The Lodge (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 15)

by Bryan, JL

  Full-sized animals loomed around us—an African lion, a giraffe, a black rhino, and the largest buffalo I’d ever seen. The creatures were mounted on wooden platforms, preserved through taxidermy, but even taxidermy could only do so much and last so long. They’d deteriorated over the years. The lion had lost much of his mane, and many patches of the buffalo’s hair had fallen off. Dirty cotton stuffing leaked from cracks in their hides.

  “This was, as you may know, originally built as a hunting lodge for Heinrich Grolman, who often went by ‘Hank’ after emigrating from Germany to Wyoming,” Darika said. “The main house has sixty-three rooms.”

  “Grolman was a big cattleman, right?” I asked, looking at the chandelier of bison horns overhead.

  “His land investments eventually led him into coal mining out west, and from there to railroads and banking. This house was not only a vacation retreat, but a showcase for his hunting trophies from around the world.”

  “And he just left it all here?”

  “He was no longer alive when his family turned the island over to the state park service in 1955. Like most of the Gilded Age estates on these coastal islands, it grew too expensive for later generations to maintain and modernize. The family closed up the buildings and abandoned them, asking the state to turn Satilla Island into a protected wildlife preserve.”

  “Why are they restoring the estate now?” I asked. “I noticed the solar roof. That doesn’t come cheap.”

  “We are looking to modernize in certain areas, while also restore what’s worth keeping.” Darika looked at the lion, with its half-shed mane, bleeding stuffing from cracks along its hide, as though she doubted it fell into that category.

  “Are you turning it into a hotel?” I asked.

  “No. A private residence.” She smiled as my jaw dropped.

  “But who…?” I let the question trail off, then closed my mouth and shook my head. “Well, if it’s somebody who likes their privacy, they certainly came to the right place.”

  “Wait a sec, though.” Stacey looked from the giraffe to Darika. “How can it be a private residence if it’s a state park?”

  “The island has been leased from the state for limited private development for a period of ninety-nine years,” Darika said. “It has been done very discreetly.”

  “Yeah, because some people would protest against that,” Stacey said. “If it’s supposed to be a protected ecosystem.”

  “I assure you the new owner is committed to supporting and enhancing the long-term health of the island’s unique ecosystem.” The line sounded well-rehearsed, like Darika had said it many times before. “We intend to renovate the existing buildings with an eye to historical preservation while looking to the future in a fully responsible manner with consideration for all relevant stakeholders.”

  “Oh,” Stacey said. “Okay, then, I guess. Could be worse.”

  “However, the flora and fauna on this island are not necessarily native,” Darika said. “Grolman imported a variety of species of animals, plants, and trees to stock his game preserve. Many were hunted to death or failed to adapt. Others are still out there. People have reported wild dogs and pigs, and there’s also a small herd of wild horses.”

  “Oh, horses?” Stacey perked up.

  “They aren’t friendly. I’d keep my distance.” Darika brought us into a room with a desk the size of a Buick. The taxidermy displays here included a fox and a boar. Many panels of the thick cedar wainscoting had been removed, leaving wall studs and wiring exposed. “This was the owner’s study. I use it as my office. Please sit. Help yourself to coffee or tea if you like.” A Keurig was set up on a rolling plastic cart in one corner, plugged into an orange extension cord that snaked across the room to a distant plug.

  “Thank you.” I took one of three hard wooden chairs facing Darika across her desk.

  “We are behind schedule on the renovations, and my employer is not happy with that.” She sat stiff and upright in her own padded leather chair, as though it, too, were hard and wooden. “We’ve had an awful parade of problems. We’ve brought out specialists of all kinds, masons, landscape crews, and all have quit. We can’t keep anyone working here.”

  “Why not?” I asked, though I had a pretty good idea where this was going. They’d hired us for a reason, after all.

  “They experience strange things,” she said. “Voices. Or something touching them, sometimes scratching. Or they see things. They get scared, and they leave the island for the day or the weekend, and never come back.”

  “Where do these strange experiences happen, primarily?”

  “All over. Inside, outside. Upstairs, downstairs, and down in the basement, where there's a vault that might go even lower. The vault door was concealed behind a wall. We discovered it entirely by accident while updating the plumbing.”

  “What’s in the vault?” I asked.

  “We don’t know. We called a specialist in rare antique locks. But he was frightened while attempting to open it and demanded immediate transport to the mainland. He does not return our calls anymore. We are attempting to find someone else, but apparently it’s no simple lock and requires some expertise. It’s likely that Grolman kept valuables like art and jewels down there when he was away from the island. That was common on other islands like Jekyll.”

  “Are you saying there could be a secret treasure trove down there?” Stacey's eyes danced at the idea of unearthing secrets.

  “I doubt the family left anything of value when they abandoned it,” Darika said. “There could be items of historical interest, though. We need to check the area for structural integrity, regardless.”

  “Did the locksmith say what he encountered down there?” I asked.

  “He heard an angry voice yelling at him, but he was alone in the basement. He said it started snarling at him. Like a demon. His words.”

  “Has anyone else heard a voice like that?”

  “Yes. As well as the inhuman sounds. Growls. Some stonemasons reported howls in the dining room, along with strange voices, when working late at night.”

  “Did they see anything?” I asked.

  “No, but the room turned freezing cold. That experience was enough to make them quit.” She shook her head. “We were already behind schedule. When the masons quit, it was like a floodgate. The rest went with them. We’ve hardly begun to restore the windows. The lawn is a mudhole. It’s supposed to be brimming with pollinator-friendly local wildflowers and ornamental shrubs by now. Even if you made our problems go away today, I don’t see how it’ll be ready in twenty-five days.”

  “What happens in twenty-five days?” I asked.

  She waved the question away. “Nothing.”

  “Can you tell us more about what people have seen here?”

  “That would take a while.” She sighed. “One carpenter said he came in from a dinner break to find a girl looking at his tools. Running her fingers over them, like she was thinking about stealing one. When he yelled at her, she looked up at him. Then, he says, she was just gone, like a whiff of smoke, like he was crazy for ever thinking she was there at all.

  “Then he saw her handprint on the head of his hammer, in red, like her fingers had been bloody. He tried to show it to Gary, but wouldn’t you know, the blood magically disappeared by then. He quit, of course. They all quit eventually.”

  I nodded, thinking how her words echoed the ferryman’s. “Who’s Gary?”

  “Security. The only other person, besides me, currently staying on the island full time.”

  “Have you ever seen or heard any of these things like the workers report?”

  “I try not to think of it,” she said quickly, then gave an apologetic smile. “I did not really believe in such things. My mother is a chemist and a skeptic. But my grandmother believed in the older ways. She said spirits were everywhere, set to wander by bad karma from their evil deeds, or by the failure of their survivors to observe proper funeral rites. So that’s what keeps me from going craz
y out here, knowledge from my grandmother. Because I cannot abandon my work. I do not fail. That’s why he wanted me here in person, overseeing everything.”

  I resisted the temptation to pry into her elusive boss’s identity again. “We typically start by examining locations where incidents have occurred. We try to eliminate possible non-paranormal causes. We can then set up observations—”

  “Good,” she said. “I can’t afford to wait another minute. I need to be able to assure the workers that this…whatever it is…has been removed and they can safely resume their efforts.”

  “Has Gary seen anything?”

  “I’ll have him talk to you when he returns from patrol.”

  “I’m here.” A beefy man with a sandy comb-over that didn’t match his graying goatee entered. He wore a cotton shirt printed with palm fronds, the top buttons open so we wouldn’t miss his gold-chain necklace. “I observed their arrival and followed at a distance.”

  “What did that accomplish?” Darika asked.

  “Uh…” Gary seemed befuddled by the question. He looked over Stacey and me as if sizing us up for a fight, then stuck out his hand toward Stacey. “Gary Tatum, head of security.”

  “He’s the only security officer we have,” Darika added.

  “Because the others bailed,” Gary said. “Not me. I grew up in a little old house next to a graveyard. I could see dead people outside sometimes, when the moonlight was bright.”

  “Wow, you weren’t scared?” Stacey asked, shaking his hand.

  “Little bit, you know, when I was a kid. But it’s just one more thing to get used to. Like the sound of coyotes. Or police sirens, once you move to the city.”

  “Did you grow up out west?” I asked.

  “Wyoming. I’ve even been to the original Grolman ranch out that way, too, when I was a teenager, but it’s just a ghost town. Nothing to see. It never was as big as this place, anyway. Ol’ Man Grolman may have called this a hunting lodge, but you could fit my whole hometown on this estate. Guess it’s just what they call kismet, a Wyoming boy ending up here at the Grolman place.”

  “By way of World Domination Wrestling,” Darika added. “Where he was known as Lance Leopard.”

  “I had a good run before Lionel Slayworld stole my act,” Gary grumbled.

  “Tell them what you’ve seen and heard here,” Darika instructed him. “The strangest events.”

  He scratched his goatee, regarding us more carefully, like he wasn’t ready to go there with us yet.

  “Or anything the workers might have told you,” I said.

  “They all see something.” Gary sighed. “Then they leave. The landscapers heard growling and thought things were watching them from the woods. Not human things. They said they could smell the animals out there, and they smelled like…what did he say? Garbage and rotten meat.”

  “Aren’t there wild dogs on the island?”

  “Sure. But some of them who heard the growling also found claw marks across their arms or back. Like an invisible animal had scratched them deep. Everybody who had those claw marks, or even saw somebody with ’em, quit. The workers started talking about diablo dogs, devil dogs, stalking the island, hunting the workers, dogs you can hear but never see.”

  “They would find these marks without actually being attacked?” I asked.

  “Exactly. The worst was what happened to the landscape crew foreman, Ernesto. They found him out in the woods, bitten and clawed—”

  “We can't discuss Ernesto,” Darika interrupted. “There’s active litigation from his family.”

  “That definitely sounds like something we need to know about,” I said. “What did Ernesto report?”

  “He couldn’t remember what happened to him,” Gary said. “He had that soap opera thing when something falls on your head and you forget.”

  “Amnesia?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “What else do people experience?” I asked.

  “All kinds of things. In the main dining room, real late at night when nobody’s there, you might hear voices. Sometimes it’s one voice. Sometimes it’s like a party, with loud drunken voices, music. Until you open the door and it’s dead silent all over, like it never happened. Not a chair out of place.”

  “Has this happened to you?”

  “Me, other people. One time we had this furniture lady upstairs—”

  “She was a professor of antiquities,” Darika said, “evaluating the items left by the original occupants to help us determine what other pieces would be appropriate.”

  “Anyway, she comes screaming down, white as a sheet, saying she saw a girl in a dress, covered in blood, staring at her from the doorway of the room. The furniture lady wouldn’t go back upstairs and wanted us to call the ferry for her right away.”

  “That sounds similar to what the other person reported,” I said. “What general age was this apparition? Elementary? Teenage? Adult?”

  “She only described the girl as bloody,” Darika replied. “She didn’t want to delve into additional details. She wasn’t in the mood.”

  “Did anyone else report this female apparition?”

  “Possibly. Didn’t someone see her outside?” Darika asked Gary.

  “Yeah, and they hear screaming from the woods,” Gary said. “Could be the same girl. We used to go looking when workers reported the screams, but we never found anybody out there.”

  “The mysterious screams in the woods did not help with worker retention,” Darika added.

  “Did the antiquities professor and the carpenter see the apparition in the same area of the house?” I asked.

  “The carpenter was in the billiards room,” Gary said.

  “No, the bowling alley, but it does share a common wet bar with the billiards room,” Darika said.

  “This is one heck of a hunting lodge,” Stacey commented.

  “No doubt Grolman wished to impress his peers who had vacation homes on nearby islands,” Darika said.

  “Did he host many social events here?” I asked.

  “It’s difficult to find specific details, but we know he invited guests here to hunt, sometimes from among those elite families vacationing on Jekyll. He imported game animals from around the world, and he bred hunting dogs. Given the number of servants’ cottages, he must have had quite a staff and a great capacity for entertaining.”

  “You mentioned hearing voices in the dining room—” I began.

  “It wasn’t just me,” Gary interrupted. “Lots of people have.”

  “Then we should monitor that area. Which way is it?”

  “The shortest path is through the billiards room.” Darika pushed open the double doors. “There’s no direct path from the entrance hall to the dining room.”

  “Old Man Grolman probably wanted to make sure everybody saw his hunting trophies on the way in,” Gary said, following close behind us as if he didn’t want us wandering around the place unsupervised even for a moment, a sheepdog enforcing the rules on us potentially wayward sheep.

  Chapter Four

  The billiards room had an Egyptian theme, with a hieroglyph-style mural depicting a pharaoh hunting a hippopotamus. More preserved animals stood there: a crocodile, an ibex with huge horns curving back toward its spine, a gazelle with its head cocked toward us, furry ears perked up as if it had just heard a suspicious sound right before it died.

  The two pool tables were topped with worn red felt imprinted with years of circular drinking-glass stains. Apparently, the lodge boys hadn't believed in using coasters.

  As with other rooms, sections of walls and ceiling had been removed, exposing the inner guts of the house. The marble top of the wet bar at the end of the room had been lifted away and set aside, revealing blotchy copper plumbing underneath. Beyond the bar lay the two-lane bowling alley, where the Egyptian theme continued, but the lights were out, leaving it in shadow.

  Darika pushed open a thick oak door into a vaulted stone space two stories high. Plastic sheets hung ov
er portions of the walls, swaying in a draft of salty ocean breeze that leaked in from somewhere. One visible section of wall displayed archaic weapons of stone, bone, and wood, like a spear and a longbow next to a fanned-out batch of arrows. The massive table seated forty.

  “The dining room,” Darika said. “Despite the apparent rugged and rustic environment, there are statements of wealth and power here as well. The floor is Italian marble, though local Georgia marble is used everywhere else. The table is cut from a centuries-old California redwood, like many of the house’s columns and trusses. The weapons on the wall are probably mock-ups of antiques, since they were abandoned here, but I will get them appraised just in case. The family took the china, art collection, and other valuables with them.”

  “But not the animal heads,” Stacey said. The room had multiple fireplaces, and over each hung the head of some beast—a black bear, a leopard, a stag, a bison. The chandeliers were clusters of bison horns or deer antlers suspended on chains. “It’s like my grandpa’s dream house.”

  “No, the family did not seem eager to take their old patriarch’s taxidermy collection with them,” Darika agreed. “They left it included with the estate.”

  “We’ll definitely set up equipment in here,” I said. “We’ll also need a room to use as our center of operations.”

  “Take any room you like, except for the study, since I'm using that, or the second-floor guest bedrooms and bathrooms that have been renovated,” Darika said. “We have a cottage for your personal accommodations. Since we have no workers staying on-site anymore, you won’t find yourselves crowded.”

  “A cottage, sweet!” Stacey said.

  “It’s the old chambermaids’ cottage,” Darika said, and Stacey’s smile faltered. “But it’s been restored. Servants lived in crowded, uncomfortable dormitory conditions a hundred years ago. Now we have an espresso machine in the community kitchen, a bidet in the community bathroom, and an individual bed tent for each employee.”