by JL Bryan
“Was your family okay?”
“My parents both died that night.”
“Oh, my God, Ellie.” Stacey moved close, putting her arms around me. I couldn’t help resisting at first—force of habit, I guess. Then I let myself sort of half-hug her, and that much contact made me start crying. I wrapped both my arms around her, feeling broken and helpless and stupid all at once.
“I was the only one left,” I whispered. “I never even saw Frank again after that night. One of the firefighters took him to a vet, but he’d breathed a ton of smoke and he had burns all over him. The vet put him to sleep, the same night he saved my life. I didn’t even get to say good-bye to any of them, not my parents, not even the dog. It just happened too fast.” A sob hitched in my chest, but I fought it, not wanting to totally break down in front of her. “My parents were good people. They didn’t deserve to die like that. I miss them so much.”
We held each other while I cried and tried to get myself together.
In case you’re wondering, this was not at all how I’d meant things to go. I’d believed I could keep up a solid, stoic front, but I’d been wrong.
After a minute, I stepped back and wiped my eyes.
“They put me in the hospital overnight, for some first-degree burns. I was truly in shock, I couldn’t process what had happened. My whole life, the people I loved the most, were gone, all vanished into smoke.
“A police detective came to visit me the next day. He was kind of a heavyset older guy, just starting to go gray. He asked me about what I’d seen, and I told him everything, even about the nineteenth-century man and how he’d kind of cast a spell over me. I was just like a robot, spitting out information, not caring whether I made any sense or whether anyone thought I was crazy.
“So this detective tells me about the history of the place. He’d been researching it. He’s the one who told me about the five earlier houses that burned down in the same spot, and later, when he’d studied it more, sent me the story of Anton Clay. By then I was living with my aunt in Virginia, which felt like a million miles from home.
“I stayed in touch with that detective. I kept sending letters asking for more information. He would reply with just quick little notes if he didn’t have anything new to tell me. He eventually retired from the force and started a private detective agency specializing in ghosts…”
“Mr. Eckhart,” Stacey said.
“That’s how I met him. All I wanted to do was the same work he was doing, getting rid of the bad ghosts so they couldn’t hurt anyone. I particularly wanted to learn how to destroy that ghost.” I pointed to the center of the empty lot where my house and my parents should have been. “So I moved back to Savannah for college, and I insisted Calvin train me on the side. He really didn’t want to, but I didn’t leave him much choice. It was either take me as his apprentice or deal with me camping out by his office all day.”
“Did you get rid of the pyro ghost?” Stacey asked, following my gaze. “Is he gone now?”
“The thing is, we can’t really kill ghosts. They’re already dead. Sometimes you get lucky and convince one to move on peacefully, but sometimes you have to trap and remove them. The really nasty, violent ghosts don’t go to the refuge cemetery in Goodwell, where we took Mercy. For the truly evil ones, we bury them in a different cemetery. We bury the whole trap with the ghost still inside. That’s literally the best we can do.”
“So that’s what we would do if we trapped that heroin-addict ghost that attacked me, right?” Stacey touched her breastbone, where the needle scratch was still visible. She’d been treating it with Neosporin. “Just bury the trap?”
“Right.”
“But wouldn’t the batteries run out eventually? The ones that power the electrical field around the jar?”
“Eventually, after several years,” I said. “But the combination of the lead-glass ghost jar, and all the cemetery earth around it, will pretty much pin the ghost into place forever, as long as nobody disturbs the buried trap.”
“Sounds hellish.”
“Violent ghosts shouldn’t be so violent, then. It’s their own fault.” I looked her directly in the eyes now. “The dead are not our concern. We’re here to protect the living. We stand on the border between the world of light and the darkness beyond, and there aren’t very many of us. The world is teeming with the dead.
“So, when I say it must be nice to have the option of going back to your parents and thinking over what you’d like to do with your life, that’s what I mean,” I told her. “This is what I do. This is what I am. And if I don’t, who will?”
Stacey nodded slowly, a thoughtful look on her face.
“I know you got into this because you thought it was neat to capture images of ghosts with your cameras,” I said. “And you’re good at that, and we need that. But you’re also strong. You don’t run from danger, and you wouldn’t ditch me if things got too hot.”
“I wouldn’t,” she said.
“You don’t just have the talent for this, you have the nerve and the guts. I’ve seen it. And I’ll admit, Stacey, I didn’t want Calvin to hire you, but I’m glad he did. It was the right call. I want you beside me in this, protecting the living against the dead. I need you. I can’t do it alone.”
There. That’s the stuff I’d actually meant to say, more or less.
We looked at each for a moment.
“So are you with me?” I asked.
She hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, Ellie, I’m with you. Partners?” She stuck out a hand.
“Don’t be silly. You’re the new kid, and I’m totally in charge.” I shook her hand. “But, yeah, eventually. Partners. Now let’s go kick some supernatural ass.”
Stacey grinned.
Driving away, I resisted the urge to look back. Once before, visiting alone, I’d see Anton inside the fence. He was no longer handsome, tailored, and spit-polished, but charred, his entire body a smoldering black wreck, except for his intense red eyes. Those had stared at me out of the charcoal skull-mask of his face, and I knew he was waiting for me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Our side trip did put us off schedule, so when we arrived at the Marsh/Treadwell house, we had less than twenty-five minutes until sunset. We had to get in and out of there fast. Our chores included changing out camera batteries and manually switching on the cameras themselves. They never had much trouble shutting down remotely, but there were always a few stubborn ones that had to be turned back on by hand. With a house so ghost-infested, it was better to turn them all on before dark rather than risk having to run inside at night.
“Let’s split up to save time,” I told Stacey as we walked into the foyer. It was funny how the foyer had once seemed the center of the haunting, but now felt like the safest room in the house—though that wasn’t saying much.
“Isn’t that what they always say in a horror movie? Right before somebody gets killed?” Stacey asked.
“Usually, yeah. So hurry.”
We divided up the first floor, switching out battery packs and turning on cameras. I took the second floor, while Stacey climbed on up to third. I really can’t say who had the worst of that, but we agreed to meet in the kitchen and go down to the cellar together. Nobody was going in that place alone, even if the sun was still up. The sun didn’t reach down into that darkness, anyway. The cellar had no windows.
I made my rounds on the second floor, changing out camera batteries and double-checking that the cameras themselves were working. In the junkie’s room, the trap remained wide open, waiting for a ghost to spring it. The crushed-up pill powder was still in the bottom, but the candles had burned down to nubs and gone out before we’d left that morning.
I reloaded it with three fresh candles and lit them up. As I did that, I heard a clear footstep in the hall.
“Almost done, Stacey.” I turned, but nobody was there.
“What’s that?” Stacey’s voice crackled over my headset.
“Were
you just out in the hall?” I asked.
“Nope, still up on three. This mold is spreading fast. The whole inside of the closet is coated with it now.”
“Okay. I think the ghosts are starting to move around. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
A minute later, I descended the steep, narrow back staircase and walked through the laundry area into the kitchen.
Then I froze. A woman stood there, looking out the densely overgrown bay window. It was not Stacey, nor anybody else from this century, given the high, stiff lace of her dress that totally concealed her neck. The dress was dark and long, almost puritanical with its starched-straight lines.
She was smallish, with dark hair and thin lips. It took a moment for me to recognize her.
“Mrs. Marsh?” I said, turning down the volume on my headset so Stacey wouldn’t distract me. “Eugenia Marsh?”
The woman turned slowly. The fabric of her dress did not move at all. It was as though she hovered just above the floor, pivoting in midair. She held a bone-white teacup on a saucer in one hand, and her turning didn’t seem to disturb it at all.
She looked right at me, her eyes staring into mine—she was definitely a conscious entity, not a residual recording.
It seemed like she was about to speak, but she didn’t. Instead, she raised her teacup to her mouth, took a sip, then placed it back on the saucer.
She looked at me for another moment, and then her lips turned black. Veins of black rose on her face, spreading out from her mouth across her nose, her cheeks, her chin. Some of them ran down into the collar of her dress. Two pulsing black veins grew upward toward her eyes, turning them solid black.
The flesh on her hands and face crumbled. Her dark hair shriveled and turned pale gray.
Then she crashed to the floor. By the time she landed on the scuffed, dirty old tiles, she wasn’t much more than a skeleton in a dress. I watched her melt away into the tiles, feeling more than a little disturbed.
“Ellie, what’s up?” Stacey dashed into the room, out of breath, waving her phone. “I couldn’t hear you. What happened?”
“I just ran into Eugenia Marsh,” I said. “We’d better get out of here. The ghosts are stirring.”
The sun was already out of sight when Stacey and I stepped out through the front doors.
We sat out in the van that night, watching the monitors. It was similar to the previous night—lots of footsteps, voices, doors swinging open or shut. A chair slid a foot or so in one of the rooms. A few half-formed, quick-fading apparitions passed the night vision cameras. The thermals picked up moving cold spots that appeared and disappeared.
This time, Stacey and I napped in shifts, taking turns watching the array of screens and listening to the speakers. This worked pretty well for a few hours. The only downside was that I slept on one of those narrow, hard drop-down bunks.
She woke me up about three in the morning, shaking my shoulder and babbling excitedly.
“What?” I grumbled, opening my eyes. I was still half-lost in a dream where I’d been drowning in a giant bowl of Lucky Charms. Don’t ask for more details.
“He sprung the trap!” Stacey said. “Junkie guy, I’m guessing.”
“Really?” I sat up, more awake now, and looked at the monitor. The broken-syringe room, as viewed in green-on-green night vision, showed the stamper arm fully depressed, the cylindrical trap sealed tight. “Finally, some progress. Did you see it happen?”
“Yeah, just now. I was about to review it on thermal.”
“Do that,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
Stacey punched keys on her laptop. A thermal video image of the room appeared on the monitor, and she backed it up a few minutes.
“There,” she said, pointing to a wispy deep-blue mist that drifted around the three bright red spots of the trap’s candles. It moved slowly, as though being cautious.
One tendril of pale blue finally extended into the trap. It snuffed out each candle as it passed, sucking out the energy.
By the time the shape reached the broken syringe at the bottom, the cylindrical shape of the trap was filled with dark blue. The ghost was inside, investigating the powdered opioids.
The trap’s sensors obviously picked up on it, because the stamper arm slammed down, sealing the lid.
“Got it!” Stacey said, beaming.
“Wait.” I looked closer. “There’s no cold spot inside that trap. It’s completely ambient temperature.” I couldn’t double-check the sensors within the trap, of course, because the EM field blocked their little wireless broadcasts.
“I don’t get it.”
“Back it up and run it very slowly.”
“Okay…” She frowned as she used her mouse.
In slow motion, the arm of the stamper began to fall. Just before the lid sealed the trap, something appeared on the screen beside it. It was just a thin line, like a wire, and it was solid black on the thermal, which meant it was probably cold enough to burn your fingers.
In an instant, the thin line yanked the entire dark-blue mass out of the trap like a fish on a hook. It hauled the ghost away through the floor.
Then the trap sealed.
“What was that?” Stacey asked.
“Looks like someone had a tight grasp on Mr. Junkie,” I said. “And he wasn’t willing to let go.”
“So…does that mean our traps our worthless now?”
“For this case, maybe. We’ll have to reset the trap to know for sure.”
“You want to go in there again?” She glanced at the case holding the ghost cannon.
“Not tonight,” I said. “It’s not worth it. We’re going to have to figure out a new approach. Let me know if anything else happens.”
I lay back on my hard little bunk, thinking it over. I mainly thought about Eugenia. From what Jacob had said, her little manifestation to me must have taken a lot of effort and energy.
I thought about what she might have been telling me, and what it might mean for our case.
Chapter Twenty-Five
About an hour after sunrise, I parked my old Camaro outside my apartment. I went in through the exterior door I shared with other tenants, then up the stairs to my place, where I was ready to crash, or maybe just sit and read for a while.
I stopped outside my door, because it was open.
It wasn’t wide open, just an inch or two, but I was fairly certain I hadn’t left it that way. I also hadn’t smashed the lock and door handle on the way out.
In this situation, the smart thing to do is walk away and call the police. You don’t want to make decisions based on impatience, exhaustion, or anger at having your home violated.
Unfortunately, I was feeling impatient, exhausted, and the early red twinges of anger. I drew the stun gun—now concealed in my purse, because I don’t go around wearing my utility belt in public—and kicked my door to make it swing wide open. It was a good, solid front kick. My kickboxing classes finally paid off a little, yay.
“Who’s in there?” I shouted. “The cops are coming now, but if you want to run, I’ll give you a head start.”
There was no reply. Nothing moved in there…not even my cat.
“Hello?” I stepped inside, holding my stun gun high. I had enough stress and problems in my life already. If I encountered a burglar, I’d be happy to take out my frustrations on him.
If he’d hurt my cat, I would probably zap him in the eyeballs.
I pounced into my little studio apartment, ready for a fight. Nothing stirred, so I probably looked a little ridiculous. Better ridiculous than sorry.
The apartment was trashed—the bed askew, the mattress thrown against the wall and slashed open, furniture moved, drawers pulled out, clothes scattered everywhere. It looked like they’d searched the place, then grown bored and started smashing dishes and glasses in my kitchen nook, then broken my poor, ancient TV set. The hex signs and dreamcatchers had been ripped from my walls, and someone had painted LEAVE TOWN in big red letters, along with what might h
ave been an attempt at a skull and crossbones. They’d used red paint for added effect.
“If someone’s here, you have five seconds to get out, or I’m going to start shooting.” So I didn’t have a real gun, big deal. He didn’t know that, whoever he was.
I stalked through the apartment, checking the only places a person could hide—the kitchen pantry, the closet, under my bed. Nothing. I glanced out at the tiny balcony, but it was empty and the door was still locked.
Something rustled behind me. I spun around, holding out my stun gun, ready to pump somebody full of voltage.
“Mrow?” Bandit poked his head out from under the sofa. He looked around cautiously, as if emerging from a bomb shelter into an uncertain world.
“Bandit!” I scooped him up and hugged him, and he gave me a little purr and tucked his head under my chin. He must have been scared, because Bandit isn’t usually much of a cuddler. “What happened? Did anyone hurt you?” I checked him for cuts and injuries, but it looked like he’d been wise enough to keep out of the way while they ransacked my apartment.
I placed him on the couch and looked again at the threatening graffiti on my wall. Either some long-lost enemy had emerged from my past in search of revenge, or this was related to my current case. Only a handful of non-dead people had any interest in what I was doing, so I thought the identity of the vandals was fairly obvious.
That was like the puzzle piece that reveals the whole picture. Suddenly, I understood the entire case and what we needed to do.
I took out my phone.
“Don’t you usually sleep during daylight hours?” Calvin asked when he answered.
“Mercy Cutledge wasn’t crazy, and she didn’t kill herself,” I said.
“That’s a new development. I’ll celebrate by continuing to drink my coffee.”
“Can you give me the psychic guy’s number? We’ll need his help.”