Gridlocked Guesthouse (Locked House Hauntings Book 1) (3 page)

And with that, they began, lighting candles (in unison--they really brought this upon themselves) and all closed their eyes and held hands.

Rachel let out a very long and drawn out orgasmic yell, and Beezer and at least Ben and perhaps even Mike seemed to smirk at it. I don't think she meant it to sound so sexual, but there it was; she moaned in a very sexual way. Beth, still sitting on Zane, seemed absolutely beside herself with embarrassment but kept her eyes shut tight.

There was a loud, horrendous thudding noise and all ten sets of eyes popped open in shock. Believe me, it was quite a startling noise. The goat on the right end of the table, near Ricky, had stiffened suddenly, perhaps frightened by the particularly long and sharp moan from Rachel, and it had tipped over. The noise of its body smacking into the table was what startled everyone.

It even startled the other goat, which also promptly tensed up and fell over. Beezer let out what could have been a funny laugh, but then a breeze shot into the room and all the candles were out in a quick wink. The room was pitch black. Nobody could see anything. Beth was suddenly grateful for the warm body of Zane underneath her. She seemed so frightened, it was natural to relax into such a firm body. A few moments later into the dark, Rachel cried, "Jamisons, are you here?" The squeal of a chair responded, or at least that was what I thought it was. Surely Mike or one of the other men had shifted in their seat and the wood let out a little scream from underneath their weight.

Ricky shouted into the dark, "If any of the Jamisons could shed light on what happened in this house, we are ready and willing to listen. Speak the truth and we will tell your story. We will bear witness to the crimes committed here."

A match sparked and, for a moment, it was easy to see Ben's face. His hand wrapped around the match, keeping it safe from a breeze while he re-lit his candle.

Soon, thirteen candles were lit, as the flame was passed silently around the room. They listened for ghosts, wild uncertain eyes scanning the room. By the time the last flame was lit, all of the faces in the room were visible. The only face still lingering slightly in the shadows was Rafael. He was still underneath a bright-eyed Lucy, and his face was in the shadows.

"Give us a sign if you are listening," Rachel said.

Immediately, there was a loud thumping on the ground.

CHAPTER SIX

Immediately, there was a loud thumping on the ground, from beneath the table. Even I knew it was Beezer thumping his big fat boot on the ground. Rachael let out a hiss. "Knock it off, asshole."

And the room grew into a cold, bright silence.
Rachel tried again. "Give us a sign if you are listening."

This time, Beezer stayed quiet like he was supposed to and the goats suddenly both bleated at the same time. It was enough to make everyone jump, and Beth let out a nervous giggle.

Ricky boomed in his pleased voice, "Are you using the goats to communicate with us?"

There was another loud bleat from the two young goats.

Then for a second time, a large rush of wind blew all the candles out. After a few moments, Ben lit another match. His face glowed in the light for a moment, and slowly, he passed the flame from one candle to the next until, again, thirteen candles were lit.

Twelve pretty faces glowed in the firelight, but Lucy let out a scream as she turned to her beloved. Rafael was dead.

"Dammit! I wanted to go first." Beezer let out a whiny pout as they turned the lights on.

"Come now, we have to see what the ghost was trying to tell us," Rachel said, trying to guide the group so they would start looking for clues.

"How did you make the goats bleat on command like that?" Tiffany whispered to Jenny.

Jenny smiled wryly, like she was hiding a secret. But if she was being honest, she would have said that she had no idea; the goats weren't trained to bleat and who the hell knows why that happened. That was what she would have said.
I would have said I knew what happened.
But nobody listens to me.

Anyways, Beezer was mad that he wasn't first, but he couldn't act to save a life, and Rafael was a beautiful corpse. He had sedated himself. That was how committed he was to the role; he drugged his own damn punch. And Lucy, who still had no idea what was happening, kept screaming hysterically looking at his soft pale face.

"You've really killed him!" Her squeaky voice was cracking and sobs quickly followed.

"Not us, one of the Jamisons. You have to decide which ghosts killed him, Amelia, Richard, the twins, or the boy. You have thirty minutes to find some clues or someone else will die."

She turned over a large sand timer and the sand starting pouring from one end to the other. Rachel certainly had a flair for the dramatic.

The twelve remaining guests began to scramble, though let's be honest since Ricky and Rachel were the hosts, they did not in fact put in effort in to the scramble, simply watching the other ones scramble. Lucy stood, horrified, and unable to move. She still stared at the slack face of her beloved.

Beezer was staring at the goats with Jenny, who didn't seem in any particular rush to find any clues. Beth timidly was watching the scene, looking at the chairs and the table. The table was long and wooden. On it sat thirteen half melted candles. The goats stood at one end while Jenny cooed over them.

John and Ben stood back from the scene, both quietly observing. Tiffany lifted candles, and checked the few cups still on the table after the toast.

Zane was quietly, but very obviously watching Beth. He hadn't been feeling smitten with her before she sat on his lap for the last hour, but now she was certainly on his radar.

Mikaela crawled under the table, clearly convinced there would be a clue. Her bottom was sparkling in the air as she crawled. Gorgeous sequins. But Mike was the one who finally found it. Being the tallest of the group--closer to seven feet than six feet--he calmly reached over to the chandelier and pulled down a scrap of paper.

"Anybody wanna guess what this says before we find out which ghost killed poor Rafael?" he said calmly.

"Hang on a minute," Mikaela said, climbing out from under the table and holding another scrap of paper.

Beth reached out and plucked a scrap from Rafael's pocket. "And this?"

Rachel had a strong frown of disappointment. Clearly she was expecting it to take a lot longer to find the scraps she had worked so hard to hide. The sand timer hadn't even run a third of its sand yet.

Ricky clapped his hand on her back and whispered into her ear, "Don't worry; the next one will take hours." She gave him a halfhearted grin.

It was true, the next one would take hours. In fact that was where the fun would start to begin.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I just realized that despite all the words I have been writing about the events on that weekend, I haven't introduced myself. I'm a Scorpio. And I don't actually know what everyone is thinking. If I say, "Beth thought to herself that it seemed like a great idea to spend the weekend in a house full of ghosts and murder," then I don't know what I am talking about.

I'm just trying to breathe some depth into this story for you. I don't want to tell you what happened in such a cold, calculated way like the newspapers. I hate those things. They say in a big, cold, breathless title, "Guesthouse carnage continued after murder mystery weekend goes terribly wrong." So if I get some of the details of what each person felt wrong, please spare me the nasty reviews. I already know I'm not omniscient. I'm just...

Curious.

And this is certainly the kind of story you should be wondering about. The next bit is my favorite, right before things got scary, but right after the party started.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was around one thirty or two in the morning. It was late, like real fucking late. I'm sorry I cursed. I don't like to be up that late; it's terribly unladylike. Darkness breeds horror the same way flies breed maggots onto a perfectly good corpse.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Lucy was still fretting that Rafael hadn't woken up yet. He was still slumped in his chair. That was a man dedicated to his role. She slowly pressed her lips to his, feeling the soft warmth of his mouth, and he just limply lay in the chair.

"Are you okay?" she whispered. And he couldn't reply. He was off his rocker. The lights were off at the farmhouse, so to speak. "Guys, do you think he's okay?" She looked up and said this in a half-frightened whisper to the room, but nobody was with her anymore. Everyone had moved to the safe room and were holding up the three scraps of paper.

Beth stared at the paper in her hand. It was a really freakishly odd clue. Rachel should have spent some more time on the first few clues. She had gotten better at the process later, the further the story she built went, but the problem was by the time the final clues should have been revealed, nobody was still playing. So my apologies in advance that these three scraps of paper are so embarrassingly bad.

I think part of the plan was to end up with thirteen extremely paranoid, sleep deprived people. For Rachel fully intended everyone to stay up late--even at this already late hour--and play the game. But since they were all still young, it could be they didn't mind the idea of staying up.

Beth's scrap of paper was just the color blue. I don't mean that it was the word blue--it was, in fact, just a paint chip from a hardware store, carefully chosen, and cut into the shape of a heart.

Mike's clue was also a paint chip; his was cut into an octagon. The color couldn't quite be described as white; it was more like the milky color of melted vanilla bean ice cream. If she had left the tags on the paint chip, this color would have been named "Old Fashioned Mayonnaise," which is a lofty way of saying a shade of white.

I prefer the ice cream.

Mikaela's note from under the table was scrawled in ink on a piece of thin leathery fabric. The edges had been singed like a proper pirate note. It was worn, rubbed on something over and over until half the letters were missing and the note said,

"The twins took their first victim.

If you're quicker the rest will live.

You have until six to find the next clues

or two more of you will be slaughtered."

Now, I've filled in the missing letters so it's easier to read, but if you'd prefer, I can leave them out next time and you can struggle to read it just like the ten of them did. Beezer immediately jumped in with, "Seriously, Rachel, you didn't even rhyme it?"

And a moment of literary mockery happened. Mikaela said, "You could have put: Double the trouble, one dead, go faster or we'll have your head."

Zane immediately burst into perfect twin laughter. "Oh yeah, or maybe we could say, 'In six hours, you'll die, unless you can fly- through these clues like a motherfucking winner.'"

Tiffany smirked, even though she tried hard not to. Rachel had worked so hard on this, and all it took was the mockery of a group of college students to really elevate any tactical errors.

"Rafael is the ghost's victim so far

Good luck getting out with your car

The murders have started

Beezer just farted

Grab fucking clues and let's jar."
Ben burst out with his unexpected (and mediocre if you ask me) limerick and everyone burst out laughing.

Ricky, seeing Rachel getting progressively more and more upset, put an end to the riffing and shouted, "Alright! Go figured out the damn clue, you only have till six, or two of you get the ax."

Lucy hesitantly wandered into the safe room. "Guys, are we sure Rafael is okay? He's so pale... Does anyone know what he took?"

Rachel shrugged. Ricky shook his head. Nobody else knew anything. "Hey, I'll keep an eye on him and you can hunt for clues with Beth," Rachel offered, determined to keep this night on track.

There was giggling and dispersing as the booze flowed more freely. This time, as they slowly searched out the house, it was obvious there was going to be a lot more to discover. There were, in fact, as they searched, padlocks of all sorts. There were lots of things to unlock, and a key that was hidden in plain sight--it was in a clear puzzle-box. Still. Nobody had any ideas what to do with the paint chips.

Beth and Zane sat together in the safe room working on the puzzle box, gently rotating it around in their hands. There wasn't a single obvious way to open it. Zane stared at her pretty hands and the concentration in her eyes as she gently ran her fingers on the box, pressing softly at it as if there would be a hidden button. He also, as she was distracted, took a moment to stare at her ample bosom.

Her eyes flickered up to his for a moment, while he was staring through the box into her deep cleavage line. She blushed and looked back down. I don't know if she thought he was looking at the box, or if she knew secretly in her heart that he was starting to lust for her. But either way, they were having a pleasant time in the safe room.