by JL Bryan
“I’ve already identified several.” He pointed to a tilted oval. “That means ‘nothing doing.’ I found them on the fences of houses you identified as unoccupied. At the houses where jewelry was stolen, there were marks indicating wealth or that the house had already been robbed. The Baker house, the one that lost a collection of silver coins, had these three circles to indicate ‘money.’ Some of these other symbols don’t seem to be common...”
“Do you think ghosts could have carved these?”
“I’m not convinced. There are plenty of instances of spirits snatching and hiding small objects, but this is more like burglary. They’re taking jewels and valuables away from the houses entirely. It could be living people studying houses to rob and then carving these marks as a way of taking notes or communicating with each other.”
“That seems like a pretty primitive way of sharing information in the twenty-first century,” I said. By this point, Michael had wandered over to join us by the long worktable.
“It could be that the people who evaluate the houses don’t accompany the robbers,” Calvin said. “Those who spy on the houses are at risk of being seen by the neighbors, so they go out and establish an alibi while the rest of the gang carries out the burglary.”
“That’s getting pretty cloak and dagger for some petty burglary,” I said. “They’re not stealing the Hope Diamond here. From what Captain Neighborhood Watch told us, the burglars took jewelry and coins, but nothing else. No electronics. What if the ghosts were thieves when they were alive?” I filled him in on the deadly train robbery.
“Then they could be repeating patterns from their lives.” Calvin nodded.
“So where are they putting everything they steal?” Michael asked.
“That would be good to find out. Maybe we’ll discover something tonight,” I said. I pulled up the stick figure of the woman with a smaller stick figure inside her skirt. “This symbol is pretty self-explanatory. It’s like somebody wanted to point out that Ember was pregnant.”
“This other figure on Ember’s fence represents bread.” Calvin pointed to the tilted oval with hash lines inside it. “If we’re dealing with ghosts, then this might indicate people on whose energy a spirit might feed. Which could be...” He paused, shuffling through the pictures I’d sent him from my phone, until he settled on one. The symbols showed another woman with a big skirt. A smaller stick figure stood beside her, with just the tiniest scratches for arms and legs. Its head was a strange shape, the title oval with hash lines through it.
“Looks a kid with a bad case of breadhead,” Michael commented.
“Children are easier marks for ghosts, with more energy to feed on,” I said. I made a special note of the house where those symbols were. It was one that had experienced a break-in with a few pieces of jewelry stolen. “They’re telling each other where to feed.”
“Wow,” Michael said. “Disturbing.”
“We have to stop them,” I said. “Not just our client’s banshee problem, but all of them.”
“That may not be possible,” Calvin said. “Remember to keep your focus on protecting the client, not saving the world.”
I nodded. “That’s why we need to get going, actually.”
“You’re helping tonight?” Calvin asked Michael.
“More like getting in the way, probably.” Michael offered a smile, but Calvin just nodded with the same grim look he’d been wearing the past few weeks.
“Try not to do that,” Calvin said. “Good luck, both of you.”
I wanted to ask Calvin whether there were any new developments with the people who’d been spying on our office, but I didn’t want to bring it up in front of Michael.
It was late afternoon by the time we reached the Kozlow house, the sun turning fat and orange in the western sky.
Ember looked pale when she answered the door.
“Tom’s not home yet,” she whispered, shuffling back inside and leaving the door open for us.
“Are you all right?” I asked, after quickly introducing Michael.
“Just tired,” Ember said. “I had a nap full of nightmares. Good thing the baby kicked me awake.” She turned for us to follow her inside.
She eased herself onto the couch, looking exhausted. I quickly caught her up on the situation.
“We’ve brought some ghost deterrents,” I said. “It’s a mixture of technological devices and folk protections that might help and definitely can’t hurt. Since your basement is the focus of activity, I’d like to set up a motion-triggered lighting array to blast anything that comes in through the basement door.”
“Do whatever you think’s best,” she said, waving her hand in a kind of dismissive half-shrug. Her eyelids were drooping.
“We’ll finish up at the railroad tracks as fast as we can,” I said. “But please call us if anything happens, and we’ll come right away.”
She nodded, her eyes distant.
“Michael, want to start on the front door?” I asked. “Hang both things.”
He left, and soon the sound of hammering echoed through the house as he nailed an iron horseshoe above the front door. Wind chimes would go up next.
“Is there anything you want to talk about?” I asked Ember, sitting down beside her. “What were your dreams?”
“The same,” she said. “I was alone on the train, surrounded by strangers, scared. When I woke up, I was drained. I’ve been pretty depressed ever since, actually. But I don’t want to bother you with my problems.”
“Bother on,” I said. “It sounds important to the case, anyway.”
“That’s the whole story.” She shrugged.
“Did you notice anything strange in the house before you went to sleep?” I asked. “Or when you woke up?”
“I felt chills,” she said. “That’s why I got into the bed. You think it was the ghost? In the middle of the day?”
“Ghosts can come out during the day. They usually don’t, but if this one’s developed a connection with you, it might make an exception.”
“So what do we do?”
“I brought a dreamcatcher,” I said. “Part of an array of folk defenses. It’s big, almost like a fishing net. I’ll hang that over your bed.”
“Does that work?”
“It’ll just be one deterrent, but since this ghost is digging into your dreams, we should definitely use it.” I stood up. “Can I get you anything?”
“A ghost-free house for my little boy,” she said.
“I’ll get to work on it.”
Outside, I found Michael hanging the wooden chimes, their bells tinkling as he anchored them into a potted-plant hook in the porch ceiling.
“So, you’d say this stuff definitely works?” Michael asked. “A horseshoe over the door?”
“Some of the folk protections work some of the time,” I said. “We’re putting that bottle tree out by the basement door. Any ghosts of people who lived around here would recognize that as a ghost defense. Maybe that will help it work.”
“If you say so.”
“I’d rather get silly with the ghost protections than leave her undefended.”
Back inside, we hung an iridescent blue glass ball in the front window. “A witch ball,” I explained. “There are threads of glass inside. Spirits are supposed to get drawn inside by the pretty surface and then get stuck in the threads. It’s an eighteenth-century ghost trap.”
“I’ve never heard of them,” Michael said.
“You don’t use centuries-old magic to put out fires?”
“Only in a pinch.”
We grabbed more gear from the van. In the basement, I set up the array of floodlights and the motion detector while Michael hung the horseshoe over the basement door. Then we unwrapped a full-length leaded-glass mirror, freestanding with its own frame.
“How does the mirror work?” Michael asked.
“We line it up facing the door,” I said, sliding it into position. “Supposedly ghosts can get confused by their own refl
ections—it might scare them or send them bouncing back like a light wave.” I shrugged. “I don’t know about that, but occasionally confronting a ghost with its true nature can shake it up, bring on some greater self-awareness, even help the ghost move on.”
“Did you go to ghost college or something?”
I laughed. “No. Armstrong State. Go Pirates.”
“I go to Savannah Tech,” he said. “Go, um, paperwork? I don’t think we have a mascot.”
“What do you study?”
“They have EMS and fire certification programs. Right now I’m taking a class in arson investigation, working toward my officer certification.”
“Fancy. That’s a lot to juggle with your little sister.”
“Little sisters are surprisingly easy to juggle. So what did you study? Wait, let me guess...” He stared at me, pretending to concentrate hard. “Nineteenth-Century Depressing German Poetry.”
“Close. Psychology. Bring that box.” I carried a stainless steel bottle tree frame outside and stabbed it into the ground just beside the basement door. I would’ve preferred to mount the bottles on an actual tree, but since the basement door was located underneath the second-floor porch, there wasn’t one anywhere nearby.
“Sounds useful,” he said. He opened a box full of empty bottles padded with brown wrapping paper. “If you ever run across any crazy ghosts.”
“The ones I deal with are all pretty crazy,” I said. “I mean, they exhibit signs of extreme abnormal psychology. They’re in denial that they’re dead, or they’re obsessed over some event or situation from their lives. The longer they exist as ghosts, the more twisted and distorted their minds become. Especially if they learn to feed on the living. Then they become monsters.”
“And you swoop in and help them process their feelings.”
“Or haul them out in a trap and bury them in an abandoned cemetery. Either way.” My phone buzzed. Stacey.
“The condor has landed,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m parking out front. I thought you liked when we talked all secret code-ish.”
“Come around to the basement,” I told her. “Be ready to wire this lighting array for temperature and EMF.”
“I’m always ready to wire a lighting array for those things.” Stacey found us behind the house, sliding bottles on the slanted, steel-rod branches of the bottle-tree frame. “Oh, nice, I love those. Can I get a picture?”
“Seriously?” I asked, but she was already snapping one of Michael and me with the cluster of inverted bottles between us.
“You forgot to tell us to say ‘cheese,’” Michael said, looking almost annoyed about it.
“True photographers never say ‘cheese,’” she said. “We’d rather capture a genuine moment.”
“Uh-huh, get to work,” I said. “Have you talked to Jacob?”
“On his way.” Stacey added to the set-up I’d created, so that any detectable sign of ghosts—temperature, a spike in electromagnetic energy, movement—would trigger the floodlights to blast the area around the basement door with a blinding light for ten minutes before they shut themselves off.
“Y’all can go gather the gear for our night hike.” I took the big dreamcatcher net from a box and a stepladder from the corner of the basement. “I’m going upstairs for a minute.”
“Come on, Mikey, let’s load up some backpacks,” Stacey said, leading him outside through the basement door.
Upstairs, I glanced into the future baby’s room—clouds and rainbows decorated the walls, and a plush white teddy bear sat in a polished new crib with a race-car mobile hanging over it. The sight of that nest waiting to be inhabited strengthened my resolve to get to the bottom of the haunting and eliminate it as soon as possible.
I assumed Ember slept on the side of the bed where hair scrunchies and Organic Life magazines were piled on the side table. I climbed the stepladder I’d found in the basement and began nailing the dreamcatcher to the ceiling.
A male voice spoke from behind me, startling me so much I almost fell off the steps.
“What are you doing?” he asked, sounding a little hostile.
I turned to see Tom Kozlow watching me from the doorway, his arms crossed. The tall, thin dentist looked annoyed.
“Ember’s been having nightmares about the ghost,” I said. “This dreamcatcher could help.”
“That’s going to stop the ghosts?” He looked incredulous.
“Ghosts exist in a world of symbolism and emotion,” I said. “Symbols can become powerful to them, especially if they’re backed by a clear intent.”
Tom looked doubtful.
“If nothing else, Ember might rest easier if she feels something is here to protect her,” I added, and he seemed to consider that for a moment before nodding.
“This is all out of my depth,” he said. “I like a sane, rational, normal kind of life.”
“Who wouldn’t?” I asked. “Sometimes life doesn’t give you those options.”
“I guess not.” He looked at the big dreamcatcher, the spider-web design strung inside the leaf-shaped frame, hung with beads and feathers, and sighed. “I’ve seen those things a thousand times, but I’m not sure what they do.”
“They’re supposed to capture bad dreams like bugs in a spider web,” I said. “In the morning, the sunlight dissolves them.”
“And that works?”
“Nothing’s ever certain.” I climbed down and folded up the stepladder. “We’re going to study the train tracks tonight, but we’ll be back as soon as we can.” I caught him up on the train robbery and quickly explained the devices we’d set up around the house. “I still strongly recommend that you both stay here in your room if you hear anything unusual tonight. It’s not safe for either of you to encounter the ghost on your own.”
“Ember’s the one who feels sorry for the thing in the basement. Maybe I’ll tie her to the bed.” He grinned. “Just kidding,” he added, almost as an afterthought, rubbing his temples.
I carried the stepladder past him and down the stairs, and he followed close behind. I left it by the door to the basement stairs and found Ember in the living room, typing away at her laptop.
“What are you doing?” Tom snapped. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“I’m just finishing up some orders for the store,” she said. “It’ll take five minutes.”
“You shouldn’t be working.”
“Ever tried making red velvet cake without cream cheese?” she asked, not even looking up at him. “Or hummingbird cake? The staff aren’t miracle workers.”
“We’d better go,” I said, since the tension between them was growing and I didn’t feel like hanging around being the monkey in the middle of their argument. “Call if you have any supernatural trouble. And stay out of the basement.”
“Maybe you should go on to bed,” Tom said to Ember.
“I’m not going to bed this early.”
“What have you been doing all day? You didn’t exert yourself, did you?”
I hurried on out of there and down the front steps. Michael stood by the van, where Stacey was loading up black backpacks for her and for me, plus an extra camping backpack Stacey had brought for Jacob. Stacey’s forest-green Ford Escape and Jacob’s accountant-gray Hyundai were parked out on the street.
“Nobody told me to bring a backpack,” Michael said as I approached.
“We could swing by your place and pick up your Spider-Man one,” I said.
“Unfortunately, Spidey went to Goodwill years ago. I can carry something with my hands.”
“What happens if you get into a fistfight with a ghost?” Jacob asked.
“I’ll use my ninja death kick of doom.” Michael kicked one leg impressively high.
“More like a Riverdance kick of doom,” I said.
“I thought you weren’t going to tell anyone about my secret dance career.”
“Too late now. Okay, kids.” I turned a little so I was addressing ever
yone. “We’ll be walking more than a mile along the old track. We’ll leave Stacey’s car at one end of the line and the van at the other. Jacob, do you have any idea what’s going on with our case?”
“None at all,” he said. “Besides haunted train tracks.”
“I didn’t tell him anything!” Stacey added, looking annoyed at me.
“Perfect,” I said. “Let’s hit the road.”
We drove east of the planned community, where Stacey parked her car in a strip mall that included a pawn shop, some vacant stores, and a very questionable establishment with black windows and a sign offering to “BUY SELL TRADE VHS/DVD.” A run-down gas station occupied one end of the strip mall.
The tracks weren’t in sight, but we couldn’t get any closer without climbing a high fence and trespassing into a shipping facility full of containers. This was an industrial area next to the river, which meant not many people were around on a Saturday night.
“So,” Stacey said, as she and Jacob climbed into the back of the van. “I’m thrilled to leave my car here for an hour or two.”
“The gas station’s open until midnight,” I said. “At least the lights will be on. Did you lock the doors?”
“Obviously.”
“Do you have insurance?” Jacob asked. “You might need it.”
“Great.” Stacey cast a longing look at her car as we pulled away. She’d parked under an outdoor light in the gas-station parking lot, near an old pay phone stand covered in graffiti. Nothing remained of the phone itself except a limp, frayed cable.
“It’s another reason to move as fast as we can,” I said. “That and the murderous ghosts.”
The parking prospects for the van weren’t much better. I drove around the area near the tracks until I decided on the Chet’s Discount Grocery parking lot. Chet’s was an institution housed inside a grimy cinderblock building with beer and cigarette signs in the windows. It was closed for the night, like the other scattered businesses in the area. I parked behind the store to hide the van. I didn’t want to come back to find our array of monitors smashed or stolen.
We climbed out, and three of us strapped on backpacks. I carried thermal and night vision goggles in mine. Stacey and I wore our utility belts, with flashlight holsters and other gear available for the grabbing. I passed Michael an extra tactical flashlight.