Page 4 of Rattling Bone (OutFoxing the Paranormal #2)

CHAPTER FOUR

There weren’t any electrical outlets in the storage unit, so they put the box in the van for later. A continued search turned up nothing further of interest, so they drove back to the house.

It was all Oscar could do not to fidget through dinner. Every time he looked at his dad, the box in the van tugged at him with the weight of a heavy secret, and he worried something would show on his face.

He’d hoped to come here and unburden himself of all the things he’d been hiding. Instead, he’d ended up with a whole new secret to conceal.

Unfortunately, he had long practice in keeping a straight face in this house. The lessons must have stuck, because dinner was pleasant, as was the round of board games afterward. When asked what they’d been up to, he told his parents about meeting back up with Josh and let them assume the catch-up session had taken the entire afternoon.

Whether Mom believed him or not, he couldn’t say, but Dad smiled with approval. He’d dropped the ghost-hunting business, spent the day doing something “normal” with his friends.

A part of Oscar was starting to regret ever coming back.

His parents turned in early, and the rest of them retreated to the den together. Mom had left a bottle of wine in the fridge for them, as she didn’t drink herself, which Tina liberated. After about an hour of small talk, Nigel said, “Do you think it’s safe to set up the projector?”

Nervousness washed over Oscar, but he nodded. “Yeah. And hopefully, if they get up to pee and hear anything, they’ll think it’s just the TV.”

Chris hopped up. “I’ll get the box. Be right back.”

There was a sense of solemnity as they set up the projector and small screen. No one made any unnecessary noise. Nigel took a notebook and pencil out of his bag. He sat beside Oscar on the couch, their thighs touching, the warmth of his presence comforting.

“Thanks for doing this with me,” Oscar said, as Chris threaded the film into the projector. “I don’t…I wouldn’t want to watch this alone.”

Tina held up her glass, as if in a toast. “We’re here for you, Oscar.”

“And it will be fascinating to see a genuine nineteen-seventies seance,” Nigel added. “The era is sadly lacking in documentation—most parapsychology departments were focused entirely on telepathy and precognition by then, to the detriment of survival research. The few highly publicized cases of hauntings were fraudulent from beginning to end, created by the credulous media and fame-seeking charlatans.”

Oscar grinned, the heaviness in his heart momentarily lightening. “Wow, sweetheart, tell us how you really feel.”

Nigel flushed. “I’m sorry—that came out wrong. It’s not just the historical interest; I’m glad to be here with you.”

“You’re such a romantic.” When it looked like Nigel was going to protest, Oscar leaned over and gave him a quick kiss. “Just take your notes.”

“Okay, it’s ready, I think.” Chris frowned at the projector. “These things can be temperamental. And we’re assuming it still works, and the film hasn’t degraded too badly. It looks in great shape, but—”

“Just play it,” Tina said.

The old projector whirred to life. “This is the Adkins Seance film,” Chris said. They hovered over the projector, ready to spring into action if anything went wrong.

There was no introduction; the film began with a group of five people sitting around a small, round table, their hands joined. All of them wore early seventies hair styles, complete with bushy mustaches on the men. The room was too dark for the camera to capture much beyond the light of the candle at the center of the table, and the faces and hands of those gathered around it.

“The camera must be on a tripod,” Chris murmured. “It’s too steady, otherwise.”

The woman directly facing the camera took a deep breath, and Oscar felt his insides twist. There were no pictures of Mamaw Fox in the family albums, but he knew immediately this must be her.

She was in her early thirties, her long brown hair curled into waves. Even at a glance, he could see his dad in her small, refined features.

“Spirit of William Adkins,” she said in a commanding voice, “we’re here to speak with you. Draw on the energy of our circle to manifest. If you are here, please let us know by knocking.”

There was a long moment of silence—then a sharp knock came from seemingly nowhere, causing the group around the table to jump. Nigel frowned slightly and leaned forward, squinting at the screen from behind his glasses.

The woman—Barbara, Mamaw—remained perfectly still. “William Adkins, are you the spirit scaring your family? Did you break the good china and make the milk go sour? One knock for no, and two for yes.”

Two knocks sounded.

“But why, Daddy?” one of the men exclaimed. “Why would you do that to us?”

“That’s too complicated a question to answer through knocks.” Barbara closed her eyes and took a deep, slow breath. Grounding herself in preparation, Oscar guessed. After a long pause, during which she seemed to be mentally readying herself, she said, “William Adkins, should your intent be peaceful, draw upon the energy of this circle. Use my mouth to speak your words.”

A shudder ran through her—then she opened her eyes, revealing only blank, white orbs.

* * *

Nigel watched fixedly as Barbara Fox turned white eyes on those seated around her at the circle. This could, of course, always be a show. Rapping was easy to fake, as were most other outward signs of spiritual activity, and there were no scientific instruments present at the seance that he could see.

But mediumship often ran in families, and Oscar had a true gift. That alone made him believe the seance was probably real.

When Barbara spoke, it wasn’t with the voice of a young woman, but rather that of an elderly man. “Where is my watch?” he asked in a faint, thready voice.

For a moment, there was nothing but shocked silence. Then the man who had spoken before said, “Your watch, Daddy? What do you mean?”

Barbara’s head twitched, and the voice issuing from her mouth grew agitated. “My pocket watch from the railroad. Who has my watch?”

The man exchanged fearful glances with the woman beside him. “We…we buried it with you, just like you asked.”

“No!” Barbara’s back straightened, and her lips twisted into a grimace. “Thief! Bring back my watch!”

“I’m sorry!” one of the other men—a boy, really—shouted suddenly, even as he jerked away and broke the circle.

There was a long moment of silence, punctuated only by his wild breathing. Then Barbara blinked, her eyes once again her own. “Did you take your papaw’s pocket watch, Billy?”

Billy’s voice shook. “I’m sorry! I need the money—I don’t want to rot in this fucking town! I need the money to get to California, and it’s not like he’s got any use for it being dead, and—”

The woman beside him gave him a sharp smack across the back of the head. “Where is it? If you’ve pawned it, so help me…”

“It’s in my room! I swear! I didn’t have the chance to sell it yet.”

Barbara cleared her throat, drawing everyone’s attention back to her. “The solution here is simple. Go to William’s grave at three o’clock in the morning, dig a hole, and put the watch in it. Cover the hole, then apologize to him for stealing.”

“And that will stop…everything?” the man asked.

She nodded. “It should. If you have any more trouble with William afterward, let me know, but I think he’ll sleep easy once he has his watch back.”

The film came to an end, the screen going white. Nigel glanced at Oscar, saw his face had gone pale and he held a hand over his mouth.

“Love?” Nigel said quietly.

Oscar swallowed and dropped his hand. “She was a medium. She really was. She saw things, and people believed her. Came to her for help.”

“So what went wrong?” Tina murmured.

“We have to—we have to watch the other tape.” Oscar swiveled around to stare at Chris. “What was the name on it? Oak something distillery? No, wait—Cloven Oak.”

“Just give me a minute.”

While Chris rewound the first film, then loaded the second, Nigel took Oscar’s hand. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.” Oscar rubbed at his eyes with his free hand. “There aren’t any pictures of her in the house, did you know that? I think…before now, it wasn’t like she was even real to me. Just a cautionary tale, an angry warning of what comes from ‘acting crazy.’ But she was a real person with a whole life.”

Nigel silently cursed Oscar’s dad. Scott had doubtless been reacting to his own trauma, but he’d hurt Oscar in the process, and that wasn’t all right.

“Okay,” Chris said. “Are you ready?”

Nigel squeezed Oscar’s hand. Tina put down her wine glass, got off the couch, and sat down on Oscar’s other side, leaning her shoulder against his.

“Let’s see it,” Oscar said.

Unlike the previous film, this time the camera was clearly being held in someone’s hand. They were outside, standing in front of an enormous stone building that was being slowly subsumed by the green of vines, shrubs, and trees. A brick chimney loomed up behind it, with a scattering of other buildings off to the side. The mountains formed the backdrop, and as the camera panned slowly over the scene, a creek could be seen flowing nearby.

The camera paused on the steep hill above the—building? Factory? A huge oak stood there, growing in three pieces from a split trunk.

“Is that the cloven oak?” asked a woman’s voice that Nigel didn’t recognize.

“Looks like it,” replied Barbara from off-camera.

The camera swung to her. She stood a few feet away, a handkerchief covering her hair and holding it back from her face. She wore a pair of blue pants with wide, straight legs, a checkered shirt with a huge collar, and a vest that matched the pants. The grin she aimed at the camera held the same easy charm as Oscar’s.

“Well,” she said, gesturing grandly to the abandoned buildings behind her, “welcome to my inheritance.”

* * *

“What the hell?” exclaimed Chris, at the same time as Nigel said, “Wait, what?”

Oscar felt the blood draining from his head. He couldn’t have heard that right. “Chris, rewind it.”

Chris stopped the film, rewound it, and started again. Once again, Barbara grinned at the camera. “Well, welcome to my inheritance!”

What the fuck? What did she mean?

“You’re a real queen of the castle, Barb,” said the camera operator dryly.

Barbara posed for a moment, then laughed. “Okay, maybe it’s not really mine. It might be, if I had a good lawyer and plenty of money, or wanted the old heap in the first place.”

“Then get on telling us about it!”

“All right, all right!” Barbara put her hands on her hips and addressed the camera directly. “I’m Barbara Fox, here with my friend Sharon, who thinks we’ll send this tape to the news and become TV stars.”

Sharon sighed audibly from behind the camera.

“We’re here at the Cloven Oak Distillery in Marrow, WV.” Barbara gestured at the cluster of buildings behind her. “My great-granddaddy Ivan Corbett built it in 1872 to make the finest whiskey this side of the Mississippi. The business did pretty well, but uh, the family didn’t.”

She turned to look at the distillery, then back at the camera, unease breaking through her earlier smile. “Accidents on the property took the lives of Ivan, his son, and his oldest grandson in their turn. My daddy was the younger grandson, and since he had a falling out with the family, the distillery went to a cousin. Things went downhill from there, and it went out of business altogether a few years back.”

“Did you know?” Tina asked.

Oscar could only shake his head. “I didn’t even know her maiden name, let alone…any of this.”

On the screen, Barbara touched her pocket in what looked like a nervous habit. “My mamaw, Miss Virginia, thought there was a curse on the family, something to do with the distillery itself. Since she passed, I’ve been trying to take up her mantle. Doing seances and the like.” She took a deep breath and redirected her stare to the camera. “If she was right, if there is a curse on this place, the ghosts of my ancestors who died on this land might be trapped here. If that’s the case, I mean to help them move on.”

There came a moment’s pause, then Sharon said, “Spooky.”

Barbara reached into the pocket she’d touched earlier and pulled out a leather bag. “That’s why we brought our salt. Plus iron nails and moss from the south side of an oak tree.”

“And a lucky rabbit’s foot.”

“Everything we need.” Barbara walked back toward the buildings, arms outspread. “Come on. Let’s see what’s inside.”

Tina turned to Oscar. “She was doing the same thing as us—as you! It’s like a proto-OtP film!”

“This is crazy,” he murmured. “I-I never met her, she died before I was born…”

Nigel’s chilly fingers wrapped around his own. “Do you need us to stop?”

“No. I need to see this. I need to know.”

The scene cut, then switched to the inside of a building with stone walls and a concrete floor. Barbara crouched beside a pool of water in the center, one hand resting on the iron railing surrounding it. In her other hand, she held an empty whiskey bottle, which she displayed to the camera.

“That’s the same bottle we found in storage,” Tina murmured.

On camera, Mamaw said, “This spring water is what was supposed to make the whiskey so good.” She leaned forward and dipped the bottle in the water. Once it was full, she tipped her head back and took a long drink.

“How is it?” Sharon asked from behind the camera.

The expression on Mamaw’s face turned contemplative, almost uncertain. “I don’t know. I mean, it tastes fine, but…maybe old Ivan was onto something after all.” Then she shook herself and popped a cork into the bottle. “I’ll keep this for later. Let’s take a look at the distilling room.”

The scene changed again, camera panning over a stone building with a high roof. Light filtered in through skylights high above.

“This is the distilling room,” Mamaw said, pointing at a two-story tall column of tarnished copper connected to an enormous copper vat. She turned back to the camera, her expression serious. “I don’t like the vibes in here.”

“What are you sensing?”

She walked slowly toward the center of the room, her image going grainy as she passed into shadow. “Fear. Pain.” She tilted her head back, looking up toward a series of catwalks along the back wall. “I think someone died in here.”

The camera view grew noticeably shakier. “Are they in here with us?”

“There’s too much daylight.” Mamaw turned away from the catwalks. “Come on, I want to see the old aging warehouse, where they kept the whiskey.”

The scene changed once more, only this time the interior of the building was so dark it was hard to make out anything but shadows. Oscar wasn’t sure if night vision had been invented yet in 1972, but even if it had, a consumer-grade camera wouldn’t have been equipped with it.

“Barbara?” Sharon called, a note of fear in her voice. “What is it? Who are you talking to?”

One of the shadows moved, and Mamaw said, “Ivan Corbett, is that you? Great-grandaddy?”

Several seconds of silence followed, then she let out a hiss. “What do you mean? Who?”

“Barbara?” Sharon asked again.

“No.” Mamaw stepped back in Sharon’s direction. “Why? Who?” She stared at nothing for a moment, then turned sharply. “We’re leaving.”

“Barb, what’s going on?”

Mamaw’s face was grim, before she vanished to one side. The camera jerked—she must have grabbed Sharon’s arm and was shoving her out of the building. “We need to get out of here.”

They emerged back outside, but not into the daylight of earlier. Black clouds covered the sky, and wind whipped the tree branches. “Where did this storm come from?” Sharon asked.

“It doesn’t matter, we need to…oh fuck, Sharon, run!”

The camera angle swung wildly; there was the sound of running feet, then a short scream—

Then the rain came pouring down. The last image was of Mamaw rolling on the ground, her mouth open in a silent scream, before the camera cut off.