Free Celeste Files: Unjust by Kristine Mason

carpet?” As she shifted her feet and moved her hand, her fingers connected with the wood frame holding up the full-sized mattress. When she flashed the light on the frame, the beam revealed paneling that didn’t match any of the wood in the room.
    “ Hot .”
    A puff of humid air tickled the back of her neck and bare shoulders. More excited to find what he wanted to show her than scared, she set the flashlight on the carpet, aiming it toward the panel. She smoothed her palms along the wood until she came across a tiny eye-hook latch. Once she unlocked it, the panel opened downward, and now rested on the carpet.
    “ See what I am, sugar. See how bad .”
    “I saw how bad you were last night, and have the bruises to prove it.”
    Denis let out a raspy laugh. “ I let you live .”
    “Let me live? Ghosts can’t kill people, and you don’t scare me,” she lied. She had no idea what Denis was capable of doing to her, and that scared the hell out of her. But she also didn’t want him to think he had the upper hand.
    “ Are you sure ?” he asked, as a hot breeze moved her ponytail. “ You’re mine until I’m done. ”
    Ignoring the ghost, she picked up the flashlight, then lay on her stomach to gain a better view of the compartment under the bed. The light touched on a wood box that reminded her of something where old silverware might have been stored. Brushing aside dust and cobwebs, she pulled the box from the cubbyhole. The letters D and C had been carved along the top of the box. Remembering Barney mentioning that Denis liked to carve his initials into his property, she lifted the lid of the wood box and aimed the light at its contents.
    “Oh, my God,” she gasped. Her body shook with fear and outrage as she quickly sifted a hand through the dozens of pictures that had been tossed haphazardly inside. All the photographs were of women. She lifted one, sucked in a breath and fought back the tears. The terror captured in the subject’s eyes, the pain and worry etched on her face, reminded Celeste of the woman she’d seen in her vision last night. But this wasn’t a photo of that woman. She’d had longer hair, a fuller mouth and had been younger.
    She picked up the next picture. Stared at the face of yet another woman, at the tears that had bathed her cheeks as the photo had been taken. At the utter horror in the woman’s dark-brown eyes.
    “ Help me ,” a woman’s voice—barely a whisper—floated around Celeste like a feather might on a breeze.
    Celeste’s mouth grew dry and her heart rate quickened. She stared at the woman’s picture, then shook her head. The ghost had her spooked and her imagination running wild. She did not just hear this woman talking to her. She set the photo on the carpet, and lifted another.
    “ ¡Ayúdame! ”
    Celeste dropped the picture, and picked up several of the other photographs. As she shined the light on them, more feminine whispers filled her head. Some were in broken English, others were in Spanish. What they all had in common was the desperation and fear lacing their voices.
    She sat back on her heels. What they all had in common was death.
    “Did he kill you?” she asked, and stared at the pictures.
    “Who you talkin’ to?” Barney stepped into the bedroom, shining his flashlight on the wood box. “What is that?”
    Between Barney and the women still talking to her, her head began to throb with the onslaught of a severe headache. “I found it under the bed. It’s filled with pictures of women,” she said, then reminded him about what she’d seen last night during her vision. “I think Denis murdered these women.”
    He squatted next to her. “What makes you think they’re dead?”
    She winced when the throbbing in her head worsened, as if someone were piercing her temple with an ice pick. “Visions…voices, only the dead come to me, not the living.”
    Barney flashed his light along the box. “There must be forty or fifty pictures.”
    Celeste