Heather Graham - The Cursed

“Then who...?” she asked.

Someone drifted in through the closed back door and then materialized into an excellent imitation of flesh and blood.

Hannah was accustomed to such comings and goings. Hagen Dundee entered the kitchen and took up a protective stance at Melody’s side, slipping a ghostly arm around her. “I heard, Hannah, and Melody is telling you the truth, I swear it. As if anyone could ever mistake her for a man! And I promise you that it was not me, either. We were not even here. We were at the Hemingway House, playing with the cats.”

“Torturing the poor little six-toed creatures, probably,” Hannah said, still angry. She’d lost business tonight, business she couldn’t afford to lose. And she was fighting to believe it had been someone’s idea of a prank; it was too frightening to think that it might be something else. Something real.

“I love cats. I would never torture cats. You know that I love all animals,” Melody said regally.

Hannah swallowed, then pursued the hope that perhaps the couple had schemed with one of their island spirit friends to scare tourists.

“Honestly,” she said, “we’ve talked about this before. It’s charming and wonderful and helps business when you guys fool around and moan and groan in the middle of the night. Or, Melody, when you make an appearance at dusk, pacing the roof. Or, Hagen, when someone opens a door in the middle of the night and you’re standing in the hallway, looking tall and strong and desperate to find your beloved. But what happened tonight...it was mean. One of those people could have had a heart attack.”

Hagen looked at Melody and then walked over to Hannah and set his hands on his hips. His sandy hair was worn in a queue, and his bleached cotton shirt seemed to billow around his broad shoulders. She could have sworn she even saw specks of mud on his black leather boots. “Hannah,” he said earnestly, “we did not do it.” Then he turned his back on her and addressed Melody. “Dear, I believe we need fresh air—and different company. Shall we go for a bit of a walk?”

She stepped forward and took his arm. Then, heads held high, they headed toward the back door.

“Wait!” Hannah said. “Please. Help me. If you guys didn’t do it...who could it have been?”

“This island has spirits—and spirits,” Hagen told her. “Most of your ghost tourists stay on at the Hard Rock when you are done talking, and maybe they imbibed too heavily of spirits of an alcoholic nature. What I do know is that we did not do it—and you have deeply insulted us by suggesting we would do something so horrible. I really cannot stand here discussing this any further, Hannah. I am sorry. Melody, shall we take our stroll now? Perhaps down to the beach?” he asked, then bowed in a courtly manner and moved as if he were really opening the door for Melody. She sailed out, and he looked at Hannah again then strode off in Melody’s wake.

Hannah watched them go, surprised—and more than a little shaken.

She’d grown up in this house with the two of them for company. Nothing like tonight’s events had ever occurred before. She couldn’t believe they would do anything so vile, but if not them... She didn’t even want to think that a murderous ghost might be stalking the streets of the city she called home.

She sank down on a chair at the kitchen table, exhausted. She’d been sound asleep when she’d been startled awake, stunned and terrified herself, by the sound of screams. And Melody and Hagen were right. They didn’t begin to resemble the knife-wielding apparition that had threatened her guests out by the pool.

She winced. It hurt to lose so much business. Weekdays in the Keys were slow this time of year. The Siren of the Sea wasn’t a major hotel to be found on every travel site on the web, though she did have a great website of her own. During Fantasy Fest and other Conch holidays, she had it made. And she had wonderful reviews on the sites where she could be found. It was still hard to make ends meet, though. She didn’t want to overprice, but she only had six guest rooms.

Her house was worth a small fortune—she knew that. She’d received enough offers for it. But she didn’t want to sell—there was certainly nothing else in the area she could afford if she sold, and Key West was her home. She’d seen a fair amount of the world, many wonderful places, but she loved Key West.

“So...” she murmured aloud, drumming her fingers on the table.

Petrie, her humongous, long-haired, six-toed “Hemingway cat,” leaped smoothly up into her lap and meowed as if in deep sympathy.

“What’s going on, big guy? You’re a cat—you’re supposed to sense things.”

He merely swished his furry tail.

Hannah stood, gently sliding Petrie to the floor, and poured herself another cup of coffee before giving the cat a few treats.

It had all happened so fast. She had heard the screams and shot downstairs to see what was going on. Everyone in the place had been out by the pool within minutes, one college boy wielding a dive knife and Mr. Hardwicke, an elderly regular along with his wife, a heavy boot. But there had been no one there other than Shelly and Stuart, both of them hysterical. Their friends had been less than kind, insisting she’d freaked out over the ghost tour, that was all. But Stuart had been adamant that there had been a ghost—a vengeful ghost—and only their screams had driven him away. Someone had suggested they call the cops; someone else had snorted and said that cops couldn’t arrest ghosts.

The next thing Hannah knew, they were all leaving. And while they’d spent most of the night, she’d decided it would be bad customer service practice not to refund their money.

Now the sun had risen on another beautiful Key West morning. Bright and early, just about 7:00 a.m., a westward breeze was coming in, the foliage was moving gently in the breeze, and the dead heat of midday was not yet burning the pavement.

She went to right one of her Victorian lawn lounges, which had toppled over in the commotion.

And that was when she saw them.

Drops of red that led off through the bushes and...

Disappeared.

She hunkered down to study the spots and froze.

They were blood. Real blood. Not astral blood, spiritual blood, ghostly blood or imaginary blood from an apparition of some kind. Real blood meant that someone or something living had come through the yard—not a ghost. There were outside lights by the pool, but at night these drops would have been invisible.

Hannah pushed her way through the foliage where the blood trail seemed to end, though the drops might have disappeared into thin air or they might have been soaked up by the dirt. She couldn’t really tell. The yard here in back of the pool grew rich and lush all the way up to the bushes that lined the brick wall and the white wooden gate that led to the small alley behind her house. Vehicles couldn’t traverse the narrow way; it was a footpath, normally used only by those who already knew it was there.

The gate was unhooked. There was a bloody handprint on it.

Gingerly, afraid of what she would find, Hannah pushed it all the way open.

And there he was. A man lying just two feet from the gate, sprawled faceup, staring wide-eyed up at the sun.

A brilliant crimson ribbon ran around his neck.

And his fingers curled as if he had been holding something....

Like the hilt of a knife.

* * *

“How did you know there was a body in the alley?” Dallas Samson asked, after introducing himself and flashing his FBI badge.

The young woman who had summoned the police was standing behind the crime scene tape that now stretched across the alley and up to her gate. Detective Liam Beckett was with her. Beckett was a city cop—and a friend of Dallas’s. Apparently Beckett was a friend of the young woman’s, too. She was extremely attractive, Dallas noted almost dispassionately. He filed away everything he noticed about possible suspects and witnesses in the back of his mind, so it was second nature to make a physical assessment. She was about five-five, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, sleek and slim, with deep blue-green eyes and a mane of golden hair. She was, however, tense. She stood straight—almost frozen. Not panicked, but icy. Almost as if she were battling not to show any emotion, doing everything in her power to remain stoic and calm. He realized he’d barely taken his eyes off her. And the tension he was feeling himself was making him come off like a drill sergeant. He couldn’t help it—not with a dead body lying in the alley and her standing there not answering his question.