Ghost Night

“We work with great props and special-effects people,” Jay said dryly. “Let’s get back. I’m tired as hell. Someone has to have some kind of sleeping pill Georgia can take.”

“I’m not sure she should be taking a pill—” Vanessa began.

“I am,” Jay interrupted her. “I need to sleep tonight!”

“I’ll take Georgia in with me,” Vanessa volunteered. She surprised herself. She hadn’t disliked Georgia; she just found the woman to be a little…vapid. But that night, she felt sorry for her. Georgia had dropped out of high school, certain that an actress didn’t need an education. She’d spent several years working as a model at car and boat shows, and Jay had discovered her because she’d gotten a local spot on television promoting a used-car dealer. Vanessa had to admit that Georgia might not be the most talented actress she knew, but she had been professional and easy to work with. She was pretty sure that Georgia had never gotten a lot of support from her parents or anyone else.

She also knew that she had been lucky. She had been raised by parents who had cared more about their children than anything else in life. Her mother and father had been avid historians, readers, writers and divers, and they had done everything in their power to put their two children through college. She loved history and she loved diving. Her actual forte was in script writing, but in Hollywood, that was a difficult route, with scripts being rewritten so many times that you seldom recognized your own work at the end, and you seldom received credit for a project, either. It had been necessary, in her mind, to learn cameras as well, and with her background, underwater work was a natural. She was driven and she was passionate about her work, so she’d jumped at the chance to work on this movie when Jay called her.

Jay loved horror movies, and they had loved each other forever. Not as boyfriend and girlfriend—they had known each other since grade school in the small town of Micanopy, Florida. He had a chance with this movie, and she wanted him to have his chance. She wanted this chance for herself, too.

She had said from the beginning that she was in only if she got her own tent.

But tonight she’d bring Georgia in with her and be a mother hen.

Carlos had been settling the young woman down; the two were sitting by the fire with large plastic cups—Vanessa was pretty sure they contained something a lot harder than champagne. As Vanessa, Jay and Lew returned, Georgia jumped to her feet, staring at them. “See? See? I told you!”

Jay took Georgia by the shoulders and tried to be calm and reassuring. “Georgia, all I can think is that Travis is playing some kind of a trick on you, sweetie.”

“No, no! You have to go look for Travis!” Georgia said.

“I guess we should,” Vanessa said quietly.

Jay stared at her with aggravation. “Look for him? Oh, please! You know damned well that Travis is the one who played this ridiculous joke, or he’s in on it! And there’s nothing there, Georgia. No hands, no skulls, no monsters. Georgia, you’ve got to get some sleep. I need some sleep.”

“No, no, I saw it!” Georgia said, shaking her head in fear. She glared furiously at Jay. “I have to get out of here. I won’t stay here!” she insisted.

“You’ve got to be joking!” Jay declared irritably. “Georgia, you were touting used cars, for God’s sake! This could make you the new scream queen!”

Georgia was obviously terrified beyond caring. “I don’t care! I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life as a waitress. I have to get off this island—now. Now!”

“It’s dark!” Jay reminded her.

“Hey, hey, it’s all right, we’re fifty miles from Miami, and we’ve got a good speedboat. I can take her in and be back to help with any follow-up or backup shots that we need tomorrow,” Carlos offered.

“What if we need the actress?” Jay demanded. “I haven’t looked through the sequences we shot today.”

Carlos looked at Vanessa. “If Nessa doesn’t mind, she’s the same height and build and has long blond hair. She can fill in.”

“Yes, yes, Vanessa can fill in! You can be my stunt double!” Georgia said enthusiastically.

“For joy, for joy,” Vanessa murmured. But she was still disturbed by the young woman’s absolute terror. Georgia was ambitious. Was she really so terrified that she would walk away from what could be a big break for her?

She realized that everyone was staring at her.

“Sure. Whatever is needed,” she said dryly to Jay. Of course she would do it. They both had a lot of hard work—not to mention their finances—tied up with this.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” Carlos promised. “Look, seriously, it’s what? Seven-thirty, eight o’clock now? I can make Miami in a few hours. I’ll get a night’s sleep and head back by five or six tomorrow morning.”

It was agreed. In another hour, Carlos and Georgia were off.

Vanessa found herself sitting by the fire with the others, sipping champagne once again, though it had lost its taste.

“I still think we should look for Travis,” she said.

Zoe let out an irritated “tsking” sound. “That jerk! He’s out there somewhere, laughing at everyone, and not caring that he’s put a real bug in the production.”

“And messing with the props. When he walks up laughing and swaggering in the morning, I think we should give him a good right hook,” Barry said.

Silence fell.

“Hey, we could sit here and tell ghost stories!” Bill suggested.

They all glared at him. Apparently, no one was in the mood.

For a while, they did reflect upon the many disappearances and oddities that had occurred in the Bermuda Triangle, but even that didn’t last long.

It was only nine-thirty when Vanessa opted for bed. She lay awake, watching the patterns of the low-burning fire playing upon the canvas roof of her tent. She thought about the ridiculousness of filming the movie—the hours of getting the characters into makeup and how, to save money, they had all taken on so many different tasks. Jay and Carlos had played the vengeful pirates, coming out of the sea, and she had supplied some of the sound effects and acted as the kidnapped and murdered Dona Isabella.

Her script was honestly good, based on history and legend. Once, the Florida Keys and the Bahamas had been areas of lawlessness, ruled by pirates. An infamous pirate captain, Mad Miller, and his mistress, Kitty Cutlass, had gone on a wild reign of terror, taking ship after ship, or so legend said. Then all had gone wrong. They had taken a ship bearing the beautiful and rich Dona Isabella. They had sunk her ship, killed most of the crew and, presumably, planned on ransoming Dona Isabella. She had been sailing from Key West to Spain, back to her wealthy husband, when she had been taken. But nothing had happened as planned. Legend said that Kitty Cutlass killed Dona Isabella in a fit of rage, and on Haunt Island, Mad Miller went really mad and massacred the remaining crew and many of his own men. Finally, his pirate ship had sunk off Haunt Island, caught in the vengeful winds of a massive storm. Vanessa had based her script on the legend, doing what research she could, with contemporary teenagers finding themselves victims of bitter ghosts risen from the sand and the sea. As a screenplay, the story provided amazing fodder for the imagination. Filming had actually been fun. There had been some amusing accidents along the way, but none that had caused any harm. Bill had fallen into one of the buckets of blood, and Jake had come bolting up out of the water once, terrified of a nurse shark. She liked the people she was working with, and so, for the most part, it had been enjoyable. A crash shoot—all of it done within three weeks. And Jay was right—it could hit big at the box office.

She still felt disturbed and uneasy, although she wasn’t alone. The tents were no more than a few feet apart. Jay, who had been bunking with Carlos, was next to her. Bill and Jake were on her left side. Lew, as secure a figure as anyone might ever want to meet, was just beyond Zoe.

But she was still afraid. It was as if Georgia’s gut-wrenching scream had awakened something inside her that knew something was coming, something that she dreaded.

At eleven o’clock, she was still staring at the canvas. She didn’t have anything really strong to help her sleep, but she decided on an over-the-counter aid. In another half an hour, she was asleep.

It might have been the pill. She slept, but she tossed and turned and awakened throughout the night. And she dreamed that Georgia was standing in front of her, giant tears dripping down her cheeks. “I told you, I told you there were monsters!”

Georgia’s image disappeared.

She dreamed of giant shadow figures rising over her tent and of seaweed monsters rising out of the ocean, growing and growing and devouring ships, boats and people, and reaching up to the sky to snatch planes right from the atmosphere.

She awoke feeling better, laughing at herself for the absurdity of her dreams.

She didn’t believe in seaweed monsters—sea snakes, yes, sharks and other demons of the real world, but seaweed monsters, no.

When she had nightmares, they were usually more logic-based—being chased in the darkness by a human killer, finding out she was in a dark house alone with a knife-wielding madman.

It had been Georgia. Georgia and that terrifying scream.

She blinked, stretched and rose. Taking off the long T-shirt nightgown she’d worn, she put on a bathing suit, ready to hit the beach. There were showers in the heads on both boats the crew had been using, the Seven Seas and the Jalapeño. Of course, one boat wouldn’t be back until Carlos returned. It was a bright and beautiful morning, and she felt that a good dousing in the surf would be refreshing.

She stepped out of her tent. The morning sun was shining, but the air retained a note of the night’s pleasant coolness. The sea stretched out before her, azure as it could only be in the Bahamas. Jay and Zoe were already up, and one of them had put the coffeepot to brew on the camp stove.

“Morning!” Jay called.

“Morning!” she returned. “How long till coffee?”

“Hey! As fast as it brews!” Jay told her.

Zoe giggled. “What? Did you think this film had a budget for a cook?”

Vanessa walked on out to the water. It was delightful; warm, but not too warm. So clear she could easily see the bottom, even when she had gone out about twenty-five feet from shore and the depth was around ten feet. The current of the Gulf Stream was sweeping the water around to the north; she decided to fight it and swim south, then let it bring her on back offshore from the campsite.

She swam a hard crawl, relaxed with a backstroke, worked on her butterfly and went back to doing the crawl, and then decided that she had gone far enough. She had angled herself in toward shore, so she paused a minute, standing, smoothing back her hair.

It was then that she looked toward the shore.

She would have screamed, but the sound froze in her throat.

She stood paralyzed, suddenly freezing as if she were a cube of ice in the balmy water.

The bones…the bodies…

Georgia’s terrified words of the night before seemed to echo and bounce in her mind.

Then she did scream, loud and long. And she found sense and logic, amazingly, and started shouting for the others to come.

The bones…the bodies…

They were there. There was no sign of the boat, but Georgia Dare and Travis Glenn were there—in the sand. Their heads, eyes glaring open, were posed next to one another, staring toward the sea. Inches away from each, arms stretched out of the sand as well—just as props had done in the filming. It was as if they desperately reached out for help as the earth sucked them down, leaving only those pathetic heads, features frozen in silent screams.

Jay had reached the scene. He was shaking and staring, in shock and denial. He shouted. “Travis, what is this, damn it! Georgia—no! No, no, no! Where is Carlos? What kind of a stunt is this?” Jerking like a mechanical figure, Jay went to touch the actor’s head, as if he could wake him up or snap him out of whatever game he was playing.

The head rolled through the sand. The body wasn’t attached.

Jay himself began to scream.

Frozen still, shaking from a sudden cold that threatened never to leave her, Vanessa remained just offshore. She didn’t move until Lew had gotten the authorities, until a kindly Bahamian official came and wrapped a towel around her shoulders, and led her away.

Chapter One

2 years later

Key West

Before him, frond coral waved in a slow and majestic dance, and a small ray emerged from the sand by the reef, weaving in a swift escape, aware that a large presence, possibly predatory, was near.

Sean O’Hara shot back up to the surface, pleased with his quick inspection of Pirate Cut, a shallow reef where divers and snorkelers alike came to enjoy the simple beauty of nature. It was throughout history a place where many a ship had met her doom, crushed by the merciless winds of a storm. Now only scattered remnants of that history remained; salvage divers of old had done their work along with the sea, salt and the constant shift of sands and tides and weather that remained just as turbulent through the centuries.

It was still, he decided, a great place to film.

He hadn’t opted for scuba gear that day—it had been just a quick trip, thirty minutes out and thirty back in, early morning, just to report to his partner, David Beckett, so they could talk about their ever-changing script and their plans for their documentary film.

Because Sean was an expert diver, he seldom went diving alone. Good friends—some of the best and most experienced divers in the world—had died needlessly by diving alone. But a free dive on a calm day hadn’t seemed much of a risk, and he was pleased that he had taken off early in the morning. Most of the dive boats headed out by nine, but few of them came to Pirate Cut as a first dive, and it wouldn’t get busy until later in the day.

And out in the boat, he wasn’t exactly alone.

Bartholomew was with him.

Climbing up the dive ladder at the rear of his boat, Conch Fritter, he tossed his flippers up and hauled himself on board. His cell phone sat on his towel, and the message light was blinking. Caller ID showed him that he’d been called from O’Hara’s, his uncle’s bar.

“I thought about answering it, but refrained.”

Sean turned at the sound of the voice. Bartholomew was seated at the helm of the dive boat, feet in buckle shoes up on the wheel, a National Geographic magazine in his hands.

Bartholomew was getting damned good at holding things.

“Thank you for refraining. And tell me again, why the hell are you with me? You hate the water,” Sean said, irritated. He pushed buttons on his phone to receive his messages, staring at Bartholomew.

“Love boats, though,” Bartholomew said.

Sean groaned inwardly. It was amazing—once he hadn’t believed in Bartholomew. Actually, he’d thought the ghost might have been one of his sister Katie’s imaginary friends. He realized he either had to accept that she was crazy or that there was a ghost. At that time, Sean couldn’t see or hear Bartholomew.

But that had been a while ago now. While solving the Effigy Murders—as the press wound up calling them—he’d ended up with his head in a bandage and stitches in his scalp.

It was the day the damned stitches had come out that he’d first seen the ghost—as clearly as if he had physical substance—sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed.

Sean listened to his messages. The first, from David Beckett, asking him what time he wanted to go out. Sean grinned. David was in love—and sleeping late. Sean was glad, since it seemed that his old friend was in love with his sister, Katie, and she was in love with him. They’d both seen some tough times, and Sean was happy for them.

The next message was from his uncle just asking him to call back.

He did so. Still, he didn’t learn much. His uncle just wanted him to come to the bar. Sean told him it would take him about forty-five minutes, and Jamie said that was fine, just to come.

“So what’s up?” Bartholomew asked.

“Going to the bar, that’s all,” Sean said. He was curious. Jamie wasn’t usually secretive.

“Can you keep a hand on the helm? Bring her straight in?” Sean asked Bartholomew as he brought up the anchor. Securing it, he added, “Jeez, am I crazy asking you that?”

Bartholomew looked at him with tremendous indignation.

“Really! That was absolutely—churlish of you! If there’s one thing I know, it’s a lazy man’s boat like this!”

Sean grinned. “I’ll be in the head in the shower for about fifteen minutes. That’s all you need to manage.”

“It’ll be great if we pass the Coast Guard or a tour boat!” Bartholomew cried.

Sean ignored him. He just wanted to rinse off the sea salt—his uncle had him curious.

He showered, dried and dressed in the head and cabin well within his fifteen minutes. In another twenty, he was tying up at the pier.

Duval Street was quiet.

As he walked from the docks to O’Hara’s, Sean mused with a certain wry humor that Key West was, beyond a doubt, a place for night owls. He was accustomed enough to working at night—or even partying at night—but he was actually more fond of the morning hours.

“What do you think Jamie wants?”

Sean heard the question again—for what seemed like the tenth time now—and groaned inwardly without turning to look at the speaker. Imagine, once he had wanted to see the damned ghost!

Oh, he could see Bartholomew way too clearly now, though when he had first come home to Key West—hearing that David Beckett was in town and worried for his sister’s safety—he had come with his longtime fear for Katie’s mind. She had always seemed to sense or see things. But that had been Katie, not him.

Bartholomew had apparently wanted to be known, though at first he proved his presence by moving things around.

Then Sean had seen him in that damned chair in the hospital room. Now he could see the long-dead privateer as easily as he could see any flesh-and-blood, living person who walked into his life.

He cursed the fact.

He had never believed in ghosts. He’d never wanted to believe. In fact, he’d warned Katie not to ever talk about the fact that she had “strange encounters” or had been “gifted” or “cursed” from a young age. The majority of the world would think that she should be institutionalized.

He wasn’t pleased that he saw Bartholomew. Now he had the fear that he would one day wind up institutionalized himself.

And he was far from pleased that the dapper centuries-old entity had now decided to affix himself to Sean.

“I will not answer you. I will never answer you in public,” Sean said.

Bartholomew laughed. “You just answered me. Then again, we’re hardly in public, you know. I think the whole island is still asleep. Besides, you’re a filmmaker. An ‘artiste!’ People will happily believe that you are eccentric, and it’s your brilliance causing you to speak to yourself.”

“Right. Don’t you feel that you should go and haunt my sister?” Sean asked.

“I believe she’s busy.”

“I’m busy,” Sean said.

“Look, I’m apparently hanging around for something,” Bartholomew said. “Others have gone on, and I haven’t. You seem to be someone I must help.”

“I don’t need help.”

“You will, I’m sure of it,” Bartholomew said.

Sean kept walking.

“So what do you think he wanted?” Bartholomew persisted.

“I don’t know,” Sean said flatly. “But he wanted something, and that’s why I’m going to see him.” He cast a glance Bartholomew’s way. The privateer—hanged long ago for a deed he hadn’t committed—was really quite a sight. His frock coat and stockings, buckle shoes, vest and tricornered hat all fit his tall, lean physique quite well. In his lifetime, Sean thought dryly, he had probably made a few hearts flutter. Sadly, he had died because of the death of the love of his life, and an act of piracy blamed upon him. However, after haunting the island since then, he had recently found a new love, the “lady in white,” legendary in Key West. When they filmed their documentary, Sean meant to make sure that he covered Bartholomew’s case and those of his old and new loves.

He’d heard once that ghosts remained on earth for a reason. They wanted to avenge their unjust deaths, they needed to help an ancestor or they were searching for truth. There were supposedly ghosts who were caught in time, reenacting the last moments of their lives. But that was considered “residual haunting,” while Bartholomew’s determination to remain on earth in a spectral form was known as “active” or “intelligent” haunting.

Bartholomew had been around for a reason—he had been unjustly killed. But Sean couldn’t figure out why he remained now. His past had been aligned with David Beckett and his family, and Sean had to admit that Bartholomew had been helpful in solving the Effigy Murders, all connected to the Becketts.

Maybe he had stayed because of the injustice done to him and because he still felt that he owed something to the Becketts. All Sean knew was that he had been Katie’s ghost—if there was such a thing—and now he seemed to be with him all the time.

Sean liked Bartholomew. He had a great deal of wit and he knew his history. He was loyal and might well have contributed to saving their lives.

But it was unnerving from the get-go to realize that you were seeing a ghost. It was worse realizing that the ghost was no longer determined to stick to Katie like glue, but had moved on to him. He was a good conversationalist—and thus the problem. Sean was far too tempted to talk to him, reply in public and definitely appear stark, raving mad upon occasion.

Ghosts were all over the place, Bartholomew had informed him. Most people felt a whisper in the breeze, sometimes a little pang of sorrow, and if the ghost was “intelligent” and “active,” it might enjoy a bit of fun now and then, creating a breeze, causing a bang in the dark of night, and so on. Katie had real vision for the souls lurking this side of the veil. So far, thank God, he’d seen only Bartholomew, and maybe a mist of others in the shadows now and then.

Sean had been damned happy before he’d “seen” a ghost at all.

Pirate Cut, he noted mentally. A good place to begin shooting. They hadn’t known in Bartholomew’s day that the reefs needed to be protected. They had brought their ships to the deep-water plunge just off the reef many times. Bartholomew knew for a fact that the legend about the area was true—ships of many nations had foundered here in storms, been cut up on the reefs and left to the destruction of time and the elements. But there was treasure scattered here, treasure and history, even if it had been picked over in the many years since.

It would also make for beautiful underwater footage. The colors were brilliant; the light was excellent. And it was near the area where Bartholomew had allegedly chased and gunned down a ship and murdered those aboard. Falsely accused, in the days after David Porter’s Pirate Squadron had been established, he had been hanged quickly, and it had been only after his unjust death that his innocence had been proven.

It was a good story for a documentary. Especially considering the events of the recent past, when a madman had decided that it was his ancestor who had been wronged and that the Becketts were to pay.

The whole story needed to be told, and it would.

And perhaps, if he managed to get Bartholomew’s story out there, with any luck Bartholomew might “see the light” and move on to the better world he believed he would find.

It was true that Bartholomew was not a bad guy and that, if he were flesh and blood, he’d be great to hang out with. But with Katie engaged to David Beckett now and basically living at the Beckett house, it seemed that Bartholomew was really all his.