Page 24 of Halloween Haunting
The others seemed ready to say the same thing, but Grace raised her hands to stop them, shaking her head as a series of trembles rocked through her body. “How else will I keep living,” she whispered, “If I cannot even manage to admit it all now?” She looked down, drawing in deep breaths and counting till herheart was polite enough to return to its regular patter. By that point, she was almost ready to give up, to throw her arms back in the air and tell them that she would be moving by dawn.
But she wouldn’tactuallymove, would she?
Despite everything – the visions, the ghosts outside her house, the creepy Lantern, the supernatural friends she made – Grace couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. No other town would have charisma like Holiday Hollow. No other town would’ve welcomed a divorced forty-three year old as quickly as they did. If Grace let fear rule her now, she would be left with nowhere to go, entirely back to square one. She would still be the same woman that was cheated on, that was abused, that was left behind, that wasforgotten.
And that wasneverhappening again.
Grace lifted her head and held Bryant’s stare. “It was then that the man in the dinosaur costume was stabbed. Repeatedly. I came out of the vision afterwards.”
“And the man – where did he go?”
She blinked. “The man? Which man?”
“The one you bumped into,” Bryant clarified, his voice tense. “The man in the monster costume. Where did he go?”
Grace was dumbfounded. “That’swhat you got out of all of that?” She lifted one shoulder in a limp shrug. “I-I have no clue. By the time I came out of the vision, I was falling, and there…well, there was onlyyou,Bryant.”
His gaze snapped around the table. The three listening ladies shared a similar look, their complexions growing paler by the second. Grace watched and her heart spiked for another time. “W-What’s going on?” she asked, her voice quivering. Somehow, their silence and knowing stares were enough to bring Grace back into her frightful state. “Someone ought to –”
“You saw the vision when you touched the guy, right?” Anna asked. She had the eloquence and confident speech of a lawyer,not sugar-coating or softening her stare as she waited for Grace’s answer. “Not moments later, not moments before.Rightwhen you touched him.”
Grace nodded. “Sure, but what does that have to do with anything?”
“Magic needs something to trigger it most of the time, Grace,” Anna explained. “A skill like foresight is one that is incapable of coming on its own. Maybe talented psychics can harbor the ability to call upon their visions themselves, but it's incredibly rare. And hardly relevant in this case.”
Grace shook her head. “I-I don’t understand.”
“What she means,” Bryant piped up, “Is that the man in the monster costume more than likely has something to do with this.”
“And?”
“And what?”
She stuck her finger at him. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Bryant looked away, his expression stuck between being annoyed and being impressed. “I’m sure Anna, Olivia, and Caroline know what I’m about to say,” he muttered, glancing around the table at the eyes that swiftly agreed with him. “The man in the dinosaur costume was Tommy Briggs.”
Grace’s eyes narrowed. “He was the one holding the party, wasn’t he?”
He nodded. “What’s more important than that, Grace, is that there was a similar murder in the mansion ten years ago. Unfortunately, the crime went unsolved. But we now have reason to believe that Tommy’s death wasn’t a coincidence, and is connected to that cold case.”
“How are they connected?”
“Sam Bennett was the poor soul taken too early, ten years ago,” Caroline replied for the Sheriff’s Deputy. “And Tommyused to be attached to his hip, you know. They were best friends.”
“But it’s more than that. Sam was killed in the library, in the same exact way we found Tommy.” Bryant shook his head. “There ain’t no way that they aren’t connected.”
An overwhelming sensation of dread settled onto Grace’s chest as Bryant described the tumultuous murder case. The last thing she expected to find in the charming town of Holiday Hollow was a crime as deadly as that. And now she found herself stuck in the middle of it, desperate to be set free but also frightfully aware of how much she was already involved. Something told Grace that she wouldn’t be getting out of this mess anytime soon. Her fingers were anxiously grazing her lips when Bryant started talking again.
“We had no hope of solving Sam’s case,” he murmured. “There was no evidence left behind, no trails to follow. But now…now we have a chance to solve this, once and for all.” He lifted his head, and those brown eyes found her once more. “With your help, Grace.”
She scooted back. “M-Me? I’m no detective, Bryant.”
“I don’t need one.”
“But –”
“I need a psychic.”
