LITMIR.BIZ

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“Hey, Erin. I assume you got the e-mail from Marnie, too?”

      “Lunch at the deli. Ten minutes, max.”

      Carrie sighed. “Yes, ma’am.” As she disconnected, she wondered what Erin was going to get her into this time.

       1

      THE DUDE’S ELBOW POKED the side of her boob. Again. Carrie couldn’t tell if he was doing it on purpose or if he was just clueless. If she had to make a guess, it would be clueless.

      It was bad enough the Crider Inn was over an hour from the Denver airport, but the shuttle bus was so packed Carrie hadn’t even been able to sit next to Erin. Although Carrie shouldn’t complain too hard. At least she was wedged against the luggage rack on one side, whereas her friend was in the middle of a creepy-guy sandwich. The one on her right looked to be in his thirties, sported a world-class mullet and kept pushing up his tortoiseshell glasses with his middle finger, making it look as if he were flipping everyone the bird. Repeatedly. On Erin’s left was a nice-enough-looking guy, somewhere in his twenties, who wouldn’t be bad at all if he hadn’t snorted every two seconds. The postnasaldrip kind of snort that even if you gave him a tissue, it probably wouldn’t do any good.

      Carrie caught her friend’s gaze and scowled at her with evil intent. For her part, Erin smiled brightly as if this were the best shuttle ride ever. Who knew? Maybe for Erin, it was. After all, everyone with the exception of the driver and herself talked of nothing but ghosts.

       Ghosts.

      Carrie sighed, reminding herself Erin hadn’t pointed a gun or threatened her in any way. Carrie had willingly dropped over a thousand bucks of her very hard-earned savings to come to this almost weeklong ghost-hunting extravaganza. She never would have agreed if it hadn’t been their last vacation together. Erin was moving to New York three weeks to the day from when they returned, leaving behind her downtown Los Angeles loft to begin her new career as a bona fide architect in New York City.

      The two of them had vacationed together every single year since they’d been juniors at the University of Louisville. Last year’s trip to Bryce Canyon in Utah had been Carrie’s pick, and although Erin hated camping out, she’d gone along with the plan. In return, Carrie had promised she’d go along with whatever, although if she’d known it would have involved ghost hunting, she might have amended the agreement.

      Her complaints had fallen on deaf ears, and Erin had booked the trip through Marnie’s Fantasy Escapes travel agency. Marnie had been thrilled and grateful, which had helped seal the deal, but the real capper had been when Erin had pointed out, quite cleverly, that Carrie could consider this a weeklong research trip. After all, she was a cartoonist who made her living mocking trends and popular culture. If ghost hunting didn’t give her enough ideas for her next graphic novel then she should just quit right now and go find herself a job serving fries with that.

      “So, I was sound asleep. I mean, I was out like a light. Nothin’ could have gotten me up, not after the workday I’d put in. But then I hear this shriek. It was loud. Like, I don’t know—”

      Carrie winced and covered her ears as the guy with the elbow issue screamed at the top of his lungs. It was a girly scream, too, high-pitched and weird as hell and far scarier than any apparition.

      “Yeah, like that,” he said, as if he hadn’t almost shattered the windows.

      Carrie noted that the shuttle driver hadn’t flinched. The bus hadn’t swerved or anything. She guessed working for the “Most Haunted Hotel in the U.S.” got one used to the odd scream.

      “The weird thing was, the people in the living room, like, I don’t know, ten feet away or something? They didn’t even hear it. But I had my EMF under my pillow, and it was going crazy. Seriously. All in the red. No shit.”

      Erin had given her a cheat sheet on the ghost-hunting nomenclature. It was far too lengthy to memorize, but she knew that EMF stood for electromagnetic field, and that Elbow Guy was referring to his meter. Carrie’d had no idea there was so much equipment involved in ghost hunting. EMF meters, ultrasensitive thermometers, night-vision goggles and cameras, and a bunch of other stuff she’d zoned out about. Erin had packed her fair share, but Carrie couldn’t complain too much. She’d brought not only her laptop, but also her scanner, a bunch of files and her drawing supplies. Thankfully, the Crider Inn had, as Erin put it, “Wi-Fi up the yin yang.”

      “I’ve had three important encounters.”

      The soft voice came from two rows back, and Carrie turned to see it was the pretty woman who was speaking. She was somewhere in her thirties, which seemed to be the median age, and she defied Carrie’s stereotypes by being elegant, fashionable and from her reading material—a heavy-duty philosophy tome—educated. Not that Erin wasn’t all those things, but Carrie had never lumped her in with the vague group she considered ghost-hunting nut-jobs. Anyway, the pretty woman’s voice held a hint of somewhere exotic, perhaps Jamaica, that captivated with its quiet strength.

      “When I was a child, my old grandfather came to me after his death. He sat on my bed and he talked to me as clearly as I’m speaking to you. He told me not to worry, that he was in a fine, fine place, and that he would watch over me for all the rest of my days. He also told me that I would travel the world, and see many great things, but it was my family I should treasure most.”

      Elbow Dude started to comment, but Carrie clipped him one in his side because the woman wasn’t finished.

      “The second experience was many years later, at a small hotel in Florence, Italy. I woke from an afternoon nap to find an old white woman standing near the balcony. She never turned to look at me, so I didn’t see her face, but I watched her shoulders rise as she appeared to take a deep breath, and when she let it out, her head bowed. She was gone the next instant.”

      The woman smiled at Carrie, maybe because she was staring so blatantly. “I keep my third experience private.”

      Carrie faced front once more, wishing she could be one of them. One of these true believers. They seemed to get much more than spooky scares or thrills from these supposedly haunted places. Take Erin, for instance. Something about her belief in ghosts calmed her. It made her world easier to understand, and despite the utter lack of scientific proof, she had no doubts whatsoever.

      Carrie wasn’t so lucky. She understood the psychology of belief in the supernatural. Human brains were designed to assign patterns and reason whether or not they exist. Ghosts, aliens, conspiracies or even finding evil messages in rock music were all based on assigning meaning to random things. At least ghost hunting was harmless and had been around since the beginning of large-brained hominids, but it wasn’t something she subscribed to, and being around people who were so ferocious in their certainty became wearing after a while.

      What she found most bewildering was that in all the years and years of ghost hunting, no one seemed concerned that no matter how hard people looked, and damn, there were industries based on people believing in ghosts, there was no repeatable, verifiable proof. She tried hard to keep her opinions to herself when she was around Erin’s friends, but it wasn’t always easy.

      When she heard intelligent, eloquent people expound on their supernatural experiences she tried not to roll her eyes. Whether she could remain a stoic observer after an intense week of pretending to believe in ghosts and goblins, well, that remained to be seen.

      Her gaze went to the window as she let herself fall into the lovely Colorado scenery. She’d make the most of her week, especially spending time with Erin. She was going to miss her friend something terrible.

      ANOTHER SHUTTLE LOAD of ghost hunters was due to arrive in the next ten minutes, and Sam Crider, current proprietor of the Crider Inn, was ready for them.

      Since it was Halloween week and this was the largest and longest convention of ghost aficionados he’d booked since taking over the hotel, he’d gone all out decorating the place. It wasn’t hard to give the hotel a spooky ambience. His family had been doing it for generations, ever since the Old Hotel, now condemned

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