Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls: A Ghost Hunter Mystery Read online

  I frowned and felt myself getting frustrated again. I’d been trying to get Gil on some kind of exercise regimen for ages, and he staunchly refused to work out anything but his fingers as they flicked across the keyboard of his computer. “You’ll make it,” I told him flatly. Just then, I distinctly heard a male voice call out, “Alex!”

  “Whoa,” said Heath, whipping his head in the direction of the mysterious voice. “Now, that I heard.”

  Gilley lifted his head to glare at me, oblivious to anything but his own suffering. “This is the last ghostbust I’ll ever agree to that involves this many stairs!”

  “Shhh!” I told him, while I listened again.

  “Alex!”

  “Who is that?” Gil asked, turning his head to look in the same direction Heath and I were squinting in.

  “I think it’s that same guy from last night!” I said.

  Heath appeared puzzled. “Why hasn’t he recruited some help to find this Alex person he’s searching for? I mean, if he’s been looking all night, you’d think that the moment the causeway opened up again, he’d head back to the mainland to alert the coast guard.”

  Gilley was fishing around in his backpack again, and after a moment he came up with a pair of binoculars. “I thought we might need these on this shoot,” he said, putting them to his eyes and scanning along the top of the cliff where the voice was coming from.

  I watched him anxiously, a terrible sense of foreboding forming in the pit of my stomach. “Something’s not right,” I whispered.

  At that moment Gilley sucked in a breath of surprise.

  “What?” I asked.

  Gilley thrust the binoculars at me. “He’s in trouble!” he said, and pointed to the top of the cliff. I squinted but couldn’t see anything, so I put the binoculars up to my eyes and played with the focus while searching along the cliff—and that was when I nearly dropped the glasses. “Ohmigod!”

  “What?” Heath asked.

  I pulled the binoculars away and grabbed his hand, running past him up the stairs. “Come on!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Just follow me!” I yelled, pumping my legs as fast as I could to get to the top in time.

  Dutifully Heath followed behind. In short order we reached the top of the rock, my legs screaming with the effort, and I tore across the unusually flat terrain, passing the large stone castle as we ran. I barely noticed it because I was so focused on getting to the far end in time.

  As we raced forward, we both distinctly heard someone calling for help, and I used every ounce of my reserve strength to run as fast as I could. Heath came abreast of me quickly, and as the cries for help became more urgent, he picked up his speed and zoomed past me in three strides.

  By the time he reached the edge of the cliff, he was a good twenty yards ahead of me. I watched him drop to his knees and reach down; then he appeared to jerk forward and I cried out, afraid he was being pulled off the edge. With two more long strides I reached him and flung myself across the back of his legs to keep him from falling.

  “Noooooooooooooo!” I heard him cry, and I gripped his legs even more fiercely.

  With a sickening dread I heard someone dropping away from us scream, “Alllllllex!”

  Using my weight to anchor Heath, I peered over the side and gasped when I saw the same man I’d seen through the binoculars falling, his arms pitifully still reaching up and flailing as his hands grabbed at thin air, all the while falling down, and down and down.

  I screamed—the scene was so horrible I could barely stand it. The man’s face was so panic-stricken and frightened and there was nothing anyone could do to help him.

  And then his form disappeared in what remained of the fog at the base of the rock, and an instant later Heath and I both heard a faint sickening crunch.

  I rolled away from Heath and lay on my back, covering my eyes with both hands. A moment later—I burst into tears.

  “Stop staring at me,” I ordered.

  “Sorry!” Gilley apologized. “It’s just, you almost never cry, M. J., and this flood’s been going for almost thirty minutes now.”

  I wiped my tearstained cheeks and stared out at the waves crashing onto shore. “Yeah, well, I almost never see someone die right in front of my eyes either, Gil.”

  “John should be back soon. And Heath and Gopher should also be showing up any minute.”

  I shuddered. John had gone back to shore to alert the authorities, while Heath and Gopher were conducting a search at the base of the rocks where the man had likely landed. I knew the distance he’d fallen and the hard surface he’d landed on certainly meant that there was no hope, but I still wanted to cling to it anyway.

  “You look cold,” Meg said from behind me. “Do you want my coat?”

  I worked to control the shivering sending tremors through my body. The wind was cold, but I was probably in a little bit of shock from the scene I’d witnessed earlier. “No,” I told her. “Thanks, though. I’ll be okay.”

  Gilley looked guilt-ridden, probably because he hadn’t offered to help me warm up. “Here,” he said, shrugging out of his sweatshirt and handing it to me. “It’s warm at least.”

  “What’re you going to wear?”

  Gilley reached for his backpack and pulled out his own coat. “This.”

  I held out my hand for his coat instead of the sweatshirt, knowing how nervous Gil got when he wasn’t wearing it. “Thanks, honey.”

  “How’s she doing?” I heard someone ask.

  Turning to look, I saw Gopher and Heath walking toward us.

  “She’ll be okay,” Gilley said.

  I blushed because I’d been an emotional wreck all the way back down the staircase. “Did you find him?” I asked softly.

  Both men shook their heads. “No,” Gopher said. “We looked all the way along the rocks underneath the cliff, and there’s no sign of him.”

  I blinked. “Was he swept offshore?”

  Gopher and Heath exchanged an uncomfortable look. “We don’t think so.”

  “So, where’d he go?”

  Heath sat down next to me and wrapped a muscled arm across my shoulders. “I don’t think he was ever really there.”

  I cocked my head at him and Gilley said, “Huh?”

  Heath eyed the top of the cliff for a moment before he explained. “I know you didn’t see it, M. J., but when I got to the edge of the cliff, I dropped down and reached for the guy hanging there. He wasn’t far away, maybe a foot or two, and as he grabbed for my hand, I swear, it passed right through mine.”

  My jaw fell open. “He was a spook?!”

  Heath nodded. “I think so.”

  No one said anything for the longest time; we were all too stunned by the possibility that we’d been so easily duped. “He looked so real,” I whispered, knowing that I had been so panic-stricken to get to him that I hadn’t even considered using my sixth sense to feel out the energy around the man.

  “He did look real,” Heath agreed. “And we were running on pure adrenaline up there. It never even occurred to me when we saw him hanging over the edge like that that he might be a ghost, which was why I automatically thought his hand passing through mine had to have been a trick of the light. But then Gopher and I couldn’t find any trace of him anywhere near the base of the cliffs, and at that end of the beach, the tide is still low enough that there’s no way his body could have been carried out to sea. There are at least fifty yards of dry rocky shore between the edge of the water and the cliffs.”

  I inhaled deeply, my tattered emotions already mending themselves back together. “He fell straight down,” I said. “So he should have landed within about ten to twenty feet of the rock face.”

  “Yep,” Heath agreed.

  I switched my attention to Gilley. “Can you do some research for us when we get back to the B&B? I want to know if there is anything in cyberspace about this ghost.”

  “On it,” Gil said.

  “And don’t go back too
far in history,” Heath told him. “The guy was wearing a down vest, jeans, and a really nice watch. I think it might even have been a Rolex.”

  “You got a lot of detail in those few seconds,” I told him.

  “I don’t know that I’ll ever get that image out of my head,” Heath replied, looking pained.

  I moved closer to him and squeezed my arm around his waist. “I know exactly how you feel.”

  “So what do we do now?” Kim asked. She’d gotten very quiet after hearing about the man who’d fallen off the cliff.

  “Wait for John,” Gilley said. “He’ll probably bring the cavalry with him and we’ll have some explaining to do.”

  “Maybe whoever he brings with him will know about our spook,” I suggested.

  And it turned out that I hadn’t been far off the mark. John returned about ten minutes later with one winded-looking constable. “Now, what’s this about a man falling to his death from the top o’ the cliff?” he asked us.

  Gopher extended his hand and introduced himself, explaining that our group was here to film an episode for an American ghost-hunting show, and that we had witnessed a man dropping to his death from the top of the cliffs, but were unable to locate his body.

  “Are you the same Americans that alerted the coast guard to this missing Alex person and his companion?” the constable asked.

  “Yes, sir,” said Gopher.

  The constable appeared irritated, and he took his handkerchief out of his trouser pocket to wipe at his brow. “Well, then, you’ve found your first ghost, haven’t you?”

  “We already suspected as much,” I said. “We’re so sorry to have raised a false alarm.”

  The constable softened. “Don’t mind it, miss. Happens at least three or four times a year whenever one of the tourists ignores the signs about not venturing onto the causeway.”

  “We have permission to be here,” Gopher said quickly, and he dug into his coat pocket for the papers to prove it.

  The constable took the paper and inspected it, finally nodding. “Everything looks in order,” he said. “Although I hardly think choosing Dunlow Castle was a wise move given its history.”

  “You mean the phantom?” Gilley asked.

  “Aye,” he said. “This is a dangerous place, mates. And you should know that if you get into trouble here on this rock, there’ll be precious little me or the coast guard will be able to do for you.” The constable then pointed to the right-of-access document he was still holding and said, “As it says in your paper here, Mr. Gophner, you’re assuming all risks while you’re here at Castle Dunlow, and the village of Dunlee will not be held liable for any deaths that may occur nor be required to participate in any rescue of you or your party should something dreadful happen at the top of the rock.”

  Heath and I exchanged a look, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing: That was a really odd thing to put into a legal access permit.

  “I almost didn’t come along to investigate, in fact,” the constable continued. “But the one time I don’t is going to be the one time when someone really does need my help.”

  “Can you tell us anything about this man?” I asked. “The one who fell to his death? And maybe even who Alex might be?”

  “I can’t say as I know who this Alex was, but I do know that the ghost you might have seen was likely Jordan Kincaid.”

  For a moment I wondered where I’d heard that name and then it hit me. “You mean the Jordan Kincaid? The heir to the Kincaid Mining family?” I’d read about his death several years previously. The story told of the dashing young playboy whose family had made a fortune mining for precious minerals all over the world. He had been the only son and heir of the prominent family, and since his death, I’d heard that his grief-stricken father had taken his own life and his mother had become a recluse.

  “The very one,” said the constable. “Such a tragedy. Came here on his own treasure hunt with a piece of paper just like yours some four years ago. He fell to his death on the third or fourth day he was explorin’ the castle. Such a pity,” he added, shaking his head. “From all accounts he was a rather nice lad.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah, well, he died an awful death.”

  The constable eyed me critically. “Well, then, let it serve as a fair warning to you all,” he said, folding the paper and handing it back to Gopher. “If I were you, I’d leave this island and never return.”

  Gopher appeared uncomfortable. “Our network is expecting some footage later today,” he told the constable. “And we’re already pushing a deadline, so we’ll promise to be careful, but we really do have to stick it out here.”

  “What do you know about the phantom?” I asked the constable.

  The middle-aged man looked to the top of the cliffs and shuddered. It was a moment before he then looked back to consider me gravely. “I know enough not to go to the top of those cliffs even for all the pound notes in Ireland, miss.”

  “That bad?” Heath said.

  “Aye.”

  No one spoke for a moment and the tension in our group moved up a notch. “We’ve heard the phantom likes to throw people off the cliffs,” Gopher said after a bit.

  “Oh, he likes to do more than that. If he isn’t tossin’ you over the side, he’s scaring you into a state of mental collapse.”

  “Mental collapse?” I repeated.

  “Aye. Two years ago a couple on their honeymoon ignored the warnings, and they made their way to the castle. When they came back across the causeway, the poor wife was in a terrible state. Her husband claimed she’d been attacked by the phantom and been driven mad.”

  “Was she hurt physically?” Gilley asked, his complexion pale.

  “No. But she was so stricken with fear that she didn’t know who or where she was. In fact, the poor lass could do nothing more than shake from head to toe. The last I heard about it, she’d been given a padded cell.”

  An involuntary shiver ran down my own spine. I’m not one for tall tales, and I couldn’t be sure that this constable wasn’t simply trying to scare us away from here because if any one of us got hurt, assumption of risk or not, he’d likely have a boatload of paperwork to fill out.

  Gopher must have suspected this too, because he extended his hand and said, “We thank you so much for coming, Constable. We’re sorry to have inconvenienced you and we promise to be very careful from here on out.”

  The constable frowned. As he turned back to the causeway, he remarked, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  After he’d gone, I looked around at our group. “I think we need a new game plan.”

  Chapter 3

  We sat around on the rocky beach for nearly ten minutes, arguing about the best course of action. Heath and I didn’t want to proceed until we’d had a chance to do some more research on the mysterious and apparently deadly phantom that lurked above our heads.

  Gilley—being the scaredy-cat in the group—was all for abandoning the entire ghost hunt and instead hunting for the nearest pub.

  John, Kim, and Meg seemed willing to support us, but in the end we were outvoted by Gopher, who insisted that we at least give the top of the rock a cursory look while we still had an hour and a half, which, he reasoned, was plenty of time to get to the castle, check out a few rooms, then head back down and hurry across the causeway.

  What can I say? Gopher was our producer and boss, and money trumps nerves, scary phantoms, and good sense every time.

  Reluctantly, Heath, John, and I all worked our way up the stairs with an enthused Gopher bringing up the rear.

  Gilley, Meg, and Kim remained on the beach, as Gil flat out refused to go with us and I didn’t want to leave him alone, so I asked the other two most vulnerable people in our group to babysit him.

  When we reached the top, I paused to catch my breath. My thighs were burning from all the stairs, and I was grateful to have reached the top without wimping out halfway up.

  “Man, that’s a long climb,” Heath remarked,
coming over to stand next to me.

  I motioned to the castle with a small groan. “Bet there’re more stairs inside.”

  “Aw, crap,” he said. “I didn’t think of that.”

  John appeared at our side looking winded. “Jesus,” he wheezed. “How many stairs did we just climb?”

  “Eleventy,” I told him, using the word Gilley had coined to describe anything greater than a whole bunch.

  I moved over to the stairs and looked down. Gopher was still trudging up, and by the look of his pace and the number of stairs he had left to climb, he’d be a while.

  “How far away is he?” Heath asked.

  “Far enough that we can check things out up here for a bit.”

  John agreed to wait by the stairs for Gopher while Heath and I moved to the castle, which was located in the center of the massive piece of rock.

  “Pretty genius to build your fortress on this thing, don’t you think?”

  I nodded. “I can’t imagine anyone who’d be stupid enough to try and attack it. You couldn’t come in from the sea, given the currents and the treacherously shallow water. There’s no way you could navigate your way through with a large force.

  “The only way to attack it would be from the shore, so first you’d have to attack and conquer the Irish forces on land. Then you’d have to bring your troops to the rock using the causeway, and since you’d only have four hours at low tide to move your troops, you’d be limited in the number you could get across at any given time.”

  “Still, you probably could get a sizable army across in four hours,” Heath reasoned.

  “Agreed, but you’d still only be able to move two men up at a time on those stairs. It would only take a small force to defend them, and there’s no other way up as far as I can tell. In the sixteenth century, this place would have been impenetrable.”

  “It does make for one spooky shoot,” said Heath as he eyed Dunlow Castle. I stopped walking long enough to look it over too.

  The place was impressive; I’ll give it that. The fortress was three stories tall, with huge stone walls topped by high narrow windows and parapets running all along the sides. Four high towers with turrets spiraled above each of the four corners, perfect for archers to take aim at any enemy who might breach those stairs.