Spookshow V: Half-Boys and Gypsy Girls, page 18
“A boy?” Mockler asked. “Was it his son?”
“The letter didn’t say.”
“Why would he use a kid in a séance? Is that normal?”
“Not that I know of,” Billie replied with a shrug. “According to the letter, Crump claimed that the boy was some kind of conduit that allowed the spirits to come through.”
“The kid was a psychic?” The detective slowed the car even more. “Jesus, this just gets weirder by the minute.”
“It has to be him,” she stated. “The severed legs, the date corresponding to the penny we found in his pocket. Crump using a boy in his act, which is where the boy got the cap from. It all adds up.”
“Except we still don’t know his name.”
She looked out at the dark forest and then turned back to the detective. “Do you think this Crump guy killed him?”
“It’s possible. The severed legs could have been an accident. Maybe he fell into the path of an oncoming train. But you said his tongue was cut out. It seems more likely he was murdered.” Mockler stopped the vehicle altogether. “There’s something else. The spot on the waterfront where the body washed up.”
“What about it?”
“I looked it up. That spot is now where Pier Four Park is. The same place where you almost drowned.” Killing the engine, he nodded at something on the starboard side of the car. “We’re here.”
Two flashlights followed a pathway that wound through the inky woods. Beyond that was the complete darkness of night in the countryside. When they came into the clearing, Billie saw strands of yellow police tape strewn among the muddy leaves. Mockler swept the beam of his flashlight over the scarred trunk of an old oak. There hadn’t been any rain in days and the blood stains were still visible.
“This is where he was found,” Mockler said.
Billie stood still, her boots already covered with mud. She looked over the old tree, mentally overlaying the scene from the photographs.
“Are you, uh,” Mockler fumbled for the words, “sensing anything?”
“I need a second.”
He went quiet and watched her. Billie took a breath and closed her eyes. Then, she began to fidget, small ticks in her shoulders, her neck. Her hands became restless, rubbing together as if cold. She opened her eyes and circled the trunk slowly.
“He was scared,” Billie said. “His head was all messed up. All these crazy thoughts, and then panic and fear.”
“Was that the drugs he was pumped with?”
“I think so. It’s all crazy.” She turned away now and then as if something out in the darkness had caught her attention. “Whoever did this to him, there was more than one person.”
“How many?”
“Five or six? Maybe more.”
“Can you describe them?” he asked.
“Not really. They’re wearing dark clothes. Their faces are hidden from me.” She stopped cold and then backed away quickly. “Oh no. That’s not good.”
“What is it?” Mockler took a step closer. The fear in her eyes was real, her hands moving faster in their manic wringing.
“Something bad was here. Something really, really bad.” She looked up as he walked toward her and waved him back. “Don’t go near it.”
He trained his light up and down the knotty bark. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not good. These people tried to bring it close, to summon it.” Billie backed away even further. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“I don’t know. Can we go?”
He took her hand and they marched from the clearing without another word. Billie was tense, her hands wringing endlessly when they climbed back into the car. He fired the engine, spun it around and stomped the pedal. Two miles down the road, he reached out and took ahold of her hands.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Just keep driving.”
“You said they tried to summon something.”
“That’s what the ritual was about. Justin was the bait or the offering. I don’t know, it’s all messed up.”
He nixed any further questions, wanting her to calm down. Her restless hands slowed with every mile they put behind them. Billie finally exhaled loudly and leaned back into the seat. He drove a little further before trying again.
“This thing they were after. Do you know what it was?”
“No. I felt it out there, like it was circling overhead, but I don’t know what it is.”
They passed a farm on one side, then a house, then two. Civilization. He looked at her. “What about Justin? Was he there?”
“No,” she said. “All I saw was the echo of what happened.”
The car merged with the traffic coming down Highway Eight and the lights of Dundas sprinkled before them. “I’ll take you home,” he said.
“Can we keep driving? Down near the rail yard?”
“What for?”
“I’m not sure,” Billie said. She was chewing her lip and the restless hand-wringing had started anew. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”
Chapter 23
“STOP HERE.”
Mockler swung the car to the curb, but his faith had ebbed to a dim ember that this stop would pan out. Following Billie’s lead, he had driven around most of the Gibson end without any luck. This location was their sixth visit so far. Each time, Billie had looked over the buildings only to declare that it wasn’t the place. When he asked what exactly she was looking for, Billie had been unable to describe it. She simply asked to keep driving. He slid the gear into park, expecting more of the same. “Is this it?”
No answer. She had already bolted from the vehicle, leaving the passenger door to bounce on its hinge.
“Billie?”
She was 30 paces out, looking up at the building looming before them. A brick edifice built in the panache of the late industrial boom, but long abandoned, the windows ugly with plywood. Mockler came alongside Billie to find her transfixed by the building behind the dipping branches of the trees. “What is it?”
The wind whistled off the wasteland of the empty field to their left. “The men who took Justin to the woods,” she said. “They were here. In this building.”
Mockler looked at the boarded up doors and then back to Billie. Her eyes had taken on that eerie gaze they had whenever she peered beyond the veil. They were going inside. Exactly how, he wasn’t sure. He told her to wait and ran back to the car. When he returned, he held two Maglites and an iron prybar. “Let’s go around back.”
The fence was low and easily traversed. The rear of the building was a raw scar where an adjoining structure had been torn down long ago. No locked doors, just more boarded up windows. Mockler approached one and drove the prybar into the seam, angling the board loose. When it fell to the floor, he climbed over and reached back to help her.
Disturbed by the broken seal, dust clouded the funnels of light from the flashlights. The beams played over the bubbled plaster and the peeling paint of the walls. The rubble on the floor was rusty and sharp and they’d both need tetanus shots if they weren’t careful.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a long time,” he said.
Billie stood by the opened window. “They didn’t come in this way.”
“Okay,” he replied, watching her. Her eyes had lost none of their earlier intensity. “Do we know what we’re looking for?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
Through a doorway and into a corridor. He trained the light east and then west. “Which way?”
“Down,” she said.
Not what he’d expected. Finding the stairwell took some time, treading over the rubble in the dark. The air grew damper as they went down one flight and then, at Billie’s insistence, another. A dank sub-basement of old stone walls and oily puddles on the floor. It stank of mold and raw earth.
“This way,” Billie said, continuing forward.
“Hold on. We’re pretty far down. If we get turned around down here, we’re gonna have a hell of a time finding our way back out.”
“We have to keep going.”
Mockler reached out for her. “What’s down here?”
“I honestly don’t know,” she said. There was no way to describe the strange pull that kept calling out to her. At least nothing that would make any sense to him. The magnetic tug at her guts was unsettling, but oddly familiar. She had experienced it once before, during her first fateful visit to the Murder House, an irresistible lure to something hidden inside. It had led her to break open the concrete floor then, opening a sinister can of worms that had engulfed them all. “But I have to find out.”
“Hang on.” Mockler swept the light over the floor, scouring the ground.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something sharp.” Reaching into the debris, he came up with a metal file, dark with rust. “This might work.” Scraping it against the wall, the pointed end of the file left a thin line across the stone. “It’ll have to do. Lead on.”
They continued on, Billie leading the way deeper into the subterranean corridor, her shoes splashing on the wet floor. Mockler stayed close behind, scraping the tool into the wall to leave a trail they could follow if they got lost.
The corridor bisected another. Peering down the left-hand passage, Billie saw a faint glow.
“There’s a light up ahead,” she whispered.
Mockler hesitated. This blind search was too reckless, stumbling around this deep in the dark. He didn’t want her to go any further. “Can you sense what’s down there?”
“I can’t tell.” She tugged her arm away, impatient to go on.
“Let me go first,” he whispered. “Stay behind me, stay quiet.”
The grit on the floor crunched underfoot too loudly as they crept forward. Mockler eased his firearm from its holster and kept it down as they approached the doorway. A soft pool of light illuminated a square of floor. Flattening against the wall, Mockler eased cautiously into the doorframe.
A vast room lit with two portable lanterns. Two individuals, both clad in dark clothing, both bent over a table working at something. Another glance revealed a third person in the room, prone on the table. This individual didn’t move, possibly unconscious as the two others bent over it.
Owen, he thought. The missing partner of the man found in the woods. These freaks were preparing him for the same ritual.
The two figures straightened up and turned to the doorway, almost as if they knew the detective was there all along. One reached for something behind him.
“Police!” Mockler stormed into the room, gun drawn. “Get down on the floor!”
Neither figure obeyed. One clutched a machete, raising it high overhead and swinging it down at the unconscious man on the table.
Mockler aimed and fired. Then, the lights winked out, plunging the room into utter darkness. Noise crashed around in the dark, furniture tumbling and glass shattering.
He swept the flashlight over the room, but both men had vanished. Mockler cursed; he had the one with the machete dead in his sights. He must have hit him, but the room was empty save for the unconscious man on the table. He barked at the darkness for the men to show themselves, but nothing stirred. How could they have fled so quickly?
“Ray!”
Keyed up, he flinched when Billie jostled into the doorway behind him. “Billie, get back.”
Training her lightbeam at the long table, she gasped when she saw the man atop it. “Who is that?”
“Owen,” he said. Moving into the room, he swept the light and the aim of the gun over the space and back again, expecting the dark figures to pop out at them. If they did, he’d simply put them down.
Billie rushed past him to the unconscious man on the table. Mockler heard her gasp again. “Oh God,” she choked. “It’s him.”
Pushing in, he looked down at the face lit up in the beam of light. It wasn’t the missing ghost-hunter.
“Gantry…” she uttered.
~
The two canisters left by the west exit door had been placed there for a reason, a contingency plan should the unthinkable occur. The two men racing up the stairs of the abandoned factory needed that contingency now.
The first man to the exit was already spinning the cap from the spout. He kicked the can over and 16 litres of gasoline glugged out onto the dirty floor. Splashing through the gurgling fuel, the other man cursed his companion for not waiting until he was clear. Now his shoes were wet with econo-grade gasoline.
“Shut up and move,” snapped the taller man. He poured the second canister onto the cracked tile. “Get the door!”
Tipping the jug, the two figures splashed a trail of fuel out the door, down the concrete steps and out into the gravel of the adjacent lot. The man with the wet shoes fumbled out a box of wooden matches, but snapped the heads of the first two in his haste to light them. The third one lit and its flame arced through the air as he threw it. The slime trail of gas went up instantly, snaking back across the lot, up the stairs and through the open door.
There was a great whooshing sound and the grimy windows of the factory flared up in a hot orange glow. The two men watched the flames for a minute longer before squeezing through a gap in the chain link fence. Only one of them looked back as they marched briskly through a brown field of dry grass.
~
Billie couldn’t believe her own eyes. The wily trickster who had guided her into this upside down world of the paranormal lay stretched out before them, pale as a fish belly.
“Is he alive?” Mockler asked.
She pressed her fingers to his neck. “There’s a pulse.”
“What the hell have they done to him?”
John Gantry lay on some jerry-rigged version of an operating table, his arm hooked into an intravenous drip. Sensor pads were taped onto his chest and his temples; the wires snaked over him and were patched into two dusty hospital monitors. Strands of wet gauze were bandaged over small wounds across his sternum and up his neck. Next to the table was a stand cluttered with surgical instruments. Mockler poked through the mess of scalpels, forceps and clamps, all still bloodied.
Billie ripped the wires away. “We have to get him out of here. Pull that tube out.”
“We need an ambulance,” he protested.
“No ambulance. You and I are getting him out.” She turned back to the man on the table and thumbed open his left eye. “Gantry, can you hear me? It’s Billie. Wake up.”
The pupils rolled around lazily without drawing focus on her. A slow gurgle issued from Gantry’s throat, but whether it was an attempt to speak or a death rattle, Billie couldn’t tell. “Hurry,” she urged the detective.
“Billie, we can’t just drag him out of here. The man’s almost dead.” Mockler shook his head at what he was saying. “He is dead, for Christ’s sakes! We need a medical team here.”
“And what, take him to a hospital? What then? He goes back to prison?”
Mockler gritted his teeth together. He ripped the needle from Gantry’s arm and tossed the tubing away. “Find something to cover him with.”
Billie found a thin sheet among a clutter of medical tools and they threw it over him. Hoisting the man up, each draped an arm over their shoulders and carried Gantry along. The corridor was narrow and difficult to negotiate with the limp figure between them.
“Stop,” Mockler said. Handing Billie his Maglite, he said, “I’ll carry him, you lead the way.”
Mockler threw the man over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and Billie went on ahead, lighting the way and clearing obstacles from their path. Over the sound of their footfalls splashing through the wet floor, another sound ragged at Billie’s ear, but she couldn’t place it. The stone corridor was like an echo chamber, amplifying and distorting sound.
Following the scrape mark on the wall, she led the way to the bottom of the stairs. An old desk was set against the wall and Billie pushed the debris from it, clearing the surface. “Hold up,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Something’s wrong,” she said, going up the stairs. “Wait here.”
Taking the steps two at a time, Billie raced up to the landing and leaned over the railing to look up. The exit above was where the noise was coming from, an angry popping and snapping sound. Light filled the stairwell above her and she felt the heat push down from the inferno raging overhead.
Chapter 24
“WE NEED TO find another way out,” Billie said, bounding back down the stairwell.
“What’s that noise?”
“Fire.” She watched his face pale. “The stairs are blocked.”
Mockler looked back down the stone hallway. A labyrinth of corridors to get lost in, all of it cloaked in darkness.
“Come on,” Billie said, already tugging at Gantry’s limp frame. “There’s got to be another way out of here.”
He hoisted the man over his shoulders again. “Lead the way.”
Scrambling back the way they came, Billie swept the light beam around, searching for an exit sign. Around a corner and up another corridor, she spotted one halfway down, its red glass catching the light. Pushing through the door revealed a stairwell, but smoke was boiling down the steps toward them.
“Keep looking,” he growled.
They pushed on, racing on down another turn in the passageway. Billie kept looking back at Mockler. With the dead weight slung over his shoulders, he was losing momentum, the strain of it shining in his bared teeth. Another exit sign appeared. Billie slammed the door open to find another smoke-choked stairwell. The flames were visible through the fog. Pulling the door closed, she found Gantry on the floor with Mockler kneeling over him, wheezing.
“The whole building is on fire,” she said.
“Let me catch my breath.”
“I’ll carry him,” she said, tugging at Gantry’s arm. “You lead the way.”
“Billie, he’s too heavy. You won’t get far.”
