Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls (7 page)

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Authors: Victoria Laurie

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

BOOK: Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls
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There was a pause, then, “Can I be thrown over Heath’s shoulder? He’s prettier.”
“Right now, Gilley Morehouse Gillespie,” I said, my voice low and threatening. “And I’m not kidding.” I hung up the phone for the second time and cast a worried glance at Heath. “If he’s not up here in twenty minutes, we’ll have to go down and get him.”
“I can go down to help them,” John offered. “After all, I’ve only made the trek up once today. You guys have both come up twice.”
In that moment I could have hugged John, but then I remembered that Kim was his girlfriend and he was probably worried about her more than anything. “Go,” I told him, even as he turned away and bolted for the stairs. “And make sure they hustle, John. We’ve probably only got fifteen to twenty minutes before that storm hits!”
As John dashed down the stairs, Gopher finally appeared. He looked sweaty and winded but happy to have reached the summit. “Where’s he going?” he asked as he turned back to look at John’s departing figure.
In answer, both Heath and I pointed to the thundercloud. “Aw, shit!” Gopher said when he saw it. “Didn’t Gilley check the weather?”
 
The storm moved faster than expected, striking our little island just ten minutes later. Gilley, John, Meg, and Kim were caught by it halfway up the stairs, and tired as I was, Heath and I still had to jog down to take their packs and hurry them along.
It was an awful climb up the rest of the way. We were pelted by water, whipped by wind, and hammered by the reverberating thunder. Lightning seemed to strike all around us, and Gilley was shivering so hard next to me that I thought for certain he’d faint. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other!” I told him, as I held his free hand and pulled him urgently up the stairs.
“How much farther?” he cried, wheezing and struggling to continue climbing.
I looked up. There was still a long way to go. “We’re nearly there, honey! Just a few more steps!” Gilley began to lift his chin to look and I quickly added, “Watch your step! It’s slippery on these stairs!”
We moved like that for twenty more minutes and the journey up took twice as long as it would have in calmer conditions, but finally we crested the ledge, all of us gasping for breath, but wanting to get out of the wind and rain. “Let’s get to the castle!” Heath called, and he and Meg began to jog tiredly in that direction.
John and Kim followed behind too, and I looked at Gilley, who was doubled over, his hands on his knees. “You go,” he said with a small wave. “Save yourself!”
Even though I was exhausted, wet, cold, and miserable, I still smiled. “Oh, Gil,” I chuckled. “How could I leave my little drama queen behind?”
Gilley simply shook his head, and continued to try and pump air into his lungs. I gave him another few seconds until a bolt of lightning struck the water just offshore and the resulting thunder was loud enough to sink both of us to our knees. “We
have
to get inside, Gil!” I shouted.
Gilley trembled but nodded all the same and took my hand. I tugged him after me toward the large black abandoned structure, and hoped to God that we weren’t about to go from the frying pan into the fire.
We made it through the giant wooden door of the keep, and were finally out of the rain. It was very dark inside, but periodically we were lit up by the lightning still crackling all around the castle. “Which pack are the flashlights in?” Heath asked Gilley, who’d collapsed just inside the doorway.
Gilley motioned weakly to the one John was holding. Just a minute later we each held a flashlight and were pointing them around the spacious room just inside the entrance. “This place gives me the creeps,” said Kim.
“Me too,” said Meg.
“Me three,” said John.
Everyone else chimed in with a number, even Gilley. “Me six,” he said, pushing himself off the ground to sit up and look around.
And that was when it hit me: There were seven of us in the group. “Where’s Gopher?”
Heath looked at me and blinked. “Isn’t he here?”
“No.” I pointed the flashlight all around the hall, looking for our producer, and finally called out to him, “Gopher!” My voice echoed through the large hall, down into distant corridors, but no reply came back to us.
“Isn’t that his pack?” Meg asked, pointing to his signature silver backpack.
I hurried over to it, and discovered it was indeed his, and next to it was his camera. I looked back to Heath as an unsettling foreboding sank deep into my bones. “He’d never leave his backpack,” I said.
“Maybe he’s off taking a whiz,” said John.
“Gopher!” I shouted. Again, my voice echoed out of the room down into the corridors, but no sign or sound of our producer could be seen or heard.
“Where could he have gone?” Gilley whimpered, looking especially frightened.
“We need to find him,” I said, getting up and wiping the wet hair out of my eyes.
“We also need to see about drying out our clothes and maybe starting a fire to get warm,” Heath advised.
It was then that I noticed both Meg and Kim standing with their arms wrapped tightly about themselves, shivering with cold.
“Right,” I agreed, rummaging around in my messenger bag for the lighter and the small notebook I never went without. Tossing both to John, I said, “You stay here with Gilley, Meg, and Kim. See if you can find some wood for a fire, and use the notebook paper for kindling. I think you should try and get one started by the door, ’cause I don’t trust that hearth’s chimney.”
We left the main group and Heath and I worked our way deeper into the castle. The storm was still raging outside, and the walls reverberated with the sound of thunder, but no flashes of lightning made their way inside. The only illumination was our flashlights. “Gopher!” I called as we moved into the first main corridor off the front hall.
Somewhere in the distance a loud creaking sound made Heath and me both pause to listen. “Where’d that come from?” Heath whispered.
“I think from that hallway down there,” I whispered back, motioning to a separate corridor that opened up all the way at the end of the one we were in.
“Gopher?” Heath shouted.
His voice echoed along the walls.
And then ...
...
something
growled back.
“What
was
that?”
I whispered. The sound we’d heard was deep and guttural and not at all human.
Heath didn’t answer me. Instead, he pulled out a magnetic grenade and popped open the cap. “Whatever it was,” he said, bending low to my ear, “I don’t think it’s friendly.”
I pulled a grenade out too and uncorked the top. Tipping out the spike, I held it high, like a knife, ready to stab it into anyone—or any
thing
—that approached. After a moment I asked Heath, “Should we continue down that way?”
“Do we have much of a choice?”
Mentally I cursed Gopher for wandering off. “Okay. Let’s keep going but quietly. No calling out to Gopher until we know what we’re dealing with.”
Heath and I proceeded cautiously down the corridor. I could still hear the storm, and the dripping of water and some sort of scuttling noise I attributed to something like a mouse or a rat, but nothing else disturbed the darkness.
As we walked forward, I began to get a terrible feeling. It was like I was thirteen again, watching a scary movie well past my bedtime. I couldn’t seem to shake the creepy shiver seeping along my spine. I leaned over and in Heath’s ear whispered, “I
really
don’t like this!”
He paused.
I paused.
And for several heartbeats neither of us moved even to breathe. The longer we stood there, waiting, the more unsettled I became. I was about to tell Heath that maybe we should double back—and quick—when a wave of something terrifying wafted through the ether and washed over me with tremendous power. I sank to my knees and closed my eyes as every nightmarish monster I’d ever seen on TV or conjured up in my worst dreams flooded through my mind and wiped away all reason.
It was as if a force that knew everything that had ever frightened me as a child or an adult had kept a record of it, and was filling my mind with all those images at once, while clearing away any ability I might have to form a rational thought. It was an onslaught of horror, and I was powerless to stop it.
The effect crippled me both mentally and physically, and I couldn’t seem to form a thought of my own. I was aware only of danger, terror, and panic until I felt something crash into my shoulder, and it knocked me to the ground. That just increased my terror and I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
I wanted desperately to get away, and so I scuttled and crawled along the floor, trembling from head to toe and barely able to hold on to my flashlight. I must have left the spike behind because very slowly I became aware of things other than the parade of terrifying images surging through my mind—like my empty right hand.
And then, with unexpected abruptness, the onslaught vanished, and I was left gasping and shaking all over but once again in my right mind. “M. J.!” someone whispered urgently to me. “Sugar, please, look at me!”
With effort I lifted my chin and realized Gilley was squatting down in front of me, attempting to get me to my feet.
His sweatshirt sagged on him, and I could see in the dim light how the dozens of magnets he’d secured to the inside of the shirt were bulging right through the fabric. “Gilley!” I croaked, clutching his arms and getting up shakily.
“What happened to you?” he asked, his face filled with concern. “And where’s Heath?”
I blinked and for the first time I was able to take in my surroundings. John, Meg, and Kim were hovering close, each of them holding several spikes and eyeing the hallway nervously. “I—I don’t know,” I said, trying to spot Heath’s face among those gathered around me. “He was next to me, and then ...” My voice trailed off as I tried to remember what had actually happened.
“And then what, honey?” Gilley asked.
I focused on his face again, still struggling to form linear thoughts. “Something attacked us.” And then, my lower lip began to tremble, and the shivering increased, and a tear or two leaked out of my eyes.
Gilley and John exchanged a look and John said, “Let’s get her back to the front hall. I can get that fire started, and I’ve got some water and a protein bar in my pack. Maybe that’ll help calm her.”
I realized I was still trembling and my hands were shaking so hard that the light from my flashlight was bouncing all over the floor. I took a deep breath and attempted to steady the ray, and that was when I saw two spikes illuminated several yards down the corridor.
I pointed to the spikes, and Gilley and John both looked to the spot. “Those yours?” Gilley asked.
I shook my head. “Only one. The other was Heath’s.”
“Heath!” John shouted.
We all waited breathlessly, but no reply came.
Tears were now streaming steadily down my cheeks as I began to consider that whatever terrifying force had produced such a crippling and mind-altering effect on me had likely done the same to Heath, and without his spike, he was completely at its mercy.
The five of us waited another few heartbeats, shining our beams down the long hallway, waiting for Heath to appear or call out, but nothing disturbed the steady rays of our lights or the eerie silence in the hallway.
“Come on,” Gilley said reluctantly. “Let’s get back and take care of M. J. Then we’ll talk about what to do next.”
The guys helped me to our makeshift camp in the large hall. John was able to get a good fire going from several pieces of wood he’d pulled from a nearby door, and we all huddled eagerly around it as much for the warmth as for the small comfort it brought to this awful place.
“So what happened?” Gilley asked me again when I’d calmed down a bit.
I shook my head, closing my eyes against the flood of memories. “I don’t even know how to describe it,” I whispered.
“Try,” he urged. I opened my eyes again and saw him staring at me with concern. I knew that I’d better get it together and explain what I could in order to help us find Heath and Gopher.
Taking a deep breath, I told them all about what had happened, and the last moment I could remember seeing Heath next to me before being attacked by that terrible force.
“So you think something actually
physically
attacked you?” Kim asked.
“Yes. Yes, I do. I think some insanely powerful spook was able to call up my worst nightmares and parade them through my mind as if they were reality. The magnitude of that onslaught was like
nothing
I’ve ever experienced. Not even the demon we encountered in San Francisco or the Witch of Queen’s Close could even touch the power of this ... this ...
thing
.”
“It must be the phantom everyone’s been talking about,” Gil said, his eyes large and afraid.
“Is that what knocked you over?” John asked.

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