2 A Haunting In Oregon (9 page)

“How long might that take?” Steven
said. “I don’t think Pete and Sarah can go through much more of this.”

“What they should do,” Roy
answered, “is leverage it. They’d have tourists coming from miles around if
someone published proof that it is still haunted. Get those TV reality shows
out here. Take advantage of it until Jurgen drops the curse, or the ghosts
drift away. Or both. It costs Jurgen every time he casts it, and if Jurgen saw
them making money off it, he’d drop it in a heartbeat. He’s a jealous little
fucker, very petty.”

“Sarah won’t do that,” Steven
said. “You know she won’t.”

“Yeah,” Roy replied, “she is an
obstinate one. I’ll bet even with ghosts chasing her down the hallways she’s
insisting they’re hallucinations. Probably wants Pete to take her to the
hospital in Medford to get checked out. She’ll figure it out eventually.”

“You told them this would solve
it,” Steven said. “Pete was counting on you.”

Roy stopped pacing and turned to
look at Steven. “Don’t you lay a guilt trip on me,” Roy said, pointing his
finger at him. “Things don’t always go as planned in this business. We did what
we thought would solve it. It will, if they give it time.”

“You know that’s not going to
work,” Steven said. “They’re terrified, they’re not thinking about selling
tickets to it.”

“Well, what do you propose, then?”
Roy said, exasperated.

“We find Jurgen and confront him,”
Steven said. “We get him to drop the curse. That’s all that needs to happen,
right?”

“Oh, we just get him to drop it,”
Roy said sarcastically.

“Yes, he drops it, the ghosts
become invisible again, problem solved. They eventually drift back to where
they came from. Pete and Sarah can start over here, try to rebuild their
business. And you can tell Pete you solved it.”

“I did solve it,” Roy snapped at
Steven.

“Not good enough!” Steven shouted
back at him. Then he lowered his voice. “Not good enough.”

Roy stomped off to the bathroom,
sulking. He slammed the door closed.

Steven walked back to his room and
laid down on the bed. This reminded him of when he and his father would fight
as he was growing up. It had always been easy to fight with Roy, and Steven
knew all the buttons to push. Over the years Steven had learned how to avoid
the fights, when to drop things that might erupt. But in this case he had heard
Roy’s promises to Pete. He had told him to trust him. He had assured him. Pete
had done everything they asked him to do. They had done a lot to help Pete, but
they hadn’t done enough. Leaving it like this would be like leaving a rabid dog
loose in a playground. It wasn’t acceptable. Steven wasn’t going to let Roy
call it a day and go home.

Steven and Roy walked down to meet
Pete separately the next morning. Steven was still angry with Roy for thinking
they could just let things stand and sort themselves out, and they hadn’t
spoken to each other since their fight the night before.

Steven joined Pete at the
breakfast table. “Things appear to have quieted down,” Steven said.

“Indeed,” Pete said. “The gunshots
stopped as the sun came up, just like Roy said.”

It was obvious Pete still had
faith in Roy. If Steven had any say in the matter, he’d make sure Pete’s faith
wasn’t misplaced.

Pete was picking at a muffin and
drinking coffee. He handed a basket of muffins to Steven. “Didn’t feel much
like cooking this morning,” Pete said.

“I understand,” Steven said. “Is
the guest who was taking the pictures still here?”

“He left after they all
disappeared,” Pete said. “Told me he had to be back in Portland today, but that
he was coming back with some friends next week.”

“Well, that’s a good sign at
least,” Steven said. Pete shot him a look that told him he did
not
think
it was a good sign.

“Is Sarah OK?” Steven asked.

“Yes,” Pete answered, “she’s up.
I’m expecting her this morning, don’t know right where she is at the moment.”

Roy entered the room. He walked to
a place at the table and sat. Pete offered him the coffee pot and Steven passed
him the basket of muffins.

Steven looked at Pete. He could
tell Pete sensed something was up between him and Roy. They weren’t looking at
each other or acknowledging each other.
He’s probably wondering what
happened last night after we left him
, Steven thought.

“Pete, I think I know what’s
causing this trouble,” Roy said. “At least, causing what you saw last night.”

Pete looked down at his plate and
took another sip of coffee. He didn’t say anything.

“Pete,” Roy said, “the portal is
closed. We can go downstairs and check, but I’m sure of it. What’s happening
now is something else.”

“And what is that?” Pete asked.

“Are you sure you want me to tell
you?” Roy asked.

“Yes, Mr. Hall,” Sarah said,
entering the room from the kitchen and sitting at the table. “We’d like to
know.” She turned to Steven. “Would you pass the coffee?”

“I think,” said Roy, “that you
might find it a little hard to believe.”

“After last night,” Sarah said,
pouring herself a cup, “I doubt I’d find anything hard to believe. If you have
an answer, I’m all ears.”

Roy cleared his throat. “Well,
what you saw last night goes on here all the time, all night long. Every night.
You just can’t see it. Remember when I told you at that first breakfast that
there were hundreds of ghosts here? Well, it’s true. You can’t see them
normally. Last night you could.”

“Because the portal was closed?”
asked Pete.

“No,” Roy answered, “because we
pissed off the person who was profiting from the portal. In retaliation, he
made them visible.”

“You’re right,” Sarah said, taking
a sip of her coffee, “I find it hard to believe. But keep going.” She tapped
Steven on his arm to get his attention, then pointed to the basket of muffins.
Steven passed it to her.

“It costs him every time he makes
them visible. I believe he’ll get tired of doing it and will eventually stop,”
Roy said. “Also, with the portal closed, many of the ghosts that are here — the
ones that came here from somewhere else, not the ones that were generated here
— will go back home. That will reduce the ghost population significantly.”

“But,” Steven said, “that may take
some time.”

“How long?” Sarah asked.

“Don’t know,” Roy said. “Could
happen quickly.”

“Or,” Steven added, “it might take
a long time.”

“Is there anything we can do?”
Pete asked.

“Well, you can wait,” said Roy.

“Or,” said Steven, “Roy and I can
hunt down the guy who’s doing it, and try to convince him to stop.”

No one said anything for a while.
They all picked at their muffins.

“Look,” Sarah said. “I’ve been
less than friendly to you, and for that I apologize. Pete told me after you
left here you went to New Mexico on our behalf. That’s really kind of you. I
don’t know what you were doing down there, but I suspect you felt it was the
right thing to do to help us.”

She poured herself more coffee
while she spoke.

“I don’t think we’ll survive more
nights like last night. Pete says the deaths will stop. All right, I’ll take
that at face value. But if our guests are literally scared out of their rooms
and into their cars, like last night, we won’t survive. We’ll be bankrupt in a
month.”

Again there was silence. Sarah
sighed.

“Listen, I know I’ve been less
than charitable. I walked into the kitchen last night when I heard gunshots.
There was a dead woman on the counter and a man above her, literally sawing
through her arm. He’d already cut off her other arm; it was lying on the floor.
I screamed and ran out of the room and into my bedroom, and I called Pete. He
told me it was happening all over the hotel and to lock myself in my room and
not come out.”

She popped a piece of muffin in
her mouth. “When I got up this morning, Pete told me you said they’d all be
gone at sunrise. Sure enough, they were. I walked into the kitchen, no sign of
the woman or the man. I can’t explain it, but apparently you were right — about
there being a lot of ghosts here, about them disappearing in the morning, all
of that. I stand corrected.”

There was another long pause. No
one moved or said anything.

“So,” she continued, “if there’s
anything –
anything
– you can do that would help us, I would be
extremely grateful. I have no idea what that might be, how much danger it
places you in. But I think you’re the only chance we’ve got here. You can stay
as long as you need to. We’ll cover your expenses. We’re desperate, Mr. Hall.”

She looked down at her muffin and
picked another piece.

 “I’m begging you,” she said,
looking back up at Roy.

Steven looked at Roy, and he could
see him melt.

-

Steven was behind the wheel, Roy
in the passenger seat. They were in their car driving back to Seattle.

“You’re doing the right thing,”
Steven said. “You and I might be equipped to deal with those manifestations,
but they are not.”

“You’re probably right about
that,” Roy said. “Still, I wish they’d just let it sit and play out. A couple
of months and it’d be fine.”

“They don’t have a couple of
months,” Roy said.

“You don’t exactly understand what
we’re going to have to do, who this guy is,” Roy said. “You think that because
it’s been relatively easy so far to work with Robert and Albert that we’ll be
just as successful with Jurgen. We won’t. He’s a vile little man and he’s
resourceful. And he’s pissed. How much energy do you think it takes to make two
hundred ghosts visible for a night? When he finds out we’re the ones behind the
shut down of his portal, he’ll direct all that energy at us.”

“He’s a man, right?” Steven asked.
“He’s not some supernatural half man, half monster?”

“As far as I know,” replied Roy.

“Then he can be reasoned with,”
said Steven.

“You may find that harder to do
than you think,” Roy said.

“Why?” Steven asked.

“He has a way of getting under
your skin,” Roy said. “Throws you off your game. That’s why I want to see Dixon
before we talk to him.”

“He was the friend who recognized
Albert’s pattern?” Steven asked.

“Yes,” Roy replied. “He and I have
some experience with Jurgen. Jurgen tried to take advantage of us.”

Steven slowed the car down as he
crossed the bridge from Oregon into Washington. It was a long bridge, spanning
the Columbia river.

“What exactly happened between you
two and Jurgen?” Steven asked. “He tried to rip you off?”

“Yes,” Roy replied, “and then he
got pissed when we called him on it!”

“Tell me the story,” Steven said.

“I needed an unusual mineral,” Roy
explained. “I found Jurgen as a source, but he had a minimum order amount and
it was far more than I needed. So I approached Dixon about going in with me on
the order, if he wanted any. He said yes, so we pooled our payment to him and
ordered the mineral.

“Jurgen takes our money, then
tells us we owe him twice as much. He claims the minimum was per person, not
per order. Dixon and I, we begin to realize we’re dealing with a shady
character. So we ask him to cancel the order and return our money. He won’t, he
says the cancel fee is equal to what we’ve already paid.”

“Ooo,” Steven said, “that
is
irritating.”

“So we went back to him and said,
look, we ordered as a partnership. That’s a single legal entity. We also
threatened to turn him in to the Secretary of State and the state Attorney General.
That seemed to work; he doesn’t like getting involved with any officials. He
said, ‘Look, because you didn’t understand the rules, I’ll give you the order
this time,’ something like that, and we both didn’t care, we just wanted our
money back or the mineral we’d ordered.

“So, we get the mineral, and it
wasn’t the right thing at all – it was completely different than what we
ordered. We took it back to him and we went around and around, with him
defending himself and us telling him whoever provided our order screwed up. He
finally agreed to supply us with the right mineral.

“So, at this point we’re pretty
sick of this guy.”

“I can imagine,” Steven
interjected.

“But that’s not the end of it,”
Roy said. “Then we start hearing that he’s bad mouthing us to other vendors,
claiming we were bad customers, we ripped him off, he did us favors and we took
advantage of him, that kind of thing. I doubt most people believed any of what
he said because most people knew what a lowlife he was. But Dixon and I were
pissed about it. First he tries to screw us every way he can, then after the
deal he keeps screwing us! We didn’t want people thinking we couldn’t be relied
upon. So we decided to stand up to him, to shut him up.”

“Really?” Steven asked. “What did
you do?”

“Dixon and I went to his
warehouse, walked into his office, shut the door, and sat down. Then we told
him if he said another word about us to anyone, we’d make it our personal
mission to destroy his business. We told him we’d dig until we found every
supplier he had and fuck with them. We’d track his customers and torment them.
And we told him we wouldn’t stop until we’d caused him enough damage to equal a
thousand times what our little mineral transaction cost.

“He weaseled and hummed and hawed.
He called us every name in the book. But eventually he backed off. He knew we’d
do it, and it wasn’t worth it to him to start some kind of war with us. There
was no upside for him and a lot of negatives. We told him we’d never order from
him again and to never contact us, either.

“Now it appears we’re going to
confront him again. That’s why I want to talk to Dixon. This will involve him
since he was with me when we had the run in with Jurgen years ago.”

 Steven realized there was more to
this confrontation than he originally anticipated. He had stood up to Roy on
this issue but he reminded himself that Roy was far more experienced than he
was, and he needed to take that into consideration.

“We’ll be getting home around
nine,” Steven said. “I presume our visit with Dixon will be tomorrow?”

“No, we can visit him tonight,”
Roy said. “He stays up all night. I think he sleeps in the middle of the day.”

“Dixon is human, right?”

“Oh yes,” Roy said. “Completely
human. Just odd.”