What's a Ghoul to Do? (18 page)

After concentrating on the area for a little bit, I felt a very small tug in the direction of the guest room I'd first noted on the floor plan. Motioning to Steven, I headed there, continuing to feel for activity on my radar.

When we got to the bedroom I looked around. The room was painted a soft lavender, with a cream-colored bedspread embroidered with violets. There was a framed photo on the nightstand, and it called to me. I picked it up and looked at the image of a woman of about thirty with wavy brown hair and ruby lips. She was laughing as she held up a jar to the camera.

"Who's this?" I asked as I offered the photo to Steven.

He studied it. "I don't know," he said.

"Your grandmother, perhaps?" I asked.

"No. She was blond and much heavier and, from what I remember of her before she died, unhappy."

"A sourpuss, huh?"

"Just like her son," Steven said. "Hmmm," he continued as he flipped the frame over and pulled it apart to reveal the back of the photo. " 'Maureen, nineteen sixty-two.'"

"Who's Maureen?" Even as I said it I felt a cold prickle at the back of my neck. The temperature around Steven and me seemed to plummet, and when I exhaled I saw my breath.

"What the …" Steven said as he looked sharply at me, his eyes nervous.

I put my finger to my lips and whispered, "Someone's here." I then opened up my intuition again to feel a strong pull toward a rocking chair across the room. I put my hand on Steven's arm and motioned toward the chair. "Over there," I whispered.

"The ghost?" he asked me.

As if in answer the chair began to creak back and forth, all by itself. I was wary of it at first. If this was the ghost that hit Gilley then it had a temper. Intuitively I reached out in the direction of the chair.
Who are you?
I asked in my mind.

The chair picked up speed and began to rock in earnest. "Holy Mother of God!" Steven hissed, his whisper urgent and frightened. "M.J.! Who is it?"

"I'm workin' on it," I said softly. This time I dispensed with using telepathy. Maybe this ghost wanted to hear me speak. "We've come peacefully," I began, my tone low and measured. "We're here to help. We simply need to know who you are and why you're here, and we can help you."

The chair stopped rocking abruptly. I felt the initial M in my head loud and clear, and then small, round orbs of light began buzzing around the top of the chair, zipping back and forth like flies. "Whoa …" Steven said. "Look at that!"

"Maureen?" I called to the chair. "Maureen, is that you?" My answer was the chair flipping backward onto its back as the orbs of light scattered to the four corners of the room. Steven and I ducked as one or two came straight at us.

As we looked up from our crouched positions, I noticed the temperature had returned to normal again. "Is it gone?" he wanted to know.

"For now," I said, sending my radar out again just to be sure.

"You asked if that was Maureen. You do not think that was my grandfather?"

"No. The energy was too light to be male."

"Pardon?"

"Male versus female energy. Male energy weighs more."

"I am not understanding this thing that you are saying. Please explain how it
weighs
more?"

I smiled patiently and said, "To me male energy is thicker and heavier than female energy. This ghost had light energy. It definitely felt female. Plus, the initial I got was an M."

"You talked to her?" Steven asked me. "What did she say?"

I shook my head and held up my hand in a stop motion. "I didn't have a chance to really talk to her. She was too agitated. She's angry about something, and I'm not sure what it is. Angry isn't good, just so you know. It makes reasoning with the ghost a lot harder."

"But where is my grandfather?"

"I don't know. Are you sure you heard his voice that night?"

"I'm positive," he said firmly. "It was as if he were standing right behind me."

"Well, it would be nice of him to show up. Maybe I could get a straight answer out of him…." My voice trailed off as I felt the smallest tug on my energy from the direction of the window. Distracted, I moved closer to get a look outside.

Steven followed me as he asked, "What is it? Is Maureen here again?"

"No," I said, and pulled back the sheer curtain. "Something else …" And that was when we saw him. Three stories down an elderly man walked across the backyard, heading toward the woods. From this angle we couldn't see his face, but once he reached the edge of the woods he paused and turned slowly around to face the house. He lifted his chin and looked up, scanning the house, and stopped when he got to the window we were staring out of.

My breath caught, and I could feel Steven shaking beside me. "My God," he said breathlessly. "It's Papa…."

Andrew lifted his finger, pointed to us, and then he vanished into thin air.

* * * *

Fifteen minutes later I was blowing on a cup of tea down in the kitchen. Steven sat numbly on one of the stools by the island, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. "Here," I said, putting the teacup under his nose. "Drink this. It'll help."

"It was him," he muttered as he took the tea. "That was my grandfather."

I nodded. "Looks like it. So what we have here are two ghosts that need our help to cross over."

"I need to know what happened to him first," Steven insisted.

I sighed and looked into my own cup of tea. "I told you I would try. But it isn't my top priority."

"Why can't we just wait until we get our answers and then you can cross him over?"

"Because, being trapped between worlds, Andrew is suffering. He's probably frightened or confused or even guiltridden. My top priority is seeing that he moves on as quickly as possible. If he did in fact kill himself, then this is the right thing to do. If someone pushed him off the roof, well, that may be one for the police."

Steven's head snapped up. "You said pushed. Do you think Maureen could have pushed him like she pushed Gilley?"

"Anything's possible. And if she was responsible for Andrew's death, there's not a lot we can do about it."

"Can't you lock her up in her window?"

"You mean her portal? I just don't get the feeling she's a negative energy, Steven. I mean, I know she took a tug on Gilley, but I'm sensing there was more to this story than we know right now. I think she had a reason for doing what she did, but I can't figure out what it is yet."

"If she murdered my Papa, I want you to lock her up."

"What am I, the cosmic jailer?" I shot at him, and when he looked offended I softened my tone. "I really think it's better if we try to gather as many facts as possible before we make a conclusion. For now, I'm not going to look at Maureen as a negative entity, at least not until we know for certain one way or another, okay?"

Steven nodded. "Okay."

"Now," I said purposefully. "We need a plan of attack. My guess is that Maureen has exerted enough energy for the night. It takes quite a bit of strength to give us the little show she put on for us upstairs. And that goes for your grandfather as well."

"I'm confused," Steven said, scratching his head. "What is all this talk of exerting energy?"

I sighed. "Ghosts can walk around among us without being seen or felt at all. It doesn't take a lot of energy to do that, but once they try to take other forms, that's when they amp up the wattage, so to speak."

"Huh?"

I tried again. "There are three forms most ghosts take when they want to get our attention: orbs, shadows, and full view. Most ghosts, as I said, travel around unseen and unnoticed for a period of time, but eventually they may try to make contact. The first form they may try is a small ball of light, just like the ones we saw upstairs."

"Okay, I'm with you," Steven said.

"Then, if they're strong enough, they may go for appearing as a dark shadow. Often these shapes don't look human, just large black blobs moving across the wall. Other times their shadows can look quite real and appear even though there's no light to necessarily cast a shadow."

"Spooky."

"They often are. Now the third form, and the one that takes the most energy, is a full physical form. Most ghosts can sustain this for only a few moments before they tire and disappear, just like Andrew did tonight."

"So my grandfather used up all his energy to walk outside and point at us?"

"Absolutely. He should be quiet for several hours at least."

"But Maureen only took the orbital form. She might still be nearby."

"It's possible, but making physical objects move is also a tremendous exertion of energy. She gave that rocking chair a ride tonight. And if she also pushed Gilley … well, that had to take it out of her as well."

"Where does that leave us, then?"

"With some quiet time to set up a few more trigger objects and a couple more motion detectors."

Steven nodded. "Okay, let's get started."

For the next hour he and I methodically put the sensors and trigger objects in all the rooms I had identified as being hot, plus a few others that Steven said his grandfather liked to hang out in. Finally, the only room left was the wine cellar.

We opened the door leading downstairs, and Steven flipped on the lights. A blast of cold air hit us as we trooped down the stairs. "Hold it," Steven said as he held his arm out, halting my progress. "Feel that?"

"Yes," I said as I felt the temperature shift. "That's weird," I muttered.

"What?"

"My radar isn't buzzing. Normally when I'm entering a room where there's an energy, I'll get this sensation that lets me know I'm not alone. I'm not getting that here."

Steven pulled his arm back and asked, "Should we check it out?"

"Most definitely," I said, and moved past him.

When I got to the bottom of the stairwell I let my eyes rove the area while my radar continued to search out the entity causing the temperature change. Still, nothing bumped my energy field.

Steven sidled up next to me and said, "I think I know why you're not getting anything."

"You do?"

"Yes. Look over there."

I did and I was surprised to see the door leading to more storage space flung wide open. "Ah," I said as I put my hand out in that direction. "That's where the cold air is coming from. Someone opened the door."

"The question is, who?" Steven said.

"I didn't," I was quick to say.

"I know. I was the last person down here after we brought that final TV, and when I went back upstairs I remember that the door was closed."

"Well," I said ruefully, "ghosts do love to open doors."

"They do?" he asked. "Why? Don't they just walk through them?"

"Oh, they do that too. But if I had to guess as to why, I'd say that opening or closing doors makes them feel powerful. Command over the physical makes them feel connected to the space they occupy."

"You believe Maureen or my grandfather opened this door?"

"Looks that way."

"Come on," Steven said. "Let's take a look."

We walked to the door and paused in the doorway, squinting into the dim light as we looked through. I was surprised to discover that instead of a room, a long tunnel opened up in front of us. "Whoa," I said. "I thought you told me this was a room used for storage."

Steven looked just as surprised as I did. "That's what I thought was here."

"Do you know where it leads?" I asked.

"No," he said, peering into the darkness.

"Well," I said, moving forward into the tunnel. "There's only one way we're going to find out then."

"That's what I was afraid of," he mumbled, and followed me.

The tunnel's walls were fortified by brick, and the floor was cement, just like in the cellar. Our footfalls echoed as we went forward, but after about ten feet we both stopped because the light was too dim. I put my hand on Steven's back and said, "I don't think it makes sense to go much farther without being able to see where we're going. There's a flashlight in the van, but I want to see if we can pick up something on camera, and the night-vision video cam is the best tool for that."

"Where is this cam?"

"Upstairs in one of the bedrooms."

"Let's get it," he said, and we both turned and headed back out of the tunnel.

Making our way up the stairs, Steven asked me, "Did you happen to pick up any spirits in the tunnel?"

"Nope. But then, I didn't exactly have my radar on when we made our way into it. I'll make sure I turn up the volume when we head back down."

A few minutes later, armed with the night-vision cam, we clattered back down the cellar steps. Steven was in front of me when he halted suddenly. "What the … ?" I heard him say.

Peeking around his shoulder I saw what stopped him. The door to the tunnel was closed. "Did you shut the door when we went upstairs?" I asked.

"Nope," he said, and moved down the steps to the door. Putting his hand on the handle he turned the knob and tugged, but the door held fast.

"What's the matter?" I asked, coming to his side.

"It's locked," he said as he tried it again, and the door held firm.

"You're kidding," I said. Steven stepped aside and gave me an
after you,
gesture. I gave him a raised eyebrow and moved to try the door. It was locked tight. "Do you have a key?" I said.

"No, but I have a phone, and I know of a locksmith in town."

"Good idea. While you're calling on that I'm going to go outside and see if maybe there's a way into the tunnel from up top."

Steven nodded and followed me upstairs to the kitchen, where he took out the phone book and began to flip the pages. "I'll help you outside as soon as I'm done with the call," he said.

I gave him a thumbs-up and headed out the door. Luckily it had stopped raining, since water was hell on the camera. Night was falling as I went over to where I thought the tunnel was. I tried to gauge from the house where the tunnel might be, but I kept bumping into the wall of the indoor pool. I couldn't see any hidden stairs or trapdoors buried in the ground, and the more I looked, the more confusing the layout became.

Steven joined me a few minutes later, carrying a flashlight. "Locksmith will be here in the morning," he announced. "Did you find anything?"