Berkley Street Series Books 1 - 9: Haunted House and Ghost Stories Collection

by Ron Ripley

Adam crouched down and saw blood stained the rough blanket. Without knowing why, Adam reached out with both hands, gripped the edges of the blanket and pulled them apart, revealing the remains of the child.

  The flesh on her chest was gone, the ribs broken and splayed outward like the fingers of a pair of ghastly hands. Her innards had been removed, and she had been stuffed with hundreds of bones.

  Adam felt bile rise in the back of his throat and he choked it down. In silence, he replaced the blanket and stood.

  "What would you have of us, Hawkins?" Tom Berkhin, the militia's captain, asked.

  “I would bury the dead,” Adam said, his voice raw. “I would see them put to rest.”

  Behind him, the militiamen dismounted and Adam looked down at Patience, wondering why she alone had been set beside the fire.

  “I hope you are at peace, child,” Adam murmured, and he turned his attention to the rest of the bodies.

  With heavy steps, he left the girl behind and went to search for his brother's corpse.

  * * *

  Slater Mill

  Berkley Series Book 7

  Chapter 1: Slater Mill, Nashua, NH

  Miguel had crept into the decrepit mill building shortly after midnight. A sharp chill had sprung up in the April air, and he needed a place to sleep. He had managed to hitch-hike from Lawrence to Nashua, but his uncle hadn't been home.

  No one had even answered any of the doors in his uncle's building.

  And Miguel had been wearing the wrong colors for Vine Street. His blue hoodie, representing his ties to the ‘Muerto Brotherhood’ had been met with hostile expressions from other young men and women. Most of those he saw were clad in dark green, the color representing the Vaqueros.

  Sleeping in the hallway outside of his uncle's apartment hadn't been an option, not if he wanted to avoid a beat down.

  The mill had been a decent option. A hole in the wire fence had let him slip away from the ones who had followed him. And he had been pleased that they hadn't pursued him into the building itself.

  Miguel knew it meant the place was probably patrolled, but he figured he could outrun any fat security guard who might have the job.

  Miguel eased the door behind him shut and waited for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the dim light. The glow of the street lamps was filtered through windows grimy with decades of dust and grit. When he could finally see, Miguel noticed that the worn wooden floorboards were covered with the same.

  Tracks of various small animals crisscrossed through the film on the floor.

  There weren't any footprints.

  Miguel grinned.

  He glanced back at the door he had entered, then he moved deeper into the wide passage. Stairs, worn down in the center, led up to a second floor, and he decided to follow them. Staying too close to the door might be risking exposure.

  Especially if he had triggered some sort of silent alarm.

  Frowning at the idea, Miguel hurried up the stairs. He took them two at a time until he reached the second floor.

  Miguel stumbled to a stop, surprised at what he saw.

  A cavernous room stretched out before him, one that looked to be the entire second floor. Dark pillars reached from floor to ceiling, and windows ran along the brick walls. Like the glass on the first floor, these windows were filthy.

  And while the first floor had seemed warmer than the outside, the second floor felt colder.

  Shivering, Miguel took a few cautious steps into the room. He looked from left to right, trying to see if any of the windows were broken.

  But the fact that none of them were, brought him to a stop.

  All of the windows should have shattered. There shouldn't have been a shard of glass left in the frames.

  Miguel had seen plenty of empty buildings in Lawrence, and if they were abandoned, it meant the windows were the targets of any kid who thought he could pitch in the major leagues.

  Miguel knew this because he had broken his share of windows as well.

  The dust at his feet spiraled up, whipped around the bottom of his jeans, and then dissipated. Another one arose a short distance away, then it died down as well. A third appeared at the left wall, but instead of dropping back to the floor as the others had, it stretched towards the ceiling. Soon it was as tall as Miguel, and a heartbeat later, it towered over him.

  He took a nervous step back, trying to see where the air creating the twisting spiral was coming from.

  Yet as he did so, the dust exploded in his face, blinding him.

  Miguel retched, trying to catch his breath. The filth invaded his nose and tried to plunge into his open mouth. He wanted to shut it out, but he couldn't, the vomit forcing him to keep his lips separated.

  Something struck him in the stomach, doubling him over, and a powerful force struck him on the back of the neck, knocking him to his knees.

  An angry, male voice asked him a question Miguel couldn't understand. The language wasn't Spanish or English.

  The man repeated his question, and when Miguel failed to answer, he was struck on the side of the head. Miguel whimpered as the blow drove him to the floor. His head throbbed, and he couldn't move, he tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids refused to respond.

  The man muttered in his unintelligible language, and Miguel felt him grab hold of his sweatshirt's hood. Miguel made an effort to get to his knees, but a boot caught him in the stomach and sent a fresh spike of pain through him.

  Miguel found himself being dragged across the floor, the boards rough and harsh against his hands. Splinters drove deep into his flesh, and he whimpered.

  The stranger paused, struck Miguel in the head again, and then continued on.

  For a moment longer, Miguel was dragged along, and then the man stopped. Hands grasped his left leg and left arm, a brutal cold penetrating his clothes. A sharp, jerking motion brought Miguel up off the floor, and he managed to force his eyes open.

  Miguel was in the air, suspended above the stairwell.

  Desperate, Miguel twisted in the grip of his attacker and looked down.

  But there was nothing to see.

  Miguel was held aloft by nothing.

  The unseen man asked a single question.

  Miguel still couldn't answer because he didn't understand.

  The man sneered and threw Miguel.

  The stairs, Miguel discovered, were hard and unyielding.

  Chapter 2: Myrtle Street Patrol

  Kurt Warner and Bill Waters both responded to the call about a break-in at the Slater Mill off Myrtle Street. It was a first for both of them.

  No one, in all of Kurt's time with the Nashua Police Department, had ever broken into Slater Mill. Bill, who had five years more on the force than Kurt, hadn't heard of it either. The place was almost a no-go zone for the local kids. Nobody knew why, and no one in the department had ever asked. The Mill was one less place to worry about, and that was fine with Kurt.

  Bill parked the cruiser at the front gate, which wasn't even chained or locked.

  Kurt took out his flashlight, held it up, and scanned beyond the fence. "Which door was it?"

  "Pine Street side," Bill answered.

  "Great," Kurt grumbled.

  "Yeah," Bill said. "Ready?"

  "Sure," Kurt sighed. "Let's do this. Probably a squatter."

  Bill nodded and pushed the gate open. They went in together, and Kurt took the lead. The Pine Street Entrance was an easy hundred yards up the right side of the building. As they went, Kurt noticed the lack of trash on the inside of the fence. In the light of the halogen street lamps, he saw that there were no cigarette butts, no signs of any sort of human passage.

  It was as if everyone in the area paid attention to the 'No Trespassing' signs zip-tied to the fence every twenty or thirty feet.

  When they approached the Pine Street door, Kurt saw it was ajar, a sliver of darkness apparent. The sight of it made him uncomfortable, and he slipped the catch off of his holster, freeing his pistol.

&nbs
p; "That's not good," Bill said, his voice low.

  "No," Kurt agreed.

  Bill called in their status on the radio, as well as the fact that the door was open. He finished with, "Proceeding inside."

  Kurt took a deep breath, settled his suddenly anxious nerves, and stepped forward. He pushed the door open, shined his light into the Mill and called out, "Nashua Police!"

  No one answered as Kurt moved the flashlight's beam from left to right, then he stopped. Beyond a set of wide stairs, he saw several fingers.

  "I've got somebody," Kurt said. He stepped into the building, Bill following behind him.

  "Hello," Kurt said, directing his voice toward the stairs. "Are you hurt?"

  A finger twitched.

  Bill saw it too, and in a heartbeat, he was calling for an ambulance.

  Still proceeding with caution, Kurt advanced towards the person beyond the stairs. When he reached them, Kurt stopped and dropped to a knee.

  A young Hispanic male lay on the floor, his body contorted and broken. His neck was twisted awkwardly, his brown eyes rolling in his head, the pupils pulsing without any sense. How the kid was still alive, Kurt couldn't understand, but he knew it wouldn't be for much longer.

  "Hey," Kurt said, reaching out and taking the hand he had seen. In Spanish, he asked, "Are you a Catholic?"

  Somehow, the boy squeezed his hand.

  "Do you want a priest?" Kurt asked.

  Again, the boy responded with a weak grasp of Kurt's hand.

  Leaning forward Kurt said, "Do you ask God for forgiveness, and repent for your transgressions against Him?"

  Again, the boy answered.

  "Do you know who did this to you?" Kurt asked.

  The boy didn't respond.

  "Was it a stranger?"

  The boy gripped Kurt's hand, squeezing it with surprising strength.

  "Are they still here?" Kurt asked.

  The boy didn't answer.

  He couldn't. His brown eyes had rolled up to reveal only the whites, and he had breathed his last breath in the filth of the old mill building.

  Kurt sat down, took his radio, and called dispatch. In the distance, he heard an ambulance's siren wail, and he asked the dispatcher to send along the priest who was on call.

  Chapter 3: Berkley Street

  The knock on Shane's door startled him.

  "Come in," he called after a moment.

  Frank opened the door. Shane saw that Frank was dressed in a suit and asked, "What the hell's going on?"

  Frank raised an eyebrow. "You don't remember?"

  "Obviously not," Shane said, getting up from his chair and stretching. "Sorry. What's happening today?"

  "My brother, Alex, is getting married," Frank said, shaking his head. "I'll be gone for the weekend."

  "Oh," Shane said, drawing the word out. "Damn. That's right. Sorry, Frank."

  Frank looked at him. "I'm worried about you, Shane. You're forgetting a lot more lately."

  "I'm still not sleeping that well," Shane confessed. "Been trying to cut back on the whiskey, too."

  "Maybe you ought to go and see a doctor?" Frank asked.

  Shane frowned and didn't answer. He and Frank had had that conversation more than once.

  Frank sighed. "Alright. Well, think about it. I do know a couple of people up at the Manchester VA who'll be able to help you out."

  "Yeah," Shane said. "I know. Let me sleep on it."

  "Ha," Frank said without any sort of humor. "Real funny. Take care of yourself this week. The newspaper's on the kitchen table. There's another unsolved murder in Nashua."

  "Where?" Shane asked.

  "The Slater Mill," Frank answered.

  "Again?" Shane said.

  Frank nodded. "Yup. The paper has dubbed the killer as the Mill Murderer."

  "Because of two bodies?"

  "Yeah," Frank said. "Some nice, light reading for you."

  Shane snorted. "The way the paper edits, it's more like some light torture."

  Frank chuckled, waved goodbye and left the room. Shane turned back to his desk, closed the book he had been reading and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had a slight headache. The lack of sleep made any sort of mental exercise a challenge. He considered getting out a fresh bottle of whiskey.

  Part of him wanted to drink himself into unconsciousness, but he knew that it wouldn't be a restful sleep.

  I need to figure out what to do about Courtney, he thought. But as soon as it crossed his mind, Shane shoved the idea away. It hurt him to think of her, and so he did his best not to.

  Even when she was screaming in the middle of the night.

  Sighing, Shane left the room. He walked along the hallway, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. None of the house’s dead bothered him, and he was pleased. He needed time alone. Time to think about what he needed to do.

  His work as a translator had dropped off, and that was his fault for focusing more upon the dead than the living. He knew he could always find work, but he lacked the desire to seek out new jobs. Courtney occupied a great deal of his thoughts, and he wondered if it would be possible to bring her back from madness, or if he would have to find a way to force her to move on.

  Shane took a pack of cigarettes off the counter, fished a smoke out, and lit it. He dropped them onto the dining table beside the paper and sat down. Frank had left the front-page face up, and in bold letters, a headline proclaimed, “Mill Murderer Strikes Again!” A sub-title asked if the police were dragging their feet because of the location of the mill, and Shane shook his head.

  It never ceased to amaze him that people thought the police played favorites when it came to death. If someone was murdered, detectives did their best to find the perpetrator.

  The article was accompanied by a series of photographs. In the first picture, there was a police officer standing in front of a door marked with yellow caution tape. The second was of a coroner’s van. It was the third photograph that caught Shane’s attention.

  The final picture was a wide shot of the mill itself. It looked like a normal, nineteenth-century mill. Dull red bricks, tall windows, and fading white trim peeling after decades of neglect. Those were expected.

  What brought Shane’s mind to a sharp, cold focus was what he saw in the window above the door.

  A pale shape.

  Through the dirty glass, he saw a man, and for a moment Shane thought it might have been nothing more than a trick of the daylight on the window.

  He knew it wasn’t though. A solid feeling of certainty in his gut, a piercing, cold understanding in his mind. They both told him that he was looking at a dead man, one who was murdering the living.

  Shane stared at the picture, smoking his cigarette. He contemplated doing nothing. It would be easy. He could pick up the front page, turn it, and forget he had ever seen the image. Shane could pretend it hadn’t been anything at all.

  But he knew he couldn’t.

  The ghost had killed twice in as many weeks, and he felt certain the dead man would kill again.

  Shane finished his cigarette, stubbing the butt out in the ashtray. He tapped his foot on the floor and considered what to do.

  Mills, he knew, had seen plenty of accidents. The buildings were no strangers to death or violence. Some said the foundations of the structures were soaked in blood. Whether that statement had any truth to it, Shane didn’t know.

  But he would find out about the Slater Mill. He would learn about deaths which had occurred there before it had ceased to be useful.

  And he would find out why it had been abandoned for so many years.

  Shane stood up, walked to the phone, and called Brian Roy.

  Chapter 4: Santeria

  Jose De Los Angeles had been a Santeria priest for seven years. He had even returned to the Dominican Republic for a year to learn at the feet of some of the finest members of his faith. Jose had learned how to summon the dead, read omens, and help care for the living. He was not afraid of ghosts, and he had cast
more than a few out of the old and run-down buildings along the Tree Streets of Nashua.

  When the teenager from Lawrence had been found dead in the Mill, there had been some mutterings about the place being haunted. Those mutters became grumbles when an old Ecuadorian had been found dead against the fence. The man’s eyes had been gouged out, and while the police suspected a crazed man, Jose and the others knew better.

  There was an angry ghost at work; one who needed to be checked.

  A knock on the door brought Jose back to the present. After a moment, he heard his wife’s voice, her words too soft for him to hear. She entered the room shortly, followed by a young woman carrying a large Calvin Klein bag. The girl was pretty, and Jose felt his interest pique, but he forced himself to focus on what she had brought, instead.

  “I bring news from Oloricha Dominica,” the young woman said. “And greetings. She sends you this gift, and hopes you will be able to accomplish your goal.”

  “Thank you,” Jose said, standing up. He crossed the room and accepted the bag from her. When he opened it, the dark, hollow eyes of a human skull peered back up at him. Jose felt a wave of relief. It was difficult to get any Santeria priest or priestess, an Oloricha of merit, to part with such a prized possession, but Dominica knew his need was great.

  Jose suspected that the deaths were not natural. That there was a spirit, perhaps an angry one, or simply misguided, who had committed the crimes. As a priest, Jose could not allow the dead to prey upon the living.

  Jose turned away as the young woman gave a short bow and then was led out of the room. He carried the bag to his altar, a long, weathered piece of wood covered with the amulets and icons necessary to execute his tasks as a priest. Jose removed the skull reverently, placing it down in the center. He set the bag on the floor and stared at the remnants of some unknown man.

  Jose closed his eyes and whispered a short prayer of thanks, and then he waited for his mind to clear. He would soon have to enter the Mill, but before he could, he needed to be prepared. Turning away from the altar, Jose walked to the closet, opened it, and turned on the light. Several bookcases lined the walls, each of the shelves filled with jars and bottles with various ingredients.