Spooked on the Gulf Coast (Gulf Coast Paranormal Trilogy Book 3) Read online

I cannot help you, Claudette. What if they put me in the ocean too?

  What bitter irony that I, who wanted so keenly to die just a few days ago, now wanted nothing more than to live.

  From the first night to this latest meal, all these social events were extremely uncomfortable for me. I didn’t want to answer any more questions or make small talk with anyone. With a sigh, I stared at my plate and picked at my food until my latest interrogator gave up and went off to search for more pleasant company. It didn’t take long for the men to label me “soft-minded,” and I welcomed their ignorance, especially as that meant they would no longer harass me with attempts at conversation. Late that night, Jean came to me. My only friend slipped under my covers and spoke softly.

  “Listen to me, Gabrielle. You must make a match. That is why we are all here. I am sorry your Poppa is gone, but you must try. Your future depends on it, dearest. You are a pretty girl, and even though you had a bumpy start, you can still have your pick. I will make sure that you have a proper match. You can have whomever you pick, but you have to make a decision. LeMoyne will listen to me. Is there no one who pleases you? I agree these are not the quality of men that I had hoped for, but we must make the best of it. I do not know what will happen to us if we do not marry.”

  I cuddled under my blanket and shook my head slowly. “I do not want to marry anyone. I want to go home.”

  “This is our home, Gabrielle. We will never leave this strange world, but we can have our freedom through marriage. We can be mothers and wives. We can live a life of honor. And although it will be a hard life, a difficult one, we are strong. Are you listening?”

  “Yes. What about you, Jean? Who has caught your eye?” We spoke in English, and although my vocabulary was limited I understood the basics now.

  “Only one. He is a bit older than I, but I do not find him repulsive at all. And he is of nobility, of a sort.”

  “Who is it?”

  With a gleeful smile, she spoke like a silly young girl, which proved that Jean was very excited about her good fortune. Or what she considered to be her good fortune. This type of behavior was so very unlike the mature, sedate Jean that I knew. “I cannot tell you yet. We are still working out the details, but I will reveal all to you soon.”

  “You cannot tell me? I am your closest friend, Jean. Am I not?”

  “I care a great deal for you, Gabrielle.” She hugged me, but I felt cold inside.

  “Oh, I see.” Disappointed at her answer, I closed my eyes and pretended to go to sleep. So I was not her closest friend? Of course not. Even in this New World, we were too different. She would always be better than me. I was nothing more than her fashionable charity. I had never felt so lonely! After Jean got still beside me and the cabin filled with the soft snores of our cabin mates, I decided to go for a walk. The nearby crashing of waves lured me, and if I wanted to talk to Poppa I would have to go to him. At least Claudette was still nowhere to be seen.

  Massacre Island was not a beautiful place, not like Havana had been. Now that place had seemed like paradise. Poppa and I had walked the markets all day. There had been so much to see and do. Poppa allowed me to pet a bright blue parrot, and we nibbled on fresh fruit and bread together. The place smelled like exotic flowers and spices; there was nothing like that here. I carefully stepped over a fallen palm tree and continued my journey to the ocean.

  No, I did not like this place at all. There were no birds, no fresh fruit, no spices and no Poppa. Nothing but five makeshift cabins, a few fire pits and the occasional beating of drums from some faraway camp. It was certainly a wild place.

  Finding the ocean wouldn’t be difficult at all. I followed my ears, grateful that no one spotted me. Why post a watch here in this place? We were on a small island in the middle of God’s nowhere. I slipped behind one building and then another until I saw the wide open beach.

  But there was one man sitting on the beach staring at the moon—Jon Batiste! I could not spy on him long; I heard someone coming up behind me. As quietly as possible, I squatted behind a cluster of small bushes and waited in the darkness. Yes, I could see a figure, a young woman. That was not Claudette but Leela! Had she too been spying on Jon Batiste? Where had she come from? A small animal ran past my foot, and I smothered a squeal. Leela must have heard, for she fled immediately.

  Seeing that she disappeared into the darkness and didn’t return, I left my hiding place and walked toward Jon Batiste. The young colonist intrigued me when he wasn’t laughing at me. Despite my mixed emotions concerning him, I wanted to speak to him. So far, it didn’t appear that he would make the first introduction, but I wanted to hear the sound of his voice. I couldn’t explain why. What should I say? I crept up behind him but couldn’t bring myself to speak. Finally, he did. He didn’t turn around but said, “Are you haunting me?”

  That question surprised me. “Do you see ghosts too?” I asked in a whisper.

  “I think I am seeing one now,” he said as he turned to smile at me. “Don’t all ghosts wear white?”

  “No, they don’t, and I do not like being made fun of.” You should go now, Gabrielle. Walk away! But I did not. Instead, I glowered down at him. He did not seem moved by my disapproval.

  “Neither do I. That certainly gives us something in common. What is your name?”

  “Gabrielle. Gabrielle Bonet.”

  “Nice to meet you, Gabrielle Bonet.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to give me your name?”

  “You know my name.”

  “How do you know that? It is still polite to provide your name when a lady asks for it.”

  “Everyone knows my name.” He stood up and dusted the sand off his clothes. “And I do not know too many ladies.”

  “My friend Jean is right—you think too much of yourself, Jon Batiste.”

  “Ah…see? You do know my name.”

  I frowned at him and decided I would leave right then and there. He called after me, “Would you rather I behave like you and think nothing of myself?” I stopped, and he extended his hand to me, presumably as an invitation to walk with him. I made it clear I did not wish to hold his hand. I held my hands behind my back and walked on the wet sand beside him. Where we were going, I did not know. I did not care. Neither did I argue with him. He was right. I did not think much of myself, but neither did anyone else.

  After a minute or two, he said a strange thing to me. “Tell me about this ghost you see. Or do you see many ghosts?” He had a smile on his face, but I began to understand that this was his natural expression. He wasn’t so much laughing at me as he was laughing at the world. I couldn’t explain why, but I found myself telling him my secret—a secret I never even shared with my close friend. But then again, Jean proved tonight that we weren’t that close after all.

  “Her name is Claudette. She was younger than me by two years and was much smaller than me. She died on the Pelican, or at least they thought she died. She was sick, like Poppa and the others. They rolled her in her blanket and threw her overboard, but she wasn’t dead.” He paused on the sand. I felt the hair rise up on my neck as I spoke Claudette’s horrible secret. “She was alive, Jon Batiste. I saw her body moving under the blanket. I screamed, but nobody would listen. Not Father Huve, not LeMoyne and not Jean. No one listened, and they threw Claudette into the ocean.”

  Jon Batiste’s jovial expression disappeared. His eyes blinked slowly and heavily as he understood what I was saying to him. “What does she want? She must know you tried to stop it.”

  “She wants justice. I think Claudette wants justice.”

  Jon touched my hair lightly, but his hand did not linger. “There is no justice here; none at all, young Gabrielle Bonet. When you see your ghost again, you should tell her that. If she wants justice, she shall have to look somewhere else.”

  I started to speak, but his fingers went to my lips. “Shh…go back, Gabrielle. It is not safe out here in the dark.”

  And with that, my strange new friend left me. He wal
ked down the beach and disappeared into the blackness beyond the shore. He walked toward the sounds of the drums that seemed to be echoing from that direction. I was tempted to follow him but did not.

  I quickly made my way back to the cabin.

  And I wasn’t alone.

  Chapter Thirteen—Midas

  “Hey, guys. What did I miss?” Hmmm. I didn’t even hear the door open. Isn’t that bell supposed to be working? With a tilt of my head, I raised my eyebrows at Josh, who only shrugged.

  “Hey, Aaron.”

  Josh’s answer to me was as it always was: “It’s on my list.” And that was the thing I liked the least about Joshua McBride—his tendency to procrastinate. However, I would not come down on him like a ton of bricks today as I usually would. The guy needed a job, and the paranormal world had been cruel enough to him lately. I kind of leaned in Cassidy’s direction as far as those scratches. Josh couldn’t have done that himself, and they were so savage-looking that there was no way he wouldn’t have felt that unless it was a spirit wound. Sometimes those came with a delayed reaction. And then last night at the museum, he had sudden stomach pains; even today he looked like crap.

  “I’m going to check the doorbell out.”

  Aaron sat down at the table across from me and removed his hat. He had shaggy dark hair, dark eyes and an uncanny resemblance to a spirit named Chebola Bula that we encountered in a previous investigation. Unlike that dark brooding entity, Aaron was a happy-go-lucky sort of guy, an expert climber, a self-described adventurer and the spoiled grandson of Nina DeSearcy. I liked him a lot, and we were lucky to have him on our team. Big thanks to Sierra on that one. She’d done an excellent job “hiring” him.

  “How is Jase doing?”

  “He’s on the mend and should be up and walking in just a few days. You need me to get started reviewing last night’s evidence?”

  “Yes. Check with Pete.”

  “Sweet.”

  For the next few hours, the entire team reviewed audio recordings, video and Pete’s sensor footage. The digital recordings offered up a few things, but the video was amazing. The sensor footage from our last session made everyone nervous but also excited.

  After our individual reviews, we went over last night’s evidence together. Sierra started the team reveal session. “This is Midas, Pete and Patricia over by the statue, the big one in the courtyard. Pete has the handheld IR camera, and Patricia is talking about her stepfather. You can hear a man’s voice.” Sierra pointed the remote at the screen, and the graphic of the voice imprint came up. She played it again and again, and although we all agreed that it was a man’s voice, we didn’t understand what he was saying. “Clearly, that’s not either of you. Peter’s talking during that segment, and that’s not your voice, Midas.”

  “Good catch. What else did you guys find?”

  Joshua looked at Cassidy and said, “You’re never gonna believe this. While you and I were checking out the anomalies on the deck of the boat, something else was happening. Take a look at the display case, the one with the comb and the beads. Here it comes, right about…there! Someone opened that display case a few inches.”

  “Get out of here! Play it again?” Cassidy leaned forward as Sierra zoomed back and replayed that segment of the video. “Wow. That is definitely a hot zone. Wait. What about the camera we had focused on that section of the exhibit? We should have captured it on that one too.”

  “Yep. That’s what we thought, but when we went to check the camera feed there was nothing there. At some point, someone must have shut it off.” Sierra frowned unhappily.

  “Someone indeed,” Pete said quietly.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  Joshua answered, “Before we get to the last anomaly footage, there is one more thing. It happened right before we left.” We watched in stunned silence as the image of a man flew past our lobby camera. He moved so quickly that the image was blurred.

  I confessed, “I think I knew who that was—that was Deter Simon, Carl’s late friend. He was the old curator, the one who said in his note that someone was haunting him. The comb from the exhibit, the same one that was in the display case, was one of the items Deter hid in his desk. That note was with it.”

  Everyone read it, and Cassidy let out a groan. “I wonder if one of the Pelican girls was haunting him. I’ve got a new painting to show you guys.” She nodded at Sierra, who clicked on the screen. Cassidy’s painting was dark with deep greens, blues and black. There was one young woman standing at the bow of the ship, which could be the Pelican. Her sad eyes grabbed your attention and held you. “This is Gabrielle Bonet. She was one of the ‘Pelican Girls.’ I’m not sure how it ends for her, but this can’t be a coincidence. Here’s what I know so far.” Cassidy told us the whole sad story of Gabrielle, how she lost her father and how she witnessed the horrible death of Claudette Catherine Toussaint.

  “Did she have a comb in her hair? What about any of those other artifacts?” Peter asked hopefully.

  “Not as far as I can tell, but I don’t think I’m done with her yet. There’s more to see. I painted another one of her too.”

  Pete let out a low whistle. “This is a total mind screw, you know that, right? I mean, the ghost has a ghost, it sounds like. Did Claudette follow her in death? Is she holding Gabrielle responsible for keeping quiet?”

  “I’m not sure.” Cassidy’s second piece of artwork appeared on the screen. It featured the same young woman. She had wavy dark hair that she wore pinned back at her temples. She had bow lips, dark eyes and pale skin. I didn’t see the comb anywhere, but she wore a white gown, like a nightgown, and the ocean was behind her. Cassidy filled us in on what she saw in her encounter. It was interesting, but we weren’t any closer to knowing who was haunting the museum.

  “I wonder who the first two anomalies were that you two saw on the deck of that boat,” Peter said to Joshua and Cassidy. “I doubt either figure was Deter, but maybe they were sailors or colonists, people associated with the original ship, the Pelican. If Carl and Deter’s theory is correct, some of these artifacts could be from the original Fort Louis de La Louisiane. That would potentially make them power objects. Their story has been lost, and now someone is listening.”

  Joshua shook his head. “That’s a lot of maybes, Pete. I’m not saying you’re not right, but this isn’t Casper we’re dealing with. It was a screaming apparition that came after Carl, and I’ve been having freaking scary nightmares about a screaming woman.” He continued, “I mean, I’ve had creepy experiences before, and I’ve had things come after me before. Remember the Ghost Queen? But something hit me in the gut last night. We need to be careful. This isn’t an entity you want to play around with or piss off. I wish these things would leave me alone. I’m not the sensitive here.”

  “No, but you’re under a lot of stress right now, Joshua. Not to put your personal business out there, but we’ve seen time and time again where stress can put an investigator in a bad position. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It just means you need to back off for a bit. I’m okay with that.”

  Joshua didn’t care for my proposal, but he wasn’t the boss—I was. “I’m fine, Midas. I can do this. Don’t cut me out.”

  “Fine, but you hang with Sierra in the van. Pete’s deploying another sensor tonight.”

  “I am?” Pete said with sudden excitement.

  “Yeah. I’m impressed, to say the least. Let’s get one in that hallway, near Deter’s former office. I’d like to have one of you stay focused on the two anomaly sensors and record anything that moves. The other investigator will watch the IR cameras and call out anything you see in real time. Also, team, I would like to focus on EVPs tonight too. Let’s find out who we’re seeing, if possible. They open this exhibit next week, and Carl needs to come back.”

  “Anyone going to talk about the elephant in the room?” Cassidy asked with a nervous smile. “That was one big passel of ghosts we saw on that ship last night.”

  “Sure
was,” I agreed. “There’s no doubt about it. That ship is a power object. It’s attracting something. Patricia called me about it earlier. She checked with the builder—it’s completely a reproduction, but it was built using a model of the original.”

  Before I could remind everyone not to jump to any conclusions yet, Aaron piped up, “I think we need to stay sharp tonight. You know, this is some serious psychic stuff, Cassidy. Have you always been psychic?” he asked her as he studied the painting carefully. “They say psychic abilities run in families.”

  “I wouldn’t know. All my family is gone.” The room got so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Cassidy’s face flushed, and I squeezed her hand.

  “Let’s get prepped, guys,” I said. “We’ve got to check everything, load it up and then go set up. You guys want pizza?”

  A unanimous “yes” erupted from the group. I volunteered to make the call. “Pete, don’t forget to hook up that other sensor to the camera. Tonight, you and Aaron will start in the basement, and Cassidy and I will take the exhibit.”

  Sierra wore her red-framed glasses. I didn’t know if they were a fashion statement or if she actually needed them, but she looked deadly serious. “I want in, Midas. You really don’t need two people in the van, and I don’t feel like I’m in danger. I’d like to participate, see if I can contact Gabrielle or Claudette.”

  All eyes went to Joshua, but Sierra wasn’t asking his permission. It actually had been her idea to step back for a little while, but hey, I wasn’t going to mention that right now. Joshua shrugged, but he was clearly not happy about it. He left the room and headed to the storage area, presumably to check out the equipment we’d need for tonight’s investigation.

  “If you think everything is cool, Little Sister, we’d welcome your help. We’ll have you work with both teams. Make sure you have plenty of batteries for EVP sessions.”

  “Sweet,” she said as she practically skipped off to her office.

  Cassidy and I were alone now. “How about you, Cassidy?”