Ghost Writer (The Ghost Files Book 7)

  GHOST WRITER

  The Ghost Files #7

  by

  Chanel Smith

  Created by

  J.R. Rain & Scott Nicholson

  THE GHOST FILES SERIES

  Ghost College (Book #1)

  by Scott Nicholson and J.R. Rain

  Ghost Soldier (Book #2)

  by Evelyn Klebert

  Ghost Fire (Book #3)

  by Eve Paludan

  Ghost Hall (Book #4)

  by Michelle Wright

  Ghost Crypt (Book #5)

  by Chanel Smith

  Ghost Town (Book #6)

  by Chanel Smith

  OTHER BOOKS BY CHANEL SMITH

  THE PACK TRILOGY

  Werewolf Moon

  Werewolf Nights

  Werewolf Forever

  THE HUNTRESS TRILOGY

  The Vampire With the Golden Gun

  The Vampire in the High Castle

  The Vampire Who Knew Too Much

  THE GHOST FILES

  Ghost Crypt

  Ghost Town

  Ghost Writer

  Ghost Writer

  Copyright © 2015 Chanel Smith

  Based on characters created by J.R. Rain and Scott Nicholson

  Published by J.R. Rain Press

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved by the authors.This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for reading us.

  Ghost Writer

  Prologue

  There was no doubt that Monty had taken quite a beating over our last couple of cases and I was beginning to feel bad about bringing him into my world of the paranormal. He covered his annoyance well with his quick wit and sense of humor, but behind those things, I could see is frustration was building. I hadn’t entered into his world as a police investigator, something that I would never have been comfortable with, but I’d drawn him into my world. I was beginning to think that it wasn’t quite fair.

  “Dan Brown has a new book out!” Monty shouted excitedly as we were passing a book store in the French Quarter of New Orleans. We’d just finished a case and had been given a little bit of time to enjoy ourselves before heading back to our home in California.

  “Who is interested in book stores when you’re in the French Quarter?” I laughed. Trying to fit Monty into any kind of mold simply didn’t work. He was much too independent minded for that.

  “Evidently I’m not the only one who does or there wouldn’t be a book store here, now would there,” he countered.

  “Touché,” I returned. I stopped and looked at the display in the shop window along with him. I was pleased to see that my friend, Diana, had yet another book out and it was proudly among those displayed in the window. At almost the same moment that I saw it, he blurted out his recognition of the author.

  “Look, there’s a book by that author that you love so much, Diana Curry. Let’s go in and buy them,” he said excitedly. “I need a little fiction to help bring me back to reality.”

  “Monty, that doesn’t make any sense at all,” I laughed.

  “Yeah. Chasing ghosts through the bayou with a cross-eyed voodoo priest certainly makes more.” His sarcastic tone was thick, but he followed it up with a wink. “Come on.”

  I followed him into the store and stood silently by as he purchased both books. I might have browsed about under other, more ordinary circumstances, but seeing Diana’s book had begun to bring back all sorts of memories for me and, to say the least, my mind was packed full of them.

  Diana and I had lived in the same apartment building when I was finishing up my degree and she was struggling to make ends meet as a single mother and a seven year old son. I’d felt sorry for her and asked if I could help her out. Since she worked the evening shift at a restaurant, she had to pay a sitter to stay with her son, Jaxon, after school. It seemed silly that she should pay for a sitter when at least four of those hours were spent with Jaxon in bed.

  Since I arrived back at the apartment a little bit before Jaxon did every day and about 30 minutes before Diana would leave for work, I decided that maybe I could help her out. So, we made a trade. She would do some housekeeping for me while I was gone to classes and I would fix supper for Jaxon, get him bathed and in bed, which worked out perfectly, allowing me to study until she came home. It was an awesome arrangement for both of us.

  “What has you so quiet?” Monty asked, interrupting my thoughts.

  “Just remembering things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “It’s a long story,” I replied.

  “Maybe you should write it in a novel, then,” he quickly countered.

  “It’s already been done.” It was my turn to be glib.

  “What? How has one of your memories become a story? You’ve never written more than a thousand words in your life.”

  “Hey, that’s not fair, I’ve written a lot of fairly lengthy papers.”

  “Everybody has, when they were in school,” he responded. “I’m talking about since then. You’re not a writer, so how did your story end up in a novel?”

  I considered his question for a minute. Did I really want to get into it? It wasn’t necessarily an uncomfortable trip down memory lane, but it was long before he and I had come together. Was there any point in telling such a story? The moment that the thought entered my mind, I heard something inside of me respond very positively to the idea. In fact, I reasoned that telling him the story of how I was first convinced that my purpose in life was to become a paranormal investigator, might help him to understand the crazy journey that I’d dragged him into.

  “Hello? Ellen? Are you in there?” he knocked softly on my head, imitating Biff talking to Marty in one of the Back to the Future movies.

  “Jesus, Monty, you know how much that irritates me!” I snapped.

  “That’s exactly why I love doing it.”

  Monty could border on the edge of annoying sometimes. I was tempted to not tell him the story, but suddenly realized that doing that would just be childish. I didn’t need to stoop to that level. No, I needed to be honest and bring out some of my feelings toward the career that I had pulled him into.

  “Alright,” I said as we continued our stroll. “Let me tell you the story that ended up in a novel, by Diana Curry, in fact.”

  “Diana Curry wrote your story? I didn’t even know that you knew her.”

  “We were best friends when I was finishing up my degree. We lived in the same building.”

  “And you didn’t share this before, because…”

  “Because there was never any reason to bring it up. Now, do you want to hear the story or not?”

  “Digame my lovely troubadour,” he replied.

  I rolled my eyes at him. He always had some surprise waiting for me and always at a time that I least expected it. Ignoring his sudden use of Spanish mixed with a word, which I assumed came from French, I started into my story.

  Chapter One

  Diana Curry sat up in her bed with her heart thundering in her chest. A loud noise had awakened her and she wasn’t certain where it came from. It sounded like someone was trying to break in. After the initial panic, her first thought was of Jaxon in his bedroom down the hall and closer to the front door. Her mother’s instinct kicked in. She had no idea what she would do against and attacker, but she had to protect her son.

  Slipping out of bed, she pulled the door open slowly and silently. It was in moments like these that she missed having Chris around. Not that he was much better than she was at this sort of thing, or anything else
for that matter, she would have preferred that he went out to investigate the noise instead of her.

  She moved through the door and took three long strides down the hall. Luckily, Jaxon’s door was always open a crack, making it easier to get inside the room and push the door closed behind her. “Stupid latch,” she whispered in the darkness. It would have been an excellent time for the damned thing to work, but of course it didn’t and that was the reason that she was able to quietly slip into his room.

  She turned her head to look toward his sleeping form in the bed. He was soundly asleep with the soft glow of the nightlight casting a glow across his peaceful and innocent face. She heard the stirring out in the living room again. Whoever it was had already broken in and was rifling through things. It wouldn’t be long before the intruder started down the hall. Her and Jaxon would need some sort of protection. She thought of Jaxon’s mitt and bat from Little League last summer.

  On quiet feet, she moved over to his toy box and attempted to quietly move things out of the way until she had his bat in her hand. As she pulled it out of the toy box, it brushed against his Power Claws Robot and it called out in its electronic voice, “grip of steel!” and then made a series of awful crunching noises that seemed to be endless.

  Diana froze in place and listened. Surely the sound would draw the intruder down the hall or scare him away. Though she strained her ears to hear, there was absolute silence in the apartment. Maybe he had been scared away by the robot, which Jaxon had always called PCR. She listened for several minutes, but heard no more sounds coming from beyond the door of Jaxon’s room. She crept toward the door, careful to keep herself between it and Jaxon.

  Crouched with the bat raised over her shoulder and ready to swing, she waited a bit longer, still not hearing any sounds from inside the apartment. The sudden realization that if the intruder had indeed fled, he would have certainly left the door open for whoever might come next, besides, she ought to call the police and report the crime.

  She cursed herself when she realized that her cell phone was on the bar between the kitchen and the living room, charging. Hell of a lot of good it does you there, Di. With no more sounds being heard, she finally decided to move cautiously toward the door.

  Pulling it open a crack, she peeped through the door toward the living room and waited. For all appearances, the apartment was empty. Pushing the door open wider, she held the bat at the ready and started to creep down the hall. When she reached the living room, she reached around the corner and flipped on the light, then drew back to see what happened.

  Out of breath and with her heart thundering in her chest, she waited to see what sort of response her actions would bring. There was no response. She peeped around the corner into the living room and saw nothing, she quickly pulled her head toward the other side, where the kitchen lay. There was nothing there as well.

  Beginning to feel a great deal more relieved, she decided that she ought to check the door. If someone had broken in, they had certainly damaged the latch, the deadbolt and the chain. She picked up her cell phone and pressed 911, but waited to press “send” while she walked toward the front door. She was startled to discover that the chain was in place, the deadbolt was firmly into the frame of the door and the door handle itself was securely locked.

  She let out a long sigh of relief and pressed cancel on her cell phone. No one had broken in. The sense of relief was short lived as another mystery suddenly hit her. If no one had broken in, then what had she heard? She went into the kitchen and opened first the refrigerator, then the pantry and each of the cabinets, wondering if something had fallen down or shifted in them.

  As she moved into the living room, it suddenly dawned on her that she had heard the noise several times, so it couldn’t have been an item falling. She scanned the living room for anything out of place, but saw nothing. It all seemed to be as she always kept it, including her grandfather’s typewriter that was sitting on the antique desk that he used to use. It seemed like it was a little bit out of place on the desk and she immediately assumed that Jaxon had been playing with it. She’d have a talk with him about that in the morning. He had been strictly warned that he was not to play with Granddaddy’s typewriter.

  Diana shifted the heirloom back into place and then started back down the hall to her bedroom, switching off the light as she went and still holding onto the bat and cell phone, just in case she might need them.

  Back in her room, she leaned the bat against the nightstand and placed the cell phone on top of it. She’d have to remember to bring the charger to her room in the morning. If she ever needed her phone in a hurry, it certainly would server her better if it was closer to hand. She glanced at the time on the phone before she set it down and settled back into bed; it read 2:12 a.m. If she was lucky, she could get in almost five more hours of sleep before she had to get up and start getting Jaxon ready to go to school.

  Try as she might, when she lay back down in her bed, she could not bring herself to fall asleep. Almost instantly, her thoughts had begun to bother her about various problems that she was facing, mostly financial.

  Jaxon’s dad had done pretty good about paying child support for a while, however, a few months before, he had suddenly stopped altogether. Without the support, Diana was wondering how she was going to stretch her income tight enough to make ends meet over the next few months. By her calculations, she might be able to hold out three more months if she was really frugal.

  Five more hours turned into four more hours and then three more hours as sleep eluded her and worry continued to fill her mind. At some point during that sleepless time, her thoughts had returned to the typewriter and her grandfather. He’d been a journalist and a columnist, eventually able to work his way into writing novels. She had always wished that she could follow in his footsteps, and might have, if life and the responsibility of a son hadn’t hit her at such an early age.

  With memories of watching her grandfather at work and remembering the sound of the keys clicking and the subsequent ring and zing of the carriage coming to an end and then be taken back into place with the lever, Diana was finally able to drift off to sleep at some unknown hour of the early morning.

  Chapter Two

  In spite of the rude awakening that came from the alarm going off much too early to suit her, Diana pushed herself out of bed and started down the hall to awaken Jaxon. Being a single mother hardly ever allowed her to sleep in, being a second shift waitress at a 24 hour Pancake House made it even worse. Her days off from the Pancake House were Sunday and Monday, not giving her a lot of quality weekend time with her son.

  She shuffled into Jaxon’s room with her eyes barely open. She sat down on the edge of his bed, looking down at his peaceful face and hated having to awaken him. She put her hand to her mouth as she yawned and then forced out the words that she had to speak. “Come on Jax, it’s time to get up.”

  When Jaxon’s large blue eyes opened and he looked up at her and smiled, she felt a thrill of joy rush through her. She was always amazed that he could wake up so cheerful, but then, he was seven-years-old, what worries and stresses could he possibly have?

  “Good morning, mommy,” he said, sitting up and sliding out of bed.

  Diana could hardly drag herself to sit up some mornings, but Jaxon seemed to spring to life and hit the ground running the moment that his eyes opened. Within seconds, he was out the door of his room and down the hall to the bathroom. From where she sat on the edge of her bed, she could hear the sound of the stream that he was depositing in the toilet.

  “Jax! Close the door when you go potty!”

  “Sorry, mom,” he called out.

  She heard the door close and smiled. He probably had already finished by the time he closed it. She got up off of the bed and shuffled out into the hallway.

  “You want me to pick out your clothes or do you want to do it?” He’d recently had a streak of independence, one part of which had been his insistence on picking out his own clo
thes for school.

  “Mom,” he moaned. “I can do it. Remember?”

  “What do you want for breakfast?” She knew the answer already, but she hoped that someday, she might get a different response, so she asked anyway.

  “Waffles with peanut butter and jelly,” he called through the door.

  Diana mouthed the words as he said them. She wasn’t sure how long that had been his breakfast order, perhaps since birth; she just hadn’t understood what he was trying to say until he’d started talking.

  She started down the hall toward the kitchen, suddenly remembering the incident from the night before, no earlier the same morning. God, why am I correcting myself? She heard the door to the bathroom open behind her and the sound of his feet as he trotted back into his room.

  “We need to have another talk about granddaddy’s typewriter,” she called out.

  He stuck his head out the door. “Granddaddy’s typewriter? Why?”

  “Were you playing with it yesterday?”

  “No, I haven’t touched it.”

  “Are you sure? It wasn’t where I usually keep it last night.” She knew where she usually kept it because of the absence of dust in that particular spot.

  “I swear, mom, I didn’t touch it.”

  Diana sighed. She hadn’t moved it and she was pretty sure that Ellen hadn’t moved it, so that only left one possibility in the house. She considered the issue for only about a second, but realized that she really didn’t have the energy.

  As she started mixing up the waffles, something that she could do from scratch without even looking at a recipe by that point, she remembered what she’d heard a comedian say once about parents with only one child. He’d said that they weren’t really parents, because if something was broken, they never had to go through the interrogation. “If you only have one kid, you already know who done it!”