Ghost Hunters (2 page)

A
fter the gloom of the bar, even the wan afternoon sun was enough to make Dick’s eyes water. He scrubbed tears away with the back of his hand and tried to convince himself that it was only the light making his eyes well up. They’d come so far, sacrificed so fucking much, and it was all blown away by one woman with a bad attitude. “Story of my fucking life,” he mumbled as he shuffled across the parking lot.

Dick saw Amy’s questioning face in the van’s windshield, jaws grinding on a wad of gum, and knew he couldn’t face the crew yet. They’d smell his failure and pounce on him like a pack of hyenas. He didn’t have the nerve to explain to them that he’d blown their last chance. He needed to clear his head. He needed advice. Dick dug his phone out of his pocket and punched the speed dial for Lonny. The cell phone coverage in this part of the country was spectacularly shitty, but he’d noticed there was decent reception as long as he was close to an actual town.

The digital burr of the ringing phone soothed Dick’s nerves. Lonny would have an answer. Lonny would be able to fix this shit. Lonny would call up good ol’ Nancy and get her back in line.

Two rings.
C’mon, Lonny
.

Dick paced back and forth, ignoring the stares coming from the van, ignoring the scowls of the Ironton natives who passed him on their way into the bar.

Three rings.
Pick up the goddamned phone, Lonny
.

His network connection wasn’t going to pick up. The last person in LA who would return Dick’s calls had decided he wasn’t worth the time or effort.

Four rings.
Don’t do this to me, Lonny.

If Lonny didn’t pick up the phone, if Dick and his team were all alone out here in the great wilderness of the Ozarks, that meant he was well and truly fucked. Because Dick hadn’t only mortgaged his own home to the hilt and maxed out a stack of credit cards thicker than a paperback novel, he’d put his whole team’s financial lives on the line.

Five rings.
Fuck you, Lonny.

Dick had to fill out all the paperwork for his team. They’d given him their addresses, their driver’s license numbers, mothers’ maiden names, Social Security numbers, everything. He’d carried that information around with him for months, from their first brush with success selling a filler spot to the Discovery Channel to the past few months of bitter disappointment. When his resources ran dry, he started spreading the risk around.

Six rings. “The person at the number you are calling cannot take your call. If you’d like to leave a message—”

Dick killed the call and shoved his phone back into his pants pocket. He’s taken out a few credit cards in the names of each member of his crew. This whole trip had been financed on plastic in their names, including the snazzy new camera and the van. The gamble looked good at the time. Lonny (
you fucking asshole, I’ll kill you
) had the whole thing lined up. They’d come out to Missouri, meet his contact, get some great footage, and be on the network right after winter hiatus. Running up the bills on the Social Security numbers his team had entrusted to him seemed like a sure bet. When they hit the big money, he’d ask them to pay him back for the money he’d fronted for the trip, and use that to pay off all that plastic. Hell, he’d be doing them a favor because he was sprucing up their credit history. They should fucking thank him.

Except none of that was going to happen. He was going to lose his home and his family. He’d run up more than a hundred grand on cards that weren’t his, which he was sure was a big old felony of some sort. Dick turned away from the van and sucked in rapid-fire breaths, hyperventilating. Just thinking about prison made his asshole shrink three sizes. His life was over.
Fuck
, he screamed in the deep, dark reaches of his mind.

Dick paced for another minute, chewing on the inside of his lip until he tasted blood. He had to turn this around before everything turned to shit.

The van’s door slammed and shocked him out of his own thoughts. He swallowed hard and licked blood from his teeth then turned to face Amy.

She gnawed on her gum, concern stamped on her features. “You okay?”

Dick raked his fingers through his shaggy hair, creating a forest of spikes on top of his head. “No. Fuck.”

Amy reached out to Dick and squeezed his shoulder. “That doesn’t sound so great.”

For a moment, Dick thought about telling everything to Amy. He’d come clean, and the two of them would work it out with the rest of the crew. They were still a great team, and her perky smile and overflowing charisma could turn this around. Maybe they’d get some work on that animal network, film some lemurs playing hide ‘n’ seek or some shit. They still had the van and all the gear, they just needed to find another break.

Then he remembered who he was talking to. Amy wanted to be successful. Amy did not want to be saddled with some loser who couldn’t get a hillbilly to talk. Amy would cut off his balls if she ever found out what he’d done to her credit. He struggled to put on a brave face. “Just a little setback. My contact doesn’t really want to talk right now.”

Amy smacked her gum. “Want me to go in and have a chat? I’m pretty good with people.”

Dick tried to imagine Nancy doing anything other than punching Amy in the mouth. Amy was cute and bubbly and looked like the poster girl for some high-end salon. If she went into that bar, Nancy’d probably cut her tits off and feed them to the drunks. “I, uh, I don’t—that’s not a great idea.”

He threw his arm around Amy and walked her back to the van. Dick started spinning stories to keep Amy from heading into the bar and to convince himself his dreams weren’t crashing and burning around his ears. “These people are a little backward from what we’re used to. They don’t like outsiders, and they don’t want their neighbors to hear them telling tales out of school. When this place closes, I’m going to come back and have a chat with Nancy. She’ll be more willing to talk if it’s just the two of us in there.”

Amy grinned and blew a bubble then sucked it back and chomped down on it. “Think she’ll be friendlier without an audience of rednecks?”

Dick nodded, though inside he wasn’t sure that was going to get the job done. There was something hard in Nancy, a core of toughness he’d never seen in Los Angeles. There was something about this place that made folks insular and reserved, unwilling to share themselves with the outside world. They had a strange sort of comfort in their isolation, and anyone who attempted to prick their xenophobic bubble was in for a rude reception.

They wore their backwoods aura like a suit of armor.

Dick was going to find out if they thought that armor was bulletproof.

T
he drunks staggered out of the Hanging Rooster and went their separate ways. Dick watched them wander off to their cars or stumble into the darkness alongside the gravel road, men and women leaving alone, as if they didn’t know the people they spent their days and nights drinking beside. Dick understood what that meant, to be by yourself even when you were surrounded by people. His wife saw him as a wannabe, a failure wasting time and money grasping at straws. They’d fought about it, and Dick hated that, but he hated the silence that had taken the place of the fighting over the past few weeks even more. He wanted this, not just for the money, but to prove to her that she was wrong. He wanted her to see the mistake she’d made about him, and the only way to do that was to make this trip work.

And he was willing to do anything
to
make it work.

He owed it to his crew, too. All six of them were sleeping in the back of the van, slumped over in the bench seats, heads leaning against the inside of the van or tilted back against the headrest, ignorant of how much their own futures hung in the balance. He let them sleep while he stood watch. For now, their ignorance really was their bliss.

The gun was a heavy lump in his lap. He’d only touched it to slip it out of the case under the driver’s seat, make sure it was loaded, and place it on his left thigh. The dead weight was a reminder of how far he’d come and how far he was willing to go. It reminded him of the kind of man he was about to become.

Dick couldn’t believe she’d pushed him to this. He’d worked so hard to get this shot. What made a hillbilly bartender think she had the right to get in his way? She didn’t even have to do anything, really. Just talk to him about the crazy shit that had gone down in the county, show him to the haunted spot that had Lonny’s sources all wound up. Shit, he’d been willing to pay her for the few hours of her time the whole thing would take. She probably would have made more money working with Dick for one day than she’d made in her whole life up to that point. He couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the bitch. “Why wouldn’t you just
talk
to me, Nancy? Why’d you have to be such a hardass?”

The last of the drunks were gathered around the trash can in front of the Hanging Rooster. A skinny little fucker, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt despite the brisk autumn night and the nasty north wind blowing, held court. His rat-like hands flickered from his pockets to the outstretched hands of other bums, passing out plastic-wrapped bundles and snatching up crumpled bills.

“Get your fucking meth and
go
, assholes.” Dick didn’t need any witnesses for what was coming. Why were there so many motherfuckers floating around this shitty little bar at two thirty in the morning?
For fuck’s sake, crawl back to your trailers
, he mentally commanded.

After fifteen minutes of smoking meth in their little huddle, they wandered off and left Dick alone. He sat in the cold van and watched the bar’s front door, willing Nancy to come out. He imagined the scene in his head, she’d be tired and preoccupied with getting the hell home. Probably wouldn’t even look around, just lock the doors and shuffle her weary little feet back to her car. Dick would walk right up, all friendly like, try to talk her into going along with him. If he could wear her down with his city-boy good looks and charming patter, that’d be great. If not…

He should have brought some kind of holster. Dick didn’t want to walk around with the pistol shoved in the back of his pants. That seemed like a great way to shoot a second hole in your ass. Maybe he could just hold it, kind of down and behind his right leg. It was dark out, she might not even be able to see the gun. Unless she changed her mind and wanted to shake hands to seal the deal. Dick didn’t even know if that was a thing, shaking hands as some kind of contract not to fuck each other over, but he’d seen it in some movie about hillbillies. That one with the girl from that other movie with the bow? He shook his head. Guns were a lot of goddamned trouble.

The plan had to be simple. He’d put the gun in his waistband, right in the middle of his back. If she changed her mind, great. They’d shake hands or French kiss or whatever the fuck these backwoods assholes did to seal the deal, and be off to the races. If she decided to fuck him over, he’d wait for her to turn away, start opening the car door. Then he’d shove the pistol into the back of her neck and march her over to the van.

Simple. Easy.

By four in the morning, Dick was about nod off, the cold and boredom had taken their toll on his stakeout endurance, when the Hanging Rooster’s front door cracked open. Nancy stepped out into the cold and fumbled with her purse. She dug around in it, looking for her keys, her attention wholly absorbed by the depths of her handbag.

Dick saw his chance, and he took it. The van’s door worked with him and didn’t creak even a little bit. He watched his step as he crossed the cracked asphalt parking lot, watching for discarded beer cans or the little brown chunks of broken bottles that would alert Nancy to his approach. Dick stole through the dark night like a damned ninja, picking a silent path across the lot. He’d crept right up next to her before she even knew he was coming. “Hi, Nancy.”

At the sound of Dick’s voice, Nancy just about jumped out of her skin. She jolted away from him, hand clutching her purse and pulling it close to her stomach. Her eyes were wild and wide and filled with a total lack of recognition. Dick froze and realized she didn’t have any idea who he was. She was acting like she’d never seen him before, like he was a crazy person come to kidnap and kill her. Then he remembered she was at least half right, potentially, and a wriggling chill crept along his spine. Second thoughts tumbled through his brain. What a stupid idea. “Uh, I was here earlier, we were talking about—”

She fumbled with something in her purse. Dick’s thoughts raced ahead, and the world around him seemed to grind to a halt as his vision of the future played out. She had a gun in there, some little chrome thing, and she was going to pull it out and put a bullet straight through his chest. It might not kill him, but it would hurt like a motherfucker, and then his plans were
really
going to be shot to shit. He had to stop her.

The gun weighed a thousand pounds. Dick knew he’d never get it drawn in time. She’d get her gun out first, game over. His hand came around, the big black pistol like the shadow of death draped from the end of his arm.

Her hand came out of the purse. Holding her keys.

Dick’s pistol pointed at her forehead.

The blood washed out of Nancy’s face. She let her keys fall and raised both hands over her head. “I don’t have any cash. You can have whatever’s in my purse, just—”

Dick’s stomach clenched. This was out of hand, he hadn’t wanted to pull a gun on her, but she’d had her hand in her purse, and he hadn’t known what might come out. Why did she make him do this? “Shut up. Just shut the fuck up. I need you to take me to the farm, Nancy.”

Her eyes went wide. “I’m not Nancy.”

“But earlier—”

The bar door creaked open. “I’m Nancy, you idiot. That’s Liz.”

Dick backed away from the women. They were almost identical in appearance, though Nancy, the
real
Nancy, had a little more red in her hair. “Fine. Whatever. Get in the van.”

He twitched the gun toward the van and then pointed it at Nancy. This was taking too long. They should have already been in the van, driving away from the bar. He imagined a police car driving by while he stood there with a gone shoved in a woman’s face.

Nancy sighed. “You don’t want to do this.”

She was right. The last thing Dick wanted to do was kidnap a pair of ornery twins and make them guide him to a haunted house in the ass end of nowhere. But he’d gone way past what he wanted, and there was no turning back. “Just get in the fucking van.”

The sisters shrugged and walked to the van. Dick followed, gun hand shaking, more certain than ever that this was going to end in disaster.