by JL Bryan
“Noah and Luke?” I leaned over for a closer look. Those were the names of the invisible friends mentioned by Crane, our client’s seven-year-old son.
“Exactly. And this is just crazy. What are the odds of four people drowning in a pond at once? You’d think they’d suspect murder,” Stacey said.
“And this,” I said, and I read aloud: “‘Catherine’s husband, Isaiah, died tragically on December 26.’ We’d better find that obit. And any subsequent reports about these deaths.”
We searched forward and backward in time. Stacey quickly found the death notice for Isaiah Ridley, who “died unexpectedly and tragically at his home” the day after Christmas. He was described as a prominent attorney who’d been very involved in public life.
“What the duck?” Stacey asked, having been trained by her mother to avoid actual swearing. “What does that mean, unexpectedly and tragically?”
“It means the newspaper wanted to be discreet and was worried about damage to the family or their reputation,” I said. “Something happened they didn’t want to put into print.”
“Stupid tactful newspaper editors!” Stacey said.
“Let’s see what else we can find.”
Despite the strange, vague manner in which the newspaper initially described the family’s deaths, there were no follow-up articles to shed more light on what had happened. The closest we could find was a notice, two months after the wife and kids died, that the house had been put up for auction to pay debts and back taxes. The Ridley family must have had some financial trouble towards the end.
We kept digging, but found nothing else about their deaths, though we found other articles that mentioned Isaiah Ridley in connection with assorted legal actions by cotton and shipping concerns. He was also mentioned as a city council member at one point, as well as an investor in the Georgia Canal and Railroad Company, which quietly failed about a year before Isaiah’s death.
The genealogy librarian helped us find the family’s death certificates. Fortunately, they had been digitized, so there wasn’t a lot of digging around in old boxes and sneezing out dust. The librarian printed out paper copies for us, and we returned to our table to study them.
For Catherine Ridley and her three children, the cause of death was listed as “asphyxiation.” No huge surprise there, if they’d drowned in a pond. There was no additional information, though, no hint of why all four people had died at once.
Isaiah’s death certificate offered a new tidbit of information. His cause of death was given as “gunshot.”
“What?” Stacey asked. “If he was murdered, the papers would have said something about it, right?”
“Right. But the newspaper chose to be discreet instead...so I’m guessing it was suicide,” I said.
“Oh, that could make sense. So maybe he loses all his money on this bankrupt railroad company, then he shoots himself on the day after Christmas.” Stacey shook her head. “That’s always kind of a depressing day, anyway, am I right?”
“It all fits, but the real mystery is the wife and kids.”
“Do you think...” Stacey glanced around the library, which had few patrons at the moment, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “Do you think his ghost killed them? Like drowned them in the pond somehow?”
“I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions,” I said. “People who commit suicide are turning their violence inward, not lashing out at other people. Why would he want to return from the grave and murder his entire family?”
“Maybe he was crazed,” Stacey said. “Maybe it was like one of those murder-suicide cases, only he got the order wrong.”
“Maybe,” I said. Stacey’s theory didn’t sound very compelling to me, but I understood that she was just trying to glue together the random pieces of data we’d uncovered so far.
“Then what do you think happened?” she asked.
“I don’t have any idea. We’re going to have to dig a little deeper.”
Stacey sighed. The historical research clearly bored her—she was much more about finding the ghosts in person and capturing their images and sounds. Long hours at the library made her fidgety.
“Let’s stop for lunch,” I suggested.
“Great idea!” Stacey leaped to her feet so fast the chair toppled back behind her. As she picked it up, she said, “Can we go to Butterhead Greens Cafe? It’s right down the block and they have this great quinoa salad.”
“I’ve been there. I’m not that into quinoa, though.”
I dropped our little stack of printouts and photocopies into a folder as we walked toward the exit. It was a miserably thin stack, without much evidence for our case.
As we strolled up the sidewalk, shaded from the pounding summer sun by ancient oaks dripping with Spanish moss, I took out my cell phone and called Grant Patterson, one of my boss’s old friends and a fellow at the Savannah Historical Association. Grant is a semi-if-not-mostly retired attorney, though he’s only fifty-two, with a passion for history and finely tailored suits. He’s the confirmed bachelor scion of an old banking and shipping family. His specialty is sordid gossip from our city’s long and sometimes dark history, which makes him valuable when we’re investigating old murders and mysterious deaths.
“Tell me the restless undead are marching up River Street,” he said when he answered the phone. “We could all use a little excitement.”
“Nothing that big, unfortunately,” I said. “Can you check up something in the Historical Association archives for me?”
“I hope you don’t mean today,” Grant replied. “It’s nearly the cocktail hour.”
“I’ve got two p.m.”
“Precisely. What long-forgotten horror will we be exploring this time?”
“The Ridley family,” I said. “Five of them died within two weeks of each other. Two parents, three children. Ever heard of them?”
“I have not. How did they die?”
“The father, Isaiah, died of a gunshot the day after Christmas. The papers didn’t report the manner of death, and they didn’t call it a murder.”
“Suicide,” Grant murmured.
“That’s what we’re thinking. Apparently the mom and kids all drowned together in a pond on the property not long after that.”
“How strange. Were they murdered?”
“That’s what we need you to figure out,” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, and it was like the newspaper didn’t want to publicize the details. It sounds like Isaiah was kind of prominent in town, so maybe they were trying to protect his family’s reputation.”
“This sounds scandalous,” Grant said. “How interesting. Let’s have the details, dear, and I’ll see what I can turn up for you.”
I gave him the address of our clients’ home and all the names of the family members and the dates of their deaths—everything we’d found so far.
“Any idea of when you can have something for us?” I asked.
“So impatient! I’ll have what I have when I have it, and not a moment before.”
“Tomorrow?” I suggested.
“Working on a Saturday violates my most treasured values and beliefs,” Grant replied, “But I may make an exception for you, Ellie.”
“Thank you, Grant.”
By this point, Stacey and I had reached the cafe, which occupied the first floor of an old house on Bull Street. The cafe was painted an eye-catching solid black with screaming green trim at the windows and doors, which made it stand out in a neighborhood defined by the massive brick Savannah College of Art and Design building across the street, two blocks wide and surrounded by old trees. The customers were largely students—at twenty-six, I felt a little old for the crowd, but Stacey was four years younger and fit right in.
I ate a big, fancy salad with blue cheese, avocado, and almonds, while Stacey had her quinoa and again offered to try and spice up my love life, nodding at a cute college boy eating a grilled chicken sandwich at another table, a boy she claimed to know. I considered it—the guy
was cute—but I declined Stacey’s offer. For the moment, anyway.
Then we each went home to rest so we could stay up all night. It was time to see the ghosts for ourselves.
Chapter Five
We returned to the Paulding home on Friday evening, about an hour before sunset. Stacey and I had only had time for quick naps at our respective apartments, so we picked up some potent, espresso-laced coffee from Goose Feathers Cafe.
A big downside to this job is the hours—you spend a lot of time at libraries and archives, which are open during the day and close early, and a lot of time doing overnight observations at haunted houses. Sometimes I’ll find myself awake for twenty-four or forty-eight hours at a clip, especially when there’s a dangerous ghost involved and I’m worried about my clients. So coffee is pretty critical to my existence.
Stacey and I sat with Gord and Toolie in the first-floor living room that was cluttered and overfurnished with its accumulation of antique divans, settees, and other fancy sorts of sofas and chairs. The late-in-the-day sunlight through the tall back windows painted everyone a bloody shade of orange, like a gentle omen of death for us all. The two kids were upstairs, presumably occupied with their tablets, phones, and televisions.
Toolie had set out cups of iced tea and a plate of some really great chocolate chip cookies for us. There’s no greater hospitality than offering your guests chocolate.
“We found a number of deaths over the years,” I told them, catching them up on our research. “You expect that with a house this old. One family in particular interested me.” I quickly filled them in on Isaiah Ridley’s probable suicide and the as-yet-unexplained deaths of his wife and three children two weeks later.
Not surprisingly, they had a visible reaction when I told them the names of Ridley’s two boys, Noah and Luke. Toolie flinched in her overstuffed brocaded armchair, while Gord’s eyes widened and he gasped noisily through his oxygen tubes.
“Crane’s invisible friends,” Toolie whispered.
“The boys’ ages were twelve and ten when they died,” I said. “Does that match Crane’s friends?”
“He does say they’re...older boys,” Gord said.
“Did he have those invisible friends prior to moving here?” I asked.
“No,” Toolie said, and Gord shook his head. “They showed up right after Crane’s sixth birthday. We’d just moved here, and we didn’t know any kids to invite for him, so it was just his parents and his sister for his little party. Kind of sad. We figured he made up his invisible friends because of that.”
“But you think...they’re real,” Gord said.
“That’s the reason we’re looking at the Ridley family in particular,” I said. “That, and the drownings. Ghosts are obsessed with their own deaths. Your constant water problems could be related to that.” I glanced up at the green stains on the living room ceiling.
“So we have two ghosts,” Toolie said.
“At least two,” I said. “We should have much more information after tonight, but there’s still the possibility of a poltergeist with your daughter, Juniper. Young people tend to create them in times of high stress, and when the house is already haunted, the psychically charged atmosphere makes it easier for them to generate a poltergeist. It’s all unconscious and unintentional, of course. The young person has no idea that she’s created it and is continuing to feed it. Did you speak to her about the ESP tests?”
“Yes...” Toolie said, but her tone didn’t exactly fill me with hope.
“What did she say?” I asked, after it was apparent Toolie wasn’t going to continue on her own.
“She didn’t seem to like the idea,” Toolie said. “She says ‘no’ to just about anything I ask her to do these days, though. She wasn’t always like that. Even a year ago, she was still a sweet little...” Toolie shook her head.
“Maybe I can speak with her, Mrs. Paulding,” Stacey said. “I’m good with kids, and I’m not that much older than Juniper.”
“Yeah, you guys can talk boy bands together,” I said, and Stacey gave me a subtle annoyed look, narrowing her eyes just slightly.
“You may as well try, but she’s stubborn as a mule in quicksand, like my daddy used to say.” Toolie snorted. “He was usually saying it about Momma. Maybe Juniper inherited that.”
“We’ll speak to her,” I said. “There are a couple of other interesting deaths. A woman drowned in an upstairs bathtub in 1915. Her name was Mathilda Knowles. I gather the Knowles family eventually sold it to your cousin’s folks, Mrs. Paulding. She wasn’t that old, only about forty-five and in good health, as far as we could tell. Since there’s the connection with water again, we’re going to look more closely at her, but I think the Ridley family ghosts are probably the main issue here.”
“This certainly is interesting,” Toolie said. “Do you think the boys are the ones messing around with the games and the TV?”
“It’s possible. We’ll set up cameras in here tonight.” I gestured toward the antique cupboard housing the board games. “Maybe we’ll pull some items out to try and draw their attention. We’ll need cameras in several places, upstairs and down...if y’all don’t mind, we should probably get started with our set-up. Unless you have other questions?”
Gord and Toolie looked at each other.
“I’m sure we have a thousand,” Toolie said. “But I wouldn’t know where to start, so go on and do what you need to do.”
“Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Paulding,” I said, and Gord gave us a worried frown as we stood up and walked out toward the van.
We started downstairs, positioning thermal and night vision video cameras in the living room so we could see the game cupboard and the phonograph. Stacey set up a high-sensitivity microphone in the middle of the room, on a rosewood end table crammed between two hefty old chairs with wide wings and high backs.
We stuck a thermal camera in the downstairs powder room to watch the sink, which frequently turned itself on at night. Most of the reported activity was upstairs, though, so we concentrated our gear up there.
Thermal and night vision cameras went into the cold, unpleasant-feeling crafts room at the front of the second story, where Toolie had seen the dark apparition. My skin crawled in that room, and I thought about how she’d described it—the tall male figure staring at her, silent and unmoving, and then the door suddenly slamming itself closed.
The crafts room was full of cardboard boxes as well as the dusty sewing machine and its forgotten shelves of beads and cloth. I opened a few cabinet doors, which were as big as regular doors between rooms, and found most of them crammed full of assorted junk, too. I didn’t know how the family could stand living in a house so cluttered, but I supposed it wasn’t their stuff in the first place, so they weren’t free to throw anything out.
I tried the doors to the front balcony, but they didn’t budge. It was strange how a room could have so many big windows yet remain so dim. That’s a haunted house for you.
Stacey and I were happy to get out of that room as quickly as possible.
We placed another night vision camera in the hall, angled to watch the sink in one of the bathrooms.
“What’s next?” Stacey glanced down the intersecting hall at the closed door to Juniper’s room, from which more harsh, angry music leaked out. Our options were to go talk to the moody teenage girl or go set up in the creepy attic where Toolie had heard strange thumps, crashes, and footsteps.
“The attic,” I said. “It sounds easier than talking to the girl.”
The door to the attic steps creaked as we opened it. I felt around the dim wall until I found the light switch, then I flipped it.
Nothing happened for a moment. Then there was a crackling sound, and a little weak yellow light glowed overhead. I turned on my high-powered tactical flashlight to ward off any curious ghosts. A concentrated three-thousand-lumen beam will send pesky spirits back into the shadows, but it doesn’t hurt them, and it certainly doesn’t help you capture them. Still, you shou
ld never go into a haunted old attic without one.
I led the way up the stairs, built in the uncomfortably steep and narrow fashion of the olden days. It was better than climbing a ladder, though. It’s hard to run for your life down a ladder.
The attic was gloomy and spacious, a musty wooden cavern full of dust and spiderwebs. Three bare bulbs spaced along the ceiling gave a little light, but one was buzzing and flickering, like it would burn out at any moment or explode and rain glass and sparks on our heads, if we were really lucky.
Heavy timbers crisscrossed the attic at steep angles, many of them conveniently positioned right at head-bashing height. Stacey and I had to duck under them as we explored the attic. First we passed through a couple of holiday areas, including a big plastic tree with a string of lights still tangled in it, next to a grinning, life-size stuffed Santa Claus with his mitten raised in greeting. One of Santa’s glass eyes was missing, giving him a freakish pirate look. Our flashlights found Easter baskets still packed with plastic green grass, then a box overflowing with Halloween masks and plastic kid’s costumes.
Ghosts like attics and basements for several reasons. For one thing, those areas are usually left dark, quiet, and deserted most of the time, so they can obsess over their issues undisturbed.
Another reason, though, is that the attic, the basement, the storage crawlspace, sometimes the garage, are like the house’s subconscious. We store away the seasonal items, and we store all the things we don’t really need but can’t throw away because we feel too attached to them. Ghosts are drawn to those accumulated geological layers of memory and meaning. They’re emotional beings more than rational ones.
“See anything?” Stacey whispered. We’d reached an area of deeper storage, with dust-coated antique furniture, a grandfather clock with a broken face, and wooden crates full of who-knows-what. Old wooden pull toys and puppets were heaped in one corner, along with a rickety rocking horse and a tricycle with a rusty seat promising tetanus to any child who sat upon it.