Gridlocked Guesthouse (Locked House Hauntings Book 1) (11 page)

Tiffany could see Rachel's smirk and feel her sparkle at the idea that the game was still on, that this party was still on. Would finishing the party solve the haunting?

Maybe the ghosts did want them to finish. The game was to find their story, to find out what happened to them. What ghost wouldn't want that?

"You have got to be fucking kidding me." It was Beezer again. "You think this is a game! You think my broken leg is a fucking joke, or that we can't leave. You think that's a fucking game!"

Rachel's smirk dropped quickly. But this was where Tiffany jumped in, "Do you have a fucking better idea? Do you?"

Ben said, "This is dangerous. We shouldn't be staying in here. We need to get somewhere safe."

John nodded firmly.

Beth turned the key in her hand. "I would like to see what this unlocks."

Zane stared at the girl and finally added his comment. "I'm in. What harm can it cause?"

I think it could cause a lot of harm to keep opening a can of worms and keep mocking the dead. As if they didn't matter. As if their deaths didn't matter.

And yes, the Jamisons did die here, and Oliver was peeled, and the twins hung by a jump rope. Everything happened for a reason, I think.

Just like it would happen now. With the only man who fathered a child--John--and the mother, Mikaela, and the twins... Mikaela and Zane were twins. Did any of the other girls have children? I'm just throwing out ideas here.

See what you think. Do you think Mikaela represented the mother and John the father? I say John because he was already trapped and frozen.

And he wanted to father a child.

I'm sure none of the other men have kids. They were practically kids themselves.

I dunno, but why would Jenny be locked up? What do you think the purpose of that was? Ben makes more sense. They couldn't let him leave and get help, obviously.

Alright, enough of my chatter; time for story.

Zane held Beth's hand and they went together to find a lock for the key. That was the plan but once they stepped out of sight, Beth turned and kissed Zane and his mind wandered to her body. He didn't take her, though; he could have, but he was sweet, and she was sweeter. He wanted her to feel like something precious before he properly violated her.

But he did kiss her, just like she wanted, proper and fierce. She melted into him. And then he released her and gave her the sweetest little wink. "What do you think it unlocks?" he whispered into her ear, nibbling gently.

She purred softly and then gathered herself. "Probably a lock." She kissed his nose and they parted, still holding hands and looking for a padlock or something suitable for the odd-shaped little yellow key. After a moment she realized it was painted, which reminded her of the paint chips. "I bet the lock is yellow like the key."

Brilliant; at least one of them understood Rachel's plans. So they started searching, first upstairs in the children's rooms. The twins' room had a bunkbed
(still a tousled mess from when lovely Ricky and insane Rachel banged on it)
, a dresser, and a bookshelf. It was pretty sparse. But there was a small yellow bank on the dresser with a clear lock. See? Not all of Rachel's clues sucked.

Inside was a note:

How many of you have died so far? Not enough. Not nearly enough. The spirits are restless.

Beth read it aloud to Zane. He frowned. "Is this all Rachel's murder mystery game thing? What are we doing here?"

Beth frowned too. What the fuck were they thinking?

CHAPTER THIRTY

Beth stepped down the top of the stairs calmly and elegantly, holding the note in one hand, wanting to talk to the others. What did they think they were going to find in a staged house? It made no damn sense.

Rachel was grinning at the sight of the note, and Beth saw something new in her eyes. What if it was on purpose? What if Ricky and Rachel froze John in the bedroom, dragged those concrete pillars to Mike's car. What if...

What if...

She couldn't quite form the thought. It was too awful, it was so awful. What if they didn't care Rafael was dead and just wanted to continue the party? What if they didn't want Beezer to go to the hospital?

How obsessed with this party was Rachel? Sure, she'd been talking about it for a while, but really. Beth rolled this around in her head. What would she have to gain by scaring the shit out of everyone?

What about Jenny?

Beth stared at the very happy girl petting her goats and laughing. Sure she was scratched up, but... she didn't even seem traumatized. Maybe she wasn't traumatized,
because she was in on it.

She paused mid-step, thinking carefully, and her foot caught a thin wire as she lifted it. She looked down slowly at the wire strung barely visible across the steps. Who the fuck put this wire there? She stared at Rachel, drinking and grinning. Rachel winked at her. Like it was still a fucking party.

Zane stepped behind her. "What's the matter?" She turned slightly to tell him what she was thinking, but all the lights went off.

When they came back on a second later, Zane and Beth were still on the steps, waiting, carefully avoiding the trip wire. Rachel was screaming and Ben was dead. The time was 5:15.

At six, two more would be dead. Beth suddenly remembered. At six. That very first note that Mikaela read--everyone had thought it meant six in the morning, but maybe, just maybe, it was six tonight.

Forty-five minutes remaining.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Beth shouted, "It's almost six!"

And Tiffany stared at the girl, not having a fucking clue what she was talking about. I'm even shocked she remembered that very specific detail from all those hours previous. Then she made a critical error and stepped forwards, this one girl who was the only one thinking that maybe Rachel

Maybe Rachel

Planned

To

Kill

Them

She caught her foot on the trip wire and fell down the stairs.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I don't know if Rachel planned to kill them or not.

Or, if I do, I'm not ready to talk about it yet. I didn't introduce her or Ricky, if you recall. And why should I? They are the ones who planned this. They don't deserve introduction.

Beth crumpled down the stairs, and Zane, from some sort of magical man skills, avoided the wire while leaping for her, trying to catch her. He didn't. She tumbled, but with nobody falling on top of her, she just got firmly beaten up, no broken legs or arms or face.

Well, but she couldn't remember what she was going to say. She couldn't remember that statement she had been afraid to voice, even to herself.

When she hit the bottom of the steps, the lights went off again. It was pitch dark. There must have been no moon out because it was so dark nobody could quite adjust to it. Fumbling, and feeling forward, Zane gingerly went down the stairs, whispering, "Beth, are you okay?"

Tiffany started to sob, and it was hard to concentrate on anything else. It was so fucking dark. Beezer let out a shout. "Hey, is she okay? Zane?"

"I don't know," Zane replied, still slowly making his way down the stairs. He wasn't sure if she had gone to the bottom or if he was about to stomp on her poor battered body.

Ricky said slowly, "I think there is a generator out back. I'll go try to start it." And the front door creaked, but it stayed dark. There wasn't any light from outside to share, it seemed. Time seemed to stall and stop and start again.

Jenny said slowly, "Hey, guys? Do you see that?"

A light figure was slowly appearing on the wall near the stairs. It was slowly walking down the stairs. It paused, right next to Zane. It was the shadowy figure of a young boy, his body peeled like a banana, the skin on the front and back of him flopping as he stepped on the stairs. Everyone was silent, staring at the figure. Zane skittered forward, trying to prevent it from touching him. He looked almost like an old film, flickering, as his body turned.

Zane's attempt to move forward to get away from it meant he forgot to watch for Beth and somehow stepped on her knee, falling forward over her. She screamed; the pain was incredible. A full weight, grown man, crunching a tender joint.

The ghastly apparition let out a scream. The scream was loud and painful; it was so fucking loud, you couldn't hear a single person screaming in reply. That shit would blow out eardrums if it could. By the time it stopped, everyone had adrenaline charging through them in big waves. The lights turned back on and the boy--Oliver, the peeled little boy--vanished.

It was Mikaela who first noticed Ben was dead, her adrenaline racing. "Fuck, guys." His eyes were swollen shut again. He looked dead when they had found him, it seemed remarkable, to me, at least, that he had survived this long. Surely he had died from complications related to the brutal beating he took.

But Mikaela and the others attributed it to the ghost. Good for them. Making decisions! It was already 5:45.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Ricky and Rachel were missing. Perhaps they had both gone to work the generator?

When Ricky came back in the front door, the ladies were all sobbing softly. Ben was definitely dead.

Now, I'm just riffing for a moment here, but if you were the ghost, would you count Ben as one of your victims for the six o'clock deadline? Would you count Rafael? Or do those people not count because, you know, they weren't directly caused by you. I mean, maybe Ben was, but if he can't take a proper whooping, whose fault was that?!?

That's why I think there were two more corpses. That's my theory. Ben didn't count. If he can't handle the terror, fuck 'em.

"Everybody else okay?" Mike said. He sounded nervous. They started as thirteen and now they were eleven. And nobody knew how to fucking leave. They were scared to try again, after what happened to Ben. Leave and get beat to shit, end up back here, and then die.

Damn scary.

Jenny clung nervously to the tall man. "Where is Rachel?" The time was ticking. 5:50.

"Didn't she go with you?" Beezer asked nervously. "Ricky? Didn't she start the generator with you?"

He turned slowly towards the immobile man on the couch, and he said, "No, I went alone. Where did she go?"

Tiffany stood up and walked past the tiny hallway with the wooden stairs into the dining room kitchen area. Rachel wasn't in there. But there was blood everywhere. She screamed and ran back to the safe room. "There's blood," she whispered, her whole body trembling uncontrollably.

Mike and Ricky went together to the kitchen, and she was right; there was blood everywhere, pooled on the floor and Carson's head was sitting in the sink. Jenny stepped behind them and said without thinking, "That's how you make head cheese." She vomited suddenly in the blood.

"Oh God, Jenny, I'm so sorry," Ricky said.

She stopped hurling, stood, and screamed, "You told me to bring them!" She shook her arm at him, her body trembling with fury. "You told me to bring them! Where is Cletus?" She shuddered. "Why the fuck would you do this to him? He was just a baby."

Her tears were hard and fast, staring at the goat's head. "What did you do with the rest of him?"

Ricky was silent, staring at the blood. His head must have been cut off here, in the kitchen. "I didn't do this," he finally said.

"Rachel, then. Where is she? Why would she cut off his fucking head!" She let out another sob.

Mike said suddenly, "What the hell is head cheese?"

Jenny's sobs turned into hysterical laughter. It was like watching someone lose her mind. Between snot-soaked laughter, she said, "It's where you make cheese in a fucking head. You gotta scoop out the brains..."

Mike stared at her; the tears, snot, and laughter flowing free. "You okay?"

"Fucking bitch butchered my pet goat. I've been better," Jenny said, catching her breath and back to game mode. She was a farmer; she'd seen many a butchered animal. Hell, she'd even butchered quite a few herself. Once the shock wore off, she could get herself back under control.

I know what you are thinking.

Two corpses.

Were Rachel or Cletus dead?

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR