The Ghoul Next Door (15 page)

I showed the slip of paper to Heath, who plugged it into his phone’s navigation app and said, “Thanks, Gil. It should take us about twenty minutes or so to get there.”

We drove our way through Boston’s winding streets, and I could see Heath focusing hard on the navigation app on his phone. Boston’s roadways can be confusing even to the locals. I managed to point him in the right direction a couple of times when he almost took a wrong turn at a rotary, but eventually we found our way to a street called Stoughton, and about midway down we found Luke’s old home.

Even from our spot across the street the place looked creepy. “Yikes,” Heath said as he put my car into park. “Why would anybody want to rent that place?”

The exterior of the home was wooden shingles stained so dark they were almost black. The shutters were an ugly muddy color and the front door was once red, but was now faded to an ugly pink. The windows were coated in grime and probably full of drafts, while the lawn was still brown and scrubby, and some bushes along the front appeared to be hanging on to life by a thread. Nothing about the place was either inviting or appealing.

“Maybe it was cheap,” I said, squinting at the place with distaste.

“It’d have to be,” Heath said. “And even if it was free, I wouldn’t live there.”

I knew what he meant. The house gave off a bad vibe. As Heath and I were waiting on Gil to call back, we saw a silver Honda pull up and park right in front of the house. About ten seconds later, a white pickup parked behind the Honda and the occupants of both vehicles got out together.

Exiting the pickup was a reedy-looking man I put in his late sixties to early seventies. He had silver hair and nondescript features. The owner of the Honda was a woman I recognized. Immediately I scrunched down in my seat. “You know her?” Heath asked me, noticing right away that I was afraid of being spotted.

“Yep. And you know her too.”

Heath peered out the window. “Hey, isn’t that the reporter from the news?”

“Kendra Knight,” I told him.

“What’s she doing here?” Heath wondered, just as Kendra and the man from the pickup truck shook hands.

“Don’t know,” I said, feeling nervous about how close we were to them. The last thing I needed was for Kendra to do another feature story on me. “Maybe she’s investigating Brook’s murder now.”

Heath started the car and put a hand on my shoulder. “Duck down,” he said, easing the car out from the curb. “We’re a little too conspicuous here.”

We drove around the block and cruised slowly back down the street, tucking in behind a minivan, which we hoped would block the view back to us from the house. Then we watched Kendra and the man in front of the house; it appeared she was interviewing him, as she had her notepad out and she was scribbling in it as the man talked and gestured toward the house. This went on for a good ten minutes until Kendra shook the man’s hand again and turned to go back to her car. I saw her head lift in our direction and Heath and I both ducked low in our seats, peeking up over the dash.

I let out a breath when Kendra got into her car and drove off. Meanwhile the man appeared to have gotten a phone call because he was on his cell pacing in front of his truck.

“Think that’s the landlord?” Heath asked me.

I sat up a little straighter in my seat. “Could be.”

“Only one way to find out,” he said, hopping out of the car before I had a chance to tell him to hold on. I followed and caught up to him just as he began waving at the man to catch his attention.

I heard the guy on the phone say, “The rent’s twelve hundred a month. If you want to see it, you can come by now, but I got places to be, so I can’t wait for you too long.”

It was then that I noticed on the other side of the truck he’d leaned a
FOR RENT
sign, which he clearly planned on putting in the front lawn.

Heath waved again and the guy said, “Look, I got someone here who seems to be interested, so I gotta go. Come by or don’t. I’ll be here for fifteen minutes or so.”

“Is this the place that’s for rent?” Heath said the second the guy hung up.

“Yep,” he said.

“Mind if we take a look?”

“Don’t rent the place to couples,” he said. “Too much of a headache when they find out they can’t live together and both of them skip out on the rent.”

I laughed like he’d just said something funny. “I’m his sister,” I told the man. “We’re not a couple.”

I saw the guy’s eyes shift from me to Heath and back again. “You don’t look alike,” he said, clearly suspicious.

“Stepbrother and -sister,” Heath said, thinking quick.

The guy rolled his eyes a little but waved us toward the house. “Come on, then,” he said. “But make it quick. I got another guy coming over in about fifteen minutes.”

My phone rang at that moment and after a quick glance at the caller ID I sent it to voice mail. Heath looked back at me and I mouthed, “Gilley.”

I had no doubt that Gil had been the one to call the landlord as we approached and he was calling me to let me know we could meet the landlord.

“I’m John,” Heath said when the guy began fumbling with his keys.

“Ray,” the guy said by way of introduction.

“Nice to meet you,” Heath told him.

Ray didn’t reply; instead he simply unlocked the door and walked inside, holding it open for us. Heath went through first and I followed. We entered into a living room and Heath came up short, causing me to bump into him a little. I moved to the side instinctively, wondering why he’d stopped so abruptly, and looked up to see him slack-jawed.

Immediately I focused on the room and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“All this will be cleared out,” Ray said from behind us as he also moved to the side. I had a feeling he was mistaking our shock for simply not liking the furniture strewn about on the floor. “The last tenant was a piece of work,” he told us. “Tossed the place. Then he cut out on the rent.”

I nodded but I was barely listening to him. The interior of the house was exactly like the one in my out-of-body nightmare from earlier. Even the chairs where Heath had tossed the creepy man who’d pinned me down were wrecked in exactly the same way. As if the whole thing had
actually
taken place. “What the hell?” I heard Heath whisper as he moved close to me and took up my hand.

“It doesn’t look like much, but it cleans up okay,” Ray was saying, making small attempts to pick up a few sticks of furniture.

I squeezed Heath’s hand. Just being in the exact same setting from my OBE was really unnerving. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Heath’s head turn from side to side, and I wondered if he was looking for the creepy dude who’d attacked me to appear in the flesh.

“The rent’s twelve hundred a month,” Ray said, and I saw that he was watching us closely. I knew we were acting weird.

Taking a deep breath, I let go of Heath’s hand and said, “Let’s look around.”

He got the hint and we moved deeper into the house.

It was a small place, probably only about seven hundred square feet. The living room was narrow and not very long. There was a sofa parked up against one wall, but no TV or other electronics were in evidence. I had a feeling maybe Ray had taken those out when it was clear Luke wasn’t coming back.

The area with the toppled table and chairs was closer to the door, and it’d served as the dining room. Behind that was a doorway, which led to the kitchen. I moved there and looked around. The place had the feeling of violence in it, but I couldn’t pinpoint anything specific. It gave me the serious creeps too, and I couldn’t understand how anybody would want to live here.

What I didn’t pick up—and was a little surprised not to—was any sense of a spook. The house had definitely seen spectral energy; there were remnants of it in the ether, but nothing that I could pinpoint specifically as a ghost in the room.

Still, I walked through the kitchen to another door and flipped the switch. An overhead light came on, illuminating a bedroom, which looked like it’d been tossed by a professional robber. The bed had no linens, just the mattress, which was slightly askew. There was trash on the floor and all the drawers had been pulled out of the dresser.

I stepped carefully around the mess to the closet, pulled there by my own intuition. The door opened with a squeak and I peered inside. It was a small closet, not much room for more than a few clothes, but most of what’d been on the wire hangers dangling from the bar had been removed, whether by Luke or Ray I couldn’t tell. I reached for the string to the overhead light and heard Heath call my name. I tugged on the string and the dingy walls of the closet lit up with graffiti. I felt my brow furrow as my eyes scanned the walls.
Deadly Dan was here,
read one blotch of black ink.
Slayer Sy was here,
read another.
Butcher Bill was here,
read another block, and a knife with dripping blood was drawn next to yet another name,
Gut-you-Guy was here.

My gaze darted around the closet, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up on end. Each autograph was distinct enough to have been drawn by a different hand. There were at least a half-dozen autographs, and the one that my gaze finally came to rest on was one that sent a cold shiver down my spine.

“Heath!” I called, riveted by the walls of the closet.

“Yeah?”

“Come here, please!”

I heard his footsteps come up behind me, his cowboy boots striking the wood floors, and for just a fraction of a moment I felt a terrible foreboding at his approach. I shoved that thought out of my head as his hand came to rest on the small of my back. “Look,” I told him.

I watched him squint at the interior of the closet and take in all the names. Some with pictures of knives next to them, and others with a few added lines of macabre poetry.

And then I pointed to the back wall, midway down, to where it read,
Lethal Luke was here
.
 
. . .

“Whoa,” Heath whispered right before I heard another set of footsteps coming toward the bedroom. Thinking fast, I snapped a photo of the inside of the closet with my phone and quickly shut the door. We turned around just as Ray came into the bedroom. He eyed us suspiciously again. “Seen enough?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Heath told him. “And I think I’ll keep looking.”

“Suit yourself.”

“We should go,” I said, taking hold of Heath’s arm and moving toward the door. Ray shifted his stance and I was starting to get uncomfortable around him.

“I would’ve cleared all this junk out before you moved in,” he said, waving his hand around at the clutter.

Heath shrugged as we passed Ray by, and I was glad he didn’t try to offer more of an explanation.

Still, the landlord kept right on our heels and I was never happier to get out into the sun again. Heath and I didn’t say a word as we left, not even a good-bye or a thank-you, which was probably pretty rude, but we both just wanted to get away from that place and talk about the closet.

Heath took up my hand as we crossed the street and we heard Ray’s truck start up. We kept our eyes on the prize and at last reached the safety of my car. Heath undid the locks and I jumped in, already fiddling with my phone to pull up the image. Heath leaned in so we could both have a look and that’s when three loud raps on his window made both of us jump.

A woman waved at us through the window. “Hi, M.J.,” she said, a Cheshire grin on her face.

My breath caught. “Shit,” I muttered.

“No comment?” Heath whispered to me.

“Oh, come on!” Kendra Knight called to us. “Talk to me, M.J. Please?”

I was tempted to have Heath drive off, but I doubted she’d let us get away. She seemed a bit on the tenacious side, as all good reporters are. I looked at Heath to see what he thought. “Your call,” he said to me. “Say the word and I can get us out of here before she can even make it back to her car.”

I squeezed his hand. “You’re pretty awesome, you know?”

He grinned at me. “I memorized the awesome-boyfriend handbook.”

That made me chuckle. Kendra tapped on the window again. “I’m not gonna go away, you know,” she told us.

I sighed. “Better roll down the window,” I told Heath, clicking my phone off and tucking it into my pocket.

“We have no comment,” Heath said the second the window was down.

Kendra frowned. “I understand you may not want to talk to me,” she began, and I could tell she had a pretty good argument lined up for why we should reconsider. “But when I saw you two across from this house, I got curious, and I’m wondering if you’re starting to put two and two together as well.”

Okay, she’d piqued my curiosity. “Two and two?” I asked.

“I thought you weren’t commenting,” she said with a sly grin. I leveled a look at her and she added, “If I share what I know, you two have to share what you know.”

“We can’t share anything,” I told her, thinking she was fishing for an inside scoop on the murder on Comm Ave. “But you may speak to my attorney if you’d like.”

Kendra blinked. “Your attorney? Why’d you retain a lawyer?”

It was my turn to blink. Was she playing coy? “You know why we did,” I said, telling it straight without giving her anything to quote me on.

“No, I really don’t,” she insisted. Then she squinted at me. “Why are you here?”

“Probably the same reason you’re here, Kendra, but just for kicks, how about you tell us why you came by, and if it’s the same reason, then we’ll tell you?”

There was no way in hell it was going to be the same reason.

Kendra seemed to think that over. At last she said, “I’m here because this house was the former residence of three men charged with the brutal stabbing and throat slashing of innocent young women: Dan Foster, who murdered Bethany Sullivan, and Guy Walker, who murdered a young woman named Amy Montgomery in the nineteen seventies, and also, as I discovered this morning, Luke Decker, who right now is being held on suspicion of murder in the brutal slaying of Brook Astor last night. I’m thinking three murderers sharing a former residence is a pretty
big
coincidence, and I’m here trying to find the connection between the three.”

I was stunned to realize that the very ghost Heath had connected with earlier on Comm Ave was murdered by a man who’d lived in this house, and my mind flashed back to the closet and the names on the wall:
Gut-you-Guy was here
. . . .

I was also stunned to hear that Dan Foster had once lived here too.

“Now how about you tell me what you’re doing here and why you’ve retained an attorney.”

It surprised me that she hadn’t heard that we’d been brought in for questioning by the police on Brook Astor’s murder, but then, we hadn’t been charged with anything, so maybe our presence just down the street hadn’t been reported to the media. Still, Kendra was like a dog with a bone, and I knew she’d find the connection sooner or later. “We were just down the street from Brook Astor’s crime scene on the night she was murdered,” I confessed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Heath look sharply at me.

Kendra’s expression told me she was pretty shocked too. “Whoa,” she said, and I could see a thousand questions start to form in her eyes.

“We can’t discuss what happened of course,” I said quickly, wanting to shut her down before she began pestering me for details I knew we couldn’t give her.

“Oh, come on!” she said. “Are you kidding me?”

I shook my head. “Sorry, Kendra. And we’ve got to go. Thanks for sharing, though. We appreciate it.”

Kendra put a hand on the window frame. “I can make you a confidential source,” she said desperately.

I motioned to Heath, and he edged the car ever so slightly away from the curb. Kendra continued to cling to the window frame. “Hey!” she said, attempting to keep us there. “I think there may be more murderers connected to this house. I had to sift through thirty years of records to find Guy’s old address, but I think there may be more men who’ve lived here who’ve committed murder. What I can’t figure out is how this house plays into it. But I think you know,” she said as Heath put the car into drive. “I think you’re here fishing around for the same answers.”

“Please let go,” Heath said to her.

But Kendra wouldn’t. She continued to hold on to the car door even as Heath eased us forward a fraction. “Kendra,” I said to her, “please let go. We have nothing to offer you.”

She did let go then, but she started trotting next to the car, and then a bit of paper fluttered into the car and onto Heath’s lap. I realized it was her business card. “I have tons of notes,” she said, panting now to try to keep up with us. “We could pool our information! This could be an amazing story, M.J.! I could make you famous! Think about it!”

Heath cleared the curb and pressed the accelerator, pulling away from Kendra. He didn’t let off until he was well away from her.

I turned to look back and I watched Kendra stand in the street watching us drive away. I had the most unsettling feeling about her probing into this case. I was having a hard enough time trying to figure out the spectral energy of that house and the men involved in what appeared to be a string of murders. It was eerie and creepy and way too much for a layperson to handle. This was the stuff of horror movies and I started to worry about Kendra.

“What?” Heath asked, reading my expression.

“I don’t like her poking her nose into this.”

“
This
or
you
?”

“This,” I said. “Okay and me, but I’m more worried about her. If there really is some sort of occult connection to all these murders, then she could be in real danger. We know how to protect ourselves. She’s too naive to get it.”

“Should we set up a meeting with her?” Heath asked. “Just to warn her?”

I lifted the card out of the cup holder where Heath had put it while he pulled away. “No,” I said. “Not yet. Let’s go back to my place and look at the names on the wall. Gil might be able to match them to other murders.”

Heath’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “There were a lot of names in that closet, Em.”

I nodded. “Including Luke’s.”

“Maybe we’re wrong about him. Maybe he really did kill Brook.”

I was so confused by my own impressions and the evidence that kept presenting itself to point the finger at Luke that I didn’t know what to think.

We got home a bit later and found Gil in my kitchen raiding the fridge. “You just had lunch,” I said, passing him on my way to the living room.

“That was hours ago,” Gil said, coming up from the fridge with a cupcake I’d been saving for after a really good run.

Before I could stop him, Gil took a huge bite. “Hey!” I shouted. “I was saving that!”

Gil paused his consumption of my cupcake long enough to grin at me. “I’m saving
you
from all these extra calories. Junk in that trunk ain’t gonna help you across the finish line, honey.”

Between the two of us, Gil had far more to worry about. He’d put on some considerable weight while we were in Europe, but since he’d been dating Michel, he’d done a good job of trimming down. Now that Michel was in New York on a shoot, I could tell Gil was starting to really miss him, and was binge eating to deal with it.

“When you’re finished stuffing your piehole, come over and help us with something,” I said, giving up because Gil could devour a sweet treat faster than anyone I knew. I’d get another cupcake.

Heath came to sit next to me while I uploaded the photo from my phone onto my laptop, where I could expand the image to see if I’d gotten all the names.

“There they are,” Heath said with a whistle. “There’re at least a half dozen, Em.”

“Half-dozen what?” Gil said from over Heath’s shoulder as he peered at the computer screen. “Hey, why’d you take a picture of a marked-up closet? Which reminds me, did you get over to the rental house?”

Heath and I both took our gazes off the computer screen to stare at Gil. He’d asked three separate questions in under ten seconds. “Have a seat,” I told him. It was just easier to start at the beginning with him. Once I’d filled him in on our little visit to Luke’s last residence and the conversation we’d had with Kendra and her theory that there were other murderers connected to the house, Gil looked properly intrigued. “Lemme see that photo,” he said.

I tapped the mouse pad and the photo came up. I enhanced it so that we could read the names better, and Gil’s expression changed to a frown. “How the hell are we supposed to identify any more murderers with this?” he said. “Deadly Dan? Gut-you-Guy? What kind of a list is that?”

“Dan is Dan Foster—he killed Bethany Sullivan—and Guy is Guy Walker, who murdered Amy Montgomery, the ghost on Comm Ave that I bumped into this morning,” Heath said.

Gilley blinked. “Wait,” he said. “Two guys on this list are the same men who murdered the two women on Comm Ave whose spirits you two fools bumped into today?”

I nodded. “Apparently. Freaky coincidence, huh?”

“Gurl,” Gil said with a tisk and a shake of his head. “Freaky doesn’t even half cover it. Okay, so we know who two of these guys are—”

“Three,” Heath corrected, pointing to the name on the bottom. “That’s Luke.”

Gil’s eyes widened. “Whoa!”

“Yep,” I said.

“But I thought we were going with the he’s-left-handed-so-he-must-be-innocent theory?”

“Yeah, well my jury’s still out. I’ll admit that I’m still a little back and forth on his innocence or guilt.”

“But what about your impressions at the crime scene this morning?” Gil said.

I shook my head and sighed. “I know. I can’t figure out how to reconcile it. I mean, look . . .” I pointed to the screen where the words
Lethal Luke
were scrawled against the back wall of the closet. “I was all set to paint him as an innocent bystander, but his name in that closet is tough to ignore, you know?”

Next to me, Heath scratched at the stubble on his chin. “I just don’t see Luke capable of being a killer, Em. Even if he was possessed by this spook. The kid’s strong. If that evil entity—whatever it is—really did get inside his head, he would’ve fought.”

I looked Heath in the eye and said, “That’d be assuming he didn’t want to commit murder, though. And we don’t know him, honey. We don’t know what’s really going on inside that head of his.”

“You guys also don’t know this spook either,” Gil pointed out.

Heath and I both looked at him. “What do you mean?” I asked.

Gil shrugged. “Well,” he said, pointing to the image on the screen, “it looks like Luke was at least telling the truth about one thing. There is a spook that seems to be possessing the men who live inside that house. And either that thing is turning these men into killers, or they were already flawed to begin with and he’s helping them along with their evil deeds. I think the next place to look for clues is to find out more about this spook.”

“We were in that house today, and we didn’t feel any kind of spectral presence,” Heath said.

“Which reminds me,” I said, suddenly thinking of something. “What’d you get on the landlord, Ray?”

Gil shook his head. “Nada. I found his name on the rental listing posted to Craigslist, but nobody named Ray ever lived at that address on Stoughton. I’m gonna keep looking, though. I mean, Ray could be a nickname or a middle name. I’ll find out who owns the place and for how long, not to worry.”

I rubbed my eyes. I was suddenly very tired. “The hard part of this is finding that spook. He wasn’t at the rental house and when we were in Courtney’s place, we didn’t feel it there either. Where else is there to look?”

Gil shrugged and said, “You guys said it yourself yesterday that this isn’t a spook that haunts locations. It haunts people. If you want to find this thing, you gotta go look for a person it haunts.”

“We’re not allowed to talk to Luke,” I reminded him.

Gil pointed to the screen again, but this time to the name of Deadly Dan. “No one said you couldn’t talk to one of the other killers.”

My breath caught. I understood immediately. Still, I could see more roadblocks in front of us. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get in to see Foster,” I said. “Not with all the media scrutiny around his trial.”