by JL Bryan
“Interesting,” was all Jacob said. He took a deep breath and stretched. “That’s about it, guys. Unless there are secret rooms somewhere you haven’t mentioned.”
“Not this time, I hope,” I said. “There’s always bad stuff in the secret rooms. Let’s go inside. Maybe Crane can tell us something new before he goes to bed.”
“Can you try to talk to him, Jacob?” Stacey asked. “I bet he’ll talk to you.”
“I don’t know. I’m not like a child psychologist over here.” He looked worried as he returned inside with us.
“You’ll be great,” Stacey said, with so much confidence that even I half-believed her.
Chapter Sixteen
The family had gathered in the living room after dinner, and they were arguing about what to watch on television when we walked inside. Something about a malevolent, dangerous ghost infesting a house can really bring the members of the household together, at least in a physical sense. It’s safer for the family to camp out together by the living room fireplace than to sleep separately and face the darkness alone. You get a glimpse of what life may have been like for our hunter-gatherer ancestors, everybody huddled near the communal hearth, scared of unnamed things in the dark world beyond their little spot of light—trying to entertain each other with stories and music so they forget about the predatory dangers lurking in the night outside.
“What’d y’all figure out?” Toolie asked, glancing from me to Jacob.
“He saw the same entities we’ve encountered,” I said. “The Ridley family, I think.”
“Did you see Noah and Luke?” Crane asked him.
“Are those the two boys in the attic?” Jacob asked.
Crane nodded. “Did you see the bad one upstairs?”
“Yes. I think Ellie and Stacey are going to get rid of him,” Jacob said.
“I hope so.” Crane was being extremely talkative tonight. Everyone else fell quiet, listening to the psychic boys talk. It was as if the stage lights had gone down for a moment, leaving just the two of them in their own world.
“Have you ever seen the little girl?” Jacob asked him.
“That’s their sister,” Crane said. “Did you see her?”
“No, where is she?”
“She likes to hide. She hides all the time.”
“Have you ever seen her?” Jacob asked. “Or heard her voice?”
“Nuh-uh.” Crane shook his head, extra-emphatically. “They talk about her. She’s a scaredy-cat.”
“Do you have any idea where I could find her?” Jacob asked.
“No. Do you like dragons?”
“Sure.”
“I have three dragons in my room.” Crane slid off the couch and dropped to his feet. “Can I show him my dragons, Mom?”
I gave Toolie a big nod. Crane might open up more with fewer people around.
“Just pick up your Legos while you do it,” Toolie said. “I’m tired of stepping on them.”
“Come on.” Crane grabbed Jacob by the sleeve and tugged him out of the room.
“What kind of dragons do you have?” Jacob asked.
“A green one and a red one. And a blue one.”
“Have fun,” Stacey said, with a great big smile. I wondered if she was watching him with the kid and thinking about how he might be as a father, possibly to the psychic children they might one day have together. Oh, Stacey.
“Well, he certainly seems to like your psychic friend,” Toolie said, and her husband nodded.
“Jacob confirmed a lot of what we’ve found,” I said. “I now think there’s a good chance Catherine Ridley murdered her husband, probably to stop him from abusing their boys. And it may have been a spirit who drowned Catherine and her two boys, instead of a mom-and-kid murder-suicide situation. When Jacob spoke to Catherine’s ghost, she said the attacker was invisible.”
“Stars and stripes!” Toolie gasped, covering her mouth. “That’s horrible. Is that ghost still here?”
“There are really two suspects,” I said. “Isaiah Ridley’s ghost, out for revenge. Or a poltergeist created by Eliza Ridley, the little girl. Any poltergeist Eliza created would have dissolved or gone dormant after her death, because it feeds on its creator’s energy. So the original plan still seems best—get Isaiah out of the house and go from there.”
“I like...the sound of...that,” Gord said.
“Stacey and I will go up and light the trap,” I said. “I have to recommend that the whole family sleep down here tonight, together, unless you can go and stay at a hotel or a relative’s house.” I couldn’t risk Isaiah deciding to murder everybody out of anger at our intrusion.
“There’s nobody nearby except my cousin over in Beaufort,” Toolie said. “The hotels around here are too expensive. And...it’s difficult.” She glanced at Gord’s oxygen tank. “We’ll stay down here, and we’ll pack a couple of suitcases so we can leave if things get too bad.”
“Then Stacey and Jacob can stay down here with you,” I told her.
“Where will you be?” Juniper asked me.
“Upstairs, ready to slam the trap.”
“I can hang out with you if you want,” she said.
“Thanks, but I’d rather you help keep an eye on your brother,” I told her.
Juniper frowned and looked down at her hands.
“Sorry, it could get dangerous up there,” I said. “So I don’t want to worry about anybody else running around..”
She shrugged a little.
“I’ll let you know if you can help with something, though,” I added.
“Whatever. I don’t care that much.” She returned to reading the werewolf romance paperback in her hands. I could tell I’d hurt her feelings, but I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t going to put her in danger.
Stacey set up her laptop so she could monitor the cameras inside the crafts room, and she handed me a tablet so I could watch the trap, too. Then she headed upstairs with me.
“I had no idea dragons could fly spaceships,” I heard Jacob saying from the open door to Crane’s room.
“Dragons aren’t real,” Crane said. “Spaceships aren’t real, either.”
“There are real space shuttles and rockets,” Jacob said.
“Yeah, but not good ones like in the movies.”
Stacey grinned at the sound of Jacob’s voice, but her smile faded when we approached the crafts room door. A soft, icy draft leaked out on all sides of it.
We clicked on our flashlights, and I pushed it open.
I stepped into the dark room and tried to turn on the overhead light, but nothing happened. I panned my flashlight back and forth as I approached the trap. Stacey kept close behind me, walking backwards, shining her light in the opposite direction so nothing could creep up behind us.
I laid my four little pieces of ghost bait inside the open trap, at the very bottom of the cylinder. One tiny iron locomotive, one very tarnished 1851 silver dime, two cufflinks.
Then I drew a long-nosed fireplace lighter from a strap on my utility belt, and I lit the three candles spaced in a descending spiral around the interior of the trap. The fire would attract the ghost, since they’re usually hungry for energy, and the bait would pull its attention into the depths of the trap and hold it there for at least a moment.
It was all pretty standard ghost-removal procedure.
As I lit the third candle, I heard deep, ragged breathing from the shadows just ahead of me.
The dark shape shuffled toward me, more than a foot taller than me and smelling of earthy decay.
I swung my lit fire-starter at him, since I was already in the middle of using it. The flame cast a scattered red glow into the rough caverns of his broken face.
He took a ragged, throat-blown-open gasp and sucked all the fire from the lighter, turning it cold and dark.
I raised my flashlight with my other hand, slamming the bright white beam into his dark, sunken eye. His iris was a clear, lifeless color, and the pupil didn’t even react to th
e sudden blast of light. It should have shrunk to a pinpoint.
He snarled with half his mouth, since the other half was mostly missing. He didn’t like the light, but I didn’t get the feeling it was going to chase him away this time.
With my elbow, I nudged Stacey in the back.
“What’s up?” She turned around and sucked in a frightened breath, but she held her light steady while she added it to mine, torching the ghost as best we could.
“Back,” I whispered. “Out.”
Stacey clung close to me, holding her flashlight over my shoulder to keep it trained on the hideous apparition. We eased our way backward toward the door.
The ghost of Isaiah flickered out of sight.
Then it reappeared right in front of me, only inches away.
Stacey and I both took in a breath, but we kept moving.
Isaiah watched us, keeping himself completely, unnaturally still in a way that only dead things can. Then he opened his right hand and unrolled his long, leathery belt, encrusted with sharp buckles and prongs.
He advanced on us as we stepped out the door. Stacey and I backed down the hall, shoulder to shoulder, our lights held out in front of us.
The ghost crept all the way to the threshold of the open door, his belt lolling in his hand like a dog’s tongue on a hot summer day.
We tensed, waiting for him to attack. My hand was on my iPod, ready to soak him in some Viennese choir music.
He stopped, and I could hear his ragged breathing. His presence in the doorway turned the entire hallway cold and gave the air a clammy feeling.
He watched us for a moment more, and then the door slammed. He’d stayed inside his lair, as far as we could see.
I ran to check the two cameras pointed at the door. If he’d stepped invisibly into the hallway with us, we weren’t seeing any thermal evidence of it.
I finally had time to notice how hard my pulse was racing, and I made myself breathe deep to calm down.
“He’s still in there.” Stacey picked up the tablet she’d given me, with a splitscreen showing the thermal and night vision cameras pointed at the trap in Isaiah’s room. She pointed to a vague profile that slid in and out of visibility. “He’s pacing. I guess that’s what he does when he’s not out hunting the boys.”
The moving purple-black mass was more obvious on the thermal camera, where it seemed to roll back and forth, very slowly, on a field of deep blue, since the whole room was cold.
“Go get Crane,” I said. “Take him and Jacob back down with the family.”
“Then I’ll come back here with you,” Stacey said.
“No, I want you with them until they go to bed,” I said. “Then I want you out in the van.”
“Ellie, it’s too dangerous to be by yourself.”
“It’ll be even more dangerous if I get blindsided by the Attic Twins or the poltergeist, or anything else,” I said. “I need your eyes all over the house.”
“Okay. I’ll use the cameras in the living room to keep watch over the family while they sleep.”
“Good idea.”
“Maybe Jacob should sit in the van with me, too,” Stacey said.
I raised an eyebrow at her.
“And help me watch all the monitors,” she added. “I mean, the clients just met him, they won’t necessarily feel comfortable with him hanging around while they try to sleep.”
“You’ve made your case,” I said. “Is he planning to stay all night?”
“He told me he’d stay as long as we need him. He has to work tomorrow, but...”
“All right. Get moving. I need all my attention on the trap.”
While Stacey went to collect Jacob and Crane, I arranged myself on my handy air mattress. I kept the tablet on my lap, and I held the trap’s remote control in both hands. The remote’s display screen told me the temperature and EMF readings inside the trap. So far, the temperature still matched the rest of the room, about forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Very chilly.
It had been risky to light the trap so late, but I’d hoped it would help draw Isaiah’s attention to it. Sometimes ghosts take a very long time to notice things. They tend to be backwards-looking beings, focused on the drama and trauma of their own lives and deaths, seeing their own memories instead of reality.
It turned out I wasn’t so lucky. While Stacey and Jacob kept the Ridley family company downstairs—it sounded like they were watching some kid’s movie, probably trying to keep Crane calm—I sat at the crossroads of the upstairs halls and watched while the ghost faded in and out of sight on the night vision, pacing and pacing, passing back and forth before the burning candles inside the trap.
Chapter Seventeen
Stacey eventually told me over the headset that the family members were ready to sleep on their temporary campground down in the living room. She and Jacob went out to the van to keep watch on everyone and everything.
We were particularly concerned about Crane slipping off again in the middle of the night, but I doubted that the parents would really be able to sleep well under these conditions, anyway. They’d probably be up most of the night, worried and afraid.
I sat at the hallway intersection, watching my trap on camera. The remote control for the trap has one big red button you really can’t miss. That’s the only feature besides the little screen with the temperature and EMF readings from within the trap.
The trap can be automatically set to close once it detects signs of a ghost inside, but I’d set the parameters pretty high—a twenty-degree drop in temperature combined with an electromagnetic spike of six milligaus or more would make the trap slam shut. I intended to keep watch all night and close the trap myself. This ghost was much too dangerous for me to just set it and forget it.
The house grew quiet except for the rain pounding the roof and windows, plus occasional claps of thunder. The flashes of lightning grew brighter, the thunder louder and closer, but nothing distracted Isaiah from his pacing. I worried he wasn’t going to notice the trap at all.
Stacey checked in...occasionally. Nothing much was stirring. The boys had barely appeared in the attic, much less strolled downstairs for some late-night activities. The poltergeist, wherever it was, remained silent and calm.
I drank Red Bull and waited.
I wondered what Stacey and Jacob were doing out in the van together. Sitting awkwardly? Chatting? Maybe the combination of boredom and attraction had led them straight into some actual kissing. I tried not to imagine them making out on the uncomfortable, narrow little drop-down bunk in the back of the van.
Maybe Stacey was right, and I would be better off dating somebody instead of spending my Saturdays with old novels and Uncle Ben’s microwave rice. Who would I even date, though? And what kind of person? Most people look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them my job.
Still, a cat wasn’t always the most fulfilling company. Maybe I could get another cat. Maybe, in just a few short years, I could become a full-blown crazy cat-collector lady.
Around one-thirty in the morning, I stood and stretched. Then I walked to the hallway bathroom for a quick break.
As I looked up from washing my hands, I saw a small girl standing in the mirror beside my reflection. She wore a dress with a pattern that looked like calico, but was all white. Her skin was pale white, too, and her colorless hair fell in curls around her face. She was elementary-school age, maybe eight or nine.
I immediately glanced to my side, but nobody was there. The girl only existed as a reflection.
“I know why you’re here,” she whispered, staring at me with white-on-white eyes.
“Eliza?” I asked.
“I want to show you something.” She pointed toward the tub, where the blue shower curtain was drawn tight.
Feeling more than uneasy—my stomach was tying itself in knots, in fact—I walked sideways toward the closed curtain, keeping an eye on the little girl in the mirror.
I could hear water running, fast and hard, behind the curtain. That
sound hadn’t been there before. The bathroom had been silent.
I grasped the edge of the shower curtain with a trembling hand, then hesitated, trying to mentally prepare myself for whatever horror lay on the other side.
“Go on,” the image of Eliza whispered from the mirror. “Look.”
I pulled the curtain aside. The shower rings on the curtain rod clicked together, one by one, above my head.
The water was running at full blast. The tub was already filled to the top, though it had only been running for a few seconds, as far as I’d heard.
It was so full that when I pulled the curtain aside, a flood of water sloshed out onto my boots and splashed across the bathroom floor like a wave crashing onto a beach.
I leaned down to turn off the faucet, knowing how much damage the overflowing water could do to my clients’ antique home. As I did, the bathroom lights went out.
I stood and turned, trying not to lose my balance in the inch of water on the floor.
The image of Eliza remained in the mirror, now the only source of light in the room. She looked ghastly, as if her form were woven from a thousand glowing filaments, with her eyes, nostrils, and mouth left as blank black holes.
Those black-hole eyes were looking right at me.
She began to rise, as though levitating off the floor over there in mirror-world.
“This is how I killed all the others.” Her voice echoed from the stone-tiled walls around me. Her words came out flat and monotone, the voice of a long-dead thing.
“Did you kill your family, Eliza?” I asked. That made no sense to me, unless the girl had extraordinary psychokinetic ability. Judging by how she’d been able to create a menacing poltergeist, though, maybe she really had possessed other abilities.
“Just like this.” Her voice was an echoing whisper.
She vanished from the mirror, leaving me in darkness, and I quick-drew my tactical flashlight like an Old West gunslinger.
She hit me before I could click it on. Her energy slammed into me like a solid brick wall mounted on the grill of a runaway freight train.