Ghost Trackers

by Grant Wilson Jason Hawes

  He smiled. Especially the dark ones.

  He expected the children to ignore him. When he’d been their age, he’d rarely noticed adults. They’d been like distant trees or faraway clouds in the sky, something you were dimly aware of off toward the horizon but not on your radar. So he was surprised when the three young bikers rode straight up to him, stopped, and fixed him with bored gazes.

  The girl was the tallest of the three and presumably the oldest. She had short, curly black hair and pale skin and wore shorts and a T-shirt displaying the image of some animé character he wasn’t familiar with. The girl looked him up and down and pursed her lips, as if she found him more of a disappointment than usual for an adult.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  He kept his tone pleasant and allowed his lips to form a suggestion of a smile. “I could ask you the same question, since the rec center’s not open yet.”

  “We live on this street,” one of the boys said, an edge of whininess in his voice. He was a full head shorter than the girl, stocky, with greasy brown hair and a doughy face that in a couple of years would be covered with pimples. He wore an oversize T-shirt and baggy jeans in an unsuccessful attempt to hide the contours of his body. The boy reminded Greg of himself at that age. He was thin now and looked reasonably attractive, even if he’d never grace the cover of GQ, but he still felt a wave of sympathy for the dough-faced boy, mixed with a strong taint of self-loathing. He might no longer resemble this kid outwardly, but on the inside . . .

  You’ve changed, he told himself. You’re nothing like this kid, not anymore. And mostly, he believed it.

  “What are you three?” he asked, still smiling. “The neighborhood watch?”

  “Sort of,” the second boy said. “Since we live here, we can’t be trespassers. Not like you.” He was thin, with short brown hair and glasses that lent him a bookish aspect, reinforced by the calm, matter-of-fact way he spoke. His plain red T-shirt and khaki shorts did nothing to dispel his geeky image, especially considering that he wore white socks that rode too high on his calves.

  Funny, the little jokes that fate played from time to time. These three kids were younger than Amber, Drew, and Trevor had been fifteen years ago, and they didn’t look exactly like them, but as his father had been fond of saying, it was close enough for government work. It was all too fitting that these three young doppelgängers should be the ones to welcome him home.

  The girl spoke again, brow still furrowed in suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

  Greg was old enough to be her father, but that didn’t seem to matter to her. As far as she was concerned, he was an interloper who needed to be dealt with. He wondered if she’d be so brave if she didn’t have her two friends along to back her up. Maybe, he decided.

  “I grew up in Ash Creek. I’m back visiting and thought I’d check out the new rec center,” he said. “Looks great, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s all right, I guess,” the chubby boy said. “But you won’t catch me going inside when it’s done.”

  Greg tilted his head to the side. “Really? Why not?” As if he didn’t know.

  “A long time ago, there used to be a house here,” the boy with glasses said.

  “A haunted house,” the chubby boy added in a hushed voice.

  “It burned down before any of us were born,” the girl said. “But our parents still talk about the Lowry House.”

  “They say the land is cursed,” Chubby said.

  “Not that we believe any of that stuff,” Glasses was quick to add.

  “We used to, when I was a kid,” Greg said. He kept his tone calm, but inside he felt something cold and dark begin to stir. “Everyone knew the Lowry House was haunted. Kids used to dare each other to go inside.”

  “Did you?” Chubby asked. “Ever go inside, I mean.”

  Greg nodded. “Yes, along with three friends of mine.”

  Despite his earlier profession of skepticism, Glasses sounded eager as he asked, “Did anything happen, anything weird?”

  “Many things happened,” Greg said. “It was a very eventful night.”

  Once again, a girl’s long-ago screams filled his ears.

  “Don’t listen to him,” the young girl—the girl of today—snapped. “He’s trying to scare us. This place isn’t haunted, and it never was.”

  Greg turned to face the girl and gave her a smile that caused her to go pale.

  “You’re wrong. The Lowry House was haunted until that last night, the night it burned down.”

  Heat washing over him like molten fire, the smell of his own skin burning . . .

  He thrust the sensations aside and pinned the girl with his gaze, causing a bit more of the blood to drain out of her face.

  “The dark force that inhabited the house left then, and it’s been gone for the last fifteen years.” He leaned a few inches closer. “But do you want to know a secret?”

  All three of the kids were pale now, their gazes fixed on him like those of tiny mammals frozen in the presence of a large predator.

  “It’s back.”

  He reached out with his mind, brushed past the children’s meager psychic defenses as if they didn’t exist, and gave them a glimpse of what dwelled inside him. In response, the wind picked up strength, the sky darkened, and shadows gathered close around the four of them, eager and hungry.

  The kids opened their mouths to scream, but nothing came out. Too terrified to produce sound, they stood there, eyes bulging, mouths gawping like fish on dry land. Greg allowed this to continue for another few seconds, reveling in their terrified astonishment, before once more closing his mind off from theirs.

  The children found their voices then and shrieked as if they’d been cut to the bone. They whirled their bikes around and began pedaling away from the rec center, still screaming. Greg grinned as he watched them disappear down the street.

  Once the kids were gone, the sky cleared, and the shadows that had gathered around him dispersed, but they didn’t go too far. They always remained close by, like faithful pets waiting for his next summons.

  He headed back to his Lexus. The kids would tell the first trustworthy adult they found about what had happened, and it wouldn’t be long before someone—the police, most likely—showed up at the rec center to ask him some pointed questions. He’d prefer not to be there when that happened. Not that he couldn’t do the same thing to any adult that he’d done to the children, but as amusing as it had been, he had more important matters to attend to.

  He got into his Lexus, put the key into the ignition, and turned the engine over. As he pulled away from the curb, he smiled.

  It was good to be home.

  THREE

  “. . . and this hallway is where the maid has been known to appear.”

  Trevor raised his digital camera, framed the hall in the viewfinder, and took two pictures. He didn’t want to take the time to review either shot right now. With any luck, at least one would turn out to be suitably spooky, and if not, well, that’s why God invented Photoshop. He would never fake a photo, but he could always darken it a bit and enhance the shadows for effect. After all, this wasn’t a scientific expedition, and it wasn’t as if he were collecting evidence. Still, the thought of doctoring the photo, even if only a little, made him feel guilty.

  He turned to the woman serving as his tour guide that afternoon. She was in her mid-seventies, still very healthy, energetic, and—fortunately—quite talkative. As a writer, Trevor appreciated this last quality. The more information she gave him, the more pages he could fill in the latest book he was working on, a volume going by the working title of Insidious Inns, the follow-up to his previous book, Taverns of Terror.

  “Have you ever seen her yourself?” he asked.

  The woman, Anne Waymire by name, owner and operator of the Rise and Shine Bed and Breakfast in scenic Greensburg, Pennsylvania, gave him a look that said she found the question borderline insulting.

  “Of course I hav
e!”

  He felt a spark of excitement at the woman’s words. He loved to listen to people’s personal encounters with the paranormal, and they always made great copy. He slipped his camera into the inner pocket of his gray suit jacket and exchanged it for a digital recorder. He’d been recording Mrs. Waymire’s accounts of the Rise and Shine’s paranormal activity for the last hour, so she was used to speaking into the machine for him, not that she’d been all that nervous to start with. He activated the device and gave Mrs. Waymire a nod to let her know it was working.

  She was a tall, slender woman, wearing jeans and a blue button-down shirt with a daisy design stitched below the left shoulder. Since Mrs. Waymire stood a couple of inches taller than he, she bent over to bring her mouth closer to the recorder’s microphone. He had assured her at the beginning of his visit that the device’s mike was strong enough to pick up her voice without her bending over to talk into it, but she’d leaned over to speak anyway, and she’d continued to do so all afternoon. He was of medium height for a man, but he could be sensitive about his stature at times (almost as much as he was about his thinning hair), and while he was certain that Mrs. Waymire wasn’t bending over to point out that she was taller than he, it still made him uncomfortable.

  “Now, keep in mind that when I say I’ve seen her, I’m speaking more along the lines of psychic impressions than actual visual contact.”

  Trevor’s excitement gave way to disappointment as Mrs. Waymire went on.

  “I can feel her presence whenever she’s around.”

  He nodded with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. In his career as an author of books and articles on the paranormal, he’d been down this road too many times before. Just when he hoped he was going to hear something good, something real, the person he was interviewing began talking about “impressions,” “intuition,” and, worst of all, “feelings.” Still, he had a book to fill, and he didn’t want to hurt the woman, so he tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice as he asked her to continue.

  “She feels lost and afraid, like she doesn’t know where she is or what’s happened to her.”

  Not bad, he thought. It might make a nice caption to go along with the photo of the hallway. He began to get interested again. “Do you have any sense of what she looked like when she was alive?”

  “Petite and pretty. Young. In her early twenties, maybe.”

  “Has anyone else ever encountered her?”

  Mrs. Waymire hesitated. “Well, not encountered per se, but guests often complain about how chilly it gets up here. That’s a sign of a ghost, isn’t it? Strange cold spots?”

  “It’s one of the classic signs, yes. So, what’s the story behind the maid?”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Did she work here when she was alive? Under what circumstances did she die? Was there anything about her death that might keep her spirit bound to this place? Some sort of trauma or maybe unfinished business of some kind?”

  She gave him a strange look before answering. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  His disappointment came back full force. “Are you saying you don’t know anything about the maid?”

  “I told you before, I feel her. That’s how I know she’s here. But as for being aware of any actual history . . .”

  He couldn’t help sighing. He should have known better. “So, you have no real evidence that there even was a maid.”

  Mrs. Waymire pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, displeased with the implications behind his words. “My feelings are my evidence, Mr. Ward.”

  “Of course they are. I didn’t mean to offend you.” He switched off the recorder and tucked it back into his suit pocket next to his camera. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Waymire. I think I’ve got all I need.”

  Her righteous indignation melted away, leaving in its place confused disappointment. “But . . . but I haven’t shown you the attic yet! It’s the best part!”

  He pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his pants, opened it, and removed one of his business cards. White letters on black background, the Os replaced by little white skulls: “Trevor Ward: Author of Paranormal Nonfiction.” Below that, his phone number and e-mail address. He handed the card to Mrs. Waymire and tucked his wallet away.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to get going. I have another appointment in Pittsburgh at six.” Which was a lie. He wasn’t scheduled to interview his next B&B owner until eight P.M. But this stop had turned out to be so disappointing that he just wanted to end the interview and get on the road. “You have my card. Why don’t you e-mail me the details about the attic, and I’ll make sure to include them when I do your entry for the book. All right?”

  “Well, OK. If you think that will work . . .”

  When he saw the look of disappointment on Mrs. Waymire’s face, he couldn’t bring himself to go through with his lie. In his line of work, he met a lot of different people. Some were attention seekers who fabricated paranormal experiences, while others were mentally ill, but most were normal, everyday folks who’d seen something strange and didn’t know what to make of it. And then there were people like Mrs. Waymire, lonely folks who wanted a bit of human companionship.

  “Well, I suppose I could stay a little longer,” he said.

  The woman grinned. “Wonderful! And when we’re finished with the attic, maybe you’ll have time for a cup of coffee before you leave.”

  He smiled. “Sounds good.”

  An hour later, Trevor was on Highway 76, en route to Pittsburgh. The sky was clear and the temperature in the mid-seventies, and he drove with the windows down. He’d visited Pittsburgh before, most recently while working on Taverns of Terror. He’d been writing about the strange, weird, and downright bizarre since graduating from Bowling Green University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, almost ten years now. First for magazines barely one step above tabloids, with names like Unexplained! and Spectral Encounters, and later in books of his own, retellings of regional ghost stories or tour guides of locations with paranormal connections. He’d come across legitimate cases of paranormal activity during his career, but unfortunately, they’d been few and far between. It was often disappointing when he interviewed owners of businesses; they saw the paranormal as another marketing tool, and they weren’t above fabricating ghost sightings to bring in trade. Mrs. Waymire had seemed genuine enough to him when he’d first contacted her by phone, and he hadn’t changed his opinion after meeting and talking with her. She hadn’t tried to con him, and that was refreshing. Besides, she made a damn fine cup of coffee.

  His Prius was equipped with satellite radio, and he tuned in a classic jazz channel and cranked up the volume so he could hear the music over the sound of rushing wind. He’d quit smoking six weeks, three days, and . . . around thirteen hours ago, not that he was counting, but he wanted a cigarette then. He’d quit for health reasons—he was carrying about twenty more pounds than his doctor liked, and as high as his cholesterol and triglyceride levels were, if they’d been stocks, he’d be a wealthy man. But why should he bother to try to get healthy? After ten years of writing about the paranormal, it was becoming clear that if he ever wanted to find out what might lie beyond this world, the only way was to kick the proverbial bucket himself. Of course, he wasn’t that desperate to visit the other side, but he really wanted a smoke right then.

  Between the wind gusting through the open windows and the loud jazz music, he didn’t hear his cell phone ring, which was too bad, because he’d just downloaded a new ringtone a couple of days ago, “Ghost Riders in the Sky” by Johnny Cash. He loved to hear it play, but he had his phone set to vibrate, so he turned off the radio, removed his cell from his pocket, and answered it.

  “Hello?”

  Silence at first, stretching on for several seconds, long enough for Trevor to think the call had been dropped. But then he heard a woman’s soft voice. “Hi, Trevor.”

  He could barely hear her over the sound of the wind, but he
recognized Amber’s voice. “Hold on a sec,” he told her. He put the phone in his lap so he could hold on to the steering wheel while he raised the windows, cutting off the wind noise. When the inside of the Prius was silent, he picked up the phone again.

  “Sorry about that. I’m driving on the highway, and I had the windows down. It’s good to hear from you. How are you doing?”

  “All right, I guess. Pretty much the same.”

  “To what do I owe the honor of this call? Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about helping me with a book on the Lowry House.” He regretted the words as soon as he spoke them.

  “You know how I feel about that.”

  Amber’s voice held a trace of anger, and even though he hadn’t wanted to upset her, he was glad to hear some kind of emotion coming from her. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”

  The Lowry House was the reason he’d gotten back in touch with her a year and a half ago. He’d gotten tired of writing articles about ghostly hitchhikers and spectral apparitions who walked up and down stairs in the middle of the night. He’d long understood that his interest in the paranormal stemmed from what had happened during his senior year in high school, when Amber, Drew, and he had entered the Lowry House the night it burned down. That something had happened—something Bad with a capital B—was a given. The problem was that none of them could remember the precise details of what had occurred.