Page 4 of Rory

Beaumont waved a hand without looking back, got into a rental truck and drove away.

Walking up the drive gave Harper some time to gloat; she knew she was the first person to be allowed alone inside McKeran’s Castle for the last thirty years, maybe longer. She’d make that fact the segment opener. At the same time Beaumont’s complete disregard of her and her safety while on his property, where over a hundred people had gone missing, disturbed her a little. For the channel she had filmed in some scary places—Black Star Canyon near Irvine, the Kehoe House in Savannah, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans—but the site of a massacre, unexplained deaths and a voodoo priestess’s burial site didn’t quite compare to the biggest missing persons black hole in the state.

“Right, let’s quit spooking ourselves, Ensley.” Harper eyed the stone walls and soaring towers. “You want a bite of me, Norm Eater, you’ll have to work for it.”

She stopped in front of the castle’s entrance to take out and check her equipment. For stills she hung her favorite Nikon around her neck; for filming she mounted her low-light loving Sony on the telescoping tripod she carried to every location. Once she took some test shots with both, she clipped her wireless microphone to her collar. She then took a bite of the crisp apple she’d tucked in her bag, which helped dry out her mouth so she wouldn’t slurp her words.

“Sound check, fleck, heck. A, be sure to leave in any background sound if it’s spooky.” Because of her deafness Harper relied on her assistant to do all the audio editing. “McKeran’s Castle visit, segment one. Let’s bust some legends, shall we?”

As she went inside Harper became immediately aware of the emptiness; when she began speaking there would probably be an echo. As she switched on the Sony she imagined how she had been told to talk in church as a kid. Since she could no longer hear her own voice the muscle memory of that hushed tone came back to her, and helped modulate how loudly she spoke.

“Welcome to the latest edition of Fear-Faire. I’m your ghost-hunting myth-cracking always curious never nervous tour guide to the paranormal, Harper Ensley.” The opener gave her a chance to collect herself as she panned from one side to the other.

Here we go.

“I contacted Renard Beaumont, the owner of McKeran’s Castle, who kindly allowed me to take a tour of the premises. This is where Esme Martinez, a journalist from Monterey Today, went missing last month.”

Because her mouth was still a little too wet Harper paused the recording to finish eating her apple. She tucked the core back in a sandwich bag and shoved it in her hoodie’s pocket before she switched the camera back on.

“Some people believe that Ms. Martinez, known locally as an ethical, straight forward reporter, staged her disappearance so she could make a sensational return on Halloween. Only Halloween came and went, with no sensation-making Ms. Martinez.” She chuckled. “I don’t buy it was staged, peeps. Do you?”

Walking down the dark front hall toward the first patch of flickering light, Harper talked about the castle’s notorious history of gobbling up people, beginning with the tycoon who had brought it over from Scotland. She panned from right to left and back again every few steps as she detailed some of the more gruesome accidents that had occurred near the property as well.

She even took a brief peek inside one of the rooms, which turned out to be an empty storage space with a painting of a medieval warrior on the back stone wall.

“Cute dude.” Harper wondered why someone would paint a man inside a closet. “According to my research, more than two hundred folks have gone missing or died under mysterious circumstances either inside the castle or within ten miles of the property,” she told the camera as she stepped out and adjusted the focus to the burning torches Beaumont had left in the old iron wall brackets. “That includes an alleged black widow murderess, whose car was found down the road, the FBI agent from Texas who died in a single-car accident, and the disappearance of a local gal turned supermodel. All of them had ties to this place, too.”

The torches ended at a short staircase leading down to another pool of flickering light. There Harper paused and considered her options. According to the pamphlet’s map, visitors had always been restricted from that area. Most of the norms who had gone missing had last been seen near the stairs leading to the second lower level. Because she had debunked a lot of allegedly paranormal activity in infamous locations, where a few times angry profiteers had tried to jump her, she knew she might encounter trouble if she went down those stairs. She also knew she couldn’t wrap up her Halloween feature without filming the entire thing.

“By the way, if I go missing and someone recovers this vid,” Harper told the camera, “I want all my stuff including my house to go to Athena Makris, my personal assistant. It’s in my will, but I figure I should say it on a vid in case no one can find it. Love you, A.”

The temperature of the air dropped ten degrees as she walked down the stairs. Beyond the lower landing a long torch-lit passage stretched empty but for an odd spot in the middle. It looked as if Beaumont had turned on whatever heated this place, because Harper could see the warmth rising from someplace near the floor and riffling the air.

“If I’m not mistaken, this is where McKeran’s Castle gets hungry,” she said as she took a few steps toward the distortion. “Of course we know that old buildings can’t really eat people unless it’s fiction—yes, Stephen King, I’m talking about your haunted house story—but sometimes it seems like the only explanation. Just like the Golden Gate Bridge attracts jumpers, this place is a magnet for folks who apparently want to disappear.”

She had already decided not to talk about the supermodel, Grace Johansen, or her grandmother, who had been a battered wife before she’d vanished here. Benedict Miller, the doctor who had lost his hospital job just before he’d vanished, was also off-limits. She always avoided using other people’s troubles to sensationalize her content. Besides that, anyone who got fired for standing up to a homophobe verbally abusing a gay co-worker was aces in Harper’s book anyway.

“Listen, I’ve thought about ditching my life, changing my name and making a fresh start,” Harper admitted to her camera. “Who doesn’t? One thing I’ve already learned is that I can’t escape my problems. It’s not fair. I didn’t want or deserve them. But my problems are mine, and wherever I go, they’re riding shotgun. Doing what I can to deal with them is just life for me. If you’re having trouble doing that, there are people who can help.”

As she recited the numbers to several intervention services, Harper thought for a moment about the two times in her life when she’d nearly given up. Both had been after getting horrible news from a doctor, and although she’d been a teenager she might have done something really stupid. Fortunately the couple who ran the group home noticed her deepening depression, and they took her to a therapist who specialized in handicapped kids. That was when she realized that not being able to do what others could didn’t mean her life had no meaning.

You aren’t broken, Harper, the therapist told her. You’re different.

Whatever was causing the air to ripple in the passage got worse, and made goosebumps pop up on Harper’s arms. For once her tinnitus had disappeared, too. She took a few still shots of the distortion before she swung around and walked back toward the staircase. Halfway there she halted again as tiny beams of white light shot out from the seams of the stone wall on her right, which seemed to dissolve in a sudden shower of the same light.

On the other side of the new hole in the wall stood a tall, slender blonde girl dressed for a Renfaire, who stared back at her as if Harper were the one who had instantly materialized in place of a wall. White mist appeared to be radiating from behind her, probably from another drum of dry ice.

“Hey.” She tucked her camera against her body; this had to be something Beaumont had rigged for her benefit. “Are you supposed to be a ghost? Because ye old medieval gown isn’t really working for me–”

As the air between them rippled, the girl reached out, grabbed the front of her shirt and jerked her through the hole in the wall.