Austin isn’t totally sure when he started taking his lunch break in the basement, but no one else working at the library seems to think any less of him for it, so it’s become a habit. That the basement is usually about as cold as a walk-in freezer is a nice bonus during the blisteringly hot Colorado summer, and even though it’s where the ghosts who frequent the library tend to congregate, they’re likely to be doing their own thing rather than wanting to chat. Not that Austin minds chatting with them. But he likes the quiet, too.
Austin idly turns the page of the book he brought from upstairs, taking a bite of his sandwich and watching out of the corner of his eye as Richard tries to teach Susie - the girl whose bones are still down here - to levitate a storage box across the room. She’s gotten pretty good at manipulating physical objects in the past two years, but hasn’t quite taken to moving things without the use of her hands.
“Hey, Austin?”
He doesn’t startle at the voice - he could feel Mac drifting down the stairs behind him before she even said anything. Looking over his shoulder at her, he raises an eyebrow.
“What’s up?”
Mac bobs gently in the air, rubbing her arm uneasily, not meeting his gaze. Austin can’t tell if she looks guilty, or just upset. Somewhere in the middle, maybe. Is she sick? Ghosts can’t get sick, right? That’s impossible.
“Do you remember when you first met Landis?” she asks, and then pauses. Austin gets the feeling she’s not done, so he waits, and Mac eventually, carefully, gets her next words out. “When whatever was in the lake - the demon, I guess - hijacked me for a second to talk to you?”
This can’t be good. Austin closes his book, and gives Mac his full and undivided attention. “Yeah?”
“Remember how, right before that, I said I felt like something really big was coming?”
“Yeah?” Austin says again. There’s a pit in his stomach that’s widening with every word out of Mac’s mouth, but he has to hear where she’s going with this.
“Well, I’ve been getting that feeling again, lately. Like -” Mac hesitates. “I dunno. Like something’s waking up that isn’t supposed to be. I guess it’s kind of like how you can feel a storm coming before the rain and lightning actually start, you know? Or how you can sometimes smell it in the air when it’s going to snow.”
“But it’s been two years,” Austin says. “The demon’s gone. We all saw it. If it were still around, it would’ve come back by now. I mean, that’s what it did last time. It was back within a couple months. Granted, someone summoned it back, but still, I can’t see it staying quiet for so long. Not something that needs blood sacrifices twice a year.”
He puts his sandwich down on top of his book, and takes a breath. Who am I trying to convince here? Mac or myself?
Mac shrugs. “Hey, I don’t know for sure what these premonitions are about. I just get them.”
“Well, I’m not blaming you for it.” Austin looks down at his sandwich. Suddenly he’s not so hungry anymore. “I just wish it was easier to tell -”
“Austin? Austin, are you down here?”
The basement door creaks open, and this time Austin does jump, before he registers that it’s just Channery. The bad feeling in his gut doesn’t subside. Channery never comes to find him during his lunch hour, and there’s a hint of worry in her voice that he doesn’t hear often. He stands up on the stairs.
“Yeah. What’s wrong?”
Mac slips around him so that he doesn’t have to walk through her on his way up the stairs, and hangs back, nervous. Austin suddenly has the feeling that she knows something she isn’t telling him, like when she and Richard found the box of bones. Maybe whatever it is was why she came down here and told him about her premonition. The twisting feeling inside of him opens up into a deep pit. What if something happened to Otter? Or Landis?
“The sheriff’s here,” Channery says quietly. “Outside. She wants to talk to you.”
Austin lets his body march itself upstairs and out the front door of the library, his ears buzzing, his mind untethered. It’s all happening again. Only this time, I wasn’t there to stop it, and one of them is dead. Someone’s hurt, or dead, or bleeding out, and I wasn’t there.
Seeing Monty does nothing to assuage the feeling. She’s leaning against her squad car in full uniform, arms folded over her chest, her face grim. A cigarette is smoldering away in one of her hands, but she isn’t smoking it. Just looking at it. She glances up when Austin gets closer to the car, but still doesn’t smile.
“What happened?” Austin asks, sure that if he tries to get any more words out, he’ll just vomit instead.
“Six recently-graduated seniors from Antlers High, and one visiting college student.” Monty flicks her cigarette to the ground and snuffs it under the heel of one shoe. “Cedric Grayson, Samantha Howell, Elizabeth Kathe, Robin Laurens, Alphonse Liddell, Valerie Ortega, and Aadi Prasad. Dead. Reports started coming in this morning, but the other kids were hysterical, and we couldn’t get the details straight for a while.”
Thank God, is the first, fleeting thought that runs through Austin’s mind, and he clenches his teeth. Don’t. Don’t do that. Seven kids just died. You don’t get to be glad that it wasn’t Landis or Otter.
“You want me on this?” he asks. Monty usually mentions the supernatural element of a case right away, but this time it seems like she’s holding back.
Monty nods. “I’ll come with you if you want to interview the kids - most of them are still back at the station, some are at the hospital. I’d like to be there in case you can get anything new out of them. But the rest seems…more your wheelhouse.”
“What happened?” Austin asks. There’s still something she isn’t telling him. “I mean, this wasn’t just random, right? How did they die?”
“Eviscerated, for the most part. Some were still alive when the EMTs got there, but, well.” Monty closes her eyes for a long moment, and sighs. “The ones with serious injuries didn’t last long.”
“So you think they left ghosts behind for me to talk to?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it. Most of them died violently,” Monty says. “They were at a senior week party. The graduating class throws one every year. Sixty kids…I hate to say it, but it’s lucky only seven of them were injured that badly. We could have lost a lot more, the way they’re telling it.”
What can eviscerate seven teenagers just like that? Austin takes a deep, shuddery breath. Unfortunately, he feels like he might know the answer.
“Where was the party?” he asks, testing his theory, forcing himself to stay calm.
A smile plays around Monty’s lips, but it doesn’t look amused. Just tired. “The old mine. The same tunnels we came through to find you and your boyfriend, two years back.”
“Right,” Austin says, swallowing past the bile rising in his throat. “Can you drive to the hospital? I want to talk to those high schoolers.”
ghost murder mystery time!