Gridlocked Guesthouse (Locked House Hauntings Book 1) (6 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

You might be thinking, but John, surely someone noticed John was missing! At least, didn't Tiffany notice?

But Rachel stood up and said finally, "Who brought a phone? We have to get Beezer to a hospital."

Everyone slowly shook their heads; they were under strict orders not to bring phones and ruin the whole party with texting and dirty pictures. Everyone except Mikaela. She had a son at home and hell if she was going to be unreachable. She raised her hand slowly, and with her left hand, she slid it slowly up her skirt and removed the phone from her garter.

It would have been a really sexy gesture if everyone was a little more settled down. Rachel frowned and wrestled the phone from Mikaela, who seemed pretty startled. The screen was locked. Rachel gave Mikaela a furious scowl and handed it back. "Call 911."

Mikaela unlocked the phone and dialed, but before she could talk to it, Rachel yanked it away. I thought that Rachel should learn to settle down a little or Mikaela might just slap her pretty little face. Mikaela didn't slap her, though, much to everyone's disappointment.

The phone didn't connect. She lifted it into the air and tried to check the signal.

No luck, if you ask me, ghosts tend to toy with the reception.

So they decided to drive to the hospital, a reasonable choice, considering the circumstances. They all walked out to the cars, Mike's big van blocking in the three other vehicles--Rachel's, Ricky's, and Jenny's.

And well, what they found was they couldn't get his van out. The van was blocking in all their other cars, and it couldn't be moved.

"How the hell did you park this thing?" Ricky said, staring at the van. The concrete planters were touching both bumpers.

"I..." Mike paused and stared at the planters. "They couldn't have been there--I had enough room to pull forward and back about a foot. I..." He stared at it. "Did someone move them?"

They stared at the planters and, sure enough, there was an obvious circle in the dirt where they previously sat. No drag marks or anything; it was as if they had levitated and landed closer to the car.

Perhaps the ghosts were just getting started.

"How did this happen?" Rachel stared at the planter.

"Let's lift them," Mike said calmly. And all the men gathered around the concrete planter. Now might be a great time to describe these things. They were cylinders, made out of concrete with a gravel outside. The rocks on the outside pressed into the concrete were sharp. They were maybe two and a half feet in width and about three feet tall. And, as the men were about to find out, super fucking heavy.

It was hard to fit very many of them around it, but they lifted together. Mike, Ricky, Zane. Collectively, the men should have been able to lift, say, a thousand pounds or so. They couldn't even get this planter off the ground. It was an awkward shape, and the men were bumping into each other. Zane lost his grip a little and the sharp rocks dug into his arm, leaving a string of bloody red scratches.

Rachel stood watching, fear crawling across her. How could they leave? Ben came out of the building, finally awake again.

Jenny stood with her two goats, on leash. "How far is it to the next property? Or town? How far will we have to walk?"

"I don't know. At least a few miles. Maybe longer. It's forty-five minutes to the next town. I don't know about other properties. I wasn't paying attention. Maybe five miles?"

Jenny thought about this; five miles was a long way. If there was a house, if there was a working phone. If. Otherwise, another five, or ten, or twenty.

The men had already given up on lifting the concrete planter. Mike stared at it and said, "What if we just tipped it over? Then we could roll it."

They pushed it from one side in this manner, Ben pushing Mike, who had his hands at the top of the planter. Zane pushing Ricky, who had his hands on top of the planter. It didn't even rock.

"Maybe you could knock it over with your van?" College students are idiots. And Mike hopped in his van. If he had ever driven a tractor or used his damn brain, he would have thought to himself
, gee, I should slowly accelerate and push gently against the damn thing until it knocks over.

Or even, try to knock over the planter at the back of the vehicle, not the one near the engine.

But he didn't think this through and instead mashed his foot on the gas and the concrete planter remained standing, and Mike was punched in the face with an ancient airbag. His van was totaled. Utterly destroyed. The engine literally crushed around the planter. Everyone cringed.

Smoke poured out the front of the van. Tiffany suddenly shouted, "Where is John?" Aren't you glad she still cared! And she and Jenny went back inside to check on Beezer and find John.

Ricky helped Mike out of the van. The whole front hood was crumpled into a U shape.

Ben turned to Mikaela. "Look, give me your phone. I'm gonna start walking. If I can get a signal, I'm gonna call."

"I'll come," she said, not wanting to relinquish her phone.

"You're in heels. I'm fast; I'll get help soon," he said.

She hesitantly showed him how to unlock the screen and he grabbed it and started off on foot immediately, while the van was still smoking and while Mike was still stunned. They were fucking blocked in now. No way they could get out.

Ben was long gone by the time Ricky started talking. "Fuck, I just I can't believe your van." Mike's van blocked the other cars and his van was going to be utterly unmovable now. "One of us should start walking, I think. We're bound to find someone home soon. Mikaela, do you mind if I take your phone with me? I'm gonna gather a backpack with some water and snacks and stuff. Who knows how long I will be walking."

Mikaela turned pink recognizing what he was saying. Ben hadn't even taken water.

"Ben just took it, he left, he's gonna get help." She cringed. What if he was already thirsty? How long
was
he going to be walking?

The night air was frosty and cold. Mikaela shivered in her trench coat, which she had slipped on before stepping outside. Did Ben have a coat?

College students are impulsive and stupid. And Ben was no exception, so I will answer her question for you. No, he had no coat. He was still pretty drunk, and he was walking with no water and Mikaela's phone, and he was walking down the road the wrong way. Not towards town or other houses, but the other way, where homes were even more spread out. If you ask me, he wasn't going to make it very far.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

So this brings us back inside to Tiffany and Jenny, who were looking for John, and you are probably hoping I'll finally tell you what Tiffany's deal is. Why is she such a baby-hating bastard?

But also, isn't it interesting that she noticed he was missing? Did she still have feelings for him? Why, then, did she refuse to marry him? Anyways, I love making you wait to hear about Tiffany, so I'm gonna talk to you about Jenny.

You probably remember that she had two goats. She lived on a farm and she was the only one with any real life experiences dealing with stuff. She wouldn't have a slammed on the gas and totaled that van. She could drive a tractor and had executed a cow and a duck, both for various injuries. Then she butchered them both and served them up for dinner. She was a tough cookie. A girl like that was something else. Her goats were Cletus and Carson, twin males. She had a crazy fondness for her fainting goats, and made a pretty penny selling the babies each year. Cletus and Carson were this year's crop. She was going to college, but it was pretty clear that she'd be taking over the family farm once she was done in college. Two hundred acres of freedom- that was what her daddy called it. It didn't bother her that she was here, and Beezer's broken leg wasn't something to freak out about, in her mind. One time while her dad was driving, he hit a pothole and a coffee mug fell off the dashboard and shattered.

Jenny was seven. And her dad, impaled by the handle of a coffee mug, just kept driving. He said they would deal with it after he fed the goats. He left it in his leg too, gushing blood. He said you couldn't pull it out or he might bleed to death. And about five hours later, when they finally moseyed down to the ER, the doc pulled it out and stitched him up. That man bitched about how much it cost, and how he wasn't gonna get the anesthesia next time.

Too much money. That was what he thought. Seven-year-old Jenny certainly thought the world of that man. So no, Beezer's busted leg wasn't something to freak out about. And neither was Rafael's death. Well, I think on a human level, she was sad she'd just met a fellow and he died. But on like a normal farm level, what could you do about it? He was dead. They didn't need an ambulance for a dead guy. Just cover him up and they had plenty of time to come up with a plan. Jenny considered neither of these events an emergency. Emergencies were much bigger than a dead guy and a broken leg, or a totally destroyed van or being blocked into a haunted house with no easy escape.

Those weren't even on her radar as far as what an emergency was.

To her, an emergency was when you got your arm cut off by a fucking moron running the tractor. Now that's an emergency. Clock is a-ticking. If that limb has even a hair's chance of being sewn back on, then they gotta move. Here, there was no clock a-ticking--all of these things would be patient, easy problems.

She was probably the only one in the house who hadn't gotten fully freaked out at this point.
But don't worry, that would change soon.
They found the master bedroom locked. They could hear John mumbling inside, but the doorknob was a painful, bitter cold to the touch. Cold enough that Tiffany let out a shout when she touched it. Jenny tried it next, and concern ran across her.

She pounded on the door. "John?" His voice seemed muffled, not just from the door, but as if he was standing through a much thicker door. "John? Unlock the door. What are you doing in there?"

She pressed her ear to the door, trying to make out his muffled words. Her ear firmly pressed to the very cool door and she heard his muffled voice slowly shout, "Help me." It was like he was shouting into a pillow.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose. "Do you think Rachel has the key?" she said, turning to Tiffany. The other woman was trembling head to toe with fright, suddenly rapping at the door herself, shouting, "John! John!" Her voice squeaked in tight, nervous tears.

Jenny ran down the stairs, past Beezer, who was dozing on the couch, leg carefully propped up, and out the front door. Ricky had just asked Mikaela to give him her phone. "Guys, John is stuck upstairs." Jenny waved her arms. "Come on!"

Zane, Ricky, and Mike came hurrying up the stairs and they examined the suspiciously cold door. They couldn't hear John say anything else. The room had gone silent.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

You might be thinking, okay, sure, so the men try to move the car, and the women just stand around fretting the whole time?

But you, my brilliant friend, may have also realized someone has been missing for a while. And not John. I mean Beth. While Rachel, Tiffany, Jenny, and Mikaela were outside, Beth stayed in to take care of Beezer. Lucy was still an incoherent mess. She was buried in a chair, her face covered, somewhere between sleeping and sobbing.

Beezer, of course, promptly fell asleep. He was dozing and moaning on the couch, quietly. And Beth got it in her head that maybe she should start breakfast, or maybe she should be working on something else. It was getting awfully close to four in the morning, and everyone should really be sleeping soon, or perhaps eating. People go crazy when it's late and they are hungry.

She stood in the kitchen and finally got brave enough to look around. There was a very obvious plan for food in the fridge, each shelf carefully coordinated with a meal. Beth hesitated. She could just imagine Rachel's pissed off face if she messed up her food plans. She chugged the last bit of punch sitting in the bowl and then washed the bowl and ladle carefully. Beth wished she could just make some food for everyone, but she didn't want to annoy Rachel.

She peered outside in time to see Mike's van smoking and the airbag popped out. Then she had an idea.

Maybe there was something useful in the basement. An old phone connected to a landline or, I dunno, something. Maybe she just got curious why the basement was off-limits.
Maybe she just really wanted to be the next person to die.
Who knows?

Beth, if you remember, was awful nervous in the kitchen with the crockpot. It was no surprise that she found herself avoiding the other people and standing all alone. She struggled in social situations. I like to think that was why she came to this party; she really wanted to push herself to be better, to grow and change and become a better thing. But now that she was here, she was having her normal troubles--except that she'd sat on Zane's lap and couldn't stop thinking about him. He'd be her first official party make out.

In fact, she was, if she ever whispered it aloud, a virgin. Not that she was a total prude; she just was young and really crappy at social stuff. So that was why she hadn't banged a man yet. But if one took notice of her, she was gonna be ripe for the picking, so to speak. She was twenty, and I think she felt too old to still have her precious lady flower all to herself. I certainly feel too old to have mine to myself.