"We have permission to be here," Gopher said quickly, and he dug into his coat pocket for the papers to prove it.
The constable took the paper and inspected it, finally nodding. "Everything looks in order," he said. "Although I hardly think choosing Dunlow Castle was a wise move given its history."
"You mean the phantom?" Gilley asked.
"Aye," he said. "This is a dangerous place, mates. And you should know that if you get into trouble here on this rock, there"ll be precious little me or the coast guard will be able to do for you." The constable then pointed to the right-of-access doc.u.ment he was still holding and said, "As it says in your paper here, Mr. Gophner, you"re a.s.suming all risks while you"re here at Castle Dunlow, and the village of Dunlee will not be held liable for any deaths that may occur nor be required to partic.i.p.ate in any rescue of you or your party should something dreadful happen at the top of the rock."
Heath and I exchanged a look, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing: That was a really odd thing to put into a legal access permit.
"I almost didn"t come along to investigate, in fact," the constable continued. "But the one time I don"t is going to be the one time when someone really does need my help."
"Can you tell us anything about this man?" I asked. "The one who fell to his death? And maybe even who Alex might be?"
"I can"t say as I know who this Alex was, but I do know that the ghost you might have seen was likely Jordan Kincaid."
For a moment I wondered where I"d heard that name and then it hit me. "You mean the the Jordan Kincaid? The heir to the Kincaid Mining family?" I"d read about his death several years previously. The story told of the dashing young playboy whose family had made a fortune mining for precious minerals all over the world. He had been the only son and heir of the prominent family, and since his death, I"d heard that his grief-stricken father had taken his own life and his mother had become a recluse. Jordan Kincaid? The heir to the Kincaid Mining family?" I"d read about his death several years previously. The story told of the dashing young playboy whose family had made a fortune mining for precious minerals all over the world. He had been the only son and heir of the prominent family, and since his death, I"d heard that his grief-stricken father had taken his own life and his mother had become a recluse.
"The very one," said the constable. "Such a tragedy. Came here on his own treasure hunt with a piece of paper just like yours some four years ago. He fell to his death on the third or fourth day he was explorin" the castle. Such a pity," he added, shaking his head. "From all accounts he was a rather nice lad."
I swallowed hard. "Yeah, well, he died an awful death."
The constable eyed me critically. "Well, then, let it serve as a fair warning to you all," he said, folding the paper and handing it back to Gopher. "If I were you, I"d leave this island and never return."
Gopher appeared uncomfortable. "Our network is expecting some footage later today," he told the constable. "And we"re already pushing a deadline, so we"ll promise to be careful, but we really do have to stick it out here."
"What do you know about the phantom?" I asked the constable.
The middle-aged man looked to the top of the cliffs and shuddered. It was a moment before he then looked back to consider me gravely. "I know enough not to go to the top of those cliffs even for all the pound notes in Ireland, miss."
"That bad?" Heath said.
"Aye."
No one spoke for a moment and the tension in our group moved up a notch. "We"ve heard the phantom likes to throw people off the cliffs," Gopher said after a bit.
"Oh, he likes to do more than that. If he isn"t tossin" you over the side, he"s scaring you into a state of mental collapse."
"Mental collapse?" I repeated.
"Aye. Two years ago a couple on their honeymoon ignored the warnings, and they made their way to the castle. When they came back across the causeway, the poor wife was in a terrible state. Her husband claimed she"d been attacked by the phantom and been driven mad."
"Was she hurt physically?" Gilley asked, his complexion pale.
"No. But she was so stricken with fear that she didn"t know who or where she was. In fact, the poor la.s.s could do nothing more than shake from head to toe. The last I heard about it, she"d been given a padded cell."
An involuntary shiver ran down my own spine. I"m not one for tall tales, and I couldn"t be sure that this constable wasn"t simply trying to scare us away from here because if any one of us got hurt, a.s.sumption of risk or not, he"d likely have a boatload of paperwork to fill out.
Gopher must have suspected this too, because he extended his hand and said, "We thank you so much for coming, Constable. We"re sorry to have inconvenienced you and we promise to be very careful from here on out."
The constable frowned. As he turned back to the causeway, he remarked, "Don"t say I didn"t warn you."
After he"d gone, I looked around at our group. "I think we need a new game plan."
Chapter 3.
We sat around on the rocky beach for nearly ten minutes, arguing about the best course of action. Heath and I didn"t want to proceed until we"d had a chance to do some more research on the mysterious and apparently deadly phantom that lurked above our heads.
Gilley-being the scaredy-cat in the group-was all for abandoning the entire ghost hunt and instead hunting for the nearest pub.
John, Kim, and Meg seemed willing to support us, but in the end we were outvoted by Gopher, who insisted that we at least give the top of the rock a cursory look while we still had an hour and a half, which, he reasoned, was plenty of time to get to the castle, check out a few rooms, then head back down and hurry across the causeway.
What can I say? Gopher was our producer and boss, and money trumps nerves, scary phantoms, and good sense every time.
Reluctantly, Heath, John, and I all worked our way up the stairs with an enthused Gopher bringing up the rear.
Gilley, Meg, and Kim remained on the beach, as Gil flat out refused to go with us and I didn"t want to leave him alone, so I asked the other two most vulnerable people in our group to babysit him.
When we reached the top, I paused to catch my breath. My thighs were burning from all the stairs, and I was grateful to have reached the top without wimping out halfway up.
"Man, that"s a long climb," Heath remarked, coming over to stand next to me.
I motioned to the castle with a small groan. "Bet there"re more stairs inside."
"Aw, c.r.a.p," he said. "I didn"t think of that."
John appeared at our side looking winded. "Jesus," he wheezed. "How many stairs did we just climb?"
"Eleventy," I told him, using the word Gilley had coined to describe anything greater than a whole bunch.
I moved over to the stairs and looked down. Gopher was still trudging up, and by the look of his pace and the number of stairs he had left to climb, he"d be a while.
"How far away is he?" Heath asked.
"Far enough that we can check things out up here for a bit."
John agreed to wait by the stairs for Gopher while Heath and I moved to the castle, which was located in the center of the ma.s.sive piece of rock.
"Pretty genius to build your fortress on this thing, don"t you think?"
I nodded. "I can"t imagine anyone who"d be stupid enough to try and attack it. You couldn"t come in from the sea, given the currents and the treacherously shallow water. There"s no way you could navigate your way through with a large force.
"The only way to attack it would be from the sh.o.r.e, so first you"d have to attack and conquer the Irish forces on land. Then you"d have to bring your troops to the rock using the causeway, and since you"d only have four hours at low tide to move your troops, you"d be limited in the number you could get across at any given time."
"Still, you probably could get a sizable army across in four hours," Heath reasoned.
"Agreed, but you"d still only be able to move two men up at a time on those stairs. It would only take a small force to defend them, and there"s no other way up as far as I can tell. In the sixteenth century, this place would have been impenetrable."
"It does make for one spooky shoot," said Heath as he eyed Dunlow Castle. I stopped walking long enough to look it over too.
The place was impressive; I"ll give it that. The fortress was three stories tall, with huge stone walls topped by high narrow windows and parapets running all along the sides. Four high towers with turrets spiraled above each of the four corners, perfect for archers to take aim at any enemy who might breach those stairs.
The views from those four towers also would have alerted the inner keep to anyone approaching the fortress from any direction. Unless one attempted an attack at night, there was no way to sneak up on the occupants of Dunlow.
And I"m not sure if that thought caused the feeling of being watched to creep up my spine, but I distinctly wondered if perhaps we weren"t being monitored by someone-or something-inside the keep.
"You get the feeling we"re being watched?" Heath asked me, as if reading my mind.
"I do."
"I have a bad feeling about this, M. J."
I inhaled and exhaled slowly. "Me too, buddy."
I turned to look back where John was still sitting, waiting for Gopher, when I noticed something ominous on the horizon. "Are you kidding kidding me?" I asked as I moved my hand up to shield the sun from my eyes so that I could squint at a large thundercloud moving toward us from way offsh.o.r.e. me?" I asked as I moved my hand up to shield the sun from my eyes so that I could squint at a large thundercloud moving toward us from way offsh.o.r.e.
"What?" Heath asked, and after I pointed to the thundercloud, he added, "Didn"t Gilley check the weather?"
On every ghost hunt we did, Gilley always downloaded the local weather report, as rain and foul weather are typically great conditions for ghost hunting, but this particular tempest certainly wasn"t welcomed at this point in the hunt, especially since we were all so exposed.
I pulled my headset out of my bag and clicked the radio transmitter on. All I got was static. "d.a.m.n!" I swore, yanking the headset off. "We forgot to do a check of the radios before we came up here." I then retrieved my cell from my back pocket and dialed Gilley.
"Yo!" he said, as if he didn"t have a care in the world.
"Did you check the weather this morning?"
"Uh ..."
I sighed heavily into the phone. "I take it that means no?"
"I woke up late," Gil said by way of explanation. "Besides, what"s the big deal? There"s plenty of sunshine and it"s not even that cold."
At that exact moment there was a rumble of thunder from the approaching storm and I could just imagine Gilley turning around to look offsh.o.r.e. "Uh-oh," I heard him say.
Fully irritated, I hung up the phone. "We"ve got to go back down."
Heath was peering at the approaching storm, and his posture suggested he was quite alarmed. "It"ll be here before we even make it to the causeway," he said.
More thunder sounded in the distance and we could both see sharp bolts of lightning crackle through the dark cloud. "That storm"s looking really mean," I said.
By this time, John had taken notice and he came trotting over to us. "We"ll never make it back down and across the causeway in time," he said. "And I don"t know that I want to be caught on that slippery bridge in that that."
As if Gilley were already privy to our conversation, my phone rang, and after I answered it, Gil said, "The causeway"s already got water across it from the storm surge. We won"t be able to get back across."
I looked skyward for a moment, wondering what I"d done wrong in another life to deserve this particular batch of bad luck. "You and the girls will have to come up," I told him.
"Say what, now?"
"Gilley, there"s no other choice. You can"t stay down there unprotected from the storm, and the castle is the only shelter on this hunk of rock."
"But-"
"No buts!" I yelled at him, worried that he"d panic and refuse to come up the stairs. "And we don"t have time to argue about it. That storm is coming in fast and furious, buddy, so get your f.a.n.n.y up here or I"ll come down and throw you over my shoulder!"
There was a pause, then, "Can I be thrown over Heath"s shoulder? He"s prettier."
"Right now, Gilley Morehouse Gillespie," I said, my voice low and threatening. "And I"m not kidding." I hung up the phone for the second time and cast a worried glance at Heath. "If he"s not up here in twenty minutes, we"ll have to go down and get him."
"I can go down to help them," John offered. "After all, I"ve only made the trek up once today. You guys have both come up twice."
In that moment I could have hugged John, but then I remembered that Kim was his girlfriend and he was probably worried about her more than anything. "Go," I told him, even as he turned away and bolted for the stairs. "And make sure they hustle, John. We"ve probably only got fifteen to twenty minutes before that storm hits!"
As John dashed down the stairs, Gopher finally appeared. He looked sweaty and winded but happy to have reached the summit. "Where"s he going?" he asked as he turned back to look at John"s departing figure.
In answer, both Heath and I pointed to the thundercloud. "Aw, s.h.i.t!" Gopher said when he saw it. "Didn"t Gilley check the weather?"
The storm moved faster than expected, striking our little island just ten minutes later. Gilley, John, Meg, and Kim were caught by it halfway up the stairs, and tired as I was, Heath and I still had to jog down to take their packs and hurry them along.
It was an awful climb up the rest of the way. We were pelted by water, whipped by wind, and hammered by the reverberating thunder. Lightning seemed to strike all around us, and Gilley was shivering so hard next to me that I thought for certain he"d faint. "Just keep putting one foot in front of the other!" I told him, as I held his free hand and pulled him urgently up the stairs.
"How much farther?" he cried, wheezing and struggling to continue climbing.
I looked up. There was still a long way to go. "We"re nearly there, honey! Just a few more steps!" Gilley began to lift his chin to look and I quickly added, "Watch your step! It"s slippery on these stairs!"
We moved like that for twenty more minutes and the journey up took twice as long as it would have in calmer conditions, but finally we crested the ledge, all of us gasping for breath, but wanting to get out of the wind and rain. "Let"s get to the castle!" Heath called, and he and Meg began to jog tiredly in that direction.
John and Kim followed behind too, and I looked at Gilley, who was doubled over, his hands on his knees. "You go," he said with a small wave. "Save yourself!"
Even though I was exhausted, wet, cold, and miserable, I still smiled. "Oh, Gil," I chuckled. "How could I leave my little drama queen behind?"
Gilley simply shook his head, and continued to try and pump air into his lungs. I gave him another few seconds until a bolt of lightning struck the water just offsh.o.r.e and the resulting thunder was loud enough to sink both of us to our knees. "We have have to get inside, Gil!" I shouted. to get inside, Gil!" I shouted.
Gilley trembled but nodded all the same and took my hand. I tugged him after me toward the large black abandoned structure, and hoped to G.o.d that we weren"t about to go from the frying pan into the fire.
We made it through the giant wooden door of the keep, and were finally out of the rain. It was very dark inside, but periodically we were lit up by the lightning still crackling all around the castle. "Which pack are the flashlights in?" Heath asked Gilley, who"d collapsed just inside the doorway.
Gilley motioned weakly to the one John was holding. Just a minute later we each held a flashlight and were pointing them around the s.p.a.cious room just inside the entrance. "This place gives me the creeps," said Kim.
"Me too," said Meg.