I had known this was coming. Melissa had all the inside gossip, courtesy of her dating Keith, our boss, Editor In Chief of the paranormal magazine for which I was an underpaid journalist. I sighed. “Just as well you’d already warned me.”
“I know, but I’m sure it doesn’t make it any easier. Skinny is, well, not a nice person.”
I agreed. I wasn’t quite as upset as I would have been under normal circumstances, because I had recently received a job offer from Jamie’s secret organization. There were three little problems with that. One, just before the men made the offer, I had received a mysterious text that said ‘job offer could prove fatal’. Two, the men had left after they had made the offer and I hadn’t heard a word since. Three, I had no idea how much it paid, or even if it did. Surely they couldn’t expect it to be voluntary. The greater good is all very well, but I have a mortgage.
“What are you going to do?”
“Look around for another job, I suppose.” I would have to find another job if I didn’t hear about the secret organization job offer soon.
“Full time or part time? I’d miss you if you left the magazine.”
I sighed again. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Melissa let out a shriek. I wondered for a moment if she’d misheard me. “I forgot to tell you. Just after you left work today, a man came to the office and asked for you.”
I was intrigued. “Who was he?”
“He wouldn’t give his name. He was very cute.” Melissa put great emphasis on the very.
I thought about the two men who worked with Jamie. They were okay looking, but I wouldn’t call them very cute. “Describe him.”
