by J L Bryan
“Oh, yeah. Me and my pack of friends. We're going to party it up.”
“Well, the invitation stands. Good evening, Ellie.”
Inside, Bicycle Shorts and her equally hot friend stood close to Michael's table, talking to each other but stealing glances at him. Michael was pouring his attention into his phone like it was full of the lost secrets of the universe.
“Everything okay with Grant?” Michael asked as I sat down.
“He's got a case for me. Everything okay in here?” I tossed a glare at Bicycle Shorts, who smirked as she looked me over, but moved away from Michael. A little.
“It's a little crowded. Maybe we should go,” he said.
“Not until I finish killing these Greek tacos,” I said. My phone chimed as the potential client's contact information came in. Bicycle Shorts looked over at us again, as if sizing me up. Why couldn't she ride off somewhere?
“What's with the case?”
“Some kind of oddities museum, it sounds like. Way up in the mountains.” I looked at my phone. “Foxboro, Tennessee.”
“You're kidding. Not the Monster Museum?”
“That...sounds like the place. You know it?”
“I've been there once. My mom took us up to Foxboro a few times. Usually for a couple days during Christmas. It's a goofy tourist kind of town. For those who find Branson too expensive and Gatlinburg too upscale—which was definitely my mom, because she struggled to pay the bills after our dad left. We were lucky they have vacation destinations for people on our budget. They had a Christmas parade, Santa village, guys who could ride a unicycle while eating fire...I'm not sure what that has to do with Christmas, but it was pretty cool. When I was a kid.”
I grimaced. I don't like any situation where people play with fire. That's not entertaining to me at all.
“Anyway, it's pretty corny, but some of our happiest family memories are from there,” Michael said. “And happy days were hard to come by.”
“I'll give this guy a call.” I stuffed the last bit of taco into my mouth and stood. “Looks like I'll need a coffee to go. A tall one.”
Bicycle Shorts scowled at us as we walked out together.
Chapter Four
“Thanks for calling me back,” Ryan Aberdeen said when he answered the phone. “I left a couple of messages at your office. My kids are freaking out.”
“Can you give me an idea of what you're experiencing?” I was walking back through the park, under the branches full of soft white lights, Michael at my side.
“We only moved in a couple of months ago,” the man said. He sounded strained, like someone who'd spent a lot of time worrying and not much resting. “It started pretty soon after, but I didn't know...I didn't realize...it's really bad. My son's scared. My daughters are...acting strange. I saw it myself, too. Solid one minute, gone the next.”
“What did you see?”
“A person. Until you looked closer, and saw it was dark green, with scales.”
“I'm sorry? Did you say 'scales'? Like a fish?” As I said this aloud, Michael turned and looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“I would have said like a snake. Some kind of reptile,” Ryan replied. “And it smelled like a swamp.”
“So...you saw a green person with scales?”
“It was in the shadows, but yeah. That was the sense I got of it. What I could see in the moonlight, around the edges...its skin was like a snake's.”
I felt my mouth open, but no words came out. My brain was fast-flipping through the countless articles and nonfiction (or supposedly nonfiction) books I'd read about ghosts. I couldn't come up with anything related to a snake-man.
“What was it doing?” I asked.
“Coming out of my son's room,” Ryan said. “It walked down the hall. Then it just disappeared. I would have thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but Ronnie was screaming about it. And the girls have had these problems. It feels threatening, but we're stuck living here for....” He sighed. “I don't know how long. You don't know anybody who wants to buy a run-down old freak show of a tourist trap, do you?”
“Not off the top of my head, sorry.”
“I know my uncle meant well by leaving us this place, after all our problems, and Paula's medical bills, but I kind of wish he hadn't. Sorry. I don't mean to unload on you.”
“That's fine, Mr. Aberdeen. I'll need extensive background on the property's history, anyway.”
“How soon can you get here? I know Savannah's a long drive, but my kids are terrified, and this is their first Christmas without their mom, and this place...this is no place for kids. Or anyone who isn't already most of the way out of their mind.”
“Okay. Some of my team is out of town for Christmas. Can we plan to come up, maybe a week from Monday?”
He was silent for a moment, then said, in a somewhat defeated voice, “Of course. Just please come as soon as you can.”
Now it was my turn to be silent, feeling worried. I've seen some dangerous ghosts in my time, and what he was describing bothered me.
“How old are your kids, Mr. Aberdeen?” I asked.
“Ronan's six,” he said. “And the girls are almost twelve. Twins.”
I took a breath. They were young, full of energy and life. If a parasitic ghost haunted the property, it would see them as a feast. The girls were also at an age where psychic sensitivity and abilities were most likely to manifest, if they had any, which would also bring the ghosts running like dogs to a dinner bell. Twins could sometimes be inclined toward psychic connections, I'd read, and my own twin cousins had sometimes seemed to share one.
“How soon can you get here?” he asked. “How soon can you start? Is there anything I can do?”
“Keep your lights on,” I said. “Most ghosts prefer dark areas. And music. Sacred music. That can help.” Mentally, I was doing the math. A week to get up there, just to get started...
...a week that I'd been planning to spend alone with my cat, possibly binging on whatever Netflix had to offer. Reading books on my super-tiny balcony. Looking through video footage for evidence of my paranormal stalker, who was acting less stalker-ish by the day, anyhow.
I looked at Michael. Maybe it wasn't shaping up to be such a lonely week after all.
“Mr. Aberdeen, did you say your uncle recently passed away?” I asked.
“Yeah. He was my great uncle, really. Grampers's brother. I didn't know him all that well, really, but I used to come to the museum every summer with my family. They found him in the museum, too. He'd been dead a few days. He'd had a heart attack. He was old, you know. Lived alone. Died doing what he loved, I guess.”
“Maybe I could come up early,” I said. “Get a start on things. Set up some gear while we wait for my team to catch up after the holiday.”
Michael grabbed my arm and shook his head, looking somewhere between afraid and angry. “Not by yourself,” he whispered.
“Oh, yeah, that would be great,” Ryan said, his voice coming out in a rush of relief. “I know a week doesn't sound like long, but the way things are going around here...anyway, great. Thank you. You're really saving us here.”
“Thanks. I'll go home and pack—”
Michael shook his head more fervently, gripping my arm.
“—I'll have to call you back, Mr. Aberdeen.” I hung up. “What is wrong with you?”
“With me? You're going to check out a case by yourself? That's not how you work, Ellie.”
“I'm not going to confront the ghost or try to trap it by myself,” I said. “I'm just putting up cameras and microphones. It takes forever. And I can start on historical background, hit the local library or newspaper archives...which is the part Stacey hates anyway—”
“But there's always a chance it could go wrong,” Michael said.
“I'm the professional here. I know what I'm doing. It's the grunt work. Sometimes it takes weeks just to identify the ghost.”
“Right.” He looked at me closely, his green eyes studying
mine. “I'll go with you.”
“No! Michael, not after the corn maze. I can't allow it. And Melissa wouldn't forgive me.”
“I'll bring her, too.”
“You're kidding.”
“So it's too dangerous for two or three of us, but perfectly safe for you alone?” he asked.
“This isn't your job. And I would never endanger your sister like that.”
“I'm only kidding. Half-kidding. How about this—Melissa and I head up to Foxboro ourselves, like when we were kids. One last Christmas together before she goes off to college. We just happen to stay in the same hotel as you. And if you need help—”
“I won't.”
“—if you need moral support and encouragement, or just someone to go ice skating with, we'll be there.”
I thought about it...and I found it appealing. “As long as Melissa isn't resentful that I'm involved.”
“She's seventeen. She's resentful when the sun comes up in the morning. But we'll have fun. It'll be good for all of us.”
“I still don't like the idea of you tagging along on an investigation.”
“Who's tagging along? I'm just going to see the bear family opening their presents.”
“The what?” I asked.
“You'll see.”'
Soon I was back home, going from what I'd expected to be a slow evening to a flurry of activity. My black cat, Bandit, watched indifferently from the sofa as I picked out clothes and other necessities for my trip. I would leave him with a week's worth of food and water and arranged a pet-setting service to come by after that if I wasn't home yet.
“I don't know how long I'll be gone, Bandit,” I said, petting him. He purred a little, then closed his eyes and snored, head drooping. “Yeah, I'll miss you, too. Don't worry about me. Just going to check a standard, everyday scaly green snake-man ghost...” I shook my head.
Then I opened my closet and pulled out my suitcase, which had only recently returned to the closet from the Atlanta job.
The ghost trap in the back, usually concealed behind the suitcase, caught my eye.
Dust had collected on the clear outer shell. Leaning forward, I peered through the dense metal mesh and into the thick leaded-glass inner jar.
A tiny wisp of cold fog floated inside.
Her name was Mati Price. In life, she'd worked as nurse for a family with three children...then poisoned the children and sung them to sleep as they died. As a ghost, her song had the power to command other ghosts and put them to sleep, and also gave her some power to entrance the living.
She'd been a monster in life, but I'd held onto her after capturing her, thinking that I could use her power to help me capture Anton's wandering ghost, who was bound to be difficult to trap.
Of course, I'd have to find Anton before I could hope to put any such plan in motion.
I considered calling Calvin back to let him know about the possible new case, but I knew he'd tell me to wait until Stacey and hopefully Jacob could join me. But I was doing what he'd wanted—getting out and spending time with other actual human beings, rather than going ahead with my own plans of sitting home watching that Christmas Story kid pursue his BB gun obsession over and over again.
Instead, I texted Stacey over in Montgomery, Alabama, several hours west of Savannah. Heading up to Foxboro, Tenn to check into possible case. I'll let you know if it looks like anything. There. She was informed of my whereabouts for the near future, and I'd downplayed it enough that she couldn't possibly have anything to worry about—
WHAT?!?! came her reply. You can't investigate a haunting alone.
Actually, I can, I typed back. But I'm not doing that. Just meeting client, getting the overview, maybe set up a little advance gear—
The phone blew up in my hand, ringing with Stacey's incoming voice call.
“Hey, I was in the middle of typing back to you,” I said. “That's called face-blasting. Making the phone ring in someone's face while they're texting.”
“It is?” she asked.
“Sure, why not?”
“Ellie, you aren't really doing anything by yourself, are you? Don't make me spend Christmas worrying about you. Wait until I get back.”
“I am waiting. Mostly. I expect you to come up and join me once you're done with all your family stuff. Bring Jacob if he's not busy or heading back to work.”
“He says this time of year is totally dead in the accounting world,” Stacey said. “But tax season is coming. He says it the way all those people on Game of Thrones used to say 'Winter is coming.' I don't think he'll be so available then. But, Ellie, I really want you to wait for us.”
“I won't do anything too heavy without you. The client sounds like he's having a real problem, and they'll all feel better once something's being done about it.”
“I thought you said it was just a 'possible' case,” Stacey said. “Now it's an emergency?”
“Probably not by our standards, but most people aren't accustomed to ghosts bothering them at night,” I said. “He has three kids, Stacey. They just moved there, and started having these experiences, and they're freaked out.”
“Ah, I get it now,” Stacey said. “You're worried that if you wait, even a few days, something terrible will happen to those kids. Something that, maybe, you could have stopped if you'd been there.”
“Well, that's true—” I had to admit Stacey understood how my mind worked.
“But that means you'd be running into danger by yourself,” Stacey said. “Which we all want to avoid. Right?”
“Better me than some innocent kids, though. Right?”
Stacey went quiet. What could she say to that? Nah, let the kids suffer?
“If you're really determined to do this,” she finally said, while letting out an exasperated sigh, “Just...be safe about it. And call me. Daily.”
“Okay.”
“What do you know about the entity so far?”
“Not much,” I said. I held back the freakish description of the ghost, unprecedented in my own experience; surely a little research would yield something in the paranormal journal, or at least in old lore. Few things in the universe are truly unprecedented, after all. “It's active at night, and it bothers the residents of the house.”
“Well, that certainly makes it different from all of our other cases,” Stacey said.
“There is one difference,” I said. “Michael and Melissa are coming with me.”
“What?” Her voice came ripping through my phone. Talk about a face blast. “How? When? What?”
“It just kind of fell together,” I said. “He's definitely not investigating with me, but apparently their family used to go to Foxboro. There's sentimental value for them. I was having dinner with Michael when I heard about the case.
“What?”
“I mean coffee. Lunch. Look, I'm just letting you know. I'll send updates. It's no big deal.”
“Sounds like a few big deals.”
“How's Jacob getting on with your family?”
“Um...well my dad's taking him deer hunting in the morning. So that should be interesting. I don't think Jacob's ever fired a gun.”
“Sounds like he's fitting right in.”
“You should watch him try to talk football with my uncles. He keeps dropping in Monty Python references. It's sad.”
“Maybe the conversation will eventually get around to something he likes,” I said.
“Medieval siege warfare? Tolkien? SETI?” Stacey snickered.
“Just try to keep him safe.”
“I'm doing my best. He did a great job horseback riding today.”
“Really?”
“No. It was kinda bad. But bruises heal, right?” Stacey took a breath. “Take care of yourself, Ellie. And keep me updated. Like, constantly.”
“I will.”
“I have a really bad feeling about this,” she added.
“Thanks for the encouragement.”
After I hung up, I resumed placing my folded stac
ks of clothing into my suitcase. The weather might have been mild here on the coast, not far from Florida and various tropical islands, but up in the Smokies, it was freezing, like Christmas is in all the movies. Maybe that was why Michael's mom had taken them up there, to give them a more Christmas-y Christmas.
It looked like we'd be having Christmas together this year...all of us orphans.
I stared back into the closet, at the cylindrical trap holding Mati Price. My pursuit of Anton Clay had been delayed again.
Chapter Five
Back at the office, I hurried through the task of preparing the van, going down our standard checklist, something Stacey and I usually did as a team to avoid overlooking anything. Our last case had also been a long way from home, so we'd already packed the van up with a variety of gear, and fortunately I hadn't unloaded it all yet.
I changed out a few batteries, did some other minor work, and the van was ready to go.
As I stepped out of the rear cargo door, I felt a chill.
The workshop was empty. I'd locked the doors since I was alone...but at the moment, I didn't feel alone.
The door to the front area was closed. The front door was locked, had been locked all day, so there was no way anyone could have come through there, not without setting off the burglar alarm.
There were other places where someone could be hiding, too. Stairs led down to the basement and up to Calvin's apartment. Even here in the workshop, there were a number of doors leading to cabinets and closets where someone could be hiding—
Stop, I told myself. I was just freaking myself out for no reason.
I took a deep breath, trying to settle my mind, while listening carefully. Maybe I'd just felt a draft, but it could also be a number of other things. Like the disgruntled ghosts of former cases. We try to keep the dangerous ones buried where no one will find them, but we don't catch them all.
I reached for my flashlight, but I wasn't wearing my utility belt. The workshop was well-lit enough, but that could change in an instant; some entities could knock out electrical systems, plunging a place into darkness. If you're really unlucky, the ghost will even feed on the electricity and make itself more powerful along the way. This was not much of a problem before the twentieth century, but a few entities have learned to do it. It was kind of an alarming trend, according to a couple of paranormal-journal articles I'd recently read.