Page 8 of Haunted Horror on Halloween

“Whatever it is, we need to move!”

And they did.

Chapter 2

Darrell Manderley.

Angela didn’t even want to think of the man. She wasn’t a proponent of the death penalty—death was final. If a mistake was made, you couldn’t rectify a death penalty.

They had dealt with so many different cases, many which had seemed to have been shaded by the worse evil that could inhabit a human being. They were often given cult cases—strange cases, often with a culprit believing he was a vampire or a werewolf or just playing off legends because, naturally, it made a killing spree more legendary.

Of course, they had their share of simple cases that could be attributed to greed, revenge, jealousy and more. Motives.

But Darrell Manderley . . .

There was no denying the man was smart, and he used his intelligence to become incredibly manipulating. Angela had to wonder about his victims, what it was in the human mind that could allow it to become so . . .

Not twisted. Susceptible.

Not that she didn’t have her own beliefs, and since they were able to speak with the dead—those who had remained and wished to communicate—she knew there was more beyond the mortal coil. But how did a man convince people who should have had some sanity and intelligence that most of the world was wrong, that the fallen angel was the one who ruled all, and that sacrificing themselves—and even their children—was the road to bliss in eternity?

She shook her head. Of course, in their investigations, they had learned through the years, he had managed his communities or cults using various tricks of the mind, playing people as he saw they might most easily be played.

“There,” Jackson said.

She’d been so lost in her thoughts she’d barely realized they had arrived on the street where the older woman Sadie McFarlane had her home—a home she had stepped out of to disappear once she’d gone out to buy donuts.

“We’ll talk to her roommates quickly, get in the cars—” Jackson began.

“And into the woods?” Angela suggested.

He nodded. “Bruce already has agents out and rangers are searching the area as well. The thing is—the forest here is huge. Acres and acres, some part of the National Parks system, some privately owned. It’s not going to be easily or quickly investigated.”

Angela had forgotten the spirit of Trent Fielding was in the backseat until he spoke, telling them, “Trust me. I will look for help that others might not see in the woods as well. Hopefully, we’ll find more friends. You know—my kind of friends,” he said lightly. “Anyway, I’m slipping in. You two knock at the door.”

Angela smiled. Trent was truly more of a help than he would ever know.

She and Jackson headed to the front door, knocking on it. A woman with silver gray hair, petite, and probably about sixty-five or so answered the door.

Jackson already had his badge out, not wanting to alarm her.

“We’re investigating—” Jackson began.

“Sadie! Oh, I’m so grateful. Grateful to everyone who is trying to help. Sadie is the dearest human being in the world. I’m Dorothy Glen, her roommate, and friends with her since I graduated high school—she was one of our history teachers. Come in, come in, though the cops have been here, I don’t know what else to say.”

She threw the door wide open for them, ushering them inside where they saw a dining room connected to a parlor and another woman was sitting at a table. She was very attractive and appeared to be in her late sixties, but she had her hair artfully colored in shades of blue and pink and appeared to be into the idea that one’s looks could be fun at any age.

Trent Fielding’s spirit was already there, leaning against the wall. He gave them a nod, one that assured him the women were for real in their worry for their friend.

“This is Leona Bell, our roommate, too. We’re all such good friends, with Sadie being almost twenty years older. And that was what the cop said—why did we have the truly elderly woman go out for donuts!” Dorothy said indignantly. “What they don’t understand is that Sadie is like—wow, I mean, like Dick Van Dyke! She’s still dancing away, active, she goes to the gym—she’s great at doing all the right things. And that’s just it. She taught school for years and years and she’s up early and she loves to surprise us with special coffees and pastries in the morning. But today . . .”

“You know that she was going to buy coffee and pastries,” Angela said. “If you were sleeping—”

“She popped into my room to tell me!” Dorothy said. “I fell back asleep, woke up an hour later . . . and she wasn’t back. I called her cell; it just rang and rang. Then I discovered she’d left it on her bedside table. She usually has it, but she must have forgotten that it wasn’t in her purse—it was on the charger. So, I went out and walked around. I walked to the coffee shop down the street, and they didn’t remember seeing her this morning . . . she just seemed to disappear into thin air. And, of course, the cops said she might have gone somewhere else, or she had forgotten what she was doing. But they don’t understand—her mind is sharper than the minds of most twenty-year-olds. But they did put out a silver alert, so . . .”

“Would you like coffee?” Leona Bell asked them, rising and coming to stand by them as Dorothy was doing. “It isn’t from a shop—just our percolator.”

Angela smiled. “And I’ll bet you make great coffee. But we’re going to go off on the hunt for your friend right away. We have a lot of ground to cover—”