The Traveler: Book 5, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (14 page)

“When?”

“The night Mr. Stahl…you know.”

“There was a man?”

The boy nodded.

“You saw him?”

“I couldn’t sleep. I watched Horror House 4 and it kept me up. But don’t tell my mom.”

Daria didn’t want to promise him anything. “You saw a man?”

“I went outside because I wanted to get some fresh air. Don’t tell my mom. She’ll be really mad.”

“It’s okay…what’s your name, by the way?”

“Devlin. Mom calls me her little dev, like little devil.”

“Was the man a ghost?” Daria asked.

The boy chewed his bottom lip. “Maybe?”

A uniformed security guard sat behind a large desk in the lobby of the complex. He smiled when he saw Christie.

“As I live and breathe!” He had silver hair and a wrinkled brow. He stood. “The youngest female detective in the Rariville Police Department ever.”

“Jug, how are you?”

Eddie watched as Jug came out from behind his desk and moved stiffly toward Christie. The two hugged.

“If I was twenty years younger, missy,” he said.

“If you were
thirty
years younger,” she said.

He put his hand over his heart. “Oh, that hurts. That really hurts.”

“Janine would kill me,” Christie said. “Your wife is one tough cookie.”

Jug laughed. “She’d kill me first.”

Christie introduced Eddie.

“The ghostbuster, right?”

“Close enough.” Eddie smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

Jug shook his hand. “I showed Christie the ropes in the year leading up to my retirement. So anything impressive she does, remember she learned it from me.”

Christie laughed. Second laugh he’d seen from her. He could tell she had a good sense of humor underneath that professional exterior.

Another major turn-on.

Jug said, “So what brings you to my little fiefdom?”

Christie said, “Felicity and Alicia. They know we’re coming.”

“Lovely women. And two of my biggest fans.”

“I’m sure,” Christie said. Then she got an idea. “Two nights ago, were you working?”

Jug looked up. “Tuesday? Yeah, I was here.”

“See anything out of the ordinary?”

“You mean like a ghost?” He winked at Eddie.

“I mean anything.”

Jug shook his head. “Nope. Can’t even remember there being any visitors.”

“Could you double-check?”

He went back to his desk and they followed. He got on his computer. “Not one visitor.”

“And nothing out of the ordinary?”

He shook his head no. “I would have remembered, trust me. Not much happens around here and the days run together.”

***

Felicity and Alicia both met Christie and Eddie at their front door. They lived in a nice condominium close to the center of town.

“Please come in,” Felicity said. She towered over Alicia and had short blond hair. Alicia was dirty blond and wore one of those infinity scarves Eddie saw on practically every woman these days.

Eddie followed them to their living room, where everything seemed to be made out of wood. Felicity and Alicia took the couch, Christie the arm chair, and the only thing left for Eddie was a wooden stool that screamed instant sciatica. Why didn’t anybody have a comfortable place to sit?

“I’ve been sitting all day, I hope you don’t mind if I stand?”

Nobody minded. In his pocket, Eddie switched on the K2 meter. He’d come up with the idea when they’d gotten to Engel’s office. Looking back, he wished he’d brought it with him for their conversations with King and Meade. Christie had somebody working on a warrant to get them inside King’s place. Eddie knew that could take anywhere from one hour to a day. He wasn’t sure where the Rariville criminal justice system fell along that spectrum. But at some point, they’d go back to Meade’s and King’s and he’d make sure to bring the K2. It wasn’t the most reliable equipment but it was better than relying on the hairs on the back of your neck.

Christie opened the conversation. “I want to thank you for coming forward. We know it isn’t easy to share something like that.”

Alicia smiled and curled up against Felicity. They made for a nice couple, very at ease around each other.

“We weren’t going to,” Felicity said. “When you start talking about ghosts, people look at you funny.”

They’d just heard Engel say the same thing.

Eddie smiled. “I guess that’s why people look at me funny all the time.”

Alicia said, “You’re the ghost hunter, right?”

“Among other disreputable things.”

Felicity and Alicia laughed. He even caught Christie smiling.

Alicia said, “We aren’t looking for any extra scrutiny, either. Most of the attention we get from people is of the negative variety already.”

Eddie nodded. One of the many things that bothered him about most mainstream religions was their irrational animosity toward homosexuality. Many cultures in antiquity didn’t think twice about it, and it existed elsewhere in the animal kingdom, so all these arguments about its “unnaturalness” were complete and utter, misinformed bullshit.

Christie said, “So why did you come forward now?”

Felicity said, “We heard the stories in the news about someone reporting a ghost and then dying. Of course there weren’t really any details about the ghost, but we thought if it was the same one that came here, maybe we could help.”

Alicia said, “I couldn’t live with myself if this were to happen again and we hadn’t said anything.”

Felicity rubbed her partner’s shoulder. “Was it really a ghost?”

“I’m sorry.” Christie smiled politely. “We’re not at liberty to discuss an open investigation.”

Alicia sat up. “But are we in danger?”

Christie nodded. “I understand your fear. That’s why I brought Mr. McCloskey along. He’s going to ask you some questions and then we’ll have a better idea.”

“A better idea if we’re in danger?”

Eddie sat forward. “The evidence of a ghost
ever
killing someone is severely lacking, almost non-existent. So the odds are really long.”

“Yes, but what about
this ghost
?” Felicity said.

Eddie felt trapped by the dilemma. They couldn’t share any details with Felicity and Alicia but his gut was telling him that if this ghost was real, then everybody that came across it was in danger.

“This ghost that you encountered didn’t harm you,” Eddie said.

Felicity nodded, but Alicia wasn’t convinced.

“I can help you better if you tell us what happened. I’ll interrupt when I have questions. Okay?”

Felicity and Alicia shared a look, nodded, then looked back at him.

Alicia leaned back into the hollow between Felicity’s arm and her body.

Felicity said, “It happened two nights ago. We’d just finished a late dinner and were curled up on the couch.”

“Just like this actually.” Alicia beamed a smile up at Felicity.

Felicity continued. “We had the TV on. I looked up and it was just right there.”

She pointed over Eddie’s shoulder. He turned and peered down the hallway that presumably led to their bedroom.

“What was it doing?”

“Floating,” Alicia said.

“Was it looking at you?”

“Yes,” they both said.

“What did it look like?”

“It was short, from what I remember,” Felicity said.

Alicia rolled her eyes. “Everybody is short to Felicity, who was an Amazon in a former life.”

Felicity said, “Okay, it was about Alicia’s size.”

“Are you calling me short?”

“Yes.”

Eddie smiled at their banter. “You keep saying
it
. Was it a man or a woman?”

The million dollar question.

“A woman.”

“A man.”

Felicity and Alicia looked at each other, surprised by their conflicting answers.

Felicity said, “It had long hair and, like I said, it was shortish.”

Alicia shook her head no. “I thought it was a guy. The hair was long and ratty.”

Eddie and Christie shared a look. The discrepancy was both good and bad. If the ghost was a man, then their lead on Perks became all the more viable. But at the same time, it did not jive with what Engel had told them.

He had described a ghost that was unequivocally male, with short hair, a beard, and broad shoulders. Two, or possibly more, ghosts complicated matters considerably.

“So what happened?” Eddie said.

“Well, it hovered. It was very faint so at first I wasn’t even sure it was there. It was just this white outline.”

“Blue outline,” Alicia said.

“It looked white to me.”

“So it’s just hovering over here.” Eddie walked to the spot Felicity had indicated. “And it’s looking at you.”

“Right.”

“What did it look like?”

“Angry,” Felicity said.

Alicia grunted. “Evil.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just the look it was giving us.”

“Like we had done something to it,” Felicity said. “There was a real hatred there.”

“What happened next?” Eddie said.

Alicia shrugged. “Nothing.”

Felicity added, “It just disappeared.”

Eddie looked down at the floor. “It was right here and then, it wasn’t?”

“That’s right.”

“Did it vanish, or did it float away?”

Felicity and Alicia looked at each other. Neither trusted their memory of this part of the haunting.

“I was terrified,” Felicity said. “I’d never seen anything like it. This one, though, wanted to get her phone to take a picture but I didn’t let her. I didn’t want her going anywhere near the thing.”

Alicia smiled. “I was scared too. It was crazy. I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t believe it. Ghosts aren’t supposed to be real, right?”

Eddie smiled. “Ghosts aren’t real, but they’re everywhere.”

Alicia took a deep breath. “Back to your question, it kind of did both.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think it started backing away from us, like it was moving into the hallway. And at the same time, it was growing fainter.”

Felicity shook her head. “I thought it just disappeared, but like I said I was terrified.”

“Have either of you lost anyone recently?” Eddie asked. But already he felt like he was grasping at straws. The reported hauntings appeared random, the only commonality being they happened at night.

Felicity and Alicia explained they hadn’t. Their parents were still alive, so were all their siblings. Alicia’s good friend had died of cancer, but that had been almost ten years ago. They had never been visited by a ghost before.

“Did you recognize the ghost? I mean, as someone you might have known?” Christie asked.

Both said no.

Eddie made them tell their story again. He interjected with a few clarifying questions but no new details came to light that held significance to him.

“It wasn’t here long,” Felicity said. “Just long enough to get our attention and shoot us that nasty look. Then it was gone.”

Alicia nodded. “I’d say it was here for thirty seconds at most.”

Eddie said, “Did you feel you were in danger?”

“I was scared and didn’t know what to think to be honest,” Felicity said.

Christie said, “Did you feel dizzy or faint? Anything like that?”

Alicia laughed. “I felt like I’d just done wind sprints.”

Felicity said, “I was scared but no, not dizzy or lightheaded. It happened so quickly.”

Christie asked some follow-ups. Felicity and Alicia didn’t know Stahl or Fellov. They’d heard of Perks and Schubert but that didn’t surprise Eddie. They were unfamiliar with Tiffany Engel at first, but when Christie fed them some details they vaguely recalled the story.

In short, they had zero connections with the other people who’d reported the ghost or with the people Christie and Eddie were considering as candidates for the ghost.

Or ghosts.

***

“Well?” Christie said.

“Well,” Eddie said.

“Well.”

Eddie stood outside the car and looked over the roof at her. Her face barely reached the top of the car. She was as perplexed as him.

“There is one thing,” Eddie said.

“What?” A glimmer of hope on her face.

“The people that have seen this ghost have one thing in common.”

She laughed. “I was thinking the exact opposite.”

Eddie pointed at her. “No, that’s what I mean. They have one thing in common, and that is: they have nothing in common.”

“Meaning the ghost is randomly visiting people.”

Eddie said, “But it can’t be, because ghosts are usually linked to a place or a person.”

“Maybe this one isn’t.”

He shrugged. “You’re right. I’ve gotten in trouble for saying never before. But conventional wisdom is telling me that ghosts have to travel with someone.”

Christie raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“You said that ghosts are either linked to a person or place.”

“Right.” Eddie leaned forward. Maybe she was onto something.

“We’ve been looking at it from the perspective of a person,” Christie said. “We’ve thought of
place
as a house, or an apartment, or an office. But maybe
place
is bigger.”