by JL Bryan
Juniper helped us carry some of the gear upstairs to the crafts room—as I instructed, we didn’t say a word while inside the cold, unpleasant-feeling room. Stacey and I carried the big stamper upstairs. We set up the cumbersome, four-foot-high structure in the middle of the room, not far from the sewing machine. The stamper is a pneumatic device that sends the lid of the ghost trap down at high speed, sealing the top before the ghost has a chance to sneak back out. Usually.
We set it up in silence, with the same heavy feeling of something watching us from the cold shadows of the room. I slid the trap into place and checked my remote. The little liquid-crystal display screen on the remote told me the temperature and EMF reading inside the trap. They matched the rest of the room—inexplicably cool, about ten degrees lower than the rest of the house, with high electromagnetic readings. No surprises there.
Stacey checked the thermal and night vision cameras, which now pointed directly at the trap. Everything was ready to go. The bait was still in my pocket. I would save that for the last minute, when we were finally ready to light the trap, then sit and watch it for hours.
Stacey and I shivered as we left the room and closed the door. Juniper had watched silently from the hall.
“Okay,” I said, feeling relieved. “Let’s go make our rounds.”
We checked the cameras and microphones all over the house. Jacob arrived at sunset—Stacey almost bolted to the door when the doorbell rang, but she slowed down and let Juniper open it.
“Hey, are you the psychic?” Juniper asked.
“Are you the one with the ghost problem?” Jacob gave her a half-smile. He wore his black retro-framed glasses and a white button-up shirt of the type that normally goes with a coat and tie. Some mildly distressed skinny jeans, new sneakers.
“Hey, come on, Jacob!” Stacey hurried forward and took his arm. “You’re late. Almost.”
“Almost late? Doesn’t that mean I’m exactly on time?” he asked, allowing himself to be towed into the house.
“Do we show him where the ghosts are?” Juniper asked.
“No, remember, we don’t tell him anything,” I said. “We let him walk around and see what he finds.”
We introduced Jacob to the rest of the family—well, Stacey handled the introductions, staying fairly close to him. The Pauldings were sitting down for a late dinner, the table set with paper plates and mismatched plastic cups.
When Jacob and Crane looked at each other, I could almost feel something click in the air between them. Psychics. I guess it takes one to know one. I imagined them sending rapid telepathic messages to each other, though I doubt that was actually happening.
“Juniper, take your seat,” Toolie said.
“Can’t I hang out with them?” Juniper asked, pointing to me.
“Sit down and eat your casserole!” Toolie said, and Juniper huffed and sank into her chair.
“Okay, show me around,” Jacob said.
“This way.” Stacey took his arm and led him out of the room. As he left, Jacob gave Crane a quick nod. That was all the communication that had passed between them, as far as I could tell, but Crane stared at Jacob with intense interest while we left to explore the house.
I felt impatient as we walked around the first floor, Jacob pausing here and there.
“I’m feeling some residual stuff down here, but nothing huge,” he said, and that was the gist of his comments until we walked upstairs.
“That kid has something, doesn’t he?” Jacob asked in a low voice, now that we were farther away from the family.
“Like what?” I asked, cutting off Stacey’s obvious rush to agree with him.
“He has some ability,” Jacob said.
“Way to be vague, Jacob,” Stacey told him with a little grin. “Do you mean juggling ability? Ventriloquism? Playing the violin?”
“He’s probably the one who’s seen the ghosts more than anyone else,” Jacob said. Stacey smiled and nodded.
“Let’s keep moving,” I said.
I can’t say Jacob had any huge revelations for us inside the house, but what he found did fit with what we already knew.
In Juniper’s room: “Yeah, there’s something in here,” he said. He kept looking up at the corners of the room. “It’s not exactly a spirit, not exactly a dead person. It’s something else. Demonic, maybe?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s human.”
It sounded to me like he was picking up on the poltergeist.
In Crane’s room: “A lot of stuff happening here, in and out, but I don’t sense anything dwelling here, if that makes sense.”
“It totally does,” Stacey said. I cut her a look to be quiet—we didn’t want to confirm or deny anything, because that could interfere with his own clarity. I’m skeptical about psychics, anyway. I know some people do have ability, and Jacob is clearly one of them, but you still don’t want to lead them with too much information.
In Toolie’s room: “The woman living here is very troubled, I think.”
He didn’t find much in the lesser-used rooms of the second floor, including two spare bedrooms connected by a bathroom hung with bright decorative towels embroidered with puffy flowers. It was a guest bathroom, with a scented candle and a basket of colorful soap balls, but no actual personal items like toothbrushes or make-up. No activity reported here, either by the family or by Jacob.
When we reached the crafts room, though, he had an obvious reaction. Of course, the trap sitting in the middle of it might have been a clue.
We hadn’t yet lit the candles inside the trap to attract the ghosts. Ghosts tend to be most active in the darkest and quietest hours of the night, from about midnight to four a.m. Each one is different, though, and there are ghosts who appear during the daytime, as well as ghosts who pop out at full steam the moment the sun goes down.
Jacob took one and a half steps into the crafts room and froze. It’s kind of funny when he does that, like those pointer dogs that go completely still, using their whole body as an arrow to indicate where the prey was hiding.
“Well?” I asked.
“You don’t need me to tell you this room is a bad place,” he said, his voice low. “Ugh. I can feel it everywhere. This thing...this male thing that used to be human, a long time ago. His presence just fills the room like smoke. I think he died here. Violently.”
Stacey shuddered and moved closer to Jacob, touching his hand. Using fear as a cover to flirt with him, I’m pretty sure.
“Is he dangerous?” she whispered, looking into Jacob’s eyes. Overdoing it. I mean, come on, she’d been in scarier situations than this.
“I think he is,” Jacob replied. He was gazing right back into her eyes.
“If you could both quit moon-goggling each other for a second, I’d like some more specific details from Jacob,” I said.
“Yeah, sorry.” He let go of Stacey’s hand and looked around. “Very cold in here, and I mean that in every possible way. Okay. I think this ghost kind of goes out and patrols the house a little bit, very late at night. He’s looking for troublemakers. He wants to punish them. He has some kind of weapon he carries. He’s angry, and he takes it out on the others...”
“The others?” I asked.
“The other ghosts. There must be more in this house, or at least he thinks there are, because he hunts them. He...” Jacob stopped and his eyes widened. “He knows I’m here. Unless you want to fight him now, we should maybe...” He backed toward the door, pulling Stacey along with him.
I couldn’t see anything unusual in the room, aside from the heavy shadows, but I could definitely feel Isaiah watching me. For a second, I could smell him, too—wet earth and rotten leather.
“Let’s go,” I whispered.
I wasn’t looking forward to my inevitable return visit to this room, to bait and light the trap. The little bits of bait remained in my pocket. I didn’t want Whippy to see them just yet.
We closed the crafts room door firmly behind us as we ret
urned to the warmer, brighter hallway.
“I assume that guy’s the problem,” he told Stacey, pointing to the room we’d just left.
“He’s a real monster,” Stacey agreed. “Ready to see what’s behind door number three?”
She opened the attic door, and he leaned through the doorframe and looked up the stairs.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “We’re not done yet.”
We flipped on the attic lights—two bulbs came to life, but the one above our heads stayed dark. Stacey and I drew our flashlights from their holsters as we accompanied Jacob up the stairs.
We’d cleaned up the splintered chunks of broken railing, just as we’d helped clean up the thousands of glass and china fragments in the kitchen. Jacob eyed the upright remnants of the railing as he passed around them.
“Watch your step,” he said.
“You have no idea,” Stacey whispered.
He was quiet for a minute, looking around the heaps of old decorations, boxes, and toys.
“Don’t mind me,” he murmured. Maybe he was talking to the creepy life-size Santa Claus lying under the plastic tree hung with tinsel.
He advanced deeper into the attic, ducking under the low beams.
“A lot of energy up here,” he said, a little louder. “More than one. They feel young, male. They’re kind of mischievous, but they’re also turning dark. Tortured souls. They’re always running and hiding from the other guy, the one on the second floor. They hide up here. So many hiding places...” Jacob removed his glasses and squinted at a shadow melting across the wall in the moving glow of my flashlight. “Yeah. The other one, the bad one, he sees these two boys as his property, somehow. Slaves, maybe?” Jacob frowned.
“What do they want?” I asked.
“They want to get rid of him,” Jacob said. “That’s pretty clear to me. End his nightly hunts, how he beats them when he catches them playing. But they’re not strong enough to do it. They want help.”
“What kind of help?” I asked. It reminded me of what Crane had said, of course, about them wanting his help, wanting him to become a ghost like them.
“To free themselves from him, to finally overthrow his rule of the house,” Jacob said. “Strength in numbers. That’s what they’re thinking. Strength in numbers.” He shrugged. “That’s all I’m getting from them. They aren’t very open with me. They want us out of here. They don’t like for the living to come into the attic at all, because it could draw his attention up here, into their hiding place. I guess he normally avoids coming up here...he patrols the rest of the house, but the attic’s like his blind spot. It must be.” He nodded. “They want us to leave right now.”
“Ask them how they died,” I said.
“Okay. How did...?” He looked off toward the far end of the attic, where we’d found a few of the Ridley family possessions.
A creaky, rusty sound echoed from the direction.
Stacey and I pointed our flashlights toward it. She stepped in front of Jacob, as if ready to protect him from any dangerous spirits.
Our lights found the heap of old toys near the back. The rusty, spring-mounted rocking horse nodded up and down, just slightly, the springs screeching with each little movement.
My heart beat a little faster, and I was ready to escape down the attic steps. Not that those had offered me much such safety in the past.
“Noah! Luke!” I snapped, trying to sound as tough and firm as I could manage. I widened the iris of my flashlight and swept it back and forth, chasing away flickering shadows. “Stay away from us!”
“Wow, they hate you,” Jacob told me. “They look angry now. You can really see their dark and tormented side now.”
“I’d rather not see that if we can avoid it,” I said.
“What about me?” Stacey asked. “Do they hate me?”
“They’ve barely noticed you’re here,” Jacob assured her. “They aren’t paying any attention to you, don’t worry.”
“Oh.” She frowned a little, as if slightly disappointed.
“How did they die?” I asked again.
“Choking,” Jacob said. “No, wait. I’m seeing water. Drowning, maybe. It was violent, not accidental. Somebody killed them.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Now they won’t tell me. They’re retreating.” Jacob shook his head. “That’s all they’re going to say to me right now. They want us out of here.”
“Good enough for now, I suppose,” I said. Jacob hadn’t told us much that was new. I was eager to get him out of the house. By which I mean into the back yard, around the pond area.
“I think he’s doing great,” Stacey said, with a smile for Jacob.
I turned away and rolled my eyes just a little as I led the way down the attic stairs.
We walked out into a drizzling rain—nothing too heavy, but I knew there was a lot more on the way.
Jacob wandered in a slow circle around the pond, keeping clear of the marshy mud at the edges. Stacey and I stood back, letting him do his thing.
“There’s a woman here,” Jacob said as he returned toward us, looking into the water. “She’s confused, she’s trapped somehow.” He cocked his head as if listening. Stacey watched him with a little bit of awe, still fascinated by his abilities. “She’s trying to get inside the house, but she can’t. She’s worried about her children. They’re stuck inside the house with the bad one...I think the ghosts in the attic are her children. She knows he’s treating them badly, attacking and abusing them. She’d do anything to stop him. Even kill him.” He shook his head. “Well, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. They’re already dead, but...that’s how she feels, I guess.”
“Did she kill him?” I asked.
Jacob hesitated for a minute, then nodded. “It’s possible. I wouldn’t be surprised. She’s pretty confused, like I said. I think her death came as a shock, and she never really got over it.”
“How did she die?” Stacey asked.
“Drowning.” He nodded at the pond. “Just like the two up in the attic. They all drowned right here.”
“How exactly did they drown?” I asked.
“I believe their lungs filled with water and they died,” Jacob said, lifting an eyebrow. “That’s how it usually goes.”
“I’m not joking,” I said. “Did she kill herself?”
“Oh! No, no. Somebody held her underwater. She died struggling and kicking.”
“Who did it?” I asked. My heart skipped a little. I really needed that answer.
Jacob closed his eyes. A few expressions crossed his face—something like confusion melting into frustration and then horror.
“She doesn’t know,” he finally said.
“How could she not know?” Stacey asked.
“She didn’t see anything. She was out here with her boys, gathering logs from the firewood heap there...” Jacob, his eyes still closed, pointed to a flower bed that featured no firewood at all. “It was cold, so cold, definitely winter. Then they were all in the pond, being held down, choking on water that was almost freezing.” He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.
“All three at the same time?” I asked.
“She never saw what killed them,” Jacob said, his voice low. He finally opened his eyes. “It was like something invisible.”
“Like a ghost?” Stacey suggested, a little too helpfully.
“I think it could be,” Jacob said. “She doesn’t know, so I don’t know.”
Stacey and I looked at each other.
“So either a group of people slipped in here, unnoticed, grabbed Catherine and her sons and drowned them all at once, or a powerful entity did it,” I said.
“Isaiah,” Stacey asked. “It fits. She kills him, then he kills her a couple weeks later...”
“And he kills the three kids?” I looked at Jacob. “What about the little girl?”
“Little girl?” Jacob shook his head. “I haven’t seen one.”
“Maybe she managed to move on, and she’s
not trapped here like the others,” I said. “I hope so, for her sake.”
“What’s this?” Jacob walked to the little cottage at the back of the yard, the one that looked like a one-story model of the main house.
“Tool shed,” I said. “I don’t think it’s locked.”
He opened the front door, flanked by thin little fake columns that mimicked the ones by the real front door to the big house. They supported a little mock balcony above the door, just big enough for a cat or small dog.
He stepped inside, not flipping on the light, and stood there quietly, as if absorbing otherworldly vibes from the leaf blower or the hedge clippers.
“Anything?” Stacey asked. I was curious, too. Maybe Eliza’s ghost had wandered over to the small version of her former home. It was certainly much calmer and quieter than the real house.
“Something happened here,” Jacob said. “I want to say a ritual or some event that opened a door.”
I nodded a little, thinking of Juniper and her attempted séance with her boyfriend on Halloween. I didn’t say anything, though.
“Yeah.” Jacob walked to the back, where there was an open space in front of a tool bench. “Right around here. It really jolted the spirits awake. Especially the woman by the pond, but also everything inside the house.” Jacob walked back to the mini-front-porch of the tool shed and pointed to the pond. “She’s been trying to get inside ever since, trying to reach her children. She uses...this is weird, but she tries to use the water lines to get inside. Like she can’t use doors or windows, those are blocked to her, so she tries to sneak in through the pipes. Still, it won’t let her inside.”
Maybe the mystery of the dripping faucets had been solved, I thought.
“What’s blocking her?” I asked, since he hadn’t yet made that clear.
“Something strong,” Jacob whispered, fairly dramatically.
“Is it the big, scary evil guy from the second floor or not?” Stacey asked, looking impatient.
“Maybe.”
“That’s her husband,” Stacey said. I shook my head—as with zoo animals, you’re not supposed to feed the psychics. Not information, anyway. Jacob’s psychic check-up of the house was just about done, though, and I sympathized with Stacey’s frustration.