The Traveler: Book 5, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (29 page)

They ran hard and fast. Eddie lost count of the branches that snapped back and whipped him in the face. He just kept running like a lunatic.

“How far?” Christie shouted. She was moving like a deer through the woods, quick and graceful. Eddie crashed through the brush like a bear.

“The trail isn’t far. Then another minute or two.”

“Faster!” Christie said.

They pushed on. The forest floor tipped down and the descent made them go faster still, to the point where Eddie wasn’t even running. Now he was just trying to slow himself down. Christie stayed on her feet but Engel crashed. One minute he was vertical, the next he’d disappeared from Eddie’s view.

Eddie scrambled and managed to change direction at the last second before he clotheslined himself on a low branch. He spotted Engel barreling and Eddie didn’t know how to stop a two-hundred pound man from rolling down a hill. He kept running and ahead the trees broke and he saw all kinds of stones.

Engel reached the bottom of the hill and seemed to slow before he landed painfully on the Stone Trail. He’d missed a boulder-sized rock by inches but pancaked on the other stones. Eddie’s momentum carried him to the rocks. He couldn’t stop himself and stepped awkwardly. His ankle rolled and the pain was so sharp for a moment he swore he’d broken something. He twisted and fell and the rocks of the Stone Trail were unforgiving on his back.

“Get up, guys!” Christie said. “We have to keep moving!”

Eddie picked his head up and saw Christie helping Engel to his feet. He rose unsteadily, carefully, like he’d hurt himself during the tumble down the hill. Eddie got up and had to favor his one side. His ankle was one big screaming nerve. Hopefully the adrenaline would kick in momentarily but until then he wouldn’t be much of a runner.

At this point, the Trail wasn’t much wider than ten feet. It stretched out in roughly a north-south line. Pines towered above them on both sides. The sun ducked behind a cloud and a chill ran through the air.

“Where, Engel?” Christie shouted.

“This way.”

“Hurry.”

Christie and Engel started down the trail and Eddie hobbled along. Fortunately for him, the trail in this direction was slightly downhill. With his ankle swelling up, Eddie didn’t think uphill was an option for him at this point.

“It’s up there.” Engel pointed to an old stump from a tree that must have been cut down a hundred years ago. It had greyed with age and almost hollowed out.

“Then where?” Christie said.

“Just down the hill.” Engel held up his hand and cupped it. “It’s like this in there. Tough to get in and out.”

“Hurry.”

Eddie had fallen behind. His ankle had forced him into a half-walk, half-run. He knew they were on borrowed time with the ghost.

Christie and Engel stepped off the trail next to the stump as Eddie tried to catch up.

“Wait!” he said.

“Eddie, we don’t have time,” Christie said.

“I know.” He limped-ran and caught up to them. His ankle throbbed and burned. “Is her body down there?”

Eddie peered down the hill. It was a hollow, like Engel had described, like someone had carved this tiny patch of land into a bowl. The floor of the bowl was no more than thirty foot in diameter.

Engel nodded.

“Then we’re close enough.” Eddie looked at Christie. “You two stay up here.”

“Eddie—” Christie started.

He cut her off. “No reason for everyone to be in harm’s way and it looks like a bitch to get in and out of there. So I’m going down alone. If the situation goes left, just take Engel back up the hill. Tiffany will dissipate and I’ll be safe. Worse comes to worst, cuff Engel to a tree. We’ll regroup at the top of the hill outside of the ghost’s cone and figure out what the hell to do next.”

“She’s coming,” Engel said.

Christie said, “Eddie, I can’t let you go down there alone.”

“You know it’s the smart play. I’m the only one who knows how to do this.”

“You have no idea how to do it, though,” Christie said.

“And you’re not going to be able to help me.” Eddie stepped forward. He wanted to kiss her but Engel was right there and if they made it out of this alive, he didn’t want Engel telling everybody Eddie and Christie had been in a relationship during the investigation. So he just put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

He said, “You help me the most by staying up here.”

Her lips turned into a hard, straight line. She knew he was right.

Eddie said, “Just be ready to get Engel out of here fast. Okay?”

“She’s close,” Engel said.

Christie nodded. “Good luck.”

Eddie stepped to the edge before the ground sloped severely down into the hollow. The throbbing in his ankle was a little better but the angle of the hill was treacherous.

Then the air around them changed. A cold wind blew through.

And Tiffany Engel materialized.

“Follow me, bitch,” Eddie said. “Down to where they dumped you like garbage.”

Blood the color of ink poured out of the gunshot wound in the ghost’s temple. She opened her mouth full of rotting teeth and hissed. The sound was like a thousand nails on a chalk board. His blood instantly ran cold.

Engel cowered next to Christie, turning away from his estranged, dead wife. Christie had her gun out but pointed at the ground.

Eddie had seen Tiffany twice now. In his motel room she had been a vague, undefined shape. But in front of him now, she didn’t hover and there was no foggy curtain of blue surrounding her. Her feet were connected to the earth and she was all sharp lines now. Without the bluish-white color and minus the gunshot wound, she would have appeared human.

But the conclusion was inescapable: Tiffany was more powerful.

Then, as if to prove it, the ghost reached out and
touched him.

“What the—”

The touch turned into a shove and Eddie instinctively stepped back, forgetting the slope behind him. His foot expected to find ground but did not and he lost his balance. The world did a somersault. Then another. In one breath, he was just spinning wildly in space, the ground a rough reminder that gravity still owned him.

He heard Christie shouting. The ghost shrieking. He tumbled down the slope. It was only fifteen feet to the bottom of the bowl, but no falls were ever short. He felt every bump on the way down and crashed at the foot of the slope where the ground evened out by jamming his side into a tree.

Pain everywhere. But mostly in his chest.

The ghost had trailed him down and now stood over him. The bullet wound continued to seep blood. It ran down the side of her battered face, down her bruised neck, down her shirt.

“Eddie!” Christie shouted.

“Stay up there!” It hurt to yell.

“I’m coming down!”

“NO, GODDAMNIT!” He grabbed his side where he’d slammed into the tree. It was tender already, like he’d broken a rib. Breathing hurt.

“I don’t want you getting hurt,” he said, not sure if she had heard him.

“Eddie!”

The ghost stopped in front of him. She reached out a hand and splayed her fingers. Most of them were broken. Eddie shuddered. What had they done to her before killing her?

***

Eddie had never seen anything like Tiffany before. Most ghost hunters could spend a lifetime investigating claims and never once lay eyes on an entity. He knew guys that had hunted for twenty years and their best find to date were some ambiguous orbs on film, or scratchy EVP, or varying hits on the K2 meter. The lucky few that did see a ghost or capture one on film at most got a glimpse. Usually, the evidence amounted to a vague form that distantly resembled something human and couldn’t be explained away rationally.

Tiffany had
substance.

When explaining it to clients, he and Tim had always likened it to thermodynamics. People were energy. When they died, that energy didn’t die with them. It could neither be created nor destroyed. Only transformed.

Ghosts were transformed energy.

Ghosts were normally linked to this world through a dramatic experience. Trauma usually created the link. The worse the trauma, the stronger the link, the more active the ghost was.

Tiffany’s face was twisted in rage. Her clothes were tattered. The blood that looked like ink turned red. It rivered down the side of her face. Her skin was coming off.

The eye closest to the bullet wound was milky white. The other stared off into space.

She was losing her fingers.

Bugs crawled over her body and dug into her decomposing skin.

The exhaustion hit him. Tiffany was sapping his strength, draining him of his life force. Ghosts required a lot of energy to manifest, and because she manifested better than any ghost he’d ever heard of, Eddie figured she used more energy. Maybe she sucked it out of the living around her. He didn’t know how it worked. Maybe he would never know.

Eddie said, “Your husband is done with you. He doesn’t love you. He never loved you. He’s been banging a different woman every weekend since you split up with him.”

Tiffany stood there a moment, watching him.

“You’re nothing to him. NOTHING.” He clutched at his side. Breathing hurt. Talking hurt. Doing nothing hurt. “He was happy when you disappeared.”

She wasn’t tall, but he was lying on the ground. She loomed over him. All dark energy. Both a presence and an absence at the same time. Like she would take and take and take but nothing would ever fill her up.

“Engel! Tell her it’s over! Tell her you don’t love her anymore.”

At first Engel’s voice was tentative, weak, but it grew in strength as he spoke. “It’s over, Tiffany. I don’t love you anymore.”

“More, Engel!”

“I’m not going to help you. You’re a murderer. I only helped you because I had no choice.”

Tiffany moved closer to Eddie. She had kept watching him, oblivious to her husband at the top of the hill. Eddie had to keep pouring on the hate. In theory, it would sever her connection to her husband and relink her to this emotionally-charged place.

“They killed you and dumped you here!” Eddie said. “You were nothing to them but a problem to solve.”

Tiffany opened her mouth and Eddie knew something really horrible was about to happen.

“Engel! Keep talking!”

“You evil bitch,” Engel said. “You manipulative, vile cunt! You’re a fucking sociopath and you ruined everything!”

“They killed you,” Eddie said. “Right over there. They put a gun to your head and pulled the trigger. This is where they left you. This is where you belong. This is where you’ll stay forever now.”

And then, Tiffany hissed.

Eddie’s heart kicked into second gear. The dull ache in his chest spread out as the pressure built.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Eddie said. “Nobody here is. You’re powerless. Because this is where you died. You were buried here. Your worthless, rotting carcass is in the ground here.”

Tiffany hissed again, and Eddie’s heart accelerated like he was doing wind sprints. His head felt both heavy and light. He knew he was slipping. As he’d feared, he’d gotten lucky in his first encounter with Tiffany. He wouldn’t be lucky this time. She was going to kill him.

She shrieked and the world disappeared. He found himself standing in the middle of a staircase. He’d been going up. He didn’t know where he was, until he realized he was holding a knife.

Then he knew.

He was back in that house where his brother had been murdered. The killer, Eamon Moriarty, suddenly appeared at the foot of the stairs and plunged his own knife into Eddie’s brother, Tim. Eddie felt the blow like he’d been stabbed himself. Pain exploded in his gut while his chest felt like it could burst.

Then the scene shifted.

He was standing on a roof in the middle of a deluge. He knew immediately where Tiffany had taken him: back to Oregon. In the parking lot below, the deranged crowd was charging the building.

Eddie picked up a rifle and started firing.

One-by-one, each shot knocked somebody down. They were so close, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. He wanted to stop. He couldn’t stomach the thought of killing anybody else, but he couldn’t stop himself. His body just kept aiming and firing. Aiming and firing.

There was a pain down his left arm. He knew immediately it was the pain of an impending heart attack.

“Christie, get out of here!” he yelled.

“Eddie!”

He couldn’t see her on top of the hill but he wanted her to go. This wonderful plan of his wasn’t working. Tiffany was going to kill him down here, unless Christie took Engel away fast, forcing the ghost to dissipate.

“Christie, I can’t fight her. Get Engel out of here!”

“We’re going!”

Relief washed over him, even though the pain was still terrible.

A jolt of electricity shot down his left arm and he couldn’t move. He was going to die. Horrifying images flashed through his mind. He saw Stan and Moira and their daughter dead. Christie dead.

But the worst thing he saw was his brother.

Tim stood over him. “It was your fault, Eddie.”

“No…”

“It’s your fault I’m dead, Eddie.”

“No…”

His heart was going to explode. He couldn’t move. Eddie forced his eyes open. The world appeared again. Tiffany was right in front of him. Her face twisted into that grotesque smile.

“I’m sorry, Tim,” he said.

The ghost hissed.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “It was my fault. You’re right. And I don’t care if I die. Maybe I’ll see you again.”

All he had to do was survive the next thirty seconds until Christie got Engel far enough away. Any moment now, Tiffany would disappear.

“I’m sorry, Tim. I’m so sorry.”

The ghost shook with rage and more visions assaulted him.

Any minute now she’d be gone.

Tiffany was going to kill Stan. Then she was going to kill Moira. Then Maddy. Christie along the way. She would torture them all.

It had been thirty seconds. She would dissipate any second.

Tiffany would find all his friends and she would kill them. She would go on killing because nobody else could stop her. This plan had failed. Eddie had failed. Now he would die for nothing. He would die because he’d rushed in again. He’d die because of a mistake—no, not a mistake. A flaw in his character.

The ghost hadn’t dissipated.

Why not?

Christie and Engel should have been far enough by now.

Tiffany smiled wickedly.

Plenty of time had passed. Tiffany should have dissipated.

But instead she inched closer to him. His chest was on fire. The flame ran down his left arm. His heart ached, like it wasn’t getting enough oxygen.

Why was she still here?

Why was she still here?

Then Eddie realized.

He’d made a terrible mistake. A
deadly
mistake.

His
last
mistake.

Ghosts were normally tied to specific places. The scene of the abuse, the scene of the crime, the scene of the marriage. More rarely, ghosts were tied to people. These were the few entities that could travel
.

With mounting fear, he realized there was no reason why a ghost couldn’t be linked to
both a person and a place.

Like this place. Where her body had been dumped.

Tiffany had a connection to this hollow. No matter how far away Christie took Engel, it wouldn’t help him now.

Tiffany was
here.
Had always been here. When she wasn’t with her husband, she was here.

She wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t have the strength to move. He was trapped. And she was
powerful
here. Unstoppable. She couldn’t be killed, she was already dead. And she could get into his head. She owned him now.

He was going to die.

He was doing to die.

Game over.

Then the ghost would find Engel and kill Christie. Then Stan. Then everybody else in this town. Then Moira. Then Maddy…