Free Your Magic Touch by Kathy Carmichael

of their modern equipment, for all intents and purposes they might as well have been locked up in some scary mad-scientist lab for the last thirty years, considering how little they knew about current events.
    The dim overhead lighting helped only a little. She could just make out doorways and some areas behind open alcoves off to the sides of the hallway that appeared to contain little more than hundreds of years of spider webs. She shivered.
    She half expected Thomas to suggest they investigate in those areas, and when he didn’t, she gave silent thanks.
    The hallway twisted and wound around like a maze, several times intersecting with other hallways leading off in other directions. Sometimes Thomas would turn to the right and sometimes to the left, following whatever electromagnetic trail he tracked on the K-II meter.
    Frannie held her digital recorder out in front of her as if it were a pistol. Her senses were on edge, and she kept expecting Dracula to jump out at them.
    Not that they’d seen or heard anything other than a couple of sleeping bats. But walking around in a dark and creepy basement made her breathing uncharacteristically shallow.
    After they’d skulked about for almost an hour, Frannie had enough of the damp and gloomy catacombs. She was ready to head back upstairs where there weren’t any spiders to speak of, and the only bats flying around were ones in the ghost hunters’ belfries.
    Oddly, she longed to curl up in that massive bed in the Princess Room. Even more oddly, she kept wondering what Sinclair was doing and whether he’d already gone to bed for the night. “Are you getting anything on your meter?”
    Thomas turned to face her, and the overhead light bulb lit up the planes of his face in a strange manner, making him look more like a zombie than the sweet older man she knew him to be. “The spirit energy seems to have died down.”
    “Should we go see if the others have found anything?”
    “That would probably be best,” he said, then signaled for her to turn around and lead them back the way they’d come.
    When she reached the first hallway crossing the one they were on, she paused. “I’m not sure which way we came from.”
    “Hmm,” he said, sounding even less sure of the right direction than she was. “I think it’s to the left here.”
    Frannie turned left, but she couldn’t tell if they were going the right way or not. “Are you sure?”
    “The dark spot on the wall up ahead looks familiar,” he said.
    Frannie looked in the direction he indicated and saw the dark spot. It looked a lot like—blood. Frightening images of murder and mayhem played through her thoughts.
    Fighting for mental control, she studied their surroundings. She didn’t remember seeing the dark spot before. But what did she know? She hadn’t been paying close attention to where they’d been heading or where they’d come from.
    After walking in that direction for a while, she came to another crossway. Her stomach dipped. “Which way now?”
    Thomas joined her, spinning first left and then right and then left again.
    Anxiety gnawed at her insides. He didn’t have any more clue than she had.
    Abruptly, a strong gust of wind blew down the hallway, stirring debris and decades of dust. She threw up a hand over her eyes, hoping to avoid the sting of the dirt and cobwebs swirling around them.
    When the wind died down, she lowered her hand, only to find the light in the hallway had gone out.
    “Thomas?”
    No answer.
    If she’d fought for control before, now she totally lost it. Panic had her firmly in its grip. She wanted to scream. “Thomas, are you there?”
    Again, no response.
    She was long past panic. Now she was terrified. “Don’t screw around with me, dude. Where are you?”
    She didn’t hear a sound other than that of her own freaked-out breathing.
    She wanted to run, but knew that would do more harm than good.
    Calm down. Calm down.
    Fate must have it in for her. Just as she’d promised