Page 20 of Rattling Bone (OutFoxing the Paranormal #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Oscar leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Snow kissed his upturned face, melting against his skin. He needed to get up, to crawl out of the ravine, to get back to the tent.

But he was so cold. Agnes must have drawn on his energy to manifest; there was nothing else out here for her to feed on.

The last light was fading. Sunset was around five o’clock this time of year, a little faster here thanks to the surrounding mountains. Agnes’s ultimatum gave him seven hours to remove three deeply entrenched ghosts from the land that had been hers.

One line of his murderous family wanted him to remove the other murderous line, or she’d kill him too. It didn’t matter that he was descended from her sister, just that Ivan was also in his family tree.

Bitterness swept over him. No wonder Dad didn’t want anything to do with their ancestors. How nice it must be to have the luxury of closing his eyes and stuffing his ears, pretending everything was all right in the world.

“Oscar?” Dad called. “Oscar, where are you?”

Oscar’s eyes snapped open. He was imagining things. He’d been thinking about Dad, and now he was hearing his voice.

“Oscar!”

Oscar scrambled to his feet. “Here! I’m over here!”

A flashlight cut through the gloom, illuminating the drifting flakes of white. Then Dad’s face appeared at the top of the slope. “Are you all right? Do you need a hand up?”

“No, I can make it.” Oscar stumbled to his feet and started up, using trees to drag himself higher as the snow slid treacherously from under his boots. “What the hell are you doing here?”

There was a long moment, then Dad said, “Mama told me to come.”

Oscar reached the top of the ravine, stopping just a few feet below Dad and staring up. “What?”

“Lisa was so mad at me, she wouldn’t speak, just banged around the house. I was pretty mad, too, so I went and sat by myself in my office.” Dad looked…chagrined? Bewildered? A mix of both, maybe; Oscar wasn’t sure. “I’d been sitting there a while, fuming…and then there she was.”

“Mamaw?”

“Yeah.” Dad looked away, then back. “I’ve never seen anything before, but there were times I thought I smelled her perfume. But that was just my imagination…or maybe not, I don’t know any more. But there she was, clear as anything, and giving me the eye the way only a mother can. Then she reached out a hand and touched the picture of you on the wall, you know the one from your high school graduation? And it fell.”

The ghostly woman Oscar had seen throughout his childhood…could it have been Mamaw? Had she just been checking in from beyond the veil, making sure he was doing okay?

His chest felt suddenly warm, dispelling the cold that had seized him. He’d never met Barbara, she’d died long before he was born…but she’d still loved him enough to make that journey.

“And now you believe?”

He’d failed to keep the bitterness out of his voice, and Dad’s face crumpled. “Maybe I could have passed it off as a dream, but I was as awake as I’ve ever been. And the picture was there, on the floor. I checked the hook, and it hadn’t fallen out of the wall—someone would’ve had to lift the picture off.” He swallowed convulsively. “I realized I’d let her down—I’d let you down. And now she was telling me clear as day I’d better find her grandbaby right now. Your mom agreed, so I set out here despite the roads. Made it in, and then Tina told me you’d gone into the woods, and no one could raise you on the walkie-talkie, and…”

Dad dashed tears out of his eyes. “I was scared to death. Scared I’d pushed you away, and you were going to die hating me…”

“I don’t hate you,” Oscar objected. “You did some things that hurt me, but, well, this isn’t the time to talk about them.”

“I know. I know.” Dad swallowed. “Just know I’m sorry. As sorry as I’ve ever been for anything in my life. I’m not going to ask for your forgiveness, just for the chance to make it up to you.” He held out a hand. “Deal?”

Oscar looked at the hand, then back at Dad. Something inside him seemed to thaw. “I never thought you didn’t care,” he said. “You’ve spent most of your life thinking your mother was crazy, shamed for it by the community. Then you’ve spent my whole life afraid I’d end up in an institution like her. You didn’t handle it well, but…I do understand.” He reached out and clasped the other man’s hand. “And I forgive you.”

Dad’s face beamed with relief, and he helped Oscar up the final few steps and into a hug.

* * *

Static crackled over the walkie-talkie. “I’m here,” Oscar said, and Nigel nearly collapsed with relief.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, even as Chris asked, “Are you all right?”

Nigel wasn’t sure both of them talking over their units at the same time would work, but Oscar answered, “I’m fine. Dad found me.”

“Scott?”

“He’s the only dad I’ve got, so far as I know.”

What the hell was he doing here…no, it didn’t matter now. “Where are you? We’ll come get you.”

“Meet us back at the tent; that’ll be easier. I think the snow is letting up, at least.”

They trudged back down the slope; Chris seemed to know the way, and Nigel followed them. The snow had indeed started to let up, at least for the moment, and soon the glow of the tent shone out through the last of the twilight.

Scott’s SUV was parked at an angle near the van, its tracks already filling in with snow. Nigel was amazed he’d been able to make it here through the storm; it must have four-wheel drive, or snow tires, or both.

They stumbled back into the tent, shaking off snow. Oscar zipped the tent up behind them to keep in the heat; the moment he was finished, Nigel threw his arms around him.

All the terror of the past half hour threatened to spill out, and Nigel took a big, gulping breath. Oscar folded his arms around him, gentle and strong. “I’m okay.”

“What the fuck happened?” Chris asked, stripping off their beanie and shaking off the lingering snow. “We were trying to raise you on the walkie talkies, but you didn’t answer. We must have spent fifteen, twenty minutes shouting for you.”

“I never heard you.” Oscar left an arm draped over Nigel’s shoulders as he turned to answer Chris.

Nigel glared at Scott, who stood quietly near Tina. “What are you doing here?”

The words came out with a hostile edge, and Scott winced. “I, uh. I saw a ghost.”

“And that was enough to, what, convince you we’re not all a bunch of liars?” Nigel scoffed.

“Mamaw’s been watching out for me.” Oscar’s arm tightened on Nigel’s shoulders. “Give Dad a chance.”

Scott glanced at them both, shame-faced. “I know I’ve been…but when the ghost of your dead mother appears right in front of your own two eyes and pulls a picture of your son off the wall…well, it changed my perspective real quick.”

“That’s not important right now,” Oscar said. “I saw Agnes.”

A chill went through Nigel. “Were you able to get her to move on?”

“No.” Oscar sighed. “She’s pissed that the Corbett’s are still on her land, after all this time. If I can get them out of here by midnight she’ll be satisfied.”

Nigel suspected Oscar was speaking circumspectly for Scott’s sake, but to hell with that. “And if we don’t, she’ll kill you, and possibly Scott as well.”

Oscar winced. “Yeah.”

Scott looked as though he wanted to object, but only said, “And she can do that?”

“She’s done it before.”

“Right.” He frowned. “Who is Agnes?”

“The woman our ancestor Ivan Corbett murdered to steal her land—this land. Mamaw was descended from both Ivan and Agnes’s sister Virginia, so we are too.”

For a moment, Scott seemed lost, and Nigel expected him to fall back on his skepticism. But instead he asked, “And she…you said…was she the one who hurt your Mamaw?”

“Yeah.”

“And now she wants to kill us.” Scott bit his lip. “Can’t we just leave?”

Oscar went to the tent flap and let it down a bit to peer out. “The snow’s coming down hard again. No way is the van going to make it out of here tonight.”

“If we could just get to the main road, it’ll be clear,” Chris said.

Scott snorted. “This ain’t the big city—the plows won’t be through until tomorrow morning at the earliest. But if we can get far enough, maybe…?”

“You go,” Oscar said. “I have to try to put an end to this.”

“No.” Scott looked him in the eye. “This place took my mama. I’m not just going to watch it take my son, too. Please, let’s just go.”

“Scott’s right,” Nigel said.

He felt a flash of irritation over how surprised Scott looked. Did he think Nigel didn’t care about losing Oscar? “You’ve been guessing this whole time that she can somehow draw her victims in, or reach out to them—but we don’t know that. And even if she can reach out, away from the property, we’d be dealing with one ghost, not four.”

“But,” Oscar started to protest.

Chris cut him off. “Look, you scared the shit out of us just now. We couldn’t get ahold of you—we thought the ghost had killed you, and we were going to stumble over your frozen corpse.”

“It was one thing when your dad wasn’t on board,” Tina said. “But now that he is, we have a shot at keeping him safe.”

Scott looked aghast. “I’m sorry…I didn’t know you were putting yourself in danger for me…I would never have…”

“I know, Dad,” Oscar said. He looked at the rest of them. “You all really want to try leaving?”

Nigel took his hand. “If we can get off this mountain, keep the two of you safe, we might break the cycle. Just a few more hours, and she’ll have missed her chance to kill every twenty-five years. She hurt Barbara, but your grandmother escaped, and no one else died. If the clock resets, we have plenty of time to figure out how to remove all of the ghosts here safely.”

Oscar hesitated…then nodded. “Okay. Let’s give it a try.”

* * *

Oscar couldn’t shake the feeling they were making the wrong decision.

Even so, he quelled the sensation and helped everyone throw any equipment they thought they might need into the SUV. Extra batteries, flashlights, and of course salt. The tent and generator could stay behind, along with the van; it would take too long to break them down in the middle of a snow storm.

“This works?” Dad asked, eyeing the canisters of table salt suspiciously.

“Quite well,” Nigel answered.

“Don’t worry about it, Dad—you’ll be driving,” Oscar said. “I’ll ride shotgun, and if anything tries to get in the car with us, I’ll deal with it.”

“And by anything you mean this ghost woman?”

“Yep.” He grabbed the handle to the passenger door. “All right, if we’re doing this, let’s go before the snow gets any deeper.”

As they piled into the vehicle, Dad glanced at the back seat, where Tina, Nigel, and Chris crowded together. “Um, Nigel?”

Nigel glanced at him coolly. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry I called you a crackpot.”

“As I told Oscar, I’ve been called that before.” He snapped his seatbelt in. “But apology accepted.”

The snow was coming down so thick, the headlights reflected back on a curtain of white. “Here we go,” Scott said, and put the SUV into gear. The tires slipped, then caught, and they began to crawl forward.

The road out was hard to find; smaller trees were bent beneath the weight of the heavy, wet snow, obscuring the track. Branches dragged along the sides of the car with loud, scraping sounds, dumping their load of snow onto the roof before springing free.

Tension continued to build in Oscar’s nerves, and he poured some salt into his hand to be ready. Agnes surely wasn’t going to just let them drive away. His pulse thudded in his throat, and a sense of impending doom inched up his spine.

The SUV rocked as it hit the snow-filled potholes, and Dad swore. “Hang on—I can’t see any of the holes to avoid them.”

Chris twisted around in their seat—then let out a yell. “Oh shit!”

Oscar snapped around. Gliding behind them, moving effortlessly through the snow, was a woman in a tattered dress.

“It’s her,” he said, gripping the salt tight.

“She’s catching up,” Chris called. “Drive faster!”

Dad stepped on the gas, his eyes darting between the rearview mirror and the windshield. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he whispered over and over again in a small voice.

“That’s it—we’re leaving her behind,” Chris encouraged. “She’s gone—I don’t see her anymore.”

Oscar knew at that moment they hadn’t lost her at all. He turned sharply to the windshield—just as she loomed up directly in front of the car.

She was no longer just a blur of snow. He caught a glimpse of wet hair hanging in strings around a cadaverous face. Gray lichen clung to her skin like a disease, and her eyes burned with a century’s worth of hate.

Dad shouted and stood on the brake. The vehicle skidded, then spun, flinging up a wall of snow before smashing directly into a tree.