The Keeper (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 8)

by JL Bryan

  Of course, a spirit feeling trapped in the dark, looking for the light, could also mean it was caught between worlds, unable to find the way out of this world and onto the next, or wherever the ghosts go when they finally depart.

  I carefully listened to any other unusual chunks of audio. One simply sounded like fish splashing in the background. The one additional item of interest was a churning wet sound. It might have been marine life, but it sounded also like the voice of someone struggling for air, gurgling as they drowned. That was how it struck me, and the sound made me shiver.

  I spent the rest of the night at a more slippery task—trying to pin down Scary Houdini. That was a case with too many moving parts. A stage magician traveling from city to city, occasionally murdering a victim—he preferred them young, female, and attractive, with light-colored hair and eyes and pale skin. That was a pattern I'd glimpsed through his eyes.

  It was possible he'd been caught at some point, so I searched through historical records, looking for any stage magicians arrested for violent crimes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. With records that old, you're lucky to find anything online, but you never know. There are sites obsessed with magicians, and even more of them obsessed with serial killers.

  My searches didn't yield anything directly, unfortunately, but I flagged some cases for further research. One involved a teenage girl in Philadelphia, 1906, who'd been found chained, hung upside down in her closet and drowned in a tub of water, imitating a magician's escape act gone wrong.

  In 1897, the body of another young woman had been found in a field outside Cincinnati, not long after a traveling circus had stopped there. She'd been sawed in half, in another sick nod to the magician's trade. Local authorities hadn't been able to identify her beyond "a shabby-looking Irish girl" and I couldn't find more about the case.

  I noted down the name of the circus, the Amazing Antoni Brothers Show, and started searching for them. There wasn't much to find, at least online, certainly not an itinerary of their travels, for example, ideally laid out alongside crime reports that fit the victim type and M.O. that were emerging here.

  I emailed Calvin, asking him if he could help find similar cases around the country in the same time period. I was also hoping for an update on whether he'd spoken to Octavia Lancashire yet, but I didn't mention that explicitly. It was too delicate a subject.

  I found some fairly cheap used books about traveling circuses and carnivals during the time period and ordered those. A used copy of Tim Szabo's Dead Roads and Medicine Shows had become available, so I ordered that, but I still couldn't find the one I really wanted: Lost Magic: The Vanishing City, which apparently had a sizable section on the old movie houses of Savannah.

  It didn't take much internet stalking to find Szabo's contact information. For one thing, he seemed highly active on a staggering number of internet forums, filling them with long and angry posts about various movie-franchise reboots. He was against all of them.

  His home address was even available on a website where he sold memorabilia, apparently out of his house. Pictures showed him posing with assorted 1930s movie posters, ventriloquist dummies, and "vintage 80s" My Little Pony and He-Man figures. The memorabilia would have been more appealing if Szabo himself hadn't also been in every picture, often shirtless, beer can in one hand, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, cigarette smoldering between his lips and threatening to ignite his unkempt beard.

  The town of Hinesville was less than an hour away. It looked like it would be faster for Stacey and me to go pay him a visit than to wait around for a used copy of his book to surface at some internet retailer.

  "Oh...wow," Stacey said when I showed her his pictures modeling his merchandise. "How does he get his stomach so pale like that? I guess all the hair blocks the sun..."

  "You can't wait to meet him, can you?" I asked.

  Stacey shuddered. "Isn't there anything else I can do instead? Like digging around an old graveyard at midnight?"

  "Sorry. I need your charm. My attempts tend to repel people."

  "Okay. I'm keeping my stun gun in my purse, though. Look at the huge Betty Boop tattoo on his arm." Stacey shivered.

  "Relax, Stacey. He's not a murderous undead ghoul or anything."

  "We don't know that for sure."

  My phone buzzed. I reached for it, hoping it was Calvin with an update.

  "Hayden," I grumbled. Then I answered it, putting him on speaker.

  "Both your headsets have been off for some time," he said.

  "You're watching us on video."

  "No, you turned that camera into the corner."

  "We're fine, Hayden. But you're right, we should stay in contact. Stacey, turn on your headset. Let me know if Hayden says anything important."

  "Why do I have to?" Stacey ask.

  "Or you could look at this database of scanned newspaper archives—"

  "Headset." Stacey turned her volume back up. "Happy now?"

  "I'd be happier with some pizza rolls," Hayden said over my speaker. "Which I have out here in the mini-fridge. Anybody wanna join me? Got Fresca, too."

  "We're fine," I said.

  "You can't just answer for everyone," Hayden said.

  "We're fine," Stacey added, and I hung up my phone.

  By sunrise, Stacey and I were dozing on the couch, surrounded by screens full of empty rooms and hallways where nothing else had happened.

  The place had its ghosts, though, and I intended to take care of them.

  In order to do that, I'd need to have a possibly uncomfortable conversation with my client before she and her staff flew back to Los Angeles, leaving us alone with the ghosts in her house.

  Chapter Sixteen

  In the morning, the three of us were invited to the main house dining room for breakfast. There were green smoothies jammed full of spinach and broccoli, whites-only omelets with diced tomatoes and green onions—nothing else, not even cheese—and that was about it. I cast jealous looks at Alyssa's Yorkshire terrier, dressed in pink bows, who lapped up the tossed-out raw egg yolks from a bowl inside the kitchen.

  Hayden looked ill as he sipped and poked at the breakfast, but occasionally remembered to throw a smile at Alyssa, over at the head of the table, who ate her omelet one very thin strip at a time. Zoe sat at her right. Delavius didn't join us. It wasn't hard to imagine him finding reasons to avoid meals like these.

  "Isn't Zoe an awesome chef?" Alyssa asked. "I'm having her take vegan culinary classes."

  "And I love them so much," Zoe said. Hard to tell whether she meant it. "Guys, we are so excited to find out what you learned last night. Do you think you can remove the problem?"

  "Well, we're still identifying the problem," I said. "We didn't observe the dark shadowy figure that you and Delavius talked about. I did see a strange white figure out at the lighthouse, but of course we didn't have any cameras out there. I did have my voice recorder, and I may have picked up a couple of words from a ghost."

  "Seriously?" Alyssa sat up. "What did it say?"

  "I can play the audio file for you—"

  "Please," Alyssa nodded.

  "Right now?"

  "We're leaving soon," Zoe said. "Alyssa's plane is waiting.”

  "Okay." I held up my phone, where I'd saved a copy of the audio file—just the ghost's voice, not any of my questions. I'd intended to play it for Alyssa before she left, since it was the only concrete sign that we'd accomplished anything so far. I didn't want them firing us before they left town.

  The room fell silent as I played the audio.

  So dark, said the urgent whisper. Where....where...the light?

  Alyssa and Zoe both stiffened up at that.

  "Ew," Zoe said, drawing her arms tight around herself like a goose had walked over her grave.

  "You can really hear it," Alyssa said, her voice barely above a whisper. A thin white sliver of yolkless egg trembling on her fork, an inch away from her mouth. Her eyes were wide.

 
"And that...brings us to another important point," I said. I hesitated, feeling nervous, then took a breath and forced myself to continue. "If you have any...personal connection to this place, Alyssa, that could be a major factor in the haunting. I understood from our other conversation that you might have visited it when you were younger, maybe as a child..." Just like me, I thought, but did not say out loud.

  Alyssa laid her fork down with an audible clink. Zoe looked into her own lap, as if afraid things were about to get ugly.

  "Why would that matter?" Alyssa asked.

  "Ghosts are extremely emotional," I said. "If they have some strong feelings toward you...for whatever reason...maybe you remind them of someone they knew in life, or maybe they've encountered you before and remember you...that could have a real impact on how active they are. The more we know about a ghost, the better we can devise a way to trap it. Ideally, we want to know a ghost's identity and its motivation. That's why we spend so much time on historical research."

  "Do you really have to do all that?" Alyssa's nose wrinkled, as if something I'd said offended her. "Can't you just, you know, nab it?"

  "If we could, we would." I thought about Kara—maybe she could just nab it. But the last thing I really wanted was to give Kara another strong ghost for her collection, her mysterious research.

  Scratch that. The real last thing I wanted was to ask Kara for help, or to speak with her, or be in the same building with her in any way.

  "So we're looking into the history of the property," I continued. "We're looking for any deaths that could be considered tragic, or violent...so far there's more than enough tragedy to go around. There was even a shipwreck—"

  "Maybe the ghost's just a random guy from the shipwreck," Alyssa said. "How would you handle it then?"

  "It's very premature to say, but there's a good chance one or both ghosts were people who lived here, who had a deep personal connection to this place."

  "Dying on those rocks out there would probably make for a deep connection, don't you think?" Alyssa shrugged and sipped her thick green smoothie. She grimaced as she swallowed it down—she clearly didn't like the taste any better than anybody else did.

  "True," I said. "Are you saying you don't have a personal connection to this place? Or maybe some of your family members?"

  "Which family members?" Alyssa's eyes burned like green embers as she stared at me.

  "The ones from...here. From Georgia. Lumber City, Georgia."

  "Where did you find out about that?" she asked. Beside her, Zoe's lips almost disappeared, she pressed them together so hard. Her eyes were still low, avoiding everyone, and now her shoulders seemed to draw a little closer together, like she was making herself small.

  "Somewhere on the web," I said, definitely wanting to protect Delavius here. "I don't remember all the gossip sites—"

  "We need to know which one," Zoe said, looking up at me.

  "Look, there's obviously something important and personal going on here," I said. "If you want to speak privately about it, that's fine. But if you want us to de-haunt the house, we need some idea of what's bringing out the ghosts."

  Alyssa stared at me for a long minute.

  "Okay," she finally said. "Privately." She gestured at Zoe without looking at her.

  Zoe stood up, suddenly cool and professional again, no longer cringing. "Because of the last caretaker's resignation, your agency will be left in charge of on-site security while we are away."

  "We're house-sitting for Alyssa Wagner! Sweet!" Hayden spoke up, as though completely oblivious to the delicate, strained emotional atmosphere in the room.

  "If you'll come with me, I can review your duties," Zoe said.

  Stacey nodded and stood. She tugged at Hayden's elbow when he failed to do the same.

  "I don't do windows," Hayden said.

  "Me neither," Stacey added. She left the dining room, making sure he followed her. Zoe closed the door tight as she left with them.

  "Thanks," I said. "And again, I'm sorry. But if you could just tell me—"

  "You listen up." Alyssa stood, suddenly towering over me, suddenly as furious as the Greek goddess Hera in...well, basically any story where she shows up. Alyssa was an actress with presence, that was certain, and I felt genuinely cowed by her for a moment. I tried to tell myself she was just playing a role. She couldn't be as seething with fury as she appeared to be. Because she appeared to be ready to grab the nearest knife and slash at my face, then demand my milk money.

  "I told you I didn't want questions about my family, and I mean it. There's only one thing you need to know about them. They're coming down here for Thanksgiving. I need all of you out of here by then. I don't mean the day of. I mean the weekend before. And all this?" She held her arms out wide and turned slowly, indicating the nicely appointed dining room all around us, with its high ceiling and repurposed antique woodwork, the undeniably impressive fireplace and mantel at the side of the room, the windows looking out onto ridiculously expensive private beachfront. "All this has to be perfect by then. I can't have them saying there's problems here, there's flaws here, this girl's gone and screwed it up. No, no, no. And that means no freaky stuff, either. They find out this place is haunted, they'll go back and laugh at me and call me a fool." She stalked closer, her face going dark and crimson now. I half-expected her to shoot me full of lightning, like I'd seen her do to villains in the movies. And to a superhero ex-boyfriend who was being a jerk, which had been funny at the time. What was his name? Boulder Boy?

  "Okay—" I said, meekly, whispering to show that I was totally submissive and not arguing. If we got through this, she would leave town, and the case would be smooth sailing for days to come, while we rooted out the ghosts and racked up the billable hours.

  Plus, to be honest, she scared me.

  "No," she said, cutting me off conversationally, though thankfully not with an actual blade. She did pick up a small grapefruit spoon and gripped it while she spoke. "It's not okay. What you need to do is act like a pest exterminator here. I am not going to hand you a treasure trove to go and sell to your tabloid friends."

  "To my...? I don't have any—"

  "Sure, whatever. If you didn't think of it yet, you would have. Everybody does eventually."

  "We signed non-disclosures."

  "And don't forget it," she said. "You have two weeks to get these ghosts out of here. Then I want all of you gone, without a trace. And I don't want to see one word about any of this leaked anywhere on the internet, do you understand me, honey?" She said honey in a way that somehow felt like a punch to the solar plexus. "Get rid of these ghosts, these whatever they are. There can't be nothing wrong with this house come the holidays. Nothing."

  She slammed the grapefruit spoon down into the antique rustic-plank dining table and bent it like she was crushing out a cigarette.

  Then she walked out the door, calling for her assistant, demanding to know why Delavius wasn't already waiting outside in the driver's seat, with her luggage loaded and the engine running.

  Chapter Seventeen

  "Well, glad none of that got awkward," Stacey said about forty-five minutes later, as we stood in the front room of the house and watched the long, black-windowed SUV pull away. It was big enough to hold a dozen people, but Alyssa, Zoe, and Delavius were the only occupants. Though Alyssa's heap of designer leather luggage and garment bags easily took up as much space as an extra person or two.

  "Downside, Ellie freaked out the client," Hayden said.

  "I did not—"

  "Yeah, right," he interrupted. "That is one unhappy movie star. I saw her emoting all over the place."

  "She was emoting a lot," Stacey agreed. "Anger, resentment...lots of it directed at you..."

  "Just be glad I'm taking the heat here," I said. "I didn't ask either of you to jump under the bus for me. Somebody had to ask about her connection here, and her family."

  "And what did you find out?" Hayden asked. "Besides that asking her those things ma
kes her hate you for life?"

  "Okay, I give up," I said. "Hayden, how do you want to trap these ghosts whose origins and motives we aren't allowed to research?"

  "Whoa, we can totally research the ghosts still, right?" Stacey asked. "We have to be able to do that."

  "I know how to trap them," he said. "We're talking about a dead lighthouse keeper, right? And what do lighthouse keepers like?"

  Stacey and I waited quietly for the answer.

  "Fish fillets, yo!" Hayden said with a broad grin. "We need to hit up the nearest seafood mart, plus nab some fresh cornmeal, have a big fish fry. And crab cakes, Maryland-style. The ghosts won't be able to resist."

  "That's ridiculous," I said.

  "That's what you think. I know a recipe."

  "For attracting ghosts with fish?" Stacey asked.

  "Yeah! I mean, no. Not for attracting ghosts. Just for the fish."

  "Hayden, we're not..." Then I considered that the client was out of town for a week, and that was a lot of downtime on his hands. "You know what? If you want to buy groceries and cook them, go ahead. Knock yourself out."

  "That's what I'm talking about! Fish fry high-five!" He held out his hand, and I eventually slapped it. "I make killer tartar sauce. You'll see. The secret ingredient is ketchup. So what's next?"

  "Next, I'm going home," I said. "We've been at this case nonstop since yesterday."

  "Yeah, that sounds perfect to me," Stacey said.

  "Wait, wait," Hayden said. "Who's going to watch the house all day?"

  "They said a security company patrols by," I said.

  "Nah, that's not good enough for Alyssa." Hayden dropped into an antique wing-backed chair with small rampant lions carved into the wood.

  "Are you getting a crush on the movie star?" Stacey asked. "Because I think she'd totally go for you."

  "Really? Huh." Hayden shook his head. "Too bad for her I'm more of a Mary Ann than a Ginger. But they said we have to caretake. Who's going to water the flowers? Or clean up the cobwebs? New ones are quietly forming even as we speak."