Mystery of the Eyewitness Ghost

By Eddie Jones

Selah Award Winner - Purple Dragonfly Book Award Honorable Mention

Are there such things as ghosts? Can we talk to the dead? In Mystery of the Eyewitness Ghost Nick finds himself confronted by a "ghost" and challenged by a psychic who swears she is a channel into the spirit world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dry Bones Publishing
• Release date: Mar 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781645269038

Eddie Jones

Eddie Jones is the head coach of the England Rugby Union team and led them to the 2019 World Cup final. He took Australia to the 2003 World Cup final as well, and masterminded Japan’s famous victory over South Africa in 2015 – one of the biggest upsets in sport. He was also the assistant coach for South Africa when they won the 2007 World Cup. His autobiography, My Life and Rugby, was a huge bestseller. Leadership is his second book.

Book preview

CHAPTER

1

DUST DEVIL

Looking back up the rutted farm lane, I asked, How far a walk to this grave?

My upstairs apartment neighbor, Keisha, tossed her bike into a drainage ditch overgrown with weeds.

She whirled to face me. A little ways through those woods.

Clouds cloaked the moon, no stars. The distant lights of Savannah’s skyline illuminated the tops of pines spreading along the Savannah River. On the porch of the farmhouse we’d sped past, a yapping, snapping, snarling dog threatened to break its chain and attack.

Keisha asked, You really saw a ghost?

A violent storm clawing its way up from Florida sent cold wind slamming into my face. I gently laid Dad’s 1967 Schwinn Sting-Ray in the ditch, taking care to keep from stabbing its handlebar in mud.

Last summer my family visited an Old West ghost town, I said. No ghost.

Kat says otherwise. Kat swears you found the ghost who killed Billy the Kid.

The actor playing the part of Billy the Kid. Ghosts don’t exist.

Making sure her black leggings didn’t get caught on barbed spurs, Keisha placed one foot on the bottom rail of the fence. They got bobcats in these woods, Kansas. She stepped up and threw one leg over. Keep up.

What makes you so sure your brother didn’t kill Joe B. Hall? I asked.

Seeing as how you haven’t been here all that long, I won’t hold being stupid against you. She dropped from the fence, landing in weeds.

Only pointing out that if a jury found your brother guilty, maybe he is.

She replied, You sound smarter when you aren’t talking.

The baying hound chained to the front porch let fly another prolonged yowl that died in the wind’s shrill scream.

We better get a move on, Kansas.

Pulling my goose-down jacket tight, I lifted my head and looked back at the dimly lit farmhouse. Wish you would call me Nick.

Kat said to call you Kansas so as you don’t forget her.

As if I could, I mumbled. With a final glance at Dad’s bike and the farm drive, I cleared the fence.

Kat claims you got some super-hotshot way of figuring out murders when law can’t.

Hurrying to catch up, I said, I don’t.

Kat says otherwise.

I got lucky a couple of times. I’m part of a group that solves murders by watching old cop and detective shows.

That’s dumb.

My sister says the same thing, I said. As does almost every police and sheriff’s deputy I’ve met. This grave, you say it’s close?

Just a ways in. She reached into her jacket pocket and handed me a Polaroid picture. Here, you’re gonna want to have this.

With only the ambient glow of Savannah’s skyline for light, I could not make out the people in the photo. Who am I looking at?

She clicked on a mini flashlight. It’s me and my brother the day I made varsity. Kwame took me out for dinner, just the two of us. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I never dress up, but I did that night. She turned the photo over for me.

On the back of the picture in small handwriting were the words: Nick is helping me.

I said, Helping with what, exactly?

Find out who really killed Joe B. Hall.

I am?

You saying you won’t?

Not saying anything seemed like the smart move, so I went with that. With her in the lead and putting distance between us, I quickly followed my neighbor into the forest. Sneakers crushed small sticks, thorns tore at jeans. The evening’s forecast had called for rain, possibly heavy at times.

We all have our breaking point, I said. Maybe your brother reached his.

He didn’t. I’ve seen Kwame get slapped, punched, and shoved to the floor, all in the same game. Never got in the punk’s face. I would. Not Kwame.

Despite my long stride, I fell farther behind. She was taking two steps to my one.

She asked, You really found a werewolf that killed somebody?

No. Only the sound of her voice let me know which way the path turned. Werewolves are a myth.

A flash of lightning unleashed a thunderous boom.

Kat says otherwise. Says you caught the killer.

If a jury found your brother guilty, I said, they must have had some reason.

Reason being he’s Black. No murder weapon, no motive. No witness. An old white man gets stabbed, Black man must have done it.

Slapping at limbs and getting scratched across the face in return, I struggled to keep up. The police can’t arrest someone without probable cause, that much I know.

Same laws for whites and Blacks but different rules, Kansas. If they’d found the knife that killed that old man, Kwame would have never gotten charged. But they hardly bothered to look. White officer showed up and seen my brother at that boathouse. Threw Kwame to the ground, cuffed him, and hauled him away.

Clearly her experience with law enforcement was different than mine.

She called back, You got locked in a casket by a vampire killer?

Not exactly, I said. But yes, I was buried alive while trying to figure out who killed someone pretending to be a vampire.

So this séance should be no big deal to you.

Is that what we’re doing?

Depends on if I have to circle back to find your body. Bobcats, Kansas. Bobcats.

With that encouraging comment, I took longer strides, faster steps. The guy who got killed, I said, panting, You say he was a ref?

And not a very good one. We’re out there busting our butts, sprinting up and down the court while some old geezer who can’t keep up makes bad calls. You want to ref, you should be able to keep up with the players.

So did they have any evidence tying your brother to the murder?

Victim’s blood on his shirt. And that’s only ’cause after Kwame got there he tried to keep the guy from bleeding out.

I thought about that and said, "Same thing happened on the show, It’s a Criminal Shame. An innocent kid affiliated with, but not part of, a gang gets pinned for a murder he didn’t commit. Retired detective who is the boy’s sponsor in the Big Brother program starts digging and uncovers the real killer."

Only reason Kwame is out on bail is ’cause he’s got a good lawyer. Otherwise, I’d never see him again.

Talking while walking left me winded, so I shut up and focused on keeping up. Didn’t work. Within minutes I’d lost sight of her. Clumps of briars looked like a bobcat, ready to attack. Every swaying branch was an arm reaching out to grab me.

I came to a slight rise, paused, and looked back the way we’d come, then ahead. No Keisha, no path. Only the sound of her thrashing about. Through the twisted fingers of yaupon hollies, I stared up at branches, half expecting to see a huge, furry blob.

Crash!

With my heart pounding, I whirled and strained to see past trees. Something smashed through the brush. Something large.

You still back there, Kansas?

Smash!

Abandoning all effort to follow some path I couldn’t see, I bolted toward the general direction of Keisha’s voice. Bolted and considered how idiotic it was that I’d agreed to come with my neighbor to a graveyard in the first place.

The dead don’t speak to the living. Ghosts don’t haunt homes. Poltergeists, ghouls, and apparitions are simply our mind’s way of seeing what we want to believe. Sam Taggard hadn’t believed in ghosts either, but that changed when he visited an old woman living in the mountains of eastern Tennessee.

Taggard, a fellow blogger for the Cool Ghoul Gazette website had explained to me how he became a believer in the supernatural when, during a private séance, the psychic blurted out, Ruth’s here! She sees you!

Taggard had asked, Ruth who? I don’t know any Ruth.

Taggard told me the mountain woman had closed her eyes as if sensing someone was near. Ruth says, ‘Good to be seen.’ Does this mean anything to you?

Taggard claimed he nearly jumped out of his chair. My grandma had died a few months earlier,’ he’d shared with our staff. I’d forgotten that her middle name was Ruth. No one ever called her that. Every time we would visit Grandma and say to her, ‘Good to see you,’ she would reply, ‘Good to be seen.’ Only way that old mountain woman would know that saying was if Grandma was in the room with us."

Spirits speaking to the living, Taggard’s dead grandmother, me agreeing to attend a séance at a graveyard … that’s what I was thinking of when clouds parted. Beneath the moon’s faint light, a clearing appeared before me.

There on a bed of pine needles the bulging eyes of a white doe stared up at me, its hindquarters showing deep gashes from a collision with a bumper or fender or … claws. The encounter had snapped bone, twisting the doe’s neck. One side of its skull was caved in, leaving a reddish-brown smear on white fur.

Seen plenty of dead deer side the road. Never a white one.

From a direction I had not expected, Keisha walked toward me.

Bad sign seeing a dead albino deer, she said. Means someone you know who passed is watching you.

Far off came the whine of an outboard motor. Keisha nodded in its direction and said, Best get this over with.

Do we have to?

I need to know who killed that ref. Only way to find out for sure is for his ghost to tell me.

We crossed the clearing, giving the deer a wide pass. Once more the moon became fully obscured by clouds. It was as if I was meant to see the dead animal in all its horror.

With the increasing whine of an outboard motor growing louder, we climbed a slight rise and reached a small bluff. Below, river oaks stretched toward water, their lower branches snaking along the ground as if too old and tired to escape burial in the rich black dirt. These were the sort of trees that, if you stared long enough, seemed to be snarling back. Beards of Spanish moss hanging from upper branches lifted with a breath of wind.

This is good a place as any to watch. Keisha dropped down behind a large rotten log. Try to blend in, she said.

I doubt your brother will get the death penalty, I said. Almost no one does these days.

Young Black male? White victim? You got lots to learn about the injustice system, Kansas. She bumped my arm. Look there!

I focused at where she pointed. I didn’t see it at first. Then, gradually, I could make out short rows of chipped headstones jutting up from weeds.

That marker under those two big trees, that’s his.

Three rows wide, four rows deep, twelve graves lay beneath a large oak.

Beyond the trees, the loud drone of the outboard’s motor died with a sputtering cough.

"Promise