Ghost Hunters Read Online Free PDF Page A

spine and triggered his fight-or-flight response, and it took everything he had to stand his ground. “This is what I came for. We’re going down.”
    Dick kept the gun trained on Nancy while he fumbled his cell phone out of his pants pocket. There was no service, but he was only after the flashlight. He flicked the icon with his thumb and shone the light into the depths before him. The hole was straight sided and lined with heavy, smooth stones. It reminded Dick of an old, dry well he’d once seen on his grandfather’s farm. It shot down into the earth well beyond the range of his light, but he saw what he needed. A rope ladder swung from a pair of spikes driven into the side of the well, and black footprints marred the pale stones. “Looks like someone has been out here since this place burned down.”
    Nancy shrugged. “It’s not anyone you want to meet. I hope to hell they aren’t down there, right now.”
    Dick grinned. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
    He flashed his phone’s light at the van. While the crew unpacked their gear, he stomped his feet against the chill and counted heads. Mickey was the first member of the crew to reach Dick. She eyeballed the gun in his hand but didn’t say anything else as she got him mic’d up. Randall, their cameraman, shuffled around in the ashes, mounting an assortment of GoPro cameras on spindly tripods. He was too invested in getting his gear set up to worry about what Dick was doing.
    Troy, their gadget wrangler, wasn’t quite as laid back about the whole experience. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Dick’s weapon, and his eyes widened. He waved the thin wand of the EMF detector in Dick’s direction. “What the fuck, man? That some kind of joke?”
    Dick shrugged. “Settle down. Our guide needed some convincing.”
    Troy paced, kicking up little clouds of black ash with every step. “You can’t do that kind of shit, man. You know where we are, right? This is fucking Deliverance territory, man. Someone catches you pulling a gun on a local, a local woman , we’re going to end up with the whole county pulling a train on our asses.”
    Nancy cleared her throat. “He’s right. The local law finds out what you’re up to, they’re going to string the lot of you up.”
    Dick raised the gun to Nancy’s face. “Shut. The fuck. Up.”
    Troy stopped his pacing and jabbed the EMF detector at Dick. “You have lost it, man. You are fucking around the goddamned bend. This is crazy.”
    Dick’s breath stuck in his throat. He was doing this for all of them , couldn’t they see that? They were in this deep now, they had to get onboard and see this through to the end. He had to make Troy see. “Look, I know this seems extreme—”
    Troy stepped back, eyes widening even further. His voice went up three octaves and cut through the cold knife like a siren. “Don’t you point that fucking gun at me.”
    Every eye turned in Dick’s direction. His whole crew stared at him, and he realized with horror that the gun was pointed in Troy’s general direction. He wasn’t pointing it at the gadget man, but it was definitely pointing toward him. “Shit, Troy, look—”
    Randall hefted one of his camera tripods, an industrial model with a five-pound aluminum stabilizing head. His panic was buried under a thick layer of fat boy stoner indifference, but Dick could sense the violence beginning to surface. “We gonna have a problem here?”
    Silence hung thick over the scorched earth, deafening in its intensity. Dick could see the betrayal on the faces of his crew. They were freaking out, losing their nerve. He could feel everything unraveling; his plan to salvage their careers, their lives , was coming apart at the seams. Dick knew if he didn’t get them headed in the right direction in the next few seconds, he was going to have a mutiny on his hands.
    He tried to catch Amy’s eye, get her to pitch in on this, but she looked away. It was just like her to wait to