Ghost Trapper 13 The Trailwalker

by JL Bryan

  “What happened to the judge's wife?” I asked.

  “They remained married until the Hangman's death forty years later. Apparently the incident proved only a brief hiccup in their marriage.”

  “Amazing,” Stacey said. “You have to admire a strong relationship like that.”

  Grant sent us a photograph of Terrance—smiling, handsome, despite a small scar at his jawline.

  After that, Grant told us about Gwendolyn Malloy, mostly things we already knew—grew up in Valdosta, made high grades, never finished college because of her death.

  “As for the preacher's disappearing wife, I may have lucked into something as well,” he continued. “If we assume she reverted to Laurie Ann Wilkerson after self-liberating from her husband, then it seems likely she died in 1947, age fifty-two. Lung cancer. I forwarded her obituary to you; it mentions no spouse or children. She was the evening shift manager at Lumpy's Burgers in Tallapoosa, Georgia, an independent establishment specializing in American diner cuisine.”

  “That really fills in a lot of blanks for us,” I said. “Thanks, Grant.”

  “Have you seen Stony Owl in person?”

  “Sure have.”

  “Remarkable. It was clearly the burial place of a highly respected individual. The placing of a stone on a grave when one passes is a sign of respect in many cultures. Great mounds of stones may indicate the presence of a grand personality indeed, one remembered for many generations after his death.”

  “Or hers,” I said, thinking of the towering apparition with the antler crown.

  “Naturally. Do you have any particular reason to believe a female leader is buried at Stony Owl? That would be a tantalizing discovery.”

  “I think I may have seen her,” I said.

  “Fantastic! That must be an old ghost indeed. What did she look like?”

  I tried my best to describe her—tall, her eyes large and dark, her face stern, her arms strong. Grant drank in every detail, down to the beadwork, and I'm pretty sure he was taking notes.

  When I finally extricated myself from that phone call, I told Stacey it was time to get moving.

  “I thought it was time for second sleep,” she complained.

  “It's to make a road trip,” I said. “Wear something you don't mind getting a little dirty.”

  “Sounds exciting,” Stacey said. “Can we get breakfast first, dirty second?”

  “That's probably a good order to do it in,” I said.

  We had breakfast at a spot in Blairsville called Cook's Country Kitchen. Then it was time to go “grave diving”—a term Stacey used, not me.

  We drove to the nearby Owltown Cemetery, a small, pastoral sort of place, no fence or walls, just some scattered trees for shade.

  The preacher had an economy-class grave marker, a little concrete rectangle on the ground offering the least amount of information it could without actually being blank: Carmody 1929. Nobody had lavished money on that one. While many of the graves were new enough to have fresh flowers from visitors, Reverend Carmody's grave lay forgotten under a juniper tree whose base had widened enough to almost cover the marker. Dandelions and wildflowers grew around the marker's edges.

  “Here we are, but what about the guy?” Stacey nodded at the gardener; we'd been unlucky enough to show up while the graveyard was being mowed. The guy had a wagon full of tools, too, like he expected to do some up-close trimming and weeding afterward, really making a day of it.

  “He doesn't look like he's going anywhere for a while,” I said.

  We were here to collect soil from Carmody's grave, but the gardener, a portly, sweaty man in his mid-fifties, kept squinting at us from under his straw hat. He could surely tell we were from out of town and seemed unsure as to whether he cared for our presence in his domain of the dead. He probably thought we were up to something suspicious. He wasn't wrong.

  “Okay, you kneel there and block his view,” I whispered.

  Stacey nodded. We got into position, then waited for the gardener to turn his back to us as he started mowing in the opposite direction. There was nothing to stop him from looking over his shoulder, though, to check whether we were trying to desecrate the little graveyard. Which we kind of were, but only a little bit.

  As soon as he turned away, I brought out a small mason jar and a plastic spoon from Cook's Country Kitchen. A trowel would have been more convenient and much faster, but we don't typically carry gardening supplies in the van. Shovels, sometimes, but not trowels.

  “Ugh,” I grunted, fighting tough, hard-packed soil. I scraped up earth from around the edges of Carmody's marker, hacking clover and tiny wildflowers at the roots.

  The lawnmower stopped abruptly.

  “Are you sure you're blocking me?” I whispered. Stacey squatted on the other side of the marker from me; behind her, I could see the gardener. He walked toward us, brushing his gloves together to knock off dirt and grass clippings. He was coming much too fast—not running, but he had a long stride, so he could possibly walk at a slow gait yet still manage to outrun us, like Jason from the Friday the 13th movies.

  “Let's go.” I stood up quickly. I couldn't really hide the jar—it was a warm day and I wasn't wearing my jacket. When I jammed the plastic spoon into my jeans pocket, the head of it snapped off and fell to the ground. I hurried to grab it up so we wouldn't leave litter behind, which delayed us further.

  “What are y'all up to over here?” the gardener asked, striding closer like an undead serial killer who was totally confident his victims could never outrun him.

  “Heading out,” I said, backing away.

  “What's in your hand?” He pointed at the jar. Then he looked down at the grave marker and scowled, instantly seeing the spoon-width trench I'd dug alongside it. His eye for detail was getting us in trouble. “What kinda devilry is this?”

  “We were just, uh, you know...” I struggled to think of a story, then said, “Running away.”

  We turned and bolted toward the van.

  We clambered inside. I couldn't get the van started, even as the graveyard gardener advanced toward us, glaring, rapidly covering the distance between us with his long, deliberate, murderous strides. Okay, maybe they weren't really “murderous” but it felt that way in the moment.

  Finally, the van's engine sputtered to life. I stepped on the gas and we were off. In my sideview, I saw the gardener step out into the road, watching us depart with a glowering look on his face.

  “Well, that's one more graveyard we can never come back to.” Stacey took the jar from the cupholder where I'd placed it. “You think Carmody will respond to his own burial earth?”

  “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But the only personal possessions of his we can find will be in the lodge he already haunts, so those probably won't serve as much of a lure, either. Using an entity's burial earth might be pretty much an act of desperation, but here we are.” I put on speed, as much as the lethargic old van would allow. We still had much to do before nightfall.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Night fell. I thought I could smell rain in the air, but the forecast didn't call for any. Maybe it was just the natural mugginess of the campground.

  Stacey and I sat out in the van, monitoring the interior of the lodge. We'd set up the stamper in the most obvious spot, the attic bathroom where the preacher had died in the tub. It seemed to be his main lair.

  The ghost trap was baited with the dirt, clover, and tiny wildflowers that had been growing from Carmody's grave. To try to increase his potential interest in the trap, we'd added a picture from downstairs, a cataract-yellow photograph of Reverend Carmody and Laurie Ann in their campaign hats and khaki uniforms. A small candle burned near the top of the trap, which sometimes helped lure entities closer.

  Nothing happened for a long time.

  “Okay, so if he does take the bait, it'll be good when Carmody's ghost isn't clomping around anymore, but then what?” Stacey asked while we waited. “Will we try to trap Gwen an
d the three boys, too? Catch and release?”

  “Possibly, but that'll be difficult. It would be better to help them move on, but that means we have to go deeper. Confront the underlying thing that's binding them here.”

  “The Trailwalker.”

  “She's one candidate.”

  “But Ellie, if the Trailwalker's a thousand years old, and she's taken several lives that we know of... wouldn't that mean she's taken a lot of them over the years?” Stacey fidgeted, uncomfortable, but such was the seating in the back of the van. “That's a lot of time. And if she has that many souls—”

  “Then she's powerful. And dangerous.”

  We chewed on that quietly for a while. The entity had certainly been impressive, a tall and powerful warrior armed with an ax, her feet wrapped in decorative leather that must have enabled her to stalk silently through the wilderness, hunting men or beasts.

  Nothing stirred around the lodge except the cackling, hooting owls.

  I jumped when my phone rang at one in the morning. The phone number was the landline for the caretaker's cottage.

  “Hello?” I said, not sure who to expect.

  “I saw it again.” Allison sounded out of breath, panicky. “It was here.”

  “What did you see?”

  “It walked through my window again. The tall one. Like a tree.”

  “The Trailwalker. It's in your house now?”

  “No. I got up and followed it. I was scared, but my kids... Anyway, it walked past Shiloh's room, and past the boys, too. I lost sight of it. Then I saw it out the window, walking away down the trail.” She swallowed. “Toward the campground. Toward y'all. So keep an eye out.”

  “Okay. Thanks for the warning. Everybody's okay there? You checked on all three kids? Nobody's outside?” I was mostly worried that Nathan might be out wandering.

  “The kids are fine.”

  “Great. Thanks again. Are you going to be okay?”

  She sighed. “I don't know. I won't be going back to sleep anytime soon.”

  It wasn't long before the paranormal activity started in the lodge.

  We'd been focused on the ghost trap upstairs, with its candle flame dancing and beckoning. After such a quiet night, we were startled when the first crash sounded over the speaker.

  “The museum,” Stacey whispered, pointing to another monitor. The pedestal displaying the old stuffed owl had toppled over, rupturing the owl within; feathers and talons and glass were scattered all around. The dead owl wasn't much of a loss in itself, but whatever entity had pushed it possessed a dangerous level of psychokinetic energy.

  “Check the footage,” I said. Stacey pulled up the museum camera's last few minutes on her tablet.

  In the greenish monochrome hues of night vision, something skimmed past the dead owl display—a tiny, spherical orb, not much bigger than a marble, or a fingertip. The pedestal went crashing over. The orb continued on toward the archaeological section.

  Another crash sounded, this one over the real-time feed from the museum. On the live monitor, the top of the archaeological display had buckled, as though someone had struck it with a heavy invisible object. Like an ax.

  Glancing back at the ghost trap upstairs, I saw no activity at all.

  “I want a closer look.” I opened the door and dropped out of the van, even as a third smash rang out from the monitors.

  “It's not safe in there!” Stacey protested.

  “That's why we're using the buddy system tonight. Come on.”

  “Oh, right. Buddy system.” Stacey hopped out and followed me to the lodge.

  The lodge was chilly when we stepped through the front door. It only grew colder as we approached the museum.

  From inside the museum's closed door, we heard more banging and crashing.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Let's have a look.”

  I opened the door.

  Inside, the archaeological portion of the display shuddered as though a tiny earthquake trembled beneath it. Another invisible blow buckled the top of the display case buckled in another spot. The Plexiglas front of the display wobbled and vibrated as though something was pounding it repeatedly. It didn't shatter, though, which probably frustrated the unseen entity.

  A deep gouge appeared above the display, hacking into the wall Josh had only recently replaced and painted after finding it clawed to pieces, like so much of the lodge's interior.

  Another gouge ruptured the wall, and then a third, a fourth. The gouges looked as Allison had described the earlier damage, like the claw mark of a large bear. They appeared in quick succession, as if hacked by someone lashing out in frustration and anger, possibly trying to bring the ceiling down on all of us.

  The front of the display vibrated so much that the artifacts inside—the obsidian blade, the copper owl—blurred as the Plexiglas in front of them wobbled like a guitar string.

  An angry howl pierced the air, barely human, an expression of frustration and fury.

  I took Stacey by the arm and silently led her back and away from the museum to the big main room with the fireplace.

  “That's pretty weird,” Stacey whispered. She nodded back toward the museum as more crashing and howling sounded.

  “Yep.” I called Allison back on the landline. She picked up instantly.

  “What's happening?” she asked.

  “I believe the Trailwalker's back at the lodge. It's smashing the place up all over again. Can you tell me where to find the keys to the museum displays?”

  “My desk, top drawer on the left. Why?”

  “I'm trying to calm it down.” I ran to the office, then back to the little museum, Stacey at my back the whole time.

  The museum had fallen silent and still, the destruction ceased. I didn't think the entity had left, though—it was freezing cold in there, and I had a definite feeling of being watched as I tiptoed through the open doorway, gripping the keys like I was planning to use them as a weapon. Not that stabbing a ghost with a key would have any effect, unless maybe that particular ghost had a powerful emotional tie to that particular key.

  The archaeological display had taken the brunt of the entity's fury. The wall above it was damaged in a dozen places, and the top of the display had been splintered and broken.

  The Plexiglas front panes still held, though they dangled loosely from damaged hinges.

  Cautiously, I knelt on the floor, inserted the key into one of the locked panes and turned.

  “Ell...” Stacey's voice rushed out in a loud whisper, but she didn't need to say anything at all. I saw it.

  The dark shadow towered over us, ten or eleven feet tall with the branching antlers at the top, a profile more like a tree than a human. She might have been exaggerating her size; such things as size and appearance can be quite malleable to ghosts.

  If her intent was to strike fear, it was working. I could feel my heart jackhammering inside my chest as I looked up at the cold, dark, featureless shadow figure. It seemed to suck all the air, heat, and light out of the room.

  “You...” I could barely speak. I swallowed, trying to catch my breath in the suddenly thin and cold air. I made myself speak to the ancient entity. “You want your things back. Right?”

  It did not respond.

  “Okay. Reasonable enough.” Slowly, I eased open the front panel. It was supposed to swing open like a door, but two of its three hinges had been broken, so it just sort of dropped aside and hung there, crooked and loose.

  I reached in and withdrew a banglwedding ringe studded with little seashells.

  As I set it on the floor, the room turned colder.

  I removed one ancient item after another, laying them at the shadow figure's feet like a vassal paying tribute to an empress. An obsidian blade. A stone ax head. The silver piece etched with a simple beaver-or-badger design, the bronze plate with the owl scratched into it.

  When I'd set them all out, I crawled backward on my hands and knees, obsequious as a peasant before a pharaoh, before finally s
tanding. Stacey was close by my side. I could see her frosty breath in the dim room, illuminated only by light leaking in from the hallway outside.

  I checked to make sure I'd set out each item and nothing remained in the display case.

  “Okay?” I whispered, trembling, looking at the dark shape. “Those are yours. I understand. We can return them to the owl. We'll bury them for you.”

  The shadow-shape became more distinct, easing forward, and again we saw the fierce warrior woman, crowned in antlers, carrying an ax that strongly resembled the stone ax head from the case. Her version looked freshly polished and sharpened along its cutting edge, and decorated with paint.

  The entity held out an empty hand, palm down.

  On the floor, the artifacts trembled, moved by invisible ripples of psychokinetic energy.

  Her face was stoic, her large black eyes like painted rocks. She had not been alive in many, many centuries. She had the stillness of the long dead.

  Then her expression twisted into a mask of fury, teeth bared, lips curling back.

  An ear-splitting howl of rage filled the room.

  She vanished.

  Then it was like a bomb exploded. Shelves were blasted off the walls. The nature displays tore loose from their wall mounts and crashed to the floor. Light bulbs burst overhead.

  “We're out!” I screamed. Stacey and I bolted for the door and slammed it shut behind us, just as a rain of shattered glass and broken beads clattered against it.

  We ran through the lodge and didn't stop until we were outside, leaning against the familiar shape of the van, catching our breath, completely shocked.

  “Okay,” I said. “That could have gone a lot better.”

  My phone rang. Allison again, no doubt wanting an update.

  I took a deep breath, not quite sure how to explain what had just happened.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “This is even worse than when we first got here,” Josh said the next morning. He and Allison had come to survey the museum damage, leaving the boys to watch Shiloh. We had advised them to stay home and away from the lodge until daylight, and we'd taken that advice for ourselves, too.