When Mark Waters decided to be a detective, he didn't
plan to investigate ghosts.
But as he sifts through evidence of a supposed suicide by train, he learns a murder that took place eighty years ago may directly affect his case.
Six months after the strange occurrences at The Depot, there’s another murder. This time, The Library holds secrets of several murders, and the dead won’t rest until the murderer checks out too.
Prologue
Edda
should have known he’d deny her. Deny seeing her, deny being with her. Her
friend had warned her, but she’d thought he was her chance to escape the life
she’d been living. A chance to be someone. A chance at love.
Ever
since she’d moved out of her momma’s home, life had been difficult. She could
barely even pay her way at the boarding house where she stayed. At nineteen,
the only thing she had going for her was her looks and body, even though it’d
been a challenge getting her size back down to fit the few clothes she owned.
Wesley
had assured her that he’d take care of her. But seeing his face tonight, she
knew it had all been lies. He screamed that everything was her fault and that
he couldn’t be bothered with someone of her social status. He’d continued to
shout while she shielded her ears, attempting to drown out his obscenities and
threats of what he planned to do to her.
She
opened the door of the bar, hoping her best friend was still working and could
give her a ride home. As soon as she stepped onto the polished wood floors, she
noticed the mess she was making. Black mud covered her new patent leather
shoes. Then she saw her new dress she’d ordered from the Sears and Roebuck
Catalog. It’d taken months to save that money, and she’d spent it all on one
dress. But she had wanted to look nice when Wesley took her to meet his
parents. Now the dress was in shreds.
How had it happened?
Her eyes
darted around the bar, trying to remember how she’d gotten back here after her
fight with Wesley.
“Becky,”
she called to her friend, relieved that she was still working. “Throw me a
towel, will ya? I got mud all over the new floors.”
Her
friend ignored her, as did everyone else crowded around the bar. The
mostly-male patrons laughed and sung along with the piano man in the corner,
but no one turned to look at her, even when the bells over the door had
announced her arrival.
“Becky,”
she said louder, but no one acknowledged her.
Instead,
bodies of people rushed around her, their faces contorting and blurring as
though she were in a dream or whooshing by them in an automobile. Men with
mustaches and beards reshaped to smooth-skinned faces belonging to women, then
back to men again. Pale-white faces turned dark, then back to white, and then
every shade in between. The clothes they wore changed colors, fabrics, even
styles. Dresses went from short to longer lengths and then to short again.
Business suits and ties changed to dungarees and undershirts. The room
lightened and darkened, over and over, as though the sun were circling the
tavern within seconds. The thick-waxed floor below her dulled and then
disappeared, and within seconds, a new floor had taken its place. Tables spun
before her, along with the chairs, as if some invisible entity were installing
them and removing them repeatedly, as though they couldn’t make up their mind
what style of furniture they wanted.
Her
gaze dropped to her hands, noticing thick black blood dripped from her
fingertips. The droplets fell, but never landed.
She
searched the room, hoping someone would help her, but then the entire room
flashed in front of her, similar to when Becky and she’d gone to the matinee a
few months ago and seen The Thin Man.
When the movie was over, they’d sat and watched as the projector rewound,
reversing the entire movie ten times faster than they’d watched it. Only, the
scene in the bar seemed to be moving forward, as if the room had sped up.
When
the world stopped spinning and twining, Edda raked her eyes across the room,
but nothing was the same.
The
bar had transformed.
It was
the same, but different. A light from the corner of the room drew her
attention. It resembled the screen at the show, but smaller. Colorful, bright
images of moving pictures flashed on the tiny screen.
Her
gaze fell on the two remaining people behind the bar.
Watching
them, a fiery hatred singed her insides, causing a flaring passion to radiate
through her soul as she realized what had happened to her.
Rather, what he had done to her.
Chapter
One
Detective
Mark Waters stretched his long legs in his favorite corner table of the dimly
lit restaurant. Other than alarm calls as a patrol officer, he only came here
for lunch, and his table had always been open because most customers didn’t
want to sit in the corner where they couldn’t watch TV or view the outside
patio area. From his vantage point, though, he could see the entry, the
downstairs seating area, the booths surrounding the bar, the upstairs dining
area, and the hanging plants that swung gently overhead. It’d been several
minutes since the last train had passed within thirty feet of the old train
station, and yet, the dangling green vines continued to sway, as though dancing
to a song only they could hear.
Despite
the ghost stories, he loved the old building that dated back to the late 1800s.
It had history and character. The famous haunt had been a brothel, a boarding
house, a saloon, and then finally the food and spirits eatery it is today.
He sat
within inches of the small restroom where many of the supposed occurrences had
taken place. Close enough that if a mouse crawled across the linoleum floor,
he’d hear it. He’d had to enter the ancient structure countless times as a
patrol officer when the alarm went off at four a.m. It’d happened so many times
that the owner had given the police station a key.
Tonight,
however, he was here for a different reason—death. Something he’d never escape,
since he’d decided to follow in his father’s footsteps as a homicide detective.
His father had been dead for almost twenty years, and he was still trying to
earn his respect.
“Waters,”
the pudgy, seasoned detective, Tim Townsend, called from behind the bar.
Townsend had always taken it upon himself to throw back a couple of shots when
he came here. He’d done the same thing on Mark’s first call to the restaurant
when Tim was his FTO. When Tim was his field-training officer, he wouldn’t have
dared to utter a word, but now Mark held rank as lieutenant.
“You
better put a five in the till, Tim. And you better not have more than one.”
“Yeah,
yeah, I hear ya.” Tim pulled out a bill that Mark was certain was a one and
shoved it into the slit of the drawer of the outdated cash register. “But like
I was sayin’…” he squeezed his large belly through the bar entrance and walked
over to where Mark sat. He rested his hand on the ladies’ bathroom door, but
then removed it as if it’d burnt him, and instead, leaned against the solid
wood bar. “Did I tell you about the time I was searchin’ The Depot and got
stuck in that little hall in the ladies’ bathroom?”
Mark
rested his chin on his fist, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “Several
times.”
“Really,
Dude. Look.” Townsend reached out, opened the ladies’ bathroom door, and
pointed. “I can’t even fit in between those two doors. And yet, I turned and
banged on every wall, and I couldn’t get out. Larry was here; he heard it.”
Mark
sighed in response to Tim’s claim, several officers’ claims actually. But he’d
been coming here for years, and he’d never heard a peep or seen an apparition,
as had been claimed for years by officers, customers, and naturally, the
owners. The proprietors loved the extra business they’d received since the TV
show American Haunts had featured the
restaurant, even brought in a medium who had in fact sensed several presences.
“I know, I know,” Mark said. “The place is haunted. I’ve heard all the
stories.”
Tim
shook his head and returned to leaning against the bar. “What are we waiting
for?”
“Forensics.
What else?”
Townsend
raised his hands in the air. “Why? Dude jumped in front of a train. End of
story. Guess we’ll have another lost soul wandering around the old joint.” Tim
chuckled at his attempted joke, but then his eyes darted around the eerie
edifice as if the dead man might appear because of his callous comment.
Waters
huffed out a breath and rubbed his head. “You sound like a teenager for God’s
sake, not a forty-five-year-old man.”
The
middle-aged man shrugged as a dismissal. Tim had never cared what people
thought of him, a characteristic Mark admired in the burnt-out detective. “Wife
and son moved back.” He adjusted his belt around his large waistline. “Guess
the punk wears off on me. Kid can’t seem to call me anything but ‘dude’, but
hey, at least we’re talking.”
Mark
threw his chin up in acknowledgement. “Congratulations, man. That’s great.”
Considering Townsend probably called his son ‘punk’ to his face, sort of
accounted for the ‘dude’ instead of ‘dad’. That wouldn’t have happened in his
house. Even at eight, Mark remembered his father demanding reverence. Of
course, he doled out respect also. His father had always spoken to him as though
he were much older and would frequently discuss the cases he was working,
almost as though Mark was his sounding board.
The
older detective puffed out his chest a fraction and then scraped a barstool
across the floor to sit. “So…how are things? Any new lady friends you care to
share some salacious details on. Since we’re just sittin’ here.”
Waters
shook his head. Tim was the horniest man he knew, the reason his wife kept
leaving him. If he wasn’t picking up a new woman, he was looking for juicy
tidbits from the other cops at the department. Mark never shared stories. Not
that he had anything interesting to reveal even if he wanted. His sex life had
been practically nonexistent for the last couple of years. His job was his
lover, and she kept him busy day and night. At twenty-eight, he should be
thinking about a wife and kids, but his father had waited until he was forty to
marry, so he had time.
“What
did you say?” Mark asked the detective who had wandered behind the bar again,
sniffing around the booze.
Tim
tilted his head as he held up a bottle of the cheap stuff this time, requesting
permission. “I asked if you had any new lady friends.”
“I
mean after that.”
“Nothin’,
man.”
“You
didn’t mutter something under your breath?”
“You
know me, Waters. If I’ve got somethin’ to say, I’ll say it.”
Mark
did know that. Still, he could have sworn he heard him whisper something.
The
bells over the door sounded, and the forensic team—all two of them—stepped
inside the bar. “You tending bar tonight, Tim?” Roland bellowed.
“Nah…just
checking stuff.”
Roland
laughed. “Sure ya are… Where’s the human hamburger?”
Crossing
the room to greet Roland, Mark gestured toward the rear exit. “It’s not
pretty.”
The
head of forensics shook his head. “Never is, Waters. But hell, when you’ve seen
it as many times as I have, you hardly even notice the smell.”
“Well,
there isn’t a death-smell yet. Just that uncooked-meat odor that keeps me from
cleaning raw chicken at home.”
Roland
walked out the rear door, and the new woman—who’d started in the last few
months—Anna, he remembered, followed
Roland outside, casting a quick glance in Mark’s direction. He’d noticed her
too in the last few weeks, but had been trying to ignore his attraction. It was
merely the reddish-blond hair, he told himself. He’d always been a sucker for
strawberry blondes. But the last time he’d dated a woman close to his job had
not worked out well, so he ignored his desire. He was great at ignoring his
wants, since he’d been doing it so long.
The
door creaked open again. Surprised, Mark turned toward it; he hadn’t expected
anyone other than the two of them. It closed after lolling open a couple of
seconds. He walked to it and pulled it closed until the latch clicked. Anna
obviously hadn’t realized that old buildings required extra attention, unlike
new hardware that closed on its own for energy savings.
“Ready?”
Tim’s booming voice rang in his ear at the same time his heavy hand clamped
onto Mark’s shoulder.
“Yeah.”
Mark turned, laughing. “You scared the—” He swallowed his words as he noticed
Tim was still behind the bar.
The good news... You can finish the first part of this mystery with a ghostly edge absolutely FREE! It's a great read when you only have about an hour to spare... Or, you can get two stories, The Depot and The Library for only $2.99!
Happy reading!
Carmen
(Includes both stories)
Also available at other retailers, but not all regions offer The Depot free, so please check before downloading.
If
it isn’t available free in your area, use…
Comments
Post a Comment