Lullaby (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 7)

by JL Bryan

  "Are you seeing any concentrations of energy? I only have a couple of cameras and microphones available. Basically what I could smuggle out in this backpack."

  "Yeah, your hostile takeover experience doesn't sound fun. I guess they usually aren't."

  "My new boss is a real fiend," I said. We passed a bar that was, as Carlos had described, a slightly reconfigured concession stand, the wall behind it decorated with a sprawling collage of movie-sized candy wrappers, boxes, and jaunty red-striped popcorn bags in three sizes. None of these were so appealing after years of mildew and water damage.

  "That sounds...incredibly awful," Jacob said. "Maybe you and Stacey should get out of there ASAP. Permanently. Are you sure Stacey's safe right now?"

  "I'm keeping her out of the line of fire. That's one reason you're here. As long as she stays at the client's house, she hasn't disobeyed orders." We passed under crumbling ceiling tiles and more loose wires as we walked into the wreckage of the lobby. "This reminds me of the old gas station. It's definitely fallen into disrepair, and everything of value was removed long ago, but the interior isn't as bad as it could have been. No graffiti, no wiring ripped out of the walls. It could be a lot worse. I don't think it was the incredible security system keeping this place safe, either. That burglar alarm wasn't far from a bell on a string."

  "People can probably sense the spirits in this place," Jacob said. "Animals, too. Enough to create some unease and make them move on. A guardian ghost could be much more effective than one of those burglar-alarm stickers in the window. If only you could control them."

  "Maybe that's where the idea of gargoyles came from." I shined my flashlight over the lobby ruins. The tarnished remnants of fancy, baroque movie-poster frames clung to a few walls, featuring movie posters from Casablanca and Plan 9 From Outer Space. "In the old days, people might have intentionally placed dangerous ghosts in places that they wanted to protect."

  We reached the front doors, boarded up and locked from the outside. Jacob rattled them, jiggling the metal chains out there.

  "We won't be escaping through these doors if anything comes jumping out and chasing us," he said.

  "Noted. Here's another bar..." My flashlight passed through another candy-stand-turned-alcoholic-beverage-dispensary in the corner. I pointed it up at the vaulted ceiling above, thick with cobwebs. "The girl at the restaurant said she saw the man in a top-floor window. We need to get up above that ceiling. Are you sensing anything now?"

  "It's less intense here in the lobby, but there are still all those years of charged memories. Scares and screams in the dark theater, stolen kisses, desire, excitement. Lots of residuals. But there's no major, conscious presence out here."

  "We'll keep looking."

  We found a short hallway with restrooms on one side and a STAFF ONLY door on the other. Its hinges squealed as we opened it. Beyond it lay steep, narrow stairs, and I knocked cobwebs aside with my flashlight before leading the way up.

  The stairs led to the old projection room, where a grimy glass window looked out over the house to the curtained stage. Abandoned wires, cables, and a couple of empty film reels lay in a dusty tangle along one wall.

  "Things are a little more intense up here," Jacob said. "Maybe because it's private, so you get a lot of people sneaking up here over the years." He closed his eyes. "I want to say there was once a balcony up here. Before the age of movies, maybe, when it was all about live performers on that stage. Then it was enclosed and they projected stage lights and movies from here. Sound. I can see people working over the years, helping to drive the emotional intensity being felt out there." He waved toward the remnants of the seating below. "And then there's a parade of people who worked here, I think, projectionists, lighting people, DJ's, bringing girlfriends or boyfriends up here for a little intimacy—"

  "I get the picture."

  "I'm getting lots of them." Jacob shook his head and opened his eyes. "Not what you're looking for, though."

  "We need to find a way up from here." I turned away from the window overlooking the house and explored deeper into the room, hoping for more stairs.

  "Uh-oh." Jacob said. He was pointing his flashlight at the ceiling. "This is kind of one of those good news, bad news situations."

  I followed his beam with my eyes and quickly saw what he meant. A smallish, square-shaped hole in the ceiling led into the pitch-black space above. Unfortunately, there was no easy approach offered—no stairs, no ladder of any kind.

  "Yep," I said. "That's where we need to go."

  "How?"

  "It will probably involve you boosting me up until I reach through and grab something solid up there. Hopefully a nice, sturdy beam or post of some kind. Then I imagine I'll kick and flail my legs awkwardly while trying to pull myself up the rest of the way. You might want to step back for that part."

  "And then how do I get up?"

  "Maybe I'll find a rope or ladder up there."

  "There are some major possible flaws in your plan," Jacob said.

  "I would say 'Let's pull over that nice, sturdy item of furniture over there' but then I'd just be pointing to empty space and looking crazy. So unless you want to stand on a glass candy shelf, I'm not sure what we can do. Have you seen anything that looked sturdy enough to stand on?"

  "Not so far. Just that rotten old scaffolding."

  "So just get me up there and I'll get it over with as fast as possible. And get ready to catch me if I come running back in a hurry and fall out of the ceiling."

  "Okay. I don't like this." He looked into the darkness above. "I really don't like this. I think there's something up there, Ellie. Something serious."

  "Good." I set up a little battery-powered spotlight, then holstered my big flashlight and held up my arms toward the ceiling.

  Jacob propped his flashlight on a dusty spool of old cable to help illuminate the room. Then he cleared his throat and approached me. His hands made a few false starts, first toward my ribs, then toward my hips. I realized he was blushing.

  "Don't be shy," I said. "My priority here is not getting dropped on the way up, okay?"

  "Right." He moved closer and put his hands on me. I planted my hands on his shoulders, and he swayed beneath me a little as I rose toward the ceiling. His face was buried against my torso as I reached for the opening above. Then I managed to get my knees onto his shoulders. He let out a little mmf sound.

  "I'm not really this heavy," I said. "Remember I have a bunch of gear in my backpack."

  "I didn't say anything."

  "You kind of grunted. Okay, one last push here..." With Jacob shoving me from underneath, I pulled myself up into the waiting darkness above.

  My hands scrambled around in what felt like an inch of dust and grit. I didn't want to think about how much of that "grit" was probably dead bugs or their dried-up leavings.

  I found a solid column of wood and grabbed on. As soon as I'd pulled myself up, I drew my flashlight and looked around.

  I was in a low attic, the roof slanted, with lots of the structure exposed. Crates and shapeless items under dusty sheets had accumulated here over the years. I could just see one narrow window, mostly obscured by clutter.

  "Ellie?" Jacob asked.

  "I'm okay. It's a little cold." I shivered and checked my Mel-Meter. "A couple milligaus."

  "There's definitely something lurking upstairs with you," Jacob said. "Do you see a handy rope ladder or anything?"

  "Sorry. I wish I did."

  "Watch yourself, then. Don't go too far away from me."

  "Believe me, that's the last thing I want right now. I'm just going to set up a camera and I'll be right back."

  I continued exploring the attic area. It was a large, irregular space, brick and wood walls arranged around an old chimney and a couple of newer HVAC ducts. I followed a narrow pass into another, even colder room. The air was getting thicker with each step. A glass pane looked out onto the sidewalk below, where the waitress had stood and looked up at the stra
nge man she'd seen. Maybe he'd stood right here. Old props and bits of sets, including a plywood castle tower, took up much of the space, leaving only a narrow twisting, turning path. I passed through the archway in the castle wall, ducking under the cardboard points of the portcullis.

  Something moved in the darkness ahead, a shadowy figure the size of a person. I pointed my light at it and nearly blinded myself. It was a dusty mirror, full-length. I'd been jumping at my own reflection.

  I moved closer to the mirror. It seemed elevated a bit off the floor, and then I saw it was mounted on the front of an odd cabinet, tall and narrow, almost like a phone booth. One side of the cabinet was a faded, peeling purple, decorated with stars and planets. Another was hung with a rotten black curtain. It looked like part of an old-time magician's act.

  My Mel-Meter kicked up as I approached it. Four, five, six milligaus.

  The dark curtain seemed to shift as my light passed over it, and I froze. A live person or animal could be hiding in that old magic cabinet, not just a ghost.

  "Hello?" I said. "Who's there?"

  "Ellie, maybe you should come back." Jacob's voice was distant, rising through the attic entrance so far away it was basically in another room.

  "I'm fine!" I called back.

  Maybe the curtain hadn't shifted at all. The movement of my flashlight could have shuffled around the shadows between the folds of the curtain, giving it the appearance of motion. I sometimes have to remind myself, when tiptoeing around in old abandoned attics, that not everything is a ghost.

  My gear was definitely indicating a presence, though. I try not to trust my gut too much, until I can verify my instincts with harder data.

  I moved closer to the curtain, gripping my tactical flashlight so that I could jab it forward if necessary. It had a beveled edge that projected ahead of the lens, good for bashing in windows but also not bad for punching an attacker in the face. If a live person was hiding in there and decided to get violent, I'd be ready. If it was a ghost, I'd be hitting it full force with white light, which could keep it at bay.

  I reached out with my non-flashlight hand and snapped the curtain aside.

  While the exterior of the cabinet had been fitted with mirrors and little doors and elaborately decorated with stars and moons, the interior was not so glamorous, just bare, crumbling boards studded with the rusty heads of nails and screws. Dead bugs littered the floor area, along with a number of oversized playing cards, yellowed and faded with age. The Joker glared at me with his huge red mouth and crazed eyes; the Queen of Hearts looked weathered and stern. A square was etched deep into the floor, maybe a trap door.

  At the center of the cabinet floor, surrounded by the fossilized bugs and forgotten playing cards, sat a simple black top hat, with a stiff brim and a narrow band of red felt for color. A couple of flies crawled along the outside of the hat.

  "Ellie?" Jacob's voice sounded incredibly distant at the moment. I didn't answer right away. I was busy crouching and reaching for the old top hat. The buzzing of the flies crawling on the hat thrummed louder, their song of death and decay amplifying as my hand approached them.

  I could have called back to Jacob that I was okay, but I wasn't sure that was true. Something gnawed in the pit of my stomach, and I felt a little dizzy, a little off-balance.

  My fingers touched the hat, and an odor rose to meet me. It smelled like rotten meat, which is just the sort of thing that old top hats usually don't smell like.

  I knocked the hat over and pointed my flashlight at the space where it had been. A small cloud of flies spun out at me, swarming on my eyelid, nose, and lips. I spat one out and waved them away from my face.

  Along with the flies came the real smell, which had apparently been a bit contained by the old black hat. I clapped my hand over my mouth and fought to keep my last meal from erupting out of my stomach. It was a fight I eventually won.

  Knocking the hat aside had revealed something else, but it took me a moment to identify the twisted lump of white fur encrusted with dried flakes of brown and black, like old blood. Then I saw one long, rotten ear and realized I was looking at the flyblown body of a rabbit. The creature looked like it had been mutilated, or maybe large chunks of it had already been eaten away by the bugs. Bits of bone were visible through strips of skin and matted fur.

  "Ellie?" Jacob called up again, and I realized I still hadn't responded from the last time he'd called up to me.

  "I'm good!" I yelled, after turning my head away from the magic cabinet to suck in some relatively less revolting air. "I just found a really gross, sad little—"

  One of the rabbit's back legs kicked. I jumped back, gasping.

  It kicked again, then rolled and flopped onto what remained of its four ruined feet. It seemed to look at me.

  The rabbit was definitely dead. One side of its head was caved in, and its remaining eye was opaque and gray.

  I couldn't speak as I watched it scramble and claw in the patch of dried filth that surrounded it on the cabinet floor. I felt a weird mix of horror and pity as I watched the torn, broken creature try to regain its balance.

  Then it coiled inward, in a movement that made me think of a cobra or a rattlesnake readying itself to bite. The dead rabbit was preparing to hop, and it was facing me.

  I snapped the curtain into place and stumbled back from it. It puffed out with a wet slap as the creature smacked into it.

  As I backed away, something jabbed me in the back. It was the handle of a big, spoked wheel that had once played the part of a ship's helm, maybe in some long-forgotten production of Peter Pan or H.M.S. Pinafore.

  I changed course, circling back around to the mirrored side of the cabinet, keeping my flashlight pointed at the black curtain. It appeared to settle back into place, but I didn't want to take my eyes off it until I was through the castle gate and out of the room.

  "Ellie?" Jacob's voice.

  "On my way in a second," I replied.

  Then something touched me. I saw nothing, but I felt a hand under my shirt. The invisible fingers were long, cold, and bony, coiling around my stomach and ribs. Unseen fingertips brushed along my vertebrae.

  I shuddered, filled with revulsion as the entity groped and prodded me. I turned back and forth, slashing with the bright beam of my flashlight. I couldn't see any visible sign of my assailant; the apparition was completely tactile. And very invasive.

  My flashlight and my movements didn't seem to be shaking it off, either. The air was clammy around me, almost slimy, like I'd been wrapped in a dirty wet blanket.

  Then my eyes went back to the mirrored cabinet, and that was when I saw him.

  He stood behind me, taller and wider than me, a shadowy man that appeared by his silhouette to be wearing a top hat and a cape. In the mirror, I could see where his arm was buried underneath my shirt, pawing at my torso with those disturbingly long fingers.

  I watched his other hand curl around my waist, another set of long fingers unrolling like tentacles and pressing into my hip in a fairly painful and personal way. They were white and featureless, maybe gloved to match his other fancy dress attire. The fingers didn't really feel human. They were much too long and felt like they had far too many joints, like snake skeletons sheathed in white cloth. Maybe they represented the tricky fingers of a stage magician, an old-time prestidigitator who'd spend his life shuffling cards and conjuring rabbits and coins from thin air.

  In the mirror, the man in the top hat was backlit by smoldering stage lanterns that glowed red, surrounded by clouds of smoke that both reflected and dispersed the burning light. This could have been the fiery red glow that the waitress had reported. The lanterns and smoke didn't exist in the real world at all, where the magician was still invisible, too.

  "Let me go!" I tried to point my light directly behind me, to where his face should have been according to the mirror, but I found it difficult to move at all anymore. The bony tentacle-fingers grasped me tighter, totally the opposite of what I'd just told him
to do.

  I could feel his breath on the back of my neck, ice-cold and laced with more of that yummy rotten-meat smell.

  I didn't know who he was, but he definitely was not Anton Clay.

  When I opened my mouth to yell for Jacob, a set of invisible fingers left my side and clamped my jaw shut. My teeth clacked together in a painful, jolting way, and I was lucky not to bite off a sliver of my tongue.

  His cold, reeking death-breath panted in my ear now. In the mirror, his shadowy top-hatted head seemed to swallow mine in darkness, like a black cloud engulfing the moon.

  His grip was strong, but he still only had the two hands. While pressure mounted around my jaw, my left side was suddenly free from the crushing wet-blanket feeling.

  I reached my left hand to my belt as fast as I could and touched the iPod mounted there.

  "Ode to Joy" rang out, one of my favorite defenses against dark entities in dark places, one I'd queued up in case of an attack from Anton. The symphonic performance flooded the attic with ecstatic golden notes.

  The ghostly fingers slackened under my shirt and against my face. In the mirror, his burning red stage lanterns flickered, and one of them went dark. The shadowy figure in his top hat and cape shrunk back from me, though only a little, and he certainly didn't vanish.

  I didn't waste time giving him a chance to recover from the sudden positive psychic blast of the music. I pulled away and took off running, dodging through the open door of a narrow, two-dimensional gingerbread cottage and away on a twisting path through the cluttered attic.

  I could still feel his cold breath on my neck. When I crashed through a flimsy cutout reindeer, cracking its smiling red-nosed face away from its body, I stumbled and slowed. The bony points of the ghost's invisible fingers ran down my back and poked into my leg. Neither the flashlight nor the music were deterring him now.

  He chased me around another corner, past a dusty red barn door one quarter of an inch thick, a cartoony flat horse standing close by.

  Then I had the sickening experience of stepping out over a cliff. Unlike the cartoon coyote, I didn't hover in the empty space, much less have time to hold up a cute little sign expressing my thoughts. I pitched forward into a dark void, my flashlight slipping free of my fingers and spinning away.