The Curse of the Old Woods Read online

  She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “It’s a childish fear, I know, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I’ve looked for her everywhere but there. I did whatever I could to avoid the woods. I wouldn’t even drive near them when I got my driving license. I was relieved to go away for school.” She paused for a moment.

  “But you know what? I still see the woods often and wonder.”

  Maya started to feel a jolt of adrenaline. She always got it whenever she was anticipating a new hunt for a ghost. And this one had the added twist of trying to find out what actually happened to Mrs. Forcier’s sister. If she could get that, her profile as a paranormal investigator would vastly improve. For a brief moment, she entertained the fantasy of quitting her part-time job at the cash register of the local Zaxy-Mart. Solving this case would get her more cases, her online videos would get more views, then maybe a guest spot on a paranormal reality show, then her own show, maybe a book deal. Maya closed her eyes briefly and fantasized about having loads of new tailor-made suits and having to decide which of her gorgeous female fans to date.

  The sound of Mrs. Forcier snapping her purse shut brought her back to the present.

  “I watched your videos. I like your energy. Use it to find my sister.”

  Maya nodded but was surprised. She and Penny—her roommate, best friend, and sometime fellow paranormal investigator—had a web channel about their exploits, if that wasn’t too grand a word for what they did, but it didn’t get much traffic. And some of the comments left by viewers were less than encouraging. It felt like a cowardly thing to do, but she decided a few months ago to disable the comments feature. It saved her sanity.

  Mrs. Forcier stood up. “I’ll email you all of my sister’s maps. They’re really quite detailed, but I think you do need them. The trails she marked are not marked on official trail maps.”

  Mrs. Forcier then stood up and walked out of the coffee shop with an elegance more suited to an upper-class woman who spent her days in an Edwardian drawing room.

  Maya closed her notebook and picked up the photograph. It was thick and old, slightly thumbed but clearly protected for years in Mrs. Forcier’s wallet. She stared into Katie’s eyes. They would never age. She looked at her skin. Katie’s arms were bare. The neckline of her sleeveless button-down shirt was high. Her face was not unhappy, but there was no smile. There was only determination.

  Before leaving the coffee shop, Maya texted Steve about Mrs. Forcier and her missing sister. She ran what used to be his business now. He also used to have a public access cable show called the Paranormal Grievance Committee. He was in semi-retirement now. The show was off the air. The old channel didn’t even exist anymore. Although she decided to rename the business from his name to hers, she was toying with the idea of a more dramatic name change. Using her name as part of the business was an ego boost, for sure, but it lacked something. It sounded too much like a firm of lawyers or accountants. She turned to Steve for advice often. He occasionally came with her and Penny on some of their investigations. She knew he’d want to get in on this one. He had his own fascination with Promontory Woods, although he wouldn’t explain why.

  She then texted Penny and brought her up to date on her meeting with Mrs. Forcier. She was most likely at her main job as a dispatcher with a trucking company, so she didn’t respond immediately.

  Maya and Penny had dated briefly about two years ago. They had initially connected on a lesbian dating app and gone out on a few dates before realizing that the only place they clicked was in the bedroom. They continued to hook up once in a while after they stopped dating until Penny fell for a woman who was a dancer at Bodies of Heaven, a men’s club on a patch of land that wasn’t inside the official boundaries of Springfield Heights or any other nearby suburb. Penny told Maya that she really wanted to give it a chance with Jessica, and Maya agreed it would be best to end the friends-with-benefits thing they’d had going. Besides, Maya really wanted to find a real girlfriend.

  Chapter Three

  The investigation begins

  Later that day at dusk, Maya, Penny, and Steve arrived at Promontory Woods. They started out on the marked trails, passed by the occasional trail runner, hiker, or dog walker. Gravel crunched under their feet. The air smelled of tree bark and butterflies and grass, a normal early June day in the creepiest woods in the area. It had been sunny all day, but it still seemed like there were parts of the woods that never saw sunlight. As they walked, they told each other ghost stories they’d heard dozens of times before. There was the one about a murdered Viking queen who some claimed had been roaming these woods for thousands of years. No one sober ever seemed to see her. More recent ghosts included Indians and French traders. One historian claimed a witches’ cult used these woods for rituals in the 1920s, some involving virgin sacrifice. Maya was always skeptical of that one. She’d never met a witch who used virgin sacrifice as part of a spell. Another historian said a serial killer had buried the bodies of several women in the area.

  Whatever the reason, there was always a creepiness to the woods that no one was able to fully explain, and the woods were known as a place where young women disappeared and came back to haunt. As the ghost hunters veered off the marked trail into the area indicated by Katie’s map, they started walking on dirt, and Maya shuddered.

  “Anyone else feel that?” asked Maya as she turned toward Penny and looked into the lens of her camcorder. “A shiver just went down my spine.” She added emphasis to the word shiver in hopes it would make the video more dramatic.

  Penny and Steve shook their heads.

  Maya sighed dramatically. “Um, I need you to say something so the recording picks up something. Come on, you two. Be stars.”

  “I did not feel anything,” said Penny who enunciated her words like she did when she visited her great aunt Martha in the nursing home.

  “No abnormal readings on the EDI meter,” yelled Steve as he held out the device in front of the camera lens. The EDI was slightly bigger than a large smartphone and measured changes in temperature and humidity. It detected vibration and shifts in the electromagnetic field, all the signs of paranormal activity.

  After about half an hour into the walk along what seemed to be one of the trails marked on Katie’s map from June 28, 1957, Maya had to stop. It had gotten dark. The moonlight was, at best, intermittent as clouds moved across the sky insouciantly, obscuring the moon, and she wasn’t sure they were still on the Katie’s trail. She turned on her head lamp.

  “What is it?” Penny asked as she pushed the “stop” button on the camcorder.

  Maya peered at the map. “I think we’re off the trail.”

  “You could be right, Maya,” Steve said, moving around slowly while keeping an eye on the EDI. “Not picking up anything here.”

  Maya studied the map for several seconds more. “It’s like she drew this map and the key to it was in her head and wherever she is, that’s where the key is.”

  Steve stepped closer. “Let me see.”

  Maya handed the map to him.

  After her morning meeting with Mrs. Forcier, Maya had done some research, trying to see what more she could find out beyond what she had been told and what she could see in Katie’s photo.

  She’d found at the library on microfiche the newspaper in which Katie’s disappearance was first reported. The picture of Katie that accompanied the article was the same one that Mrs. Forcier had given her. There was the same clear-eyed, unflinching gaze. It seemed to burn through the newsprint even after so many years. The story imparted the facts, as were known then, of Katie’s disappearance. It noted that Katie’s was the latest disappearance connected with Promontory Woods.

  Maya found a few more stories, briefs really, about Katie’s disappearance, but by November of 1957, the local paper had lost interest. Maya had searched through local newspapers through the decades and had found no more mentions of Katie. She had been forgotten, except by Mrs. Forcier.

  She also found stories o
ver the years about the numerous false starts to develop parts of the woods, to take a few acres here and there for housing or a strip mall. None of those plans ever went far. Those that weren’t voted down by the city council stalled in other ways. A company that managed to get approval in the mid 1960s to take a corner for a housing cul-de-sac suddenly went bankrupt. Work stopped on that project before it started. Another project approved in 1978, a strip mall on the northern edge, was beset by problems. Bulldozers stopped working when they got to the woods. Workers complained of headaches from an unknown toxin. After numerous false starts and “a bad dream” the owner announced that he was turning the land into a bird sanctuary. The latest project, another attempt at housing, had just been approved on the eastern edge. Ground was supposed to break for that project next month, although Maya was skeptical it would ever happen.

  Besides, thought Maya, as she slapped the latest mosquito trying to take a bite of her, who wouldn’t prefer to have this beautiful nature around them. She took a couple of deep breaths, looked up and got a fleeting glimpse of the moon.

  “Let’s go back this way. I think I know where I went wrong,” Maya said.

  “Start filming again?” Penny yelled, following after.

  “Sure, why not? We can just edit it out if it seems silly,” Maya said.

  “This map is just amazing,” Steve said. “I mean, there’s a real beauty to it. She would have made a kick-ass cartographer.”

  “I like that. Kick-ass cartographer,” Penny said.

  “Shhh.” Maya was more confident now about the direction she was going in. “Steve, are you taking any readings?”

  She heard a rustling of paper. Steve folded the map away.

  “Yep. Yep. Don’t you worry,” he said.

  They walked in silence several more feet with Maya stumbling a couple of times after stepping over fallen branches and limbs.

  “Shit. We’re definitely on to something,” Steve said. “These readings are amazing. There’s definitely something here.”

  Maya launched into some impromptu narration in case they decided to upload this footage to their web channel.

  “We seem to be back on track now, got going in the wrong direction a few minutes ago. Now, Katie was very specific in the drawings of the trails she apparently took on her walks through the woods. Unfortunately, it seems like she made up all these trails she walked. They don’t actually exist on any official trail map. They’re not trails at all. She really was a free spirit.”

  “Groan. Was that meant to be a pun?” Penny said as they kept moving.

  “No. I was just free talking, like free verse in poetry.”

  “What the what?” Penny sounded incredulous.

  “Sounded pretty clever to me,” Steve said.

  “Of course, you like it, you old fart,” Penny said. “You and my dad just love your puns.”

  “Good evening.” The voice didn’t belong to any of them.

  Penny let out a horrified squeak. Steve burped. Maya let out a stream of obscenities. Maya looked toward where she thought the voice came from in time to see a man who looked to be in his thirties. He wore a local forestry service jacket.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.

  “Oh, we’re not scared. Just a little surprised,” Maya said, feigning calmness and bringing her heart rate down with some deep breaths. She turned her headlamp so it was no longer blinding him, and he angled his flashlight so it provided all of them with a little light.

  “Name’s Mike Hogan.”

  Maya shook his hand. His fingers were thick and callused. “I’m Maya Nicholas. These are my associates, Steve Driessen and Penny Torres.”

  “Lemme guess,” Mike said. “You’re here trying to scare up some ghosts.” The quiet of the woods was broken up only by intermittent interruptions from his walkie-talkie.

  “That’s right, Mike,” Steve said. “You probably get a lot of our sort out here.”

  Mike nodded. “That I do. End up scaring themselves usually,” he said with a little laugh.

  “How long have you worked here, Mike?” Maya was thinking he could be a good resource.

  “Long enough to know better. Please don’t do that, miss.” He gestured at the camera Penny had trained on him. “I don’t want to be in anyone’s video.”

  Penny glanced at Maya who shook her head. Penny pushed the “stop” button and held the camera down at her side.

  “Thanks, miss. Appreciate it.”

  “Mike, have you ever heard of a young woman named Katherine Rose Morey? She was called Katie by her family.”

  Mike swatted at a bug, probably a mosquito, and then scratched his cheek.

  “Heard a lot of stories since I’ve been working here. Colleagues have told me some. Heard some from other ghost hunters. Don’t remember names, though. Katie? Might have heard about her, but all these ghost stories just start to run together after a while. All the same, you know.”

  Maya was disappointed but not surprised. She hadn’t heard about Katie either until Mrs. Forcier came along. If Katie had been making appearances to anyone else, they were keeping quiet about it. The more likely scenario was that she’d only visited her sister, and even that appearance was in doubt. There were no other witnesses. Mrs. Forcier could have just been seeing what she desperately wanted to see.

  “Okay. Well, thanks, Mike. We should be getting back to our investigation,” Maya said and smiled brightly.

  Mike smiled in return. It struck her that it was a sad sort of smile.

  “Don’t stay out too late,” he said gently. “It isn’t ghosts you should be worried about out here.”

  Penny said, “Oh, we know. It’s almost always humans that are worse than any ghost or demon or whatever.”

  “Have a good night,” Mike said. He turned and walked away.

  “All right. Let’s get a move on,” Maya said. “We were going in what I believe to be the right direction.”

  Penny turned the camera back on, and they walked along the path for a few minutes with Maya providing more narration. She mentioned Mike but not by name. She talked about the darkness that enveloped them in the woods. Maya suddenly stopped walking and shushed her friends.

  Penny bumped into her. “Ouch.”

  “Did you hear that?”

  Steve, still scanning the area with the EDI meter, said, “Hear what?” He stopped just short of tripping over Penny.

  “Is it the forest ranger again?” Penny asked.

  “Shhh. Be quiet, be still, and listen,” Maya said.

  She thought she heard a low murmur, a hum of someone talking. Could it be Katie, the free-spirited ghost? If it were, it would be fantastic. Besides the potential to communicate with the spirits on an investigation, she could possibly solve a crime, if a crime had been committed. She imagined telling Mrs. Forcier all about what actually happened to Katie. Being able to help someone get closure on something that had been an open wound for decades had been something Maya had looked forward to ever since she had heard about Katie’s disappearance.

  “This could be it. Get ready, Penny. Steve, you got the audio?”

  Although the camcorder wielded by Penny recorded sound, Maya always made sure to record a separate soundtrack on some audio equipment that Steve had bought and improved over the years.

  She listened more closely to what she thought were ghostly mumblings. As the sound became clearer, she realized what it was.

  “Julie, are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” The voice was male, young. Most definitely not ghostly.

  “Yeah, I think we’re on the right track now. Just keep up, little brother.”

  That female voice, presumably, was Julie.

  Penny, leaning close to Maya, whispered in Maya’s ear, “What do we do?”

  In response, Maya put her index finger up to her lips. They stood still and waited. She heard the crunch of small tree branches under the feet of Julie and whoever else was with her. They were coming closer.
Then, Maya started feeling ridiculous. Why are we hiding? We’ve done nothing wrong. We were here first.

  “Come on,” she whispered to Penny and Steve. “Let’s go.”

  The three of them crept slowly and as quietly as they could back onto what Maya had thought was one of Katie’s trails. It still felt like hiding, but the impulse to not bring attention to herself was hard to shake. She heard the other voices getting closer. It irritated her. Whoever those other people were had probably ruined whatever chance she would have tonight of encountering Katie’s ghost. Snap! The branch sounded unnaturally loud when Penny stepped on it.

  “Shit,” Penny said.

  “Who’s there?” That sounded like that Julie person.

  Silence. Maya wasn’t sure what to say or if she should say anything. She really didn’t want anyone else to know they were there and why they were there.

  Then, an unearthly male voice spoke. “There’s nothing here for you but blood and death. Leave now,” it hissed.

  Maya turned around. It was Steve.

  “Steve? Steve Driessen? Is that you? Come out, come out wherever you are.” Again, the Julie person.

  “Damn it,” Steve muttered.

  “She knows you?” Maya said. “What’s going on, Steve?”

  “A blast from my not-so-distant past,” he said.

  “Steve, I know that was you,” said Julie as she stepped close enough for Maya to see her. “I’d know that cheesy, Saturday matinee horror movie voice anywhere. You better not be treading on my investigation.”

  This was too much. Maya stepped in front of Penny and Steve and stood wide as if she was protecting her turf.

  “Your investigation? What investigation are you talking about?” Maya asked.

  Julie, a white woman with long brown hair tied into a ponytail that stuck out of the back of her baseball cap, holding her own EDI and a pair of night vision binoculars, stepped closer to Maya. She looked Maya up and down. Maya returned with her own scan of Julie’s khaki trousers and blue t-shirt.

  The woman grinned. “Steve? You’ve changed your hair.”