Ghost Trackers (25 page)

Drew’s eyes narrowed. “You did this to her, didn’t you?”

He executed a mocking bow. “Guilty as charged.”

“How?” Drew demanded. “Did you spike her drink with some sort of psychotropic drug?”

He laughed. “Nothing so crude! You don’t need to use drugs when you have mojo, and I’ve got some
serious
mojo, my friend.”

Although Sherri was no longer screaming, she continued to struggle. Trevor still fought to hold on to her as he turned his attention to Greg. “Are you saying you did this
psychically
?”

His smile held a cold, cruel edge. “You’re the paranormal investigator, Trevor. You tell me.”

Julie was steady once more, so Amber let go of her and stepped to Drew’s side, keeping her gaze fixed on Greg.

“You were there with us the night the Lowry House burned down,” she said. “And something happened to you, something that changed you. Gave you powers. You caused the hallucinations we experienced, and you killed Sean and Jerry.” She wasn’t sure how she was aware of all this, but she knew it was true.

Drew stepped forward, his hands balled into
fists at his sides. She hoped he wouldn’t take a swing at Greg. If he possessed the power to kill with his thoughts, what could fists do against him?

“Whatever you’re doing to Sherri, stop it now, before she suffers any permanent damage,” Drew said.

Greg’s tone was one of amusement, but his gaze was devoid of emotion as he spoke. “Why should I? Because it’s
wrong
to hurt people? Or maybe because you’re asking me as a favor since we used to be such
good
friends in high school? Let me tell you how this is going to play out. Sherri is going to stay trapped in her private little nightmare until her heart explodes, and you and Trevor are going to watch it happen, knowing that there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Unless, of course, you manage to think of something clever in the next few minutes.”

Trevor’s face clouded over with anger, and Amber knew that if he hadn’t been restraining Sherri, he’d probably have attacked Greg. From the way Drew’s jaw muscles bunched, she knew he felt the same way but was fighting to maintain control of his emotions. Most likely, he feared that any move he might make against Greg would only provoke him into doing something worse. Then she realized something.

“You didn’t say anything about me.”

Greg turned to her, still smiling. “That’s because you’re not going to be staying. It’s getting
a bit stuffy in here, and I thought you might like to come with me and get a little fresh air.”

He gestured, and she found herself walking toward him. She didn’t want to, but while she tried to stop herself, her body moved of its own accord until she was standing next to him.

Drew took a step forward, but Greg held up a warning finger and waggled it from side to side.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you—not unless you want Amber to die of a brain aneurysm before you can take another step.”

Drew stopped and glared at Greg, then looked at her, his gaze softening, and she saw the frustration mingled with regret in his eyes. She wanted to tell him that it was OK, that she’d be all right, but she couldn’t speak. Greg slipped an arm around her waist, and despite his control over her body, she shuddered at his touch. If he noticed or cared, he didn’t remark on it.

Sherri’s exertions had become less energetic, and she was struggling to breathe.

“We have to do something!” Trevor said. “I don’t think she can last much longer!”

“Well, this has been fun,” Greg said, “but Amber and I should be going. And since I want to end the evening on a high note . . .” He gestured, and everyone else in the hall began screaming. Some clapped their hands to their heads, while others ran around or attacked those standing closest to them.

Greg surveyed the chaos he’d created with satisfaction. He then turned back to Drew and Trevor, and although he didn’t raise his voice, somehow he had no trouble being heard over the terrified screams that filled the hall.

“You might find a way to break Sherri’s trance before her heart gives out, but good luck saving everyone else.” His lips drew away from his teeth in an expression that bore only the faintest resemblance to a smile. “Come along, Amber.”

He started walking toward the door, his arm still curled around her waist, and she went with him, her body moving as if she were a puppet and he the puppeteer. The screams of the reunion attendees followed them as they left the hall, and she wanted to glance back at Drew one more time, but her body refused to cooperate.

She felt something warm and wet sliding down her cheeks and realized she was crying.

Drew and Trevor
stood in the midst of madness. Their former classmates, as well as the DJ, were lost in whatever nightmarish scenarios were playing out within their minds, transforming the hotel ballroom into a bedlam. People stood shrieking at the tops of their lungs, while others punched, kicked, and bit anyone who came too near. Still others pounded their heads against the floor, walls, or tables, as if attempting to drive out the horrible images that had invaded their heads. Some just sat or lay on the floor, weeping, and Drew found their despair heartbreaking.

Members of the hotel staff arrived, undoubtedly drawn by the racket, but instead of entering, they stood in the doorway, gaping in shock. He understood their reaction. None of them was trained to deal with a crisis of this magnitude, and they had no idea how to react or what was expected of them. Soon one of them would think to call 911, and police and EMTs would arrive—but not in time to help. He didn’t know how long it would take for the terror generated by the hallucinations
to cause cardiac arrest—he assumed that the time would vary somewhat from one individual to another—but he doubted that he and Trevor had more than a couple of minutes before people started dropping dead around them. They couldn’t afford to wait for the EMTs to get there.

“What can we do?” Trevor had to shout to be heard over the noise of the crowd.

While Drew specialized in working with patients who’d suffered severe trauma, he had no experience in helping people who were in the process of being traumatized, let alone people who were in the grip of some sort of psychically generated illusions. Hell, he could barely bring himself to believe such a thing was possible. But if he was going to have any chance of saving these people’s lives, he had to put aside his doubts.

And as difficult as it was, he also had to put aside his concern for Amber. It had taken every ounce of willpower he had not to interfere as Greg left with her, and he’d only been able to do it because he’d feared that Greg would make good on his threat to use his abilities to hurt her. He told himself that she was safe, that if Greg had wanted to harm her, he’d have done so already, and he’d have done it in front of Drew and Trevor. But just because Greg hadn’t harmed her physically didn’t mean he didn’t intend to hurt her in other ways,
and with his abilities, he could put her through the tortures of the damned simply by manipulating her mind. And if, as it had appeared, Greg was also able to control her body, there were other things he could do to her or force her to do against her will. Bad things . . .

Stop it!
he told himself. This was what Greg wanted, to keep him confused and distracted while people died around him. And he refused to let that happen.

“We need to shock them somehow,” he shouted to Trevor. “Jolt them out of their hallucinatory state.”

“What, you mean, like, slap them or something? No way we could smack all of them in time. We could turn the music back on and crank it all the way up.”

He shook his head. “We need a sudden, strong jolt, and it needs to be something that will affect everyone at once.” A thought came to him. “Didn’t you say you quit smoking recently?”

“A couple weeks ago, why?”

If Trevor was like most people trying to quit . . . “You still carry your lighter?”

Trevor frowned. “Yeah, but I don’t use it.”

He felt a flicker of hope. “Get it out!” Without waiting for Trevor to respond, he rushed to the cash bar and grabbed the first bottle of booze he could get his hands on, Bacardi, as it turned out. As he headed back to Trevor, a man came at him—someone
he didn’t recognize from high school, and he wondered if it was someone’s spouse—eyes wide with terror, teeth bared, hands outstretched as if he intended to fasten them around his neck. Before he could reach him, Trevor rushed forward, slammed into his side, and sent him sprawling. The man fell, then sprang to his feet, but instead of renewing his attack, his expression went slack, and the front of his pants darkened as his bladder emptied.

Drew forced himself to look away, and he ran to the nearest table and splashed Bacardi onto the tablecloth. “Light it up!” he told Trevor.

“Are you nuts? That—” Trevor broke off, grinning. “That’s brilliant!”

He flicked on his lighter and touched the flame to a sodden patch of cloth. It caught fire at once, and the flames spread. He didn’t stand and watch; he ran to another table, splashed alcohol onto it, then moved on to the next. Trevor followed, igniting tablecloths as they went.

He feared that some of the people might end up stumbling into one of the fires in their delusionary state, but with any luck . . .

The heat and smoke from the table fires activated the room’s sprinkler system. Streams of freezing cold water jetted down from the ceiling, dousing the flames and, more important, soaking everyone in the room, Trevor and him included.

As if a psychic switch had been thrown some-where,
the screaming cut off, and everyone stopped moving. They stood, sat, or lay motionless for several moments while water rained down on them, and then they began to look around in confusion. Drew wasn’t certain, but at a quick glance, it appeared that everyone was still alive. He saw Sherri Wackler over in one corner, looking as dazed as everyone else but otherwise unharmed.

Trevor laughed and clapped him on the back. “Hot damn! We did it!”

He smiled. “Looks that way.” He turned to Trevor and pointed at the lighter still gripped in his friend’s hand. “Good thing old habits die hard.”

Trevor laughed again. “Guess so.”

But the triumph of the moment faded, and he took hold of Trevor’s arm and started pulling him toward the door. “C’mon, we need to get out of here before the police arrive.”

“We’re going to go get Amber, aren’t we?” Trevor said.

He nodded. “And I think I know where Greg’s taken her.”

Still shivering and
soaked from the sprinklers, they got into Trevor’s Prius and were backing out of its parking space as the emergency crews arrived. The police and EMTs parked in front of the hotel’s main entrance, while Drew and Trevor pulled out onto the street unnoticed.

“At least this time, the EMTs won’t find any dead bodies waiting for them,” Drew said.

“I’m just glad we got out of there before the cops showed up,” Trevor said. “They’d want to question us for sure, and who knows how long it would be before they released us? The sooner we get to Amber, the better.” He turned the heater on full blast.

“Head for the Lowry House,” Drew said. “That’s where Greg will take her.”

Trevor stepped on the gas, and they zoomed down the suburban streets at highway speeds.

“You do remember the house burned down a decade and a half ago, right?”

“The physical building doesn’t matter so much as the symbolism of it,” Drew insisted. “Greg fed us hallucinations of the Lowry House—or at least its location—at different times in its history. For whatever reason, that place is important to him, and that’s where he wants us to go.”

Ash Creek wasn’t all that large, but the rec center was on the other side of town from the hotel, and even as fast as Trevor was driving, Drew knew it would take several minutes for them to get there. He knew that Amber would have no way of knowing it, but he mentally urged her to hang on, they were coming as fast as they could.

“Are you sure that’s where he’ll take her?” Trevor asked. Despite his words, he turned left on
the next street and started heading in the direction of the rec center. “And even if that is where he’s gone, if he has the ability to manipulate people’s minds, he could make it so that we couldn’t see him even if we were looking straight at him. Hell, he could be sitting with Amber in the backseat, and we might never know it.”

“I thought of that,” Drew said, resisting the urge to turn around and check the back. “But if Greg wanted to hide from us, why would he have manipulated her into convincing us to come to the reunion in the first place, and why would he toy with us the way he has? Sending hallucinations, killing two men in front of us, attempting to kill an entire roomful of people and challenging us to save them. He chose to reveal himself to us and let us see the kind of power he wields. It’s all part of an elaborate game he’s playing. It’s why he took Amber. Well, one of the reasons,” he amended. “He wants us to chase him, as if he’s a child playing a game of keep-away.”

“But why?” Trevor asked. “What could he want with us?”

He shrugged. “Payback, maybe. We may have let him hang out with us in high school, but we never accepted him as a friend, at least not a close one.”

“And he had a thing for Amber,” Trevor added, “which means he’s jealous of the two of you.”

“There is no two of us,” Drew said. “We’re
just . . .” He trailed off when Trevor gave him a look. “All right. Maybe he
is
jealous. But the most important reason is likely something we don’t remember. He was with us that night in the Lowry House, and something happened to him, something that he blames us for.” He turned to look at Trevor. “The paranormal is your realm of expertise. Where do you think he got his powers from?”

Trevor thought for a moment before answering. “I suppose it’s possible that he’s been possessed.”

“You mean by a demon?” He couldn’t believe he was suggesting such a thing, but then, before this weekend, he hadn’t believed in psychic abilities, either, and he’d come to accept that Greg had them. He wondered how many more impossible things he’d come to believe before the night was over.