Island Ghosts: A Will Castleton Adventure Read online

  Light glinted from his hand.

  A big kitchen knife.

  Will parked the car crosswise in the guy’s path and dialed 911 on the cell.

  “U.S. Marshal Will Castleton,” he told the dispatcher before she even finished announcing he’d reached Gamer’s Key emergency response. “I’m reporting a possible ten-zero or attempted murder. A man with a knife. Send an ambulance. I’m on - damn.” He hadn’t taken note of the street names. “I’m one block west of the Gamer’s Key 7-11, at the north end of the street.”

  “Sir, could you - ?”

  Will pushed the END button and got out of the Jeep. He was instantly soaked, even before he fixed his weapon on the man.

  “U.S. Marshal,” Will said. “Where is she?”

  The guy stopped his pissed-at-the-world stride, cocked his head. “Kimmy? Hell, Kimmy’s dead, man. You’re too damned late.”

  “I am not too late.”

  The man stood there a moment, the knife hanging like a natural extension of his arm. The man was not the least bit afraid of him.

  “You one of those cops afraid to use his gun?”

  “No.”

  The man nodded.

  Will held steady.

  It went down fast. The man raised the knife to shoulder height, started striding toward Will.

  Will knew instantly what the guy wanted, and he was not going to give it to him.

  The man roared and charged, the knife hand pumping now.

  Will took a second to aim low.

  The shot rang out.

  The man went down.

  Will had aimed for the knee, had hit him in the thigh. Through and through, was his guess. In the movies he might have kept going or got right back up. In real life he dropped the knife, grabbed at his wound, writhing in the middle of the flooded road. He made incoherent whining, growling noises.

  Will kept the gun on him. “Roll over onto your stomach and put your hands behind your back.”

  “Man, you shot me!”

  “You’re going to live,” Will said. “After you die, you’re just dead. But you’re going to live with this night for years to come.” He cuffed the guy. A trickle of the dude’s blood was heading for the gutters. “Where is she?”

  “Can you at least put me in your car or something? Out of the rain? You got me sitting in the middle of a fucking river.”

  “You’ll survive. Where is she?”

  The man growled in protest. “Man, everyone on this island knows where we live. She’s on the porch.”

  “Which house?”

  Neighbors had come out to their own porches now.

  “The red one.”

  Will threw the knife onto a neighbor’s lawn. Then his bare feet sprinted through the cold water on the hard asphalt. Across the mushy lawn, the uncut grass there. He leapt three tall steps to the porch.

  The woman was there. Kimmy. She was sprawled on her back, wearing a rather pretty navy blue dress of some summery material.

  Now dark with rain.

  And blood.

  She was dead. Had to be.

  Blood and water mixing all over the floorboards of the porch.

  Will heard a rasping breath over the hiss of the rain. She moved. Tried to sit up. Couldn’t even come close.

  He hastened to her side.

  “You hand in there, Kimmy. Help is on its way.”

  She clutched his hand with her good hand. He doubted she could move the other.

  She tried to form a word.

  “Shhh,” he said.

  Her panic-stricken eyes found his and seemed to settle just a little.

  Will held her unharmed shoulder tight, held her hand, held her eyes with his. “It’ll be all right.”

  Her lips quivered. She moaned. The moan ended in a cough, a thin mix of blood and spittle on her chin.

  He kept eye contact, stroked her hair.

  They sat that way. Will felt time become a fluid, malleable thing. He slowed it, stopped it

  until her pain was a matter of seconds, not minutes. Her soul moved briefly through his body as it passed. He shivered. The way intricate way she perceived and related to colors, her sense of smell, these had been so vivid during her lifetime as to be almost alien senses to him.

  He looked at her another moment or two, still holding her hand, her shoulder. There would be no resuscitation.

  The rain let up a bit.

  Then a sudden flash of lightning - but no thunder.

  Will turned.

  It was Lehman. He’d snapped a picture. He’d obviously been listening on a scanner at the 7- 11, had beat the cops here.

  Will decided he didn’t give a damn about the picture.

  Lehman shook his head. Perhaps tere was even real regret in the gesture. “Hard luck, Castleton. Looks like you got here too late.”

  Will held Lehman’s gaze.

  “I got here in time.”

  “What the hell do you mean, Castleton?” He pointed at Kimmy’s body. “She couldn’t be any more dead, could she?”

  “Sometimes all we can ask is that someone hold our hand as we die. Or even after.”

  Will believed that if he listened just right he could hear ghosts whispering their cold, clear assent in the diminishing hiss of the rain.

  Then the sibilance was drowned out by sirens, approaching fast.

  Lehman, who had been looking at Will, befuddled, pulled a notebook from his back pocket and began scribbling down the quote.

  THE END

  ***

  A Note from the Author

  I hope you enjoyed this Will Castleton adventure. If you’re reading this, this means you’ve finished one of the four stories currently available in ebook format. Obviously, Will travels a long way - physically, mentally and spiritually - between the events detailed in “Island Ghosts”, “Samantha”, “The Bridge” and “Nighteyes”.

  Let me say this: I don’t have set dates yet, but two novels providing connective tissue between the stories have been outlined and will be written if there’s enough reader interest. If you enjoyed any of these stories - let me know and I’ll get writing!

  I wrote the original four Will Castleton stories back in the late 1990s/early 2000s for small press magazines and anthologies.

  The first, “Island Ghosts”, came pretty much out of nowhere and was simply an exercise in speed, movement and suspense. It appeared in the Future Mysterious anthology simply entitled DIME - a collection of hard-boiled private eye stories. Thank you, Babs Lakey, for taking a story that technically didn’t even feature a private eye! But Lakey apparently saw potential in Will Castleton and so did I.

  Then an editor asked me for a story to include in an anthology about ghost hunters. So I moved Will Castleton forward in time a bit and wrote “Samantha.”

  The first Will Castleton novel, at least as I have it planned right now, will provide more background into the event causing Will to become psychic, and regarding his relationship with the less ghostly of the two Samanthas featured in the eponymous story.

  The second novel will detail Will’s coming to grips with the spirit world and will further events hinted at in “The Bridge”, which appeared in a small press magazine, and “Nighteyes”, which, though it doesn’t feature any form of the word “vampire” was originally published in a collection of stories about vampire hunters.

  If you’ve enjoyed any of these stories, there are two things you can do.

  #1. Let me know on Twitter! - https://www.twitter.com/davidbainaa I’m dying to write these two novels - but only if readers want them! Nothing motivates a writer like fan support! I love talking to readers! (I know, I know - I should be writing instead of Tweeting, but I’m pretty good at scheduling my time.)

  #2. Sign up for my newsletter, and I’ll let you know the minute any more Will Castleton material becomes available. I’ll only send you one email a month (excepting perhaps a few extra-special, extra-short announcements), and I promise you’ll always get something free
and a coupon for a discounted ebook.!

  Thanks, as always, for picking up this ebook!

  Sincerely,

  Dave Bain

  https://bit.ly/bainbooks

  ***

  About the Author

  David Bain is a community college English professor and independent writer with well over 100 publications in venues as diverse as Weird Tales and Poems & Plays.

  Connect with David Bain

  Website: https://bit.ly/bainbooks

  Amazon Page: https://bit.ly/davidbainkindle

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidbainaa

  Newsletter: https://bit.ly/bainnewsletter

  ***

  Watch for these other Will Castleton Paranormal/Psychic Detective Adventures

  available in December 2011.

  ***

  - Other books by David Bain -

  Novel

  Gray Lake: A Novel - $2.99

  Short Story Collections

  While the City Sleeps: Tales from Green River - $2.99

  Four Stories - $1.49

  Streetlights Filled with Flowers: Three Tales of Urban Fantasy - $.99

  Grindhouse Novelettes

  David Bain’s All-Nite!!! Grindhouse Quintuple Feature!!! - $2.99

  Island Ghosts: A Will Castleton “Slightly Psychic” Detective Adventure - $.99

  Cauldron Car: A High Octane Horror Grindhouse Novelette - $.99

  The Cowboys of Cthulhu: A Weird Western Grindhouse Novelette - $.99

  Brujas Behind Bars: A Chicks in Prison Grindhouse Novelette - $.99

  From The Chronicles of Shin and Skulk

  The Pit of Cormair: A Shin & Skulk High Fantasy Sword and Sorcery Adventure - $.99

  Shin’s Silent Quest - $.99

  The Tsan - $.99

  Select Stories From the Collections

  Black Cab - $.99

  Finding Tim - $.99

  Hellcat Prom Night - $.99

  Phone Sex on the Nightside - $.99

  A Pleasure to Burn - $.99

  Under an Invisible Shadow - $.99

  GRAY LAKE: A NOVEL

  Teenage friends Brian Henderson and Scott "Iggy" Ignatowski suddenly find themselves living the ghost stories and urban legends they so love one night as they watch a car drive across the moonlit surface of GRAY LAKE. At the same moment, in the marshes to the north, the battle for dominance over a troubled gang of small town meth dealers begins.

  For Iggy, the car’s arrival heralds a downward spiral as he dreams of its sometimes lovely, sometimes ghastly occupants chauffering him into murky depths. For Brian, it issues in a season of dark love in the form of Maya, a devastatingly beautiful but strangely enigmatic girl he meets on the lakeshore.

   Soon the mysteries of the ghost car, coupled with the unstable gang members’ obsessions, will drive Scott, Iggy and others toward fateful choices, hurtling headlong into a violent and deadly showdown on the spectral shores of Gray Lake.

  ---

  Read an excerpt here!

  Gray Lake

  by

  David Bain

  “Because Gray Lake is haunted,” Brian said. “I mean think about it. I know at least fifteen Gray Lake ghost stories just off the top of my head.”

  “Fifteen?” Iggy lifted his back from the windshield of Brian’s Jeep and propped himself up on his bony elbows, the tendrils of his curly hair twisting about the shoulders of his t-shirt, the ends long enough to still be brushing the glass. The Jeep sat on the skinny ribbon of public access, which was little more than a wide berm. Iggy began counting on his fingers. “Let’s see – Hatchet Man, Little Lost Lucy, crazy Dr. Sallee – who may even have been Hatchet Man – the ghost girl made of fog over in the marsh, what other ones?”

  Brian and Iggy were facing Deadman’s Hill, which was infamously steep and high. After descending Deadman’s, Lakeview curved around the contour of the lake. There was a good deal of shallow water and leafy shore shrubbery between them and the hill, which loomed about a football field and a half away.

  Brian remained lying on the hood. His athletic frame, white tennis shorts, red polo shirt and close-cropped blonde hair stood in stark contrast to Iggy’s spindly, spider-like body, cut-off jeans, black Misfits skull t-shirt and long, dark, shaggy locks.

  “Well, okay, what I’m saying, Ig, is whenever anyone from Green River tells one of those ghost stories – urban legends, I mean - like even the old one about the killer with the hook hand scratching to get into the car where the kids are making out, ever since I was a little kid, people have set that one right here at this spot. Right where we are now. This little strip of sand along the road. You know it didn’t really happen here - as if it really happened anywhere - but there must be three dozen lakes around Green River. So why do they choose this one if it isn’t really haunted?”

  “Because it’s a popular make-out spot?”

  “People like to say that, but tell me, how many times do we come out here, you, me and Bull, and it’s empty, like it was made just for us. Or it’s just one or two people hanging out, stargazing like you and me, or smoking a cigarette and looking out over the water or something? In fact, have we ever encountered anyone making out here? I’ll tell you something. Back in the bad old days of last semester, back when I wasn’t single, I took Janie out here one Saturday and, dude, there was just too much traffic. We’d get warmed up, all breathy and slurpy-faced – she was a really sloppy kisser - ”

  “I wouldn’t have cared. Not in the least. Bring on the sloppy-kissing cheerleaders! You were a fool to dump her, man.”

  “Like I need advice from someone who’s never made out here or anywhere else on this planet. Look, my point is that thirty seconds later, every time we got going, we had to stop because we had to see whether or not the headlights on the road would suddenly pull up next to us.”

  As if on cue, another car crested the hill far above them.

  “So where’s this one going?” Brian asked.

  “It’ll go left, into the trailer park.” A car going right would head into the relatively new, more well-to-do waterfront houses of Gray Lake Estates.

  “Nah,” Brian said, pausing for a yawn. “It’ll go past us, toward Burr Oak.”

  “Left,” Iggy said. “Definitely left.”

  The car turned left.

  “Damn, how do you do that? I don’t even average one in three but you get, what, maybe ninety percent right?”

  Iggy grinned - his thin face skull-like under his cowl of long stringy hair - and stretched out on the hood, reaching into the pocket of his cut-offs. When he pulled his hand out again he held up a crinkly little pin-sized joint that was barely visible in the moonlight.

  “I’ve been using a top secret psychotropic substance previously known only to the ancient Atlanteans in order to heighten my already awesome powers of awareness and prognostication.”

  “Jesus. Okay, go ahead, smoke it if you think you have to. Just don’t let any of it waft my way.” Brian waved a hand in front of his nose as if he were already trying to keep the noxious smoke at bay.

  “Where do you get that stuff anyway? Stuckey?”

  “Yeah, Stuckey.”

  “Pfft. I mean, look at the source. You want to turn out like him?”

  “Hey, you let Stuckey buy beer for you.”

  “No, Bull lets him buy beer for us.”

  “You wouldn’t have anything to do with Stuckey if it wasn’t for Bull’s football connection?”

  “Are you kidding? I know cooler people than Stuckey who are over twenty-one.”

  Iggy shrugged. “Listen, dude. You sure I can’t talk you into trying some just this once? Summer’s just begun. No piss tests for you until August at the earliest. This spring you said you would.”

  “I lied. Or, well, I’ve reconsidered.” He held out an upraised palm. “Not for me, sorry.” Brian suddenly adopted Iggy’s position, up on his elbows. He looked at Iggy, his eyebrows now in a sharp V.


  “Yeah?” Iggy asked, exhaling blue smoke.

  “Shh, Ig. You hear that?”

  “No, what?”

  “Quiet. Listen.”

  Far back over the top of Deadman’s Hill, away back toward Green River, a loud engine – so distant, and yet already so incredibly loud – was growling toward them.

  “Damn,” Iggy said. “Someone needs a new muffler.”

  The engine sounded like it had to be just over the top of the hill, though the two boys couldn’t even see the glow of the car’s headlights yet.

  “So this loud car,” Brian said. “Which way?”

  “I … I don’t know,” Iggy said.

  “Come on, weed got your tongue or what? You’re The Prognosticator, man. You’ve got special insights and all. Take a guess.”

  “No.”

  “Quit being weird and take a guess!”

  “Into Gray Lake Estates.”

  “Was that weed really strong or something? Are you so stoned that all logic’s left you? Turn into Gray Lake Estates with an engine like that? No way. In fact, it’s too loud even for the trailer park. Nope, that one’s going to drive right past us and head on into the night toward Burr Oak. Only a true rock-n-roll hell-billy would drive a car like that.”

  “No,” Iggy said. “No, I don’t want that car to go past us. I don’t want that thing coming anywhere near us.”

  The still-distant engine kicked its growl up another snarling notch as it fought the grade to the crest of the hill.

  “Brian, I’m scared. That car, it’s not a normal car.”

  ***

  Sweet, pungent smoke rolled so thick through the old Nova Menger had chosen for the night that Jim Stuckey could barely see his hand directly in front of his eyes. AC/DC’s “The Jack” off High Voltage was throbbing away on the speakers. Keith Orban and Stuckey had been singing along, their vocals now degenerating into a tangled mix of laughter and mistimed lyrics. Stuckey was sucking at air in between hacking, but-gusting coughs from his last hit. His lungs were burning. In his mind’s eye he could see them pulsing red in his chest, achieving the same bright brick color as his thin flannel shirt.

  As he choked down the last cough – maybe his final weed wheeze ever – Stuckey rolled down the window.