Spookshow V: Half-Boys and Gypsy Girls, page 2
The late John Gantry, she reminded herself.
Dropping her bag at the door, Billie sank onto the sofa and wondered if the wily Englishman was really gone. During the mayhem at the old house, Gantry had been arrested and locked up on a murder charge. While there, he had been stabbed in the back by another inmate and pronounced dead. It was hard to believe that a simple prison brawl could have taken the shifty Brit down, especially since his body vanished from the morgue the following day.
Billie sighed. How utterly messed-up was her world when someone she knew got stabbed in prison and then pulled a vanishing act? All occurring while she herself was being threatened by a ghostly woman who had wanted to possess her completely. Is this what her gift, her ability to speak to the dead, was doomed to provide? A macabre life of insane torments? Who in their right mind would pass this on to a child?
A child.
Billie sat up and cocked her ear to listen. The apartment was quiet, the only sound was a dull burr from her neighbour downstairs who kept his radio on day and night. There was no odd rattling from the next room, no scraping sounds overhead from something scuttling across the ceiling.
“I’m home,” she called out to the destroyed flat. “Where are you?”
More silence. No legless figure crept out of the shadows, no mute phantom of a child sprang onto the arm of the sofa. Half-Boy wasn’t home. Which was odd, since he had been an almost constant companion since Billie’s latent psychic abilities had bloomed back during the humid swelter of summer.
She didn’t realize how much she had missed him until he failed to materialize. Had she taken him for granted? Or had something happened? The last time she had seen him was in the cemetery, just after her mother’s casket went into the ground. For a brief moment she thought she had glimpsed her mother there, far away among the tombstones, overseeing the internment of her mortal remains. And alongside the shimmering silhouette of her mother was the small form of the boy whose legs had been cruelly amputated. Had he moved on, crossing over to the other side for good? Was there some connection between her mother and Half-Boy or had the whole thing been a mirage brought on by grief?
She dialled Mockler’s number but the call clicked over to his answering service. That meant he was on the job and couldn’t pick up the phone. She hung up without leaving a message and sent him a text stating simply that she was home now. Uncertain if she should close the message with an XO, Billie omitted any sign-off. She still didn’t know what to make of the whole situation with the detective. Was this the start of something serious or had they just tumbled together briefly during a harrowing time for both of them? They had spent one night together in a dingy motel in her hometown and remained in contact through the mayhem that followed and the subsequent funeral. Mockler had helped her arrange a burial plot and service. They continued to text when she retreated to Aunt Maggie’s for some peace. Not the most romantic beginning to a new relationship but it had been unique.
The problem was, she thought as she propped her feet onto the battered coffee table, was that she was sick to death of unique, of weird. What she wanted most of all was a simple date with the man she’d crushed on for the last few months. Dinner, maybe a movie. Seeing a band play at one of the watering holes she and her friends frequented. Something almost boring. Or, at the very least, free of any hint of the macabre or the paranormal. Was that too much to ask?
Dropping her feet to the floor, Billie rose and scanned the mess around her. Dealing with the catastrophe seemed too daunting. What she wanted right now was to get on her bike and clear her head.
Chapter 3
THE VIDEO FOOTAGE from the security cameras was grainy, monotonous and, for the most part, utterly useless. Shot from two angles, the first camera captured the interior lobby of the city morgue while the second security camera covered the loading bay outside the building. There was just over six hours of footage to cover, from the time the last morgue attendant closed up for the night in question until 5:06 AM the next morning when the attendant arrived to unlock the doors. Six hours of static shots of an empty corridor and a quiet loading dock and nothing happened.
Mockler stretched his back, grumbled under his breath and set the footage back to the beginning and played them again, this time increasing the playback speed to half. There had to be something he missed the first time around. Dead men don’t just rise up from the slab and saunter out of the morgue.
Do they?
In any other situation that would be true but the dead man in question was one John Herod Gantry, a murder suspect in one homicide here in Hamilton and another in London, England. He had been arrested by Mockler’s partner and killed by another inmate during a fire inside the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre. Before Mockler could identify the body, the remains had vanished while he and Billie were trapped in the Murder House. That, he knew, could not be a coincidence. So here he sat, going over the CCTV footage from the morgue. There was nothing to see, just the static, unchanging angles on an empty corridor and the roll-up door in the back where the meatwagon pulled up.
“Jesus Christ, Mock. Give it up already.”
Mockler spun his chair at the voice behind him. “Give up? I can’t even start on this.”
Detective Odinbeck tossed his jacket onto the back of his chair and shook his computer awake. “You’re starting to obsess over that footage, bud. There’s nothing to see.”
“True,” Mockler said. “But it’s what I don’t see that’s relevant.”
“You wanna put that in English?”
“Take a look at this.” Mockler turned to his screen and slid the counter forward on the playback bar. “Nothing changes all night until this part. At 4:23 AM.”
Odinbeck leaned in to the screen as Mockler hit play at the designated time. The grainy feed displayed the corridor and the exterior bays then the footage scrambled, first the shot in the corridor and then the angle on the outside doors. It lasted no more than two minutes, all snowy static before the image resumed and everything appeared the same as before.
Mockler looked at his partner expectantly. Detective Odinbeck blinked his eyes. “What am I looking for?”
“Didn’t you see it?”
“The static?”
“Yes,” Mockler said. “First the corridor, then the exterior.”
“It’s static, buddy. Old cameras. That’s all.”
Mockler leaned back in his chair. “Something happened during those two snowy parts. It had to.”
Odinbeck plunked a hand on the younger detective’s shoulder. “You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”
“I’ve been though the tapes twice. Nothing happens except for this.”
Odinbeck sighed. “Okay. What do you think happened?”
“Somebody stole the corpse during the static. There’s no other explanation.”
The older detective tapped a finger against his lips in contemplation. Then he looked up, bright-eyed. “Or your friend Gantry got and walked out of the morgue on his own?”
“Thanks, Odin.” Mockler tossed his pencil at him. “That’s helpful.”
Odinbeck grinned. One of his few true pleasures was winding up his younger partner. “Do you want some advice? Let it go, man. There’s nothing more to be done until some new info pops up. Don’t pull another Ahab.”
“I’m not. I just need to know what happened.”
“Mock, look at me. You obsessed over this guy when he was alive. Now you’re doing it when he’s dead. Let it go. Aren’t you glad to be shed of all the spooky nonsense?”
Mockler chewed on the question. The camera footage kept playing on his monitor. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Then turn it off and forget it. Focus on something you can actually do. Like the open files on our desks.” Odinbeck picked over the paperwork crowding his desktop and pulled up a file. “Like this. The two fugitives on the loose.”
Mockler killed the video, turning to peer at the file. “Which two?”
“The ones who attacked Billie’s friend in the hospital. Tweedledee and Tweedledum.”
“Justin Burroughs and Owen something-or-other.”
Odinbeck checked the document. “Rinalto. There still on the lam.”
The two young men in question were part of the awful business at the house Mockler had watched bulldozed. They had tried to kill Kaitlin Grainger in her hospital room. Later they abducted Billie and took her back to the old house. Both were enthralled to something dark within the Murder House. “Okay,” he ceded. “Let’s focus on those two.”
“Atta boy,” Odinbeck grinned. “You should be grateful for this.”
“Grateful?”
“For once we’re not dealing with a murder file. Just plain old fugitives on the run.” The older detective dug out the photographs they had of the two men in question. “Beavis and Butthead don’t look like the brightest turnips in the patch. How hard is this gonna be?”
Mockler took the pictures from the other man and studied the faces of the two men. Odinbeck was right, neither of them looked particularly intelligent. Mouth-breathers with a dull glaze over their eyes as if they were high. The duo had been missing for almost two weeks now. They would turn up somewhere. If, the detective cautioned himself, they weren’t already dead.
~
The man in the woods ran for his life. Crashing through the underbrush in the dark, his skin was flayed by spindly branches and cold thickets. His bare feet crunched over a carpet of pine needles and sharp twigs fallen from the trees. His foot snagged on the exposed root of a hemlock tree and he tumbled down hard, rolling through the deadfall of late autumn. He was cold and bleeding but he held his breath to listen.
He could hear them out there in the dark. Footfalls crunching through the woods, coming after him. The sounds were faint, fading off in the background under the sound of his own panting. How many were there? How close? It didn’t matter. Keep moving.
Pitching forward, he pressed on but the ground was uneven and in the darkness he fell again and didn’t get up. Every square inch of his body was in pain. How much blood had he lost in the last few day? They had beaten him, his abductors in the hooded masks. They had cut his flesh with razors and pricked it with needles. They had shaved his head with dull shears and kept him starved and thus weak. It was hard to think straight.
What had happened to his friend? They had taken him too, hadn’t they? Was he dead?
The noise of his pursuers filtered through the dark, stomping onward and getting closer. He tried to get up but his strength was gone. The ground was wet and cold but he lay down on his side and curled his legs into his chest. If he remained still, his abductors might pass right over him. The ground smelled of decaying vegetation and rich, loamy earth. Something crawled over his neck, making his flesh tingle but he made no move to brush it away.
Silence. The wind in the branches overhead but nothing more. Had he fallen asleep? Had his ruse worked, hiding in the leaves until the men passed over him and moved on?
“Little rabbit,” said a voice in the dark.
The pain exploded him awake. A hard boot to the base of his spine. The running man looked up and went blind as the beam of a flashlight whited-out his vision. He tried to crawl away but another heavy boot stomped him down, flattening his belly to the wet ground.
“Fast little rabbit,” said a voice.
“He wasn’t starved enough,” said another voice. Both male, both without pity. “He had enough strength to bolt.”
The panting man felt himself hoisted from the ground by powerful hands. He tried to speak, to beg but all that came out was a blubbery sob.
“We went too easy on him,” came one of the voices. “We won’t make that mistake again.”
Dragged roughshod through the brush, the shivering man was hauled back through the woods like the prize carcass of some dead game animal. A five-point buck downed by hunters.
Antlers, the man thought as his legs were scratched raw by the thicket. He remembered seeing antlers in the place of his capture. Or were they horns?
Chapter 4
THE DAMAGE TO the shop on James Street wasn’t as bad as Billie remembered. The glass in the front door had already been replaced and the shelving ripped from the walls was salvageable. The last time Billie had seen the Doll House, it looked like something out of a war zone. Aside from the visible damage done to her friend’s shop, something else seemed off when she came through the newly-glazed door. The familiar ring overhead was missing. The antique bell over the door had been ripped down during the attack. It sat just inside the display window, bell and hanger, waiting to be put back up.
“Jen?” Billie called out. The shop appeared abandoned. With no bell over the door, there was no way to announce visitors to the shop.
Jen came out of the back room with a cordless drill in one hand. Her face lit up when she saw the visitor. “Billie. You’re back!”
The hug was quick but warm. There had been some enmity between the two for the last month and Billie hadn’t been quite sure what the reception would be like but Jen beamed her bubbly smile, genuinely glad to see her.
“How was your stay at Maggie’s?” Jen asked.
“Quiet. Maggie took care of me, as always.”
“You should have called to tell me you were coming back. I would have cleaned up instead of looking like this.” Here Jen took a step back to show off her attire. Loose jeans and her boyfriend’s old sweater, both speckled white with primer paint. More of the paint dotted her hands, a smudge of it on her chin.
“You’ve been busy,” Billie said.
“I wouldn’t say busy. I couldn’t bear to even look at it for a week. Dad finally forced me to face the damage and figure out how to repair it.”
“That must have been heartbreaking, seeing it like this.” Billie looked past her friend to the doorway of the back room. “Is your dad here?”
“No. He went back home yesterday.”
“That’s too bad. I like when your dad’s here.” Billie reached out and took her friend’s hand. “Are you holding up okay? Since, you know, the attack?”
“I am now. I cried myself silly, thinking I was ruined.” Jen shrugged and smiled. “But that wasn’t doing me any good. So, here we are. It’s almost like starting over.”
Billie looked the space over. The long south wall was patched and primed, ready for colour. Shelves were piled on the floor, waiting to be put up again. The tables and racks were pushed against the north wall of exposed brick. The old church pew, salvaged from a flea market in Guelph, appeared unharmed. “How bad was the damage?”
“The fire wasn’t too bad, only one rack of clothes was actually burned but the stink of it got into everything. I had to chuck every garment that was on display, even the stuff that wasn’t touched by the fire.”
“Ouch. That’s a lot of inventory to lose.”
“It is,” Jen agreed. She nodded at the bare wall. “I’m hoping the new paint will cover up the smoke smell.”
“Are you going with a different colour for it?” The wall had been hot pink with accents of black. Billie loved the colour scheme.
“Nope. I want it exactly as it was before, the whole thing. When people walk back in here, I want it to look like nothing happened.”
“Good. The pink and black rocks.”
“You know what’s really amazing? The people who’ve stopped in just to say hi or ask if I needed help. Customers, people who’ve shopped here. A few of them made me cry they were so sweet.”
Smiling, Billie watched her friend’s eyes become dewy. “I’m not surprised. People love your shop.”
“Help me straighten this drop cloth, would you?” Jen nodded at the sheet laid out to protect the floor from paint drops. “It keeps getting bunched up.”
Pulling both ends, they stretched the cloth flat and weighted the corners with paint cans. Billie looked up. “Where’s Adam?”
“He had to go to work, which is probably for the better. He just bitches a lot when I ask him to help out.”
“I’m here,” Billie said. “What do you want done?”
“Are you sure? I was going to put the colour on the wall, but you’ll get your clothes messy.”
Billie gave a wave of dismissal and reached for a paint can. “Hell, a touch of pink paint might spruce up my wardrobe.” Prying the lid off, she breathed in the smell of wet paint. “Do you want to roll or do the trim?”
“I’ll start the trim, you roll. We can swap out halfway.” Jen tossed her a fresh roller pad and then looked for the small paintbrush. “We should go out tonight, now that you’re back.”
“I’d love that.” Billie cautiously poured the bright pink paint into the roller tray. “Have you seen Tammy or Kaitlin?”
“They’ve both been by to help out. Even the messy stuff when we threw all the inventory out. You wouldn’t believe how bad it reeked.”
Billie dipped the roller into the thick paint. “Are they doing okay?”
“Kaitlin seems a little subdued.”
“Subdued?”
“Quiet and a bit blue. Not herself, anyway.” Jen dipped her brush into the paint, scraped off the excess and went to work on the trim. “I think the hospital stay brought her down.”
“Sure,” Billie added, although she knew that Kaitlin had suffered much more than that. “I’m sure it’s humbling to be stuck in one too long.”
“So,” Jen said. “What’s the story with your boyfriend?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend, remember?”
“You know who I mean,” Jen teased. “Your detective friend. Mockler.”
Billie tried to sound nonchalant. “Nothing. We talked on the phone when I was at Maggie’s.”
“Right. All very casual, huh?” Jen smirked at her friend. “You should invite him out with us tonight.”
“I think I will,” Billie said. If, she thought, she ever got a hold of him. The detective still hadn’t returned her text. He’s just busy, she told herself. Or he changed his mind completely and never wanted to hear from her again. The jury was still out.
