Southern Bound - A Paranormal-Mystery (Max Porter Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  "Okay, well, maybe not the exact same thing, but the point is we'd still be the same people making the same choices we always make. But if we stay, if we fight our way through all this, then maybe we can improve ourselves enough to make things different. I don't know, make things better. Besides, aren't you the one who told me we had to push through?"

  Sandra said nothing for a few minutes, then she looked upon Max and said, "You know something? I love you."

  Part of Max wanted to talk this out further, but he tried to listen to his own words. The old way was talk and talk and talk until every angle and emotion had been explored. In the end, they would make love, but the next morning, nothing much would change. This time, Max decided, would be different. This time, he would take her love and hold onto it, forget about analyzing it to death, and instead, draw on its strength. After all, they were about to go ghost hunting in Old Salem. He needed all the strength he could get.

  Chapter 20

  They parked on Salt Street, a quiet area dominated by one ancient tree and a wall of younger trees, and in full view of the backyards of the houses lining Main Street. Light drizzle fell, and the midnight moon glossed the wet pavement with a dim, quarter-crescent glow. The sound of water drips hitting fallen leaves peppered the air. Though people lived here, nobody appeared to be up at two in the morning.

  "See anything?" Max whispered.

  Sandra peered around. "There's a dog sniffing that tree."

  "You see dead animals, too?"

  "No. There's a real dog sniffing that tree."

  Max followed Sandra's eyes and saw a small, black Dachshund puttering around a maple tree. Stifling a nervous giggle, Max said, "Let's just get to this."

  Sandra pecked his cheek and headed up the street. "Honey, relax. We're just talking to some ghosts."

  "There's a sentence I never thought I'd hear."

  "I mean it. You've got nothing to fear."

  "You're the one who said they can get all angry and hurt us when they're not bound."

  "But you're with me. I won't let them harm you."

  "You know some special handshake or something?"

  "Let's just get this done," she said and turned onto West Street at a fast clip.

  Max hurried to catch up. "Where to first?" he asked.

  She gestured toward the town square. "That seems like the best place to start. I'll be able to see a lot of the area from the center."

  Together they walked toward the grassy square, a truck passing on a distant street the only sound not of their making. Max listened to their breathing, their footsteps, their nervousness. More than just fear, he thought. If a person's imagination could have accidentally altered reality, he knew he would be bringing terrible creatures upon them. The idea of abandoning this pursuit, of rushing back to their car's safety and slipping home, seduced him for a fleeting moment. Then they arrived at the center, ringed by tall evergreens scenting the air with their wet fragrance.

  "Okay, ready?" Sandra asked. Max could only nod. Sandra took a cleansing breath and turned in a slow circle. Her eyes darted about. She squinted at one spot, glossed over another, until she returned to the position where she had started. Another breath, another slow circular turn, another return to the start.

  Max started to speak but Sandra snapped her head to the side. "What is it?" he asked, peering over her shoulder toward the Salem Academy. "What do you see?"

  "I don't know," she said. "Not a ghost. At least, not like the ones I've always seen. This was more like a wisp of smoke, like black smoke that moved of its own will. But I didn't see anything solid."

  "This place is hundreds of years old. Most of these buildings are original. It should be teeming with ghosts. Shouldn't it?"

  "What are you talking about?" Sandra said, raising her voice enough to sound violent in the still night air. "What do you know about it? You've seen one ghost and you think you understand it? I've been dealing with this my whole life, and I've been doing it on my own — no formal training, no mentor, nothing. So forgive me if I can't make it all work just the way you want it on cue."

  Max stepped back. "I didn't mean it that way. I don't feel comfortable here. I want this to be over. That's all." But that wasn't all. He didn't want to tell her that he had caught sight of the black wisp, too, and to him it was not a shadowy spirit at all, but rather a shadow — they were being watched.

  "There," Sandra said and pointed in the opposite direction of the shadow.

  "What do you see?"

  "I don't know yet. Something, though. A faint glimmer of something," she said and headed across the slippery grass.

  Max followed, glancing over his shoulder several times but never catching even a glimpse of the shadow he had seen before. Perhaps it was just an overactive imagination playing on his nerves. The idea made sense, but Max just couldn't believe it.

  Sandra crossed the street and stepped onto the brick laid sidewalk. Old trees pushed up the bricks with their roots, making the path a series of miniature mountains and valleys. She knelt down and smiled into empty space. "Hello," she said. Max squatted behind her but he saw nothing. "You're very pretty ... I can't hear you too well," she said. Then she jumped to her feet. "Wait! Come back!" Wiping the damp hair out of her face, she turned to Max. "She disappeared. Damn. I don't think she knew, you know? That she was dead? I must've scared her pretty bad."

  "Don't be ridiculous. I'm sure she runs from ghost-seeing people all the time."

  Sandra responded with just a hint of a smile — enough to ease them both a little. "This is going to be tricky," she said. "Don't worry, though, we'll get one of them to help us."

  Together they stood on the sidewalk, each silent, each searching the empty grounds. Max checked every window, every doorway, every nook he thought might harbor an enemy.

  An enemy? The idea that he now had faceless enemies to contend with, had been contending with for some time, eroded any illusion of security he still horded. Come on, ghosts, he thought. Show yourselves already.

  Another five minutes passed before Sandra said, "On the corner." She waved and approached like a tourist seeking a little friendly information — not too far from the truth, in fact. "Excuse me," she said, "I'm looking for a book that was placed around here awhile back ... a book ... no, no, a book." To Max, she said, "I think we're supposed to follow."

  "Then let's follow."

  Max kept a few steps back from Sandra so as not to crowd her or her invisible companion — plus, it afforded him a better distance to react from in case somebody moved against them. Not that he had an inkling what to do should anything happen, but some chance was better than none at all. Watching the sway of his wife's hips sent a jolt through his body — he would rather be at home in bed with her than traipsing in the drizzle, but then he'd rather never have heard of Hull or any of this in the first place.

  "This way," Sandra said, pointing to the long building Max had toured during daylight — Single Brothers House.

  "How do we get in?" Max asked as he jiggled the locked door handle.

  "I think," Sandra said and they heard a click from behind the door. "Looks like our ghost is being helpful."

  "Let's just keep on his good side."

  Sandra frowned. "How did you know that?"

  "I assume an angry ghost would not be a good idea."

  "No, you said his. You said, 'Let's just keep on his good side.' How did you know the ghost was male?"

  Had it been broad daylight, had they not been talking about ghosts of long dead settlers, he might have had a flippant or sarcastic reply. Instead, under the thin moonlight and steady drizzle, his chest grew heavy. "I don't know," he whispered, afraid to think the question through. "Just a guess." Without waiting for a response, he tried the door handle again and this time it opened with ease.

  They stepped into the wide foyer, the hollow sound of their footsteps on old wood echoed throughout the empty building. A musty odor tickled Max's nose, thicker than when he had visited before, and th
ough rather open in design, Max felt the walls tightening around him in the darkness. He fumbled for his flashlight, and when he flicked it on, the narrow, pale beam made the claustrophobic sensation worse as if only the illuminated sections of the building existed.

  Sandra drew a quick breath. "Wow," she said.

  "Ghosts?"

  "Just two others, but they're impressive looking. Their light is so bright."

  Max moved the flashlight around but saw only an empty foyer. "Can you see our fellow?"

  "It's hard," she said, squinting in the dark.

  "Call him. Maybe he can still hear you."

  "Shh. Please, let me do this."

  Max waited, wondering what the ghosts were doing, where they stood. Did they see him? Did they feel his presence? Perhaps that's why he felt so closed in — perhaps he felt them surrounding him.

  Sandra turned right and crept down the trade hall. The joiner's room on the right looked menacing in the flashlight beam — wooden skeletons of unfinished furniture surrounded by tortuous tools of assorted sizes. They proceeded further down the hall. The potter's room on the left with its foot-powered spinning wheel turned into a macabre lair where strange experiments of creation occurred under their nighttime gaze. Then, to Max's dismay, the ghost led them downstairs to the darker, colder basement floor.

  Max struggled to recall the pleasant daytime feel of this building but even the scuffling of their feet against the stone floor transformed into a hideous monster lurking just beyond the flashlight beam. He followed Sandra and the ghost down the hall until they stopped at a door on the left. A placard on a podium explained that this room had once been used for training but later came to be a storage room. Sandra stepped over the rope barring the entrance and pointed to a dusty pile of junk filling up the corner.

  "I think it's in here," she said and started sifting through the pile.

  Max entered the room to help. Broken pottery and old wood scraps lay around, haphazardly discarded in the room. A broom, a mop, bits of paper, and other leftovers filled in the numerous nooks of the small room. When Max pulled out a large, metal hook, Sandra said, "Crap."

  "What?"

  To the empty space, she said, "Book. I said, 'Book.' With a B. Damn."

  Letting the hook clatter to the ground, Max said, "Great."

  "Don't go," she said, stepping toward the outer-wall. Then her shoulders drooped. "He's gone."

  "I'm sorry, honey, this was just a bad idea. These ghosts aren't going to help us."

  "That's only the second one. We've got to give it more time. It's not easy. Not all ghosts are as connected with the world like Drummond. Some of them are barely here at all. It's like trying to get directions during a snowstorm in Siberia and you don't speak Russian. Get it?"

  "I know. I'm not blaming you. But, really, this could go on all night with no luck."

  "Or we might hit it big."

  Max heard wood creaking from above. "Shh," he snapped and turned out the flashlight. With slow, quiet movements, he edged toward Sandra. He stepped into the corner of something sharp, pain bursting at his hip, and grunted as he wrangled back the urge to yell. He felt around — the podium with the placard. Inching a few steps at a time, he worked around the podium and reached Sandra, put his mouth to her ear and whispered, "I think somebody's been following us since we got here."

  "How do we get out?" she asked, her voice steady despite her rigid body.

  "To the left and upstairs there's a door. It leads out back to the gardens. When we go, I'll turn the flashlight on and keep it pointed straight at the ground. At the stairs, I'll turn it off and the rest we have to do in the dark. Move quick but not so fast that you'll get hurt. And ... I don't know. That's the best I can come up with."

  "It's plenty good."

  "I love you, you know."

  "Right back at you," she said, turned her face and pressed her lips against Max with such force that his chest swelled with an overwhelming sensation — love and dread swirling like two wrestlers forever clenched together.

  When she pulled back, she exhaled slow and deliberate. "Okay. I'm ready."

  "Okay," he said, "I'm turning on the flashlight. Get ready to move. Here we go."

  Max pushed the flashlight's button, and it blazed light onto the floor. He saw the podium and the various piles of wood and boxes, and in the doorway, he saw the figure of a man lunging toward him.

  Chapter 21

  Together, Max and Sandra let out a startled cry. The man leapt atop Max and the flashlight banged to the floor, shutting off, leaving them in darkness. Max shoved hard but could not budge his attacker. Two strong hands gripped his throat, pushing his head back and slicing his ear against the corner of some plywood. Again, Max attempted to push off the man but the struggle for air weakened him.

  "Max? Max?" Sandra called as she fumbled in the dark. He wanted to reach out to her, to hold her hand, and the thought flashed in his mind that, at least, it wasn't her throat being strangled at the moment. He pictured this man straddling her, choking her, and hoped she had the sense to run now while she could get away.

  The image in his mind brought to the forefront that he should have done what any sensible woman would have attempted from the beginning. Mustering the last of his strength, Max garbled out a yell and rammed his knee upward into the man's groin. His knee hit something hard and he heard a crack. The man grunted a cry and rolled to the side, curled in a fetal position and whimpering.

  Max wheezed and gasped as he crawled forward, one hand massaging his throat, the other seeking the flashlight. The fight had sent ages of dust into the air, drying out Max's mouth with its dead taste. Blood dribbled from his ear. He felt a hand grab his wrist, but before he could utter a painful yelp, he heard the welcome voice of his love.

  "It's me, it's me," she said. "I can't find the flashlight."

  He pulled her hand towards his chest and breathed in her hair. Together, they stumbled to their feet and groped a path into the hall.

  "This way," Max said, every syllable searing his throat. He turned left and moved as fast as he dared in the darkness. When he reached a wide door, slants carved into the wood, he searched for a handle or knob.

  The door wouldn't open. Calm down, he scolded himself. Don't panic. "I think it's locked," he said.

  "Be sure," Sandra yelled.

  "We're wasting time. That guy's not going to be down for long. He was wearing a cup, for crying out loud. A fucking cup. What kind of person wears a cup?"

  "A professional, honey."

  "That's what I'm saying. Now, let's go back the way we came. I can get us out of here."

  "But the door."

  "Sandra, trust me."

  He heard the rustling of her clothing as she nodded. Then he heard something that shot adrenaline through his body — silence. Why didn't he hear the groans of their enemy?

  "Sandra," he whispered. Her hands fidgeted about his arm until they found his right hand again where they affixed firm. Without another word, he led her back down the hall, his left hand trailing the rough wall.

  He heard the grunt a second before he felt the man's fist strike his lower back. Max arched as the man grabbed his head and tossed him into the wall. His left arm blocked much of the impact, but still he saw little blue flashes in the darkness.

  He heard Sandra scream. He heard the man yell. He heard a body smack into something hard and drop. As he forced himself to stand (he only just noticed he had fallen to the floor), Max felt hands grab hold of his arm. He yanked back, flailing in the dark.

  "It's okay. It's me," Sandra said.

  "Where's —"

  "I don't know. He grabbed me and I bit his hand. Then I swung my fist and hit him — I think in the head but I'm not sure. I can't see anything. Can you walk?"

  "I'm okay," Max said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and using her as a crutch. His head blazed, and he wanted to vomit but managed to keep setting one foot in front of the other.

  They reached the sta
irs and clambered up to the main floor. Light from the streets pierced the darkness in sharp slivers — enough to move fast. Max took three deep breaths, let go of Sandra, and focused on walking in a straight line. Each step sent stabs up his side but he pushed on. Knowing the danger just one floor below motivated him plenty.

  Sandra darted ahead, reached the backdoor and rattled the handle until it opened. He could see her triumphant smile. "I got it," she said.

  She put her arm around his waist for support, and together they stepped into the backyard, light rain dancing on their faces and filling the chill night air with its fresh smell. They hurried along the path leading to the garden and the fenced-in crops. Max expected to hear the man slam open the door and chase after them but nothing came. Not yet. Sandra slipped on the wet ground, causing Max to stumble as well, but they managed to stay standing and rushed to the garden's end.

  "Can you climb over?" Sandra asked.

  The fence was made of wood and only chest high, but Max knew the climb would hurt. The idea of going back and around the fence did not sit well, though, so he nodded. Wincing and grunting, and with the aid of Sandra, he managed the small feat.

  "The car's this way," Sandra said, heading left.

  "No," Max said. "They might be waiting for us."

  "They? There's more than one?"

  "I don't know, but we're not risking it. Let's go around, take the long way, and we'll circle back. If there's only one or a whole gang it won't matter. Either they'll have left by that time or we'll be able to see them as we approach. We'll know then and figure it out from there."

  "Okay," she said, scanning the area. "We're on Old Salem Road."

  "Follow it to the right. I think it curves a few blocks up and connects with Main Street."

  As they walked along the glistening street, several cars shot by. Max felt too unsteady for this street. He kept seeing himself weave into the path of an oncoming car. With a nod, he led Sandra back onto Salt Street, heading away from their car and paralleling Old Salem Road.

  He checked over his shoulder for any pursuit. Just empty street. White streetlamps dotted the right side of the road, one with a white street sign — the paint chipping off. The left side had a brick sidewalk and homes. The cracked pavement pooled water. A weird sensation formed in Max's chest, worked upward until it reached his face, and emerged with a fit of giggles.