2 A Haunting In Oregon (8 page)

Roy drove as Steven searched for
Amy Maysill on his phone. He found her and mapped to her home. “She lives a few
blocks from the cemetery,” Steven said.

“Probably walks to it to maintain
the gravesites,” Roy said.

“What are we going to tell her
about this?” Steven said. “I know if someone showed up at my house and said,
‘Here’s a shitload of gold for you,’ I’d have questions.”

“We’ll tell her the truth,” Roy
replied, “but omit some parts. A recently discovered will of her ancestor
disclosed the location of this treasure, and directed that it go to his
descendants.”

“There could be dozens of his
descendants living,” Steven said. “Why her?”

“She doesn’t need to know this is
any more than her share,” Roy said.

“What if she knows other members
of the family?”

“I don’t know, I’ll make something
up,” Roy said.

Steven directed Roy through a
series of turns until they stopped at a small house in a run down area. Most of
the houses were poorly tended, with unmowed lawns and patches of weeds. Amy’s
house was the cleanest on the block; you could tell the yard was attended, and
although the house was modest it looked cared-for.

“Here goes,” Roy said, stopping
the car on the street in front of the house. Steven removed the tin box from
the trunk and they walked to the door. Roy knocked.

A short woman in her mid-thirties
answered the door. She was wearing the uniform of a fast food chain. She looked
tired.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Mrs. Amy Maysill?” Roy said.

She looked suspicious. “Yes,
that’s me.”

“I’m Ben Yates and this is—” he
motioned to Steven “—Henny Youngman, and we’re from the law offices of your
family estate. We’re acting on behalf of the will of Robert Maysill, an
ancestor of yours. We have an item here that you’ve inherited.”

He really is good at this
,
Steven thought.

She squinted her eyes. “Inherited?”

“Yes,” Roy said. “If we could come
in, we’ll transfer this to you. I think you’ll be impressed with it.”

“Are you selling something?” she
said. “I have no time or money. If you pull a toaster out of that box I’ll just
wind up asking you to leave.”

“No toaster,” said Steven. “We’re
just delivering this. It’s all yours, no sales, no strings.”

She squinted her eyes further and
seemed to be thinking it over. “All right, I’ll let you in, but I’ve just
finished a long shift and I’m tired, so please don’t start in on a sales pitch
or I’m going to kick you right out.”

She opened the door and they
walked inside. The living room was small but tidy. All of the furniture was dated
but functional. There was a television in the corner; it was an older tube model.
Steven and Roy sat on the sofa. They could feel the springs underneath the
cushions.

“Thanks for letting us in,” Roy
said. Amy sat on a wooden chair across from them.

“So what’s this about?” she asked.

“Well,” started Roy, “recently the
will of an ancestor of yours was discovered. It directed that certain items
that had been undiscovered until just recently be given to his descendants. We
researched and found you to be one of those descendants. This is your share of
the items bequeathed to you. You are a descendant of Robert Maysill, correct?”

“Yes, I am,” Amy said, “but his
family died poor. Except for the house he built and the money he spent on a
family crypt before he died, they had no money to pass on.”

“That’s what everyone thought,”
Roy said, “until this was discovered.” Steven opened the box, reached in, and
held up one of the baggies.

“Dirt?” she asked.

“Not dirt,” Steven said. “Look
closer. Here.” He passed the baggie to her. It was heavier than she expected,
and it fell out of her hands and to the floor. Both Steven and Roy sucked in
air.

It didn’t open; the seal on the
baggie held. She reached down and picked it back up.

“It sure is heavy,” Amy said.
“What is it?”

“Gold,” Roy said. “There are three
more bags in this box. They’re yours.”

She passed the bag from one hand
to the other, thinking about what they had said. Then she handed the bag back
to Steven.

“Is this the part where you ask me
to write a check as a good faith deposit on the gold?”

Roy chuckled. “No, we’re not
asking you for anything. We’re going to leave this with you, free and clear.
It’s yours to keep, do with as you wish. The only condition of the will was
that it not be talked about publicly. I think your ancestor wanted it spent discreetly.”

Amy sat stunned and silent. After
a moment she spoke. “You’re telling me that you’re just giving me four bags of
gold? You don’t want anything?”

“That’s correct,” Roy said. “We
don’t want anything. This is an inheritance. You’re entitled to it. We’re
merely delivering it per the directives in the will.”

“I might believe you,” Amy said,
“if you hadn’t told me his name was Henny Youngman.”

They all stared at each other,
waiting to see who would speak first.

“How about you tell me what’s
really going on?” Amy asked.

Roy sighed. “All right. You’re correct,
his name isn’t Henny Youngman. He’s my son, his name is Steven. And there isn’t
a will. But the rest is true. Your ancestor asked us to deliver this to you.”

Amy looked at Roy. “My dead
ancestor?”

“I know how this must sound,”
Steven said. “But Robert Maysill wanted you to have this. He directed us to it,
and asked us to deliver it to you specifically. I think he’s impressed with how
you tend the crypt. He mentioned Patricia.”

Amy brought her hand up to her
mouth. She looked down at the tin box.

“I’m not going to ask how you
talked with him. I just need to know if you’re pulling my leg,” she said,
looking up at Roy and Steven, clearly perplexed. “If this is a joke, it is very
cruel.” She began to tear up.

“It’s not a joke,” Steven said.
“Robert said to tell you that Patricia is fine, and asks about Mangey, whoever
that is.”

“Oh,” Roy interjected, “and to
bring more daffodils.”

Amy laughed. “Mangey is what
Patricia used to call our dog. I’d always call it ‘the mangey old dog.’ She was
little and couldn’t pronounce the whole thing, so she just called him ‘Mangey.’
The name stuck.” Amy paused. “Patricia passed away years ago, when she was
four. She’s buried in that crypt. I had no money to afford a plot. A man down
at city parks found out I could use the crypt for free, since there were spaces
still open in it and I was in the family. I’d go down there to talk to her. You
can walk into it, there’s a bench inside. I’d sit there and just talk.
Sometimes I’d look over the names on the other graves and talk to them too.
Just casual, funny stuff, asking them if they were taking good care of her,
that kind of thing. I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t think they were
listening.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“So this is for real?” Amy said,
looking up at Roy and Steven.

“Yes,” said Roy. “When we leave,
this gold stays here, with you. It’s all yours.”

“My advice is not to tell anyone
you have it,” Steven said. “No one, until you can take it somewhere and get it
exchanged for cash,” Steven said. “If you decide to keep any of it, I suggest
getting a safe deposit box at your bank.”

“I’ve never had anything like a
safe deposit box. How much do you think it’s worth?” she asked.

“Based on its weight and the price
of gold,” Steven said, “I’d say hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Amy slowly grabbed the sides of
her head with her hands and stared at the floor. She seemed to be holding her
head together, as though it might explode at any moment. When she raised her
head to look at Steven and Roy there were tears on her cheeks.

“Well I don’t know what to say,”
she said. “I’m…numb.”

“The main thing,” Roy said, “is to
take proper care of this. Don’t tell anyone, not even people you trust. Go down
to the bank today and lock it up until you decide what to do with it. We’re
going to go now. Steven will leave you his number in case you need us for
anything.”

“Do you have a pen?” Steven asked.

They all stood and Steven and Amy
exchanged phone numbers. They walked to the door.

“You realize this completely
changes everything, for me, for my kids?” Amy asked as they walked out the door
and turned to face her in the doorway. “I have three boys, all in school. No
husband. I work two jobs most days. We barely get by. Now…”

“I think that’s what Robert had in
mind,” Roy told her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” they both said,
and turned to walk to their car. Amy watched them as they got in and drove off.
Then she closed the door and turned to the tin box on her living room floor
that had just altered the course of her life.

-

Steven and Roy drove back to their
motel. They were both a little overwhelmed by the experience with Amy.

“I told you sometimes good things
happen,” Roy said. “This is one of those times.”

“I hope she spends it well,”
Steven said. “When people win the lottery and suddenly come into a lot of
money, you wonder if they will go crazy and lose it all.”

“I don’t think that will happen
with her,” Roy said. “It’s not millions. It’s enough for her to pay off a mortgage
and put her boys through college, but she’ll still work. It’ll just be a lot
easier.”

Once they entered the motel,
Steven walked into Roy’s room.

“No text from Albert yet,” Steven
said, checking his phone. “Is there anything we should do?”

“Just wait,” Roy said. “It’ll
come. We did exactly what he asked. If it doesn’t, we’ll go back to the
cemetery and have another conversation with him.”

“I’ll be next door,” Steven said.
“If the text comes through, I’ll let you know.”

Steven walked over to his room and
laid down on the bed. He was pleased at how things had gone with the day. Pete
had been cooperative during the digging and giving Amy the gold had been a rare
experience.
It’s not every day you get to change someone’s life like that,
he thought.
Now all we need is that text from Albert.

As though thinking about it caused
it, Steven’s phone buzzed. He checked it and walked over to Roy’s.

“You’re right,” he said to Roy,
“it came through. ‘Instructed by RM to close it permanently effective immediately’
it says.”

“Ha ha!” Roy said, clapping his
hands together. “I think that will do it. Let’s call Pete and give him the good
news!”

Steven dialed the phone and handed
it to Roy. Roy spoke with Pete and explained about the gold delivery to Amy and
the text from Albert. They discussed a few other things. Roy assured him things
would start to improve at the manor, starting tonight.

When he hung up, Steven asked him
if Pete seemed OK.

“He’s ecstatic,” Roy told him. “He
said we’re welcome as guests at the manor anytime, no charge. Let’s celebrate! Maybe
we can find a nice steak place here in town.”

“What, you don’t want to head back
to Seattle?” Steven asked.

“No, let’s stay the night and go
back in the morning,” Roy said. “What I’d really like is a big fat steak and a
bottle of wine to go with it. Does that fancy phone of yours have all the steak
places in it?”

Steven smiled and went to work
checking out reviews.

-

Steven and Roy spared no expense
at dinner that night. They started off toasting each other with whiskey. Each
ordered their fill of meat and side dishes. They split a bottle of wine between
the two of them. By the time they got back to their motel they were ready to
sleep. They wished each other good night and settled in for the night.

Steven was awakened by his phone.
As he picked it up to see who was calling, he checked the time: 3 a.m. The call
was from Pete.

“Hello?” Steven said groggily.
“Pete?”

“Steven, are you still in town?
Can you come out here right away?” Steven could hear panic in Pete’s voice.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Everything’s gone to hell,” Pete
replied. “Sarah has barricaded herself in her room, the guests are packing up
and leaving, and…” he paused, “…well, I guess you should see it. Can you and
Roy come out here, now? I don’t know where else to turn. Roy said things would
be better, but the exact opposite is happening. We need help!”

“We’ll be right there,” Steven
said, and hung up the phone. He threw on some clothes and went next door to
rouse Roy.

“Maybe we’ve been double crossed,”
said Steven as he drove out to the manor. “Robert, or Albert.”

“Robert, maybe,” Roy said. “Albert
definitely not. If he said he shut down the portal, I believe him.”

“Maybe the ghosts aren’t happy
about it being shut down,” Steven suggested. “Maybe they’re not going to just
drift away quietly. Or maybe it has to do with the removal of the gold.”

“If I had a dollar for every one
of your maybes,” Roy said, “we’d be shittin’ in knee high cotton. Why don’t we
just wait and see what Pete is talking about.”

That silenced Steven. He could
tell Roy was pissed that things hadn’t gone as he’d promised to Pete. Roy had
miscalculated something, and Steven realized he was just irritating him with
scenarios. Steven was much more of a worrier, a planner. He liked to think
things through, run options in his mind. Roy was more able to take things as
they came.

They drove the remaining distance
in silence, and in the dark. The sun wouldn’t rise for another couple of hours.
As Steven pulled the car into the long driveway that led to the house, both he
and Roy could see something was wrong.

“Look at that!” Roy said.

Steven slowly inched the car along
the driveway towards the house, a thousand feet in the distance. Lights were on
in the central common rooms. As they watched, a light would flash behind a
window in the guest rooms, as though someone had flashed a camera in a darkened
room. Then another flash would come from another window. The house would sit
dark for a moment, then another flash would come.

“Do you want to check this out,
before we meet Pete?” Steven asked.

Roy slipped into the River and
observed the house from within the flow. Everything looked normal, as it had on
the first night they were there. He could see the wisps of ghosts moving within
the house and in the yard, but they didn’t seem to be moving any differently
than before. He moved to a position above the house, the same angle he had
shown Steven on the first night. The ghosts were moving in the same patterns,
some confined to a single room, others moving between them. He saw the woman in
the room next to Steven’s — she was walking back and forth, preparing to shoot
herself. He looked for the little girl and found her in the basement, chained
near the furnace. She was yanking on the chains just as before. He looked
around for any other disturbances, any beings other than ghosts. He didn’t see
any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

He exited the flow. “The ghosts
all look the same,” he told Steven. “They’re doing the same things they were
doing when we were here before. I don’t see anything else.”

“No portal?” Steven asked.

“None,” Roy answered, “but then
it’s past the time it would have appeared, if it had. I doubt it did.”

Steven pulled the car in front of
the house, and they both left it and walked to the main door. Pete was there to
meet them.

“I thought you said it would be
over!” Pete said to Roy.

“The portal is closed Pete, I’m
sure of that,” Roy told him.

“Then how do you explain this?”
Pete said.

“Explain what?” Steven asked.

Pete pointed to the drawing room
where they had first met Sarah. Roy and Steven walked into the room and glanced
around.

On the floor was a man twisting in
pain, dressed in old clothes. After a moment, another man materialized above him,
straddling him with both legs. He held a revolver and he raised it to point at
the lying man. Then he pulled the trigger repeatedly, firing bullet after
bullet into the man’s head. After the third bullet the man’s head split apart,
blood spreading on the floor. He continued firing until he had emptied his
revolver. Then he looked up at Steven, Roy and Pete, standing in the entryway
to the room. He opened the revolver and dumped the shells on the floor. Then he
started reloading it.

“He will come after you,” Pete
said, “if you don’t leave the room. He thinks we’re witnesses.”

They all hurried into the main
hallway at the base of the stairs. “We’re safe out here,” Pete said. “He
doesn’t leave that room.”

Steven noticed a lady in an
exquisite dress descending the staircase. She was regal and refined, with
excellent posture and a highly held chin. When she reached the bottom of the
stairs, she turned, and walked toward them.

Steven instinctually stepped to
the side to allow her to pass, and Pete went with him. But Roy stood still as
the woman passed through him and continued into the corridor towards the
kitchen.

“It’s like this all over the
house,” Pete said.

“We saw flashing in the windows as
we drove up,” Steven said. “Do you know what that is?”

“One of the guests,” Pete said.
“He’s trying to take pictures of them. All the other guests left. Scared to
death, in the middle of the night. They just packed up and took off. Sarah’s
been in her bedroom all night, she won’t come out.”

They heard gunshots coming from
the drawing room as the ghost reenacted the murder they had just witnessed.

“Every couple of minutes,” Pete
said, “six gunshots. Goes on and on.”

“Pete, take us down to the
basement,” said Roy. “I want to see if the portal is still there.”

They walked to the door that led
down to the basement. Pete unlocked it and opened it. He reached to turn on the
stairwell light, but before he could reach it, he glanced at the bottom of the
stairs. There was a man barely visible, sitting on the bottom step, with his back
to them. As Pete turned on the light, the man twisted his neck around to face
them. His face was missing as though it had been sheared off by a blade.

“I’m not going down there,” Pete
said. “Sorry guys, I can’t do it.”

“I suggest we ride this out until daylight,”
Roy said. “We know our two rooms in the north wing are ghost free. Is yours?”
he asked Pete.

“What?” asked Pete.

“The room you sleep in, Pete. Were
there ghosts in it?” Roy repeated.

“No,” he answered, “not that I
saw. I heard the gunshots and I got up. That’s when I saw all of this.”

“I suspect Sarah’s room is ghost
free too,” Roy said, “or she wouldn’t still be in there. Can Steven and I
return to our rooms in the north wing for the rest of the night? I think once
daylight hits we’ll see things calm down enough that we can go down into the
basement.”

“Yes,” Pete said, pulling a
keychain out of his pocket and sliding a key off it. “Your rooms are still
open, you can use them. This is a master key.”

“Go to your room, Pete,” Roy said.
“Stay there. Put in ear plugs if you have to. Let’s meet in the dining room at
7 a.m. It’ll be light then, and we can talk this through without all this…” he
waved his hand dismissively, “…hubbub.”

“Right,” Pete said, and turned to
walk off to his room. Steven and Roy made their way to the north wing to find
their rooms.

-

“Be sure to throw the chain on
your door,” Steven suggested once they were inside their original rooms. “We
don’t want the photographer walking in on us.”

“Good idea!” Roy said, chaining
his door.

The rooms had been cleaned and
made up. Neither Steven or Roy had any clothes or toiletries with them, they
were all back at the motel. They would have to make do with the clothes on
their backs until they could go back into town.

Steven walked through the
adjoining door into Roy’s room. “What do you think?” Steven asked.

“I don’t think anything out of the
ordinary is happening here,” Roy said, “except they’re visible. We already knew
this was a ghost trap, they’re here by the hundreds. For some reason, once the
portal shut down they became visible. Or at least some of them did.”

“Pete looked terrified,” Steven
said. “He was scared out of his mind.”

“Of course he is,” Roy said. “What
he doesn’t realize is these ghosts are always behaving this way, doing these
things. He just never sees it. They’re just doing what they always do every
night.”

“Why would they become visible?”
Steven asked. “Did something about the portal malfunction? Are they angry, is
that why they’re showing themselves?”

“I doubt it,” Roy said. “Only a
few of the ghosts here actually have enough strength to become visible over the
years, and even then only for brief moments. That’s where the material for the
ghost book Pete gave you comes from – people who caught glimpses of the few
that had enough strength to manifest. To see so many of them visible, all at
once, I don’t think this is the ghosts’ doing. Or the portal. This took a lot
of energy.”

“Then what?” Steven asked.

“I wonder if that mirror is still
available,” Roy said, walking into his bathroom. “Ah! Here it is.” He returned
with the mirror he had used to detect the pattern in the tunnel.

“Here, hold this, will you?” he
said, handing the mirror to Steven. “I’m going in the River. Just stand and
hold it, just like that. Don’t move it.”

Steven held the mirror while Roy
slipped into the flow. After a minute, he returned.

“That motherfucker!” Roy said as
he emerged from the River. “You can put the mirror down.”

“What?” Steven asked. “What did
you see?”

“A pattern. This one I already
recognize. It’s descended around the house and yard.”

“What’s descended?” Steven asked.

“It’s like a curse,” Roy answered.
“Fresh, just cast. Makes the ghosts visible to human eyes. It’ll last until
dawn, then the sun will eliminate it. I’ve seen the pattern before. A little
ratfuck named Jurgen. He’s a low-life scumball.”

“He’s casting a curse on the
house? Why?”

“He’s an asshole,” said Roy,
becoming angry. “It’s just the kind of thing he’d do, the little fucker.”

“Tell me what’s going on!” Steven
raised his voice to Roy. “Stop and explain it to me!”

Roy sat down on the sofa in the
living room of the suite. “Jurgen is the lowest of the low. He’ll sell anything
to make a buck. He steals most of what he sells, and he’s not above selling the
worst stuff, the most degenerate things.” A light clicked on in Roy’s head. He
turned to face Steven, smiling broadly. “Including ghost matter. And human
blood! He’s been the one on the other end of the portal! He’s pissed!” Roy was
delighted with his discovery.

“Will you please let me in on what
you’ve figured out?” Steven said. “I feel really in the dark here.”

“Robert didn’t have a chance to
close the portal before he died, right? He left it open, paid for into eternity.
It’s been sitting here, attracting ghosts for a hundred and seventy years.”

“Right,” nodded Steven.

“So, along comes an opportunistic
fuck like Jurgen. He discovers the portal. He must have found the other end
inside the mine Robert mentioned. It’s just like him to be prowling around an
abandoned mine, looking for things he could sell. He had to be there in the
middle of the night, right when the portal opened. He recognized what it was,
and he went through it, finding himself in the basement of the manor –
surrounded by a mother lode of ghosts.”

“OK, I’m with you,” Steven said.

“Jurgen is a scavenger. He
collects things and refines them into other materials that he can sell. Mostly
recipe components. You can get the basic stuff from him, but he specializes in
exotic items, stuff that’s hard to get. Sells for more money.”

“Like ghost matter?”

“Exactly!” Roy agreed. “Ghost
matter isn’t easy to come by. Here he’s found a free, abandoned, secret
passageway to a bonanza of ghost matter. He realizes he just needs to send
through a few trained harvesters when the portal is open, and he’s got an
ongoing supply of ghost matter to sell or refine. Right up his alley.”

“And that’s why the ghosts were
upset about it,” Steven said. “They didn’t like being harvested.”

“Yes, but not enough to leave, apparently,”
Roy said. “The draw of the portal was too strong to resist even if it cost them
some matter some nights.”

“But the deaths? Harvesters gone
wrong?”

“In addition to an endless supply
of ghosts, Jurgen realizes he’s also got a steady supply of sleeping humans. He
crosses a line, repurposes some harvesters to collect blood, and sends them
through the tunnel. It’s risky since harvesters aren’t used that way, but we
know that’s what’s happening, we saw it ourselves. Human blood is worth a lot
as a compound. Some blood is worth much more, like the blood of a pregnant woman.
The portal gave him a nice income stream.”

“Before we shut it down,” Steven
said.

“Yes,” Roy agreed, “before we shut
it down. Now he’s lost his easy supply of bodies and ghosts. He’s pissed. He
probably thinks he can get us to reopen it by scaring the daylights out of
whoever did it. That won’t work with us of course.”

“But it’s scaring the daylights
out of Pete and Sarah,” Steven said, “and their guests. Can we reopen it? The
portal?”

“No way,” Roy said. “You have to
pay someone like Albert to do it, and neither of us could afford it, trust me.
Not to mention we’d be opening the place back up to the harvesters. No, that’s
not the solution.”

“What do we do? We can’t leave
them like this.”

“Jurgen is a vengeful little
fucker,” Roy said. “I dealt with him once before, when a friend was after some
unusual ingredients. He tried to screw us over, but we caught him and forced him
to be equitable. Really pissed him off. He tormented us about it until we stood
up to him, showed him we wouldn’t be bullied, then he backed down. He’s a
despicable person. I was hoping I’d never run into him again.”

Roy got up and began pacing the
room.

“In this case,” Roy continued, “he
probably wants to know who turned off his supply line. The curse is to shake us
out. It only lasts a night, he’ll have to re-cast it every night. He’ll never
find out who did it, or if he does, he’ll believe it was Robert Maysill who
shut it down. He had it good while it lasted, now it’s over. Eventually he’ll
get tired and give up, move on.”