by J L Bryan
“They say this was the throne of the Indian king, many centuries ago,” Ryan said. “From here he would rule the local tribes. If anyone displeased him, they'd be thrown into the Bottomless Abyss back there. And when the sun landed directly on the throne, they believed that was the gods infusing the king with power.”
“Okay,” I said. “That sounds nothing like actual Cherokee history, politics, or religious beliefs.”
“It's just a local legend.”
“After looking at your uncle's artifacts from Atlantis, I'm going out on a limb and guessing he made it up himself.”
“The spirits of the old Indian kings won't like hearing you saying that.”
“They didn't have kings. Is there anything else down here?”
“Nothing that's part of the official tour,” Ryan said. “Just blocked-off old tunnels.”
“I'll go back upstairs and get to work, then,” I said. “Maybe my cameras picked up something in the museum last night.”
“Yeah, I should probably check and make sure my kids aren't tearing each other apart yet, anyway.”
We started our climb from the underground caves into the light above.
Chapter Eighteen
Upstairs, it was definitely Christmas Eve. Lights blinked on the tree, among ornaments handmade from construction paper and pipe cleaners. Four small, clumsily wrapped presents were tucked under it, one for each kid, plus one for “Dad” from “Penny & Polly.”
The three kids were fighting when we arrived.
“We're doing our band!” Penny yelled at Ronan, who sat on the couch with a game controller in his hand. Penny held a small guitar, while Polly sat on the armchair with a keyboard across her lap. Penny rounded on Ryan as soon as we entered. “Dad, tell him we can't hear our music with his stupid game on.”
“Your music stinks!” Ronan yelled back. “It stinks like a dead skunk. That never took a bath even once.”
“Dad!” Penny shouted. “Ronan says our music stinks like a dead skunk!”
“I know, I'm standing in the room with you,” Ryan said. “Ronan, you spend too much time on the video games anyway, so pause it—”
“You always take their side!” the boy shouted.
“I will always take the side of you kids making music instead of playing video games. Why don't you pause it and play with them? You can grab your drums.”
“No!” Penny and Polly both said, looking offended at the idea.
“You ask for parental intervention, you get a parental solution,” Ryan said. “Either you let your brother join you, or you put the instruments down and start on your chores for today. There's dusting, vacuuming, laundry...”
“Okay, I guess he can play with us,” Penny said. “As long as he doesn't play too loud.”
“He always plays too loud,” Polly whispered.
“Ronan, remember what we said about drums overwhelming the other—Ronan, pause it. Pause it!”
The boy grunted and paused the game, then looked at his father impatiently. “What do I have to do now?”
“Play your drum with your sisters.”
“I don't want to!”
“He doesn't even want to!” Penny said.
While Ryan focused on his arguing kids, I did my best to ignore them all and finish the set-up I'd begun the previous afternoon. I placed a couple of cameras in the hallway where Ryan had seen the lizard-man—or maybe the “Snake Man” whose hand was downstairs, but I didn't want to jump to conclusions. Seemed kind of obvious, though.
I set up a thermal and night vision camera in Ronan's room, where the lizard-thing had crawled on his walls, sometimes taking the form of a man.
Finally, I started setting up cameras and the most sensitive microphone I had inside the girls' room.
Though I was working alone, I started to feel like someone was watching me, a feeling I've learned not to ignore. I turned to look.
I might have expected Amil, the dead boy in the white and purple robe, but instead it was one of the twins. Polly, I guessed by her pastel pink t-shirt and her nervous silence.
“Hi,” I said. “Did your dad tell you why I'm setting these up?”
She nodded.
“I'm almost done,” I said. “Hopefully these won't be here more than a few days. Then I'll be out of your way.”
“Are you...?” She bit her lip.
“What's wrong? You can ask me anything.”
“Are you really here to get rid of Amil? Penny says you will.”
“I'm here to find out if there's anything dangerous in your house,” I said. “Like what your brother is seeing. There might not be any danger at all, but that's what I'm here to find out.”
“Amil isn't dangerous,” Polly said. “But...” She chewed her lip and looked over her shoulder into the hall, as though afraid someone would hear her. “Amil is afraid of the others.”
“Who are the others?” I asked, extremely interested to hear what she meant by that.
“The others down below,” she said. “They hang around the museum at night. They're scary. And they're mean to Amil.”
“Have you seen them?”
“A little. And heard them.” Her quiet whisper grew even quieter. “My sister doesn't, not like me. She gets mad because I can see Amil better than she can. And hear him.” She blushed crimson.
“You really like him, don't you?”
Polly nodded.
I took a breath, trying to figure out how to explain my concerns to her. “Here's the thing, though. He might be what he seems. Or he might not be. Sometimes, these...entities...”
“Entities?” Polly frowned.
“Ghosts,” I said. “That could be what you're seeing—”
“I know,” Polly said. “I know Amil's not really alive. Not anymore.”
“Okay. Well, sometimes they can present themselves as nicer and friendlier than they really are.”
“He really is nice, though. Nicer than my sister or brother. And I think he likes me better than Penny.” She blushed again. “I don't want him to leave. I don't want him to go away.”
“I know, but be careful,” I said. “I had a case once where a pair of boy ghosts made friends with a boy who was alive, only to convince him to join them.”
“Join them how?”
“By killing himself.” I remembered following seven-year-old Crane out onto the roof of his home in the pounding rain, high above a brick walkway that didn't offer much of a soft landing. “They acted like they were his friends, but really they wanted to hurt him. I don't want that to happen to any of you.”
She frowned. “Just like Muncie Deyhoff.”
“Who?”
“At my old school. Muncie invited us to her dumb party, but then she sat there with her friends and made fun of us for being twins. Like they asked a bunch of mean questions. And called us freaks and said we should be in a freak show. And they wanted to know whether one of us can feel it if the other one got hurt. So they pinched us. And Muncie stomped on my foot.”
“I'm sorry. That sounds terrible.” I patted her shoulder awkwardly, feeling sorry for her.
Polly made things far more awkward by taking this as an opening to embrace me and press her face against my chest. A moment later, she was sobbing, and I didn't know what else to do except hug her back. Which made her hug me tighter. It was a real downward spiral.
“They always make fun of us,” Polly murmured against my clothes. Poor kid. “They always say we're the weirdest freakos.”
“I'm sorry.” I flailed around inside my head for something to say. “You're in middle school, right?”
“Yeah. Sixth grade.”
“That's harsh. Kids made fun of me all the time then, too.”
“For what? There's nothing wrong with you.” She pulled back, sniffing, and looked me over carefully, as if searching for flaws.
“There's plenty wrong with me,” I said, laughing a little, but I guess she didn't appreciate my self-deprecating move there. “But they made
fun of me for anything. Because my glasses were thick. Because I was always reading a book. Because my mom bought me some incredibly uncool shoes once. These things looked like donkey feet.”
Polly burst out laughing, and I felt relieved. Maybe my management of the situation hadn't quite scarred her for life.
“Polly! Where are you?” Penny shouted, stomping up the hall. “We're supposed to have band practice!”
“I better go,” Polly whispered, then suddenly hugged me again. “You're so nice. You're like a mom.”
She ran off, leaving me alone with that extremely uncomfortable and certainly inaccurate comment. I was glad I didn't have to respond to it.
I tried to remember what it was like to be eleven. That was across the great dividing gulf of my life, which had been my parents' death. Age eleven was solidly on the happier, brighter side of that divide. A childhood of softball practice and weekends at the beach with Mom and Dad. I'd been in sixth grade, with a serious crush on Kenny Dortman, who sat in front of me in English. He'd had a nice smile and some nice back muscles I'd wanted to reach out and caress. He'd been my first crush, something I'd felt with an intensity that seemed world-changing at the time, for at least a couple of month, until I saw him and his friends throwing rocks at a squirrel and I'd hit him with my bookbag.
There was a good possibility that the young boy ghost that Penny and Polly were seeing would turn out to be even worse than Kenny Dortman had, with plans more evil than harming cute tree-dwelling mammals for fun.
I hurried to finish my work.
Chapter Nineteen
Out in the living room, Ryan seemed to have momentarily settled all conflicts by making some buttery-smelling popcorn and playing the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on TV.
“Which one is this?” I asked. “The original or the sequels?”
“What sequels?” Ronan asked. Behind him, Ryan was shaking his head vigorously for me to stop.
“Oh, there's a couple. Like Rudolph's New Year. With Baby New Year?”
“Seriously?” Ronan looked awed, like I'd just revealed a major secret of the universe to him. “There's more Rudolph movies?”
Behind him, Ryan shook his head and slumped in defeat. Because he knew what I knew—
“They stink,” Penny said. “They all stink except for the first one.”
“I want to see them!” Ronan said, either not believing her or not caring. He still had his whole life ahead to learn just how disappointing movie sequels can be.
“Well, I'm heading back to my hotel for a while,” I said. “I'll examine the footage we collected last night. And I can come back later for an overnight observation, if that works for you.”
“You're spending the night?” Polly asked.
“You can't stay up past bedtime or Santa won't come,” Ronan hurried to tell me. He eyeballed my camera warily. “And Santa doesn't like it when people try to take pictures of him. Not unless they pay the elves twenty bucks first.”
“I'll keep that in mind, I promise,” I said. “I won't scare Santa off.”
“And don't eat his cookies and milk,” Ronan said. “Or he'll think we don't like him.”
“You got it.” I glanced at the wide stone fireplace with its smoke-blackened interior. Plenty of room for a chubby old elf with a sack full of toys. I recalled it was going to be below freezing all night. “Ryan, do you mind if I set up an observation center inside somewhere? Normally I can use the van for that, but normally I'm working in a warmer climate.”
“You want to use my uncle's old bedroom?” He pointed down the hall. “It's a little cluttered, but I can clear it out.”
“No, thanks,” I said, really quickly. I didn't want to be spending the night in the apartment. I wasn't worried about the ghost of Snake Man, either; I was worried about Polly tiptoeing down the hall for some more social bonding. She was a perfectly nice kid, but clearly had profound emotional needs that I couldn't begin to stick around and fulfill. I was hoping to be home by New Year's. The kids had suffered losses. I couldn't fix that. All I could do was my job; keep them safe, remove any threats. Then go home.
On top of that, I can't say the words my uncle's old bedroom really sounded appealing.
“I was thinking one of those old offices on the second floor,” I told Ryan.
“Sure. Come on, I'll help you out.”
“I want to go, too,” Polly said.
“Stay here, girls,” Ryan said. “Watch your brother.”
We returned down through the hidden stairs behind the bookshelf.
“This is probably your best bet.” Ryan opened a door to an office with a fairly large pile of boxes and clutter in one corner. A dusty desk and chair were pushed against one wall. “Electricity works fine.” He jiggled the light switch, and the overhead eventually came on.
“I couldn't ask for more,” I said. “Unless it was wi-fi.”
“The password is ILOVECHORES33,” he said. “That was yesterday's secret password. Which the girls were told only as a reward for sweeping and mopping.”
“So it's an incentive program.”
“Exactly.”
I took a breath. “It seems challenging. I mean, I worry about my cat, and realistically he's just at home snoring on my pillow. I don't have to, you know...”
“Prepare him for adult life?”
“Right. He's never going to be ready for that.”
Ryan laughed. “Let's get this place livable for you.”
He was a big help, and quick. In just a few minutes, the old clutter was gone, the room reasonably cleared, swept, dusted. It didn't look brand new, or anything like it, but it wasn't nearly so creepy. There was even daylight from the window, but like most of the windows, it was high on the wall, horizontal, and narrow. Old Uncle Leydan wouldn't want anything to penetrate the gloom.
I'd seen images of the man back in the office—a somewhat wacky-looking bug-eyed man in the 1960s who'd grown ever more eccentric, to the point where he sported an extra-long beard and striped stove pipe hat, calling himself “Dr. Weirdman.” Between that and his collection of dead animals, it was not hard to see how the guy had managed to stay single his whole life.
Ryan, on the other hand, definitely had his appeal. He wasn't going to remain single forever. Well, unless he showed his dates around the dead-baby aquarium.
“I've got it from here,” I told him, after we'd moved in some gear from the car. “I'll just wire everything up and get going.”
He looked out over my array of laptops, tablets, and small monitors removed from the van, and the coils of cable meant to connect them all into a big mess.
“I can take it from here,” I said, in case that somehow hadn't been clear enough. “You can go on back to your family.”
“Yeah...” He rubbed the back of his head and looked out the window. Delaying. But why?
“Is there a problem?”
“Well, just...what does this kind of thing cost, typically?”
“It usually depends on how long it takes,” I said. “Especially with out-of-town expenses like hotel and meals.”
“Right. Of course.” He rubbed his temples. Of course, he'd already told me about the financial strain he was under.
“We have done a sliding scale for people in distress,” I said. “And we can talk about financing, if the bill gets too large...”
He nodded. “I can tell you already it'll be too large. Just with the hotel, probably.”
“I promise I'm not staying anywhere expensive.”
“I don't think we could afford a room at the Motor Shack by the interstate.”
I was at a loss. “I have a couple more people planning to come after Christmas, too.”
“Maybe we should cut this short,” he said. “Can you just give me some advice about how to deal with all this?”
“Not without knowing more details about the case.”
“I can't even say whether I'm more worried about the Ghost of Snake Man or that boy ghost. I know
the girls don't seem afraid of it, but...that worries me more. Being afraid is a normal reaction to the things we've been seeing. But they seem...”
“Enamored?”
“Yeah. I mean, of a dead boy? That's what he is, isn't he?”
“If he's a ghost, then yes, he's the remnant consciousness of someone who has died. But that doesn't mean he was a boy when he died.”
“What?” This possibility seemed to bother him pretty heavily, as it should have. “What do you mean?”
“He could have been someone who lived to be an adult, but identifies with the childhood portion of his life,” I said. “Or he could be deliberately presenting himself as a child to gain the trust of your children.”
“That's...awful.” Ryan was going pale. “I mean, I figured it was imaginary at first...and since I saw Snake Man, I've started thinking maybe a kid ghost, but...the idea that it's a dead man pretending to be a boy?” He shook his head. “I didn't realize there was an even more disturbing third option here. That makes me want...want to...”
“We don't know anything for sure,” I said. “I need to dig into the history of the area. Find an identity for Snake Man and for any kids who've died in the area. Maybe someone will fit the description.” I frowned. “Amil. That can't be a very common name. I wonder if they're hearing it correctly.” I looked it up on my phone. “The name origin is Arabic. Or Hindu. That kind of fits with the physical description Polly gave. Darker hair and eyes, right?”
“I doubt there have been a lot of people from India or the Middle East who've lived in this part of the Appalachians. Or any part of the Appalachians.”
“That should make at least part of my research easier,” I said. “I'm sure I won't be able to get to the local library or courthouse records until after Christmas. Maybe I'll have an even clearer idea of what I'm looking for by then.”
He nodded. “I guess you'll just have to run up a tab for now. Hopefully I can get this place open and making money again soon...or even better, sell it...if I can find someone as crazy as Uncle Leydan, willing to sink a chunk of money into this ridiculous place.”