Chapter 30
Part 1
By The Pricking of my Thumb
"Shelby," I said quickly with a nervous hitch in my voice. I was trying to think of something to tell her; a lie that could explain what we were doing. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, keeping her eyes narrowed on Dean and I the whole time.
"I followed you guys back here because you seemed to know something that the rest of the cops didn't." She said, crossing her arms.
"Well, that's true," Dean said, trailing off at the end. She raised an eyebrow at the both of us.
"I never swear, but if you two don't tell me what the hell is going on here – really going on here – then I'm going to tell the cops that I don't think you're really FBI." Dean muttered something under his breath about not really swearing and I stepped on his foot. "Because I don't really think you are FBI."
"Okay, look," I said, trying to think of how to explain. "You're right, we're not FBI and we do know something the cops don't; we know how to really help you and find your sister."
"Tell me." She said evenly, obviously trying to keep her anger in check.
"We don't really have time for the whole 'ghosts are real?' revelation," Dean muttered quietly to me. I waved my hand slightly to tell him to let it go.
"What did he say?" Shelby asked, angrily.
"Okay, you know that whole story you told me?" She nodded. "And I'm sure you know that Dewey is the boy; well, see… sometimes when somebody dies, or takes their life tragically, their spirit doesn't ever go to rest."
She narrowed her eyes at me.
"And sometimes the spirits can manifest and do horrible things to living people that kind of resemble the spirit's worst last moments, especially after building constructions or renovations," I said.
"Let me get this straight," Shelby said as she started walking closer to us. She stopped when she was standing right in front of me. "You're telling me that the spirit of the crazy understudy has come back because of the construction that Dewey put the theatre through, and now she's kidnapping children, and then drowning them?"
I paused and glanced at Dean before looked back at her and nodding.
She raised her hand quickly and slapped me across the face before I could comprehend what was happening.
"Hey!" Dean snapped at her. "Just because you can't handle the truth, doesn't mean you can slap her!"
"I'm fine," I said, rubbing my cheek. I turned back to look at Shelby. She looked a little apologetic, but her anger and other emotions were quickly taking control. "Look, this isn't something that the cops can help you with. If you turn us in, the cops will never be able to catch who's doing it and they'll just close the theatre down. And you'll lose your sister. Is that what you want?"
Shelby hesitated for a moment and the sadness and worry showed through all her anger. She shook her head and muttered, "No".
"Then you have to trust us, because we're the only ones who can figure out how to end this, once and for all. We," I said, pointed to myself and Dean, "are the only ones right now who can help you."
She glanced between Dean and me for a few seconds before she took a deep breath. She held her hand out for Dean to take, and he did, hesitantly. "Dean, I'm Shelby."
She shook his hand and then regarded the both of us.
"All right, Dean, Rose, what can I do to help?" She asked. Dean turned to me with an eyebrow raised.
"Uh, no offense, but you can stay out of our way." Dean said.
"What?" Shelby asked. "No, you don't get it,"
"No," Dean said, putting the EMF reader back in my backpack, and taking the screwdriver for good measure. "You don't get it. We know what we're going. We've been dealing with this shit for basically our entire lives. We can't do our job with you tagging along. You'll just be a liability."
"My family is everything!" She snapped. "My little sister is all I have. I get that you guys are professionals, or whatever, but I'm on the verge of losing my entire family!"
"Okay, look, we don't even have a plan, yet." I said, before Dean could say no to her again. "We believe that your sister is somewhere upstairs in the walls,"
"The walls?" Shelby asked incredulously. I just nodded.
"But it'll be in Dewey's apartment, and we can't exactly walk up there and start smashing walls down looking for her." Shelby bit her lip. "And then we have to find where this lady was buried so we can salt and burn her remains and make sure that she never comes back."
"My favorite part," Dean muttered sarcastically.
"Well, I don't know much about the salting and burning…" Shelby started, "but I know about this hidden passageway behind the back curtains. I didn't think about it before but they are kinda in the walls and could be part of the hidden passages in Dewey's apartment. It leads to a narrow staircase that I never had the guts to go up, but it isn't anywhere near the catwalk and I guess it could lead up to Dewey's."
"Yeah," Dean mumbled, "that could work."
"Shelby," I started. She looked at me with questioning eyes. "How well do you know Dewey?"
She shrugged. "Not very well. I talk to him occasionally whenever there's rehearsal, but to be honest he really creeps me out. I catch him staring at me all the time and I started to think that maybe he liked me…"
"You really wanted to help us, right?" I asked. Shelby nodded and then stopped when she realized the direction I was taking.
"You're not going to make me talk to Dewey, are you?" She asked quickly.
...
"Hey, Dewey," Shelby said quietly as she approached him in the auditorium. He was sitting at the director's table, just staring at the empty stage. Dean and I watched from one of the balconies above as she took the stage manager's seat next to him.
"Hello, Shelby." He continued to stare at the stage and she looked up at us with confused eyes. I motioned for her to keep talking to him.
"How you doing?" She asked him. He turned to look at her slowly.
"I feel like that's something I should be asking you, not the other way around." He said. Shelby let out a small awkward laugh.
"I'll be better when I find Amber." She said. She glanced up at Dean and me again for only a second before she cleared her throat. "But I suppose I should realize that there's a chance that I won't get her back."
"Don't say that, Shelby." Dewey said gently. "The cops will find her soon enough."
"I just don't know what she would want. She's too young to have to decide whether or not she'd want to be buried or cremated." Shelby said.
"They buried my mother at the St. Barnabas Memorial Cemetery before they even realized that I was her son." Dewey said, sadly. I turned to Dean and gave him a thumbs up. He squeezed my shoulder gently as he got up and left to go find the cemetery. Shelby glanced up and saw that Dean had left all ready. I gave her a thumb up as well, our signal for her to wrap it up.
"I'm sorry if the cops had to question you," Shelby told Dewey. He pulled out a pocket watch and checked the time.
"Actually I opted to go do it at the station." He said, tucking the watch back into his jacket pocket. "I should probably be on my way down there."
He got up to leave, but turned back to Shelby.
"Stay as long as you'd like. Everything's locked up all ready and there are a few policemen wandering around. I'll tell them you might be here." Shelby nodded and waved to him as he left the auditorium. As soon as I was sure he was out of the building I left the balcony and met Shelby back at the closed off dressing room.
"That was relatively easy," Shelby said with a little smile. I smiled back at her.
"Yeah, it was. You were really good at getting that information out of him. Dean and I usually have to pull the information from people and make it really obvious." I sighed and shook my head. "Anyway, lead the way."
She nodded and led me away from the dressing rooms and back behind the back curtain. She started counting the wooden panels that were between the regular brick walls. It looked like the wood was just leaning against the wall but Shelby pushed one in and it opened into a hidden passageway. She walked in and I followed after, closing the wooden panel behind us. I pulled out my flashlight and turned it on. It was so tiny and dark; I probably should have made Dean do this part while I dug up the lady's grave. I tried to fight away the compressing feeling of claustrophobia that was making it a little hard to breathe.
"Down there is the stairs up," Shelby pointed in the direction we had been going and then to the other direction towards the dressing rooms, "and that way just leads to a small empty room that looked like it could have been an old costume room or something. It's kinda creepy. I've only been back here once."
The passage was so tight that we had to shuffle sideways, and we started shuffling to the stairs. Shelby paused at the top.
"Uh," she mumbled, "do you wanna go first?"
I nodded and shined the flashlight at the wall, looking for a door. There was something that looked like what could be a doorway that had a peephole and I bit my lip as I looked through the peephole. It looked like Dewey's bedroom. We kept walking down the narrow passage, which wasn't as narrow as it was down below; we still had to walk in a single file, but we didn't have to shuffle sideways.
Every time we saw a peephole we would take turned looking in it. We soon came to a crossing and had two ways to go down.
"Which way?" I asked. Shelby took a deep, shuddering breath behind me and started mumbling incoherently behind me. I turned and flashed the light on her to see what she was doing. She was pointing between the two paths and I realized that she was using the 'eenie-meenie-minie-moe" technique to decide. I almost smiled because it was something I would have done if I had been doing this part by myself.
She ended pointing left so I pointed my flashlight down that way and continued on. I stopped when I heard crying.
"Is that Amber?" I whispered to Shelby.
"No," she said quietly. I bit my lip and figured that Dean had found the grave.
"There's something I should tell you," I said while I continued to walk slowly and check in peepholes. Some showed parts of Dewey's apartment but others showed old empty rooms, not connected to the apartment at all. These were probably where the children had been kept.
"What?"
"Well, whenever you dig up a spirit's grave, they usually get really pissed off." I said, checking another peephole.
Dewey's bathroom.
"What'll happen?" She asked.
Of course, I didn't have to answer because right at that moment the ghost of Dewey's mother showed up at the end of the small passageway. I stopped quickly and Shelby bumped into me.
"That'll happen." I said. Shelby gasped when she saw the spirit but it quickly flickered and disappeared.
"Is it gone?" Shelby asked. I shook my head.
"No," I told her. "Let's keep looking."
"Shelby!" We turned quickly. The spirit was holding onto Amber who was struggling to get to us.
"Amber!" Shelby cried, starting to get to her as quickly as she could. Right before she got to them, they flickered away again. "Amber!"
She quickly turned on me, glaring.
"Where did she take Amber?" She growled, grabbing me and pushing me against the wall and holding my shoulders against it. I hit my head against one of the tiny metal peepholes and gasped when I started seeing stars.
"I don't know," I told her loudly, using a defensive technique I had learned in middle school from John to push her off me. "But accosting me isn't going to help."
I started pacing up and down, trying to think. I felt like I was grasping at air, not knowing what was going to happen next. It wouldn't be so hard to think if I was in a more open space, if there wasn't a kid's life at stake and if the kid's older sister hadn't demanded to tag along. I tried to understand what Shelby was feeling, but I needed to keep an objective stance and keep looking at the big picture.
There had to be something I was missing, but I couldn't think of anything.
"What are you doing? Pacing when my sister's life is at stake? Where the hell did they go? Where did she take Amber? Would you stop ignoring me!" Shelby yelled at me. I finally snapped and pushed her up against the wall, like she had to me, only I was stronger than her and I continued to hold her there.
"What do you think you're doing?" She snapped, glaring at me.
"Could you shut up for two seconds?" I snapped back. She continued to glare but she shut her mouth. I took a deep breath, pushing away the constant fear of the small space we were crowded in. "I'm not Wonder Woman, but I'm doing my best, okay."
Shelby nodded.
...
Part 2
Something Wicked This Way Comes
"There's got to be something you haven't told me about the story. Something that might seem like a small detail, nothing important. It might have been something that sounded completely insane that you might have thought it was a false rumor." I told her. She tried to think.
"There's nothing," she whispered sadly. My cell phone started vibrating and I took it out. Dean was calling.
"Yeah?" I answered on speakerphone.
"Find the girl yet?" He asked, his voice echoing a little in the narrow passage.
"Uh, well, kinda." I said. "You find the grave?"
"Yeah, I'm digging now but I decided to check in." Dean said. I almost smiled.
"Well, we're fine. But we're missing something. Call me after you salt and burn." I told him. He agreed and we hung up.
I started pacing again, looking at the ground while going over everything that Shelby had told me, everything on the mural, through my mind. I passed where the ghost had shown up with Amber and then I paused and turned to Shelby, who had been watching me the whole time.
"What do you know about the theatre ghost?" I asked her. Shelby frowned.
"Not much," she said. "I had heard a few scary stories about it, but tried not to think about it."
"Tell me," I told her. She raised an eyebrow.
"Why? Aren't we dealing with the spirit of Dewey's mom?" She asked. I looked back down at the ground where I stood, where the ghost had shown up with Amber, and nodded.
"Sometimes, when ghosts are extremely pissed off, they'll leave a residue where they manifest or do something that exerts a big amount of their energy. Mostly it's ectoplasm." I told her. "Down in the dressing room, there was a glob of it in the vent, and it was showing up in the victim's lungs."
"But?" Shelby asked. I gave her a questioning look and she shrugged. "It just feels like a 'but' is coming."
"Tell me about the theatre ghost," I told her.
"Well, from what I heard, there was this guy in the 1920's, a pedophile." Shelby said. "It was the first time I heard a rumor about hidden rooms up here. Supposedly he kidnapped children and kept them in these rooms to play with."
Shelby's face went white when she realized what she just said. She gasped and covered her mouth. "You don't think?"
I frowned. "Dewey's mom used a lot of energy to manifest with your sister. It was enough energy that should have left behind some ectoplasm." I pointed to the spot. "There isn't any."
"What the hell was she doing with Amber, then?" Shelby asked. I quickly shook my head and pulled out my cell phone. I had a guess, but I didn't know if I was right. I speed dialed Dean's number and impatiently waited for him to answer.
"You okay?" He asked when he answered.
"Don't salt and burn the remains," I said.
"What? Why?" He asked.
"She's not the one stealing children. I think she's trying to help them." I retold him what Shelby had just told me and he agreed with my conclusion.
"Does Shelby know what his name was?" Dean asked. I reiterated the question to her. She shook her head.
"No," I told him. He sighed.
"All right, I'm gonna make a real quick call and I'll get back to you." He said, hanging up before I could respond. I looked up at Shelby.
"What are we going to do?" She asked.
"Uh," I looked around and found the closest peephole. Looking through it I could see Dewey's bedroom was on the other side and I tried to find the way onto the other side. I pushed a loose board and it slid to the side, revealing the inside of his closet. I looked back at Shelby. "You think he has a computer in there?"
We went through his closet, past his bedroom and into his living room. I looked around and saw a laptop sitting on a small table and quickly went over to it and turning it on. Thankfully it wasn't password protected and I quickly searched the local news database for theatre pedophiles. It disturbed me a little to see how many hits there were but I finally found the right one.
My cell phone vibrated and I quickly answered it as I scanned the old newspaper article.
"All right, I called a series of people, but finally ended up at a historical database of the county and guess what I found out?" Dean said.
"That the guys name is Clive Hennegee, also known as The Nightmare Man?" I said. Scanning the article I also learned that this guy was an actor in the theatre, the closed off dressing room downstairs coincidently belonged to him, and he drowned the children after he had his way with them.
"Yeah, luckily they're buried in the same cemetery; unluckily Clive is buried all the way on the other side of the cemetery, almost a mile away." He said. "I'll call you when I'm done here."
"All right." I told him, hanging up.
"So, now what's the plan?" Shelby asked.
"There's something else I wanna know," I said, clicking back to the search engine. I typed in 'Gavrilla Memorial Theatre' and 'drowning' to see how many hits there were. If the spirit of Dewey's mom was doing the drowning, then there wouldn't be any between the time that Clive Hennegee died and before Dewey was supposedly drowned by his mom. I relayed my thoughts to Shelby and she nodded slowly, running it over in her mind.
"That makes sense, especially after we learned that this creep drowned a bunch of kids." She sighed as we both skimmed through articles about children being found dead from drowning all the way back to before Hennegee died through to now. "How often do you and your husband do this?"
I stopped and turned to look at her in confusion.
"Husband?" I asked.
"Dean, I mean," She said. "Isn't he your husband?"
I shook my head, maybe a little bitterly, as I closed the browser and shut his laptop. "He's just my boyfriend, but we have been going out for a few years."
"Oh, it's just," she hesitated, "I dunno, I guess the way he looks at you, and how he yelled at me after I slapped you."
I couldn't help but smile. I hadn't realized that Dean looked at me in any special way. I felt a small pang in my heart when I vaguely wondered if Dean and I could ever get married. I'd never pegged him to be in any sort of committed relationship and I certainly hadn't believed that we'd still be together years after our silly one night stand. I felt my face heat up, and couldn't believe that thinking about that night could still make me blush. I needed to change the topic and get back to the task at hand.
I cleared my throat. "We should probably get downstairs. I don't think she's up here anymore. I think Dewey's mom might have taken her downstairs, away from Hennegee's spirit."
Shelby nodded and we went back through the secret door in Dewey's bedroom closet, just in case Dewey were to come back if we left through the front door. Even though I was almost positive that Amber wasn't upstairs anymore, we checked all the peepholes that we passed on our way back to the stairs. All the rooms were empty.
We reached the bottom of the stairs and continued shuffling to the loose panel that led back behind the curtain. I stopped and looked down the opposite direction of the stairs, the way we had been heading.
"What did you say was down that way?" I asked Shelby.
"It looked like an old costume room, basically a closet. It has a door that goes to nowhere." She said. "Like the rest of this place, it freaks me out."
We heard laughing from behind us and we quickly turned and saw a new spirit; Clive Hennegee. He stood a few feet away from Shelby and just grinned at us for a moment before he lunged and snatched her up, dragging her back. I cursed and tried to pull out my Smith & Wesson from my backpack.
"Rose!" She cried, struggling to break free. I followed as he started dragging her by her hair up the stairs.
"Shelby, just hold on!" I finally found my gun, glad it was loaded with rock salt casings and quickly pointed at… nothing.
They were gone.
"Shit!" I cursed, kicking the wall. I dropped my backpack, frustrated with it, and pushed my way up the stairs, hoping to see them but deep down knowing he had taken her somewhere I wasn't going to find anytime soon.
I went back down the stairs, completely out of breath, and passed my backpack. I passed the way back to the stage all the way to the end of the narrow passageway. I slid the wooden panel to the side and entered the room that Shelby had told me about. It was small, but large for a closet. There were shelves and bars with hangers on them and a door that opened to nothing but a wall. The room was empty. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and breathed deeply, trying to figure out what to do next.
Not only did I feel responsible for loosing Amber, but I was definitely responsible for loosing Shelby. There were so many hidden rooms in the passageways upstairs and I was on the verge of breaking down. I checked my cell phone – no reception, battery almost dead – and saw that it was nearing 11pm. It had been a nonstop day.
I heard footsteps out in the passage way and quickly peeked from around the open panel.
Dewey's mom was staring straight at me. I frowned and came out of the closet, watching her. After a few seconds of just staring at each other she turned 90 degrees to her left and walked through the wall. As fast as I could, I went to the bottom of the stairs and grabbed my backpack and then pushed my way past the wood panel out of the hidden passageway.
I looked to my left and to my right, looking for the ghost, as my cell phone started buzzing. I answered it as I decided to get out from behind the back curtain.
"Hey," I said, weaving in between ropes and ladders and slowly walked out onto the stage. It felt like somebody had been squeezing my lungs up until this point when I finally felt like I was out in the open.
"He's burning up as we speak." Dean said. I sighed in frustration and looked around for any signs of Dewey's mom.
"Well, that's great except I still don't have Amber and I lost Shelby." I told him.
"You lost her?" He asked.
"Hennegee showed up out of nowhere, starting staring at us and laughing all creepy and then lunged at her and grabbed her. I tried to get to her but the passage was too narrow and then he completely disappeared." I rushed.
"Okay, calm down. I'm on my way." He said. "You sure we don't need to burn Mrs. Dewey?"
"Yes, I'm sure." I told him, seeing her in between side-stage curtains. "Call me when you get here."
I hung up and followed her backstage. She walked past the spiral stairs up to the catwalk and disappeared behind another wall. I looked around for an obvious door nearby but could see one.
"What the hell?" I muttered. I started trying to move wooden panels in the wall but nothing budged. I stepped away to take a better look at my surroundings and the floorboard I stepped on flipped up and revealed a metal doorknob underneath.
"Okay, this is officially the weirdest hunt ever." I said to myself, kneeling down and lifting up a few more floorboards. I grabbed the handle and lifted up yet another large panel of wood that had been hiding another spiral staircase going down. I left my backpack but held out my flashlight and gun and descended into the darkness under the stage.
Everything was dark and concrete under here and I could feel my claustrophobia set in again. I heard footsteps behind me and quickly turned, shining my flashlight. I jumped when I saw the ghost light up and walk through an opening. I followed her and saw her turn another corner and I continued to follow her until she stopped in front of a wooden door looking very misplaced in all the concrete walls and floors. She disappeared and I had a feeling that would be the last time I'd see her.
I quickly tried the door handle and was glad that it wasn't locked, since my lock pick kit was upstairs in my backpack. I pulled the door open and shined my flashlight inside the room. Shelby and Amber were both unconscious on the floor.
I rushed in the room and checked their pulses, thankful that they were both still alive.
"Rose!" I heard Dean call in the distance.
"In here!" I called back. Light suddenly filled the room and I jumped a mile high when I saw all the mannequins. They scared the crap out of me.
"Are they alive?" I turned to the door and saw Dean come in and rush towards us. I nodded, smiling, thankful that they were both going to be all right, and thankful that he was here.
...
"I realize that I never apologized for slapping you," Shelby said later, in the front house. Paramedics were looking over her sister for any injuries. I smiled and waved my hand at her.
"It's no problem, really. If a slap is the worst thing that happened on a job I consider myself really, really lucky." I told her. It was true. This had been the weirdest and most confusing hunt I could ever remember and one of the only ones where nobody suffered any serious injuries.
"So, this happens all the time?" She asked. I nodded.
"Constantly." Dean said.
"Are there others like you and Dean?"
"Yeah, but Dean and I are the only ones who ever work with a partner. Usually hunters keep to themselves." I smiled ruefully. "It's a really dangerous job to have with a family."
"I owe so much to you two, really. I know you said you have to go soon, but let me cook you guys a dinner. I bought an apple pie the other day." She said. I looked up at Dean and saw he was having a very conflicting moment. I shook my head.
"Thanks, but we really couldn't. We usually try not to stick around after we finish." I said, answering for Dean. Shelby nodded. I handed her one of my fake business cards, with my real cell number on the back. "In case you ever need to get a hold of me."
She took out a pen and ripped the card in half, writing down her own information on the blank half and handing it to me.
"And you'd better call if you're ever in the area." She said. I smiled and hugged her, a little sad to leave her. It had been a while since I felt sad to leave somewhere when usually I couldn't wait to leave.
...
...
I KNOW! I'm so late. It seriously wasn't my fault this time. I had the chapter all ready to update Wednesday afternoon, like promised, but the internet in my house has been down. It just came back on. This is in two parts because I felt bad that I couldn't post when I had said I was going to so I added the next chapter to make this post super long. I hope it makes up for any disappointment.
But hey, you know what's kinda disappointing for me? If I understood the story traffic correctly, I've had 221 unique visitors read Chapter 29 since I posted it but I only got 5 reviews. I hate to beg, but come on. I know you guys can do better than that. You have done better than that. And thank you to the 5 lovely readers who did leave reviews. I dedicate this chapter to you.