The Unearthed: Book One, The Eddie McCloskey Series
Read The Unearthed: Book One, The Eddie McCloskey Series Online
Authors: Evan Ronan
Three years ago, a father, mother, and son murdered each other at home—a bloody tragedy that would later be known as the Moriarty Massacre. Only the youngest son, Eamon, survived that horrific night.
Now the Rossellis, the family currently living in the home, are experiencing strange phenomena. The phone rings randomly, a bloodlike stain continually reappears in the dining room, and their son, Billy, is talking to someone. Someone nobody can see and only Billy can hear.
The Rossellis hire Tim and Eddie McCloskey, local ghost hunters, to investigate. As the case quickly develops, their investigation takes dark turns as they race against time to find a missing boy. And as Tim and Eddie discover some terrifying similarities between the Moriartys and the Rossellis, they realize another massacre might be around the corner, and only they can stop it.
The Unearthed
is approximately 65,000 words and is specifically formatted for Kindle.
THE UNEARTHED
by evan ronan
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.
-From the First Law of Thermodynamics
Eddi
e
said, “I can’t believe three people were murdered here.”
Tim nodded his agreement and knocked on the Rosselli’s front door.
They’d both seen the Rosselli place before. Many people had driven by in the aftermath of the killings and the home had been featured on the local news for a couple weeks straight.
But they’d never been inside.
The Rosselli place was a two-story colonial in suburbia. Wide driveway, a green lawn, and an old basketball hoop hanging crooked over the two-car garage.
The front door opened.
Jackie Rosselli was a short man, with black thinning hair and an aquiline nose. He wore a white polo shirt tucked into khakis and loafers with no socks. He ushered Eddie and Tim inside and quickly checked the street for neighbors.
Jackie smiled at them in the foyer. “Thanks for coming.”
“This is my brother, Eddie,” Tim said.
“Nice to meet you.” Eddie shook Jackie’s hand.
After some small talk, Jackie led them to the dining room. Eddie saw family photos on every wall. Jackie’s wife had ten years on her husband, but she was a total babe. Eddie gestured with his eyes at the picture. Tim pretended not to notice.
In the dining room there was an expensive-looking table and matching buffet cabinet. Eddie wondered if there was any good booze hidden in there.
“I’ll be right back. Working from home tonight,” Jackie said.
“Take your time,” Tim said. “We’ll need a few minutes to set up in here.”
Jackie left.
Tim took their equipment out of the briefcase. He set the microphones, a digital recorder, and notepads on the table and took a seat near the buffet cabinet. Eddie heard Jackie turning off a TV somewhere.
“I can’t believe we’re standing in the Moriarty house,” Eddie said. If they landed this gig it’d be their biggest job ever.
Tim smiled and placed the digital recorder on the middle of the table. Eddie went to the other side of the table to help him set the mike up.
“You know, I was thinking …” Eddie began.
“Uh-oh.”
“Maybe we should try video for the interview.”
Tim said, “We’ve been through this. People are put off by a video camera.”
“Microphone, camera, same difference.”
“Let’s just stick with the recorder for now.”
Eddie shrugged. “Hey, it’s your world. I only play in it.”
“The last time I—”
“Took my advice, yeah, yeah.”
“—someone got hurt.”
“Someone twisted an ankle.”
“Could have been worse.”
“Right, and the Cuban Missile Crisis could have started World War Three. But it didn’t.”
Tim hit a button on the digital recorder and held a mike up to his mouth. “Test, one, two.” He listened to himself on the playback and adjusted the volume.
“So what time you think we’ll get out of here?” Eddie asked.
Tim gave him one of those older brother looks. “How would I know that?”
Eddie put on a mock frown. “I thought you knew everything.”
Tim chuckled and flipped him off quickly before Jackie came back in.
Eddie said, “I’m just anxious to see Mom and Dad. It’s been a year.”
“Me too.”
“This house reminds me of that other job.”
“Which one.”
“The New York job, with Giles Tyson. What were their names …?”
“You mean what was her name.” Tim smiled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Tim was shaking his head. “Let’s not have a repeat of that here.”
“You know I have a thing for tall redheads.”
“You have a thing for women with a pulse. Sometimes the pulse is optional.”
Eddie smiled. “Seriously, bro, you remember those cans—”
Tim couldn’t help but laugh. During that investigation in New York, Eddie had just so happened to find the wife’s dresser open. He’d put on one of her double D bras to surprise everybody. At the time, Tim had been furious. Now here he was laughing about it.
But they needed to put their game faces on. Because this was the site of the infamous Moriarty Massacre.
Jacki
e
Rosselli took another look out the window in his home office. He didn’t want the neighbors to know he was talking to paranormal investigators. But it was going to get out. By tomorrow word would spread … Jackie worried the kids at school would tease his boy about it. Last thing his son needed right now.
He headed back to the dining room. The brothers were done setting up.
Jackie said, “Should I sit?”
“Please.” Tim pointed to the empty chair across from himself.
Jackie sat and surveyed the two brothers. They were a study in contrasts. Tim was less than average height, bald, stocky. Eddie was tall and lean. Tim had close-cropped, thinning hair. Eddie had a bird’s nest of black on his head. But there was something about them that made them look like brothers. Maybe it was the wide-set blue eyes.
Eddie was late twenties but dressed ten years too young for his age. Black t-shirt and baggy jeans. Tim acted like he was in charge and dressed like it, with a button down shirt and khakis.
Tim said, “We’d like to start now if that’s okay.”
“I have a list.”
Tim leaned forward and pushed a button on the recorder. “That’s great. Let me explain how we do things first.”
“Okay.”
“We’re recording this conversation. We do this for several reasons. First, we can never write as fast as we can talk. Second, we need a transcript to make sure we capture all of the necessary information.”
Jackie had been deposed before. This “interview” was already feeling like testimony.
“Third,” Tim explained, “we may need to review this conversation later, so it’s for convenience as well.”
Tim ran through a series of ground rules that Jackie thought were pretty obvious no-nos. Don’t talk over each other. Don’t interrupt. Wait till the entire question is asked. Et cetera. Tim was walking a fine line between professional and condescending.
“And you have to answer truthfully, to the best of your knowledge,” Tim added. “We can’t help you if we have an inaccurate picture of what’s been going on.”
“I didn’t call you out here to lie to you.”
Eddie jumped in. “We’d never expect you to. But we’ve found out the hard way that sometimes clients hold things back or distort them.”
Jackie wondered who the hell they’d worked with before.
“Please state your name and address for us,” Tim said.
“John Rosselli. Seventeen-Thirteen Pembroke Lane.”
“How long have you lived here?” Tim asked.
“Six months next week.”
“You’ve called us here to investigate paranormal activity in your house, is that correct?”
Eddie took notes while his brother asked questions.
“Not just in the house. It’s outside, too.”
Tim steepled his hands. “I need you to tell me about all the things you yourself experienced. You can refer to your list if you’d like. Then we’ll walk through each one in detail. I can’t stress enough that, for now, I only want to hear about what you have experienced. Not what others might have told you. Okay?”
Eddie looked like he wanted to roll his eyes at his brother.
Jackie took the list out of his pocket. “Well, my wife has experienced the most, including the phone. And my son, he is … I’ll let him tell you.” He felt his face get hot. “I’ve experienced the least. I was the first one to notice the carpet, though.”
“Tell us about it,” Tim said.
“Right behind me. It’s a dark stain, like dried blood.”
Tim craned his head. “When did you first see it?”
Jackie said, “The house was all hardwood when we moved in. I guess the Moriartys used areas rugs. At the open house we noticed a dark spot in the wood behind where I’m sitting.
“It just looked like a stain in the wood so I thought nothing of it.” Plus, the asking price had been ridiculously low. “We had the floors stripped and redone with a lighter finish. The guys doing the job were able to get rid of it.
“About a week later, I noticed a small stain in the same area. I called the floor guys and complained. They blew me off. Said there would always be tiny blemishes, no way they could get the floor perfect.
“But the stain grew. It stretched from one plank to two. It became an eyesore because it was dark.
“I had another floor guy out. I thought it might be some type of rot, but the floor guy didn’t know what it was. He offered to replace that part of the floor. We had to get some other work done on the house, this seemed unimportant in comparison, so we held off.
“We put a throw rug over it. It grew to about two feet in diameter. Eventually when I washed the throw rug I saw the stain had gotten on the bottom of it.
“It was cheap enough to get that piece of wood replaced so we had the guy come out and take care of it.”
Neither Tim nor Eddie said anything.
“But the stain came back.”
Jacki
e
felt the old anger rising up. “No matter what we did, it came back. So we put carpet down. We picked a darker color, just in case. The stain bled through. So now I scrub it out every so often.”
Tim asked, “Can we pull the carpet up to monitor its growth while we’re here?”
“No. I’m not spending another dime on that floor. Besides, you can see it with the naked eye. I haven’t scrubbed it in two weeks.” He turned in his chair and pointed.
Tim stood. “I’ll take a look now and I’ll have my tech guy take some pictures when he’s here over the next few days.”
“Sounds good,” Jackie said.
“Do you mind if I get a drink of water?” Eddie asked. He looked hung over.
“Follow me.”
They went into the kitchen. Jackie poured him a glass out of the water line in the fridge.
“Thanks.” Eddie took a sip. “How’s work treating you?”
Jackie watched Tim, who was kneeling and examining the carpet. “People never want to pay all their taxes so I have good job security.”
“You’re an accountant, right?” Eddie asked.
Jackie kept an eye on Tim. “That’s right.”
“Do you work in the city?”
“Used to. My wife still does. I’ve got my own practice here. Working all those hours will kill you.”
“Is that where you met your wife?”
He nodded, warming to Eddie. “Yeah. She always had a thing for younger guys. But don’t tell her I said that.”
Eddie smiled. “I won’t. And I got the same problem, only with women.”
Jackie laughed. “She only works two days a week now, so she’s home with Billy often.”
“Must be nice.”
Tim’s face was inches from the carpet. “I see it.”
Jackie felt relieved. He hadn’t doubted himself but Tim’s sighting validated it in some way for him.
Eddie put his glass on the counter and took a knee to scrutinize the rug. He ran his fingers over the spot. “Doesn’t feel any different than the rest of the rug.”
“I’m guessing that’s where one of the Moriartys died.” Jackie folded his arms. It couldn’t have been anything else.
“Probably—” Eddie started to say but cut himself off.
Tim shot Eddie a look. “We’ll look into it, Jackie.”
* * * *
“So how do we move forward?” Jackie asked.
They had questioned him for over an hour. Tim had harped on the minutiae—where, when, how often, how many times, when was the last time. All the things that nobody ever remembered perfectly. Jackie had told them about the phone, the strange noises. He felt like he’d been interrogated and that his answers weren’t satisfactory.
Tim said, “First rule of business is caution. For us, this is both an investigation and an experiment. So we need reliable data and we need objectivity.”
Jackie had lost count of Tim’s rules. “I want action, not caution. How long will this take?”
“We’ll get on it right away. Back tomorrow to meet with your wife and son. My techie will be here for set-up. I’ll get my researcher working at the same time. We’ll be onsite overnight. We’d like to shoot for Saturday.”
That was more like it. “Saturday will be fine. Do you need us out of here?”
“No, but we’ll need access to all parts of your house, and we’ll be working for most of the night. If you’re here, you just need to follow our lead and let us do our jobs.”
“Why overnight?” Jackie asked.
“Beings tend to manifest themselves at night more often. We shut off as many power sources as we can. In theory less electrical interference makes it easier.”
In theory? Jackie couldn’t believe what he was nodding at.
Tim said, “After onsite collection is the data review. That’s the longest part of the process, usually takes two or three days.”
“What are the chances that you’ll be able to validate this for us?”
Tim looked like he’d been expecting this question. “We dismiss over ninety percent of claims. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. It just means we can’t verify it.”
“I don’t like the sound of a ten percent hit rate for what I’m paying.”
Eddie suddenly inserted himself into the conversation. “But from what you’ve told us, it looks like we’ll be able to find something.”
Tim gave Eddie another disapproving look.
Jackie asked, “What do you think, Tim?”
“We have to start from the premise that it’s not there until proven. We take as scientific an approach as we can. One of the reasons I started my own practice was because I had seen what bad science could do. People like yourself getting bum information because some weekend-warrior amateurs didn’t follow the method. Bad things happen and it’s one of the reasons our line of work gets a bad rap.”
Jackie took all this in. It seemed like Tim was more concerned with not tarnishing his credibility for future jobs than he was at doing this one. “So, back to the ninety percent dismissal rate.”
“It doesn’t mean we can’t help you,” Tim said. “The good news is, of the claims we do validate, almost a hundred percent turn out to be harmless. There might not be much we can do to stop the activity, but most of the time, with a little education, there’s no need.”
“So you probably won’t find anything, and if you do, there’s not much you can do about it?” Jackie couldn’t keep the edge out of his voice. Tim was no salesman.
“Most hauntings are what we call residual. These are harmless because—”
Jackie cut him off. “Residual?”
Eddie jumped in. “Sometimes, there’s a traumatic event or emotional experience so powerful that it leaves an impression on a place. It’s like leftover energy. So it never goes away. It’ll repeat itself, play back and start over. There’s no intelligence to it, no ill will. It can’t hurt you. Once you know what it is, it won’t bother you.”
“You said most hauntings,” Jackie said. “What are the other kinds?”
Eddie started to say something, but Tim spoke over him. “There are a few different kinds. Spirit hauntings, poltergeists, possessions. But these are extremely difficult to validate, even more so than residuals.”
Jackie still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was the crap of bad horror movies.
Tim continued, “Spirit hauntings are believed to be caused by the soul of a human who’s died. The spirit usually doesn’t realize it’s dead, or for whatever reason is not ready to cross over. Poltergeists are even trickier. Many paranormal investigators nowadays are highly skeptical of so-called poltergeist activity. The thinking now is that it’s more likely to be the product of psychokinesis, caused by one of the people living in the house.”
“But you can’t think—” Jackie started to say. Poltergeists, psychokinesis …
Tim said, “I don’t think anything at this point. The process will lead us. I’ve seen bad things happen when investigators aren’t careful.”
Jackie felt like telling these two clowns to get the hell out of his house. But on the other hand, he had nowhere else to go. And his family needed help.
Tim said, “We’ll give you the highest quality job, Jackie. We have a great reputation.”
“Is there any way this can be done faster? Two weeks is a long time.” He kept thinking about the calls from his wife, Talia, when she was home alone—the frantic, breathless calls. Jackie, please just come home. Something isn’t right. At first, he’d been mildly annoyed by her calls. Then he’d worried about her sanity. But as time had passed, he’d experienced some of the same things and wondered if she was right.
Or if he was losing his mind too.
Tim said, “I wish there were. But I’m out of paid time off.”
Jackie nodded. One week wasn’t a horrible turnaround. But if they couldn’t find anything, it’d be a week wasted.
Tim opened a folder and pulled out two documents. “This is our standard contract and waiver.”
“Can you get started tonight?” Jackie asked. He had to try.
They both stood. “I wish we could, but we have a prior engagement this evening.”
* * * *
“I was just stating my opinion.” Eddie wanted to say a whole lot more, but he didn’t. Tim never understood where he was coming from.
Tim put the van in REVERSE and backed out of the Rossellis’ driveway.
Eddie cracked his window and fished a smoke out.
Tim said, “Bro, the process is everything. Without it, we’re a bunch of mouth breathers running around with flashlights.”
Eddie watched the Rosselli house recede into the distance as they pulled away. It looked like such a normal home. You’d never think there had been a triple murder there only a few years ago.
“Hey, man. In the future, be careful at the client site,” Tim said.
“What do you mean?”
“Bringing up that story when Jackie was out of the room—not the time or the place. I could barely stop laughing before he got back.”
“No harm, no foul.” He lit the cigarette and took a long drag.
“Not this time.”
“You’re right, you’re right.” Eddie said, thinking piss off you anal bastard.
Tim slowed the van and made a left. He was going the wrong way.
“Where you going?” Eddie asked.
“I’m picking Michelle up.”
“Michelle?”
Tim said, “Yeah.”
Eddie just gave him a look.
Tim said, “She’s my girlfriend.”
“Not your wife.”
“Are you trying to be difficult?”
“Are you?”
Tim pulled off the road. He took a deep breath before facing Eddie.
“Why don’t you like her?”
“She doesn’t like me.”
“That’s not true.” Tim could spot a lie better than Sherlock Holmes, but he was a worse fibber than Pinocchio.
Eddie said, “Look, I’m happy for you. But she’s not cool with me. And today should be about you and me.”
Tim exhaled sharply. “Alright, bro.”
Tim turned them around and headed for the cemetery.
* * * *
Colestown Cemetery was situated at the west end of town and occupied a wide expanse of land. Tim steered under the weather-beaten bricked archway, very much looking its age of nearly two hundred and fifty years.
Their parents were buried in the northwest corner, along the side skirting Route 541. Tim had requested this section, because you could see their marker from the road. Eddie had agreed to it.
It was one of the few things they had ever agreed upon so easily.
Tim parked. They walked across the row of stones and stopped in front of the joint marker at the end of the line.
Here lie Bruce and Margaret McCloskey, taken before their time, loving and devoted parents to Timothy and Edward.
Eddie put a hand on the cold stone. Tim stood a few feet back.
Eddie visited his parents often and hadn’t cried over them in a long time. But today, the tears burned his face. He felt Tim’s hand on his shoulder, a moment later.
Eddie composed himself. Tim took his hand off his brother’s shoulder and walked to the chain link fence separating the plot from the road. He paid no mind to the cars that zipped by.
Eddie still kneeled in front of their parents’ marker. He wiped under his eyes. Then he pulled out his pack of smokes and teased out a cigarette. He fired it up and took a long drag.
“Thanks for making it just us,” Eddie said.
Tim turned and gave his brother a smile.