Bone Key (5 page)

An acne-festooned teenager wearing a Van Halen T-shirt said, “What, and people
believed
that? I mean,
duh,
it was the kid!”

“Maybe it was.” Another dramatic pause. “And maybe it wasn’t!”

Angela put her hat back on and led them down the creaky stairs. Once, Angela had asked why they didn’t replace the stairs, but her boss pointed out that creaky stairs in a haunted house is a
good
thing.

Jonathan
still
hadn’t shown up to run the gift shop, like usual, so Angela locked up the house and hoped he deigned to arrive by the time the tour was over. She hated having to run the gift shop after doing the whole tour.

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Over the following hour, she took the group out onto the early-evening streets to each of the other six houses on the tour, and described some of the hauntings. Between each one, the fat man complained about how much
walking
and
stand-
ing
they were doing, and don’t they get a
break
? At each one, a pair of older women who appeared to be sisters hung on Angela’s every word, gasping in all the right places and saying that that was amazing. Right after that, the kid with the acne would come up with what he thought was a logical and scientific—and possibly accurate, not that Angela cared—explanation of each haunting, earning him a dirty look from the two sisters.

By the time she got to the story of Captain Naylor, she was about ready to kill all of them. The sisters’ simpering approval was almost as bad as Acne Boy’s channeling of Dana Scully—and both of them were a treat compared to the fat man.

“Captain Terrence Naylor owned this house during his life as a wrecker captain. During the nineteenth century, one of the most lucrative businesses on Key West was the wreckers. Ships and boats were regularly getting damaged on the reefs, and wreckers would go out and do rescue and salvage. A lot of the houses on this island were built by wrecker captains with the money they made.”

“That’s
awful,
” the fat man said. “Profiting on people’s suffering like that.”

40 SUPERNATURAL

Angela ground her teeth. That was the other thing she got regularly, people who were outraged at the wreckers’ actually making a living. “They were performing a service—and it was a very specific and well-regulated service. They weren’t profiting on misery any more than firefighters do. Without wreckers, a lot more people would’ve died out on the sea.”

The fat man didn’t look convinced, so Angela went back to ignoring him and telling them about how Captain Naylor had been haunting the house since he died in 1872, and how to this day, guests at the Naylor House Bed and Breakfast would hear the captain’s voice in the night . . .

“Prob’ly just the wind,” Acne Boy said. “Tropical breezes, all’a trees—plus all’a live music right

’round the corner on Duval. Only really really stupid people’d believe that was a ghost.” That last was said while looking right at the sisters. The Naylor House was right across the street from the Lipinski House, so the tour ended when Angela walked them across Eaton Street and stood under a streetlamp. “Thank you all for coming to our tour.” Glancing at the front door, she saw that it was unlocked, and the display lights in the gift shop were on, so obviously Jonathan had materialized. “The gift shop is available, and I hope you all enjoy your stay in the Keys.”

Some of the group didn’t bother coming inside—

Bone

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41

ey

including, thank God, Acne Boy—while others went in to browse the items in the shop. They sold books about the island, about the folklore, about some of the famous people and historical events of the Keys, and so on. There were also maps, postcards, gift cards, CDs by local artists, and various silly
tchotchkes
that tourists always liked to buy for whatever stupid reason.

While folks browsed, Angela walked up to the desk and glowered at the pale, long-haired, bearded young man with the beer gut already sticking out from under his too-small T-shirt. At least he’d remembered to bathe this morning. He had his nose in a gaming magazine that had an orc or something on the cover.

“’Bout
time
you showed up,” she said.

“What?” Jonathan said defensively without looking up from the magazine. “I knew you wouldn’t be done with these guys until seven.”

“What if I finished early? Or what if one of them wanted to buy something at the start? You’re
supposed
to be here at six.”

Jonathan shook his head. “Whatever.”

Sighing, Angela looked around and made a beeline for the fat man, who was with his wife looking at the Florida license plates with people’s names on them. He was holding up a license plate emblazoned with the name terry. “We should get this for our niece.”

His wife frowned. “Doesn’t she spell it with an I?”

42 SUPERNATURAL

“What do you mean?”

“It’s ‘Terri,’ with an I. She don’t spell it like that, with a Y.”

“What difference does
that
make?”

Angela walked up to him. “Thanks again for coming on the tour,” she lied. “If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask Jonathan over there.”

“Oh, thank you, I will,” the fat man said.
Yes.
“Good.”

A pair of young men who appeared to be a couple, and who’d been blessedly silent during the tour, came up to Angela.

“Excuse me, Angela?” one of them said.

“Yes?”

“I think I left my bracelet up in Raymond’s room.”

The other one made a
tsk
noise. “Dammit, Paulie, I
told
you to get that clasp fixed, but do you listen?”

“Oh shut
up
, Mario, I’m just—”

Mario held up a hand. “Fine, fine,
don’t
listen to me, I don’t know
anything.
”

Angela put on her best smile. “I can run up and check for you.”

“Could you please?” Paulie said, his wide eyes and hopeful smile giving him a look of gratitude.

“That would be so great. It’s a silver bracelet with a Celtic knotwork pattern on it.”

“No problem.” She regretted the risk of not Bone

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43

being there when the fat man descended upon Jonathan, but knowing the man in question, Angela’d probably still hear whatever he harangued the dork with from upstairs.

Going up the winding staircase, she opened the door to find that the furniture had been rearranged. The tiny couch was now against the wall, the rocker had been rotated ninety degrees, and the easy chair was facing the window. Raymond was also on the couch.

Right on the threshold was an unclasped silver bracelet that had a very lovely Celtic knotwork pattern etched all around it. Smiling, Angela picked it up and walked back downstairs, the wood creaking under her heavy boots. Once the tourists had paid for their goodies and left (Mario and Paulie both expressing gratitude for her retrieving the missing bracelet, Paulie promising Mario that
this time
he’d get the damn clasp fixed), Jonathan and Angela were alone in the house—at least until the eight o’clock group started to trickle in.

“What’s with the redecorating in Raymond’s room?” she asked Jonathan, who had gone back to his gaming magazine.

“What’re you talkin’ ’bout?” he asked without raising his head.

“Raymond’s room. You rearranged all the furniture.”

44 SUPERNATURAL

Finally, Jonathan looked up. “Angie, the hell’re you
talkin’
about? I just got here five minutes ’fore you did. Barely had time to unlock the place an’

turn the lights on ’fore you guys came all bargin’

in. I ain’t been upstairs.”

“Then who rearranged the furniture?”

“Hell if
I
know.” Jonathan looked back down at the magazine.

Shaking her head, Angela went back up the winding stairs.
This is seriously messed up.
The stairs seemed to be creaking extra loudly this time.
Stop it, it’s just your imagination. Jonathan’s
probably lying. Or maybe Stella or Gene came in
while the tour was going on. That’d be just like
them.

When she got back to the top of the stairs, she pushed the door slowly open, and it creaked even louder than the stairs had. Hating the sound of it, she pushed harder, throwing the door all the way open with a crash against the brick wall of the turret.

Angela stared at the room. It looked like it had when she came up for Paulie’s bracelet. But the doll was gone.

She walked over to the sofa, which had a small indentation on the spot where Raymond
had
been sitting.
So how the hell did it move?
The only door to the house that hadn’t been sealed shut was the front door, a security measure that had been put in Bone

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45

to safeguard the merchandise and cash register in the gift shop. The house wasn’t that big—Angela would’ve seen somebody try to sneak upstairs in the time between her retrieval of the bracelet and now.
So who took the stupid doll?

Angela nearly jumped out of her skin as the wooden door slammed shut with a louder crash than it had made when she threw it open.

“Okay, Jonathan, this just stopped being funny.”

She stomped over to the door, grabbing the handle and yanking on it—and almost wrenched her shoulder. She’d easily opened and shut the door any number of times since starting this job, but now it wouldn’t budge.

After yanking on it a few more times, she started slamming her palms against it. “Hey! Jonathan!

Open the damn door!”

Reaching into the pocket of her vest, she pulled out her cell phone. She’d had enough of this crap. Flipping it open, the words no service were emblazoned across the top of the screen.
What the hell?
She’d never had a problem with cell reception except sometimes when it rained. Certainly, the house wasn’t a dead zone. Hell, she’d had a half-hour conversation with her nowex-boyfriend in this very room a month ago. Angrily closing the phone, she looked around the room—

—and saw Raymond standing on the end table. 46 SUPERNATURAL

The little lamp was on the floor, even though Angela had neither heard nor seen it being moved.

“All right, this is so
totally
messed up. If somebody doesn’t—”

Raymond launched through the air right at Angela. Too stunned at this impossible thing happening, she didn’t duck out of the way despite instincts honed from two semesters’ worth of selfdefense classes back at college. The doll’s impact knocked her backward, her head colliding with the door, her hat tumbling to the floor. Her vision swam, and she felt suddenly nauseous, even as she wondered how a hundredyear-old doll stuffed with straw could knock her down, much less jump.

Raymond’s cloth hands, with no fingers, clamped the sides of her head. Angela tried to blink the spots out of her eyes and tried also to speak, to ask what was going on, but it just came out as gibberish. The doll rammed the back of her head into the thick wooden door again.

Her nausea was overwhelming. There were two Raymonds in front of her now, swirling about and never changing that same simian expression it always had, but those dinky little arms kept their grip on her head and slammed it against the wall again and again and again . . .

FOUR

Sam watched the setting sun paint the sky over the Gulf of Mexico a magnificent orange and purple. Dean drove their fully restored 1967 Chevrolet Impala across the Seven Mile Bridge, a long stretch of U.S. Route 1 that linked Key Vaca and Little Duck Key. They had driven down from Bobby’s on major highways for as far as they could, until Interstate 95 ended at the southern tip of mainland Florida.

From there, it was down Route 1, or the Overseas Highway as it was called on this stretch, which was the only road that linked all of the Florida Keys together. The last time they’d come here, it was after sunset, and they’d done what they had to—clearing a poltergeist from a motel—and left the following morning for another job. They’d been driving for two straight days to cover the two thousand miles between the 48 SUPERNATURAL

Singer Salvage Yard in South Dakota and the Florida Keys. Key West itself was the southernmost point in the continental U.S. Rather than bother with a motel for New Year’s Night, they slept in shifts while the other drove down the various interstates through Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia, before finally getting to Florida, then having to drive all the way down its peninsula. They arrived right as the sun was going down on the second of January.

“Great sunset, ain’t it?” Dean said.

“Yeah. This whole part of the drive is nice, actually. We spend so much time on interstates, it’s nice to have a scenic drive for a change.”

“First time Dad and I came down here, he was driving, and I was like you—starin’ out the window like a dog.”

Sam chuckled. “So this is why you were so hot to come back down here? So we could roll down the car windows?”

“Among other things.” Dean was smiling widely and turned up the volume on the radio so it could be heard over the wind whipping into the Impala from outside. He’d found a Miami classic rock station, and it was playing “Long Time” by Boston.