Gridlocked Guesthouse (Locked House Hauntings Book 1) (13 page)

Her eyes grew wide with fright. "Is Lucy dead?"

Ricky was pounding on the door now, pulling with all his might, but it didn't open.

Jenny cupped her hands around her eyes and peered in the window too. Lucy definitely looked dead to her. Beezer was harder to see; the angle wasn't very good. But he certainly wasn't moving. "Lucy doesn't look good, that's for sure. I hope she's not dead."

Mike wasn't paying attention to any of them; he was nervously running the route through his brain. How had they looped back to the guesthouse? Sure, it had been dark, but it didn't seem like it was so dark that they would've accidentally gone in a circle. But maybe they had? They must have. How else would they be here?

He was, at this point, really frustrated. His frustration was accented by Ricky pounding on the door, jerking on the handle. Ricky let out a shout and then started kicking the door. He was going full ninja turtle on the door's ass.

Jenny kept staring in the window. "What the hell is John doing?"

Tiffany, who had been looking away--she was so uncomfortable with the dead Lucy and the possibly dead Beezer--let out a gasp. He was carefully tying the long double-dutch rope into a noose. He had just finished.

Ricky shouted, "Open the door, John!"

Tiffany put her fingers to her lips, stifling the scream that was starting to build. John slowly slid the noose around his neck, and he looked calm. He calmly walked to the kitchen and looped the other end of the rope around the chandelier. Tiffany did let out a scream now, pounding on the window with her fist. "John!"

Jenny frantically looked over at Mike. "What can we do?"

Strong Ricky screamed and threw his shoulder into the door. He beat the door with his fists, and then rattled the handle again, kicking it.

John positioned himself on the edge of the table, pulling all the slack from the rope and carefully tying it to the chandelier. One step and he would be hung. I want to tell you that they managed to get inside in time.

But they didn't.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Tiffany was wrapped in Jenny's arms; she was sobbing uncontrollably. The two girls were both turned away from the window. And Mike had finally made the decision to break in. He was in the middle of shattering the very window that they had been staring through.

Ricky was still trying to open the door. He was furious. His angry face is beautiful.

And John was dangling from the chandelier, still squirming, his face turning purple. There was no way they could save him in time. Even with Mike shattering the window in record time, and then charging in, they couldn't possibly save him. What was happening?

It took Mike a while to break through the window, using just rocks, but he did the best he could. John was on the end of the rope, no longer thrashing. Mike tore him down and tried mouth-to-mouth. But it was unsuccessful, and John lay there, dead as a doornail.

Ricky seem completely oblivious to everything that was happening. He ran through the house, yelling for Rachel. He didn't check John, Beezer, or Lucy. He didn't check a single one of them. Jenny told Tiffany to stay outside, and she went in and checked each of them one at a time. She was tough, farm tough. But looking at so many of her friends, now corpses, messed her up. She tried to take Lucy's pulse and found her body already quite cold. She was very dead.

Beezer was less dead, his body still warm underneath her fingertips. But he was dead just the same, no poking or prodding gave any sort of response. She considered trying mouth-to-mouth, but after looking at Mike sobbing over John, she reconsidered. No reason for two of them to kiss the dead.

She burst into tears.

Ricky did not find Rachel. He scrambled up the stairs to check the master bedroom, checked the twins' room, and checked the remaining room.

He came back down to the safe room, checked the library, checked the kitchen and dining room. And then he stood at the top of the wooden stairs, staring down into the basement. Two of the locks were unlocked on the bottom door. And Carson's corpse, still missing his head, was lying at the bottom of the stairs.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I think that Ricky loved Rachel. I don't know if Rachel loved him back; that will be something we find out later, I guess. He had a ring in his pocket. And he fully intended that after this ridiculous weekend, the perfect ending to her murder mystery ghost house would be an acceptance of his proposal.

He helped with almost all of the party planning: painting little objects, hiding keys, hiding locks and clues. It was her idea that they would rent an actual house, where actual murders had taken place. She did a ton of research. He had helped her collect the news articles, then visited the gravesite. Hell, he had even helped her install...

He had helped her install...

The freezer components for the master bedroom. So they could make it cold unexpectedly.
(Honestly, I would have told them not to bother, Richard was perfectly capable of making the room cold without it)
He had helped her make the ghoulish video projection of Oliver. In fact, there was more. There was a lot more.

He assumed while he was going out to "restart the generator," she was doing her part. And maybe she had; he wasn't sure if killing Cletus and Carson was part of the thing. He would've said it was too far, but they'd gone too far. But, he liked going too far with Rachel. He liked that she was a little sick, little twisted, and really liked to scare the shit out of her friends.

Rafael dying was ridiculous and frustrating to both him and Rachel, but it just seemed like a fluke. Not like a party-ending event. Even Beezer's leg was not that big of a deal. Her killing the goat seemed like a fucking bad idea, but not a big deal either.

But now, Rachel hadn't come back. And Lucy, Ben, Beezer, and even John were dead. Five of them were dead. There were only eight left. This was seriously fucked up. Even for Rachel.

And they had done some weird stuff together. It was all in good fun, and it seemed like they were on the same level. Sure, and even slapped each other around now and again in the bedroom. But this, this was something different. This had gotten way out of hand. And Ricky wanted to know if Rachel was still trying to scare the shit out of everyone.

Or was something deeper and scarier happening? He wanted to know if there really was a ghost, and if they really were fucking with everyone. He wanted to know where Rachel was. And if she was still the kind of woman he wanted to propose to.
I wasn't really rooting for her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

"I moved Rafael," Gorgeous Ricky said. "Not just that, but I helped make that vision, if you want to call it, of Oliver." He paused while Tiffany and Jenny and Mike registered what he was saying. "I don't know what happened to Carson, and I don't know where Rachel is. I thought this was part of the weekend."

Tiffany stared at him slowly. "People are dead."

"I know." Ricky paused and stared out the window slowly. "I think Rachel is still trying to play, despite everything going on."

"But?" Jenny said.

"I just don't understand how everyone died," said Ricky. "This is really fucked up. Why is it so hard to leave? What happened to Ben? Why the heck..."

Tiffany turned and looked at Jenny. "How did you get locked in your car?"

"I told you, I woke up there. I..." Jenny frowned." The thing is, I just don't remember. I wish I did; it could've been Rachel. I don't know how she would've gotten me in the car. I just woke up there. I think I've been hoping it was Rachel. Or Ricky. I was hoping..."

Mike suddenly said, "Where are Zane and Mikaela? Where are they? They should have been right behind us. We were not far apart. Hasn't it been like an hour?"

Everyone looked at each other quietly. Tiffany turned and looked outside. Still dark. Mike stood up and stepped through the shattered window. The others joined him. Mike said, "Let's get some fucking weapons. Maybe some psychopath is here with us."

I wonder if he was right.

Mike grabbed his stick, took some of the glass shards from the window, and started to lace them to his stick. He was using Beezer's shoelaces. Tiffany grabbed a knife from the kitchen. Mike looked up at her. "Not a knife. You need something long-range. Tie it to a broom handle. I don't know. You can't win a hand-to-hand knife fight. Make a weapon where you can hit them where they cannot hit you."

With this new order, Tiffany and Jenny both armed themselves with broom handles with knives taped to the end. They were modern-day spears. And they looked scary as fuck.

Mike had his crazy version of the mace, but Ricky took the remains of the shattered chair that John had attacked Tiffany with. He ended up with a long baseball-bat-shaped stick. And armed like this, they walked back into the dark. Back to the road.

Do you think we will find them dead or alive?

CHAPTER FORTY

Do you think Rachel might be a murderer? Did she plan the party and then go crazy slaughtering everyone?

Or was there another person, another killer? Or do you think that all of these deaths were caused by the ghosts?

Rachel did, after all, plan the entire party around the fact that an entire family was killed in this house. The whole family was slaughtered; Oliver peeled, the twins hung, Amelia with the word "grid" on her thigh, and Richard frozen in his bedroom.

Did Rachel make up any of this? Maybe she had woken up the spirits with her relentless idea to scare everyone. Or maybe, just maybe, they were the reason why everyone was here in the first place. Maybe they used Rachel to draw in a new set of victims.

Isn't it suspicious that Lucy decided to kill herself? And then John decided to murder Beezer, and then kill himself? Don't you think the puzzle pieces are just not fitting together?

I don't think that Ricky, or Mike, Tiffany or Jenny had any idea what was going on. I think that they were just trying to stay alive. They were trying to find Zane, Mikaela, and Beth.

And they certainly decided one thing. People were dying. They didn't know if it was a ghost, serial killer, or some really shitty luck. But this bedraggled, exhausted, terrified group of people were out looking for their other half. Do you think they'll find another bloodbath?

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Mike felt Tiffany's hand. She was trembling from head to toes as they walked in the dark down the road. She held her broom handle with a knife on the end; he held his stick with glass laced to it.

Directly in front of them were Ricky and Jenny. It was now so dark- must've been cloudy because the stars were hard to see. It had gone so dark that it was hard to see their hands in front of their faces. Nervously, they shuffled along the road, directly in the middle. They didn't talk to each other.

Ricky was breathing hard, the ring weighing heavy in his pocket. It was heavy in his heart too. Either Rachel had been dismembered or something worse, or she was attacking people. There was no good end to the story. He was convinced that either he was about to battle the love of his life or find her brutalized. A third thought struck him; he always had the option to join her.

He never seriously considered hurting people for fun before. He turned his head slightly and stared at Jenny. She was walking in a steady pace, spear outstretched in front of her. The glistening knife blade reflected what very little light was left. He could take her. Even as she tried to be threatening, he knew he could take her.
He could kill her.