A Ghostly Ride in Gulfport (Gulf Coast Paranormal Book 10) Read online

  “Look at that! They’re moving deeper into the park. You got the keys, Midas?”

  “No, I still have them,” Sierra answered as she eased toward the fence and unlocked the gate. Dropping the keys in Midas’ open hand, she stepped back and let him lead the way. “Should we follow?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Midas answered, locking the gate behind us. “We’ll finish setting up after. Right now, this takes priority. I can’t believe we are seeing these orbs with the naked eye. They appear to be interacting with one another. Aaron, do you know of any insects that would do this?”

  Aaron was kind of our unofficial bug guy. He loved the outdoors, plant life, animals and creepy-crawlies. “Nothing that I can think of. They are moving faster now. I think we need to pick up the pace if we’re going to keep up with them.”

  “Right. Watch your footing, everyone!” Midas reminded us as we hustled behind the orbs. They were rushing through the midway and headed to the amusements section of the Gulf-A-Rama.

  “I could be mistaken, but I swear I hear the sound of voices. Are they talking? Is that an echo from somewhere?” I didn’t believe it, but I had to at least try debunking the sound.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Joshua said as he held the IR camera up and began recording. “Maybe we can grab the footage and review it for audio. I’m getting some awesome video, by the way. These things are showing up as blue and white heat markers. Look at this, Midas.”

  Midas had stopped for a minute. “Did you see that? To the left of the orbs? I swear I saw a little girl. Long dress, like the old-fashioned pioneer kind.”

  “Oh, that’s the prairie girl. I saw her multiple times last night. So, she’s making an appearance again. This is going to be an awesome night,” Sierra said in an excited voice. “Wait! Where are they going?” Suddenly, the swarm of tiny lights began to rise and flicker. The seven of us stood there gawking up at the empty sky, and Jocelyn continued to snap away.

  “Ah, man. That was so wonderful. Wait a minute. I see one. They are coming back, but the light is moving fast in the opposite direction. Toward the back of the park!”

  And we were off again, following the one remaining orb; it glowed intensely red, then faded to a light pink. It cleared the chain-link fence, rose up and shot down to the ground so fast I thought for sure it would stir up the ground beneath it. It didn’t. It just disappeared.

  All of us stood there with our mouths open for a few seconds. Midas said, “Let’s head back to the gate. Take a good look at that spot, Bruce. We need to remember where that orb landed. I’ve got a hunch.”

  “Is that private property?” Sierra asked carefully.

  “It belongs to Trenton Gaines. He won’t mind if we go take a look. I think we need to. Don’t you?”

  Ten minutes later, we were walking through the scrubby bushes and tall grasses that littered the field behind the park. There were no trees out here, which seemed odd to me. I felt my skin crawl slightly as I stood armed with a digital recorder. “Hey, I don’t think we’re alone. What do you think, Sierra?” I asked as I turned to my friend.

  Her eyes were wide, and her arms were raised slightly, like she was a toy being toted by an invisible giant.

  “What are you doing, Sierra? You okay?”

  She shook her head, and her arms settled to her sides as tears streamed down her face. “They are here, all of them. They want us to remember them. Look! Can’t you see them?” Sierra was so upset that she was barely getting the words out. I took a step toward her but banged my toe on a rock. Wait, that was no rock. This was a marker. A gravestone.

  “Can’t you see them? They are everywhere. They want to be remembered. Not forgotten. Not lost. We’re not lost…oh God. Joshua?”

  “I’m here, Sierra Kay.” He put his arms around his wife as she let the power of what she felt overwhelm her. I was grateful and not for the first time that I wasn’t a sensitive. Just a girl who painted a few ghosts from time to time.

  Bruce knelt down about ten feet away from me and moved his hand across the tall grass. “Here’s another marker. They must be all over the place. Look at this one. Midas?”

  “Yeah, I see a few broken stones. Could be grave markers.”

  Jocelyn shouted out, “No, boss man. There’s no ‘could be’—they are. We are standing in a graveyard. This broken marker, you have to see it.” I made my way to her; she was standing now and wiping her nose, which was wet with tears.

  “Son of a gun. You’re right. So those orbs weren’t elementals, not like we’ve seen before. They were likely the spirits of these souls. And what does that say?”

  “Hannah Sky. Died in 1855. Age 6,” I said, feeling the weight of the words as I spoke them.

  Sierra squatted down beside me to touch the stone. “She wanted me to find this. She wanted us to find this. This is why we’re here, Midas. What happened to Benjamin Pettis is a tragedy, but so is this. These resting places must be remembered and respected,” she said as she stood up with a determined look on her face.

  “Good idea, Sierra. I think Trenton Gaines will want to know about this. Maybe he already does, I don’t know, but we will certainly share all this with him. Let’s leave them in peace and go back to the park. I’d like to do some EVP work around the carousel. Let’s see if we can communicate with Ben.”

  “I’ve got the ghost box if you would like to try that again,” Bruce offered, apparently excited about his new toy.

  “Sure, but let’s not neglect the standard digital recorders. We should work in teams. I think we should also go back to that funhouse, Joshua. This is our last night here; we may as well make the best of it.”

  “Okay, let’s set the cameras up first.”

  For the next thirty minutes, the team worked on unloading equipment, testing angles and checking batteries. “Forget the list. I want a shot at that funhouse again,” Sierra said as she pulled her hair up into a messy bun. “I hate clowns, you all know that, but I need to do this. I have to face my fears. No, don’t argue with me, Joshua. I’m doing it. Cassidy, would you go with me? Not that I don’t trust you, baby, but I’m pretty sure Cassidy won’t jump out at me with a clown mask on.”

  “I’ll go. What do you have in mind?”

  “I just want to walk through it and see if I can pin down that negative spirit. If I’m right, I think it was chasing that little girl, Hannah Sky. It had to be the negative entity that she was running away from.”

  We walked away from the rest of the group as they sorted out their own details. “What are we going to do if we find something, Sierra? If there is a negative spirit here, it might not like seeing you two nights in a row.”

  “It probably won’t, but I have to do this. This little girl needs someone to help her. You aren’t a mother, Cassidy. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  I immediately felt crushed and stopped on the pathway with my flashlight by my side. “Are you kidding me with that?”

  Sierra spun around, her ponytail bouncing slightly as she assessed my facial expression. “Oh my God. I’m such an ass. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Obviously, you know all about loss. Your sister…gosh, please forgive me, Cassidy. I’ve been a real jerk to you lately.”

  “Let’s just go and get this over with,” I barked back as we walked toward the funhouse. I don’t know why her offhand remark bothered me so much. No way was I ready to have kids, but I’d already faced the pain of losing someone I loved with all my heart—three someones, actually. It really stung that Sierra seemed to forget that so easily.

  Put your feelings to the side and get to work. “Okay, so tell me again what happened in here? You see anything on the bottom floor?”

  Sierra stepped in behind me. The heels of her boots sounded clunky on the old wooden floor. “Nothing much, just a heavy feeling. Do you feel it?”

  “It feels creepy, but I’m not the sensitive,” I reminded her as I stepped deeper into the maze with the flashlight.

  “More like the insen
sitive. How is it that I can be so in tune with the dead but so out of whack with my friends? I really am sorry, Cassidy.”

  I sighed as I swung the light in her direction. “I know, Sierra. It’s all right. Let’s do this, okay? So, tell me what you feel. Don’t hold anything back. Let’s take it room by room. I’ve got the digital recorder going too, just in case we pick up anything.”

  “Great. Let’s see, I’m not sure if this has anything to do with my own dislike of clowns…” she began slowly. I noticed she was careful not to call it a fear this time. “But I’m feeling a lot of residual fear. Like the kind you would expect to feel in a funhouse that was really designed to scare kids. Yeah, it’s kind of out of balance. Is the floor crooked, or is that just me?”

  I stood where she was standing. “No, you’re right. This floor rests at a slight tilt. Probably a little bonus to make you feel creeped-out in here. I’m surprised they would allow that; they probably wouldn’t if this were being built today. With these crooked floors you’d get sued so fast, but it clearly isn’t warping. It was laid offset like that.”

  Sierra rubbed her hands together as she got really still. “Nothing else in here. Just that feeling, what they call the ‘funhouse effect,’ I guess.”

  “Let’s try the room next door. You are doing great, by the way.”

  Sierra took a few deep breaths as I flashed a light on the wall. Damn, that was a lot of creepy clown wall space. I agreed with her. This wasn’t a “fun” house at all.

  “In here, oh yeah…there’s been something in here. I think it lives here. There is a theory about this. Negative entities are drawn to empty spaces with heaps of negative residual energy. I can’t think of anything more negative than this room. Look at that wall! It’s like it is covered in blood. Do you see that?”

  I didn’t see anything at all that looked like blood. Just another mural of clowns cavorting in frightening poses. “No, I don’t see blood. Where, Sierra?”

  “There! Oh God, I have to get out of here. Someone lost a lot of blood in here. It’s everywhere. I feel sick, Cassidy.”

  “Take my hand. Let’s go back outside so you can get some air.”

  “No. I have to keep going.”

  We moved further into the maze, but there wasn’t much else to see or feel on the bottom floor. Before we climbed up the steps, I called up, “Hey, we’re coming up there. Don’t you dare hurt my friend Sierra. You keep your hands to yourself.”

  Sierra was visibly shaking now, as if she’d just been standing in a freezer. She walked ahead of me on the stairs—I didn’t rush her. She rubbed her hands and stood at the top of the stairs. I followed in behind her and immediately knew we weren’t alone.

  “What the heck? Who would put all this junk in here? This is more like a house of clown horrors. If you ever wanted to kill that fear of clowns, this would be the perfect place to do it. Let’s do some EVP work in here.”

  “You start,” Sierra said as she took the flashlight from me and bounced the beam around the darkened room. “And if you think this room is bad, wait until you see the next one. It’s a nightmare come true.”

  “Did you hear that? We think your place is pretty terrible. Do you like all these props in here?”

  “Cassidy, what are you doing? Don’t provoke, please.”

  “Trust me, Sierra. If you’re going to conquer your fears, you’re going to have to take a stand. You can do it. Tell this clown thing where to get off.”

  She didn’t seem too excited about my proposition, but she took the audio recorder and handed me the flashlight. “Fine.” She cleared her throat and walked around the room. “Is there anyone here who wants to talk to me? Are you the one that’s been harassing Hannah Sky? Did you try to scare me last night? You did a pretty good job.”

  Suddenly, it felt as if I walked through a wall of spider webs, but I didn’t see any. I waved my hands around and came into contact with a strange sticky residue that vanished as soon as I touched it. “Sierra! Check me for spiders. I think I walked into one. God, I hate spiders.”

  “Ha! So, I’m not the only one who has a fear of something specific. I wonder if this thing knows that. I don’t see anything…turn around. Oh my God!”

  “What? What is it?” I said as I tried to claw at my own back. “Is it a spider? Is it a big one?”

  She laughed and said, “No, there’s nothing there. Just kidding.”

  “Hey, that’s not cool. Not at all. I know I felt something—and weren’t you the one who said no scaring?”

  “That was before I knew you were afraid of spiders.” She grinned at me playfully, and then we both froze. The sound of heavy footsteps surprised the spider scare out of me.

  “There’s someone up here with us walking around,” I said as I brushed away the invisible web one more time. I grabbed Sierra’s hand, and we hurried to the next room. With all the junk, that wasn’t easy. She was right. This room was much more horrible than the last. I hated this place already. “There! I swear I saw something moving over there! Did you see that?”

  “No! Where?” She held my hand a little too tightly now, but I didn’t complain. I wasn’t letting her go either.

  “The corner, behind the clown and werewolf.”

  “That’s exactly how it started last night. Hey, if you’re in here, you should know you can’t hide from me. I can feel you, and so can Cassidy. Come out now. Let us see you.”

  We heard nothing, and there was no other shadow play. We had to get closer. That’s when the radio screamed to life.

  “Emergency! Help! Aaron fell off the wheel and he’s on the ground. Help me!” Jocelyn’s voice screaming into the radio sent us both running for the exit. Leaving the clowns and shadows behind, we barreled down the stairs and south toward the rides. I could see flashlights bouncing. The rest of the team was heading toward the Ferris wheel too.

  When we got there, we saw Aaron lying face down and moaning. Jocelyn was beside him crying. Bruce was on the phone with emergency services while Midas raced toward the gate to unlock it.

  How quickly things had turned from exciting investigation to potential tragedy. Aaron was coherent but unable to move and in a great deal of pain. “No, don’t move him, Joshua! He can’t be moved. Obviously, something is broken!” Jocelyn warned him. “Don’t touch him!”

  Although I hadn’t done it for a while, I couldn’t do anything except pray.

  Chapter Fifteen—Cassidy

  Jocelyn rode with Aaron in the ambulance as the rest of us followed. “Why in God’s name would he climb on that Ferris wheel? He doesn’t do good with heights, not unless he’s climbing and has his gear. What would make him do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Midas answered in a solemn voice. “I should have called off this investigation after last night. I’d gotten that warning from Papa Angelos, and I knew this was an unlucky time for me. I knew it, but I ignored all the warnings. This is on me.”

  “Whoa, whoa, Midas. It’s too early to start assigning blame. You clearly didn’t ask him to scale that train wreck. He was probably trying to show off for Jocelyn. He’s got it bad for her, I think.” He didn’t want to talk after that, and I didn’t want to force him. This was bad, so incredibly bad.

  We watched helplessly as they unloaded Aaron’s broken body from the ambulance. Jocelyn’s face was red and swollen from crying. She stayed with him as far as they would let her go. Midas picked up his phone and took a walk; clearly, he was calling Nina, Aaron’s grandmother.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Jocelyn.

  “No, I’m not. I shouldn’t have let him go up there. He wanted to climb it. Just a few buckets, Cassidy.” She plunked down in the seat with her head in her hands. “I can’t believe this happened. I think he might have broken his neck.”

  “Don’t think the worst. Let’s wait and see what the doctors say. I hear this is a good hospital,” I lied as best I could.

  “I hate hospitals. I’ve spent way too much time in them already. Everyone die
s in hospitals. I can’t let Aaron die.”

  “He’s not going to die,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. When she didn’t answer, I tried to engage her in conversation to keep her mind occupied. “Were you sick as a child? Is that why you were in hospitals so much?”

  “No. I was always healthy. It was my mother. She has a thing for men who beat her. A real turn-on, apparently.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Sierra rushed in and put her arms around Jocelyn, who started to cry again. “It’s okay. He’s going to be okay. Cassidy, can you find some water for her?”

  “Sure,” I said, happy to have a mission to go on. I was horrible at all this. I always said the wrong things at the wrong times. I guess in that way Sierra and I were too much alike. But in moments like this, she always came through. I didn’t find any vending machines but did spot a water cooler and some cups.

  But then I saw my fiancé crying, and that was it for me. I forgot my mission and walked outside to hold the man I loved. I couldn’t remember ever seeing Midas cry about anything. He often felt things intensely, but he was never one to let the tears flow. Except now.

  I wrapped my arms around him, and together we sank to the ground in a mutual embrace. There were people walking in and out of the emergency room, but nobody bothered us. It felt like we sat there for an eternity. I didn’t mind. I didn’t want to be anywhere else except with Midas.

  A few hours later, Nina arrived. She was gracious despite the circumstances, but the man she brought with her wasn’t a friendly guy at all. While he wasn’t openly confrontational, I could tell he did not approve of any of us. Nina wanted to see her grandson but had to wait for Aaron to stabilize, which didn’t help the situation much. Midas introduced Jocelyn to Nina, and Jocelyn immediately began to apologize for Aaron’s accident.

  “I’m really sorry about all this.”

  Nina offered no words of comfort, but she gave her a small smile. She was called to the back and left us alone with the silent, angry man she called Chuck. Midas asked to speak to him outside and Chuck begrudgingly left the waiting room with him, but the two weren’t gone long. An awkward silence fell until Nina returned. “He will be okay. Broke his collarbone and some fingers. He will be okay. I must go back with him. They are taking him upstairs soon.” We all breathed a sigh of relief; a broken collarbone didn’t sound like a walk in the park, but it was much less serious than we’d feared.