Return of the ghost

“S imon, give me the rifle,” Cari said, sounding only a little shaken.

Simon’s eyes popped wide in disbelief, and he nearly dropped the smoking rifle.

“Cari—” Eric screamed.

“The rifle, Simon. Hand it to me,” Cari insisted.

His expression still stunned, Simon raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired it at Cari again.

Again, everyone screamed.

Cari didn’t move her position.

“You—you’re a ghost!” Simon screamed, backing away. “You’re a ghost!”

He took another step back. White smoke from the rifle curled up to the ceiling. Behind him, Rose had slumped weakly onto the bench behind the table.

“The rifle,” Cari insisted.

“No!” Simon cried. “If you’re a ghost, then I’ll have to shoot one of the others.”

He took one more step back, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and pointed it at Craig.

“No, Edward! No more shooting!” a woman’s voice cried.

At first, Cari thought it was Rose. But Rose was sitting half-dazed behind Simon, her head in her hands.

“I’ll shoot if I want to!” Simon yelled in Edward’s rough voice. “You keep out of this, Greta! This is my hunting party!”

“The hunting party is over, Edward,” the woman insisted.

And Cari suddenly realized that the woman’s voice was coming from Simon.

“Put down the rifle, Edward,” Simon said in the woman’s voice. “The party is over.”

“No, Greta!” Simon yelled back in Edward’s gruff voice. “Don’t tell me what to do. I got rid of Simon, and I can get rid of you!”

“Edward, you’re making me very impatient,” the woman’s voice replied.

It was the woman they had heard in Simon’s room, Cari realized.

So there was no mystery woman in the hotel. The woman they had heard was another of Simon’s personalities—Greta, Simon’s dead wife.

When they’d heard that argument in Simon’s room between Simon, Edward, and the mystery woman— all three voices had been Simon’s!

“Get out of here! Get away from me!” Edward screamed.

“Not until you call the hunting party to an end,” he replied in the woman’s voice.

As he continued to argue with himself, three voices taking angry turns, Cari found herself staring once again at the rifle.

She took a deep breath and lunged forward, a desperate, off-balance leap. Magically, to her own surprise, the rifle came easily from Simon’s hand. She grabbed it and kept running toward the back of the kitchen.

Simon was startled at first, but then he became angry. He lurched after her—

And tripped over Martin. He cursed angrily as he fell heavily on top of his servant.

Martin stirred and blinked his eyes.

Simon groaned and grabbed at his leg with both hands. “My knee. I hurt my knee.”

Eric and Craig moved quickly to hold Simon’s arms as Martin struggled uncertainly to his feet.

“What’s happening?” Martin asked, rubbing the prominent dark swelling on the side of his head.

“Yes. What is happening?” Simon asked, suddenly switching to Simon’s voice. “Why are you holding me? Where is Edward? I’ll bet that brother of mine is responsible for all this confusion.”

Simon sat up, but Craig and Eric kept hold of his shoulders. “Is the kitchen open?” Simon asked. “I’m famished. Are there any sandwiches available?”

The dinghy bobbed in the early-morning waters. The motor coughed, then dropped to a steady hum. Martin guided it toward the mainland.

Eric sat in the back, his arm around Cari. Jan and Craig were toward the front behind Martin and Rose. Simon, his hands tied behind him, sat by himself on the other side, staring down at the floor of the launch.

Cari took a deep breath of the fresh, salty air, then turned to take a last wistful look at Piney Island.

“How did you do it?” Eric asked, bringing his face close to hers so she could hear him over the loud hum of the motor and the rush of waves against the hull.

“Do what?” she teased, snuggling against him.

“You know. The rifle thing.”

“Well, it was weird how it just struck me,” Cari explained. “I was staring at the rifle and thinking about it. And I realized that he’d been really close to us in the woods, and he’d fired a lot of shots. But he hadn’t hit us. He hadn’t hit anything.”

“Yeah? So?”

“Well, I decided he’d have to be a better shot than that.”

“I guess. But that doesn’t explain—”

“Let me finish,” Cari said, gently slapping his shoulder. “Then I remembered about the hotel lobby. He fired the rifle twice in the lobby, remember? But there was no damage. Nothing crashed to the floor. No bullet holes in the walls. There weren’t any ricochets. Nothing. That’s when I realized that Simon’s rifle was loaded with blanks.”

“Weird,” Eric said, shaking his head. “Really weird.” Cari knew he was using it as a term of admiration.

“Martin was foolish enough to allow Simon his hunting party, but he took the precaution of supplying him with only blanks. At least, that’s what I hoped.”

Eric paled. “You weren’t sure?”

“Pretty sure,” Cari said. She reached her face up and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

“Party summer!” Craig yelled back to them from the front of the launch. “Party summer!”

Everyone laughed.

“Maybe it wasn’t exactly a party summer,” Cari said. “But just think about our great papers when it’s time to write ‘What I Did on My Summer Vacation’!”

Eric grinned at her. “You’re weird,” he said.

“Thanks for the compliment,” she replied. “You’re weird too.” And she reached her face up for another kiss.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20