The Maelstrom of the Leaf Academy (Gulf Coast Paranormal Book 11) Read online

  Jocelyn added, “You can summon things if you use their name. Let’s just call him Ollie.”

  Nobody said a word. We sat in the SUV for a minute until Joshua said, “Are we going to go or what?”

  Midas’ inquisitive expression triggered something within me. I couldn’t bail on the team. The investigation at the Leaf Academy had become more than a ghost hunt. There was no need to hunt anything. There were ghosts here, but they didn’t want to be here. They deserved to be free.

  But what if they don’t want to be free? What if what I saw were just the shadows of those souls? No. I couldn’t believe that. I couldn’t believe that a soul was beyond rescuing. Either in life or in death. The fear and grief for Shanafila faded, and something else rose up within me. Determination. I wasn’t going to leave McCandlish or Shanafila or anyone else here on this property with that horrible thing. These souls had to be set free. No, I didn’t know how to do it, but once again I trusted that I…no, we would find a way.

  “Let’s go, Midas. I’m ready.” After giving him a brief kiss, which was totally unprofessional, I got out of the sturdy black vehicle. I shut the door behind me and made my way through the overgrown weeds to the front door of the small white building.

  This was for Shanafila.

  Chapter Fifteen—Midas

  The key wouldn’t slide into the lock no matter how many times I tried. I tried the next key, just in case. Still no luck. I checked all the keys, and none of them was the right one. “Maybe there’s another door,” I said as I walked around the building. Cassidy went with me, but Jocelyn was already scoping out the building with her camera. Joshua leaned against a dirty window and tried to get a look inside.

  “It’s dark in there. Looks like most of the windows are boarded up,” he called as we walked up to the nailed-up back door. “We’re not getting in here this way. Not without a crowbar or at least a hammer.”

  I sighed and said, “I’ll try to call Adrian.”

  “I hope you can get a signal. I’ve got zero bars on my phone,” Cassidy observed as she slid her phone back in her pocket.

  “It’s ringing,” I said as we continued to pace around the outside of the building. “She’s not answering. I’ll leave a message. Maybe she’ll get back to us soon.” I left the client a polite but hurried message and then gathered the team together. “No dice, guys. I want to get in there, but I’m not going to break a window to do it. Let’s do some EVP work at least and keep our eyes peeled for anything that looks like a significant hill.”

  “Okay,” Cassidy agreed. “Let’s go to opposite sides of the building and work in pairs. Jocelyn, want to come with me? Meet back in ten.”

  “I’m game. We’ll go to the front door.” Jocelyn flashed her typical grin, the one that said I love my job. It was good to see that again. As the women disappeared around the corner of the building, Joshua pulled his recorder out of his black bag. After adjusting the volume, he held the recorder up.

  “My name is Joshua, and this is my friend Midas. We noticed the place is locked. Did you lock it?” It was an odd question, but sometimes these were the most successful. I heard nothing but the wind blowing, nothing unusual. Hearing a disembodied voice was a rare thing but not completely unheard of. “What’s your name?” A crow squawked in the distance. Joshua nodded at me to step in and ask a few too.

  “Did you worship here at this church? Do you know the people who did?” The crows squawked again, and I heard wings fluttering not far from us. I glanced over my shoulder and spotted a rotting wooden fence about fifty feet away. A wild cherry tree hovered over the collapsing fence line, but I didn’t see any birds. We asked about a dozen more questions and decided to play back the recording. Joshua turned the volume up, and we listened to our own voices asking questions. Sadly, there were no other voices, no evidence that anyone heard us. I glanced at my watch, surprised to see that our ten minutes were almost up. “Let’s listen again. Just in case.” Joshua agreed and checked the volume to make sure it was up as high as possible. We listened again, and a few seconds in, he clicked the recording off.

  “Wait a second. Where are the crows? I don’t hear them. Do you?” Joshua’s eyes narrowed as he replayed the recording. He was right, I didn’t hear the birds at all. “We should be able to hear them. I can hear the wind, the tree branches creaking, but no birds, no crows.”

  Before I could respond, Joshua began to wave his hands. He sputtered and jumped back and started to shout as if he were in pain. That’s when I noticed the bees circling his head. The audio recorder hit the ground as he held his hands up to protect his face. He took absent swings at the buzzing cloud, but the insects weren’t going to relent.

  “Follow me!” When he didn’t budge, I reached through the cloud and ignored the angry stings. I grabbed Joshua’s shirt sleeve and practically dragged him to the SUV. “Cassidy! Run!”

  A car was pulling into the driveway. Sierra! There was no time to wave her down, but I was happy to see she was rolling to a stop. Cassidy and Jocelyn were not far behind us, but the bees weren’t going away. Joshua yelped in pain and swore as he continued to swing at them.

  “Get in the SUV! Move it!” I opened the door and shoved him inside. Unfortunately, one of the bees followed him. He yelled again as it apparently stung him up, but he smashed the thing. I waved at the insects, but they didn’t stick around. The lingering few zipped away, and the rest of us climbed into the vehicle and tried to catch our breath. “You alright? Let me look at you. Ah, dang it! You’re a mess, man. Your wife is here. Let her in, Jocelyn, but wait until she’s closer just in case.”

  “What are y’all running from?” Sierra demanded as she scurried from her car into the SUV. “Oh my God!” She climbed over Jocelyn and sat beside her husband. “Joshua! Bees or wasps?” She slid off her jacket without missing a beat.

  “Bees, and I think this one has a stinger still in it.” He slid up his shirt sleeve and showed her an angry-looking wound.

  “Thank God. He’s allergic to wasps. Would one of you mind grabbing the first-aid kit? Do we have one in here?”

  “Yep, I’ll get it.” I glanced around the vehicle and didn’t see any sign of the horrible swarm that had nailed Joshua at least three times. I quickly grabbed the bag and made my way back to the driver’s seat.

  A few minutes later, Joshua was breathing easier although he was largely slathered with allergy cream and smelled like rubbing alcohol. “I’m a jerk. I’m sorry, Sierra Kay.”

  “Let’s talk about it later.” She put the last of the alcohol swabs in the small plastic trash bag that I kept in the SUV for just such occasions. “Is that your way of apologizing? Because if it is, that apology sucks.” I heard them kiss, and I cut eyes at Cassidy. Before I could remind them where they were, Jocelyn shouted at me. She’d been sitting next to Sierra, her headphones in her ears as she listened to the audio she and Cassidy had recorded at the opposite side of the church.

  “You have to hear this—it’s a man! I swear I hear a man talking…mumbling…no. Singing! Yes, I think he’s singing.” She snatched the headphones out of her ears and rewound the recording. “I didn’t hear anything when we were standing out there until we heard Josh screaming.” She pressed the play button and turned up the volume.

  Jocelyn’s calm voice sounded from the small device, and then I heard the second voice. A male voice, not mine and not Joshua’s. I couldn’t make out the words of the husky voice that whispered a song in the background, but Cassidy clutched my hand.

  “I know that voice. It’s the Crow Man—Fula Hatak! The shaman who led Shanafila to the Medicine Hill.”

  Chapter Sixteen—Sierra

  I helped Joshua get into our own car and eased in behind the SUV as we headed back over to the school, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay. Not with my husband’s face swollen like a beach ball. Could he be mistaken about that allergy? For someone who was supposedly only allergic to wasps, his skin sure was mottled and red in several places.

/>   “Maybe you should go back to the hotel and take an allergy pill. I saw a pharmacy not far from the hotel.”

  “No. I’ll be fine. We can’t let them go back in there without backup. I wish we’d never come here.” Joshua slung his bag on the floor and leaned back, his face twisted in pain.

  “What gives, McBride? You haven’t been yourself since we arrived here, and now you want to act like you’re all committed to the cause. I appreciate your public apology, but you’ve got some explaining to do.” Joshua and I had had our troubles in the past—some were his fault, and a lot of them were mine—but I thought we’d put all that behind us. Evidently not. He was harboring some ill will for whatever reason. To my surprise, he didn’t pretend I was being paranoid.

  “I don’t know what it is. I just feel off. Angry for no reason, and I know it’s not me. You and I both know I’m not the sunniest person, but the Leaf Academy…I don’t like it. Actually, I hate this place.”

  I took his hand and squeezed it. “I’m not a fan either. And if we were here for any reason other than to help someone, I would say let’s go to Midas right now and tell him we’re out. But I can’t. Neither can you.”

  He shook his blond head and frowned. “What do you mean we can’t? Adrian Shanahan wants to bulldoze this place to the ground, and I can’t say I blame her. Yeah, I know that’s not what a paranormal investigator should admit, but places like this…they don’t need buildings attached to them.”

  “We’re not here for Adrian Shanahan. We’re here for all the others. They are stuck here, Joshua. Can you imagine being enslaved to something like this…thing? Forever? I can’t walk away. Midas needs my particular skill set.”

  “Let’s think about this for a minute. You’ve been attacked by crows, I’ve been attacked by bees, and you want to set a school full of ghosts free. Are you nuts, Sierra Kay?”

  I stared past him and took in the sight of the crumbling Leaf Academy. Even with its faded bricks and boarded windows, it was an intimidating sight. Although I hadn’t yet seen the bevy of ghosts hiding here, I knew that they were there. And that there was no peace here at the Leaf Academy. None at all. “Yeah, probably. If you’re coming with me, then come on. Before something else comes after us.” Midas waved at us quizzically as we all pulled up and parked, and I waved back. Joshua’s swollen face broke my heart, but I wasn’t lying to him. I had to help these lost souls.

  With a heavy heart, I walked with Joshua hand in hand back into the school. I glanced at the stone above the door and reminded myself of that half-forgotten Bible verse. I will fear no evil. How long did that stone help these people? Ten years? A year? A day? Or had it just been an empty dream keeping the entity that they knew resided on this land out of this building? No, it had been an empty promise to all the students who had come here, and to Hugh McCandlish.

  “What about your research, Sierra? Did you uncover anything that will help us?” Midas asked as we gathered in the small room that used to be the headmaster’s office. Joshua tinkered with the computers and pulled up the monitors for the cameras. Everything appeared to be in good working order. At least for now.

  “Only a few news stories. Mostly about this Holloway character. He was kind of a bad seed, and his family more or less disinherited him because of his rough lifestyle. He burned through the family fortune in a space of three years before his brother stepped in.”

  Jocelyn gasped at Sierra’s news. “All of it? Ms. Shanahan didn’t say anything about that to me. I got the feeling that they were still very wealthy.”

  “Oh yeah, he didn’t do any permanent damage but enough to get him ousted. He was found dead here. The coroner ruled it a suicide. I guess you all know he jumped off the roof. Hey, did someone leave a radio going around here?” I tucked my hair behind my ear and strained to hear the music.

  “I hear it too,” Cassidy said quietly. Apparently, no one else heard a thing. Joshua and Midas immediately went into debunk mode and began searching rooms and even looked outside, but there was nothing that could have caused that music. No passing car was going to blare classical piano. Once they returned shaking their heads, I decided it was time to get back to investigating. Someone wanted to talk to Cassidy and me. As we were the only sensitives here, it would have to be us.

  “Since we’re the only two hearing it, I guess we have to check it out. Sun is still up, but it’s dark down that hallway. Cassidy, do you have a flashlight?”

  “Yep. The thermal will be useless in there, since there’s still light coming through that broken ceiling, but we can take the proximity meter and…”

  I reached into a nearby black box and took out my rag doll. It wasn’t just any doll; it was rigged to light up and interact with anything that touched it. “I’ve been dying to try her out.”

  Midas laughed. “A girl toy in a boy’s school? You should definitely get some attention, but I wouldn’t want to be that doll if one of those schoolboys shows up. Might get kicked around a bit.”

  “Exactly. Let’s hurry, Cassidy.”

  We trekked down the hall cautiously and entered the auditorium without any fuss. The back of the room was raised slightly; it was built this way, in a kind of funnel, to amplify the sounds coming from the orchestra pit and the stage. I thought it was wild that a boys’ school would have an auditorium like this. From what I read, they allowed the town to use the property for many elegant events. But why would they do that knowing it wasn’t safe here?

  I walked carefully down the steps toward the stage, keeping my eye out for birds that might be waiting to attack me. There were broken sections of chair rows everywhere as if a giant had visited the auditorium and had a big ol’ fit. Kind of like our daughter, Emily, who had the McBride temperament. Unfortunately.

  Stay focused on the investigation, Sierra. Don’t think about anyone you love right now. You know this creature plucks things out of your mind.

  “Let’s see. Where’s a good place to put our rag doll? Would anyone like to play with her?” I asked. Cassidy clicked the audio recorder and put it next to the doll. We did our best to prop her up neatly, but she kept falling over on the stage. “Do you like my doll? I tell you what—I will lay her down here. If you want to, you can touch her hair or her feet or…”

  I feel cold, the doll said pitifully.

  Cassidy’s wide eyes matched mine. “That didn’t take long. Are you cold? You can play with my doll. I don’t mind.”

  I feel cold. The doll repeated the phrase, but the voice sounded a bit off. Kind of like the batteries were low. Cassidy shivered and walked the edge of the stage with her flashlight pointed at different things. “What’s your name?” I asked despite the lump I felt in my throat. “If you’re cold, maybe we can help you.” The doll went quiet, and I followed Cassidy around as she checked out a few areas. It was easy to see shadows here with the sun going down and the debris everywhere. “Look! I think I see a room down there. Shine that light between the boards, Cassidy.”

  The LED light illuminated a room we hadn’t seen before; obviously, this was a room that had been used for housing props and costumes. “Look at that! I have to get in there. Do you see a door?” We searched for a door but had no luck. However, the boards were easy to move; they were so rotted that they practically crumbled in our hands.

  “Should we tell Midas?” Cassidy asked cautiously.

  “We should but after we check it out. Low bridge in here. Watch your head. On second thought, let’s go one at a time. If this thing collapses, you go get help. May I borrow your flashlight?” Cassidy agreed, but by the tone of her voice, I could tell she didn’t like this idea…either because she wanted to go first or because she would much rather Midas be in on every detail of the investigation. “Damn, I should have brought a camera. Look at all this. There are literally trunks everywhere. A wooden rocking horse. God, I hate those things. I don’t see any musical instruments at all. I wonder who was playing music…Cassidy, can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.�
�� I could see her squatting down and peeking inside the room at me. “I’m right here. The first sign of trouble, you get out, okay? Stay where I can see you.”

  “Sure, Mom,” I said playfully as I waved the flashlight around and visually plundered this room. I couldn’t stand up all the way; the ceiling was too low, and that was a strange sensation for me since I wasn’t that tall. Swinging my light around, I nearly screamed when I saw a shadow crouching down on the far wall. It was a mirror and the image was Cassidy, but I gasped and then laughed at myself for being scared.

  “What is it?”

  “Just a mirror. Who puts a mirror under a stage? So weird.”

  I’m cold…

  The doll sounded off again, but it wasn’t the usual doll’s voice. It sounded deep and growly, the phrase drawn out and menacing. Like it was mocking us.

  “Uh, did you hear that?”

  Before I could answer Cassidy, I heard the doll’s voice again. But it wasn’t coming from the stage this time. The voice was in my ear.

  I’m cold…

  And then I saw the figure crawling away on its hands and knees. A black shadow, boy-sized and moving too quickly to be human. A living human, anyway.

  “Time to go,” I said to no one in particular as I scrambled like a madwoman to get out of the storage space. Just as my hands breached the door, I felt a tug on my foot. A definite, painful tug. “Quit!” I screamed as it dragged me back a few inches. Apparently, this ghost wanted to play, but I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like these games. Not at all. “Cassidy! Help me!” I forced myself to keep my emotions under control. That’s what this thing wanted more than anything—to generate and feed on fear. Oh yes, this was a powerful entity. And this was no damn ghost!