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Faith took a deep breath and forced herself to be calm. “Michael, I understand that you’re upset—”
“Forget it,” he snapped. “It’s a waste of time to argue with you.”
She didn’t reply. What could she say? Everyone she cared about hated her right now.
Turk licked her elbow, and she turned to him and smiled. Everyone except Turk.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Michael said. “I found something.”
Faith sat up. “What did you find?”
“Haunted Horrors,” he said. “It’s a blog by this small-time sci-fi writer, Callum Jennings. He’s from Sioux City, and apparently, he’s been mapping all of the supposedly haunted locations in Iowa.”
“And?”
“And,” Michael said, “I remembered that the kids who found Patrick Jeter’s body found him in a storm shelter that’s supposed to be haunted.” He turned to Faith. “Guess where else is supposed to be haunted?”
Her eyes widened. “It wouldn’t happen to be a couple of grain silos, would it?”
"Why, as a matter of fact, it would."
“Well, now, that’s interesting,” she said.
“I got something better for you.”
He turned his laptop to face her. She got off of the bed and knelt next to him.
The post was the typical sensationalist style, a lot of exclamation points and flowery descriptions. What caught Faith’s eye, and almost certainly Michael’s eye as well, was a paragraph near the middle of the post that claimed that vengeful spirits had murdered their three victims.
Some people just deserve to die,Mr. Jennings claimed.Perhaps they’ve committed crimes in a past life. Perhaps they’ve committed crimes in this life. Perhaps they’ve simply trespassed places they weren’t meant to go. Whatever their crimes, human justice eluded these three, or perhaps it’s the other way around. Well, whatever the mistake that allowed these criminals—and criminals they must be or the spirits would have left them unmolested—to escape punishment, the vengeful spirits of the lost souls of Western Iowa have ensured they do not avoid justice.
“What a lovely and well-balanced individual,” Faith said drily. “Do you have an address for him?”
“I’m looking one up now.”
He took his laptop back and opened the FBI database. Unusually, the database had no information on Jennings.
“I find it exceedingly hard to believe Mr. Jennings has no priors,” Michael muttered to himself as he navigated back to Jennings’ website. He clicked a link to open a shopping list of the various sci-fi novels Jennings had written. After clicking on a few, he finally found one with a publisher listed.
“Call that number,” he told Faith. “See if you can get an address.”
It took some coaxing, but when Faith promised not to divulge her source, the publisher’s representative provided the last known address for Callum Jennings.
“Perfect,” Faith said, “Let’s go see what he has to say.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The address led to an old wood plank house about three miles from Sioux City in the small community of Hope Falls, a place that had no waterfall and no sign of hope among the dilapidated homes and abandoned businesses.
Maybe they meant Falls to be a verb,Faith thought.Hope Disappears here.
An old Ford Bronco was parked in a dirt driveway next to an even older Dodge Power Wagon. As they walked up the drive, Faith could see a bundle of canvas tarp in the back of the Power Wagon.
She shared a look with Michael and knocked on the door. Turk stood just to her right, head low, tail switching back and forth.
The door opened a crack, and a scratchy voice said, "Yes? What do you want?"
“Callum Jennings?”
