What a Ghoul Wants (4 page)

I slept like the dead (no pun intended) for several hours until something roused me
from a lovely slumber. I remember opening one eye with a slight whimper. I was still
heavy with fatigue. What had it been that’d woken me up?

I listened for a minute, and could hear only the rhythmic sounds of Heath’s steady
breathing next to me. I closed my eye with a little sigh, ready to tuck back into
la-la land, when something from the other side of our door made me snap the lid open
again.

I listened, and this time I could hear a sound like a woman crying from the hallway.
At first I just listened, wondering if perhaps she’d simply had a spat with her boyfriend
or her spouse, but I hadn’t heard any arguing, and didn’t Merrick say that he’d put
us in an unoccupied part of the castle? Then I immediately wondered if Heath had locked
the riffraff door behind us. Knowing him, he hadn’t; he wasn’t someone who looked
down his nose at anybody. If some guest of the castle wanted into this section, Heath
would hold the door for him.

The crying just beyond our door continued, and I waited for the woman to move back
to her room, but the sound of her pitiful weeping went on and on. Finally and with
a grunt of irritation I pushed up off the pillow and shivered in the damp night air.

Hugging my sides, I moved to the door and tried to feel for the peephole, as there
was no light coming through from out in the hallway.

It took me a second or two to understand that there was no peephole—the Welsh maybe
aren’t as paranoid about strangers at their door as we Americans. I stood there for
about five more seconds, wondering what to do, and after listening to the woman continue
to sob in distress, I decided what the hell, it wouldn’t hurt to check on her. Hiding
my nearly naked bottom half behind the door, I turned the knob and pulled.

The door opened with a considerable squeak, and as I leaned out, I could see someone
huddled in the hallway startle at the noise. Even though the corridor was dimly lit,
I could make out the figure of a woman dressed in a long white nightgown and a black
knit shawl, cowering against the wall. She got up when I leaned out to take a look,
and she began to limp along down the hallway while trying to cover her face with her
hand and the shawl. I stared at her for a moment, and one thing became quite clear:
Judging by her disheveled appearance and the purple bruises I saw on her wrists and
forearms, the poor thing had been in some sort of awful scuffle.

“Are you all right?” I whispered. Her demeanor was so timid and frightened that I
was afraid I’d scare her even more if I spoke at full volume.

She simply shook her head and tried to limp away, pulling her shawl even more closely
about her. But then she happened to glance back at me over her shoulder and through
her tangle of hair I could see a black eye and a puffy lip. Someone had roughed her
up pretty good.

“Ma’am?” I said. “Do you need some help?”

She ducked her chin again and limped with a bit more effort to put some distance between
us.

I hovered indecisively in the doorway for a few anxious moments. Should I go after
her and try to help or console her? What the heck happened to her, anyway? Had she
been attacked by someone she knew? Or was there a predator on the loose in the castle?
Whichever, the woman needed medical attention—that much was clear.

Finally I backed into the room and hunted around in the dark for my jeans. At last
I found them on the floor by the bed and shuffled into them as quickly as possible.
My sweater was harder to locate, as it had ended up partially kicked under the bed.
Heath stirred a little when I muttered in irritation, but otherwise he didn’t wake
up.

After hastily getting into the sweater, I darted to the door, opened it as quietly
as that awful squeak would allow, and ran out into the hall. . . which was empty.

There was no sign of the woman. Undaunted, I moved down the corridor, listening as
I went for the sound of her whimpering, but nothing came to my ears. At the end of
the hallway I looked first right, then left, but couldn’t see anyone about. “Dammit!”
I muttered. Which way had she gone? Had she come to this wing to hide from her assailant?
Had she perhaps moved back through the riffraff door to her side of the castle? And
where the heck was that door, anyway? I realized I hadn’t paid any attention to where
the door was located in this maze of corridors.

I moved to my right first and went quietly along the hallway, listening for any sign
of the distraught woman. I thought about calling out to her, but she seemed so spooked
by my appearance that I didn’t want to send her any deeper into hiding.

Still, as I traveled up and down both the right hallway and then the left, I could
find no sign of her, or the main corridor leading out of this wing of the castle.

“Well, that sucks,” I muttered when I turned a corner and saw that it was a dead end.
Only an open window greeted me. The wind was pulling the two halves of the shuttered
casements back and forth, and I was a bit scared that the glass would break if the
wind was strong enough, so I moved to close the two panes. As I reached for the separate
halves, I heard a loud splash from below. It was still very dark out, but I could
just make out the gleam of the water in the moonlight. I peered into the dim waters
of the moat, but saw nothing that would have been responsible for creating such a
loud splash. “Weird,” I whispered, closing the window and throwing the lock.

A shiver went up my spine and I felt more than a little creeped out all of a sudden.
I had a fleeting thought that the woman I’d seen might have gone through the window
and into the moat, but wouldn’t I have seen her jump?

I shivered anew and turned back toward the way I’d come. I’d taken only about five
steps away from the hidden corner with the window when the bulb right over my head
suddenly went out, plunging me into an even murkier gloom. The hairs on the back of
my neck stood up on end, and I looked around uneasily. A cold chill also seemed to
fill the hallway, and suddenly I
really
didn’t want to be in that hallway. I wanted only to get back to my room—stat.

I started trotting in that direction when all of a sudden I heard a sort of low, guttural
growl, but not quite like a dog might make. It was a rumbling of sorts, like the sound
a cat makes right before it hisses, only this particular rumble was much deeper and
had more timbre.

It came from behind me and reflexively I paused to look over my shoulder. There was
nothing in the hallway, but I could identify where the low rumble was coming from—it
was from the last door on the left where I’d been standing only seconds before.

The rumble grew louder, more carnal and vicious, and for a moment I stood frozen,
my brain trying to make sense of what was happening even as the internal warning bell
we all carry sounded, demanding that I turn tail and run.

Just as I was about to take off, however, there was a screech from behind the door,
followed immediately by a tremendous crash against it. I jumped and let out a frightened
squeal, staring hard at the door, which sounded as if it was rattling on its hinges.

It was as if someone. . . or some
thing
had just launched itself right into the door at full force. The low rumble picked
up again, and I didn’t wait around for that door to break down and whatever was behind
it to come out and get me. I bolted.

Just as I reached the intersection to my hallway, I heard another tremendous crash
and the sound of splintering wood. Whatever had been in that room was now breaking
out of it.

I rounded the corner and ran like my life depended on it—which, let’s face it, it
probably did. I dashed down the hallway listening for the sound of that door giving
way, but all I heard was that terrible low growl, until one last crash and a tremendous
boom let me know the door had given way.

As I ran, the lights above me went out one at a time the moment I passed underneath
them, and I could feel that I was on the verge of being plunged into total darkness.

Ahead I could see our door; it was still slightly ajar and one light was still lit
in the hallway, drawing me like a beacon. I was just a few yards away when I heard
that terrible rumble again, followed by the sound of something
very
big giving chase.

I could hear the pounding of its feet charging toward me. It sounded as big as a tiger,
but I dared not look back. I kept my focus on making it to the door of our room and
used my arms to pump faster and faster. Even as I tore down the corridor, I could
feel a bone-chilling cold engulf me and its appearance was so startling that it almost
caused me to stumble.

Somehow I managed to keep my footing and ran as if my feet had wings.
“Heath!”
I cried as the bitter cold wrapped itself around me and threatened to freeze me from
the inside out.
“Heeeeeeeeeath!”

The pounding footfalls of the thing giving chase drew nearer and nearer. Whatever
it was, it was faster than I was. Abject terror seeped into my bones like that frigid
cold, and as I opened my mouth to scream, the last bulb went out overhead, enveloping
me into total darkness.

Behind me the footfalls sounded like they were right on top of me now, and just as
I was about to be tackled, a light inside our room came on and the door pushed open,
flooding the hallway with light, and Heath stood in the doorway looking at me as if
he could hardly believe his eyes.

I barreled into him, throwing us both into the room, and somehow reached back to slam
the door behind us. “What the. . . ?” he gasped as my momentum shoved him right onto
the bed.

“Shhhh!” I whispered, shivering while I whipped around to throw the dead bolt. A second
later whatever was giving chase slammed right into the door with such force that I
was knocked back off my feet.

Chapter 2

I fell right into Heath, who grabbed me around the waist, twisted on the mattress,
and pulled me to the floor. He then tugged me around the far side of the bed, positioning
me as close to the far corner as possible, before putting himself and the bed between
me and the door. I wrapped trembling arms around him, and from over his shoulder I
watched the door with thundering heart and heaving lungs, waiting for whatever had
slammed against the door to strike again.

I could see the wood had splintered from the force of whatever had hit it, and the
screws in one hinge appeared to have been compromised. Another solid slam and the
whole thing would give way.

But the seconds ticked by and nothing else happened. Still, we huddled in that half-crouched
position for many minutes, waiting and watching, but only silence filled the room
and the hallway beyond.

At last Heath turned to me with big wide eyes. “What the
hell
was that?”

I could only shake my head. I had no earthly idea.

Slowly he helped me to my feet and sat me down on the bed, where he ran a hand over
my cheek and studied me with grave concern as if he was looking for any sign of injury.
Finally he said, “Tell me everything.”

At first I didn’t quite know where to start. I must’ve started and stopped my story
six different times, and I could see the confusion in Heath’s eyes, but I wasn’t able
to make sense of all that’d happened since I’d been awakened either.

“You say this woman was hurt?” he asked when I’d finally gotten most of the story
out.

I nodded.

Heath eyed the door warily. “Could she still be out there?”

“I looked for her and I didn’t see any sign of her. I’m not sure what happened—she
could’ve gone back to her side of the castle or maybe she headed to the front desk
for help.”

Heath squeezed my hand before moving to the door. He put his ear to it first and listened
closely; then he turned the dead bolt very slowly so as not to make a sound. He placed
his hand on the knob, then seemed to think better of it.

Turning back to face me, he took in the room, and I could tell what he was thinking—he
wanted to have handy anything he could use as a weapon. The room was so spartan there
wasn’t much to utilize, but finally he grabbed the small metal trash bin and edged
back to the door. He looked at me over his shoulder and I nodded. Opening the door
a tiny crack still caused the door to squeak. I braced myself, not knowing what to
expect, and Heath put his eye to the crack. I could already see that the overhead
lamps had come back on in the hallway, as the slight opening allowed in a thin ray
of light.

For several seconds I watched Heath just stare out into the hall, but then he backed
up a bit and opened the door a little farther. I crossed the room and stood behind
him, trying myself to get a peek. What I could see was an empty corridor, still dimly
lit but clear of anyone or anything that might cause us alarm.

Heath then stood back and I followed suit. As he did so, he pulled the door open all
the way and considered it. “What?” I asked.

“Whatever hit the door should’ve left a mark,” he said, but I couldn’t see any outward
sign of damage from the force of the impact of whatever had slammed against the door.
Only the splintering of the wood and the compromised hinges on our side showed any
sign of damage.

Absent too was the bone-chilling cold that had so enveloped me as I raced down the
corridor. And I couldn’t exactly remember if the cold had left the area before I’d
reached the room, or some time after—I’d been far too scared in the seconds following
my escape into the room to pay much attention. While the air in the hallway was still
chilly, it wasn’t anything like the freezing cold that had crawled under my skin and
taken root in my insides. I shivered even thinking about it.

“You okay?” Heath whispered, eyeing me with concern again.

“Fine. What do we do now?”

Heath closed the door and took my hand. Leading me back to the bed, he clicked on
the bedside lamp and stared hard at the small night table. “Where’s the phone?”

“What phone?”

“Shouldn’t there be a phone for us to call down to the desk?”

I blinked. He was right. “What is it with these VIP digs, anyway? Small musty rooms,
no phone to speak of, and no clock either, did you notice?”

Heath grumbled with irritation as he shuffled around the bed looking for his own jeans
and sweater. I watched him until I thought to check my phone for the time, but when
I tapped my screen, it wouldn’t come on. “Huh,” I said, attempting a second and third
time to get it to work.

“What?” Heath asked, pulling his sweater over his head.

“My phone’s dead.”

“Didn’t you charge it at the airport?”

I nodded. I had charged it there, so it should still have substantial power now, because
I hadn’t used it since. Getting up, I went over to my messenger bag and rooted around
for the charger, and then the challenge became finding an outlet. Finally I pulled
out the plug from the lamp and got the phone some juice. “It’s three a.m.,” I said
once the display came to life.

“At least we got a few good hours of sleep,” Heath remarked, coming over to slip his
arms around my middle. “I’m headed down to the front desk. I think we should let someone
know there may be an injured woman somewhere in the castle.”

I turned in his arms to look up at him, suddenly afraid for him. “But what about that. . .
that. . .
thing
?”

Heath eyed the door. “I’ll have to risk it.”

I didn’t know what it was that I’d encountered in that corridor beyond our door, but
one thing I did know—it wasn’t human. . . and it almost certainly wasn’t alive. “I’m
going with you,” I said firmly.

Heath shook his head, but I wasn’t having it. Pushing out of his arms, I moved over
to my messenger bag again and rifled through it.

The magnetic spikes we use to combat the worst of the poltergeists we encounter on
our ghost hunts were packed away in a large canvas bag that John was in charge of,
and therefore were probably safely tucked away in his room. I hadn’t even thought
to carry any spikes into the castle, as all I’d wanted to do was get a little shut-eye.

The best I could do was to come up with a few refrigerator magnets that I had on hand
just in case one or two of the magnets glued to the protective sweatshirt Gilley wore
came loose.

In other words, if Heath and I did encounter that thing again in the hallway, we wouldn’t
have much in the way of defenses. Still, I also managed to come up with an electrostatic
meter, which would measure the electrostatic energy around us as we made our way to
the front desk and hopefully give us at least a running start. “Em,” Heath said when
I handed him two of the magnets and moved toward the door, “you should stay here.”

I didn’t even bother with a reply. Heath is one of the sweetest, most chivalrous guys
on the planet, but sometimes he forgets that I can be pretty tough too. I opened the
door and prepared to step into the hallway when I felt his firm grip on my shoulder.
“Me first,” he whispered.

The old me would have rolled my eyes and defiantly pulled out of his grasp and stepped
into the hallway. New me—the me that had been through a lot of rough stuff in recent
months—allowed him to go first.

As we entered the hallway, I turned on the meter. The needle surged a little as the
power came on, but then it settled into that comfortable normal range and I breathed
a teensy bit easier.

Heath led the way, slowly and cautiously, and neither of us spoke a word. We moved
in the opposite direction from where I’d gone looking for the poor woman I’d encountered
in the hallway, and I was grateful that Heath seemed to know where he was headed,
because I was very quickly lost.

At last we came to the riffraff door, and beyond that, the large staircase I remembered
climbing wearily several hours earlier. We went down the stairs side by side with
Heath still holding tightly to my hand. “Did the meter register anything on the way
here?” he asked quietly.

“Not even a small surge,” I said. Sometimes the needle on one of our gadgets will
bounce if the location we’re in has quite a bit of electrical current running through
it—like a modern building made to house a lot of computer equipment or wiring, but
these old buildings usually have fairly low voltage capacity, and that keeps the meters
pretty flat.

It’s a good thing too, because then we know to trust them—when those needles begin
to bounce, it’s because some spook is on the move. But our whole way to the front
hall not much had registered, which in its own way was a little odd, because these
castles usually come with a whole host of spiritual activity, and I knew we’d seen
something spectral when we’d first entered the main hall upon our arrival.

Still, I didn’t dwell on it overlong; I was just grateful to reach the front desk,
but that relief faded the moment we stood in front of it and discovered that no one
was manning it.

I rang the bell and Heath and I both looked around, but no one was there to help us.

Heath pulled out his phone from his back pocket and tapped the screen, but his phone
didn’t light up or come on. “My phone’s out of juice too,” he said with a puzzled
expression.

“That confirms it,” I said. “Whatever that thing was that chased me down that hallway
was definitely spectral. It drained both our phones and all the lights in the hallway.”

Heath nodded. “We’ll have to get the scoop on what else might haunt this castle ASAP,”
he said, looking around the desk as if he was trying to find something. Leaning over
the high counter, he finally came up with what he’d been searching for. “Got it,”
he said, holding up the phone triumphantly, then digging around until he’d located
a phone book.

“Who you gonna call?” I asked, then followed that quickly with “Do
not
say you’re calling Bill Murray or I will have to hurt you.”

Heath chuckled as he thumbed through the first few pages of the directory before lifting
the receiver. The phone was one of those old-fashioned contraptions with a rotary
dial. “I’m calling the police.”

My jaw dropped. “For reals?”

Heath nodded and held up a finger, indicating someone on the other end had answered.
“Good morning, sorry to call so early, but I’m a guest at Kidwellah Castle, and I
think a female guest at the hotel has been hurt.”

Heath proceeded to tell the person on the other end of the line as much as he knew
before he began to ask me questions. What did she look like? Where exactly had I seen
her? What seemed to be the extent of her injuries? Did I know her name? Where was
she now?

It went on like that for a bit until I took the phone and answered all the questions
myself. It turned out that I was talking to the secretary of the Penbigh police. She
seemed a very thorough woman, intent on discovering if in fact she had sufficient
cause to wake the poor fool who would have to come out and search for the injured
lady I’d seen.

Finally she asked, “Will you be there to greet the constable on duty, miss?”

My gaze landed on the desk clock tucked to the side of the check-in counter. It read
three thirty a.m. “Yes,” I said, holding in a sigh. “We’ll be here.”

After hanging up with her, Heath and I settled in for the wait, finding the two thrones
set up near one of the the armored knights to be kind of comfortable. “Still tired?”
Heath asked once we’d taken our seats.

“Very. You?”

Heath yawned. “Yeah. All this travel wears on you, doesn’t it?”

The sigh I’d been holding in escaped me. “How many more shoots do we have until we
get a break?”

Heath rubbed his eyes. “Three, maybe four more after this one, I think.”

I was quiet for a while after that. Mostly I was so homesick I could barely stand
it. We’d had a chance to head back to the States about three weeks earlier, but our
visit to New Mexico—Heath’s home state—hadn’t been even remotely pleasant. It’d been
as much work as one of our shoots, in fact.

And although I’d been in the States, I hadn’t been home. I missed Boston. I missed
my condo. But mostly I missed my sweet bird, Doc—the African gray I’d had since I
was eleven—and of course my Boston friends something fierce. And while I’d spent a
few quality days with Doc while we were in New Mexico, the short visit with him had
only emphasized how much I’d missed his little feathered self, and it was a thousand
times harder to leave him when we boarded the plane back to Europe.

“Maybe they won’t renew us for another season,” I said quietly.

Heath laid a gentle hand across my neck and began to massage the tense muscles there.
“You miss your bird.”

“I miss him like crazy. But I also miss home, you know?”

Heath’s expression became clouded with guilt. “My family and their troubles took up
all the time you could have spent in Boston, Em. I’m really sorry.”

I waved a hand dismissively, even though my eyes were starting to mist a bit. “None
of that was your fault, Heath. Gil and I volunteered to go with you to your uncle’s
funeral, and we also insisted on staying when things got dicey.”

Heath leaned back and closed his eyes. “Maybe this shoot will go by quick,” he said
wistfully.

“Well, it can’t go too quickly. If it unrolls like Dunkirk, we’ll be in trouble with
the network again.”

“That place was a total bust,” Heath agreed.

I leaned back too and closed my tired eyes, wishing the constable would get here already.
Within a few moments I had inadvertently dozed off.

Only a short time later the sound of someone yelling startled me awake.
“Arthur?”
a male voice shouted. “Arthur Crunn, are you here?”

Heath and I both shot out of our chairs like bullets. I was so out of sorts that it
took me a minute to figure out where I was, and that was further complicated by the
tall lanky fellow with a thick mustache standing in the front hall holding a flashlight
and giving us a quizzical look.