by JL Bryan
“You’re sure those cameras are working?” I asked.
“They’re working! Can we please go?”
We walked up the stairs, Stacey in the lead, with me walking sideways and swinging the ghost cannon back and forth, flooding the cellar with blinding light. I hadn’t seen anybody who looked like Captain Marsh, either, but they’d scattered quickly.
The cellar door at the top of the stairs was stuck. Stacey kicked it until it popped open.
We hurried back across the kitchen. The remnants of the cabinet doors banged open and shut as we passed, which only made us put on speed.
We made it out the front doors. The hot, humid night air felt like a warm bath after the freezing basement.
“That was too much,” Stacey whispered, shaking her head.
I switched off the ghost cannon as we walked toward the van. I remote-unlocked the van with the key fob, and Stacey opened the back door. She groaned as she looked inside.
“It’s like the house is kidding,” she said.
I walked up beside her. She was looking at the monitors.
Despite the fresh batteries in the cameras, both of those in the basement had turned dark again.
Chapter Twenty-One
For the rest of the night, our monitors picked up apparitions, sounds, voices, and occasional moving objects. The wardrobe door in the syringe room opened and closed. We had a pile of evidence to show the house was haunted, but that wasn’t going to help our clients much. They needed the specters gone, permanently.
As dawn broke, we shut down our gear—Stacey could power down the cameras remotely so we didn’t have to go back inside. We went into town and treated ourselves to breakfast at Clary’s Cafe on Abercorn Street, where I had sourdough bread French toast stuffed with strawberries. I felt like I deserved a leisurely, carb-filled breakfast under the outdoor awning. I’d been awake for more than twenty-four hours.
That’s why our next move was to go home and sleep. I skipped returning to the office for our cars and instead dropped Stacey at her apartment, several blocks from the College of Art and Design campus, then I drove to my place and crashed hard on my bed.
I awoke at noon and went to retrieve her. We had a two-hour drive south to Waycross to meet with Captain Marsh’s only living relative, Louisa. Did I mention this job involves a lot of driving? Whether you’re going to check out a haunted beach resort in Florida, or tracking down people who lived in a haunted house years and years ago, you’re spending a lot of time on the road. I brought my MP3 player this time, so there was a little less Taylor Swift, a little more Runaways.
Louisa Marsh lived in a nursing home in downtown Waycross, a five-story institutional building whose front entrance was framed in big concrete blocks with peeling remnants of green paint. The place looked depressing before we even stepped inside.
The staff directed us to the recreation room on the fourth floor, where a couple of old men drowsily played chess at a table, a few other residents sat alone drowsing in front of newspapers, and a few more drowsed in front of a Press Your Luck rerun on the TV. A guy with a checkered suit and big muttonchop sideburns kept saying “No whammies, no whammies!”
We found the eighty-year-old woman gazing out a narrow window at the dingy streets below, dust dancing around her in the yellow light. She seemed lost in thought, and the nurse had to say her name a few times to get her attention.
The woman was small and wiry, wearing a fuzzy pink bathrobe with moth holes all over it. Her hands were gnarled with arthritis. Her eyes were small and pale, sunken deep in a wrinkled face. She looked frail and moved slowly.
“Ms. Marsh, I’m Stacey Ray Tolbert,” Stacey said. “I spoke to you on the phone yesterday. About the house?” Stacey added, when the woman just gave her a puzzled look.
“Oh, of course, dear.” Louisa’s voice was weak and shaky. “You want to buy the house. Where’s your husband?”
“I’m not married, Ms. Marsh,” Stacey said. “Still shopping for that, you might say.”
“Good.” Louisa gave a small nod. “I’ve seen too many women ruined by marriage. Never went for it, myself. I like my independence. I like to spend all morning in the bath if I want, or eat two pieces of peach cobbler all by myself, without worrying what some man will think.”
“That sounds like a smart approach, ma’am,” Stacey said.
I pulled over a couple of plastic chairs so we could sit down.
“Ms. Marsh,” I said, “There may be some confusion. We’re not here about buying the house. In fact, you already sold the house in 1985.”
“Oh, my.” Louisa touched her fingers to her mouth. “I believe you’re right.”
“My name is Ellie Jordan, and I’m a detective.” I handed her an Eckhart Investigations card, but she didn’t look at it. “Stacey is a detective, too.”
“Oh, like Angela Lansbury!” Louisa smiled.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “We’re investigating a case that involves the history of your house. We were hoping you could tell us about it.”
“Where to begin?” Louisa shook her head. “I did love that house dearly.”
“Did you ever meet Captain Marsh himself?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Uncle Gustus. My parents did not think much of him—he was a wild sort, you understand, who liked to have some parties for gentlemen, and there was always gossip. Still, my father believed the old man had money hidden somewhere, and we were his closest relatives, so we went to visit. Holidays, Uncle’s birthday, and so on. Then you’d never know how much my parents disapproved of him. Uncle Gustus would bounce me on his lap and dangle a few idle comments about his will, like waving a string in front of a cat. My parents were the cat, you see.” She laughed, then coughed, and I smiled. The woman was much more spry when discussing the past than the present, fortunately.
“I didn’t care for him when I was a girl,” Louisa continued. “He was scary, with that giant beard and deep voice. Even his laugh was scary to me. He would make me sit with him, and he’d pet my leg like this.” She passed her hand over her knee a few times, which made me think of the strange claw marks on Lexa’s leg.
“Did he ever…hurt you?” I asked, trying to put this issue of child abuse as delicately as possible.
“Not so much. And true to his word, he remembered us in his will—me, anyway! He left everything to me, which made my parents livid.” Louisa chuckled. “He must have known what they said about him in private, or guessed it. Oh, there wasn’t much money after all. He’d sold most of his land to pay his gambling debts. It was mostly just that big, lovely old house.
“My parents insisted I should sell it, but I had my own troubles with them. I wanted to get away. I was twenty years old, and having my own house looked like a world of freedom to me. So I didn’t sell it. I moved in, but it was in such a state that I couldn’t afford the repairs. That’s when I started renting out rooms.”
“And this was 1954? 1955?” I asked.
“Around then, I’m sure. When you’ve seen so many years, child, they all begin to melt together in your memories. President Eisenhower was in office, I can tell you that.”
“So you inherited the house, and you ran it as a boarding house,” I said. “What can you tell us about those years?”
“I can certainly tell you the house drew in all kinds of odd strangers from the road,” Louisa said. “Maybe because it was always being repaired, maybe because there were warehouses and such around. It wasn’t in the pretty part of town, not at all. We had dockworkers and such coming to stay, and working women, you know. My uncle probably enjoyed that.”
“You mean he enjoyed it after he died?” I asked, a little confused.
“Well…yes.” She fidgeted nervously and asked for water, which Stacey ran to fetch for her. Stacey returned with a large paper cup, and Louisa took a tiny sip.
“Did you encounter any ghosts during your time there? Any evidence the house might have been haunted?” I asked.
She sighed. “
Yes, the house was haunted. I would occasionally see people walking around, and they would just disappear. Or you’d hear voices, or things falling down when nobody was in the room. The first I saw was my uncle himself. I was dusting the games room, or the smoking room they called it, when I began to smell something burning. I though the house was on fire! I just about ran out of there screaming, but then I saw Uncle Gustus, sitting in his old wing chair by the fire, smoking one of those big, smelly cigars he loved so much. He was just watching me clean.”
“Oh, gosh. Were you scared?” Stacey asked.
“A little, of course. Not as much as you might think. Remember, I didn’t hate Gustus anymore. I was grateful to him for leaving me everything, for setting me free of my parents. I can’t begin to say how much I appreciated that. So I just looked back at him, and after a little while, he faded away.”
“Did you ever see him again?” I asked.
“Lots of times. Sometimes he spoke to me, told me I was always his favorite. Sometimes I’d feel him playing with my hair, or touching me on the knee. And I’d greet him like a friend. I wasn’t scared of him, or any of the others, because I knew he’d keep me safe from them.”
“The others?” I repeated. “Other ghosts?”
“Oh my, yes, here and there…they’d make themselves known. Some of them were as restless as a flea-bitten dog, but they never did me any harm.”
“Did you wall off the east wing of the house to protect yourself from the ghosts?” I asked, taking a guess.
“Oh, dear, not the ghosts,” she said. “The boarders! You’ve never seen such ill-bred, profane, uncultured men. The women were just as bad. Drunks, loud, behaving like animals. I carved out the east wing to give myself a little peace.”
“That must have been dangerous,” I said, “A woman running the place alone, with those kinds of boarders.”
“Oh, yes. But I wasn’t alone much. I always had a handyman or two to keep the house running—that place was always trying to fall apart. They would help me with the rough ones, too. Some of those boys loved to fight, so they didn’t mind when one of the renters gave them the opportunity.” Louisa chuckled a little to herself.
“Can you name some of the men who worked for you over the years?” I had my pen and pad out, ready to jot down more potential witnesses. I needed any insight into the house I could get.
“Oh, yes, but most of them have passed on. The last two were the best. Buck Kilkenny and Dabney Newton. Those boys could fix anything—including men who refused to pay rent, if you get my meaning. I’m sorry, but it was rough times, and rough folks, too.”
“I understand.” I jotted down their names.
“I called them my rousties,” she added. “It’s a word from the circus people. A roustabout, actually, someone who does all the odd jobs around the circus.”
“Do you know if Buck and Dabney still live in Savannah?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know, child. They were alive last I heard, that’s all I can say. Buck and Dabney…” Her eyes grew a little misty. “They were the ones who found that crazy woman’s body.”
“Really? Mercy Cutledge?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“What can you tell us about her?”
“There isn’t much to say, is there? She was a…well, an escort, I suppose they call it now. She entertained men at my uncle’s parties for a time, then she snapped and murdered my uncle. Stabbed him in his bed! Such horrifying news. Such a crazed woman. When I heard they were letting her out of that hospital, I just…” She shook her head.
“How did you react?” I asked.
“Well, I thought she would come after me next! The world these days…” Louisa shook her head. “Some people felt sorry for her, but I never did. She was a murderer.”
“I understand,” I said. “So the ghosts didn’t scare you at all?”
“Not after I got used to them. Honestly, the house was always full of strangers coming and going. The ghosts weren’t nearly so dangerous as the living.”
That didn’t exactly match my experience with her house, but she seemed to mean it.
“Did anything change after Mercy died there?” I asked.
“It got kind of quiet,” Louisa said. “I’m not sure if I saw my uncle again after that. I didn’t live there too much longer myself. The city came along and said I had to get it up to code or stop renting rooms. I couldn’t afford to turn it into a modern hotel, so I had to put it up for sale. I was sad to move out, but the place felt different, anyway.”
“Different how?” I asked.
“Silent. Not so lively. Like the ghosts were old and tired, and they didn’t show up so often.” Louisa shrugged. “You probably think I’m crazy, but after so long, they almost felt like family. Well, one of them was family.” She smiled a little. “Uncle Gustus used to comfort me with his presence. After that crazy woman hung herself, I just felt alone in that house. So I lived in an apartment for a time, down on East Broad Street, but it never felt like home. And this place…” She looked around. “To be honest, I don’t remember moving here at all.”
I thought over what she’d said, then asked for the names of anyone else who had worked at the boarding house, other handymen she’d employed over the years. I asked about people who had died there. She remembered a few violent deaths and overdoses, but nobody she’d known personally, nobody whose name she could recall after all this time. “I just let the police handle all of that,” she said.
I saved the most difficult questions for the end.
“Ms. Marsh,” I said, “To your knowledge, did your Uncle Augustus have any interest in the occult?”
“The occult?” She blinked, as if startled by the question. “What do you mean?”
“Black magic, sorcery, that sort of thing,” I replied.
“Oh…goodness.” She shook her head. “Where would you get an idea like that?”
“We’ve heard it from a couple of people,” I said.
“Who? The crazy woman?” Louisa chuckled. “Uncle Gustus was not a religious man. He liked his drinking, his gambling, and his women. Most people disapproved of him. But you listen to me right now.” She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, leaning toward me a little. “He had no interest in God, nor in the Devil, neither. He was only interested in pleasure—sinful pleasures, some would say. But that’s the limit of it. Don’t believe anyone who tells you different. And don’t go around saying that about him. He doesn’t deserve to be remembered like that.”
I doubted she would like my next question, either—but sometimes you have to be direct.
“Did Augustus ever murder anyone?” I asked.
“Who have you been talking to?” Louisa looked deeply offended. Her face flushed, and her hand crumpled into a fist on her chair arm. “I don’t think I want to speak to you women anymore.”
“It’s just a follow-up to something we heard,” I said. “I’m very sorry if it upset you, it’s really not a big—”
“I’d like you both to leave now.”
“Can I just ask one or two more questions?”
“Absolutely not!” Louisa was turning red. “Do I need to call an orderly to throw you out? Because I don’t mind doing that at all.”
“That won’t be necessary, Ms. Marsh.” I stood up. “If you want to talk more about your house, or your uncle, please call me. My number’s on the card.”
She looked out the window and didn’t reply.
“Well, that wasn’t much help, was it?” Stacey asked a few minutes later, as we walked down the concrete front steps of the nursing home. “Or was it?”
“I have some hope for follow-up interviews,” I said. “I want to talk to some of the people who worked there.”
“I feel sorry for her, though,” Stacey said. “It sounded like she had a weird, lonely life, and now I guess her mind is slipping.”
I just nodded.
I made Stacey drive the van home. As soon as we were on the road, I called Anna T
readwell to update her: we’d observed a number of ghosts in her house, we’d set a trap for the dangerous one we’d encountered, we’d interviewed Louisa Marsh. I reluctantly added “brought out a psychic” to our list of concrete actions, since I needed to pad it out a little. The only accomplishment they really wanted to hear of course, was “got rid of the ghosts.” I wished I could have said that.
“When do you think we can move back?” Anna asked. They were staying at the Econo Lodge by the airport, which told me everything about their dwindling family budget.
“Soon,” I told her. “We’re working day and night.”
She didn’t sound reassured.
I called Calvin to give him the names of Louisa Marsh’s employees over the years. Maybe he could turn up something, or put in a call to the police department. It was Sunday afternoon, so if we were lucky, somebody would have time to talk to a retired homicide detective.
As it turned out, we were a little bit lucky.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Buck Kilkenny and Dabney Newton were two names known pretty well to the Savannah police department. Their record of petty theft and drug offenses didn’t make them particularly memorable, but they also owned a scummy dive bar by the interstate over in Port Wentworth, just a few miles inland from Savannah and part of its metro area. Interestingly, that place was called Roustie’s. Calvin’s police contacts advised us to stay away, but I’m not great at taking advice.
We pulled into the parking lot of the bar, which looked like a repurposed Pizza Hut, with brick walls and a flaking red roof. A few motorcycles sat outside, along with more than one dingy pick-up truck decorated with the Confederate flag. The bar looked like a place where meth-addicted rats went to die.
“You know, it’s weird,” Stacey said as she parked the van. “Louisa’s story didn’t totally match the original police report from 1982.”
“Which part?”
“I’ve read that thing a few times, and it doesn’t mention Buck and Dabney at all, or any maintenance guys discovering the body. It just sounded like Louisa walked out there one morning and found Mercy hanging from the baluster.”