Spookshow 4: Bringing up the bodies

by Tim McGregor

  “Sort of. Some nights she’d go crazy with it, running the patterns over and over. Then she’d make me do it. I couldn’t read the cards so I had no idea what they meant. I just laid them out in a pattern. She used to get scared by whatever was there.”

  He scribbled on and then looked up. “Do you think she saw her own fate in the cards?”

  “Maybe. She never told me what she saw in them.”

  “And what about Franklin Riddel? Your father?”

  “Never knew him,” Billie said. “I vaguely remember him visiting once or twice. They would fight. But that’s all. I don’t even remember what he looked like. He turned religious at some point, like a born-again Christian or something. Maggie could tell you more.”

  “Your aunt?” He put the pen down again. “Are you all right? We can take a break.”

  “I’m fine. It’s just weird. I haven’t thought about any of this in so long. It almost seems like someone else’s story. Someone else’s life.”

  “What about the night she went missing? Do you remember what happened?”

  “She was fit to be tied that night. Angry. She made me run the cards a number of times. Whatever she saw scared her. A car pulled into the driveway and she told me to hide. So I did. There was a crawl-space under the floor. Something bit me when I was hiding there.”

  “Bit you?”

  “I think. Or I cut myself on something.” She lifted her foot and looked at her ankle. A faint scar was still there. “I don’t remember what it was.”

  Mockler leaned in. “Who came to the house that night?”

  “Riddel. I recognized his voice.”

  “What happened?”

  “I heard them yelling at each other. Then crashing noises, like they were fighting. I crawled out of the hiding spot and she was gone. They both were. The parlour was trashed. There was blood on the floor.”

  “How old were you? Eight?” She nodded and he exhaled. “That’s a terrible thing for a kid to see.”

  “I don’t remember anything that happened afterwards. Someone found me wandering around town. Maggie said I didn’t speak for a month after that.”

  “You were in shock,” he said. “Is that when you went to live with your aunt?”

  “She and uncle Larry. They were nice. It was so different living with them. They weren’t angry or paranoid all the time. I didn’t have to walk on eggshells around her, the way I did with mom. It was peaceful. And aunt Maggie, she—”

  Mockler dug a pack of tissues from his pocket and put it down before Billie.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be. Take a breath. There’s no rush.”

  Billie dried her eyes and crushed the tissue into a ball. “Maggie was so kind to me. So the opposite of mom, you know? I kept waiting for something to change, to get in trouble or watch Maggie blow up like mom used to. She never did.”

  “She sounds sweet.”

  “She is,” Billie said, smiling at the thought. Then the smile faded and she grew quiet. She dabbed at her eyes again.

  He put his hand over hers. “What is it?”

  A couple at another table turned to look at them as Billie tried to stifle the tears. Mockler got up and touched her elbow. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The sky was dark and the air held the threat of rain as they left the coffee shop and wandered down the side street. The chill air braced them both and Billie apologized again. Then she stopped and he stopped too.

  “I used to wish she wouldn’t come back,” she confessed. “Those first few weeks after mom went missing and the police were there and people were searching the woods and the river. I didn’t want her to come back.”

  “Do you remember why?”

  “I wanted to stay with Maggie. I thought if mom comes back then I’d have to go live with her again but I didn’t want to. I liked it better being with Maggie. So I wished that she wouldn’t be found. God, what a horrible thing.”

  “You were a kid. And you were traumatized. Don’t beat yourself up over that.”

  Billie looked at her shoes. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”

  “Maybe it’s not my place to say but it sounds like you were better off with your aunt.”

  “We’ll never know,” she sighed. The confession had drained her, leaving her with a hollow feeling in her gut. She looked up from her shoes. “So what happens now?”

  “Road trip. I need to talk to the police in your hometown.”

  “Can’t you just call them?”

  “I have. They’re having trouble locating your mom’s case file in their archives. Showing up in person might hasten the search.”

  “Maggie’s place is just an hour outside of Poole,” Billie said. “You should visit her when you’re out there.”

  “I will. If you have her number, I’ll call ahead.” They doubled back toward John Street. Mockler dug out his car keys. “Do you want a lift somewhere?”

  Billie stopped. “I want to go.”

  “I can drop you anywhere.”

  “No. To Poole. I want to go with you.”

  His brow furrowed, like she had said something nonsensical. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “I don’t care. I want to help.”

  “I can’t involve you in a police investigation, Billie. You know that.”

  “Who would know? Is your partner going with you?” When the detective shook his head, she pressed the issue. “Then no one has to know. Let me come with you.”

  “Aside from the trouble we’d both be in, it might be painful for you. I don’t know what I’ll turn up. There’s a good chance I won’t find anything at all.”

  “So that’s a yes?” She smiled when she looked at him. “When are we leaving?”

  ~

  “You couldn’t find anyone else to do this?” grumbled the man behind the wheel. His name was Jameson. A well respected surgeon and stalwart pillar of his community. A man who carved his own path and found success through skill, determination and hard work. At the moment, he was playing chauffeur to a man wanted in four different countries for a string of crimes that ran from fraud to murder.

  “It ain’t so bad, is it, Jamie?” John Gantry smiled from the passenger seat of the Range Rover. “Not like you had anything better to do.”

  “I was hosting a party!” Jameson barked. “The faculty heads, all in my drawing room.”

  “The missus will keep them happy until you get back.” Gantry stuck a cigarette in his mouth and patted his pockets for his Zippo. “Peggy’s looking awful trim these days. She playing tennis again?”

  “Don’t you dare smoke in my car.”

  Gantry lit up. “I’m sure more than one of those stiffs in the staff wants to get his mitts in her knickers.”

  Jameson fumed, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. “Where the hell are we going anyway?”

  “Just keep driving. I’ll tell you when we’re there.” Gantry pointed at something ahead. “Left up here.”

  The driver turned off the main artery onto a side road that veered into the dark trees of the mountain. “Knowing you,” he said, “is like having herpes. You always show up when you’re least wanted.”

  Gantry laughed and blew smoke through the cab.

  “If I had known,” Jameson went on, “that one mistake would turn into a lifetime of servitude—”

  “It was more than one, Jamie,” Gantry interrupted. “And who was always there to bail you out? Hmm?”

  “If I had known how this would turn out, I’d have sooner made a deal with the devil.”

  “Who says you didn’t, mate?” Gantry flashed a diabolical grin, then he pointed at something up ahead. “Slow down. There. Pull up to those gates.”

  The Range Rover slowed and hove up before a gate of wrought iron. Dead vines were woven through the bars. Past the gates and up a long drive, there was a house. Dark, no lights in the windows.

  Jameson’s face fell. “Oh shit. Is that what I think it i
s?”

  Gantry swung out of the cab and looked up at the crumbling manor before them. “That’s it. The Murder House.”

  Jameson’s hands clung tighter to the wheel. “You’re not going in there, are you? What am I saying…”

  “I’ll be a few minutes. Keep the motor running.”

  “Screw that,” Jameson said. He put the gear in reverse. “Mission accomplished. See you later.”

  “Sit tight. I just wanna have a look around.”

  He closed the door on Jameson’s griping and passed through the gate and took in the expanse of the house. It must have been grand at one time, with its massive pillars and tall windows. Now it looked like the empty husk of something that had died long ago. The front entrance was boarded up but he found a side entrance that was open. The ground was trodden down and strands of police tape were trampled in the mud.

  Stepping over the threshold was like slipping into a cold bath. The air was heavy and oppressive and it made his guts curdle. The sheer misery was overwhelming. Without a doubt, the place was haunted. He toured through the atrium and the grand hall, stepping over the debris and trash accumulated over the past century before cutting straight for the cellar door. The door itself had fallen from its hinges and stood leaning against the wall. Gantry scrounged up the small flashlight he’d brought and shined the light down but the beam didn’t penetrate very far into the darkness.

  Few things scared John Gantry anymore. He had seen more nightmarish, demented things in a week than most did in a lifetime but every so often he came across something that made him hesitate. Whatever it was that was slithering around down there in the dark, this was one of them.

  “Rise and shine, arseholes!” he bellowed into the darkness. “The party’s here.”

  Something heard him. The bleeding sense of misery ratcheted up a notch while the temperature plunged even further. Down he went.

  Picking his way through the broken chairs and cast off furniture, he followed a well worn path through the cellar. The police had been all through here, some of their equipment left behind or forgotten in the dust. Stepping through a doorway he entered the larger chamber, his eyes immediately drawn to the open pit in the centre of the floor.

  He traced the circumference of the painted pentacle with the flashlight and knelt down to examine the glyphs. He clicked his teeth. “Someone’s been up to no good.” He looked into the pit where Billie said she had found the skeleton. The bones of her own father, no less. The pit was empty now, nothing but a little loose dirt inside.

  Rising to his feet, he threw the beam over the walls to read the runes painted there. Whoever had done this was into some serious shite. Some of the markings he could decipher, others were obscure or without reference that he could find. Some of it was utter gobshite, deranged doodles by brainless idiots. Not uncommon when it came to the black magic crowd. Most of them barely had a grasp of what they were doing.

  He went back to the five-pointed star on the floor, comparing it with the marks on the walls. Some of this was the real deal. Whoever this gang in the robes that Billie had described, someone with knowledge was guiding their hand. The pentacle, configured in this way, was a conjuring circle. Some bloody-minded fool was literally trying to raise hell.

  “You know I can feel you out there,” he bellowed without looking up. “In the dark, watching me. Don’t be shy. Step out and talk to me.”

  His voice echoed off the tiled walls of the cavernous chamber, bouncing back to him. Then a crack to his right, a dull knock to his left. A tinkling rattle, like broken glass, came from behind him.

  There was more than one. And they were all around him, down here in the dark where the weak flare of the flashlight barely cut through the pitch.

  Growing impatient, he lit a cigarette. “Come on. I don’t have all night. Step up.”

  More tinkling sounds. Sod this. Stepping back into the hallway, he picked a framed mirror from the junk and brought it back into the chamber. Settling it onto the brick ledge on the wall, he propped it there about eye level and stepped back. He saw his own reflection in the dusty glass and some of the space behind him. The darkness shifted about like smoke. Something was there, behind his back.

  A face appeared in the mirror. Horrid and pale, hovered behind him. It’s jaw opened slowly.

  “Tell me your name,” Gantry said.

  The face worked its jaw but no sound came out.

  “Your name,” Gantry barked.

  It’s voice was raspy and slow. “You shouldn’t be here,” it said.

  Gantry studied the dull apparition. “You’re not the one who did this. But you’re stuck here all the same, yeah?”

  “She won’t let us go,” the raspy voice said. “All of us.”

  “How many are here?”

  “Too many,” it hissed.

  “What about a bloke named Albee. Is he trapped in here too?”

  The face twitched. A flap of dessicated flesh fell from his cheek like burnt paper.

  Gantry blew smoke at the mirror. “You said she. Who is she? Tell me her name.”

  “She doesn’t like people talking about her.”

  “Tough titty. Give me her name.”

  The apparition kept twitching and more of its brittle flesh fell away from the skull. “She knows your name. She knows all about you, John Gantry.”

  “Is that right? And how does she know that?”

  “We all know,” it hissed. “Ellen told us.”

  Gantry whipped around fast. “What did you say?”

  The phantom was gone but it’s voice whispered to him from the darkness.

  “She’s here.”

  Jameson checked his watch for the tenth time. Dinner would already be underway at his house, Peggy moving the party along and wondering where the hell he’d vanished to. He didn’t have a clue what he was going to tell her when he got home. He wasn’t about to tell her about Gantry.

  He put his hand on the key in the ignition and considered just driving away. Leave the English bastard to whatever trouble he had walked into. His hand was turning the key when a noise from the house made him look up.

  Gantry, marching quickly down the driveway and through the gate. He slung into the passenger seat. “Go,” he said.

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  Gantry looked down at himself. His jacket was burnt and still smoldering in spots. His knuckles were bloodied and he could feel his lip swelling up. “Dust up with the owner. She doesn’t care for trespassers.”

  “What owner?”

  “Just go, for Christ’s sakes. Before she torches your motor.”

  Jameson turned the key and hit the pedal, the rear wheels spitting gravel behind it.

  Gantry rolled down the window and leaned out to take a last look at the Murder House before it disappeared behind the oak trees. In the upper window of the turret, a light glowed.

  Chapter 11

  THE BOOKS WERE NOT looking good and every time Jen sat down to balance them a knot twisted up in her guts. Was it possible to have an ulcer before one turned thirty? Since taking possession of the storefront, she had kept meticulous records of money coming in and going out and charted everything as best she could. October was her fifth month since opening the Doll House and she knew it was still early days yet. Five months simply wasn’t long enough to make any reasonable predictions but she couldn’t quash the feeling of dread every time she looked at the numbers.

  Her dad’s words rang in her head. “Hope is not a business plan.” It hadn’t been hers. She had planned out everything as best as she could and had saved up enough money over the last three years to run the business without a profit for eight months. The one thing she hadn’t foreseen in opening her own business was the toll it would take on her. Physically, emotionally and mentally, it drained every last reserve of strength that she had. She never stopped working, never ceased thinking about it no matter where she was or what she was doing. Adam was losing patience, frustrated at how her mind
was always on the business and never in the moment. Sometimes while talking to her, he would catch her eyes glazing over as she thought about work and he would spin outrageous lies into whatever tale he was telling just to see if she was listening. She could only apologize so many times before Adam would simply walk away, leaving her to stew alone over the numbers running through her head.

  Worst of all, it was killing her creatively. Part of the reason for opening the Doll House was to showcase her own designs. Jen Eckler originals. The awful truth was that she hadn’t designed anything new in three months. Fretting over the business was consuming every last corner of her mind and there was nothing left to be creative with. It was like a vicious circle. The more she worked to keep the shop afloat so that she could create her own designs, the more the business end was killing her creativity. How did this happen?

  The bell over the door jingled. She looked up to see Tammy enter.

  “Hey,” Jen said. She looked at the time. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Kaitlin?”

  Tammy tossed her bag onto the church pew and leaned on the counter. “I was. Kyle showed up. Kicked me out.”

  “Again? Is he blaming all of us now?”

  “I don’t know. I guess he’s still in shock.”

  Jen closed the laptop. “Does he think he’s the only one hurting right now?”

  “Easy, Jen,” Tammy said in a weary tone.

  “It’s not right. We didn’t have anything to do with why Kaitlin got hurt.”

  Tammy eased onto the bench. “You didn’t.”

  Jen bit her tongue. Sometimes her anger flared hot and she spoke too quickly. “How is she?”

  “The same.”

  Coming around the front counter, Jen began re-folding the garments on the low table in the middle of the shop floor. “They’ve been saying the same thing for a week. Can’t they do anything for her?”

  “I don’t know.” Tammy rolled her eyes and leaned back. “Why don’t you go tell them how to do their jobs?”

  Jen lowered the garment in her hand. “What’s the matter with you?”