Ghost Night

Zoe looked at him with incredulous disdain. “No. No, we did not.”



Jay looked from face to face and was obviously satisfied with the chorus of denials.



“All right, we’ll check it out,” Jay said.



“Yes, yes. Come on, let’s do this,” Lew said with his pleasant and easy Bahamian accent. “We’ll find Travis and see what’s going on. Miss Georgia, you’re going to be just fine, honey.”



But Georgia shook her head. “Travis is dead,” she repeated.



“I’ll light some torches from the fire,” Lew offered.



“I don’t believe we’re doing this,” Jay said, tired and irritated as they started down the beach. “I made a mistake in casting, that’s for sure. We’re filming a legend, a horror flick, for God’s sake. She’s letting it all get to her. This is crazy.”



Lew chuckled softly. “Ah, yes, well, that’s the way it is with American slasher flicks, eh? Two young people drink and wander off into the woods or the pines to make love, and then the monster comes upon them. They are mistaken. This is Bimini. There are no monsters.”



Vanessa stopped. They had come to the edge of the beach. A pine forest came almost flush with the water after a rise in the landscape.



“Nothing,” Jay said. “There’s nothing out here at all.”



Vanessa raised her torch to look around. She froze suddenly. There was nothing there now, but just feet from her, the sand looked as if it had been raked, and it was damp as well, as if someone had dumped buckets of water twenty feet inland from the shore.



“Look,” she said.



“Someone was playing a joke on her—on her and Travis, maybe,” Jay said. He swore. “We’ve got one more day of filming to tie up loose ends, and I guess it’s natural that someone just feels the need to play practical jokes.”



“But where is Travis?” Vanessa asked.



Lew was hunkered down by the disturbed sand. “Interesting,” he said.



“What?” Jay asked.



“It does look like something burst outward from the sand—more than it looks as if someone were digging in it,” Lew said. “As if it erupted, and was then smoothed over.”



“We work with great props and special-effects people,” Jay said dryly. “Let’s get back. I’m tired as hell. Someone has to have some kind of sleeping pill Georgia can take.”



“I’m not sure she should be taking a pill—” Vanessa began.



“I am,” Jay interrupted her. “I need to sleep tonight!”



“I’ll take Georgia in with me,” Vanessa volunteered. She surprised herself. She hadn’t disliked Georgia; she just found the woman to be a little…vapid. But that night, she felt sorry for her. Georgia had dropped out of high school, certain that an actress didn’t need an education. She’d spent several years working as a model at car and boat shows, and Jay had discovered her because she’d gotten a local spot on television promoting a used-car dealer. Vanessa had to admit that Georgia might not be the most talented actress she knew, but she had been professional and easy to work with. She was pretty sure that Georgia had never gotten a lot of support from her parents or anyone else.



She also knew that she had been lucky. She had been raised by parents who had cared more about their children than anything else in life. Her mother and father had been avid historians, readers, writers and divers, and they had done everything in their power to put their two children through college. She loved history and she loved diving. Her actual forte was in script writing, but in Hollywood, that was a difficult route, with scripts being rewritten so many times that you seldom recognized your own work at the end, and you seldom received credit for a project, either. It had been necessary, in her mind, to learn cameras as well, and with her background, underwater work was a natural. She was driven and she was passionate about her work, so she’d jumped at the chance to work on this movie when Jay called her.



Jay loved horror movies, and they had loved each other forever. Not as boyfriend and girlfriend—they had known each other since grade school in the small town of Micanopy, Florida. He had a chance with this movie, and she wanted him to have his chance. She wanted this chance for herself, too.



She had said from the beginning that she was in only if she got her own tent.



But tonight she’d bring Georgia in with her and be a mother hen.



Carlos had been settling the young woman down; the two were sitting by the fire with large plastic cups— Vanessa was pretty sure they contained something a lot harder than champagne. As Vanessa, Jay and Lew returned, Georgia jumped to her feet, staring at them. “See? See? I told you!”



Jay took Georgia by the shoulders and tried to be calm and reassuring. “Georgia, all I can think is that Travis is playing some kind of a trick on you, sweetie.”



“No, no! You have to go look for Travis!” Georgia said.



“I guess we should,” Vanessa said quietly.



Jay stared at her with aggravation. “Look for him? Oh, please! You know damned well that Travis is the one who played this ridiculous joke, or he’s in on it! And there’s nothing there, Georgia. No hands, no skulls, no monsters. Georgia, you’ve got to get some sleep. I need some sleep.”



“No, no, I saw it!” Georgia said, shaking her head in fear. She glared furiously at Jay. “I have to get out of here. I won’t stay here!” she insisted.



“You’ve got to be joking!” Jay declared irritably. “Georgia, you were touting used cars, for God’s sake! This could make you the new scream queen!”



Georgia was obviously terrified beyond caring. “I don’t care! I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life as a waitress. I have to get off this island—now. Now!”



“It’s dark!” Jay reminded her.



“Hey, hey, it’s all right, we’re fifty miles from Miami, and we’ve got a good speedboat. I can take her in and be back to help with any follow-up or backup shots that we need tomorrow,” Carlos offered.



“What if we need the actress?” Jay demanded. “I haven’t looked through the sequences we shot today.”



Carlos looked at Vanessa. “If Nessa doesn’t mind, she’s the same height and build and has long blond hair. She can fill in.”



“Yes, yes, Vanessa can fill in! You can be my stunt double!” Georgia said enthusiastically.



“For joy, for joy,” Vanessa murmured. But she was still disturbed by the young woman’s absolute terror. Georgia was ambitious. Was she really so terrified that she would walk away from what could be a big break for her?



She realized that everyone was staring at her.



“Sure. Whatever is needed,” she said dryly to Jay. Of course she would do it. They both had a lot of hard work—not to mention their finances—tied up with this.



“I’ll be back in the morning,” Carlos promised. “Look, seriously, it’s what? Seven-thirty, eight o’clock now? I can make Miami in a few hours. I’ll get a night’s sleep and head back by five or six tomorrow morning.”



It was agreed. In another hour, Carlos and Georgia were off.



Vanessa found herself sitting by the fire with the others, sipping champagne once again, though it had lost its taste.



“I still think we should look for Travis,” she said.



Zoe let out an irritated “tsking” sound. “That jerk! He’s out there somewhere, laughing at everyone, and not caring that he’s put a real bug in the production.”



“And messing with the props. When he walks up laughing and swaggering in the morning, I think we should give him a good right hook,” Barry said.



Silence fell.



“Hey, we could sit here and tell ghost stories!” Bill suggested.



They all glared at him. Apparently, no one was in the mood.



For a while, they did reflect upon the many disappearances and oddities that had occurred in the Bermuda Triangle, but even that didn’t last long.



It was only nine-thirty when Vanessa opted for bed. She lay awake, watching the patterns of the low-burning fire playing upon the canvas roof of her tent. She thought about the ridiculousness of filming the movie—the hours of getting the characters into makeup and how, to save money, they had all taken on so many different tasks. Jay and Carlos had played the vengeful pirates, coming out of the sea, and she had supplied some of the sound effects and acted as the kidnapped and murdered Dona Isabella.



Her script was honestly good, based on history and legend. Once, the Florida Keys and the Bahamas had been areas of lawlessness, ruled by pirates. An infamous pirate captain, Mad Miller, and his mistress, Kitty Cutlass, had gone on a wild reign of terror, taking ship after ship, or so legend said. Then all had gone wrong. They had taken a ship bearing the beautiful and rich Dona Isabella. They had sunk her ship, killed most of the crew and, presumably, planned on ransoming Dona Isabella. She had been sailing from Key West to Spain, back to her wealthy husband, when she had been taken. But nothing had happened as planned. Legend said that Kitty Cutlass killed Dona Isabella in a fit of rage, and on Haunt Island, Mad Miller went really mad and massacred the remaining crew and many of his own men. Finally, his pirate ship had sunk off Haunt Island, caught in the vengeful winds of a massive storm. Vanessa had based her script on the legend, doing what research she could, with contemporary teenagers finding themselves victims of bitter ghosts risen from the sand and the sea. As a screenplay, the story provided amazing fodder for the imagination. Filming had actually been fun. There had been some amusing accidents along the way, but none that had caused any harm. Bill had fallen into one of the buckets of blood, and Jake had come bolting up out of the water once, terrified of a nurse shark. She liked the people she was working with, and so, for the most part, it had been enjoyable. A crash shoot—all of it done within three weeks. And Jay was right—it could hit big at the box office.



She still felt disturbed and uneasy, although she wasn’t alone. The tents were no more than a few feet apart. Jay, who had been bunking with Carlos, was next to her. Bill and Jake were on her left side. Lew, as secure a figure as anyone might ever want to meet, was just beyond Zoe.