by JL Bryan
“So what’s your plan of attack?” Calvin asked. He dug his chopsticks into his rice again.
“Pretty standard so far. I’ll hit the library and see what I can dig up about that house. I already called the Savannah Historical Association, but nobody can meet with me until tomorrow. The family’s ready for us to set up a full-spectrum observation tonight…well, the wife’s ready. The husband thinks it’s all nonsense.”
“He’s probably just in denial to hide his fear,” Calvin said. “He knows something is opening that door at night, and he knows he can’t stop it.”
I nodded. “So that’s the plan. I’m going to sit by that door all night.”
“I’ve been concerned about you going to these jobs by yourself,” Calvin said.
“I know, so you hired Stacey, and now I’m stuck training a ghost-happy paranormal fangirl.”
“Stacey has plenty of good qualities for this job.”
“Name one,” I said.
“She’ll work for cheap,” he replied.
“Name two.”
“She’s good at collecting audio-video evidence.”
“Name three.”
“Stop moving the goalposts,” Calvin said. “My point is, I don’t want you to get hurt investigating these hauntings. Stacey sits out in the van with the monitors while you’re alone inside.”
“I can handle whatever any ghost wants to throw at me.”
“I used to think that, too.” Calvin glanced at his thin legs, sitting useless in his wheelchair. Calvin had grown out his gray hair a bit since leaving the force, but he still had the square shoulders and rigid bearing of a cop. Even wearing his granny glasses and sitting in his wheelchair, he still projected authority.
“I get it, Calvin,” I said. “I really do. You think you’re sending a couple of girls into danger, but I promise you, we can handle it. If we can’t, we’ll get out of there. This doesn’t even sound like a very dangerous haunting—maybe a territorial ghost trying to drive out the living, but she hasn’t hurt anyone…”
“I am responsible for your safety,” he said. “But I also think the team could use an extra perspective. An extra set of hands, too.”
“I don’t know if you’ve checked the ledger lately, but we aren’t exactly rolling in spare cash right now. So even if we did need somebody else, which we don’t, we can’t afford it. We’re lucky Stacey is a trust-fund baby willing to work for peanuts.”
“Then we’re doubly lucky that the young man I have in mind is willing to work for free—for now, at least—as part of his therapy.”
“Therapy? What is he, a phasmophobic?”
“He doesn’t have an irrational fear of ghosts,” Calvin said. “If he’s afraid of them, it’s because he finds himself surrounded by them. Purely rational, really.”
“I don’t think I like where this is going.” I put down my fork and sat up on my old wooden workbench stool.
“He was in an airline crash,” Calvin said. “One of only a few survivors. Since then, he’s been in almost constant contact with the dead—”
“No, no, come on. You know what I think about using psychics.”
“I’ve had some great help from them in the past,” Calvin said.
“And we’ve been burned by them, too. Subtract out the frauds, the crazies, and the ones who maybe are psychic but are still obviously crazy—”
“An old friend recommended him to me,” Calvin said. “She thinks working with us would help him gain control over his abilities.”
“That’s why he’ll work for free, then,” I said. “Because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“Exactly. You said yourself this is a minor case with limited danger. It sounds like a good test for him. We can just see what he finds.”
“I like to keep it scientific, Calvin. Things you can observe and measure.”
“This city’s full of colleges. Why don’t you call around and see how many professional scientists agree that applied parapsychology is related in any way to actual hard science?”
“I just don’t like the idea of some guy wandering around pretending to download information into his brain. It can distract you from the real evidence.”
“Or break the case,” Calvin said. “I had one or two psychics help with that even when I was still on the job. Missing persons and homicide—police use psychics more than the public knows.”
“You told me I’d be in charge of the field work now,” I said. “That was our agreement. You can’t stick me with some crystal ball reader who’ll just trip up my investigation.” I stood up and tossed my greasy to-go box into the trash. “I have to run. The library closes at six today. You going to your poker game tonight?”
“Changing the subject and running away?” He raised an eyebrow at me.
“Exactly. I’ll check in later.” I opened the steel fire door at the back and hurried out before he could try to sell me on the psychic again. He really should have known better.
I left the big van at the office so Stacey could set it up when she returned from lunch. I drove my own car, a black 2002 Camaro that continues to run mainly by magic, I think. It has T-tops that pop out so I can soak up the roughly nine months of summer this city enjoys every year. And, when I get the chance, I can drive very, very fast. It’s probably not the kind of car I would have bought for myself, but I inherited it from my dad, so I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I zipped a couple of exits down the interstate, then hit thick traffic downtown. I didn’t have far to go, though.
The Bull Street Library is a thing of beauty, nearly a hundred years old, with a Grecian marble facade and Ionic columns. It’s a gorgeous sunlit place to spend a few hours slogging through microfilm in search of murder and death.
Chapter Five
“I want to check whether you recognize any of these women,” I said to Anna. We sat at her dining room table again, facing each other. I’d asked Lexa and Stacey to leave the room. It was eight-thirty, and the windows behind me showed solid darkness outside.
I opened the manila envelope and slid out ten black-and-white photos printed on regular computer paper, all of them drawn from the library’s newspaper archives. They showed women with clothing and hairstyles from across the past century. I’d been at the library until closing time, mucking around in microfiche, which meant I’d missed my kickboxing class. I didn’t totally regret it—kickboxing is a great workout but also kind of a pain.
Of the ten images on the table, only two really interested me. The other eight were filler. Since Anna had described a woman with straw-like hair, half the women were blond.
Anna watched with her brow furrowed as I spread out the pictures. She took a few minutes looking them over.
I sipped some of the coffee she’d thoughtfully brewed for Stacey and me. It was strong and rich, which was good. It was going to be a long night.
Finally, Anna touched one page and slid it over to me.
“That could be her,” Anna said, tapping a pretty woman in a dark dress with long, unkempt yellow hair. The woman wore a flat, blank look. It was an arrest photo.
“Who?” I asked.
“The one I saw. If it’s any of them, it’s her.”
“Okay. I’d like to ask Lexa the same thing, if that’s all right.” I slid the woman’s picture back into place.
Anna nodded. She opened the door and brought Lexa inside. The house echoed with the sound of banging—Dale had picked the moment of our arrival to go hang drywall in the main house.
Stacey leaned in the door with a questioning look, and she obviously wanted to get in on the action. I gestured for her to stay where she was. She nodded, gave a conspiratorial wink and a thumbs-up, then raised the digital camera to continue recording us.
Lexa sat across from me. Her eyes were wide and solemn as she looked down at the pictures.
“Lexa,” I said, “I just want to know if you happen to recognize any of these people.”
“That’s her.” L
exa picked up the same printout and waved it at me. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Mercy Cutledge,” I said. I hesitated to continue. What I was about to say was not exactly great conversation for a ten-year-old, but Lexa was already being haunted by the woman. Knowing the identity of a specter can give you a real sense of power over it—it’s no longer some unknown evil tormenting you, but a specific person with a name and a past. If I were Lexa, I would have wanted to know. I had to see kids frightened or endangered by ghosts, and always feel a special need to protect them.
“Did she used to live here?” Lexa asked, still gazing at the grainy picture.
“I think so. The newspaper said she was a household employee of a past owner of this house, a sea captain named…Augustus Oliver Marsh.” I drew out a picture of Captain Marsh, a bald, white-bearded man in a white suit, posing in a highbacked chair next to a telescope and a globe. His mouth was a hard, humorless line almost lost in his enormous beard, which curled down to his shoulders and chest. His eyes were bright and sharp, almost stabbing outward from the paper. “Have you heard of him?”
Anna shook her head.
“Do you recognize this woman?” I pointed to a scratchy image of a woman in a high-necked dress and a large hat decorated with feathers. It was the oldest picture of the group.
“No,” Lexa said, and Anna shook her head again.
“This was Eugenia Marsh, his wife,” I said. “She died in 1901. Sudden sickness and fever.”
“Oh, no!” Anna said.
“Captain Marsh himself died in 1954…also in this house. He was murdered by this woman, Mercy Cutledge.” I pointed to the picture that Anna and Lexa had both picked up.
“I just felt chills up and down my back,” Anna whispered.
“Was it like someone was touching you?” Stacey asked, dashing toward her with the camera. “Like fingers, or a hand, or—”
“Calm down, Stacey Ray,” I said.
“She’s a murderer,” Lexa whispered, staring at the blond woman.
“I don’t understand something,” Anna said. “If his wife died in 1901…how old was he in 1954?”
“According to his obituary, he was born in 1848.” I brought out a copy of the old newspaper notice to show them. “He fought in the Confederate Navy as a teenager, and later he became a steamship captain. So he was a hundred and six when he died.”
“Wow.” Anna gaped at the picture.
“Why did she kill him?” Lexa asked. “What did he do?”
“I couldn’t find that in the papers,” I said. “She was committed to a state psychiatric hospital…” I leafed through more of the printouts. “Released in 1982. After which….Well, it’s a little disturbing.” I was already feeling bad for talking about the murders in front of the girl.
“Lexa, do you want to leave the room?” Anna asked.
“No!” Lexa scowled. “Tell me everything about her.”
I glanced at Anna, who sighed and nodded.
“She paid a return visit to this house after she was released the mental hospital,” I said. “By then, it was owned by Marsh’s grandniece, Louisa Marsh. And…well, Mercy came back here and took her own life.”
Anna gasped and looked at Lexa, who was just nodding and processing. She looked much calmer than her mother.
For Lexa’s benefit, and maybe for Anna’s, too, I spared the true gory details. I hadn’t mentioned how Mercy Cutledge had stabbed the extremely elderly man thirty-three times with a butcher knife, or how she’d hanged herself from the second-floor landing in the foyer twenty-eight years later, leaving Marsh’s grand niece to find the body.
I figured I would get into those specifics only if I needed to, and preferably when the little girl wasn’t around.
“So that’s our ghost,” Anna whispered.
“It seems likely to me,” I said. “Especially after you both picked her out of the line-up.”
“Then how do we…” Lexa glanced around, then lowered her voice until it was barely audible, as if afraid the ghost would overhear her. “How do we make her go away?”
“First, we have to see what kind of ghost she is,” I told them. “Some ghosts are more like recordings, just doing the same thing again and again. Some are more aware of what’s going on around them. She’s obviously territorial and trying to scare your family away. Maybe she thinks she’s still living in this house. Stacey and I will do our observation tonight, and that should give us plenty of information about what we’re dealing with.”
“Are you going to stay all night?” Lexa asked.
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“Good.” Lexa nodded.
“We’ll both be watching out for you, Lexa,” Stacey said. “You don’t have to worry about anything tonight!”
That claim was a little exaggerated. It was entirely possible that our presence would anger the ghost, goading her into being more aggressive. Still, I nodded slightly, wanting to comfort the girl. Lexa gave me a suspicious look, but she did seem to relax a little in her chair.
“Should we get started?” I asked.
Since Dale was working over in the main house, with the security door ajar, we started upstairs. We set up twin cameras in the master bathroom, one regular digital video, one thermal to detect cold spots. Stacey hummed the Ghostbusters theme while she worked, until I gave her a look that told her to cut it out.
“I guess I’ll be using the hallway bathroom tonight,” Anna said, in a resigned, half-joking sort of tone.
“Remind Dale, too, please,” Stacey said, and I had to swallow back a laugh. Stacey would be out in the van monitoring all the cameras and microphones together. She was probably worried about seeing Dale using the bathroom in the middle of the night. That would be less scary than a ghost, but not by much.
When Stacey was done there, we moved out into the upstairs hallway. We set up a night vision camera outside Lexa’s door. Stacey raised it high on its tripod and tilted it forward, so we could see anyone on the second flight of stairs or in the hallway by Lexa’s room.
Lexa smiled and nodded a little, as if the camera made her feel a little safer.
We set up another pair of cameras in the downstairs hall, a night vision and a thermal, pointed right at the security door. I placed my little inflatable air mattress behind them. This way, I could watch the door with my own eyes, plus see the display screens of both cameras, all at a glance.
Through the security door, we could still hear Dale hammering away at the drywall in the main house, though it was almost ten o’ clock now. Anna and I stepped through the door.
We stood in a dim hallway in the main house, lit by a couple of electric lanterns. The floor was ancient, heavily scuffed hardwood. If there had been any furniture here, it had been cleared out while the contractors stripped and replaced the walls. The hall had a few old wooden doors, all of them closed, and it led into darkness in both directions.
“Don’t you think that’s enough for tonight, Dale?” Anna asked. “The ghost hunters need to set up over here.”
“Oh, almost forgot about them,” Dale said, giving me a little sneer. “I hope you don’t slow things down too much.”
Here’s what I wanted to say: You’re only being sarcastic and smarmy to hide your fear, Dale. You know something creepy is happening, and you’re just making a pathetic attempt to cling to the denial stage.
Here’s what I actually said: “We don’t mean to cause you any trouble at all, Mr. Treadwell. We just need to monitor this hallway tonight.”
Dale made a show of sighing and putting down his tools.
“Whatever calms the girls down, I guess,” he said. “I need to go take a shower, anyway.”
Stacey looked worried as Dale walked through the open security door, back into the east wing. He tossed her a smile as he passed by.
“Use the hall bathroom!” Anna told him. “They put cameras in ours.”
“Oh, come on!” Looking annoyed, Dale strode up the stairs. “Can’t get
any privacy around here…”
I kept my face calm and professional while he left, biting back the urge to make a snarky remark when he was out of range. Anna and Lexa were still his wife and daughter and might not appreciate such comments from an outsider, no matter how he was acting. All three family members were my clients and had to be treated with respect.
I caught Stacey’s eye just as she opened her mouth to say something, and she seemed to think better of it and stayed quiet.
“It’s dark in here,” I said. Dale’s two electric lanterns were feeble in the heavy gloom, like sputtering candles. I clicked on my flashlight, piercing the darkness with three thousand lumens of shimmering light.
A flashlight is a ghost trapper’s sidearm. Seriously. You can chase a lot of nasties away with a solid blast of bright white. It doesn’t hurt them, but it can bother them enough to make them slip off in search of darker pastures. A strong bright light interferes with the ghosts’ electrical fields, making it harder for them to focus when they want to claw at you or throw dishes at your head. This is probably why ghosts prefer to do their haunting and harassing at night.
Lately, I’ve been carrying an MF Tactical PowerStar, a SWAT team flashlight with a hard aluminum casing and protruding steel ridges around the lens, which can help if you need to break in or out of a place quickly. It puts out up to thirty-three hundred lumens at a blast, like a beam of sunlight on a hot desert day.
Of course, my job is to find and remove the ghosts, not to send them scurrying away into hiding, so I only use the flashlight as a last resort, when the need to finish the job is momentarily overshadowed by danger. Or by fear—I get into a lot of very dark, scary situations in this line of work, and I’m not too ashamed to say I still get terrified when I encounter malevolent specters and spirits. I’m only human.
“I want to get the door from each direction,” Stacey said. She raised a night vision camera on a tripod and pointed toward the back of the main house. “I’ll do this one back there. Do you mind setting up the last thermal?”
“Sure. I want to check out the foyer, anyway.” That was where Mercy, Captain Marsh’s murderer, had hanged herself in 1982. It was bound to be a center of any activity.