Page 7 of Rattling Bone (OutFoxing the Paranormal #2)

CHAPTER SEVEN

“You don’t have to do this,” Nigel said. “We could still leave. Go home.”

Oscar walked slowly up the steep hillside behind his parents’ house. Nigel followed behind him, feet slipping on the snow-covered leaf litter. The forest around them was still, with only the distant sounds of car engines to disturb the silence.

“I used to come up here a lot as a kid,” Oscar said, instead of answering. “Whenever I wanted to think, or just get out of the house and be by myself for a while.”

The forest broke open, revealing a stretch of bare rock, the mountain’s stony core erupting through the skin of soil. Gray forest, gray stone, gray sky.

He climbed up onto the outcropping, then reached down and hauled Nigel up after. Nigel’s fingers were ice cold; he’d left his gloves back at the house.

“Thanks,” Nigel said. Then, “What you’re talking about doing is dangerous, Oscar. Whatever is lurking in the distillery killed three of your relatives and probably did something to your grandmother. We need to get as far away from it as possible.”

Irritation flickered through Oscar—they’d already had this discussion at the restaurant. So instead he tried a new tack. “You were all right with us risking ourselves to release the ghosts of the Matthews house.”

Nigel’s eyes widened behind the shields of his glasses. “I had no idea the investigation would turn out to be so dangerous!”

“But when it did, you were okay with letting me use my abilities to put an end to the haunting,” Oscar snapped. “Jones was a dangerous ghost, and maybe whatever is in the distillery is too, but we handled him and we’ll handle this.”

“Fine, but at least wait a week, or a year.” Nigel folded his arms over his chest, tucking his fingers beneath his armpits for warmth. “If this thing becomes active every twenty-five years, that means we’ll be challenging it at its most powerful.”

How could Nigel not see? “You know why! If I leave and something happens to Dad, I won’t be able to live with myself!”

“There’s no reason to think he’s in danger!” Nigel dropped his arms. “It’s been fifty years since your grandmother went to the distillery, and he’s been fine! Barbara probably would have been, too, if she’d stayed away or gone some other year!”

Oscar rubbed a hand over his face, trying to scrub away his aggravation. “And what if you’re wrong? The risk is too great. I don’t understand why you’re being like this!”

“Because I don’t want to lose you!”

Nigel’s shout echoed through the trees, before fading into silence. His gray eyes blinked rapidly, as if holding back tears, and his hands balled into fists.

All of Oscar’s frustration evaporated. “Hey,” he said, holding out his arms. Nigel stepped into the embrace, and Oscar wrapped him in a tight hug. Nigel’s slight body trembled against his. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You can’t promise that,” Nigel said, voice muffled by Oscar’s sweater.

“Okay, fair.” Oscar rubbed circles on Nigel’s back with one hand. “But I know to be careful. And unlike Mamaw Fox, I have an experienced team with me, including you.”

“We don’t know what happened to Barbara, though. Was she possessed? Did something attach to her? Did something cause a medical emergency that resulted in brain damage?”

The last possibility was the one that scared Oscar the most. “We have experience,” he repeated. “If I start yelling at something to get off me, break out the salt and the electro-static discharge strap. You know what to do.”

“I wonder if there could have been something done for her, even after.” Nigel shivered against him, though not, he suspected, from the cold. “Do you think your grandfather knew about her spirit work? Or believed, if he did?”

Oscar shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Even if he did, it got to the point where he called for a doctor. And then…fuck.”

Nigel pulled back and looked up at him. “What is it?”

“Every book of Appalachian ghosts that I found at the library mentioned the lunatic hospital. The one she was held in.” His throat had gone dry. “If it’s as haunted as the stories say, and she was a medium on god-knows-what medications…”

Nigel swore softly. “She would have been completely exposed, not just to confused and frightened ghosts, but to any negative ones who wanted to manipulate or possess her.”

“Yeah.” The thought made him ill.

“I wish I could say something other than ‘I’m sorry.’” Nigel’s arms tightened around his waist. “The whole situation is tragic.”

“I know. I keep thinking, if things had been different, if she’d lived, if I could have trained with her.” What would it have been like to grow up knowing he wasn’t crazy, that he didn’t have to hide? “But I’ve been practicing, you know I have. Shielding, grounding, envisioning white light, everything in the journal pages that Dr. Lawson copied for me.”

“And you think it’s enough to take on Cloven Oak.”

It wasn’t a question, but Oscar nodded anyway. “I need to do this. I can’t risk running away from whatever is out there preying on my family, just hoping it doesn’t get Dad, too. We have no idea what its reach might be, or why it’s after us, or anything about it.”

Nigel met his gaze. “All right. If you think we can do this, it’s good enough for me. I’m still frightened…but this is your choice, not mine. I’ll support you.”

Oscar hugged Nigel tighter. “Thank you.”

Nigel hugged him back. “I’ll contact Mrs. Montague tonight. If we’re going into a dangerous, haunted old distillery, we might as well get paid for it.” He pulled away and looked up. “If you’re okay with that, I mean.”

“I’m not going to turn down a rich old lady’s money,” Oscar said with a rueful grin. “I’m thinking we do the initial sweep tomorrow, in the light of day.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

“Right.” Oscar looked down at the house below. The short day was rapidly drawing to a close, and the lights within shone warmly through the gray twilight. “Let’s go back. I want to ask my mom about cousin Julie.”

* * *

“I’m pleased to hear that,” Patricia Montague said through the phone. “Do you need any equipment? I can have it shipped to you overnight.”

Nigel paced back and forth in the driveway near the van. He’d come out here so the call could be private, but he felt like his hands were about to freeze off. He shouldn’t have left his gloves in the house, but it was too late to get them now.

“We have most of our investigation equipment,” he told her, “but we were expecting to be working inside of an occupied house. So we don’t have a generator, or a tent, or heaters, or anything else required to set up a command center at an abandoned location in the middle of winter.”

“Text me a list and the address. Everything you need will arrive tomorrow.”

The perks of having a rich patron. “I will.”

“Of course, I expect a copy of any raw footage collected during the investigation. And I would like to view the old films you found.”

The small hairs on his neck prickled. Patricia Montague had known the medium Robin, whose photocopied journal pages Oscar had been learning from. She’d apparently been friends with both the medium and Dr. Lawson. He didn’t know what their history was, exactly, but it had ended with Robin dead, Dr. Lawson antagonistic, and the Montague family withdrawing their financial support from the Institute of Parapsychology.

At least, until Dr. Lawson retired and he came along. Had Montague just been biding her time, waiting for the next survival researcher she could get her hooks into?

Not that it mattered; without her generous grant and donations, he would likely have fallen victim to the next round of budget cuts at the university. And it was because of her that he’d met Oscar. So he owed her twice over.

“Right,” he said. “Oscar may prefer to get the films transferred so he can keep the originals, I don’t know, but I’m sure he won’t mind letting you view the footage.”

“Thank you, Dr. Taylor. Is that all?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do keep me informed.”

She hung up. Nigel immediately texted her the list and an address—though not the one belonging to Oscar’s parents.

On the way up the hill, they’d discussed how to handle things. Oscar decided to text Josh and see if he was willing to have their equipment sent to his house, away from the prying eyes of Oscar’s parents. Scott wouldn’t be happy if they went looking for ghosts in the same place something terrible happened to his own mother.

Not that Nigel could entirely blame him for that. He wanted to grab Oscar and haul him back to Durham, back to his warm, ghost-free apartment.

Far away from whatever cursed family legacy lurked in these hills.

* * *

When Mom offered to wash the dishes after dinner, while everyone else went to play a board game, Oscar seized on his chance to talk to her alone. “I’ll give you a hand with those.”

“No need, honey.”

He began stacking plates. “I insist. You’ve been waiting on us hand and foot; it’s the least I can do.”

She smiled. “Well, I can’t argue with that. I’ll wash and you dry?”

They worked for a few minutes in silence, while everyone else drifted into the den. Mom spoke first. “I like your friend Chris. They’re funny.”

Oscar grinned. “Don’t tell them that, it’ll go to their head.”

“It’ll be our secret.” She glanced casually over her shoulder, then said, “Did you go to the storage place?”

“Yes.” Oscar lowered his voice, even though there was no way Dad could hear him. “We found some things. Films of Mamaw. She was a spirit medium, did you know that?”

“Good heavens, I certainly didn’t!” She frowned slightly as she scrubbed a stubborn bit from a casserole dish. “Maybe that’s why your daddy is so dead-set against this ghost hunting of yours.”

“Probably. Did you know Mamaw’s family used to own a distillery just out of town? Cloven Oak?”

Mom shook her head. “I didn’t know there was one. But then, I’m not from around here originally, and Scott never talks about his family. I think Julie was the only one from your mamaw’s side left anyway.”

Oscar nearly dropped the plate in his hands. “I wanted to ask about her, actually.”

She sobered. “It was a terrible thing, and at Thanksgiving, too. I’m just glad you were so young; I don’t imagine you remember much of it.”

“Just that she died. What happened, exactly?”

“I don’t like thinking about it.” Mom pursed her lips, then sighed. “But I know you wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Julie’s daddy moved them to Kentucky back when she was a little girl. There was some kind of falling out between his side of the family and your great-grandfather—Mamaw Fox’s daddy.”

“Do you know what about?”

“I surely don’t. Scott might, but it was a long time before he was born, so it’s hard to say. At any rate, they’d gotten back in contact at some point, I’m not sure when, and Julie and her husband came visiting for Thanksgiving.” A little smile touched her mouth. “We had a full house that year—there was Julie, and of course Papaw Fox, and my mama and daddy, and a bunch of cousins on the Fox side.” The smile faded. “A shame it ended the way it did.”

Oscar tried to recall any specifics, but the memories were vague, blurry. So many Thanksgivings had featured the same cast of relatives coming over, sitting around the TV watching football, then stuffing themselves on turkey, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and cornbread.

“It was the Saturday after,” Mom went on. Her hands had stilled in the sink, sudsy water dripping slowly from her fingers as she stared into a time that no longer existed. “Julie and her husband…what was his name? David, that was it. She was a real outdoorsy type, loved to hike. They left to hike somewhere—she was going to show him something…” Her brow furrowed.

A cold feeling went up Oscar’s spine. “Could it have been the old distillery?”

“I don’t remember, hon.” Mom sighed and turned her attention back to the last of the dishes. “After having people in and out for two days, with you running around the house on a sugar high from all the candy Papaw Fox kept slipping you, I was exhausted. I laid down for a nap, and I woke up with Scott saying we needed to go, that Julie’d had a heart attack.” She handed him the last plate. “Poor David. Not many people had cell phones back then, and he’d had to run back to the car and drive into town to phone for help. By the time he guided the EMTs to where she was, it was too late. At least she didn’t have any children to leave behind.”

The cold around him deepened. “And what year was it, again?”

“Nineteen-ninety-seven.”

Twenty-five years after Mamaw Fox had her encounter at the distillery. It fit the pattern.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said. “If you remember anything else about it, let me know.”

He started to turn away, but she said, “There was one thing. Maybe you don’t remember—you probably don’t, you had so many nightmares when you were young.”

He turned back slowly. “What do you mean?”

“You woke Julie up one night, do you remember?”

He cast his mind back, but the incident was lost in the fog of early childhood. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you were probably sleepwalking—little kids do that. She opened her eyes in the middle of the night and found you standing by her bed. You said something about a lady wanting to talk to her, over and over again. She came and woke me up, and I put you back in the bed, and we both had a laugh at little kids and their imaginations.” Mom put away the kitchen sponge and turned to him. “Lord, I hadn’t thought of that in years. You had so many incidents like that…” she trailed off.

“Yeah,” he said, mind spinning in circles.

“I’m going to go into the den and see if they have room for another player.” She started past him. “You coming?”

“In a minute.”

Once she was gone, he turned slowly to the window above the kitchen sink. His reflection looked back at him, unnaturally pale.

“Did you try to warn Julie?” he whispered to the air. “And if so, who are you?”

He received no answer.