Krewe of Hunters 1 Phantom Evil (27 page)

The woman crooked a finger at Angela, asking her to come, to follow them.

For a moment, Angela just lay there, fighting a feeling of terror. But then she made herself get up and she walked to the specters who were beckoning to her. Susanne turned, holding little Annabelle's hand, and Percy reached out for Angela. “Where are we going?” she whispered to him.

“Up,”
he said.

They walked down the hallway together, and then up the stairs to the attic. Angela floundered for lights by the side of the wall, and the naked bulb sprang to life, casting light and shadow over the vast expanse of the room. “Why are we here?” Angela asked Susanne.

The ghost raised her arm, pointing, but Angela couldn't really see what she was trying to show her. Angela spun around. She saw a dressmaker's mannequin, a pile of old trunks, cases and boxes. She thought at first that none of it had been touched in ages—other than the fact that she could see that the dormer windows had been wired for the alarm system. With the one
bulb casting an eerie light over the piles of the past, she found the place unnerving.

“I just don't see,” she said softly.

She turned around again, assessing the area slowly. There seemed to be something sad and poignant about the dressmaker's dummy with the full soldier's uniform upon it; made and never touched. The giant wire-mesh crate that held children's toys from all ages seemed very sad as well. There were old wooden trains, dolls from a distant time, trains and tracks, an old stuffed rocking horse and more.

“I don't see,” she said again.

She felt the woman's presence behind her. The pretty young woman with the blond hair, the huge eyes, and jeans and T-shirt from the twenty-first century. She felt as if she touched her shoulders, turning her again.

Angela was certain that the ghost of Susanne Crimshaw and her young friends from another age were urging her toward the trunks against the wall. She walked over to them, curious, and still uneasy and unnerved, but certain that there was something she was supposed to discover.

She turned, wanting to know which of the trunks she should be going through, but the ghosts were gone. But she wasn't alone. She heard her name called. “Angela! Angela!” Whitney was shouting her name, and the pounding of footsteps on the stairs told her that Whitney wasn't coming up alone.

“I'm here, I'm here—I'm fine,” she said.

Whitney burst into view from the landing, and Will was right behind her.

“We saw you—we saw you walking down the hall, and up the stairs!” Will said.

“It's on film. You—you weren't alone,” Whitney said, her
honey-colored skin an odd, mottled shade of paste as she looked at Angela. “We—we were scared to death for you.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs again. It was Jenna, rushing up to meet them. “Is everyone all right? What's going on?”

“Angela walked here as if she was in a trance,” Whitney said.

“And we were watching the screens, so we could see Angela,” Will explained. “Wait until you see that film again,” Will said, staring at Angela.

“It was Susanne Crimshaw,” Angela said flatly. “She's here, and she's managed to make contact with the children. They're together, and they're trying to help us find something.”

“So they brought you here,” Jenna said. “They're gone, aren't they? I don't—I don't feel anything here.”

“They're very shy ghosts, I'm afraid,” Angela told her.

“Well, then, let's get started looking,” Will said. “Pick a corner, everyone.”

“It's huge—three wings of attic, just like three wings of house, and three wings of basement,” Jenna said. “This house is huge.”

“Yes, but the ghosts brought Angela here,” Will said. “I'll take a quick walk through the place.”

He headed toward the front.

Angela looked around. There were piles of lumber and pipe, there were ancient paint cans. All out in the open, and clearly, just what they appeared to be. She needed to be digging into the unseen—what might be hidden up here.

She started for a far corner filled with trunks, and started to open them. They seemed to be mostly filled with clothing and mothballs.

“Stuff from the 1920s,” Jenna said, closing one of the trunks she had opened.

“I think I'm back in the 1860s or '70s,” Angela said.

“Ditto,” Whitney called.

The third trunk that Angela opened was different. There was some kind of mechanism in it.

“What's that?” Whitney asked her.

“I'm not sure…I have to get it out.”

Will came back in. “That wing is like a big…like a shelter or something. Tons of bed frames.”

“Slave quarters, probably, back in the day,” Whitney said.

“Yeah, I guess,” Will said, coming over to Angela. “Hey, it's a projector.”

“A projector?” Angela murmured. “I wonder what it was projecting.”

Will shook his head. “Whatever it was, it was probably outstanding. I've used this kind in a magic show. You can project images into the air with it, the thing is amazing—and really expensive. Let's see what's on it—grab that roll there, in the tin can, on the bottom of the trunk.”

Angela grabbed the film canister and handed it to Will. He quickly searched for an outlet. “They can work on batteries, too, but…I think the ones in this thing are dead now. There—there's an outlet.”

He plugged in the projector and hit a button. “Turn off the big overhead bulb. Let the light in from the stairs and hallway.”

Jenna obliged him. And there, in the murky light, a horrible image appeared. It was the image of a little boy—with an ax in his skull and blood creeping down his face.

They heard a faint sound. A whisper. And it, too, was horrible.
“Mommy?”

“Damn!” Will exclaimed, and played with the machine, finding the volume control. The plaintive word became louder. The image moved, as if alive.
“Mommy?”

“Mommy, it hurts. It hurts so badly. Help me, Mommy,”
the image said, staring at them with wide blue eyes.

“Oh, my God!” Jenna said, and jumping up, she turned on the light. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! I can't stand it. That's horrible, so horrible.”

Even with the light on, they could faintly see the projected image.

“Turn it off, Will, turn it off, please,” Angela said. “We know what it is. We can show Jackson, and he can get it to the police. Now we know for a fact that someone was in here, that they were playing horrible tricks on Regina—a way to get her out on the balcony of her own room.”

Will turned off the projector. He was quiet a minute. “Was that the little boy you've been seeing, Angela?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“But you weren't seeing a projected image—you were seeing the real thing, right?” Will said.

“I wasn't seeing a projected image,” Angela said.

“So…do you think that whoever saw the image also saw the real ghost?” Will asked.

“Not necessarily,” Angela said. “There are all kinds of pictures at the museum—and pictures of the children can be found there. They're probably also available in old newspaper archives. No, I don't think that anyone had to have seen the ghosts of the children to pull this off.”

“Who the hell could have gotten into the house so easily, and managed this stuff?” Whitney asked.

“Well, David Holloway, for one,” Angela said.

 

Jackson's phone rang while he was watching the senator sip a second latte. It was Andy Devereaux.

“Well, we went in, and we have a couple of guys in for questioning,” Andy said.

“Did you find anything? Anything at all to suggest that a murder—or murders—were committed there?” Jackson kept his eyes on David Holloway as he spoke.

“Nothing. There are a couple of girls here, and we're trying to question them. And I have two members of the church council, but no Martin DuPre, and they're saying that they've never had anyone who matches that description as a member of the church. I can hold all of them for about twenty-four hours, but after that, I'm going to hope that I can at least find proof of statutory rape, and that may be all that I have.”

“Thanks.”

“Come in the morning. Maybe you have a unique way of asking questions,” Andy suggested. “Right now, I'm praying the girls quit crying, that I can find out a few real names, and get something out of the crew. The financial guys are going over the books. But I need more. And I'm going to have to bring your girl, Gabby Taylor, back to identify DuPre, if he's really the father of her child. Have you told any of this to David Holloway?”

“Yes, I'm looking at him right now,” Jackson said.

“All right. Get here in the morning. I've got officers on the case, but this might be something you can handle with more
intuitive questions. I haven't dealt with crazy cults before, though I have dealt with enough crazy teenage girls.”

“Do your best, Andy.”

Jackson hung up. Both Holloway and Jake were watching him.

“DuPre wasn't there. Do you have any idea where he might be, Senator?”

“I gave him the night off,” Holloway said.

“Call him.”

The senator did so. The phone just rang and rang.

Jackson wasn't surprised. “I doubt if he'll be reporting to work tomorrow, Senator.”

As they sat there, Jackson's phone rang. It was Will. “We've found something,” he said. “Are you still with the senator?”

“I am.”

“Can you leave him?”

“If you're telling me I need to do so.”

Will began to speak quickly, so quickly that he didn't understand the gist of what Will was saying at first. And then he did.

“You need to see this,” Will said. “The question is—should you bring the senator with you or not?”

 

Together, they watched the image projected. Jackson stared at the machinations, and thought about the fact that the answer had been in a trunk in the attic, and he grew cold. The cruelty behind the creation of the image was staggering; that the person with the mind to instigate such brutal torture was still walking around free was chilling.

He watched Senator David Holloway watching the images of the bloodied child, pleading for help, saying that “it hurt.”

He watched tears form in the senator's eyes, and then roll down his cheeks.

“Who would do this?” he whispered.

“Someone close to you,” Jackson said, his voice harsh. He had to watch the senator's reactions. “Someone close to you who has access to the house. I'm sure the plan was to allow the projection to lure your wife out to the balcony—and to her death. But I'm thinking that though she went to the balcony, she wasn't ready to jump. That's why she was thrown at the end, despite this display of smoke and mirrors, as Will would explain it. You have to know who did it, Senator. Because someone did it because they wanted to drag you down, or because they thought that they were doing you a favor. Frankly, I think it's the first—your people are all involved in groups that do their best to tear down your campaigns.”

The senator shook his head, stricken. “It's impossible. I knew nothing.”

He looked lost. Far older than his years.

“Would you like some water, Senator?” Whitney asked him.

The senator nodded. He had been seated in the grand ballroom, where they could best display the recorded image that was so state-of-the art, it appeared three-dimensional.

The figure began to repeat the pattern.
“Mommy!”

“Turn it off!” the senator begged. “Please! Turn it off.”

Will quickly hit the switch.

“Think about it, Senator. If you can think of anything that will help us, we need to know,” Jackson said. “If you have been involved in this in any way, we need to know.”

“How dare you?” Holloway huffed.

“Senator, your people are involved up to the gills. What part you might have known about is still in question.”

“I wouldn't have done that to Regina!”

“But, the question remains—were you being blackmailed for any reason? Did you want your wife gone—just not this way?”

“Bastard,” Holloway told Jackson.

“Well?”

“You were supposed to find ghosts!” Holloway raged.

“Were you involved?” Jackson demanded.

“I've told you! Dammit—I've told you. Yes, I knew about my people going into those wretched communities—joining the Aryans and the Church of Christ Arisen. Well, I knew about DuPre and Conroy. If they took that to mean they should go crazy—it wasn't me. And I didn't kill my wife.”

“It's all still looking so gray, Senator. Not at all good,” Jackson said.

Holloway didn't seem to have anything else to say. He stared at Jackson a long time and spoke at last. “You are a bastard, Crow. An absolute bastard.”

“Did you have my team come in just to say that yes, there were ghosts, Senator? To distract from your little Aryans involvement?” Jackson asked. “Did you think you were getting a team of paranormal experts who would
want
ghosts to exist, and play it out like a pack of innocent lackeys, swearing that there were ghosts?”

“You're an ass, and I'm innocent,” Holloway said. “I did want you to prove there were ghosts. There are ghosts in that house—and ghosts caused my wife to die. Quit accusing me. Maybe I did want to prove it because I didn't want to live with the guilt of having caused her to commit suicide—but she didn't, and I didn't kill her. And if you'd let well enough
alone, DuPre and Conroy would have gotten what we needed, and I could have shut them all down.”

“It was all for the good of man, right?”

“I'm innocent of Regina's death.”

“Yes, but you either killed other innocents—or brought about their deaths with you machinations, Senator.”