Page 82 of Girl, Haunted

Shit. This unsub was on his way out. Terminal C ticket to the boneyard. Suddenly, his twisted little memoir made a lot more sense. This was his trigger, his stressor.

The name. Check the goddamn name.

She flipped the bottle, scanned the label. There, printed in smudged block letters:

MR. MARROW, VINCENT – Enzalutamide 40mg. Take 4 capsules daily.

'Got you! Vincent Marrow!' She held the bottle aloft like a trophy, then ran out to meet Sheriff Redmond in the hallway. 'Sheriff, you hear me? Got his name. Let's find him.'

Redmond turned to her. He looked like he'd just watched his own autopsy.

Ella waved the pill bottle under his nose. ‘Vincent Marrow. You ever come across that name?’

But Redmond was busy staring into the middle distance, his hangdog face gone slack and pale.

Ella snapped her fingers in front of his nose. ‘Redmond. Hey. You with me?’

He blinked slowly. ‘We're too late.’

‘What? Too late for what?’

Redmond shook his head. ‘It's been right in front of us the whole damn time. I can't believe I missed it.’

Ella fought the urge to grab him by his rumpled lapels and shake until candy fell out. She didn't have time for this cryptic crap.

‘What the f….? Sheriff, hurry up. What’s going on?’

‘There's... Jesus, there's another haunt.’ Redmond clutched his gut like he'd just taken a bullet. ‘One off the books. I forgot all about the damn place 'til just now. ‘Til you mentioned that name.’

The world tilted on its axis. Ella grabbed the door jamb for support, new sweat slicking her palms. ‘Another haunted house? One youforgotto mention?’

Redmond nodded miserably. He looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole. ‘It’s been shut for years, decades! How was I supposed to know?’

‘Son of a bitch! You forgot? Youforgotthe one place this fuckhead would run to?’

‘I didn’t know it was still standing! Marrow Farm. About twenty klicks away from here. Owner tried turning it into some scare house decades back, but it got shut down for being…’

Ella raised a hand. A memory surfaced. One of Carter's inane video titles flashed in Ella's mind like a neon sign:

MARROW FARM - ABANDONED HAUNTED HOUSE, CLOSED DOWN FOR BEING TOO SCARY??

‘Marrow Farm,’ Ella said. Her head snapped to the left and she found herself staring at a faded photograph hung crooked on the wall. A towheaded boy, no more than eight, standing rigid before a weather-beaten sign.

MARROW FARM. EST 1897.

The fragmented tale clicked into focus, one bloody slide at a time. Vincent Marrow, farm boy. A troubled kid, plagued by visions no one else could see. So he grew up twisted, desperate tomake the world believe. And what better way than to turn people into his own personal ghost stories? Craft a legend so visceral that no one could deny it?

She asked, ‘You remember where it is?’

Redmond pulled out his car keys. ‘We can be there in fifteen minutes.’

And then they were down the stairs, out of the bookshop and back in the car.

Somewhere in the darkness, a killer waited. Ella’s only comforting thought was that Luca wasn’t a squealer, he was a fighter. Maybe there was still time, maybe Luca wasn’t…

No. Ella couldn’t finish the thought. Speaking the possibility aloud, even in her own head, would make it real.

Time to go. Time to meet Vincent Marrow and show him how a real ghost story ended.

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