by H. P. Bayne
Because Dez had warned him away from black, reminding him how it showed dirt a lot more easily, Sully had gone with grey. Since Sully washed his SUV every week, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
He sat inside it now, letting the heat blast as the engine warmed up. He’d had to scrape a little frost off the windows today, a sure sign winter was closing in. It felt like they’d just left it behind, but that was reality when living so far north of the equator.
When he’d checked in with Emily before leaving the building, he discovered her heat had gone out too. As the building was water-heated, it happened periodically. She’d call the owner and ask him to come and check it.
Hoping it was something as simple as a pilot light needing relit, he left it at that, Emily assuring him she was quite fine and wouldn’t die because it was a little chilly. Though in her eighties, she didn’t consider herself old by any means, and Sully knew from experience she was far tougher than she appeared.
He waited a few minutes until the engine had warmed, then belted himself in and started off.
Lachlan’s office was located across the river, in a neighbourhood boasting homes with classic Victorian facades. How many of these places were actually built in the Victorian age, Sully didn’t know, but it had a San Francisco appeal to it, one which drew buyers whenever a For Sale sign sprouted.
Sully had some money saved up, but no way would he ever be able to afford a property in this area.
As it stood, neither could many others. Unable to find buyers for many of the properties as homes, a sizeable number had been converted for business use. The street on which Lachlan’s office was situated held houses containing physiotherapists, a chiropractor, a real estate agency and a dentist office. Lachlan’s building was subdivided into several offices, two on the main floor and three—one in each of the large former bedrooms—on the upper floor.
When it had been just him running Fields Investigations, Lachlan had rented one of the top three. Now with two associates—one of whom was Dez, six and a half feet-tall and built like a linebacker—the office felt small when they were all inside.
Luckily, Sully came in at six feet and was lean in build, meaning their client wouldn’t feel quite as crowded with Dez not coming.
With no great surprise, given the way Lachlan had described his dealings with the man, Sully found the client already there when he entered the office. Lachlan was, as usual, behind his desk. Across from him sat a man close to forty. A coat was draped over his chair, and his arms—concealed behind a snug-fitting button-down—suggested he tried to stay in shape. His middle, though, rolled a little over his belt, and Sully guessed he liked to celebrate a solid workout with a beer and a good meal.
The man’s eyes lit with recognition as he zoned in on Sully. He was used to that look. His uncle’s murder trial had outed him not only as a skilled amateur investigator, it had revealed something even more significant.
Sully could see the dead.
Since Sully had been requested by name, he had little doubt the problem was ghost-related.
The man stood and stepped forward eagerly, extending a hand as he approached.
“Neil Wynne,” he said. “Spelled W-Y-N-N-E but pronounced ‘win.’ Sometimes, people pronounce it ‘Whinny,’ but they’re wrong.”
Sully smiled kindly as he shook. The man was nervous, whether about the problem he was encountering or about meeting Sully. For some reason he couldn’t comprehend, the trial had turned him into an overnight celebrity of sorts. He attracted clients to Lachlan like fruit flies to apple cider vinegar—so Lachlan said, anyway.
Unfortunately, several of them were clearly unhinged. Sully hoped this wouldn’t prove to be one of those times.
“Sullivan Gray. Most people call me Sully.”
Neil’s brows went up. “Do you want me to call you Sully?”
“Works for me.”
With a grin, Neil nodded, then turned abruptly back to his chair and sat. “I’m sorry to disturb you like this—”
Lachlan chuckled in a way that suggested he’d heard those words before. “As I said earlier, Mr. Wynne, it’s our job. You’re not disturbing us. How can we help you?”
Neil waited until Sully had taken the remaining chair before launching into it. “What I’m going to tell you would be rather embarrassing to say to anyone else, but you’re not anyone else, are you? I mean, you know these things exist.”
There it was. One ghost problem, coming up.
Often, people who were haunted brought their ghostly hangers-on with them. Not so with Neil.
“No one’s going to judge you,” Lachlan said. “Please, tell us what’s brought you here.”
Neil nodded tightly and took a breath. “I suppose I should start at the beginning.”
Lachlan broke in at the resulting pause. “A good place to start.”
Egged on yet again, Neil continued. “My family and I—that is, my wife and daughter and myself—recently needed to downsize our mortgage payments. You see, my son, Callum, he’s gone off the rails. He’s my son from my first marriage, just turned twenty-one. Well, both kids are from my first marriage. Casey—she’s a girl—is sixteen. I hate to say this, but Callum was an accident. We were young when we had him, only seventeen, still in high school. We had him and married soon after.
“I know many young parents aren’t ready for the responsibility, but we actually did quite well. My family was never supportive, but Leah’s family was. They helped us with a lot, and we did well for a few years. Then Leah was killed in a car crash.”
Sully didn’t interrupt with expressions of condolence, though he gave the man a sympathetic smile. Neil smiled back, but it slipped from his face as quickly as it had come.
“Callum was with Leah in the car. He was seven, old enough to remember exactly what happened. He was always troubled afterward. I took him to see a counsellor, but she wasn’t very good, I’m afraid. Made things worse. He’d never go back to see anyone after that, and we couldn’t insist.”
“We?” Sully didn’t know what information would be important but figured a full picture was best.
Neil scrubbed a hand down his jawline. “Oh, yeah. I met Drea quite soon after. I joined a support group for those suffering the loss of a spouse. She was there. Her husband had been working in construction and he was killed in a workplace accident. We started seeing each other outside of the group, just as friends at first. It didn’t take long to develop into something more, and we’ve been together since.”
Shifting in his chair, Neil sat straighter. “Callum never did get past his mother’s death. He despised Drea from the start, accused me of trying to replace his mom. Nothing I said could convince him otherwise, even at that young age. He learned in time to tolerate her, but he never liked her.”
He cleared his throat. “Anyway, perhaps this is all beside the point.”
Sully glanced at Lachlan. His eyes had narrowed as he regarded their client, a sure sign of annoyance. Were the man’s story not so tragic, he might have broken in with a call to get to the point.
Luckily, Neil was far too focused on Sully to notice Lachlan’s expression. “My son ran into legal problems and needed a good lawyer. We paid. You do that sort of thing for your kids. But it left us in a position where we had to either remortgage our house at a terrible rate or sell it to pay our bills. We decided to sell. It felt like the right thing to do anyway, to start over somewhere new.
“We searched for a cheaper place to live but, as I’m sure you realize, most cheaper places in the city are in neighbourhoods where I wouldn’t want my wife and daughter living. I’d be anxious anytime either of them had to go anywhere without me.”
Neil readjusted himself, crossing his legs this time. “At this point, I received an unexpected phone call, a lawyer in the town of Willow Valley. You know the place?”
Sully considered the name a moment. “I don’t think I’ve ever been there, but I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s a nic
e little town, kind of old-fashioned. Mainly seniors live there now, and they take care of the place very well. The main street in winter looks like a Christmas card.”
Lachlan harrumphed. He’d reached the limit of his short patience.
Sully sought to bring the conversation back on track. “What did the lawyer call about?”
“A house,” Neil said. “Or, more specifically, a will. My great aunt’s will. Mildred Wynne was my dad’s aunt, or probably more likely, his great-aunt. She lived alone in a large house about fifteen minutes by car from Willow Valley. I don’t remember ever going to visit her there, yet she left the house to me when she died late last month. Granted, I’m from a small family, and she had no kids of her own, but still …”
“And what happened, Mr. Wynne?” Lachlan asked.
Another shift in the chair. This time, Neil slumped forward until his elbows came to rest on his knees, his eyes tracking down as well. “Well, that’s the reason I’m here, really. We checked the place out a couple of weeks ago. There was no question we would be moving there. We really had no place else to go. I’d been out once before to look through it, and I thought it would be perfect with some TLC. I mean, it’s significantly larger than the house we left behind and all we’d have to worry about covering is upkeep and property tax. I figured we could pay for upgrades as we could afford them.”
Lachlan heaved a sigh.
This time, Sully nudged Neil on. “But something happened.”
Neil nodded. “Not the first time I was there. That time, I went in and opened all the curtains to let some light in. When I came back to show the place to my family, the curtains were all closed again.” He shuddered and fell silent.
Sully hoped that wasn’t all. “Is there something else?”
Neil glanced back up to meet Sully’s eye. “Oh, yes. Moments after arriving with my family, my daughter became convinced she saw a woman in the upstairs window. I thought she must be seeing things, but in case she wasn’t, I went inside without them to search. I found no sign of an intruder. That’s when I noticed all the curtains were closed again, so I opened them.”
Another shiver. “They closed again, Sully. Right in front of my eyes. No one was there.” He paused, but continued a moment later without need for further prompting. “I went to the window in the master bedroom—the windows from which my daughter believed she’d seen the woman—and I drew the curtains back. I looked down and saw an old woman standing next to my family, grinning up at me. Not a nice grin either. She looked insane, evil even. Then …” He worked his palms over his upper arms as if to warm them. “She screamed.”
“Your daughter?” Lachlan asked.
Neil shook his head. “The old woman. It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Ear-shattering and wild. I don’t know how else to described the noise, but it was horrible. And watching her scream … I’m embarrassed to say it, but I fainted.”
“Can you describe her?” Sully asked.
Neil visibly shuddered. “Long, matted grey hair, white eyes, blackened teeth. And she was skinnier than I’ve ever seen anyone. Almost like a skeleton.”
As creepy as this image was, Sully sensed more was to come.
“You mentioned this happened a couple weeks ago,” he said. “Something happened since, didn’t it?”
Neil nodded, the movement as tense as the rest of him. “We moved in a few days ago. The new owners of our house in the city needed to get in, so we packed up and moved. You can imagine how anxious I was.
“Well, the first few days were fine. I stayed awake at night, mind you, but I didn’t hear anything much, other than the usual old house noises. Then things started happening. Little stuff at first. We’d put down a set of keys or a glass or a picture. When we came back into the room, they’d be gone. We’d look everywhere, and they’d suddenly reappear exactly where we’d left them. And the noises changed. We’ve heard scratching in the walls but can’t find any trace of rodents. Creaking on the floors overhead sound less like settling than they do footsteps. And the curtains have been closing on their own again.”
Sitting straight, he eased a breath through pursed lips. “Now we’ve been seeing her. My daughter and I, I mean. Not my wife. Drea never sees anything. I think she’s convinced we’re crazy.”
“What have you seen?” Sully asked.
“The old woman. Always the same old woman—only we’ve been seeing her in full black, with a veil and everything. I’ll see her standing behind me in the TV or computer monitor screen. I’ll catch a glimpse of her in a mirror or out of the corner of my eye. It’s only ever for a second. As soon as I blink, she disappears.
“It’s been worse for Casey. The other night, she woke up screaming, Told us she saw the woman standing over her bed. She’s mostly slept in our room since.
“But here’s what really disturbs me: I’m convinced I’ve seen the screaming woman before. Took me until last night to put a finger on it, but I think I know where.”
He paused, emotion tightening his features and bringing a sheen of tears to his eyes. He took a few long breaths, and thankfully Lachlan didn’t rush him. When Neil next spoke, he seemed to have regained some control.
“Before Leah was killed, I’d been having terrible nightmares. Never anything in detail, and never anything I could truly recall. But flashes of things stayed with me. I saw blood, smelled it even. And there was an old woman. Screaming. All these years, I’d put it out of my mind, but it all came back to me last night.”
His eyes went from Sully to Lachlan and back again. “I went through terrible guilt after Leah’s death, wondering whether those nightmares were prophetic. Maybe something was trying to tell me what was about to happen and I ignored it. What if I had trusted in it and done something to stop Leah and Cal from getting in the car that day? Maybe I could have prevented her death. If so, if the same thing is happening now, maybe someone else I love is in danger. If I do nothing again, and something happens, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“And you want me to see if I can find this ghost?” Sully asked.
Neil nodded rapidly. “Yes. Would you?”
“I can try.” It wasn’t as easy as that, though. “I don’t know how much you know about me, but there are limits to what I can do. My ability to see ghosts is limited to people who’ve died unjust deaths. Homicides, ones where people need something in order to cross over. If your ghost isn’t the victim of a homicide, I won’t be able to see her or communicate.”
Neil’s hopeful expression suggested he wasn’t put off. “But you can try. That’s the important thing. Please, come out to the house. Maybe you’ll see something and can help.”
Sully met Lachlan’s eye and received a nod. In turn, Sully gave Neil a nod.
“Okay. I’ll come out. Make sure you’re all still there when I come by. Sometimes ghosts are attached to people rather than places. Given what you say about these nightmares before your first wife died, I think it’s likely you or someone in your family is what’s drawing this woman. What time would work for you?”
The answer was predictable enough to make Sully feel stupid for having bothered to ask. “Now would be great. I mean, if you’re able.”
Sully smiled. “Not a problem.”
3
It wasn’t a problem for Sully, anyway. Dez might not see it that way.
Typically, Dez wanted to know whenever Sully was about to embark on a ghost investigation. Dez’s being with him had sometimes meant the difference between life and death.
In this case, Sully was convinced he didn’t have anything to fear from the family in need, and he didn’t want to drag Dez away from his family day if it turned out this was nothing more than a straightforward haunting they could do little about. In Sully’s experience, his success rate with non-homicides was low. Communication was a big part of what he did in helping homicide victims find peace. If he couldn’t see or communicate with a ghost, it was tricky getting them what they needed to cross over.
Sully followed Neil out to the property, but he had a sheet of written directions in case he needed them. Rush-hour traffic was flowing full bore, and while most was entering the city rather than leaving, intersections became harder to manage between seven thirty and nine thirty.
As it happened, Sully did lose Neil within city limits, having been cut off twice and getting stuck at an intersection. Sully wasn’t worried, his sense of direction well up to the task and Neil’s instructions detailed enough to allow a child to find his way to the house unaided.
So Sully had to chuckle as, upon leaving city limits, he spotted Neil’s car pulled over along the shoulder, hazard lights flashing. Sully pulled up behind him and Neil immediately got out of the car and approached.
“Didn’t want to lose you,” he said. “It’s smooth sailing here on in.”
Nice guy, Sully thought as Neil returned to his vehicle. With no way of predicting what he’d find at the house, he hoped it was something he could help with. He didn’t want to have to tell Neil there was nothing he could do for him.
They continued down the double lane for almost a full hour before turning onto a smaller two-lane highway. This one they kept to for approximately fifteen minutes before turning off onto a paved road with a sign reading “Willow Valley 3 km.”
Sully had heard the word “quaint” used to describe various settings, but in Willow Valley, the word could not have found better meaning.
As he crested a hill, the town came into view in a valley below, nestled amidst a wide stand of mature trees tinted in various shades of red, orange and gold. Willow Valley was a picture postcard, from the steeple of its stone church rising between the treetops to the river snaking through the community. The bridge this side of main street was one of those classic constructs—one likely here since the community’s birth—and Sully was left in little doubt town council had repeatedly opted to repair and restore rather than replace.