by JL Bryan
I turned out my flashlight and stood still for a moment. The sea water fully covered the tops of my boots now, so I moved closer to the tower, where the sand was still visible, though certainly quite wet, the ocean beginning to swallow up the base of the tower for the night.
"Matty Verish?" I asked, speaking the name of the widow light-keeper who'd taken over the tower for many years, diligently keeping it up after her husband died, training her sons to operate it in turn. "Are you the one I saw up there all those years ago? Or Callie Verish?" That was the only family member to survive the big hurricane in 1883, the one had that had killed three thousand people, including almost the entire light-keeper family. "Callie? Are you the one who appeared to me? Do you still haunt the lighthouse? Did you resent losing it to the new keeper? You probably felt like you deserved it. Your family was here for generations, ever since this version of the lighthouse was built. Are you still here?"
I held my voice recorder high, pointing it toward the entrance and windows high above. If anyone answered, it wasn't within the range of my hearing. The recorder could detect sound waves well beyond that range, fortunately.
"You can talk to me," I said. "Why are you here? And who is the male figure that's been seen walking out here?" I turned and pointed the recorder back along the boulder jetty. A causeway-like path of sand and small rocks still connected the lighthouse to the rest of the land, but the ocean was definitely encroaching. The sea was calm, though, and the sky was clear. I didn't have anything to fear from the weather.
This part of the mission was a bit personal. I intended to hide the voice recording from everyone but Stacey—and maybe even her, just to be safe, and analyze it alone. I didn't want Hayden, Kara, or any such person learning about my childhood connection to this place. The less they knew about me, the less they could use against me.
I started toward the first of the stone steps leading up and around the lighthouse. I paused, looking at the sharp oyster shells exposed like deadly spikes along the side.
My heart picked up a little as I stepped onto the first stair with one foot, then the other. I could feel tiny hairs standing up all over me, as if jolted by static electricity, but that was easily my own nervous reaction. It didn't indicate anything supernatural. There were no cold spots, no voices, no apparitions of any kind.
"Who was it that appeared to me?" I asked. "Were you there to help? Or did you...want to hurt me?" I remembered the feeling of being trapped underwater, unable to break free even though my nose and lips were only an inch or so below the surface.
I didn't get a response, whether clear, subtle, or in between. I heard only the sound of the water sloshing slowly in the night, the occasional splash of a jumping fish, boat motors in the distance.
To the north and west of me loomed a sizable blob on the horizon across the river channel. Fort Pulaski stood there, centuries old, guarding the river against the long-dead Yankees—not very well, as it had turned out, since the walls had been shattered by cannon fire. The fort had recently been flooded by another big tropical storm.
The old fort was said to be haunted by plenty of its own ghosts, soldiers and prisoners, but it seemed too far away to be the source of any ghosts wandering Alyssa Wagner's property. Many ghosts don't care for running water—it can scramble their energy in somewhat the same way as sunlight—which is part of the reason that the anti-ghost color of haint blue is meant to protect against unwelcome spirits.
Looking the other way, there was nothing but dark ocean water, encroaching in and around the spur where I stood, gradually turning into a tiny island of its own, just big enough for the old lighthouse and the oyster beds around it.
I moved up onto the second step, then the third, testing each one before ascending. They were dark and slippery—these were the steps that spent much of their lives underwater, after all, with little chance to dry out. Erosion had crumbled their edges, but the first three steps managed to hold my weight without any major protest. I kept one hand trailing along the side of the lighthouse, and one eye on the sharp boulders and shells below.
Step by step, I ascended onto the forbidden tower—forbidden by law, at least—following the steep spiral up and around. I asked my questions again. Was anyone there? Did anyone have a message for the living? For me?
I completed one revolution around the lighthouse. I paused on the stairs, looking down at the first stair below me. It was a drop of several feet down to where I'd started. A wave of the slowly rising tide washed over the muddy land and surrounded that first step. Each wave would grow slightly higher, swallowing a little more of the stairway.
I continued onward, following the stairs around again, finally reached the barred archway of the front entrance.
Through the bars, I could see where the stairs continued, up and around in a spiral within the lighthouse. I pressed myself against the rusty bars and reached my arm through them, clutching my flashlight. The beam revealed more of the spiral staircase, as well as the shoddy condition of the interior. Water glistened all over the walls, though it hadn't rained recently. It smelled foul inside, as if filled with mold and muck.
The stairs continued up and out of sight above me. They looked damp and eroded, but walkable, if it came to that. The bigger problem was the bars blocking the entrance—easily removed, but with some risk of getting charged with a federal crime. Any damage to the lighthouse would obviously bring attention right to our client, who'd just purchased and expanded the only building close by.
Buying the old cottage away from the government, along with permits to expand and build, must have cost Alyssa a fortune. I thought again about the extravagant expense here. She could easily have purchased an impressive historic mansion anywhere in the area for less money, though with an equal risk of being haunted, naturally. The city is loaded with beautiful old mansions.
I looked back at the main house. At one point, according to yellowed historical photographs, there had been a wooden bridge built across from the archway where I stood to the old light-keeper's cottage, following the jetty of boulders. This was supposed to keep the lighthouse accessible during high tide, but one hurricane or another had smashed that bridge and left no trace of it behind.
The hand that held my flashlight, along with most of the arm that I'd extended through the bars, suddenly felt very cold. It was damp coldness, too, like a freezing mist in the air.
I turned quickly back to look inside the lighthouse, while drawing my arm back out of the bars. My fingers were almost too numb to hold my flashlight. I holstered my voice recorder, then clicked the flashlight off with my other, not-quite-so-frozen hand. I didn't want the powerful light to discourage any supernatural presence from manifesting. Not at the moment, anyway.
I looked into the deep shadows within the tower. My eyes took a little time adjusting to the sudden gloom after my flashlight went dark. I unholstered my EMF meter and found that the energy and temperature levels fluctuated wildly around the bars blocking the archway. The interior of the tower was several degrees colder than the outside, even just an inch or so inside the bars.
Tucking away the EMF meter, I took out the voice recorder and resumed my questions—whispering now, not wanting to startle the entity into fleeing.
“Hello? Is someone there?” I paused for a minute, waiting for any response. “If someone is there, please send me a message. Can you speak? Or make any kind of sound?” I paused again, then added, “Can you tap on the walls, then?”
I fell silent, listening, squinting into the dark as I searched for any sign of movement.
It emerged all at once, pale and transparent, faintly glowing. Had my flashlight been on, it would have drowned out the apparition, and I would have seen nothing at all.
The entity's appearance was not fully formed. It seemed to float, gauzy and white, ribbons of weak light trailing away from it and faded away into the darkness all around. Its shape just barely suggested a human, the face a featureless white oval, the limbs nonexistent, unle
ss they were represented by those thin white ribbons of pale light.
I shivered. No matter how many supernatural entities you encounter, there's no stopping that biological-level fear, the animal instincts shrieking at you to get away from the haunted area as fast as you possibly can. You learn to work through the fear, but the fear never goes away.
Of course, my childhood experience here, seeing a white figure while I'd nearly died, probably made this particular response a bit worse and more personal than usual.
My heartbeat picked up. I started taking deep, slow breaths to calm it down. The breathing helped a little.
The glowing white figure rushed close to me, and I recoiled, bracing myself for impact. If the ghost gave me a hard shove, it would be a long drop from the slippery old steps to the sharp rocks and shallow seawater below.
I dropped to one knee, lowering my center of gravity to make it more difficult for the entity to push me off. I readied my flashlight to strike back with thousands of searing white lumens in case the ghost got hostile.
The entity stopped suddenly on the other side of the bars, as though it was no more capable of passing through them than I was. Ghosts are physically able to pass through bars and solid walls, so this suggested a psychological barrier on the ghost's part. Perhaps it couldn't leave the lighthouse, or believed it couldn't, or had no desire to do so.
I knew that the entity could at least go up to the circular walkway at the very top if it wanted an outdoor stroll, though. I'd seen it up there before. I was almost certain this was the entity that had watched me struggle underwater when I was a child. That had been in broad daylight—well, daylight shrouded by rain clouds, but the ghost had been out in daytime, anyway. That's not unheard of, but it certainly made this ghost a little bit of an odd duck.
“Hello,” I whispered. “Do you remember me? I remember you.”
If it responded, it wasn't within the range of anything I could see or hear.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Matty Verish...Callie Verish...?” I said aloud the name of any female I'd read about in connection with the tower, but I could hardly recall all the various wives and daughters off the top of my head. Nor their sisters or their cousins or their aunts, as the song goes. Those two stood out because of their intense histories with the lighthouse.
If one name meant more than the others to the faceless, transparent presence, it made no indication. It was fading, had been fading since my eyes first landed on it. Its glow withered, its ribbony appendages seeming to melt away.
I felt a little bit of panic that I was going to lose touch with the entity without ever making any real contact with it.
“I remember you from that day when I almost drowned,” I said. “Years ago. Did you see me then? I think you did. I think you were watching me.”
My desperation grew as the cold white figure shrank and faded more. I reached my bare hand through the bars again, directly toward the entity. This kind of direct physical contact can create a momentary psychic connection, almost always unpleasant, between the living and the dead. I hoped for a glimpse of who she was, or some piece of her life, just as I'd experienced with the magician ghost in the theater.
It didn't work this time—the figure drew back, keeping its cold essence just out of my touch. It continued fading, more rapidly now, leaving only pale traces in the air.
“Were you trying to kill me?” I asked. “When I was a kid? Did you want me dead? Do you want me dead now?”
For a moment, the fading into dimness seemed to stop. It even reversed, brightening more. It was far from a clear answer, but it was the closest I'd come to eliciting a response tonight.
Then it was gone altogether, like a candle snuffed out, all the pale glow and ethereal substance vanished. The cold spot dissipated quickly. I could feel the change on my skin before I double-checked with my meter. The temperature of the air within the lighthouse quickly reached parity with the air outside, and the crazy energy spikes went away.
I clicked my flashlight on and swept it around the inside of the lighthouse again, looking at the stairs I could see.
“There's something in the lighthouse,” I said, turning up my headset. “It showed itself to me for a second.”
“Uh, didn't you make a big song and dance about the lighthouse being off-limits for this investigation?” Hayden asked. “Something about federal crimes?”
“Hayden's right,” Stacey's voice added quickly. “And you know how it kills me to say that. But you did indeed sing that song and dance that dance, Ellie.”
“And let's keep singing and dancing it,” I said, still peering into the dark lighthouse. “I just wanted you to know. There's something in there. Be extra careful around this tower.”
“Considering it looks like it's about to topple over at any moment, I'll be sure to do that,” Stacey said. “What did you see?”
“A very faint apparition,” I said. “Pale and white. Thin and drifting.”
“Maybe it was just like a napkin or something,” Hayden suggested.
A long silence held among our headsets, filled only by the electrical crackle of the open channel.
“I'm going to pretend you didn't say that,” I replied.
“Did it speak?” Stacey asked. “You said you were going for an EVP session.”
“Maybe I picked something up, but I doubt it.” I added the doubt mainly to steer Hayden's interest away. “I'll sift through it later and check for auditory anomalies.”
“You'll do it yourself?” Stacey asked, sounding surprised.
“We've had plenty of time to kill so far on this case,” I said. “If I get bored, I'll toss it over to you, Stacey.”
“Okay.” I could tell by her tone that she was puzzled—normally digging through heaps of audio data was a job I gave her. Fortunately, she didn't ask any more questions about it. I'd brought up my childhood connection to the place in hopes of drawing out the ghost, but I didn't particularly want anyone else hearing that and asking me more questions.
Apparently, Alyssa and I had that in common. We both had some sort of connection to this lighthouse, and neither of us wanted to talk about it.
I carefully made my way down the exterior steps, three times counterclockwise around the lighthouse. When I reached the final stair, it was covered in salty water. I had to slosh my way to the shore, my boots sinking down to my calves with every step as I made my way through the night.
Chapter Fifteen
The rest of the night was less eventful, but we'd confirmed to my satisfaction that there was a strong haunting at the lighthouse. It wasn't a weird dream fragment from my childhood near-death experience. My instruments had measured significant changes in temperature and energy levels. I'd also seen it with my own eyes, but if you want to be scientific, you have to question what you see. The difference between hallucination and reality is hard data, not feelings.
Lately, I'd been letting my feelings pilot the ship too often. This case—my whole line of work, really—was a constant invitation to insanity. More so every day, it felt like. When I close my eyelids, movies of things I've seen play across the inside of them. It's always a horror movie, because that's my life. It's a horror movie, and all the doors are locked, the exit signs are switched off, and you can't escape the theater. And the dark things in the shadows aren't just your imagination—they're chasing you between the rows, trying to kill you. And the floor is really sticky and gross. And so on.
Stacey wanted details of my encounter at the lighthouse as soon as I was back inside, but I kept it short and vague. Hayden was listening, after all, through our headsets, through microphones in the caretaker's bungalow where Stacey and I sat on the couch surrounded by tablets and laptops.
We ribbed him—almost by habit at this point—but Hayden was hardly the worst of the people from the PSI takeover of our agency. He was, I almost had to admit, the best of them. He'd been there for us in a tight spot or two. He was also helping Nicholas hide our Anton Clay investigation fr
om Kara.
Still, I had to assume that Hayden's deeper loyalty lay with his actual employers and not with us, and so we had to keep our distance.
I was worried about Nicholas's motives for doing that, but I thought I could guess. Anton Clay's ghost was extremely powerful and dangerous, and Nicholas would want to provide such an entity for his company's research. That was the only thing that made sense to me, based on what I knew of these people who'd swooped in and taken over our lives.
Personally, I was ready for them to reverse-swoop back out of here and disappear again. Stacey seemed to feel the same. I hoped Calvin's attempt to reverse the sale led somewhere, and fast.
In the living room of the caretaker bungalow, I removed my radio headset and replaced it with earbuds from a laptop. While Stacey kept watch on our array of cameras and sensors across the three buildings—and stayed in touch with Hayden via her headset, lucky girl—I dug into the data collected by my voice recorder. Waveforms and spectrograms filled my screen.
My recordings from the lighthouse totaled about fifteen minutes. It had felt to me like I'd been there much longer, as if time had slowed when I was close to the tower. That had probably been my nerves, my sense of time dilating in the presence of danger as my eyes and ears scrambled to take in all the information they could about the unnatural threat before me.
I did the usual analysis, letting the software flag any big spikes or drops in the audio. There were a few. The software helped me try to amplify and manipulate them into the range of human hearing.
So dark, the voice seemed to say, once I'd squashed and pushed the waveforms until I could hear something. It was an urgent whisper, with as much emotion as I'd ever heard from a dead person's voice. Where....where...the light?
I shuddered at the voice and its implications. It could well be a lost soul, maybe one of the Verish family, unable to move on from the lighthouse. Perhaps it was the widow Matty Verish, still present, worried about how the light had gone out, no longer there to warn ships against the rocky spur and treacherous shoreline. If so, she must have been hanging around worrying about that for the past century.