Gridlocked Guesthouse (Locked House Hauntings Book 1) (10 page)

Rachel tried to run to Tiffany, but John was already there. He looked like a wild creature and he was wielding a chair. He charged down the stairs, chair overhead, throwing it forward.

Rachel shouted, "John, stop! Stop!" Fight or flight, and he was fighting whatever it was he saw. I like to think he saw something, and not that he had the sudden, unrelenting urge to beat the shit out of Tiffany. Rachel screamed at the sight of it, completely unable to move. Flight or fright, baby, and she just froze like an ice cube.

Beth, instead, was the one leaping down the wooden steps, tackling John to the ground, the chair now a splintered mess from his smashing it into the locked door.

Everyone stopped, though, when they heard it. Beezer stopped screaming, Lucy stopped covering her ears, John stopped attacking Tiffany, and Ben stopped running. All together, they gasped and turned and looked at the thing that was happening.

The house was moving. The floorboards croaked as it shifted in the dirt. The windows opened and shut quickly, one after another, as if they were dominoes. The basement door had one padlock open and fall off.

The front door finally popped open and the three frightened men and the one straight-up terrified Jenny stood, a loud crack of thunder behind them so loud and petrifying that they leapt, charging inside. "What's going on!" Mike shouted. Rachel and John hurried to the safe room.

Beth carried the mangled Tiffany, her thin, bare midriff spiked with little bits of chair. She was sobbing. Beth too was sobbing. But even beaten and terrified, they all instinctively knew they had to gather in the safe room.

And Jenny started to explain. She was standing next to the bear, the big stuffed, ragged brown bear. God, I love that bear.

"I went outside last night before I was gonna sleep. I figured Cletus and Carson would like to take a wee." She paused thoughtfully. "I couldn't get back in." She took a deep breath, and everyone settled down. Rachel even brought in a big vegetable platter that she had prepped. Everyone nibbled while they ate, listening to each tale. It might seem odd to you, that after John attacked Tiffany, and everyone went crazy, that everyone suddenly settled down for story time. But I think this was part of it, everything settled, everyone had their heads. Even Lucy, who had been a basket case all evening, suddenly seemed awake. She was present.

Everyone was.

And I should tell you about Lucy. You might be thinking, gee her boyfriend overdosed, and it sucks, but surely she could, I dunno, be a human? Maybe she could just breathe a moment. Or get her shit together. And also, why the hell was everyone else taking Rafael's death so damn easy? What was it that made his death a breeze for them and a nightmare for her?

And the truth is, I'm not sure. It could have been the house, or the situation, or that everyone had a lot of shit on their plate. Like John being pissed and hurt about Tiffany's refusal to marry him, and his dead baby. Maybe he didn't have room on his plate for another feeling like, a guy he knew was dead upstairs, hanging out of a wardrobe.

Anyways, it doesn't matter. Lucy's plate was Rafael. Lucy, I'd say, was more sensitive to death than the other people. Her mother was dead. Her father was dead. And when she was fifteen, her sixteen-year-old boyfriend was suicidal. There was one day they were wrestling around and he got angry and suddenly barked that he should end it all. He should end it and walk away from it all. And she said no, and he pulled out a gun. She tried to wrestle it from him, and well, even she didn't know if he pulled the trigger on purpose, but his brains splattered her face when the bullet fired. This is the life of Lucy. She and death were
intimate
. Most of her years, she'd tried to make up for the pain by fucking and kissing and loving the hell out of anyone who would stand still for five seconds. She was the kind of girl who wore her heart on her sleeve, right there, every little tear and kiss and love just beating beneath the surface. She never held back. She didn't become jaded. But she was a broken girl just the same. Really fucking broken. And this was her last straw. She'd be so fucked up from this point forward that nothing would ever be the same for her again.

But like I said, everyone was suddenly present and accounted for. They were trying to determine what was going on. Eating delicious carrots and ranch, and generally, if you had walked in on them in this very moment, you would have thought they were still mid-party. They seemed almost happy.

"I couldn't get back in," Jenny continued.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"I tried the front door. I tried the windows. I beat at them with my fists, and nobody heard me. Nobody heard me!" She paused, but despite her frantic tone, as soon as she stopped for a breath, she was back to calm. "So I was thinking about what to do, try to break a window to get in or what. Eventually, I thought maybe I should just try to sleep in one of the cars. It was pretty damn cold out there."

She crunched a carrot thoughtfully. She seemed to be building the rest of the story in her mind, looking for a way to form the sentences into a coherent thought. "So, what I'm saying is..." She paused again, crunching. I think she was obnoxiously slow. Get to the point, girl! We're waiting! "That was when I saw Oliver."

Everyone blankly stared at her.

"Oliver, you know? The four-year-old boy that was... peeled, I guess is how Ricky put it." She paused again, looking down at her toes before she crunched another carrot. "So I saw him. He was... mid-peel. Skin flopping to the front and to the back of him, and it was terrifying, and I screamed and started running. And well..." She paused for more ranch. Jenny was calm. Her story was calm and just the kind of tale you'd tell that might have a funny punchline. "So then I came back a while later, and I was..." She gestured to her face. "You know, I had run into branches and stuff. That's why my face is tore up. And so then I tried the cars--Ricky's was locked, Rachel's was locked, mine was blocked in..." She paused again, more ranch. "But the van was all smashed up, so it wasn't locked. I climbed in there, and Cletus and Carson snuggled up with me, and then I woke up, in my car. Tied to the steering wheel. I don't know how long I was there." She paused and finally looked up, staring into the eyes of each person slowly before continuing. "Oliver did it. I'm certain."

The room was quiet
(except for the celery and carrots, which were being crunched happily.)
"Did anyone move Rafael? How did he get upstairs?" Lucy asked. I think the group was shocked she spoke at all.

The room grew silent again and nobody even attempted to answer her. "John, can you tell us more about how you got locked in the frozen bedroom? Why were you in the cabinet?" And Rachel almost added,
Why the fuck did you attack Tiffany?

John began his explanation with the part Rachel wanted to know first. "I didn't see her. I mean, I did, but I didn't see her. It wasn't Tiffany. I mean, it was." He took a deep breath, flustered. He was fucking embarrassed to have hurt her like that. "I saw... Richard, I think. I think that's who I saw. He was cold as ice and he was dragging her down the stairs while she screamed, and so I just ran up and attacked him. But the chair... went through him and shattered on the door. And then I kept trying to swing it at him. It had to be the ghost. Nobody else is here."

Rachel looked down at her feet uncomfortably. Tiffany was still picking bits of wood splinters from her stomach. She was dotted with tiny slivers--she had already pulled out the biggest ones. It was a scary thought. Him hitting her with the chair. But then again, if he had been pummeling her, she'd be more than splintered. She'd have been stabbed clean through by that wooden chair leg. It was a splintery spear after it broke. And sure, John was repeatedly stabbing at her, but right above her, so just the tiny pointed tip dug into her flesh.

Not the whole thing.

Just the tip.

Okay, I know, all of these young people would have been snickering at that particular set of sentences.

Ben finally spoke up; his face had stopped swelling so badly, and the ice was helping. He could open one eye most of the way, but he had been hit, he had been really fucking hit by something. "I started walking down the road, and I got real far, it seemed. Real far. Hours of walking, and it was cold as fuck, so I kept moving, you know? Trying to stay warm."

John nodded seriously. He knew what it was like to be cold as fuck.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Ben continued, "I started to get worried. I hadn't seen any houses or anything, not a sign or a side road or anything that I could work with. And Mikaela's phone hadn't shown any signal at all. But then, as I held it up, I realized I had a faint signal. I made the decision to stop following the road and instead follow the signal. This turned out to be a horrible mistake. Besides getting horribly lost, which was absolutely a problem, I started to look at the phone more than I looked at where I was walking.

"I fell down... something. I'm not sure what it was exactly. A hill, I guess. It hurt and there were these brambles I got caught in." He had a long pause, and even though he wasn't eating carrots or celery, it seemed like a normal pause. A few moments later, he continued, "I don't know how I got at the bottom of the stairs. I thought something was starting to chase me. As I fell down the hill, I was certain someone was chasing me. But once I hit the bottom, I started running and..." He stopped.

Beth suddenly mumbled, "I've got it!" and everyone turned to look at her. She was holding the clear box. A key was in her hand.

Ricky said, "I knew that they could get it eventually, Rachel." And everyone smiled.

Ben's confusing tale didn't explain anything. Jenny's tale meant there was a ghost, but Beth's key meant--well, who knows exactly? Maybe it just meant they could have some fun. They needed some fun after this crazy night.

And so they started to relax. Ricky brought out the booze and they pretended they were still at a party, still having a fun weekend. They didn't know how to get home. They didn't know who the fuck tied up Jenny. But they just blew off some steam and ate loads of dessert and made out with each other until someone sent them a car in the morning. Nobody died. Nothing else happened.

I'm lying.

But if you want to hear these words and stop now, then it might be a good time. Go get yourself an ice cream cone and don't come back ever.

Honestly, I don't even know how you made it this far. Do you even believe in ghosts? I do, just not the kind that you might believe in. I believe in being haunted by memories and poor decisions. I think that Lucy has ghosts.

I also think Rafael is very, very dead and not trying to give some sort of message about the wardrobe.

I am not even sure the Jamisons were real people. Weren't they just part of the elaborate murder party ghost game thing Rachel was hosting?

Besides, maybe Ben fell down a hill and came back because he is in on it.

Or maybe he locked up Jenny.

Or maybe Jenny tied herself up to scare the fuck out of everyone.

Maybe Mikaela didn't have the only phone, but the person who still has a phone doesn't want anyone to know she has a signal.

She could call for help.

I bet just that thought is enough for you to figure out who has the phone. Who doesn't want any help?

Rachel, obviously. Now she doesn't want Beezer to die, but it's just a broken leg, people! It's just a broken leg. Would she have called to stop Rafael from dying? Of course she would have; she isn't a monster. She's not a lunatic. But he was already dead when they figured out there was a problem. Why would she ruin the party she had spent months prepping for--for what? A guy who they couldn't do a damn thing for?

So yes, if you can't handle it, then just put this book down and everyone lives.

Still with me?
Well, I like you more already.

While Beth released the key unexpectedly from its tiny clear prison, the dining room suddenly made a creaking, croaking noise. The chandelier squealed as it spun, and a double-dutch jump rope hung from it.

"Do you think ghosts are real?" Tiffany asked John, her voice desperate.

"Fuck," he whispered back softly. He couldn't take much more of this.

Just as they turned to stare at the forlorn rope dangling in the air, a loud clomping noise from the library started up. It kept going, one after another. Mike was the closest and leaned his head towards the library. "The books are flying off the shelves!" he shouted nervously. And they were exploding off the shelves; first one, then another, then more until books were crashing from every angle from every shelf. Mikaela started screaming and then immediately shifted to sobbing. "What do they want?" she screamed.

And Ricky had been waiting for this glorious moment, he had been waiting for it.

"Did Rachel tell you that we picked this house because the people we described--Amelia, Richard, Lillian, Oliver and the twins--actually were murdered here?"

Beezer, always a skeptic no matter what facts anyone told him, said, "You have got to be shitting me! How the fuck would a man freeze to death in a bedroom?"

John shouted, "I nearly froze to death in that bedroom!"

Rachel said solemnly, "We must have awoken them. The only way to finish this will be to finish the game."