Bone Key (10 page)

Jorge, though, wasn’t really listening to what Laurie was saying, and only partly because she was vapid and annoying. Instead, he was staring at the poker table and felt his jaw drop open. Laurie actually noticed this, and her pert face scrunched into a frown. “What are you all staring at?”

The young boy answered. “There’s a man there!”

Turning around, Laurie saw what Jorge saw: an old white man with short gray hair, large round glasses, and a bright smile. He was wearing a straw hat, a white button-down shirt, and white pants, and he was shuffling a deck of cards. Reynaldo’s Rapture look came back. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, that’s Harry Truman!”

“It—it
can’t
be!” Laurie looked as if her brain had short-circuited, a feeling Jorge could sympathize with. “Isn’t he, like,
dead
?”

Truman set the cards down and his smile got wider. “Well? Someone gonna cut the deck? It’s five-card draw, jacks or better to open, trips or better to win.”

Jorge was starting to think that maybe this trip was worth it for Reynaldo after all . . .

EIGHT

David Madleigh had never been so scared in his life.

Admittedly, the competition wasn’t exactly what you’d call fierce. David was pushing thirty and still hadn’t figured out what to do with his life. He had two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s. When he completed the latter, he came down to Key West to take a summer off and just hang out, go to the beach, drink a lot of beer, listen to a lot of music, do some snorkeling, maybe learn how to scuba dive, and so on, before moving back north to work on his Ph.D. That was five years ago. He hadn’t gotten around to leaving the island yet.

The money he’d saved up for the vacation had run out, so he had to work, and since his MA was in English literature anyhow, what better use to put it to than to work at the Hemingway Home and Museum?

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That was fine right up until Hemingway’s ghost showed up.

David had heard all the ghost stories. Hell, he’d even done a few ghost tours on a freelance basis over the past five years. But he’d never actually seen a ghost—until six months ago.

It had actually been kind of cool at first. The ghost didn’t really
do
anything except glare a lot, but that pretty much fit Hemingway’s intense personality. This was a guy who fought bulls, after all. Then he started talking.

And acting.

The historical society insisted on keeping the place open. Business was bad enough in January once the holiday crowd disappeared, they didn’t want to make it worse. David’s argument that they weren’t going to get a lot of people anyhow fell on deaf ears. He had to keep giving tours and hoping that nobody would mention the cats—like that poor guy this morning.

And sure enough, the place was deserted this evening. Nobody had shown up for the 6:15 tour, and he was willing to bet that the same would be true for the 7:15.

Then two guys came in—one very tall, one just the regular kind of tall, both going for a sort of post-Grunge look. They were also a little ripe, like their last shower was in 2007. The taller one was carrying a packing tube of some kind. The shorter 96 SUPERNATURAL

one was holding what looked like an old Sony Walkman that had been attacked by a rabid dog, and also wore a necklace with some kind of weird charm. The taller one approached David after the two paid their way.

“Hi there. I’m Sam Winchester, this is my brother, Dean.”

David smiled. He’d pegged them for a couple, not siblings. “My name’s David, and I’ll be running the tour, which starts at fifteen minutes past the hour. Until then, I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have. The house was orig—”

Sam interrupted him. “We’re actually curious about the hauntings.”

Sweat, which the mild breeze did nothing to ameliorate, beaded on David’s forehead. “You talked to that couple, didn’t you?”

“I’m sorry?” Sam put on a confused expression, but David wasn’t buying it.

“Look, that man just tripped and fell on the sidewalk. There are a lot of cracks—Katrina, y’know?

Messed up all the sidewalks around here.” In fact, most of the sidewalks had been fixed up in the two and a half years since Hurricane Katrina, but David had to say
something
. . .

“I don’t know what man you’re talking about,”

Sam said. “We just—”

A noise startled David, causing him to jump up a few inches in the air and his heart to skip Bone

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a beat. Whirling around, he saw Sam’s brother, Dean, raising his arms and dropping his messedup Walkman. Looking down on the pavement, David saw that the Walkman was sparking, lights flashing on and off.

Sam looked at Dean. “Dude—the EMF blew out.”

“You think?” Dean said, shaking his hand back and forth. “Christ, the energy you’d need for that’d light up Chicago. Definitely some major mojo here.”

David had no idea what these two were talking about, but he needed to get them out of here before Mr. Hemingway showed up. “All right, look, I don’t know what you two are doing, but—”

Turning back to David, Sam said, “We need to know about the haunting. When did it start?”

“I—I don’t know what—”

Walking up to him, Sam stared down at him with scary-intense eyes. “Look, David, something bad’s happening here. We need to stop it. People have been hurt and killed.”

The sweat was now pouring down into David’s eyes. He removed his glasses and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his T-shirt. “K-killed? I don’t know what you’re—”

“When did the hauntings start?”

“About—about six months ago. Mr. Hemingway just kept—kept
appearing
, y’know? And it 98 SUPERNATURAL

was cool and all, but then—but then he started
talking
to people.” He looked away. “Then he got rid of the cats.”

Sam frowned. “Cats.”

“Yeah, I was wonderin’ about that,” Dean said.

“The museum’s famous for having lots of cats. They all got six toes, supposedly.”

“Right,” Sam said with a nod, “because Hemingway had polydactyl cats.”

David ignored the glare that Dean gave Sam at that comment, and said, “And he kept checking on the tourists. Mostly it was okay, but if anyone was here to see the cats instead of his home, he’d throw them out!” It was actually kind of a relief to
talk
about this. The staff had been dancing around the issue, kind of pretending nothing untoward was happening.

“When did he become so active?” Sam asked.

“Last week. Couple days before New Year’s.”

Sam looked at Dean. “When that girl died.”

David frowned. “What girl?”

“Never mind,” Sam said. “Do you know when he’ll show up again?”

“That’s easy,” Dean said with a smirk before David could say that he had no idea. Talking a lot louder, Dean said, “Well, shoot, Sammy, if the cats aren’t here, we may as well go home! Nobody cares about some musty old writer dude, we just wanna see the cool cats!”

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Closing his eyes, David said, “You’ll hear him now.”

Sam asked, “Hear? Not see?”

David reopened his eyes to see a look of confusion on Sam’s features. “Yeah, when he throws people out, you can’t see him. If he just wants to yell at you—and he does that a lot, lemme tell ya—

then you can see him.”

“Good,” Dean said. “Means they have limits.”

An all-too-damn-familiar voice said, “Limits are for the living, boy.”

Both brothers looked around, but couldn’t see anything. Dean looked at his brother. “Sam!”

But Sam was already reaching into the tube he was carrying, and pulled out two sawed-off shotguns. He tossed one to Dean, who caught it one-handed. Panic suffused David. The only guns that were supposed to be there were from Mr. Hemingway’s collection.

Dean started waving the shotgun around.

“Where are you, you dead bastard?”

“Impressive,” Mr. Hemingway’s voice said. Suddenly, the air shifted and the form of Mr. Hemingway coalesced right in front of Dean. “You do those modifications yourself, boy?”

That threw Dean for a loop, apparently, as his mouth fell open. “Uh, yeah—yeah, I did.”

Sam, meanwhile, took aim with his shotgun and fired it, the report reverberating in David’s ears. 100 SUPERNATURAL

David’s father used to hunt all the time, and taught David all kinds of things he didn’t care about regarding firearms. Since leaving home, David had willfully forgotten most of what his father had taught him, but he remembered just enough to know that shotgun blasts usually didn’t look like that. It was a spray of what looked like sand or dirt or salt or something.

Whatever it was, it had an immediate effect on Mr. Hemingway, who looked like he literally blew apart, his screams echoing off the house and competing with the shotgun blast to completely deafen David. Over the ringing in his ears that made everything echo like they were in a tunnel, David heard Dean say, “Y’know, this whole conversational thing is really messing with my game. Was he really geeking out over my sawed-off?”

Ever the tour guide, David found himself saying,

“Mr. Hemingway was a connoisseur of firearms in his life.” He said it in a high, squeaky voice, and not entirely consciously. His ears were
still
ringing, and his feet were rooted to the spot. He didn’t think he could move if someone put a gun to his head—which was a real possibility just now.

“That . . . hurt!”

All three of them looked around. That was Mr. Hemingway’s voice.

Sam had once again raised his shotgun. “
Defi-
nitely
some major mojo.”

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“Oh
yeah,” Dean said, doing likewise.

“Hey,” David said, “you really can’t have those in here!”

“Rock salt disperses spirits,” Sam said. That brought David up short. “Really?”

“Yup. These shotguns fire rock-salt rounds. It won’t hurt anything.”

David probably should have pointed out that even rock salt can cause damage to physical objects if thrust with great force out of a shotgun barrel, but a voice sounded in the courtyard.

“You . . .
shot
. . . me!”

The voice was still disembodied, which worried David, as it probably meant he was going to do something physical.

“Yeah, well, it’s what we do,” Dean said. “Call it revenge for all the kids who had to suffer through
The Old Man and the Sea
in school.”

“Shoot . . . a man . . . in his . . .
home
?”

“No, shoot a spirit who’s infesting a museum,”

Dean said. “C’mon, ‘Papa,’ show yourself. Face me like a man!”

Having already reached what he’d thought was his panic threshold, David found himself panicking
more.
Appealing to Mr. Hemingway’s
machismo
was a
bad
idea.

“Oh . . . I will, boy . . . rest assured. Very . . . very . . . soon.” Those last three words were a bit quieter, as if a song was fading out at the end. 102 SUPERNATURAL

“I think we got him,” Sam said. “Just took a little longer.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, “and I get the feeling he’s gonna pull himself together faster’n usual, too.”

He looked at David. “We need to salt and burn his bones. Where’s he buried?”

David’s mind went blank for a second, then he stammered, “Er, uh—Idaho.”

“Crap.” Dean shook his head.

Sam approached David. Where before he was intense, now he was pleading. “Listen, David, we’re staying at the Naylor House—you know the place?”

Quickly, nervously, David nodded.

“If the spirit comes back, call there and let one of the proprietors know, okay?”

“O-okay.”

“Freeze!”

Whirling around, David saw Officer Van Montrose standing in the entryway, his weapon out and pointed at Sam and Dean.

“Drop the shotguns and put your hands behind your heads, fellas,” Montrose said in his deep voice.

“Officer—” Sam started, but Montrose cut him off.

“I didn’t say talk, I said drop the shotguns and put your hands behind your heads—
now
!”

Sam and Dean did as they were told. “On your knees, interlock your fingers,” Montrose added. As they did so—Sam looking resigned, Dean Bone

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looking pissed—Montrose said, “Heard a shotgun blast, David. What happened?”

“These two guys were firing—firing rock salt at—at, you know, the—the thing.” Even with the frank talk with Sam and Dean, David couldn’t bring himself to say “Mr. Hemingway’s ghost” out loud.

“Rock salt?” Montrose asked. “You sure?”

David nodded quickly.

“Okay.” Montrose walked around behind Sam and grabbed one arm, bringing it down to the small of his back, and attached a handcuff to that wrist, then did the same for the other arm. He then cuffed Dean, and yanked both to their feet.

“C’mon, fellas, we’re goin’ for a ride.”

David swallowed. The ringing in his ears was finally starting to die down, so the world was starting to sound normal again.

“You okay, David?” Montrose asked.

“Not really. You, uh—you need me to make a statement?”