Phantom Evil

Jake was looking at her sympathetically. “Don’t look like that—kid,” he teased. “He’s really not out to put you through the nth degree.”



“Huh?” she looked at him.



“He’s following Martin DuPre,” Jake explained. “DuPre’s got some fancy dinner tonight.”



“Oh. Well, that’s good,” she said.



The five of them wound up gathering around the table; it was a nice moment—a strange moment of bonding. “Jenna, go on,” Angela said.



She took a long swallow of her beer. “I had a patient one time, a really nice old man named Jeter Miller. He had cancer, and he was dying, but one day, he went into cardiac arrest. The doctors worked on him, but he died. I had been his nurse. He’d been such a nice old fellow and he might have had six months, maybe a year, to go—I was sorry. Well, I wound up in the hospital morgue with some paperwork the night of the day when he had died, and I happened to be alone in the fridge—that’s what we called the body storage—when he gripped my hand. I can tell you, I was so terrified that my scream came out as a squeak.” She paused, taking a deep breath.



“He wasn’t really dead?” Will asked.



“Oh, no. He was dead. And don’t stare at me like that. I don’t share this story often,” Jenna said.



“I’m sorry,” Will said. “I didn’t mean to stare at you in any way that wasn’t full of trust and sympathy, believe me.”



“What then?” Angela prompted her.



“He just wanted to talk to me. He said that his business partner had messed with his IV, bringing on the heart attack. The man had killed him to keep Jeter from telling his son—from whom he’d been estranged until recently—about the will that left his half of the business to him. To make a long story short, there wouldn’t have been an autopsy because he was a stage-4 cancer patient and he had died in the hospital. I started making a squawk about the situation, there was an autopsy, and it was proven that the partner had poisoned the IV. I went back down to the morgue, thinking that I’d been crazy the first time, but that I was going to tell the corpse that everything was okay, and he thanked me with tears in his eyes, and told me that he’d just been waiting to thank me, and then…well, I saw light. I saw light the way that we saw it today. So, Angela, maybe by freeing Mr. Petti when you found his skeleton beneath the floor, you let them all go where they needed to be.”



“Thank you,” Angela said. She reached across the table and squeezed Jenna’s hand.



Jenna took another very long swallow of beer. “And now, you all think I’m crazy.”



“None of us, honey!” Whitney said, lifting her beer. “To us,” she said softly. “The ghost-files team. The Krewe of Hunters. Or, whatever they want to call us.”



“The Krewe of Hunters? I like it,” Will grinned, lifting his beer bottle as well. “Indeed, to us. And a sworn promise. None of us will ever think the others are crazy, and we won’t be afraid that the others think we’re crazy. We all know that we’re delightfully different, and that’s that!”



They clinked bottles.



“What do we think about Jackson?” Jake asked. “What do we think he thinks?”



“He thinks he’s boss,” Angela said.



“He is the boss,” Jake punctuated his remark with a chug.



“Technically, Adam Harrison is the boss,” Angela corrected.



“Whatever, he’s in charge of the team,” Jake said.



“He’s a good guy,” Will said. “And we shouldn’t be lying or hiding things from him. He isn’t saying that it can’t be—he’s just saying, prove it.”



Angela stood up. “I’m going to get ready for dinner,” she said. “Have fun storming the castle, everyone.”



She turned and started out of the room. Whitney tossed a cardboard coaster at her. “If it’s a really fancy place, bring us all doggie bags!”



Angela turned back to her, laughing. “Okay, maybe I came out ahead tonight. Maybe not… Time will tell,” she said.



She left them sitting in the kitchen, grateful for the friendships she seemed to be forging with them.



Up in her room, she paused. The door that separated her room from Jackson’s was not closed tight, but it was closed. He evidently wanted his privacy.



Prime time, Angela thought.



Yes.



Dusk descending again, and it was that time that Regina had died, and a time when it seemed that the past liked to replay, almost like a play, but sometimes, the characters changed the lines. She had to be crazy, she decided. She had been terrified in the basement that afternoon—it had just been for split seconds really. Then Will had come down, and the world had begun spinning back to normal again.



What would have happened if she hadn’t left the basement?



She didn’t know. She hadn’t been afraid of the manifestation she had seen that had appeared as the strange light in the film. Not at all. But she had felt that there had been something behind her. Something evil. Something ready to pounce on her.



Ghosts didn’t pounce. They didn’t have much physical power. Ghosts did exist in this house. Maybe Jackson knew it, and maybe he was right that a real, living, flesh-and-blood human with strength had to be involved as well.



She sat on the bed, half closing her eyes. “Annabelle? Percy?” she called softly.



For a moment, there was nothing.



Then, in her mind’s eye or in real life, the little boy appeared. A moment later, she saw his sister peeping out from behind him.



They weren’t real. They weren’t solid. She could see the wall behind them.



But they were there.



“Please, miss, he’s a very bad man,” Percy said to her.



“You mean Mr. Newton? Madden C. Newton. He was terribly cruel to you,” Angela said.



Percy winced. He lowered his head, and then nodded. Then he looked up at her again. “But they keep coming. They come to this house, and something happens, because he gets into their minds, I think.”



“He’s a very bad man,” Annabelle said, still clinging to her brother.



“He was a bad man,” Angela said. “But you were very good children. There is a better place for you, where you can find your parents.”



“No,” Percy said, looking at her gravely. “I have to stay. I tried to help the lady. But she didn’t see me, and she saw what they wanted her to see. She couldn’t hear me, but the bad man made pictures with the light, and she saw what he wanted her to see.”



“Percy, I don’t understand. What bad man?”



“He knows the house. He has come to the house. He came when the nice lady lived here. I wanted to help her. I tried to help her. She couldn’t see me. She saw what he wanted her to see,” Percy said.



“Angela!” There was a tap on the dividing door. It opened, and Jackson was standing there, impossibly tall and lean and solid and alive.



She looked at Percy and Annabelle, who faded away.



She turned back to Jackson, worried that he would have heard her conversation and become certain that she talked to herself.



But Jackson’s keen, dark blue eyes were riveted on the spot where the children had been standing.



He had seen them, she thought. He had seen the children!



But he looked at her then and said casually, “Ready to go?”



“I just need a minute to change my clothes,” she said, and closed the door between them.



CHAPTER ELEVEN



Angela walked along beside Jackson in silence, wondering just how they appeared to others, she so blond, and he so dark.



It was a beautiful season to walk in the city of New Orleans. A night with a soft breeze and enough warmth to make that breeze like the soft, comfortable touch of a warm and gentle hand.



But one of her favorite things about the city was the variety of people and colors to be found there, nationalities and backgrounds all mixed up to produce the most interesting and handsome human beings.



She didn’t ask Jackson if he had seen the children in the room. If and when he wanted to say something to her, he would.



He seemed distracted as they walked, and still, he looked at her now and then, as if he remembered she had been in a dangerous position, and the fact didn’t please him.



“Jackson?” she asked.



“Huh?”



“You’ve had strange experiences. I know you have. Anyone that Adam brought into this has had some kind of—strange experience.”



He looked down at her. She thought that he would instantly deny her. But he didn’t. “Dreams,” he said. “But dreams may simply be projections of our minds, utilizing what we know and making sense out of it.”



“All right. So…?”



“All right—I’ll tell you this.” He looked pained for a minute. “I thought I saw one of my coworkers, Sally. She came to me in a dream and told me where the murderer was holed up. I made it there in time to save two lives, but found…well, that Sally had died. It shook me up pretty badly, but I know how Adam Harrison knew about it. He likely wondered how I’d gotten there, either through a brilliant burst of insight, or something that was paranormal. And I don’t know which myself at times, really.”



“You’re still a skeptic.”



He hesitated. “I believe in God, or a supreme being, and I believe our role in life is to live with kindness to others, and I believe monsters should be brought down. Maybe I do believe in something beyond, but I’ve also seen enough fakers, quacks, and criminals to remain a skeptic. Okay?”



She lowered her head and smiled. It was actually quite a lot from him.



“It was lovely of you to think of adding a trip to the museum on to dinner like this,” she said, her tone light.



“I’m glad you think so.”



They walked down Royal Street toward Canal until they reached the museum. Jackson swore softly. The museum would be closing in fifteen minutes, per a sign on the door.