Ghouls Gone Wild (11 page)

“Supposedly the witch cursed the mob and their descendants. She said that she would return every hundred years to claim the lives of seven members of the mob’s families.”

“Okay,” Gil said. “I’m following.”

“And about sixty-five years ago she took the lives of seven village residents who were descendants of the group that killed her and her family.”

Gilley gave me a level look. “What aren’t you telling me?” he demanded.

“The family name of some of the victims was Gillespie.”

Gilley turned starkly pale and he just stared at me as if I’d told him he had two weeks to live. “Say what, now?” he whispered.

“The witch has been attacking members of the Lancasters, McLarens, Hills, and the Gillespies. The last few members of the original Gillespie family fled Scotland fearing the curse—and relocated to America.”

Gilley audibly gulped. “Uh-oh,” he said.

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” Heath repeated. “Seriously, dude. I mean, there must be tens of thousands of Gillespies all over the world. Just because you have the same last name doesn’t mean
your
family came from this part of Scotland.”

Gilley whipped out his cell phone and began punching numbers on the screen. Holding it up to his ear, he waited a beat, then said, “Mom? Hi, it’s Gilley.” There was a pause, then, “Yes, I know it’s early, and I’m sorry, but I just have to ask you one question: What part of Scotland did Grandpa and Grandma Gillespie come from?”

I stared at Gilley’s face, waiting to see the relief I was sure would come, but instead he went a shade paler and made this little squeaking sound before saying, “Some little village on the outskirts of Edinburgh named Queen’s something? Uh, okay, thanks, Ma, call you later.” He hung up and stared at me in horror. “Why is it
always
me?!”

 

We headed right back to the inn after the crystal shop. On the drive back I held Gilley’s hand and tried to prevent him from hyperventilating. “I have to leave town!” he said. “She’s coming after me!”

“She’s not coming after you,” I reassured him, really hoping that was true. “I mean, before we go fleeing the country, let’s try and figure out if this legend is true or if it’s one giant fable the locals cooked up to attract tourists.”

“Bonnie didn’t seem to think it was a fable,” Heath said. “She looked genuinely scared.”

I glared at him and whispered, “Ixnay on the Onniebay, please!”

But Heath wasn’t backing off. “I think we need to take this seriously, M. J.,” he said. “I mean, we can’t just discount what we saw in the caverns last night. And what about the images Gilley captured on tape? It’s pretty clear that some spook is haunting those caverns and believes she’s a witch.”

“But you heard what Bonnie said,” I told him. “The very first thing she said to us was that the witch’s appearance is a full
thirty-five
years early. Maybe she isn’t coming after anyone right now. Maybe she was just irritated that we were in her territory, and that sparked her into action.”

“But what about that maintenance worker?” Gilley insisted. “I mean, that man looked scared to death.
Literally!
”

I sighed heavily as we pulled into the inn’s parking lot. “Of course he was scared!” I yelled a bit louder than I’d intended, and I saw John’s eyes glance at me in the rearview mirror. “The man was having a major heart attack down in some dark cavern where no one could help him, Gil. He was probably terrified that his worst fear was coming true!”

“Or his worst fear was coming right at him,” Gil mumbled.

“Didn’t Bonnie say that the witch’s lover was run down by the mob? That he was chased until he collapsed and died?” Heath said.

“Just like the maintenance worker!” Gil exclaimed, pointing at Heath like he was Sherlock Holmes.

I rolled my eyes. “Well, there’s an easy way to put an end to the mystery,” I said. “All we need to do is find out the last name of the maintenance worker. If it’s something other than Lancaster, Hill, McLaren, or Gillespie, we know it was just a coincidence.”

“It was McLaren,” John called from the front seat as he put the van into park. “While you guys were in the crystal shop, I went for coffee, and the locals are all talking about it. Jack McLaren was the name of the maintenance worker who collapsed and died down in the close.”

Gilley made another squeaking sound and thrust his fist into his mouth. “Terrific,” I sighed. “Juuuust terrific.”

 

 

 

“Why is he packing?” Gopher asked as we all huddled in Gilley’s room while my partner ran around like a frightened hen, frantically stuffing articles of clothing into his suitcase.

“There’s been a development,” I said, then went on to explain everything we’d learned from Bonnie at the Crystal Emporium. Gilley hadn’t even heard the whole story and I noticed him pausing at times as I retold it for Gopher. Still, by the time I’d finished, Gil was zipping up his suitcase, ready to head for the airport.

“I still don’t get why Gilley’s packing,” Gopher said, scratching his head.

“Weren’t you listening?” Gilley screeched.

Gopher winced. “Yes, Gil, I was listening. But that doesn’t mean your family is from the exact same part of Edinburgh, does it? I mean, it’s a big city. They could have come from any village on the edge of it.”

But Gil was shaking his head. “It’s the same place,” he said. “I’ve already looked up my grandfather’s name on
Ancestry.com
. Both he and my grandmother were born just a few streets away, within one block of each other!”

Gopher sat down in a chair near the window. “Okay, okay, but, Gilley,
you’re
not from here! You’re from America. And maybe this witch will just assume once she hears you talk that you’re just another American tourist.”

But Gilley was shaking his head. “Nope,” he said, heaving his suitcase off the bed. “I’m not taking any chances. I’ll rendezvous with you guys at the next location. Good luck.”

As Gil tried to walk out the door, Gopher called him back. “You realize you’ll be in breach of contract, right?”

Gilley halted in the doorway and turned to look back at Gopher. “Say what?”

Gopher stuffed his hands into his pockets, clearly uncomfortable. “The network likes you, buddy. They think you’re one of the more-colorful members of the team. I sent them the footage from yesterday and they ate it up when you went running to M. J. and Heath’s rescue. I’d hate to think what they’d do if they found out you’d left the shoot.”

I narrowed my eyes at Gopher. “You
wouldn’t
!”

Gopher pulled his hands out of his pockets and held them up in surrender. “Hey, don’t blame me,” he said. “It’s out of my control. Gilley signed a contract and if he walks, then he’s in breach, and the network won’t look favorably on that. I’m convinced they’ll sue.”

“How vigorously?” I asked. I’d read that contract backward and forward. All the chips were in the network’s favor. Essentially, for the next eight to ten weeks they totally controlled almost every move we made.

“The last reality-TV star to dis them will never be solvent. Never.”

“But she’ll
kill
me!” Gilley wailed.

Gopher gave Gil a look like he understood fully. But I wasn’t buying it. “Maybe not,” Heath said into the heavy silence that followed.

All eyes swiveled to Heath, and he, in turn, leveled his gaze at me. “We’re ghostbusters, M. J. Shutting down these evil poltergeists is what we
do
. And I think that this job is exactly what we’re about. If this witch’s ghost has risen again, then it really should be up to us to send her to hell—permanently.”

“You mean you want to take her on?” I asked incredulously. It’d been all I could do to muster the courage to simply investigate the caverns. I hadn’t planned on any actual ghostbusting, especially with someone so powerful as the ghost of the Witch of Queen’s Close.

But Heath was nodding his head as if his mind was made up. “I think we have to bust her. If the legend is true, then six more lives could be at stake. We can’t just sit back and gather footage of spooky stuff while people are dying.”

I thought on that for a minute while Gilley continued to grip the door handle to his room like he was holding on for dear life. “What are you thinking?” I asked him.

“I don’t want to be poor,” he said honestly. “But I don’t want to be dead either.”

I smiled, and made up my mind then and there. “Okay, people, new plan: We’re going after Rigella’s ghost. But our first priority is to make sure that Gilley is safe at all times. I don’t want him anywhere near the caverns, and I want him protected by extra magnets and backup twenty-four/seven.”

“He should wear a meter,” Heath said. “If it starts to spike and one of us isn’t around, he’ll have a heads-up that he needs to call one of us.”

“Oh, he’ll wear a meter all right,” I said. “And he’ll have me playing watchdog at all times except when we’re down in the close.” Turning to Gopher, I said, “Can you please move Gil and me into one room with two beds?”

“Absolutely,” Gopher promised. “Anything else you’ll need to make sure he’s safe?”

I looked at Heath. He shrugged. “I can’t think of anything.”

“As many magnets as we can find,” I said after thinking on it. “I want him so surrounded by disruptive electromagnetic frequency that no ghost within ten miles could possibly get to him.”

“Where am I going to be when you guys are in the close?” Gil wanted to know.

“In the van,” I said. “And I want the entire interior padded with magnets.”

“On it,” Gopher said, making a note in his iPhone.

“How soon before the camera and sound guys get here?” Heath asked.

Gopher glanced up and said, “Their plane gets in tonight around ten. We could start filming by midnight if you want.”

My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t want to go back down to the close, but I also knew that putting it off was going to make my anxiety worse. “Great. Most of our cameras and meters are still in place, right, Gil?”

He nodded. “I checked on them this morning. They’re all still sending data.”

“Good. We’ll consider the baseline complete, and we’ll start this bust tonight. Heath, you and I need to come up with a plan to deal with some of that overpowering plague energy that tackled you in the close last night.”

“Good idea,” he said. “But at least now we know why it was so intense.”

“Why?” Gopher asked.

“The close was where the town sent anyone who was showing symptoms of the plague. I figure those caverns were where hundreds, if not thousands, of people perished from the disease. And all that fear and suffering has left an imprint. If Heath and I are going to take on the witch, we’ll need to be completely present and clear of any residual energy.”

“How are you going to manage that?” Gilley asked me.

“We’ll have to strike a delicate balance,” I told him. “We’ll need to be really grounded, and we’ll have to tone down our radars.”

Gopher looked curiously at me. “You guys can tweak the intensity of your radar?”

“I can,” I said, and eyed Heath to see if he agreed.

To my relief he nodded. “I think it’s a survival technique,” he said. “If I didn’t dial back my antennae there’d be no way I’d be able to walk through a crowd or get to sleep at night.”

Gilley finally let go of the door and came back over to sit down on his bed. He still looked upset. “Won’t that be a dangerous thing for you to do, M. J.?”

I knew what Gilley was hinting at. If I went into the close on anything but high alert, the ghost of Rigella could move in on me before I had the time to feel her coming. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take, Gil.”

Gilley frowned. “I really don’t like this at all.”

“None of us do,” Heath said. “But I don’t see how we have any real choice.”

I glanced at my watch and said, “I’ve got to check on Wendell. Gopher, let me know when you’ve arranged to put Gil and me together; in the meantime, Heath, if you could babysit him until we move, that’d be awesome.”

“On it,” Heath said.

 

Later that evening most of the crew was gathered around the van, which was parked a full block east of the entrance to the close. I had wanted it—and Gilley—to be farther away, but anything beyond one block messed with the reception, which was already challenged due to the signals coming from underground.

Gil was seated inside the van and was surrounded by magnets. He had on his trusty sweatshirt, and there were refrigerator magnets stuck to every conceivable surface. And I had to admit, I felt pretty good about his being surrounded by so much protection.

Heath and I had spent a few hours in deep meditation, gathering protective shields to our energy, and then we’d done an exercise to ground ourselves, which involved a visualization where we imagined our bodies as tree trunks with thick roots planted deep into the ground.

I’d also brought along the charm Bonnie had given me, explaining to Heath that it was an identical match to the one his grandfather had placed around my neck in my OBE. “Where’s my charm?” he’d asked playfully when I’d told him the story.

“Oh, I think you come with plenty of charm already,” I said with a laugh. Heath liked to flirt with me and I wasn’t about to let up teasing him about it.

The new cameraman and sound guy weren’t much in the way of personality. Both men were middle-aged, overweight, quiet, and seemingly very skeptical about what we were doing here. They didn’t say anything, of course—they were professionals after all, and I was pretty sure they’d seen all kinds of weird behavior over the years. But it showed in their eyes when we talked through our game plan and how we would try to provoke Rigella’s ghost into appearing, then follow her to her portal. “If we can find that portal, we can shut her down before she has a chance to hurt anyone else.”