Ghost Fire

by G. G. Andrew

  Adele guided him by the arm to the nearest loveseat. “Sit down, Lucas. You look tired.”

  Reluctantly, he sat on the small couch. There on a table beside him sat a coffee pot and plate of cookies, like they were at some social gathering.

  Laney joined him on the loveseat, toeing off her sandals and curling her legs beneath her. “Do you mind if I record this?” She pulled her cell out.

  They all nodded. Just being there was uncomfortable; he hardly imagined how having an audio record of it could worsen the situation.

  Lucas cleared his throat. “You look well, Mrs.—Adele.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, Lucas. To be honest, I’ve felt better than I have in years.”

  “Oh?”

  There came a snick, and Lucas pulse leapt as he caught sight of a flame on the other side of the room.

  “Sorry,” Tucker said quickly, as Lucas realized it was just a lighter. The kid was lighting up a cigarette or something.

  His heartbeat slowed, but his grip tightened on the arm of the couch.

  “Technically no one’s allowed to smoke in here,” Tucker continued. “But, you know”—he inhaled and Lucas realized he was waving around a joint—“I’m in charge, so.” He gave a cocky smile and held it out to Lucas.

  He shook his head. “No thanks.”

  Tucker shrugged and moved it towards Laney, who said, “No thanks, I’m working.”

  Tucker was about to take another drag when Adele reached a hand out. “I believe I could use something to center myself.” She laughed lightly.

  She took the joint and inhaled deeply. As she released the smoke slowly through her mouth, she nodded and refocused on him. “You know, Lucas, now that you’re grown, I can tell you. It’s awfully hard to lose your spouse, your partner in life.” Her eyes shone. “Bill was my whole world back when we stayed at this inn 20 years ago. We were on the cusp of early retirement. Did you know that?” She leaned forward to pass the joint back to Tucker, who looked impressed.

  Lucas shook his head.

  “We were young, just 48, but Bill had made some good investments—he always had a keen mind, especially for figuring out how things worked. He figured out how the stock market worked, and he played it.” She smiled sadly. “We had plans. We’d come here to see friends, but we’d planned within the following year to travel to Europe. Paris, London, maybe Spain.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his gut clenching. Mr. Lyons’s face, hazy in smoke and filled with terror, flashed for a moment in his memory.

  “It’s alright.” Adele smoothed down her skirt. “Anyway, I was a very rich woman after he died, but I never did make it to Paris. Instead, I went other places. Places I never dreamed of going. Tiny countries I’d never heard of, small villages cars won’t drive you to. All in search of a way to bring Bill back.”

  Lucas cleared his throat and looked down, uncomfortable. When he finally looked up, Adele had the joint in her hand again and was staring at him more intensely than before.

  “You see, Lucas, he’s not really gone. Not in any natural way. That’s what those psychics I met told me. He was just taken by that entity that lives on the third floor.”

  “Mrs. Lyons,” he began, “I just…” He stopped, unsure what to say to this woman who, despite her vigor, was obviously still not accepting her husband’s death.

  But how could he convince her otherwise? That Mr. Lyons was really gone?

  He’d seen that thing snatch him.

  That thing.

  The room had gone still with tension, but then Adele gave a light laugh. “Oh, I realize it sounds completely bonkers! I thought so too, from time to time. I imagine you think I’m a dotty old lady, and maybe I am. But once you meet Mina, you’ll be a believer too.”

  “Mina?”

  A knock came from the front of the inn.

  Chapter Seven

  Laney

  Laney had noticed the tension in Lucas’s body from the moment she’d spied him in the lobby, and it’d only grown tighter. Like a screw twisted into a plank of wood past the point of usefulness, something was bound to crack sooner or later. A dash of guilt doused her excitement over the stellar quotes Adele was giving her. Seeing him here was almost painful.

  At the mention of Mina, his face turned to granite. “Who’s that?”

  Adele stood up, practically bouncing on her toes. “Only the most powerful psychic I’ve ever met.” She winked at him. “And I’ve met a lot.”

  She left to fetch her friend.

  A solid minute passed, when no one spoke save Tucker, who tried to start small talk numerous times. Lucas’s eyes were hard on the floor.

  Laney liked to shoot the breeze as much as the next girl, but right now she was focused on Lucas’s profile. Who cared about spirits or whatever was supposedly hiding at Cattleman’s Crossing? Even dressed in jeans, a gray tee, and a scowl on his face, he was the most interesting thing in this old place. His dark eyes, strong hands, the line of his jaw. The more she saw him, the more fascinated she became.

  A mark, her parents would’ve called him, and she could see why. There was a goodness in him bone-deep. The way he was with Adele, the politeness without artifice, the honest concern. Even his odd belief in the Cattleman’s Crossing ghost held a certain earnestness she hadn’t encountered much in her life.

  The more she thought about it, the more she realized Lucas coming here couldn’t just be about the money. He honestly wanted to help people. Laney thought back to that fleeting expression she’d seen in the restaurant, followed by his agreement to come here for a lump sum.

  Was it possible he’d come here out of concern for her?

  He caught her staring and she gave him a small smile. He only offered narrowed eyes and a slight shake of his head in response.

  Good man or not, he was now pissed at her. He didn’t want to be here, but he especially didn’t want others to be here. He was scared, but he definitely had some kind of hero complex thing.

  Had he wanted to protect her? Did he still? Laney considered it. At the restaurant, she’d been fairly direct with him. There was just the matter of her not mentioning Tucker or the psychic, but in fairness she hardly thought it would make a difference.

  Adele entered the room again in a swish of skirt, her tinkling laugh trailing behind her. In her wake shuffled a young woman. She was in her early 20s at best, with thin dark hair that curled in toward her neck and shoulders that reminded Laney of seagrass. She was as pale as the spirits she was probably claiming to commune with, and despite the Texas heat, she wore a cardigan sweater over her small frame. She was looking all around her, at the ceiling beams and dusty chandelier, the scuffed floorboards, the pictures on the walls—anywhere but at the people in the room.

  “Everybody,” Adele said, “this is Mina. Mina, this is everybody.”

  She could’ve just introduced them all by name, since there were only three of them still sitting, but maybe Adele guessed Mina had no interest in the mortal inhabitants of the room.

  She was right. Mina’s glance briefly washed over Tucker, Laney, and Lucas, then went back to her perusal of the walls. “Hello,” she said faintly. But then her gaze shot back to the firefighter.

  He shifted. “Hello,” he said in a low voice, reluctantly.

  “Hey, awesome to meet you,” Tucker said, his body strumming with energy. He’d been ecstatic when she’d told him Adele Lyons was bringing a psychic along for the ride. He took a nervous drag.

  “Sit down, Mina,” Adele said, ushering her into a straight-backed vintage chair in the corner. “I hope your trip down was pleasant.”

  Mina nodded and didn’t so much settle in the chair as drop.

  “So what kind of psychic are you?” Tucker asked, his eyes alight. “Like can you communicate with ghosts or see the future? Or are you one of those that can hold an object in your hand and figure out who held it last and what they were feeling and if they’d killed anybody recently? Do you think we’ll get to see the spirit
of this place tonight? I have an EVP recorder and you know it’s like the 20th anniversary so maybe some shit will—”

  “Those in the other dimension care nothing for anniversaries,” Mina said in a breathless voice, picking at a loose thread in her cardigan.

  She dropped the thread and her eyes rolled up, studying the ceiling again—or something beyond. If this was all an act—and not, Laney’s other guess, a mental breakdown—it was a pretty convincing one. Laney would’ve paid good money to see her working a room alongside her parents.

  No one responded.

  “They have no use for calendars,” Mina said, her eyes still heavenward. “These dates and anniversaries carry no meaning for them. It’s people that fuel them. Their anticipation, their excitement. Their dread. It’s that energy that wakes the old ones.”

  “Old ones?” Tucker said, his bloodshot eyes widening. “Like Lovecraft? Cthulu?”

  Mina waved a small hand in her lap. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But something is here.”

  The room fell silent. A floorboard creaked. Smoke from the joint Tucker and Adele had passed back and forth made the room hazy and reeking of weed.

  Outside night was descending. Laney sensed it more than she was able to see it in this windowless room. Something in the quiet of the outer world, the way this inn felt like a cocoon more and more, a space encased and apart from the rest of life.

  Cocoon? Laney nearly laughed out loud. That was a silly word for it. Although if the tales Tucker, Adele, and Mina were telling was the clunky caterpillar, maybe she could spin it into a beautiful butterfly of a story—or at least one you couldn’t look away from.

  She stirred and pointed her phone in Mina’s direction.

  “Can you tell us what you think happened that night, 20 years ago? You know, with your special insight.”

  Mina stared at her and blinked once, and Laney had a strange suspicion that this young woman knew she didn’t believe any of this. Of course, that too made sense; what were successful psychics but cons who knew how to read others uncannily well? She’d obviously intuited what Adele Lyons had wanted to hear, and no doubt she was getting paid a hefty remainder of whatever the older woman hadn’t spent at Charlatans ‘R’ Us.

  “I don’t see the past,” Mina said. “Only what is.” Her gaze travelled to Lucas before finding the ceiling again. “I feel what’s in the world, whether it’s seen or unseen, and what’s in the next.”

  “The next?” Laney said, holding her cell closer.

  “The next.” Mina nodded, irritatingly not explaining any further. Then she sat up straighter, the most movement she’d made since entering the room. “I feel its—its…need.”

  Tucker inhaled sharply.

  Laney looked over to the joint still burning in his hand. Ash drifted to the ground in his distraction.

  “Do you sense Bill in this place?” Adele said quickly. “Can you feel him? Can you hear him?”

  Mina paused, then shook her head. “Not yet. The other spirit is too strong. If we can go to the place where he disappeared…”

  “What kind of spirit is it?” Tucker asked. “Is it the spirit of somebody who died close to this spot years ago, maybe a guy named Pocket—”

  Mina shook her head. “It might have been human once. But that was a very long time ago.” Her eyes closed. “It wants something here. Perhaps many things. It is always seeking.” Her eyes squeezed shut tighter. “In many ways, it is old and has seen much. In others, it is like a small child waking from a nap. A little confused, a little angry.” She tilted her head and frowned, like she was listening to something no one else could hear. “And very, very hungry.”

  Lucas stood. “That’s enough.”

  A beat passed, and no one spoke. Though he’d interrupted Mina, it was Laney that Lucas was directing his hot gaze toward. He stirred to speak, but then shook his head. He moved to the door and yanked it open.

  Laney rose so quickly she dropped her phone. “Wait, Lucas, don’t leave.”

  Wordlessly, he ducked his head and disappeared into the library, his shoulders set stiffly.

  “O-kay.” He was upset; she got it. He really believed there was something supernatural here, and Adele’s crazy friend was stabbing that truth in with a hot poker.

  “Wait, he’s leaving?” Tucker asked as the four of them remained in the room.

  Laney let out a dismissive laugh. “No,” she said, though she wondered how she’d be able to convince him to stay after that psychic’s episode. “Give me a minute. He’ll stay.”

  As she followed him into the library, she heard the soft voice of Mina echo behind her.

  “He’ll stay.”

  Lucas was through the library and at the entrance when she reached him. He was staring at the door, his fingers interlaced behind his head. He hadn’t picked up his duffel.

  “Wait,” she said.

  He turned and glared at her. “Anything else you’ve forgotten to tell me, Laney? Anybody else joining us for this amusement park ride? Maybe some babies or helpless newborn kittens?”

  She laughed before she could stop herself, and he narrowed his eyes even more.

  “Sorry,” she said, biting her lip. She stepped closer and lowered her voice. “There are no other surprises, I promise. It’s just the five of us here. Tucker has some equipment he’s setting up to see if it can pick up any temperature shifts or disturbances in the Force or whatever. Adele is going to the third floor with Mina to try to talk to her dead husband who—spoiler alert—is probably not going to talk back. I’ll walk around and get some pictures and quotes for the article later tonight, but it shouldn’t take long. You’re free to do whatever you please.”

  If the past half hour hadn’t gone the way it did, she would have put heavy emphasis on the whatever you please part, hoping that whatever he pleased to do included her. But now that potential seemed about as likely as seeing the spirit of Silas Bolton on the third floor.

  He was still angry—his jaw tight, his brown eyes darkened—so she assumed he’d turn, pick up his duffel, and leave. Instead he thrust his hand out.

  “Give me my room key,” he said.

  She paused, then fished a key out of her sundress pocket and pressed it to his palm.

  “202,” she said.

  His eyes sharpened with the realization that she hadn’t put him in that room he’d stayed in years ago.

  He must think I’m an opportunistic bitch, she considered as she watched Lucas turn and climb the steps.

  It was ironic. Agreeing to do this piece had brought him into her life, this man who was nothing like any other man she’d met. Seeing him again at Cattleman’s Crossing, Laney realized she wanted more of Lucas than this one night. She wanted to watch him talk and move through the world. Wanted to know if he still believed in Santa Claus and why he was so nice to people. Her life had been so lousy with lies. Here was a man who was decent and believed things—crazy things, even to his detriment.

  But her upbringing had made her a secretive thing. Perhaps she’d known what she was doing at the restaurant, not mentioning the two other guests at the inn that night. Perhaps she’d known it would’ve angered him to know more people would be staying in what he believed to be a haunted inn. Even with the truths she’d given him, her Stonewater leanings were the very thing now making him keep her at arm’s length.

  It was all so hard to shake off. She imagined what it would feel like to peel off her own artifices one by one and let them drop to the floor. Her dress, the smile, the persuasive words, the act. Would he still be here when she stood before him?

  Chapter Eight

  Lucas

  He stomped up the stairs, too angry to feel the fear he’d imagined when he ascended into the darkness that pooled at the curve in the staircase. There were lights on the second floor, but the inn had curves and small spaces where shadows seemed to congregate.

  He should’ve left, but he knew he wasn’t going to. He’d had an inkling even as he’d s
at down to dinner with Laney Stonewater that she’d be a hard woman to leave. It wasn’t just her attractiveness, it was that he felt like he could be himself in her presence more than with anyone he’d ever met. She had a natural skepticism and a devil-may-care way, and he took everything, especially himself, too seriously. It was what happened when you saw something that aged you far older than your years.

  He gritted his teeth and kept climbing toward the light. The dark red rug cushioned his steps and framed pictures of the inn guided his way. They showed the building before and after the fire, as if to remind him of how much time had passed. Then his foot hit the landing of the second floor.

  It was different than he remembered—the hardwood floors were new and polished, the paint fresh, the artwork more modern. Yet there was familiarity in the narrowness of the straight hall, the closed doors on either side lined up like soldiers. And beyond, the staircase to the third floor at the opposite end. However they’d updated the inn after the fire, they hadn’t fixed all its quirks. The staircases weren’t together but on different sides of the building; you had to climb to the second floor, then walk down the hall to a staircase to reach the third. He remembered liking that as a kid. But it was a damn fire hazard, and it was shocking it’d been approved. The Dixons must have connections that allowed them to skirt the law.

  He fished his key out of his pocket. 202. Not his old room; Laney or that boy had had the consideration not to do that to him at least. If only they’d considered that maybe this wasn’t the best time or place for a party with pot and cookies.

  He couldn’t believe that he was here, couldn’t believe that there was an old lady and teenage boy and that young woman who’d made the hairs on his arms stand on end here too. It wasn’t right, but he was in it now. He was always rushing in to save people, and he wouldn’t abandon this post, even as his unease grew.

  After looking around the empty hallway, which seemed to echo with every step, he walked the few feet to his room door and slid the key in the lock.