by JL Bryan
Stacey raised her eyebrows.
"Sorry, I just..." I trailed off, realizing that I definitely didn't want to share this very personal memory with Kara at the moment. "That lighthouse has been there a long time. It's a real piece of local history."
"Since 1793," Alyssa said, looking out at it. "Wrecked and rebuilt a couple of times."
"Wrecked?" Stacey asked.
"Hurricanes." She turned and walked deeper into the gallery, her assistant close behind like a loyal schnauzer.
The upstairs gallery offered large, deeply piled sofas and chairs around glass tables, facing out over a railing to the glass wall and drop-down projection screen. It was like the balcony at a movie theater, only with more privacy if you wanted to snuggle while you watched the big screen, or just watch the waves rolling in from the ocean. The framed movie posters hung along the back wall, above the seating.
"Everybody sit." Alyssa started toward one of the plush chairs, then swerved past it to open the folding doors to a bar behind it. She drew out a bottle of water and paced while we found our seats. Then she moved toward the same chair, hesitated, resumed pacing. "It's been a little crazy here. I had Zoe call you because..."
She fell silent, then dropped into her seat. She was all energy, much of it unfocused, twitching, kicking, glancing around. "Okay. I don't want to sound crazy, so I'll make Zoe start. She saw it first, anyway."
"What did you see?" Kara asked the assistant, who stayed on her feet, hovering near the giant rolled arm of Alyssa's chair, a servant awaiting instructions.
"Well, we had some trouble with the caretaker," Zoe said. "Alyssa's primary residence is still the Los Angeles house, of course, so during and after the reconstruction here, we hired a caretaker to keep an eye on the place. The caretaker's bungalow is out back. Connected by a hallway. Our special construction waiver did not allow additional buildings on the property, so we connected the guest house and caretaker's bungalow to the main house."
"It's all one building?" Stacey asked. She looked out the window at the covered walkway, connecting the house where we stood to two smaller, matching buildings. Together with the house, it enclosed a sizable garden outside, with benches and a fountain where a large stone fish gargled up an endless supply of water.
"Technically," Zoe said. "The caretaker's bungalow was completed and furnished first, actually, since it was the smallest building, and we wanted someone to watch over the place. We've been in and out of town."
"My life is insanely hectic," Alyssa added. She was staring at her phone and didn't look up.
"I bet!" Stacey said. "It must be like an adventure every day—"
"More like a nightmare." She pointed at Zoe, prompting her to continue.
"A local attorney, who helped us with the zoning problems, was also able to find a live-in caretaker," Zoe said. "Highly recommended. He could do gardening, repairs, anything that was likely to come up. We offered above-market pay and free lodging, but he quit after a week."
"He said the house gave him bad dreams," Alyssa said, finally looking up. "He couldn't stand to live here. Do you have any idea what it feels like to hear that? To sink a fortune into getting this place together, only to be told that it's so unpleasant I can't pay someone to sleep here?"
"I'm sure the news was unwelcome," Kara said.
"Unwelcome? This place is supposed to be...perfect. My family is coming for Thanksgiving. I don't want anything going wrong here." Alyssa was pacing faster now, looking out over the railing to where the workers still attempted to make the huge paper-hive decorations swirl the way she wanted them to. There was a focused, burning intensity in her mint-green eyes. "Everything has to be just right. No flaws."
"We had a similar problem with the next caretaker," Zoe said, resuming the main story. "At one point, I had to come here for a few days on my own..." She shivered. "I saw it myself." Then she fell silent, looking off out the window.
"Can you tell us what you saw?" Kara asked after a long moment.
"There wasn't really much to see, exactly," Zoe said. "Not that I could describe. I was sleeping out in the caretaker's bungalow, because the other houses were still being furnished and decorated. That's what I was here to oversee.
"So I slept out there for three nights," she continued. "The first two seemed fine. I was exhausted and went right to sleep. On the third night, it began to rain. I thought that was nice at first, the rain drops falling on the roof. I thought it would lull me to sleep.
"I was already in bed, with the lights off, when it happened. It must have been around midnight. The rain was still coming, but it was soft. Soft enough that I could hear something walking right outside. It was right behind my headboard, just on the other side of the wall. Squish. Squish. Like that. Walking.
"That woke me up some more, and I was a little scared already, but I told myself I was being stupid. It was probably just a dog, or who knows what kind of animal, coming out of those woods. So I reminded myself that the front door was locked, and animals typically can't come in through windows and doors.
"Then it walked by the window." Zoe shivered and drew her arms in. "It got cold in there all of a sudden, or maybe that was just how I felt when I saw it."
"What was it?" Stacey asked, drawing an annoyed look from Kara, who clearly wanted to be in control of the conversation.
"Through the window, I could see the shadow of a man walk by. I heard the squish squish footsteps in time with it. I thought it was a person out there—and then I was really scared, because I was the only person home, in any of the houses, and it's so isolated out on this part of the island....As soon as he was past the window, I got out of bed, ran to the dresser, and grabbed this." Zoe pulled a chunky pink-shelled stun gun from her purse. It looked like a toy pistol. "I was ready to drop him if he broke into the house."
"She knows how to use that thing, too," Alyssa said.
"I bet you had some weapons training, too, right?" Hayden said. "I mean, playing Zap Girl and all that."
"Zap Girl is armed with her 'rod of lightning' and her 'spark-shooter,'" Alyssa said. "There were no actual weapons for me to learn."
Kara was shaking her head at Hayden. "Please go on, Zoe," she said. "Was there anything else?"
"Yeah, I haven't gotten to the main part. So I had this stun gun, and then I tiptoed over to the window. I saw nothing out there but rain and trees and a little moonlight. I went to take up a post by the bedroom door, then I thought of something: the back door, the one that opens onto that long outdoor hallway connecting all the buildings. If he could get in there, he might be able to get inside the bungalow with me.
"So I opened the bedroom door and moved out into the sitting room, keeping the lights off, trying to avoid the dark windows as best I could. The caretaker's bungalow is small—one bed, one bath, sitting room that's open to the tiny kitchen, and that's it.
"The front door's in the sitting room. I could see it was still locked. The back door is at the other end, in the kitchen, just past the stove. I hurried that way.
"The back door has a glass window, so I could look out into the covered hallway outside. That hallway's glass on both sides, you know, so it was almost like looking right out into the night.
"The guy was already inside the hall. He was inside the building with me." Zoe took a deep breath and shook her head. "This is tripping me out pretty bad, remembering all this stuff. It's like reliving it." She glanced nervously at the nearest window, as if worried the shadowy man would be out there, floating in the gray, rain-dampened daylight.
"Please continue," Kara said. She held her phone in her lap, recording the conversation. She seemed indifferent to Zoe's troubled emotional state.
Stacey reached out and touched the girl's arm sympathetically. "Maybe I should go get you a water this time," she said, which made Zoe smile and wave her off.
"I'll be fine," Zoe said. "So I saw him in the hall. That was when I started to realize something was really off about him. At first I thought my
eyes must be playing tricks. I couldn't see any distinct parts, if that makes sense. No details. Not clothes, not shoes, not hands...just a black mass with the outline of a human being. He was walking darkness. I could see legs, arms, the outline of maybe a stiff hat at his head. He was solid, but at the same time he wasn't like a real person at all. More of a shadow person. Like in A Haunting in Toronto."
"Never mention that movie," Alyssa said quickly. "I was young and needed the money."
"Only it looked real," Zoe continued. "It was like five feet outside the back door. And since I couldn't see its face, I couldn't really tell whether it was looking toward me or away from me.
"Then I noticed the back door where I was standing and watching...that door actually wasn't locked. I'd forgotten about it. I reached for the knob to turn the deadbolt right then. Then I hesitated, because the dark figure out there wasn't moving. I wasn't even sure whether it knew I was inside the bungalow or not. If I turned that lock, it would make a noise, and that could draw his attention.
"So I held that knob in my fingers and pretty much held myself still, too afraid to make whatever little scraping and clicking noise the lock was going to make. The shadow figure stood out there and didn't move at all. It was so quiet. Like a still picture. I couldn't breathe, I was so afraid of making a sound.
"Then it started to move. It started to walk. Since it didn't really have...features...I couldn't tell at first whether it was coming toward me or going away. I had the stun gun in my other hand, ready to zap him...or more like it...if it tried to get me.
"But it was going the other way, up the hall, toward the main house. It moved a few feet up the hall. Then it was gone, totally gone, like it was never really there at all." Zoe shook her head. "I just kept looking and looking, but it had just gone from completely solid to completely vanished.
"I stood there a long time," she said. "Part of me wanted to call the police, but what could I say? There was nobody there, no sign of a break-in. There wasn't even a door to the outside near where he'd been. He would've had to walk in through the glass wall. So anyone who came would think I was just crazy.”
“Crazy Hollywood chick,” Hayden said, nodding sagely. Kara's face tightened ever so slightly, but ever so noticeably, and she clearly would've given him a sharp rebuke, or even a sharp blow to the jaw, if only it could have happened without the client noticing.
“Uh, right,” Zoe said. “So instead I double-checked that all the windows and doors in the bungalow were locked up. I pulled the curtains tight, though the one in the bedroom really wouldn't cover the glass completely. Then I ended up sitting in the living room with the stun gun in my hand, waiting for the shadow-man to come back. I didn't sleep again that night. As soon as the sun came up, I was back in my rental and headed into town to find a hotel. I almost quit my job.”
“I wouldn't let her,” Alyssa said. “I could barely find my socks without her.”
“Since we couldn't keep a caretaker, I've hired a local security firm to keep watch on the place, stopping by daily to check the property for any signs of a break-in or damage.”
“What about D-Train?” Stacey asked.
“He is Alyssa's personal bodyguard,” Zoe said. “He stays with her.”
“Ever since the stalker.” Alyssa shook her head. “And let's not get into that.”
“Have you witnessed anything here yourself?” Kara asked Alyssa. “Or has he?”
“He has.” Alyssa nodded at Delavius, who'd apparently been lurking in the dark hallway that led deeper into the second floor of the house.
“Whoa!” Stacey, jumping when she saw him. “I didn't even hear...I mean, are you wearing ninja shoes or what?”
“Technically, they are sneakers,” Delavius said, stepping forward to join us in the room.
“He's good at being invisible,” Alyssa told us. “I think he stole that cloak from Harry Potter.”
“Or Kevin Bacon in that invisible-man movie,” Stacey said. “Hey, while we're all talking about Kevin Bacon, have you ever done a movie with him? Or with somebody who did a movie with him? Because I was just wondering—”
“Stacey, I doubt she wants to talk about her Kevin Bacon number,” I said.
“Ooh, what's her Kevin Bacon number?” Hayden asked.
“It's two,” Alyssa said, pretty matter-of-factly, as though this were a perfectly normal conversation.
“That's not bad,” Hayden said, rubbing his chin in what he probably thought was a sagely manner.
“Why are Americans so obsessed with this Kevin actor?” Kara asked. The bite in her tone told me she was annoyed with all of us, client included.
"It's a mystery," Hayden said.
"I'm sure it all leads somewhere gruesome and twisted in our collective psyche," I said. "Delavius, can you tell us what you saw?"
"It wasn't as wild as what she saw," he said. "It was just last night, during the rain. I thought I saw somebody walking out there, along the boulders, going toward the old lighthouse. I went out there and followed him. He already had a pretty good head start by the time I got out there. I moved up on him as quick as I could, while keeping as quiet as I could—"
"Wearing those ninja shoes," Stacey said.
"Yeah. The water was coming in, so the lighthouse was already cut off from the land. I hurried so I could get to him before he reached the water. I didn't want to be splashing around trying to get him, you know.
"So I yelled out, 'Hey! What are you doing?' just as I caught up to him. I reached out to grab his shoulder, and he turned around and looked at me. Then he was gone." Delavius shook his head. "Like he was never there at all. Like Zoe said. Puff, gone. Like smoke. Only smoke would have left some traces hanging in the air. This guy was there, about to step in the water. Then he wasn't.
"I pretty much had the same thoughts as Zoe, too. I thought I was crazy. Then I saw the footprints in the sand. They looked like somebody had walked out there wearing boots. Then the water came up higher and those footprints were gone, too." He pulled out his phone, flipped around with his thumb for a second, then turned it toward me.
The picture on his phone showed two sets of footprints in the sand. One set ended a few feet before the edge of the water. The other set of prints continued on, alone, into the water. The incoming tide was already beginning to swallow them up.
"See?" Delavius said. "Those are my footprints, but who made the other ones? It was the guy who disappeared." He shook his head. "I might not have told anybody, but I'd already heard the other stories about this place. I was never a big believer in ghosts...but I remember my grandmother used to tell me stories about them. She had a bottle tree near her front door to trap them. I guess she knew the truth."
"I can't have this stuff going on around my house." Alyssa stalked through the room, taking a long look at each of us ghost hunters in turn. Her green eyes struck mine and held them a long time. I couldn't help thinking that she was acting overly dramatic, as if that were a habit or instinct with her. "My family is coming in a couple of weeks. Everything must be perfect. Absolutely flawless. I can't have problems that week." She stopped at Kara, staring deep into her eyes as she repeated herself. "Flawless. Do you understand?"
Time seemed to slow down as they looked at each other. For a second, I almost thought Kara would snap, maybe reach out and tear Alyssa's soul out through her nose, using her fingernails Egyptian brain-hook style like she'd done to me.
"We..." Kara finally said. Her gaze fell to the hardwood floor, which looked like it had been built from thick antique planks, probably recovered from some other falling-apart old house to help expand this one. "We are at your service, of course."
"Good." Alyssa continued on to the end of the gallery and turned back. "Can you do it? Two weeks? I need zero problems when my family arrive."
"We can begin immediately," Kara said. She gestured at the Hoff. "Our technical manager, Hayden, and his assistant Stacey will begin rigging up our observation gear."
Stace
y bristled at being called the Hoff's assistant, but many people might have mistaken her bristling for a smile. A tight, toothy smile. The kind of smile a wild animal would give you just before biting your fingers off.
"Because time is such an issue," Kara continued, "we will need to set up all over your property at once. We use an array of high-sensitivity equipment to attempt to capture audio and video of any entities on your property. Cameras and microphones will need to be everywhere, though we can naturally leave them out of the bedrooms and other sensitive areas, so long as no paranormal activity has been witnessed there. Our emphasis will be on the locations where ghosts have been seen."
"Just keep them out of the master suite," Alyssa said. "You can watch anywhere else."
"Maybe not my bedroom, either," Zoe said.
"You can watch mine if you need to, but nothing ever happens in there," Delavius added.
"We're all staying in the main house now," Alyssa said. "You're free to do as you like in the guest house and the caretaker's bungalow."
"Yeah, nobody's sleeping out there again," Zoe hurried to add.
"We may also emphasize the oldest portion of the house," I said. "The part that was here before you expanded it."
"You've done your research," Zoe said.
"I've been here before," I said. "When I was a kid. The old lighthouse is sort of a local landmark. And I remember that the old keeper's house was much smaller and falling apart. You've done some amazing work here. It really looks authentic."
"It is authentic." Alyssa looked offended by my comment.
"We've worked hard to source locally for materials," Zoe added. "The stones, the timbers, the floors...they're nearly all taken from the ruins of older homes and barns all over the Lowcountry. Including some of the tubs and other bathroom fixtures."