Gray Ghost Read Online Free

fish.”
    Vecchio stretched his arms, bent over at the waist, and flexed his legs a couple of times. Then he said, “C—mon, Ralph. Show me the way.”
    Calhoun watched his client and his dog climb over the rocks along the shoreline and disappear through some bushes. In a minute they’d come upon what was left of the quarantine building just over the rise. Now it wasn’t much more than a big concrete-walled hole with a few charred floor joists still in place. The rest of it had burned into rubble that February night in 1918.
    Every time Calhoun thought about it he got the willies.
    He poured himself some coffee and sat there in his boat. It had been a good morning so far. They’d found fish and caught a few of them. The sea was calm, the sky overcast, the client competent. Paul Vecchio was good company in a boat, and so was Ralph, and Stoney Calhoun was content.
    The tide had turned, and he was trying to decide where they might find fish stacked up on the outgoing when Ralph came scrambling over the rocks. Instead of jumping back into the boat, he stood there on the shore with his ears perked up and started barking.
    “What’s up?” said Calhoun. “What’d you do with Mr. Vecchio?”
    Ralph barked again, looked hard at Calhoun, then turned and trotted back through the bushes.
    Calhoun figured he got Ralph’s message.
Well, shit,
he thought.
All those fish out there waiting to be caught, and something’s happened to my client

CHAPTER TWO
    Calhoun climbed out of the boat and hauled it farther up on the sand. The tide had already turned, so it wouldn’t float away, but he wrapped the bowline around a boulder and tied it off anyway. He sure as hell didn’t want to be stranded on Quarantine Island with ghosts and some kind of a problem and no boat.
    He pushed through the bushes and climbed up a rocky slope, and then he was looking at the charred skeleton of the old quarantine building. After a minute, he spotted a patch of Ralph’s orange -and-white fur through the weeds. He gave a yell, but the damn dog didn’t move, and that was unlike him.
    As he got closer, he saw that Ralph was sitting beside Paul Vecchio with that alert look he got when he’d spotted a chipmunk in a stone wall. Vecchio was sitting on the ground with his back against a boulder and his arms crossed over his knees and his chin resting on his arms. Calhoun was relieved to see that his client appeared to be all right.
    “Hey,” Calhoun yelled. “Hey, Paul. Everything okay?”
    Vecchio didn’t reply. He didn’t move. He and Ralph seemed to be mesmerized. They were both staring toward the burned-out cellar hole.
    Calhoun went over and squatted beside Paul Vecchio. He looked where the man and the dog were looking.
    They were staring at a big black lump that was leaning against the outside wall of the old foundation.
    It took Calhoun a minute to recognize what he was seeing.
    It was a human body. A black, charred corpse, sitting with its back against the wall facing east, with its hands in its lap and its legs stretched out in front of it and its head bowed.
    Vecchio turned his head and looked at Calhoun. “A ghost,” he whispered.
    “Doubt it,” said Calhoun. The faint odor of rotten flesh hung in the damp air. “I don’t think ghosts smell like that.”
    He got up and went for a closer look. The crusty body was seared and blackened and blistered from head to foot. Whatever clothing it might’ve been wearing had been burned away. You could barely distinguish the black nubs where the ears and a nose would’ve been. There were no fingers. Just black lumpy paws on the ends of the arms.
    Calhoun couldn’t tell for sure whether it had been a man or a woman, old or young. By the size of the body, he guessed it was a full-grown man.
    Vecchio came over and stood beside Calhoun. He took out his little digital camera and snapped a few pictures. The quick flashes winked in the misty air.
    “What do you think happened?” he said.
    “Either he