Ghostwriting (10 page)

Katlin was obviously following the conversation, as she turned in her seated position to view Billie.

Billie backed up a step. ‘Yep. What's the story with all the tears? Isn't she happy to be going home?'

Katlin turned back to view Shannon, the smile still broad on her face.

‘I believe she is crying tears of joy, Bill —'

A knock on the door startled Shannon and Billie witless for a second and Katlin vanished. Her path to Shannon now clear, Billie raced down to the landing to join her outside Shannon's room. The knocking repeated and then just kept going.

‘Oh shit,' Shannon mumbled, fearing they had stirred up old Heartley's ghost too. ‘This has never happened before … the knocking always stopped after two rounds.'

‘But now there's no spook to answer the door and make the other spook go away,' Billie pointed out, just as horrified by the thought of confronting the murdering old bastard.

‘I'll go,' Shannon offered, but Billie pulled her back.

‘You can't even bear to glimpse a buried skull,' Billie chided. ‘I'll go.' She turned on the foyer light, using the switch which was on the wall halfway down the stairs. This seemed to break the ghostly tension a little and Billie charged toward the door, determined to kick Heartley's head in. Through the keyhole she saw no one and the knocking had ceased. She unbolted the locks and opened the door slowly, preparing for Heartley's ghost to burst in.
She found Simon on the ground, searching through his bag. ‘Simon! You scared the shit out of us.'

‘Sorry, darling heart,' he replied, with a large apologetic smile, ‘but I seem to have misplaced my keys.'

The girls breathed a sigh of relief, for they were very glad to see him.

 

Simon had undergone an unexpected split with the new man in his life and had abandoned his travel plans and returned home. He was delighted when he heard about what had been going on; a mysterious development in the history of Heartley B&B that he could document.

‘I had no idea. Well done, ladies,' Simon exclaimed, rising from the kitchen table to get himself another coffee — the girls were both drinking juice. ‘You have my unreserved blessing to return Katlin to Ireland. I would consider it a great service to this house … in fact, I'll even shout you both a business class airfare to Ireland. Sound fair?'

Shannon's jaw nearly hit the ground. She was speechless. Billie, however, was more sceptical. ‘He's just looking for a polite way of getting his house back,' she commented to Shannon and then looked at Simon. ‘I would have left for a lot less … but I'll take the trip thanks, babe.'

‘I do feel bad about doing you two out of a holiday,' Simon confessed to Shannon, who shook
her head to assure him that there were no hard feelings. ‘Although it doesn't sound like you've been doing too much relaxing here.'

‘You said it!' Billie emphasised as she rose from the table. ‘I'm just going to have a swim and then Simon can give me a hand to get Katlin out of the ground.'

Simon screwed up his nose, not overly thrilled at the suggestion.

‘Ah, don't be such a girl.' She whacked him on the back on her way past and nearly winded the poor fellow.

‘If only I had her balls,' he sighed with envy.

5. Drying Out

Billie left her towel on a chair and approached the pool. Shannon was right about this glasshouse — light and airy as it was, it did feel distinctly creepy this morning. Perhaps the revelation of two deaths occurring in the pool had something to do with Billie's newfound apprehension of the place.

On the verge of diving into the warm, inviting water, Billie's skin began to prickle with pins and needles induced by fear, not cold.

‘I don't think so.' Billie stepped back from the edge, deciding to forgo her swim today. Every fibre of her being was warning her away from the water and it wasn't like her to be aware of her intuitive voice.

‘Old man Heartley can just kiss my fucking arse!' Billie's words from the previous night came back to haunt her, as she copped a hard shove to the upper body and found herself headed for deep water.

 

‘I have a couple of friends who are quite psychic and they claimed that the house was definitely haunted,' Simon explained, while he and Shannon walked down to the pool-house. They had decided to join Billie for a swim before executing their appalling chore. ‘Still, I've never been aware of the disturbances you have described … but then, I've never been sober for very long either.'

They could hear Billie splashing around as they neared the end of the pathway that led to the glassed-in pool.

‘Jeez, Billie sounds like she's really getting serious about her swim.' Simon opened the door and stood back allowing Shannon to enter first.

She strolled into the pool-house ahead of him. ‘Holy shit, Simon!' Shannon found herself racing to the far end of the pool where Billie was struggling to keep her head above water. Due to all her surfing Shannon was a fairly powerful swimmer, but she stripped off her top layers of clothing to stop them from dragging her down.

Simon hit the water before Shannon did, and grabbing hold of Billie he was surprised to find some invisible force pulling her body down. ‘It's like she's
weighted. I can't get her to stay afloat,' he spluttered, appealing to Shannon, who dived straight in.

She surfaced and grabbed one of Billie's arms. ‘Drag her to the shallow water,' she ordered, having determined the best course of action.

‘Let go, you murdering prick,' Billie spluttered out as she was rolled on to her back and stretched between her friends and her unseen foe.

‘Help us, Billie,' Shannon ordered, swallowing water as she heaved Billie's weight behind her and struggled to find the floor of the pool.

‘I'm trying, goddamn it,' Billie retorted sharply, fed up with playing games. ‘Let me go Heartley, you fuck, or I will dig up your bones and feed them to a pack of rabid dogs!' she yelled defiantly at the water that threatened to suck her under.

Shannon and Simon suddenly found themselves surging forward. Moments later they were in the shallows, panting for breath and spitting out water.

‘Are you okay?' Shannon turned her attention to Billie, now that she had her breath back.

‘A fucking ghost just tried to kill me!' Billie rapidly waded to the end of the pool and climbed out. Simon and Shannon decided to do likewise. Billie didn't sidetrack to get her towel. She just headed straight for the door.

‘Where are you going, Bill?' Shannon raised herself out of the water and stood to wait for Simon.

‘The fucker pushed me in …' Billie turned back to advise them not to hang about, but did not waver from her course. ‘If Heartley thinks he can intimidate me into leaving Katlin in the ground, he's in for a rude shock!' She shouted angrily into the glasshouse: ‘You're dealing with twenty-first century women now, prick!' She slammed the door on her way out and stormed off up the garden path.

‘She is really pissed,' Simon commented, as he and Shannon made haste to put some distance between themselves and the pool-house.

 

Billie was like a woman possessed following the pool incident; now the vendetta was personal. She worked relentlessly to dig Katlin's bones out of the ground and never flinched once from the gruesome chore.

The skeleton itself was pretty badly busted up, having been pushed into the hole in the ground feet first. Still, the threesome gradually laid out the fragments of Katlin's remains beside the dig and kept searching until every little bone had been accounted for — if there was one thing Billie was intimately familiar with, it was human anatomy. The disjointed state of the skeleton was fortunate in so far as it all packed neatly into a suitcase.

Nobody ate very much at dinner that night, but Simon polished off a whole bottle of red wine on his own. Billie was neither drinking nor smoking, and nor would she until their mission was over.

‘What are you going to tell customs if they ask to check your bags?' Simon queried, fearful for the girls.

‘I've thought about that.' Shannon smiled for the first time since the pool incident this morning and dispersed a little of the gloom that had descended on them all. ‘I'm going to type up a fake order form on the film company letterhead that I've got lying around in my editing suite.'

‘You're going to tell them it's a prop for a film?' Simon gaped at the idea, finding it so outrageous that it just might work.

‘Works for me, babe.' Billie gave her hippie mate a wink. ‘But if they pull us up, I don't know you,' she added and then laughed at the look of desertion on Shannon's face. ‘Oh, as if?' Billie was offended that her friend would take the joke to heart. ‘You know I'd punch out the guards while you do a runner with the bones.'

Shannon laughed, as this was more like the truth. ‘You know, now I think about it, this is really exciting.'

Billie swallowed down another vegetable juice and slammed the glass down on the table. ‘Yep! I've never felt so alive in my whole goddamn life!' Of course, Billie was very liberal with the ‘f' word in this instance.

‘Well, getting Katlin back to her lover is one thing,' Simon sighed, ‘but what am I going to do
about the ghost in my pool? I'm sure as hell never going in there again.' He went white with fear. ‘What if it comes up to the house?'

‘We've never encountered him in the house.' Shannon was quick with the comforting thought.

‘If he comes up here I'll kick his butt, just like I did this morning,' Billie assured him, rubbing her fingers through her short bleached hairdo.

‘But what am I going to do when you leave?' Simon was stressing out. ‘I could be murdered here and no one would be the wiser.'

‘Then come with us?' Shannon proffered. ‘The Irish are experts on ghosts. I'm sure someone there can give us some good advice on how to be rid of one.'

The colour returned to Simon's face and he stood. ‘Let's do it.'

All the lights in the house began to flicker in unison. The temperature in the room plummeted, and all present could see the vapour of their breath.

Billie reached for her bag. ‘Keys, wallet and sunglasses, guys … everything else we can pick up on the way.'

‘Right you are,' Simon agreed, launching himself into the search for said items, which were scattered around the kitchen.

Shannon crammed the album pertaining to the house's history in her large pouch-like bag, and reached for the handle of the suitcase containing Katlin's bones.

‘I'll take that.' Billie took the suitcase in hand. ‘The only way that Heartley gets this bag from me is if he pries it from my cold, dead fingers.'

All the doors in the house began opening and slamming closed in rapid motion, the noise of which was deafening.

‘Jesus Christ!' Simon cried, shoving his wallet in the back pocket of his filthy jeans as he scampered back toward the girls.

‘Ah! The decaying bastard is full of piss and wind.' Billie waved off the display as if it were nothing and headed for the back door with the suitcase. When she tried to exit, all the doors slammed closed and the back door refused to open.

‘F — k it!' Billie kicked the stubborn item, frustrated that her brute strength would not open it.

Shannon went for a window, but once unlocked it began crashing up and down like a guillotine.

‘Here …' Simon grabbed a small coffee table and swinging two of the legs outside he used the table and the other two legs to prop up the window which continued to pound down, though unable to break their brace. ‘Quick, let's go!' He helped Shannon out of the window. Billie clambered out on her own, dragging the suitcase with her.

No sooner had Simon jumped out on to the lawn than the tabletop split in two and one fragment came crashing down on top of him.

Both girls rushed to his side.

‘Simon, are you okay?' Billie slapped him around the cheeks, but failed to raise any coherent response from the man beyond an, ‘Ahhhh?'

As kitchen items began flying out the window at them, Shannon and Billie were forced to move.

‘Take the bag.' Billie handed Katlin's remains over to Shannon, and scooping Simon over her shoulder, Billie headed for the car.

Katlin's case and Simon got thrown in the back seat. Billie jumped into the driver's seat, eager to get the car started, as the sky above rumbled, threatening rain.

‘Hurry, Billie,' Shannon urged from the passenger seat, having never been so scared in all her born days. ‘I have a bad feeling —'

‘Yeah, me too,' Billie said, hating to admit it. She turned the key in the ignition. ‘No, no!' Billie tried to start it several times and slammed the wheel in frustration. ‘It always starts, first time, every time!' In the rear vision mirror she spied old Heartley sitting in the back seat, smiling back at her. ‘F — k! Heartley's in the car.'

Shannon turned and looked in the back seat, but saw nothing; she looked back at Billie, who was glaring into the rear vision mirror. ‘What's he doing?'

‘The fuckwit is blowing me kisses.' Billie, infuriated and ever more inspired, grabbed her bag and got out of the car.

Shannon followed suit. She pulled her mobile phone from her bag and checked it for a signal. ‘Shit!' It was promptly returned to her bag. ‘Now what?'

‘Are you game to go back in the house?' Billie questioned, as she spotted the wheelbarrow and moved to fetch it.

‘Absolutely not.' Shannon was grateful that Billie was not seriously entertaining that notion either.

Once Simon was in the barrow, Shannon attempted to pull Katlin's suitcase from the back seat, but it stuck fast. ‘Billie, I think Heartley's sitting on it.' When Billie grabbed hold as well, the suitcase gave a little, but it took considerable heaving to free the bag from the car and when it did come away, the force sent Shannon and Billie toppling backwards to the ground.