by Shayla Black
Cocky? Why not? Two people were already dead.
“Sam,” the voice said, “I’m disappointed in you. I thought you were a negotiator.”
“Okay, let’s negotiate and not threaten other people.”
He looked at Rocky, who was listening to his own phone, watching Sam with anxious eyes. Rocky nodded. They had a location.
“Okay. I agree. Don’t kill anyone else and we’ll back off. I’ll get Jenna right now, and she’ll back off.”
“Six hours, you’ll get another call.”
The line went dead.
Tandy Whitehall seemed oblivious to the tenor of the call. But Sam had risen and stepped back where only Rocky and Devin knew who’d been on the other end of the line. But he was now really interested in that scent from Tandy’s shop.
“It’s popular with a number of men in town,” Tandy said. “And a few women. Here’s the list one of my cashiers just sent me. John Bradbury bought that scent, and I guess he suggested it to a lot of his friends and coworkers.”
Sam took the phone and looked at it.
“Mortuary? Now?” Rocky asked.
“You got it.” And he handed the phone back to Tandy.
“I’ll turn myself in to the police now,” Tandy said.
“No. Sit tight, right here. You too, Sissy.”
“The call came from the mortuary,” Rocky said.
He hurried out the door, wondering just which one of the people on the list was now holding Elyssa Adair hostage there. He didn’t want Tandy calling the police. Not until he found out exactly who he was dealing with, someone that might even now be stalking Jenna, who may be stumbling into a trap.
Chapter 8
The mortuary was definitely clearing out. People were leaving in groups and singles. The ticket booth was closed. By the time Jenna walked across the porch and reached the front door, no one was around, the last of the visitors having reached the parking lot. She entered through the front door and no costumed actor greeted her.
“Detective Martin,” she shouted.
No answer.
“Micah? Jeannette? Naomi?”
No reply.
The silence gave her a sensation of unease, one that had nothing to do with the fact that she was accompanied by two bickering ghosts. She ignored them, allowing them to follow her as she searched the ground floor rooms, amazed that the actors and staff could clear out so quickly. Also, no one had locked up. She passed through the dining room with its array of skeletal guests. On through the kitchen, where it appeared that a massacre had taken place. Fake blood leaked from a cauldron on the stove top, body parts lay scattered on a table, but no actor-chef or cook standing around with a plastic butcher knife to put chills and thrills into the bloodstreams of attendees.
“Goodnight,” she heard someone call from the front of the house. “Last one out, lock up.”
Jenna hurried to the front door. But whichever performer had just left had done so quickly. She could just make out a dark form heading to the parking lot. She hustled back to the kitchen.
“There’s no one down here,” Gloria said, following close behind her.
“We should check upstairs,” John suggested.
“We should go to the basement,” Gloria said.
Jenna was irritated. “Stop. I’ll go up first, then we’ll go down.”
The stairway up seemed misty in the eerie black lighting used for the haunted house attraction. She moved carefully, unnerved, not wanting to be taken by surprise. One by one, she searched through the second floor rooms. Spider webs, creepy creatures, all manner of frights remained. But no one person. Where the hell was Detective Gary Martin? She heard the sound of movement coming from the back of the house. She hurried across the hall to one of the rooms that looked down over the delivery entrance to the old embalming rooms.
“Basement,” she said.
“Told you,” Gloria whispered.
“Where is everyone?” John asked.
“Good question. Detective Martin should be here,” Jenna said. “Let’s see what’s down in the basement.”
She moved quickly, hurrying down the blackened stairs. Portraits adorned the walls that started off as depictions of the living and changed to rotting skeletons from different perspectives. She ignored them and hurried around to the stairs to the basement. Her phone rang. Sam. She hit the answer button.
John screamed.
She whirled to see why.
A fist came out of the darkness, smashing against the side of her face. Her body crashing down the rest of the stairs, her phone disappearing into the misty darkness of the embalming room below.
Before the world vanished, she heard Sam’s voice through the phone.
Calling her name.
* * * *
Sam spotted the mortuary, high on the hill, glowing opaque in the strange mix of moonlight and artificial electric haze. No cars filled the parking lot. The building seemed to be alive, its upstairs windows like soulless eyes. The front door appeared to be a gaping mouth caught in a strange and twisted oblong O of horror.
“Not sure how exactly we should be doing this,” Rocky said.
“Maybe call the local police?” Devin murmured.
“No,” Sam said. “We handle this ourselves.”
The killer had threatened to kill Elyssa and now he probably had Jenna too. No time to wait for the locals.
“No police,” he said.
And neither of his colleagues argued since, among those who bought the woodsy scent from Tandy Whitehall’s shop was Detective Gary Martin. A cop gone bad? Sam didn’t know. Especially since another man associated with the mortuary had purchased the scent, too.
The head of the paranormal research department.
Micah Aldridge.
* * * *
Jenna tumbled down the stairs, feeling every bruise to her body, but managed to roll out on the floor and draw her weapon.
She heard an eerie laugh.
“You have no idea how much trouble you’re in,” a voice told her in a hoarse, eerie whisper.
Then she heard another voice. Gloria Day. “It’s a boo-hag.”
Down the steps one came. But no demon. Instead, a living, breathing person in a boo-hag costume, armed with a Smith and Weston pistol gripped by red latex-clad hands.
“Stop,” she commanded.
But the costumed person ignored her. “Throw down your gun. Now.”
A snap of sound and a system was turned on that offered first eerie music, then the deep, rugged, masculine voice of the attraction’s narrator. “And so Proctor died as well, for, as he was supposed to have said, the girls did, in the end, make devils of far too many a man and woman. It was in June of 1692 that the first of the condemned were hanged. Before it was over, nineteen would die in such a manner, and one man, Giles Corey, would be pressed to death.”
A sudden flow of light sprang from one of the niches.
She heard a sob of fear and terror.
“Auntie Jenna? Help me. Please!”
Elyssa stood in the niche, supported on a stool, a noose around her neck, a second costumed boo-hag at her side ready to rip away the stool.
* * * *
Sam came through the mortuary front door. Rocky and Devin had slipped around the house, intent on entering the basement via the delivery entrance. He moved with care. What he wanted was to barge in with guns blazing and wrap his fingers around the throat of the killer now threatening Elyssa and Jenna. But he told himself to slow down, use caution. His head pounded, ready to explode. All he could hear was Elyssa’s sobbing through Jenna’s phone, from four minutes ago.
A lot could happen in four minutes.
He climbed the porch steps and saw that the mortuary’s front door hung half ajar. He entered the foyer and looked around, certain from the acoustics and sounds made when he’d called her that the phone had dropped in the basement. He hurried through the garish decorations and around to the stairway.
A body lay on the floor right by the door to
the basement stairs.
Not a prop.
Micah Aldridge.
He hunkered down and felt for a pulse. Faint. But there. He found his phone and dialed 911 requesting an ambulance and the police. He’d identified himself and asked for no sirens. His phone blinked for an incoming call. Rocky. He answered and told him the situation and that help was coming.
He left the fallen man and headed for Jenna and Elyssa.
Knowing now who he was about to encounter.
* * * *
“We’d been debating how to handle this, and honestly,” the costumed boo-hag said, “you weren’t on our original list. But that’s okay. We had you running all over looking at Wiccans and talking about the Gullah people, and don’t you love our costumes?”
Elyssa was still sobbing, but Jenna realized that struggling just caused the rope around the young girl’s neck to chaff more. Elyssa’s wrists and ankles were tied. Once the stool was kicked aside, there’d be no recourse for her.
“It’s not that I care,” the boo-hag said. “I really don’t care if the kid—or you—live or die. You couldn’t let a damned suicide be a suicide. You just had to turn it into a murder investigation.”
“You’re so sadly mistaken,” Jenna said. “The medical examiner knew immediately that John Bradbury had been murdered.”
The boo-hag by Elyssa spoke out angrily, “That’s because your good buddy Sam Hall talked the medical examiner into believing that. It could have been left a mystery, accepted as a suicide. But that’s all right. Eventually they would have blamed the Gullah people or the Wiccans. But you! Bursting in here, pushing everyone around. Here to pat poor baby cousin on the back. What made you start running around screaming murder anyway?”
“John Bradbury told Elyssa it was a murder and that you would murder more people. Then John found and told me about the way you two attacked him. And yes, you did have us investigating what might be going on in Salem. But this has nothing to do with the Gullah community or the Wiccans or history, except in whatever way you thought you could use it. This is all about greed.”
John Bradbury’s ghost floated over the niche where he’d been hanged, and where Elyssa was now dangerously close to meeting the same fate, swiping angrily at the air.
To Jenna’s surprise, the boo-hag moved back, as if the movement had been felt.
“Don’t you understand?” the boo-hag behind Jenna said. “We’re in complete control. So I’ll only say it one more time. Drop your gun or my pal over there will kick the stool out from under your cousin.”
“I don’t think so,” a new voice suddenly announced.
Sam.
The boo-hag whirled around. “Sam Hall. The great attorney, P.I. No—great FBI special agent now. Have you forgotten all about our negotiation?” stairway boo-hag said.
“Not at all.”
The boo-hag beside Elyssa said, “We’ve still got all the cards, Special Agent Hall. Come down here. Now. Or this girl dies.”
Jenna recognized the woman’s voice. Naomi Hardy. And she knew that their suspicions had been right. This had nothing to do with the past, nothing to do with feuds or beliefs. “Naomi Hardy. You did this for a promotion? You killed people—you probably planned on killing more people to create a real Wiccan war and send a Wiccan to prison—all for a promotion.”
The boo-hag’s head whipped around. “She knows who I am.”
“Shut up,” the boo-hag on the stairwell said.
“You know, I thought at first that it was either Micah—or even poor Detective Martin,” Sam said. “But, Jeannette, you and Naomi have to be the two dumbest murderers I’ve ever met!”
Of course, Jenna thought. Jeannette Mackey.
“Kill the stupid girl, Naomi. Do it,” Jeannette yelled.
“They’ll shoot me,” Naomi said.
Jenna thrust herself up and burst toward the niche, trying to get to Elyssa. She could make that move because Sam had her back. Luckily, Naomi Hardy stayed hesitant. The boo-hag on the stairwell raised her red latex arm to fire, but Sam slammed his arm down on hers and the weapon went cascading down the stairs.
Jeannette screamed in fury.
Sam and the boo-hag went down.
“Kill the damned girl,” Jeannette roared.
Naomi recovered her wits and kicked the stool.
Jenna lunged forward to save her cousin. Arms around the girl, she supported her weight so the rope could not tighten around her neck. Naomi’s body began to jerk from side to side, as if being pushed hard. Gloria Day and John Bradbury were trying to have an affect on her, but it was another ghost who managed to stop her. He was in Puritan garb as well, a big man, heavy-muscled, broad-shouldered. He appeared before Naomi, who gasped and backed away.
Rocky burst through the basement door and helped Jenna get the noose down and off from Elyssa’s neck. Sam wrenched Naomi Hardy aside. Devin Lyle appeared and cuffed Naomi, telling her that she was under arrest.
Sirens screamed from outside.
Help was coming.
The reign of terror was over.
* * * *
“Naomi Hardy thought that she had a brilliant way to become the head of the company? Get rid of John Bradbury? In the midst of the highest paying time of the year? Really? She did this for a job?” Devin Lyle asked.
“It was a pretty damned good job, from what I understand,” Sam told her. “And trust me, I didn’t get it until the end. I knew that both Detective Martin and Micah Aldridge had ordered that cologne—Scent of the Pine—Tandy Whitehall sold. And since both of our victims had smelled it, the scent seemed involved. But, as we would have learned had we had time to ask Micah about it, he bought it for Jeannette Mackey, who loved the scent.”
They were all at Devin’s place, a charming cottage on the outskirts of town. Devin had inherited the house from her Aunt Mina, who remained after death, still watching over Devin when she was in Salem. Mina was with them now, shaking her head over the terrible things an emotion like greed could cause a person to do. She’d done her best to make the ghosts of John Bradbury and Gloria Day comfortable in her house.
“How did she get Jeannette involved?” Rocky asked.
“Jeannette saw herself as a seer, a medium, the rightful agent at the gate. Their agreement was that once Naomi became boss, she’d find another place for the haunted house company to operate. They were so obsessed with what they wanted to do that they were willing to kill,” Jenna said.
“And,” Sam explained, “Jeannette knew all of the legends about the new local cultures and communities beyond the Wiccans. She also hated both Tandy Whitehall and Gloria Day. What better way to get back at the two women than kill the one and get the other arrested for her murder.”
“They planned on killing more people,” Elyssa said.
Her parents, overcome with gratitude for Jenna and Sam and the Krewe members, had allowed her to come along with the adults.
“Who was next?” Rocky asked.
“Somebody named Sissy,” Elyssa told them. “In case they didn’t blame the Wiccans, they’d start looking at the Gullah people. They never intended for any of us to survive the night.”
“I’m pretty sure they thought they’d killed both Gary Martin and Micah Aldridge,” Sam said.
Martin had been discovered in the basement, a bad gash to his head. But both men were going to be all right.
“Here’s what I understand,” Sam said. “They had to kill John and make it look like a suicide. They figured that it might not work, so they planned an elaborate scheme to kill more people and make it look like an inter-Salem cultural war of some kind.”
The ghostly presence of Gloria Day said, “So I died because of you, John?”
“It seems so. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t die because of John,” Auntie Mina pointed out. “You died because of two greedy, sick, demented women.”
“Who really thought they could kill me, Sam, and Elyssa, and get away with it,” Jenna said. She looked at
Sam and smiled. “Thank goodness they underestimated you.”
“They underestimated the Krewe,” Sam said.
“I don’t think Jeannette cared if she died,” Elyssa said. “As long as she took us with her. But, you’re right. Thank goodness for the Krewe. I think I’d like to be part of this one day.” Elyssa leapt to her feet. “Gotta go.”
“Where?” Jenna asked her.
“Party. It’s Halloween. And I’m rather an important person right now. My guy is here for me. Don’t worry, my parents love Nate.”
She kissed and hugged them all, thanking everyone profusely, and then she was gone.
“What about us, John?” Gloria asked him. “Shouldn’t we be going somewhere by now? Into the light or whatever.”
John looked at her. “I’m thinking about sticking around for a bit.”
“How lovely,” Aunt Mina said.
Gloria reached for John’s hand. “If we’re going to stick around together, we’re going to play give and take. Come on. It’s Samhain.”
“Where are we going?”
“Gallows Hill, of course.”
John Bradbury groaned, then shrugged and took Gloria’s hand. “Why not.”
They said their good-byes and disappeared.
“I’m curious about one thing still,” Jenna said. “There was a third ghost there last night. A powerful ghost. He was in Puritan apparel, big guy, like a hearty farmer type. Then he was gone. Who was he? There’s not another victim somewhere, is there?”
Rocky shook his head. “The two women spilled everything at the station. No more victims.”
“Big dude, powerful, looked like a farmer?” Mina said. “Might have been John Proctor, sick to death of watching more horror over petty jealousy and greed. Those bitter human emotions might have caused the hysteria once, but he wouldn’t want to see it happening again. Could have also been George Burroughs. He was a big dude, too.”
“I wish we could thank him,” Jenna said.
“I’m sure he feels thanked,” Mina said.
“Are we going out for Halloween?” Sam asked.
