Deep Trouble Read online

  Now that, I could believe.

  It took all three of us to get the gnome’s cage situated in the guy’s truck. “The good news is, we’ve got a cargo plane coming in tonight. Saves me from a long drive and skips the awkward questions at the border.” He climbed into his truck. “Thanks for the call, Father. Nice to meet you, Wojcik.”

  As usual, he mangled my last name. It’s “voy-chick,” but it’s easier to answer to “woj-sick” than correct everyone. With that last indignity, the FFRC guy headed out, taking our problem gnome off our hands.

  I turned back to Father Leo. “Now, what about this new job?”

  He motioned for me to take a seat on the steps beside him. “Got a call from a friend of mine up in Waterford. Ever been up that way?”

  I nodded. It’s a little town on a back road up to Erie, and it gets more than its share of snow in the winter. “Yeah, I’ve been there. Not for a while.”

  “There’s a historic old building up there, the Eagle Hotel. Been around since Revolutionary times. Got turned into a museum and a restaurant a while back, and now and then they do special events there.”

  “Sounds pretty tame to me.”

  He shrugged. “It usually is. Except now, it’s not. And that’s where you come in.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “The hotel has always been haunted,” Father Leo said. “Until now, it’s been harmless—items get moved around, people report hearing a woman’s voice or a baby crying.”

  “And now?” I knew he was working up to something. I don’t get called in for nuisance ghosts.

  He took a deep breath. “Now we’ve got a Revolutionary War soldier and a French and Indian War soldier who square off and fire their muskets at each other. A ghost of a housekeeper goes shrieking through the main hallway, and people hear a child’s voice and breaking glass, but when they go into the room, there’s no child and no broken glass.”

  I gave him a look. “Still, not my kind of thing. What’s the real problem?”

  “Three people have been attacked in the past two weeks, but there are no footprints, no fingerprints, and nobody showed up on the security cameras,” he replied. “The ghost sneaks up behind them and chokes them until they pass out, military style, but doesn’t kill them.”

  “That’s bad for business,” I replied. “Do we know who it is and why the ghosts suddenly went into overdrive?”

  Father Leo shook his head. “If I knew that, we wouldn’t have to pay you the big bucks.”

  “Har-de-har-har,” I replied. I get a stipend from the Occulatum, but most of it goes to cover my co-pay at the doctor’s, getting patched up from doing the work.

  “One of the docents thought he caught a glimpse of a tricorn hat,” Father Leo replied. “And a man he swore was Mad Anthony Wayne.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar. “Who?”

  “A Revolutionary War general known for his temper, hence the nickname,” Father Leo replied. “Spent a lot of time up around Waterford during the war, and on a visit years later, died near Erie and was buried up there. A few years after that, Mad Anthony’s son came to claim the body. Dug it up, boiled off the flesh, and packed the bones into saddlebags for the trip down to his home in Georgia. The flesh is buried near Erie. Legend has it that not all of the bones made it down south.”

  “And you think Mad Anthony is looking for his missing bones?”

  “Maybe.”

  I frowned. “Doesn’t explain why he came back now.”

  Father Leo grinned. “That’s where you come in. Just—be careful. Mad Anthony was known as a cunning warrior and a fearsome fighter. It sounds like he’s still dangerous. Don’t take chances.”

  “I’m sorry, have you met me?”

  Father Leo rolled his eyes. “Don’t take more chances than usual then, Mark. You still owe the parish charity fund money from our last poker game.”

  Chapter 2

  The Eagle Hotel, a three-story stone hotel in downtown Waterford, looked peaceful enough. With its red, white, and blue bunting around the window boxes and the painted sign proclaiming its name above the door, it looked charming and lousy with history. It had stopped being an inn long ago, and now, while a restaurant claimed the downstairs, the top two floors were part of a local museum. I might have gone to the museum on a field trip as a kid, back before I knew ghosts were real.

  I parked my truck a few blocks away and walked past the hotel and around the block to get a feel for the place. The small lawn had been neatly trimmed, and electric candles glimmered in the windows, shimmering more than usual with the old, wavy glass. Father Leo’s contact had given me a key, both to the restaurant and to the museum, but I wanted to scope out the whole setting before going inside.

  The back gate wasn’t locked, and I let myself inside, crossing the yard for a good look at the rear of the old hotel. I’m not a medium, and I’m sure as hell not a ghost whisperer—I tend to yell loudly at ghosts when I encounter them. But I felt a shift in the air all around me when I got close to the stone building, and it sent a warning prickle down my spine.

  Right before a gun blasted behind me, and I nearly lost the hearing in my left ear.

  I dropped to the ground and rolled toward the bushes, trying to get out of the line of fire. Someone returned fire, and I kept my head down.

  It took a few seconds to realize that one person was firing a musket, and the other a breechloader rifle. I know my guns, even the old-fashioned ones. I have a few friends who are die-hard re-enactors. And the volley of gunshots that had me pinned down shouldn’t have happened in the same century, let alone in this century.

  I chanced a look over the bushes, long enough to rest assured that I was not about to die in a hail of bullets. Just as I gathered the courage to get to my feet, the gunfire stopped. I dusted off my pants and stepped into the yard, and that’s when someone tackled me from behind.

  The weight of a man’s body knocked me forward as a strong arm came around my neck and pressed against my throat. Fortunately, Father Leo had warned me about Mad Anthony’s little trick, and I was ready for him. I grabbed the iron knife from my belt sheath and plunged the point backward, right into what should have been my attacker’s midsection.

  The ghost let go immediately and stepped back. When I turned around, no one was in sight. I rubbed my throat, sure that if I hadn’t been prepared, I would have ended up unconscious in the middle of the yard and with a hell of a headache when I woke up.

  So why, after all these years, was Mad Anthony Wayne so…mad? What pisses off a two-hundred-year-old Revolutionary War general? I didn’t know, but I needed to find out. Neither the restaurant nor the museum were going to do much business if the general’s ghost kept choking out their customers.

  I headed for the back door, braced this time for phantom gunfire. Just as I put the key in the lock, I heard someone moving behind me.

  “Halt! Police! Put your hands in the air.”

  I had a split second to decide whether or not the cop was real or just a ghost. I erred on the side of caution and lifted my hands open and out to my sides.

  “Turn around,” the cop ordered. I complied, still holding the key to the door.

  “I have permission to be here,” I replied. “Father Leo sent me. I’ve got a key.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Is there a reason you’re here after the place is closed?”

  I shrugged. “The owners wanted me to see if I could figure out why there’ve been some strange things going on. People have gotten hurt. I’m going to try to fix that.”

  My answer seemed to satisfy him because he holstered his gun. His nametag read “C. Dougherty.”

  “All right,” he said, eyeing the key in my hand. “But how about if I wait down here until you’re done, just to watch your back.”

  It was a statement more than a question, and I didn’t think I got a vote in the matter. “Be careful,” I warned. “There’s a restless ghost who’s been hurting people.”

&n
bsp; He nodded. “I heard about that. Don’t worry. He won’t get me.”

  “Suit yourself,” I muttered, and opened the back door. The building manager had left the security system off, and the decorative candles in the windows gave me enough light that I didn’t need a flashlight.

  I left Officer Dougherty outside and slipped through the restaurant’s kitchen and into the dining area. Everyone had gone home, but the faint scent of beef pot roast lingered, and my stomach growled. I made my way to the center of the room and then stopped. I didn’t sense any cold spots or see any orbs, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. In the distance, I thought I heard a baby cry, but the sound was faint enough it might have come from outside.

  A second key got me into the museum upstairs. Where the electric candles’ glow had given the restaurant a comfortable hominess, here in the museum, they seemed to accentuate the shadows. The two upper floors housed both museum exhibits and offices. The staff areas weren’t high on my list since I figured they were unlikely to have any heirlooms or relics that might have triggered the haunting. The museum itself, however, was another matter.

  Before my hunting days, I wasn’t all that interested in history. Now, researching legends and lore helps me get a jump on the ghosts and bad nasties that I put to rest. Along the way, I’ve become a bit of a history buff because you can’t make stuff that weird up. Who the hell boils his father’s bones and then takes the skeleton on a road trip, leaving bits and pieces along the way?

  The small museum covered Waterford’s long history. George Washington actually did sleep here, in this very hotel, more than once. Several of the displays were dedicated to the French and Indian War, which—interestingly enough—did not involve the French fighting Native Americans. Instead, both the French and the native tribes fought the British—and since this was before the Revolution, that put Washington and his buddies on the side of the Redcoats. See? How weird is that?

  The restaurant didn’t have any noticeable cold spots, but upstairs in the museum—where the heat rising should have made the rooms warmer—I felt cold all over. The sense of being watched was even stronger, and the sound of that baby crying grew louder, though it seemed to be coming from downstairs.

  The display cases showed the history of the area from the original native tribes to the French fur traders who collaborated with them and then to the influx of the English with their forts and settlements. Although the Civil War didn’t range up this far north, Waterford’s sons signed up and headed to battle, earning them a commemorative display of guns, uniforms, medals, and tattered journals. A number of the Revolutionary War and French and Indian items came from archeological digs by nearby Edinboro University around the remains of Fort LeBeouf, and I wondered as I looked at the lead bullet fragments and other relics how much ghostly energy the pieces carried with them.

  I turned and found myself staring straight down the barrel of a flintlock rifle. I heard the bang, saw smoke rise, and staggered as my brain insisted I must have taken a direct, close-range hit. The man in the British Red Coat uniform vanished before my heart stopped thudding.

  A rifle shot behind me sent my pulse hammering again. My hand flew to my chest, certain it would find a bloody exit wound, but my shirt and jacket remained intact. I kept enough of my wits about me to swivel, facing my attacker, and found only empty space.

  “That’s enough!” I yelled although the two ghosts had vanished. “The war is over, goddammit!”

  That’s when I saw a hatchet fly right past my left ear, and I heard its steel blade sink deep into the wooden post behind me. I looked up to see a dark-haired, bearded French fur trapper, complete with a Davy Crockett-style coonskin cap, giving me a murderous glare. I don’t speak a lick of French, but from the stream of vitriol, I figured he was cursing his aim.

  “You too!” I yelled, pointing at him. “Enough already! You’re dead! You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”

  He straightened up and squared his shoulders, surprised and offended. In the next heartbeat, he was gone.

  My nerves might never be the same, since I had no idea when I’d get another ghost drive-by. The sound of shattering glass made me flinch, throwing up my arms to protect my face and head. After a second, I realized that none of the cases around me had broken, and the windows were still intact. I uncoiled warily. A woman shrieked, so close behind me I could have sworn I felt her breath on the back of my neck. I have faced down swamp monsters and wendigos, killer trolls and were-squonks with reasonable courage, but that scream in my ear nearly made me piss myself.

  “What is your problem?” I yelled, turning to face empty air. “Geez.” I don’t know if shouting at ghosts actually does anything to them, but it makes me feel better.

  The ghosts inside had been an annoyance, and they might give someone a heart attack, but otherwise, none of them posed a danger. Mad Anthony, on the other hand, might pull his cute little fainting trick on the wrong person and do some real damage.

  I went back to searching the display cases, hoping that I would know what I needed when I saw it. The decorative candle didn’t light up the room enough, so I played my flashlight over the tagged items, looking for something that might give me a clue on how to send our troublesome ghosts packing.

  Museums always make me a little sad. All the things in the cases used to be just what people used in their everyday lives, part of their daily routine. I felt certain that when they went about their business with their personal possessions, they never expected strangers to be gawking at the flotsam and jetsam of their lives, neatly displayed and tagged. I was certain that the rough trappers and beleaguered soldiers would be astounded, and probably dismayed. I tried to imagine myself coming back in two hundred years as a ghost and seeing my dishes or my DVD collection enshrined in a glass case and decided to put a note in my will to burn everything my friends didn’t want.

  Brigadier General Mad Anthony Wayne had a whole display case of his own. A mannequin wore a reproduction of one of his uniforms, including the tricorn hat. Paintings and sketches pieced together his life, from his early days to the Revolution, and then sullying his legacy by battling the Native Americans. An odd assortment of his belongings was on display, but none of them looked like the kind of thing that would pull a man’s spirit back from the grave. On closer look, some of the items weren’t even really his—just period pieces like the kind he might have used. I sighed, having turned up a big, fat “zero” when it came to busting his ghost.

  What was I missing? Mad Anthony hadn’t been hanging around the Eagle Hotel for the whole two hundred years since he died, so something must have changed. But the obvious answer—that one of his missing bones had been put on display—hadn’t panned out.

  I wandered into the next room and found a history of Waterford after its colonial past. Sepia-toned photographs accompanied memorabilia from long-gone local companies, restaurants, and stores. A time capsule from 1968 that looked like a rusted metal box sat next to old milk bottles from a home-town dairy, cans from a now-defunct brewery, and framed pictures of Waterford-born men and women who had made good.

  When I reached the end of the display, I slumped against the wall, out of ideas. I figured the ghosts were about due to show up and shoot me again, but this time, I was ready for them. With my back to a period cast-iron stove, they weren’t going to sneak up on me, and I waited for them to reappear.

  Trapper Jacques was the first to show up, and when he pulled his arm back to throw his ax at me again, I hurled a handful of rock salt in his face. Poof! One down.

  Musket Guy appeared to my left. Lucky for me, those old guns are a bitch to fire. Before he could get his shot off, I salted him, and he vanished. The Civil War soldier almost got the drop on me, but I had enough salt to take him out, too.

  Downstairs, the baby wailed, and an invisible woman screamed. I had no idea what to do about ghosts I could hear but not see, and fortunately, they weren’t who I’d been hired to hunt. Whi
ch made me wonder how Officer Dougherty was holding up downstairs. I glanced out the back window and didn’t see him, but I figured he had probably decided to sneak off for a smoke.

  Strong arms gripped me from behind. One arm went around my throat, and the other hand knocked my iron knife from my belt. I could feel a large, muscular body pressed up against me, and instinctively, I rammed my elbow backward, but instead of sinking into his gut, it met thin air.

  Unfortunately, Mad Anthony’s arm around my neck felt entirely solid. I kicked back for his knee, but got nothing, and trying to stomp down on his instep did zilch. He held me, pinned, and no matter how I wriggled, I couldn’t get free.

  Shit. I tried to pull his arm clear of my throat, but my hands couldn’t get purchase, although a force kept them from reaching all the way to my neck. Mad Anthony squeezed harder, and my vision began to blur, coloring my view with dancing spots.

  Desperate to break his hold, I tried going limp. I almost slipped free, and then Mad Anthony had to compensate because if he was going to support my whole not-insubstantial weight, he needed to be more than a floating arm.

  His body grew more solid, and that was my cue. I grabbed for the force around my throat with both hands, hoping I could keep from hanging myself, and lifted my feet from the floor, then pushed off with all my strength, shoving myself back against him.

  We fell together, crashing into the display case. This time, real glass fell all around me, slicing into my scalp and hands, cutting my face. I was glad I’d worn a heavy coat and hoped that I didn’t manage to impale myself since the ghost’s body wasn’t going to take the brunt of our fall.

  Mad Anthony’s hold loosened just enough for me to gasp in air, and then he tightened again. I tore at the energy with my right hand while my left grabbed for the iron knife I had glimpsed on the floor when we fell. All I got for my trouble were a bunch of glass splinters in my palm since the blade remained maddeningly out of reach.