Ghost Trackers (19 page)

When the explosion came, the impact jolted up Drew’s arm and into his shoulder, but his hand remained steady, held frozen in place by the buzzing in his ears. Blood sprayed out of the exit wound in Lowry’s back, and the man flew backward as if punched. His eyes rolled white in their sockets, but a beatific smile was fixed on his face as he fell. He landed in a wet red pool of his own blood with a sickening squelch and lay still.

Drew couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He stared down at Lowry’s dead body, unable to believe what he’d done.

Not you—the voices! They did it! They made you hold the gun, made you pull the trigger
. . . That’s what he told himself, but even if it was true, it didn’t do anything to blunt the terrible, crushing guilt he felt at having ended another man’s life.

The voices had a different reaction to Lowry’s death. The excited buzz quieted, became relaxed, almost drowsy, as if its hunger had been sated and it was content.

The silence in the living room was cut by a frantic voice calling down from upstairs.

“John! Are you all right? What happened?”

It was a woman’s voice—Lowry’s wife, Drew guessed—and she sounded terrified. He didn’t blame her. Hearing an unexpected gunshot in your home in the middle of the night was bound to shatter anyone’s composure.

Another voice. “Mommy! What’s happening? I’m scared!” A little girl, maybe five or so. It was accompanied by a third voice, this one of an even younger child crying. The sound was high-pitched and loud, and Drew couldn’t guess the child’s gender, but he remembered that Lowry had two children, a girl and a boy. This, then, was presumably the boy crying.

Drew wanted to call out and reassure them, but what could he say?
It’s OK. I shot your husband and your daddy, but he’s dead now, and there’s nothing more to worry about
.

The buzzing once more increased in volume and intensity, and while it still didn’t form any words, he had no trouble understanding what it was trying to communicate.

Nothing to worry about? I wouldn’t say that
.

His right foot slid forward of its own volition, followed by his left. His right slid forward again, and once more his left followed suit. He tried to reassert control over his legs, but he had no more success than when he’d tried to stop himself from
shooting Lowry. His feet continued moving him forward, and with a cold, sinking feeling, he realized where they were taking him.

The stairs.

By killing Lowry, he’d prevented the man from harming his wife and children, but it seemed that the voices were determined to make sure that history repeated itself, one way or another. And since Lowry could no longer carry the gun upstairs, the voices had chosen someone else to do it.

Drew mounted the first step. Then the second. The buzzing was loud again, excited and insistent, urging him onward, urging him to climb faster.

The woman’s voice came again, uncertain and afraid. “John? Honey, is that you?”

The third step creaked, and the small boy’s cries became more strident, as if he sensed what was coming up the stairs for him. The girl called for her mommy once more.

With his left hand, Drew grabbed hold of the wooden railing and tightened his grip. His foot tried to mount the next step, but his hold on the railing prevented it.

The buzzing became angry then, increasing in volume until it felt as if a pair of razor-sharp daggers had been plunged into his ears. His face scrunched up in pain, but he refused to release his grip on the railing. The buzzing grew even louder, and the pain intensified to the point where it felt as if his skull might burst like a rotten melon.

He gritted his teeth against the pain, and tears streamed down his cheeks. The agony inside his head became his entire world, drove out all other thoughts. He could no longer remember his name, was no longer even aware of himself as an entity separate from the pain. He knew two things: that the pain would go away if he let go of the railing and that he would rather die than allow that to happen.

He sensed the shrug in the voice as it said,
If that’s the way you want it
. . .

His hand raised the gun to his face, inserted the muzzle into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

“I’ll see you
at the banquet.”

Drew looked at Greg, struggling to comprehend what the man had said.

Greg gave his hand a last pump before releasing it and starting to walk away. He got a few feet before he stopped and turned back around to face Drew.

“You know, I used to consider you something of a rival,” Greg said. “You weren’t as smart as I was, but Trevor and Amber looked up to you and followed your lead.” His smile verged on a leer. “Especially Amber. I was jealous. I didn’t want to just be a member of your group; I wanted to be its leader. I suppose in a way, I wanted to
be
you.” He paused and looked thoughtful. “Seems silly now, doesn’t it?”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked away. Drew watched him go, dazed and struggling to reorient himself to his surroundings.

You’re in the hotel lobby
, he reminded himself.
You were sitting and talking with Greg when . . . when whatever it was happened
.

His shirt was damp under the arms and at his lower back, and he felt drained, as if he’d sprinted a mile without stopping.

“Contemplating the mysteries of the universe?”

He looked up to see Trevor and Amber standing in front of him. Trevor smiled, but it seemed forced, much like his opening comment, and Amber was looking at him with an expression of concern. Drew wondered how bad he appeared. If it was even close to the way he felt, he figured it was pretty damned bad.

“You just missed Greg.” Drew was surprised by how steady his voice sounded. “We had a nice little chat. And in the middle of it, I . . . experienced something.”

Trevor exchanged looks with Amber. “Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around,” he said.

Amber and Trevor sat, and the three friends spent the next half-hour catching each other up on what had happened since they left Flying Pizza. They kept their voices low in order to prevent being overheard by anyone passing through the lobby. When they were finished, Trevor said, “Still doubt something paranormal is going on?”

Drew gave him a weak smile. “Let’s say that while I retain the right to be skeptical, I’ve decided to concur with your diagnosis.” He hadn’t told his friends that he’d been considering leaving before his—for lack of a better word—
vision
of the Lowry House. Whatever was going on here, it had
become clear that the three of them were bound not only by what had happened to them fifteen years ago but also by what was happening now. Regardless of the outcome, he would no longer consider abandoning his friends. As he’d so often told his patients, sometimes the only way out of a bad situation was to plow ahead and get through it. And one way or another, the three of them would get through this—together.

Trevor grinned. “This may be the first time you’ve completely agreed with me. Can I get it in writing? I’ll have it framed and hang it in my office.”

“Do you think that Greg is involved in all this, too?” Amber said.

“He said he wasn’t with us in the Lowry House the night it burned down,” Drew said. “And while we have some vague sense that he showed up there at one point, we remember going without him.”

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t show up later,” Trevor said. “It wouldn’t have been the first time. We’d tried to ditch him before that, and somehow he always managed to find us. I used to say he was like a broken maraca, because we couldn’t shake him.”

Drew smiled. “I remember.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe he was there and was traumatized like the rest of us. His memories might be blocked, too.” He frowned then. “But that wouldn’t
explain why he wasn’t found at the Lowry House with the rest of us when the emergency crews arrived.”

“Maybe he got out before anyone else arrived,” Trevor said. “He still could’ve been traumatized, just not injured like we were.” He sighed. “Or maybe he wasn’t there. We don’t have any evidence one way or another, so unless our memories return—all of them—we may never know.”

“You’re both missing another possibility,” Amber said. “Maybe he’s lying.”

Drew and Trevor looked at her.

“When did you become so cynical and distrusting?” Trevor said, sounding as if he was only half joking.

She smiled. “Just trying to cover all the bases. But think about it: Greg is the one who called me about the reunion, and I in turn called you, Trevor, and you called Drew. Basically, we’re here because he invited us. It’s like he wanted us here.”

“He could just have wanted to reconnect with some old friends from high school,” Drew said. “Still, you make a good point. He did give off more than a few weird vibes during our conversation, and the entire time, he projected a sense of mocking superiority, as if he had some kind of secret knowledge he enjoyed keeping from me. If he was at the Lowry House that night and did retain his memory, that could account for his strange attitude
today. Maybe he
does
know something we don’t.”

“But if he did remember anything, why would he keep it from us?” Trevor said. He turned to Amber.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe he’s not sure what he should do. Maybe whatever’s happening to us is happening to him, too. Maybe he’s scared.”

“I don’t know,” Drew said. “He didn’t seem frightened to me. Come to think of it, he didn’t seem stressed at all, despite his talk about how much work helping out with the reunion is. He seems calm and relaxed, like someone who’s got it all together, or at least thinks he has.”

“So what should we do?” Trevor asked. “Go find him and force him to tell us what he does and doesn’t know? I’m afraid I forgot to pack my thumbscrews this weekend.”

Drew smiled at the joke. “I don’t know if we could force him to admit anything. He seems to keep himself under pretty tight control. But before he left, he told me that he’d see me at the banquet. Maybe if the three of us sat down and talked with him, he’d open up to us.”

Drew glanced at Amber, and although he didn’t say anything, she said, “You mean open up to me.”

“He did admit to me that he was . . .” He didn’t want to say
jealous
, because that would be
admitting that there was an attraction between himself and Amber, one that had been there since they were kids and was as strong today as it had ever been. “Fond of you in high school,” he finished.

Trevor rolled his eyes. “That’s one way to put it, I suppose.”

Amber ignored him. “The banquet’s scheduled for five o’clock, which means we have several hours to kill.” She paused, looking uncomfortable. “Sorry. Given the way things have been going this weekend, that’s a poor choice of words, isn’t it? What should we do until then?”

“Whatever we do, we should stick together,” Drew said. “So far, the two people who’ve died don’t appear to have any direct connection to the Lowry House, but that doesn’t mean we’re safe. If something happens to one of us, the others will be there to call nine-one-one, if nothing else.”

“And if any of us has another psychic experience, the others will be there to observe,” Trevor said. “Maybe we’ll learn something that will prove useful later.”

“Useful for what?” Amber said.

“For understanding what’s happening,” Trevor said, as if it were obvious. “That’s the whole reason we started investigating paranormal incidents in high school, wasn’t it? To gain a deeper understanding of our world—and what might lie beyond.”

She shook her head. “That’s not enough, not this time. This has gone beyond mere curiosity about the paranormal and even beyond getting our memories back so we can finally understand what happened to us the night the Lowry House burned down. Two people have died already, and who knows how many more might follow? We don’t need just to understand what’s happening; we need to stop it.”

Trevor looked at her. “Not only did I forget my thumbscrews, I left my proton pack and ghost traps at home, too.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, but there was no malice in the gesture. It made Drew smile. It reminded him of how the three of them had teased and bantered with one another back in high school.
The more things change
. . .

“In that case,” he said, “we should research methods of nullifying negative psychic energy. It seems the Lowry House is an archetypal Bad Place, a storehouse of . . . the scientist in me is reluctant to use the term
evil
, but I can’t think of any word that’s more appropriate.”

“But the Lowry House was destroyed that night,” Amber said, and then she frowned. “Wait a minute. Maybe we really
did
set the fire. Maybe we were trying to . . . I don’t know, exorcise the place or something.”

“Possibly,” Drew said. He searched his feelings to see if he had any reaction to Amber’s words, but
he couldn’t find anything. If they had set the fire on purpose to cast out the evil infesting the Lowry House, his memory of it remained buried.

“Well, if we did burn the house down on purpose, it didn’t work,” Trevor said. “The evil’s stronger than it ever was. Now it can reach out to touch minds and even kill people.”

“Amber’s vision was of a massacre on the site where the Lowry House would one day be built,” Drew said. “Maybe the house itself wasn’t the nexus for the negative psychic energy that became stored there over the years. Maybe it was the land it sat on.”

“The land’s still there,” Amber said. “And now there’s a rec center on top of it.”

“When they open the center and people start going there . . .” Trevor said.

They fell into silence after that. The implications were clear. The negative energy that permeated the land there would have hundreds of new victims to prey upon. They had to do something to prevent that from happening.

“Let’s go back to one of our rooms,” Drew said. “We’ll keep an eye on one another until the banquet, and we can brainstorm ideas for our next move.”

“I know some experts I can ask for advice on conducting psychic cleansing,” Trevor said. “Don’t look at me like that, Drew. They’re not kooks. They’re serious professionals I rely on to supply
information for the books and articles I write. When we get to the room, I’ll fire off a few e-mails, leave a few postings on message boards, see if I can’t get someone on live chat. Maybe they’ll be able to give us some information we can use.”