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Allie Grant aimed her flashlight at the padlocked door to the Margaret Handy Senior Center. On the surface, the abandoned building appeared like any other ranch style structure built in the nineteen-fifties. Lots of brick, lots of windows, lots of deterioration. But this wasn’t just any crumbling building. According to her anonymous source, this building was haunted.
Unfortunately, it was also locked up tighter than the Spanx she’d worn on her last date. Which was so long ago that Allie could barely recall the details, the only memorable part of the evening being when she took off those Spanx. Alone. Right before crawling into bed with a Snickers bar and the worn out copy of Anne of Green Gables Buela had given Allie on her seventh birthday.
Allie stifled a yawn. She wouldn’t mind being in bed right now. It was nearly midnight and she’d been up since the crack of dawn. But she was a journalist in need of a story and a haunted building (as hokey as that sounded) was a potential goldmine in magazine advertising revenue. It was also the kind of story that could get a freelancer like herself a cover byline, but better yet, it was the sort of story that could land her a permanent job at Florida! magazine.
She raised her flashlight above the door illuminating a huge NO TRESPASSING sign. The way Allie saw it, she had two options.
The first involved going to her brother Zeke’s house, getting a decent night’s sleep, then waking up bright and early to seek out The Person In Charge. She’d make an impassioned (yet logical) plea on why she had to spend time inside the building, and The Person In Charge would comply, because, really, why wouldn’t they?
Under normal circumstances, that’s exactly what she’d do. She simply couldn’t help herself. Buela taught her early that good girls finish first. A thought that had remained stuck in her head the way her Cuban grandmother’s lumpy cheese grits used to stick to Allie’s ribs on a cold January morning. Although she’d been gone over twelve years now, Allie could still hear Buela’s voice telling her what to do. But right now that voice was being drowned out by yet another sign stating that the building was scheduled for demolition at nine a.m. tomorrow, giving Allie basically zip time to contact The Person In Charge.
Bringing her to option number two.
An option Buela would definitely not have approved of. Not to mention Zeke, who also happened to be Whispering Bay’s current chief-of-police. Nope. Allie was beyond certain Zeke wouldn’t take too kindly to his baby sister committing a B&E.
But was it really a crime to break into a deserted building scheduled for demolition in less than nine hours?
A shiver skated up her spine.
It wasn’t cold. Not really. It was October and still seasonably warm enough for the Florida panhandle, but the building was isolated from the rest of the ocean strip by at least half a mile. That on its own made it creepy enough, and then of course, there was that haunted thing.
Maybe she should channel the lion from The Wizard of Oz and begin chanting I don’t believe in ghosts…I don’t believe in ghosts…
But there was something to be said about Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore and that whole pottery wheel scene.
Hopeless Hollywood romanticism? No doubt. It was lovely to believe that even after death there was something so powerful about the feelings we had while we were alive that they pulled us back to the people and places we once loved.
But all corniness aside, she was a journalist, and at the behest of Florida! magazine’s editor, Emma Frazier, Allie had just driven nearly six hours to investigate a story on what most people (herself included) would consider the flimsiest of leads. But if Emma wanted a ghost story, then that’s what Allie would give her. Impressing Emma Frazier was the key to landing her dream job, which happened to be Goal Number Three on Allie’s four part Life Plan. So despite the NO TRESPASSING sign, she wasn’t leaving until she got her story. A padlocked door was beyond her capabilities, but no building this old could be burglar proof.
Using her flashlight to guide her, Allie made her way through a patch of weeds to study the windows on the side of the building.
Bin-go! Jalousie glass panes. Popular in Florida during the last century before central air-conditioning became standard. Those windows might provide excellent ventilation but they looked easy as all heck to break into. Not that Allie had any experience sneaking in or out of windows. Once upon a time, that had been Zeke’s forte. Before he’d cleaned up his act, of course. Nowadays, there wasn’t anyone more upstanding than her big brother.
She noticed the window in the middle was missing several of its glass panes. Had someone already broken inside? Maybe. Or more likely those panes had fallen out over time, and since the building was scheduled to come down, it wouldn’t have made sense to fix them.
Which brought Allie to her third option—it wasn’t really a B&E if she didn’t actually break anything. Yes, there was that big NO TRESPASSING sign but the window was practically open. Some people might consider that an invitation.
Ha. Her brother would call that delusional thinking. Fuzzy morality, at best. But what were her options? Despite the late hour, she was now fully awake.
She sent up a silent apology to Buela (Zeke, she would deal with later) and went into action. With the flashlight tucked beneath her arm, she knocked the flimsy metallic screen out of the way. Balancing her bottom on the open window ledge, she lowered one sneakered foot inside—when the tinny-sounding ring tone version of Adele’s Rumour Has It startled her into falling butt first onto a hard wooden floor.
Her cell phone flew out of her shorts pocket. Allie scampered on all fours to retrieve it, causing her right knee to come in contact with something sharp. Ouch! She ignored the pain and glanced at her cell phone’s caller ID telling her (warning her) that it was her roommate, Jen.
“Where are you?” Jen asked.
“Check the fridge.” Allie had purposely left Jen a note taped to the refrigerato
r door. It was the first place Jen always went when she got home from her evening shift at the hospital where she worked as a respiratory therapist.
After a slightly too long pause in which Allie imagined Jen not only finding the note, but last night’s leftovers as well, Jen said, “You’re in Whispering Lakes? Isn’t that where you grew up?”
“Yep, but it’s Whispering Bay.” Allie went on to explain about the email that had caused her to jump in her car and make the six hour drive to her hometown.
“So, let me get this straight,” Jen said. “Someone sent you an anonymous email telling you there’s a ghost inside the building? And you, what? Jumped in your car and drove up there? Just like that?”
Yes, just like that, she wanted to say, but something warm and wet trickled down her shin, distracting her. She pointed the flashlight on her leg to investigate. Blood! The sight of blood (especially her own) made her light-headed. Allie took a shaky breath. “Are ghosts attracted to blood?”
“That’s zombies. Or is it vampires? Yep, it’s definitely vampires. Wait. Did you say blood? Allie, whose blood are we talking about here?”
“Mine. I kind of cut my knee going in through the window.” No need to mention the knee incident had occurred as a result of Allie’s own clumsiness. Of course, that clumsiness had been caused by Jen’s poorly timed phone call, but Allie wasn’t one to point fingers.
“Ooh! You broke into the building? How very Woodward and Bernstein of you. But if you get arrested, don’t expect me to bail you out of jail.”
Jen was right. Allie didn’t normally go this far to get a story. Yes, pleasing her editor was a large part of her motivation, but the fact was, despite its run down appearance, there was something about the old building that called out to her.
“The thing is, I have a hot date tonight and driving all the way up to Whispering Pines to save your butt isn’t on my agenda,” Jen said.
A hot date at this time of night was code for a booty call from Jen’s boyfriend, Sean. For the first time this evening Allie was glad she wasn’t home tucked away in bed. She wasn’t sure what Jen and Sean were into, but they’d met at a Tarzan yodeling contest. If Sean spent the night, it meant Allie didn’t get any sleep unless she wore earplugs.
“It’s Whispering Bay,” Allie said, unable to stop from correcting Jen. Allie hadn’t called Whispering Bay home since she was eighteen, but the only family she had in the world lived here, and she still visited frequently enough that she was on a first name basis with most of the town’s population. It was only natural she felt protective of the place.
“Whatever. You’re so uptight. You know, you could use a hot date yourself. Hey, maybe the ghost is male,” Jen added.
“And probably like eighty-years-old. This place used be a senior center. Plus, I kinda like my guys alive. Jen, listen, I really have to go—”
