Her hand slipped into her sweater pocket and pulled out the card her father had given her. Tennyson – Jack of all Trades and the number printed in bold letters. She avoided calling Jack Tennyson because she’d dated his son and it hadn’t ended well. Her father said she needed to put it behind her and call Jack.
He shook his head and chuckled. He most likely spotted someone from the tour going off on their own. This made him pause. He didn’t think anyone would just wander off by themselves, but this woman had either vanished, or she deliberately headed into the foliage where there were no lights placed, and he didn’t remember her holding a flashlight. Yet she kind of glowed. That was it. That was why she seemed out of place. She shimmered. “Ghost,” he murmured and startled himself for even voicing it.
The woman stared in his direction, or at least it seemed like she did before she disappeared. He blinked and tried to rationalize what he witnessed. Maybe there was a path or something. Surely, the woman had not vanished.
Rowan chewed on her lower lip as if in deep thought.
“I doubt we’re going to see a ghost tonight,” he assured her, believing she feared they would.
“How do you know?” Her blue eyes looked almost black in the dim lighting, wide and frightened, too.
“This is all in fun, remember?” He shrugged as if to make light of the situation.
“Jared told me he’s only seen a woman who haunts the place but every time he tries to catch up to her, she disappears before he manages to come close enough to snap a photo. I think that’s why he does these tours. If I remember right, he was related to the woman who disappeared.”
“Haley Rose?” she asked.
“Did you know they never found her body or her boyfriend’s either?” Spike asked. “It’s a pretty interesting unsolved mystery; they drove away from here and just vanished.”
“Is it Haley Rose and Baz Keegan,” Spike spoke up and Rowan’s gave riveted to him.
The family closed the park even though they had just finished the pool that had four slides and a wading area. Some say the woman who haunts this place is the daughter, but others believe it’s the mother who is hoping her daughter will return home. She had loved this place and would frequent it often before bigger dreams took her away. During the summers, she worked at the concession stand.” He turned toward the building behind him and shone his flashlight. “Maybe she’ll be serving the guest tonight.”
“Gather around,” Jared called to them and waved his hands for the group to draw near. “The water park opened in 1983, a tourist attraction people sought to keep cool during the summer,” he began the ghost story with a bit of history. “Unfortunately, in 1987, the fun stopped for Tina Easton when the teen suffered a seizure. Before anyone realized what had happened to her, the girl was floating at the bottom of the pool.”
As they came to the end of the dirt road, a fence blocked their entrance to the water park. Of course, it wouldn’t stop anyone from jumping it if they had an inkling to do so. Luckily, they didn’t have to resort to calisthenics; Jared had the key and opened the lock.
“Make sure you wait for me at the concession stand up ahead. I don’t want anyone wandering off until I turn on the lights.”
