Ghost Falls (Haunted Souls #22)

4

If Jude had thought the view of the falls from his hotel room was incredible, it was nothing compared to standing across from them. The roar of the water was almost deafening. It was almost impossible to believe that much water could flow over the falls without them running dry. “What do you think, buddy?”

he asked Wolf

“It’s super cool,”

Wolf said, his eyes glued to the sight in front of him. “I want to ride down them like in a waterslide!”

Wolf held a hand in the air and made a motion like he was going over the falls. “It would be the biggest splash ever!”

Wolf’s eyes danced with excited.

Watching the awesome display of nature through his son’s eyes gave Jude a bit of insight into why men and women had tried to brave the falls themselves over the last century and a half. The idea of man triumphing over nature was a tale as old as time. It was the reason men had gone off in search of the South Pole, to explore the depths of the Mariana Trench, and into space. While all Jude could see was extreme danger, all Wolf could see was an adventure. He had a feeling Rooster Jackson saw the same thing when he stood here marveling at the falls himself, never once thinking his attempt to make history would result in his own death.

Cope had been right on the money when he’d said they needed to find a way to talk to Cannonball that wouldn’t involve trying to appeal to his common sense.

“Hey,”

Ronan said, breaking Jude out of his thoughts. “I got us tickets. All we have to do is get in line for the funicular, which will take us to the loading platform.”

“What’s a funicular?”

Jude asked.

“It’s sort of a combination of an elevator and a train. We get into the car and it takes us down using cables like an elevator, but the car itself is on tracks.”

“I can’t imagine Aurora is going to like that,”

Jude said. He knew Fitzgibbon would be there to soothe his daughter, but once she got it in her head not to do something, that was the end of the discussion.

“He bribed her with ice cream and a shopping spree,”

Ronan said with a snort. “Apparently there’s a soft-serve vendor that sells pink bubblegum twists in a waffle cone. It’s up by the Skywheel.”

Ronan pointed behind them.

One of the attractions Jude couldn’t wait to try was the Niagara Skywheel. It was a scaled down version of London’s Eye. He was looking forward to having a bird’s eye view of the Falls. In the same area was a dinosaur-themed mini golf course, a game arcade, and several restaurants. It would be the perfect place to take the kids for lunch and some fun tomorrow after Cope’s duties were done for the morning at PsychicFest. “Let’s do this before Aurora decides a hundred new stuffies aren’t worth the price of the boat ride.”

Jude and Ronan joined the others in line for the funicular. He could hear Fitzgibbon telling Aurora how much fun it would be. The look on the little girl’s face said she thought it was otherwise.

When the funicular car reached the top, the doors opened. Jude watched as wet and happy tourists disembarked. Some were laughing. Kids were shouting that they wanted to do it again. Jude hoped that would be Aurora, Everly, and Wolf after their trip to the falls.

After the car emptied, they all filed inside. Aurora didn’t seem to be affected by the height or the steep incline the car was about to descend. The ride was short, only three minutes long and when they reached the bottom, Aurora was laughing over something Wolf had said. So far, so good.

The line leading to the boat dock was short. With it being October, the large tourist crowds of the summer were long gone, just as they were back in Salem. Fitzgibbon handed their tickets to the man scanning them. Each of them were handed bright red ponchos.

“It’s so pretty!”

Everly gushed. Ronan unfolded it for her and helped her into it, securing the hood so that only her face was showing. Cope and Fitz did the same for Everly and Wolf, before donning their own.

“Dad, look!”

Wolf called out. “It’s Cannonball!”

Wolf pointed ahead of them, where a non-descript man stood with a woman and a child who appeared to be Wolf’s age.

Hearing his name, Cannonball turned. “Hey, little man. What’s your name?”

“I’m Wolf and these are my friends, Aurora, and Everly. I can’t wait to see you stunt on Sunday!”

Wolf jumped up in down.

Jude noticed the woman standing beside Cannonball looked as if she were on the verge of tears. She turned away from her husband who was shaking the kids’ hands and posing for pictures. “Jude Byrne,”

he held out his hand.

“Nice to meet you. This is my wife, Heidi and our son Carl the third. We call him CJ.”

Cannonball offered Jude a wide smile.

Wolf instantly starting chatting with the boy, asking him who his favorite Star Wars character was. Predictably, his answer was Baby Yoda, who seemed to be everyone’s favorite.

Jude had a hundred questions he wanted to ask the stunt man, but the line started to move and before he knew it, they were on the boat with Ronan trying to find the best place to view the falls.

“Okay, that was interesting,”

Cope said, coming to stand beside Jude against the lefthand railing of the boat. “His wife is absolutely beside herself worrying about Cannonball.”

Jude nodded. “I could see it in her eyes. Well, that and the disgusted way she looked at Wolf when he called out Cannonball’s name.”

“She wasn’t upset with Wolfie, but at the idea that another little boy idolized her husband.”

“Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have shown Wolf the YouTube videos of Cannonball’s greatest hits.”

Jude knew from experience that boys were more likely to try crazy stunts. The combination of testosterone and bad judgement fueled several memorable stunts that ended with Jude bleeding and Running Eagle having to take him to the local emergency room. The stitches and casts had never been enough to make Jude slow down or be more cautious. He knew Cannonball had experienced the same kind of childhood, but with the added burden of being the son of a dead daredevil. It wasn’t that Heidi was being unfriendly, but more that she didn’t want Wolf to follow the same path as her husband. Jude agreed completely.

“She might be the key,”

Cope said, as the boat started to push away from the dock.

“What, to getting Cannonball to call off the stunt?”

Jude asked, spotting the little family a bit further up along the railing. CJ was jumping up and down, pointing the dramatic American Falls.

“Yeah,”

Cope agreed.

“Well, she hasn’t been able to get him to budge so far.”

Jude studied the young woman, who unbeknownst to her would become a widow within seventy-two hours. Most families didn’t know when tragedy would befall them, but Heidi Jackson did. Her husband would die at ten past one on Sunday afternoon. It looked to Jude as if the woman was already in mourning. He wished he could reach out to her and offer some measure of comfort, but knew that the last thing she wanted was for Cope to confirm her worst fears.

“When we get to the press conference tonight, I’ll try to find Heidi and see if I can get a feel for where Cannonball’s head is in all of this.”

Jude shook his head. “No, you need to talk to our daredevil. Tell him what you and Everly have seen and not just with what happens on Sunday, but what you see in their future. The pain and struggles that both she and her son are going to experience without him. Ronan and I will speak to Heidi and find out if there’s anything at all that could talk Cannonball out of going over the falls.”

“Daddy, look!”

Wolf shouted. He pointed to the top of the American Falls, where the water was gushing down and causing mist when it pounded the rocks below.

Jude understood now why the boat was called The Maid of the Mist. He took a spot next to Wolf and knelt down to be at eye level with him. It was only one hundred and ten feet from the precipice to the river below, but at this height, it looked so much taller. “Pretty cool, huh?”

Wolf nodded his head enthusiastically.

“I’m wet!”

Aurora shouted over the roar of the falls.

Jude turned to the little girl who was standing with her arms out and her face pointed up to the falls. He couldn’t tell if Aurora was excited or horrified by being covered in the water from the Niagara River.

“I’m part of the waterfall!”

Aurora shouted.

“Me too!”

Everly agreed. The two girls danced in the water raining down on them.

“Okay, I didn’t see that coming,”

Ronan said, helping Jude back to his feet.

“Neither did Fitz, look.”

Jude pointed to their captain who was recording Aurora dancing. It looked like he was crying, but with everyone being soaked by the spray from the falls, it was hard to tell.

“It’s good to see Aurora come out of her shell like this and try something new.”

Ronan grinned at the girls who were now talking animatedly with Wolf and CJ. “I saw you taking to Cannonball. Did you tell him what Everly knows about his future?”

Jude shook his head. “No, this wasn’t the time or place. Fitz managed to get us into Cannonball’s press conference tonight. My plan is for us to talk to him and his wife then.”

“She looks like he’s already dead.”

Jude followed Ronan’s line of sight. While the kids and Cannonball were laughing and having a hell of time for themselves, Heidi wore a sad look in her eyes. She turned from her husband and son to look up at the approaching Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side of the river. At one hundred eighty-eight feet, they were much taller than the American Falls, but provided a softer, rock free, landing. “Would you do it?”

“What go over the falls?”

Ronan laughed. “Not for love or money. I remember seeing Evel Knieval on television when I was a kid and watching the shit he did scared the hell out of me. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I was brave enough to try it, all I could think of was how much it would hurt when things went wrong.”

Jude was imagining the same thing. After he and Wolf had watched Cannonball’s videos, he’d looked up the people who’d gone before him. The barrels people used to go over the falls were exactly that in the early days. The same brown barrels with metal rims that wine or whiskey were aged in. Of course those crude devices were doomed to fail. Next came barrels that looked more like coffins than a barrel. Some of them worked, while most did not, as Rooster found out first hand. There were so many things that could wrong. The barrel moving off course, the current being faster, harder, or swirling in ways that weren’t anticipated. Then there was the fall itself. The barrel could crash on the rocks, against the back wall of the falls, or land safely, but then become trapped under the pounding water. Even if Jude were single and childless, he, like Ronan, wouldn’t do this stunt for anything.

Turning his attention from the falls back to the kids, Jude studied CJ. He was the spitting image of his father with his dark hair and eyes. He had no idea what tragedy was about to befall his family. How could he? Wolf looked at Jude and Cope like they both hung the moon. His fathers were brave, strong and invincible in the eyes of the first grader. CJ saw his father under the same lens, just as Jude was sure Cannonball saw his father. The loss of Carl senior cemented Cannonball’s destiny. If his father had lived, would Cannonball have become a lawyer or a plumber instead of a daredevil? If, lord forbid, Jude were to die in the line of duty, would Wolf become a cop to avenge him and walk in his shoes? He found himself not wanting to know the answer.

The last time Jude and Wolf talked about what he wanted to be when he grew up, his son’s answer had been a firemen, because they were strong and brave and were allowed to get dirty. Jude remembered laughing over the last bit. Wolf was forever wanting to go outside and roll around in the dirt and mud. He reveled in being dirty, like Pig-Pen from the Snoopy cartoons.

Wolf had always been a thoughtful and curious little boy. The thoughtfulness came from Cope, while his curiosity came from Jude. He knew Lizbet would follow in a similar path, but were there things Jude did that his kids might emulate that would one day come to harm them? Was he giving them the tools they needed to survive in this world that was growing ever more hostile by the day?

Wolf’s unmistakable laugh, pulled Jude out of his own thoughts. He loved the safe and secure bubble he and Cope had created for their family. It didn’t cross Wolf’s mind to be afraid of the boat, of the fact that it could run out of gas, capsize or even explode. Was Wolf better off not knowing the dangers around the bend, or was it better to live in the moment, come what may?

Jude didn’t have an answer for that question. What he did know was that he was going to do everything in his power to keep CJ from losing his father, even if Jude, Ronan, and Fitz had to slap handcuffs on him.

Jude hoped it wouldn’t come to that.