southern ghost hunters 02 - skeleton in the closet (9 page)

"More like one hundred and fifty," I said, "but let's stay on topic."

"This one here is a real war hero," he said, jabbing a thumb at the young soldier who couldn't have been older than his late teens, or late 170s, depending on how you looked at it. "Lost his head taking out the Yankee cannon position."

The corporal gave an embarrassed shrug. "I put it back on." He touched a hand to the longish dark hair curling at his neck, as if to make sure his head stayed put.

"Thank you for your service," I said. I appreciated it. I did. "One of the volunteers for our Cannonball in the Wall event was killed last night. A woman named Darla. She died right over there." I pointed to the place where I'd found the body. The display table had faded away and in its place, I saw flickering streaks of white and yellow light shining up from the floor. "Oh, wow."

"Would you look at that?" The corporal tossed his cards down and joined me, earning a collective
arggh
from the group behind us. "Soul traces. She
is
new." He cleared his throat and seemed embarrassed. "Not that I didn't take you on your good word." He edged closer to the death scene. "Sometimes, it's hard to focus on anything outside the game."

"You gonna play or what, Owens?" the dealer groused.

He waved them off. "I fold."

"Thank you," I said. I'd needed someone like him to care.

"My pleasure," he said, before he averted his eyes and took a sudden interest in the floor.

Pops of red pierced the white and yellow soul traces. "What are those?" I asked.

"I'm afraid it means your friend Darla did not die easy," he said, a touch of sadness in his voice. "It's most likely a crime of passion. See the purple?" He pointed to the floor. It oozed over the hardwood like blood. "She passed away there on the floor or it wouldn't cling like that."

"Oh," I said, moving to take a closer look.

"Don't touch it," he said. "It'll give you a blistering shock." 

I'd take his word for it. "You tried it?"

"Only once," he said with a shudder.

"What are the shadows?" They swirled like smoke, just out of reach of the light. 

"Anger. Hers, from the look of it. See how it mingles with the light? Poor girl didn't want to go."

Amazing.

I turned to him. "So you can actually look at a place where someone died and learn things about how it happened?" The implications were enormous. I could use an assistant like that. 

"You can do it as well," he said, as if my excitement embarrassed him. "If it's a recent death."

I didn't know if I wanted the responsibility. Although it didn't seem as if I had a choice.

I turned back to the group on the floor. "Did any of you see what happened to the woman who died?"

The one-eyed soldier furrowed his brows. "I think we were at that sock hop last night." 

"We haven't done that since the '50s," Owens corrected. 

"I almost feel bad about locking the beast in the basement now," Stoutmeyer said. "Almost."

He and the one-eyed soldier laughed. 

"You have animals in here?" I asked, a little taken aback. 

Owens cringed. "No. He died in the battle, same as us, but he's damaged and angry. He's banished to the basement most of the time." The baby-faced corporal watched the flickering streaks of white and yellow light, Darla's soul traces. "The beast insisted he saw a man use a bayonet on a lady," he said. "She had a discovery that would change everything. We told him he was wallpapered."

"What?" I asked, not catching the slang.

"Wouldn't put it past a Yankee," Stoutmeyer added.

"Now I wonder," Corporal Owens mused.

"He might have killed her himself," the man with the bandaged eye insisted. "I hear he can touch things in the mortal plane."

I exchanged a glance with Frankie. That would be one powerful ghost indeed.

"What else you know, Gregson?" Frankie asked.

The ghost scowled and kept his cards to his chest.

"You have any idea where this beast person is?" I prodded. I really needed to talk with him.

Gregson's expression deepened to one of disgust. "A lady like you shouldn't even look at an animal like that." He pointed to the bloody bandage above his eye. He's not right in the head."

"The man is evil," Stoutmeyer declared. "If you even want to call that
thing
a man. He's banished to the cellar for a reason."

Lovely.

I hoped he wasn't a poltergeist. I'd dealt with that particular manifestation before, and it had scared the living daylights out of me. 

"Down below?" I asked, just to be sure. The basement of the library housed rare books as well as duplicates that had been taken out of circulation. I'd been once during a library tour. Otherwise, the area was off-limits to nonemployees.

The men nodded, appearing distinctly uncomfortable. 

Right. "I'll check it out." I glanced at my watch. Only fifteen minutes left. If I could secure just one lead, one clue, it would go a long way to helping the police investigate. And we'd get Marshall off my back. 

At least I knew where I was going. The entrance to the stacks was located in the hall behind the circulation desk. 

I didn't even look at Frankie as I left. Either he'd join me or he wouldn't. I couldn't waste time worrying about it. I walked down the center aisle of the hospital. The moans of the sick grew louder. 

I opened the pass-through on the desk and slipped behind it, refusing to show my relief when Frankie glided straight through the solid mahogany on my right.

"Don't say anything," he grumbled, pulling out a silver revolver. He opened it up, checking the bullets.

"You can't shoot him," Owens said from behind us. 

"We've tried," Gregson added.

 I turned to see all three men hovering behind us. 

"Don't go down there," Stoutmeyer warned. "I'm serious, Frankie. And if you do, for God's sake, don't take the lady."

Unfortunately, I was the one who needed to go.

"We'll be fine," I said, not quite sure if I was reassuring them or giving a pep talk to Frankie and myself. 

We passed through the door in the back marked "Employees Only."

"This isn't my idea of a good time," Frankie reminded me.

"Noted," I said, flipping on the lights to the stark corridor. Straight across stood the six-paneled oak door that led to the stacks.

It had been spooky enough on the library tour. I opened it wide, and as I felt the cold air streaming from the narrow staircase, I fought the urge to run. I'd never been able to understand before why I felt so uncomfortable in the stacks, but now I knew. The ghost didn't want anyone down there.

Now or never. I pulled at the string to illuminate the bare bulb above my head.

"It's a little medieval, don't you think?" Frankie asked, hesitating on the landing. He felt it, too.

"According to Melody, they don't go here much," I said. "Most patrons want the newer books and the periodicals." No doubt the librarians avoided the place when they could.

We began our descent.

I ran a hand over the rough-cut gray stone wall on my right and felt the coldness of going underground.

This had been the coal pit, back when they needed it to heat the building. Melody had talked about renovation plans, but those had been shelved for lack of funds.

I reached up for another lightbulb string and froze at the sound of metal groaning against concrete below. I jumped when I heard glass shatter.

"Somebody's down there all right," Frankie said under his breath.

As if we hadn't known.

I pulled on the light. I didn't need it to see, but it made me feel better all the same.

Frankie cocked his gun.

"Put that thing away," I murmured. "It won't work." Stoutmeyer said so.

"Doesn't hurt to try," Frankie mused.

Or it might just make the ghost angry. "We have to let him know we mean him no harm."

Frankie let out a huff. "Speak for yourself."

There were no more lights on the stairs, and the one I'd turned on only illuminated a pool of gray at the bottom. After that, blackness.

With each step, the air grew chillier. Goose bumps raced up my arms as I fumbled for a light switch at the bottom. Something to escape the penetrating emptiness and despair.

This one didn't work. My eyes flickered up and there, in the ghostly silver light of the other side, I could see why. The bulb had been obliterated.  

It seemed the ghost had been counting on a regular intruder instead of me. And what I saw in the underground room surprised me. Rows upon rows of metal bookshelves penetrated the ethereal mist.

"I'm seeing what's really here," I said, trying to process it. Every other time, when Frankie had let me view the other side, I'd witnessed the ghost's view of things.

"This is how he sees it," Frankie said, as if no other explanation mattered.

"Okay." I pressed forward. So we had a solitary, rampageous, possibly murderous ghost who lived in the stacks and saw…books. 

I ran my hand along the shelves on either side of me. The books felt solid, real. 

As we neared the end of the row, I caught a flicker of light around the corner.

Frankie stiffened. "It's him."

I kept walking. I turned the corner, ready for anything, when I was blasted by a furious wind. The ghost flew at me, a terrifying vision of sharp teeth and snapping jaws. It wasn't even human.

Chapter Six

I
SCREAMED
AND
dodged behind the bookcases. The ghost streaked past, a wall of terror and pain and rage.

It would have slammed right into me.

Obviously, this was not a talking ghost. This was an attacking one, and it was very, very angry. 

I braced myself against a row of hardbacks, my heart threatening to beat clean out of my chest. 

"Ha," Frankie's disembodied voice said against my ear, the shock of it jolting my last frayed nerve. "Stoutmeyer was right. This one's more animal than human."

It was an easy thing to say—even simpler to dismiss a person without giving them a chance. I had to admit I was tempted to go along with the group's view after what I'd just seen. 

Except that Stoutmeyer had said he'd talked to it.

Crazy, rampaging, beastly ghosts didn't stop to chat, did they?

I crept closer to the edge of the bookshelf once more, wondering if I had the courage to peek around the corner.

This ghost had witnessed Darla's murder. He'd been aware for long enough to notice and care about what happened in the living world. That was more than we could say for the poker-playing ghosts or the nurse I'd met.

"Aw, no," Frankie grumbled as I neared the aisle. "Whatever you're thinking, stop right now."

"Shh…" I whispered. I could do this. I could step back out into that aisle. "He's kind of like you."

"Me?" Frankie snorted. "You think he's like me? You're smoked."

I stepped around the corner and saw the apparition straight ahead. It had taken on human form this time, which I took as a positive. The air crackled with animosity and frustrated energy. It pinched at my skin and made my joints ache.

The man glowed fuzzy at the edges, but I could see enough to discern that he wore dark pants and a simple shirt with buttons and a collar. He'd settled himself in an old library chair and curled inward around…a book.

He held a hardback with a gold cover and white lettering. I could even make out some red accents on the letters. And since the book had color, I'd venture to say it was a real volume from the library.

Which meant Stoutmeyer was right. This ghost could interact with physical objects. He was powerful indeed.

The apparition raised his head, glaring at me through empty eye sockets. His jaw grew longer before my eyes, his teeth pointed. "Leave," he hissed, his voice echoing in the isolated old coal room.

A line of sweat tickled my back, even though the rest of me burned. Every cell in my body screamed to run. Run! And never look back.

He drew the book to his chest and snarled.

The ghost was reading
Interview with the Vampire
.

"I love that book," I blurted out. My voice sounded squeaky, shrill. More than a little desperate. "Have you read the whole story? I did. Five times. My roommate in college gave it to me and I went so crazy for it I skipped class for a week and read the entire series straight through." 

He glared at me, as if ready to strike. His nostrils flared with breaths he no longer needed to take. He jerked out of his chair and I fought back a yelp.

"I've read it twenty times." He said it like a challenge while holding the book to his chest. 

"Wow." He sure had a lot of time on his hands. Wait. Of course he did. "Did you know they made it into a movie?"

He rumbled low in his throat. "Movies scare me."

"Sure," I said automatically, my mind frantically spinning to keep this conversation going, searching for some way to connect. "Some of the casting choices frightened a lot of us, but Tom Cruise was actually good in it."

The ghost came into clearer focus and I could see he didn't quite know what to make of me, either. 

"Why are you…speaking with me?" he asked, choosing his words carefully, as if he wasn't quite accustomed to friendly intruders wandering down into his lair and rambling on at the mouth.

"I can see ghosts," I explained, "which is really good because last night—"

He drifted closer. "You realize I'm a Yankee."

Oh. Well, no. "I hadn't noticed." 

He stopped. "That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in a hundred and fifty years."

Poor thing. He must have been banished down here for a long time. Of course he had. The ghosts upstairs said he'd also died in the Battle of Sugarland. It seemed they'd kept to their separate sides, even in death. It hurt me to think of him isolated like that.

"Your side was in the right," I told him. It needed saying. "Maybe the ghosts upstairs just didn't want to see Sugarland burn." It was hardly an excuse. Still, war was ugly, and it seemed these ghosts had been unable to let go of the pain from the fight.