Page 44 of No Surrender
Simon gave him one for the store. “And if you remember anything else, give me a buzz.”
Walt and Ed were clearly going to talk shop, so Simon said goodbye and headed down the block toward where Vampire’s Castle used to be.
“Have I told you that there was nothing at all romantic about being a pirate?”Dante said, remaining out of sight but present in Simon’s mind.
“Many times.”Simon tried to hide his grin, enjoying teasing his ancestor.
“Brackish water, wormy biscuits, storms at sea, and if the King’s Navy wasn’t chasing them, then privateers like Coltt and I were breathing down their necks. Pirates were not nice people—and not nearly as good looking or well-dressed as in that horrible movie you made me watch.”
“I didn’t force you to do anything. And it’s still one of the most profitable movies of all time,”Simon needled.
“This generation has no taste.”Dante sighed, but Simon knew the spirit had been riveted to the screen the night they’d watched the first movie in the series. Unfortunately, Dante couldn’t share the popcorn.
“That’s it,” Simon murmured under his breath as he stopped across the street from the defunct attraction. Despite his promise to Vic to stay out of trouble, he felt as safe here as anywhere on the Grand Strand. A popular oddities museum sat next door to what was now a T-shirt shop with an unused second floor, and even though it wasn’t tourist season, plenty of visitors still walked this stretch in daylight looking for diversions.
“So we went from pretend pirates to pretend vampires? You live in a very strange time,”Dante commented.
“You have no idea,”Simon replied. “Can you get inside and go to the second floor? If we’re right, there will be bodies from forty years ago, and maybe some stuff the killer kept that belonged to the victims.”
“Unless it’s warded against ghosts, I should be able to have a look around,”Dante replied. “I’ll keep an eye out for spirits. Is it said to be haunted? Because from what you say, it should be.”
Simon shook his head. “I keep pretty close tabs on the known hauntings, and this location hasn’t come up—either in the past or since the castle closed. Which makes me wonder…”
“Let’s see what I can find. Then afterward, you can take me to some more places that aren’t real.”With that snarky comment, Dante left. Simon pretended to window shop in the nearest tourist trap, trying to kill time without obviously loitering.
If Judd had been a janitor at Vampire’s Castle before it closed, maybe he held onto a key. We still don’t know Thompson’s connection to the place. Did he work there before he took up killing? That would make sense, but it’s probably hard to find a paper trail after all this time.
When Dante didn’t return immediately, Simon felt exposed hanging around on the street. He ducked into an ice cream shop and had just emerged with a butter pecan cone when he felt Dante’s presence.
“Found them.”
“What—?”
“The second floor looks like someone just blew out the candles and shut the door,”Dante reported. “There are false caves made out of something that looks like stone and isn’t. They don’t look much like real caverns, either.”
“What else?”Simon prompted.
“Someone made a hole in the false stone and hid the bodies inside, then put a larger ‘rock’ in front to hide it. Six corpses. More like mummies now.”
“Shit.” Simon felt relieved that they had found the missing women’s bodies but sad to confirm their deaths.
“Several ghosts remain. Perhaps the ones you contacted were able to leave the building and are stronger—the ones left behind are barely a flicker.”
“Did you see anything that might have been the killer’s trophies? Jewelry, personal items, shoes, pieces of clothing?”
“They’re arranged on a small table like a shrine. But…it appears someone has been there recently. The dust had been disturbed, and there were footprints. The shrine looked tended.”
“Well, that’s not good.”Simon licked a drip from his momentarily forgotten cone. “Did you learn anything from the ghosts?”
Simon picked up on Dante’s emotions and felt his distress.
“They’re frightened of the building’s visitor and afraid there will be more murders. Some of the ghosts have started to lose their sense of self. It supports your theory that the killer leeched energy from their deaths to heal himself. And I picked up a phrase—‘no surrender.’”
“Do you know what they mean?”
“They are united in defying their killer’s desire to make them disappear. I had the sense that he bound them somehow to that place so they couldn’t move on to the afterlife.”
“Guess it turned out to be a ‘vampire’s castle’ after all, but not in the way anyone expected,”Simon noted.
