by JL Bryan
“So the ghosts are definitely gone this time?” Dale asked. He wasn’t drunk or cocky now. He seemed chastened and humbled by the experience. “They aren’t going to come back?”
“They’ve all moved on,” I said.
“Even from the crypt?” he asked, still looking worried.
“Definitely,” I replied, and he got a reflective look on his face. I imagined Dale changing the newly-discovered room into some kind of man-cave, with a hideous couch and beer signs. The evil old idol might be replaced by a shrine to the Cubbies. I held back a laugh. “After last night, I’d say this is now probably the least haunted house in all of Savannah. Call us if you have any trouble, but I don’t anticipate any. We can do a follow-up in a few weeks if you’d like.”
“Then we can keep going with the renovations? The rooms will be safe to rent?” Anna asked.
“Yep, as soon as you clean up the mold and broken syringes, you can make this a really nice place,” I said. “You’ll probably find that the remodeling goes much faster and cheaper, with fewer problems than before. That’s normal.”
“Thank goodness,” Anna said, sighing a little. She smiled at her husband, and he smiled back. It felt like ice breaking in the sunlight.
“What about Mercy?” Lexa asked. “Did she move on, too?”
“She’s leaving the house with us,” I said. I hadn’t mentioned the part where I was possessed by Mercy’s ghost. I could feel her inside me, restless.
“Can you thank her for me?” Lexa asked. “She was just trying to warn us about the bad ones. She was really a good ghost.”
“She was, but she’s ready to leave now,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about any ghosts anymore, Lexa. Good or bad.”
Lexa nodded silently. She’d been through a lot.
As we left the house, stepping out onto the driveway shaded by oak and moss, Stacey took a last look at the sharp peaks and high roofs of the Gothic-style house.
“You know, once you get rid of the ghosts and spiders, it is a pretty nice mansion,” she said. “I bet it will make a cute little hotel.”
“Yeah. I think they’ll be fine,” I said. “I hope their check clears.”
We drove away.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“So, does that thing really have black magic or not?” Stacey asked.
We were at the office, in the basement. I was carefully sliding the two pieces of Captain Marsh’s broken idol into a ghost trap. I sealed the lid.
“I have my doubts,” I said. “The important thing is that Marsh himself believed in it. It was the focus of his powers.”
“Yeah, but he killed those people to lengthen his own life, and that worked, right? I mean, he lived to be a hundred and six.”
“Some people have longevity on their side.” I placed the trap into a giant steel safe, eight feet tall, on a shelf alongside similar sealed traps. The one next to it held an old voodoo doll bristling with needles.
“If you don’t believe in the occult stuff, why are you stashing that thing? Why not just toss it in the trash?” Stacey asked.
“It’s Calvin’s policy.” I shoved the steel door shut. “Better safe than sorry.”
“And keeping a vault full of supernatural bric-a-brac from old cases counts as safe?” she asked.
“Maybe not, but that’s our job. We face the dangers so other people don’t have to.”
“Hey, you should put that on our business cards!” Stacey said.
A whirring and clanking sounded above. Calvin descended from the ceiling, caged inside the little industrial elevator that connects the three floors of the building. His bloodhound Hunter stood beside him, languidly wagging his tail. Hunter liked riding the elevator.
When it reached the floor, Calvin opened the cage door and rolled out. The dog stayed loyally at his side, but drifted in Stacey’s direction, knowing she was good for a long scratch under the chin.
“Case closed?” Calvin asked, glancing at the safe door, and I nodded. “Good. That sounded like a tough one.”
“It was,” I agreed.
“What do you think of the psychic kid? Any good?”
“Better than expected,” I said. “He helped us break the case, and he also held back a swarm of attacking ghosts. We may as well keep his number on file.”
“Or maybe invite him out for lunch,” Stacey suggested. I looked at her, and she blushed. “Or, you know. Coffee?”
“What about this one?” Calvin inclined his head toward Stacey. “Are we keeping her or throwing her back?”
I gave Stacey a long look.
“It’s up to her,” I finally said. “Personally, I’d like to keep her.”
“I’d like to stay,” Stacey said. “This work matters. And there’s almost nobody willing to do it.”
Calvin nodded. There wasn’t much left to say, and only one thing left to do.
Chapter Thirty
I walked into Roustie’s the next night, accompanied by Jacob and Stacey. They lingered near the front door while I walked up to the bar—I just wanted Dabney and Buck to see I wasn’t alone. I didn’t know how Jacob would fare in an all-out brawl with these people, but maybe he could make them all miserably depressed or something.
The bar hosted a much bigger crowd than it had on Sunday afternoon, and David Allen Coe played loud on the jukebox. As I approached the bar, Buck was entertaining a couple of hefty biker guys while pouring their drinks.
“…so the sign says, ‘Liquor in the front, poker in the rear’!” Buck was shouting to be heard, or just shouting because he was drunk. The bikers laughed, and one of them pounded his fist on the bar as if he couldn’t control himself. Then they asked for more drinks.
“Hi there, Buck,” I said.
He looked up at me, and the drunken smile vanished from his face.
“Maybe you want to talk at the end of the bar?” I sat down a few stools away from the nearest customer, under the rack of drinking glasses and next to the cash register.
Buck stared at me, saying nothing. He clearly didn’t know how to react, because he ran back to the kitchen door and shouted for Dabney. Dabney scowled when he saw me.
The two of them approached with fairly hostile looks on their faces. Buck muttered something to Dabney and pointed at my two friends by the door.
“Hi, boys,” I said. “You two were such a big help with my investigation, I thought you’d be curious how the case turned out.”
“Yeah, all right,” Buck said, nodding rapidly until Dabney elbowed him to stop.
“First, I should remind you that I’m not the police,” I said. “My job is to serve my clients, which is usually about removing the ghosts from their homes. It’s not my job to dig up old criminal cases and prosecute them. Are we clear on that?”
The two of them just stared at me. Dabney narrowed his eyes a little, while Buck actually gulped, then poured himself a drink.
“I have to tell you,” I said. “Captain Marsh—Louisa’s great-uncle, you know—he was a real monster in life. He liked to murder passing strangers, rootless people, anybody the authorities wouldn’t notice had gone missing. But after he died, he really became a monster. He kept on killing the same sorts of people. I think Louisa knew about it and helped him. She definitely covered up for him. She walled up the crypt under the house where the bodies of his victims were stored.”
Dabney and Buck glanced at each other, Buck’s jaw dropping open. They probably didn’t know about that. It would have been done soon after Louisa took over the house, when Dabney and Buck were still children.
“So that gives you some idea of why the place was so haunted,” I continued. “Just think about Louisa for a moment, living alone there, seeing nobody but strangers, while serving the murderous ghost of her dead uncle. Maybe she was just really grateful to him for leaving her the house. Maybe Louisa’s a little twisted herself. You have to wonder whether she was crazy when she got there, or whether the house and that evil ghost made her that way.
/> “Anyway, when she heard her great-uncle’s killer, Mercy, was being released, she decided she wanted Mercy dead. Maybe she was afraid for her own life, but I suspect Captain Marsh’s ghost wanted it done. He wanted revenge, and he wanted Mercy to die right there in his house so he could torment her for years to come.
“There was one problem. Mercy wasn’t some drifter staying at the house. She wasn’t going to show up on her own. That’s why Louisa sent you two to kidnap Mercy after she got out of the hospital. You brought her to the Marsh house, you put a noose around her neck, and you threw her over the railing.”
“That ain’t…hey, that ain’t…” Buck tried to come up with something to say.
“Shut up, Buck,” Dabney said. “You ain’t got no proof of that, lady.”
“Actually, I’ve heard it from the victim herself, Mercy,” I said. “I work with ghosts, remember? But I figured it out before she told me. The two of you gave yourselves away by ransacking my apartment and threatening me. That’s when I knew you had something to hide. Add together the inconsistencies between what Louisa told us a few days ago and what she told the police thirty years ago, and I pretty much figured it out.”
“Dang it, Dabney, I told you we ought to leave her alone—” Buck began.
“Shut up!” Dabney actually slapped Buck across the face, and Buck cringed like a long-abused dog. Then Dabney turned to me. “Nothing you’re saying could hold up in court.”
“Hey, I told you, I’m not the police.” I held up my hands defensively. “I’m not trying to put together a case for the prosecution here.”
“Then what are you trying to do?” Dabney asked.
“I’m just getting to the part y’all don’t know about,” I said. “You see, Captain Marsh had power over almost every ghost in that house, because he’d personally killed them. When he was alive, he first poisoned his wife to get her out of his way, then he ritually sacrificed the others down in his cellar—the crypt cellar, the one y’all maybe didn’t know about. He sacrificed them to this ugly little demon idol. Lord knows where he got it, but there it was, surrounded by old candles.
“Anyway, he didn’t kill Mercy. You two did. In fact, Mercy had killed him. So, by the rules of that household, Mercy’s ghost actually had power over Captain Marsh’s ghost. She used it to stand against him, to protect the living against him and trap him down in his lair. For the longest time, Mercy was the only ghost anyone encountered there, and her only goal was to drive people away for their own safety.
“Now, Captain Marsh was a powerful ghost, so you can imagine how strong and powerful Mercy’s ghost became, fighting against him all those years. Like a bodybuilder in heavy training, I guess. That’s something to think about.
“When I take a ghost out of a house, I usually do a catch and release. I look for the proper place to let the ghost free. Mercy had a particular place in mind.”
“Where’d she want to go?” Buck asked.
Behind them, a neon Michelob sign glowed brighter, then fizzled and died. The entire sign slipped off the wall and crashed to the floor.
“What was that?” Dabney jumped and turned to look.
“She wanted to come and stay with you two, her murderers,” I said. “I can’t imagine why, but I thought it would be nice to honor her last request, don’t you?” I slid off my stool, my jeans peeling away from the sticky cushion. “So I’ve brought her here. Maybe she can help around the bar, if she isn’t too focused on revenge.”
“Wait,” Buck said, “You can’t leave a ghost here!”
“She’s just babbling,” Dabney said. “There ain’t no ghost, Buck.”
Then the glasses in the rack over their heads began to explode, one by one, raining down shards on Buck and Dabney at high speed. They screamed and backed away.
The cash register opened, and all the cash and coins leaped out onto the floor.
I turned and walked away. All around me, an unseen force toppled unoccupied chairs and sent tables sliding across the room. More beer signs exploded and spat out showers of sparks. The bar patrons stood up, shouting in surprise at the wave of unexplained destruction.
I didn’t know whether Mercy would kill Dabney and Buck right away, or keep them alive to torment for years to come. I leave such matters in the hands of higher powers than myself.
“Well?” Stacey asked me when I reached the door.
“I think Mercy is going to be very happy with them,” I said. “Might be bad for business, though.”
“You can’t please everyone.” Stacey smiled and touched Jacob’s arm.
“Thanks for all your help, Jacob,” I said.
“It was fun,” he told me. “This part right here, anyway. The rest of it was unspeakably horrible.”
“Welcome to the job,” I said. “Now let’s get out of here. I heard this bar is haunted.”
We walked out the door while Mercy’s ghost tore the place apart behind us.
From the author
Thanks so much for taking the time to read Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper. If you enjoyed this book, I hope you’ll consider leaving a quick review at Amazon. Good reviews are possibly the most important factor in helping other readers discover a book.
The second book in the Ellie Jordan series is already in the works. I hope to write several of these following her different cases and adventures—I certainly had a lot of fun with this one, and I hope you did, too.
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Thanks for reading!
Also by J.L. Bryan:
The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)
Jenny Pox
Tommy Nightmare
Alexander Death
Jenny Plague-Bringer
Urban Fantasy/Horror
Inferno Park
The Unseen
Science Fiction Novels
Nomad
Helix
The Songs of Magic Series (YA/Fantasy)
Fairy Metal Thunder
Fairy Blues
Fairystruck
Fairyland
Fairyvision