by JL Bryan
Contents
Title
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Also by J. L. Bryan
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
From the author
Lullaby
Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper,
Book Seven
by
J.L. Bryan
Copyright 2016 J.L. Bryan
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my wife, who doesn't seem to mind how much time I spend staying up all night reading about ghosts, mansions, and old graveyards.
I appreciate everyone who has helped with this book. Thanks to beta readers Daniel Arenson and Robert Duperre, and Isalys Blackwell. Thanks to my proofreaders Barb Ferrante and Morgan Hennessy. Thanks to Claudia from PhatPuppy Art, who created the great cover art for this book, and her daughter Catie, who's done all the lettering on the covers for this series.
Thanks to my agent Sarah Hershman and to everyone at Tantor Media who have made the audio versions of these books. The audio books are read by Carla Mercer-Meyer, who does an amazing job.
Thanks also to the book bloggers who's supported the series, including Heather from Bewitched Bookworks; Mandy from I Read Indie; Michelle from Much Loved Books; Shirley from Creative Deeds; Katie and Krisha from Inkk Reviews; Lori from Contagious Reads; Heather from Buried in Books; Kristina from Ladybug Storytime; Chandra from Unabridged Bookshelf; Kelly from Reading the Paranormal; AimeeKay from Reviews from My First Reads Shelf and Melissa from Books and Things; Kristin from Blood, Sweat, and Books; Aeicha from Word Spelunking; Lauren from Lose Time Reading; Kat from Aussie Zombie; Andra from Unabridged Andralyn; Jennifer from A Tale of Many Reviews; Giselle from Xpresso Reads; Ashley from Bibliophile’s Corner; Lili from Lili Lost in a Book; Line from Moonstar’s Fantasy World; Holly from Geek Glitter; Louise from Nerdette Reviews; Isalys from Book Soulmates; Heidi from Rainy Day Ramblings; Kristilyn from Reading in Winter; Kelsey from Kelsey’s Cluttered Bookshelf; Lizzy from Lizzy’s Dark Fiction; Shanon from Escaping with Fiction; Savannah from Books with Bite; Tara from Basically Books; Toni from My Book Addiction; Abbi from Book Obsession; Lake from Lake’s Reads; Jenny from Jenny on the Book; and anyone else I missed!
Most of all, thanks to the readers who've supported this series. There are more books to come!
Also by J.L. Bryan:
The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series
Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper
Cold Shadows
The Crawling Darkness
Terminal
House of Whispers
Maze of Souls
Lullaby
The eighth book in the Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series should be available in October or November 2016
The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)
Jenny Pox
Tommy Nightmare
Alexander Death
Jenny Plague-Bringer
Urban Fantasy/Horror
The Unseen
Inferno Park
Science Fiction Novels
Nomad
Helix
The Songs of Magic Series (YA/Fantasy)
Fairy Metal Thunder
Fairy Blues
Fairystruck
Fairyland
Fairyvision
For Johnny
Chapter One
Halloween was over. It was just past midnight, and I sat in an uncomfortable plaid-upholstered chair in a dim hospital room. Most of the light came from the slightly ajar door to the hall. I could hear a Sanford and Son rerun from a television somewhere else on the floor.
My boyfriend lay still in his bed, breathing lightly, which was all he'd done for the past twenty-four hours. His eyeballs occasionally shifted under their lids, back and forth, indicating dreams.
Michael had been knocked unconscious and nearly killed by the sword-wielding ghost of a Hessian horseman from the eighteenth century. The sword had passed through him, leaving a nasty scar across his chest and stomach. A matching scar ran down his back. The wound had never bled, and the X-ray hadn't revealed any internal damage, but the ghost sword had scarred him all the same.
His sister, seventeen-year-old Melissa, occupied the other very uncomfortable plaid chair. She had already watched her mother die in hospice care a few years earlier. Their father had taken off for parts unknown when they were children. If Michael died, she would be alone, like me.
I knew she had to be scared, but she kept it inside, her mouth hard and flat, her eyes glaring at her fingernails. If anything, she looked angry.
“Tell me again how it happened,” Melissa said. It wasn't the first time she'd asked me to recount the events. I didn't like talking about it, but she deserved whatever would help her cope.
“He was possessed,” I said. “The ghost inside him was a man named Anton Clay who died in 1841. A real firebug. When he was alive, he had an affair with a married woman. She broke it off, he burned down her house, killed her whole family and himself. Since then, his ghost has burned down other houses, killing more people.” Including my house and my parents, but I hadn't yet gone into that with her. “It was my fault. I don't know how Clay ended up possessing Michael, but I know he did it to get to me.”
“Because of your work,” Melissa said. Her voice was flat as she looked out at the night outside, where a little rain now drizzled. She was tall and athletic like her brother, did ballet with a studio, and also had a shelf of soccer trophies in her room. She was a senior in high school and busy applying for colleges. She was usually cheerful and friendly, more than I'd ever been as a teenager. Now she slumped in her chair, looking small.
Agreeing with her would have been a lie. Anton Clay had been after me for the past eleven years, since I was fifteen. I'd become a ghost hunter because of him. I'd barely escaped the night he killed my family.
Melissa might have deserved the truth, but I wasn't ready to share all of it. So instead I said, “Anton, the ghost, almost succeeded. He almost killed us all. If the horseman ghost hadn't struck him down and stopped him, we would all be dead, even Michael.”
“And where's the horseman ghost now?” Melissa still didn't look at me, her eyes fixed on the falling rain outside.
“He crossed over to the other side.”
“He won't be back to help us.”
“No, but he was dangerous, too.”
“And where is the ghost of Anton Clay now?” Melissa asked.
“I don't know. Jacob—that's our psychic�
��”
“I know who he is.”
“Jacob thinks Anton's ghost left Michael, probably knocked out by the horseman's sword, and is roaming free somewhere.”
“Are you going to catch him?”
“That's exactly what I'm going to do when we get back home. Anton lived most of his life in and around Savannah. It's almost a certainty that his ghost returned there.”
“But Michael's going to be okay?”
“I think so. It's really up to the doctors now.”
Melissa was silent for a long moment, then she said, “I have a chemistry test tomorrow. I should go home.” The hospital was located in Rincon, a town halfway between the farm where Michael had been struck down and our hometown of Savannah. It was thirty minutes from home, less if you floored it and hoped no cops were around.
“I'm sure it will be an excused absence,” I said. “It's a family medical emergency. I can call the school for you.”
“You're not my mother,” Melissa said, her voice listless, her eyes still avoiding me. The comment caught me off-guard.
“Well, no,” I said. “But if you need an adult to call for you, I can—”
“Michael should never have gotten involved with you.” Melissa spoke quietly, looking down at her purple fingernails. That comment caught me off-guard even more than the previous one, but I suppose it wasn't too shocking under the circumstances.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again, unsure what to say. I tried for the truth.
“You're probably right,” I said. “I never meant to put him in any danger.”
“Maybe you should go.” Melissa looked at her brother in the bed.
“You want me to leave the room?”
“Don't you have a home? Don't you have anything better to do?”
“This is where I want to be,” I said. “With Michael.”
“It's your fault he's even here,” Melissa said. “You said so.”
“Yeah.”
“So maybe you should go home.”
“You really don't want me here, do you?” I asked.
She finally looked at me, and there was fury in her eyes. She didn't say anything.
Feeling stung, I stood up. I touched Michael's hand, then ran my fingers over his sleeping face, touched his thick, longish brown hair. Some little part of me hoped my touch would somehow revive him now. Another, more suspicious part tried to sense whether Anton Clay was really gone or maybe slumbering deep inside Michael's unconscious form, perhaps trapped there.
“Just leave him alone,” Melissa said behind me.
I tensed, but resisted the urge to verbally lash out at her. She was the kid here, and I was the adult.
She raised her chin as I turned to look at her, almost as if she was preparing for a boxing match.
“Melissa, I know what it's like to think you're alone,” I said. “You're not. You can talk to me. You can trust me.”
She stared at me for another long moment, fuming. Then she said: “I can trust you to get my brother killed.”
This clearly wasn't going well.
“I'm sorry,” was all I could think to say, and then I made my way out of the room.
I tried to keep my feelings hidden as I walked up the fluorescent-lit linoleum hallway, past the nurses' station, where two female nurses, one young and one middle-aged, were not being very subtle about watching the four muscular firefighters playing poker in the waiting area. They were Michael's co-workers and friends who'd come up from Savannah when they'd heard he was in the hospital.
One of the firefighters raised a hand, smiling at me. “Hey!”
I waved back, but continued on to the elevator and jabbed the button with my thumb.
“How's he doing?” The guy walked over to me, and the other three guys were half-standing now, looking at me. One of the nurses scowled, as if jealous of this wave of attention I was drawing. As if I ever wanted to be the center of attention in any situation. I certainly didn't want to be at the center of this one.
“Good. He's good.” I glanced at the floor indicator above the elevator. The elevator car was coming slowly...slowly...
“Yeah? So he's awake?”
“Did he say anything?” one of the other firefighters asked.
“Okay, so he's not that good,” I said. “He's still out.”
“Where are you going?” The first firefighter had caught up to me now, thanks to the slow elevator. I tried to remember his name from when I'd met this group earlier. Was it Brad? Or Bret? Usually I'm careful to note these things. A good detective pays attention to the smallest details, but I was exhausted and not really in work mode. “Hey, if you need something, we'll go get it for you,” he added.
The other three nodded, making little grunts and grumbles of assent. It was kind of cute. I tried not to laugh.
“Thank you,” I said. “I just have some stuff to take care of.”
“That's what Pete's for.” Brad-or-Bret pointed to the youngest of the group, who looked like he might be nineteen, definitely no older than twenty. “Pete can take care of stuff for you, right, Pete?”
The young guy nodded and gave me a thumbs up, playing the eager rookie.
“I'm fine. Just help his sister if you can, okay? She might stay here all night.” The sluggish elevator finally arrived, and I stepped on board.
“You're not staying?” Brad-or-Bret asked, his forehead wrinkling as if confused. “Where are you going?”
“Yeah, we still don't even get what happened to Mike,” another firefighter said. “We need you to explain that, because nobody else has made any sense.”
“It was a ghost,” I said. “He was attacked by a ghost.”
The four of them stared at me silently. Then the doors closed, and I rode down toward the parking lot.
Chapter Two
I drove my black Camaro down the highway at about eighty, rain splattering hard against my windshield, my wipers at top speed. The rain was picking up, and the night was growing colder.
My mind raced. Foremost in my thoughts was the threat of Anton Clay running loose. He seemed determined to kill me, to finish what he'd begun the night he killed my parents, and pretty eager to kill those I cared about, too. I was the one that got away, I suppose, and he thought I belonged to him.
Close to Savannah, I pulled off the interstate and out into the suburbs. I drove to my old childhood home, past the old wooden sign featuring the neighborhood's highly misleading name: Riverside Point, adorned with a sailboat. The neighborhood was nowhere close to the river or the ocean.
From the main road, the neighborhood appeared pleasant enough. The first few houses were still in relatively good repair, fairly well-kept.
The houses grew more dilapidated as I drove deeper into the neighborhood. A missing rain gutter here, an overgrown yard with wild brambles there, and then a couple of houses that had plainly been abandoned or foreclosed upon, their yards gone to seed.
It seemed like the rot radiated from the place where my own house had stood, as if Anton Clay's presence in the neighborhood had caused the whole area to decay.
I parked in the street, alongside the curb. I had been here earlier today, looking for signs of Clay's presence, but I hadn't found any. Maybe things would be different at night. Maybe he'd return. This was still the most logical place to start looking for Clay—though I knew of at least two other locations around Savannah that were also worth checking.
With a backpack of gear in one hand, I climbed out of the car, then stood and looked at the empty lot. Construction equipment had come through and destroyed everything, from the old trees to the cheap wooden fence that had gone up around the empty lot sometime after our house burned down. Red, churned-up earth with a deep trench across the center was all that remained.
I slipped on the backpack and clicked on my tactical flashlight. I widened its iris to make a floodlight. The rain had slowed to a misty drizzle, but the ground ahead was still slippery mud.
Taking a deep breath, I st
arted up along the broken chunks of my old driveway. High weeds had grown up through it, but these had been crushed down by the recent presence of excavators and whatever other equipment had plowed up the location of my old home.
I shined my light across the mud. The house next to mine looked forlorn, maybe even foreclosed and forgotten. One window near the back was boarded over. The house on the other side looked more inhabited, the yard full of junk, one light on in the basement, behind a window blocked off with red cloth.
The remnants of my driveway ended at muddy earth. I stepped hesitantly onto the mud where my house had been long ago.
Where strong ghosts are present, most people can feel it at least a little, even if it's just a sense of discomfort, like something is in the room with you or maybe watching you through a window. Even animals can sense ghosts and usually prefer to move away, except for occasional oddball cats and dogs who try to confront the spirit instead.
I'd always felt that awful sense of presence when visiting this site where my life had been ruined and turned to ash. Tonight, I felt nothing.
I walked carefully around the mud, taking readings with my Mel-Meter, which measures temperature and electromagnetic energy. Nothing unusual came up, no sudden cold spots or patches of activity.
“Anton,” I said, using the commanding tone of voice that I try to put on when speaking to dangerous ghosts. “Anton Clay. Where are you? Come out and speak to me.”
I watched and listened, but there was only the mist of rain, falling so slowly the raindrops seemed to hang in midair, glimmering as they reflected my flashlight.
“I'm here,” I said. “Come for me. You can leave everyone else in my life alone now. I give up.”
Well, that sounded pretty suicidal, but I'm not sure I meant it. I just wanted to draw him out.
“Come on, Anton,” I continued. I brushed my rain-wet hair back from my face. “Don't hide from me now. Don't tell me you're scared. Don't tell me that after trying to take everything from me, you've changed your mind. Or have you?” I listened to the silence. An ambulance siren echoed in the distance. “Because I'm not giving up on you, Anton. You don't get to slide away that easily. Wherever you are, I'm going to hunt you down and find you. I'm going to trap you and put you somewhere so awful you'll wish you had just gone on to Hell where you belong. Do you hear me, Anton? We are not done with each other.”