What a Ghoul Wants (35 page)

I looked down again at the poor battered sister of the Widow, and she was staring
at me with a mixture of fear, horror, and bewilderment. And then all that changed
and she gasped, eyeing something I couldn’t see right above her.

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s your ticket home, sweetie.”

There was a sudden shriek at the end of the hallway and I looked up to see the Widow
reaching out with one hand toward her sister, who graced her with a sad look before
winking out of ghostly existence as the light took her and carried her home.

In that instant both the Widow and I understood that the sisters would never see each
other again, because over the centuries of haunting the castle, the Widow’s soul had
turned as black as coal, and the doors of heaven are closed against such vileness,
especially when that vileness courts the likes of a demon in exchange for power.

As if to prove me right, the Widow smiled wickedly and next to her a chain appeared.
She gave a tug on it and poor Merrick Brown appeared. He was shaking in fear and when
he saw me, he cried out pitifully, “Help me!”

The Widow yanked hard on the chain and Merrick was pulled roughly to the side.

“Merrick!” I shouted, but the Widow was once again in motion, and she was pulling
the young man with her.

I raced down the hallway after them, but they were several yards in front of me. Just
as I was closing in on the Widow, Merrick, and the secret passageway, I was struck
from behind again, but this time the blow wasn’t nearly as bad as anything I’d sustained
earlier. When I looked around, I could see small bits of black shadow—maybe a dozen
or so—moving along the walls and the floor, dispersing toward the hidden passageway.
A moment later they’d faded into the wall next to the sconce along with all signs
of the Widow and Merrick.

I stopped at the sconce, panting hard and attempting to catch my breath. At the end
of the hallway while I was taking in lungfuls of air, Heath and Lumley appeared.

“Em!” Heath shouted.

“I’m fine!” I called back.

The two raced to me and Heath wrapped me in his arms. “Don’t you ever take off on
me again like that!”

I pushed at him a little. “No time for that right now, sweetie. We’ve got the Widow
to deal with.” And then I looked around for Michel and John. “Where are the other
two?”

“John’s helping Michel back to the safe zone,” Heath replied.

“And I’ve got this gadget,” Lumley said, holding up the Super Spooker.

“I think the Widow and her demon are in the portal,” I said. “It’s now or never, guys.”

Heath handed me his spikes and took up Gilley’s gadget. He aimed the speaker right
at the place on the wall that I pointed to and I moved to the sconce. Before I pulled
it, I handed Lumley the list of the eleven victims drowned in the moat, including
his brother, Merrick, and Lefebvre, and said, “The minute I open this door, Inspector,
we’re going to move down a set of stairs while you call out to every name on that
list. Command them to come to you. Tell them they must come if they want to be free.”

“Understood,” he said.

I then opened up my messenger bag and pulled out two dozen spikes, and laid them on
the floor well to the side of the passageway door. I then got back into position and
gripped the sconce. “On the count of three,” I whispered, looking at Heath to make
sure he was ready. Once he nodded, I said, “One. . . two. . . three!”

I pulled hard on the sconce and the passageway door opened. Lumley’s flashlight flicked
on and we headed into the stairwell, which was dank and smelling horribly of sulfur
and mold. I went first and Heath came up right behind me with Lumley at the rear.
“Now, Inspector!” I shouted.

He began calling out the names on the list, demanding that they all come to him, and
as we made our way down the stairs, I could hear Heath fiddling with Gilley’s gadget.
The atmosphere of the stairwell altered, and I could feel the electromagnetic energy
ratchet up several notches. The first to appear was a balding man in a long overcoat,
looking terribly confused and scared. There was a collar around his neck and a length
of chain, but the Widow wasn’t with him and he seemed to be moving of his own free
will. “Get out of the stairwell!” I shouted at him. The minute I yelled at him, he
took off running up the steps. Then, another man appeared, and another and another,
and at each of them I shouted instructions to go up into the hallway above.

They all complied. I counted the number of prisoners, eight so far, and no sign of
Oliver Lumley, Merrick, or André Lefebvre, even though Lumley had called out their
names. The minute we turned a corner on our way down, I came up short. A skeleton
in amazingly good shape lay on the stairs, a silver knife still clutched in the hand.
We all paused to look at it and immediately I felt the presence of the duke enter
my mind. For a moment he took over all my thoughts and showed me the image of himself
in his final moments, brokenhearted at the loss of his son, stumbling onto the secret
passageway, intending to kill his wife. But here he’d paused to consider that every
ill thing that had befallen him had been the result not of her, but of his own evil
deeds. Had he not beaten his first wife and killed her, none of the rest of the terrible
events that had happened to his friends and loved ones would have come about, and
knowing that all of it was a result of his own actions was his undoing. Depressed
and forlorn, he’d pulled out his dagger and slit his wrists, and he’d died here by
his own hand, as much to send a message to his wife that she’d finally beaten him
as to also show her he took responsibility for his own role in the death of her sister.

I felt a hand on my shoulder then and Heath said, “Em?”

I shook my head to clear it. “Let’s keep going,” I said, stepping carefully around
the duke. In my mind I called out to him to come help us, but I didn’t feel him move
with us. His spirit seemed to hang back, still angry. Still heartbroken. Still lost.

When at last we got to the bottom of the stairwell, I knew why we’d seen no sign of
Merrick, André, or Oliver Lumley.

At the base of the stairs was an enclave carved into the stone wall, and it was oozing
with ectoplasm. It was near the steel door on the other side of which was the hidden
cavern where we’d found Clarence Lumley’s remains. Within this enclave was a pulsing
orb of energy, which was blacker than the surrounding stone, and from the depths of
it I could hear cries for help. I knew that the Widow would hold tight to the people
most important to us, and she wasn’t about to give up without a fight.

“There’s her portal!” I shouted, reaching inside my bag for another spike and a hammer.

Heath pointed the Super Spooker directly at the pulsing black orb and I held up my
spike and the hammer, getting ready to pound a spike into the wall. Turning to Lumley,
I yelled, “Call your brother!”

The inspector did over and over, but he didn’t appear. I knew we were close to the
point of giving the Widow enough energy to reappear and attack us again, and was just
about to give up and drive the spike home when Ollie’s face appeared directly within
the portal window. “Help me!” he begged.

“Come out!” Heath and I shouted together.

“Ollie!” the inspector cried. “Ollie! Come out of there! Just climb through!”

Ollie attempted to climb out of the portal, but the chain around his neck was taut,
and he couldn’t seem to move forward.

I had no idea what to do and looked around for something, anything, to use to help
him break free. If I stuck a magnet in the hole, he’d be stuck there forever, and
if I moved forward without my vest on and tried to pull him out, I risked getting
my ass kicked by the Widow.

Just as I was looking around wondering what I could use, a shape appeared from the
steel door. A very handsome man who very much resembled the inspector and Ollie came
forward and held his hand out to his deceased son. “Come on, lad,” he said. “Daddy
will help you.”

Ollie took his father’s hand and together the two managed to get Ollie out of the
portal, although the chain around Ollie’s neck never relaxed. And then Merrick appeared
and André right behind too. Clarence helped them out of the hole as well, but try
as they all might, they couldn’t break free of the chain about their necks. It kept
yanking them backward and to our horror, one by one they were pulled back into the
portal.

“No!” I cried. “Ollie! André! Merrick! You only
believe
you’re chained! You’re not! I promise you! You
can
break free!”

But it was no use, and Clarence refused to let go of his son’s hand and was in danger
of being pulled into the portal too. I looked desperately at Heath, and I knew we
were both thinking the same thing; if we jammed our spikes into the portal, we’d lock
all three of them in, and possibly cause terrible injury to the spirit of Clarence.

“Help them!” the inspector cried, beside himself with grief.

And just when I thought all hope was lost, I felt myself roughly pushed to the side
and in front of me stepped the duke!

He looked exactly the same as he had when I’d seen him outside on the thin strip of
land, but there was even more anger and determination to the set of his jaw. Without
pause he shoved Clarence aside, breaking the hold he’d had with his son, and climbed
into the portal. For a moment all we could do was stare, but then quite suddenly out
of the hole flew Merrick, then André, and at last Oliver. All three were free of their
chains and they all scrambled quickly away from the portal. In another instant the
Widow appeared and I’d never seen such vile anger in a face! She spat and she swore
and she attempted to lunge at us, but a firm hand grabbed her by the back of the neck,
placed a collar and chain on her exactly like she’d placed on her prisoners and yanked
her firmly backward. The duke then appeared to us again and nodded to the spikes in
my hand, his face clearly pleading with me to use them.

I hesitated; I didn’t want to lock him in with the Widow, but then a large, black,
clawlike hand latched onto his shoulder, and as he struggled against the demon’s grip
he barked angrily at me and again motioned to the spikes. I took a step back, shocked
and terribly afraid for him. Heath was in motion before I could fully collect myself.
Grabbing hold of my spike and hammer, he lunged forward and drove the spike into the
center of the alcove, pounding on the spike so hard that he cracked the stone. I pulled
out several more spikes and handed them to him one by one and he continued to pound
away long after the portal had vanished.

Meanwhile I happened to glance behind me to see the inspector standing in awe as his
father and his brother both embraced, then turned to wave sweetly at him before looking
up at something that couldn’t be seen with the eyes of the living. A moment later
Merrick and André were also off on their journey home. The scene was so amazing that
it made me cry.

“I forgot to turn the gadget off,” Heath said, panting as he came up next to me. I
looked to where he was pointing at the Super Spooker on the ground. It was keeping
the electromagnetic energy of the area strong enough for Lumley to witness his brother
and father crossing over.

“Everyone down here got across,” I said.

Heath’s eyes drifted to the alcove. “Except for the duke.”

I felt a pang for the man who’d sacrificed his own soul for the sake of others. And
I hoped that somehow, someway, even though he was now locked in a lower realm, there’d
be a path for him to the other side too.

“Come on,” I said to Heath. “Let’s make sure the others find their way to the light
too.”

* * *

About an hour later we all gathered once again in the dining hall. Meg and Kim fussed
over us like two triage nurses, finding blankets to wrap us in, tea to warm our bones,
and some day-old scones to munch on. While Gilley alternated between setting up the
film we’d shot for Gopher and making sure Michel was okay after his clash with the
demon, Inspector Lumley gave us a little more insight into what his investigation
had uncovered.

“You were right, you know,” he told me. “A few of the widows of the men found drowned
in the lake are stepping forward one by one to confess their sins. Lady Lydia has
been blackmailing them for years. We estimate she’s extorted several million pounds,
in fact.”

Heath reached under the table and squeezed my hand. When I looked at him he was eyeing
me with pride. I smiled and blushed. Much of my hypothesis about the murders had been
just that—a theory—but it sure felt good to be proven right.

“The dowager’s butler, Fredrick Carlisle, was in on it from the start. We ran a background
check on him, and it seems that in his youth he was anything but a good citizen. He
did a short stint in prison for beating another bloke senseless, and it appears he
was recruited by Lady Hathaway specifically for those credentials. She had him trained
as a butler and gave him a small portion of the take from the women who came to her
for help in disposing of their husbands.”

“What about Mary?” John asked. “She didn’t look like she had any money. How did she
and her brother get wrapped up in all this?”

“Mary’s husband was a brute,” the inspector replied. “She confessed everything to
me, and she claims that her husband beat her regularly. She says that there were rumors
when she and her husband came here to work that wealthy troublesome men were drowning
in the moat, but she held off asking the dowager for help until her brother, Arthur,
came to manage the hotel. It was Arthur in fact who approached the Lady Hathaway about
Mary’s husband, Richard Farnsworth, and Lady Hathaway agreed to take care of the groundskeeper
in exchange for paying Mary and her brother a mere pittance of what they were worth
to work here the rest of their lives. That’s the real reason why neither she nor her
brother carried mobile telephones, Miss Holliday. She told me you’d asked about them
on the night the drawbridge was tampered with. Neither Mary nor her brother could
afford a mobile. They couldn’t afford much of anything, in fact, which is also why
they took up residence here. They were allowed free room and board, but barely any
salary.