by JL Bryan
We gave Calvin the summary of what had happened and helped him into the van, where he would be watching the monitors all night.
“So you’re the fireman,” Calvin said, appraising Michael over his glasses. Calvin wore a coat and tie for the occasion, though he’d neglected to shave or untangle his salt-and-pepper hair, which had grown longer year by year since he’d left the police force.
“Yes, sir.”
“Decent manners, too,” Calvin said. “Not like these young people who don’t bother with proper introductions.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, feeling embarrassed. “Michael the fireman, this is Calvin the ghost detective.”
“Good to meet you, boy,” Calvin said, shaking his hand. “Heard you’ve been a big help.”
“I just carry stuff to the basement.”
“With a basement haunted as bad as yours, that’s a big help.”
“Thanks,” Michael said.
“I need to ask you something, Michael,” I said, opening a briefcase I’d stored in the back of the van. It was crammed full of folders holding photocopied pictures and documents from the library and the Historical Association. I flipped through them and found the picture of Edgar Barrington from the asylum morgue. “Do you recognize this person?”
Michael’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s Mr. Gray.”
“Whoa,” Stacey said. “Seriously?”
“This man’s name is Edgar Barrington,” I said. “We think he’s our boogeyman.”
“Mr. Gray’s the boogeyman?” Michael asked.
“It could be the twin brother,” Calvin said.
“That’s right. Edgar had a twin brother, Joseph,” I explained to Michael. “Joseph died in a horseback riding accident, possibly arranged by Edgar. His ghost could be stuck here along with his twin.”
“Twins can have a strong psychic connection,” Calvin added. “If Edgar’s stuck here, Joseph could be stuck with him.”
“It’s crazy to think that old man is a ghost,” Michael said. “I figured he was just quiet and lonely, kept to himself. He never really replied when I spoke to him, but just kind of nodded and smiled and continued on his way. Sometimes he was heading toward his apartment, sometimes leaving the house and strolling up the sidewalk...”
“Why do you call him Mr. Gray?” I asked.
“That’s what Terry and Alex called him,” Michael said. “They lived in apartment B before the Fieldings did.”
“Maybe it was just from his appearance,” Stacey said. “He wears a gray suit, never speaks to anyone. Somebody started calling him Mr. Gray and it caught on among the tenants.”
“He does have a gray tone to his skin, too, like he’s sick,” Michael said. “I always thought it was the perfect name for him. What’s his real name again?”
“Joseph Barrington,” I said. “Edgar’s his brother.”
“And you’re hoping to catch Edgar tonight. With this.” Michael tapped the trap, half-filled with grave dirt. I’d dumped the excess dirt into a mason jar to make room for candles inside the trap, and so the trap’s internal sensors wouldn’t be buried in earth.
“Standard ghost trap,” I said. “A layer of leaded glass on the inside, surrounded by an electromagnetic field, the whole thing insulated with plastic. This dirt is from Edgar’s grave.”
“And that actually works?”
“Sometimes. Tonight will depend on whether he’s attracted to his own grave dirt or repelled by it.”
“Better get that trap ready,” Calvin said, turning back to the array of glowing screens to watch the house. “We’re into the ghosting hours.”
We carried the gear down to the basement, where I slid the trap into the stamper. I lit a couple of candles to help draw the ghost’s attention. On my advice, we stayed quiet throughout this process.
I programmed the trap to snap shut when it detected a temperature drop of five degrees or more, combined with an EMF spike of at least two milligaus. That was virtually a hair trigger. I would be watching the trap on video with the remote in hand, but it was good to set the trap to close automatically when it detected a ghost, just in case something went wrong.
We left quickly and closed the basement door behind us. Then we lingered in the short hallway, near the bottom of the steps to Michael’s apartment. Michael and I just looked at each other.
“Okay, I’d better check on the clients...” Stacey excused herself, stepping through the door into Alicia’s apartment.
I felt rooted there, looking up into Michael’s bright green eyes, and there was again that feeling of something warm and magnetic drawing us together. I hoped he felt it, too, and that I wasn’t going completely crazy.
“Do you think you’ll catch him tonight?” Michael asked.
“If we don’t, I’m not sure what we’ll try tomorrow night.”
“Anything else I can help with?”
I was tempted to ask him to sit with Stacey and me, monitoring the apartment from the inside, but I worried my personal feelings about having him around would distract me from the work. Also, it might be hours before anything happened—what if the conversation grew awkward or he started to think I was boring? There were all kinds of ways for things to go wrong, and all kinds of mistakes I could make if I wasn’t totally focused on what I was doing.
“I think we’re all set for the night,” I told him. I glanced at his lips and imagined what they might feel like on my own. Yep. Distraction. “Thanks again.”
“Call me if you need anything at all,” Michael said. “I want to keep everybody safe.”
“Of course you do.”
The moment lingered, and I wondered if he might hug me, or something else...
“Good night,” he said, turning away slowly and starting up the stairs. Was he not interested? Or did he have to be such a gentleman? I’m sure he could read the look on my face like an open book. He’d probably seen it plenty of times on other girls.
“Good night,” I said. I walked to the door to Alicia’s apartment, then looked back to see his denim-clad legs climbing up and out of sight.
When I walked through the door, the apartment was quiet, the lights low. Stacey sat on the couch in front of the secondary nerve center she’d set up on the coffee table, consisting of a laptop and a couple of tablets.
“Where’s the family?” I asked.
“They all went to bed in Alicia’s room,” Stacey said, pointing at the closed door near the foot of the stairs.
“All right.” I sank onto the couch beside her.
“What’s up with you?” Stacey asked, looking me over.
“Nothing. What are you talking about?”
“You’re grinning like the Joker and your face is all flushed. What did you two do out there? Jazz aerobics?”
“We didn’t do anything,” I said. “Just said good-night.”
“But you were ready for more, weren’t you?” Stacey waggled her eyebrows.
“Get serious. Any activity?” I leaned in toward the laptop, which showed the night vision view of the basement, with its usual suggestions of half-formed apparitions. I toggled it to the thermal and saw the scattered little cold spots.
“Just the usual downstairs stuff so far,” Stacey said. “Nobody’s gone near the trap. No spidery boogeymen crawling out of old wells. Here’s the thermal we set up in the furnace room.” She showed me on a tablet. The well was an obvious black hole, ringed with waves of dark purple, at the far end of the blue-hued room. Freezing cold.
“Come on, Edgar,” I said. “I’m ready to finish this job.”
Edgar made no hurry to appear.
“So, want to talk about Michael?” Stacey asked.
“Nope.”
“Jacob?”
“Go ahead.”
“We’re going out on Friday,” she said. “That new movie’s coming out, the historical one about what’s-her-name, that Russian queen lady?”
“Catherine the Great?”
“Is that it?”
; “I don’t know. I never see anything until it’s on Netflix.” I checked the time. “I’ll make some quick rounds of the apartment.”
“Should I come with you?”
“I’ll be fine.” I strapped on my utility belt and drew my flashlight, a replacement for the one that had been cut in half. I checked the door under the stairs first, then I went up to check the kids’ closets, the door to nowhere, and the sunken porch at the end of the hall. The Mel Meter didn’t show anything unusual—not for those doorways, anyway, where the readings had always spiked. I looked around with my thermal goggles, but there was no sign of Edgar the boogeyman or Gerard the friendly ghost.
“All clear up here,” I said into my headset, and Calvin and Stacey both confirmed they heard me.
I returned downstairs, where Stacey was watching an Isaac Mizrahi-thon on QVC, the volume lowered to a whispering-gerbil level.
“We don’t watch TV during investigations,” I said. “It could discourage the ghosts from appearing.”
“Then why don’t we tell our clients to just leave the TV on all night?” she asked. “Besides, it’s not observation night, it’s trap night. And for once there’s someone else to help watch the monitors. Don’t you love that T-shirt dress?”
I made my rounds multiple times that night.
At quarter until four, I was upstairs yet again when Calvin’s voice came over my headset.
“He’s here,” Calvin said. “He just came out of the well...now he’s passing through the door into the laundry room...”
“Stacey, watch the door to the dead-end stairs,” I said. “I’ll cover the ones up here.” I pointed the glowing beam of my flashlight at the archway door.
“Yes, ma’am,” Stacey said. With Calvin on the radio with us, she was being entirely professional tonight.
“He’s moving toward the trap,” Calvin whispered. “He’s very close to it, like he’s looking at it...”
I held my breath.
“Just jumped away,” Calvin said, and I sighed. The trap had failed. “He’s moving across the ceiling, just like I remember. Crawling like a black spider. Now’s he’s above the stairs, moving to the door.”
“Great. Stacey, get ready.”
“I’m in position.”
We tensed, waiting for the dark entity to emerge from one of the doors.
We waited and waited.
“Maybe he went into the Fieldings’ apartment,” Stacey whispered.
“Check Melissa’s closet,” I said.
“It’s clear,” Calvin replied. “I...” He took a sharp, sudden breath.
“Calvin?” I asked.
“The monitors just blacked out,” he said. “The van’s gone dark. Something’s tapping on the roof. I think it’s out here, Ellie. I’m firing up the ghost cannon.”
“We’re on our way,” I said. My heart was instantly racing. Edgar had crippled Calvin last time—maybe he meant to finish the job tonight.
I raced down the stairs, watching Stacey run across the living room and out the front door, her flashlight ready.
I jumped over the last few steps and hurried toward the door.
The dim lights in the room went dark, and so did the television, bringing a sudden silence throughout the house.
A voice spoke from directly behind me, like a lover leaning over my shoulder to whisper a secret, his breath as hot as desert wind on my ear.
“Eleanor.”
It wasn’t my mother this time.
I stopped, and the front door closed itself, the lock clicking into place.
I turned to face him. It was like stepping toward an open oven, the heat pushing against me.
Anton Clay’s face had haunted my nightmares for the past ten years. He was handsome, his blue eyes piercing and powerful, his long blond hair tied back with a black ribbon. As always, he wore his coat with tails, his silk cravat and vest. His golden cufflinks and buttons gleamed as though reflecting a great fire.
This ghost had killed my parents and tried to kill me, burning our house down around us. In life, he’d had an affair with a married woman who lived in the old antebellum mansion located where my parents’ neighborhood now stood. The woman had broken it off, and he’d responded by burning down her house, killing her, her husband, and their whole family, as well as himself.
In death, he was a pyromaniac ghost, who burned down every house built on the site of his death. Including, most recently, mine.
He stood in the dark living room as a solid apparition, seeming to glow with a fiery light of his own, heat rippling the air around him.
Absolute fear froze me into place. It was my worst nightmare, being trapped in a house with him again, and it was coming true.
“My sweet girl,” he said, his voice right out of the early nineteenth century—the accent more stiff and English, not yet softened into the modern Southern cadence by generations of slow cooking in the sun. “Are you at last ready to join me? I have waited so long. Hungering for you while you blossomed and grew.” He moved closer, scorching the air around me, flash-drying the skin on my face. “We belong together, Eleanor. You are mine.”
I wanted to tell Calvin and Stacey what was happening, but my lips wouldn’t move to form the words. I couldn’t hear either of them on my headset anymore. I wondered if Anton had sucked out the battery power from my headset, just as he’d done with the lights in Mia’s room.
Not Anton, I reminded myself. Edgar. He’s taking the form of my fear.
“Beautiful, beautiful Eleanor,” he whispered, reaching a hand toward my cheek. I was a child again, sick with terror.
“Edgar.” I barely managed to say it, barely managed to push the air across my lips. It took all the courage I had, and then some, to talk back to him. I forced myself to say it louder. “Edgar Barrington. That’s your name.”
The apparition of Anton Clay hesitated a moment, staring at me, withdrawing his hand. Then the blue irises of his eyes turned fiery red, and his skin seemed to redden, too.
“You misunderstand the situation entirely,” he said, with an arrogant smile. “I am within you, Eleanor. Always. Our little spidery friend, the one who haunts the house, has merely opened an opportunity for us to visit again. I am here with you, just as I was with you that night. Be joined with me, Eleanor. Be consumed by me.” He leaned close, his scorching lips approaching my mouth, and I realized he meant to kiss me. “Our destiny is sealed.”
“No.” It wasn’t a tough no. It was definitely more of a helpless-squeak no. I backed up a few steps from him, but he kept up with me. He was not rushing. He moved almost languidly, as though he had no cares at all, as though he were completely in control of the situation and knew it.
I backed into the wall. Stupid. He didn’t try kissing me again, though. This time, he leaned back just a little, satisfied that I was cornered, and opened his hand, palm up.
A gout of flame sprang up, more than a foot high, conjured at his fingertips. The air roasted around me. I felt my cheek blister and smelled crackling strands of my hair. He smiled, the manic smile of a deep thirst about to be quenched, an addiction about to be satisfied.
Thin runners of flame rose all over the room behind him, tracing along the edges of the furniture, the corners and baseboards, the frame of the front door, outlining the room in fire. A stream of fire raced up the staircase handrail toward the second story.
Someone pounded on the front door, shouting. Stacey, trying to get back in. It sounded like she was kicking the door pretty hard, but the solid old oak held firm. The entity was keeping her out.
Fire and smoke billowed from beneath the door to Alicia’s room. I heard the woman and her children screaming inside.
I lunged toward that door, but Anton grabbed me, his fingertips digging into my arm like sharp talons. I struggled to get free, but the apparition was very solid, as solid as a living person. He barely moved, just smiled and gripped my arm while I pulled and lashed at him. His eyes drooped to half-lidded as he relished the screams
of the burning children beyond the door. Getting his fix. Anton Clay, psychotic dead aristocrat, loved to burn things, but he loved to burn people even more.
With my free arm, I drew my flashlight and smashed it into his stomach. No reaction, like hitting a brick wall. If anything, his eyes drooped even more, his blissed-out drugged-up smile spreading wider across his face.
The flashlight had done some damage to him when he was in the form of Fleshface, up in Mia’s room, but it didn’t bother him at all now. Maybe that was because Fleshface was someone else’s fear, and Anton Clay was my own.
The fingers biting deep into my arm grew hotter and hotter, smoldering through the leather sleeve of my jacket, burning into the skin underneath. I screamed in pain.
The flames rose all around us, the thin streamers of fire expanding into irregular shapes as they ate into the furniture and the structure of the house.
Fists pounded against Alicia’s burning door, and their screams grew louder. I could make out the individual voices, even in that chaos—Alicia’s howls of pain, Kalil’s boyish grunts and cries, Mia’s horrified shrieks. The entity was trapping them in there, making sure they couldn’t escape the blazing fire.
“Listen to them die,” Anton Clay whispered. “You can’t help them. Just as you could not help your parents. Or chose not to? You were quite angry with them, weren’t you, Eleanor? I could feel it on you, the heat of a furious young girl. Maybe you wanted them to die. Wanted to be free. Some part of you wished for that.”
Even as his fingers burned into my arm, his words held me entranced, conjuring all the horror, guilt, and grief from deep within me. It was my fault. I deserved to die—
“Ellie!” a voice screamed. Stacey? Not Stacey.
Alicia. She ran into the room, flanked by her kids. They must have come out through the master bathroom.
She stopped cold when she saw the fire, and held out her arms to both sides to stop Kalil and Mia, too.
The three of them watched in horror as flames engulfed their apartment. The banging and screaming at their bedroom door stopped abruptly.