“Must be a draft,” Rory said. “Old houses are full of them.”
“A draft slammed all the doors?” Frank said.
Now, both twins were screaming in the basement.
“They must be locked in, too,” Frank said.
By this point, I was pretty sure I heard Wade’s screams joining the girls’. My team, though, stayed calm.
“It is … ghost?” Ricardo said finally, his accent thick.
“No,” Rory said. “It’s a house built on SFX. Flickering lights? Fine. But locking doors?” She took out her cell. “That violates my civil liberties. I didn’t sign anything that lets them do that.”
She hit speed-dial, then lifted the phone to her ear. After a moment she pulled it down, frowning, and looked at the screen. I knew what she’d see, but just stood there, blank-faced, bracing.
“Motherfucker! They’re blocking the cell signal.”
The others checked their cells. I did, too, for show, but I knew it’d be blocked. I glanced slowly around the room.
Ghosts can’t block a cell signal, Jaime.
And they shouldn’t be able to slam and lock doors. But they had. At the inn and now here.
“Um, our phones have been blocked since we got here,” Cameron said. “I checked. Our contracts say no tweeting or anything, and they’re obviously using a blocker to be sure.”
Great, but that doesn’t explain the door, does it?
As the others bickered, it was almost surreal. We were in a supposedly haunted house and, except for the cameraman, not one of them seemed to consider that this could be an actual haunting. That’s what I got for choosing the smartest of the bunch.
Rory wheeled on Sal. “You’ve got an earpiece. Tell that Becky chick—”
“I can’t tell her anything. It’s dead.” He took it out and handed it over. “Been dead since the door slammed.”
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going on—”
“Of course you do,” Rory said. “It’s a setup to scare us silly. Only, unlike the morons in the basement”—she raised her voice to a shout—“we aren’t scared. Just very, very pissed off.”
The lights flickered and went out.
“Yep,” Rory said. “Just what we needed.”
“Flashlights on, everyone,” I said. “We’ll just hang tight and wait. Frank isn’t filming, so there’s no footage coming.”
“Sure there is,” Rory said as we turned on our phone lights. “Hidden cameras.”
“Which work so well in the dark,” Cameron muttered. “Infrared cameras.”
“Everyone, just stop arguing. Even if Rory’s right, no one is panicking, so we still aren’t giving them useful footage. If it’s staged, they’ll give up—”
A yelp sounded, muffled, as if from another room.
I shone my light around. “Where’s Ricardo?”
A panicked babbling in Spanish answered from behind the second door … which was now cracked open. We all raced through.
THIRTEEN
Our flashlight beams bounced around the dark room, then all settled on Ricardo. He sat on the floor, clutching his side. Blood dripped through his fingers.
I made it to him first. I dropped and tugged his hand away. There was a slice through his shirt.
“Run,” a voice whispered in my ear.
I jumped, but before anyone could ask what happened, I gritted my teeth.
Yep, it’s a ghost. Admit it. Accept it. Deal with it.
I raised Ricardo’s shirt. The wound wasn’t more than a shallow slice, but blood had soaked his shirt and his hand. More smeared the floor.
“How the hell did that happen?” Rory said, her voice rising an octave. “There’s nothing in here to cut him.”
She was right. The room was empty.
“Does anyone have a tissue or—”
Frank passed me a handkerchief. I pressed it against Ricardo’s side. Ricardo took over holding it. I rocked back into a crouch. When my heels threatened to give way, I yanked them off and tossed them aside. I turned to Ricardo, who stared numbly as he held the cloth against the wound.
“Can you tell me what happened?” I said, speaking slowly, keeping eye contact.
He stared at me.
I fumbled in Spanish, asking roughly the same thing. I got a rapid-fire response far beyond anything I could interpret with two years of high school Spanish—failed high school Spanish.
“He says he doesn’t know what happened,” Cameron said. “He heard a noise and came in here. It was dark. He thought the sound was coming from the other side. He walked across the room and something slashed his side. When he turned, no one was there.”
“Okay, that’s it,” Rory said. “We’re getting out of here. I don’t care if they rip up my contract.” She strode to a door behind Ricardo. “If the front way is blocked, there’s got to be a back—”
As she yanked on the handle, the door we’d come through slammed. Sal raced over to it as fast as his thick legs would take him. The door wouldn’t budge. Neither door would.
“Okay, everyone—” I began.
“Help me,” whispered a voice to my left.
I looked over. It was Polly Watson, dressed in her party sweater and skirt. She was pressed against the wall, her wide eyes fixed on mine.
“He’s coming,” she whispered. “Please, help—”
She let out a shriek. The first knife blow struck, and blood welled up on her sweater front.
“What do you see?” Frank asked.
I yanked my gaze away and turned to see every flashlight beam and eye focused on me.
“You saw something,” Frank said. “What was it?”
“Nothing. I was thinking. Now, we need to just stay calm. We’re in a house full of people. We’re just fine—”
“No, we aren’t.” Frank gestured at Ricardo, still on the floor, eyes wide with shock. “Something is going on here. I don’t think any of us”—a pointed look at Rory— “can deny that now. This isn’t staged.”
“Then the plan is the same. We sit tight and wait—”
“And wait for this thing to attack someone else?” Frank stepped toward me. “You see ghosts. I’ve followed your career for years. You’re the real deal, and you see something in this room.”
I glanced toward Polly, now on the floor, dying. I swallowed and reminded myself she wasn’t dying, she was long dead, and I had no idea why I was seeing this, but there was nothing—
“What are you seeing?” Frank whispered.
“Nothing.” I paused as I felt their gazes, skeptical, even a little angry, as if I was keeping vital information from them. “I keep thinking I see something, but if it’s a spirit, he or she isn’t coming through.”
Ricardo let out a stream of panicked Spanish and jabbed his finger toward the wall, right behind where Polly’s body was fading. I lifted my flashlight. There was blood on the wall. I’d seen it there earlier, when her ghost had been attacked. It was just like in the basement. Spectral blood spattering the walls and—
“Is that blood?” Cameron whispered.
They could see it?
I looked again. The blood was different now. Earlier, I’d seen spatters. This was thin lines trickling down, as if the drywall was sweating blood. I walked over and touched it.
“Jesus!” Rory said.