The Other Side: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  He’d retrieved Mortenson’s bag from the BMW’s trunk and was hefting it back inside (seriously, what had the woman packed—lead plates?) when two figures emerged from the lobby. He recognized one of them as they got closer: Bryce Riley, dressed in designer jeans and leather jacket, mirrorshades, and hiking boots even more expensive than Duncan’s. The other figure was a dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties, a head shorter than Riley. Her style was no-nonsense: jeans, leather bomber jacket, work boots.

  The two had been chatting, but both looked up as Stone approached. Riley looked him up and down, then his gaze settled on Mortenson’s huge, flowered suitcase and he smirked. “Hey,” he said with a languid wave of his hand. “You’re the Stanford occult guy, right? What was it—Stine, right?”

  “Stone.” He didn’t add you insufferable twat, but he probably didn’t have to.

  Riley grinned, showing straight, capped teeth. “Oh. Right. Stine’s the guy who writes those spooky books for kids. Honest mistake, yeah?” He nodded toward the woman. “This is Kelly Petrucci—she’s our director.”

  “Pleasure,” Stone said.

  “I’ve heard so much about you, Dr. Stone,” Petrucci said, extending her hand while giving Riley the side-eye. “I’m looking forward to working with you and Dr. Mortenson tomorrow.”

  Well. At least Riley’s conceited obnoxiousness didn’t seem to have rubbed off on everyone in the crew. “Thank you, Ms. Petrucci.”

  “Come on, Kel—let’s let Dr. Stone get himself unpacked. Looks like it’s gonna take him a while.” Riley smirked again, with another glance at the oversized suitcase.

  Petrucci at least had the grace to look apologetic as the two of them continued on. Stone was sorely tempted to use a little magic to pull one of Riley’s overpriced boots out from under him to see how he liked a muddy faceplant, but he managed somehow to resist. There’d be plenty of time to take The Other Side’s prima-donna star down a notch or two if it became necessary.

  Mortenson answered her door promptly at Stone’s knock, and favored him with one of her rare smiles when she spotted her suitcase. “Oh! Thank you, Alastair. I appreciate it. I hope it wasn’t too heavy—I probably shouldn’t have brought so much, but there were a few books I wanted to bring along in case I had some free time.”

  Ah—that explained the lead plates. He carried it inside and deposited it on her bed. “No, no, it was fine. Happy to help.” He passed along the messages about dinner, the get-together at eight, and Rita dropping by the next day’s shooting schedule. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Of course. I think I’ll lie down for a bit before dinner.”

  The rain had stopped and didn’t look like it would start again for a while, so Stone took the opportunity to stretch his legs while getting a closer look at the tiny town of Brunderville. He set off at a brisk walk, his Doc Martens crunching on the gravel, glad to put the whole television-crew thing behind him for a while.

  It didn’t take him long to get back to the main road, such as it was. He paused before turning down it, switching on magical sight for another read. Once again, the auras of the trees were everywhere, pale green against the gray sky. He focused on a couple of buildings he could see, including a tiny store just across the street from the winery’s turnoff, along with the cluster of vehicles parked near the Brunder mansion. The coverall-clad men were gone now, leaving the truck, the motorhome, and the trailer looking forlorn and deserted in the muddy field. Beyond, the mansion rose up as if guarding them.

  If he was going to look around the mansion at all, it would have to be soon. He glanced at his watch: three o’clock. That left him a little over two hours before he’d have to head back up to the winery and shower before dinner. He decided to get an overview of the town first; if he didn’t end up having time to check out the mansion before tomorrow, it wasn’t a big deal. They’d be in Brunderville for the next three days—that should be plenty of time for him to poke around unseen. He turned left, in the direction away from the mansion.

  His long strides covered the area efficiently, and after two hours of tramping around, he was reasonably confident he’d seen most of what the town had to offer. There were currently few buildings along the main street, though he spotted several cleared areas that were likely slated to become more tourist destinations: spas, quaint little restaurants, tiny bed-and-breakfasts, bars, and the infrastructure to support them in the form of gas stations, markets, souvenir shops, and similar venues. Some construction had already begun, but not much was finished yet. They were probably waiting until spring to resume, after the rainy season. He wondered if they got snow up here.

  The only surviving structures from the older periods included a threadbare but largely intact single-room schoolhouse, the gutted remains of a church, and a few husks of what had probably been homes and smaller businesses. Stone paused briefly at each to scan them with magical sight, but still spotted no sign of anything even remotely resembling the negative energy required to maintain a long-running curse.

  He paused the longest behind the church, hunting around in the damp, overgrown tangle of weeds in search of a cemetery. Though he did find a few broken headstones and bits of rotting wood that might once have been others, most had been lost to time and reclaimed by the earth. Even so, it didn’t seem to him that there were nearly enough to support Kolinsky’s report of large percentages of the townspeople dying off over a brief period. Perhaps if that had happened, there hadn’t been enough living people left to bury them. That meant the bodies had either been removed to other locations, possibly washed away in a flood…or they were still here somewhere. He doubted that, though—he couldn’t imagine that the people who’d gotten together to try reclaiming this little ghost town as a tourist haven wouldn’t have checked for such things.

  The last thing he did before heading back was to follow the single road on the opposite side of the main street to see where it went. It didn’t take long: less than a quarter-mile away it veered to the south and ran along a muddy, roaring creek stretching ten to fifteen feet across. It must have been raining for a while up here, as the stream flowed along very close to the top of its banks.

  A single derelict building—probably a sawmill, from its size and proximity to the creek, crouched nearby. Stone stood a few feet back from the edge and watched the water surge past as he examined the mill with magical sight. If he focused a bit more, he could sense the ley line that crossed the creek and stretched back toward the town, but it too felt normal and undisturbed. Perhaps Kolinsky had been correct: if there was in fact a curse in operation here, it might require a significant population to activate. Since Stone hadn’t seen a living human soul around the area, aside from the television crew and a few scattered locals, he might have to resolve himself to coming up empty with the black mage’s information.

  “Hello!” called a voice.

  Stone spun to find himself facing a tall, burly, bearded man in a plaid shirt, jeans, and a stocking cap, ambling up the road in his direction.

  “Sorry, sorry!” the man said cheerfully, waving. “Didn’t mean to startle ya!”

  “It’s all right.” Stone turned fully away from the river and tramped back toward the mill. “I was just…having a think.”

  “Good place to do it. I’m Bill Mott, by the way.”

  “Alastair Stone.”

  Mott took that in. Somewhere in his middle to late twenties, he looked more like a mountain man than a young hipster. “Are you with the group from that ghost-hunting show? I’m sure I’d recognize you if I’d seen you before.”

  “Guilty as charged. Just doing a bit of scouting before the shooting starts tomorrow.”

  “Looking for ghosts?” Mott’s grin was friendly, not mocking.

  “Not really. Besides, I’m told the ghosts are up at the Brunder place.”

  “That’s the st
ory, though I’ve been up there a bunch of times and never seen one. If old Jacob and his daughter are haunting the place, they’re keepin’ quiet about it.” He leaned in a little, as if relating a secret. “If you want my opinion, I think Randy and Mary just want to get the place certified as officially haunted so it’ll help ’em get more customers when the place opens up. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

  Stone chuckled. “I think the same thing, honestly.”

  “So you don’t believe in ghosts? That’s weird for a guy who works on a ghost-hunting show, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t work on the show. A colleague and I are consulting. We’re the occult experts.”

  Mott nodded, as if not quite sure what to make of that. “That’s cool,” he said at last. “Well, anyway, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I should let you get on with whatever you’re doing.”

  “Will you be at the little get-together up at the winery this evening?”

  “Yeah, I’ll probably go. I’m one of the few folks who actually live in town, so I’ll never turn down free drinks.” He grinned. “Plus, I picked up a little side work helping the TV crew move their gear, so you should see me tomorrow.”

  As Mott waved and headed off, Stone called, “Mr. Mott?”

  “Yeah?” He turned back.

  “Tell me, if you don’t mind—have you ever heard anything about Brunderville being...well, cursed?”

  He actually rolled his eyes. “Yeah, everybody around here’s heard that. Story’s been going around for years, that some curse was the cause of the town failing at the end of the Gold Rush, and then again during the Depression.”

  “But you don’t believe it?”

  “Nah, why should I? There’s a perfectly logical reason for the failures, both times. The gold ran out, and then the war started and all the guys who came here for logging went off to fight. Since logging’s not a popular job for the ladies, the industry fizzled out. There’s no mystery about it.”

  “It certainly sounds that way,” Stone admitted. “Do you by any chance know any of the supposed details, though? The reason the so-called curse began, for instance? That’s one of my jobs as a consultant—to gather information.”

  “I think they already came through here a while ago to ask that kind of stuff,” Mott said. “I remember hearing something about it—they wanted to get all the stories. All I know for sure is that it’s supposed to have had something to do with Jacob Brunder, the guy who founded the town. He and his daughter moved here during the Gold Rush to sell stuff to the miners, and made a killing at it—as you can see by their house. But aside from that, the records have all kinda been lost. I guess stuff from that long ago sometimes doesn’t get preserved.”

  Stone nodded. “Has your family lived in the area a long time, Mr. Mott?”

  He shook his head. “No, I only moved here recently. Right now, I run a little general store for the locals, and pick up extra money helping out with the construction. When things pick up, I’m planning to open a restaurant and bar.”

  Stone thanked him and set off back toward the winery at a quick walk as the drizzle began to pick up again. It was already dark; as a city dweller who spent most of his time in urban settings, he’d forgotten how black the night could be in a place where few of the buildings were far enough along in their construction to have any lights yet. No cars cruised the area, and there weren’t any streetlights, even along the main drag. With the heavy clouds obscuring the moon, the only visible illumination came from the production company’s cluster of vehicles outside the Brunder mansion and the faint, distant glow from the winery. He wished he’d brought a flashlight—he could use a light spell, of course, but he didn’t want to take the chance of someone spotting him with it. As it was, he shifted to magical sight and used the light from the trees’ auras to navigate back to the side road. All in all, he was disappointed in the fruits of his afternoon’s exploration—so far, Brunderville was turning into more than a bit of a bust. If that continued to be true, it was going to be a long three days.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Jason and Verity grabbed a fast-food lunch in Barstow and rolled into Las Vegas two hours later. The sky was a pale slate gray, and as always the town, so vibrantly lit at night, looked desolate and somehow diminished in the filtered sunlight of midday.

  “You got us a place to stay already?” Verity asked as they cruised up the Strip. She leaned her head against the window, watching the high-rise megacasinos pass by on both sides of the street.

  “Not yet. Figured we’d find something closer to downtown, near where they found Gary. Got a preference?”

  She pointed to a tall, black-glass tower rising up on their right. “Sure. Let’s stay at the Obsidian.”

  “Little out of the budget. Remember, I gotta submit expense reports. Fran’s not gonna pay for posh.”

  She chuckled. “Too bad we can’t call up Mr. Harrison and ask him to put us up for a few days.”

  “Sure, you go right ahead and try that. Let me know how it goes. Meanwhile, I’m gonna find us something cheap.”

  They drove downtown and cruised around until they found a little place along Fremont Street that advertised cheap weekday rates. The room was as tacky and generic as they expected, but at least it was clean and had a good lock on the door.

  Verity tossed her bag on the bed closest to the window and pushed open the drapes to reveal a view of a dingy construction site. “What’s our first stop?”

  “Let’s go talk to Fran’s guy at the PD. Once we find out what he’s willing to tell us, we can go check out the place where Gary was found.”

  “You got a phone number for this guy?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Well…I’d just rather meet him somewhere other than police headquarters.”

  “Why?” Jason stopped digging clothes out of his bag and turned toward her with a questioning head tilt.

  “Just because I wasn’t that worried about the Evil messing with us doesn’t mean I want to walk into a nest of armed ones with both eyes open, y’know? By the way, did you bring a gun?”

  “Yeah.” He pulled a locked box from his bag and opened it to reveal an automatic pistol. “Nice thing about Nevada—I can’t carry concealed here, but I can walk around with the damn thing in an open holster on my hip and almost nobody will care.”

  He put it back in the box and locked it, then opened his wallet and removed a business card. “I’ll leave it here for now, though, till we figure out where we’re going. For now, let’s give this guy a call and see if he’s willing to meet us somewhere.”

  The cop, a guy by the name of Chet Roper, agreed to meet Jason and Verity in an hour. It turned out he and Fran had worked together on a case many years ago, and he remembered her fondly. He named a coffee shop about a mile from the Las Vegas Metro station near the Strip.

  He was waiting for them when they arrived, sipping coffee in a back booth and paging through a sheaf of papers. A middle-aged black man of medium height, he had graying temples, shrewd dark eyes, and the faint beginnings of a paunch. He stood as Jason and Verity approached, and looked Jason up and down. “So, you’re Fran’s new pet project. How’s that nasty old bitch doing, anyway?” The twinkle in his eyes took the sting from the words.

  “Same as always,” Jason said. “Short and grumpy.” He shook Roper’s hand. “Jason Thayer. This is my sister Verity.”

  “Bringin’ sisters along on investigations?” Roper asked, waving them to seats across from him, his smile departing in favor of a disapproving frown.

  “I could wait for you somewhere else,” Verity said. She’d been afraid that might be a problem, but hadn’t wanted to bring it up.

  “Nah, it’s cool,” Roper said. “Sit down, both of you. I can’t stay long, but maybe I can help you out a little. So you want to know about Gary Woods.
”

  “Yeah,” Jason said. “Things aren’t adding up.”

  “What’s not to add up?” Roper glanced down at the papers in front of him, then back at Jason. “I don’t know how much you know about Vegas, Thayer, but it ain’t a nice town. If I told you about half the stuff that goes down in the back alleys around here, you’d probably pack up and go back to California.”

  “Don’t be too sure about that,” Verity said.

  “She just means we’ve heard stories,” Jason said quickly, with a sharp sideways glance at her.

  “Yeah, well, I’m bettin’ you haven’t heard these kind of stories. Like I said, this a nasty place. Nastier than usual. You see all the lights and the glitz and the showgirls and you think it’s a nice safe playground for the tourists. Sorta like adult Disneyland, only Minnie’s on the street corner givin’ it up for pay, and Mickey’s hustlin’ craps out back of the Golden Nugget.”

  That was an image Verity had never contemplated before, but colorful analogies aside, Roper was one hundred percent correct. Even so, she and Jason probably knew that better than he did.

  “Okay,” Jason said. “So the place is rotten. We get that. But what’s that got to do with Gary?”

  “Ain’t just the place that’s rotten. It’s the people, a lot of ’em. Sure, you got your upright-citizen locals who keep their heads down, and your tourists who just come here for a little fun on a weekend and then go back home to their jobs and their families like nothin’s changed. But a lot more people come here because it’s one of the few places in this country where you can find pretty much anything you’re lookin’ for, if you know where to look and can find the right people.”