by J N Duncan
“Jackie,” he said quietly and bowed his head in acknowledgment.
She could not look him in the eye or anywhere near his face for that matter. With her hand gripped even tighter on her shoulder bag, Jackie increased her pace and strode passed him. “Hey, Nick,” she muttered and went up the steps two at a time and disappeared into the dark confines of the plane.
The Lear seated sixteen, four groups of paired, leather seats facing each other. A bar and kitchenette separated them further, making it eight in front and eight in the back. Jackie chose the seat farthest away from the door, hoping everyone would just leave her alone on the flight so she could get herself organized in some way or another. Shelby ruined that by plopping down in the seats across from her, stretching her legs across both seats.
Her elbow propped on the armrest, chin in hand, Shelby smiled at her. “Can’t ignore him forever, boss.”
“I realize that, Shelby. Thank you.” She made no effort to hide the sarcasm.
“Longer you take, the worse it’ll be, trust me,” she replied.
“I know!” Jackie snapped back, trying to keep her voice down. “Can you just leave it alone, please? It isn’t any of your goddamn business.”
“It is if you can’t effectively communicate with your team,” she said in a harsh whisper, the smile vanishing from her lips. “Flight’s about twenty-five minutes. Figure it out, Jack.” Shelby reached over and gave Jackie’s knee a firm squeeze and then got back to her feet, moving up front to sit with Nick.
She heard Laurel grumble inside her head. She’s right, hon. Even if she’s being a bitch about it.
Jackie slumped against the side of the plane and closed her eyes as the plane rushed down the runway for takeoff. At least we agree on something.
Chapter 6
The brief squeal of wheels touching down jarred Jackie out of her doze. It seemed she had only just shut her eyes, but now it was time to get busy. The squirming, nagging fear in her gut had to be buried, pushed down into the depths where she could ignore it. Any luck and it would just go away.
Jackie paused by Nick, who stood at the door of the plane as they all stepped off. She let out the breath pent up in her lungs. “Ready to roll on this, Nick?”
He looked down at her in silence for so long, Jackie was afraid he might not bother to answer her. Finally, he nodded. “I am. You?”
“Nope. We’ll figure it out as we go,” she said and headed for the steps.
A cold wind swirled around the airfield, little more than a single strip of concrete and one corrugated metal hangar. The ground was damp from an earlier rain. Jackie looked around, half expecting there to be a limo waiting for them.
“Do we have a car?” she asked.
“Should be by the main office,” Nick said, coming up behind her.
“Pretty out here—” Cynthia began.
“Great,” Jackie said. “Let’s go.”
They all followed in silence, shoes splashing through the puddles on the tarmac. Once they reached the squat, flat-roofed main office, Jackie walked through the door and made her way toward the front. Outside, she spotted the rental car and walked over to the Ford Explorer to wait for Nick to bring the keys.
You OK, hon? Laurel wondered.
“I’m fine,” Jackie said quietly. “Just trying to ... shift gears here.”
Just remember, this isn’t the FBI anymore.
“No need to remind me of that,” Jackie said. What they were, exactly, remained to be seen. When Nick got to the SUV, Jackie held out her hand. “I want to drive.”
He dangled the keys over her outstretched palm. “You know where we’re going?”
She snatched them out of his fingers. “Not really.”
“Oh, let her drive, babe,” Shelby said, and tossed her bag over the backseat into the back. “She needs to be able to control something.”
Jackie pointed a finger at her as she opened the driver’s side door. “Not helping.” She did not need every last one of her foibles brought to light for them to discuss. It was bad enough that they all knew what they did.
Once out on the highway, Cynthia rode shotgun and informed her, via the GPS, that they were about twenty minutes away from Thatcher’s Mill. Jackie took another deep breath. She was getting tired of trying to constantly relieve the tension in her gut.
“So, let’s go over what little we know and what we want to do,” she said. “Sound good?” When nobody offered up any other options, she continued. “We have a town with more than its fair share of ghosts, which obviously I’m not sure what that even means.”
Nick cleared his throat. “Town that size, you would be lucky to find three or four at any given time.”
That sounds about right, Laurel agreed.
“So, let’s say for the sake of argument that we’re looking at five times that number, fifteen to twenty ghosts. What could that mean?”
“Likely an incident of mass death,” Cynthia replied, “but the little bit of digging I’ve been able to do hasn’t pulled up anything like that.”
“How far back did you go?” Shelby asked.
“Back to the turn of the century,” Cyn said. “Doesn’t mean something didn’t happen of course, but I didn’t see anything that got noted anywhere.”
“Someone or something could be keeping them around,” Nick added. “Sometimes one tormented soul will draw others to it, like a magnet.”
“Misery loves company,” Jackie said.
“Something like that,” he replied.
There was an awkward few seconds of silence, until Shelby broke it. “Laur, baby. Come out of Jackie’s head and sit with me.”
Jackie sighed. This was exactly what she signed up for. Laurel hesitated. Go, for Christ’s sake. I’m fine. She slipped out, sending a cool shiver down Jackie’s spine. “What about a killer?” she offered. “Could we have a serial killer on our hands?”
Cynthia shook her head. “No reports of linked murders of any kind in the area. At least nothing that has popped up on anyone’s radar.”
They were getting nowhere with this. “So, lots of possibilities but no corroborating information of any kind at this point. Which means, we need to cruise the town and canvas the locals.”
“And see if we can talk to any of the ghosts,” Nick added.
“I’ll check that out,” Laurel said. “That’s kind of my thing now.”
Shelby snickered at her. “Laurel Carpenter, Ghost Detective.”
“Oh,” Cynthia said. “I’d watch that.”
“If you could see them,” Shelby replied.
The three of them laughed. Jackie frowned in an effort to hide the smile creeping onto her face. Damn them. There was nothing amusing about any of this. In the rearview mirror, Jackie could see the corner of Nick’s mouth curl up as he shook his head. It was better than nerve-wracking silence at least.
The two-lane, shoulderless road wound its way through rolling hills and scattered fields, little more than wet dirt and groves of dark, spider-webbed branches collecting water from the low-slung sky. They were in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, with nary a coffee or pastry shop to be seen. Somewhere off to the east, the Mississippi wound its way south through Iowa farmland. It was not difficult to imagine ghosts wandering aimlessly over this landscape.
They finally passed a sign that said THATCHER’s MILL, 2 MILES. Jackie had the feeling that a couple of hours in the podunk and they would be on the road back, having wasted a perfectly good Friday that she could have spent curled up on her couch doing a whole lot of nothing.
“You realize this could be a complete waste of time,” she said to no one in particular. “This is a ten-year-old lead we’re following up on.”
“So what?” Shelby said. “It’s a good way to get our feet wet. We’ll figure out what’s worth going out on and what’s not.”
“I suppose,” Jackie replied.
The Ford crossed a bridge over a shallow creek, where a sign welcomed them to Thatcher’s Mill. Up
ahead, Jackie could see the main street, lined with old brick, two- and three-story buildings, and not much beyond that, the highway exiting the town and disappearing around a tree-covered hill. The brightly colored sign of the local diner could be seen on a corner up ahead, and Jackie had half a mind to stop there first, just so she could get some coffee in her system.
Then someone stepped out in the path of the SUV, forcing Jackie to swerve and slam on the brakes. She caught some gravel on the side of the road and slid sideways off onto the shoulder.
“Holy shit!” She leaped out of the SUV, scanning the road for a body. There was nothing to be seen.
“She’s over there,” Nick said, pointing behind the Explorer, but he made no effort to move.
Jackie spun on her heel and then froze. It was a woman all right, light and wispy as fog. She curled around behind their car and continued to walk toward the edge of town. Now that she was aware of its presence, Jackie could feel the cool whisper of Deadworld, faint but there. Her heartbeat finally began to slow.
“OK, that about caused a heart attack,” she said.
Shelby laughed and laid a hand upon her shoulder. “Takes a while to get used to that. I’ve almost dumped my bike a couple of times, not realizing until too late what I was about to hit.”
Laurel followed the ghost for a few steps, calling out to her and then stopped. “She’s not even aware. Strange.”
“Or doesn’t care,” Nick said. He turned back to the car. “Well, that’s one. Wonder how many more we’ll find?”
On the edge of the road, Laurel stared off into the heart of the town. “There’s more,” she said. “I can feel them.”
“How many?” Jackie wondered and climbed back into the driver’s seat. “A lot?”
Laurel shrugged and walked through the door and back to her spot. “Can’t tell. Let’s drive through town and see.”
Once back on the road, Jackie eased them into town at a brisk twenty miles per hour. Cynthia pointed out the next one, lingering on a street corner outside the diner. Laurel spotted another above the feed store behind a window. Another crossed the road, clipping the front corner of the SUV, and Jackie felt the bone-deep twinge of the dead. By the time they reached the far side of Main Street, they had spotted ten. She circled back down a side street, parallel to the highway and then crossed back over to the other side to follow a second street back up.
There were only about eight blocks worth of town in Thatcher’s Mill, a few hundred people at the most. Jackie finally pulled into a spot on the street outside the diner. She wanted more than coffee now. Cynthia had been keeping notes.
“How many?” Jackie asked.
“Assuming we didn’t duplicate any,” Cyn said, rechecking her tally, “about thirty-five.”
“Goddamn,” Shelby said. “What the fuck is going on in this place?”
Nick sat on the edge of his seat, feet dangling out to the ground. He stared blankly toward the edge of town. “Anyone else notice they were mostly women?”
Cynthia tapped her notepad. “Thirty-one of them were female. That can’t be good.”
“Thirty-one?” Jackie leaned over and looked at Cynthia’s notes. “Almost ninety percent. You’re right, that isn’t good.” They all got out without saying a word. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” So much for the quick trip. It was time to call up the Geekroom over at the FBI and get Hauser moving on this.
Nick closed his door and, instead of heading into the diner, walked out into the middle of Main Street. A car slowed and honked at him, swerving around his still figure. His hands were on his hips, head cocked slightly to the side while he made a slow, 360-degree turn.
Shelby leaned against the SUV, arms crossed over her chest. “What is it, babe?”
Jackie walked out to where he stood. This was not a look she had seen on him before. “You see something, Nick? Or sense something?”
His gaze abruptly refocused and he looked down at her, face etched with concern. “I’ve been here before.”
Jackie pursed her lips. “Why is that making you look so worried?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “It was a long time ago, 1890s I think.”
“So, something happened here back then?”
“Maybe. I was chasing down Drake at the time.”
Shelby stood up straight. “Drake was here?”
“Passed through, anyway,” Nick replied. “He might’ve killed someone here.”
Jackie closed her eyes for a moment and then turned back toward the diner. “Great. Nearly die, lose my job, fly hundreds of miles away, and we still run into the fucker.”
Cynthia held the door open to the diner for her. “It was a hundred years ago. Surely it can’t be related to what’s going on now.”
Jackie marched past her and into the diner. “Don’t bet on it.”
Chapter 7
The coffee, somewhere between FBI swill and Nick’s decadent mud, soothed the tense knot in Jackie’s stomach. It still boggled her mind that they had somehow picked a case in a town where Drake had been. It could be nothing at all, but dozens of ghosts and a vampire who took pleasure in creating them did not seem coincidental to her at all, even if it was one hundred years ago.
Shelby, the little wench, had pushed herself into the booth next to Cynthia, leaving the empty space next to Jackie as the only spot for Nick to sit. He had slipped in without a word and artfully kept his body from touching hers, though it did not matter. Even inches away, it felt to Jackie as though he was pressing up against her.
“So,” Shelby said, leaning against Cynthia and sipping her water, “what’s the agenda, boss?”
How the hell was she supposed to know that? “I was hoping you had some bright ideas. I can get Hauser to dig up some info about this place, find out if anything out of the ordinary has gone on here. Maybe we can have a word with the local law enforcement.”
“Get the law out of your head, babe,” she replied. “If you’ve got a place with ghosts, what are you going to hear?”
Hear? Of course. “Ghost stories. This place should have a million of them. Speaking of which, where did Laur go?”
“She went poking around to see if she could talk to any of them,” Shelby said.
“That will be our best source,” Nick added. “Those that have been here a long time may not remember much of anything, but any recently dead should remember what happened.”
The waitress, a forty-something woman with her hair pulled up and pinned with a pen, stopped by to refill Nick’s and Jackie’s coffees. “More ghosthunters, eh?”
Jackie sat up straight. “We’re not ...” She took a deep breath. “We heard there were an unusual number of, um, hauntings in this area.”
The waitress snorted. “You and every other freak with an EMF meter.”
“Look, Miss—” Jackie clenched her fists. She was not about to get labeled as a group of circus clowns trying to prove the existence of ghosts.
“Ma’am,” Nick said with his charming half-smile. His hand rested on Jackie’s thigh, patting it a couple of times in warning. “We’re not here to run tests for paranormal activity. We already know there are ghosts here. We’re researchers. We’re here to find out why.”
“Oh!” Her terse face relaxed into a smile, not entirely friendly. “Well, I’ll give you a sound piece of local advice then.” She leaned over and topped off Nick’s coffee. “It’s wise to leave the Thatcher’s Mill curse alone.”
“Molly!” The balding, bearded cook yelled out at them from the grill. “Quit your infernal blabbing. They don’t want to listen to your BS.”
Molly frowned and whipped her head around. “Curse ain’t no bullshit, Tucker! Just advising the good folk here to do what’s best for them.”
“Look like they can take care of themselves, woman. Take their damn order and leave them alone.”
“Sorry,” Molly said, shaking her head. “Old prick’s in a mood today. You all looking for some lunch or just sipping coffee while you
figure out where to find your ghosts?”
“Already found them,” Jackie said, giving her best fake smile. “I’ll take a cinnamon roll or Danish or whatever pastry sort of thing you have back there.”
Molly stared at Jackie for a moment before turning her gaze back to Nick. “What about you, handsome? What’ll it be?”
“Roast beef sandwich,” he said. “Have you seen any of the Mill’s ghosts, Molly?”
“Course I have.” She laughed. “Everyone here has at one time or another.”
“Coconut cream pie,” Shelby added. “So, what’s this curse all about?”
“For you?” Molly nodded at Cynthia, who sipped her hot tea and shook her head.
“Just the tea, thanks.”
“Thatcher’s curse,” Molly said, pulling the pen from her hair to write down their order. “Once born here, you never leave, even after you’re dead.”
Tucker leaned over the diner’s counter. “Damn it, Molly. Leave the poor folk alone.”
Nick waved him off. “It’s all good, sir. We’re just out from the University of Chicago doing some research on local ghost stories. Your town seems to have a few.”
Tucker chuckled. “More than a few, but I’d keep looking if I were you. Most folk around here don’t like your type prying into things. Private, quiet people who don’t like to be reminded about unsavory things like dead girls walking their streets, if you understand what I’m saying.”
Tucker went back to his grill, and Molly walked back to deal with their order. Nick took a sip of his coffee, and Shelby grinned, giving him a salute with her water glass. “Nice one, babe.”
“And more or less true, other than the U of C part,” he said quietly over the top of his cup.
“I could’ve handled that just fine,” Jackie muttered.
“Oh, come on.” Shelby laughed. “You’d have reamed her a new one. Let’s face it, boss, subtlety is not one of your strong points.”
