“Why’d you turn off Slayer?” Coulter demanded. They were driving along an isolated mountain road; majestic pine trees filled the valley below.
“Because I can’t think with all that screaming in my ear,” Scott replied from behind the wheel. They’d started the drive to the California/Nevada border three hours ago and should have reached the location. “Okay I’m lost.” He stopped the car and they all piled out.
Scott spread the map on the hood of the Range Rover while Anjali and Coulter stretched their legs. “I specifically requested an updated DVD for my GPS. I can’t find the damn turnoff anywhere and neither can the navigation system.”
An icy wind blew over the tops of the trees. The quiet was complete; not even birds twittered in the trees. Civilization seemed far behind. “Do you sense anything?” Coulter asked Anjali.
She gazed around at the isolated point and shivered. “Yeah, the Donner party and they’re hungry.”
Scott thumped his finger on the map twice. “We’re going the right way. The turnoff to the house should be just ahead.”
They all piled back in.
The farmhouse was barely standing.
Ragged weeds covered the ground. The wooden planks covering the porch were rotten in some places, worn everywhere else.
“This is a dump,” Coulter said as they drove up.
“The place doesn’t matter. Rhett Uglee is still a client,” Scott said.
He parked the car, and they headed up the dusty, weedy drive. The front door, barely on its hinges, opened and a thin, anemic-looking man with skinny arms, light brown hair in a mullet cut, sideburns, and a droopy mustache came out. He was wearing a sleeveless flannel shirt and a baseball cap turned backward.
Scott held out his hand with a smile. “Rhett?”
Rhett shook hands and gazed curiously at Anjali and Coulter while lighting up a cigarette. “So you wanna talk out here or inside?”
“How about inside?” Scott said. “Anjali can get a feel of the place.”
“Angela?”
“Anjali,” she said.
“That’s what I said. Angela.”
“Why don’t we go in?” Scott said, and Rhett led the way.
The inside wasn’t much better than the outside. Cracked and splintered floorboards, chipped and peeling wallpaper, and beat-up furniture.
“Uglees have lived in the Manor for generations,” Rhett said.
Coulter laughed. “Manor?”
“Fill us in, Rhett,” Scott said. “On the phone you said you believed the presence was female?”
They all sat down. The chair Coulter sat on buckled and cracked under him.
Rhett’s cigarette smoke swirled around the room, and Anjali sneezed.
Rhett settled back and scratched his stomach. “There’s a female ghost in my house, and she’s been molesting me.”
Scott reached over and switched on the video camera.
“I can’t bring none of my lady friends home,” he complained. “She don’t like that. She gets angry and starts messin’ with my TV channels.”
Anjali bit down on her lip to keep from laughing.
Coulter had a very skeptical look on his face.
Scott kept his tone professional. “Has the presence threatened you at all?”
Rhett shook his head and took another drag. “No, but sometimes she startles me—I scream when that happens. Doors keep poppin’ open all the time and such.”
“Why don’t we take a look around?” Scott said.
Rhett turned to Anjali. “She won’t like you bein’ here, Angela. She’ll think you’re one of my lady friends.”
Anjali widened her eyes at Scott, who quickly stood up. “How about that tour?”
Rhett shrugged and took them through the house. In the bedroom, he pointed to the lumpy twin bed. “Sometimes she crawls in there with me.”
Coulter leaned close and whispered in Anjali’s ear, “You reckon there’s ever been a woman within ten feet of this room?”
Anjali smiled, and Scott looked over at them for a long moment before addressing Rhett. “Where else have you experienced strange phenomena?”
They followed Rhett down to the cellar. Old shelves were filled with rows and rows of glass bottles. Dim lighting illuminated cobwebs and the dusty floor. Rhett pointed to one of the shelves. “Once, I was walkin’ here…and a head popped out between the bottles and starts starin’ at me.”
“Holy shit, no wonder you’re seeing things!” Coulter was holding one of the bottles and sniffing it. “Moonshine.”
He held the bottle out to Scott, who sniffed it and yanked himself back. “Damn that’s strong.”
“I’m tellin’ ya’ll she’s here,” Rhett said. “I’ve tried to make her leave. I tells her, ‘You’re deceased and I’m not so you best leave me be.’ But she don’t listen.”
They walked back to the main room. Scott took Rhett aside. “I’m going to talk to my associates. We’ll decide how to pursue this case.”
“I’ll be here.” He lit up another cigarette and plopped down on the sofa.
Scott, Anjali, and Coulter met outside.
“There’s nothing in there,” Coulter said. “Are you going to pursue every claim made by a moonshine-swigging nut job?”
“I didn’t pick up anything, Scott,” Anjali said. “Maybe he’s just hearing things. Those floorboards creaked more than my grandmother’s knees.”
“Now that we’re here, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt,” Scott said. “We have to be as thorough as possible. According to the local sheriff, one of his female deputies did sense a threatening presence while investigating a theft on the property.”
“Theft?” Coulter said. “What would anybody steal from here?”
“Are ya’ll going to communicate with the spirit or what?” Rhett called out from the doorway.
Scott looked at Anjali and Coulter. He nodded to Rhett. “We’ll be there.”
Rhett hovered near the doorway. “I was thinkin’ we should make the spirit jealous so she’d come out. Maybe Angela here and I can sit together and she can pretend to be my lady friend.”
“I don’t think—” Anjali began.
“Actually,” Scott said, “that might be a good idea.”
She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him aside. “I’m not cozying up to Rhett.”
“All you have to do is sit on the sofa with him and talk.”
Anjali frowned. “Fine, but this goes above and beyond the call of a medium.”
Scott set up the video camera so it faced the sofa where Rhett and Anjali would be sitting. He attached a miniature broadcasting unit to the camera. “This has a radius of one hundred and fifty yards so we’ll be able to hear and see everything that happens.” He held up his PDA. “We can watch on this. It has a receiving unit.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” Coulter asked.
“The guys at Best Buy helped me out.”