The Traveler: Book 5, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (13 page)

“It’s all over the news. And…”

“And what?” Eddie asked.

Engel looked away. “I never planned on telling anybody, I thought I was going crazy to be honest. But I’ve been visited.”

Eddie put the K2 meter away. “Have you?”

“Yeah. It just started happening in the last month or so.”

“Did you tell anybody?” Eddie asked.

“No…it’s not the kind of thing you tell people. I figured everybody would think…you know.”

Eddie said nothing.

Engel filled the silence. “My God, I swore I was going crazy but then I read the news this morning and they’re basically saying ghosts killed two people. Is that right? Is that really happening?”

Eddie looked to Christie.

She said, “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“It sounded exactly like what happened to me.”

“Was the ghost a man or a woman?” Eddie said.

Engel didn’t blink, didn’t hesitate. “A man. He had a beard and big shoulders.”

***

Back in the car, Christie drummed the steering wheel. They sat in the parking lot for a minute, both absorbed in their thoughts.

Finally Christie turned to him. “That changes things.”

“Yeah.”

Eddie had questioned Engel for another twenty minutes about his alleged visitor. The man had described a classic haunting. Eddie had come at him from several different angles, but Engel’s account of the haunting did not change significantly enough to warrant suspicion.

Christie said, “So that gives us another place to check out.”

Eddie groaned. “This case gets bigger every minute.”

Christie said, “By the way, did the K2 meter actually go off?”

“Yeah. It was a weak hit.”

“What does that mean? Ghost or no ghost?”

“Let’s put it like this.” Eddie twisted his head from side-to-side to work out the kinks. “It’s a little more than nothing, but not a whole lot more.”

“And I thought there were too many what-ifs in my line of work. Your job is moving from one grey area to the next, isn’t it?”

“Most of the time. But that makes the real finds all the sweeter.”

Christie got a call and put the phone up to her ear. “Hey, Harney.”

She listened. Eddie couldn’t hear what her partner was saying. Christie said yes a few times then closed with, “I’ll call you back.”

She put the phone in her pocket.

“This case is developing quickly.”

“What’s up?” he asked.

“My partner already found Sandy.”

“That’s good.”

“That’s not all.”

He waited.

“Somebody else came forward about a ghost.”

“The ghost came today?”

She shook her head. “Two nights ago.”

“So after Stahl but before Fellov.”

“Right. And they’re fine.”

“
They
?”

Daria Snow couldn’t wait until dark to venture back to Stahl’s house.

So she didn’t.

The March weather was unpredictable and constantly shifting, so she wisely bundled up, grabbed her gear, and stopped at C’s desk to give him a kiss before she left. They had met each other late in life, both of them divorced once already, and at last they felt like they had found true love in each other. C was almost sixty and she wasn’t that far behind, but they found themselves often giggling like high schoolers and holding hands when they went out.

C stopped what he was doing when she came in and folded his glasses and hung them from the neck of his t-shirt. She knew all his signs well. He wanted to give her advice.

“Did you tell them?” C asked.

Daria said, “I’m going to.”

“Just think about it,” he said.

“I have thought about it.”

He smiled and pinched her arm. That was the closest they ever came to a disagreement. “Christie seems like a good cop, but remember, they protect their own. Even the good ones. That’s what they always do.”

“I know.” She smiled back at him. C’s politics were even further to the left than her own. He’d had a bad experience with the police in his college days when he’d protested something or other. It was a non-violent demonstration and the students had remained seated to ensure they were non-threatening. Still, the cops had maced them. C had been blasted in the face and couldn’t open one eye for almost two days.

“Taking care of their own means coming after, or discrediting, the threat. They might turn on you if you accuse one of them,” C said.

He was pressing her, more than usual. She said, “I saw what I saw.”

He held out his palms. “I believe you.”

She suddenly didn’t believe him. She’d tried warning the neighbor last year about her son falling in with a bad crowd, because she’d seen it in her visions. Her neighbor hadn’t appreciated the personal intrusion and Daria had lost a friend because of it. As far as she could tell, her vision hadn’t come true. She was happy it hadn’t and also suspected it hadn’t come true
because
she’d warned her neighbor.

Still, C had advised against going to the neighbor in the first place and had later reminded her, in that gentle way of his, of his opinion after her attempted warning had blown up in her face.

“You don’t trust my vision. That is what this is about,” she said. It wasn’t the first time he’d slyly recommended she not share the details of her visions with someone. As a matter of fact, this was becoming more and more a pattern.

C shook his head no. “Daria, I’m just worried about you. I don’t trust the police and I never will.”

“They’re not all bad.”

“What happened when you tried to help them with Tiffany Schubert?”

Daria left without another word. She sat in her car for a few minutes before even turning the engine on. She still hadn’t sent Eddie the email with the name of the cop she suspected might be working with the ghost.

She decided to think about it some more.

Daria stuck to the speed limit. She was a careful driver because she’d read all of the studies about how quickly the accident rates climbed for every mile per hour over the speed limit people went. She reached Stahl’s house in twenty minutes.

By then the sky had clouded up again and the air had turned damp. She was grateful for the extra layers of clothes she’d brought. Eddie had promised her a police backup while she went dark, but they weren’t getting here until 6:00PM. That gave her almost three hours to burn before she could get inside the house.

Daria got her gear together and walked the perimeter of the house. It was a nice neighborhood, the houses were newer and spread out. Though she wouldn’t have traded her place for anything. Even if she fell into money, she’d stay where she was. All that extra money could go to charity.

She didn’t notice anything different about the house. All the doors still ha
d
POLICE LIN
E
tape across them and the windows were shut. All the blinds were closed. Stahl’s car was parked in the driveway, practically nosing the garage door.

Two nights ago, she’d set up along the side of the house because she had sensed this energy about the area. This afternoon, the same spot felt cold to her.

Daria took her time. She had plenty of it. Step-by-step, slowly she traced a path to the backyard. One spot felt like it could be something. She stopped and waited. The feeling passed. She went on to the next spot and that energy bubbled inside her. This was something.

She smoothed the blanket she’d brought on the grass and laid out her carry-pillow on one side of it. Daria had enough space on the digital recorder to run it the entire evening, so she turned it on now and started how she always did, stating who she was, where she was, and what time and date it was.

She bundled herself up a little tighter and laid down. The back of her head hit the pillow and she looked up at the grey sky through the trees that were just beginning to bud again. She knew the clouds could hide messages if you read them carefully enough, but this afternoon she couldn’t discern anything in their patterns.

Resting her bag on her chest, she fished out the ghost box. She was looking forward to reestablishing a connection with the four entities from two nights ago. She loved communicating with people that had crossed over to the next plane. They possessed so much wisdom, she felt she always learned something from them.

Daria turned on the ghost box.

“Hey, everybody. It’s me again, Daria Snow. Are you there?”

In that robotic voice, the ghost box said, “
Happy.”

“I’m so glad to hear you’re happy. I was hoping you’d like to talk again. I enjoyed our conversation the other night.”

“Sad.”

“Is one of you sad?”

“I have been here a long time.”

She sighed. It was good she’d allotted herself an extra three hours. Ghosts never communicated in straight lines. They were always roundabout, very stream-of-consciousness. She prided herself on being patient.

“How long have you been here?”

“Six months.”

“That is a long time. Does that make you sad?”

“I miss my wife.”

“Who was your wife? Did she live here?”

“I enjoy reading.”

Daria smiled. This ghost was going to require all her patience.

“Who are you talking to?”

The sound of a live, human voice terrified her.

Daria sprang up from the blanket and tossed the ghost box off her chest. It landed in the dirt and its lights continued to blink.

She tried to stand but one foot got tangled in the strap of her bag and she fell back down. Her butt hit the ground and her glasses fell off her right ear.

Completely flustered, she managed to get to her feet and spotted a boy on the edge of Stahl’s property. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, of course, and his sneakers weren’t laced, of course, and he was actually wearing shorts! Even though it was barely fifty degrees out.

“Who were you talking to?” the boy asked.

Daria almost told him the truth, but realized that might scare him and scared he might run home to his mother who would come back and ask her to leave. Then she’d have to say she was working with the police and she wasn’t sure the police wanted her saying that. Things could get out of hand really quickly, so Daria needed to say just the right thing.

“Just myself.”

“That’s a ghost box,” the boy said. “Are you talking to them?”

She smiled. An enormous wave of relief washed over her. The boy knew about ghost hunting! That made him an ally, maybe even a friend. But she had to be careful. She knew what she said often got her into trouble and she was trying to get better at communicating.

“Yes.”

“Were you trying to talk to Mr. Bathroom?” the boy asked.

“Mr. Bathroom?”

“You know.” The boy looked down. “Mr. Stahl, who used to live here.”

How to answer that question? Before her laid an invisible minefield. She knew she had to be careful but also couldn’t think of any convincing lie to tell the boy.

“Why do you call him Mr. Bathroom?”

“I didn’t make it up! I swear. He said it one time to be funny.”

“Said what?” She was having trouble following the boy.

“Uh, you know…
bathroom
stall
? Get it?”

Daria didn’t get it. Not right away. “Oh, yeah, that’s funny. Were you friends?”

The boy nodded. She had no idea how old he was. She’d never had children and her childhood had been such a long time ago, back when things were really different, before computers and the internet, so kids were a complete mystery to her and little boys were a different species.

“Mr. Stahl used to throw me the football. He was good at basketball too, way better than dad.”

“Oh.” She realized she needed to say something about Stahl’s death. But how did you talk to a boy who was anywhere from six to eleven years old about a thing like that?

The boy stepped forward, a little bit. He wasn’t sure about her.

“I’m so sorry about your friend,” she said. “He seemed like a nice man.”

“Mom didn’t like him.”

Daria realized the boy had information about Stahl and that it might help the police. She didn’t want to interrogate him, he was too young for a thing like that. But if he knew something…

“Your mother didn’t like him?”

The boy shook his head no. “He brought too many women around.”

Daria laughed out loud. The boy looked confused. He didn’t understand why that might be funny.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh,” she said.

The boy still looked confused. “Mom liked the one woman, but dad said she was crazy.”

“Crazy? What do you mean?”

“I think they broke up but she kept coming.”

Daria knew she was onto something. Maybe the woman had died and her jealousy had extended into the afterlife, along with her soul? Maybe she’d come back to haunt Stahl for leaving her? That series of events was plausible.

“When did she stop coming?”

“Awhile ago,” the boy shrugged. He was losing interest. “Do you want to throw the football?”

“I don’t really know how.”

The boy looked like he was about to go. She didn’t want him to. She suspected there was more he could tell her.

“How do you know about ghost boxes?”

“I saw it on Chasing Ghosts, last season…” He thought. “…the second episode.”

“You have a good memory.”

“Thanks. Are you going to be here all day?”

“Probably,” she said. “Maybe you’d like to show me how to throw the football?”

He shrugged. “Can you play basketball?”

“I was never very good at that either.”

The boy looked over his shoulder, like he was checking for something.

Daria said, “Is something the matter?”

He turned back to her. “Can I ask you something without you telling anybody?”

“Of course. We’re friends.”

“I don’t even know your name, how can we be friends?”

“I’m Daria Snow and I live in this town too.”

“Oh. Okay. You promise not to tell anybody?”

She had stepped closer to him, without realizing. He shrank back, closer to the property line. She could just make out what was presumably his house, through the trees alongside Stahl’s property.

She said, “I cross my heart and hope to die.”

“You shouldn’t say that.”

“I’m sorry.”

The boy frowned. “Your subconscious takes everything you say literally, so right now it thinks you hope to die.”

“You’re right, I should have thought of that.”

“Just remember for next time. Okay?”

What did he have to tell her? As patient as she was, she wanted to scream. “I cross my heart I will.”

“Good, that’s better.”

She waited.

The boy looked like he’d forgotten he was going to tell her something.

She waited, afraid she would break the spell.

Finally he spoke. “Is the man coming back?”

How was she going to answer this? “I’m sorry, Mr. Stahl isn’t coming back. He has moved on to the next plane, though maybe we can talk to him from time-to-time.”

The boy frowned. “I’m not talking about Mr. Stahl. I know he’s dead and probably in heaven because God forgives everybody, no matter what. Except for Adolf Hitler.”

“Oh. Okay.” Daria was glad she’d kept the digital recorder running. It had captured this entire conversation. “What man?”

“He was doing what you were doing the other night.”

“There was a man here, ghost hunting?”

“Not ghost hunting. I meant, just walking around out here.”