The views from those four towers also would have alerted the inner keep to anyone approaching the fortress from any direction. Unless one attempted an attack at night, there was no way to sneak up on the occupants of Dunlow.
And I’m not sure if that thought caused the feeling of being watched to creep up my spine, but I distinctly wondered if perhaps we weren’t being monitored by someone—or something—inside the keep.
“You get the feeling we’re being watched?” Heath asked me, as if reading my mind.
“I do.”
“I have a bad feeling about this, M. J.”
I inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Me too, buddy.”
I turned to look back where John was still sitting, waiting for Gopher, when I noticed something ominous on the horizon. “Are you kidding me?” I asked as I moved my hand up to shield the sun from my eyes so that I could squint at a large thundercloud moving toward us from way offshore.
“What?” Heath asked, and after I pointed to the thundercloud, he added, “Didn’t Gilley check the weather?”
On every ghost hunt we did, Gilley always downloaded the local weather report, as rain and foul weather are typically great conditions for ghost hunting, but this particular tempest certainly wasn’t welcomed at this point in the hunt, especially since we were all so exposed.
I pulled my headset out of my bag and clicked the radio transmitter on. All I got was static. “Damn!” I swore, yanking the headset off. “We forgot to do a check of the radios before we came up here.” I then retrieved my cell from my back pocket and dialed Gilley.
“Yo!” he said, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Did you check the weather this morning?”
“Uh ...”
I sighed heavily into the phone. “I take it that means no?”
“I woke up late,” Gil said by way of explanation. “Besides, what’s the big deal? There’s plenty of sunshine and it’s not even that cold.”
At that exact moment there was a rumble of thunder from the approaching storm and I could just imagine Gilley turning around to look offshore. “Uh-oh,” I heard him say.
Fully irritated, I hung up the phone. “We’ve got to go back down.”
Heath was peering at the approaching storm, and his posture suggested he was quite alarmed. “It’ll be here before we even make it to the causeway,” he said.
More thunder sounded in the distance and we could both see sharp bolts of lightning crackle through the dark cloud. “That storm’s looking really mean,” I said.
By this time, John had taken notice and he came trotting over to us. “We’ll never make it back down and across the causeway in time,” he said. “And I don’t know that I want to be caught on that slippery bridge in that.”
As if Gilley were already privy to our conversation, my phone rang, and after I answered it, Gil said, “The causeway’s already got water across it from the storm surge. We won’t be able to get back across.”
I looked skyward for a moment, wondering what I’d done wrong in another life to deserve this particular batch of bad luck. “You and the girls will have to come up,” I told him.
“Say what, now?”
“Gilley, there’s no other choice. You can’t stay down there unprotected from the storm, and the castle is the only shelter on this hunk of rock.”
“But—”
“No buts!” I yelled at him, worried that he’d panic and refuse to come up the stairs. “And we don’t have time to argue about it. That storm is coming in fast and furious, buddy, so get your fanny up here or I’ll come down and throw you over my shoulder!”
There was a pause, then, “Can I be thrown over Heath’s shoulder? He’s prettier.”
“Right now, Gilley Morehouse Gillespie,” I said, my voice low and threatening. “And I’m not kidding.” I hung up the phone for the second time and cast a worried glance at Heath. “If he’s not up here in twenty minutes, we’ll have to go down and get him.”
“I can go down to help them,” John offered. “After all, I’ve only made the trek up once today. You guys have both come up twice.”
In that moment I could have hugged John, but then I remembered that Kim was his girlfriend and he was probably worried about her more than anything. “Go,” I told him, even as he turned away and bolted for the stairs. “And make sure they hustle, John. We’ve probably only got fifteen to twenty minutes before that storm hits!”
As John dashed down the stairs, Gopher finally appeared. He looked sweaty and winded but happy to have reached the summit. “Where’s he going?” he asked as he turned back to look at John’s departing figure.
In answer, both Heath and I pointed to the thundercloud. “Aw, shit!” Gopher said when he saw it. “Didn’t Gilley check the weather?”
The storm moved faster than expected, striking our little island just ten minutes later. Gilley, John, Meg, and Kim were caught by it halfway up the stairs, and tired as I was, Heath and I still had to jog down to take their packs and hurry them along.
It was an awful climb up the rest of the way. We were pelted by water, whipped by wind, and hammered by the reverberating thunder. Lightning seemed to strike all around us, and Gilley was shivering so hard next to me that I thought for certain he’d faint. “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other!” I told him, as I held his free hand and pulled him urgently up the stairs.
“How much farther?” he cried, wheezing and struggling to continue climbing.
I looked up. There was still a long way to go. “We’re nearly there, honey! Just a few more steps!” Gilley began to lift his chin to look and I quickly added, “Watch your step! It’s slippery on these stairs!”
We moved like that for twenty more minutes and the journey up took twice as long as it would have in calmer conditions, but finally we crested the ledge, all of us gasping for breath, but wanting to get out of the wind and rain. “Let’s get to the castle!” Heath called, and he and Meg began to jog tiredly in that direction.
John and Kim followed behind too, and I looked at Gilley, who was doubled over, his hands on his knees. “You go,” he said with a small wave. “Save yourself!”
Even though I was exhausted, wet, cold, and miserable, I still smiled. “Oh, Gil,” I chuckled. “How could I leave my little drama queen behind?”
Gilley simply shook his head, and continued to try and pump air into his lungs. I gave him another few seconds until a bolt of lightning struck the water just offshore and the resulting thunder was loud enough to sink both of us to our knees. “We have to get inside, Gil!” I shouted.
Gilley trembled but nodded all the same and took my hand. I tugged him after me toward the large black abandoned structure, and hoped to God that we weren’t about to go from the frying pan into the fire.
We made it through the giant wooden door of the keep, and were finally out of the rain. It was very dark inside, but periodically we were lit up by the lightning still crackling all around the castle. “Which pack are the flashlights in?” Heath asked Gilley, who’d collapsed just inside the doorway.
Gilley motioned weakly to the one John was holding. Just a minute later we each held a flashlight and were pointing them around the spacious room just inside the entrance. “This place gives me the creeps,” said Kim.
“Me too,” said Meg.
“Me three,” said John.
Everyone else chimed in with a number, even Gilley. “Me six,” he said, pushing himself off the ground to sit up and look around.
And that was when it hit me: There were seven of us in the group. “Where’s Gopher?”
Heath looked at me and blinked. “Isn’t he here?”
“No.” I pointed the flashlight all around the hall, looking for our producer, and finally called out to him, “Gopher!” My voice echoed through the large hall, down into distant corridors, but no reply came back to us.
“Isn’t that his pack?” Meg asked, pointing to his signature silver backpack.
I hurr
ied over to it, and discovered it was indeed his, and next to it was his camera. I looked back to Heath as an unsettling foreboding sank deep into my bones. “He’d never leave his backpack,” I said.
“Maybe he’s off taking a whiz,” said John.
“Gopher!” I shouted. Again, my voice echoed out of the room down into the corridors, but no sign or sound of our producer could be seen or heard.
“Where could he have gone?” Gilley whimpered, looking especially frightened.
“We need to find him,” I said, getting up and wiping the wet hair out of my eyes.
“We also need to see about drying out our clothes and maybe starting a fire to get warm,” Heath advised.
It was then that I noticed both Meg and Kim standing with their arms wrapped tightly about themselves, shivering with cold.
“Right,” I agreed, rummaging around in my messenger bag for the lighter and the small notebook I never went without. Tossing both to John, I said, “You stay here with Gilley, Meg, and Kim. See if you can find some wood for a fire, and use the notebook paper for kindling. I think you should try and get one started by the door, ’cause I don’t trust that hearth’s chimney.”
We left the main group and Heath and I worked our way deeper into the castle. The storm was still raging outside, and the walls reverberated with the sound of thunder, but no flashes of lightning made their way inside. The only illumination was our flashlights. “Gopher!” I called as we moved into the first main corridor off the front hall.
Somewhere in the distance a loud creaking sound made Heath and me both pause to listen. “Where’d that come from?” Heath whispered.
“I think from that hallway down there,” I whispered back, motioning to a separate corridor that opened up all the way at the end of the one we were in.
“Gopher?” Heath shouted.
His voice echoed along the walls.
And then ...
... something growled back.
“What was that?” I whispered. The sound we’d heard was deep and guttural and not at all human.
Heath didn’t answer me. Instead, he pulled out a magnetic grenade and popped open the cap. “Whatever it was,” he said, bending low to my ear, “I don’t think it’s friendly.”
I pulled a grenade out too and uncorked the top. Tipping out the spike, I held it high, like a knife, ready to stab it into anyone—or anything—that approached. After a moment I asked Heath, “Should we continue down that way?”
“Do we have much of a choice?”
Mentally I cursed Gopher for wandering off. “Okay. Let’s keep going but quietly. No calling out to Gopher until we know what we’re dealing with.”
Heath and I proceeded cautiously down the corridor. I could still hear the storm, and the dripping of water and some sort of scuttling noise I attributed to something like a mouse or a rat, but nothing else disturbed the darkness.
As we walked forward, I began to get a terrible feeling. It was like I was thirteen again, watching a scary movie well past my bedtime. I couldn’t seem to shake the creepy shiver seeping along my spine. I leaned over and in Heath’s ear whispered, “I really don’t like this!”
He paused.
I paused.
And for several heartbeats neither of us moved even to breathe. The longer we stood there, waiting, the more unsettled I became. I was about to tell Heath that maybe we should double back—and quick—when a wave of something terrifying wafted through the ether and washed over me with tremendous power. I sank to my knees and closed my eyes as every nightmarish monster I’d ever seen on TV or conjured up in my worst dreams flooded through my mind and wiped away all reason.
It was as if a force that knew everything that had ever frightened me as a child or an adult had kept a record of it, and was filling my mind with all those images at once, while clearing away any ability I might have to form a rational thought. It was an onslaught of horror, and I was powerless to stop it.
The effect crippled me both mentally and physically, and I couldn’t seem to form a thought of my own. I was aware only of danger, terror, and panic until I felt something crash into my shoulder, and it knocked me to the ground. That just increased my terror and I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
I wanted desperately to get away, and so I scuttled and crawled along the floor, trembling from head to toe and barely able to hold on to my flashlight. I must have left the spike behind because very slowly I became aware of things other than the parade of terrifying images surging through my mind—like my empty right hand.
And then, with unexpected abruptness, the onslaught vanished, and I was left gasping and shaking all over but once again in my right mind. “M. J.!” someone whispered urgently to me. “Sugar, please, look at me!”
With effort I lifted my chin and realized Gilley was squatting down in front of me, attempting to get me to my feet.
His sweatshirt sagged on him, and I could see in the dim light how the dozens of magnets he’d secured to the inside of the shirt were bulging right through the fabric. “Gilley!” I croaked, clutching his arms and getting up shakily.
“What happened to you?” he asked, his face filled with concern. “And where’s Heath?”
I blinked and for the first time I was able to take in my surroundings. John, Meg, and Kim were hovering close, each of them holding several spikes and eyeing the hallway nervously. “I—I don’t know,” I said, trying to spot Heath’s face among those gathered around me. “He was next to me, and then ...” My voice trailed off as I tried to remember what had actually happened.
“And then what, honey?” Gilley asked.
I focused on his face again, still struggling to form linear thoughts. “Something attacked us.” And then, my lower lip began to tremble, and the shivering increased, and a tear or two leaked out of my eyes.
Gilley and John exchanged a look and John said, “Let’s get her back to the front hall. I can get that fire started, and I’ve got some water and a protein bar in my pack. Maybe that’ll help calm her.”
I realized I was still trembling and my hands were shaking so hard that the light from my flashlight was bouncing all over the floor. I took a deep breath and attempted to steady the ray, and that was when I saw two spikes illuminated several yards down the corridor.
I pointed to the spikes, and Gilley and John both looked to the spot. “Those yours?” Gilley asked.
I shook my head. “Only one. The other was Heath’s.”
“Heath!” John shouted.
We all waited breathlessly, but no reply came.
Tears were now streaming steadily down my cheeks as I began to consider that whatever terrifying force had produced such a crippling and mind-altering effect on me had likely done the same to Heath, and without his spike, he was completely at its mercy.
The five of us waited another few heartbeats, shining our beams down the long hallway, waiting for Heath to appear or call out, but nothing disturbed the steady rays of our lights or the eerie silence in the hallway.
“Come on,” Gilley said reluctantly. “Let’s get back and take care of M. J. Then we’ll talk about what to do next.”
The guys helped me to our makeshift camp in the large hall. John was able to get a good fire going from several pieces of wood he’d pulled from a nearby door, and we all huddled eagerly around it as much for the warmth as for the small comfort it brought to this awful place.
“So what happened?” Gilley asked me again when I’d calmed down a bit.
I shook my head, closing my eyes against the flood of memories. “I don’t even know how to describe it,” I whispered.
“Try,” he urged. I opened my eyes again and saw him staring at me with concern. I knew that I’d better get it together and explain what I could in order to help us find Heath and Gopher.
Taking a deep breath, I told them all about what had happened, and the last moment I could remember seeing Heath next to me before being attacked by that terrible force.
“So yo
u think something actually physically attacked you?” Kim asked.
“Yes. Yes, I do. I think some insanely powerful spook was able to call up my worst nightmares and parade them through my mind as if they were reality. The magnitude of that onslaught was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Not even the demon we encountered in San Francisco or the Witch of Queen’s Close could even touch the power of this ... this ... thing.”
“It must be the phantom everyone’s been talking about,” Gil said, his eyes large and afraid.
“Is that what knocked you over?” John asked.
I thought back. “No. I think that might have been Heath.”
Gilley leaned toward me. “So he was next to you right up until then?”
I nodded. “Yeah, Gil. I think he was.”
“Can you remember anything else after that?” he pressed.
I sighed, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Not much, buddy. I mean, I remember falling to my knees, then being knocked over by Heath, then crawling away down the hall where you guys found me, and that’s when reality clicked in again.”
“What do you think made the attack stop?” Meg asked.
My eyes moved to Gilley’s sweatshirt. “That,” I said, pointing to his chest.
Gil looked down. “Me?”
“Your sweatshirt.”
“But why didn’t your spikes work?” John said. “I mean, if Gilley’s sweatshirt was able to stop the phantom from attacking you, then why didn’t your spikes stop it in the first place?”
I leaned over and felt Gil’s shirt. It was packed with magnets. “Have you seen inside his shirt? He’s probably got two dozen magnets glued to the inside.”
“Three dozen,” Gilley corrected.
I sat back and regarded the group. “I think there might have been just enough magnetic energy radiating off Gilley to thwart even the phantom.”
I could see the small bit of relief in Gilley’s eyes. I knew he was terrified of being in the castle with a powerful phantom on the loose, especially since he’d seen the state I’d been in just twenty minutes before. But knowing he was wearing enough magnetic power to keep the phantom away probably lent him a bit of comfort.